Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Milo and POTUS
Sep 3, 2017

I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?
PraiseGOD RawDog

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Milo and POTUS
Sep 3, 2017

I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?
I've never been prouder of a snipe

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

Biffmotron posted:

So through the 1920s and 1930s there were a host of airpower futurists (Douhet, Mitchell) who advanced various arguments about the use of the airplane in war, with the goal of avoiding the Western Front 2: Somme Mud. The strongest versions of these arguments were that a handful of precision strikes could effectively cripple an enemy nation by knocking out vital centers like bridges, power plants, oil refineries, ball bearing factories, etc. And as a corollary, mass bombing of cities would prove so terrorizing and destructive that the civilian population would rise up and sue for peace. Both schools tested their arguments in WW2, with pretty dismal results. Vital centers were impossible to hit from altitude, and most damage could be repaired in short order. And despite killing hundreds of thousands of people, mass bombing didn't force governments to the negotiating table, with the exception of the two atomic bombs*.

I can see this being a discussion, IE all the theorists arguing about the best way to achieve either "air attacks to break civilian morale" or "air attacks to destroy industrial capacity".

This dictomy Gladwell is trying to draw is still bullshit, though. The air-power theorists are still taking swings at two different thesies of strategic air power, breaking the will of the people to fight or destroying the enemy's capability to fight (by destruction of industry, and/or the enemy's air force.) What's more, the USAAF in Europe was *all about precision strikes against industrial targets, and they did it with massed attacks with many bombers, because that's how you attacked with strategic aircraft in 1942.* The only people to buck this trend were...the Nazis, who tried to deploy a strategic bomber with dive bombing capability, the He 177, and we all know how awful that went. (Interestingly, the Germans also had this argument, but for different reasons. They didn't have the resources to deploy thousand bomber raids, and were looking for a way to deploy their tactical bombers as strategic bombers via precision strikes, as well as making the horrible He 177 bet, in hopes a small fraction of aircraft could accomplish the same ends as massed attacks if they could dive bomb.) Precision vs. Massed attack was not mutuially exclusive, either: the Allied strategic campaign in Europe made the night bombers useful, once radar bombsights were mass deployed, as they could accomplish similar precision strikes to daytime USAAF bombers. (Given where it is coming from, I bet the Dambusters raid doesn't get any sort of mention, since it was a presision raid that was pulled off...but was nothing like a knockout blow, and the casualties were appallingly high. Oh wait, why did I write all that, the British did it, that's the reason it's not mentioned.)

So just on the basis of that review, it sounds like the story Gladwell wants to tell is "precision won" vs. massed area attacks. This is stupid and wrong, and you can see it in how the nuclear attacks barely get a note. The truth is that *both* methods were highly successful, at least in their adoption in the modern world.* Nuclear weapons made the annihilation of a whole city, or all the important facilities in it, for lack of a better term, economical. And in the context of the theorists arguing at the start, *neither* thesis was shown to be a magic bullet. If precision ended conflicts, we never would have been in a position to coin the term "operation useless dirt."

*This is not to say killing 100,000 Japanese in one raid on Tokyo is fine - that's a whole 'nother discussion. I will repeat the thread consensus, though, that the atomic attacks on Japan were standard USAAF tactics via different methods.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye


So, dumb question, why was the hardening on the turret so different between the right and left sides?

Ensign Expendable
Nov 11, 2008

Lager beer is proof that god loves us
Pillbug

Nebakenezzer posted:

So, dumb question, why was the hardening on the turret so different between the right and left sides?

Processes started to slip as the war went on, so different batches of armour had different chemical compositions and went through different hardening treatments.

Trin Tragula
Apr 22, 2005

Arbite posted:

Were any studies done on what an exclusively Austria-Hungary vs Serbia 1914 conflict would have looked like?

Not really. It's kind of like asking "what would have happened if gunpowder weapons didn't exist yet?" At this point, you're so far from reality that it stops being useful. Everyone's thinking was shaped by the certain knowledge that Russia would intervene on Serbia's side.

Fuschia tude
Dec 26, 2004

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

How would two naval commanders on opposite sides of a Napoleonic-era conflict communicate if they wanted to negotiate something? Send a boat across the water, flying some sort of neutral flag? White flag?

