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sc0tty posted:Posted in the book barn but thought I would try here as well. Not a book, but there are memoirs online that are really worth reading. This one in particular is great: http://english.iremember.ru/tankers/70-otroschenkov-sergei-andreyevich.html
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Oct 29, 2014 23:40
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Trin Tragula posted:In the all-time ranking of "hilariously useless yet widely-issued weapons", where does the Mk 14 sit? (Other than at the bottom of the sea with bent firing pins.) Up there with the lovely Chauchats the AEF got in WW1.
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Oct 30, 2014 00:13
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Extra History takes a moment to go back over their inaccuracies or embellishments. Which is pretty cool.
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Oct 30, 2014 00:31
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Raenir Salazar posted:Extra History takes a moment to go back over their inaccuracies or embellishments. And manage to gently caress up some extra stuff along the way.
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Oct 30, 2014 00:47
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sc0tty posted:Posted in the book barn but thought I would try here as well. Armored Thunderbolt is a great look at how the M4 Sherman was developed and used. Plus Tank Destroyer talk http://www.amazon.com/Armored-Thund...red+thunderbolt
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Oct 30, 2014 00:54
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MrYenko posted:Early MkXIVs didn't have this, of course, and at least one boat was lost to a circular run (Tullibee,) with three more possible (Grunion, Tang, and Triton,) before anything was done. Tang was lost to a circular-running Mark 18 electric torpedo, not a Mark 14. Trin Tragula posted:Yeah, I got that, I'm more wondering "can anyone think of anything more useless than it?" Recently I've spent a bit of time reading about the rifle that the Canadian Corps took to France in 1915. For boring political reasons, they used a comedy lump called a Ross instead of the Lee-Enfield... Come now, the Ross wasn't that bad. It wasn't great, but it wasn't hopeless. You'd have to be pretty thick to incorrectly re-assemble the bolt and shoot yourself in the eye. http://www.forgottenweapons.com/myth-and-reality-of-the-ross-mkiii/ Raskolnikov38 posted:Up there with the lovely Chauchats the AEF got in WW1. The .30-06 Chauchats were pretty bad, but the French 8mm guns and the Belgian 7.65mm guns were decent light machine guns. The Germans even [url=http://www.forgottenweapons.com/chauchat-followup/]modified one[/url] to fire 8mm Mauser. If you want a really lovely light machine gun, I give you the Breda Model 30.  The Breda's faults included: -being ugly as sin. Seriously, look at the homely little bastard. -being expensive and difficult to make. -overheating rapidly (barrels had to be changed every 200 rounds). -having a really lovely extraction and feed system. To stop the gun from ripping apart cases during extraction gun lubricated every cartridge during feeding. Sand easily got caught in the oil and the gun jammed. Guess where the Italians were fighting? That's right, North Africa. And if you don't use oil, the gun will tear apart the spent cartridges and spray brass chunks all over the inside of the gun. -the Breda didn't have a detachable magazine. Instead, Mario and Pepe had to unhinge the fixed magazine, put in a 20-round stripper clip and then resume firing. Better hope not sand got into the action while you were doing this. If the fixed magazine got damaged (if some clumsy gunner dropped it or God forbid, somebody shot it), the Breda 30 was out of action. -having a slow rate of fire. As if the reloading system and 20-round mags didn't slow the gun down enough, the gun only had a 500 round per minute cyclical rate of fire.
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Oct 30, 2014 01:15
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Trin Tragula posted:Yeah, I got that, I'm more wondering "can anyone think of anything more useless than it?" Recently I've spent a bit of time reading about the rifle that the Canadian Corps took to France in 1915. For boring political reasons, they used a comedy lump called a Ross instead of the Lee-Enfield, and the blokes duly rocked up at Ypres in 1915 to find they were armed with a weapon that: It's not the same level of criminal negligence and total failure that was the Mk14. Like, the Ross was not at all suited for war conditions, but it was a working rifle as opposed to the block of wood with with PVC barrel that the Mk14 analog would be. Jaguars! posted:What was the Italian intelligence service like in WWII? I've been reading a book on Crete and the Greek theater, and it seems that there were a case or two of axis spies actually being useful in the eastern Mediterranean. Can't speak for the Italians themselves, but one of their best sources of intelligence was the Japanese consulate in Alexandria that happened to overlook the RN's naval base. Whoops.
