The Weekender: Win A Warhound Titan & Themed Weeks!
September 20, 2014 by dignity
Win yourself a Warhound Titan by simply heading over and liking our Facebook page! As well as that we're delving into news on On The Table coming back in a new form, an Ezine! (details HERE!) and some awesome themed weeks on the way!
That's not all however as we're talking Carnevale and their current Kickstarter as well as the one from GCT for Rise of the Kage!
In community news we're checking out Oriskany's Operation Market Garden re-creation and how that got us thinking about an upcoming Tank Week featuring Bolt Actions Tank War book.
Have a great weekend of wargaming!
Already a Facebook “Liker”
Also Tanks for the great episode.
Love the warhound. it will go well with my ork army ;p
Great show guys. This week every year I watch “A Bridge Too Far”. Being a former member of the 82nd Airborne we observe this great event and remember our airborne brothers who didn’t come home. Especially the British and Polish paratroopers who fought so valiantly.
Hm, I seem to miss the ezene launch. 🙁
Would be nice to get the link. Thanks!
Have linked to it up in the post above @mkus 🙂
Didn’t get the ezine although it says I am subscribed.
That is the same problem I have.
For anyone who didn’t get it
It’s from onthetable@beastsofwar.com
Subject ‘Win a Warhound Titan Tonight!’
Check your spam.
Will their be a prize to go on the tank when john has finish her? Hint hint nudge nudge??? @warzan
Will playing on an 8×8 table mean you need to use those sticks for pushing troops around the table? That’d be some proper WW2 shizz right there lol
The other themed week next month isn’t by any chance for Relic Knights? By the way, have you considered doing some other coverage of Relic Knights. One other point, Relic Knights is awesome and you should do some coverage of it 😉
@redben I think is trying to say he likes Relic Knights and should cover it.
I was trying to slip it in subtly and not be too obvious…
John certainly knows his stuff, i could sit and listen to him for hours.
I want a big shiny tank vroom vroom
Great show. However your image of a JS3 is actually a JS2!
I’ll have to get the cattle prod to Justin for that 😉
Revealing, educational and fascinating… I’ll never look at a tank mini the same way again.
With your modular table design here’s a challenge… What if it’s made in such a way it can go from WW2 to Napoleonic in a minute or two? Not all of us have as much storage space as you.
That was a really interesting and well presented show, nice one, especially John.
Love the ideas for hobby lab! I play all my bolt action games with the field, roads and hedges you made and they are perfect. If you could make other modular terrain that fits in with those that would be amazing!!!!
Here in the Netherlands a megagame about Market Garden is organised every few years. If you’re interested contact Casus Belli in Nijmegen or Murphy’s Heroes in Delft.
Great episode. I just love tanks and this was soooo interesting. But I have to correct John on 2 details. First 600 m/s is nearly two times the speed of sound which is 340 m/s thru air. Secondly at the end of WW2 Roosevelt was already dead, he died not a month before Victory in Europe. So of course he had still some influence on the situation but he wasn’t directly involved in the diplomatics with the soviets after the capitulation of Germany.
We had a hugh Market Garden FoW game with like 10 players in march this year. Have to check out Oriskanies post.
Just out of curiosity I looked up if general Patton has passed away and he unfortunately died in a car accident in Germany in December 1945.
Just found a ezine in my in box sent today is that No 2 ?
Warren missed the chance to say ‘Welcome to Studio M4!’
Gun v Cannon nomenclature – who cares, they still make big bangs.
Rifled v Smoothbore – rifled barrels wear out faster, much much faster so a new liner has to go in at about 4 or 5 times you need to reline a smooth bore. Smoothbores can take higher pressure which equals higher muzzle velocity which equals greater penetration at any range. Smoothbores can also fire a greater variety of ammo including a host of smart rounds.
Hollow charge weapons fired from rifled weapons lose some of their impact as some of the blast is dispersed radially due to the rotation instead of all going forward.
