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zoux posted:So they fire the wooden bullets into those metal things attached to the end of the barrel? What's the ballistic performance on a bullet made out of wood, tbh I'd assume it would be in pieces as it came out of the barrel. It's balsa wood. They completely shatter, but can throw little splinters out of the barrel so don't fire next to someone's head. If the barrel adapter would not be present, you'd still be hard pressed to kill someone but blinding or injuring would work. The device in Finnish Army was called "patiraiskaaja" which is "bullet rapist", and the word "pati" is a childish or playful for for bullet, like "boooolet". I do like how no one's even questioning using Mosins in TYOOL 1976. Finland's been poor as poo poo for infantry arms for a long time. The Mosins were sold to civilians in early 1990s, and disappeared from troops in the early eighties. They sold for today's equivalent of about 100 bucks each to gun owners! Goddamnit! 450 finnish marks. Vahakyla fucked around with this message at 16:26 on May 19, 2023 |
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May 19, 2023 16:22
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Vahakyla posted:It's balsa wood. They completely shatter, but can throw little splinters out of the barrel so don't fire next to someone's head. If the barrel adapter would not be present, you'd still be hard pressed to kill someone but blinding or injuring would work. The device in Finnish Army was called "patiraiskaaja" which is "bullet rapist", and the word "pati" is a childish or playful for for bullet, like "boooolet". There are pictures of troops in the current Ukrainian conflict having Mosins. Admittedly scoped ones but yeah at this point a Mosin showing up isn't that weird.
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May 19, 2023 16:30
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Thomamelas posted:There are pictures of troops in the current Ukrainian conflict having Mosins. Admittedly scoped ones but yeah at this point a Mosin showing up isn't that weird. If you really have to get some kind of DMR into the troops' hands, something with a scope that shoots 7.62x54 is not the worst you could do.
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May 19, 2023 16:32
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Vahakyla posted:It's balsa wood. They completely shatter, but can throw little splinters out of the barrel so don't fire next to someone's head. BFAs for these types of blanks often have a shape that directs the splinters downwards. Even when they come out the front the most dangerous aspect of blanks is the pressure wave of the expanding gas. When I did WWII reenacting before each "battle" there was always a safety demo done to remind everyone of how dangerous they can be. Usually they'd set up a plastic gallon jug of water and shoot at it from a meter or so away to show that the blast will definitely penetrate the plastic which, incidentally, is much tougher than your skin
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May 19, 2023 16:37
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wiegieman posted:If you really have to get some kind of DMR into the troops' hands, something with a scope that shoots 7.62x54 is not the worst you could do. That was the consensus reached. We only see the scoped ones, so that is their likely use.
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May 19, 2023 16:41
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Scratch Monkey posted:BFAs for these types of blanks often have a shape that directs the splinters downwards. Even when they come out the front the most dangerous aspect of blanks is the pressure wave of the expanding gas. When I did WWII reenacting before each "battle" there was always a safety demo done to remind everyone of how dangerous they can be. Usually they'd set up a plastic gallon jug of water and shoot at it from a meter or so away to show that the blast will definitely penetrate the plastic which, incidentally, is much tougher than your skin When the vampire takeover happens, will wooden bullets work or should I just stick to stakes and silver
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May 19, 2023 16:53
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The mentioned device is officially called sysäyksenvahvistin or recoil amplifier. The wood blanks use a smaller propellant because the wooden bullet weighs less. This gives a more realistic feel of firing the weapon, and in the case of gas operated automatic weapons, is required for the cycle to complete. Even then RK-62 will easily jam with blanks on full auto. We were sternly warned not to leave the little screw that fixed it in place loose, and never to point at anyone when firing. If the thing came off it might carry enough punch to kill someone at close distance. Obviously this will be the secret melee weapon when we run out of bullets! 
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May 19, 2023 17:25
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Nenonen posted:and never to point at anyone when firing. Yeah exactly, this is why we'd never bust doors in at Kaartin Jääkärirykmentti MOUT-site and fire full auto into the face of the OPFOR (Keltainen Valtio [Yellow Nation]) from one meter away.
