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Grand Prize Winner posted:the what now?  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAN_Little_Joe
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Jan 25, 2016 01:40
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My friend sent me an album of some neat propaganda posters.    
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Jan 25, 2016 02:26
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I like how all of them are using the M6 Heavy Tank.
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Jan 25, 2016 02:35
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chitoryu12 posted:My friend sent me an album of some neat propaganda posters. It's a mighty good road.
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Jan 25, 2016 02:40
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bewbies posted:You really can't compare torpedoing an unmanned 1960s light frigate with a modern supercarrier. The carrier weighs 50 times what the frigate does, for example. I thought a cavitating torpedo worked better the heavier the target was because the weight was what broke the ship?
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Jan 25, 2016 02:48
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Taerkar posted:I like how all of them are using the M6 Heavy Tank. The M6 Heavy Tank was very widely used in propaganda, so that's not surprising.
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Jan 25, 2016 02:59
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Huh, really? I thought the M6 never actually saw service anywhere. Was the jumbo or pershing just not considered photogenic enough or something?
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Jan 25, 2016 03:08
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Throatwarbler posted:I thought a cavitating torpedo worked better the heavier the target was because the weight was what broke the ship? In theory, without external factors. However, a ship's size and weight can allow bigger defenses.
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Jan 25, 2016 03:08
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Throatwarbler posted:I thought a cavitating torpedo worked better the heavier the target was because the weight was what broke the ship? I'm far from an expert on hydrodynamics but I'm pretty sure torpedo damage won't scale up with gross weight. My guess is the weight factor is more of a function of the density of the ship versus the strength of the keel, and that is largely secondary to the size of the explosion vs the total area of the hull. In other words, if you detonate a 300kg torpedo warhead underneath a 1,000,000,000 ton ship it probably won't cause anything but very localized damage, in the same way a hand grenade detonated under a Nimitz wouldn't.
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Jan 25, 2016 03:10
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spectralent posted:Huh, really? I thought the M6 never actually saw service anywhere. Was the jumbo or pershing just not considered photogenic enough or something? The M6 never entered service but they had 40 of them lying around and if you're gonna take pictures of a tank and drive it over cars for propaganda purposes, it's way better to use a leftover cancelled tank than a fully functioning one that could be shipped across the sea to shoot Nazis.
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Jan 25, 2016 03:16
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Eej posted:The M6 never entered service but they had 40 of them lying around and if you're gonna take pictures of a tank and drive it over cars for propaganda purposes, it's way better to use a leftover cancelled tank than a fully functioning one that could be shipped across the sea to shoot Nazis. The M6 also looks way more powerful and imposing than their other tanks.
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Jan 25, 2016 03:27
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Jobbo_Fett posted:The M6 also looks way more powerful and imposing than their other tanks. The silhoutted tank though, is an M3 
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Jan 25, 2016 03:46
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The silhoutted tank though, is an M3 Yeah, note how it is missing, because it is weaker. M6 best M-tank.
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Jan 25, 2016 03:56
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spectralent posted:Huh, really? I thought the M6 never actually saw service anywhere. Was the jumbo or pershing just not considered photogenic enough or something? a jumbo isn't going to be much more impressive in a propaganda picture than any other sherman, and both of those were pretty late war tanks anyway incidentally the germans did a somewhat similar thing with the neubaufahrzeug tanks - they only made 5 of them, because they sucked, but they were large and imposing so they'd get used for photo ops so the germans could be like "hey look at our badass HEAVY TANKS" in the days when all they had were light and medium tanks early in the war Pornographic Memory fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 03:59
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spectralent posted:Huh, really? I thought the M6 never actually saw service anywhere. Was the jumbo or pershing just not considered photogenic enough or something? The M6 predated the Pershing by several years. Also the whole point of the Jumbo was to look exactly like a Sherman, so it wasn't the greatest propaganda tool.
