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Grand Prize Winner posted:The Spanish usually reduced their armor to padded cloth surcoats due to the sweltering heat. They kept the morion helmets. Even so those coats were plenty to stop stone-tipped arrows and macuahuitls, at least for a few hits. Think like the trauma plates in modern ballistic vests. * I was just on St. Croix where Columbus lost a guy due to arrows from the locals. Of course, no word on if the Spaniard was wearing armor.
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Sep 9, 2016 14:27
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I don't envy bowyers who had to work horn with non steel tools. It obliterates rasps and sawblades. A good rasp is absolutely dull after finishing a pair of hornstrips. Curled up horn like ram's is best not sawed, but you drill a series of holes along the path you want and use a chisel to split the parts between the holes so that you can split off the bottom. Queue alot of rasping, maybe using an adze to take off material faster and you're able to straighten it by heat and work it into the 6-8mm thick strip. That's a alot more work than water buffalo horn.
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Sep 9, 2016 14:42
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Miles Vorkosigan posted:Speaking of, in 1491 the author mentions that when Europeans showed up in North America the local's bows were actually better weapons than the settler's guns. How true is that? And for that matter, how much do we know about North American bowmaking? Were they better, worse or different than bows in Europe and Asia? He didn't say they were better (also he did get a bit sensationalist about that stuff imo), just that the settlers were horrible shots, underfed etc so basically not much of a match for the natives. I don't think he was trying to claim if a regiment of Hegel's guys got dropped in the Americas they'd exchange their guns for native selfbows or anything. SlothfulCobra posted:Firearms in 1492 had their issues, but it's a moot point, since native American arrows ain't got poo poo on the suits of armor that the spaniards had access to. it was specifically in reference to the British colonies in the 1600s Comstar posted:That sounds...wrong. Obsidian bladed swords maybe, but how good is an obsidian bladed chisel, hammer, axe, pick and shovel, even if you discount armour too? They did it all with stone tools, slowly and very laboriously. Speaking of 1491, there's a bit in it where he goes over how Native Americans would have to fell trees with stone axes, and basically what a complete pain in the rear end it was. It takes teams of men days to achieve versus a single guy just a few hours with a steel axe. According to him they valued European steel axes significantly more than any of their weapons. And bronze working to the point of making sturdy tools and armor and poo poo doesn't just pop up overnight, it took a very long time to develop. Early bronze is trash. Maybe they'd have developed it beyond that eventually but there wasn't the same pressure for it there was in Eurasia (where much of the continent had no easy access to obsidian and the like) since everywhere that had the bronze also had much better alternatives.
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Sep 9, 2016 14:59
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Miles Vorkosigan posted:Speaking of, in 1491 the author mentions that when Europeans showed up in North America the local's bows were actually better weapons than the settler's guns. How true is that? And for that matter, how much do we know about North American bowmaking? Were they better, worse or different than bows in Europe and Asia? A bow is better than a gun if you know how to use the bow and the thing you're shooting isn't wearing any armour, so in the hands of practiced native archers against a bunch of European colonists yes bows would probably be better. The value of guns is that the settlers would be able to use them without training, and they would continue to be effective against things bows would not be, hence why they were also prized by the natives because they do have their advantages, probably much easier to hunt big game with them, for example. Especially as you can use guns on horseback, whereas horseback archery limits the size of the bow you can use. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 16:05
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OwlFancier posted:The value of guns is that the settlers would be able to use them without training
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Sep 9, 2016 16:41
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Finally caught up reading  Anyway, tank question. Would tanks/infantry ever hose enemy tanks with machine gun fire, to rattle the crew/get a lucky hit somewhere?
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Sep 9, 2016 16:48
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I do recall reading at least in WW2 with some vehicles if they had a sort obvious or open port without the plating slot and glass covering of fire being directed on said view ports to distract or button down the gunners.
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Sep 9, 2016 16:51
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Siivola posted:This is a weird argument, because effectively using a muzzle-loading gun without maiming yourself involves a very specific skillset. It requires rote training that can easily be given to virtually anyone. Becoming an effective war archer requires years of training and high strength.
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Sep 9, 2016 16:56
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ChickenWyngz posted:Finally caught up reading Yeah. You can break vision prisms, or if we're talking about older tanks put rounds through the viewports. With really older tanks, even non-penetrating hits can cause casualties from spalling.
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Sep 9, 2016 16:58
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Siivola posted:This is a weird argument, because effectively using a muzzle-loading gun without maiming yourself involves a very specific skillset. Well yes you need to be able to operate it without blowing yourself up but once you know how to use it, it requires minimal practice to be able to use it effectively. You point it at the thing you want to kill, you fire it, you reload it. Whereas using a bow requires quite a lot of training to be effective with. You need the strength to fire it and you need to get your motions and stance right to shoot accurately, as well as needing to be pretty fit in order to keep firing for very long.
