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Fangz posted:Nazis are dumb. QED Yep. One day I will write up an effort-post on how German infantry uniforms illustrate how utterly dumb they were. Maybe when I have a slow day at work.
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Oct 16, 2018 17:59
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Fangz posted:When there's a war on and your vehicle turns out to be 4x harder to produce than promised, kill the project. Don't pull manpower and manufacturing capacity from everything else. Sounds like you lack true Aryan will, genosse.
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Oct 16, 2018 18:16
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So a while ago I mentioned booby traps and mines and holy gently caress there's some stuff I hope I never have to experience. Not sure if the author, Ian Jones, is a bad one (I'm sure someone can look it up), but the book "Malice Aforethought: A history of booby traps from World War One to Vietnam" is an incredibly compelling read. It really gets into the nitty gritty "War is Hell" aspect, detailing how booby traps were first used (as we commonly know them now), how they were countered, training personnel to do so, and so on. I'll try to skim the text and pick up any excerpts that really stand out, but I'm just flipping through pages at the moment. There's a few booby traps I'd already heard about in other literature, and there's even a mention on Kraits! On killing other soldiers - WW1 "I saw straight to the front and a hundred yards away a crowd of men running towards us in grey uniforms. Picking up another rifle I joined him pouring rapid fire into this counter attack. We saw at least one drop, to Walker's rifle I think, and then noticed that they were running with their hands up. Laughing, we emptied our magazines into them in spite of that." On British Ingenuity - WW1 "The ingenuity of the British soldier is proverbial. In "No Man's Land" we devised 'booby traps'. The war could not have continued for a week without canned food: and these tins served a dual purpose. They were strung together on tripwires in the most inviting places for enemy patrols, with machine guns trained upon them. Soon as the tins rattled fire was opened up with the machine guns and a patrol hurried down the ditch to bring in the quarry, a prisoner or a corpse. In the first experiment I brought samples of each." German retaliation to the above - WW1 "But if the British soldier played with booby traps then the German was not to be denied, for they placed an elaborate explosive dummy in a ditch leading from our lines much used by our own patrols. The decoy proved, as was expected, too much for Jock's curiosity, and we lost two good men as the consequence." Advancing on a German withdrawal - WW1 "Ah sir we have lost a lot of good fellies. The trenches were left full of booby traps. All I did was pick up a Hun's helmet from the floor of a trench and a bomb went off underneath. Lucky for me sir it was burried and I only got it slightly. Ye'll perhaps know Mr. Harcourt of the 6 Warricks, Sir? Well, he's bought it. They went over on our right and he went down a dugout, but as soon as he put his hand on the handrail, the two bottom steps blew up, and took both his legs off. He died before they could get him away." --Examples of traps encountered during the German retreat: -A shovel stuck into the side of a dugout between the timbers; when the shovel is removed it pulls a wire that explodes a mine. -A French stove with stovepipe dismantled, one wire attached to the leg of the stove and the other to a stovepipe nearby; when the stovepipe is picked up a charge is fired. -A window-weight suspended by a fine cord stretched across the entrance to a dugout; a man entering would break the cord and the weight falls on a detonator attached to a charge. -Cap badges, artificial flowers, bits of evergreen, pieces of shell and other articles likely to be picked up as "souvenirs" left behind in dugouts and attached to charges. -Handrails on the steps of dugouts attached by a wire to a charge. -A timber on the side of a dugout projected slightly out at the top but was fixed at the bottom. A nail had been positioned, inviting the new owner of the dugout to drive it home and secure the timber. Behind the nail was the cap of a cartridge and an explosive charge. -In dugouts constructed with casing, mortice-and-tenon joints, the wedging of timber where the sides had been cut and removed could indicate the position of a charge. -A dozen stick grenades, to be fired by means if a wire attached to a sandbag which has to be moved before the door of a dugout could be opened. -A charge in a chimney with a length of fuse attached which would be ignited should a fire be lit. -Detonators in lumps of coal -A book on a table with a wire running from