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a travelling HEGEL posted:
We do seem to be something of a bog standard in academia at least, if it's any consolation, I only care about 'small wars', have never been big on Cold War (outside of absurdities such as ekranoplan or warplans) and the World Wars bore the arse off me. You can have your Rommel, I'm a Giap man through and through. My newfound interest in warfare from the Siege of Vienna to, well, the congress of Vienna was actually peaked from lurking in this thread 
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Nov 23, 2013 14:54
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AdmiralSmeggins posted:We do seem to be something of a bog standard in academia at least, if it's any consolation, I only care about 'small wars', have never been big on Cold War (outside of absurdities such as ekranoplan or warplans) and the World Wars bore the arse off me. You can have your Rommel, I'm a Giap man through and through. quote:My newfound interest in warfare from the Siege of Vienna to, well, the congress of Vienna was actually peaked from lurking in this thread Although, I have gone to a bar that still has a cannonball in its wall from the '84 siege, that was pretty cool. And I've walked past a place that pried their cannonball out, gilded it, and hung it above the door where the establishment's sign usually goes. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Nov 23, 2013 |
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Nov 23, 2013 15:02
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And there was me thinking I was a strategy hipster 
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Nov 23, 2013 15:07
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AdmiralSmeggins posted:hipster a travelling HEGEL posted:Godspeed you! holy roman emperor
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Nov 23, 2013 15:20
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So, I was wondering about nuclear strategy. Specifically targets. Who was targeting what and where? Do we even know? With the main players it's fairly easy to figure out. Soviet missiles were targeting Western Europe and North America with most of their firepower likely concentrated on West Germany, the UK, France, Canada, and the United States while American missiles were mostly targeting the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries such as Poland and East Germany. What about non-aligned countries though? Nuclear war is often portrayed as a civilization-busting catastrophe but I'm curious as to who outside the main belligerents would be affected (directly by the war itself. Obviously the resulting nuclear winter and radiation would gently caress everyone the world over but I'm limiting this to people actually having their territory directly targeted by nuclear weapons.) China is a wildcard who probably had nukes pointing at both the US and the Soviet Union depending on what time period we're talking about. Would they or the Soviets also target Japan? Southeast Asia? Australia? India had nukes starting in 74, who were they aimed at? What about Africa and the Middle East? Had a nuclear war broken out would it just be people literally lobbing nukes at everyone outside their bloc who might potentially not be totally on your side?
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Nov 23, 2013 15:21
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AdmiralSmeggins posted:have never been big on Cold War... I'm a Giap man through and through. No comprendo. Since you're a COIN/small wars guy though do you know about the Eritrean War of Independence? Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Nov 23, 2013 |
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Nov 23, 2013 15:52
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Fojar38 posted:So, I was wondering about nuclear strategy. Specifically targets. Who was targeting what and where? Do we even know? We some of the early nuclear targeting options leading up to SIOP-62 (the definitive 'grand tour' US warplan, IE nuke everything), and a lot was written during the Cold War itself within the US policy domain, but the nitty gritty of megatonnages and megadeaths are still largely out of the public's view. On the Soviet or Chinese side it's a total wash AFAIK. quote:What about non-aligned countries though? Nuclear war is often portrayed as a civilization-busting catastrophe but I'm curious as to who outside the main belligerents would be affected (directly by the war itself. Obviously the resulting nuclear winter and radiation would gently caress everyone the world over but I'm limiting this to people actually having their territory directly targeted by nuclear weapons.) Well if you accept the possibility of limited nuclear war taking place, indirect effects might not that large. A naval exchange, like with what almost happened with the Soviet sub that got harassed all to hell during the Cuban Missile Crisis, would not have had a global ecological impact had the power that be been able to cut it short. The same goes for systems like air defense, whose use would present a clear nuclear escalation, but would have had no direct impact on civilians in themselves. I think territory is a bit of a nebulous concept if you consider all the different ways and means of using these weapons. quote:China is a wildcard who probably had nukes pointing at both the US and the Soviet Union depending on what time period we're talking about. Would they or the Soviets also target Japan? Southeast Asia? Australia? India had nukes starting in 74, who were they aimed at? What about Africa and the Middle East? As I said there's no publicly available stuff on Chinese strategy that I'm aware of, but yes they probably had the Soviets in their sight from the day they had a deliverable weapon, and the US after their long-range capability came to be. Japan and Korea hosted a substantial number of US military facilities, as did the