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HEY GAL posted:where is this nasty little thing on the spectrum Naming a murderous spikeclub "how do you do" is such a sterling example of frisky north european belligerence it made my axes grow tear ducts for the purpose of shedding a single tear of joy.
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May 16, 2016 12:52
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My grandpa was a truck driver transporting war materials, he had access to lots of gas, since his truck didn't need a ration card.
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May 16, 2016 13:47
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WW2 Data More land mines abound for the Imperial Japanese! Ever wondered what a Beehive mine is? Which mine is made out of terra cotta? What does a Japanese Bangalore torpedo look like, and what was the explosive composed of? What little-produced mine was similar to the Lunge Mine? What explosive did the "Improvised Land Mine" use? All that and more at the blog!
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May 16, 2016 14:33
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Retarded Pimp posted:My grandpa was a truck driver transporting war materials, he had access to lots of gas, since his truck didn't need a ration card. Did you grandpa have any good gasoline huffin' stories
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May 16, 2016 14:45
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I had a grandpa who fixed airplanes. He used soap once to quickly patch up some fuel tanks, and the commissar disagreed. My grandpa pulled out his pistol, handed it over, and said "If the planes don't come back, you can execute me right here." Thankfully the planes came back. The other grandpa commanded the battalion that took the Reichstag. I thought it was one of those stories until I came across his name in some documents. Turns out that actually happened. One of my grandmothers trained as a spy, until someone figured out that dropping a Jewish spy into Nazi Germany was probably not the greatest idea. After that she taught German at the spy school.
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May 16, 2016 14:49
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Ensign Expendable posted:One of my grandmothers trained as a spy, until someone figured out that dropping a Jewish spy into Nazi Germany was probably not the greatest idea. After that she taught German at the spy school. How long did that take? Was it the first couple weeks of training or was it during the final briefing before being sent of to Germany that somebody finally put two and two together?
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May 16, 2016 15:22
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Ensign Expendable posted:One of my grandmothers trained as a spy, until someone figured out that dropping a Jewish spy into Nazi Germany was probably not the greatest idea. After that she taught German at the spy school. How much more killed would you get for being a Jew than for being a Soviet spy? Or would it just be harder to pass as a proper German for some reason?
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May 16, 2016 15:27
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Ensign Expendable posted:One of my grandmothers trained as a spy, until someone figured out that dropping a Jewish spy into Nazi Germany was probably not the greatest idea. After that she taught German at the spy school. How would they know she was Jewish? It's not like they can check for a circumcision. While we're on the subject, was that something that was ever used to identify Jewish people?
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May 16, 2016 15:28
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My grandfather was a PFC somewhere in Europe but probably moved with the early force that went in through Italy since his draft card is dated in early '42. The other grandfather was a little different since my grandmother raised me on stories about him being a USAF test pilot in the 50s-60s and it wasn't until my 20s that I found out he was actually a maintenance guy and never flew anything 
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May 16, 2016 15:31
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My paternal grandpa was in the Pacific. Before the war he had some science credits in college and he had actually gone around the Midwest doing Mr. Wizard science demos. Like he would go into a high school gym and hook up a Jacob's Ladder or one of those lightning globe things and do a show for the farmers about the wonders of electricity. Anyway, after Pearl Harbor I guess the Japanese captured some islands that had radar arrays , and some of them were unfinished or damaged, so when they were recaptured teams had to be sent in to fix them. He was an NCO of some kind and I don't believe he saw a living Japanese person during the war. He had the story that they were on an island with a native Polynesian population that wore traditional clothing, so the women didn't have shirts. The chaplains were concerned about the morality of seeing tits all the time, so they handed out GI t-shirts. The women were initially pleased by the gift but having never worn shirts they had some chafing and discomfort so they modified the shirts. By cutting away the parts that covered their breasts. My maternal grandpa was younger. He volunteered as soon he was eligible, which was just in time to finish basic training as the war ended and be sent to garrison duty in Greenland for a while. Then he went home to South Dakota. My father-in-law volunteered for Vietnam and served in the infantry. He has said that volunteering was a bad decision and he didn't know why he did it, but that if he had it to do over again he'd probably do the same anyway. He doesn't really talk about it. He has a bunch of scars from when a bullet hit his watch, fragmented, and tore several tracks all the way up his forearm.
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May 16, 2016 15:50
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Hazzard posted:How would they know she was Jewish? It's not like they can check for a circumcision. Yes and no. There are anecdotes about it from ghetto clearings and also as a way of mocking Jewish men in public but it was also widespread in other populations. Lots of Catholics get it done for example. It was considered hygienic for a huge part of the 20th.