it down a table leg to a charge hidden under the floor; this would be initiated if the book was picked up. -Partially demolished dugouts with blown entrances were not always a sign of safety; charges were found in concealed portions of these, often using crude contact devices. -A branch placed over an entrance to a dugout as if to conceal it. On moving the branch a short delay was initiated before an explosion was caused. Gas shells as booby traps - WW1 "The Germans also made use of gas shells to deny troops the use of tunnels, dugouts, and cellars, and although not strictly traps, they did cause casualties. They were discovered after several men from a dressing station were seriously gassed. They had been in a German dugout in which there was the faintest smell of mustard gas. This gas, even in quite strong concentrations, does cause immediate incapacitation so the faintest smell would not be enough to worry about. However, after a few hours' exposure the sheltering soldiers developed the symptoms of mustard gas poisoning." On using aerial bombs in North Africa - WW2 "[Referencing a failed detonation earlier] Not all were so lucky. The Australian 2/34th Battalion passed through a minefield of aerial bombs, two of which detonated. There were 28 casualties, 12 fatalities and 16 injured, including the commanding officer who was badly wounded." Safe? - WW2 "In one case a mine was found on the surface with the igniter set to 'sicher' (safe). It looked as if it had been simple abandoned in the haste of the retreat. However, woe betide the unwary individual who picked it up because it had been set with an anti-lift device attached to the bottom of the mine." British Switch No.8 - WW2 "The Germans suffered at the hand of the retreating British as they retreated in 1942. [...] The switch consisted of a hollow spike which was driven into the ground and which house a striker system designed to fire a round of ammunition. The action of stepping on the bullet would be sufficient to release the striker, which would fire the bullet up into the unfortunate victim." ^ Captured stores of these were subsequently used by the Germans, except they were deliberately positioned in a way to aim for a man's genitals. It was called the "De-bollocker" by the Brits, not for the S-mine. Krazy Karl the Kooky Kraut - WW2 "[After a story of Karl losing his best friend to booby traps] 'You must approach the matter psychologically,' was his eternal cry. He could not stand for a long time in front of a house. 'Attach a mine to a door handle? That's for kids! The British did it until they got bored. It no longer takes anyone in and it does not affect the adversary's morale.' On the wall of a room a picture hung crooked. 'Tommy wouldn't bother at all about a crooked picture' Karl declared. 'But it would annoy the British officer that saw it. He would go over and put it straight. But that would be his last action on earth. Therefore, attach a fine wire to the picture leading to a charge in the plaster wall, put it breast high.'" On deserted vehicles and long range patrols - WW2 "[...] they had drive up to inspect a derelict truck and in doing so their jeep had run over a thermos-bomb. It was not an uncommon accident, for the enemy delighted in surrounding any abandoned vehicles with such anti-personnel devices. In the explosion that followed, the jeep was set on fire and the officer badly burned. Cox, the driver, jumped out and ran round the pull the officer out, but as he did so he stepped on another bomb which exploded and shattered his leg." All for some water - WW2 "[...] and another was wounded by a water bottle that exploded when the cork was pulled out." Collection for training - WW2 "Most, but not all, training was done without enemy mines because of the dangers involved. Besides the risks of handling unfamiliar mines, some of the explosive fillings used became dangerous with age, particularly after being subject ot the desert's extremes of temperature. In one case a 109th Engineer Combat Battalion truck carrying some 450 neutralised, but live, mines exploded, killing an entire 12-man squad instantly. The importance of mining - A German officer from an armoured pioneer batallion --- WW2 "A Tellermine should be laid every 50 to 100m or 100 to 200m. Very many dummy mines (metal, pieces of every kind) should be laid between the two real mines. If an enemy motor vehicle strikes a mine then they will naturally look for other mines. He will then look for other mines and find only dummy mines which will tend to irritate him, but eventually he will become careless after searching for mines along a stretch of 100m without finding anything but iron fragments. After he has become tired of searching and drives on, several other vehicles may pass over a live mine before one comes along which causes it to explode. In this way, almost every