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TheLovablePlutonis posted:The recovering the dead stuff was really interesting because it led to some of the best Athenian leaders being purged during the Peloponnese war for "not doing enough to recover the bodies of dead sailors/soldiers". Yup. Execute 7 generals for winning a battle. Great job! The some people see the Athens/Sparta war as a war between the dysfunctional extremes of democracy and fascism, and while I think that it's a dangerously limiting narrative to get stuck in, it really is an attractive one at times. the JJ fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Oct 29, 2015 |
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Oct 29, 2015 06:18
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 Gotta love security specialists always quaking in their boots that all the brown/russian people will get your state of the art military tech from youtube videos. A remote rocket launcher? Surely the Red Chinese could never think of that!
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Oct 29, 2015 08:48
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the JJ posted:Yup. Execute 7 generals for winning a battle. Great job! The narrative fixation on a struggle between abstracts is always going to be attractive because of the political-economic power struggle that occurs in the civilian realm, which then calls for the history of military conquest to fit to the political story behind it. You can say that Napoleon's facilitation of Republican ideological proliferation fomented the rise of revolutionary/republican movements a generation later through the flaws in the post-1815 breakup of the French Empire planned by the other royal and imperial powers. Those revolutionary movements, particularly those in the area of what is now Germany, set the stage for the Bismarck/Wilhelm/Conservative contingent to try unifying Germany as a way of solidifying the power of the aristocracy against the liberals and radicals of the time, culminating in the F-P war of 1870 getting kicked off by Bismarck thinking the various Germanic states would ally against a common French enemy. After that war, Bismarck decided to try squashing all the Catholics, a choice which radicals in turn used against him by explaining that religion, even Protestantism, was good for nothing. Along comes Willy Deuce, who decided that good old fashioned military expansion would shut those god drat reds up. This buildup eventually comes to a head in 1914, as Germany starts invading Belgium and then France. At the same time, on the Eastern front, this Lenin guy shows up from Germany and people go apeshit. They overthrow the Romanovs and bring about the glorious Soviet revolution. Despite this opponent being essentially knocked out of the war, Germany still loses. Folks are pissed because those drat Republicans didn't roll over and fall before the Kaiser's superior Teutonic forces, and also because everyone is pretty fed up with Germany's poo poo at this point and impose pretty harsh punishments. Naturally, everyone starts blaming the Reds again, and this dude named Adolf shows up on the scene, manages to shoehorn his party into the mix as a bulwark against the Communists. This jackass somehow thinks the Kaiser had the right idea and invades Poland, kicking off WWII. Following WWII, the tensions between the Eastern and Western allies (e.g. Communists and Capitalists respectively) get put on the slow simmer of the cold war. A side effect of this arrangement is the return of the proxy war. Korea, Vietnam, South America, you have brushfire poo poo popping up all over. One such place, in the twilight years of the cold war, is Afghanistan. The USSR invades Afghanistan to prop up their puppet against a big ol' Islamist movement that was almost certainly helped along by Western powers. They become embroiled in Afghanistan through the inability to overcome the guerrilla insurgency tactics being taught to Mujahideen by Western agents. One such student was Osama bin Laden. In short, Napoleon Did 9/11. This bullshit stream of consciousness brought to you by an attempt to out-keldoclock keldoclock. For entertainment use only. E: The pike-riddled end of the 30YW saw the Bourbon dynasty consolidate power in France. Louis XIV decided he'd make sure this gravy train kept rolling so he started seeding the country's administration structure with lesser nobles. This pissed off the high-birth aristocrats something fierce, but kept that gravy train rolling so well, in fact, that Lou outlived pretty much all of his heirs. When he died, the crown fell to a kid, Louis XV. XV should have been named King Stepped-on-his-own-balls rather than Louis. His decisions to try outmaneuvering literally everyone ended up drat near bankrupting France and giving rise to the "hey gently caress these guys" attitude that ended up getting his grandson killed, abolishing the monarchy, and eventually handing the country over to a young guy from Corsica after the revolution met backlash from the shitters in the aristocracy. Addendum: PIKES DID 9/11. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Oct 29, 2015 |
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Oct 29, 2015 08:57
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JcDent posted:
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Oct 29, 2015 09:19
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FAUXTON posted:After that war, Bismarck decided to try squashing all the Catholics What did we ever do to him?  FAUXTON posted:The USSR invades Afghanistan to prop up their puppet against a big ol' Islamist movement That one book I read states that it happened because their puppets wasn't commie enough or something. So they took over, military style. other than that, pike-and-shot can melt steel beams
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Oct 29, 2015 09:53
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FAUXTON posted:PIKES DID 9/11.  pikes? no pikes here (((stealth))) HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Oct 29, 2015 |
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Oct 29, 2015 10:40
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JcDent posted:What did we ever do to him? Be allegiant to the Pope, who wasn't a German, basically. (plus longstanding cultural divisions between north and south Germany going back to Hey Gal's period)
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Oct 29, 2015 11:27
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HEY GAL posted:
Can't they just lower them and put them on the ground at their sides?
