Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "[Vietnam] Riverine Warfare \u0026 Patrol Boat River PBR (Documentary)" video.

  1. T-34 was a great tank. But as Blah said, it did have many flaws as well and it wasn't designed for long lasting peacetime or a comfertable space for the crew. Not only were they crampy, and the gun had a hard recoil that the crewmen had to avoid, it was also the loudest tank in world war 2. For good and bad of course, not so good for surprise attacks but better for psychological warfare. T-34 was a tank that was built to be powerful in combat. It was built for being each to produce for unskilled labor, and at low cost, and at short period of time. An average life expectancy for a Soviet tank in the hard fights on the easternfront was just 6 months, so russian engineers considered it waste to use expensive and time consuming components if they lasted much longer than 6 months. It was more important for the russians to replace the huge losses in tanks in 1941, and to outproduce the germans with numerical superiority. And for training tank crewmen with tanks that did needed to last longer and didn't have to see combat, the soviets used allied tanks such as the valentine. And the tank was indeed excellent in combat. It had no problems with crossing terrain that most german tanks without wide tracks couldn't. Its protection was excellent compared to most tanks in its days. And in 1941 it also had the most powerful gun of any medium tank of its day. And it was mobile as well. And it was reliable in that sense that the crews could fix the tracks and most other stuff in the field. But of course, when it took a penetrating hit it was game over. I think that about 80% of the russian tank men died in the war, and there was a 80% chance of dying in the tank if it took a hit compared to a 80% chance of not dying if the same happened to a german or west-allied tank. In my opinion was it without doubt the best tank in world war 2. A poor country had outproduced a mighty industrial nation with occupied Europe's industrial capacity at its disposal. They have built a tank that outclassed most of the tanks that Germany had. It was the tank that more than any other allied tank won the war.
    3
  2. Not at all. The corruption in Vietnam was immense, and Vietcong had no problems of buying all kinds of American weapons from the corrupt South Vietnamease ruling class, including M16 rifles, grenades, food rations, clothes, trucks, jeeps and even tanks and helicopters. But even if huge amounts of M16 rifles was stockpiled, the Vietnamease prefered to not use them. Partially because they wanted as few ammo types as possible to carry along the Ho-Chi Minh trail for logistical reasons, and partially also because the M16 sucked compared to the AK47. When your M16 starts to jam in the middle of a fire fight you don't wanna to have to take it apart and clean it, simply because you often don't have the time to. Shell casing overexpanded when fired and did not eject to clear the chamber for the next round. Marine Tim Holmes said: "One of our dudes got hurt. His rifle fired a round and then it didn't eject it. The shell expanded and then it pushed another one right in there and it blew up. He was all bloody; that was our first casualty. You see, M16's jam a lot. You're firing maybe two magazines real fast so it's hot as hell." Some soliders wrote their congressmen and senators " ´We left with 250 men in our company and came back with 107. Practically every one of our dead was found with a rifle torn down next to him." A marine wrote to Senator Gaylord Nelson " The weapon has failed us at crucial moments when we needed fire power most. In each case, it left Marines naked against their enemy. Often, and this is no exaggeration, we take counts after each fight, as many as 50% of the rifles fail to work. I know atleast two Marines who died within 10 feet of the enemy with jammed rifles." Conclution: M16 was a weapon for the benifit of the weapons manufacturer Colt, and the Army officers who lobbied to approve it. They didn't have to deal with this malfunctioning weapon in combat unlike, hundreds or even thousands of American and South Vietnamease troops who lost their lives because of it. It was a weapon for the economic interests not the soliders. Congressman Richard Ichord's committee discovered that the army knowingly let Colt Firearms test the weapons and pass army design criteria using ammo specified by designer George Stoner rather than ammo the army procured in Vietnam.
    2
  3. But if you use killratio as a measurement of success, then you will end up with very strange conclutions. First of all, I don't know how you numbers are calculated. Many russian tanks was lost in 1941 thanks to airpower attacking the railway transports and only about half the tanks was operational when the Germans invaded due the lack of maintance and repairs. So if half the tanks in a unit is away on repairs, then its much harder to fight effectivly. Furthermore, the german forces had more experienced crewmen, while the russians used untrained farmboys. The Germans had refined their combat tactics after the wars in the west, while the russians had purged their army. The germans also had air superiority til the battle of Kursk, so they didn't have to the same constraints. The early t-34 tanks did also lack radio which decreased the level of co-ordination of a unit. And in the early war was the russian tank arm scattered in small units, so when the russians managed to do a succesful attack the effects became very limited. In all, the tank was great in combat, but bad tactics, bad tank crews and other factors limited its performance. And that is hardly the fault of the tank in itself. With the reasoning that killratios = success, one could argue that the Elephant was the best tank in world war 2, since it had the highest killratio of any tank. If the numbers are inflated, and to what extent the role of crewskill, leadership, noobiness of the enemy and circumstances played in, I don't know. However, that tank was considered unreliable, too heavy, too slow, too inflexible when it its so slow and can't use most bridges, and it did cost way too much to produce, it lacked a mobile turret. So the germans only produced a few of them and took them out of production in less than a year. If killratios was everything, then I guess that the germans would have kept them in production never replaced them with Tiger I and other tank destroyers.
    1