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Tomn posted:I take it parole was at least reasonably well-respected, then? Well, sort of. On one hand it was incredibly easy to go back to the fight if you wanted to. The records that indicated you were a paroled prisoner were often days or weeks away, and if you'd been caught and paroled as "John Smith of Grover County" and told them the second time that you're "Jon Smythe of Harlan County" how the hell are they going to verify that? On the other hand, there were a lot of soldiers who'd had enough and used their parole as a "Get Out of the War Free" card, especially in the latter half of the war after Grant shut down the prisoner exchanges. Hell, given the desertion rate of the CSA in '64 and '65, a lot of guys didn't wait for parole to say "gently caress this" and head home.
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Aug 13, 2015 17:00
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Hazzard posted:Didn't that happen not that long ago in Africa? Food aid was sent and it was just taken by the local warlords and perpetuated the war going on in the region for a while. Yes, Somalia in the early 1990s. Mohamed Farrah Aidid seized UN food shipments for himself and killed UN soldiers, which is what eventually led to the United States sending in Rangers and Delta Force to seize him. Contrary to what the film Black Hawk Down shows, however, the dramatic opening scene where Aidid's men gun down hundreds of civilians to keep them from taking food didn't happen and by the point of the Battle of Mogadishu the majority of the food shipments were successfully making it through. The film also leaves out that the battle occurred after the UN had decided to move on from simply handing out food to actually trying to rebuild Somalia, as well as virtually all of the political reasons behind why the attempted capture of Aidid was undertaken. It makes it look like they were just trying to take down African Hitler to stop him from starving thousands of people, which wasn't exactly the case. Much of the realism of that film was in its portrayal of the battle itself, not the buildup to the attack or the political fallout afterward. While reading up on the subject, I did find one interesting look at how American war films are made. While it's common for them to show soldiers discussing their motivations for the conflict and questioning whether or not they're doing the right thing, it's very rare for the films to actually explore their objections in detail.
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Aug 13, 2015 17:53
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chitoryu12 posted:While reading up on the subject, I did find one interesting look at how American war films are made. While it's common for them to show soldiers discussing their motivations for the conflict and questioning whether or not they're doing the right thing, it's very rare for the films to actually explore their objections in detail. Apparently that's because the US army for a long time has loaned equipment to people making films and then getting some input on the script. Forrest Gump was getting military support for a while and then they found out about the talk about Vietnam in it. You don't want people opposing what the military is doing to get too much of a speech, which is why pro war films tend to be exciting than anti war films.
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Aug 13, 2015 18:39
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Hazzard posted:Apparently that's because the US army for a long time has loaned equipment to people making films and then getting some input on the script. Forrest Gump was getting military support for a while and then they found out about the talk about Vietnam in it. You don't want people opposing what the military is doing to get too much of a speech, which is why pro war films tend to be exciting than anti war films. Well, if you show war as exciting, you're not being that much anti-war!
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Aug 13, 2015 20:17
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Hazzard posted:Apparently that's because the US army for a long time has loaned equipment to people making films and then getting some input on the script. Forrest Gump was getting military support for a while and then they found out about the talk about Vietnam in it. You don't want people opposing what the military is doing to get too much of a speech, which is why pro war films tend to be exciting than anti war films. As a counterpoint, the army did lend equipment for Stripes. And enlistment went up.
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Aug 13, 2015 21:37
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Whoops, nearly forgot to  100 Years Ago Sir Ian Hamilton is a man with amazing reserves of dignity, patience, and willingness to give his fellow man the benefit of the doubt. He has the patience of a saint; but even he can only stands as much as he can stands, and he can't stands any more. He spells it out for Lord Kitchener as bluntly as he's able (which isn't very much; he really is incorrigibly pleasant and good-tempered), but the message is clear; he wants Stopford, Hammersley, and Mahon out on their ears as an opening bid. Meanwhile, there's highly disturbing rumblings coming from Bulgaria (traceable to recent large shipments of sauerkraut), and General Cadorna is set to renew the Isonzo Human Fertiliser Project. You know, because the war hasn't been brutal enough lately.
