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Arquinsiel posted:Isn't this what hunting and target shooting crossbows are? Every recreation i've seen of those Chinese repeating Xbows, they look utterly pitiful. Pathetic range, punch and accuracy. Firing them en masse from high above is the only situation I can think of where they might actually be somewhat effective, and I still think they'd bounce off even the lightest armour.
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Jun 16, 2016 19:53
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xthetenth posted:This would be interesting, but they only figured out the huge advantage of large, fast carriers after making the Lexington and Ranger. It was definitely a serious consideration, there was a minor panic when they realized the Nagato class' speed, but that was with the fast carriers already established. I was going to offer to fight Kyoon for the honor of the USS Lexington until he made it clear he meant the original BC design, not the carrier. The carrier actually proved useful well beyond expectations, especially in her ability to operate aircraft in foul weather. Being able to operate scout planes in foul weather helped seal the end of the BC era, so one can argue that Lexington is one of the only ships that proved her own uselessness while still being a major success.
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Jun 16, 2016 19:55
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Zorak of Michigan posted:I was going to offer to fight Kyoon for the honor of the USS Lexington until he made it clear he meant the original BC design, not the carrier. The carrier actually proved useful well beyond expectations, especially in her ability to operate aircraft in foul weather. Being able to operate scout planes in foul weather helped seal the end of the BC era, so one can argue that Lexington is one of the only ships that proved her own uselessness while still being a major success. She also helped expose the danger of FAE in carriers!
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Jun 16, 2016 19:59
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The battleship issue is, I think, very similar to what we're running into with new generation atomically expensive aircraft. That is, they're too expensive and rare to be routinely used in the roles they been used historically so as a result they wind up being more for photo ops and politics than actual war fighting. prove me wrong, Air Force
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Jun 16, 2016 19:59
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what impact did the washington naval treaty have on wwii naval combat? obviously, it impacted ship designs and limited total tonnage. but: -would surface combatants played a much larger role in the war without it(because there would have been more of them)? or, did the great depression create a 'ceiling'(in the sense that the participants couldn't have built many more ships than they were limited to)? -did the washington naval treaty hasten the emergence of naval air power as being the dominant form of combat afloat? the grand fleet went to sea with 36 battleships at jutland. the high seas fleet went with 16. i dont think there were 52 battleships between all wwii participants. did the relative lack of surface combatants create an ideal situation for air power to thrive(for want of other options)? -had wwii started with much more substantial surface fleets, would this have delayed the emergence of air power? it seems that a not insignificant portion of early wwii aircraft carriers started out life as battleships/battlecruisers and were re-ordered or rebuilt as aircraft carriers once the 1st washington naval treaty was signed. not only that, but the us/uk/germany were all still laying down bb/bc hulls well into the mid 40s. there was obviously still an old guard that hadn't fully bought into naval air power when you consider that the united states was contemplating ships like the montana and building ships like the alaska/iowa. i suppose you'd have to be familiar with the doctrinal usage of aircraft carriers in the inter-war years and the impact of billy mitchell's tests on naval thought, which i am not. i guess, my central question would be: did the washington naval treaty indirectly force naval aviation upon the various wwii combatants as a result of limited surface tonnage?
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Jun 16, 2016 20:00
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Main Paineframe posted:The answer to that question depends on what you want to protect them from, but there aren't many cases where "battlecruisers" is really the right answer - they don't fare particularly well against battleships and submarines, and they're overkill against destroyers and torpedo boats. They were very good at killing cruisers, but you don't need to go quite as extreme as some of Fisher's babies (like the HMS Furious, with 3-inch belt armor and two 18-inch guns in 1917) to deal with those. What if you wanted something to keep up with your fast carriers and had a large anti air armament so that they could protect your carriers from enemy air attack? Seems like a perfect use for a battlecruiser.
