Early Risers.

[Barry O]

10 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

@Barry O Why did you find my post "funny"?

 

I qualified my statement by saying "....the T-62 (or even the T-90) may be outclassed..."

 

However, my observations about how the Soviets just threw men and material against German targets is hardly contentious. And from newspaper reports it seems that Putin's military is continuing the Soviet tactic of considering their troops as expendable. And it's hardly a stretch to contend that if faced with a "superior" military technology, Putin would just continue to throw troops against the objective.

 

And as much as we in the West find it distasteful or "wrong", in many countries the citizen is there to serve the state and not the other way around. Again, hardly a contentious observation.

Why did I rate it funny?

 

I do have history in the use and design of tanks.  You seem to have missed one Soviet tank in particular.. the JS2 which could knock lumps put of most German vehicles and caused the UK to stick a 120mm gun in the Conqueror main battle tank. 

T34 with the later guns was capable of doing a lot of damage.. especially against the more numerous Panzer IVs. 

 

Russian tactics and training has always been based on two things... lots of people who were not easy to train. And lots of people mean lots of easy to build tanks requiring little or no training

 

Baz

Edited January 26, 2023 by Barry O

[Barry O]

12 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 But it does have an inside toilet.

All British tanks have inside facilities.  Haven't the Ozzie M1s got them? Or is  it like the Boiling vessel? Not invented in the USA?

 

Baz

Edited January 27, 2023 by Barry O

[Barry O]

3 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. Getting ready to go out for the SEERS meeting tonight, a talk on one members garden layout, when it was built and construction. The feet are still a bit sore but Saturday morning will be too late to make a decision on the Longfield exhibition so its almost certain that I won't attend.

Many Russian tanks have active protection but this has been negated by the latest NATO anti-tank weapons. In some of the newsreels you can see many of the Ukrainian Soviet era tanks now sport bar armour. The Ukrainians also acquired a tank factory upon independence that was producing the T72 and T80 and they have produced their own versions (different engine and turret) using western technology.  

Not sure where you are getting this from but whoever is producing it is not clued up.. at all.

 

People who know about armour don't tend to write about it in the public domain.

 

Baz

Edited January 26, 2023 by Barry O

[monkeysarefun]

46 minutes ago, Barry O said:

Not sure where you are getting this from but whoever is producing it is not clued up.. at all.

From the people who made World Of Tanks, where every Russian tank has a sniper-like gun, impenetrable armour and a mysterious "cloak of invincibility" that means that many rounds shot at them mysteriously just  disappear during travel before reaching them.

 

 

PS: the internet seems to believe that the Abrahms has no toilet facilities ...... I worked at Land HQ a few years ago with a tanker guy back when we had Leopards. He talked fondly of the days-long CW/BW exercises, locked down  in a tank in the Northern Territory  in summer with no proper  toilet. Awesome stuff.

[monkeysarefun]

7 hours ago, Barry O said:

T34 with the later guns was capable of doing a lot of damage.. especially against the more numerous Panzer IVs. 

 

The KV was a beast too, less  known than  the T34 but  when introduced its armour could withstand any German antitank round of the time of introduction other than the 88 (though the Fins got to them with Molotov cocktails) and its gun was capable of knocking out any German tank it faced. One KV-2 with its 152mm howitzer halted elements of the 6th Armoured Division at a crossroads near Raseiniai, Lithuania for 22 hours and was only finally overcome when it ran out of ammunition. 

Edited January 27, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[Coombe Barton]

... asteroid, 2023 BU, reputedly the size of a truck or minibus, is going to pass earth inside the geostationary satellite orbits a bit after midnight. It should be named Evri - they pass by without calling. ...

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2023/01/26/covid-up-26-in-five-days-more-taxpayers-money-down-the-drain-antibodies-increase-tenfold-with-booster/

[pH]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

A traditional approach to staffing the armed forces. Plenty of Englishmen on the wrong side of the law took the King's Shilling to serve in the (almost) endless wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. 

It happened more recently than that, and they weren’t all Englishmen:
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Ramensky

[Erichill16]

Evening All,

Not much to report other than struggling to get on here. Spiny thing just goes round.

Week consisted mainly of looking after nephews,mil etc and sorting ‘stuff’ out at mums. 
Bit Late so goodnight.

 

[polybear]

7 hours ago, TheQ said:

Actually quite common in Saudi when European toilets are fitted, not holes in the floor. I've seen those signs in the UK too where large quantities of non British born people live.

 

ISTR mention of certain foreign visitors squattin' on the carpet in the middle of Selfridges (or was it Harrods?).....

 

6 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

Wall = mullered.  Mercedes not much better.

 

 

 

 

What became of the driver?

 

Bear here......

Yet another evening at the M.E. Club; there's been a slight change in that our start time is now 30 minutes later (we found this out tonight - it's a new development).  Poo.  Still, as we don't get charged at all then we're still very lucky to have the facility.

One project now completed - I'm just awaiting delivery of some 10-32 UNF bolts from the 'bay; I should've started the next stage of the latest project but wasn't really sure there was enough time left to complete all machining operations in the time remaining (they need to be done without removing the job from the lathe in order to ensure alignment).

 

Not sure what tomorrow will bring as yet - another MIUABGAD methinks.

 

In other news......

Anyone else think that a certain individual (guilty of raping two women) would've been ideally suited to serving their time in a Women's Prison in Scotland?  I'm sure the 100-odd inmates could've explained the error of his sorry, her ways in a most "effective" way......

Bear gone.

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. A good evening at SEERS this evening. Started with a talk by the owner of a garden railway demonstrating the forty plus members of his stud in action, he also bemoaned the demise of Track Shack. There was a second speaker showing some pics of unusual visitors to Tilbury shed including a GWR 28XX 2-8-0.

[PupCam]

Evening All!

 

Very, very, very late on parade today - Whoops!   Though I have been keeping up via my phone.

 

A day consisting mainly of:

 

1) Delivering and collecting a family member to hospital for some day surgery

 

2) Milling and filling a block of aluminium into a peculiar shape.  This will become the "missing bit" of a Beeza crankcase casting that holds the steel strap on that holds the magdyno on.    I can't believe how fortunate I am to now have machining facilities in the garage.  I've only had the Myford a couple of years but boy is it getting a workout!

 

In Other News

 

I found this interesting (to me) video via Faceache today.   So many things to like about it:

 

a) It features a Mosquito (well, that's enough really)

b) It features George Aird, the dH Test Pilot (best known for ejecting from a Lightning over Hatfield airfield leading to a truly classic photograph)

c) It features Booker airfield in the 80's.    In the 70's a young Puppers used to glide at Booker and my best mate spent many years of his working life there.

 

 

Night All!

Edited January 26, 2023 by PupCam

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[jjb1970]

7 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

A traditional approach to staffing the armed forces. Plenty of Englishmen on the wrong side of the law took the King's Shilling to serve in the (almost) endless wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Failing that they were impressed (particularly in the RN).

 

It's a long standing tradition going back to antiquity. And not just in the olden days or less salubrious countries. The French Foreign Legion offers people with a shady past an opportunity to make a fresh start (though they have limits) and it has been common in lots of countries for magistrates/judges to offer problem teenagers the chance to join up so they can straighten their lives out rather than go into a vicious circle of being fined or getting jail time for misdemeanours and ending up a complete mess.

[jjb1970]

On active protection, tanks have used ERA for decades, but the more modern active protection systems are designed to stop ATGM/RPGs before they reach tanks and armoured vehicles. There are soft and hard kill systems, the Russian T90 and some of their other upgraded tanks use a hard kill system.

[jjb1970]

On tanks, it has always struck me that there is a parallel between tanks and other big toys like warships and combat aircraft in that most people seem interested in the 'top trumps' type stuff about capabilities but few consider whether the things work and are usable.

 

To take WW2 tanks, the T-34 was crude, early models had terrible ergonomics and a two man turret, you can easily add on more faults (for balance, it had a powerful gun, good protection and excellent mobility). The Panther had a superb gun, excellent optics, great frontal protection (much less so to the sides) and crew ergonomics while not perfect were a world above Soviet tanks. So on paper it might be assumed the Panther was a better tank. However, it had terrible reliability issues and a transmission which wasn't up to the job (and changing it out was a big job), short track life, the T-34 was crude but it was easy to operate, reliable and many drove across Europe (admittedly many also got blown to bits in the process). The big German heavy tanks (Tiger/Tiger II) were superb in combat but Germany had hopelessly inadequate resources to build tanks requiring such resources to build and operate and there were only a handful of them. And then there was fuel. The Soviets built the T-34 and KV/IS series in vast numbers and had everything to operate them in vast numbers.

