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Contingency Plan posted:In the aftermath of the American Civil War, I'm curious about the post-war fate of soldiers who fought for the Confederacy in the border states of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. While many men fought for the South in these states, these states remained in the union. After the war, were these men pillorized as traitors in their communities? In the South there was the reconstruction regime but I've never heard anything about the treatment of ex-Confederates in the border states post-war. The Lesser Bonapartes did a pretty good series on the Jesse James gang which covers that very thing. Try this: http://thelesserbonapartes.libsyn.com/the-james-gang-part-i-missouri-loves-company
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Jul 26, 2015 10:13
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Didn't the Christie suspension--when connected to road wheels--make the tanks run stupidly fast? I mean, by modern standards, even. Yeah, saw this citation on Wikipedia. 104 MPH in 1931. The point of the Christie convertible tracks thing is that you linked the drive wheels to the rearmost roadwheels with a chain and removed the tracks, converting them to wheeled vehicles. And it doesn't have anything to do with Christie's suspension design, just happened to be the same dude doing both.
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Jul 26, 2015 12:08
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Special Two-In-One Boners Update 100 Years Ago 25th July: The Ottomans are falling back to Kut-al-Amara, cue the dramatic chords and foreboding. Some Schutztruppe lay siege to Saisi in Zambia, led by a competitor for oldest combatant of the war. A full-scale Russian retreat from Malazgirt is now in progress, and Kenneth Best goes to church in Alexandria. Today: General Stopford is such an utterly tragic figure. It's not his fault that they dragged him off half-pay. He's trying to use a little common sense, and pay attention to experienced subordinates like his Chief of Staff who are telling him that Sir Ian Hamilton's orders are completely unfeasible. He just lacks the vision and nous (and the military intelligence) to see that Reed's experience isn't directly transferable to Suvla Bay. Elsewhere, Mimi and Toutou are heading for Lake Tanganyika at best speed, although soon they'll have to be man-hauled. The siege of Saisi continues, and there's a horrific personal account from Second Isonzo, describing conditions on Mount San Michele about now. It's bad enough without all the fighting going on.
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Jul 26, 2015 12:56
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I found this on the Rock Paper Shotgun PC Gaming blog, basically it is a video cast where Historians basically watch, analyse and discuss the themes and elements of games both using history as a setting or design choice. It is called History Respawned, check the channel out here.
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Jul 26, 2015 16:22
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Didn't the Christie suspension--when connected to road wheels--make the tanks run stupidly fast? I mean, by modern standards, even. Yeah, saw this citation on Wikipedia. 104 MPH in 1931. Yeah, on wheels, and only for a short time. The rubber tended to start melting at high speeds.
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Jul 26, 2015 17:51
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Contingency Plan posted:In the aftermath of the American Civil War, I'm curious about the post-war fate of soldiers who fought for the Confederacy in the border states of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. While many men fought for the South in these states, these states remained in the union. After the war, were these men pillorized as traitors in their communities? In the South there was the reconstruction regime but I've never heard anything about the treatment of ex-Confederates in the border states post-war. I doubt it. Lots of people in the border states were sympathetic to the Confederacy, that's why they were border states. I mean they'd not get a government pension or anything but I doubt they got too much of a hard time in general.
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Jul 26, 2015 20:20
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A lot of people who fought for the south who came from those states did lose their property, have their families affected, etc.
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Jul 26, 2015 20:33
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GreyjoyBastard posted:I could probably cobble together an estimate of the state of the Autobahn if I could be bothered to look up the pounds-per-square-inch calculations for a Leopard 2. I can probably guess based on personal experience: Many years ago, the tanks stationed in our old hometown moved out because their unit got replaced and they had to go to another base. The tanks moved through with special protection-thingies on the treads to prevent road damage. So we then stood around at our windows all along the street the tanks had to move through and enjoyed the view of a hundred tanks rolling past. A day later I went out for some errands. Just as I crossed the street, I saw the curbstone near me looking weird. I took a closer look, and I saw a part of the curbstone was just sheered off and ground down to fine dust. Apparently one of the slow moving tanks had accidently hit that part of the curb. So yeah, that part of the Autobahn probably wasn't in good shape after that experiment. I imagine some sort of finely ground gravel path in that Leo's wake.