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Jun 16, 2016 20:03
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Saint Celestine posted:What if you wanted something to keep up with your fast carriers and had a large anti air armament so that they could protect your carriers from enemy air attack? Seems like a perfect use for a battlecruiser. The US did exactly that , just with light cruisers. You don't need that massive displacement in order put a zillion 40 mm guns on a ship Edit: and I should say the Royal Navy too, they really came up with the idea in the long time before anyone else that bewbies fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jun 16, 2016 |
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Jun 16, 2016 20:05
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The always awkward Germany/Poland match has just started in Euro 2016.
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Jun 16, 2016 20:06
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Saint Celestine posted:What if you wanted something to keep up with your fast carriers and had a large anti air armament so that they could protect your carriers from enemy air attack? Seems like a perfect use for a battlecruiser. Well, you could probably get an AA cruiser for cheaper, or an Iowa-type fast battleship that can keep out shells from a Kongo.
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Jun 16, 2016 20:22
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:what impact did the washington naval treaty have on wwii naval combat? obviously, it impacted ship designs and limited total tonnage. but: This one is probably impossible to answer, because there are massive political questions involved with this one. Dreadnought construction costs were already a huge deal in Britain prior to WWI, and things would have been much tougher in the post war depression period. Where that money would come from is a nasty dispute waiting to happen. Which incidentally is exactly why the Washington Treaty was created in the first place.
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Jun 16, 2016 20:23
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Since I caught flak for not posting any more about fascism after an earlier flurry, I'd like to invite people to ask questions about fascism (ideology, historical instances of, comparison between different strains of, origins, etc.) here since it focuses my ability to post about it. The previous posts were uploaded here: https://abriefhistoryoffascism.wordpress.com/
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Jun 16, 2016 21:01
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Also better to spread your AA defences across multiple smaller ships so one lucky bomb doesn't take the whole net down.
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Jun 16, 2016 21:17
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HEY GAL posted:it seems to me that the romance language Fascisms have the real freaks, does anyone else think that's the case or am I reaching? like, is there a difference between the Nazi death cult and Italian or Romanian fascism's? It's a good question; I'm only familiar with the Nazis. I'm thinking you need to give some examples, because I already know how bizzare the Nazis can be  Let me just quote my friend and your Cyrano in the Cold War thread: Cyrano4747 posted:That is way over played. It was something a handful of party hacks had a hard on for but the scientific establishment squashed it at the research level.
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Jun 16, 2016 21:18
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pthighs posted:The always awkward Germany/Poland match has just started in Euro 2016. Is the Russian team going to join in halfway through?
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Jun 16, 2016 21:19
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:-did the washington naval treaty hasten the emergence of naval air power as being the dominant form of combat afloat? the grand fleet went to sea with 36 battleships at jutland. the high seas fleet went with 16. i dont think there were 52 battleships between all wwii participants. did the relative lack of surface combatants create an ideal situation for air power to thrive(for want of other options)? Both the RN and the Imperial Navy understood in 1914 that air power was going to be imporrtant. If in 1910 there had been an aeroplane light enough and powerful enough and reliably manoueverable enough to take off from and land on a carrier the size of HMS Argus, there's a fair chance that someone would have built some sort of carrier in time for the start of the war. There wasn't, so the Germans went with Zeppelins and the British went with seaplanes for their aerial scouting needs. The proto-carrier HMS Campania should have been present at Jutland, which Jellicoe had taken a major interest in, but got left behind because her berth at Scapa Flow was relatively isolated and everyone forgot to pass her the sailing orders.
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Jun 16, 2016 21:22
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Disinterested posted:Since I caught flak for not posting any more about fascism after an earlier flurry, I'd like to invite people to ask questions about fascism (ideology, historical instances of, comparison between different strains of, origins, etc.) here since it focuses my ability to post about it. The previous posts were uploaded here: Riso  Trin Tragula posted:Both the RN and the Imperial Navy understood in 1914 that air power was going to be imporrtant. If in 1910 there had been an aeroplane light enough and powerful enough and reliably manoueverable enough to take off from and land on a carrier the size of HMS Argus, there's a fair chance that someone would have built some sort of carrier in time for the start of the war. There wasn't, so the Germans went with Zeppelins and the British went with seaplanes for their aerial scouting needs. The proto-carrier HMS Campania should have been present at Jutland, which Jellicoe had taken a major interest in, but got left behind because her berth at Scapa Flow was relatively isolated and everyone forgot to pass her the sailing orders. Huh. Do you think it would have had an influence on the battle? Or was aircraft technology not up to task yet?
