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spectralent posted:I think most places valorise successful last-ditch defences and stuff. When you're getting crushed in anything, a point where you rally is always going to be notable. "Near catastrophic retreat and concession of all gained ground along with majority of materiel" is not quite what I'd call a rally. It really is odd that it's quite so lionized.
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Jan 6, 2017 03:04
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HEY GAL posted:but the way they do it will vary by culture, no? Almost certainly, sure, but those bits of the story are the bit where the evil empire's crushed absolutely everything, and our plucky heroes escape to regroup and strike back. There's also the Bataan, which was also mentioned, and Wenck holding open a corridor during the Battle of Berlin. Yeah, there's probably something British about the way particular bits are lionised, but early WW2, in public consciousness, is the invincible army running rampant and crushing all before it. Our underdog heroes are fighting for their lives at that point, not to win, and they succeeded. I don't think that kind of general understanding of a narrative event in something as mythologised as much as WW2 was is uniquely British.
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Jan 6, 2017 03:04
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OwlFancier posted:"Near catastrophic retreat and concession of all gained ground along with majority of materiel" is not quite what I'd call a rally. It wasn't catastrophic, though. That's the point. The expectation was that the entire BEF would be lost; instead they just lost a load of tanks and guns and fell back beyond the (in reality even more effective than understood at the time) barrier of the channel. 25pdrs don't have the same emotive weight as tommies do. EDIT: I mean, to be clear, it's a military disaster. But when you expected a total defeat and to lose basically everything, a catastrophic loss where most people get to limp away is a win. How WW2 gets remembered isn't particularly an accurate reflection of the military situation at the time. spectralent fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 03:07
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:It was luck in this case, because the SM.79 was never meant to be multi-role (or at least not that kind of multi-role) in the first place. Nobody had their poo poo together regarding multiengine torpedo bombers in 1939 except the Japanese, anyway.
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Jan 6, 2017 03:17
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It was important in the context of the time to portray Dunkirk as something of a victory, so as to prevent an utter collapse in British morale.  It's not really an uniquely British thing to do so, and it's not that unusual that the idea lingered. I mean Nazi propaganda tried to do the same with Stalingrad. quote:They Died So That Germany Could Live Lots of vomit inducing purple prose to be found at http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/stalingrad1.htm Fangz fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 03:21
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I suppose if MI5 can convince the entire planet that carrots give you night vision it's not overly surprising that Dunkirk being cool and good stuck as well.
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Jan 6, 2017 03:28
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FastestGunAlive posted:US forces at Bataan and the frozen Chosin come to mind for me. As a Texan, I believe I am obligated to mention the Alamo at this juncture.
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Jan 6, 2017 03:30
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OwlFancier posted:"Near catastrophic retreat and concession of all gained ground along with majority of materiel" is not quite what I'd call a rally. Someone already mentioned the Alamo, but an even better example is Thermopylae. Big defeat that didn't accomplish anything, but it's been taught for hundreds of years as an amazing story of "Western civilization."
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Jan 6, 2017 03:40
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I mean, hell, if we're just going for "big defeats that are remembered fondly" the list is going to be even more massive.
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Jan 6, 2017 03:43
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Jan 6, 2017 03:44
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Grenrow posted:Someone already mentioned the Alamo, but an even better example is Thermopylae. Big defeat that didn't accomplish anything, but it's been taught for hundreds of years as an amazing story of "Western civilization." I thought both the Alamo and Thermopylae were supposed to be tactical victories, with the defenders exacting a disproportionate price for what the attackers gained.
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Jan 6, 2017 03:52
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I love all of the statues of William Wallace that just copy the movie. Celebrate your nation by commemorating the time an Australian wiped his rear end with your history in order to make a movie that's mostly about Mel Gibson fellating himself.
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Jan 6, 2017 03:53
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Page 262!  e: Any interesting stories about the development of jets?
