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You'll note that modern tanks don't use "national insignia" for the most part. When I was in the USMC our tanks had "tac marks" - stenciled numbers painted with black spraypaint - but no star. I think the US Army uses a small black star, but again, it's relatively small and stenciled on with spraypaint. You're trained to recognize silhouettes and shapes, not to look for opportunities to "shoot the ones with the big red stars." I'll admit it seems a bit silly - once you're seeing the insignia you've already seen the tank - but the big white stars of WWII seem to be asking for trouble. I can understand using prominent markings to keep "friendly fire" at a minimum, like the white stripes on Soviet tanks in 1945 or the "inverted V" from the 1st Gulf War, but these are generally used when you've got a big advantage anyway.
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Mar 21, 2018 15:57
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bewbies posted:Both sides in the Civil War had significant SIGINT and EW efforts. The CSA had a whole giant organization in the north who just sat around trying to pirate telegraph lines. There was the Culper ring during the American Revolution. I know that before recently that spies were hated above all and executed when captured. Popular culture, Le Carre books, etc. tells us that in the Cold War foreign agents were captured and kept to be traded for allied spies. Was that true? When did it change exactly? I know that domestic spies that were caught were often executed {the Rosenbergs), but did NATO or WP execute foreign agents?
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Mar 21, 2018 16:05
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zoux posted:I know that domestic spies that were caught were often executed {the Rosenbergs), but did NATO or WP execute foreign agents? Well, the Rosenbergs were the only Americans executed for espionage by the US in the Cold War. Most American spies for the Soviet Union were given prison time. The Soviets were more execution happy, though. But no, foreign agents tended not to be executed. Imprisoned, but not executed. They were more valuable alive, because they could be traded back, and executions tended to invite retaliation.
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Mar 21, 2018 16:55
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JcDent posted:What about Soviet infantry casualties at Kursk, tho? Read back on what I wrote earlier. It covers Manpower losses as well.
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Mar 21, 2018 17:20
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13th KRRC War Diary, 21st Mar 1918 posted:Two patrols left our lines in the early morning the first starting at 2.15 am composed of L/C Coppin and 3 other ranks whose task it was to locate any work of the enemy and to reconnoitre the broken down pill-box east of JERICHO. The patrol proceeded in a South Easterly direction for about 70 yds from where sounds of digging were heard. The pill box was reconnoitred and found to be unoccupied but several coughs were heard from the trenches which was about 30 yds in rear of the pill box. The patrol returned at 4 am. 13th KRRC War Diary, 21st/22nd Mar 1918 posted:SPECIAL REPORT March 21st 1918 was the start of the German Spring Offensive - Der Kaiserschlacht - further to the south. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Michael Having a look at Birr (not Burr) Cross Roads Cemetary, I could only find two 13th KRRC entries for around this time, not three: 18th W J R MYERS Rifleman King's Royal Rifle Corps 13th Bn. A/201285 21st B J EMBLETON Rifleman King's Royal Rifle Corps 13th Bn. A/205484
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Mar 21, 2018 17:25
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Cessna posted:You'll note that modern tanks don't use "national insignia" for the most part. IIRC for the western allies in particular the primary utility for the markings was to protect against friendly airstrikes-when you've got P-47s and Typhoons loaded with bombs and rockets overhead looking to blast anything that moves, a giant-rear end white star on the engine deck is going to be your best protection against an Unfortunate Incident.
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Mar 21, 2018 18:56
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MikeCrotch posted:Eh, there was a lot of feeling in the German army at the time that something has decisively changed at Kursk. Don't forget that the Operation Citadelle part was immediately followed up by a huge series of successful summer offensives by the Red Army (which the Soviets count as part of Kursk but the Germans don't, which is a big part of the disparity in casualty figures). Part of the planning for Kursk was based on the fact that this was likely the last great chance for Germany to seize the strategic initiative in the East, and when it failed that was reflected in the views of the German high command. It's been a few months since I read Showalter's Armor and Blood, but the big thing I took away from it is that the German high command collectively succumbed to a sort of myopia. By the end of the battle, entire SS armor divisions, which had started out as these lavishly equipped monster units, had turned into batallion-sized or smaller improvised units. Instead of moving on large fronts, those improvised units were only able to attack a single strongpoint, or maybe a closely knit complex of them. At that point the battle was obviously a joke - even if those remnant forces somehow won all their battles, it wouldn't be enough to blow the Soviet defenses wide open and create a battle of annihilation. Nonetheless, the high command was pushing forward, and watching those attacks as though they held the same military significance as a division-scale breakthrough. It was a monstrous delusion, driven by a fear of admitting defeat, and a misplaced confidence in Soviet ineptitude. Sure, those German troops were some hard-bitten tough bastards, going right into some of the most lavish defenses ever built, and making it work. Their equipment and tactics worked for them. None of that matters because at the strategic level, they were screwing up by the numbers. It's more interesting, to me, to look at the cold-blooded way the USSR was handling the operational level of the battle, carefully rationing out reinforcements to prevent a breakthrough with minimal impact on their plans to take the offensive. Wank over the Tiger and Panther all you want, the Russians had already factored all that stuff into their plan, and knew exactly how to win anyway.
