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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. Thanks for that! So you feel airpower was very important, which I find interesting. I'm even more puzzled why histories tend to leave it out. I've certainly read detailed accounts of both Stalingrad and Kursk, and I can't remember planes being mentioned.
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Jan 18, 2016 22:47
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bewbies posted:Here's a big post I made a while back: So why, in your view, was tactical air support (I'm probably using the wrong terms) so much more decisive on the Eastern front than on the other fronts?
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Jan 18, 2016 23:11
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Nenonen posted:There are always rumours. In WW1 there were rumours that Germans were eating Belgian babies. And do you think that Red Army conscripts had read Mein Kampf? As someone whose family was being actively hunted down by the Nazis and their buddies at the time, and had to fight back or die, the Nazis weren't subtle. They weren't trying to hide anything. They relished in making a point of massacring a gargantuan number of people as gruesomly as possible for the slightest of dissent. If the fascists attacking the USSR were half as brutal as the ones occupying Yugoslavia, there was much, much, much, much more than just rumors reaching the Soviet troops.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:12
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Nenonen posted:There are always rumours. In WW1 there were rumours that Germans were eating Belgian babies. And do you think that Red Army conscripts had read Mein Kampf? Rumours are one thing, but remember that the Red Army started rolling the front back in late 1941. When you walk up to a field of cinders that used to be a village or a nice curtain of hanged bodies with German signs on them, you don't need rumours.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:16
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SeanBeansShako posted:I hated how in the late Napoleonic Wars some of the Polish line infantry had to wear plain old French shako for what I suspect was supply issues. Those hats really are class. How late? I'm not exactly super good on The Hundred Days, but I'm fairly sure that there weren't many Poles around Napoleon at that point and they didn't really have time to recreate their formations in such a short period (aside from the Polish Guard Chevaux-légers who had accompanied him to exile).
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Jan 18, 2016 23:21
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BurningStone posted:Thanks for that! So you feel airpower was very important, which I find interesting. I'm even more puzzled why histories tend to leave it out. I've certainly read detailed accounts of both Stalingrad and Kursk, and I can't remember planes being mentioned. Focused histories maybe? Like when I read about the battle of the bulge it's all 101st airborne, encirclement and Patton but you can absolutely bet that air power played a big part. IL-2's specifically are noted as being pretty drat important to the point where nerds like to point out a memo from Stalin basically saying "You aren't building IL-2's fast enough, the motherland depends on IL-2's, do you want to upset me?" The IL series and the T-34 are basically ingrained into the modern mythos, I liked that post because it paid a bit more attention to the LA series and the Yaks. Grand Prize Winner posted:So why, in your view, was tactical air support (I'm probably using the wrong terms) so much more decisive on the Eastern front than on the other fronts? I don't know that it was. There was an old meme that upon making contact with the enemy Americans would immediately pause and call in some P-47's to bomb/rocket the poo poo out of things. I think it was this: quote:“If you encounter a unit you can’t identify, fire one round over their heads so it won’t hit anyone. Rhymenoserous fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Jan 18, 2016 |
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Jan 18, 2016 23:25
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Rhymenoserous posted:
It's less of a subtle "don't upset me" and more of a "build more stuff or I'll wreck your poo poo" kind of telegram.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:37
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Yeah I didn't remember the exact details. Though during that era even finding out he was mildly upset with me would be enough to make my rear end in a top hat pucker.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:39
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Rhymenoserous posted:Yeah I didn't remember the exact details. Though during that era even finding out he was mildly upset with me would be enough to make my rear end in a top hat pucker. "You...disappoint me, Kulkov..."