mine becomes effective and the enemy has corresponding losses. In addition, the enemy becomes very uncertain in his movements, he is greatly influenced psychologically, and ceases to have confidence in the safety of the highway even when it has been travelled by several vehicles." Booby trapped gun - WW2 "A booby-trapped rifle was discovered in which a small explosive charge was hidden in the butt which would explode when the trigger was pulled." Churchill AVRE - WW2 "In one town they came across there was a thick concrete roadblock on either side of the road into the middle of which a cylindrical concrete block had been rolled. This resisted nroaml tank-high explosive fire and therefore a Churchill AVRE with a Petard was requested to assist with the demolition. Using this, block in the centre of the road was reduced to rubble. Hammerton, a flail tank troop commander, was invited to go through the breach, but couldn't because the flail attachment was too large. It was decided the Petard-armed AVRE would go through and widen the break from the other side. It had just got through the gap when there was a tremendous explosion, and the 40-ton tank was shattered and thrown into the air. A jeep, which had nipped in behind the tank, simply vanished in the explosion. A naval mine with some 300 pounds of explosive had functioned under the tank, which also set off the remainder of the Petard rounds carried inside it." Tunnel Snakes - Vietnam "They would take a snake, we used to call them one-step, two-step, or three-step, and they were bamboo vipers. They weren't very long, but they had a very potent bite; once bitten you could only take one or two more steps. The Vietnamese somehow tied the snake into a piece of bamboo with a piece of string and as the tunnel rat goes through he knock it, and the snake comes out and bites you in the neck or face and then the blood gets to your heart very quickly. You had to make sure when you went through a tunnel you not only looked at the sides with your flash light, but also you looked at the ceiling." And the book goes on and on. There's mention of mines in Africa (or elsewhere) stacked one on top of the other, or even 3 in total, in a hole 6 feet deep. The minesweeper finds the first, removes it, and detonates the other two thanks to an anti-lift device. Or, when 3 were used, the first was removed and the 2 made safe... just for the 3rd's anti-lift device or pressure plate to function. Or, for example, sharpened Punji stakes "deployed" in landing zones in Vietnam. Anyone jumping off the helicopter ran the risk of injury. Grenades tied to loose branches (or small branches), at risk of being blown away from a helicopters "prop wash" could seriously injure a pilot or passengers, if not down the helicopter itself! Its a fascinating read and everyone here should add it to their library.
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Oct 16, 2018 18:17
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I like this little section I found in a book I was reading. "...Studies of the Recent U.S. "Operation Flash Burn" by the Swedish General Staff have resulted in their feeling that due to the present mobility, little change should be required in their tactical doctrine [when nuclear weapons are involved]", granted this was 1954, but hah.
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Oct 16, 2018 18:56
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Cessna posted:Yep. What, like how those Hugo Boss-designed uniforms looked really cool, but black wool in the Russian summer was a bad look even before the other factors that required the wearer to stand perfectly straight or else they'd ~ruin the lines~?
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Oct 16, 2018 19:01
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*forgot to refresh*
Natty Ninefingers fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Oct 16, 2018 |
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Oct 16, 2018 19:04
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Geisladisk posted:Why did the Nazis feel the need to make a shittier turretless Panther in order to accommodate a even bigger AT gun, when the gun on the Panther was already a specialized AT gun that could handle basically any Allied tank? Nazis believed in numerology and 88 was shorthand for 'heil Hitler'. ...but there's also the matter that KwK 42 could not handle every tank at all ranges and angles. Which no gun ever will, but the niche for heavy tank destroyer battalions was that they could snipe at enemy heavy tanks at ranges where enemy couldn't return effective fire. Plus they must have figured that since Germans were developing super duper heavy tanks, then everyone else was also developing super duper hyper heavies! Which isn't untrue, but those were mostly left at prototype stage when the war ended.
