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Animal posted:I am a fan of Iain M Banks (currently reading Excession) but can you please explain all these acronyms so we can participate? They are not obvious and Google turns nothing.
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Feb 5, 2015 06:39
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HEY GAL posted:was that the guy who was also on star trek Yes it's the same guy: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Abdullah_bin_al-Hussein Though apparently the reports of him actively bombing ISIS are misleading, and the photos are outdated: https://twitter.com/josephbraude Animal posted:I am a fan of Iain M Banks (currently reading Excession) but can you please explain all these acronyms so we can participate? They are not obvious and Google turns nothing. OCP: Outside Context Problem HFY: Humanity, gently caress Yeah AI-FY: Artificial Intelligence, gently caress Yeah The terms have been discussed in more detail in the last few pages of the thread. Kaal fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 07:37
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I haven't kept up with this thread as well as I should, but this came across my email and I figured you guys might enjoy picking it apart. I love WWII history, but I'm always skeptical of chain emails:quote:You might enjoy this from Col D. G. Swinford, USMC, Retired and a So, obviously including the Manchuria campaign and Winter Wars as part of WWII. Though was it actually an American serviceman, or an American serving in the Finnish Army? quote:2. #2, I've heard of kids lying about their ages (usually 17 year olds), 12 seems a bit of a stretch. #3, seems kind of obvious, especially as the swastika was in wide spread use before the Nazis appropriated it. quote:4. This seems a bit of a stretch. I know bomber crews, especially B-17 crews, had high attrition rates, but this seems as much a myth as the "march into their machine guns" from WWI. quote:5. Again seems a stretch. quote:6. I know about the practice of tracers every 5th or 6th round and the "almost out" stream, but I've never heard of this before. quote:7. I would love to see the pictures. quote:8. Yeah, sure, if it took off from the Azores. The Ju-390 had a longer range and it couldn't fly from Germany to NYC on a single leg. Brilliant part 3 of a series of posts about the Ju-290 from Nebakenezzer: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3276654&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=676#post440413175 quote:9. I've heard this story before, but to my recolection, the toilet forced them to surface and they were promptly shelled. Or am I wrong? quote:10. I thought it was only one man (and there's a movie "based on" this guy). Trying to see if it's available with English subtitles somewhere. quote:11. I've heard this before, too. quote:12. Curious about this one. Right, he was killed by a can of spam and not some prison guard knocking him over the head.
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Feb 5, 2015 07:47
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YF19pilot posted:So, obviously including the Manchuria campaign and Winter Wars as part of WWII. Though was it actually an American serviceman, or an American serving in the Finnish Army? The Manchurian campaign by the Japanese was in 1931,  So guess this was one of the German advisors sent with von Falkenhausen? Seems plausible. 7.)  10.) It must have been drat confusing capturing units of Russians/Ukranians and various other Ostruppen (who had Soviet weapons too). Edit: Whoops, misread #1. AceRimmer fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 08:09
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YF19pilot posted:#2, I've heard of kids lying about their ages (usually 17 year olds), 12 seems a bit of a stretch. Yeah, my grandfather was 15 when he enlisted. He didn't get discharged when they found out his real age, but he was sent off his ship and served on a dock for the rest of the war. That kind of thing was common because birth certificates weren't mandatory, so people would have a relative vouch for their age if they didn't have or didn't want to supply documents showing their real age.
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Feb 5, 2015 08:09
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For #1, there's a Finnish source that lists three American volunteers serving in the FDF who were KIA in the Winter War, so it's entirely plausible. They were probably descendants of Finnish immigrants or immigrants themselves. But yeah they were not servicemen in an American service.
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Feb 5, 2015 08:45
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xthetenth posted:Autoloader or huge turret ready rack with most of the ammo, and if you're German and stupid, you've got ammo in the front next to the driver too. Putting your secondary ammo rack into a compact position behind the strongest armor facing on the entire tank and one that is entirely hidden when in a hull-down position is hardly "stupid".
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Feb 5, 2015 10:38
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Slavvy posted:This guy? drat, this reminds me that I actually really want a gritty modern war telling of the Eugenics Wars from Star Trek's canon. It would be loving amazing. Kanine fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 12:24
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Kanine posted:drat, this reminds me that I actually really want a gritty modern war telling of the Eugenics Wars from Star Trek's canon. It would be loving amazing. I doubt it. Backstory wars are generally kept in the backstory for a reason. As something undescribed they can be significant and interesting in the reader's minds. When actually talked about, the results are frequently disappointing.
