|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:They were trying to do that. Thing is, the Italo-Austrian border looks like this. Churchill wanted a massive D-Day type invasion of Europe through the Northern Adriatic in WW2, and was reportedly quite pissed nobody listened to him. I mean, just look at how short of a route to Berlin that is!* *(only look at a political map, not a topographic one, please.)
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 03:53
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 07:57 |
|
|
Kanine posted:so im reading about the munster rebellion shenanigans with jan matthys and his whole sect. So when people get their non-identifiable dangly bits or organs nailed to doors and such as a warning, do they put a little Post-It note underneath identifying the owner? Or do they make a big to-do about it and make it a local event where everyone gathers together to watch someone take a spleen and nail it to the town gate? Because I can otherwise see a lot of people who don't know the story walking past this rotting bait and tackle and wondering just why the hell someone would do something so disgusting.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 03:58
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:So when people get their non-identifiable dangly bits or organs nailed to doors and such as a warning, do they put a little Post-It note underneath identifying the owner? Or do they make a big to-do about it and make it a local event where everyone gathers together to watch someone take a spleen and nail it to the town gate?
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 04:01
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:These are massive spectacles. And nobody would wonder why someone did it, it signifies the ignominy attached to treason. Even if you didn't know who it was, a member of that culture would be able to tell that someone had hosed up severely. The main message is "Don't piss me off or yours will be up here next."
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 04:15
|
|
|
Slaan posted:We are supposed to be getting reinforcements soonish, once the maneuvers settle down. Then you will be able to take part in the trenches. Thanks for the intelligence, mein Herr! 
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 04:24
|
|
|
Not actually intelligence! Just assumptions from the first post by Grey saying that we will move onto the trenches once things settle down. Which presumably means Korps get switched out for fresh units on both sides.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 04:30
|
|
|
Slaan posted:Not actually intelligence! Just assumptions from the first post by Grey saying that we will move onto the trenches once things settle down. Which presumably means Korps get switched out for fresh units on both sides.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 04:32
|
|
|
You presume things will settle down and not that the war will be over by Christmas, 1914! I'm telling you, this war will be won in a dashing cavalry charge, just you wait.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 04:33
|
|
|
Generation Internet posted:You presume things will settle down and not that the war will be over by Christmas, 1914! I'm telling you, this war will be won in a dashing cavalry charge, just you wait. If it fails it just wasn't dashing enough and will have to be repeated.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 05:14
|
|
|
Taerkar posted:Do you mean the YB-35? The -49 was mostly post-war. Literally actually, to the point where they were trimming topweight wherever possible for more guns and were still eating up a worrying amount of the margin of stability. Apparently a few damaged ships that came close to sinking wouldn't have been close with that amount of flooding with early war loads. Of course they'd have been more likely to get hit in the first place.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 05:30
|
|
|
I love this thread. I loving soak this poo poo up. Eastern Front chat. I'm sure I read somewhere that the Very First thing any Soviet soldiers would do when advancing on Ze Germans would be to strip the bodies of the sweet, sweet pharmacutical speed that the oh-so-neutral Swiss provided to Reich #3. Apparently the bogus Russian crank was surprisingly teeth-grindingly awful, leading to a loving huge bump in performance when the boys got a taste of the good stuff. Did I just make that up?
