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All of this circles back to history stuff because it's easy to forget just how recent events that seem very far away can be. Take Civil War poo poo. There are old people around still who when they think of Confederate soldiers think of the grandpa that they loved and who was nice to them. This obviously isn't everyone and clearly doesn't paper over the people who just want statues of R.E. Lee in the town square because of lost cause horseshit, but there are also still people around (and voting, and writing letters to the editor, etc) who draw very direct and personal connections to events that took place over 150 years ago.
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Nov 16, 2018 20:50
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Neophyte posted:Which leaves me wondering how much it cost the Soviets to keep all that old kit. I mean, yes you can just chuck the crate of Mosins coated in CommieCosmo[TM] into some dark corner but I have to imagine more comlicated machinery like BTRs or tanks or planes etc. needed fairly regular maintenance to stay in usable shape, even if they didn't needed to be 100% ready all the time. It doesn't take THAT much effort to keep an AFV in running condition depending on how you store it. Keep fuel in the tanks, start the engine and get it hot once in a while, chase down leaks and fix them, bust rust with a wire brush where you need to, etc. But the amount of work required is almost entirely dependent on the conditions you keep it in. Putting it in a covered building with regular checks and preventative maintenance is idea, but that's not always an option. Covering up areas where water can pool and get in helps - this is why you see old airplanes covered in shrink-wrap. Parking it out in the desert is good - sure, the paint will fade but you'll get a lot less moisture/humidity and corrosion. Leaving it where it gets rained on isn't as good, etc. (Ships are awful here, as they're in salt water. I could blather on about cathodic protection, anti-fouling paint, etc.) That said, it looks like the Soviets didn't always take care of their old vehicles: 
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Nov 16, 2018 20:55
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Cythereal posted:So I'm into the chapter of Blind Man's Bluff about the disappearance of the USS Scorpion, and the book mentioned that the last USS Scorpion had also disappeared at sea. Out of curiosity, I looked things up on wikipedia, and there have been six USS Scorpions in the US navy. Three of them disappeared under mysterious circumstances. 
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Nov 16, 2018 20:59
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Soup Inspector posted:I know that not all of these were contemporaneous, but why did the Warsaw Pact have so many different models of APC and IFV? Although I can understand why countries might have sub-variants of the "standard" Soviet model, it seems like a logistical nightmare for not too much gain (I imagine there's only so many meaningful niches you can carve out in the APC-IFV continuum, in terms of mobility, protection, etc.). I'll handle the ones so far not mentioned: The MT-LB was an artillery tractor as well as an APC as designed and used the PT-76's running gear so it's not much effort to make, the MT-LBu was mostly used as a battery command vehicle so it makes sense to share as many components with the MT-LB as possible even if the vehicle needs to be bigger, the BMP-23 was based on the same hull as the MT-LBu because that's what Bulgaria was set up to produce. The OT-62/TOPAS is a BTR-50 built under license with a variety of weird turrets. Everything else on the list was Romanian, and the Soviets didn't really trust Romania so they didn't get as much of the good stuff. Having said that the entire TAB series and the B-33 Zimbru are essentially BTR-60/70/80 series variants with different equipment and the MLI-84 was a BMP-1 variant with different equipment. The MLVM is the only really weird one, an APC for mountain troops derived from the SU-76 chassis. Really it's not too bad logistically compared to NATO, where by the 1980s the only armies who hadn't developed (or co-developed with one other operator) their own APC or IFV variant were Denmark and Luxembourg. And the Danes were working on one.
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Nov 16, 2018 21:05
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HEY GUNS posted:retire that name The last was a gunboat that served in the Spanish-American War, was sold as a private yacht and then brought back into service after a few years, and finally scrapped before WW1. So 5 of 6 have come to bad ends. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Nov 16, 2018 |
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Nov 16, 2018 21:06
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Comrade Gorbash posted:It gets worse - of the other three, two served in the War of 1812 and met bad ends. The first was burned to prevent its capture, and the second was actually captured and dismantled by the Brits.
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Nov 16, 2018 21:07
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Cessna posted:
And then some: 
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Nov 16, 2018 21:18
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HEY GUNS posted:i am superstitious as hell. i wasn't joking. For the Brits, naming a ship the Invincible has always felt to me like tempting fate. Three of the six HMS Invincibles came to bad ends. One was lost in a storm off England in 1801 with two thirds of her crew dead, another was also lost in a storm off England but this time in 1886 and most of her crew survived, and the other was a battlecruiser that suffered a magazine explosion at Jutland and only six out of more than a thousand men aboard survived.