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Aug 13, 2015 22:04
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There was the whole plan with the FP-45 Liberator to drop super cheap pistols on enemy territory so that local resistance units could use them. I don't know if it ever actually happened though.
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Aug 13, 2015 22:17
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SlothfulCobra posted:There was the whole plan with the FP-45 Liberator to drop super cheap pistols on enemy territory so that local resistance units could use them. I don't know if it ever actually happened though. Very limited numbers were dropped, mostly into China and the Philippines.
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Aug 13, 2015 22:35
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:As a counterpoint, the army did lend equipment for Stripes. Who wouldn't want the chance to fight in a Tactical Winnebago?
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Aug 13, 2015 22:46
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SlothfulCobra posted:There was the whole plan with the FP-45 Liberator to drop super cheap pistols on enemy territory so that local resistance units could use them. I don't know if it ever actually happened though. I'm pretty sure those little guns were so terrible they were really only used as something to hide in a pocket to use to cap a single soldier in the head up close and then steal his gun.
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Aug 13, 2015 23:11
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Kanine posted:I'm pretty sure those little guns were so terrible they were really only used as something to hide in a pocket to use to cap a single soldier in the head up close and then steal his gun. That was the explicit point. They were designed to be marginally better than stabbing someone in the back.
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Aug 13, 2015 23:12
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Also, they were still lethal. By airdropping millions upon millions of guns (and in turn, millions upon millions of rounds of .45 ACP with them) to partisans, the Germans would be forever paranoid. There's no reasonable way that they could confiscate every single one, and any civilian could be hiding a pistol under their coat just waiting for a sentry to turn their back. It was theorized that it would have a deep psychological effect on the occupiers.
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Aug 13, 2015 23:25
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Tevery Best posted:I guess it's because the Polish forces didn't really have Western-style patches like the rest of the units had. They could have put up something else, though, like the Combat Parachute Badge, but that wasn't unique to the Brigade. chitoryu12 posted:Much of the realism of that film was in its portrayal of the battle itself, not the buildup to the attack or the political fallout afterward.
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Aug 14, 2015 00:03
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Arquinsiel posted:I am constantly amused that they left out the 45 minutes or so that the Rangers and Delta Force sat on opposite sides of a wall from each other waiting for the others to be the first to say "so... we're ready to head off on that five minute drive home then". And portrayed the Mogadishu Mile as literally running full tilt a whole mile under enemy fire (not even pausing to vomit from exertion) all the way through the gates of the stadium to cheering Somali civilians, when in real life they just made a coordinated tactical walk/jog on foot for a mile until they ran into an allied column elsewhere in the city and joined up with them.
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Aug 14, 2015 00:05
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Honestly that's way more understandable than the utter clusterfuck the wait was. If not for that wait, there'd have been no movie.
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Aug 14, 2015 00:09
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chitoryu12 posted:forever paranoid. There's no reasonable way that they could confiscate every single one, and any civilian could be hiding a pistol under their coat just waiting for a sentry to turn their back. It was theorized that it would have a deep psychological effect on the occupiers. Yes, like Project Eldest Son, mentioned earlier in this thread.
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Aug 14, 2015 03:42
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Does anyone have a recommendation for a book on the development of early firearms in Asia and then Japan? I read that apparently matchlocks were still being used in parts of Asia up until the 19th century, what would be the reasons for that be? (I don't remember if that's totally correct though.) I know almost nothing about the history of Asia so I apologize if I'm asking a dumb question.
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Aug 14, 2015 04:54
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Kanine posted:Does anyone have a recommendation for a book on the development of early firearms in Asia and then Japan? I read that apparently matchlocks were still being used in parts of Asia up until the 19th century, what would be the reasons for that be? (I don't remember if that's totally correct though.) I know almost nothing about the history of Asia so I apologize if I'm asking a dumb question. Well, Japan had famously closed itself off, so maybe firearm advances didn't reach them (but they loved the matchlock a whole lot)?
