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the JJ posted:Wilson's the old one?
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Oct 13, 2015 00:22
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So I was away because of things and was lazy on catching up because of the nearly 1k unread posts and I'd just like to reiterate: Shut the gently caress up Keldoclock.
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Oct 13, 2015 01:36
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Arquinsiel posted:Shut the gently caress up Keldoclock. Shut the gently caress up Keldoclock. Seriously.
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Oct 13, 2015 01:51
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ITT a teenage computerman attempts to argue with us about military history. Shut the gently caress up Keldoclock.
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Oct 13, 2015 02:03
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Uh have you forgotten his IQ is like a 130 points?
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Oct 13, 2015 02:05
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So I posted a question which got kinda lost at the bottom of a page, and is probably too technical a subject to find anything on, but can anyone suggest anything focusing on factory production and metalworking? It's what I'm trained in and I get a kick out of hearing about that kinda of stuff. If there's just nothing out there, could I get an effort posts on Soviet factory techniques. I've heard that one of the most important reasons for the superior production of the Soviet Union over Germany is that they had had American engineers update everything according to the latest mass production standards.
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Oct 13, 2015 02:27
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Fell Fire posted:Was it that they ordered them without, or was it that the U.S. wouldn't send them with? I recall something about the turbocharger design being too valuable and classified, but I might be mis-remembering. I remember reading about the engineers or liaisons telling the Brits when they ordered the trial units how much that would degrade the performance, but that's what they wanted, so that's what they got. I'll see if I can find it.
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Oct 13, 2015 02:27
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I don't know about it specifically but in very skeptical about that American engineers thing. It takes years and a production stoppage to upgrade factory lines. In 41/42 the soviets needed all the production they could get. A major stoppage would be a bad thing.
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Oct 13, 2015 02:36
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Retarded Pimp posted:I remember reading about the engineers or liaisons telling the Brits when they ordered the trial units how much that would degrade the performance, but that's what they wanted, so that's what they got. I think it was related to the Brits wanting to use the same engines as on other planes to minimize repair issues. They apparently didn't think the performance drop would be an issue.
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Oct 13, 2015 02:46
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Cyrano4747 posted:I don't know about it specifically but in very skeptical about that American engineers thing. It takes years and a production stoppage to upgrade factory lines. In 41/42 the soviets needed all the production they could get. A major stoppage would be a bad thing. According to the video lecture linked earlier the American-designed factory upgrades were pre-war.
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Oct 13, 2015 02:52
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The USSR purchased a fuckton of foreign expertise in the 20s and 30s to get their industry up and running, including the tank industry.
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Oct 13, 2015 02:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:I don't know about it specifically but in very skeptical about that American engineers thing. It takes years and a production stoppage to upgrade factory lines. In 41/42 the soviets needed all the production they could get. A major stoppage would be a bad thing. During the 30s the Soviets hired Albert Kahn's firm to design ~500 factories and train Soviet architects and engineers. Kahn is of course famous as the "Architect of Detroit" and was the leading industrial architect of his day. The Lone Badger posted:According to the video lecture linked earlier the American-designed factory upgrades were pre-war. It wasn't so much a matter of upgrades as wholesale design. The Soviets, pragmatically, based their 5 year plan industries on the best practices of capitalist Detroit by purchasing the services of the best industrial architectural firm in the world. Polikarpov fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 02:57
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Ah thought it was wartime. Ignore me then.
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Oct 13, 2015 02:59
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Cyrano4747 posted:Ah thought it was wartime. Ignore me then. I'd rather ignore Keldoclock.
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Oct 13, 2015 03:13
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:I'd rather ignore Keldoclock.
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Oct 13, 2015 03:18
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Is there any reason the lovely P-38's didn't get Lend Leased to the USSR like the P-39 was?
