|
e:SlothfulCobra posted:Obviously when the Italian armies met on the field, they'd be in it to win it, but there was this whole extra financial dimension to inter-italian warfare because the Italian states had more money to burn than men. They were constantly buying out the contracts of enemy mercenaries, and Federico da Montefeltro actually made a pretty penny selling the promise to not fight against someone. ^^^  Foul Fowl posted:is there a good book to read about these mercenary armies? and also about italian city state politics during that period? Extra Credits did a one off episode on a fairly famous one And thus the mafia was born.
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 18:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 23:15 |
|
|
gently caress Extra Credits.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 18:56
|
|
|
don't forget the sforzas, what happens when a mercenary levels up
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 18:59
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:Well more I figured that it might be true because it's a contemporary source, and also because it's exactly what I would do if I was a mercenary being asked to fight other mercenaries for money. This is one of those things where the problem with contemporary sources is that the author almost always brings their own prejudices into the writing. I find Machiavelli particularly grating because the man has a reputation for being exceptionally cynical, dishonest, and manipulative that has lasted until our day. As for the money, well, this could be either the case of our brains being warped by the nation-state ideas in our heads or it could just be that we're not the sort of people who would become mercenaries. HEY GAL was just mentioning earlier how oaths are a big deal for mercenaries in this time period, that's one of the things a colonel leverages to get his men to die for his wallet. On the other hand you should never leave mercenaries around on garrison duty because those fuckers will immediately turn coat and sell out the moment the enemy army shows up. The First Punic War has some great examples of mercenary antics and its followed by the Truceless war that goes to show just how badly pissed off war veterans and mercenaries will ruin your country if you screw them over. Unfortunately everything I know about that time period comes from old board games so I can't just post about it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 19:06
|
|
|
I don't really have a problem with what I've seen of Extra Credits, but how the gently caress do you do a video about Federico da Montefeltro without mentioning that he cut a chunk out of the bridge of his nose, to improve his field of view.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 19:07
|
|
|
Ithle01 posted:HEY GAL was just mentioning earlier how oaths are a big deal for mercenaries in this time period, that's one of the things a colonel leverages to get his men to die for his wallet. On the other hand you should never leave mercenaries around on garrison duty because those fuckers will immediately turn coat and sell out the moment the enemy army shows up. by our standards, they're more pragmatic than we are in some areas and way less than we are in others.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 19:10
|
|
|
Mr Enderby posted:I don't really have a problem with what I've seen of Extra Credits, but how the gently caress do you do a video about Federico da Montefeltro without mentioning that he cut a chunk out of the bridge of his nose, to improve his field of view. You'll notice that this is actually reflected in his art!  And they mention it in their follow up Lies episode for the Opium Wars I believe. There's just so much they could always put in to each of their Extra History episodes that something always has to be cut; and while totally bad rear end the nose story doesn't really fit in with the narrative they were trying to tell; which is about the birth of the Renaissance and wealthy lords being patrons to early modern thinkers. So they do mention it, just not directly in that episode.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 19:10
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:wealthy lords being patrons to early modern thinkers  
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 19:13
|
|
|
I've hurfed this bit of durf at you guys before, but since I finally got around to writing a lot of words about it in an organized fashion, I figured I'd post it. The next time someone claims the S-tank was a tank destroyer, an SPG or a defensive vehicle, link them to these words.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 19:16
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:smokeless maybe not, but isn't black powder vulnerable to going off when it's jostled? i remember hearing that you've got your biggest risk of an accidental discharge when you're ramming Nope. The reason you get premature discharges while ramming BP is that you had an ember down in the bore that ignited it. That's why cannon swab between shots, but it cna happen with muskets etc. too. edit: I'm sure there is a pressure where black powde will spontaneously ignite, but it's more than a human hand is going to produce. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Aug 19, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 19:33
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:the same drat dudes who might not believe in any religion and go through the thirty years' war for nothing but gold, who will strip the dead and kill the wounded, who won't blink at doing all sorts of things to any civilian who crosses them, will, if you ask them to, live and die for nothing but a company flag. When I was writing my post I originally went off on a vitriol fueled diatribe comparing the oaths the mercenaries swore to concept of dying for one's country, but then deleted it when I realized I probably shouldn't let my own disgust for nationalist sentiment show through in a post where I just five seconds ago poo poo-talked Machiavelli as being too cynical and biased to be considered a reliable source.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 19:39
