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hogmartin posted:Presumably not every engineer, but probably every officer. ADM Rickover was famous for conducting uncomfortable and humiliating interviews of potential nuclear submarine officers, it would be very surprising if he hadn't enacted some kind of plan to ensure that his successors continued the tradition now 30 years after he died. http://www.businessinsider.com/hyman-rickover-interview-techniques-2014-4 I remember a story in one of my sub books about some prospective officer going through the Rickover interview where he got pissed off at an answer, and picked up the paperwork he had on his desk and threw it all straight up in the air. A folded piece of paper spiraled down and landed on Rickover's head, perched there like a hat, and Rickover conducted the rest of the interview like that.
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Aug 14, 2016 18:51
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Isn't there also a story where he took a prospective officer to lunch and failed him instantly when the guy salted his food without checking if it needed to be salted first?
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Aug 14, 2016 18:54
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HEY GAL posted:anyway, i showed my brand new sheath for my dagger to my hauptmann and he said "that's not suitable for a common soldier". showed it to a friend of mine and he said "as soon as you get hungry you'll sell it." I bet you your sheathe to my hat that you won't sell it next time you're hungry.
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Aug 14, 2016 18:59
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ArchangeI posted:Isn't there also a story where he took a prospective officer to lunch and failed him instantly when the guy salted his food without checking if it needed to be salted first? A lot of the stories are apocryphal. My favorite is the one where Rickover dressed up in civvies and tried to walk aboard one of the SSBNs parked in Groton. A Marine guard confronted him with an aimed M14 and yelled "Halt right there!" Rickover drew himself up to his full height (which wasn't much) and said "Marine, do you know who I am?" The Marine responded "Yes, sir! You're the deadest loving admiral in the US Navy if you don't halt right there!"
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Aug 14, 2016 18:59
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Trin Tragula posted:Let's play a game, this one is called "1715 or 1915?" So which one is it? I legit can't tell.
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Aug 14, 2016 19:34
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Grand Prize Winner posted:So which one is it? I legit can't tell. Hint: binoculars
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Aug 14, 2016 19:46
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The Belgian posted:Hint: binoculars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binoculars#Galilean_binoculars (binoculars or a portable telescope mean this isn't 1615, tho) HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Aug 14, 2016 |
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Aug 14, 2016 19:48
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HEY GAL posted:weirdly enough, no Well I suppose, but wouldn't it be exceptionally rare for a soldier to have one back then? It also seems unlikely that they would be durable enough to be used in a military context back then. (Though I could be completely wrong.)
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Aug 14, 2016 19:51
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The Belgian posted:Well I suppose, but wouldn't it be exceptionally rare for a soldier to have one back then? It also seems unlikely that they would be durable enough to be used in a military context back then.
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Aug 14, 2016 19:54
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HEY GAL posted:rare, yes. a telescope that's portable by a single person would itself be the Hot New poo poo as of 1715, which is why 30yw battlefield ruses look so hilarious to us ruses such as....?
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Aug 14, 2016 20:59
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Phanatic posted:A lot of the stories are apocryphal. My favorite is the one where Rickover dressed up in civvies and tried to walk aboard one of the SSBNs parked in Groton. A Marine guard confronted him with an aimed M14 and yelled "Halt right there!" Rickover drew himself up to his full height (which wasn't much) and said "Marine, do you know who I am?" The Marine responded "Yes, sir! You're the deadest loving admiral in the US Navy if you don't halt right there!" Yeah, he's kind of like the Keyser Soze of the Navy that way. I've heard the "do not presume the eggs are not already salted" one too. It's kind of hard to know what to believe. There are 2 main types of Rickover stories: - A haughty junior officer tries to snow him and gets utterly shut down - An E-nothing peasant doing a poo poo job Does The Right Thing and gets his approval (like Phanatic's story above) So you can see how he became a folk legend. I believe all the interview stories though.
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Aug 14, 2016 21:48
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I think it was a Rickover story where if he asks you if you have children, and you do, and you answer with more than, "Yes, sir," then you lose the interview.
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Aug 14, 2016 22:05
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hogmartin posted:Yeah, he's kind of like the Keyser Soze of the Navy that way. I've heard the "do not presume the eggs are not already salted" one too. It's kind of hard to know what to believe. There are 2 main types of Rickover stories: I think most of the stories are also told with Rickover's name filed off and Curtis LeMay's name written in.
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Aug 14, 2016 22:11
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Phanatic posted:I think most of the stories are also told with Rickover's name filed off and Curtis LeMay's name written in. Or James Mattis.
