https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitWehraboosSay/comments/4dmipd/who_would_win_1939_nazi_germany_vs_2016_poland/d1srwr3

That is, of course, complete bullshit. They were used for accuracy (stable firing platform) and sustained fire for a longer time.

Our linked friend is also not quite up to date with why machine guns (GPMGs or squad level LMGs) are used in combat: Their role has not been taken over by "fire and move".

And, of course, the 5.56mm cartridge isn't accurate at 1000m, and has barely any doing power at normal combat ranges, a complaint grunts are voicing since Desert Storm at least.

From https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3qeils/til_in_ww2_nazis_rigged_skewedhangingpictures/cwf3x4a we get the above claim, which is just plain wrong. So wrong, I wouldn't know where to begin. However, US pilots fly more than a combat sortie every three days, they fly, on average, two a day at the very least. In fact, sortie generation is one of the most important pieces of consideration for airfields, aircraft carriers, and new planes.

This thread is, on the whole, a terrible show of compeltely not getting the importance of training to get new pilots combat ready, and completely misses the point on... everything.

I wrote a take down of Our Linked Friend's larger bits of idiocy over here: https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitWehraboosSay/comments/3qfrlf/a_light_bit_of_wehrabooing_in_rtil/cwf4kqr

Rule #3 needs a clarification: No personal attacks, no name-calling or other insults.

And a new #4 rule: No Grandstanding. This ain't a soapbox for your pet issues, or preferred wankery. You can discuss issues, by all means, but nobody has endure your wall of texts.

Rule 4 will require some discretion by the moderators, while a body of "case law" gets established.

https://np.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/3g354k/huckabee_purpose_of_military_is_to_kill_people/

R2: Clausewitz 101. Militaries are created to engage in war. "War is a continuation of politics by other means." While the military can be used to continue politics by means of humanitarian aid and such, the primary purpose is conducting warfare. "War... is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will."

/u/BritainOpPlsNerf wrote the takedown of Wehraboo bad military science before the /r/badmilitaryscience got posted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3e722m/how_come_germany_was_so_much_stronger_than_france/ctcp5xe?context=3

The long and short of it: Training absolutely matters as a force multiplier, and the more veterans you have, the better.

The Wehrmacht was underequipped, undersupplied and expertly trained (the USAAF did the same thing the Heer did, rotating volunteers into training positions, creating institutional knowledge, instead of unit-specific knowledge), giving it the edge in the early phases of the European theater of Operations, and possibly enabling it to hang on for six years despite everything.

In an idea stolen from /r/CredibleDefense, I've created a Google Drive folder with at least a few doctrines & operational manuals, for convenience's sake (The USMC makes it really difficult to get non-classified publications).

Currently, this includes:

US armed forces' doctrinal publications

Army

• ADP3-0: Unified Land Operations ¥
• ADP3-90: Offense & Defense
• ADP5-0: The Operations Process
• ADP6-0: Mission Command ¥
• ADRP1-02: Terms & Military Symbols

Army Field Manuals

• FM3-0: Operations
• FM3-90.1: Offense & Defense Volume 1
• FM3-90.6: Brigade Combat Team

Navy

• Naval Doctrine Publication 1: Naval Warfare

Air Force

• Air Force Doctrine Volume 1: Basic Doctrine

Marine Corps

• MCDP1: Warfighting
• MCDP1-1: Strategy

Bundeswehr

• The Bundeswehr on Operations

Historical & Obsolete

WW2

• US Army FM 7-5: The Rifle Battalion

Cold War

NATO Analysis

1960s to 1970s

• CAESAR XXVI
• New Technology for NATO: The Soviet/Warsaw Pact Ground Forces Threat to Europe
• Soviet Military Doctrine and Warsaw Pact Exercises

Analysis and Studies

• Managing Convergence: German Military Doctrine and Capabilities in the 21st Century
• Victory Has a Thousand Fathers: Sources of Success in Counterinsurgency ¥
• Precision and Purpose: Airpower in the Libyan Civil War ¥

¥: ePub available

Get it here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0Bxmp88FWZnQpfnhydGc2WWp4eWYyUWhoY0xwcUVGOHktam9LNU9NZDdFZXBNdFB6dEtiWFE&usp=sharing

Changelog

25/07/2015 Spun off analysis and studies into its own category, since there's more than one. Added more studies and army doctrine publications. Better headings. NATO intelligence analysis of Warsaw Pact doctrine and stance.

http://np.reddit.com/r/MilitaryPorn/comments/3dgn9d/a_soldier_points_to_the_damage_caused_to_his/ct57idd

Composite armor isn't made from steel (much less Krupp / ThyssenKrupp steel), but is a closer cousin to plastics, by counteracting the stiffness (and thus brittleness) of steel with the elasticity of polymers. And, with the reactive armor upgrades of Leo 1 & 2 is a second line of defense in modern armor, anyway.

