Asherterix
Out Exploring
- Location
- Approx. 15,396,300,000 miles away
- Pronouns
- He/They
That sounds awful. I want it now.
Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline
- Thread starter Aelita
- Start date
- Timeline Post-1900 Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Honestly, the one spot in that whole video that I actually like was the Sam Fennah stuff, which introduced me to Satellite City and his whole bizarre universe. Other than that? A complete shit show.
Hawkatana
That jaywalking punk anarchist
- Location
- That place in the thing
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That wasn't great either. It was just a different kind of bad.
Zolarian01
Deputy Premier, UISR
- Pronouns
- He/Him
How did the Hispanic sections of the Comintern react to the Red May Revolution?
Asherterix
Out Exploring
- Location
- Approx. 15,396,300,000 miles away
- Pronouns
- He/They
Actually, speaking of internet-based music, how is Epic Rap Battles of History doing? I say this because I've been on a nostalgia binge of their content, and I wondered if some battles would change. Churchill vs Rooselvelt would change, but what about various others? I think there would probably be a Commander Columbia vs Captain America or Superman...
Also, to answer Zolarion's qustion, I think largely by having revolutions of their own.
Also, to answer Zolarion's qustion, I think largely by having revolutions of their own.
Last edited:
Tank vs Tank: Wehrmacht box tanks in the eastern front starring the Rhino and Jaguar (Aelita and Spartakrod)
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
*Excerpts from Blitzkrieg: Manoeuvre war on the Eastern front (London: Osprey Books, 1991)
The Pz. Kpfw. IV "Nashorn" or "Rhino" to English speakers; underwent many iterations, first seeing service in the invasions of Poland and Yugoslavia where it seemed to be virtually invincible against anything the outmatched eastern european armies could throw at it. Singular battalions could rampage with virtual impunity against even the heaviest resistance, and though there was room for improvement, it would find its place in the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS for years to come. In the fateful combats of operation Teutonic, the behemothic heavy tanks would accompany the initial scrum through the USSR's western territories, bulldozing its way through any number of BT-7s or disorganised T-34s that had the misfortune of encountering the heavy battalions of the Panzertruppe and finding worthy adversaries only in the Soviet Union's own mighty KV-1 tanks.
The further improved Ausf D with a significantly improved engine and transmission as well as improved armour and armament made world shattering combat debut in summer 1941's Operation Landsknecht, the fateful drive on the Soviet city of Leningrad. Unlike the typical medium and light tanks of the Wehrmacht, which were grouped into divisions, the meticulous heavy tanks would be deployed as independent "schwere Panzerabteilung" (heavy tank battalions), reporting directly to field army headquarters. Like the StuG battalions, the 's PzAbt' would be attached as needed to support breakthrough missions by the infantry and tank troops, delivering overwhelming direct fire support on enemy defences.
But while the StuG III was an economically lean design courtesy of the engineers at Ford-Werke, armed with the ubiquitous 7.5 cm Pak 40 and modest armour, the Nashorn was cladded and equipped like knights for the thickest close fighting, and cost nearly 260,000 Reichsmarks. They would be the final legacy of German craft production, well made and spacious fighting vehicles, boasting considerable engineering refinement as well as crew ergonomics of the likes never seen before, but they would inevitably be superseded by the Front Ford philosophy.
Physically, the Nashorn resembled an enlarged Pz. Kpfw. III, with the Ausf D even sporting the enlarged side-skirts common to most later era Panzer IIIs. Indeed, in initial engagements it was often mistaken for the smaller medium tank in the haze of the battlefield, to the misfortune of the enemy. The armour profile is very similar, a rectangular hull with vertical armoured sides, and a vertical front plate for the driver vision port and hull machine gun port. But the face-hardened steel armour was 120mm thick on the front hull with certain platings reaching up to 140mms, and an average of 80mm on the sides and rear, all enough to shrug off everything but the heaviest howitzer shells and to equal the power of the tank it was designed to match and counter; the KV-1.
