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Ok I realized I have never talked about the Soviet Union’s weaponry so I'm going to talk about the tank series that was extremely successful in the second world war and that most people don’t talk about much the Kliment Voroshilov tank better known as the KV. I will start with the first time the tank model saw action which was deployed in the winter war the KV-1 and the KV-2. The KV-1 was a strong heavy tank that was near invulnerable to Finnish anti-tank weapons and was capable of easily destroying any of the few tanks the Finns could throw at it and the KV-2 in particular was a deadly bunker destroyer with the 152mm Howitzer mounted on it that could destroy pretty much anything and just like the KV-1 was almost invincible in the war but of course we all know how the Winter War ended even with their superior tanks and numbers their inferior leadership and tactics allowed the Finns to annihilate the Soviets and overall few KVs saw action in the Winter War but saw much more service in the Continuation War. When the Germans invaded during Operation Barbarossa a few hundred KV tanks were there to meet the germans as hitler made the biggest mistake of his life and the most notable event of a KV in combat was the Battle of Raseiniai where a single KV tank (it is unknown if it was a KV-1 or KV-2) halted the entire 6th Panzer division for an entire day until the germans managed to hit it in the rear armor with an 88mm Flak which managed to penetrate the armor and it is also kinda funny being how T-34s and KVs were immune to the majority of German AT weapons and most German tanks until the Tiger and Panther and the versions of the Panzer IV with 7.5cm Pak cannon. Ok so to continue the story of the lone KV the Russian crews despite the tank being disabled actually continued to fire on the germans with the machine guns when the Germans approached it in the morning and the gunfire stopped when the German troops shoved grenades into the holes in the armor that the 88mm Flak caused and the panzer division moved forward. The KV tank was in service till the end of the war though the tank series only being produced until 1943 and later in the war the soviet’s new heavy tank the IS series largely replaced the KV and funny thing is that the IS chassis was really just a modified KV chassis and Ill probably make a post about the IS sometime in the future.

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Ok I wanted to talk about one of my favorite things in the second world war, infantry anti-tank weapons however I am not including anti-tank rifles as there were a LOT more anti-tank rifles than hollow charge AT weapons and we are talking about the 4 most widely used ones today (as shown from top to bottom) the German Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck, the American Bazooka and the British PIAT(Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) and we will start with my personal favorite the Panzerschreck.

The Panzerschreck (Tank Terror) was a copy of the American Bazooka that was bumped up to 88mm and was more capable of penetrating armor up to 230mm with a hit at a 90 degree angle however there was a big difference from the Bazooka which was that with the Bazooka the rocket it done launching by the time it left the barrel and the Panzerschreck rockets continued burning after leaving the barrel causing a large amount of backblast that could harm the operators and nearby soldiers which is why Panzerschreck teams had to have facial protection and the launcher itself has a shield with a little glass viewing port to protect the operator and overall the Panzerschreck preformed very well though they were produced in large numbers but in lesser numbers than the rest of the weapons I am going to talk about and we are going to the disposable AT weapon that Germany made for the Wehrmacht and Volkssturm the Panzerfaust.

The Panzerfaust (Tank Fist) was a disposable single-shot recoilless gun firing a high explosive anti-tank warhead that was very effective at penetrating armor and was very inexpensive to produce and there were about 6 million made in world war 2 it was issued to the Wehrmacht, the Volkssturm, and the Italian and Romanian armies and the United States and Soviet Union used the ones they captured. Contrary to popular belief the Panzerfaust was not a rocket or grenade launcher but a recoilless gun. There were many variants of the Panzerfaust that mainly had to do with the weapon’s effective range and the Panzerfaust 60 was the most common variant. Also I forgot to mention the Panzerfaust was developed from the Faustpatrone which was a smaller version using black powder propellant. The Panzerfaust’s design heavily inspired early versions of Russian RPGs and the Panzerfaust 150 variant looks much like the RPG-2

Ok now for the one everyone knows about the American Bazooka which was the world’s first infantry portable anti-tank rocket launcher with a large amount of variants and a few different types of rockets including HEAT, White Phosphorus, and practice rockets there were several variants such as the regular M1, the more prevalent M9 and M9A1 with Optics systems, and the M20 Super Bazooka with a 3.5 inch warhead. The bazooka while being the first weapon of its kind and an effective weapon to destroy tanks and hard targets it was less powerful compared to the German Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck and the American 82nd airborne division actually preferred captured Panzerfausts over their Bazookas. The Bazooka family of rocket launchers served through out World War 2, Korea and even up until Vietnam until being replaced by the M72 LAW.

