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Biffmotron posted:Heyo, I know this one! World War 1, with the immense expansion of the American Army. John Carson is the definitive guy, either in his book The Measure of Merit or the Army specific article version, Army Alpha, Army Brass, and the Search for Army Intelligence. The idea was to promote smart people instead of idiots. It wasn't great, but possibly better than nothing, and the ASVAB is it's modern descendant. Keep in mind that psychiatry during this time was more eager to see things in terms of general mental deficiency than we are today, so depression, anxiety, hallucinations, would all be symptoms of an underlying 'feeblemindedness', rather than disorders largely independent of cognitive ability. Sorry to bring this up from a couple pages ago, but what did "Army Beta" entail? I'm guessing a test for illiterates had lower expectations, so what was the upper range for people who took the Beta? Sergeant?
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 10:08 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 07:22 |
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask / Tell > Ask Us About Military History: Shut the gently caress up, Keldoclock
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 11:08 |
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khwarezm posted:Quick question, I know pitched battles have generally been given too much emphasis in popular history (especially compared to sieges), but in what periods in history would people think they might have assumed maximum importance and why? Napoleonic Era maybe? Alexandrian conquests and the subsequent Hellenistic wars perhaps? This reminds me of one of my biggest pet peeves, which is modern people judging 17th century commanders by 18th/19th century criteria. Count the later--or even 20th century--assumptions in this excerpt from a review of a good Osprey book on Luetzen: I should do a series of effortposts on Luetzen when the anniversary comes around next month, I think it's my favorite battle. Ideally, I should get a Gustavus Adolphus fanboy to do it in tandem with me to avoid bias. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Oct 10, 2015 |
# ? Oct 10, 2015 12:01 |
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Honestly the Russo-Japanese War was lost on land before Tsushima. Kuropatkin's immense caution combined with Stessel's terrible mismanagement of Port Arthur's defence meant that a lot of the wrong lessons were taken away by observers (such as the continued belief in the effectiveness of frontal assault and elan) which is part of how the First World War starts out as such a mess. so what you're saying is that japan is responsible for killing even more white people than just the russians
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 13:26 |
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Phobophilia posted:so what you're saying is that japan is responsible for killing even more white people than just the russians Well. Russian incompetence more than Japan, maybe.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 13:31 |
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xthetenth posted:After the hit they may not have actually done anything wrong, and I tend to agree they didn't. What I very seriously contest is the notion that a single bomb being able to put an aircraft carrier in a state of "pack it up guys, this isn't getting fixed" is a state that you get in without very severe, embarassing flaws in the design phase. USN design made a better showing, the Yorktown and Hornet took a beating and the absolute cataclysmic worst case happened to one of their carriers with the Franklin taking two bombs in the middle of actively warming up aircraft and in the process of fueling, with the added bonus of a nice rack of 14,000 pounds of rockets on it to cook off. Unlike a great many ships that suffered serious damage, the Franklin's hull was in perfectly good shape, even after the hangar deck was a hellish cataclysm. Agree with you completely that it's a systemic embarrassment. I just don't think that the crew did anything particularly wrong, and the minute that bomb was released Akagi was hosed no matter what.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 14:40 |
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xthetenth posted:Well, it's more that the 1942 campaign was much more destructive to the Japanese than Yellow Sea, and left them in a very bad position for a much larger second force. And if we weren't talking about Japanese planning for WWII I'd worry I was torturing the metaphor. But more accurately they fought the battles of 1942 as something like their idea of initial sparring between carriers and light forces, and didn't realize it was a prelude to the decisive battle, it was the decisive campaign, and they needed to outright win it. The funny thing about Midway was that it made for a year and a half or so of very tepid, abortive carrier operations on both sides that made the war distinctly not a carrier war.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 14:49 |
