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gradenko_2000 posted:He certainly went very in-depth on the character of David Beatty's wife. My favourite part of Castles of Steel was how he was a total Jellicoe fanboy. Just like reading Nicholas and Alexandra as a a defence of Nicholas The Man.
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Nov 19, 2014 22:30
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EvanSchenck posted:I got into this a little in the last thread but I'll see if I can get something posted about it this afternoon. sry I got sidetracked yesterday by video games. ... As a result of their 1867 victory over Austria, Prussia had gained control over the states of Northern Germany. It's allies were bound up with Prussia in the North German Confederation, and several states that had sided with Austria (Hanover, Nassau, Frankfurt, usw.) were directly annexed to Prussia. This left a significant chunk of the German states to the south--Bavaria, Baden, Wurttemburg, usw.--still outside the Prussian sphere and they needed to be brought around if the Hohenzollerns were going to rule all Germany except Austria, or the Kleindeutschland solution to German unification. Bismarck judged that what was needed was a victorious war against the French, who were the historic enemies and oppressors of the German people. French aggression against Prussia would lever the southern German states into an alliance with Prussia, and joint victory over France would cause a wave of popular elation and convince the princes to accept the formation of a German Empire. As a bonus, the French Army was very much beatable, and the French government would be pretty easy to provoke. Emperor Napoleon III had a very inflated opinion of himself and was prone to bouts of foreign adventurism. I would pretty much describe him as an adroit politician but a poor statesman; he used military campaigns as a kind of public relations strategy more than as an instrument of state policy. For the purposes of getting Bavaria u.a. to align with Prussia it was imperative that France be the one to declare war, and as it turned out Napoleon III was happy to oblige. There was a brief diplomatic crisis when a cousin of the Prussian King became a candidate for succession to the Spanish throne, which France could not allow because they would be surrounded by Hohenzollerns, and it was resolved easily enough by the cousin withdrawing his claim. At this point Bismarck had a version of diplomatic communication between the King and the French ambassador, the "Ems Dispatch", leaked to the papers. It was edited in such a way as to imply discourtesy or an insult to the French ambassador and therefore the French people and nation. Or something like that. I would recommend looking it up, because to modern eyes it seems like nothing but it was an incredibly big deal at the time. Bismarck also timed the publication so that it would appear in the French papers on Bastille Day, to ensure that it riled them up as much as possible. So, French society went into an uproar demanding that upstart Prussia be punished for its presumption, and the French declared war. Napoleon III actually anticipated that the southern Germans and Austrians would side with him and take on Prussia to avenge their 1867 defeat, but as far as I can tell he made no real effort to actually make that happen, and rather just assumed it would work out. Neither did he seek the aid of any of the other great powers. In the event, the southern German states sided with Prussia and the Austrians remained neutral. The opposing French and Prussian armies were very different. The French army was a well-trained professional force with some excellent equipment, primarily the Chassepot breach-loading rifle with was the most advanced infantry weapon then in use. It had a significant advantage in accuracy and range over the Dreyse guns used by the Prussian infantry. The French also had the mittrailleuse, an early machinegun. Their expectation was that the superior killing power of their infantry would allow them to meet the Prussians in the field and pick them apart in a shootout. This was their expectation particularly because of the composition of the Prussian army. After the Napoleonic Wars the Prussian general staff had arrived at the conclusion that to compete with more populous great powers like France, they needed to have a higher proportion of their population in arms. They inaugurated a system by which men were obligated to undergo basic training and serve a short time in active duty, after which they were in the reserves and subject to periodic retraining and being called up in the event of war. The general staff planned this mobilization extensively to ensure that it could be executed as quickly as possible, to get the maximum numbers in the field and beat the French to the punch. Ostensibly these part-time soldiers weren't drilled or experienced to the standards of a professional army, and neither the French nor the Prussians expected them to hold up as well under fire. Therefore the Prussian general staff concentrated on maneuver tactics to exploit their superior mass and minimize their troops exposure to enemy fire. Prussian troops would maneuver in smaller units to flank and encircle French armies, which were used to the idea of maneuvering in mass and then digging in to slug it out. When the war began the French army, responding to popular pressure, mounted an invasion of Germany before it was really ready. The poorly organized French forces quickly met Prussian and allied armies in strength and