GWOT VI - Armored Car
Apr. 8th, 2022 09:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VI - Armored Car
I'd known intellectually that prior to the Firecracker War, there had been Americans wealthy enough to collect literally anything. Not just stamps or coins or gems. Or guns or china or crystal. Or swords or paintings.
Military vehicle collectors, they had called themselves. The next to last stop for military vehicles from past eras, between decommissioning and demilitarization on the one hand and disassembly and destruction on the other.
Some of the collectors - who tended also for some reason to be farmers or at least live in rural areas (have you ever tried to park a tank downtown?) - had dozens of vehicles. Some even drivable.
Most military bases had obsolete equipment on display at the gates. The aircraft were junk. The tanks and cannon were ... not quite junk. Filled with concrete in the barrels, but barrels could be replaced. Non-working engines, but there were plenty of trucks and tractors to provide a donor engine. Or two or four.
Then there were the armored vehicles in police use. Scratch a sheriff's office, find an armored vehicle or two. Usually rusting in someone's storage yard, but not always.
Then consider that the military bases also have storage yards, and what might be rusting in them.
All told, there weren't a lot of first line battle equipment coming out of America's factories any more. But there was an awful lot of obsolete gear that could be reconditioned and put into service.
California had done it. It was one of the ways we'd won our fragile independence.
I shouldn't have been surprised that the churches had done it as well. Tractor, tank, truck, an engine is an engine and tracks are tracks.
Machine guns are not difficult. Homeland and the FIrecracker War had created a great hunger for ammunition, and factories all over the Americas had delivered. And kept delivering.
Light cannon, such as the 37mm on the wrecked World War II 'Greyhound' armored car in front of me, I hadn't expected. I should have. Just a bigger gun. Casings are easy, powder is easy, warheads are not that hard. If you really want to do unto others before they do unto you.
If I had brought more anti-tank...
I still wouldn't have had it at the control points. I'd have just brought more mines.
It's difficult to see anything in an armored car. You need ground guides.
Snipers are good at picking those off.
I hadn't expected child sappers.
Of these minor details are wars won and lost.
I kicked the cooling hull of the car. Now it was just scrap, if you wire brushed what was left of the crew - carbon - off the springs of the seats and the floor.
But there were a lot more out there just like it.
I needed more anti-tank. I wouldn't be getting it from the UN. California couldn't afford to send more forward, even if I could spare the cubic from the other explosives.
Let the enemy be my quartermaster.
They had technicals and killdozers. Now they'd revealed the ability to at least support armored cars, if not reconstruct them.
A 37mm is an anemic cannon. About the same penetrating power as a 40mm grenade. A modern Mk-19 automatic grenade lanucher had a 37mm beat on everything but range. I didn't have any Mk-19s. But someone had made or found 37mm shells.
It was time to poke my intel squirrels. And go back and do a little military history homework.
I knew, and we'd taught the Refuge forces, all the improvised and infantry anti-tank tricks. Cocktails, satchel charges, anti-tank grenades, the ridiculously heavy and not very effective anti-tank rifles, the reloadable recoiless rifle and bazooka and RPG-7, the single shot anti-tank rocket.
The gyrostabilized heavy barrel on a California gun truck could have destroyed that armored car from beyond its own effective range. Powered servos beat hand cranks every time, and my crews were good. Gun truck, not very armored, but World War II armored car, not _enough_ armored. There just wasn't a gun truck nearby when I'd - and a thousand dead refugees - had badly needed one.
I couldn't get more gun trucks any more than I could lay hands on California or American main battle tanks.
I could take, and steal, the enemy's armored cars.
It was, well, something to do.
I'd known intellectually that prior to the Firecracker War, there had been Americans wealthy enough to collect literally anything. Not just stamps or coins or gems. Or guns or china or crystal. Or swords or paintings.
Military vehicle collectors, they had called themselves. The next to last stop for military vehicles from past eras, between decommissioning and demilitarization on the one hand and disassembly and destruction on the other.
Some of the collectors - who tended also for some reason to be farmers or at least live in rural areas (have you ever tried to park a tank downtown?) - had dozens of vehicles. Some even drivable.
Most military bases had obsolete equipment on display at the gates. The aircraft were junk. The tanks and cannon were ... not quite junk. Filled with concrete in the barrels, but barrels could be replaced. Non-working engines, but there were plenty of trucks and tractors to provide a donor engine. Or two or four.
Then there were the armored vehicles in police use. Scratch a sheriff's office, find an armored vehicle or two. Usually rusting in someone's storage yard, but not always.
Then consider that the military bases also have storage yards, and what might be rusting in them.
All told, there weren't a lot of first line battle equipment coming out of America's factories any more. But there was an awful lot of obsolete gear that could be reconditioned and put into service.
California had done it. It was one of the ways we'd won our fragile independence.
I shouldn't have been surprised that the churches had done it as well. Tractor, tank, truck, an engine is an engine and tracks are tracks.
Machine guns are not difficult. Homeland and the FIrecracker War had created a great hunger for ammunition, and factories all over the Americas had delivered. And kept delivering.
Light cannon, such as the 37mm on the wrecked World War II 'Greyhound' armored car in front of me, I hadn't expected. I should have. Just a bigger gun. Casings are easy, powder is easy, warheads are not that hard. If you really want to do unto others before they do unto you.
If I had brought more anti-tank...
I still wouldn't have had it at the control points. I'd have just brought more mines.
It's difficult to see anything in an armored car. You need ground guides.
Snipers are good at picking those off.
I hadn't expected child sappers.
Of these minor details are wars won and lost.
I kicked the cooling hull of the car. Now it was just scrap, if you wire brushed what was left of the crew - carbon - off the springs of the seats and the floor.
But there were a lot more out there just like it.
I needed more anti-tank. I wouldn't be getting it from the UN. California couldn't afford to send more forward, even if I could spare the cubic from the other explosives.
Let the enemy be my quartermaster.
They had technicals and killdozers. Now they'd revealed the ability to at least support armored cars, if not reconstruct them.
A 37mm is an anemic cannon. About the same penetrating power as a 40mm grenade. A modern Mk-19 automatic grenade lanucher had a 37mm beat on everything but range. I didn't have any Mk-19s. But someone had made or found 37mm shells.
It was time to poke my intel squirrels. And go back and do a little military history homework.
I knew, and we'd taught the Refuge forces, all the improvised and infantry anti-tank tricks. Cocktails, satchel charges, anti-tank grenades, the ridiculously heavy and not very effective anti-tank rifles, the reloadable recoiless rifle and bazooka and RPG-7, the single shot anti-tank rocket.
The gyrostabilized heavy barrel on a California gun truck could have destroyed that armored car from beyond its own effective range. Powered servos beat hand cranks every time, and my crews were good. Gun truck, not very armored, but World War II armored car, not _enough_ armored. There just wasn't a gun truck nearby when I'd - and a thousand dead refugees - had badly needed one.
I couldn't get more gun trucks any more than I could lay hands on California or American main battle tanks.
I could take, and steal, the enemy's armored cars.
It was, well, something to do.
