|
FPyat posted:Are there good examples for Sun Tzu's precept that giving the enemy a path of escape is better than entrapping them? He didn't say that, he wrote that you give the appearance of a path of escape so that you can slaughter them while trying rather than have to fight through a desperate last stand. Cannae is the only kinda-example that I can think of at the top of my head - the Romans thought their 'path of escape' was attacking through the middle of the Carthaginian army and it turned out to be a trap. The relevance of this advice falls away a bit when everyone agrees that a surrounded force can surrender and be taken prisoner rather than have to fight to the death.
|
#
?
May 30, 2023 07:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 19:34 |
|
|
Alchenar posted:Cannae is the only kinda-example that I can think of at the top of my head - the Romans thought their 'path of escape' was attacking through the middle of the Carthaginian army and it turned out to be a trap. They didn't think that was a "path to escape" at all, they thought it was the path to victory. That is, you beat the Carthagenians by destroying their army, and the way to do that is to decisively attack it right in the middle with as much force as possible. The idea that they were surrounded didn't even enter into their thinking until it was too late.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2023 15:21
|
|
|
I think you can maybe point to something like Teutonberg Forest where the Romans found themselves strung out in a fighting retreat and got whittled down, whereas if the Germanic forces attempted a set piece battle they might not have done nearly so well.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2023 15:27
|
|
|
MikeC posted:From the time McClellan launched his Peninsular campaign to Grant's ascension to the commander of all Federal armies, the AotP engaged only in 6 major operations over the span of 24 months. Besides time spent in winter quarters, the biggest army on either side was frequently idle and not engaged especially after a major battle. For example, even if Meade could not immediately pursue Lee following Gettysburg, there was little excuse for being as idle as he was till the Bristoe Campaign. This lull allowed Longstreet to be detached for duty in the West and his presence along with 15,000 men from the ANoV was a major contributing factor to Rosecran's defeat at Chickamauga. Lincoln was infuriated as he should have been as this type of idleness allow the Confederates to shuffle men from crisis point to crisis point while Federal armies lay inactive. If not Lee's two separate forays into the North where McClellan and Hooker were forced into action by Lincoln to put an end to Lee's rampage, that idle time might have been even worse. Compare this to the final 12 months of the war when the AotP was in almost constant movement from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania, to the battles on the North Anna before settling into the siege of Petersburg in July. Even while in siege, Grant kept Meade and satellite armies active with numerous raids in the Richmond area preceding the fiasco at The Crater, and subsequent to that an extended effort on the Weldon rail link to Wilmington. Maybe I am allowing Lincoln's complaints towards Meade/McClellan post-Gettysburg/Antietam color my judgement too much
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2023 16:22
|
|
|
FPyat posted:Are there good examples for Sun Tzu's precept that giving the enemy a path of escape is better than entrapping them? Sort of an opposite example, but Xiang Yu, one of the contenders for the throne during the breakup of the Qin, was famous for crossing a river and then burning his boats in order to convince his troops that the only way out now was victory or death since they were now trapped. How much influence that had on the following battle isn't certain of course but he did win despite being heavily outnumbered. Similarly, Cortez is well-known for having destroyed his ships while in Mexico to convince his own troops that the only way forward was to victory. Again, how much effect that actually had is unknown but we all know how that story ended.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2023 16:24
|
|
|
TheWeedNumber posted:yeah and im still curious enough to want to to hear more After Midway the IJN tried to cover up the extent of the defeat not just from the public but from the army so it's like "The country just lost most of its fleet carrier in a single day" was something the navy actively tried to hide from the army. That's pretty loving important information
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2023 16:26
|
|
|
This is a fun thread: https://twitter.com/TaubHistory/status/1663513664907771904 https://twitter.com/TaubHistory/status/1663517325570588673    
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2023 16:38
|
|
|
FPyat posted:Are there good examples for Sun Tzu's precept that giving the enemy a path of escape is better than entrapping them? In addition to the good caveats others have added, I'll say that there are a lot of semi-encirclements, retreats through constrained terrain, and breakout attempts in modern warfare that probably live up to the spirit, if not the letter, of that precept. The Falaise Pocket in Normandy is a good example. Terrific casualties were inflicted on the Germans, including forcing a lot of much needed materiel to be abandoned or destroyed, as they pushed through a semi-encircled "neck" in the line to get to safety. This was during the breakout phase from Normandy, and it would have been fairly annoying to have to bottle up and reduce that huge a chunk of Germans if they decided to dig in and not surrender. In this case a good chunk of the units that broke out were the nuttier flavors of Waffen SS (SS Hitlerjugend comes to mind) so surrender can't be assumed. A good example of the opposite is the encirclement of the 101st at Bastogne. They occupied some critical crossroads and were a real pain in the balls to the Germans, weren't willing to surrender, but were also cut off with no easy relief for a while. From the German point of view it probably would have been desirable to get them to move off that spot and attempt a breakout, even if a good chunk of them got away. The Battle of Halbe - where the encircled German 9th Army tried to break out of their encircled positions in Berlin in 1945 and link up with the 12th Army, with the intention of surrendering to the Western Allies rather than the Soviets - is another good example of that. Again, a lot of SS units so a willingness to surrender to the Soviets can't be assumed. They were still a pretty formidable, albeit depleted, force with ~90,000 men and ~80 tanks. The breakout was a brutal affair, with heavy casualties for both the Soviets and the Germans, but ultimately still probably less of a clusterfuck than if the SS had just dug in and decided to make their last stand. It's a bit much to say that the Soviets gave them a path of escape, but it does illustrate the basic idea that someone who is trying to go somewhere else is easier to kill than someone who is dug in and won't budge. fake edit: thinking it through, another example of that, albeit one that doesn't fit in with the spirit of the precept, would be Little Bighorn. Custer's command got wiped out in the attack, repulse, and retreat. Meanwhile Reno's command survived by loving off from the attack as soon as they recognized how big the enemy force was and digging in on a hill. Basically if you can boil that supposed precept down to "it's better to fight an enemy that isn't dug in, try to lure them out of their trenches or better yet never let them get in them" then it's pretty solid and you can find a bunch of examples Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 17:31 on May 30, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 30, 2023 17:28
|
|
|
Some more person-centric history. This one's borrowed, but I'm posting about with his permission. He mentioned that his family has always been a socialist, and that minority rights have been important. As much was also proven with the history of his maternal side, who saw his great uncle's crew send messages about him. Person: Lieutenant Carrol "Ted" Binder, US Army Air Corps. A B-17 navigator who was shot down and perished. Harvard-graduate. A member of the 303rd Bombardment Group. Fate: KIA on 24 May 1944, 28th combat mission. He had had the same crew for a long time, and that crew flew on a mission that ended up as internment after a battle damage landing in Switzerland. Ted, however, had been left out of the crew to be a navigator for another new crew and their B-17. That flight was shot down over the Baltic Sea. The only surviving crew member of the fatal flight was his gunner who sent a letter to Ted's father. He was held captive by the Germans in Denmark and then messaged back when released. . Here's letters to the mother and father of the pilot. First one is his OG long-time crew who got interned, and second letter is from the tail gunner survivor who was on the fatal flight.    And another letter:   His diary entry from his first combat mission was also put online a long time ago: http://www.303rdbg.com/firstmission.html It is a very long read, but also a very intimate look into a man's first combat flight and his personal views on it and what he thinks of bravery and himself. Vahakyla fucked around with this message at 19:51 on May 30, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 30, 2023 19:28
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:To be fair to Lincoln, he'd spent a lot of time dealing with a general who did, in fact, constantly make excuses as to why he wasn't waging the war with aggression. There's some excuses for why McClellan was as... deliberate as he was, of course. He was easily taken in by Confederate deception tricks, and he always doubled Pinkerton's assessments of enemy troop strength - which Pinkerton had already doubled when his agents sent in their (usually very accurate) reports. A bigger part, though, is that McClellan was a superb organizer who always wanted to wait for just one more set of supplies or just one more bit of drill. I didn't know that Pinkertons agents gave accurate reports only for higher ups to fudge the numbers the narrative I read was the pinkertons as a whole were just making poo poo up
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2023 20:23
|
|
|
FPyat posted:Are there good examples for Sun Tzu's precept that giving the enemy a path of escape is better than entrapping them? During the 8th and 9th centuries Byzantium was going through a difficult period in its history. Having lost significant territories to Arabs, Lombards and Bulgarians, the Empire faced a serious lack of money and manpower and had trouble raising armies to defend itself from further encroachments. In this period Byzantine Anatolia was frequently raided by Arab raiding parties that often had more men than the entire Byzantine army throughout the Empire. Unable to stand against such a force in open battle, the Byzantines resorted to what they called "shadow warfare", a strategy of ambushes and guerrilla warfare. The sainted emperor Nikephoros Phocas wrote a manual about this way of war. One of the tactics used by the Byzantines was this : they'd avoid fighting during the invasion, but shadow the Arab force as it was returning to Abbasid territory. During nightfall, they'd surround the Arab camp from three sides and attack, but always leave one route free. The Arab warriors, rich with plunder and slaves and close to home, would then have a strong incentive to grab some expensive and mobile treasure and flee, abandoning their comrades. And so, weakened by desertion and disorganization, the remaining raiders would be easier for the Byzantines to dispatch and rescue the slaves.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 00:43
|
|
|
Typo posted:I didn't know that Pinkertons agents gave accurate reports only for higher ups to fudge the numbers Both sides spoke the same language, and had no sense of internal security. Between newspapers and reports from interrogating deserters and fleeing slaves, Allan Pinkerton generally did have a fair idea of the actual strength (though like McClellan he was very credulous about things like fake cannon). He just assumed that he missed a bunch and doubled his figures. I suspect that a combination of Lost Cause "Lee Was a genius" and hatred of the Pinkerton's later activities plays a part in the narrative that he was useless, but I've seen pretty good analysis that his base data wasn't bad.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 00:58
|
|
|
Was reading poo poo that isn't publicly published, it seems. Ignore me.
