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Deteriorata
Feb 6, 2005

xthetenth posted:

Do you have a link?

Arquinsiel posted:

Got a link handy?

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3708238

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HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME
That thread's not about martinets or people who're just really into the concept of authority, it's about people I'd call conspiracy theorists. The majority of 17th century thinkers weren't conspiracy theorists, with the exception of the witchcraft panics.

Arquinsiel
Jun 1, 2006

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady
I think you may be conflating authority with power a bit.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

Arquinsiel posted:

I think you may be conflating authority with power a bit.
I think they could be authoritarians in Altemeryer's sense--people who believe in hierarchies as the way things should be done, and violence as the response to most problems. I don't see them as authoritarians in PJ's sense, which are people who are in the grip of a powerful overriding conspiracy-theory-style narrative, probably because they were abused as children. And I'm glad that she eventually changed the word she uses for those people to "narrativists," because that's what's distinctive about them, the story they think they're part of.

Arquinsiel
Jun 1, 2006

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

HEY GAL posted:

I think they could be authoritarians in Altemeryer's sense--people who believe in hierarchies as the way things should be done, and violence as the response to most problems. I don't see them as authoritarians in PJ's sense, which are people who are in the grip of a powerful overriding conspiracy-theory-style narrative, probably because they were abused as children. And I'm glad that she eventually changed the word she uses for those people to "narrativists," because that's what's distinctive about them, the story they think they're part of.
I have not gotten that far yet, but that scans way better with the earlier posts alright. I guess "the system" and "God" are effectively interchangeable between the tinpot dictator and the birther.

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Arquinsiel posted:

I have not gotten that far yet, but that scans way better with the earlier posts alright. I guess "the system" and "God" are effectively interchangeable between the tinpot dictator and the birther.

Don't forget THE FREE MARKET!

Also, if the Allied bombings of the industry were so poo poo, why is "not developing strategic bombers" still a thing held against Third Reich?

EDIT: I was watching a Paradox LP of Hearts of Iron IV and Hiroshi Oshima is marked as "Prince of Terror" in the game. I wanted to know what was that horrific that he had done... and according to wiki, the most horrific thing about him is how big of a security leak he was. Jesus Christ, just look at the stuff that leaked through his correspondence :stare:

In a related question: would the communication between Japan and Germany been carried out by telegraph? I'm interested because I want to know how his poo poo was intercepted, and because I'm horrified at the possibility of some schmuck having to type 20 page report to telegraph transfer.

JcDent fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Apr 20, 2016

Tias
May 25, 2008

Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

HEY GAL posted:

more news from the country where it's normal to sue people for insulting other people
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/15/angela-merkel-agrees-prosecution-comedian-erdogan-poem

If this sounds like whatabout-ism I'm sorry, I'm as pissed about this as everyone else, it's just a bit funny that people up in arms about censorship and German laws now aren't aware that this has always been a thing, since they care so much about it..

Not only is illegal to insult foreign heads of state in Germany, it's illegal to insult the German state or it's symbols (the penal code, §90). Thus, protests are attacked by police if they play the song "Deutchland muss sterben" by the German punk band Slime, and protestors also have to form a ring around the speaker wagon if it plays the cover "A.C.A.B" by the same band.

This is not even not even a case of cops losing their temper and going vigilante, protest organizers are later prosecuted and fined massive amounts along with public harassment by police (something that only came to an end in the constitutional courts in 2000, 1 BvR 581/00).

Although the prosecution of this bands lyrics - and everybody who plays them in public spaces - finally got the kick in 2000, it has had huge personal costs for those involved that they have been involved in a decade of court cases and having to go all the way to the constitutional court. Also the band itself, since distributors are too scared to re-release the songs without the offending lyrics removed.

That the German police state is touchy about the "honour" of political institutions - own and others - should therefore not come as a surprise just because it's now touching on a cause celebre like Erdogan being a dick. People on the left wing, who go to soccer games or listen to punk rock in Germany has known this for decades.

Thanqol
Feb 15, 2012

because our character has the 'poet' trait, this update shall be told in the format of a rap battle.
So I just saw this poo poo.

I know the Three Kingdoms is basically fantasy and propaganda, but I do still feel compelled to ask: Were there any actual formations this elaborate and crazy? Is there any basis for this at all? Or should I treat this like a gimmick villain's one special move?

