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Having involuntarily served in Europe's Worst Excuse for an Army, we were told the reason Americans were carrying around so much ammunition was because they can't aim worth poo poo and just spray and pray. edit: Page 420 ayooo
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May 3, 2017 19:31
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8KKqQc-6hU Where the term "shotgunning" comes from.
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May 3, 2017 19:37
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married but discreet posted:Having involuntarily served in Europe's Worst Excuse for an Army, we were told the reason Americans were carrying around so much ammunition was because they can't aim worth poo poo and just spray and pray. Portugal?
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May 3, 2017 19:40
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married but discreet posted:Having involuntarily served in Europe's Worst Excuse for an Army U.S. Army?
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May 3, 2017 20:42
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SeanBeansShako posted:I look forward to the day though when victory was achieved by a force of men who were told by their commander that the enemy is much better armed, trained and led though. That'd be some great telly. First Gulf War was pretty close, the coalition sincerely believed they would take potentially hundreds of thousands of casualties against what was one of the biggest armies in the world, stacked with veterans after an 8 year nightmare war. The British in particular essentially stripped the entire BAOR of everything workable to field a full armoured division in Iraq, and expected to need every tank. aphid_licker posted:I got about three days of tactical instruction in basic training back in the day and even as a retarded teenager I remember thinking as we were clumsily babby's-first-fire-and-maneuvering towards an undefended bit of random geography that this seemed like it would be an exceedingly bad idea irl. The idea of being sufficiently high on chauvinism to think otherwise is really weird if you get down to it. The other part of this is intense discipline - the French in particular in WWI backed up the whole elan and cran thing by treating soldiers like little more than dogs, with predictable results come 1917. The British treated soldiers better overall, but were real big fans of shooting people considered cowards to prove a point as well.
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May 3, 2017 21:06
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MikeCrotch posted:
Not so much actually. The French shot twice as many soldiers as the British.
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May 3, 2017 21:14
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MikeCrotch posted:First Gulf War was pretty close, the coalition sincerely believed they would take potentially hundreds of thousands of casualties against what was one of the biggest armies in the world, stacked with veterans after an 8 year nightmare war. The British in particular essentially stripped the entire BAOR of everything workable to field a full armoured division in Iraq, and expected to need every tank. Plus Iraq had a pretty serious anti-air defense system, and losses were lighter than expected. Even so, certain units took some serious damage. Enough A-10s got hit (and lost) that they were kept at high altitudes in subsequent conflicts, and I think it pretty much ended the use of the JP233 by Tornadoes (even though none were actually shot down while delivering the munition, it was judged to be just too risky to keep doing it). I remember that even after the initial operations in the ground war were successful, there was still a lot of breathless "Where are the Republican Guard divisions?" all over the news, because they were purported to be still a serious threat.
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May 3, 2017 21:16
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Alchenar posted:Not so much actually. The French shot twice as many soldiers as the British. Twice as many relative to army size or twice as many total?
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May 3, 2017 22:03
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Polyakov posted:Twice as many relative to army size or twice as many total? Both actually. Both Britain and France mobilised around 8m soldiers over the course of the conflict.
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May 3, 2017 22:06
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Alchenar posted:Both actually. Both Britain and France mobilised around 8m soldiers over the course of the conflict. It's also worth pointing out that around 90% of British soldiers sentenced to death had that sentence commuted to imprisonment or hard labour.
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May 3, 2017 22:10
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Yes but I wouldn't trust the official numbers, they don't count the men of the Singapore Mutiny or other incidents like that too.
