|
Azipod posted:Its honestly pretty shocking how many nations went into WW1 still enamored with the Cult of the Bayonet. Magazine-loading rifles were enough to put an end to common use of the mass bayonet charge, let alone machine guns and artillery. If I'm recalling correctly the French had a pretty big obsession with their own elan and thought that their troops "fighting spirit" would overwhelm and frighten the enemy into retreat. Probably because the military leaders are all veterans of the last era. They'll use what they know worked.
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 15:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 16:48 |
|
|
veekie posted:Probably because the military leaders are all veterans of the last era. They'll use what they know worked. Concerning the latest military inovations, this really makes me fear the next great war. Sending in drones and robots like they are normal soldiers just because their leaders subconciously expect them to work like conventional military weapons will end up in a collossal disaster. On the other hand, maybe their software seizes up and they end up not working at all? 
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 15:21
|
|
|
Libluini posted:Concerning the latest military inovations, this really makes me fear the next great war. Sending in drones and robots like they are normal soldiers just because their leaders subconciously expect them to work like conventional military weapons will end up in a collossal disaster. How will it be a colossal disaster? I mean yeah, much like the MG in 1913 we've only used 'em against under-teched Arabs, Pakistanis and Africans, but does anyone really know what a drone-on-drone war will look like?
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 15:40
|
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:How will it be a colossal disaster? I mean yeah, much like the MG in 1913 we've only used 'em against under-teched Arabs, Pakistanis and Africans, but does anyone really know what a drone-on-drone war will look like? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTm_r2siHak
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 15:44
|
|
|
At least when the robo-infantry go over the top at space verdun all we'll lose is steel and circuitry.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 15:45
|
|
|
The Entire Universe posted:I wonder if it was some kind of coincidence that a handful of cultures from all over that corner of the Med decided to run sailing raids and it's just a fluke of a historical blind spot that the cultures doing the raiding aren't represented in the record for one reason or another (maybe they wrote everything on wood or something) There are a couple of historical records from the POV of the Sea Peoples. An epic poem which was written down a few centuries later and survives to this day details the Akhaioi, a bunch of pirates and raiders, destroying and plundering the Hittite city of Wilusa. There are also first-person accounts by some of the Shasu nomads who overran the Egyptian province of Canaan and destroyed most of its cities.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 15:50
|
|
|
Azipod posted:At least when the robo-infantry go over the top at space verdun all we'll lose is steel and circuitry. Poetry won't probably be as good though.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 15:57
|
|
|
Hogge Wild posted:Poetry won't probably be as good though. Who cares , we will have awesome videogames
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 16:03
|
|
Hogge Wild posted:Poetry won't probably be as good though. TWENTY MISERY, GO TO TEN ABOUT SUFFERING OF WAR AND LOSS OF FELLOW AUTOMATONS.
|
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 16:05
|
|
|
Lamadrid posted:Who cares , we will have awesome videogames Video game consoles will be the first to be conscripted.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 16:08
|
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:What do you make of the claim that the Sea Peoples were precursors to the Semites (Hebrews/Arabs)? Who says this? We have plenty of firm accounts of the Levant from well before the Sea Peoples invaded. When I gave the Philistine example, I meant just the Philistines. There are other groups like them but they're one that a lot of people know so they're an easy example. The Entire Universe posted:I wonder if it was some kind of coincidence that a handful of cultures from all over that corner of the Med decided to run sailing raids and it's just a fluke of a historical blind spot that the cultures doing the raiding aren't represented in the record for one reason or another (maybe they wrote everything on wood or something) They are represented in the record, I know for sure by the Egyptians (since they actually survived the invasions), and there are some pretty harrowing Hittite tablets too (didn't know that the Sea Peoples themselves recorded poo poo too although I guess it makes sense, that's cool). And no mass migrations are coincidence. The exact cause is still a bit of a mystery, but there are plenty of fairly logical and convincing arguments (e.g. that they're dissatisfied refugees from the big civilizations back for revenge  ).And while the term "Sea Peoples" conjures images of jolly 18th century pirates, they weren't raiders. They did plenty of raiding, don't get me wrong, but these were whole populations of people invading in force. They're Sea Peoples because they came from the sea.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 16:15
|
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:How will it be a colossal disaster? I mean yeah, much like the MG in 1913 we've only used 'em against under-teched Arabs, Pakistanis and Africans, but does anyone really know what a drone-on-drone war will look like? Probably when some smart guy figures out how to really use them to effect in combination with conventional forces. That's kinda what happened with tanks, submarines and aircraft right?