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Oct 13, 2015 03:39
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Molentik posted:
I can't actually answer your question directly, but I do have a first-hand account of a medic who served with the Canadian Army. My Grandad in WW2. I think I posted this a few years ago so I figure I might as well pull it out again. This is a man who hated, heated the idea of killing, who ultimately served in the front-lines in Germany in the fiercest fighting in Europe Western Armies fought in WW2, and he did so without carrying a weapon. Yo Keldoclcok - think you can measure up? He wrote this when he knew that alzheimer's was coming for him. __ It starts with sleeping on a cow’s back in Alberta, trying to stay warm and dry in a paint peeled barn, as rain seeps through the rotting roof. I am twenty-one and I have taken a train from my family farm in Saskatchewan, following the Alternative Service directive to report to the Seebe Internment Camp No. 130, a prisoner of war and conscientious objectors camp, in Kananaskis. Scowls from the train engineer as he drops me short of my destination - scowls from the farmer’s wife as she directs another yellow-bellied conchie to her dilapidated barn for the night - scowls from the cow as I mount her back to avoid the oozing poo poo filled floor. I lie there feeling her warmth, as our breath mingles and rises upwards into the night. I report to Seebe in the morning, walking over a pock-marked road, through an open barbed gate, and into my life for the next two years. I like the work, the road construction, the tree planting, the physicality of it all - what I detest is the confinement. The octagonal Bren gunned towers, the shoot on sight directives, the tight lipped guards that shadow my movement making me feel corrupt and old inside. We leave the camp to work. One afternoon, while taking a break from pick axing a gnarled mountainous road, a group of us climb to the top of a cliff edge. I stand with three grey clad young Doukhobors perched on the top of the world. We put our backs into a gigantic boulder and push it over. It sings as it plunges downward, crashing and splintering into oblivion. After a year at Seebe, I escape by joining the Royal Canadian Medical Corps - at basic training I enter the war, a war of words and condemnation. I am the lily-livered potato peeler that refuses to bear arms, a putrid sore that warrants cauterization. I jump to the commands and stand in line waiting for the bark of my name. I hang and pull forty chin-ups, drop for 100 pushups and squats, then I file back into line and do it again and again. I take over and do the same again for Brian James and Fred Jenson as they sit too tired to take their shift. Grudgingly, they admit that the yellow-bellied rear end in a top hat has no guts, but lots of gumption. I have my uniform. It has a large round Red Cross insignia on my back and a small one on my sleeve. I stand strong. With twenty-one thousand new recruits I zigzag across the Atlantic. Our ship is a pot of spewing vomit, but I manage to walk the deck as if it is a prairie landscape. I provide pills and drag listless comrades to the deck for air. It appears that I have the stomach for war after all. Riding trains in London. Throwing gum out the window to cute girls that grab it and giggle as they find my barrack’s number scrawled on the wrapper. Out on a date with one of them - she towers over me, a bosomy laughing force, who brings her Cockney brothers for support. They surround me with bellows, grunts and acceptance as we walk and then sprawl happily drunk under the watchful lions of Trafalgar Square. A promotion that lasts a day - I sew an extra stripe on my sleeve and then a Sergeant stalks in catapulting a rifle my way. I grab it, the wood and steel crosses my chest and rests in my hands solid and cold. White knuckled, I throw it back and brace for the spewing filth vomiting from his mouth; “fuckin' coward”, “castrated conchie”, “stupid bastard”! I stare back listening to putrid labels that flow over and around me. The stripe is ripped from my shoulder, and I stand at attention unconverted. I am a medic on the front lines. I crawl through the bloodied soil searching for ripped flesh - bandaging bodies, as bullets pound and screams explode. I treat comrades and enemy soldiers without distinction, both bleed red. I also bag the bodies and listen to the Padre speak of a God who is on our side. God speaks English, but I understand rudimentary German and I know that both sides pray. I hop from the back of a vehicle as we slowly approach the hospital compound, and I see three soldiers stealing shiny brown boots and a flannel gold trimmed jacket from a body that lies on the red cobbled street. I know the soldiers. I also know the body. He was a German doctor who worked on the sixth floor patching prisoners of war, listening to their screams, as he cut and stitched without the aid of morphine. Supplies run short in war, and the enemy gets the dregs. I crouch down and reach into his trouser pocket. I find his wallet and in it a picture of a woman and two children. They smile at me, unblinking from its grey surface. I place the picture in my pocket thinking that I will write them and let them know that he jumped from the 6th floor window, because he could no longer absorb the pain. I do not write and I keep their picture for years. Conchies and Negros stand isolated on soldier-swelled platforms - we double-time it to the back of the train. With every advance, we file into cars that smell of urine and vomit, the ostracized