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So basically everything devolves into a multiplayer match or
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Apr 12, 2016 15:27
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JcDent posted:So basically everything devolves into a multiplayer match or I have yet to read about a gun powder era tea bagging. But give it time. Drunk soldiers.
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Apr 12, 2016 15:28
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JcDent posted:So basically everything devolves into a multiplayer match or you've got a sword, you've got one of those sick little shields now's your time, man
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Apr 12, 2016 15:36
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There was actually a lot of fighting outside the big blocks of men. This was most of the reason dragoons were a thing.
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Apr 12, 2016 15:37
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Panzeh posted:There was actually a lot of fighting outside the big blocks of men. This was most of the reason dragoons were a thing. And Light Infantry. And the various Rifle armed regiments of the Coalition nations.
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Apr 12, 2016 15:39
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The big blocks of dudes had at minimum 10% of their manpower fighting in skirmish order at any given time, and they fought their little private war with the other side's skirmishers. Hazzard posted:Supposedly this happened a lot in the Peninsula Wars with the British Rifles meeting Chasseurs and Tiralliers constantly, but I don't remember anything detailed about what happened exactly. This happened a lot in all wars from say, 1700 until 1870 or thereabouts. The French loving loved skirmish order and raised entire battalions of Voltigeurs. By Chasseurs I assume you mean Chasseurs a Pied, who were Light infantry but not primarily used as skirmishers. Tirailleur just literally means skirmisher - before the Imperial Guard was established it was applied to all troops being used as skirmishers. After that, there were dedicated Young Guard regiments of Tirailleurs who were used in skirmish order. Skirmisher encounters were rarely decisive. All skirmishers were trained extensively in battalion and company line tactics, including the bayonet, as well as their skirmishing tactics. You're not going to give up the mass of either 10% of your line battalions or an entire battalion when push comes to shove in the line. The standard was for skirmishers to form on their battalions or for the battalion of skirmishers to form on the left of the formation once the mass of the division, brigade, demi-brigade etc caught up to the skirmisher's positions.
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Apr 12, 2016 17:13
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Huh; so most big battles had a lot of dudes running around in loose order to gently caress up with the other side's dudes running around in loose order, then?
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Apr 12, 2016 18:07
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More or less. For some reason I was thinking specifically about scouts getting into hand to hand. No idea why I went so specific there.
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Apr 12, 2016 18:18
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spectralent posted:Huh; so most big battles had a lot of dudes running around in loose order to gently caress up with the other side's dudes running around in loose order, then? Yep. Bigger battles had several such layers...light cavalry at the edges, heavy cavalry and independent skirmishers around the main body, then skirmishers detached from line units. The skirmisher battles at Gettysburg in particular were pretty incredible, they had a lot of terrain to work with and they were largely detached from their main bodies. Here's Berdan's report, it is kinda cool and maybe gives you an idea how these guys were employed.
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Apr 12, 2016 18:26
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And in an era too where the only means of long range communication was either a dude on a horse carrying a simple written message or flags.
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Apr 12, 2016 18:50
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Tevery Best posted:The problem is the Anders Army is famous across the globe for one chief reason: Oh gently caress.
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Apr 12, 2016 18:57
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Skirmishers go back even further, too. Romans had their velites, Greeks had their peltasts. If the enemy is using a big block of dudes there's usually going to be at least some value in sending light troops to harass and annoy them without the block being able to do much about it unless they stopped being a block. From what I understand skirmishers are rarely decisive in combat, though, they're more about softening up the larger formations and weakening morale so that their own formations have an edge when push comes to shove. Also arguably skirmishers go back even further than that, since they predate ordered warfare. 
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Apr 12, 2016 19:31
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Tomn posted:Skirmishers go back even further, too. Romans had their velites, Greeks had their peltasts. If the enemy is using a big block of dudes there's usually going to be at least some value in sending light troops to harass and annoy them without the block being able to do much about it unless they stopped being a block. From what I understand skirmishers are rarely decisive in combat, though, they're more about softening up the larger formations and weakening morale so that their own formations have an edge when push comes to shove. They're also remarkably effective at keeping the other guy's skirmishers away from your block of dudes. They're one of those things that isn't decisive but which requires everyone to have them once they come on the scene.
