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bewbies posted:The manorial system/lower level feudalism existed in large part to support the mounted heavy cavalryman (knight) and his retainers, who were the dominant force in European war for a long, long time. However, they started declining in importance well before firearms really became widespread; the longbow/crossbow and polearms were seeing to that. That being said, training bowmen or pikemen was hard, slow, and very expensive whereas guns were relatively cheap and very easy to employ so they sort of finished off the mounted knight as the decisive thing in battle. Thanks! I'm always kinda fascinated by the economic and social implications of developments in warfare.
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Aug 15, 2014 09:57
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Throatwarbler posted:This is obviously a more complex topic than can be covered in a single comedy forums post but in order to understand the Officer/NCO system you have to remember that whole "war is politics by other means" thing and that in most societies there's a distinct gap between the ruling class and the proletariat. A competent army is nice but a politically reliable one is better. The whole incompetent officer/get-r-dun NCO thing is basically a manifestation of that. Officers first and foremost are politicians,the whole career/incentive structure is that of a politician, not some mindless technocrat or someone who is Good At Their Job. Countries that have strong middle classes, rule of law and protection for individual property rights tend to have more people who stay around long enough to become competent at their jobs but who aren't nobles and/or politicians. You see why Britain and the US are good at this while Tsarist Russia not so much. Actually, I think the lack of NCOs in the tsarist army has more to do with the fact that the institution tended to have long service soldiers become officers instead of NCOs as the upper/middle classes of Russia did not produce enough officers to run the large army they had. A soldier who had served long enough could go back, get an education and become an officer fairly easily. Yeah, it probably comes as a shock but in WW1 there were more officers who came from the enlisted in Tsarist Russia than in Britain, France or Germany. poo poo's complex, yo.
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Aug 15, 2014 12:28
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HEY GAL posted:Such good friends that they went to the administration of the city where they were staying and asked a guy to include, as an addendum to the account of this fight, something about what good friends they were. A copy was duly made in the Regimental Gerichtsbuch, where it has stayed for almost 400 years. poo poo like this is why I got into history. There's something really comforting about knowing that, at some level, even a mundane rear end in a top hat like me is going to leave enough of a paper trail that there's a teeny tiny chance someone, somewhere in the far distant future might actually become aware that I existed. Of course this means you also have to be careful with what you do. I've got an article sitting in revision purgatory that deals largely with this one completely irrelevant, obscure school administrator who was such a colossal gently caress up that his teachers basically mutinied. As far as I can tell the one place in the historical record where he still exists is in a file as thick as my thumb that's 90% people writing in to tell an investigation what an rear end in a top hat he is. As a bonus, his last recorded action before disappearing back into the mists of time is stealing fruit from schoolchildren. Just to make this not a complete derail, it's quasi-military related because it all happened under the auspices of Soviet occupation and Mr. Fuckup got his job largely because he could (hypothetically at least) speak both Russian and German.
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Aug 15, 2014 14:38
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Panzeh posted:A soldier who had served long enough could go back, get an education and become an officer fairly easily. Do you know what kind of education they were getting? Are we talking basic schooling (literacy and numeracy, basically) or are we talking about education in the sense of "cultivation" etc. that usually matters to the sort of people who think its important that officers be seen as members of the social and cultural elite?
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Aug 15, 2014 14:48
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Cyrano4747 posted:Do you know what kind of education they were getting? Are we talking basic schooling (literacy and numeracy, basically) or are we talking about education in the sense of "cultivation" etc. that usually matters to the sort of people who think its important that officers be seen as members of the social and cultural elite? From what I understand, it was just basic literacy and numeracy, not really social and cultural stuff like you say.