Finally, since 120mm smoothbore is in use almost everywhere apart from the UK, ammo is cheaper and more obtainable. It gets kind of embarrassing to run out of it in the middle of a war…
@dorthonion , @hazard , or @johnlyons – maybe one you can help me with a question I’ve always had regarding British tanks and smoothbore vs. rifled tank . . . ARMAMENT (nice dodge, eh?) After the war, the British got us all started on the L7 105mm rifle weapons. First retrofitted on later versions of the Centurion, which meant it was on all the Centurions and Ben Gurions used by the Israelis, as well as the later M48 Patton versions, the later German Leopard Is, etc. The L7 105mm was a standard NATO 105mm rifle for tanks, even the very first M1 Abrams had the L7.
Then the British switched to the 120mm SMOOTHBORE (L11, I think) for all their Chieftain series tanks in the 70s and 80s. The Germans and Americans saw this, and followed along. The Germans eventually came out with the Rh120 John mentions (M256 in America, I think), which the US eventually started building under license for the M1A1, etc. The French would up with an 120mm smoothbore in the AMX 40 Leclerc, and even the Merkava winds up with the 120mm smoothbore.
But no sooner do the British get us all started in the 120mm smoothbore, they switch back to the 120mm RIFLE (L12 I think) for the Challenger 2.
So my question is this . . . are the British just have some fun with us? 😀 Is this the defense industry’s idea of a global practical joke?
Chieftain doesn’t run Smoothbore. Its the same basic gun they took form Chieftain to Challenger 1 the L11A5. Perhaps there was a smoothbore prototype? But as far as I am aware the British never commissioned a tank with a smoothbore main armament 🙂
Nope, I just checked behind myself and can find no variant of the Chieftain that carried the smoothbore. How the hell did that get in my head? I’ve “known” that for years, I guess I misread it somewhere long ago and never corrected it. Thanks for the remedy! (And no cattle prod needed 🙂 ).
Chieftain, Challenger 1 and 2 all had rifled barrels and fire the same ammo. I have fired all three! A 120mm smoothbore has been trialled to be fitted to Cr2 but it was found that nearly the whole tank would need a redesign due to the ammo being one piece where as the Cr2 is designed for three part ammo.
Is the British education system really this bad???
Here we have three grown men, who presumably all finished school, without having any idea of what THE SPEED OF SOUND is?????
I don’t expect you or anyone to know it to the tenth digit or how being ten miles up affects it, but just knowing the ballpark figure to roughly tell whether something is supersonic or not is basic common knowledge.
Words fail me….
I can’t speak for John, but what you witnessed was a classic ‘can’t get this computed on the fly’ moment. I’ve always know the general speed of sound to be around 700 mph John quoted the velocity to me in meters per second, and it unraveled from there.
The reson it unravels is pretty straight forward, in that I/we have to keep the topics and questions moving, so while John is talking I’m listening for a Segway opportunity or somewhere we can steer into to find out more.
So it’s not a real conversation in the truest sense where 100% of your attention is on the topic, there is too many other things all going on at the same time.
The effort to go back and correct a moment like that is also not really feasible to still get the show out for 6am either… So we leave it.
So in a nutshell, these things happen sometimes because we have to focus on ‘words not failing us’… 😉
‘basic common knowledge’ really… ?
words fail me on the attitude here.
MAXXON, I think your comment is a bit harsh and perhaps you need to consider the difficulty in producing a show such as this. Obviously their focus is on producing an exciting show to supplement your gaming experience and small errors may creep in as a result, I think there are more polite ways in assisting them with some minor detail and perhaps rather praise them them on what they achieved.
From my side I think it was a tremendous show, how awesome was that just sitting in a Sherman, and the discussion on the Tank itself was incredibly interesting. I also enjoyed the discussion on Opertaion Market Garden, I always knew that this operation happened but I never knew what the exact plan was and what the overall objective behind it was, that discussion has given me some tremendous insight into the operation, thank you.
