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EvanSchenck posted:The invasion of Afghanistan actually made a certain degree of sense because the Taliban was a state sponsor of Al Qaeda and that did constitute a strategic problem that we had good reasons to want to resolve after 9/11. Also you shouldn't overrate the cynicism/awareness of the people in the Bush administration who were in charge of making that call. I remember them being criticized by Mideast experts back then because they had this tendency to talk about Al Qaeda as if Al Qaeda's objectives were a real problem to be confronted as opposed to the millenarian fantasies that they are. I would say that the neoconservatives and Al Qaeda both shared the belief that we were in a clash of civilizations and they were at the tipping point of history, and if that sounds insane it's only because it is. The Machiavellian puppetmaster is a stock character in fiction but IRL people mostly believe their own bullshit. Bad at their jobs I can understand. But I don't see how people can be so badly ignorant today in a first world country. The amount of resources being constantly expended on various intelligence agencies gathering information makes it seem like there's no excuse for being so ignorant, the way there was even during the early 20th century, let alone prior to that. But I guess not.
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Mar 17, 2014 08:02
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Slavvy posted:Bad at their jobs I can understand. But I don't see how people can be so badly ignorant today in a first world country. The amount of resources being constantly expended on various intelligence agencies gathering information makes it seem like there's no excuse for being so ignorant, the way there was even during the early 20th century, let alone prior to that. But I guess not. The corollary to my little statement about malice, incompetence, and attribution is "...and almost everything the U.S. government does can be explained by incompetence."
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Mar 17, 2014 08:42
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Slavvy posted:Bad at their jobs I can understand. But I don't see how people can be so badly ignorant today in a first world country. The amount of resources being constantly expended on various intelligence agencies gathering information makes it seem like there's no excuse for being so ignorant, the way there was even during the early 20th century, let alone prior to that. But I guess not. Never underestimate the stupidity of politicians. And the thing about the intelligence services is that they are ordered around by the politicians. If they are looking for Black Gay Hitler in Argentina's cyborg army, then they are more likely to miss out on the actual threats to the nation. IIRC, the Bush shift away from Bin Laden once he took office is one reason that the 9/11 attacks were allowed to happen. The Alphabet soup all knew that an attack was coming, but weren't given the resources to follow up on it anymore. So basically, blame bureaucracy. Politicians are dumb, their appointees are hated and the competent lifers are ignored/put on stupid poo poo for making their bosses look bad.
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Mar 17, 2014 09:08
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Glorgnole posted:He's shooting one of those stick-mounted fireworks at police. The part that gets lit is on the front of the stick and gets pushed towards the front of the launch tube after ignition. So he's not pushing a ramrod, he's loading the actual projectile into the launcher. One of the guys in the background is holding a big bundle of them. Yup, you'll see more irresponsible things being done to consumer grade fireworks at any New Years party.
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Mar 17, 2014 09:31
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Slaan posted:Never underestimate the stupidity of politicians. There is also the fact that the US intelligence community has a real problem with gathering Human Intelligence. After all, when you can read all their mail and get close up pictures of their swimming pool from orbit, what do you need a spy for?