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Feb 5, 2015 13:03
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Arquinsiel posted:Someone asked a while back about when the last time a head of state led his military into combat was. It's actually plausible that this never happened. The picture of him supposedly preparing to fly shows him in cotton fatigues rather than a flight suit and there's no evidence that he has any flight training at all, let alone military. He was British infantry and commander of the Jordanian Special Forces, but there's no record of him being in any air force. All of the American sources repeating this story are right-wing papers, with the story having a "That darn dirty Barrack HUSSEIN Obama is a coward who doesn't want to fight terrorism!" slant. The story itself is probably the Jordanians just hyping up propaganda to make their government and armed forces look badass. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 14:55
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Chamale posted:Yeah, my grandfather was 15 when he enlisted. He didn't get discharged when they found out his real age, but he was sent off his ship and served on a dock for the rest of the war. That kind of thing was common because birth certificates weren't mandatory, so people would have a relative vouch for their age if they didn't have or didn't want to supply documents showing their real age. Fifteen I can see if the kid is a bit of a growth spurt, but I don't know any 12 year olds that could pass for a full grown adult. Unless they pretended to be a jockey or something. Antti posted:For #1, there's a Finnish source that lists three American volunteers serving in the FDF who were KIA in the Winter War, so it's entirely plausible. They were probably descendants of Finnish immigrants or immigrants themselves. But yeah they were not servicemen in an American service. This I figured, kind of in the same way that there were "American servicemen" fighting in the Wermacht. Immigrants or sons of immigrants who went "back home for the fatherland."
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Feb 5, 2015 15:02
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A quick Google search of Calvin Graham does get a bunch of results about it, apparently even a movie was made about him. Got a Bronze Star too.
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Feb 5, 2015 15:07
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Magni posted:Putting your secondary ammo rack into a compact position behind the strongest armor facing on the entire tank and one that is entirely hidden when in a hull-down position is hardly "stupid". When the cool kids have blowout racks that are actually close to the loader and gun? It's also behind side armor, if it goes up it's in the tank, and that's in return for a really awkwardly placed rack. Fair enough with the hull down bit, I occasionally forget that NATO decided they were always going to have the pick of terrain and always be able to find hull downs.
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Feb 5, 2015 15:31
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YF19pilot posted:4. USAAF casualties were around 112,000, USMC casualties were about 87,000. So, the first part is true. As far as straight-up casualty rates, USMC was around 14% for the entire war, USAAF was around 4.5%. However, keep in mind that most of the USAAF manpower never got on an airplane: for the pilots and crew, casualties were far, far higher. It is almost impossible to determine a straight casualty rate for bomber crews across all theaters, but we have loss rates so we can make some conclusions. 8th AF loss rates early in the campaign (1943) were 3.8% and a tour at that time was 25 missions, so your odds of making it through at that rate without being on a "loss" was around 5%. Later loss rate was around 2%, but the tour length was increased to 30 (increases chances to 40%) and then 40 (back down to 20%) missions. This data is problematic though; it doesn't account for planes lost over England or the ocean where the crews could be rescued, nor does it account for the large numbers of crewmembers wounded on planes that completed missions. In any case, the loss rates for bomber crews was horrendous and it was even worse for RAF bomber command. quote:Generally speaking, there was no such thing as an average fighter pilot. This is...sort of true, for a couple of reasons. First, every country eventually went to some variant of four ship formations, with two leads and two wingmen. The lead was the more experienced pilot and generally made decisions about what to attack, then did most of the attacking. The wingman's job was almost exclusively to protect his lead. So, naturally, this resulted in a lot of dead wingmen and leads generally getting most of the kills. For the Japanese and for Luftwaffe in particular this got magnified to a ridiculous degree: their pilots stayed in front-line units until killed or captured or disabled, so their good pilots got REALLY good. However, this practice deprived them of qualified instructors (the USAAF and the RAF, for example, would move experienced pilots back to training units to teach the next cohort), which in turn led to crappier pilot training, which in turn led to crappier pilots, which in turn led to lots of them getting shot down. The "experten" were the best fighter pilots in the world by a mile, but the vast majority of the Luftwaffe's pilots were pretty useless. That all being said it is pretty tough to determine what "average" actually means so this statement isn't all that useful. quote:It was a common practice on fighter planes to load every 5th round This is all accurate. One follow up point: all sides eventually turned to "flasher" bullets that made a bright flash when they struck the target, These were either incendiary ammo or just bullets with a little visible chemical that let the pilot know the bullets were hitting the target. This wasn't an issue for HE cannon rounds of course. quote:German ME-264 bombers were capable of bombing New York City, but they This is hard to say being as it was only a prototype and no serious performance characteristics were ever recorded. There is speculation that the -264 with a light bombload and extra fuel (an internal fuel tank in addition to the wing tanks and the fuselage tank) could have made a round trip from the French coast to the northeastern US but this sort of thing was of...dubious value. It wasn't that difficult from a technical perspective, however.
