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Trin Tragula posted:Question. If this person had instead been used as a decoy to draw German anti-aircraft fire away from the bombers, would he then have become the Master Baiter? Well, he's flying in a circle pattern so he's more of a Jerker.
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Sep 25, 2015 17:18
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Keldoclock posted:Re. the RAF and strategic bombing chat. Ancient civilisations did a bunch of horrible poo poo, I don't see how this contributes to the conversation in any way.
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Sep 25, 2015 17:19
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Keldoclock posted:Re. the RAF and strategic bombing chat. This is the eternal question regarding where the combat zone begins and ends in modern war. This debate has been going on throughout history - I don't know how far back you could go to find people complaining about civilians being caught up in a conflict, but I would say the 19th century and the American Civil War in particular was one of the starting places of talking about deliberately targeting non-combatants. As I said, this debate was raging on both sides of WWI, with the British complaining about the brutish Hun bombing and shelling innocent civilians and indiscriminately sinking ships. The Germans retorted that the British naval blockade was effectively starving their children to death, so what was the difference really? I think a lot of the controversy comes from two points: 1. The scale of the civilian deaths 2. The military necessity of the attack I think people nowadays are accustomed to the idea that there will be collateral damage in a war, but would expect that there should be *some* kind of military benefit at the end. The Hamburg raid was one of the worst firebombings of the war but (seemingly) attracts less attention as it definitely dealt a blow to the Germans, to the point that Speer stated that 5 more raids like Hamburg would have ended the war. Dresden on the other hand was much more murky; to my mind, the military benefits were dubious at best, and I think it was much more of a case of Bomber Command wanted to use the RAF for *something* instead of letting them go to waste. The atomic bombings are somewhere in between, with the fact that we have so little information on the workings of the Japanese government at the time making it difficult to assess exactly how much the atom bombs helped cause the surrender.
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Sep 25, 2015 17:21
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MikeCrotch posted:Re. the RAF and strategic bombing chat. Thank you, this is just the kind of effort post I was fishing for when I responded on my phone at 3AM last night. Also, cheerfullydrab posted:Ahh, gently caress can I just stop putting forward arguments? Knock my king and say I forfeit? I can contribute to the thread, I'm not completely useless, but when it comes to my opinions about WW2, it just starts nonsense. There is no room for any revisionist history in this thread. The whole "destroyers for bases" argument is something I started from a one-off comment, and I tried not to get involved because I didn't want to make it worse. I am sorry for posting about posting, but I honestly think I have things to contribute to the general discussion as long as I don't unload my opinions. I am genuinely sorry for making GBS threads things up. Maybe I wasn't active in the thread the last time you caused a stir, or maybe I just don't remember. Either way I don't care at all. If you think you have something to contribute, by all means do so. Just understand that there are a lot of people in this thread who spend a lot of time studying and thinking about this stuff, so you will be expected to back up your ideas with some semblance of thought based on research, either yours or stuff you read from other people. It seems like you have a lot of opinions about this stuff, which is fine, but they're just that unless you have some kind of well thought out argument backed by facts to support them. It's not like people are running around shouting "citation needed" left and right, but if pushed most people here can point to reasons why they think that something was the way it was. If you have those reasons (which was utterly unclear from your initial post) then give them. Note that I said you were painting with an overly-broad brush with your cartoonish depiction of the evil of British bomber command leaders. They weren't doing it just because they were murderous fuckwits, they were doing it because that was the way to get to a larger goal they had. Was that a good, or even possible way to get to that goal? THat's open to debate and I'm sure lots of people in this thread would welcome that kind of conversation. Just saying they were evil for the sake of being evil doesn't help anything. It's just intellectually lazy, which is what annoys people the most. Also, to answer your Dresden question, by the time the end of the war came around they had a firm policy establishes in conjunction with the Americans. They were pushed into nighttime area bombing by their early war limitations and then the Americans were willing to take the losses that daylight bombing entailed. By the time you get to the end of the war they are still operating in the same institutional context that MikeCrotch spelled out above and are still trying to meet the same goals as they were when they started. In the specific case of Dresden the idea was to speed the German collapse in the east and help the Soviets speed the war to an end. This was two-fold: On the one hand proponents of the psychological impact of bombing thought hitting centers directly behind the advancing Soviet lines would make the defenders realize just how hosed the situation was and abandon their positions. Did this work? Probably not, but it's what the military thought at the time was. Lots of poo poo that we thought was effective in WW2 turns out to have not been. The other big issue was that as the Soviets advanced into Silesia the Germans needed to push around a lot of men, and Dresden was a major transportation hub (there were also some factories etc. that were discussed as well but the transportation issue was the big thing everyone was looking at). Was this effective? Probably not. Did Dresden need to get hit as hard as it was? Probably not. But there were reasons behind the decision to flatten it beyond mere mustache-twirling evil. If you want to understand how and why something happened you really have to look at the context of the even. In the case of Dresden the important contexts are the war at that period in time and the institutional culture and history of bomber command.