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

Tias posted:

That the German police state is touchy about the "honour" of political institutions - own and others - should therefore not come as a surprise just because it's now touching on a cause celebre like Erdogan being a dick. People on the left wing, who go to soccer games or listen to punk rock in Germany has known this for decades.
It's not just the state or symbols of the state, they're apparently really touchy about insults in general and willing to go to court over the least little things. And have been ever since Hieronymus Sebastian Schutze and friends or probably even earlier. I just didn't know that the Chancellor was also allowed to bring suit on a foreign head of state's behalf (they have to file for permission first).

edit: Is it just heads of state though? Or if archange1 insulted me, could Merkel sue them for me?

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Apr 20, 2016

Hogge Wild
Aug 21, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Pillbug

Thanqol posted:

So I just saw this poo poo.

I know the Three Kingdoms is basically fantasy and propaganda, but I do still feel compelled to ask: Were there any actual formations this elaborate and crazy? Is there any basis for this at all? Or should I treat this like a gimmick villain's one special move?

Riding over enemy infantry's shields was a common tactic, eg. Vercingetorix used it.

Kemper Boyd
Aug 6, 2007

no kings, no gods, no masters but a comfy chair and no socks

JcDent posted:

Also, if the Allied bombings of the industry were so poo poo, why is "not developing strategic bombers" still a thing held against Third Reich?

You mostly get opinions like that in popular-level history anyway. Anyone who's more than casually acquainted with the industries and resources available to the Germans at the time would know that A: they couldn't really build a strategic bomber force on top of everything else B: they chose to not do so.

Tomn
Aug 23, 2007

And the angel said unto him
"Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself."
But lo he could not. For the angel was hitting him with his own hands

Thanqol posted:

So I just saw this poo poo.

I know the Three Kingdoms is basically fantasy and propaganda, but I do still feel compelled to ask: Were there any actual formations this elaborate and crazy? Is there any basis for this at all? Or should I treat this like a gimmick villain's one special move?

For what it's worth I seem to recall reading at least one (possibly unreliable) account before of two Chinese generals who showed up to the battlefield and spent the whole time going "Hah, but do you recognize THIS formation?" "Aha, that's the Flying Crane Twists the Mulberry formation, and the correct counter is the Two Dogs Fording the Stream formation!" "Hm! So he knows Two Dogs Fording the Stream! But luckily I know the Ten Thousand Thundering Typhoons formation..." etc. etc., showing off their knowledge of the art of war instead of actually fighting.

From what I know elsewhere, though, an issue with that sort of thing in Chinese history is that while they'd occasionally talk about special named formations like that they rarely actually described what the formations looked like or how they worked in practice. All you have to work with are flowery names like the ones above, which I suppose the TV show's creators took as a license to come up with crazy poo poo.

Roller Coast Guard
Aug 27, 2006

With this magnificent aircraft,
and my magnificent facial hair,
the British Empire will never fall!


JcDent posted:

Also, if the Allied bombings of the industry were so poo poo, why is "not developing strategic bombers" still a thing held against Third Reich?

The Western Allied forces did [THING]. The Western Allies were on the winning side. Ergo, doing [THING] was the right choice.

The Germans did not do [THING]. The Germans were not on the winning side. Ergo, not doing [THING] was not the right choice.

Tias
May 25, 2008

Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

HEY GAL posted:

It's not just the state or symbols of the state, they're apparently really touchy about insults in general and willing to go to court over the least little things. And have been ever since Hieronymus Sebastian Schutze and friends or probably even earlier. I just didn't know that the Chancellor was also allowed to bring suit on a foreign head of state's behalf (they have to file for permission first).

edit: Is it just heads of state though? Or if archange1 insulted me, could Merkel sue them for me?

in principle yes, but I doubt they would stoop to use it, particularly over internet poo poo.

Fat Samurai
Feb 16, 2011

To go quickly is foolish. To go slowly is prudent. Not to go; that is wisdom.

Tomn posted:

For what it's worth I seem to recall reading at least one (possibly unreliable) account before of two Chinese generals who showed up to the battlefield and spent the whole time going "Hah, but do you recognize THIS formation?" "Aha, that's the Flying Crane Twists the Mulberry formation, and the correct counter is the Two Dogs Fording the Stream formation!" "Hm! So he knows Two Dogs Fording the Stream! But luckily I know the Ten Thousand Thundering Typhoons formation..." etc. etc., showing off their knowledge of the art of war instead of actually fighting.

In fairness, artistic merit seems a more civilized way of deciding the result of a battle than going and poking the guys in the wrong uniform with sharp sticks.