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Feb 5, 2015 16:26
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xthetenth posted:When the cool kids have blowout racks that are actually close to the loader and gun? It's also behind side armor, if it goes up it's in the tank, and that's in return for a really awkwardly placed rack. Fair enough with the hull down bit, I occasionally forget that NATO decided they were always going to have the pick of terrain and always be able to find hull downs. I think the side armor issue would be addressed through defensive positioning, too. At least it would try to get addressed, that is. I honestly wonder whether anyone gave a gently caress since it seems like everything was designed to facilitate capable fire direction for tactical nukes until the strategic nukes landed.
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Feb 5, 2015 16:32
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ArchangeI posted:Maybe this discussion is better off in the Science Fiction thread down in the Book Barn: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3554972&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 Agreed. Tollymain posted:honestly i'm of the opinion that every nation head should put their rear end on the line when at war, maybe we'd have less of the buggers Agreed on this too. And Members of Parliament's and their families should also serve. No fortunate sons. Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 16:44
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YF19pilot posted:This I figured, kind of in the same way that there were "American servicemen" fighting in the Wermacht. Immigrants or sons of immigrants who went "back home for the fatherland." A pretty significant proportion of the Scandinavian immigrants returned home. Naturalization in the United States was a very different animal back then, and, if the records from my family (Sweden) are anything to go by, many people were acquiring citizenship after just five years of residence.
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Feb 5, 2015 17:07
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Hogge Wild posted:Agreed on this too. And Members of Parliament's and their families should also serve. No fortunate sons. WW1 was a bloodbath for the sons of British members of parliament and the aristocracy, so it's no guarantee. It was also a bloodbath for former privileged members of my alma mater, Cambridge - long lists of them are splashed liberally on war memorials across all of its colleges. I suppose it's a combination of youthful idealism and naive concepts of public service that did it. Asquith and Bonar Law both lost sons in the bargain. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 17:07
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Disinterested posted:WW1 was a bloodbath for the sons of British members of parliament and the aristocracy, so it's no guarantee. It was also a bloodbath for former privileged members of my alma mater, Cambridge - long lists of them are splashed liberally on war memorials across all of its colleges. I think it's because of the infamous problem of World War I being fought by classically-minded leaders without fully understanding the gigantic bloodbath that was about to be caused and especially not realizing how massively deadly modern technology had made war. Military service is a longstanding tradition for wealthy/royal/important families, so many of the officers would be from rich families or the sons of important politicians (which often went hand-in-hand with aristocracy) following in their forefathers' footsteps. Then they actually arrived in the glorious gentleman's war and found a torn-up wasteland scattered with dismembered limbs and chemical weapons and likely got themselves evaporated by an artillery strike.
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Feb 5, 2015 17:40
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Disinterested posted:WW1 was a bloodbath for the sons of British members of parliament and the aristocracy, so it's no guarantee. It was also a bloodbath for former privileged members of my alma mater, Cambridge - long lists of them are splashed liberally on war memorials across all of its colleges. Please tell me he actually made laws, and that I can go to jail for breaking the Boner Laws.
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Feb 5, 2015 17:44
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I don't know if this has ever been posted but it is circulating through the DoD right now and it is pretty funny. It is authentic as far as I know; it was released a few years ago. edit - the best stuff starts on page 28 but the whole thing is pretty interesting. "Make "speeches," Talk as frequently as possible and at great length., Illustrate your. "points by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic-comments." ...is the one we're all dying at bewbies fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 17:56
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Tias posted:Please tell me he actually made laws, and that I can go to jail for breaking the Boner Laws. The Bonar Law Law.
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Feb 5, 2015 17:57
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Addendum to tanks fording things: http://youtu.be/ICKLGYs8CE8 The SCUBA gear and '50s bikini babes are what really sell this as a marketing video. 
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Feb 5, 2015 18:24
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Hogge Wild posted:Agreed. Wasn't the a Jerry VIP PoW list full of sons of someone in high command? chitoryu12 posted:I think it's because of the infamous problem of World War I being fought by classically-minded leaders without fully understanding the gigantic bloodbath that was about to be caused and especially not realizing how massively deadly modern technology had made war. Military service is a longstanding tradition for wealthy/royal/important families, so many of the officers would be from rich families or the sons of important politicians (which often went hand-in-hand with aristocracy) following in their forefathers' footsteps. Then they actually arrived in the glorious gentleman's war and found a torn-up wasteland scattered with dismembered limbs and chemical weapons and likely got themselves evaporated by an artillery strike. But that's the thing: WWI was so bloody because they didn't know what they're doing. It would have probably been less deadly or, more important for the public opinion, less deadly in a confined area if folks understood the trench-machinegun-arty balance better.
