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SeanBeansShako posted:The only thing missing with the excellent musket chat we had a page back was Hegel explaining how musket balls were cast and the amazing arrival of the humble paper cartridge. Can't have cocks and nipples without balls.
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Jun 26, 2015 17:19
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Delivery McGee posted:In other news, I recently saw on Tumblr a post about how the A-bomb was used on Japan rather than Germany because racism. I mean, racism was definitely a part of justifying doing such a terrible thing to the Japanese, but the main reason it wasn't used against the Nazis was less "fellow white people" and more that the war in Europe had been over for about four months before the Bomb was ready, no? Dresden pretty much disproves the "going easy on Germany because white people" theory. Unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific starting on day 1 of the war was definitely because of racism.
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Jun 26, 2015 17:26
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OF course the japanese weren't racist at all. such a shame such good calm people who wouldn't hurt a fry had to get attacked out of the blue by the USA.
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Jun 26, 2015 17:31
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I think it is fair to say that there was a strain of racism in America directed towards the Japanese that wasn't really directed at Germany but those bombs were getting dropped as soon as they were ready on whoever was still resisting regardless of their continent of origin.
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Jun 26, 2015 17:35
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cheerfullydrab posted:I still say that it is possible to discuss the motivations of the people who fought for secession without endlessly fighting over whether the idea of secession had merit or not, but this page seems to prove me wrong. Welcome to the lament of the historian confronted with a public that can't differentiate between approving of something and understanding it. I teach a class on the Holocaust. Beating that horse to death is pretty much lecture #1.
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Jun 26, 2015 17:36
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xthetenth posted:Can't have cocks and nipples without balls.  Cyrano4747 posted:Welcome to the lament of the historian confronted with a public that can't differentiate between approving of something and understanding it. How often do you repeat the phrase "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" on average?
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Jun 26, 2015 17:48
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Delivery McGee posted:
T___A fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Jun 26, 2015 17:59
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SeanBeansShako posted:The only thing missing with the excellent musket chat we had a page back was Hegel explaining how musket balls were cast and the amazing arrival of the humble paper cartridge. Well hell, I'll ask the question. Did soldiers ever commonly make their own balls with molds and lead, or were they just issued balls? Did they handle the balls roughly or gently? Before paper cartridges, what did people do for wadding? Did they just have a little sack full of balls hanging off their belt? Seems a little inconvenient from a drill perspective.
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Jun 26, 2015 17:59
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Delivery McGee posted:In other news, I recently saw on Tumblr a post about how the A-bomb was used on Japan rather than Germany because racism. I mean, racism was definitely a part of justifying doing such a terrible thing to the Japanese, but the main reason it wasn't used against the Nazis was less "fellow white people" and more that the war in Europe had been over for about four months before the Bomb was ready, no? Dresden pretty much disproves the "going easy on Germany because white people" theory. Nuclear Secrecy had a post about that. If the atomic bombs were ready in time the only real question would be "could we use a British plane for it" because the B-17 and B-24 couldn't lift it.
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Jun 26, 2015 18:05
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wdarkk posted:Nuclear Secrecy had a post about that. A Lancaster would do, right? They did carry those 10k Tall Boys, or was it a question of size?
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Jun 26, 2015 18:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:A Lancaster would do, right? They did carry those 10k Tall Boys, or was it a question of size? The link goes into that. A Lancaster could almost certainly do it (Fat Man might be too fat), the problem was political.
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Jun 26, 2015 18:16
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Well hell, I'll ask the question. Did soldiers ever commonly make their own balls with molds and lead, or were they just issued balls? Did they handle the balls roughly or gently? Before paper cartridges, what did people do for wadding? Did they just have a little sack full of balls hanging off their belt? Seems a little inconvenient from a drill perspective. I think it was Luetzen where battlefield archaeologists found some screwed up, discarded musketballs that were still recognizably pieces of window frame. SeanBeansShako posted:The only thing missing with the excellent musket chat we had a page back was Hegel explaining how musket balls were cast and the amazing arrival of the humble paper cartridge. edit: put the balls in your mouth HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Jun 26, 2015 18:16
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Was there any risk of cancer or whatever from having a mouth full of balls? Or was it general accepted that you'd die of septicemia or getting kicked by a horse before it was an issue? e: by the 18th century people were generally just issued pre-molded balls due to standardization, right? Or would Napoleon's men still be melting their own lead when they made cartridges?
