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Well, what were their relative speeds, with different wind directions? Of course, this is assuming this is a perfectly flat piece of water with infinite room to manouver. http://www.atarn.org/chinese/yn_xbow/zhugehtm.htm Continuing poisonchat from a few days ago, just what was the "Tiger-killing poison" used on Chinese repeating crossbows? We probably talked about this earlier, but I just can't find any reliable translated references on if it was really Aconitum, and if it is really that nasty when tipped onto arrows. It's described as killing instantly, but at most the probably meant it knocked you onto your rear end with a single scratch. A better question is if you have something that nasty in your arsenal, that grows in your garden, why it wasn't more widely utilised.
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Dec 14, 2012 10:31
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INTJ Mastermind posted:More naval history speculation.. How would the battle of Midway been different if the Kido Butai had sortied with all six fleet carriers instead of just four? If the battle plans stayed the same, I don't think it would have made too much of a difference as the Japanese never found the American Carriers until after the decisive blow had already been struck. The difference it would have made is some more combat air patrols, and perhaps more recon planes. The most important part of the battle was that the Americans found the Japanese first and could attack their carriers. The battle could have very easily gone the other way had a stray japanese recon plane got lucky.
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Dec 14, 2012 10:31
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Okay, so what if the Koreans had Taffy 3 and the Venetians had Yamato?
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Dec 14, 2012 11:11
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the JJ posted:This assumes the Koreans sit there and wait for the Venitians to engage rather than maneuver to extend the time they can deploy their fire power. That's a fair criticism. How fast/much faster would Korean ships of the era have been?
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Dec 14, 2012 15:22
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Apparently they were very maneuverable, so I'd say its not crazy to assume it could just move out of the way when the galley gets up to battle speed for its ramming attempt. edit: just a further question about the Japanese fleet at this point, were the ships so terrible because of the low quality of timber available on Japan or was the fleet rush-built for the invasion so quality was compromised?
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Dec 14, 2012 15:44
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Bacarruda posted:That's a fair criticism. How fast/much faster would Korean ships of the era have been? Because of the really gently angled U shaped hull the Panokseon actually had a really tight turning radius which makes me wonder if they could have fired a broadside and then turned around to expose the other side in less time than it took to reload the cannon. Probably European galleys had a faster top speed. Korean boats used the Chinese style oar which was more so "sculling" than "rowing". Looking at diagrams of it I'm having a hard time understanding why anyone would choose that style over a more traditional oar, other than the fact that they don't stick out from the boat as much and are a little bit less likely to get sloughed off by a passing ship. 
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Dec 14, 2012 15:51
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Could it be because of Chinas rivers? We know they used their river networks a lot for war as well as trade, and having your oars stick way out on a tight river with heavy traffic is a good way to get them entangled/lose them. Just a hypothesis of course, but it makes sense from a very basic view point.
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Dec 14, 2012 16:55
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INTJ Mastermind posted:How the hell does that even work anyway? Once all the Luftwaffes planes had been shot down the surviving pilots were organised into infantry batallions and sent east. A similar thing happened with sailors when they had no ships left. Although there were several sub-21 year old U-Boat commanders (hehe submarine pun) it has to be noted that all of them were exceptional officers who would have no doubt become commanders later in their career. The youngest, Ludwig-Ferdinand von Friedeburg, was only twenty years old when he took his first command (and saw combat, and sank a ship) and was one of the last Germans to be released by the Western Allies in 1947. He didn't appear to pose any sort of threat but they assumed that a twenty year old who has managed to gain command of a U-Boat must be dangerous.
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Dec 14, 2012 17:20
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Using shipless crews as infantry? Another thing shamelessly stolen from the Soviets.
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Dec 14, 2012 17:45
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Grand Prize Winner posted:As long as we're on boat talk, there was a really awesome discussion of pre-dreadnaught ironclads somewhere in this or the GBS history thread. Does anyone know where it is? I've got some posts in this thread if you check my history. If that doesn't fill you in, I can always write more. edit: probably this one http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3297799&userid=115420#post399532576
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Dec 14, 2012 18:40
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Okay, so what if the Koreans had Taffy 3 and the Venetians had Yamato? Japanese wreck both with ships full of mini-ditkas.
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Dec 14, 2012 18:51
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Ensign Expendable posted:Using shipless crews as infantry? Another thing shamelessly stolen from the Soviets. Why did the Soviets keep their Navy back in the 2nd World War? we're they saving it for when it was time to declare war on Japan? Or was the Soviet Navy still restructuring from the Purges? I know they saw some action helping defending Leningrad and the Crimea during the big sieges but outside Soviet Marines kicking rear end on land they seemed to the more static of forces during the 2nd World War?
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Dec 14, 2012 19:11
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SeanBeansShako posted:Why did the Soviets keep their Navy back in the 2nd World War? we're they saving it for when it was time to declare war on Japan? IIRC it was simply not modern enough to compete and a lot of it was sunk in port.
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Dec 14, 2012 19:43
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SeanBeansShako posted:Why did the Soviets keep their Navy back in the 2nd World War? we're they saving it for when it was time to declare war on Japan? The fleet in Vladivostok was powerless to do anything against the Germans and mainly concentrated on escorting convoys from the US (Japan did not make a concentrated effort to cut these supply lines). The fleet in the Black Sea played a role in the Crimea, as you say, whilst the fleet in the far north was used to escort the Arctic Convoys from Britain. The Baltic Fleet - the largest and most powerful at the Soviet Unions disposal - was completely cut off in the Gulf of Finland by German submarine nets and minefields. They cut it off so effectively that not a single Russian ship managed to get west of Helsinki until 1944, when the Germans were in retreat. 85,000 mines were laid in the Gulf in WW2 alone, to add to the few thousand laid during the Soviet-Finnish war and the 40,000 still floating about since WW1. It's the most heavily mined area of sea on the planet.
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Dec 14, 2012 19:43
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SeanBeansShako posted:Why did the Soviets keep their Navy back in the 2nd World War? we're they saving it for when it was time to declare war on Japan? Russia had and has four fleets: Northern, Baltic, Black Sea and Pacific. (There were also smaller naval forces operating in Caspian Sea and Lake Ladoga.) During WW2 the Baltic Fleet spent most of the war under blockade in the back end of the Gulf of Finland. Venturing out to the sea from Krohnstadt was going to be a suicide, due to mines, coastal batteries on both shores, and air and naval forces of Germany and Finland. Plus the sea was frozen much of the time, anyway. During this period the most the fleet could do was support the Oranienbaum bridgehead. The Black Sea was kind of similar, not much was going to happen there for as long as the Luftwaffe dominated the southern skies. Aside from supporting marine invasions and evacuations neither Soviets nor Romanians were too interested in a decisive confrontation. I think the Northern Fleet was largely occupied with convoys, watching for German invasions on Murmansk and such. The Pacific Fleet was going played the second fiddle for the duration of the Great Patriotic War, so whatever human and material resources could be transferred to west, was. This meant sending a few ships to join the Northern Fleet. In theory there were waterways connecting the Black Sea to Baltic Sea to Arctic Sea, but in practise they were too cramped and shallow for larger warships, on top of which large parts of them were lost to enemies in 1941. So USSR had two enclosed sea navies separated from all the others and two open sea navies that could in theory join together, except they were situated across the globe from each other. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Dec 14, 2012 |
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Dec 14, 2012 19:49
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Great replies so far, thank you.wdarkk posted:IIRC it was simply not modern enough to compete and a lot of it was sunk in port. So most of it was still Great War era tech or prior? did Stalin and his 'reforms' delay modernisation?
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Dec 14, 2012 19:52
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SeanBeansShako posted:So most of it was still Great War era tech or prior? did Stalin and his 'reforms' delay modernisation? I think it's more a question of what was important for the defense of Soviet Union. What were the main naval bases? St. Petersburg, Murmansk, Sevastopol, Vladivostok. Where was a major war going to be decided? Somewhere between Vistula and Dniepr. Building a strong modern navy would be of no use there.
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Dec 14, 2012 19:58
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duckmaster posted:Once all the Luftwaffes planes had been shot down the surviving pilots were organised into infantry batallions and sent east.
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Dec 14, 2012 20:08
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gradenko_2000 posted:Didn't the Luftwaffe form "field divisions" by as early as 1942 because Goering wanted some ground pounders for his little corner of the Reich? Yes but these were formed from support services rather than pilots. Also not so much because Göring wanted to do so, but because the ground forces needed more men and the Luftwaffe had a lot of able-bodied servicemen not doing anything too useful. Since he couldn't keep them all to himself, he argued that their Luftwaffe ethos (of which he was the prime example) would be broken if they were mixed with the unwashed Heer masses. Therefore, the Luftwaffe Field Divisions. The best equipped of which was Panzer Division Hermann Göring. Modesty looked good on the guy!
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Dec 14, 2012 20:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:Didn't the Luftwaffe form "field divisions" by as early as 1942 because Goering wanted some ground pounders for his little corner of the Reich? I thought this was the problem. From what I recall, I could have sworn that the LW issue was that they had plenty of planes, just not enough trained pilots to fly them. Hence the Volks program and series of planes.
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Dec 14, 2012 20:20
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SeanBeansShako posted:Great replies so far, thank you. My great grandfather was in the graduating class of replacement naval officers (the first wave considered politically reliable), and pretty much everyone shot up the ranks since there was ever so much to replace. His memoirs don't talk about modernization or anything, but I imagine flushing out the ranks didn't do the navy any favours.
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Dec 14, 2012 20:43
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Nenonen posted:Yes but these were formed from support services rather than pilots. Also of note, the Luftwaffe field division's combat performance was abysmal.
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Dec 14, 2012 21:08
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Nenonen posted:The Black Sea was kind of similar, not much was going to happen there for as long as the Luftwaffe dominated the southern skies. Aside from supporting marine invasions and evacuations neither Soviets nor Romanians were too interested in a decisive confrontation. The Luftwaffe, despite its air supremacy wasn't really able to do much about Soviet shipping in the Black Sea. This is one of the reasons that the sieges of Odessa and Sevastopol lasted so long. In fact, Odessa produced so much during its siege that it sent out mortars on outgoing ships. The Romanians did not want to get their four destroyers on the wrong side of the Parizhskaya Kommuna's guns with their guns. After 1942, though, the Black Sea Fleet's readiness dropped to a level that the Germans and Romanians were able to evacuate Sevastopol without much of an issue.
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Dec 14, 2012 22:15
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Saint Celestine posted:Also of note, the Luftwaffe field division's combat performance was abysmal. Weren't the fallschirmjägers pretty good?
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Dec 14, 2012 22:28
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Lord Tywin posted:Weren't the fallschirmjägers pretty good? They were good, but a minority. They were also well trained. However when most people talk about Luftwaffe Field Divisions, they think of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luftwaffe_Field_Division "Until taken over by the Heer (and in many cases for some time afterwards) these units were issued with standard Luftwaffe feldblau uniforms, and being so easily identifiable were said to often be singled out by opposing forces. Their reputation as combat troops was poor, despite the high standard of Luftwaffe recruits, at least in part from being required to perform roles (ground warfare) for which they as airmen had little training. They were frequently used for rear echelon duties to free up front line troops." I forget what book I read it in, but they did not have a good reputation. They got the best equipment and frequently sucked at using it, so a big waste.
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Dec 14, 2012 22:53
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mllaneza posted:I've got some posts in this thread if you check my history. If that Who would have come off the better in a battle between HMS Warrior and USS Monitor or CSS Virginia?
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Dec 14, 2012 23:03
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Saint Celestine posted:They were good, but a minority. They were also well trained. However when most people talk about Luftwaffe Field Divisions, they think of It really must have sucked balls to have joined the Luftwaffe so you don't have to fight on the eastern front and then suddenly you are transferred to the eastern front with the added bonus of not having any relevant training for infantry warfare.
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Dec 15, 2012 02:26
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Why would you join the LW to not fight on the Eastern Front?
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Dec 15, 2012 02:54
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Throatwarbler posted:Why would you join the LW to not fight on the Eastern Front? Because you'd most likely die.
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Dec 15, 2012 03:01
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How well was the German invasion of Crete executed? All I know is that Germany never tried any major paradrop operations after it, but I don't know whether that was because they bungled it, the Allies defended well, or they were just asking too much of the Fallschirmjagers.
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Dec 15, 2012 03:13
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^ They bungled the poo poo out of it. Had the British been just a little stronger, they would have lost the battle of Crete. The Fallschrimjagers took so many casualties that they never(?) undertook another airborne operation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Crete Long story short: Germans gently caress up, but the Brits gently caress up more, Germans capture an airfield, enabling them to flood in more troops and prevail. Also they tried to seaborne land reinforcements that turned into a clusterfuck thanks to the British navy. Oh. They jumped separate from their weapons. So when you landed on the ground with a pistol and a knife, you had to go searching for your container with your heavy weapons in it. Oh and the enemy might be shooting at you. Good luck Kamarad! Boiled Water posted:Because you'd most likely die. I dunno. It seems like it wasn't what branch you joined, but rather where you were placed, that you stood the best chance of survival. Join Wehrmacht - Spend the war 'occupying' Denmark. Join Wehrmacht - Get placed into 6th Army under Paulus. Join Kriegsmarine - Cushy land job/Minor Naval forces role Join Kriegsmarine - Scharnhorst or a Uboat Actually, joining the Luftwaffe sounds terrible either way, since you either get placed into a field division or you get to fly sorties until you die vs bombers/Soviet Air Force. Lets just sum it up. "Being part of the German Armed Forces in WW2, you had a 50/50 chance of surviving." Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Dec 15, 2012 |
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Dec 15, 2012 03:14
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I don't believe for a minute the odds were that good.
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Dec 15, 2012 03:32
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Saint Celestine posted:^ They bungled the poo poo out of it. Thanks for the summary. I thought their bad planning for Sealion was just a one-off thing, but also "They jumped separate from their weapons."?  Incredible.
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Dec 15, 2012 03:41
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It's almost as if the officers in charge looked at the war as a whole and decided to try and sabotage it from within.
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Dec 15, 2012 03:52
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Saint Celestine posted:Actually, joining the Luftwaffe sounds terrible either way, since you either get placed into a field division or you get to fly sorties until you die vs bombers/Soviet Air Force. Only a minority of people in any air force are fly boys. Airplanes are so finicky and require so much servicing, especially during the most intense operations, that the support personnel can vastly outnumber the pilots. Eg. USS Enterprise CVN-65 had an air arm of 250 pilots and 1,550 support personnel with capacity for up to 90 planes. It's better to have a relatively large ground crew to keep the planes in maximum use by a smaller cadre of pilots who get as much flight time as possible than it is to have the pilots waiting grounded. In that regard being in the air force is one of the cozier spots: the most trouble one could expect is the enemy trying to bomb your airfield but at least you'd have AA guns around you. Blckdrgn posted:I thought this was the problem. From what I recall, I could have sworn that the LW issue was that they had plenty of planes, just not enough trained pilots to fly them. Hence the Volks program and series of planes. I thought it was more about that they had a pressing shortage of airplane fuel toward the end of war and could not use it on pilot training as much because everything went to the active Geschwaders?
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Dec 15, 2012 04:00
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Only way to win? crash your plane into the Irish sea and hope you get picked up by the Irish coast guard.
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Dec 15, 2012 04:18
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SeanBeansShako posted:Only way to win? crash your plane into the Irish sea and hope you get picked up by the Irish coast guard. There was the rookie pilot who either accidentally or "accidentally" got his directions mixed up and landed his plane (with a top-secret prototype radar) in an English airfield.
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Dec 15, 2012 04:22
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SeanBeansShako posted:Only way to win? crash your plane into the Irish sea and hope you get picked up by the Irish coast guard. I don't know, I think I would first like to do some comparisons between the internment conditions in other unaligned countries like Sweden and Switzerland. How were interned soldiers treated in these countries, anyway? What happened to German soldiers after the war ended? At the moment all I can find is about Swedish internment of anti-nazis and refugees during WW2, which is new information to me.
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Dec 15, 2012 04:47
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What is a "gentleman adventurer"? A mercenary?
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Dec 15, 2012 04:55
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AgentF posted:What is a "gentleman adventurer"? A mercenary? Could be. Could be also a Explorer, Military Advisor, Mercenary or Dealer Of Exotic Pleasurables. Very generic term.
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Dec 15, 2012 05:00
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