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SeanBeansShako posted:The weirdest thing about The Last Tiger is it doesn't make sense chronologically to the rest of the game, as it comes with a content update rooted in early Blitzkrieg/Fall of France of the games content time line. I still think a story based on Dunkirk or a British light tank crew fighting a retreat with the French would have fit a lot more? It would have undermined the Anglo-American idea of the French as unwilling participants*. *: Of course, as Robert Paxton and (that French Jew whose name I can't remember but fought in the army in 1940 and wrote about the French collapse and was in the Resistance before getting murdered by the Nazis literal days before liberation) talk about there were a whole lot of proto-Pétainisme/fash-symps/anti-democracy among the French military command but that was probably more part of the strategic-level collapse, not a tactical-operational thing? Schadenboner fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 18:09
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Schadenboner posted:It would have undermined the Anglo-American idea of the French as unwilling participants*.
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Dec 6, 2018 18:14
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Bourricot posted:Marc Bloch, the book is called Strange Defeat (l'Étrange Défaite).  Yup. Important to remember he's writing from within the event, it's memoir more than big-H history. But really good/important. I should find my copy and re-read it. Thanks!
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Dec 6, 2018 18:18
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SeanBeansShako posted:
As practical matter it's considerably harder to get access to Russian archives than it was in the immediate post cold war period.
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Dec 6, 2018 18:33
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chitoryu12 posted:The StG 44 isn't a great gun, but that's mostly in the context of what came a few years after it. I've fired one and it's heavy, uncomfortable, has surprisingly harsh recoil for an assault rifle, and is a little difficult to make hits with in full auto. But semi-auto and bolt-action rifles in large calibers like .30-06 and 7.92x57mm have these flaws worse. The StG 44 was a legitimate game changer for a soldier who got one in basically everything except pinpoint long range accuracy, prone shooting, and weight. In a video game, none of the flaws of the real rifle except recoil are going to be present so you're basically using a weapon a decade or two more advanced than the rest. The SKS and the FN FAL both use tilting bolt, as do basically all the famous WW2 light machine guns. It's a great mechanism if you need a lot of locking strength (i.e. if you're using full power rifle rounds) in a full-auto gun and want it as compact and light as you can get. But once you move to intermediate rounds, you don't need as much locking strength so other options will give you more accurate, simpler, and usually lighter rifles. EDIT: In fact, despite their wildly opposed popular reputations, the StG 44 is a lot like the Chauchat. By virtue of being the first widely used and successful versions of their respective concepts, they're worse than everything that came later but better than any reasonable contemporary alternative. Plus they both have pretty crappy magazines. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 18:58
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chitoryu12 posted:
Nazi Engineering.txt
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Dec 6, 2018 19:22
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it's really just a form of first mover disadvantage
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Dec 6, 2018 19:33
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P-Mack posted:As practical matter it's considerably harder to get access to Russian archives than it was in the immediate post cold war period. I'm sad now  .
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Dec 6, 2018 20:09
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Comrade Gorbash posted:EDIT: In fact, despite their wildly opposed popular reputations, the StG 44 is a lot like the Chauchat. By virtue of being the first widely used and successful versions of their respective concepts, they're worse than everything that came later but better than any reasonable contemporary alternative. Plus they both have pretty crappy magazines.
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Dec 6, 2018 20:20
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It's both funny and a bit sad a lot of these early automatic mgs/rifles are done in by claggy mud. They were designed for that mystical biff baff done by christmas clean 1st World War they all imagined.
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Dec 6, 2018 20:26
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you know what does not get enough attention? the mitrailleuse
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Dec 6, 2018 20:27
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SeanBeansShako posted:It's both funny and a bit sad a lot of these early automatic mgs/rifles are done in by claggy mud. They were designed for that mystical biff baff done by christmas clean 1st World War they all imagined. I'm not sure how much of it was just technology of the time rather than conscious design decisions. Open mags was a gimme but hey they make sense for a MG on an airplane
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Dec 6, 2018 20:31
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HEY GUNS posted:you know what does not get enough attention? the mitrailleuse I love that thing.
