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#61
01-09-2013, 09:09 PM
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As far as the stockpiles of material at machine shops goes....I disagree. I'm an Engineer by trade and have 13 years' experience designing tools (and 6 years' other stuff). I work in manufacturing and most of the places I've worked at have a tool room and all had a maintenance department with a small to medium stockpile of common materials (4140-1018-4340, some exotic tool steels, plus brass and/or bronze or bearings). You'd be surprised what some of these places have...and once society begins to grind down, that material isn't being used for new tools or machine parts.
I don't necessarily mean raw material for production product, but for maintenance (machine and tool) purposes. Production raw material stocks would run out fast. We keep a good stock at work, but it still wouldn't last long...probably just enough to shut down from lack of orders. I should add some context...what I mean is that in most areas you will be able to find a good 10-30 feet of some form of 4"-5" round steel stock, probaby not in one place, and maybe a mix of several types of steel, perhaps a length of something they got for a long gone project. I would try to make it all from one type for consistant ballistic performance. I think most GM's could limit it to enough shot for 30 rounds or less including some training and proof firing. Again...obtaining raw materials could be a good...mini adventure! Railyard search anyone? Creepy old factory? -Dave 
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#62
01-10-2013, 10:54 AM
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Just to be clear - when I say that its very likely that an older tank or AFV in the hands of the milita/Home Guard could have its full basic load of shells I meant that it could have enough shells to fill its racks.
However I didnt mean that they would have a huge mix of shells of all the various types that that tank or AFV was issued when it was in the hands of the US military. So you could have a tank that has its full load of shells - but every one of them is a solid shot shell made by the local machine shop or could be a mix of HE shells and solid shot shells. As for a machine shop having the capacity to make shells - it really depends on the size of the machine shop - my home town which is pretty small (4700 people) had a very large machine shop in it that employed over 400 people that made all kinds of parts and castings for Ford. They had a very large stock of material on hand and could probably turn out shells for quite a while in a situation like we describe here. They werent a mom and pop shop with six employees located in a small prefab building - but a very large independent set up. Those kind of machine shops are the ones that could be very useful to the Home Guard or militia or State Guard unit (western NY after all) that is lucky enough to have that shop in its area of protection. And the town was using water power to generate power for the town and sell it to the local utility so in that case that shop could still have full electrical power. Now that kind of machine shop would definitely be the exception not the rule for sure.
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#63
01-10-2013, 11:26 AM
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Police and 'other' bomb squads good source of knowledge for building munitions
For a militia or home-guard unit, a decent bomb squad would be 'fairly capable of providing the knowledge to design fuses and make "home made explosives." Compined with machine shop capabilties this could be very powerful/useful to the Militia (or a maruader band.)
Land mines and IEDs are fairly simple to improvise. Grenades as well, the first were simply metal balls filled with blackpowder and lit by a burning fuse. I would not think rifle grenades would be that hard to manufacture. Fuses for explosive rounds are harder, but not impossible. Different types of shells would have to have different types of fuses. exploding rockets, mortars and then cannon shells might need different fuses to function after the increasingly high velocities. "Barrage Rockets would not be hard to improvise, but 'accurate rockets would be more challenging. Recoilless rifles have been improvised by the IRA, but they require a quality steel and knowledge to make the breach. I could see a "bazooka" making a come back, perhaps firing either HE or shaped charge rounds. Munitions for AFVs. The easiest round to make for any gun would likely be a 'cannister or 'shotgun' round. It could be as simple as a black powder charge behind the approbriate weight of ball bearings, lead shot, marbles, rocks..., initiated by an electrical current passing through a glow plug or some such. Solid shot would require some maching but should not be that hard for a machinist to make, with tools common in high schools. High explosive shells would be fairly easy to make. Reliable mechanical fuses for them more difficult. Electrical ignition might be easier and more reliable, but then your rounds are likely going to have to have a battery, and thus a 'shelf life.' In a game many years ago, my PC once helped design and modify a fire truck into a AFV. The chassis was already heavily reinforced and designed for decent cross country movement. We armored the cab and crew area. A 'armored basket' added to the ladder allowed a MMG (or ATGM if we had any missiles) to be employed from behind cover. By putting thickened fuel into the tanks, the swivel mounted fire nozzle on top of the vehicle became a massive flamethrower. We intentionally did not fill the tanks as we did not want to be sitting on top of 1,500 gallons of home made napalm.