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Panzeh posted:The funny thing about Midway was that it made for a year and a half or so of very tepid, abortive carrier operations on both sides that made the war distinctly not a carrier war. Well, except for finishing off destroying the prewar carrier forces as a serious strategic force at Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz. Both of those were pretty important in cutting even deeper into the Japanese cadre of aviators. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Agree with you completely that it's a systemic embarrassment. I just don't think that the crew did anything particularly wrong, and the minute that bomb was released Akagi was hosed no matter what. Yeah, fair enough, and I didn't mean to imply that it was a huge failure on the part of the crew.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 15:01 |
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Panzeh posted:The funny thing about Midway was that it made for a year and a half or so of very tepid, abortive carrier operations on both sides that made the war distinctly not a carrier war. I suppose the ultimate lesson from Midway was that if you can't poo poo out 3 or 4 fully formed & upgraded carrier task forces within two or three years, you really are at a major strategic disadvantage.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 15:11 |
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100 Years Ago Some things that make me cranky happen at Loos. Louis Barthas and chums give General Niessel an early morning alarm call (which the man himself is happy to admit is an act of petulance), and it's from one raving socialist to another as Lieutenant Clement Attlee is trying not to die of dysentry on Gallipoli; Lieutenant Bernard Adams has a nice day off in Bethune, the shopping capital of northern France.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 15:13 |
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sullat posted:I suppose the ultimate lesson from Midway was that if you can't poo poo out 3 or 4 fully formed & upgraded carrier task forces within two or three years, you really are at a major strategic disadvantage. Well that and if the IJN's leadership had been intellectually honest and the entire Imperial leadership not terminally dysfunctional Midway would never have happened because the entire strategic plan that Midway was a part of was a fool's errand and the wargaming in preparation for the operation revealed critical flaws in the Japanese plans that Yamamoto and company simply ignored.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 15:15 |
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HEY GAL posted:18th to mid-19th century, I think. According to this guy it took the importance of a trial by combat writ large, while those people are much less reluctant than my guys to give a set-piece battle, since it's less costly for them. Interesting, so was the increasingly large scale of armies and ability to rapidly pull up reinforcements and replacements for losses as state apparatus became more sophisticated playing a role here? The usual reasoning for the rarity of pitched battles I've heard is the extreme risk they entailed, but if you can replace losses more easily that would be less of an issue.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 17:18 |
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khwarezm posted:Interesting, so was the increasingly large scale of armies and ability to rapidly pull up reinforcements and replacements for losses as state apparatus became more sophisticated playing a role here? The usual reasoning for the rarity of pitched battles I've heard is the extreme risk they entailed, but if you can replace losses more easily that would be less of an issue. Meanwhile, considering fights are so rare, a bunch of things follow. Like how a successful early 17th century commander is not necessarily someone who wins fights, it's someone who can raise armies and keep them together. Ernst von Mansfeld lost I think all pitched battles he was involved in, but he kept getting hired because of that. That and he appears to have been good at asymmetrical warfare and retreats. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Oct 10, 2015 |
# ? Oct 10, 2015 17:22 |
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HEY GAL posted:I should do a series of effortposts on Luetzen when the anniversary comes around next month, I think it's my favorite battle.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 17:30 |
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Panzeh posted:The funny thing about Midway was that it made for a year and a half or so of very tepid, abortive carrier operations on both sides that made the war distinctly not a carrier war. Leading to the
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 17:45 |
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In the lifetime of your average middle ages person, how big a role does war and combat play, overall? Is it a once in a lifetime sort of thing? What about for the nobility? Are we talking hardened killers the lot of them, or they more the survivalist type - who train and theorize, but probably will never see a sword drawn in anger?
