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Delivery McGee posted:Also, naval gunfights are If anyone's interested in reading about this kind of horror story, one of the best books depicting it is a sci-fi book called Off Armageddon Reef. The big naval battles near the end of the book are horrifyingly and vividly detailed about exactly what is happening to the ships on the receiving end of heavy cannon fire and what is happening to the men on board.
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Jul 16, 2015 18:48
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. You look at that little 6" ball, what's it gonna do? Maybe knock over one gun and kill/maim five men, if it penetrates the hull. But it's not meant to penetrate, they even reduced the powder charge the closer they got to the enemy. Ideally the shot would stop about 2/3 of the way into the hull and throw off splinters. Just like non-penetrating hits on a tank, you kill 'em with their own armor. These splinters are big. Like, you could turn one down into a decent baseball bat if you shaved off the razor-sharp edges. One solid hit could wipe out a couple of gun crews. There's a reason peglegs and hooks for hands are a common trope.
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JcDent posted:Isn't it that ores in Japan are kind of lovely, that's why you needed to fold katanas five thousand times? Yes, europeans did the same thing until the metallurgy developed to the point they could make the better steels. Most swords until the 1000's or so were made like katanas. Softer iron in the center, with hard high quality steel around the edges
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Jul 16, 2015 18:54
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JcDent posted:Isn't it that ores in Japan are kind of lovely, that's why you needed to fold katanas five thousand times? Synthetic rubber is just another petroleum-based polymer, and obviously necessary because Germany didn't have any/many sources for natural rubber. Synthetic fuel is synthesized from gaseous hydrocarbons, themselves derived from either coal, biomass, or natural gas, because again Germany had fewer sources for petroleum than coal and biomass.
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Jul 16, 2015 18:56
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What are the primary sources for the wooden splinter stuff? Medical records?
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Jul 16, 2015 19:17
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bewbies posted:It was actually kind of the opposite if you can believe it. Japanese craftsmanship on their aircraft in general was of the highest order and the engines were no different. Allied analysts who got to look at Japanese aircraft were pretty stunned by how well crafted they were. The metal limitations were a main reason for this: they couldn't bludgeon their way out of problems with more or better metal like the US or Germany did. That being said, their maintenance and sustainment processes were....really bad, as have been discussed at some length. The fine tolerances of the engines really didn't help these matters. Did that emphasis on craftsmanship interfere with their ability to develop? If it takes you three times as along to build an engine, then by implication,it takes you three times as along to iterate design improvements along the way to having a war-ready engine.
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Jul 16, 2015 19:38
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Did that emphasis on craftsmanship interfere with their ability to develop? If it takes you three times as along to build an engine, then by implication,it takes you three times as along to iterate design improvements along the way to having a war-ready engine. It took so long to build engines because they didn't have a conscription/service regulations that exempted skilled workers in the labour force. So you'd end up having your factory worker who happens to have been working with and on engines for years suddenly brought into the armed forces ranks and sent off somewhere after training. You'd then have to replace said skilled labour with some guy who may or may not be all that great, and you'd have to train him and so on.
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Jul 16, 2015 19:41
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Jobbo_Fett posted:It took so long to build engines because they didn't have a conscription/service regulations that exempted skilled workers in the labour force. So you'd end up having your factory worker who happens to have been working with and on engines for years suddenly brought into the armed forces ranks and sent off somewhere after training. You'd then have to replace said skilled labour with some guy who may or may not be all that great, and you'd have to train him and so on. This seems really dumb? Japan already started at a disadvantage with a small % of their population being familiar with things mechanical, and now you take some of the few people you have and send them off somewhere?
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Jul 16, 2015 19:47
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Saint Celestine posted:This seems really dumb? Japan already started at a disadvantage with a small % of their population being familiar with things mechanical, and now you take some of the few people you have and send them off somewhere? It was especially bad for the Navy. The army controlled the draft, and wouldn't stop drafting the Navy's civilian employees.