When coupled with the fighting manual's recommended 30 degree angling, this presented a target that was practically immune to fire from the Red Army's standard 57mm ZiS-2 anti-tank gun, like a knight in shining armour charging towards peasant archers. Armed with its 8.8cm/L56 calibre gun, it was able to puncture most anything short of another heavy tank at most combat effective ranges, while designed to potentially accommodate larger guns in the future should the need arise. The hope was that the tank would be able to serve as a long-lived basis for the heavy combat formations of the Panzertruppe for years to come.
PzKpfw IV Nashorn of s PzAbt 503
For the standards of the time, the large calibre main cannon also allowed for the delivery of a powerful high explosive shot, following complaints from the infantry about how the Panzertruppe either could deal with tanks or field positions but never both. While the modified Pz. Kpfw III was able to fit a potent 7.5cm gun, the gain in velocity came at the price of the previous medium calibre gun's high explosive performance, resulting in impeded effectiveness against dug in VOSCOM forces and frequently forcing Stahlpakt formations to wait for the arrival of assault guns such as the StuG III and the Brummbar, something that heavy tank battalions equipped with the Nashorn never needed.
Though concerns were raised by the tank's mechanical requirements; particularly by engineers associated with Ford who had been schooled in the American interchangeable parts philosophy of design hammered in by decades of working on cars; it was believed that the tank's role would mitigate this issue. As a breakthrough tank, the vehicle could be simply shipped to the battlefield and driven into the heaviest fighting along narrow fronts to open passageways through enemy defensive formations that more mobile assets could then exploit. With the limited duration of the combat missions in the concept of the vehicle, any that broke down could be seamlessly moved back for maintenance and repair and the vehicles held in reserve until the need for them arose once more.1
This was at least, the general theory behind the Nashorn's design. And when allowed to function in this role, it excelled against virtually all possible opposition. As has already been mentioned, Breakthrough formations equipped with Nashorn tanks simply pushed through any opposition the Polish armed forces could offer, moving with contempt for the lacklustre firepower of the Polish anti-tank formations and engaging any targets of their choosing at will.
With more Nashorn tanks deployed to the Polish Campaign than the Polish had tanks at all, the Nashorns were portrayed as virtually invincible and their crews certainly seemed to believe it. And against the Polish army, they may as well have been, with no confirmed losses to Polish anti-tank fire throughout the entirety of the Polish war.2
Nashorn tanks would be the first German mechanised assets to breach into Warsaw where they would overwhelm the final lines of defence, unable to be halted by anything short of direct artillery strikes by crews that were not well trained in anti-tank warfare.3 And it would be in the sight of the mighty tanks of the German army that the annexation of Poland would be signed, while the president would shortly commit suicide as Nashorns would drive down Warsaw's streets in parade formation.
The Nashorn compared very favourably to its opponents during the first two years of fighting on the Eastern Front. It easily outclassed the available medium tanks of the Red Armies, and its relative immunity most anti-tank weapons prompted a crash program to uparm Soviet and American tanks with the high velocity 76mm, still insufficient against the Nashorn's frontal armour but capable of flanking engagements at range. Even against the Soviet KV series of heavy tanks and the American T-5 of the breakthrough tank brigades, the Nashorn was largely superior in firepower and overall protection.
The 8.8cm KwK 36 was significantly more powerful than the 85mm ZiS-53, and would not be surpassed in tank-killing ferocity until the 90mm D42 could be retrofitted. But the Nashorn's faults could also not be ignored in the vast expanse of the USSR: it was a heavy tank, with all that this implied.
While the mud and rains in the Russian countryside are a hazard to all vehicles, and Nashorns had better ground pressure ratings than lighter PzKpfw IIIs due to the much wider tracks and interleaved roadwheel design, any vehicle can and will be bogged down in the rasputitsa conditions. The Nashorn suffered from a lack of suitable armoured recovery vehicles to dislodge them when they did get stuck.
In most circumstances, it was incredibly difficult to recover and repair any Nashorn unable to move under its own power. Field services often had to set up at the site of a wreck and field repair the tank to get it back into a maintenance depot. The Wehrmacht wanted an armoured recovery vehicle derivative to alleviate this problem, but Henschel & Son could not produce enough hulls to meet the demands of the heavy tank battalions even without diverting production.