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Aug 15, 2014 16:04
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Crosspost from TFR's movie thread, as I figure you guys would probably find this interesting as well: The BBC has been running a program called "Our World War" about soldiers in WW1. The basic premise is essentially "Band of Brothers: Battle of Mons edition." It's a slickly produced, high budget-ish (remember: BBC scale here) production that claims to draw on the stories of real people to construct its narrative. I haven't looked too deeply into where they're getting their precise stories from, but it looks to be a mix of post-war interviews, wartime diaries and letters, and unit histories. So far they're two episodes deep and I haven't read up enough on where they're going with this project to say what the final scope of it will be. I will say that so far they haven't really shied away from killing the gently caress out of the people on the show, so I strongly suspect it's going to have a bit more of the flavor of The Pacific than Band of Brothers with regards to following any single person or group of people too extensively. The two episodes I've seen featured different units, so different groups of guys. I have no idea if the ones who survived will be re-visited or if it's just going to be a whole different batch every episode. I kind of hope the latter, honestly. There isn't a terrible amount of character development as a result, but they include enough dialogue to at least establish that these are people and not have it be just a mindless hour of action. I've only given the episodes I've seen a single watching and I was concentrating more on just enjoying the show so I wasn't screwing up my eyes looking to nitpick equipment or doing my damnedest to catch them out on a minor historical slight or anything like that. Are all the SMLEs proper early war with volley sights etc. or are they late war with Ishapore screws? hosed if I know, and honestly hosed if I care. The history passes the quick and dirty sniff test at least. As far as being an entertaining show goes it does that job well enough also. It's a WW1 drama with lots of action. The special effects are competently done. That said, this is a BBC production and you can really tell they didn't have a Spielberg type budget. For the BBC the effects are outstanding, but there are places where the muzzle flashes are really obviously post-production, and I saw more than one spot where an MG that was supposed to be chattering away had an obnoxiously static cartridge belt. One thing that really does bug the gently caress out of me is how goddamned bloodless it is. I'm not looking for some kind of gore-drenched orgy of destruction, but they show some pretty rough poo poo and it's always framed in such a way that the effects of the violence are just out of view. I'm sure this is because of the British audience it's intended for. A good example of this is a scene in the second episode where 4 guys are defending a shallow slit trench and a German jumps in. One of them draws a boot knife and goes utter apeshit just stabbing the bejeezus out of the German - probably 15-20 stab wounds into the torso and neck. They never show the knife after he draws it and there isn't a drop of blood visible anywhere on the brit after rolling at the bottom of the trench with the German and brutally stabbing him to death. It's also really, really obviously aimed at the 14-24 year old crowd. They layer in modern music in places in a way that I honestly found obnoxious but which someone fifteen years younger - or maybe just with less of a stick up their rear end - would probably find pretty cool. They also used a lot of overhead top-down CGI to show developing tactical situations that just pulls you out of the action really badly. It looks like FLIR imagery from a drone or something and was probably put in specifically to appeal to the Call of Duty demographic. The camera work also makes me kind of want to kill someone, as there is a LOT of clearly GoPro inspired shooting. Camera fixed over the gun barrel facing back towards the shooter, camera fixed on the chest of the shooter facing outward, camera up-and-under the guy's face while he runs, that kind of poo poo. Lots of shaking as a result. The net result just makes it feel a lot like I'm either watching a video game or kit-mounted GoPro footage of something in Afghanistan or maybe a 3-gun competition. tl/dr I'm personally giving it about a B-. If they had filmed it like a normal loving miniseries/movie and eschewed all the GoPro-type bullshit I'd kick it up a letter grade. I can deal with the lack of blood and some of the special effects shortcomings under the heading of "it's the BBC" but that camera work makes me want to punch someone. The "drone footage" type stuff is forgivable as a shortcut for showing how the larger battle is unfolding and I can write off the music as an attempt to make WW1 sexy for the GWOT generation - you can REALLY tell they're doing their damnedest to make it interesting for under-18 year olds. It's worth watching but it's not going to become a classic. On an interesting side note, they've got an online-only "interactive episode" where you make choices CYOA-style. It's worth playing through once.
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Aug 15, 2014 19:35
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Pretty much feel the same way about it too. Worth checking out at least. Still think they should have left the weird facing shakey cam exterior shots of the runner doing his job out in the Mons episode because it just embarassingly funny. Instead of, well tense.
