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The Lone Badger posted:AFAIK the biggest advantage of composite bows is that you can make them smaller for the same power, allowing you to have bows powerful enough to be militarily-relevant but short enough to fire from horseback. They're also a bit more efficient than a simple bow in transforming the stored energy into kinetic energy. So they aren't exactly a good option for quickly equipping an army? Like, the thread has taught me that longbows are a pain in the rear end to make and train for, but I haven't heard about other bows.
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Aug 10, 2018 08:22
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JcDent posted:I dunno why exactly tank destroyer chat got banned, but "Could Imperial Japan have won WW2?" repeats get p. boring 
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Aug 10, 2018 09:13
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JcDent posted:So they aren't exactly a good option for quickly equipping an army? Like, the thread has taught me that longbows are a pain in the rear end to make and train for, but I haven't heard about other bows. AFAIK English style longbows are relatively simple to make, just take the right part of a yew tree, carve it right and let it dry, but you gotta have the right wood for that and apparently it was pretty uncommon in continental europe or something? Composite bows take a lot of effort and a months-long curing process, though. Poster JaucheCharly did a series of posts about making them back in one of the medieval history threads and it seemed like a LOT of work. Can't speak to crossbows or early hand gonnes. Have this weird feeling that I'm wrong on something above too, but 
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Aug 10, 2018 09:41
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ilmucche posted:Don't they also require less strength to draw? Generally if you're going to war you want to use a bow that's as strong as you're capable of drawing. I believe composite bows are slightly more efficient so a given power can be achieved with a weaker draw. Grand Prize Winner posted:AFAIK English style longbows are relatively simple to make, just take the right part of a yew tree, carve it right and let it dry, but you gotta have the right wood for that Needs to be good and seasoned too. You can't cut down a yew tree and immediately make a bow with it, you've hopefully had a stock of wood sitting for a while. The Lone Badger fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Aug 10, 2018 |
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Aug 10, 2018 09:43
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Cythereal posted:and America was willing to stomach those losses. Yes. This is the bit the Japan did not know to be true. Though that said, imagine a big old fleet battle in the deep ocean like the Japanese were expecting to fight, where Pearl Harbour levels of battleships go down (in the ocean so they aren't getting raised) with great loss of life, plus a bunch of carriers too, where America has incontrovertibly been massively defeated - America isn't comprised of Spartan cyborgs, it's humans like anywhere else, and I could see there at least being considerable pressure for a negotiated peace in that circumstance.
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Aug 10, 2018 10:51
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JcDent posted:I dunno why exactly tank destroyer chat got banned, but "Could Imperial Japan have won WW2?" repeats get p. boring One common mistake that people often make is trying to compare the draw weights of bows and crossbows directly against each other. That's obviously a problem when the average war bow had a draw weight of (IIRC) ~80-120 lbf, whereas military crossbows could got all the way to 1200 lbf, so on first glance it would look like the crossbow would be ludicrously more powerful. However, in practice the total energy of both ended up fairly close together, and the reason for that lies in the power stroke. Basically, power stroke is the distance between the points of a (cross)bows string at rest, and at full extension. In other words, its the distance across which the string is actively exerting force on the arrow/bolt when it is loosed. For bows, that's almost the full length of the arrow, so somewhere in the neighbourhood of a meter. For crossbows it's much, much shorter, more like ten to twenty centimeters. So while a bow exerts less force on its arrow at any given moment, that force is applied for a much longer period of time, resulting in a total kinetic energy that's actually pretty similar to what a crossbow's greater force applied over a shorter duration. In practice, an 800 lbf medieval crossbow would end up with roughly the same kinetic energy as a ~100 lbf bow. At that point, you'd need a fairly elaborate device such as a windlass or cranequin to span the crossbow. So in practice, bows and crossbows meant for warfare weren't all that far apart in terms of raw power. The main advantage crossbows had is that even with very powerful ones you didn't have to be physically strong to draw them, since you could use a variety of devices to give you massive mechanical advantage. By comparison, if you want to draw and shoot a 100+ lbf war bow, you'd better be pretty drat buff around the shoulders. Of course, the crossbow's loading devices might be kind of tricky to use in the heat of combat, possibly resulting in a fairly slow rate of fire. If you're interested in more details about crossbows, there's a youtube channel and site by a guy called Tod who builds historically accurate reproductions of historical crossbows (and other weapons) and has a shitload of info about them: https://todsworkshop.com/blogs/blog/crossbows-spanning-methods
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Aug 10, 2018 10:56
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Just to add on that, here's a video Tod going down to the nitty gritty of bow power: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdB470lo6nM A .22LR round packs more energy than any of the bows tested.