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Oct 29, 2015 12:55
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imagine a crowded trench, now rotate the image of those pikes in your head until they're horizontal the answer is no
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Oct 29, 2015 13:23
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Xerxes17 posted:Oh boy, the Leyland L60 engine is amusing to read about, as is the development of the Chieftain. This is exactly the same dilemma that happened with capital ship construction roughly 1905-1922.
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Oct 29, 2015 13:46
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:This is exactly the same dilemma that happened with capital ship construction roughly 1905-1922. Bigger to the point of impracticality?
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Oct 29, 2015 13:57
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Xerxes17 posted:Bigger to the point of impracticality? And rendered largely moot due to technological advancements with other weapons a couple decades later.
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Oct 29, 2015 14:27
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HEY GAL posted:imagine a crowded trench, now rotate the image of those pikes in your head until they're horizontal Somewhere there is an answer to that problem that has something to do with razzle dazzle camo...
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Oct 29, 2015 15:18
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Molentik posted:Somewhere there is an answer to that problem that has something to do with razzle dazzle camo... Bajazzle your Battleship, your foes won't know what the gently caress.
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Oct 29, 2015 15:55
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FAUXTON posted:The USSR invades Afghanistan to prop up their puppet against a big ol' Islamist movement that was almost certainly helped along by Western powers. And the ChiComs.
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Oct 29, 2015 16:51
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Molentik posted:Somewhere there is an answer to that problem that has something to do with razzle dazzle camo...
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Oct 29, 2015 17:45
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FAUXTON posted:Bajazzle your Battleship, your foes won't know what the gently caress.  In a world where face-identifying drones dominate the battlefield, human dazzle camouflage is the only recourse. Attempts to counter this strategy lead to the tragic deaths of every mime, and David Bowie.
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Oct 29, 2015 17:59
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Chamale posted:
Can you hear me Major Tom? CAN YOU HEAR ME?!
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Oct 29, 2015 18:04
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Since you live in 2015 CE, you are several times more dependent on another guy's labour/capital for your meals than a medieval farmer. With pre-modern logistics, I'm actually willing to believe that.
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Oct 29, 2015 19:10
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A new Hardcore History was just uploaded! This time about the Persians & Assyrians and poo poo.
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Oct 29, 2015 19:19
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Molentik posted:A new Hardcore History was just uploaded! This time about the Persians & Assyrians and poo poo.  Also pikes did 9/11 had me giggling.
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Oct 29, 2015 19:26
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JcDent posted:Gotta love security specialists always quaking in their boots that all the brown/russian people will get your state of the art military tech from youtube videos. A remote rocket launcher? Surely the Red Chinese could never think of that! Yeah the Stasi were putting these things to good use 25 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Herrhausen quote:Herrhausen fell victim to a sophisticated roadside bomb shortly after leaving his home in Bad Homburg on 30 November 1989. He was being chauffeured to work in his armoured Mercedes-Benz, with bodyguards in both a lead vehicle and another following behind. The bomb had been hidden in a saddle bag on a bicycle next to the road that the assassins knew Herrhausen would be traveling in his three-car convoy. In the bag was a 7 kg bomb that was detonated when Herrhausen's car interrupted a beam of infrared light as it passed the bicycle. The bomb targeted the most vulnerable area of Herrhausen's car – the door where he was sitting – and required split-second timing to overcome the car's special armour plating. The bomb utilized a Misznay-Schardin mechanism. A copper plate, placed between the explosive and the target, was deformed and projected by the force of the explosion. It is unlikely that this improvised explosive device had the precise engineering required to form the liner into a more effective slug or "carrot" shape (as in a shaped charge or an EFP)[citation needed] but in any case, the detonation resulted in a mass of copper being projected toward the car at a speed of nearly two kilometers per second, effectively penetrating the armoured Mercedes. Herrhausen's legs were severed and he bled to death. I wonder if infrared beam detonators have found any modern use in Iraq or Syria...
