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The Tet conspiracy theory kinda demands that the North Vietnamese authorities had a better understanding of the situation in South Korea and what would happen than all other actors in the conflict, especially the US and the NLF - and knew they had a better understanding and so knew they could exploit the NLF's failure to grasp their strategic weakness and the US's failure to understand the true nature of events. That just doesn't make much sense. If those dangerous southern communist leaders say "no, gently caress off", then the plan fails. If the offensive goes too well and the NLF wins credibility and support, then the plan fails. If the offensive goes too badly and the US and their allies clearly strengthen their position, then the plan fails. Fangz fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 18:03
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bewbies posted:BCTs today certify and deploy as a unit, guys don't get rotated/swapped individually except in specific situations (lesson learned from Vietnam). Is there any reason why the replacement depot debacle didn't stick from WWII?
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Feb 15, 2017 18:07
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The Tet Offensive conspiracy theory is one of those theories that looks very plausible on the surface. The weakening of the VC likely did make things easier for North Vietnam after their overall victory, but I don't think it would have been too different in the long run.JcDent posted:Now, I don't mind WWII posting, especially since it's my favorite historical period, but the DC angle and several others have been done to death. What's your opinion on Tank Destroyers? 
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Feb 15, 2017 18:14
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Plutonis posted:Re: Nazi airplanes. How feasible was the Ho-229? I saw it on My Tank Is Fight and War Thunder and fell in love with how badass and sleek it looked. Flying wings were pretty loving difficult to do right before the advent of real avionics software/computing. The B2 originally had something like 136 computers onboard, with most of them related to flight control and such. More recent upgrades have cut that number down a lot, but they are a huge part of providing stability and flight control.
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Feb 15, 2017 18:55
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Phanatic posted:It was during the war, in May of 45. There'd been a press blackout so people hadn't been warned of the danger. A woman and 5 school kids found one in the woods and disturbed it, setting it off. After that the authorities decided to lift the blackout and warn people. Radiolab did a thing on it. Apparently the coverup caused more distress than just the deaths by themselves. Also trying to cover up sightings of aerial craft always results in alien theories.
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Feb 15, 2017 18:58
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Nenonen posted:I think the predecessor for A-10 Thunderbolt II is, surprise surprise, P-47 Thunderbolt. Fugly war machines that can take a ton of damage. P-47 just wasn't a single role ground attack aircraft. Clearly the A-10 is supposed to pick up the mantle of the mighty Alpha Jet
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Feb 15, 2017 19:48
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Is there any reason why the replacement depot debacle didn't stick from WWII? that model was really designed to incorporate conscripts into an army that was rapidly expanding...it was efficient from a logistical perspective but it made a lot of concessions to unit cohesion and combat capability. if you have a full time volunteer/ professional force you're almost always going to be better off using a model that trains and employs whole units rather than a piecemeal approach.
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Feb 15, 2017 19:55
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bewbies posted:that model was really designed to incorporate conscripts into an army that was rapidly expanding...it was efficient from a logistical perspective but it made a lot of concessions to unit cohesion and combat capability. Right, and during WWII the army wised up to that fact. iirc the stop-gap solution was to, at an early stage, organize replacements into 4-man squads and keep that squad together during the whole process. I'm asking how the army ended up forgetting that lesson, and rotating individual soldiers during Vietnam?
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Feb 15, 2017 20:23
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Train units comprised only of people from the same town WWI style IMO What could possibly go wrong with that idea
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Feb 15, 2017 20:24
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:I'm asking how the army ended up forgetting that lesson, and rotating individual soldiers during Vietnam? Same reason the US navy went from having the best damage control in the world to lighting a carrier on fire without a single enemy being involved. Institutional knowledge is a bitch.
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Feb 15, 2017 20:27
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MikeCrotch posted:Train units comprised only of people from the same town WWI style IMO Apparently fighting shoulder to shoulder with your neighbors was good for morale until everyone died.
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Feb 15, 2017 20:27
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Ensign Expendable posted:Apparently fighting shoulder to shoulder with your neighbors was good for morale until everyone died.
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Feb 15, 2017 20:29
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I visited a village near Moscow where they didn't put all the men in the same unit but they all got killed anyway. The memorial there is super depressing, you see entire families die out.
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Feb 15, 2017 20:32
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Does that mean what I think it does? (ham)
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Feb 15, 2017 20:32
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FAUXTON posted:There's a plaque (installed in 1992 though) a dozen blocks away and change from my house, commemorating the balloon bomb that blew up harmlessly in the air there. Nothing really special other than "holy poo poo one of those got to Omaha" which is honestly impressive. If you think about it it's almost like a very slow ICBM. I wonder what the world would look like if nobody invented rocketry so instead we got really really good at building balloon bombs. The star wars program would certainly be easier.
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Feb 15, 2017 20:37
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Tias posted:Does that mean what I think it does? (ham) The gist of it is all the young men from X village go off, they all die, then there's a massive gap where the working-age population should be so everyone starves or, optimistically, the village collapses and is abandoned. The same kind of deal happened with Pals Battalions in the UK.
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Feb 15, 2017 21:07
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MikeCrotch posted:Same reason the US navy went from having the best damage control in the world to lighting a carrier on fire without a single enemy being involved. This. This is also the reason why our army (the German Bundeswehr) still has some basic stuff in its Dienstvorschriften covered by stuff based on 19th century Prussian ideas. Because these ideas work and as a German army, the Bundeswehr is terrified of not going with tradition when tradition is known to work. Of course this is the same reason why the pre-reform Prussian army got such a trashing by Napoleon, but oh well. Nothing is perfect.  Anyway, I think the idea behind this is that by writing everything down, institutional knowledge can be preserved even if everything else goes to poo poo. Like in this example, if that had been a German carrier, somewhere on there would have been a bureau holding like a hundred books describing step by step how proper damage control should be conducted.
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Feb 15, 2017 21:11
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Right, and during WWII the army wised up to that fact. iirc the stop-gap solution was to, at an early stage, organize replacements into 4-man squads and keep that squad together during the whole process. Ah I gotcha. While I agree the rotation policy was a bad idea, it wasn't really the army's fault in this case...or at least not entirely. They were sort of backed into a corner by law and policy and political expediency that resulted in some seriously contradictory directives from senior leaders. There were two main reasons they went to the individual rotation policy: 1) the government refused to mobilize the reserve component because it wasn't a proper war (and we needed those guys to fight the Russians, if they got uppity); and 2) the length of conscripted service at that time was limited to 24 months, which, if you account for basic training and job training, you really only had about a year's worth of useful service out of a conscript. This meant that unit training - the kind of large scale team-oriented stuff that builds cohesion/morale/competency among a unit - had to be cut out completely. There were various efforts to increase the length of conscription but there wasn't the political capital to get it done. All that created a problem: they had to maintain forces in Korea and Europe plus X00,000 in Vietnam, but they couldn't extend conscription length or mobilize reserves without some sort of major changes to law and policy. So, your choices are 1) reduce the number of troops in Vietnam to allow for a unit rotation policy, or 2) do the individual rotation thing...the math just didn't allow for anything like unit rotation while maintaining that strength level. That said there have been some analyses that put a lot more blame on army leaders didn't object strongly enough to the....poorly constructed policies the civilian leadership was putting out, which I tend to agree with.
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Feb 15, 2017 21:18
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On the Vietnam tour thing still; I believe officers were also a 12 month rotation but only 6 months in a "dangerous" billet. Still not much comfort to those you're leading. I also believe Marines were on 13 month tours. No idea why the difference of one month.
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Feb 15, 2017 21:27
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spectralent posted:The gist of it is all the young men from X village go off, they all die, then there's a massive gap where the working-age population should be so everyone starves or, optimistically, the village collapses and is abandoned. The same kind of deal happened with Pals Battalions in the UK. It was for HEY GAIL. "Sul" in Danish( and presumably, German) means fatty meat.
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Feb 15, 2017 21:48
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FastestGunAlive posted:On the Vietnam tour thing still; I believe officers were also a 12 month rotation but only 6 months in a "dangerous" billet. Still not much comfort to those you're leading. I also believe Marines were on 13 month tours. No idea why the difference of one month. There was actually a personnel management reason for this also...the "dangerous" jobs were things like platoon leader or command of a line company, vice being in a staff position; it was reasoned that it grew better and more well rounded officers to have them spend half their time in a direct leadership role and half their time on staff. This is actually a really good developmental policy in a general sense, but any advantages it offers go right out the window when you limit tours to a year and as a result you have platoons rolling through 5 or 6 platoon leaders per year.
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Feb 15, 2017 21:55
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Tias posted:It was for HEY GAIL. "Sul" in Danish( and presumably, German) means fatty meat. "Sul" doesn't mean anything in German. There's the German word "suhlen" which means "to wallow" though and it has the same pronounciation.
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Feb 15, 2017 22:06
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That's what I always assumed was the basis but one of the sources (admittedly unverified) I found while googling around today said it was an initial policy from when the war was anticipated to be short that never was changed. Which kind of makes sense since your platoon commander time typically isn't six months- usually your more senior lieutenants nearing captaining/time to move units, are folded into the bn staff or sent to regt (but then again maybe you shorten it to that because attrition is so high)
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Feb 15, 2017 22:07
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Libluini posted:"Sul" doesn't mean anything in German. There's the German word "suhlen" which means "to wallow" though and it has the same pronounciation. sueltz is a kind of preserved meat product tho
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Feb 15, 2017 22:23
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HEY GAIL posted:sueltz is a kind of preserved meat product tho Yeah, but Sültze and Suhle are pronounced quite differently.