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May 16, 2016 17:01
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Cyrano4747 posted:It was considered hygienic for a huge part of the 20th. And on 4chan in the 21st
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May 16, 2016 17:21
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MikeCrotch posted:Did you grandpa have any good gasoline huffin' stories No, but he did tell me he was hauling a load of steel to St. Louis and ran out of gas. He pulled into a gas station and the owner wouldn't give him any gas without a ration coupon. An argument ensued resulting in Grandpa walking 5 miles down to the ration board and explaining what happened. Someone there called the the gas station owner and told him he'd lose his operating license if he kept refusing to sell the gas. That was Grandpa's WWII fight story.
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May 16, 2016 17:26
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JcDent posted:And on 4chan in the 21st And by, you know, the CDC.
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May 16, 2016 17:54
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Retarded Pimp posted:No, but he did tell me he was hauling a load of steel to St. Louis and ran out of gas. He pulled into a gas station and the owner wouldn't give him any gas without a ration coupon. An argument ensued resulting in Grandpa walking 5 miles down to the ration board and explaining what happened. Someone there called the the gas station owner and told him he'd lose his operating license if he kept refusing to sell the gas. That was Grandpa's WWII fight story. You should just tell people the gas station owner's name was Jerry, regardless of what it actually may have been.
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May 16, 2016 17:57
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Cyrano4747 posted:It's always a grandfather who was throwing grenades down the hatches of Tigers, never a grandfather who sat in a weather station in Iceland and heard from his cousin who worked in a motor pool in London that poo poo was going down in France. My grandfather's war experience* was mostly bland. "I drove a general around in a jeep in Germany." I'm sure driving through the concentration camps sucked though. *Mind you, the actual draft process was pretty hosed up. The draft board went to my great-grandmother and said "we need one of your sons, pick one and let us know."
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May 16, 2016 18:11
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ulmont posted:My grandfather's war experience* was mostly bland. "I drove a general around in a jeep in Germany." I'm sure driving through the concentration camps sucked though. That was actually probably a humanitarian concession. A lot of families back then relied on the labor of adult children to make ends meet especially rural families. Letting them pick one would let them make the right choice for the finances and general family well being.
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May 16, 2016 18:48
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Early-war tanks were mostly terrible and Matildas were pretty bad too. They had very thick armour that early AT guns couldn't penetrate. They got phased out because their production methods were archaic, repairs were too difficult, and the gun ring was too small for a proper tank gun. Jobbo_Fett posted:The last time I saw that scene I groaned at how stupid it was. Cyrano4747 posted:edit x2: did he really refer to the MG34 and 42 generically as "Spandau" guns? That's really loving odd. Usually when someone talks about a "Spandau" they're talking about the WW1 era MG08 or MG08/15
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May 16, 2016 18:50
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My grandfather on my mom's side was an officer on the USS Bunker Hill and was aboard it when it was struck by kamizakes in 1945. I saw his wartime diary at one point-- apparently he had lots of paperwork related to the incident he had to do as the ship slowly limped back to port.
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May 16, 2016 18:55
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Empress Theonora posted:-- apparently he had lots of paperwork related to the incident he had to do as the ship slowly limped back to port. War. . . . War never changes.
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May 16, 2016 19:31
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from the point of view of paperwork, an officer is just a node for the reception and transmission of paperwork
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May 16, 2016 19:32
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war is paperwork by other means
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May 16, 2016 19:34
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Agean90 posted:war is paperwork by other means strong thread title choice, but it should be "war is a mere continuation of paperwork by other means"
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May 16, 2016 19:48
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Agean90 posted:war is paperwork by other means
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May 16, 2016 19:48
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david_a posted:Lol, I wonder if a side ever tried to optimize an attack based on how much paperwork it would generate for the other side. "If we dent that cruiser instead of sink it the HQ will be out of commission for weeks filling out TPS reports!" The Information Age's equivalent of "The 5.56 is only designed to wound to create a greater burden on the enemy's force"
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May 16, 2016 19:50
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Hazzard posted:How would they know she was Jewish? It's not like they can check for a circumcision. Not that actual desant spies in general got the best of treatments when caught, their best hope would be to kill themselves rather than be taken alive. Hazzard posted:While we're on the subject, was that something that was ever used to identify Jewish people? A long time ago I read Ismail Akhmedov's memoir "Stalin's GRU" which in all likelihood was laced with a heavy layer of BS as it was published during the cold war after he had defected to the west. According to the book he was at Berlin embassy when the war started, and the males working there were forced to strip naked before being transferred out of the country. Akhmedov then had to explain that he was a Muslim, not a Jew. It doesn't sound true to me - if Germany was going to respect their diplomatic immunity then why would they make any exceptions when they still wanted their own diplomatic staff back in one piece?
