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bewbies posted:So I guessed I missed that we were discussing Japanese swords in the WWII era which seems kind of irrelevant to me, I was asking more about how they compared to other weapons from around the world in the eras when swords were useful. bewbies posted:I'm anything but an expert on this but I have always had the impression that Japanese swordmakers were pretty excellent. This is probably an impossible question to answer definitively because no one is going to donate their old antique weapons to be tested to (potential) destruction. In addition swordmakers were very varied in their technique, both within Japan and around the world.  Almost by definition, the vast majority of katanas would be of the lower quality types. Similarly, western and chinese weapons would be very different between high class weapons and the stuff you are trying to equip your ordinary footsoldier with. Another point is that Japanese swordmakers were working with very poor quality base materials. A lot of the 'art' of katana construction is really about correcting for shortcomings in the steel used - folding and refolding helps burn off impurities, and even out inconsistencies in the carbon content. The basic technique of pattern welding was fairly widespread across the world, though obviously different cultures implemented it slightly differently. And honestly the quality of the weapon is generally not that important. Miyamoto Musashi won his duel with a long wooden stick. Medieval melee theorists were generally convinced that polearms beat swords. Fangz fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Dec 4, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 15:49
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I liked the Cryptonomicon alot, but some parts are just fiction and popculture. With quick googling, you can find out that the quality of standard issue officer swords was poo poo. There's people from former samurai families that used old blades that were passed down. Hooray, you just looted a 400 year old blade. Once I get back home, I'll dig out the link from the medieval thread, where you can read up on how hard it is to kill people fast by stabbing or cleaving them. Swords always get all the love, but don't forget blunt weapons and all the good polearms.
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Dec 4, 2014 15:54
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Fangz posted:Yes, that quote has been given before, back the last time this argument came up. That bit's also in Stephenson! quote:"Hey," Shaftoe says, "if we surrender to you, you'll kill us. Right?"
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Dec 4, 2014 16:04
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I love the way how he describes submarines.
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Dec 4, 2014 16:15
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JaucheCharly posted:Swords were classified as inferior melee weapons. Inferior even to spades. Take a look at the melee weapons that people used when storming a trench. It's a bunch of clubs or spades. Where's the guy here that gave us the rundown? You shoot people, because it's safer and better at stoping them, you stab them with a bayonet or sword, they still go on and might hurt you too. That's why you have veterans from everywhere tell that you use your spade to chop at the neck, because that's pretty likely to knock out or kill a person instantly. You can safely assume that using a sword to chop somebody's head off in front of other people is a ritualized execution, not that it's a particularly great (and easy) option to kill people. Taking off a person's head with a single strike is also a test of skill that takes expertise. I've heard this line of discussion before, but the caveat I've always heard is that few people (including Japanese officers*) had any particular training in swordplay, which is why simpler weapons like trench clubs and bayonets were preferred. Also, trenches allowed such limited movement that the best weapons needed to operate along a single axis (bayonet) or have extremely short arcs (knives and clubs). Spades are talked about, but largely because they are tools that are already being carried by troops, and therefore a soldier incurs no added weight by relying on it. *Modern Japanese Kendo is based on the post-occupation restoration of martial arts in Japan. Sword-training prior to the war is colloquially distinguished as kenjutsu, and was different in many ways from our modern perception of the art. In particular, Japanese sword-training had been on the decline since the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The art had a revival in the 1920s, but even then the quality of the training remained relatively poor; in the lead-up to the war there was a broad movement in the Imperial government to use martial arts and traditions to promote military fervor, but the sheer scale of the effort ensured that the actual instruction received by students was rote and basic - and often being taught by practitioners who weren't particularly skilled.
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Dec 4, 2014 16:21
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JaucheCharly posted:I liked the Cryptonomicon alot, but some parts are just fiction and popculture. With quick googling, you can find out that the quality of standard issue officer swords was poo poo. There's people from former samurai families that used old blades that were passed down. Hooray, you just looted a 400 year old blade. Don't forget that katanas are the weapon of choice for most pizza-delivery technicians in a post-governmental corporate dystopia. So that's saying something.
