Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

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Zamboni Apocalypse: Dec 29, 2009

Jobbo_Fett posted:

I've had some pretty powerful flashlights shone in my face because youth and stupidity, and we're probably talking 2000~ and less lumens and they leave spots in your eyes for a few minutes at least. Obviously, depends on exposure and proximity to the light source so it depends.

I'd imagine that if it went off next to you and you were looking right at it, you'd be temporarily blinded at the very least.

Ahhh, you'd hardly notice it, what with being :supaburn:

and all.

# ? Jan 30, 2017 19:28

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# ? May 22, 2024 05:07

FAUXTON: Jun 2, 2005; spero che tu stia bene

bewbies posted:

So I've mentioned a few times, this relatively minor but (ostensibly) remarkable piece of engineering from WWII Japan: the Nakajima Homare. Sadly it doesn't seem like there is a whole lot of information on in, at least in English, so I'm still a little bit in the dark about what its deal is. I'll post a bunch of info and thoughts and see where this goes.

So, this engine was...an anomaly, for a number of reasons. The first, and most significant to me is that it came from Japan. While post-war Japanese industry has pretty much thoroughly mastered the piston engine, during WWII, and especially for aircraft, they generally sucked when compared with their peers/competitors. They preferred radial engines; in general their designs seriously lagged behind Germany/US/UK in most major performance categories; at the same time they so neglected inline engines that their only competent variant was a license built DB-600 series. So, their aircraft designers suffered through years of supbar engines, forcing them to come up with some pretty brilliant/elegant solutions to get around their shortcomings....and then all of a drat sudden in mid-1943, from out of nowhere comes this absolute world-beater of an engine in the Homare.

It was the biggest reason being the late-war Japanese fighters (mainly the Ki-84 and N1K) being so formidable in spite of practically every imaginable operational shortcoming; specs-wise it shamed every other piston engine that saw action during the war. It was developed and fielded during a period of extreme drought with regard to metals and quality fuel, and in an environment that was...not particularly conducive to major engineering projects in general (due to large amounts of high explosive and incendiary devices falling from the sky on a regular basis). It certainly wasn't problem free though, like with every Japanese engine it had reliability issues and it was an absolute monster to maintain, but once the kinks were worked out of manufacturing and maintenance processes its reputation seems to be, at least from the Japanese, to be pretty sterling.

Here's (I think) a picture of one, and also a gorgeous F-86:

Here's the Pratt and Whitney R-2800, which is rightly regarded as the premier all-around aero engine of the war. I'll use it as kind of a comparison from here on out.

So on first glance, you can clearly see the differences in workmanship: the American engine is pretty exquisitely crafted: very clean lines on the cooling fins, hardline tubing, etc. The Homare just looks rougher, which is pretty consistent with what postwar intel sources say about it. The curious thing is usually with aero engines, rougher construction means poorer tolerances and more weight, but it didn't in this case.

Some vital specs comparing it to other 18 cylinder late-war monsters. I won't get into variants and whatnot because who gives a gently caress

Homare
Output: 1990 hp
Power:weight - 1.11 hp/lb
Specific Power - .91 hp/cuin
Frontal Area - 118 cm
Compression Ratio - 8.0

R-2800 (powered the F6F, F4U, P-47, among others)
Output: 2100 hp
Power:weight - .89 hp/lb
Specific Power - .75 hp/cuin
Frontal Area - 134 cm
Compression Ratio - 6.75

Bristol Centaurus (powered the Tempest and Fury, later design)
Output: 2520 hp
Power:weight - .77 hp/lb
Specific Power - .94 hp/cuin
Frontal Area - 140 cm
Compression Ratio - 7.2

BMW-801 (not an 18 cylinder and much earlier, but for comparison's sake...powered the Fw-190)
Output: 1539 hp
Power:weight - .69 hp/lb
Specific Power - .6 hp/cuin
Frontal Area - 129 cm
Compression Ratio - 6.5

Rolls Royce Griffon (not a radial, but just for comparison's sake...powered the late war Spitfires)
Output: ~2000 hp
Power:weight: 1.03 hp/lb
Specific Power: .91 hp/cuin
Compression Radio: 6

A quick explanation of why these numbers are sort of important: output and power:weight should be obvious, specific power (that is, how much power you get out of a given displacement) is related to weight, but also to manufacturing cost and internal volume (you want the least amount of both). Frontal area is basically engine diameter and it is just as important if not moreso than power:weight for an aircraft - for a radial-powered aircraft the engine is a huge source of drag; minimizing the amount of frontal area decreases said drag and thus is very desirable. Compression ratio is just how much the fuel/air mixture gets squished by the cylinder before ignition.

So, for a WWII airplane nerd, the Homare's specs are pretty eye opening. It isn't just better than the most highly regarded engines of the era, it is a LOT better. Its frontal area is comparable to the tiny cute prewar radials, its power/weight is, I think, the best of any widely manufactured aero engine of the era. What has confused/baffled me for a while is HOW, especially considering that the Japanese didn't have access to miracles like 150 octane fuel and decent alloys. My hypothesis has three parts:

1: They cranked the compression ratio way the gently caress up. Compression ratio is a pretty good general indicator of engine efficiency - a modern Honda D engine runs about 10, a high performance road car might get as high as 13, the fantastic naturally aspirated vintage F1 engines could get as high as 17. Most WWII aero engines hovered between 6 and 7, and it was generally not thought of to jack it much higher...it caused more engine wear, more chances for detonation (which could be catastrophic at those power levels), and increased the demands on machining quality and whatnot during manufacturing. It looks like though that the Japanese engineers said gently caress it and pumped out a much higher performance engine despite these issues.

2. They used direct fuel injection on a radial. This wasn't a huge deal for inlines....fuel injection had been used widely since early in the war. However DFI was a lot trickier on radials...instead of having a nice injector that could just run fuel along the length of an inline engine, you had to inject fuel into each cylinder that was organized in, well, a radial fashion, and this was a pain in the rear end. You also didn't have the issues of losing power under negative G's that carbureted inlines had, since there was always at least a few cylinders that were upright...so most radials just used a carburetor, albeit in the case of the R-2800, a very high tech one that wasn't affected by G forces.

3. They worked out some sort of efficiency in cooling that no one else figured out. This is...pure speculation on my part, but it is very hard to explain how they limited the frontal area of the engine so much. People smarter than me have speculated that the figured out some manner of increasing the airflow to the rear cylinders which was a huge deal for a two row radial....Wright tried something similar with the mammoth 3350 with the result that the rear cylinders tended to burst into flames and burn the wing off of its parent B-29 with alarming regularity.

The Homare certainly wasn't without its performance weaknesses....the biggest one was high altitude performance, and most of that problem can be directed squarely at its mediocre boost system. This makes sense given the Japanese limitations with alloys - these engines ran incredibly hot, but the turbo/superchargers ran even hotter. If you didn't have the metal that could deal with the heat, you had to turn it down. Hence, the Ki-84 and N1K were always outclassed by the USAAF heavies at high altitude, what with their multi-stage fancy pants boost systems. It was also, as mentioned earlier, pretty temperamental, to which you could certainly point to the complex design features as a contributing factor. That being said, its performance, especially considering the limitations (the largest being it had to rely on 87-92 octane fuel instead of the 120 or 150 poo poo the Americans and Brits got) is pretty remarkable.

This concludes my thoughts on a relatively unimportant bit of WWII; please critique, especially if you're someone who knows engines better than I do, which should be most of you.

Goddamn what a post.

# ? Jan 30, 2017 19:33

PittTheElder: Feb 13, 2012; Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Finally reached the point in Dark Sun where they're seriously exploring how to actually build a thermonuclear bomb, and the fundamental limitations involved. Turns out you can't actually build a backyard bomb; even though you can theoretically chain stage after stage of fusion fuel together, you can't transform that energy into a useful destructive force. Past a certain point (~100MT), the explosion stops being bigger, and instead starts ejecting atmosphere into space; if you build a bigger bomb, it doesn't eject more atmosphere, it just ejects it faster.

# ? Jan 30, 2017 19:48

OneTruePecos: Oct 24, 2010

bewbies posted:

So I've mentioned a few times, this relatively minor but (ostensibly) remarkable piece of engineering from WWII Japan: the Nakajima Homare.

<snip>

The Homare certainly wasn't without its performance weaknesses....the biggest one was high altitude performance, and most of that problem can be directed squarely at its mediocre boost system. This makes sense given the Japanese limitations with alloys - these engines ran incredibly hot, but the turbo/superchargers ran even hotter. If you didn't have the metal that could deal with the heat, you had to turn it down

<snip>

This concludes my thoughts on a relatively unimportant bit of WWII; please critique, especially if you're someone who knows engines better than I do, which should be most of you.

Out of curiosity, how much real world use did it see, and in what applications?

One thing that occurs to me is that the Homare may be a pretty clever result of the recognition of the limitations on any Japanese design. Given the metallurgy and the fuel available, they were never going to be able to crank up the boost, so maybe they decided instead to wring as much as possible out of the engine in an un- or low-boosted state? So, yes, the boost system is going to be mediocre and high altitude performance is going to suffer accordingly, but that was going to be universally true relative to their belligerents' designs that could take advantage of better metals and fuel. In that case, it may make perfect sense (depending on what kind of plane you're putting it in) to focus instead on maximizing the performance region available to them, where co-incidentally their adversaries may be compromising. I dunno, that's certainly what the choice of such a (relatively) high compression ratio says to me, reverse engineering it 75 years later.

# ? Jan 30, 2017 20:01

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

HEY GAIL posted:

zander sontag was probably an ok guy though

His name makes me think his ancestors liked to eat fish on Sundays

which really is pretty OK, now that I think about it

# ? Jan 30, 2017 20:18

FAUXTON: Jun 2, 2005; spero che tu stia bene

PittTheElder posted:

Finally reached the point in Dark Sun where they're seriously exploring how to actually build a thermonuclear bomb, and the fundamental limitations involved. Turns out you can't actually build a backyard bomb; even though you can theoretically chain stage after stage of fusion fuel together, you can't transform that energy into a useful destructive force. Past a certain point (~100MT), the explosion stops being bigger, and instead starts ejecting atmosphere into space; if you build a bigger bomb, it doesn't eject more atmosphere, it just ejects it faster.

That's interesting, like a theoretical limit to the mechanics of blast waves where below that limit it stays under the "lid" and just blows out horizontally but once you pass that limit any additional force is just thrown out through the path of least resistance which in this case is into space?

# ? Jan 30, 2017 20:29

Phanatic: Mar 13, 2007; Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

OneTruePecos posted:

Out of curiosity, how much real world use did it see, and in what applications?

One thing that occurs to me is that the Homare may be a pretty clever result of the recognition of the limitations on any Japanese design. Given the metallurgy and the fuel available, they were never going to be able to crank up the boost, so maybe they decided instead to wring as much as possible out of the engine in an un- or low-boosted state? So, yes, the boost system is going to be mediocre and high altitude performance is going to suffer accordingly, but that was going to be universally true relative to their belligerents' designs that could take advantage of better metals and fuel. In that case, it may make perfect sense (depending on what kind of plane you're putting it in) to focus instead on maximizing the performance region available to them, where co-incidentally their adversaries may be compromising. I dunno, that's certainly what the choice of such a (relatively) high compression ratio says to me, reverse engineering it 75 years later.

That's my wondering. Okay, it's rated at 1900 hp, but apparently had a lovely supercharger and didn't actually produce the rated power at altitude.

So far as being able to pull off that compression ratio with only low-octane fuel, did it use any sort of octane-boosting like methanol/water injection? The Sakae did, and the Homare was a development of that engine, no? Also, what was its RPM compared to similar engines, and its useful life?

FAUXTON posted:

That's interesting, like a theoretical limit to the mechanics of blast waves where below that limit it stays under the "lid" and just blows out horizontally but once you pass that limit any additional force is just thrown out through the path of least resistance which in this case is into space?

Exactly. Same thing with setting off an underwater explosion. If it's shallow enough it'll just vent a lot of its force through the surface into the air. The atmosphere is pretty darn thin on the scale of the planet.

Phanatic fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Jan 30, 2017

# ? Jan 30, 2017 20:37

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

bewbies posted:

This concludes my thoughts on a relatively unimportant bit of WWII; please critique, especially if you're someone who knows engines better than I do, which should be most of you.

This is a excellent post! Thank you.

As for the cooling the rear cylinder bank, maybe they did something funky with the engine cowling(s)?

# ? Jan 31, 2017 00:22

StandardVC10: Feb 6, 2007; This avatar now 50% more dark mode compliant

Phanatic posted:

So far as being able to pull off that compression ratio with only low-octane fuel, did it use any sort of octane-boosting like methanol/water injection? The Sakae did, and the Homare was a development of that engine, no?

From what I've read (which is mostly older sources so take it with a grain of salt, I guess) the water-methanol injection was a fairly late addition to the Sakae for the A6M6 Zero, so the Homare was probably under development before it was added.

OneTruePecos posted:

Out of curiosity, how much real world use did it see, and in what applications?

As per Rene Francillon's Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War, I can find:
Kawanishi N1K-J - probably the Imperial Japanese Navy's best late-war fighter design, and the only one apart from the Zero to be fielded in real quantity. Actually developed from a seaplane!
Aichi B7A - intended for use as a single-engine carrier bomber, entered service when no carriers were available. Non-factor generally.
Nakajima C6N - fast reconnaissance aircraft, not bad at what it did but never needed in quantity.
Yokosuka P1Y - twin-engined bomber. Entered service very late, spring 1945.
Aichi S1A - night fighter prototype. Never flew.
Mitsubishi A7M - planned successor to the A6M Zero. Prototypes used this engine, but according to Francillon it wasn't considered powerful enough and development moved to the Mitsubishi MK9A. In any event, the A7M never entered service.
Nakajima G8N - prototype four-engined heavy bomber. I'm not even sure what they were planning to use this for, but its only combat experience was getting shot up on the ground.

So there were a lot of applications, but apart from the N1K mainly on airplanes that arrived too late to enter service, or have any impact if they did.

Those are all Navy planes. The Imperial Japanese Army's engine designation system is hellishly confusing, so it'll take me longer to figure out what used it, but the Ki-84 would definitely be the most important application there.

e: that is, the Ki-84 that actually saw use in quantity. It seems the IJA liked the Ki-84 rather a lot, and tried a whole bunch of alternative engine fits to improve its altitude performance, none of which were actually put into use before WWII ended.

StandardVC10 fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Jan 31, 2017

# ? Jan 31, 2017 01:17

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

god i love this thread, someone can shout a question into the wind and within 24 hours some nerds have crowdsourced an encyclopedia-level answer

# ? Jan 31, 2017 01:23

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

I think my favorite thing about this thread is when someone starts expounding on a topic, and I go to google it for more information, only to find that there isn't any (or at least not very much), because it's practically (or maybe even just is) original research.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 01:29

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Ainsley McTree posted:

I think my favorite thing about this thread is when someone starts expounding on a topic, and I go to google it for more information, only to find that there isn't any (or at least not very much), because it's practically (or maybe even just is) original research.

as far as i know, i am one of two people who are studying the Italian theater of the 30yw since some italian dude in the 1920s. It's me and some English guy. (italians themselves allegedly look down on milhist because it reminds them of fascists. at least, that's what i've heard, dunno for sure)

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Jan 31, 2017

# ? Jan 31, 2017 01:36

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

anyway, bewbies, i am not a personal fan of ww2 era stuff but i am a fan of technology that develops in isolation so this was a great post for me, thank you

# ? Jan 31, 2017 01:39

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

HEY GAIL posted:

as far as i know, i am one of two people who are studying the Italian theater of the 30yw since some italian dude in the 1920s. It's me and some English guy. (italians themselves allegedly look down on milhist because it reminds them of fascists. at least, that's what i've heard, dunno for sure)

The 30 yw goes to Italy?

I gotta finish reading that book.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 01:46

FAUXTON: Jun 2, 2005; spero che tu stia bene

Nebakenezzer posted:

The 30 yw goes to Italy?

I gotta finish reading that book.

My pike goes acroooooosssss the alps...

# ? Jan 31, 2017 01:54

Phanatic: Mar 13, 2007; Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

StandardVC10 posted:

From what I've read (which is mostly older sources so take it with a grain of salt, I guess) the water-methanol injection was a fairly late addition to the Sakae for the A6M6 Zero, so the Homare was probably under development before it was added.

In that case, how can those statistics possibly be real? If you could achieve a compression ratio of 8:1 with the lovely low-octane fuel the Japanese had access to, then why did the Allies need 100/150-octane or anti-detonant injections in engines with significantly lower compression?

Phanatic fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Jan 31, 2017

# ? Jan 31, 2017 01:55

StandardVC10: Feb 6, 2007; This avatar now 50% more dark mode compliant

Phanatic posted:

In that case, how can those statistics possibly be real? If you could achieve a compression ratio of 8:1 with the lovely low-octane fuel the Japanese had access to, then why did the Allies need 150-octane or anti-detonant injections in engines with significantly lower compression?

I mean I'm not saying it doesn't have it, just that it probably didn't come from the Sakae if it did.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 01:58

FAUXTON: Jun 2, 2005; spero che tu stia bene

Phanatic posted:

In that case, how can those statistics possibly be real? If you could achieve a compression ratio of 8:1 with the lovely low-octane fuel the Japanese had access to, then why did the Allies need 100/150-octane or anti-detonant injections in engines with significantly lower compression?

One of the things that direct fuel injection can improve is compression ratio. If, somehow, the engine was injecting the fuel at high pressure late in the compression stroke then it's possible that detonation was occurring close enough to the intended timing that it didn't matter all that much. That's making a lot of big assumptions though.

E: Very big assumptions, such as wartime imperial japan figuring out how to maintain an appropriate fuel mixture without anything approaching a modern ECU.

FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Jan 31, 2017

# ? Jan 31, 2017 02:10

bewbies: Sep 23, 2003; Fun Shoe

OneTruePecos posted:

Out of curiosity, how much real world use did it see, and in what applications?

One thing that occurs to me is that the Homare may be a pretty clever result of the recognition of the limitations on any Japanese design. Given the metallurgy and the fuel available, they were never going to be able to crank up the boost, so maybe they decided instead to wring as much as possible out of the engine in an un- or low-boosted state? So, yes, the boost system is going to be mediocre and high altitude performance is going to suffer accordingly, but that was going to be universally true relative to their belligerents' designs that could take advantage of better metals and fuel. In that case, it may make perfect sense (depending on what kind of plane you're putting it in) to focus instead on maximizing the performance region available to them, where co-incidentally their adversaries may be compromising. I dunno, that's certainly what the choice of such a (relatively) high compression ratio says to me, reverse engineering it 75 years later.

They built around 9,000 of them (in contrast to 120,000+ of the R-2800.... :patriot:

), nearly all of them went into either Ki-84s or N1Ks. As expected both of them were stellar performers at low/medium altitude...the Ki in particular was maybe the best performing aircraft of the entire war at that altitude (its only competition is the Yak-3 and the later Spitfire marks IMO). This is just speculation obviously but I do think that they probably intended to build the best performing engine regardless of maintenance/reliability/manufacturing concerns...this sort of aligns with the Japanese preference of quality > quantity, plus if they knew they were always going to be limited on boost that wringing the best lower altitude performance possible out of the powerplant was a decent compromise.

Phanatic posted:

So far as being able to pull off that compression ratio with only low-octane fuel, did it use any sort of octane-boosting like methanol/water injection? The Sakae did, and the Homare was a development of that engine, no? Also, what was its RPM compared to similar engines, and its useful life?

They definitely used water/methanol as an ADI, and pretty liberally it would seem. Sources on this are kinda sketchy but it appears it ran at higher RPMs than comparable engines...around 3000, vs 2700 for the R-2800. All of this likely had a pretty severe effect on its service life, but since airframes in this era had lifespans measured in hours this wasn't really as big of an issue as it would be today.

As for the compression ratio, that is really a design feature as much as anything. ....it is relatively easy to increase the compression ratio, the hard part is increasing the cooling and anti-detonation and reliability along it. Case in point, the vintage bigass engines used for air racing nowadays are often pushed north of 12:1, but they of course are basically custom rebuilt by hand and meticulously cared for.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 02:21

Phanatic: Mar 13, 2007; Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

bewbies posted:

As for the compression ratio, that is really a design feature as much as anything. ....it is relatively easy to increase the compression ratio, the hard part is increasing the cooling and anti-detonation and reliability along it. Case in point, the vintage bigass engines used for air racing nowadays are often pushed north of 12:1, but they of course are basically custom rebuilt by hand and meticulously cared for.

And they also run very high-octane avgas. The unlimited-class air racers use 115/145 that's made only for them. My incredulity isn't based on the claimed compression ratio, it was based on them actually being able to operate at that ratio without high equivalent octane numbers or blowing the conrods right out of the cylinders.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 02:37

Crazycryodude: Aug 15, 2015; Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?

So are there any landmine nerds around (I remember the naval mine effortposting from a while back)?

For various reasons (lol Zimmerit) I've recently become interested in the history of magnetic mines. Anybody know much about how popular and/or effective they were/are?

# ? Jan 31, 2017 03:01

spectralent: Oct 1, 2014; Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

Following the Krengel saga I've become interested in diaries, so, does anyone have any good recommendations, in particular for the eastern front and asia? I liked the ground-level, at-the-time aspect of it, particularly, so stuff that's "the krengel diary but for a soviet soldier" or whatever would be fantastic.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 03:08

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

spectralent posted:

Following the Krengel saga I've become interested in diaries, so, does anyone have any good recommendations, in particular for the eastern front and asia? I liked the ground-level, at-the-time aspect of it, particularly, so stuff that's "the krengel diary but for a soviet soldier" or whatever would be fantastic.

if you know german, try to pick up a copy of peter hagendorf's diary, from the 30yw.

Nebakenezzer posted:

The 30 yw goes to Italy?

I gotta finish reading that book.

yep! the french/venetians/savoy/parma and spain/spain's italian possessions/genoa had a bunch of fights about the valtelline

# ? Jan 31, 2017 04:53

ughhhh: Oct 17, 2012

spectralent posted:

Following the Krengel saga I've become interested in diaries, so, does anyone have any good recommendations, in particular for the eastern front and asia? I liked the ground-level, at-the-time aspect of it, particularly, so stuff that's "the krengel diary but for a soviet soldier" or whatever would be fantastic.

Before you read that have your read the diary of our hero and great poet who was also a conscientious objector?

# ? Jan 31, 2017 05:24

Raenir Salazar: Nov 5, 2010; College Slice

spectralent posted:

Following the Krengel saga I've become interested in diaries, so, does anyone have any good recommendations, in particular for the eastern front and asia? I liked the ground-level, at-the-time aspect of it, particularly, so stuff that's "the krengel diary but for a soviet soldier" or whatever would be fantastic.

There's My Just War: The Memoir of a Jewish Red Army Soldier in World War II

Like Krengel he gets lucky as gently caress.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 05:27

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Raenir Salazar posted:

Like Krengel he gets lucky as gently caress.

everyone who lives does, the unlucky ones are dead

# ? Jan 31, 2017 05:29

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

bewbies posted:

This concludes my thoughts on a relatively unimportant bit of WWII; please critique, especially if you're someone who knows engines better than I do, which should be most of you.