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Sep 9, 2016 16:59
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OwlFancier posted:Well yes you need to be able to operate it without blowing yourself up but once you know how to use it, it requires minimal practice to be able to use it effectively. You point it at the thing you want to kill, you fire it, you reload it. Are you talking about a musket or a cannon here, I'm slightly confused? you can get some nasty powder burns if you mishandle or have firelock misfire but you maim yourself and your crew if you fumble around with an artillery piece and forget to ensure the barrel is gun powder free before setting up the next shot.
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Sep 9, 2016 17:04
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SeanBeansShako posted:Are you talking about a musket or a cannon here, I'm slightly confused? you can get some nasty powder burns if you mishandle or have firelock misfire but you maim yourself and your crew if you fumble around with an artillery piece and forget to ensure the barrel is gun powder free before setting up the next shot. Muskets, I don't think the European civilian settlers brought cannon with them as a matter of course and if they did I don't think the native Americans brought ballistae. E: sorry when I say "blowing yourself up" I mean having the powder go off in your face and blinding you or something. Not having the entire gun explode and killing half the crew. Cannons absolutely need training and practice and fitness to use. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 17:07
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Pellisworth posted:imagine obsidian-tipped pikes glass, you say like in windows?
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Sep 9, 2016 17:13
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OwlFancier posted:Muskets, I don't think the European civilian settlers brought cannon with them as a matter of course and if they did I don't think the native Americans brought ballistae. Understood, gun powder is serious business and your going to need even some basic training now for a day or so before being let anywhere near it.
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Sep 9, 2016 17:19
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Ideally yes though I'm not sure if colonial America would have had our rigorous health and safety practices.
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Sep 9, 2016 17:20
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OwlFancier posted:Well yes you need to be able to operate it without blowing yourself up but once you know how to use it, it requires minimal practice to be able to use it effectively. You point it at the thing you want to kill, you fire it, you reload it.  Hell, I'd even contest the idea that a gun doesn't require any fitness, considering how huge early muskets in particular were.
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Sep 9, 2016 17:21
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Yes you need a functioning brain and the ability to lift a large gun, and yes you get better at it with more practice. Though I would be surprised if breathing and trigger pull was going to hugely impact the accuracy of a 15-16th century arquebus or early musket. But it's still possibly the greatest ratio of lethality : operational difficulty of any weapon at the time, which is also a lot of why the crossbow was adopted over the bow and the gun over the crossbow. There were weapons which were more effective in certain circumstances and with training, but they all suffered because when you can supply everyone with a moderately effective weapon, that itself is a quality in its own right. Same reason why the assault rifle was adopted, yes a heavy machinegun is more powerful, yes a high caliber rifle is more accurate, yes a submachinegun is handier in confined spaces, but an assault rifle does everything fairly well and everyone gets one.
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Sep 9, 2016 17:33
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Hey Disinterested that Operation Typhoon book looked interesting, it should be pretty approachable for a layman right?
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Sep 9, 2016 17:41
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You can teach a solider to be proficient with a musket and follow close order drill in the Napoleonic era in something like 9-12 weeks. If you're just taking it down to load and fire and care for weapon, it's probably two weeks. Siivola posted:I'm hardly arguing that one can become a successful archer overnight, but I feel you're seriously underselling the practice required to actually shoot a gun worth a poo poo. Aiming with a gun is just as much about motions and stance (and breathing and trigger pull and), and good loving luck trying to reload a musket in a proper battlefield hurry. At least you can't quadruple-load a bow by accident. Breathing and trigger pull are irrelevant and the standard of fitness is such that literally any 16 year old non-disabled male of the time period should be able to use the weapon. You're recruiting from peasants and city-dwellers who work hard for a living, not shut in internet nerds. edit: loading a musket in a hurry is difficult, hence the emphasis on drill. If you do it a couple thousand times, you won't have much issue. Practicing loading a flintlock 2,000 times is less than a hundred hours.
