Tiger, Tiger burning bright!

[Schlack]

Tiger, Tiger burning bright! German armor and why the Tiger I got made.

There's something about the way Germans over engineered their tanks that makes me happy. It's like even in the midst of WWII they were still churning out vehicles that could win not just militarily but also on style points. For one thing, the Germans named their new main battle tank in 1942 the "Tiger". Well actually Ferdinand Porsche gave it that name. Officially, it was known as the 'Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausführung H' which is somehow not as sexy. What was it with the WW II era Germans and sexily named vehicles? The Americans at the time tended to name their tanks after stuffy old Civil War generals like "Sherman" and "Lee". Hell, the British named one of their best tanks of the war the "Matilda", which is possibly the worst name for a tank ever. It sounds like your granny in combat boots.

But the Germans?

They called their tank a "Tiger" just to fuck with the average infantryman's head.

http://wartard.blogspot.com/2011/02/tig ... armor.html

[Thundercat]

Ah we had the little known Comet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_tank

Sadly only produced in numbers towards the end of ww2, but it could take on a tiger, had many features that are still in use on tanks today. It led to the classic Centurian tank

[bambam]

Germans had the best tanks, Brits had the best planes. In the WW2 game of rock, paper, scissors it turned out planes trumped tanks. Anyhoo was it the tank or was it the 88mm anti-tank gun it carried? Brit and US tanks were intended anti-personnel which did mean they were fuxed when they came up against a Tiger.

Bamz

[Schlack]

Germans had the best tanks

French had better tanks than the germans early on

Russians had better tanks than the germans

The panther was a copy/response to the t-34.

Tiger many have been a technically better tank at the time but was less suited to mass industrial warfare, especially given the resources of the germans at the time.

you want to see some of the big bastard soviet tanks at the end of the war

[Nemes1s]

The best thing I seen has to be the jap sub aircraft carrier

Why don't we still have them ?

[bambam]

I'd never heard of them till you mentioned it Nem, so I read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400_class_submarine. Cool - gotta hand it to the Nips. They were so screwed towards the end of WW2 though - converting the sub planes to Kamikaze weapons for an attack on Panama they had to divert to Japan where "Fifteen American aircraft carriers had assembled at Ulithi atoll". Fifteen ffs.

[Gavac220]

Also the Allies didn't have the best planes. The German's were years ahead of the rest of the world. They came too late, and in too few numbers (Hmmm sound familiar? eg. Tiger Tanks) to make any real difference, and Hitler kept getting involved in their deployment and use. That crippled their capabilities.

At the end of the war, it was tug of war from Russia and the West to get the German designs, and personnel that led to all our modern planes of today.

[Gavac220]

If you are interested in WWII, this site will introduce you to some of the facts that are rarely talked about. It's interesting reading.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/facts.html

[Gavac220]

And here are some REALLY unusual vehicles. Interestingly, many were converted into wood burning engines!! Using the gases from superheating to drive the cylinders (No flames/ without igniting them)

Wood burning (VW's lol)

http://strangevehicles.greyfalcon.us/

Full compilation with 00's of oddities

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxtabc7m ... dded#at=16

The associated website with individual vehicle details

http://strangevehicles.greyfalcon.us/

Oh and an American SUPER TANK the T28



Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ7jwcHc ... re=related

And if size matters, then Panzer VIII Maus is your thing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pYVmn2L ... re=related

And the biggest of them all - Never got off the design stage. The Landkreuzer P.1500 "Monster"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuze ... 0_Monster"

Enjoy

[Sayril]

Go Swedish Tanks!