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May 19, 2023 17:35
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the idea to skip the shot and just fire splinters is something you'd probably find scribbled in the margins of some naval design notes
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May 19, 2023 17:45
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Vahakyla posted:Edit: ACTUALLY they are Officer Cadets! Rant inbound. In Finland, Cadets and Candidates are separate, and have two different ranks. There's a big post potential in how the Royal Navy used to divide up its would-be officers. In the WW2-1970s period you could have: 1)Officer Cadets 2)Officer Candidates 3)Cadet Ratings 4)Midshipmen 5)Sub-Lieutenants Under Training 6)Upper Yardmen depending on where the officer-to-be had come from, where they hoped to end up, where they were and how far along in training they were.
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May 19, 2023 19:29
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BalloonFish posted:There's a big post potential in how the Royal Navy used to divide up its would-be officers. In the WW2-1970s period you could have: Hell yeah there is. Even today the US Military retains the barebones. Cadets are in ROTC or Academy, but those in the Army who go to OCS are never cadets, "just" candidates since they're merely getting a crash course in how to be an officer, not in pursuit of academia.
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May 19, 2023 19:46
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Vahakyla posted:They sold for today's equivalent of about 100 bucks each to gun owners! Goddamnit! 450 finnish marks. poo poo, they didn't sell for that much more even after the importers got their mitts on them. I think I got my m28 (complete with two Civil Guard District numbers, one lined out) for ~$200 in 2007 or so. It was considered quite the fancy pants purchase in TFR of the era, costing over 3x what a Soviet m44 would run you.
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May 19, 2023 22:34
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Cessna posted:Yes, a lot of armies used/bought helmets from elsewhere. French "Adrian" helmets were used seemingly everywhere. Even the "bad German" helmet was exported: Way more than the helmets, the Germans sold a poo poo ton of arms to China (and a bunch of other countries) in the run-up to WW2. The rifles they're holding are the precursor model to the K98k (Mauser Standardmodell). Edit: Nifty thing about those, note the parade sling hook on the front barrel band there. That's a Gew98 feature that was eventually deleted for the K98k, but is still there on a lot of the intermediary ones.
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May 19, 2023 22:35
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BalloonFish posted:5)Sub-Lieutenants Under Training Did they ever use the acronym form? 
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May 20, 2023 00:31
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Quackles posted:Did they ever use the acronym form? Yes. Apparently the SNCOs who ran most of the professional courses that those men would go on took great joy in using the acronym on ship daily orders, and felt a rich vein of lower deck v. wardroom humour was closed off when that designation was dropped. SLts U/T (to write it as the style guide would properly have it...) were specialists - usually technical graduates (mechanical or electrical engineers) or medics (surgeons or dentists) - or other professionals (intelligence officers, accountants, shipwrights) whose existing experience or qualifications enabled them to start training with the privileges, pay and status of commissioned officers (Sub Lieutenants) but who were as yet unversed in military or naval ways and so had undertake familiarisation and qualification courses as Sub Lieutenants Under Training before going into the fleet.
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May 20, 2023 01:01
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Oh, so that sounds kind of similar to the Direct Input Limited Duty Officers that are used to teach Nuclear Power School in the US.
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May 20, 2023 01:05
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Vahakyla posted:It's balsa wood. They completely shatter, but can throw little splinters out of the barrel so don't fire next to someone's head. If the barrel adapter would not be present, you'd still be hard pressed to kill someone but blinding or injuring would work. The device in Finnish Army was called "patiraiskaaja" which is "bullet rapist", and the word "pati" is a childish or playful for for bullet, like "boooolet". Here in Sweden, we use them on a number of weapons, though I'm not sure about which wood they use (I've heard it's different, between Finland and Sweden). They're approved for use beyond 10 m without safety glasses, and up to 2 m with according to SäkR Ehv/Pv.
