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Grand Prize Winner posted:Question related to Mac and Patton's lionization in the American pop consciousness: why didn't Ike or Bradley get a similar larger-than-life treatment? I mean, Eisenhower made it into the dang oval office and he still gets short shrift compared to George "Take that, bonus army" Patton. Loud flashy characters where you can point to a few specific things (Philippines, Bastogne for starters) catch on rather easily, I guess. Eisenhower being a talented strategist who over the course of years is way more impressive to people who understand it all, but dashing bravely to the rescue of the defiant 101st Airborne in the face of disaster and conventional wisdom is much easier to market than looking at maps and understanding logistics. E: vvv and that (well I might quibble with the "very" part of "good at their jobs")vvvv
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Dec 28, 2016 22:35
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JcDent posted:So, ugh, how did Patton and Monty got both so high up the totem pole and so lionized? They were both very good at their jobs and very popular both with their men and with the fire-eaters on their own side. Also they won a lot (except when they didn't, *cough* Market-Garden *cough* Metz *cough*), and their victories were hugely important ones. Monty finally broke the Afrika Korps at El Alamein and then forced them all the way out of Egypt and Libya. Patton was in command of Cobra which was the big breakout from Normandy. Those were crushing, important victories for the Western Allies. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Dec 28, 2016 |
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Dec 28, 2016 22:35
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If you have strong opinions about this, please post: A note on engines Engines are a detail that remain fundamental to aircraft design. The Wright brothers flew thanks to the development of the gasoline engine, which was lightweight, but powerful enough to be adapted to flying. If you want to add performance in any dimension - power, speed, or range - you start with your engine and work outward from there. During the Second World War, better aircraft engines was an obsession with all combatants for that reason. A greater power output could make or break a new fighter aircraft, or allow a heavy aircraft to live up to its payload potential. To give you an idea of power ranges, 1000 horsepower was what the radials in the B-24 and the B-17 made, while the Spitfire and the Mosquito were driven initally by V12 Merlins making 1500 hp. Though ugrades, the Merlin was in some applications making 2000 hp by the start of 1944. The engine of the Corsair carrier fighter stated with 2000 hp and went up from there; the slightly mad Napier H-24 was putting out 2400 hp reliably by 1944. The Germans started well - their aircraft engines are notable in that they adopted fuel injection over carburetors throughout World War 2 - but developing the next generation piston engines proved challenging. The DB 606 is the start of a whole series of failed engines the Nazis tried to develop, with sometimes development programs going so poorly the entire line was cancelled. The Jumo (Junkers Motor) 222 is the most conspicuous complete failure - it was a series of six four cylinder banks arranged around a central crankshaft - projected to put out 2500 hp. It was a favorite of aircraft designers, and it's failure caused the cancellation of many designs that were waiting for this new power plant. I mention all this as when looking at hypothetical aircraft, you can almost gauge the design's plausibility by looking at the spec'd engine output. 2000 hp is on the border; that such a design doesn't have to constantly fight for those engines over its applications in fighters requires considerable black gay Hitler; if those outputs stretch to the 3000 hp, our black gay hitler curve approaches its Liberace point, since we're now assuming a world where Jumo could develop and deploy Wasp Majors successfully because the Third Reich defeats the Soviet Union and now rules everything west of the A-A line. These engine woes (brought on by the Third Reich's material problems and its increasing stresses in manufacture) contributed to the turn to turbines in Nazi designs. Of course, by abandoning piston engines, all the Aryan eggs were in the basket of a new engine type that as it turns out is considerably harder to manufacture than the high output piston engines they just gave up on, and were more demanding in materials and metallurgy as well. Nazi procurement programs: Waiting For Godot, except racist.
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Dec 28, 2016 23:20
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:They were both very good at their jobs and very popular both with their men and with the fire-eaters on their own side. This is exactly it. Big wins combined with Their personality and public image is what set them apart and made them more known than, say, Bradley.
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Dec 28, 2016 23:33
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Hardcore History transcript generated by predictive text:excerpt posted:There’s another famous incident where Lenin said, quote, “Everything is happening and it’s so horrible and greasy and I often think about how many things are happening right now in history.” End quote. http://objectdreams.tumblr.com/post/153158660124/hardcore-history-segment-written-using-a
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Dec 28, 2016 23:36
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swamp waste posted:Hardcore History transcript generated by predictive text: quote:War is the most common story in the world.
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Dec 28, 2016 23:37
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Question related to Mac and Patton's lionization in the American pop consciousness: why didn't Ike or Bradley get a similar larger-than-life treatment? I mean, Eisenhower made it into the dang oval office and he still gets short shrift compared to George "Take that, bonus army" Patton. Eisenhower was in on the whole Bonus Army thing too, you know.
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Dec 28, 2016 23:41
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Plan Z posted:That and he gets blamed for Japanese prudishness and censored porn by Weebs, when the laws that affected that kind of stuff go back to something like 1906. In fact the American occupation under MacArthur led to an early Japanese sexual revolution, with most of the earlier restrictions you referenced on pornographic material lifted or simply ignored. Sexual material was only censored if it involved Westerners, and it wasn't until I think 1948 that censorship of sexual material started to be re-implemented. The massive proliferation of prostitution at this time in Japan is another aspect of the sexual politics of the period, which you can see reflected in western media like the 1967 Bond film You Only Live Twice. That is a rather sad chapter of the occupation though, especially in how in anticipation of the occupation the Japanese government pretty much reproduced the system of comfort women for the benefit of American troops.
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Dec 29, 2016 00:06
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Squalid posted:In fact the American occupation under MacArthur led to an early Japanese sexual revolution, with most of the earlier restrictions you referenced on pornographic material lifted or simply ignored. Sexual material was only censored if it involved Westerners, and it wasn't until I think 1948 that censorship of sexual material started to be re-implemented. The massive proliferation of prostitution at this time in Japan is another aspect of the sexual politics of the period, which you can see reflected in western media like the 1967 Bond film You Only Live Twice. That is a rather sad chapter of the occupation though, especially in how in anticipation of the occupation the Japanese government pretty much reproduced the system of comfort women for the benefit of American troops. That Bond film is all kinds of messed up when viewed now.
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Dec 29, 2016 00:21
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SeanBeansShako posted:That Bond film is all kinds of messed up when viewed now. I've never seen it but I've heard it's straight down the line Orientalist. Still Ms. Suzuki drives that bitchin' Toyota convertable
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Dec 29, 2016 00:28
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SeanBeansShako posted:That Bond film is all kinds of messed up when viewed now. Yeah, loving gyrojet guns! What were they thinking?
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Dec 29, 2016 00:28
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Nebakenezzer posted:I've never seen it but I've heard it's straight down the line Orientalist. Bond 'dies' and is reincarnated as a Japanese person, just like every goons' dream.
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Dec 29, 2016 00:35
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Squalid posted:The massive proliferation of prostitution at this time in Japan is another aspect of the sexual politics of the period, which you can see reflected in western media like the 1967 Bond film You Only Live Twice. That is a rather sad chapter of the occupation though, especially in how in anticipation of the occupation the Japanese government pretty much reproduced the system of comfort women for the benefit of American troops. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karayuki-san Hard to blame the US for this one.
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Dec 29, 2016 00:45
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Mantis42 posted:Bond 'dies' and is reincarnated as a Japanese person, just like every goons' dream. I loved the theme though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tbobaz8nn4
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Dec 29, 2016 00:53
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Mantis42 posted:Bond 'dies' and is reincarnated as a Japanese person, just like every goons' dream. "Boo, Wea Boo."
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Dec 29, 2016 01:04
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Mantis42 posted:Bond 'dies' and is reincarnated as a Japanese person, just like every goons' dream. So he can actually have a relationship with a Japanese Girl instead of just loving them? e: The screenplay for You Only Live Twice was written by Roald Dahl 
Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Dec 29, 2016 |
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Dec 29, 2016 01:22
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Nebakenezzer posted:e: The screenplay for You Only Live Twice was written by Roald Dahl Well, he was sort of a lower key less brutal version of Ian Fleming and did some spying in the 2nd World War. Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
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Dec 29, 2016 01:43
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Nebakenezzer posted:If you have strong opinions about this, please post: Not strong opinions, just a quick quibble: The original production Merlin in the Spitfire and Hurricane (and the Fairey Battle, but we don't talk about that...) was the Merlin III and it made 1,030hp so long as it had 100-octane fuel, which didn't begin to become widely available until the summer of 1940. Before that most were tuned to run on 87-octane juice, which severely limited its power output at lower altitudes. In fact it was the Allies' advantage in fuel technology that really helped them push out those power figures and where the Axis began to fall behind. By 1944 the Merlin was adapted to run on 150-octane fuel, making 2000 horsepower at sea level (100-octane remained the standard squadron-service petrol, with the 150 stuff being given to squadrons chasing V1 flying bombs or operating the high-speed recon versions of the Spitfire and Mosquito). The German engines started the war with an engineering advantage (superior supercharger design and fuel injection, although that did make the Daimler engine very thirsty which was a strategic disadvantage in the Battle of Britain) but fell behind in metallurgy and chemistry. And of course no-one could mass-produce engines like the USA. Without Packard building a quarter of all the Merlins ever made (and Ford making another 20% of the total in Manchester) then there would have been a lot of pressure on the second-tier engines such as the Bristol Centaurus, Napier Sabre and Allison V1710. Packard was chosen as it was very much the 'American Rolls-Royce' but the Packard engineers were amazed when they got the Merlin blueprints to find how generous all the tolerances were for what was one of the most powerful aero-engines of the day, and one bred from a Schneider Trophy-winning racer. The +/- figures on the components were more akin to a tractor, and a very cheap one, rather than what they were expecting from Rolls-Royce. The answer was that at that stage Rolls-Royce essentially handbuilt every Merlin it made, just as it had with every car and aero-engine it had built before then. This was back when Rolls-Royce made all its nuts and bolts in-house as it didn't trust anyone else to make them properly. The team building up each engine would select parts to take up all the 'loose space' caused by the generous tolerances - if a crankshaft journal was towards the smaller end of the range, you'd pick out some of the bearing shells that were slightly thicker. Each cylinder would be measured and a suitably-sized piston lapped to fit. Rolls-Royce fitters were trained (and expected) to assemble the engines without torque wrenches - instead they could tighten bolts by 'feel', knowing exactly when each part had bedded down to another. Each Merlin was, essentially, a unique 'blueprinted' engine which made it powerful and reliable but an expensive and complicated nightmare to make in volume. That may have been the Rolls-Royce way but it wasn't the American way. Packard set up a proper production line with machinery to do all the work that was done by hand at Derby and those generous tolerances were brought right down so every part of every Packard Merlin was interchangeable with another of the same model variant. They also changed quite a lot of the engine's internal metallurgy using developments that the US auto industry had made before the war and which were considerably ahead of the British. The reliability and durability of Merlins built by R-R and Packard were statistically identical but the Packard ones were much cheaper per unit and didn't need nearly as much fettling. Perhaps surprisingly Rolls-Royce always looked very kindly on what Packard did and seemed to recognise that they were dealing with a firm that was, at the very least, an engineering equal and which could actually teach them quite a lot. Packard-built Merlins were covered by the same 'no questions asked' warranty as the UK-built Merlins, as Bill Lear (of Lear Jet) fame found in the 1960s when he was flying a P-51 (powered by a Packard Merlin) in Switzerland. The starter clutch was giving trouble and after several failed attempts to fix it Lear contacted the Rolls-Royce dealer in Geneva (this was long before the car- and aero- divisions split up). They took the failed clutch, boxed it up and sent it back to Derby and a week later it was back, fully rebuilt and functional. And all free of charge because this was classed as a 'periodic adjustment', covered by R-R's unlimited warranty. Apparently the dealer told Lear that "Rolls-Royce-designed products do not fail, Sir  " Even if they had been built by another company in a different country 20 years ago...
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Dec 29, 2016 03:08
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Remulak posted:Prostitution was huge business in Meiji Restoration Japan. Poor girls were shipped all over the world and were an important source of foreign currency. Certainly you can't blame the US government for the Japanese state sponsored brothels, in fact the army ultimately ordered the system shut down (it was embarrassed Allied servicemen were being photographed queued up out the door). I do find the whole situation vaguely disturbing though, particularly because despite all the moral problems raised by the official system, eliminating it may have caused much more harm. It didn't stop prostitution, just put it out onto the street beyond the eye of the state and healthcare workers which had previously supplied prophylactics and other services to improve safety and security.
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Dec 29, 2016 03:50
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Nebakenezzer posted:I've never seen it but I've heard it's straight down the line Orientalist. Still Ms. Suzuki drives that bitchin' Toyota convertable The most perplexing scene in that film is where they have 5 women in lingerie essentially applying yellowface to Sean Connery. Dude is 6ft 2, you are not selling him as an undercover Japanese peasant fisherman in the 60's.
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Dec 29, 2016 04:10
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Polyakov posted:The most perplexing scene in that film is where they have 5 women in lingerie essentially applying yellowface to Sean Connery. Considering how the super-secret-Japanese-ninja-base was infiltrated by evenmoresupersecretninjas like... 3 times, I'm pretty sure everyone is just incredibly stupid. Pretty sad when Sean Connery's brother makes a knock-off 007 movie that's better than an original.