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Jan 18, 2016 23:43
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JcDent posted:still wainting on organization and tactics in ACW and Franco-Prussian war I can tell you a little about the American Civil War. Somebody here must know this better than I do and can correct me. An important note: both sides had to create their armies both from scratch and on the fly, so nothing is really standard. Lots of things change during the war, too, as lessons are learned and technology changes. Every statement needs a lot of "usually" or "most of the time" qualifiers. For the most part, people think in regiments. More than any other organizational level, soldiers identify with their regiments, generals give them orders, and historians write about them. It's supposed a total of 1000 men, split into 10 companies of 100 men each. In practice, replacements may or may not get provided, so a veteran regiment could be as low as 300 men total. Three to five regiments make a brigade. Above that things get fuzzier. Mostly the South liked a few big units and the North went with more, smaller ones. A Confederate corp and a Union corp didn't have anything like the same number of men. At Gettysburg the Union had seven infantry corp and the South had four, but the actual numbers are much closer (90,000 to 70,000). For day to day living arrangements, the men would break into unofficial smaller groups that could fit into a tent together. You might have a group of four guys, for instance, where one carried an axe, one a coffee pot, and two had the canvas for the tent. Or they could be depend on wagons to carry that stuff, and everybody only carried his own personal belongings and weapons. During long campaign breaks, such as over the winter, the soldiers would build themselves more substantial shelter, even little houses with doors and windows. Tactics changed dramatically during the war. At the start they're inherited from Napoleon. It's quickly apparent that things are different from 1815: the weapons are now longer ranged and a lot of the fighting is in rough, undeveloped country where it's hard to form and move in nice neat blocks. So instead of forming lines of men two or three deep, they shake out into something that looks bit more like what Napoleon would have called light infantry. There's still a battle line, but the men are more spread out, not in rows waiting their turn to fire. They use cover and adore trenches (everybody gets very good at building trenches). The extra range of the rifled musket affected the other types of arms as well. Old cannon found the infantry they were shooting at now had range to shoot right back, so there was a quick more to longer guns. They were still direct line of sight weapons; no distant bombardments of a point on a map. They could fire grapeshot, round shot, or an explosive shell with a timed fuse. Likewise, cavalry could be shot down from so far away they had no hope of charging into melee. They were forced into scouting and raiding, hardly ever appearing on a major battlefield. At the very end of the war, when Grant is determined to force his way to Richmond, things start to look a little like the first World War: 30 miles (48 km) of immovable trench lines guarding the Southern capital, with no-man's land and snipers.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:47
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Ensign Expendable posted:Rumours are one thing, but remember that the Red Army started rolling the front back in late 1941. When you walk up to a field of cinders that used to be a village or a nice curtain of hanged bodies with German signs on them, you don't need rumours. It would be downright irresponsible for any army to rely on conscripts to become patriots only at the moment they randomly stumble upon a hanged body or other gory scene. Conscripts fight because their government tells them to, some governments just have better methods and resources to indoctrinate and persuade them than others. Imperial Russian military was bad at controlling their men, for reasons, and this wouldn't have changed one bit if Kaiser had wanted to kill every last Russian.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:54
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Trin Tragula posted:The Beauty and the Sorrow includes a Hungarian cavalryman, a Russian sapper, and Florence Farmborough; but it's short on direct quotation and long on novelistic rewording, or taking a few words to go off on a description of some general principle (cough, cough). Thoroughly seconding this recommendation. Didn't even know there was an English translation, that's just awesome.  Yeah, novelistic rewording is kind of a thing with this author, but at least he usually does it extremely well. Most WWI stuff I've read has been extremely dry and academic ("On August 3rd, General Bob moved his division two miles to the north. Field Marshal Steve considered repositioning the left flank, but decided not to. Lieutenant-Colonel Dave experienced severe logistical problems near the village of Villemerde. On August 4th..."). This one is very different, and well worth a read.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:54
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Nenonen posted:It would be downright irresponsible for any army to rely on conscripts to become patriots only at the moment they randomly stumble upon a hanged body or other gory scene. Conscripts fight because their government tells them to, some governments just have better methods and resources to indoctrinate and persuade them than others. Imperial Russian military was bad at controlling their men, for reasons, and this wouldn't have changed one bit if Kaiser had wanted to kill every last Russian. I think people are talking past each-other at this point. Yes.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:05