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#64
01-10-2013, 03:33 PM
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Post-TDM though, friction enters into the equation, and gets towards the realm of "everything is simple, but even the simplest thing is nearly impossible." I'm not saying there's no possibility of some local militia (or warlord) fabricating new ammo for an antique, but I believe it would be sufficiently improbable that for all of CONUS you could probably count on one hand the number of antique AFVs successfully resurrected along with their primary armament.* Maybe anywhere from as many to 2-3 times as many antique tanks where local communities had figured out ways to turn the main gun into a breech loading blackpowder cannon (much less optimal but it still results in a tank you can drive around a little and make go boom, which will deter a lot of marauders). (* Of course if one really wants to have vintage armor being part of a local militia or other organization CONUS, they could have always located a national emergency stockpile like in Allegheny Uprising, only one that hadn't been updated since the mid-50s or so, complete with vehicles, spares parts, ammo, etc. Obviously not more than a one-off scenario, but unless guys with that equipment set were living in the shadow of one of the more powerful MilGov or CivGov cantonments it would make the associated local militia the dominant power group in the local area, even with minimal to zero skill on how to most effectively utilize the assets they have. (Plus there's probably a cool mini-campaign in there somewhere with PCs wandering into some isolated mountain town in the Smokies, various New England mountain ranges, Rockies, or elsewhere and find them locked in a death struggle with a well equipped New America cell. A couple of observation rolls later the PCs start noticing that there sure do see to be a lot of M1 Carbines in evidence . . . wait a minute, is that an M2 carbine? And does that guy in the guard tower have a BAR? . . . etc.)
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#65
01-10-2013, 05:43 PM
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Sorry HorseSoldier but I personally know of at least thirty tanks, AFV's and other military vehicles in the US that fully operational, with live tubes and in the hands of civilians - mostly re-enactor groups but also people who work with Hollywood as well.
You can run your campaign anyway you want after all - but having less than five AFV's running in the whole US post TDM from all the tanks, armored cars, scout cars, half-tracks etc.. - that is way too low. And there is canon to back that up - look at the Grenada module - what do you find in a garage but a fully operational (only lacking a battery and the heavy machine gun) M113 APC Now if a guy in his garage in Grenada can have a fully restored and operational M113APC then I highly doubt that in a country hundreds of times bigger there are only five AFV's in similar condition Heck there are re-enactor groups that have multiple tanks that have live tubes and a collector in CA near San Francisco that has literally dozens of AFV's, almost all of them restored to fully operational status and there was still electrical power even after the nuke strikes per several of the modules - eventually most of it stopped working but there would have been time for people who know what they are doing to get that old tank up and running with some shells to fire (from what is described in Last Submarine it took months until the last of the oil fired electrical generating stations they got back up and running ran out of oil and went off the grid for good) and if you own an old tank you probably have lots of tech manuals as well and drawings - including instructions on how to make the shells Plus the Soviets invaded Alaska and made their move on the Pacific Northwest prior to the nuke attacks on the US - once that happened every one who owned an old tank and every town that had one in front of its VFW would have been putting them back into service and making shells for them or getting them from the US govt - nothing makes you want armor like "THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING" Most likely post TDM you are looking at probably 100-200 old tanks, AFV's, etc.. spread out all over the US in the hands of New America, local warlords, independent towns, militias and Home Guards, if not more with probably just as many acting as pillboxes where all they got working was the guns and thats it - and with very few of those who own them wanting to give them up to MilGov or CivGov to go fight the Mexicans or Russians or each other when it leaves them wide open to maruaders or NA
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#66
01-10-2013, 06:33 PM
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The existence of the vehicles themselves isn't the issue.
