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PittTheElder posted:I remember seeing something illustrate the same during the Charge of the Light Brigade. Cannons firing directly at the advancing cavalry meant that said cavalry could actually dodge them reasonably successfully, or at least the dudes in front. How big is the roundshot we're talking about though? A falconet has a bore of 2" so the 1lb roundshot is going to be slightly smaller and is probably going to be moving like greased lightning.
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Oct 1, 2015 07:04
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 EE, what's your opinion of this KV-2's turret? I don't think the colour variation is due to clouds, but maybe I'm just grasping at straws. Another thing I was wondering, how many KV-2's were actually produced? One book I have quotes 206 examples. Wiki states 334 but has no source for the number.
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Oct 1, 2015 07:11
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Someone mention dust and smoke? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyAF3u_dpjw
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Oct 1, 2015 07:51
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chitoryu12 posted:Someone mention dust and smoke? Position of the shadows means that the smoke would have to be straight above. Dust, I don't know.
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Oct 1, 2015 08:05
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Arquinsiel posted:Dieppe, if anything, was useful in that it demonstrated the capabilities of the Commando units to simultaneously hold the flanks of a landing and push inland to deal with gun positions. It didn't hurt too badly as a test for landing tanks either, and showed nicely what kinds of problems they would face later. Bear in mind that the Sicily landings were a year or so later, so they knew from Dieppe that pebble beaches weren't actually better than sand at all. Could you elaborate mang.
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Oct 1, 2015 08:52
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JcDent posted:"first the Regulars, then the Territorials, then the first parts of Kitchener's Army, then the great mass of it" Regulars - This was the professional core of the BEF that predated the war. They were regarded by pretty much everyone as being the best soldiers available to anybody at the start of the war as they were very well trained, had good morale and a lot of them, in particular the NCO's, had combat experience in the Boer War. Their party trick was the 'Mad Minute', 1 minute of rapid, accurate rifle fire that was so effective the Germans at the Battle of Mons thought they were facing machine guns. These guys had the nickname of the Old Contemptibles, and almost totally wiped out by the end of 1914 in the First Battle of Ypres. The important thing about the BEF at the start of the war is that it was loving tiny, only about 80,000 guys. The size of Britain's standing army was a point of fun for the continental powers - Bismarck said that if they British Army ever invaded Germany, "He would have them arrested!" I don't have figures for how many survived, but a fair few did live through the war. Many of them became vital as NCOs in Kitchener's New Army and the conscript armies. Territorials - These guys were effectively the army reserve at the outbreak of the war. They were arranged in regional battalions and were meant to be used for home defence, though at the start of the war battalions were offered the chance to serve overseas, with many taking that option. Territorial units were often used as garrison units in the Empire and freed up regular units to be sent to France. At the start of the war each battalion was recruited from a certain area and had a distinct character, though this was diluted during the war as casualties mounted and replacements came from New Army personnel (see below) and later conscripts. Kitchener's Army/K Army/New Army - These names all refer to the same thing - the units composed of the wave of men that volunteered at the very start of the war. The term Kitchener's Army comes from Lord Kitchener, he of the famous 'Britons Wants You' poster and Secretary of State for War in the early part of the war. Kitchener was one of the few people who envisaged a war lasting at least 3 years and so wanted to built an army to prepare for it. The K armies were given a long time to train and prepare - they were not used in a major way until the Battle of the Somme over 18 months after the start of the war. In order to boost recruitment if enough guys from the same area signed up to fight, you were allowed to form your own regional battalion made up of your mates. This made for a great esprit de corps but also led to some of the most tragic moments of the war; in one instance, most of the young men of the northern town of Accrington became casualties on the first day of the Somme when 585 out of 700 of the Accrington Pals battalion were killed or wounded going over the top. The K Army's were viewed with some trepidation when they first starting arriving in numbers on the front in 1916, but showed themselves to be just as effective after some seasoning on the front and formed the core of the BEF in France after 1916. The fact that Britain had the luxury of being off the coast and not under direct threat and the BEF commanders putting any really big attacks until the K armies were properly ready meant that they had time for a lot of extensive training. Conscription - Due to the huge numbers of volunteers that had come up at the start of the war, there was no need for Britain to introduce conscription in 1914 and 1915 to fill out their army. Indeed, the training and equipment apparatus was struggling to cope with the almost overnight switch from a standing professional army of 80,000 men to preparing over a million for war. As the war ground on though, fewer and fewer men were volunteering to replace the guys who had been lost in Flanders in 1914 and 1915. This led to the passing of the Military Service Act of 1916, which was effectively a call up for conscription. I'll be honest, I don't know a huge deal about the men drawn up by conscription, though from what I remember they were not regarded particularly differently to other troops and still have the luxury of extensive and thorough training. One interesting fact about conscription during WWI is it was a major factor in the formation of the welfare state in the UK. Around 1/3 of men who were called up were found to be unfit for duty due to poor living conditions, appalling diets and almost non-existent healthcare. The scandal of the Empire having to reject a huge part of its potential recruiting pool due to poor health became a point of national security, and parties on both sides made it a priority to start improving the living and working conditions of the poorest members of society.
