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BurningStone posted:I don't think Hey Gal's guys shove each other, or any of the pre gunpowder armies we know about. It might happen, but it was never the goal. Based on my experience with quarter staff, where we're using 8-9ft long staves, I think that if two pike formations met, one of two things happened. 1) Hilsborough happens and the formation blinded pushes forward, because they men at the back don't know what's happening at the front so they keep pushing. Basically what appears in "Bad War" (Edit: Hilsborough was a disaster at a football match where large groups of fans were crushed up against a fence and a few people died.) 2) The men stop just at the edge of pike range and try to thrust each other without getting closer. I'm guessing this is more common, since the more open formations Hey Gal described make a crush seem less likely. The Swiss could then have been the best at pikes by being able to keep their pikes longer than everyone else's and making a push together into the enemy and causing men to break formation through a lack of experience. But as time goes on, the push of pikes gets less and less common, with muskets and artillery becoming more common, so closing to pike range becomes more difficult. But maybe I'm talking out of my arse.
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Feb 27, 2016 10:25
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lol no, there's anywhere between three feet to three paces between one pikeman and another side-to-side and front-to-back and there's a bunch of dudes whose job it is to run around telling everyone what to do. these were not undisciplined blobs, nobody's "pushing into" anyone, you are trying to stab the other dude with your spear and stay out of the way of the musketeers. your 1) stands a very low likelihood of happening and your 2) is contradicted by battlefield accounts, i have no idea why anyone thinks pikemen didn't legit try to kill one another. this was in all the secondary sources i remember pointing you towards
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Feb 27, 2016 10:50
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Hazzard posted:Based on my experience with quarter staff, where we're using 8-9ft long staves, I think that if two pike formations met, one of two things happened. 96 killed and 766 injured is more than 'a few'...
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Feb 27, 2016 11:42
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feedmegin posted:96 killed and 766 injured is more than 'a few'... english football hooligans against the spartan 300 id bet on the spartan 300 in the long run, but if the spartans had any cars, theyd be right hosed e: that one guy: we will fight them in the shade *hooligan throws molotov* goatsestretchgoals fucked around with this message at 12:27 on Feb 27, 2016 |
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Feb 27, 2016 12:24
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'ear that gaz? That fuckin Greek poof just called you a molon
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Feb 27, 2016 12:54
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100 Years Ago Douaumont village is still holding out, and now we're considering why. (Hint: it involves artillery.) There's also a consideration of exactly what "defence in depth" means to Petain at the moment. Elsewhere: General Haig is forced to commit to relieving the French 10th Army in Artois; General Cadorna has had his interfering minister of war unceremoniously sacked; Mr Sykes Goes to Petrograd to ensure that the Russians are happy with the Sykes-Picot agreement; Grigoris Balakian makes friends with his Jandarma escort with the judicious application of money; Herbert Sulzbach gets the news from Verdun (and a promotion); Robert Pelissier is packed in like a sardine on the Hartmannswillerkopf; and some German rotter attacks E.S. Thompson's water supply, which threatens to dislocate the entire East African offensive. quote:Pikefighting Here's what I don't get, as a graduate of the Public Bar School of It Stands To Reason. If you gave me a sharp pointy thing on the end of a really long stick and then told me "now go get in a fight with those people" (and I couldn't run away first), my thought would be "hey, at least I'll have a really long stick so I can poke the sharp bit around from a safe distance", and my second is "I do not want to get any closer to the other lot's sharp bits than I absolutely have to". The idea that I/we might not do that and instead attempt to get into a mass pushing contest seems like ordering a rifle team to fix bayonets, at which point they all hold the rifle at the muzzle end and start swinging them as clubs. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Feb 27, 2016 |
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Feb 27, 2016 13:10
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At what point does a spear become a pike? I have a vague idea that a spear is for poking but you could also throw it while a pike is poke-only. e: lawl quote:At what point hogmartin fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Feb 27, 2016 |
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Feb 27, 2016 13:34
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hogmartin posted:At what point does a spear become a pike? I have a vague idea that a spear is for poking but you could also throw it while a pike is poke-only. I assume that a spear can be used one handed, whereas a pike is just too long for that sort of nonsense. But I don't know what I'm talking about so I could be wrong!