Link: http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2015/jul/13/ew-jackson/ew-jackson-says-obama-cutting-naval-fleet-1917-lev/

Obamaphobia is low-hanging fruit but when it's joined in by notable Republican personalities, it's a cross between a conspiracy theory and an awful understanding of our military.

• "1917 levels" is a nonsense statement like "bombing them back to the Stone Age"; the US Navy aren't going to roll out some steam battleships

• The year picked is even worse considering it was in the middle of World War I and at the height of American involvement in it, especially in countering German submarine warfare

• Comparing quantities to any other year's readiness level or another country's is always asking for trouble as it ignores tonnage, composition, range, and literally every other important thing when judging the potential of a naval force

• The US naval budget is gargantuan and will remain so despite any slim reductions; the other top spenders are either allies or two strategic rivals with significant gaps in available funding, technology, contractors, and naval expertise

• Some reductions are part of a continued scale down from previous Cold War commitments as strategic rivals' blue water ability declines and that of allies' increases to say nothing of clearing out significant budget bloat, corruption, and so on

• The only significant cut was actually the bipartisan (although Republican led) sequestration cuts a few years ago which barely hamstrung non-essential exercises and some payroll for a short time.

tl;dr Obama is going to time travel the US Navy and we must stand ready

The Red Pill is 120 thousand fit college educated middle class men. If we really wanted to we could invade New Zealand and install a new government. We definitely have the manpower. There are plenty of veterans here. Plus everyone here knows where the magazine release is on an M16, from years of playing Call Of Duty.

Realistically the Red Pill Reaction Force would be far more effective than half the world's militaries. The Afghan military is fucked up on opium. The Iraqi army cant even do jumping jacks.. Plus New Zealand has only 8 thousand military personnel the majority of whom are useless paper pushers.

from: https://np.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/3br7f1/the_red_pill_now_illegal_in_new_zealand/csopcxl

I mean, where to start? Video games might have some elements of realism in them, but holy shit, they more often then not get so much wrong. Especially arcade-y shooters like Call of Duty. Oh, and since when does Call of Duty have guns that jam? Maybe it does these days, but knowing how to clear a jam in your rifle is the difference between life and death on the battlefield if it happens. Or even more importantly, all of the mundane day-to-day shit of fielding a weapon is completely not depicted in a video game -- I have never seen a single game portray the complete field strip of anything (including the America's Army game, which did feature weapon jams). If you don't maintain it, it will break. I've handled the M-16, and while it is relatively easy to break down with practice (compared to some other guns), it still takes some training.

(Lets ignore the fact that these chumps at best will be able to acquire AR-15s and nothing significantly heavier. A civilian in the United States has a hard time finding a full-up automatic anything, so they are not going to be fielding a proper fireteam with a LMG or grenade launchers. Forget mortars or anti-air weapons, those things will require a trip down to your friendly international arms dealer, but good luck with that -- the items you'll be getting will be very expensive and more or less obsolete compared to modern military forces.)

This enlightened poster is also forgetting that there is a ton of other shit that goes into fielding an army. The guys doing the shooting are a small percentage of the force. Logistics can determine the outcome of a campaign quite easily. Of course, these fellows are all hardcore ALPHAS, so they won't be seen doing any of that bitch work!

And speaking of alpha bullshit, all of these guys who have never had to operate in a cohesive fighting force. The Red Pill ideology, to put it in a nutshell, is fiercely individualistic. This is at odds with military orderliness. To put it mildly. I imagine that this would turn into an Orky mess where you have everyone trying to assert themselves as the biggest and meanest Ork. (Nailed it, Warhammer 40k reference.) Even beyond the high level military command structure, you have to drill unit tactics endlessly. A US Army fireteam has practiced enough where these things are second nature. A bunch of keyboard warriors with zero practice at field operations who have never met each other in real life won't be capable of cohesive anything.

