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Cyrano4747 posted:If you're walking and working with your body all day you burn a fuckton of calories. You just need that many to keep on your feet. Look up what some athletes eat and it's goddamned jaw dropping - upwards of five figures per day. That's an extreme example, but it illustrates the principle. It was definitely not a case of "I was surprised these people need this amount of food", it was a case of "I was surprised these people were able to get this amount of food regularly" - especially given the colossal rates of attrition everyone's armies seem to suffer at all times. It's like someone lands with 7,000 men, has a skirmish and a siege for two months, and then the 1,000 bedraggled survivors get evacuated by sea. Gort fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Feb 1, 2018 |
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Feb 1, 2018 20:53
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Gort posted:It was definitely not a case of "I was surprised these people need this amount of food", it was a case of "I was surprised these people were able to get this amount of food regularly" Yeah, but the larger point is that they HAD to have that amount of food. Any less and they flat out wouldn't have been able to campaign. If you read some accounts of large campaigns where food runs out it gets loving ugly, fast, and it rapidly becomes a mob of rather angry refugees rather than anything that can conduct military operations. edit: whether we're talking about the ancient greeks, the romans, charlemagne's army, Henry VII's, Napoleons, or dudes in Afghanistan right now, you simply have to put calories into soldiers if you expect them to be able to fight. edit 2: this also gets into why armies are generally the best fed. They NEED that food to do their job and the people in charge tend to consider that job very important. You see tons of examples in history of armies being properly fed while the civilians around them starve to death, not infrequently as a direct result of the local army eating all the food.
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Feb 1, 2018 20:55
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HEY GUNS posted:do you mean the specialized food in the nifty containers, or "this much bread, that much beer" etc? BEcause the second one is old.
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Feb 1, 2018 21:10
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The German u-boat casualty rate always surprises me when I remember it (Wikipedia says 75%, but I feel like I remember hearing 80-something somewhere). Is there any other branch of service in the war that suffered anything comparable?
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Feb 1, 2018 21:13
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Kamikaze pilots? 
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Feb 1, 2018 21:16
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Soviet penal battalions? Nothing as big as an entire service though.
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Feb 1, 2018 21:22
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Didn't strategic bombing crews suffer incredible casualties?
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Feb 1, 2018 21:23
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Saint Celestine posted:Soviet penal battalions? Yeah I guess it’s kind of a fuzzy question. Not really sure how to articulate it better though.
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Feb 1, 2018 21:26
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Night10194 posted:Didn't strategic bombing crews suffer incredible casualties? Not as far as I'm aware, no?
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Feb 1, 2018 21:28
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Il-2 Sturmovik rear gunners.
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Feb 1, 2018 21:34
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Half of the USAAF's casualties in WWII were suffered by 8th Air Force bombers.
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Feb 1, 2018 21:35
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Night10194 posted:Didn't strategic bombing crews suffer incredible casualties? Yeah, but not on anything like the same rate as the U-Boat guys. I don't have any numbers on the percentage that went KIA, but one figure I like to throw around to make people understand it is that the 8th airforce alone had almost exactly as many KIA as the entire USMC.
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Feb 1, 2018 21:37
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Night10194 posted:Didn't strategic bombing crews suffer incredible casualties? There are a ton of different ways to measure this so getting accurate numbers are kind of hard. The 8th AF aircrews suffered between a 20-30% KIA rate, but in 1942-43 it was significantly higher. The RAF night bomber crews went through an absolute bloodbath from late 1943 onwards: the most common KIA rate given there is 55%. As far as I'm aware that's probably the large organization that suffered anywhere near as badly as the U-boat crews.
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Feb 1, 2018 21:43
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How did Germany defend against night bombing and why was it so deadly for the RAF?
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Feb 1, 2018 21:57
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yeah, but not on anything like the same rate as the U-Boat guys. I don't have any numbers on the percentage that went KIA, but one figure I like to throw around to make people understand it is that the 8th airforce alone had almost exactly as many KIA as the entire USMC. Can't find similar figures for 8th AF, but wikipedia gives RAF Bomber Command a 44.4% KIA rate, with a total casualty rate of 58.9%. So bad, but not U-Boat bad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bomber_Command
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Feb 1, 2018 22:11
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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It varied. Early on, the most effective tactic was "intrusion" - you let the bombers get through, then jump them shortly before they land, when they're low on fuel and are starting to relax from the tension of the flight. After that, you shoot up the airbases to catch aircraft on the ground. Hitler banned this tactic in favor of trying to stop the bombers on the way in (primarily for prestige reasons), and RAF losses dropped significantly. Trying to stop night bombers on the way in required vectoring in from ground-based radar stations, which generally had only an approximate fix on the enemy's relative position. In daytime this wasn't a handicap, because the interceptors would generally be vectored into visual range and become self-guiding, but the night interceptor pilots were practically blind, thus needing a much finer fix that ground-based stations had difficulty providing. The poor visibility also made it difficult to aim guns at the bombers, because you had -at best- a vague outline. In the late war period, improved radar sets were mounted on the fighters themselves trivialized the detection problem, and the introduction of "Schräge Musik" upward-firing cannon solved the aiming problem. These guns were much easier to hit with (as all you needed to do was trigger them when the bomber was directly above you), and a bonus was that bottom attack is a really poor tactic for conventional fighters, so the British never considered it a threat, and mounted minimal or no defensive armament in the ventral position.