Actually, they did have the speed of sound roughly correct, when @johnlyons says 700 mph (at sea level, obviously). Then @warzan tried to convert it not only into seconds, but from Imperial to Metrics (meters per second). Hell, I can’t do that in my head, much less on the fly **while** I’m being recorded on video.
700 mph / 3600 sec in an hour = 0.1944 mps
0.1944 * 5280 feet in a mile = 1026 feet per second
1026 fps / 3 = 342 yards per second
342 yps / 1.1 = roughly 311 meters per second.
so 600 meters per second = roughly MACH 2.
You’re telling me you could do all this math in your head, while being recorded? Why are you playing wargames instead of working at some think tank somewhere building us flying cars?
When the Tank God speaks…you better listen!!
Just checked and it is win a war hound tonight.
I don’t think Flames of War covers the Pacific theatre yet
Nice to hear Jon talk about Arnhem. My Grandfather is one of the few surviving veterans of Arnhem and the highest ranking surviving officer. He came in on a glider and commanded a squad and a couple jeeps with bren guns. They retreated from the Germans into the forrest but days later were captured. I went there about 10 years ago with him and it was amazing to see how grateful the dutch were all these years later even though they were not liberated at that point in the war they all said that it gave them hope that they were not forgotten yet. I personally can’t bring myself to game WW2, it’s not that I disagree with it it just is my personal feeling.. If i did I’d play the Nazis and paint their skin devil red just for giggles !
sorry, oldest surviving officer in his regiment that is
Sounds like John might like to see your nachtwolf in the miniatures ER more then Justin’s stuff. He could do a historical rescue episode 🙂
A few words on ammunition terms…
A ‘Round’ is all of the components required to fire the gun/cannon once.
A round is typically broken down into:
Projectile – the bit that exits toward the enemy. Also known as ‘Shot’ if it is solid or Shell if it contains a payload, e.g. High Explosive, Smoke, Hollow Charge. A shell will also have a fuse to ensure the contents are activated at the correct moment.
Charge -This is the propellant. When encased in brass it is usually referred to as a ‘Cartridge’.
Primer – This is the element that starts the whole thing. It can be likened to a blank round for a rifle. It has a percussion cap, like a regular ‘bullet’, and a small quantity of propellant which ignites the main charge. It is pre-screwed into the base of a Cartridge case or placed into the breech block for split load ammunition.
Nice episode. One reason the West tends to have loaders vs.Russian (Soviet) tanks and their auto-loaders is the belief that four crew is needed for day to day repairs. Which sort of shows the different doctrines about the lifespan of their tanks in combat. Also apparently the Soviet auto-loaders had the bonus feature of sometimes loading the gunners forearm into the breech.
Post Nazi ETO combat? Perhaps. One thing is the West failed to realized is how terrible the war in the East was. As bad as Omaha beach was on D-Day, the worst part was over by noon. Now imagine that going on all day, day after day, for years.
Also I sure it was difficult to imagine Stalin’s paranoia. For a great history read look into Anne Applebaum’s “Iron Curtain” about how horrible Stalin was post WWII. About a quarter of the way into book she has to stop and remind the readers that despite what they were reading, Hitler was by far worse and the correct enemy to fight.
As for tactical gaming in that environment? While interesting to game it, it’s difficult to really predict what would happen. In my limited reading (the opening of Archives in East Germany and Russia are beginning to make an impact), in theory the Soviets could field a huge army of heavy hitting troops and tanks, but I believe deep problems on the Strategic/Operational levels would prevent them. As shown by their stop and start nature of the counter-offensives between 1943 and 1945 they had significant issues with lack of trucks, radios, function rail roads and perhaps even a paucity of good maps and basic literacy issues.
Another issue with brass cartridges is the spent casings – they either need to be ejected from the tank or they clutter the floor. Caseless charges are held in either bags or hard cellulose packages which completely burn up when fired.