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Jul 26, 2015 20:53
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I'm curious at what point soldiers stopped wearing solid bright colors and generally started wearing greens and tans and stuff that blended in with their environments? Also I'm curious about what factors determined the colors of specific uniform colors through a lot of history. Why did British soldiers in the American Revolution generally have Red Coats? Why did Union soldiers wear blue while Confederates chose Gray?
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Jul 26, 2015 23:25
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Kanine posted:I'm curious at what point soldiers stopped wearing solid bright colors and generally started wearing greens and tans and stuff that blended in with their environments? Also I'm curious about what factors determined the colors of specific uniform colors through a lot of history. Why did British soldiers in the American Revolution generally have Red Coats? Why did Union soldiers wear blue while Confederates chose Gray? My personal answer to that, but I'm no historian, it's that it was soon as camouflage became more important than unit cohesion. Also, miliraty tends conservative, so I guess the game is over by WWI but some people took its sweet time to notice.
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Jul 26, 2015 23:38
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The reason why uniforms were colourful up to the late 19th century was mainly for cohesion with a tiny bit of fashion/frugality on the top. When hundreds of muskets fire multiple volleys the smoke gets pretty thick and you need some way to ensure who was who. As for why certain dyes for certain nations were picked it really depended on how cheap/avaliable certain dyes were for mass production.
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Jul 27, 2015 00:14
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Kanine posted:I'm curious at what point soldiers stopped wearing solid bright colors and generally started wearing greens and tans and stuff that blended in with their environments? Also I'm curious about what factors determined the colors of specific uniform colors through a lot of history. Why did British soldiers in the American Revolution generally have Red Coats? Why did Union soldiers wear blue while Confederates chose Gray? Different armies changed at different times. The British switched to Khakis after the Boer War, while the French kept wearing bright red pants until 1915. The Germans wisely made a switch in 1907. Most early modern states let regimental commanders equip their own units, so it's impossible to really say why a particular colour was chosen. There were all sorts of colours showing up, which was easily confusing. When the time came to standardize uniforms, governments needed to look at the expense of acquiring dyes, as well as the image that certain colours produced. Raw linen is gray, so gray uniforms were very cheap. But few countries wanted their armies to look so poor. The British chose red dye because it was still fairly cheap, and already somewhat associated with the British army. It was suitably unique from the rest of Europe as well, who preferred white uniforms. The Royal French and Hapsburg armies both used white uniforms, which must have been a shitshow. White uniforms thus had some royal symbolism, so after the revolution the French army switched to dark blue. The source of dye was also important. Most dyes suitable for dyeing mass-produced uniforms came from India, which was controlled by Britain. The dark blue in French and Prussian uniforms were both made from indigo from India. When Napoleon was blockaded by the British, he was forced to raise regiments dressed in white. During WWI, the French found that they couldn't use synthetic red dye, because the only major sources were factories in Germany. The Confederates didn't really get a standard uniform until late into the war. Gray uniforms were still the cheapest though, so it was the right choice given their lack of choice dyes. In the early war, militia troops on both sides wore whatever they wanted, so there were blue confederates, gray yankees, and zouaves on both sides. Dyes and pigments are surprisingly limited resources. Certain colours were absolutely impossible to produce economically until we came up with chemical dyemaking processes. Dyes don't all react to sunlight in the same way either, you don't want to have to keep redyeing uniforms every few weeks. Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Jul 27, 2015 |
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Jul 27, 2015 00:30
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Kanine posted:I'm curious at what point soldiers stopped wearing solid bright colors and generally started wearing greens and tans and stuff that blended in with their environments? Also I'm curious about what factors determined the colors of specific uniform colors through a lot of history. Why did British soldiers in the American Revolution generally have Red Coats? Why did Union soldiers wear blue while Confederates chose Gray? The invention of an effective smokeless powder, pyrocellulose, in 1884 is the factor that made it a good idea to wear earth tones instead of bright colours. As that rapidly became popular among advanced militaries, battlefields were no longer covered in thick waves of smoke, and primitive camouflage colours were more worthwhile. As for specific factors, Slim Jim Pickens did a good job explaining all your other questions. The French were the last Great Power to change from brightly coloured uniforms, and any other stragglers learned the lessons of the Great War and similarly made the change at that time.