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Oct 16, 2018 19:10
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darthbob88 posted:What, like how those Hugo Boss-designed uniforms looked really cool, but black wool in the Russian summer was a bad look even before the other factors that required the wearer to stand perfectly straight or else they'd ~ruin the lines~? Boss designed Nazi Party uniforms and was a contractor who sewed them (using slave labor) during the war, but he didn't design the Wehrmacht's uniforms. Black wool was used for tank crews, but most infantry never saw these. And it's not a matter of standing perfectly straight as much as it is restrictive tailoring to emphasize physical characteristics and utter impracticality as regards manufacture and wear. Check out this photo:  Look at how high that guy's belt is. It's above his elbows. You can see this in all sorts of photos:  This was done to give them the "Empire Waist" look, to make their legs look longer so as to give the illusion of height. It looks snappy in newsreels, but it's really impractical and uncomfortable; imagine having a tight belt right on the bottom of your ribs. That belt was held in place with aluminum hooks threaded through internal suspenders that fit inside the uniform:  You can see the three holes for the hooks here:  The whole system is a complicated mess and was rendered unnecessary when they got regular leather suspenders, but they kept making them for years anyway.
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Oct 16, 2018 19:15
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Jobbo_Fett posted:On using aerial bombs in North Africa - WW2 e: holy poo poo the belt hooks I'm crying Tears of Patriotism aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Oct 16, 2018 |
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Oct 16, 2018 19:24
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aphid_licker posted:Are there sources given? These anecdotes are, very probably in my memory word for word, also in this guy's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Carell book on North Africa (I read it as a teenager, don't judge) and I'm curious which path they took to end up there. Nearest source for the 1st quoted bit points to "The Valentine in North Africa 1942-43", although this may just be the source to the story immediately prior. Source for Karl the Krazy Kraut is - "The Foxes of the Desert" 3rd one is "Notes on the experiences in mine laying and shelter construction" Oh, I forgot stuff like dummy slit trenches that are mined/booby-trapped so that those seeking shelter either choose between open, sighted terrain, or the possibility of blowing up in a trench. Or, you spot a mine/explosive device in the street, you attach a pull wire and retreat to some convenient cover. Maybe its a trench, maybe its a doorway, whatever. You pull the rope, pulling the mine, which pulls a wire, which detonates your "safe" position. Edit: Not to mention how dangerous anti-lift devices, or secondary fuzes, could be, that in some situations it was judged safer to simply destroy the munitions in situ and move on. Sadly, there's very little on the Russian front, save for a mention every once in a while. It's contrasted with the great section for Vietnam and another for the Japanese. Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Oct 16, 2018 |
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Oct 16, 2018 19:38
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the belt's been at the level of the floating ribs for a while and you have to hold it there somehow, some acw uniforms balanced the belt on top of little pillows of fabric at the back of the jacket the belt isn't to hold your pants up, it's to hold stuff on. trying to make the thing that holds the belt in place the same thing as the suspenders was the ill-advised part in my period you hold your pants up by lacing it to your jacket like both of them are a huge shoe
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Oct 16, 2018 19:48
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aphid_licker posted:e: holy poo poo the belt hooks I'm crying Tears of Patriotism It's worse than it looks. They went with the internal suspenders because they wanted the soldiers to look all modern. But the internal suspenders required a lot of work. They're a separate piece of cloth with little holes for the hooks; sewing the eyelets and holes requires a special sewing machine. It also made it necessary to make a complex internal lining to hold the suspender:  After Poland they realized that the suspenders weren't particularly good at holding up the belts, especially when they were loaded up with ammo, a breadbag, a shovel, and other heavy stuff. But they were stuck with this in France:  You start seeing the leather "y-strap" leather suspenders appear in 1941:  But they kept making the internal suspenders anyway, even though they were useless. Even in 1943 the uniforms had a small internal tab/suspender system:  What made this extra pointless was the fact that the German military, especially the SS, was using camouflage smocks. Once you've got the smock on there's no way to get to the hooks or suspenders, obviously, but they kept making them anyway:  What's even funnier is that initially those smocks were intended to fit OVER the field gear, so they came with big open pockets./ Soon they realized that this was dumb - but the whole system was off anyway. They'd have a wool uniform top with internal suspenders with aluminum hooks, then put a camouflage smock over that, rendering the whole hook thing useless - but, again, they kept doing that for years anyway. Nazi uniforms, like Nazis, were stupid.
