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For comparison, a normal warbow is more like 80-120 on average with the extreme topping out at like 180. I dunno how that translates to crossbows but an order of magnitude greater was pretty striking.Phobophilia posted:I've asked this question many times myself. And I've never found a convincing answer. And I can't find any good data on the toxicology of the poison. They say it's based on aconite, but all the data on how nasty it is was from oral reports. I thought that tales of weapons that are widespread utilizing poison were always bullshit so that doesn't sound likely? And repeating crossbows were used in China for two thousand years; it's a little unfair to pass a blanket judgement on them from examples that you've seen that were probably made as hobby projects/toys. I've been trying to track down pictures of Boxers wielding them that allegedly exist to compare though but haven't had any luck so if anyone knows where to find them that'd be cool.  also here's a quote about them from 1880 I thought was interesting: (from a book called "the uncivilized races of men in all countries of the world" so you know the author is authoritative) quote:The strength of this bow is very great, though not so great as I have been told. It possesses but little powers of aim, and against a single and moving adversary would be useless. But for the purpose for which it was designed, namely, a wall piece which will pour a series of missiles upon a body of men, it is a very efficient weapon, and can make itself felt even against the modern rifle (single shot percussion in those days - geo). The range of this bow is said to be 400 yards, but I should think that its extreme effective range is at the most from 60 to 80 yards, and that even in that case it would be almost useless, except against large bodies of soldiers. During this period every mention of crossbows seems to be the repeating type, they seem to offer advantages over firearms (a repeating crossbow can fire every 1.5 seconds; what's the rate of fire on a firearm a Boxer might have been using?) where conventional crossbows don't. Although if you meant "most Chinese crossbows over the course of their entire history" then yeah of course they weren't the standard.
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Aug 6, 2014 07:06
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:I'm no expert on those wars, but I will say that Waterloo is one of my favourite movies of all time and worth watching to anyone interested in the Napoleonic Wars. I can't comment on its accuracy - what do the thread regulars think? There will literally never be a more realistic war film ever made (because there were 17,000 Soviet soldiers acting as extras and you just aren't going to get that ever again). The Soviets also just took an area of the Ukraine and engineers went and re-molded the entire landscape to look like the actual battlefield, so the film location is actually closer to the battlefield than the real battlefield (which was destroyed a handful of years later by the Belgian king to make a big mound celebrating his son). The film simplifies events greatly and reduces the Prussian contribution to 'dramatic appearance to save the day' but by and large captures the ebb and flow of the battle.
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Aug 6, 2014 07:53
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:You're not going to have enough ammunition to blast through a forest. That's what engineers are for.
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Aug 6, 2014 09:34
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Don Gato posted:800 pounds I presume.
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Aug 6, 2014 10:16
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:A while back, someone posted a great transcript of tank communications from the Pacific Theater; at one point an officer criticizes another tank for wasting a shell on an enemy machine gun. You're not going to have enough ammunition to blast through a forest. I'm pretty sure he wasn't chastising him for wasting a shell, he was chastising him for wasting a "squirt" (ew) of MG ammunition on an emplacement that he literally told him to run over. Command and Conquer did not lie to me it turns out.
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Aug 6, 2014 10:26
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Actually I've been looking for that transcript forever so if anyone can link or post it in full, I would be... really ok with that.
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Aug 6, 2014 11:00
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Frostwerks posted:I'm pretty sure he wasn't chastising him for wasting a shell, he was chastising him for wasting a "squirt" (ew) of MG ammunition on an emplacement that he literally told him to run over. Command and Conquer did not lie to me it turns out. Come to think of it, when/what was the last iteration of the "infantry tank" doctrine? The Matilda?
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Aug 6, 2014 14:33
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FAUXTON posted:Come to think of it, when/what was the last iteration of the "infantry tank" doctrine? The Matilda? Valentine and Churchill came later. Though the Bob Semple might have been designed even later, but I'm not sure which category it fits into...
