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sullat posted:Didn't one of the French kings successfully land an invasion on Albion's shores in the 1200s? My vague recollection is that he was trying to install his own claimant, but was bought off while besieging London. I don't know about that particular invasion, but I'll point out that the key difference being discussed here (and the thing that made Normandy "unprecedented") was that Normandy was a successful large-scale contested landing - that is, there were soldiers on the beaches waiting to repulse the invaders as they got off the boats, which naturally would make any invasion a tricky deal. This didn't happen in earlier times, as Phobophilia pointed out, because armies couldn't learn about and respond to any invasion quickly enough to catch them mid-landing. They could still contest the invasion and win it or lose it, but it'd just be a regular battle between armies at that point. Edit: Actually, now that I think about it, I'm kinda curious. Reading through the letters in the link that Ensign Expendable put up (thanks for that, by the way, those were pretty interesting), it feels like British generals considered such a landing incredibly difficult if not outright impossible at first (before America joined the war in earnest, anyways), and then found the landings surprisingly successful when they were actually carried out - beyond expectations, anyhow. Granted, part of that was probably Churchill's diplomatic maneuvering with Stalin ("It's not that we don't want to help, it's just much too difficult!"/"Now that we're helping, look how much rear end we're kicking!"), but even so, in retrospect, what the odds of success for the landings look like? Was Normandy going off as well as it did a fluke? Did the Germans never have a chance of repulsing an invasion to begin with, or did they have a chance that was lost somehow, or what? Tomn fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Jun 7, 2014 |
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Jun 7, 2014 16:51
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sullat posted:Didn't one of the French kings successfully land an invasion on Albion's shores in the 1200s? My vague recollection is that he was trying to install his own claimant, but was bought off while besieging London. Prince Louis was proclaimed King of England during the First Baron's War. Then King John promptly died. Many of the barons decided they didn't have any beef with John's son, and switched sides and sent Louis packing back to France with a healthy chunk of change and an agreement that he didn't count as an official king of England. Dunno if that's the one you were thinking of.
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Jun 7, 2014 17:07
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Tomn posted:I don't know about that particular invasion, but I'll point out that the key difference being discussed here (and the thing that made Normandy "unprecedented") was that Normandy was a successful large-scale contested landing - that is, there were soldiers on the beaches waiting to repulse the invaders as they got off the boats, which naturally would make any invasion a tricky deal. This didn't happen in earlier times, as Phobophilia pointed out, because armies couldn't learn about and respond to any invasion quickly enough to catch them mid-landing. They could still contest the invasion and win it or lose it, but it'd just be a regular battle between armies at that point Caesar's first invasion of Britain was opposed, and successful. Surely not the scale of Overlord, but it could be done.
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Jun 7, 2014 17:23
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Tomn posted:Granted, part of that was probably Churchill's diplomatic maneuvering with Stalin ("It's not that we don't want to help, it's just much too difficult!"/"Now that we're helping, look how much rear end we're kicking!"), but even so, in retrospect, what the odds of success for the landings look like? Was Normandy going off as well as it did a fluke? Did the Germans never have a chance of repulsing an invasion to begin with, or did they have a chance that was lost somehow, or what? that kind of questioning is always pretty difficult, because we only have sources about history as it happened. It should be noted, however, that the majority of contested landings during WWII were successful (I think First Wake Island is an exception, and I am hard-pressed to come up with another. Anzio didn't go too well, but wasn't pushed back into the sea). It certainly is difficult to see how the Germans could have turned the situation on June 6th, 1944 to their advantage. A strong counter attack with tanks early on would have had to contend with literally every plane in England, before running smack dab into the concentrated fire of the greatest fleet Europe had seen since Jutland. It is dubious at best that such a counterattack could have succeeded. If you go back further and ask what the Germans could have done to bolster the defenses in France before D-Day, you quickly run into the problem of having to defend a very long shoreline against attack by an enemy who can concentrate enormous firepower nearly at will along it. It's possible to defend against it, probably, but it would have been almost prohibitively expensive. So, yeah, i don't see how Germany could have turned back the allied Invasion, but part of that is because the Allies waited until they had an absolutely crushing superiority. If they had decided to invade in 1942 or 1943, as some American generals (as well as Stalin) wanted, things might have gone differently.
