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Yeah, they were saving up for a big kamikaze blow-out in the face of Operation Olympic. Indeed, that was planned as the final "decisive battle"...they weren't planning on saving anything significant for Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu proper. It was stop the Americans on Kyushu or nothing. Or, as it turned out, get nuked into submission. Maybe that instead.
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May 21, 2014 07:33
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Weren't they hoarding planes then to use for kamikaze attacks on the invasion force? Hoarding is a good word. The planes had only enough fuel to undertake a single one way journey, and maybe even less than that. They were a bunch of sitting ducks that couldn't be used against anything short of a full-on American assault (to preserve their mass which was the only thing they got going for them), and would be easily destroyed by any American attack against the airfields in preparation for the invasion.
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May 21, 2014 10:52
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Kaal posted:Preventing a BIOS firmware update from going bad is pretty easy though. Either prevent the normal OS from doing the update so it has to be done manually (the classic way of doing it), or implement a BIOS recovery program (the modern way of doing it). Or both, for that matter. At that point, the hacker has to personally update the machine and destroy the backups, and they may as well have just taken a hammer to it. If "a program" can do it, a virus can do it. If it can be done by software, and the software access control is broken, the virus can do it. The "BIOS recovery program" is a program. If you can break the protection you have unrestricted access to the machine and you can write to the register to erase the BIOS. There is not much of an incentive to reverse engineer the literally thousands of different PC motherboards in the wild. There is a strong incentive to do this to hundreds of internet routers/big (cell) telephone switches, starting with the most popular. Not to speak of the friendly national corporations huawei(cn)/zte(cn)/cisco(usa)/juniper(usa)/qualcomm(usa) giving you engineering specs and backdoors. quote:
quote:edit: For example, take the breakthrough Spiegel article about Juniper: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-nsa-uses-powerful-toolbox-in-effort-to-spy-on-global-networks-a-940969-3.html It details all sorts of ways that the NSA can access computers, and it is some pretty heavy stuff, but you'll notice that almost all of them are related to quiet information gathering of civilian devices. This is because as soon as an intrusion is noticed, it can be quickly repaired. It's certainly effective in it's own way, but there's very little that would be applicable in a battle, unless the enemy decided to start emailing its tactical strategies or carrying around their personal GPS-enabled mobile phones. And that is particularly true of the "remote-access" capabilities that would be most worrisome for a war-fighter. Sure there's a possibility that an important industrial SCADA could be attacked, but that requires an enemy hacker to have physical access to the equipment - something that is rather less likely during an actual war. I'd expect SCADA systems to be poorly secured, but a difficult target, them being so unique snowflakes. And iirc the NSA helped secure some of the critical ones (nuclear reactors and such? I don't remember). The NSA contractors must have lol'ed like crazy.
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May 21, 2014 14:03
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HEY GAL posted:Yeah, they wore makeup. That's Jimmy Durante and you will not convince me otherwise.
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May 22, 2014 00:59
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Nenonen posted:Did meteorology and accurate and timely weather forecasts have any role in wars prior to WW2? How did they cope with the limitations posed by the war eg. Germans might have their submarines send weather reports from the Atlantic but that must have been spotty at best. Did Allies have any means of gathering weather data from continental Europe though? From the last page, but off the top of my head meteorology played a huge role in the planning of the Normandy Invasion. The Channel doesn't exactly have the calmest or most predictable seas at the best of times, and as such it was crucial to have the strike launched when the seas were calm enough for the landing craft to reach shore safely, the skies calm and clear enough for aircraft to operate, and most importantly had to happen during a specific tidal cycle. The original date when all of these factors were to come together, June 5th, was postponed due to storms in the channel. The decision to proceed for June 6th was effectively a tremendous coinflip, and could have ended disastrously had the weather worsened instead of clearing up.
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May 22, 2014 01:16
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:That's Jimmy Durante and you will not convince me otherwise. The hilarious thing about this is that this nose was apparently common among the Bourbons. I wonder if Louis XIV looked like that and all his paintings were flattering him?