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Apr 12, 2016 19:58
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spectralent posted:Huh; so most big battles had a lot of dudes running around in loose order to gently caress up with the other side's dudes running around in loose order, then?
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Apr 12, 2016 20:08
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There's also a lot of small fights between the battles as armies sprawl out to feed and provision themselves.
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Apr 12, 2016 20:18
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Panzeh posted:There's also a lot of small fights between the battles as armies sprawl out to feed and provision themselves.
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Apr 12, 2016 20:23
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So, for the part 2 then; what's a skirmisher vs skirmisher fight look like, if you zoomed in on that bit of the fight? I'm picturing a lot of ranged weapons, but were there dudes there stabbing each other too? Is skirmishing also a big scrum where the losers get mowed down, or are the metrics different? Are skirmishers your elite or are they just some random dudes?
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Apr 12, 2016 20:25
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Tomn posted:Skirmishers go back even further, too. Romans had their velites, Greeks had their peltasts. If the enemy is using a big block of dudes there's usually going to be at least some value in sending light troops to harass and annoy them without the block being able to do much about it unless they stopped being a block. From what I understand skirmishers are rarely decisive in combat, though, they're more about softening up the larger formations and weakening morale so that their own formations have an edge when push comes to shove. Wasn't there some battle in the Peloponnesian war where the Athens fought some Spartans where the Spartans just had hoplites and annihilated them with skirmishers?
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Apr 12, 2016 20:33
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spectralent posted:So, for the part 2 then; what's a skirmisher vs skirmisher fight look like, if you zoomed in on that bit of the fight? I'm picturing a lot of ranged weapons, but were there dudes there stabbing each other too? Is skirmishing also a big scrum where the losers get mowed down, or are the metrics different? Are skirmishers your elite or are they just some random dudes? You'd be shot more in a skirmishing fight or you just pull back, unless you are ambushed out the blue chances are pretty slim you'd engage in melee. Bayonet wounds as a whole were quite rare in the Napoleonic Wars, muskets and sabers from mounted troops did the main butchery in a heated race with the roundshot of the artillery. Bayonet charges at the best moment during battle usually persuaded the enemy to quit the field most of the time.
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Apr 12, 2016 20:40
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spectralent posted:Are skirmishers your elite or are they just some random dudes? Depends heavily on the time period, local culture, and how exactly the specific military unit is organized. Greek skirmishers were generally the poor or the young, since everybody had to buy their own equipment and real manly men who could afford it would get proper (expensive) armor and become the more honorable hoplites or even cavalry, while Napoelonic-era skirmishers were selected from those with more intelligence and initiative because you can't trust normal dumb line grunts to know what to do when he's not marching in formation with everyone else (or so the thinking went.)
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Apr 12, 2016 20:43
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SeanBeansShako posted:Bayonet wounds as a whole were quite rare in the Napoleonic Wars, muskets and sabers from mounted troops did the main butchery in a heated race with the roundshot of the artillery. Bayonet charges at the best moment during battle usually persuaded the enemy to quit the field most of the time. I remember reading that most Napoleonic soldiers never experienced a bayonet charge in which the two sides actually clashed front to front. It may have been one of the asides in War and Peace, though, so I don't know how reliable that is.
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Apr 12, 2016 20:55
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Lord Tywin posted:Wasn't there some battle in the Peloponnesian war where the Athens fought some Spartans where the Spartans just had hoplites and annihilated them with skirmishers? Yes, this happens a couple of times. You have Lechaeum where some soldiers fighting in the Spartan army were retiring past Corinth without their skirmishers because they were required to observe a festival and then getting picked to pieces while the enemy ran back and forth pelting them. There is also Pylos, but I don't really know if that one counts because the Spartans were screwed for other reasons there. Fighting without cavalry is the bigger issue and that's what creates a lot of the real massacres in ancient wars because it really lets you run down a routing force. Whether or not the cavalry count as skirmishers is beyond me though. I don't really think you can give a good description of a skirmisher vs. skirmisher fight without factoring in the terrain (although I guess that's true of every battle) because if you're fighting in dense brush or a city that will look different than an open clearing. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Apr 12, 2016 |
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Apr 12, 2016 21:02
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spectralent posted:So, for the part 2 then; what's a skirmisher vs skirmisher fight look like, if you zoomed in on that bit of the fight? I'm picturing a lot of ranged weapons, but were there dudes there stabbing each other too? Is skirmishing also a big scrum where the losers get mowed down, or are the metrics different? Are skirmishers your elite or are they just some random dudes? This video will answer most of your skimishing/light infantry questions reguarding the gun powder era at least.
