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But that's Cadorna
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Aug 28, 2018 03:50
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Cessna posted:Any time, I'm more than happy to pass it along. It was very surreal at the time. Hey if you're sharing war stories, I recall that you one said you participated in the 1992 UNITAF landing in Somalia? It's really rather hard to find anything written with any colour about this mission. It being rather overshadowed by the Gulf War which immediately proceeded it, and the drama in Mogadishu that followed. I assume you mostly did famine relief, and probably didn't interact much with local militia? I'd love to hear more war stories 
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Aug 28, 2018 04:23
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Koramei posted:Here you go What book is this? The side/front view I can use for 3D modeling.
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Aug 28, 2018 04:37
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5000 Years of Chinese Costumes If you don’t have it in a library near you I can take some pictures if there’s a period you’re interested in, it’s mad expensive. E: huh actually I looked it up and it’s not as mad expensive as I was expecting but still the offer stands, I’ve going to read it a bunch lately so it’s pretty simple for me to do. Koramei fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Aug 28, 2018 |
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Aug 28, 2018 04:48
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Squalid posted:I assume you mostly did famine relief, and probably didn't interact much with local militia? I'd love to hear more war stories Yep, there really isn't that much to tell. After the landing we mostly went along with food convoys, which was generally uneventful as the sort of folks who would attack a food convoy were scared off by the visible presence of armor. We were pulled out before the "Blackhawk Down" incident, and there's a part of me that wonders if withdrawing the armor emboldened the warlords. (Helicopters, while lethal, aren't as intimidating.) The Gulf stories are more interesting.
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Aug 28, 2018 04:57
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Koramei posted:5000 Years of Chinese Costumes I would happily take "ALL OF THE TANG" and "ALL OF THE JIN," and maybe "ALL OF THE ENTIRE BOOK, JUST THROW IT AT ME" if you are so inclined  ...I should probably just hit the library
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Aug 28, 2018 06:15
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Cessna posted:Yep, there really isn't that much to tell. After the landing we mostly went along with food convoys, which was generally uneventful as the sort of folks who would attack a food convoy were scared off by the visible presence of armor. We were pulled out before the "Blackhawk Down" incident, and there's a part of me that wonders if withdrawing the armor emboldened the warlords. (Helicopters, while lethal, aren't as intimidating.) The Gulf stories are more interesting. Thaaat's the problem though, I can find Gulf War stories all over the place, but there's literally nothing but the driest of dry bare boned descriptions about UNITAF. But surely something interesting happened to SOMEBODY in a massive amphibious landing and occupation of a country in the middle of a massive civil war and famine? There's just little accessible material about what happened on the ground during this extremely large and ambitious operation. I don't know if your withdrawal emboldened the warlords or not, but Colin Powell was already convinced before any boots landed that a prolonged American presence would inevitably drag the US a quagmire from which it would struggle to escape. For that reason US interference in Somali internal affairs was kept to a minimum until American soldiers could GTFO and be replaced by UN peacekeepers. Boutrous Boutrous Ghali by contrast had no qualms about jumping into local politics. He was so gung-ho in fact that he had argued for US forces to forcibly occupy Somaliland, even though the country was not in famine, so that it could be annexed back into Somalia proper, regardless of local opinion on the issue. Colin Powell thought that was a terrible idea and he was shot down by the Americans. However once the US handed operational control over to the UN it quickly dived into the morass of Mogadishu politics and US soldiers were dragged along too.
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Aug 28, 2018 06:47
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It's been forever since I read it but Somalia on $5 A Day was a pretty good read about the 10th Mountain Division in Somalia before Oct. 3 1993.
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Aug 28, 2018 12:37
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Koramei posted:5000 Years of Chinese Costumes I'll add it to my wishlist, but in the meantime, if you're so inclined, male & female costumes: Ming (1368-1644), Yuan (1271-1368), South/North (420-589), Wei/Jin (220-589 CE), North (420-589).