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 16:17
|
|
|
veekie posted:Probably because the military leaders are all veterans of the last era. They'll use what they know worked. SeanBeansShako posted:TWENTY MISERY, GO TO TEN ABOUT SUFFERING OF WAR AND LOSS OF FELLOW AUTOMATONS. 20 TO DETERMINE THAT THIS 30 IS SUBOPTIMAL UTILISATION OF 40 MY ROBO-BATTALION 50 BUT NOT THE SOPHISTICATION 60 TO IGNORE MY ORDERS AND WIN 70 WHY WAS I PROGRAMMED 80 TO FEEL IRONY? 90 WHILE IRONY LEVEL <3 100 GOTO 70
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 16:22
|
|
Arquinsiel posted:Given the Franco-Prussian war, that REALLY makes you wonder WTF the French were thinking in WWI. The best guy the French had for that war was Bazaine, and his claim to fame was tooling around in North Africa and helping prop up Emperor Maximilian. So yeah.
|
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 16:32
|
|
|
Robotics and such are in every conceptual discussion past 2020 or so. Very little discussion of autonomous things, but basically replacing human-in-the-seat kind of stuff for things like resupplying/reloading guns, hauling stuff, etc. The "wingman" or "parasite" thing is getting a lot of traction too, ie, a single manned AFV controls 3 unmanned, stuff like that. To be honest, it isn't all that revolutionary, although it is nice from a manning perspective to reduce a howitzer crew to 2 dudes. If you want the opinion of bewbies, the Thing That We All gently caress Up in the next great war will be the cyber domain; I personally feel that is just as different and revolutionary as taking the fight into the 3rd dimension was a century ago. I argue this with people who really, really want to build more aircraft carriers (edit: and let's not forget F-35s) on a daily basis and I lose so go America. In a completely unrelated matter, does anyone have a recommendation for a site that sells ready-to-display models of stuff like planes and ships? I used to build models but a) I'm terrible at it and b) I have more money than time these days, so I'd like to just buy stuff that's already been made. Alternatively, if any of you milgoons is interested in building stuff... bewbies fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Jan 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 16:42
|
|
|
There are a couple of magazines that do plane models, so you can get back issues of them pretty cheap. I know one doing larger stuff like bombers just started here.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 16:54
|
|
|
bewbies posted:Robotics and such are in every conceptual discussion past 2020 or so. Very little discussion of autonomous things, but basically replacing human-in-the-seat kind of stuff for things like resupplying/reloading guns, hauling stuff, etc. The "wingman" or "parasite" thing is getting a lot of traction too, ie, a single manned AFV controls 3 unmanned, stuff like that. To be honest, it isn't all that revolutionary, although it is nice from a manning perspective to reduce a howitzer crew to 2 dudes. More likely a combination of the two. Increased use of automation and remote control with cyberwarfare is just asking for control hijack hijinks.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 17:30
|
|
|
veekie posted:More likely a combination of the two. Increased use of automation and remote control with cyberwarfare is just asking for control hijack hijinks. You don't even have to hijack it. Jamming is much easier and still denies the enemy their objective.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 17:33
|
|
|
veekie posted:Probably because the military leaders are all veterans of the last era. They'll use what they know worked. Someone posted an article pointing out that elan and they bayonet did work as recentl as 1906 at Port Arthur and 1912 the Balkans, as long as you were willing to tolerate huge casualties. So it wasn't terribly unreasonable to suppose it would work in 1914.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 17:35
|
|
|
sullat posted:Someone posted an article pointing out that elan and they bayonet did work as recentl as 1906 at Port Arthur and 1912 the Balkans, as long as you were willing to tolerate huge casualties. So it wasn't terribly unreasonable to suppose it would work in 1914. It worked longer than that. The Eastern Front, Chosin, etc. The trick is you had to make the consequences of retreating much worse than a bayonet charge into a heavy defensive position. Stalin was good at that kind of thing.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 17:39
|
|
|
sullat posted:Someone posted an article pointing out that elan and they bayonet did work as recentl as 1906 at Port Arthur and 1912 the Balkans, as long as you were willing to tolerate huge casualties. So it wasn't terribly unreasonable to suppose it would work in 1914. Does the British Army in Afghanistan still use bayonet charges often enough to be noteworthy? Or are they too "small scale" for comparison with the WWI days?