What the Wehrmacht needed was a medium tank that could be efficiently mass produced and could also engage Soviet and American armour on favourable terms. True to the pseudo-Darwinian philosophy of Hitler, the Reich Armament Ministry hoped to find the way forward through competition.
Two major projects would compete to succeed the PzKpfw III; the conservative VK 30.03(M) project by MAN AG and Rheinmetall, and the more ambitious Entwicklung 50 project by Ford Werke.
The VK 30.03, originally intended to be a 30-35 tonne medium tank when greenlit in spring 1940, would balloon to the 47 tonne PzKpfw V "Panther" in its final pre-production version. While less burdened by the legacy of German craft production than the Nashorn, the Panther was proving to be expensive, and as the armour thickened and chassis lengthened to adjust to the shifting needs of the Wehrmacht, this overstressed the engine, transmission and final drive components greatly.
The E-50, by contrast, was designed under the tutelage of American expat engineers and Fritz Todt's philosophy of war economy. Intended to be produced on an assembly line by forced labour, and sharing components and design philosophy with other Entwicklung series projects, the E-50 began in a heavier weight class and successfully trimmed down through careful engineering and volumetric analysis.
Externally, the two prototypes were quite similar. Both tanks were tall and boxy tanks, with a rear engine and frontal transmission typical of German tanks. Both had clean lines compared to the greebled armour pattern of their predecessors; well sloped glacis plates of 80mm thick sloped at 55 degrees on the Panther and 54 on the E-50.
The major visible difference was in the turret. The Panther's turret was largely rectangular, with a transverse cylindrical mantlet 100mm maximum thickness which could unfortunately deflect shells through the thin hull roof armour. The E-50 had a hexagonal turret and small conical mantlet over the rear of the breech. This presented a smaller vulnerability zone, more thickly armoured at 120mm at 21 degree slope.
The two tanks took different philosophies with their main armament. The Panther prototype was armed with the 7.5cm KwK 42 L/70 gun, a very potent anti-tank weapon that suffered from poor performance in high-explosive shells. Ford chose to equip the initial E-50 with the same 8.8cm KwK 36 as the Nashorn, which had less armour penetration but was favourable logistically due to the shared ammunition train with the Nashorn and the numerous Flak 36 anti-aircraft guns. The roomier turret of the E-50 was also designed to fit a derivative of the longer 8.8cm PaK 43 heavy anti-tank gun when it became available and required.
The development of both prototypes reached a fever-pitch of urgency during the campaigns of 1941. Even in the great Wehrmacht victories at Kiev and Pskov, the Panzertruppen took tremendous mechanical attrition, to say nothing of the loss of veteran tank crews. Upgraded to the limits of the chassis, the PzKpfw III Ausf M was still heavily vulnerable to everything from the excellent ZiS-2 anti-tank gun to the PTRS anti-tank rifle. Anti-tank rifle teams used the extraordinarily powerful 14.5x114mm BS tungsten-core shot to pierce the side and rear armour of German tanks in volley-fire, and the spaced-armour side-skirts required to stop the already overloaded chassis in dire straits.
As Red Army formations bristled with more anti-tank firepower, including their own analogues to the Pakfront, as well as new innovations in recoilless rifles firing shaped-charge warheads, the beleaguered PzKpfw III would have to give way.
PzKpfw 50 Ausf. D near Kursk, Summer 1943
On 1 January 1942, Hitler gave his final decree on the subject. Development of the PzKpfw V would cease immediately, and all existing materials at MAN AG would be recycled as a heavy assault gun/tank destroyer. This gave the MAN AG konzern a means to save face after all the development cost of the Panther was sunk, and the contracts for the resulting Jagdpanther would write their own illustrious story in the war. By the same decree, the E-50 would be accepted for serial production, with modifications, as the PzKpfw 50 Jaguar.
While Jaguar production would take precedence, and thus Panzer formations would operate for a time with a mix of Jaguar and PzKpfw III companies, the less developed PzKpfw 25 Gepard would soon follow in serial production to finally replace the remaining PzKpfw IIIs.