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Oct 16, 2018 19:57
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but you can just keep your belt up by buckling it tighter it's what i do
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Oct 16, 2018 20:01
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Hello thread, I got my masters in history in may, did my thesis on a PseudoMarxist journal of critical and intellectual theory and studied mostly Weimar Germany. Right now I'm unemployed and looking for a dope book or two to fill the time in between cover letters. I'm really looking for something extremely good and engaging about Weimar cinema and politics, Vietnamese decolonization and the Vietnam war, later Soviet history/eastern bloc history, or really just anything super good you've read lately about anything historical you'd recommend to someone with a healthy interest in milhist but principally into political history
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Oct 16, 2018 20:02
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All this talk of Nazi aesthetic reminds me: Are y'all watching Man in the High Castle? I've seen concerns that it's humanizing Nazis, but isn't that kind of Arendt's point? That Nazis aren't some magic evil subspecies, they're just normal people? Or is it too risky given that we've got almost-Nazis roaming the streets in violent packs in America?
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Oct 16, 2018 20:03
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HEY GUNS posted:but you can just keep your belt up by buckling it tighter Are you carrying a shovel, bayonet, breadbag, canteen, and Mauser ammunition? (And clipping your gas-mask's strap to your belt?) A higher belt isn't a good thing here. Cessna fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Oct 16, 2018 |
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Oct 16, 2018 20:04
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zoux posted:All this talk of Nazi aesthetic reminds me: Are y'all watching Man in the High Castle? Nope. If I wanted to watch Nazis on TV I'd turn on the news. I get enough of that poo poo as it is.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:05
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For over a decade Uncle Sam made her heroic sons and daughters fight in browns and tans of Southwest Asia while wearing a kind of bright bluish-grey camo pattern that not only didn't blend into anything, but tended to illuminate you in certain low light conditions. To help compensate for this they made everything on it velcro, which usually resulted in said uniform coming out of the dryer as a big ball of fabric all stuck to itself, but provided some levity when inevitably someone would switch their name and "US ARMY" thus raising morale.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:09
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Also - the SS helmet cover. It's reversible. It has a "fall" (brown/orange) side and a "spring" (brown/green) side. These were printed with dye, so it required multiple "passes" to get the colors on the cloth:  It is made out of multiple pieces of cloth sewn together at angles. To attach it to the helmet there are, yes, more aluminum hooks. These hooks are mounted on springs, which are covered over with individual pieces of cloth:   This requires a ridiculous amount of material, time, and labor.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:16
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Do they switch armies so frequently that US ARMY needs to be a velcro patch?
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Oct 16, 2018 20:16
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zoux posted:All this talk of Nazi aesthetic reminds me: Are y'all watching Man in the High Castle? I am, and I was kind of stoked to see the alternate-reality Japanese Navy CVBG. Yamato refit with a helipad and probably missiles 
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Oct 16, 2018 20:34
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The Russians used a pencil?
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Oct 16, 2018 20:39
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PittTheElder posted:Here's a video I randomly encountered on Youtube of a parade of British WWI military vehicles : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GMITokuHN4 Combining this with the current topic of dumb nazis: Why didn't the nazis use steam trucks/tractors in ww2? They had lots of coal, and so little oil that they had to use a lot of horses. Is it just that they weren't considered cool?