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:smokeless maybe not, but isn't black powder vulnerable to going off when it's jostled? i remember hearing that you've got your biggest risk of an accidental discharge when you're ramming Black powder isn't very impact-sensitive, you could bang on corns with a hammer all day long and you'd just crush them into individual grains. It's really sensitive to friction, though, so if you had some unburned grains from the previous shot stuck to the surface of the barrel, and while you were ramming you squeezed some grains between the rammer and the side of the barrel and generated enough friction to ignite them, that could result in an ND. Or if the tip of your rammer were capable of striking sparks off the barrel, that'd be a bad idea. Or, you know, if there was still an ember down there from a previous shot, it might not be enough to ignite a new charge that you pour in but then when you ram it and compress it against that ember, boom.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 19:44
|
|
|
It's misleading to say that Machiavelli loved Rome as much as some people have since a lot of his project was encouraging people to reject classical models for political behavior, particularly his subversion of the classical concept of virtus. Anyway, Cheeky quick post from this book on Operation Typhoon re: the Panzer troops after Barbarossa and in the lead up to the operation - Just for clarity: go day of Typhoon was October 2nd (Guderian was allowed to go early to monopolise air cover for a couple of days). Go day Barbarossa June 22nd. Relative Strength of Panzer troops June-October Bock's 8 Panzer divisions on the 22nd of June totalled 1,530 tanks. On October 2nd he had a little more than this to use for Typhoon, despite having the greatest concentration of Panzer Units any German commander would have in the war. Where did those numbers come from? Firstly, between June and October, however, Bock was assigned Hoepner's panzer group (the 4th) and 4 more Panzer Divisions in addition to his 8 panzer divisions under Hoth and Guderian, making 12. However, almost all the reinforced strength came from new production and 2 specific Divisions, the 2nd and 5th Panzer Divisions: as a result, 12 of Bock's Panzer Divisions contributed only half of the total number of tanks involved in operation Typhoon. And of the ones that he had rolled through from his original 8 panzer divisions, a number of tanks were only in a provisional state of repair. If the strength of the 12 veteran Panzer divisions Bock had on October 2nd [the 8+4 new ones] is tracked from 22nd of June to 4 October the divisional strength had been reduced by 70%, from 2,476 to 750 tanks. Colonel Walther Charles De Beaulieu, the chief of staff of Panzer Group 4, noted that at the end of September: ‘what one referred to as a “division” was actually only half of a division”. Meanwhile, the shiny new divisions, the 5th and the 2nd, brought 450 tanks each. Hitler was also terrible about reinforcing these depleted units. For Typhoon he released 300 tanks out of a production total of over 800 between Barbarossa and Typhoon, amounting to: 60 38(t)'s, 150 mk III's, 96 mk IV's, averaging out to only 25 new tanks per division. Hitler was so assured of victory though that the navy and airforce gained a greater share of production between July and December 1941: overall production of army weapons fell 29% in that period. Tracking The Losses in Barbarossa Hoth's 3rd Panzer Group is a good example. His 7th division after the first week of Barbarossa had lost 50% of it's Mk. II's and III's and 75% of it's Mk. IV's, more than half to logistical issues and breakdown rather than enemy action. Though, where Soviet forces could be used adequately, they were also devastating: Model's 3rd Division lost 22 tanks in a single action stemming from an ambush, to Soviet tank fire, in Zhoblin on July 6th. Taking the Panzer groups as a whole by September 7th: Guderian had 5 Panzer Divisions with 256 tanks, down from 904 on 22 June. Hoth had 280 tanks, down from 707. Hoepner had 250 tanks down from 626. These were the formations whose only internal reinforcement of tanks was the aforementioned 300 (or 25 per division). Not Just Tanks To put those tank losses in the perspective of human loss, Guderian's 'panzer group' (around this time it becomes an army, and is swolen) had also lost 32,000 men as casualties. The infantry often had it worse, since they were isolated and mobile support to assist them in defensive battles was minimal, so ever smaller units kept holding the same positions. Blumentritt wrote in this period: ‘In modern warfare infantry requires armoured support not only in the attack but also on the defense. When I say our lines were thin, this is not an understatement. Divisions were assigned sectors almost twenty miles wide, Furthermore, in view of the heavy casualties already suffered in the course of the campaign, these divisions were usually under strength and tactical reserves were non-existent’. One idea of how bad it could be is the fighting at Yel'nya between 18th August - 5th September, where the 137th Infantry division lost 2,000 men in a defensive battle; the 263rd, in just one week of that fighting, lost 1,200. Kluge's army as a whole lost 38,00 men, Stauss 48,000; by 26 September the total casualties for Barbarossa across all army groups were 534,000, 15% of the initial force - while only 385,000 were in the replacement army. This is substantial when you consider that 85% of German men aged 20-30 were already in the Wehrmacht, whereas in July-August 1941 the Soviet Union added 27 new field armies to its total strength. This attrition was a factor in the air war: Kesselring, who was the lead aerial commander for Typhoon with army group centre, was reduced from 1,200 to 1,000 aircraft despite replacements. Between 22 June and 12 July 550 German planes were destroyed and 336 were damaged, and the planes were moving away from good, secure bases in German territory to damaged or shoddy bases in Soviet territory. In trucks, as already mentioned, this attrition was also a huge problem. There were 600,000 trucks available on June 22 for Barbarossa, largely within the 4 panzer groups. By late September, Panzer Group 2 reported a loss of 30-40% of all its wheeled transport. Exact numbers aren't available for all units, but if you can extrapolate from those losses elsewhere that's a loss of between 180,000 to 240,000 vehicles before Typhoon and the Russian rain and cold had even started. How many did Hitler release to the front when he ordered the release of 300 new tanks? 3,500. Barbarossa had begun a demotorisation of the German army that would only continue in to Typhoon. You get the sense about the campaigns of 1941 as a whole that the Germans had thrust a brittle weapon in to the Soviet Union's gut only to have it snap off at the hilt. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Aug 19, 2016 |