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Sep 25, 2015 17:25
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MikeCrotch posted:This is the eternal question regarding where the combat zone begins and ends in modern war. This debate has been going on throughout history - I don't know how far back you could go to find people complaining about civilians being caught up in a conflict, but I would say the 19th century and the American Civil War in particular was one of the starting places of talking about deliberately targeting non-combatants. As I said, this debate was raging on both sides of WWI, with the British complaining about the brutish Hun bombing and shelling innocent civilians and indiscriminately sinking ships. The Germans retorted that the British naval blockade was effectively starving their children to death, so what was the difference really? Comparative morality is really loving wonky across historical eras because the morality really is hosed up if taken out of the historical context in which it happened. Today we are much more sensitive to civilian deaths so the kinds of numbers that were put up in WW2 would never be tolerated. More importantly, civilians are not really considered appropriate targets any more.* At the time civilian population centers were considered militarily viable targets in and of themselves and worth targeting the same as any military park, transportation hub, or factory. *generally. Our entire nuclear arsenal and the attendant operational theory are a direct outgrowth of WW2's Strategic Bomber Command. If poo poo gets serious enough blowing up entire cities is still considered militarily justified. That said, short of a civilization-ending nuclear exchange between peer nations I don't think you're going to find anyone who says that civilian city centers are a good candidate for carpet bombing any more. This also has a lot to do with the advent since the 70s of effective PGMs. The kind of precision bombing that the USAAF was pursuing in the 30s and 40s is actually feasible today. Of course there are still civilian casualties caused by both collateral damage and target misidentification - and those are still very controversial - but they are several orders of magnitude removed from what you get with urban carpet bombing.
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Sep 25, 2015 17:31
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JcDent posted:OK! Has there been any comparison done on the effectiveness of British, American and Soviet WWII helmets? I don't think so, but I can't imagine them being all that different in combat. None of them could reliably protect against anything stronger than a pistol at range, and any rifle would tear through them unless it was a glancing blow. They were mostly used to protect against incidental hits like minor shrapnel and glancing blows that would kill otherwise. Even the PASGT kevlar helmet that's commonly in use today (as well as its variants) is only rated at Level IIIA. Roughly this is the .357 Magnum and .44 Magnum range, but more specifically: quote:Protects against 8.1 g (125 gr) .357 SIG FMJ Flat Nose (FN) bullets at a velocity of 448 m/s ± 9.1 m/s (1470 ft/s ± 30 ft/s) and 15.6 g (240 gr) .44 Magnum Semi Jacketed Hollow Point (SJHP) bullets at a velocity of 436 m/s (1430 ft/s ± 30 ft/s). Conditioned armor protects against 8.1 g (125 gr) .357 SIG FMJ Flat Nose (FN) bullets at a velocity of 430 m/s ± 9.1 m/s (1410 ft/s ± 30 ft/s) and 15.6 g (240 gr) .44 Magnum Semi Jacketed Hollow Point (SJHP) bullets at a velocity of 408 m/s ± 9.1 m/s (1340 ft/s ± 30 ft/s). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxwvDLdnYG4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvBHq5PW0Ag chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 17:42
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Keldoclock posted:Re. the RAF and strategic bombing chat. The progression of history has a humanitarian bias (and thank god for that). We like to pretend that we're more civilized than people were in 70 AD. Of course, atrocities in conflicts across the globe show we have a long way to go, but we should strive to do better than before.