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Feb 15, 2017 22:24
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FastestGunAlive posted:On the Vietnam tour thing still; I believe officers were also a 12 month rotation but only 6 months in a "dangerous" billet. Still not much comfort to those you're leading. I also believe Marines were on 13 month tours. No idea why the difference of one month. Six months with a infantry company in the field, and six doing some staff job in the rear. I remember hearing or reading that the USMC 13-month thing was a holdover from when they initially sailed over there on ships. Like, time onboard ship on the way over doesn't count as time in-country. Don't know if that is true or not.
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Feb 16, 2017 00:37
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Libluini posted:Anyway, I think the idea behind this is that by writing everything down, institutional knowledge can be preserved even if everything else goes to poo poo. Like in this example, if that had been a German carrier, somewhere on there would have been a bureau holding like a hundred books describing step by step how proper damage control should be conducted. He was in the reserves from lime 68-72 or something like that, though.
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Feb 16, 2017 01:11
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The modern USN takes damage control way more seriously. They have schools where sailors have to learn how to do damage control under realistic conditions which are colloquially described as "ships that sink every day". I had a Royal Navy flag officer tell me in all earnesty that it was amazing and that the RN had nothing like that, and that this was a Bad Thing.
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Feb 16, 2017 01:41
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:Airships I undoubtedly found this from earlier in the thread or a previous incarnation but these (lengthy) blog posts own: http://horseformer.blogspot.ca/2015/07/the-story-of-r100-and-r101-i-imperial.html?m=1 Bout the British airship competition between the state and private capital! One does not end well!
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Feb 16, 2017 03:14
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Pontius Pilate posted:I undoubtedly found this from earlier in the thread or a previous incarnation but these (lengthy) blog posts own: Yeah, Neb (re)posted them in this thread. They're very good! Especially now that they're all properly tagged His (entirely relatable, imo) thing about airships is why I made that comment, in fact.
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Feb 16, 2017 04:02
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airships make me rigid
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Feb 16, 2017 04:04
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:The modern USN takes damage control way more seriously. They have schools where sailors have to learn how to do damage control under realistic conditions which are colloquially described as "ships that sink every day". I had a Royal Navy flag officer tell me in all earnesty that it was amazing and that the RN had nothing like that, and that this was a Bad Thing. I must know more, but I don't know where to look.
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Feb 16, 2017 04:06
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:They have schools where sailors have to learn how to do damage control under realistic conditions which are colloquially described as "ships that sink every day". you mean submarines?
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Feb 16, 2017 04:07
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thatbastardken posted:you mean submarines? they ain't diesel boats anymore
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Feb 16, 2017 04:16
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:The modern USN takes damage control way more seriously. They have schools where sailors have to learn how to do damage control under realistic conditions which are colloquially described as "ships that sink every day". I had a Royal Navy flag officer tell me in all earnesty that it was amazing and that the RN had nothing like that, and that this was a Bad Thing. Does the RN still have Perisher or has that gone the way of the rest of their navy?
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Feb 16, 2017 04:18
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VanSandman posted:I must know more, but I don't know where to look. The first thing to look up is probably the USS Forrestal disaster. The tl;dr is that it was an incident where an aircraft carrier stationed off of Vietnam suffered a devestating fire that nearly destroyed the ship, in part due to atrophied DC practices in the aftermath of World War II. The event precipitated a renewed effort in the Navy to create and sustain good DC practices, and is still used as a case study in DC training today.
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Feb 16, 2017 04:24
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I want to know about the ships that sink every day.
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Feb 16, 2017 04:28
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bewbies posted:Ah I gotcha. While I agree the rotation policy was a bad idea, it wasn't really the army's fault in this case...or at least not entirely. They were sort of backed into a corner by law and policy and political expediency that resulted in some seriously contradictory directives from senior leaders. Wow I didn't realize they hadn't mobilized reserves. That seems crazy, to have a draft for a war you don't think is important enough to use reserves.
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Feb 16, 2017 07:54
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hey, someone just posted early modern spain on twitter https://twitter.com/fungumchum/status/831415480648863744
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Feb 16, 2017 09:46
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Phanatic posted:Does the RN still have Perisher or has that gone the way of the rest of their navy? It still has Perisher but it was always overblown anyway, in any Navy if your next step in the command chain is Captain and you fail to meet requirements, you aren't going to be serving on a submarine again anyway. Acebuckeye13 posted:The first thing to look up is probably the USS Forrestal disaster. The tl;dr is that it was an incident where an aircraft carrier stationed off of Vietnam suffered a devestating fire that nearly destroyed the ship, in part due to atrophied DC practices in the aftermath of World War II. The event precipitated a renewed effort in the Navy to create and sustain good DC practices, and is still used as a case study in DC training today. Can't talk about the Forrestal fire without posting the video.
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Feb 16, 2017 12:12
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