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Jan 6, 2017 03:57
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OwlFancier posted:I thought both the Alamo and Thermopylae were supposed to be tactical victories, with the defenders exacting a disproportionate price for what the attackers gained. In theory you could argue that, but neither seem to have much of a real effect on the subsequent course of the war. Santa Ana's army still outnumbered the Texans by a huge amount, and he eventually lost at San Jacinto due to his own incompetence and poor reconnaissance. The Persians were still marching around Greece, burning cities to the ground (including Athens) and had enough men to put up a pretty hard fight at Plataea a year after Thermopylae, so clearly whatever casualties the Greeks inflicted there couldn't have been too devastating. "Ah, but they inflicted disproportionate casualties!' always seemed like a bit of a cop-out to me in terms of explaining the importance of the Alamo/Thermopylae. Defenders should inflict disproportionate casualties on their attackers, but that doesn't mean we should count them as strategic victories.
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Jan 6, 2017 04:02
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Grenrow posted:In theory you could argue that, but neither seem to have much of a real effect on the subsequent course of the war. Santa Ana's army still outnumbered the Texans by a huge amount, and he eventually lost at San Jacinto due to his own incompetence and poor reconnaissance. The Persians were still marching around Greece, burning cities to the ground (including Athens) and had enough men to put up a pretty hard fight at Plataea a year after Thermopylae, so clearly whatever casualties the Greeks inflicted there couldn't have been too devastating. "Ah, but they inflicted disproportionate casualties!' always seemed like a bit of a cop-out to me in terms of explaining the importance of the Alamo/Thermopylae. Defenders should inflict disproportionate casualties on their attackers, but that doesn't mean we should count them as strategic victories. Oh yeah obviously, it's just that the individual forces punching above their weight gives you at least something to be pleased about. It makes some sense to put up a statue and say "look at this cool dude he killed loads of these other guys, never mind that it did bugger all good in the long run, he kicked individual arse, if you all could manage that we'd win every time" Whereas "giving up everything you set out to do and running away across a huge terrain obstacle and then hiding behind it without any equipment because you left it all in France" would seem a bit harder to spin positively. Harder to be enthusiastic about "woo, we only got literally worse than decimated for no gain whatsoever!" The ability to muster the evacuation force made sense as an impressive feat but selling Dunkirk itself as a positive seems uniquely weird in terms of war mythologizing. E: Then again, I suppose there are people who think the Charge of the Light Brigade is inspirational... OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 04:07
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I thought the big deal about Thermopilae was that it kept the Greek coalition from falling apart because it was a big glowing "Yes, we really will fight to the bitter end for your sake" sign from one of the two major coalition leaders. Was I misinformed?
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Jan 6, 2017 04:10
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my dad posted:I thought the big deal about Thermopilae was that it kept the Greek coalition from falling apart because it was a big glowing "Yes, we really will fight to the bitter end for your sake" sign from one of the two major coalition leaders. Was I misinformed? Herodotus (who to my knowledge is the only major text we have on this campaign) says that wasn't the case. When the Persians were advancing towards Athens to take the city after Thermopylae, they were hoping that the other Greek land forces would come take the fight to the Persians in Boeotia, but the Peloponnesians hosed off back to their more defensible region and built a big wall. They didn't totally abandon the Athenians (the combined Greek fleet assembled at Salamis near the fleeing Athenians), but there doesn't seem to be a great show of Greek unity because of Thermopylae. All of these explanations for why Thermopylae deserves to be seen as a "great battle of history" seem like a real stretch without much actual evidence to show for it. i think the real reason we still talk about it is that the Spartans used it for later propaganda efforts and then it was picked up by later European cultures when they started getting on a real kick about the origins of "western civilization."
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Jan 6, 2017 04:40
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Nobody generally knows about the broader military context. Look at the newspaper I posted. "Heroic efforts cleverly outmanoeuvre a superior enemy force, now we shall rebuild to fight back" is a really easy message to sell. Nobody knows or really cares about the logistical difficulty in replacing lost equipment. Like I said, if you can sell Stalingrad as a *victory* you can sell anything.
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Jan 6, 2017 04:50
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Hell, I even feel like the defence of Moscow's done as a victory, even though that's the tail end of Barbarossa. When you get your poo poo pushed in, the poo poo-pushing-in letting up for a bit is still a thing to be happy about.
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Jan 6, 2017 04:58
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OwlFancier posted:I suppose if MI5 can convince the entire planet that carrots give you night vision it's not overly surprising that Dunkirk being cool and good stuck as well. Wait, that's where that myth came from? My dad used to tell that to me all the time as an example of when "common wisdom" is wrong, I had no idea it originally came from MI5.
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Jan 6, 2017 05:01
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They were covering up how good the British radar network was, IIRC.
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Jan 6, 2017 05:07
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The Lone Badger posted:They were covering up how good the British radar network was, IIRC. Aircraft mounted radar, specifically. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propaganda-campaign-popularized-the-myth-that-carrots-help-you-see-in-the-dark-28812484/
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Jan 6, 2017 05:13
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Rodnik posted:https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...kFJaFdoWDJVT253 Hi, I realize it's been ages since you asked, but it seems nobody answered, and, well, maybe you'll find this useful or something:    The island turns out to be the Russky Island, which I only searched for after saving the picture.   
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Jan 6, 2017 07:32
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I think you'll find that replacing a BEF amount of soldiers to be a tad harder than just rearming them. By the way, did the kit change that mich beween Dunkirk and later UK involvements in Europe? Or is it just warlord games trying to sell us two boxes of infantry instead of one.
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Jan 6, 2017 11:07
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Raenir Salazar posted:Page 262! The Russians actually had jet aircraft in development during WW2, with at least one example having been flown quite early in the war. Unfortunately, the BI-1 would never make it into production due to teething problems and the death of at least one test pilot. No known examples of the BI-1 exist, afaik. Another Russian jet thing. The British actually gave the Russians several Rolls-Royce Nene engines. These were tested, reverse engineered, modified, and would eventually be put into the MiG-15. The Korean War may have been quite different (in the air) if it wasn't for Clement Attlee
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Jan 6, 2017 12:15
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JcDent posted:I think you'll find that replacing a BEF amount of soldiers to be a tad harder than just rearming them. Depends on what you mean. The loss of equipment at Dunkirk is the sole reason why the 6-pounder gun took so long to get into service - due to the time cost of altering production, the British had to choose between 1000 6-pounders and 10,000 of the older 2-pounder guns. Similar issues led to obsolescent tanks (the Matilda II, Valentine, and Covenanter in particular) being made in large numbers simply because that's what they could make. Individual foot-soldier equipment was less affected, as the Lee-Enfield remained the primary rifle until years after the war. The Sten submachinegun probably wouldn't exist, as that was an emergency project, although something similar (and undoubtably better, as the emergency Sten was only marginally better than nothing at all) would probably have shown up (much the way the M3 Grease Gun was introduced in the US) due to the demand for such weapons. Pretty much all of the heavier weapons at the infantry level either had been in production well before Dunkirk or weren't designed until afterward, and were mostly unaffected.
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Jan 6, 2017 13:47
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Did the helmts, uniforms and stuff change much between Dunkirk and Normandy? Because Wargame british mainly come in BEF, Desert Rats and Europe flavors. Obviously, Desert Rats look sufficiently different, but I dunno about th other two.
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Jan 6, 2017 14:06
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JcDent posted:Did the helmts, uniforms and stuff change much between Dunkirk and Normandy? Because Wargame british mainly come in BEF, Desert Rats and Europe flavors. Obviously, Desert Rats look sufficiently different, but I dunno about th other two. Yes. But the changes could sometimes just be little things over a number of different "official variants". seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Battledress#Variants Similarly, the helmets the Commonwealth troops had could vary in design and series. The Mk III "Turtle" helmet, for example, was designed in 1941 but only made its first use on D-Day. It never completely replaced the old Brodie helmet, which itself had several variants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk_III_helmet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brodie_helmet#Variants I can't recall the various different webbing/etc that everyone had to carry all their gear, but its safe to assume that they also had the same treatment as TOEs were changed.
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Jan 6, 2017 14:24
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Gnoman posted:Depends on what you mean. The loss of equipment at Dunkirk is the sole reason why the 6-pounder gun took so long to get into service - due to the time cost of altering production, the British had to choose between 1000 6-pounders and 10,000 of the older 2-pounder guns. Similar issues led to obsolescent tanks (the Matilda II, Valentine, and Covenanter in particular) being made in large numbers simply because that's what they could make. Individual foot-soldier equipment was less affected, as the Lee-Enfield remained the primary rifle until years after the war. The Sten submachinegun probably wouldn't exist, as that was an emergency project, although something similar (and undoubtably better, as the emergency Sten was only marginally better than nothing at all) would probably have shown up (much the way the M3 Grease Gun was introduced in the US) due to the demand for such weapons. Pretty much all of the heavier weapons at the infantry level either had been in production well before Dunkirk or weren't designed until afterward, and were mostly unaffected. Would all those problems happened anyway? Did that maybe end up as a benefit as they needed materiel quick and cheap later as they ended up being pushed back in Asia by the Japanese, and soon after were assaulting Africa. If Dunkirk didn't happen they might have not had industry pumping out enough old equipment quicker and cheaper? Fo3 fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 14:26
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What are the advantages and disadvantages of the helmets the different countries used? It seemed like it would have been very straightforward to just copy each others' designs, so why didn't they converge on a single design?
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Jan 6, 2017 14:29
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Fo3 posted:Would all those problems happened anyway? Did that maybe end up as a benefit as they need materiel quick and cheap because they were being pushed back in Asia by the Japanese, and soon after were assaulting Africa. The difference is that, had the British not lost all their heavy gear in France, they would thus need to produce less of the outdated stuff to bring them up to par before being able to "upgrade" to the better stuff.
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Jan 6, 2017 14:30
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Fangz posted:What are the advantages and disadvantages of the helmets the different countries used? It seemed like it would have been very straightforward to just copy each others' designs, so why didn't they converge on a single design? AFAIK, same reason why the tanks were different, or the guns were different, or the uniforms were different. It fits the requirements laid down by the governing bodies of each respective military. Also, production becomes an issue vis-a-vis license production. Why would France make Lee-Enfields when it already has production running for MAS-36s? Switching to an entirely new rifle, with new ammo, etc etc, isn't easy. If you take the risk and switch production, and survive the ordeal, it could pay off in the long run, but it may not be the most obvious choice based on the available data at the time.
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Jan 6, 2017 14:34
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Fo3 posted:Would all those problems happened anyway? Did that maybe end up as a benefit as they needed materiel quick and cheap later as they ended up being pushed back in Asia by the Japanese, and soon after were assaulting Africa. No. Without the BEF losing so much stuff, they would have had enough equipment that the short period of lower production wouldn't have hurt them significantly, and by the time the Pacific War broke out they'd be two or three years ahead of history in equipment. Fangz posted:What are the advantages and disadvantages of the helmets the different countries used? It seemed like it would have been very straightforward to just copy each others' designs, so why didn't they converge on a single design? There are minor differences in weight vs. protection value, but the biggest reason they didn't converge on a single design is that a helmet changes your outline significantly (often to the point where it is the only way to identify you at night), and looking like the enemy tends to get your soldiers shooting each other by mistake.
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Jan 6, 2017 14:34
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Jobbo_Fett posted:The difference is that, had the British not lost all their heavy gear in France, they would thus need to produce less of the outdated stuff to bring them up to par before being able to "upgrade" to the better stuff. Because they "lost" France and their gear, they weren't their fighting in that theatre at least. How useful the heavy gear would be if you had to transport it to SE Asia (only to lose it there instead  )
Fo3 fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 14:35
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Fo3 posted:Yeah but are you saying a withdrawal of their gear, or a continuing front there? For Dunkirk, they can't keep fighting there. That's the whole reason for Dunkirk to begin with. So yes, a withdrawal with all their heavy equipment would have saved them from having to produce a lot of "unnecessary" stuff and focus on more important, if slower to produce, stuff.
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Jan 6, 2017 14:38
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Crazycryodude posted:Woah the Lebensborn program was real? I'm kind of embarrassed I never knew about it, I thought it was invented for The Man in the High Castle as a way to illustrate ~creepy Nazi reproduction~ weirdness. Oh, but do you know what's really going to bake your noodle? Without the program, we wouldn't have pop supergroup Abba! Frida Lyngstad was born in an SS Lebenborn creche that recruited from Sweden and Norway  OwlFancier posted:I suppose if MI5 can convince the entire planet that carrots give you night vision it's not overly surprising that Dunkirk being cool and good stuck as well. Wait, what?
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Jan 6, 2017 15:00
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Carrots improving your night vision was a saying born in WW2 through propaganda to explain away British radar development improving the RAF performance finding German aircraft. Like the best propaganda, there is some truth in it. The Germans knew about the radars, but vitamin A does help eyesight. But very little of vitamin A that can be absorbed comes from carrots in the form of beta carotene Fo3 fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 15:06
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Fo3 posted:Carrots improving your night vision was a saying born in WW2 through propaganda to explain away British radar development improving the RAF performance finding German aircraft. I think Tias is more questioning how Dunkirk is "Cool and Good". Its more of an inspirational thing. Everybody pitched in and we saved our boys from the nasty Germans! That and the BEF was a huge portion of their manpower. The UK had 13 divisions in the BEF, and I've forgotten how large those could be. As a generic number, they could vary between 10,000 and 20,000. Also, wikipedia lists this as their official losses. quote:In 1953, L. F. Ellis, the British official historian, wrote that by the end of the informal evacuations on 14 August, another 191,870 men had been evacuated after the 366,162 rescued by Operation Dynamo, a total of 558,032 people, 368,491 being British troops. In 2001, Brodhurst wrote that many civilians escaped from French Atlantic and Mediterranean ports to England via Gibraltar and that 22,656 more civilians left the Channel Islands, from 19–23 June. Although much equipment was lost, 322 guns, 4,739 vehicles, 533 motor cycles. 32,303 long tons (32,821 t) of ammunition, 33,060 long tons (33,590 t) of stores, 1,071 long tons (1,088 t) of petrol, 13 light tanks and 9 cruiser tanks were recovered during the BEF evacuations and 2,472 guns were destroyed or left behind. Also destroyed or left behind were 63,879 vehicles, 20,548 motor cycles, 76,697 long tons (77,928 t) of ammunition, 415,940 long tons (422,610 t) of supplies and equipment and 164,929 long tons (167,576 t) of petrol.
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Jan 6, 2017 15:29
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Not really, I understand why you'd need to mythicize Dunkirk. The war couldn't stop just because you suffer a horrific defeat, and if there's one thing brits love, it's pluck :v I'd heard the carrot = good eyesight thing before( as late as last night at a meeting, in fact!), but I'd never heard about it being related to radar. Tias fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 15:40
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Jobbo_Fett posted:For Dunkirk, they can't keep fighting there. That's the whole reason for Dunkirk to begin with. So yes, a withdrawal with all their heavy equipment would have saved them from having to produce a lot of "unnecessary" stuff and focus on more important, if slower to produce, stuff. The fact most of the BEF got away with quite a decent amount of Belgian/French soldiers pretty much seals the deal on Dunkirk not being a terrible result. If you are looking for spirit breaking gigantic gently caress up's you got Singapore and Hong Kong to come. Also, remember this thing happened at the tail end of the fall of France and most of western europe more or less in sucession collapsing against the Nazi Blitzkrieg. Spain is fascist, Ireland and Sweden are neutral and the United States is still on the fence. It would be sort of insane at the time to try and not spin Dunkirk into something a little more accepting for the people of the UK. SeanBeansShako fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 15:42
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