It's the existence of their heavy, or even secondary weapons in a workable state (including availability of ammo) which is. Now I can't speak specifically for the US, but I'm pretty damn sure there's some serious laws and restrictions on private, aka non-military ownership of heavy weapons. We've heard here on these very forums that each and every 40mm HV grenade launcher round needs it's very own expensive licence - and they're just a tiny explosive compared to tank guns! How many hoops need to be jumped through, fees paid, and expansive forms filled out (in triplicate) for just one heavy weapon to be maintained on a mobile and armoured mount? Yes, the possibility is there, and yes there are a few examples, but I bet even those examples have at least the breach blocks removed and placed in some damn secure storage somewhere separate from the vehicle. So, getting back to one of my earlier points, if these vehicles exist, and knowledge of them is common enough so that members of this forum know about them and their location, what's to stop the government/military from simply checking their records and sending out a truck to collect them as a war appropriation, with the owners being given a receipt and promise of later restitution (utterly useless post nuke)?
__________________
If it moves, shoot it, if not push it, if it still doesn't move, use explosives. Nothing happens in isolation - it's called "the butterfly effect" Mors ante pudorem
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#67
01-10-2013, 06:55 PM
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First off the government probably has a lot more to do on its hands than go and picks up a bunch of obsolete tanks and AFV's after the nuclear strikes - if anythign they may license such owners to be members of lawfully deputized militias
Second - you can own a fully operational tank, cannon, AFV, you name it - and live shells as well here in the US as long as you pass a background check and pay a fee - its actually pretty simple heck just yesterday I saw an add for a live barrel fully functional 57mm anti-tank gun with live rounds being offered for sale with the breech fully in place and ready to go The US is a lot different from other countries in the world - you would be amazed at what you can own here - for instance their is a guy in Nevada who owns two fully operational mini-guns - they have been featured on several shows and there are places that have operational tanks where you can go fire live rounds - its expensive but they are for real The reality is that the US is the one country post TDM that you would find tanks and AFV's in the hands of ordinary citizens. As for other weapons - you had to be there during the Rodney King riots in LA when it was being openly discussed on TV that the reason the Marines and National Guard hadnt come into town yet was that they were worried they would face gangs armed with LAW rockets and Redeye missiles. They had reliable intel that the Crips and Bloods had at least a dozen LAW's and three Redeyes. Heck I have been to a gunshow right here where I live where a guy had for sale an operational 20mm AA gun just last year. He had the forms right with him that you needed to fill out for the ATF if you were interested in owning the gun. He hauled it to the show in an open trailer like it was totally normal to be pulling a trailer with an AA gun, which apparently it was.
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#68
01-10-2013, 07:23 PM
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The US Government is not going to go knocking on some guy's door post TDM to inquire about a Pak 36 or M1 AT Gun or whatever here and there. It just will not happen. It won't for the lack of resources. I believe the license you refer to (others more involved with them, please correct) is a Class 4 Destructive Device permit. The US 37mm in the Stuart and M8 have a breech that attaches to the barrel via acme threads. Again, I think the key here is context...you will run into a crew served vintage ATG/Flak/Mortar/Light Howitzer with a handful of shells once in the proverbial blue moon. If there is a museum of any kind in the area, the chance will be more likely...obviously. There are 2 or 3 German 75mm ATG's, with probably twice that many 37mm ATG's in the US. There at most maybe a dozen live US M1 ATG's in existance and maybe a few dozen US and German AFV's in the US coast to coast outside of large formal museums in running order. Some have live breeches, some not. In the grand scheme of things, their impact will be barely felt, but in the right place and time they will be all the difference in the world to the owners. The US M2/M3 Half Track, M8/M20 armored car and M3 Scout Cars will be by far the most common AFV you will find in municipal/county/private use. Gun trucks will be the most common encountered...there are a lot of commercial/government dump trucks in the US. -Dave
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#69
01-10-2013, 08:11 PM
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Remember we're talking pre-1997 too. Might not make a huge difference but I'm willing to bet that there were fewer obsolete APCs and MBTs in private hands in the US 16 years ago than today.
