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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Not when we're talking about area bombing an entire city like during the attack on Dresden. How's that meaningfully different than a whole bunch of other area bombing attacks on a whole bunch of other cities during that war? Dresden was at least as valid a military target as any other city you'd name. It had a shitload of factories. It was a significant transportation center. If bombing Dresden was a war crime, so was bombing Berlin, Cologne, Essen, Frankfurt, etc. It's not like the very best "precision" bombing had to offer at that point of time was much different. The CEP of B-17s with the Norden bombsight was about a quarter mile, which means *half* the bombs you drop fall outside that radius, and *that's* the best you could expect under wartime conditions with the best tech of the era.
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Jan 14, 2015 05:00
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Phanatic posted:How's that meaningfully different than a whole bunch of other area bombing attacks on a whole bunch of other cities during that war? Dresden was at least as valid a military target as any other city you'd name. It had a shitload of factories. It was a significant transportation center. If bombing Dresden was a war crime, so was bombing Berlin, Cologne, Essen, Frankfurt, etc. It's not like the very best "precision" bombing had to offer at that point of time was much different. The CEP of B-17s with the Norden bombsight was about a quarter mile, which means *half* the bombs you drop fall outside that radius, and *that's* the best you could expect under wartime conditions with the best tech of the era. Like someone already said, you're at least hitting the right country (so, good thing they didn't fight Luxemburgh or Angora). I guess the margin of error was the reason why they didn't bomb the poo poo out of panzer schools or something?
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Jan 14, 2015 05:41
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Arquinsiel posted:The problem here is that we're looking at it in retrospect. Did it help the war effort? gently caress no. What did they think it was doing at the time? Nobody ever gets up in the morning and decides to make a major strategic error after all. Well the trials where who did what, were all done with the benefit of hindsight. Unless I've misread the issue at the heart of the discussion.
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Jan 14, 2015 05:43
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Arquinsiel posted:The problem here is that we're looking at it in retrospect. Did it help the war effort? gently caress no. What did they think it was doing at the time? Nobody ever gets up in the morning and decides to make a major strategic error after all. Wasn't one of the stated goals of the allied bombing campaign to demoralize the poo poo out of German civilians in hopes that that would stop the war?1 1Exactly how this would stop the war not stated, and probably not thought through too well.
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Jan 14, 2015 05:47
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Well the trials where who did what, were all done with the benefit of hindsight. Unless I've misread the issue at the heart of the discussion.
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Jan 14, 2015 05:50
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I don't understand the argument that strategic bombing didn't help the war effort or disrupt German industry? How could that be?
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Jan 14, 2015 06:04
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Well the trials where who did what, were all done with the benefit of hindsight. Unless I've misread the issue at the heart of the discussion. The trials were also conducted by the winners. Just saying. PittTheElder posted:Wasn't one of the stated goals of the allied bombing campaign to demoralize the poo poo out of German civilians in hopes that that would stop the war?1 I think this is the classic 'This [tremendous act of violence] will teach them a lesson! They're sure to just give up if we [do enough horrible things] and realise how futile fighting is!' I'm pretty sure this has only ever worked once in all of history and the rest of the time they just end up fighting harder; a lesson seemingly lost on almost everyone everywhere because even now some people seem to think that 'if we just kill enough Muslims, it'll teach them all a lesson!' and some of those people run countries. Arquinsiel posted:I think you may have missed my point, which at core is that to the guys ordering the boots on the ground to gun down jews for six years it probably seemed like a vital part of the war effort. I think only dyed-in-the-wool nazi superfreaks legitimately thought it was helping the war effort and everyone else just kind of went along with it because Hitler. You're underestimating the dysfunction of the Nazi war machine and state in general.
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Jan 14, 2015 06:07
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What did cavalry units do with wounded horses?
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Jan 14, 2015 06:09
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Throatwarbler posted:I don't understand the argument that strategic bombing didn't help the war effort or disrupt German industry? How could that be? I don't think anyone here is arguing that it didn't. But that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't also a war crime.
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Jan 14, 2015 06:11
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Throatwarbler posted:I don't understand the argument that strategic bombing didn't help the war effort or disrupt German industry? How could that be? The line that gets trotted out is for the direct/intended effect of strategic bombing(disrupt the enemy's ability/desire to wage war) 1- German production increased throughout the war (to which someone responds: Germany didn't get on a wartime production schedule until 43 or 44 because Hitler didn't want to curtail production of civilian goods) 2- Post war interviews of German civilians didn't indicate that strategic bombing swayed them against continuing the war or something like that Then someone brings up something about the decimation of the Luftwaffe as a result and the opportunity cost(men, materiel) of defending strategic bombing targets. Then someone else brings up how ineffective the norden bombsight was. Someone else points out that the men assigned to AA units were too old or young to fight as infantry. etc. This is like the third go around.