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May 3, 2017 23:48
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Sorry to break in to the current discussions. But for whoever was looking for Vietnam reading stuff about a week ago, I would very highly recommend Vietnam: The definitive oral history by Christian G Appy as a companion read to a more traditional history. It interviews a wide range of people from North Vietnamese ground troops to William Westmoreland and captures the range of conditions people people lived with at the time. MacNamara's book In Retrospect also shows a lot of just how dumb the way the US fell into the war was. Being a political history it's incredibly slanted, ofc. Not a good read, but worthwhile for the perspective it provides. New Zealand's Vietnam War: A history of courage, commitment and controversy by Ian McGibbon is an official history of a particular area of mostly military operations if you wanted to get into detail of how things happened at a level which is not too complicated to follow. While it's not overtly pro-military (the NZ government commissioned it from a historian in the 2000s rather than being written by the units involved) , it's interesting to see the contrast of perspectives with the oral history above. Of course you'd have to get this book in from a library network since there's probably all of four copies outside Australasia. Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 01:52 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 01:49
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MikeCrotch posted:First Gulf War was pretty close, the coalition sincerely believed they would take potentially hundreds of thousands of casualties against what was one of the biggest armies in the world, stacked with veterans after an 8 year nightmare war. The British in particular essentially stripped the entire BAOR of everything workable to field a full armoured division in Iraq, and expected to need every tank. Honestly the Gulf War was probably the most strategically thoughtful war since WWII. Things like the feinted landing from the sea, the decision not to invade Iraq, the Battle of Khafji, etc. are all indicative of a war that was not just "come up with a good operational plan and we'll make it up as we go along (Korea) or Just Do Whatever (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq). Of course it benefitted heavily from clear political objectives and reestablishing a legitimate government rather than trying to form a whole new one, but holy crap how fast we forget the value of these things.
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May 4, 2017 03:48
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Honestly the Gulf War was probably the most strategically thoughtful war since WWII. Things like the feinted landing from the sea, the decision not to invade Iraq, the Battle of Khafji, etc. are all indicative of a war that was not just "come up with a good operational plan and we'll make it up as we go along (Korea) or Just Do Whatever (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq). Of course it benefitted heavily from clear political objectives and reestablishing a legitimate government rather than trying to form a whole new one, but holy crap how fast we forget the value of these things. OTOH the coalition encouraged uprisings, which were then crushed by Iraq after the ceasefire, which resulted in the coalition establishing no-fly zones, which resulted in a decade long cold war that got hot again in 2003. It's fine to have limited war goals, but if the victory doesn't end the conflict you can expect hawkish revisionism and regime change mentality to gain ground.
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May 4, 2017 04:22
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Honestly the Gulf War was probably the most strategically thoughtful war since WWII. Things like the feinted landing from the sea, the decision not to invade Iraq, the Battle of Khafji, etc. are all indicative of a war that was not just "come up with a good operational plan and we'll make it up as we go along (Korea) or Just Do Whatever (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq). Of course it benefitted heavily from clear political objectives and reestablishing a legitimate government rather than trying to form a whole new one, but holy crap how fast we forget the value of these things. The really interesting part of Gulf War 1 was i think the air war, just because the planning process that went into it was the most incredibly thorough process that i think i have seen historically and the result of that was the almost complete dismantling of the Iraqi ability and desire to fight by the time that the tanks started rolling in. Its really significant in the sense that it established the whole idea of winning wars from the air and changed how the US thought it could approach war afterwards, not always beneficially in my view, but it was almost a perfect demonstration of what could be achieved with air power. Though it did help that they had almost six months to get forces together and prepare and thing through rather than stumbling in as in Vietnam or getting thrown into it by an invasion as in Korea. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 12:41 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 12:38
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Polyakov posted:Though it did help that they had almost six months to get forces together and prepare and thing through rather than stumbling in as in Vietnam or getting thrown into it by an invasion as in Korea. Or throwing up your hands and saying "Hell with it, just bomb something. No I don't care what."
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May 4, 2017 12:45
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Polyakov posted:The really interesting part of Gulf War 1 was i think the air war, just because the planning process that went into it was the most incredibly thorough process that i think i have seen historically and the result of that was the almost complete dismantling of the Iraqi ability and desire to fight by the time that the tanks started rolling in. Its really significant in the sense that it established the whole idea of winning wars from the air and changed how the US thought it could approach war afterwards, not always beneficially in my view, but it was almost a perfect demonstration of what could be achieved with air power. I know thanks to the Cold War thread that the Gulf War was a vindication of changes made to training and organization in the air force post-vietnam. A lot of these methods of doing things were taken apart later in the 1990s to, I dunno, make it easier to promote officers.