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May 20, 2023 01:14
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Groda posted:Here in Sweden, we use them on a number of weapons, though I'm not sure about which wood they use (I've heard it's different, between Finland and Sweden). They're approved for use beyond 10 m without safety glasses, and up to 2 m with according to SäkR Ehv/Pv. I believe that the Swedish military approves of this. I do not believe it's a good idea. I'm interested in the BFA the Finns use(d), considering that there were a few Finnish Mosin variants and the front sights/front sight blocks were not identical between them.
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May 20, 2023 01:28
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madeintaipei posted:I believe that the Swedish military approves of this. I do not believe it's a good idea. I'll defer to anyone with actual Finnish military experience on this, but my understanding is that some time that I'm going to vaguely hand-wave as "after WW2" they standardized things significantly. The oldest stuff (the un-altered Imperial m91s and Soviet m91/30s, the independence era m24s, the partially updated m91s etc) got either rotated out or recycled for M39 production, and you're mostly left with the m27, m28, m28-30, and increasingly just m39s. All of those have essentially the same "dog ear" style front sight protectors and, critically, the bayo lugs are basically the same. (edit: if you want to get into the weeds the main differences are in the front barrel band. IIRC there was some weird slap fight between the Army and the Civil Guard over single piece vs. hinged barrel bands). I'm pretty sure the bayos on those post-m24 guns are all broadly interchangeable, with the usual caveats that maybe some light fitting is needed and the bayo/rifle interface is more a rough standard than a specific model etc. That's important because I'm pretty sure those old BFAs are using the bay lug as part of their attachment point, rather than the front sight ears. I'd be fairly surprised if even reservist trainees were rolling around with an old m91 in the 70s, arshin unit rear sights and all.
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May 20, 2023 01:55
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Just for reference : how much functional difference was there between one piece and hinged barrel bands?
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May 20, 2023 02:01
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Xiahou Dun posted:Just for reference : how much functional difference was there between one piece and hinged barrel bands? Functional? Not much. Imagine a rough oval of metal. In the hinged ones there's a basic hinge with a rivet through it on one side, and on the other a screw that threads into them instead of the rivet. Unscrew, pull out, band hinges open. In the one-piece it's a solid sleeve with a screw that runs in one side, through the stock, and out the other side to retain it. IIRC the arguments were over how the different approaches would affect accuracy. It's been forever since I read up on that, like a decade +, so take that with appropriately huge amounts of salt. As an aside, to give an idea how the dimensions just need to be good enough, I just tested a WW1 era m98/05 bayo (the "butcher blade" design) on a K98k, and it fits. A little looser than would be ideal, but good enough for infantry work. Those two guns have some pretty significant differences in the barrel band / front stock / front sight /etc areas, but they kept the major parts of the bayo lug and barrel geometry good enough for it to work.
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May 20, 2023 02:11
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Okay cool. It seemed minor but what the hell do I know.
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May 20, 2023 02:18
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In what era did demonstration drill teams begin
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May 20, 2023 03:56
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Camrath posted:The only downside is that Baker rifles are literally impossible to get in the UK without a full firearms licence, and for a weekend Napoleonic larp event (known in the community as Shlarpe, obviously) that’s a load of hassle and expense above and beyond even what I’m prepared to spend on nerd hobbies. Why is this out of curiosity compared to that Enfield?
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May 20, 2023 05:29
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zoux posted:In what era did demonstration drill teams begin I'd say that this is going to be extremely hard to pin down. The Pretorian Guard would do show drill in Rome, and some Athenian hoplite units would also do show drill during quiet times.
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May 20, 2023 05:37
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feedmegin posted:Why is this out of curiosity compared to that Enfield? Basically black powder blank-firers aren’t really a thing anyone makes: reenactors generally use smooth bore muzzle loaders on a shotgun licence. With regards replicas, the two big manufacturers are Denix and Kolser, both (iirc) Spanish companies. They make all sorts of wall-hanger replicas, some of which can fire toy caps or percussion caps unmodified, others which need some surgery first. Their range of 19th century stuff isn’t great, and the flintlocks are much trickier to modify for caps (you need to install a stud on the hammer to mount them) than the percussion ones (you just file down the nipple to fit, and if you want to use percussion caps also drill a vent hole through it out the side). Enfields are the main percussion rifle that Denix produces, so for LARP purposes where the overall look and going ‘bang’ is more important than exact period accuracy, they tend to get used a lot for any gunpowder era setting.
