The History Channel
Feb. 18th, 2007 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumIs starting to piss me off.
I understand that people will make mistakes, but the number of them which I am seeing is making me question the folks they have doing their fact-checking.
Take, for example, the armament of the Huey helicopters in Viet-nam. They say the arrived in theater with 2 x 30mm machine guns. Not.
The only aircraft we have with a 30mm is the A-10 Warthog, and the recoil from a single 25 rd burst slows it, a lot.
That was bad enough, but they then said, it was quickly upgraded to a pair of 60mm machine guns. They then showed them, and mentioned them by name... the M-60, a .30 caliber machine gun.
Which replaced the M-1 Browning, a different .30 caliber machine gun. The biggest change? The M-60 uses a shorter cartridge.
In the grand scheme of things this is meaningless. Most people don't care enough about things ancient (or modern, for that matter) to know that the context they are being given about whatever bit of infotainment the History Channel is peddling, but on the flip side, if they are this clumsy in the little things, what sorts of mistakes are they making in the bigger things? I know they are victim to the problem of a small number of people giving them "expert" commentary. The American who teaches at Sandhurst has been used to explain everything from the close combat tactics of the Greeks, to the logistical/tactical problems which caused the US Army to not be interested in helicopters.
It seems that his being at Sandhurst is enough "gravitas" to make him an expert on anything which involves an army.
This problem isn't limited to the realm of television history though, we are prone to allow pundits to weigh in, as if they had expertise on things which they aren't expert on, and we do it, often enough, even after they've been shown to be clueless to the point of actually being dangerous.
I understand that people will make mistakes, but the number of them which I am seeing is making me question the folks they have doing their fact-checking.
Take, for example, the armament of the Huey helicopters in Viet-nam. They say the arrived in theater with 2 x 30mm machine guns. Not.
The only aircraft we have with a 30mm is the A-10 Warthog, and the recoil from a single 25 rd burst slows it, a lot.
That was bad enough, but they then said, it was quickly upgraded to a pair of 60mm machine guns. They then showed them, and mentioned them by name... the M-60, a .30 caliber machine gun.
Which replaced the M-1 Browning, a different .30 caliber machine gun. The biggest change? The M-60 uses a shorter cartridge.
In the grand scheme of things this is meaningless. Most people don't care enough about things ancient (or modern, for that matter) to know that the context they are being given about whatever bit of infotainment the History Channel is peddling, but on the flip side, if they are this clumsy in the little things, what sorts of mistakes are they making in the bigger things? I know they are victim to the problem of a small number of people giving them "expert" commentary. The American who teaches at Sandhurst has been used to explain everything from the close combat tactics of the Greeks, to the logistical/tactical problems which caused the US Army to not be interested in helicopters.
It seems that his being at Sandhurst is enough "gravitas" to make him an expert on anything which involves an army.
This problem isn't limited to the realm of television history though, we are prone to allow pundits to weigh in, as if they had expertise on things which they aren't expert on, and we do it, often enough, even after they've been shown to be clueless to the point of actually being dangerous.
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Re: Fact Checking
Date: 2007-02-22 03:12 am (UTC)The Apache has a chin mounted, organic, single barrelled chain gun with a moderate rate of fire, the two systems in place are the M230, as well as the M242 (25mm chain gun, the same system as used in the Bradley and the LAV/Stryker).
The Cobra had a three barrelled 20mm cannon, and mounted, on the stub-wing, a number of systems, to include a the classic M-134 mini-gun.
The issue (with the variations on chin-mounted weapons) was the control element. The chin mounted weapons had a built in aiming device (joystick, and pipper in the HUD). When you put something on the stub-wing, the parralax is a factor, and the interface varied.
This was worked out, but the idea was to have a few versions, for specific roles. As it came to pass, they standardised the load-out so as to make (generally) the controls standard.
The 40mm grenade launcher is an amazing weapon, put half-a-dozen rds on target and you can wipe out a platoon in the open. Because of how they work they could be used in places where the cover was too think to put cannon rounds on target, and they cover area in a way which machine gun fire can't. Even when the canopy is too dense for the rounds to penetrate to the ground, the airbursts would cause inhuries, as well as flush/disperse troops in light cover.
The plan was to have different versions working in concert (much the way one has mixed weapons in a rifle squad) and so be able to provide flexible support, to meet the needs of the troops on the ground.
Have I muddied the waters some more?
TK