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Madman Theory is a terrible idea and it's only through the grace of God that the Soviet Union didn't lose their poo poo and start WW3 when Ronald Reagan was president because the head of the KGB was convinced Reagan intended to perform a preemptive strike based on his rhetoric. Also, some of Nixon and Kissinger's ideas during Vietnam were genuinely terrible and I think at one point the SoD had to tell the two of them "no, we can't nuke Hanoi or the Ho Chi Minh Trail", but I might be half-recalling that. edit: I mean, Nixon was a bit unhinged, but he understood that actions have consequences at least. He wasn't completely rational though. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Nov 15, 2017 |
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Nov 15, 2017 00:15
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during the waning days of his presidency, didnt the secretary of defense take nuclear control away from him? I seem to recall everybody being nervous about Nixons habit of being drunk at 4am talking to paintings.
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Nov 15, 2017 00:23
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Siivola posted:It's getting late so I'm not gonna dig the specific video, but Matt Easton did one on this topic. I think his core point was that they were issued blunt and only sharpened before action, so people started telling stories. the sword ma guy would know, genrow?
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Nov 15, 2017 00:35
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Ithle01 posted:Also, some of Nixon and Kissinger's ideas during Vietnam were genuinely terrible
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Nov 15, 2017 00:37
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bennyfactor posted:This is from a few pages back, but could somebody provide more information on these retractable biplanes? Google turns up nothing but biplanes with retracting landing gear and the only IS-series of anything Soviet I can find are tanks. The struggle to increase the maximum speed of a fighter by adopting the monoplane configuration, using more powerful engines and increasing the wing loading led to an aggravation of the take-off and landing characteristics in spite of the use of high-lift devices. The new fighters required increasingly longer runways, causing difficulties with the basing of Fighter Air Regiments in front line areas. The problem of combining high speed with good take-off and landing performance was solved in an original way by designer Vasily Nikitin and pilot Vladimir Shevchenko, who suggested using a retractable win configuration. At take-off and landing the fighter was a biplane with low wing loading, but once it was airborne, with its lower wing retracted, it became a high speed monoplane. The team intensively set to work designing the prototype, the IS-1, planning to power the aircraft with the 900hp Shvetsov M-63. It was completed and proceeded to flight testing in 1940. The IS-1 was built of metal, the tail structure being fabric covered. With its lower wing extended the aircraft was a sesquiplane with a Polikarpov Chaika-type wing. Each lower semi-wing consisted of two hinged parts, and in flight the inner wing sections retracted into fuselage wells by means of rigid rods, while the outer wing sections retracted into wells in the upper wing. The landing gear was conventional, with a tailwheel. The main undercarriage retracted into the inboard section of the lower semi-wing, the front part of the wheel being housed in the fuselage. Once the wheels were retracted the undercarriage wells were closed by doors, retraction of the wings and undercarriage being a simultaneous operation. During take-off and landing, when wing loading needed to be as low as possible, the IS-1 looked like a conventional biplane with a fixed undercarriage, but in all other phases of flight it was a high wing monoplane. The IS-1 was one of the lightest fighters, having a take-off weight of only 2,300kg with an empty weight of 1,400kg. It had an open cockpit, and to improve control the ruder and elevator were fitted with trim tabs. Under test the IS-1 showed a maximum speed of 453 km/h, a service ceiling of 8300m and a range of 600km. Its time to 5000m was 8.2 minutes. The lower wing and undercarriage extension/retraction system operated faultlessly during testing. In 1941, using experience gained with the IS-1, the design team built a second version of folding-wing fighter, the IS-2 powered by a Tumanksii M-88 air-cooled radial. The aerodynamics were improved by giving the engine cowling a more streamlined shape and fitting a cowl shutter to regulate the flow of cooling. Instead of several holes arranged around the cowling perimeter, two exhaust pipes were fitted on the engine. In addition, the tailwheel was made retractable. Even with improved aerodynamics and powered by the 1000hp engine the aircraft could not match the LaGG-3, MiG-3, and Yak-1 in speed. Further development of the IS-type fighters was cancelled owing to the outbreak of the war, although the designers had already embarked upon the preliminary designs for the IS-3 and IS-4 prototypes. -- All information taken from Soviet Combat Aircraft of the Second World War by Yefim Gordon and Dmitri Khazanov
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Nov 15, 2017 01:01
