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100 Years Ago The Battle of Messines comes to an end; the Germans have once again failed to break through, and now pause to reorganise. There's another offensive coming, and this time it's going to be spearheaded by the Prussian Guards. In the meantime, lots of shelling, lots of digging, and probably a fair amount of praying. The Russians go on the offensive into Armenia, opening the Caucasus campaign, about which there's annoyingly little English-language writing. A large and queasy force of 8,000 sepoys has just arrived off the coast of Tanzania. And there's a hilarious but far too short story in the Daily Telegraph, about a very surprised Dutch fisherman who put his trawler's nets out and caught a submarine.
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Nov 2, 2014 22:52
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Magni posted:In addition to all the other things brought up, there's a very small and humble thing that was revolutionary back in the day. And you're likely to have one in the trunk of your car. God, I loving wish this were true:  Betterer, and saferer.  Also complete loving trash. Give me a real jerrycan any day.
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Nov 2, 2014 23:04
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Were there/are there any military operation plans or wargames detailing what war between nuclear powers would look like after they fired their nukes? I've looked up Wikipedia for various war plans like Operation Chrome Dome and Seven Days to the Rhine River, but obviously they don't go into much detail past the initial few days. In culture it's just assumed that the conflict would go: conventional warfare -> nuclear war -> civilization collapses, the world reverts to Fallout/Mad Max -style tribalism. Would that really be the case with the arsenals the nuclear powers had, and if it wasn't, would they simply make and deploy more nuclear weapons until they had removed their enemy's ability to fight?
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Nov 2, 2014 23:20
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MrYenko posted:God, I loving wish this were true: Well, exceptions prove the rule and all that.  (Also, the original jerrycan was made out of steel while most modern ones are plastic.)
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Nov 2, 2014 23:22
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I looked at the pictures for jerrycan on Wikipedia and I can't tell what makes it so much better than its predecessor or anything else people have managed to come up with. What's its deal?
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Nov 2, 2014 23:26
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HEY GAL posted:I looked at the pictures for jerrycan on Wikipedia and I can't tell what makes it so much better than its predecessor or anything else people have managed to come up with. What's its deal? It packs square, which is huge.
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Nov 2, 2014 23:38
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HEY GAL posted:I looked at the pictures for jerrycan on Wikipedia and I can't tell what makes it so much better than its predecessor or anything else people have managed to come up with. What's its deal? I found an article, and it's definitely helpful to look at the contemporary cans that it replaced:  It's like a can from the future. Basically: - Easy to manufacture - Easy to transport - Holds a lot - Doesn't leak Glorgnole fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Nov 2, 2014 |
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Nov 2, 2014 23:39
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HEY GAL posted:I looked at the pictures for jerrycan on Wikipedia and I can't tell what makes it so much better than its predecessor or anything else people have managed to come up with. What's its deal?  Compared to this, a jerrycan is simpler (two stamped parts fitted together vs. side, bottom, top, nozzle and handle), jerrycan holds its form better due to the intendations on its sides, and jerrycan is easier to stack because its handle and nozzle don't stick out from the square form. Considering how many canisters a motorized army needs, it's quite handy!
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Nov 2, 2014 23:44
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Thanks, everyone. It seems like the perfect object.Glorgnole posted:I found an article...
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Nov 2, 2014 23:52
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HEY GAL posted:
Carrying things is a considerably more mainstream activity than poking people with 16 foot poles.
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Nov 2, 2014 23:59
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Those fuckers can still be a bitch to open during a -35 C army exercise. But hey, I got to use my bayonet!
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Nov 3, 2014 00:01
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P-Mack posted:Carrying things is a considerably more mainstream activity than poking people with 16 foot poles.
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Nov 3, 2014 00:06
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Wars are won by working out better ways of carrying things.
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Nov 3, 2014 00:45
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Seriously the Germans made the engineering disaster that was the Tiger and then turn around and make the jerrycan, a piece of pure engineering elegance.
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Nov 3, 2014 00:52
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If Aders had made the Jerry can, it would weigh 500 kilograms and take a month to make, but it would be accepted for service anyway because Posche's proposal would be just as bad, but also twice as expensive and prone to spontaneously catching fire.