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Dec 29, 2016 04:19
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Goofy 60s orientalism aside, I actually quite like YOLT. Its got ninjas, hijacked space ships, a secret volcano base, Bond and Bloefeld finally meeting faced to face, and Tiger Tanaka. It's basically a classic Bond formula film done well, like Goldfinger without the slow middle. And an even better theme song. Debate me nerds.
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Dec 29, 2016 04:47
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It still is better than Die Another Day.
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Dec 29, 2016 04:52
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SeanBeansShako posted:It still is better than Die Another Day. I can't imagine anyone defending Die Another Day. Maybe CineD.
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Dec 29, 2016 04:54
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Mantis42 posted:Goofy 60s orientalism aside, I actually quite like YOLT. Its got ninjas, hijacked space ships, a secret volcano base, Bond and Bloefeld finally meeting faced to face, and Tiger Tanaka. It's basically a classic Bond formula film done well, like Goldfinger without the slow middle. And an even better theme song. Austin Powers 1 is YOLT Austin Powers 3 is Goldfinger Austin Powers 3 sucked. Then again, You Only Live Twice and Goldfinger both treat women badly.  Edit: And now for my DAD defense. I kinda like the song, and the sword fight is loving cool. That's all I got. In Military History-related films: Are they really still using one of those Spanish 109's for Dunkirk? All the Spitfires look right, although I believe they should be the 8-gun versions, but I don't think I've been able to get a good look at them after watching the awesome trailer in theaters.
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Dec 29, 2016 05:02
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:They were both very good at their jobs and very popular both with their men and with the fire-eaters on their own side. Practical art of moving armies notwithstanding.
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Dec 29, 2016 05:14
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BalloonFish posted:Good stuff Thanks for the feedback. I'm kinda new to the whole engine angle; I just end up looking up the wikipedia entries when trying to gauge engine output. With ze Germans, it seems to me like they start the war very well positioned with aircraft engines, but then fail - really badly - to make the advances the Allies do, and I'm never quite sure if this is because of fuel, industrial experience, the strain on German industry that was absent with the allies, etc.
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Dec 29, 2016 05:14
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Nebakenezzer posted:Thanks for the feedback. I'm kinda new to the whole engine angle; I just end up looking up the wikipedia entries when trying to gauge engine output. With ze Germans, it seems to me like they start the war very well positioned with aircraft engines, but then fail - really badly - to make the advances the Allies do, and I'm never quite sure if this is because of fuel, industrial experience, the strain on German industry that was absent with the allies, etc. To be fair, nobody had the same experience as the USA. The Brits had help from them, the Russians had their own issues and relied on lower-octane fuels. All three major axis countries: Italy, Germany, and Japan all had difficulties. IIRC Germany simply couldn't get past the DB60X series and other potential replacements never materialized, as was posted. By the time jet engines were introduced, production and resources were disrupted. The lower service life didn't help either. quote:Given the lower-quality steels used in the 004B, these engines typically only had a service life of some 10–25 hours, perhaps twice this in the hands of a skilled pilot. Japan didn't have the experience, or the resources necessary to build high-quality engines. They only started to break the 2,000HP barrier by... late 1943, I think? Might've been later, but no matter what the actual date was, they didn't have the means to produce anything near the same quality as the USA. Italy is purely lack of experience and the lack of production facilities. This is why most of their planes either had French Gnome-Rhone radial engines or a variant of the German inline DB60X.
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Dec 29, 2016 05:27
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Polyakov posted:Dude is 6ft 2, you are not selling him as an undercover Japanese peasant fisherman in the 60's. I'll just leave this here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-british-tea-heist-9866709/
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Dec 29, 2016 05:56
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Saw this gun and thought of this thread https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beOgmCxeh7A
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Dec 29, 2016 06:11
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Mantis42 posted:Goofy 60s orientalism aside, I actually quite like YOLT. Its got ninjas, hijacked space ships, a secret volcano base, Bond and Bloefeld finally meeting faced to face, and Tiger Tanaka. It's basically a classic Bond formula film done well, like Goldfinger without the slow middle. And an even better theme song. The Spy Who Loved Me is pretty much a straight up remake of YOLT with subs instead of spaceships and no (or at least much much less) racism. It's Roger Moore at his finest instead of a visibly bored Connery. It's got Jaws, sets so large they had to build the largest sound stage in the world to shoot, and the single best stunt of the franchise. It's better.
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Dec 29, 2016 06:38
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gohuskies posted:The Spy Who Loved Me is pretty much a straight up remake of YOLT with subs instead of spaceships and no (or at least much much less) racism. It's Roger Moore at his finest instead of a visibly bored Connery. It's got Jaws, sets so large they had to build the largest sound stage in the world to shoot, and the single best stunt of the franchise. It's better. And then compare that to the Mendes-directed Spectre, which after Skyfall was such a visceral disappointment of a movie that its sole redeeming quality was the hilarious realization that Christoph Waltz plays the same character in every movie. Even the record-setting refinery explosion played second fiddle to seeing Waltz lapsing right back into his nazi-on-prozac character the moment his face appeared on screen. Like everyone should have seen it coming with that title song but you just wanted it to be great because Sam Mendes was hitting his stride and Craig was settling into the role, Voldemort as the new M and that French elf lady as the girl and instead you get to watch Waltz be the Jew Hunter all over again while Craig rapes Monica Bellucci on a mirror and makes an entire rapport with the word "oval office" without ever uttering the word itself. It's a shame because Blofeld and Spectre are such good and relatable villains in this day and age.
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Dec 29, 2016 07:50
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I remember reading somewhere that in the lead-up to Overlord several US divisions were graded as unfit for combat. Was that due to poor training or a lack of combat experience or both? Also, how did this compare to British and Canadian forces and how did the US divisions actually fare once they hit the beach?
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Dec 29, 2016 08:03
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Most of the landings were pretty well run affairs; Omaha beach was the exception, and accounts for basically half of all casualties suffered by the Allies during the landings. For instance, at Juno beach the Canadians suffered only 340 killed and 574 wounded; they had expected something in the realm of 2000 casualties, presumably based on the experience at Dieppe. Casualty figures for Sword, Gold, and Utah are pretty similar. So they did pretty well, but none of the landing elements achieved their first day objectives either.
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Dec 29, 2016 08:33
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On the other hand, then, wgat were the overall strengths and weaknesses of Patton and Monty? Why were they liked by their men if they were lovely commanders? Also, if anyone wants to say something interesting about wars in Chechnya, I wouldn't mind reading about it.
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Dec 29, 2016 09:09
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They weren't lovely commanders. Certainly they had their failures but they also had great successes. Same with MacArthur (plus, you know, the whole nuke thing and poo poo talking thing). People were just pointing out their flaws, which are often overlooked due to their popularity. This thread just tends to be a bit of an echo chamber.
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Dec 29, 2016 12:11
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FastestGunAlive posted:They weren't lovely commanders. Certainly they had their failures but they also had great successes. Same with MacArthur (plus, you know, the whole nuke thing and poo poo talking thing). People were just pointing out their flaws, which are often overlooked due to their popularity. This thread just tends to be a bit of an echo chamber. MacArthur is probably best described as an average commander who got a lot of chances. His best success was Inchon, his managing of the operations in the DEI and the Phils was average, and his managing of the defense of the Phils and the Korean War after Inchon was poor. I wouldn't say he was terrible, but I think if he had not been protected he probably would have suffered from Marshall's "swift relief" policy. To put it in perspective, Marshall basically cleaned out the entire US Army of old officers in the late 30s and was willing to relieve anyone who failed.
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Dec 29, 2016 12:35
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I think that's a fair assessment. I think in one of Keegan's books he's basically described as average with the occasional flash of genius and as the right guy at the right time but outside of that far too volatile and inconsistent. I'm a bit (very) biased as the grandson of a Philippine Scout but it's a miracle the troops there held out as long as they did, considering the quantity and quality of troops and equipment. That's more a testament to the individual soldier than to MacArthur though
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Dec 29, 2016 12:57
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Panzeh posted:MacArthur is probably best described as an average commander who got a lot of chances. His best success was Inchon, his managing of the operations in the DEI and the Phils was average, and his managing of the defense of the Phils and the Korean War after Inchon was poor. I wouldn't say he was terrible, but I think if he had not been protected he probably would have suffered from Marshall's "swift relief" policy. MacArthur was also great at PR - say what you will about the man's ego, but what he did both during the fall of the Philippines and the return to the islands did a lot for American and Filipino morale.
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Dec 29, 2016 13:30
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Cythereal posted:MacArthur was also great at PR - say what you will about the man's ego, but what he did both during the fall of the Philippines and the return to the islands did a lot for American and Filipino morale. Apparently the filipino people loves him for it - he's still an rear end in a top hat, though.
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