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ponzicar posted:If the pike is long enough, you can defend your home without even being there.  If I have a house, and you have a house... (My pike goes acrooooooooss the road and breaks your window)
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Oct 5, 2015 04:26
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HEY GAL posted:you already know the answer to this one, in your heart
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Oct 5, 2015 04:29
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darthbob88 posted:I would assume not, since the obvious and proper method for home defense would be shooting pistols out your window. At the invader, or just in general?
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Oct 5, 2015 04:40
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darthbob88 posted:I would assume not, since the obvious and proper method for home defense would be shooting pistols out your window. Pfft. 
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Oct 5, 2015 04:45
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Deteriorata posted:Pfft. I made some improvements. 
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Oct 5, 2015 04:58
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You call that a fort? Any Early Modern engineer would be horrified to build something that primitive. Walls that aren't angled and no sign of the Trace Italienne.
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Oct 5, 2015 05:35
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Hogge Wild posted:I've read almost nothing about the Soviet procurement. What were their biggest mistakes? One of the things that is alluded to, both in the Jon Parshall link I posted and in Wages of Destruction is that the Soviet citizenry paid an enormous price for the mobilization of the war economy. Germany and the Nazis were always very consciously aware of public opinion - after the experiences of the home front in WWI and the blockade they were very reluctant to impose too much hardship on the German people, and reduced rations for things like food and coal incrementally throughout the war. The Gestapo kept an eye on public opinion the entire time and it was often decided to cut the rations of things like coal to industry if public morale was bad. The Soviets on the other hand mobilized their economy in a much more severe fashion, and basically were producing vast numbers of tanks at the expense of basically the entire consumer market. A large number of people in the USSR suffered from malnutrition and starvation due to the extent at which resources were divereted out of the civilian economy in the early part of the war in the East. On the subject of war economics, thread darling Adam Tooze has a 3 part lecture series on the interwar economy of Europe & America which I highly recommend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDlRKl3XGoM - Myths and Realities of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and Versaille https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Alx_JDpQio - How the USA came to have everyone in their pocket https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11p6VNP96NE - The farming crisis in Germany in between the wars
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Oct 5, 2015 09:45
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I badly want a series about modern engineers who are thrown back to the Renaissance and make their living by being battlefield engineers. Modern mechanical knowledge bolted onto period materials. Introduce Newtonian Physics a few hundred years early and a society can save piles of money on building materials.
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Oct 5, 2015 09:48
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Hazzard posted:I badly want a series about modern engineers who are thrown back to the Renaissance and make their living by being battlefield engineers. Modern mechanical knowledge bolted onto period materials. Introduce Newtonian Physics a few hundred years early and a society can save piles of money on building materials. First job: Hope someone has a solar powered calculator, and frantically write down trig and log tables.
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Oct 5, 2015 10:05
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:I made some improvements. hey! i still portray someone who works for swedes!
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Oct 5, 2015 10:50
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HEY GAL posted:hey! i still portray someone who works for swedes! hosed up if true
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Oct 5, 2015 11:15
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nothing to seehere posted:First job: Hope someone has a solar powered calculator, and frantically
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Oct 5, 2015 11:28
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Build a slide rule out of pikes so you can keep cavalry from interrupting your calculations?
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Oct 5, 2015 12:07
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Deteriorata posted:Pfft. Hey, baby, wanna come by my place and see my rear entry tower?
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Oct 5, 2015 12:14
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Y'know, while we're on the subject, how did pike procurement work? Say Wallenstein or Gustav Adolf decided he needed a new regiment but didn't have surplus weapons available - how'd they go about getting the pikes? Government arsenals? Contracted out to carpenters and smiths? Dedicated pikesmiths? Hand a bunch of wood and spearheads to the soldiers and tell them to figure it out themselves?
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Oct 5, 2015 12:33
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For the guys I study, the colonel and the quartermaster handle procurement through arrangements with local manufacturers or suppliers. Like how when Mansfeld was trying to reassemble his regiment after they all deserted he wrote that he had an angle on "six thousand man worth of good weapons from the Netherlands" from some dude he met in Prague. Multiply that by ten or twenty and that's how a big army gets all its stuff. I don't know about Sweden, though, and I seem to remember reading something about G.A. handling some procurement stuff himself, so don't generalize that. If Wallenstein has raised the regiment himself, he probably supplies it out of his own estates. If it's a regiment that someone else owns that's in his army, see above. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Oct 5, 2015 |
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Oct 5, 2015 12:52
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It's the anniversary of Milunka Savić's death. (not a 100 year one, mind you, she died in 1973) "The Great War" Youtube channel has a video on her:
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Oct 5, 2015 12:53
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my dad posted:It's the anniversary of Milunka Savić's death. (not a 100 year one, mind you, she died in 1973) quote:She received her second Karađorđe Star (with Swords) after the Battle of the Crna Bend in 1916 when she captured 23 Bulgarian soldiers single-handedly
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Oct 5, 2015 12:57
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HEY GAL posted:what The version I was told is that she went to take a poo poo, got lost, and returned to the wrong trench without the other side realizing she was an enemy soldier. Cue hilarity.