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Jan 14, 2015 06:18
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Slavvy posted:I think only dyed-in-the-wool nazi superfreaks legitimately thought it was helping the war effort and everyone else just kind of went along with it because Hitler. You're underestimating the dysfunction of the Nazi war machine and state in general.
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Jan 14, 2015 06:20
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Disinterested posted:Some people, like Thomas Mann, saw the destruction of the cities as...(b) a sort of necessary disproof of Nazism, something that make it totally clear that fascism meant total destruction and that there could be no uncertainty about who had lost this time. I'm not going to debate this because I lack the necessary objectivity and anything I could say, while being honest, about the destruction of the city where I spend half my time would get me probated. But I do recommend this book. I'll also say that the parts that aren't Soviet era new construction are all sandstone, and every sunset turns the city center rose and gold. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Jan 14, 2015 |
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Jan 14, 2015 06:42
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SlothfulCobra posted:What did cavalry units do with wounded horses? Get some fresh meat right off the hoof. Xerxes17 fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Jan 14, 2015 |
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Jan 14, 2015 08:53
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Xerxes17 posted:Get some fresh meet right off the hoof. Otherwise you kill the horse, if it's not readily fixable, particularly in a war situation. Wounded horses are tremendously difficult to deal with.
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Jan 14, 2015 09:18
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PittTheElder posted:Wasn't one of the stated goals of the allied bombing campaign to demoralize the poo poo out of German civilians in hopes that that would stop the war?1 At least since Douhet people have always thought about how they could win wars without any ground troops whatsoever. Now it's 2015 and so far it has never ever worked.
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Jan 14, 2015 10:17
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Kemper Boyd posted:At least since Douhet people have always thought about how they could win wars without any ground troops whatsoever. Now it's 2015 and so far it has never ever worked. In fact, when you're dealing with fascists, it often has the unpleasant effect of making people speed up their genocidal program in the fear that the aerial bombardment is a preamble to invasion or that the dumbasses bombing you might begin to realise soon that the bombing isn't stopping them. You're right, the idea has always been total folly sold to politicians as as low commitment version of warfare. Although in the point of Dresden, some Jews (most famously Victor Klemperer) did escape from deportation to Auschwitz in the confusion.
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Jan 14, 2015 10:56
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Phanatic posted:How's that meaningfully different than a whole bunch of other area bombing attacks on a whole bunch of other cities during that war? Dresden was at least as valid a military target as any other city you'd name. It had a shitload of factories. It was a significant transportation center. If bombing Dresden was a war crime, so was bombing Berlin, Cologne, Essen, Frankfurt, etc. It's not like the very best "precision" bombing had to offer at that point of time was much different. The CEP of B-17s with the Norden bombsight was about a quarter mile, which means *half* the bombs you drop fall outside that radius, and *that's* the best you could expect under wartime conditions with the best tech of the era. Look, alls I'm saying is that it would be hard to just dump your bombs over the middle of nowhere (instead in of the general vicinity of the actual target) and have it go unnoticed like that guy implied the bomber crews could've done instead of bombing cities. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 11:21 on Jan 14, 2015 |
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Jan 14, 2015 11:16
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Acebuckeye13 posted:There's also the question of protection. I could be wrong on this, but when you're making a piece of armor plate, the addition of any holes for things like the bow machine-gun is going to weaken the overall strength of the plate significantly. Add that to the necessary compromises you have to make when trying to make a tank NBC resistant, and the bow machine gun could very well be a detriment to the tank's design. This is very much a part of it, it's also why you start seeing the removal of protrusions from the front plate for the driver and instead small periscopes to not only limit the number of holes in the armor but to also make them at odd angles to where shots will likely come in from.
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Jan 14, 2015 11:17
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Hogge Wild posted:In what different ways were the tank turrets rotated? The Swedish military got really interested in missiles via some stuff fired from Peenemünde that accidentally landed in Sweden. I really should do a post on early Swedish missile development, it's pretty fascinating and as far as I know there's very little written about it even in Swedish. I found some documents at the national archives before Christmas which described a huge development program that was previously unknown to me. They had ideas about missiles for every purpose for all service branches and they built a whole bunch of experimental ones.
