[4Tran]

Originally Posted by Liddo-kun

Watched episode 5.
Not putting in spoiler anymore since a lot of people in the thread seem to have watched it already.

Episode starts with eating delicious looking tank shaped cakes.
Unfortunately, the mood turns bad right away when Maho and her teammate arrives. I'm surprised Miho is actually second in command before she left her sister's team - this is probably the reason why student council wants to recruit Miho to help their school.

Well, without Miho, they would have no chance. Since the Panzercraft team seems to be very important, they need her. Imagine the team with Momo as commander and quail.

Originally Posted by Tak

You know, after watching episode 5, I am beginning to believe the challenges for Oorai in their match against Pravda would be a very daunting one.

Apparently, numbers are non-issue in certain circumstances. If Saunders is to showcase American industrial might, I wonder if Pravda will be showcasing Soviet dedication to operation success.

- Tak

It depends on if they're going to go with the perceived Soviet characteristics or the actual ones. In either case, ~10 tanks isn't enough force to display operational-level combat, and tank tactics was not the Soviet forces' strong point.

Pravda should be a rough match since they're the defending champions, and a T-34 and IS-2 combo is a lot scarier than a bunch of Shermans.

Originally Posted by Kaoru Chujo

The portrayal of Americans is in fact pretty nice, as 4Tran says. It's like a 1950s Japanese version of Americans: friendly and straightforward, enthusiastic, capable, and with overwhelming industrial production.

I've been out of the loop for a while. Have there been any other neat nationalities portrayed recently? In most shows, nationality seems to be just a footnote of little consequence.

Originally Posted by LeoXiao

That being said, imagine the Call of Duty games where you gun down scores of Nazis. Assuming you get to play as a Japanese infantryman, and mostly have missions where you fight hordes of NRA militiamen, it should'nt be too much different, eh?

As I pointed out earlier, Panzer General already exists. For anyone unfamiliar with the game, it's a operational-level game where the main campaign covers a bunch of German units on campaigns in Poland, France, Sealion, Moscow and even attacking Washington D.C. There is no Allied campaign, so you can only play the bad guys.

Originally Posted by LeoXiao

China DID have them, if Wikipedia is to be believed, just not in large numbers.

This shows why there's always more to learn about this conflict . To be fair though, I wasn't really thinking of anything acquired post-1937.

Originally Posted by Tak

Otherwise, an average Japanese infantryman was not much better equipped than their Chinese counterpart. In fact, you can even claim the Japanese had inferior infantry equipment compared to their Chinese counterpart. A typical Japanese infantry at the time was equipped with the Type 38 6.5mm rifle and machine guns that were bulky & difficult to setup. A typical Chinese infantry was armed with Mauser 8mm rifles. The German divisions were also equipped with sub-machine guns, Czech-made machine-guns and some even had MG34s.

The question of how well-armed an infantry unit is isn't answered by an infantryman's personal gear. It's answered by how much artillery the unit has access to and how well-supplied with ammunition they are. Machine guns are of lesser, but still significant importance. But that's more in terms of how many a unit has, and not really about how good they are.

Originally Posted by LoweGear

They represent Germany. Hence, the style of their uniforms and having German tanks (the Tiger and Pzkpfw III).

Ooarai is the only school that's not representing a particular country. Not even Japan strangely enough.

Originally Posted by Scarletknive

Those tanks are heavy tanks right? Don't tell me they are tank destroyers...

The only heavy tanks that Germany produced are the Tiger I and Tiger II. The Pz. III is the original chassis for the StuG III.

"Tank destroyer" may be a bit of a misleading term. It doesn't really mean a very powerful tank; rather it designates an AFV (usually a non-tank) whose primary role is to kill other tanks. American tank destroyers are basically tanks with open tops, but everyone else tends to use non-turreted AFVs like the StuG III.

Originally Posted by LoweGear

The Panzerkampfwagen aka Pzkpfw III aka Panzer III was the Wermacht's main medium tank during the early years of WWII alongside its older supplement/successor the Panzer IV. These shouldn't be much of a problem for the Oarai team.

A Pz. III with a 50mm gun will still be more dangerous than anything other than the StuG III!