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Spacewolf posted:Inquiry: Going by Hey Gal's posting of the treaty definition of a mercenary...Where do the Pontifical Swiss Guards stand? Again, mercenaries aren't *illegal* in international law terms, they're just a different category and some people have promised not to employ them. The Swiss Guard would have been banned under the Swiss constitution, but a special exemption was made for them because tradition. Historically speaking, they're pretty clearly mercenaries. They don't actually lop off heads for the Pope anymore (but they could), but they certain used to.
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Nov 27, 2014 16:34
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The nullification crisis did give us one of the best Andrew Jackson quotes: "John Calhoun, if you secede from my nation I will secede your head from the rest of your body."
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Nov 27, 2014 16:46
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SeanBeansShako posted:I'd really love one of the Naval History goons to do a breakdown on the fleets of the Spanish-American war. I really love the look of the pre-dreadnaught stuff but I can barely find much stuff about them I'll see if I can find time for that. Pre-dreads are really loving neat, it should be fun to write.
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Nov 27, 2014 16:51
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mllaneza posted:I'll see if I can find time for that. Pre-dreads are really loving neat, it should be fun to write. Looking forward to it already when you get the time man  .
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Nov 27, 2014 16:53
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Nullification and the other "states rights" disputes were addressed through the political process. Only the slavery issue was so intractable that it led to war. Although the political process was able to delay the inevitable for about 50 years, giving the North a chance to industrialize and build up its manpower reserves.
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Nov 27, 2014 16:58
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mllaneza posted:I'll see if I can find time for that. Pre-dreads are really loving neat, it should be fun to write. This bad boy's tied up in Philadelphia. It's a shame, there's not enough money to maintain it properly and the museum is trying to unload it on someone who can afford to do so but there are no takers so far. At this point she's been in the water since 1945 and she might wind up just being turned into a reef.      It's worth a visit if you're in the area. They do cannon fire demos, and the little internal steam engines for the powder hoists etc. still work. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 16:59
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JcDent posted:2. I can't find a link, but one guy had an article where he stated that soviet doctrine really helped him in wargames and that said doctrine was "plan axis of attack, launch massive artillery barrages on likely targets, rush the axis-es, if any of the axises get bogged down in fighting, switch troop to another one, etc". Yep, that sounds like deep battle to me. I think there's some good posts about it in this thread or the old one.
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Nov 27, 2014 17:00
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Phanatic posted:This bad boy's tied up in Philadelphia. It's a shame, there's not enough money to maintain it properly and the museum is trying to unload it on someone who can afford to do so but there are no takers so far. At this point she's been in the water since 1945 and she might wind up just being turned into a reef. Fix your links mate. There's also a campaign to save HMVS Cerberus http://users.netconnect.com.au/~ianmac/cerberus.html That's admittedly a bit late, since the ship has spent most of the last century as an artificial reef, but the article has good links and photos (if you can stand the 1990s web aesthetic). This site has a list of surviving predeads http://www.oz.net/~markhow/pre-dred/index.htm I particularly recommend looking into the Huascar, originally Peruvian she was taken by Chile as a prize of war. She also spent some time in the hands of rebels doing a bit of piracy. She was the target of the first self-propelled torpedo ever fired in anger. Or curiosity.
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Nov 27, 2014 17:14
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Alchenar posted:Unequivocally Slavery. Nothing about the Confederacy or US politics in the decades leading up to the civil war makes sense unless you realise that the Slavery issue was at the core of all tension. Hmm. I'd suggest that this is not a complete answer. The South rebelled because of slavery, that's true. But it's not entirely true that the North fought the South to get rid of slavery, a bigger reason was to preserve/restore the Union. If there could have been a compromise that preserved slavery in the south, but prevented the secession and war from taking place, many in the North would have taken it. Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 17:27
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Lincoln was pretty clear about the fact that he was fighting to keep the Union together, yeah.
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Nov 27, 2014 17:30
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Raskolnikov38 posted:The nullification crisis did give us one of the best Andrew Jackson quotes: Calhoun, it should be noted, was one of Jackson's Vice Presidents. Jackson was a real motherfucker to people he didn't like (or peoples he didn't like, in the case of native Americans) and it showed. When asked if he had any regrets when leaving the office of President, he said, 'I have only two regrets: that I did not shoot Henry Clay and I did not hang John C. Calhoun.' Henry Clay, for those who don't know, was Speaker of the House, easily the number two position of power in America at the time.