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Aug 15, 2014 19:49
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Arquinsiel posted:You'd be amazed how much it's used. I'd wager every program you're using right now (assuming an x86/x64 CISC Intel-style chip) is full of them. Uhhh. If you mean a branch at the machine code level, yes, every program you use does and it doesn't depend on the chip type. Bit hard to have useful programs without them. In source code, as opposed to while/if/other structured programming stuff (that do of course compile down to a conditional or unconditional branch in machine code) - not so much. Especially given all the programming languages out there that don't even have a goto. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 19:57
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PittTheElder posted:
Hahaha, thank you, my tears have abated. bewbies posted:You forgot a pretty important position: the platoon sergeant. Nearly every military organization, especially tactical formations, are led by officers who are assisted by a senior NCO of some sort. At the platoon level it is the PSG, at a company it is the first sergeant, and above that the sergeants major. At lower levels they are essentially responsible for executing the daily operations of the unit, at higher levels they are "advisors" to senior officers which means they go around looking for cigarette butts and things to paint. edit - and I should add, most of the time at the platoon level the PL essentially has no real role in operations outside of being a mouthpiece for the commander. Platoon leader is purely a developmental role (why else would you put someone with no practical experience in charge of a thing), and it is the NCOs and particularly the PSG who make sure things go. Oh I completely agree. In fact I had a whole rambling paragraph talking about the various kinds of sergeant and corporal and their relationship with the platoon leader (Lieutenant) and the Captain, but in the end I decided it was distracting from the main idea I wanted to convey and so I deleted it. Thanks for putting together a brief explanation of it though - the 2LT (second lieutenant, or junior LT) /SFC (sergeant first class) dynamic is pretty key to truly understanding the modern American military unit, and confusion over it tends to create all sorts of misunderstandings for civilians. Arquinsiel posted:It does, and you may always assume that someone is. Yay, good. So Warrant Officers: If we accept that the basic roles of a junior enlisted is to work and fight, an NCO is to organize and direct, and an officer is to coordinate and lead, then we're left with a basic military hierarchy that is pretty good for commanding troops. The junior enlisted essentially have the least amount of responsibility, while the officers have the most, but everyone has their specific role. And this works pretty well when you're just talking about soldiers. The problem that appears is when militaries start acquiring expensive and delicate equipment - the boats, tanks, and aircraft of modern warfare. It takes lots of experience and responsibility to operate them, which means you need better trained and higher ranked soldiers. At first armies would just commission new officers, train them up, and send them into the skies or onto the waves. But then you've got lots of officers running around that have minimal command experience. That causes issues when they're called to perform traditional officer roles and lead soldiers. Thus the Warrant Officer was introduced, which is an officer with a specific warrant of non-command authority. It was a great solution to a rather intractable problem. Warrant Officers are essentially technical experts - their rank reflecting the increased training and responsibility of their position, but without introducing them into the command hierarchy per se. Warrant Officers are commonly found in positions where extensive technical expertise is required, but the mandate of a fully commissioned officer is not - the classic example would be flying helicopters. WOs are very useful to a military, since they encourage specialization of training and capability. Indeed the US Army's modern usage of the Specialist rank can be seen as something of an extension of the concept into the enlisted corps - they are soldiers whose training and experience elevates them above the common private, but without the hierarchical authority that would be denoted by a promotion to Corporal. To make an analogy: One can see some comparisons between WOs and Registered Nurses in the medical field, with RNs being significantly more capable than less well-trained types of nurses, but not needing the extensive breadth of education and responsibility required of a full doctor. In academia, the comparison might be an adjunct professor versus a full professor that is on a tenure-track. However, as in these other fields, there is some controversy over how Warrant Officers can be appropriately used. Some militaries are encouraging the expansion of Warrant Officers as being cost-effective and militarily efficacious - others (such as the US Air Force) have restricted their employment as being inflexible and exploitative (because they have a hard ceiling on promotion and advancement). All in all, it's a very interesting type of rank that provides a good perspective on the inner workings of modern militaries. Kaal fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 20:03
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It's important to bear in mind here that the US army has a much expanded concept of the warrant officer to other world militaries. (For those in need of a quick conversion, we only have the equivalent of master sergeants and sergeants-major - you can have a technician who is some flavour of WO, but he'll always have been a technician and will have been promoted as a technician throughout his Army career - there's no such thing as a separate Warrant Officer corps that you can join. British helicopters are piloted by officers; that's what William and Harry were doing when they were on active service.) When the rest of the world hears "warrant officer", they think of the bloke in a battalion who's responsible for managing the sergeants. A BEF battalion would have had a Company Sergeant-Major (this is a title, not a rank; his rank is Warrant Officer Class 2) for each company of men (at full strength, four companies of 250) in addition to its commanding Major, and his second-in-command, and each battalion would have had a Regimental Sergeant-Major (ranking WO Class 1) in overall charge of all the NCOs; the RSM would frequently be a close confidante of the