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HEY GAL posted: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 I thought he became blackout drunk after a couple significant events, like June 22, 1941 and August 6, 1945.
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Oct 1, 2015 16:43
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Frostwerks posted:Could you elaborate mang.  When you consider that the tanks landed were Churchills and they handled the sands of the Sahara just fine, the pictures of them all half-buried by their own tracks is pretty damning about how terrible an idea it was. It was a minor consideration in a list of "let's see if we can do this too!" Good Ideas, but like the rest it contributed to the institutional understanding of how to stack the odds in your favour when conducting opposed landings.
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Oct 1, 2015 16:47
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MikeCrotch posted: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. Ok, I went digging through my hard drive and found a small writeup of what I've dug up so far that I did for TFR years ago. Some of the research was mine (I remember flipping through Tuchman to figure out what her source was) and some is stuff that I found other people discussing on some really crusty WW1 history forums, but everything I took from that was people looking at original accounts I didn't have access to. Don't consider it definitive, but I think it's pretty illuminating. The other thing I want to emphasize before I get started on this is that this story was pretty popular in the British wartime press, and the British press at this time was no too shy about telling a nice story or lying outright to paint a good picture for the home front. Remember: these are the same guys who printed pictures of victims of Russian anti-Jewish pogroms with the caption "German atrocities in Belgium." The "Machine Guns at Mons" story is just perfect for that kind of thing - it plays up the supposed superiority not only of the British soldier (so well trained he can fire a round a second!) but also the weapon the military is arming them with (so well designed it can sustain that kind of firepower!). In full disclosure I have a bit of a reputation in TFR of being very, very not impressed by the Enfield. The whole reason I looked into this 'mistaken for an MG' stuff in the first place is because it is constantly cited by the most insufferable Enfield fanboys who insist it is the most superior bolt action firearm ever designed. I'm of the opinion that it is mediocre and at the time of WW1 was merely an adequate rifle that they could not replace as planned in 1914 because of the outbreak of war. Anyways, on Mons: Any time you dig deep on that MG legend it gets more and more ephemeral the further back you track it. You will find many people pointing to Tuchman’s “Guns of August,” where she cites the memoirs of a soldier named Smith-Dorrien. He gives no solid source for his belief that the Germans mistook their rifle fire for machine guns, which begs the question of how he knew what the Germans were thinking. There is no good evidence that he had special access to prisoners, for example. The other major source I’ve found on this is the official “History of the Great War based on Official Documents” that was directed by Sir James Edmonds. There are some references to him saying that the Germans were mistaking rifle fire for MG fire. However, these are largely taken out of context. Edmonds goes to a lot of effort to talk about the disposition of the British MGs (they did have them at Mons) and their effectiveness. The section that people usually talk about has him saying that the Germans were faced with intense rifle fire that they could not distinguish from the incoming machine gun fire. This is important, because just after this he describes how British soldiers were able to neutralize a German MG nest once they determined its location by turning their own MGs on it. This wasn’t an instance of the Germans thinking that British riflemen were machine gunners, but of the general level of fire coming from the British lines being such that they couldn’t pinpoint where the MGs were, much to their detriment. The other really troublesome point as far as these things go is that you find constant mentions in the memoirs of German officers - Bloem and Von Kluck are easy to get - of the intense fire at Mons that distinguishes between rifle and MG fire. There are a couple of books that come out in the 20s from Germany that seem to play up “machine guns behind every hedge” in the opening stages of the war, but they are written in a very heroic manner that juxtaposes that implacable opposition with the heroism of the German soldier making the early advances. I personally suspect that these are less of a true account of the number of MGs at the early battles or German beliefs that they faced an inflated number of MGs and more literary license on the part of patriotic authors trying to write heroic war stories about a fight that was ultimately lost. Finally, I would also point out that the idea of the ‘Mad Minute’ wasn’t unique to the British, although they were alone in being quite so exuberant about it (the shooting competitions with cash prizes, the well publicized records of extremely fast shooters, etc). The Germans trained to create beaten zones of rifle fire, a tactic that went back to when rifles had the range to be deadly far beyond their aimed accuracy but machine guns were not widely available to