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May 20, 2023 12:55
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On the plus side, you can always tweak your uniforms slightly and do Crimean War stuff too.
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May 20, 2023 13:25
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Vahakyla posted:I'd say that this is going to be extremely hard to pin down. The Pretorian Guard would do show drill in Rome, and some Athenian hoplite units would also do show drill during quiet times. Yeah I was wondering mostly if it went back that far or didn't appear until firearms were the main arms. Do we have any idea what these ancient drills looked like?
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May 20, 2023 16:30
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FDF bullet chat: In addition to wooden bullets, we trained once or twice with aluminium-cored(?) bullets. Dunno if that is a common practice elsewhere. They were fired without a BFA and I understood their purpose to be "the Lt in charge of this trench clearing exercise can't be arsed to secure the area for kilometers in every direction one could end up firing in (like 280 deg sector), so we'll use the Al-bullets to cut that down to a more sensible distance." The ballistics were complete arse, but they holed paper well enough at 30 meters.
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May 20, 2023 19:45
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Loezi posted:FDF bullet chat: In addition to wooden bullets, we trained once or twice with aluminium-cored(?) bullets. Dunno if that is a common practice elsewhere. The Germans had (have?) something similar, but different, for 7.62 NATO. Plastic case, 10 grain plastic bullet (so about 1/15th the weight of normal) really light charge. Hypothetically accurate out to 300 yards but I’ve never tried it myself. DAG makes it, you see it occasionally for sale as surplus. Iirc the thinking is basically the same: good enough for punching paper for basic marksmanship training, no real issue with a round getting over the berm.
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May 20, 2023 20:22
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Cyrano4747 posted:The Germans had (have?) something similar, but different, for 7.62 NATO. Plastic case, 10 grain plastic bullet (so about 1/15th the weight of normal) really light charge. Hypothetically accurate out to 300 yards but I’ve never tried it myself. DAG makes it, you see it occasionally for sale as surplus. This stuff:  I just checked and they also have it in 9mm.
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May 20, 2023 21:10
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Nammo makes them in 5.56, 7.62, and 12.7. In Norway they're colloquially known as blåfis (blue fart) while blanks are rødfis.
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May 21, 2023 00:27
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Drakhoran posted:Nammo makes them in 5.56, 7.62, and 12.7. In Norway they're colloquially known as blåfis (blue fart) while blanks are rødfis. Red fart?! Lol. Limited range ammo. I gather that, with a lessening interest in marksmanship and an expanding population, some of these plastic rounds allow training in more distance limited firing ranges. In the US, NRA approved targets are calibrated in size to approximate different ranges. In theory, a smaller target within point-blank range is just as good as a bigger one at a longer range.
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May 21, 2023 01:47
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madeintaipei posted:Red fart?! Lol. That seems wrong but I don’t know why
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May 21, 2023 02:12
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:That seems wrong but I don’t know why https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh5kZ4uIUC0
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May 21, 2023 08:12
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:That seems wrong but I don’t know why On that note: The Brits had the Swift Training Rifle, which was basically a modified rifle that would just extend a little needle from the barrel when the trigger was pulled. You'd use it sitting directly in front of a target sheet drawn to scale, and wherever the needle punched a hole is the place you "hit". The idea was that it would be a very cheap and simple way to get people used to holding the thing correctly and using the sights properly.   e: found a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HO4p4Jm_FI Perestroika fucked around with this message at 18:41 on May 21, 2023 |
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May 21, 2023 18:34
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What the critism of John Keegan's "face of battle" besides that he was inspired by SLA marshal? I'm reading the part about Agincourt atm, and the way he described the battle largely as an exercise in crowd management is pretty interesting like the reason why the French infantry attack fails despite numerical superiority is pretty horrifying. What was happening was the French were 10 ranks deep charging at the English. Upon contact the English took a step back and the guys behind the front line who couldn't see what was going on kept pushing. Which either pushed the guys at the front into the swords of the English or just made them lose their footing. So they fell down into the knee-deep mud and started drowning. Then the second line of guys got pushed onto their fallen comrades on the first line and were forced to fight while standing ontop of some dude who was probably still alive. They themselves started to stumble because a human body is not exactly a stable platform to fight on and then the third line got pushed on the second line, who met the same fate. That's pretty horrifying if you imagine falling face down into knee deep mud and unable to get up because your buddy got pushed on top of you while you drowned.