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Mar 17, 2014 09:58
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Tekopo posted:I'm currently fascinated by Battle Cruisers: I understand at the moment why they were originally created (they were intended to prevent commerce raiding by armored cruisers) and they did well in that particular job (see the battle of the Falklands), but why were they used in Jutland in a role they were never intended to take? Were any battle-cruisers built post WWI and if so, why and what were their intended roles post-Jutland, since they proved to be a liability when placed in fleet battles? There are two answers to that question. The first one is because David Beatty is an idiot and spent no effort on relaying the information about German deployments back to Jellicoe that he was supposed to under the Grand Fleet's battle plan. The other answer assumes you were wondering why battlecruisers were ever in a position to be shot at by enemy capital ships that can kill them due to their lack of armor. Both answers depend on the important part of the Royal Navy's intentions at Jutland, sink a lot of German battleships without incurring worse losses in return. One hundred and fifty British ships took part in the Battle of Jutland (not counting one seaplane carrier), but only 28 of them were dreadnought battleships. Putting them in position to sink the 16 German dreadnoughts was the whole point of the exercise. Of those 28 dreadnoughts 4 of them were the brand new Queen Elizabeth fast battleships. Those fought with the 9 battlecruisers, leaving 24 battleships in the main line. Exactly how do you sail 24 ships, in formation, and keep them ready to engage the enemy at what would in practice be about 25 minutes' notice. You fight them in line of battle, with the fleet admiral in about the middle. It turns out the most practical way to sail them around before the fight is in a formation called divisional columns abreast. The 24 ships are divided into 6 divisions of 4 ships each. Each divisions plays follow the leader with their lead ship. Each of the six lead ships is in line abreast with the other leaders, giving you a rectangle of battleships six across and four deep. It also turns out that wider formations are easier to maneuver than deeper ones. Convoys would routinely go 10 abreast and 3 or 4 deep. You work out in advance, and practice thoroughly, exactly how each divisional leader maneuvers to turn this formation to get it where it needs to be at the right time. The difference is maneuverability of line abreast columns and line ahead is that of a compact mass versus a long straggly snake. So there you have your Grand Fleet in cruising formation. You can't fight like this, an enemy in line ahead would beat you silly. You'd get collisions as you tried to form up in too much of a hurry while avoiding gunfire. So you have to deploy before contact. If your scouting forces did their job the enemy isn't expecting you to appear out of the fog and mist in exactly the worst place. Jellicoe didn't get the information he needed to make the perfect deployment, but he managed well enough for having to basically guess when and which way. "Which way" is the fun part. The cruising formation had two planned ways to deploy into a fighting line ahead. Left or right. The columns of divisions were spaced widely enough that if a lead ship turned 90 degrees left or right and the rest of its division turned in the same spot, when the last ships had assumed their new course, all 24 ships would be in line ahead on a bearing 90 degrees left or right of the base course of the cruising formation. Left or right was the question. When was also the question. Deploying in the right direction at the right time would let the Grand Fleet unleash all its firepower on the weaker High Seas Fleet. Jellicoe managed it, and crowned his achievement by crossing the German's T and forcing them to flee. Luckily for the HSF, they had a maneuver planned for just such a predicament. The need to put the fleet in the right place at the right time and then to deploy in the correct direction demanded superiority in fleet scouting. The Grand Fleet had to have better information than the enemy had on the dispositions and course of the battle. Beatty had the job of getting that done and he failed. He had two squadrons of battlecruisers (9 ships) with which to back up 26 light cruisers in the scouting role. As further sign of the importance of fleet scouting, Beatty was reinforced, after repeated requests, with 4 Queen Elizabeth class super dreadnoughts. These were the fastest, most heavily armed, and newest ships in the Royal Navy. Beatty neglected, to be kind, to bring the commander of this squadron in on his plans and train with them. Nelson's genius was in leadership, building his Band of Brothers. Beatty was handed a mighty weapon and left it to rust in the rain. In action, 5th Battle Squadron would miss an order to turn away from the enemy and be subjected to concentrated fire that just missed costing the Royal Navy one or two of their most powerful ships. "Missed an order" is too kind to Beatty, 5 BS had no idea what the order meant, was too far away to see it given as a flag signal, and didn't have it repeated to them by wireless per doctrine. That left 4 ships speeding headlong into the entire German battle line. It is a credit to Admiral High-Evans that he didn't end up recreating the Charge of the Light Brigade at sea. He got the hell out of there when he realized he was all alone. His ships had to make their turn away within range of the HSF battle line and heavy fire was concentrated on the turning point. HMS Warspite (of the notable WW2 career) was hit 16 times while turning and had her steering gear damaged forcing an extra 360 degree turn. Other ships were hit as well, all escaped. That was how Beatty found the German main force. "Oh poo poo, run !". He didn't send the signals that Jellicoe needed to plan his deployment. The Battlecruiser Fleet and 5th BS ran north to meet up with their main force, and didn't call home to say they were bringing company. He didn't do his job, and things could have gone badly for the Grand Fleet if he hadn't. Have a diagram of the actual deployment of the Grand Fleet  In the upper left you see the Grand Fleet in cruising formation, and the 5th BS moving in to take their place in the line. The Queen Elizabeths were that fast, although the main fleet wasn't quite at full speed while moving in, and especially, changing formation. To the south you see the High Seas Fleet, with their battlecruisers falling into formation at the head of the line. At this point, the HSF was faced with a line of fire on the horizon as the Grand Fleet cut across their T and opened fire. That