Philippines and of course Guam, and there were plenty US forces around in South Vietnam and Thailand during the sixties and early seventies. I guess it all depends on what level and scale of conflict we're talking about here. Total war? Localized conflict? Comparatively low levels of escalation? I'm sure Australia was slated to get hit in some kind of apocalyptic plan the Soviets cooked up, but I don't think we'll ever see that kind of stuff released from their archives. India was their trading partner and part-time ally though, so maybe who knows what the thinking was before Smiling Buddha? They might as well have been part of a US set of targets. As for the Indian program, I was under the impression that they kept it on the back burner post-1974, with development only escalating after Pakistan got in the game throughout the nineties. I'm sure they could look at a map and decide they wanted to bomb Islamabad and Karachi, but if you don't have an immediately deliverable weapons it's all a bit academic. Since you've mentioned Africa and the Middle East, let's consider the other two 'non-aligned' Cold War nukehavers: South Africa had something like a 'declare nuclear weapons capability, do a full-on weapons test if necessary' policy for times of acute national crisis. This in order to get the United States involved if they were sufficiently threatened by outside, notionally communist forces. They wanted to be taken seriously and be able to break out of their international isolation, nuclear weapons as a diplomatic trump card if you will. Israel probably deployed them as a demonstratory, warfighting, and retaliatory capability from the get-go. One can only imagine what their usage parameters would have looked like. quote:Had a nuclear war broken out would it just be people literally lobbing nukes at everyone outside their bloc who might potentially not be totally on your side? On paper? Not from a Western perspective post-massive retaliation. What kind of nuclear war are we talking about?
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Nov 23, 2013 16:55
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I recently read Jukka Rislakki's "Paha Sektori" (Bad Sector) which isn't available in english. In it he talks a lot about what sort of nuclear threats Finland and the Nordic countries faced. Since the Soviets were aware of the fact that in case of war, the Swedes would ditch their neutrality and allow the US in, the Soviets targeted everything that could be used as an airfield. The US did the same to Finland, since the whole finnish neutrality policy wasn't credible at all. This threat subsided a bit after everyone had missiles, since the airbases lost quite a bit of their importance.
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Nov 23, 2013 17:19
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:So 20+ years after the opening of the Soviet archives are there still lots of things still to be uncovered, translated, regarding WWII or do we have as good a grasp on things as we're gonna get? Short answer: there's plenty left. Long answer: Let's take the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, one of many archives (and my favourite, because this is where most of the tank stuff is). What's in it? Literally everything, every document that has ceased to be useful to the Red Army, like this thing. Literally a scrap of paper with haphazard scribbles, transcribed, indexed, and filed away in the infinite halls of Podolsk. Another issue is that the documents are sorted by owner. You can't just say "I want everything on the IS tank" and get a nice index, you have to ask for Artillery Committee documents, Kirov factory documents, Uralmash documents, documents of the various Fronts and Guards Independent Heavy Tank Breakthrough Regiments, etc. And then sit there and skim through tons of materials irrelevant to what you need. And when you do find them, you have to give them to a frail old lady to run through an equally frail old photocopier, which kind of limits how much information you can extract. That's one archive, out of hundreds, if not thousands, and that's just for getting the documents you need. As far as translation to English, that's another bottleneck.
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Nov 23, 2013 17:38
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So, Siege of Vienna? I've been to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna today: Turkish hornbows  more:  Crimean Tartar hornbow. Those are larger and have more reflex in the grip. Note the string bridges:  Some turkish general's riveted chaimail, the inside of the links is just 5mm. Very tightly weaved. Looted after the Siege of Belgrad  Hussar's cuirass. Note the segments:  Different types of imperial soldier's equipment:  There's also the seal of the sultan that was captured in the Battle of Zenta, but it's a rather hidden in a small case and the ligthing was pretty bad (also the reason why there's just these few pics)
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Nov 23, 2013 20:34
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:So 20+ years after the opening of the Soviet archives are there still lots of things still to be uncovered, translated, regarding WWII or do we have as good a grasp on things as we're gonna get? A professor of mine will soon be releasing a book covering most of the files found in Romania and she's still discovering loads of 'new' stuff. One of the most surprising things she said she discovered was how important Albania was and how much more powerful member states were then mostly is thought. This is the book and if everything goes alright I'll be helping with the final pass in a few months so if anything interesting military wise comes out I'll keep y'all updated: http://www.amazon.ca/Warsaw-Pact-Reconsidered-Laurien-Crump/dp/0415690714 After reading your post better I realise you were mostly interested in the WW2 stuff though I'm sure someone might find this interesting.