SerthVarnee
Mar 13, 2011

It has been two zero days since last incident.
Big Super Slapstick Hunk

MrBling posted:

I figured I might share a post about something that happened in World War 2 that probably isn't that widely known.

There was a Danish military operation in China in the early months of 1942.


Okay, this is something I did not learn in school (Danish civilian here).

Do you have any book suggestions for me to read up on this? This is some fascinating poo poo.

piL
Sep 20, 2007
(__|\\\\)
Taco Defender

Fangz posted:

Also you are dodging antiaircraft fire and trying to spot fighters at the same time.

Accuracy was quite good in controlled tests. It's in combat conditions that things got hard.

One of my favorite bits from Fleet Tactics is that weapons basically always underperform in actual combat and everyone is disappointed by their results.

BalloonFish
Jun 30, 2013



Fun Shoe

Fuschia tude posted:

How would two naval commanders on opposite sides of a Napoleonic-era conflict communicate if they wanted to negotiate something? Send a boat across the water, flying some sort of neutral flag? White flag?

It was unusual for communications to happen once fighting was underway, but in theory it was as on land - flying a flag of truce and sending a party to communicate/negotiate. Usually a suitably ranking and responsible officer would come over in a ship's boat.

It was more usual for such communications to happen between a ship (or fleet) in harbour and a ship/fleet blockading it outside. Messages and negotiations could happen both ways either by ship's boats under flag of truce or coming and going merchant and fishing vessels being given messages to carry, or having representatives put aboard to carry the messages in person.

When Shannon was shadowing USS Chesapeake in Boston harbour, Captain Broke of the Shannon made sure that American sailors from captured prizes sent in their boats back to Boston carried an oral message to Lawrence of the Chesapeake inviting him to come out for a frigate duel. In the end Broke made his famous written invitation, delivered by sending on his own boats under a flag of truce, with the letter carried by an American civilian that Shannon had been holding prisoner but was releasing for the purpose.

This was the way of doing things until well into WW2 - at Mers-el-Kébir the negotations between the British and French fleets were done by detaching a destroyer from the British fleet and approaching Mers-el-Kébir under a flag of truce, then sending an officer over to the French flagship by motor launch. Unfortunately the officer chosen had been selected due to his fluency in French and his experience as a naval attaché in Paris and was 'only' a Captain. The French CO took umbrage at being asked to negotiate with an officer below flag rank and required all talks to be conducted via his flag lieutenant, leaving neither of the men doing the negotiations with any actual power to decide on or agree to anything without going back up their chains of command.

====

I know this thread loves some info about military logistics. Some one on ww2aircraft.net has just put up an article from the December 1942 issue of Aviation Weekly, by an Allison rep about maintenance with the American Volunteer Group.

Here's the whole thing: https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/american-volunteer-group-maintenance.56118/

And here's the pertinent extract:

Tye M. Lett Jr., Allison overseas representative posted:

Cannibalism
In China we found that it was usually the little bits and pieces and grounded airplanes; parts like distributor points, small screws, distributor fingers, spark plug insulator tips and the like - small parts such as these gave us the real headaches.

To "keep 'em flying" for Chennault's boys we developed the practice of making two flyable planes out of three or four wrecked or damaged ones. This practice we called "cannibalism" and we developed it to a fine art. Every time we pulled this trick I said a little prayer for American standardization and the interchangeability of parts, which is a highly-to-be-praised characteristic of Allison engines.

This "cannibalism" has a direct effect upon what you should order from the Home Front, and upon that which those serving you there should be prepared to supply you. For in "cannibalizing" you pick up a lot of certain kinds of extra spare parts. A good example is valve springs. As a rule you will get overstocked on these. Also the particular conditions under which your planes are operating and fighting, even to those of the weather, will determine the character of spares resulting from cannibalization. You should begin to figure upon this early from the first experience gained in the particular theater in which you are operating.