takes us well past where I'm interested in going today, this post is about scouting forces. Both sides operated light cruisers as both scouting elements and as destroyer flotilla leaders, one light cruiser with a senior officer on board with room to work makes a destroyer squadron much more useful than it otherwise would have been. These light cruisers were mostly 22 to 24-knot ships armed mostly with 4 inch guns in open mounts, or with only splinter shields. The Royal Navy was introducing cruisers with more or fewer 6 inch guns for added firepower. Since cruisers are the natural and intended prey of the battlecruisers both sides used them to back up the light crusiers in the scouting role. And that's how it played out. A couple of CLs spotted each other and called for help. A skirmish started, the BCs from both sides headed for the sound of the guns, and then engaged each other. The RN had more BCs at the point of contact, so the German BCs ran for help. They got it and the British in turn ran for help. So there you have it Tekopo, the battlecruisers at Jutland a) were being used in their intended role and b) didn't actually perform it for the British. The Germans got full value for money and blood out of their battlecruisers. After Jutland, the concept of the fast, heavily armed, but lightly armored capital ship was re-evaluated and thrown out by all the world's navies. The British had the Hood and her three sisters just under construction and delayed them to redesign their protection. Naturally the first ship laid down, the Hood, had the fewest and most conservative changes made to her design. Also naturally, the ship furthest along in construction was the one that was finished, not the one with the best changes made with the lessons of Jutland (for those following along at home, 3 British BCs just plain blew up and sank). The Repulse and the Renown were too far along to modify much, they served well in WW2 but never had their defenses tested. After 1918 I believe the BC category lay fallow until about 1941 when the US ordered the Alaska class. There is a school of thought that the Iowas were battlecruisers since they weren't armored against their own main battery, they were certainly fast enough to qualify as battlecruisers. Post Jutland they had two roles. The first was the one the Hood was in when she was destroyed, run down enemy ships and sink them. Barring that chink in her armor, a King George V and the Hood should have mopped the floor with a battleship and a heavy cruiser. The other role only emerged during WW2 and was mostly filled by fast battleships: carrier escort. You can fit an amazing antiaircraft battery to a battleship, and carriers proved to need the protection.
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Mar 17, 2014 10:12
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Thanks, that's a really thorough analysis of the role of Battlecruisers. I think they are endlessly fascinating, but before further research I thought they were complete follies, although in their role of hunting down cruisers they really excelled.
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Mar 17, 2014 10:24
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Tekopo posted:I'm currently fascinated by Battle Cruisers: I understand at the moment why they were originally created (they were intended to prevent commerce raiding by armored cruisers) and they did well in that particular job (see the battle of the Falklands), but why were they used in Jutland in a role they were never intended to take? Were any battle-cruisers built post WWI and if so, why and what were their intended roles post-Jutland, since they proved to be a liability when placed in fleet battles? Blame Jackie Fisher. While the man did a lot for the Royal Navy in the late 19th/early 20th century Battlecruisers was one of the major areas where he dropped the ball. The basic idea behind the battlecruiser was simple give it the biggest guns and the fastest engines possible in order to deal with enemy commerce raiders. The idea being that they'd be able to outgun anything fast enough to keep up with them and outrun anything strong enough to outshoot them. And when used in that role they worked very well. The main problem that would come back to haunt them was simple, the only way to squeeze a battleships firepower and a cruisers speed on to a hull that size was to cut the tonnage devoted to armour and other defences. Now the problem with that was largely a perception issue. If you are an Admiral or a politician who has spent the last few years paying for and manning these things you start looking at them and thinking "well it has the guns of a battleship and is the size of a battleship and it costs the same as a battleship. Therefore, it must be a battleship." and using them accordingly in battle with disastrous results. Another thing that didn't help was that Battlecruisers being Jackie Fishers personal pet project got the best and brightest the navy had to offer and thus came to see themselves and be seen by the rest of the navy as a dashing elite who were the best of the best, So there was no way you could leave them out of action. Add in the problems with ammo handling and the generally poor quality of british naval artillery and you get results like Jutland where three british battlecruisers were destroyed. Now German battlecruisers were supposedly built to a much more sensible and realistic design but I'm not really qualified to discuss them. Also to answer your second question, Battlecruisers were being built post war. Notably the British Furious-class American Lexington-class and Japanese Amagi-class battlecruisers. But then the washington naval treaties hit and as part of the treaties was a limit on capital ship tonnage which saw most of these battlecruisers scrapped or converted into aircraft carriers which being new and untested at the time were exempt from the treaty requirements. e,f,b
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Mar 17, 2014 10:29
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Yeah, I did read about how it was Fisher that drove the construction of Battlecruisers but to blame him for them seems a bit weird, since he DID build them for their intended role and not as ships-of-the-line. But you are right in that their problem are largely ones of perception: even the name of their class, Battlecruisers, seem to suggest that they should be used as fighting ships in a large scale battle. It's also good to note that Beatty was seriously against sending a couple of his BCs to the South Atlantic to fight the Scharnhorst/Gneisenau, but it can't be denied that the BCs sent there did some of their most valuable work and really did show that the class worked in their intended role.