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

HEY GAL posted:

It's not just the state or symbols of the state, they're apparently really touchy about insults in general and willing to go to court over the least little things. And have been ever since Hieronymus Sebastian Schutze and friends or probably even earlier. I just didn't know that the Chancellor was also allowed to bring suit on a foreign head of state's behalf (they have to file for permission first).

edit: Is it just heads of state though? Or if archange1 insulted me, could Merkel sue them for me?

There are two different paragraphs as play here. The big one that most people are talking about is §103 StGB. This one applies to insulting foreign heads of states, a member of a foreign government who is currently in Germany, or a foreign diplomat. This is only prosecuted if the federal government actually gives the go-ahead like Merkel just did.

The second one is §185 StGB, which deals with "regular" insults, and carries a lighter maximum sentence. In this case it should just work like a regular suit, with no particular need for the federal government to get involved. Fun fact, there's also a paragraph for mutual insults: If both parties insulted each other in the same time and place, the judge might just decide that things are even and that no punishment will be necessary. :v:

WoodrowSkillson
Feb 24, 2005

*Gestures at 60 years of Lions history*

HEY GAL posted:

have you ever seen a germ? sat down and grabbed one, i mean.

edit: Here's a good one--you're tired, right? i mean, right now. Perhaps modern life has left toxins in your body. Nobody was like this in the past, when things were natural and more wholesome.

I was, but then i started putting these pads on my feet and it totally cleared that problem up! PM me for details.

Kemper Boyd
Aug 6, 2007

no kings, no gods, no masters but a comfy chair and no socks
Video game post: for all 17th century enthusiasts, Pike & Shot (and Pike & Shot: Campaigns) is most definitively worth trying out. It is hard as hell and the AI is a jerk, but I managed to win my first battle today and had a very authentic experience of "loving hell the Imperial horse routed at the last second."

Polyakov
Mar 22, 2012


JcDent posted:

Also, if the Allied bombings of the industry were so poo poo, why is "not developing strategic bombers" still a thing held against Third Reich?

It's not really accurate to say that allied bombing of industry is poo poo, its a commonly held belief for a few reasons:

The first is that at the start of the war it was not particularly effective, nobody really understood what bombing in wartime would be like, especially unescorted daylight raids, the British responded to this by flying at night and used various techniques to find their targets, (Pathfinders, Oboe, H2S and others im forgetting), the americans bulled through it and flew in tight defensive formations and ate the losses until they got an escort fighter with enough range to cover them (they did also employ some of the various aids the british used). However as the war progressed bombing became more effective.

The second is that when trying to assess the damage that bombers did people tend to look at production in Germany which increased throughout the war pretty much and say, "look its going up we killed all these civillains for nothing" which ignores two things, the first and most important is that german industry had an incredible amount of slack capacity availabe to them, it seems incredible that a state going to conquer the european and asian continent didn't start running two shifts in its wartime factories until i think 1942, also it doesnt account for the expansion of german industry via the looting of occupied countries and the extensive employment of slave labour from those conquered countries (which was eventually the only thing keeping German industry going) which aritificially boosted industrial output in a way not available to the allied powers, German production would have been significantly higher without allied bombing efforts.

The third is that a titanic amount of german production capacity and manpower was devoted to defending their cities, they had nearly a million soldiers manning the AA defences in germany, give or take 20-30% of production of artillery, shells and various technical industries (optics, electro-mechanical aiming gear etc.) was devoted to building flak. Plus the necesary building of fighters to try and fight the enemy strategic bombers (which made the production of their own strategic bomber force even less likely).

I think a lot of the reasons that strategic bombers get a poor assessment of their efficiency is for two reasons:

1: It was a bloody unpleasent business, the allies killed hundreds of thousands of civillains in the procedure of winning WW2, and that (rightly so) does not sit well with people today when they look back on it and it colors assessment quite badly.

2: Strategic bombing was a very gradual process, it doesnt have the same decisiveness as a battle where after you win it you push into the enemy territory, you can quantify easily the damage that capturing 20'000 men and blowing up 200 tanks and taking 3 towns does, but its hard to exactly quantify the effect especially given that the bombing only had a particularly noticeable effect once the large concentration raids began in late 42, but the british had been bombing for years beforehand, so that was 3 years of ineffective bombing that did minimal damage and lost lives,

After late 1942 and the battle of the ruhr in early 1943, once bombing started to bite, there was the start of chronic shortages in the german armaments industry that really hurt their industrial production. (See graph below that i pulled out of The Wages Of Destruction: Making and breaking of the Nazi Economy, a great book that i reccomend anyone reads if you have an interest in a detailed look at how the german war economy organised itself).