The Pz. Kpfw. IV "Nashorn" or "Rhino" to English speakers; underwent many iterations, first seeing service in the invasions of Poland and Yugoslavia where it seemed to be virtually invincible against anything the outmatched eastern european armies could throw at it. Singular battalions could rampage with virtual impunity against even the heaviest resistance, and though there was room for improvement, it would find its place in the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS for years to come. In the fateful combats of operation Teutonic, the behemothic heavy tanks would accompany the initial scrum through the USSR's western territories, bulldozing its way through any number of BT-7s or disorganised T-34s that had the misfortune of encountering the heavy battalions of the Panzertruppe and finding worthy adversaries only in the Soviet Union's own mighty KV-1 tanks.
The further improved Ausf D with a significantly improved engine and transmission as well as improved armour and armament made world shattering combat debut in summer 1941's Operation Landsknecht, the fateful drive on the Soviet city of Leningrad. Unlike the typical medium and light tanks of the Wehrmacht, which were grouped into divisions, the meticulous heavy tanks would be deployed as independent "schwere Panzerabteilung" (heavy tank battalions), reporting directly to field army headquarters. Like the StuG battalions, the 's PzAbt' would be attached as needed to support breakthrough missions by the infantry and tank troops, delivering overwhelming direct fire support on enemy defences.
But while the StuG III was an economically lean design courtesy of the engineers at Ford-Werke, armed with the ubiquitous 7.5 cm Pak 40 and modest armour, the Nashorn was cladded and equipped like knights for the thickest close fighting, and cost nearly 260,000 Reichsmarks. They would be the final legacy of German craft production, well made and spacious fighting vehicles, boasting considerable engineering refinement as well as crew ergonomics of the likes never seen before, but they would inevitably be superseded by the Front Ford philosophy.
Physically, the Nashorn resembled an enlarged Pz. Kpfw. III, with the Ausf D even sporting the enlarged side-skirts common to most later era Panzer IIIs. Indeed, in initial engagements it was often mistaken for the smaller medium tank in the haze of the battlefield, to the misfortune of the enemy. The armour profile is very similar, a rectangular hull with vertical armoured sides, and a vertical front plate for the driver vision port and hull machine gun port. But the face-hardened steel armour was 120mm thick on the front hull with certain platings reaching up to 140mms, and an average of 80mm on the sides and rear, all enough to shrug off everything but the heaviest howitzer shells and to equal the power of the tank it was designed to match and counter; the KV-1.
When coupled with the fighting manual's recommended 30 degree angling, this presented a target that was practically immune to fire from the Red Army's standard 57mm ZiS-2 anti-tank gun, like a knight in shining armour charging towards peasant archers. Armed with its 8.8cm/L56 calibre gun, it was able to puncture most anything short of another heavy tank at most combat effective ranges, while designed to potentially accommodate larger guns in the future should the need arise. The hope was that the tank would be able to serve as a long-lived basis for the heavy combat formations of the Panzertruppe for years to come.
PzKpfw IV Nashorn of s PzAbt 503For the standards of the time, the large calibre main cannon also allowed for the delivery of a powerful high explosive shot, following complaints from the infantry about how the Panzertruppe either could deal with tanks or field positions but never both. While the modified Pz. Kpfw III was able to fit a potent 7.5cm gun, the gain in velocity came at the price of the previous medium calibre gun's high explosive performance, resulting in impeded effectiveness against dug in VOSCOM forces and frequently forcing Stahlpakt formations to wait for the arrival of assault guns such as the StuG III and the Brummbar, something that heavy tank battalions equipped with the Nashorn never needed.
