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Ensign Expendable posted:Hmm, maybe they can get like, a big spool of carpet. Or rather, make a loop of carpet spinning between two spools so you don't need as much carper. And make the carpet out of small metal links. Maybe have two carpets so you can turn. And put an engine on it so the carpet spins faster. And you might as well put an armoured box around the engine. This sounds like how the Germans would have naturally come about it.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:18
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These issues make sense, I guess it just always seemed to me that physically pushing through or covering a wire seems a much more obviously efficient solution than trying to cut it with artillery shells - which well, why do we actually think that would work? It always seemed to me mysterious that the allies got 'surprised' that their barrage had no real success in cutting through wire.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:21
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Fangz posted:These issues make sense, I guess it just always seemed to me that physically pushing through or covering a wire seems a much more obviously efficient solution than trying to cut it with artillery shells - which well, why do we actually think that would work? It always seemed to me mysterious that the allies got 'surprised' that their barrage had no real success in cutting through wire. They probably thought that it was "obvious" that artillery would blow barbed wire fences to bits because it's an explosion and explosions blow stuff up.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:25
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When you see the pictures of wire thickets, you really see how people could get stuck on the wire - it always seems a bit odd to think of someone stuck on one or even two strands, but when you've got loose rolls and thick clumps, you slip into that and you cannot get out at all. Hung on the wire could mean totally suspended on meters of it crammed densely into a few feet of space.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:32
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It's basically the least bad option. Realistically how the gently caress do you even begin trying to hack your way through a dozen plus yard belt of wire to move troops through? How do you blow your way through MULTIPLE belts like that? Hit it with a poo poo ton of arty and hope that it gets chopped up enough and buried under flying dirt enough that you have a few lanes to advance. The development of the tank was pretty much a direct response to this dilemma, and one that was never satisfactorily solved all the way through today. gently caress, the Bangalore Torpedo - the main means of clearing wire belts for American engineers in WWII - was only phased out in 2001. Two Thousand and loving ONE. Explosives are STILL the best way to breach a belt of wire if you don't have a bunch of handy multi-ton tracked vehicles to plow it under with. Barbed wire loving sucks if you're trying to attack through it.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:33
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Cyrano4747 posted:It's basically the least bad option. Realistically how the gently caress do you even begin trying to hack your way through a dozen plus yard belt of wire to move troops through? How do you blow your way through MULTIPLE belts like that? Hit it with a poo poo ton of arty and hope that it gets chopped up enough and buried under flying dirt enough that you have a few lanes to advance. I think leaving the fate of a major offensive to 'I sure hope this works' is kinda nuts, though.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:38
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Fangz posted:I think leaving the fate of a major offensive to 'I sure hope this works' is kinda nuts, though. What's the alternative? Not attack the enemy? You've got a front stretching from the channel to the alps that's locked down into this, and politicians on both sides that either want that final push into the enemy's heartland to force a peace or to shove the perfidious boche back into his own country. Having no offensive isn't really in the cards, so this is the least bad option. The thing is it worked sometimes. Lanes did get blasted through the wire. People made it to the opposing trenches. The lines DO shift, even in the most stalemated parts of the war. It's just that once those lanes are clear you've got all that other bullshit like advancing across hundreds of yards of open terrain into machinegun fire and when local breakthroughs happen the communication and control really isn't there to exploit effectively.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:44
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That's what happens when you know that alternatives won't work. And you can hardly test it at home by building a patch of barbed wire and then bombing it. Had that happened, you'd have chucklefucks reposting hilarious stories about how the British didn't account for some molecular variance in German barbed wire, the sponginess of French dirt or some other Obvious In Retrospect thing.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:46
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JcDent posted:Please tell me more! In the game of Only War I'm currently playing in, we're a bunch of rear-line troopers assigned to an Atlas Recovery Vehicle (Basically a MBT with the guns removed and a crane thrown on top) who've been send into combat due to losses. Hijinks currently involve assaulting an observation post armed with nothing but pintle-mounted .50 cals, towing away and stealing enemy heavy weapons, and somehow shooting down a transport plane and towing away the (Mostly-intact) wreck. There's also the game I ran over Christmas, where the group was a tank platoon that ended up stranded behind enemy lines. That was a fun game, since instead of the typical "Each PC is a different member of the tank crew" setup that most tank-based games go with, I took advantage of OW's Comrade system and made it so that each tank was effectively crewed by two PCs, a driver and a gunner. Having three player-controlled tanks on the table really opened up some interesting tactical scenarios, especially since one of the players was an Abrams driver in real life (And part of the reason why I ran the game was because he was home on leave), so he was available to consult/complain about the military realism of the setting  Unfortunately, that game only went for about 3 sessions, but it was a fun concept I'd definitely be interested in trying out again.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:49
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chitoryu12 posted:This sounds like how the Germans would have naturally come about it. It's pretty much just a carpet removed from one of the early French tank predecessors, the Boirault machine.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:50
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Acebuckeye13 posted:In the game of Only War I'm currently playing in, we're a bunch of rear-line troopers assigned to an Atlas Recovery Vehicle (Basically a MBT with the guns removed and a crane thrown on top) who've been send into combat due to losses. Hijinks currently involve assaulting an observation post armed with nothing but pintle-mounted .50 cals, towing away and stealing enemy heavy weapons, and somehow shooting down a transport plane and towing away the (Mostly-intact) wreck. Sounds totally rad. A tank without a turret with guns on it is basically one of those funky APC conversions, like the Kangaroo and M39.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:53
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Running an all-tanks game sounds cool, though I wonder if it wouldn't become somewhat stale if you didn't lean heavily on logistics/psychosocial issues for surrounding material, given the relative lack of variety in most 40k army's vehicle sections.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:58
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Cyrano4747 posted:What's the alternative? Not attack the enemy? Yeah, they were able to beat the trenches, but the problem is they did it slowly and obviously and it was basically impossible to prevent the other side from railing in reinforcements to block the hole- that's the real difference between the mostly static fronts and the less static fronts- the development of the railnets. Russia had poor railways and they could not really do the same thing to stop German advances- in fact, the railnets heavily favored the central powers' defense in the east, at least in the German sector of the line.
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Feb 20, 2017 19:02
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At that point you might as well trudge across No Man's Land on stilts.
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Feb 20, 2017 19:02
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Cyrano4747 posted:It's basically the least bad option. Realistically how the gently caress do you even begin trying to hack your way through a dozen plus yard belt of wire to move troops through? How do you blow your way through MULTIPLE belts like that? Hit it with a poo poo ton of arty and hope that it gets chopped up enough and buried under flying dirt enough that you have a few lanes to advance. What'd they replace it with? MICLIC?
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Feb 20, 2017 19:05
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Raenir Salazar posted:At that point you might as well trudge across No Man's Land on stilts. I think you're on to something 
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Feb 20, 2017 19:08
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JcDent posted:Sounds totally rad. A tank without a turret with guns on it is basically one of those funky APC conversions, like the Kangaroo and M39. Well, it's also a real thing in use by most of the world's militaries. Cyrano4747 posted:The development of the tank was pretty much a direct response to this dilemma, and one that was never satisfactorily solved all the way through today. gently caress, the Bangalore Torpedo - the main means of clearing wire belts for American engineers in WWII - was only phased out in 2001. Two Thousand and loving ONE.
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Feb 20, 2017 19:16
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Fangz posted:Potentially silly question, but the old idea of 'throwing a carpet over the barbed wire' - is there a good explanation why that isn't workable, and so why the military was fixated with trying to cut barbed wire by shelling it? I'm always wincing when I see WWI-barbed wire, because I remember that one time after an exercise, when I had to help roll up the NATO-wire we used. As careful as I was, I just loving touched the wire at one point. Totally shredded my trousers. Trying to get away to prevent my legs from ending up in the wire got me a nasty cut on my hands, too. For the rest of my military days I think one of my gloves had this odd surgically precise cut in it. Annoyed the gently caress out of me, because I was too dumb to remember getting a replacement again and again. Then I'd have to crawl through thorns and suddenly get a reminder why I should get a replacement. (Don't worry, I did get a replacement pair of trousers. I'm not totally hopeless.) The idea of some poor bastards getting caught in that stuff gives me nightmares.
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Feb 20, 2017 19:55
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spectralent posted:Running an all-tanks game sounds cool, though I wonder if it wouldn't become somewhat stale if you didn't lean heavily on logistics/psychosocial issues for surrounding material, given the relative lack of variety in most 40k army's vehicle sections. Clearly you've never played Imperial Guard
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Feb 20, 2017 19:56
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Libluini posted:The idea of some poor bastards getting caught in that stuff gives me nightmares. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K1BdDVvV9Q
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Feb 20, 2017 20:01
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that loving song 
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Feb 20, 2017 20:08
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Getting stuck on razor wire suuuuucks let me tell you that.
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Feb 20, 2017 20:15
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:This dude loving hates the French. I'm not entirely sure I agree with his 'the French built the wrong thing so they didn't have enough tanks' thesis to be honest. I thought there were more Allied than French tanks in 1940 (and normally if you're the attacker you want to be outnumbering your opponent, not the opposite!), and in any case it hardly matters how many you've got if they're all in the wrong place.
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Feb 20, 2017 20:23
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How much trouble did they have getting rid of all that barbed wire after the war?
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Feb 20, 2017 20:27
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Trin Tragula posted:Barbed wire is what turns a trench from a useful short-term fieldwork to increase your infantry's survivability as it defends a position for 24-48 hours* into a long-term living space for five million men.
