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HEY GAL posted:Speaking of, anyone know if black powder is explosive enough that standing near a cannon when it's firing would give you some sort of brain injury? I am suddenly quite paranoid. I would imagine the concern would be the blast rattling your noggin. The skull transmits that poo poo, though most of the stuff regarding blast TBIs pertains to guys near a detonating IED, which is likely more boom than being near a black powder cannon. Point is, it's probably like being socked in the head at the very least and you don't want to overdo it.
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Aug 19, 2014 23:58
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Hogge Wild posted:They should use silencers: Goddamn I cannot get over that they actually painted a camo pattern on it. "A giant 4 story hunk of metal on an wood display base? Camo that bitch up! No one will ever see it."
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Aug 20, 2014 01:32
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Since it's stationary on an army base, it's probably because the paint is there to help prevent corrosion on something.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:21
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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What the hell is that thing.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:23
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Fangz posted:What the hell is that thing. Artillery silencer. Yep.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:26
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Does it actually work at all? I've heard varying opinions on silencers for regular guns but never had a chance to use one myself, so I can't mentally place it on the "slightly quieter" to "Goldeneye pew-pew-pew" scale.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:30
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bewbies posted:Its on the way in a big hurry. They're doing experiments next month where they run a howitzer with a crew of 4 thanks to combination of robots and "strength enhancers". Please tell me you mean exoskeletons of some kind 
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Aug 20, 2014 02:30
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Arquinsiel posted:Does it actually work at all? I've heard varying opinions on silencers for regular guns but never had a chance to use one myself, so I can't mentally place it on the "slightly quieter" to "Goldeneye pew-pew-pew" scale. It does to an extent. The idea isn't to provide tactical stealth or anything, it's so that artillery test firing will be less irritating to those living nearby.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:32
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PittTheElder posted:Since it's stationary on an army base, it's probably because the paint is there to help prevent corrosion on something. And army painters don't know any other way to paint than camo.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:16
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I mean if you're going to paint it...
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Aug 20, 2014 03:19
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PittTheElder posted:I mean if you're going to paint it... I'm saying if it was a real army project it would have been painted like a dick because there are two things they do well in the army, one of which is drawing dicks. They'll let you know about the other in three weeks.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:22
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But it's already shaped like a dick!
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Aug 20, 2014 03:46
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PittTheElder posted:But it's already shaped like a dick! Yes but they didn't paint it like one. The splotches on army dicks aren't that color.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:55
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Throw some anime on there.
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Aug 20, 2014 04:05
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Frostwerks posted:Throw some anime on there. The air force doesn't have tanks.
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Aug 20, 2014 04:05
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FAUXTON posted:Yes but they didn't paint it like one. The splotches on army dicks aren't that color. They haven't been like that since the days of army trains and before those horrible STD awareness films.
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Aug 20, 2014 04:09
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SeanBeansShako posted:They haven't been like that since the days of army trains and before those horrible STD awareness films. When is the next rotation for basic anyway?
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Aug 20, 2014 04:12
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Hogge Wild posted:They should use silencers: That's probably a good counter to one of these guys. 
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Aug 20, 2014 05:41
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SlothfulCobra posted:That's probably a good counter to one of these guys. *unit assignments are being passed out* I got armor! I got mechanized! I got.... Acoustic detection brigade???"
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Aug 20, 2014 06:11
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Speaking of re-enactments, here is a gallery from my town, where a bunch of people threw a very small one of a 1920 battle during the Polish-Bolshevik War. The photos are small, but there's a lot of them.
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Aug 20, 2014 13:26
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SlothfulCobra posted:That's probably a good counter to one of these guys. Now there's a dude who was probably really really happy that radar made him obsolete.
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Aug 20, 2014 14:38
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Given a lot of the sheer horror of WWI, acoustic fire detection was probably an extremely cushy job. Any one know the approximate proportion of guys that would have been classed as front liners in WWI? For all we here about the trauma of the trenches, there must have been a gigantic supply train behind those guys. Or was the tail end mostly women and people otherwise considered unfit for combat duty? PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 15:16
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PittTheElder posted:Any one know the approximate proportion of guys that would have been classed as front liners in WWI? For all we here about the trauma of the trenches, there must have been a gigantic supply train behind those guys. Or was the tail end mostly women and people otherwise considered unfit for combat duty? I remember reading somewhere that it was 3 soldiers in logistic and support roles for 10 combat troops.
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Aug 20, 2014 15:40
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Arrath posted:Please tell me you mean exoskeletons of some kind Yes this exactly. Plus some special "light lift" things that basically look like things you'd use in a warehouse. Apparently one of the things basically allows a guy to pick up a 795 projectile (that weighs over a hundred pounds), carry it from the stack and put it in the breech all by himself. HULK STRENGTH
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Aug 20, 2014 16:10
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bewbies posted:Yes this exactly. Plus some special "light lift" things that basically look like things you'd use in a warehouse. How long do you think it will take before two people break their arms trying to high five each other wearing that?