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Aug 6, 2014 14:49
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FAUXTON posted:Come to think of it, when/what was the last iteration of the "infantry tank" doctrine? The Matilda? Churchill is the last one to have that designation although I'd say you can argue that the Merkavas are at least descendents of the doctrine.
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Aug 6, 2014 14:51
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Frostwerks posted:Actually I've been looking for that transcript forever so if anyone can link or post it in full, I would be... really ok with that. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3297799&pagenumber=47&perpage=40#post387585213 quote:Tank Talk I posted this in the last thread but honestly I am not certain it's legit. I tried googling some of the text and I don't see a hard source, just the text being posted around at different forums without any proof that it is real.
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Aug 6, 2014 16:37
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Koramei posted:For comparison, a normal warbow is more like 80-120 on average with the extreme topping out at like 180. I dunno how that translates to crossbows but an order of magnitude greater was pretty striking. The issue is that it's difficult to find any repeating crossbow that isn't the dinky one. I guess it's possible that the knowledge to make them has been lost.
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Aug 6, 2014 16:43
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Slavvy posted:Touching on this, were the more experienced units in WWII (or other wars, I suppose) given more ammunition for their tanks? Like, lets say a tank is nominally designed to carry 30 shells. If the combat life expectancy of the tank is measured in minutes, it doesn't make sense to load the thing up with the full thirty when it's only likely to fire a few before being destroyed itself. Was there a policy of deliberately under-loading the vehicles given to inexperienced units? I'm thinking particularly of the USSR because of the sheer number of tanks destroyed during Kursk and the like. Comrade tanker, first tank gets the ammo, second tank only tank. When first tank falls first tank will pick up ammo and continue the fight.
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Aug 6, 2014 17:08
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Ask Us About Military History: I'M SQUIRTING Thank god that's not in the lexicon anymore.
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Aug 6, 2014 17:19
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JaucheCharly posted:
Why would you assume it has a composite prod? quote:
The draw length on a crossbow like this is much shorter than a selfbow, so the bolt has a lot less time to accelerate. The length of the arms is also much shorter, which again slows it down. I don't know the exact numbers but this basically means you aren't projecting missiles with the same speed until you get up to something like the 300# range. As an aside, even the slowest loading mechanism (the windlass) could still be loaded pretty fast if done by a professional. http://youtu.be/WEOeZTV9wiA
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Aug 6, 2014 17:23
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gohuskies posted:http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3297799&pagenumber=47&perpage=40#post387585213 Looks like the commander was happy to have his troops use machine guns, but was concerned about wasting the high explosive shells. I'd love to know if this transcript has a genuine origin or if it was simply made up.
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Aug 6, 2014 17:28
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Googling "Iwo Jima tank radio chatter" gave me this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtnNXYEqAD4 Not the same transmission from the transcript, though. Slavvy posted:Touching on this, were the more experienced units in WWII (or other wars, I suppose) given more ammunition for their tanks? Like, lets say a tank is nominally designed to carry 30 shells. If the combat life expectancy of the tank is measured in minutes, it doesn't make sense to load the thing up with the full thirty when it's only likely to fire a few before being destroyed itself. Was there a policy of deliberately under-loading the vehicles given to inexperienced units? I'm thinking particularly of the USSR because of the sheer number of tanks destroyed during Kursk and the like. I think the answer here is that no this most likely did not happen, because if it were a provably widespread practice it's the sort of thing that would probably be widely repeated since it plays so well into stereotypes of the Red Army. Plus there's the fact that this sort of thing flies in the face of logic, since it only actually saves shells if you calculate, correctly, that literally all your tanks are going to be irrecoverable losses in a time frame less than it would take for them to expend their ammo loads. Realistically not all your troops in any operation will be casualties, many of your casualties will be recoverable, tanks that are total losses may still be able to have their ammo (or other parts, for that matter) salvaged, and you cannot predict which of your men/tanks specifically are just going to be future total write-offs not worth a full ammo load. edit: obviously shell shortages did happen but if you had the shells it would be retarded to tell some units "nope you can only get this many until you prove you're good enough to have a full load" Pornographic Memory fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 18:47
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That's a weird coincidence, he mentions (not) shooting through tanks in another video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxiXHImU4Yk
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Aug 6, 2014 19:23
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Looks like the commander was happy to have his troops use machine guns, but was concerned about wasting the high explosive shells. I'd love to know if this transcript has a genuine origin or if it was simply made up. See, my read of it would be that the commander is joking. American's famously never were particularly choosy about their ammo consumption anyway, having the colossal materiel advantage. Ordering his men to literally run the enemy down sounds like a really quick way to get a bunch of grenades right under you going off.