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Dec 6, 2018 20:32
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:A low key crucially important scene in Stalingrad that makes the portrayal of the Germans so good is when they execute a group of civilians, including a boy that they’ve come to like, by firing squad. They don’t really want to do it but they follow orders because well, that’s what they do. So while the movie works to humanize those German soldiers through their personalities, comraddery, and adversity , it also makes clear to the viewer that they’re also war criminals. Now granted I haven't seen this movie in like 15 years, but after they shoot the kid didn't the senior office go to every soldier, one by one, and make them discharge their bolt to show they had fired a bullet into the kid? Implying that if he caught one of them not having fired, then they were next against the wall. But yea otherwise i remember it being a great film and it didn't really do anything to glorify or "wheraboo" the Germans. Hell there's a scene in the beginning which shows them (the German characters) beating up Soviet POWS while they excitingly talk about getting to use them as slaves after the war.
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Dec 6, 2018 20:51
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P-Mack posted:As practical matter it's considerably harder to get access to Russian archives than it was in the immediate post cold war period. "what archives?" says FSB clerk throwing boxes of gulag records into incinerator. Comrade Gorbash posted:EDIT: In fact, despite their wildly opposed popular reputations, the StG 44 is a lot like the Chauchat. By virtue of being the first widely used and successful versions of their respective concepts, they're worse than everything that came later but better than any reasonable contemporary alternative. Plus they both have pretty crappy magazines. I recall, from something I read like a decade ago admittedly so I don't know if it's true, that magazine production for the StG44 was very low, only like 3-4 magazines per gun for the entire production run. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I'm not sure how much of it was just technology of the time rather than conscious design decisions. Part of it certainly stems from designers just trying to figure out how to make things work in the first place, which is why you get things like the Luger's toggle-lock mechanism and/or toggle-lock rifles.
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Dec 6, 2018 21:09
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SeanBeansShako posted:It's both funny and a bit sad a lot of these early automatic mgs/rifles are done in by claggy mud. They were designed for that mystical biff baff done by christmas clean 1st World War they all imagined. The number of weapons that can survive being covered in thick mud is pretty low. Even bolt-action rifles fail, sometimes very badly very quickly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZobRzO4bSS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrV3Wq59mz0 Ironically, one of the only guns to ever pass their mud tests was....the Luger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_IeAaR5AmU Turns out the secret to surviving mud is to seal the gun well enough that no mud gets in when the rifle is closed and the action can blow any mud off instead of inviting it in. The Luger, for all the myths about it being unreliable and useless in the mud, is actually extremely durable against it! One of the most interesting mud tests they did was a reproduction Henry rifle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRZHsZkv-2A When first fired, it works flawlessly even with mud in the magazine tube. On the second attempt, it jams completely and irreparably. What happened? Look at the ejection port. In the first test, they left an empty case in the chamber that was ejected when the lever was worked, kicking mud off. On the second attempt, they left the chamber empty and then cycled the rifle. Without a casing or live round being ejected, the mud was free to fall into the mechanism.
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Dec 6, 2018 21:15
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HEY GUNS posted:nobody says anything bad about the chauchat in my presence enjoy your comically tapered bullets
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Dec 6, 2018 21:42
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bewbies posted:I think I've asked this before but at what point could I have had a conversation with a historical English speaker? I thought I saw The Historical Linguist Signal on the clouds. First off, it's not the best phrased question for a variety of reasons. One of the big ones is "have a conversation" is super vague. I can half-assed have a conversation with a random, say, Italian person despite only knowing pasta names and how to say, "John has telephoned*". That's because I'm used to trying to get points across in languages besides my native ones and I'm pretty patient with that kind of thing, plus I know a bunch of cheats to make things easier. (Plus I know French and enough about Italian to "Italianize" my French and hope for the best.) But this is clearly not what you mean. I assume you mean something like "have a (flawless) conversation (without too much effort)", which is more workable but still I'm gonna hem and haw. A good thing to keep in mind is that I can virtually guarantee you that I can find modern "English speakers" who don't meet that criterion. (This dovetails into a larger point that I'll try to gloss over, namely that nailing down what is or isn't a given language seems intuitive but rapidly gets super messy if you're trying to have a formal definition that isn't just tummy feels.) . E.g. talk to someone from, say, rural Scotland and let me know how that goes. Keep in mind that "English" is one of the more monolithic languages with relatively little variation. German, or o my god Chinese, are a shitton worse. So let's set aside "have a conversation" and language variation and the answer is an unsatisfying... Maybe 500 years ago if you're pretty canny (Shakespeare is pushing it ; it's got an extra pronoun, the phonology is different, and all of the meanings are tweaked slightly so good luck) ; Middle English or earlier you have The Great Vowel Shift to deal with plus the last little bits of the full case system a la the rest of Germanic. But even then we're being really optimistic. If you go back and listen to the first audio recordings from the 19th century, it can be pretty hard to make them out and it's not just the crappy recording tech at the time. Language changes really fast, and writing hides that. It kind of hurts your head if you think about it too much, but you probably actually have totally different vowels from even your parents. So I'd say 150 to 400 years, depending heavily on who you're talking to and how good you are at languages. Also everyone just ignore all of those written sources. Like, I get it, you want to have sources, but taking those sources as representative of spoken language would be at best adorably naive. The classic example being something like Les Serments de Strasbourg, where Charlemagne's kids are clearly trying to write in Latin but their Latin sucks so you can tell that they really are thinking in Old French. This is cool and you can actually tell a lot from it, but you can't just read it straight. People are very, very bad about thinking they know more about the language(s) they speak than they actually know. Trust me, I have to tell people they're wrong about language for a living. Why yes I do drink a lot. Did that make sense/help? *It gets used as an example a lot for some reason and it stuck in my head.
