A Review of German Medium And Heavy Tanks, 1938-1945

I thought I'd have fun with my post today.

Mark III Panzer

This was one of the earliest combat tanks in the German arsenal. It was only moderately armored and was equipped with a rather weak 5 cm L/42 gun, which was effective against lighter tanks but would merely glance off the armor of heavier tanks, like the British Matilda or Soviet T-34. It was intended to be phased out as the war went on, but found a lot of use on the Eastern Front as the Wehrmacht became more desperate for anything they could find.

Mark IV Panzer

This was the most effective early German tank, and was used in the invasions of Poland and France, where it performed very well against the weaker tanks (or in the case of the Poles, cavalry) of the enemy. It was equipped with a 7.5cm L/24, but this later was updated to a L/46 by the F2 model. It was very well armored and served as the backbone of the German tank force throughout the war. However, it was found to be insufficient against the Soviet T-34, which sported both heavier armor and armament, and that led to the development of the later tank designs.

Panther

This was my personal favorite of the German tanks. It combined powerful fire (a high-velocity 7.5cm L/70, able to punch through armor up to 200mm thick), heavy armor (up to 100mm in the front), and high speeds unmatched by other tanks of the same class. While less heavily armored than the Tiger (see below) and having a smaller cannon, it was able to make up for this with its speed and slimmer profile. Serving on both the Eastern and Western Fronts, it outclassed any British or American tank it ran into, and was effective against all but the heaviest Russian tanks and assualt guns. However, it suffered from production difficulties that limited its numbers in the field.

Tiger

This tank was designed to be the unquestioned king of the battlefield, and almost always was. Slower than the Panther, it sported a 8.8cm L/56 cannon and heavy frontal armor. A single Tiger tank was able to destroy 15 Allied tanks in a battle in a French town - the Allied gunfire could not penetrate the armor. On the Eastern front it faced slightly stiffer opposition from new-model T-34s and assualt guns such as the SU-152 (which had a massive 15.2 cm gun). However, Hitler insisted on deploying most Tigers on the Western Front, where they were either bogged down in the forested countryside or destroyed by Allied air power, instead of using them in the east where they could move freely on the fields of Ukraine. Also, like the Panther, Tigers were very difficult to produce and were very hard to come by.

Königstiger (King Tiger)

The Königstiger was the undisputed king of the battlefield. With a unstoppable 8.8cm high-velocity cannon (the same used in anti-aircraft guns, actually) and huge armor plating, it was almost invincible in head-to-head tank battles. However, it was not produced until 1944, and therefore only a handful were ever produced. Where they were used, however, they would decimate the opposition. Even the best Soviet tanks were no match for this beast.

Pictures!:

Mark III
Mark IV (This is with the shorter L/24 gun, mostly likely a D model)
Panther
Tiger
Königstiger

Next week: German Assualt Guns 1941-1945!

Global warming? Who cares?

History is great. Since it always repeats itself, we can use it to find out what'll happen to us if we keep doing the same dumbass things we've been doing for 5000 years. Or, in this case, that the world has been doing in the past 250 million.

From Technology News:

"A slow process of climate warming rather than a comet or asteroid impact led to Earth's biggest mass extinction, according to research. Scientists have found no evidence of a major impact around the time of the event, known as the 'Great Dying,' 250 million years ago. They believe the extinction was the result of global warming due to volcanic eruptions and a drop in oxygen levels....The Great Dying wiped out 90 percent of marine species and nearly three-quarters of animals and plants on land."

90% of life, huh? That seems like an awful lot. And all that from some carbon dioxide that was released from volcanic eruptions. Of course, we don't have to wait for that, we've got plenty of factories and power plants to do it for us. To spare you the detailed scientific analysis, it basically came down to a few degree rise in temperature that killed all the plankton in the ocean. Since that produces the vast majority of the oxygen on the planet, oxygen levels quickly went down, and it created serious hardships, as can be imagined. Furthermore, plankton forms the foundation of the oceanic food chain, so everything that ate anything in the ocean died.

