Post cool photo's of WW2 Machines/Engineering

[Mr_B]

A large part of the Battle of Britain victory.



Just because I want one ...



Airbourne work horse.



Panzerfaust



Horsa glider.



ASDIC ( sonar ) set.

Edited by Mr_B on Wednesday 31st December 14:49

[pony2]

[pony2]

[Callan.T89]

Simpo Two said:

Negative Creep said:

Callan.T89 said:

Another couple of Stuka Pics - my favourite plane ever, some real interesting and futuristic design ideas went into this plane and was the basis for the American A10 tank buster.

Erm are you sure about that? The Americans had plenty of dive bombers and ground attack aircraft of their own

I too am struggling to find anything in common between the Ju-87 and A10, except in the tactical usage.

The Book "Stuka Ace" by Hans-Ulrich Rudel was compulsary rading for all engineers who worked on the A10 programme and Rudel himself was a consultant to the engineering team.

TEKNOPUG said:

True but it was never designed to operate without complete air superiority. As an Air to Ground attack aircraft it was superb. Hans-Ulrich Rudel didn't think that they were overrated, in Stukas he flew some 2,530 combat missions (a world record), during which he destroyed almost 2,000 ground targets (among them 519 tanks, 70 assault craft/landing boats, 150 self-propelled guns, 4 armored trains, and 800 other vehicles; as well as 9 planes (2 Il-2's and 7 fighters). He also sank a battleship, two cruisers and a destroyer. He was never shot down by another pilot, only by anti-aircraft artillery.

Read the Article about Rudel on Wikipedia or "Stuka Ace" itself, unbelievable reading, the Russians were so pissed at him they put a bounty on his head (dead or alive). He was also the most decorated soldier of WW2 and the most decorated German solider ever I believe.

And he only flew Stukas

Edited by Callan.T89 on Wednesday 31st December 15:00

[Bushmaster]

Bailey bridge. Invented in England, 1943. Used worldwide ever since.

Edited by Bushmaster on Wednesday 31st December 15:12

[pony2]

[Callan.T89]

I can't believe nobody has posted a pic' of these yet:



The Panzer VI Panther Tank, widely regarded as the best (although not most important) tank of WW2 and the basis for post war MBT's

May have been a copy of the T34 in respects but an absolutely devastating weapon far superior to all of it's contemporary's.





Also spawned the Jagdpanther




What a profile - function driving form.


Also if anyone is interested check out a website called "Lone Sentry" which has loads of decomissioned WW2 intelligence documents that you can read.

[Steamer]

Callan.T89 said:

.

Where is this one pictured Callan? I was almost tempted to say somewhere in north england... but I'm guessing it would be sporting ALOT more graffiti if it was on our side of the channel!!

[ZR1cliff]

Callan, if you're into tanks ' Battle of the Bulge ' is on Ch4 now.

[Livid]

jollygreen said:

coanda said:

geek-mode/

Not got any pics of an mp-44 then? Thats where the AK-47 started - as did all modern assault rifles!

/geek-mode

Actually, wasn't it called the STG then renamed the MP44?

I seem to recall reading that Mr K used a similar design to the trigger mechanism from an M1 too in his first prototype.

I thought it was the mp44 was a submachine-gun, and it was the Sturmgewehr 44 that was the first assault rifle

[FourWheelDrift]

Steamer said:

Callan.T89 said:

http://image20.webshots.com/21/5/90/66/207559066eu...

Where is this one pictured Callan? I was almost tempted to say somewhere in north england... but I'm guessing it would be sporting ALOT more graffiti if it was on our side of the channel!!

Is that the one at Vimoutiers in France? It's been repainted if it is, or is it a replica as the only other one outside is in Russia and that doesn't look like Russia to me.

This is the Russian one, vandalised and still sporting wartime damage & ex-range target.


PS. Webshots isn't working, you have to paste that link above into a new window to view it.

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Wednesday 31st December 16:10

[Skywalker]

Following on from the sentiments on the pic of the Sten -


The 'Grease Gun'


- Composition B...kept armies going 'Boom' into the 90's


German 'S' Mine - aka the Bouncing Betty

and on the not-killing side




Just the scale of organising the feeding programme for a whole nation blows the mind.

and whilst the Chinese may have 'dibs' on this from 2 millenia previously


it was these devils that made it into a viable weapon of war.