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May 16, 2016 19:50
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strategic bombing of paper mills to paralyze the axis war effort
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May 16, 2016 19:51
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Agean90 posted:war is paperwork by other means 30 Years War would have lasted about 6 weeks if they'd all loaded their cannons with requisition forms.
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May 16, 2016 19:53
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Eventually leading to an officer led coup. Either they win and can force somebody else to do the forms or die and not have to worry about it either way.
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May 16, 2016 19:55
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We cannot change the hearts and minds of those people of the enemy, but we can make paperwork so terrible and make them so sick of bureucracy that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to war E: War is paperwork, and you cannot refine it. The more bureucratic it is, the sooner it will be over
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May 16, 2016 20:02
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Arquinsiel posted:It seems to be a British thing. All MGs are Spandaus, the MP-40 is a Schmeisser, all halftracks are Hanomags. It must be an old British thing then. I've heard Schmeisser in reference to MP-40 but i've only ever heard someone talk about Spandau's in relation to WWI machine guns, and not heard anyone call anything a Hanomag. Please don't judge my country by that one guy in a weird jumper on youtube, we don't like him either.
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May 16, 2016 20:03
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Nenonen posted:A long time ago I read Ismail Akhmedov's memoir "Stalin's GRU" which in all likelihood was laced with a heavy layer of BS as it was published during the cold war after he had defected to the west. According to the book he was at Berlin embassy when the war started, and the males working there were forced to strip naked before being transferred out of the country. Akhmedov then had to explain that he was a Muslim, not a Jew. It doesn't sound true to me - if Germany was going to respect their diplomatic immunity then why would they make any exceptions when they still wanted their own diplomatic staff back in one piece? I can't remember which book it was, but supposedly in the early days of the Eastern Front, Soviet prisoners would be commanded to drop their pants for inspection. The circumcised ones would be assumed to be Jews and shot, which supposedly led to a number of Muslims being shot as well. No idea about the veracity of this, however.
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May 16, 2016 20:04
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MikeCrotch posted:It must be an old British thing then. I've heard Schmeisser in reference to MP-40 but i've only ever heard someone talk about Spandau's in relation to WWI machine guns, and not heard anyone call anything a Hanomag. I've not heard of "Spandau" but I've heard "Hanomag" really frequently.
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May 16, 2016 20:19
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I just thought of the best idea for a military science fiction book. In the aftermath of a space battle, a heavily-damaged gigantic space warship drifts slowly back to its homebase, everyone on board endlessly fills out paperwork related to the battle that just happened.
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May 16, 2016 20:20
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Drama erupts when a tired, over-caffinated young subaltern shreds pages 3-17 of the admiral's damage report on the lower decks by accident. Can the subaltern find a way to reconstitute the reports before the admiral navigates enough of the bureaucracy to file disciplinary measures? Edit: There is a romance subplot where both parties involved try desperately to figure out whether or not their relationship is considered acceptable according to regulations.
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May 16, 2016 20:25
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cheerfullydrab posted:I just thought of the best idea for a military science fiction book. In the aftermath of a space battle, a heavily-damaged gigantic space warship drifts slowly back to its homebase, everyone on board endlessly fills out paperwork related to the battle that just happened. This could be cool as hell. The reader gets to slowly piece together the battle, the reasons for the battle, and what that means in the larger scale for themselves. The Admiral's reports back on to the government on what this means for the rest of the war effort, the Lieutenant's heartfelt condolence letters, the mail clerk Corporal's hastily-scrawled note attached to a bundle of unsent love letters that he found when clearing out a dead colleague's locker. There could even be drama when a couple of the reports don't quite match each other and a further inquiry is launched, hinting at a saboteur.
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May 16, 2016 20:33
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SquadronROE posted:This could be cool as hell. The reader gets to slowly piece together the battle, the reasons for the battle, and what that means in the larger scale for themselves. The Admiral's reports back on to the government on what this means for the rest of the war effort, the Lieutenant's heartfelt condolence letters, the mail clerk Corporal's hastily-scrawled note attached to a bundle of unsent love letters that he found when clearing out a dead colleague's locker. You're describing a novel about paperwork, I suspect most people would find that boring as hell.
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May 16, 2016 20:56
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this would make WITP:AE look like a quadruple-platinum hit
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May 16, 2016 21:00
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Elyv posted:You're describing a novel about paperwork, I suspect most people would find that boring as hell. You leave reality out of this.
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May 16, 2016 21:03
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Aren't you describing an epistolary novel that uses after-action reports, KIA lists, medal citations, and post-battle histories?
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May 16, 2016 21:09
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