Also while I agree that town machine shops may well have the capacity to produce main gun rounds for obsolete MBTs, the suggestiion that it's an easy task and every town with an obsolete MBT could and would do it is just fanciful. It should definitely be the exception rather than the norm. And as I've said earlier in this thread, it would make a good adventure hook. That way if the PCs have had a hand in helping a officially affiliated militia get their tank's main gun fully functioning it will have an air of plausibility. The idea that larger militia groups in the Twilight War CONUS with obsolete MBTs and main gun ammo would be common enough not to be a big surprise is just too far from my idea of T2K to seem plausible to me.
__________________
 "It is better to be feared than loved" - Nicolo Machiavelli
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#70
01-10-2013, 08:15 PM
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A) a working tank B) necessary ordnance expertise C) tools and materiel needed to be turning out even small numbers of built-from-scratch rounds of main gun ammunition is going to be miniscule. And some of those are going to lose their club membership when their homemade ammo destroys the ordnance on their AFV or catastrophically kills the whole vehicle. Quote:
By the time you get to post-nuke antique tank owners who have all of the above and access to the means to do quality control on ammunition (i.e. guarantee safe pressure levels and not just blow the cannon up -- or just produce a consistent enough product that the gunner's sights aren't just decorative) . . . you're probably down to a club which has a total of zero members. Or maybe, just maybe, enough to count on one hand. Like I said, maybe a bigger club where guys have figured out how to turn their Sherman tank into a mobile 75mm breech loading black powder cannon -- easier to keep fed, lower pressure levels means less risk of bad QC wrecking the gun or vehicle, etc. Quote:
Post-TDM? With the country falling apart, court system on hiatus, and logistics essentially just gone? Anything of military value is going to be considered military property by the units left in CONUS, and subject to seizure.* Especially something like an AFV, working piece of artillery, etc. There may be some compensation provided for the seized property -- though honestly after the nukes, the real selling point the .mil can offer is letting an AFV owner and his family come live inside the wire of a cantonment rather than any sort of financial remuneration or barter. I'd conclude, then, that the lack of any reference to pre-M60 tanks being in the hands of MilGov or CivGov forces strongly suggests that it is because there are very, very few (if any) functional pre-M60 tanks still running by the year 2000, and those that are lack ammunition and other critical components of the logistics side of the house. Those that have made it are probably in the hands of out of the way groups, as far as any serious fighting is concerned, and probably the best organized groups that have both electrical power and a food surplus to spare on personnel maintaining labor intensive vehicles with very limited day to day value. (In a world of limited resources, do you have your available heavy vehicle mechanics spend 100 man-hours a month keeping your M4 or M26 or whatever in working order, or using that same amount of labor to keep ten agricultural tractors working, for instance.) (* I'd venture to guess that both MilGov and CivGov opt for some partial disarming of the populace they can get their hands on, as well, something like we've done in A'stan and Iraq -- a rifle per household for militia service and personal defense, with maybe the same idea for pistols, and maybe shotguns and .22's excepted entirely, but anything in excess subject to seizure to help equip other militia units, etc. I'm sure that would be unpopular and passively or actively resisted in places, but I'm also sure it would happen.)
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#71
01-10-2013, 08:25 PM
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I could definitely see where an antique AFV played a role in some scenario where PCs had to help good guys who'd resurrected one or face bad guys similarly equipped. But nothing outside of the Twilight War era military supply system is going to have any real meaningful military impact or be a major threat or benefit to organized MilGov or CivGov (or NA) forces.
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#73
01-10-2013, 10:36 PM
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Targan, you and Leg are not from the US. Australia and the US are very different in what you can legally own.