were repulsed back across the border. At the tactical level the killing power of the French infantry and their advanced weaponry was clearly exceptional and any Prussian formation that was exposed for any length of time could expect to be chewed up. However, the Prussian troops were usually able to move to advantageous positions. The outmaneuvered French forces would be surrounded and pinned in place, making them easy targets for the Prussian artillery, which was overwhelmingly superior thanks to their large numbers of steel breach-loading Krupp guns. The slapdash nature of French mobilization also meant that the Prussians were able to mass their troops while the French were broken off into several different armies, which could isolated from one another and defeated in detail. The largest French army was hemmed in around Metz, while other Prussian columns policed up smaller garrison forces around Alsace-Lorraine. The Metz force attempted a breakout, initiating the Battle of Gravelotte, at which French troops inflicted massive casualties on a superior German force but were nevertheless forced to retreat back into their fortifications. Two weeks later another French army marching to their relief was checked, encircled during its retreat, and then completely destroyed at the Battle of Sedan. The disaster led to the formation of the Government of National Defense, which deposed the captured Napoleon III in absentia and made preparations to carry on the struggle. The French Army in Metz held on for another couple of months after Sedan but was forced to surrender after its supplies were completely exhausted. The effort by the French to raise armies was hopeless because the freshly raised troops were no match for the Prussians (let alone for the pre-war professional French army) and the Prussians could run detachments down and smash them before a force sufficient to pose a real threat could be assembled. Paris was taken under siege at the end of September and held out until January of 1871, at which point the Prussians lost patience and commenced to bombard civilian targets with heavy artillery rather than simply attempting to reduce military fortifications. At around the same time, the new French government in exile at Bordeaux finally recognized that the war was not winnable and sought terms from the Germans. The German Empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors, usw. To the question of whether France was doomed to lose this war, the Prussians and their German allies indeed had some very important advantages on their side. Their artillery, tactical doctrine, and their organization at the operational level and in their mobilization would have made a successful French campaign very difficult. On the other hand the lack of coordination in the French forces and their resulting piecemeal defeat wasn't inevitable; if they had planned for war more realistically, eschewed going off half-cocked with their initial offensive, and instead confronted the Prussians in a single mass, they would have at the very least made a much better show in losing, and even had some small chance of winning. In the first stage of the war the combat power of the French Army was considerable, and in terms of battle casualties they tended to give at least as good in as they got even when losing. This possibility was thrown away by the poor planning of Napoleon III's government and generals.
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Nov 19, 2014 23:31
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The Chassepot was very significantly better due to its higher muzzle velocity, giving it longer range and better accuracy. Proportionately more casualties were inflicted by rifle by the French; in part that's due to their very inferior artillery. That is true. But the two rifles weren't dramatically better/worse than each other, especially when it came to rate of fire. Also, it's difficult for troops using iron sights to effective engage targets beyond about 400-500m or so (and long-range volley fire can only get you so far). It wasn't like the Austro-Prussian War or the Schlewsig Holstein War, where one side had muzzled loaders and the other had needle guns (guess who won?).
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Nov 19, 2014 23:31
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Bacarruda posted:That is true. But the two rifles weren't dramatically better/worse than each other, especially when it came to rate of fire. Also, it's difficult for troops using iron sights to effective engage targets beyond about 400-500m or so (and long-range volley fire can only get you so far). That's against a point target, like an individual soldier. It's 1871 so infantry are still moving around the battlefield in units of at least company size and often larger, so there's no shortage of area targets. Additionally the French Army in the first phase of the war was made up of long-service professional soldiers, so they were better able to get the most of their weapons. All indications from casualty figures and contemporary accounts are that at long range French rifle work was devastating and far superior to what the Prussians were able to do with their needle guns.
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Nov 19, 2014 23:45
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Are there any good resources on the Brusilov Offensive? The wiki article on it makes some interesting claims on the quality and nature of Imperial Russian tactics, including claiming that they were a forerunner of german stormtrooper doctrine.