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Jan 25, 2016 04:55
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The silhoutted tank though, is an M3 RIP that driver's pelvis
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Jan 25, 2016 05:03
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Cyrano4747 posted:Even Russia would balk at annexing the territory of a nuclear power. Didn't stop Argentina from trying to pick off the Falklands. Or heck, the whole border conflict between China and Russia during the Sino-Soviet split. I think the general calculation would be whether Ukraine would go nuclear over what Russia pulled in Crimea - and the answer is, probably not. Fangz fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 07:31
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What if you're willing to go nuclear in a scorched earth scenario 
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Jan 25, 2016 07:46
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Fangz posted:Didn't stop Argentina from trying to pick off the Falklands. Or heck, the whole border conflict between China and Russia during the Sino-Soviet split. The Falklands are far, far less of a serious security threat to the UK than swiping Sevastopol was for the Ukraine, and those border conflicts were never about annexing territory to the same degree that you see Russia doing these days. Speaking of Argentina, a non-nuclear power perversely has a lot more freedom to try and snag little bits and pieces off the edges of a nuclear power. If the UK had nuked Buenos Aires over the Falklands no one on the planet would have seen that as a proportionate use of force. In that scenario you're basically guaranteed a conventional response and the Argentines figured that they had an OK shot with that. In the same vein, if Cuba decided tomorrow to take back Guantanamo Havana isn't eating a nuke. We'd pound the poo poo out of them with conventional munitions and there would probably be marines re-taking the base within hours, precisely because saying "welp, they attacked us so I guess we've gotta go nuclear" wouldn't really float.
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Jan 25, 2016 15:21
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Yeah, that's why I included the Sino-Soviet conflict. I agree that losing Crimea was worse strategically than most of these examples (though on the flip side also much more bloodless), but I still don't think that with the way Russia did it, it was the sort of thing that Ukraine would have conceivably gone nuclear over. In the event, Ukraine barely resorted to conventional weaponry to hold on to the Crimea, and I don't in fact think that international opinion would have countenanced a mushroom cloud over Moscow in response - not when many people's assumption was that this will all boil over and there will be a negotiated pull out. EDIT: VVV I still don't think that's terribly likely given how things develop as a steady, uncertain escalation. I don't think there's a clear enough point where Ukraine can really credibly say that nuclear war is on the table. But it's hard to judge with these counterfactuals. Potentially with a nuclear Ukraine, Russia would have been even more pro-active in its support of the existing regime. Fangz fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 15:31
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Fangz posted:Yeah, that's why I included the Sino-Soviet conflict. Ukraine didn't resist because they knew Russian would take the opportunity to start (and win) a conventional conflict if they did. If, instead, they had nuclear weapons, they could have resisted in Crimea without fear of further Russian attack.
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Jan 25, 2016 15:43
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There can be no Republic of Donetsk without Donetsk  
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Jan 25, 2016 15:45
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I also wonder how much more leverage over allies you get as a nuclear power. It's one thing to go asking for help when your only recourse is to let it play out and hope for the best, but when you can go "Well you can help or we'll start firing nukes" I expect your allies have much more incentive to lend conventional hands and take stronger stances. There was a lot of apathy for a long time about the Ukraine thing.
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Jan 25, 2016 16:05
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I left off at possibly the most boring point last time, so let's do What Actually Happened to Conscientious Objectors, a CYOA story Certificate of exemption for Combatant Service Only So, you've left your Tribunal and they've granted you "Exemption from Combatant Service Only" (ECS). After a final rousing chorus of the Red Flag/Simply Trusting God Every Day (delete as appropriate), you have a couple of choices available to you: 1. Accept ECS, and join the Non-Combatant Corps at your assigned barracks (turn to A) 2. Reject ECS, and refuse to turn up to barracks as ordered (turn to B) 3. Reject ECS, and go on the run (turn to C) A. Congratulations, Private! You've just joined the Non-Combatant Corps. Here you will be expected to follow military orders, wear uniform and be called "Private X" until you are demobilised. After drill and an above-standard level of physical and verbal abuse, you will be formed into a unit with a variable amount of other Conscientious Objectors and sent to provide logistic and labour support to the military at Home or behind the lines at the front. However, you will also be given a written guarantee that you will not be expected to handle a weapon at any point in your time with the NCC. What constitutes a "weapon" is up to your commanding officer, and what you will work on is up to your own individual conscience - some COs found loading ammunition morally acceptable, while others objected to handling even the constituent parts of military material, agreeing to handle only foodstuffs, uniforms and medical supplies. If at this point you've changed your mind; turn to B. The Non-Combatant Corps is possibly the least-researched aspect of the Conscientious Objector story. Regionally organised Battalions were allocated to tasks varying between road-making and camp setup in Wiltshire, to loading material for the front in the coastal ports, to sanitary and labour support in France and