minions playing cards and harmonicas to a nauseating clatter and sway. I am in Holland piecing together slashed threads of resistance and then - the war ends. I stay on helping with the mop-up, a conchie who cannot leave until his conscience fills - saturated and overflowing with good deeds. On leave, I fill a backpack with army surplus and cross the border into Germany. My ancestors left Germany in the 1600’s, but I still have relations here. I head north and find them - starving. They have eaten their emaciated oxen and are living off the rats in their barn. I give them my army rations and promise to return - it takes forty years and I am sixty-five years old. Surprisingly, some still remember the young blond soldier who left the chocolate bars. After five years of war I return to Canada. My ship docks in Vancouver and I stay, roaming the streets with hundreds like me, lost men in a world that no longer fits. I look for work and sit with the other spoils of war in bars, mixing ketchup and crackers into hot water the bartender provides. People look at us and know we are the vagrant dead that survived. I see two people on the street, they hold up religious magazines like shields across their chests. I stop and ask if they kill. They say no, and I feel myself reach towards them for a lifeline that will pull me from my despondency. I find work in northern Canada prospecting for iron-ore, and I live for two years in isolated camps, nestled in the grooves of spreading glacier appendages. For the first time in twelve years, I consider going back to Saskatchewan. I have a wad of cash. I journey south to Vancouver and buy a 1955 Buick Skylark. I fill it with gifts and drive into the flatness of the prairies, a prodigal returning home to the fold. I marry a woman, who was twelve years old when I left for the war. She is a teacher and a genuine catch for a wanderlust bachelor from the north. We have two children. As teenagers, they watch as I open a small rectangular box that arrives with the morning mail. I slam it into the garbage. It contains four medals, riff-raff that I refused to accept twenty-five years ago. For the first time, my daughters realize that I am a veteran. I am angry when they watch the television show MASH. I punch the OFF button and yell, spitting out its name like bile. I am eighty-seven years old and I find that I repeat myself, I forget where I have been and where I am going, but I still have memories that pool and churn in my head. They start with sleeping on a cow’s back in Alberta - trying to stay warm. __ Too bad we can't get the same first-hand accounts from Hey Gal's guys. Wonder how my Grandad - German at birth - would have done with a similar anti-violence perspective way back when? Was there such thing as a pacifist warrior in the 30 years war?
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Oct 13, 2015 04:12
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RedFlag posted:He wrote this when he knew that alzheimer's was coming for him. Thanks for your service, wherever you are.
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Oct 13, 2015 04:22
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RedFlag posted:story That was a good read, thank you (and your grandpa for liberating my country). Do you know where he served?
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Oct 13, 2015 04:22
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Combat-gliderchat: My grandfather was a CG-4A pilot, and ended up not particularly fond of the assignment. (He volunteered, and never made a combat landing.) Imagine a flying machine knocked together by the lowest bidder from a group of furniture companies who started building aircraft less than a year ago, with the aerodynamics and glide ratio of a railroad boxcar with wings. (Whereas modern sailplanes often have glide ratios of 35:1 or more, and sometimes as high as 60:1, the CG-4A at combat weight and best-glide speed (60mph) was 12:1. It wasn't straight down, but it was about as close as you can get in a fully functional fixed-wing aircraft.) Now imagine stuffing this thing full of people, guns, and ammunition, and trying to point-land it in an unprepared and un-surveyed field, at highway speed, almost certainly at night, with no lights other than the numerous tracers from all the people shooting at you. This is before you even get to the idea of flooded fields, telephone poles, and other assorted countermeasures that the defenders have available to them in the time before your assault. Even making the assumption that the glider makes it down safely, the pilot, trained at great expense over most of a year, is now nothing but a poorly trained airborne infantryman, since he is by definition in a hostile LZ, with dubious chances of immediate recovery. Combat gliders were simply a (bad) way to drop equipment heavier than what a parachutist could strap to his body in a time before aircraft developed aft-facing cargo doors. As soon as these purpose-built cargo planes became available, gliders disappeared, and for good reason. As an additional addendum, a WWII C-47 towing a CG-4A, or a pair of them, was not going to be carrying any cargo internally at all.
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Oct 13, 2015 06:13
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MrYenko posted:As an additional addendum, a WWII C-47 towing a CG-4A, or a pair of them, was not going to be carrying any cargo internally at all. Seems like a "well, duh" point, but one favored poster might have forgotten it. Good story, RedFlag, you grandpa knew how to write it.