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Oct 1, 2015 10:41
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Jobbo_Fett posted:
It looks like it's just faded and dirtied irregularly to me; nothing exceptional if it's been in the field any length of time.
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Oct 1, 2015 11:50
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MikeCrotch posted:'Mad Minute' I tried to do this a few minutes ago, with no prior experience, only knowing the technique from books. It is done by operating the bolt of the rifle with the first finger and thumb, and pulling the trigger with the middle finger. I found it very unusual to do with my weapon, creating unsteadiness when cycling the bolt and some, not quite as bad, unsteadiness during aiming and firing. Perhaps an Enfield would be a superior weapon to do the practice on- I performed it on a M1903A3. By changing my grip and stance from a loose left hand grip and a blade stance to a tight grip and more athletic, boxer-like stance, I was able to use my left to assist in the movement and fired 5 "shots"(using snap caps) in 20 seconds(+/- 1.5 seconds). Amusingly, I was doing this practice before reading your post, a classic example of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 12:06
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i know a guy who swore to me he can get three shots a minute with a matchlock tho edit: i don't believe him HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 12:14 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 12:08
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Supposedly, using the technique I described it is possible to fire an Enfield at the rate of 1 shot per second, with the average rate for someone trained as 1 shot per 2 seconds. The larger magazine of the Enfield no doubt helps, as would reloading using stripper clips rather than loose cartridges. E: could it be done using something like this? Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 12:17 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 12:12
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it's not the muzzle-loading bit because there are dudes who get a lot of speed out of flintlocks. it's the part where the angle of the match has to be right and sometimes it stubs itself out in the pan for reasons but that gun is really pretty, thank you for posting
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Oct 1, 2015 12:20
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Is it cheating to use phosphorus sulfide on a gun match? I am thinking of something like a cotton fiber string with phosphorus sulfide glued around it, like the tin-can grenades I played with when I was a small child. Or would that be too fast-burning? I have not yet had the chance to practice with a matchlock weapon, so please forgive my ignorance of the basic elements of their operation. E:↓ I think you will find casualty distribution is grossly unequal, for the clear reason that, being near many recently made causalities, you are likely to soon become one yourself. Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 12:34 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 12:30
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Thank you for the British Army post! With Wiki putting casualties at 10%, it's strange to read Triangula's post about companies getting wiped out. Must be support personnel surviving being the factor that skews the numbers.
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Oct 1, 2015 12:32
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I recall hearing how handing out the steel Brodie helmet caused rates of injuries to go up in certain areas, since men were getting head injuries instead of being killed outright by shrapnel. A company of men with head injuries might as well be dead if you're trying to organise a battle on the front lines.HEY GAL posted:i know a guy who swore to me he can get three shots a minute with a matchlock tho How anyone manages more than one a bit shots a minute with a matchlock is beyond me, considering how fiddly the match must be and attempting to hold the fork, firearm, match, all the while keeping the match away from powder storage. Hazzard fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 13:04
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HEY GAL posted:it's not the muzzle-loading bit because there are dudes who get a lot of speed out of flintlocks. it's the part where the angle of the match has to be right and sometimes it stubs itself out in the pan for reasons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KTS8PQ06Qo It looks like a method is to do a test-touch while the pan is still covered. The matchcord seems to remain stiff for an inch or so, meaning that droopiness is probably not a problem. But it still needs to enter the clamp at the right angle. Also, sheesh are matchlocks finnicky.