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Aug 10, 2018 11:03
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I don't think invading Fiji, etc, was really all that viable either. Japan early 42 is in a position where literally any offensive option is bad and a waste of resources but they need to win Right loving Now and they're on a great streak of victories and so therefore not continuing the offensive Somewhere Viable and Useful is not possible. you can argue, fairly accurately, that putting oneself in this position is bad, but i don't really know what the Good Alternative was at this point. The HMS Good Alternative sailed in '34 What happened/changed in 1934?
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Aug 10, 2018 11:32
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Fangz posted:
The “rebuilding” began in 1938
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Aug 10, 2018 11:41
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ilmucche posted:Don't they also require less strength to draw? Afaik most cultures either used either both technologies or none of them, which leads to many RPGs using the terms recurve and composite interchangeably.
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Aug 10, 2018 11:48
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Seriously people constantly ignore the decisions made in the late thirties with an eye to a coming conflict. The decision to have a massive two ship navy was made two months after the Anschluss, which included things like the swarm of Essex class carriers that hosed Japan. Some of the carriers that won the battles of 1944 had their keels laid before Pearl Harbor. Even more importantly the process of designing those ships was started years before that. Even the ships laid down in early 1942 benefited from drawing on blueprints that had been worked on for a long time. Could the Japanese beat the US without the 1938 naval bill? Probably not even then but 1943 looks a lot different without the first new fleet carriers coming online in the middle of that year. Imagine if Enterprise et al had to keep holding the line well into 44, maybe even 46”5The war in the Atlantic probably also looks different with fewer escorts (especially light carriers) available for anti uboat work.
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Aug 10, 2018 11:59
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Cyrano4747 posted:The decision to have a massive two ship navy  The USN - two Montana-class battleships, one for the Atlantic, one for the Pacific.
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Aug 10, 2018 12:32
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Pykcrete ships with battleship guns and hundreds of planes
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Aug 10, 2018 12:50
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GotLag posted:What happened/changed in 1934? eh i picked the November Incident kind of arbitrarily, it's part of a broad continuum of increasing Japanese colonial adventurism and militarism. you could probably argue the January 28 incident in '32, but that seems more in line with traditional carving up of China, or the Mukden Incident in 31, or even the 2-26 incident which forced Okada out in 36.
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Aug 10, 2018 12:59
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:That isn’t the reason. Building a ship is the long duration, not sending it from the Atlantic to The Pacific. A vast majority of US combat ships were built on the East Coast. No he's right (a bit) on this. Building on the East Coast to go through the Panama canal on your way to your permanent mid-Pacific base is one thing But if you are a European power and you need to move your fleet to the Pacific it's a really long way to go, particularly if your basing is uncertain. You can't go over the top though the Arctic, you have to go all the way around Africa and back up again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War#/media/File:Battle_of_Japan_Sea_(Route_of_Baltic_Fleet)_NT.PNG. Russia sending the Baltic fleet to the East was a massive bet and once it fell apart Russia had no means of continuing the war. Cyrano4747 posted:Seriously people constantly ignore the decisions made in the late thirties with an eye to a coming conflict. The decision to have a massive two ship navy was made two months after the Anschluss, which included things like the swarm of Essex class carriers that hosed Japan. Some of the carriers that won the battles of 1944 had their keels laid before Pearl Harbor. Even more importantly the process of designing those ships was started years before that. Even the ships laid down in early 1942 benefited from drawing on blueprints that had been worked on for a long time. Also this. There's a reason Guadacanal is such an interesting Naval campaign - in many ways what defined the course of the battle was the fact that both sides knew that they were not getting any new carriers for 12 months and could not risk the ones they had. Not coincidentally it was probably the most even part of the naval war in the East. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Aug 10, 2018 |
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Aug 10, 2018 13:07
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ilmucche posted:Given how the Japanese treated other places they invaded if they took hawaii there likely wouldn't be many Americans left, so we could've seen the interesting effect of dropping an atomic bomb on a volcano Xenu already did it. The result is John Travolta.
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Aug 10, 2018 14:55
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Interesting thread on the genesis of unilateral presidential control of the US nuclear arsenal. https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/1027913455091810304 Particularly https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/1027913459474857984 He notes this later but it's interesting that during the Cold War the executive control was seen as a check against bellicose military leaders who may have wanted to use nukes, whereas now....
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Aug 10, 2018 14:55
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huh, speaking of that guy he did an interesting thread on the bombings in general yesterday: https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/1027574332044783616 He mentions re: the Japanese thoughts on Soviet arbitration, incidentally: https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/1027574359559479297
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Aug 10, 2018 15:43
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Well it's true. Nerds hate blackpower in elf games.
