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FAUXTON posted:was it really wartime though If you use the same argument we do, yes  Under a more sane approach it's even more illegal! Industrial accident destroying a planet is a good one; great way to find some poor maintenance tech and blame it all on them.
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Dec 2, 2019 16:13
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Cat Army 
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Wasn't there a Belgian uniform at some point that looked like a candy cane?
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Dec 2, 2019 16:33
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Rebel Commander Luke Skywalker said he became aware of the Alderaan disaster the moment it happened, despite being many parsecs away. Obiwan Kenobi was caught trespassing on Moff Tarkin's Peace Planetoid shortly after the incident, before the planetoid itself was destroyed. Further a rebel attack (supposedly carried out by rogue elements!) on an imperial facility had recently stolen highly classified military plans. Makes you think.
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Dec 2, 2019 16:44
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Besides it doesn't make sense for Tarkin to have used the Death Star.
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Dec 2, 2019 16:50
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Randarkman posted:The mention of cost overruns made me remember how Emperor Palpatine's penny-pinching is my absolute favorite part of the old EU. Milo and POTUS posted:The EU at times is so insane it might circle back around to endearing. But like... in the dumbest way Gentlegoons, the Brexit thread is the other way. FAUXTON posted:was it really wartime though Empire was only using eminent domain for a new interstellar highway. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Dec 2, 2019 |
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Dec 2, 2019 16:53
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I often read about early modern civilians wielding clubs or cudgels. Would these have been purpose-built weapons, or household implements that doubled as clubs? Nowadays almost everyone has an axe or a baseball bat but I don't know anyone with a club that is only used as a weapon.
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Dec 2, 2019 16:57
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Milo and POTUS posted:Wasn't there a Belgian uniform at some point that looked like a candy cane?  How soon we forgot the War for the North Pole.
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Dec 2, 2019 17:07
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As seen in Rogue 1, the Empire was in pursuit of known terrorists in possession of capital ships, capable of leveling cities from orbit. Perhaps the terrorists destroyed Alderaan, using some unknown method, perhaps the same method used to destroy the military facility of the Peace Moon. Join the Empire today. Help us root out and destroy the terrorist rebels and prevent another Alderaan.
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Dec 2, 2019 17:09
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Peasant homes would probably have something cudgel-like around, like an axe handle or a mallet. Written accounts of people practicing stick fighting as a martial art tend to date to the 19th century or thereabouts so they're much younger than Early Modern: The French really liked the short staff and the Irish are famous for the shillelagh. Both sticks can pass for a walking aid but I'm pretty sure they were made to be carried as a weapon.
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Dec 2, 2019 17:21
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VanSandman posted:As seen in Rogue 1, the Empire was in pursuit of known terrorists in possession of capital ships, capable of leveling cities from orbit. Perhaps the terrorists destroyed Alderaan, using some unknown method, perhaps the same method used to destroy the military facility of the Peace Moon. 
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Dec 2, 2019 17:26
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Siivola posted:Peasant homes would probably have something cudgel-like around, like an axe handle or a mallet. I remember those old Spy vs. Spy cartoons in Mad Magazine when I was a kid. They had a weird design for the clubs they hit each other with.  I was a bit puzzled by the fact that they were always hitting each other with turkey drumsticks.
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Dec 2, 2019 17:40
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Randomcheese3 posted:It's not that likely; British ships proved a lot more resilient to the sort of hits that doomed Lutzow and put Seydlitz into the position she was in. British ships were better designed to stop the spread of flooding, and had more portable pumps than the German ships. None of the British battlecruisers that sank were sunk by shell hits that penetrated the hull or magazines; it was all turret hits that caused the explosion. As Lion shows, these turret hits were survivable with proper safety procedures. Turret hits that did not penetrate the armour could still cause fires. If the British had been following German-style magazine procedures, then it's likely none of their ships would have sunk, but if the Germans had been following the procedures prevailing in the Battlecruiser Fleet, it's likely that Derfflinger and Seydlitz would have exploded too. What are your sources for this? Staff's book has locations of every shell hit on all the German BCs. You replace Seydlitz with any British BC and it doesn't make it back.