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Dec 4, 2014 16:26
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On the subject of soldiers lending each other money:
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Dec 4, 2014 16:40
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Fangz posted:The only effective counter other than your rifle is your pistol? What does that leave your Marine with as his alternatives? His grenade? The entrenching tool in his backpack? His meal ready to eat? How could an enemy soldier keep their focus to stab you when there's some beef stew right there?
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Dec 4, 2014 17:23
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Well i was gonna cut his head off, but his ration has CHOCOLATE holy gently caress.
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Dec 4, 2014 17:25
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Everyone is basically describing the spring offensive of 1918
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Dec 4, 2014 17:29
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Kaal posted:That's so silly of Insurgency to set it up like that. Modern US forces use night-vision gear that is entirely in the infrared. Their flashlights are similarly in the infrared, and are invisible to the naked eye.
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Dec 4, 2014 17:29
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Agean90 posted:Well i was gonna cut his head off, but his ration has CHOCOLATE holy gently caress. Fun aside, the army wanted to supply a chocolate that soldiers wouldn't just eat right away, and managed to produce a chocolate so unpleasant that soldiers would go hungry rather than ever eat it. Eventually they wound up rationing out a bunch of M&Ms instead.
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Dec 4, 2014 17:29
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Fangz posted:This is probably an impossible question to answer definitively because no one is going to donate their old antique weapons to be tested to (potential) destruction. In addition swordmakers were very varied in their technique, both within Japan and around the world. I'm confused by the terminology in this, by hard steel, do they mean tempered hardened steel or brittle poor quality steel? in general sword production moved away from pattern welded blades once the technology and resources for producing swords from entirely tempered steel were available. For example, british sabers in the 1700s would not have a soft iron core and a hardened steel edge, the whole thing was tempered hardened steel.
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Dec 4, 2014 17:59
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Fangz posted:Medieval melee theorists were generally convinced that polearms beat swords. Is that true on an individual scale or more of a unit scale? Polearms and spears (and especially pikes for obvious reasons) strike me as being something that are a bit of a liability when you're mano-a-mano, but rapidly become superior the more of you there are with them.
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Dec 4, 2014 19:06
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Taerkar posted:Is that true on an individual scale or more of a unit scale? Polearms and spears (and especially pikes for obvious reasons) strike me as being something that are a bit of a liability when you're mano-a-mano, but rapidly become superior the more of you there are with them. Shields are the biggest what if. One on one with no shields the reach of a polearm is a huge advantage, a shield can let you close far more safely. The dude with the longer weapon can always just back up while still threatening the sword guy. Obviously anything can happen, especially if one is way more skilled then the other, but on average the spear dude wins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_IIHlFOEiI
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Dec 4, 2014 19:18
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WoodrowSkillson posted:I'm confused by the terminology in this, by hard steel, do they mean tempered hardened steel or brittle poor quality steel? in general sword production moved away from pattern welded blades once the technology and resources for producing swords from entirely tempered steel were available. For example, british sabers in the 1700s would not have a soft iron core and a hardened steel edge, the whole thing was tempered hardened steel. Not in Japan, their ore comes from iron sand so they never moved away from pattern welding. I'm sure its a cultural thing too, this is how our ancestors made swords and they were great.
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Dec 4, 2014 19:50
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Rabhadh posted:Not in Japan, their ore comes from iron sand so they never moved away from pattern welding. I'm sure its a cultural thing too, this is how our ancestors made swords and they were great. I know they did not, my question was about the first item on the list that looks like a solid, hardened steel blade but is listed as the worst blade.
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Dec 4, 2014 20:07
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Rabhadh posted:Not in Japan, their ore comes from iron sand so they never moved away from pattern welding. I'm sure its a cultural thing too, this is how our ancestors made swords and they were great. And if your sword is 10% worse than a Europeans sword, how much does that even matter? I can't imagine there was a huge drive to innovate, especially since your sword wasn't your primary weapon either. It's like arguing over which military issues the best sidearm.