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Nov 20, 2014 01:29
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EvanSchenck posted:sry I got sidetracked yesterday by video games. Don't be, this post is worth the wait! As a follow-up set of questions, I find it interesting that the French armies emphasized infantry firepower so much and disregarded their artillery, considering how their last great military leader rose to fame on the back of his artillery. What caused the French army at the time to focus their development the way they did? Correspondingly, how did the French Army react to its defeat? What lessons did it take away from the war, and were they ultimately the right lessons?
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Nov 20, 2014 02:05
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Tomn posted:Don't be, this post is worth the wait! The emphasis on infantry fire was a result of the realities of the war and equipment, not a specific doctrine. The French still viewed artillery as a dominant battlefield arm, they just did not embrace innovations in breechloading artillery as early as the Prussians. I find it kind of funny that French artillery goes in cycles - superior in the Napoleonic wars, inferior mid-1800s, superior at the turn of the century. It sort of depends on whether they won or lost the last one. There were a couple of lessons that the French took from the war, which you can see directly applied in WWI. 1. Mobilization - the Prussians wiped the field because they could call up more troops and concentrate them faster. The French completely revised their mobilization processes in an effort to match. 2. Infantry maneuver - In open country, the Prussians were able to better exploit terrain and dictate engagements. The French were typically 3. Artillery - the French started building some of the best artillery pieces in the world and became real leaders in this area. In part, the effectiveness of the Canon de 75 mle 1897 drove some of the evolution to complex entrenchments, because the 75/1897 was absurdly effective at killing guys in open ground. A 4-gun battery firing shrapnel could deliver 17,000 ball projectiles over an area 100 meters wide by 400 meters long in a single minute. That kind of performance would render a closed order battalion completely combat ineffective should it be caught in the area. Again, the French kind of get caught by their own cleverness, as the 75 mle 1897 is great at killing guys without cover but is marginally useful against even slightly hardened targets. In 1870, with something like the 75/1897, they probably bloody the poo poo out of the Prussians, maybe even win the war outright, but in WWI, it's just not the right tool for the job. Of course, the French artillery in 1914 had something like 90% of its field tubes as 75/1897s or the similar-performing Schneiders.
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Nov 20, 2014 02:37
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Comstar posted:Has there been any wargames where this has been played out? Was the RN any better in 1918 than they had been at Jutland? Absolutely. There were many more senior officers (ship captains and flag officers) who had extensive wartime experience than in 1916, and there was an absolute determination on the part of the British admirals that, given a second bite at the High Seas Fleet, they would do all they could to destroy it. Part of the reason Jellicoe's tactics at Jutland have been described as being overly cautious was that he was apparently unaware that the German commanders had no intention of fighting a stand-up fleet engagement. The British assumed, thanks to some rather blithe mirror-imaging of the Germans, that any fleet action would become a general one where both sides went all-out to destroy each other. Instead the Germans made every effort to get the hell away from the British at Jutland when they realized they weren't facing only Beatty's Battle Cruiser Fleet in isolation. Scheer made a few tentative attacks on the main British battle line, but broke them off fairly quickly once the weight of the British fire began to damage the German ships. He barely escaped annihilation during the night when he ran into the rear of the British line because of some utterly awful communications fuckups among the rearmost British battleship commanders. Jellicoe later said that had he realized he would only get one chance at the Germans, he would've been much more aggressive than he actually was at Jutland. Note, of course, that Jellicoe isn't the C-in-C of the Grand Fleet in 1918, Beatty is. Beatty who had been aggressive to the point of extreme carelessness in the early stages of Jutland (though his mismanagement of his squadron was less responsible for the thousands of dead in the Indefatigable and Queen Mary than the shockingly poor ammunition-handling practices which were rife in the British fleet at the time). There's also the issue, previous mentioned, that by October 1918 the combined British-American fleet has an absolute crushing preponderance over the Germans. CNN Sports Ticker posted:My favourite part of Castles of Steel was how he was a total Jellicoe fanboy. Just like reading Nicholas and Alexandra as a a defence of Nicholas The Man. Everyone should be a Jellicoe fanboy IMO. He was a consummate professional who had the bad luck to make all the right decisions but come away empty-handed. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 03:04
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Kaal posted:On Omaha Beach specifically the landings were very difficult (due to a variety of conditions including the cliffs, limited avenues of attack, poor sea conditions, and the fact that it was the most heavily defended) and the American troops assigned there were initially forced to attack without the benefit of armor or allied bombardment. Basically, Omaha was a situation in which almost everything that could go wrong did, and not because the original plan was dumb. It clearly worked way better four other times that day. Disclaimer: numbers rounded, errors my own, I am not a real history poster etc etc.