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Sep 25, 2015 17:43
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feedmegin posted:I don't think FDR personally was of that mindset, but I think a certain portion of the American government was - after all, before the US got attacked a lot of Americans were like 'oh, hey, Britain's fighting on its own to preserve democracy against the Nazis, but oh well, not our problem'. This was not a popular agreement with the British government - they agreed to it because they were desperate. If it were not disadvantageous to the British government in the long term, why do you think Churchill disliked it? feedmegin posted:Because Britain was desperate to get America into the war at pretty much any price. I think we're loudly agreeing with each other here, by and large. Britain got what it needed; America exacted a price for it (as it had every right to, of course; I'm just saying it wasn't the 'hey, Britain, we see you're fighting for freedom here, we'll do you a solid!' it's sometimes presented as - Lend-Lease is a much better example of that once America had actually joined the war). As for the speech to the Commons, it's a speech to the Commons, in wartime, by the prime minister. It's not exactly going to represent a free and frank expression of his private thoughts on the deal. How are basing rights for a future ally considered an "exacted" price? Once the Americans joined the war, they'd be using those facilities anyways. The agreement was a clandestine way for the British to ask the Americans to build airfields and harbours on a bunch of their possessions, for joint use. That stuff on its own stirs dangerously close to an actual alliance, and the American public won't allow for that. So the spin they throw on it is that America is gaining rights in exchange for some old destroyers. FDR gets to look like a businessman, the British get ships and facilities for the Atlantic War. Again, this only looks like a bad deal if you are a British politician who sees Anglo-American co-operation as something that won't be continued after the war. This is 19th-century thinking that ignores reality. America had eclipsed Britain for reasons outside of parliament's control. The British couldn't afford to build bigger facilities on those islands in the first place. Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 17:47
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chitoryu12 posted:I don't think so, but I can't imagine them being all that different in combat. None of them could reliably protect against anything stronger than a pistol at range, and any rifle would tear through them unless it was a glancing blow. They were mostly used to protect against incidental hits like minor shrapnel and glancing blows that would kill otherwise. Even the PASGT kevlar helmet that's commonly in use today (as well as its variants) is only rated at Level IIIA. Roughly this is the .357 Magnum and .44 Magnum range, but more specifically: I can't provide a source now, but I read a while ago that helmets were never really designed to stop bullets and high velocity shrapnel. One of the lessons learned by the Franco-Prussian war was that all the rocks and dirt thrown about by modern artillery made head trauma a way bigger issue than it was in previous eras. The general idea of the metal helmet was the same as a construction hat: protect the head against being hit by hard poo poo. Along a similar line, I read (I think the same place, this was years ago) that the flared bottom of the Stahlhelm was shown to be a bit more effective at protecting the base of the skull and the neck, especially when the soldier wasn't standing straight up. You see something similar with the US PASGAT helmets. edit: for what it's worth modern PASGATs don't stop direct strikes by most bullets either. I've shot up a few and a full sized rifle or MG round (e.g. 7.62NATO) will go right through them. Intermediate rifle cartridges (e.g. 5.56NATO) will do a number on them as well. The ones I shot up would stop a 9mm pistol round, but still put a pretty good dent in it, and were completely defeated by magnum cartridges like .357. This isn't to say that they wouldn't save lives if you caught a glancing round or one from very long ranges, I'm just speaking of what I've personally seen shooting them straight on Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 17:47
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Cyrano4747 posted:Comparative morality is really loving wonky across historical eras because the morality really is hosed up if taken out of the historical context in which it happened. Today we are much more sensitive to civilian deaths so the kinds of numbers that were put up in WW2 would never be tolerated. More importantly, civilians are not really considered appropriate targets any more.* At the time civilian population centers were considered militarily viable targets in and of themselves and worth targeting the same as any military park, transportation hub, or factory. Yeah, i'm aware that comparative morality is a minefield at best - I was mainly aiming to paint a picture of the kinds of debates that had happened during WWI and between the wars that led up to the thinking behind the RAF's strategic bombing campaign.
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Sep 25, 2015 17:50
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MikeCrotch posted:Yeah, i'm aware that comparative morality is a minefield at best - I was mainly aiming to paint a picture of the kinds of debates that had happened during WWI and between the wars that led up to the thinking behind the RAF's strategic bombing campaign. Yeah, I wasn't disagreeing with you, I was just elaborating a bit. SOrry if that wasn't clear.
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Sep 25, 2015 17:51
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There's an account of an event where the Mongols assembled all the females in a city from age 5 upwards into big public stadium, forced their families to gather around in the stands, then raped them all, sometimes to death, as their loved ones watched. Demanding that the atrocities we commit be not historically unprecedented is a loving low bar.
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Sep 25, 2015 17:53
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MikeCrotch posted:T I think there's a third point which can be thrown into the mix which would be 3. The justness of the war itself. When the regime you are fighting is Nazi Germany then you get a hell of a lot more moral latitude to do horrible things and still come out ahead on the comparative utilitarian calculus than you do when you are dropping napalm on Vietnamese villages because something something domino effect.
