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Siivola posted:Obviously this is optimized such that any three privates can set it up and break it down, but how bulky can you make a tent? Even if you upscale this to be super tall or some weird shape, you won't end up with that much more canvas or poles. Just rent a cart or something.
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Apr 10, 2020 09:45
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About the switch to two handed weapons. Matt Easton put out a video yesterday where he argued that with swords specifically the unpopularity of two handed swords during the age of shields was mostly because of how they are worn and not how they are wielded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpDTzrMA89Q
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Apr 10, 2020 11:44
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:That is true to a point but overstated. To that end... I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about the arms race, is it ahistorical to say that armour and weapons co-evolve? You can say plate armour became more widespread not only due to better metallurgy but also societal changes leading to increasing labour costs making the painstaking work involved in (good) mail less cost effective, yet plate armour still outperformed against most weapons of the time and you see a shift in weapons used to counter this. Afaik use of early(ish) medieval two handed weapons was reserved for the absolute elite units who could afford full body mail and were intended to hold a line/protect a person while outnumbered where a long but manoeuvrable weapon is very useful, kind of a different use case even if the weapons seem similar. Swords are kind of a weird area as they are so tied to fashion and social standing and being, with exceptions, a backup weapon 
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Apr 10, 2020 12:54
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Squalid posted:Do China, Russia, or India have similar requirements, given I assume they are less likely to be interested in overseas deployments? Obviously transport is still an issue regardless, but if you're mostly worried about moving stuff around on rail that would obviously change the calculus. Nenonen posted:The difference is the degree of survivability. When a tank is hit it needs to figure out how to get out of that situation quick, it'll need repairs, it may have to be abandoned, it's also possible that something inside gets hit and there are casualties, even a risk of fire. With an IFV the assessment starts from the worst possibilities being the most likely ones. It probably catches fire, people inside probably are wounded if not dead, the vehicle probably will have to be left in place, sometimes it might be able to be towed home for repairs... Cessna posted:I think this is overly optimistic as far as tanks go. If a tank gets hit with an ATGM odds are pretty good that it and everyone inside are dead. Incidental note, ISIS bailed out an Iraqi Abrams with a manually guided Malyutka ATGM from the 1960s to the front. Just because you can't penetrate it doesn't mean you won't remove the tank.
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Apr 10, 2020 13:55
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Squalid posted:Do China, Russia, or India have similar requirements, given I assume they are less likely to be interested in overseas deployments? Obviously transport is still an issue regardless, but if you're mostly worried about moving stuff around on rail that would obviously change the calculus. Russia's new IFV/APC shares its engine and chassis with their new MBT; I think it ended up weighing in more than the T-90. Israel also has a superheavy IFV, same sort of idea. Neither of them have any real strategic mobility requirements, so it isn't such a big deal to build a big fat battle taxi. All of China's APCs/IFVs are light...lighter than their US equivalents in most cases. My personal favorite is the teeny little airborne IFV that clocks in at a whopping 8 tons. wiegieman posted:How much is APS changing this? I've heard all sorts of wild things about Israeli tanks shooting down current gen Russian ATGMs and even backtracking the shooter. Are tanks going to be infantry proof? APS are certainly showing promise, but it is very, VERY hard to stay ahead of the curve with regards to missile technology and their various penetration aids. In any case, APS certainly isn't a catch-all survivability solution. Trophy, for instance, is super effective against older ATGMs smuggled into the hands of militiamen, but doesn't do a whole lot against a long range precision rocket artillery attack, and threat missile systems are already out there specifically designed to defeat it. bewbies fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Apr 10, 2020 |
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Apr 10, 2020 14:29
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mllaneza posted:For Toomuchabstraction's benefit, the above is the "battle turn around" maneuver practiced by the German navy in WW1. In it every ship simultaneously turns 180 degrees to port or starboard as ordered. This reverses the direction of your line in mere minutes. It's a quick way to get a smaller force out of trouble with a larger one. It also doesn't have the "Windy Corner" disadvantage; at Jutland the 5th BS reversed course while under fire, so the Germans just ranged in on the spot where they were all turning. Several ships got badly hit, and Warspite lost steering control and had to circle while under fire. Any navy could learn that, Got it, thanks. Maneuvering's going to be a little silly in this game, since one side in each conflict typically only has a single ship, while the other side starts out having a dozen and towards the end of the game will likely have more like 60-100 ships. In short the player doesn't really have a "line of battle" they need to worry about, and the enemy is going to have a variety of formations depending on the mission, to help keep things varied. I take it the "Windy Corner" problem is where the line of battle pulls a U-turn, which means a lot of ships passing through the same stationary location?