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 17:45 |
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define middle ages. are you talking my dudes? rodrigo diaz's dudes? edit: nobel prize's been handed out. the one for literature went to this chick: http://granta.com/boys-in-zinc/ HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Oct 10, 2015 |
# ? Oct 10, 2015 17:49 |
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HEY GAL posted:define middle ages. are you talking my dudes? rodrigo diaz's dudes? I guesssss taking an average? 'It depends' would be valid here, i'm wondering what the range is.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 17:55 |
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oh, and i think i figured something out the other day: vratislav eusebius von pernstein and stach loeser, whose letters talk often about how they hang out together, not only write with the same ink (every ink fades differently; theirs is burnt sienna now), but with the same pens.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 18:00 |
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HEY GAL posted:The second one, plus the part that everyone assumes the common soldiers are there of their own free will. (Yes, so are 18th or 19th century common soldiers, but they're more...organized) Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus are taking for granted the fact that if either of them loses heavily, the survivors stand a good chance of simply dispersing. It's a huge expensive hassle to raise another army after that. Yep. No sane commander in the 30YW wanted a battle. Battles were enormously risky and there was no way to know which way they would go. Plundering your way across the countryside and besieging everything in sight, that was how the game was played.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 18:03 |
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TheFluff posted:No sane commander in the 30YW wanted a battle. edit: I wouldn't put it that strongly though--it's a very risky option, but it's also a very strong option. And their culture places high value on it as a display of beauty and power. But this risk is why these people care so much about luck. edit 2: Add "partizan fighting" to "plundering," there's a whole lot of that. Take three hundred or so of your closest friends on their fine horses, stick an infantryman on the back of each trooper's horse, and make a foraging/small-scale-warfare expedition out of the week, it's fun. edit 3: in a world where you can become a respected general without having taken part in a single pitched battle, Tilly fought something like fifty eight in his life and only lost three. In addition to "Father Tilly" or "Father Jean" I've also heard "Der Unerschrockener Feldmarschall" as a name for him: "The Undaunted Field Marshall" HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Oct 10, 2015 |
# ? Oct 10, 2015 18:04 |
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my dad posted:Shut the gently caress up, Keldoclock Shut the gently caress up, Keldoclock
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 19:29 |
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Agree with you completely that it's a systemic embarrassment. I just don't think that the crew did anything particularly wrong, and the minute that bomb was released Akagi was hosed no matter what. Was your username grabbed from one of the LF name threads? Cause its really good and they had some really, really funny names. Cythereal posted:Well that and if the IJN's leadership had been intellectually honest and the entire Imperial leadership not terminally dysfunctional Midway would never have happened because the entire strategic plan that Midway was a part of was a fool's errand and the wargaming in preparation for the operation revealed critical flaws in the Japanese plans that Yamamoto and company simply ignored. This is weird too because it seems that at least on the Internet the IJN is often perceived as being the competent branch of the empire of Japan's armed forces, at least when it came to fighting capable foes and not running roughshod over poorly disciplined/equipped/supplied locals and isolated garrisons. Frostwerks fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Oct 10, 2015 |
# ? Oct 10, 2015 20:17 |
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Sorry to bring this up from a couple pages ago, but what did "Army Beta" entail? I'm guessing a test for illiterates had lower expectations, so what was the upper range for people who took the Beta? Sergeant? I don't actually know, so I'll answer around your question. A large portion of the Army intelligence tests was simply following orders, which even illiterates can do. On page 305, Carson talks about Special Regulation 65, which prohibited morons, anybody with a mental age of 8 or less on the Stanford-Binet scale, from serving in the Army. So I'd guess that Beta was simply to separate people with poor written English skills, a new immigrant from Naples, or someone raised way back up the holler, from people with serious mental deficiencies. I doubt that an illiterate could be promoted at all. Even sergeants need to be able to read in order to enforce the grooming standard. The questions were some pretty ticky-tacky bullshit.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 20:30 |
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Frostwerks posted:This is weird too because it seems that at least on the Internet the IJN is often perceived as being the competent branch of the empire of Japan's armed forces, at least when it came to fighting capable foes and not running roughshod over poorly disciplined/equipped/supplied locals and isolated garrisons. The IJN was a strange beast at times. They did display genuine strategic and operational brilliance at times, notably their pioneering of massed carrier-based airpower as a serious weapon of war, and their pilots, sailors, and officers on the tactical level were often extraordinarily skilled, particularly early in the war. However, the IJN's leadership was deeply and bitterly divided, and often highly inflexible when the Americans (primarily) did not behave as expected - typically by being much more aggressive and tactically canny than Japanese plans assumed they would be. Some part of this was due of course to American codebreaking and ELINT, and some was due to the developed arrogance of the IJN's leadership, notably Yamamoto himself. The ultimate distant goal of the Japanese offensive towards Midway was an invasion and occupation of Hawaii, which was an absolutely terrible idea for any number of reasons. Taking the Midway Islands was intended as a stepping stone, and completely aside from the carrier battle an amphibious invasion of Midway would have been an immense slaughter that even if it had succeeded (which there's a very good chance it would not have) the Americans could easily afford to lose and the Japanese would have been very hard-pressed to keep supplied.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 20:34 |
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I just picked up a copy of The Iran-Iraq War by Williamson Murray and Kevin M. Woods at a used book store for 2 bucks. So far it seems pretty detailed and well-written, but I was wondering if any of you had an opinion on it/whether or not it's a solid way to learn more than I do about that war (which is very little).