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bewbies posted:I saw an 262 once, that's the jet fighter. That was the only thing that ever scared me worse than the Himalayas. It doesn't make much sense to you now probably, you've seen F-16s and all that poo poo, but those things were so fast it didn't even look like a plane to us. It looked like a space ship. We had been told about them of course but that didn't even prepare us for actually seeing the thing. He flew through us like it was nothing, and our fighters were following him like kittens after a momma cat. They just couldn't keep up. And those jets had giant cannons in the nose, if they hit you, you were a goner. I saw him take a shot at another bomber but he missed and then he just zoomed away, never saw him again. Bewbies, I know I am way late but I am just catching up on some recent posts and this thread moves quickly. This is awesome. (the whole post was, actually, but this part especially) If you or anyone else is interested, in light of recent P-38 discussion I have a couple of interesting documents at home. One is an account of mock dogfights between a P-38 and a Spitfire, don't know what model/Mark either one was. Another is a letter from, if I recall correctly, a group of P-38 pilots complaining about the cockpit layout due to switching from reserves to main tanks/dropping the externals being a ridiculous, convoluted process that cost some junior pilots dearly in the PTO. Nothing real earth-shattering, I just like to see documents/performance charts from that period. e: edited for readability MrMojok fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Jan 19, 2016 |
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Jan 19, 2016 00:06
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Tevery Best posted:How late? I'm not exactly super good on The Hundred Days, but I'm fairly sure that there weren't many Poles around Napoleon at that point and they didn't really have time to recreate their formations in such a short period (aside from the Polish Guard Chevaux-légers who had accompanied him to exile). Post 1812 after the Invasion of Russia, of course the artist might have just been lazy or misinformed.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:11
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JcDent posted:still wainting on organization and tactics in ACW and Franco-Prussian war I'm not sure what you're looking for with respect to the Franco-Prussian War. It's important to bear in mind that there's really no such thing as small unit tactics at this point. Some specialized infantry like sharpshooters and skirmishers are trained to fight in loose order, but in order to concentrate firepower and maintain cohesion in units guys have to be fairly close together, and they tend to be assembled in fairly large units. Generally speaking the battalion of 800-1000 men is the smallest independent unit for battlefield purposes. Signals technology consists of stuff like flags, bugles, drums, etc. so anybody who isn't within shouting distance of an officer is basically out of communication and will have to just muddle through as best he can. French tactics are based around feu de bataillon or "fire by battalion." The idea behind this is that in 1870 the range and killing power of infantry formations has gotten very dangerous. Units caught in the open will be subjected to withering fire and shortly destroyed. The idea is to find good ground--strong defensive terrain like a ridge line, a sunken road, breastworks, whatever--and anchor your forces on it. Then when the enemy advance to contact, you slug it out with them, and you don't move until they're badly disrupted. The French infantry were the best equipment in the world at this time, and they were long-service professionals who could usually rely on being better trained, more experienced, and mentally tougher than most anybody they were going to fight. In a contest of rifles, they're going to win. When the enemy has been sufficiently busted up, they advance and rout the enemy with the bayonet, and the cavalry sweep in to police them up as prisoners. The upshot of this is that French troops maneuver in large units, battalion-size at least, to maximize their firepower, which also means they're moving slowly. Also, when they think they've found a good position, they don't leave it. They're just not very mobile. Feu de bataillon strongly prioritizes fire over maneuver, and the infantry itself supplies a large proportion of the firepower relative to artillery. By contrast, the Prussians know their infantry is not as tough, skilled, or well-equipped. If they get into a shooting match with the French, they'll lose. To avert this, they train to maneuver quickly. Prussian battalions break down into their constituent companies of about 200-250 men and form columns. This is kind of basic stuff but in case this was part of what you were confused about, columns can move about the battlefield faster than blocks or lines, which have to move slowly so everybody can keep up and they can dress the formation as they move. Columns, being longer than they are wide, are easier to keep together as they move through terrain. Smaller units, like companies, can also keep together more easily and move more quickly. Conversely, you can't really fight in column, because most of your soldiers are stuck inside the column and unable to safely fire outwards. Also, companies are really too small to effectively apply firepower. The idea is that the Prussian infantry battalion breaks down into company columns, moves quickly to the French flanks or to the strong defensive position where it reforms to fight. Breaking down into smaller units also has the advantage that if something goes wrong and they get caught in the open by the French firepower, that company might be chewed up but the rest of the battalion will probably be okay. The idea is that the Prussian infantry columns can get to positions where they're in contact with the French, so the French can't move around or safely withdraw, but only minimally exposed to the French rifle fires. The Prussians are a lot faster and they typically outnumber the French, but the French are still very dangerous even when outmaneuvered and enveloped. Being exposed to chassepot and mitrailleuse fire even briefly will expose a unit to shocking casualties, they just melt away. Rather, they have to pin the French in place and play it safe while the Prussian artillery moves into position. The Krupp guns do the heavy lifting, and eventually the French positions can be reduced to the point that the Prussian infantry can close the distance with relative safety to overrun them. Or, if they try to retreat in the face of the bombardment, the Prussian infantry can catch them in the open.