And now for the last one that nobody remembers whatsoever the British PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) which is a spigot mortar system used by the British in the second World War and kept in British inventory up until the mid 50s. The way the mechanism for firing the PIAT works is a propellant cartridge to fire it like a rifle grenade and Im not kidding about the other main part of the firing mechanism, just a very large spring............... seriously I'm not kidding the British used a spring to launch hollow charge shells at tanks though I'm just kidding around it was mostly the propellant cartridge doing the launching lets get back to reality. Ok the last main part of the firing mechanism was that you had to pull a big plunger on the back of the weapon for it to fire and this was usually done by standing on it and pulling it or lying down and pulling it and the weapon usually re-cocks itself when it fires but that didn’t always happen forcing you to do it manually again. Another big flaw in the weapon was that it had a very short effective range of around 50 yards away and if you are shooting at say a Panzer IV or god forbid a Tiger or Panther then they will have to be really close for you to get a reliable hit. though despite this the hollow charge shell this weapon fired was extremely effective and could easily disable tanks and there was no back blast like a launcher and being that it was a mortar it was more difficult to tell where the shells would be coming from making this weapon actually kinda stealthy which somewhat makes up for the short effective range. Man I just realized how much I had to write about this thing because most people wouldn’t know what the PIAT is

Also I just wanted to tack on I mentioned the word Hollow Charge a lot and I just want to explain what that is a Hollow Charge projectile is a type of Shaped Explosive Charge that when it detonates forms a stream of molten metal particles to burn through armor and it works very effectively for infantry AT weapons and they don’t rely on velocity for more damage you could run up to the side of a tank and hit a hollow charge shell on the side of it and it would be just as effective as if you fired it out of a rocket launcher which make them much better than anti-tank rifles which relied on bullet velocity to penetrate armor

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German Mechanized and Motorized infantry both later encompassed under names like Schützen and Panzer-grenadiers were fast moving infantry units used in pincer and encirclement blitzkrieg tactics as well as just providing infantry support for tanks when the regular infantry lagged behind the armor. The way they were utilized in encirclement tactics was that the tanks would bypass strongpoints then circle around and attack from the rear and the Panzergrenadiers behind would assault from the front which would trap enemies. The picture I have posted here is what most people would imagine when thinking of Panzer-grenadiers but in all reality most half tracks were issued to panzer devisions and not to Panzer-grenadiers and so most Panzer-grenadiers were transported in trucks though they were very effective whether in trucks or half tracks. I also wanted to talk about the half-tracks and there were several versions of them, half tracks were very heavily armed with 1 or 2 MG34 or MG42s and some versions had older versions of the 75mm guns on Sturmgeschutzes to allow them to fight tanks and other armored targets and these weapons alongside the rifle and submachine gun fire from the panzer-grenadiers from inside their vehicles the half tracks could lay down tons of firepower on enemy troops. Also one last thing to say remember that the panzer-grenadiers weren’t always in their vehicles they would actually most often dismount and stow their equipment in the vehicles and attack on foot especially on the eastern front usually only fighting from their vehicles when on the move with Panzers

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Ok I have not posted in a while so I am posting about one of the largest tank designs ever the Landkreuzer P.1000 Ratte (translates to Rat) it was a 1000 ton tank armed with what are essentially small naval cannons firing 280mm shells that would likely be able to punch through just about anything and several other armaments including 8 20mm Flak guns, 2 15mm machine guns and one 128mm anti-tank gun (the same as the one on the Jagdtiger) and the armor of 150-360 millimeters would be impenetrable to almost any allied weapons aside from extremely high powered artillery, bombers, and naval guns. The engines would have had snorkels so oxygen could reach the engine when the tank went underwater because it would have to being that it would be impossible to move with trains and no bridge could ever support it so it would have to go underwater to go long distances and being the state of German fuel reserves this thing if it had ever made it into combat it would almost certainly run out of fuel, have horrifying engine problems, or be quickly immobilized and then be abandoned. Obviously this tank never even had as little as a prototype which is why I am showing you some blueprints because of Albert Speer who had this and other superheavy tank projects like the Maus canceled for obvious reasons, seriously Albert Speer seemed to be the only person on German tank production projects who seemed to understand the just because something is gigantic doesn’t mean it is going to be good and while the French and Italians had refight the last war syndrome hitler seemed to not understand tanks because he wanted giant moving steel bunkers like how early tanks in WW1 were used and a lot of old superheavy tank projects from the first world war as breakthrough tanks.