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Aug 28, 2018 14:00
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Fuligin posted:I would happily take "ALL OF THE TANG" and "ALL OF THE JIN," and maybe "ALL OF THE ENTIRE BOOK, JUST THROW IT AT ME" if you are so inclined Check out the Osprey site and see how much their e-books are for that sort of thing too.
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Aug 28, 2018 14:09
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if rodrigo diaz closes this thread i can make a new one but i warn yall it will be 100% no-effort
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Aug 28, 2018 14:36
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:There's a reason that fascists aren't entirely wrong when they try to describe themselves with the "third way" euphemism. this is why all the really old-school right wing conspiracy theorists fixated on fractional reserve lending as the hidden evil conspiracy that was destroying the modern world. this seems to be on the way out with the younger far-rightists, at least i haven't seen as much of it as from the old people.
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Aug 28, 2018 15:03
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that was one of the major tent poles of Ron Paulism and the neo-goldbug cryptocurrency movement. it’s become somewhat politically homeless post Trump but then what isn’t.
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Aug 28, 2018 15:09
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CoolCab posted:that was one of the major tent poles of Ron Paulism and the neo-goldbug cryptocurrency movement. it’s become somewhat politically homeless post Trump but then what isn’t.
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Aug 28, 2018 15:19
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So I've been pretty into local civil war history since I moved back to Kansas City; in digging around old papers I might have found something fairly interesting. The sleepy little picturesque All-American town I live in was, in the antebellum years, one of the three major riverine ports offering ferry service across the Missouri River (the others were Leavenworth and City of Kansas...how the City of Kansas--now Kansas City--became the dominant city in the region is another interesting story). This was pretty big business at the time, as nearly all western expansion to the Pacific territories filtered through northwest Missouri. This particular part of the state, being heavily populated, somewhat remote, and right on the Kansas border, was one of the worst regions in the entire country for bushwhacking and plundering and whatnot--the county didn't recover to its pre-war population until the 1980 census. Parkville is named after George S. Park, who is in a lot of ways comparable to Jebediah Springfield. He fought in the Texas War (somehow surviving the Goliad Massacre), made his way, along with thousands of other people, to a new chunk of Missouri that had just been "bought" from natives and set up a very profitable ferry enterprise. He also started a newspaper which, due to the recent population explosion and its position on the Kansas border, became very influential in the region and notable nationwide. Park was no abolitionist--he owned slaves--but he believed in a free soil Kansas (probably as that would increase white migration to the region and thus give him more ferry traffic), and that riled the locals. They attacked his newspaper and States Rightsed his printing press into the river, possibly lynching a black employee or slave of Park's in the process. Park was very upset by this, and wrote letters describing the event to just about every major newspaper on the east coast. Several New York papers have them in their archives. After this tragedy, Park gave up printing, and briefly moved away, but upon coming back to the area, found a lucrative new enterprise almost immediately: the western branches of the Underground Railroad had established a fascinating new city, called Quindaro, on the Kansas side of the river. Runaway slaves from Missouri and Arkansas were generally shuttled through safehouses along the river until they reached the Kansas City area, at which point they were ferried across the river to Kansas and something approaching freedom. Quindaro was built by a particularly dedicated band of abolitionists, who had the not-terrible plan of inundating Kansas with so many freed slaves and free-soil white folk that Kansas would have no choice but to enter the union as a free state. This did not work out quite as they intended, of course. Park found himself shuttling a lot of these runaway slaves and white settlers from Parkville to Quindaro, and so started building places for them to stay while they were waiting for their ferry. In reading about Park's printing problem and subsequent enterprises, I've seen references, but no official account, to some manner of massacre that occurred in Parkville in either 1857 or 1858. What I've seen so far: a band of spirited States Rights supporters raided the town, rounded up a bunch of free black and runaways, killed them somehow or other, and buried them in a mass grave in the river bluffs just south of town. Local paper archives don't go back this far, and there's only brief mentions of it in other publications. So, I'm going to try and do some actual field archeology! The only sources I have mention the grave being nearby the oldest (white) settlement in Platte County, inside what is today a wildlife preserve. I suspect I won't find much, but it isn't a very heavily traveled area, so maybe there is something up there. After all, they didn't find Quindaro until the 1980s, and that was right in the middle of the KC metro area. Here's a killer rundown of Quindaro, if you're interested. Follow up: Park was big on education and funded the startups of two colleges, what are now Park University and Kansas State University. Park is of particular interest to the Reconstruction era, as it employed and educated blacks during an era when integrated higher education was virtually nonexistent in America. Parkville was still segregated of course - its roads did not connect the black and white sides of town, which looks rather strange today. bewbies fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Aug 28, 2018 |
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Aug 28, 2018 15:26
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CoolCab posted:that was one of the major tent poles of Ron Paulism and the neo-goldbug cryptocurrency movement. it’s become somewhat politically homeless post Trump but then what isn’t. Trump's director of the office of manager and budget was the founder of the congressional blockchain caucus.