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Feb 1, 2018 22:20
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zoux posted:How did Germany defend against night bombing and why was it so deadly for the RAF? I think someone wrote something about the night fighter effort and how it was generally quite effective.
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Feb 1, 2018 22:25
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There was also a continuous "wizard war" of electronic navigation aids, radars, and jammers. Notably one of the early successful Commando raids involved storming a German radar site, capturing its technicians, and bringing home all the interesting bits.
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Feb 1, 2018 22:27
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Thump! posted:We still use essentially the same helmet, though the headset and mic are a little more modernized. A lot of guys will also use a headset similar to Peltors or flight headsets that fit under the issued Kevlar helmet. Never seen anyone using throat mics, during my time in the USMC or the Army. I was never in the service but I've used a couple of throat mics with GMRS radios and I can tell you this: 1) Cheap ones are poo poo. 2) Really expensive ones work like magic if you have them adjusted just right. I could whisper into mine and people would report I was still coming through loud and clear. 3) Wearing an "adjusted just right" throat mic chafes my neck something fierce after a few hours.
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Feb 1, 2018 22:36
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StandardVC10 posted:There was also a continuous "wizard war" of electronic navigation aids, radars, and jammers. Notably one of the early successful Commando raids involved storming a German radar site, capturing its technicians, and bringing home all the interesting bits. They only called it the wizard war to cover up the raids to capture Hitler's astrologers and birth certificate.
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Feb 1, 2018 23:30
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Speaking of the Kriegsmarine, why were they much more willing to take casualties and hold out longer than their predecessors in WW1 when the entire Kaiserliche Marine basically mutinied?
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Feb 1, 2018 23:51
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StandardVC10 posted:There was also a continuous "wizard war" of electronic navigation aids, radars, and jammers. Notably one of the early successful Commando raids involved storming a German radar site, capturing its technicians, and bringing home all the interesting bits. Also the tactic of having German speaking refugees use the same radio frequencies to give the pilots bad directions.
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Feb 1, 2018 23:53
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How were levy soldiers in feudal conflicts motivated to fight? For the past couple of hundred years, at least, wars have been rationalized and "sold" to the people fighting those wars with nationalism, ethnicity, religion, or idealism. Most people aren't terribly interested in killing other people, so it is pretty important to motivate them to do it. But what about wars between feudal lords purely motivated by personal gain of the lord? For instance, during the Sengoku period in Japan. You are a peasant living under Lord Whatever. He is warring with the Lord in the next province over, Lord Whomever. You are forced into his army as a rank and file spearman. It sucks. The guys you are expected to try your hardest to murder speak the same language as you, are of the same ethnic group, have the same culture, and live only a few days' walking distance from your house. They might as well be your cousins. You have no ideological beef with them whatsoever, the only thing separating you is that a different but identical guy claims ownership of the land you live on. How would you be motivated to fight and kill these guys? Would the war be "sold" to you at all? Would the enemy be dehumanized at all? Was it simply a matter of "it is your duty, do it and shut up"? If so, were you likely to take that duty seriously? Geisladisk fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Feb 1, 2018 |
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Feb 1, 2018 23:55
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You volunteer in the hopes of getting paid. Involuntary conscription is a modern thing.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:04
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Speaking of casualty rates, bombers, and navies, how was it determined who is KIA vs MIA in situations like that? In the case of a bomber crew going down over enemy territory or a ship sinking it seems practically impossible to determine. Were they listed as MIA unless someone saw the body or just presumed dead?
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Feb 2, 2018 00:04
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13th KRRC War Diary, 1st Feb 1917 posted:The Battalion paraded under the command of Capt. G.H. NORRIS in column of route in fighting order, and at 8a.m. moved off on a route march passing through FLAWUE GILLETTE, ECOUART, FARM, BELLE CROIX, RACQUINGHAM, LEMONT DUPIL, LAPIERRRE, REAUMONT, and thence to the range, A.24.C. (Sheet 27.S.W.) At the first halt the teams for the competition which was to take place fell out and marched under their leaders to the range. Each Company, including H.Q. details, supplied 3 teams. The competition was arranged by 2/Lt. KIMBERLEY, and R.Q.M.S. Yates, and was as follows:- Teams consisted of 9 men, and fire controlled by Platoon Commander. On the butts 18 tiles were erected, and the teams at 150 yards distance had to run to the 100 yards firing point, and the team which succeeded in breaking its 9 tiles first was the winner. This was a "knock out" competition, and finished at 12-30 p.m.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:09
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Siivola posted:You volunteer in the hopes of getting paid. Involuntary conscription is a modern thing. Pretty much. You join Lord X's army because you're tired of being a farmer or servant and the regular pay (pay not always regular) and chance to loot sounds good. May also be a criminal or refugee from a neighboring province. Basically life sucked and if you felt you could hack it being a soldier promised (though didn't always deliver) a less suck-tastic life, or at least the ability to work out your suffering on some other guy. After all, if the Lord wants his army in fighting shape he's going to be doing his best to at least feed you semi-regularly. And if he didn't, you had the force of arms to just take the food from the poor peasants.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:42
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Plus you could get a lot of money from looting. If you got really, really lucky you might even capture someone important and get a chunk of the ransom for him.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:44
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Are you telling me that the real opiate of the masses is war?
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Feb 2, 2018 00:54
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Siivola posted:You volunteer in the hopes of getting paid. This is especially effective if the soldiers have already stolen everything not nailed down and most things that are, and you're doubtful that you'll make it through the next winter like this.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:55
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Yeah, basically being a soldier was a good way of social/economic advancement for the poor. You got off the farm/out of the cellar, semi-regular payment, the chance to burn and loot. If you weren't too lucky but stuck with it, you could work your way up to the sergeant and basically be the boss of a bunch of these guys. If you were lucky you could basically set yourself up as a minor lord of your own ransoming some rich twit's son back to him. And if there were a thousand and one ways to die horribly as a soldier? Well any ex-farmer or ex-apprentice could list a thousand and TWO ways to die or be maimed (which could equal dying) on a farm or workshop if you let him go on long enough, many of them the same risks he had as a soldier. People actually lived about the same age back then (life expectency ratings are generally heavily skewed by the crazy high infant mortality rate) but life was rough and it was easy to die horribly, might as well make the best of it by getting a job as a soldier and either hope for loot, or just hope to be a gate guard who's paid better for less work than growing up on your family's farm. Especially if you were lucky son #4 or #5 to survive infancy: you're not going to inherit jack with all the brothers in front of you, might as well head off into the world.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:56
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Geisladisk posted:
Speaking the same language and sharing the same culture never stopped anybody from knifing someone. Also, if they were really your cousins, and you cared about that sort of thing, you would definitely know and you would probably raise a fuss about it and join the fight on their side. Depends where you're talking. I don't know about Japanese levies, but in Western Europe they basically stopped even trying to levy farmers by the high middle ages. During HYW, peasant volunteers were told to go do something else while the professionalized semi-mercenaries fought a real war. "Feudal" levies have more in common with warbands like the Gauls or early Italians. It's villages gearing up to defend themselves or steal some poo poo from a hated neighbour (or whoever). These guys are basically farmer soldiers like the Romans, and they're often getting their training done in heartless low-intensity conflicts that nobody has bothered to document. When people in these sorts of societies ever band together or get absorbed into a larger entity, the succeeding state inherits a useful source of organized soldiers to call up. It's not at all like picking names out of a lottery, and its an organization that fades away when life gets less violent. Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Feb 2, 2018 |
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Feb 2, 2018 01:06
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zoux posted:How did Germany defend against night bombing and why was it so deadly for the RAF? The how is a big topic. The why is a little simpler. In World War 2, any air force that could defend its own airspace could also inflict nasty casulties on attacking bombers. This was true in Europe, both day and night. It's just that in the night, the Luftwaffe had a few advantages that meant it could continue as a effective fighting force even after overwhelming material superiority of the Allies became a thing. First, Night interception was a one-on-one affair, which favored the Luftwaffe. USAAF daytime bombers flew in tight formation, and got escort whenever possible, but the Allied AF at night couldn't do those things. The Luftwaffe couldn't fly in formation either, but one night fighter vs. one bomber, well, the defending fighter has the advtanage. As Gnoman said, the German fighters used Schräge Musik from later 1942 onward, and that meant a stalking fighter might be able to completely suprise the Allied Bomber. Both the Halifax III and the Lancaster had big fuel tanks in the wing next to their fuselage, so slanty cannon fire into that would bring the whole works down. Even when the Allies began making their own night fighters superior to the Germans, interception was still a one-on-one affair, with one German Night Fighter vs. one Allied night fighter. This meant the enormous air superiority that wrecks the daytime Luftwaffe's poo poo in 1944 wasn't as much as a factor. You also have the fact that the German night fighter has to find a 1000 bomber stream usually vectoring in to a German city, while the Allied Night Fighter has to find the German night fighter, and it could be anywhere. Second, the Germans had major trouble getting new aircraft types into production, and so had to adapt what they had to be night fighters: Bf 110s and medium bombers like the Do 217 and the Ju 88. These worked fine at night because the Allies couldn't do massed escorts like in the daytime. All that a night fighter needed was to be faster and more maneuverable than a Allied Heavy bomber, carry a lot of firepower, and hopefully some radar. The He 219 was a fighter in a way the other types were not, but they were only made in small numbers. It's not like the Allies didn't put it the effort; in addition to using Mk. XXX Mosquito night fighters in 1944, intelligence was setting up covert FAO controllers in occupied Europe to help direct Allied night fighters, to say nothing of the constant war of electronics going on. The entire European air war was extremely hard fought on both sides. It was just given the basics of tactics at the time, the Luftwaffe could still intercept night bombers with fighters effectively even in late 1944.
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Feb 2, 2018 01:08
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There's also the prospect of glory, however that works. People really respect war heroes. You mix that in with the prospect of booty and your leader making sure that you're fed, and war can seem like a big ol' party outside of the moments when you're actually risking your life. Wasn't the main deal with the feudal system that the people who weren't getting paid were the feudal lords who were hooked into a big ol' political system where they were already obligated to do what the bossman higher up tells them or suffer the consequences?
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Feb 2, 2018 01:25
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yeah, but not on anything like the same rate as the U-Boat guys. I don't have any numbers on the percentage that went KIA, but one figure I like to throw around to make people understand it is that the 8th airforce alone had almost exactly as many KIA as the entire USMC. Even in the USN, submariners had the highest casualty rate of all sailors, at 1 in 5. And IJN antisubmarine warfare *sucked*.
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Feb 2, 2018 01:34
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Phanatic posted:Even in the USN, submariners had the highest casualty rate of all sailors, at 1 in 5. They had a secret ally in BuOrd though.
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Feb 2, 2018 01:43
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Taerkar posted:They had a secret ally in BuOrd though. and that one senator who gave away that japan was setting the depth charges off prematurely.
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Feb 2, 2018 01:48
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T___A posted:Speaking of the Kriegsmarine, why were they much more willing to take casualties and hold out longer than their predecessors in WW1 when the entire Kaiserliche Marine basically mutinied? For one, submarines fielded like 50 dudes each as opposed to the thousands of men on a capital ship. Secondly, submarines operated mostly individually, and occasionally in small packs. This is in contrast to Jutland-like fleet actions where hundreds of ships were trying to achieve decisive victory. Thirdly the reason why WW1 sailors were so eager to rebel was that they had spent years moored at harbour doing nothing but waiting for the eventual kamikaze order. Finally NSDAP was a revolutionary party and as such knew how to quell other revolutionaries.
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Feb 2, 2018 01:50
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PMush Perfect posted:The former. The first time you'd start seeing something like it would be the 19th century when canning became a thing, but it was still a sort of slapdash process until World War I when you started having regular rations in regular packing. Even then, rations were still often done in the form of "24 ounces of boneless meat per day" and what you got wasn't guaranteed; I read something about how Italian soldiers in WW2 would sometimes get nothing but 3 cans of tuna a day, and the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge turned to stolen American rations and whatever they could scrounge from abandoned civilian buildings as their food ran out (one soldier I read about grabbed some old apples off the ground and was struck with diarrhea for his trouble). The US military was really ahead of the game in WW2 with the C-Rations because the huge, non-threatened economy and extensive logistics network allowed for a specialty packaged ration with regular known contents to be mass produced and issued to soldiers as complete packages instead of just handing out cans and packs of crackers before an offensive. It took until after WW2 for most of the rest of the world to catch up in ration consistency.
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Feb 2, 2018 01:53
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Nebakenezzer posted:It's not like the Allies didn't put it the effort; in addition to using Mk. XXX Mosquito night fighters in 1944, intelligence was setting up covert FAO controllers in occupied Europe to help direct Allied night fighters, to say nothing of the constant war of electronics going on. The entire European air war was extremely hard fought on both sides. It was just given the basics of tactics at the time, the Luftwaffe could still intercept night bombers with fighters effectively even in late 1944. If night bombing remained dangerous even when the USAAF was doing day-bombing raids with impunity then why did the night bombing continue? Feel like I'm missing something here.
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