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Oct 5, 2015 13:00
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P-Mack posted:Does anyone know of any decent programs specifically for map drawing? Google Geographic Information Systems Software (or GIS). There are lots of them. I used to work at a place where we were constantly refining and updating maps of watershed areas. Real maps of high quality are actually not easy.
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Oct 5, 2015 14:08
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and since pike shafts have to be ash you need to source the wood too
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Oct 5, 2015 14:14
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Raskolnikov38 posted:He didn't work himself to death, he died during surgery due to a unskilled doctor and complications of the torture he received in the gulag. Wikipedia seems to imply it's more than that: quote:On 3 December 1960, Korolev suffered his first heart attack. During his convalescence, it was also discovered that he was suffering from a kidney disorder, a condition brought on by his detention in the Soviet prison camps. He was warned by the doctors that if he continued to work as intensely as he had, he would not live long. Korolev became convinced that Khrushchev was only interested in the space program for its propaganda value and feared that he would cancel it entirely if the Soviets started losing their leadership to the United States, so he continued to push himself even harder.
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Oct 5, 2015 14:18
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Murgos posted:Google Geographic Information Systems Software (or GIS). There are lots of them. GISs are great in a data-driven environment, but in order to legibly present maps to Joe Public I find that it's often a good idea to export to your vector graphics program of choice (Illustrator, Inkscape) and make the design decisions there. For a MilHist map you could do stuff like drawing lines and polys on top of irl OpenStreetmap data in JOSM, and use Maperitive as an intermediary for exporting to a wireframe .svg. Then go and do what mappers do! Vector graphics are always your friend for maps, so if you don't have Adobe Creative Suite maybe try out Inkscape.
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Oct 5, 2015 15:06
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I just draw on top of Google Maps with Paint.NET.
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Oct 5, 2015 15:11
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HEY GAL posted:and since pike shafts have to be ash you need to source the wood too Ugh my shaft shmells like ash
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Oct 5, 2015 15:14
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Koesj posted:GISs are great in a data-driven environment, but in order to legibly present maps to Joe Public I find that it's often a good idea to export to your vector graphics program of choice (Illustrator, Inkscape) and make the design decisions there. Ah, good to know. I didn't make maps I did the DB work on the back end and some of the outward facing UI stuff for researchers. All I know is that the people who did make the maps had a lot of rigor involved, also this was 20+ years ago so I have no clue how things have changed.
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Oct 5, 2015 15:26
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Hazzard posted:Introduce Newtonian Physics a few hundred years early and a society can save piles of money on building materials. please explain
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Oct 5, 2015 16:11
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WW2 Data We've gotten to the Soviet 122mm Projectiles - Part 1, fired from guns seen on the IS-2, IS-3, Su-122, ISU-122 and many more tanks, as well as field guns. Which round had a two-piece and a one-piece variants? Click to find out! Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Oct 5, 2015 |
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Oct 5, 2015 16:18
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Raenir Salazar posted:Wikipedia seems to imply it's more than that: Well yeah his health wasn't great but the doctor creating uncontrolled bleeding and his jaw being too hosed up to properly intubate him probably played a more immediate role.
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Oct 5, 2015 16:48
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Jobbo_Fett posted:WW2 Data The IS-1 had an 85 mm gun. Also the IS-4, IS-6, and IS-8 has 122 mm guns. Also the ISU-122 and ISU-122S SPGs. Edit: the Soviets did have an experimental one-piece 122 mm shell for D-25 derivatives, but it actually slowed down loading and did not result in any space savings, so the idea was discarded. Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Oct 5, 2015 |
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Oct 5, 2015 17:07
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Ensign Expendable posted:The IS-1 had an 85 mm gun. Whoops, forgot about that one.
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Oct 5, 2015 17:09
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:please explain Before Newtonian Physics was invented, often buildings would spontaneously convert into masses of demolecular goo.
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Oct 5, 2015 17:35
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Ensign Expendable posted:I just draw on top of Google Maps with Paint.NET. Yeah that's probably good enough in the majority of cases. If you have to iterate then vector graphics come to the fore though. Also there's NATO symbology fonts!
