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Vincent Van Goatse posted:The Prussians aren't cut from the film, they're just only featured in passing a few times once the battle starts and then they show up at the end to save the day. Yeah, aren't there a bunch of characters in the credits who don't appear in the film? 
Lobster God fucked around with this message at 23:57 on May 16, 2017 |
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May 16, 2017 23:55
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Don Gato posted:Having talked to and drank with far too many submariners, I will vouch for it and say that movie is 100% accurate. Something about being locked into a metal tube either only attracts crazy people, or it breaks people. According to an old acquaintance, it the submariners' life also attracts people with severe gas problems. Could just be confirmation bias, though.
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May 17, 2017 00:10
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I have to imagine on a old diesel sub the smell of hydrocarbons and BO pretty much overwhelmed everything else
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May 17, 2017 01:06
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 to whichever of you left that comment about "imaginary countries".
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May 17, 2017 01:30
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:The Prussians aren't cut from the film, they're just only featured in passing a few times once the battle starts and then they show up at the end to save the day. I'm pretty sure in said cut four hour original I've read them doing a lot more than just showing up at the last minute. Also, goddamn media/financial limitations of the times!
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May 17, 2017 02:34
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:The Prussians aren't cut from the film, they're just only featured in passing a few times once the battle starts and then they show up at the end to save the day. ugh i wanna see that poo poo so bad
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May 17, 2017 02:58
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Incidentally I just watched waterloo this weekend (while playing video games). No idea which version. Blucher featured a fair bit. But while there may not have been too many scenes of him, the strategic implication of the Prussians was very well deal with. There was great concern when the british and the prussians were both moving towards france. Napoleon was celebrating in this bath tub when the armies split apart. There was a big focus on how napoleon split a 1/3 of this force to make sure blucher doesn't show up at the battle. And then there was the french lying to their armies that the advancing prussians were actually the detached french force.
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May 17, 2017 03:50
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I'm trying to find the details about a story I remember reading here. At some point in WW2, didn't a group of German soldiers trapped behind Soviet lines get captured, but Soviet intelligence successfully fooled the Germans into repeatedly resupplying them?
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May 17, 2017 11:48
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Nebakenezzer posted:I'm a broken person I mean, I gues there weren't really very many operational german tanks around back then? I mean, not that it excuses it at all. If I were to guess they wanted to create a visual contrast between the plucky allies in their 'Shermans' and the nazis in their 'Big Cats'. Historical accuracy wasn't usually that big a deal for Hollywood back then (or now, for that matter). Except for something like The Longest Day, where several of the cast were playing themselves.
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May 17, 2017 11:56
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Splode posted:I'm trying to find the details about a story I remember reading here. At some point in WW2, didn't a group of German soldiers trapped behind Soviet lines get captured, but Soviet intelligence successfully fooled the Germans into repeatedly resupplying them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Scherhorn
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May 17, 2017 12:21
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Yvonmukluk posted:I mean, I gues there weren't really very many operational german tanks around back then? I mean, not that it excuses it at all. If I were to guess they wanted to create a visual contrast between the plucky allies in their 'Shermans' and the nazis in their 'Big Cats'. You could go through a lot of trouble to try to find some working Shermans(maybe possible) and working Panthers and tigers(probably not) or you could just accept the Spanish Army's help and use what they have in their inventory. The best you can really get are gonna be dressed up T-34s.
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May 17, 2017 12:39
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lmao this is completely nutso and completely in line with what the nazis would fall for
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May 17, 2017 12:49
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To be fair, there's plenty of films from that era that did go the extra mile for accuracy, like Kelly's Heroes and Tora Tora Tora. Really, it's less that Hollywood as a whole didn't care about historical accuracy during that time period, and more that films like The Battle of the Bulge just didn't give a poo poo.
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May 17, 2017 13:13
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Eh, it's also a bit harder when you're trying to depict armor engagements with multiple tanks on screen at the same time. Kelly's Heroes just needed to have the one Sherman (for the most part). Battle of the Bulge had a few scenes where they have at least platoon strength units maneuvering in fields, maybe larger as it's been a while since I've seen it. Once you get to that many it's a lot easier to find a friendly military willing to let you play with their toys in a field.
