|
Mycroft Holmes posted:an m60 It sure worked for the West Virginians in famous historical document 1632~ edit: gently caress, don't want to start the next page with a shitpost. Give me a bit to think of something worthy. e: okay, I was at a conference on drones recently. a few of the speakers made disparaging comments about early drones, including some 1960s drone ASW helicopter that apparently almost never made it back onto the ships that launched it, leading to several more years of manned ASW helicopters. How bad did the early ones suck, and when did they start being a good ROI? Grand Prize Winner fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Aug 31, 2016 |
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 04:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 14:13 |
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:It sure worked for the West Virginians in famous historical document 1632~ It's kind of unfair to pick on the QH-50 too much because it was designed to be very small, very cheap, and consequently had the accident rate you'd expect from a drone helicopter from 1960 that didn't have much in the way of redundant systems. Much as the joke goes that interceptors are the first stage of a two stage SAM, those were expendable like the first stage of a two stage long range depth charge, and it's a bit hard to judge the ROI on a system that provides a capability that otherwise wouldn't be there. They did do some interesting stuff with them with television cameras to spot artillery and do recon for their ships, as well.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 04:14
|
|
|
Xerxes17 posted:Thread title suggestion: "Ask us about Military History: Operation Just Post". Sorry, been meaning to reply sooner to this. I'm trying to recall all the details she gave me about Dresden, but there wasn't much. She never said much about it, and I'd ask her but she passed away about a year ago (along with my grandfather and my mother), so I'm sorta out of options for asking for more details there. She did tell me about the sounds, though. I think those are what haunted her the most. I do recall a more light-hearted story: Her sister was arrested at some point in 1941-1942 for speaking ill of Adolf Hitler. She was held for a year or so and was being released to her family when the guard at the exit said to her "So, you going to keep your mouth shut now?", to which she replied "Hitler can kiss my rear end" (or so goes family lore). She was turned around and walked right back into the prison, where she remained for a few more months before being released. Whether or not that's family-style stdh is up to you to decide, but that's how I was told the story. Final note here: After WWII my grandmother moved back to Darmstadt with what was left of her family. During the Korean war, my grandfather was deployed as a member of a radar unit in the US Air Force in Germany. His last name (Ball) was notable because there were two young fellows in his unit who had the last name "Cox". At one point, he would always tell us, his commander looked at them and said "Oh great, we've got two Cox and a Ball", a story we would always groan at. Anyway, when my grandfather passed away I was going through his old military stuff and found his Korean war-era orders. Sure enough, there were two young men with the last name "Cox" on the roster, along with my grandfather.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 07:36
|
|
|
Rodrigo Diaz posted:As the other answers suggest, the is no one set "way". It's just a question of tactics. You could break into them with rodeleros or halberdiers and follow up with your own pikemen, you could hit them with well armored cavalry (or just hit them in the flanks) you could blast them apart with cannons, whittle them down with handheld ranged weapons, etc. Lots of ways. quote:Edit: Disinterested posted:Sit on a fortification and yell swear words at them.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 11:31
|
|
|
Hogge Wild posted:Coming to Finland to be sober? But yeah sure! Yeah yeah, I know, but all the more reason for AA to move to town I guess  What cool things are there to see in Milhistorical Helsinki? Religious, local history type stuff has interest as well.Cocksmith posted:how many bears would it take to beat a tiger ii Considering one bear can mount up to 8 Kh-55 cruise missiles, each capable of bringing 200 kT thermonuclear warheads to the table, I'd say one is sufficient   
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 11:51
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:breitenfeld happened because tilly's guys were flanked while fighting guys to their front I thought you said the you couldn't flank a tercio because it was a square Tilly: Fraud status confirmed
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 11:52
|
|
|
I have a question about naval warfare. Submarines are well and truly hosed once the enemy starts using active sonar, right? Why don't people use active sonar at all times then?
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 11:54
|
|
|
VanSandman posted:I have a question about naval warfare. Submarines are well and truly hosed once the enemy starts using active sonar, right? Why don't people use active sonar at all times then? Then you're open to every other sub that isn't using active sonar.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 11:58
|
|
|
VanSandman posted:I have a question about naval warfare. Submarines are well and truly hosed once the enemy starts using active sonar, right? Why don't people use active sonar at all times then? Active sonar is basically putting a big sign on your boat saying "THERE IS A BOAT HERE"
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 12:02
|
|
|
Tias posted:Yeah yeah, I know, but all the more reason for AA to move to town I guess Viapori is always worth a visit on a sunny day. Never lost a battle, only surrendered once!  On the island there's also a WW2 sub that you can walk through (it's as cramped as you can expect with a dozen other filthy visitors)  Oh and there's also the war museum in the same location 
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 12:06
|
|
|
MikeCrotch posted:I thought you said the you couldn't flank a tercio because it was a square From playing Pike and Shot, I can tell you that early tercios are immune to flanking and rear attacks but late tercios can be charged from the rear! Also I was playing Breitenfeld the other night as Gusto Ado. drat Saxon treachers!