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Jul 27, 2015 00:55
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Kanine posted:I'm curious at what point soldiers stopped wearing solid bright colors and generally started wearing greens and tans and stuff that blended in with their environments? Also I'm curious about what factors determined the colors of specific uniform colors through a lot of history. Why did British soldiers in the American Revolution generally have Red Coats? Why did Union soldiers wear blue while Confederates chose Gray? Rudimentary trying to not stick out like the proverbial sore thumb started with the British rifle regiments during the Napoleonic wars. Sharpe and his guys were the 18th-century equivalent of modern Rangers/snipers, so they wore dark green uniforms with black trim to blend in. The Brits wore red during the revolution because they always had (probably originally because red dye was cheap and plentiful). Same with the Union in the ACW -- presumably they originally chose blue because it was the opposite of British red. Colorful uniforms helped with unit cohesion on the blackpowder battlefield -- easier to see who's who through the smoke when your whole army is wearing the same color, and each regiment has a different color trim. As for when it ended, almost all armies (except, of course, the fashion-conscious French) were dressed in drab earth tones by WWI (the French were still wearing blue coats and red trousers as the everyday field uniform well into WWI). Camouflage uniforms in the modern sense, with splotchy color to break up one's outline, began to be adopted by the USMC during WWII and became standard for US forces midway through our involvement in Vietnam. Presumably the rest of the world adopted them on a similar time scale, the Americans are just the ones I know best.
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Jul 27, 2015 01:20
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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SeanBeansShako posted:I found this on the Rock Paper Shotgun PC Gaming blog, basically it is a video cast where Historians basically watch, analyse and discuss the themes and elements of games both using history as a setting or design choice. I hope they do Civ, bring in a postmodern analysts, and make nerds freak the gently caress out like they did last time.
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Jul 27, 2015 01:40
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In historical accounts of the late Roman empire, the armies of the Romans and the northern European tribes are often described as becoming more like each other as time went on. My question is did Gothic and Gaul armies really become more professional, adopting some kind of legion-like organization with proto-centurion NCOs? If this doesn't make any sense, this question was inspired by something Dan Carlin said in a Common Sense episode (number 93; with Sam Harris) where he said some historian said that Barbarian tribes compensated for Roman Technology was by being " harsher, more badass and more dangerous on an old school level" Now, Dan probably mangled the exact quote, but it's still a 180 from what I thought the current historical view was. I think the historian was Hans Delbrück, but since it was audio only I just typed what I thought was spoken into google and picking the top result. The context this was brought up in is also pretty interesting in light of the discussion in this thread about how important UAVs were in the Ukrainian conflict. It was about Russian soldiers in that conflict looked "old school badass" and how they'd beat drone operators in fight. If you want to hear it for yourself in was in episode 93, starting at 2:12:10.
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Jul 27, 2015 03:14
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Phobophilia posted:I hope they do Civ, bring in a postmodern analysts, and make nerds freak the gently caress out like they did last time. Haha, over 600 dislikes. Man that is sad.
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Jul 27, 2015 03:28
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Monocled Falcon posted:In historical accounts of the late Roman empire, the armies of the Romans and the northern European tribes are often described as becoming more like each other as time went on. Yeah, that "barbarians were hardcore motherfuckers" thing is the height of the scholarship ca. WW1. The long and short of it is that the Romans and the various barbarian peoples on their periphery moved towards each other between roughly the 3rd and 6th centuries. The various Germanic tribes romanized, especially those who lived in direct contact with the Romans on the frontier, and the Romans adopted more and more "barbarian" practices. This is complicated by the fact that many of the barbarian leaders were men who had done service in Roman armies - and not just foederatii. A fair number of them became prominent generals who engaged with elite Latin society and held Roman citizenship. Meanwhile the Romans were allowing more and more barbarians into the Western Empire, both to serve in armies and to work land in central and western Gaul that had been depopulated over the past few centuries. There's a really great book that deals extensively with this transformation in its first half. Patrick Geary's "Before France & Germany: The creation and transformation of the merovingian world." I strongly recommend it. It's very readable and a quick lead at ~230 pages.