battalion's commanding officer and would fulfil a broadly similar role, except managing the NCOs instead of the officers. Good officers would become good officers at least partly by asking for and listening to advice from their CSM and RSM, who would (at least in 1914!) have got a lot of service in and been an invaluable source of military memory. (In the modern-day Army a lot of good WOs gain commissions, on the grounds that they've spent a number of years sorting out the messes created by clueless subalterns and would therefore make good subalterns themselves.) Again, they're basically responsible for Getting poo poo Done, but at a higher level than the sergeant. For instance, on a multi-day route march, the unit CO will say "OK, we'll stop here for the night", and then it's the RSM who sees that everyone has a place to sleep and that the quartermaster issues the rations properly, while the officers retire to keep on top of their moustache care. That's basically what a warrant officer does in the rest of the world. The exact ranks, titles and duties are of course subject to change, and in particular you should be careful extrapolating from the British model because it was invented to police a colonial empire and is organised with that in mind. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 21:50
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This is a bit off topic, but I realized that my Paperwhite is full of books I've already read and I'm heading off to a nice cottage on a calm lake with a sandy beach and plan on doing a lot of beachside reading. I've been on a WWII and post war tank binge for a while, reading http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/ a lot, and my question is this: Can anyone recommend some good books, that are available for a Kindle, that deal with WWII era tanks, tank tactics, and maybe Stalingrad specifically, as well as Bagration? I'd appreciate anything that anyone can recommend.
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Aug 15, 2014 21:53
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Cyrano4747 posted:On an interesting side note, they've got an online-only "interactive episode" where you make choices CYOA-style. It's worth playing through once. I'm totally enjoying the game, and it makes me want to watch the show, but their post-battle analysis is loving laughable: Like in the first act, where they argue that the best runner is the "reliable soldier" instead of the young, fast runner. And then the runner isn't fast enough to make it, and the rest of the show is filled with drama because of the unreliable kid being on the front lines instead. Dumb. And then in the second act they dinged me for not shooting at the unknown soldier, even though he was obviously wearing a British military uniform and they knew there was a missing soldier. And then finally they ended with a suggestion that the group should have abandoned their position and retreated - as if British WWI history isn't filled with examples of soldiers being shot for cowardice for doing exactly that.
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Aug 15, 2014 22:50
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Kaal posted:And then finally they ended with a suggestion that the group should have abandoned their position and retreated - as if British WWI history isn't filled with examples of soldiers being shot for cowardice for doing exactly that. Yeah, um, if you actually go and have a look at the details of the charges against men who were executed (more commonly in these cases for desertion or for quitting their post without authority, both easier charges to prove than cowardice), nobody was shot for retiring in good order and in the face of the enemy from an untenable position to a defensible one. The expectation was never that any position should be held to the last man and the last round (with perhaps a few highly specialised exceptions like Gheluvelt in 1914, when there were no reinforcements and nowhere left to retire to). In cases where men gave up a position en masse and one of them was later executed, I've always seen some kind of aggravating factor involved in the charges. The most common narrative presented to a court-martial in those cases went something like this: panic spread among men who were still in a defensible position and in some kind of contact with superior authority, and they then fled in rout from their positions until they ran into someone senior or scary enough to exert some control over them, who then restored order; the man being charged would either be a private who could be painted as a ringleader of the panic spreading, or an NCO who the authorities considered should have taken control of the situation and kept the men in their positions, and instead encouraged the panic by joining in. I'm not trying to defend the executions as being in any way fair, just or proportionate, but the tale of military executions is tragic enough without needing to invent things that didn't happen. Troops were forced out of High Wood and positions like it on innumerable occasions throughout the war, and if they'd all been shot then 306 wouldn't be the total number of executions for the entire war, it'd be the number of executions for offences committed on most days during any major action.
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Aug 16, 2014 00:00
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Thanks
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Aug 16, 2014 08:01
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Any resources on the internet of the evolution of the combat medic?
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Aug 17, 2014 01:10
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I've watched Our World War and I do recommend it. It's obviously no Band of Brothers but I quite liked it and while I do recognize some of the criticisms that Cyrano raises I do believe that they were made in order to get some more mainstream appeal and I forgive them for it. I didn't find the music too jarring and the overhead FLIR stuff works as establishing the context of what is going on just like the strategic map overviews. It also has good drama and brings up topics and discussions which take the whole thing beyond just an action thing set in ww1. It's not a masterpiece but its well worth one's time I think. e: I do agree with the comments above about the interactive episode. I made two of the same mistakes trying to send the fastest man back and not opening fire since the man was obviously in a British uniform, carrying a Lee-Enflied, and you knew there was a massing man in your squad which just seem to punish you for drama's sake.