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 12:11
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Active sonar is basically putting a big sign on your boat saying "THERE IS A BOAT HERE" Don't the folks in the sub/nearby already know that, though? Who is getting new info from active sonar?
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 12:43
|
|
|
zzuupp posted:I'm still 2 pages behind, but THANKS for reminding me about this righteous dude. Which reminds me of one of my favorite chains of weird historical tidbits. When Alexander Suvorov was a kid, he was obsessed with literature about military and military history, but he was rather sickly and his father didn't want to allow him to persue a military career. One day, their neighbor, General Abram Petrovich Gannibal dropped by to have a chat with the kid after he heard Suvorov's dad complaining, and was so impressed that he ended up persuading the father to allow Alex to pursue his career of choice. Now, this Gannibal fellow, who was he?  *Ibrahim was born somewhere near Lake Chad to a local noble family (for a long time it was assumed he was born in Ethiopia, since "Ethiopia" was an 'eh, close enough' location used by Russians to refer to more-less everything Subsaharan African that wasn't a known colony of someone). As a small child he was kidnapped/taken hostage/enslaved (your preferred choice of words may vary) by the Ottomans and brought to Constantinople/Istanbul (your preferred choice of words may vary). There, he was noticed by a Serbian merchant, Sava Vladislavić Raguzinski, a diplomat/spy (your preferred choice of words may vary) in employ of Peter the Great, who rescued/ransomed/purchased (your preferred choice of words may vary) the child and brought him to Russia to introduce/present/gift (your preferred choice of words may vary) him to the Tzar. Peter the Great took a liking to the kid, and made him his godchild and a member of his household, from which point on Ibrahim was known as Abram (Russian version of Abraham-Ibrahim) Petrovich. The surname Gannibal (Hannibal) was something added later, during his military service in the French army. Abram followed Peter the Great on his military campaigns, and was eventually able to enroll in a French military academy, where he graduated as an artillery officer and took part in some French civil war (apologies for the lack of detail, my knowledge of the clusterfuck that is French history of the time is... poor, to say the least) Anyway, he not only survives but distinguishes himself, and eventually returns to Russia. A few years later, Peter the Great dies from bladder gangrene (yikes) and some bigwig Russian prince uses the opportunity to exile Gannibal 4000 miles away to MiddleOfNowhere, Siberia, due to not being able to stand seeing a *Blazing Saddles GONG sound* in court. A few years after that, someone wonders "Why the hell is one of our best military engineers over there and not over here?" and Gannibal is brought back to court. He goes up in rank to Major General, and eventually becomes the governor of a province in Russia, before retiring in an interesting reversal of traditional slavery depictions, a black landlord living in a manor and owning a bajillion Russian serfs. (seriously, look up Russian serfdom, it's kinda horrifying) He was very much a shining example of Russian nobility of the time, which is to say, a well-educated rich rear end in a top hat with a strong mysoginst streak who despised anyone below him.  He had his first wife imprisoned for over a decade on account of infidelity (daughter too white), yet there's a preserved letter he sent to a fellow noble that boils down to "yo, bro, I knocked up one of my serfs, I'm handing her over to you since it's kinda awkward having her around"I'm kinda sad Pushkin's novel about his great-grandfather wasn't finished, as fictionalized as it was, since the topics it was supposed to explore include Gannibal's attempts to handle being seen both as an intellectual and a distinguished noble in the Tzar's service, and an exotic African curio to be gawked at and gossiped about by everyone else, as well as tackling some interesting interplay of class and race (paraphrasing a random Russian noble: 'He may be a black devil, but at least he's not a commoner') *(I'm using this statue as the image because I can at the very least be 100% certain that the statue is intended to depict him, regardless of the accuracy of the depiction. The internet suffers from a bad case of "hm... a picture of a black dude in European uniform, this must be a depiction of the particular black dude in Europe I'm talking about, surely there can't have been all that many of them, right?" ) A bit of a derail from military history, but continuing the chain, that Serbian fellow who brought him to Russia? The guy was a merchant-adventurer with a ridiculous amount of involvement in world affairs, and I'm kinda surprised by how little he is known back here. He took part in the battle of Poltava (I read once that he was the Russian quartermaster, but no idea if it's true), and between his roles as a diplomat, merchant, and spy, he founded the first Russian intelligence network abroad, he signed to concordat between the Vatican and the Russian Empire, had one of Vivaldi's operas, La verità in cimento, dedicated to him, got stupid rich trading in Ukraine, took part in peace negotiations with the Ottoman Empire, was an important element in financial reforms in Russia, translated Mavro Orbini's "The Realms of Slavs", did undercover work in the Balkans, especially in Montenegro, was responsible for the Treaty of Kyahta between the Russian Empire and the Qing Empire - defining the borders and allowing trade between them, wrote secret reports on the state of the Ottoman and Qing empires, and wrote another treatise on Qing to the Russian court that boils down to "Don't go to war with China, you dumb fucks!", and even built a fortress on the Chinese border(Troitskosavsk), dude had one hell of a life.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 12:53