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Jan 19, 2016 01:10
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EvanSchenck posted:long-service professionals who could usually rely on being better trained, more experienced, and mentally tougher than most anybody they were going to fight.
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Jan 19, 2016 01:15
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HEY GAL posted:imagine an entire army full of louis barthas After the loss at Sedan and fall of Metz, a lot of the French soldiers in that war felt like Barthas.
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Jan 19, 2016 01:18
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SeanBeansShako posted:After the loss at Sedan and fall of Metz, a lot of the French soldiers in that war felt like Barthas. it's bitching all the way down
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Jan 19, 2016 01:23
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HEY GAL posted:not talking about his morale--old grogs like that were the backbone of the french army That is what I am saying. Then the Paris Commune happens and people are surprised?
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Jan 19, 2016 01:25
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today in german mercenary names: Quirinus Landgraff
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Jan 19, 2016 03:45
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HEY GAL posted:today in german mercenary names: Quirinus Landgraff Do you have a file full of these guys' names? There really needs to be an online generator.
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Jan 19, 2016 03:58
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xthetenth posted:Do you have a file full of these guys' names? There really needs to be an online generator.
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Jan 19, 2016 04:05
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EvanSchenck posted:I'm not sure what you're looking for with respect to the Franco-Prussian War. So what you're saying is that the French needed to be more aggressive in advancing against the Prussian artillery? How distant would the guns be? Were the French actually lacking sufficient offensive spirit?
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Jan 19, 2016 05:31
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Ensign Expendable posted:It's less of a subtle "don't upset me" and more of a "build more stuff or I'll wreck your poo poo" kind of telegram. quote:You have let down our country and our Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture IL-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. Shenkman produces one IL-2 a day and Tretyakov builds one or two MiG-3s daily. It is a mockery of our country and the Red Army. I ask you not to try the government's patience, and demand that you manufacture more ILs. This is my final warning.
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Jan 19, 2016 06:48
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We've all heard of the Mysorean Rockets? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysorean_rockets quote:In 1792, during the Third Anglo-Mysore War, there was mention of two rocket units fielded by Tipu Sultan, 120 men and 131 men respectively. Lt. Col. Knox was attacked by rockets near Srirangapatna on the night of 6 February 1792, while advancing towards the Kaveri River from the north. The Rocket Corps ultimately reached a strength of about 5000 in Tipu Sultan's army. Mysore rockets were also used for ceremonial purposes. When the Jacobin Club of Mysore sent a delegation to Tipu Sultan, 500 rockets were launched as part of the gun salute.
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Jan 19, 2016 07:09
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PittTheElder posted:So what you're saying is that the French needed to be more aggressive in advancing against the Prussian artillery? Well, no. That would have required a reversal of their whole military doctrine, which really wasn't feasible. In addition, the numerical and mobility advantage was with their enemies and the French often wound up enveloped by the Prussian infantry. Often it was their firepower and strong defensive positions that stopped them from simply being overrun. Abandoning their prepared defensive positions would have neutralized the advantages of their equipment and training and left them fighting a more numerous and more mobile enemy in the open. On top of that, the guns would have been shooting at them the whole way, and leaving their positions they'd have been totally exposed to that. It would've been a disaster. Once the war had begun there wasn't a realistic fix for the situation. The Prussians simply had a better idea of how the fighting was going to work, a better plan to leverage their advantages and minimize their disadvantages, and they organized very effectively to make it happen the way they wanted. In part this was an outcome of Prussia inventing the staff college. They had people reasoning through these things out in a way that no other country was doing. quote:How distant would the guns be? This is still the era of direct fire so it depends on lines of sight and so forth, but Krupp field guns had a maximum range listed at 3.5-4.5km depending on the model. They outranged the French guns, were more accurate, quicker firing, and their shells were way better. quote:Were the French actually lacking sufficient offensive spirit? The French went on the strategic offensive immediately, actually with more speed than was advisable. Their tactics were defensive but only to a point; the idea was to win a bloody exchange of fire with the enemy and then break him with a bayonet attack.
