|
From France and Pretender Great Britain defend her, Foes let them fall; From foreign slavery, Priests and their knavery, And Popish Reverie, God save us all.
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 00:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 19, 2024 19:24 |
|
|
Anti-popery is sort of required given that the queen's other job is leader of the English Anti-Popery squad.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 00:14
|
|
|
I'm not entirely sure of the protocol on re-asking things but, anyone got some info on post-WW2 soviet women in the military? As I said, WW2 totally dominates the "female soldiers" thing and all mention of them dries up straight after, and this thread's just about the only place I know where to go to ask where to look.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 00:52
|
|
|
My mother told me she had the option of getting a commission at the end of her university degree, but opted not to. That's all I know, it's not really my time period.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 00:55
|
|
|
when did warfare become more shot than pike?
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 01:00
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:My mother told me she had the option of getting a commission at the end of her university degree, but opted not to. That's all I know, it's not really my time period. That's fair. I did see a note that there was recruiting at universities at wikipedia, actually. Would the cold war thread be a better place to ask on this, actually? spectralent fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Nov 2, 2016 |
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 01:02
|
|
|
Stairmaster posted:when did warfare become more shot than pike? 1717 is the introduction of the Charleville, so sometime before that.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 01:26
|
|
|
spectralent posted:That's fair. I did see a note that there was recruiting at universities at wikipedia, actually. We have at least one regular poster here who'd know about this. I've asked questions about this before as well; the extent of my knowledge is "While communism was in theory totally cool with equality of the sexes, the cultural prejudices couldn't deal as well, so women were withdrawn from frontline roles post WW2."
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 01:36
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:1717 is the introduction of the Charleville, so sometime before that. What is a good book about the War Of Spanish succession now by the way?
|
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 03:31
|
|
|
SeanBeansShako posted:What is a good book about the War Of Spanish succession now by the way? about that war? don't know about what war looked like at the time? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Warfare-Age-Marlborough/dp/1885119143
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 10:38
|
|
|
Stairmaster posted:when did warfare become more shot than pike? I want to say the ideal ratio during the later stages of the English Civil Wars was 2:1 shot:pike. The Scots didn't quite manage that because poor, but the New Model Army did. I'm sure Hey Gal will be along shortly to tell us that the glorious civilised mainland Europeans had already achieved that ratio in 1492 or something unlike my backwards countrymen 
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 10:53
|
|
|
USMC_Karl posted:I'm currently reading a book on Q-ships that, while it is really interesting, definitely is showing its nearly 100 years of age. Does anyone here either a) have a good recommendation for a book on Q-ships or b) mind sharing information on Q-ships? In WW2 the German raider SMS Kormoran sunk the HMAS Sydney in a (sort of) surprise attack off the coast of Australia. The Kormoran, a former merchant ship, had guns and torpedo tubes hidden behind false hull segments and secondary weapons were raised from within the superstructure of the ship when the order to decamouflage was given. At the time of the battle (which resulted in mutual sinking) she was disguised as a Dutch merchant vessel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_between_HMAS_Sydney_and_German_auxiliary_cruiser_Kormoran.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 15:24
|
|
|
The Q ship in WW2 was probably the best ROI the German surface navy had
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2016 22:51
|
|
|
Nebakenezzer posted:The Q ship in WW2 was probably the best ROI the German surface navy had AMCs and Q ships aren't really the same thing.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 03:54
|
|
|
drunkill posted:In WW2 the German raider SMS Kormoran sunk the HMAS Sydney in a (sort of) surprise attack off the coast of Australia. The Kormoran, a former merchant ship, had guns and torpedo tubes hidden behind false hull segments and secondary weapons were raised from within the superstructure of the ship when the order to decamouflage was given. At the time of the battle (which resulted in mutual sinking) she was disguised as a Dutch merchant vessel The first German ship sunk by a US one was the AMC Stier, which fought the US Liberty Ship Stephen Hopkins to a fiery mutual destruction.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 04:26
|
|
|
And a special shout out to AMC Jervis Bay!
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 05:07
|
|
|
I'm just gonna randomly throw one in here. Did the Republicans ever have a real chance of winning the Spanish Civil War? Outside of somehow preventing it from happening at all of course. Brought on partly by the fact in HOI4 the war is very much winnable.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 13:02
|
|
|
Flesnolk posted:I'm just gonna randomly throw one in here. Did the Republicans ever have a real chance of winning the Spanish Civil War? Outside of somehow preventing it from happening at all of course. Brought on partly by the fact in HOI4 the war is very much winnable. You're conflating "real chances" with the gay black hitler territory of HoI4. I've written a couple of papers on the SCW, and my conclusion is.. maybe. IF: - Britain, France and the US had not been colossal hypocrites banning arms sales to the Republic while ignoring multi-national military expeditions from Germany and Italy( and if they had, what then? Perhaps it would have started the Euro theatre of WW2 early.) - The soviet union hadn't backed stalinist parties and killed/tortured all their opposition, splitting apart any hope of a functional military organization at the front. - the crack colonial troops had been prevented from entering the mainland. ..which is to say, no, unless we go all the way back to the start of the conflict and everything happened in an entirely different fashion, they did not have a real chance.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 13:31
|
|
|
Fair enough, mentioning HOI was more in the "that inspired the question" sense.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 13:40
|
|
|
More questions inspired by videogames! Specifically WWII Russian front. How does a big encirclement work? Do you leave part of your forces behind to control roads and villages, sacrificing forward momentum to secure supply lines? I'm thinking that Russia is a drat big place and controlling every supply line in would be progressively more difficult the bigger the encirclement. How big were WWII encirclements, really? I'm going to assume that the supply trucks don't reach the border, go "whoops, this hex is the wrong colour, better turn back" I'm not even sure that the armiesw didn't forage or got food and bullets from airdrops or whatever. 
Fat Samurai fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Nov 3, 2016 |
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 13:56
|
|
|
Fat Samurai posted:More questions inspired by videogames! Specifically WWII Russian front. The Germans relied pretty heavily on airdrops to get fuel to the panzer spearheads, but that wasn't really enough to meet even bare minimum requirements. Logistics is hard and probably did more to stop the blitzkrieg in Barbarossa than hastily assembled rifle divisions did. In theory i guess the flanks and supply lines of the pincers should have been vulnerable to counter encirclement, but the Soviet army was too hosed up at the time to actually pull it off despite how attractive it looks when you're dealing with arrows on a map. I'm sure one of our posters who actually knows what they're talking about will weigh in soon.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 14:21
|
|
|
The Battle of Kiev in 1941 was the biggest encirclement in military history, trapping almost the entire Southwestern Front, hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops. And of course the Battle of Stalingrad ended with the German Sixth Army being encircled and destroyed. So yeah, WW2 encirclements could be pretty huge.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 14:25
|
|
|
Fat Samurai posted:More questions inspired by videogames! Specifically WWII Russian front. Generally trucks etc were precious so even with a quite porous encirclement you don't try to sneak supplies through. The other thing you need to remember is that this was the age before the mass availability of long range wireless communications. Being encircled thus often meant being cut off from communication with the higher ups, with all the confusion and disruption that implies. With many lower ranking officers in the soviet army lacking in initiative, this can be disastrous.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 14:47
|
|
|
Flesnolk posted:So yeah, WW2 encirclements could be pretty huge. Also let's not forget the encirclements of Germany and Japan!
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 14:53
|
|
|
Fat Samurai posted:More questions inspired by videogames! Specifically WWII Russian front. A typical WWII major encirclement usually consists in armoured spearheads (and/or cavalry) exploiting a breakthrough made by infantry assault. The fast formations then move on, trying to reach the rear areas of the enemy and disrupt their communications and supply. They are not themselves cut off by the enemy right after the penetration because: a) by pushing into the not so well defended rear areas you deny the enemy a chance to move in by the fastest routes. They cannot run trains by perpendicular rail lines, or march along the perpendicular roads, since that is most likely your avenue of advance (or at the very least you make sure to prevent it). This only leaves them with the option of cutting you off by moving parallel to the front - usually at a walking pace, since you wouldn't exactly station your mobile forces right on the front line, and if you would, the enemy most likely wouldn't attempt a breakthrough there. And if they are moving at a walking pace, then your slow formations are more or less as fast as theirs and can keep up with them. b) because the formations that made the breakthrough in the first place are going to have a large advantage over the enemy forces in nearby non-breakthrough sectors by the nature of things. If they didn't, there would have been no breakthrough, and that's why you've gathered them for the breakthrough in the first place. Later on, what protects them is: a) if the penetration hasn't stalled yet (see Kursk), by this point they should be doing damage to the enemy rear area units and infrastructure. This usually means hasty displacement of HQs, intercepted supply columns, breakdowns in communication. At first, it's the failure in communications that really prevents the forces in the pocket from reacting quickly enough. Furthermore, because of the chaos, pinpointing the exact positions of the enemy columns (and remember these are long, drawn-out columns, which also contributes to flank security) becomes next to impossible, and even what you do know becomes hard to pass to the units. The most likely reaction from the enemy probably won't be to assault the area of the penetration (because attacking is hard, the enemy is probably at an advantage there, and even if they aren't, there's no real way for you to know due to comms disruption) or attempting to cut off the fast units (again, this requires coordination, force, and reliable information), but to immediately start moving back (relatively simple, relatively safe, and if the enemy actually is making a mess in your back field, you have either lost already and should run anyway or at best will soon lose contact with the frontline units and you gotta tell them where to run while you still can). Obviously, they will not be well-prepared to fight in this situation, which makes holding the pocket easier. b) the exploiting forces are immediately followed by other formations supposed to hold the flanks and support the penetration. Those forces are then followed by rear-area or second-line troops supposed to clear out remnants of already defeated formations or clean up pockets of resistance (usually collapsing fairly quickly at this point). As can be seen here, encirclements mostly work by battling weaker enemy forces in areas where the other side is not prepared to fight (because why would you waste materiel on preparing for a possible fight dozens of kilometres behind your front when your front needs the same materiel for a 100% certain fight that is happening right now) and it is usually very rare to see the enemy try to counter-encircle the spearheads rather than just withdraw due to the enormous pressure on command and control that rapid hostile activity carries. Therefore, what really limits deep penetrations is less enemy resistance (since as long as you are supplied, you can generally expect to handily beat rear-area forces and unprepared reinforcements) and more logistical matters. Your spearheads will at some point lose direct access to supply sources and will have to rely on their integral supply train and whatever they can capture. You plan with that in mind and pick objectives which are achievable under these logistical conditions. Attempts at quick raids at positions far beyond the lines are rare and mostly performed when it implies a really severe blow to the enemy capacity to lead and supply their forces (e.g. knocking out the Antwerp port would be disastrous for the Allies during the Battle of the Bulge, but was obviously not possible). I hope this is largely correct and helpful.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 15:13
|
|
|
Continuing a trend of "abandoned military bases in the Arctic being found":quote:Russian researchers have discovered the secret Nazi base in the Arctic after it was abandoned during World War II. The base, called “Schatzgraber” or “Treasure Hunter,” was supposedly a weather station. It sits on Alexandra Land in the Franz Josef Archipelago in the Arctic Circle, reports Russian news outlet Regnum. quote:It was then in service from 1943, before being abandoned in July 1944 when its crew were all poisoned after being forced to eat raw polar bear meat infected with roundworms while running low on supplies. The men became seriously ill, and survivors had to be rescue by a German U-boat. quote:The mysterious place was also known as Schatzgraber or "Kladoiskatel”. Eugeniy Yermolov, a senior research associate at the National Park "Russian Arctic", said: "Before this information about this base was known only from written sources, and many considered it as a fiction. However, now we have real evidence. "