|
|
|
Nenonen posted:Viapori is always worth a visit on a sunny day. Never lost a battle, only surrendered once! That GAZ-AAA quad-gun mount 
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 12:55
|
|
|
VanSandman posted:I have a question about naval warfare. Submarines are well and truly hosed once the enemy starts using active sonar, right? Why don't people use active sonar at all times then? The range at which active sonar can detect a ship is far shorter than that at which a passive detector can detect a ship using active sonar. The active sonar user is listening to echos whereas the passive array is listening to the ship directly, so the signal has to travel twice the distance.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 12:57
|
|
|
i'm the realms of slavs
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 12:59
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:i'm the realms of slavs lol On a serious note, it's a very bad history book, but an extremely ideologically influential one.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 13:00
|
|
|
VanSandman posted:Don't the folks in the sub/nearby already know that, though? Who is getting new info from active sonar? Any detection system I can think of that relies on reflected energy - radar, sonar, light - can be detected further away than it can detect something, basically like Fangz said. It's even tougher of a scenario than that though, because in addition to the sound needing to be reflected back, it also needs to be strong and clear enough that the returned signal is enough to make a detection; it could be reflected back and then filtered out or ignored by an operator. The common analogy is someone pursuing you with a flashlight through the woods at night. You might not know they're a few hundred yards away, but as soon as they turn on the flashlight, you do. You're also far enough away that even if they're looking straight at you, they probably won't see you, even with the light. Consider how far away you can see approaching headlights and how short your effective range of vision actually is when you're the driver. There are ways around this, tactically. You can use air-dropped sonobuoys or dipping sonar, which can get to the sub within detection range before it knows they're coming, but if you're on a ship just banging away, a sub will know where you are from much further away than if you weren't, and can maneuver so that you won't ever know it was there, just like evading the flashlight.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 13:18
|
|
|
Pellisworth posted:What was typically done with horses past their working prime? Eaten or put out to stud, I'm assuming? At least in modern times horses are considered past their prime once they're into their teens, but can live well into their twenties or thirties. Their lifespans are roughly twice the number of years they'd be fit for battle I'd guess. Late to the party, but what can you do. Let's see. Horse hair is drat great for brushes and also used by luthiers and plumbers. Horse leather is drat fine for shoes, gloves and bookbinding. Horse meat is ok to eat. You can make strings for instruments from gut. Whatever you can do with the fat Horse sinew is also fine for a number of things You can cook glue from hides and sinew Apparently you can also make soap from carcasses, but I've got no idea how soap making works. OwlFancier posted:Slings are pretty boss, as mentioned until they invented better bow technology, slings were by far the more effective weapon at range. Turns out lovely wooden self bows aren't actually very good at throwing arrows very far. For the love of god, stop triggering me so hard. I need to work on things. It's true that lovely wooden self bows aren't actually very good at throwing arrows very far , but the keyword here is "lovely". You need to season a stave for years before you can turn it into a bow. A green sapling like this is barely more than a stick with a string. Wooden selfbows are awesome and deadly, unless being made by somebody who has no clue about what he is doing. Some of the best performing and simplest designs like the Möllegabet and the Holmegard bow are tech from the stoneage. Slings are nice, because they are simple in every aspect. You don't need to wait until a tree grows into a nice couple of staves, season it and then manufacture arrows on top. The dude operating the weapon doesn't need to be a super fit and highly trained specialist. (It doesn't hurt ofc) You can hand somebody a club, a spear or a sword and he'll be able to kill somebody in one way or another, but high drawweights are something that people cannot just pick up and roll with it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 13:28
|
|
|
JaucheCharly posted:Apparently you can also make soap from carcasses, but I've got no idea how soap making works.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 13:32
|
|
my dad posted:*(I'm using this statue as the image because I can at the very least be 100% certain that the statue is intended to depict him, regardless of the accuracy of the depiction. The internet suffers from a bad case of "hm... a picture of a black dude in European uniform, this must be a depiction of the particular black dude in Europe I'm talking about, surely there can't have been all that many of them, right?" ) Thomas-Alexandre Dumas just stares annoyed at that section of the internet and shakes his head sadly.