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Nov 20, 2014 04:05
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Ensign Expendable posted:"Human wave" doesn't have a strict definition. If you define it as "sending a lot of men to attack", then I guess they were, but that describes every offensive ever. I'm not nearly as familiar with the Korean War as I am with WWII, but from what I heard the "human waves" were a consequence of the Americans thinking they were fighting a lot more men than they actually were. I remember reading quotes from Canadian soldiers that served in Korea that involved large groups of soldiers with grenades but not guns rushing Canadian positions. Does anyone know if there are sources that support that?
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Nov 20, 2014 04:37
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Monocled Falcon posted:Are there any good resources on the Brusilov Offensive? The wiki article on it makes some interesting claims on the quality and nature of Imperial Russian tactics, including claiming that they were a forerunner of german stormtrooper doctrine. Norman Stone's The Eastern Front: 1914-1917 covers it pretty well. An interesting bit he talks about is how Brusilov came up with these innovative (for the Russian Army) tactics because of deprivation. When you don't have a lot of troops, you don't have a lot of artillery and your logistics are shoddier compared to the northern and center fronts, you get creative. Also, a significant portion of Brusilov's officers were younger men, and many of them went on to higher positions within the Red Army.
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Nov 20, 2014 04:54
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Sometimes I get the impression (WHICH CAN BE TOTALLY MISTAKEN) that the French are always fighting the last war: having the afore mention open field arty in a trench war, having trenches and slow tanks in WWII, having fast, lighthly armored tanks post war...
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Nov 20, 2014 04:54
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Knowing nothing of how French command developed their Cold War tank doctrine, between NATO blocking the soviets and their attempts at empire, fast light tanks makes sense.
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Nov 20, 2014 04:59
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Going to respond to the questions in a while, but first, a humorous anecdote:quote:[Memoir writer Alonso de Contreras] jokingly tells how he once saw a Dutch gunner who was hit in the face by a cannonball. His head was blown to pieces, and the men around him were splattered with the pulp of his brain and pieces of bone. One such bone hit a sailor on the nose. The nose was crooked from birth, but the blow now straightened it, to the happiness of the sailor and the astonishment and mirth of all. Remember, these are the cultures that invented the picaresque novel.
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Nov 20, 2014 05:07
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Pretty good day for that dude, got a free nose job and he didn't take a cannonball to the face.
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Nov 20, 2014 05:10
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HEY GAL posted:Going to respond to the questions in a while, but first, a humorous anecdote: Knew a girl in my karate class who got her nose tweaked in drills and fixed by a punch to the face in a tournament two weeks later.
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Nov 20, 2014 05:26
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JcDent posted:Sometimes I get the impression (WHICH CAN BE TOTALLY MISTAKEN) that the French are always fighting the last war: having the afore mention open field arty in a trench war, having trenches and slow tanks in WWII, having fast, lighthly armored tanks post war... Raskolnikov38 posted:Knowing nothing of how French command developed their Cold War tank doctrine, between NATO blocking the soviets and their attempts at empire, fast light tanks makes sense. The AMX 30 and the Leopard were both developed when everybody thought HEAT shells were too powerful to be sufficiently armoured against. This was basically true until composite armours were developed.
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Nov 20, 2014 05:35
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JcDent posted:Sometimes I get the impression (WHICH CAN BE TOTALLY MISTAKEN) that the French are always fighting the last war: having the afore mention open field arty in a trench war, having trenches and slow tanks in WWII, having fast, lighthly armored tanks post war... To be honest, everyone is always fighting the last war. France just gets the short end of it because their biggest rivals are literally right next door to them.
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Nov 20, 2014 05:38
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Oh I was thinking of the AMX 13 wrt that post, but yeah HEAT is why early-mid MBTs didn't have a bunch of armor.