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Dec 4, 2014 20:13
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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WoodrowSkillson posted:I know they did not, my question was about the first item on the list that looks like a solid, hardened steel blade but is listed as the worst blade. Looking at that chart, I would guess this first item on the list is only hard steel, which makes it more brittle then the other sorts.
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Dec 4, 2014 20:25
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Taerkar posted:Is that true on an individual scale or more of a unit scale? Polearms and spears (and especially pikes for obvious reasons) strike me as being something that are a bit of a liability when you're mano-a-mano, but rapidly become superior the more of you there are with them. I suppose it'd depend on the degree of armour involved. Especially if you're looking at the later middle ages, usually people would be wearing rather comprehensive as well as effective metal armor, against most swords would struggle to even make a dent. While there were techniques developed for swordfightin in full armour, they were usually closer to stopgap measures to give them at least some utility rather than the ideal approach. Meanwhile, especially somewhat shorter polearms like for example a poleaxe were not actually that much less nimble than a longsword, and they also offered enough leverage and mass to be much more effective against an armored foe. Perestroika fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Dec 4, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 20:37
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Taerkar posted:Is that true on an individual scale or more of a unit scale? Polearms and spears (and especially pikes for obvious reasons) strike me as being something that are a bit of a liability when you're mano-a-mano, but rapidly become superior the more of you there are with them. Here's the thing: reach is almost always an advantage in a weapon because the guy with longer reach gets to dictate the fight. In order to do anything the guy with less reach needs to 'close the gap' which as almost always an inherently risky action, and this rule tends to apply at any range or context. Note that the determining factors people have mentioned have nothing to do with the quality of the sword or polearm but of the existence/quality of a shield or armour - is. Does the sword guy have something to mitigate the risk of closing with polearm guy?
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Dec 4, 2014 20:44
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Alchenar posted:Here's the thing: reach is almost always an advantage in a weapon because the guy with longer reach gets to dictate the fight. In order to do anything the guy with less reach needs to 'close the gap' which as almost always an inherently risky action, and this rule tends to apply at any range or context. Knife, sword, spear, arrow, gun, or missile - if you can kill the other guy before he can effectively hurt you, you win.
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Dec 4, 2014 21:06
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Rabhadh posted:Everyone is basically describing the spring offensive of 1918 Any other, more credible examples of this? (besides 1918)
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Dec 4, 2014 21:15
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100 Years Ago My favourite grognard Louis Barthas gets to watch an attack today without having to participate in it; it features some of the earliest uses of a hurricane bombardment and of mining underneath enemy positions to blow them up. It's all in service of a major offensive that may never take place; the French brains trust is vacillating about where precisely to attack. Meanwhile, the Austro-Hungarians continue to get the derriere velocite in Serbia and IEF "D" hunkers down outside Qurna to wait for reinforcements. Bacarruda posted:Most career British Indian Army officers spoke functional, if not fluent Urdu.* By WWII, officers posted to the British Indian Army had to pass the "Urdu Elementary Examination" within a year of disembarking in India. Officers who passed the exam earned an £11 bonus and had better chances of being promoted. Those who failed were refused leave and had their pay docked. Back in 1913, Urdu was only an optional subject for Indian Army cadets at Sandhurst, and before 1907 it wasn't even on the syllabus. (I'd love to know when this all changed and they actually went "hmm, maybe the lazy arses should learn the drat language", and whether making it mandatory at Quetta had any bearing on that.) And, even if a cadet tried to take the subject, the typical training period right now in winter 1914 was about three months, which was barely long enough for them to learn how to read a map and which end of their sword they should hold. (And then they could well end up in a battalion that had lost a load of jemadars and couldn't expect a reinforcement-draft for months...)
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Dec 4, 2014 21:20
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corn in the bible posted:This was part of why Japan was so desperate to expand, I believe. Japan has little mineral wealth and their metalworking was terrible as a result. The legend of fabulous samurai swords that can cut through anything is ludicrous considering most of them couldn't cut through anything at all; having control of mainland territory or ports would enable them to build a real metallurgical industry. They already had Korea and a chunk of northern China, and being an island they weren't short of ports in the first place...