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Aug 17, 2014 12:06
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Top Hats Monthly posted:Any resources on the internet of the evolution of the combat medic? I was recently wondering specifically about battlefield wounded during the era of muskets and lines. Movies like Gettysburg usually show a stream of walking wounded staggering back to rear positions. I'm guessing this was more-or-less the case but was there any specific rules on when it's ok to abandon your spot in the line due to injury? Were there proto-medics on the front lines who were expected to hang back and tend to the wounded, or was it a case of either getting to the rear yourself or laying there in agony until the fighting is over? How quickly were the wounded usually able to be moved? Would subsequent assault waves be stepping over their critically-hit compatriots of earlier waves as they advanced? Or in defense, if your company is firing from behind a stone wall, you can't exactly have men getting up out of cover to drag wounded and dead men back. Do you just crouch there surrounded by carnage until one side breaks? In general it's always seemed to me that being packed shoulder-to-shoulder like that would result in lots of wounded and dead piling up really close to eachother, which would be a lot more tactically problematic than when the casualties are dispersed like in later wars.
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Aug 17, 2014 18:27
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From my readings on the American Civil War, so I don't know how well this applies to other periods, but: First-hand accounts of the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House tell of sections of the Confederate line that were repeatedly assaulted with heavy casualties to the point where the attacking Union soldiers were stepping on, in and over the bodies of the earlier waves and the ground having turned to mud because of all the bloodletting. So yes, if a position was contested enough, it really was about standing in the middle of piles of bodies until someone gave up. There were no guidelines on when a man could or couldn't run from battle due to injury. Completely green troops might run and disperse at the first sign of shots fired, while veteran troops might fight until they would take 50% or more casualties. It was a big part of discipline, elan and tactics to make men feel like they needed to and could keep fighting, whether it was making sure your regiment's flanks were covered by another regiment, making sure the battle standard was raised or even just keeping troops in those close-order formations so that soldiers would have a comrade on either shoulder that they would feel obliged to fight for. Nurses/field medics could pick up men from the battlefield, but only if the battle was over, or the battle had moved on from where injured men lay or there was a mutual ceasefire to attend to the wounded.
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Aug 17, 2014 18:40
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vintagepurple posted:In general it's always seemed to me that being packed shoulder-to-shoulder like that would result in lots of wounded and dead piling up really close to eachother, which would be a lot more tactically problematic than when the casualties are dispersed like in later wars. I'll do some poking around the bookshelf. I'm pretty sure I've got a few books specifically about the history of combat medicine, as that's a favored hobby of my father's. That said, off the top of my head I do remember that the British solution for this ca. Napoleon was to basically push the wounded to the rear of the formation as circumstances allowed, where they would be tended by orderlies etc. as best as possible immediately behind the lines. We're talking "within yards of men firing guns" immediately here. When they formed square to repel cavalry you would shuffle the wounded to the interior of the square. There are lots of accounts that noted how you could tell the positions held by various units after a battle because of the positioning of bodies on the field. Also, during the ACW you would have critically wounded men lying on the field until they could be safely recovered after the hostilities stopped. Again, lots and lots of accounts (to the point where it's a cliche) about how awful it was to listen to the moans of wounded men who hadn't been found yet dying on the battlefield the night after a major engagement. I'm pretty sure there's a decent chapter (or maybe a specific section of each chapter?) in Face of Battle about how the wounded were treated in the battles and periods that are examined in that book. edit: the earliest antecedents of the medic -> field hospital -> real hospital system as we understand it are basically ACW, and it got honed in WW1. By WW2 it was basically as it exists today, although we've obviously refined things over the past 60 years and the speed at which the wounded are evacuated has increased significantly.