Good one – look forward to XLBS tomorrow
Good morning guys. Great show, and a great change of venue, sitting in John’s jacuzzi. Next time put some water in it, though, and let Justin come in as well. 😀
I gotta say, though, that Patton gets a lot more credit than he deserves because of his persona, his relationship with the press, and the abilities and accomplishments of peers and subordinates for which takes most of the accolades. Yes, his preparedness for a possible German attack northwards through the Ardennes was a shining moment, (“I can attack with three divisions within 48 hours”) . . . one of the few that is truly “all-Patton.”
Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not “hating” on Patton. I’m hating on the American press and movie industry that distorts historical events for the “sake of a good story.” By way of a positive, inverse example, Patton needs to get a lot MORE credit for what he did BEFORE the war, basically building and nurturing the embryonic American tank corps in the late 20s and early 30s, long before the military establishment gave any credence to these clunky, slow, fragile machines. The US Army knows it, which is why they named the M46, 47, 48, and 60 series of tanks after him. 🙂 But it’s not good in a movie, book, or magazine article, so it doesn’t get much attention. Meanwhile, battlefield accomplishments are assigned to him because he swears a lot, carries ivory-handled pistols, and had the good fortune to have a George C. Scott movie made about him 25 years later. Granted, the generals who actually did most of the heavy lifting are a lot less interesting, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t do these things.
This is why , on the battlefield, a more detailed and granular review of events takes a little of the shine off Patton’s record, mentality, and performance. I’m not saying he wasn’t a good general, I’m not saying he wasn’t a great general. But he was NOT the end-all, be-all American battlefield commander of World War 2. To make that assertion is to overlook dozens of other American generals like Hodges, Bradley, Devers, Truscott, Simpson, and of course John S. Wood, “the American Rommel,” commander of the 4th Armored Division (tryly one of our greats, fired by Patton for political reasons). Many of these guys were the ones who won many of the battles Patton largely gets credit for, especially his famous drive across France.
The only problem with the Hot Tub (cue Eddie Murphy channeling James Brown) is the pastiness highlighted by last weeks Weekender. BTW, talking of generals getting more credit than they deserve it’s pretty hard to be MacArthur.
Just checking, if you mean MacArthur gets way too much credit than he deserves . . . Wow. I’d have to start a new forum thread to fully articulate how much I totally agree with that.
[rolls Willpower save to avoid launching a 4-page rant . . . phew! Made it.]
You’ve hit the nail on the head with the mention of the press there Oriskany! History remembers the stand-out personalities. “The little Austrian Corporal” comes to mind 😉
What you find is that in a lot of cases the big names of WW2 were in the right place at the right time. For example, a quote from a BBC documentary on Rommel during the french campaign in 1940 “How good did Rommel need to be when faced with such woeful enemy tanks and tactics” Yet his reputation was sealed because of his bravado and skill at commanding tank units. His skill met Monty in the desert and history shows us that the British won that campaign. Now we can go into “Monty had more stuff, and Rommel had supply issues” Sure, that’s true, but I find it hard to believe that such a skilled and noteworthy commander would willingly chase British forces until his supply line broke. To me it smells of desperation on Rommel’s part and possibly this came from what the German High command and Hitler were telling him he had to do.
I think the real skillful commanders are the lower ranked officers. They had to follow orders and were the ones normally trying to improvise under extreme circumstances. But like I said, history has focused on the names that were in the press a lot.
go for it you will fell better afterword’s @oriskany LOL
I did mean too much credit. Way too much credit. Don’t worry about four pages. Go for a couple and I can chip in some (seriously how much of an a** was he about the 32nd at Buna-Gona. And he’s the guy to want to see on the opposite side if you want to launch a surprise attack, and…..)
@zorg and @bigterp . . . I’d need a day or two to compile the whole list. 🙂
I, for one, don’t care about how many details you got wrong or right; you guys got me pumped about tanks. Great show!
I’m just surprised how poorly we all speak German after Hitler won the war. And I wonder how we’re all still alive even though we have mustard in our houses (especially after it killed so many people in WWI.)
John is indeed the Tank god. “I’ve got my own Sherman” pretty much finishes the argument.