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Jul 16, 2015 19:49
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howe_sam posted:They just didn't do a very good job of creating the circumstances of the myth. Like they used something dinky like a six pound cannon and never got a significantly large enough splinter to skewer one of the pig carcasses they were using for a human analog. As compared to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfsuIaTU92Y
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Jul 16, 2015 20:00
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When my daughter asked me about the Pacific Theater in WWII, I told her it was easiest to understand if you assumed that Japan never had a war plan in the sense we mean it. They had a conviction that Heaven would ensure their victory, and a rough scheme for putting Heaven in an excellent position to intervene in their favor.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:11
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xthetenth posted:It was especially bad for the Navy. The army controlled the draft, and wouldn't stop drafting the Navy's civilian employees. That is hillarious.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:16
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Delivery McGee posted:Artillery shot was cast iron (in Napoleonic times) and steel now. So, no lead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_warship_Mars (Though this was more about the sailors from Lübeck setting the ship on fire when boarding it with predictable results) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronan_(ship)
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Jul 16, 2015 20:19
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(except for the case of canister shot, which was literally a keg of musket balls, but that was generally a "keep the guns from being overrun" last-ditch effort).
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Zorak of Michigan posted:When my daughter asked me about the Pacific Theater in WWII, I told her it was easiest to understand if you assumed that Japan never had a war plan in the sense we mean it. They had a conviction that Heaven would ensure their victory, and a rough scheme for putting Heaven in an excellent position to intervene in their favor.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:24
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Rent-A-Cop posted:They had a plan, but it was pretty much a "One good punch" style of plan. They knew from the outset that a war of attrition would not be in their favor and tried for a knockout blow. To their credit, the first few months of the war went very, very badly for the US. What Japanese planners misjudged was what the American response would be. After it became apparent that the knockout punch hadn't worked the Navy kept trying for another even bigger punch while the Army went for fanatical no-retreat-no-surrender hoping that the US wouldn't be up to that level of blodletting. As far as I can tell, they decided they would be having the war, and only then looked to see how winnable it would be. Between that and some truly awful analysis of the Russo-Japanese war and WWI, they figured on the decisive battle and hitting the US' morale as something that would let them win. Once they did that they stuck to that all war, hoping that finally something would let them win.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:28
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Zorak of Michigan posted:When my daughter asked me about the Pacific Theater in WWII, I told her it was easiest to understand if you assumed that Japan never had a war plan in the sense we mean it. They had a conviction that Heaven would ensure their victory, and a rough scheme for putting Heaven in an excellent position to intervene in their favor. I always assumed that the plan was "take decadent western resources in the Pacific, then take Hawaii. Make peace with weak American ape-men by giving back Hawaii, keep empire." Your version though is hilarious and is kinda what they thought anyway, I just might steal it
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Jul 16, 2015 20:35
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Hitting the other guy really really hard with the opening punch and then making it very costly for him to claw back the position he had before the war started is not, on its face, a bad strategy, but the opening punch could have been stronger (no carriers at Pearl) and the whole "making it very costly" part never quite materialized. If it was going to work, they should have been bleeding the USN white from the word go, not taking 1 to 1 losses as in Coral Sea, much less outright losing trades as in Midway or Guadalcanal.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:37
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Delivery McGee posted:
Ah, man, that means that the naval missions from Assassin's Creed III were even less accurate than I thought. Great stuff though.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:42