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Oct 16, 2018 20:39
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Ensign Expendable posted:Do they switch armies so frequently that US ARMY needs to be a velcro patch? its called "task organizing" and you need to be ready for any contingency Also I just finished "Rocket Men" which is a retelling of the Apollo 8 mission along with a bunch of social history stuff from 1968. It was a good book. Anyway at the end they're doing kind of an epilogue and Frank Borman, the Apollo 8 commander, goes on a university tour at the request of NASA. For some reason, at a bunch of schools, he gets harassed and whatnot because apparently harassing an astronaut is a good way to protest the Vietnam war. That wasn't terribly surprising to me, but this was: in 1969, Borman, along with his wife was invited to Cornell by one Carl Sagan, now legendary space enthusiast. What went on there was, allegedly, an extended berating of Borman and his wife by a the local SDS chapter, supervised/overseen/encouraged by Sagan. Now, I can kind of see how this guy:  might not necessarily see eye to eye with this guy  but I find it really hard to believe that the gentle soul I remember from "Cosmos" would underwrite a bunch of student radicals attacking an astronaut about a national policy said astronaut had nothing to do with and didn't even participate in (though granted he was a colonel in the air force). Alls I can find on it now is a brief reference taken from Borman's autobiography, and that's it. Does anyone else have any relevant info? Also it is kind of badass how many of the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo astronauts are still alive and old as gently caress. .
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Oct 16, 2018 20:44
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Whats that they say about never meeting your heroes?
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Oct 16, 2018 20:56
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Jobbo_Fett posted:But... aircraft developed independently of naval doctrine? Billy Mitchell anyone...
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Oct 16, 2018 21:06
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These WWI traps sound like the sort of thing you hear about in the news when some dumbass survivalist blows himself up after he got drunk and forgot how to navigate his own minefield. I can imagine they probably killed as many of their own soldiers as they did the enemy's.
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Oct 16, 2018 21:17
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Whats that they say about never meeting your heroes? My hero is the Buddha so I hope I never meet him
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Oct 16, 2018 21:19
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tonberrytoby posted:Pretty cool. Because you can instead use the Fischer-Tropsch process to turn that coal into liquid fuel.
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Oct 16, 2018 21:23
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tonberrytoby posted:Pretty cool. Later in the war they used a lot of wood gas generators for non-combat and rear echelon vehicles.
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Oct 16, 2018 21:28
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Molentik posted:Later in the war they used a lot of wood gas generators for non-combat and rear echelon vehicles. Yep, my grandfather drove one. A few years back North Korea was in the news for doing the same thing to keep their vehicles going.
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Oct 16, 2018 21:33
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bewbies posted:but I find it really hard to believe that the gentle soul I remember from "Cosmos" would underwrite a bunch of student radicals attacking an astronaut about a national policy said astronaut had nothing to do with and didn't even participate in (though granted he was a colonel in the air force). Alls I can find on it now is a brief reference taken from Borman's autobiography, and that's it. Does anyone else have any relevant info? Cornell then was as disproportionately liberal then as it was now, Sagan held the military in low regard to begin with, and in 1969 he was one of the people who thought that NASA spending money to put uniformed soldiers into space was a diversion of funds away from useful science and towards the same evil military-industrial complex that was currently incinerating villagers in Vietnam. "Gentle souls" are as capable as putting the boot in as anyone else when they have the upper hand and something to prove to their peer group. zoux posted:My hero is the Buddha so I hope I never meet him Aren't you supposed to kill him if you do that?
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Oct 16, 2018 21:34
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Ithle01 posted:These WWI traps sound like the sort of thing you hear about in the news when some dumbass survivalist blows himself up after he got drunk and forgot how to navigate his own minefield. I can imagine they probably killed as many of their own soldiers as they did the enemy's. Usually you booby trap spots you aren't visiting yourself...
