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SeanBeansShako posted:Would be cool if we'd talk about the Soviet Paratroopers or the Indian ones that fought the Japanese in Burma, they seem to not get as much love. I recently read Slim’s Defeat into Victory and Burma is my new theater to deep dive. The paratroopers and air assaults as part of the campaign are pretty interesting. Also extremely interested in any other ww2 memoirs at the tactical or operational level with as much insight as Slim’s btw. For years I’ve heard people recommend it and I’d always disregarded until a particular CO of mine also recommended it. It is definitely a good read for understanding operational art.
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Jun 1, 2021 17:59
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Phanatic posted:You absolutely do not. Mechanical integrators were a fundamental part of the analog gunfire control systems of the time. I mean to integrate with more autonomous, electronic networked systems. The computers themselves did really good work as far as I understand.
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Jun 1, 2021 18:04
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lightbulbs are bad enough, battleship guns do not need to be on the internet of things
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Jun 1, 2021 18:40
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Alexa, target enemy vessel and fire "Firing on Amy's Waffles"
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Jun 1, 2021 19:12
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My youtube recommends sent me a video today that was about how Germany could possibly have a coal shortage before and during the war when it was its most prolific natural resource, explaining that they had more than enough coal, the issue was that they didn't have the transportation infrastructure to move it all to areas of need because the German rail system was too overtaxed by passenger, freight and military demands after it was nationalized and nazi-fied so that its operations and staffing were handcuffed by ideological concerns. I thought it was really interesting until it suddenly took a hard turn into a screed about how the real culprit in the whole debacle was... socialism! Centrally planned economics removing profit motive and market forces and other things "Wikipedia won't tell you," are what REALLY brought down the Nazi economy, and if you're not willing to see that despite the evidence you're just willfully blind! Which is when I noticed it was on a playlist with Sargon of Akkad videos and things with titles like "Why the Nazis were Leftists." I really hate how Youtube has so much good history content but when you watch it you're inevitably fed right wing propagandist tripe masquerading as more good history content by the loving algorithm.
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Jun 1, 2021 20:21
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Hey history guys, I've been told this thread is the place to ask about military history. I'd like some recommendations on the operational and strategic thinking and military / political footholds of the Cold War. I've read Command and Control, the Dead Hand, a bunch of stuff about Vietnam and the CIA. I'd like to know more about operations in Latin America, the balance of power, and especially how politics shaped and opened up following the collapse of the Soviet Union. If this is too broad of a question, I'll take just good stories and well-regarded general non-fiction. I'm just looking to shore up my knowledge in this area, not write a paper or anything.
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Jun 1, 2021 20:29
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All the talk about small-arms makes me wonder if it really is that difficult to figure out once you get the hand on, for instance a kar98 or mp-40. I understand having to clean it is obviously a hassle, but in terms of picking it off a dead nazi and using it straight away it would seem to me (who, admittedly, have only fired guns in a controlled environment where mud in the reciever is obviously not a problem) pretty straight forward. Clip/magazine goes in, draw the bolt (I'm not familiar with the terms and english isn't my first language so apologies) and aim at the bad guys and gently squeeze the trigger to remove the enemy. I figure there are a lot of steps I've missed so feel free to correct me and/or call me a big dumdum 
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Jun 1, 2021 23:45
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Greggster posted:All the talk about small-arms makes me wonder if it really is that difficult to figure out once you get the hand on, for instance a kar98 or mp-40. Its still important to know how to handle, just in case. We're talking knowing how the sights work, what kind of ammunition it uses, how to read "Fire" and "Safe" in a foreign language. There's a lot of universal details that are similar among firearm designs, yes, but if you're making a video on something, you might as well cover the essentials while rolling tape.
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Jun 2, 2021 00:24
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The Germans liked to use captured shermans, not only because they needed the tanks, but because they made excellent engineering vehicles, because their engines and transmissions were not overstressed, unlike most German tanks.
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Jun 2, 2021 00:36
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Sanguinia posted:My youtube recommends sent me a video today that was about how Germany could possibly have a coal shortage before and during the war when it was its most prolific natural resource, explaining that they had more than enough coal, the issue was that they didn't have the transportation infrastructure to move it all to areas of need because the German rail system was too overtaxed by passenger, freight and military demands after it was nationalized and nazi-fied so that its operations and staffing were handcuffed by ideological concerns. Who was this clown?