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Apr 10, 2020 14:33
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bewbies posted:Russia's new IFV/APC shares its engine and chassis with their new MBT; I think it ended up weighing in more than the T-90. Israel also has a superheavy IFV, same sort of idea. Neither of them have any real strategic mobility requirements, so it isn't such a big deal to build a big fat battle taxi. The Russian Armata IFV isnt out yet though, is it? I thought when they scrapped the plans to actually buy the tank (orders went from 1000 to 500 to 200 and down to 20 and maybe more in the future) the IFV (and rest of the variants) went down the same drain.
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Apr 10, 2020 14:44
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Valtonen posted:The Russian Armata IFV isnt out yet though, is it? I thought when they scrapped the plans to actually buy the tank (orders went from 1000 to 500 to 200 and down to 20 and maybe more in the future) the IFV (and rest of the variants) went down the same drain. Yes and no...the first batch of all the Armata platforms is due this year, but you always have to account for "Russia" when it comes to things like this.
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Apr 10, 2020 14:51
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The Abhay wants a word with you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhay_IFV
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Apr 10, 2020 14:52
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Squalid posted:also a lot of the best quality weather proofing like oil cloth would also be ridiculously flammable. Lol no it isn't. https://youtu.be/VTXjm0no8gw Nessus posted:I think those tents were pretty involved and bulky. The Roman legions could pack them around but I don't think any medieval armies had that level of scale and logistical infrastructure, at least not on a casual basis. Thankfully someone saved me the effort here. https://www.tentorium.pl/en/iconography/ But also the source I quoted literally mentioned tents. ThaBus posted:I'm not sure what point you're trying the arms race, is it ahistorical to say that armour and weapons co-evolve? You can say plate armour became more widespread not only due to better metallurgy but also societal changes leading to increasing labour costs making the painstaking work involved in (good) mail less cost effective, yet plate armour still outperformed against most weapons of the time and you see a shift in weapons used to counter this. What's ahistorical is thinking of it as a uniformly applicable, organized and highly conscious effort. I do not think every soldier would be picking weapons based on optimization for combat against fully armoured men at arms, even though they might expect to encounter them. The survival and common use of cutting-focused swords into the 17th century is proof enough of that, even if later blades had e.g. multiple fullers instead of a single one like their predecessors. My statement is in part a reaction to the impression that shields were entirely discarded, as were arming swords, when plate armour shows up on the scene. I've seen this, especially the former, in academic works as well as internet posts, and whether it is a result of ignorance or imprecise language it ignores an entire class of soldier literally called a shield bearer. quote:Afaik use of early(ish) medieval two handed weapons was reserved for the absolute elite units who could afford full body mail and were intended to hold a line/protect a person while outnumbered where a long but manoeuvrable weapon is very useful, kind of a different use case even if the weapons seem similar. Swords are kind of a weird area as they are so tied to fashion and social standing and being, with exceptions, a backup weapon They aren't exclusive to elite soldiers, no. You see two handed axes spread all over the place, long spears in use in various parts, some early polearms like the gisarme mentioned by Wace.