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Dec 6, 2018 21:46
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SeanBeansShako posted:It's very paint by the numbers both game play and story wise and nothing offends or sadly does anything new. The game play elements that force violence and spectacle undo the whole trying to send a vague message from the start. Video games etc. I enjoyed this article on Battlefield V, but it's title definitely gives away the viewpoint "Battlefield V’s campaign tries to argue that WWII had very fine people on both sides".
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Dec 6, 2018 23:06
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Xiahou Dun posted:But this is clearly not what you mean. I assume you mean something like "have a (flawless) conversation (without too much effort)", which is more workable but still I'm gonna hem and haw. I mean it's not rural but I suggest Americans itt search for 'Rab C Nesbitt' on YouTube and see how it goes for you. Yes, he is speaking modern English.
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Dec 6, 2018 23:27
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Hegel, the BBC has a podcast on Thirty Years War. What do you think? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001fv2
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Dec 7, 2018 00:11
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13th KRRC War Diary, 23rd November 1918 posted:In the morning the Battalion had a fatigue party of 30 on road cleaning which is to be a daily duty in future. In the afternoon the allotted numbers attended the 1st of a series of lectures by Professor Adkins on modern problems and history. The Regimental Sergeant Major and the Sgts of the Battalion entertained the C.O. and officers and a few French N.C.O.s to a smoking concert which was much enjoyed. 13th KRRC War Diary, 24th November 1918 posted:The Battalion paraded for Divine Service at 1100 hours. Another round of the inter-platoon Football Competition was played. 13th KRRC War Diary, 25th November 1918 posted:A Brigade route march through LIGNY, CAULLERY, CLARY, MONTIGNY, thence back to CAUDRY. In the evening an elementary French Class was started by 2/Lt. Kruger. 13th KRRC War Diary, 26th November 1918 posted:In the morning classes for elementary education were held. The Battalion played the 1st ESSEX at football on their ground and after an even game beat them 3 goals to 1 (a penalty). This was the first match the Battn played in the Divnl.Association League. 13th KRRC War Diary, 27th November 1918 posted:In the morning there was only the ordinary routine of platoon inspections, a run and P.T. a little drill and education classes. In the afternoon there were sports under Company arrangements. 13th KRRC War Diary, 28th November 1918 posted:The first wet day since the armistice, consequently no training was done. The Battalion played the 13th Royal Fusiliers in the Divisional Leagure and won 8 goals to 2. 13th KRRC War Diary, 29th November 1918 posted:A warning order was received that the Division would move on Sunday to the SOLESMES Area by route march. The Brigade paraded at 1000 hours for inspection by G.O.C. 111th Inf. Bde. 13th KRRC War Diary, 30th November 1918 posted:The day was spent in making preparations for the move on the 1st. 13th KRRC War Diary, 1st December 1918 posted:The Division commenced to move to-day to the area in Belgium which it will occupy for some considerable time. It is intended to march the whole way in east stages and the move must be completed by December 17th. 13th KRRC War Diary, 2nd December 1918 posted:The Battalion moved off again at 0900 hours and marched via BEAUDIGNIES and GOMMEGNIES to WARGNIES-LE-PETIT, where it expects to remain for about a week. In spite of the marching of the last two days being mainly over pave, very few men fell out. The billets here are rather better than in the previous stopping place, but the luxury we had at CAUDRY absent, chiefly because the Boche removed most of the people's household effects. The inhabitants are also underfed and in some ways are worse off for food than when the Germans were here. Then they were dependant on the American Relief Commission for supplies, but when the War arrived in these parts, they were cut off and since then the French victualling arrangements do not appear to have been very satisfactory. Their own stores of potatoes and wheat were removed by special thieving parties whom the enemy sent round before his departure. 13th KRRC War Diary, 3rd December 1918 posted:Information was received that His Majesty the King would pass through the Divisional Area on the 3rd and 4th, so arrangements were made for representatives of the Battalion to be in position to welcome him. 13th KRRC War Diary, 4th December 1918 posted:Companies were left at the disposal of Company Commanders. 13th KRRC War Diary, 5th December 1918 posted:The Battalion went for a route march through AMFROIPERT, GOMMEGNIES and PREUX AU SART. 13th KRRC War Diary, 6th December 1918 posted:On this and the following days the mornings were occupied with inspections, and physical training, a little drill, and rifle exercises, and in the intervals between these, parties were sent out to collect some of the numerous salvage of the neighbourhood.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:12