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 13:50
|
|
|
SeanBeansShako posted:Thomas-Alexandre Dumas just stares annoyed at that section of the internet and shakes his head sadly. content: https://twitter.com/DanAmira/status/770799213626228736/photo/1
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 13:59
|
|
|
hogmartin posted:...but if you're on a ship just banging away, a sub will know where you are from much further away than if you weren't, and can maneuver so that you won't ever know it was there, just like evading the flashlight. Note that this only became a real option for the submarine with the advent of advanced diesel-electric boats capable of 10+ kts submerged, (German XXI class, USN GUPPY program, Soviet Whiskey boats, etc) in the closing days of WWII and post-war, and particularly with nuclear power, which allows submarines to move freely while submerged.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 14:02
|
|
|
Cool video of a guy being dressed in 14th Century armor based on the effigy of the Black Prince. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGl_UXc9HIE
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 14:04
|
|
|
Nenonen posted:From playing Pike and Shot, I can tell you that early tercios are immune to flanking and rear attacks but late tercios can be charged from the rear! But they do get a combat penalty the more dudes they're engaged with at one time, so hitting them from multiple sides still sorta works
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 14:14
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:when i was a child i thought dumas pere meant the general and dumas fils meant the three musketeers dude because i didn't read anything but milhist even then and i had no idea there were two authors named dumas Way back in the day when I visited Hawaii and saw this I laughed about it all day. If it was anyone other than the Canadian representative it wouldn't have been as hilarious but it was a literally half-blind canuck who hosed up the nice copy of the surrender document and drat near derailed the surrender because the Japanese delegation refused to sign it until Nimitz (I think it was Nimitz) came back and initialed every edited line. Fuckin' Canadians, man.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 14:19
|
|
|
FAUXTON posted:Way back in the day when I visited Hawaii and saw this I laughed about it all day. If it was anyone other than the Canadian representative it wouldn't have been as hilarious but it was a literally half-blind canuck who hosed up the nice copy of the surrender document and drat near derailed the surrender because the Japanese delegation refused to sign it until Nimitz (I think it was Nimitz) came back and initialed every edited line. Wouldn't be the first time a Canadian defaces an important document. "Proclamation of the Constitution Act, 1982" 
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 14:52
|
|
|
MrYenko posted:Note that this only became a real option for the submarine with the advent of advanced diesel-electric boats capable of 10+ kts submerged, (German XXI class, USN GUPPY program, Soviet Whiskey boats, etc) in the closing days of WWII and post-war, and particularly with nuclear power, which allows submarines to move freely while submerged. Oh, true, I was assuming a modern scenario. Combining nuclear or advanced conventional submarines with homing torpedoes that can cover miles at basically highway speed (and can be wire-guided after launch) is a bit of a game-changer over submarines that have to surface to charge batteries and fire straight-running torpedoes with flip-a-coin detonators and gyros.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 14:56
|
|
|
It seems to me like emission control is one of the things that laypeople really don't understand very well about the modern battlefield. It is absolutely crazy when you see graphical representations of how emitters "look" to collection assets...it really is like turning on a flashlight in a dark room, except that you can tell exactly who manufactured the flashlight, and when, and you can be pretty sure who the specific owner of the flashlight is, and how much juice the flashlight batteries have left, and etc In semi related news the army and marines are trying really hard to figure out how to reduce signatures of units in the field and the biggest issue currently is cell phones that the joes haul around with them.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 15:14
|
|
|
Gegil posted:Cool video of a guy being dressed in 14th Century armor based on the effigy of the Black Prince. I have a few misgivings about this reconstruction. Mainly, it seems excessively heavy, even for the late 14th c when armour was heavier than it would be later. Maybe when they say "armor and weapons" they are including the lance? I still think it's too heavy, though. Including a bishop's mantle over top of the breastplate *and* an aventail with the bascinet seems unnecessary. Also I don't think his mail is fitted right, there's a fair bit of folding in the sleeves.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 15:16
|
|
|
bewbies posted:
and take selfies of themselves invading the Ukraine