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Feb 27, 2016 13:42
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Trin Tragula posted:...ordering a rifle team to fix bayonets, at which point they all hold the rifle at the muzzle end and start swinging them as clubs. I remember hearing somewhere that this was a not uncommon thing for ACW soldiers to do.
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Feb 27, 2016 13:46
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I've started volunteer work at the military musuem again now, if any of you find yourselves in Bristol or below in the UK, feel free to do some train riding or driving down to see it. It is a lovely place, sort of a musuem in a musuem in a musuem as it covers multiple things to do with the infantry regiments associated with it. Plus, opposite is a old fashioned operating railway line! I took some pictures of a much older layout for the thread a few years back when I last volunteered, I can try and dig them up again if anyone wants. A must visit if you love light infantry, volunteers and weaponry now. The old website is here I'll be uploading media to the new one shortly.
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Feb 27, 2016 15:17
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P-Mack posted:I remember hearing somewhere that this was a not uncommon thing for ACW soldiers to do. Their muskets were basically heavy, hardwood foundations with the shooty poo poo bolted in. If it can handle being shot a bunch without shattering, it's probably good for caving in some toothless traitor's dome too.
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Feb 27, 2016 16:46
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HEY GAL posted:this was in all the secondary sources i remember pointing you towards I don't remember the books I read covering the push of pikes in much detail. I'll look through Robert Munroe's diaries when I get the chance. As for 1), I doubt that was ever a goal, hence "Bad War"'s title. I took away that nobody ever wanted it and was a freak occurrence. 2) Was what is what I gathered as the norm(Not sure where) , since nobody is going to willingly advance into enemy pikes unless they had longer ones.
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Feb 27, 2016 17:53
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Trin Tragula posted:Here's what I don't get, as a graduate of the Public Bar School of It Stands To Reason. If you gave me a sharp pointy thing on the end of a really long stick and then told me "now go get in a fight with those people" (and I couldn't run away first), my thought would be "hey, at least I'll have a really long stick so I can poke the sharp bit around from a safe distance", and my second is "I do not want to get any closer to the other lot's sharp bits than I absolutely have to". The idea that I/we might not do that and instead attempt to get into a mass pushing contest seems like ordering a rifle team to fix bayonets, at which point they all hold the rifle at the muzzle end and start swinging them as clubs.
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Feb 27, 2016 19:13
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Splode posted:I assume that a spear can be used one handed, whereas a pike is just too long for that sort of nonsense.
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Feb 27, 2016 19:14
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Hazzard posted:I don't remember the books I read covering the push of pikes in much detail. I'll look through Robert Munroe's diaries when I get the chance. quote:As for 1), I doubt that was ever a goal, hence "Bad War"'s title. I took away that nobody ever wanted it and was a freak occurrence. quote:2) Was what is what I gathered as the norm(Not sure where) , since nobody is going to willingly advance into enemy pikes unless they had longer ones.
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Feb 27, 2016 19:17
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HEY GAL posted:I believe the spear/pike distinction is whether you can hold it with one hand, but on the other hand once the Germans have pikes they start referring to all other pike-like-objects in pike-centric terms, so you have the halfpike (9 feet long) and the sturmpike (about a person's height) Death to the pikeriarchy.
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Feb 27, 2016 19:21
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HEY GAL posted:I believe the spear/pike distinction is whether you can hold it with one hand, but on the other hand once the Germans have pikes they start referring to all other pike-like-objects in pike-centric terms, so you have the halfpike (9 feet long) and the sturmpike (about a person's height) I would think you'd be on board with that. "No, that's the dinner pike. You're supposed to eat the salad with the salad pike, it's the smaller one." 