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Mar 17, 2014 10:35
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Would it be correct to say that BCs were built and had a purpose during an odd transitional phase where (naval) aviation, radar and radio technology were not yet developed enough to serve as scouts?
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Mar 17, 2014 10:50
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steinrokkan posted:Yup, you'll see more irresponsible things being done to consumer grade fireworks at any New Years party.
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Mar 17, 2014 10:52
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gradenko_2000 posted:Would it be correct to say that BCs were built and had a purpose during an odd transitional phase where (naval) aviation, radar and radio technology were not yet developed enough to serve as scouts?
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Mar 17, 2014 10:56
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You'd be surprised how much intelligence work is just people reading foreign newspapers and then writing bland reports about what's going on in country A. Something else: I'm quite sure you have superbly capable people reporting all kind of things, but what gets selected as valid info is probably more often than not heavily dependant on the worldview of the decision makers. What could possibly go wrong if you put people like Wolfowitz and Cheney in positions of power? It's a paradoxon that the needs of these people will be catered to, much in a sense of not only decision makers "hearing what they want to hear" to justify policy X or really any pretext of power politics, but also "telling the bosses what they want to hear" for reasons of career or what have you. One of the more radical examples for this is probably the pretext of the invasion of Iraq. Anyway, this reminds me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwXF6UdkeI4 Power Khan fucked around with this message at 11:05 on Mar 17, 2014 |
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Mar 17, 2014 11:01
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Slavvy posted:Bad at their jobs I can understand. But I don't see how people can be so badly ignorant today in a first world country. The amount of resources being constantly expended on various intelligence agencies gathering information makes it seem like there's no excuse for being so ignorant, the way there was even during the early 20th century, let alone prior to that. But I guess not. What, exactly, do you think they were ignorant of? You can have as much information at your fingertips as any man alive and still interpret it terribly, or decide to try and cheat the odds. JaucheCharly posted:What could possibly go wrong if you put people like Wolfowitz and Cheney in positions of power? I agree with everything else you say, but don't lump Wolfowitz and Cheney together. Aside from the fact that Cheney isn't a neocon, he was a good sec def! How did he get to be awful? I have no idea!!!
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Mar 17, 2014 13:26
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The years of the G.W Bush presidency are probably comparable to a binge, not on good schnaps, but poorly distilled moonshine. Getting loaded on being the only superpower left on the block. An Empire in the making, right?
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Mar 17, 2014 14:28
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So mostly studying the early modern period here its all sieges, sieges, sieges and its kind of one note. I know siege warfare was how most of how most of war was conducted since, like, forever, but what period might have seen the highest amount of pitched battles compared to sieges and why?
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Mar 17, 2014 16:32
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Tekopo posted:Yeah, I did read about how it was Fisher that drove the construction of Battlecruisers but to blame him for them seems a bit weird, since he DID build them for their intended role and not as ships-of-the-line. But you are right in that their problem are largely ones of perception: even the name of their class, Battlecruisers, seem to suggest that they should be used as fighting ships in a large scale battle. It's also good to note that Beatty was seriously against sending a couple of his BCs to the South Atlantic to fight the Scharnhorst/Gneisenau, but it can't be denied that the BCs sent there did some of their most valuable work and really did show that the class worked in their intended role. Fisher deserves quite a bit of criticism for believing that speed was armor when it really wasn't. The "large light cruisers" were the most insane expression of his philosophy but he clearly had the same idea in mind when he conceived the dreadnought battlecruiser. In theory, yes, the BCs could avoid battleship fire by running away. However, the culture of the RN never encouraged officers to run away. You had to do your best to strike a blow against the enemy. It might have been 150 years since they executed poor Byng but the memory remained. I'm not sure if Fisher simply refused to imagine that British battlecruisers would ever have to retreat, or if he somehow assumed that speed was armor even you were closing on the enemy at a combined speed of 55 knots and trying to use your own main battery, but either way, he was way off base. I applaud Fisher's reforming zeal and the guy was certainly larger than life, but he got this one wrong.
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Mar 17, 2014 17:08
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khwarezm posted:So mostly studying the early modern period here its all sieges, sieges, sieges and its kind of one note. I know siege warfare was how most of how most of war was conducted since, like, forever, but what period might have seen the highest amount of pitched battles compared to sieges and why? WWII? The Napoleonic era also had quite a few grand clashes. Then you get warfare where sieges are simply too hard to manage and every battle becomes a pitched battle followed by some raiding. This is more or less the Greek model. No one, aside from the Spartan's immediate neighbors, was getting wiped out, but the threat of 'my army is bigger than yours and, while we can't get into your city to destroy you, we will gently caress up your agriculture if we stay here' was generally enough to get favorable treaties and the like. Of course, once the hegemonic powers get strong enough that they can dispatch men even during harvest time you start seeing sieges again.
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Mar 17, 2014 17:45
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Tekopo posted:That's actually one of the thoughts that occurred to me: BCs in an era of aerial supremacy would make their job highly redundant and also make their deployment much more dangerous than in an era like WWI in which bombers had only started to become developed. I glossed over a lot of post-Jutland BCs. The Americans were building 8 when the Washington treaty was signed, two of them were converted into aircraft carriers. The French built a pair to run down German pocket battleships. I'm busy today but I should do something on those ships, and the French carrier projects.
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Mar 17, 2014 19:03
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:I was just joking man, one of two quoted Afghanis thought 9/11 was an inside job. I was wondering if that was the joke and I missed it. Though I'll point out that there are actually like 8 Afghanis quoted in that article.  Also, Battlecruiser chat is great.
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Mar 17, 2014 21:46
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Fisher deserves quite a bit of criticism for believing that speed was armor when it really wasn't. The "large light cruisers" were the most insane expression of his philosophy but he clearly had the same idea in mind when he conceived the dreadnought battlecruiser. In theory, yes, the BCs could avoid battleship fire by running away. However, the culture of the RN never encouraged officers to run away. You had to do your best to strike a blow against the enemy. It might have been 150 years since they executed poor Byng but the memory remained. I'm not sure if Fisher simply refused to imagine that British battlecruisers would ever have to retreat, or if he somehow assumed that speed was armor even you were closing on the enemy at a combined speed of 55 knots and trying to use your own main battery, but either way, he was way off base.
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Mar 17, 2014 21:51
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Your battlecruisers are crap compared to this battlecruiser. The Kirov-class Nuclear Powered Guided Missile Battlecruiser  Twenty 'gently caress you and die' supersonic anti ship missiles; tipped with fission-fusion thermonuclear warheads. 200kt. The equivalent of twelve SA-10 SAM battalions defend this ship against air attack. Also, if you get through the SA-10s you gotta face SA-15 SAM and SA-8. Only one remains in active service... I might be jumping the gun to describe this ship as history.
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Mar 18, 2014 03:05
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So I'm reading Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. Crecy was disastrous in a lot of ways and there is the mention of King John the Blind of Bohemia deciding he wanted to do some battle. The reigns of 12 horses were intertwined so no one would lose track of him. Everyone involved in that group ended up dead, but are there any records to indicate, uh, how successful a blind king with a sword was?