Proper Appraisal of Parts Needed
Another truth of maintenance which appears quickly under the stress of war is that a large stock of all kinds of parts is not the answer to efficient field service. It would be better to have a large and varied assortment of the small bits and pieces available at the First and Second Echelons, for these are the parts usually most needed to put a plane back into action in a hurry. These vital First and Second Echelon parts should always receive first priority. The major parts, required by Third and Fourth Echelon operations, can be provided at longer intervals, and where quickly needed can be flown to hot spots of action in emergency.

A careful weighing of unit parts according to incidence of failure, of course, runs counter to the present unit system of setting up arbitarily the number of parts needed to service an airplane for 60 to 120 days and multiplying that figure by the number of ships in the squadron. Too often the feeling is that parts are so vital that it is just as well to have them on hand though they are averages in certain categories. This is uneconomical in wartime when every part should be counted in man-hours and material.

Another wasteful practice is that carries over from peacetime operation under ordinary laws of supply and demand is the practice of ordering 1000 units, hoping to get 100. When, by chance, the squadron does get the 1000 units - not the 100 - there is terrible consequent waste of labor, materials and transportation. And further it should be borne in mind that the squadron that receives 1000 units where only 100 were required may be dooming some squadron in another quarter of the globe to certain defeat.

It's telling of how much of these threads I've read that my eyes scanned over "Japanese Army Supply Submarine" and it took me a few seconds to clock how ludicrous that would be in any other context.
\/

BalloonFish fucked around with this message at 16:13 on May 23, 2021

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

Imperial Japanese Army Supply Submarine

http://www.hisutton.com/WW2-Maru-Yu-Class-Submarine.html

Lawman 0
Aug 17, 2010

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kkrHswfPVs
Didn't realize this was a Churchill special.

Panzeh
Nov 27, 2006

"..The high ground"

Taerkar posted:

Of interesting note is that some of the big successes that came from bombing factories weren't actually known by the Allies at the time. Production of the StuG III pretty much stopped at least for a while because of a bombing raid on Alkett.

Factories were difficult to put completely offline but the support industries to them were decidedly more fragile. And of course you have the long term consequences of strikes to the oil fields and refineries as well as strikes to the various infrastructure locations. Sure they could fix the rail lines, but it's a lot harder to replace the rolling stock.

Also, when the US began to focus the bombing of Japan on its transportation infrastructure, including the coastal transportation, it severely affected Japan's ability to distribute food and had the war gone on longer, would no doubt have had a serious effect.

Buschmaki
Dec 26, 2012

‿︵‿︵‿︵‿Lean Addict︵‿︵‿︵‿
I just finished watching the second movie in the "The Human Condition" trilogy and I'm really curious as to how training in the Imperial Japanese Army was conducted. It's wild to me that they would have people who aren't even NCOs just train people at the front? Was that judt a Kwantung Army thing or did the entire Japanese army train recruits in places they might have experienced combat, and also was it something that only started happening later in the war? I guess the training as depicted in the film could also not be a realistic depiction!

Ensign Expendable
Nov 11, 2008

Lager beer is proof that god loves us
Pillbug

piL posted:

One of my favorite bits from Fleet Tactics is that weapons basically always underperform in actual combat and everyone is disappointed by their results.

Pretty much, I find that nearly every report on new equipment is ridden with complaints and lists of deficiencies, even if it ends with "this is the best weapon I've seen so far".

MrBling
Aug 21, 2003

Oozing machismo

SerthVarnee posted:

Okay, this is something I did not learn in school (Danish civilian here).

Do you have any book suggestions for me to read up on this? This is some fascinating poo poo.

All the info I know about it comes from a Henrik Kauffmann biography called Uden Mandat. https://www.bog-ide.dk/produkt/4977743/bo-lidegaard-uden-mandat

it's a really good and interesting book.

SubG
Aug 19, 2004

It's a hard world for little things.

piL posted:

One of my favorite bits from Fleet Tactics is that weapons basically always underperform in actual combat and everyone is disappointed by their results.
You send your PBYs out to look for the Japanese, get a report that they've spotted the Kido Butai, you launch a bunch of bombers at them, they report hitting a half dozen ships and heavily damaging them, and then it turns out they've actually encountered a supply convoy and the extent of battle damage was splashing water on one of the oilers. I can understand being disappointed.