So, unless we all want to die of oxygen deprivation, let's try to clean up our act, eh?

President Bush Is A War Criminal

So I finally snapped today. I'm not sure what exactly did it, but I went from believing the Iraq war was an unfortunate mistake made by a president eager to combine political and economic agendas with his own personal one to a war which has degenerated into the same ugly killing of the Balkan wars of independence. Estimates of the number of dead Iraqi civilians reach up to 100000. Its difficult to grasp these numbers, but thats, for reference, about the same as the population of Hartford. The ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina (for which Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian prime minister at the time, is now on trial at the Hague for) was responsible for 145000 deaths. The recent invasion of the city of Fallujah, before the war home to 300000 people, has reduced that city to rubble, with witnesses comparing it to the German city of Dresden after Allied firebombings in 1945. US troops routinely rounded up and executed civlians during the invasion, and have killed prisoners as recently as the fighting in Fallujah. While it's easy to hold the soldiers themselves accountable for their actions, their being stuck in a hostile evironment, overworked, underpaid, and always in constant danger can be attributed to those above. Even yesterday, I expressed disdain for those who referred to Bush as a war criminal, believing such bombastic rhetoric accomplished nothing. But I finally connected the dots and realized that Bush has precipitated a conflict that fulfills no purpose and has left tens of thousands dead and millions more with lives that will be forever ruined. Nearly 1100 US soldiers have been killed in combat and another 10000 have been wounded, 6500 seriously enough to be unable to return to duty (quite seriously). This adds up to about one out of every 15 soldiers in Iraq either being killed or wounded in combat. Bush has not attended any funerals of the soldiers (nor has Rumsfeld, but he's an easy target) and the Pentagon until recently refused to allow the press to release photos showing flag-draped caskets of American dead. After a suicide bomber at a US base left 14 US soldiers dead , Bush responded by saying that they died in "a vital mission for peace." He seems to fail to understand the pain and suffering his decisions have wrought, instead preferring to take a moralistic stand about a battle between right and wrong that he has been pushing since September 11. More and more I have to wonder what differentiates him and Slobodan.

Why all the idiocy? (Part I)

Imagine you open the paper one morning. The headline tells of more soldiers from your country being killed in a distant land, trying to defeat an insurrection that lurks in the countryside and will use whatever means necessary to gain independence. They prefer to fight your soldiers in ambushes rather than open combat, knowing the inferiority of their weapons and training, and are not above attacking civilians to intimidate them to not cooperate with your government. What year is it?

Most would probably think 2003/4/5, with "your country" being the United States and "distant land" being Iraq. But it just as well could be 1776/7/8, with "your country" being Britian and "distant land" being, yes, the United Colonies of America.

What those who decry the actions of the insurgents in Iraq fail to realize is the strong parallels between them and our beloved patriots of '76. Our brave minutemen hid behind walls and waited for the British to pass to commence firing (that was the entirety if the battles of Lexington and Concord), much as Iraqi insurgents rely on roadside bombs. British supply convoys would be ambushed, the soldiers killed, instead of attacking the main body of the British Army. Those found to be collaborating with the British would be tarred and feathered (which almost always resulted in death from the tar taking the skin with it when it peeled off), or outright executed. Loyalist property was confiscated, the owner being chased out of the country (usually heading to Canada).

While exact parallels do not exist between American militia and Iraqi insurgents, enough resemblance between the two groups exists to question the legitimacy of demonizing our opposition. The Bush Administration frequently refers to Iraqi groups not as "insurgents" or "rebels," but as "terrorists" or "thugs." Legitimate operations against an invader in an effort to free one's county from occupation is being confused with acts intended to destroy order and harm the country.

Basically, all I'm saying is think about our own country's past and where we would be today if it wasn't for our own insurgency.