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Aug 17, 2014 19:13
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PittTheElder posted:This. I probably wouldn't call history a science, nor would I call my own profession, engineering, a science; math is out too. Science to me is a very narrow field involving repeatable experimentation to investigate physical or biological phenomena. Which is not to say that history, engineering, and math, aren't scholarly disciplines, they just aren't science. Data gathering without Math would be impossible. Math is the foundation of Science. It's really not that hard. There's a reason the Natural Sciences all involve a shitload of Math, you know? Also from my point of view, we here often scoff at the "soft sciences" but we do think they're science, just not as good as "real" science. The problem with soft sciences like history is often all the stupid political poo poo which can bog it down. If you write a bunch of bullshit and call it history, it's really hard to claim you're wrong as long as you at least have reasonable arguments and sources. On the other hand, if you claim gravity doesn't exist you won't suddenly be catapulted of the Earth. Regardless of how good your sources were and how convincing your arguments have been. It just won't happen. Pellisworth said it best, I think. Ensign Expendable posted:Is applied science a science? Discuss. No.
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Aug 17, 2014 20:21
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Libluini posted:Data gathering without Math would be impossible. Math is the foundation of Science. It's really not that hard. There's a reason the Natural Sciences all involve a shitload of Math, you know? I don't think math counts as a science unto itself really, although I'm not down on the history of everything we figured out. Seems a whole lot like everything was derived from first principles, whereas science has been an ongoing process of experimentation, observation, and revision of those principles. Which is not to belittle math in anyway, it's obviously important as poo poo, it just seems to deserve it's own category as the tool that every science uses. I think the soft sciences are just what they are because they primarily involve how humans interact with each other, and our ideas on ethics (correctly) prevent the sort of rigorous experimental control that's possible in the harder sciences.
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Aug 17, 2014 20:30
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:I don't think math counts as a science unto itself really, although I'm not down on the history of everything we figured out. Seems a whole lot like everything was derived from first principles, whereas science has been an ongoing process of experimentation, observation, and revision of those principles. Which is not to belittle math in anyway, it's obviously important as poo poo, it just seems to deserve it's own category as the tool that every science uses. Well, I prefer to be on the side of the majority in the case of Math. Math as we see it: A science, without a common accepted definition, but commonly known as a science. In short, mathematics is a science, which analyzes abstract structures self-constructed through logical definitions with the aid of logic regarding their properties and patterns. Interestingly, according to Helmut Hasse, Math is both a soft science and the thinking tool of the natural sciences. So both sides can be claim they're right! It's both a science and not. So in the end, it comes down to personal taste. 
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Aug 17, 2014 20:41
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Libluini posted:Data gathering without Math would be impossible. Math is the foundation of Science. It's really not that hard. There's a reason the Natural Sciences all involve a shitload of Math, you know? There is actually a fair bit of naval-gazing about why this is so that has taken place within the scientific and mathematical communities. I'm not 100% dialed into it, so I won't attempt a summary, but you'd probably do well to at least familiarize yourself with the arguments and conversations spawned by Wigner's "Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Sciences." As I recall a bunch of the counter-arguments are from mathematicians who actually point out that humans create and select mathematics to fit a situation, which perhaps says more about the mathematics in question than the underlying physics (it's almost always physics used as an example in these) they are seeking to describe. As for the rest of it, you really need to look into how we organize academic fields today. Now, it's important to remember that classification and division of knowledge is not something that is static at all and has a history all of its own. As fields of human understanding have expanded and multiplied we've struggled to fit them into pre-existing structures for ordering that knowledge. The old trivium and quadrivium and liberal vs. practical arts are considered pretty obsolete by most today, as an example (ed: there is a significant difference between modern "liberal arts education" as a pedagogical principle and the "liberal arts" as a organizing Logic for a classical education). That said, the top-level distinction is the critical/empirical divide. That's where you've got your break between the humanities and the sciences. Within the sciences you have the social, natural, and formal sciences. Math is a field within formal science, as is logic. Again, I want to emphasize that like all methods for organizing anything these are not "natural" divisions. They're human constructs and as such are open to debate and modification as time goes on. Still, this is the current state as it is generally recognized to exist and the culmination of millennia of men much more clever than myself sitting around thinking deeply about the nature of human knowledge and how we aught to go about organizing our thoughts. edit: if you really want to stir the bucket you include the distinction between disciplines and professions. That's where you get the things like the split between religion as a humanity and divinity as a profession, computer science vs. computer engineering, and things like the MD/PhD research medical practitioner.
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Aug 17, 2014 21:32
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Why did America make tank destroyers?
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Aug 17, 2014 21:50
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Hogge Wild posted:Why did America make tank destroyers? The short answer is a combination of cost and the need to keep AFVs under a certain weight so they could be effectively transported overseas.