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May 17, 2017 13:21
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BattleMoose posted:Incidentally I just watched waterloo this weekend (while playing video games). No idea which version. Blucher featured a fair bit. But while there may not have been too many scenes of him, the strategic implication of the Prussians was very well deal with. I'm just annoyed we never see the French Army getting lost, Grouchy chomping on stawberries and taking his sweet time and the brutal fighting at Wavre. The Prussian rear guard pretty much keeping the reserves busy during Wavre which was some pretty vicious brutal street fighting. I too want to see that four hour version of the film, we'll never get a close to scale Napoleonic reinacment like that again 
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May 17, 2017 13:21
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SeanBeansShako posted:I'm just annoyed we never see the French Army getting lost, Grouchy chomping on stawberries and taking his sweet time and the brutal fighting at Wavre. The Prussian rear guard pretty much keeping the reserves busy during Wavre which was some pretty vicious brutal street fighting. I've heard Kolburg is pretty OK as far as realism goes, but I've never actually seen it so I'm just going off second hand info.
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May 17, 2017 13:23
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Does that use CG? Also drat, where'd your Roman avatar go man this is super weird!
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May 17, 2017 13:36
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SeanBeansShako posted:Does that use CG? i doubt it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolberg_(film) and same!
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May 17, 2017 13:48
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Oh uh, It's a Nazi Germany made film. Never seen it then.
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May 17, 2017 14:02
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Acebuckeye13 posted:To be fair, there's plenty of films from that era that did go the extra mile for accuracy, like Kelly's Heroes and Tora Tora Tora. Really, it's less that Hollywood as a whole didn't care about historical accuracy during that time period, and more that films like The Battle of the Bulge just didn't give a poo poo. I mean, it's not like Hollywood cares much more these days about historical accuracy - U-571 and all that.
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May 17, 2017 14:48
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Thanks, that's the one!
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May 17, 2017 14:59
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SeanBeansShako posted:
Yeah, someone decided to buy me a new one. I'll find something I like then change it sometime today or tomorrow.
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May 17, 2017 15:08
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yeah, someone decided to buy me a new one. I'll find something I like then change it sometime today or tomorrow. I'm glad they couldn't bring themselves to change your custom text at least. What a weird post that was
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May 17, 2017 15:13
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Ainsley McTree posted:I'm glad they couldn't bring themselves to change your custom text at least. What a weird post that was Don't look too far into it. I'm pretty sure it goes about as deep as "Hilary clinton has a dick"
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May 17, 2017 15:13
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Can someone show the full Suetonius post??
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May 17, 2017 15:29
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Tias posted:Can someone show the full Suetonius post?? 
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May 17, 2017 15:36
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lol
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May 17, 2017 15:37
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Because I have no shame, here it is:Arglebargle III posted:I just realized something out of the blue this morning: babies BITE. Hard. If you've ever hung out with a nursing mother you know they bite all the time. Cyrano4747 posted:I can't believe I'm actually trying to logically think this through in my head but here we go. . . Grand Fromage posted:Welp.
