Another good M18 article…
The first thing that shocked me is just how quick the Hellcat gets out of the hole. Slam the Torqmatic into first, and put your foot down on the accelerator and the M18 just hooks up and goes like a, well, cat out of hell. It’s astonishing how quick this 69-year-old 18 ton TD is. Credit that to the 940 lb-ft of torque on tap. Somewhat counter-intuitively (but I’m sure to the delight of the kids that drove Hellcats during the War), the faster you go, the easier the TD drives. For example, by the time I took the controls of the Hellcat, the field we were driving on had become what’d be a challenging off-road course for wheeled vehicles, with deep, soft dirt washouts, massive whoops, and plenty of odd-angled ruts and dips. The best way to handle them in the Hellcat, Bill assured me, was to go faster. And boy was he right. The Hellcat is so quick that there are rumors of servicemen in M18s facing off against Willys Jeeps in drag races, with the Hellcat destroying the Jeep off the line.
ShivaX
2677
At the end of the day hit points make things not remotely realistic.
In WoT your tank can take X penetrating hits, then it explodes.
In reality your tank can take… probably one. Maybe more. 17-pounders ended tanks in a single shot fairly often. In WoT they never do because damage is based on caliber and everything has hit points, so a 17pdr into the side of a Panther means the Panther takes a small amount of damage and then turns and shoots the Firefly that shot it. In real life the Panther crew bails out if any of them survived in the first place.
Reminds me of WW2OL. You can shoot a Matilda all day and it doesn’t care. Until you hit the right spot and penetrate and then it ceases to exist. That shot can be the first or the 30th shot. Physics and ballistics doesn’t give a crap.
And yeah WoT doesn’t give a crap about either, too. Then again that’s fine because it’s an arcade game essentially. Fun often, but only the 3D models of the tanks are anything like realistic.
It was a fine vehicle most of the time, but like all systems effectiveness depended on a host of factors. By the time US forces were operating large numbers of tanks and tank destroyers there were fewer and fewer German tanks, though assault guns and TDs somewhat made up for that. Our TDs did a lot of general infantry support stuff, and while a high-velocity AT gun isn’t ideal for that role, it’s better than nothing.
TDs, like our tanks, were not supposed to engaging in one on one duels anyhow. Any comparisons of one vehicle to another that focus on that sort of matchup will miss the forest for the trees, too.
The M18, interestingly enough, was indeed manufactured by Buick.
Timex
2680
Alexa, kill a bunch of Nazis.
There goes a whole swathe of the USA and the west!
And nothing of value was lost.
Dejin
2683
An interesting thread on the My Lai Massacre, and the helicopter crew who was willing to point guns at US soldiers to try to protect Vietnamese civilians:
Great thread. I remember reading about a helicopter crew who intervened but didn’t know about what happened when became whistle-blowers. I don’t know if the military has a whistle-blower law. Not that civilian one helps that much,
I believe it’s called a “Code Red”.
Well played, sir, well played.
Timex
2689
I’ve seen Red6’s stuff in presentations before… I’m not convinced that it’s not total vaporware bullshit.
It might not be, but the only stuff I’ve actually seen about it is very much flashy marketing videos. I’ve not seen it actually work in production yet, and the idea that it’ll be production ready for deployment in an actual fighter in the next year seems…ambitious.
Well, if it’s AR, and not full VR, and it’s being used in a simulator, I can see that. If it’s something more out there, though, I’d also be a bit skeptical.
Timex
2691
Nah, their stuff is supposedly being targeted as being used in live flying. Like, you wear the helmet and fly around and see constructive entities.
schurem
2692
The thing where they use AR to project virtual bogeys to real pilots in real jets? yeah that’s real, and it’s happening man. They been hyping that up on the Fighter Pilot Podcast for some time now.
Timex
2693
Is it really? Like I said, I’ve seen Red6 for a while now, but I have yet to see it actually working in the real world, and not marketing videos.
schurem
2694
This is of course about the rather radical “projecting a plane on the pilot’s helmet visor” kind of AR. But the less radical version has been around for quite some time, where your radar or datalink gets to ‘see’ things that aren’t actually real for you to run intercepts on etc.
Heck, in a very real sense almost all military training is AR, fighting virtual opponents with virtual weaponry. It’s all a version of running around the neighborhood yelling pew pew you dead!
Now the F-35 Ahelmet is ideally suited for this, as it’s already geared for headtracking and generating AR overlays and imagery.
And the possibilities for hacking these things? Priceless! Ok, it’s probably hella difficult and impractical, but imagine the chaos…