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Jan 14, 2015 11:57
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bewbies posted:The anti tank missile (the X-7) worked reasonably well in testing and probably would have been effective in combat; the French and US used copies of it for many years afterwards. The Fritz X (glide bomb) and the Hs-293 (anti ship missile) were both pretty effective throughout their service lives. Allied countermeasures were better though; I'll go so far as to say that this was a key enabler for the Allies at Normandy. The X-4 air to air missile worked at least in theory but it had some major operational issues: the pilot had to fly the missile as well as his plane, and in a sky full of Allied planes this wasn't a terribly good idea. As far as I know the X-4 didn't make any serious contributions to postwar research. Interesting stuff. Where did the USA and French use the copies of X-7? Korea and Indochina? Griz posted:WW2 British and Russian - electric motors Thanks. The video from your link shows the really cool T-34's lever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq9lKJq1xQ0 TheFluff posted:The Swedish military got really interested in missiles via some stuff fired from Peenemünde that accidentally landed in Sweden. I really should do a post on early Swedish missile development, it's pretty fascinating and as far as I know there's very little written about it even in Swedish. I found some documents at the national archives before Christmas which described a huge development program that was previously unknown to me. They had ideas about missiles for every purpose for all service branches and they built a whole bunch of experimental ones. Yeah, please post.
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Jan 14, 2015 12:57
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeKJkSFuPFQ MUST. CRUSH. CAPITALISM.
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Jan 14, 2015 13:15
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Look, alls I'm saying is that it would be hard to just dump your bombs over the middle of nowhere (instead in of the general vicinity of the actual target) and have it go unnoticed like that guy implied the bomber crews could've done instead of bombing cities. To be more specific by the time of the Dresden bombing RAF bombers were equipped with bomb bay cameras and were expected to provide their footage after every run to prove they were trying to hit the target marker. Not taking your bomb photos was taken extremely seriously by Bomber Command as it meant you might be chickening out of dropping on the target, so as Sexman says you'd have a very tough time dropping your bombs in the countryside, not getting a snap of it and convincing your superiors you'd actually done a run. In addition the photos were also meant to see if you were dropping early and ducking out so you get out of the AAA fire sooner - this was very common in the night raids and led to 'creepback', where the bombing area would move backwards along the bomber stream from the target as each bomber saw where the previous bombs had landed (due to the fires produced) and would drop their bombs at the earliest opportunity so they could turn for home. For the later bombing raids this was taken into account in the planning stages, so it would be planned for the expected creepback to move the bombing onto other worthwhile targets and spread the damage and resulting fires as much as possible.
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Jan 14, 2015 14:30
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I'd like to read about general military use of the Motorcycle in the 20th Industry, that'd be interesting.
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Jan 14, 2015 14:33
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SeanBeansShako posted:I'd like to read about general military use of the Motorcycle in the 20th Industry, that'd be interesting. I'd like to hear stories about the Sheridan, which was armored as a motorcycle.
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Jan 14, 2015 14:37
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SlothfulCobra posted:What did cavalry units do with wounded horses?
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Jan 14, 2015 14:43
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Alchenar posted:Nah, you'd just leverage your maths skills to be an accountant and your absorbed wisdom of the concept of 'futures' and how capitalism works to work your way up.
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Jan 14, 2015 14:45
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:The line that gets trotted out is for the direct/intended effect of strategic bombing(disrupt the enemy's ability/desire to wage war) The Germans under Speer did also managed to keep up production in ways Bomber Command apparently didn't realize; Speer remarks in his memoirs that in an interview with a representative of BC they were shocked at just how well the Germans had managed to keep it going and would've thrown far more effort at it had they known; an effort (something like an additional 2000 bombers?) that Speer remarks might have crippled German industry sooner. And meanwhile on imgur:  
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Jan 14, 2015 15:19
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One of the things in the air war was that the Germans were really bad at figuring out how to defend their airspace despite massive resources poured into radar networks and AA guns. Galland has later remarked (and as far as I know, former Allied commanders agree with him) that the Jagdwaffe never managed to get sufficient amount of planes in the air, partially due to Luftwaffe training being really bad during the war, partially due to fighter production constantly being diverted over into making more bombers. When the Germans had their poo poo together, like during the Schweinfurt raids, the losses on the day bombers were more or less catastrophic.
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Jan 14, 2015 15:50
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cyberbug posted:The first futures market was invented in 1636 by the Dutch for tulips, and promptly resulted in the invention of the speculative economic bubble. Tulip Mania Thales already did that in 600 B.C. by reserving options to use olive presses in anticipation of a good harvest and reselling them with profit.