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May 17, 2017 15:40
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Cyrano4747 posted:Because I have no shame, here it is: We were going to find it eventually, you did the right thing
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May 17, 2017 15:45
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Forget I asked 
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May 17, 2017 15:47
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Sorry this took so long, I bought a new book on the subject which was really good and I had to go back and rethink bits of my original post. The book in question is The Iran Iraq War by Pierre Razoux and is where all the neat maps in this post come from. Previous posts. Part 1: Historical context Part 2: The Armies, the Objectives and the beginning. Part 3: The Initial year - Saddams assault. Part 4: Iraq is driven out of Iran, 81-82. Part 5: Iran starts its assault into Iraq, 82-83. The Tanker War. One of the first things that Iran did at the outbreak of the war was for President Bani-Sadr to promise that Iran would not block the Straits of Hormuz, he was well aware at the time that if there was one thing guaranteed to bring outside powers in on the Iraqi side it was messing with the export of oil through the strait. However six years later there would be a huge quantity of NATO ships in the gulf directly attacking Iranian ships, Saddam would successfully bait the Iranians into action that would lead to that end by his attacks on Iranian ships and the mass importation of war material through the strait to be unloaded at Kuwait and Saudi Arabian ports and then moved on to Iraq.  Important areas (Left to right): Kuwait City, Bandar-e Khomeini, Kharg Island, island cluster of Siri Island Abu Musa and Greater and lesser Tunb, Bandar Abbas. The first shots taken against civilian shipping came very early in the war, in early 1982 Iraq would declare a maritime exclusion zone in the north of the Gulf, under this pretext Iraq would attack tankers coming out of the Kharg oil terminal or at Bandar-e Khomeini. The insurance rates for ships bound for the ports contained in this zone, Bandar-e Khomeini, Kharg Island and Bushehr, tripled. Iraq mainly employed Super Frelon helicopters armed with their limited supply of Exocets as well as Su-22 and MiG-23s who typically employed rocket pods or lighter soviet missiles like the AS-7 Kerry (KH-23 Grom) which were beam riding missiles with a slightly smaller warhead of around 110 kg as compared to the exocets 165kg. The Iraqi navies Osa boats would launch rapid hit and run attacks, firing off their SS-N-2 Styx missiles at long range and turning tail, however they scored very few hits. Iraq also attempted to employ its silkworm missiles recently bought from China but failed to score any hits with them either. There would also be sporadic bombing of oil facilities, especially offshore rigs which would cause generally minor damage, but Iran would stop construction of the new Bandar Khomeini refinery. Iran would respond by putting the majority of its serviceable F-14s on permanent patrol above the Kharg terminal and would heavily reinforce it with Hawk missile batteries which would essentially put an end to Iraqs ability to hit the terminal, these patrolling F-14s would give the first confirmed kill to a Phoenix missile when an Iraqi MiG-25 would be hit by one over the gulf. Given Irans ability to protect the major facility of Kharg these initial attacks did not represent a prolonged and persistent attack on economic capacity throughout the gulf, which is what the Tanker war would become. Iran had major port facilities further down the gulf coast and would move its traffic away from that area robbing the Iraqis of the means to attack due to the lack of sufficient modern long range aircraft. These early attacks would only affect roughly 2% of Iranian sea export traffic.  Strike ranges of the Iraqi aircraft without tanking support. Iran really had no interest in starting a war in the Gulf as it could only hurt them more, so it wasn’t until Iraq had the capability given to them by France to consistently and persistently attack by air that it could start in earnest. Hence the importance of the Beirut barracks bombing I mentioned previously as that was the major trigger for France agreeing to sell Iraq enough material that they could conduct a prolonged and meaningful campaign. The Iranian navy was still significantly stronger than the Iraqi one and a lot of fighting was taking place close to Iraqi port facilities so they really had no chance of fighting a sea war, anything serious Iraq wanted to do it had to do from the air. The tanker war is generally considered to have started in March 1984, an Iraqi super-etendard recently delivered from France hit a Greek oil tanker, the Filikon L, with an Exocet missile recently imported from France. The missile failed to explode and the tanker suffered only minor damage. This was for the best given that said tanker was at the time carrying oil from Kuwait, who was heavily supporting Iraq at this stage with financial assistance. Iraqi jets would not have a stellar record at identifying correct targets throughout the war as we will see, so they very much started as they meant to go on by attacking a friendly target with a dud missile. Neither side would have that much success at sinking targets, oil