lay down that kind of suppressive fire. They even used spotters to determine range and judge the effectiveness, much the same way that forward observers are used for artillery work and that MGs were ranged in at that time. (See Zuber’s “The Battle of the Frontiers” for a good account of this German technique). In fact, it was the relative inferiority of the Enfield at this kind of extreme long range suppressing action in the open fields of S. Africa during the Boer War (the Boers had a lot of Mauser rifles, so the comparison was direct) that was one of the major pushes to replace the Enfield in the years immediately before the war. If WW1 hadn’t happened the P-14 would have replaced it in short order. Another thing to consider is that the British were not alone in having effective rifle fire when on the defense. The Belgians managed to slow down opposed pontoon crossings by the Germans quite effectively in a number of locations without large numbers of MGs, and in some instances none at all. Rifles of this age were accurate, devastating, and reasonably quick firing. “Mad Minute” aside it is trivial for even an untrained person to put 15 rounds through them a minute. While this doesn't address the myth itself it should be remembered that rifles were deadly enough in their own right at this time and many other forces managed decisively withering fire with rifles alone, especially at the early stages of the war. I think that half the reason that the British became so associated with this feat is that they had such a major emphasis on it before the war that, again, was highly publicized to the public via newspapers etc. even before the conflict began. In the end I think the Mons MG myth is the result of very intense British small arms fire leading the Germans to have unreliable estimates on the numbers and locations of the MGs, much to their detriment. This had less to do with the super-engineered Enfield Rifle or the super-human abilities of the Old Contemptibles and more to do with the way that the Germans were advancing into interlocking fields of fire and were in a pretty unfortunate situation on that day. I strongly doubt anyone mistook a rifle company for an emplaced machine gun, but the rifle fire was certainly intense enough that it made the location of those MGs difficult to determine. The MG myth is just the exaggeration of a kernel of truth that is far less dramatic than the notion that the British Tommy, coupled with his trusty Enfield, was so skilled at rapid fire that if he wasn’t a replacement for an MG (the iconic harbinger of death on WW1 battlefields) than he and a few of his trusty mates could do a good impression of one. This isn’t to say that British rifle fire wasn’t devastating at Mons - it was - but this wasn’t the unique feat of British soldiers with a uniquely British weapon. It was a product of the way war had developed across the previous half century.
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Oct 1, 2015 16:52
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Trin Tragula posted: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... What period? Edmond's "Military Operations: France and Belgium 1914" is available online and it has some pretty extensive orders of battle for that period. Given that he wrote the Official History for the British Army I suspect that you mind find those located there for later years as well.
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Oct 1, 2015 16:54
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Xerxes17 posted:I'm guessing that was Chuikov? Chuikov broke out in horrible rashes during the battle of Stalingrad due to stress (pretty understandable) but i'm pretty sure he made a recovery and was fully involved in later campaigns. I think Paulus was affected by something stress related as well but i've drawn a total blank on what it was. Cyrano4747 posted:Rifle poo poo This is a Good Post. I mean, the British Army going to war with inferior equipment, who would have guessed?!?!
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Oct 1, 2015 17:04
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Would pebbles be effective shrapnel or at least better than no shrapnel?
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Oct 1, 2015 17:12
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JcDent posted:The day we stop calling AA guns "common objects" is a dark one edit: Does some German dude's definition of "modernity" answer this question HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 17:24
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HEY GAL posted:This actually makes me wonder something. In my period, almost everything is decorated as though it were a work of art. Calligraphy goes on everyday records, cannon get decorations, there's decorative carving on warships, etc. Later, that stops being the case. Why? If I ask a modern gun manufacturer "why don't you put cool designs on your weapons," he or she would give me some sort of utilitarian argument. It wastes material, it takes longer to make, etc. If I asked a 17th century gun manufacturer "why do you put cool designs on your weapons," I'd get everything but a utilitarian argument, because decoration and aesthetics are not considered irrelevant. What happened? Probably a change of priorities due to the switch to assembly line production. When you aren't making every last gun by hand and you need to make interchangeable parts, putting curlicues and filigree all over the metalwork and the stocks becomes less of a priority. At least, that's my guess.
