Cyrano4747 posted:Also loving laffo at the kit for the Agincourt archer including the loving sharpened log. You mean you don't carry around sharpened logs to defend yourself from angry French Knights on chargers?
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Aug 3, 2016 20:42
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HEY GAL posted:apparently some of the people of the amazon were so dismayed by the early modern european practice of medical/instrumental cannibalism (which I posted about in the last thread), in the 1970s their descendants still called the author of this New Yorker article a pischtaco, someone who wants to steal the fat from human bodies. The interesting thing about this particular belief is that there is a similar one in Spain. Did they arise independently of each other, or was there some cultural cross-pollination?
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Aug 3, 2016 20:44
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early modern Europeans used human fat to make medicines and do magic. early modern Amazonians--I don't know. So probably what I think happened is that in Spain the folk belief is about people who'll do that to you, instead of you doing that to some corpse, and in South America maybe the idea of doing it at all was incredibly hosed up and they saw some Spanish rendering people for fat, which we know from primary sources (posted in the last thread) that they did. Pulling this further out of my rear end, possibly the belief in south america ended up being that the spanish did it to stop their weapons from rusting because an outside observer had no idea it was supposed to be magical. Edit: Blood drinking was also medicinal in early modern Europe; the blood of a soldier or other violent person would cure epilepsy, for instance. That one's as old as Classical Rome. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Aug 3, 2016 |
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Aug 3, 2016 20:52
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HEY GAL posted:early modern Europeans used human fat to make medicines and do magic. early modern Amazonians--I don't know. So probably what I think happened is that in Spain the folk belief is about people who'll do that to you, instead of you doing that to some corpse, and in South America maybe the idea of doing it at all was incredibly hosed up and they saw some Spanish rendering people for fat, which we know from primary sources (posted in the last thread) that they did. This is really putting the 1632 series in new light. Why do they never mention this sort of thing?
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Aug 3, 2016 21:06
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One funny thing: the conquistadors would probably have practiced corpse medicine everywhere they went, yet the myth seems to be confined to the Andes region. Why would they cling to the belief that outsiders want to take their fat centuries after they stopped the practice?
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Aug 3, 2016 21:09
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Mycroft Holmes posted:This is really putting the 1632 series in new light. Why do they never mention this sort of thing? 
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Aug 3, 2016 21:10
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Kopijeger posted:One funny thing: the conquistadors would probably have practiced corpse medicine everywhere they went, yet the myth seems to be confined to the Andes region. Why would they cling to the belief that outsiders want to take their fat centuries after they stopped the practice?
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Aug 3, 2016 21:13
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Kopijeger posted:One funny thing: the conquistadors would probably have practiced corpse medicine everywhere they went, yet the myth seems to be confined to the Andes region. Why would they cling to the belief that outsiders want to take their fat centuries after they stopped the practice? It's probably partially a function of isolation.
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Aug 3, 2016 21:14
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Phanatic posted:Casualties include both dead and wounded, so in that sense I'd say because Iraq was a brief high-intensity conflict followed by a long low-intensity occupation. In other words, fewer people were shooting at us for a shorter period of time than during Vietnam, so fewer casualties. While we're on the subject, Vietnam marked a resurgence in the view that it was more important to wound than kill enemy soldiers. I'm reasonably sure that A) the 5.56 M16 round was introduced specifically to maim enemy soldiers, so that their allies would spend valuable resources treating and protecting them, exposing themselves to the U.S. forces and that B) upon learning that U.S. forces could request helicopter MEDEVAC, Viet Cong/NVA forces deliberately instigated more low-intensity battles, in order to draw out helicopters to shoot with their machinegun crews.
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Aug 3, 2016 21:35
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Tias posted:I'm reasonably sure that A) the 5.56 M16 round was introduced specifically to maim enemy soldiers, so that their allies would spend valuable resources treating and protecting them, exposing themselves to the U.S. forces and that Argh. No, no it was not. Will this myth not loving die?
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Aug 3, 2016 21:43
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HEY GAL posted:because everyone who's on the same side as Our Heroes is an enlightened believer in modern ideals "Gustavus Adolphus, you should arm your entire populace to protect your country from foreign invasion!" "Gadzooks, I could make ALL of Sweden my army!"
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Aug 3, 2016 21:43
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Cyrano4747 posted:Argh. No, no it was not. Will this myth not loving die? I'm pretty sure I read about it somewhere that seemed legit, but could you maybe expound on why it's dumb instead of just implying that it's dumb?