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Apr 10, 2020 15:28
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https://twitter.com/DrLindseyFitz/status/1248585987288072192?s=19
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Apr 10, 2020 15:43
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I take it the "Windy Corner" problem is where the line of battle pulls a U-turn, which means a lot of ships passing through the same stationary location? Yeah. The actual order given from the flagship would be "turn in succession" - each ship turns by the ordered amount (given in compass points back then, each point being 11 degrees, so 32 points around the compass in total) when it reaches the assigned point, which is the point where the ship at the front of the line is when the flagship signals "execute" (manoeuvering signals were hoisted up to be read, would [in theory] then be acknowledged back and forth along the line, then the signal would be hauled down at the moment the manoeuver was to begin). Of course ideally the flagship would be at the front of the line, so it would both give the 'execute' and make the turn at the same time. Each ship then alters course by the same amount when it reaches that point, so the order and arrangement of the line is preserved, but on a new course. As you've already figured out, the downside of doing that under fire is that the enemy know exactly where each ship in the line is going to be at some point and only has to range their guns once and then just keep flinging shells onto that spot as the line passes and turns through it. The alternative would be "simultaneous turn", where each ship adjusts its course by the ordered amount at the same time, rather than at the same place. This means that the ships no longer form a line, but (depending on the size of the course change) either end up steaming in echelon or in something like line-abreast. Or, if you order "simultaneous turn, 16 points to starboard", all the ships in the line will wheel right and reverse course immediately, but the order of the fleet will be reversed and now your flagship may be at the back of the line. This is what the German fleet did when it had its 'T' crossed when the battlefleets first met. In the set-up to the battle, Jellicoe had used a mix of both orders to deploy the Grand Fleet from its cruising formation (six formations of four ships, steaming line-astern within their formation and line-abreast of their neighbouring formations) into a single line of battle - each formation would turn eight points to port in succession, but each formation would begin that manoeuvre simultaneously, so each line of ships dropped into place behind the other, taking up the space that had been between them. If all this sounds like an operational nightmare, you'd be right. Especially since it was virtually all done with signal flags being repeated back and forth, over a battle line five miles long, with ships pouring out smoke right next to their signal halyards, a generally grey and gloomy North Sea day, and fading light.
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Apr 10, 2020 16:22
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Nenonen posted:
The one I think is neat as hell is this capacitive armor. You've got two plates separated by a dialectric. The inner one is charged to some fuckoff voltage, the outer one is ground. When it gets hit and the penetrator shorts the two plates, the thing discharges a pulse of current through the penetrator to ground, and the penetrator explodes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7rxBifd0cY Now obviously that video's old as hell so I imagine it never approached deployment. But it's still neat as hell.
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Apr 10, 2020 16:31
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FrangibleCover posted:Well, which tank and which ATGM? This is somewhere I feel like it's impossible to really make statements less general than Tanks Are Better Armoured Than Contemporary IFVs. Oh, absolutely - agreed. I'm just bristling at the idea that a tank can take a hit from an ATGM "to the face" like it's no big deal. FrangibleCover posted:Incidental note, ISIS bailed out an Iraqi Abrams with a manually guided Malyutka ATGM from the 1960s to the front. Just because you can't penetrate it doesn't mean you won't remove the tank. Again, agreed. I remember shooting on a range at Pendleton once, on a nearby range the grunts were getting a rare chance to fire real M47 Dragons. The Dragon wasn't highly regarded - compared to something like a TOW they were pretty poor - but they still convincingly tore huge holes in the old M48s on the range and made it clear that they would have utterly ruined any tanker's day. Just because a weapon is old or not top of the line it does not follow that it won't do a lot of damage.
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Apr 10, 2020 16:34
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Do you think Osprey gives good bang for the buck? I've bought a few books from them and don't intend to in the future.
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Apr 10, 2020 16:37
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BalloonFish posted:If all this sounds like an operational nightmare, you'd be right. Especially since it was virtually all done with signal flags being repeated back and forth, over a battle line five miles long, with ships pouring out smoke right next to their signal halyards, a generally grey and gloomy North Sea day, and fading light. Yeah, dang, I keep forgetting about the difficulty of just communicating with your allies in the days before radio. Thanks for the added details! Phanatic posted:The one I think is neat as hell is this capacitive armor. You've got two plates separated by a dialectric. The inner one is charged to some fuckoff voltage, the outer one is ground. When it gets hit and the penetrator shorts the two plates, the thing discharges a pulse of current through the penetrator to ground, and the penetrator explodes. You're right, that is neat as hell. 
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Apr 10, 2020 16:43
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Yeah, dang, I keep forgetting about the difficulty of just communicating with your allies in the days before radio. Thanks for the added details! lol
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Apr 10, 2020 16:53
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FPyat posted:Do you think Osprey gives good bang for the buck? I've bought a few books from them and don't intend to in the future. The pictures are usually nice.
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Apr 10, 2020 17:19
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Nessus posted:I think those tents were pretty involved and bulky. The Roman legions could pack them around but I don't think any medieval armies had that level of scale and logistical infrastructure, at least not on a casual basis. Baggage trains were a thing in medieval armies. There are tons of accounts of people looting the gently caress out of them when a battle goes poorly or some mounted soldiers get into the rear. Not to mention we also have surviving examples of these tents in various museums. Some of them famously captured as part of a retreating enemies baggage train even! A lot of the surviving ones are embroidered to gently caress and representative of the expensive end of things because no one cares about carting home some plain tent for foot soldiers, but the really pretty tent that the general sat in makes for a nice trophy.