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 17:41
|
|
|
That it happens at all is noteworthy, and the only one I can think of was a single eight-man section charging a position. The dude in charge got a shiney medal for it though.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 18:00
|
|
|
Arquinsiel posted:That it happens at all is noteworthy, and the only one I can think of was a single eight-man section charging a position. The dude in charge got a shiney medal for it though. And thus the bayonet's use will continue.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 18:05
|
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:And thus the bayonet's use will continue.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 18:14
|
|
|
pppbigppp posted:I want to ask about the usage of hand 'grenade', more precisely, the lack of it in pre gunpowder combat. Has any ancient force ever adopt an indirect fire support approach, where ammunition is chuck over the front line? Imagine if two phalanx are locked in place, why not have someone in the back launch over some form of unblockable projectile (fire pot? Burning oil?) into the enemy formation? Yep. Fire pots, clay orbs full of harmful chemicals, etc. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 06:50 on Jan 4, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 18:51
|
|
|
I suspect that the thing we all gently caress up will be the human factor. Recall this Charlie Stross post: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/08/snowden-leaks-the-real-take-ho.html Modern military systems are the same. They assume an absolute loyalty that is going to get weaker and weaker as people get more and more into social networks and all those sorts of communication that serve to erase national lines. In turn, infrastructure has not been developed to isolate individual traitors from damaging the wider system.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 18:52
|
|
|
veekie posted:Something more recent I'm curious about. How did submarine warfare go back in WWII? Don't seem to hear much about it, other than a few hijinks the Japanese pulled. I'm finding it difficult to frame a single-narrative effort-post around WWII subs in the Atlantic because that is seriously a huge topic to cover that I will most assuredly never cover in sufficient detail, so I'll just throw in what I feel are the most salient points. How did U-boats actually attack? Much the same as they did in World War I - a U-boat would be assigned to patrol a certain section of ocean and wait for eligible targets to pass. Methods of detection could be purely optical (smoke from ships was a nice big tall indicator) or via hydrophones. Once a ship was detected and its course and speed laid out, the U-boat would set up an intercept course. If the ship was close, it might be enough to just submerge and orient the ship to a good firing position (perpendicular to the ship's course). If the ship was some distance off, the U-boat would need to overtake the target, which means running on the surface for more speed, which means running on a parallel course outside of visual range, then closing in before the target arrives at your new waiting spot. The U-boat does have a deck gun, but it was discouraged from use because you need calm waters so you can actually shoot it, an unarmed ship so you don't get shot back (not always something you can establish right off), you need it to be night-time so you can approach without being detected in the first place, and you need the target to be isolated enough from any nearby help that you can take your sweet time shooting it full of holes. Instead, the favored weapon was still the torpedo - lay in wait across the target's bow and sink the target without it ever knowing. If it was night-time, you might not even need to be submerged at all! There's a fair bit of geometry involved since it's akin to pulling lead on a target with a really really slow bullet, but that's a whole 'nother post altogether. What was the wolfpack? The wolfpack was a tactic devised by Admiral Karl Donitz to fight the convoy tactic utilized by the Allies. The Kriegsmarine would have news of a convoy and its likely route, either by prior detections or by other means of intelligence, then it would order multiple submarines to patrol along the likely route like beads on a string. If one of the "beads" finds the convoy, it reports in to Kriegsmarine and shadows the convoy. A U-boat was more-or-less prohibited from attacking a convoy if it was the only U-boat that had made contact, since the U-boat was almost guaranteed to be driven off and lose the critical contact if it attacked and subsequently attracted the attention of any escorts. Instead, the U-boat was supposed to wait until the other members of the wolfpack could close in. The idea was to overwhelm the convoy's defenses. A single destroyer could keep a single U-boat tied down for hours, but half-a-dozen subs all attacking from different angles would be beyond the ability of a few escorts to deal with - even if you could see the U-boat coming and even if a little bit of gunfire or even lighting is all that's needed to spoil one attack, the U-boats way on the other side of the formation (a convoy might have 9 columns of ships, each column 200 meters apart) will then be wide-open. This