 

A more modern example might be the Type 45 destroyer. The air warfare system is superb, arguably the best in the world, but the things struggle to complete a voyage without breaking down. They're trying to upgrade them to improve reliability but I'm not convinced an auxiliary engine upgrade will address the real problems, and they were struggling to get WR21 spares almost from new.

[iL Dottore]

8 hours ago, Barry O said:

Why did I rate it funny?

 

I do have history in the use and design of tanks.  You seem to have missed one Soviet tank in particular.. the JS2 which could knock lumps put of most German vehicles and caused the UK to stick a 120mm gun in the Conqueror main battle tank. 

T34 with the later guns was capable of doing a lot of damage.. especially against the more numerous Panzer IVs. 

 

Russian tactics and training has always been based on two things... lots of people who were not easy to train. And lots of people mean lots of easy to build tanks requiring little or no training

 

Baz

The point of my post was not so much about the battle worthiness of WWII Russian tanks, but about how the Soviets used their huge numbers of (relatively mechanically simple) tanks and men to grind down the enemy, regardless of cost in men and material.

 

The Soviets had some excellent war material, which was, according to some military histories I’ve read, in some ways better than the Western equivalent - being simple to make, use, repair and very reliable in the field. To add to your observation, Baz, after a few false starts, what the tank factories in the Urals were producing really created problems for the Wehrmacht. (I read that the OKW were so impressed with the T34/76 that many of its features [such as sloping armour] were used when designing the Panther). I think that you can say that the T34/76, the T34/85 and JS2 were amongst the most effective tanks of the war (I don’t want to use the term “best” as “best” can be very subjective).

 

I think that most people underestimate the savage immensity of the Eastern Front. It was an ideologically driven conflict between two, diametrically opposed, totalitarian regimes. The war on Eastern Front was quite literally one of survival. The casualty rate is almost beyond comprehension:  according to Russian government figures, USSR losses within postwar borders were about 26.6 million, including 8 to 9 million due to famine and disease; the Germans lost about 7 million war dead (of which 5.3 million were military casualties - mostly on the Eastern Front). In comparison Britain and the US got off comparatively lightly (450’900 UK and 419’400 US war dead).

 

[Grizz]

Morning All

 

Woke up at 04:53 this morning, think that it might be the pull of the end of January and slightly lighter mornings. I so hate going to work and coming home from work in the dark. Most uncivilised.

But I must be grateful that at least these days I no longer have to get up at 03:45 every day to start fielding bad news phone calls, emails and messages about how badly night maintenance work is going / has gone / or didn’t happen. Then catching the first one up to town to get to the office at 06:30, to start preparing the defence and attack strategies for the morning conference calls, attribution meetings and possession scheduling / rescheduling bun fights. So much wasted energy and resources. And just to think that after I left other less experienced poor baskets were thrown in the deep end and are now doing exactly what I used to do. Gods bless them.

Promised Mrs Grizz an early morning Mocca in bed this morning. Well in a mug on her bedside table obviously. Mocca delivered at 05:07. Job done. Brownie points for Grizz. Banking them for another day.
 

Day off today…..well we’ll see if it turns out to be a true day off, or will something drift along to interrupt my plans to continue with some muddle fly over / bridge construction. 

 

Had fun out and about yesterday and whilst out on my wanderings this Yellow Beastie (MMT, Mobile Maintenance Train) was in the yard at Horsham. Quite an interesting piece of kit, which I’ve conducted on a few occasions. 
 

 

Probably got to drop number two cub to the station this morning and then off to ScrowFuxx to collect my steel strips to continue building my flyover / bridge. Fingers crossed.
 

In the meantime….Have a great day all. 

 

ATB Grizz
 

[pH]

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

On tanks, it has always struck me that there is a parallel between tanks and other big toys like warships and combat aircraft in that most people seem interested in the 'top trumps' type stuff about capabilities but few consider whether the things work and are usable …

 

Arthur C.Clarke wrote a short story about this in 1951:

 

https://www.baen.com/Chapters/1439133476/1439133476___5.htm

[Grizz]

Just been watching this Abrams tank ‘Drifting’….and can’t help but wonder what banging tunes the crew have got playing through their head sets? 😆

 

 

Now for me it’d definitely have to be Sepultura’s cover of Mötörhead’s ‘Orgasmatron’…………just saying. Er…I’ll get my coat. 