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Jan 19, 2016 07:15
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Nenonen posted:There are always rumours. In WW1 there were rumours that Germans were eating Belgian babies. And do you think that Red Army conscripts had read Mein Kampf? Dude, you're so phantastically wrong. Fighting goes back and forth and the RA soldiers found that lots of the soldiers in the WM had a flexible policy of taking prisoners, meaning that they shot them on the spot or at the side of the road. In the first weeks this was so rampant, that there were multiple desperate orders from the OKH to stop this practice, because it stiffened the will to resist so badly, that the RA soldiers generally fought to the last man. By the end of fall '41, after the big Kessels of Kiev, etc., lots of soldiers made it out of the pow "camps" where they and their comrades rotted in the open. When they came back, these stories were loving everywhere. One of the things that partisans do, was to transport post out of the occupied territories, so relatives back home and soldiers knew about the executions and the starvation in the cities. Propaganda built on this, everybody knew what was happening, because soon or later, a relative would tell about it in their letters.
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Jan 19, 2016 08:30
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That is some Letter-to-pope-Innocent poo poo right there.
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Jan 19, 2016 08:37
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PittTheElder posted:So what you're saying is that the French needed to be more aggressive in advancing against the Prussian artillery? How distant would the guns be? Were the French actually lacking sufficient offensive spirit? The French needed to not be outnumbered 2 to 1 by a unified Germany.
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Jan 19, 2016 08:53
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Trin Tragula posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxvG8ed10UQ That seems exactly the wrong lesson to take- you cannot wear down the enemy reserves changing over the top faster than he can bring them up from the rear via railway lines, and you cannot see where the enemy is weak, and report that back to HQ before the information is out of date. Seems like Haig just convicted himself in the court of military history opinion.
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Jan 19, 2016 08:55
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Thanks for the ACW and Franco-Prussian explanations (those two were so similar I thought I was rerearding the post). Comstar posted:That seems exactly the wrong lesson to take- you cannot wear down the enemy reserves changing over the top faster than he can bring them up from the rear via railway lines, and you cannot see where the enemy is weak, and report that back to HQ before the information is out of date. This sounds like video game logic. At least in the way I read them: kill the guys on the front, then kill the new guys that come up, by having more guys. Two opposing divisions clash and destroy each other, then two new ones get fed into the grind. Sounds like 100% casualty rate in huge units.
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Jan 19, 2016 10:06
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Comstar posted:That seems exactly the wrong lesson to take- you cannot wear down the enemy reserves changing over the top faster than he can bring them up from the rear via railway lines, and you cannot see where the enemy is weak, and report that back to HQ before the information is out of date. As to the first part, it had actually been noted at this point that the Germans were pretty uninspired when making counterattacks against positions taken by the allied forces. This is the major reason why the Germans took so many casualties at the Somme (foreshadowing), because while the British attacks were usually pretty costly, the German counterattacks to dislodge the British were usually just as costly, and consisted of similar linear wave tactics. Not everyone in the German army was a stormtrooper.
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Jan 19, 2016 12:06
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Bip Roberts posted:The French needed to not be outnumbered 2 to 1 by a unified Germany. Lesson learned from Franco-Prussian War be more agressive. Lesson learned from ww1 be less agressive and rely more on heavy defences. Lesson learned from ww2 be more mobile. Seems to me the French were always one war behind
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Jan 19, 2016 12:12
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Trench_Rat posted:Lesson learned from Franco-Prussian War be more agressive. Lesson learned from ww1 be less agressive and rely more on heavy defences. Lesson learned from ww2 be more mobile. Seems to me the French were always one war behind Everyone is one war behind. France was just right next door to their most dangerous enemy every time.