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 05:38
|
|
|
xthetenth posted:Literally actually, to the point where they were trimming topweight wherever possible for more guns and were still eating up a worrying amount of the margin of stability. Apparently a few damaged ships that came close to sinking wouldn't have been close with that amount of flooding with early war loads. Of course they'd have been more likely to get hit in the first place. I'm kind of curious why. From reading Shattered Sword a month back, it sounds like the IJN just never seriously thought they would encounter enemy air power in a lot of cases, along with a doctrine that threw everything into the offensive.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 06:01
|
|
|
The Allies totally made ridiculous superweapons that now we don't even think of as superweapons the same way we think of early jet fighters and preposterous tanks. Setting aside the obvious example of the atomic bomb, which is almost certainly the craziest superweapon ever used, think about stuff like how they used radar. Radar fire controlled guns, ground-detecting radar fuses in artillery shells and so many other examples are all ridiculous superweapons by the standards of the day - the Allies just had the right ideas to make them work and the industrial capacity to back them up. The B-29 would be considered a superweapon as preposterous as the Maus if you described it to a 1943 German engineer, but the Allies still used them to destroy Japan.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 06:21
|
|
|
Ok, super-weapons aside: why did so much of the axis' basic fundamental equipment suck donkey balls and they never made any effort to fix them? I know the allies had some real humdingers but they tended to fix them after a short while when everyone realised that [gun] is more likely to kill you than the enemy. Stuff like the laughable german winter uniforms, every japanese small arm ever etc. Just basic poo poo that Did Not Work and seemingly never got fixed. I'm having a hard time remembering details but I'm talking specifically about not-super weapons. Just normal weapons. You can argue about industrial capacity and scientific innovation et al, but if you're talking about basic equipment being issued to troops which simply doesn't work properly it seems like even a monstrously dysfunctional regime would catch on and fix the problem eventually.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 06:38
|
|
|
Hey, I finally found the mass grave photo I've been looking for! This is from Luetzen: Dunno why the top two were positioned like that, but it's pretty striking.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 06:39
|
|
|
Slavvy posted:Ok, super-weapons aside: why did so much of the axis' basic fundamental equipment suck donkey balls and they never made any effort to fix them? I know the allies had some real humdingers but they tended to fix them after a short while when everyone realised that [gun] is more likely to kill you than the enemy. It costs a lot more to fix these things. First you have to get people to fix the problem and that takes longer the less familiar they are with the thing, though the flipside is they may close in on the problem if they have fresh eyes. Supposing this fix doesn't create any more problems requiring their own fixes, you have to modify production to manufacture things fixed or manufacture the fix to apply to the gun or whatever. poo poo needs to get shipped to where they go and in the event you're making whole new guns and replacing existing ones, you're left with a whole ton of guns you don't want to just leave there unless you want to accidentally arm the guerrillas. Japan, at least, was in love with its own myth of the indomitable spirit of Japan that would enable them to overcome material disadvantages and poor equipment. It didn't help that the IJA considered China and the USSR to be their primary foes (Which was in direct opposition with the IJN< which saw America as Japan's ultimate foe). Against China, their equipment was often better but there's no way to make up for the numbers. Against the Russians, they were hosed. The USSR would certainly have more men and better equipment.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 07:05
|
|
|
Slavvy posted:Ok, super-weapons aside: why did so much of the axis' basic fundamental equipment suck donkey balls and they never made any effort to fix them? I know the allies had some real humdingers but they tended to fix them after a short while when everyone realised that [gun] is more likely to kill you than the enemy. I can't really think of really terrible fundamental equipment for the Germans. I don't think their winter uniforms themselves were the problem, they just didn't bring any with them. Maybe how they didn't use pre-packaged rations, but relied on field kitchens for everything? As for the Japanese, their bread and butter were bolt-action rifles, grenades, and light mortars. They worked well in jungles, and they definitely worked fine against the Chinese. The light machine guns were hosed up, and probably a tremendous pain to deal with, but the Japanese military wasn't really big on treating their own soldiers like human beings, so it wouldn't have been the biggest problem. Japanese artillery though, was always completely outdated, which bit them in the rear end both times when they fought the Soviets. But in China and the Pacific, they worked fine.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 07:07
|
|
|
Still, this all started as a dicussion over Breda and a squad Machinegun isn't a superweapon. Hell, Breda is barely a weapon  Slavvy posted:Ok, super-weapons aside: why did so much of the axis' basic fundamental equipment suck donkey balls and they never made any effort to fix them? I know the allies had some real humdingers but they tended to fix them after a short while when everyone realised that [gun] is more likely to kill you than the enemy. Well, the British understood their cruise tanks were crap and their tactics were poo poo (tanks say TTYL and run away from infantry), and had the industrial capacity to bounce back. Maybe it's pride and unwillingness to take the costs of retooling stuff. I mean, sure, everyone could run around with Kar98k and it would probably not take long for Nazis to prove that MG42 is the superior MG, It's just that their allies wouldn't take it, I guess. The German winter uniforms is all Hitler, I guess (Russia will fall before winter because they're slavish untermench), and an unexpectedly cold winter. For other things... I don't know, Maybe there wouldn't be enough times and resources to, say, retool Italian industry for Panzer IIIs. Maybe they had really retarded industrialists who didn't like assembly lines because reasons.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 07:08
|
|
|
Why would we need to clog up the supply lines with winter uniforms, when we will defeat the Judeo-Bolshevists in not more than 6 weeks? We just need to kick in the door and the whole rotten building will come down!