Really appreciate posts like this, it always gets me wiki-diving and googling, there's a lot of fascinating stuff out there. For instance, I was watching the last Foyle's War episode and they used an Auster J/1N to approximate the marks that flew in WW2, and it features the wonderful DH Gipsy Major. I like those little planes particularly the De Havilland ones because so many of them and that engine were imported to Australia, we took thousands of various marks and models.

Airwars is a fun little documentary series on the major aircraft used in WW2, it's not exhaustive, but it was the first place I learnt about a lot of Russian aircraft. But I think my favourite story is of all the experimentation with Fockle Wulf 190 engines, there was nothing they wouldn't try including Juno engines.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 06:11

blackmongoose: Mar 31, 2011; DARK INFERNO ROOK!

HEY GAIL posted:

yep! the french/venetians/savoy/parma and spain/spain's italian possessions/genoa had a bunch of fights about the valtelline

Sometimes I feel as though more than 50% of Spain's fights are about trying to maintain access to other places they're fighting or going to fight.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 06:30

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

blackmongoose posted:

Sometimes I feel as though more than 50% of Spain's fights are about trying to maintain access to other places they're fighting or going to fight.

it's hard to be an empire

edit: 50% of france's fights are about trying to deny spain access to other places they're fighting

# ? Jan 31, 2017 06:32

gohuskies: Oct 23, 2010; I spend a lot of time making posts to justify why I'm not a self centered shithead that just wants to act like COVID isn't a thing.

spectralent posted:

Following the Krengel saga I've become interested in diaries, so, does anyone have any good recommendations, in particular for the eastern front and asia? I liked the ground-level, at-the-time aspect of it, particularly, so stuff that's "the krengel diary but for a soviet soldier" or whatever would be fantastic.

Seven Days In January is one of the best war stories I've ever read https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Days-January-SS-Mountain-Operation/dp/0966638964 It's by a battalion operations officer in the 6th SS Mountain Division - the first third or so of the book is about ski operations against Russians for several years in and around Finland, but the meat of the book is when the division is sent to the Western Front for Operation Nordwind against the US in January 1945. The author is in a position to straddle both the front lines and the command decision making, and it's an extraordinary story of how infantry combat actually happened at the tactical level in WW2, with a focus on a specific and fascinating operation. Its one of the best war books I've ever read - exciting and readable while being extremely rigorous and well thought out. I can't recommend it highly enough, this is a book where I'm willing to give my guarantee that if you buy it, read it, and honestly and seriously feel it's wasted your time and money, PM me and I will paypal you $10.

gohuskies fucked around with this message at 08:44 on Jan 31, 2017

# ? Jan 31, 2017 07:20

JcDent: May 13, 2013; Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

I forget the name, but I bought a diary of some panzerjager recon (how does this stuff work) dude who was in it from the first day of Barbarossa. If you think that Barbarossa was a walk in the park, that dude would beg to disagree. He's a lot more talkative than Krengel and he has a lot to say about being in combat.

If I could find, um, a digital copy in English, I could probably do a read a long. It would certainly be faster and neater than me translating from Lithuanian which was probably translated from English after being translated from Kraut.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 08:14

Polikarpov: Jun 1, 2013; Keep it between the buoys

JcDent posted:

I forget the name, but I bought a diary of some panzerjager recon (how does this stuff work) dude who was in it from the first day of Barbarossa. If you think that Barbarossa was a walk in the park, that dude would beg to disagree. He's a lot more talkative than Krengel and he has a lot to say about being in combat.

If I could find, um, a digital copy in English, I could probably do a read a long. It would certainly be faster and neater than me translating from Lithuanian which was probably translated from English after being translated from Kraut.

Is that the one where the entries end abruptly after Operation Bagration kicks off? I read that one, chilling stuff.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 08:19

JcDent: May 13, 2013; Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Yeah, same one. I only got a few pages into it, but I remember it being a decisevely War Is Not Fun book.

Imagine that it's about one of Krengler's buddies that wasn't gerting radiation treatment in the middle of a major military operation.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 08:24

Jobbo_Fett: Mar 7, 2014; Slava Ukrayini; Clapping Larry

JcDent posted:

Yeah, same one. I only got a few pages into it, but I remember it being a decisevely War Is Not Fun book.

Imagine that it's about one of Krengler's buddies that wasn't gerting radiation treatment in the middle of a major military operation.

The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer was pretty :gonk:

. Advances, retreats, truck convoys being strafed and bombed by IL-2s, his foxhole buddy trying to be macho and try to counter-snipe a sniper with an MG-34 only to get shot in the face with an explosive round...

Or the young SS soldiers that displayed a whole lot of fanaticism and Guy's like "I didn't see too many of them the next day" after they assaulted a Russian trench line + defenses.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 08:50

Animal: Apr 8, 2003

JcDent posted:

I forget the name, but I bought a diary of some panzerjager recon (how does this stuff work) dude who was in it from the first day of Barbarossa. If you think that Barbarossa was a walk in the park, that dude would beg to disagree. He's a lot more talkative than Krengel and he has a lot to say about being in combat.

If I could find, um, a digital copy in English, I could probably do a read a long. It would certainly be faster and neater than me translating from Lithuanian which was probably translated from English after being translated from Kraut.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 08:52

Polikarpov: Jun 1, 2013; Keep it between the buoys

JcDent posted:

Yeah, same one. I only got a few pages into it, but I remember it being a decisevely War Is Not Fun book.

Imagine that it's about one of Krengler's buddies that wasn't gerting radiation treatment in the middle of a major military operation.

I found the kindle version I had. Title is Eastern Inferno: The Journals of a German Panzerjager on the Eastern Front, 1941-43

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004DI7R2E/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

# ? Jan 31, 2017 08:58

Clarence: May 3, 2012

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

I'm pretty sure all battleships are just too top-heavy in general. Just from memory, I know that Barham rolled, Repulse rolled, Prince of Wales rolled, and Oklahoma rolled, and that plus the IJN is already most of the battleships lost during the war.

Not having too much stability (tending towards being a tender ship) is/was generally seen as a good thing for a warship - a "slow, easy roll" is good for gunnery. Within limits, of course. A stiff ship (lots of weight low down) will be too stable and roll very quickly.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 12:02

spectralent: Oct 1, 2014; Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

ughhhh posted:

Before you read that have your read the diary of our hero and great poet who was also a conscientious objector?

Yeah, the one Lenoon posted, right? That was pretty great.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 14:50

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

I was browsing The Chow Line, a Facebook page that makes reproduction US military rations and other items, and they had this picture from WW1.

quote:

French field bread or "gun cotton" as lovingly called by Marines, is brought up near the front and tossed onto some tarp ready for distribution to AEF soldiers in the trenches.

An incredibly thick crust, coupled with low internal moisture allowed this bread to keep in these conditions for upwards of a week without any sign of spoilage.

Common practice was to soak pieces of the bread in water before eating in a bid to make it more palatable.

This doesn't seem like a very sanitary way to distribute bread.

# ? Jan 31, 2017 15:34

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# ? May 22, 2024 05:07

xthetenth: Dec 30, 2012; Mario wasn't sure if this Jeb guy was a good influence on Yoshi.

Clarence posted:

Not having too much stability (tending towards being a tender ship) is/was generally seen as a good thing for a warship - a "slow, easy roll" is good for gunnery. Within limits, of course. A stiff ship (lots of weight low down) will be too stable and roll very quickly.

Also some of those ships hadn't gotten bulges yet, but had been fit with more AA. Granted it's not late war US fits that were right up on the edge of endangering the ship if it was hit badly, but that's still adding topweight (especially for the director aimed autocannon).

# ? Jan 31, 2017 15:52

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

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