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Nov 23, 2013 20:57
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Is The Mitrokhin Archive, by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, a reliable book? I'm 100 pages into it and it has parts that are unbelievably farcical, like the English plot to publicly de-pants and humiliate Lenin.
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Nov 23, 2013 22:08
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Ugh. The one on the left reminds me of a now-retired USAF Lt Col's flight suit.
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Nov 23, 2013 22:15
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:No comprendo. IIRC Giap started in '42 but I really meant, Nuclear Deterrence bores me. I only know of it, that it's a rare modern example of an anti-colonial struggle against an African country and that the Ethiopians had clearly never read anything about not attempting repression against an insurgency that has widely societal support. Long running, high casualty COIN that should probably be held up as an example but isn't due to Anglocentrism. I have a college friend who is a devout Africanist who could probably bend your ear over it, InspectorBloor posted:So, Siege of Vienna? I've been to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna today: Now that is a nice collection of relics, reminds me of the Polish Military museum in Warsaw, Hussaria uniforms are pants=shittingly terrifying
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Nov 23, 2013 22:19
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Godholio posted:Ugh. The one on the left reminds me of a now-retired USAF Lt Col's flight suit. Must be very ineffcient to wear so much metal when you fly a plane. At least it isn't trying to strangle you like the F-22 suit 
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Nov 23, 2013 22:45
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Godholio posted:Ugh. The one on the left reminds me of a now-retired USAF Lt Col's flight suit. I found that one pretty impressive. It's a Lancer's suit. There's also another one like this one across the room, made for a general. That one looks like as if it rendered the poor guy completely immobile. There were also lots of different kind of swords, sabers and pallaschs. All very impressive and large. Oddly large if you compare the sizes to the uniforms that were on display. Small guys with large swords. Oh yea, the Hussaria. Those guys are really scary. An armored steamroller with lances. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Nov 23, 2013 |
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Nov 23, 2013 23:02
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Speaking of German armor: Kurfürst August von Sachsen, by Zacharias Wehme, 1586. Commissioned upon Elector August's death by his son, Christian II von Sachsen. Edit: And this is Christian II.  
HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Nov 24, 2013 |
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Nov 23, 2013 23:02
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Nice one. Is that chainmail on August's dick? Have another Schamkapsel 
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Nov 23, 2013 23:11
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Is The Mitrokhin Archive, by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, a reliable book? I'm 100 pages into it and it has parts that are unbelievably farcical, like the English plot to publicly de-pants and humiliate Lenin. Much of the material is supposedly accurate although there's plenty of reputable scholars who have their doubts such as Amy Knight, although most of their doubts are based on the supposed ironclad security within Soviet intelligence. So really it depends on how much you believe in the KGB etc being hypervigilant in document security measures. Considering things like Bradley Manning walking out with thousands of secret documents on a loving fake burned Lady Gaga CD, I have my doubts the Soviets didn't have equally boneheaded lapses in security.
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Nov 23, 2013 23:25
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I was browsing some games on steam today, so forgive me if this sounds incredibly dumb, but one of the games is based on WW2 about torpedo boats, what interested me is this image: I'm really curious if there were actually warships with T-34- EDIT: Thanks for the correction and answer! Fizzil fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Nov 23, 2013 |
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Nov 23, 2013 23:30
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Fizzil posted:I was browsing some games on steam today, so forgive me if this sounds incredibly dumb, but one of the games is based on WW2 about torpedo boats, what interested me is this image: Yes, this happened. Also that's the T34-76 turret. http://hobbyport.ru/ships/bka_1125.htm http://translate.google.co.uk/trans...:en-US:official
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Nov 23, 2013 23:38
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Much of the material is supposedly accurate although there's plenty of reputable scholars who have their doubts such as Amy Knight, although most of their doubts are based on the supposed ironclad security within Soviet intelligence. So really it depends on how much you believe in the KGB etc being hypervigilant in document security measures. Considering things like Bradley Manning walking out with thousands of secret documents on a loving fake burned Lady Gaga CD, I have my doubts the Soviets didn't have equally boneheaded lapses in security. Yeah, I don't doubt that security forces could make dumb mistakes at the best of times. Mitrokhin started smuggling documents by memorizing them and rewriting them in secret, then after he eventually became accustomed to the search procedures he'd just put the papers in his pants and take them home. There seems to be a recurring theme of security forces overestimating the competence of other forces, like when the British were leaking so much to the Italians that the Soviets became convinced it was a case of deliberate collusion.
