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Tevery Best posted:Actually I'm fairly sure denatured nowadays means it's going to make you puke all over, but is no longer lethal. Governments have realized that maybe, just maybe, having people drunk on the job is not exactly something that should carry a death sentence. Sailors and Marines in the Pacific Theater would make "Torpedo Juice" by filtering torpedo fuel through a compressed loaf of bread and mixing it with pineapple juice. They would also make booze by hoarding prunes from the mess, mashing them up in a 5" powder can and allowing the whole mess to ferment in the tropical heat. Once Guadalcanal was relived priorities for unloading newly arrived transports changed drastically- ammunition and equipment would be thrown to the sides so the men on longshoreman duty could get to the beer.
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Jul 14, 2015 22:22
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LordSaturn posted:So, uhh, what's your background? This is a weird question but after reading all your fascinating materials-science posts on making glue out of fish and such, it occurs to me I don't know why you're making bows. Are you a grad student? A hobbyist? Info like a list of notable effortposters would be kind of handy in the OP, IMO. Grad student, hobbyist on the best way to trying to be a professional? I shot alot in the backyard when I was a kid, but stopped eventually. 20 years later I saw something about bowmaking that got me fired up. I think it was that video of Lukas Novotny and Mughal weapons. Turns out that university training (yes, social sciences) is pretty useful if you need to learn stuff from scratch. I always had a strong inclination for chemistry, but never followed up. Never did any woodworking before. I guess there's this overlapping of shooting stuff, art and chemistry that's appealing. This hobby sounds alot more original than saying that you have a band.
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Jul 14, 2015 22:33
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Tevery Best posted:Actually I'm fairly sure denatured nowadays means it's going to make you puke all over, but is no longer lethal. Well it depends on what you buy and where you buy it from. There's still plenty of stuff out there that can straight-up kill you in sufficient quantity. Indeed just about anything that makes you puke is capable of killing you. There is a trend toward using additives that make alcohols taste extremely bitter, or smell horrible, or really nauseous, or simply a skin irritant, but typically that sort of thing is the exception rather than the rule. And frankly American law rather favors labeling something as dangerous rather than allowing for any legal confusion by making it merely unpleasant.
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Jul 14, 2015 22:38
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bewbies posted:I think I made an effort post about this a while back, probably more detail in there. I'd agree with what you said. My additional two cents would be this: The Fw 190 and the Bf 109 managed to stay on par with allied fighters, and the Fw 190 was also very flexible; with the BMW radial you could use it for ground attack and close air support. The Bf 110 was a failure as a fighter but just coincidentally a good ground attack aircraft and did well in the night-fighter role until 1944. This was more a lucky coincidence for the Germans than any sort of design virtue, though - even if it had been marginal in those jobs, the replacements for the Bf 110 just didn't appear. The Me 210 was a F-35 style multi-mission disaster, and when they finally unfucked the program, it was the later part of 1943. The Me 210 had such a vile reputation in the Luftwaffe that they actually had to rebrand the resulting product the Me 410. This was produced in significant numbers - about 1000 - but like the Panther tank, the Bf 110 had to remain in production due to the Nazis needing that production. I've read that the 410 was a good light bomber and a good heavy fighter, but that the bombing aspect meant many airframes were being used just as bombers, because of various senior Nazis believing in attacking all the time, forever. The He 219 was a great night fighter, and one that possibly could have been adapted to wider roles - but was only produced in small numbers. The Ar 240 was a fully pressurized high flier that also worked as a dive bomber and was flying by 1940. It was totally state of the art - but when the Nazis leared they'd need all-new machine tooling and a new factory to build it, they said "gently caress that." There's also the Ta 154, which was just a shitshow. A lone aircraft that bucked this trend was the Fw 189 recon airplane, that saw its role creep from tactical recon to ground support and even night-fighting thanks to a very robust airframe design. The Ju 88 was another lucky break for the Germans, as it was good at a fairly astonishing variety things - I'm not sure there was a medium bomber elsewhere in the war that took to so many roles so well. This was just about the only luck the Germans would have with bombers, as it turns out. The Do 17 and the He 111 were old designs by the time the battle of britian was over, and attempts to replace them and the Ju 88 with a new "bomber B" program produced nothing. The Do 217 and the Ju 188 were successful medium bombers, but were done by the manufacturers as an attempt to field a more modest replacement program that didn't rely on vaporware engines. The Ju 87 Stuka and the Hs 129 were good at close air support - but were sitting ducks for enemy fighters, and could only operate in environments where the Luftwaffe could control the sky. Their replacement was supposed to be the Me 210. (One successful but little known airframe the Luftwaffe had for close air support was the Hs 123 biplane, which proved extremely capable of strafing and light bombing on the eastern front. It was so effective in this role the Nazis almost restarted production of it.) Heavy bombers were a total clusterfuck under the Nazis - I gotta pick on something Bewbies said, here - as they paid all the costs of developing a heavy bomber, but still didn't have anything in the end. The He 177 'Grief' was an attempt to build a heavy bomber that would use technology to overcome the