Taerkar posted:

Dense underbrush with an almost comically long gun attached to a rather underpowered turret traverse drive. Sounds like a great idea.

Hazzard posted:

Is it just the perspective or were Pickelhaubes quite squat? Media always makes them much taller than they look in those pictures.

BurningStone posted:

How important was it to the outcome? I've read both general accounts of the entire war, and detailed ones of individual battles, and the air war is almost never mentioned. The only two things I can remember are the Soviet planes getting destroyed in their hangers on the first day, and the Stalingrad resupply attempts. Accounts of the Pacific always make it clear it was a combined land-sea-air war, and accounts of the western front will talk about the Battle of Britain, strategic bombing, and tactical air support. But writers seem to forget planes ever went east of Berlin.

I'll check out that documentary link too, thanks.

bewbies posted:

Sure why not

In the early 1930s the Soviet government was all about airplanes. They developed some amazing planes like the ANT-25 that were as impressive as anything the west was building and then touted these as propaganda pieces. They also kind of accidentally created what was absolutely the best fighter in the world in 1933, the Polikarpov I-16, which had performance comparable to the front line fighters of most nations in 1939. Alongside the I-16 they developed a couple of fairly useful biplane fighters, the I-15 and I-153.

Then...nothing happened. For 6 critical years. During this time Germany developed the Bf-109, the Brits got their Spitfire and Hurricane, the US got the P-39/40 and the F4F, and the Japanese got their Ki-43 and the Zero. Things first started to look hairy in Spain, when the I-15/153/16s pretty much had their way with earlier German biplane fighters and then...got completely jacked by the early model 109s when they showed up. Similarly, Chinese I-15/16s got torn up badly fighting against newer (but not top of the line) Japanese fighters. As a result some bureaucrat in 1939 decided that the VVS REALLY needed a new fighter plane or two or three. So, about 3 years too late, new requirements were drawn up the next generation of Soviet fighters. Three main designs were submitted: the MiG-1/3, the LaGG-1/3, and the Yak-1. These three designs (primarily the last two) would basically become the basis for of the VVS fighter force for the remainder of the war. At around the same time, new designs for a light tactical bomber (the Il-2) and a twin engined tactical bomber (the Pe-2) were making their first flights; both would eventually be world beaters.

So, all of these new designs were promising, but at the time of Barbarossa most of the VVS was still in I-15/153/16s. A handful of LaGGs had made it to squadrons, but there weren't many other modern types available. That, plus poor pilot training, a gutted officer corps, and a complete lack of preparedness basically let the Luftwaffe annihilate the VVS where it stood through the first few weeks of Barbarossa. The sheer number of planes lost was staggering...4000+, against less than a hundred Luftwaffe losses. So, the VVS essentially had to rebuild from scratch. Fortunately, they had some quality designs to work with and they were given some excellent equipment through Lend-Lease.

Until fairly recently, people thought of the post-1941 VVS as being a conscript air force with gobs of primitive equipment. It was, to a certain extent; they never developed effective high altitude bombers or the big shiny fast fighters to escort them, nor did they develop big sexy rugged naval aircraft. But, when you look at the Red Army requirements and what the VVS wanted to accomplish, they designed aircraft that were perfectly suited to the way that they wanted to fight. Basically, all weather tactical air power, specifically close air support and interdiction, were the name of the game. Everything the VVS flew during the war supported these two missions. What this required:

1) Planes that are simple to maintain, even in extremely difficult conditions. These aircraft are operating close to the front lines often on unimproved fields and with minimally trained maintenance personnel, so simplicity and ruggedness are paramount.

2) Planes that are tough as balls. When you're a) flying almost entirely at low level and b) flying against the Luftwaffe of 1942-43, you're going to be taking a LOT of punishment. Having planes that can take hits and keep flying (and are then relatively easy to repair) is extremely valuable.

3) Excellent low altitude performance. In order to let the attack aircraft do their thing, you have to maintain at least local air superiority. This means you have to field aircraft capable of winning dogfights at low altitude over all other performance characteristics.