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Feb 5, 2015 18:57
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chitoryu12 posted:I think it's because of the infamous problem of World War I being fought by classically-minded leaders without fully understanding the gigantic bloodbath that was about to be caused and especially not realizing how massively deadly modern technology had made war. Military service is a longstanding tradition for wealthy/royal/important families, so many of the officers would be from rich families or the sons of important politicians (which often went hand-in-hand with aristocracy) following in their forefathers' footsteps. Then they actually arrived in the glorious gentleman's war and found a torn-up wasteland scattered with dismembered limbs and chemical weapons and likely got themselves evaporated by an artillery strike. Exactly. It is the most often given example of a war waged by the poor on behalf of a disinterested elite, and the worst possible example to boot, particularly if you factor in the absolutely thundering working class nationalism it provoked in its build-up and early stages. Its most defining characteristic is that the whole nation really did go to war. Officers tended to die more often, leading the way. Dan Snow, BBC article posted:Although the great majority of casualties in WW1 were from the working class, the social and political elite were hit disproportionately hard by WW1. Their sons provided the junior officers whose job it was to lead the way over the top and expose themselves to the greatest danger as an example to their men. The claim that WW1 was just a rich man's war is really just an emotional coping mechanism for the conflict, IMO, just like the claims that it was worthwhile are a coping mechanism for those mournful for the empire. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 19:05
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Disinterested posted:Exactly. It is the most often given example of a war waged by the poor on behalf of a disinterested elite, and the worst possible example to boot, particularly if you factor in the absolutely thundering working class nationalism it provoked in its build-up and early stages. Its most defining characteristic is that the whole nation really did go to war. Officers tended to die more often, leading the way. Eh, a lot of the drum beating about WW1 being a rich man's war is basically leftist political rhetoric. I'm not saying that in a pejorative sense, simply as a statement of fact. People who were trying to drum up working class resentments for political reasons made a lot of hash out of how badly the war was going and the traditional class divisions between officers and foot soldiers in early 20th century militaries. It's also helps that a lot of the people pushing for a transnational working class movement were trying to raise class awareness while dampening nationalistic impulses, so emphasizing the universality of suffering etc. was a good way to do that for that generation of people. This holds broadly true for just about any European combatant, by the way. You had labor activists in England making a lot of similar claims as socialist activists in France and Germany.
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Feb 5, 2015 20:21
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JcDent posted:Wasn't the a Jerry VIP PoW list full of sons of someone in high command? World War 1 on the western front was going to be a poo poo show even if you gathered a who's who of great military commanders and put them in charge.
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Feb 5, 2015 21:13
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MrYenko posted:Addendum to tanks fording things: This is amazing
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Feb 5, 2015 21:55
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xthetenth posted:When the cool kids have blowout racks that are actually close to the loader and gun? It's also behind side armor, if it goes up it's in the tank, and that's in return for a really awkwardly placed rack. Fair enough with the hull down bit, I occasionally forget that NATO decided they were always going to have the pick of terrain and always be able to find hull downs. You mean like the one the Leo 2 has in the turret? Also, it's hardly placed awkwardly for a reserve rack that was never meant to be used during combat to begin with* (in fact, it's placed perfectly for th driver to hand shells back to the loader during a short stop and allows a considerably faster transfer of rounds from the reserve to the ready rack than for example the arrangement in the Abrams), off-center target compared to the size of the tank. Oh, and the side armor is distributed unevenly and stronger towards the front. And you'd have to be really loving stupid to not consistently be the one to pick the terrain when you're fighting the war the Leopard 2 was built to fight. Literally nobody who ever actually operated the tank has voiced any complaints or problems with the ammo storage - the only people I've ever seen try to make an issue of it are... some guys on internet forums. *If you need more shells than a full ready rack in a hurry, something has gone horribly wrong to the point where you actually being able to fire off that much ammo before getting killed would require outright divine intervention in your favour. Magni fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 22:26
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hey we found the guy that designed the placement of the Leo 2 reserve rack, sup dude
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Feb 5, 2015 23:27
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bewbies posted:USAAF casualties were around 112,000, USMC casualties were about 87,000. So, the first part is true. As far as straight-up casualty rates, USMC was around 14% for the entire war, USAAF was around 4.5%. However, keep in mind that most of the USAAF manpower never got on an airplane: for the pilots and crew, casualties were far, far higher. It is almost impossible to determine a straight casualty rate for bomber crews across all theaters, but we have loss rates so we can make some conclusions. 8th AF loss rates early in the campaign (1943) were 3.8% and a tour at that time was 25 missions, so your odds of making it through at that rate without being on a "loss" was around 5%. Uh no, the probability that you won't be on a loss after 25 missions with a 3.8% chance of being shot down is about 38%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_distribution
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Feb 6, 2015 01:56
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TheFluff posted:This is amazing that's quite a deuce.