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Oct 30, 2014 01:24
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A similar situation existed in the western Med insofar as "good binoculars in Ceuta" give solid intel on Gibraltar movements.
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Oct 30, 2014 01:44
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Bacarruda posted:the gun only had a 500 round per minute cyclical rate of fire.
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Oct 30, 2014 01:56
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Bacarruda posted:Tang was lost to a circular-running Mark 18 electric torpedo, not a Mark 14. How do they know thats what happened to it, or whatever happened to any sub lost in an accident? Diving technology was not as good back then, was it from logs from radio chatter?
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Oct 30, 2014 02:12
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Animal posted:How do they know thats what happened to it, or whatever happened to any sub lost in an accident? Diving technology was not as good back then, was it from logs from radio chatter? According to the wikipedia page, there were 5 survivors.
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Oct 30, 2014 02:15
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In the case of the Tang, four, out of ten crew that escaped the sunken sub using a momsen lung to swim to the surface, survived.
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Oct 30, 2014 02:18
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sc0tty posted:Posted in the book barn but thought I would try here as well. http://www.amazon.com/Armored-Thunderbolt-U-S-Sherman-World/dp/0811704246 or anything by Zaloga, really. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Commanding-Red-Armys-Sherman-Tanks/dp/0803229208 Loza is the loving boss, and he also did a thing on I Remember that you can read for free: http://english.iremember.ru/tankers/17-dmitriy-loza.html There are a ton of good interviews in I Remember (infinitely more in Russian, of course). If you're not limiting yourself to books, then here's some good stuff: The Chieftain's Hatch: The_Chieftain is a tank combat veteran with a passion for military history. Yes, this is a video game website, but Wargaming takes their background research very seriously. This is largely focused on Western Allied vehicles, but there's plenty of communist goodness to go around. Recent articles specifically tackle Fury and myths of tank combat on the Western Front. Tank Archives: Shameless self promotion! I run a blog on tanks, with a boatload of primary documents. A lot of it is on the technical and tactical tidbits. I also translate articles from the Russian World of Tanks website that deal with high level overviews of tank battles. I don't really delve into that sort of thing myself. I focus mostly on the Eastern Front, but there are other parts as well. The Tank and AFV Blog: Does the same thing I do, but for Western Allied vehicles. I hope you like Shermans. The Crusader Project: Relies on primary documents, but quotes them somewhat infrequently. Nevertheless, an excellent collection of sources on the North African theater. A post I wrote way at the beginning of the thread that gives a very brief overview of armoured warfare. An Effortpost by our very own Rossmum on why the Panther isn't all it's made out to be by people that have a poor understanding of tank warfare. The same thing about the Tiger, but a lot longer and actually sourced. Things not to read: Death Traps, or anything associated with Belton Cooper, including History Channel shows. Sledgehammers. Wilbeck's research of things other than Tiger battalion diaries is limited at best. Anything from achtungpanzer (the website, not the book). It's like Wikipedia with less stringent requirements for citations. Anything from Christo's Intel Corner. This guy appears more credible than achtungpanzer by at least pretending to have citations, but he pulls a Viktor Suvorov-esque stunt of either making up sources that don't exist or completely, wilfully or otherwise, misunderstanding very simple concepts. OperationBarbarossa.net: this guy's historical analysis consists of pulling unrelated numbers, wanking over sick K:D ratios, and claiming that his work is somehow revolutionary.
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Oct 30, 2014 02:39
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~500 RPM was a pretty standard ROF for the light machine guns of the period, the Bren, BAR, and Type 96 were all right around there.