4) Easy to fly. You're basically building a new air force from scratch and it isn't like your pilots were world beaters to begin with. Best to keep things as easy as possible.

Literally everything else: range, high altitude speed, payload, etc, were secondary to these four requirements. As a result, the VVS wound up fielding the most formidable tactical bomber of the war (the Il-2) and the best low altitude air superiority aircraft of the war (the Yak-3 and the La-7).

About the aircraft types specifically, the LaGG-3 was a reasonable first effort that was utterly transformed when a giant radial engine replaced the liquid cooled V-12 it had been fielded with. This turned it into the La-5, then the La-5FN, and eventually the La-7. The La-5 was the first VVS aircraft that was capable of really taking on the 109 on more or less equal terms, and at low altitude (where the Russians wanted to fight) it was decidely superior. Soon after, the Yak-1 was developed into the Yak-9, which became most produced Soviet fighter of the war. The basic Yak-9 was capable of holding its own against the 109 and 190; it was also extremely versatile (developed into high altitude, long range, and lol huge cannon variants) and eventually proved to be extremely potent once a new engine was installed. This upengined variant (the 9U) hit the streets in late 1943 and was the fastest fighter in the world at the time. At about the same time, Yakovlev was developing a pure dogfighter version of the Yak-1: the Yak-3. It was smaller than the -9 but with the same engine; as a result it was arguably the best performing aircraft in the world when it became operational. When it recevied the same engine upgrade it became, in my opinion, the best pure air superiority fighter of the war, though it was more difficult to fly and maintain than the -9 variant. Interestingly, the most promising of the 1939 designs, at least in terms of performance, was the MiG-3. It was, essentially, the tiniest airfame that could be built around the biggest inline engine available. It was the only VVS aircraft that could outperform the 109Fs and early Gs and the 190A in 1941, but it was difficult to fly, difficult to maintain, and performed poorly at low altitude...and so was largely ignored in favor of the less flashy models.

As for the bombers, the Il-2 doesn't need much more written about it, but the Pe-2 is one of the more underappreciated designs of the war. It was easily the equal of the much more famous Mosquito in just about every way and its performance throughout the war was pretty exceptional. A slightly later design (the Tu-2) was, along with the A-26, the best twin engined tactical bomber design of the war in my opinion, though it wasn't produced in nearly the same numbers as the Pe-2.

The Soviets concentrated so heavily on these aircraft types that they kind of neglected the future; as a result they had no competent long range bomber nor any decent jet fighters as the Cold War dawned. Fortunately for them they were able to steal both of these things from the West and thus caught up pretty quickly.

Tias posted:

A bit late to the party, but this is correct in a sense.

By the time he lost at Stalingrad, the German soldier was used to being part of a victorious combined arms juggernaut with superior training and logistics, and was losing even basic creature comforts such as being in a hot, dry place to celebrate christmas. All the while Hitler hosed over even minor strategems that could alleviate the tactical situation.

The soviet soldier had always known want, defeat and lovely leadership, and so when they trapped the Germans and received fresh men, good equipment and earned victories, their morale went up as the Germans went down. Stalin wasn't a much better tactician than Hitler or anything, but having an inflexible, clueless mass-murdering psychopath in charge feels a lot better when your offensives have a chance of succeeding.

bewbies posted:

Here's a big post I made a while back:



As for the importance of the air war, it had two very important strategic elements. First, the influence of tactical airpower (read: attack aviation) on major strategic operations was pretty decisive in the east, moreso than in any other theater of the war. It isn't coincidental that the Red Army started winning the war when they finally wrested air superiority away from the Luftwaffe. They were very, very good at wrecking poo poo on the ground with aircraft; without the VVS doing its thing as well as it did, I don't think the Russians win at either Stalingrad or Kursk. I can go into some more detail on this later if anyone is interested.