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Dec 2, 2019 18:00
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The EU gets dumb, but it's not much dumber than any other franchise gets as more and more works are added by authors who either timidly coast mine the original source work for material or make their own wild additions. I think what's really interesting about the EU is that it only really started taking off in the 90s. There were a few side novels, comics, and cartoons back when the original movies came out, but they mostly dried up by '86, despite Kenner's pitch to produce more content to make toys out of. There's a real synergy when Timothy Zahn started making his books in '91, and then in the same year, Dark Horse got the the license and started putting out new, original comics and Lucasarts took a break from Monkey Island and Pipe Dream to make a new Star Wars games and later started licensing out the property to independent making more original content in '93. So you have novels, video games, and comics all suddenly producing new original content at about the same time, and they all collectively inform each other, and you have weird intersections with all the most 90s comic trends and some important formative moments of video games, and all works being invigorated by the success of the rest until by the time Episode 1 comes out, it's riding off of a wave of contemporary content and firmly established fanbase instead of just nostalgia. goatsestretchgoals posted:Is the Death Star a BB or a BC? It was built as a BB but lol at getting dropped by a single torpedo. The Death Star is basically a tank destroyer. Main gun not on a swivel so it takes a while to really line up a shot, not very good at dealing with smaller enemies, and largely a reactive force rather than proactive.
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Dec 2, 2019 18:12
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Cessna posted:I remember those old Spy vs. Spy cartoons in Mad Magazine when I was a kid. They had a weird design for the clubs they hit each other with. In heraldry this is the usual armament of a 'savage'. Likewise that is how heraldists draw a grenade. Prohias was just following standards! Nenonen fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Dec 2, 2019 |
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Dec 2, 2019 18:16
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Cessna posted:Taken as a whole it is hard to beat the Neopolitains: Much like their ice cream.
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Dec 2, 2019 18:16
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Chamale posted:I often read about early modern civilians wielding clubs or cudgels. Would these have been purpose-built weapons, or household implements that doubled as clubs? Nowadays almost everyone has an axe or a baseball bat but I don't know anyone with a club that is only used as a weapon. I got a really good hittin' stick. It's about an axe handle in length. I literally keep it tucked in a corner as a just in case thing.
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Dec 2, 2019 18:19
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Is there a good study on why defensive missiles on bombers never really took hold?
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Dec 2, 2019 19:18
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Chamale posted:I often read about early modern civilians wielding clubs or cudgels. Would these have been purpose-built weapons, or household implements that doubled as clubs? Nowadays almost everyone has an axe or a baseball bat but I don't know anyone with a club that is only used as a weapon. I keep my old baton from my police days tucked away but honestly a bat is better because it’s not designed as a weapon from the get-go and you can use almost all the same moves with it. Baring that a mop handle is very similar in size to a riot baton. I also got like 3 axes, two chainsaws and a wrecking bar. If a treant comes at me I’m loving ready.
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Dec 2, 2019 19:54
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Saint Celestine posted:Sure, they took hit, mostly from 11" and 12". Replace the German BCs with the British BCs, and Scheer's 2nd turn most likely results in 5 sunken BCs. Comparatively, look at the beating Seydlitz took and somehow made it back to port.  "British Battlecruisers were badly designed because if they had been shot at by British Battlecruisers they would all be killed instantly!"Obviously this is a ridiculous comparison, you don't design ships to counter themselves, but if it were not a ridiculous comparison surely all it would demonstrate is that British Battlecruiser armaments were well designed and highly fit for purpose? For what it's worth, German battlecruisers were also terrible because if they had been replaced by rubber duckies at Dogger Bank they'd have been swept from the seas. bewbies posted:Is there a good study on why defensive missiles on bombers never really took hold? 1. They have, you're looking at the wrong sort of bomber  2. Mounting a missile to be able to fire in multiple directions is difficult and the resulting mount will be heavy and draggy and unreliable. Mounting a missile fixed forward results in you having to dogfight using a heavy bomber. Don't do that. 3. Designing a missile to be able to fire in multiple directions from a directionally agnostic mount results in Pye Wackett. Don't do that either.
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Dec 2, 2019 20:21
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Hey milhist thread! Long time lurker, (almost) first-time poster. I'm looking for Christmas gifts for myself and others, and was wondering: What are, in your opinion, the best-written books of military history in English? Assume the audience enjoy reading history but aren't professional historians. (Something less readable than, say, Shattered Sword will be a tough sell.) The topic doesn't matter! I'm curious to see what books stuck with the folks in this thread throughout time and space. As for myself, my favorite book of military history is probably Grant's autobiography, though honestly calling it military history is a bit of a stretch. It's really more of a straightforward memoir about a person who happened to be a great general. He's just such an interesting writer, with an unassuming and easy-to-understand style.
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Dec 2, 2019 20:44
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Dance Officer posted:Gentlepersons, this is the milhist thread. I'm sure there's a star wars thread for all your star wars discussions. At the exact moment, when the Star Wars discussion started here, the Star Wars thread in GBS started to discuss WW1 and WW2. I can only tell the threads apart by looking at the poster names and avatars.
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Dec 2, 2019 20:45
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FrangibleCover posted:
But you do take that into consideration? One of the comparisons for ships is whether they are armored against for their own guns. For example, Iowa is brought up as a case of their armor not being able to withstand their own guns. I dont see how this is ridiculous. Certain doctrines led to a certain design, that maximized firepower over armor. You swap the two, and get predictable results. You want a balance, not glass cannons. \/ That is my source as well, I will have to look at it again, as my memory is that there were a lot of partial pens. Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Dec 2, 2019 |
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Dec 2, 2019 20:55
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Saint Celestine posted:What are your sources for this? Staff's book has locations of every shell hit on all the German BCs. You replace Seydlitz with any British BC and it doesn't make it back. My sources are Staff's German Battlecruisers of World War One, Roberts' British Battlecruisers: 1905-1920, Friedman's The British Battleship: 1906-1946 and Fighting the Great War at Sea, Brown's The Grand Fleet, Burt's British Battleships of World War One, Brook's The Battle of Jutland and Campbell's Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting. There's also a few papers, especially Lambert's "Our Bloody Ships" or "Our Bloody System"? Jutland and the Loss of the Battle Cruisers, 1916. Running through the hits on Seydlitz, only the turret hits were more dangerous to a British battlecruiser than to a German one, and this is because of poor procedures. Had the British ship been following the same ones as Seydlitz's crew, then she would have survived, much as Lion did. Most of the hits exploded outside the armour, or penetrated armour that was no thicker than on British ships. It''s also worth noting that British shells often failed. Post-battle testing found that armour-piercing shells typically exploded on impact with plates thicker than 1/3rd calibre (i.e. a 4in thick plate for a 12in shell, or 5in for a 15in shell), while inert shells typically failed to penetrate 6in plates fully intact. The hits forward, which caused most of the flooding along with the torpedo hit, were much more easily survivable for British ships, which had better pumping capacity, fewer penetrations of watertight bulkheads, and better damage control procedures. Compare the travails of Seydlitz to those of Inflexible after she was mined in the Dardanelles in 1915. Inflexible had a mine go off under her bow, blowing a hole 30 by 26 ft in her side and bottom forward. While she flooded rapidly, she only gained 5ft of draft forward, compared to a 15ft increase in draft for Seydlitz at Jutland - though part of this is due to the lack of battle damage creating further leak paths in Inflexible.
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Dec 2, 2019 20:58
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nrook posted:I'm looking for Christmas gifts for myself and others, and was wondering: What are, in your opinion, the best-written books of military history in English? Assume the audience enjoy reading history but aren't professional historians. (Something less readable than, say, Shattered Sword will be a tough sell.) May I suggest David Chandler's Campaigns of Napoleon? It's old, but it is a beautiful book and very readable. Reading my Dad's copy is what got me interested in Mil-Hist.
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Dec 2, 2019 21:03
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nrook posted:Hey milhist thread! Long time lurker, (almost) first-time poster. The Liberation Triology by Rick Atkinson is an extremely readable account of the allied campaigns in North Africa, Italy and Western Europe. Full of small little anecdotes and really good at giving a feeling of the overall struggles the allied armies went through to achieve victory. It manages to avoid the whole "this division marched there, this division marched here but was delayed by a sudden rainstorm, allowing the enemy division to turn the flank of..." narratives that no one can follow without an animated map. Anthony Beevor is also in, I feel, a sweet spot between professional, serious history and pop-history. Rana Mitter's Forgotten Ally is an amazing overview of China in WWII and really allowed me to grasp this whole theater of the war that gets almost entirely ignored in the west unless there is an American or 5 involved somewhere (usually pilots). It focuses a bit more on the societal and economic effects of the war in China, but those are incredibly closely related to the actual war fighting and you would only get part of the picture if you only read the stories of Japanese divisions going here and attacking there. ArchangeI fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Dec 2, 2019 |
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Dec 2, 2019 21:11
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Saint Celestine posted:But you do take that into consideration? One of the comparisons for ships is whether they are armored against for their own guns. For example, Iowa is brought up as a case of their armor not being able to withstand their own guns. Honestly you argue against yourself better than I could. British Battlecruisers were not armoured to resist their own guns. Neither were the Iowas. Were they badly designed ships? Hell, I can't think of anything I rate against its own guns for a significant length of time except the Scharnhorsts, and that's because the Scharhorsts were horribly undergunned. Maybe the New Mexicos?
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Dec 2, 2019 21:37
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FrangibleCover posted:Honestly you argue against yourself better than I could. British Battlecruisers were not armoured to resist their own guns. Neither were the Iowas. Were they badly designed ships? Hell, I can't think of anything I rate against its own guns for a significant length of time except the Scharnhorsts, and that's because the Scharhorsts were horribly undergunned. Maybe the New Mexicos? I was making that point in response to the suggestion that its ridiculous to consider whether not you design ships to resist your own guns. Naval designers certainly considered it. This argument is getting a bit long, so my final comment is that the battlecruiser design as originally conceptualized by Fisher was inherently flawed because of their lack of armor.
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Dec 2, 2019 21:51
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nrook posted:Hey milhist thread! Long time lurker, (almost) first-time poster. I'm always here for book recommendations. Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors and Six Frigates are two of the finest military histories ever written, and anybody with a passing interesting in the US Navy will love both. Keane's Road of Bones about the siege of Kohima is utterly compelling, and captures the sense of these two great empires battering each other to pieces at their very extremities. And picking just one book from the Second Indochina War shelf, Shooting at the Moon is about the strange and destructive 'secret war' in Laos,
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Dec 2, 2019 22:44
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Dance Officer posted:You could look into the way world of warships handles armour and penetration mechanics. A lot of things matter in the warships model; the type of shell being fired, what part of the ship it hits, the angle it hits at, whether or not the shell penetrates (or overpenetrates), you name it. Please don't. World of Warships has armor mechanics based on World of Tanks, which leads to ridiculous things like plunging fire not being nearly as dangerous as it should be and everyone trying to staying bow on to the enemy because they take less damage that way, which is not how naval combat works.
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Dec 3, 2019 00:43
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nrook posted:Hey milhist thread! Long time lurker, (almost) first-time poster. Barry Strauss's book on Salamis is just wonderful. quote:But in 472 B.C. Aeschylus could still see the white horses of the sun rising over the earth that morning and the red stain widening in a Persian grandee's beard. He remembered things that he described in cliches, but they were earned cliches, as he might have thought; anyone who was there that day had the right to stumble in his words. There's a lot that's readable but Strauss is beautiful.
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Dec 3, 2019 00:58
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Please don't. World of Warships has armor mechanics based on World of Tanks, which leads to ridiculous things like plunging fire not being nearly as dangerous as it should be and everyone trying to staying bow on to the enemy because they take less damage that way, which is not how naval combat works. Well that answers the nagging guilt of not giving the game a try for me. Battleships, tanks of the sea?!
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Dec 3, 2019 00:59
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SeanBeansShako posted:Well that answers the nagging guilt of not giving the game a try for me. That only works if tanks existed before battleships, which is clearly not the case. Instead, tanks are the Man-o-Wars of the land. Thanks for the feedback about armor!
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Dec 3, 2019 01:07
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SeanBeansShako posted:Well that answers the nagging guilt of not giving the game a try for me. If you want something broadly similar but with a more realistic damage model (whatever that means), War Thunder naval battles is pretty good. Penetration and internal damage is modelled rather than just using an hp system.
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Dec 3, 2019 01:09
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WW2 Data Everything you need to know about the V-1 "Buzz" Bomb. How was it fuzed? How many failsafes did it have and how did they work? What was the expected survival rate of a piloted Buzz bomb? Other than the He-111, which other bomber could have carried it? How did the various gyros work? Which German bomb did they use as the V-1's warhead? All that and more at the blog! Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Dec 3, 2019 |
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Dec 3, 2019 01:19
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Can anyone in this thread recommend me books dealing with women in historical warfare? In particular, while their work in support roles would be interesting, I was more looking for cultures or circumstances that led to women acting as generals or even troops. For example, Artemisia, the Trung sisters, or Zenobia.
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Dec 3, 2019 02:00
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Hiro Protagonist posted:Can anyone in this thread recommend me books dealing with women in historical warfare? In particular, while their work in support roles would be interesting, I was more looking for cultures or circumstances that led to women acting as generals or even troops. For example, Artemisia, the Trung sisters, or Zenobia. Artemisia is kind of uncomplicated really. She was queen of Halicarnassus and as a subject of the King of Persia led her city-state's contribution of ships during the invasion of Greece. Her importance has been kind of overblown because 1) She was Greek and 2) She was from Halicarnassus. Herodotus who was a Greek from Halicarnassus himself and that's probably why she is emphasized in his account leading to subsequent historical overemphasis on her probably and the seemingly common misconception that she was the overall commander of the Persian fleet (when she was in fact pretty far down the chain so to speak). She did not command the Persian fleet in any of the battles it fought, that was a Persian (or possibly Phoenician, can't quite remember, but the Phoenician contribution to the fleet was the largest and by far most important). She commanded Halicarnassus's contribution of five ships. edit: Did Zenobia lead armies? Are you sure you aren't thinking of Queen Mavia? edit2: Looking into the above, it seems she did on occasion, but she really was a powerful monarch ruling a state and had various generals she put in charge of armies and such while the Queen Mavia I mentioned above is closer to a straight up warrior queen. Really though, in earlier times (say before the early modern period to be a bit arbitrary), it wouldn't be uncommon for actually reigning female rulers in monarchies and aristorcratic societies to lead their armies (or at the very least accompany them as the formal leader) and furthermore be expected to do so. This goes across cultural lines and really seems to be more of a military aristocracy thing and a consequence of hereditary rule than anything else, two examples off the top of my head are Eleanor of Aquitaine and Razia Sultan. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Dec 3, 2019 |
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Dec 3, 2019 02:17
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Cessna posted:Taken as a whole it is hard to beat the Neopolitains: christ just think about having to keep those clean in the field, or at least having to pretend to try
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Dec 3, 2019 02:34
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Hiro Protagonist posted:Can anyone in this thread recommend me books dealing with women in historical warfare? In particular, while their work in support roles would be interesting, I was more looking for cultures or circumstances that led to women acting as generals or even troops. For example, Artemisia, the Trung sisters, or Zenobia. There's an impressive book on Russian women in WW2 called The Unwomanly Face of War, but given your examples the 1940s might not be historical enough.
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Dec 3, 2019 02:38
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nrook posted:What are, in your opinion, the best-written books of military history in English?
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Dec 3, 2019 02:55
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Pyle posted:At the exact moment, when the Star Wars discussion started here, the Star Wars thread in GBS started to discuss WW1 and WW2. I can only tell the threads apart by looking at the poster names and avatars.
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Dec 3, 2019 02:55
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