<\/p>\n
Kuromorimine successfully engaged Oarai in a surprise attack, taking Anteater Team in the Type 3 Chi-Nu out of the battle. Anteater, even though accidentally, did do one good thing: the shot they backed into was aimed at Ankou in the Panzer 4. Would it have hit? Would it have disabled the Oarai Flag Tank? Of course that’s the narrative intention, even if the road not taken can never be known. Even before Anteater reports their condition to Miho, Maho and Erika are moving on to the next target. Miho, as usual, is more worried about Anteater Team’s safety:<\/p>\n
<\/div>And this is probably as good a time as any to point out; Nekota has eyes? Like, normal eyes? With the thick glasses anime has a tendency to draw character’s eyes behind the lenses as “squinting,” but the creators didn’t go that way with Nekota. In fact, beyond the cat ears and the gaming themes, the designers clearly had a different idea in mind. Here’s her appearance in the Opening Credits:<\/p>\n
<\/div>With the pronounced eyelashes and slit eyes, something that clearly contradicts the design used for Girls und Panzer<\/em>, Nekonya is obviously based on Leiji Matsumoto’s Maetel; the heroine of Galaxy Express 999<\/em> and Maetel Legend<\/em>, sister of Emeraldas, and one of the wielders of a (custom, limited to 4 or 5) Cosmo Dragoon handgun.<\/p>\n Miho, visibly relieved by the Anteaters’ condition, instructs Oarai to prepare for “Operation Smoky Smokes!” Which, uh; is a smokescreen. A giant smokescreen. All six Oarai tanks activate smoke charges as they continue toward a large hill. Erika dismisses the tactic as pointless and starts to order all Kuromorimine tanks to fire into the smoke, but the order is overridden by Maho. She tells Erika they don’t know what Oarai is doing, so it would be good to not fall into any traps. Firing now would waste ammo, which is limited. This idea makes an appearance in multiple matches, although the fact that it’s only brought up as a plot point and not an ongoing concern shows that, you know, that’s really all it is. However, it can be considered there *is* a reason to constantly fire in this gamified environment: the shots are unnerving to your opponent, and RNG says *some* of those shots will hit if you throw enough downfield. I’m terrible at throwing things, but if I do it enough I’ll connect with the target *sometimes*.<\/p>\n Beyond that, Maho tells the team, Oarai is fielding a Porsche Tiger, which is slow and, as pointed out last time, gets stuck easily. Oarai is headed toward a tall hill to take advantage of the position; the Tiger(P) will slow them down and Kuromorimine will be able to catch up easily. But as the smoke clears, Maho realizes she was wrong. Darjeeling is even surprised at what she sees:<\/p>\n Oarai is already near the top of the hill. The STuG III and the M3 Lee are towing the Tiger(P), giving it more power and stability, and the Panzer 4 is likewise attached to both the STuG and the Lee to help make up for the loss in power. Katyusha is even impressed by the tactic. Momentarily. Until she realizes someone might hear her compliment someone else.<\/p>\n Just as the smokescreen clears Miho orders plan “Motorcycle Gang!” prompting the two unattached lead tanks, the Type 89 and Char B1 bis, to turn perpendicular to the group and…start another smokescreen; this one wide instead of tall and billowing. To give just a bit more time, we suddenly shift to the missing Oarai tank. You may have noticed none of the recent smokescreen tactics have shown Turtle Team in the Hetzer. That’s because they were sent ahead to an ambush position in a copse of trees near the hill’s base.<\/p>\n Once again Anzu takes the gun while Momo loads. Anzu is giggling in anticipation:<\/p>\n As before, Anzu isn’t trying to destroy any tanks; she’s aiming to hinder. The more powerful gun at her disposal just means she can do it from cover now rather than having to expose her tank. Turtle is able to damage the tracks on two Kuromorimine tanks as they pass. Oarai’s harassment tactics continue to keep them punching above their level. Turtle Team vanishes from sight again; an interesting observation considering Erika, upon seeing the first smokescreen, dismissively stated “They’re not ninjas.”<\/p>\n Oarai begins to bombard Kuromorimine from the top of the hill. They disable two Kuromorimine tanks before Maho orders a Jagdtiger to the front center position. Simple explanation: “Jagd__xxx__” is essentially a fixed-gun tank destroyer version of whichever tank is denoted by “__xxx__”. I mentioned in the last post the Hetzer is most-correctly called a Jagdpanzer 38, because it’s based on a Panzer 38(t). While tanks called “STuG”s like the STuG III *are not* called “Jagdpanzer III” because they were intended from the start to be “mobile artillery,” rather than tank destroyers, or “hunters;” which is where the “Jag” part of the name comes from. (Technically the full name of these tanks would be “Jaegerpanzer ### __xx__”, but you see the “Jagd__xxx__” much more commonly) So a Jagdtiger is a Tiger tank chassis with a fixed gun. Or, that’s how it works mostly; but a Jagdtiger is ACTUALLY based on the *Tiger II* heavy tank, not the *Tiger* heavy tank. It had one of a few of the 128mm guns the Germans developed, and heavy front armor.<\/p>\n Oarai doesn’t have anything that can defeat the Jagdtiger head-on. Turtle Team watches a few rounds of shot exchanges from a distance. Miho tells her crew taking out two Kuromorimine tanks is good enough; it’s time to withdraw. Anzu radios in, asking if it’s time to get started.