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Jun 16, 2016 21:24
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Disinterested posted:Since I caught flak for not posting any more about fascism after an earlier flurry, I'd like to invite people to ask questions about fascism (ideology, historical instances of, comparison between different strains of, origins, etc.) here since it focuses my ability to post about it. The previous posts were uploaded here: Here's one: did the survival of Spanish fascism lead to further development in fascistic political theory?
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Jun 16, 2016 21:28
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How were submarine launched flying boats of WW1 used? Did they do recce for the subs or were the subs and their airplanes doing recce for the navy in general?
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Jun 16, 2016 21:30
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Nebakenezzer posted:It's a good question; I'm only familiar with the Nazis. I'm thinking you need to give some examples, because I already know how bizzare the Nazis can be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Guard_death_squads anyway, today I finished listing the members of the Saxon Hoffahne (I think they're a dragoon company, which would make these dudes the only dragoons I've got) from their pay records for three months in 1624. Every time a guy was payed he signed for it, which implies a pretty sophisticated level of organization. Some highlights:  The company doctor habitually signed his name with either a question mark or an exclamation point. No, I don't know why.  Abraham Pariß or Parietz signed with his mark, the only soldier to do so. In some cases, the musterschreiber wrote down that people couldn't write, but most of the entries have signatures on them. (Some are blank, or people who weren't the guy being payed signed for him, but those could be due to more things than illiteracy.) The Elector's court troops are pretty high-rent, but that's still a lot of literacy.  And here's Zdenko Sigmund Wallenstein, Fahnenjunker. This is probably the beginning of his career. Do you see how this ink has aged brown? Some of the signatures are different colors from the main text, which says to me those signatories brought their own ink. (I wish I had a way to chemically analyze them though!) At the time, all of these inks would have been black. All the military correspondence I have is the result of the writers carrying ink with them in little jars, in their luggage or on their person, all across Europe. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Jun 17, 2016 |
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Jun 16, 2016 21:34
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Saint Celestine posted:What if you wanted something to keep up with your fast carriers and had a large anti air armament so that they could protect your carriers from enemy air attack? Seems like a perfect use for a battlecruiser. Cruisers can do that job almost as well and cost a lot less. That was the ultimate problem with battlecruisers. They could do pretty much everything that cruisers could do, and sometimes do them slightly better than a cruiser could - but they cost almost as much as a battleship. Battlecruisers' primary advantage over cruisers, the big selling point that justified their extra cost over a regular cruiser, was that they were excellent at chasing down and destroying cruisers; when cruiser-hunting proved to be a relatively minor part of both wars, battlecruisers tended to find themselves ending up in roles where they weren't really worth it.
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Jun 16, 2016 21:40
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my dad posted:Huh. Do you think it would have had an influence on the battle? Or was aircraft technology not up to task yet? Campania was carrying perfectly capable wireless-equipped seaplanes that potentially could have let Jellicoe know the High Seas Fleet's exact course and position at some point during the afternoon. That's a complete and total game-changer and vastly increases the Grand Fleet's chances of winning a major victory in the evening. edit: I've just had a great mental image of them flying past the battlecruisers, where they all buzz Lion and the observers drop insulting notes on the theme of of "TELL THE FLAGSHIP WHAT'S GOING ON, IDIOT" Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Jun 16, 2016 |
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Jun 16, 2016 21:40
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Deptfordx posted:Every recreation i've seen of those Chinese repeating Xbows, they look utterly pitiful. Pathetic range, punch and accuracy. Firing them en masse from high above is the only situation I can think of where they might actually be somewhat effective, and I still think they'd bounce off even the lightest armour. My understanding was that repeating crossbows were a peasant's weapon to see off bandit raids and regular crossbows, like we recognise in Europe were the battlefield weapon.