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Jun 7, 2014 17:26
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P-Mack posted:Prince Louis was proclaimed King of England during the First Baron's War. Then King John promptly died. Many of the barons decided they didn't have any beef with John's son, and switched sides and sent Louis packing back to France with a healthy chunk of change and an agreement that he didn't count as an official king of England. Yeah, that's the one. Looks like he was invited over and landed peacefully with local support, so it don't count as an opposed landing.
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Jun 7, 2014 17:28
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Dieppe ended in disaster in addition to first Wake.
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Jun 7, 2014 17:47
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Tomn posted:Was Normandy going off as well as it did a fluke? One of the things to consider here is the massive Allied air superiority. During day time, any large scale German movement was going to get hit by air strikes, so any German reinforcements were either going to be bombed to hell while they moved up or had to limit their movement to night time and bad weather. This meant that the German reserves couldn't be brought to Normandy fast enough to counterattack properly. Since the Allied initial landings were powerful enough to defeat the local defending forces and the Allies could land troops faster than the Germans were bringing them in, the invasion was never in any real danger of being defeated. If we go into the gay black Hitler territory, I can think of two ways how the landings could fail. If the Germans had a clairvoyant, they could have focused all of their armored reserve near the beaches and counterattacked in force immediately. They would have taken massive losses from the naval gun support but they might have been able to defeat the beachheads by concentrating against one before they were able to link up. There could have also been some freakish super storm that would have had to stop Allied naval resupply efforts for couple of weeks at least and prevent any air operations in the area. Historically there was a three day storm few weeks after the landings that wrecked one of the two artificial harbours that the Allies were using(they hadn't captured any real ports at this time yet), but even this only slowed down the offensive instead of stopping it.
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Jun 7, 2014 18:07
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Dieppe ended in disaster in addition to first Wake. Dieppe was a raid. Which doesn't mean that it wasn't a disaster, but it was massively smaller in scale and scope than most other landings.
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Jun 7, 2014 18:35
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Obfuscation posted:If we go into the gay black Hitler territory, I can think of two ways how the landings could fail. If the Germans had a clairvoyant, they could have focused all of their armored reserve near the beaches and counterattacked in force immediately. They would have taken massive losses from the naval gun support but they might have been able to defeat the beachheads by concentrating against one before they were able to link up. There could have also been some freakish super storm that would have had to stop Allied naval resupply efforts for couple of weeks at least and prevent any air operations in the area. Historically there was a three day storm few weeks after the landings that wrecked one of the two artificial harbours that the Allies were using(they hadn't captured any real ports at this time yet), but even this only slowed down the offensive instead of stopping it. If Hitler hadn't bought the FUSAG ploy hook, line, and sinker he might have had more units in and around Normandy instead of Calais. For that matter, if Rommel hadn't decided that the weather was too bad for an invasion and been more alert on the night of the 5th, things might have gone differently as well. Neither of those cases, or even both together, would likely have been enough to prevent the landing or throw it back into the sea, but they could have made it more painful than it was.
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Jun 7, 2014 19:12
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One random, possibly apocryphal anecdote (that I probably read in this thread) that I love about D-Day was the German reaction to Allied paradrops. Since German airborne operations tended to be far more dense (due to less opposition?), they figured that for there to be troopers landing all over Normandy, there must have been far, far more of them then there actually were.
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Jun 7, 2014 19:27
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Nenonen posted:Caesar's first invasion of Britain was opposed, and successful. Surely not the scale of Overlord, but it could be done. That's stretching the definition of 'invasion of Britain', surely. I mean, if you're counting that then you might as well count the St Nazaire raid too.
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Jun 7, 2014 19:39
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Obfuscation posted:If we go into the gay black Hitler territory, I can think of two ways how the landings could fail. If the Germans had a clairvoyant, they could have focused all of their armored reserve near the beaches and counterattacked in force immediately. They would have taken massive losses from the naval gun support but they might have been able to defeat the beachheads by concentrating against one before they were able to link up. There could have also been some freakish super storm that would have had to stop Allied naval resupply efforts for couple of weeks at least and prevent any air operations in the area. Historically there was a three day storm few weeks after the landings that wrecked one of the two artificial harbours that the Allies were using(they hadn't captured any real ports at this time yet), but even this only slowed down the offensive instead of stopping it. While not a freakish super storm, a storm from June 19-22 wrecked the mulberry harbor that had been built at Omaha beach beyond repair and did majorly set back allied supply efforts.