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Oct 1, 2015 17:37
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HEY GAL posted:This actually makes me wonder something. In my period, almost everything is decorated as though it were a work of art. Calligraphy goes on everyday records, cannon get decorations, there's decorative carving on warships, etc. Later, that stops being the case. Why? If I ask a modern gun manufacturer "why don't you put cool designs on your weapons," he or she would give me some sort of utilitarian argument. It wastes material, it takes longer to make, etc. If I asked a 17th century gun manufacturer "why do you put cool designs on your weapons," I'd get everything but a utilitarian argument, because decoration and aesthetics are not considered irrelevant. What happened? I wonder if assembly line production might have something to do with it. It's one thing for a skilled craftsman to spend a little extra time and effort to make things pretty, another if you'd have to hire an extra person for the job of cannon gilder. I read some stuff a long time ago about how the distinction between artist and craftsman wasn't really a thing prior to the industrial revolution- the guy who carved statues and the guy who carved chairs weren't viewed as doing fundamentally different things.
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Oct 1, 2015 17:44
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Probably a change of priorities due to the switch to assembly line production. When you aren't making every last gun by hand and you need to make interchangeable parts, putting curlicues and filigree all over the metalwork and the stocks becomes less of a priority. I would also guess that standardization and professional militaries have a bunch to do with it. Look at African soldiers and their gold plated AK-47s. Or to split the time difference Murat blowing all of his war loot money on fancy clothes. Soldiers will always try and look fancy unless you make them conform.
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Oct 1, 2015 17:45
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Would the change have anything to do with the concept of Brutalism in architecture?Frostwerks posted:Would pebbles be effective shrapnel or at least better than no shrapnel?
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Oct 1, 2015 17:49
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this also reminds me of the article i read once where some dude pointed out that people in the past did things for reasons other than ones we might consider useful, so "increase the glory of the king of france" is as sensible a reason to go to war for the 17th century french as "contain communism" might be to our recent ancestors and that's letting aside the part where some early moderns consider war an end in itself Arquinsiel posted:Would the change have anything to do with the concept of Brutalism in architecture? HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 17:49
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MikeCrotch posted:Chuikov broke out in horrible rashes during the battle of Stalingrad due to stress (pretty understandable) but i'm pretty sure he made a recovery and was fully involved in later campaigns. It pains me to say this, but I don't think the Enfield was inferior. Really it was more or less the equal to anything else given the conditions by the middle of the war. All things considered the war doesn't really change one bit if you give the Germans Enfields, the French Mosins, the British Lebels, and the Russians Mausers. gently caress, of all the major arms the Lebel was by far and away the most out of date but it served well enough. What I really object to, though, is all the people who insist that the Enfield was a superior weapon. It did its job, but it also had a lot of shortcomings that the British military was keenly aware of. The action was a hang-over from an old blackpowder design and .303 was an old rimmed cartridge. Rimmed cartridges have drawbacks all of their own and the .303 in particular had pretty anemic long range performance - hence why the Boers generally came out on the upside of any long-range, volley fire duels across the open spaces in S. Africa. Now, once you settle down into trenches and you're not looking at kilometer and a half engagement distances for riflemen that stops being so important. Even so, the P-14 was a much better rifle (seen in American service as the m1917) and the cartridge that it was originally designed for was better than .303. It was average, that was it. I'm not going to bag on anyone who likes them because they like old poo poo from old wars (gently caress, I own a couple myself) but there are good reasons why that design never made it over to the civilian world in a big way. Meanwhile the general pattern of the Mauser action is ubiquitous even to this day with hunting arms. It's just one of those things where popular culture latched onto something that was OK at doing its job and imbued it with supernatural abilities.
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Oct 1, 2015 17:56
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HEY GAL posted:
When mechanized manufacturing started being a thing, craftsmen dwindled in numbers, and the cost of specialist labor such as it takes to engrave guns went through the roof. It also doesn't help that the items you're talking about became much more common as they became standardized, which puts them within reach of people who can't afford that kind of embellishment. An aristocrat in 1600 who is commissioning a fowling piece with a fancy wheel lock can afford to have the guy making it turn it into a work of art. A farmer in 1800 who is buying a hunting rifle might embellish it a little with his pocket knife, but he sure as poo poo doesn't want to pay the money to have it done. You can still find all sorts of examples of individuals using their own skill and time to embellish these kinds of items. There are tons of examples of really horrible attempts at DIY woodworking and metal engraving on gun forums, for example (TFR has a long history of making fun of them), and in a more military context there are equally legion examples of trench art made from everything imaginable. At one point I owned a Yugoslavian SKS that had the stock carved up by a Serbian nationalist. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 18:01
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Much of it has to be because the client wants a million rifles that fit certain specs. But I don't think that aesthetics cease to matter - industrial era just has a different standard for aesthetics. Remember the grumbling about Hasbro guns when M-16 was first introduced? A rifle with plastic parts just didn't meet some people's expectations at the time. It looked like a child's toy compared to, say, a Garand. P.s. You can still buy or procure very ornate hunting pieces if you have more money than you have good taste. Or you might as well have your Bentley be modified to resemble a 16th century horse carriage.