Oh yeah, and New Zealand is friends with the US and Australia -- they might have an issue with a bunch of Internet Tough Guys who like to demean and insult women in their spare time (which they have so much of, in spite of the copious amounts of lifting they surely must be doing).

/u/elos_ found some bad historical military science (and forgot to post it here; a mere oversight, I'm sure), and dissects it in /r/badhistory.

https://np.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3b18qg/those_damned_lions_being_led_by_donkeysin_1870/

The TL;DR: Infantry tactics developed too slowly, and modern fire teams aren't shoulder-to-shoulder enough. Nevermind that the Line of Battle was the solution to the two fold problems of communication and the requirement to have a lot of weight of fire.

So, one day I'm in a European international history 1918-1945 class, and the professor goes on a rant about Ukraine. He then proceeds to spew BS about how NATO is nothing but a nuclear alliance and the Russians would win any coventional engagement.

When I say that the Russians would not be a cakewalk, but NATO would have relative parity fighting against the Russians in a conventional engagement, he spews more BS and a straw man argument about how I'm talking about AirLand Battle. I explicitly told him that I was talking about Full Spectrum Operations in regards to the U.S., but then he goes on about how AirLand Battle would be the doctrine used in fighting the Russians in Ukraine in 2015.

How is this bad military science? Because the U.S. Army hasn't used AirLand battle since the end of the Cold War. As early as the Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. has returned to the Combined Arms Manuever Warfare that it used in WW2, with Full Spectrum Operations.

As a bonus he started talking about how glorious the BM-21 and BM-30 were, and spewed even more shit about the "massive tank reserves" that the Russians could throw into Ukraine.

Edit: Added sources

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/b1-bombers-brouhaha-minor-dispute-big-rift-20150518-gh3v6v

The idea that a war with China would be "unwinnable" implies an outmoded idea of what war between nations necessitates. A US-China war doesn't necessarily involve an amphibious invasion force of a million soldiers and a march to Beijing as the writer must think. The goal of war isn't always to completely obliterate your opponent from the Earth.

It's entirely within the realm of possibility to win an air and naval war and then blockade China until a settlement could be reached, or it could just be a short skirmish that ends with white peace a week after it starts (think the Russo-Georgian War). It could be a lot of scenarios, and there are a lot of those scenarios where China's massive population and army barely factor into the equation at all.

It is, of course, also entirely possible that the US could lose these limited wars. The point is that they're not "unwinnable" like a full on invasion, conquest, and regime change of China would be.

It reminds me of how people also talk about how Russian-NATO tensions over the Baltic states will lead to "World War 3," as if there will be 50 Russian divisions driving to Brussels or NATO moving on Moscow. In all likelihood it'd be a short border skirmish, again not unlike the Russo-Georgian War.

To put it simply: there's not enough at stake in the world anymore to set things up for total war. There could be in the future, but the world order would have to change significantly.

This is a copy paste of my comment on this thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryGfys/comments/36jrp8/slovenian_zsu_572_firing_at_ground_targets/crelxoe

yeah, but it was useless as a SPAAG. It was so poorly designed for AA tasks, everyone would just use it for killing ground targets instead.

This is really untrue.

While it was rendered obsolete vs more modern aircraft it was effective against the aircraft it was designed to counter, those of the fifties and early sixties.

Its lack of sophisticated technology actually proved to be an asset during the conflict, as it was simple to maintain and could operate independently without a large degree of operator training.

The SAM sites were devastated by the IAF DEAD operation, but there wasn't any effective way to dispatch the ZSU-57s, other then directly blowing them up.

They couldn't be blinded or jammed, and they couldn't be cut off from the intelligence network, as they weren't reliant on it.

http://i.imgur.com/iFiY5GT.png

http://i.imgur.com/bWqo5pQ.png

Was it a great system?

No it wasn't.

But to say it was "useless" is flat out ignorant of its design and real life performance.

Someone posted this in /r/warshipporn and it's just verifiably 1000% awful.

It opens with the disclaimer "Quality of equipment, training, and professionalism of each military is not taken into account." An understatement of all understatements, this is the equivalent of making an infographic on the physical differences of 100 people you have personally known for decades and in the first line, you say you can't tell the difference between a dick and a pair of lips.

Every time BusinessInsider looks like it might make it halfway to decent, it manages to fail at so basic a task which involves at most a few days of basic Googling from reputable free sources that could be performed by a couple of people on fiver.