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Mar 21, 2018 18:58
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I always feel bad for the frontline units in a defense in depth strategy. Must have been fun motivating them. “Yeah you’re going to be massively outnumber and inevitably overrun but your job is to be a speed bump for the enemy so that they run out of steam 30 miles behind your position. Any questions?”
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Mar 21, 2018 19:05
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Two amazing things about the battle of Kursk from the German side: 1. They were attacking into 1:2 numerical disadvantage which uh  2. Even if they made a breakthrough there were 5 whole Soviet armies the Germans didn't know were there, waiting in the rear.
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Mar 21, 2018 19:11
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Tomn posted:Reading the official history of MI5 right now, and it got me curious - does anyone here have any reliable information about how pre-industrial espionage and counter-espionage worked? Even in WW1 it seemed like a complete amateur-hour shitshow, and that was with the benefit of centralized government, a well-developed bureaucracy, and well-organized funding. How did espionage work before that, as far as we know? How far back do you want to go because there's plenty of examples here such as Jesuits and the protocols outlined in the Arthasastra. Keep in mind the Arthasastra is not nearly as old as it claims, but still pretty old. The idea for a successful spy operation is usually the same though, informants, lots and lots and lots of informants. Several of which exist only to spy on your other spies. Basically, just have everyone snitching on everyone else through an anonymous network that you sit at the center of. This takes no small amount of time and effort in your day, but it's considered worth it to keep you alive and aware of what your neighbors are planning to do.
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Mar 21, 2018 19:21
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I always feel bad for the frontline units in a defense in depth strategy. Must have been fun motivating them. I dunno, it seems to me like the frontline gets chewed the gently caress up by any sort of major offensive and them's were the breaks. I think media and the current American mil-tech hegemony has warped our notion of how many people get churned up in total war.
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Mar 21, 2018 19:25
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It's always been that for the guys at the front of the line, middle front of the column or the forlorn hope during a siege.
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Mar 21, 2018 19:29
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"Rifle" rather than "fusil"? Get the hell out. Also, while we're posting memes, check out this sweet, sweet OC:      
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Mar 21, 2018 19:30
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I always feel bad for the frontline units in a defense in depth strategy. Must have been fun motivating them. It's not like every part of the frontline will be attacked. And ideally they'll be cycling the troops around so maybe nothing will happen while you are at the front. It's not as bad as being sent on a recon-in-force.... (aka "run forward knowing nothing about what's ahead trying to make some noise so the bad guys shoot at you") That's gotta be the worst job. Fangz fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Mar 21, 2018 |
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Mar 21, 2018 19:30
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Boo you guys and not engaging me in discussion about small arms.
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Mar 21, 2018 19:42
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Milo and POTUS posted:Boo you guys and not engaging me in discussion about small arms. But enough about Kaiser Wilhelm.
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Mar 21, 2018 19:55
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Fangz posted:It's not like every part of the frontline will be attacked. And ideally they'll be cycling the troops around so maybe nothing will happen while you are at the front. RIF is not what you describe.
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Mar 21, 2018 20:16
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Acebuckeye13 posted:The tl;dr is that it varied, a lot. Cool, thanks. I'm building a tiny M4A3 (76)W and I wanted to do some of the crap you typically see on Shermans, and it got me wondering about it once you see lumber, tank tracks, scavanged armor, and even elaborate sandbag trellises how much of it was morale, and how much of it was really practical. Geisladisk posted:This guy is not loving around. 
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Mar 21, 2018 20:18
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According to Geneva conventions, captured enemy vehicles that have no national insignia can be executed on spot as spies.
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Mar 21, 2018 20:23
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Nenonen posted:According to Geneva conventions, captured enemy vehicles that have no national insignia can be executed on spot as spies. How thick of a rope do you need to hang a tank?
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Mar 21, 2018 20:24
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Gaius Marius posted:How thick of a rope do you need to hang a tank? Could you crush a tank in one of those machines that turns cars into cubes? Take the ammo out first, obviously
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Mar 21, 2018 20:27
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Gaius Marius posted:How thick of a rope do you need to hang a tank? They're executed by firing squad on a testing range, obviously.
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Mar 21, 2018 20:31
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One anti tank gun is given a blank so that it can comfort itself with the uncertainty.
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Mar 21, 2018 21:08
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Cessna posted:You'll note that modern tanks don't use "national insignia" for the most part. I think that tank identification by model would have been much less reliable in WW2 than the modern world. Optics were way worse, there were a lot of nations involved which all produced a handful of original tank chassis, and the armies were exclusively conscripted. Without easily recognizable insignia you would have a lot more instances of, for instance, American troops seeing a British Comet for the first time, panicking, thinking that the mysterious boxy tank is a Tiger, and blue-on-bluing them.
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Mar 21, 2018 21:39
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are you seriously suggesting that conscripted combat veterans are worse at war than an unbloodied professional force
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Mar 21, 2018 21:45
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Victor Hutchinson's POW Diary Friday 16th March-Wednesday 21st March, 1945 Spring is here – daffy-down –dilly. March refuses to go out like a lamb. Coming into the home stretch.
