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Saint Celestine posted:Not WW2, but you could be the Iranians and just send waves of children across the minefield to blow them up. After all the mines are cleared, then you send in your regulars. I've heard that was apocryphal... for the Iranians. I have read that one method the Germans used was to round up suspected Jews and Partisans and have them run across suspected minefields, and the Soviets used several of their penal battalions in a similar fashion. I'm sure Ensign Expendable is more knowledgeable on the topic than I am, however.
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Nov 17, 2013 04:46
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Fangz posted:I'm not sure if the Germans ever developed a good anti-mine method. I believe anti tank mines did for a lot of German tanks at Kursk. Their most hilarious anti-mine method from the Germans was zimmerit. Having developed a mine/bomb a soldier could attach to a tank via magnet, the Germans begin pasting ridged clay onto their tanks, adding days to construction time. The ridges would prevent the mine from sticking to the hull and the tank moving was expected to shake it off, as they assumed the allies would also use magnetic mines. They never did.
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Nov 17, 2013 04:58
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Acebuckeye13 posted:I've heard that was apocryphal... for the Iranians. I have read that one method the Germans used was to round up suspected Jews and Partisans and have them run across suspected minefields, and the Soviets used several of their penal battalions in a similar fashion. I'm sure Ensign Expendable is more knowledgeable on the topic than I am, however. Yeah any large scale state-sanctioned "they murder children" stories are usually bullshit, it's just a standard way to deride your enemies. It has totally been done (and is still done) though, particularly in poorer places like Burma and Congo, but even occasionally among our first-world fighting forces in isolated-but-not-infrequent-enough cases.
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Nov 17, 2013 05:03
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Fangz posted:3. If you get one of the arsehole commanders, then, well... You and the rest of the boys say your prayers to Marx and advance as though the minefield wasn't there. Some of you will get through, hopefully, and maybe the casualties you incur will be balanced by the element of surprise. Good luck! "They marched their men through minefields!" was a very common thing to say to illustrate the cruelty of whoever you didn't like. The Soviets said it about the Tsarists, trash level popular "historians" said it about the Soviets, and yet no actual text of order on marching through minefields has ever surfaced. Raskolnikov38 posted:Their most hilarious anti-mine method from the Germans was zimmerit. Having developed a mine/bomb a soldier could attach to a tank via magnet, the Germans begin pasting ridged clay onto their tanks, adding days to construction time. The ridges would prevent the mine from sticking to the hull and the tank moving was expected to shake it off, as they assumed the allies would also use magnetic mines. They never did. It also didn't work.
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Nov 17, 2013 05:27
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It's funny, up until this moment I assumed I just misunderstood the whole zimmerit thing somehow. I always figured that zimmerit must have been used in response to some real threat, and when the Germans stopped applying it to new tanks it was simply a late war cost-cutting measure that ultimately didn't really hurt them too much. But the actual story is so much funnier.
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Nov 17, 2013 05:32
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Acebuckeye13 posted:. I'm sure Ensign Expendable is more knowledgeable on the topic than I am, however. Username subject expertise combo?
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Nov 17, 2013 05:41
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Ron Jeremy posted:Username subject expertise combo? You're one to talk...
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Nov 17, 2013 05:50
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Ensign Expendable posted:It also didn't work.  Oh nazis you never fail to amuse.
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Nov 17, 2013 05:53
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Ensign Expendable posted:"They marched their men through minefields!" was a very common thing to say to illustrate the cruelty of whoever you didn't like. The Soviets said it about the Tsarists, trash level popular "historians" said it about the Soviets, and yet no actual text of order on marching through minefields has ever surfaced. Wouldn't marching people through a minefield be pretty terrible at actually clearing mines anyway? Sure a lot of people are likely to get brutally killed, but they're probably going to miss a lot of mines(the profile of feet on the ground compared to a roller), destroy morale rapidly, and give away any surprise factor you were going to have with the explosions. Also nobody has that many undesirables/reserves to spare.
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Nov 17, 2013 08:12
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veekie posted:Wouldn't marching people through a minefield be pretty terrible at actually clearing mines anyway? Sure a lot of people are likely to get brutally killed, but they're probably going to miss a lot of mines(the profile of feet on the ground compared to a roller), destroy morale rapidly, and give away any surprise factor you were going to have with the explosions. Yeah, the most common really expedient method of getting rid of mines i've seen in records is just the use of large amounts of artillery on known minefields.
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Nov 17, 2013 08:16
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Raskolnikov38 posted:
veekie posted:Wouldn't marching people through a minefield be pretty terrible at actually clearing mines anyway? Sure a lot of people are likely to get brutally killed, but they're probably going to miss a lot of mines(the profile of feet on the ground compared to a roller), destroy morale rapidly, and give away any surprise factor you were going to have with the explosions. Like I said, Ensign knows far more than I do about the practices about the Red Army. The German army as well, most likely. However, one of the articles I was assigned to read this semester mentions the topic, and here's where the thread goes from "Oh those wacky Germans" to being utterly horrifying. (Quotes are copied from the article A Calculus of Complcity by Waitman Beorn) quote:Because enemy mines are to be expected throughout the “Triangle” region, “Minesweeper 42s” (members of Jewish labor battalions or captured bandits with hoes and rollers) are to be available in sufficient quantities. Units are to equip themselves with cords to use as leashes with which to control the Jews or bandits. quote:2nd Battalion, 727th Infantry Regiment, which was employed as the lead battalion, broke the enemy resistance in a quick attack, in spite of the fact Never underestimate the ability of the Nazis to go above and beyond in the field of sheer inhumanity.
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Nov 17, 2013 08:42
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At least they had tools. That sounds more believable to send undesirables to do extremely risky work, rather than sending them into certain death.
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Nov 17, 2013 08:53
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Ensign Expendable posted:"They marched their men through minefields!" was a very common thing to say to illustrate the cruelty of whoever you didn't like. The Soviets said it about the Tsarists, trash level popular "historians" said it about the Soviets, and yet no actual text of order on marching through minefields has ever surfaced. quote:There are two kinds of mines; one is the personnel mine and the other is the vehicular mine. When we come to a mine field our infantry attacks exactly as if it were not there. The losses we get from personnel mines we consider only equal to those we would have gotten from machine guns and artillery if the Germans had chosen to defend that particular area with strong bodies of troops instead of with mine fields. The attacking infantry does not set off the vehicular mines, so after they have penetrated to the far side of the field they form a bridgehead, after which the engineers come up and dig out channels through which our vehicles can go. This might be a slur, but I think it's reasonably plausible. Minefields, at least in some cases, are not absolutely dense. The purpose here would not be to clear the minefield, but to preserve operational momentum, and not get into a situation where the enemy can react and you find yourself mine clearing under enemy fire.
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Nov 17, 2013 11:17
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Ensign Expendable posted:
It did work - it made their tanks look 
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Nov 17, 2013 11:40
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One of the official British Army 'lessons learned' from the failure of the Anzio Operation was "No amount of shouting through megaphones will induce troops to advance through a minefield". So someone clearly tried it.
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Nov 17, 2013 12:23
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Re: Sword chat, was Colichemarde a thing during the 30 years war? This wiki page gives 1680 as an invention date, but who knows if some kind of proto-Colichemarde was in use earlier. I believe the only surviving examples are on Small Swords though.
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Nov 17, 2013 12:29
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Their most hilarious anti-mine method from the Germans was zimmerit. Having developed a mine/bomb a soldier could attach to a tank via magnet, the Germans begin pasting ridged clay onto their tanks, adding days to construction time. The ridges would prevent the mine from sticking to the hull and the tank moving was expected to shake it off, as they assumed the allies would also use magnetic mines. They never did. This description isn't quite accurate. The principle was to add some distance between the steel hull and the outer surface by adding a sufficiently thick non-magnetic layer, thus weakening the effectiveness of any magnets. The function of the ridges was to increase the thickness while keeping the zimmerit layer lighter (and presumably quicker to dry) than if it was an equally thick even layer. Before Hafthohlladung the Waffen SS developed a smaller non-magnetic sticky bomb, HL-handgranate, which relied on glue for its stickiness. What could possibly go wrong?
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Nov 17, 2013 12:36
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Rabhadh posted:Re: Sword chat, was Colichemarde a thing during the 30 years war? This wiki page gives 1680 as an invention date, but who knows if some kind of proto-Colichemarde was in use earlier. I believe the only surviving examples are on Small Swords though. However, I'm not a sword specialist, so if I say "I haven't seen any," that'll mean almost nothing--if I'm going to a museum, I'll be outside looking at the artillery park before I'm inside with the swords. (I met a half-cannon outside a restaurant near the Festung Dresden museum. His name was Julius.  ) So the answer is...maybe not? Sorry.
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Nov 17, 2013 13:11
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a travelling HEGEL posted:There are tons of pre-rapiers, proto-rapiers, and transition rapiers out there, the categories of many of which bleed into one another in practice. I do not remember seeing any swords with that cross section from this period. It just seems like an elegant solution to the "your sword is too drat thin  " argument, which is why I brought it up.
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Nov 17, 2013 13:13
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Nenonen posted:This description isn't quite accurate. The principle was to add some distance between the steel hull and the outer surface by adding a sufficiently thick non-magnetic layer, thus weakening the effectiveness of any magnets. The function of the ridges was to increase the thickness while keeping the zimmerit layer lighter (and presumably quicker to dry) than if it was an equally thick even layer. The British developed a similar device during the dark days after Dunkirk, for use by the Home Guard. For some reason it was not well liked! I recall an anecdote about a poor trainee, who somehow managed to get a live grenade glued to his trousers during training. He undressed swiftly, and therefore survived.
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Nov 17, 2013 13:52
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Rabhadh posted:It just seems like an elegant solution to the "your sword is too drat thin Also, I imagine most people who were taking swords into battle didn't exactly get to pick and choose which kind they wanted, so it might not be that illogical that some impractical types would be there.
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Nov 17, 2013 14:40
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Panzeh posted:Also, I imagine most people who were taking swords into battle didn't exactly get to pick and choose which kind they wanted, so it might not be that illogical that some impractical types would be there.  (this picture is from a hundred years prior to what we are talking about, but what pike-on-pike combat looks like is similar) You need something small enough so that you have room to fight in this poo poo show. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Nov 17, 2013 |
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Nov 17, 2013 14:50
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Panzeh posted:Also, I imagine most people who were taking swords into battle didn't exactly get to pick and choose which kind they wanted, so it might not be that illogical that some impractical types would be there. That doesn't seem too likely unless they were conscripted. Swords were kind of a significant investment, and if you couldn't afford to pick you're more likely to wind up with a stock servicable infantry sword than some kind of weird design. The weirdass types are more likely to be tailor made to the user.
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Nov 17, 2013 15:18
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a travelling HEGEL posted:It's actually not impractical for a musketeer or pikeman to carry a small weapon as a backup, because after poo poo starts going down the field is going to look like this: Isn't the name of that image "Bad War?"
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Nov 17, 2013 16:27
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Kemper Boyd posted:Isn't the name of that image "Bad War?" 
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Nov 17, 2013 16:36
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How on earth was battlefield command & control done in engagements like this? You'd think that after two such units locked in melee they'd stay locked until one side routed or something?
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Nov 17, 2013 17:54
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It wasn't  That is basically what happened. Battles are not orderly things.
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Nov 17, 2013 18:00
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Hovermoose posted:How on earth was battlefield command & control done in engagements like this? You'd think that after two such units locked in melee they'd stay locked until one side routed or something? You can send a runner over, but once the battle begins (and this is going to be the case up until the 19th century, I think. Later? Earlier? Help me out here, someone) a lot of things are going to be out of the commander's hands, especially if (like Gustavus Adolphus or Pappenheim) he also fights. This isn't Wellington standing on a hill or something--when Gustavus Adolphus died he was leading a cavalry charge against Wallenstein's left wing. Although you can make meaningful decisions after the battle starts, no wonder military theorists believe so much depends on initial deployment. Edit: Koramei posted:It wasn't http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Breitenfeld_(1631)#Tactical_Overview Just, the decisions they make cannot be very granular. It's at the level of "The Saxons are wavering; press the attack" or "Refuse the Swedish line," not at the level of directing individual tercios or brigades. That's what their own officers are for. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Nov 17, 2013 |
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Nov 17, 2013 18:11
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Wasn't that how training and discipline played a huge difference in the effectiveness of armies? Simply having enough control to disengage in an orderly manner on demand would be a pretty huge advantage.
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Nov 17, 2013 18:12
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a travelling HEGEL posted:I'll be outside looking at the artillery park before I'm inside with the swords. (I met a half-cannon outside a restaurant near the Festung Dresden museum. His name was Julius. Was any old artillery used (in desperation) in World War II? The military museum in Paris has an old cannon with Russian names and a date from 1945 carved into it.
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Nov 17, 2013 18:21
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I guess maybe you could improvise some kind of grapeshot, since the actual ammunition old cannons used might be pretty scarce.. I don't actually know though, although I am very fond of the occurrences when ye olde weaponry shows up again in modern history.
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Nov 17, 2013 18:26
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Was any old artillery used (in desperation) in World War II? The military museum in Paris has an old cannon with Russian names and a date from 1945 carved into it. Depends how old you are talking about. As EnsignExpendable has pointed out the Germans made a thing of raiding French stockpiles for guns and welding them onto anything that moved (and the Atlantic wall).
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Nov 17, 2013 18:28
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Old artillery was sometimes used in desperation well after WW2, especially by people that can't manufacture their own stuff and on under equipped fronts. But on the whole I think the metal would have been too valuable? People'd want to melt it down and make something more useful with it if they could.a travelling HEGEL posted:Not entirely. Look at this overview of the Battle of Breitenfeld: Tilly, Pappenheim, Gustavus Adolphus, and Horn are all making decisions and doing things. Even in a general melee like that? That couldn't have been common, surely? Incidentally I really love the picture on that section (someone posted it earlier in the thread too) . I don't know if it was intentional but the clouds of smoke show so much more than just musketfire.
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Nov 17, 2013 18:35
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Alchenar posted:Depends how old you are talking about. As EnsignExpendable has pointed out the Germans made a thing of raiding French stockpiles for guns and welding them onto anything that moved (and the Atlantic wall). Oh, that's basically high tech cutting edge compared to what was pulled out of museums. AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Was any old artillery used (in desperation) in World War II? The military museum in Paris has an old cannon with Russian names and a date from 1945 carved into it. Depends how old you're talking. I've seen a document enumerating model 1900 76.2 mm cannons for use by the Moscow Militia. There were two 6 inch Vickers model 1873 cannons set up in fixed turrets at Kolomna at the end of 1941. Allegedly, 6 inch model 1877 howitzers were also used as improvised AT guns in defense of Krasnaya Polyana, retrieved from stores of an artillery school. A British Ordnance BL 60-pounder was photographed in 1941 at Volokolamsk. Bitter Mushroom posted:I guess maybe you could improvise some kind of grapeshot, since the actual ammunition old cannons used might be pretty scarce.. I don't actually know though, although I am very fond of the occurrences when ye olde weaponry shows up again in modern history. High explosive is high explosive, and can do some pretty serious damage. The Tsarists kept some stuff literally forever, so it's not hard to imagine ammunition was available.
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Nov 17, 2013 18:38
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Koramei posted:Even in a general melee like that? That couldn't have been common, surely? quote:Incidentally I really love the picture on that section (someone posted it earlier in the thread too) Here's some work by the Swiss artist/mercenary Urs Graf, who seems to have had a good sense of humor. I posted these in the last thread, too.  
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Nov 17, 2013 19:37
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Koramei posted:Old artillery was sometimes used in desperation well after WW2, especially by people that can't manufacture their own stuff and on under equipped fronts. But on the whole I think the metal would have been too valuable? People'd want to melt it down and make something more useful with it if they could. The Smithsonian donated several pieces from their artillery collection during World War II(?) as scrap metal, but iirc they were mostly 1900s-era guns.
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Nov 17, 2013 19:48
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a travelling HEGEL posted:You need something small enough so that you have room to fight in this poo poo show. Someone posted a movie clip of pike on pike action, and in it, a protagonist-looking guy and some others crawled under the Pikes with swords and daggers and commenced to stabbing. Was this a typical part of pike warfare, or Hollywood action?
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Nov 17, 2013 19:48
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sullat posted:Someone posted a movie clip of pike on pike action, and in it, a protagonist-looking guy and some others crawled under the Pikes with swords and daggers and commenced to stabbing. Was this a typical part of pike warfare, or Hollywood action? Bacarruda posted:The Smithsonian donated several pieces from their artillery collection during World War II(?) as scrap metal...  Jeez.
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Nov 17, 2013 20:11
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a travelling HEGEL posted:Nah, you can do that. Look at half the guys in the engraving I posted. They've dropped the pikes and gone either to their swords (which I wouldn't have done, still too big--but then again my eyesight is so bad that if I stand at the butt end of a pike the point is blurry) or their cinquedeas or something (which would have been my choice). A friend of mine in England has a poker that started out life as a cavalry officer's sword from 1550 and has been poked into fires ever since then. The handle of it is worn away but maker's marks and the rest are still visible enough to verify what it was but it's in just terrible condition. The blade is snapped off about 1/3 of the way down too, something that happened around WWI when someone used it to lever open a locked door. Everyone knew it was this old sword they just thought it was fun to use it as a poker. They gave the scabbard to a theatrical society at some point, too, or they just lost it and thought that'd sound better. Things that make historians cry.
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Nov 17, 2013 20:48
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Obdicut posted:A friend of mine in England has a poker that started out life as a cavalry officer's sword from 1550 and has been poked into fires ever since then. The handle of it is worn away but maker's marks and the rest are still visible enough to verify what it was but it's in just terrible condition. The blade is snapped off about 1/3 of the way down too, something that happened around WWI when someone used it to lever open a locked door.
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Nov 17, 2013 20:51
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