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Oct 1, 2015 18:01
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HEY GAL posted: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 IIRC he 'cheated' and drank some weak-rear end wine while everyone was getting wasted on vodka.
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Oct 1, 2015 18:10
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Raskolnikov38 posted:IIRC he 'cheated' and drank some weak-rear end wine while everyone was getting wasted on vodka. imagine you're halfway through the night and you realize he's been staring at you for a while now
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Oct 1, 2015 18:12
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Cyrano4747 posted:What period? Edmond's "Military Operations: France and Belgium 1914" is available online and it has some pretty extensive orders of battle for that period. Given that he wrote the Official History for the British Army I suspect that you mind find those located there for later years as well. I'd love to just go to the OH, but unfortunately it's only the 1914 volumes that are available for free, and the French OOB has been put in a blender since August 1914. (I do have the French OH, but what I can't work out is the French phrase for "order of battle"...)
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Oct 1, 2015 18:12
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HEY GAL posted:this also reminds me of the article i read once where some dude pointed out that people in the past did things for reasons other than ones we might consider useful, so "increase the glory of the king of france" is as sensible a reason to go to war for the 17th century french as "contain communism" might be to our recent ancestors 
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Oct 1, 2015 18:13
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Raskolnikov38 posted:IIRC he 'cheated' and drank some weak-rear end wine while everyone was getting wasted on vodka. He was also a late riser so everyone else would be sleep deprived by the time his bacchanals really started going while Uncle Joe would be at his freshest. Btw. is it true that Zhukov threatened to put Smersh after Katukov's mistress if Katukov couldn't start concentrating on deep penetrations... sorry, what was I saying?
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Oct 1, 2015 18:33
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Nenonen posted:He was also a late riser so everyone else would be sleep deprived by the time his bacchanals really started going while Uncle Joe would be at his freshest. Zhukov wasn't even remotely in charge of SMERSH, and they had better things to do.
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Oct 1, 2015 18:36
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Ensign Expendable posted:Zhukov wasn't even remotely in charge of SMERSH, and they had better things to do.
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Oct 1, 2015 18:38
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100 Years Ago It's a new month, let's lift our heads for a moment and go see what the news is from the Italian Front. Answer: mostly quiet, and for once General Cadorna is happy to sit tight and wait for his supply situation to improve. Gee, I sure do hope that there's not soon going to be a major war-changing development in a neighbouring theatre that might disturb this happy equilibrium! It's mostly uneventful on the Western Front, except for a large and inconvenient counter-attack against the Hohenzollern Redoubt. And it's trouble for Louis Barthas, when his bosses declare the current erection unsatisfactory and request that it be stiffened... HEY GAL posted:as my studies demonstrate, nobody has better things to do than be a backbiting, gossiping little douche to your friends Once again, the more things change, the more they stay the same!
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Oct 1, 2015 18:53
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Trin Tragula posted:I'd love to just go to the OH, but unfortunately it's only the 1914 volumes that are available for free, and the French OOB has been put in a blender since August 1914. (I do have the French OH, but what I can't work out is the French phrase for "order of battle"...) Ordre de bataille?
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Oct 1, 2015 19:42
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Cyrano4747 posted:It pains me to say this, but I don't think the Enfield was inferior. Really it was more or less the equal to anything else given the conditions by the middle of the war. All things considered the war doesn't really change one bit if you give the Germans Enfields, the French Mosins, the British Lebels, and the Russians Mausers. gently caress, of all the major arms the Lebel was by far and away the most out of date but it served well enough. That's true for pretty much all wars, isn't it? Equipment isn't going to be the biggest factor in general (assuming it's at least of about the same generation) and smallarms won't in particular. I mean, the French went into 1870 with the Chassepot which was pretty cutting-edge and very much superior to what the Germans were using, and look how much good that did them.
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Oct 1, 2015 19:46
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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'll have you know HITLER was a teetotaler I was under the vague impression the man loved his amphetamines, though
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Oct 1, 2015 19:50
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Trin Tragula posted:I'd love to just go to the OH, but unfortunately it's only the 1914 volumes that are available for free, and the French OOB has been put in a blender since August 1914. (I do have the French OH, but what I can't work out is the French phrase for "order of battle"...)