Edited January 27, 2023 by Grizz
More

[Barry O]

Ey up!  The walkabout continues with the odd stop for refreshments and sleep.

 

Stay safe!

 

Baz

Edited January 27, 2023 by Barry O

[jamie92208]

Good moani g.  Still cool but not frosty here.  Breakfast had and sandwiches made.  Yes I'm allowed out to play today so am off trainsptting with a bit of shopping to do as well so a good day in prospect.  Coffee to fi ish now.

 

Jamie

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl,

5.75 hours sleep followed by some minor dozing.

 

9 hours ago, pH said:

It happened more recently than that, and they weren’t all Englishmen:
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Ramensky

Indeed. Contrary to many people's beliefs after the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, not all the Highlanders were hunted down and killed.  Several officers who were known about and a lot more men, mostly not known about until much later, chose to join the British Army. Many of the  men had not been " loyal to the cause" but had been loyal to their clan chiefs and there is evidence some were "strong armed" into joining the Jacobites.

 

Either way, joining the British Army gave a place to hide, wages, a roof over your head and a career.

 

Ben the alarm clock Collie reverted to going to work time to try to get me up. He went back to his pit when told not yet Ben, but was restless and kept getting up wandering around before settling again. Meanwhile I was trying to get comfortable most joints are not happy this morning, this joined by slight shoulder pain from sewing!!! Yep a slight RSI, from the arm and shoulder stretching out to pull the thread through.

 

I suspect there will be great efforts by the Russians to capture any of the tanks delivered, to find out their secrets, after first attempting to hit them with missiles when they first cross into Ukraine.

One problem the Ukrainian forces will have is 14 Challengers, 30 Abrams, and a number of Leopards no doubt with local modifications from each donating country, it's going to give a huge logistics and interoperability problem.

 

Today's plans,

More filling on the rudder,

More fibreglassing the centre console,

Extend the luff wire,

And today's maybe, start looking at fitting the bearings for the rudder shaft into the boat, they need to be in place so the rudder top can be made to a close fit to the hull.

 

Time for a Muggacoffee and breakfast.

 

[polybear]

8 hours ago, PupCam said:

Milling and filling a block of aluminium into a peculiar shape.  This will become the "missing bit" of a Beeza crankcase casting that holds the steel strap on that holds the magdyno on.    I can't believe how fortunate I am to now have machining facilities in the garage.  I've only had the Myford a couple of years but boy is it getting a workout!

 

 

We need pictures......

 

1 hour ago, Grizz said:

Just been watching this Abrams tank ‘Drifting’….and can’t help but wonder what banging tunes the crew have got playing through their head sets? 😆

Now for me it’d definitely have to be Sepultura’s cover of Mötörhead’s ‘Orgasmatron’…………just saying. Er…I’ll get my coat. 

 

For this Bear it'd be "Mony Mony" by Billy Idol - a certain Bear has to be careful if that comes on the car radio cos' it seems to affect the Go Pedal somewhat.....

 

Bear here........

Missions today include sorting the two toolboxes used for the M.E. Club Evenings - they seem to be getting heavier (the fact that Bear has a habit of rescuing useful-looking bits of metal out of the scrap bin doesn't help....) - there's also a lot of tooling in there that doesn't need to be, so a tidy is in order.

I also need to order a new pendulum mechanism for the Kitchen Kitty Kat Clock - KItty's Bonce stopped wigglin' backwards and forwards some months ago, which is kinda sad.  So a search of the 'bay will no doubt be in order cos' that's where the usual solutions reside.

 

After that it's MIUABGAD.......

 

In other news.......

Rumours are surfacing that HS2 may not actually run to Central London after all; instead there's talk that it may terminate in West London (Old Oak Common maybe).  Something to do with rising inflation and construction costs (the last estimate was £98bn in 2019).

 

Bear gone.

[Barry O]

1 hour ago, Grizz said:

Just been watching this Abrams tank ‘Drifting’….and can’t help but wonder what banging tunes the crew have got playing through their head sets? 😆

 

 

Now for me it’d definitely have to be Sepultura’s cover of Mötörhead’s ‘Orgasmatron’…………just saying. Er…I’ll get my coat. 

Ride of the valkeries was used on one film about tanks..

 

Baz