To actually answer your question though, not developing strategic bombers is kind of a lazy criticism of German wartime strategy that doesnt stand up if you think about it, which a lot of people dont. The majority of allied production was behind the Urals or over the atlantic, out of strategic bomber range, they tried to gain air superiority over Britain and lost once already, why would Britain crumble any more than germany did? They never really had the spare production capacity to build strategic bombers, certainly not on the scale that the allies did where they started launching 1000 bomber raids in late 1942, which was when area bombing started having a serious effect. There are a few reasons why that number of bombers were neccesary to really do lasting damage to production in a city, which take up a fair amount of space on their own, but its not really likely that the Germans could have really successfully developed strategic bombers once the war had started (you can argue that had they developed a force pre WW2 it would have had a decisive effect at the start but i dont think thast was feasible or even true, nobody knew how to bomb at the start of the war and there is no reason to suppose the Germans would have been any better at it). To win the war the Germans needed to win quickly on the battlefield, as they needed to in WW1, and they planned for that and executed that superbly, getting into a slogging match against Allied war production via the medium of strategic bombers was never going to take off as a strategy.

Polyakov fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Apr 20, 2016

xthetenth
Dec 30, 2012

Mario wasn't sure if this Jeb guy was a good influence on Yoshi.

Strategic bombers could have been quite useful to Germany in the u-boat campaign and that was their only real hope of beating Britain, so there's definitely a place for them but it's more than just building a strategic bomber and being done.

Acebuckeye13
Nov 2, 2010
Ultra Carp
I think it's inaccurate to say that Germany chose not to develop heavy bombers-they had a huge number of bomber designs that were approved and reached various prototyping stages, and several of them were produced in fair numbers. Really, if anything Germany's lack of serious strategic bombing efforts was less of a conscious desire on their part and more of a result of Germany's completely insane aircraft procurement system that prevented almost anything from actually getting built.

Polyakov
Mar 22, 2012


xthetenth posted:

Strategic bombers could have been quite useful to Germany in the u-boat campaign and that was their only real hope of beating Britain, so there's definitely a place for them but it's more than just building a strategic bomber and being done.

In fairness to them, they did design and use a 4 engine plane in that role, the FW Condor, and it was a significant detriment to allied shipping in that role, they just never had the production to keep up with losses once the allies started having the capability to intercept and shoot them down, because they were never really in range of escort fighters so would have run into the same problems as the allied air forces over germany had, lone bombers were just asking to get detected on radar and shot down.

xthetenth
Dec 30, 2012

Mario wasn't sure if this Jeb guy was a good influence on Yoshi.

Polyakov posted:

In fairness to them, they did design and use a 4 engine plane in that role, the FW Condor, and it was a significant detriment to allied shipping in that role, they just never had the production to keep up with losses once the allies started having the capability to intercept and shoot them down, because they were never really in range of escort fighters so would have run into the same problems as the allied air forces over germany had, lone bombers were just asking to get detected on radar and shot down.

The development of them was an utter boondoggle though, and it seriously limited their use.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Polyakov posted:

There are a few reasons why that number of bombers were neccesary to really do lasting damage to production in a city, which take up a fair amount of space on their own, but its not really likely that the Germans could have really successfully developed strategic bombers once the war had started (you can argue that had they developed a force pre WW2 it would have had a decisive effect at the start but i dont think thast was feasible or even true, nobody knew how to bomb at the start of the war and there is no reason to suppose the Germans would have been any better at it).

Hmm, to expand on this a bit, though, pre-war everyone thought strategic bombing was going to be the war-winner - 'the bomber will always get through' and all that (in an age where fighters were slower than they were by the time of the war and radar didn't exist). The Germans pioneered strategic bombing, going back to Guernica but also early war bombing raids on Warsaw and Rotterdam, plus also obviously the Blitz.

That being the case, and if you think strategic bombing is a war-winner, it is a failure to attempt it without putting sufficient resources behind it, even if it turns out it wouldn't have been as effective as you thought.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Cyrano4747 posted:

It wasn't just the fact that it was a lovely thing to do, once the ashes cooled on Tojo's Japan and Hitler's Germany everyone was scrambling to make sure those countries were in the West's camp for the Cold War. Cold War politics is a big part of why war crimes trials lost so much steam in that period as well.