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May 22, 2023 06:43
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The "drowning in mud" is probably a thing that did happen - there are sources talking about it occurring in other battles - but is likely overblown as the cause of the defeat. The reality is that at Agincourt the French had a bad plan that was executed badly, the critical factor being allowing the fight to occur on terrain that was perfect for the English - recently plowed, wet fields with woods on either side. This is why the French had to pack their foot troops in so tightly which caused a variety of issues. Really the main issue for the French was one of command - the cavalry attack to disperse the English archers utterly failed, and then the main attack proceeded anyway, leading the tightly packed mass of French troops to be shot from both sides by arrows after a tiring walk and then charged in the flank by the archers. There also seemed to be a large number of troops in the French rearguard who were not deployed effectively or at all, both because of a lack of space and because French command didn't seem to have a plan for them. Agincourt is a battle which is still fairly contested academically and there has been a lot of research since Keegan. This is due to a variety of factors; 1. A lot of the main contemporary sources are suspected to be English propaganda and so need to be treated with caution 2. The battle has a strong resonance with English national myth making and so historians have to had to untangle some of the elements that made the battle seem like some sort of "impossible victory" for the English, in a similar way to how Midway was treated in the US until Japanese sources started getting translated 3. We still don't know where the battle was fought exactly - there's no archaeological evidence at the site where it's assumed to have been fought so people suspect the location is wrong.
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May 22, 2023 11:36
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Face of Battle is still a pretty good read - Keegan was a skilled writer - as long as you understand that he wasn't a specialist in most of the things he was writing about (IIRC most of his real focus at that time was on WW2) so he was leaning on other scholarship, and the scholarship he was leaning on was whatever was around in the early 70s. I suspect the Agincourt Mud thing is a good example of that, where he was dependent on the majority consensus of the secondary literature he was dependent on, and that consensus has since moved on. See also: SLA Marshal. That said, it's also a very important book, at least if you're into historiography. I've had more than one old (non-milhist) prof tell an anecdote that runs something like this "In the late 60s / early 70s we all assumed military history was just biographies of generals, battlefield maps, and arguments about how many buttons the Napolonic Guard wrote. Then Keegen comes out with this book that we all read and holy cow this military historian is doing history like we do it!" That's grossly simplified, and I'm sure he wasn't the first or only one leaning into the cultural elements of warfare and the experience of the common soldier, but for whatever reason he really struck a chord and there's this generation of people who were young profs or in grad school around 1976 who point to him specifically as showing that military history wasn't just an equipment and maps focused discipline for knuckle-draggers. Keep in mind that this is late and immediately post-Vietnam English-language academia that we're talking about here, so that's going to color things as well. The fact that Keegan wasn't ex-military himself probably got him in the door with some of those people. In a lot of ways it's broadly comparable (although I don't think nearly as influential) as Thompson's Making of the English Working Class. That's another one that has probably had the scholarship pass it by a bit in the last 60 years, although I don't know enough specifically about the area to comment on how badly, but it's still a good read, still a good introduction to the subject, and still very important as far as tracing the influences on more modern works.
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May 22, 2023 13:03
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My main take on agincourt is that if the English had crossbows, and the French long bows, the result had been the same
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May 22, 2023 13:30
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