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Mar 21, 2018 22:02
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:are you seriously suggesting that conscripted combat veterans are worse at war than an unbloodied professional force I don't think that this is a matter of "worse at war..." In peacetime (in the 90's) we spent a lot of time learning about tank recognition. We'd look at pictures of tanks and have to ID them. We did this regularly. Hell, they had flash-cards for training. ("What's this?" "T-64.") After a few years of this you get to know your AFVs. I distinctly remember one class where the instructor called out how to ID a tank based on a feature of a front-view facing tank revealed by the shadow on the ground. ("That's a T-54, not a T-55, look at where the bore evacuator is placed.") I don't know if wartime conscripts had this level of training. They probably got to know what their own vehicles looked like (obviously, through exposure) and got a crash-course on potential threats, but I doubt that they spend months - years - building the in-depth knowledge. This is not a matter of "worse at war," but of having the time to develop specialist knowledge.
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Mar 21, 2018 22:07
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:are you seriously suggesting that conscripted combat veterans are worse at war than an unbloodied professional force I have no idea how that was what you took away from my post.
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Mar 21, 2018 22:20
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If the Sherman got tracked, could they use the improvised track armor to fix the tank?
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Mar 21, 2018 22:27
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Geisladisk posted:I think that tank identification by model would have been much less reliable in WW2 than the modern world. Optics were way worse, there were a lot of nations involved which all produced a handful of original tank chassis, and the armies were exclusively conscripted. Tank recognition, as well as aircraft recognition, were both taught. Tank chassis are unique and unknown until they are accurately described by anyone, or an example is captured. And printing presses werent slow, so dissemination of information on new types could spread somewhat rapidly. National markings were always a more secondary thing, and seemed to be more important when tanks were still relatively new for people, or when friendly fire incidents were to be minimzed
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Mar 21, 2018 23:52
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golden bubble posted:If the Sherman got tracked, could they use the improvised track armor to fix the tank? Assuming that the crew survived, had the tools, had enough track and track pins, they didnt sink into the ground or otherwise get stuck, and werent getting shot at while doing so? Probably
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Mar 21, 2018 23:53
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Cessna posted:I don't think that this is a matter of "worse at war..." I'm curious. . How much time do NATO forces spend learning to identify not-their-own-country NATO armour? I mean, American A-10s shot up British light armour more than once in the Gulf Wars iirc.
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Mar 22, 2018 00:01
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Comparing reports to actual documentary evidence, tank recognition seemed spectacularly bad, especially on the Eastern Front.
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Mar 22, 2018 00:03
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Fangz posted:Comparing reports to actual documentary evidence, tank recognition seemed spectacularly bad, especially on the Eastern Front. Especially in a conflict in which you didn't already have huge amounts of intel on your opponent. You go to war with Iraq in 2003, you already have a long list of weapons that Iraq has and can train your whole drat army on it if you want to. With WW2, every side was still developing and rolling out radically different equipment as the conflict went on. Your average trooper probably wouldn't see a Tiger for the first time until he saw it broken down on the side of the road. And then because he can't really tell a Tiger apart from a Panzer IV with a long-barreled gun, he'd probably call every vaguely similar tank he sees "a Tiger" and tell horror stories to war correspondents of how they're just all over the place.
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Mar 22, 2018 00:18
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Dmitriy Loza talks about a couple of friendly fire incident in his tank corp which was composed of all foreign vehicles, Matildas, valentines, shermans etc..quote:- Did you ever have to fire on our own soldiers or tanks?
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Mar 22, 2018 00:44
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feedmegin posted:I'm curious. . How much time do NATO forces spend learning to identify not-their-own-country NATO armour? Constantly. It was all part of the mix. AMX-30 and VABs, Chieftains and Warriors, Leos and Marders - and Type 90s and 96s, and K-1s and K200s, you name it. feedmegin posted:I mean, American A-10s shot up British light armour more than once in the Gulf Wars iirc. Tank identification is tough when you're roaring along at 400 mph and trying to weave around. You've got maybe a second to ID something.. The one I always felt nervous about was the "Fox" NBC vehicle we picked up a few weeks before the Gulf (I) started. There was one attached to our battalion HQ. I think we were all a bit worried that a plane would mistake it for a BTR:  
Cessna fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Mar 22, 2018 |
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Mar 22, 2018 01:02
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Tevery Best posted:Also, while we're posting memes, check out this sweet, sweet OC: I assumed this was something like "I die for the emperor, I live for memes" at first and tbh I prefer it that way
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Mar 22, 2018 01:15
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Cessna posted:I don't think that this is a matter of "worse at war..." they also did have flash cards during WWII but your point is taken in that in a standing army you have more hours to devote to such activity, but i'm not sure the results are necessarily superior considering all of the friendly fire incidents in GW1
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Mar 22, 2018 01:45
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Mar 22, 2018 02:05
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Tevery Best posted:"Rifle" rather than "fusil"? Get the hell out. I do not like these translations. They reek of Google. Especially the Japanese.
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Mar 22, 2018 02:38
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