In other words, Anything else > German superheavy tanks

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Ok this time we are going WAAAAAAY back all the way to 1592 to talk about the turtle ship which was a ship designed by Admiral Yi Sun-Shin who was a total badass even as he was dying and all of you should read about him but we are simply talking about his turtle ships which were armored ships that were near impossible to board which was the primary Japanese strategy during ship to ship combat and was protected against arrows and muskets and is it thought that the spikes were covered in empty sacks to hide them to trick the Japanese boarding parties. The resilience of the turtle ship was shown with the way Admiral Yi used them by charging them right into the thick of action and even ramming enemy ships, there were also no losses until Yi was demoted and reduced to being a regular soldier(though of course that didn’t last) and in an ensuing battle every turtle ship ever built was destroyed. Also if your curious there were about 20-40 turtle ships were built 

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Ok I realized I talk a lot about German weapons of the world wars mostly so in this post I will be talking about the M1917, M2, and M1919 machine guns as seen here in order from top to bottom all of which were designed by John Browning.

So first we will talk about the M1917 and its origin starts with John browning in 1900 filing a patent for a recoil operated machine gun design and the military showed little interest until entering WWI when they needed more modern machine guns as they mostly relied on machine guns supplied by the French and British as well as the “Potato Digger” machine gun also previously designed by browning and they were adopted though only around 1200 saw service as the war ended before they could be fully rolled out but they did stay in service until the 1960s seeing some action in Vietnam.

 Ok now onto the M2 machine gun which is literally the same action as the M1917 but modernized, lacking water jackets, converted to thumb triggers and having the cartridge bumped up to .50 BMG and so we will start with the M2 because it came before the M1919. The well known .50 BMG M2 Browning machine gun is the longest running machine gun ever designed with it being a capable, accurate and lethal machine gun that could be used for anti-infantry, anti-air, and sometimes even anti-tank purposes and it is really the exact same action as the M1917 just without a water jacket and a longer barrel and scaled up to a heavier cartridge also in some cases it has been effectively used as a sniper rifle most notably by marines in Korea and there is a common myth that it can’t be used on enemy soldiers because of the law of war and so soldier aim for belt buckles as that is enemy equipment but it is untrue it is just a misconception as soldiers in Korea were told only to use M2s on enemy equipment due to ammo shortages.

 Ok on to the M1919 medium machine gun which was the United States standard LMG in WW2 and was version of the M1917 gun action still in the same cartridge and but lacked a water jacket and was movable by a team of men for fire support and could be effectively used in tanks, APCs, aircraft and dug out positions and though it is sounding like a GPMG it wasn’t as it wasn’t a great SAW or ground based AA fire and those positions fell to the M2 and the M1918A2 BAR (which I will likely make a post about soon) and just like the the M2 the M1919 is still in service today around the world but they are often converted into 7.62x51mm NATO rather than the .30-06 Springfield used in WW2 and Korea

Damn that was a lot of typing I really wanted to make a post about these machine guns so sorry that I couldn’t go in depth enough I will likely make individual posts in the future about these guns to explain more

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In my last post I talked about the MG42(top) and I mentioned the MG34(bottom) a lot so I decided to talk about it as well and compare it to the MG42. The MG34 was the world’s first general purpose machine gun capable of filling the role of an HMG, LMG, SAW, Anti-Aircraft machine gun, and vehicle and aircraft mounted guns. One of the most interesting features of the MG34 was the adjustable rate of fire thought the pistol grip which was 600-1000 rounds which is one reason it could fill every role of a machine gun because you need a lower fire rate for infantry and vehicle use and a higher rate of anti aircraft/aircraft mounted use. The MG34 while highly effective was very complicated and expensive and was mostly replaced with the simpler and cheaper MG42 in most roles except for tanks which is because of the barrel change method and while both guns had quick change barrels the method for the MG34 is better for tanks because the receiver and stock gun pivoted off the barrel allowed to change while the MG42 had the barrel change through a slot in the barrel shroud which the barrel and trunnion slide out which would be much more difficult in a tank and the MG42 overall was a better GPMG