Belgium. All NCC Conscientious Objectors were Privates, and were led by NCOs and Officers from the regular army. In at least some cases it was used as a after-injury convalescent posting, either prior to discharge or rotation back into the front. This, as you'd expect, created a great degree of friction between the ranks of the NCC. Many NCC men found the work to be morally acceptable to their objection, though semi-frequent strikes from 1916 to demob attest to localised incidents of dissent, usually around what exactly constituted directly military work. During the "backs to the wall" crisis of 1918, attempts were made to force NCC men into combat positions, causing a wave of strikes at exactly the wrong time, and additionally probably leaving several NCC men in areas occupied in Operation Michael (I know they were in Rosieres on the 25th of March, but I can't find anything else about them). The NCC get the short straw of both military and pacifist studies of the war. To military historians they're a difficult and irritating type of labour battalion, and to pacifists they're the "guys that joined the army". I like them though, I think it's drat difficult to define the exact limits of your personal morality - must have been a hell of a precarious balance. B. So, you've decided to reject the Army. You go home and wait for your call-up date to pass. Some time after, you are arrested (sometimes politely), and brought in front of a Magistrates court, which will usually fine you 40 shillings (apparently over £400 in modern money - which seems rather high), which you will not have to pay, because it isn't bail. You're going to the army anyway. From the magistrates court, you're escorted under guard to the barracks you should have reported to and issued with a series of simple orders: Put on a Uniform. Stand to attention. Sign your enlistment forms. Rejecting all of these necessarily puts you in a lot of trouble. Depending on when and where you're resisting, you might then face a few different experiences: March 1916: The military, not knowing what the hell to do with you, will send you to court martial and give you 28 days confined to barracks guard house. May 1916: You're quite likely to face physical abuse of varying severity, from a beating, starvation and forced physical exertion until you pass out (The Walker brothers, from North London, all went through this at Mill Road Barracks), to "being found with your throat cut in barracks surrounded by NCOs whistling innocently" (a "P.D Smith, from Bolton", though we know bugger all else about him). From June 1916 onwards: Less likely (but still possible) that you're going to be beaten, but more met with an exasperated sigh and a court martial. The court martial will aim to get rid of you - 1-2 years for disobeying orders, and a transfer to a civilian prison. If you've been released from a prison sentence back into the army, congratulations, you get to do this all over again, and again, and again, until the war ends. Unless you're one of "the Frenchmen", your involvement with the military temporarily ends here, and you're in the loving embrace of the British prison system.  London COs "out of prison", but in Dartmoor Prison - November 1917 C. Doing a runner. Are you: a talented artist, poet or writer? If so, you might be in luck, having sufficiently powerful and influential friends might well mean you can spend the whole war "working" on fruit farms without ever being checked up on by the Pelham Committee for the Employment of Conscientious Objectors. While registered with the system, you've managed to completely escape it. Lady Ottoline Morrell and her less-famous MP husband, Philip, somehow managed to shelter about half of the Bloomsbury group on their estate, largely while loving them/letting them gently caress each other. The literal definition of the intellectual CO who skipped the hardship and went straight to the fun bit of being a sexually liberated hedonist. If you aren't lucky enough to be a middle-class author, going on the run is difficult, but possible. Networks of sympathisers exist around the country which will hide you, or attempt to get you to a largely sympathetic port - Liverpool or the Clydeside - who will get you to the USA, or to Ireland. COs on the run are periodically picked up throughout the war, and it's unknown how many evaded conscription completely. A fair few were sheltered by the North London Herald League, a very active, very organised group of Socialist agitators operating in North London (surprise surprise), who put them to work writing agitprop and as trade union liaisons. Others managed to spend the entire war in the central offices of the No-Conscription Fellowship, churning out articles and propaganda, and somehow being missed by frequent raids on the property. Similar groups existed around the country, and the number of COs sheltered by these groups is unknown. My favourite story of COs doing a runner is a small group who just went on holiday to Dartmoor for six months, only being picked up when COs started to be sent to the prison there because they overheard the imprisoned COs talking and went over for a chat.  CO produced Christmas Card, 1917 Next up: Prison, Work Camps and Newspapers
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Jan 25, 2016 16:32
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SeanBeansShako posted:Somehow, King Georges the IV's skeleton got some weird undead erection the moment this was typed out on the internet. For all its faults, I loved Sharpe's representation of rockets. Also, I will be doing a presentation on the essay that got me into this thread in the first place, is there a better short clip to show than Alastrite? Wikipedia has informed me there exist two films set in the 30 Years War and I want something to explain huge pike blocks and muskets. I may just show a pile of pictures instead. Watching the scene again, French cavalry aren't even trying to aim, some are just shooting into the air. Hazzard fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 16:37
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Hazzard posted:For all its faults, I loved Sharpe's representation of rockets. Thank god for budget fireworks now.
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Jan 25, 2016 17:03
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Hey lenoon that's super interesting, and to me it seems quite progressive (or practical at least) that option A was even possible.