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Aug 3, 2016 21:45
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Cyrano4747 posted:Argh. No, no it was not. Will this myth not loving die? I'm proud of myself; when I read that line, a little alarm went off in my head that said "that doesn't sound right" which means either that reading this thread has made me smarter, or that I already read about that myth and just forgot
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Aug 3, 2016 21:48
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The old wound rather than kill chestnut pops up a lot online, but I've never seen any contemporary sources that back it up. Any round that will reliably incapacitate an enemy is just as likely to kill him. The big advantage of 5.56 over 7.62 is that you can carry about 3 times the ammo for the same weight.
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Aug 3, 2016 21:49
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Tias posted:I'm pretty sure I read about it somewhere that seemed legit, but could you maybe expound on why it's dumb instead of just implying that it's dumb? Because killing the enemy is always better than wounding in a pitched battle and imagine how bad your morale would be if you knew your weapon would "only wound" while theirs will kill you.
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Aug 3, 2016 21:50
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E: Double posted like Project SALVO 
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Aug 3, 2016 21:50
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xerxes17, did you read my (too late) post on pappenheim's tomb? next time you go to prague you should go say hi to him
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Aug 3, 2016 21:52
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To the extent there's a grain of truth to it, it's that modern armies are okay with giving up a little bit of lethality in exchange for all the other advantages (ammo capacity) of intermediate calibre rifles. But no one ever sat down with a slide rule and tried to intentionally design the bullet to wound only. In any case, where you got shot and time to medical attention are usually going to be bigger factors than what exactly you were shot with.
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Aug 3, 2016 21:53
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HEY GAL posted:xerxes17, did you read my (too late) post on pappenheim's tomb? next time you go to prague you should go say hi to him I did, and I'll certainly give him a visit. I didn't see nearly enough irresponsibly rad things when I went there.
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Aug 3, 2016 21:56
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Cyrano4747 posted:Argh. No, no it was not. Will this myth not loving die? Couple years back during a food manufacturing training course I was attending (gently caress factory work, especially with food) one of the fellows on it who was a British Army cadet instructor was pretty drat convinced that this was true. Of course the man also cosplayed as a pirate down at Looe during the summer so yeah.
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Aug 3, 2016 21:57
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Tias posted:I'm pretty sure I read about it somewhere that seemed legit, but could you maybe expound on why it's dumb instead of just implying that it's dumb? I'm about to head out, which is why I didn't expand up there. Hoped someone would come in and fill in the gaps. Here is the phone posted tldr 1) the driving force towards moving to intermediate cartridges was a combination of weapon handling characteristics and logistical issues. Simply put, a full sized rifle round is nigh uncontrollable in full auto in a rifle, and the rounds are pretty bulky. Something like an AK or an AR is a nice mid-point between your SMGs and your battle rifles and largely recognizes that while rifle-like accuracy and punch is desirable you really don't need a round lethal at multiple kilometers. 2) ~5-6mm calibers were a hot thing in cartridge development from the 30s through the 60s. poo poo, the Garand was originally designed for a .257 caliber bullet. ~6mm offerings weren't super uncommon. Basically by having a lighter, smaller bullet going faster you get some neat stuff, ballistically speaking. 3) shorter case + lighyer bullet = much lighter ammo. Check out the combat loads for a WW2 infantryman and the combat loads for a Vietnam infantryman. IIRC it was ~40 rounds for a guy with a Garand, which is less than two mags out of an M16. Having your guys carrying more ammo when they go into combat is a really important thing. On the other end of it, militaries don't train their soldiers to stop and help their buddy off the field after they're hurt. That's pure hollywood. The fastest way to get help to the wounded is to end the fight so that dedicated medical personnel can get to them, which means either driving off or neutralizing the enemy asap. It also doesn't help that a wounded enemy is still an enemy who can shoot back or otherwise hinder you doing whatever it is you're trying to do. I'm sure someone else will be along to fill in the gaps.
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Aug 3, 2016 21:58
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And wasn't it established that being able to maintain a high volume of fire was critically important? That volume is what keeps heads down and allows units to maneuver supposedly.
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Aug 3, 2016 22:02
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:And wasn't it established that being able to maintain a high volume of fire was critically important? That volume is what keeps heads down and allows units to maneuver supposedly. That was the logic, and the US was working during the cold war on a bunch of weird flechette gun projects that took that idea to the extreme.