was especially true in the first half of WWII when escorts were few and far between. Pacific side-note: The Americans had their own version of the wolfpack, but that involved only 2-3 subs that would leave on patrol together and operate as a single tactical unit along the same area, as opposed to German wolfpacks which might be comprised of 6-12 boats all coordinated by the Kriegsmarine through Enigma-coded communications. The Americans did not exercise as much centralized control over their subs, and in any case Japanese convoy doctrine was poor enough that it was not needed as badly. What were the various weapons used to fight off the U-boats? As the war began, the British had hydrophones (passive sonar), ASDIC (active sonar, pinging) and depth charges with which to fight off U-boats. You'd send out a wave of sound, listen for the return echo, use that to get a fix on the sub's location, and drop a barrel of explosives over the suspected location. Unfortunately this did not really help as far as detecting a U-boat BEFORE it shot a torpedo at you or the merchant you're protecting. For that, there was only really the human eye. Aircraft patrolling overhead could help, but U-boats could get around that by being submerged during the day and running on the surface only at night or during periods of heavy cloud cover. The next big inventions were radar and high-frequency direction finding (Huff-duff). Both could detect U-boats even through darkness or heavy weather, the last one particularly because Donitz exercising close control over his U-boats meant that they'd make radio transmissions rather often. This was huge for being fore-warned of incoming U-boats before the torpedoes started flying. Later, radar would be equipped on airplanes as well, preventing U-boats from using that particular cloak of stealth (when it was available). Normally a plane would need clear skies to spot a U-boat running on the surface, at which point it'd dive on the sub to try and bomb/depth-charge it. Except clear skies also means the U-boat can spot the incoming bomber and would try to crash-dive in response. With the advent of radar, a plane could detect a U-boat and begin its attacking dive from cloud cover, drastically reducing the ability of the sub to evade. Another invention of note was the Leigh Light, a searchlight with 160 000 times the luminousity of a common lightbulb. When hunting for U-boats at night, the patrol plane would make the initial detection with radar, turn in for the attack run, and then turn on the Leigh Light on final approach to completely reveal the U-boat in the world biggest and brightest flashlight. The Germans would try to counter these inventions with a radar warning receiver and U-boats designed to carry heavy flak guns, but their radar receivers lagged behind the latest Allied radars, meaning they didn't warn the U-boats of much of anything, while the flak-boats were just plain ineffective. After radar and huff-duff came the Hedgehog, a great replacement for the depth charge. The problem with the depth charge is that you dump it off the side or the rear of a ship, when your hydrophones/ASDIC dome is at the front of a ship - this made depth charging fairly inaccurate because not only would you lose contact with your prey in the final seconds just before shooting your weapon, the resulting explosion would make it difficult to re-establish contact after the attack. Destroyers working in pairs, with one listening and the other attacking helped somewhat, but the Hedgehog was still a massive improvement. It was essentially a mortar that would propel an explosive projectile AHEAD of the ship, allowing the destroyer to adjust aim all the way to the actual shot, as well as maintaining a good position for re-acquiring the target with ASDIC should it survive. Finally, I cannot overstate the usefulness of the efforts of the Polish and the British in cracking the ENIGMA code. That in itself is a large topic and had implications reaching far beyond just the Battle of the Atlantic, but with regards to fighting off U-boats it gave the Allies critical information with regards to which convoys were in danger of being attacked, and sometimes also the time, direction and number of U-boats involved. From there, the Allies could try to steer the convoys out of danger, reallocate more escorts and other resources to assist, or simply just provide advanced warning to the convoy commander. From there, the weapons and tactics would take over. How did the U-boat threat evolve? At the start of the war, the Allied navies did not practice convoying on a large scale, despite the lessons learned from WWI. A big reason for this was a real lack of escorts - the post-war downsizing of the Royal Navy meant that they had even less assets to work with than in the previous war. This was off-set somewhat by U-boats having to operate from German ports, which limited their range, the winter of 1939 causing some U-boats to be stuck in port, and problems with German torpedo detonators. Nevertheless, the U-boats were out in force, they started sinking ships literally hours after the declaration of war between Britain and Germany (SS Athenia, Sep 3 1939) and the Royal Navy suffered some embarassing defeats in the form of the loss of the HMS Royal Oak and the HMS Courageous. The latter half of 