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Jun 2, 2021 00:45
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Greggster posted:All the talk about small-arms makes me wonder if it really is that difficult to figure out once you get the hand on, for instance a kar98 or mp-40. It's probably something that anyone familiar with guns could figure out, but you may not have the chance for a lot of experimentation if you find yourself in that situation, so having some training on it beforehand can't hurt. Especially for things like safeties, which a) can vary widely between different manufacturers, and b) may not be apparent if they've been correctly disengaged until you actually pull the trigger. There's also an aspect of safe handling, it's arguably just as important to know how to not shoot things that you don't want to be shot.
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Jun 2, 2021 00:56
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A few minutes of familiarization would be a lot nicer than figuring out how to load a Mauser from stripper clips under fire.
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Jun 2, 2021 01:08
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Tias posted:If it's any consolation (it isn't) Denmark is also utter poo poo about this, and was as much on board as Norway and Sweden when it came to presenting a new unified protestant people, which meant, uh, thinking saami and finns were sorcerors and burning them and their stuff if someone got sick There are or were significant Saami and Finish populations in Denmark? Edit: Shermans were frequently modified into tractors and other industrial and agricultural vehicles after the war, and I believe one Canadian company, Morpac industries, still makes vehicles based on Sherman components. Weka fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Jun 2, 2021 |
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Jun 2, 2021 01:30
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Weka posted:There are or were significant Saami and Finish populations in Denmark? Here's a particularly fun one:  Sherman tank that was converted into a snow plow, photographed up at Grand Canyon National Park in '49.
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Jun 2, 2021 02:59
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Ensign Expendable posted:Soviet paratroopers were kind of the black sheep of the armed forces in the GPW and don't really have many successes to point to. They did the whole "Oorah marines" overcompensating thing after the war which surprisingly resulted in a huge jump in prestige and a whole bunch of custom hardware that they didn't get during the war. IIRC isn't there at least two places they did fairly well; being the battle for Kyiv where they retook some ground and held it before the Germans flanked the city; and in the Caucasus mountains? Fake edit, apparently they also fought at Stalingrad? And apparently weren't they successful in Manchuria?
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Jun 2, 2021 03:19
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Haven’t checked but wasn’t VDV a big thing in tuhatsevskis deep battle ideas? Which would imply they were one of the formations that got purged big time just before the war. Soviet airborne was the hot poo poo interbellum though. They held multiple massive shows of force in the 1930s with mind-boggling casualties. All foreign observers were impressed on their ability to drop thousands (and lose hundreds) of soldiers.
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Jun 2, 2021 03:29
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any kind of operation is inherently dangerous but few operational maneuvers are as dangerous as paradropping
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Jun 2, 2021 03:34
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GotLag posted:Who was this clown? The channel is called TIK. Hilarious excerpt from his About page: "FYI I neither support the far-left nor far-right, which is why some of my videos are getting plenty of dislikes, evil comments are being left on them, and why my email address is no longer available. If you have business enquires, I'm afraid you're out of luck."
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Jun 2, 2021 03:42
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Alchenar posted:Basically there's two paradoxical rules of infantry: To what extent is this to be fought against by officers and the system, and to what extent is it to be embraced as 'veteran soldiers probably know what they're doing'?
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Jun 2, 2021 03:50
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An earlier iteration of the thread took time to laugh about Midway, the 2019 war film directed by...Roland Emmerich. The director famous for such stunningly accurate war films as Independence Day and The Patriot. I never bothered to watch the movie and still haven't. But I finished the History Buffs two-part review of the film. He really enjoyed it the film, and said he had to admit that Roland Emmerich had actually made a good war film. It's a good review of the film, and also a really good 1-hour summary of the battle. Part 1 Part 2
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Jun 2, 2021 04:00
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Greggster posted:All the talk about small-arms makes me wonder if it really is that difficult to figure out once you get the hand on, for instance a kar98 or mp-40. Pretty much any small arm of WWII is something that anybody could figure out given a little time to practice. Relying on having that time to practice is not the greatest of ideas. Taking the time to provide training could mean the difference between a squad holding a position by turning a MG42 around and having the same squad overrun while trying to get the thing to shoot.