It would be interesting to see a graph or something of the average amount by which observers overestimated the effects of a naval engagement on the enemy, from Salamis to like Seal Cove or Bubiyan. Like what was the golden age of the fish that got away? My intuition is that it was probably around WWII because of the sudden prominence of aircraft and therefore the reliance on aerial observation of a force that is otherwise over the horizon. But I'd like to believe that, I dunno, the Genoese Navy back in its heyday routinely managed to inflate the number of Majorcan pirates they sank or captured or whatever.

Edgar Allen Ho
Apr 3, 2017

by sebmojo
How did early modern ships even manage to find each other?

Or even get timely orders? Like how did Nelson get word that the franco-spanish fleet was leaving Cadiz so fast that he could catch them?

Tomn
Aug 23, 2007

And the angel said unto him
"Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself."
But lo he could not. For the angel was hitting him with his own hands

SubG posted:

You send your PBYs out to look for the Japanese, get a report that they've spotted the Kido Butai, you launch a bunch of bombers at them, they report hitting a half dozen ships and heavily damaging them, and then it turns out they've actually encountered a supply convoy and the extent of battle damage was splashing water on one of the oilers. I can understand being disappointed.

It would be interesting to see a graph or something of the average amount by which observers overestimated the effects of a naval engagement on the enemy, from Salamis to like Seal Cove or Bubiyan. Like what was the golden age of the fish that got away? My intuition is that it was probably around WWII because of the sudden prominence of aircraft and therefore the reliance on aerial observation of a force that is otherwise over the horizon. But I'd like to believe that, I dunno, the Genoese Navy back in its heyday routinely managed to inflate the number of Majorcan pirates they sank or captured or whatever.

I should think that accidentally overestimating the effects of a naval engagement in the event of a victory was incredibly rare prior to gunpowder because most naval engagements were decided by some combination of ramming and boarding - real hard to walk away with a mistaken idea of how well you did under those circumstances unless you were on the losing side.

INTENTIONALLY overestimating how well you did, on the other hand, is a glorious and ancient tradition.

Edit: For that matter, even after gunpowder most engagements were extremely close range and when decisive would end with one ship surrendering, and when indecisive would end with the other side successfully running away which should give everyone involved a pretty decent idea what everyone was still capable of.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

How did early modern ships even manage to find each other?

Or even get timely orders? Like how did Nelson get word that the franco-spanish fleet was leaving Cadiz so fast that he could catch them?

Answer: With difficulty. Nelson's two great victories at the Nile and Trafalgar* involved a lot of running around back and forth trying desperately to locate the French fleets. Generally lighter, faster frigates would cruise around acting as scouts to try and bring word of enemy fleet locations back to the main fleet, but when everyone is days away from each other trying to catch up to the main fleet in transit is a tricky proposition and there were never enough frigates anyways.

*Nelson didn't just catch the French out of Cadiz, he was actively blockading them at Toulon and was blown off station, which the French took as an opportunity to break out following which he chased them around half the bloody world before effectively blockading them in Cadiz - which he did deliberately loosely to try and entice the combined fleet to come out.

That being said, in the early modern period especially logistics and wind patterns played a major role - few fleets could afford to put to sea for very long before running out of food so they had to take the most efficient paths to their destination, and prevailing winds and currents in a given location could dictate where exactly any fleet wishing to do anything had to go in order to get where they were going. This usually means that most major naval battles were fought somewhere closish to land - in the open ocean with nothing to fight for and an endless expanse of space where you could be it's a mug's game trying to catch anyone out there. Better to go where the enemy wants to go and lie along chokepoints, or if your victualing system was good enough (as the Royal Navy was in the Napoleonic Wars) just keep a permanent blockade on their ports.

Also re: timely orders, the simplest answer is they didn't. A degree of individual initiative was expected of an admiral on a foreign station.

Tomn fucked around with this message at 22:29 on May 23, 2021

SerthVarnee
Mar 13, 2011

It has been two zero days since last incident.
Big Super Slapstick Hunk

MrBling posted:

All the info I know about it comes from a Henrik Kauffmann biography called Uden Mandat. https://www.bog-ide.dk/produkt/4977743/bo-lidegaard-uden-mandat

it's a really good and interesting book.