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Jun 26, 2015 18:33
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Was there any risk of cancer or whatever from having a mouth full of balls? Or was it general accepted that you'd die of septicemia or getting kicked by a horse before it was an issue? Battles were rare enough that people didn't have to worry about that, and you'd probably die of something else before the lead got to you. Balls in mouth 24/7. Balls.
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Jun 26, 2015 18:44
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Fizzil posted:Not sure about the Crusaders, but the Arabs and Turks in the middle east were pretty different in arms and organizations, that quote about "muslim" bows is pretty much garbage though, its either Arab or Turkish bows, and the latter was of pretty good quality in general. How about some more posts?
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Jun 26, 2015 18:46
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). I have very little information on the types of weapons used, spears, javelins, crossbows, bows, glaives and maces were common, single edged straight swords too.
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Cyrano4747 posted:Welcome to the lament of the historian confronted with a public that can't differentiate between approving of something and understanding it. I get a surprisingly high amount of "You said a Soviet tank was good? How does it feel to be pro-purges, Stalinist scum?", but only on the internet, thankfully.
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Jun 26, 2015 18:57
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bewbies posted:Is this a serious answer? Not in wording, but in basis, sure. The attack on Sumter constituted a level of harm that simply isn't present in "oh man they're drafting an army" since occupation doesn't require the shelling or shooting of anything or anyone. It doesn't mean that I can't fathom the reasoning behind confederates volunteering at that point but I'm of the belief that the ideological climate down there was such that volunteers were more likely to be signing up out of bravado/animosity/ideological entanglement with the social and economic institutional aspects of slavery even if they weren't slavers themselves. It seems like the directly-related "they're drafting a big army up in America, take cover" is far less likely than "let's shoot those drat abolitionists trying to corrupt out pure society" or some derivative thereof. E: I guess it's better put as a view that the southerner who is simply defending their borders without consideration of slavery is pretty much a gay black hitler scenario. The debate between slavery/abolition had gotten so rancorous by the 1860s that stuff like witch hunts for people suspected of being "the other side" weren't rare, poo poo was polarized. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Jun 26, 2015 18:59
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Klaus88 posted:How often do you repeat the phrase "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" on average? Never. I really try to get the gently caress away from that phrase because it leads directly to the most lazy, overly-sentimental crap writing possible. Rather than being a useful shorthand for the importance of understanding the past they use it as a loving thesis and/or misguided call to action. See also: "never again." I also don't like it because it obscures the unique historical context that events take place in. The Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide might be comparable events, but neither one of them is directly related to each other and they are both terrible proxies to examine modern human rights abuses. The gas chambers of Auschwitz, the legacy of a failed world war, and early 20th century European antisemitism have gently caress all to do with the ongoing crisis in South Sudan. The point that I constantly have to make is that it is not enough to stand gaping in front of the enormity of the atrocity or fall back on shallow platitudes like "never again." Circling back to the confederate discussion, the point is that you can study something and understand why and how it happened without getting bogged down in simple condemnation or platitudes about the necessity of remembering things. I'm personally more fond of another saying about history: "The past doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
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Jun 26, 2015 20:07
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Delivery McGee posted:I think they might mean "ability to estimate range". Like, most people can look at a thing and say "that's, oh, about two miles away," whereas a guy like Humphreys there could look at the same target and go "hmm ... 3400 yards," and bracket it with the first two shots. Part of my job involves proctoring exams for students getting qualified on crane operation, and that includes seeing students with varying levels of depth perception. One of the challenges in the test involves dunking the headache ball on the end of the steel cable into a 55 gallon drum, then taking it out and dunking it in a barrel further away. You quickly discover that many students have awful depth perception, especially the older ones. There's no shadow or anything to help you tell that you're lowering the ball into the barrel, so it's quite common to see them lower it onto the edge of the drum or even miss it entirely.