I just recently played Market Garden with http://www.megagame-makers.org.uk
My game was with the Dutch branch http://www.megagame-makers.nl which was good for me since I live in Luxembourg.
I encourage you all to take a look and perhaps try out a real fog of war experience.
Tank Week? That sounds like Shark Week but twice as awesome! Can’t wait to see that.
Sharks-driving-tanks week….
“Sharks driving Tanks in a game of Relic Knights” week. 🙂
Excellent ep guys
Love the Sherman!
There’s a show right there – the re-building of the Sherman. John, do you keep a blog ongoing for the work you’ve done to date? I’ d be interested in following, and I’m sure quite a few others would too!
Great show folks, and look forward to the Tank War review in proper ( got a copy and still digesting)
Tank week? I’d better get some paint on them Shermans.
Great show guys
As a former tankie can I point out that the 3 piece ammunition shown is actually 155mm artillery ammunition but the principles the same, from what was drummed into me in training (this doesnt mean its right!) the reason we brits use 3 piece ammo is simply speed of loading for example a well drilled crew can have 4 rounds in the air at once if they are firing the high explosive shells, also having the separate parts means storage is easier the “round” is kept high in the turret so you can drag it out and gravity helps you the “charges” are kept in armoured bins around the turret ring, this leaves the percussion cap which is loaded via a magazine attached to the breach in the same manor as an automatic rifle so as the breach closes its inserted ready to go.
And Warren if 600meters per second is impressive, Challenger 2 fires its armour piercing round at 2000m per second which imparts the same mass as a 5 ton elephant traveling at 250 miles an hour into a point no bigger than my avatar.
The points about rifled over smooth bore boil down to tactical doctrine the british armies doctrine was dig in and use accurate long distance fire to slow down the enemy, other armies based theirs around fire and manouvre. this of course was when we were sat on the Rhine awaiting the arrival of the Soviet 3rd shock army not so much now.
John great work on the Sherman, she’s looking grand.
Im glad to see my theorizing on split ammo wasn’t far off. And had I remembered I would have brought in tactical doctrine too.
But it’s great to have an ex-tankie here who didn’t immediately call BS on my ramblings. I must have learned the odd thing in my time 😉
Brilliant show gang, thanks for your hard work. Really looking forward to tank week. Can’t imagine how much fun that will be. As an aside, back in the mid 60’s I delivered papers to a gentleman in San Dimas California. In his very large backyard he had a collection of WW2 US equipment that included a working, and armed, M3 halftrack, an M2 White Scout car, 3 Jeeps and a Deuce and a Half truck. Not sure why he had all this equipment, but as a young man it was very cool to check out. Thanks again gang, very good episode.
Just to spoke my preference, this weekender was clearly not for me 🙁
My feelings when the weekender doesn’t mention tanks 😉
Great show as always.
Didn’t Patton attack an a Mexican unit during the US Mexican war when he was young to be the first motorised attack at Pancho Villa with two cars with a fixed mounted machineguns added to them and the slapping of a wounded soldier as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton
Hello Folks, Hope all is well. Thank you , just Freaking AWESOME. Thank you John the shop and your family’s Tank is great. Loved every part of it and yes a rifled bore is a gun and a smoothbore is a cannon . My uncle manned a Sheridan in Vietnam and it had a smoothbore cannon . thanks again as all ways what a show thanks.
A really great show in an interesting setting. You make me confused guys. As I have written in the flamers for FOW video I am at a crossroads with BOLT and FOW. I really do not know which one to buy! I do not like the 15mm scale and that’s why I am leaning towards BOLT. John, you really know what you are talking about. Still however I cannot wait to see Justin’s pick by @warzan 😀
An excellent and informative show, keep up the great work.
I always find it interesting listening to John speaking about WW2 and tanks in general. That guy’s a history book!
Really enjoyed that. Great show
Great show guys! More shows like this every so often are a great shift in gears!
