feedmegin posted:Well, given the Austrians also fought the Danes in that war lumping them together as Germans seems sensible. Yeah, Prussia, Austria and the other German states together is certainly more or less all the Germans.
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Dec 5, 2017 21:18
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It should be noted that figuring out what the gently caress "Germany" meant was kind of a thing then. Should it be a "big Germany" encompassing all speakers or a "Little Germany" that didn't lump in all that Habsburg multi-ethnic weirdness. Hypothetically the Austro-German war was over how Schlesswig-Holstein was to be administered following the Danish war, but the real underlying cause was this question of whether the center of gravity for the German speaking world would be Berlin or Vienna. The Prussians won, so the small German solution was the one that historically happened. This is a big part of why so many people were pretty willing to go along with the Anschuss 75 years later, including a lot of Austirans. An Austria shorn of those Hungarian entanglements seemed like a natural candidate for an extension of the German nation building project started by Bismarck.
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Dec 5, 2017 21:25
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Cyrano4747 posted:Isn't that what Navy SEALs are for? As in exactly what their original job description was? Yes. There's overlap to be sure - sometimes SEALs would do the beach recon, sometimes it was Force Recon. I was just a sergeant, I didn't decide which was picked.
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Dec 5, 2017 21:26
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Oh see I thought Prussians was just what you called Germans when there were 100 independent German kingdoms.
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Dec 5, 2017 21:28
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I have to admit that calling the German Empire the "small Germany" outcome makes me laugh, even though its accurate.
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Dec 5, 2017 21:30
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Cyrano4747 posted:Isn't that what Navy SEALs are for? As in exactly what their original job description was? I've read that there's been some issues lately with the SEALS having such a (mostly unfounded) reputation as high-speed-low-drag operator super soldiers that they're being deployed into ground combat at the expense of troops who are actually trained and experienced in performing such operations.
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Dec 5, 2017 21:33
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Comrade Gorbash posted:I have to admit that calling the German Empire the "small Germany" outcome makes me laugh, even though its accurate. Insert the Kaiser we all know and love to hate/hate to love right here.
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Dec 5, 2017 21:34
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zoux posted:Oh see I thought Prussians was just what you called Germans when there were 100 independent German kingdoms. Nah, "Germans" was always a kind of generic term for all those guys who spoke more or less the same language. The individual political entities were called by their proper names (Prussians, Bavarians, etc) whenever they were talking about the kingdoms, armies, etc. Kind of similar to "Latin Americans" vs "Mexicans/Guatamalans/Colombians/etc" today. Comrade Gorbash posted:I have to admit that calling the German Empire the "small Germany" outcome makes me laugh, even though its accurate. Can always grow your kleines Deutschland into a Grossdeutschland.
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Dec 5, 2017 21:36
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Oh, just remembered something. So a while ago a friend of mine was repeating a story he'd heard about the Royal Navy. Specifically, he claimed, there was a point where the British (around the Victorian period) were designing guns so large that they were killing the gun crews with overpressure whenever they were fired. As they didn't know what overpressure actually was, they were having trouble figuring out how to counter that, but in the meantime they decided "gently caress it, we need the big guns anyways" and so basically installed the big guns on ships but never used or exercised them, the idea being that in a major fleet action they'd send the unsuspecting gunners to their stations to fire the critical, decisive blow and consider the crews "acceptable losses." I am almost entirely certain that this story was bullshit for all sorts of reasons - morale, practical training considerations, the likelihood of convincing more than one gun crew to fire off the drat things, and the ridiculousness of gambling your best crews on a single salvo in a naval engagement. However, I'm curious if anybody has any idea where he might have gotten the story (he doesn't know himself). Was there maybe an incident that occurred with a really large gun that he exaggerated into becoming official doctrine instead of a one-off, or something?
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Dec 5, 2017 21:41
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Also, I may have to scrub finishing Walking With Sharpe. And that is heart breaking. Why? Despite being packed full of general trivia of the Napoleonic British soldier and what he does it appears to have been pushed out the door without any loving editing at all. Multiple typos, weird inconsistent font issues (quotes are in bold or in a really hard to read mock cursive) with some quotations actually not being marked out at all and just awkwardly crashing into authors general narration of the topic. It's a hot mess of a nerdy coffee table book. I kind of want to finish it though because it deep down has some hardcore facts. Anyone else ever read a book that for some reason was poorly presented but soldiered on? Tomn posted:Oh, just remembered something. I have never heard of anything like this.