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Jan 19, 2016 12:15
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BurningStone posted:Likewise, cavalry could be shot down from so far away they had no hope of charging into melee. They were forced into scouting and raiding, hardly ever appearing on a major battlefield. Weren't the cavalry also used as dragoons, ie. mounted fast infantry? Also, what was the function of this box behind the turret: 
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Jan 19, 2016 12:16
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JcDent posted:Thanks for the ACW and Franco-Prussian explanations (those two were so similar I thought I was rerearding the post). Hey! I know a solution to this problem! Conscription and Tribunals Welcome back! It's March 1916 and the Military Service Bill has now become the Military Service Act. An estimated couple of hundred thousand men are about to - for one reason or another - apply for exemption from the British Army. The rest of the British population, aged 181-41, male and unmarried, is about to learn what "attrition" really means. The Exemption process was poorly thought through, and implemented in the grand style of late 19th century English bureaucracy, by worthies of the parish whenever they could be bothered to do so. Exemption from the army had to be won - men were "soldiers until proven otherwise", which was done through applying to a local Tribunal. This most civic of boards was convened at a parish level2 and had the difficult and exacting task of deciding which exemptions were to be passed, and which men were to be sent to the army. They received little guidance initially, and usually had voted themselves into existence from pre-existing volunteer enlistment boards. Their job was "simple": Bearing in mind the needs of the Army and the Civilian economy, and the law, assess each individual application for exemption through a separate hearing3, and decide whether or not a man would go to the army. They could pass few verdicts: Total Exemption, Temporary Exemption, Refused Exemption and Exemption from Combatant Service Only - this last one would cause problems. I'm often harsh on the Tribunals, and now, having read through more extant Tribunal records than probably anyone else, I think I can rightfully say that they did a hard job badly, with no intention of doing it well. Staffing the Tribunals with those patriotic enough to have been on enlistment committees was a poor choice. Allowing the Army a Military Representative on each Tribunal to "look after the needs of the Service" was counter productive. Allowing Tribunals to operate with no oversight beyond Government Circulars4 looks, now, like hilarious negligence. In short (and short it must be because otherwise this is long) Tribunals sent as many men as they could to the Army. In rural and urban areas alike, this caused vast and long-term hardship for both the dependents of conscripts and their local economies. Rural Tribunals were usually more lenient, understanding the needs of industries around them, and often operating in a small enough area to be able to see the economic cost of drafting vital individuals. Urban Tribunals were rather different, and the separation in class, education and occupation between the grandees of the Tribunal and the men they encountered made for more volatile and difficult sessions. Compounding this was the simply enormous volume of work Tribunals had to do. With each application comprising several handwritten forms, to be read by each member of the Tribunal, to be summed up verbally at each hearing and then a list of questions to be read and answered, the Tribunal system was well set up to process several applications an evening. The problem can be described quite simply by comparing two Tribunal minute books I've worked with, on the same day. Monday, 5th June 1916 (I remember this one because it's when Kitchener died). Yiewsley Tribunal - 5 applications Battersea Tribunal - 71 applications scheduled For an (ideally) 3-5 hour Tribunal session, that is an impossibly large amount of work. Yet each application was supposed to be judged on it's own merits, fairly assessed, and decided upon. Even without including the Conscientious Objectors who made the Tribunal system famous for it's inadequacy and bias, there's accounts of fights breaking out, Tribunal members violently disagreeing, Trade Union leaders having the Military Representative followed home and assaulted5 for threatening conscription against a proposed strike, etc etc Enter 18-20,000 Conscientious Objectors. Men whose principles were setting them against the entire system of military conscription. Not universally hyper-intelligent, or good at debating, or anything like that, of various backgrounds and motivations and abilities, with very different relationships to Tribunals, different domestic situations and occupations. They are, however, united by two things - a stubborn refusal to be conscripted and a willingness to never, ever, shut the gently caress up in a Tribunal hearing. Setting Conscientious Objectors, protected by a vague and poorly-written clause in the Military Service Act: "Exemption may be granted on the basis of..... A Conscientious Objection to Military Service (note that this Exemption may be from Combatant Service Only)" against a highly pressured, creaking, biased and above all hyper-patriotic Tribunal board led to the expected outcome. Aside from the barrage of insults, slurs, direct attempts to provoke men into a violent defensive reaction6, the constant variations on the theme of "If it were up to me you'd be shot", the numbers tell the story well. Between 18 and 20,0007 applications for exemption as a Conscientious Objector Between 18 and 20,000 exemptions legally due under the law provided they could be evidenced 87 known8 exemptions Now, I've been accused of bias against Tribunal members because I work with the group that they treated poorly (and often illegally), but there's something very clearly up with these figures. Even