fact that the Nazis couldn't really field thousands of heavy bombers, as they didn't have the fuel, or the right engine. (Or, if you prefer, enough production of a powerful enough engine.) The engine problem was solved with a "power pack" of four engines driving two propellers - this was fine, it had worked in testing without problems - but somebody commanded the He 177 should also be made to dive bomb. This combination of ambition was doomed to failure, and the Nazis spent years trying to make it work, because the He 177 was too big to fail and the Nazis didn't have a backup to this over-ambitious plan. By the time somebody said "gently caress it, let's lust make a bomber with four engines driving four propellers" it was too late to start over. The production was something like a thousand airframes, and only half of those ever saw operational use. The British, by contrast, introduced the Short Sterling, used it for bombing till it was obsolete, and then withdrew the Sterling from bombing, to replace it with two new four engined designs, all while the Germans were struggling with engine fires and dead test-flight crews. The Naval flyers were, ah, interesting. Y'know how the German Military was all "don't declare war in 1939, we need at least two more years for all out war with Britain and France?" German Naval aviation suffered especially because of this, because most of the aircraft it had assumed that its job would be to keep the Baltic secure from French Naval forces. They had a variety of Dornier flying boats, and the BnV 138, which were good airplanes as far as they went. The Germans also had a gigantic flying boat in the form of the BnV 222, and several air transport records were broken with the "Viking" during the war - but they made a grand total of 13 or 14 airframes. The fact that the BnV 222 had started as a civilian project meant that it really was not suited for combat. The Fw 200 Condor was a improvised stop-gap airplane until the He 177 arrived. (shameless promotional post) I've written about it here at some length.  TL;DR it was a marginal combat aircraft that had a run of extraordinary success thanks to good officers in the wing that flew them, and big tactical errors on the part of its opponents. The Ju 290 was a late war addition to the naval flyin' crew, and it was (I think, anyway) a excellent aircraft with a lot of versatility. Of course, only about 50 were ever constructed. I've also written about the Ju 290 in some detail (once again, ) for the interested.e: fixed URL Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 01:59
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Nebakenezzer posted:The Bf 110 was a failure as a fighter but just coincidentally a good ground attack aircraft and did well in the night-fighter role until 1944. It was a good heavy fighter, and was a failure against fighters because it wasn't all that agile.
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Jul 15, 2015 02:10
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Nebakenezzer posted:I've also written about the Ju 290 in some detail (once again, Also, I love these posts.
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Jul 15, 2015 02:50
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The FW 200 is a weird story. Really makes you do a double take when Catalinas can successfully protect something.
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Jul 15, 2015 03:31
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I love flying boats for some reasons (probably cos they're big) and heavy fighters sound totally rad, so, of course, they're were not well suited for heavy fighting roles. By the by, what, besides radar, makes a good night fighter? Also, somehow soldiers drinking basically anything to get shitfaced is somehow making war more terrifying than I previously thought. Weird.
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Jul 15, 2015 05:13
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JcDent posted:I love flying boats for some reasons (probably cos they're big) and heavy fighters sound totally rad, so, of course, they're were not well suited for heavy fighting roles. By the by, what, besides radar, makes a good night fighter? Multi-man crew, stability and/or good flight characteristics, non-cramped crew cockpit, heavy forward firepower. Wooden construction would help out a lot too.
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Jul 15, 2015 05:26
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P-Mack posted:The massive drug problems also included the nuclear force, so yeah. The nuclear force is still pretty hosed up Last year two missile launch officers in Montana got busted with fake pot (known to cause massive panic attacks) and further investigation revealed that 1/5 of the force was cheating on their monthly proficiency tests. And then there's the Trident sub whistleblower detailing the total lack of security, safety, and maintenance on British nuclear subs - he walked into a no-recording-devices-allowed room, took the super-secret missile manual out of its safe, pulled out his phone, and recorded the entire book right in front of several other people - fire in the missile compartment because they were storing huge amounts of toilet paper next to things that get really hot - can't test the missile hatches because the hydraulic system contains more seawater than oil and no one cares enough to fix it - "I heard the Launcher and Fire-control Supervisors whispering to each other in the MCC. The Fire- control supervisor spilled coffee on the missiles Data entry subsystem keyboard. It set of an alarm. That's all the information I gathered on that incident because they were trying to cover it up so the Weapons Engineering Officer (WEO) wouldn't find out what happened." - "There was an excessive amount of Trouble Failure Report's (TFRs) being filed in SWS department; due to operator and defective equipment. An example of one of the operator errors: They allowed a trainee to carry out a procedure he had never seen done before. It was a simple procedure, all he had to do was click Yes when he was told to click Yes, but he clicked No." - "Five minutes before leaving the boat for leave I walked into the JRs toilets; the whole deck was flooded in a couple inches of brown water. I tried the senior rates and it was the same. This summed the system up."