Much appreciated, thanks!

I'll try to snag myself a copy when I get the chance.

BalloonFish
Jun 30, 2013



Fun Shoe

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

How did early modern ships even manage to find each other?

Or even get timely orders? Like how did Nelson get word that the franco-spanish fleet was leaving Cadiz so fast that he could catch them?

A lot of the time they simply didn't - finding the enemy relied on predicting their aims and so being able to predict where they were going, and how weather and the need for supplies would affect their movements. This is why you rarely find major actions happening out in the middle of the ocean (that was usually restricted to lone frigates encountering each other by chance). Fleet actions tended to take place near headlands or ports or at key straights and other choke points, because the side pursuing the other will know that if so-and-so wants to get to [place], they have to go near [other place], so I'll hunt for them there. Or they know that if a fleet is at sea it has to return to one of a few ports before too long, so you wait near a prominent landfall or bay while the enemy is storming around the open sea looking for you. Or you lurk near the enemy fleet when it's in port, or at some other key point that it will have to pass once it's out, and the battle comes during the break-out.

A full naval fleet would spread over many square miles of sea and have multiple rings of scouting frigates to increase the 'sighting range', with sloops and cutters to both provide more 'eyes' and to carry and relay messages between the outriders and the main fleet. Reports from merchant ships could yield vital intelligence, as well as any other friendly warships which saw anything useful. Rendevous were set up in advance ('meet in such-and-such a position between [x date] and [y date]) and always had a Plan B attached to the orders.

As for orders, it was well-appreciated that anything written could take weeks or months to reach its recipient, and any set of orders could be rendered obsolete by changing situations. So orders at high level (such as staff command to flag rank) were extremely general and strategic in nature, essentially laying out what broad goal was required and what political and diplomatic red lines could not be crossed to acheive that. As orders were distributed down the chain, they became more specific but always left a lot of room for adaptation and initiative if those carrying out the orders were going to be working apart from the chain of command. By contrast fleet orders were usually extremely prescriptive due to the limitations of tactical communication which made fleet actions as hard to coordinate as strategic ones.

Major naval powers maintained networks of packet boats or advisos whose sole purpose was to swiftly carry orders, documents and personnel between the major command points, and these were augmented by individual warships which would either be given sacks of despatches and mail to carry when they returned home or would, if needed, be detached specifically for such duties.

Before Trafalgar, the Combined Fleet's escape from Cadiz was observed by a network of blockading British frigates which were able to quickly pass the word back along a chain of ships via flag signals. It was earlier in the Trafalgar Campaign that things went wrong - Nelson's loose blockage of Toulon (intended to encourage the enemy fleet to come out) ended up with the French being able to get a 27-ship fleet past Nelson's blockade and out the Straights of Gibraltar due to a combination of weather, Nelson wrongly assuming that Villeneuve was heading for Egypt and so heading off in the wrong direction, and (as a result of that) a massive time delay as word was passed from Gibraltar to Nelson (by then near Alexandria) that the French were actually out in the Atlantic. Nelson then chased Villeneuve's path across the Atlantic, to Antigua and then back again, gaining on him time-wise but still a week behind by the time the Combined Fleet was holed up in Cadiz.

E: beaten with the good info.

BalloonFish fucked around with this message at 22:36 on May 23, 2021

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually
A history professor at Syracuse posted a twitter thread following along with his efforts to read Gladwell's book on strategic bombing:

https://twitter.com/Alan_Allport/status/1395770118785966086

It goes about as well as you would imagine.

SubG
Aug 19, 2004

It's a hard world for little things.

Tomn posted:

I should think that accidentally overestimating the effects of a naval engagement in the event of a victory was incredibly rare prior to gunpowder because most naval engagements were decided by some combination of ramming and boarding - real hard to walk away with a mistaken idea of how well you did under those circumstances unless you were on the losing side.
Perhaps. It's difficult to know for sure because of the paucity of detailed accounts of naval engagements during e.g. the Hundred Years War, but when you've got dozens if not hundreds of galleys or whatever going at it in a general melee it seems like an accurate accounting of whatever you didn't lose or manage to capture yourself would be difficult. Like after the Battle of Margate/Cadzand the English were probably (rightly) confident that they did well, having captured a large number of ships and scattered the rest, but the disposition of the remainder, not counting those that were e.g. burnt in the harbour and therefore easily accounted for, was probably fairly fuzzy even to those engaged in the battle.

