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I wouldn't really call Red Army "better" since IIRC it's the one where a officer character heroically murders a bunch of POWs and then changes into civilian clothes to escape being captured. Wouldn't recommend reading anything by Ralph "Actually the Iraq War was Good" Peters anyways on moral grounds.
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Nov 12, 2018 20:07
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C.M. Kruger posted:I wouldn't really call Red Army "better" since IIRC it's the one where a officer character heroically murders a bunch of POWs and then changes into civilian clothes to escape being captured. I don't think this disqualifies it. That scene didn't come off as "heroic," and if anything a guy panicking in combat and losing his poo poo is more believable than every character being a square-jawed super-competent hero (I'm looking at you, Tom Clancy). C.M. Kruger posted:Wouldn't recommend reading anything by Ralph "Actually the Iraq War was Good" Peters anyways on moral grounds. Yeah, 9/11 broke his brain. I can give Red Army a pass because he wrote it in the 80s. Now that I think of it his War in 2020 was pretty bad, and that predates 9/11. Okay, Red Army only.
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Nov 12, 2018 20:10
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Dunno, I have my own issues with Red Army. Much like Third World War it's a book written with an axe to grind. Peters is obviously of the opinion that divided NATO command is a major weakness of the alliance and IIRC goes so far as to offer a solution in the epilogue that essentially boils down to "All NATO Armies should be handed over to the direct control of the US immediately". Go through the book again and see how the Germans and Dutch disintegrate without a fight, the Brits hold stubbornly but are inevitably dislodged from their positions by the cowardly withdrawal or incompetent destruction of their continental counterparts and the Americans literally never lose, not only holding on to all of CENTAG but having sufficient reserve to cause huge problems for the Soviet forces in NORTHAG's area. Then the German government surrenders and the brave Americans are stabbed in the back by elected officials and... hang on. So yeah. It gets operations better than any other book in the genre but it's still a bit weird and I'd say quite Rah Rah America. I like it, I just don't think it's the superlative Only Good Cold War Book that it gets held up as in grog circles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyNxJ80sqq4 Here's an Audiobook of it though!
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Nov 12, 2018 20:27
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FrangibleCover posted:It gets operations better than any other book in the genre but it's still a bit weird and I'd say quite Rah Rah America. Agreed, fair point. FrangibleCover posted:I like it, I just don't think it's the superlative Only Good Cold War Book that it gets held up as in grog circles. Only? No, not at all! I only brought it up to point out that the USSR doesn't have to be faceless hordes in wargames, novels, etc. I think Chieftains is a better book.
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Nov 12, 2018 20:33
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Cessna posted:(Well, better than Flames of War, which is admittedly a low bar. (gently caress off, "hen-and-chicks.")) What is hen-and-chicks, for the uninitiated?
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Nov 12, 2018 20:35
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GotLag posted:What is hen-and-chicks, for the uninitiated?
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Nov 12, 2018 20:49
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GotLag posted:What is hen-and-chicks, for the uninitiated? So in the tabletop wargame Flames of War, Hen and Chicks is a Soviet rule for armored vehicles that does three things: -Vehicles in a platoon cannot move unless the platoon commander moves. -If the platoon commander moves, everyone counts as moving -If a vehicle in a platoon moves, it has a +1 penalty to hit targets with its main gun. (It also halves its rate of fire, but that's a general rule for everyone) The effect of this is that Soviet tanks are much more difficult to use effectively under these rules. There are exceptions—Guards Heavy Tank units like the KV-1 or IS-2 don't suffer from Hens and Chicks, for instance (Though they also have their own glaring problems, which in part render the IS-2 in particular as being all-but unusable)—but on the whole, the rules are constructed to ensure that a Soviet player is going to have twice the number of tanks on the table as an opponent playing an equivalent armored list. The thing about it is that Hens and Chicks isn't really a bad rule in and of itself—it makes Soviet tanks play differently, and allows them to be priced so cheaply that you can take a ton of them. The real problem is that only Soviets have to deal with this rule or any rule like it, and that only a handful of Soviet lists get to avoid it. As a result, when taken in conjunction with other restrictions on Soviet lists (Such as being practically barred from taking any units as Veterans, which drastically impacts a unit's ability to not get shot, and not having any access to smoke rounds) the game effectively portrays Soviet tankers as uniquely incompetent boobs right up into 1945, with few effective tactics other than driving their tanks en masse directly into German guns. It's Real Dumb. Acebuckeye13 fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Nov 12, 2018 |
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Nov 12, 2018 21:14
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GotLag posted:What is hen-and-chicks, for the uninitiated? In the game Soviet tanks are forced to use more restrictive rules on moving and shooting than German tanks - or any other nation's tanks, for that matter. The rule has changed from edition to edition, but it generally makes the Soviets vastly less tactically flexible. At the same time the Germans get special rules, like "Stormtrooper move," where they get a chance to move after shooting to avoid return fire. Because in 1944 the Germans were all experienced, steely-eyed, tactically savvy veterans and the Soviets were a uniquely bad horde of conscripts, right guys? Edit: Acebuckeye13 beat me to it.
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Nov 12, 2018 21:18
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Cessna posted:Only? No, not at all! I only brought it up to point out that the USSR doesn't have to be faceless hordes in wargames, novels, etc. I think Chieftains is a better book. Nah, that wasn't a criticism of you, indeed this thread has had the most balanced view on it I think I've ever seen, but it's a general annoyance to me.
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Nov 12, 2018 21:24
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TheFluff posted:This it not some creative interpretation on my part, by the way - when they were setting the tactical and operational requirements for the strv 103 project back around 1960, they were doing calculations for what kind of operational range they needed based on how much fuel it would take to take the armored brigade from its initial positions down to the sea and fight a battle there without refueling (no time for that stuff when the enemy strength grows by the hour). Similarly, in the air force, there's planning documents that very strongly emphasize that the strike aircraft must not be wasted on things like close air support - that's for silly Americans with more money than sense. The Swedish strike aircraft were a strategic resource, to be carefully protected and saved until it was time for the moment of truth, the potentially war-winning day, where you would deploy every aircraft and pilot completely without regard for losses in three or four concentrated strikes. The surviving planning documents speak of it in those exact words, "a potentially war-winning opportunity". I fukken love how brazenly "morituri te salutant" Swedish plans were. I wonder how the near 100% casualty rates tankers and pilots felt back then.
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Nov 12, 2018 21:25
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Cessna posted:In the game Soviet tanks are forced to use more restrictive rules on moving and shooting than German tanks - or any other nation's tanks, for that matter. The rule has changed from edition to edition, but it generally makes the Soviets vastly less tactically flexible. At the same time the Germans get special rules, like "Stormtrooper move," where they get a chance to move after shooting to avoid return fire. god I'm still mad about the Berlin book. You know they finally gave the Soviets veteran tanks? They were hidden away as a support option for an online Hero Cavalry list you had to pay extra money for. That was it. gently caress Battlefront.
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Nov 12, 2018 21:32
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13th KRRC War Diary, 12th November 1918 posted:The morning was spent in training. A very complimentary communique published by the French Minister of War was received, a copy of which is attached. (App.D) Nothing in the appendix for this, sorry. (What's that - you thought it was all over?)
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Nov 12, 2018 21:43
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Cessna posted:See, I can totally see that happening in the Soviet army. I mean I was mostly joking, although I am more than willing to believe that the intensity of stupid bullshit was a lot bigger east of the Iron Curtain, what with the mass conscription and all I do suppose I owe you the rest of the berries story, though. So it was in the summer of '81. The unit major's birthday was coming up, and somebody had the bright idea to load up a company of conscripts onto a bunch of trucks and go get him something nice. Given that there was a forest nearby, berries sounded like a good idea. The platoons split up and each went to another part of the woods. So they lined the troopers up and told them that each had to fill up a mess tin with berries. And that was about it. And every time someone had filled the tin and brought it back to the LT, the LT took the tin, poured the berries out into a milk barrel, and said "Now do that again, but don't forget to fill up the cover too this time." This was, of course, uttered with cackling, assholish glee. So my dad waited until nobody was looking, refilled his tin from the milk barrel, then sneaked away until the end of the "exercise," so that nobody would see him not working. But there was another guy, we'll call him Malinowski because that's what I remember dad calling him. I might be misremembering. Anyway, Malinowski's father was a Very Self-Important Person, because he owned a private company. Some kind of grocery store, if I recall correctly, but that was more than enough to make him a serious Big Shot back then - I mean, he had food. So Malinowski figured he was not going to be bullied by some dickbag LT who did not even pass his A-levels. He took his tin, hosed off as far away from the LT as he could, crawled into some shrubs, and started just eating berries straight off the bush like an animal. He had berry juice all over him after a couple hours. Some time passed, evening was creeping up, so the LT ordered a roll call before going home. They go along the line, and one dude is missing. A quick check confirms: Malinowski is gone. Desertions happened every now and again back then, so the LT called the platoon brown noser and told him to run up the road and look for the guy. He ran down the road, yelling at the top of his lungs: "Malinowski, Malinowski!" He supposedly had a voice of a yokel and a posture of an idiot, so that was reportedly very funny. But Malinowski heard that, got up, dusted his uniform off, and walked out of the bushes to join the rest of the platoon. The LT yells at him: "Where the gently caress have you been, Malinowski?!" "Citizen Lieutenant, I report that I have been picking berries!" The LT looks and sees he's holding an empty mess tin. "Where the gently caress are your berries, then, Malinowski?!" He can see the dude's face, hands, even uniform are still covered in berry juice. "Citizen Lieutenant, I report: Gypsies stole 'em, put 'em on a stick and carried 'em away." ___________________ When they came back to the unit, the LT wagged his finger and said: "Well, Malinowski, you'll do extra time for that." And Malinowski got two weeks in jail, and that meant he had to do two extra weeks of duty. Which would be no big deal. Except that delayed him leaving service until something like December 20th 1981, and martial law was declared on December 13th. Nobody could be discharged from the military during martial law. The martial law lasted until July 22nd, 1983.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:02