The second major element was that it tied up somewhere between half and two thirds of the Luftwaffe, which kept them from further ravaging the western strategic bomber forces and later the invasions in North Africa, Italy, and France. I don't think any of those operations succeed without air superiority and I don't think the Allies achieve air superiority, at least on that timeline, without the Russians bleeding the Luftwaffe in the east. Obviously this is more of a "fleet-in-being" sort of effect rather than a decisive action, but it was still hugely important to the outcome of the war.

Gargamel Gibson posted:

Not very warm, though, which became apparent during the Winter War.

bewbies posted:

As for the importance of the air war, it had two very important strategic elements. First, the influence of tactical airpower (read: attack aviation) on major strategic operations was pretty decisive in the east, moreso than in any other theater of the war. It isn't coincidental that the Red Army started winning the war when they finally wrested air superiority away from the Luftwaffe. They were very, very good at wrecking poo poo on the ground with aircraft; without the VVS doing its thing as well as it did, I don't think the Russians win at either Stalingrad or Kursk. I can go into some more detail on this later if anyone is interested.

Gargamel Gibson posted:

Why did the beret become a popular military hat? It doesn't keep you warm, it doesn't keep the sun out of your eyes, you can't wear it under a helmet. All it does is look sharp and fit inside a pocket.

xthetenth posted:

What do protestants wear, and do they actually go to the trouble of making Catholics change helmet if they defect?

Or is that to stave off everybody buying one?

Cyrano4747 posted:

You can also turn the whole premise around and point out that this was not the first time that Prussians and Russians met on the field of combat. If the German accustomedness to good facilities, good equipment, and success was a detriment in WW2 and the Russian's long experience with suffering and want was an advantage for them, then why did the Tsarist army poo poo the bed so badly in WW1?

JcDent posted:

Re-read the Franco-Prussian post. I'm interested in stuff on tactical level, I guess, how the dudes were organized into units and how they fought. Talking about armies and collumns just makes me imagine colored blocks sliding on a map.

xthetenth posted:

Those are late era ones. Early Pickelhauben could be goofy tall and kind of equivalent to a leather version of the miter cap Prussian grenadiers wore.

HEY GAL posted:

None of our poo poo really matches all that much, but our helmets are in the Dutch style, more or less.

edit: my hauptmann would like it if we matched more, and he would also like it if we stopped doing things like tying our mugs to our belts. that helmet thing is just one part of him standing alone against the tide of us not looking as spiffy (or as Protestant) as he likes.

my dad posted:

The tall ones were given up on when the top brass decided that the pickelhaubitze project was too ambitious.

xthetenth posted:

What exactly is the Dutch style? Some of this stuff is hard to get good pictures of without knowing what will make search engines give the right thing.

Ensign Expendable posted:

What's the ridge for? Structural reinforcement or something else?

Tias posted:

Because contrary to the Tsarist army in WW1, they had some kind of morale, new equipment and functioning supply lines.

Ensign Expendable posted:

What's the ridge for? Structural reinforcement or something else?

Azathoth posted:

This brings up a point that I'd like to hear from experts on.

It seems that individual Soviet soldiers understood, at least by the time of Stalingrad, if not sooner, that they were fighting a war from which only one side would survive. That if they lost, it would not just mean their own deaths, but that of their family and friends once the Germans got to them.

I don't get that same sense from reading about Russian soldiers in WWI. I do not say this to suggest that the individual soldier was not capable or motivated, but instead to suggest that the average Soviet soldier was prepared to sacrifice and endure far more than the average WWI Russian soldier because of the almost impossibly severe consequences for defeat.

Am I off-base in thinking that?

Azathoth posted:

This brings up a point that I'd like to hear from experts on.

It seems that individual Soviet soldiers understood, at least by the time of Stalingrad, if not sooner, that they were fighting a war from which only one side would survive. That if they lost, it would not just mean their own deaths, but that of their family and friends once the Germans got to them.

I don't get that same sense from reading about Russian soldiers in WWI. I do not say this to suggest that the individual soldier was not capable or motivated, but instead to suggest that the average Soviet soldier was prepared to sacrifice and endure far more than the average WWI Russian soldier because of the almost impossibly severe consequences for defeat.