Tomn posted:

Edit: For that matter, even after gunpowder most engagements were extremely close range and when decisive would end with one ship surrendering, and when indecisive would end with the other side successfully running away which should give everyone involved a pretty decent idea what everyone was still capable of.
Perhaps, but that probably depends a great deal on a comparatively small number of ships engaged and a tendency for battles to occur in good/clear weather (and therefore permitting observation over a fairly long period of time). It isn't as if there aren't plenty of examples of meeting encounters on land in which one side misconstrued the size, composition, and condition of the other despite being in direct contact with them.

Neophyte
Apr 23, 2006

perennially
Taco Defender

FMguru posted:

A history professor at Syracuse posted a twitter thread following along with his efforts to read Gladwell's book on strategic bombing:

https://twitter.com/Alan_Allport/status/1395770118785966086

It goes about as well as you would imagine.

Even I, who has never been a plane-toucher, know that tailwinds do not help you take off. Did Gladwell just not proofread his own work?

Vahakyla
May 3, 2013
To fill in with the tall ship thing, I've also worked on a two masted tall ship, a type of a ketch, and I did the basic deck slave, and then (a horrifically unqualified) watch officer, for two summers. While I managed my watch, I did not perform the navigation, nor did I perform helm duties. There was always someone at the helm who was used to doing it, and four or five men and women of the watch would be on mast and sail duty, and one navigator on maps, GPS, and comms, and then I'd execute as per wanted by the first officer. I found it extremely demanding, task saturated, and then also surprisingly boring. While I definitely did ok at my post, I'd have very little ability to really tell anyone, or discuss with them, the individual masts, or how to helm, or how to navigate, and all that.

It's weird. I don't find it that weird that some other tall ship sailor would appear to be dumb as hell to someone else from a different ship.

Tias
May 25, 2008

Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Buschmaki posted:

I just finished watching the second movie in the "The Human Condition" trilogy and I'm really curious as to how training in the Imperial Japanese Army was conducted. It's wild to me that they would have people who aren't even NCOs just train people at the front? Was that judt a Kwantung Army thing or did the entire Japanese army train recruits in places they might have experienced combat, and also was it something that only started happening later in the war? I guess the training as depicted in the film could also not be a realistic depiction!

I haven't seen the movie, but when large parts of training are beating people into obedience and forcing them to bayonet prisoners, you don't need a trained NCO as much as a battle-scarred anyone.

GotLag
Jul 17, 2005

食べちゃダメだよ

FMguru posted:

A history professor at Syracuse posted a twitter thread following along with his efforts to read Gladwell's book on strategic bombing:

https://twitter.com/Alan_Allport/status/1395770118785966086

It goes about as well as you would imagine.

This is self-harm and I hope somebody has checked in on the poor bastard.

Edit:

Neophyte posted:

Even I, who has never been a plane-toucher, know that tailwinds do not help you take off. Did Gladwell just not proofread his own work?

We know Gladwell has touched at least one plane:
"I don’t remember much except being baffled as to who this Epstein guy was and why we were all on his plane."

GotLag fucked around with this message at 10:00 on May 24, 2021

Panzeh
Nov 27, 2006

"..The high ground"

Neophyte posted:

Even I, who has never been a plane-toucher, know that tailwinds do not help you take off. Did Gladwell just not proofread his own work?

Gladwell is very much a take guy who got adopted in elite circles because his facile ideas appealed to them so now he's pretty much set for life.

The book completely mischaracterizes the doctrinal conflicts and genesis of strategic bombing and uh, it just doesn't really tell anything new or novel.

Abongination
Aug 18, 2010

Life, it's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come.
Pillbug
Just watched the Latvian ww1 film "Blizzard of souls"

6.5/10, really good sets, costumes and cinematography but falls flat in other areas.