slashing that 18-20 thousand exemptions "legally due" to a much, much smaller number - say 10 in every 100 COs could legally prove a "Conscientious Objection to Military Service", and far more than this could, we'd still be looking at a couple of thousand COs legally completely exempt. If we were generous to say, the Quakers, and saw them as a group who had an apriori legal claim to CO status, we'd have 5-6,000 exempt men. So whatever my bias against Tribunals - and if you're reading this [Redacted], we will resume this conversation in April - this is not a system that functioned as it was intended to. The vast majority of COs received either No Exemption, or "Exemption from Combatant Service Only". This provided them with the first of many choices which would shape the next five years (and far beyond) for them. Do you accept "Non-Combatant Service" and go into the army in a Non-Combatant role, or do you refuse it? Either way, a week or two after your Tribunal hearing9, you would receive a polite call from a Policeman asking if you intended to report to Barracks. After that - arrest, a short Magistrates Court Trial as an absentee, and then - handed over to the military. --- I actually have to get back to work on doing this, but I'll do more later. I was actually on TV talking about this recently, for a very brief look at a terrified me, you can check out Antiques Road Trip (series 5 episode 14) on bbc iplayer. 1. 18 year olds could be conscripted, but not sent abroad - or initially to the army at all, until they were 19. An exception was made for Conscientious Objectors: "You're too young to have a Conscience! You should be locked up!" 2. Usually on a parish level, but in places where this was difficult/impossible - such as large cities - they were convened on a (urban) borough level 3. Industries and employers could apply on behalf of their workers, so batch applications and hearings were not uncommon 4. The Tribunal minutes for Wandsworth show that Government circulars were voted to "lie unread" until they piled up to a literally dangerous degree in 1918, two years after they were first received. 5. St Pancras Tribunal, late 1917 6. My favourite is the question "If your wife was being assaulted by a German, what would you do? Allow him to carry on his beastly violation?" and the possibly apocryphal answer "I may hit him. But I wouldn't declare war on his country", or, elsewhere in the world (well, Tower Hamlets) "Ask me that outside". Of course, COs waving copies of the Communist Manifesto or singing the Red Flag, bringing a Bible to the hearing and pontificating from it, or being backed up by a Choir (either socialist or religious) probably gave as good as they got. 7. Tribunal records were largely destroyed after the war. This number has been stitched together from a number of sources, most prominently the Cyril Pearce CO Register. The 20,000 is my own estimated figure going from my own work on inner London. Extrapolating from known numbers in Middlesex to cover the other parts of the city with a similar population density, we go from ~2k to 3 in London alone. 8. Fully exempt men are difficult to find. Once exempt they disappear - other COs are tracked by army and prison records. 9. Possibly, anyway. If you disagreed with your Tribunal hearing, you could Appeal to the County Tribunal - records of the Middlesex Appeal Tribunal can be searched, for free, here - try looking up Charles Titford and the Walker Brothers, and then, if they still didn't give you the verdict you wanted, the Central Tribunals meeting in London, Glasgow and Cardiff beckoned, if you were allowed to apply there by the Appeal Tribunal.
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Jan 19, 2016 12:23
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Hogge Wild posted:Weren't the cavalry also used as dragoons, ie. mounted fast infantry? That's the Firefly. Because of the space the 17 pdr took up, they didn't have room for the radio, so that's mounted in a box on the back. Normal fireflies look like this, though https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/ShermanFireflyAmersfoort.jpg so maybe in that image they chose to stow some spare ammo or something behind the turret? Fangz fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Jan 19, 2016 |
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Jan 19, 2016 12:27
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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. Arquinsiel posted:While both of these things are perfectly acceptable reasons to wear one by themselves berets are also very easy to make in different colours for the purposes of unit identification. The further ease of just sticking cap badges on for more granularity is a further bonus. Also they're one of the few hats you can stick a pair of headphones on over and not have them get in the way all silly like. Apparently the last was a genuine concern for the British tank units. In addition to these reasons I think that one of the main reasons was that after the various special forces started to use them, it became cool and everyone else wanted them too. Fangz posted:That's the Firefly. Because of the space the 17 pdr took up, they didn't have room for the radio, so that's mounted in a box on the back. I googled info about those boxes, but found only game forums. They may have been used on different tanks also for counterweights for the gun. What are the comedy forum's historians' opinions about those boxes?
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Jan 19, 2016 12:47
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lenoon posted:Hey! I know a solution to this problem! Really makes me appreciate the procedure I had to follow when I was drafted. Clerk: "Are there any reasons why you shouldn't be serving in the military?" Me: "Yes, I would like to object to the service." Clerk: "Alright, sign this and get ready for your medical." THE END
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Jan 19, 2016 13:05
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