Am I off-base in thinking that?

Tias posted:

Because contrary to the Tsarist army in WW1, they had some kind of morale, new equipment and functioning supply lines.

HEY GAL posted:

i dunno, probably structural reinforcement.

here's some modern morions, on the Swiss Guard. A very different silhouette. You can see how high the ridge is under some of the plumes (many helmets, period and reproductions like these, have little sockets in the back where you stick the feather. You can see that in the engraving of the musketeer in that Dutch helmet I posted.)

Cyrano4747 posted:

You are conflating causes and effects. Armies that are well supplied have good leadership and are winning have good morale. Armies without those things have lovely morale. They win and lose because of those factors not their morale. Morale isn't a cause but a symptom of underlying factors that make an army less effective. Pulling some kind of "national character" into it as a factor in morale is just trying to put an academic veneer on trading in national and racial stereotypes.

"The Russian is more :accustomed to rough living and suffering" is straight out of a 30s era ethnography textbook. It's basically the noble savage argument. Those kinds of generalities underpin a lot of rationales for a "civilized" more "intelligent" people naturally taking leadership roles over more "rugged" "simple" people best suited for labor. It's the same philosophy you find in Nazi race and labor policies, British arguments for empire, and American slavery.

I am not saying that you are making this argument or believe these things in just pointing out why those kinds of explanations are rejected. It's sloppy thinking that claims current situations as being natural and eternal while ignoring the underlying causes.

feedmegin posted:

Makes sense. Pre-World War 2, total war where one country or the other would win or be totally annihilated wasn't the norm. Russia lost World War 1 and it signed a sucky peacy treaty and lost a bunch of territory but it wasn't wiped out as an entity. Germany lost World War 1 and negotiated a peace more or less before any allied boots even touched German soil. France lost in 1870 but France as a country continued. In all cases, at worst, a portion of your country's citizenry were someone else's citizens now. As a civilian, if your country lost, well, it might kind of suck but you mostly didn't fear for your life.

The Nazis, on the other hand were out to straight up exterminate and starve as much of Russia as they could hold and settle it with Germans instead. They were pretty up-front about it. If losing the war means a Russian soldier and his family starve to death or get shot, then drat right they're going to fight harder (and not be too keen on notions like 'quarter' or 'prisoner of war' either, in some cases).

HEY GAL posted:

Molentik posted:

It's funny how much that helmet looks like the Dutch helmet of WW2, which are (one of the) ugliest helmets of the war.

Nenonen posted:

I don't believe in this as it sounds just too simplistic and is based on hindsight. The German occupation of Ukraine in 1918 was going to leave many Russians to starve anyway. Also Nazis didn't explicitly go telling everyone that they would kill or enslave all Russkies. Instead their propaganda focused on blaming everything on Jewish bolshevik commissars and once they'd be done, everyone could live in peace.

Ultimately though, what would a soldier know about his enemy apart from what their own propaganda was telling them? Until front units started encountering POW and concentration camps, at which point the war was already near over.

The most striking and I believe the most important difference between WW1 and WW2 Russian armies was that in WW1 units there were radical agitators forming soldier's committees within the army, while in the Red Army any expressions of dissent would be swiftly dealt with. No man, no problem!

So, I believe it comes down to control of public opinion and public discourse, especially in front units. This comes down to many factors, like how hardships are easier to cope with when you believe that your leaders are your comrades who share those hardships and not feasting on caviar and vodka while you are dying in a trench and your family is starving in a tiny cold flat.

Ensign Expendable posted:

The Red Army started finding burned barns full of skeletons long before they got to any camps.

feedmegin posted:

Yeah, this, plus they saw what happened to the areas the Germans had invaded, plus don't underestimate the rumour network in any army. I specifically didn't mention the concentration camps; there was plenty of other evidence, going back to the pre-war period and Mein Kampf for that matter, of how the Nazis intended to treat Russia.