Would a Iowa battleship shell destroy a WWII sherman tank?
In 1944–45 Kriegsmarine pocket battleships and cruisers (Admiral Scheer, Lützow, Prinz Eugen, Nürnberg, Leipzig, Köln and Emden) routinely supported Wehrmacht desperately fighting rearguard action in East Prussia and later further West.They fired from positions on the Baltic sea, ten-twenty miles from the targets. It took up to one minute of a shell flight from firing to impact. The shells had been 6″-8″-11″ (light/heavy cruisers and pocket battleships respectively), supersonic over whole trajectory.At times the fire was directed at Soviet tank formations. Here is a forward observer’s report from one of engagements (heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen firing, main battery 8″):“25-ton T-34 tanks had been blown up, two or three at the time by the Navy’s guns. These ‘steel monsters’ actually flew some 3-metres above the ground when the Prinz’s shells exploded”. (“The war in the Baltic Sea 1944-1945" by Friedrich von Hammerstein).As T-34 was about same class as Sherman, and Iowa shells had been tad heavier (at 16″) than 8″, the answer to the question is I guess “yes”.Note: the targeting process was interesting. The ship kept a fix on a visible tall landmark (church steeple for example), forward observers would radio target data relative to that landmark. Spotting planes were also used. The ships would steam while firing.
Who is the most talented programmer you have ever met?
I’ve met several brilliant programmers, but not sure who was the most talented or even if it’s reasonable to compare them. In chronological order:John Kunze helped me get into 6809 assembler programming. Despite being addicted to hashish, he improved the TRS-80’s Color Computer’s BASIC text editor, then developed both the software and hardware for a hard drive expansion kit (not the drive; just the interface controller and software to make the BASIC interpreter see the drive as multiple virtual floppy drives).I met Scott Schaeferle at a Color Computer conference in Chicago around 1984. He was eighteen or nineteen I think, but had written the Dynacalc spreadsheet for OS-9. I was seventeen, so on top of being deeply impressed I also felt hugely outclassed. :) He was refreshingly modest.My friend Emile Richard was an electrical engineering student at McGill University. He wrote a compact print spooler for the Color Computer in assembly, then built his own 6809-based computer to drive numerical LEDs. Today he develops medical device software.My coworker Gavriel State at Corel Corp. on the Corel Draw 6 for Macintosh project would figure out the software architectures we needed to map Win32 concepts to the Carbon OS and to the frameworks supplied with the Metrowerks Codewarrior IDE. He would also effortlessly debug things at the machine instruction level. He went on to found Transgaming, helping port/emulate PC games to/on Linux. His friend (and another coworker) Michael Sherman was also gifted, having no trouble delving into the intricacies of C++ compilers.
Were Stalingrad and Midway the 2 defining battles of WW2?
No, as far as Midway, is concerned. Germany by just about any measure, outside Naval power, was the most powerful Axis opponent. Germany was the only Axis power that could threaten the vital strategic interests of the USSR, Great Britain, France, and potentially, in the long run, the United States. Japan could only threaten the peripheral colonial possessions of France Great Britain and the United States. The most Japan could do against the USSR was tie down an Army in Siberia for the first six months of the war. For every 5 Germans killed in WW2 it is claimed that 4 were killed on the Eastern Front.If I had to pick my choices would therefore be:Battle For Moscow 1941. (Without a win here no Stalingrad)Battle for Stalingrad 1942. (Without a win here no Kursk)Battle of Kursk 1943. (Offensive power of the German Army permanently blunted). This limited the German Army response to the Italian and French campaigns.Now back to Midway. Yes the battle was decisive if all you consider are the Naval Battles of World War 2. It would be #1 for the same general reason of the Battle For Moscow. It allowed the US to go on the offensive at Guadalcanal. This set up a series of naval battles off Guadalcanal that, in my opinion was the naval equivalent to Stalingrad. These battles were mostly fought between surface elements, at night, and at point blank range. For every Marine that died on Guadalcanal three sailors died off shore. Number 3? Saipan and the Marianas “Turkey Shoot.” Spruance finished off a weakened Japanese Naval aviation arm and permanently eliminated Japans ability to wage carrier warfare.
What is your favorite tank and why?
… ever heard of the Bob Semple Tank?Because if you haven’t, it’s about to school you on being so bad that you go full circle and become incredible.That is corrugated iron stuck on a heavy tractor with 6 machine guns. That is it. It was an attempt (key word: attempt) by the New Zealand government to produce some local armor during the Second World War to try and fend off Japan. As it would turn out, wheeling out a prototype that would look primitive by the end of the First World War doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the people, and plans to disperse hulls across the island to prepare for the feared invasion were scrapped under the pressure of public ridicule.Why do I love this failed prototype that never saw a battlefield? Well… how do I put this? It’s so shitty that it’s endearing to me. I find it adorable, and I love seeing people snicker and laugh when I show it to them. Really, that’s the only reason.Honorable Mentions:Pz.Kpfw. I Ausf. CIf only because it’s the most fun tank I play in World of Tanks. Also, it’s kinda adorable.T-34Cliché, perhaps, but it’s due the credit it earns, if only for somehow getting both cheaper yet more effective with almost every iteration.Grizzly I cruiserYou may see an M4A1 Sherman, but I see a little under 200 units of Canadian pride. And a borrowed American design. But, hey, we Quebecois gave you John Garand, so I’d say that’s fair.NI tankThis is basically the Soviet Bob Semple Tank (Ivan Semple?)… with the added bonus of (ostensibly, if a [Citation Needed] section on its Wikipedia article is to be believed) having drove up to a German position to tow away their field guns while under fire. “Bamboozle” seems like the only word to describe such an incident.And finally…Panzer IV Ausf. D, F2 and HBecause I am a shameless weeb. Also, it was a pretty cool tank, basically the medium tank of the Axis, like the Sherman for the Allies and the T-34 for the Soviets.EDIT: Yes, I know the image is of an Ausf. H, I only briefly browsed the wiki as a refresher and didn’t read far enough to see that the original tank, an Ausf. D, was later upgraded into an Ausf. F2, and later and Ausf. H