So, you’re saying that the US Naval Strategy in WWII can be summarised, in hindsight, as “Zerg rush”?
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Well that and using advanced eavesdropping to route convoys away from submarine wolf packs. (See ULTRA). We didn’t disclose that until 1975.
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They do. It’s called the Royal Navy.
The UK’S armed forces are very much set up to project force to any beachhead in the world, but since the channel gets in the way, it isn’t set up to fight a big continental war.
For the past 300 years, the UK has had the strategy of “Ensure the seas are clear,and make sure nobody unites Continental Europe.”
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If the Royal Navy managed to invade all those countries in Yakko’s song (including the land-locked ones) without significant Army ground forces, then color me impressed. (But I know that obviously many of those invasions pre-dated the existence of tanks.)
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I can’t imagine that the vaunted Royal Navy was terribly useful in the invasion of Botswana.
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Are you suggesting that the United Kingdom hasn’t waged any major land wars outside Continental Europe over the last 300 years??
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I thought the on-off empire building and colonialism went without saying. And also didn’t really feed into the whole thing about not maintaining a large army suitable for fighting in the European plains.
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You’re not suggesting that ULTRA was a US development? It was the Poles and later the British who broke the Enigma ciphers. (Also the movie U-571 is complete bullshit.)
Getting back to the logistics question, from the Wikipedia article on ULTRA:
“Because he had the invaluable advantage of being able to read Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Enigma communications, General Bernard Montgomery knew how short the Germans were of men, ammunition, food and above all fuel. When he put Rommel’s picture up in his caravan he wanted to be seen to be almost reading his opponent’s mind. In fact he was reading his mail.”
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Nope. Not at all. I was suggesting it was very useful in winning the Battle of the Atlantic. Also that pretty much any history of the war prior to 1975 is sorely lacking important information.
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Okay. It was the reference to US Naval Strategy in the post you replied to that confused me.
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That’s fair
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Can’t comment on tea pots, but when I was Canadian infantry, '81-'85, I was an M113 driver for a year. A water heater was located just behind the driver, squarish and light grey like your first example.
Ours had a spigot for dispensing hot water, and the top opened to put boil-in-the-foil MREs for heating.
One very important driver responsibility was to always have hot water available. Hell was to be paid if the rest of my section returned from pounding the ground and the water wasn’t hot for coffee. Or tea.
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Looks like an A2? Lateral steering? Yours look almost the same as ours!
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A whole lot of the hardware shipped to Ukraine is surplus. That’s all ok with me. It shows that even western stuff of a couple decades ago is better than what Russia’s army is using. And a lot of the top of the line modern stuff has huge logistical problems with training, maintenance, and classified aspects. The composition of modern tank armor is classified - very impractical to hand that over to a foreign military without a whole system in place for tracking who has access to it. To put it simply, I wish the Ukrainians had a fleet of F35s, but I understand there’s no practical way for that to happen, so they’re going to get either old F16s, or Grippens, both of which are great for what they need. Same with tanks and many other pieces of hardware.
Even at the level of the riffles, looks like the Ukrainians have been upgraded to M4s or equivalents. The Russian rusty AK74s look so terrible in comparison.
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The Wikipedia article on the boiling vessel says:
Similar heaters, designated “Heater, Water & Rations” (HWR), are now also fitted to many US fighting vehicles.
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No easy answer sadly - this is very much a state-by-state response.
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I hear it’s like kayaking in the Navy.
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Hm… Britain must have kept this one under wraps for more than half a year, if they’re the first to donate artillery as well.
Norway already donated their M109s to Ukraine last summer:
Lots of vehicles and hardware have been donated. Rob’s post was specifically about main battle tanks.
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Originally published in April but regularly updated:
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