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May 22, 2014 09:06
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On the topic of weather and war: The thing about combat metrology is that you don't need an invasion to start collecting data. Pop up on the coast near somewhere isolated in a submarine, pop down an automated weather station, bob's your uncle. Weather Station Kurt (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Station_Kurt) was a Nazi installation not found on mainland North America until 1977
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May 22, 2014 12:00
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CoolCab posted:On the topic of weather and war: This has absolutely nothing to do with military history, but what sort of wiki is that? It's in non-simple english, but it has nothing at all in common with the format at the normal wiki. e: this is the article on a normal wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Station_Kurt Frostwerks fucked around with this message at 00:45 on May 23, 2014 |
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May 23, 2014 00:41
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Frostwerks posted:This has absolutely nothing to do with military history, but what sort of wiki is that? It's in non-simple english, but it has nothing at all in common with the format at the normal wiki. It's mobile version, remove the .m. from the url. I hate it when people post links to it, even though it's not a big trouble to switch to the normal style.
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May 23, 2014 00:44
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Ahh, I gotcha. I got a flip phone so I had no clue you'd need a different formatting to be viewed on phones. Does the awfulapp have a different layout for the forums?
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May 23, 2014 00:46
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You can just scroll down and hit "desktop" too.
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May 23, 2014 04:42
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A couple of pages back somebody recommended the 17 part docudrama Soviet Storm, all of which can found on youtube. After watching it over the course of a fortnight I'd also recommend it to anybody interested in learning about the eastern front of WWII. Can anyone make a recommendation for a similar docudrama or documentary on the arms/technology race in the European theater during WWII?
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May 23, 2014 05:20
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Speaking of Soviet Storm, there's a bit in there I wouldn't mind learning more about. At the beginning of the battle of the Caucasus episode there's a story about a soviet solider sneaking into a dam the Germans have captured, shooting some of them working to disarm demolition charges on the dam and then blowing the dam. It seems like a hell of a story but I haven't been able to find anything on it, at least in English language works anyway.
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May 23, 2014 05:50
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I just wanted to comment on the naval strikes vs land installations discussion: It's a lot easier to aim for a ship in the open ocean and to evaluate your aim afterwards. When you're bombing an island, even a complete miss might throw up some dust and smoke that'll obscure the target. If you make a direct hit and damage something real flammable like a tank farm, you'll obscure the rest of the target even more. The IJN had a pretty good idea based on their previous experiences (notably Pearl Harbor) that hitting Midway with half their strike force wasn't going to cut it. They either needed to send everything or have a second wave ready to go without waiting for the first wave to confirm the need for a second wave. Nagumo did neither: he only sent half his force to Midway based on a super vague verbal order from Yamamoto to "keep half your planes in reserve" and additionally waited until his first wave came back before even thinking about sending a second one. On a somewhat related note, the difference between trying to shell something on the water and something land also came up during the initial stages of the Dardanelles campaign. The old RN battleships did have large enough guns that they could "oneshot" a Turkish gun emplacement, but only if they could hit it, and observing fall of shot when the background is a dusty rocky mountain is really quite difficult. They could suppress the guns by firing rapidly into its approximate location, but that reduced the chance of getting a direct hit even more.
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May 23, 2014 06:05
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Isn't the German bombardment of the Polish positions on the Westerplatte another example of how hard it can be to spot the fall of shot well? They lasted for seven days before running out of ammunition while under bombardment.
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May 23, 2014 06:32
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It was just one old battleship built before WW I, with main armament consisting of two towers of double 28 cm guns. As far as spotting goes Westerplatte should be far easier than some pacific island, since Germans had troops close by and complete command of sea and air.
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May 23, 2014 07:32
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a kitten posted:You can just scroll down and hit "desktop" too. THat'd be a valid point if I knew it was a mobile version. As it was I just wanted to get away from that godawful layout.