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Aug 14, 2015 05:06
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Also, the FP-45 Liberator concept was revived for Vietnam with the Deer Gun. It was supposed to be distributed during the Advisory Period to guerrillas operating in the north, and like the Liberator it was meant to just pop an NVA grunt in the back of the head so you could steal his stuff.. It was conceptually almost identical, but made use of new materials (it's aluminum and plastic, mostly) and you unscrewed the barrel to load rather than opening the breech at the rear. Almost all of them were destroyed, and they never got any real usage because the Vietnam War suddenly turned into mass American involvement instead of "We're totally just advising, guys. Not killing people at all." chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Aug 14, 2015 |
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Aug 14, 2015 05:15
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Kanine posted:Does anyone have a recommendation for a book on the development of early firearms in Asia and then Japan? I read that apparently matchlocks were still being used in parts of Asia up until the 19th century, what would be the reasons for that be? (I don't remember if that's totally correct though.) I know almost nothing about the history of Asia so I apologize if I'm asking a dumb question. Matchlocks are still used today in rural Tibet. It was a poor and isolationist place before China annexed it, and under Chinese occupation it's still poor and rather cut off. Traditional musket hunting works well enough, the Chinese government doesn't allow Tibetans to buy more modern weapons, and powder is cheap.
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Aug 14, 2015 05:16
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JcDent posted:Well, Japan had famously closed itself off, so maybe firearm advances didn't reach them (but they loved the matchlock a whole lot)? This is exactly it. Also, the Edo period had very few conflicts where large amounts of firearms would be used and so there was little incentive for continued development. It wasn't until foreign interaction began to ramp up again in the 19th century that Japan joined the modern world. In fact, during the Meiji Restoration, Japan began to view European culture as the end-all-be-all of civilization rather than China (which they were practically national fanboys of). They essentially skipped about 250 years of technological development and went straight from the 16th to the 19th century practically in one go. This is what resulted in the somewhat jumbled culture and technology of Imperial Japan, with some of the best fighter planes in the world being delivered by horse-drawn cart to the airfield.
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Aug 14, 2015 05:19
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chitoryu12 posted:Also, the FP-45 Liberator concept was revived for Vietnam with the Deer Gun. It was supposed to be distributed during the Advisory Period to guerrillas operating in the north, and like the Liberator it was meant to just pop an NVA grunt in the back of the head so you could steal his stuff.. It was conceptually almost identical, but made use of new materials (it's aluminum and plastic, mostly) and you unscrewed the barrel to load rather than opening the breech at the rear. Get that weak poo poo outta here. 
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Aug 14, 2015 06:35
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chitoryu12 posted:This is exactly it. Also, the Edo period had very few conflicts where large amounts of firearms would be used and so there was little incentive for continued development. It wasn't until foreign interaction began to ramp up again in the 19th century that Japan joined the modern world. In fact, during the Meiji Restoration, Japan began to view European culture as the end-all-be-all of civilization rather than China (which they were practically national fanboys of). They essentially skipped about 250 years of technological development and went straight from the 16th to the 19th century practically in one go. This is what resulted in the somewhat jumbled culture and technology of Imperial Japan, with some of the best fighter planes in the world being delivered by horse-drawn cart to the airfield. On this subject I was under the impression that warring-states period Japan involved lots of pike and shot-style warfare. Did guns and the associated tactics catch on as well in other Asian countries?
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Aug 14, 2015 06:44
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StashAugustine posted:On this subject I was under the impression that warring-states period Japan involved lots of pike and shot-style warfare. Did guns and the associated tactics catch on as well in other Asian countries? The Chinese invented gunpowder and the first cannons and proto-muskets, but they relied on "cold" weapons like swords, pikes, and bows/crossbows until quite recently. The Ming Dynasty I believe made significant use of cannons (including imported European guns and later copies of them) but preferred their common soldiers to use crossbows, which were faster and more reliable than matchlocks. They simply lacked the need to develop advanced infantry firearms, as they didn't face opponents for much of their post-gunpowder history who would actually require advances in weapons. China spent quite a long time as the big kid on the block in East Asia. During the Second Opium War, however, the Qing Dynasty got the poo poo kicked out of them by European armies in 1860 (including a very humiliating capture of Beijing and sacking of the Summer Palace). The more traditional military found itself obsolete in the face of European advances and, much like Japan, rapidly began equipping itself with modern weaponry. They still took a long time to really reach a new peak of power, as they were stymied by lack of funding and the same traditionalist and conservative beliefs that kept them from improving in the first place.
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Aug 14, 2015 07:21
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chitoryu12 posted:The Chinese invented gunpowder and the first cannons and proto-muskets, but they relied on "cold" weapons like swords, pikes, and bows/crossbows until quite recently. The Ming Dynasty I believe made significant use of cannons (including imported European guns and later copies of them) but preferred their common soldiers to use crossbows, which were faster and more reliable than matchlocks. They simply lacked the need to develop advanced infantry firearms, as they didn't face opponents for much of their post-gunpowder history who would actually require advances in weapons. China spent quite a long time as the big kid on the block in East Asia. Even when they started modernizing, there were some serious holes. On paper, Japan was the underdog in the First Sino-Japanese War but they faced the Beiyang Army and its fleet alone, without the other modernized Chinese military groups assisting. Japanese troops were also better drilled and trained than their Chinese counterparts. One of my profs liked to tell us how in the aftermath of the war, Japanese inspection teams hoping to learn from the war found that many Chinese ship guns failed to account for much damage because their ammo had either been secretly sold off or were duds because the man in charge of the arsenal, Li Hongzhang's own son, had been cheating his own father. I haven't really looked hard for sources to confirm it but it's one of those things that sounds like it could be true given how corrupt China was at the time.
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Aug 14, 2015 07:29
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Argas posted:. I haven't really looked hard for sources to confirm it but it's one of those things that sounds like it could be true given how corrupt China
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Aug 14, 2015 07:42
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Kanine posted:Does anyone have a recommendation for a book on the development of early firearms in Asia and then Japan? I read that apparently matchlocks were still being used in parts of Asia up until the 19th century, what would be the reasons for that be? (I don't remember if that's totally correct though.) I know almost nothing about the history of Asia so I apologize if I'm asking a dumb question.
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Aug 14, 2015 08:53
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Kanine posted:Does anyone have a recommendation for a book on the development of early firearms in Asia and then Japan? I read that apparently matchlocks were still being used in parts of Asia up until the 19th century, what would be the reasons for that be? (I don't remember if that's totally correct though.) I know almost nothing about the history of Asia so I apologize if I'm asking a dumb question. Early asian gunpowder weapons were mostly fire arrow or cannon. A good book to cover gunpowder warfare is one that covers the 16th century Japanese invasion of Korea. One of the big game changers was Japan's adoption of portuguese matchlocks. Matchlocks are relatively light, mobile, and can be used in massed infantry formation. Don't let anyone tell you samurai don't use guns, they loving loved these things. On the other side, Korea had some excellent cannons. The largest of them fired massive 1300x130 iron spears. Korea also had fairly mobile fire arrow launchers that shredded infantry formation, but these take a long time to setup and were best used to defend fortresses. It's no small wonder that Korean soldiers consistently lost in pitched battles, but the Korean navy consistently won on sea.  take it to gbs
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Aug 14, 2015 09:07
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Phobophilia posted:On the other side, Korea had some excellent cannons. The largest of them fired massive 1300x130 iron spears. Korea also had fairly mobile fire arrow launchers that shredded infantry formation, but these take a long time to setup and were best used to defend fortresses. It's no small wonder that Korean soldiers consistently lost in pitched battles, but the Korean navy consistently won on sea. How easy is it to set a wooden ship on fire? Historical anecdotes (from any era) are always appreciated. I assume a flaming arrow does not instantly set a ship alight, but what does it take? Do those fire arrow rocket launchers do the job consistently? Once your ship is on fire, how do you put it out? Sure, you're in a body of water, but considering how many ships are designed, you might not be able to just reach over the side with a bucket and scoop up some water.
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Aug 14, 2015 09:32
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Splode posted:How easy is it to set a wooden ship on fire? Historical anecdotes (from any era) are always appreciated. Your common ship carried drinking water, right? I assume between letting your ship burn and having nothing to drink, you'd choose to save the ship.
