10-25-2020, 09:15 PM | #41 |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Major advantage of a half track?
The last time US forces made a large opposed landing was 1950, Inchon, Korea.
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
10-26-2020, 03:32 PM | #42 |
Banned
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Bristol
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Re: Major advantage of a half track?
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. |
10-26-2020, 03:46 PM | #43 | |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: Major advantage of a half track?
Quote:
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10-26-2020, 03:50 PM | #44 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Bristol
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Re: Major advantage of a half track?
Quote:
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. |
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10-26-2020, 05:47 PM | #45 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Major advantage of a half track?
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).
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
10-26-2020, 06:45 PM | #46 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Major advantage of a half track?
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.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
10-27-2020, 12:16 AM | #47 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Major advantage of a half track?
Quote:
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.)
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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10-27-2020, 02:03 AM | #48 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Udine, Italy
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Re: Major advantage of a half track?
I agree with this.
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10-27-2020, 12:43 PM | #49 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Major advantage of a half track?
Quote:
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.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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10-28-2020, 02:55 AM | #50 | |
Join Date: Apr 2019
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Re: Major advantage of a half track?
Quote:
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. |
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Tags |
halftrack, wwii |
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