|
I sorta 'like' how the description tries to bait and switch you:quote:Battle of Kursk, 1943. A young German conscript in an elite division of the Wehrmacht is pinned into a factory with his comrades. Just before his life ends, he finds himself awake in a world where animals talk and walk on two. Knowing only terrifying and confusing battles, Hans is elated to be taken out of the colossal struggle which consumed him. The reality of the cause he once served: actually nazism is cool and good
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 12:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 11:41 |
|
|
Ah yes, one of the many and famous factories in the plains of Kursk.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 13:02
|
|
|
Jobbo_Fett posted:"The armament on Shinano was quite different from that of her sister vessels due to her conversion. As the carrier was designed for a support role, significant anti-aircraft weaponry was installed on the vessel: sixteen 12.7 cm (5.0 in) guns, one hundred and twenty-five 25 mm (0.98 in) anti-aircraft guns, and three hundred and thirty-six 5-inch (13 cm) anti-aircraft rocket launchers in twelve twenty-eight barrel turrets. None of these guns were ever used against an enemy vessel or aircraft." Shinano, like Yamato and Musashi, was a net good for the Allied war effort. Just imagine if all those resources had gone into something useful instead.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 13:46
|
|
|
Tias posted:I don't know about NATO equivalent, but the Hauptfeldwebel is a First Sergeant in the USA Are you sure? My translation website tells me a First Sergeant (US) is a Oberstabsfeldwebel, a Hauptfeldwebel is a Master Sergeant (US). Of course, is also suggests "Oberfeldwebel" for both ranks if isn't specifcally the US-Army, and I know both can't be true at the same time, so maybe the guys feeding the website are just really confused about military ranks? Edit: OK, gently caress it. I went directly to the NATO-rang code on Wikipedia instead of trying to translate German terms directly. So yes, you're right. A Hauptfeldwebel is a Sergeant First Class. Libluini fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Feb 17, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 14:03
|
|
|
my dad posted:Savitri Devi I was going to say "she sounds like a pretty disturbed Indian lady", but: Wikipedia posted:Savitri Devi Mukherji (30 September 1905 – 22 October 1982) was the pseudonym of the Greek-French writer Maximiani Portas I wonder what the Indian independence fighters she assisted thought of her.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 15:02
|
|
|
Manuals came in, seems I got a complete tech manual on the M13/42, referred to simply as M42, the L3/33 tankette, and the M13/40!    Now to
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 16:17
|
|
|
gohuskies posted:There's a great book on the Forrestal fire: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00188V7Y6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 This is an excellent book, and $3 for the Kindle version is well worth it. It doesn't really have or need the maps or diagrams that can make some military books a pain to read on Kindle. It falls more on the Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors personal stories end of the spectrum than the Shattered Sword scholarly analysis of events. Which is neither good nor bad, just how Freeman chose to write it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 16:25
|
|
|
Previous posts. Part 1: Historical context Part 2: The Armies, the Objectives and the beginning. The initial year, Saddams assault. Sorry it’s been so long, this week I’m going to talk about the initial offensive into Iran, why it went quite so wrong so quickly. Both armies were largely inept in these early stages, while Iraq would prove to be more inept and it is a major reason why their offense went so poorly. That initial Iraqi ineptness would have huge implications for Iran and its performance later in the war because of how it would influence the Iranian hierarchy, we will however get to specifics in due time. One interesting point is that both sides would accuse the other as being in the pocket of the Americans, and the Americans would support both sides significantly. Henry Kissinger would say, “It’s a pity that both sides can’t lose,” and the ongoing war did serve US interests quite nicely until tankers started getting blown up. I don’t think this was an intentional policy merely the muddle of politics that resulted in this. We would have Iran-Contra in 1985 and Iran would pursue a policy of getting its proxies to kidnap Americans to trade for arms, and the US would assist heavily with Iraq to stop Iran winning. Important Groups. Iranian Pasadaran: At this time they were the full time militia, envisioned as a Peoples army they existed initially to coup proof the Iranian revolution from the army by having a parallel structure loyal directly to the regime. They were generally poorly equipped with little heavy equipment and were employed as light infantry. They would increase greatly in quality throughout the war. Iraqi Popular Army: Essentially the same idea as the Pasadaran, these formations however would cause huge problems when they were misemployed as line troops by Iraq. These were almost always the weak points the Iranians would attack. Iranian Basij: A part time and largely untrained militia, would merge with the Pasadaran after a year of the war, these people were essentially driven by fanaticism (typically religious) and were on the battlefield to die. They had no heavy equipment and often had severe shortages of even basic rifles and had no effective command structure and so were unreliable on the battlefield as anything other than bullet soaks until they merged with the Pasadaran. KDP: The Kurdish Democratic Party, led by Mustafa Barzani until his death shortly before the Iranian revolution, then by his son Massoud Barzani who is still alive today as the president of Iraqi Kurdistan. This was the major force in Kurdish politics in Iraq at this time. KDPI: The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, lead by Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, suffered a split with the KDP along tribal territorial lines and had a deeply acrimonious relationship with the KDP. Pre-war skirmishes and rabble rousing.  Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei Both sides meddled aggressively in each other’s business leading up to war. Iran attempted to cause an uprising among the Shia Muslims of Iraq’s south, but perhaps surprisingly saw little results, they distrusted the Persian nationalism of Khomeini and the leading Iraqi Shia cleric Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei disagreed vigorously with Khomeini’s interpretation of Shia philosophy. In a sense I think this does show Khomeini either starting to believe his own press a bit too much about how he was the natural leader of Shia Islam, or some overly enthusiastic acolytes who thought of him as the natural leader of all Shia. In this instance, historical Arab distrust of Persians won out over any religious ties. Saddam would go on to employ religion in war as a motivating factor in which he enjoyed the support (albeit not always enthusiastic) of much of Iraq’s clergy. Iraq would retaliate by rabble rousing in the Khuzestan region of Iran where there was an Arab Majority but didn’t enjoy too much success either, what goodwill he had built up was washed away by the brutal behaviour of his troops when they invaded that region. Both sides would employ the Kurds in each other’s countries. Iran had to put down a Kurdish revolt in its northern regions in late 1979, this would last until early 1981 when the last Kurdish strongholds fell to Iran but they would continue guerrilla warfare into 1983. The source of this result was the Kurdish groups were part of the many groups that revolted in Iran against the Shah and when they asked for political concessions Khomeini denied them and had Kurdish groups banned. Iraq had problems with the Kurds throughout the war but this would not come to the fore until 1983.  The general area of Saif Saad artillery duel, take this with a pinch of salt as I’m not sure I’m correct, because of how Arabic is anglicised in my book I’m not completely sure it’s the right place. There was significant conflict before the outbreak of war, artillery exchanges across the border were commonplace from September 1st until the invasion on September 22nd. These escalated to small incursions and border small arms fire as the days went on. Iran occupied Iraqi border stations and there was an air engagement between two MiG-21’s from Iraq and 2 F-4’s from Iran which resulted in one F4 being shot down and its pilot captured on the 8th of September. An Iranian P3 aircraft fired on the Iraqi navy on the 19th of September and the Iranian navy deployed leading to an engagement when Iran fired on an Iraqi merchant vessel, the reported sinking’s in the initial skirmish were 5 Iranian patrol boats, but an Osa class missile boat was sunk by an Iranian ASM helicopter shortly afterwards. These were in most senses the typical border skirmishes between two countries that don’t like each other very much, artillery duels were nothing new and had happened extensively leading up to the 1975 Algiers accords. However this time Saddam was seriously considering Invasion and it was the artillery shelling from both sides that took place at Zain-al-Qawa and Saif Saad on the 4th of September. That would provide the official Casus Belli for the Iraqi invasion. Iraq would abrogate the 1975 agreement and invade on the 22nd. Strategic planning. “We have to stick their nose in the mud so we can impose our political will over them. This cannot take place except militarily.” - Saddam While we have covered why Saddam went to war in previous posts: his Pan-Arabist inclinations, hatred of Iran and the humiliation of the 1975 treaty, and ultimately his belief that it would serve as a stepping stone to an invasion against the true enemy, Israel. The one that would truly handicap Iraq, however, was Saddams belief that, to evoke a different period in history, he merely needed to kick in the door and the rotten structure of Iran would come crashing down. The invasion of Iran does have some interesting parallels with the invasion of Russia, both were predicated on the idea that the country being invaded would surrender, and both would focus heavily on inflicting battlefield losses rather than taking strategic objectives. What is I think instructive at this point is to look at a quote from Saddam from an early planning meeting: “What is stopping us from moving forward on all axes and surrounding Iran’s armies and capturing them? No one is saying there will be no resistance; no one is saying there will be no losses or dead. The result of our military calculations is that we will be able to reach the heard of Iran ... They might skirmish with us, a plane might come and we will shoot it down … however once a plane attacks Baghdad then that is that. It is over and done with” The answer to “What is stopping us” being the Iranian military. It shows just how low Saddams regard was of his opponent, he really believed that Iran posed no real military threat and as such didn’t feel the need to burden himself with extensive military planning. Though he was not entirely wrong given the sorry state of Irans military it meant that Iraq was not prepared in any way for what to do if the Iranians didn’t give up. And this would see consequences. A former Iraqi general recalled that the plan boiled down to invade Iran and take the border regions, meaning that the leadership would have to respond with regular forces from the capital which would leave it open to a coup by Medhi Bazargan, the first prime minister of Iran after the revolution. This coup would never materialise and there was no sign that it ever existed and Barzagan would serve in the Iranian parliament through half the war until his retirement. The conflict zone.  