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Nov 23, 2013 23:39
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ArchangeI posted:Must be very ineffcient to wear so much metal when you fly a plane. At least it isn't trying to strangle you like the F-22 suit Shape rather than material. But yeah it was still trying to strangle her. 
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Nov 23, 2013 23:43
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So the Military History thread in D&D, is it as bad as I fear it is?
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Nov 24, 2013 00:29
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:So the Military History thread in D&D, is it as bad as I fear it is? It is the usual WWII megathread and no topic lasts enough to receive interesting answers, but ironically the worst posts so far have been submitted by Ask/Tell MilHist regulars trying to make their opinion of D&D known. SA drama 
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Nov 24, 2013 00:33
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:So the Military History thread in D&D, is it as bad as I fear it is?
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Nov 24, 2013 00:36
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Fangz posted:Yes, this happened. Also that's the T34-76 turret. Sounds like a lot of  . Why not just park a pair of T-34s and an artillery piece or two on a river barge / ferry and blast away?
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Nov 24, 2013 01:04
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INTJ Mastermind posted:Sounds like a lot of
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Nov 24, 2013 01:17
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Why build an entire tank with all the fiddly track and engine bits when you can just slap a turret on a boat? Because when you already have perfectly good boats and perfectly good tanks. Why waste time designing and manufacturing a boat-tank when you can just shoot your tank from a boat? Plus, once you're tired of shooting at stuff from the ocean, you can just land your tanks and now your navy has turned into an army.
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Nov 24, 2013 01:23
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The Albanian boat tank destroyer doctrine is a good one, I don't care what anyone says. Even after the Polish war bears were discontinued.
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Nov 24, 2013 01:24
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INTJ Mastermind posted:Because when you already have perfectly good boats and perfectly good tanks. Why waste time designing and manufacturing a boat-tank when you can just shoot your tank from a boat? Plus, once you're tired of shooting at stuff from the ocean, you can just land your tanks and now your navy has turned into an army. You have rivers that need military patrols, you need reasonably sized and protected guns permanently emplaced on these patrol boats, and you have great quantities of battle-tested turrets equipped with just the required sort of guns. What you don't need is dozens of tons of excess steel weighting your river craft down without adding any benefit, all the while requiring all sorts of extra maintenance and precautions. But hey, maybe you will sometime need one extra, commandless tank stuck in riverbank mud to sway a decisive battle to your advantage?
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Nov 24, 2013 01:33
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InspectorBloor posted:I've been to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna today... 
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Nov 24, 2013 02:23
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steinrokkan posted:You have rivers that need military patrols, you need reasonably sized and protected guns permanently emplaced on these patrol boats, and you have great quantities of battle-tested turrets equipped with just the required sort of guns. But everybody knows tanks are most dangerous in gangs. A gang of tanks.
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Nov 24, 2013 04:50
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Frostwerks posted:But everybody knows tanks are most dangerous in gangs. A gang of tanks. I thought it was a murder? Anyway, here's a really cool video about American submarine tactics in World War 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=PFN9nvFYHmk&list=FL5MRUleRh7oDpzGnx37S6tA
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Nov 24, 2013 05:25
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A romp of APCs. A gaggle of IFVs.
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Nov 24, 2013 06:15
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A parliament of tank destroyers.
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Nov 24, 2013 07:38
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A sloth of bears. A school of gay hitlers.
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Nov 24, 2013 10:46
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Frostwerks posted:But everybody knows tanks are most dangerous in gangs. A gang of tanks. You are correct. Henceforth every river barge shall be issued with an independent tank battalion 
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Nov 24, 2013 11:59
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Prepare for boarding action, engage ramming speed!
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Nov 24, 2013 13:22
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Farecoal posted:I thought it was a murder? A Marder?  Were there any mercenaries during the world wars?
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Nov 24, 2013 15:33
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