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Aug 3, 2016 22:08
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They also found that almost all infantry engagements happen at ranges of 300m or less, which means SMGs are a little too weak but battle rifles are too strong. The intermediate weapon is a logical solution to modern combat.
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Aug 3, 2016 22:11
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Tias posted:While we're on the subject, Vietnam marked a resurgence in the view that it was more important to wound than kill enemy soldiers. I'm reasonably sure that A) the 5.56 M16 round was introduced specifically to maim enemy soldiers, so that their allies would spend valuable resources treating and protecting them, exposing themselves to the U.S. forces and that That's a persistent myth. It's untrue for a bunch of reasons. 1. This isn't an MMORPG where everyone runs around with a hit point total and one bullet does 1d6 damage and another does 1d8: there is a continuum of effect. There is killed outright at one end, and there is mildly annoyed and still capable of fighting back at the other end. Ceteris parabis, you'd like more of the killed-outright and less of the still-shooting-back type. 2. The notion of the enemy will spend valuable resources treating and protecting his wounded only works against certain enemies, and it only works if your enemy retains possession of the battlefield (and/or if you're willing to commit massive war crimes). Your enemies are not trained to put down their gun and stop shooting if one of their buddies gets wounded bad enough for him to stop shooting. If you win the battle, all the enemy's left-behind wounded are now your responsibility: *you* need to expend resources to treat and protect your enemy's wounded. 3. Consider the morale effects of your soldiers finding out that their weapons are only designed to wound, but the bad guy's weapons are designed for lethality. They're all going to switch to scavenged weapons at the earliest opportunity. Similarly, what if the bad guy figures out your weapons are only designed to wound? 4. The 5.56x45 is actually a very lethal round within a range where it's still traveling at 2500 fps. It is light enough that when it yaws around it tends to fracture at the cannelure into two or three pieces that each can go merrily bouncing around through your internal organs. 5. Development of an intermediate-length round started well before Vietnam. Heck, the M1 Garand was originally chambered in .276 Pederson, a round that is virtually a ballistic twin of modern cartridges like 6.8mm SPC or 6.5mm Grendel. MacArthur vetoed that and insisted the Garand be rechambered in .30-06 not because .276 was insufficiently lethal but because we had millions of rounds of .30-06 left over from WWI, plenty of weapons chambered in it, and he didn't want the expense of a dual supply requirement. After WWII, just about everyone but the US twigged to the fact that a round that can reach out and kill people at 2000 yards is probably excessive for most combat engagements and you'd be better off with your troops being able to carry significantly more ammunition even if it was only effective out to several hundred yards. The US insisted on a big full-length round as NATO's standard, while at the same time insisting that the new round be suitable for full-auto fire in infantry cartridges...and then forced the adoption of 7.62x51mm, a round so powerful that full-auto fire with the M-14 or FN-FAL was pretty much uncontrollable. The eventual realization is what led to the small caliber/high-velocity experiments that led to the development of 5.56mm. The ultimate irony is that now that we've switched to fighting in mountainous deserts, engagement ranges are longer, and we've given our troops M4 rifles with shorter barrels, and as a result in a lot of engagements in Afghanistan only a few guys in a platoon are equipped with weapons that are effectively able to be used in those engagements. So people are looking pretty seriously at rounds like 6.5mm instead. These rounds are, again, pretty ballistically similar to the .276 Pedersen MacArthur rejected back in 1932. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Aug 3, 2016 |
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Aug 3, 2016 22:11
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Xerxes17 posted:I did, and I'll certainly give him a visit. I didn't see nearly enough irresponsibly rad things when I went there.
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Aug 3, 2016 22:14
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BattleMoose posted:I am going to UK/France soon. Part of my trip I certainly plan on going through the Normandy beaches and maybe spending a night in Caen and so forth. Have people here been through that area before? Can you tell me if there are anything specific I should go to/do? Even if its a little out of the way and worth it, very interested. Will also be in Paris. I'm just finishing my trip to Normandy for that purpose tommorrow, I'll let you know when im sober and back home Friday.