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Jul 27, 2015 03:55
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Monocled Falcon posted:In historical accounts of the late Roman empire, the armies of the Romans and the northern European tribes are often described as becoming more like each other as time went on. it was more the inverse. The Roman armies got less professional and less disciplined as time went on. not that the Gothic or Gallic (incidentally, there were no Gallic armies in late antiquity, the Gauls had been genocided centuries before) armies were slathering hordes of barbarians beforehand mind.
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Jul 27, 2015 03:57
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There's a great line in Guns of August about how zouave pants and elan weren't a great match for feldgrau and realistic triaining.
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Jul 27, 2015 03:58
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Phobophilia posted:I hope they do Civ, bring in a postmodern analysts, and make nerds freak the gently caress out like they did last time.  haha wow
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Jul 27, 2015 04:48
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Delivery McGee posted:Rudimentary trying to not stick out like the proverbial sore thumb started with the British rifle regiments during the Napoleonic wars. Sharpe and his guys were the 18th-century equivalent of modern Rangers/snipers, so they wore dark green uniforms with black trim to blend in. When you look that swag, who needs red and stuff?
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Jul 27, 2015 05:12
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Koramei posted:not that the Gothic or Gallic (incidentally, there were no Gallic armies in late antiquity, the Gauls had been genocided centuries before) armies were slathering hordes of barbarians beforehand mind. This is silly. Classical era cultures just doesn't follow our modern understanding of race and ethnicity , so assigning the label of genocide to anything is highly inappropriate. In this case, it's also completely false. The Romans didn't exterminate the Gauls, or their culture. Gaul was a part of the Roman Empire for 500 years, and by the end of it the culture of its inhabitants had shifted to something neither Gallic nor Republican Roman. SeanBeansShako posted:Haha, over 600 dislikes. Man that is sad. I agree with everything he said, but I still found the video annoying. Maybe it's just something about youtube analysis videos that makes people mad.
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Jul 27, 2015 05:17
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Camouflage actually dates back to at least Julius Caesar when his scout ships were painted blue-green and had sailors wear identical uniforms to match the color of the sea. The nature of black powder battlefields (with close-range combat and an emphasis on formation tactics and drills) meant that it was more important for units to be easily identifiable on the battlefield than it was for them to hide, but light infantry like riflemen didn't have such restrictions and could afford to wear earth tones to hide better. Standardized uniforms in somewhat camouflaged colors (like khaki) came about when rifles started becoming standard issue and European and American armies started fighting opponents on equal footing with the same technology, which made the open field tactics of smoothbore muskets a good way to get slaughtered. World War I saw the advent of highly accurate artillery guided by spotters, and soldiers began painting their field guns and tanks in disruptive multi-colored patterns to better disguise them against the background. World War II is when camouflage really became a big thing, in part because it was the first war where soldiers started truly acting as individuals on the battlefield. The chaos of urban and jungle combat destroyed what cohesion lasted through World War I, with soldiers no longer fighting in large groups on open battlefields and operating in smaller units like individual squads or platoons. It was now more valuable for soldiers to be hidden than to be identifiable to a commanding officer directing the course of battle.
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Jul 27, 2015 05:37
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:I agree with everything he said, but I still found the video annoying. Maybe it's just something about youtube analysis videos that makes people mad.
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Jul 27, 2015 05:48
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Delivery McGee posted:Camouflage uniforms in the modern sense, with splotchy color to break up one's outline, began to be adopted by the USMC during WWII and became standard for US forces midway through our involvement in Vietnam. Presumably the rest of the world adopted them on a similar time scale, the Americans are just the ones I know best. Actually, it was first used by the Germans in 1935-7 and mostly by the SS. Modern Flecktarn traces its roots back to that pattern. USMC Frog skin/Duck Hunter (Is that really the name?) wasn't used until 1942. Edit: And apparently the Weimar Republic had camouflage way back in 1931 as Splittertarn Edit#2: The Italians seem to be the first with a pattern from 1929 "Telo Mimetico" Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Jul 27, 2015 |
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Jul 27, 2015 06:09
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Monocled Falcon posted:
PFFFFFT HAAHAHAHAHAHAHA Delbrück has been torn apart for a long long time. Citing him would be like citing Charles Oman or, for a more generally accessible comparison, citing a social darwinist for a study on human intelligence. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Jul 27, 2015 |
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Jul 27, 2015 07:12
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Actually, it was first used by the Germans in 1935-7 and mostly by the SS. Modern Flecktarn traces its roots back to that pattern. USMC Frog skin/Duck Hunter (Is that really the name?) wasn't used until 1942. If you want to be really specific, camouflaged soldier uniforms started becoming common back in the days of muzzleloading rifles, when rangers and other light infantry wore earth tones to better blend in with the background. It just wasn't until the 1930s that we began earnestly developing specific camo patterns for standardized uniforms.