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Dec 5, 2017 21:41
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chitoryu12 posted:I've read that there's been some issues lately with the SEALS having such a (mostly unfounded) reputation as high-speed-low-drag operator super soldiers that they're being deployed into ground combat at the expense of troops who are actually trained and experienced in performing such operations. Thinking of that and Force Recon, some of the confusion these days is that up until the last few decades the special operations teams were usually embedded in larger specialist units. It was conceived of initially as just another special mission and thus a natural fit alongside underwater demolition teams or alpine troops or whatever. Plus that arrangement had the benefit of potentially confusing opposition intelligence. But now that the spec ops community has broken out into its own commands, the units they used to be part of still have vestiges of that reputation without the training for the mission.
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Dec 5, 2017 21:46
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Tomn posted:Oh, just remembered something. I can't even imagine what misunderstanding was made that could lead to such a story forming.
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Dec 5, 2017 22:15
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Alchenar posted:I can't even imagine what misunderstanding was made that could lead to such a story forming. My guess is the fact that when the main guns on WW2 BB's were in action you had to clear the decks.
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Dec 5, 2017 22:22
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Weren't there were several battleships that could kill/injure secondary gun crews if the big guns went off at the wrong time?
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Dec 5, 2017 22:25
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bewbies posted:Weren't there were several battleships that could kill/injure secondary gun crews if the big guns went off at the wrong time? As far as I know, that's a myth - I've seen it mentioned as a myth in many history books from the early ironclad era onwards, but never a confirmed account. It's always "That old rustbucket of ours is so poorly designed!" or "Come on, their battleship is so poorly designed!" Never any firsthand accounts of it happening.
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Dec 5, 2017 22:31
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Cyrano4747 posted:My guess is the fact that when the main guns on WW2 BB's were in action you had to clear the decks. Alternate explanation - some guns DID explode: 
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Dec 5, 2017 22:32
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I would have thought that the victorian period would be a little bit early for absurdly big guns on ships. Not least because they didn't even have smokeless powder until like, what, 1885 ish?
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Dec 5, 2017 22:35
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OwlFancier posted:I would have thought that the victorian period would be a little bit early for absurdly big guns. Absurdly big guns started appearing about as soon as guns in general started appearing - take a look at siege bombards from the Renaissance. When inventing any new weapon in human history, there's always been a guy going "Let's see how big we can make this sucker!"
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Dec 5, 2017 22:37
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What was the biggest pike?
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Dec 5, 2017 22:40
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Cythereal posted:Absurdly big guns started appearing about as soon as guns in general started appearing - take a look at siege bombards from the Renaissance. When inventing any new weapon in human history, there's always been a guy going "Let's see how big we can make this sucker!" Yeah I meant on ships, obviously you have people making gigantic siege guns but in terms of overpressuring people to death, black powder and the confines of a ship make that a bit harder.
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Dec 5, 2017 22:42
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Ensign Expendable posted:What was the biggest pike? Nobody knows. It was stolen and sold for money to buy hat feathers before anyone could measure it.
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Dec 5, 2017 22:43
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OwlFancier posted:I would have thought that the victorian period would be a little bit early for absurdly big guns on ships. Some of the guns of that era were monstrous. USS Passaic, for example, carried a 15" Dahlgren gun:  (That's an 11" long and a 15" short gun. Yeah, I played a lot of the old wargame Ironclads back in the day.) USS Puritan was supposed to carry 20" guns, but the end of the US Civil War halted production. OwlFancier posted:Not least because they didn't even have smokeless powder until like, what, 1885 ish? Why let that stop you?
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Dec 5, 2017 22:45
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Maybe it comes out of the Royal Navy switching from the Armstrong gun back to muzzle loaders more prone to bursting?
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Dec 5, 2017 22:46
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Cessna posted:Some of the guns of that era were monstrous. USS Passaic, for example, carried a 15" Dahlgren gun: I was also thinking the crappy early turrets would be an obstacle yet apparently not.
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Dec 5, 2017 22:49
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Cessna posted:Some of the guns of that era were monstrous. USS Passaic, for example, carried a 15" Dahlgren gun: 11" nothing, the British were mounting 13" and upwards guns (admittedly mortars, not cannons) on ships in the mid-18th century. Bomb ketches of various stripes featured some ridiculously big, if short and fat, guns.
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Dec 5, 2017 22:53
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OwlFancier posted:I was also thinking the crappy early turrets would be an obstacle yet apparently not. I am NOT a naval architect, but I get the impression that everything from the Ironclad era was brute-force. Big guns, giant gears, little or no ventilation or light below decks. It must have been hellish.  Edit: That's another Passiac-class monitor, with a 15" and an 11" gun. Cessna fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Dec 5, 2017 |
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Dec 5, 2017 22:54
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Maybe to help narrow things down a bit, are there any guns to begin with that in any way killed off their own crews on the regular? Even ones that were rejected during trials for exactly that reason?
