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OwlFancier posted:I have absolutely no idea what it says because my latin is terrible, that's just what it looks like. Ugh, at this point I might as well provide the thread some entertainment and attempt a translation Hail, Fortune! Die throwers be praised I think that's the jist of it, but I imagine I've made some mistakes with tense or person.
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Sep 30, 2016 03:09
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OwlFancier posted:I have absolutely no idea what it says because my latin is terrible, that's just what it looks like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alea_iacta_est This should help more than a literal translation.
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Sep 30, 2016 03:24
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Previous Posts: Part I In the last post I discussed the state of British tank development at the end of WWI heading into the interbellum. In this post we look at the development of British tanks conducted by the Vickers Limited, and later, Vickers-Armstrong Limited company in the period immediately after the war. This is a time when companies just made tanks in the hope that someone, somewhere, would buy them. Usually, someone did. Vickers Medium Mk I  I'm assuming at this point that all these black and white pictures are in the same field... It was obvious fairly quickly that the British Army's supply of Heavy Mark V and Medium Mark C tanks was wholly inadequate for the type of tank combat that was envisioned for the future. Due to the disaster that was the Medium Mark D the Tank Design Department was shuttered and the government turned to the Vickers company to produce the required design, "a light infantry tank". What came from this, in 1921, was the" Vickers Medium Tank Mark I", a design heavily influenced by the previous medium line and roughly the same shape but with a rotating turret. This turned out to be terrible, and the government decided to go with a competing Vickers design, the "Vickers Light Mark I". In 1924, just to be confusing dicks, they renamed this design the Vickers Medium Mark I. This 12 ton tank had only 6.25mm of armour but could reach speeds of 15KPH and was armed with four .303 Hotchkiss s or two .303 Vickers machine guns in various fixed points in the turret, bow and sides as well as an Ordnance Quick Firing 3 pounder cannon in a rotating turret. Unfortunately in a step backwards for crew ergonomics, the engine and transmission were in the crew compartment. The real points of note on this design are twofold. First, the suspension had springs resulting in a much smoother ride for the crew. It seems nobody hat thought this was of much import until now, but Vickers decided it was and ran with it. The second, and most important in some ways, was that the main gun was mounted in a turret that had room for three men - commander, gunner and loader. This was the first tank that tried this arrangement. It was also the first tank since the French Char 2C to see mass production since the end of the war, even though it wasn't particularly successful and never saw combat. It was, however, invaluable in letting the British army test their theories on mechanised warfare. It remained in service until 1938, at which point it was amongst the first of the out-dated designs to be phased out. Some variants existed, notably including such innovations as a co-axial machine gun mount, a rotating commander's cupola and a "close-support" version armed with a 15-pound mortar system. There was also a silly one with giant wheels for better road mobility, but sadly I can't find a picture of this monstrosity. Vickers A1E1 Independent  Sole tank built, Bovington. In 1924 the General Staff asked Vickers for a heavy tank design, and our old friend Gordon Walter Wilson stepped up to deliver this monster. Weighing in at 34 tons and 25 feet long with between 13 and 28mm of armour, it had a crew of eight to man the four individual machine gun turrets around a central turret mounting the same OQF 3-pdr as the Medium Mk I. It actually had a decent amount of horsepower in the engine and could reach speeds of 32 KPH, and the coiled spring bogies were a definite step forward in suspension terms. The weight of the tank also required a new hydraulic braking system to be devised, and one successfully was. It was finished in 1926 and was met with no particular interest from the British military. On the other hand, it WAS seen as hugely interesting to various foreign powers, and in a case of industrial espionage one Norman Baillie-Stewart, a Subaltern in the Seaforth Highlanders, stole the plans and delivered them to a Major Mueller in the German military.