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I'm going to dispute everything you just said woodrow
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Feb 28, 2015 20:27
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| # ? May 27, 2024 17:18 |
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Rabhadh posted:I'm going to dispute everything you just said woodrow [insert argument here]
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Feb 28, 2015 21:15
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SLA Marshall in 3...2...1... 
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Feb 28, 2015 21:26
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SlothfulCobra posted:Before the advent of firearms, was there a melee equivalent of soldiers not wanting to kill and just repeatedly reloading without firing or shooting over their enemey's head? Maybe as much because they don't want to get hurt as much as they don't want to kill (a pretty important part of this, a face to face melee is going to make the whole 'kill or be killed' equation a lot simpler than seemingly random gunfire) but a lot of Greek battles end with pretty low casualties. Unless you had real meatgrinder with neither side giving way or a huge rout you might see like 17 deaths a side in a battle involving thousands.
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Feb 28, 2015 22:43
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Rabhadh posted:I'm going to dispute everything you just said woodrow Ok cool.
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Feb 28, 2015 23:30
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the JJ posted:Maybe as much because they don't want to get hurt as much as they don't want to kill (a pretty important part of this, a face to face melee is going to make the whole 'kill or be killed' equation a lot simpler than seemingly random gunfire) but a lot of Greek battles end with pretty low casualties. Unless you had real meatgrinder with neither side giving way or a huge rout you might see like 17 deaths a side in a battle involving thousands. Exactly how does this work? Does one guy get stabbed and the entire army goes "woah Ok we're done gently caress this"?
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Mar 1, 2015 02:00
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Slaan posted:Boy do I have a military animal story for you. You see, there once was a bear in Eastern Europe... Yogi Bear fought in the Eastern Front?
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Mar 1, 2015 02:16
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Splode posted:Exactly how does this work? Does one guy get stabbed and the entire army goes "woah Ok we're done gently caress this"? I mean, we know that it happened because we have a fair number of reliable sources going ''and then blah met blah outside of blah and after the clash the blah withdrew, leaving 24 dead on the field while blah buried 17 of their own." The thing is between having really reliable sources and the Greek death customs (in which recovering your dead was suuuuuuper important and a big part of the post-battle dick waving was letting the other guys come over and get their dead) we know that this is pretty accurate. We can speculate about why this happens but the funny thing about a lot of historical sources is they rarely feel the need to elaborate on what they consider common knowledge and, well, normalcy. We know more about what they'd consider exceptional than what they'd consider normal, which is kinda funny. Anyway, we have sources like Xenophon talking about the importance of having cavalry on the field to either harass routers or cover your own retreats. Even much later most mass casualties in battle are going to come from the rout. Presumably these low casualty battle happen when two sides get together and one side goes 'well gently caress this noise'* but holds it together enough to back off without completely breaking ranks, or at least one portion of the army hangs tough enough to keep the victors in 'sheilds up' mode so the rest can back off. *which could happen a lot, at the end of the day only one city-state is fielding anything approaching a professional army. the JJ fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 02:28
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Wojtek the Soldier Bear wasn't from Eastern Europe 
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Mar 1, 2015 02:34
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the JJ posted:I mean, we know that it happened because we have a fair number of reliable sources going ''and then blah met blah outside of blah and after the clash the blah withdrew, leaving 24 dead on the field while blah buried 17 of their own." Didn't greek battles turn out this way because they were mostly a phalanx shoving match and armour out-performed weaponry substantially at that point?
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Mar 1, 2015 04:17
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Slavvy posted:Didn't greek battles turn out this way because they were mostly a phalanx shoving match and armour out-performed weaponry substantially at that point? Did they draw some lines on the sand and if you got pushed back past your line you had to surrender? But seriously, where are you shoving them too? How does it end?
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Mar 1, 2015 05:23
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I was under the impression one side would eventually get exhausted? I mean, there wouldn't have been much ancient greece if every battle ended with a rout + slaughter.
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Mar 1, 2015 05:27
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Slavvy posted:I was under the impression one side would eventually get exhausted? I mean, there wouldn't have been much ancient greece if every battle ended with a rout + slaughter. That makes sense, thanks!
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Mar 1, 2015 05:28
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Slavvy posted:Didn't greek battles turn out this way because they were mostly a phalanx shoving match and armour out-performed weaponry substantially at that point? I've never bought into the idea that it would become a huge shoving match. First of all, the spear has to be useful for something, else why would they carry it? It's not like they didn't have swords. Secondly, if every fight became a huge shoving match, with the backlines of each army buttressing their own front lines, then every battle would have seen loads of casualties just from the inevitable crowd crush as one side gave way, which isn't borne out in the low causality figures we tend to see. It seems to me that the low casualty counts derive from both sides being very manpower constrained, and having cultural rules derived therefrom.
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Mar 1, 2015 06:15
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Spear jousting at speartip range in formation, first one to break cohesion loses?