tankers being huge and very hard to deal critical damage to. The weapons mainly employed were Exocets, machine guns, mines, RPG’s and other larger missiles, the only way realistically that you would sink a supertanker with those weapons was causing a fire or explosion among its cargo. The effect of what essentially became an all-out war on civilian traffic in the Gulf was actually fairly limited in direct material effect. There were roughly 1000 ships passing through the gulf every month and in the entirety of 1984 there were 53 Iraqi attacks on shipping, while this would intensify considerably, for most of the tanker war there was never really any danger of that much direct damage to any individual tanker. The real damage early on would come from the fact that Iran was forced to offer cut price on its oil to attract customers and from the increased insurance rates for Kuwaiti and Iranian ships. Lloyds insurance rate for ships to Kuwait increased by a factor of five throughout 1986 once Iran started attacking in earnest. However once Iraq got the bugs worked out they would cause nearly thirty ships to have to be scrapped in a two month period of attacks in 1986 and would cause oil exports from Iran to drop by 20%, not as a result of those sinkings entirely, but ships started to stay away to avoid the risks. Iranian attacks in the period would usually be superficial in damage as they had no missiles to attack large ships with that they dared to use so they would employ machine guns and rockets against the superstructure of ships trying to kill and terrify crew.  USS Stark having taken an Iraqi Exocet. The Tanker War went through several developments, however it really heated up in the May of 1987 when the USS Stark was struck by an Exocet missile fired from an Iraqi Mirage fighter. This incident was largely what tipped the balance for the USA to move in and enforce safe navigation in the Gulf. They had been considering it for a long time and when they did so it would really tip the balance in the gulf heavily against Iran. Other factors were Iran’s stop and search policy of ships bound for Saudi, Kuwaiti or Iraqi ports and the overtones of Kuwaits government to both the US and USSR to protect it. The reason the Tanker War was so important is as you may imagine because of oil exports, both sides sustained this war on the back of their oil revenues. Iran exported over 90% of its oil via tanker through the Gulf, whereas Iraq only exported a fraction of their oil this way, they tended to use pipelines via Turkey and Syria. However Saudi Arabia and Kuwait both extensively used tankers to export their oil and their stance in support of Iraq made their ships fair game for the Iranians as far as attacks were concerned. It was also the only conceivable way that Iraq could draw the US into supporting them directly, Saddam hoped that by provoking Iran he could make them do something stupid to which the US would have to respond. His deduction was right and the US would savage the Iranian navy hard and would come within a hairs breadth of retaliatory airstrikes on the entire Iranian coastline as a result of their provocation. Kuwait. Kuwait was the most vulnerable state on Iraq’s side in the war, it had a very significant Shia minority of around 40% officially among its citizens but with significant quantities of non-citizen Shia as well. It had not historically had too much of a problem with the divide between the two sects but the war was inflaming tensions everywhere. It also exported all of its oil via water, unlike Saudi Arabia who had other options. It was also vital for Iraq’s war effort, with its own port facilities under siege Iraq had to turn to the small nation of Kuwait to unload its arms imports, in the largest week of imports in December 1986 seven soviet arms ships arrived in Kuwait city and unloaded nearly 150 T-72s and several MiG-29’s along with lots of additional arms and equipment. By 1987 Kuwait had given Iraq over $13 billion in aid in a mixture of loans, gifts and other assistance. Iran had been trying to knock over the monarchy for quite a long time and disgruntled Shia Muslims encouraged and funded by Iran would conduct a series of bombings throughout the war and try to assassinate the Emir in 1984. In 1986 the Emir would dissolve parliament after major fires at the Mina Al-Ahmadi petroleum complex, Iran would also start intentionally targeting Kuwaiti tankers in the same year. When Iran took the Al-Faw peninsula in 1986 they started threatening Kuwait more directly, Indeed Kuwait only lay across a short stretch of water from Al-Faw. Iran had also deployed Silkworm missiles bought from China along its coast and had started to lob them at Kuwait city from time to time. The Silkworm was large enough to seriously threaten a tanker, it had a warhead of around 500kg as opposed to the Exocets 165 kg, they were almost at the point where they could successfully shut down any traffic in the gulf if they wanted.  