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Apr 10, 2020 17:20
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FPyat posted:Do you think Osprey gives good bang for the buck? I've bought a few books from them and don't intend to in the future. Here's an answer to a similar question I posted in TFR's deals thread. Osprey's giving a bunch a way for free right now so it's come up. Tl;dr they're enthusiast level and have uneven quality, but generally aren't offensively awful but you'll also do better buying a more in-depth book if you're really interested. That said a lot of the really good books on those niche subjects are expensive as gently caress. Their book on the Mauser Rifle is a joke compared to the reference materials I have, but my K98k 3 volume set of books alone cost about $250. Internet Wizard posted:Hey Cyrano (and any other history dorks) what levels of rigor are the Osprey books? Are they decent wavetops reads on something that'll point me to more in depth sources or are they authoritative on their own? Somewhere, maybe in the milsurp thread, I described them as "enthusiast dad level books." They're popular sources for people who build models because they focus a lot on the nitty gritty of equipment etc. The quality of each one also varies a ton as they all have different authors and I've never really gotten the feeling that they do that much editorial control beyond making sure the books aren't just blatantly wrong on a "Germany won WW2" level and that there aren't major grammatical gently caress ups. Think of them as print editions of old History Channel shows, back when it was all about Hitler's Secret Doomsday Weapon and less about Ancient Aliens. As a basic intro though they're not bad. A step up from just reading wikipedia or finding an effort post by a random person on the forums. fake edit: Ok, here's a good example. I'm looking at the Fallschirmjaeger book that's free this week. Download it and go find the section titled "Belief and Belonging." I'm actually really pleasantly surprised at the mini-dive they do on the Nazification of German education and how that affected the world view of incoming recruits to the German army in early WW2. Something that a few of these Osprey books do is introduce a fictional soldier as a device to examine the unit that they're talking about. In this case they describe what a fictitious "Willi Schmidt" might have experienced and how his background might have affected his behavior. It's a legit device. Well, here they actually go into how education under the Nazis would have shaped him. This is actually right in my wheel house and something I spent a lot of my PhD working on, and I've got to say that the few pages they have on it isn't bad. Like, I could sit down and nit pick parts of it but on the whole it gets a pass. the Fallschirmjaeger book posted:This new Reich will give its youth to no-one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing. (Dr Bernhard Rust) Now, the end starts to get a little clean Wehrmacht-y and it 100% starts to lean hard into the whole "chivalrous elite troops" poo poo. That said a few paragraphs later it does own up to the fact that they executed suspected partisans. quote:Partisans are loathed by all regular troops in any war, largely because they melt back into the general populace after inflicting their damage. Hitler himself had also singled them out in his Ten Commandments to the Fallschirmtruppen referred to earlier. Against an open foe, he said, fight with chivalry, but extend no quarter to a guerrilla. This admonition was remembered well on Crete and in Russia in particular, with the slightest suspects being summarily executed. Something to remember is that kind of book is pretty much the perfect storm for clean wehrmacht pro-WW2 German bullshit. It's an enthusiast level book that spends the middle half going into excruciating detail on equipment and uniforms for the sort of people who like to paint little models of soldiers. There's a lot of poo poo in there that I roll my eyes at and it 100% provides an escape hatch for someone to say 'well, this particular parachutist that I'm painting was one of the good ones who was just fighting for his country and not that Nazi poo poo' but at the end of the day the author is pretty unequivocal in saying that Nazis sucked and the ideology was abhorrent. There's a footnote at one point that comments on Rust and Ludwig Mueller, the Nazi who was more or less in charge of trying to get the various churches on board, "It can be noted with some satisfaction that both Mόller and Rust committed suicide rather than face imprisonment after the war." There are parts of all this that I'm really critical of, but there's nothing that makes me just say that it's trash. It's enthusiast literature, not something put together by a professional historian. The author in particular has caught some poo poo for his book on the Waffen SS but even that doesn't seem to delve into straight up denialism. Really he just seems like another wargamer who is enamored with the "elite" status of some German army units, something that's come under a lot of scrutiny in more recent years. If it's the only book you ever read on German paratroops you're not going to walk away thinking Hitler had the right idea, and if it gets you interested enough in the subject to look for better material then that's a positive.
