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bewbies posted:I dunno...it is pretty hard to imagine someone like Napoleon having any patience for "BBBBUT SENIORITY" guys, but on the other hand European armies were hardly more progressive than their new world counterpart. Certainly you can see examples of general catfighting in WWI (particularly in the French army) despite their political situation being far more stable. It's interesting, I agree with your read on Napoleon but he never really had to manage an army at peace. An army at war provides on-the-job training and performance evaluations that are very difficult to manage during peacetime, so naturally you have a different and lovely political structure that is inculcated in a peacetime army. I would say that a natural consequence of war is reform to more efficient internal structures eventually... but then of course you have Imperial Japan which disproves that theory entirely.
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Apr 18, 2017 15:50
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It's almost like ship classes are meaningless conceptual distinctions that can and will be obsoleted any time a new technology or strategy is developed. Edit: The development of the CV ship designation is my favorite, because clearly that is a vessel that is ultimately a 1920s cruiser. Meanwhile a Nimitz class CVN displaces over twice as much as an Iowa BB. edit x2: While we're at it an SSBN literally blows both of them out of the water if we want to talk about raw destructive potential, while getting the BB naming scheme despite the SS prefix. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Apr 18, 2017 |
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Apr 18, 2017 15:51
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zoux posted:Are they sticking with those designations for new classes? The newest class of ship I'm aware of is the LCS, what ships did that mission/role before and what were they called? Frigates, I guess, crossed with Coast Guard cutters? The LCS is kind of sticky because they're supposed to have 'mission modules' for minor ASW/ASUW/some other stuff, so in theory they should be flexible enough to adapt to a mission. I don't think they have much capacity, if any, for attacking inland though, or addressing a larger or more distant vessel, and not a lot of anti-air capability. They sound less capable than the OHPs were, but I don't have anything to back that up with.
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Apr 18, 2017 15:57
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Cyrano4747 posted:It's almost like ship classes are meaningless conceptual distinctions that can and will be obsoleted any time a new technology or strategy is developed. Reminds me of the Times of London reporting on the Monitor- "Whereas we had available for immediate purposes one hundred and forty-nine first-class warships, we have now two..."
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Apr 18, 2017 15:59
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Cyrano4747 posted:It's almost like ship classes are meaningless conceptual distinctions that can and will be obsoleted any time a new technology or strategy is developed. None of that is as ridiculous as the USMC referring to the ground as the deck.
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Apr 18, 2017 15:58
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zoux posted:None of that is as ridiculous as the USMC Fixed that for you
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Apr 18, 2017 15:59
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zoux posted:Are they sticking with those designations for new classes? The newest class of ship I'm aware of is the LCS, what ships did that mission/role before and what were they called? LCS is kind of a different thing altogether....they are tiny and basically intended to fight brown water threats only, and as far as I'm aware there really isn't an historical equivalent....maybe....triremes? Coastal battleships? Monitors? Coast Guard cutters? The Zumwalts were designed as destroyers for whatever reason despite being the size of a WWII heavy cruiser but they've been Nunn-McCurdied into oblivion. Right now it is looking like ABs all the way down for the forseeable future.
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Apr 18, 2017 16:03
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One of them big square Japanese ships that couldn't go very far from the coast without sinking.
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Apr 18, 2017 16:12
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bewbies posted:LCS is kind of a different thing altogether....they are tiny and basically intended to fight brown water threats only, and as far as I'm aware there really isn't an historical equivalent....maybe....triremes? Coastal battleships? Monitors? Coast Guard cutters? The good old Victorian gunboat. Cyrano4747 posted:Fixed that for you Nah.
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Apr 18, 2017 16:14
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I wish people photographed/painted Gunboats more. They sound very improvised sometimes.
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Apr 18, 2017 16:19
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zoux posted:It really is shocking just how bad the generalship of the Army of the Potomac was before Grant. Fredricksburg and Chancellorsville, Jesus Christ. Burnside gets some credit because he asked to not be made the commander of the Army of the Potomac because he knew he wasn't good enough. That's fairly rare.
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Apr 18, 2017 16:19
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:The good old Victorian gunboat. Those Soviet baby warships with T-34 turrets? Edit: http://wio.ru/fleet/ww2armorb-1124.htm GotLag fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Apr 18, 2017 |
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Apr 18, 2017 16:20
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MikeCrotch posted:Haig's throwing French under the bus to take his job was pretty spectacular. Sepp Dietrich wasn't wrong in describing Rommel like that. At the start he knew he didn't have the resources to achieve his objectives at the start but that didn't stop him one bit.
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Apr 18, 2017 16:22
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Also, Napoleon III and his relationship with his military men is hilarious to read about. It'd make a good political TV drama for French telly.
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Apr 18, 2017 16:25
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GotLag posted:Those Soviet baby warships with T-34 turrets? quote:21 July 10943 Few ships could boast a service life of 9000 years!
