SlothfulCobra posted:

And I don't even know how they'd deal with having to create a whole new system of plumbing, considering how their water sources would be left back 400 years in the future in Virginia. Or is that taken too? How desperate for food will these people be after their preserved goods run out and they're stuck with a whole town's worth of empty stomachs and most of Europe's arable farmland already accounted for by legitimate non-time-traveling landlords?

bloom posted:

So I recently watched The Terror(fun little series) and got curious about warship names. Can anyone recommend me a book on the subject? Not looking at any particular nation or timeframe as such, just got a general curiousity about how naming conventions change over time.

Feels to me like there should a book explaining how a country goes from "Erebus" and "Terror" to "Gay Viking" in 100 years.

SlothfulCobra posted:

And I don't even know how they'd deal with having to create a whole new system of plumbing, considering how their water sources would be left back 400 years in the future in Virginia. Or is that taken too? How desperate for food will these people be after their preserved goods run out and they're stuck with a whole town's worth of empty stomachs and most of Europe's arable farmland already accounted for by legitimate non-time-traveling landlords? Are they supposed to quickly become a hub of trade or manufacturing? Darn, now I'm stuck wondering what the plot of this book is...this is how they getcha.

Tomn posted:

It's been a long time, but I think one of the side stories has them making deals with the local farmers where they loan them the use of tractors and other modern agricultural tools in exchange for a cut of the harvest. It's also a relatively small rural town, as opposed to a major city, which probably helps.

HEY GUNS posted:

a tractor won't gently caress and make more of them

a tractor can't pet cats either

Tomn posted:

And yes, one running theme is the Grantviller's doctor being kept awake at nights by the possibility of plague, screaming at every government official he can get his hands on that they need to do more because it's coming sooner or later.

Libluini posted:

Those government officials must have been mightily confused,

Tomn posted:

Ah, to be clear: he was yelling at the AMERICAN officials, who weren’t used to the idea that plague is a serious problem.

Tomn posted:

Ah, to be clear: he was yelling at the AMERICAN officials, who weren’t used to the idea that plague is a serious problem.

bloom posted:

So I recently watched The Terror(fun little series) and got curious about warship names. Can anyone recommend me a book on the subject? Not looking at any particular nation or timeframe as such, just got a general curiousity about how naming conventions change over time.

Feels to me like there should a book explaining how a country goes from "Erebus" and "Terror" to "Gay Viking" in 100 years.

Ainsley McTree posted:

The vastly superior luftwaffe let them have it to give them a gentlemanly sporting chance, obviously

quote:

The story is presented in the first person, related by a Saga-Age Icelander named Ospak Ulfsson. During a violent thunderstorm, an unexplained phenomenon transports the titular 20th-century American GI back in time to Ospak's homestead. The American, who becomes known as Gerald "Samsson", is an engineering student drafted to serve at Keflavik during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Gerald is taken in by Ospak's family who assume him to be a shipwreck survivor. Although his engineering background gives him many ideas of how to improve life for the Icelanders (such as advanced sailing vessels), his lack of practical know-how, and his oversophisticated ideas when set against the nature of 10th-century life, lead to none of his suggestions being implemented. Knowledge of 20th-century metallurgy does not endow him with the highly specialised skill needed to work in a 10th-century smithy, and his attempt to do so ends with a costly fiasco. Also, knowing the theory of how to design a large metal bridge is not a sufficient base for constructing a small wooden bridge over a rivulet with medieval carpentry tools.

There is also a whole series of misunderstandings caused by social and cultural differences. Gerald tries to tell the Icelanders that in his country there are no blood feuds because the government takes care of punishing all wrong-doers. However, his listeners have no concept of a vast impersonal government and its law-enforcement agencies; Gerald's words, when translated into concepts familiar to his listeners, are taken to mean that all law-enforcement is done by the King in person - whereupon the amused Icelanders remark that such a King would be too busy to beget an heir... And conversely, when Gerald tells that he had been a military policeman and describes the task of one, they are astonished at what they see as his foolhardy courage of "offending all the men in the war host" - since Vikings would absolutely not have tolerated the petty regulation of their dress and personal life which is common for soldiers in a 20th-century army.

Then, Gerald guilelessly mentions that his family owns no land and lives in one apartment of a big house where many other families live - not realising that he has just plunged his social status sharply down, as in this rural society a landless man is far down the scale. And when he boasts that the United States is a free society, but admits that US citizens may be called up for military service even at harvest time, his shocked hosts conclude that the US is the worst and most monstrous of tyrannies - since in their economy, calling up the farmers in harvest time would doom their families to starvation.

Meanwhile, Gerald and his host's daughter fall in love with each other. A rival suitor from a neighboring clan, annoyed at her preference for the "useless" foreigner, insults Gerald, who then challenges him to "fight it out" - not realising that in this society, duels between free people are fought with weapons and often to the death, and that fighting bare-handed "is for slaves". Trapped in a holmgang and about to be cut down, he uses his gun and kills his opponent.

In order to avert his host becoming entangled in a blood feud, Gerald departs on his own - which leads to his being outlawed and hunted down. When making his last stand, his ammunition runs out ("his magical weapon failed him" as the locals see it) but he gives a good account of himself with a sword seized from a fallen opponent before being finally killed.

The ending of the story suggests that, in time, Gerald's burial barrow would come to be regarded as the tomb of "an ancient hero" and that he would in death find the place in Icelandic society which he did not gain in life.

bloom posted:

So I recently watched The Terror(fun little series) and got curious about warship names. Can anyone recommend me a book on the subject? Not looking at any particular nation or timeframe as such, just got a general curiousity about how naming conventions change over time.

Feels to me like there should a book explaining how a country goes from "Erebus" and "Terror" to "Gay Viking" in 100 years.

bloom posted:

Feels to me like there should a book explaining how a country goes from "Erebus" and "Terror" to "Gay Viking" in 100 years.

mllaneza posted:

They're a good read. Churchill for all his faults and raging imperialism, is one hell of a writer. It's also probably the only source in military history written by a head of state during the actual conflict. "So I called <allied head of state>..." is a sentence very few authors could produce.

mllaneza posted:

Even his proposed Balkans followup to Italy made sense from the perspective someone looking at a map. Once through the coastal mountains, you're on a vast plain with a clear shot at Vienna. If the Western allies had beaten the USSR to Vienna and Budapest, that would have had a big impact on how the Cold War played out. So you have the experts analyst the prospects. If they say no, you don't do it.

feedmegin posted:

HMS Terror was a stone frigate as recently as 1971. The most recent HMS Erebus was broken up in 1947.

ChubbyChecker posted:

He wasn't the head of state, and there are tons of sources in military history written by the heads of states during the actual conflicts, eg. Trump's tweets about Syria.

bloom posted:

The why of it is what I'm interested in though. Going by my modern sensibilities, those names might as well be HMS You're hosed If You Sign Up.

SlothfulCobra posted:

They'd probably have access to antibacterial soap for a while, which'd cut down on the disease, but after that ran out, they'd be real hosed by all the festering disease to which they'd have no resistance from long-term exposure that people of the era would have. Best case scenario maybe their modern vaccines can keep out the big bugs for a generation, but nobody gets vaccinated for smallpox anymore.

And I don't even know how they'd deal with having to create a whole new system of plumbing, considering how their water sources would be left back 400 years in the future in Virginia. Or is that taken too? How desperate for food will these people be after their preserved goods run out and they're stuck with a whole town's worth of empty stomachs and most of Europe's arable farmland already accounted for by legitimate non-time-traveling landlords? Are they supposed to quickly become a hub of trade or manufacturing? Darn, now I'm stuck wondering what the plot of this book is...this is how they getcha.

mllaneza posted:

.... In short, he gets laughed at for some of his ideas, but no credit for listening to the professionals once they'd done their homework....

...So you have the experts analyst the prospects. If they say no, you don't do it...

13th KRRC War Diary, 12th Apr 1918 posted:

In the afternoon considerable shelling was carried out by both the enemy and us. A white tape was laid from the Aid Post to B Coy. with a branch off to C Coy.-this was to guide the incoming Btn. and give them as much assistance as possible. In due course the Btn. was relieved and moved into reserve at GOMMECOURT PARK where everyone is in tunnels although in many cases very cramped.
Relief complete was given at 10.45 p.m.

bloom posted:

The why of it is what I'm interested in though. Going by my modern sensibilities, those names might as well be HMS You're hosed If You Sign Up.

I'm not kidding when I say I want to know how people come up with their warboat names.

HEY GUNS posted:

i want to get warspite tattooed over one of my iliac crests

HEY GUNS posted:

i want to get warspite tattooed over one of my iliac crests

SeanBeansShako posted:

Sometimes they inherit these names via tradition. Sometimes they stick and are part of silly in joke that confuse people, congratulations for keeping that tradition going by the way.

Remember the British Admiralty is full of eccentrics and nerdy weirdos who are just as odd as we are only they dress slightly better and don't have access to the internet. Yes they are good at sailing, budgets and leading but my god they can get weird.

Comrade Gorbash posted:

The RN also has a deep weakness for theme naming. Around the turn of the 19th century they kept naming gun-brigs <thing>er, so you have Boxer, Grappler, Growler, and Defender, but also Tickler, Cracker, and Plumper.

Cythereal posted:

I still prefer the RN's naming system to the USN's, though.

BalloonFish posted:

The famous Temeraire of 1798 was British-built but named after a French seventy-four captured and comissioned in 1759. Gloire and Glorieux both retained their French names in RN service. The oddest one is probably HMS Ville de Paris, which was a British-built first rate built in 1795 but named after de Grasse's flagship from the Revolutionary War which had been taken as a prize but sank before it could be put back into service. To commemorate the acheivement, and because Ville de Paris was a respected ship and design, the Admiralty comissioned a brand new ship named after the enemy's capital city in the enemy's language.

goatsestretchgoals posted:

Cowardly P-51s had only slightly more than half a fuel tank when they engaged the heroic Luftwaffe defenders who were saddled with a full fuel tank.

Tekopo posted:

Did the Romans ever name their ships? Do we have any record of actual named Roman ships, beyond a classification of which squadron they were in and their number?

quote:

Roman ships were commonly named after gods (Mars, Iuppiter, Minerva, Isis), mythological heroes (Hercules), geographical maritime features such as Rhenus or Oceanus, concepts such as Harmony, Peace, Loyalty, Victory (Concordia, Pax, Fides, Victoria) or after important events (Dacicus for the Trajan's Dacian Wars or Salamina for the Battle of Salamis).[94] They were distinguished by their figurehead (insigne or parasemum),[95] and, during the Civil Wars at least, by the paint schemes on their turrets, which varied according to each fleet.[96]

Fangz posted: