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Anti Tank Vespa
- thriftwy 3y agoI was seeing these Napoleonic depictions of artillery piece being transported on a donkey's back and never stopped wondering if they ever tried to fire directly from that poor donkey's back.
- red_admiral 3y agoI think this is a good time to mention the elephant-mounted machine gun: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/elephant-mounted-machine-gun-1914/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/elephant-mounted-machine-gu... That's a real WW1 thing, not an Age of Empires 2 cheat code.
- mcv 3y agoAccording to the article, it wasn't a real thing, but only a publicity photo: > It’s probably a publicity picture, not something the army would actually try to employ. The elephant would not respond well to the sound of that machine gun a few inches from his ears.
- StimDeck 3y agoSadly nothing about how it fared in combat.
- trilbyglens 3y agoSeeing as it was developed in the 1950s, it likely never saw combat.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoFrance had plenty of combat at the time but the other side rarely, if ever, had tanks.
- sofixa 3y agoThe weapon in question, the M20 recoilless rifle, turned out to be ineffective against tanks (even against T-34s which by the 1950s were obsolete), but effective as close infantry support against stationary targets. So it could still have been used effectively against e.g. Vietnamese or Algerian positions.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoLooks like it was used in Algeria, actually, according to this source: "La Vespa 150 TAP o "Vespa Bazooka" como la llamaban algunos tuvo su bautismo de fuego durante la guerra de Argelia (1954-62), en que varios cientos de estas motos fueron desplegadas y utilizadas por las TAP y la Legión Extranjera." [1] Googla translation: "The Vespa 150 TAP or "Vespa Bazooka" as some called it had its baptism of fire during the Algerian war (1954-62), in which several hundred of these motorcycles were deployed and used by the TAP and the Foreign Legion." I haven't found other sources, though. [1] https://laescaleradeiakob.blogspot.com/2013/12/la-vespa-150-tap.html https://laescaleradeiakob.blogspot.com/2013/12/la-vespa-150-...
- sofixa 3y agoCuriously the Wikipedia page in French mentions Algeria as well, but has no sources, and the official military archives have zero relevant mentions of Vespa, M20, scooter, bazooka, ACMA.
- sio8ohPi 3y agoThere are various photos online that claim to show it in the field in Algeria during their war of independence. Given that it was used by French paras who were deployed there during that time, I have no particular reason to doubt those captions.
- dragontamer 3y agoStill a thing. https://www.eurasiantimes.com/electric-bikes-in-ukraine-are-raining-missiles-on-russian-army/ https://www.eurasiantimes.com/electric-bikes-in-ukraine-are-...
- hutzlibu 3y agoA big improvement. A vespa is loud. A electric motorbike/bicycle is silent and way better offroad so greatly improves survival rates of teams using these in real combat.
- trhway 3y agoDon't forget IR. The night vision is very widely used in the Ukraine war, and ICE engine is much better/farther/brighter visible in IR.
- heavenlyblue 3y agonight vision is not IR
- trhway 3y agopassive night vision (thermal vision) sensors typically used by military are sensitive around 10 micrometer wavelength, which is IR.
- scrumper 3y ago> enough speed to ram any vehicles if needed in an emergency That was a surprising statement! A 37mph crash on a scooter isn't going to leave you in particularly good shape for fighting.
- allturtles 3y agoNot to mention the small mass you have on your side. A vespa is going to lose in a ramming fight against most any vehicle. The cited source doesn't say anything about ramming.
- rob74 3y agoIt's just claimed that it has enough speed for ramming, not that the ramming would actually be effective...
- gpderetta 3y agoWhat does it means to have enough speed for non-effective ramming? That it is not stationary? It seems a very low bar...
- defrost 3y agoFast enough that when you jump off it will stay on line and reach your target tank and then explode, taking out a track or something. ie. Will reach the tank but not ram it at high speed, so timed grenades or something will do the job.
- stevage 3y agoSounds like the centrepiece of a fun combat game.