Northern conflict area, major crossing roads marked in red, a bitch of an area to fight in with conventional troops. Turkish border northern marker, Khanaqin southern  Central conflict area, major crossing roads marked in red, many minor ones not marked. Kanaqin northern marker, Mousayin south.  Southern conflict area, major logistical road to Tehran and Iranian interior marked in red. The border between Iran and Iraq is not an easy target, in the north there are the mountains that dominate the Kurdish areas, it is impractical to fight with anything other than light infantry in those areas and keeping them supplied is an utter ballache. These mountains ran in the north from the Turkish border to the city of Khanaqin. In the centre from Khanaqin to Mousayin there are passes which are open to troop movement. Several of these passes focus around Baghdad but after leaving the mountains there is a lot of flat terrain in the run up to Baghdad. And finally there was the run of the border from Mousayin to the coast which was marshy terrain, four rivers feed into the Persian Gulf here and there were a significant amount of irrigation ditches and farmland that could be turned into impromptu defences. Iraqi internal matters. Saddam had two potential problems from internal elements, the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south. The Kurds kept their heads down for the start of the war in a probably wise move. However the southern Shia areas had the problem of the Dawa party.  Bani al-Sadr  Amina al-Sadr The Islamic Dawa party was founded by Shia radicals and had significant sympathy for Khomeini, in the 1979 protests they were heard to chant, “Long live Khomeini, al-Sadr and the religion. All of us are yours to sacrifice Khomeini.” In 1979 one of their clerics issued a fatwa forbidding membership in the Ba’ath party, Saddam retaliated by making membership of the Dawa a capital offence and carried that out with brutal efficiency. Even being related to members of the Dawa party was enough to get you punished, if not usually executed. Saddam used early success in the war for political capital to begin deporting troublemakers, around 100’000 would be deported to Iran or to areas in Iraqs interior once the war broke out. A leading Shia cleric Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr would be tortured to death along with his sister Amina al-Sadr which would inflame the Shia faithful resulting in unrest in Basra and an assassination attempt on Tariq Aziz. People of Shia faith or Iranian heritage would often have their property confiscated. Saddam would say of the unrest, “The Dawa party are concentrating on Basra however this is good, these individuals will be exposed and we will get rid of them.” There is no direct evidence of this but I have a suspicion that Saddam deliberately attempted to inflame tensions to expose ringleaders and provoke trouble to give him a pretext for his actions in pre-emptively dealing with the Dawa, before they could become a true problem by deportation and execution. The Air War, 1980-81. Planning. These plans specifically I think are a great example of Saddams dual competency when it comes to military matters. He had studied the Israel victories in 1967 and 1973 and the Iraqi general staff had wargamed repeats of both of those wars. They identified the huge advantage that Israel had gained in 1967 by their pre-emptive strike on the Arab air forces and they planned a repeat. An excellent idea in theory, Iran had vast technological superiority in the air and so destroying them on the ground would be much easier than in the air. However as you almost certainly have guessed there was a problem, indeed several of them. That problem was the utterly shoddy state of the Iraqi air force, and also the completely bungling way in which it was planned. I mentioned in previous posts that the Iraqi airforce was forbidden from training low level attacks under 5000 feet due to the use of those skills in a coup. There were several exercises leading up to the attack but they did very little to actually prepare the squadrons for the attack they would be doing. They were not informed of their targets until the evening of the 21st, the day before the attack and did not brief their men until the next morning. The initial air attack. When squadron commanders opened their orders they found that staff planners in Baghdad had miscalculated the fuel requirements, there was insufficient fuel load to successfully return from the attack. They had to very quickly reduce bomb loads to allow the planes to return. Crews were briefed at 10.30 on September 22nd for the strike to cross the border at 12.00 and to hit their targets at 12.30. They had no intelligence other than human intelligence, so no reconnaissance photographs or reliable plans, several aircrews were surprised at the scale of the Iranian bases, built with US expertise and for a much larger air force than Iraqs. The second big problem that they had was that they completely missed one important lesson from the 1967 war, one of the reasons that Israel was so successful was that airbase infrastructure was poor on the part of the Arab nations. Iran had armoured hangers and US trained ground crews who had largely escaped the war. These were not Egyptian MiG’s sitting out under the desert sun, Iraq did not have the capability to penetrate the hangers in any reliable way. So they bombed the runways and caught a few Iranian planes out in the open. Casualties from this attack were no more than a few of Iran’s older jets and some holes in the runways which were almost instantly repaired by the aforementioned ground crews. Iran’s air force was in no way really harmed by this attack and they struck back the next day. Iraq had attacked with 250 aircraft in 2 waves and had gotten essentially nothing for their pains. Driven out. Iran would respond quickly and violently in the air, on the 23rd they launched a raid of 150 aircraft, mainly F-4’s with a small contingent of F-5’s. Interestingly 14 F-14’s made it into the air. Despite the mass imprisonment of their pilots. Iran acted quickly to get them back into service releasing their pilots from prison and recalling those who had retired to fight again. Even with the very short lead time before this attack (24 hours at most) Iran managed significantly better results than Iraq, they destroyed twenty aircraft on the ground and damaged eight airfields for the loss of 3 F4’s. They would over the following days destroy nine more Iraqi aircraft in the skies. Throughout October the Iranians would shoot down 25 more aircraft for no losses of their own.  Iranian F-5 Tiger II. Iraq tried to keep up its attacks with a bombing raid on the Kharg oil terminal, but it caused only superficial damage due to small bomb loads. Iraqi air defence was completely incapable of defending its airspace due to its general incompetence. Detections from radar were not passed on up the chain of command in a timely fashion, battery commanders were afraid of authorising firing encase of fratricide. There had been no training to distinguish between Iranian and Iraqi targets and as a result Iran quickly established almost total air superiority. Iraqi planes would decline to fight and turn away from engagements. They failed to learn in the same way that the Egyptians did about air defence when they had another go at Israel in 1973, despite similar equipment the Iraqi anti-air forces were nothing close to the quality of the units that enabled Egypt to deny Israeli air control. Iran would launch a large air raid at the end of September, they would hit power generation facilities around Baghdad and two tomcats would bomb the Osirak nuclear reactor causing little lasting damage but badly shaking Saddam. Iraqi air defence was almost a farce in many ways, much air defence was done by the Iraqi popular army who were badly trained and doctrinally limited. Their ROE only allowed them to fire when they saw either the plane being engaged by other missiles, or if it bombed a nearby target. So interception of planes before they hit the target was almost an impossibility. Saddams paranoia and desperate measures. Saddam was still pushing for outlandish attacks at this stage, his air force was incapable of defending its own airspace and yet he pushed for a significant strike against the dams north of Tehran in an effort to flood the Iranian capital. Despite the lack of the following components of his plan: 1: Intelligence about the area. 2: Data on Iranian defence capabilities. 3: Pilots that could reliably hit the dams. 4: Bombs big enough to do guaranteed damage 5: Planes that could reach that far with enough bomb load to do damage to the structures while evading destruction.  Tu-16 badger. Iraq did possess several Tu-16 Badger bombers which could have done the job, but sending those in against the Iranian air force would have been a death sentence for their pilots. The Saudis were understandably quite skittish and asked America for protection, the US obliged by sending 4 AWACS planes to control and integrate with Saudi Arabia’s new F-15 fleet, which was being aided by American instructors at the time. Saddam was convinced that this information was going to the Iranians one way or another which doubtless contributed to his decision in early 1981 to disperse his air force to other Arab nations to preserve it. He had the following to say. “We will not use our air force. We will keep it. Two years hence our air force will be in a position to pound the Iranians.” Iraq had ceded control of the air to Iran. The ground campaign. While the planning of the air campaign is baffling, what was truly incomprehensible was the poor state of briefing of the Army. General Makki Khamas would recall after the war that he saw no evidence of central planning in the thrusts of the Iraqi army, they were not designed to be mutually supporting and did not have a clear objective in mind. As has been mentioned before they mostly ambled across the border and left several key objectives uncaptured. Initially the goals of the war were relatively sensible, he did not seek to drive across the Zagros Mountains and take Tehran. Saddam was interested in obtaining the disputed border territories and some of the border oil fields in the Khuzestan area. Iraq did not prepare for the total war that this would evolve into, I am very much belabouring this particular point but Saddam expected a peace deal or a coup in the Iranian government would end the war. The Invasion. Despite the escalating tensions and the border skirmishes there were only border guard units and Pasadaran forces mobilised in the area of the Iraqi invasion in the south, most of the army’s best units were off fighting the Kurds in the north. They essentially met no resistance and made good progress in the first few days. They attacked in the north, south and centre simultaneously, which was a bizarre choice, there was really nothing to take in the north, Iraqi strategic objectives of oil fields were concentrated in the centre and the south and the mountains in the north were foul terrain to fight in. Generally speaking they advanced to a line defined by the towns of Mousiyan, Susangerd, Ahvaz and Khorramshahr and then started to dig in. They halted at the outskirts of Ahvaz and Susangerd and didn’t make it inside the cities. They failed however to appreciate how the Iranians would counter attack. The northernmost marker on the map is the location of the only major highway leading to the south of Iran through the mountains. Iranian forces were mainly based around Tehran and the highway that is shown leading from Khorramabad down through the mountains to Dezful and finally to Ahvaz would be the lifeline of Iranian forces fighting in the south. There were 3 key roads, the road from Ahvaz to Susangerd in the northwest, the road from Ahvaz to Khorramshahr in the south and the Ahvaz Dezful road in the north. The Iraqis failed to take any of these roads and allowed the Iranian troops to use them to manoeuvre for their counter attacks. They had not grasped the importance of encirclement in the slightest and so squandered their advantage by allowing the Iranians every chance to get their act together. Looking at the map there is a very obvious massive defensive feature in the form of the massive mountain range that Iraq failed to recognise and close. Had they been defending the passes they would have been in much better shape, or even had they focused a push onto Dezful to cut off the southern Iranian forces from reinforcement and slowly wound them up. But they didn’t, and these roads would supply Iranian forces throughout the war. Relations with the local populace. Again this is another instance of Saddams dual personality, the Khuzestan Arabs were largely indifferent at the start of the war. They didn’t really like the Persian dominated government and there was a resistance movement but they seemed to place more value on a quiet life. Saddam recognised this and warned his generals that after their experience with the Kurds Iraq needed to take a humane approach, “if a garden is smashed by [our] tanks, they [should] receive a monetary compensation for such losses of up to four times the original worth.” Which again is a sensible approach, there is no need to inflame the local populace if you don’t need to. But, when Arabs were captured among the Iranian troops that surrendered in the early days of the war Saddam ordered those captured shot as traitors. The commander of the 9th division General al-Duri was particularly enthusiastic in fulfilling this order and shot hundreds of local Arabs who were in possession of weapons which quickly turned them against the invading Iraqis. Later on in October Saddam would say, “Looting is the right of the soldier, they fought it and they should take it.” Leading to predictable results. This policy put to rest Saddams stated propaganda line of Khuzestani independence and formation of a new state with close ties to Iraq. Global situation. There was a UN ceasefire proposed which Iraq accepted and Iran rejected, this was very relieving to Saddam as he had grown attached to his new possessions and was less willing now to bargain them away. Khomeini and the Iranian government were incensed at the invasion and it allowed Khomeini to sideline the civilian government and assume more and more control over the country. This was the start of the development of Iran’s theocratic government and it is very dubious to my mind at least that Khomeini would have achieved such absolute power without the Iraqi invasion to rally the populace behind. Khomeini declared that Iran would fight until the removal of Saddam and payment of Iraqi reparations. He would stick to this line throughout the war, which made negotiated peace impossible. Bloodbath of Khorramshahr.  Iraqi soldiers across the Shatt-Al-Arab watch Khorramshahr burn. Khorramshahr lies right on the border of Iraq, you would think it would be a priority target to quickly, but the forces assigned to take the city were undermanned and underequipped. It was an armored division which was poorly suited to the vicious urban combat that would develop. Iraqi artillery shelled the city relentlessly but it took the arrival of the Iraqi Special Forces battalion and over a month of fighting until the city fell on October 24th. Iraq was significantly hindered because of the massive oil fires from the storage tanks at Abadan Island which covered the city with a thick smokescreen. They were also hindered by the rivers and marshes that surrounded the city. The fight for Khorramshahr was completely unneccesary, the Iraqis had highly mobile armour heavy divisions that could have easily cut the road from Ahvaz and Bandar Mahrshahr and left the soldiers in Khorramshahr to starve until they surrendered. But they inexplicably left those roads open for the early stage of the fight and this allowed the Iranians to pour poorly trained but eager Pasadaran soldiers into the city. Around 15’000 people died in the fight for the city in roughly equal proportions Iranian and Iraqi, and Iraq lost nearly 100 armored vehicles, their special forces were devastated by the fight and would not return to full strength for a long time. Khorramshahr was nicknamed The City Of Blood (Khuninshahr) by the Iranians. Fight for Abadan.  