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Aug 17, 2014 22:05
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More importantly, how and why were they used? Serious question: is there a reason all new Shermans weren't upgraded to Sherman Fireflys or M4A3E8s or some other up-gunned variant? Or was it just not necessary given the presence of those variants, and up-gunned TDs and such? PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Aug 17, 2014 |
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Aug 17, 2014 22:07
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Cyrano4747 posted:It's also really, really obviously aimed at the 14-24 year old crowd. They layer in modern music in places in a way that I honestly found obnoxious but which someone fifteen years younger - or maybe just with less of a stick up their rear end - would probably find pretty cool. They also used a lot of overhead top-down CGI to show developing tactical situations that just pulls you out of the action really badly. It looks like FLIR imagery from a drone or something and was probably put in specifically to appeal to the Call of Duty demographic. See, I absolutely loved that idea, because it's a great way of solving the problem of how to maintain the mood of "the blokes on the ground have no loving idea what's going on if they can't see it" while also getting the dramatic irony from having the audience know exactly how hard the hard place is that the rock is bashing them against. quote:The camera work also makes me kind of want to kill someone, as there is a LOT of clearly GoPro inspired shooting. Camera fixed over the gun barrel facing back towards the shooter, camera fixed on the chest of the shooter facing outward, camera up-and-under the guy's face while he runs, that kind of poo poo. Lots of shaking as a result. The net result just makes it feel a lot like I'm either watching a video game or kit-mounted GoPro footage of something in Afghanistan or maybe a 3-gun competition. Do you not think that this might be kind of the point? Show people images in a familiar style to drive home the point that if you were living 100 years ago, you'd be right in the middle of all this? I'd file it with the stylistic choice of having the blokes use modern inner-London accents rather than making them speak like period gorblimey-guv'nor-apples-and-pears-and-strike-a-light Cockneys would have done. Having watched only the first episode, I was seriously impressed by how effectively in an hour they managed to cover a shitload of the cultural issues facing the BEF at the time with just a little line here and a line there and without dwelling on anything or taking away from the Zulu feel that the episode had to it; no machine guns, poor use of artillery, overconfidence from the staff, failure to use the Engineers properly, and half a dozen other things I noticed at the time and then forgot once it hit the fan. By the way, the runner in that one is Bill Holbrook, whose stories are all over Lyn Macdonald's BEF oral histories, and if you want to go to the source 1914 is absolutely stuffed full of him, particularly regarding the outbreak of war, the long march to Mons, and the rather quicker retirement.
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Aug 17, 2014 22:17
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Hogge Wild posted:Why did America make tank destroyers? An influential man had a Bad Idea and wouldn't let go of it. Armored Thunderbolt is a good overview of Sherman history and development.
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Aug 17, 2014 22:19
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PittTheElder posted:More importantly, how and why were they used? Eventually 75mm Sherman production was phased out in favor of just 76mm and 105mm howitzer versions, especially with the HVSS arrangement. The US tested the 17lbr and found too many issues with it to justify switching over.
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Aug 17, 2014 22:21
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Another thing to keep on mind is that d-day to VE Day is just under a year. Changes arising from battlefield issues about takes that same timeframe to produce and equip when your industrial base is on the same continent as your armies let alone across the Atlantic. A mass up gun program of the Shermans just wasn't feasible before the war ended, especially since Pershing production was beginning to ramp up.
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Aug 17, 2014 22:33
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PittTheElder posted:More importantly, how and why were they used? Tanks don't fight tanks 100% of the time. In fact, they fight tanks very infrequently. Most of the time what they're doing is supporting infantry, and that needs a powerful HE shell. Once everyone figured out how to retain your good HE shell and obtain adequate AT performance, they moved to those guns. Really huge guns like the KwK 42 and 17-pounder do have exceptional anti-tank performance, yes, but they achieve it at a cost. Ergonomics, HE effect, more time/money needed to make one, etc. There is no advantage to having this kind of gun for the majority of the work a tank does, and many disadvantages. The standard 75 mm gun on the Sherman was already enough to take out a PzIV from the front or a Panther/Tiger from the side, so the only time when you need a Firefly is when you engage these tanks from the front, which happens very, very rarely. The majority of Sherman tanks would go from Normandy to the Elbe without ever seeing a Tiger or a Panther.