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 19:47
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:edit: I'm sure there is a pressure where black powde will spontaneously ignite, but it's more than a human hand is going to produce.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 19:54
|
|
Oh and added flavour quotation between a new recruit and a veteran in October 1941:quote:‘Have a look at a map of Russia. The land is immense. And how far did we advance? Not even as far as Napoleon in 1812 – our conquest is only a thin strip on the map’. Meahwhile quote:'Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist, after the war admitted to an American at Nuremberg 'I never read Clausewitz.' He continued: 'I dont know enough about Clausewitz to be able to tell you what his theories are. I know that Russians must have read him a good deal, and perhaps it's too bad I didn't read it'
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 19:56
|
|
|
That's not black powder. During WWII they would have been nitrocellulose stabilized with diphenylamine, later on a slightly different composition was used but it was still pretty much nitrocellulose. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Aug 19, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:04
|
|
|
Every time I hear about Nazi incompetence I just think "Thank God Hitler wasn't competent. He might have actually beat Russia."
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:14
|
|
Mycroft Holmes posted:Every time I hear about Nazi incompetence I just think "Thank God Hitler wasn't competent. He might have actually beat Russia." It's pretty clear that virtually every time the German army is more circumspect and tries to slow the gently caress down to stop all this crippling attrition all it actually does it give the Soviets more time. Hell, destroying these huge pockets of Soviet troops and putting down millions of Soviet men is enough to buy the requisite time. And it goes both ways: what if Stalin was prepared to allow his generals to withdraw and prevent their encirclements?
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:16
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:That's not black powder. During WWII they would have been nitrocellulose stabilized with diphenylamine, later on a slightly different composition was used but it was still pretty much nitrocellulose. edit: i understood some of those words 
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:24
|
|
|
Disinterested posted:You get the sense about the campaigns of 1941 as a whole that the Germans had thrust a brittle weapon in to the Soviet Union's gut only to have it snap off at the hilt. This is an amazing line.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:26
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:ok, this entire time i thought they used black powder as well. and the wikipedia entry says there were portions of black powder on some of the charges, but not what they were for. what were they for? that was the navy being super stupid. They wanted to see if ocmpression could cause ignition, but didn't want to use real explosives, so they used bags full of wooden pellets with small black powder charges on the end. This is insanely stupid and doesn't test gently caress all.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:27
|
|
|
When France changed to a pointed bullet for their 1886 Lebel rifle (which used a tube magazine under the barrel like you see in cowboy lever-action guns), they made cartridges with a little groove on the cartridge base around the primer so the trailing cartridges' bullets wouldn't ride up and strike the primers on the leading cartridges in the tubes. Welp, that's my contribution to accidental discharge chat, thanks for listening, God bless 
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:27
|
|
|
If Hitler was competent, he wouldn't be fighting Russia in the first place. At least not while he still had a war going on in the west.Mr Enderby posted:I don't really have a problem with what I've seen of Extra Credits, but how the gently caress do you do a video about Federico da Montefeltro without mentioning that he cut a chunk out of the bridge of his nose, to improve his field of view. For the purposes of their style, noses just don't exist. They did depict him with only one eye without ever explaining it though.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:28
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:that was the navy being super stupid. They wanted to see if ocmpression could cause ignition, but didn't want to use real explosives, so they used bags full of wooden pellets with small black powder charges on the end. black powder should not be doing that
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:30
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:the same drat dudes who might not believe in any religion and go through the thirty years' war for nothing but gold, who will strip the dead and kill the wounded, who won't blink at doing all sorts of things to any civilian who crosses them, will, if you ask them to, live and die for nothing but a company flag. A man must have a code 
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:36
|
|
|
aphid_licker posted:A man must have a code i've heard guys bring up "the praiseworthy Imperial German War Law" in the middle of towering arguments. they take their own legal code very seriously edit: among other things in the Mansfeld Regiment's Articles of War is Article 2, the one where they swear to pray "sincerely, and from their hearts" for Philip IV's goals
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:37
|
|
spectralent posted:This is an amazing line. Stahel uses a line from Glantz about the USSR and Germany being two prizefighters who punch eachother to blindness and exhaustion.