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Jul 27, 2015 07:18
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chitoryu12 posted:If you want to be really specific, camouflaged soldier uniforms started becoming common back in the days of muzzleloading rifles, when rangers and other light infantry wore earth tones to better blend in with the background. It just wasn't until the 1930s that we began earnestly developing specific camo patterns for standardized uniforms. Which is why I quoted the part where he talked about camouflage pattern uniforms and his statement that the USMC were the first. 
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Jul 27, 2015 07:22
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Arquinsiel posted:I think it's because all his stuff seems to be "take a thing you like, explain why it's actually terrible". Basically the impression you get from Feminist Frequency or most everything on Escapist: they take something that people adore, explain how it's worse than hitler, and then they look upon the nerds, and wonder why they're not welcoming to new blood. But this ain't the thread for that, and I've avoided getting into anything decisively gamegatey so far, so... how did the 95th Regiment of Foot get around such issues as marauding cavalry and communication issues?
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Jul 27, 2015 07:42
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No one said that Civ is worse than hitler you stupid fucker.
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Jul 27, 2015 08:03
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:PFFFFFT HAAHAHAHAHAHAHA Look, his claim to fame is almost being put into a frankenstein monster, you can't expect too much from him.
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Jul 27, 2015 08:34
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Phobophilia posted:No one said that Civ is worse than hitler you stupid fucker.
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Jul 27, 2015 09:11
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Phobophilia posted:No one said that Civ is worse than hitler you stupid fucker. I didn't say that anyone said that Civ is worse that Adolf, I was just commenting on the connection between game analysis in general and nerd backlash. I'm sorry if my hyperbole caused harm.
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Jul 27, 2015 09:35
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I've read and listened to some of that game criticism, and it's really, really mild. I really don't see why people overreact to it.WoodrowSkillson posted:Look, his claim to fame is almost being put into a frankenstein monster, you can't expect too much from him. OK, now I'm curious. What's this about?
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Jul 27, 2015 10:09
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my dad posted:I've read and listened to some of that game criticism, and it's really, really mild. I really don't see why people overreact to it. I, uh, won't say anything about it. Do you have anything specific in mind?
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Jul 27, 2015 10:17
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my dad posted:OK, now I'm curious. What's this about? 
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Jul 27, 2015 11:07
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JcDent posted:how did the 95th Regiment of Foot get around such issues as marauding cavalry and communication issues? They operated in the context of regular infantry who could provide them the mass to actually take and hold positions, but skirmishers proved very valuable and effective for all sides throughout the Napoleonic Wars. Their tactics were fairly typical for that kind of infantry- Voltigeurs, etc.
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Jul 27, 2015 11:36
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Panzeh posted:They operated in the context of regular infantry who could provide them the mass to actually take and hold positions, but skirmishers proved very valuable and effective for all sides throughout the Napoleonic Wars. Their tactics were fairly typical for that kind of infantry- Voltigeurs, etc. So, they didn't stand shoulder to shoulder like in some episodes of Sharpe, yes? How did they/other types of infantry like that dealt with Cav? Did they have have a part of the regiment as regular line infantry, or were they attached to other regiments? I know very little about Napoleonic warfare, other than that I wouldn't want to be a soldier back then.
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Jul 27, 2015 11:41
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JcDent posted:So, they didn't stand shoulder to shoulder like in some episodes of Sharpe, yes? How did they/other types of infantry like that dealt with Cav? Line infantry tended to form tight squares to deal with cavalry. Skirmishers usually took shelter in the squares when cavalry came. The 95th didn't fight as line infantry, but they tended to accompany line infantry regiments, being in the same brigade.
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Jul 27, 2015 12:15
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