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Jan 25, 2016 17:35
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Koesj posted:Hey lenoon that's super interesting, and to me it seems quite progressive (or practical at least) that option A was even possible. It really was! As much as I give the military system a lot of poo poo (mainly due to what happened to anyone who took up B), the formation of the NCC was a good move. It freed up men for the front, and allowed somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 men to serve with the army without going against their conscientious principles. It's formation was largely due to progressive and liberal forces in parliament (mainly capital-L Liberals, Quakers and some of the anti-conscription Labour men) calling for some kind of officially sanctioned status for Conscientious Objectors. They couldn't get absolute exemption for them all (though they continued to try unabated), but it was a major compromise from the most likely alternative official position of "gently caress 'em". It's probably more practical and pragmatic than progressive - the NCC men received a lot of poo poo from the army, from parliament, and from the general public who all periodically complained about even the mere existence of the concession - but it was a good step on the road to the far more progressive system set up in the Second World War along similar lines.
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Jan 25, 2016 17:51
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Hazzard posted:Watching the scene again, French cavalry aren't even trying to aim, some are just shooting into the air.
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Jan 25, 2016 17:52
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lenoon posted:It really was! As much as I give the military system a lot of poo poo (mainly due to what happened to anyone who took up B), the formation of the NCC was a good move. It freed up men for the front, and allowed somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 men to serve with the army without going against their conscientious principles. It's formation was largely due to progressive and liberal forces in parliament (mainly capital-L Liberals, Quakers and some of the anti-conscription Labour men) calling for some kind of officially sanctioned status for Conscientious Objectors. They couldn't get absolute exemption for them all (though they continued to try unabated), but it was a major compromise from the most likely alternative official position of "gently caress 'em". When you get there, could tell also about the system they had in WWII?
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Jan 25, 2016 17:56
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Chalk me up as another poster intrigued by the whole Non-Combatant Corps concept. 
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Jan 25, 2016 18:32
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100 Years Ago The Grand Fleet is getting rather bored sitting in Scapa Flow waiting for something to happen; Admirals Jellicoe and Beatty relieve the boredom by squabbling over who should be allowed to play with the Navy's newest toys. Meanwhile, in France, Lieutenant Henri Desagneaux's training course finally begins; it seems that the first lesson is "How to annoy the men with bullshit", and he dutifully watches as a general berates some unfortunate blokes about bootlaces and buttons. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 18:33
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago Yeah, it doesn't really get interesting there until about 1939 
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Jan 25, 2016 19:13
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WW2 Data As we delve deeper into Imperial Japan's Explosives, we come across a particularly interesting section for the IJA. It would appear that they used several different air-to-air explosives. We also examine some concrete and substitute bombs. Speaking of which, what filling did the concrete bombs have? What did at least 1 type of substitute bomb have and what was its purpose? What is "Tanoyaku"? What interesting design feature allowed for more compact cluster munitions? Which bombs were allegedly used as air-to-air "missiles" and how did they operate? All that and more at the blog!
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Jan 25, 2016 19:21
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Empress Theonora posted:Chalk me up as another poster intrigued by the whole Non-Combatant Corps concept. I'm sure Byzantium in HoI would have space for a Conscientious Objector movement...... I like the NCC, and work is done, so I've got time to say a bit more about it. The important thing to remember is that they were, really, Soldiers. Non-Combatant soldiers, certainly, but still men who had agreed to sign up to the Army. Their non-combatant status was guaranteed only by a promise, and when it came to promises, the British Conscientious Objector of any stripe had heard many and seen them all broken. So, in a lot of ways, it was up to each individual man to define what he felt "Non-Combatant" meant, which, in practice, meant organised consensus within units leading to strikes, slowdowns and refusals to work. Their status as men apart from the army led to friction, but it also led to systematised discrimination. They were paid less, and denied the post-war salary increases. The last (that I know of off the top of my head) were demobilised in April 1920, and Winston Churchill repeatedly insisted in Parliament that they were "Soldiers first", so he could do with them as he pleased, but ignored the contradiction in treating them as COs first (poor pay, slow demob) and soldiers second. They were hated by popular opinion, and by the Army:  Propaganda postcard, probably 1917 but they were also disliked by the harder fringe of absolute pacifists because they looked like this:  NCC men doing washing, date unknown. Trapped in a limbo of not-a-soldier and not-a-"proper"-pacifist, they were largely ignored by the wider movement, and in many ways remain ignored today. My own organisation doesn't like to focus on them, something I've been (pacifistly) forcing through, that their stories were important, and in terms of understanding the individual morality of Conscientious