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Oct 1, 2015 13:11
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Phobophilia posted:It looks like a method is to do a test-touch while the pan is still covered. if your gun fails to go off and you need to try your match again, do NOT forget to close the pan, i did that once and just the pan going off under my hand gave me a big fat bruise that lasted for a month edit: i was extremely sleep-deprived at the time edit 2 Hazzard posted:How anyone manages more than one a bit shots a minute with a matchlock is beyond me, considering how fiddly the match must be and attempting to hold the fork, firearm, match, all the while keeping the match away from powder storage. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 13:13
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Wouldn't your dudes be extremely sleep deprived AND hungover AND slightly drunk?
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Oct 1, 2015 13:19
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lol "slightly"
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Oct 1, 2015 13:20
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JcDent posted:Thank you for the British Army post! Also casualties were disproportionately in the initial waves of the assault, either getting killed going over the top or getting killed in the counter bombardment or getting killed in the ensuing counterattack. Also also i'm not sure if the 10% figure was for an attack or what, but one thing about WWI is that while attacks were loving brutal, there is also a whole lot of gently caress all going on in many places along the line. Once trench warfare breaks out there is also a really small number of attacks going on as well - it's not like WWII where you have low level fighting going on all the way up and down the line the entire time, people in the trenches when the weather is good said that you could forget there was a war going on. Unlike other nations the British tried to combat this with having the troops perform regular trench raids so that they didn't get too comfortable in the trenches - a fair few British officers (including Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen) said that they got good experience in how to conduct major attacks by performing night raids.
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Oct 1, 2015 13:33
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Hazzard posted:A company of men with head injuries might as well be dead if you're trying to organise a battle on the front lines. Worse. A company of dead men just requires a graves detail at some point. A company of wounded men requires a massive amount of support infrastructure (if you don't want them to become a company of dead men). When you are organizing battles among Corps or Army fronts the expected proportion of KIA to WIA among your casualties is something that affects your logistics chain pretty substantially.
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Oct 1, 2015 13:35
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HEY GAL posted:lol "slightly" not enough time between waking up and arriving at the battlefield to get properly drunk
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Oct 1, 2015 13:45
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Phobophilia posted:hungover AND slightly drunk? Someone hasn't heard of Hair of the Dog
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Oct 1, 2015 13:58
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It baffles me how Kings ever did any decision making when I think the average soldier can afford to be slightly drunk all the time. Kings must be able to afford to drink all day long. It reminds me of a Geography teacher telling my class that Europe took over the world by sharing wine with everyone they wrote treaties with. The other party would be too drunk to argue anything.
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Oct 1, 2015 13:59
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Phobophilia posted:not enough time between waking up and arriving at the battlefield to get properly drunk sure there is. plus, when you're standing around on the battlefield doing nothing you can drink even more. those guys you're supposed to kill at the top of the hill aren't moving anyway, and you're sure as gently caress not attacking that position without a lot of liquid courage.
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Oct 1, 2015 14:00
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Those gourds aren't holding water, thats all I'm saying.
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Oct 1, 2015 14:02
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And that last cannonball was so traumatic that you need another drink to calm yourself down. Every event on the battlefield could prompt a drink. Did drinking games exist at this point? Would soldiers be making each other take shots every time a bullet hit the ground in front of them? Or for every mention of "the cause" in a speech they would take a drink. I imagine it's difficult to find something common enough to take a drink, but not so much you're dead of liver poison by Sunday mass.
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Oct 1, 2015 14:03
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Hazzard posted:Did drinking games exist at this point? I think drinking games have existed since the invention of drink.
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Oct 1, 2015 14:24
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MikeCrotch posted:Also casualties were disproportionately in the initial waves of the assault, either getting killed going over the top or getting killed in the counter bombardment or getting killed in the ensuing counterattack. I think it was for the entire war. When you read about the bombardments, it's hard no to think of entire companies and battalions getting wiped out - how could someone survive?
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Oct 1, 2015 14:46
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Slavvy posted:Lets say that happens (yes, I realise that if they were competent they wouldn't be the Nazis) and the worst case scenario happens: the allies get crushed and pull back into the channel. Was there a contingency plan of some sort or were they just going to shrug and let the soviets deal with it? Probably throw reinforcements into Italy maybe or try landing into southern France?