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Jun 2, 2021 04:12
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Sanguinia posted:The channel is called TIK. Oh my god I looked up that video and it's amazing. Here's TIK in the comments: quote:Then the capitalists would be forced to lower their prices or go hungry themselves. That's why under a capitalist economy you have deflation. But of course, we don't have a capitalist economy...
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Jun 2, 2021 04:26
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Bagheera posted:An earlier iteration of the thread took time to laugh about Midway, the 2019 war film directed by...Roland Emmerich. The director famous for such stunningly accurate war films as Independence Day and The Patriot. I'd also never watched Midway so I was kind of shocked at how apparently historically accurate it actually was according to this review, beyond the general Hollywoodery of course.
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Jun 2, 2021 05:25
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zoux posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI1F5SnkLBs Others have posted about how it's fairly common for enemy equipment to be reused. Training on enemy weapons also allows soldiers to understand how the equipment they are going to face works, and any advantages that will need to be considered, and any disadvantages that can be exploited.
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Jun 2, 2021 05:40
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Bagheera posted:An earlier iteration of the thread took time to laugh about Midway, the 2019 war film directed by...Roland Emmerich. The director famous for such stunningly accurate war films as Independence Day and The Patriot. Huh. I skipped the movie for the same reason. And I was even suspicious watching the YouTube video, since in my experience 99% of Youtubers who open with animated caricatures of themselves are intolerably loving annoying. So I was pleased that a.) this dude was alright, and b.) this movie had some historical chops. The world's a surprising place. Particularly appreciated how he trashes the maudlin  "dedicated to the brave sailors on BOTH sides" bit at the end, too.
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Jun 2, 2021 06:12
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EggsAisle posted:Huh. I skipped the movie for the same reason. And I was even suspicious watching the YouTube video, since in my experience 99% of Youtubers who open with animated caricatures of themselves are intolerably loving annoying. So I was pleased that a.) this dude was alright, and b.) this movie had some historical chops. The world's a surprising place. History Buffs is a really fun channel. The guy's content is good, although a couple of them have some pretty HOT TAKES. His review of A Bridge Too Far has a really eye-rolling thought about "blunt messaging," in film, and he treats Zulu with some pretty obvious kid gloves concerning the British Imperialist history its set in because it was a childhood favorite of his and he doesn't want to think too many bad thoughts about it.
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Jun 2, 2021 06:37
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On Burma - Just finished reading "Behind Japanese Lines , with the OSS in Burma" by Richard Dunlop Super interesting stuff with the author being a late war agent dropped in. Lots of focus on native tribes in the area being raised into guerilla forces.
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Jun 2, 2021 07:08
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Acebuckeye13 posted:One of the other problems with the drop bags was that the Americans got the idea from British paratroopers, but didn't realize they were supposed to be limited by weight - dudes would shove as much ammo and supplies as they could into the bags, and this made them so heavy that the tether would snap as soon as the chute opened. Seems a huge oversight to me
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Jun 2, 2021 07:10
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Weka posted:There are or were significant Saami and Finish populations in Denmark? During the time of Kalmar Union, I guess there was, but these were isolated incidents where they fell into Danish hands. Our colonial hellscape was directed at (for at time) the Estonian natives, and (primarily) the Inuit people of Greenland.
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Jun 2, 2021 08:12
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The Lone Badger posted:To what extent is this to be fought against by officers and the system, and to what extent is it to be embraced as 'veteran soldiers probably know what they're doing'? Go into Internet VFW and ask people who went to Iraq how much of their kit they bought themselves. Mileage varies enormously, but there's loads of posts about how the Germans institutionalised bringing foreign equipment into their formations. Losing equipment is bad but it happens out of sight and in a conscript army what are you going to do, send the guy home? Gaining equipment was treated with anything from a shrug to enthusiastic encouragement. Frankly if you are an officer in WW2 and your troops are enthusiastically working on the next fight then you don't do much to discourage them.
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Jun 2, 2021 09:08
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Milo and POTUS posted:Seems a huge oversight to me That's history, folks.