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Mar 1, 2015 06:16
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PittTheElder posted:I've never bought into the idea that it would become a huge shoving match. First of all, the spear has to be useful for something, else why would they carry it? It's not like they didn't have swords. Secondly, if every fight became a huge shoving match, with the backlines of each army buttressing their own front lines, then every battle would have seen loads of casualties just from the inevitable crowd crush as one side gave way, which isn't borne out in the low causality figures we tend to see. Surely somebody would have recorded the RULES OF BATTLE if they were that artificial.
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Mar 1, 2015 06:25
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Splode posted:Surely somebody would have recorded the RULES OF BATTLE if they were that artificial. Not necessarily. Practices can be accepted and culturally ingrained at a level where a contemporary person who think it stupid even take note of the custom, particularly in a context where few people are literate. Part of studying history before the modern period (when print became super-cheap and people got obsessed with recording everything) is figuring out things that people didn't write down because they took it for granted.
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Mar 1, 2015 06:51
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Splode posted:Surely somebody would have recorded the RULES OF BATTLE if they were that artificial. Indeed, it's a common problem where people don't bother to write down or preserve the things everyone knows, because everyone knows it anyway. And this was an era where all the citizens of the town would have known the rules, because their fathers and friends would have told them how to behave before they marched off to war.
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Mar 1, 2015 07:41
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ugh ancient history. Wayyy too hard.
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Mar 1, 2015 09:08
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100 Years Ago A look at the Italian Army on the eve of war. (Although nobody in the Army actually knows it's the eve of war.) Herbert Sulzbach's morale is starting to suffer, forcing the Dardanelles has suddenly got rather difficult, and most of the men in Glasgow are still out on strike. Splode posted:Exactly how does this work? Does one guy get stabbed and the entire army goes "woah Ok we're done gently caress this"? I've mentioned this before in here, but there's a really interesting book called Among the Thugs that you might want to check out. It was written by a slightly loony American journalist in England in the mid-80s who becomes fascinated with football hooligans, to the point where he sticks around and joins in when they go fighting other hooligans. What you're left with are several entirely fascinating analytical accounts of what it's like to be a volunteer in hand-to-hand mob violence. And I think the author would somewhat agree with you. These people have leaders who they look up to and who they follow and who make rudimentary tactical arrangements; but a lot of the major decisions (particularly the ones about whether to fight or run or both) seem to him to have been made by the crowd as a whole at once, and a major part of being a leader is how to lead subtly, while letting the crowd think it's deciding things for itself. Fundamentally, the crowd as a whole decides subconsciously when it's time to fight and when it's time to run. The book's full of these kind of insights, it's well worth reading. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 09:48
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It's not just an ancient history thing. One major theory about why Venice avoided civil strife in medieval Italy of the kind that tore places like Florence apart is that there was a common cultural understanding that any sort of heavy infighting could easily lead to a famine because of how precariously Venice was supplied with food (it also, of course, had a much more inclusive system of government). But it's not like that's exactly written down...
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Mar 1, 2015 11:28
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PittTheElder posted:It seems to me that the low casualty counts derive from both sides being very manpower constrained, and having cultural rules derived therefrom. This I don't buy at all. They were happy to slaughter each other given a chance. You have Xenophon noting: you keep your cavalry on hand to prevent a slaughter and rout. You have the phrase "come back with your shield, or on it," which is entirely unnecessary unless you're expecting people to book it after a fight, you've got all sorts of writers writing about absolute massacres (the Sicilians come to mind, but hell you even get the Athenians cornering a few hundred Spartans plus allies in a cow field and pelting them to death with javelins) and no one there is writing about the perfidy of group X or Y breaking the rules. We do know what their death customs were and we know that those rules only applied after the battle was done. Now why one side might want to call time out after a relatively brief contact, but they need breathing space to do that, and the other side needs to hold the field, and be standing over dead bodies in order to grant that the could be taken. Low casualty battles happen, but that's not to say that they're normal, or expected. We have a few apocryphal accounts of battles by champion, a la the Illiad but even the infamous Battle of Champions between Argos and Sparta, if it really did happen, ended with the two disputing the results and having an actual throw down to settle it for realzies. Both sides even supposedly marched home so that they couldn't interfere with the 300 v. 300 and then marched right out again after the fact. I definately don't think and hypothetical pushing matches would lead to less casualties. That's what HEYGAL's era likes to call "Bad War" and it's really not pretty, and it'd be even more in your face and less pretty with 8 ft. long spears in your face. Xenophon discusses the simple problem though, if one side wants to pursue the other it needs to break formation. That's fine if the enemy army is in a complete rout, but if they've got an active rear guard or a cavalry wing in reserve, the winner needs to stay shields up and somewhat cohesive, which is just way too unwieldy to go and hunt people down.