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Oct 1, 2015 15:21
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JcDent posted:I think it was for the entire war. Well a quick answer is often they didn't. There are a lot of cases of units being in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting punished for it. However there were plenty of reasons guys could survive an artillery barrage. Firstly, in the early war artillery was overwhelmingly firing shrapnel shells. One of the unique properties of shrapnel shells is that they fire a spray of pellets like a shotgun in front of the shell, so depending on the angle, fusing and speed of the incoming shell the guy in front of you might get minced by ball bearings while you are untouched. Even with HE shells you might get missed by all the fragments. There is also a reason everyone built all those trenches - they are really good for protecting you from artillery. Most attacks would consist of leaving your trench, taking the other guy's trench (if you can) and then hunkering down like gently caress to avoid getting smashed by the inevitable artillery strike. On the defence, it was rapidly discovered by the Germans that having tonnes of guys right up at the front line was a bad idea, as they would get heavily hosed up by the opening bombardments that the Allies were so fond of. The British found this out the hard way before the German spring offensives - not being used to conducting defence, they had forward trenches full which led to massive casualties in the preparatory bombardment. The Germans also had much better dug and developed trench systems which helped them survive the usually much heavier Allied bombardments. A key thing to remember is that the bloodiest stages of the war were right at the start and right at the end - when everyone was out of the trenches and fighting in the open. The Battle of the Frontiers in the first month of the resulted in over 500,000 guys becoming casualties in 1 month. It was insane. If you were in the British army you were more likely to die in the Hundred Days offensive that you were at the Somme. But on the other hand, you had months on end where no major attack was taking place and no-one was really having a go at each other. That 10% figure doesn't really give you a great idea of how casualties mounted up during the Great War.
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Oct 1, 2015 15:36
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MikeCrotch posted:Germans at the Battle of Mons Do you have a source on this? I'm extremely skeptical of it and every time I research it I dead end into the same handful of really iffy reports.
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Oct 1, 2015 15:39
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Cyrano4747 posted:Do you have a source on this? I'm extremely skeptical of it and every time I research it I dead end into the same handful of really iffy reports. I'll be honest, I don't. I probably should have refrained from mentioning the 'Battle' of Mons since it has been so overhyped in the British consciousness as the first British action on the continent since Waterloo. Still, it was documented that the Mad Minute was used at Mons and the Germans found it a hard enough fight that they were temporarily stopped and allowed the BEF to escape, so it's a good example of the quality of the BEF regulars at the start of the war.
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Oct 1, 2015 15:48
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Raenir Salazar posted:Probably throw reinforcements into Italy maybe or try landing into southern France? They were straight up going to try again somewhere in Northern France if I recall correctly. It's not like other options are any good.
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Oct 1, 2015 15:50
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Raenir Salazar posted:Probably throw reinforcements into Italy maybe or try landing into southern France? Like they actually did, you mean?  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dragoon
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Oct 1, 2015 16:03
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Does anyone know where I might be able to find a really good, comprehensive source for the French orders of battle during WWI? There's some really weird poo poo going on among the French generals right now and I'm trying to find out (for instance) whether it's Louis Barthas's corps who's been affected by it or whether it's the corps next door to them; not the easiest job since Barthas doesn't give a gently caress what unit he's in as long as it's with his mates, and I can't find a decent source to tell me either who the 280th Regiment belonged to, or e.g. which brigade was commanded by Niessel and then what division/corps that brigade belonged to...
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Oct 1, 2015 16:07
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Hazzard posted:It baffles me how Kings ever did any decision making when I think the average soldier can afford to be slightly drunk all the time. Kings must be able to afford to drink all day long. Lol if you thought that Hitler, Stalin or Churchill had a sober moment during WW2 (or much of WW1).
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Oct 1, 2015 16:24
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Wasn't there a Russian general who had such a case of nerves he broke out in a rash most of the war?
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Oct 1, 2015 16:26
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Nenonen posted:Lol if you thought that Hitler, Stalin or Churchill had a sober moment during WW2 (or much of WW1). i thought stalin stayed sober while everyone else at the usual russian-style boozeups was getting drunk, which is kind of terrifying if you think about it
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Oct 1, 2015 16:27
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StashAugustine posted:Wasn't there a Russian general who had such a case of nerves he broke out in a rash most of the war? I'm guessing that was Chuikov?
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Oct 1, 2015 16:34
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Panzeh posted:Unfortunately the US spent much of the early Cold War with important services run by lunatics. Still probably better than Britain, which spent much of the early Cold War with important services run by enemy agents.
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Oct 1, 2015 16:36
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