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Apr 12, 2016 21:03
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I've heard a guess that the Greek Heroes (Achilles and the like from the Trojan War) were probably skirmishers, but it was Hoplites that pushed the wealthiest landowners out of skirmishing and into infantry and cavalry. That's the only counter example I can think of in a pre-modern era of Skirmishers being an elite force. By the nature of Skirmishers being very cheap soldiers, it almost excludes the nobility. Maybe you could count the Persian Immortals/Companions, since they were armed with a bow, spear and shield. And I want to say that sometimes Roman Legionaries were used as skirmishers, but I can't think of a source for this. I can't actually think of any films off the top of my head that really show how skirmishers work.
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Apr 12, 2016 22:20
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HomoNeanderthal11C posted:"Private Louis Barthas continues his quest to regain the corporal's stripes that he doesn't want to wear." https://youtu.be/POH14-HMGFc
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Apr 13, 2016 02:06
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SeanBeansShako posted:This video will answer most of your skimishing/light infantry questions reguarding the gun powder era at least. Classic Firearms is a good channel
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Apr 13, 2016 02:08
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SeanBeansShako posted:This video will answer most of your skimishing/light infantry questions reguarding the gun powder era at least. Thanks, good video. Follow up question, how effectively can a skirmish line protect the flanks of a big block of dudes against the big line of dudes, or did both sides of that conflict have the same issue with not having well enough trained dudes to pull off the big line tactic.
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Apr 13, 2016 02:27
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Lord Tywin posted:Wasn't there some battle in the Peloponnesian war where the Athens fought some Spartans where the Spartans just had hoplites and annihilated them with skirmishers? In Xenophon, he mentions that the enemy skirmishers are playing all sorts of merry hell with the column of hoplites, so they grab everyone from Crete and Rhodes and give them bows & slings so they can keep the skirmishers at bay. They weren't fighting Persian soldiers, though, just locals who didn't want the Greeks marching through their land stealing their stuff.
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Apr 13, 2016 03:21
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So something popped up in a cracked list I browsed while I was having my coffee, which is something I sometimes do before my brain starts for the day. I want to pose a question to the thread: Is there an identifiable origin for the myth of weapons intended and designed specifically to wound rather than to kill? This list named fragmentation grenades, of all things, as a wounding-type weapon. They had the usual explanation: "This ability to wound the enemy creates a strategic advantage: Suddenly having to take care of a wounded soldier or two burdens the uninjured a whole lot more than blowing said soldiers to smithereens would." I'm mostly familiar with this story in the context of small caliber assault rifles. My guess was that it originated during a 5.56 NATO vs. 7.62 NATO argument, from somebody who didn't understand the actual reasons the smaller caliber was preferred and chose to invent one. But seeing it applied to another class of weapon made me wonder if there was a more complicated story.
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Apr 13, 2016 13:46
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Hey neat, the Combined Arms Research Library has a collection of digitized obsolete manuals. I can't find a publication date filter in the browse view but there's stuff in there from at least the 1884-1997 range. All the publications seem to be US military but right around 1917 there are quite a few 'lessons learned' documents about weapons and tactics from British experiences e.g. the Army War College's Machine gun notes, no. 2: from British sources: Lots of basic training booklets too, like Private Pete learns to be a good soldier! from 1944:  The "Extracts from the Articles of War" listed in the 1913 Soldier's Handbook are nearly identical to the modern UCMJ which didn't take effect until 1951.