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Aug 14, 2016 22:18
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Grand Prize Winner posted:ruses such as....?
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Aug 15, 2016 00:00
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HEY GAL posted:one tactic for the defenders during a siege is literally that from a distance it's hard to tell where the front door of a star fort is I assume this means they make/paint on fake doors? That's pretty funny. "Curse you Bugsolfus von Bunnystein!"
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Aug 15, 2016 00:16
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Kemper Boyd posted:The Finnish infantry brigades are supposed to use tractors, trucks and buses for strategic mobility though. Besides, the only thing they're good for is for being a force-in-being anyway since they have almost no AA or AT gear. Infantry Brigade 80 has tractors and trailers, but I was speaking of paikallispuolustusjoukot, ie. battalion and company sized local defense units.
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Aug 15, 2016 00:16
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Splode posted:I assume this means they make/paint on fake doors? That's pretty funny. you can't see the thing from high up, if you try to get closer the defenders will start shooting, and theoretically maps and plans of the fort you're besieging might exist, but where? and how would you get them?
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Aug 15, 2016 00:19
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Why would you bother attempting to take a Star Fort anyway? Those things are huge, terrifying obstacles. Just go around.
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Aug 15, 2016 00:23
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I know they wrote a big manual on how to attack star forts by digging trenches towards it, but I was under the impression that the general advice for doing so was "Don't."
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Aug 15, 2016 00:24
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Endman posted:Why would you bother attempting to take a Star Fort anyway? Those things are huge, terrifying obstacles. Just go around. cool
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Aug 15, 2016 00:24
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OwlFancier posted:I know they wrote a big manual on how to attack star forts by digging trenches towards it, but I was under the impression that the general advice for doing so was "Don't." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege#Marshal_Vauban_and_Van_Coehoorn but no, people keep loving attacking these things sieges are the new black, have you seen the 80yw
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Aug 15, 2016 00:25
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Try diplomacy? Wait a few centuries for the aggressive ravelin cancer to consume the entire fort?
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Aug 15, 2016 00:26
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HEY GAL posted:now that fort's dudes are behind you I can see how that might be a pain, but certainly less of a pain than trying to take a Star Fort. And besides, they might be behind you, but you're in their bed with their wife in the town they're not defending because they're sitting in the fort.
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Aug 15, 2016 00:31
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HEY GAL posted:no, this means from far enough away the glacis just looks like an almost featureless low slope From wounding round the remains of incomplete star fort in the UK recently, I can say that they are easier than you think to overlook. I didn't realise it was a star fort on the drive up, only once I was walking around what would have been its walls, realising that there was some stonework around and a low slope, and thinking back to HEY GAL's posts.
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Aug 15, 2016 00:57
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nothing to seehere posted:From wounding round the remains of incomplete star fort in the UK recently, I can say that they are easier than you think to overlook. I didn't realise it was a star fort on the drive up, only once I was walking around what would have been its walls, realising that there was some stonework around and a low slope, and thinking back to HEY GAL's posts. I didn't think we had any actual star forts over here, I know some of the castles were updated, the Tower of London is surprisingly modern in its outer works and Stirling Castle shows some definite gunnery modifications but do we have any actual purpose built star forts?
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Aug 15, 2016 01:01
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Endman posted:I can see how that might be a pain, but certainly less of a pain than trying to take a Star Fort. And besides, they might be behind you, but you're in their bed with their wife in the town they're not defending because they're sitting in the fort.
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Aug 15, 2016 01:19
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OwlFancier posted:I didn't think we had any actual star forts over here, I know some of the castles were updated, the Tower of London is surprisingly modern in its outer works and Stirling Castle shows some definite gunnery modifications but do we have any actual purpose built star forts? I was going to say, I thought we had our own little brand of crazy coastal fortress towers instead of Stat Forts?
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Aug 15, 2016 01:24
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darthbob88 posted:I think I see a fatal error. Shhh, I may have just noticed the same one. 
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Aug 15, 2016 01:29
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100 Years Ago Good news, motherfuckers. Someone's just come back from holiday.  12 August: We close the book on the Battle of Romani, and General Haig plays a genuinely hilarious jape on General Joffre; but that's just an appetiser for the return to action of Sergeant Flora Sandes, the only Briton the Salonika front who actually wants to be there. Oh, and General von Falkenhayn's position as German commander-in-chief is looking extremely ropey and he desperately needs to not be totally wrong about something; good thing he's assuring everyone in Berlin and the Kaiser too that Romania cannot possibly enter the war until the end of September even if they wanted to, which they probably don't. Digestif courtesy of E.S. Thompson, who's managed to lose his mates' kit, and Max Plowman, who has acquired a batman, a patronising attitude, and a disturbing piece of news.