It did inspire me to dig further into why they were fighting German armies in 1919 however so not a total loss.

Partial recommendation?

SeanBeansShako
Nov 20, 2009

Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.
We're getting closer and closer to that film about the Czech Legion or the Beglians in Russian with their armored cars!

Lawman 0
Aug 17, 2010

SeanBeansShako posted:

We're getting closer and closer to that film about the Czech Legion or the Beglians in Russian with their armored cars!

I want a film about the supposed Saladin crusader trebuchet duel imo.

Tomn
Aug 23, 2007

And the angel said unto him
"Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself."
But lo he could not. For the angel was hitting him with his own hands

SubG posted:

Perhaps. It's difficult to know for sure because of the paucity of detailed accounts of naval engagements during e.g. the Hundred Years War, but when you've got dozens if not hundreds of galleys or whatever going at it in a general melee it seems like an accurate accounting of whatever you didn't lose or manage to capture yourself would be difficult. Like after the Battle of Margate/Cadzand the English were probably (rightly) confident that they did well, having captured a large number of ships and scattered the rest, but the disposition of the remainder, not counting those that were e.g. burnt in the harbour and therefore easily accounted for, was probably fairly fuzzy even to those engaged in the battle.

Perhaps, but that probably depends a great deal on a comparatively small number of ships engaged and a tendency for battles to occur in good/clear weather (and therefore permitting observation over a fairly long period of time). It isn't as if there aren't plenty of examples of meeting encounters on land in which one side misconstrued the size, composition, and condition of the other despite being in direct contact with them.

Eh, you might be right - just noting that from an individual captain's point of view it's pretty obvious if you won a boarding action or not, or successfully rammed the enemy or not, as opposed to WW1 or so where it's someone with a set of binoculars looking at something nearly on the horizon and trying to make out if you even actually hit the enemy, let alone what damage it did.

I will note however the spotting in an engagement is still probably pretty easy compared to land observation because we're talking about individual ships, as opposed to amorphous regiments, on what is essentially a flat, featureless plain while every vessel has their own high ground from which they can climb to get a better view of things, in a scenario where both fleets are going to spend hours maneuvering in sight of each other before contact - which, again, is liable to happen at very short ranges, like we're talking pistol shot range. Plus, decent weather is pretty likely because, well, they're sailing vessels and rely on the weather to move around - I'd have to check because probably there have been a few, but fighting a major naval engagement in the middle of a storm would be rare because of the sheer luck-of-the-draw danger involved, and even without a storm a very strong wind badly restricts options as the ship heeling over would cause the upwind vessels to be unable to fire their lower deck gunports since they'd be right up against or in the water with their available guns by default pointing lower at the water and thus having lower range, while the downwind vessels would be firing their full broadside at a higher angle and thus greater range. And in times of rain or poor visibility, without the ability to see other vessels an admiral's command and control over his own fleet would be badly restricted as well, relying as much as it does on flag signals, which means most commanders would be unlikely to be willing order a major engagement. As such, most naval engagements are likely to occur in conditions of good visibility - at least until the shooting starts and everything is obscured by gunpowder smoke except whoever you're dueling right this moment.

Fakeedit: Like, I want to reemphasize than pre-modern boats are sloooooow. We're talking 4-6 knots on a good day. There's a lot of time to take a good long look at the enemy.

Tomn fucked around with this message at 14:35 on May 24, 2021

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

https://twitter.com/Alan_Allport/status/1395799537902669825?s=20

Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 14:36 on May 24, 2021

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Panzeh posted:

Gladwell is very much a take guy who got adopted in elite circles because his facile ideas appealed to them so now he's pretty much set for life.
I always think of him as a guy who writes self-help books for people who think they're too sophisticated to be caught reading self-help books.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

Thanks for that link, FMguru, the professor says "where to even start with this bullshit" as a separate tweet and my god, he is right

Like did you know the British area bombing campaign, because the two heads of bomber command were a sadist and a psychopath?