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 07:24
|
|
|
Am I imagining reading something about someone telling Hitler the best plan was to simply copy the T-34 instead of drafting new designs?
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 07:40
|
|
|
I think there is an over-emphasis on stuff like small arms because we were all brought up on video games where the protagonist wins the war with his rifle, and modern day wars seem to generate a lot of imagery of soldiers with fancy rifless being in the center of action. In many countries private individuals can also own these implements which might make some people overly sentimental towards them. It's not as if the modern British army has lost any crucial battles because their rifles were unreliable, for example. At the end of the day rifles and machine guns just aren't that important in the big scheme of things, compared to say, artillery, or how quickly you can dig a hole and jump in to have a small chance of surviving artillery. There was a video floating around recently of some young Ukrainian soldiers well supplied with all manner of rifles and anti-tack weapons being fairly cozy before a couple of thermobaric Grad rockets wiped them out. Really hits home. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 07:55
|
|
|
Slavvy posted:Am I imagining reading something about someone telling Hitler the best plan was to simply copy the T-34 instead of drafting new designs? That is actually a question I had. Why not just copy T-34, but with... whatever Germans had better than Soviets (radios? MGs? Turret Traverse mechanisms? Germans?). I understand it's not easy (germans don't seem to be all that amped about cast turrets, AFAIK), but it's probably somewhat better than just making a new tank from scratch, no? And the "untermensch design" point wouldn't hold up considering how eager the Germans were to use captured enemy stuff.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 07:55
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:I can't really think of really terrible fundamental equipment for the Germans. I don't think their winter uniforms themselves were the problem, they just didn't bring any with them. Maybe how they didn't use pre-packaged rations, but relied on field kitchens for everything? Also, only the Type 11 was really weird and problematic among LMGs. The Type 92 HMG was a bit off an odd duck because it used feed strips, but it's weird more from being a World War I design holdover than anything else. The Type 96 and Type 99 LMGs were basically equivalent to the vz. 26 or Bren. The tanks.....we don't talk about Japanese tanks.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 08:22
|
|
|
Nucken Futz posted:I love this thread. I loving soak this poo poo up. This is certainly plausible because Axis soldiers (at least Germans and Finns) were regularly rationed honest-to-God German-made meth to keep going. I read a Finnish news story just yesterday about people finding packs of Pervitin in the back of granddad's or grandma's cupboard and wondering what to do with it. Likewise drug addiction was a huge but unspoken problem among Finnish vets.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 08:30
|
|
|
As far as Eastern Front amphetamines, there is a story from Dimitry Loza's book about being issued chocolate bars that secretly contained a stimulant before a big early morning attack...and finding out about the stimulant once the attack was delayed and nobody could get any loving sleep. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 09:28
|
|
|
sullat posted:Not disastrous in the vein of Gallipoli or some of the more unsuccessful Western Front battles, but the allies ended up with 1.5 million men sitting in Salonika using up all those supplies doing nothing. They were bottled up by the Austrians with the army they were already using to crush the Serbs, so it didn't even really divert troops from other fronts. Granted, for the troops it is better to hang out oj the Aegean coast than be thrown into another meat grinder in Flanders, but from an overall perspective it was a huge waste of manpower that could have been better used soaking up bullets in France. I would say at least in Gallipoli, the Allies withdrew, whereas Salonika bore no fruit until the war was already over. Most of the troops watching the perimeter were Bulgarians, who couldn't really be used elsewhere, anyway, so it didn't even draw off Central Powers strength. That all being said, the idea behind Salonika is reasonable- more troops in the Western Front probably won't make a difference, but opening up the Balkans and saving Serbia might. Turns out they failed, but it wasn't a bad thought. The geography of the Balkans worked against them, though.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 10:45
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:I can't really think of really terrible fundamental equipment for the Germans. I don't think their winter uniforms themselves were the problem, they just didn't bring any with them. According to a re-enactor on another board, the German winter jacket was lined with fur. Which is great... when it's dry. Completely useless when wet and filthy. The material used to make the outer shell of the jacket was not waterproof. You see the problem.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 11:04
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:The Type 92 HMG was a bit off an odd duck because it used feed strips, but it's weird more from being a World War I design holdover than anything else. The type 92 is the best first world war machine gun design. You could fire it 24 hours a day with no need to even add watet to the barrel sleve.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 11:14
|
|
|
Rabhadh posted:The type 92 is the best first world war machine gun design. You could fire it 24 hours a day with no need to even add watet to the barrel sleve. Thanks for this Neal Stephenson quote.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 11:58
|
|
|
ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Thanks for this Neal Stephenson quote. For real is it a quote?
