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#1
10-20-2010, 04:22 PM
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You know, somebody on this site metioned doing a Twilight: 1918. After the research I''ve done on the weapons of WWI...I'm actually kinda worried!
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#2
10-20-2010, 04:38 PM
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Time for an anti-tank weapon from hell!
The British Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank or PIAT. This was a stopgap weapon first issued in 1942. It was delevoped by Lieutenant Colonel Blacker RA, the same Blacker who introduced the world to the Blacker Bombard in 1930. He seems to have this really sick desire to use the Spigot Mortar. Anyhow! The British Army needed a simple, cheap, easy to maufacture weapon that didn't use a lot of critical material and a minimum amount of explosive force. The PIAT met all of these requirements. This is nothing more than a metal tube, holding an enormous spring, which was compressed by unlatching the shoulder pad and standing on it, and lifting the weapon so that the spring and spigot were withdrawn into the body and held in place by a simple seer mechanism. The body was then returned to the shoulder pad and the PIAT was now ready to fire. A bomb was placed in the guideways at the front and when the trigger was pressed, the spigot was released, entering the tail unit of the bomb and exploding the propelling cartridge inside. This blew the bomb off and at the same time returned the spigot back into the body, recocking it for the next round. The maximum range of the bomb is about 100 yards. Maximum armor penetration is about 75mm. Within its limitations, the PIAT was a startingly effective weapon, but it was never popular with the infantrymen who had to carry the 32 pound weapon. It is heavy, cumbersome to carry, awkward and strenuous to cock, and violent to fire, but it was respected as a weapon which did what it set out to do; stop a tank when used by a resolute man. The most famous incident involving the PIAT took place in the Italian campaign when Fusilier Jefferson dashed into the open and fired it from the hip, stopping two Tiger tanks at close range. He was adwarded the Victoria Cross for this remarkable feat, and the general opinion in the ranks was that he deserved the medal for firing the PIAT from the hip, let alone killing two tanks with the thing!
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#3
10-20-2010, 07:57 PM
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Probably a little more famous (at least around here) was a local boy, Ernest "Smokey" Smith, a Seaforth Highlander. He earned a Victoria Cross in Italy by (among other things) using a PIAT to take out two Mk V Panther tanks (one by firing from the hip) plus a Stug III, then hold off up to a company of SS simgle-handedly with a Thompson. While dragging wounded comrades to safety. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Smith Tony
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#4
10-20-2010, 08:47 PM
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There was this awkward pause when were talking, and I didn't really know what to say next, so I filled it with "So...uhh... so like where did you get shot? In the back?" "No! I didn't get shot in the back. I wasn't fucking running away." -- getting scolded by this angry old man made my day. It was kinda funny, but I'm glad I got to meet him, mostly.
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#5
10-21-2010, 02:28 AM
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#6
10-21-2010, 03:23 AM
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I know some people (guys and gals) that are (or were) in the Seaforths, and they say he was indeed a heck of a guy! Tony
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#7
10-21-2010, 03:28 AM
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Can we count WWII Italian and Japanese tanks?
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#8
10-21-2010, 07:41 AM
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if anybody wants to zing a least favorite aircraft or warship...its a bad weapon
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#9
10-21-2010, 07:37 AM
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#10
10-21-2010, 08:41 AM
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I should use some of this to encourage players to put skill points into bayonet training, huh? Those don't jam.
__________________
My Twilight claim to fame: I ran "Allegheny Uprising" at Allegheny College, spring of 1988.
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#11
10-21-2010, 04:06 PM
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#12
10-21-2010, 05:44 PM
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__________________
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons...First We Take Manhattan, Jennifer Warnes Entirely too much T2K stuff here: www.pmulcahy.com
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#13
10-21-2010, 06:47 PM
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#14
10-22-2010, 10:31 AM
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Fun fact of the day, the Russian word for bayonet is: Shtik.
__________________
My Twilight claim to fame: I ran "Allegheny Uprising" at Allegheny College, spring of 1988.
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#16
10-21-2010, 07:14 PM
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Tony
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#17
10-22-2010, 08:21 AM
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I think I remember reading something about advice for getting a stuck bayonet out of the target. It was just to fire a round off, to make the hole bigger, if I remember right...
Of course, it might have been in some silly movie, or be an urban myth.