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gradenko_2000 posted:Hitting the other guy really really hard with the opening punch and then making it very costly for him to claw back the position he had before the war started is not, on its face, a bad strategy, but the opening punch could have been stronger (no carriers at Pearl) and the whole "making it very costly" part never quite materialized. It pretty much seems like the Japanese decided that to win the war they needed to win the battle, came up with a maybe for the battle and went from there without making sure they would win the war that way. They somehow missed they were going up against the world's largest power, not the b-team of Imperial Russia, the dysfunctional backwater of Europe.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:42
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Did that emphasis on craftsmanship interfere with their ability to develop? If it takes you three times as along to build an engine, then by implication,it takes you three times as along to iterate design improvements along the way to having a war-ready engine. Japan kind of put the quality over quantity model in place with just about everything including their aircraft. As has been said, they knew they weren't going to win a war of attrition, so it made some sense to have fewer, higher quality things than lots and lots of lower quality things. It certainly did make upgrading equipment along the way more difficult, but again, that was something of a conscious tradeoff...if they were in a war long enough to require significantly new things, they were going to lose, and old planes are just as effective as new ones at flying into ships on purpose.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:43
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bewbies posted:Japan kind of put the quality over quantity model in place with just about everything including their aircraft. As has been said, they knew they weren't going to win a war of attrition, so it made some sense to have fewer, higher quality things than lots and lots of lower quality things. It certainly did make upgrading equipment along the way more difficult, but again, that was something of a conscious tradeoff...if they were in a war long enough to require significantly new things, they were going to lose, and old planes are just as effective as new ones at flying into ships on purpose.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:52
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Khalkin Gol and Lake Khasan should've been a wake-up call to the Japanese.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:54
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Japan chat must be something that happens every three months here or so.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:54
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Rent-A-Cop posted:I don't know if that really holds water. Japanese production quality, especially post about 1943, was pretty shoddy on a lot of things. Late-war Arisakas for example have a real nasty reputation for blowing up in the shooter's face. Maybe aircraft were an exception, but a lot of Japanese Army equipment started the war obsolete and got worse from there. Pretty sure those Last Ditch Arisakas were 1945 built examples. I don't know if I'd go so far as saying a lot of stuff was obsolete. Certainly the tankettes were, but I've always seen it more as their equipment had issues or quirks, not completely obsolete.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:58
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Rent-A-Cop posted:I don't know if that really holds water. Japanese production quality, especially post about 1943, was pretty shoddy on a lot of things. Late-war Arisakas for example have a real nasty reputation for blowing up in the shooter's face. Maybe aircraft were an exception, but a lot of Japanese Army equipment started the war obsolete and got worse from there. I was talking about their armament industry (and really, their entire military) prior to the attack on the US. Practically everything got heavily diluted the longer things went on.
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Jul 16, 2015 21:01
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Pretty sure those Last Ditch Arisakas were 1945 built examples. I don't know if I'd go so far as saying a lot of stuff was obsolete. Certainly the tankettes were, but I've always seen it more as their equipment had issues or quirks, not completely obsolete.
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Jul 16, 2015 21:06
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JcDent posted:Japan chat must be something that happens every three months here or so. Like the cherry blossoms blooming on the slopes of Mt. Fuji, all things in their season. Soon they will drift away, to be replaced by questions ranking generals in the ACW.
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Jul 16, 2015 21:13
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Khalkin Gol and Lake Khasan should've been a wake-up call to the Japanese. They were, at least for the Army. Then the Navy went "ahaha look at these idiots, watch how it's done".
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Jul 16, 2015 21:14
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sullat posted:Like the cherry blossoms blooming on the slopes of Mt. Fuji, all things in their season. Soon they will drift away, to be replaced by questions ranking generals in the ACW. And then someone will innocently wander into the thread and ask about tank destroyers.
