MACHINE vs MACHINE

I think you will get better response over at the car forum regarding the automobile idea. You may even get a GB together on the subject. I do remember an early Spielberg movie called "Duel" with Dennis Weaver pitting his Plymouth against a Peterbilt tanker rig. 

I remember a couple of great movies with dissimilar machine combat.  One, I believe it starred Peter O'Toole, featured a float scout plane that had been disabled so i that it could not fly but could taxi, and a German submarine, in a river in South America, with a duel of the two trying to sink the other.

The other was set in the North African desert.  A disabled P-40 against a german tank.  Both neat duels of dissimilar machines.

Have a look at Osprey's "Duel" series of books. They pick a pair of machines and an engagement and dissect it all thoroughly- Mig-21 vs Mirage III in one of the Arab Israeli wars, T-34/76 vs Tiger at Kursk/Prokhorovka, Panzer III vs M3 Lee in Tunisia, Spitfire I vs Bf-109E in the Battle of Britain. There are too many good choices to pick just one favorite. Although I really did like the M1A1 Abrams vs T-72 at 73 Easting in Iraq.

Don, that Peter O'Toole movie was "Murphy's War". I remember seeing that so long ago. I think my favorite movie of that type was "The Enemy Below" with Curt Jurgens as the U-Boat commander and Robert Mitchum commanding a Destroyer Escort.

Don,I think that plane was able to fly,remember he tied wicker molotov coctails to the wings,However he did use a barge with a crane on it and he dropped a torpedo on the U-Boat using the crane.Murphy's War,great movie

"The Enemy Below", WOW! Great Movie! Now I'll have to look it up and watch it a couple of times.

Jim 

The Yamato pounding it out with an Iowa class would have been cool to see.

PANZER826

  I thinking here just the machine vs the machine with all human factor being equal. Any thoughts? 

The human is the most non equal part of any of these "duels." The IROC series, identically prepped cars, one brand, one model, was an exercise in that. You still had some drivers who dominated. Give two guys the same model kit, tools and paints and you will have two slightly different models. The only way to go machine to machine would be to have identical robotic controls operating each machine.You could pretty much predict the results, however, based on the specs of each machine. 

There's some great ones historically that happened (P-51 vs. Bf-109, F6F and F4U vs. the Zero) and some that were intended and never happened (F/A-18 vs. Mig 29, F-14 vs. the Tu-95).  I agree the Yamato vs. an Iowa would have been interesting!

Groot

AJ, they did that back in the '60s, it was called Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots!

I used to like that series on Spike that had warriors from different eras fighting it out,like Zulu vs Spartan,Aztec vs Apache it was pretty good

And history is full of examples where the "inferior" machine beat the superior machine due to the human factor.

Su-27 vs MIG-29 in the Eritrea - Ethiopia war.

Snake vs Mongoose

Or how about the T-800 vs. the T-1000? ;-)

I miss the show BattleBots

Remember "Robot Wars"?

pyrman64

I miss the show BattleBots

I'll second that....that show was fun