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Oct 30, 2014 02:42
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Animal posted:How do they know thats what happened to it, or whatever happened to any sub lost in an accident? Diving technology was not as good back then, was it from logs from radio chatter? Several people survived the Tang sinking. The Tang was making a nighttime attack on the surface when it torpedoed itself, so there where nine men on the bridge. The explosion threw several of these men into the water, including the submarine's commander (and top-scoring US sub skipper) Dick O'Kane. Three men, including O'Kane treaded water until a Japanese ship picked them up. O'Kane would be given the Congressional Medal of Honor while still in Japanese captivity. The rest of the Tang's crew rode the submarine to the bottom. Thirteen people managed to escape from the forward torpedo room using the Momsen Lung escape apparatus, although only about half lived long enough to be rescued. All of the Tang's survivors spent the rest of the war in a Japanese POW camp. Gathering information on submarine losses requires quite a bit of historical detective work. Unless the submarine was sunk in a friendly harbor (e.g. U-4708), sent out a distress signal before sinking, or was lost within sight of friendly forces, navies didn't know if a submarine was lost until it was long overdue. For example, even after USS Triton stopped communicating with SUBPAC, the Navy sent a band, a mailbag, and ice-cream to the dockside on Triton's expected return-home date, assuming that the submarine might have had a radio failure and that it was better to be on the safe side. Needless to say, Triton never showed up... Figuring out the how, when, and where of a submarine loss usually became a post-war effort. As records were captured and/or declassified, historians and naval officers could solve the mysteries of submarine losses. Investigators could use a variety of tools to figure out what had happened to lost submarines. In some cases, friendly records held answers. For example, USS Seawolf was probably sunk by friendly fire. How do we know this? Because the destroyer escort USS Richard M. Rowell engaged an unidentified submarine in Seawolf's patrol area. The submarine wasn;t heard from again. In other instances, enemy records revealed the cause of submarine's loss. After the war, the US military made a massive examination (the JANAC) of Japanese records to determine the effectiveness of the US submarine force. In some cases, this investigation gave clues as to the fate of lost submarines. In other cases, post-war investigation by historians yielded clues as to what happened to lost submarines. Japanese records and the testimony of Japanese officers helped locate the wreck of the USS Wahoo and determine that Wahoo had probably been sunk by a Japanese plane or warship. Which brings us a third source for investigators: submarine wrecks. In the case of Wahoo, a wreck dive found that the submarine had been sunk by an aerial bomb hit to the conning tower, confirming Japanese reports. Similar story with USS Grunnion. Historians found Japanese accounts of a submarine attack that took place at roughly the same place and time Grunnion went missing. Using this information, searchers were able to find the submarine wreck and determine Grunnion sank due to a circular running torpedo and/or mechanical failure.
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Oct 30, 2014 04:06
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Since the Momsen lung has been mentioned a few times, I recommend reading The Terrible Hours by Peter Maas. It's popular history so it's probably not the best book about submarine rescue and salvage operations, but it's nonetheless a very entertaining and interesting read.
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Oct 30, 2014 04:31
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Ensign Expendable posted:An Effortpost by our very own Rossmum on why the Panther isn't all it's made out to be by people that have a poor understanding of tank warfare.  This is the best thing. 
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Oct 30, 2014 04:40
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So who's enough of a WW2 or aviation geek to know about the 588th Night Bombing Regiment aka the Night Witches aka Die Nachthexen ? Are you also enough of a geek to play tabletop RPGs ? Then I've got a kickstarter for you: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bullypulpitgames/night-witches/ It's an RPG from a respected designer, using a solid system, covering the all-woman 588th from training in 1941 to Berlin. I've read through the backer draft, and this is a solid game.
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Oct 30, 2014 04:47
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bewbies posted:~500 RPM was a pretty standard ROF for the light machine guns of the period, the Bren, BAR, and Type 96 were all right around there. Sure, on paper, the Breda 30 had a decent cyclical rate of fire. But having an average cyclical ROF, an awkward loading system, and frequent (and often difficult to fix) stoppages meant the Breda's effective rate of fire was much, much lower than that of its peers. Of course, even if the Breda had been able to fire 1400 RPM then it would have just jammed even more often...
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Oct 30, 2014 04:58
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Tomn posted:
Since it was trivial to get a Bingo within a single post, a more randomized version 2.0 is now used.
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Oct 30, 2014 05:17
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Wehraboos make me laugh, please tell me more about how the country that lost WWII was actually better in every way than their opponents .mllaneza posted:So who's enough of a WW2 or aviation geek to know about the 588th Night Bombing Regiment aka the Night Witches aka Die Nachthexen ? Are you also enough of a geek to play tabletop RPGs ? Then I've got a kickstarter for you: Well, that's right up my alley. I should probably try Apocalypse World before I pledge to see if it's any good.