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 12:22
|
|
|
Rabhadh posted:For real is it a quote? No it just sounds like the kind of weeaboo crap he'd write.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 12:23
|
|
|
Machine gun water jackets don't work by evaporation, it's a closed system isn't it? Seems kind of unrelated.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 12:26
|
|
|
ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:No it just sounds like the kind of weeaboo crap he'd write. What makes you think it isn't a good gun for what it was used for?
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 12:31
|
|
|
It's easy to fire the T92 without changing water, because it's air cooled. T92 was mostly a competent design, but the loading mechanism was a bad mistake. In the original T3 MG, loading was allowed from small strips - it used the same ammo as the Japanese Arisaka rifle, so the reason behind the decision was that a team could carry mutually interchangeable ammo for their weapons in small packages. The T92 changed the calibre of the round to 7.7 mm, but the loading mechanism was unchanged, so it now lost its (controversial) utility, and became a liability that caught dirt and accumulated gritted up lubricants.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 12:46
|
|
|
Regarding the ability to sustain fire, the T92 wasn't known for anything of the sort. It was a weapon best suited for sporadic fire. The need for a heavier weapon capable of long bursts of fire over long periods of time led to development of new weapons that would supplement the T92 - for instance by repurposing the Vickers aircraft MG serving in Japan under the designation Type 89.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 12:53
|
|
|
Rabhadh posted:What makes you think it isn't a good gun for what it was used for? I question claims that any machine gun could fire for 24 hours straight.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 13:01
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:It's easy to fire the T92 without changing water, because it's air cooled. Yeah but the 6.5mm, while a good round in general, was a bit anemic for a heavy machine gun, and it was probably easier to upscale the same design than make something entirely new. Edit: Also, I have my questions on just how much the feed system affected reliability. I don't recall seeing any reliable sources that expanded on that, and the rounds wouldn't be oiled until they were well inside the gun, and only fairly lightly, to aid extraction. If anyone has anything solid on the reliability I'd like to see it. By the way, Forgotten Weapons has a very timely video related to this conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgfYvC7LuBY LimburgLimbo fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Mar 10, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 13:50
|
|
|
JcDent posted:That is actually a question I had. Why not just copy T-34, but with... whatever Germans had better than Soviets (radios? MGs? Turret Traverse mechanisms? Germans?). I understand it's not easy (germans don't seem to be all that amped about cast turrets, AFAIK), but it's probably somewhat better than just making a new tank from scratch, no? And the "untermensch design" point wouldn't hold up considering how eager the Germans were to use captured enemy stuff. They did. Daimler-Benz submitted what was basically a T-34 clone for the Panther project. MAN said "gently caress that", built their entry, and started a smear campaign against DB claiming that their design wasn't German looking enough. Guderian also writes in his memoirs that they'd love to copy the T-34, but Germany couldn't mass produce aluminum engines and hardened steel like the Soviets could.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 13:52
|
|
|
ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:I question claims that any machine gun could fire for 24 hours straight. The MG42 lasts a whole 7.5 seconds before you're supposed to change the barrel. (Although of course you'd never fire one continuous burst for that long)
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 14:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 07:57 |
|
|
Argas posted:I'm kind of curious why. From reading Shattered Sword a month back, it sounds like the IJN just never seriously thought they would encounter enemy air power in a lot of cases, along with a doctrine that threw everything into the offensive. That's the Americans in the mid and late war. The Japanese were pretty much stuck with a god awful 25mm mount that in addition to the standard intermediate caliber problems of being a complex mount with a heavy director but not actually gaining much range over much lighter guns, was slow to traverse, fired from a 15 round magazine rather than one that could be continually topped off, giving it a lower total rate of fire less than the 40mm bofors, had a director that handled speeds above 600kph by etched circles in the glass for estimating, and was only really decent in that it was reliable (unlike the US 1.1", which was a neat mount but way overcomplicated. Unlike the US, who went from .50 and 28mm to 20mm and 40mm, the Japanese didn't have the capacity to rearm. A lot of it is that heavy AA batteries like the US used were very heavy, so neither side started the war with them, and the US was the only one that could pull off a program to upgrade like that. xthetenth fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Mar 10, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2015 14:20
|
|