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Oct 1, 2015 19:51
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Nebakenezzer posted:I'll have you know HITLER was a teetotaler Guy loved anything Morell injected into him, including morphine, vitamins, meth, caffeine, and even fuckin' strychnine.
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Oct 1, 2015 19:55
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you can get high off strychnine?
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Oct 1, 2015 20:05
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HEY GAL posted:you can get high off strychnine? Near-death experiences are a hell of a drug.
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Oct 1, 2015 20:25
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Google says it's a stimulant.
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Oct 1, 2015 20:26
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feedmegin posted:That's true for pretty much all wars, isn't it? Equipment isn't going to be the biggest factor in general (assuming it's at least of about the same generation) and smallarms won't in particular. I mean, the French went into 1870 with the Chassepot which was pretty cutting-edge and very much superior to what the Germans were using, and look how much good that did them. Pretty much. Unless it's a generational difference - say going against a late 45 military with one from 1910 - any benefits tend to get swamped by bigger factors at the army level. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 20:44
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First you learn that Wehrmacht isn't clean, then Panther is a poo poo tank, then Enfield isn't a good rifle... Man, liking stuff is hard. Did I allready mention that I visited the war museum here recently? Saw a rusted StG, many Mosins, Mausers and Arisakas because apparently Lithuanian wars of Independence ca.1918 was a potluck and everyone brought whatever they had (looted from Czarists). The Gun/Weapon Room is overwhelming in that 3/4 of walls are covered with firearms and most of them are pre-bolth action. This thread and HEY GAL posts made me enjoy it a lot more since I now know that we didn't just go croosbow -> musket -> bolt action, but it's still way too much poo poo for a non sperg. They didn't have Brown Bess nor Baker's rifle, but there were fortress guns (of Taiping King sniping type) and ornate African boomsticks. Of the modern poo poo, they only had an AKM with a GP-25, so it was near drat a shrine to me. Man, that fire selector is goofy as gently caress. The room also had polearms, but I didn't look at them 'cos girlfriend was getting tired/angry (she liked military tech museum, must be the driver thing working), and helmets - French "firefighters", a brody, Stahlhemls (none of ours, I think), the stupid E-Germans helms, Falshirmjager (rusted a pierced, tho) and so on. In a semi-unrelated note, here's me doing bad things to a T-72M  And a T-55something: 
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Oct 1, 2015 20:52
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Phanatic posted:Guy loved anything Morell injected into him, including morphine, vitamins, meth, caffeine, and even fuckin' strychnine. Churchill is all "my straightforward alcoholism doesn't look so bad now, eh?"
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Oct 1, 2015 21:15
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HEY GAL posted:as my studies demonstrate, nobody has better things to do than be a backbiting, gossiping little douche to your friends You study the forums?
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Oct 2, 2015 04:44
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I just got my hands on a British ergonomics evaluation of some German tanks. Turns out there are some fun drawbacks to the Tiger, like the clinometer that slices the gunner when he traverses the turret, a shell clip that injures the loader's hands, and also the ammo rack that is rendered invisible when it's cloudy.
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Oct 2, 2015 05:25
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HEY GAL posted:as my studies demonstrate, nobody has better things to do than be a backbiting, gossiping little douche to your friends sometimes they find better things to do with their enemies. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Torture_of_captain_rosinsky_by_soldies_of_red_army.jpg That's a naked polish man being impaled on a tree, so don't click if you are squeamish.
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Oct 2, 2015 05:30
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Ensign Expendable posted:I just got my hands on a British ergonomics evaluation of some German tanks. Turns out there are some fun drawbacks to the Tiger, like the clinometer that slices the gunner when he traverses the turret, a shell clip that injures the loader's hands, and also the ammo rack that is rendered invisible when it's cloudy. 
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Oct 2, 2015 05:34
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Xerxes17 posted:Wait, what? He probably means it's placed in such an inconvenient area that it might as well be invisible when the tank is filled with clouds of smoke. I mean maybe the Nazis had rendering problems and just didn't have the ammo rack show up because the GPU was too busy with the weather but I'm going to guess it's a wonky British word choice thing.
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Oct 2, 2015 06:54
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British tankers just weren't engineered to the exact tolerances required to function properly in a German tank. German overengineering strikes again. 
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