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Aug 6, 2014 19:34
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The Chinese bronze age crossbow posted earlier seems to have a much longer draw length than that late medieval crossbow. I wonder of the materials just can't stand up to having a draw length of much longer than 5 inches for the 1200+ lb weight.
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Aug 6, 2014 19:44
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CoolCab posted:See, my read of it would be that the commander is joking. American's famously never were particularly choosy about their ammo consumption anyway, having the colossal materiel advantage. Ordering his men to literally run the enemy down sounds like a really quick way to get a bunch of grenades right under you going off. Supposedly a tactic used on the Eastern Front was for tanks to stop over foxholes and rotate in place to deal with the infantry in them. It sounds strange and risky but I'm pretty sure I read it in either Beevor's book on Berlin, Band of Brothers (describing it as something the Germans learned in the East maybe) or, most likely and least reliably, Guy Sajer's book The Forgotten Soldier. Then again I also read a first person account from The Reader's Digest's The World At Arms (man that book was awesome when I was first learning about WWII) was a German soldier describing actually manning a trench waiting for Russian tanks to deliberately run over them so they could plant magnetic grenades on their "bellies". The same book (Reader's Digest one) also mentioned that the Japanese improvised anti-tank mines in the Phillipines by having a guy sit in a hole with a hammer and an artillery shell or aircraft bomb 
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Aug 6, 2014 19:51
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CoolCab posted:See, my read of it would be that the commander is joking. American's famously never were particularly choosy about their ammo consumption anyway, having the colossal materiel advantage. Ordering his men to literally run the enemy down sounds like a really quick way to get a bunch of grenades right under you going off. The enemy in that nest were already dead, running over the gun was just to destroy it.
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Aug 6, 2014 19:51
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Why would you assume it has a composite prod? It's indeed the drawlength of the crossbow that makes it slow for the first reason that you gave. In order to archive comparable kinetic energy (compared to a generic bow) in a projectile with the weight X, the return speed of the limbs has to be much higher for a short bow/prod. It's the mass of the limbs and also the inherent properties of the material like you can see in the link below that are the problem. The reason why crossbows with steel prods (and also, but to a lesser degree composite prods) do not yield the same efficiency is that the materials do not perform well enough to archieve the neccessary return speed for that short drawlength. The weight of the string and it's properties are also important. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12212152/kooi97materials.png The formula for kinetic energy tells why a fast projectile is good if you want to pierce something. Ek= 1/2 m*v² (you fans of AT and tank guns will also know that). There's most likely some convergence where ideal mass meets ideal velocity from the engineering standpoint. What you can do with the given materials is another question. What you're wrong about is the idea that shorter limbs make a slow bow. It's indeed the other way around. The fastest bows are those with short and narrow limbs (even better with much reflex). Turkish flight bows are an extreme example of that as you can see in the image below (The bow in grandpa's hands, about 44"). The working section of each limb is less than 25cm, still yielding a drawlength of close to 28". With the extreme reflex, etc. it's obvious that these bows are unstable and not made to last, but they're the pinnacle of what's possible with those materials. Ideally those can shoot an arrow of 200grain at a speed of well over 300 fps with a generic 120# flight bow of that making.  One needs also consider convenience when talking about bows and prods. E.g. quality horn needed for bowmaking was very rare in Korea at that time (making such large composite prods very unlikely). Their war bows were mostly made of wood and sinew and for that, they needed to be made longer, so that the material is less stressed. They're still a composite, although of different woods (Also including bamboo as a grass, the bow wrapped in sinew for safety).    