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 15:16
|
|
|
Kemper Boyd posted:I remember something like bad analysis on part of the Royal Navy playing a role too. The thinking was that putting ships into convoys would allow the Germans to sink more ships than otherwise if they found one. At the time, it wasn't realized that running convoys makes finding targets harder for the subs. Yes, the Brits thought that keeping merchant ships as individuals would be better because if a single merchant was found and sunk by a sub, you only lost the one ship, whereas supposedly if you had half-a-dozen or something traveling in a convoy then spotting one means the sub might get to bag all six. In practice it didn't really work that way because, as you said, putting ships into convoys means there's less individual points of ocean that will yield targets for the subs in the first place. As well, the sub won't get to bag all six since they just don't have that many tubes nor that good at aiming a single spread even if they did, and once you've made you're attack on a single ship, then the rest know to either zigzag or run, and either would make follow-up attacks very difficult for the sub. Castles of Steel makes the salient point that the Brits had been running convoys for years before they figured this all out - the Grand Fleet traveling together was itself a convoy that was pretty much impenetrable to subs, but they never made the connection. Fat Samurai posted:More questions inspired by videogames! Specifically WWII Russian front. This is probably an oversimplified view: Blitzkrieg is what happens when you pick the weakest point in the enemy line, break it open with artillery and infantry assault, send the tanks through to exploit, and use air power to disrupt the enemy's ability to shore up the breach. Encirclement is what happens when the tanks drive deep into the enemy rear areas and then form a ring around the rest of the enemy's front line. Sometimes you use geography to complete the encirclement, as in the German invasion of the BeNeLux. Other times you have to use two separate "pincers", as with what happened with most Eastern Front encirclement battles (including ones that the Soviets pulled off!) Ideally, you should have motorized (or even mechanized) infantry capable of keeping up with tanks that will take the responsibility of securing the encirclement's flanks, but Germany never had enough of those so they did usually end up securing the flanks with tank forces and/or whatever infantry could hustle-up fast enough. Once the encirclement is complete, the infantry liquidates the pocket. The tanks don't get to refuel this whole time, except from whatever paltry amount you can fly/paradrop in, but that's not enough to sustain an offensive. You complete the encirclement, you destroy/capture everything in the pocket, the tanks/motorized infantry hold the pocket from people trying to break it from the outside and to prevent anyone from escaping. After the pocket is completely consumed, that's when you refit/resupply/refuel the tanks. One of the big differences between the Eastern Front and every other time that the Germans had to practice Blitzkrieg was that you generally only had to do this once. The Germans blitzed Poland and took the entire country in one go. After the Dunkirk evacuation, the British Army wasn't on the continent anymore (and wouldn't have had any heavy equipment even if they were sent back over the Channel again), and the heart of the French Army had been cut out. Fall Rot / Case Red had to be a separate new offensive after the cleanup of the encirclement in the BeNeLux, but by then the Allied armies had been so thoroughly defeated that they couldn't stop the Germans even in a straight-up fight. But with the Eastern Front, the Germans couldn't achieve the kind of victory where you either push the enemy into a geographic wall, nor could they defeat "the heart" of the enemy army. They encircled 300k+ men to the east of Smolensk during the initial phase of Barbarossa. They encircled another 500k+ around Kiev in September. They encircled around 300k or so in the Bryansk pocket during the first phase of Typhoon. This would have been more than enough to defeat any other nation, but Russia, and not in the timeframe they had if they wanted to get to Moscow before the snows set in (assuming that that in itself would have resulted in a total victory at all). So what you get is that the Germans pull off an encirclement, weeks to liquidate the pocket, weeks to regear the Panzers for another encirclement, and then they do it again, and again, and then it's November 1941 and you're still facing stiff resistance in front of Moscow but you can't regear the Panzers anymore because it's the rasputitsa and bringing up supplies would take too long before winter sets in so you just attack forward however you can and it falls short and WELP.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 15:26
|
|
|
Rasputitsa is overblown by German memoirs. It didn't last that long and German half tracks performed better in mud than old Soviet tanks and tractors. The Red Army was also hilariously short on the latter, meaning that they had a worse time moving supplies and men than the Germans did.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 16:19
|
|
|
I think the key contextual point that's difficult to grasp through time is that there are no cars in an infantry division (well maybe one or two). It's really difficult to imagine a world in which motor transport doesn't exist but that's where many Russian infantrymen found themselves in 1940. So imagine you are on the front line with all your mates and you are totally up for a fight and then someone tells you that 80km behind you the Germans have driven their tanks all around you in a couple of days and cut the railways that your ammunition and food are delivered on. It will take you over a week just to force march to the place where the Panzers are now (assuming the German infantry looking at you from the field over don't have anything to say about it) and you have about 3 days of rations. And that's if your officers are brave enough to start a retreat without orders and if the formations to your left and right manage to do the same thing without someone loving up and turning you all into a wandering rabble. And then if you actually manage to make it to the edge of the encirclement then you still have to fight your way out. Without any of the guns or mortars or stuff that you need to launch an attack against entrenched infantry because you left all that poo poo behind. That's what an encirclement means in terms of how it causes armies to fall apart.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 17:05
|
|
|
Tias posted:You're conflating "real chances" with the gay black hitler territory of HoI4. I've written a couple of papers on the SCW, and my conclusion is.. maybe. You forget to mention that the Republican side was completely incompetent and wasted their offensives and didn't conduct them properly, if they hadn't wasted as many soldiers and materials as they did it would have been likely that they would have held out to WW2.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 17:26
|
|
|
Pump it up! Do it! posted:You forget to mention that the Republican side was completely incompetent and wasted their offensives and didn't conduct them properly, if they hadn't wasted as many soldiers and materials as they did it would have been likely that they would have held out to WW2. At which point they would still be hosed since their biggest backer was the Soviet Union, which was allied with the Nazis in 1939.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 17:43
|
|
|
There's a good anecdote in Schwerpunkt about Germans falling back on a road and having a hard time keeping moving through all the Soviet troops falling back.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 17:45
|
|
|
Flesnolk posted:I'm just gonna randomly throw one in here. Did the Republicans ever have a real chance of winning the Spanish Civil War? Outside of somehow preventing it from happening at all of course. Brought on partly by the fact in HOI4 the war is very much winnable. yes, if some of their dice results had been better
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 17:48
|
|
|
There's no need to be rude, I already said that was just what put the question in my head.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 18:04
|
|
|
Communist modded Persia helped them win on my playthrougg!
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 18:19
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:I think the key contextual point that's difficult to grasp through time is that there are no cars in an infantry division (well maybe one or two). It's really difficult to imagine a world in which motor transport doesn't exist but that's where many Russian infantrymen found themselves in 1940. I too would be surprised if, as a Russian infantryman in 1940, I heard that the Germans were 80 km behind me.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 18:26
|
|
|
Two questions about the H.R.E. 1. What was the most cohesive mobilization against an external enemy? 3rd Crusade? Siege of Vienna? 2. What was the best contemporary Statesman's Yearbook-like tome that covered every territory in it?
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 18:31
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:I too would be surprised if, as a Russian infantryman in 1940, I heard that the Germans were 80 km behind me. You were just facing moscow, it's an easy mistake to make.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 19:04
|
|
|
Pump it up! Do it! posted:You forget to mention that the Republican side was completely incompetent and wasted their offensives and didn't conduct them properly, if they hadn't wasted as many soldiers and materials as they did it would have been likely that they would have held out to WW2. Then the question remains: Why were they incompetent? Was it simply lack of skilled military leaders or factors which actively promoted such bad strategies being implemented?
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 19:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 19, 2024 19:24 |
|
|
nothing to seehere posted:Then the question remains: Why were they incompetent? Was it simply lack of skilled military leaders or factors which actively promoted such bad strategies being implemented? Well quite a lot of the trained military leader types were, y'know, on the other side. All civil wars everywhere tend to be a clusterfuck of incompetence, especially at first, because most of the people involved are amateurs.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2016 20:21
|
|