And there are more tanks in the US than you would think http://www.armyjeeps.net/armor1.htm Now some of these vehicles came from Europe - like the Hellcats for instance -and you have to ignore the Russian ones as without detente they never are offered here for sale - but others are US vehicles - and this is just one site So what is for sale on the site 2 WWII Stuarts, 3 WWII Shermans, an M75 APC, a M114 APC, a Ferret, an M3 Scout Car, a Chaffee, a M113 and a M47 let alone the Mule complete with working 106mm recoilless and the Pak 35/36 German WWII 37 MM Anti Tank Gun ( Built 1940 ) that is all original thats one site, showing vehicles spread all around the US Remember guys - when I say they are likely it means that it is not stretching the bounds of credulity to have a militia or Home Guard unit with a working tank in it - and also keep in mind that a hundred to at most two hundred working AFV's spread throughout the US works out to 2-4 working tanks/AFV's per state a the most - not exactly an overwhelming force of tanks that throw a game out of balance - i.e. I dont see a Sherman, a Stuart, a Ferret and an M48 in the hands of militia groups in Minnesota changing the balance of power in the US it adds an interesting dynamic and makes for nice surprises to complicate character's lives as well as give them possibly a nice way to lay their hands on some armor to give them an edge - for example when we were on our way on the Allegheny Uprising scenario our GM had us find encounter exactly such a militia group that was armed with a Stuart tank - as all we had were two HMMVW, with one armed with a .50 we made it a priority to acquire that tank - which we did using subterfuge as well as in the end a firefight that we won
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#74
01-11-2013, 01:46 AM
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__________________
"It is better to be feared than loved" - Nicolo Machiavelli
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#75
01-11-2013, 08:48 AM
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Being a bit of a mil vehicle nerdboy, I'm somewhat involved in the military vehicle collection scene and I'd like to add some information. This info is both a positive and a negative to part of this debate. Keep in mind this is a pretty general overview of the state of affairs and exceptions did and still do occur.
During the 1980s there were, at the very least, a few hundred working military vehicles from the 1910s to the 1980s in the hands of collectors and museums in the USA. At that time, there were very few forums or magazines devoted to the mil vehicle collection hobby, Wheels And Tracks and the magazine of the MVPA (Military Vehicle Preservation Association) being some of the few English language publications that allowed collectors to sell/trade vehicles, parts, manuals and equally importantly, information about where to find things. But the hobby was growing larger and stronger during that time so that by the 1990s and particularly the 2000s, other magazines and internet forums joined the network and essentially raised the profile of the hobby. As the hobby took off in the 1980s and 1990s, social connections were made with clubs in various Western European nations to compliment those already in North America and the UK which further facilitated the enlargement of the database for vehicles and spares. In the USA alone during the 1990s, it was possible to find everything from various marques of Jeep, assorted recovery vehicles, 1940s to 1960s GS/cargo trucks, fuel tankers, ambulances, Dodge CUCVs, various civilian and military command/staff cars, WW2 Dodge WC squad vehicles, M37 trucks, various Kaiser Jeeps, Bren Gun Carriers, Kubelwagens, tank transporters, early manufacture Humvees, Ferret Scout Cars, M114 Lynx recce vehicles, all variations of M2 and M3 halftrack, M2/M3 and M24 Chaffee light tanks, M3 Grant, various marques of M4 Sherman, M48 Patton and T34 medium tanks, C15TA armoured carriers, White Scout Cars, Saracen APCs and SdKfz halftracks. Many of the vehicles didn't have fully working armament but some did. Easily two thirds were NOT tanks and to keep most of these vehicles running was bloody expensive - it was definitely a hobby for those with lots of disposable income and that holds true even more so today. With the raising of the profile of collecting military vehicles by private individuals came an increase in the social network available to collectors. This network cannot be overestimated and it is very much a primary reason why the hobby is so well represented today. Those vehicles, especially the 1940s-1950s era vehicles, required extensive logistics networks so that collectors could find needed parts to complete their vehicles. This was facilitated by the social networks that grew up around the hobby. It's the sort of thing that is like say, there's a supplier with a warehouse of spare track for an M4 Sherman in France, a Belgian collector with 5 x Bren Gun Carriers for sale, a canvas supplier who does a sideline in tarps and covers for WW2 Allied military vehicles in the USA, a group of adverts in the Dutch mil vehicle magazine with someone selling a few radios, someone else selling a set of Tiger tank exhaust pipe shrouds and someone else offering a wiring harness for the electrics in a Ferret, the local approved British government disposal agent selling 28 x