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Aug 20, 2014 16:15
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Don Gato posted:How long do you think it will take before two people break their arms trying to high five each other wearing that? Probably not long, though the loaders don't generally have hand-analogues - they've got hooks or prongs - so it'll probably be a fist-bump. The most advanced one I've seen is a Japanese company that has an adjustable clamp, a la Aliens. But I bet they'd still go with hooks or prongs for something as delicate and heavy as military ordnance. The solid-state stuff is just more reliable: http://www.blastr.com/2014-2-4/look-out-aliens-tech-company-creates-real-life-power-loader-exo-suit Here's the a look at where exoskeleton tech will probably be trending toward in the short term: A couple days ago the Navy announced trials of Lockheed's FORTIS exosuit, which is unpowered and intended for reducing strain injuries rather than throwing around cars. It only has a 36-pound capability, but that's enough for many of the heavy tools used in ship maintenance and construction. Most importantly, it doesn't need an arc reactor to make it work: http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/19/navy-exoskeleton-test/ Kaal fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 17:07
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HEY GAL posted:Speaking of, anyone know if black powder is explosive enough that standing near a cannon when it's firing would give you some sort of brain injury? I am suddenly quite paranoid. If you stood somewhere in front of the muzzle, probably. But if you do that there's gonna be other injuries too. That's why no one stands in front of the muzzle. Honestly, you just gotta learn your job and everyone elses and watch to make sure the details are followed. I've heard of one crew where the limber was left open and caught the friction primer after the gun was fired. Another where the crew didn't snuff the vent while swabbing. And even witnessed one where someone didn't pin the trunnions on a mountain howitzer. Fortunately no one was hurt from the latter, but is was kind of hard to explain why the gun crew was running back down the hill chasing the barrel to find it imbedded in the dirt and decided to all play dead.
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Aug 20, 2014 17:32
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PittTheElder posted:Any one know the approximate proportion of guys that would have been classed as front liners in WWI? For all we here about the trauma of the trenches, there must have been a gigantic supply train behind those guys. Or was the tail end mostly women and people otherwise considered unfit for combat duty? Well, what's the definition of a front-liner? There's absolute shedloads of men who weren't in an infantry battalion, but whose duties meant that they went up the line at least occasionally, certainly if you define "up the line" to be anywhere a German gunner might try to drop a shell on your head. Speaking of which, that's without considering the pedantry you could play over whether the artillery are front-liners or not...
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Aug 20, 2014 20:46
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Cyrano4747 posted:Here are some half sketched out thoughts on the matter that I have. I'm straight up just copy/pasting from a thinking document that I've got set up for a intro lecture to an intro course that I'm half-way through writing, which is why I was touchy about all that in the first place. I'm still feeling out around the edges of my own thinking on it, so forgive me if it's rough. That said: I know you were trying to kill this topic, but as someone with a bit of training in paleontology I think I should mention these arguments apply equally well to that field. The existence of enormous amounts of uncertainty, and some level of personal interpretation by researchers, is an inescapable part of natural history. There is very much about the past we do not know, and probably will not ever know for certain, but that does not preclude us from using the scientific method to answer specific questions, so long as we are aware of and acknowledge the limitations. I'm not a trained historian, but when I read papers like this: http://econ.sciences-po.fr/sites/default/files/file/elise/AEJApp-2007-0034_manuscript.pdf which seem to me to apply the scientific method to answer historical questions like the value of past investments, I'm confused by what you mean about historical methodologies. Creating new historical data is challenging, but we can still create testable hypotheses no? If we read an account of a city being sacked in such and such a year, we can hypothesize that the city was sacked in that year. The hypothesis can be tested by looking for other accounts that confirm the first account, or dig under the city for dateable layers of ash. That to me is scientific history. Philosophy of science is not my forte, and I may have biases which confuse your point in my mind. I admit i've assumed [i]a priori[i] that paleontology is a science, and I think most paleontologists would agree. I also may conceive history differently from you, for in my mind I don't differentiate archeology from archival research, they are just different lines of evidence on the same subject. However the fact that all the fossils we will ever have from the Cretaceous are already buried somewhere, and that we will never have any more, seems perfectly analogous to the problems you have identified in historical research, specifically that all the evidence of Hitler's not blackness and not gayness has already been created.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:29
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PittTheElder posted:Since it's stationary on an army base, it's probably because the paint is there to help prevent corrosion on something. It would be OD green then. There isn't a can of paint that you just slather on for corrosion and it automatically comes out in a fetching camo pattern.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:38
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Squalid posted:I also may conceive history differently from you, for in my mind I don't differentiate archeology from archival research, they are just different lines of evidence on the same subject.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:40
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Rhymenoserous posted:It would be OD green then. There isn't a can of paint that you just slather on for corrosion and it automatically comes out in a fetching camo pattern. But this way it matches the vehicle! That camo pattern does not look terribly hard to paint. PittTheElder posted:Given a lot of the sheer horror of WWI, acoustic fire detection was probably an extremely cushy job. Troops were only on the front line like 10% of the year or something, were they not helping with logistical stuff the rest of the time? If not, what were they doing?