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Jun 26, 2015 20:09
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bewbies posted:Like the north, the vast majority of the southern armies were made up of yeoman farmers. Yeoman is a term reserved for british commoners who cultivate their own land  E2: and navy/coast guard officers, I guess.Also, holy poo poo thread title: chitoryu12 posted:I actually have a picture handy of a flintlock that was converted to percussion. You can see how a good part of the flintlock mechanism is still there, just frozen in place with the nipple put in and a hammer replacing the cock. Ask Us About Military History: Nipples and cocks are a major part of firearms history Tias fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Jun 26, 2015 20:14
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Don't forget about the (musket) balls!
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Jun 26, 2015 20:22
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Hey Shako, by the 18th century people were generally just issued pre-molded balls due to standardization, right? Or would Napoleon's men still be melting their own lead when they made cartridges?
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Jun 26, 2015 20:24
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Ask Us About Military History - Upgrade your cock to a hammer, soldier.
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Jun 26, 2015 20:37
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Hey Shako, by the 18th century people were generally just issued pre-molded balls due to standardization, right? Or would Napoleon's men still be melting their own lead when they made cartridges? I believe there was still some small scale of melting and smelting on the field (I imagine with captured enemy ammuniton on campaign if they couldn't fit the smoothbores barrel of certain armies muskets) but a lot of the stuff was supplied ready made in factories.
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Jun 26, 2015 20:38
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Tias posted:Yeoman is a term reserved for british commoners who cultivate their own land from your link: "In the United States, yeomen were identified in the 18th and 19th centuries as non-slaveholding, small landowning, family farmers. " 
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Jun 26, 2015 20:42
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Every time I see Yeomen these guys always come to mind to me.
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Jun 26, 2015 20:43
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bewbies posted:from your link: I'm an idiot, disregard. I didn't even notice there was a United States section, I had just read (the introduction to) the article yesterday and felt like being helpful 
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Jun 26, 2015 20:56
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But how do you find time to be a guard whilst being a subsistance farmer?
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Jun 26, 2015 21:07
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Delivery McGee posted:In other news, I recently saw on Tumblr a post about how the A-bomb was used on Japan rather than Germany because racism. I mean, racism was definitely a part of justifying doing such a terrible thing to the Japanese, but the main reason it wasn't used against the Nazis was less "fellow white people" and more that the war in Europe had been over for about four months before the Bomb was ready, no? Dresden pretty much disproves the "going easy on Germany because white people" theory.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:19
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revolther posted:You don't hear stories about Japanese and US forces crossing battlefields to come together for Christmas dinners or soccer matches. It goes back to the colonial history of treating all non-European descended cultures as beastly slave dogs to be mastered, and if they resist violent unreasonable barbarians to be snuffed out. Which was the exact reasoning used. Racism had nothing to do with nuking Japan. Why do people on the Internet think everything is about race?
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Jun 26, 2015 21:33
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Why do you have to bring tumblr into this thread? Wasn't the war already concluded in Europe by then?
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Jun 26, 2015 21:37
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Pretty sure we Americans weren't having Christmas football matches with any enemy combatants in the Second World War, Japanese or not.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:41
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Nazis are notoriously poor sports.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:46
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SeanBeansShako posted:I believe there was still some small scale of melting and smelting on the field (I imagine with captured enemy ammuniton on campaign if they couldn't fit the smoothbores barrel of certain armies muskets) but a lot of the stuff was supplied ready made in factories. The biggest change that led to mass production of ammunition was probably standardization of weapons. Starting in the middle of the 18th century, armies would create a single pattern weapon that would be stored in a "pattern room" and used as a reference for measurements. At this time, guns were still produced by individual arms makers and cottage industries; beforehand they were all individually procured by the officers in charge of raising and maintaining an army. But by providing a pattern weapon that could allow some form of standardization, they could at least get the caliber right. You still wouldn't have total interchangeability with parts and repairs would need custom pieces, but at least you could shove the same bullets down the barrel. It helped that (as I explained in my older posts) ammo was issued undersized (like .69 caliber balls for .75 caliber Brown Bess muskets) to better fit down a heavily fouled barrel and so you didn't need exacting standards. Today, mass production and 100% interchangeability means that every M16 is identical except in extremely minor details to every other M16 and all the parts will fit the other gun and every 5.56x45mm bullet will fit down every barrel the same way.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:08