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Oct 30, 2014 05:27
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It beats that other kickstarter about women in WWII, that's for sure.
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Oct 30, 2014 05:35
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Don Gato posted:Wehraboos make me laugh, please tell me more about how the country that lost WWII was actually better in every way than their opponents Or Dungeon World, the rules for that are available under Creative Commons at http://book.dwgazetteer.com. Pay special attention to the GM section, it's a Best Practices guide to running RPGs. For something resembling MilHist content, I still have my notes on French battlecruisers and carrier ops. I *will* finish those and post them before Thanksgiving.
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Oct 30, 2014 05:50
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Arquinsiel posted:What kind of tool was this? I could see that almost not being retarded if it was like, a hoe or something. It was a shovel with a hole in it so it could be used as a viewing port without getting shot in the head 
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Oct 30, 2014 05:50
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While we're on the topic of terrifying submarine stuff, everyone should check out the story of the USS S-5. There's also a very good book about it called Under Pressure. During a test crash drive, a main valve was left open, and water started pouring into the hull. Much of ship was saved from flooding by closing downstream valves, but the bilges and torpedo room flooded, and the weight pulled the submarine down to rest on sea shelf, in 60m of water. But the submarine was still full of air, and it happened to be about 70m long. Thus a plan was born...
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Oct 30, 2014 08:10
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:While we're on the topic of terrifying submarine stuff, everyone should check out the story of the USS S-5. There's also a very good book about it called Under Pressure. No deaths. Goddamn, that is some resourceful thinking in that crew. "Sure we'll have to close off half the boat to avoid chlorine gas, but if we time it right we'll end up with enough of the stern above water to cut an escape route with cold chisels and other hand tools." Badass factor 100.
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Oct 30, 2014 08:45
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The Breda M30 for those interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-D3nN4QycM
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Oct 30, 2014 09:30
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Fangz posted:Not a book, but there are memoirs online that are really worth reading. This one in particular is great: Ensign Expendable posted:http://www.amazon.com/Armored-Thunderbolt-U-S-Sherman-World/dp/0811704246 or anything by Zaloga, really. Thanks for both of these. Will check them out.
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Oct 30, 2014 09:51
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:It's not the same level of criminal negligence and total failure that was the Mk14. Like, the Ross was not at all suited for war conditions, but it was a working rifle as opposed to the block of wood with with PVC barrel that the Mk14 analog would be. Yeah, the Ross suffered from something like same problem that the Mark 14 did; in testing, it radically outperformed every other option. This was, in fact, accurate: there were few weapons finer for putting a hole in a wolf at a few hundred yards. While hunting, with all the time in the world to familiarize yourself with it and get it ready, and where your weapon doesn't get dirty. For bringing into a filthy trench, where you might have to have it fire ready for hours at a time, and would need a poorly trained conscript to break it down and reassemble it at the speed of "oh gently caress that's a German" there were few weapons worse.
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Oct 30, 2014 11:32
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Ensign Expendable posted:Things not to read: What's the issue? I've seen Cooper's Death Traps recommended here a few times.
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Oct 30, 2014 13:45
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brozozo posted:What's the issue? I've seen Cooper's Death Traps recommended here a few times. The problem with Death Traps is that while Cooper has an interesting story to tell, he tends to speak authoritatively even when he has no idea what the hell he’s talking about. So on anything from the development of the Sherman, the reason why the Pershing was delayed, even stuff that should lie within his areas of expertise, such as why the Sherman suffered from fires, are all mischaracterized or outright false. While it’s not surprising that Cooper has such a negative opinion of the Sherman, being the guy that patched up and cleaned out knocked-out tanks without ever seeing their positive aspects on the battlefield, his book has still had an overall negative effect on the public perception of the Sherman despite its many successes.