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Feb 20, 2017 20:47
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darthbob88 posted:Well, it's also a real thing in use by most of the world's militaries. There's also the larger, armored version of that, which can be used to clear out a road across a minefield, like the UR-77 Meteorit, M58 Mine Clearing Line Charge, and Python Minefield Breaching System. Of course, certain middle east dictators have discovered that it destroys streets just as well as minefields https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq8uUMjkteQ.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:17
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HEY GAIL posted:abatis, my dude I was about to bring this up. Entangling obstacles have been a part of warfare since forever. As part of their camp fortifications, Roman legionaries carried double-ended stakes called sudes. There is some dispute over exactly how they were used but modern reconstructions indicate they could have been used in several different configurations. They might have simply been driven into the ground, presenting a line of sharpened points toward the enemy. They could also have been lashed together to form something like a Czech hedgehog, or combined with a crossbar to create a cheval de Frise. Similar obstacles were used up through the invention of barbed wire. There's a lot of photographs of earthworks with abatis from the American Civil War, for example. Barbed wire entanglements from WWI were like the apotheosis of the abatis, made possible by industrialization.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:17
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married but discreet posted:Getting stuck on razor wire suuuuucks let me tell you that. The Finnish military issued, at least back when I was there, thick leather gloves called "kissantappohanska" (or cat-killing glove) for the double purpose of handling wire and acting as a winter glove when fitted with a wool liner or, ostensibly, to stop cats from scrathsing you while you killed them. Nato wire is drat nasty stuff.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:55
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Abatis is far easier to blast away with artillery and takes longer to setup than barbed wire. Also you can't run an electric current through abatis, something that I bet Wallenstein would have loved to do!
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Feb 20, 2017 22:31
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Nenonen posted:. Also you can't run an electric current through abatis, something that I bet Wallenstein would have loved to do! I'm waiting for the Iraq-Iran war posts to get to that bit!
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Feb 20, 2017 22:40
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There's never a bad time to post a video of Finnish artillery shell impacts...from the impact zone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUvcdKGD-FM
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Feb 20, 2017 22:45
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I wonder how many cameras were blown up in the making of the video.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:50
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Do you happen to remember the title? This sounds right up my alley. Rise of flight I assume. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcQMuotUdQo If you can get your Gotha off the ground one time out of three you're doing well, if you can land it again without dying you're practically an ace.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:04
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The thing about rise of flight being a grog game is that it is still surprisingly approachable. While the planes are meticulously modelled, there isn't much to model. It's a kite with a tractor engine. If you're brand new to flight sims it's not a bad choice at all: flaps, prop pitch and fuel mixture controls haven't been invented yet so don't worry about them! If you're considering giving it a go, there's a free demo that gives you two decent planes and lets you be a gunner on any plane in multi-player. I would love nothing more than a goon rise of flight resurgence, it is a great game to play with goons.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:13
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SlothfulCobra posted:How much trouble did they have getting rid of all that barbed wire after the war? hahahahaha you think they got rid of it It's still there. It's still coming out of the ground. It's not just shells they dig up in the iron harvest. Some of it's even still standing where it was put in a hundred years ago.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:45
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Trin Tragula posted:hahahahaha you think they got rid of it I like how they just pile up everything in garbage collection points for people to gather up and destroy. How much do you think gets "collected" by private citizens passing by first?
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Feb 21, 2017 00:00
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Trin Tragula posted:hahahahaha you think they got rid of it we don't have an iron harvest though, just bones https://www.welt.de/geschichte/gallery112864334/Ein-Massengrab-der-Schlacht-von-Luetzen.html HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Feb 21, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 00:08
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WWI barbed wire talk: The problem with clearing barbed wire with artillery was that it did work (on occasion). The rub is that the shrapnel shells that were used (it was assumed shrapnel can cut the wire, it doesn't) were capable of destroying the wooden posts and pegs that held the wire in place. Earlier on in the war wood was used to fix the wire in place. Later on they progressed to using metal pegs, which would not be cut by shrapnel. So the British started the Battle of the Somme with the assumption that shrapnel shells could cut the wire because in previous battles, it did, well more specifically it destroyed the wood so the wire would scatter helter skelter and openings would be created. HE shells were much more effective at clearing the wire but they were always in short supply and there were significant downsides of heavily shelling no man's land assuming it wasn't already completely hosed up. One of the most important contributions that a WWI era tank could make was clearing the wire. Consider in any battle after 2 days, all the tanks were out of action, if they weren't taken out by enemy action they would have broken down. When they were feeling more sensible, they threw a loving anchor behind the tank to grab the wire and drag it into circles and clear large passages for the infantry. EDIT: Also consider that for the last few miles towards your own front lines, some poor sods had to carry all that barbed wire by hand! And there was a lot of wire that needed man handling. BattleMoose fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Feb 21, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 02:20
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HEY GAIL posted:trenches from the 30yw were still there hundreds of years later, i've seen 18th century engravings of well-dressed gentlemen staring at 'em. some of them are still there today, like the field fortifications at noerdlingen If you visit more recent mass graves that haven't been dug up and reburied the bodies come up just the same, something to do with fluid dynamics and granular convection. When I visited one of the sites of mass killings in Cambodia there were signs everywhere asking you to please not keep any souvenirs, and around each sign post were little heaps of cloth and bone which respectful visitors had removed from the footpaths.
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Feb 21, 2017 04:04
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Some of those pictures of barbed wire look pretty loving ridiculous. Would some amount of wire be capable of stopping even a tank from plowing through?
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Feb 21, 2017 04:09
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