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Sep 25, 2015 18:05
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Late summer to fall, 1627 When the remnants of the Mansfeld Regiment finally staggered to a halt, it was outside Frankfurt am Main, which is here.  This is the most direct route from Milan to Frankfurt on foot that goes through cities my subjects mention passing. The Mansfeld Regiment probably took a similar route--I'm pretty sure it passes through the territory of the Swiss Confederation, their enemies, which would have been why their weapons were confiscated. But Mansfeld himself is currently living in Schluckenau, sometimes travelling to Dresden (when he's not in Prague), and he mentions wanting to meet up with some of his officers later in Leipzig. Those cities are here. Schluckenau has the red thing on it:  Why did the regiment head north instead of northeast? Where were they trying to go? I was looking at a volume of letters which were labeled 1628, just in case I found anything interesting, and it turned out there were a bunch of letters from 27 in there, which had been misfiled. According to those letters, Wallenstein was planning to bail Mansfeld out, and it is this that enabled Mansfeld to transfer his regiment into Imperial service. (The Emperor, as Mansfeld mentioned, has no money.) At that time, Wallenstein was operating near Alsace. He requested "all of the infantry and one or two of the best cavalry companies" (Imperialists can afford to be choosy about cavalry, they're usually better at it than their opponents), which he would absorb into his own army. Mansfeld was pretty apprehensive about this. This probably had nothing to do with the weirder corners of Wallenstein's black reputation, both of the parents of his Oberst Lieutenant Vratislav Eusibius von Pernstein had been massively into occultism and Mansfeld almost certainly knew about it, considering von Pernstein's mother's second husband was Mansfeld's younger brother. (It's possible that Mansfeld's brother was also into that stuff, considering his choice of wife. I have not found any evidence one way or the other, so I won't say anything here.) What Mansfeld was worried about was a threat to his own power. When he sent Stach Löser to negotiate the transfer, he sent instructions with the negotiating points in them--how much money Löser was to ask for, and so on. "His grace should remember that we remain in the Elector of Saxony's service ," he says, even though "the War People lodging in Alsace and the Wetterau are the Emperor's to command." Mansfeld will accept orders from nobody other than Wallenstein himself, no middlemen, Wallenstein should give patents to each of Mansfeld's captains, and so forth. But there are three collections of notes, which seem to represent different layers of rough drafts: the first is polished, the second is less polished, and the third is in Mansfeld's own hand. The less polished the document, the more nervous it is. "I will uncover my feelings to the Oberst Lieutenant," begins the second document, "namely that I cannot give way to the General Lieutenant and Field Marshal." (General Lieutenant is the highest rank there is, so called because he is "holding the place", lieu tenant, of the head of state who hired him.) The third exhorts Löser, "in order to further my high name," to "be conscious of what title and authority with which I command." He's gathering his dignity around himself because it's all he's got left right now. This has got to sting. I used to think Mansfeld and Wallenstein hated each other, but now I'm not so sure. Wallenstein certainly seems willing to work with Mansfeld, there's enough letters between them about random stuff, not just this, in the files. I did hear somewhere that Wallenstein had said "If Mansfeld were as sick as he is conceited, he'd have died a long time ago," but he says a lot of things about a lot of people. He may not have meant anything too serious by it. Certainly, Wallenstein seems not to have taken this opportunity to abuse Mansfeld in writing, which surprised me. Except for one letter. "the Ob. Leutenampt löser has brought me all that happened to my lord which i have answered on all points and my lord is to be content with it i ask that he will go to his People as soon as possible because that furthers His Majesty's service" Mansfeld had been living on his estates this entire time. Wallenstein's been in terrible health for at least the entire 30 Years' War, but he always travels with his army. He might not be able to walk or stand, but he's there. Edit: his response when 600 unfed, unclothed, unarmed people show up near Frankfurt instead of about 2000 of them, organized into companies and supplied, in Alsace is not recorded HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Sep 26, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 18:18
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bewbies posted:It seems maybe you're asking more about using short range systems in a direct fire mode? Both Sidewider and Stinger can be used against a surface target if the heat signature is large enough . Sidewinder is actually quite lethal against armored targets. Stinger, not so much, which kind of sucks because anything with a large enough heat signature for it to lock onto probably has more armor than it can penetrate . I assume comparable Russian systems have the same capabilities British starstreak manpads can be used against vehicles apparently, it appears its effectiveness against tanks and more heavily armoured vehicles would be limited as it splits into 3 sub munitions with smaller amounts of explosive.