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Apr 13, 2016 13:59
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EvanSchenck posted:So something popped up in a cracked list I browsed while I was having my coffee, which is something I sometimes do before my brain starts for the day. I want to pose a question to the thread: Is there an identifiable origin for the myth of weapons intended and designed specifically to wound rather than to kill? Cracked is trash, that story is horseshit.
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Apr 13, 2016 14:23
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EvanSchenck posted:So something popped up in a cracked list I browsed while I was having my coffee, which is something I sometimes do before my brain starts for the day. I want to pose a question to the thread: Is there an identifiable origin for the myth of weapons intended and designed specifically to wound rather than to kill? Don't even ask me to cite this but I remember discussion about this on some forum probably 15 years ago convinced me at least that the M1892 revolver was sort of the first example of a perceived underpowered weapon being described as "intended to wound". It sort of makes sense in the context, it was one of the early examples of a smallerized caliber and it is pretty easy to imagine some NCO imparting this bit of wisdom to his squad and then the whole thing takes off from there.
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Apr 13, 2016 14:32
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EvanSchenck posted:Cracked Frags Fragmentation grenades have the advantage of having a larger area of effect than HE grenades, but are typically heavier and thus likely cannot be thrown as far. Since the fragments are unpredictable in terms of how big they may be and how far they will go, they have a much greater area in which they can wound or kill people. Anyone near a frag grenade when it goes off is going to die or be crippled. A HE grenade is still going to gently caress people up that are close enough to it, but the lethal range is smaller. Also not all wounded require two guys to carry off and in most situations those guys would be back soon anyways, or they would wait until the fight is over to extract the wounded.
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Apr 13, 2016 14:34
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100 Years Ago (Plus A Favourable Interest Rate) It's the 8th of April still. The South African Horse is now slogging on as fast as it can go towards Kondoa Irangi, but surprise! von Lettow-Vorbeck and Major Kraut (who are two different people) have some plans of their own. General Townshend is cutting his rations again at Kut; Rawlinson attempts to argue with the Chief over the Somme, but if Haig really wants to be stupid and over-ambitious then it's his prerogative as Chief; General Joffre continues talking up the exploits of one Robert Nivelle; if Grigoris Balakian is ever going to escape he is going to need to think of something very quickly; Maximilian Mugge is munificently prepared to admit that he is among human beings in the 3rd Royal Sussex; and Malcolm White becomes our latest correspondent to go up the line for the first time. It's still jolly good larks for him. It's also maps galore, with not just one, but two attempts to mangle geography beyond recognition in the name of representation.
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Apr 13, 2016 14:35
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EvanSchenck posted:So something popped up in a cracked list I browsed while I was having my coffee, which is something I sometimes do before my brain starts for the day. I want to pose a question to the thread: Is there an identifiable origin for the myth of weapons intended and designed specifically to wound rather than to kill? The talk about wounding weapons comes out of the observation that in general, as many or more of military casualties are wounded, and not actually killed. Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Military_casualties_by_branch_of_service for example. (Note the giant exception for Japan...) Look also at WWI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties And the point that dealing with wounded causes a logistical burden is well put, as is the point that certain weapons are more likely to wound than to kill. So there's a grain of truth there. Where this idea gets silly is when people go on to say there's a deliberate strategy to not kill your opponent (outside of specific contexts where you are trying to take hostages, of course). The difference between killing an opponent immediately, killing them after a few minutes, incapacitating them but not killing them, and leaving the enemy standing and still shooting at you is way too slight for planners to focus on. That article fundamentally doesn't make sense, anyway. If you are fighting with grenades and you intend to win the battle, any enemy wounded you have lying around, assuming you care about the Geneva Conventions and aren't scumbags, are POWs *you* have to deal with. There's no strategic advantage there. Fangz fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 14:40
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bewbies posted:Don't even ask me to cite this but I remember discussion about this on some forum probably 15 years ago convinced me at least that the M1892 revolver was sort of the first example of a perceived underpowered weapon being described as "intended to wound". It sort of makes sense in the context, it was one of the early examples of a smallerized caliber and it is pretty easy to imagine some NCO imparting this bit of wisdom to his squad and then the whole thing takes off from there. It's really easy to see how the two concepts of 'it's really important that you wait till the end of a contact to tend to the wounded because if two guys drop their rifles to carry a third off the battlefield then the unit just lost 3 guys and will lose the fire-fight' and 'oh wow our rifles are really overpowered for what they actually need to do, which is inflict enough damage to incapacitate an enemy at several hundred yards' would conflate in people's minds to become 'weapons designed to wound in order to turn enemy soldiers into medical orderlies'. It's one of those post-ww2 rules of thumb we learned; if you are hit in a fire-fight then you are likely to either be dead by the time you reach a hospital or you won't. So while a soldier's instinct is to stop and help his mate who's been hit, their effort is best spent either winning the fight or breaking contact.