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May 23, 2014 07:33
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Cyrano4747 posted:Effective for what? It's a completely relative term. They did just fine hunting large game. They managed to hold their own pretty well against thinly-spread army assets in the pre-ACW muzzle loader days, and managed to score some really significant victories given the right setting and the right/wrong commander (on either side) well after that, although they were just as likely to be armed with firearms of their own at that point. On the contrary, I remember fondly destroying tanks with catapults and spear-men in Civilization. So life is exactly like a game of Civilization, is what you're claiming here. 
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May 23, 2014 10:25
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Libluini posted:On the contrary, I remember fondly destroying tanks with catapults and spear-men in Civilization. So life is exactly like a game of Civilization, is what you're claiming here. I like to think that veteran spearmen can defeat newly recruited tanks with molotov cocktails.
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May 23, 2014 10:43
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Obviously they have a shaped charge on the end of their spears. edit for pic: 
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May 23, 2014 11:14
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Supposedly Finnish troops used birch logs to make 1930s built Soviet tanks throw off their tracks during the Winter War.
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May 23, 2014 11:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:The IJN had a pretty good idea based on their previous experiences (notably Pearl Harbor) that hitting Midway with half their strike force wasn't going to cut it. They either needed to send everything or have a second wave ready to go without waiting for the first wave to confirm the need for a second wave. Nagumo did neither: he only sent half his force to Midway based on a super vague verbal order from Yamamoto to "keep half your planes in reserve" and additionally waited until his first wave came back before even thinking about sending a second one. This may have been a mistake but it ended up being inconsequential to the battle. Destroying Midway was unnecessary anyway, the only reason to strike midway was to draw US attention, so a half-done strike was enough for that.
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May 23, 2014 11:42
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Rabhadh posted:Obviously they have a shaped charge on the end of their spears. Even with the shaped charge, and a tank with zero situational awareness, I can't imagine it would be comfortable to have that thing go off in your hands.
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May 23, 2014 18:19
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Even with the shaped charge, and a tank with zero situational awareness, I can't imagine it would be comfortable to have that thing go off in your hands. I'm pretty sure lunge mines were always intended to be suicide weapons.
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May 23, 2014 18:21
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Hastings mentions those in Retribution saying that at first they took Soviet tankers by surprise and had a few early successes until the soviets just started spraying machine gun fire at any Japanese getting near the tank.
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May 23, 2014 18:28
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Hastings mentions those in Retribution saying that at first they took Soviet tankers by surprise and had a few early successes until the soviets just started spraying machine gun fire at any Japanese getting near the tank. Despite their fanatical bravery and devotion, the suicide bombers were ineffective. In an overwhelming majority of cases, they were destroyed by submachinegun fire before reaching their goal. Only 2% of our tank losses can be attributed to suicide bombers, despite a very large amount of them. Hogge Wild posted:Supposedly Finnish troops used birch logs to make 1930s built Soviet tanks throw off their tracks during the Winter War. I haven't read anything about this, but you could definitely immobilize a tank with a log. Soviet instructions forbade using logs to dislodge American Lend-Lease tanks, as this would tear the tracks.
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May 24, 2014 03:40
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As in, running over the logs, or having a log thrown between the spokes?
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May 24, 2014 03:48
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Ensign Expendable posted:I haven't read anything about this, but you could definitely immobilize a tank with a log. Soviet instructions forbade using logs to dislodge American Lend-Lease tanks, as this would tear the tracks. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was just a widely spread tall tale. Heh, I thought about asking you if it was even possible  .Phobophilia posted:As in, running over the logs, or having a log thrown between the spokes? The latter.
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May 24, 2014 11:35
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Speaking of Soviet Storm, there's a bit in there I wouldn't mind learning more about. At the beginning of the battle of the Caucasus episode there's a story about a soviet solider sneaking into a dam the Germans have captured, shooting some of them working to disarm demolition charges on the dam and then blowing the dam. It seems like a hell of a story but I haven't been able to find anything on it, at least in English language works anyway. Yeah I was wondering about that too. I assume it's just some short footnote buried in a huge stack of unorganized reports discovered in some archive somewhere. Not much more to it than that. Since the series was originally produced in Russia I doubt there are any English translations for that. Or maybe there's an entire chapter devoted to it in a Glantz book gently caress if I know.