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Nov 3, 2014 00:56
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The other thing about the Jerry Can is that it's easy to get every last drop out due to the shape of the container and the angled corner that the spigot sits on. You don't end up with any awkward little corner holding ~1/4 cup of fluid that you can't get out without doing all sorts of odd acrobatics. Across a few thousand containers that's hundreds of gallons saved, and if you're talking gas it also doesn't make a stack of near-empty cans a giant, fuming fire hazard.
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Nov 3, 2014 02:51
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Trochanter posted:Were there/are there any military operation plans or wargames detailing what war between nuclear powers would look like after they fired their nukes? I've looked up Wikipedia for various war plans like Operation Chrome Dome and Seven Days to the Rhine River, but obviously they don't go into much detail past the initial few days. In culture it's just assumed that the conflict would go: conventional warfare -> nuclear war -> civilization collapses, the world reverts to Fallout/Mad Max -style tribalism. Would that really be the case with the arsenals the nuclear powers had, and if it wasn't, would they simply make and deploy more nuclear weapons until they had removed their enemy's ability to fight? I actually just finished reading THE DAY AFTER WORLD WAR III by Edward Zuckerman. It basically is a overview of US government plans for surviving a nuclear war from the 50s to the 1980s. It focuses more on civil defense but there's a few tidbits in there on military matters. In this 1977 Pentagon report report it states (Bottom of page 4) http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB173/SIOP-25.pdf quote:"To the extent that escalation cannot be controlled the US objective is to maximize the resultant political, economic, and military power of the United States relative to the enemy in the post war period. This 1979 Office of Technology Assessment report , while mostly concerning the economic results of a nuclear war hints at some intresting post-war military thinking in its introduction. http://ota-cdn.fas.org/reports/7906.pdf quote:Moreover, the analyses in this study all
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Nov 3, 2014 03:24
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Cyrano4747 posted:The other thing about the Jerry Can is that it's easy to get every last drop out due to the shape of the container and the angled corner that the spigot sits on. You don't end up with any awkward little corner holding ~1/4 cup of fluid that you can't get out without doing all sorts of odd acrobatics. Aren't fumes a bigger fire hazard? (although the jerry can has that issue covered, too)
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Nov 3, 2014 06:11
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Well shaken and mostly emptied gasoline containers are a great source for fumes.
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Nov 3, 2014 06:16
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Hey Hegel, I was homebrewing today, and for whatever reason, started to think about all the drunk people you are studying. Is there anything of note about what kind of stuff they were shoving down their throats? I was wondering about the strength of the stuff in particular.
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Nov 3, 2014 07:13
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To continue the "what general are goons like" discussion, I'd say Conrad von Hötzendorf. He was an enthusiastic but utterly incompetent loner, and was involved in an E/N story that was ridiculously close to that one goon who carried around a girl's printer and expected her to fall in love with him.
Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 10:10
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Magni posted:In addition to all the other things brought up, there's a very small and humble thing that was revolutionary back in the day. And you're likely to have one in the trunk of your car. I'm really glad you mentioned it, because I wouldn't have ever known it was a german design. I mean, the name in English kinda gives it away, but in Spanish there's absolutely no reference to its country of origin. Thanks to everyone who answered my dumb question by the way.
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Nov 3, 2014 11:44
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Hey Hegel, I was homebrewing today, and for whatever reason, started to think about all the drunk people you are studying. Is there anything of note about what kind of stuff they were shoving down their throats? I was wondering about the strength of the stuff in particular. (The tanner was also selling beer. Ew.) simplefish posted:The thing is, there's a view that wrongly puts historical people as prudish instead of crude (but not outwardly explicitly coarse). HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 13:39
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:To continue the "what general are goons like" discussion, I'd say Conrad von Hötzendorf. He was an enthusiastic but utterly incompetent loner, and was involved in an E/N story that was ridiculously close to that one goon who carried around a girl's printer and expected her to fall in love with him. (Lovely buff coat though, in that picture. I loving covet one of those things, but they're really expensive. http://www.karlrobinson.co.uk/Gallery_buff_coats.html) HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 14:08
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HEY GAL posted:Wine usually, although there were those five guys who bought what they described to the interrogator as "a tiny little thing of beer." By the end of the night one of them ended up severely injured, one was too drunk to get back to quarters so a friend helped him into a back room of the tannery where they were, and one was dead. Sounds like one hell of a party.