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Aug 10, 2018 15:50
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Personally I would love to see more of these mighty warriors and noble Paladins suddenly being carried off in a whiff of shot by a grinning peasant wielding a blunderbus.
SeanBeansShako fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Aug 10, 2018 |
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Aug 10, 2018 15:52
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The caveat about Japanese concerns about Soviet invasion does need an important clarification, though: Japan was worried about continued Soviet aggression in China, not an invasion of the Home Islands. August Storm was goddamn terrifying and the bulk of the IJA was tied up in China, so Japan was very alarmed about the Soviet Union just straight up taking China and making it another Soviet Socialist Republic. Japanese leadership was not, however, worried about Soviet landings in the Home Islands themselves. The Soviet Union had no navy worthy of concern and zero amphibious assault capability. They might have developed that capability by late 1946 or 1947, but by then the Americans would have settled the matter via Operation Starvation, Operation Olympic (with or without the massive chemical weapon attack that had been planned and presented to Truman), or the atomic bomb.
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Aug 10, 2018 15:53
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Koramei posted:huh, speaking of that guy he did an interesting thread on the bombings in general yesterday: Incidentally he's the guy that invented Nukemap. His New Yorker archive is dope.
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Aug 10, 2018 15:55
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Yeah in 1945 the USSR invading Japan was just as realistic as Germany invading Britian with Operation Sealion. Probably with similar results as well if it were to actually happen.
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Aug 10, 2018 15:57
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zoux posted:Incidentally he's the guy that invented Nukemap. His New Yorker archive is dope. And the Nuclear Secrecy blog. All pro clicks. E: His 'Older Entries' link seems to be broken, but the Post Archives link seems to work. goatsestretchgoals fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Aug 10, 2018 |
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Aug 10, 2018 16:56
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Look I know it's terrible but the Demon Core is an insanely cool name for anything, much more an actual nuclear bomb
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Aug 10, 2018 17:11
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What about just getting a brigade on Hokkaido so they could claim it in the aftermath as an occupation zone?
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Aug 10, 2018 18:52
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feedmegin posted:
Phone posting strikes again.
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Aug 10, 2018 19:38
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Raenir Salazar posted:What about just getting a brigade on Hokkaido so they could claim it in the aftermath as an occupation zone? Wasn't going to happen, the Soviet Union had no sea lift assets and no great interest in doing so. They were far more interested in Korea, China, and Southeast Asia than they were in Japan. What they wanted from Japan itself - and they have to this day - was the Kurile Islands.
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Aug 10, 2018 19:47
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Cythereal posted:Wasn't going to happen, the Soviet Union had no sea lift assets and no great interest in doing so. They were far more interested in Korea, China, and Southeast Asia than they were in Japan. What they wanted from Japan itself - and they have to this day - was the Kurile Islands. By 46 they probably could have entirely by air if they wanted to, I have to imagine almost everything Japan had would be trying to stop the US landings in the south.
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Aug 10, 2018 21:28
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Corsair Pool Boy posted:By 46 they probably could have entirely by air if they wanted to, I have to imagine almost everything Japan had would be trying to stop the US landings in the south. Only if they could land sufficient forces, which is unlikely. Japan's geography is extremely rugged - there's a drat good reason why the Americans were planning to invade from the south, and it's the same reason why Japan was expecting to be invaded in the south. Opposed aerial landings are virtually unheard of.
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Aug 10, 2018 21:41
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Cyrano4747 posted:Seriously people constantly ignore the decisions made in the late thirties with an eye to a coming conflict. The decision to have a massive two ship navy was made two months after the Anschluss, which included things like the swarm of Essex class carriers that hosed Japan. Some of the carriers that won the battles of 1944 had their keels laid before Pearl Harbor. Even more importantly the process of designing those ships was started years before that. Even the ships laid down in early 1942 benefited from drawing on blueprints that had been worked on for a long time. Similarly, it was British prewar preparation in expanding their aircraft industry that allowed aircraft to exceed German production during the Battle of Britain - maybe somebody knows some good hard stats on this, I'm guessing this lead the British never relinquished.
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Aug 10, 2018 22:38
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Nebakenezzer posted:Similarly, it was British prewar preparation in expanding their aircraft industry that allowed aircraft to exceed German production during the Battle of Britain - maybe somebody knows some good hard stats on this, I'm guessing this lead the British never relinquished. The shadow factory scheme is a really interesting bit of the production war.