Though concerns were raised by the tank's mechanical requirements; particularly by engineers associated with Ford who had been schooled in the American interchangeable parts philosophy of design hammered in by decades of working on cars; it was believed that the tank's role would mitigate this issue. As a breakthrough tank, the vehicle could be simply shipped to the battlefield and driven into the heaviest fighting along narrow fronts to open passageways through enemy defensive formations that more mobile assets could then exploit. With the limited duration of the combat missions in the concept of the vehicle, any that broke down could be seamlessly moved back for maintenance and repair and the vehicles held in reserve until the need for them arose once more.1
This was at least, the general theory behind the Nashorn's design. And when allowed to function in this role, it excelled against virtually all possible opposition. As has already been mentioned, Breakthrough formations equipped with Nashorn tanks simply pushed through any opposition the Polish armed forces could offer, moving with contempt for the lacklustre firepower of the Polish anti-tank formations and engaging any targets of their choosing at will.
With more Nashorn tanks deployed to the Polish Campaign than the Polish had tanks at all, the Nashorns were portrayed as virtually invincible and their crews certainly seemed to believe it. And against the Polish army, they may as well have been, with no confirmed losses to Polish anti-tank fire throughout the entirety of the Polish war.2
Nashorn tanks would be the first German mechanised assets to breach into Warsaw where they would overwhelm the final lines of defence, unable to be halted by anything short of direct artillery strikes by crews that were not well trained in anti-tank warfare.3 And it would be in the sight of the mighty tanks of the German army that the annexation of Poland would be signed, while the president would shortly commit suicide as Nashorns would drive down Warsaw's streets in parade formation.
The Nashorn compared very favourably to its opponents during the first two years of fighting on the Eastern Front. It easily outclassed the available medium tanks of the Red Armies, and its relative immunity most anti-tank weapons prompted a crash program to uparm Soviet and American tanks with the high velocity 76mm, still insufficient against the Nashorn's frontal armour but capable of flanking engagements at range. Even against the Soviet KV series of heavy tanks and the American T-5 of the breakthrough tank brigades, the Nashorn was largely superior in firepower and overall protection.
The 8.8cm KwK 36 was significantly more powerful than the 85mm ZiS-53, and would not be surpassed in tank-killing ferocity until the 90mm D42 could be retrofitted. But the Nashorn's faults could also not be ignored in the vast expanse of the USSR: it was a heavy tank, with all that this implied.
While the mud and rains in the Russian countryside are a hazard to all vehicles, and Nashorns had better ground pressure ratings than lighter PzKpfw IIIs due to the much wider tracks and interleaved roadwheel design, any vehicle can and will be bogged down in the rasputitsa conditions. The Nashorn suffered from a lack of suitable armoured recovery vehicles to dislodge them when they did get stuck.
In most circumstances, it was incredibly difficult to recover and repair any Nashorn unable to move under its own power. Field services often had to set up at the site of a wreck and field repair the tank to get it back into a maintenance depot. The Wehrmacht wanted an armoured recovery vehicle derivative to alleviate this problem, but Henschel & Son could not produce enough hulls to meet the demands of the heavy tank battalions even without diverting production.
What the Wehrmacht needed was a medium tank that could be efficiently mass produced and could also engage Soviet and American armour on favourable terms. True to the pseudo-Darwinian philosophy of Hitler, the Reich Armament Ministry hoped to find the way forward through competition.
Two major projects would compete to succeed the PzKpfw III; the conservative VK 30.03(M) project by MAN AG and Rheinmetall, and the more ambitious Entwicklung 50 project by Ford Werke.
The VK 30.03, originally intended to be a 30-35 tonne medium tank when greenlit in spring 1940, would balloon to the 47 tonne PzKpfw V "Panther" in its final pre-production version. While less burdened by the legacy of German craft production than the Nashorn, the Panther was proving to be expensive, and as the armour thickened and chassis lengthened to adjust to the shifting needs of the Wehrmacht, this overstressed the engine, transmission and final drive components greatly.
The E-50, by contrast, was designed under the tutelage of American expat engineers and Fritz Todt's philosophy of war economy. Intended to be produced on an assembly line by forced labour, and sharing components and design philosophy with other Entwicklung series projects, the E-50 began in a heavier weight class and successfully trimmed down through careful engineering and volumetric analysis.
Externally, the two prototypes were quite similar. Both tanks were tall and boxy tanks, with a rear engine and frontal transmission typical of German tanks. Both had clean lines compared to the greebled armour pattern of their predecessors; well sloped glacis plates of 80mm thick sloped at 55 degrees on the Panther and 54 on the E-50.