[1] Designs influenced by the Independent include the German Neubaufahrzeug heavy tanks, and the Soviet T-35 heavy tank. Some claim the Soviet T-28 was also influenced by it, but more on that later. The single prototype was run ragged in testing until 1935, when it was sent to Bovington where it now remains. Vickers Medium Mk II  Bovington is the best place ever for picture... borrowing. In 1925 the Vickers Medium Mk I design was slightly modernised. The superstructure was changed in a few minor ways and the turret back was modified so that the mounted machine gun could be used to engage aircraft. It was slightly heavier than the Mk I so was also slightly slower at 13KPH, but the tradeoff was considered worth it. It was sent to Egypt by Major-General Percy Hobart (SO much more on him later!) in 1939 for experiments in desert operations, but reports about them seeing combat in 1940 are conflicted. Some reports claim that a single tank was dug in as a pillbox, but others claim that they saw combat against the Italians. They remained in service until 1940, but had started to be phased out in 1938 along with the MkIs. However during the summer of 1940 with the threat of Operation Sealion and the loss of vehicles in France several units were re-equipped with the Mk II just to have any tanks at all available to meet the invasion. The invasion never came, and all they were used for was initial driver training. Digression: Tankettes! and the Experimental Mechanised Force! Also in 1925 the epically named Lieutenant-General Sir Giffard Le Quesne Martel decided that what the British army really really needed was one- or two-man tanks armed with a buttload of machine guns and a 3-pdr gun. So he built one in his shed, because that was the kind of thing people did in those days. The result was this:  Yup. LOTS of people thought this was a good idea for a while. While hilariously silly looking to the modern eye, this caused quite a lot of debate and the Carden-Lloyd Tractors, run by John Carden and Vivian Loyd, decided to make their own version, the famous Carden-Loyd Tankette. This was a two-man machine that was much shorter and mounted only a single machine gun. This is what it looked like:  Much better. The two designs were put into competition by the War Office and the Carden-Loyd design won out, although the idea never really went anywhere. It was, however, enough to attract the attention of Vickers-Armstrong who bought out Carden-Loyd Tractors and became the basis for the Universal Carrier and, more relevantly to our topic, the Vickers Light Tank series. It was also marketed somewhat successfully abroad and the Belgians in particular experimented with mounting both a 47mm anti-tank and 76mm low-velocity gun on the chassis. Although the recoil of the guns was far too much for it to handle they decided that the idea had promise, leading to the T-13 Tank Destroyer, built for the Belgian army by Vickers-Armstrong. In the desperate defence of Belgium in June the prototypes did in fact see combat, but were not particularly effective. The T-13 went on to be used by the nazis as the "Panzerjaeger VA 802(b)" In 1927 the War Office formed the Experimental Mechanised Force to investigate the use of tanks and other armoured equipment in war. The three points of view were that of Colonel J.F.C. Fuller, who advocated a purely tank-based force, that of Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, who said that a combined mechanised all-arms force was best, and that of Giffard Le Quesne Martel again, who was off the opinion that penny-packeting tanks out to the infantry had worked fine last war, let's do it again (with the benefit of hindsight, we all know that Basil was right and the various cavalry officers who were sure that horses would work fine next war were full of poo poo). The Carden-Loyd tankette was intended to support the infantry, while the Tank Corps was to be armed with the following "Light" tanks for a cavalry/recon role. The exercises of the unit led to the conclusion that the best solution would be some mix of light and medium tanks with half-tracked armoured transports for the infantry but that was declared to be too expensive so instead the British army went with independent tank brigades and motorised infantry brigades that operated with bugger all combined training or even much thought given to operational doctrine, resulting in the poor performance in France. Because of course. Vickers Light Tanks Mk I to V These tanks were derived from the above in the years between 1931 and 1936, and were a quick series of incremental design changes. The Mk I was essentially a Carden-Loyd tankette with a sealed hull and a turreted machine gun. The chances between marks are not particularly obvious and to be honest if you showed me any of them I'd not really be able to tell you anything other than "it's not a Mk VI or higher", so the simplest thing to do here is to show you a picture of each: Mark I  Mark II  Mark III  Mark IV  Mark V  As you can see, not much difference between them, with the obvious exception of the suspension change between Mk III and Mk IV. The maximum armour thickness was 12mm and they were cracking fast little things able to get over 50kph out of their engines. The three-man crew usually had a .50 Vickers machine gun and a .303 Vickers machine gun mounted co-axially in the turret, but some variants of some marks had four AA-mounted MGs in an open turret. The design was moderately successful, with the Mk III being deveoped into the Vickers T-15 Light Tank for the Belgian army. Vickers Medium Mk III  Around 1926 the War Office decided they wanted to look at replacing the Medium Mk I and II tanks they had and approached Vickers-Armstrong with a specification for a tank not exceeding 15.5 tons in weight, becoming known as "the 16 tonner". They