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Aug 20, 2014 23:29
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Koramei posted:Troops were only on the front line like 10% of the year or something, were they not helping with logistical stuff the rest of the time? If not, what were they doing? This is one of those statistics you have to be very very careful with, else it's easy to make an error along the lines of the classic one we've all done at some point when we were getting into this poo poo and thought that "casualties" was a synonym for "killed", instead of "killed/wounded/missing". So, 10-15% was the amount of time an infantryman spent actually occupying the main fire trenches, in what you might call the Blackadder position. However, it's important not to equate this figure with the total time spent "up the line", which was about 45-60% of a fighting man's time. Trench systems were complicated things, even on the Allied side, and there was more than just one trench to be occupied.  15% of yer man's total service might be in the fire trench, and then another 10% in the support trenches immediately behind (or t'other way about); then 30% back in the reserve trenches; and then the rest of your time would be out of the line; but you'd probably have spent more of your time up the line than not, depending on how your luck fell. As to what they did while they were out of the line? Resting, training, going on leave, gambling, eating egg and chips in town, contracting an exciting new venereal disease, getting put on a charge, or some combination of those things. Certainly they were only allowed to participate in logistics as passengers or recipients of mail. You don't want a load of pongos who have spent the past however long getting yelled at by their sergeants to not think trying to do work that requires thinking, and you don't want their officers screwing you up with Good Ideas; if any of them were suited to that sort of thing, they'd have been identified and sent to a logistical Corps in the first place and not to a fighting regiment.
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Aug 21, 2014 00:54
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Squalid posted:I know you were trying to kill this topic, but as someone with a bit of training in paleontology I think I should mention these arguments apply equally well to that field. The existence of enormous amounts of uncertainty, and some level of personal interpretation by researchers, is an inescapable part of natural history. There is very much about the past we do not know, and probably will not ever know for certain, but that does not preclude us from using the scientific method to answer specific questions, so long as we are aware of and acknowledge the limitations. Did Polish troops ever use bears?
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Aug 21, 2014 01:18
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Koramei posted:Troops were only on the front line like 10% of the year or something, were they not helping with logistical stuff the rest of the time? If not, what were they doing? Logistics is somewhat more than "hey carry this poo poo around", so the guys wouldn't be all that useful except in very limited circumstances. It'd be like taking you and sticking you in a 400k square foot warehouse. You'd be worse than useless. Plus, you do want your combat troops to rest, and "hey carry this poo poo around" is not exactly restful.
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Aug 21, 2014 12:51
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Mind you, if someone needed something to be carried up the line, and they'd run out of Pioneers to grab, of course you just found the nearest bunch of blokes who didn't seem like they were doing anything and asked the officer for a carrying party, and officers who'd say "no, my men are here to rest" weren't nearly as common as they should have been. It was actually a fairly common complaint among the PBI that "rest" was often not nearly as restful as it could/should have been, partly due to things like that, and partly due to the regime in the training camps (Etaples is of course the most notorious, but there were plenty of others).
Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Aug 21, 2014 |
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Aug 21, 2014 13:16
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How did they actually set up trenches? Like, the two armies bump in to each other and, like, half the soldiers fight and half are furiously digging? It's just hard to picture how you'd go around swinging a shovel when there's bullets flying everywhere.
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Aug 21, 2014 14:46
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I don't think there were many meeting engagements after first couple of weeks in western front. Based on what little I know it was mostly one side bumping into prepared line of other side, trying to overrun it, getting slaughtered, and setting up their line wherever possible.
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Aug 21, 2014 14:51
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Rockopolis posted:How did they actually set up trenches? Like, the two armies bump in to each other and, like, half the soldiers fight and half are furiously digging? It's just hard to picture how you'd go around swinging a shovel when there's bullets flying everywhere. Infantry manuals show how to dig while prone.
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Aug 21, 2014 15:00
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Ensign Expendable posted:Infantry manuals show how to dig while prone. This, combined with self preservation as a motivator.
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Aug 21, 2014 15:07
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