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bewbies posted:edit - for comparison's sake I think the V-2 project cost around $2bn This is one of the Gayest of Gay Black Hitlers, but I wonder what the V-2 project would've cost if it had been an American project run by a not-at-all-dead Alt-History version of Robert Goddard or even an American-born Alt-History version of Von Braun.
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Mar 23, 2017 06:11
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bewbies posted:B-29 I have the Haynes B-29 'Owners' Workshop Manual' (really a technically-focused overview of the entire program and operational history) sitting next to me and couldn't resist tapping out this (rather lengthy, whoops) quote about the experience of maintaining it as an illustration of the price of performance: quote:"To all of us who worked on it, the Wright R-3350 radial engine was an object of consuming hatred. Basically, it was two nine-cylinder engines mounted on a double throw crankshaft. Voila! Instant eighteen-cylinder engine--and a mechanic's nightmare. The aircraft itself was bad enough to maintain, but those engines! The two banks of cylinders created by the double mounting were so close together that the mounting bolt flanges on the cylinder bases had to have the edges planed down in order to fit next to each other on the engine housing. This engine had a reputation of being a voracious eater of valves and rings, as well as a prodigious swallower of oil, and cylinder changes were almost as common as engine changes. There was seemingly a Rule that allowed only those cylinders on the bottom of the engine to fail. This is so that the oil can run out of the engine housing and drip ceaselessly into the mechanic's hair, ears, nose, and down the back of his neck. The 25-flight-hour maintenance checklist includes inspecting and adjusting all 144 spark plugs and running a cotton pad along all ~11 miles of control cabling to check for fraying. Plus, this is Saipan or Guam, so the weather alternates between tropical torrential rain and sunlight that heated exposed aluminum enough to burn unprotected skin. Crew lockers had constantly-burning 100 watt bulbs fitted to keep spare clothes from rotting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a8B7oYVtNY
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Mar 23, 2017 08:13
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Being a German in Stalingrad was really awful. Completely surrounded, below freezing temperatures, slowly starving to death. Then fewer and fewer planes start to show up as the German front gets pushed back and they lose planes and airfields. You will probably be killed in combat, but if you don't you will probably die of starvation or exhaustion after surrendering. If you survive that you are still probably going to die in a Gulag. If you don't you still aren't going home until the 1950s. I think in Beevor's book he said only 5% of the ones who surrendered ended up surviving until release. To be honest, being a Red Army soldier in Stalingrad was even worse.
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Mar 23, 2017 09:11
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E: on the subject of superguns, didn't Saddam try to build a massive modern artillery piece in the eighties?Cythereal posted:Yup, and Iron Dawn talks a bit about the Crimean War - not a lot, but a number of officers in the ACW had been observers during the Crimean War and that war also saw some proto-ironclads used. Marinier, apparently, though I haven't found the expression a lot.
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Mar 23, 2017 09:57
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Libluini posted:To be honest, being a Red Army soldier in Stalingrad was even worse. Being in Stalingrad sucked for everyone involved.
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Mar 23, 2017 10:03
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Tias posted:E: on the subject of superguns, didn't Saddam try to build a massive modern artillery piece in the eighties? Massive, yes. Modern? Debatable, since IIRC Project Babylon was largely a reenactment of the V3 idea. In any case, it was possibly designed to fire satellites into orbit rather than actual barrages, since it could not actually be aimed.
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Mar 23, 2017 10:28
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Hunt11 posted:Being in Stalingrad sucked for everyone involved. Rats?
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Mar 23, 2017 10:32
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Did the guy behind the idea die in a suspiciously Mossadic way, or is that just internet conspiracy garbage?
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Mar 23, 2017 10:33
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Did the guy behind the idea die in a suspiciously Mossadic way, or is that just internet conspiracy garbage? Oh, Gerald Bull was assassinated. Most likely Mossad, but the Iranians were also contenders.
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Mar 23, 2017 10:39
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Nebakenezzer posted:Oh, Gerald Bull was assassinated. Most likely Mossad, but the Iranians were also contenders. Probably more for his work on SCUD improvements than the supergun.
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Mar 23, 2017 11:25
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zoux posted:I know this is utterly subjective and dependent on definitions, but was WWI "worse" than WW2? I know a bit about WW2 and very little about WWI, but every story I ever hear about WWI makes me feel just dread and hopelessness and sorrow for the people involved. I dunno how much of that is down to how WW2 is almost celebrated here in the US and we're constantly told about various individuals and units heroics and so on. I don't want to denigrate the impact of the various intentional atrocities committed during WW2, obviously when you factor in the Holocaust and the fire bombings of Japan and Japanese atrocities against the Chinese and so on that absolutely adds a legitimate "worse" aspect to it, but I feel like if a malicious genie ever captured me and forced me to pick whether to fight in WW1 or WW2, WW2 is the no brainer. Well, if you're American it's very unlikely you'd end up having to fight in World War 1 anyway and if you did it wouldn't be for long and it mostly wouldn't be trench warfare. WW1 for the win if you want to live, really.
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Mar 23, 2017 11:41
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Trin Tragula posted:The Kaiser would like to dispute this. So too would his good friend the Emperor of Austria-Hungary. Right behind them are the Tsar of Bulgaria, the King of Romania, the King of Italy, the King of Serbia, the King of Greece, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the Sharif of Mecca, and some dude called Abdulaziz ibn Saud, who's rather peeved by this "Sykes-Picot agreement"... Also, y'know,
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Mar 23, 2017 11:44
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feedmegin posted:Well, if you're American it's very unlikely you'd end up having to fight in World War 1 anyway and if you did it wouldn't be for long and it mostly wouldn't be trench warfare. WW1 for the win if you want to live, really.
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Mar 23, 2017 12:16
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feedmegin posted:Well, if you're American it's very unlikely you'd end up having to fight in World War 1 anyway and if you did it wouldn't be for long and it mostly wouldn't be trench warfare. WW1 for the win if you want to live, really. *Ignores European experience of war, flails retardedly at Germans*
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Mar 23, 2017 12:36
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Plutonis posted:Oh yeah the Korean Turtle Ships were some real monsters as well. Korean Super Turtle Ships complement nicely the Korean Super Admiral. Honestly Yi Sun-Sin is hands down the most amazing military commander's story I've encountered despite wasting more time than is healthy on wikipedia. Wikipedia posted:
Nelson may be a better known admiral who died during a decisive battle at the end of an illustrious career, but he certainly wasn't Imprisoned, tortured, and demoted to common infantry twice.
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Mar 23, 2017 12:47
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Tevery Best posted:Massive, yes. Modern? Debatable, since IIRC Project Babylon was largely a reenactment of the V3 idea. In any case, it was possibly designed to fire satellites into orbit rather than actual barrages, since it could not actually be aimed. Uh... Isn't it impossible to just shoot things into a stable orbit? The projectile's orbit will include having to go through Earth, which doesn't exactly bode well for it.
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Mar 23, 2017 13:56
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PittTheElder posted:Finally, come join us in the Spaceflight thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3580990&pagenumber=1 Good ever-loving God, you guys need either someone to edit/update the first posts, or you need to terminate and start a new thread. I'm interested and all, but that's out of date AF. Not a good way to bring new people into the thread.
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Mar 23, 2017 14:12
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J K Rowling has brought this letter to my attention: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/844886895809216512 How accurate was this assessment?
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Mar 23, 2017 14:16
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Fangz posted:J K Rowling has brought this letter to my attention: Abot as accurate as Hitler's "One kick" assessment. Probably less actually, as this came a week or so after the German high-water mark in the BoB, and well past any theoretical window for Sealion in 1940.
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Mar 23, 2017 14:45
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JFK's dad was Mel Gibson levels of Anglophobic, but he had a good reason at least to be.
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Mar 23, 2017 15:09
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SeanBeansShako posted:JFK's dad was Mel Gibson levels of Anglophobic, but he had a good reason at least to be. Was it just because what England had done to Ireland or did the nation do something in particular against him?
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Mar 23, 2017 15:34
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This is cool at how far people are pushing Total War style engines. If you can get 30,000 characters+animations on screen that can conceivably cover a majority of either classical/pre-modern historical battles or perhaps sections of a front line for more modern battles? Over a larger map if the characters are spread out along trenches/redoubts/fox holes how many of WWI/WWII/Vietnam/Korea could be simulated at that limit? What size of a map would we need and would we also get rear echelons to fit?
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Mar 23, 2017 16:17
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Raenir Salazar posted:front line for more modern battles I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of how a battle happens all the way up to WWI. Like, I get what the disposition of forces would look like, how the armies would maneuver and engage, basically how a pitched battle happens. (massed lines of dudes shooting/stabbing each other) I gather WWI is typified by its lack of maneuver, so that's not to hard to understand, but say in WW2, how would two armies engage one another? Is it just assault of fortified positions? It's even more muddy in the modern era, like I have no idea how a battle between two US-peer armies would fight it out on the field. Is a pitched battle even possible anymore? Is it just a long line of small unit vs. small unit engagements? zoux fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Mar 23, 2017 |
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Mar 23, 2017 16:58
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If I understand the Airpower/Cold War thread right, it sounds like a (near) peer war would consist mainly of anything that moves and/or broadcasts a radio signal getting pasted by precision munitions fired from a bajillion miles away.
Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Mar 23, 2017 |
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Mar 23, 2017 17:13
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Hunt11 posted:Was it just because what England had done to Ireland or did the nation do something in particular against him? I think this is a question somebody of Irish American descent from the east coast that could maybe answer better, but from what I understand this was a thing a lot of men like him at the time felt.
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Mar 23, 2017 17:24
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my dad posted:Uh... Isn't it impossible to just shoot things into a stable orbit? The projectile's orbit will include having to go through Earth, which doesn't exactly bode well for it. Yes, which is why what you'd be shooting would also include a rocket motor for the circularization burn at the top. My reading of the Iraqi supergun is that Hussein didn't really give a poo poo about it for its own sake, but it's a project that Bull sold to him so that Bull could continue his research. Hussein only agreed to fund the project if Bull assisted with the effort to modify his Scuds for extended range, which he did, and that's why the Mossad killed him.
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Mar 23, 2017 17:31
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feedmegin posted:Well, if you're American it's very unlikely you'd end up having to fight in World War 1 anyway and if you did it wouldn't be for long and it mostly wouldn't be trench warfare. WW1 for the win if you want to live, really. WW1 was loving rough for American troops who fought in it. You had 100k dead and 200k wounded in what was really only about six months of fighting. It was the most American wartime deaths up to that point except for the ACW. I mean, maybe if you're just talking about "if you were a male in the country at this time" your argument holds, but if your'e talking actual combat troops deployed abroad WW2 is a much easier slog on the whole. Of course this is highly dependent on what your'e doing and when you get in. The dude in the 8th AF in 1942 has a significantly worse than average life expectancy and the guy who shows up on the American sector of the front in October 1918 probably isn't hosed. WW1 was also intensely traumatic for that generation of Americans, and not just the soldiers. Shell shock and horrible deformities became culturally significant for the first time since the ACW. People thought it was entirely pointless and just a horrific waste of money and life. By the 1930s 70% of the public thought that American involvement in the war had been a bad idea, which was a big part of what drove the isolationist sentiment pre-WW2.
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Mar 23, 2017 17:36
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SeanBeansShako posted:I think this is a question somebody of Irish American descent from the east coast that could maybe answer better, but from what I understand this was a thing a lot of men like him at the time felt. I can ask my dad (as in my actual father) about it then.