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Jun 16, 2016 22:21
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Throatwarbler posted:Also better to spread your AA defences across multiple smaller ships so one lucky bomb doesn't take the whole net down. Incidentally I seem to remember destroyers being disproportionately useful because they could hang out close enough to capitol ships to use their automatic aa without too much risk of collision.
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Jun 16, 2016 22:58
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my dad posted:Riso Similarly to what Mr. Tragula said, Scheer was always scheming to use his Zeppelins as some sort of leverage against the British. Zeppelins were actually over the North Sea, trying to support the fleet during the battle of Jutland, but a combination of night flying and poo poo weather made them spectators rather than participants. At the end of the battle one Zeppelin did recon RN fleet elements correctly and radioed the (now retreating) German fleet with them - though this is sorta cancelled out by the other Zeppelin that saw something radioing in a whole series of erroneous reports.Had the weather been fine, Zeppelins would have been the eyes of the German fleet during its sortie. The weather over the North Sea - IE more or less constantly murky and rainy - was an extra obstacle to hinder aerial recon. In the days of the mark 1 eyeball, you had to see your opponent to report them, and that's pretty hard when visibility is at best a few kilometers. Nenonen posted:How were submarine launched flying boats of WW1 used? Did they do recce for the subs or were the subs and their airplanes doing recce for the navy in general? People were launching airplanes from submarines in WW1?
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Jun 16, 2016 23:23
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Nebakenezzer posted:People were launching airplanes from submarines in WW1? The Germans had an utterly hilarious submarine that someone tried to repurpose as a seaplane tender, and I would totally have written about it for comedy purposes in 1914 if I'd known it existed. U-12! The RN also did an experiment with E-22, which came to a screeching halt when the ship became a tragic victim of sub-on-sub violence.
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Jun 16, 2016 23:39
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Hazzard posted:My understanding was that repeating crossbows were a peasant's weapon to see off bandit raids and regular crossbows, like we recognise in Europe were the battlefield weapon. I know there's depictions of them in military use, large ones mounted on walls, like some kind of late medieval hmg. I haven't seen a reproduction of one that size, though, and the ones that are out there do seem pretty piddly. The documentation for their use is pretty solid, as far as I know, and my guess is that there just hasn't been much of an interest to seriously recreate and test them.
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Jun 16, 2016 23:40
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Trin Tragula posted:The Germans had an utterly hilarious submarine that someone tried to repurpose as a seaplane tender, and I would totally have written about it for comedy purposes in 1914 if I'd known it existed. U-12! The RN also did an experiment with E-22, which came to a screeching halt when the ship became a tragic victim of sub-on-sub violence. What I originally was thinking was Hansa-Brandenburg W.20 which was later in the war. But now I see that the submarine intended to carry it was never built. Pity! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansa-Brandenburg_W.20
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Jun 16, 2016 23:48
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Hazzard posted:My understanding was that repeating crossbows were a peasant's weapon to see off bandit raids and regular crossbows, like we recognise in Europe were the battlefield weapon.  Here's a picture of one taken in 1860. As far as I know none of the attacking British soldiers were actually hit by crossbow bolts.
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Jun 16, 2016 23:49
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Whoah thanks for that picture, I'd heard there were images of them from as late as the Boxer Rebellion but couldn't find them for the life of me.
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Jun 16, 2016 23:55
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago You've mentioned Watling street trench a few times, the original Watling street ran NW from London to Wales in pre-england times and formed the border between the Danes and the Anglo-Saxons. So the Watling st trench would probably be the major reserve or frontline trench that would be considered to run the length of the western front.
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Jun 17, 2016 03:24
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FishFood posted:I know there's depictions of them in military use, large ones mounted on walls, like some kind of late medieval hmg. I haven't seen a reproduction of one that size, though, and the ones that are out there do seem pretty piddly. The documentation for their use is pretty solid, as far as I know, and my guess is that there just hasn't been much of an interest to seriously recreate and test them. If it's cranked by the same guy who fires it, there's no way around the useless initial velocity. The force you can exert with one arm over and over isn't nearly enough to power a serious weapon. You'd get the same result throwing knives. The only way you could conceivably build a useful one would be to have an (at least) two-man team where one cranked a big self-releasing mechanism continuously while the other aimed, and a firing rate of something like one per ten seconds.