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Aug 14, 2015 09:38
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Chamale posted:Matchlocks are still used today in rural Tibet. It was a poor and isolationist place before China annexed it, and under Chinese occupation it's still poor and rather cut off. Traditional musket hunting works well enough, the Chinese government doesn't allow Tibetans to buy more modern weapons, and powder is cheap. They're used for hunting, at least. The current trend for poor Chinese who want to do violence is to convert nail guns or airsoft toys into improvised firearms. I've posted a few pictures of it in TFR. I've always wondered why we don't see more stuff like, single barrel shotgun with cartridge from waxed paper, Armstrong's mixture for primer, and red phosphate mix for propellant. I guess it's too much work for something that a criminal wouldn't find sexy, but I'm sure I have some Chinese brothers from other mothers out there with angle grinders and a little engineering acumen. chitoryu12 posted:some of the best fighter planes in the world being delivered by horse-drawn cart to the airfield. Don't make the mistake of modern hubris: Low-tech isn't always worse.When I or any of my peers need to move an airplane a short distance (such as, say, out of the hangar, or from one end of the airfield to another), we grab the ol tow-bar and pull. Muscle power works just fine for something as lightweight as a single-seat, single engine prop plane, as long as the surface is even and flat. And those little airfield tugs are expensive, and don't work on grass  (although now I wonder why we haven't come up with a hitch adapter so we can use tractors or 4x4s. I'll bring it up the next time I meet those guys) Similarly many of my tools are 60 to 100+ years old or modern replicas of same, because in certain applications (noise, need for more control, need to reduce vibrations), old hand tools are a better fit than the modern electric stuff. A machinist teacher I knew once jokingly called me a blacksmith when I started fitting a piece to another with a hand file, but our mill wasn't capable of the precision that comes with patience and steady fingers.Chinese procurement from the first modernization up to like, the 1970s was a complete shitshow. In WWII, even the best of them were using WWI-vintage equipment (admittedly common for many of the less developed nations in 1938).  With the reserve forces and such often not even having firearms (these of course, almost never saw contact with the enemy, being used instead as a sort of police force.)   EDIT: ↓ No problem, although I am disheartened at the squeamishness in a frank discussion of the history of war. Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Aug 14, 2015 |
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Aug 14, 2015 09:45
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Please spoiler/NSFW that last one.
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Aug 14, 2015 09:51
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Phobophilia posted:One of the big game changers was Japan's adoption of portuguese matchlocks. Matchlocks are relatively light, mobile, and can be used in massed infantry formation. Don't let anyone tell you samurai don't use guns, they loving loved these things.  They look lighter than contemporary European muskets too--I don't recall ever having seen a Japanese musket fork, for instance. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Aug 14, 2015 |
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Aug 14, 2015 09:53
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Splode posted:Once your ship is on fire, how do you put it out? Sure, you're in a body of water, but considering how many ships are designed, you might not be able to just reach over the side with a bucket and scoop up some water. Prepositioned buckets of sand I believe. Water won't necessarily work if your enemy used a good incendiary.
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Aug 14, 2015 10:02
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So Koreans basically invented the MLRS? No wonder Best Korea has those tractor-pulled versions. Also, yes, the samurai fascination with firearms is, well, fascinating. Probably because at that point samurai tradition was more on getting the other dude dead than honour or something.
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Aug 14, 2015 10:05
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JcDent posted:Also, yes, the samurai fascination with firearms is, well, fascinating. Probably because at that point samurai tradition was more on getting the other dude dead than honour or something. Wasn't Bushido pretty much invented whole-cloth well after the Samurai caste had transitioned into being bureaucrats?
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Aug 14, 2015 10:08
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The more I read this thread, the more I think all fighting men have more in common than not. War seems to be pretty consistent in how it shapes people.
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Aug 14, 2015 10:21
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Hypha posted:The more I read this thread, the more I think all fighting men have more in common than not. War seems to be pretty consistent in how it shapes people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqWIe4Exk7E
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Aug 14, 2015 10:25
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8ukBgJX2tw
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Aug 14, 2015 10:28
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I was thinking more the humorous stories that Hey Gal has. I am sure that as long as there are pistols, there will be soldiers shooting them out of windows as you do.
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Aug 14, 2015 10:34
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