This show has been a long time waiting for me! I love tanks. I love them so much I even joined a tank regiment after 8 years in the infantry. As for the argument Smooth or rifled I’d choose rifled every time! I’ve done every job in CR2 and can tell you with a well drilled crew you can engage roughly 6-8 targets a minute and with the accuracy of a rifled barrel every little helps.
Also don’t want to be that guy but there was mention of the primer/percussion cap being placed in after the bag charge. Although technically correct it comes in the form of a brass cartridge that is auto loaded as the gun recoils. Don’t wanna get into to much detail but that’s the rough outline. Well that’s my two penith….. Great show guys and can’t wait for tank week!!
Should really read all the comments. Pretty much repeating soldado up there. Opps. Sorry.
I love you David for pointing out the autoloaded primer! I had remembered that right after we had filmed! haha
Happy to help john.
Glad to have someone validate what I say so I know Im not waffling C&*% 🙂 and that the memory isnt going
I think…THINK the boss of CCA of 4th armored division was THE Abrams…
Lt. Colonel Creighton Abrams, for whom the M1 Abrams battle tank is named.
Good weekender but I really liked the difference between a Gun and a Cannon, but the Stryker uses a 105mm Gun not a 120 Cannon.
Hmmm tanks 😉
Great to see a show on location again. this one is especially good since it is so contextual. John can be a guest speaker whenever he wants. He always has something interesting to tell.
I’m from the Netherlands, but even so I was a bit fuzzy on the Market Garden operation.
Also good to know that driving around in a tank is like driving around in a big bomb.
Oh, thanks for the history lesson.
A good fiction read for post-Nazi US/USSR combat is Robert Conroy’s Red Inferno: 1945.
Finally been able to finish watching the second part of the weekender and it was great! Loved the “Sherman” tour.
See you next weekend
The Russian T-72 has a Auto loader I believe. With alot of the most effective Anti-tank shells being essentially depleted uranium Darts with a sabot a rifled barrel doesn’t really hold an advantage I would think.
As other folks more knowledgeable than me said, rifling makes the round a little more accurate, but muzzle velocity, ballistic performance, range (and thus accuracy over distance) declines slightly.
The trick was how to give a smoothbore the same accuracy as a rifled gun. I believe they largely compensated for this with the inclusion of the fins on the back of the DU sabot “dart.” Hence, the “silver bullets” we see (and barretem30 mentions . . . APFSDS-DU (Armor Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot Depleted Uranium) rounds. One writer from the First Gulf War said that 120mm RH120 (M256) guns on M1A1 Abrams were able to “slice through dead tanks to kill live ones . . .” but who knows (these were probably T-55s, admittedly). The penetrating power of these guns, firing this ammunition, is indeed freakish.
This is always one thing that’s slightly bothered me when people point at the performance of T-55s, 62s, and 72s in Syria, Egypt, and Iraq (1967 Six-Day, 1973 Yom Kippur, 1982 Lebanon, and 1991 Gulf War) and say “Wow, look how terrible Soviet tanks perform. We would have had no problem in Germany if the Fulda Gap scenario had really broken loose.”
Well, for one, the Soviets exported their slightly inferior tanks to client states and kept the good ones for their own Category I and II tank divisions (i.e., T-64s with 125mm guns instead of T-62s with 115mm guns . . . and T-80s instead of T-72s). But another thing is the ammunition @barretem30 mentions. I don’t think the Soviets ever exported these “silver bullets” (oh yes, the Soviets have had them almost as long as NATO has), so the client states in the Middle East were firing AP solid cap rounds, etc, NOT these tank killers that easily double a tanks killing power against other tanks (to say nothing of the GUIDED antitank rounds these Soviet tanks can fire, the AT-11 “Sniper” missile and others).
So yes, M1A1. Leopard II, and Challenger 2s could still take on many times their numbers in actual SOVIET tanks, with Soviet crews and Soviet ammunition . . . but I don’t think the margin would have been nearly as big as we saw in Middle East wars through the Cold War period.
I feel like I lit the fuse and you are handling the resulting explosion here @oriskany 😛