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Aug 15, 2016 01:37
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HEY GAL posted:no, this means from far enough away the glacis just looks like an almost featureless low slope
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Aug 15, 2016 01:42
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So I was wandering through a book store today and found 6 of 7 volumes of "The World War" by Francis March. The third volume was missing. Does anyone in here have any advice for reading it? So far it seems very very nationalistic and rah rah America which, fine, it's written by the relative of a general and also 3 years after the armistice.
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Aug 15, 2016 01:50
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Endman posted:Why would you bother attempting to take a Star Fort anyway? Those things are huge, terrifying obstacles. Just go around. Rifled cannon, motherfucker.
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Aug 15, 2016 01:52
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HEY GAL posted:now that fort's dudes are behind you Don't kinkshame
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Aug 15, 2016 02:08
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Endman posted:I can see how that might be a pain, but certainly less of a pain than trying to take a Star Fort. I wonder why many successive generations of professional soldiers who actually fought in those centuries never thought of this very obvious "just go round" tactic you've discovered. It's a pretty basic feature of military strategy. Fortifications don't just make the things inside them more difficult to attack, they control the entire area surrounding them. One of the things inside them, being protected, is a mobile force. You can't destroy that force without reducing the fortifications, and you can't ignore them because they will sortie and interfere with you. For example, your army has to eat, which means foraging or a supply train, probably some combination of the two. Living off the land requires you to disperse men in foraging parties, who are then vulnerable if the enemy sorties from their fortress. Likewise, your supply train is vulnerable to attack. You ignored the star forts, and now your army is starving. There is also the probability that you may have to fight a pitched battle, and if you left enemy fortifications intact in your rear, while you are engaged with the enemy's main force the garrisons will sortie and hit you from behind. Also a specific issue with the idea of just going around the forts and capturing a city, which is loss of cohesion during pillage. Basically, when you march in your men will want to steal anything they can get their hands on, find booze and get wasted, assault women, fight over loot, booze, and women, and just generally collapse into disorder. You really do not want this to happen with enemy garrisons intact in your rear, because they are in fighting order and your men are not. Reducing the star forts is very difficult. Not reducing the star forts is fatal.
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Aug 15, 2016 02:22
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Was fatal at least. Patton got stuck on them after being all  about no fort being able to stand up to his genius. Ended up having to just go round and leave forces to bottle them, which was totally fine with the USA's manpower advantage at that time and probably wouldn't have worked in any other war or will ever work again.
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Aug 15, 2016 02:32
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HEY GAL posted:sieges are the new black, have you seen the 80yw Something something flanders field?
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Aug 15, 2016 02:36
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Arquinsiel posted:Was fatal at least. Patton got stuck on them after being all Well, like ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted, technical innovations over the course of the 19th century gave attackers considerably better options for dealing with fortifications. Better guns, better shells, etc. made it more feasible to reduce forts through firepower. Moreover, by the time Patton was butting up against the Siegfried Line, sorties by defenders were much less dangerous because leaving the fortifications meant exposing themselves to artillery and airpower and probably being disrupted before they could do anything useful. He was pretty safe just leaving men to screen the fortifications, because he knew they had the finest artillery and close air support in the world backing them. The development of modern fire support is just a huge problem for those kinds of counterattacks. Even if the combat spearhead comes through okay, softer supporting elements just get chewed up badly. The German reaction to the landings at Anzio are a great example, because they did what they were supposed to do--they identified the landing site and used their mobile reserve to mount a determined counterattack. But in practice, any German column that moved exposed itself, and was met by overwhelming fire from naval guns and air support. Got wrecked before they could do anything useful. Of course since then you do see armies with a material disadvantage moving towards guerrilla warfare, and arguably the principle is very similar. Instead of having walls and trenches you hide yourself in the civilian population, and you make sorties by ambushing the enemy and then retreating back into obscurity.
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Aug 15, 2016 02:55
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EvanSchenck posted:I wonder why many successive generations of professional soldiers who actually fought in those centuries never thought of this very obvious "just go round" tactic you've discovered. Consider me educated on why reducing fortifications is so critical. Of course, if you could do so next time without the snide comment at the beginning, that would be even better.
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Aug 15, 2016 03:14
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A lot of WWII combat situations are the result of a weird balance in tech where things like this are possible but would now just not happen due to our ability to simply blow the poo poo out of them with a single flyover.
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Aug 15, 2016 03:15
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