Objectors, probably more important than looking at the better-known Absolutists who could make no compromise. They negotiated a minefield of moral, legal and military ambiguity, doing what was right for them, and succeeding in renegotiating the terms of their own non-combatant status on several occasions. They were massively influenced by the actions of other CO groups and protested on their behalf - something that the Absolutists wouldn't deign to reciprocate until late 1919. This negotiation often took the form of strikes, as described by Catherine Marshall in "The Tribunal", the newspaper of the No-Conscription Fellowship, printed 7th December 1916:   Apologies for the terrible artifacting. Marshall, you'll note, is far more concerned with Clifford Allen (chairman of the NCC, and her lover/partner) and the other "Absolutist" COs, going so far as to ascribe the strike to his presence at Newhaven. This is probably total bullshit. While Clifford was a charismatic presence, this description is far more a propaganda move on Marshall's part, positioning the Absolutists as the "true believers" in the movement, at a time when what it meant to be a CO was under rapid debate. On an individual level their stories are very poorly known, and the official records of the NCC, such as they are, are poor. Stitching together individual COs WO363 files (British army service records), you can see a precarious balance that is both self enforced and enforced by military justice. COs withhold their work as NCC men, leading to individual and collective punishment - but sometimes with the punishment of the Officers creating the problem. Others are disciplined for preaching religious or political "sedition" to the rank and file combatant soldiers, and this never stops throughout the war. The option to "Change your mind" was there as well - several thousand COs (between 3-4,000 officially spent the war with the NCC, perhaps 12,000 were sent to it at some point, with 7,000 of those going straight from there to prison) spent some weeks and months with the NCC before deciding that they could not, in actual fact, cope with the compromise demanded of them, and deliberately broke orders to an extent that prison was the only option. I find these men fascinating, showing that objection was not always an automatic reaction, but something that not only varied, but varied over months of internal and external debate before they took their choice. Life with the NCC was not easy, but COs making the choice to abandon it would surely have known about the brutal conditions of the prisons, especially once COs began to be released from their first sentences in September 1916. One of the best books on Conscientious Objection and the NCC isn't a history but an autobiography, George Baker's "Soul of a Skunk". Baker was a socialist CO, and wrote pretty much immediately after the war in an accessible and pretty drat funny style, so that he could explain to his son what he had done during the war. He was one of the men who took up NCC work initially (after what he describes as an "adolescent-romantic attempt at ending my own life", he's such a self disparaging guy, because it is good evidence of the sheer trauma breaking the status quo was for some men), but after around six months rejected it, choosing an indeterminate time in prison, one that drove him nearly to insanity. He found the NCC difficult to adjust to - wearing uniform and despising his "cowardice for not choosing prison", finding the religious men ("those inflicted with humpty-dumptyianism") who were happy with the NCC tiresome and more irritating than the Officers who shower them with insults. His realisation comes from working with a POW and a "Rabelaisian Dockworker", who finally makes up his mind for him; "George lad, if you 'ate the f_______n khaki, why'd you f______n wear it then?". With that, he talks to another CO in a similar situation, and challenges a friendly NCO to give them any order - he's told to pick up some scrap paper and put it in a bin. He refuses, and he's off to prison until 1919. Fake edit: If anyone can find an electronic copy of Soul of a Skunk, i'd love to see it. Real edit: Hogge Wild posted:When you get there, could tell also about the system they had in WWII? Yes, of course! I don't know it as well, though. lenoon fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 19:26
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Surely you can make a strong cause for the NCC having their story brought out to the spotlight. Given the modern popular view of the Great War as a giant pointless meatgrinder fought to hold a few hundred muddy yards in France, I think the stories of the NCC are definitely a lot more relatable. The Absolutists kind of come off as these moral supermen that people aspire to be while those who found themselves in the NCC at one point or another sound like the reality of being an average nonviolent bloke.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:49
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HEY GAL posted:they might have been recruited from reenactors--the people with firearms don't level their weapons because even blanks are dangerous According to a Spanish speaking forum I ran through Google Translator (Only the highest quality of sources for me) they were using Spanish soldiers for most of the extras.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:20
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Hazzard posted:According to a Spanish speaking forum I ran through Google Translator (Only the highest quality of sources for me) they were using Spanish soldiers for most of the extras. if i die due to this fuckass hobby, it will probably be because some german has shot me while "showing me his pistol"
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Jan 25, 2016 20:25
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HEY GAL posted:they're probably (hopefully) good about not muzzle-sweeping people then, unlike some people Well that's as authentic death as you could ask for.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:28
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Well that's as authentic death as you could ask for. Only if she jumps out a window too.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:29
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