I gave the example of a composite prod, because I have the measurements for a comparable bow of that size at hand. For wood, the drawweight will be less for comparable thickness, but still extreme if we talk about wrist thickness of the working section. (You can also look to the mass of selfbow vs. composite for let's say about 120#) Pure horn and sinew bows/prods aren't ideal btw. Part of it can be explained by the weight of horn & sinew, which has both higher kg/m³ than wood that you would use for the job. If you want to build up thickness (8 times more efficient than width), it is smart to insert wood between horn & sinew that's ideally light, flexible and also stiff (the glue-up is also important, but you figured that). Maple is such a wood, and also certain types of bamboo. There are many others ofc, but those are the most widely used ones. In Persian and Turkish bows, wood makes up exactly 1/3 of it's weight. I have heard differing opinions as to why warbows are made with a little more horn. I spoke with Jaap Koppedrayer a few days ago and he told me that he experienced that more horn makes the bow more resistant to mechnical damage. Horn will also always return to it's original shape, which is also a quality that you want if you need to unstring the bow every few months. With more horn the process is faster. Sinew also does that, but horn adds stability, while sinew doesn't. Sinew and heat is like a lighter and gasoline. When I have time more time, I'll certainly build a crossbow with a composite prod, but I'm also a bit scared of those things (I also won't build a warbow for the same reason in the near future). Those things are really dangerous. If they explode, because you hosed up something, it can kill you, amputate fingers or a hand. Those are no joke. If you build something like such a powerful crossbow, you want as much safety as possible. That's why steel and an overbuilt string are good. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 20:05
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CoolCab posted:See, my read of it would be that the commander is joking. American's famously never were particularly choosy about their ammo consumption anyway, having the colossal materiel advantage. Ordering his men to literally run the enemy down sounds like a really quick way to get a bunch of grenades right under you going off. The US had tons of supply problems at various stages of WW2. The complete and utter breakdown of the logistics chain during the drive across France is the most famous example, but it happened a bunch. What you have to realize is that every single US tank, plane, and soldier was operating at the tail end of a 5000+ mile supply chain reaching back across giant goddamned oceans and frequently involving mind-staggeringly bad terrain for the final dozen to hundred miles. Taking the example of the tank crews on Iwo Jima, did they have any concrete notion of when they would next be able to get out of the front lines long enough to reload? Assuming that was soon, had whoever was responsible for transporting their ammo to the front caught up with them yet? Assuming that link was good to go, had enough shells been off loaded onto the beach head? Was the ammo ship even in a position to be conducting loading/unloading operations, or had kamikaze attacks forced it to raise anchor to be able to maneuver or - worse - steam out of the area for fear of this happening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMs4IJQVRYM And so on. Military logistics is a giant pain in the rear end, and it's one that the US military in particular has been dealing with for hundreds of years. The brits too for that matter. A lot of seemingly silly ammo-conserving policies (magazine cut-off devices in pre-WW1 bolt action rifles, for example) seem like silly anachronisms until you realize just how far each bullet has to be transported and how hard it can be to get more of them.
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Aug 6, 2014 20:07
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 For a second I thought that was Crossroads Baker. drat.
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Aug 6, 2014 20:18
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CoolCab posted:See, my read of it would be that the commander is joking. American's famously never were particularly choosy about their ammo consumption anyway, having the colossal materiel advantage. Ordering his men to literally run the enemy down sounds like a really quick way to get a bunch of grenades right under you going off. As cyrano also pointed out, yes the US had large industrial capacity but that's no promise that the HE for those specific tanks are anywhere near them or their supply base. They could be sitting inside a warehouse in New Caledonia or stuck on a ship that Australian dock workers poorly loaded so that the shells are under all the other cargo.
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Aug 6, 2014 20:23
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Though MG ammo would, in theory, be a lot more common than the 75mm rounds.
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Aug 6, 2014 21:13
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dublish posted:
Liberty Ships were designed to carry about 10,000 tons of cargo and often carried more, so that could be the equivalent of a ~10K nuke blast.
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Aug 6, 2014 22:25
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Retarded Pimp posted:Liberty Ships were designed to carry about 10,000 tons of cargo and often carried more, so that could be the equivalent of a ~10K nuke blast. To put this into perspective, Crossroads Baker was 21kt, about the same yield as the Nagasaki device. Smaller, yes, but well within the same order of magnitude.
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Aug 6, 2014 22:29
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Retarded Pimp posted:Liberty Ships were designed to carry about 10,000 tons of cargo and often carried more, so that could be the equivalent of a ~10K nuke blast. That's assuming the cargo was loaded with TNT and next to nothing else  That'd be a lovely tour.
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Aug 6, 2014 22:35
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When the SS Mont-Blanc blew up in Halifax Harbour in 1917, it was the equivelent of 2400 metric tons of TNT. It did this to the city.  It was the largest explosion in history until the advent of nuclear weapons.
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Aug 6, 2014 22:49
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Somewhat related, here's a fun photo: Yes, that's the guy in charge of operation Crossroads cutting a nuke-shaped cake.
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Aug 6, 2014 22:49
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Today is the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. Here's a video of Castle Bravo, the largest American nuclear test at 15 MT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd1IFjBNNVo The bomb was three times more powerful than expected because of an unexpected reaction of fast neutrons from fusion with lithium-7 in the secondary. This resulted in a large contamination from fallout, killing a Japanese fisherman and sickening several others on a boat outside of the evacuated zone.
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Aug 6, 2014 23:04
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Thanks for this, I've previously read arguments that historical crossbows were very inefficiently designed in terms of velocity vs draw weight, but they were framed as "Lol look at these dumb medievals without our fancy equations." It makes more sense to me that while you could theoretically make them more efficient, in practice they were built the way they were for convenience and safety. If you're going to be using a windlass or lever anyway, I guess it's not as big of an issue.
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Aug 7, 2014 00:01
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Is there any good books or documentaries about the American Civil War. Bonus points, if about Gettysburg.
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Aug 7, 2014 01:09
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SkySteak posted:Is there any good books or documentaries about the American Civil War. Bonus points, if about Gettysburg. There's this Ken Burns guy who I hear makes good documentaries.
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Aug 7, 2014 01:11
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This Republic of Suffering is a good apres-War, if you feel like being horribly depressed.
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Aug 7, 2014 01:40
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SkySteak posted:Is there any good books or documentaries about the American Civil War. Bonus points, if about Gettysburg. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom is a great single volume comprehensive overview.
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Aug 7, 2014 02:07
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Pornographic Memory posted:Supposedly a tactic used on the Eastern Front was for tanks to stop over foxholes and rotate in place to deal with the infantry in them. It sounds strange and risky but I'm pretty sure I read it in either Beevor's book on Berlin, Band of Brothers (describing it as something the Germans learned in the East maybe) or, most likely and least reliably, Guy Sajer's book The Forgotten Soldier. Then again I also read a first person account from The Reader's Digest's The World At Arms (man that book was awesome when I was first learning about WWII) was a German soldier describing actually manning a trench waiting for Russian tanks to deliberately run over them so they could plant magnetic grenades on their "bellies". I believe this happened to the Americans at the Kasserine Pass in North Africa. At least Wikipedia claims: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kasserine_Pass Wikipedia posted:During the German advance, American infantry casualties were exacerbated by the American habit of digging shallow slit trenches instead of foxholes, as German tank drivers could easily crush a man inside a trench by simply driving into it and simultaneously making a half-turn. I think Antony Beevor mentioned it in one of his books as well. My guess is that it would only work on slit trenches, I think a guy in a foxhole would be harder to crush because it would be narrower and deeper and the tread would just go over the top of the hole.
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Aug 7, 2014 04:21
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OctaviusBeaver posted:I believe this happened to the Americans at the Kasserine Pass in North Africa. At least Wikipedia claims: One of those Soviet memoirs mention doing this to some hapless Italians, and afterwards having to pick out hair and bone shards from their treads.
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