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Jul 15, 2015 05:50
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Griz posted:- "There was an excessive amount of Trouble Failure Report's (TFRs) being filed in SWS department; due to operator and defective equipment. An example of one of the operator errors: They allowed a trainee to carry out a procedure he had never seen done before. It was a simple procedure, all he had to do was click Yes when he was told to click Yes, but he clicked No." If everyone else are having the same problems, we're safe from nuclear war for the foreseeable future. EDIT: Now on quora: some guy argued that Roman legions were untrained, malnourished younglings with Spanish swords and Gaul tactics lead by inexperienced young nobles, and only won through zerg rush tactics by having a lot of willing bodies to be thrown at the enemy. JcDent fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 06:26
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Griz posted:The nuclear force is still pretty hosed up IIRC there's a goon who does this missile poo poo and seems exactly like these problems would imply.
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Jul 15, 2015 07:48
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JcDent posted:If everyone else are having the same problems, we're safe from nuclear war for the foreseeable future. They won by having way better logistics than anyone else. People like to say the Romans stole Iberian swords and Gallic shields and whatever but none of that poo poo actually matters much when it comes to winning wars
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Jul 15, 2015 11:28
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JcDent posted:If everyone else are having the same problems, we're safe from nuclear war for the foreseeable future. The Roman army changed significantly over time. That might describe the Roman force that lost at Cannae, but the post-Marian force that was trouncing the everyone else in Europe? Not so much. Logistics helped, sure, but fundamentally the Romans were able to win ridiculously lopsided battles on the field using discipline and tactics, and a force of motivated experienced professionals.
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Jul 15, 2015 11:57
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Nebakenezzer posted:The Ju 88 was another lucky break for the Germans, as it was good at a fairly astonishing variety things - I'm not sure there was a medium bomber elsewhere in the war that took to so many roles so well. The only thing that comes to mind is the Mosquito, although the Ju 88 was adapted for a few roles that the Mossie wasn't. count_von_count fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 12:22
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Fangz posted:Logistics helped, sure, but fundamentally the Romans were able to win ridiculously lopsided battles on the field using discipline and tactics, and a force of motivated experienced professionals. And they were able to field, train and have those guys there because of logistics. Edit: that sounded way more snarkier than I intented.
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Jul 15, 2015 12:24
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mastervj posted:And they were able to field, train and have those guys there because of logistics. Oh, the other guy ripped a new one to the first guy, demolishing basically everything he said (with the provision that it was mid-Rome Legions, so probably post-Marian). I don't think stealing Iberian swords and Gallic helmets, and then using those to kill their inventors is that bad, either. count_von_count posted:The only thing that comes to mind is the Mosquito, although the Ju 88 was adapted for a few roles that the Mossie wasn't. How is that not in videogames!
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Jul 15, 2015 12:43
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On the topic of soldiers and booze, one of the stories from the Indian Mutiny is that one streets of one of the Indian cities about to be stormed by the British Army had bottles of booze lined up to delay the troops, as nothing would stop a redcoat faster than free alcohol. The problem was so bad that the officers had to run ahead of the men and smash the bottles with their swagger sticks so the troops would advance.
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Jul 15, 2015 13:20
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Baconroll posted:On the topic of soldiers and booze, one of the stories from the Indian Mutiny is that one streets of one of the Indian cities about to be stormed by the British Army had bottles of booze lined up to delay the troops, as nothing would stop a redcoat faster than free alcohol. The problem was so bad that the officers had to run ahead of the men and smash the bottles with their swagger sticks so the troops would advance. this sounds as though it could be combined with marksmen or something to very quickly rob the british forces of their entire officer cadre
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Jul 15, 2015 13:28
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V. Illych L. posted:this sounds as though it could be combined with marksmen or something to very quickly rob the british forces of their entire officer cadre They're trying to fight the empire, not improve it.