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Aug 3, 2016 22:24
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Phanatic posted:That's a persistent myth. It's untrue for a bunch of reasons. In addition it matters a lot more where the round hits than the size of the round when you're talking about carbine/rifle rounds. A 5.56 (or 5.45 or 7.62x39 for that matter) has more than enough power to go through a person at normal combat ranges (Zorak's aforementioned 300m or less) that it's not like a larger and heavier 'Full Sized' rifle round gives any advantage for 'lethality'. If anything the terminal ballistics of 'carbine' rounds might actually make them more forgiving as to placement, esp. if they fragment inside the poor SOB that catches one. Now if body armor becomes more and more widespread and cheaper then you might see some shifting towards heavier rounds again, but that's not likely with asymmetrical warfare.
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Aug 3, 2016 22:24
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HEY GAL posted:what? that's like...the entire place I know, but specifically early modern stuff aside from the buildings/streets.
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Aug 3, 2016 22:29
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Phanatic posted:6.5mm Grendel Sounds like something William Gibson would make up. It's astounding how many different calibers there have been, just in handguns alone.
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Aug 3, 2016 22:38
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"On 3rd August was the Finnish guard proclaimed a telegram sent by the Emperor, which ordered the battalion to ready itself for fighting shape. In the same day were celebrated the high [the word means literally high, as a tree, or very important]name day of the Empress, due to which we had a service in our battalions church. After we exited the church for the barracks yard and formed into lines the commander of the battalion, freiherr[vapaaherra in Finnish, means literally "free lord/master" and was a noble rank about equal to a baron, I use the german term since it doesn't translate to English] Ramsay [the Ramsay family is a branch of the Scottish one, some of them moved to Finland in the 1500's] appeared and proclaimed:"let us wish well for Empress Maria on her high name day, hurrah!". Eager "hurrah!" shouts rang out from the ranks; the band played the imperial hymn. "Second", freiherr Ramsay proclaimed, "must I inform you that the Emperor has, in his mercy, willed to order the Finnish guards battalion to prepared itself to fighting shape, the faster the better." With forceful and voluminous cheers we saluted this order, welcome and happy for a warrior[again warrior, not soldier]. Even the open windows of the barracks filled with cheering warriors and the stormlike cheering lasted for a long time, well after the chiefs had left. Every warrior felt the sacred duty to begin defending, in a manly fashion, both christianity and the ancient, warlike fame won by our ancestors. After 3rd August the guards battalion erupted into effective action. Horses were bought and a supply train was being outfitted, enlisters (recruiters) were sent to many parts, to Osthrobotnia, to Tavastland, to Savolax and Karelia [I'm using Swedish place names here]. Streams of men flooded from everywhere. Having spent 4 days in Tavastland I brought with me 20 strong men. At the same time I said my goodbyes to my old mother and my friends, who, with tears in their eyes shook my hand, perhaps thinking that we saw each other for the last time. Moved to my very heart I promised to return again, should God permit it, having first visited Constantinople. Training began: turns, marching, instructing[perhaps aiming, the term could also mean loading drills etc] and shooting rifles, all peacetime "ceremonies" were left on the wayside. The dutiful training of young privates and the outfitting of the supply train lasted for the whole August. " ---------------------------------- A note on some of the terms, the Finnish words "vääpeli" (the rank of the author) and "vapaaherra" are pretty much literal translations from German and so, when the terms have no literal equal in English I use German ones to avoid mistranslating military or noble ranks. Vääpeli was the second-highest NCO rank in the Finnish forces of the Russian army. Also, the units didn't seem to have been constantly at full strenght, but being supplemented by recruiting of volunteers. This changed after the Russo-Turkish war to a system of random drafts, but that had not been in effect by the time the events of the book took place. There is a nice article of this in the Finnish wikipedia (https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomen_suuriruhtinaskunnan_armeija), due to spending cuts after the Crimean War there were only two Finnish formations in the Russian army, this one and a marine battalion. The article quotes (Torsten Ekman: Suomen kaarti 1812–1905 (suom. Martti Ahti). Schildts, Helsinki 2006) and says this about the guards battalion, the book is in Finnish, the section below translated by me: "It's men were, up to the end of the 1870's recruited volontarily and they were mostly agricultural labourers, workers, apprentices or the sons of talonpoika(land-owning farmer, they could still be dirt poor) and torppari(rent farmers who did not own their land but were not legally prevented from leaving it, they were not serfs). Discipline was harsh and cruel corporeal punishments were used." Ataxerxes fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Aug 3, 2016 |
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Aug 3, 2016 22:45
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Xerxes17 posted:I know, but specifically early modern stuff aside from the buildings/streets.