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Sep 9, 2016 17:48
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I used to study stone tools before conscientious objection, so I know a bit about what you can and can't do with various types of stone, and what the Aztecs in particular did with obsidian. Stone tools are and will always be my first love - so pretty! So sharp! So useful! Obsidian makes excellent knives and sharp edges, because of its legendarily thin terminal edges when it's properly worked. It's easy to produce sharp edges but it's significantly less simple to consistently produce regular blades and bladelets that can be mounted - standardisation of blade segments (as you'd wedge and caulk into wooden or stone clubs to make those classic Aztec bats. That requires specialist knowledge and specialist tools to make what we'd call prismatic blade cores, leading to regular very thin linear flakes you can either use as is or further work into the right length. These blades have incredibly thin cutting edges, but as long as force is transferred through the body of the flake, rather than perpendicular to it, they will retain sharpness for a very long time, provided that you're not hitting it against anything less elastic than the obsidian. Naked, a sharp obsidian edge will cut right through flesh and only lose its original ultra-sharpness. That first slice will break the very very fine edge, but you can retain an edge for many subsequent slices. However, if you draw that edge through or along a hard surface it will blunt quickly, and if you strike a comparatively non-elastic surface, (like metal, or dead bone, or stone) or transfer energy perpendicular through the flake (getting it caught in bone and twisting) it will break off the edge. Through living or recently dead bone ("wet" bone), that will bite, you can draw it out and it will keep an edge fairly well. If you can immobilise, reinforce and shock absorb the flake, say by wedging it into a club and gluing it in place, it becomes very difficult to do anything that will actually significantly blunt the flake, and equally difficult to put energy through the blade the wrong way. It'll blunt when you hit it against metal, but it won't break - and if it did, it will be held in place, and a broken obsidian bladelet is still very dangerous. I've cut up pig carcasses by hacking them to pieces with obsidian blades set in wooden hafts, and it does work very very well. These aren't disposable tools for an hour or two of fighting, but can stand up to pretty significant punishment. Sure the blade will be blunted by hitting bone, or a cuirass, but it will still be sharp, and still capable of concentrating enough force in a very small space (we're talking going from micrometer thickness to 0.5mm) that even after hitting that Marion helmet, the next blow retains enough cutting edge to go right into your skull.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:05
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you can teach someone to operate a gun relatively effectively and safely in an afternoon. building the strength and technique to shoot a warbow took years.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:05
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lenoon posted:I used to study stone tools before conscientious objection  you have lived an interesting lifequote:These aren't disposable tools for an hour or two of fighting, but can stand up to pretty significant punishment. One thing I've read repeatedly is that the Aztec obsidian weapons would break extremely quickly against the conquistadors' steel swords though, right? Still before they encountered those they were more than good enough.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:15
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It's important to note that while the early European colonists brought along lead to make new balls for their guns, at least in North America they didn't have the capacity to make their own gunpowder for several decades because of reasons I'm not fully conversant with. That had a major impact on the effectiveness of their firearms.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:15
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Yeah that's something else the author goes over in 1491 (I should probably just find the passage) as another reason the natives stuck with their bows rather than guns, since even if they had them they'd have trouble supplying the things. He wasn't trying to argue that guns were worse- just that in the context, to the natives, bows were a preferable weapon.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:19
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Ah, didn't we have the issue of making gunpowder a while ago? Who posted that about the guys going around and having the right to pull down stables, because one component accumulates on stable's walls over time?
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Sep 9, 2016 18:43
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ChickenWyngz posted:Finally caught up reading Yes. Until about the mid 1930s, tanks were still vulnerable to machine gun fire. Bulletproof glass wasn't great, armour was still thin enough to succumb to even rifle caliber armour piercing bullets at close ranges, and even in tanks with thicker armour, you could knock off inner parts of rivets and injure the crew without penetrating the armour. Also, bullets could still get in by ricochet, which was a huge problem with PzIs during the Spanish Civil War. By WWII, bulletproof glass and, quick-swappable periscopes were already a thing, plus riveted armour was largely replaced by thick welded armour that was no longer susceptible to bullets. Machineguns were still useful in anti-tank defense, as infantry is generally reluctant to run into MG fire. If the tanks don't suppress MG nests, infantry falls behind, and tanks without an infantry escort won't last long against enemy infantry and their AT guns.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:50
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Koramei posted:
Yeah that's where you're putting it up against something it can't cope with. Obsidian is brittle enough to shatter against steel, but is definitely not something that loses an effective edge as quickly as people often make out.
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Sep 9, 2016 19:04
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JaucheCharly posted:Ah, didn't we have the issue of making gunpowder a while ago? Who posted that about the guys going around and having the right to pull down stables, because one component accumulates on stable's walls over time? The 3 ingredients for black powder are: * Saltpeter (properly known as potassium nitrate) * Sulfur * Charcoal Saltpeter is easily acquired from societies at this time, as it naturally forms from both human and animal dung. If you have access to manure, you have access to saltpeter. Charcoal, obviously, you get from burning wood. Sulfur is harder, as you need to find sulfur deposits to harvest from. A nascent colonial society may have some difficulties quickly finding sulfur and extracting it.
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Sep 9, 2016 19:30
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Medieval/ancient history: Has there ever been a time in history where close combat infantry with melee weapons (I'm thinking swords and other weapons of the sort) were the primary factor in deciding victory as opposed to cavalry, pikemen, archers/artillery/riflemen)? I'm referring to dudes getting in the mix with their arming swords and maces and what not making a sizeable difference. I always considered this type of infantry to be more of a screen to prevent other less armored or mobile targets from getting overrun immediately or to buy time to set up a charge, but I'd like to read about the exceptions.