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Jun 2, 2021 11:04
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Sanguinia posted:The channel is called TIK. It is a shame that he has such extreme viewpoints as I actually liked his series on Crusader and Stalingrad. But now it is very hard to really believe his conclusions anymore due his *slight biases*. Perhaps now I need to re-evaluate if Halder was actually the reason for German failure in Case Blue.. The breaking point for me was when he was claiming the excellence of free--market by quoting the example of how hotel chains can build enough beds for tourists, but NHS can not have enough hospital beds ("even though their budget has grown from year to year!").
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Jun 2, 2021 11:39
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Sanguinia posted:The channel is called TIK. Oh my god yeah, that tracks. Even as I was reading your descripting I was thinking "that kinda sounds like TIK", and there he is. The guy also managed to fool me for a while until I watched one of his less-focused Q&A videos, where he unmpromptedly went on a long rent about how von Mises and Rothbard were the best historians ever and you totally have to rely on axioms and "logic" to be a good historian. Because if you acknowledge that history can be ludicrously complex with a host of not always apparent factors playing into it, you're an bad postmodern hegelian marxist or something. 
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Jun 2, 2021 11:44
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This is a Morpac off-road crawler Some very obvious Sherman parts on it
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Jun 2, 2021 12:07
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Raenir Salazar posted:IIRC isn't there at least two places they did fairly well; being the battle for Kyiv where they retook some ground and held it before the Germans flanked the city; and in the Caucasus mountains? Fake edit, apparently they also fought at Stalingrad? And apparently weren't they successful in Manchuria? Like pretty much everyone else, the Soviets had an idealized notion of what airborne operations could do with ww2 technology in the deep battle doctrine, and the VDV units they had were a reflection of that. Much like with the other powers, airborne operations were generallyt disappointing. The VDV units were high quality infantry units, particularly for 1941, but aside from that, their record in actual airborne operations was not very good. It's not really well-known because it was never done at even the division level, much less the corps level that you'd see the Western allies do.
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Jun 2, 2021 12:26
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I watched The Battle of Milne Bay - The Unknown Turning Point of the Pacific War and I had no idea it was nearly identical results as Guadalcanal, in miniature. An Allied brigade instead of a division, fighting a Japanese Battalion instead of a Brigade, supported by at-night-superior Japanese Light Cruisers instead of Battleships, vs 2 squadrons instead of a Wing, over a period of a week instead of some months. And they make the exact same mistakes at Guadalcanal, again! I would like to know what the Japanese High Command concluded after Milne Bay and why that doesn't seem to have made any difference in their tactics and strategy later on at Guadalcanal.
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Jun 2, 2021 12:33
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Wasn’t the lack of Soviet airborne operations due mainly to lack of air transport to drop them?
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Jun 2, 2021 12:33
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Scratch Monkey posted:Wasn’t the lack of Soviet airborne operations due mainly to lack of air transport to drop them? Yes, it's one of the reasons- they still did them but only at the brigade level. The airlift capacity just wasn't there.
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Jun 2, 2021 12:34
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Sanguinia posted:History Buffs is a really fun channel. The guy's content is good, although a couple of them have some pretty HOT TAKES. His review of A Bridge Too Far has a really eye-rolling thought about "blunt messaging," in film, and he treats Zulu with some pretty obvious kid gloves concerning the British Imperialist history its set in because it was a childhood favorite of his and he doesn't want to think too many bad thoughts about it. It's a shame Zulu is such a solid film set in a really problematic era and hosed up one sided war. The DVD case is a fantastic looking thing I am too embarassed to display because of the stupid war. (It's a detailed close up of the 1870's pattern tunic).
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Jun 2, 2021 13:12
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SeanBeansShako posted:It's a shame Zulu is such a solid film set in a really problematic era and hosed up one sided war. The DVD case is a fantastic looking thing I am too embarassed to display because of the stupid war. I'd like to do Zulu era tabletop wargaming, but, again, problematic era. I'll also say that FOR IT'S TIME the movie Zulu was pretty decent. Every time a British character says something derogatory towards the Zulus they are told to shut up by their peers or superiors.
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Jun 2, 2021 15:16
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