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Jul 15, 2015 14:05
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JcDent posted:How is that not in videogames! It was actually in one! It was Secret Weapons Over Normandy, which you can pick up for the Xbox, PS2, or PC if you can find a copy/download link. It's an arcadey flight sim that focuses on experimental and prototype weapons of World War II, the Mistel included in the final battle.
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Jul 15, 2015 16:55
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chitoryu12 posted:It was actually in one! It was Secret Weapons Over Normandy, which you can pick up for the Xbox, PS2, or PC if you can find a copy/download link. It's an arcadey flight sim that focuses on experimental and prototype weapons of World War II, the Mistel included in the final battle. 
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Jul 15, 2015 17:05
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chitoryu12 posted:It was actually in one! It was Secret Weapons Over Normandy, which you can pick up for the Xbox, PS2, or PC if you can find a copy/download link. It's an arcadey flight sim that focuses on experimental and prototype weapons of World War II, the Mistel included in the final battle. IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 has Mistels in it. AceRimmer posted:And you can fly it in Il-2 as well! It used to have a broken model where you could activate its landing gear whenever. Was pretty funny using it as a pseudo-hydraulic system.
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Jul 15, 2015 17:24
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In this drawing, the kid seems to be using a short pike with a musket fork attachment. Was that really a thing? It seems like a stupid design.
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Jul 15, 2015 17:40
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Why does it seem stupid? Russian Streltsys used bardiches for the same purpose: If you use your close range weapon for support, you don't have to carry an additional tool for it. Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 17:52
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Northern Italy, Switzerland, Frankfurt am Main or Hieronymus Sebastian Schutze and Felix Steter Go On A Road Trip Not everyone in the Mansfeld Regiment deserted when they weren't given their payout. Six companies made it to Lindau, and two made it to Frankfurt am Main. The trip sounds like it was grim--the officers had to pay for everything out of their own pockets and they ran out of money on the way, everyones' clothes were in tatters, offering little protection against the mountain climate, and the Swiss decided they wouldn't be given passage without giving up their weapons. The officers from all the companies of the regiment, scattered cavalry troopers, and two complete companies that made it to Frankfurt in mid-August were about six hundred men in total and "completely defenseless." Which is probably why Frankfurt felt secure in denying their order for food and quartering. Sure, what remains of the Mansfeld Regiment has an imperial patent, but Vienna and Prague are a long way away. They managed to scrape up three hundred rations of bread and a little beer, but Frankfurt denies them everything else.When their captains ask them if they want to cross the Main, they say they are entirely unwilling. There's "no backtalk," they just can't move. They've had only about three or four days rest in this entire time. "Before God and the world, we the captains and officers who were present on the scene want to be excused of the destruction of the Imperial Graff Mansfeld Regiment, which we in no way payed out and which we want to reconstitute again quickly," write a group of officers, led by the Quartermaster and Wachtmeister. The Quartermaster is Wincklemann, whom we last saw seriously wondering whether or not to just shoot Felix Steter in the face. He'd embezzled a mindblowing amount of fabric a few years ago and will be arrested a few years from now, no doubt for something similar (I haven't read those documents yet, just seen them listed), but he's doing his part right now, futilely baling water out of the sinking ship with the rest of them. They've sent a letter to the Elector of Mainz, whose territories lie nearby, asking for help. There was no answer. Mansfeld is trying to reconstitute the regiment as well. He has a lead on "6000 man worth of good weapons from the Netherlands" from a handler he met in Prague, and he's trying to get some Imperial war commissary people (Colonels von Sizig and von Frankenstein, for the people keeping track of early modern German names) to come down and lean on Frankfurt--von Sizig was Mansfeld's Oberst-Lieutenant when he was fighting in Hungary, and he's confident something will get done in the name of that old friendship. Meanwhile, "because of hunger," and because they have no other place to stay, what remains of the Mansfeld Regiment disperses into the surrounding villages. I haven't seen any detailed descriptions of what it is they're doing in there, but several people make reference to the "evil condition" of the villages around Frankfurt. I am willing to bet that when the Swiss confiscated the Mansfeld Regiment's weapons, what they took were the pikes and muskets, not the swords, pistols, knives, and daggers. Nobody blames them though, this is as natural as a flood after heavy rains; as Wallenstein put it, "an unpaid army will destroy everything." The only time military people bring up what they're probably doing is for an edge in the negotiations with the Frankfurt Burgermeister and city council. So the question isn't, is Frankfurt willing to see the last 600 of the Mansfeld Regiment die in front of its walls (they are), the question is are their negotiators willing to see terrible things happen to the villages in the surrounding area before it feeds and houses those soldiers? As of the middle of August, they haven't blinked yet. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 18:12
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Chamale posted:In this drawing, the kid seems to be using a short pike with a musket fork attachment. Was that really a thing? It seems like a stupid design.