- RecycledEle 3y agoYes, we want you to take a motorcycle up against a tank. It's cheaper, you're expendable, and we will win with the budget we have. You joined the Legion to die, and we are sending you where you can do that. No, we do not cover you with life insurance.
- morkalork 3y agoComrade, here is top of line RKG-3 anti-tank grenade. Pop out of fox hole and throw over tank! Who needs fancy top-attack Javalin when you have grenade with parachute eh? I'd take the Vespa option any day of the week.
- trhway 3y ago>Yes, we want you to take a motorcycle up against a tank. Fast forward to today. In a video from Gaza a Hamas fighter runs toward Merkava and manually puts a blast-fragmentation warhead onto its armor (not for the lack of weapons as he shoots a tandem warhead from an RPG half a minute later). I have a hypothesis what is going on in that video - the Trophy active defense system would shoot down an incoming warhead, yet it wouldn't react to a person running toward it (like in Dune and similar where cold blade weapons is used because defense systems deal with the fast incoming threats), and the tanks don't have infantry right by the tank because system like Trophy damages the accompanying infantry, and the Trophy really performs a lot of tank defensive tasks that the accompanying infantry would otherwise be tasked with. So, the first warhead - the one manually placed on armor (and that warhead wasn't shaped charge) - explodes and takes out the Trophy, and after that the Hamas guy shoots the tandem warhead which would penetrate the reactive armor and the main armor.
- dragontamer 3y agoNo one assembles hunter-killer squads to specifically take out enemy tanks with such a crappy weapon. Instead, you provide them because its "better than nothing" if you happen to run up against an enemy tank. Furthermore: there are lesser vehicles, such as Humvees and IFVs that have thinner armor where these anti-tank guns would work better against. ----------- Actual anti-tank hunter-killer groups used guided missiles even as early as the 1960s (with Nazi designs from the 1940s!!!), and today use automated fire-and-forget homing missiles. Guided missiles have far more range and reliability. Early guided weapons were just a radio (or even a wire attached to the rocket in the earliest designs).
- StimDeck 3y agoSadly nothing about how these fared in combat, anyone have any insight?
- hyperific 3y agoThis must have inspired the Tuk-Tuk Boom Boom in Just Cause 2 and 4 https://justcause.fandom.com/wiki/Tuk-Tuk_Boom_Boom_(JC2) https://justcause.fandom.com/wiki/Tuk-Tuk_Boom_Boom_(JC2) https://justcause.fandom.com/wiki/Tuk-Tuk_Boom_Boom_(JC4) https://justcause.fandom.com/wiki/Tuk-Tuk_Boom_Boom_(JC4)
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoProbably that came from this: https://www.reddit.com/r/shittytechnicals/comments/n7vjmg/danish_assault_tuk_tuk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/shittytechnicals/comments/n7vjmg/da...
- rob74 3y agoI'd rename it to Tuk-Tuk Boom, because from the looks of the (non-recoilless) cannon it could obviously only go "boom" once, after which the flimsy vehicle would be utterly destroyed...
- stavros 3y agoBut then does a tuk-tuk go "tuk" twice?
- mzi 3y agoIn Sweden, like other developing nations, we had our soldiers cycling with their anti tank weapons (first picture): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_infantry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_infantry
- smartis2812 3y agoWhich is much better for the environment. (Y) Kudos
- Broken_Hippo 3y agoI mean... Ok. But they definitely aren't going quickly to protect from tanks. I'm not educated in the right ways to work out if shelling is worse than some bikes that'll probably outlast the war, if they don't get destroyed.
- sofixa 3y agoDepends on the tank and the situation - a bicycle from short range can be faster than the turret can be rotated to expose the bicycle to the machine gun of the tank. Not to mention the ambush opportunities in forests and the like, where the bicycle and the operators can lie down, be covered in netting, and spring up after the tank has passed them to hit it on the sides/back, and run away quickly after the attack.