But anyway, let's start with the horriful things:

• North Korea ranks #1 in submarines apparently lumping midget submarines with the diesel or nuclear subs of most other nations which could probably single-handedly take out half of the North Korean navy.

• Whoever decided to copy and paste this from Global Firepower (which often has unreliable numbers) decided to skip the entire section of ranking actual warships by number or tonnage instead fucking up the submarine value (as seen above) and introducing the fairly slanted useless aircraft carrier column.

• The aircraft counts are wildly off for almost every country but at least they counted support aircraft, although not sure if that's better or worse.

• The nuclear missile section isn't much more accurate compared to Arms Control Association's numbers or the FAS' figures.

In a nice example of Wehraboo-ism, the German army was really big. Completely forgetting that the logistics (railways, airplanes, Opel Blitz trucks) were seriously lacking, and couldn't support the Wehrmacht adequately.

https://np.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/35c9o4/a_user_thanks_a_waffenss_soldier_for_his_service/cr3v02m?context=3

Comment in question

Explanation:

S-300 is a very good air defense system but I see it get overrated/exaggerated often. The idea that it makes air assets "useless" is silly for a couple reasons

1. Stealth. It doesn't make air defense obsolete like the layman often assumes, but it's still an important factor, and almost no one has experience dealing with it in a genuine combat scenario, so the training for it is probably weak. For the sake of clarity: the US currently has the F-22 stealth fighter (also able to be loaded for ground strike missions) and the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber in service, with the F-35 coming online presently.
2. The US purchased S-300s from Croatia some years ago. By now they've been taken apart, put back together, and toyed with constantly somewhere in the Nevada desert. Their exact capabilities are probably known and factored into the training and equipment upgrades for wild weasel and EW units, which leads me to...
3. SEAD, EA/EW, Wild Weasels, etc. There's an entire discipline of warfare dedicated to suppressing, nullifying, and destroying enemy air defense, which the USAF has been at the forefront of (with Israel deserving a mention as well) since forever.

It's not a matter of "welp, they have S-300s, I guess we can't use planes in this war." A strong air defense network makes a mission much more complicated but it doesn't make it impossible.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitWehraboosSay

At least in ground support, the A10 is a far superior plane

Of course, the A-10, developed for Cold War era battlespace (So many tanks! So few fast mobile AA!) is totally adequate for the 21st century of asymmetrical battlespace. /s

Even if the air frame weren't aging, the cost of smart munitions has gone down so much, that the A-10 is, at best, a psychological support for friendlies, and an ordnance magnet for OPFOR.

/u/Patriotic_Historian delves into some reasons as to why Dresden made a valid (even, possibly, a good one) for the US 8th Air Force.

Hint: It's the economy stupid. Even during strategic bombing German military production rose.

/r/worldnews has decided that the Ukraine conflict is a test case for nuclear disarmament:

Never give up your nukes

That's one thing that's been overlooked during this ongoing conflict. Nuclear disarmament is absolutely a lost cause now thanks to Russia's invasion. Absolutely no state will ever willingly disarm now because they can just point to Ukraine and say "Look at that! We don't want to end up like them!"

And you know what, they'd be pretty justified. Nuclear disarmament would be very nice, but this might be a resounding nail in the coffin for it, at least for the near future.

So, there are enormous practical, military, economic, and diplomatic problems involved in the idea of Ukraine, a very poor country with limited military capabilities, maintaining a nuclear arsenal that can challenge Russia – but I'm not going to address that at all. No, let's imagine that Ukraine has somehow pulled it off; and moreover, without damaging its own reputation or causing Russia to take counter-measures, either. Ukraine is a nuclear weapons state. She has (say) 50 warheads, with cruise or ballistic missile delivery systems that can hit targets at least throughout western Russia, with little chance of interception.

My argument is, so what? Ukraine has no credible threat to actually use their nuclear weapons in this scenario.

• Ukraine's not going to hit it's own territory with nuclear weapons.

• Counter-force strikes are out because 50-odd warheads, even perfectly placed, would only just start to chew in to the Russian nuclear forces.

• Tactical nuclear strikes on Russian targets are not a credible threat. If Ukraine did this, it would be destroying its own diplomatic position while starting an utterly hopeless conventional/nuclear war with Russia, which end up occupying Ukraine and treating it how they liked.