<\/p>\n Turtle Team engages Kuromorimine from behind. They first encounter the same Jagdpanther they blew the track off earlier, and do it again:<\/p>\n Turtle Team throws the Kuromorimine battle line into disarray, weaving between and around tanks. This opens them up for some shots of opportunity, as well. Except, they’re not “shots of opportunity.” Oarai begins advancing back down the hill toward Kuromorimine during the confusion, taking out more Kuromorimine tanks and pushing to break out. The right flank begins retreating, giving Oarai an opening they use to change battlefields again. Oarai descends the hill single-file, busting through Kuromorimine’s disarray. Leopon takes the lead, bouncing two shots with their heavy armor. Mallard activates *another smokescreen* as they pass through Kuromorimine.<\/p>\n Oarai continue relocating as Kuromorimine regroup. Katyusha and Kay from Saunders are both excited for the state of the battle; Katyusha almost falls off Nonna’s shoulders and Kay is shown munching popcorn. Arisa comments she’s never seen Kuromorimine so disorganized before. Kay responds Kuromorimine trains for aggressive, precise attacks but have trouble when unexpected situations arise. Basically, they plan for what they do to work, and can’t handle the situation if it doesn’t. Unfortunately Kuromorimine also has an extreme statistical advantage in almost every way. Oarai has outfought them so far but Kuromorimine still has more than twice the number of tanks, and *much* heavier armor and bigger weapons. And that’s not counting some other difficulties Oarai faces on their own side, like their reject tanks.<\/p>\n Right on cue the Tiger(P) starts clunking, knocking, and smoking. Leopon’s commander, Nakajima, climbs out of the tank and starts maintenance while the tank is running…which surprisingly works.<\/p>\n Erika, leading the Kuromorimine pursuit in her Tiger II, tries to line up a shot on Ankou’s Panzer 4; when she encounters her own team’s foibles. In the real world, as Germany tried to out-quality and out-big their enemies, especially after invading the Soviet Union, they experienced a couple of side-effects from their constant updating and limited production runs. They didn’t have the capacity to produce all the proper spare parts and they didn’t have the logistics to distribute parts and maintenance appropriately. So when tanks broke down, they stayed broke down longer. As things got bigger they also had to deal with issues that had been becoming apparent: you can’t just keep making things bigger and bigger arbitrarily. To an extent this is an example of square-cube law, which states that as an object’s surface area increases, it’s volume increases *more*. Or, volume increases faster than surface area. The increase in size in a heavy tank requires more than just a commensurate increase in engine horsepower. Pretty sure German designers knew this, but Germany just didn’t have the engines, or at least in enough quantity. And they didn’t have strong enough transmissions and final drives. And obviously they were pushing the envelope, which means no one really *knew* how to build any of this. Which touches on the final problem; the more desperate Germany became, the less time they had to “get it right.”<\/p>\n To wit: before she can fire the huge gun on her Tiger II at Oarai; her left track falls off. Not an unusual occurrence for German heavy tanks.<\/p>\n (Darjeeling comments that Kuromorimine only started using heavy tanks in order to confront Pravda more readily; a clear reference to World War 2. Which is neat, I suppose, but unnecessary. In fact it comes off as “explaining something that doesn’t need explaining”, but as I’m no stranger to that, I’ll just drop it)<\/p>\n But in the same vein, the next challenge for Oarai is crossing a pretty wide and fast-running river. You won’t be wrong if you’ve picked up that Miho has actually planned for a lot of contingencies so far, and this is one of them. She has the tanks arrayed abreast with the heaviest up-stream and the lightest down-stream to keep the current from affecting the lighter tanks. This puts the Ducks in the Type 89 at the end, as the Type 89 was intended to be a light tank but ended up barely surpassing 10 tons, thus causing it to be classed as a “medium” tank…if only technically. Heck, Ford and Chevy both make Chassis-cab Silverados and F-series trucks that weigh about 10 tons. Barely, again; but they exist. This plan seems to work fine, until halfway across the river. The Rabbits’ M3 Lee suddenly shuts down.<\/p>\n Rabbit commander Azusa, after checking with her team, tells Miho and the others to continue on; they’ll be fine. But at the same time we see that even sitting in the protected current the Lee is starting to tip. Miho, as you probably predicted, is now facing a similar situation to the event that cost Kuromorimine the win in last year’s finals. A team member needs rescuing, but the enemy is approaching fast. Before she can fret too much, Sayori tells her to go help the Rabbits. This is just who Miho is, and it is now in the nature of the entire Oarai team. It’s kind of a “never leave a fallen comrade behind” thing, which plays big in movies but is obviously a bit more nuanced in real life. Now, of course, why it has to be *Miho* who goes to the Rabbits is a separate and legitimate discussion, but that’s not really part of *this* story. Miho has to do it because she’s the leader, and this team works the way she wants it to work.