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Nov 16, 2018 21:19
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scorpion is a good name for a gun boat though, like the hms gently caress YOU, a bomb ship
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Nov 16, 2018 21:38
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Cythereal posted:For the Brits, naming a ship the Invincible has always felt to me like tempting fate. And there are still some Argentinians who claim HMS Invincible R05 was sunk during the Falklands. It really, really wasn't.
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Nov 16, 2018 21:43
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HEY GUNS posted:retire that name "That is my nature"
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Nov 16, 2018 21:54
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Cessna posted:It doesn't take THAT much effort to keep an AFV in running condition depending on how you store it. Keep fuel in the tanks, start the engine and get it hot once in a while, chase down leaks and fix them, bust rust with a wire brush where you need to, etc. Thinking about that, what are the consequences of trying to store large ships in full-on freshwater instead, when there's enough freshwater space for them? Are there any risks of deteriorating faster that way?
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Nov 16, 2018 22:07
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feedmegin posted:Hello hi I am p lefty myself as you know and I will freely admit that stuff like Kraft durch Freude and the Volkswagen are pretty socialist-ey policies - except, very importantly, for the 'only people of the right racial purity can have this' element, of course. Hear this a lot from people who misunderstand the role of intent and purpose in politics - yes, cars produced for all is a fairly socialist policy, but if you intend only a certain group of people to have them then it isn’t socialist. Comrade is not a word but an earned title - other people give it to you and other people can take it away. If you aren’t everybody’s comrade (ruling classes excluded) then you aren’t anyone’s comrade. The “if you’re right of X you’re a fascist” I cannot comment on honestly.
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Nov 16, 2018 22:08
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Lobster God posted:And there are still some Argentinians who claim HMS Invincible R05 was sunk during the Falklands. Hey, at least the US Navy has only had one USS Invincible and one USNS Invincible, and only assigned that name to one of them. One was a civilian freighter, the SS Invincible, conscripted into the navy during WW2 and returned to its owners unharmed after the war. The one ship the US actually gave that name to is an ocean surveillance and missile instrumentation ship still active today.
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Nov 16, 2018 22:09
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Cyrano4747 posted:There are people posting on facebook who were bounced on the knees of veterans of the CSA as small children. I was born in a village and had never experienced electricity till I was like 8. While I was doing my grad program in the US without a cellphone or a personal coputer, scrounging for catered food from campus events, kids back in my village all had cellphones downloading the latest Bollywood songs as their ringtones. My grandpa did have a hand powered radio that we used to listen to BBC on, so I guess I wasn't too isolated. If anyone has a chance they should watch a documentary called 'Honey hunters of Nepal' by Eric Valli that came out around the mid 80s and watch the recent Vice 'this mountain honey will get you high' documentary from the same village from a few years ago. The difference is crazy. ughhhh fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Nov 16, 2018 |
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Nov 16, 2018 22:14
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LatwPIAT posted:The BTR-40 and BTR-152 were developed at roughly the same time, to fill two niches: small armoured personnel carrier and big armoured personnel carrier. The BTR-40 arrived slightly earlier, and the Soviet Union quickly discovered that its small passenger capacity was prohibitive, and focus entirely on BTR-152 production. FrangibleCover posted:I'll handle the ones so far not mentioned: The MT-LB was an artillery tractor as well as an APC as designed and used the PT-76's running gear so it's not much effort to make, the MT-LBu was mostly used as a battery command vehicle so it makes sense to share as many components with the MT-LB as possible even if the vehicle needs to be bigger, the BMP-23 was based on the same hull as the MT-LBu because that's what Bulgaria was set up to produce. The OT-62/TOPAS is a BTR-50 built under license with a variety of weird turrets. Everything else on the list was Romanian, and the Soviets didn't really trust Romania so they didn't get as much of the good stuff. Having said that the entire TAB series and the B-33 Zimbru are essentially BTR-60/70/80 series variants with different equipment and the MLI-84 was a BMP-1 variant with different equipment. The MLVM is the only really weird one, an APC for mountain troops derived from the SU-76 chassis. Thanks very much for indulging my question. I'll admit that sometimes it can be difficult to keep certain Soviet AFVs straight just because of how things like numbering can be non-indicative (look at the BTR-40 > BTR-152 > BTR-50 chain for example), and maybe it's just the circles I travel in but you don't generally hear too much about stuff like the SKOT etc. Now that you guys have broken it down a little it's a bit easier to parse. And from the sounds of things it seems like my hunch that I wasn't giving enough emphasis to the variety of different Western AFVs was right. I suppose that familiarity breeds inattention.  Never heard of the MLVM before, but I suppose I could see a (tough) case for it considering the unique difficulties that come with mountain warfare. But now that LatwPIAT pointed it out, I find myself wondering why you'd need a completely different APC for motor-rifle and armoured units. I'm abominable at anything involving ORBATs, but I know enough to understand that (unsurprisingly) Soviet armoured units have a higher proportion of tanks in them relative to motor-rifle units - but that doesn't seem to imply anything about the APCs used. Was it down to the intended usage of armoured vs. motor-rifle units in battle (spitballing here, but presumably you'd want a more survivable and heavily armed vehicle for an environment in which you'd be committing an armoured unit)? Apologies if I'm missing an incredibly obvious answer!