Kuwait citys proximity to the Al-Faw peninsula. Therefore in 1986 Kuwait approached the superpowers of the world, asking to reflag its ships and for protection. It was only they who were capable of putting a stop to Iranian actions in the Gulf and therefore it made sense for Kuwait to try and drag any large power into the Gulf. The Kuwaiti view was that if one of the US or USSR got involved then the war was more likely to end, at this stage it had been going on for 6 long years and showed no real sign of stopping. The USSR accepted immediately, it was looking for a way back into the Gulf after it was heavily condemned for its invasion of Afghanistan and with the recent coming to power of Gorbachev it was precisely timed to change the USSR’s mind. The USSR was at a point where it was stepping away from supporting communists on ideological grounds and more towards fruitful working relationships with any ideology that they could work with. The US who had been reluctant to get too deeply involved up to that point were immediately spurred into decisive action by the Soviet inroads into the area. Kuwait played this incredibly well, it was one of the more neutral countries in the gulf in the Cold war. It saw that the US had withdrawn from Lebanon after suffering casualties in the bombing in 1984 and wanted to be certain that the US would get in and stay in, and the best way to do that would be to wave the spectre of Communism in front of mid 80’s Roland Reagan. The five tankers that were to be reflagged as soviet were reflagged as US along with six more, for a total of eleven of Kuwaits 23 tankers. They would rent three tankers from the USSR mainly as a reminder to the US not to leave them high and dry. The Kuwaiti Oil minister blackmailed the US into involvement with his announcement that five tankers would be reflagged as soviet. He managed to secure the protection for Kuwait of both the US and USSR against Iranian aggression by this move, rendering it about as safe as it could be expected with the artillery fire from Al-Faw rattling windows in Kuwait city. The Start of the Tanker war - 1984. As previously mentioned the opening shots of the Tanker war were fired in 1984, Iran would retaliate at this stage by using its P-3 Orion aircraft to patrol the gulf near Kuwait, to spot and identify targets. They would then call in F-4’s armed with their 20mm cannon and rocket pods to strafe the superstructure of Kuwaiti tankers located north of Bahrain. The idea of sinking a supertanker with these is as previously mentioned ludicrous, but it was the start of Iran’s direct intimidation of the Gulf monarchies, Kuwait especially to get them to cut support for Iraq. At this stage Iraq needed the monarchies cash or it would fold pretty quickly. Syria had cut the major pipeline Iraq had used to export oil and this was causing major cash shortfalls that were only covered by loans and gifts from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.  Iranian Airforce P-3. Saudi Arabia had been pursuing a much more muscular policy in the gulf since the death of King Khalid and the ascension of King Fahd, it could not let Iraq fall. It had the full backing of the US for its policy and a steady supply of support in terms of F-15’s and modern missiles as well as US AWACS planes who were maintaining a constant watch on the goings on across the gulf. As a result Saudi Arabia declared what it called the Fahd line, which ran along the edge of the Iranian declared exclusion zone and they warned Iran not to stray across it. The US also announced it was sending the USS Midway and its battle group to the Gulf of Oman. Iran took this opportunity before the arrival of the Midway to test the Saudi resolve. A standard Iranian strike mission crossed the Fahd line, a P-3 Orion and a pair of F-4’s who were headed towards two Saudi oil tankers that had just left Dhahran. The Saudi Air Force intercepted them with two F-15’s who shot down one phantom and severely damaged another. Iran responded aggressively by dispatching a group of six further Phantoms to the area, Saudi Arabia responded by sending a further 4 F-15’s and a pair of F-5’s, not willing to back down Iran then dispatched 6 F-4’s and 6 F-14’s, who prompted Saudi Arabia to dispatch another 8 F-15s and 8 F-5’s. There was a battle of nerves going on with both sides refusing to back down, somehow it ended without anyone getting an itchy trigger finger when the Iranians were forced to retreat due to fuel concerns. Shortly after this incident the US would sign an agreement to deliver more F-15’s, the new M-1 Abrams tank and other of its most modern equipment. This engagement is notable partly because it was the closest we got to a major fight between Iran and Saudi Arabia but also because it would inform Iranian policy. Their airforce had the advantage over Iraq at this time but not over Saudi Arabia with American backing, and soon after this we will see the transformation of their strategy from conventional attacks to the unconventional with small boats and mines. This would not be the end of the Iranian airforces involvement, but they would be much more careful in confronting Saudi Arabia from then on.  RSAF F-15 (I know it’s an F-15SA but I can’t find a better picture of an actual Saudi plane) This stage of the war also saw Gadaffi’s attempts to weigh in on the war by his mining of red sea, there were a variety of reasons why he did it. He had supported Iran because he hated Saddam Hussein, he was trying to weaken Egypt. By mining the red sea he could achieve both aims, he dropped traffic through Suez significantly and also dropped traffic to the Saudi oil terminal of Yanbu. I’ve done this in more detail before in a different post but this is how it fits in to the wider Iran-Iraq war at the time. By the end of 1984, Iraq had struck 45 different vessels, 23 of which were tankers, sunk or damaged to the point of scrappage 14 of them. The vast quantities of oil in the tankers bunkers acted as a huge damper against explosive shock and so it was very difficult even with exocet strikes to sink a large oil tanker. Iran sunk 1 ship and damaged 13 others, ultimately both countries were able to export pretty much their entire OPEC quota (1.2 million BPD for Iraq, 2.3 million BPD for Iran) so the effect on world oil supply was negligible, however Iranian profits were halved because they had to reduce the price of their oil in order to entice people to take the risk of visiting Kharg. 1985 – Saudi price wars Economic war. The direct war on tankers would continue throughout 1985, but by far and away the most important development of this year would come from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. This was a plan conceived between Riyadh and Washington to ruin the economies of the USSR and Iran simultaneously, both hated enemies of Saudi Arabia. Iran got 80% of its government revenue from oil, and its international isolation meant it could not fall back on international finance in the event of that number taking a dive, the USSR it was calculated would lose 1 billion dollars from its budget per dollar drop in the price of oil. Iraq would not be affected so badly because it was waging its war on credit from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and at this time the USA, and none of those countries minded having a tool to manipulate Hussein either. The plan was very simple, Saudi Arabia would open the taps of its production wide open, it was currently extracting around 2 million BPD with a potential capacity of around 10 million, and if it artificially dropped prices it could easily just ramp production to maintain its own spending. There were a lot of other reasons for this including North Sea oil and so on but they aren’t directly relevant to the war. In concert with this the US would allow its currency to drop in value which would also hammer down the price of oil given that dollars were the reserve currency at that time.  Oil price since 1940, note the catastrophic drop with the patronising arrow next to it. Starting in July the Saudis ramped production to 6 million BPD in August 1985, 9 million in October and 10 million in January of 1986. The price of oil tumbled, it was around 66 dollars per barrel (inflation corrected figures) at the start of 1985 and would drop like a stone to around 22 dollars per barrel at the start of 1986 before rebounding slightly when to protect US oil companies they agreed to stabilise prices at a higher level. This would crater Iranian state revenue by over two thirds, seriously blunting their ability to perform offensive operations. Kharg oil terminal – Third round. Iraq was now starting to move into a situation of decided aerial superiority over the gulf, they had brand new F-1EQ5 Mirages alongside the 4 Super-Etendards from France who were capable of firing exocets and also with the aid of external fuel tanks and the use of Su-22’s as in flight refulers gave Iraq the reach to attack ships as far away as Qatar. In practice at this time they rarely went out that far and still focused mainly on Kharg, also at this stage the Iraqi pilots had finally finished being trained and were now capable enough to hit their targets reliably. They were also getting regular intelligence briefings from the US’s radar coverage and also from satellite and spy plane flights. Iran was running seriously short of planes and munitions, the war of the cities was going on where tit for tat exchanges occurred on each other’s population centres and the majority of planes were on that duty. They were out of Maverick missiles and were forced to resort to rocket and occasionally sidewinder attacks on ships. But they did very little actual damage due to their small warheads.  Iranian oil infrastructure showing shuttle tanker routes. Iran would adopt the strategy of using decoys around Kharg to defeat the increasing volume of Exocet attacks. They also set up a floating temporary terminal off Sirri Island, this was three 400’000 ton supertankers which were used to fill customer’s ships and were a semi-permanent fixture. The Iranians shuttled oil to these three tankers from Kharg using other oil tankers. They also employed old ships as floating decoys near the shuttling tankers, and as a result despite the increase in Iraqi pilot proficiency the exocets they launched only had a hit rate of 29% compared to the around 60% hit rate of the previous year. As well as the problems with insufficient planes, the Iranians were beginning to run out of SAM’s on Kharg, the Iraqis noted that they rarely fired their Hawk missiles and drew the correct conclusion that they were running out. The Iraqi air force planned and executed a fairly dangerous operation which would have been inconceivable 5 years ago. 6 SU-22’s and 2 Mirage F-1’s flew at sea level beneath the Iranian radar coverage, skirted Kharg and attacked from the South, splitting up and attacking the three different jetty complexes of Kharg with 500 pound bombs and left the area quickly before the Iranians, who had been sleeping under the intense heat of the mid-afternoon sun could respond. The damage was fairly low, one jetty was damaged and several oil tanks were on fire. Unfortunately when the Shah had planned Kharg he had anticipated the potential for war and there were more than enough redundant facilities to keep it operational. At the end of 1985 Iran would capture the Al-Faw peninsula which would severely curtain Iraqi sea access to the Gulf, however it would not have any effect on Iraqs ability to send planes deep into the gulf to continue its campaign. Though the rate would drop as the modern planes used there would be diverted to defend the airspace of Al-Faw. 1986 – Iraq drives Iran to breaking point. Iraqi operations.  Iraqi strike courses, the line skirting Saudi Arabia and then swerving out into the gulf was known as the Farsi Hook and was typical of most Iraqi strike missions. 1986 marked the point that Saddam would successfully goad Iran into attacking openly in the gulf and would provoke US intervention. It also marked the real start of success for the Iraqi air force, away from the gulf they would successfully set the Tehran refinery ablaze and start hitting accurately key industrial targets. But in the Gulf the Iraqis had noted the Iranian expansion of the floating oil terminal off Sirri, at this stage they had secured full Saudi connivance in allowing them to execute their air raids. In late 1986 a tanker supported raid would take off from Iraq, move through Saudi airspace and strike the Sirri facility, it was comprised of 2 strike Mirage F-1’s and 4 with buddy stores to give them the range, they would drop 4 900 pound bombs and score four hits, two bomb strikes sinking the tanker Azarpod and leaving two others damaged. Another complex operation would be launched two weeks later when they struck the Lavan terminal and sank another tanker. This prompted Iran to move its floating terminal to Larak, just off Bandar Abbas. However the Iraqi air force was tenacious, Saddam had ordered them to strike Iranian oil capacity, and General Shaban the commander at the time had a highly developed survival instinct. In November 1986 Iraq made its longest range strike of the war with a force of 12 Mirages, 3 strike and 9 refuelling flew down to Larak and bombed the floating terminal there, sinking the tanker Antarctica and severely damaging four others. Iranian operations. These attacks by Iraq were in my view the trigger for Iran to start really ramping up their attacks on tankers in the gulf, Iran knew it would inevitably drag the US in, but they were faced with an impossible choice. Time was against them, Iraq was getting support from the world and they had pretty much run out of people they could blackmail, negotiate or buy significant amounts of weapons from. They needed to act and they were too drat inflexible to make peace, and so they chose to strike openly at civillain traffic en masse. A lot of this was also triggered by the fact that the Pasadaran naval arm had recently come into being, using Swedish bought fast boats called Boghammars armed with RPGs, 50 cal machine guns and 107mm rocket launchers. Irans Navy would dispatch two of its four Alvand class frigates, built by Vosper of the UK, into the straits of Hormuz, they would fire off several Sea-Killer missiles at UAE and Kuwaiti tankers and begun stopping and searching ships heading for the gulf monarchies and confiscating war material, their biggest haul was a load of T-69 tanks and assorted artillery pieces taken off a Chinese freighter. The Pasadaran would act a lot more aggressively, as was typical, they based their fast boats on the islands of Lesser and Greater Tunb and Abu Musa and would race out and spray the superstructure of supertankers with rockets and bullets, causing casualties among the crew and damaging them enough that they had to be prepared. They also begun preparations for mining operations. Conclusions. The early stages of the tanker war didn’t really have a huge effect on the economies of the two nations, Iraq because it used the gulf very little to export, and Iran because it had huge quantities of slack capacity. However by the end of 1986 Iraq was capable of seriously hurting Iranian ability to export oil, it was able to launch sophisticated long range attacks on infrastructure. Unable to attack Iraqi exports directly Iran launched attacks on the gulf monarchies supporting Iraq and did do significant damage, but not enough to either financially impact them or to intimidate them into backing down. The triple blows of Saudi meddling, Iraqi attacks and Iranian discounts meant that Iranian oil revenue completely collapsed, they had no allies to fall back on however. The tanker war is a fairly useful barometer for the state of the war, we really see the Iraqi armed forces coming to maturity at this stage via the increasing competence of their air force, this was generally reflected throughout the armed forces, as Saddam got more desperate he allowed more professionalism and less toadies in the command structure. Tanked strike missions are generally quite hard in terms of training and equipment and so being able to repeatedly and consistently successfully execute them is the mark of a well-developed air force. Simultaneously we see the Iranians running out of resources and being forced to improvise to stay in the fight, they manage this very well generally and a lot of the fight is fairly even despite the increasing Iraqi advantages. Next time we will cover the Stark incident and US involvement, it will step aside pretty far from the battle lines as they stand but I think it better to finish off the tanker war now that we have begun it.
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May 17, 2017 18:10
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Womp womp https://twitter.com/LaurenBaleWWLTV/status/864937237598916609
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May 17, 2017 21:41
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Polyakov posted:USS Stark Incident Wait, so Iraqi strikes a US destroyer with an anti-ship missile, killing 37 sailors and wounding 21 more. Everyone and their dog knows that Iraq was responsible. An Iranian helicopter assists in rescuing Stark. Then the US decided to blame Iran?  lol good
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May 17, 2017 22:48
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Wait, so Iraqi strikes a US destroyer with an anti-ship missile, killing 37 sailors and wounding 21 more. Everyone and their dog knows that Iraq was responsible. An Iranian helicopter assists in rescuing Stark. Then the US decided to blame Iran? Kind of, essentially Reagan really downplayed Iraqi involvement and the US accepted Saddam paying reparations to the families without much of a fuss, Reagan would accuse Iran of being the real villian because of their spreading of the war into the Gulf, which was not an alltogether accurate reporting of the facts, but the political atmosphere in the US was not really rigged in Irans favour at that time. More what they did was they refused to blame Iraq and the incident meant that plans to deploy significant fleet units into the Gulf were accelerated which would inevitably lead to a conflict with Iran. What i said about it being the trigger probably is a bit strong in retrospect, but it caused a major acceleration in existing plans and whipped up a good bit of war fervour to sway the doubters but American deployment was going to happen at that stage even without the Stark incident. The Iranians didnt help themselves by publically gloating and at one point Rafsanjani tried to claim responsibility, but that was sort of inevitable with the fervour of the Revolutionary Guard.
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May 17, 2017 23:35
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PittTheElder posted:Wait, so Iraqi strikes a US destroyer with an anti-ship missile, killing 37 sailors and wounding 21 more. Everyone and their dog knows that Iraq was responsible. An Iranian helicopter assists in rescuing Stark. Then the US decided to blame Iran? It's only 7 or so years after the Iranian Embassy incident.
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May 17, 2017 23:41
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PittTheElder posted:Wait, so Iraqi strikes a US destroyer with an anti-ship missile, killing 37 sailors and wounding 21 more. Everyone and their dog knows that Iraq was responsible. An Iranian helicopter assists in rescuing Stark. Then the US decided to blame Iran? Yeah, that always was one of the more bizarre things I remember when I read about the war. That's Reagan for you, I guess. This was while Iran-Contra was blowing up, so maybe he also figured he needed to blow up something else.
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May 18, 2017 03:35
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Excellent. As far as I'm concerned they should all come down with the exception of literal battlefield monuments and, because I'm feeling generous, one monument to Robert E. Lee in Virginia.
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May 18, 2017 04:13
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Excellent. crossposting something i learned in the political forwards thread today in response to me making a joke about george washington setting his slaves free after he died Mondian posted:Only his own, Martha's remained enslaved until some of their descendants were eventually freed by Robert E. Lee himself I agree that that earns him a monument, but he better make it count because he's not getting any more
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May 18, 2017 04:19
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It's more that I think Robert E. Lee, as one of America's most famous and successful generals, ought to have some sort of monument even if he was a slave-holding Confederate son of a bitch.
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May 18, 2017 04:30
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:famous and successful generals...son of a bitch. although you said some of your admirals were cool ed: the mansfeld i study was a loving douchebag. at least ernst von mansfeld (the other mansfeld) had an entertaining life HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 04:47 on May 18, 2017 |
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May 18, 2017 04:42
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