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Nov 20, 2014 05:40
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The AMX-13 wasn't a terrible idea though. The Alvis Scimitar and Scorpion are still in service with the British, amongst others, and seem to have a viable role on the modern battlefield.
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Nov 20, 2014 06:35
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Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the French plan for WW3 was to go strategic when the first soviet tank crossed the border? As a bonus they'd get to nuke Germany a bunch too!
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Nov 20, 2014 11:00
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Patrick Spens posted:I remember reading quotes from Canadian soldiers that served in Korea that involved large groups of soldiers with grenades but not guns rushing Canadian positions. Does anyone know if there are sources that support that? This is really not a bad idea and IIRC was used in WWI with great success. When attacking silently at night, muzzle flashes would just give your own position away to the defenders, who you can't see in the dark anyway. A grenade sailing silently through the air from behind cover is a far superior weapon.
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Nov 20, 2014 14:05
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Azipod posted:Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the French plan for WW3 was to go strategic when the first soviet tank crossed the border? As a bonus they'd get to nuke Germany a bunch too! Yep. Apparently, it was deterrent enough to make Soviets plan to not cross the French border.
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Nov 20, 2014 15:00
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JcDent posted:Sometimes I get the impression (WHICH CAN BE TOTALLY MISTAKEN) that the French are always fighting the last war: having the afore mention open field arty in a trench war, having trenches and slow tanks in WWII, having fast, lighthly armored tanks post war... Everyone's always fighting the last war.
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Nov 20, 2014 15:01
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Kemper Boyd posted:Yep. Apparently, it was deterrent enough to make Soviets plan to not cross the French border. To be fair, our own contingency plans included nice things like getting nukes from the USA to mine our bridges and use tactical nuclear strikes with our own Tornados as soon as the Soviets start doing the same. If the Soviets had ever attacked, they would have most likely got only halfway across Germany before everything around them would have suddenly erupted in nuclear fire. (In the case the Soviets hadn't gone nuclear, our plans were mostly about slowing them down and encircling them somewhere in Northern Germany after NATO-reinforcements arrived, destroying the northern arm of the Soviet invasion. It was then assumed the Soviets would either go nuclear, or lose the war.) I guess this means logically, if the Soviets had won conventionally, we would've gone nuclear instead. Also the holes we bored into bridges and streets to stuff nuclear bombs in are still there, if you want to look it up. They're sealed right now but the only thing missing from being able ot use them is the absence of nuclear weapons.
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Nov 20, 2014 15:15
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Weren't those spaces in the bridges meant for normal explosives ? I can't imagine a bridge being so sturdy a nuclear bomb has to be put inside it to ensure its destruction.
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Nov 20, 2014 15:22
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Libluini posted:Also the holes we bored into bridges and streets to stuff nuclear bombs in are still there, if you want to look it up. They're sealed right now but the only thing missing from being able ot use them is the absence of nuclear weapons. The only thing that comes to my mind when nuclear combat engineering gets discussed is T-64s with charred bellies and liquified crews on sub-orbital ballistic trajectories.
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Nov 20, 2014 15:22
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CeeJee posted:Weren't those spaces in the bridges meant for normal explosives ? I can't imagine a bridge being so sturdy a nuclear bomb has to be put inside it to ensure its destruction. Presumably you'd blow the thing when a whole Soviet armored division is about to cross so you're sure to get 'em all with one explosion.
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Nov 20, 2014 15:27
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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blowfish posted:Presumably you'd blow the thing when a whole Soviet armored division is about to cross so you're sure to get 'em all with one explosion. Exactly. The same reason some streets in Germany have weird, sealed-up holes in them.
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Nov 20, 2014 15:36
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Libluini posted:Also the holes we bored into bridges and streets to stuff nuclear bombs in are still there, if you want to look it up. They're sealed right now but the only thing missing from being able ot use them is the absence of nuclear weapons. Also the sealant.
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Nov 20, 2014 15:49
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CeeJee posted:Weren't those spaces in the bridges meant for normal explosives ? I can't imagine a bridge being so sturdy a nuclear bomb has to be put inside it to ensure its destruction. Dude we were thinking about putting nuclear reactors in cars back then. Everything was a nail to that hammer.