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Mar 18, 2014 03:26
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Baloogan posted:Your battlecruisers are crap compared to this battlecruiser. The Kirovs were sweet ships. Absolutely design to sail into the Atlantic and gently caress things up. In Harpoon I always just ran subs in their direction if one was in action, that usually did the trick. Here's another pretty battlecruiser.  That's the Strasbourg, a French battlecruiser built to handle the German surface raider threat of heavy cruisers and pocket battleships. 30,000 tons, 31 knots, armored against German 11" guns, 8 13" (330mm) guns. That's 8 heavy guns in four quad turrets, all forward. This arrangement saved several hundred tons of protection since you need to protect fewer magazines. Taking heavy shells in the engine rooms is Really Bad, so you don't skimp on the main belt, but you can thicken or extend it with the savings from not having to build a really heavy armored box around an extra magazine or two. The Hood had that many (bigger) guns, but in 4 turrets. You also have to protect the whole turret assembly, adding more weight per turret. It looks weird, and you can't shoot back while running away, but you save a lot of weight. The British did that with a couple of ships, they were successful.  Along with her sister, the Dunkerque, the French BCs accomplished almost nothing in WW2. Dunkerque was beached after the engagement with the British at Mers-el-kabir and then scuttled when the Germans occupied the naval base at Toulon. Strasbourg escaped Mers-el-kabir and was also scuttled at Toulon. Either or both ship would have been invaluable to either side in the Mediterranean. The ships they were intended to counter were the German Deutchland class pocket battleships and later the true BCs of the Scharnhorst class. The Deutschlands were a bit bigger than a pre-war heavy cruiser at 14,000 tons. They were well protected against cruiser guns, carried 6 11" guns in triple turrets fore and aft, and had a maximum speed of 28 knots. To save weight and labor they had a fully welded hull, being the first major warships built in this fashion. Welding saved a great deal of weight but at the risk of structural weakness. Intended as commerce raiders they had diesel engines for fuel efficiency, a range of 10,000 nautical miles at 20 knots would be one of the best in the world until nuclear propulsion, uh, a mere 26 years after the first Deutschland was laid down.  Unlike the French ships, these saw a lot of action. Luckily for them, none of it was against capital ships. Unluckily for them, it turns out that 3 cruisers can take one of them on and walk away from the fight. That actually happened in 1939. The Admiral Graf Spee, a ship you may have heard of, had a very nice cruise bagging several merchnats ships, and following the Prize Rules, which the U-boats were very much not doing. Here's the Graf Spee after tangling with the cruiser squadron who caught her.  Yep. Not badly damaged at all. Of the three cruisers, the Exeter with 8" guns and the Achilles and Ajax with 6" guns really didn't hurt her that badly. In exchange none were sunk, but they were all hit and at least two had turrets knocked out. Stuck in a neutral port he had to leave soon, and presented with fake messages indicating the imminent arrival of heavy units the captain took the other option. He scuttled the ship and committed suicide. I suppose he thought he was saving the lives of his crew, so I'll give him that.  The Admiral Scheer had a bigger score of merchants sunk. She was also notable for being bombed by mistake during the Spanish Civil War while she was serving on the Neutrality Patrol. Against the Arctic convoys she contributed little, ending her days in harbor, sunk by the RAF. The Deutschland was very active in the Norway campaign. Later in the war German heavy units were order to operate with extreme caution, this lead to her being chased away from a Russia-bound convoy by a destroyer force. She was scuttled in May 1945, raised by the Russians, and used as a target for weapons tests. More battlecruisers later !
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Mar 18, 2014 03:50
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mllaneza posted:The British did that with a couple of ships, they were successful. I think you're a little too kind to Nelson and Rodney. Yes, they were tough as nails, but their guns never really performed properly and IIRC they had problems with the muzzle blast tearing up decking when firing abeam. The British decision to go with three turrets forward meant that 1/3 of their battery was unable to fire ahead at short range. Also, while I recognize that this is not a valid metric, they were appallingly ugly ships. There's a reason than when they finally had a chance to build fast battleships and started designing the KGVs, nobody said "How about we pick up with the Nelson design?"
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Mar 18, 2014 04:09
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Weren't there some issues with those French quad turrets? Why didn't anyone else go after that approach?
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Mar 18, 2014 04:17
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Tekopo posted:That's actually one of the thoughts that occurred to me: BCs in an era of aerial supremacy would make their job highly redundant and also make their deployment much more dangerous than in an era like WWI in which bombers had only started to become developed. The Prince of Wales and Repulse would agree with you. Baloogan posted:Your battlecruisers are crap compared to this battlecruiser. Lehman and the gang reactivated the Iowas in part to serve as a response to the Kirovs. Also because they wanted 600 ships.
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Mar 18, 2014 04:50
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Zorak of Michigan posted:There's a reason than when they finally had a chance to build fast battleships and started designing the KGVs, nobody said "How about we pick up with the Nelson design?" The KG Vs were a different approach to meeting the requirements of a different treaty. That's why they ended up with 14" guns instead of 16" like everyone else, tonnage limits are a bitch. At least they managed to put 3 turrets on it. The big problem with quad turrets isn't the complexity of the design, the French just welded a pair of twins together and strengthened the support structure. The problem with quads is that one penetrating hit means you lose 4 guns all at once, possibly two turrets' worth if the magazines connect. On a KG V, even a lucky hit leaves her the quad turret aft. I hope they learned from WW 1, connecting magazines are a bad idea. The Seydlitz was almost lost at Dogger Bank after a hit set off a magazine inferno that took out two turrets. If the ±RN didn't learn from that, then the nelson and Rodney could have been both oddly handsome and also deathtraps.