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Oct 29, 2015 19:28
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Given that you can buy them in shops all over the place right now thanks to motion-sensitive Halloween decorations... I'm going with yes.
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Oct 29, 2015 20:00
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100 Years Ago It turns out that one new minister of war does not a government make: Rene Viviani is out and the new French government is to be headed by Aristide Briand. Also returning to prominence is General Gallieni, sidelined for a year after the fighting moved away from Paris. The Serbians blow up their main arsenal, Austro-Hungarian manpower is beginning to threaten to possibly run a bit low at Third Isonzo, and General Monro tours Gallipoli to find out what's what. Arquinsiel posted:Tape small branches to the end of your pikes so you look like a grove of saplings? Let every soldier hew him down a bough and bear it before him. Thereby shall we shadow the numbers of our host and make discovery err in report of us!
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Oct 29, 2015 20:02
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Molentik posted:A new Hardcore History was just uploaded! This time about the Persians & Assyrians and poo poo. http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-56-kings-kings/ Here's the link.
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Oct 29, 2015 20:12
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statim posted:
I try. I'm glad nobody took it seriously because parts of it were tough to write due to how absolutely ludicrous they were. I mean there's definitely this broad reactionary backlash against communists and socialists starting in the late 19th century but trying to make some kind of conspiratorial narrative out of it is just so drat dumb because of how many other things were going on. E: math is hard today, communism wasn't called communism in the 1700s. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Oct 29, 2015 |
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Oct 29, 2015 20:41
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Trin Tragula posted:Let every soldier hew him down a bough and bear it before him. Thereby shall we shadow the numbers of our host and make discovery err in report of us!
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Oct 29, 2015 20:46
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Molentik posted:A new Hardcore History was just uploaded! This time about the Persians & Assyrians and poo poo. 17 mins in and it's poo poo. For all the rambling about narrative this ep. itself has got zero so far. Also weird tonal shifts.
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Oct 29, 2015 20:52
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Molentik posted:A new Hardcore History was just uploaded! This time about the Persians & Assyrians and poo poo. Wait... is he technically done with WWI? I thought he had one more in there to conclude it.
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Oct 29, 2015 20:55
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Nebakenezzer posted:Nature has all sorts of ways of saying do not touch 
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Oct 29, 2015 21:20
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Is Air Interdiction successful? More specifically, were dedicated Interdiction Bombers successful? During the Second World War the Allies devoted tremendous effort to bombing infrastructure and units on the march. The B-25 and B-26 specifically seem to have seen a lot of action in this role. In the lead-up to Operation Neptune, strategic bombing of Germany was halted to hammer the French railyards and road network. From reading German memoirs, I know that many German units were delayed or lost soft-skin vehicles on the march to the beaches. They don't seem to have lost much combat strength in terms of AFVs though. The 12 SS Panzer for example was hit particularly hard, but still arrived near Caen with nearly all of the tanks it would need to tie up the British advance. Were the resources devoted to interdiction better used to strategically bomb Germany or provide close air support? After the war, the Americans spent a lot of time and money on advanced aircraft designed for low-level and night interdiction. The A-26, B-57 and especially F-111 come to mind. They were expensive and had very advanced avionics and fire control systems. The F-111 had a very troubled development, did not spent much time in theatre over Vietnam, and attacked an enemy without much opposition during Desert Storm. The similar SU-24 and Panavia Tornado also did not see combat in the role they were designed for. Were dedicated interdictors successful conceptually or in combat? Frosted Flake fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Oct 29, 2015 |
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Oct 29, 2015 21:40
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:This is exactly the same dilemma that happened with capital ship construction roughly 1905-1922. That kind of thing happens in basically every engineering endeavor, adding mass anywhere where it must be moved/supported always creates a spiral where you must add more supporting structures. It's particularly relevant in planes, where the weight margins are thin and impact performance a whole lot, but tanks suffer from it quite a bit too. Armor plate is heavy yo. Putting a King Tiger and a T-54 side by side is a nice example of that kind of thing. Those tanks look completely different but they are extremely similar in terms of basic capabilities, the armor protection is nearly identical and the guns are quite comparable. But because of a few differences in the initial layout and engineering decisions (The T-54 mounting the engine in a transverse configuration, with the transmission directly coupled to it all in the back of the tank is one of the main ones), the Soviet design is drat near HALF the weight.
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Oct 29, 2015 23:03
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I love how awkward this photo looks and I think you would like it too.
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Oct 29, 2015 23:27
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Makes the Bren Carrier look cool.
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Oct 29, 2015 23:33
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SeanBeansShako posted:Makes the Bren Carrier look cool. I really hope it had a clown car horn 
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Oct 29, 2015 23:35
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Frosted Flake posted:Is Air Interdiction successful? More specifically, were dedicated Interdiction Bombers successful? First of all, what is interdiction? That's not meant to be a gotcha question mind you, I'd like to know what what we're arguing about in the post-WWII context  Second, mission ≠ platform. Posing the argument that certain planes ever performed their 'real' intended mission is kind of beside the point IMO; I'll come back to that in a bit. Third, there actually are good examples of those kinds of more dedicated platforms executing those kinds of specialized missions, which I'll broaden up to 'strike' as a category (IE everything telated to isolating the battlefield): North Vietnamese point targets hit by F-105s, A-6s, A-7s, and in the end even F-111s with precision guided munitions; F-111s vs. Khaddafi; numerous F-117 deployments; *everything* Iraqi in '91 including low-level airfield strikes by Tornados with very specialized munitions (JP-233); a whole string of neocolonial conflicts afterwards, albeit often fought with multirole platforms; etc. Also, an important factor might be that only the largest of military powers were able to afford those kinds of dedicated aircraft (or weren't, like the UK with TSR-2), and never directly fought each other anyway. If we were to measure weapons systems by their effectiveness in ultimate intended use, there's whole categories beyond 'somewhat more expensive and one-dimensional planes' we should be looking at. Lots of Cold War-era planes were in the end (part-) designed for a mission that wasn't supposed to happen as well, nuclear strike, but they still ended up infinitely more useful in actual wars than, say, nuclear missile submarines. Then there's the issue of platforms being being not very one-dimensional from the 1960s onwards, with some exceptions of course. By all accounts the very numerous F-4 was a good strike aircraft, but it started out as a naval interceptor. The F-111, Tornado, and Su-24 had dedicated Electronic Warfare variants that were built in numbers and proved pretty useful. The former two were multirole aircraft in some part of their life anyway, though the F-111 failed quite soon in that regard, and the Tornado ADV only really came to be built because of a weird Royal Air Force acquisition process (plus ca change). Postwar one-offs which you can IMO honestly doubt the use of are early supersonic strike aircraft, which killed large numbers of their pilots in peacetime because of underdevelopment, and/or were supremely inefficient in wartime. See the F-105 experience in Vietnam. Then again, these planes were there primarily to keep the peace or something, but within the context of being able to fight with battlefield nuclear weapons so ehh. Also, missiles turned out to work really well, but those had a singular, on-off use case and any plane will be more flexible than that. Another decent example of a strike (or interdiction if you will) aircraft that took it too far was the F-117. IIRC the program was only ever run as a prolonged experiment, was cut short at too small a number to sustain over the long term, produced a one-trick dog of plane, and was relatively quickly superseded by better stuff (or options, at least). That being said, I think there are decent parallels to be found in early supersonic and stealth efforts: they were relatively unsafe, underdeveloped, hard to fly, and of very narrow use. All other 'interdiction' aircraft turned out to be fine. e: Don't write long posts on a mobile device 
Koesj fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Oct 30, 2015 |
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Oct 30, 2015 00:14
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Jobbo_Fett posted:I love how awkward this photo looks and I think you would like it too. Looks like a manned version of a Goliath tank. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhK8L0PgPdA
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Oct 30, 2015 00:15
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Deteriorata posted:Looks like a manned version of a Goliath tank. Familleureux Utility B tractor.
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Oct 30, 2015 00:18
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Familleureux Utility B tractor. Yeah, I know they're not really related. It just looked like a version of the Goliath with a seat on top, which gave me an excuse to post the video.
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Oct 30, 2015 00:23
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Deteriorata posted:Yeah, I know they're not really related. It just looked like a version of the Goliath with a seat on top, which gave me an excuse to post the video. Fair enough. A Go-Kart/DeathRace version where people ride Goliath's where any crash could lead to 60kg of explosives going off is hilarious to me.
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Oct 30, 2015 00:32
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