responded with the A6 design, a totally new design with no relationship to the previous marks, and it was all kinds of bad. Turret layout, suspension, gun mounting, stability, everything just wrong. So they scrapped it, and in 1928 the Medium Mk III was designed. Interesting improvements in this design were the inclusion of a turret bustle to store the radio and while the suspension was not good the tank could achieve a respectable 48KPH, although during cross-country travel the bogies would often break under strain. With a crew of seven it had between 9 and 14mm of armour and mounted the now-familiar 3pdr gun and three .3.3 Vickers MGs, two of which were in separate forward turrets beside the driver's position. The E3 model included improved suspension, but the price was sadly too expensive and the design was not accepted for use. There is speculation that this may have influenced the Soviet T-28 with the dual forward MG turrets, but that could equally have been derived from the Independent. Vickers Mark "E"  Type A Designed in 1928 and also known as the Vicker's 6-ton, this is the last of our tanks for today and is probably the most interesting in many ways. Again, this tank was designed by the team of Carden and Loyd and again this tank was not picked up by the British army, but did receive a large amount of international attention. The suspension was an interesting new design, with two axles each of which had a two-wheel bogie on it. Each bogie was connected via a leaf spring to another, and was regarded as giving good cross-country performance although the contemporary Christie suspension was better. The tracks were made of steel and the combination of these gave the tank good reliability for the day. The tank had two versions known as Type A and Type B. The Type A had two separate turrets each of which mounted the now familiar .303 Vickers MG, while the Type B had a two-man turret mounting a OQF 3-pdr co-axially with a MG. This feature was copied by basically every tank that came afterwards, right up to the present day. The armour was 25mm thick at the front, with 19mm at the rear and no part thinner than 13mm. This was quite a heavily armoured little beast compared to the tanks of just ten years earlier. The international attention is probably most famous for the licensing of the design to the Soviet Union, who re-armed with their 45mm gun and designated it the T-26. Several of these were sold to Spainish forces during their civil war, fighting against the Panzer I in use by the Nationalist forces there and is regarded as having given a very good account of itself. It did so well there that the Italians procured some from the Soviets too, and partially based their Fiat-Ansaldo M11/39 and M11/40 tanks on the design . The Polish army also bought several and licensed the design, but modified it somewhat into their 7-TP. The Finnish also purchased several, re-armed them with various guns and got plenty shot up, captured some more from the Soviets during the winter war and finally retired them in 1959. Several other powers as far away as Not bad going for a "failed" design eh?  Type B or, "the good poo poo". That's our lot for tonight, and I stayed up far too late working on this for you all  Next time we get into the Cruiser and Infantry tank split, and try to make sense of why everything has a 2-pdr with no HE. Expect the post probably Monday, but maybe earlier if my weekend is less busy than expected.[1] His shenanigans were rumbled, and he ended up being convicted and held in the Tower of London, becoming the last British subject to be held there. He went on to get German citizenship and be involved in the Lord Haw-Haw propaganda effort while living in Germany, eventually dying here in Dublin in 1966 while living under an assumed name. It's a great story of consistent dickery  Edited to fix BBcode. Arquinsiel fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Sep 30, 2016 |
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Sep 30, 2016 05:30
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Ice Fist posted:Ugh, at this point I might as well provide the thread some entertainment and attempt a translation Almost, it's “Hail, Fortune! The die rollers salute/greet you“ which suspiciously sounds like a P&P thing  Apparently gladiators in ancient Rome used to greet the Emperor with “Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutant“ (Hail, Emperor! Those destined to death greet you) before murdering each other, but I don't know if this is anything more than a legend
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Sep 30, 2016 07:21
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Love all those tanks that look like something you'd doodle in grade school. Great posts thanks for burning the midnight diesel
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Sep 30, 2016 07:49
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System Metternich posted:Almost, it's “Hail, Fortune! The die rollers salute/greet you“ which suspiciously sounds like a P&P thing Legend or not, I based my looted latin on that. A kind goon on the classical forum gave me Ave, Fortuna! Aleatores te salutant! as a great option for what I wanted. I may or may not 3D model a dice tower and I wanted something latin to go on it.