The major visible difference was in the turret. The Panther's turret was largely rectangular, with a transverse cylindrical mantlet 100mm maximum thickness which could unfortunately deflect shells through the thin hull roof armour. The E-50 had a hexagonal turret and small conical mantlet over the rear of the breech. This presented a smaller vulnerability zone, more thickly armoured at 120mm at 21 degree slope.
The two tanks took different philosophies with their main armament. The Panther prototype was armed with the 7.5cm KwK 42 L/70 gun, a very potent anti-tank weapon that suffered from poor performance in high-explosive shells. Ford chose to equip the initial E-50 with the same 8.8cm KwK 36 as the Nashorn, which had less armour penetration but was favourable logistically due to the shared ammunition train with the Nashorn and the numerous Flak 36 anti-aircraft guns. The roomier turret of the E-50 was also designed to fit a derivative of the longer 8.8cm PaK 43 heavy anti-tank gun when it became available and required.
The development of both prototypes reached a fever-pitch of urgency during the campaigns of 1941. Even in the great Wehrmacht victories at Kiev and Pskov, the Panzertruppen took tremendous mechanical attrition, to say nothing of the loss of veteran tank crews. Upgraded to the limits of the chassis, the PzKpfw III Ausf M was still heavily vulnerable to everything from the excellent ZiS-2 anti-tank gun to the PTRS anti-tank rifle. Anti-tank rifle teams used the extraordinarily powerful 14.5x114mm BS tungsten-core shot to pierce the side and rear armour of German tanks in volley-fire, and the spaced-armour side-skirts required to stop the already overloaded chassis in dire straits.
As Red Army formations bristled with more anti-tank firepower, including their own analogues to the Pakfront, as well as new innovations in recoilless rifles firing shaped-charge warheads, the beleaguered PzKpfw III would have to give way.
PzKpfw 50 Ausf. D near Kursk, Summer 1943
On 1 January 1942, Hitler gave his final decree on the subject. Development of the PzKpfw V would cease immediately, and all existing materials at MAN AG would be recycled as a heavy assault gun/tank destroyer. This gave the MAN AG konzern a means to save face after all the development cost of the Panther was sunk, and the contracts for the resulting Jagdpanther would write their own illustrious story in the war. By the same decree, the E-50 would be accepted for serial production, with modifications, as the PzKpfw 50 Jaguar.
While Jaguar production would take precedence, and thus Panzer formations would operate for a time with a mix of Jaguar and PzKpfw III companies, the less developed PzKpfw 25 Gepard would soon follow in serial production to finally replace the remaining PzKpfw IIIs.
- This was the OTL justification given for why the panzertruppe was not overly concerned with the mechanical reliability of its heaviest vehicles due to the expectation of using them in limited duration offensive operations.
- This is not exactly true and discounts losses to anti-tank mines, artillery, and airpower.
- Post-archive opening evidence revealed roughly five years after the publishing of this book as part of detente measures demonstrates that the fault was more in the lack of high grade Polish armour piercing shells due to little access to Tungsten rather than any lack of training on the part of Polish troops who were well versed in anti-tank warfare but lacking in the means to prosecute it.
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
So more of Germany succeeding wildly in the beginning, only to stall out as they lost momentum and their opponents adapted to their plans and readjusted.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The new tank does seem impressive, or at least better designed than most German tanks OTL. But to Nazi Tank Worship I'll just say No Tanks.
Tabascoheath
Unkempt, Evil-eyed Charlatan, and Pseudo-Mystic
- Location
- Your Nearest Orbital Habitat
You mean to say that having the biggest, baddest, most awesomest tanks ever designed and given to us by the master craftsmanship of German engineering and fordian production lines doesn't automatically win the war. does this mean that a prospective power has to actually invest in logistic services and properly prepare for a multi front war and not assume its opponents will roll over and die the moment you super awesome big cat invulnerable tank roll onto the field? Nah I think we should just build more Jagdpathers.