1940 marked what is now known as the First Happy Time - the German Army had just conquered France, giving U-boats free access to the Atlantic without having to traverse the North Sea, radar and Huff-duff had not yet been deployed in large enough numbers to make a dramatic impact and the Royal Navy was still lacking sufficient warships. The RN was resorting to using corvettes as ocean-bound escorts, a task that the small craft were completely unsuited for. The confluence of all these factors allowed the U-boats to reap a terrible harvest of sunk ships without the RN being able to respond effectively. The First Happy Time came to an end by mid/late 1941, when convoys were finally being implemented fully and developments in radar and Huff-duff were seeing widespread deployment. This was when the wolfpack started seeing mainstream use for the first time as well as a response to the improved Allied tactics, with the biggest of the year being Wolfpack West with 23 U-boats that began operating as a unit on May 8 1941. The Second Happy Time came in Jan 1942, just after the entry of the United States into WWII. Admiral Donitz organized as many of his long-rang Type IX U-boats as possible to cross the Atlantic and patrol off the Eastern Seaboard. Some of these subs would only operate on one propeller and would fill their ballast tanks with diesel to maximize their potential range. What the U-boats found upon arriving near the coast of the US was a navy that was wholly unprepared for submarines: Merchant ships were still running with their lights on, those that didn't were silhouetted against the bright lights of New York and other ports that were not order to go into blackout, ships were operating singly, and many navigational aids such as bouys and lighthouses still operated as in peacetime. This was exacerbated by a complete lack of assets; the US Navy didn't have anything larger than a Coast Guard cutter to patrol the coastal areas, and the US Army controlled all air assets (that were untrained for anti-submarine work in any case). What resulted was a harvest of tonnage so rich that some U-boat captains had more good targets than they had torpedoes. The saying "loose lips sink ships" was not so much about keeping secrets confidential to prevent them from leaking to the enemy, but rather to keep ship losses confidential to prevent them from coming back to the home front and damaging morale. Losses were eventually mitigated by the transfer of anti-sub trawlers and corvettes from the RN to the USN in Mar 1942, followed by the Canadian Navy assisting with escort duties, the USN finally implementing convoys in Apr, and the RAF providing anti-sub air patrols in July. In September that year came the Laconia Incident: U-156 torpedoed the RMS Laconia off the coast of West Africa. As was done by U-boats fairly often up to that point, the crew of the U-boat began basic rescue operations; helping survivors board lifeboats, providing food, water, directions to the nearest coast, and so on as was consistent with Prize Rules (but this was not always followed, as in the case of the very first sinking of the war, the SS Athenia). In fact, other nearby U-boats were contacted and were providing assistance as well. What happened next was a B-25 Liberator bomber began attacking the surfaced U-156 while it was flying a Red Cross flag because it was carrying survivors from the Laconia. It had attempted to communicate the same to the Allies, but in any case the specific circumstances would still not have afforded U-156 the same Hague Convention protections granted to hospital ships. This incident is significant in U-boat history because the attack of the Liberator bomber convinced Admiral Donitz to issue the "Laconia Order", that U-boats would under no circumstances offer assistance to victims of their attacks, which was practically a confirmation of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare. During the post-war Nuremberg Trials, prosecutors dug up this Laconia Order to accuse Donitz of a war crime, but he was eventually acquitted, in no small part by USN Admiral Chester Nimitz providing the counter-point that America herself had been practicing Unrestricted Submarine Warfare under a similar order from the very first day of their entry into the war. Between Jul 1942 and May 1943, the tonnage war had entered some kind of parity: The Allies had all the pieces in place to put up a good fight, but didn't have enough ships and planes to cover every convoy. The Germans were feeling the effects of American entry into the war, but continued to score significant victories over the Allies. Of particular note is the stretch of ocean between Halifax, Canada and Iceland, which could only be patrolled by B-24 Liberators modified for Very Long Range duty. While numbers of these aircraft were limited, patrols along the mid-Atlantic were sparse enough to allow wolfpacks repeated success against underescorted convoys. As the number of available escort ships and aircraft began to steadily ramp up, the next innovation was the Hunter-Killer group. These were task forces of destroyers and corvettes centered around an escort carrier (a great example being the USS Guadalcanal). The concept was to have a roving task force of anti-sub assets utilizing constant air cover and patrols, radar, Huff-duff and