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Nov 16, 2018 22:28
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fishmech posted:Thinking about that, what are the consequences of trying to store large ships in full-on freshwater instead, when there's enough freshwater space for them? Are there any risks of deteriorating faster that way? The fact is that there's no great way to store a ship. Steel exposed to air and moisture rusts. So you paint it; then the paint flakes off and it rusts again. Salt water (and other factors) accelerates this process. You can use fancy expensive paint to delay this but, again, it will rust eventually. You can also set up cathodic protection - essentially adding a sacrificial anode to the ship that rusts first, saving the stuff you don't want to rust - but again, that only delays the process. Every museum ship out there is a ship of Theseus, slowly decaying and losing more and more historic fabric to time and the elements. The hope is that some day there in the future someone will invent better ways to preserve a ship - as it is, what we have now is vastly better than what was available a generation ago - but, well, it's all just buying time. In my experience the best way to deal with this is to actively preserve the ship - drydock it and inspect the hull as if it was a working ship, replacing corroded parts as much as possible. But this is expensive - a museum ship with a lot of tourists can afford to do this, while many other just can't. And, of course, the bigger the ship, the more expensive it is to drydock.
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Nov 16, 2018 22:35
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ughhhh posted:I was born in a village and had never experienced electricity till I was like 8. While I was doing my grad program in the US without a cellphone or a personal coputer, scrounging for catered food from campus events, kids back in my village all had cellphones downloading the latest Bollywood songs as their ringtones. I watched those and they’re cool. I wonder if after the Vice documentary came out the area has undergone new radical changes? I assume degenerate hippy tourists would flood the region after they saw the guy seizure under the effect of the honey thinking “I gotta try this!” Tourist economies inevitably cause a lot of trouble for everyone even when they bring $$$
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Nov 16, 2018 22:37
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civil war vets came really close to seeing a man in space edit- the last Vietnam vet will probably outlive me. I'm 36
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Nov 16, 2018 22:43
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Squalid posted:I watched those and they’re cool. I wonder if after the Vice documentary came out the area has undergone new radical changes? I assume degenerate hippy tourists would flood the region after they saw the guy seizure under the effect of the honey thinking “I gotta try this!” Tourist economies inevitably cause a lot of trouble for everyone even when they bring $$$ The area was next to a route from Kathmandu and a Chinese border post. Its also not really in any national preserves or hiking trails so no tourists. Nowadays its right next to a busy crowded highway choked with trucks. Also here is something involving guns for this thread. 
ughhhh fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Nov 16, 2018 |
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Nov 16, 2018 22:54
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Cessna posted:The fact is that there's no great way to store a ship. also there is one known perfect way to preserve a ship: sink it https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45951132 HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Nov 16, 2018 |
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Nov 16, 2018 22:57
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HEY GUNS posted:consider the guns they sell for ship use (mossberg sells them), special finishes and whatnot It isn't really practical to cover a historic ship in nickel plating. HEY GUNS posted:also there is one known perfect way to preserve a ship: sink it This entirely depends on the water conditions. Some will preserve a ship for a very long time, others will reduce a ship to a boat-shaped rust-stain in a few years.
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Nov 16, 2018 23:03
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Soup Inspector posted:But now that LatwPIAT pointed it out, I find myself wondering why you'd need a completely different APC for motor-rifle and armoured units. I'm abominable at anything involving ORBATs, but I know enough to understand that (unsurprisingly) Soviet armoured units have a higher proportion of tanks in them relative to motor-rifle units - but that doesn't seem to imply anything about the APCs used. Was it down to the intended usage of armoured vs. motor-rifle units in battle (spitballing here, but presumably you'd want a more survivable and heavily armed vehicle for an environment in which you'd be committing an armoured unit)? Going mostly off holistic impressions rather than having explicitly read anything in a document here: a) Yes, you definitely want it to be better protected, because if you're accompanying an armoured battalion you're going to be facing the heavily armed thing you're going to be using a tank battalion against; b) Since you're going to be running into the heavily armed and armoured things you're going to be using a tank battalion against, you want bigger weapons so you can more effectively fight and defend against them; c) You want similar mobility to the tanks so you can follow them wherever they go, which means tracks. Wheeled APCs without too much armour, meanwhile, are nice when you want a vehicle that can serve as an APC but also use roads effectively. This gives far greater strategic mobility, and are cheaper, which is very good when you're trying to give one to every squad in your army.