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Dec 5, 2017 22:55
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I mean that's generally a risk with big cast guns cos they tend to fail explosively when they do fail, and the loading process relied on you getting all the last shot out before you load the next one. Old cannons are sort of inherently dangerous.
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Dec 5, 2017 22:58
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Tomn posted:Maybe to help narrow things down a bit, are there any guns to begin with that in any way killed off their own crews on the regular? Even ones that were rejected during trials for exactly that reason? That picture I linked to above was of the gun named "Peacemaker." In 1844 the ship that carried it - USS Princeton - took a cruise on the Potomac river with the President (Tyler) and other VIPs aboard. They fired off a salute when they passed Washington's home at Mt. Vernon. A bit later the Secretary of the Navy (Gilmer) said "fire one more!" The gun exploded, killing him, the ship's captain, and several other people. The navy decided not to build more ships of that class.
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Dec 5, 2017 23:02
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Ensign Expendable posted:What was the biggest pike? Probably some late Hellenic sarissa tbh
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Dec 5, 2017 23:09
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Tomn posted:Maybe to help narrow things down a bit, are there any guns to begin with that in any way killed off their own crews on the regular? Even ones that were rejected during trials for exactly that reason? Aside from accidents, no. Historically, military forces have always been extremely adverse to weapons that regularly kill their uses rather than the other guys.
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Dec 5, 2017 23:09
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Tomn posted:Maybe to help narrow things down a bit, are there any guns to begin with that in any way killed off their own crews on the regular? Even ones that were rejected during trials for exactly that reason? Any gun, large or small, has the capacity to kill its operator if it fails catastrophically. Even a modern rifle can kill the shooter if the bore is obstructed or there is a manufacturing defect or something causes an out of battery detonation of the cartridge. Anything that had a flaw so severe that it was killing operators on the regular would never get past prototype stages. Now, that said, if you're talking about "probably minor injury, you can shake it off (probably)" the MG42 actually fits that definition. It had some pretty bad problems with bolt bounce causing out of battery detonations. It wasn't usually enough to frequently kill the operator, but it could sure give you a bad day picking brass slivers out of your arm and cheek, and if you were unlucky maybe lose you an eye. I The eventual solution was three fold: slower primers were developed to give the action an extra few milliseconds to settle down and make sure the rollers were locked in place between bolt and receiver and after the war the bolt was redesigned slightly to help alleviate it, and most countries went with rate limiters on their post war MG42 derivatives that also helped with the issue.
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Dec 5, 2017 23:12
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Cyrano4747 posted:Any gun, large or small, has the capacity to kill its operator if it fails catastrophically. Even a modern rifle can kill the shooter if the bore is obstructed or there is a manufacturing defect or something causes an out of battery detonation of the cartridge. You still have issues, sometimes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrkUqOV4kZA
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Dec 5, 2017 23:18
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Cythereal posted:Aside from accidents, no. Historically, military forces have always been extremely adverse to weapons that regularly kill their uses rather than the other guys. Unless it looks really cool.  
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Dec 5, 2017 23:26
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The American M1A1 76 mm gun had a tendency to eject casings at the loader instead of into the bag, which I guess could bruise him up a bit.
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Dec 5, 2017 23:28
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Cyrano4747 posted:5cm HE shells also aren't really great at dealing with infantry. My guess is that they were there in case they ran into unfriendly recon vehicles. If you're enemy is in a half track or an armored car with only an MG and you've got a 5cm cannon, you win. That is there purpose, yes. Soft-skinned vehicles, light tanks, armoured cars, etc.
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Dec 5, 2017 23:28
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Cessna posted:The navy decided not to build more ships of that class. And nearly told its designer to get hosed when he submitted his design for the Monitor a decade and a half later.
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Dec 5, 2017 23:32
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dublish posted:And nearly told its designer to get hosed when he submitted his design for the Monitor a decade and a half later. Clearly that thing will never float. Iron is heavier than water!
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Dec 5, 2017 23:35
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Cythereal posted:Aside from accidents, no. Historically, military forces have always been extremely adverse to weapons that regularly kill their uses rather than the other guys. I mean it's not a gun per se, but y'know kamikaze planes...
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Dec 5, 2017 23:38
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SeanBeansShako posted:Anyone else ever read a book that for some reason was poorly presented but soldiered on? Have you ever played tabletop RPGs?
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Dec 5, 2017 23:42
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