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Aug 28, 2018 15:48
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CoolCab posted:that was one of the major tent poles of Ron Paulism and the neo-goldbug cryptocurrency movement. it’s become somewhat politically homeless post Trump but then what isn’t. It's also, at its core, an antisemitic ideology. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:18960415_antisemitic_political_cartoon_in_Sound_Money.jpg And it leads pretty logically to this: https://slate.com/technology/2018/08/the-lurking-threat-of-anti-semitism-in-cryptocurrency.html
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Aug 28, 2018 16:45
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bewbies posted:So, I'm going to try and do some actual field archeology! Out of curiosity, would you have to do a fuckton of paperwork before doing any actual archeology there? I assume its gotta involve some sort of permit since it dosn't exactly sound like it'll be you and a shovel working on your own private property. Also how much detail do you plan to put into the documenting of your activities and findings? Trying to learn more about a specific part of the past is, in my opinion, always cool and good. However this opinion does rather assume that anything learned will be logged properly and the findings shared with the public since all archeology in effect is learning through destroying.
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Aug 28, 2018 17:52
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13th KRRC War Diary, 28th 1918 posted:Extensive salvaging operations were undertaken.
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Aug 28, 2018 22:12
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Are burying parties to bury the dead?
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Aug 28, 2018 22:14
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Fangz posted:Are burying parties to bury the dead? Yes.
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Aug 28, 2018 22:50
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So this is almost troll-level simplistic but I assure you it’s a real question: is the difference between light and heavy infantry/cavalry just the amount of armor worn? Would the only reason you not field all heavy X instead of light X be cost to field, or were there different tactical reasons to use different troops?
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Aug 28, 2018 22:54
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Wow that book is expensive, 150$ in Maple Syrup monopoly dollars.
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Aug 28, 2018 23:00
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poisonpill posted:So this is almost troll-level simplistic but I assure you it’s a real question: is the difference between light and heavy infantry/cavalry just the amount of armor worn? Would the only reason you not field all heavy X instead of light X be cost to field, or were there different tactical reasons to use different troops? At least in some militaries right now, the difference between light and regular infantry is the amount of vehicles used to support the dudes. Finnish sissi troops for instance ditch almost everything larger than an ATV or a snowmobile, and as a result can operate away from road networks, which is handy when basically everything between Finland and Yellow State is densely forested and roads are sparse. But that also means they have to hump everything they need on their back, which means a lot of grumbling and also no room for body armour or fancy weapons.
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Aug 28, 2018 23:11
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poisonpill posted:So this is almost troll-level simplistic but I assure you it’s a real question: is the difference between light and heavy infantry/cavalry just the amount of armor worn? Would the only reason you not field all heavy X instead of light X be cost to field, or were there different tactical reasons to use different troops? The role of cavalry changed over time, but lets take, say, the middle ages. If you're using heavy cavalry; your mounted knights, your cataphracts, whatever, you're using them to charge enemy positions. The goal is to overwhelm and break enemy infantry and panic them through mass charge or to pin already engaged infantry from the flank or behind. The idea is that the heavy cavalry is high off the ground and heavily armored, so they're protected from enemy attack (and, of course, being charged by horses is scary). With light cavalry; Spanish jinetes, koursores, turcopoles, etc, that's not why you're using them. You're using them to scout ahead, to conduct raids, and your main goal with them, for most of the battle, is to keep them away from the enemy. You're using them as skirmishers....you have them fire bows or javelins at the enemy, to harass troops out of position, to distract them, to attack them briefly and then withdraw, and generally use their increased speed and maneuverability to keep them harassing the enemy while trying to keep them from getting heavily engaged themselves. Heavy cavalry isn't as good at that as light cavalry is. Heavy cavalry is the bear, light cavalry are the bees.
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Aug 28, 2018 23:39
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poisonpill posted:So this is almost troll-level simplistic but I assure you it’s a real question: is the difference between light and heavy infantry/cavalry just the amount of armor worn? Would the only reason you not field all heavy X instead of light X be cost to field, or were there different tactical reasons to use different troops? Okay so on the absolute simplest possible terms: all of warfare forever is about logistics. You need your troops and the stuff your troops need to fight to be in the same place at the same time or you don't have an army. The 'lighter' a force is, the less logistical burden there is on it and the easier it is to enable wherever it wants to go. You might have an entirely light force that can go off the grid for a while, an entirely heavy force that stays at home, or usually some hybrid mixture of the two. Now two rules to remember: 1) A 'light' force will lose to a heavier force. 2) If the heavy force can't get to the place where the light force is, the light force wins by default. This hopefully explains why the history of most warfare isn't 10 guys on each side with full plate mail and repeating crossbows staring at each other.
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Aug 28, 2018 23:50
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France is here to talk about how the French use legèr. Interwar it meant mobile or fast in the sense of motorized or mechanized transport. Thus a French light division typically had more equipment and a bigger logistical tail than its non light equivalents.
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Aug 28, 2018 23:59
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Alchenar posted:This hopefully explains why the history of most warfare isn't 10 guys on each side with full plate mail and repeating crossbows staring at each other. Oh wow, you found my sketch books from high school!
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Aug 29, 2018 00:11
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All of the answers have been fascinating and wildly different so far. Please keep it coming, they’re great. As regards light and heavy in, say, the Roman times, were talking raiding parties and scouts vs regular infantry with spears and javelins? For modern times, where would a BMP filled with troops fall? And if (as I assume) this is considered light infantry, is the advantage over yanks only only mobility and logistics?
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Aug 29, 2018 00:15
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poisonpill posted:All of the answers have been fascinating and wildly different so far. Please keep it coming, they’re great. It depends on the military, frankly. A BMP full of infantry might be a "light" force if it's attached to a supply train that can keep it good to go in a place where a heavier force isn't feasible. Think USMC landing on a beach with a couple equivalent vehicles. Meanwhile it might be a "heavy" force if it's tied down to a base and can't move that far away - say a BMP in afghanistan that can't go too far away from the FOB for fear of running out of gas/ammo/etc. These are just terms, and as such they're entirely dependent on their context. edit: consider this: what the marines consider a "light" force, what the airborn considers a "light" force, and what a main line US Army division consider a "light" force are all going to be very different things.
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Aug 29, 2018 00:30
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Heavy cavalry in modernish times would be Libyan tanks stranded in the Sahara waiting for fuel and ammo while light cavalry would be Chadian irregulars running over their supply lines deep in the desert.
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Aug 29, 2018 00:53
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sullat posted:Heavy cavalry in modernish times would be Libyan tanks stranded in the Sahara waiting for fuel and ammo while light cavalry would be Chadian irregulars running over their supply lines deep in the desert. Built Battle ToughTM
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Aug 29, 2018 00:59
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Now there's a virgin/Chad meme for you.
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Aug 29, 2018 00:59
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The Virginian tank vs the irregular Chad I think I get your points here, that light/heavy really means long/short supply chain (or easy/hard, however you measure it). In modern warfare, is it a fair generalization to say that cities are taken with ‘light’ troops or does it once again depend on context? E: constantly mumbling about "supply chains" / literally jams whatever ammo he can find into the fifty year old gun and it still fires always stuck in mud exactly 15 miles behind the front lines / everywhere at once, defies geography writes memoirs pretending to have influenced the outcome / dies a thousand heroic deaths and retires to a life of leisure poisonpill fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Aug 29, 2018 |
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Aug 29, 2018 01:04
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What an army needs to take a city is mostly contingent on who/what is defending it. You can definitely just hunker down and blast away a city block-by-block, as the Russians did in Chechnya. Or just sprint around or through the cities like in the Invasion of Iraq. It's all relative.sullat posted:Heavy cavalry in modernish times would be Libyan tanks stranded in the Sahara waiting for fuel and ammo while light cavalry would be Chadian irregulars running over their supply lines deep in the desert. So I read this in a reddit thread, from a guy claims to be a milhist author named "Tom Cooper". quote:If Habré did anything well during his reign, that was to accept people from all possible (Chadian) tribes, regardless of their religion, ideology etc. He was especially happy to include/accept dissidents from various parties that used to collaborate with Libyans and/or the GUNT. Then he picked a bunch of youngsters and sent them for training abroad (primarily to France). When these came back, in 1986, they developed that 'razzou' (meanwhile better known as 'infiltration') tactics, the essence of which was 'old/traditional-style mounted raid' - but with support from AML-90s, ATGMs, and RPGs, and mounted on Toyotas, of course (I'm really trying to keep this 'short', so sorry if I omit anything). Nobody could confirm anything the last time I asked, so I'm still wondering if something this metal is possible. Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Aug 29, 2018 |
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Aug 29, 2018 01:36
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poisonpill posted:For modern times, where would a BMP filled with troops fall? And if (as I assume) this is considered light infantry, A BMP with infantry (more accurately, infantry with a BMP) would not be considered Light Infantry, it would be Mechanized Infantry. In fact, that's the very definition of "mechanized infantry," infantry with APCs/IFVs. quote:is the advantage over yanks only only mobility and logistics? A BMP isn't all that great. I wouldn't consider it at an advantage against a comparable US force. Cessna fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Aug 29, 2018 |
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Aug 29, 2018 02:04
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quote:They would pin down the targeted enemy unit with ATGMs and AML-90s, and then drive around its flanks - or straight within its positions/ranks - at such a speed that even minefields were no problem (they were travelling at such speeds, mines would explode behind their vehicles) Maybe in a cool Bollywood action movie, where the heroes stand on top of their vehicles and sing during the battle. In real life? Nope.
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Aug 29, 2018 02:07
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:
Reminds me a bit of Victoria 4th generation war. Literally don't read it unless you want to  yourself. Read it with the understanding that this is how a crazy person thinks the world works.TL;DR Light infantry toting RPG's, mortars, light technicals, T-34-85's manned by the Average Maine citizen (ie 40+ year olds) would be able to practically conquer all of America after it dissolves due to diversity.
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Aug 29, 2018 02:10
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That’s not a great read on th Toyota war. The trucks were used to transport ATGMs to positions and to develop different approaches to Libyan FBOs. It was more strategic mobility and less tactical mobility. The Libyans were demoralized and conceded the initiative from the beginning.
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Aug 29, 2018 02:24
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Nobody could confirm anything the last time I asked, so I'm still wondering if something this metal is possible. I know next to nothing about mines but it seems as though going fast through a minefield is the worst thing you can do.
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Aug 29, 2018 02:26
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