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Radio War Nerd EP #364 — Tanks-giving In Ukraine, feat. John Griffiths (Patreon)

Published:
2023-01-31 21:47:52
Imported:
2023-06

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Content

Guest: John Griffiths, Totally Tanked podcast 

Recorded: January 30, 2023

Tanks are all the rage in the Ukraine war, a very mid-20th-c. weapon for a very 20th-c. war. We talk to Totally Tanked's John Griffiths about the workhorses of this war — the T-64 and T-72 — along with the alleged "game-changers" pledged to Ukraine, the Leopard, Challenger and Abrams.

Check out John's podcast Totally Tanked.

Attn London RWNers! Don't forget the RWN London Meetup, February 7th 2023, at the Old White Bear.

Music Interlude by Brendon Anderegg's Mountains. Buy Mountains here.

Total time: 1:23:08

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

Files

Comments

a clash of purple

I'll never understand why everyone doesn't just use the T-34 and the AK-47. They get the job done, they're cheap, and there's tons of spare parts because so many have been manufactured. Some military innovations are worth adopting, but I really don't think that you can improve much on something like an infantry rifle or a main battle tank at this point. Not enough to justify the cost, anyway.

T
>>100931990

Low margin manufacturing doesn’t pay for mansions in northern Virginia

etienne
>>100931990

Libya tried sending T-whatever tanks against Chad and got owned by guys in pickup trucks

Matthew Wood

yes to a discussion on Carthage and Salammbo, such a brilliant book

Jimothy Realname

I finally have the opportunity to correct a RWN guest on something, and I would be remiss if I didn't take it. This is my particular area of expertise, you understand. The welding process that was used for the T-34 is known as submerged arc welding. "Submerged" doesn't refer to water, however. Rather, granular weld flux is deposited from a hopper ahead of the advancing weld electrode. The electric arc is therefore *submerged* in flux (unlike other welding processes, in which the arc is not occluded.) This eliminates most of the light and smoke from the welding process - you can look at it without eye protection. Submerged arc welding inherently lends itself to automation (its basically always done by a machine, rather than someone manually holding the electrode), and it can weld much faster than most other methods. All of this makes it perfect for mass production. In contrast, German tanks were all welded purely by hand (if i'm not mistaken). So a long weld along the side of a Tiger tank would be done manually by a guy holding an electrode and welding at maybe 10 inches per minute, whereas a long weld on a T-34 would be done by someone operating a machine specifically set up to do that weld, and it would be done 5-10 times faster.

Steven Wilsher

What a wonderful episode, and it turns out I DO want to know more about tanks.

a clash of purple
>>100931990

re: T: I live in the suburbs of northern Virginia, and it's pretty crazy. There's still a lot of regular people living in regular houses, but there's also a lot of neighborhoods with big ol' McMansions. And horse farms, but I don't know whether that's a Southern thing (not that northern Virginia is really part of the South anymore in terms of culture) or a military-industrial complex profiteer thing. Lots of immigrants too, especially from Korea. I've never lived in California, but from the way Dolan and Ames describe places like Silicon Valley it sounds familiar. There's quite a few of the richest people in the world, but they live a stone's throw away from normal human beings (including plenty of abject poverty, people begging on the side of the road, etc.). re: etienne: That's true, but it has nothing to do with the quality of the T-34 as a tank. It's not like the Chadians were engaging armored columns with their technicals in a head-on fight or anything. So if Gaddafi had used any other kind of tank, would the outcome have been any different? I doubt it. The war in Chad was a civil war, and Gaddafi initially had the support of some Chadian factions. The way he conducted the war was to use his Chadian allies for infantry while the Libyans supplied armor, artillery, and air support. Things turned against him when Chad mostly united against the Libyan occupation, so all of a sudden his forces had no infantry. The hardware of either side isn't really what decided that conflict.

David Andrews

I always learn something useful from this podcast. Nice job.

Sam Zeng
>>100976203

With regards to rivets vs weld. You gotta remember the makers of tanks were often locomotive manufactures. When they start designing it they used the knowledge and skills they had which was riveted construction. With a welded haul you can get rid of the super structure and thus saving tons and tons of weight. The German and soviets were the first to standardize welded construction for their tanks.

Sam Zeng
>>100931990

Well weapons do become obsolete but the US and the West have a really bad habit of designing equipment by committee. Too many people wanting too many things from a platform and then the platform is bad at doing any specific thing or has serious intrinsic flaws. The F-35 is probably the best example. Trying to make 1 airframe do 3 very different things delayed the program for a decade.

etienne
>>100931990

yeah I don't know how to put it but I wish the guys would do an honest episode about the F35, about what it should be doing according to doctrine, what they think the doctrine should be, how far the doctrine is from reality, how the plane fullfills and doesn't fullfill its job according to doctrine, how it actually performs as of 10 years of debugging, etc, etc. I think dismissing the whole thing as procurement grift is facile, I'd like them to make an objective case for it

a clash of purple
>>100931990

The pricetag on the F-35 really overshadows any kind of discussion you could have about its merits as an airplane. It's like the big aircraft carriers; it has practical applications, but it could never actually do enough to be worth the cost. It can't be understood as anything except pure corruption.

Jimothy Realname
>>100976203

No problem! I paid good money to learn that submerged arc welding was pioneered on the T-34, and posting this information for free is how i'm striking back at the college-industrial complex

Anonymous
>>100931990

You do run the risk of the well worn bad tank fallacy. Basically once you’ve trained a tank crew for long enough to be effective it’s cheaper to put them in a better tank than one which will be easily destroyed, and in which the crew will die when the tank is destroyed.

Xander Udo

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse podcastam

Tyler Berglund

Wonderful episode, I’ve never had any interest in the machines or mechanics of war, just the geopolitics, but this convo has made a convert of me.

Cameron Young

Great episode- Tanks for it

Anonymous

"Nerdling", a perfect follow-up to the "Zerg Rush".

xnfec

Spotted in this travel video, here (near the border - about 2/3 through) were some German tanks heading for Ukraine, one assumes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJBPvJtQ0WI

Anonymous

lol, i love the sigh we will do one for the military gear obsessed hogs. As a military tech obsessed war nerd hog thankyou. Great guest!

ClockworkOuroborous

Funny, I'm a fish nerd to hitting the aquarium store and the tank info page would be a win/win for me