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Feb 27, 2016 19:45
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Hands up anyone else who is imagining a bunch of landsknechts trying to eat with pikes like chopsticks
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Feb 27, 2016 20:22
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xthetenth posted:Why do you have Longstreet as being definitely the most competent? I don't know enough to have an opinion, but I'd be interested to hear more. A combination of his tactical successes: I don't think any corps or army commander on either side was as successful (arguably Cleburne, but in much smaller roles), plus I think that he was the only senior officer on either side who had a something close to a modern view of industrialized warfare. That is to say, he understood better than anyone in his era (and better than practically everyone in every army in 1914 for that matter) how firepower had changed things, and how best to leverage that firepower to counter more traditional thinkers. That isn't to say he didn't have his share of elan-style charges, but he was far less interested in such things than practically everyone else. Also, regarding the CSA's future as a nation, industrialization, and general incompetency: It is pretty dismissive to say that the CSA economy, et al would have quickly collapsed after the war. While they weren't nearly industrial power that the north was....almost no one on earth was, either, save Britain and France. The CSA was backwards in comparison to the US, but was comparable in both size and industrialization potential as any number of minor European powers, plus they had simply massive room for growth both within their borders and without. Southerners were practically drooling at the possibilities of a pan-American slave empire decades before the ACW, and had the south been free to unleash its rather bellicose and self-righteous character on the Caribbean and Central/South America, they might well have succeeded in creating something of an empire (at least in the first two, SA is maybe a bit of a stretch). That, coupled with the fact that one of the world's best early oil fields was right in their wheelhouse ...I think they would have done just fine. Provided, of course, that they didn't have further examples of secession and thus split into little fiefdoms over issues like rail gauges and tariffs, which would have been a distinct possibility. As for the general competence of their government, I made a post to this end a few months ago, but the CSA hardly had a monopoly on idiocy during the ACW, and I'm inclined to think that the US government was generally far less competent in practically every measure throughout the era. Every example of ridiculousness and or stupidity that gets brought up about the CSA, there's usually at least one, and often several examples of even worse behavior from the north. The only meaningful difference between the two was that the north had a great deal more room for error.
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Feb 27, 2016 21:31
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I just saw the Imperial Russian attempt at a hand grenade for the First World for the time ever. Wow...that sure is a thing.
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Feb 27, 2016 22:27
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Trin Tragula posted:Hands up anyone else who is imagining a bunch of landsknechts trying to eat with pikes like chopsticks Well I wasn't
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Feb 28, 2016 01:12
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Trin Tragula posted:Hands up anyone else who is imagining a bunch of landsknechts trying to eat with pikes like chopsticks I have a hard time imagining them even bothering with plates.
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Feb 28, 2016 01:19
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P-Mack posted:I remember hearing somewhere that this was a not uncommon thing for ACW soldiers to do. Most famously (and possibly just a legend) done ~25 years earlier at the Alamo. Edit: which was this week in history, 23 Feb - 6 March 1836. Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Feb 28, 2016 |
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Feb 28, 2016 01:19
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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FAUXTON posted:Their muskets were basically heavy, hardwood foundations with the shooty poo poo bolted in. If it can handle being shot a bunch without shattering, it's probably good for caving in some toothless traitor's dome too. Not really. Using guns as clubs is a great way to break them. The stocks are designed to withstand front to back stresses. Hitting me from the side is a great way to snap the stock at the wrist. This is really common damage to see on guns that have just been transported improperly much less used as a club. If you want to kill someone with a gun without shooting and don't have a bayo you smash their skull with the butt. Note that when you butt stroke someone the stock is supported at both ends which makes breaking the stock less likely.