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Mar 23, 2017 17:41
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Fangz posted:J K Rowling has brought this letter to my attention: Wrong in that the BoB was never going to force the British to surrender. Correct in that the UK had absolutely no hope of invading Europe and ending the war. Their main plan was convincing the US to join the war and do their fighting for them and the anti-war faction in the US was very aware of that.
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Mar 23, 2017 17:57
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Wrong in that the BoB was never going to force the British to surrender. Correct in that the UK had absolutely no hope of invading Europe and ending the war. Their main plan was convincing the US to join the war and do their fighting for them and the anti-war faction in the US was very aware of that. Britain had 383,700 soldiers killed fighting in World War 2. The US had 407,300 killed from about three times the total population. Sure you don't want to reword that a little bit?
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Mar 23, 2017 18:05
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feedmegin posted:Britain had 383,700 soldiers killed fighting in World War 2. The US had 407,300 killed from about three times the total population. Sure you don't want to reword that a little bit? Ok, "do roughly half of their fighting for them". I'm not saying they were cowards, they just had no hope of pulling off alternate universe d-day on their own, they didn't have the manpower or industrial capacity.
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Mar 23, 2017 18:07
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feedmegin posted:Britain had 383,700 soldiers killed fighting in World War 2. The US had 407,300 killed from about three times the total population. Sure you don't want to reword that a little bit? He said Americans did their fighting for them, not that they did their dying. 
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Mar 23, 2017 18:13
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Doesn't matter either way, in the end it was the Soviets doing the vast bulk of the fighting and dying anyways. All getting the US in was ensure that France wouldn't become an SSR.
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Mar 23, 2017 18:27
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Sure but nobody knew that in 1940 when Kennedy was writing.
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Mar 23, 2017 18:32
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zoux posted:I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of how a battle happens all the way up to WWI. Like, I get what the disposition of forces would look like, how the armies would maneuver and engage, basically how a pitched battle happens. (massed lines of dudes shooting/stabbing each other) I gather WWI is typified by its lack of maneuver, so that's not to hard to understand, but say in WW2, how would two armies engage one another? Is it just assault of fortified positions? It's even more muddy in the modern era, like I have no idea how a battle between two US-peer armies would fight it out on the field. Is a pitched battle even possible anymore? Is it just a long line of small unit vs. small unit engagements? Yeah basically there's so much about how the fighting for WWI/WWII/Korea are abstracted and I'd love some massed total war engine simulation gaming of it that includes more of the overall fighting. Large enough for air cover to matter and for artillery to be present, pelting supply lines. WarGame comes close, but I want more.
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Mar 23, 2017 18:34
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Mantis42 posted:He said Americans did their fighting for them, not that they did their dying. Britain will never stop fighting Napoleon until the last drop of Prussian blood has been spilled.
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Mar 23, 2017 18:46
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Cyrano4747 posted:Doesn't matter either way, in the end it was the Soviets doing the vast bulk of the fighting and dying anyways. And the entirety of germany and basically all of continental europe becoming a soviet client state surely.
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Mar 23, 2017 18:49
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PittTheElder posted:Britain will never stop fighting Napoleon until the last drop of Prussian blood has been spilled. Trust me, the Prussians didn't need to be encouraged to fight Napoleon. They just needed money and time to assemble the greatest staff officers of the age.
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Mar 23, 2017 18:52
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Cyrano4747 posted:Doesn't matter either way, in the end it was the Soviets doing the vast bulk of the fighting and dying anyways. And then they go socialist on us anyway, the ingrates 
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Mar 23, 2017 18:58
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SeanBeansShako posted:Trust me, the Prussians didn't need to be encouraged to fight Napoleon. They just needed money and time to assemble the greatest staff officers of the age. The Prussians and Austrians were gigantic assholes and Napoleon had no trouble finding German allies.
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Mar 23, 2017 19:08
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