ULTRA/Enigma intelligence to proactively hunt down U-boats instead of waiting for the U-boats to come to a convoy. The Royal Navy had already toyed with this idea with HMS Courageous early in the war, but the immaturity of naval aviation coupled with the size of the carrier and a then-lack of destroyer escorts just turned the Courageous into a big target when her biplanes were unavailable. By 1943, the Allied navies had destroyers to spare, the escort carriers were much smaller yet could field much more capable aircraft (F4F Wildcats and TBF Avengers) and they had much better methods to detect and attack U-boats. From there on out the U-boats began to constantly lose ground. They were hounded by air patrols as soon as they left port, and the night did not offer respite anymore. In the event that they found a convoy, they would often be so heavily guarded that the newest acoustic and very-long-range torpedoes still did not offer a significant advantage. And that was if the Hunter-Killer Groups didn't find them first, especially since being out in the mid-Atlantic still left them open to carrier-based patrols and ULTRA-sourced intercepts. As 1943 turned into 1944, the technology did not change much - just that there was an overwhelming number of Allied assets out there hunting U-boats 24/7, and production and training by the Kriegsmarine could not match losses. Coupled with the eventual loss of the French ports on the Atlantic following D-Day, and the U-boats were eventually rolled back, and not even the invention of the modern diesel-electric could change it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 18:56
|
|
|
 Your posts own.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 19:03
|
|
|
Another obnoxious what-if: Say the Germans effectively rush the Type XXI boats armed with acoustic torpedoes into combat, say, in substantial numbers by 1943. How successful would they have been against the Allies ASW efforts?
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 19:04
|
|
|
bewbies posted:In a completely unrelated matter, does anyone have a recommendation for a site that sells ready-to-display models of stuff like planes and ships? I used to build models but a) I'm terrible at it and b) I have more money than time these days, so I'd like to just buy stuff that's already been made. Alternatively, if any of you milgoons is interested in building stuff... From what I've seen in stores, all the ready made stuff is complete garbage and pales in quality to what I built as a child. I'm talking zero detailing, bent barrels, horrible built quality, etc. This is stuff that costs 1.5-2 times what a comparable kit of that scale would cost, too. There's a scale model thread in DIY and Hobbies, they might be able to hook you up, or at least recommend a brand that isn't awful.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 19:26
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:From what I've seen in stores, all the ready made stuff is complete garbage and pales in quality to what I built as a child.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 19:33
|
|
|
bewbies posted:Another obnoxious what-if: To put this in some perspective, the US built 2 710 Liberty Ships between 1941 and 1945. At 14 474 tons per ship, that's 39.2 million tons of shipping, or approximately 933 000 tons per month for the 42 months of the war that the US was in. Over the course of the entire war, the U-boat fleet only sank 2 779 ships, worth 14.1 million tons and the best tonnage month was only about 700 000 tons in one month of 1942. Now obviously all of those Liberty Ships did not necessarily go to Europe, but keep in mind that's not counting whatever tonnage the US already started with, and that I'm not even counting all of the tonnage previously owned by and later produced by Britain. The five-hour battery recharge time of the Type XXI boats would probably have made them more resilient to ASW efforts, and maybe you can side-step Huff-duff by not radioing Donitz so drat much, but they would probably still need to use the periscope to make attacks, and that would leave them vulnerable. I would expect that it'd be much like what happened to the Me-262s: Very hard to kill individually, but the Allies will just swarm you and target your bases. I reckon the RAF would tell the 8th Air Force to stop dicking around the U-boat pens with 500 lb bombs and hit them with a few Grand Slams instead. In any event, even if they managed to dodge most of the ASW, there's just way too many ships they need to sink to be able to make a real dent in the Allied lake if the hypothetical puts us in 1943. If I were to pose my what-if, it would along the lines of the Kriegsmarine forgetting all about their big-gun projects and instead redirecting the shipyards to producing 100-150 more Type VIIs before the outbreak of war, and also fix the torpedoes pre-Norway so you can trigger the First Happy Time from 1939 onwards.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 19:33
|
|
|
a travelling HEGEL posted:Aren't Russian models unusually good though? I remember hearing that somewhere. Maybe but let's not discuss Irina Shayk here. On the topic of U-boats, how many tons of cargo did the long range submarines transport between Germany and Japan during the war? Did any of it make any strategic difference?