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May 4, 2017 12:49
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Nebakenezzer posted:I know thanks to the Cold War thread that the Gulf War was a vindication of changes made to training and organization in the air force post-vietnam. A lot of these methods of doing things were taken apart later in the 1990s to, I dunno, make it easier to promote officers. Its interesting, the guy that was the major force behind a lot of planning (Colonel John Warden) for it got sidelined after Gulf 1 because he was viewed as a troublemaker, he spent an awful lot of his career dodging the AF bureaucracy because he wasn't terribly interested in doing things the way that the AF said they should be done if it didn't make sense to him which got him passed over for promotion to General a couple of time due to the amount of feathers he ruffled. Which is my view is very surprising given that Gulf 1 was probably the most successful campaign the USAF ever fought and he was deeply involved in its planning and shows to my mind that the AF's culture hadnt really changed all that much just because of the huge amount of organizational inertia that it had, you still needed to play by the old bureaucratic rules that any large military gets to get promoted. What it got given in Gulf 1 was clear objectives and targets that were chosen to actually deal damage in an appreciable way to specific parts of Saddams war machine, it had the technological capability and intelligence necessary to hit them accurately and powerfully to a degree it didn't really have before or since, it is after all a lot easier to pick out targets to hit if you were involved in building half of them.
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May 4, 2017 13:22
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The warfighting phase of 2003 was far more lopsided than in 1991.
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May 4, 2017 14:18
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Yes but you get less hypothetical points for beating up saddam in 2003 than saddam of 1990 because it's a less impressive feat.
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May 4, 2017 14:23
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GW1 also gave us the idea that air power uber alles, and now the joint force has no clue what to do if denied its golden umbrella. And it showed everybody that if you want to beat the US and friends, you can't let them meticulously mass combat power on your borders for months beforehand and then choose the day and time to start things off.
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May 4, 2017 14:23
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Enh, when was the last time anyone won a war without air superiority? (Both sides not having air power doesn't count.)
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May 4, 2017 14:36
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bewbies posted:GW1 also gave us the idea that air power uber alles, and now the joint force has no clue what to do if denied its golden umbrella. And it showed everybody that if you want to beat the US and friends, you can't let them meticulously mass combat power on your borders for months beforehand and then choose the day and time to start things off. To be fair you can't beat anyone if you let them do that.
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May 4, 2017 14:39
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VanSandman posted:To be fair you can't beat anyone if you let them do that. 
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May 4, 2017 14:43
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Fangz posted:Enh, when was the last time anyone won a war without air superiority? (Both sides not having air power doesn't count.) Falklands probably qualifies.
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May 4, 2017 14:45
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Fangz posted:Enh, when was the last time anyone won a war without air superiority? (Both sides not having air power doesn't count.) The russians made a poo poo ton of gains in Eastern Europe from '42-44 in air environments that were either contested or actively hostile. Even down to the final days of the war the Luftwaffe was able to get very localized air superiority (or at least make it all very contested) to the point where the Red Army couldn't assume air power on demand or friendly skies shielding them from enemy observation and bombardment. This is a big, big part of why mobile AAA was always such a big part of their cold war makeup. More recently the Iranians and Iraqis both contested frontline airspace during their war. I don't know that you could unequivocally hand the title of "air superiority" to either of them. edit: the DPRK made a ton of gains against the US during the push down to Pusan early in the Korean War, most of it in the face of superior American airpower.
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May 4, 2017 15:11
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Cyrano4747 posted:The russians made a poo poo ton of gains in Eastern Europe from '42-44 in air environments that were either contested or actively hostile. Even down to the final days of the war the Luftwaffe was able to get very localized air superiority (or at least make it all very contested) to the point where the Red Army couldn't assume air power on demand or friendly skies shielding them from enemy observation and bombardment. This is a big, big part of why mobile AAA was always such a big part of their cold war makeup. Iran enjoyed air superiority at the start of the war but that dropped off very sharply when they ran out of parts for their F-14's. Its interesting in a sense beacuse Iraqs advances were made under Iranian air control, and later in the war Irans advances were made under Iraqi air control. I wouldnt ever say either side enjoyed air dominance but at tiomes it was close to it.