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Aug 17, 2014 22:37
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Another thing to keep on mind is that d-day to VE Day is just under a year. Changes arising from battlefield issues about takes that same timeframe to produce and equip when your industrial base is on the same continent as your armies let alone across the Atlantic. A mass up gun program of the Shermans just wasn't feasible before the war ended, especially since Pershing production was beginning to ramp up. One other thing to bear in mind is that the Allies brought more upgunned Shermans to Normandy than the Germans brought Panthers and Tigers. The crucial thing they were lacking wasn't tanks that could hit hard, it was tanks that could take a hard hit.
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Aug 17, 2014 22:40
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Operational research showed that even if a Sherman could bounce an extra 50% of the hits to the front, it would only result in the tank bouncing 15% of overall hits, which is not enough to justify the extra weight. The best way to allocate that weight was to improve the gun and to make the tank safer to be in when hit (wet ammo racks).
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Aug 17, 2014 22:54
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Alchenar posted:One other thing to bear in mind is that the Allies brought more upgunned Shermans to Normandy than the Germans brought Panthers and Tigers. The crucial thing they were lacking wasn't tanks that could hit hard, it was tanks that could take a hard hit. The Bureau of Ordinance did design a bunch of tanks post-Sherman, one of which was the M6 Heavy tank. The problem with the M6 is that it was ready to go when the KV-1 was going out of service and was almost identical in protection while being even bigger, heavier and less practical. This lead to the giving up on high levels of protection in the new tank because it wasn't considered practical. Most improvements came with the gun and suspension, which puttered along until well into 1944 until they finally settled on the M26.
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Aug 17, 2014 22:56
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Wouldn't a breakthrough tank have been pretty useful for the hedgerow areas? Granted it wouldn't be as useful once you left.
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Aug 17, 2014 22:56
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Yes, but if you make a bigger and heavier tank, that forces out a few Shermans you could have taken. When you're fighting a war on the other side of the world, those things have to be considered.
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Aug 17, 2014 23:03
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wdarkk posted:Wouldn't a breakthrough tank have been pretty useful for the hedgerow areas? Granted it wouldn't be as useful once you left. Keep in mind that during the war, the amount of armor needed to deal with modern anti-tank guns made a tank really heavy which caused a lot of issues. The hedgerow problem was more one of tactics than hardware.
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Aug 17, 2014 23:13
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Panzeh posted:Keep in mind that during the war, the amount of armor needed to deal with modern anti-tank guns made a tank really heavy which caused a lot of issues. This is still basically true today. The Abrams and other modern MBTs are ridiculously effective against HEAT warheads from the front, but cheap, man-portable weapons can still penetrate large areas of them, and the protection they offer comes at the cost of making them only air-portable in a technical sense and unable to make it across a whole lot of bridges.
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Aug 17, 2014 23:23
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I thought the abrams/challenger were basically impenetrable to shoulder mounted weapons. Didn't a few abrams break down/get disabled in Iraq and have RPG's just ping off them until they were recovered? Or is this just a matter of new technology vs 30 year old technology?
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Aug 17, 2014 23:25
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Ensign Expendable posted:The standard 75 mm gun on the Sherman was already enough to take out a PzIV from the front or a Panther/Tiger from the side, so the only time when you need a Firefly is when you engage these tanks from the front, which happens very, very rarely. The majority of Sherman tanks would go from Normandy to the Elbe without ever seeing a Tiger or a Panther. These are the things I find rather surprising, probably an effect of modern media. I knew tanks were primarily used in anti-infantry ops, but I assumed there would also have existed a good HE round for the 76mm or 17lb guns. Although I suppose you'd then have to retool your factories to make adequate supplies of shells of both sizes, and move supplies of both, etc., which would be a hassle. Ensign Expendable posted:Operational research showed that even if a Sherman could bounce an extra 50% of the hits to the front, it would only result in the tank bouncing 15% of overall hits, which is not enough to justify the extra weight. The best way to allocate that weight was to improve the gun and to make the tank safer to be in when hit (wet ammo racks). Which brings me to my next question: when a tank gets hit, what exactly is it that knocks it out, assuming the engine isn't hit? Shell fragments and spall cooking off your ammunition is an obvious risk, but if your rounds are wet racked or outside the crew compartment, how much danger is the crew in from overpressure or spalling? Is a significant amount of heart actually transferring into the crew compartment? Curious about both WW2 era tanks and modern ones, if people happen to know.
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Aug 17, 2014 23:36
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