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Mar 1, 2015 15:35
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I acquired a technical manual on German bombs, rockets, grenades, etc of World War 2. Wikipedia also has a laughably small amount of info on the different bombs used, in fact I don't think it even has a page on common bombs. With that in mind, and a lot of spare time, I figured it might be interesting to some people. Coming from a TM, the info is very dry, with little background information, and loaded with numbers and properties. If you know anything about German bombs used during that time you know that they come with an abbreviation that denotes its construction or purpose. These are: pre:Designations German English SC Sprengcylindrische H.E. Cylindrical general purpose SB Sprengbombe High capacity bomb SA High capacity bomb SD Spreng Dickenwand H.E. thick walled, semi-armor piercing, fragmentation SD(small) Anti-personnel SBe Splitter Beton Concrete fragmentation bomb PC Panzerdurschlag cylindrische Cylindrical armor-piercing bomb PD Panzer Dickenwand Armor-piercing BT Bomben Torpedo Torpedo bomb SP Splitter Fragmentation (anti-personnel) ZC Zementcylindrische Cement cylindrical bomb BLC Blitzlichtcylindrische Photoflash bomb KC Kampfstoffcylindrische Chemical cylindrical bomb NC Nebelcylindrische Smoke cylindrical bomb SB bombs are designed to produce the maximum blast effect. Built with thin walls, they have as much as 80 percent loading. Instantaneous fuzing is used. SD types are used against targets which are vulnerable to fragmentation damage. Usually, they are fuzed for immediate detonation and may have extension rods in order to explode above ground. The walls of bombs in this category are thick and uniform between variants, with a slightly heavier nose. Loading factors are around 35 percent. They are distinguished from other bombs by the red paint on their tail cone. (Small) SD bombs are a seperate group as they are entirely different bombs, rather than smaller versions. These have thick walls and a low loading factor. In most of small SD bombs, mechanical fuzes are used instead of electrical, and usually kept in containers. SBe, or concrete bombs, are used in the same way as SD's. They have thick concrete walls reinforced with steel. Low power explosives, along with a 20 percent loading factor, are normally used. The PC armor-piercing bombs are most often used against ships and fortifications. They often have short delay fuzes to allow for penetration. PC bombs are slightly streamlined and have heavy noses and thick walls. Construction is made with cast steel, with the nose specially hardened. Their loading factor is 20 percent and filled with a TNT wax mixture. Dark blue paint on the tail cone identifies them. In the event that PC bombs are used as fragmentation, and thus fuzed instantly, the dark blue may be overpainted with red. PD bombs are even more exclusively armor-piercing. They are longer, thinner, have thicker casing and a lower loading factor. The bomben torpedo (BT) was never used operationally but was put into production within the last 2 months of the war. Coloring Bombs that are carried internally are usually colored dark green, and externally carried bombs are painted More next time...
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Mar 1, 2015 17:19
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Please elaborate further on the Sprend Dickenwad and other funny german words. Actually that was all interesting. Please continue!
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Mar 1, 2015 18:33
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You mean Spreng Dickwand.
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Mar 1, 2015 18:47
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JaucheCharly posted:You mean Spreng Dickwand. That's not one bit less ridiculous than the other.
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Mar 1, 2015 19:00
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I have one of those books for shells up to 5 cm on aircraft and towed mounts. It's called Handbuch der Flugzeug Bordwaffenmunition 1936-1945 for anyone that likes silly long German words. Also a Soviet compilation on intelligence on German artillery shells of all calibers, but sadly there are no silly German words, just their short forms.
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Mar 1, 2015 20:15
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tfw you think that is a long German word.
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Mar 1, 2015 20:19
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JaucheCharly posted:tfw you think that is a long German word. Oh no, that's downright tame, I'm saying the silly long words are in it.
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Mar 1, 2015 20:22
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I could say something like Bordwaffenwartungsspezialistenausbildungskurs and it would make perfect sense.
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Mar 1, 2015 20:29
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JaucheCharly posted:I could say something like Bordwaffenwartungsspezialistenausbildungskurs and it would make perfect sense. You're Austrian aren't you?
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Mar 1, 2015 20:33
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Whyyyyy?
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Mar 1, 2015 20:35
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Rabhadh posted:I'm going to dispute everything you just said woodrow WoodrowSkillson posted:Ok cool. Hah sorry about this, posted when I was drunk then fell asleep
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Mar 1, 2015 20:51
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JaucheCharly posted:Whyyyyy? Because Austrian German is a fantastic source of long words above and beyond regular German?
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Mar 1, 2015 21:19
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Oh, yes yes. I'd like to think that comes from the monarchy crumbling and leaving 6.4mio people with a bureaucratic apparatus for 50mio.
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Mar 1, 2015 22:03
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Notes from research: Why the gently caress do you spell "Gallop" "Calob"? That's all
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Mar 2, 2015 01:03
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Well, why?
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Mar 2, 2015 02:19
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FAUXTON posted:Well, why?
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Mar 2, 2015 02:21
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Lots of languages lack a voicing alternation, so I'm not shocked. Especially if the writer were German.
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Mar 2, 2015 02:22
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years AgoA look at the Italian Army on the eve of war. (Although nobody in the Army actually knows it's the eve of war.) Dramatic irony is such a common thing when reading about history.
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Mar 2, 2015 02:24
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