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Oct 5, 2015 17:36
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Meanwhile, in early modern Europe:quote:The most fundamental, and radically unfamiliar, element of the [early modern] viewpoint is its premise of a one-sex system. That is to say, instead of explaining male and female bodies as the two distinct forms of the human species, the early modern tradition considered man to be the more perfect manifestation of the single body that both men and women shared … The differences between the sexes lay not in the flesh, which was thought to be identical, but in the higher phenomenon of vital heat. Elena/o de Cespedes https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleno_de_C%C3%A9spedes was born a woman. After she had a child, he says, he turned into a man. So he changed his name, became a surgeon, and spent a few years in a Spanish army. Did they have both sexes? Did they surgically alter themselves? We don't know. Edit: Now that I think of it, I wonder if this provides an answer to the question of whether the comrades of women who dressed as men to fight in armies ever figured it out. In the 19th century, it seems they kind of didn't, that men and women's roles were so segregated (and women were dressed so, uh, outlandishly) that it was possible for women in the ACW to pretend to be men because their comrades might not have known what a woman's body looked like in pants. In the 17th century, it's possible that everyone would have thought that what we would have called "a woman dressing like a man" was "a person who is something other than 100% man or woman." HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Oct 5, 2015 |
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Oct 5, 2015 18:06
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Kaal posted:Before Newtonian Physics was invented, often buildings would spontaneously convert into masses of demolecular goo. In my head, I'm assuming it has something to do with building bridges quickly in particular. However, I'm also having a rough time of it. I think people forget that Newton was kicking this stuff around in the late 1600s versus, say, the 1800s or something. I thought people knew about the catenary curve since ancient times, and the rough rule of thumb that you can build a stable span of one so long as you kept the inverted "chain curve" within the middle third of the span. I would not have thought about it if I had not put too much time into learning about pizza ovens. That poo poo is old, yo.
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Oct 5, 2015 19:05
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Trin Tragula posted:I've got my buffer back! It's about 10 days big. Next job; see if I can get them autoposting again. I can't really add much to this but I spent a great deal of time in Ctesiphon / Salman Pak, Iraq. It is home to the largest free standing arch in the world:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taq_Kasra (not my photo) It is also the final resting place of Salman the Persian in the Mosque just a stones throw away from the Arch. The mosque also housed a very nifty torture room in 05 for local sectarian violence but that was out of (obvious at least) use in 08. There were some WW1 looking steel pot helmets kicking around but I have no photos of them and couldn't say for sure one way or another. I spent two deployments in and around Salman Pak, the second of which I lived literally next to the Arch. There is so much history packed into that part of the world and I didn't get much opportunity to experience it, but what I did get to see was pretty neat.
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Oct 5, 2015 19:33
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HEY GAL posted:Meanwhile, in early modern Europe: This is really interesting-- basically everything I know about women dressing as men to enlist in armies is from the ACW, which I did some research on (to write an alternate history story on an internet forum about that involved a woman fighting with the Union army, so not really anything super historically rigorous  ), and I guess I'd always just projected that 19th century attitude backwards into the early modern.
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Oct 5, 2015 19:38
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Rincewind posted:This is really interesting-- basically everything I know about women dressing as men to enlist in armies is from the ACW, which I did some research on (to write an alternate history story on an internet forum about that involved a woman fighting with the Union army, so not really anything super historically rigorous race progress (and things that go along with it like the concept of "atavism" and the "primitive") human rights historicism utilitarianism a sharp distinction between "magic," "science," and "religion" a sharp distinction between the "natural" and the "supernatural" the idea that war should not exist and that it's possible to eliminate it oh! Privacy! From the instant they were born until the moment they died, my dudes were probably never alone. Nor would they have wanted to be, no matter what they were doing. Also, a shame and repugnance associated with making GBS threads, pissing, loving, eating, drinking, and violence, but that began to develop earlier; my dudes have better table manners than their forbearers, for instance. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Oct 5, 2015 |
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Oct 5, 2015 19:47