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#18
10-22-2010, 09:41 AM
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#19
10-23-2010, 08:10 PM
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The problem I always had with the "shoot to disentangle your bayonet" idea was that if you have a round in the weapon why you ever using the bayonet in the first place? I think it was Rommel who noted in WWI that bayonet fights are usually won by the guy one with more ammo in his weapon. The development of the "shoot after you bayonet them" idea represents how vestigial bayonet use became in the 20th century.
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#20
10-22-2010, 11:37 AM
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__________________
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons...First We Take Manhattan, Jennifer Warnes Entirely too much T2K stuff here: www.pmulcahy.com
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#21
10-22-2010, 04:07 PM
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__________________
"Let's roll." Todd Beamer, aboard United Flight 93 over western Pennsylvania, September 11, 2001.
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#22
10-23-2010, 02:54 PM
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Here's another bad weapon. The M-4 Sherman medium tank. Now before the flaming starts, please consider the following:When the Sherman saw its first combat action at El Alamein, it was a match for the German MkIV in all respects except for firepower. But even the US Army admits that the Sherman was obscelent by 1943-44. When Shermans met Tigers and Panthers in the Italian and Normandy campaigns, the results were shattering of Allied forces. Our primary tank was undergunned, underarmored, and actually had worse cross-country mobility then the Germans. Only two things saved Allied armor; the fact that more Shermans were in the supply pipeline and that, compared to the German tanks, the Sherman was more reliable.
Now this is due more towards the idiotic doctrine that tanks will not fight tanks, this is the job of the tank destroyers. The tank destroyers get better guns, and improved ammunition while Army Ground Forces believed that the short barreled 75mm was all that was needed. From 1943 onward, tankers were begging for a larger tank with more armor and above all else, the 90mm gun.
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#23
10-23-2010, 04:14 PM
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Yeah, the Ronson was kinda <deleted> for its time, even the Pz IV could pop them easily at ranges, but not the sort of range the Pz V and Pz VI could, but the main thing about the Ronson was that we had numbers, and the British "Firefly" mod was really the only effective weapon against the Pz V and Pz VI, but that was if it got a lucky side or back shot at medium range, and not get spotted at 2000 yrds.
Still, I find the Sten and subsequent Sterling SMG variant to be well shit, my reason: My father was on foot patrol in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, walked past an RUC officer asleep in a chair, about 10 minutes later they made it up the hill, a RUC "car" pulled up and blared its horn to wake up the sleeping copper, who stood up and the sterling fell to the floor from his lap, and emptied its clip down the road, ripping my father's good boots, which he had only just broken in. However, the Japanese in WWII kinda made some really bad weapons, mostly small arms and rifles, go on, take a gander at some of them, and the mish-match of calibres.
__________________
Newbie DM/PM/GM Semi-experienced player Mostly a sci-fi nut, who plays a few PC games. I do some technical and vehicle drawings in my native M20 scale. - http://braden1986.deviantart.com/
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#24
10-23-2010, 04:56 PM
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What we did with the Shermans was basically mob the Germans with numbers instead of trying to match their technology. We could build them fast and cheap. But in the typical tank engagement, the US pretty much counted on losing four out of five Shermans for each Tiger or Panther they got. (That I got from my neighbor, Michael March, who was a Sherman tanker in World War 2.)
Sounds kind of like Soviet-style combat techniques.
__________________
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons...First We Take Manhattan, Jennifer Warnes Entirely too much T2K stuff here: www.pmulcahy.com
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#25
10-23-2010, 05:32 PM
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__________________
Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048 https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module
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#26
10-23-2010, 05:08 PM
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The problem with both the Italians and Japanese in WWII was that neither nation was as heavily industralized as Germany was, in fact, the Italians had already reached their maximum production and were winding down before their economy failed. Add to this the pre-war decision to replace the standard caliber weapon with a new, larger caliber and their situation becomes even worse.
Even the Germans had this problem, when the MP-44 (Stu.44) assault rifle was developed, one of the main reasons why it was rejected was due to no one wanting to take responsibility for declearing 8 milliard (that's eight thousand million rounds) of standard 7.92mm ammunition as worthless.
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#27
10-23-2010, 05:18 PM
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__________________
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons...First We Take Manhattan, Jennifer Warnes Entirely too much T2K stuff here: www.pmulcahy.com
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