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Apr 10, 2020 17:22
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FPyat posted:Do you think Osprey gives good bang for the buck? I've bought a few books from them and don't intend to in the future. Osprey is a bit like WIkipedia - a brief over overview, don't take it too seriously, look at the references it cites and read those. It also varies widely by author - some are good, some are awful. (Edit: Or, what everyone else already said.)
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Apr 10, 2020 17:23
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Xakura posted:lol  Wait, why weren't they using radio? At minimum using a set of code phrases instead of flags? Being able to send out a message to the entire fleet at once instead of hoping it makes it through a long game of telephone seems, uh, useful.
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Apr 10, 2020 17:37
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Cessna posted:Osprey is a bit like WIkipedia - a brief over overview, don't take it too seriously, look at the references it cites and read those. Osprey got their start in the pre-Internet days and were the only widely available guides for people painting armies. That solidified their reputation nicely. The writing has always varied in quality, and mistakes creep into the illustrations from time to time, but an editor is going to look at it for accuracy. Like wikipedia, you don't cite Osprey books, you read them for an overview and then cite their sources. TooMuchAbstraction posted:
This was the very dawn of seagoing radio. There was no voice communication yet, and sending and receiving code was still unreliable. Worse, you'd have to collect acknowledgements from every ship - and they would all be on the one frequency. Flags were both more reliable and more flexible, even with the disadvantages of flags. You'd also supplement flag hoists with messages sent by searchlight, those were pretty reliable. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Apr 10, 2020 |
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Apr 10, 2020 17:41
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Cessna posted:Oh, absolutely - agreed. I'm just bristling at the idea that a tank can take a hit from an ATGM "to the face" like it's no big deal. All of the meaningful data is obviously classified, but it is a huge ask for any man portable ATGM -- especially old line-of-sight missiles with unitary warheads -- to defeat a modern MBT's frontal protection. We all make fun of how heavy and unwieldy the Abrams has gotten but all that weight brings with it a whole lot of HEAT resistance. There's a reason why modern missiles virtually all go top-down and/or have multistage warheads. That isn't to say you couldn't knock out a modern non-monkeymodel Abrams with something vintage but I definitely wouldn't want to be the guy trying it.
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Apr 10, 2020 17:47
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Siivola posted:Here's a modern FDF-style tent that fits about 1020 people, even today made out of treated canvas and not entirely waterproof: ...what the gently caress do you call a rat tail on the front
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Apr 10, 2020 17:54
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bewbies posted:Israel also has a superheavy IFV, same sort of idea. The namer? I'm looking at it on wiki and it's also got the mortar, even if external. They seem to like those on vehicles
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Apr 10, 2020 17:59
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bewbies posted:All of the meaningful data is obviously classified, but it is a huge ask for any man portable ATGM -- especially old line-of-sight missiles with unitary warheads -- to defeat a modern MBT's frontal protection. We all make fun of how heavy and unwieldy the Abrams has gotten but all that weight brings with it a whole lot of HEAT resistance. There's a reason why modern missiles virtually all go top-down and/or have multistage warheads. You don't have to penetrate a tank's armor in order to kill it. A good hit from an ATGM is going to badly hurt a tank even if it doesn't instantly destroy it. It will shatter sights and vision blocks, blinding the tank. (Like we used to say, you can't armor glass.) It will bounce sights out of boresight, rendering its gun inaccurate. It will damage electronics, no matter how "protected" they are. It will activate fire suppression systems - they'll save the crew from burning to death and put out fires, but they'll also disable the tank. It may hit suspension components, immobilizing the tank. All of this also leaves the tank much more vulnerable to subsequent attacks. And this doesn't even mention the effect that a hit will have on a crew. It is entirely possible to kill a tank without penetrating armor. The idea that a tank hit by an ATGM is fine if the armor isn't penetrated is flat-out wrong.