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Apr 18, 2017 16:35
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SeanBeansShako posted:Also, Napoleon III Napoleon III let a large number of people with widely varying opinions on everything have a lot of influence and power at various times and half the time France during his rule seems like a high school clique trying to run a country
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Apr 18, 2017 17:02
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"Hey guys this Crimean War thing is going too slow, you want me to come over there?" "No your majesty, we're fine..." "Well tough, I'm going to come over there..." "NO WE'RE COOL DONT' COME IN!"
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Apr 18, 2017 17:15
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zoux posted:It really is shocking just how bad the generalship of the Army of the Potomac was before Grant. Fredricksburg and Chancellorsville, Jesus Christ. The thing is, both Hooker and Burnside performed better in commands afterward. Hooker was a decent general, they both really struggled with the command of the whole army. Burnside less so but he was still a competent corps commander.
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Apr 18, 2017 17:17
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Ensign Expendable posted:Few ships could boast a service life of 9000 years! the superiority of soviet technology and engineering, comrade! 
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Apr 18, 2017 17:25
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Panzeh posted:The thing is, both Hooker and Burnside performed better in commands afterward. Hooker was a decent general, they both really struggled with the command of the whole army. Burnside less so but he was still a competent corps commander. Lincoln should get a lot more flack for establishing a 7 Corps structure in the first place. It created an entire unnecessary layer of command that got promptly filled with political appointees who could be guaranteed to try and gently caress everything up regardless of who was in command (see: Sickles and Slocum at Gettysburg). The AotP should never have had more than 4 Corps and there's never a point where they couldn't have been filled with competent Generals.
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Apr 18, 2017 17:46
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bewbies posted:LCS is kind of a different thing altogether....they are tiny and basically intended to fight brown water threats only, and as far as I'm aware there really isn't an historical equivalent....maybe....triremes? Coastal battleships? Monitors? Coast Guard cutters? The LCS ships are effectively seagoing corvettes. Though the Freedom class is being redesignated as Fast Frigates, and Lockheed is selling a roided up version to the Saudis that's basically a small AEGIS destroyer.
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Apr 18, 2017 17:48
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zoux posted:Are they sticking with those designations for new classes? The newest class of ship I'm aware of is the LCS, what ships did that mission/role before and what were they called? The USN is now talking about something in the 4000 ton range to pack a bigger anti-surface punch than the LCS ever could. They're calling it a frigate. http://www.scout.com/military/warrior/story/1677469-navy-to-upgun-change-new-frigate
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Apr 18, 2017 17:48
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Alchenar posted:Lincoln should get a lot more flack for establishing a 7 Corps structure in the first place. It created an entire unnecessary layer of command that got promptly filled with political appointees who could be guaranteed to try and gently caress everything up regardless of who was in command (see: Sickles and Slocum at Gettysburg). The AotP should never have had more than 4 Corps and there's never a point where they couldn't have been filled with competent Generals. Sickles is the guy that created a huge salient because he didn't want to march up a hill or something right? What did Slocum do?
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Apr 18, 2017 17:49
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bewbies posted:LCS is kind of a different thing altogether....they are tiny and basically intended to fight brown water threats only, and as far as I'm aware there really isn't an historical equivalent....maybe....triremes? Coastal battleships? Monitors? Coast Guard cutters? I guess the antecedents to the LCS in the US navy would be the Patrol Boat River/Patrol Craft Fast and the Pegasus hydrofoil. The PBR/PCF havings its origin in Vietnam which served its role pretty well for the 30 years or so it was in service and the Pegasus having been designed to fight the large numbers of soviet missile boats they were pumping out. That is what the 6 Pegasus' they built were used for while in service, but they were put out of service because they could only really operate in coastal areas and the USN didnt really see a need for that when they thought they could do it trivially by air or just with frigates.  Pegasus hydrofoil. The way that the US approached the problem back in the 1980s, which was the last time that having to fight in a coastal area really cropped up for the USN, was to rent two large oil maintainance barges, move them around a lot and keep light attack helicopters and SEAL teams on them to go hunting for the small Iranian motorboats they were using to attack traffic. The PCF's and Pegasus ships were called in to defend the big floating bases against the Pasadarans small speedboats armed with rockets and .50 cal machine guns, however they didnt get to do much fighting because the Iranians never tried to attack one of those bases so any actual combat was solely done by the helicopters until the USN could arrive in force with actual warships to shut down the Iranians completely.  3 PCF's sat on the deck of one of those barges. The LCS is in a large way designed to fight against that very same threat that those two boats were called on to fight in the tanker war, I just find it very odd that they are only really coming into service now when the threat that would really emerge from Iran and states like it should have been obvious in the 80's that the need for the LCS as a ship would be there. E: Changed PBR to PCF in many instances because im bad. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Apr 18, 2017 |
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Apr 18, 2017 17:50
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Panzeh posted:The thing is, both Hooker and Burnside performed better in commands afterward. Hooker was a decent general, they both really struggled with the command of the whole army. Burnside less so but he was still a competent corps commander. Part of the reason Chancellorsville turned into such a clusterfuck for the Union was because Hooker was more or less incapacitated for most of it because he happened to get too close to a rebel cannonball.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:05
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zoux posted:Sickles is the guy that created a huge salient because he didn't want to march up a hill or something right? What did Slocum do? Showed up late. He does okay defending Culp's Hill, but there's a reason that after the battle he and his corps are sent West.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:04
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MikeCrotch posted:Re. The Ural ray killing radar rumour, I heard the same thing about the MiG-25's radar being powerful enough to kill rabbits around the airfield. Reminds me of the stories I heard of our soldiers using their jammers to set sheep on fire in Kosovo. (German EloKa, if you were wondering.)