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Jan 14, 2015 15:54
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Raenir Salazar posted:The Germans under Speer did also managed to keep up production in ways Bomber Command apparently didn't realize; Speer remarks in his memoirs that in an interview with a representative of BC they were shocked at just how well the Germans had managed to keep it going and would've thrown far more effort at it had they known; an effort (something like an additional 2000 bombers?) that Speer remarks might have crippled German industry sooner. Did Britain stick with that rifle fire stuff through to WWII? I know it was a "Yep, that's the Brits" thing in WWI but it seems like they'd have pivoted to something different pretty quickly once they figured out WWII wasn't going to be fought largely in static defense positions.
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Jan 14, 2015 16:18
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FAUXTON posted:I don't get what the point of this post is outside of juxtaposing discussion of war with national leaders of warring countries in order to make some kind of point about how we can't talk about war without making sure everyone knows how much all present think war is bad, as though anyone interested in military history thinks war is anything but the fires and ravages of hell loosed upon the unassuming earthbound mortals with the piss-poor luck to live in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong government. So, here's Hitler eating watermelon. Actually, I did it for the Putin punchline about hitting the country you were aiming at. 
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Jan 14, 2015 16:26
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100 Years Ago With the geography thoroughly rearranged, the Battle of Soissons begins receding towards the history books (but not very many of them, apparently). Useful idiot Horatio Bottomley appears at a patriotic rally, so giving me an excuse to talk about him a bit. There's unrest brewing in the southern Caucasus; and the official communique in the paper reports "We fired a shell and it exploded with a jolly good bang", in not many more words.
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Jan 14, 2015 16:39
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FAUXTON posted:Did Britain stick with that rifle fire stuff through to WWII? I know it was a "Yep, that's the Brits" thing in WWI but it seems like they'd have pivoted to something different pretty quickly once they figured out WWII wasn't going to be fought largely in static defense positions. The Brits did stick with bolt action rifles throughout the war, though I think that quote doesn't sufficiently stress the importance of the Bren LMG. EDIT: From the British army LMG training manual: quote:"The light machine gun is the principle weapon of the infantry and every man will therefore be trained to use it". It goes on, "the rifle is the personal protective weapon of the individual, it may be needed, in an emergency to augment the fire of the section…" EDIT 2: Unless I'm reading this wrong, it seems from TOEs, British and German densities of MGs per platoon was essentially the same, though of course the Bren had very different qualities (both advantages and disadvantages) to the MG42. Fangz fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jan 14, 2015 |
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Jan 14, 2015 16:56
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Throatwarbler posted:I don't understand the argument that strategic bombing didn't help the war effort or disrupt German industry? How could that be? From everything I've heard marauding bands of allied fighters on the way home from their escort legs did almost as much damage to the German war machine as the bombing. I've heard it's directly responsible for the "Ok airfields are done, lets hack a runway out of the woods and hide the planes under the trees." poo poo that was going on in late war.
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Jan 14, 2015 17:55
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Hogge Wild posted:Thanks. The video from your link shows the really cool T-34's lever: JcDent posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeKJkSFuPFQ
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Jan 14, 2015 18:09
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I've only looked through the sights of an Abrams and Bradley, does anyone have an image of what a T-34 or Panther or Sherman's optics looked like?
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Jan 14, 2015 18:16
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Rhymenoserous posted:From everything I've heard marauding bands of allied fighters on the way home from their escort legs did almost as much damage to the German war machine as the bombing. I've heard it's directly responsible for the "Ok airfields are done, lets hack a runway out of the woods and hide the planes under the trees." poo poo that was going on in late war. Did they have fuel to strafe ground targets? Because I don't think escorts carry bombs or anything. "Marauding bands of allied fighters" just brings up wonderful images, tho!
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Jan 14, 2015 18:29
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JcDent posted:Did they have fuel to strafe ground targets? Because I don't think escorts carry bombs or anything. I remember reading that escort fighters had to stay close to the bomber formations until 1945 or so. Once that requirement was lifted, they would pursue enemy fighters down to the hedgerows if necessary to get the kill.
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Jan 14, 2015 18:33
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sullat posted:I remember reading that escort fighters had to stay close to the bomber formations until 1945 or so. Once that requirement was lifted, they would pursue enemy fighters down to the hedgerows if necessary to get the kill. Yeah. We did lose a bunch of pilots attacking airbases, especially good ones because skill is a better shield again fighters than AA, but it caused a lot of problems for Germans trying to actually do anything in the air.
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Jan 14, 2015 19:07
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A friend who is the gunner on a Leo 2 told me that he and the guys are scared of a hit that damages the hydraulic system. Supposedly it's very hot (200 or 300°C?) and under very high pressure and makes for a good steamy death. Note, that's just for the hits that don't outright kill everybody on board. Anyone else heard stuff like that?
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Jan 14, 2015 19:34
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