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May 4, 2017 15:18
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Fangz posted:Enh, when was the last time anyone won a war without air superiority? (Both sides not having air power doesn't count.) We had epic air superiority for Iraqi Freedom, and we steamrolled their military like we were a Call of Duty protagonist. The problems came when we had to deal with a conflict where there was no centralized leadership or supply lines that could fall.
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May 4, 2017 15:43
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I gave a somewhat elaborated answer to that Quora question and I have like 10 upvotes! An actual question though, aside from misused or dead end technological developments, we know for example that maybe they should have made some sort of interceptor rockets for AA defence instead of pouring resources into the V-program, but what were they behind on? For example I've heard/read that the Germans only had radios at the battalion level, while the US had them down to the platoon level; was this technologically driven or was German radio production just bad that they couldn't get that many available to frontline units? The obvious answer is nuclear physics but aside from that! bewbies posted:GW1 also gave us the idea that air power uber alles, and now the joint force has no clue what to do if denied its golden umbrella. And it showed everybody that if you want to beat the US and friends, you can't let them meticulously mass combat power on your borders for months beforehand and then choose the day and time to start things off. IIRC it's been suggested that what politically Iraq should have done was to realize that they couldn't hold Kuwait and gamble that if they announced they were going to withdraw and comply with US/UN demands but then draaaaaaaggggggeeeeddddd ittt ouuuutttt they might have forced the US out because it was costing I heard was 15 billion a day to station that many troops and equipment in preparation?
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May 4, 2017 15:55
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Raenir Salazar posted:An actual question though, aside from misused or dead end technological developments, we know for example that maybe they should have made some sort of interceptor rockets for AA defence instead of pouring resources into the V-program, but what were they behind on? The Germans had a bunch of SAM projects, a lot of which have English wikipedia pages. Look for Enzian, Wasserfall, Rheintochter, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henschel_Hs_117 I'll leave the posting info beyond that to someone who actually knows their poo poo. e: a bunch of these look really striking but I can't rehost the pics rn. aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 16:35 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 16:18
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Raenir Salazar posted:I gave a somewhat elaborated answer to that Quora question and I have like 10 upvotes! Part of it is that technology is much more nuanced than just 'levels' like in many games. Specifically Nazi Germany had some rather significant issues in industrial implementation compared to the allies, most specifically in the production of vehicles. This was compounded of course by strategic bombing but that just made the issues worse rather than creating them. More specific examples would be less advanced casting and welding techniques, I believe, and their radar technology wasn't as advanced as the allies either. Many of the "wunderwaffe" were more a symptom of desperation than anything else.
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May 4, 2017 16:33
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A lot of the crazy poo poo (Maus, VK 70.01, etc) was way too early to blame on desperation.
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May 4, 2017 16:37
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Fangz posted:Enh, when was the last time anyone won a war without air superiority? (Both sides not having air power doesn't count.) Vietnam.
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May 4, 2017 16:45
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Ensign Expendable posted:A lot of the crazy poo poo (Maus, VK 70.01, etc) was way too early to blame on desperation. True, but those would fall more into the category of feature creep or in the case of many of the Porsche vehicles, vanity projects after a certain point.
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May 4, 2017 16:50
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Raenir Salazar posted:
German tank development lagged heavily behind the rest of the world. They were extremely late in embracing sloped armor (the US, Britain, and the Soviets were all using it in the 1930s to some degree or another), which drastically weakened their protection on a per-ton basis compared to Allied tank designs, and they didn't put the effort into improving the less obvious aspects of tank design needed to make their heavier vehicles work properly. Their rifles and artillery also were pretty unimpressive technologically (particularly late war, once use of the VT radar fuse was authorized against infantry), and their aircraft (excepting only the Bf-109, FW-190, and Me-262 fighters) were inferior to their Allied counterparts in pretty much every way. Those areas where they did manage to leap slightly ahead were those the Allies had either put on the back burner, left for after the war because they seemed like too great an expenditure of resources during the fighting, or thought were impractical. Allied jet fighter and guided missile projects started before their German counterparts, but were largely starved for resources until there was a need to counter the German jets or when the war was effectively won and they could start pushing resources into getting it won faster. Finally, some things that the Germans are credited for introducing were Allied innovations in the first place. The Panzerschreck, for example, was a copy of the bazooka, and the Allies mounted rockets on their planes before the Germans did.