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Jun 7, 2014 19:43
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Sylphid posted:I imagine English armies landed in hostile French territory all the time during the Hundred Years' War. For most (all?) of that period, a fairly large chunk of northern France was English (well, Anglo-Norman, and let's not forget the 'Norman' part of that term refers to an area of modern-day France). So not really, no. Marched into it, sure.
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Jun 7, 2014 19:48
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feedmegin posted:That's stretching the definition of 'invasion of Britain', surely. I mean, if you're counting that then you might as well count the St Nazaire raid too. Well Ceasar's first invasion of Britain was a small force by Roman standards, but it was still two legions - a hundred ships and perhaps 12,000 soldiers. It wasn't enough to conquer Britain, but it was enough to defeat any army that the locals could field. Kaal fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Jun 7, 2014 |
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Jun 7, 2014 19:50
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ArchangeI posted:And the worst part? He's unemployed. When he has work, he does the same thing, except he brings his friends, too. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Jun 7, 2014 |
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Jun 7, 2014 20:10
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HEY GAL posted:The relationship between you and your "quarter-giver" wasn't always bad, though. Peter Hagendorf seemed to like one of his hosts and even got him a gift when he moved out, which if it were fiction would have been humor so black that I could see it showing up in Pictures for Sad Children or something. I mean Christ, imagine the conversation. Is there an English translation of his diary?
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Jun 7, 2014 20:28
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StashAugustine posted:Is there an English translation of his diary? Not a complete one. There's excerpts in here, but the translation is flat and sterile, it doesn't do justice to his...let's say "exuberant" grammar and spelling.
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Jun 7, 2014 20:33
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This might be a tad unsuitable for this thread, but I am not sure where it'd best fit. It is a hypothetical but something I was really curious about: Lets just say one of those glorious communist revolutions of D&Ds dreams comes true in the United Kingdom . They want to depose the ruling government (that technically was elected legitimately, if corrupt as poo poo). The police and for now, the army are still on the side of the ruling government yet that could potentially change. The revolutionaries are on track to take control of several major cities. Is NATO obliged to aid the ruling government, no matter how unpopular? Additionally, does such a wide scale revolution do enough to trigger Article V within NATO itself? I understand the devil is in the details to an extent, but I am curious about what would actually be done. Would anything change between now in the cold war? Would the responce changed if it a smaller member like say, Greece?
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Jun 7, 2014 21:12
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SkySteak posted:This might be a tad unsuitable for this thread, but I am not sure where it'd best fit. It is a hypothetical but something I was really curious about : I'm fairly sure Article V only concerns attacks from outside actors. Revolutions are usually not considered outside forces. Of course, things might be different if, saaaaay, it turns out that a number of protest organizations have gotten support by a foreign government (Putin paying back a favor). But even then it would require extended negotiations and depend heavily on other factors. I can't imagine a situation where an Article V intervention in an internal upheaval would be automatic in the same sense that Russian forces crossing into Poland would be.
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Jun 7, 2014 22:10
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Concerning the D-day landing, I've recently listened to the latest Hardcore History episode about WWI. In it Dan Carlin talked about the Gallipoli landing disaster and how the people who fought there would later then be in position to prepare the D-day landing. Could the memory of Gallipoli and the sharp contrast between that clusterfuck and the relately smooth D-day landing also have been a factor in the perception of D-day as unprecedented success?
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Jun 8, 2014 00:53
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Raskolnikov38 posted:While not a freakish super storm, a storm from June 19-22 wrecked the mulberry harbor that had been built at Omaha beach beyond repair and did majorly set back allied supply efforts. On the same note, the allies laid an underwater pipeline across the channel just to supply the landing with petrol. The sheer scale of the logistics involved has always impressed me. The western allies really did wait until they had an overwhelming advantage before they opened up the western front: their interests were the preservation of their own strengths and lives, while the soviets bled on the east. I'm also surprised the Germans never tried to cut the pipe, or was the channel so heavily patrolled that any submarine would be depth charged before they could find the pipe?
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Jun 8, 2014 00:58
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Generally outside of Australia and New Zealand, Gallipoli is mostly forgotten about. I suspect the sort-of-failure of Anzio probably featured more highly in people's minds.