I know at some point Gladwell is later defending Curtus LeMay

e: The entirety of the strategic bombing thesis was authored by Americans in the mid-30s

Panzeh
Nov 27, 2006

"..The high ground"

Nebakenezzer posted:

Thanks for that link, FMguru, the professor says "where to even start with this bullshit" as a separate tweet and my god, he is right

Like did you know the British area bombing campaign, because the two heads of bomber command were a sadist and a psychopath?

I know at some point Gladwell is later defending Curtus LeMay

e: The entirety of the strategic bombing thesis was authored by Americans in the mid-30s

"The bomber always gets through" being an article of faith of the psycho brits rather than a reflection of the technology when strategic bomber doctrine was being developed is one of those mistakes you only make if you don't know anything about it.

BalloonFish
Jun 30, 2013



Fun Shoe

Tomn posted:

Plus, decent weather is pretty likely because, well, they're sailing vessels and rely on the weather to move around - I'd have to check because probably there have been a few, but fighting a major naval engagement in the middle of a storm would be rare because of the sheer luck-of-the-draw danger involved, and even without a storm a very strong wind badly restricts options as the ship heeling over would cause the upwind vessels to be unable to fire their lower deck gunports since they'd be right up against or in the water with their available guns by default pointing lower at the water and thus having lower range, while the downwind vessels would be firing their full broadside at a higher angle and thus greater range. And in times of rain or poor visibility, without the ability to see other vessels an admiral's command and control over his own fleet would be badly restricted as well, relying as much as it does on flag signals, which means most commanders would be unlikely to be willing order a major engagement. As such, most naval engagements are likely to occur in conditions of good visibility - at least until the shooting starts and everything is obscured by gunpowder smoke except whoever you're dueling right this moment.

Fakeedit: Like, I want to reemphasize than pre-modern boats are sloooooow. We're talking 4-6 knots on a good day. There's a lot of time to take a good long look at the enemy.

The one that comes to mind is the Battle of Cape St Vincent (the 1780 one), which was not only fought through a succession of nasty squalls but most of the action happened at night.

It was also an example of an admiral voluntarily giving up the weather gauge, for exactly the reasons you say - Rodney ordered his ships to pass on the Spanish fleet's lee side, which not only blocked their easy escape to harbour but ensured that the Spanish ships could not use their lower deck guns.

What's interesting in the matter of speed is a) how low the average daily mileage of sailing warships in the 18th/early 19th century was, even by the standards of the most sluggish and underpowered modern sailing vessels (I've seen similar conclusions to yours - 5knts was a decent average passage speed, regardless of the type of ship) and b) how little the figures increased between 1700 and 1800. The introduction of coppered hulls only led to an average speed increase of something like one knot. But the biggest effect was increasing how fast ships could go in light winds. In heavier winds the limiting factors weren't really the drag of the hull but the stability and seakeeping qualities of the ship. But coppering allowed ships under full sail in light winds to go as quickly as they had previously gone under reefed sails in moderate winds.

Cessna
Feb 20, 2013

KHABAHBLOOOM

SubG posted:

But anyway I don't think the fact that O'Brian wasn't an old sea hand isn't inherently shameful or anything. Like I don't think most readers expect that Homer could have killed Hector just because he composed a work in which he describes Achilles doing so. The problem is when somehow or other that presumption does get made--like in the case of people giving guys like Clancy a platform in which he's presented as a subject matter expert instead of a crafter of fantasies.

It is my understanding that the writers of Star Trek have never served a single day on a space cruiser.

Scandalous!

Biffmotron posted:

This of course reached it apogee with the XB-70 Valkyrie, and everything has been regression since.

Truth.

Lawman 0
Aug 17, 2010

Panzeh posted:

"The bomber always gets through" being an article of faith of the psycho brits rather than a reflection of the technology when strategic bomber doctrine was being developed is one of those mistakes you only make if you don't know anything about it.

That doctrine really blows my mind that it somehow got wide adoption.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Cessna
Feb 20, 2013

KHABAHBLOOOM

Lawman 0 posted:

That doctrine really blows my mind that it somehow got wide adoption.

It's not insane given aircraft performance at the time it was initially stated. Multi-engine bombers had more power and could fly higher and faster than contemporary fighters.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply