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Not sure if this is of interest, but I've had a chance to go through my great-uncle's wartime papers and he had some photos from his gun camera footage. He flew a Mosquito. His log notes an attack on a flack ship on December 3rd, which was “damaged and silenced”. They attacked five ships. “Nord Eulen” (A four hour operation.) 
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Jun 21, 2017 20:56
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Dreylad posted:Not sure if this is of interest, but I've had a chance to go through my great-uncle's wartime papers and he had some photos from his gun camera footage. He flew a Mosquito. It definitely is!
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Jun 21, 2017 21:02
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Jun 21, 2017 22:06
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Merkel sounds a little too British to me... And have you seen her steeple her fingers? Classic British Imperial supervillain gesture.
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Jun 21, 2017 22:11
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 now we know where porsche got his ideas from
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Jun 21, 2017 22:41
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Hogge Wild posted:
A British idea stolen and created by the Germans. The connections reveal themselves...
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Jun 21, 2017 23:29
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I know we're laughing, but assuming you could somehow actually get the thing onto tracks has anyone done the math on whether a pre-dreadnought could generate enough power to move itself on land?
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Jun 22, 2017 00:11
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That's a big if. Track links are more complicated than they appear, and making one that doesn't break ridiculously quickly is not trivial. Especially with such a massive vehicle. How do you change it when it slips off or breaks? You'd have to get some serious construction equipment in to help, and a tank that can't be repaired by its own crew isn't very useful.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:16
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I can't imagine how much fun its gearbox would be. At that point you might just be better off with turbo-electric no matter how much copper it takes – some of those ships already used it.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:28
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doesn't look that hard
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Jun 22, 2017 00:35
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Just try to steer clear of mud
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Jun 22, 2017 00:59
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Cingulate posted:I see the Napoleon question is a somewhat ... contentious issue? When I was studying abroad in France I asked one of my (French) teachers how Napoleon was viewed by the French today. As she was giving her view another teacher jumped in and they basically had this argument.
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Jun 22, 2017 01:00
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Do people still talk about the Dreyfuss Affair?
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Jun 22, 2017 01:27
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I found an interesting book in the library recently: it's a book of mostly color photographs taken during the Nazi attack on the USSR. The photos were taken not by the propaganda crews, but by two priests who were picture takers. (One of the two photographers decided war was coming in 1938, and spent a fair bit of money to put hands on as much color film as he could find, figuring (correctly) that color film was one thing that was going to vanish when the war started.) Can post scans if people are interested. Also it has some essays and even some translations of official documents. One of these documents is written German general, von Seydlitz, who wrote a very detailed memo (on 25 November 1942) in Stalingrad once the Soviets began their offensive. Even being stuck besieged, he figures out that the airlift was hopeless, and that the only chance the army had was to break out immediately, arguing against the order to stay put. It's interesting because the guy's attitude was stark: either everybody gets together to escape Stalingrad, or annihiliation, as he puts it. A question: do you think a breakout could have actually been effected by the 6th Army? Von Seydlitz assumes most of the material would have to be lost to save the men. I'm not an expert, but I'd think the Soviet pincers overwhelmingly strong, and the 6th army itself a starving shadow of itself even in November. With no fuel and no hay (von Seydlitz mentions that they were about out of fodder, which meant no more horses) the entire force was going to have to walk out of there. Other interesting points made by the book:
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Jun 22, 2017 01:40
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http://i.imgur.com/m9Qb4E5.gifv
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Jun 22, 2017 02:02
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Fangz posted:Do people still talk about the Dreyfuss Affair? If not we certainly should. That poo poo is crazy.
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Jun 22, 2017 02:33
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Napoleonic talk: I think people may not have noticed that the guy I was referencing is actually extremely credible and my view points have largely been influenced by him, J David Markham. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._David_Markham quote:J. David Markham is an internationally acclaimed historian and Napoleonic scholar. His major books include Napoleon’s Road to Glory: Triumphs, Defeats and Immortality (winner of the 2004 Napoleonic Society of America Literary Award); Imperial Glory: The Bulletins of Napoleon’s Grande Armée (winner of the International Napoleonic Society’s 2003 President’s Choice Award); and Napoleon and Dr. Verling on St. Helena. He has been featured on the History Channel International’s Global View program on Napoleon, the History Channel’s Conquerors program (Napoleon’s Greatest Victory; Caesar in Gaul) and Napoleon: The Man Who Would Conquer Europe, as well as in programs on the Learning and Discovery channels. He has served as historical consultant to History Channel and National Geographic Society programs. Markham has contributed to four important reference encyclopedias (Leadership; World History; American Revolution; French Revolution and Napoleon). He has presented numerous academic papers to conferences in the United States, the UK, France, Italy, Israel, Georgia, and Russia. He is President of the Napoleonic Alliance and Executive Vice-President and Editor-in-Chief of the International Napoleonic Society. David has organized International Napoleonic Congresses in Italy, Israel, the Republic of Georgia, and France. He was the first American scholar to present a paper at the Borodino Conference in Russia. His awards include the Legion of Merit from the International Napoleonic Society, the President’s Medal from the Napoleonic Alliance, and the Marengo Medal from the province of Alessandria, Italy. @Hunt11: I don't know why you feel the need to be abusive when confronted with perspectives that conflict with your own.
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Jun 22, 2017 03:46
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poo poo, he was featured on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel? well consider me convinced
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Jun 22, 2017 03:53
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Solaris 2.0 posted:For the Souths defeat you never get one explanation. Some will acknowledge the Southern regime, corrupt as it was, was doomed to fail as soon as the Americans pulled out while others will say the US "abandoned" the south. You have to remember most fought for the South because they were strongly anti-communist. I'm not much interested in moralistic hot-takes on any conflict, much less ones in which popular narratives are as politicized as Vietnam In many colonies the colonial administration substantially predated any sense of national spirit which one could betray. I do however always love hearing new historical narratives and from new perspectives. I'm interested in war as a social phenomena, a phenomena which often pulls back the heavy veil that otherwise often masks the true nature of power, identity, and society. I admit with my questions I was mostly just trying to bait you into sharing any interesting anecdotes or points you could remember from your research. Why was it that Vietnam developed a much larger Christian population than, say Cambodia or Laos? I imagine that if the war had ended earlier through any means, even victory by Ho Chi Minh following the French withdrawal, Vietnam would be more prosperous today. War takes a hell of a lot out of an economy.
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Jun 22, 2017 04:24
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Squalid posted:War takes a hell of a lot out of an economy. War with no coherent strategy other than "kill as many of the other guy as you can, but don't make us look bad doing it" tends to be even more destructive than normal.
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Jun 22, 2017 04:26
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Koramei posted:poo poo, he was featured on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel? well consider me convinced Yeah also laughing at how all of his awards are from the napoleonic society. Lemme see if I can dig up his CV
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Jun 22, 2017 04:34
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Squalid posted:I imagine that if the war had ended earlier through any means, even victory by Ho Chi Minh following the French withdrawal, Vietnam would be more prosperous today. War takes a hell of a lot out of an economy. It was a different kind of war, and over a much longer period, so maybe the comparison isn't really fitting- but since the question is directly comparing it to Korea, it's worth pointing out that the Korean War had a very comparable human toll. I think it's totally possible that more generous interactions with the US in the wake of it would have made a huge difference regardless of that, just like they did for South Korea. What were Vietnamese relations (economic and otherwise) with the west like after the war, anyway? I know they're on pretty good terms with the US today but that can't have been the case in the immediate aftermath, and then of course we all know what happened with China. Did they have trading relations with nations in Europe? Just after the Korean War for instance, South Korea sent a huge number of laborers to Germany in return for aid in helping to establish industry and so on, was there anything like that for Vietnam? Koramei fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jun 22, 2017 |
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Jun 22, 2017 04:41
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BattleMoose posted:@Hunt11: I don't know why you feel the need to be abusive when confronted with perspectives that conflict with your own. Telling you to shut up, while maybe not the best words to use in a historic discussion is hardly abusive, especially withe the forum we are on right now. Anyway my anger came from the fact you making outrageous statements that when called on you either ignored it or just repeated the same point. The fact that you have still not addressed how the actions of a man who could have caused a civil war just by coming back is supposed to be noble. Especially when you state some drivel about the need to get rid of kings with Napoleon who did all he could to set up his family of kings of his own whilst he himself got declared Emperor. Also considering what the History channel has turned into I would hardly view that as a point of pride.
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Jun 22, 2017 04:42
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Hunt11 posted:Telling you to shut up, while maybe not the best words to use in a historic discussion is hardly abusive, especially withe the forum we are on right now. Anyway my anger came from the fact you making outrageous statements that when called on you either ignored it or just repeated the same point. The fact that you have still not addressed how the actions of a man who could have caused a civil war just by coming back is supposed to be noble. Especially when you state some drivel about the need to get rid of kings with Napoleon who did all he could to set up his family of kings of his own whilst he himself got declared Emperor. Also considering what the History channel has turned into I would hardly view that as a point of pride. It might turn out that I may be mistaken as to the credibility of this particular individual but then so be it. I don't think the comments I made were outrageous (otherwise I wouldn't have made them). I didn't ignore the point you made, I addressed it. We might just have diametrically opposed view points on this issue. Fighting a civil war to overthrow a Monarch is acceptable in my view and usually necessary. And this was a monarch installed by foreign powers. Either way one of your largest complaints against this man is based on the potential of a civil war that didn't even happen. We don't even know if he even would have fought it. Instead he invited the forces sent to stop him, to shoot him. There was no indication at all that he was actually prepared to fight any of the forces sent to stop him. I really don't know what else to say or which parts of this explanation are in your own words "so blatantly disingenuous".
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Jun 22, 2017 05:10
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Ok I did dome light digging. Disclaimer this is midnight internet poo poo from an iPad. I might have very well missed something but I'm not too terribly worried First off I want to make it clear that the dude has published books, which is more than I can say. He's putting out popular histories that seem to be getting an audience so good on him. That said his books don't seem to make any impact in the academic sphere. He's just not getting reviewed, which is a bad sign. Not even something by a grad student on H-France. The one review I was able to find that wasn't Amazon or something similar was a military history journal. The reviewer was a retired colonel who ended the review with vive l'empereur! so I'm not sure how good his assessment of the scholarship is or how unbiased he is. Markham also isn't an academically trained historian. He has an MA and a MEd. now I will be the first one to stick up for people not needing a degree to write good history, but that training does come in handy when it comes to things like big interpretations where you are putting something in its political and historical context. You know, like figuring out if Napoleon was trying to pursue a policy of diplomacy and peace. Again, someone without academic training can do good history but it's less common. Most of those people also make enough of a splash to get reviewed and talked about. The places that he is getting a lot of press from are all unabashedly pro napoleon. That's fascinating in and of itself. I wasn't aware that there was a napoleonic equivalent to die hard monarchists. What is interesting is that I do see some traffic talking about some contributions he's made in publishing sources. Apparently he put together all of napoleons dispatches and got those published plus got napoleons doctors diary out there. That alone is an accomplishment and seems to be something that people are paying attention to. My take off half an hour of research and trying to read the currents of a field that isnt my own is that he's a very enthusiastic amateur who writes really good prose and makes very readable histories, but that his specific analysis might not be the most credible. He reminds me a lot of the kind of non-academic historians you get writing on the ACW, down to the beneficial side effect of getting collections of documents published.
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Jun 22, 2017 05:11
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BattleMoose posted:Fighting a civil war to overthrow a Monarch is acceptable in my view and usually necessary. And this was a monarch installed by foreign powers. And how do you feel about overthrowing monarchs in order to replace them with different monarchs who happen to be related to you?
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Jun 22, 2017 05:45
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Noted anti-monarchist Emperor of France and King of Italy Napoleon. Dude hated monarchs so much he made himself a double monarch and his brothers kings of Spain, Holland, and Westphalia respectively. Like I don't think it counts as anti-monarchist if you're overthrowing the monarch to make yourself the monarch.
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Jun 22, 2017 06:06
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Whoa my AP euro his teacher in high school taught Napoleon coming back and daring his troops to shoot him and then taking over again as cool as hell, like GOAT status. Fake news?
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Jun 22, 2017 06:11
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Dreylad posted:Not sure if this is of interest, but I've had a chance to go through my great-uncle's wartime papers and he had some photos from his gun camera footage. He flew a Mosquito. Uh yeah that's of pretty drat significant interest, holy poo poo. "Hey guys, not sure if anyone's interested, but I got some front row footage of my grandpap wrecking the balls off some Nazi boats in a mosquito" Definitely, please share. Do you have any writing from him on his sorties? Wondering about his impressions of the mosquito, whether he'd flown other craft in a similar role, etc.
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Jun 22, 2017 06:40
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I don't think anyone had something negative to say about the mosquito, ever
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Jun 22, 2017 07:12
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Napoleon wasn't anti-monarchist (the turbulent and irrational French Republic probably turned him against republicanism) but he embraced enlightenment ideals in most other ways. He abolished anti-semitic laws and enforced religious tolerance, for instance, and believed in meritocracy and equality before the law. During the 100 days he even seemed to evolving towards constitutional monarchism. He did send an army to Haiti to return to the old status quo, which meant a return to brutal slavery, and that is a pretty big black mark, but compared to basically every other ruler in Europe he was ahead of his time.
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Jun 22, 2017 07:26
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Mazz posted:I don't think anyone had something negative to say about the mosquito, ever Back in undergrad I had to read a material science book by J.E. Gordon, a materials guy who worked at the Royal Aircraft Establishment during the war and had a hand in designing the Mosquito. One of his anecdotes in the book involved having to deal with a furious airbase commander who hated his Mosquitos because for some reason his kept having structural problems. When Gordon investigated he discovered the commander insisted on having all his planes hosed down frequently. His wooden, partially glued together planes. The constant wetting/drying was causing the frame to weaken or something along those lines. It was an interesting book, but you could tell it was also an old as hell book because it referred to Kevlar and similar synthetic fibers as something along the lines of "curious materials that we one day hope to find a use for".
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Jun 22, 2017 07:36
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Ainsley McTree posted:Just try to steer clear of mud I think at the weight a warship brings to bear everything can be seen as mud. A warship on land and with wheels would destroy the landscape faster than a Bagger 293 excavator. And probably get stuck in the first river it tries to cross. Looking at the Bagger 293 as an example (that thing weighs 14200 tons), you could try this thing with destroyers or light cruisers at the most. And with tracks. And they would be slow. Battleships would be absolutely nuts, though. That just screams "bad idea" very loudly. This makes me think of another thing, though: How exactly are the tracks of a 14k ton monster excavator repaired? I'm guessing whatever the method is, it could be adapted to make a land destroyer type abomination work. zoux posted:Modern millennial British troops would be too busy LOOKING AT THEIR PHONES to see the waves of T-72s blazing through the Fulda Gap to conquer all of the continent. When I was in the Bundeswehr, we would sometimes joke the Soviet Union could have easily won every war. How? By attacking on weekends, when everyone was at home on our side. 
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Jun 22, 2017 07:58
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Mazz posted:I don't think anyone had something negative to say about the mosquito, ever I seem to remember some Nazi commander bitterly complaining that the British had the Mosquito (instead of him).
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Jun 22, 2017 08:08
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A more serious question: what is the viability of beaching an obsolete battleship you can't afford to man and maintain up next to a coastal fortified position, to basically drop a coastal battery next to someone? Or would it be too vulnerable to attack and capture?
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Jun 22, 2017 08:13
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Wasn't that the plan for the Yamato, in the end? It got sunk at sea before it could make it to any beach but I remember reading that somewhere. Anyways I don't think a beach battleship would be anywhere near as effective as actual land based fortifications actually built with that purpose in mind but I'm no expert.
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Jun 22, 2017 08:20
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The Lone Badger posted:I seem to remember some Nazi commander bitterly complaining that the British had the Mosquito (instead of him). Göering posted:In 1940 I could at least fly as far as Glasgow in most of my aircraft, but not now! It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops. After the war is over I'm going to buy a British radio set - then at least I'll own something that has always worked. It's apparently apocryphal though.
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Jun 22, 2017 08:56
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Ensign Expendable posted:That's a big if. Track links are more complicated than they appear, and making one that doesn't break ridiculously quickly is not trivial. Especially with such a massive vehicle. How do you change it when it slips off or breaks? You'd have to get some serious construction equipment in to help, and a tank that can't be repaired by its own crew isn't very useful. Oh I totally get the concept is absurd, I'm just idling wondering whether the ship generates enough power to actually move itself presuming you were able to find a way to handwave away all the other reasons it wouldn't work.
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Jun 22, 2017 09:07
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:Back in undergrad I had to read a material science book by J.E. Gordon, a materials guy who worked at the Royal Aircraft Establishment during the war and had a hand in designing the Mosquito. One of his anecdotes in the book involved having to deal with a furious airbase commander who hated his Mosquitos because for some reason his kept having structural problems. lol Mazz posted:I don't think anyone had something negative to say about the mosquito, ever What I've read from German fighter pilots' biographies, shooting down a Mosquito ranked higher than shooting down any other plane. Not only because they were fast as hell, but because they also lead the bombing sorties. The only negative thing I've heard about them, in addition to that Göring's rant, was that they couldn't be mass produced like metal planes, and the bottleneck in the production was the number of trained and experienced cabinetmakers and the like. Libluini posted:I think at the weight a warship brings to bear everything can be seen as mud. A warship on land and with wheels would destroy the landscape faster than a Bagger 293 excavator. And probably get stuck in the first river it tries to cross. Baggers are so cool! Lets post a pic:  And that weekend invasion joke is still being told, at least in Finland. I heard it the first time in Yes Minister.
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Jun 22, 2017 09:55
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Nebakenezzer posted:I found an interesting book in the library recently: it's a book of mostly color photographs taken during the Nazi attack on the USSR. The photos were taken not by the propaganda crews, but by two priests who were picture takers. (One of the two photographers decided war was coming in 1938, and spent a fair bit of money to put hands on as much color film as he could find, figuring (correctly) that color film was one thing that was going to vanish when the war started.) Can post scans if people are interested.  please do
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