RB44 trucks in good condition and 8 x WMIK 110 LandRovers in worn condition, someone who located a truck mounted comms shelter for a Dodge M880 in a farmers barn in Canada, a friend of a friend who has a half restored Bedford K2 Ambulance and a fully restored Harley Davidson WLA MP's bike that he wants to swap for a Dodge WC64 Knock Down Kit Ambulance and a website selling tins of unopened paint in official NATO cam colours. It's that sort of thing, you can't just walk down to the Quartermaster's Store and put in a request for this stuff. You can't even walk down to the local wreckers yard and find this stuff. You very often cannot find all the parts you need in one particular place. Sometimes you spend years tracking down parts for a particular vehicle even in this age of email and instantly uploaded web photos. If it wasn't for the various shows, living history displays and trade magazines that came about to support the collectors, many of these vehicles would be sitting half complete because the social networking allowed collectors to share info on vehicles and spares and also about fakes and scams. Now back to the game, during the Twilight War, this social network is going to be torn apart and many of the suppliers for the hobby won't even have a chance to come into existence (considering that many of them came into being in the 1990s or later). So while I can absolutely see a mid-sized town in the USA having a few M4 Shermans, the ability of that town to keep them operational will get less and less the longer they operate them simply because there will not be the long-range support network that the hobby currently enjoys. The ability to find suitable spares will be incredibly impaired by the effects of the war and they will get worse as the war goes on because the guy maintaining those M4s will not be able to phone his friend in the next county to ask about spares let alone contact someone in the UK who had a shed of M4 parts (assuming that the town the UK supplier is in wasn't bombed etc. etc.) Yes there were a lot of spares kept in war stores until the 1970s and even later but when the spares were disposed of, many of them went to scrap metal merchants who cut them up for the money, other spares were sent to friendly nations and only a (relatively speaking) handful made their way onto the collectors market. In game, it's certainly possible to find some abandoned military storage facility that has a bunch of spares for a 1950s vehicle but these would be rare finds and probably the basis of an adventure for the PCs.
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#76
01-11-2013, 08:55 AM
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Well thats why the game being so flexible is a definite asset - in your campaign you can have tanks be very rare and almost out of ammo where in mine they are somewhat more available and in some cases they have full racks (either because its all homemade steel shots or because they either got the ammo legally from the govt or stole it from a depot)
getting parts also makes for good adventures as well my GM did an adventure as a change of pace using pre-rolled characters where we had to escort three trucks full of ammo, M14's and M16's, spare parts and 90 rounds of 90mm tank ammo from Cairo IL to Green Bay Wisconsin for a militia that had declared for MilGov that needed ammo for two tanks they had and spare parts in exchange for electrical parts and four guys who had worked at power plants and refineries in the past quite the adventure - the peacetime 9 hour drive took us four days to make the distance due to various issues including fighting off two marauder attacks and negotiating with a third group - and in the end deliveriing the supplies just in time to fight off another marauder group then turning around and getting home again afterward with the men and electrical equipment end result - we made it, the refinery under MilGov control and a local power plant had people who could do some repairs and improve efficiency and MilGov control in Wisconsin expanded
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#77
01-11-2013, 09:03 AM
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The war starting however may have actually made it easier for some of those tanks and vehicles to be put back into commission - especially once the Russians invaded Alaska.
Now you have the spectre of invading Russians in everyone's minds - and the local collector and his tanks become very important to people and the towns they are in - so getting them back in shape also becomes important. And you can get all kinds of info, drawings, etc.. - with those in hand its just a case of making the needed parts. So again its one thing with a bolt from the blue war were the US gets nuked on sunny Tuesday morning. its another where they have been fighting over a year before the nukes hit and people have a whole year to make damn sure that if the Russians do come they have something to fight them with and they had the internet in 1995-98 - so the ability to get parts and info online was there
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#78
01-11-2013, 10:34 AM
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Targan - what do you mean by shadow boxing? Honestly never heard that term before and if its in any way a violation of how we should be doing posts here then I will immediately cease it and apologize.