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May 24, 2014 21:26
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I'm going to third wanting to know more about that really. Or read just a huge break down of some good examples of Soviet-Nazi spy ring and under cover work stuff.
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May 24, 2014 21:28
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Hey thread, I found a thing. It's a copy of a letter left by a Fourier (the guy who allots quartering, there's one per company) when he deserted. The copy was recorded in his regiment's legal record book. I've translated it as best as I could, but Baroque German remains a hosed up thing to read. Anyway, they haven't been payed for a while (this regiment has a bunch of other problems too, and 40 people ended up deserting in the same night over it, but this is the only thing that he's writing about), and this guy's having what looks almost like an existential crisis over it. It's from August 1625, but I'm not sure of the exact date. quote:REGISTRATION quote:I had really hoped to have better opportunities in this thing than this, and to serve in my office as promised. But now I see that I was leading only an empty name, and that to reckon in this thing you have to be young, and look at others with your fist. quote:I have spent a great deal on the people. I have expended effort, work, and monetary expenses, so it really seems to me, as I had hoped, that I should have been better repayed. But for God's sake, dude, you honestly didn't see this coming? In this line of work? I've found him. The most naive person in the 17th century. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:20 on May 26, 2014 |
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May 26, 2014 19:55
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Bottomline? - Wife is sick - Job sucks - No pay - lovely colleagues - Too old for this poo poo - Invested too much of myself, got poo poo in return. That sounds almost like my last job
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May 26, 2014 21:39
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JaucheCharly posted:Bottomline? - The new management is moving the office to Italy and so now we "have to be comfortable with relocating," gently caress that Actually, he really likes his colleagues. lovely boss, though. Wallenstein said that if Wolfgang von Mansfeld "was as sick as he is conceited, he'd have died a long time ago," which is just...just the sickest burn, I am in awe. Edit: Did your last job involve an ill loving hat, though? Because their hats are pretty sweet. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:13 on May 26, 2014 |
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May 26, 2014 21:49
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JaucheCharly posted:Bottomline? Such is life in glorious Arstotzka.
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May 26, 2014 22:20
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Also: do any of you remember when I mentioned finding a dude with the fantastic name of Century van Breitenbach? He's in a muster roll from 1681. Today I found a Julius Caesar van Breitenbach testifying in a murder trial in 1625. Like, a grandfather or great uncle or something. Conclusion: not only is this evidence for military service as a familial way of life for normal people as well as famous people (which we already know about), that family's been massive dorklords (pretty sure Century refers to the Roman military unit) for at least seventy years or so. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 00:26 on May 27, 2014 |
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May 26, 2014 23:01
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The History Channel is airing the first part of their hugely hyped 3 part miniseries on the World Wars tonight. And judging by the commercials and the channel's last decade of programming it's going to be awful and hit every single cliche and misconception imaginable. For examples, did you know Patton invented tank warfare? I can't loving wait.
Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 01:23 on May 27, 2014 |
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May 27, 2014 01:15
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HEY GAL posted:Also: do any of you remember when I mentioned finding a dude with the fantastic name of Century van Breitenbach? He's in a muster roll from 1681. I feel this has given me a great perspective of the period and people.
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May 27, 2014 01:26
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:The History Channel is airing the first part of their hugely hyped 3 part miniseries on the World Wars tonight. And judging by the commercials and the channel's last decade of programming it's going to be awful and hit every single cliche and misconception imaginable. For examples, did you know Patton invented tank warfare? I can't loving wait. Please get plastered and do a live review, thanks.