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Nov 3, 2014 14:21
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HEY GAL posted:Odoardo Farnese was not a general, but he was a fat petulant little rear end in a top hat who got his country into a bunch of conflicts with Spain for his own self-aggrandizement. Starting wars for one's own self-aggrandizement was surely the entirely fashionable hobby of leaders for much of European history?
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Nov 3, 2014 14:25
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Fangz posted:Starting wars for one's own self-aggrandizement was surely the entirely fashionable hobby of leaders for much of European history? ArchangeI posted:Sounds like one hell of a party. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 14:31
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HEY GAL posted:Yeah but there's a bunch of documents out there about how this guy was a douchebag 20 year old, it's great. Have you managed to get any kind of grip on how the casualties in that unit balance out by cause? Obviously some die in battle or of battle related injuries, and others die of the usual mix of disease and camp pestilence that just goes along with large clumps of people before germ theory and proper sanitation. What are we looking at for the "other" category, though? What's the attrition rate like for a regiment at rest just due to drunken shenanigans and the general friction of having a bunch of heavily armed guys milling around without too much to do? Also, any indications of PTSD in that crowd? You've already mentioned the one suicide. I can't imagine that these guys are in the best head-space half way through a campaign.
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Nov 3, 2014 15:21
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Odd question I came up with this morning but say I'm a soldier in a 1942-1943 regular soviet rifle division. How do I get to the front line from the assembly area?
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Nov 3, 2014 16:33
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Cyrano4747 posted:Have you managed to get any kind of grip on how the casualties in that unit balance out by cause? Obviously some die in battle or of battle related injuries, and others die of the usual mix of disease and camp pestilence that just goes along with large clumps of people before germ theory and proper sanitation. What are we looking at for the "other" category, though? What's the attrition rate like for a regiment at rest just due to drunken shenanigans and the general friction of having a bunch of heavily armed guys milling around without too much to do? However! I did find a list of the members of one company of the Mansfeldischer Regiment with "k" next to the names of the sick and "t" next to the names of the dead, so someone was comparing that company's state at some prior time to their present state. Off the top of my head (I'm posting from a library and my notebooks are back in the hostel), I thiiiink the casualty rate in that instance was about 12%. If you compare that to the figures for famous 30yw battles like Lützen or Wittstock on Wikipedia, that makes "hanging out" approximately as deadly as combat. No breakdown by cause though. quote:Also, any indications of PTSD in that crowd? You've already mentioned the one suicide. I can't imagine that these guys are in the best head-space half way through a campaign. Anyway, there's erratic behavior, but their culture is also super different from our own. Even in "normal" times they respond to all perceived challenges with violence, for instance. Edit: Incidentally, Corvisier says suicide is rarer for 17th century soldiers than 18th c. No idea why. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 16:40
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Odd question I came up with this morning but say I'm a soldier in a 1942-1943 regular soviet rifle division. How do I get to the front line from the assembly area? At that point it kind of depends; in 1941 no rifle divisions had organic motor transport so unless you got augmented from some other formation or took a train or boat you were walking. By 1945 the standard rifle division TOE included a transportation ("Auto-Transport") allocated at a platoon (~10 trucks) per battalion or around 100 trucks for a division.
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Nov 3, 2014 16:59
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So I watched "Fury" for the second time over the weekend and I have a question. I got from the film that Sherman tanks were regularly ripped to shreds by the German Tiger tanks, so were swarming tactics common to compensate?
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Nov 3, 2014 18:54
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Somebody more knowledgeable than me can talk about the tactics themselves, but on a logistical level we cranked out what, ten, twenty Shermans for every Tiger produced? So hopefully you could either hit 'em in the side or rear from ambush or pin 'em and get behind 'em. Or they'd just break down and be abandoned. Just a few pages back some guy posted statistics and a large percentage of Tigers were lost to mechanical trouble and destroyed by their own crew. On the other hand, if you were in a Sherman and just kinda stumbled up on a Tiger in a bare flat field, head-on? Yeah, you're pretty well boned.