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Sep 30, 2016 07:54
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Though the posts may not appear here, would goons prefer effortposts on the subject of: Intellectual underpinnings to the inept medieval papacy's powergrabs Italian medieval lawyers trying to lawyer themselves up an independent state apparatus
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Sep 30, 2016 08:03
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JcDent posted:Legend or not, I based my looted latin on that. "Hail, Fortune! We who are about to dice salute you!" for the English translation? Disinterested posted:Italian medieval lawyers trying to lawyer themselves up an independent state apparatus for me
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Sep 30, 2016 08:29
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Disinterested posted:Though the posts may not appear here, would goons prefer effortposts on the subject of:  , man (though everything connected to the papacy is especially cool )
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Sep 30, 2016 08:34
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System Metternich posted:
If I set you guys up with expectations it encourages me to follow through, you see.
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Sep 30, 2016 08:35
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ArchangeI posted:It's not a processing fee, its a fine. Which German police likes to collect immediately when they are facing foreigners because by the time that whole thing has gone through the process used for German citizens (involving a letter and a period in which the fine can be challenged in court), the foreigner is probably safe and sound back in his home country and then getting to him becomes that much harder. And by God we're not letting someone who went 132 in a 130 zone on the left lane of the Autobahn get away with it if we can help it. Oh okay. In that case I was lucky to get off.
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Sep 30, 2016 09:44
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Disinterested posted:Though the posts may not appear here, would goons prefer effortposts on the subject of:
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Sep 30, 2016 09:46
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Disinterested posted:Though the posts may not appear here, would goons prefer effortposts on the subject of: Sounds like a better story of lawyer hubris. Do both at some point though.
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Sep 30, 2016 10:03
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HEY GAL posted:i like quentin skinner as much as the next goon, so the second one He's a good chap. I'll do papacy and then work back to Italians from there.
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Sep 30, 2016 10:13
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Disinterested posted:Though the posts may not appear here, would goons prefer effortposts on the subject of: Never not effortpost about the Donation of Constantine and/or the Investiture Controversy imho.
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Sep 30, 2016 10:13
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Has anyone built a tank with thicker side armour than front armour?
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Sep 30, 2016 10:33
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Wait, the Swedes had trouble finding spare parts for Sherman tanks only a couple years after WW2? Were they even trying?
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Sep 30, 2016 11:07
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Disinterested posted:If I set you guys up with expectations it encourages me to follow through, you see. It worked for me (although loving laffo at getting all the books for carrier posts read in a reasonable timeframe).
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Sep 30, 2016 13:17
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Fangz posted:Has anyone built a tank with thicker side armour than front armour? I'm not sure if anyone's made a tank with thicker sides but one of the soviet KV designs that never saw service (6, iirc?) has the same side armour as front.
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Sep 30, 2016 13:53
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Arquinsiel posted:
The Soviets didn't just put in a 45 mm gun into the Type B and call it a day. At first they put in a 37 mm gun into the Type A (yup, in that tiny turret), and later a 45 mm gun in a brand new large turret. They also put a 76 mm recoilless rifle into a Type A turret, but the idea of an infantry support tank that belches flame in the area that infantry likes to hang out in was rejected. The T-26 later gained a 76 mm howitzer in a new turret (T-26-4), but a malfunction of the gun during testing (even though the tank would enter production with a different gun) cast a shadow on the whole thing and it was cancelled. The BT-7 got that same turret eventually though, so  Fangz posted:Has anyone built a tank with thicker side armour than front armour? No, that doesn't make sense to do. The front is where you expect the enemy to shoot you the most, plus the sides are larger in area and armouring them drives the weight up quickly. spectralent posted:I'm not sure if anyone's made a tank with thicker sides but one of the soviet KV designs that never saw service (6, iirc?) has the same side armour as front. The KV-1 had 75 mm all around, although the front was somewhat sloped, so it was more effective. The KV-6 had 90 mm of front armour. Maybe one of the crazy KV-4 variants did, but those are just hilariously impractical designs to begin with.
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Sep 30, 2016 13:55
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Ensign Expendable posted:
This is not surprising. I did a haunt that used really high quality werewolf puppets, and a drunk guy was walking too close to the dumpster that hides the puppet from view and I accidentally hit him with it. He began attempting to posture to the puppet and taking wide swings at it, as if it was a person in a costume who lunged at him.
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Sep 30, 2016 14:04
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Ensign Expendable posted:The Soviets didn't just put in a 45 mm gun into the Type B and call it a day. At first they put in a 37 mm gun into the Type A (yup, in that tiny turret), and later a 45 mm gun in a brand new large turret. They also put a 76 mm recoilless rifle into a Type A turret, but the idea of an infantry support tank that belches flame in the area that infantry likes to hang out in was rejected. The T-26 later gained a 76 mm howitzer in a new turret (T-26-4), but a malfunction of the gun during testing (even though the tank would enter production with a different gun) cast a shadow on the whole thing and it was cancelled. The BT-7 got that same turret eventually though, so It may have been 4; I know it wasn't mass produced. I'll have to check.
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Sep 30, 2016 14:22
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Fangz posted:Has anyone built a tank with thicker side armour than front armour? Some current thought in passive armor layout for the future is that the top should be the most heavily armored thing as death from above munitions keep proliferating. I personally like the idea of driving about in an armored umbrella.
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Sep 30, 2016 14:47
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bewbies posted:Some current thought in passive armor layout for the future is that the top should be the most heavily armored thing as death from above munitions keep proliferating. I personally like the idea of driving about in an armored umbrella. Presumably then people would just start developing death from the side munitions instead, though.
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Sep 30, 2016 15:47
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Dear thread: if you were trying to explain why Battleships were so over by the end of World War 2 in a concise manner, how would you do it? Battleships were too vulnerable to airplanes and missiles and cost a king's ransom besides? "Capital ships" (kinda vauge on this term) are always super expensive and so everybody started going with carriers and soon ballistic missile submarines, leaving no cash for Battleships?
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Sep 30, 2016 15:58
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Nebakenezzer posted:Dear thread: if you were trying to explain why Battleships were so over by the end of World War 2 in a concise manner, how would you do it? Battleships were too vulnerable to airplanes and missiles and cost a king's ransom besides? "Capital ships" (kinda vauge on this term) are always super expensive and so everybody started going with carriers and soon ballistic missile submarines, leaving no cash for Battleships? Link a picture of the Yamato sinking? There were enough floating around that even if you wanted to use them you had some, and there's always room for more money for postwar carrier aviation. The RN carrier wing shrunk in a big way, the only people who used most or all of their war carriers were the US or had two or three of the things. Jets needed bigger carriers (the Essexes were using A4D Skyhawks as their fighters after a while because they were the best that would fit), they really wanted carriers that had had an expensive refit to an angled deck, and they themselves were expensive and quickly obsoleted.
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Sep 30, 2016 16:09
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A carrier does everything the battleship is supposed to do at probably less cost, longer range (with more survivability because it stays further from danger) and with more growth potential as you can upgrade it just by buying better planes. Any battleship that wanted to enter contested waters needed air cover, and for much of the earth's surface, that meant a carrier as escort. So you have to buy the carrier anyway.
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Sep 30, 2016 16:10
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Their vulnerability to air power is the big one. A CV of any era after about the 20s can generally clown on a BB from WAY outside it's effective range. A battleship being bombed and torpedoed by aircraft launched from a carrier 100 miles away has zero ability to respond. Just look at the fate of the Yamato This only gets worse as improvements in missiles make armor more and more pointless. By the time you hit the 70s a missile cruiser is going to kill a traditional big gun battleship as well.
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Sep 30, 2016 16:12
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Wait, the Swedes had trouble finding spare parts for Sherman tanks only a couple years after WW2? Were they even trying? Weird as that sounds, yes. By 1948 when they were actually starting to get rolling after letting all the sweet offers of hundreds of brand new tanks including ammunition for peanuts pass them by due to bureaucratic inertia, only junkyard Shermans with various odd parts missing (like sights and periscopes) were left, with no spares. Ask the UK if they were willing to sell spares? Nope. Ask Canada? No, everything's gone already. Ask the US? No we ain't sellin' poo poo, go away. The initial offer in 1947 was for 200+ former Canadian Shermans of various types, brand new, never used, including ammunition, offer expires in two weeks, 1200 pound sterling each. The inspector of the armored troops was really into this since it would enable him to replace all the thoroughly obsolete tankettes and some other old junk with modern reliable tanks and gain an actual reserve of extra vehicles for once, and all of this for pennies. They even drew up a completely new TO&E for the armored troops to try to convince the higher ups, but even after getting the offer extended by a week there was no approval forthcoming and the entire thing fell through. The commander of the army publicly announced that he doubted that the tank had any future as weapon and welp, that was that. The later offer for 50 junkyard Shermans was much cheaper but also less attractive because they were in worse condition and didn't come with ammunition etc. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Sep 30, 2016 |
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Sep 30, 2016 16:17
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TheFluff posted:The commander of the army publicly announced that he doubted that the tank had any future as weapon He said this in 1947? Holy poo poo, I hope they fired him for incompetence.
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Sep 30, 2016 16:41
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not the first time a swede's let terrible judgement ruin him
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Sep 30, 2016 16:43
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Arquinsiel posted:
Ah, the T-26E - "E" stands for English. Despite the name it's not an actual captured T-26 but a Vickers 6-ton bought from Britain armed with the 45mm gun, optics and DT coaxial mg taken from captured Soviet tanks. Bow-mounted Suomi Tank-SMG (a Suomi SMG with no butt and narrower barrel jacket) remained the same. The 26 remaining Vickers tanks were modified this way after the Winter War in which eight Vickers' had been. Unification of armament of course made logistical sense, but parts for the British and Soviet versions still were largely incompatible - Vickers tanks had been built according to Imperial measures while T-26 used metric system in its parts. The removed 37mm tank guns were installed into captured BT turrets which were turned into pillboxes in the new Salpa fortification line. The pillboxes are still there but without armament.  Soviet T-26s were captured in large numbers during both Winter War and the Continuation War, altogether 114 were captured and 77 of them were still in used in the Panssaridivisioona in 1944. The T-26 captured by Finns was taken in August 1944! Finnish T-26s still saw success during the Lapland war against German light tanks (Somua or Hotchkiss). The remaining vehicles were kept for driver training until 1961. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Sep 30, 2016 |
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Sep 30, 2016 17:06
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Mycroft Holmes posted:He said this in 1947? Holy poo poo, I hope they fired him for incompetence. Were there any promising guided anti-tank missiles already in development at that point in time? I guess I could see somebody looking at one of those, compare that to the fairly rapid development of hand-held AT weaponry like the Panzerfaust and Bazooka just a few years ago, and then make an extremely optimistic extrapolation based off of that.
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Sep 30, 2016 17:18
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Nebakenezzer posted:Dear thread: if you were trying to explain why Battleships were so over by the end of World War 2 in a concise manner, how would you do it? Battleships were too vulnerable to airplanes and missiles and cost a king's ransom besides? "Capital ships" (kinda vauge on this term) are always super expensive and so everybody started going with carriers and soon ballistic missile submarines, leaving no cash for Battleships? Carriers perform stronger, further, safer, more flexible power projection. Even an unsinkable battleship could still only shoot things within 25 miles or so. Their offensive abilities were as superseded as their defensive abilities.
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Sep 30, 2016 17:31
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bewbies posted:Some current thought in passive armor layout for the future is that the top should be the most heavily armored thing as death from above munitions keep proliferating. I personally like the idea of driving about in an armored umbrella. 
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Sep 30, 2016 17:42
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Just start some legs and some sort of cannon on it and we've finally reached Big Zam.
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Sep 30, 2016 17:53
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Mycroft Holmes posted:He said this in 1947? Holy poo poo, I hope they fired him for incompetence. I think the reason for him saying that was mostly because of this new promising HEAT technology and the fact that you couldn't do the early war "drive hundreds of kilometers with unsupported tanks" kind of operations anymore. I guess he imagined lighter infantry support vehicles with big guns but little armor or something. Who knows.
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Sep 30, 2016 18:20
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Eela6 posted:To make it into a bunch of smaller sub-questions: You can't really think of states at this time having their entire military under a single administrative or organizational structure. In most European countries armies are raised on the regimental system. Men are recruited into a regiment from within a geographic area, and each regiment has its own command, administration, recruitment, and logistical structure so it is nominally able to function as an independent formation. On campaign, regiments will be piled together to form larger armies. Spain adopts this system as a result of the reforms initiated by the Spanish Bourbons after the War of the Spanish Succession (aka the Bourbon Reforms). Another aspect of these reforms is simplifying the Spanish imperial administration in Europe and in the New World, including attempts to better integrate the various parts of the Spanish crown with one another. As a result of these two things, there is not really an idea of formally separate armies that answer specifically to the monarch in his capacity as king of Aragon, of Castile. Firstly because armies barely work like that anyway, and secondly because that would have gone against the objectives of the Bourbon reforms. In practical terms regiments raised in adjacent areas might be formed into the same army and therefore you would wind up with armies of mostly Catalonians, or mostly Castilians, etc. quote:What kind of armies are they? That is, are they small or large - both absolutely or relative to their rivals? Are these armies comprised of professional soldiers, militia / levies, mercenaries, or some combination? In 18th century Spain, as with most European countries, the armies are populated by long-service professionals who are not literally mercenaries as they are employees of the state and loyal to the crown rather than to their company/regiment as an independent entity. On the other hand, they are similar to mercenaries because they enlist primary for the promise of (more or less) steady pay, food, and the opportunity to loot. Spanish armies are not tiny but they are smaller in relative terms than other continental powers by this time. This has to do with a severe decline in the European Spanish population over the 17th century, and shortcomings in the administrative, financial, and transportation infrastructure of Spain. The Bourbon Reforms were initiated to try to bring Spain in line with other European countries in those areas, but pretty much failed. Spain has a lot of problems. It doesn't have a very large population, the roads are poo poo so transport is best by sea and the interior is pretty isolated, there is very little manufacturing, the tax base is small and not collected efficiently, etc. etc. etc. In Central and South America, Spanish garrisons are frequently very very small relative to the land area and population they are expected to control, which is as normal for colonial administration at this time. For example, in the Mexican revolt led by Miguel Hidalgo, professional Spanish armies were often outnumbered by more than 10:1 and could still win (e.g. at Calderon Bridge, 6000 Spanish soldiers defeated about 100,000 insurgents). This isn't to say that the Spanish armies were amazing, only that the rebel armies didn't have much in the artillery, firearms, or powder, and they were a disorganized mass of irregulars against real soldiers. In other areas, for example most of the South American campaigns, the number of soldiers involved on either side is typically very small considering the areas over which they are campaigning. I don't think sure Simon Bolivar ever commanded as many as 10,000 men, and frequently he was campaign with only 2-4,000, or even less. He carried out the Admirable Campaign with like, under 800 guys. This is a function of the underdeveloped nature of many of the Spanish colonies--the population is small, and the territory doesn't have the infrastructure or forage to support anything bigger. quote:Who commands? is it professional / merit based? hahaha no quote:Is it a nobility thing, or can you buy commands Yes to both. As in most European armies commissions are purchased, and people of low birth are limited in how far they can advance. Advancement to command in the Spanish army is mostly political and social. IIRC the British had frequent complaints during the Peninsular War that their Spanish allies were commanded by incompetent assholes (see, e.g. the Battle of Barroso). Interestingly, this wasn't as much of a problem in the colonies, because positions there were not at all prestigious, and could in fact be dangerous due to tropical diseases in some areas. Ambitious aristocrats avoided them, which opened those opportunities for competent officers. For example, if you've been listening to the Revolutions Podcast, you may have noticed that Monteverde, who commanded the Spanish army that put down the First Venezuelan Republic, was in the colonial service partly because he was from the Canaries and therefore socially inferior. It was also common for well-to-do creoles from the colonies to send their children to be educated in Spain proper, where they frequently joined the military. For example, Simon Bolivar had a military education in Spain, and Jose de San Martin actually served as a staff officer in the Peninsular War. However, because these people were barred by birth from social and military advancement beyond a certain level, they often went back to the colonies to serve. Finally, an important thing to bear in mind is that the Spanish army in the colonies was not very Spanish. The armies fighting to keep the colonies under Spanish control are mostly composed of locally recruited royalists.
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Sep 30, 2016 18:22
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TheFluff posted:He left in 1948, but at that point it was already too late. So he was a forward thinking visionary? 
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Sep 30, 2016 18:35
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Cyrano4747 posted:Their vulnerability to air power is the big one. A CV of any era after about the 20s can generally clown on a BB from WAY outside it's effective range. A battleship being bombed and torpedoed by aircraft launched from a carrier 100 miles away has zero ability to respond. Just look at the fate of the Yamato I think that most carriers were faster than battleships anyways, so even if the BB could survive constant air attacks it would almost certainly never catch the carrier, even allowing for potential distance drops due to launching/recovering planes. Hell just look at how the BB's role changed from 'Kill Enemy Ships' to 'All of the AAA, ever'
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Sep 30, 2016 18:44
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