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Old 10-24-2020, 01:51 PM   #31
safisher
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Default Re: Major advantage of a half track?

"The US Army captured many SdKfz 251s during the war but found them to be generally inferior to the M3 because of their poorer mobility. The principal problem was that the SdKfz 251 was not fitted with a powered front axle, and it had about 25% less power than the American vehicle. The lack of a powered front axle resulted in poorer mobility and steering difficulties in mud and snow. The complicated rear suspension on the SdKfz 251 required a higher level of maintenance, and the interleaved wheels became impacted with mud which tended to lead to shedding tracks. A US comparison concluded that the American suspension gave better riding qualities and was much quieter in operation. The SdKfz 251 also lacked a front roller bumper, which made it un-
able to traverse terrain that could be overcome by the M3."

Keep in mind that the Israeli's used all the half-tracks they could beg borrow or steal well into the 1970s, and was modernizing them even as they acquired M113s after 1970.
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Old 10-24-2020, 02:01 PM   #32
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Default Re: Major advantage of a half track?

"One possible solution was the adoption of a fully-tracked vehicle to carry the infantry into combat. This was never seriously considered by the US Army due to the assumption that such vehicles would be prohibitively expensive. (Britain was the only country to employ fully tracked personnel carriers in the Second World War, the famous Universal Carriers.) Instead, attention was focused on the use of half-tracks. In the United States, half-tracks can be traced back to the Holt Tractor Company in 1914 which began experiments with the substitution of a tracked assembly on trucks in lieu of the usual wheeled rear axle on commercial vehicles. The main advantage of half-track configurations was that the track reduced the overall ground pressure of the vehicle and made it more mobile in mud and snow. There was extensive experimentation with half-track trucks through the 1920s and 1930s for many specialized applications, especially artillery prime movers. The T9 half-track truck of 1935-1936 was an important milestone in the technical evolution of these vehicles since it proved the feasibility of synchronizing the powered front wheels with the powered rear track assembly for better cross-country performance. The main disadvantages of early half-tracks were the low durability of the tracks, and their slow speed compared to conventional wheeled vehicles."

"Col. Sidney Hinds argued that the half-tracks gave the armored infantry the capability to follow tanks across terrain that was inaccessible to trucks. Furthermore, the armor protection, in spite of its admitted limitations, allowed the half-tracks to dismount the infantry much closer to their objectives than if they were using standard trucks. The armored infantry advocates also noted that the half-tracks could follow the infantry more closely even when the objective had to be assaulted on foot. The proximity of the half-tracks allowed the infantrymen to go into action unencumbered with heavy gear since this could be left on the half-track. This made the armored infantry more effective since they didn’t exhaust themselves as quickly as ordinary infantry. Indeed, one of the main problems that many older officers had with the new units was their rag-tag appearance. The half-tracks inevitably became cluttered with additional gear, much of which senior officers regarded as unsightly and unmilitary."
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Old 10-24-2020, 02:31 PM   #33
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Originally Posted by bocephus View Post
Much like amphibious assault vehicles of WWII would be pretty pointless today (except in specific edge cases) because we have many other (better) options to move troops from water to land. No doubt in 50-100 years historians will giggle about Jets that can hover, rocket assist take off, Chinooks, etc...
Don't tell the marines that. As far as I know they still consider the direct modern descendants of those vehicles to be mission critical assets for any kind of opposed landing operations.

(You could argue that opposed landing operations constitute a specific edge case, but that's the primary case that those vehicles were ever intended for.)
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Old 10-24-2020, 04:05 PM   #34
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Don't tell the marines that. As far as I know they still consider the direct modern descendants of those vehicles to be mission critical assets for any kind of opposed landing operations.
Now, when was the last time one of those happened?
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Old 10-24-2020, 05:37 PM   #35
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Now, when was the last time one of those happened?
Probably WWII or maybe Korea...but that isn't due to better options for moving from water to land. It's due to avoiding landing anyplace that would be opposed.
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Old 10-24-2020, 09:12 PM   #36
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Now, when was the last time one of those happened?
Desert Storm had some diversionary Marine operations out of the Gulf, faking another direction of attack toward Baghdad and Kuwait. But I don't remember how much actual landing they did, as opposed to having a MEF as a force in being (plus battleships preparing the invasion area, people surrendering to drones, and so on).
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Old 10-24-2020, 09:15 PM   #37
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Default Re: Major advantage of a half track?

The future does not guarantee an unopposed landing in every conflict.
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Old 10-24-2020, 09:42 PM   #38
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Now, when was the last time one of those happened?
The 1980's?

The Israelis made some landings during the War of Attrition, and also during the 1982 Lebanon campaign. The Falklands War in 1982 was an opposed amphibious assault that would have benefited from more vehicles. During the attack on the Al-Faw peninsula during the Iran-Iraq War, the both sides would have loved to have amphibious armor.

Later, Sri Lanka against the Tamil Tigers also had a number of amphibious assaults but they were pretty small scale, and Russia seizing Crimea wasn't mostly amphibious or opposed.

Getting armored vehicles over a beach remains a useful capacity.
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Old 10-24-2020, 10:17 PM   #39
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Default Re: Major advantage of a half track?

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
Probably WWII or maybe Korea...but that isn't due to better options for moving from water to land. It's due to avoiding landing anyplace that would be opposed.
Oh, agreed, but there's a reason for that avoidance. The situations in which there aren't better options than an opposed landing are very minimal, and mostly limited to targets that aren't enemies of ours (e.g. if China decides to invade Taiwan it might come up, but it won't be us trying to use landing vehicles).
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Old 10-25-2020, 05:11 AM   #40
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Default Re: Major advantage of a half track?

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Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
Desert Storm had some diversionary Marine operations out of the Gulf, faking another direction of attack toward Baghdad and Kuwait. But I don't remember how much actual landing they did . ..
None. The landing preparations were a pure diversion, although the Marines didn't know it. While everyone was watching them get ready, the armoured attacks west of Kuwait kicked off.
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