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Oct 13, 2015 08:24
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Any good podcasts on military technology, im lookin for good poo poo on naval stuff, avionics, etc
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Oct 13, 2015 09:04
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Nebakenezzer posted:In the aeronautical insanity thread, there is lots of love for the oddball (but incredibly successful) An-2. Designed after World War 2 as an agricultural/bush plane, it's biplane wings are a big asset in those roles. It also gives the An-2 some interesting flying characteristics. If the engine goes dead on you at night, the manual says to yank back on the control yoke and hold it. Then the An-2 descends to the ground at roughly the same speed as a parachutist. Reminder that a Vietnamese An-2 got shot down by some American dude in a Huey with an AK-47
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Oct 13, 2015 10:24
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RedFlag posted:Too bad we can't get the same first-hand accounts from Hey Gal's guys. Wonder how my Grandad - German at birth - would have done with a similar anti-violence perspective way back when? Was there such thing as a pacifist warrior in the 30 years war? I don't know whether the Anabaptists are still murderous as of the 17th century or whether they've switched to pacifism yet. The Jews aren't pacifist in the sense of an objection to war, but they are more peaceful in their personal habits, like not beating their children, discouraging brawls, and rarely carrying weapons (they were "weapons unfaehig," which meant the Emperor was supposed to protect them, but some of them carried weapons anyway, especially when they traveled). People will say that war is bad and peace is desirable. Catholic priests are not supposed to carry weapons, and many don't. But nobody believes that you can eliminate war. Also, since almost all soldiers are there by choice, someone in your grandfather's position would not have been drafted. Possibly if he were Swedish (actually Swedish, not just fighting for them) and the lottery came up wrong for him, but I know less about Swedes. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 10:41
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RedFlag posted:I can't actually answer your question directly, but I do have a first-hand account of a medic who served with the Canadian Army. My Grandad in WW2. I think I posted this a few years ago so I figure I might as well pull it out again. This is a man who hated, heated the idea of killing, who ultimately served in the front-lines in Germany in the fiercest fighting in Europe Western Armies fought in WW2, and he did so without carrying a weapon.
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Oct 13, 2015 10:42
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RedFlag posted:Yo Keldoclock - think you can measure up? I do not think there is more a person can ask for, from life. People like your grandfather did the best they can, with what they had. They were born into an exceptional time where all the choices they had were bad ones. That's only a little less true today, but the peace the blood of both of my great-grandfathers and one of my grandfathers has bought us the time and space we need to plant trees and hope that they grow well. tekz posted:Any good podcasts on military technology, im lookin for good poo poo on naval stuff, avionics, etc OmegaTau, with preference for aviation. Roughly half the episodes are in German, but all of them are very good. You might also enjoy some lighter fare, like the Technically Speaking podcast, which is less military but very engineering. Polikarpov posted:People keep asking you to stop posting but you don't see them getting it now, do you? well they can suck it, man. I answer questions, especially if they are directed at me. Why should the requests of 3 other posters supersede RedFlag or Tekz, just because they post more often? I'm not going to stop asking questions either, or throwing my bad ideas into the pool here. The quickest way to get the right answer out of a bunch of nerds is to tell them a wrong answer, especially if nobody knows the right answer when you've started. Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 11:22
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Keldoclock posted:
People keep asking you to stop posting but you don't see them getting it now, do you?
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Oct 13, 2015 11:29
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Keldoclock posted:If I fail, I will be forgotten. If I succeed, I will be forgotten later, but I can die knowing I have done the right thing, if I stand back far enough for the whole of it to fit into one scene. If you want to succeed, you should probably go do something worth considered a success instead of talking poo poo on an internet comedy site. I wanted to be a soldier for the longest time, until I realized that the urge to kill and be recognized for it is a sign of trauma. Now I want to heal people, you should consider getting in on that instead.
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Oct 13, 2015 12:00
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hey tias how are things
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Oct 13, 2015 12:08
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Allright, except I still get too mad at people for being wrong on the internet 
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Oct 13, 2015 12:13
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things are ok here too, just about to go to the archives have a fine day
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Oct 13, 2015 12:14
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Tias posted:Allright, except I still get too mad at people for being wrong on the internet Don't I know that feeling. Tanks must have been real cheap in the interwar years since good ol' Lithuania had about 20 FT-17s and then bought about 20-ish Vickers tanks.
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Oct 13, 2015 12:29
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So, this question is probably mostly going to be up Hegel's alley, but of course all input is welcome. Basically, I'm wondering how gunpowder was handled in the later 16th and early 17th centuries. How relatively easy or difficult was it to manufacture in sufficient quantities? Would the soldiers of a given regiment be mostly making it on their own from the raw ingredients (like they did with bullets, I think?), or would they just buy the finished product directly? Was every soldier or sub-unit that needed it responsible for carrying (or even procuring?) their own supply, or was there a centralised powder store for the whole regiment? Personally I can't help but picture it as a rickety horsecart piled high with leaking powder kegs just waiting to go up in a giant conflagration, because that seems like exactly the kind of thing Hegel's people would do. But of course I have no idea how close to or far from the truth that might be 
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Oct 13, 2015 12:45
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Keldoclock posted:If I fail, I will be forgotten. If I succeed, I will be forgotten later, but I can die knowing I have done the right thing, if I stand back far enough for the whole of it to fit into one scene. this is like an ever so slightly intellectually rigorous thread so before you start saying stupid goddamn poo poo about everything in the world you might want to learn literally anything about the topic or at least post questions ideally not including your dumbass navel gazing
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Oct 13, 2015 12:49
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So, reading Robert Forczyk's book that was posted earlier in this thread. Goddamn it is just a constant parade of for the Soviets. "Guys, don't attack without enough ammunition ""Guys why don't you try waiting and assemble properly before an attack ""Guys you seriously need to give your tank groups infantry and artillery support ""Nooooooo why are you doing all of the above again for the 4th time in so many weeks, JFC what is wrong with you* *Stalin, as it turns out. Also, kind of getting the impression that Zhukov was actually kinda poo poo at his job. To paraphrase the book "Operation Uranus was so successful because Mr. Passionfingers was kept busy with his own thing, Operation Mars. Guess which of the two was a trainwreck for ten points!"