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May 4, 2017 17:20
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Fangz posted:Enh, when was the last time anyone won a war without air superiority? (Both sides not having air power doesn't count.) Afghanistan, both times (well, most recently) Turns out airpower is real loving useful against a conventional enemy, but either an expensive alternative to artillery at best or an active detriment at worst in counterinsurgency wars.
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May 4, 2017 17:25
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 Posted today from the Swedish museum Livrustkammaren in Stockholm. Which you should go visit if you're around. Dunno if Hey Gal is still around but Gars is best 30YW dude.  (still catching up on the old thread)
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May 4, 2017 17:30
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Gnoman posted:German tank development lagged heavily behind the rest of the world. They were extremely late in embracing sloped armor (the US, Britain, and the Soviets were all using it in the 1930s to some degree or another), which drastically weakened their protection on a per-ton basis compared to Allied tank designs, and they didn't put the effort into improving the less obvious aspects of tank design needed to make their heavier vehicles work properly. Their rifles and artillery also were pretty unimpressive technologically (particularly late war, once use of the VT radar fuse was authorized against infantry), and their aircraft (excepting only the Bf-109, FW-190, and Me-262 fighters) were inferior to their Allied counterparts in pretty much every way. So how sloped does the armour need to be for it to count, and what would be the earliest examples for the various Allied nations? There's very little in terms of rifles for the Germans, unless you count most small arms as rifles. If you list the Mp44 as a rifle (for assaulting, you see!) then its pretty advanced compared to other nations. They had plenty of good artillery in a variety of calibers and for a number of purposes. Not all were poo poo, but they had some forward-thinking designs that were manufactured. Uhhhh, the He-219, the Ju-88, the Ar-234, the Bf-110, the Fw-189, and others would like to have a word with you. Allied jet fighters didn't start before the Germans, who had at least two separate aircraft flying under Jet power before anyone else, unless I'm missing something with regards to the testing and flight dates for the He-178 and the He-280. Hell, even the Italians beat everyone else but the Germans with the Caproni Campini N.1. The Panzerfaust was before the Panzerschreck, and started development at around the same time as the M1 Bazooka, so that's more a draw than anything else. And the Russians were the first to put rockets onto aircraft, but I can't say I've heard people say the Germans were the first so I dunno 
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May 4, 2017 17:52
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Raenir Salazar posted:I gave a somewhat elaborated answer to that Quora question and I have like 10 upvotes! Possibly related to the German radio shortage, US radios used giant Brazilian crystals to send messages through some kind of wizardry. The blockade obviously meant Germany had to find an alternative, probably less effective, manufacturing process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b--FKHCFjOM I don't really understand what's happening in this video but I found it oddly entrancing. Squalid fucked around with this message at 18:00 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 17:57
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Taerkar posted:Part of it is that technology is much more nuanced than just 'levels' like in many games. Specifically Nazi Germany had some rather significant issues in industrial implementation compared to the allies, most specifically in the production of vehicles. This was compounded of course by strategic bombing but that just made the issues worse rather than creating them. Our computer technology was a field where Germany was absolutely leading the field, too bad we kind of lacked stuff to do with our new computers. Though at least some interesting stuff happened: In one of the late-war German bombs was the world's first analogue-digital interface installed, for example. And with the defeat this short world lead ended immediately: All factories for computer-related technologies were plundered in large scale. After 1945, German computer development never really took off again. Sure, lots of stuff was done after World War II, but the chance of a German Silicon Valley essentially died the day Hitler was elected.
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