• Counter-value strikes (ie, civilian holocausts) are even less plausible; Ukraine is not going to commit mass atrocities that shock the whole world just to prove a point and then get itself occupied and annexed and surely treated brutally in return.

Would the nukes at least protect Ukraine from being extincted as a state; a kind of last resort, Samson Option threat? It's hard to see how. All of the above calculus still applies if the last blocking positions have been destroyed and the Russian mechanized columns are pouring into Kiev. The strike would harm Russia terribly, but it would harm the occupied Ukrainians also, so why would they do it?

Also, don't anybody say that the Ukrainians could just pretend to be irrational and willing to use nukes for arbitrary reasons, unless you have a specific plan for how to convince the Russians that the entire nexus of people with power over the Ukrainian nukes (including e.g. a palace guard commander who could stop the insane attack order by a palace coup, etc) all happen to be irrational in exactly the way that turns out to be game-theoretically optimal!

So yeah. This could have been six times longer.

Link

Let's set aside the fact that F-35 is a lot more than "a bit better" than the Chinese's supposed stealth fighter and get to the assumption that China will somehow outnumber US fighters by a 10:1 ratio somehow.

China has about 1500 warplanes as its 80s generation designs get replaced.

The US Air Force has nearly 5,000 and the US Navy nearly 4,000.

Even if we're just comparing pure fighter planes (and support planes count for a lot), the US can field 2,000 fighters alone against China's goal of likely 500 fighters (assuming qualitative restructuring after their old fleet is retired). That's without going into the greater logistical and intelligence depth of US airpower or that it would field allied airpower in whatever armchair wargame scenario would come up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2rbp07/when_did_the_concept_of_having_separate_tanks_and/cneobrq

Fortunately /u/TheHIV123 provides a take down right there.

TL;DR: The M4 was well-built, easy to use, easy to make, and well equipped.

http://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2os5m8/guardian_published_pulitzer_award_winning_article/

At the end of a long-wided treatise on how Strategic Bombing Was Unequivocally Good (not even in hindsight, mate), we find that the OP doesn't understand what Total War means. It doesn't mean that ethics get suspended, thus legitimizing every tactic and strategy pursued, nor does it turn the implementors of this into legal targets for military action.

Total War is the theory of a nation's every effort being dedicated to warfare, logistics, manpower, and production. Since this is a theoretical construct, it is not a justification for anything the OP claims.

Link: http://np.reddit.com/r/MURICA/comments/2nv2c0/damn_straight_mr_president/cmhfxnf

• Some opening with total misinformation about "total war" during the US Civil War including the old "Sherman killed everything" trope

• A hilarious misunderstanding of how firebombs or nuclear weapons fit into US military strategy or any country's military strategy since World War II

• Chemical weapons were banned by most countries since World War II and at the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, including by Hitler

• The only instances of weapons of mass destruction used in the Middle East before the alleged use by Assad were by Saddam Hussein for whom it tremendously backfired on.

• A really bad but more belabored explanation of the "Let's just glass the Middle East" garbage

The whole post is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of military strategy, military history, and the use of tactics dependent on different challenges for a conventional military force. Scorched earth has never been a US military policy although forced relocation was during the Indian Wars or Vietnam, the latter of which wasn't a viable or useful option in Iraq or Afghanistan setting aside the tremendous violation of international law and humanitarian ethics.

Yeah, /r/murica is a satire sub but it's also full of people with earnestness about being American and don't take it seriously; that's what make being an incorrect pendant about glassing the Middle East so much the worse.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-m-4-sherman-tank-was-hell-on-wheels-and-a-death-trap-502b0d99e744

So, War is Boring is a usually sane blog that covers all things military. However with the release of the new film Fury, which portrays the Sherman as woefully outmached by the PzKfw.VI(e).

Most tanks at the time ran on diesel, a safer and less flammable fuel than gasoline. The Sherman’s powerplant was a 400-horsepower gas engine that, combined with the ammo on board, could transform the tank into a Hellish inferno after taking a hit. All it took was a German adversary like the awe-inspiring Tiger tank with its 88-millimeter gun. One round could punch through the Sherman’s comparatively thin armor. If they were lucky, the tank’s five crew might have seconds to escape before they burned alive. Hence, the Sherman’s grim nickname—Ronson, like the cigarette lighter, because “it lights up the first time, every time.”