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Oct 13, 2015 13:23
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Xerxes17 posted:So, reading Robert Forczyk's book that was posted earlier in this thread. Goddamn it is just a constant parade of Another fun meatgrinder, by the Wikipedia read of it.
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Oct 13, 2015 13:34
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Perestroika posted:So, this question is probably mostly going to be up Hegel's alley, but of course all input is welcome. Basically, I'm wondering how gunpowder was handled in the later 16th and early 17th centuries. How relatively easy or difficult was it to manufacture in sufficient quantities? Would the soldiers of a given regiment be mostly making it on their own from the raw ingredients (like they did with bullets, I think?), or would they just buy the finished product directly? Was every soldier or sub-unit that needed it responsible for carrying (or even procuring?) their own supply, or was there a centralised powder store for the whole regiment? In the early 17th century Swedish farmers had to pay saltpeter tax in kind. This meant that they had to send a certain amount of ash, firewood and charcoal with poo poo and piss soaked dirt to the collectors. This didn't get the Crown enough saltpeter so they had to later also pay saltpeter tax in cash so that the Crown could import it. To improve the amounts of saltpeter gathered, the Crown started to send out saltpeter collectors who toured the countryside in their carriages boiling dirt. Saltpeter and charcoal was then sent to gunpowder mills where it was mixed with sulphur. I'm not sure where Sweden got its sulphur, but iirc most of the sulphur that Europe used came from Sicily and Iceland.
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Oct 13, 2015 13:37
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Generation Internet posted:I was a paid re-enactor of a British soldier in a generic regiment circa 1867 for the whole Summer. This consisted mostly of marching up and down a parade square and showing off battle tactics for visitors, stuff like file-firing, volleys, bayonet drill, square, etc. (I also did artillery on our fort's 24pdr. SBML cannons as well as 6pdr. Armstrong's, but that's a bit beside the point.) It takes time for changes in doctrine from observing other people's wars to filter through; it's not like some dude in the British Army looked at Fredericksburg and was like 'gotta rewrite our drill manual right now this second' without approval from the rest of the staff. And both sides in the US Civil War did, in fact, fight in lines until it became a series of sieges towards the end. (As did all sides involved in World War 1 in 1914 for that matter)
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Oct 13, 2015 14:02
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The Taiping in the early days got their saltpetre by tearing down old houses and grinding/boiling/whatever the bricks.
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Oct 13, 2015 14:09
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| # ? May 26, 2024 23:32 |
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:this is like an ever so slightly intellectually rigorous thread so before you start saying stupid goddamn poo poo about everything in the world you might want to learn literally anything about the topic or at least post questions ideally not including your dumbass navel gazing Keep recommending me material then, so far I have found everything agreeable. You're right though, I've made a mistake by going away, coming back and forgetting to stop rising to the bait you guys keep giving me. Nobody minded my contributions in the many months I have been posting here until I misunderstood a question and suggested I held an unpopular personal opinion. Then suddenly all my poo poo started being examined with microscopic scrutiny and all of my actual claims were dismissed out of hand. Tias posted:If you want to succeed, you should probably go do something worth considered a success instead of talking poo poo on an internet comedy site.  Tias posted:I wanted to be a soldier for the longest time, until I realized that the urge to kill and be recognized for it is a sign of trauma. Now I want to heal people, you should consider getting in on that instead. Hogge Wild posted:In the early 17th century Swedish farmers had to pay saltpeter tax in kind Yep. Until 1903 potassium nitrate was largely produced as an agricultural byproduct, by mining mineral deposits, or bat guano deposits. Easy access to nitrates through developments in chemistry these days makes the whole process much easier. Edit: With regards to the details of your question, I think I might actually have the answer to that one somewhere in my digital library. I'll see if I can find an answer quickly. Speaking of contributing to subject matter, I just got a copy of Харьковская ЧеКа. I'll post up an interesting tidbits in a day or two. Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 14:14
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