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:54
|
|
|
Does anyone know what these light cavalry hats/helmets are called?  I think I've seen British light infantry companies wearing these too, and something similar from an American revolutionary cavalry unit (I think Maryland Dragoons, maybe?). Was this an official "light" horse/foot piece of headgear, or am I wrong that it was primarily associated with light units?
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:55
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:i've heard guys bring up "the praiseworthy Imperial German War Law" in the middle of towering arguments. they take their own legal code very seriously I like how the dudes who are into reenacting the poo poo you study are just as weird as the dudes that did it originally. Yes, I know you reenact it too.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 20:58
|
|
|
How destructive is the firing of a 15 inch battleship gun anyway? Like is it dangerous to any crew who might be topside during a firing? Undoubtedly it would be deafeningly loud I guess.SlothfulCobra posted:If Hitler was competent, he wouldn't be fighting Russia in the first place. At least not while he still had a war going on in the west. I love this question though; if Hitler doesn't invade Russia, what the hell is he going to do instead? He has no meaningful way to end the war in the west, so the only other option is to sit on your hands waiting for the economy to collapse. What was the German general staff's opinion of the rapidly reforming Red Army? Were they as concerned about it in '40 as they were in '13?
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 21:00
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
Grenrow posted:Does anyone know what these light cavalry hats/helmets are called? During this era self raised dragoons, light infantry and riflemen got some very interesting accessories and uniforms picked or bought by the senior officers that raised said regiments. I'm not sure what the exact name for it is, but I have seen the style used once or twice more. Sort of reminds me of the leather helmets the Austrian's had during the first half of the Napoleonic Wars before they switched over to shako.
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 21:01
|
|
|
VanSandman posted:I like how the dudes who are into reenacting the poo poo you study are just as weird as the dudes that did it originally.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 21:08
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:How destructive is the firing of a 15 inch battleship gun anyway? Like is it dangerous to any crew who might be topside during a firing? Undoubtedly it would be deafeningly loud I guess. IIRC the reforms were meant to be done in 43 or 44? So the window to attack wasn't huge.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 21:10
|
|
SeanBeansShako posted:During this era self raised dragoons, light infantry and riflemen got some very interesting accessories and uniforms picked or bought by the senior officers that raised said regiments. I'm not sure what the exact name for it is, but I have seen the style used once or twice more.  I thought of D when I saw it.
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 21:12
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:pellisworth has some posts where he bitches about his german colleagues' approach to scientific equipment--this poo poo's still A Thing with them few pages back, but yeah, modern German science is very well-respected and high-quality but they have a reputation for overengineering and over-automating equipment, especially in the field. It's one thing to have a fancy complex setup in your well-controlled university laboratory, but you try to take that into the field and American scientists are gonna be like why. When I was starting my thesis research I was setting up lab equipment and showed our very experienced lab technician the reference schematic I was basing my design on. One look at it, she says "this is from a German publication, isn't it? We need like a third of this stuff." Also, after doing a bunch of field research, you really want to avoid unnecessary automation for a lot of the same logistics reasons as, say, tanks. Field equipment needs to be robust and simple to operate because you're working long hours in a cramped laboratory on a moving ship at sea and you only have the replacement parts you packed along. Like gently caress I am going to gamble my research samples on the assumption my complicated valve automation system won't fail. I'll just switch the drat valve myself.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 21:14
|
|
|
what do germans do when their complicated bullshit fails? have you asked any of your german counterparts this
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 21:15
|
|
|
What do you do when you're tired and mess the order up? 
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 21:16
|
|
|
Someone correct me but weren't there issues with German weapons melting on deployment to ISAF.
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 21:16
|
|
|
Disinterested posted:Someone correct me but weren't there issues with German weapons melting on deployment to ISAF. The G36. Better yet, the melty plastic was among other things the connection between scope and barrel.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 21:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 23:15 |
|
|
This is a good opportunity to ask a question Stahel doesn't answer: why, in the figures I listed above, would the IV's losses be 75% of total strength, while the III and II's losses were at 50%? Given most of the losses were reliability or supply related, were the IV's in 1941 that much more unreliable than the rest of the tank fleet? He says that they tended to ditch the heavier armour when they had to ditch vehicles for fuel and parts reasons as well, so I'm assuming that might have been a factor?
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2016 21:22
|
|