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 20:42 |
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my dudes know what's up with question 1
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 20:45 |
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Biffmotron posted:The questions were some pretty ticky-tacky bullshit. Question 12 seems like "All of the above" would have been a reasonably legitimate answer to a lot of people at the time. And question 16 seems like it's begging for a write-in.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 20:49 |
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Tomn posted:Question 12 seems like "All of the above" would have been a reasonably legitimate answer to a lot of people at the time. Question 12 would confound a great many people in this country at this very second what are you talking about. Oh, and the answer is clearly B.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 21:29 |
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HEY GAL posted:my dudes know what's up with question 1 Only because there were even more different kinds of money at the time, making it harder to collect specimens from all of them.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 21:32 |
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Tomn posted:Question 12 seems like "All of the above" would have been a reasonably legitimate answer to a lot of people at the time. As the LSAT says, it's not about getting the actual correct best answer, its about providing the best answer in the technical sense of the question
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 21:43 |
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The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould is a good book to read if you're curious about early intelligence testing, and it includes a section on those WW1 US army tests. It's been a while since I've read it, but I remember his examples from the beta test having things like "what is missing from this picture" and showing a kettle without a spout or a pig without a tail.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 21:46 |
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currently reading Six Galleons for the King of Spain, by Carla Phillips. I'm on Chap 3 right now, which has a lot of detailed, granular information on how they built ships in the 16th and 17th century, and SEXMAN, if you're into the earlier history of the profession you study you should give this a look, it's p. boss
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 21:51 |
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Nebakenezzer posted:As the LSAT says, it's not about getting the actual correct best answer, its about providing the best answer in the technical sense of the question It's also, I feel like, about showing that you are a nice obedient soldier, and not some kind of smartass.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 22:34 |
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That's an interesting test, because it's not measuring what we'd call intelligence today. It looks more like it's intended to screen out those who are clueless or not taking it seriously than to find geniuses. The stereotypical brilliant but eccentric professor would probably flunk it. But it's best to have platoon commanders who are sensible and reliable, rather than understand the general theory of relativity.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 23:20 |
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BurningStone posted:That's an interesting test, because it's not measuring what we'd call intelligence today. It looks more like it's intended to screen out those who are clueless or not taking it seriously than to find geniuses.
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# ? Oct 10, 2015 23:27 |
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I've just finished Europe's Tragedy. I can see how it's brilliant for someone who's working on the period, and wants an overview of the narrative, but I must admit it left me a bit cold. There's very little cultural history, and all of the religious debates (which as an amateur seems pretty loving key) are boiled down to "fanatics" (for which read "irrational actors") versus "moderates" ("rational actors"). I can imagine that if I got very into the subject, I'd like having a book where I can look up who signed a treaty with whom on March 14 in Mecklenburg , and I can see there's a need for this very even handed overview, but it's a long way from a beginners overview. Non-ruling-class civilians barely feature at all. There's no reference to literature or physical culture at all, apart from weapons. To be clear, I don't think this is a bad book for what it sets out to do, but as an amateur looking for an introduction I felt it was a bad choice. Blow by blow accounts of battles aren't that fun when you can't picture what either side are wearing, or what language they're speaking. What I'm saying is I want a book that holds my hand like I'm an idiot, leading my through the 30 years war while stopping to explain the most obvious poo poo. If anyone knows of one, please tell me.
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# ? Oct 11, 2015 00:16 |
So I'm guessing that book leaves out all the whores and gambling?
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# ? Oct 11, 2015 00:25 |
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wedgewood is a good intro even though i learned a while ago she based lots of her stuff on published materials from the 19th century material culture...ask me i guess? what specifically would you like to know? same for cultural history. anything in particular you want to learn more about? for occultism, for instance, check out frances yates or the eros and magic in the renaissance guy edit: and civilians are in the last (?) chapter, the one on memory and reception HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Oct 11, 2015 |
# ? Oct 11, 2015 00:30 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 07:22 |
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Slavvy posted:So I'm guessing that book leaves out all the whores and gambling? So that leaves what, just drinking 24/7?
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# ? Oct 11, 2015 00:33 |