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Aug 10, 2018 23:04
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Cythereal posted:Only if they could land sufficient forces, which is unlikely. Japan's geography is extremely rugged - there's a drat good reason why the Americans were planning to invade from the south, and it's the same reason why Japan was expecting to be invaded in the south. Opposed aerial landings are virtually unheard of. But the US also only has bases and logistical "highways" from the south. Japan also didn't expect the USSR to enter the war and thus could reasonably expect that the USSR wouldn't serve as a launch pad for an American invasion from the north, or worry about diversionary attacks. I've decided to take another look at the Leavensworth papers, the Japanese had 80,000 soldiers in the Kuriles, 20,000 in South Sakhalin, and around 260,000 in Southern Korea. The Soviets carried out amphibious landings (the youtube series Soviet Storm gave me the most details, the Leavensworth papers and Wikipedia gave no information; Soviet Storm also asserts that Stalin was interested in Hokkaido as an occupation zone) on Sakhalin, and the Kuriles. 10,000 landing directly on the northern most island. Supposedly 8,000 defended the northern most island. The Soviets had est. 42 ships for the assault on Shumshu, the Soviets took the island with only 1,000 casualties before the garrison surrendered. Soviet Storm goes on to assert the Soviets were planning on invading Hokkaido before Stalin canceled the operation due to US diplomatic opposition. Considering the naval bases and airfields captured that put Hokkaido well within operational range, and whatever IJN assets to defend the home islands were likely earmarked for the Americans, I think the Soviets certainly had the capacity to land 10,000 on Hokkaido if the will existed to push for it. Based on what information I can get regarding the Kurils, I really don't see the evidence that Hokkaido would've been insurmountable for the Soviets, especially if it is simultaneous with Downfall.
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Aug 10, 2018 23:07
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SeanBeansShako posted:Personally I would love to see more of these mighty warriors and noble Paladins suddenly being carried off in a whiff of shot by a grinning peasant wielding a blunderbus. Ever check out Arcanum? That’s the opening cutscene and one of the central themes of the game.
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Aug 11, 2018 09:56
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TaurusTorus posted:Ever check out Arcanum? That’s the opening cutscene and one of the central themes of the game. I already own it and have been hoping years for it to either be remade or adapted into a modern game. When I heard I could also do this with Pillars of Eternity I installed that thing and played it hardcore. I have a soft spot too for Fable 2, It's got fancy muzzle loaded black powder weaponry and 18th century styling outfits.
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Aug 11, 2018 13:43
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Soviet tank winter camo Queue: Semovente L40 da 47/32, Semovente da 75/18, Semovente da 105/25, 7.92 mm wz. 35 anti-tank rifle, 76.2 mm wz. 1902 and 75 mm wz. 1902/26, IM-1 squeezebore cannon, 45 mm M-6 gun, 25-pounder, 25-pounder "Baby", 37 mm Anti-Tank Gun M3, 36 inch Little David mortar, 105 mm howitzer M3, 15 cm sIG 33, 10.5 cm leFH 18, 7.5 cm LG 40, 10.5 cm LG 42, 17 cm K i. Mrs. Laf., 47 mm wz.25 infantry gun, Ferdinand, Tiger (P), Scorpion, SKS, Australian Centurions in Vietnam, PzIII Ausf. E and F, PzIII Ausf. G and H, Trials of the PzIII Ausf. H in the USSR, PzIII Ausf.J-N, Russian Renault, Nashorn/Hornisse, Medium Tank M4A2E8, P.1000 and other work by Grotte, KV-100 and KV-122, Cruiser Tank Mk.I, Cruiser Tank Mk.II, Valentine III and V, Valentine IX, Valentine X and XI, 7TP and Vickers Mk.E trials in the USSR, Modern Polish tank projects, SD-100 (Czech SU-100 clone), TACAM R-2, kpúv vz. 34, kpúv vz. 37, kpúv vz. 38, IS-1 (IS-85), IS-2 (object 240), Production of the IS-2, IS-2 modernization projects, GMC M8, First Soviet assault rifles, Stahlhelm in WWI, Stahlhelm in WWII Available for request:  Schmeisser's work in the USSR Object 237 (IS-1 prototype) SU-85 T-29-5 KV-85 Tank sleds T-80 (the light tank) Proposed Soviet heavy tank destroyers DS-39 tank machinegun MS-1/T-18 Kalashnikov's debut works SU-152 combat debut MS-1 production Kalashnikov-Petrov self-loading carbine SU-76M (SU-15M) production S-51 SU-76I T-34 applique armour projects T-26 with mine detection equipment NEW  Archer  Medium Tank M3 use in the USSR HMC T82 57 mm gun M1 Medium Tank M4A4  Jagdpanzer IV Panther trials in the USSR Grosstraktor Gebirgskanone M 15 Maus development in 1943-44 German anti-tank rifles Panzer IV/70 SOMUA S 35 in the German army  Hotchkiss H 35 and H 39  FIAT 3000 FIAT L6-40
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Aug 11, 2018 22:14