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Jun 8, 2014 00:58
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feedmegin posted:For most (all?) of that period, a fairly large chunk of northern France was English (well, Anglo-Norman, and let's not forget the 'Norman' part of that term refers to an area of modern-day France). Haha, what? No. The Anglo-Norman period ended either with the ascension of Henry II (an Angevin) or, if you're feeling more generous, the conquest of Normandy in 1204 by Philip II. Hell, even after the treaty of Bretigny in 1360 the vast majority of English gains were in and around Aquitaine. Calais was also ceded to the English. I also cannot think of any large-scale opposed landings in the medieval period. Piratical raids, like those conducted by Don Pero Niño in the early 15th century, would meet local resistance, sometimes very significant at that, as at Jersey, but even there the landings themselves were not opposed. This is for a few reasons: 1. Marshalling local forces to oppose a landing was difficult, but not impossible, especially in communities used to piracy. Thus Don Pero met (and defeated) an equally-sized English force at Poole in 1405. But this was not an invasion force. However, these forces would not be sufficient to defeat a serious invasion force like that which William of Normandy brought. Their landing was unopposed. This leads into: 2. There were simply not enough people to patrol coastlines, and without near-instant communications the time to transmit any hypothetical warning would usually be time enough for the invaders to land. Even given the risk of light resistance, an invasion force could usually move to a safer landing zone, such as a friendly (sometimes bribed to be so) port, or an empty stretch of beach. 3. There were not projectile weapons sufficiently threatening to ships and boats to impede the act of landing in itself until quite late. Not only are cannons (and, eventually, machine guns) significantly more dangerous for landing craft in terms of terminal effect, I have to imagine the flatter trajectory is a significant benefit at long range. There's probably other reasons I'm missing, but these are the clearest ones that stick out to me.
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Jun 8, 2014 01:06
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HEY GAL posted:Not a complete one. There's excerpts in here, but the translation is flat and sterile, it doesn't do justice to his...let's say "exuberant" grammar and spelling. I don't know if its actually available for purchase, but i definitely read a full english translation of his diary for my class on economics and the 30 years war. Very richly annotated as well. So look in your university's library StashAugustine and they might have it, I don't access to it myself any more since they lock you out of the relevant section after a class ends so I can't throw you a download.
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Jun 8, 2014 01:55
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Phobophilia posted:I'm also surprised the Germans never tried to cut the pipe, or was the channel so heavily patrolled that any submarine would be depth charged before they could find the pipe? In all honesty, I don't think the Germans ever knew about PLUTO. And even if they had, there wasn't a great deal they could have done about it. The Bay of Biscay is swarming with US Navy and Coastal Command patrol aircraft. The E-Boat forces, Bieber submarines, and combat swimmers couldn't have done it either. It was a tiny little pipeline in an aggressively-patrolled stretch of water.
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Jun 8, 2014 02:46
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Haha, what? No. The Anglo-Norman period ended either with the ascension of Henry II (an Angevin) or, if you're feeling more generous, the conquest of Normandy in 1204 by Philip II. Hell, even after the treaty of Bretigny in 1360 the vast majority of English gains were in and around Aquitaine. Calais was also ceded to the English. If I remember the Iliad correctly, the Greeks pulled off an opposed landing against the Trojans.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:12
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sullat posted:If I remember the Iliad correctly, the Greeks pulled off an opposed landing against the Trojans. They did, though of course that was not during the Medieval Era.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:22
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DeceasedHorse posted:As an bonus, the narration is also absolutely fantastic; if you are into audiobooks I definitely recommend it. You're not kidding, Charlton Griffin has a fantastic voice.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:27
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uPen posted:You're not kidding, Charlton Griffin has a fantastic voice. It's like Alec Guiness and/or the guy that plays Jorah in GoT. I knew absolutely nothing about the Thirty Years War before starting the eBook the other day and I'm totally enthralled. Great purchase.
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Jun 8, 2014 05:38
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Kaal posted:They did, though of course that was not during the Medieval Era. Would the C3 technologies be much different in the Greek Heroic (??? Hellenic?) period vs. the Middle Ages? I mean, you've got mounted messengers, runners, and pigeons back then, and that's pretty much the same as what you have up till Napoleonic experiments with semaphore telegraphs. Who do we have as a source on Troy, though? Homer? And he (if he existed) was writing decades after the fact?
