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HEY GUNS posted:nah, the only thing that can fight a dude on a horse is another dude on a horse, it's one book's explanation for why muskets never really took off in china What about a dude on a horse... With a gun?
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Oct 31, 2017 12:26
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:It does in that it takes years to train a slinger and it takes like eight weeks to train a guy to shoot a gun. On the other hand your slinger has probably several times the rate of fire. And can shoot over people.
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Oct 31, 2017 12:27
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OwlFancier posted:On the other hand your slinger has probably several times the rate of fire. And can shoot over people. And you have quite a lot of people who already learned how to sling for civilian reasons (hunting), it's not like you have to send them all off to Slinging Boot Camp.
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Oct 31, 2017 12:33
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13th KRRC War Diary, 31st Oct 1917 posted:Training commenced and specialist classes started I've not managed to find out what "evacuated" means, as yet - this happened to 43 "other ranks". Wounded is its own category - 1 officer and 91 other ranks. Gassed is another category again. And somebody was extremely naughty and got sent to prison. Also interesting to note is that 12 second lieutenants arrived during the month, four companies with four second lieutenants each means there is only around 16 of them total in the battalion (except where they are running a company instead of the usual captain)...    Fortunately for me, November's diary is typed, with a decent ribbon.
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Oct 31, 2017 12:42
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OwlFancier posted:On the other hand your slinger has probably several times the rate of fire. And can shoot over people. if this stuff actually mattered then the napoleonic wars would have been fought by slingers
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Oct 31, 2017 12:56
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Today was the 100th anniversary of the last Australian light cavalry charge, during the battle of beersheba. https://www.awm.gov.au/visit/events/beersheba-anniversary https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/the-charge-of-the-4th-light-horse-brigade-at-beersheba
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Oct 31, 2017 12:56
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Polyakov posted:What about a dude on a horse... With a gun? what about a dude, on a horse, with like, six guns
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Oct 31, 2017 12:58
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Geisladisk posted:Reading How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. There was a lot of discussion in OKH prior to Citadel that trying to pinch off the salient was the most obvious move possible and the Soviets could predict the attack by reading a map. Von Manstein among others felt that trying to cut across the salient and take a slice out of it was a much better plan than trying to encircle the whole thing, but they were overruled. xthetenth posted:Hey ensign, How did the soviets start their diesel engines, on tanks and trucks? If you're talking WWII era, tanks had both electrical starters and compressed air starters (in the event it was too cold to use the batteries).
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Oct 31, 2017 13:04
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HEY GUNS posted:nah, the only thing that can fight a dude on a horse is another dude on a horse, it's one book's explanation for why muskets never really took off in china Wait, you mean to tell me that the kick they taught me in Tae Kwon Do to kick a guy off a horse wouldn't actually work???
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Oct 31, 2017 13:21
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HEY GUNS posted:nah, the only thing that can fight a dude on a horse is another dude on a horse, it's one book's explanation for why muskets never really took off in china It's more that the Qing were cheap bastards, imo.
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Oct 31, 2017 13:25
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P-Mack posted:It's more that the Qing were cheap bastards, imo. On the other hand, it is weird that they didn't invent the musket. I haven't personally seen an explanation as to why that is better than "just one of those things" and a shrug. Same as with "why didn't Europeans figure out the mouldboard plow?" or "how come no one hit on the Minie ball before 1847?" feedmegin posted:And you have quite a lot of people who already learned how to sling for civilian reasons (hunting), it's not like you have to send them all off to Slinging Boot Camp. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 13:42
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:if this stuff actually mattered then the napoleonic wars would have been fought by slingers Now I am imagining the sling replacing the over hyped Austrian air gun and the weird 'INSTANT EXECUTION' stuff of that old milhist urban legend.
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Oct 31, 2017 13:45
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Cyrano4747 posted:Pretty much journal articles. THat poo poo shifts over decades, so if it's a subject you're really interested in you won't have much trouble staying abreast. HEY GUNS posted:the word you're looking for is historiography, google "recent historiography of [x]" Thanks. I was primarily curious about stuff like the magnitude / scope of the changes, what sort of things it is that get overturned, and the timeframe the process takes place over, not any single topic, but I'll google something up. Will report back if I find something neat. e: oh yeah "Historiografie" is the key, now I'm googling paydirt. aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 14:24
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Speaking of muskets and far east, did the mass use of muskets by the Japanese in their first invasion of Korea give them any advantage at all? I know well enough about how their navy was completely trounced, but you'd think that a country that had more guns than most of Western Europe would have an easier time.
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Oct 31, 2017 14:39
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The thing about Chinese muskets is they never really got standardized mass production. Up until the 19th century they run the military in a shoestring, so they have half a century worth of guns in service alongside each other at any given time. Then poo poo hits the fan with the Taiping and they buy anything they can get their hands on to equip troops as quickly as possible. They finally set up a state arsenal in imitation of Western manufacturing in the Tongzhi period but for whatever reason it's a complete shitshow and the local product ended up both shittier than British imports and way more expensive.
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Oct 31, 2017 14:46
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Guys, muskets are infinitely superior to nearly any other type of distance weapon. There is a reason drat near everyone abandoned whatever else they were using in favor of them as soon as they could, outside of rare instances like horse archers or whatever that prevented it. if you give the Romans matchlocks, they will have pike and shot in about 5 years since pikes are literally all over the place and they just need to figure out how to keep the musketeers safe from cavalry. We've mentioned this before in the Rome thread, but my opinion is gunpowder and its production are one of the only real things you could just magically drop into history and see it take off. Bronze cannons and artillery were used right the way through to the American Civil War, and if you showed a general you can just make a bunch of bronze into a tube and shoot dudes way further away than arrows and catapults reach, they are on that in an instant.
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Oct 31, 2017 14:56
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I still maintain that high end warbows were more effective weapons on a man for man basis than were firearms, at least until the minie ball came around.
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Oct 31, 2017 15:04
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Comrade Gorbash posted:On the other hand, it is weird that they didn't invent the musket. I haven't personally seen an explanation as to why that is better than "just one of those things" and a shrug. Same as with "why didn't Europeans figure out the mouldboard plow?" or "how come no one hit on the Minie ball before 1847?" I've read a little as to why the Chinese seem to stop innovating after a certain point. One theory is that the Chinese desire for social order above all other things stepped on the development of the merchant class, as people getting lots of money not explicitly part of the power structure was seen as a threat. Similarly, down at the individual level, innovation was discouraged because the social order wouldn't allow people to change their status, and was hostile to anything that changed the way things were. I've heard similar theories about why the large cultural lead the Arabs had in medieval times seems to peter out. Religious orthodoxy combined with the Ottoman empire meant hostility to intellectuals.
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Oct 31, 2017 15:06
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Nebakenezzer posted:I've read a little as to why the Chinese seem to stop innovating after a certain point. One theory is that the Chinese desire for social order above all other things stepped on the development of the merchant class, as people getting lots of money not explicitly part of the power structure was seen as a threat. Similarly, down at the individual level, innovation was discouraged because the social order wouldn't allow people to change their status, and was hostile to anything that changed the way things were. Eh, I think it's simpler than that and you don't really need to invoke anything unique about Chinese culture that tamps down on innovation (which just has a very orientalist ring to it). My take is that it probably just wasn't necessary. Qin China was a dominant regional power in a way that even Rome never managed. There were simply no local threats that couldn't be handled with the army that they had on hand, and it remained this way well into the gunpowder era. Even Europeans didn't massively poo poo in their hats until the Opium Wars. A lot of military innovation (hell, innovation in general) takes place because there is some pressure or stress that gets people looking for novel solutions to problems.
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Oct 31, 2017 15:11
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Plutonis posted:Speaking of muskets and far east, did the mass use of muskets by the Japanese in their first invasion of Korea give them any advantage at all? I know well enough about how their navy was completely trounced, but you'd think that a country that had more guns than most of Western Europe would have an easier time. I've read it gave the Japanese a huge advantage - the Koreans were still entirely using bows and such, where the Japanese had proper muskets. I've only read about it in one of those "A brief history of the Samurai" books, but the antics of Japan invading Korea would amuse the readers of the thread.
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Oct 31, 2017 15:17
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bewbies posted:I still maintain that high end warbows were more effective weapons on a man for man basis than were firearms, at least until the minie ball came around. Yes, but how many men?
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Oct 31, 2017 15:24
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Yea, I think it's less "China is special because oriental culture " and more "large hegemonic states with no enemies didn't need to bother with technological innovation". See how quickly the Japanese and Maori came up with the same innovations as Europeans did when they had to.
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Oct 31, 2017 15:37
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Cyrano4747 posted:Eh, I think it's simpler than that and you don't really need to invoke anything unique about Chinese culture that tamps down on innovation (which just has a very orientalist ring to it). Yep. They didn't need a lot of firepower since the opposition was usually localized rebellious peasants with pointy sticks and you could always just send more men if you really needed to. This ceases to work once the empire is completely broke and the area in rebellion is "all of it".
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Oct 31, 2017 15:38
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P-Mack posted:Yep. They didn't need a lot of firepower since the opposition was usually localized rebellious peasants with pointy sticks and you could always just send more men if you really needed to. Hell, at least the Ming had the northern steppe nations as a big foreign army threat looming over their head. The Qing, meanwhile, didn't even had to bother with that.
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Oct 31, 2017 15:43
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How's the Great War youtube series? I watched a few episodes yesterday and I enjoyed it but I want to make sure I'm not learning bad history.
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Oct 31, 2017 15:49
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Don Gato posted:The real question is, if we bring back black powder guns to the early Roman Empire, how long before they start using something like pike and shot tactics? I'd say between a minute and however long it takes for a general to notice that these "gun" things are way easier to train with compared to swords. I'd say at least a hundred years. The Romans were absolutely notorious for how much they disdained everything that was new, so unless you could somehow claim gunpowder was invented by Archimedes or someone equally ancient, they'd just scoff and tut-tut for about a century. But 50 bucks says they'd then immediately jump to small-unit loose formation skirmisher tactics in the Napoleonic light infantry model.
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Oct 31, 2017 15:55
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zoux posted:How's the Great War youtube series? I watched a few episodes yesterday and I enjoyed it but I want to make sure I'm not learning bad history. Its just fine for the level of detail they are going for. They did list their major sources at some point but i cant remember where it was, I do remember it had John Keegan, Peter Hart and Max Hastings in, and they are all fairly reliable.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:04
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Tevery Best posted:I'd say at least a hundred years. The Romans were absolutely notorious for how much they disdained everything that was new, so unless you could somehow claim gunpowder was invented by Archimedes or someone equally ancient, they'd just scoff and tut-tut for about a century. Yeah, Rome would probably poo poo all over these newfangled weapons, right up until someone used gunpowder against them, and then it would become very much their thing.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:06
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Polyakov posted:Its just fine for the level of detail they are going for. They did list their major sources at some point but i cant remember where it was, I do remember it had John Keegan, Peter Hart and Max Hastings in, and they are all fairly reliable. Good, because it's an extremely ambitious project and impressive in it's own right. These Austro-Hungarians, folks, they're not very good.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:14
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Tevery Best posted:I'd say at least a hundred years. The Romans were absolutely notorious for how much they disdained everything that was new, so unless you could somehow claim gunpowder was invented by Archimedes or someone equally ancient, they'd just scoff and tut-tut for about a century. That's not how the Roman military worked at all. They adopted the Gladius from the Spanish. Mail armor from the Gauls, Hoplite tactics from the Greeks, Cataphracts from the Persians, and they changed from Hoplite warfare to the maniple system after fighting the Samnites they might come up with some weird distinction where only slaves or plebians or whatever use the muskets, but those are getting used immediately.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:29
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MikeCrotch posted:There was a lot of discussion in OKH prior to Citadel that trying to pinch off the salient was the most obvious move possible and the Soviets could predict the attack by reading a map. Von Manstein among others felt that trying to cut across the salient and take a slice out of it was a much better plan than trying to encircle the whole thing, but they were overruled. While reading through the chapters on Kursk, I'm just completely baffled by how the Germans could think this was a good idea. I'm no general, and this might be a 20/20 thing, but the Soviets knew months in advance that the Germans were coming, and the Germans knew it. The Soviets had literally months to stack a tiny area with as much manpower, fortifications, and materiel as humanely possible, and when they couldn't fit any more poo poo, they started stacking the rear areas with a reserve force counting literally millions. The Soviet buildup in the area was completely absurd - The book mentions that the average Soviet infantry company in the region had 9 attached AT guns. That is one AT gun for every squad of infantry. And to top it off, there were no pressing strategic objectives that mandated attacking into that nightmare. The book mentions that while the Germans knew that the Soviet buildup was immense, they didn't have a clear idea of just how huge it was. Was it just a case of everyone giving a collective shrug, and going, "ah hell, how bad can it be"? Committing the entirety of your mobile forces to a largely blind attack into a numerically and materially superior enemy, who you know has had months to prepare, seems completely inexplicable. Then again, it ain't like the Germans had very many good options at that point.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:36
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P-Mack posted:Yep. They didn't need a lot of firepower since the opposition was usually localized rebellious peasants with pointy sticks and you could always just send more men if you really needed to. So am I crazy or do I remember various dynasties being overthrown by outside invaders, who set themselves up as the new jack emperors I mean, I guess as far as society is concerned, getting rid of the people in the eye of the pyramid but keeping everything else the same isn't much of a challenge
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Oct 31, 2017 16:37
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Comrade Gorbash posted:On the other hand, it is weird that they didn't invent the musket. I haven't personally seen an explanation as to why that is better than "just one of those things" and a shrug. https://www.amazon.com/Firearms-Global-History-Kenneth-Chase/dp/0521722403
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Oct 31, 2017 16:39
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Geisladisk posted:Then again, it ain't like the Germans had very many good options at that point. Pretty much - and if they'd decided to attack somewhere else, presumably the Russians would have spotted that too and built up there instead. I guess the best viable alternative would have been for the Germans to go on the defensive, but that rather requires Hitler to not be Hitler.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:39
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zoux posted:These Austro-Hungarians, folks, they're not very good. You don't need a popular YouTube channel to tell you that for sure.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:40
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Geisladisk posted:While reading through the chapters on Kursk, I'm just completely baffled by how the Germans could think this was a good idea. I'm no general, and this might be a 20/20 thing, but the Soviets knew months in advance that the Germans were coming, and the Germans knew it. The Soviets had literally months to stack a tiny area with as much manpower, fortifications, and materiel as humanely possible, and when they couldn't fit any more poo poo, they started stacking the rear areas with a reserve force counting literally millions. The Soviet buildup in the area was completely absurd - The book mentions that the average Soviet infantry company in the region had 9 attached AT guns. That is one AT gun for every squad of infantry. And to top it off, there were no pressing strategic objectives that mandated attacking into that nightmare. The book mentions that while the Germans knew that the Soviet buildup was immense, they didn't have a clear idea of just how huge it was. I believe either Guderian or Manstein suggested holding their forces back and waiting for the Soviets to make the first move, and then counterattacking. The counter arguement to that largely consisted of everyone staring at the map, noticing the giant salient and going "ITS RIGHT THERE." Seriously though, the Germans really hadn't had one of their blitzes / mechanized attacks defeated before, and thought that given some new weapons, and sufficient concentration, they would ultimately win the day. They got far though. Its still rather impressive how far their panzer armies/corps got in the face of that much resistance.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:42
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Going on the defensive means losing your last chance to take initiative. If the Kursk salient wasn't cut off, it would be an amazing starting point for an offensive, and then the Germans were hosed anyway. There's no way to win at this point, no matter how black and gay a Hitler you get.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:43
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Nebakenezzer posted:I've read a little as to why the Chinese seem to stop innovating after a certain point. quote:I've heard similar theories about why the large cultural lead the Arabs had in medieval times seems to peter out. Religious orthodoxy combined with the Ottoman empire meant hostility to intellectuals.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:45
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Buddy of mine posted this, figured you might be able to help. My googling has turned up little. He's trying to identify the top left patch from WW2. Top right is the US XX Corps patch, bottom center is 3rd Army. Any ideas? 
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Oct 31, 2017 16:46
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HEY GUNS posted:honestly i would not call a culture with that many weird polearms "not innovative" Ottomen, surely.
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Oct 31, 2017 16:47
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