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The MG42 was a terrifying general purpose machine gun used by the Wehrmacht and had the nickname of “Hitler’s Buzzsaw” because of the noise it made and its ability to cut through soldiers with its high fire rate of 1200 rounds per minute. In WW2 the German military needed a cheaper alternative to the MG34 GPMG which was very expensive and complicated and the MG42 was developed with a much higher fire rate due to the bolt being put on rollers and the open bolt construction though it lacked the variable fire rate control of the MG34 and was less accurate it was just as reliable and different bolts could be exchanged to change the fire rate. The MG42 heavily influenced machine gun design and along with the MG34 introduced the concept of general purpose machine guns and is still in service today with the Bundeswehr with the modernized design of the Rheinmetall MG3 firing 7.62x51mm NATO rounds rather than the 7.92x57 Mauser rounds

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I felt that I focused on WW2 a bit too much so lets head back to the predecessor and talk about a tank from WW1 most people don’t know about as it was overshadowed by the FT-17 and Mark IV tanks. The Whippet tank was an exploitation vehicle for attacks and exploiting gaps in the enemy lines that the heavy tanks had made and while it is technically a medium tank it was used like a light tank and it has quite an odd design with the upward bulge on the hull for the machine guns. Aside from the old shape it was relatively effective but came right at the end of the war and didn’t see very much action though in the first and second tank vs tank engagement in history they appeared which I will talk about in a later post

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The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet was a rocket powered point defense interceptor aircraft which was a completely unique type of aircraft in WW2 and throughout world history as it was the only rocket powered interceptor aircraft to ever be operational. The plane worked by rocketing up into the air and engaging enemy aircraft before gliding back down to the ground to refuel and rearm. The armament of the plane was two 30mm MK 108 cannons. Overall this plane was very ineffective against allied aircraft as well as being difficult to fly due to its extremely high speed and failed to make any significant impact with only 370 made and had only 18 kills to its name

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The Messerschmitt ME-262 was one of the first fighter jets to ever exist and was a very advanced aircraft with 4 30mm MK 108 cannons and could be armed with 24 R4M rockets and was very deadly against allied aircraft especially bombers and although it was very fast it was less maneuverable which left it vulnerable in dogfights. Hitler also made a really dumb decision because he thought it would be a good idea to make a lot of these into fighter bombers without bomb sights and ignoring that they weren’t developed as fighter bombers. Also just to say this was not the first fighter jet that was the canceled Heinkel 280 and the first jet powered plane was the Heinkel 178

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The concept of taking 5 Shermans to kill a tiger or panther is a MASSIVE WW2 tank myth being that 5 tanks was a tank platoon and there were Shermans with the capability to penetrate their armor such as the British Sherman Firefly with its QF 17-pounder gun and the M4A3 Easy Eight with its 76mm High Velocity cannon also while through the war more powerful guns were being put on Shermans this all really doesn’t matter as Shermans weren’t even built for destroying tanks in the first place that role was for tank destroyers such as the M10 Tank Destroyer, M18 Hellcat and M36 Tank Destroyer as well as heavier tanks like the M26 Pershing

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The Sturmpanzer IV better known by its nickname Brummbar was a German assault gun similar to the Sturmgeschutz III and Sturmtiger in purpose of being a low velocity infantry support vehicle. Created in 1942 and manufacturing started in 1943 this vehicle saw combat and first saw combat in April of 1943. The armament of this vehicle was a 150mm L/12 gun as well as an MG34

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The Sturmtiger was an assault gun with a massive 380mm rocket propelled gun that was created in 1944 on the chassis of the Tiger I which were built from damaged vehicles. With a massive gun that could destroy most defenses and 150mm front armor this vehicle was very effective at supporting the infantry but came to late in the war to make a difference as it was meant in a purely offensive role and Germany was mainly on the defense in the later years of the war

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Would I not want to be in a German tank when the T-34 Calliope rolls onto the battlefield also just to avoid confusion the T-34 Calliope was an M4 Sherman with a large rocket launcher on top

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Yup they developed an impractical tank that would likely run out of fuel, just get bogged down or even just get struck by an allied bomber because it would be a great target with it’s massive size

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Good one German tank engineers