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HEY GAL posted:Meanwhile, in early modern Europe: I was always fascinated by the way gender norms twist themselves around necessity. I guess that's why women stepping into male roles is more common in times of turmoil. An example of an all-time queer role would be Albanian tribes a where sometimes a father without sons would basically tell his oldest daughter "you're a man now", change her name, and make her dress, act, and live like a man. The examples of women from Serbia transgressing gender roles tend to be more subtle (at least the ones I know), and more about taking on male roles while remaining a woman, though I guess the lines blur with women who had to conceal their biological sex in order to take on the role they wanted. (obviously, modern examples of women's rights and gender-reassignment surgery not being taken into account) A branch of my family were Grenzers (border troops, basically) on the Habsburg Military Frontier. My father dig some digging through family history, and the history of the areas they lived in, and there's some interesting stuff he found. For one, some communities were formed in such a way as to be able to continue functioning without men, since there was no telling when the Habsburgs were going to drag off every able-bodied man to serve as cannon fodder in a random war hundreds if not thousands of miles away. This included women leading households. forcing returning men to stay in quarantine for a while before rejoining the community, even fending off Ottoman raids on their own. Though frankly, I'm not sure how much I should trust what my father told me, since I didn't get to see his sources, and he's a bit of a romantic with regards to family history. Off the top of my head, some notable examples of Serbian fighting women would be Čučuk Stana, a hajduk (outlaw/freedom fighter/land pirate depending on who you ask) who openly participated in combat in the Serbian and Greek revolutions against the Ottomans in the early 19th century (interestingly, even before she started fighting, her father taught her how to read, and let her wear men's clothing), Milunka Savić whom I already mentioned fighting in WW1, and Sofija Jovanović who had a similar life story with slightly fewer medals. The Partizans in WW2 had a shitton of women fighting, my great-aunt included, but they didn't really transgress gender roles as much as they just wanted to shoot some Nazis. I know there were examples of women hajduks even earlier, but Serbian history between the beginning and the end of the Ottoman reign is rather blurry, and very little written stuff exists about it. (Note: I am not a historian, so this might be completely wrong, but that's the impression I get from the historians I talked to) The weirdest thing is how it seems easier for foreign women to break into a traditional male role here, some even being encouraged to do so by otherwise rather patriarchal people. Notable examples here would be the English nurse Flora Sandes joining the Serbian army in WW1 (you'll hear more about her from Trin Tragula I imagine) and Ruth Mitchel, sister of US Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, who joined the goddamn Chetniks in WW2.
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Oct 5, 2015 20:19
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I have some shakier data on a different subject: soviet party times in Afghanistan! I'm reading a book of collected memoirs, mostly of drivers for some reasons, but there's stuff from Russians others, too. In no particular order: -The invasion/the coup was the cluster of all fucks. Soviet airlift was a joke, and it helped extremely in that 1) the prez was waiting for Soviet aid 2) the Kabul guard thought the soviet garrison was doing practice runs (they were - for an invasion) 3) the army was lead by bumblefucks and full of cowards. One notable moment includes a VDV officer scoring an unlikely grenade throw into an open T-54 hatch and cooking off the tank - otherwise they'd be toast, since his buddy forgot to take the ammo for a GMG. - a food and water convoy of 10 trucks and 20 dudes stumbling into an ambush meant for an ammo convoy. The driver in question had to drive two trucks. This is done by driving your truck forward, using roadside ditch to get back to an another truck, sitting down into a pool of blood on the driver seat, driving this truck a kilo further than his own truck, running back to his own truck, and so on and so forth, and that's how you do 20 kilos in 9 hours - everyone's high on marijuana or hash all the time, because war is hell, doubly so in the Red Army - Red Army replacements and reinforcements happen like so: they take you from your training unit and bring you to Afghanistan border. Then officers come "shopping" for replacements. Trained as a BTR-70 driver? Will do as a med truck driver. Radiomechanic? Will service planes now! Infantry commander is sad, because all the choice cuts are already taken, and he's left, again, with "Asians". - Everyone is super racist to "Asians" (basically any sort of Soviet Socialist Republic Of -Stan folks): stupid, untrained, fit for only physical labor, etc. - One Uzbek singer who'd get all the serving muslims as the audience did end up running away with the mudj, tho - Afghani booze! Trouble is, Afghanis are Muslims and, as such, a little rusty at making it. So when they payrol comes, the spending procedure is this 1) Vodka and drugs 2) Is there's no vodka, technical spirit from pilots 3) If pilots don't have any technical spirit (with that fresh rubber smell), you get Afghani moonshine. Sold in plastic bags, because nobody has bottles - Jaundice epidemics! Some guys had the good luck to "go into the mountains" already sick, but unaware. They come back yellow as lemons, and it's mostly too late at that point - Demobilized? Might as well sleep in the field for four nights, nobody cares anymore. Then you maybe raise some clatter, flash some medals, and they give you two cargo helos to take you back to the Union. But the pilot sets down just over the border, so hitchike a Kirgizian man and wife. Seven soviet paras go into the car, the wife stays outside to wait. The rest of the trip is finished with massive drinking and probably some orgies on a train. - Pilots in an airbase used to get paid well, so they'd used to drink and smoke a lot, and gently caress the young kitchen staff that they had. Then the command got wind of it, and all the young ladies were replaced by WOMEN over 50. - Once, they managed to scrape together two semi-sober Frogfoot pilots for a night sorties. On return, they're sure they hit some of their own guys. ...And more!
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