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Sep 9, 2016 19:32
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aldantefax posted:Medieval/ancient history: Rome.
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Sep 9, 2016 19:35
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The shield wall was a very viable tactic at various points in time, and your read is basically backwards for much of human history - the light cavalry / skirmishers screen for your more decisive arm, whether that's a shield wall or a pike block or line infantry.
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Sep 9, 2016 19:44
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chitoryu12 posted:The 3 ingredients for black powder are: Is the story of Cortez's men harvesting sulfur deposits from the Popocatépetl volcano bullshit? You can make adequate blackpowder without sulfur, by the way, it's just harder to ignite and won't work too well in a flintlock or matchlock. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 19:44
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The shield wall was a very viable tactic at various points in time, and your read is basically backwards for much of human history - the light cavalry / skirmishers screen for your more decisive arm, whether that's a shield wall or a pike block or line infantry. Yeah this, cavalry has long been useful for its mobility but unless you're the Huns, the bulk of your army is going to be infantry, probably armed with spears and shields. Or alternatively with some of the inventive medieval tin-openers-on-sticks that were fielded across Europe. Cavalry is just what people tend to be more interested in historically because that's where all the rich buggers go and get all the fancy gear and the glory  E: Or axes, axes also an option too. Maybe a few swords if you're lucky. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 19:52
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aldantefax posted:Medieval/ancient history: You're not really going to be able to create distinct categories like this in most of the medieval period. You didn't necessarily have one block of men-at-arms that you labeled the spear guy unit while another block was the designated sword dude battalion. There were organized units, but they weren't distinguished from each other by whether they carried poleaxes or shortened lances. Even archers and people like that with specialized roles would join in the hand-to-hand fighting sometimes. English archers in the Hundred Years War put down their bows and used close combat weapons to help flank the enemy. In Flemish militia groups, pikemen were accompanied by dudes with swords and goedendags/maces. Most sources describing medieval battles mention a huge variety of weapons being used and soldiers routinely carried multiple weapons. The idea that medieval warfare was dominated by cavalry has been pretty thoroughly debunked by now.
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Sep 9, 2016 19:52
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The shield wall was a very viable tactic at various points in time, and your read is basically backwards for much of human history - the light cavalry / skirmishers screen for your more decisive arm, whether that's a shield wall or a pike block or line infantry. Would that mean that the shield (and the formation dependent on it) is more important than the sword? I know for the Roman shield wall the gladius was designed around the scutum. Or, am I getting that backwards as well? Not actually sure.
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Sep 9, 2016 19:59
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Shield walls do require shields, yes, otherwise what you have is a musket line without the muskets. Essentially the only reason you wouldn't carry a shield is if you needed the weight or both hands to carry something else. Crossbowmen even carried massive shields for a while to hide behind while reloading. Not least because a lot of battles would open with a load of bastards chucking javelins and stuff at you, so being on the front line without a shield is asking for a javelin in the chest. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 20:02
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chitoryu12 posted:The 3 ingredients for black powder are: Saltpeter is the ingredient that was difficult to obtain in overseas colonies. Small amounts are easy, just like you said, but it's a process that takes a good amount of time. If you need a lot of gunpowder and you need it quickly, you're SOL. Saltpeter was actually the most difficult ingredient of gunpowder to obtain and its availability -- or lack of-- defined multiple conflicts before the 20th century.
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Sep 9, 2016 20:07
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:It's important to note that while the early European colonists brought along lead to make new balls for their guns, at least in North America they didn't have the capacity to make their own gunpowder for several decades because of reasons I'm not fully conversant with. That had a major impact on the effectiveness of their firearms. Not enough people to ah, pee and poop the needed stuff?
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Sep 9, 2016 20:07
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chitoryu12 posted:The 3 ingredients for black powder are: There is an interesting (flashback) chapter in Blood Meridian by McCarthy where the scalphunters are out of ammo, being chased by Apaches, and the Judge takes them into a cave and later to an extinct volcano and makes gunpowder in this way. It's fiction of course, but what you said reminded me of it. Also it's an interesting book with a historical emphasis that some of you might like. e: the story is ugly as gently caress, but a lot of people who read and post in here are used to such.
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Sep 9, 2016 20:09
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aldantefax posted:Would that mean that the shield (and the formation dependent on it) is more important than the sword? I know for the Roman shield wall the gladius was designed around the scutum. Or, am I getting that backwards as well? Not actually sure. I'm not sure where the need to separate these things comes from or what the utility of doing so is. It's not like anyone was fielding armies of men holding up shields without any weapons. These things go together. Medieval people generally weren't as obsessed with quantifying each individual component of your gear the way we do today. The shield and lance (or whatever other weapons) go together. You're not going to come to the muster with just your shield.
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Sep 9, 2016 20:11
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