Sooo what happened with POWs from the DDR, or eg modern Poland for that matter; did they get released faster? (the ones that weren't already hardcore communists prewar, that is, I know those guys tended to end up running the place postwar).

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
That Japanese POW story has amazing drawings.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

xthetenth posted:

The development of them was an utter boondoggle though, and it seriously limited their use.

Yeah, it wasn't so much developed as some officers in the summer of 1939 going "OMG, we're going to have to support U-boats in the Atlantic and we don't have any sort of airplane that can do that so let's just bodge this long distance airliner into the role until the He 177 is available, hopefully by 1941"

As other people have said, a strategic bomber can be put to many uses, and Nazi Germany really suffered because they hadn't developed one.

Kemper Boyd
Aug 6, 2007

no kings, no gods, no masters but a comfy chair and no socks

Acebuckeye13 posted:

I think it's inaccurate to say that Germany chose not to develop heavy bombers-they had a huge number of bomber designs that were approved and reached various prototyping stages, and several of them were produced in fair numbers. Really, if anything Germany's lack of serious strategic bombing efforts was less of a conscious desire on their part and more of a result of Germany's completely insane aircraft procurement system that prevented almost anything from actually getting built.

I'd say it was a choice on their part, considering that the whole Ural Bomber program was shut down by Kesselring after the death of general Wever. I'd say that the continuing efforts to build heavy bombers was more of an expression of how much of a shitfest German procurement was and how strong the tendency to go off on wild goose chases like "lets bomb New York its gonna be awesome, mein bro." was.

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

It also has a lot to do with civilian population centers becoming legitimate military targets. There were tons of theories about this, ranging from ideas about impacting industry through "de-housing" (i.e. killing in their beds) industrial workers through the pretty honest assessment of bombing as a terror weapon to make it so unpleasant for civilians that the government was forced to sue for peace. The second part in particular was heavily influenced by French and British fears during WW1 that they were a bad campaign away from popular unrest in 1917, the collapse of Russia at the same time due to a revolution, and the way that Berlin in particular turned against the Imperial German state at the end. Remember: the last war is one that saw two of the three major monarchies - and the only two where the monarch was still the undisputed head of state - collapse due to civil unrest brought on by the war being absolute poo poo. Of course there were specific tensions in those systems that they fractured along, but from the outside observer it looked like poo poo just got so bad for the home front that they kicked the fuckers out of power. From that standpoint bombing population centers isn't really that far a jump from blockading the enemy to force food and materiel shortages. It's basically the next step in a modern understanding of total warfare that strikes directly at the enemy's economic productivity, and by extension at its population.

For what it's worth this is still the world we live in. These assumptions are what fed directly into the theories about how you would cripple an enemy with nuclear weapons. There are very concrete economic and military objectives - the destruction of communications centers, the destruction of industrial and military sites, etc - but there is also the very clear threat to civilian lives that creates the same terror component that was at the heart of nighttime incendiary raids against cities in WW2. Huge chunks of foreign policy today are directly shaped by the capacity (or lack thereof) of a foreign nation to project power into your heartland.

Personally, and this is just my take on it, I think that when we look at strategic bombing in WW2 what we're looking at is an immature technology that is having some impact, but not as much as it could have in a (thankfully thus far hypothetical) future war. Think of it like tanks and airplanes in WW1: they certainly had their uses, and they really started to come into their own by the end, but they weren't nearly the major factor that they were in the next one.

edit: because Ik now it will come up - yes we did do what amounted to a WW2 style strategic bombing campaign in Vietnam. I would argue that it wasn't too effective precisely because it was a WW2 style campaign. Everything that guys like Bomber Harris were talking about really becomes viable once you start tossing nukes. Had we started nuking N. Vietnam I doubt things would have gone on too much longer. That would have been a monstrous decision and probably lead to WW3, so I'm not arguing it was the right move, but it would have reached the immediate objectives of all those B52s dumptrucking HE over Hanoi much more effectively.

Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Apr 20, 2016

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Cyrano4747 posted:

Remember: the last war is one that saw two of the three major monarchies - and the only two where the monarch was still the undisputed head of state

Everyone always forgets Austria-Hungary :smith:

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

feedmegin posted:

Sooo what happened with POWs from the DDR, or eg modern Poland for that matter; did they get released faster? (the ones that weren't already hardcore communists prewar, that is, I know those guys tended to end up running the place postwar).