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Apr 10, 2020 18:02
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Milo and POTUS posted:The namer? I'm looking at it on wiki and it's also got the mortar, even if external. They seem to like those on vehicles correct. I think they also had an older ridiculously heavy IFV. I actually went to the a few of the operational tests the US Army did on the Namer, I couldn't stop seeing it as a tank that'd had its head cut off. It is BIG Cessna posted:You don't have to penetrate a tank's armor in order to kill it. A good hit from an ATGM is going to badly hurt a tank even if it doesn't instantly destroy it. It will shatter sights and vision blocks, blinding the tank. (Like we used to say, you can't armor glass.) It will bounce sights out of boresight, rendering its gun inaccurate. It will damage electronics, no matter how "protected" they are. It will activate fire suppression systems - they'll save the crew from burning to death and put out fires, but they'll also disable the tank. It may hit suspension components, immobilizing the tank. All of this also leaves the tank much more vulnerable to subsequent attacks. And this doesn't even mention the effect that a hit will have on a crew. It is entirely possible to kill a tank without penetrating armor. I mean...yes? All of that stuff might happen, but it also might not. No one WANTS to eat a missile and hope for the best, but if I'm making a bet on a post-SEP Abrams versus a Cold War-era ATGM, my money is on the Abrams coming out of it still able to fight effectively.
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Apr 10, 2020 18:13
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:
One of the big problems with the radios in use at the time of Jutland was that they were essentially self-jamming - the spark gap transmitters used produced a tremendous amount of noise across the spectrum. This meant that if two messages were sent at the same time, they might well end up jamming each other, even if they were sent at different frequencies. Then there were issues with damage and reliability. The transmitters required long festoons of insulated cable. A break in the insulation could render the radio useless. Finally, there were worries about giving away the position and strength of the fleet. If the enemy intercepted the messages, it could give some important information away, and since the British were doing that to the Germans, they had to consider the reverse. Even so, the Grand Fleet did practice using radio for maneuvring, and was proficient in it by Jutland. Despite the disadvantages of it, radio was roughly five times quicker than using flags for tactical signals, though it was significantly slower for longer messages like contact reports.
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Apr 10, 2020 18:25
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bewbies posted:I mean...yes? All of that stuff might happen, but it also might not. No one WANTS to eat a missile and hope for the best, but if I'm making a bet on a post-SEP Abrams versus a Cold War-era ATGM, my money is on the Abrams coming out of it still able to fight effectively. As a former Abrams crewman, I think you are wrong. Edit: Hey, you might get shot and be just fine. But for the most part getting shot is a life-altering event.
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Apr 10, 2020 18:27
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Wouldn't you then be able to leave the armor out without changing the survivability of the vehicle? Or is this about degrees/definitions of "survival"
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Apr 10, 2020 18:37
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Cessna posted:As a former Abrams crewman, I think you are wrong. Fair enough. Rhetorical final question: if just throwing a few pounds of HE against the outside of a tank -- regardless of penetration -- really is sufficiently lethal in most cases, why have all the world's leading armies bothered developing top-down attack missiles despite their costing orders of magnitude more than LOS systems?
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Apr 10, 2020 18:40
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Siivola posted:Here's a modern FDF-style tent that fits about 1020 people, even today made out of treated canvas and not entirely waterproof: The problem is not everyone had those tents. There's lots of accounts from the American Revolution, for instance, of men sleeping in the open air. quote:Lieutenant Samuel Shute noted one such occasion in July 1779: "We marched to Shawney flatts [near Wyoming, Pennsylvania], got a little dinner, took a sociable buck dance, then proceeded to the falls.... At 8.P.M. took a bite of beef & bread a drink of grog and retired to rest. Colo. DeHart, Genl. Hand & myself slept together in the open air, but with a canteen of spirits at our head." quote:During the 1778 New Jersey campaign one of Washington's aides related, "I cannot say that the fatigues of our late march has been of any disservice to my constitution in sleeping in the open fields under trees exposed to the night air and all changes of the weather I only followed the example of our General.... When I joined his Excellency's suite I gave up soft beds undisturbed repose and the habits of ease and indulgence... for a single blanket the hard floor or the softer sod of the fields early rising and almost perpetual duty. quote:Near Morrisania, New York, in May or June 1781, Sergeant Joseph Martin and his men "lay all night upon the ground which we had occupied during the day. I was exceedingly tired, not having had a wink of sleep the preceding night, and had been on my feet during the last twenty-four hours, and this night, to add to my comfort, I had to take charge of the quarter guard. I was allowed to get what rest I could consistently with our safety. I fixed my guard, placed two sentinels, and the remainder of us laid down. We were with our corps, who were all by dark snug in the arms of Morpheus. The officers slept under a tree near us." quote:Captain Enoch Anderson was with a detachment shadowing the British army north of Darby Creek in Pennsylvania. "Night came on [13 or 14 September], there was no house we dare go into; we had no tents. I had no blanket even and must make no fire. Some had blankets however. The night was very cold. I kept myself tolerably comfortable by walking about, but was very sleepy and could not sleep for the cold. The 19th century is when you got pup tents that two soldiers could carry between them for a portable shelter. I don't know the packed size of medieval or 18th century tents, but I would imagine modern materials have made them far lighter and more packable than old cloth or leather tents.