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Jun 17, 2016 13:11
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Osama Dozen-Dongs posted:If it's cranked by the same guy who fires it, there's no way around the useless initial velocity. The force you can exert with one arm over and over isn't nearly enough to power a serious weapon. You'd get the same result throwing knives. The only way you could conceivably build a useful one would be to have an (at least) two-man team where one cranked a big self-releasing mechanism continuously while the other aimed, and a firing rate of something like one per ten seconds. Or for a permanently-mounted wall weapon you could link it to an external power source. Team of oxen in the courtyard below, windmill, etc.
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Jun 17, 2016 13:24
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Osama Dozen-Dongs posted:The force you can exert with one arm over and over isn't nearly enough to power a serious weapon. Uh, several thousand years of history begs to differ.
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Jun 17, 2016 13:37
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HEY GAL posted:wanna live in the potato-gun tank-boarding universe I, too, enjoy Gorkamorka.
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Jun 17, 2016 13:37
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FishFood posted:I know there's depictions of them in military use, large ones mounted on walls, like some kind of late medieval hmg. I haven't seen a reproduction of one that size, though, and the ones that are out there do seem pretty piddly. The documentation for their use is pretty solid, as far as I know, and my guess is that there just hasn't been much of an interest to seriously recreate and test them. A friend had an original, and the measurements of the prod point to a slightly stronger version than the ones built, but only slightly. The darts were poisoned, almost completely incapable of causing alot of damage on their own. From another buddy that did a reconstruction, I know that it's the locking mechanism that limits the drawweight of the prod, the layout doesn't allow for much, and the short powerstroke is a problem, like in any crossbow.
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Jun 17, 2016 13:41
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Fangz posted:Uh, several thousand years of history begs to differ. Protip: a bow is drawn with the upper back. Go to the gym sometime and see how much you can row and how much you can pull with just the arm. Even better would be to replicate the semicircle of the Chinese thing's pull, but I've never seen a device like that.
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Jun 17, 2016 13:42
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Tanks dominating the field with Greek Fire? Are they Da Vinci tanks? Didn't the Hussites basically do that with circled wagons?
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Jun 17, 2016 14:01
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A winch and ratchet mechanism was used to speed up the load time of crossbows lenoon fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Jun 17, 2016 |
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Jun 17, 2016 14:40
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Don't know about you, but people seemed to be pretty happy with single handed stabbing and smashing. Mace to the face is a tried and true concept.
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Jun 17, 2016 14:45
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FishFood posted:I know there's depictions of them in military use, large ones mounted on walls, like some kind of late medieval hmg. I haven't seen a reproduction of one that size, though, and the ones that are out there do seem pretty piddly. The documentation for their use is pretty solid, as far as I know, and my guess is that there just hasn't been much of an interest to seriously recreate and test them. I work in a machine shop that specializes in grinding round things and making them really, really round. We'd have a guy that'd come in at the end of the day with baskets of wooden crossbow bolts to be ground as perfectly round as could be. Eventually he earned the nickname "Dartman". He was, eh, eccentric. But he paid, so we'd grind them just like he wanted. One day he brought in his repeating crossbow and showed it to the crew. It had an overarm lever and a magazine of sorts underneath. I never got to see it fire but he was quite excited about it. He'd always be bringing in historical texts and really got into recreating the exact weapon. Unfortunately he passed away recently. I'll have to try and dig up some of his sales literature. At one time he had a silent dart gun that could fire 50 yards accurately. His goal was to sell it to the CIA, not sure where it ever went. Among his eccentricities was only driving in the center of a car and not going outside on full moon nights because of werewolves. He worked at a local paper mill and would sleep in the locker room instead of leaving at night. Here's the patent for it : http://www.google.com/patents/US3968783 Edit : Found a picture and article about it from 1977, except it's behind some lovely paywall. Yooper fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Jun 17, 2016 |
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