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Jun 8, 2014 06:26
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You mean on Troy or on the Trojan War? While it did probably happen, there is no real account or evidence of the Trojan War other than Homer. And he was composing centuries after the fact; the Trojan War happened in the late Bronze age, right before the Greek Dark Age- Homer was right at the end of that.
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Jun 8, 2014 06:48
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Would the C3 technologies be much different in the Greek Heroic (??? Hellenic?) period vs. the Middle Ages? I mean, you've got mounted messengers, runners, and pigeons back then, and that's pretty much the same as what you have up till Napoleonic experiments with semaphore telegraphs. Yeah that'd be the Heroic Age, and the communications technology would probably be fairly similar. There might be some differences in scale and quality (the Romans, for example, built a pretty excellent courier relay network called the cursus publicus that enabled messages to travel fairly quickly across the empire - similar to the Pony Express) but it's all going to be more or less the same level of technology. Homer is the only source on the war, though archaeology supports the existence of Troy and the period geomorphology he presents. In the story, the Achaeans beach their ships close to the walls of Troy, which had a large natural harbor that poured into the Aegean Sea. The Trojans had been warned of their attack because of the earlier attempts at diplomatic resolution, and so they met the Achaeans on the beach as they came off the boats. But the Achaeans won the field, and so the Trojans retreated behind their walls where they were besieged for years and eventually conquered. So in the story the only reason that the Trojans were able to oppose the landing was because the Achaeans landed within eye-shot of their city.
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Jun 8, 2014 07:21
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Davincie posted:I don't know if its actually available for purchase, but i definitely read a full english translation of his diary for my class on economics and the 30 years war. Very richly annotated as well. So look in your university's library StashAugustine and they might have it, I don't access to it myself any more since they lock you out of the relevant section after a class ends so I can't throw you a download. Really? Holy poo poo, that's cool. Can you remember the name of the translator?
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Jun 8, 2014 08:12
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Phobophilia posted:On the same note, the allies laid an underwater pipeline across the channel just to supply the landing with petrol. The Allies also apparently studied the feasibility of simply digging under the English Channel as a means to get across. The study's findings was that it was possible from an engineering standpoint, doable within a year. They abandoned the idea because they had no way of dealing with what would happen once the first tunneler actually came out the French side.
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Jun 8, 2014 08:33
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Tomn posted:That's interesting. Do you have any idea why artisans seem so prone to become mercenaries? Cities provide centralized recruiting centers for a mercenary company on the move, and they prefer people who can afford to provide part of their own equipment, or something? What I remember is that many burghers already are soldiers. Cities are its own administrative units and have to raise their own levies. In rural areas will get some peasants and sign them up for twenty years of soldiering, but in cities the regiments are raised ad hoc from militia trained burghers. Gladi fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Jun 8, 2014 |
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Jun 8, 2014 12:40
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HEY GAL posted:Really? Holy poo poo, that's cool. Can you remember the name of the translator? I got nothing left but the knowledge of having read it. Might have just been something the professor translated in his free time for the purpose of the class. To make up for it, a funny, vaguely related to military history picture:
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Jun 8, 2014 13:57
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That made my day, thanks for posting that.
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Jun 8, 2014 13:58
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Fragrag posted:That snare drummer is just thinking to himself, there's got to be a better way to do this. I think I liked their old show to be honest, the motorcycles starting up before they peddeled out was hilarious, and of course the old medic joke
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Jun 8, 2014 14:15
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Phobophilia posted:The key difference was they had telephone wires and railroads in the 1940s, meaning that any landing is going to be contested and ideally pushed back into the sea. Well, all that is really a toss up here. After all, hitler was convinced this was a diversionary attack and wouldn't send reinforcements in till it was way too late. So all the radios and phones available did little to nothing Supply lines are kind of a toss up too since the allies already had plans for that that got hosed up by the worst storm in the channel in some 100 years.
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Jun 8, 2014 14:24
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For the early modern warfare buffs in the thread. Is the combat in "Alatriste" even remotely accurate? Specifically the bits with people sneaking under the pikes and kneecapping enemy soldiers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTYuYxmICGo
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Jun 9, 2014 01:45
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