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Nov 27, 2014 17:52
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corn in the bible posted:Can anyone tell me if the infamous Dazzle camo was actually effective? It's certainly very striking, but I never knew whether it did its job properly or not. It's my understanding that while it was rather effective when used on merchant ships to make it more difficult for U-boats to get a good firing solution during WWI, it was only adopted by the Royal Navy in Aug 1917. Jutland had been over by more than a year, and we would never again have a naval engagement large enough between then and the invention of radar rangefinding and the widespread use of naval aviation to really put it to the test.
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Nov 27, 2014 18:03
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VanSandman posted:Calhoun, it should be noted, was one of Jackson's Vice Presidents. Calhoun has the distinction of being the only person to have been VP for two different presidents. Technically they were all the same party, but only because there was only on political party of note at that time. He spent most of his time as VP undermining the work of the president.
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Nov 27, 2014 18:04
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100 Years Ago The Serbian counter-attack continues over the Kolubara. With little else to discuss, I've been doing one of those effortposts. This one is about trench foot, which is just beginning to rear its head among the blokes. Their one pair of issue trousers, one pair of puttees, one pair of socks, and one pair of boots are entirely inadequate for occupying freezing, flooded trenches for days at a time. It's a truly horrible ailment. If anyone's interested in yet more detail, there's a link to a (freely-available) paper about the British medical response to trench foot. Meanwhile, today's Daily Telegraph brings out this fantastically redundant headline from the financial pages.  Isn't that brilliant? I for one am truly grateful that they're keeping the nation informed that the money markets are, in fact, full of money. What else would they have in them? Magic beans? I could literally spend months being sarcastic about that phrasing. JcDent posted:3. What happens to the guns, armor and ammo of a killed soldier? In WWI, they sit with the corpse until someone goes to get them, which someone usually does do eventually. If they fell in No Man's Land, and the front hasn't moved anywhere in the meantime, this must be done either under cover of darkness, or by negotiating a brief local truce. This can be done either as official recovery of equipment, or as an informal resupply exercise. The scruples of the individual would determine how much was Identifying the dead was taken very seriously, and not just to recover military property/steal other people's poo poo/go souvenir-hunting. If the enemy's lying dead, and you can go out and find from their uniforms which unit they belong to, that's now important intelligence to be sent back down the line. Obviously you also want to identify individuals on your side whenever possible; so his family can be told for sure what happened, so the Staff knows for sure exactly how many men they've got and how many they've lost, and because it might happen to you one day and you'd hope they'll do the same for you. Enemy officers' bodies were particularly marked out, in case they were carrying
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Nov 27, 2014 18:18
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sullat posted:Calhoun has the distinction of being the only person to have been VP for two different presidents.  begs to differ
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Nov 27, 2014 18:22
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HEY GAL posted:She also took her last five dollars to a casino once and came back with twenty. I'm trying to put together a combination your mom and German mercenary joke, but it's just not coming together.
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Nov 27, 2014 18:25
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bewbies posted:I don't necessarily have a problem with people who say the war was over "states' rights", so long as that is caveated by noting that states deciding for themselves the legality of chattel slavery was by far the most important "right" being debated. I also do not think that anything other than "slavery" is being offered as a cause in any public school anywhere in the US. This was a couple of pages ago but... Article 1 Section 9(4) of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America posted:No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.[14] The congress could not ban slavery, but was in no way forbidden from mandating it. Granted that the C.S.A might not have incorporated those protections down to State level, that still leaves us with... Article 4 Section 2(1) posted:The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired Which says that individual States do not have the ability to effectively ban slavery within that State. And... Article 4 Section 2(3) posted:No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs; or to whom such service or labor may be due. Which renders the Fugitive Slave Act into the Constitution over and above any rights of States to enforce their own laws in their own territory. Also any territories of the CSA were Constitutionally required to allow slavery as it existed at the time of the CSA's founding. It was not about States Rights, because Confederate States were required to allow slavery. sullat posted:Nullification and the other "states rights" disputes were addressed through the political process. Only the slavery issue was so intractable that it led to war. Although the political process was able to delay the inevitable for about 50 years, giving the North a chance to industrialize and build up its manpower reserves. Yeah, this. Secessionists certainly had other reasons besides slavery to want to leave the Union, but in the absence of slavery there would have been no civil war, and if slavery had been the only issue they still would have seceded.