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I think this says a lot about WW2. Top: Cameron Highlanders battalion in 1914 Bottom image: Same battalion upon their return from the front lines in 1918 
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Nov 12, 2018 22:04
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I doubt any of those guys were around in 1914 too.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:07
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EvilMerlin posted:I think this says a lot about WW2. This may be one the most chilling pictures I have seen in this thread.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:10
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EvilMerlin posted:I think this says a lot about WW2. They became masters of camoflage?
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Nov 12, 2018 22:12
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EvilMerlin posted:I think this says a lot about WW2. Unfortunately the picture isn't quite real. From imgur: quote:Edit: this picture is a representative illustration of what was factual and the case for so many regiments.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:13
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Yeah, they didn't have battalions of a few dozen men hang around in the trenches. It's true that a lot of the original men would have gotten killed or wounded, especially early on, but the battalion would have been filled up with reinforcements.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:19
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It's still pretty goddamn chilling though to consider you could go from over a thousand people to 27 in just a handful of months of fighting.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:21
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I'd like to see their losses split into Killed, Wounded (Permanent Casualty) and Wounded (Returned To Duty). I've no doubt that many died, but the way that Killed and Wounded is written always makes one subconsciously read it as All Killed when that's seldom true.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:26
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Nenonen posted:They became masters of camoflage? Can I just say I hate 'representative illustrations' like this that end up getting passed off as factual? There's enough fake news out there already.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:28
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Unfortunately the picture isn't quite real. From imgur: Yeah it may be chopped, but it gets the point across. feedmegin, Its not fake news. Its a representation of what happened to the Cameron Highlanders during WW1.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:31
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I mean we don't even know how many recruits brought in and transferred over and how many times said battalion had to do this. And what about the men wounded and invalided out who survived? And it wasn't just a thing for the Highlanders too, this happened to almost the entire British Army and the Imperial forces involved in the war.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:31
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SeanBeansShako posted:I mean we don't even know how many recruits brought in and transferred over and how many times said battalion had to do this. And what about the men wounded and invalided out who survived? And it wasn't just a thing for the Highlanders too, this happened to almost the entire British Army and the Imperial forces involved in the war. Brit's (and territories) lost between 744,000 and 887,858 (KIA) and nearly 1.7 million wounded.... And that's a LOT less than the French or Germans did.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:35
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EvilMerlin posted:feedmegin, Its not fake news. Its a representation of what happened to the Cameron Highlanders during WW1.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:38
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EvilMerlin posted:Brit's (and territories) lost between 744,000 and 887,858 (KIA) and nearly 1.7 million wounded.... And that's a LOT less than the French or Germans did. The British Army is pretty drat small compared to those two. The losses suffered is pretty drat serious stuff.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:41
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HEY GUNS posted:ok but if you think these are the actual dudes it's different. it feels different, if nothing else That's exactly why I mentioned it.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:47
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Watched the Peter Jackson thing. Amazing technical achievement, clear he's trying to tell the Story of Tommy Atkins at the Third Battle of Generique, glad it works for people who haven't heard those anecdotes a few hundred times over already, but I could spend days yelling about the clip choices.Clarence posted:Nothing in the appendix for this, sorry. Are they off to Russia? Please tell me they rolled a natural 1 and they're off to Russia in three months.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:48
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EvilMerlin posted:Yeah it may be chopped, but it gets the point across. Your OP: 'Top: Cameron Highlanders battalion in 1914 Bottom image: Same battalion upon their return from the front lines in 1918' That second line without context (which i fully believe you were unaware of) is a lie. A lie I've seen going round twitter, too. Those dudes in the second picture are being photographed at the exact same moment in 1914. Because that photo is a fake that people are believing is a real photo taken in 1918. Blurring the lines around this sort of poo poo in history Does Not End Well. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Nov 12, 2018 |
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Nov 12, 2018 23:02
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Trin Tragula posted:Are they off to Russia? Please tell me they rolled a natural 1 and they're off to Russia in three months. There is also mention in a bit of how many of them are 'originals' from when the Battalion first arrived in France; 60 still remain, so ~6%. The other 94% won't all have been casualties - transfers to other units, promotions, commissions, even a few found to be underage or court martialled - but most would have been. I've not seen a figure for total casualties but it might easily be 200 to 300% of strength.