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Nov 20, 2014 15:57
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blowfish posted:Presumably you'd blow the thing when a whole Soviet armored division is about to cross so you're sure to get 'em all with one explosion. It doesn't work quite that way - these are tactical nukes blown at ground level so the affected area would be small and armored units are pretty safe against nukes anyway. The nuke makes it sure that engineers can't just repair or replace the blown bridge in a day. There is nothing left of the bridge or its foundation. The road leading to the bridge will be massively hosed as well. Even the river banks aren't where they used to be and the ground around them is littered with debris. Engineers will have to wear hazmat suits while building a new bridge and all traffic going through the site afterwards better be NBC protected. The bridge vicinity couldn't be used as a staging area for men and supplies and I also wouldn't want to be in the AAA unit protecting the new bridge against enemy air strikes. In other words a nuke mined bridge would be a major hindrance to an advancing army. Consider the port of Cherbourg which Germans destroyed and mined so thoroughly that it took over a month for Allies to get this vital port into use. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 16:13
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quote:Also the holes we bored into bridges and streets to stuff nuclear bombs in are still there, if you want to look it up. They're sealed right now but the only thing missing from being able ot use them is the absence of nuclear weapons. Yeah AFAIK you could easily fit a S/MADM (special/medium atomic demolition munition) in standard pre-bored demolition shafts. Libluini posted:To be fair, our own contingency plans included nice things like getting nukes from the USA to mine our bridges and use tactical nuclear strikes with our own Tornados as soon as the Soviets start doing the same. Or Starfighters in earlier years. NATO was into tactical nukes bigtime from the late 50s onwards. quote:If the Soviets had ever attacked, they would have most likely got only halfway across Germany before everything around them would have suddenly erupted in nuclear fire. (In the case the Soviets hadn't gone nuclear, our plans were mostly about slowing them down and encircling them somewhere in Northern Germany after NATO-reinforcements arrived, destroying the northern arm of the Soviet invasion. It was then assumed the Soviets would either go nuclear, or lose the war.) That's funny because from what little (second-hand) stuff that we know about Soviet planning they thought pretty much the same thing: if NATO hasn't gone nuclear from the outset then it would be facing a use it or lose it situation pretty quickly. It's the ambiguity of it all that helped prevent a war. "Are we strong enough to force them into backing away from nuclear first use? Are they mad enough to not even care?"
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Nov 20, 2014 17:11
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Speaking of tactical nukes, the sprint missile will always remain one of my favorite uses of overkill ever. A tactical nuclear warhead attached to a missile capable of hitting mach 10 in 5 seconds to take out bomber formations. Welcome to America you commie bastards 
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Nov 20, 2014 17:39
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Remember kids!  quote:There is no such thing as overkill, only "open fire" and "I need to reload".
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Nov 20, 2014 17:46
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Look at that fucker going white-hot from ablative heating! This is only 30 years after WWII 
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Nov 20, 2014 17:53
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Don Gato posted:Speaking of tactical nukes, the sprint missile will always remain one of my favorite uses of overkill ever. A tactical nuclear warhead attached to a missile capable of hitting mach 10 in 5 seconds to take out bomber formations. Welcome to America you commie bastards Actually it was an ABM system. There were...some limitations to this, like detonating nuclear warheads in the upper atmosphere above populated areas.
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Nov 20, 2014 17:58
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Really brief tankchat: Does anyone know why the Panther designation goes from Ausf. D (1/43 to 9/4) to Ausf. A (8/43 to 6/44)?
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Nov 20, 2014 18:06
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Alchenar posted:Really brief tankchat: My best guess is that the Ausf. Ds are relegated to pre-production batch status, and the first "real" Panthers are now Ausf. A. Those designations were incredibly arbitrary anyway, aside from a handful of vehicles where they actually made sense.
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Nov 20, 2014 18:13
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Weren't they basically neutron bombs? The idea being the incoming warheads were moving way too fast to stop with the blast wave, but the neutron radiation would make their cores go off prematurely and fizzle. Just a reminder, there's a huge and awesome thread in TFR about crazy cold war air force stuff.
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Nov 20, 2014 18:14
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