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Jul 16, 2015 21:15
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Pretty sure those Last Ditch Arisakas were 1945 built examples. I don't know if I'd go so far as saying a lot of stuff was obsolete. Certainly the tankettes were, but I've always seen it more as their equipment had issues or quirks, not completely obsolete. This is what I've read as well. Their 1945 guns were rough at best and unsafe to use at worst, but that was the end of the war. Throughout the main years it was more a problem with weird and bad design choices rather than outright poor manufacturing, though I think each year the quality gradually decreased (like using inferior wood and doing less aesthetic finishing work)
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Jul 16, 2015 21:15
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gradenko_2000 posted:Hitting the other guy really really hard with the opening punch and then making it very costly for him to claw back the position he had before the war started is not, on its face, a bad strategy, but the opening punch could have been stronger (no carriers at Pearl) and the whole "making it very costly" part never quite materialized. Eh, I don't think it mattered how hard they hit. They fact that they hit the USA at all, with a surprise attack no less, inflamed public opinion so much that total war to unconditional surrender was pretty much inevitable. Taking out all the PacFleet carriers in '41 or '42 wouldn't have changed the public opinion enough to get the negotiated settlement the Japanese wanted. All those Essex class CVs were rolling off the shipyard and into the war no matter what happened to their predecessors. Ultimately, I think it was very much a "Fighting the Last War" thing for the Japanese. They were trying to repeat the success of the Russo-Japanese War without being fully cognizant of the differences between Czarist Russia of 1900 and the USA of 1941. Granted, they were not alone in this, and even the big American-booster Churchill was shocked by the ability of the Americans to go from zero to nuking your rear end in only four years (maybe five if you count the desultory move towards a war footing in early 1941). JcDent posted:Japan chat must be something that happens every three months here or so. Well, sure. Beats the weekly "Panzer Vor", doesn't it? jng2058 fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Jul 16, 2015 |
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Jul 16, 2015 21:18
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Ensign Expendable posted:They were, at least for the Army. Then the Navy went "ahaha look at these idiots, watch how it's done". I have heard that Tojo said something snarky when he found out about Midway.
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Jul 16, 2015 21:25
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jng2058 posted:Eh, I don't think it mattered how hard they hit. They fact that they hit the USA at all, with a surprise attack no less, inflamed public opinion so much that total war to unconditional surrender was pretty much inevitable. Taking out all the PacFleet carriers in '41 or '42 wouldn't have changed the public opinion enough to get the negotiated settlement the Japanese wanted. All those Essex class CVs were rolling off the shipyard and into the war no matter what happened to their predecessors. I think that you are right; but one small thing I've learned hanging around the mil history circles is that if you are in a position where you think you have to go to war, your military will make up a plan where you could conceivably win. It don't really matter how realistic it is, or how much of a long shot it is. The Iraqis in the first Gulf War had a plan, and they thought it was a good one, based on 1) their experiences in the Iran-Iraq war, and 2) decadent westerners not willing to take casualties. So they dreamed up this scenario where the Allies were going to have to fight World War 1 style battles in the desert, and they'd surely quit when the casualties started to mount. It's kinda the same way with the Japanese in World War 2.
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Jul 16, 2015 21:26
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So here's a bit of Gay Black Hapsburg to break up the WW2 chat: If by some miracle the Spanish Armada had kept its poo poo together long enough to transport the Spanish Army from Flanders to England (from what I understand that would require a few Gay Black Hapsburgs in and of itself), was there any realistic chance of keeping that Army supplied or reinforced while it tromped around England? Would they have been able to keep themselves going and battle-worthy through forage and plunder alone, or would they have required supplies from Flanders/Spain? And if they required the supplies, did Spain have the infrastructure needed to maintain those supply lines and keep the English from privateering them to hell at the same time?
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Jul 16, 2015 21:28
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Nebakenezzer posted:I think that you are right; but one small thing I've learned hanging around the mil history circles is that if you are in a position where you think you have to go to war, your military will make up a plan where you could conceivably win. It don't really matter how realistic it is, or how much of a long shot it is. The Iraqis in the first Gulf War had a plan, and they thought it was a good one, based on 1) their experiences in the Iran-Iraq war, and 2) decadent westerners not willing to take casualties. So they dreamed up this scenario where the Allies were going to have to fight World War 1 style battles in the desert, and they'd surely quit when the casualties started to mount. Yeah, Yamamoto's war career pretty much reads like that. He did everything he could (which wasn't much) to prevent going to war with the Americans, and then when he was ordered to do so anyway shrugged and said, "well, here's the best I've got..."