Cynic does raise a good point in the availability of older army trucks - all of which would make great vehicles to turn into gun trucks - which of course is another thread entirely.
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#79
01-11-2013, 10:44 AM
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__________________
If it moves, shoot it, if not push it, if it still doesn't move, use explosives. Nothing happens in isolation - it's called "the butterfly effect" Mors ante pudorem
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#80
01-11-2013, 01:28 PM
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and spare parts can be made - I work for a company that routinely gets spare parts made to drawings that were released back in the 1970s' - and you can order TM's from the government easily enough - as I said you have to believe that anyone with an old military vehicle after the war commenced and especially after the Russian landing in Alaska did their best to get that vehicle/AFV/tank into fighting shape.
And vehicles can take a lot of abuse - a few years ago a collector found a bunch (15+ Stuarts) that had been sitting out in the open on a Brazilian ranch under covers since the 1960's, full of hornet nests. Several of them, once the nests were removed, started up immediately and could move on their own power as soon as they were fueled. These arent high precision systems like today - they can take a lot of abuse, jury rigging,etc.. - most likely in the post TDM world the last Shermans and Stuarts will still be operational long after most modern vehicles have broken down
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#81
01-11-2013, 07:21 PM
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*throws hands up in disgust*
Sure they can be made, provided there's a whole list of resources available as at least two very knowledgeable members of this forum have stated. You don't have those prerequisites and your vehicle is so much useless scrap metal - far better to use more modern vehicles for which parts are more easily scavenged. Old vehicles are simply too much trouble by and large to bother with UNLESS you've got a decent supply chain behind you.
__________________
If it moves, shoot it, if not push it, if it still doesn't move, use explosives. Nothing happens in isolation - it's called "the butterfly effect" Mors ante pudorem
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#82
01-11-2013, 07:59 PM
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We agree on many things. In fact I've learned much from this thread. It's not the presence of a significant number of obsolete fighting vehicles in the CONUS that I'm arguing against. I think you've done a great job in demonstrating how many are likely to be around. It's their likelihood of being fully functional in most cases that I'm arguing against. Post-nuke I think it would be much harder than you're positing to come up with POL, parts and ammo. Not to mention technical know-how.
__________________
"It is better to be feared than loved" - Nicolo Machiavelli
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#83
01-11-2013, 08:10 PM
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Thanks Targan - now I see what you mean.
I have a different opinion of how many would be functional - but there are different kinds of functionality that still make them useful. Look at Krakow - they have a bunch of tanks - but only five are really fully functional. The rest still have working guns and thats about it - so they have fourteen tanks - but in reality what they have is 9 turreted steel pillboxes and five functional tanks And even a tank that doesnt have a main gun working is still very much a deterrent if the enemy doesnt know it isnt working - you have to have a lot of guts to be the one who goes out there to see if the only thing that tank has still working is the .50 mounted on top. But I would think we can all agree that the discussion has opened up several new ideas for possible missions to either obtain parts, obtain working tanks or do a deal for ammo and parts with people who need them.
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#84
01-11-2013, 09:30 PM
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Krakow is like comparing apples and oranges when we're talking about the US - other countries, actually in the conflict zones may be another matter altogether.
Krakow's defenders are the remnants of an entire Polish Division, including many of their supporting elements. A US town/organisation isn't going to be starting from such a position of obvious "strength" - at best they'll have an old vehicle or two, which may have been kept in a semblance of working order by a private owner or group of volunteers before the war. Many of these vehicles as Stainless mentioned, are also unlikely to be armoured, or intended to carry armour. Tanks, APCs and AFVs in general are absolute BEASTS to maintain, even in peacetime when parts can be sourced from all around the world. Come the break down of civilisation as we know it and, as has been said before, that job becomes near impossible without a decent stock of parts, machinery, skilled technicians, reliable power supply, etc, etc, etc So, in conclusion, it's possible to find the occasional WWII or Korean era AFVs in militias, but they're far from a common occurrence, regardless of ammo.
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If it moves, shoot it, if not push it, if it still doesn't move, use explosives. Nothing happens in isolation - it's called "the butterfly effect" Mors ante pudorem
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#85
01-11-2013, 09:57 PM
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Quote:
__________________
"It is better to be feared than loved" - Nicolo Machiavelli
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#86
01-12-2013, 02:15 AM
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ans far as getting things operational the older kit has several key advantages
1) most collectors i know and every machine shop around here has a collection of old army training manuals that cover field fabrication of parts. these are from as late as the 1950's so later vehicles would be less likely to be covered but if you know what your doing(which anyone working in a machine shop should) you can make similar parts for the newer kit. 2) most of the vehicles used in ww2 where made in whatever factory was available from actual manufacturer production factories to bicycle factories. because of this the parts were designed to require as little machining as possible while still remaining effective. 3) with gas production at a minimum cars can be used for source material to keep equipment operational. 4) while everyone seems focused on getting the main gun operational many communities will just make due with what they can make operational. ie; raid the local walmart for model rocket parts and mount a rack of barrage rockets on the old M48 in front of the VFW. now im not saying every town, village, and sewing circle is going to have armor. but you guys are turning popping a blister into brain surgery. lets face in in Chechnya during the 90's various factions were improvising tanks with whatever was handy. are you so certain your neighbors would be less creative?
__________________
the best course of action when all is against you is to slow down and think critically about the situation. this way you are not blindly rushing into an ambush and your mind is doing something useful rather than getting you killed.
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#87
01-12-2013, 03:30 AM
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Quote:
__________________
"It is better to be feared than loved" - Nicolo Machiavelli
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#88
01-12-2013, 07:37 AM
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Quote:
On the other hand, Paladin Books used to attend all of the state-wide and regional gunshows and they sold an extensive line of survivalist material, including copies of the "Poor Man's James Bond Manual", "Improvised Munitions", "Anarchists' Cookbook" and other such classics.
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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#89
01-12-2013, 07:44 AM
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So I should assume, unless I have specific information to the contrary, that in every town in America the majority of machine shops will have an archive of documents covering parts fabrication for a variety of obsolete military vehicles and heavy calibre ordnance?
__________________
"It is better to be feared than loved" - Nicolo Machiavelli
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#90
01-12-2013, 09:51 AM
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How about mueseums and depots?
I agree that AFVs are logisitcally intensive beasts that are hard to keep running in good times and will be extremely challenging to keep running in T2k. If for no other reason then fuel consumption, I believe that many (most?) units, would reserve their functional armor for specific offensive actions or to be employed as part of a counter-attack force in 'defensive operations.'
But for a fun adventure, three CONUS sites that have lots of interesting vehicles, maintenance faciliities and at least pre-war a wide range of experienced staff are. The Patton mueseum at Fort Knox, Ky. Had/s a extensive collection of AFVs from WWI on. Including US, allied, friendly and captured vehicles. Very extensive maintenance facilities at the Mueseum, not counting those aboard the rest of the base. There was an extensive US Army armor testing facility at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Aberdeen MD, which has A LOT of one off prototypes, 'acquired' WARPAC kit and allied kit, as well as several obsolete pieces of kit. Very importantly they had a HUGE knowledge base of scientists, engineers and machinists that good fabricate just about anything. Finally the National Training Center at Fort Irwin CA (and to a far lesser extent the USMC base at Twentynine Palms CA) have good collections of historic US armor and significant collections of 'threat kit.' At Ft Irwin, some of the vehicles were US standard vehicles visually modified to look like Soviet Kit. I know there was a fully function Ontos (lightly armored tracked vehicle carrying six 106mm RR) at 29 Palms in 1989. Again, I don't believe that in T2K armor would be common, but there are 'possibilities' to work in some interesting kit. Tasking a group of PCs returning from Europe to build a 'armored brigade' composed of recalled retired veterans and raw recruits, equip them with the collection of vehicles from any of the above, procure munitions and lead them against Mexican Army, New America enclaves in KY, or maruaders in NY or VA could be an interesting campaign.
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