Major advantage of a half track?

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Now, when was the last time one of those happened?

The last time US forces made a large opposed landing was 1950, Inchon, Korea.

[smurf]

Citroen Kegresse track

The inventor Adolphe Kégresse had varying degrees of half track through: Russia, Poland, France, Belgium, UK, USA, and vehicles captured by the Germans too.

Their best role appears to be artillery tractors.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by smurf

Citroen Kegresse track

The inventor Adolphe Kégresse had varying degrees of half track through: Russia, Poland, France, Belgium, UK, USA, and vehicles captured by the Germans too.

Their best role appears to be artillery tractors.

Which reminds me, the Romanovs had a half-tracked limousine kicking about somewhere...

[smurf]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Which reminds me, the Romanovs had a half-tracked limousine kicking about somewhere...

Yeah the links mention it.

Another implication of the half track is that many of the roads in Europe during their hay day were not surfaced but just well worn tracks. If it rained they turned into muddy tracks.

[Rupert]

Even a surfaced road will turn into a river of mud after it's been fought over (and or bombed and shelled a few times) and then had a division or three of armour roll down it, assuming there's a bit of rain (or the water table is right under the surface).

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by bocephus

They were best considered in tandem with the rest of the equipment available at the time and the doctrine that spawned them to fill a needed niche.

Yes, if you are used to contemporary motor vehicles, you need to look closely at what the ones in the 1930s and 1940s were like. The tanks of the day were especially unreliable (I saw a statistic of a late-war Panther breaking down after driving an average of 150 km on tracks) and unpleasant to ride in. So people wanted something with the long range of wheeled vehicles and the off-road capabilities of tracked vehicles.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Yes, if you are used to contemporary motor vehicles, you need to look closely at what the ones in the 1930s and 1940s were like. The tanks of the day were especially unreliable (I saw a statistic of a late-war Panther breaking down after driving an average of 150 km on tracks) and unpleasant to ride in. So people wanted something with the long range of wheeled vehicles and the off-road capabilities of tracked vehicles.

Do halftracks have much superior reliability to a fully-tracked vehicle of equivalent load?

Tanks often had poor reliability, yes, but tanks also tended to be heavy vehicles with stressed power train and suspension components. (German ones were often particularly bad at that, and then overengineered so that they were harder to repair.)

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

Wheeled vehicles have gotten very good off roads and tracked vehicles have gotten more reliable and user friendly so it's mostly just that the niche occupied by half-tracks has been squeezed out.

I agree with this.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

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.)

Before War Plan Orange gave them an opportunity to study for a niche for themselves, they were the enforcers of gunboat diplomacy. I have a copy of their earlier Small Wars Manuel, which in turn was adapted from Callwell's.

The Navy will continue to need infantry for various reasons not least security in foreign ports. The "Naval Army" thing may not be theoretically needed or the best organization in theory but disbanding it is needlessly harmful to morale when it can always be detailed to the army as before.

As for large opposed landings those are improbable. Raids you can usually find an empty beach for and large enough wars to need large opposed landings may not be in the works but the theory is necessary. At the least there is as much need for the Army to have masses of tanks as for the Marines to have landing vehicles.

[bocephus]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Do halftracks have much superior reliability to a fully-tracked vehicle of equivalent load?

Tanks often had poor reliability, yes, but tanks also tended to be heavy vehicles with stressed power train and suspension components. (German ones were often particularly bad at that, and then overengineered so that they were harder to repair.)

Much like the original question, you would need to add some parameters to get a useful answer.

Do you mean was a halftrack in 1943 more reliable than the previously mentioned Panther? Yes... IF you mean did they stay operational longer.

Was it the most reliable method to transport troops or gear vs the classic truck/jeep of the time... really I dont know. My opinion (and thats educated enough to know its just shy of hand wavy) is that they must have been, or the allies would have used trucks instead of adding a new vehicle to the supply chain. The fact that they were used for the duration of the war and continued for a time in inventory SEEMS to indicate that they had some number of functional differences to trucks that made them preferable. That preference could have been as simple as "Infantry commanders liked having the extra armor for their boys" to as complex as an analysis done by some tacticians in a war college. I dont know.

No matter what you have to at least lock in the time and location you are talking about to ask the question and get a useful answer. Better if you could mail down what specifically you want to compare it to and why.

For me, further discussion would only be productive if someone can also give the "Game reason" for asking the question, otherwise this is just a fun exercise in military history.