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Oct 16, 2018 21:37
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bewbies posted:I find it really hard to believe that the gentle soul I remember from "Cosmos" would underwrite a bunch of student radicals attacking an astronaut about a national policy said astronaut had nothing to do with and didn't even participate in (though granted he was a colonel in the air force). Alls I can find on it now is a brief reference taken from Borman's autobiography, and that's it. Does anyone else have any relevant info? Don't have more information about it, but based on interviews with the astronauts, they were military pilots and thought of themselves as such, as did the public to a lesser degree. One of the pretty standard responses the early astronauts will give in response to the "how did you feel about how risky space flight was" question was "well all my friends were flying experimental aircraft or getting shot at over Vietnam, spaceflight doesn't seem so risky next to that." And I guess if you're going to harangue soldiers over Vietnam there's no reason to stop at astronauts. Also minor point of order, all the Mercury guys are dead. But yeah more than a dozen Gemini/Apollo guys around, though dropping fast.
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Oct 16, 2018 21:45
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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I recall reading Vietnam-era stories about grenades modified with near instant fuses specifically for use in making booby traps, and the subsequent inevitable mixup with a regular grenade.
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Oct 16, 2018 21:48
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Phanatic posted:Aren't you supposed to kill him if you do that? Just on the road
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Oct 16, 2018 21:52
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Usually you booby trap spots you aren't visiting yourself... https://www.wptv.com/news/local-news/water-cooler/north-carolina-man-shot-by-his-own-booby-trap-tells-911-im-gonna-die Edwin Smith had booby trapped his back door with a shotgun, only to have the contraption backfire on him when he opened the door to feed some squirrels. When the weapon discharged, he was struck in right arm. During a 911 call, Smith repeatedly exclaimed how fearful he was of losing his life to the gunshot wound. "I have a trip wire, and I opened up the door and the trip wire went off and blew my arm off. I'm gonna die! I'm in the driveway. I'm gonna die. Tell everybody I love them, OK?" Smith said during a call to 911.
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Oct 16, 2018 22:16
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They say the most convincing lie is one the teller believes himself, so it obviously stands to reason that the most effective booby trap is one that catches the person who made it. Now, if you'll excuse me. (puffs on bubble pipe, picks up book, explodes)
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Oct 16, 2018 23:04
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Tunnel Snakes - Vietnam hmm. . . this trap might work, or at least be likely enough to work for someone to give it a go bamboo vipers (usually refers to any of several species in the Trimeresurus genus) are, unlike kraits, very common and easily handled, and might not be strong enough to force their way out of small containers. Fully grown adults may not be anymore than 40 cm. When I first read this I thought it said they were literally tying up the snake itself with string, something that I think would be rather difficult to do to an animal without hips or arms! but I think they mean the bamboo container was held together with string, which makes a lot more sense. Looking for more information I found scattered references in several sources, the earliest being a 1968 newspaper article. Bamboo vipers were rumored to be hidden in all kinds of places. According to a mix of newspaper correspondents, modern Vietnamese tourist guides, and veteran recollections, They could be variously nailed alive above doors inside houses, tied to the ceiling of tunnels by their tale, tied to tree branches where GIs might inadvertently walk into them or grab them, and even hidden inside the VC's own rucksack so that if they were killed and searched GIs would have a nasty surprise. Other than the bamboo container in tunnels, I think most of these are probably more legend than fact. Bamboo vipers are responsible for more bites than any other snake in much of southeast Asia. Most commonly bites are on the hand or wrist, and occur while people are picking fruit in the forest and fail to see the well camouflaged snake resting near the longan berries they were reaching for. Fortunately while venom from these snakes will definitely turn you into a casualty and ruin your month, they aren't usually fatal for healthy adults. Soldiers new to the tropics would have to be taught quickly not to reach into a damp rucksacks which have laid on the forest for days because that poo poo is just a magnet for wild scorpions and centipedes and snakes, the same reason you check your goddamn boots before you put them on, and its easy to blame charlie for all the nasty poo poo you're putting up with anyway.
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Oct 16, 2018 23:07
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Squalid posted:hmm. . . this trap might work, or at least be likely enough to work for someone to give it a go Another trap mentioned, involving snakes, is related to snakes being tied to stuff, like a stick - around head height, in a cave, and hoping the GI stumbles into it, maybe grabbing a snake, and getting bit.
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Oct 16, 2018 23:11
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