<\/p>\n All of Oarai stops while Miho jumps from tank to tank. She takes a rope connected to one of the towing lines used previously. While Yukari and Sayori monitor Kuromorimine another tow line is rigged through all Oarai’s tanks, allowing them to continue crossing the river, taking the Rabbits with them. Rabbit Team is eventually able to get their engine started again as the group finishes the crossing. Erika is disgusted by Miho’s “softness;” Maho has no comment. But she does notice the Hetzer trying to sneak up on them:<\/p>\n She calmly instructs Tank 11 to fire at the Hetzer, which is accomplished right as Turtle Team readies to fire. The shot just barely misses the Turtles and Anzu orders a swift retreat back into the trees, shouting “I’m not letting that happen a third time!” (this is actually a correct reference: in the practice battle to start the series, the Student Council lined up a shot on the Panzer 4, missed; and was immediately disabled in return. In the St. Gloriana exhibition match the Student Council repaired their left track then rejoined the battle right as Miho was trapped, blocking Gloriana’s shot and exuberantly exclaiming “We’re here!” And then they missed, and were immediately obliterated by four Gloriana tanks)<\/p>\n Oarai pulls out of the river (puts away the tow cables between scenes) and turns into a wooded area immediately. A frustrated Erika wonders where they’re going, but Maho glances at a map and tells her most likely the nearby town. Which makes sense strategically, as Oarai has been most effective from ambush; which also protects their limited tanks. This is *not* the kind of battle Kuromorimine prefers, but they still have an overwhelming numerical advantage. And a secret.<\/p>\n Not far into the woods Oarai crosses a stonework bridge over a gorge. The final tank is the Tiger(P) which uses it’s weight and some careful driving to collapse the bridge behind them. (It works visually; logically…it’s not impossible)<\/p>\n Miho is…as surprised as the audience.<\/p>\n Miho is relieved to make it to the city, for reasons we’ve already discussed. But soon after entering town they spot a Kuromorimine Panzer 3 poke out from behind a building, then quickly reverse away. They decide to try to take it out before the rest of Kuromorimine arrives. This feels wrong, but as far as they know, by the numbers, the entire rest of the team is at least several minutes behind them. The Panzer 3 leads them through town before stopping at the end of a block. Oarai lines up to fire, when the path is blocked:<\/p>\n The “moving wall” is revealed to be a Maus, a German super-heavy tank design that never saw combat. In fact, only two prototypes were even completed, which is a story of it’s own. Although it was originally intended to be equipped with a 150mm gun, in the end a 128mm was used. Armor was *extreme*. Despite its lack of service, that the Maus was actually built and about to be tested before the two prototypes were destroyed in retreat makes it the largest and heaviest tank to be produced. Some other nations produced prototypes of super-heavies, but nothing that approached the 188 ton heavily-armored Maus. Kuromorimine fielding one in battle is *technically* not dissimilar from Oarai’s Type 3 Chi-Nu, except for the Chi-Nu being both tested, *and* produced in large numbers.<\/p>\n Miho orders Oarai to withdraw from the battle immediately. There is absolutely no way for them to win a gun battle with the Maus. Heck, only Pravda and Kuromorimine’s OWN heavy tanks could hope to throw enough weight to damage the behemoth…and Kuromorimine already had the advantage in this department. The Maus tries to rotate its turret toward Oarai as they retreat, but their gun barrel is too long. They have to back up even further and turn into the street to effect a shooting solution.<\/p>\n The first shot from the Maus misses, but the impact throws several Oarai tanks backward. Anzu is sure they’ve been disabled, but the Hetzer survives. Sodoko angrily shouts that the Maus shouldn’t be so cocky just because it’s big, and fires both of the Char B1 bis’ guns…ineffectively…at the Maus. The Maus’ reply disables Mallard immediately:<\/p>\n They had a good battle this time, being instrumental in the deployment of smokescreens and towing. But the Hall Monitors are all OK. Oarai backs away from the giant Maus, firing round after round. Every shot bounces. Hippo fires in revenge for the Mallards, and we actually see the shell ricochet off the Maus and behind the STuG. The Maus disables them next.<\/p>\n Oarai is now down two more tanks, leaving five to face…heck, I don’t remember…fourteen or fifteen Kuromorimine tanks. They can’t win a battle of attrition, especially with the Maus on the battlefield. Erika is pleased to hear the Maus has taken out two Oarai tanks; but Maho knows the battle isn’t over until Oarai’s Flag Tank is removed, and that means Miho. And she’s one of the very few people who take Miho completely seriously.<\/p>\n And that’s where this episode ends! Coming up, Girls und Panzer Episode 12: The battle we can’t back down from!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was going through my morning video queue, and noticed right before stopping to write a bit an upcoming video was titled “I hope your old plane crashes!” Some context; this video was from an aviation channel that does historical commentary as well as current aviation stories, hosted by a pilot instructor with extensive flying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[638],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paige-writes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60818"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60843,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60818\/revisions\/60843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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