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 15:18
|
|
|
Rodrigo Diaz posted:I have a few misgivings about this reconstruction. Mainly, it seems excessively heavy, even for the late 14th c when armour was heavier than it would be later. Maybe when they say "armor and weapons" they are including the lance? I still think it's too heavy, though. Including a bishop's mantle over top of the breastplate *and* an aventail with the bascinet seems unnecessary. Also I don't think his mail is fitted right, there's a fair bit of folding in the sleeves. lol if your armor fits, just lol
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 15:20
|
|
|
bewbies posted:It seems to me like emission control is one of the things that laypeople really don't understand very well about the modern battlefield. It is absolutely crazy when you see graphical representations of how emitters "look" to collection assets...it really is like turning on a flashlight in a dark room, except that you can tell exactly who manufactured the flashlight, and when, and you can be pretty sure who the specific owner of the flashlight is, and how much juice the flashlight batteries have left, and etc I think "No loving Cell Phones On Maneuvers/Operations" would be a good one. Give the power mad rear end in a top hat in the group a passive cell phone detector thingy and the authorization to destroy confiscated cellphones during field ops. E: or re-purpose the old "Someone Talked!" propaganda.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 15:29
|
|
|
Disinterested posted:Halder was sat uselessly on his arse in Germany. The closest units were the IX (Geyer), XXXX [Pz] (Stumme), LVII [Pz] Kuntzen, XX (Materna) Corps, all fourth army units, so it's Kluge's Army. So I'm reading Robert Kirchubel's "Atlas of the Eastern Front" and, obviously, Typhoon has a nice description + series of maps for it. According to the book, the Germans had nearly 2 million men (78 Divisions), 14000 mortars and artillery pieces, 1000 tanks, and 1390 aircraft. The Russians had over 1.25 million men (95 divisions, 13 tank brigades), 7600 indirect fire weapons, 990 tanks, and 863 planes. (Edit: At the start of operation Typhoon) Guderian attacked first, between Novgorod Seversky and Kursk and made some good initial gains, mainly because STAVKA wasn't sure what to make of his independent movement/attack. Two days after Guderian's attacks, the rest of Heeresgruppe Mitte joined the advance. He notes a critical logistic problem for the Germans, which hampered their ability to take (or hold) ground. But the Russians were also suffering problems of their own in the form of massive losses. Between 30 Sept and 15 Oct they lost almost 2 million casualties (1.3 million captured, the rest dying in battle). 3.PanzerGruppe and 4.PanzerGruppe were the closest to Moscow, with 2.Panzer-Division being the closest German unit to Moscow. They had almost reached Lobnya, which is about 27 kilometers from Moscow. Things settled down from there, before German fortune started reversing. During the month of November, the Germans began the month with 2.7 million men and received no notable reinforcements, whereas the Russians started with 2.2 million men and added another 2 million by the end of the month. Kirchubel notes that the Nazis had 4 main problems: Troop Exhaustion, Personnel+Materiel Attrition, Anaemic Logistics, and Lack of Direction/Attainable Goals. Kirchubel's criticizes Von Kluge (who wasn't the commander of Heeresgruppe Mitte at the time of Operation Typhoon) as a plodding, unimaginative general. In fact, he's talked about Von Kluge's ineptitude twice in just a few pages. Does anyone have any more info on why? Oh, and from what I can tell from Kirchubel's maps the closest units to Moscow are: 2.Panzer-Division (XL Corps/4th Panzer Group) 106.Infanterie-Division (V Corps/4th Panzer Group) 1.Panzer-Division (LVI Corps/3rd Panzer Group) [Might be 4th, though, as they switched back and forth  ]11.Panzer-Division (XXXXVI Corps/4th Panzer Group)
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 15:32
|
|
|
How do you even get service out there in Afghanistan or whatever
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 15:34
|
|
|
Koramei posted:How do you even get service out there in Afghanistan or whatever Would you have to? Presumably an issue would be people are taking these to be cameras/MP3 players while they're constantly trying to find a signal.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 15:48
|
|
|
VanSandman posted:Don't the folks in the sub/nearby already know that, though? Who is getting new info from active sonar? There's a big difference between "There's a boat somewhere over there" and "There is a boat here, at these exact co-ordinates".
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 15:53
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:lol if your armor fits, just lol We get it, everything in your century sucks. Move on.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 15:59
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 15:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 14:13 |
|
|
Simo would be ashamed at this bad snipe.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2016 16:02
|
|