Nope. I've got a bunch of documents related to the Minister of Education for Thuringia going on a trip to Moscow in 48 or 49 for a German-Russian friendship tour (she was a die hard socialist before the war and spent most of '32-33 in Moscow, so it wasn't an affectation on her part). She spent a significant part of it visiting POW camps to search for relatives for people in her area and to bring back messages from the guys there.

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

feedmegin posted:

Everyone always forgets Austria-Hungary :smith:

Doh!

I KNEW I was screwing that point up.

SeanBeansShako
Nov 20, 2009

Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.
Franz Josef is going to be so pissed!

Hazzard
Mar 16, 2013

Cyrano4747 posted:

Doh!

I KNEW I was screwing that point up.

What happened? My school ignored their existence when doing both World Wars beyond. "Austria invades Serbia" and then as far as we were concerned, Germany fought WW1 by itself.

Also, what happens to anti air ammunition when it misses? Was there concern about Tommy missing the Luftwaffe and some ammunition raining down and killing someone in their bed?

Power Khan
Aug 20, 2011

by Fritz the Horse

Cyrano4747 posted:

Doh!

I KNEW I was screwing that point up.

From the afterlife: "Mir bleibt doch gar nichts erspart auf dieser Welt"

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Hazzard posted:

Also, what happens to anti air ammunition when it misses? Was there concern about Tommy missing the Luftwaffe and some ammunition raining down and killing someone in their bed?

That happened all the time. A couple of the civilian casualties at Pearl Harbor were from friendly AA fire.

That said most AAA in WW2 was on a timed fuze, so if it missed it just blew up anyways. Really it was the duds that came back down intact. The guns also weren't fired straignt up. Mosto f the time the angle of the shot would be enough to take it out of the city. There was still significant danger to people on the ground, though. People got injured by falling shrapnel from the burst AAA shells all the time if they weren't taking shelter.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Cyrano4747 posted:

edit: because Ik now it will come up - yes we did do what amounted to a WW2 style strategic bombing campaign in Vietnam. I would argue that it wasn't too effective precisely because it was a WW2 style campaign. Everything that guys like Bomber Harris were talking about really becomes viable once you start tossing nukes. Had we started nuking N. Vietnam I doubt things would have gone on too much longer. That would have been a monstrous decision and probably lead to WW3, so I'm not arguing it was the right move, but it would have reached the immediate objectives of all those B52s dumptrucking HE over Hanoi much more effectively.

Was there a serious strategic bombing campaign in Vietnam? I know very little about it, but I thought the bombing of the North was a relatively brief operation. Basically what I'm saying is that I'd love to see or be linked to an article/effort post on just what was going on. I guess I should just go read wikipedia...

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

PittTheElder posted:

Was there a serious strategic bombing campaign in Vietnam? I know very little about it, but I thought the bombing of the North was a relatively brief operation. Basically what I'm saying is that I'd love to see or be linked to an article/effort post on just what was going on. I guess I should just go read wikipedia...

The US dropped twice as many bombs during the Vietnam War as was dropped in WWII.

Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Apr 20, 2016

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

PittTheElder posted:

Was there a serious strategic bombing campaign in Vietnam? I know very little about it, but I thought the bombing of the North was a relatively brief operation. Basically what I'm saying is that I'd love to see or be linked to an article/effort post on just what was going on. I guess I should just go read wikipedia...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder

It was kind of half-assed all the time for various political reasons, but it lasted 3 years and had the stated intention of destroying transportation infrastructure and industry while pressuring the north to stop supporting the VC in the south. The idea was to push them out of the war without actually sending troops in to the north which no one really had a stomach for. Depending on whose statistics you believe they killed anywhere from ~50-200k civilians doing it, so it's not like it was exactly precision bombing either.

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Saint Celestine
Dec 17, 2008

Lay a fire within your soul and another between your hands, and let both be your weapons.
For one is faith and the other is victory and neither may ever be put out.

- Saint Sabbat, Lessons
Grimey Drawer

PittTheElder posted:

Was there a serious strategic bombing campaign in Vietnam? I know very little about it, but I thought the bombing of the North was a relatively brief operation. Basically what I'm saying is that I'd love to see or be linked to an article/effort post on just what was going on. I guess I should just go read wikipedia...

Oh yes. There was the three big efforts -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Linebacker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Linebacker_II

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