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Mar 18, 2014 04:55
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what is it about military history that attracts so many goobers, do you think?
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Mar 18, 2014 09:18
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You know, I was always more of a airplane fan, but drat if this ship chat isn't interesting. Trying to look for the exact number, but I can't seem to find it; not even in Wikipedia. Any idea how many ships the British brought for the second invasion of the Rio de la Plata? Nelson had what, 33 ships in Trafalgar against the 41 in the French-Spanish Fleet? The Second Invasion happens in 1807, and the professor's throwaway comment was about a hundred British ships arriving here in 1807. Which sounds bonkers, but led me to wonder how many ships were actually here. I mean, you do have 11,000-12,000 British troops. How many ships do you need to transport that many men? Argentinian history isn't really prominent in my career's... uh, syllabus? It's like maybe 10%. Europe is way more fun it seems, so I was just wondering.  As an aside, the Wikipedia article for this says the Buenos Aires citizens used boiling oil to fight back the British, and I quite remember every single history teacher/book/show/etc repeating it as gospel. Then Felipe Pigna comes along and says "You guys do realize how expensive oil was in Buenos Aires, right? Why wouldn't they use water."  I can't recommend that guy enough for general Argentinian history, if any of you have any interest.
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Mar 18, 2014 09:19
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cuckold cleanup posted:what is it about military history that attracts so many goobers, do you think? JaucheCharly posted:The years of the G.W Bush presidency are probably comparable to a binge, not on good schnaps, but poorly distilled moonshine.
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Mar 18, 2014 09:41
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:Overcompensating for perceived weakness, plenty of room to air unwholesome political opinions in dog-whistle form, rarely humbled by real danger. The usual. Also explosions. ... pewpew
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Mar 18, 2014 10:15
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:Overcompensating for perceived weakness, plenty of room to air unwholesome political opinions in dog-whistle form, rarely humbled by real danger. The usual. In addition you have lots and lots of numbers, specs and minutia to pour over. That can draw in certain types of people prone to pedantry and insufferableness.
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Mar 18, 2014 12:09
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:What happened to your name, Bloor? Oh, just using my steam name here for reasons of DayZ, and because Jauche is such a great word that is hardly used in regular conversations. The old name was taken from a Hunter S. Thompson novel and people would respond quite hostile to any of my posts when I had that picture of him in the tuxedo as my avatar. I was not aware that I'm such a horrible person, but hey.  Lesson learned: Avatars matter. So let's get back to war stuff. Why are you called WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL now? And why are you not making effort posts about 30 years war stuff? Nothing bad about ships, but it's not my thing. 1. Reading about Janissary stuff, I wondered how european states managed to curb the influence of a standing army on the political system? 2. What happened to all the mercenaries in the wake of the Peace of Westphalia?
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Mar 18, 2014 12:13
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JaucheCharly posted:Why are you called WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL now? And why are you not making effort posts about 30 years war stuff? Nothing bad about ships, but it's not my thing.
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Mar 18, 2014 12:28
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:Overcompensating for perceived weakness, plenty of room to air unwholesome political opinions in dog-whistle form, rarely humbled by real danger. The usual. that makes sense. must suck running into those guys
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Mar 18, 2014 13:07
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Azran posted:Stuff about Argentina
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Mar 18, 2014 13:51
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I don't suppose you are going to cover any of the Royal Navy White Elephants in future posts mllaneza? Though the French Navy stuff is facinating.
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Mar 18, 2014 16:26
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JaucheCharly posted:Oh, just using my steam name here for reasons of DayZ, and because Jauche is such a great word that is hardly used in regular conversations. The old name was taken from a Hunter S. Thompson novel and people would respond quite hostile to any of my posts when I had that picture of him in the tuxedo as my avatar. I was not aware that I'm such a horrible person, but hey.
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Mar 18, 2014 17:27
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I seem to remember reading somewhere that the real reason the Graf Speed was scuttled was that a lucky hit fired at extreme range had gone down a stack and destroyed the fuel separation system, so there was not enough fuel to make it to a friendly port and not enough time to make repairs before they would be seized and interned. I also seem to remember that this was only discovered recently. Any truth to this?
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Mar 18, 2014 17:31
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