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Dec 4, 2014 21:23
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Fangz posted:Yes, that quote has been given before, back the last time this argument came up. The Japanese used mass charges for reasons other than "sword beats gun, hurr durr". Against Chinese units, the charges were effective. Chinese troops were poorly trained and equipped, and didn't usually have access to artillery or other supporting arms. In China, they used the charge as a tactical option. At Guadalcanal, a complete breakdown of intelligence meant that the Japanese CO was convinced he was facing maybe a tenth of the force that the Americans had actually entrenched on the Island. He ordered his 1000 men to charge into prepared positions manned by 3,000 marines. Had there really only been 300 marines or so, it might not have been a complete failure. At Saipan, long after the battle was decided, the remaining Japanese forces and civilians organized a charge. This was solely to avoid the dishonor of surrender. Japan's a pretty insular island, and the distillation of cultural norms over time resulted in a total intolerance for surrender. So it wasn't as if they expected the charge to reverse the battle, they just wanted to die. The CO at Saipan commits suicide before the charge is even defeated. Banzai charges are named for the Japanese army's warcry. It's pretty silly when you think about it, what else are they going to be yelling? Why don't we call every Russian assault tactic an "u-ra assault"?
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Dec 4, 2014 21:26
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Banzai charges are named for the Japanese army's warcry. It's pretty silly when you think about it, what else are they going to be yelling? Why don't we call every Russian assault tactic an "u-ra assault"? Because by the standards of the early 20th century Russians are white(ish - there's still that whole "slavic" thing people get uneasy about) while there is meanwhile about a hundred years of a specifically American racist attitude towards Asians slapped on top of a long W. European tradition of Orientalist bullshit. That's how you get strange, barely comprehensible "Banzai charges" from  , brutish, pigheaded "human wave attacks" from  , and stirring depictions of bravery and derring-do on the odd occasion that  or  actually has to fix bayonets.
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Dec 4, 2014 21:36
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Shields are the biggest what if. One on one with no shields the reach of a polearm is a huge advantage, a shield can let you close far more safely. The dude with the longer weapon can always just back up while still threatening the sword guy. Obviously anything can happen, especially if one is way more skilled then the other, but on average the spear dude wins. This is really cool. It seems to me that even a modicum of armour would be immensely advantageous because it would let you brush off glancing blows instead of being immediately crippled. It also seems that if both men had similar armour, the advantage would lie with the swordsman because he would be able to close to his ideal distance far more easily, and his weapon having a cutting edge would make it more useful for exploiting the gaps in armour.
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Dec 4, 2014 22:22
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cheerfullydrab posted:On the subject of soldiers lending each other money: You could show Willie and Joe cartoons to guys fighting 400 years ago and guys fighting 400 years from now and I bet they'd still get the humor.
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Dec 4, 2014 22:26
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Slavvy posted:This is really cool. It seems to me that even a modicum of armour would be immensely advantageous because it would let you brush off glancing blows instead of being immediately crippled. It also seems that if both men had similar armour, the advantage would lie with the swordsman because he would be able to close to his ideal distance far more easily, and his weapon having a cutting edge would make it more useful for exploiting the gaps in armour. You stab the gaps, not cut them. Speardude can still control the distance by shortening the grip or stepping out. There's a reason why stabbing is forbidden, even in those crazy russian fights in full plate. Speaking of stabbing stuff: At least four-fifths of the reports of “fierce bayonet charges” by our troops emanating from the Korean theater are false either in whole or in part. In some instances, the troops which were described as engaging in this manner did not even possess bayonets. In others, they had bayonets and fixed them, but, during the attack, did not close with that weapon upon the enemy. One of our allies was credited in the operations of the early winter with a bloody repulse of the enemy at bayonet point in which scores were skewered; this story drew attention the world over. It helped inspire the new interest in the weapon. No doubt, the killing took place. But all of the attendant circumstances indicate that its main victims were friendly ROKs, trying to fall back into protecbive lines after their own position had gone; it was a case of mistaken identit’y. The need for a sharp killing inst,rument’ at the end of a rifle is well indicated by the course of Korean operations; the need of a discipline which will compel troops to retain such a weapon and will enable them to use it with some efficiency when an emergency requires it is equally well indicated. Recurrently through the winter in the defense of hilltop perimeters, infantry companies were engaged with the enemy at such close range that the rifle used as a spear would have taken many a victim. But killings by Eighth Army infantry under these circumstances were so few that they could be counted on one man’s fingers. When the rifles began to run empty and the enemy at last closed, with very few exceptions the men had no blade with which to stand off the rush. For lack of bayonets, they fought with clubbed rifles, stones, and sometimes with their bare fists. All of these things are in the record: the companies and individuals who so participated can be named. Oddly enough, however, the repetition of situations in which the bayonet might have proved useful did not of itself stimulate the interest of troops in the return of the weapon. The companies which had been caught short for having thrown the bayonet away did not demand it,s re-issue. They were not “bayonet-minded,” and they seemed perfectly willing to fight again under the same odds in the next round. (p.103ff) http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/docrepository/commentary_on_infantry_weapons_korea_1950_51.pdf
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Dec 4, 2014 22:49
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Arquinsiel posted:Insurgency is PMCs, and the way the system works is kind of clever in that you have a sort of "budget" of points you can use to outfit your man. Take NVGs? No frag grenade for you! Conveniently there are patches of light around that you are best off avoiding standing in, so NVGs also seem to have an exaggerated reaction to those. It's not quite the advantage in game that it would be in reality. The Insurgents can actually get them too, but you need to be a particular class and due to the more limited resources it's more likely to cost you something vital like actually having an automatic rifle than just something handy like a grenade. There's also weight considerations, since the game seems to model that reasonably well. That makes sense in terms of mechanics. NODs are such a huge advantage that it'd be pretty much impossible to balance playing against in a game that modeled them accurately, unless via respawns or overwhelming numbers. The team without them would pretty much just be hanging around waiting to die.
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Dec 4, 2014 23:50
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Trin Tragula posted:Back in 1913, Urdu was only an optional subject for Indian Army cadets at Sandhurst, and before 1907 it wasn't even on the syllabus. (I'd love to know when this all changed and they actually went "hmm, maybe the lazy arses should learn the drat language", and whether making it mandatory at Quetta had any bearing on that.) And, even if a cadet tried to take the subject, the typical training period right now in winter 1914 was about three months, which was barely long enough for them to learn how to read a map and which end of their sword they should hold. (And then they could well end up in a battalion that had lost a load of jemadars and couldn't expect a reinforcement-draft for months...) Interesting. It seems like there was a greater emphasis on learning Indian languages post-WWI, then. From what I've read about the interwar Indian Army, British officers were supposed to speak to VCOs and enlisted men in Urdu (Ghurka officers were supposed to speak Nepalese to their men, iirc). New officers received a year's training with a munshi (a private language teacher) and had to pass a language test. Failing the test was a serious career roadblock. During WWII, it seems like language skills (even if they had to be acquired on-the-job and while in-country) remained important for British Indian Army officers, since the Army did try to make sure officers acquired basic Indian language skills. Although it's pretty clear that a bunch of corners were cut to speed wartime training. After 1940, most British officers underwent about 4-6 months training at an Officer Training School and then were shipped off to their units, where they got further training on the job. As I mentioned earlier, once in India, officers were supposed to learn an Indian language and take a proficiency test. Although, as in WWI, it seems like the quality of spoken Urdu amongst WWII officers was really mixed. Most career Indian Army officers seemed to be bi- or tri-lingual while the wartime recruits were staggering along in broken pidgin Urdu.
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Dec 4, 2014 23:51
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Kaal posted:That makes sense in terms of mechanics. NODs are such a huge advantage that it'd be pretty much impossible to balance playing against in a game that modeled them accurately, unless via respawns or overwhelming numbers. The team without them would pretty much just be hanging around waiting to die.
