SJV-II

Everything related to military history and other factors...

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Infinite hp

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#457—CANDICE SUSAN SWANEPOEL 🇿🇦

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#456—LILY EASTON 🇦🇺

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#455—BRI STERN 🇺🇲

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#454—HOPE BEEL 🇺🇲

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#453—ROSANNA ARKLE 🇳🇿

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Tank 74 (Strv 74)' Swedish medium tank, 1960s.

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The AMX-30 Javelot was a French experimental self-propelled anti-aircraft system based on the AMX-30 tank chassis. Instead of using radar-guided guns or missiles, it carried a large launcher for 64 small 40 mm anti-aircraft rockets. The idea was to throw a dense, high-speed salvo into the path of low-flying aircraft, especially attack jets and helicopters, creating a kind of rocket “shotgun” effect.

Each rocket was reportedly just over 1 kg, with a warhead of around 400 g, and could reach roughly 1,100 m/s. The system was meant for short-range air defense, with an effective range often described around 1.5–2 km. A French-American development effort around the ammunition reportedly ended in 1974, with the technical goals for the rockets achieved, but the system did not enter production.

The concept was interesting but awkward. By the 1970s, air-defense vehicles were moving toward radar-directed autocannons, guided missiles, or combined gun-missile systems. The Javelot’s unguided rocket salvo was powerful in theory, but it would have depended heavily on accurate fire control, timing, and target prediction. Against fast jets, that was a difficult problem. So the AMX-30 Javelot remained a prototype/development concept rather than a standard French Army vehicle.

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KV-2 tank featured a 152 mm M-10 howitzer mounted in a massive, boxy turret designed for heavy firepower against fortified positions.

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The Tiger II, often called the King Tiger, was Germany’s heaviest operational tank of World War II and one of the most intimidating armored vehicles ever put into combat. Introduced in 1944, it combined extremely thick sloped armor with the powerful 8.8 cm KwK 43 L/71 gun, one of the best tank guns of the war, capable of destroying most Allied tanks at long range. Its frontal armor was almost impossible for many enemy tanks to penetrate under normal battlefield conditions, and in a defensive position it could be devastating. 

But the Tiger II was also a product of Germany’s collapsing war situation: it was expensive, heavy, mechanically demanding, and difficult to recover when it broke down. At nearly 70 tons, it strained engines, transmissions, bridges, fuel supplies, and repair crews. On paper, it was a monster; in reality, it often suffered from shortages, poor mobility, mechanical failures, and inexperienced crews. The Tiger II was not a war-winning weapon, but as a battlefield presence it was terrifying — a late-war tank destroyer wrapped in fortress-like armor, arriving at a time when Germany no longer had the fuel, factories, or logistics to use it properly.

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This photographd shows a late-1950s to early-1960s U.S. Army / U.S. Air Force experimental installation of a 105 mm M2A2 field howitzer mounted inside a surplus aircraft fuselage section, used as a static test rig to study recoil forces, structural loads, and mounting geometry for air-mobile artillery concepts. The howitzer is fitted to a reinforced internal cradle and pedestal mount, allowing engineers to analyze how recoil impulses would be transmitted into a lightweight airframe. Contrary to later myths, this was not intended for firing in flight; the goal was to assess whether helicopters such as the Piasecki/Vertol H-21 Shawnee could transport a pre-mounted gun, land rapidly, and deliver artillery fire immediately without full ground deployment. 

Testing demonstrated that recoil management, airframe fatigue, center-of-gravity shifts, and vibration made such installations impractical for operational use. These experiments nonetheless influenced later U.S. Army doctrine by confirming that sling-loaded or externally transported howitzers were a far more viable solution for airmobile artillery than internal gun mounts, shaping helicopter artillery employment during the Vietnam War era.

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The Panhard M3 VDA air defense vehicle mounts a single-man turret armed with twin Hispano-Suiza 820 SL 20mm autocannons, effective against low-flying aircraft.

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Tiger I #308 from 3.Kompanie s.Pz. Abt. 502 Commanded by Hauptmann Leonhardt it was abandoned by the Crew in the Baltics in September 1944.

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A Soviet ISU-122 and its crew await new orders (Berlin, April 1945).

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German naval mine in 1916.

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A Churchill tank of 51st Royal Tank Regiment crashes through a hedge during the advance across the Italian countryside, July 20, 1944.