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Apr 18, 2017 18:11
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Grant might never have come east if Philip "I'm a one-armed Jersey son-of-a-gun, follow me!" Kearny the Magnificent, first American to be awarded the Legion d'honneur, hadn't gotten perforated by A.P. Hill's boys at Chantilly.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:25
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The LCS has no real precedent because nobody had laid down a class of ships that are expressly designed to a) cost a lot of money and b) instantly get sunk when engaged by shore-based weapons.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:48
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The LCS has no real precedent because nobody had laid down a class of ships that are expressly designed to a) cost a lot of money and b) instantly get sunk when engaged by shore-based weapons. Not really. You'd be surprised how it's happened several times. Quite surprised.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:57
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Grant might never have come east if Philip "I'm a one-armed Jersey son-of-a-gun, follow me!" Kearny the Magnificent, first American to be awarded the Legion d'honneur, hadn't gotten perforated by A.P. Hill's boys at Chantilly. Good old Phil Kearny, with his trusted III Corps division commanders Fightin' Joe Hooker and Dan "Temporary Insanity" Sickles.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:19
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For years I've been hearing and reading that the British tank crews suffered relatively heavy casualties because of this and that in WW2, but the one that's bothered me the most is the claim that they didn't wear helmets. I know that the British Army adopted and produced helmets specifically for tank crews. I know you mostly see pictures of Brit tank crews wearing berets, but the majority of those are also all posing for pictures, so I naturally assume they'd wear their caps instead of helmets in pictures and many would just pop their helmets on when they needed to. I feel like there'd be better reasons like particular theatres, bail-out training, ammo stowage, the random whims of the numbers, and lots of others to explain the supposedly higher casualty rate. The helmet one just kind of struck me as too easy and ignored too many factors, but does anyone know if it's actually true or not?
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Apr 18, 2017 19:20
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Dunno about that in particular (I have never heard that claim) but in general tanker helmets aren't meant to stop a piece of shrapnel or a bullet, they're riding a tank for that. The main purpose of tanker helmets is to protect your noggin from getting bruised from a bumpy ride inside a metal coffin. These things don't have airbags.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:35
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Sure, but taking an ATR or ATM to the hull will also increase the chance of banging your head on the suddenly lurching tank body, so there's that.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:37
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British tank design was the biggest enemy Let's s make our tank fast! It will cost armor, but we'll make up for it by adding a lovely gun! Let's make our tank super armored! Sure, it will be slow, but we will undergun it, so whatever. Let's make a fast tank with vertical armor in 1944! And so on and so forth, till the blessed Centurion showed the Brits that you should only compromise in the engine compartment. And the British made quality slow tanks with lovely engines for 50+ years.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:55
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Churchills were a quite solid infantry support tank, which is what they were designed to do. And Cromwells worked albeit less generally than the Sherman.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:03
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Not really. You'd be surprised how it's happened several times. Quite surprised. There's a difference between a ship that is useful for other purposes (Blucher) getting caught in a bad place at a bad time doing a stupid thing, and a ship that is only designed (poorly) to be in bad places at bad times doing stupid things. The Cascos and Keokuk are good proto-LCS and very instructive, Keokuk especially.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:26
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This ex-BAOR lifer I knew was fond of saying that the tank they had was "second to none if it happened to break down in a good firing position". Not sure which one of the post-war British tanks he was referring to.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:37
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Chieftain, probably. They had a lot of engine trouble.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:48
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OwlFancier posted:Churchills were a quite solid infantry support tank, which is what they were designed to do. And Cromwells worked albeit less generally than the Sherman. Churchills are apparently absurdly cramped. They had tiny little turrets because they were British tanks and therefore hilariously un-modern. I don't know how they fit 75mm guns into there, but I suppose the British were pretty good at stuffing big guns into small spaces.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:58
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