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Oct 30, 2014 14:49
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Couple of really basic questions: first of all, I know there's a whole myth going on regarding SS forces. I've seen posters here mention that their status as elite formations is completely wrong, and most of them were either standard or substandard in quality. Why did this start? Just part of Cold War "germans are our friends now" propaganda? Nazi war propaganda? Second, what's the deal with nazi engineering. They have this "efficiency and unbeateable design" myth going on when a lot of their stuff was incredibly overengineered or just downright silly, but did they actually make anything "good" as a whole? I think the only pieces of equipment I've seen mentioned as good in their function are the MG42, the StuG IV and the stahlhelm. Am I grossly wrong?  Interested to know where did they NOT gently caress up.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:24
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Azran posted:Couple of really basic questions: first of all, I know there's a whole myth going on regarding SS forces. I've seen posters here mention that their status as elite formations is completely wrong, and most of them were either standard or substandard in quality. Why did this start? Just part of Cold War "germans are our friends now" propaganda? Nazi war propaganda? Just history nerds blindly focusing on the few formations that were elite and had good equipment or at least were zealously dedicated to Hitler, and highly decorated veterans like Michael Wittmann. On the other hand very few people talk or write about Bosnian SS men or such. quote:Second, what's the deal with nazi engineering. They have this "efficiency and unbeateable design" myth going on, but did they actually make anything "good" as a whole? The Tiger was a piece of crap for all the reasons EE listed, IIRC bewbies mentioned that the Bf109 was already showing its age during the war, etc. I think the only pieces of equipment I've seen mentioned as good in their function are the MG42, the StuG IV and the stahlhelm. Am I grossly wrong? V-2 was pretty cool, German rocket engineers had no problems with finding jobs after the war. The 88mm Panzerschreck was way more effective than the 60mm Bazooka it mimicked, and Panzerfausts, especially later versions, were perfect for German army's late war needs. Fanta is pretty nice, too.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:35
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Azran posted:Couple of really basic questions: first of all, I know there's a whole myth going on regarding SS forces. I've seen posters here mention that their status as elite formations is completely wrong, and most of them were either standard or substandard in quality. Why did this start? Just part of Cold War "germans are our friends now" propaganda? Nazi war propaganda? It's kind of tough to really classify anything military as "good as a whole" if only because there will always be tradeoffs. Early Sherman tanks turned into flaming deathtraps, their guns were outclassed, etc. On the other hand, they made a lot of them very quickly and they were comparatively maneuverable. The T-34 was crudely built (to use a generous term) but what it lacked in reliability it made up in simplicity and quantity. Nazi equipment had huge drawbacks in stuff like raw material (i.e. steel) quality and quantity, and the complexity of poo poo like the Tiger's interleaved wheels meant it took a long time to manufacture and service. It just didn't meet the challenge of war against opponents with more industrial capacity, more resources, and higher quality raw materials, since a dead tank is a dead tank is a dead tank, and your ability to replace it matters a hell of a lot more than how many of the other guy's tanks it killed, once it's dead. The Nazis failed that test in no small part due to hubris.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:48
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The Fw-190 and Ju-88 were kickin rad.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:49
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Azran posted:Second, what's the deal with nazi engineering. They have this "efficiency and unbeateable design" myth going on when a lot of their stuff was incredibly overengineered or just downright silly, but did they actually make anything "good" as a whole? I think the only pieces of equipment I've seen mentioned as good in their function are the MG42, the StuG IV and the stahlhelm. Am I grossly wrong? I've said this before, but I feel like here and around the smarter parts of the internet ye olde pendulum has swung way too far in the direction of "lol Germany", which I suppose is understandable given the large numbers of obsessive pro-German spergs out there to argue against. That being said, Germany's technical achievements during the war were pretty incredible, and I'll go so far as to say in the areas that they cared about their systems were consistently the best, or among the best, in the world. A partial list, off the top of my head: - The Bf-109 was the best single seat fighter in the world through mid 1942 and it was still capable through 1945; its powerplant (DB-600 series) was the best liquid-cooled aero engine of the war. - The Fw-190 was, in my opinion, the best single seat prop fighter design of the war (along with the F4U); the MG 151/20 cannon that armed the 190 and later 109s was a superb weapon as was the Mk108 30mm gun. - The Me-262 was by practically any measure the most capable aircraft of the war and was an amazing technical achievement. - The Type XXI U-boat was so far ahead of its time that variants of it are still around and still marginally effective. The acoustic torpedos were also pretty impressive if somewhat erratic. - The Hs 293 and Fritz-X guided bombs were not only impressive technically but were extremely effective when they were able to employ them. - The Panzerfaust/Panzerschreck were the best handheld AT weapons of the war. - The Panzer IV was an excellent design that was well ahead of its time and was an effective weapon until the very end of the war. - The FlaK 18/36, etc was pretty magnificent, enough has been written about this - leFH 18 and variants were the best light howitzers of the war - The MG-42 was advanced enough its descendents are still in use - The V2 was probably the single most advanced thing anyone built during the war (maybe the B-29), the V1 wasn't that far behind Anyway All of this crazy crap didn't help them win anything as so much of it was ill-employed (Me-262) or outright wasteful (V2) but I don't really think that detracts from the technical achievement. The tricky part is understanding how this stuff fits in context which of course the internet is generally terrible at.
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Oct 30, 2014 16:06
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Nenonen posted:Just history nerds blindly focusing on the few formations that were elite and had good equipment or at least were zealously dedicated to Hitler, and highly decorated veterans like Michael Wittmann. On the other hand very few people talk or write about Bosnian SS men or such. Well, there's also the issue of the institutional dick-waving between the professional military and the party apparatus (which itself was just an extension of the bigger tummy-sword fight between the government establishment in general and the parallel party structures). This is why you get all of the issues with the SS having to scrape together weapons and equipment for the Waffen SS from anywhere they can, up to and including salvaging foreign weapons and contracting with individual small arms plants to make rifles out of parts rejected for military contracts. This itself is a big part of why they were so gung-ho to leverage their control of the camps into an industrial base and why they were so loving eager to manufacture munitions and small arms using slave labor. SS small arms procurement is just such a staggeringly byzantine clusterfuck that only even begins to sort itself out around '43 or so. A big chunk of it also probably has to do with post-war political reckonings for wartime fuckups. No one in high political or military office wants to explain how 1940 happened in 1945 and it just becomes a lot easier to handwave everything away by saying that the Germans were uniquely skilled at warfare and had amazing equipment and tactics that just blew everyone else out of the water. It then makes the general arc of the war a triumphal come back against steep odds aided by the heroic efforts of our scientists/leaders/soldiers/etc to catch up and surpass this devilish Teutonic mastery of warfare, rather than trying to un-gently caress a situation that never should have occurred in the first place.
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Oct 30, 2014 16:14
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Azran posted:Couple of really basic questions: first of all, I know there's a whole myth going on regarding SS forces. I've seen posters here mention that their status as elite formations is completely wrong, and most of them were either standard or substandard in quality. Why did this start? Just part of Cold War "germans are our friends now" propaganda? Nazi war propaganda? Part of the whole SS myth is that the Wehrmacht really did use them as "firefighting" units to plug up gaps, stop breakthroughs, conduct late-war offensives and whatnot, and they did generally have some success in that role. But that doesn't mean that the SS units were all "elite". The Germans also did make a bunch of good stuff during the war, but it tends to be analyzed in a vacuum. The Ta-152 was a hell of a plane, but taking even just economics into account tends to put a damper on the whole thing.
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Oct 30, 2014 16:19
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bewbies posted:
Well, unless you're the poor SOB servicing those engines To add: Their general network of long-range air defense radar and interception dispatching was crazy loving good for the 40s. It didn't prevent the Luftwaffe from getting the poo poo torn out of it in the engagements that followed, but that isn't part of the issue. The Feissler Storch is an amazing observation and short range transport aircraft and one hell of an amazing short takeoff/landing vehicle. The Hetzer might be one of the most effective and economical TDs of its era. Cheap like a motherfucker and really good at what it did. The Mp44 family was really loving revolutionary. Yeah, not the first time someone did a pistol grip full auto with an intermediary cartridge, but the first time they got it to work for mass production. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 30, 2014 16:20
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Speaking of Mg42, we had reworked versions and a friend of mine operated one that had our crest stamped over the swastika, but you were still able to make it out. So, war. Syria.  http://imgur.com/a/3gxfb?gallery A friend asked me, and I have no clue how they do it, but these guys that snipe people there, how do they actually tell who is who if everybody wears the same stuff? Aside from the guys in the obvious black pyjamas. "Beyond this street, there's probably the enemy"?
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Oct 30, 2014 16:39
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