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HEY GUNS posted:the sword ma guy would know, genrow? Yeah, most 19th century cavalry sabres were issued blunt and only got sharpened before actual deployment to a war zone (or to India/Africa), partly because it would just be unnecessary grinding on the blade to be sharpened if you were just loving about on parade back in London but also because many (most/almost all?) would have metal scabbards that would blunt the poo poo out of the blade as you rode around. But it's a myth that soldiers didn't sharpen their swords or didn't need to. If civil war Americans were loving around with unsharpened sabres, I would guess that it has more to do with them being really inexperienced with blades and not being instructed by anyone who actually knows something about swords. British cavalry units in India would sometimes just have the local village blacksmith guy sharpen all of their swords before/after a fight, especially during poo poo like the Mutiny. That has more to do with the peculiarities of 19th century gear and military life, though. I wouldn't extrapolate that to any other eras where swords were more common, especially not medieval soldiers/Heygal's rowdy boys. Those guys were more dependent on swords in general combat, plus they were living in societies where you'd just be wearing a sword as a daily thing and you might end up using it for general self defense and/or thuggery purposes. Look at Chaucer, the sword/buckler combo was like Ye Olde Shotgun above the fireplace back in 14th century England. Those guys definitely knew the value of a sharp blade vs a dull one.
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Nov 15, 2017 01:10
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feedmegin posted:Also iirc their swords were incredibly lovely to start with so why not tbh?
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Nov 15, 2017 01:12
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Grenrow posted:Heygal's rowdy boys.
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Nov 15, 2017 01:13
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HEY GUNS posted:nixon wanted to nuke the dykes, kissinger talked him out of it, which means that nixon is an official worse person than philip II Jesus, I knew he was a homophobe but not at that point.
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Nov 15, 2017 01:20
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HEY GUNS posted:and at that time the inside of a scabbard was wood/wood lined with rabbit fur/jacked leather/recycled medieval parchment (in at least one case) Yeah, some 19th century Brits said that the metal scabbards were lovely and went for wood-lined leather like in the good ol' days. I've never seen any figures for how popular those were, but they were called "campaign" or "field" scabbards so there at least seems to be a general acknowledgement that they were better for combat service. Although one downside to those that your dudes probably did not have is that apparently the wood could swell up and cause problems in a particularly humid environment.
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Nov 15, 2017 01:24
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Matt Easton makes the point that there’s major sampling bias in the selection of swords at survive the 19th century and earlier periods. Swords that survived to today are often those that were never issued to anyone and spend their whole existence sitting in an armory, because swords that were used got rusty or damaged and were just thrown away or melted down. So when you pull out a big selection of civil war swords and none of them have ever been sharpened, it doesn’t mean people didn’t sharpen their swords, because those swords were likely never even used in the first place or even issued at all. This is also not to say people did sharpen their swords, just that surviving examples are not necessarily representative of what existed in the past.
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Nov 15, 2017 01:26
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Delivery McGee posted:Don't play with swords indoors. Good advice, but probably best not to play with swords all, they'll fuckin' cut you wide open. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_RpbaUU7NI
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Nov 15, 2017 01:32
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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I'm not sure how much military importance this has (in fact, I may be sure it has no military importance), but this thread's talking all about swords and sharpness, and this video just came out today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAkEd8r7Nnw
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Nov 15, 2017 01:54
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Russian reenactment of the Nuremberg trials.
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Nov 15, 2017 02:07
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Nov 15, 2017 02:12
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Ensign Expendable posted:Russian reenactment of the Nuremberg trials. Where are your seventeen years? At the Nürnberg Trial. Where are your seventeen sorrows? At the Nürnberg Trial. Where is your black pistol? At the Nürnberg Trial. Where are you no longer? At the Nürnberg Trial. More interesting option: doing a hypothetical version of the trial where the Soviet leadership are tried and sentenced according to the same criteria the NS leadership were.
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Nov 15, 2017 03:06
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Ithle01 posted:Madman Theory is a terrible idea and it's only through the grace of God that the Soviet Union didn't lose their poo poo and start WW3 when Ronald Reagan was president because the head of the KGB was convinced Reagan intended to perform a preemptive strike based on his rhetoric. Also, some of Nixon and Kissinger's ideas during Vietnam were genuinely terrible and I think at one point the SoD had to tell the two of them "no, we can't nuke Hanoi or the Ho Chi Minh Trail", but I might be half-recalling that. You drunkenly order a nuclear strike on North Korea one time* and no one ever lets you live it down  *pretty sure it wasnt the only time zoux posted:At the other end of the spectrum Finally, the blade of my forefathers shall taste blood again. Because where others studied the pen, I studied the blade.
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Nov 15, 2017 03:09
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I wasn't even counting the things that he did while drunk and was just going with his sober-minded plans to use nuclear weapons, but yeah I guess I should count the drunk ones too. Although it does distract from my original point which was that Mad Man theory isn't even a good idea when the person in question isn't crazy. Or drunk. Or senile.
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Nov 15, 2017 04:07
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So a friend was saying he started watching the new Vietnam documentary, but he actually had to stop because the "rich people send poors to fight and die" was making him angry. (He's an ex-soldier.) Is it true that later to fill the numbers, MacNamara started some sort of "take poor black kids, train 'em 50% less, then shove them in the front line?"
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Nov 15, 2017 04:09
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Nebakenezzer posted:So a friend was saying he started watching the new Vietnam documentary, but he actually had to stop because the "rich people send poors to fight and die" was making him angry. (He's an ex-soldier.) Is it true that later to fill the numbers, MacNamara started some sort of "take poor black kids, train 'em 50% less, then shove them in the front line?" Project 100,000 was a hell of a thing that really speaks for itself and everyone ought to take a good look at. It wasn't explicitly racial, but the people it kept from getting drafted trended white as hell.
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Nov 15, 2017 04:21
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I always liked the story about how a general in the ACW wanted dragoons, but he didn't have enough horses so they used mules instead. And they didn't have cavalry sabres so they used hatchets.
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Nov 15, 2017 04:31
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Nebakenezzer posted:So a friend was saying he started watching the new Vietnam documentary, but he actually had to stop because the "rich people send poors to fight and die" was making him angry. (He's an ex-soldier.) Is it true that later to fill the numbers, MacNamara started some sort of "take poor black kids, train 'em 50% less, then shove them in the front line?" Warning: this is a very sad book. quote:In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara were desperate to find additional troops for the Vietnam War, but they feared that they would alienate middle-class voters if they drafted college boys or sent Reservists and National Guardsmen to Vietnam. So, on October 1, 1966, McNamara lowered mental standards and inducted thousands of low-IQ men.
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Nov 15, 2017 04:43
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Ice Fist posted:How does it work currently? Trump wakes up every morning, tries that, and then turns fox and friends on for his daily briefing
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Nov 15, 2017 05:57
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Kopijeger posted:More interesting option: doing a hypothetical version of the trial where the Soviet leadership are tried and sentenced according to the same criteria the NS leadership were.  What a hot take
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Nov 15, 2017 10:05
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You should probably hang Churchill, LeMay and Harris while you're at it as well, if we're doing this
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Nov 15, 2017 10:55
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MikeCrotch posted:You should probably hang Churchill, LeMay and Harris while you're at it as well, if we're doing this We probably should have anyway. MacArthur too, just to be safe.
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Nov 15, 2017 11:05
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The project 100,000 men were supposed, in theory, to get more training.
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Nov 15, 2017 11:21
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Ensign Expendable posted:Russian reenactment of the Nuremberg trials. I kinda want to see video of Goering demoralizing Jackson to the point where he never really recovered his nerve.
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Nov 15, 2017 11:56
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MikeCrotch posted:You should probably hang Churchill, LeMay and Harris while you're at it as well, if we're doing this Good idea. After all, hanging or imprisoning the leadership of a defeated nation for waging wars of aggression, committing war crimes and crimes against humanity and conspiring to commit such acts is flagrantly hypocritical if you let your own people off for doing the same. The point was, it could be an interesting exercise to put the leadership of the victorious nations on trial and judge according to the same criteria the Axis leaders were judged.
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Nov 15, 2017 12:05
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"for doing the same"
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Nov 15, 2017 12:12
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Fangz posted:"for doing the same" I'm awaiting the millions-of-refugees-in-dresden argument
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Nov 15, 2017 12:14
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The firebombings of dresden and tokyo and god knows where else were hosed up, and you can't really deny that. But the nazis were a new and hosed up kind of evil and it's good that the Allies stopped them. I'm not sure what my point is aside from awful wars bring awful poo poo in their wake. Also the Holocaust was one of the worst things to happen in human history, which is basically a long record of awful poo poo we do to each other.
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Nov 15, 2017 12:23
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I'm pretty sure Kopijeger meant "when they did the same kind of poo poo that some of the Nazis were being prosecuted for at the tribunal" rather than "since there was no difference between them and the Nazis", in which case, yeah, it's an interesting thought experiment.
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Nov 15, 2017 12:23
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Fangz posted:"for doing the same" For example, remenber that the war in Europe officially started with the invasion of Poland in 1939. The Soviets waged a war of aggression by invading the country from the east shortly afterward, and attacking Finland later that year. They also forcibly annexed the Baltic states and Bessarabia. In short, if waging a war of agression is in itself a crime, then at the very least the Soviet leadership should be on trial as well.
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Nov 15, 2017 12:28
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I think a big difference is the Nazis started the war. All the atrocities they did were premeditated and done without any provocation or as a response to aggression. The Allied bombing campaign was all part of the war that was in response to the Germans.
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Nov 15, 2017 12:30
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my dad posted:I'm pretty sure Kopijeger meant "when they did the same kind of poo poo that some of the Nazis were being prosecuted for at the tribunal" rather than "since there was no difference between them and the Nazis", in which case, yeah, it's an interesting thought experiment. That's it. Never claimed that the sides were completely morally equivalent, only that it is flagrantly hypocritical to (as is the case with the Soviets in particular) condemn someone as a criminal for waging a war of aggression your own side actively participated in.
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Nov 15, 2017 12:36
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FAUXTON posted:I'm awaiting the millions-of-refugees-in-dresden argument Let me tell you about Dwight "Ike" "Adolf Hitler" D Eisenhower's german death camps.
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Nov 15, 2017 12:37
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I mean technically the US invaded Italy and France
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Nov 15, 2017 12:45
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Kopijeger posted:That's it. Never claimed that the sides were completely morally equivalent, only that it is flagrantly hypocritical to (as is the case with the Soviets in particular) condemn someone as a criminal for waging a war of aggression your own side actively participated in. The main thing to understand was that it was a choice between prosecuting some criminals or none at all. It's true, not everyone who committed crimes against every count was prosecuted, but some were, and that's pretty unique. Otto Kranzbuhler, Doenitz's lawyer, basically said, while he disagreed with the way the trial went, the alternative was just to arbitrarily execute or imprison them, and thusly it was certainly a better alternative to doing nothing or summarily executing the perpetrators. Hypocrisy is often trotted out as the worst thing ever, but is it worse than not even having rules?
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Nov 15, 2017 12:46
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SimonCat posted:I think a big difference is the Nazis started the war. All the atrocities they did were premeditated and done without any provocation or as a response to aggression. The Allied bombing campaign was all part of the war that was in response to the Germans. It's the Max Hastings argument and I don't think it has an answer: 'Allied bombing of cities was horrific and in the end analysis had little impact on the course of the war, however it was only conducted in order to win the war and ended when the war did. The people involved acted in good faith that they were pushing along a path to peace. The Holocaust was an end in itself and there was no opportunity for the Jews or any other victims to 'surrender' and save themselves.' You have to go a really long way to find an act that wouldn't be justified if it brought the end of the Nazi regime a day closer.
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Nov 15, 2017 13:05
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