Let's be frank. It wasn't. Here is a report from a Major Elston, of the Tank Destroyer Board, in January 1945, responding to a request explaining the apparent superiority of German Armor:

1. The fact that German tanks are generally heavier than ours has evidently led some writers to the assumption that "heavier" means "better." But the biggest tank isn't necessarily the best. Carnera was bigger than Dempsey. The best tank is the winning tank.

2. If size were a gage of worth, then German Ferdinand would be the best tank on Earth. Actually, this sluggish monster seldom could make more than 8 miles an hour off roads and has now gone out of production.

3. The Tiger, weighing 56 tons, (62 tons in action) and the Panther, weighing 46 1/2 tons, both carry an 88mm gun and from 102mm to 120mm of hull armor. They are less maneuverable than either US medium tanks or US self-propelled Tank Destroyers. To date in all theaters, encounters between German tanks and our self-propelled Tank Destroyers show a score which consistently favors our own equipment

4. As an example, XII Corps has just reported the overall score of their seven TD Battalions against German tanks of all sizes to 2 Nov 44. This score is:

No. of German tanks destroyed by TDs - 125

No. of TDs destroyed in same actions - 25

Ratio: 5 to 1 in our favor

5. Above comparison is fairly typical of other reports. This hardly represents a "disgraceful situation of armament inferiority". Recommend that Senator Johnson stop beating his breast long enough to explain why, if German equipment is so superior to ours, it has been steadily retreating ever since El Alamein? How does he explain the ability of our "shockingly inferior" equipment to chase all German armor out of Africa, Sicily, Italy and France?

6. Actually, medium armor was a wise choice for us, instead of heavy armor, because we had to land on hostile beaches in all four countries. Sixty ton tanks weren't practical for such landings. The Germans, being at home and with no amphibious operations in sight, were able to use their giants. Being bigger than our mediums, naturally they can mount bigger guns. Their thick armor is at the expense of mobility and would have been mill stones about our necks at Omaha Beach.

7. Note that the statement which "aroused" Senator Johnson is that German tanks are "heavier, better armored, and better gunned. In this the adjective "better" is loosely used - praises all the virtues of weight and fails to damn its disadvantages.

8. Statement that American guns are too light to knock out heavy German tanks without excessive losses is not true. (See both of the TD Brigade reports by General Ernst)

9. Statement that German 88mm gun is equal or superior to any American gun is true. Firing either their 3220 f/s with 22.4 lb. projectile (now in use) or their 3775 f/s 16-lb. cored projectile (probably still in development) this gun develops a muzzle energy of 3,500,000 ft/pds. Our own 90mm guns, firing either our existing 2840 f/s with 24.1 lb projectile or our 3900 f/s cored projectile (still in development) develops only 3,050,000 ft/pds. However, a similar comparison between our 76mm gun and the German 76.2mm gun shows a distinct superiority to our weapon.

Fury also uses Belton Y. Cooper's sensationally named "Death Traps" as a source for the efficacy of the Medium Tank M4. There is, however, an issue with this. As Nicolas Moran, the historical advisor for World of Tanks (who is quite fun to read, and knows how to dig through archives quite well)

"Death Traps is not a reliable source. Don't cite it. Or the History Channel show based on it."

Here's the issue: Death Traps is a memoir, not a researched historical work. These are the recollections and perceptions as the man saw them, recited some 50 years after the fact. This leads us to two problems:

Honestly. Belton Cooper was a damned mechanic, never saw battle, and the only evidence of battle he saw was broke-ass Shermans returning, while all the good, working Shermans were happily killing Hitlerite bastards. It's a book written in 1998, be a Lieutenant who talks as if he understands the machinations of Generals. This book is trash. The article not so much, but for god's sake, please PLEASE let people know about this foolishness.

Sources:

http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/pc-browser/21/The_Cheiftains_Hatch_Sherman_PR_Bigger_Cooper/ (Yes, I borrowed heavily from this. So sue me. It's a good source, and worth reading)

http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/pc-browser/21/TCH_Fury_Sherman_Tiger/

http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/pc-browser/21/chieftains-hatch-hello-kitty/

Of course The Government should make certain that every soldier has a working weapon, but the military planners also must foresee every conceivable failure mode of every weapon a soldier may be using, ever.

Which is of course completely prohibitive in cost, and would require a solider to carry tools that may be needed never during a tour (or even a whole career).