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Nov 27, 2014 18:34
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Tekopo posted:Edit: Also I would recommend reading about the Carolina Nullification crisis as well because it has striking parallels with the ACW as well. I particularly was struck by a section in Battle Cry of Freedom on the Nullification Crisis; there were a great many southerners who were rather unhappy that Nullification had not led to Secession, and believed this was the result of taking a slower and more reasonable approach to the issue. They were swearing up and down that the next time something like this happened, they were just going to drop the mic and storm out. Which explains why you see all the Southern states leave so quickly the moment Lincoln is elected, and before he's even had a chance to do anything. bewbies posted:There were lots of significant socioeconomic schisms between north and south that had little to do with slavery: the Nullification Crisis came reasonably close to ending with insurrection due to federal tariffs and their regional effects. Fear of the growing population and thus political power of the north threatened not only the practice of slavery, but also the semi-feudal agricultural economy that the power base of the south lived in. The south was terrified of the new wave of industrialists in the north, as they predicted somewhat correctly that they'd turn into an aristocracy in their own right (plus some amusingly ironic concerns about worker conditions). And so on, we could go on like this for a while. But the concern was that the North would become as powerful as the South, and that this would then endanger the institution of slavery. It was at least 95% about slavery. Probably more.
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Nov 27, 2014 18:37
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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So I learned today that a cousin of my mother's, Able Seaman Thomas Christopher O'Carroll, died on the HMS Syrtis, a submarine that sank off the coast of Norway with all hands in 1944 after hitting a mine. Kind of a cool piece of family history.Rabhadh posted:Nothing out of the ordinary here, talking absolute bullshit is a well known Irish defence mechanism. Also the bullshit thing is totally true.
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Nov 27, 2014 20:23
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Arquinsiel posted:For those that don't know, Cork calls itself "the rebel county" and "the people's republic of Cork". They even made fake passports for it. They're basically the Texas of Ireland. Stars and Bars: Probably a reenactor or something Third National Flag: More well educated than #1, far more racist. If you see this on a website you are in for a fun time. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 20:28
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HEY GAL posted:Owns the Naval Jack: If not German or Swedish (or from Cork I guess), is a racist Well let's just say a lot of us wouldn't mind if they did actually secede.
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Nov 27, 2014 20:31
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Arquinsiel posted:Honestly I wouldn't rule it out. Cork is...
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Nov 27, 2014 20:32
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While the South succeeded because they feared losing slavery, few Northerns fought to destroy slavery, at least early in the war. Far more fought to keep the country together. Even the Emancipation Proclamation was sold to the public as a way to hurt the South's war effort.
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Nov 27, 2014 20:34
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HEY GAL posted:Are they your Bavaria?
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Nov 27, 2014 20:36
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HEY GAL posted:Naval Jack: If not German or Swedish (or from Cork I guess), is a racist Where do Hardee flag owners fall into this hierarchy?
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Nov 27, 2014 20:39
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Bacarruda posted:Where do Hardee flag owners fall into this hierarchy?
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Nov 27, 2014 20:41
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Mr. Sunshine posted:These are really neat! Was this official, or something individual units/ships did on their own initiative? Are there other examples of military designers going "gently caress it, we can't hide it, let's at least make it look like something else". There were a few Firefly-related modifications.    Plus fake guns on commander or artillery observer vehicles were very common.   Up close, they aren't super convincing, but if you're looking at them from a distance through dirty binoculars in the stress of battle, they do just fine.
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Nov 27, 2014 20:42
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JcDent posted:3. What happens to the guns, armor and ammo of a killed soldier? Unless they were killed in some inaccessible place, they're going to get picked up by whoever controls that area next. For instance, the Soviet government paid hefty bounties for helmets (more for Soviet helmets, and even more for intact helmets, but anything goes) and scrap metal of any sort.