- nicbou 3y agoGermany did that with Panzerfausts in the last days of the war. The riders were children.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago> The riders were children Kids today are living the good life.
- sofixa 3y agoNot only developing nations, Japan used bicycle infantry in their invasion of Indochina and Malaya to devastating effect - motorised vehicles were hard to use in the jungle terrain, but bicycles were fine while being drastically faster than the foot infantry used by British and other Allied troops.
- fulafel 3y agoWhere is the state of the art at with self-driving two wheeled vehicles?
- FFP999 3y agoNot ready to mount weapons on, if that's what you're asking.
- perilunar 3y ago> ...in an emergency it could be fired while in the frame, and while the scooter was moving. You'd have to have balls of steel to fire that thing while riding the scooter. It's recoilless, but you are sitting right on top of it.
- rpmisms 3y agoNot to mention the blast from the missile after it leaves the tube, and the aerodynamic effects. I've fired a 9mm pistol from a moving motorcycle, and it's already tricky to maintain balance. Can't imagine this wouldn't end with the rider on the ground many feet away from the bike.
- meheleventyone 3y agoIt’s a recoilless rifle, the exhaust gases go out the back so the net force on the rider and bike would be pretty low. It’s also designed for transport, with the rifle statically deployed on a tripod rather than firing in motion.
- rpmisms 3y agoYes, but the rocket is still being a rocket, and after it leaves the tube, it'll still toss a ton of exhaust at the bike. I know it's designed to be fired stationary, but this discussion is about the feature allowing it to be fired in motion in emergencies, which hopefully nobody ever did.
- aerostable_slug 3y agoIt didn't fire rockets. It's a recoilless rifle, IOW a cannon with an exhaust, not a bazooka-like rocket launcher.
- meheleventyone 3y agoAnd even things like the RPG-7 use a recoilless design to launch the projectile before the rocket ignites and you don’t see the user being impacted much at all by the rocket exhaust.
- trilbyglens 3y agoAll of you criticizing the mismatch of power between a Vespa and a tank simply do not understand the desperation felt by those living in countries occupied by the Germans during the war. In the 1950s Europe was poor, extremely traumatized, and people lived in fear of another war. This is a vehicle of desperation.
- addcommitpush 3y agoIt is not a "vehicle of desperation", it's just a cheap para-friendly way to move a 47kg gun around. The contemporary equivalent is bigger but still not that big: https://www.defense.gouv.fr/dga/actualites/qualification-du-vehicule-fardier-destine-aux-troupes-aeroportees-aux-forces-speciales https://www.defense.gouv.fr/dga/actualites/qualification-du-...
- FFP999 3y agoThis reminds me of the contemporary use of e-bikes in Ukraine, which I understand is one of the many reasons that this war was not the curbstomp Russia seems to have expected.
- albertgt 3y agoThe TIE fighter of its day
- rkagerer 3y agoI've never had any interest in driving a scooter until now, but there's something tantalizing when I picture driving a big bazooka down my street.
- Piraty 3y agobe sure to bring your spade mortar as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/37mm_spade_mortar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/37mm_spade_mortar
- jacquesm 3y agoFinally a two wheeled vehicle that will command some respect in Amsterdam traffic. I'll take it.
- j-a-a-p 3y agoThe glass wind shield mounted on a Vespa, commonly referred to as a 'Holleedertje', has a similar effect and it keeps you dry in the rain as well.
- jacquesm 3y agoThat's why dutch people have front bike seats for children. You can hide behind them when it's raining really bad.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoI can recommend the "Bad Teeth No Bar" book for more ideas https://onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk/colins-new-book/?tax=tour&tid=66 https://onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk/colins-new-book/?tax=tour&...
- Lolaccount 3y agoWhen I read the title I thought this might be some new programming fork, but was secretly hoping for ... an Anti Tank Vespa! And it is!
- FFP999 3y agoI think I've just seen the perfect vehicle for commuting in Boston.