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Sep 25, 2015 18:27
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page 666 hell yeah. So I've got another question about naval warfare. I know stuff about modern naval combat, WW2, WW1, and the British navy in the "Golden Age of Sail". What was naval ship to ship warfare like back in Roman and Greek times? Was it just flaming arrows and guesswork, or boarding operations?
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Sep 25, 2015 18:50
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SquadronROE posted:page 666 hell yeah. Ramming. 
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Sep 25, 2015 18:56
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Lots of ramming. They didn't put those bronze caps on the front for nothing.
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Sep 25, 2015 18:57
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So it's page 666 and I've got to follow HEY GAL? Of course. How appropriate. 100 Years Ago I both love and hate the first day of a big offensive. It's great because there's so much going on and so many stories to tell. It's shite because there's too many stories to tell and far too much going on all at once. This is a triple-header. Of course, thanks to the Anglo-centric state of English-language scholarship, the shortest post is about the biggest offensive, as the French Army gets stuck in at Second Champagne (and achieves something) and Third Artois (and doesn't). Say, which attack was Louis Barthas going to be in? Wasn't it Third Artois? Of course it was. Poor bugger spends most of the day marching confusedly around a mud-pit, which is at least slightly better than having to go over the top. Next we have the story of the BEF's diversionary attacks at Hooge Chateau and Aubers Ridge, including yet more proof that where there's a lovely end of the stick to be got, the Indians will have that lovely end shoved right in their faces. And then we have far too many words about the Battle of Loos, in which some drunken Scotsmen rampage through a French town; nothing unusual about that, except this time, they're going to get medals for it instead of fourteen days' Field Punishment Number One. Sadly, the tactical disadvantages to using drunken Scotsmen soon become apparent...
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Sep 25, 2015 18:57
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SquadronROE posted:page 666 hell yeah. Early Republican Romans were bad at sailing compared to Carthaginians, so they just put huge boarding bridges on their ships and marched legionaries onto the decks of their cowardly opponents. Roads and swords can apparently beat everything, even at sea. It is just such a Roman solution, I love it. During the Imperial Era the Romans just took that one step further and conquered every port on the Mediterranean, so they had no more enemies left to fight except each other (they used Greek sailors trained in the use of ballistae and ramming). And in the Byzantine Age they used Greek Fire, which was prototypical napalm - because Homo Homini Lupus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus_(boarding_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire 
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Sep 25, 2015 19:10
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How many Civil Wars did the Romans fight? the other day I came to the conclusion they simply really enjoyed a good civil war.
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Sep 25, 2015 19:13
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SeanBeansShako posted:How many Civil Wars did the Romans fight? the other day I came to the conclusion they simply really enjoyed a good civil war. Oh my gosh, I have no idea. A lot. One year is simply known as "The Year of the Five Emperors". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_the_Five_Emperors
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Sep 25, 2015 19:19
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HAIL SATAN!
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Sep 25, 2015 19:35
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Hogge Wild posted:HAIL SATAN! Why, how many tank divisions does He have?
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Sep 25, 2015 19:47
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The 666th Satanist Tank Destroyer Regiment. I hear they use bears instead of autoloaders.
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Sep 25, 2015 19:48
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Sep 25, 2015 19:50
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Cyrano4747 posted:Lots of ramming. They didn't put those bronze caps on the front for nothing. Ramming and boarding mostly. It took a while for any form of artillery to get good enough to largely end the days of galley warfare.
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Sep 25, 2015 19:50
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Hogge Wild posted:HAIL SATAN! While we're on the topic of Roman awesomeness - the Mark of the Beast (666) actually goes back to the Roman imperial period, and was written about extensively by Roman scholars. It may be a coded reference to the Emperor Nero, who ruled during the First Jewish Revolt and whose reign was noted for its anti-Christian policies. Decades later, when that section of the New Testament was being written, the Emperor Domitian was known for his political similarities to Nero. Complaining about Nero as the anti-Christ* was a good way to talk about Domitian without attracting undue attention. Perhaps we really should be saying "Ave Nero!" *Nero is an easy target because he was just a generally unpopular emperor and there are a lot of stories about how terrible he was, including the apocryphal tale about him playing the lyre while Rome burned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irenaeus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero Kaal fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 19:51
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Cythereal posted:Ramming and boarding mostly. It took a while for any form of artillery to get good enough to largely end the days of galley warfare. Shipborne artillery is interesting. In Ancient Times (galley times basically), the most effective artillery for sinking a boat would be indirect fire catapults throwing rocks. Of course, these are wildly inaccurate against moving targets and perform poorly from the decks of ships, so much so as to be useless. Then you have direct fire artillery - ballistas and the like. These are largely more accurate, but lack the ability to poke holes in a boat to let the water in. (Letting air in generally doesn't do poo poo. This is why torpedoes are an incredibly effective device per pound of explosive compared to naval gunfire throughout history.) So everyone goes to the logical options - rams, to make holes to let the water in, and boarding, to kill all the people on the boat and maybe grab it for yourself. There's also fire based things, but these are extremely dangerous throughout history. Really, artillery wasn't a decisive arm of naval warfare until probably the culverin, and even then there was a lil bit of rammin here and there.