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Aug 3, 2016 22:50
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As a thought experiment, how many places you can shoot a person are actually going to be lethal? For all the other places on the body, a weapon designed to be lethal is a better wounding weapon than a theoretical weapon designed only to wound because pretty much by definition it's going to be depositing more energy or depositing it in a more destructive way. So it's not even proven that a hypothetical weapon designed to wound would do a better job of it than a regular one. Plus killing a guy is a better fail mode than not wounding them enough.Phanatic posted:The ultimate irony is that now that we've switched to fighting in mountainous deserts, engagement ranges are longer, and we've given our troops M4 rifles with shorter barrels, and as a result in a lot of engagements in Afghanistan only a few guys in a platoon are equipped with weapons that are effectively able to be used in those engagements. So people are looking pretty seriously at rounds like 6.5mm instead. These rounds are, again, pretty ballistically similar to the .276 Pedersen MacArthur rejected back in 1932. The funniest bit is that the first place they should look is the barrel length rather than throwing the whole damned thing out and adding yet another caliber (that's totally going to replace one or both of the other calibers we swear), but how often do we hear talk of that rather than some new hotness caliber that's really a small full sized round when you get down to it (as in not relying on small caliber high velocity effects)?
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Aug 3, 2016 22:57
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Tias posted:I'm pretty sure I read about it somewhere that seemed legit, but could you maybe expound on why it's dumb instead of just implying that it's dumb? I think the idea was not that it was intended to maim as much as with semi/automatic weaponry, the larger calibre was simply not needed and it was considered that the 5.56 round was perfectly effective while being much more accurate in sustained fire. So I guess it would be intended to wound in the sense that the possibility of wounding the enemy rather than killing them if you hit them was considered sufficient to keep the round effective while reaping the benefits of the smaller calibre in terms of accuracy. But nobody sat down and said "hmm let's see if we can figure out how to cause maximum misery among the enemy with our bullets" Also full size WW1/2 rifle rounds are absurdly overpowered for the kind of actual fighting ranges they saw. They make sense if you're hunting a moose or something and you need to kill poo poo super dead from a long way away, but human beings will stop shooting back with far less coercion, and they don't tend to stand still a thousand yards away while you sit and aim. A lot of fighting in the second world war involved trying to get close to the enemy to increase your ability to kill them, and at close range you definitely don't need a .303 rifle to kill someone. Hence the transition postwar into lighter calibre assault rifles which are still accurate at range but become increasingly effective as the, well, assault closes in on the enemy, with the capacity for rapid fire and also not being over four feet long. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Aug 3, 2016 |
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Aug 3, 2016 22:58
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xthetenth posted:As a thought experiment, how many places you can shoot a person are actually going to be lethal? If we're talking immediately lethal or incapacitating it's pretty much just the central nervous system, followed by the vessels of the circulatory system. There are plenty of places that will be lethal in a little bit (lung shots, big organs full of blood that won't bleed out as fast as an artery, etc), and even more that will eventually be lethal without medical treatment (penetrating wounds of the gut). Past that a lot of it comes down to psychological factors. The effects of weapons on the human body is some freaky poo poo. Some people will get shot absolutely to ribbons and keep fighting (MOH citations are good places to see this in action) while others will be combat ineffective after a relatively minor injury. This part of it isn't all that well understood , even now.
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Aug 3, 2016 23:07
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Cyrano4747 posted:Past that a lot of it comes down to psychological factors. The effects of weapons on the human body is some freaky poo poo. Some people will get shot absolutely to ribbons and keep fighting (MOH citations are good places to see this in action) while others will be combat ineffective after a relatively minor injury. This part of it isn't all that well understood , even now. 
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Aug 3, 2016 23:11
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I imagine it depends rather a lot on the individual whether being shot makes you think "oh gently caress I'm going to die" and whether that causes you to switch off or get pissed.
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Aug 3, 2016 23:11
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xthetenth posted:As a thought experiment, how many places you can shoot a person are actually going to be lethal? E;fb
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Aug 3, 2016 23:14
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this is why they have you cover your opponent's sword while you withdraw even after a successful lunge, siivola (and anyone else who's taken early modern fencing)
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Aug 3, 2016 23:16
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OwlFancier posted:I imagine it depends rather a lot on the individual whether being shot makes you think "oh gently caress I'm going to die" and whether that causes you to switch off or get pissed.
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Aug 3, 2016 23:18
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