Iraqi T-62 tank knocked out in an irrigation ditch outside Abadan. The fight for Khorramshahr distracted Saddam and the high command of Iraq for a crucial month, they got sucked into a meat grinder from which they could not extricate themselves. Saddam recognised that it would have been better to surround the city after it had fallen but that was far too late, they did proceed to surround Abadan to the north and east cutting off land reinforcements. But the Iranian navy continued to supply via the Persian Gulf rivers which the Iraqi navy tried to stop but suffered heavy losses of two of its modern Osa missile boats and the majority of its torpedo boats. They would use Katyusha missiles mounted to landing craft to turn Abadan and its refinery into a smoking ruin. Iranian artillery would retaliate and destroy the Iraqi refinery and port facilities at Fao. Iraq failed to take Abadan, they had expended too much in the fight for Khorramshahr and their forces were exhausted and they were unable to stop Iranian resupply by sea. The advance halts.  Iraqi T-62 tank caught in the flood outside Susangerd. In mid-November the Iraqi army was advancing on Susangerd when the Iranians opened the dams of the Karkheh River which flooded the plain across which they were advancing, sinking the 150 Iraqi tanks in water and mud up to their turrets and forcing their abandonment. The water and marshes of the south would play a large role in the oncoming war and this was an interesting foreshadowing of the very bad news that would usually spell for the Iraqi armoured forces. The furthest Iraqi forces would ever get into Iran was around 65 kilometres from the border. They made it to the outskirts of Susangerd and Abadan, close to Ahvaz and close to Dezful. They then dug in and waited for the Iranian response. Saddam called an end to offensive operations on December 7th with intermittent shelling of the Iranian cities.  Iraqi artillery shells Ahvaz. Iranian response. Iran was caught by surprise by the Iraqi attack, they fell back in disarray initially but fortunately the Iraqi advance is best described as ponderous, so they were able throughout the initial stages to escape engagements with Iraqi forces and then reform and do it again. The defence of Khorramshahr was a remarkable achievement given the Iraqi numerical advantage, but as often happened in urban warfare the heavy Iraqi shelling simply created defensible rubble piles and didn’t make the city all that easier to actually take. The Iranian air force would perform admirably and their ATGM helicopters managed to inflict a heavy toll on attacking Iraqi Armor by popping up over mountainous or hilly terrain, firing, then scooting before AAA could be brought up to neutralise them.  Iranian AH-1 Cobras of the Imperial airforce pre-war. Iran would plan its first counterattack in 1980 but it would be launched in 1981, president Bani Sadr was forced into an attack around Mehran and Ahvaz by the clerics which I will cover next time. Iranian actions are sparse in this post largely because they were fighting delaying actions and trying to mobilise. Their mobilisation was pretty poor, it took the armoured division at Ahvaz five days to get ready to fight after the invasion, the new Pasadaran and Basij fighters had at most two weeks of training before being thrown into the city fights. However the one thing they did not lack was volunteers, there were so many volunteers for these militias that they could not equip or sensibly deploy them all and many were sent to the east of the country to combat drug smuggling from Afghanistan. Concluding remarks. Saddam wanted to destabilise Iran and make its government fall, his belief that it was possible is the root of a lot of his problems, he thought a limited invasion would cause that to happen and kept repeating that the Iranians would have to come to terms. He sorely underestimated Iranian will to fight, the fact that his army would sit in their positions in some cases until 1982 until they were driven out by Iran. This would lead to a decay in readiness and morale by the time the Iranians did return which would cause significant problems for Iraq when the time came to hold their ground. He had every opportunity to cut Iranian logistical lines, his army got hung up on strongpoints and city fighting and failed to do so in a timely fashion. For an aficionado of the eastern front of WW2 as he would often proclaim himself, (He took particular delight in the Katyusha shelling of Khorramshahr) Saddam failed to insist upon encirclements and pocketing of the enemy forces that was displayed there. His thought process is truly bizarre, he is recorded as pointing out that encirclements are necessary but not in forcing people to carry them out, he raged at incompetence and had people executed for it a lot but often the replacement would be no better. His army would dig in and construct extensive fortifications, this I will cover in the run up to the next post, this preparation begun in January 1981 and would cover the Iraqi occupied territory and would stretch deep back into Iraq by the time the Iranians got there. Iran really had no excuse for not being prepared for the Iraqi attack, they did have internal issues at the time it’s true but at the point that you start getting into dogfights over Iraq it was just a gross failure in judgement to not assume that war was a very strong possibility. They had been involved in mutual provocation for a very long time. They were saved from a much bloodier war by Iraqi incompetence. I still don’t think that had Iraq taken the mountain passes it would have “won” the war, Iran was capable of supplying large forces by sea as it showed and it had the will to fight, but it certainly would have been a much tougher experience for them.  Rough extent of the Iraqi advance in the south outlined in red. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Feb 18, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 22:07
|
|
|
my dad posted:Doing a Google image search for that lead to a side-result of learning about Savitri Devi and her book "The Lightning and the Sun", written in 1958 and dedicated to "To the god-like Individual of our times; the Man against Time; the greatest European of all times; both Sun and Lightning: Adolf Hitler, as a tribute of unfailing love and loyalty, for ever and ever." fun fact? it's coming back, and this time in pepe form
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 22:29
|
|
|
Very nice. I flew over the Zagreb mountains once, it's seriously forbidding terrain, kinda reminiscent of parts of Colorado or Wyoming, definitely not somewhere I'd want to launch an offensive. And losing 150 tanks to mud in a desert plain is a pretty spectacular gently caress up.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 23:53
|
|
|
Squalid posted:And losing 150 tanks to mud in a desert plain is a pretty spectacular gently caress up. "Lieutenant, where are you tanks?!" "I'm sorry sir, we lost them in the flood."
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2017 00:50
|
|
|
HEY GAIL posted:now google esoteric hitlerism gently caress, what did you get me to Google https://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl...WM:&vet=1&w=267 e: ADOLPH HITLER: AVATAR Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Feb 18, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2017 00:52
|
|
|
Avatar: The Last Hitlerbender
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2017 01:04
|
|
|
Polyakov posted:Previous posts. gently caress yeah you are back!
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2017 01:11
|
|
|
Thank you for this!
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2017 02:53
|
|
|
Thank you Polyakov, these posts are a fascinating read.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2017 04:52
|
|
|
Thank you for more Iran-Iraq war information. I've been copying all of this just in case it gets lost because it's just that good.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2017 08:51
|
|
|
The Iran-Iraq is just baffling in how bad the Iraqi's had to perform to be able to lose to a force they not just outnumbered, but out equipped and out supplied among other things.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2017 09:06
|
|
|
Jack2142 posted:The Iran-Iraq is just baffling in how bad the Iraqi's had to perform to be able to lose to a force they not just outnumbered, but out equipped and out supplied among other things. Well, is it so baffling? The soviet army officer ranks hosed up just as bad after the purges, an you could argue Saddams anti-coup measures and poor training programs have a similar effect.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2017 11:00
|
|
|
So if I understand this right, Iraq had 3 separate groups outside of the military proper for the sake of being ready to defend against a coup? That sounds like an organizational nightmare.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2017 18:26
|
|
|
Iraq had one group, the Peoples Army, Iran had the Pasadaran and Basij. I forgot to actually put the nationalities in that summary because im bad so i just went back and changed it. The Pasadaran is what would eventually be called the Revolutionary Guard. There were other groups that were non military that existed to coup proof both regimes, the internal security forces of both nations were largely loyal directly to the regime but im kinda leaving them out because i dont know a whole lot about them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2017 18:33
|
|
|
Char B1 bis Queue: Char B1 ter, Strv 103, 02SS Aerosan, Pz.Sfl.IVb, CKD TNH and LTP (Tanque 39), Emil and KRV, M3A1, ZIK-20, T-12/T-24, LPP-25, LTP, Valentine in the USSR, ZIS-41 and ZIS-43 halftracks, Medium Tank M2, T2E1 Light Tank, Combat Car M1, T18 HMC, M10 Wolverine, Infantry Tank MkI Available for request:   A1E1 Independent  T-37 with ShKAS Wartime modifications of the T-37 and T-38 SG-122 76 mm gun mod of the Matilda Tank destroyers on the T-30 and T-40 chassis 45 mm M-42 gun SU-76 prototype  L-10 and L-30 Strv m/40 Strv m/42 Landsverk prototypes 1943-1951 Strv m/21 Strv 81 and Strv 101  Trials of the TKS and C2P in the USSR 37 mm anti-tank gun  Renault NC Renault D1 Renault R35 Renault D2 Renault R40 25 mm Hotchkiss gun  PzI Ausf. B PzI Ausf. C PzII Ausf. a though b PzII Ausf. c through C PzII Ausf. D through E PzII trials in the USSR Pak 97/38 7.5 cm Pak 41 Hummel s.FH. 18  LT vz 35 LT vz 38 Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Feb 19, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2017 21:13
|
|
|
Please do the Valentine in the USSR, Soviet Halftracks, all of the American stuff starting with the M2 Medium.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 00:16
|
|
Phanatic posted:WWII. They looked at bombers that came back from raids damaged, observed where the damage was, and armored the portions where the damage *wasn't*, under the rationale that planes that were hit in *those* areas didn't make it back, and the places where the planes that did make it back were damaged were less critical because that damage was being survived. That was the first time it was done, but the methodology was used in Korea and Vietnam. Awesome. This is cool as hell. I love that he has to specify his method of root-finding (because numerical analadis and computation are in their infancy.)
|
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 00:37
|
|
|
Tias posted:Well, is it so baffling? The soviet army officer ranks hosed up just as bad after the purges, an you could argue Saddams anti-coup measures and poor training programs have a similar effect. Has any Iraqi army ever appeared competent in battle? I'm genuinely curious. Even with force parity or numerical advantage.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 00:57
|
|
|
Lerius posted:Has any Iraqi army ever appeared competent in battle? I'm genuinely curious. Even with force parity or numerical advantage. Kuwait 
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 01:12
|
|
|
MANime in the sheets posted:Kuwait I'm eagerly awaiting the epilogue to the Iran-Iraq posts where Saddam says to himself, "That war went fine, just fine. Let's try another one!"
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 01:29
|
|
|
Lerius posted:Has any Iraqi army ever appeared competent in battle? I'm genuinely curious. Even with force parity or numerical advantage. Saladin was pretty successful.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 01:31
|
|
|
Iraq does get their poo poo together later in the war, at the end of Iran Iraq the Iraqi army was genuinly kind of nails, eventually Saddam got his hands out of direct military matters and lets people do their thing. It was just in no way ready for prime time against the US when the US decided to fight cleverly, and the planning of Gulf 1 was a genuine marvel to behold. P-Mack posted:I'm eagerly awaiting the epilogue to the Iran-Iraq posts where Saddam says to himself, "That war went fine, just fine. Let's try another one!" The aftermath of the Iraq war and especially the accrued debt from the vast loans that Kuwait gave to Iraq was a large contributory factor in Gulf 1. It is genuinly kind of interersting, i will be progressing onto that after im done with this as it all forms a sort of interconnected series of events.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 02:54
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:Char B1 bis This kinda requires a judgement call on your part, but could you do one about the dumbest/worst design to make it to production?
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 04:49
|
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:This kinda requires a judgement call on your part, but could you do one about the dumbest/worst design to make it to production? Out of the remaining ones that's probably the Infantry Tank MkI.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 06:06
|
|
|
So, the upcoming French DLC for Battlefield 1 is going to add the St. Chamond tank. In reality, it was a lovely tank. I wonder if that will be reflected in gameplay.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 06:26
|
|
|
All WWI tanks were relatively lovely. It's hard to model how lovely they were in a video game though and still make it playable.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 06:34
|
|
|
Vincent Van Goatse posted:Saladin was pretty successful. Hammurabi 
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 06:41
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:All WWI tanks were relatively lovely. It's hard to model how lovely they were in a video game though and still make it playable. Hmmm. I could see a hyper-realistic version in the vein of Surgeon Simulator or something like that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 06:55
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:All WWI tanks were relatively lovely. It's hard to model how lovely they were in a video game though and still make it playable. They'll probably do that in Verdun if they ever get that far in developing it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 06:56
|
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:Hmmm. I could see a hyper-realistic version in the vein of Surgeon Simulator or something like that. I was thinking of something to the tune of "Calm Down Stalin". Make sure you keep up your fiddly engine, stick your head out if the hatch to gasp for air, and don't forget to actually fire at the enemy while you do!
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 06:59
|
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:Hmmm. I could see a hyper-realistic version in the vein of Surgeon Simulator or something like that. Spintires: 1918 Amiens
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 08:06
|
|
|
more like goat simulator
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 08:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 11:41 |
|
|
FAUXTON posted:Spintires: 1918 Amiens This would be a great game. I've always wished spintires would let you drive a logistics truck under fire. Alternatively just put that mud simulation in ArmA.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2017 09:16
|
|