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Sep 25, 2015 20:04
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Shipborne artillery is interesting.      (The roundship has just rammed the galley on the right, according to the title, Dutch Ships Ramming Spanish Galleys off the Flemish Coast in October 1602) Edit: lol, check out all the infantry in the bottom painting. Pike and shot on a boat. 
HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 20:23
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ahem well er, at least one of those is an Archipelago Frigate and then also in one picture you can see galleys getting extremely clowned on
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Sep 25, 2015 20:34
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hey, the one on the left is backing up as fast as it can to shoot the dutch again edit: i think "pike and shot on a boat" is the most spanish thing i've seen this week
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Sep 25, 2015 20:38
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One of the reasons I like the Safehold book series so much. The first book culminates in a massive galley fleet going up against a fleet of the first cannon-armed galleons anyone on the planet has ever seen and getting utterly, horrifyingly, sadistically clowned. Similar events occur in later books as pike-and-shot armies go up against armies with Napoleonic-style flintlocks and artillery, and the like. It's almost like reading a game of Civilization. Or this. 
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Sep 25, 2015 20:59
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Cythereal posted:One of the reasons I like the Safehold book series so much. The first book culminates in a massive galley fleet going up against a fleet of the first cannon-armed galleons anyone on the planet has ever seen and getting utterly, horrifyingly, sadistically clowned. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 21:07
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HEY GAL posted:galleys have cannon. And there's plenty of contexts in which the ability to steer is worth putting up against what a roundship can bring to the table. Which is why in that book the galleons in question make sure to engage in a situation that absolutely favors the galleons, which also have far more sophisticated cannons than the galleys. Also helps that the galleon fleet has the aid (though only two people in the fleet know it) of satellite reconaissance.  I remarked on the series for just how horrific the battles are written when a major technological lopside is involved. Weber's merits as an author are debatable, but drat does he paint a nauseating picture of what it's like to be on the wrong end of a significant technological mismatch, or for that matter in the later books simply being a sailor on a cannon-armed galleon battle at all.
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Sep 25, 2015 21:14
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Trin Tragula posted:So it's page 666 and I've got to follow HEY GAL? Of course. How appropriate. Your hyperlinks to the other two posts in the Second Champagne post are missing.
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Sep 25, 2015 21:18
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkXIYgsvO0c
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Sep 25, 2015 21:37
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Why read lovely fiction, while there's the battle of Lepanto, where galley were up against galeass.
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Sep 25, 2015 21:50
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Fangz posted:Ancient civilisations did a bunch of horrible poo poo, I don't see how this contributes to the conversation in any way. Tias posted:The progression of history has a humanitarian bias (and thank god for that). We like to pretend that we're more civilized than people were in 70 AD. this is a thread for military history, the military actions of the last century are already history and those of the current one are going to be history. If you think we are immune to these sorts of things simply because we have been told those parts of the past that were written down then lol. Similarly lol if you think they happen less often or less terribly. We are but human. MikeCrotch posted:the British complaining about the brutish Hun bombing and shelling innocent civilians and indiscriminately sinking ships. The Germans retorted that the British naval blockade was effectively starving their children to death, so what was the difference really? Alchenar posted:3. The justness of the war itself. history shows enough to give me a suspicion that any perceived justness of a war is simply the result of effective propaganda and rhetoric. Not beyond a reasonable doubt, but I do not subscribe to academic rigor in the matter of the ethics of war due to the futility of the task. Fangz posted:There's an account of an event where the Mongols assembled all the females in a city from age 5 upwards into big public stadium, forced their families to gather around in the stands, then raped them all, sometimes to death, as their loved ones watched. Hogge Wild posted:HAIL SATAN!
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Sep 25, 2015 23:01
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Keldoclock posted:I wouldn't stick around to hear the lamentations of their women though, feminism tells me they are just as likely to be the enemy as the men.
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Sep 25, 2015 23:07
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