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HEY GUNS posted:you know what does not get enough attention? the mitrailleuse I'm not saying it's because Anglosphere militaries never really got much into them but that's 100% definitely why it is. You see loads of them on the continent in all sorts of weird configurations. Did you know that Norway has technically operated a 25mm autocannon? I can't say I know that much about them but I definitely love the effort.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:17
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Yeah Scottish English (or god if I really want to confuse someone, Scots) is my go to example of a Very Different Dialect for Americans. Also fun is that HEY GAL and I both speak things that are technically called German, but can basically not understand each other at all. Because I only ever spoke Bavarian with my family and she speaks some kind of Ossie fish-person Innsmouth speak full of gray and Soviet-occupied tears. But I could use Gullah or Jamaican Patwa as examples too, those are just slightly messier because they're creolized and that has its own giant bag of issues. Not that they're bad, they own serious bones. They just aren't as nice and clean an example.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:20
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Xiahou Dun posted:Yeah Scottish English (or god if I really want to confuse someone, Scots) is my go to example of a Very Different Dialect for Americans. I love this one for that purpose: https://youtu.be/le_uNGdpa4c
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Dec 7, 2018 00:28
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TerminalSaint posted:I love this one for that purpose: https://youtu.be/le_uNGdpa4c I prefer this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqmDq6IiF_Q
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Dec 7, 2018 00:54
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I have understood far more of these youtube videos than I'm comfortable with. I need to stop hanging out with the Scottish friends so much. (Although they have been teaching me Scottish Gaelic which is somehow even more exasperating than Irish Gaelic and it's wonderful. Also the copious alcohol, but that might be leaning too hard into the stereotype. Also my one friend has been teaching me Cumbrian which is just flap-jack bonkers and I love it.)
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Dec 7, 2018 01:05
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Xiahou Dun posted:I have understood far more of these youtube videos than I'm comfortable with. There's at least one Scottish Gaelic speaker on the forums, I remember a thread about it.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:25
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When I made a passing reference to learning Gaelic as a hobby I had multiple PM's going, "Are you actually insane? Why would you do this to yourself?" I just like learning languages and I think the phonology is cool. Not the most exciting syntax however. Are you still learning Chinese, P-Mack?
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Dec 7, 2018 01:38
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chitoryu12 posted:There was no real way to make the StG 44 cheaper or better while still maintaining the characteristics and design that made it an StG 44, so it was discarded shortly after the war for better weapons and only really used by people who had no other alternative (like the Viet Cong or East German guards). There were StG 44 production lines in Occupied Yugoslavia, and when Yugoslavia was liberated, these remained in Yugoslavian hands. The StG 44 was the service rifle of the Yugoslavian paratroopers until 1983. They'd licensed their own version of the AKM in 1970. It could just be organizational inertia, but Yugoslavia spent thirteen years issuing StG 44s to their most elite troops and AKMs (M-70) to the rank-and-file. (A similar thing happened with MG42 production lines. The Yugoslavian squad machine gun, the M-53 "Šarac", is straight-up an MG42 produced with the original tooling.)
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Dec 7, 2018 01:52
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LatwPIAT posted:(A similar thing happened with MG42 production lines. The Yugoslavian squad machine gun, the M-53 "Šarac", is straight-up an MG42 produced with the original tooling.) Rechambered or still in 7.92?