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Nov 3, 2014 19:08
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Shermans rarely came up against Tigers in battle, given the rarity of the tanks themselves. When they did, it would generally be with the British, who had the Firefly variant that could penetrate all the German heavies very reliably. Later in the war you also had the 76mm upgunned version with HVAP ammo to even the playing field. And even without all of that, given air and artillery superiority, there is very rarely the need for Shermans to just charge at a Tiger en masse, when the ability to wipe out a Tiger safely is just a radio call away.
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Nov 3, 2014 19:34
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Benny the Snake posted:So I watched "Fury" for the second time over the weekend and I have a question. I got from the film that Sherman tanks were regularly ripped to shreds by the German Tiger tanks, so were swarming tactics common to compensate? I wouldn't say they were "regularly ripped to shreds," if for no other reason than that US tanks (or British ones for that matter) didn't regularly encounter Tigers. At one point in the Normandy fighting, there were only about 35 Tigers in Normandy, most in the British sector. Lots of Allied tankers went the entire war without seeing a Tiger. And if they did see one, it was probably in a ditch with a blown transmission. The sensible thing to do in that situation would have been to pop smoke (most Shermans had smoke dischargers, and as the movie showed, Shermans had WP smoke shells) and break contact. From there, the American armor platoon could bypass the Tiger entirely or attempt to outflank and destroy the Tiger. The last part of that fight the tank ballet was totally unnecessary. With the right ammo, Wardaddy's 76mm could punch through the Tiger's about 140mm of armor at 500m. The Tiger's average frontal armor was roughly 100m thick...
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Nov 3, 2014 19:35
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Benny the Snake posted:So I watched "Fury" for the second time over the weekend and I have a question. I got from the film that Sherman tanks were regularly ripped to shreds by the German Tiger tanks, so were swarming tactics common to compensate? There was a huge tankchat a couple of pages ago, you can look over there for more detailed/spergy explanation of wwii tanks.
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Nov 3, 2014 19:39
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100 Years Ago A relatively quiet day at Ypres; there's only a shitload of German shelling while they reshuffle their hand. Winston Churchill has a classic Good Idea regarding Turkey, and we do have two major actions in Africa. Considering how much British forces get talked up and excused as "oh, they were designed as a colonial police force", they've managed to make a hilariously horrendous bollocks of these two battles. (Of course, I do also own a gratifyingly thick book which is subheaded "British Military Blunders 1879-1900", and it fills some 400 rather readable pages with stories about the British Empire making a hilariously horrendous bollocks of colonial warfare. C'est la vie!)
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Nov 3, 2014 19:51
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bewbies posted:At that point it kind of depends; in 1941 no rifle divisions had organic motor transport so unless you got augmented from some other formation or took a train or boat you were walking. By 1945 the standard rifle division TOE included a transportation ("Auto-Transport") allocated at a platoon (~10 trucks) per battalion or around 100 trucks for a division. Stupid question, but "Motorized Infantry" literally means "infantry but with enough trucks that the whole (?) unit can travel on trucks" as opposed to regular infantry that marches and/or uses horses, right? Also, they don't fight on/with the trucks, but use the trucks while they're not fighting, which is still a large portion of the time and still speeds up the unit greatly on the operational/strategic scale. And then, "Mechanized Infantry" is that, but with half-tracks/APCs that can do off-road infantry-transporting better than trucks can, and in the modern sense also has things like BMPs and Bradleys that can actually be used to fight with. Finally, what is "Armored Infantry"?
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Nov 3, 2014 19:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:
A U.S.-centric designation for mechanized or motorized infantry regiments (later, battalions only,) attached to an armored division. Related; A loving GREAT resource for scenario creation: http://www.bayonetstrength.150m.com/index.htm
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Nov 3, 2014 20:03
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gradenko_2000 posted:Stupid question, but "Motorized Infantry" literally means "infantry but with enough trucks that the whole (?) unit can travel on trucks" as opposed to regular infantry that marches and/or uses horses, right? Motorized typically means that the unit has an organic unarmored transportation capacity sufficient to move the entire unit simultaneously, in contrast to "light infantry" which has to be moved in lifts or by non-organic assets. Correct that the vehicles are not considered tactical platforms, they are intended to stay well behind any contact. Mechanized means that said transpo capacity is armored and usually tracked. "Armored" isn't used much, at least to my knowledge, but it means specifically that the unit is all IFVs versus APCs. bewbies fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 20:09
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