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Nov 16, 2018 23:39
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Depending on the era, wouldn't most warships meet bad ends? Unless they're scrapped (something I understand wasn't done to wooden ships), wouldn't they be used until sunk by incompetence/weather/deterioration?
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Nov 17, 2018 00:41
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Cessna posted:It isn't really practical to cover a historic ship in nickel plating. Practical? No. Baller as gently caress and worth it? Oh yeah. Tell me you don't want to see the Iowa nickled from bow to stern.
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Nov 17, 2018 01:03
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Cyrano4747 posted:Tell me you don't want to see the Iowa nickled from bow to stern. 
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Nov 17, 2018 01:09
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Cyrano4747 posted:Practical? No. Baller as gently caress and worth it? Oh yeah. 
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Nov 17, 2018 01:19
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That said, with our luck they'd get it durakote'd and then a realtree hydro-dip applied.
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Nov 17, 2018 01:25
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Cerakote a submarine in Kryptek Typhon for better deep sea camouflage.
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Nov 17, 2018 01:36
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ughhhh posted:The area was next to a route from Kathmandu and a Chinese border post. Its also not really in any national preserves or hiking trails so no tourists. Nowadays its right next to a busy crowded highway choked with trucks. Also here is something involving guns for this thread. oh good then if fate ever takes me to Nepal I can plan my own degenerate excursion to red honey country. Looking online Turkish rhododendron honey goes for $1 a gram, so I imagine its somewhat inevitable that market forces start replacing customary use.
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Nov 17, 2018 01:40
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Cyrano4747 posted:There are people posting on facebook who were bounced on the knees of veterans of the CSA as small children.
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Nov 17, 2018 03:21
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 yeoldecartoone.tumblr.com
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Nov 17, 2018 03:22
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Baronjutter posted:
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Nov 17, 2018 04:18
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Cyrano4747 posted:All of this circles back to history stuff because it's easy to forget just how recent events that seem very far away can be. Take Civil War poo poo. There are old people around still who when they think of Confederate soldiers think of the grandpa that they loved and who was nice to them. This obviously isn't everyone and clearly doesn't paper over the people who just want statues of R.E. Lee in the town square because of lost cause horseshit, but there are also still people around (and voting, and writing letters to the editor, etc) who draw very direct and personal connections to events that took place over 150 years ago. One of my favorite ways to illustrate this is that Laura Ingalls Wilder (the author of the Little House books that were adapted into the Little House On The Prairie TV series) was born just after the ACW and lived through WWI, WWII, and Korea, dying in 1957. Not the most extreme example, perhaps, but the cultural presence of Little House on The Prairie and the associated books is pretty high in the US, and the show is extremely associated with that time period.
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Nov 17, 2018 04:18
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LatwPIAT posted:Going mostly off holistic impressions rather than having explicitly read anything in a document here: That's roughly my holistic impression as well, except that unlike what you and I would think of as motorised formations, MRDs have tanks and tracked artillery and I think usually both IFVs and APCs. This kills the strategic mobility of the unit and makes you want to use it against people who have heavily armed things that you need tanks and IFVs to kill. This doesn't necessarily preclude the use of an APC, and the BTR series is blurring the line into IFV anyway, but I don't understand why they didn't do what everyone else did in combined arms formations with APCs: Tracked Shitboxes. They even had the MT-LB for the role but for some reason they wanted wheels.
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Nov 17, 2018 04:33
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Here's a clip from the show "I've Got a Secret" from 1956, and the person who has a secret saw the assassination of Lincoln. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RPoymt3Jx4
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Nov 17, 2018 04:34
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President John Tyler (b. 1790) still has two living grandchildren.
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Nov 17, 2018 04:41
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It is hypothetically possible that a young girl could have watched Commodore Perry's black ships sailing into Tokyo Bay at the opening of Japan before the Civil War, and as an old woman seen Admiral Halsey accepting the Japanese surrender aboard Missouri from the very same vantage point.
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Nov 17, 2018 06:00
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Going from heavier than air flight to the nuclear age and then the moon landing in the span of a normal lifetime is the one that gets me.
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Nov 17, 2018 06:42
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109 year old great x3 grandmother, watching the news on 9/11: I knew those wright brothers would lead us to trouble.
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Nov 17, 2018 06:44
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