Paul Lakowski

can you get this on pdf link ?

Its far worse to dismiss a report just because YOU don't believe it....Especially when ESL is involved......JUST because it took US orders of magnitude more effort to make such a weapon possible.. How many times during the cold war did we hear rumor's of this weapon or that weapon....only to find out their was much more to the weapon than any one expected and it was ready much earlier than expectred. etc etc etc. I read of the Ohrdruf incident and the observer was in a plane and the US intel reports rated that report level 2. The bright flash and explosive force of a "pineapple size device" was of particular importance. It sounds to me like something exploded that was more than normal explosive bomb and it had some kind of radioactive component ....maybe a 'dirty bomb'? Who knows.

They were pretty stupid in may 1940 along with the French and others. Did the French and Belgian troops halt fighting because the Germans won, or because their political leadership caved and 'surrendered on their behalf'?

This so called belief in WE winning the war is no doubt based on American involvement turning the tide. I was always told by parents grand parents , aunts & uncles plus all seniors alike that "we" were all alone until Yankees got involved , other wise it was only a matter of time before Hitler won. ,

RM Citino books on Reichswehr development [The Evolution of Blitzkrieg Tactics & The Path to Blitzkrieg] , show that rearmament began in the late 1920s while Groener, Schleicher Fritsch, worked out situations were the Locarno Conference /treaty would used to leverage hinder the west ability to interfere in military actions along the Polish/German boarder. It was viewed that this was the most likely need /successful use of limited military forces leading to the expansion of the Wehrmacht to a mobilised force of 21 divisions begun in early 1930s [to be completed by 1938] . Boarder clashes in 1920 showed unwilling ness of France to step in against German Polish boarder clashes....leading to French Polish conflict.

You should read German history in addition to British History, not instead of . It took the Wallies two years to learn how to fight again. British-French strategy- as I recall- was to hid behind the Maginot line while RAF bomber command bombed Germany back to the stone age. A complete disaster of a strategy. Mind you Hitler gambled and dragged Germany into war years before they were ready.

In the real world anything is possible. I remember in the 1960s my uncles and grand parents laughed at me for bragging about how great the RAF/RN where during WW-II. The consensus was that we were just lucky that Hitler was such a twit when it came to war. They also cautioned not to believe anything on "Telly"

As tanks are not replaced the role of the ICV has to expand. I remember a 1979 article prototype of a MARDER 1 with 57mm auto cannon mounted , as a fire support AFV. Its taken this long to make such dreams reality? I just figured they were reviving the old SPW-251/9 concepts of 75L24 /SPW organic fire power?

When I first studied NATO/WARPACT in the mid 1970s I was most impressed with MARDER. Good armor and competent armament that could up grade for special AP ammo. It also seemed OK to up armor and stick an MILAN ATGM a decade later. Compared to M-113 that was the defacto NATO APC, it looked like the only ICV that could deal with the BMP-I and later BMP-II. The Bradley and Warrior seemed like a life time later. My ideal Brigade would be 2 ICV Battalion plus a Tank Battalion plus Recon battalion plus Armored Artillery Battalion...the era would determine the model choices.

With out an gap the projectile will not exaggerate its yaw. Filler will only slow any rotation of the projectile, thus limiting this yaw. BUT if we are speaking about body protection its moot point .

perforated armor works by forcing the projectile to yaw sharply through the plate so when it strikes the main armor its penetration drops sharply.. If the air gap between the main armor and the perforated plate is not large enough , the projectile is supported by both plate and main armor, so it hardly yaws at all. Which is why gap fillers are not good enough. Even a brittle projectile may not shatter in such a case. If the air gap is wide enough [LOS] the projectile may hit the main armor sideways and lose most of its potential. Its got to be AFV armor even light AFV.

The possibility of launching such a politically based raid was floated by Raeder prewar- in an effort to highlight the value of the KM to Hitler. So plans were discussed and clearly Pound was aware of the dangers and informed Churchill accordingly. PM position in the war cabinet was perilous at best, so he could assume nothing and feared everything. I remember these discussions in Britain with vets in the 60s and our position was dangerous indeed. The KM had 227 warships at the end of 1939 and grew to 410 by the end of 1940 and this doesn't include all the hundreds of auxiliary fishing vessels and steamers commandeered to fill patrol missions. .Only 55 U-Boats existed at the end of 1939 growing to 88 by the end of 1940. So less than 1/4 of the fleet, meaning plenty of escort vessels would have been available. Highlighting the Norway operation it appears 147 vessels were dispatched to ferry 9500 troops to over 1/2 dozen ports. This force included 104 naval escort vessels and along the way 23 were sunk plus another 4 damaged and 5 steamers/tankers lost. Sounds like 1/4 to 1/5th were lost, not the oft claimed half, which can only work if you cherry pick data. As to the performance of the armed forces at that time , they were poor at best. It looks like they needed a couple of years of actual fighting to relearn how to fight modern war and train the vast numbers of mobilised troops. Its clear the Krauts were years ahead of that curve , while the RAF may have done better - since number of pilots was drop in the bucket next to the number of sailors and ground troops to be trained. The joke when I was young -was the WALLIES couldn't punch their way out of a paper bag and I have not read anything since then to change that POV. If anything ; works by SCOTT/SMITH/LEVY & O'HARA etc have only served to illustrate that they were worse than I even suspected. I would hazard a guess that most internet posters - have been educated and polluted by playing war-games.

Invading the UK would have worked only if it was over night Norway type raids - about the same time Dunkirk started.- with a port to port landing around UK simultaneously. If the Krauts put much thought in these landings, they would direct them to all be near/adjacent to RN/RAF bases/ports with orders to commandeer what ever they needed to raid these bases, further widening the chaos. The combined confusion to HMG command and control - would have ignited a social/political shock wave that would have swept through Britain, toppling the war cabinet long before Churchill could rally British opinion based on any RAF/RN reported success could occur. FSL warned Churchill that if such a raid occurred; up to 200,000 German troops could be landed in such a raid and there would be precious little they could do to prevent this. Churchill accepted this report. Neither side was any good at naval combat night or day attacks , but intercepting at night was damn near impossible and RN reaction time to over night action in the Channel were often 6-8 hours behind the KM , giving the German warship flotilla time to escape. The Brits could certainly try to attack these numerous spread out post by land; air and sea, but it appears each German landed group included at least a weeks supplies and would likely commandeer [brutally if needed] , what even vessels/vehicles/supplies they needed to last longer. Pretty soon it would compile with Dunkirk into a government toppling disaster.

RIP , but his works will live on in our numerous libraries.

This armor is optimised to defeat long rod penetrators like APFSDS & HEAT warheads . yep works just as well as thicker steel plates, but its cheaper than ceramic steel armor. This statement is so confusing. yes, but in ballistics research both long rod penetrators and accumulated charges [HEAT] are done with long rods with very high length to depth ratios. APFSDS use tungsten or DU alloy , while HEAT warheads are simulated with copper rods. With more elaborate research actual accumulated charges are used, but many more are needed to get reliable average figure.