- Location
- The great frozen north
Yikes- a Germany that has access to the Tiger I right out of the gate, and the E-50 by 1942 is a terrifying thing. Just how insane will everyone's tanks by by the end of this war? In any case, I do hope we get similar updates on the other factions' tanks later on, this is cool.
- Location
- The left-wing of the impossible
American tanks are coming up next.
In numerical terms, most of later German tank development is going to be iterations on the Panzer 50. The chassis will be the second most widely produced by Germany, counting the derivatives , second only to the Panzer 25 series, which is introduced later as a light/medium. They will have larger tanks based on the OTL E-series, but those will fulfill the same specialized heavy role, being reserved for special independent heavy tank battalions and tank destroyer battalions.
Nice new update
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So uh will that monstrosity the Mammuth be Canon to this version? I'm really torn on if I want it to be. It's so absurd that's its borderline asb but it's also hilarious.
Asherterix
Out Exploring
- Location
- Approx. 15,396,300,000 miles away
- Pronouns
- He/They
What was the mammuth? I'm simultaneously afraid and interested at once..
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Three hundred and eighty nine tons
Twin 17 centimetre autoloaded cannons
Dual twin 40mm bofors "ear guns" with optional 60mm rocket pods.
Twin 20mm pintle mounted autocannons
Battleship grade armour plating
An engine normally meant for usage in U-Boats
Four tracks
And all German excess baby.
Last edited:
that sounds like it'd break down after a week of use
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
I mean less than twenty were ever built and it was largely a way to keep naval production facilities useful/continue to grift the German state for Reichsmarks after the surface fleet was reduced to a fleet in being later in the war due to unacceptable attrition in raiding actions.
- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Dude, that's the freaking Mammoth Tank/Apocalypse Tank from the Command and Conquer/Red Alert series.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm gonna hazard a wild guess the designer was compensating for something.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Look, Germany came very late to the imperial table and is very insecure about the size of its empire
- Location
- The left-wing of the impossible
Like many of its OTL counterparts, the Wunderwaffe/napkinwaffe projects of Reds! are as much attempts by people to remain employed in engineering and design and thus avoid getting drafted as anything. Some of these projects have their true believers sure but often they are things being sold to military procurement people with bold promises to keep the lights on.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So uh is that a yes? It will be Canon to this version as well? If so I hope we get an actual story or omake of the first encounter with one and the commintern taking it out. Whenever we get to that point in the story of course.
Long time reader, first time question asker.
Considering the relatively more advanced status of military doctrine at the start of this TL WW2 (OTL late war tank developments happening in more early stages of the war, widespread use of semi-automatic weapons by infantry, more mature doctrine) I wonder as to the state of camo in use by the forces involved. Are there camouflage patterns being widely used on armored vehicles and specialty troops much like OTL late WW2 or is the concept still being mostly experimented with and not seeing widespread adoption?
Considering the relatively more advanced status of military doctrine at the start of this TL WW2 (OTL late war tank developments happening in more early stages of the war, widespread use of semi-automatic weapons by infantry, more mature doctrine) I wonder as to the state of camo in use by the forces involved. Are there camouflage patterns being widely used on armored vehicles and specialty troops much like OTL late WW2 or is the concept still being mostly experimented with and not seeing widespread adoption?
- Location
- The left-wing of the impossible
Yes there's a definite progression in camoflage. At first the biggest concern is concealment from air attack, so along with the painting of camouflage patterns on vehicles, there's also the use of camouflage netting to conceal gun positions, stationary trucks, etc.
As for camouflage uniforms, the basic field uniforms of most militaries in WW2 are a rudimentary form of camouflage, hence the usage of feldgrau to blend into shadows by the Germans, and olive drab by the WFRA for summer uniforms, as well as the use of white smocks and helmet covers in winter. The transition to camouflage patterns happens in the late war, and it's not a universal thing due to logistics. It would be something generally seen on guards and assault units, as well as the Waffen-SS
Mammoth Tank! Mammoth Tank! Mammoth Tank!
Did the Nazis use some kind of occult portal to see into alternate timelines and steal the design from the Red Alert Soviets or something?
I see @Saint_007 beat me to it. But still...
Last edited: