quote:

Wa.Prw.6 wrote a new general contract for further development of tanks and sent a copy to Krupp in February 1937. The terms in this new contract allowed Wa.Prw.6 to specify whatever components they wanted installed. This left the design firms with very little latitude in the design. They were forced to fit all of the requested parts into the size and shape box demanded by Wa.Prw.6. Dipl.Ing. Woelfert at Krupp refused to sign this new contract, preferring to keep the terms of their previous contract with Wa.Prw.6. In May 1936, Kniepkamp informed Krupp that this contract had been signed by 10 other firms and gave Krupp until 15 May 1937 to come to terms because new design tasks were pressing and he would be forced to recommend a different design firm to Oberstlt.Phillips - head of Wa.Prw.6. Krupp didn't sign and was barred from any further automotive development and no longer received any significant feedback from the troops' experience.

OwlFancier posted:

I thought it was sort of the other way around because while maille is time consuming to make, it's not especially difficult. Whereas plate armour requires a skilled smith.

OwlFancier posted:

It's like tanks vs ATGMs except you only have like, a dozen tanks that can only go in the middle of a really wide open field, and the enemy has hundreds of ATGMs on planes, you can't afford to build any more tanks because your military procurement process is hideously inefficient and pork barreled to hell, you aren't on a war footing and seizing direct control of what industry you have left would be political hilarity, and if you lose all the tanks your ability to fight wars overseas is basically hosed.

Perestroika posted:

Personally I'm just sad that Lorica Squamata never seemed to have caught on in a big way. It's so pretty!

HEY GAIL posted:

lenoon posted:

I've been expanding my reading beyond my usual realms of Britain 1600-1954, and looking at some romans. Does anyone know of any good studies about Roman armour? I've been poking around looking for ballistic gel studies on squamata, plumata and segmentata but am drawing a blank. For my modern oriented mind, segmentata seems like a revolutionary invention, but was it as much of a huge leap in infantry armour as it seems, or was it only marginally better than the other contemporary armours?

Evidence From Dura Europos For the Origins of Late Roman Helmets posted:

[This helmet] was certainly deposited during the siege which destroyed the city in the mid-third century. Dura, the most important forward base and garrison of the Roman army on this stretch of the Euphrates, was attacked and destroyed by the Persians under Shapur I around AD 255-7. of the wealth of archaeological remains resulting from the siege, the richest in terms of artifacts are those from the operations around tower 19. The countermine was an attempt by the Roman defenders to stop the Persians undermining the foundations of the tower preparatory to an assault. The consequent battle underground resulted in the defenders being worsted. The pile of unrecovered Roman bodies in the countermine, and the subsequent destruction of the tower are eloquent testimony to this.

The helmet was found close to a body lying alone, separate from the mass of Roman bodies at the other end of the mine. There is good reason to think that the helmet belonged to this individual, and that he was one of the attackers. he had apparently been facing the city when he was struck down, and fell backwards. This is of course hardly conclusive, but several other features point towards the same conclusion. Also lying close to the body was a large sword, the blade of which no longer survives. However, it had a flat disk pommel of jade, which was certainly an import from Chinese Turkestan. The shape of the pommel is unroman. The mail shirt found on the body has a pattern of bronze rings on the chest. These form a trident device, which looks like a 'heraldic' crest. it is very similar to the devices worn by Sassanian nobles on the contemporary rock carvings. Finally the helmet itself is totally different from the other helmets found at Dura. These are all perfectly standard Roman types. The helmet from the mine is clearly related to the ostensibly Sassanian helmets from Mesopotamia and North Iran.

OwlFancier posted:

I would have thought the overlapping torso plates would be a bit tricky as if they aren't aligned well they'd catch a bit?

Tias posted:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Lorica Segmentata wasn't used all that much, was it?

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

You're wrong, but not about this. It only had about a century of use iirc

Siivola posted:

Just as an aside, it's weird to think of "only about a century of use" as the short-lived exception, considering how quickly military equipment has progressed in modern and even pre-modern times.

SeanBeansShako posted:

Speaking of equipment being used for a century and since this is the part of the thread cycle where we talk about weaponry and equipment, lets talk a little about early Victorian British Army gear for a second:

After the ending of the Napoleonic Wars the British armed forces both army and navy pretty were at the peak of their success, with the victories, funding and serving soldiers/ships on the water that the golden times for all those involved. Then a long peace followed in mainland Europe. Almost 30 years long. Stagnation occurs, men get old and retire, ships become obsolete and all that jazz.

During this crazy time the former prince Regent then King George IV was at the height of his hedonistic dandy party time reign and well the man like all Royalty of this era had a little bit of a uniform fetish. Fashion trumped function and the British soldier was not spared the humiliation of looking like the cross between the Nutcracker and that soldier on the front of the Quality Street sweets box/tin with Wellington and company quietly gritting their teeth and putting up with it for the time being because well this was Prinny. Dude was a royal steretypical protogoon especially with his health so he wasn't going to live forever.


Nobody sneeze men!