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Feb 28, 2016 01:24
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Cyrano4747 posted:Note that when you butt stroke someone the stock is supported at both ends which makes breaking the stock less likely. And is being stressed in the proper fore-and-aft direction, if you're doing it right. Ideally, of course, you stab the guy with the bayonet and then smash his face in with the other end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1gYUSgcfZ4 See the bit right at the end (2:43). "Left jab, right cross." Edit: it's terrifying up close -- the first time I showed my SMLE to my pappy with bayonet fixed, he did that move, then complained about how you can't properly buttstroke a guy with an M16 because the plastic stock will break and/or bend the buffer tube. (He had an M14 in Basic, and preferred it over the special snowflake sawed-off M16 he mostly used in-country.) Edit: also, if it comes to fixing bayonets, even in the musket days, things have gone incredibly poorly. Bayonets are still issued, but it's more an excuse to give every soldier a utility knife, nowadays. Well, I guess they were useful for poking at enemy horses up until Victoria's reign, but since cavalry stopped using horses ... Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Feb 28, 2016 |
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Feb 28, 2016 01:30
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Ask Us About Military History: Stroke the butt fore to aft An actual post, though: Delivery McGee posted:
I'm curious about that; apart from stabbing horses, when would infantry tend to use bayonets against other infantry over shooting at them (mostly I'm curious about the musket days)?
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Feb 28, 2016 03:40
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Ainsley McTree posted:Ask Us About Military History: Stroke the butt fore to aft Two I can think of: 1) when you run out of ammunition, a bayonet charge is about all you have left; 2) if you can charge your enemy while they're reloading or demoralized you can break their lines. Rather than shooting into a bunch of pointy things coming at them, the defenders may decide to run for it.
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Feb 28, 2016 03:46
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Are you patriotic enough to die horribly from internal infection now? (The answer a majority of the time will surprise you)
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Feb 28, 2016 04:41
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Cyrano4747 posted:Not really. Using guns as clubs is a great way to break them.
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Feb 28, 2016 04:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:Not really. Using guns as clubs is a great way to break them. The stocks are designed to withstand front to back stresses. Hitting me from the side is a great way to snap the stock at the wrist. This is really common damage to see on guns that have just been transported improperly much less used as a club. If Hero of the Soviet Union award orders taught me anything it's that breaking your gun over a fascist's head is a great way to get a new gun.
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Feb 28, 2016 05:26
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Can anybody recommend to me some good books about the American Revolutionary War?
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Feb 28, 2016 05:43
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Took a visit to the Bay Area Renaissance Festival this year, and of course the landsknechts were back. I stopped by their camp when they were demonstrating defense against daggers and got some nice pictures. I've also got some video I can upload later. I also got video of a 2.5 pound cannon being fired! I had to balance the DSLR on my knee while plugging my ears to do it, but it worked.          
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Feb 28, 2016 05:47
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Ainsley McTree posted:Ask Us About Military History: Stroke the butt fore to aft I thought that "two volleys and then the bayonet charge" was pretty standard for the musket era?
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Feb 28, 2016 06:04
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chitoryu12 posted:I also got video of a 2.5 pound cannon being fired! I had to balance the DSLR on my knee while plugging my ears to do it, but it worked. Video or it didn't happen. I've been near six-pounders and I ain't deaf. (the ACW-reenacment arty set off all the car alarms tho)
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Feb 28, 2016 07:03
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Why is he carring around a bunch of sticks?
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Feb 28, 2016 08:06
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Tias posted:Why is he carring around a bunch of sticks? I think you'll find those are hemidecapikes with practice tips.
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Feb 28, 2016 08:28
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Mycroft Holmes posted:Can anybody recommend to me some good books about the American Revolutionary War? I haven't found a good general history. However, there's an excellent college course from Yale on YouTube.
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Feb 28, 2016 09:02
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Zorak of Michigan posted:hemidecapikes
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Feb 28, 2016 09:36
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pike is the measure of all things
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Feb 28, 2016 09:41
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Mycroft Holmes posted:Can anybody recommend to me some good books about the American Revolutionary War? David McCullough's 1776 doesn't cover the whole war, just the first year. It's definitely worth reading though.
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Feb 28, 2016 09:44
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