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Cyrano4747 posted:Seriously people constantly ignore the decisions made in the late thirties with an eye to a coming conflict. The decision to have a massive two ship navy was made two months after the Anschluss, which included things like the swarm of Essex class carriers that hosed Japan. Some of the carriers that won the battles of 1944 had their keels laid before Pearl Harbor. Even more importantly the process of designing those ships was started years before that. Even the ships laid down in early 1942 benefited from drawing on blueprints that had been worked on for a long time. A lot of people forget that at the outset of the war, the US military wasn't exactly a bastion of strength. While Roosevelt had laid the groundwork for the rebuilding of the military, even by 1941 it was still recovering from the deep cuts of the Great Depression and would take time to build into a truly effective fighting force. And while we know what resources the US had available and could bring to the table, the leaders of Germany and Japan had no way of knowing that US industrial output would become as flat-out ludicrous as they became. Like, look at the Willow Run Bomber Plant. Before the war it was literally a strip of farmland in the middle of loving nowhere. Ground is broken in April 1941, and within five months they sprung 3.5 million square feet of factory space into existence, and within three years production was streamlined to the point that they were producing a four engined heavy bomber every sixty minutes. This is insane, and it was happening all across the country, from Chrysler's tank plant an hour away in Warren, Michigan to Kaiser's shipyards on the West Coast. The rate at which the US was able to both build and innovate was utterly staggering and frankly unbelievable. There's some story that I can't remember the details of that Hitler was once given an intelligence estimate on how many planes the US was producing a month, and he tore the estimate to shreds because there was no loving way anyone could build that many planes, and if the US really was building that many Germany may as well give up now-and in reality, the US was building even more than that. In the end, that's the thing to really keep in mind when considering Axis decision making during the war-it's not that they realized the US was an industrial juggernaut and decided to fight it anyway, it's that they had no clue just how incredibly horrifying US industrial might really was.
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Aug 12, 2018 03:55
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Acebuckeye13 posted:A lot of people forget that at the outset of the war, the US military wasn't exactly a bastion of strength. While Roosevelt had laid the groundwork for the rebuilding of the military, even by 1941 it was still recovering from the deep cuts of the Great Depression and would take time to build into a truly effective fighting force. And while we know what resources the US had available and could bring to the table, the leaders of Germany and Japan had no way of knowing that US industrial output would become as flat-out ludicrous as they became. Even so, in the case of Japan, recognition of how vastly superior American industry was to Japan's was why some naval officers supported the Washington Naval Treaty despite it limiting Japan's number of battleships below the United States. The prevailing sentiment in Tokyo was that it was a gross national insult, but some in the IJN supported the treaty because it saved Japan from getting into an arms race with the United States that Japan couldn't hope to win.
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Aug 12, 2018 04:07
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Imagine being the Japanese Naval Minister in the midst of a 1920s Anglo-American arms race. They have plans for 18" gun giants and you've just barely convinced the Diet to go with an 8-8 plan of 4 16" gun ships and 4 18" gun ships at a later date. And then somebody in DC or Whitehall says "what if we could make the guns even bigger" and you're spending half the national budget on ships that are now obsolete. Again.
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Aug 12, 2018 04:43
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bewbies posted:I don't think anyone is arguing that the Japanese were right ex post facto, as they obviously were not. What I'm arguing at least, is that based on what information was available to them in the mid 1930s, planning for a decisive battle that would keep the US out of the western Pacific was a reasonable and possibly even best course of action considering what they wanted to do politically and strategically. And some of what America did in terms of production are just kind of insane. The Detroit Arsenal was built in just under seven months and producing tanks before it was completed. Detroit ended up with 350,000 people moving there. That was the 1940 population of Hiroshima. Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company had ~1000 workers at the start of the war. And at it's peak had ~30,000. And it was just producing Liberty Ships and T2 tankers. Which are valuable but not the same priority as an aircraft carrier. I'm not sure there is a historical precedent for this. The closest I can think of was the industrialization of the Soviet Union. I can totally see planners in Japan saying to themselves that sure, America is an industrial juggernaut that can out produce us 2 to 1 but if we smash their fleet at Pearl Harbor that puts them into a position of being behind and having to catch up. Even the most pessimistic planners would have probably found the idea that the US would produce more Essex class carriers during the war than Japan would build carriers to be insane.
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Aug 12, 2018 09:07
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