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May 27, 2014 01:33
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Ensign Expendable posted:Please get plastered and do a live review, thanks. I'm afraid I don't have the constitution to attempt that. edit: hahahah it begins with a dramatically told origin story of Hitler's mustache. Yes that's right And going by well known photographs of Hitler pre/during WWI it's not even loving true. edit 2: Patton was the first person in history to think of mounting a gun on an automobile. edit 3: the machine gun was the deadliest weapon used in WWI. What's artillery? edit 4: ahaha WWI Hitler has the coordination of a Three Stooges character. jesus christ this is taking such a hardline deterministic course of history sooooooo loving bad. edit 5: well, I didn't think that it was possible that one could describe the motivations and planning of the Gallipoli campaign without even once mentioning the words "Ottoman Empire" or even "Turkey" during it but here it is. I guess I've learned. Also it goes without saying that every single detail of the motivations, planning, and execution of the battle (which apparently lasted one day) was completely wrong. edit 6: Stalin was Lenin's right hand man from the beginning and was his partner during the Russian revolution. (which, again, apparently occurred over night. And it only happened because of German planning and financing and not, you know, because of decades of build up and violent resentment toward the Czar.) Literally noone else is mentioned about the revolution, not even loving Trotsky. And they don't even name the Czar. Was Stalin's ghost a historical consultant on this show? I just can't take this anymore. This is not just  details, this is absolutely terrible. edit 7: no mention of unrestricted submarine warfare in bringing the US into the war. and young Patton is watching film of Mark V tanks sucking like he's studying film for the big game on sunday. And by doing this Patton made tanks not suck. And apparently we had m3 Stuarts fighting in WWI. edit: slow mo montage of US Doughboys marching to the front as wounded british/french troops lie all around on the ground edit: Patton's tank brigade under McArthur's command forced the first German retreat during the war 1:30 in and unlike every single other main character Hitler has yet to say a word besides "my gas mask it won't seal. MY MUSTACHE MY MUSTACHE" Seriously, with his literal bumbling clumsy antics and his weird unearthly social behavior Hitler is being portrayed as a loving cartoon character. edit whatever: Patton and MacArthur were the two, and only, commanders of note during the Hundred Days offensive. And their units were THE men to do anything. In fact there has not been a single portrayal of french of british troops for 45 minutes. I guess Patton's brigade of 3 dozen tanks won us the war! Also going back a bit, the words "Marne" "Verdun" and "Somme" have never been mentioned. Meanwhile there was a segment on Patton's pursuit of Villa. edit I'm in physical pain: for all the US centric focus on WWI, Pershing's name is never mentioned. edit just 30 more minutes: the Japanese began their, quote, "fairly straight line" to WWII because the Allies didn't treat them as an equal partner during the Paris Peace Conference. Because I guess taking a few undefended German islands in the Pacific entitles you to be treated equally with the nations that actually did stuff? Apparently it was a "huge insult" and the two Japanese actors ominously walk out of the room in slow motion. also Versailles directly led to WWII, of course. yay deterministic history. edit 3rst: we had Sherman tanks and air cooled Browning machine guns in 1919. no mention of the German Revolution and the uprising of the population against the Kaiser. And of course no mention of the quasi Civil War in Bavaria. edit: now that I think about it, besides Woodrow Wilson and Ponche Villa there has not been a single historical figure mentioned, let alone named, aside from the "main characters" of the series. You can count the names on two hands. So all of the central figures of World War I? See the Commanders and Leaders list on the top of the wiki article?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_war_i Yeah, only Wilson is mentioned. edit 210: Hitler attends his first meeting of the German Workers Party. 5 minutes later Beer Hall Putsch then Mein Kampf. And those 5 minutes are about Mussolini. And there is an unhealthy emphasis on using the full title of "National Socialist Party" rather than just Nazi party. Because the Nazis were socialists guys, just like the democrats! 
Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 04:06 on May 27, 2014 |
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May 27, 2014 01:38
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Maybe that miniseries was (is going to be) made by historians 500 years from now and sent back to our time. Did Lenin personally slain the Tsar in a swordfight on the Eiffel tower?
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May 27, 2014 03:28
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