The only way to describe these uniforms is awkward. Despite being thinner and slightly smaller than us, they barely fit a soldier or officer of the early 19th century. The coatee jackets were so tight that if you dropped your musket or sword you were going to be a source of hilarious entertainment crabbing around trying to get hold of the thing again. Try not to dirty your trousers too in the mud and make sure you obscenely large inverted bell shaped leather helmet style hat doesn't slide off your head while doing so. Oh I forgot to mention soldiers were also still loving wearing stocks in this era.

Yes stocks, those obnoxious leather braces worn around the lower neck to keep the head up and back straight. They were around despite hundreds of them 'going missing' in the Spanish campaigns in the Napoleonic Wars. God help any soldier or young officer especially in the Household regiments in this era, you don't have the excuse to be on active service and not adapt your equipment or uniform to something less comfortable and practical. During this parade ground wild west uniform regulations were being established and the government was finally getting around to being the ones responsible for what their soldiers wore instead of paying the men who raised and maintained the regiments. Progess was being slowly made behind the scenes but well it was fighting stagnation because there ain't no Boney to fight no more!

No doubt the raised Indian and Scottish regiments with their own uniforms sighed with relief not having to suffer most of this madness.

So yeah, Prinny finally pegs it and his more sensible brother William IV who actually served takes the throne. Wellington and co finally breath a sigh of relief and teaming up with Prince Albert towards the end of all this (he made a hat! look at it! stop complaining men!) a series of meetings, trials and tests to try and make life slightly less horrible for the British soldier.

Unlike his bosses who can at least get their gear tailored to fit them the poor bastards have to make do with their gear. During this phase details leak out that more modern European military fashions and standards were being considered and for some reason this alarms that weird cadre of traditionalists in the UK have horrible nightmares about the Coldstream Guards running around dressed as Napoleonic Imperial Guard puppets and Punch of course has a good time with all this like it always did in that era. Eventually they came up something like this:



Example a) Regular Fusilier pre Crimean War era ready for parade or minor guard duties.

(Really nice image, not mine props to the original creator out there)



example b) Grenadier Guard of the same era. Note the wing style epaulettes, the jackets lace pattern on the front and the possibly fictional hilarious golden gloves which I am not sure were ever issued? these things are recreations now. He's also wearing all his gear on the march.

Yes, It's a retro Napoleonic era uniform. It's basically the iPod nano of early 19th century British army uniforms. Yes those are loving tails on the thing. They are back, you thought you saw the last of them in the Napoleonic Wars didn't you? and well, yeah the coat is red but there still 20-30 years left before this becomes a major danger.

Everything used fighting Napoleon is more or less still there with a few new additions to make up for the smoothbore muskets replacement. Now the coat isn't as bad as the pre 1830's one the design was changed to something more practical and comfortable in the last decade and the trousers are certainly a welcome change because soldiers are not wearing constantly washed damp white ones making them actually sick. Not that they are gone for good, they are worn in the dry summer months of May to the Sepember but their days are certainly numbered only to seeing a different kind of action for many officers at many summer balls.

The Albert shako is a mixed bag. It's not as bad as the series of inverted bell shaped ones from before but it still suffers the same issues. But hey it was better that the previous one. All the ones I have seen from that time are all army or officer militia spares. Not one for the enlisted soldier in good condition, even online. But the men hated it for being still bloody hot and awkward to wear and some nationalist officers hated it for looking too Austrian/German looking and wanted something with more British squared height dammit!

It's still awkward weight wise and will no doubt fall off and be lost without being secured by the strap and outside Europes climates the British soldier is still going to be sweating wearing it. But hey, look at that cute little neckguard at the back! Prince Albert tried! a series of smaller lower profile shako of this style would follow during and after the Crimean War but by the 1860's it turns into a strange Frankenstein's monster of a quilted shako kepi love child that eventually vanishes into the mists of time surrounded by forage caps and bonets. During the Crimean War these things found themselves being eventually replaced by forage caps amongst the rapidly hairy freezing bitter serving soldiers during the siege part of the conflict.

Problem being though on the march these men are still being hampered by all the straps and belts of their needed field equipment. During the Crimean War this was being worked on and eventually the first leather belt valise harnesses would begin to appear after said conflict which would finally help with distributing the weight of their equipment. Now all this stuff didn't just magically appear over night, it slowly showed up through the whole of the 1830's and took forever to reach the depots around the globe for the growing British Empire. So you'd have men wearing an odd mix of hopefully modified pre and post Regency gear in South Africa or the newly established colony of Hong Kong. This distance created some very strange combinations, one of these days I'll scan a few from my Brandford plate books and we can all coo and gossip over them.

So off to the Crimean peninsula these men awkwardly march, wish them luck because they've still got some painful lessons to learn ahead. But at least they can move mostly freely now! wish them luck, they are going to seriously need it. Actually send them furcoats instead.

SeanBeansShako posted:

Now imagine doing that in Asian or African climates.

Just think of the Sikh Army seeing all this happening and wondering 'what in the gently caress?'?