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revolther posted:You don't hear stories about Japanese and US forces crossing battlefields to come together for Christmas dinners or soccer matches. It goes back to the colonial history of treating all non-European descended cultures as beastly slave dogs to be mastered, and if they resist violent unreasonable barbarians to be snuffed out. Which was the exact reasoning used. This is a mindbogglingly ignorant post. Imperial Japan had an extremely aggressive colonial history even before WWII. The underlying cause behind their entry into WWII was their ongoing invasion of China, which was a bald faced war of conquest. Americans regarded the Japanese with racially-based mistrust, but the Japanese state was guilty of the same. The Japanese public was bombarded with images of American solders as cannibalistic rapists, something which more accurately described their own troops. Objectively, imperial Japanese military training and discipline was the most dehumanizing and traumatic of all the states involved during the war. The idea of fraternization was wholly unacceptable to the Japanese soldier, who was threatened with extreme punishment, isolation, and ridicule for minor breaches of discipline. The product of their abusive training was a subservient solder conditioned to thoughtlessly accept any orders or official directives. This is the soldier that participates in Nanjing, and the soldier that fruitlessly challenges American advances in the South Pacific. Moreover, Christmas truces ceased to happen after 1915, during an entirely different war. Finally, you're implying that Americans hated the Japanese so much, they declined to nuke nazi Germany. In truth, the German state had already surrendered by the time the bomb was delivered. It's pathetic that you would go so far to push the juvenile narrative of "America is always wrong!!". Imperial Japan created their own monstrous imperialist machine, which appears to be something you're ignorant of. If you considered yourself progressive for believing your own nonsense, I want you to know that it's incredibly Eurocentric to ignore the agency of non-European cultures in creating their own history. Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Jun 26, 2015 22:11
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The Pope posted:Racism had nothing to do with nuking Japan. Why do people on the Internet think everything is about race? I want to say something about America and their perception of races and... I'm not sure how to phrase it.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:12
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Whoops! Forgot to jab "post". 100 Years Ago A review of the situation down in the Caucasus, where things are about to get interesting again. Herbert Sulzbach is out of hospital, and Kenneth Best has run into yet another cretin of a staff officer.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:12
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revolther posted:You don't hear stories about Japanese and US forces crossing battlefields to come together for Christmas dinners or soccer matches. It goes back to the colonial history of treating all non-European descended cultures as beastly slave dogs to be mastered, and if they resist violent unreasonable barbarians to be snuffed out. Which was the exact reasoning used. Well, that was the First World War, and the US and Japan were both on the Entente side in that war, so...I'm not sure how the two points are connected or relate to the firebombing/nuking of Japan? Edit: Also Slim Jim Pickens makes an excellent point regarding Imperial Japan's stance on other races. Japanese treatment of Chinese and Korean people (among others) during that period was pretty barbaric. Davin Valkri fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Jun 26, 2015 22:13
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Delivery McGee posted:In other news, I recently saw on Tumblr a post about how the A-bomb was used on Japan rather than Germany because racism. I mean, racism was definitely a part of justifying doing such a terrible thing to the Japanese, but the main reason it wasn't used against the Nazis was less "fellow white people" and more that the war in Europe had been over for about four months before the Bomb was ready, no? Dresden pretty much disproves the "going easy on Germany because white people" theory. I think that book was referring to the H-bomb, which is even more wrong.  The Dresden firebombing killed 23,000 people, although some neo-Nazis like to say it killed more people than the Hiroshima or Tokyo bombings. Hamburg was the deadliest firebombing in Europe, at 42,000 deaths. Part of the reason Allied firebombings killed more people in Japan by tonnage was that Japanese architecture used more wood, and so was more flammable. There was also more bombs dropped on Japan, leading to the higher absolute numbers of civilian casualties from bombings.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:25
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Davin Valkri posted:Well, that was the First World War, and the US and Japan were both on the Entente side in that war, so...I'm not sure how the two points are connected or relate to the firebombing/nuking of Japan? I mean, nothing about Japan excuses the Western attitudes towards the Japanese, and the associated internments, skull souvenirs, propaganda... But it also doesn't exonerate the Japanese themselves.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:25
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