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Dec 7, 2018 02:04
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Xiahou Dun posted:When I made a passing reference to learning Gaelic as a hobby I had multiple PM's going, "Are you actually insane? Why would you do this to yourself?" 我還學習漢語可是太難了。  Languages are cool but definitely don't come easy to me.
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Dec 7, 2018 02:18
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P-Mack posted:我還學習漢語可是太難了。 You uh. Didn't say that grammatically. You said something like "I have of the Chinese learning although it was too difficult." Except like wronger. I had to go through character by character to even parse it. I think you wanted “我學過中文， 但是太漢了” Sorry. But good on you for going with Traditional! It's way more readable and much better looking. If you ever want a learning buddy, my Chinese is getting rusty and I'm happy to help/teach/just communicate! Just PM me.
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Dec 7, 2018 02:27
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Xiahou Dun posted:You uh. Didn't say that grammatically. Gah, I do way more reading than writing so I definitely make a hash of things when trying to "express basic ideas". Thanks for the offer!
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Dec 7, 2018 02:31
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LatwPIAT posted:There were StG 44 production lines in Occupied Yugoslavia, and when Yugoslavia was liberated, these remained in Yugoslavian hands. The StG 44 was the service rifle of the Yugoslavian paratroopers until 1983. They'd licensed their own version of the AKM in 1970. It could just be organizational inertia, but Yugoslavia spent thirteen years issuing StG 44s to their most elite troops and AKMs (M-70) to the rank-and-file. Well before the AKM they were using bolt-action M48 rifles right? IMO that late in the Cold War you'd really be better off getting your regular troops switched over to automatic rifles first, the paras can make due with their gear that's "good enough" before changing over at a later point.
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Dec 7, 2018 02:39
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GotLag posted:Rechambered or still in 7.92? Both still in 7.92, so at least they have the round commonality! Yugoslavia bought from both sides and had giant piles of random surplus kit dumped on them, so they had some very weird ammunition sets. 7.92 Kurz was replaced by 7.62 Short was replaced by 5.56 NATO while at roughly the same time 7.62x54R was replacing 7.92 Mauser. The SMG was in 9mm until you add in the Territorial units for .45 ACP and also .22LR in Slovenia. Frankly I don't understand how they managed to have a civil war, what if everyone had seized the wrong ammunition dumps for their guns? Xiahou Dun posted:Yeah Scottish English (or god if I really want to confuse someone, Scots) is my go to example of a Very Different Dialect for Americans.
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Dec 7, 2018 02:40
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Just like if I was doing this to a German speaker, I wouldn't pick my Bavarian or HEY Gal's Swamp German, but East Friesian. Context.
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Dec 7, 2018 02:45
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C.M. Kruger posted:Well before the AKM they were using bolt-action M48 rifles right? IMO that late in the Cold War you'd really be better off getting your regular troops switched over to automatic rifles first, the paras can make due with their gear that's "good enough" before changing over at a later point. Yugoslavia was one of the major users and producers of the SKS, which they produced as the PAP M-59. (And later as the PAP M-59/66). The AKM entered production in force in 1970 and very quickly replaced the M-59/66. I guess it is possible that they figured they could save money by not switching to M-70s before they had to, though. The M-70 and M-70A models were milled and apparently somewhat expensive. (The M-59/66s were put in storage and very soon most of them were sent as aid to Angola and Mozambique, where they remained in service for a long time because they could fire rifle grenades - which Yugoslavia also supplied. Mozambique received a special version made from M-59/66 kits and local teak hardwood. It's probably the best SKS ever made. I'm not big on gun ownership, but if I were to own a gun, a Mozambican SKS with a sticker that says "this gun kills white supremacists" would be cool, in a somewhat morbid way...)
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Dec 7, 2018 03:05
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P-Mack posted:我還學習漢語可是太難了。 繁体字是敌伪的语言，简体字是人民之字！ *Writing that out hurt my soul
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Dec 7, 2018 03:14
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Was watching a clip of platoon and think I saw a shotgun. Were they in common use in Vietnam? Seems almost any rifle of that generation would have the benefit of better range and accuracy and even in a "put lots of lead downrange" competition even on semi auto they could probably keep pace with a shotgun by volume alone.
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Dec 7, 2018 04:08
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