SeanBeansShako posted:

I'd think they'd attempt to try but when the wet weather seasons happened they'd all just not bother and the sergeant major would spend evenings getting drunk at the many organised brothels out there.

It's weird though. The Napoleonic uniforms at the end of that conflict were mostly comfortable and practical. During the weird stagnation of the Regency these uniforms were pretty much changed so bored aristocrats could get laid more and impress high society.

And it took over 30 years to fix that!

feedmegin posted:

Yeah, but the American Civil War happened 150 years ago, and after Reconstruction the South pretty much went back to being a place where everyone (white, anyway) thought the Confederacy was in the right. The Spanish one is in living memory, and don't forget Spain only stopped being a literal dictatorship like 40 years ago. Everyone's gonna have a granddad or similar family member who was executed or did the executing, got shot or did the shooting, everyone's gonna have some oldie living in their family who thinks morals were better and youngsters were more respectful and the trains ran on time when the Caudillo was still around in the 70s, and the descendants of both sides are all living together, and I guess for a lot of people the best way to keep living together is to never bring that poo poo up.

vintagepurple posted:

30 years and God-knows-how-many desperate tommies who just wanted money, adventure and to get laid.

The other thing that sticks with me is how poo poo the rations were. It was probably fine by 19th-century standards but today? oh god

In a proper garrison, you'd get a loaf of bread for breakfast. White for officers, wheat for enlisted, and the wheat was much more gritty than modern wheat bread.

For dinner, the noon meal, you got 3/4 lb of meat, typically beef or mutton, and more of whatever starch or grain was available, typically potatoes. One barracks, about 20 men, would pool the ration and make a stew. Dinner was leftovers from the previous meals. Anything else was either purchased or grown by the enlisted. Enlisted also got one penny a day for beer which could not be denied, even if their officer docked the entirety of their regular pay of 12 pennies.

Trin Tragula posted:

I've got a question. When did people decide that it was a Good Thing to have something (such as a puttee or a gaiter) that could secure a bloke's trouser leg to the top of his boot?

Ainsley McTree posted:

Are there any armies that still wear useless, overly stylized uniforms into combat or is that pretty much done now? I'm thinking maybe like North Korea, or a particularly insane third world warlord might still be emphasizing style over substance

Kopijeger posted:

And another thing: when did modern armies decide to have mess halls with hired staff to prepare the food instead of having the soldiers make food at the barracks?

SeanBeansShako posted:

During the middle of the Napoleonic Wars they were experimenting with replacing the knee length breeches with longer pantaloons and trousers but there was some weird issues over who was going to foot the bill of the Redcoats new legwear. The people or the treasury? The tax payer didn't want to do it nor was the treasury too fond at their new responsibility of paying for soldiers gear.

Each side decided in the end they halfed the bill and British soldiers were responsible for wearing and maintaining both styles.

SeanBeansShako posted:

Now imagine doing that in Asian or African climates.

Just think of the Sikh Army seeing all this happening and wondering 'what in the gently caress?'?

Perestroika posted:

Personally I'm just sad that Lorica Squamata never seemed to have caught on in a big way. It's so pretty!

chitoryu12 posted:

As recently as WW2, Japanese soldiers made their own food even in garrison. They would send a runner to get the containers of food and cook everything back at the barracks.

The US was pretty advanced when it came to food in the 1940s. Their incredible infrastructure and industrial capacity allowed them to not only issue standardized packaged rations, but also to deploy field kitchens and set up mess halls back at the base. Most everyone else took until the Cold War to catch up.

feedmegin posted:

Well yes and no, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy,_Army_and_Air_Force_Institutes for example. Japan might be a bit of a special case but field kitchens and mess halls have been around for quite a while in any First World army in any situation where the blokes have settled down for a bit, and stuff like https://reprorations.com/Britain%20WW2/WW2-Britain.htm was a thing, too. Like, I'm not saying America was bad at this, they were good at it, but it's not like all the rest of the world's militaries were banging rocks together and having their grunts stew mammoths in cauldrons they'd hunted themselves with flint spears, you know.

quote:

SUPPLEMENTING OUR MEAGER RATIONS

Our food, during this time consisted of what we could get from headquarters and the rations we had stolen crossing the channel. While it was enough to sustain us, we missed fresh stuff, especially meat. So, we supplemented our rations with Black Forest deer that we sot. [We] were the only ones who had any experience cleaning game, so we were kept busy cleaning and cutting up the deer.

People from other outfits in the vicinity heard about us and came over asking us to butcher their game. Once a guy drove into our camp and said, "Hey, I shot a deer, can you cut him up for us?" "Yes," we said, so he pulled out what remained of this little deer (the adults only stand about three feet high). He'd shot that deer about 15 times with a 50-caliber machine gun. There were only shreds left. It was impossible to get any good meat out of it. Another guy brought in a cow. He thought he had killed a deer and wanted us to butcher it for him, but it was just an old, tough milk cow. (There were a lot of people from the big cities in the army and they didn't know anything about these things.)