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Apr 10, 2020 18:41
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chitoryu12 posted:The problem is not everyone had those tents. There's lots of accounts from the American Revolution, for instance, of men sleeping in the open air. Not having those tents was a sign that the army was ill equipped. The reason you see those quotes in reference to the US Army during the revolution was to point how just how much privation they were suffering and how little they were having to make do with.
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Apr 10, 2020 18:44
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bewbies posted:Fair enough. Rhetorical final question: if just throwing a few pounds of HE against the outside of a tank -- regardless of penetration -- really is sufficiently lethal in most cases, why have all the world's leading armies bothered developing top-down attack missiles despite their costing orders of magnitude more than LOS systems? because line of sight works both ways
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Apr 10, 2020 18:51
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I mean, poo poo, we have contemporary images that show them. We also have a bunch of historically significant surviving examples, especially from the siege of Vienna. The captured turkish tents were something of a popular war trophy. Here's one of them, in a museum in Dresden today:  Oh, and remember how I said earlier that not every tent was worth keeping? Turns out a bunch of the prettier chunks of them were made into catholic vestements as a special gently caress you to the non-christian invaders.  The embroidered poo poo there is tent material. Now this isn't the dumb bog standard stuff that your regular soldiers are going to be sleeping in, but it's the fancy version of that. No one's carting home a bunch of random canvas to put on display or turn into religious clothing. All that poo poo probably either got folded into their own armies or just cut up for general "it's a piece of canvas" use by the locals.
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Apr 10, 2020 18:51
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bewbies posted:Fair enough. Rhetorical final question: if just throwing a few pounds of HE against the outside of a tank -- regardless of penetration Hold up, that's not what we're talking about. An ATGM is not just "a few pounds of HE." It's a shaped charge, and probably a sophisticated one at that. Yes, modern armor systems are built to protect against this, but let's not portray an ATGM like it's a big lump of Civil War dynamite lazily piled on the fender somewhere. bewbies posted:-- really is sufficiently lethal in most cases, why have all the world's leading armies bothered developing top-down attack missiles despite their costing orders of magnitude more than LOS systems? Because top-down attacks are even more lethal. (To continue by "getting shot" analogy - getting shot is a life-altering event. Getting shot in the head is an even more life-altering event.)
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Apr 10, 2020 18:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:I mean, poo poo, we have contemporary images that show them. Good lord imagine the weight of a tent made from what looks to be about as heavy as a full weight quilt.
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Apr 10, 2020 19:02
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Squalid posted:i wouldn't want to drink water out of a butt either, tbh. I sometimes weld in oilskin proofed with beeswax and linseed oil.
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Apr 10, 2020 19:17
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Cessna posted:You don't have to penetrate a tank's armor in order to kill it. A good hit from an ATGM is going to badly hurt a tank even if it doesn't instantly destroy it. It will shatter sights and vision blocks, blinding the tank. (Like we used to say, you can't armor glass.) It will bounce sights out of boresight, rendering its gun inaccurate. It will damage electronics, no matter how "protected" they are. It will activate fire suppression systems - they'll save the crew from burning to death and put out fires, but they'll also disable the tank. It may hit suspension components, immobilizing the tank. All of this also leaves the tank much more vulnerable to subsequent attacks. And this doesn't even mention the effect that a hit will have on a crew. It is entirely possible to kill a tank without penetrating armor. Right, but I thought we were talking about the difference between IFV's and MBT's here, not whether a tanker's day will continue dandy fine if they get hit by ATGM or, for that matter, APFSQWERTYDS. The scale of potential damage to MBT starts from 'can drive home on its own means' and ends in 'catastrophic, everyone dead' whereas for an IFV the scale starts from 'blood and guts everywhere, vehicle unusable'.
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Apr 10, 2020 19:25
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