[Fezant Pluckah]

FourWheelDrift said:

Fezant Pluckah said:

The Japanese battleships Yamato & Musashi, largest battleships ever built and the only ones to ever have 18 inch guns.

Again we were first, the Battlecruiser HMS Furious was built with a single 18inch gun. It was fired, perhaps just the once and was renowned to cause more damage to the ship than to the target due to it's lightweight armoured construction. Furious was soon converted into an Aircraft carrier.

I wasn't aware this was a " we did it first" thread. The fact is the British failed dismally in their attempt to mount an 18inch gun on a ship. Only the Japanese mastered that. When it came to battleship design the Japanese (and Americans) were leaps and bounds better than us.

[anonymous-user]

[BruceV8]

[quote=Bushmaster
[/quote]

"Well that was the Bren Gun". Actually its an L4 LMG, which was a conversion of the WW2 .303 Brens to 7.62mm. It was a 1920s design and was still in service into the 1990s. My unit took them to the first Gulf War and the following Kurdish relief operation. They were dated 1945 and were replaced by LSWs in 1992. Not a welcome issue, let me tell you.

[Incredible Sulk]

Fezant Pluckah said:

FourWheelDrift said:

Fezant Pluckah said:

The Japanese battleships Yamato & Musashi, largest battleships ever built and the only ones to ever have 18 inch guns.

Again we were first, the Battlecruiser HMS Furious was built with a single 18inch gun. It was fired, perhaps just the once and was renowned to cause more damage to the ship than to the target due to it's lightweight armoured construction. Furious was soon converted into an Aircraft carrier.

I wasn't aware this was a " we did it first" thread. The fact is the British failed dismally in their attempt to mount an 18inch gun on a ship. Only the Japanese mastered that. When it came to battleship design the Japanese (and Americans) were leaps and bounds better than us.

But wasn't design constrained by treaty obligations post First World War? Isn't that why we ended up with all those peculiar looking things like Nelson and Rodney?

[BruceV8]

Super-heavy artillery - one of my pet subjects!

TheEnd said:

This is the Paris gun from WW1. Made from a 38cm(15 inch) naval gun fitted with a 21cm (8.26 inch) liner. The shells were sequentially numbered and each was slightly larger than the next to compensate for the massive barrel wear. When the 21 cm barrel was shot out it was replaced by a 24 cm one, again with sequentially numbered and sized shells. This gun shelled Paris from a range of 70-80 miles. It was moved by rail, but fired from a static platform. Despite a massive hunt for it the French never found it and it is believed that the Germans destroyed it near the end of the war.

TheEnd said:

This gun is a WW2 K5E 21 cm railway gun - the spiritual successor of the Paris gun. These could be fired from their rail mounting and first fired accross the channel on the UK in August 1940. Shells landed as far inland as Maidstone and Chatham.

The ammunition pictured is not for this gun but for the gun below.

TheEnd said:

hot metal said:

Big Gustav I think,used during the seige of Sebastopol.

80cm railway gun, referred to as officially as Gustav but the German gunners preferred their guns to have female names, so they called it Dora. This has led some to believe that there were two guns built, but most accept that there was only one. There have been larger calibre guns, but none larger overerall. It needed four sets of railway tracks to fire from, which had to be built on site. It took six weeks to bring into action. The gun had a crew of 1320 men. It was used at the sieges of Leningrad and Sevastopol. Some reports say it was even used in the suppression of the Warsaw uprising. At one point the Germans planned to use it against the UK, but this was decided against as it could not be hidden in tunnels and cuttings like the other railway guns and would have been an easy - and very high priority - target for allied air attacks.

Overall, these super-heavy guns were incredibly impressive feats of science and engineering, but a complete waste of valuable men and materials. But Uncle Adolf did always love a great big white elephant, didn't he?

[Fruitcake]

BruceV8 said:

Bushmaster said:

"Well that was the Bren Gun". Actually its an L4 LMG, which was a conversion of the WW2 .303 Brens to 7.62mm. It was a 1920s design and was still in service into the 1990s. My unit took them to the first Gulf War and the following Kurdish relief operation. They were dated 1945 and were replaced by LSWs in 1992. Not a welcome issue, let me tell you.

Well spotted. Although it's not the only Bren to have a straight (rather than curved) magazine. Brens were also made in 7.92mm cal (i.e. the same as used by the Germans) for use by the Chinese Army under Chaing Kai Shek (under US overall control) and, to a lesser extent, the French resistance et al.

Interestingly, the Bren was based on a weapon of 7.92mm cal in the first place - the ZB.26, made in Czechoslovakia, then modified extensively into the .303 cal Bren, then back into 7.92mm...

The L4, pictured, was closer to the 7.92mm Brens (simply because they were designed to fire rimless cartridges) then it was to the .303, though the shorter 7.62mm round meant that some of the internals had to be stretched.

I can match your level of

[BruceV8]

Fruitcake said:

BruceV8 said:

Bushmaster said:

"Well that was the Bren Gun". Actually its an L4 LMG, which was a conversion of the WW2 .303 Brens to 7.62mm. It was a 1920s design and was still in service into the 1990s. My unit took them to the first Gulf War and the following Kurdish relief operation. They were dated 1945 and were replaced by LSWs in 1992. Not a welcome issue, let me tell you.

Well spotted. Although it's not the only Bren to have a straight (rather than curved) magazine. Brens were also made in 7.92mm cal (i.e. the same as used by the Germans) for use by the Chinese Army under Chaing Kai Shek (under US overall control) and, to a lesser extent, the French resistance et al.

Interestingly, the Bren was based on a weapon of 7.92mm cal in the first place - the ZB.26, made in Czechoslovakia, then modified extensively into the .303 cal Bren, then back into 7.92mm...

The L4, pictured, was closer to the 7.92mm Brens (simply because they were designed to fire rimless cartridges) then it was to the .303, though the shorter 7.62mm round meant that some of the internals had to be stretched.

I can match your level of

everyone knows that We had a ZB26 among our training weapons in Cyprus. No date on it, but it was stamped with a Greek royal crest and I would surmise that the Czechs sold it to Greece in the 1930s and it was probably used in WW2 and the Greek civil war, alongside British forces. The Greeks then supplied it to EOKA in the 1950s to use against British forces in Cyprus, who then captured it and have kept it ever since. Funny how about 20 lbs of steel can have so much history.

[FourWheelDrift]

Fezant Pluckah said:

FourWheelDrift said:

Fezant Pluckah said:

The Japanese battleships Yamato & Musashi, largest battleships ever built and the only ones to ever have 18 inch guns.

Again we were first, the Battlecruiser HMS Furious was built with a single 18inch gun. It was fired, perhaps just the once and was renowned to cause more damage to the ship than to the target due to it's lightweight armoured construction. Furious was soon converted into an Aircraft carrier.

I wasn't aware this was a " we did it first" thread. The fact is the British failed dismally in their attempt to mount an 18inch gun on a ship. Only the Japanese mastered that. When it came to battleship design the Japanese (and Americans) were leaps and bounds better than us.

Just pointing out that the Yamato was not the only ones to mount an 18inch gun, besides we did it 20 years before the Japs, with 20yrs of development I'm sure ours would have been better. We just abided by the Post WWI Washington treaty on tonnage and guns and didn't cheat.

The Japanese 18inch guns of the Yamato weren't very good really, they were fired maybe 6-7 times in practice gunnery during the entire war and very seldomly during any battle mainly because of the damage firing did to the guns/bores themselves.

The Yamto very rarely ventured out and most fire from the big guns late in the war when it did was of "beehive" AA shells. These are loaded up with thousands of small projectiles turning the big guns into giant shotguns to shoot at aircraft at long range. These were also damaging to the barrels as they were held together with copper bands which damaged the rifling of the barrels. To demonstrate the fragility of the guns Yamato's big guns (firing beehive rounds) only fired 27 times at Leyte Gulf compared to the Nagato's 84 rounds. IIRC they couldn't be re-lined and there were not replacements either.