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Nov 27, 2014 20:46
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Ensign Expendable posted:Plus fake guns on commander or artillery observer vehicles were very common. Do tankers in battle prioritise enemy command tanks? Surely they'd shoot at the ones shooting at them, first.
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Nov 27, 2014 20:55
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Fangz posted:Do tankers in battle prioritise enemy command tanks? Surely they'd shoot at the ones shooting at them, first. If you knock out a tank, there is one less gun shooting at you. If you knock out an artillery observer, there is one less artillery battery shooting at you. Obviously if you're currently engaging enemy tanks, you're not going to shoot at the harmless commander first, but if you see a bunch of tanks out in the distance, you know who to shoot at first.
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Nov 27, 2014 21:13
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Fangz posted:Do tankers in battle prioritise enemy command tanks? Surely they'd shoot at the ones shooting at them, first. Of course; aim for the antennaed one! e: modern 'command tanks' can shoot you just as good, maybe even better because the company commander got the best crew... Koesj fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 21:15
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HEY GAL posted:Are they your Bavaria? Bavaria is better than Cork, mostly because Munich exists.
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Nov 27, 2014 22:49
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JcDent posted:Some more questions about stuff and poo poo My dad was in Egypt from late '39 on. Royal Engineers - 8th Army. According to him, as the front lines moved back and forth it would come as no surprise to find unarmed bodies dumped in the wadis (sp?). Both sides did it. He explained that being detailed to escort prisoners to the rear meant you were going to be separated from your Unit/Company. Things moved fast, it gets tricky in the desert real quick. A much more prudent approach was to take your charges over the first rise and hose them. Then double time back to yer boys, any Q's - they tried to escape ......Honest. He mentioned it was crazy, nobody knew where the lines were. People got lost all the time. Apparently people like my dad. I'm going from a terribly faulty memory, but I'm sure he told us this story ......... Maybe I got it from a movie tho.? They had stopped their truck in the middle of nowhere, trying to figure where the gently caress they were. Soon they notice a dust column heading in their direction. They're only a few dudes in a truck, a couple of rifles onboard, that's it. So they sit and wait. A convoy of about ten trucks go high-ballin' past them. Full of Germans, loaded for bear. He should have died. They waved at him. So I guess - Who knows.
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Nov 28, 2014 04:11
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HEY GAL posted:The dome opens to reveal the missile silo beneath WhatProtestantsReallyBelieve.txt
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Nov 28, 2014 04:30
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So the difference between Naval Jack and the Flag of the army of Virginia is different proportions and a lighter cross?Ensign Expendable posted:Unless they were killed in some inaccessible place, they're going to get picked up by whoever controls that area next. For instance, the Soviet government paid hefty bounties for helmets (more for Soviet helmets, and even more for intact helmets, but anything goes) and scrap metal of any sort. I was unclear with my question. What I had in mind is "does their kit get recycled back in use?" For example, is there some poor US infantryman running around Afghanistan with rifle that was at some time found with a dead guy?
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Nov 28, 2014 05:15
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Unless it is damaged to the point where none of the parts can be salvaged, I imagine yes it goes back into the munitions and equipment stock.
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Nov 28, 2014 05:28
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JcDent posted:So the difference between Naval Jack and the Flag of the army of Virginia is different proportions and a lighter cross? HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Nov 28, 2014 |
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Nov 28, 2014 05:29
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JcDent posted:So the difference between Naval Jack and the Flag of the army of Virginia is different proportions and a lighter cross? Have you seen Georgia's state flag?  For a few years it was changed to not literally be the flag of the CSA, but the state legislature changed it back again.
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Nov 28, 2014 05:52
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corn in the bible posted:Have you seen Georgia's state flag? Mississippi is still the worst state, once again, with the no-poo poo flag of the confederacy except one bar at the top of the flag was changed from red to blue. There's something irksome about that kind of behavior - it'd be like Massachusetts adopting a similar design to Australia's for their flag, but with a clam instead of the southern cross or something. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Nov 28, 2014 |
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Nov 28, 2014 06:02
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From what I've read about the CSA in this thread I think it's more like if a region of Germany adopted the Nazi flag because of *heritage*.
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