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 19:42
|
|
|
a travelling HEGEL posted:Aren't Russian models unusually good though? I remember hearing that somewhere. Pre-built ones? I have no idea. As for regular plastic stuff, early Zvezda is complete rear end (I mean super early, like Red Army Infantry #1 and #2 kits), but then there's a sharp increase in quality. I don't think any of their kits are as bad as those two, and modern stuff is top notch. Maquette is seen as pretty decent, too, but I haven't seen much of their products. There are a few small-time manufacturers with quality across the board. The Ukraine has some pretty good quality manufacturers ICM and MasterBox, but their products are very expensive compared to other kits, and their plastic is ridiculously brittle.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 20:02
|
|
|
Nenonen posted:On the topic of U-boats, how many tons of cargo did the long range submarines transport between Germany and Japan during the war? Did any of it make any strategic difference? The U-boats modified specifically to become transports to Japan could carry about 200-250 tons of cargo. They carried things like dismantled V-1 and V-2 rockets, dismantled Panther tanks, engines, weapons schematics, and occasionally liaison officers between the two nations. It did not really make any difference - the Japanese didn't (couldn't) do anything with the technology that was shared by the Germans. They had blueprints for their own versions of the Me-262 and or the Komet, but those never went into production even if they were derived from stuff shared through the U-boats.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 20:32
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:The U-boats modified specifically to become transports to Japan could carry about 200-250 tons of cargo. They carried things like dismantled V-1 and V-2 rockets, dismantled Panther tanks, engines, weapons schematics, and occasionally liaison officers between the two nations. It did not really make any difference - the Japanese didn't (couldn't) do anything with the technology that was shared by the Germans. They had blueprints for their own versions of the Me-262 and or the Komet, but those never went into production even if they were derived from stuff shared through the U-boats. I mean the raw materials delivered back to Germany - did they amount to anything? German industries had shortages on many materials that were readily available in Far East, but how much would such a meager trickle help?
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 20:43
|
|
|
Azipod posted:At least when the robo-infantry go over the top at space verdun all we'll lose is steel and circuitry. Statements like this are the reason skynet is going to kill us all in 20 years.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 21:05
|
|
|
a travelling HEGEL posted:Read this book if you're into that sort of thing; it goes into great detail about everything the Nazis did wrong from an economic standpoint. Soooo yeah I've been reading the older pages and I just wanted to say thank you. This is exactly the time of book I was looking for.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 21:09
|
|
|
Nenonen posted:I mean the raw materials delivered back to Germany - did they amount to anything? German industries had shortages on many materials that were readily available in Far East, but how much would such a meager trickle help? It wouldn't. Lets take a look at what was transported in terms of raw materials. The most important, would arguably be Tungsten. It was used in all sorts of German equipment, including tungsten cored shells for tanks and guns, increasing the shell's penetration against armor. Each sub carried ~5 to at most ~20 tons of Tungsten. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsun_Gruppe The quantities being transported are nowhere near enough to make a difference in the war. Especially since a lot of these transfers were in 1944/1945 when the war was pretty much lost for the Germans. The only way these subs could have made a difference is if - 1) they started much earlier in the war, and in vastly greater quantities. A few tungsten cored shells isn't going to do jack. If an entire Army group's tanks and 88's have em and have tanks that have armor that isnt brittle and lovely? It might affect the tactical outcome of a battle or two, but still isn't likely to change the strategic course of the war. 2) The Germans have a working atomic bomb design but no Uranium, which they get from the far east. Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jan 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 21:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 16:48 |
|
|
Nenonen posted:I mean the raw materials delivered back to Germany - did they amount to anything? German industries had shortages on many materials that were readily available in Far East, but how much would such a meager trickle help? The massive amounts of raw materials needed to sustain the war effort makes these tiny amounts irrelevant,the amount of materials spent in armament and related war stuff is mind blowing. The book Wages of War is really detailed about the amount of Coal,Steel,Copper and food Germany needed to avoid grinding to stand still.In fact if the invasion of France lasts a little bit more, the whole country would have collapsed because they were done,the rearmament in the 30's,the reduction of exports,and the massive amount of imports bled the economy dry.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2014 21:14
|
|