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Jul 15, 2015 18:13
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So Germans during WWII couldn't stick to a standardized frame for anything, partially just because it seems they liked tooling around, and partially because the hierarchy was so hosed up and full of weird administrative fiefdoms that everybody was ordering designs for different things and interfering with all sorts of poo poo, right? What about Japan during the war? Aside from the munitions posts here, my only knowledge of Japanese war machines and equipment comes from War Thunder, where it looks like half of all Japanese airplanes in WWII were some variation of the A6M Zero.
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Jul 15, 2015 18:50
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HEY GAL posted:Northern Italy, Switzerland, Frankfurt am Main You will forever regret it if you don't make a book out of these stories.
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Jul 15, 2015 18:52
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Ofaloaf posted:So Germans during WWII couldn't stick to a standardized frame for anything, partially just because it seems they liked tooling around, and partially because the hierarchy was so hosed up and full of weird administrative fiefdoms that everybody was ordering designs for different things and interfering with all sorts of poo poo, right? The Germans DID stick to a standardized frame though, that's why you have the Ju-88 and its many variants, or the Bf-109 and Fw-190 and so on. They just had difficulties developing replacements to those earlier designs thanks to pressure applied on all fronts, much like how the constant drain of manpower and necessity reduced the amount of time they could spend training which later affected their combat performance. Japan has a wide variety of aircraft. I've effort-posted a few times on them that I could try to fish from the archives if people don't mind me reposting content from a different thread. Linking single posts: Mitsubishi Ki-67 Hiryu Mitsubishi B5M Mabel Kawasaki Ki-119 Kawasaki Ki-64 Aichi B7A Ryusei Mitsubishi A6M Reisen Mitsubishi Ki-83 Kawasaki Ki-100 Let me know if any of these don't work or require Archives, and I'll repost them here. Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 18:57
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HEY GAL posted:Northern Italy, Switzerland, Frankfurt am Main is this before the stuff you've been posting recently or did schutze actually resurface?
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Jul 15, 2015 18:59
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V. Illych L. posted:is this before the stuff you've been posting recently or did schutze actually resurface?
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Jul 15, 2015 19:01
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HEY GAL posted:after, and his name wasn't mentioned but if he's still an officer with the mansfeld regiment he's in there, throwing money down the hole with everyone else Is there a point where the officers of an insolvent regiment will gather the men together and say "Look, there's no money now, and there never will be any in the future, we're hosed. So we're bugging out, good luck figuring something out on your own"? 'Cos these guys seem really super dedicated to trying to keep the regiment afloat, which is kinda admirable but also sorta insane, especially after you hocked the weapons.
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Jul 15, 2015 19:13
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Tomn posted:Is there a point where the officers of an insolvent regiment will gather the men together and say "Look, there's no money now, and there never will be any in the future, we're hosed. So we're bugging out, good luck figuring something out on your own"? 'Cos these guys seem really super dedicated to trying to keep the regiment afloat, which is kinda admirable but also sorta insane, especially after you hocked the weapons. in the grand scheme of the things that have happened to the mansfeld regiment in the summer of 1627 this doesn't mean very much, but i wanted to make sure we were all accurate
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Jul 15, 2015 19:15
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Arquinsiel posted:You'd think that "smells bad and is poisonous" would be a deterrent but TBH that's basically alcohol in a nutshell I'm a recovering alcoholic, and I can tell you that to a person addicted, anything short of certain and forewarned death isn't a deterrant, and even then it's up in the air. Hospitalized sufferers will drink cleaning alcohols, and it's a pretty big nuisance in treatment wards. During prohi attempts in Russia, people drank perfume, aftershave and all sorts of nasty poo poo, dying in the process. Sounds neat, what's it about?
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Jul 15, 2015 19:22
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Brake fluid too.
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Jul 15, 2015 19:23
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JaucheCharly posted:Brake fluid too. Is that why they couldn't stop?
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Jul 15, 2015 19:24
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They stopped pretty dead in their tracks.
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Jul 15, 2015 19:26
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Is that why they couldn't stop? It made them constipated so they couldn't go, either.
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Jul 15, 2015 19:28
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Tias posted:Sounds neat, what's it about? quote:soldiers...rioting against military authorities as a means of expressing discontent
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Jul 15, 2015 19:46
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