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Dec 5, 2014 00:11
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AceRimmer posted:There's also the (almost certainly apocryphal?) Battle of the Sausages during the Winter War. A Russian battalion supposedly broke through Finnish lines up to a field kitchen that had prepared a large quantity of barbecued sausages. At this point, after months of eating black bread and perhaps salted herring, discipline completely broke down and the breakthrough ended right there. Well, uh, Perryville, I think, the Union troops were so thirsty they broke and ran for a nearby river despite being under fire at the time, many were killed while trying to get a drink of water. Same thing happened at the battle of Hattin during the crusades as well. Be sure to have access to water before going on campaign.
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Dec 5, 2014 00:36
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Rabhadh posted:Not in Japan, their ore comes from iron sand so they never moved away from pattern welding. I'm sure its a cultural thing too, this is how our ancestors made swords and they were great. More like 'we've had centuries of peace and these work perfectly fine for disciplining peasants and getting in pointless duels, why innovate?' For half of the samurai class having to buy a sword was a burden. Yukichi Fukuzawa (aka the dude on the 10000 yen note) recounts pawning his swords basically as soon as he got them and replacing them with bits of metal with hilts on them. It's not 'hurrdurr ancestors.'
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Dec 5, 2014 01:19
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sullat posted:Well, uh, Perryville, I think, the Union troops were so thirsty they broke and ran for a nearby river despite being under fire at the time, many were killed while trying to get a drink of water. Same thing happened at the battle of Hattin during the crusades as well. Be sure to have access to water before going on campaign. Same thing at the end of the siege of Syracuse. The Athenian's were forced to retreat and then harried relentlessly until they happened on a stream. Thucy. recounts soldiers trampling each other and lapping at the stream even as it began to run red while the Spartan/Syracusans speared them in the backs.
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Dec 5, 2014 01:21
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Cyrano4747 posted:That's how you get strange, barely comprehensible "Banzai charges" from
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Dec 5, 2014 01:41
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I might be going in over my head, but Japanese charges operate on a nigh incomprehensible sense of honor, duty and mind over matter. Soviet "human waves" (don't know if they're ever shown with bayonets) are shown as cold officers just throwing men forward because communism. When you hear stories of Americans or British "fix bayonets", it's always a heroic last ditch effort that saves the day (or, going on stories about Ray Rescorla, just a punctuation mark). After WWII, it's basically THE British thing to do. "The poo poo's all buggered, lads, but we're not yet dead. Fix bayonets!" And it's never mass bayonet charges. Why? Because mass western bayonet charges lost all their luster in WWI. I guess that would explains why you can say 'but Russian charges had artillery planned and stuff' and still not leave a mark. Everybody learned that from WWI. HEY GAL posted:This is also why white Fascists are described in the history books as doing things because they are Fascists/Nazis, but Asian Fascists are described as doing the same goddamned things out of ancient notions of "honor" and "shame." If a hundred years is ancient, sure. I have lost count of the times American treatments of the Second World War try to suss out the Nazis' motivations while disposing of the Japanese junta with a wave of the hand. I don't think anybody claims Unit 731 or Rape of Nanking happened because of "honor". Thing is, Japanese, being late to the whole colonialism thing and having spent several centuries not going places, had to rapidly convince their people that it's totally OK to colonialise neighbors (and they wanted that, because they saw China and though "this is not happening to us. Quick, what do great countries have...? I know, colonies!"). It got to the point were Chinese and Koreans were seen as sub human scum. BBC made a report about how history of WWII (well, Fifteen year war) was though in China and Japan, and they said there was this one old guy who stated that killing a Chinese man was like swatting a mosquito (with the accompanying slap on the wrist). However, I don't know how sweet life was in Wehrmacht, but Japanese infantryman got the the short end of the stick even as he entered bootcamp. You do not want to be a Japanese soldier any time around the end of XIXth and start of XXth centure. But I don't got one thing: how the gently caress did IJN and IJA get into a dick measuring contest that likely made the war easier for Allies?
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Dec 5, 2014 02:28
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I seem to recall Japanese Army discipline in WW2 for the common grunt of the IJA was pretty rough stuff more associated with Victorian era armies.
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Dec 5, 2014 02:39
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IIRC there was no credible civilian leadership thanks to a bunch of assholes assassinating anyone who wasn't "patriotic" enough.
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Dec 5, 2014 02:39
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