To be fair, given what the Germans would be bringing ashore, namely disorganized scattered light infantry, and who a lot of the Home Guard was, namely WWI vets with two pertinent skill sets, namely digging in deep and shooting Germans, I suspect the Home Guard could have seen off any plausible Sealion by themselves.
US Military procurement programs results reversed
- Thread starter Bougnas
- Start date
To be fair, given what the Germans would be bringing ashore, namely disorganized scattered light infantry, and who a lot of the Home Guard was, namely WWI vets with two pertinent skill sets, namely digging in deep and shooting Germans, I suspect the Home Guard could have seen off any plausible Sealion by themselves.
marathag
Banned
Never got to 2nd level test.
the real competition was with the Savage .45
The U.S. adopting a selective fire FAL in .276 or another similar cartridge is (to me anyways) an interesting "what if."
US Army ordnance for 100 year of fucked up small arms procurement development and purchase decisions.
Convair YB-60 instead of the Boeing B-52
and also, I had a thread about the YB-49 entering service.
and also, I had a thread about the YB-49 entering service.
Oh I wonder how the M1911 did "When you drop it in Arizona in Range Mud"?
Oh look
I'm still in hiding
It's important to note that .276 Pederson was almost as big as .308 Winchester (7 x 51 mm compared to 7.62 x 51 mm). The FAL was originally designed for .280 British (7 x 43 mm). My personal issue with the Pederson cartridge is the steepness of the case wall, which would force large box magazines to be fairly severely curved; this becomes a significant impediment for carrying magazines in web gear and can be problematic when shooting prone if the magazine is resting on the rear wall instead of the bottom.
As strong as my nostalgia for the Springfield name is, one of McNamara's (few) good moves as SecDef was destroying the institutional influence that Springfield Armory represented. Ordnance's criminal behavior in their attempts to sabotage the AR-15 adoption likely cost the lives of hundreds of American soldiers in Vietnam and was never prosecuted as harshly as their actions should have warranted. I am convinced that Ordnance's negligence in small arms development and procurement, though probably not rising to the level of criminality outside the AR-15 saga, cost the United States tens of thousands of dead and wounded American soldiers from the Mexican War to Vietnam. Among a variety of other factors was Ordnance's continual focus on intentionally limiting the ability of American infantrymen to actually shoot at the enemy.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "nothing like it," because the wikipedia article lists a whole bunch of "similar" vehicles that are used by countries like France, Switzerland, and Australia, and in general the idea of a largish off-road capable light truck seems pretty universal. Could you clarify?
marathag
Banned
Here' is what the Hummer replaced.
M715 from Jeep
M1009 from GM, all 1-1/4 Ton
All had issues in service. Only the GM was a Diesel
Humvee replaced all of them, and while being more capable than the old ones, better off road performance from portal axles and Tire Inflation System, had a higher payload while keeping high on-road speeds, and not as tall.
So, not really like a Unimog or Bremach than the 'Light Utility Vehicle' the Humvee was originally rated as. Problem was with the Humvee is that the Army didn't really have a heavier Vehicle to go to, and tried to make the Humvee do everything, and doubling the weight with armor and guns. That was not a good plan
ATL Enfield P17 was widely regarded as the best of the Lee-Enfield rifles.
References: Gun Jesus (aka Ian McCollum at www.forgottenweapons.com) and my dad Major Edson Warner who won 5 Queen’s Medals, shot for Canada twice at the Olympics and at Bisely more times than we can count!
References: Gun Jesus (aka Ian McCollum at www.forgottenweapons.com) and my dad Major Edson Warner who won 5 Queen’s Medals, shot for Canada twice at the Olympics and at Bisely more times than we can count!
marathag
Banned
There was a vehicle design for those conditions
The Gama Goat
All wheel Drive, articulated
But is was a very bad implementation.
Expensive, slow, noisy(almost 100dB), unreliable, maintenance hog,weird handling quirks and one of the last things in the Military with a manual transmission, it was not a popular ride, and was phased out for the Dodge and GM pickups starting in the late '70s.
The Hummer is a great example of a project that got out of hand. I knew an engineer that worked on a competitor for that project. It started off as basically Jeep 2. The original ideas was cheap easy transport to replace the Jeep without various Jeep issues an example of which is that the old army Jeep was a bit high center of gravity. And was not great for transporting more the 2.
Somehow the project experienced huge amounts of creep and became the all signing and all dancing Hummer that is frankly HUGE. But it could have been worse. I remember the family friend having a FIT one day when some genius involved with the project suggested basically making the stupid thing amphibious and his boss told him they would need a prop drive system like the duplex drives of WW2. Eventually that was tossed out the window.
So we got a super sized Jeep that is the ultimate Jake of all trades m aster of non that costs a LOT more then is probably justified. Then because it is so large and used in so many roles including directly in combat we now have folks bitching that it is not armored. Well if you want armor get a tank or an armored troop transport. Not a vehicle designed to be cheep and dirty.
So in many ways the Hummer is the poster child for out of control projects that somehow managed to in the end be not to bad. But that could have been better and cheaper if the project didn’t snowball. The Bradley itself is another example of this. But this has happened many times before and will surely continue to happen in the future.
Aircraft have this happen to them a lot. The various Douglas Navy aircraft designed during WW2 (dive bombers and torpedo bombers) are great examples of this. They added so many bells and whistles that it basically killed the project. But many other examples exist.
Somehow the project experienced huge amounts of creep and became the all signing and all dancing Hummer that is frankly HUGE. But it could have been worse. I remember the family friend having a FIT one day when some genius involved with the project suggested basically making the stupid thing amphibious and his boss told him they would need a prop drive system like the duplex drives of WW2. Eventually that was tossed out the window.
So we got a super sized Jeep that is the ultimate Jake of all trades m aster of non that costs a LOT more then is probably justified. Then because it is so large and used in so many roles including directly in combat we now have folks bitching that it is not armored. Well if you want armor get a tank or an armored troop transport. Not a vehicle designed to be cheep and dirty.
So in many ways the Hummer is the poster child for out of control projects that somehow managed to in the end be not to bad. But that could have been better and cheaper if the project didn’t snowball. The Bradley itself is another example of this. But this has happened many times before and will surely continue to happen in the future.
Aircraft have this happen to them a lot. The various Douglas Navy aircraft designed during WW2 (dive bombers and torpedo bombers) are great examples of this. They added so many bells and whistles that it basically killed the project. But many other examples exist.