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Nov 12, 2018 23:52
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Cessna posted:PLEASE e-mail them. Cold War Commander might be more up your street if you're more into friction of war stuff and don't mind some abstraction (each models represents multiple vehicles and units "heal" between turns if they're not outright killed). I notice that you already post in the hex and counter thread so won't try and sell you on tiny cardboard squares
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Nov 13, 2018 00:34
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Mycroft Holmes posted:oh god, i just noticed the person running this discord named the bot Erwin Rommel. You're expected to take the honorable way out with cyanide after failing to find the g-spot.
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Nov 13, 2018 01:54
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I have a 9 hour flight to Europe and a 17 hour flight back and I am looking for good book, podcast or lecture recommendations to load up on for the travel. I am a fan of Military History and Current Event and usually read Cold War, Current Events or Great Game era stuff. My only turn off is the Civil War, but I wouldn't be opposed to a nice biography of Sherman if there was a decent one I'm open to nearly anything that you find compelling and will read through nearly anything, but I have read some very very dry accounts [A marches to B, orients toward X, engages Y at length is something I'm trying to avoid]. I have recently read, in no particular order: The Great Game The Jungle is Neutral Trespassers on the Roof of the World Cobra II Dark Money Killing Hope The Big Roads Dark Sun (History of the Hydrogen Bomb) War, Economy and Society (Dated but good) Skunkworks Blank Spots on the Map I also have a thing for sci-fi and trashy military sci-fi. I enjoyed Jannissaries, Hammers Slammers, Flashman, The Damed Trilogy (A Call to Arms etc etc) and god forgive me for these two, Warhammer 40k and The Safehold Series. I'll be scanning hardcore history for anything that catches my eye, and I've subscribed to a few youtube channels I'm going to rip audio from that were shared in the cold war thread consisting of smart people discussing their area of expertise or sharing stories. Open to any lecture or talk that won't overly rely on visual aids. More like the Soviet German War, Myths and Realities would be cool https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Clz27nghIg. Going to download his Kursk talk and maybe Stalingrad. Please help.
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Nov 13, 2018 02:43
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Waroduce posted:I have a 9 hour flight to Europe and a 17 hour flight back and I am looking for good book, podcast or lecture recommendations to load up on for the travel. I am a fan of Military History and Current Event and usually read Cold War, Current Events or Great Game era stuff. My only turn off is the Civil War, but I wouldn't be opposed to a nice biography of Sherman if there was a decent one
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Nov 13, 2018 02:44
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Waroduce posted:I also have a thing for sci-fi and trashy military sci-fi. I enjoyed Jannissaries, Hammers Slammers, Flashman, The Damed Trilogy (A Call to Arms etc etc) and god forgive me for these two, Warhammer 40k and The Safehold Series. I always rec the 1632 series (I know it's trashy BUT!) or Ryk Brown's "Frontiers Saga" sci-fi. Many other sci-fi series I could recommend too. PM me and I can recommend some more.
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Nov 13, 2018 02:46
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Some personal favorites off the top of my head: Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway Fiasco: The Untold Story of the American Military Adventure in Iraq the last one will likely make you Real Mad fyi
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Nov 13, 2018 02:54
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Some personal favorites off the top of my head: I love you and I loved all of these and they are very good recommendations I have read. more in the same vein if anyone has. Fiasco made me really pissy tbh Command and Control was equal parts hilarious and horrifying
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Nov 13, 2018 03:04
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Some personal favorites off the top of my head: A few more recommendations: Neptune's Inferno: The US Navy at Guadalcanal The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945 Two more thread favorites about WW2 in the Pacific, the most modern and in-depth scholarship on the origins of WW1 (if you've read The Guns of August, this is its modern replacement), and a comprehensive look at China in WW2. Warning: that last one is one of the most depressing books I've ever read.
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Nov 13, 2018 03:06
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Red Eagles: America's Secret MiGs is also a neat book that's worth checking out.
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Nov 13, 2018 03:25
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