Arrath fucked around with this message at 04:40 on May 31, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 03:37
|
|
|
Arrath posted:unpublished material! What's the source for the report? Can't find any hits for it online, and the only report I saw mentioned the 800kg bomb that hit the Tennessee (which was a modified battleship round) Somebody fucked around with this message at 06:06 on May 31, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 03:52
|
|
|
Jobbo_Fett posted:What's the source for the report? Can't find any hits for it online, and the only report I saw mentioned the 800kg bomb that hit the Tennessee (which was a modified battleship round) As near as I can tell it isn't published online anywhere, at least publicly. Uh, oops?
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 04:41
|
|
|
Arrath posted:As near as I can tell it isn't published online anywhere, at least publicly. Uh, oops? Nothing to oops about, I'm just curious as to the rest of the text. Were torpedos also notes for duds or was this just bombs? Presumably if the design was bad, the fuze(s) for those 250kg bombs would have a general note for unreliability.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 04:51
|
|
|
Dud rates for air dropped bombs depends a lot on not only the bomb itself (quality of the fuse, explosive composition, etc) but also on what it hits. Famously the ground around / under Berlin is basically recovered marshland that is still crazy wet to this day. This is why the subways are so shallow there. I watched excavation work on a basement there once and they hit water table like ten feet down. Its Florida grade. So the ground is basically a giant sponge, which makes it a lot harder to guarantee successful fusing. Berlin is double cursed because its got a thick layer of clay about ~50 ft down, which bombs would ricochet off and end up pointing nose up. This was bad because the time delayed fuses some had worked by having acetone dissolve cellulose disks and when nose up the acetone never hit the disks, leaving these live and partially fused bombs there for 70+ years. There are dudes in the Berlin bomb squad that specialize in just those fuses, they find a few each year still. This is also why you frequently get UXO in rivers and harbors. Water plus muddy bottom = great bomb trap. So my guess is shallow harbor plus sandy/muddy bottom ups the dud rate, and a lot of the poo poo that they were dropping on on land was basically tropical wetland that had been maybe paved over with an inch of concrete. So soft ground.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 05:05
|
|
|
Jobbo_Fett posted:Nothing to oops about, I'm just curious as to the rest of the text. Haven't got to the torpedo section yet 
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 05:16
|
|
|
Vahakyla posted:Some more person-centric history. This one's borrowed, but I'm posting about with his permission. Thank you for that.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 11:35
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:This was bad because the time delayed fuses some had worked by having acetone dissolve cellulose disks and when nose up the acetone never hit the disks, leaving these live and partially fused bombs there for 70+ years. Time-delay fuses were only used in aerial bombs when bombing cities weren't they? Surely in an anti-shipping role you'd use impact fuses.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 11:43
|
|
|
The Lone Badger posted:Time-delay fuses were only used in aerial bombs when bombing cities weren't they? Surely in an anti-shipping role you'd use impact fuses. Why? You want the bomb to penetrate the deck of the ship and explode very shortly thereafter.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 12:12
|
|
|
The Lone Badger posted:Time-delay fuses were only used in aerial bombs when bombing cities weren't they? Surely in an anti-shipping role you'd use impact fuses. Yes I was just mentioning it because the geology of Berlin and how it affects bombs is something related to this that I know about and the time delayed bombs is a rather famous example of the wonky poo poo bombs can do when they hit the ground.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 12:52
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Why? You want the bomb to penetrate the deck of the ship and explode very shortly thereafter. That would be impact-fuse-with-a-delay though wouldn't it? Not 'this will go bang half an hour from now'
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 14:03
|
|
|
Can you set a delay fuze that long? My experience has been you set them in seconds and fractions of seconds.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 14:08
|
|
|
FastestGunAlive posted:Can you set a delay fuze that long? My experience has been you set them in seconds and fractions of seconds. Yes. But to make sure I wasn't talking out of my rear end Z.17 Bm. Mechanical Clockwork Time Fuze Used in: Hs-293 Flying Bomb, SC 1000, PC 1000, SC 500, BSB 1000, etc. Possible Actions - Long Delay Time [3 to 135 minutes delay after impact. Set for 5 to 120 minutes delay with +/- 10% accuracy] Lol literally the other page has (17)a Electrical-Clockwork Time Fuze Used in SC 250 and SC500 (others as well) Possible Actions: Long delay time - 1.5 to 80 hours delay after impact.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 14:21
|
|
|
Pretty interesting. I guess it would be a useful psychological effect by having it go off so later, when people think the bombardment is over and the area is safe
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 14:29
|
|
|
FastestGunAlive posted:Pretty interesting. I guess it would be a useful psychological effect by having it go off so later, when people think the bombardment is over and the area is safe
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 14:31
|
|
|
Nessus posted:I imagine your goal would be more to have it go off after they'd just poured new concrete, or possibly to blow up repair crews. It's the repair crews/firefighters thing mostly, yeah. Also people coming out of shelters when they hear the all-clear.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 14:33
|
|
|
FastestGunAlive posted:Pretty interesting. I guess it would be a useful psychological effect by having it go off so later, when people think the bombardment is over and the area is safe This, but there are other applications as well. You force your enemy to get UXO teams to remove ordnance, you prevent troops from repairing damage or returning to operational status, and you can use these in both an offensive or defensive capacity, such as with booby traps or scorched earth policies.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 14:33
|
|
|
FastestGunAlive posted:Pretty interesting. I guess it would be a useful psychological effect by having it go off so later, when people think the bombardment is over and the area is safe Reminds me of the great Finno-Soviet radio battle, where Finns blasted a polka on radio for days on end to block Soviet signals intended to blow up radio mines they'd left in Viipuri before abandoning the city. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrBLSmuhTSs Loezi fucked around with this message at 14:38 on May 31, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 14:35
|
|
|
Wasn't just playing the polka enough punishment?
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 15:03
|
|
|
Cessna posted:Wasn't just playing the polka enough punishment? Polka is amazing when you're in a beer tent, drunk, and surrounded by enthusiastic Germans and/or Wisconsinites. This is a hill I will die on.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 15:06
|
|
|
Okay, fair. (And I would stretch the definition a bit and add Norteņo.)
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 15:33
|
|
|
feedmegin posted:That would be impact-fuse-with-a-delay though wouldn't it? Not 'this will go bang half an hour from now' Yes, it would be.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 16:01
|
|
|
Tomn posted:Sort of an opposite example, but Xiang Yu, one of the contenders for the throne during the breakup of the Qin, was famous for crossing a river and then burning his boats in order to convince his troops that the only way out now was victory or death since they were now trapped. How much influence that had on the following battle isn't certain of course but he did win despite being heavily outnumbered. Feanor did it as well, both to let his followers know there was no way back and also as a 'gently caress you' to the guys he stole the boats from.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 16:27
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Polka is amazing when you're in a beer tent, drunk, and surrounded by enthusiastic Germans and/or Wisconsinites. This is a hill I will die on.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 17:05
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/Trey_Explainer/status/1663898944496103424
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 17:43
|
|
|
Were gay discharges such a common occurrence in MacArthur's staff that it impeded work?
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 18:08
|
|
|
Lots of weird Al erasure in this thread all of a sudden
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 18:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 19:34 |
|
|
Cessna posted:Okay, fair. Polka is a dance and type of rhythm, it's basically a really fast waltz. Waltzes and polkas are both in 3/4, they're just at different tempos, so a waltz is kind of gracefully swooping while polka you're doing quick crab-trotting. They're also a shitload of fun to play because of that rhythm. If you play an instrument I can't recommend it enough. That Newmarket Polka I linked is originally Irish, then French Canadian, followed by Cajun/Zydeco and now it's not uncommon in bluegrass, just to give you an idea of how widespread they are. Words like "reel", "waltz", "jig", "slipjig", "hornpipe", "march", "slide", etc. in a tune is a pre-sheet music identifier of time signature and corresponding dance.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 19:58
|
|