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Feb 6, 2015 01:59
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WWI question: if attacking fortified enemy trenches is clearly an incredibly costly proposition with little to no upside, why not just stay put and only counterattack portions of your own line that have been taken (i.e. when you have a really good chance of success)? I can see how doing that for the French would be politically unacceptable and that this would draw the British in, but what about the Germans? Were they just like "gently caress it, we gotta do something before the blockade ruins us"?
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Feb 6, 2015 03:16
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Mortabis posted:Uh no, the probability that you won't be on a loss after 25 missions with a 3.8% chance of being shot down is about 38%. For those of you who may not be mathematically inclined, in order to not be a loss 25 missions, you need to succeed 25 times in a row with a 100-3.8 = 96.2% chance of success. So you just multiply that chance by itself 25 times and get: (1-0.038)^25 = 0.379
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Feb 6, 2015 03:21
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stranger danger posted:WWI question: if attacking fortified enemy trenches is clearly an incredibly costly proposition with little to no upside, why not just stay put and only counterattack portions of your own line that have been taken (i.e. when you have a really good chance of success)? I can see how doing that for the French would be politically unacceptable and that this would draw the British in, but what about the Germans? Were they just like "gently caress it, we gotta do something before the blockade ruins us"? Just one more attack is all we need to break their spirit! (Also holding more territory gives you an advantage at the negotiating table)
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Feb 6, 2015 03:32
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Legendary Ptarmigan posted:For those of you who may not be mathematically inclined, in order to not be a loss 25 missions, you need to succeed 25 times in a row with a 100-3.8 = 96.2% chance of success. So you just multiply that chance by itself 25 times and get: (1-0.038)^25 = 0.379 There's another snag here, which is that those 25 missions are not even remotely independent trials. If you survive 10 missions, your per mission survival rate is going to be higher than 96.2%. So really 38% is a probably a rather low figure.
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Feb 6, 2015 03:54
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I'm curious about something. Why is the Korean War represented in media so much less then Vietnam? Granted, I'm not that into war movies, so I might be underestimating, but it seems like Vietnam is burned into pop culture and the public consciousness way more then the similar war that came before it.
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Feb 6, 2015 04:12
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WickedHate posted:I'm curious about something. Why is the Korean War represented in media so much less then Vietnam? Granted, I'm not that into war movies, so I might be underestimating, but it seems like Vietnam is burned into pop culture and the public consciousness way more then the similar war that came before it. Television. Vietnam was in everyone's living room every night, so it was far more prominent in the public consciousness. Korea didn't get the publicity and thus didn't generate anywhere near the emotions that Vietnam did as a result. Korea also set the stage for people questioning the point of the war in Vietnam. It was close enough after WWII that there was still a lot of rah-rah patriotism over it, but it generated a lot of unspoken puzzlement as to just what we were doing there. There was no existential threat involved, no easily caricatured bad guys. Fortunately, it ended before a lot of those doubts metastasized into open protest. Korea was then forgotten about because it had all those uncomfortable feelings associated with it that no one wanted to dredge up. Ike got elected in '52 by promising to end the war, which he did - and then got us committed to the defense of South Vietnam shortly thereafter. As Vietnam ramped up, all the mixed feelings everyone had had about Korea came back, and Vietnam then stood in for both.
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Feb 6, 2015 04:24
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I'm guessing Bewbies came up with his number by doing 100% - (3.8*25). Which is awesome, because it means that if they do 2 more flights--27 instead of 25--the chance of survival plunges to an astounding negative 2.6%. 
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Feb 6, 2015 04:30
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WickedHate posted:I'm curious about something. Why is the Korean War represented in media so much less then Vietnam? Granted, I'm not that into war movies, so I might be underestimating, but it seems like Vietnam is burned into pop culture and the public consciousness way more then the similar war that came before it. It was short, it was a genuinely multinational effort (which helps deflect criticism), and ultimately neither side really won, so nobody can get overly pumped up about it. e: Or TV. TV is probably a better answer.
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Feb 6, 2015 04:33
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.