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Jul 16, 2015 21:31
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Tomn posted:So here's a bit of Gay Black Hapsburg to break up the WW2 chat: If by some miracle the Spanish Armada had kept its poo poo together long enough to transport the Spanish Army from Flanders to England (from what I understand that would require a few Gay Black Hapsburgs in and of itself), was there any realistic chance of keeping that Army supplied or reinforced while it tromped around England? Would they have been able to keep themselves going and battle-worthy through forage and plunder alone, or would they have required supplies from Flanders/Spain? And if they required the supplies, did Spain have the infrastructure needed to maintain those supply lines and keep the English from privateering them to hell at the same time?
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Jul 16, 2015 21:42
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What were the Japanese POW camps like anyways? That is to say, the POW camps that America operated that they put Japanese into. I don't know of a better way to phrase that. I heard that the Germans got a pretty great setup all things considered.
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Jul 17, 2015 00:23
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SlothfulCobra posted:What were the Japanese POW camps like anyways? Pretty much exactly the same. They were all constructed according to the Geneva Convention, which required that facilities be built to the same minimum standard that would be built for an equivalent rank in your own military. So most enlisted shared bunk beds, were given access to basic medical care, and were expected to perform menial labor. During construction everyone - including the American guards - lived in tent cities because that was the legal requirement. Actually the American-built Japanese civilian internment camps were built to the same standards as well, they just get a bad rap because of the initial overcrowding and the civilian expectation that they should get more than 40 square ft of space. Kaal fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jul 17, 2015 |
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Jul 17, 2015 00:36
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JcDent posted:Oh, and I recently finished reading Achtung Panzer (midblowing book for me), and they mention that Guderian was too optimistic on synthetic rubber and fuel. How exactly does synthetic rubber and fuel happen? Re: synthetic fuel, anyone know why the Germans never went for ethanol? In Sweden most military vehicles (including tanks) plus most agricultural machinery that wasn't practical to run on wood gas were run on ethanol/gasoline mixes in either 50-50, 75-25 or 85-15 proportions (everything that is old is new again, today you can buy 85-15 ethanol/gasoline as "E85" at most gas stations). When speccing out engines for tank production the contract included a clause that said the engines were to be factory-tuned for 50-50 gasoline/ethanol but should be easily adjustable to run on either 85-15 or pure ethanol if the need arose. 100% pure gasoline was almost exclusively reserved for the air force. The navy operated its own oil mining facility - they mined alum shale and roasted it in huge coal-fired ovens and extracted oil; later the same location was used to mine uranium for the Swedish nuclear program.  Swedish conscripts refueling their tanks with "motyl" (motor alcohol). Strängnäs, 1942. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Jul 17, 2015 |
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Jul 17, 2015 01:20
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Kaal posted:Pretty much exactly the same. They were all constructed according to the Geneva Convention, which required that facilities be built to the same minimum standard that would be built for an equivalent rank in your own military. So most enlisted shared bunk beds, were given access to basic medical care, and were expected to perform menial labor. During construction everyone - including the American guards - lived in tent cities because that was the legal requirement. Actually the American-built Japanese civilian internment camps were built to the same standards as well, they just get a bad rap because of the initial overcrowding and the civilian expectation that they should get more than 40 square ft of space. The internment camps actually got a bad rap because the US government was unconstitutionally detaining American citizens.
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Jul 17, 2015 01:51
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The internment camps actually got a bad rap because the US government was unconstitutionally detaining American citizens. Well none of the internment camps held American citizens, you're referring to the assembly and relocation centers. Which, actually, ended up being ruled constitutional when the Supreme Court ruled on the issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States
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Jul 17, 2015 01:57
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