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Apr 13, 2016 14:42
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Also, if you've got a weapon designed to wound that doesn't catch the target right, then they aren't incapacitated, while a weapon designed to kill will likely give more leeway because it really comes down to depositing energy into people and how much energy you need depends on where you hit them. It's easy to think that weapons that are smaller and deposit less energy aren't designed to kill, but the odds of a single hit killing is only part of the picture. Generally making the odds of a single hit killing or incapacitating the target lower is done to improve the number or quality of hits that the individual or unit puts out.
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Apr 13, 2016 15:05
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The human body is both rather easy to kill and rather hard to kill. The difference between life and death can be a matter of millimeters, and larger rifle rounds aren't necessarily more lethal in all circumstances. People don't have hitpoints after all. The biggest drive for smaller rounds is recoil reduction and increasing the amount of ammo carried for a given load.
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Apr 13, 2016 15:25
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Taerkar posted:The human body is both rather easy to kill and rather hard to kill. The difference between life and death can be a matter of millimeters, and larger rifle rounds aren't necessarily more lethal in all circumstances. People don't have hitpoints after all. This needs to be emphasized. People don't just drop when they're hit a few times. Page through Medal of Honor citations and you will find all sorts of crazy examples of people taking dozens of rifle-caliber wounds and staying in the fight.* An enemy who is just wounded doesn't automatically tap out and go home. More anecdotally there was a guy in TFR a while back who was friends (or something? I remember reading the attached news article) with a guy who took a dozen .40 caliber pistol rounds during a domestic dispute he tried to intervene in and still had his poo poo together enough to carry out a toddler to the cops waiting outside. It's not that uncommon for people to take mortal wounds and keep fighting until they expire. On the other side small wounds can easily be fatal. The vast majority of firearms deaths in the US are from small, concealable pistols and among that group the round with the dubious honor of killing the most Americans per year is the widely-derided .25 ACP (a round with even less oomph to it than .22 LR). Get hit in the right place by pretty much anything and you're dead. Then you have the opposite of the guy who won't stop despite being dead on his feet. Some people drop like a rock despite only having relatively small, superficial wounds, probably just due to the shock of being injured. When it comes to how individuals are incapacitated (or not) by wounds it's just as much psychological as physiological. If you want to use a weapon to reliably neutralize a person as a threat the only way to do it is massively disrupt their central nervous system or put enough holes in major blood vessels that they bleed out quickly. Anything past that is getting into vagaries of how the individual reacts to trauma. Purposefully designing a military weapon to wound is idiotic because all you are doing is reducing your ability to neutralize the enemy. * Not all of them are posthumous either! Check out Roy Benavidez. He jumped out of a motherfucking helicopter with only a loving knife to go save a bunch of dudes who were under heavy fire and got the poo poo shot out of him in the process. He had a total of 37 gun, shrapnel, and bayonet wounds and was declared dead when they got him to a medical facility. He spat in the face of the guy who was zipping him into a body bag to indicate that he was still kicking. 
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Apr 13, 2016 16:37
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People have a bit of a tendency to overlook the whole point of lethality....the point of land warfare is to impose your will on your opponent, and the relative lethality of weapons is only a means to that end. It isn't often that the effects of weapons in and of themselves are all that relevant, rather, what matters is how well they support the goals/objectives of the campaign. It is a really fundamental difference from how, say, gun owners view their concealed carry weapons.
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Apr 13, 2016 17:00
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