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zoux posted:Oh for sure. If I had been around in 1962 I would've died of multiple bleeding stress ulcers. I remember asking my parents, who would've been seven or eight when it happened, if they were scared and they said they didn't even remember it. I was terrified of nuclear war as a kid, and I really only experienced the very tail end of the Cold War - I can't imagine coping with civil defense drills and brinksmanship. As an anecdote, both my parents were in South Florida during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and were about the same age. My dad was 8 and his family happened to be down on vacation from New York in Miami, and don’t recall anything unusual about it at all. My mom’s 6th birthday was literally during the middle of it and the thing she and all her family remembers was military stuff (From what they described, sounded like AA guns or SAM batteries) at seemingly random places and along certain roads in Broward county during it all.
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Jun 23, 2021 18:30
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My social studies told me that some people stopped going to work during the crisis because it seemed pointless when the world was about to end. That was so striking, it's one of the things that got me interested in history.Nenonen posted:The real losers were some Soviet missile troops personnel who had been promised a transfer from Bumfukgrad, Siberia to Cuba. One of the first things that tipped off the Americans was satellite photos showing an unusual number of soccer fields near a Cuban military base. Cubans play baseball, Russians play soccer.
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Jun 23, 2021 20:20
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hypnophant posted:Someone like Cyrano or Ensign Expendable would be able to say more but my understanding is that this is emphatically not the case, the archives were opened briefly after 1992 and historians had a few years to dig through the massive, poorly cataloged collection before it was quickly shut back up as the oligarchs solidified their power. What got out into the west in that period is basically all there is and it’s very uneven. This is basically my understanding. I didn't do anything with Russia or the USSR, but I was friend with people who did so I got a lot of second hand grad school bar chatter on this. IIRC the really good window to be doing a PhD on sensitive Soviet era stuff was something like 1992-1996 or so.
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Jun 23, 2021 22:46
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zoux posted:Oh for sure. If I had been around in 1962 I would've died of multiple bleeding stress ulcers. I remember asking my parents, who would've been seven or eight when it happened, if they were scared and they said they didn't even remember it. I was terrified of nuclear war as a kid, and I really only experienced the very tail end of the Cold War - I can't imagine coping with civil defense drills and brinksmanship. Chamale posted:My social studies told me that some people stopped going to work during the crisis because it seemed pointless when the world was about to end. That was so striking, it's one of the things that got me interested in history. I was talking about this with my English Literature teacher in the mid-90s, when she was in her 50s, and she remembers being at high school in the UK and every room had a radio on with the BBC going and no one really got any work done; they were literally all just waiting for the word that the balloons had gone up.
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Jun 24, 2021 00:33
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Does anyone know any books that cover the design and building of the early American Cruisers and Pre-Dreadnaught Battleships? Something similar to these books: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L6Z9AEU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o02?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ONZQ7BY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o08?e=UTF8&psc=1
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Jun 24, 2021 04:18
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From many threads back, but I remember an excerpt from a novel being posted where two southern characters are having a conversation when one of them out of nowhere brings up how Johnston lost the civil war, and the other character is surprised but immediately says it's more the fault of Bragg. At least it goes something like that. Does that ring any bells?
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Jun 24, 2021 12:17
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So I was watching Force 10 from Navarone and they mentioned the secrets of penicillin. I was unaware the Germans lacked penicillin during the war and it was only widespread with the allies from 1942 onwards. What was the treatment of wounds and amputations in WWII prior to the availability of penicillin? Did they allies notice a increase in recoveries from wounds after it's introduction? Did the Germans rely more on amputations or other medical treatments. Also was penicillin sought after by the Wehrmacht when they captured allied sippy dumps?
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Jun 24, 2021 23:34
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Tiger Crazy posted:So I was watching Force 10 from Navarone and they mentioned the secrets of penicillin. I was unaware the Germans lacked penicillin during the war and it was only widespread with the allies from 1942 onwards. You washed the wound and cleaned the dressings and hoped for the best.
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Jun 25, 2021 00:12
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Tiger Crazy posted:What was the treatment of wounds and amputations in WWII prior to the availability of penicillin? Sulfonamides. If you’re watching a WWII movie and someone rips open a pouch and sprinkles powder from it on a wound, that’s sulfa. These were the first antibiotics and date back to the thirties. Basically they inhibit folate synthesis, and thereby inhibit bacterial growth by depriving them of this essential nutrient. This is different from penicillin, which disrupts the formation of the bacterial cell wall. So first off, penicillin is more generally effective, in that it kills bacteria rather than just slowing growth. quote:Did they allies notice a increase in recoveries from wounds after it's introduction? Did the Germans rely more on amputations or other medical treatments. The Germans were actually the ones who developed the first sulfonamides. By the time penicillin rolled around there were a number of bugs that had developed some resistance to them. Also, penicillin had a broader spectrum of action, including to some very broad classes of bacteria, like strep and staphylococcus. Also also, about 3% of the population has severe reaction to sulfa, up to and including anaphylactic shock. Life threatening reactions to penicillin are far rarer.
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Jun 25, 2021 00:41
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And in WWI they apparently used moss for dressing wounds.
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Jun 25, 2021 02:28
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This article came up in the Katawa Shoujo LP. (go read it, it's interesting) I'd like to know how much of it is true, though.
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Jun 25, 2021 06:28
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Dance Officer posted:This article came up in the Katawa Shoujo LP. (go read it, it's interesting) I'd like to know how much of it is true, though. I don't know any official numbers off-hand, but airmen dying in training was not altogether rare. Typically it would be with landing/flying accidents, such as nosing over during a landing, crash landing killing the pilot/crew, or a collision in the air. You also have other ways of dying, like hypothermia, or making GBS threads out your guts because of an errant fart at high altitudes. Edit: The cited source doesn't include a god drat page, and the source is 337 pages long, and touches on a wide variety of topics. The source is also Army Air Force only, so no Navy/Marines here! quote:The planes continued to be unreliable, and to make things worse, once overseas, many green pilots were given the controls of planes in which they had little to no flying experience. Pretty sure this is an outright lie, and one would presume that the pilots that didn't die in the wrecks DURING TRAINING may have some experience flying the types. Side note, found the stats page being referenced:  I swear I've never heard the Liberator being called the Flying Coffin, but maybe that's on me. And how are planes "continuing to be unreliable"? Is the engine randomly exploding? Does the landing gear not work? If its THAT bad, why even use the B-24 and not simply make more B-17s? Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Jun 25, 2021 |
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Jun 25, 2021 06:35
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Here's a crash report of a B-24, lost stateside, and why the numbers alone don't tell the full story. Date: 18-MAY-1942 Time: 05:25 Type: Consolidated B-24D Liberator Owner/operator: 66th BSqn /44th BGp USAAF Registration: 41-1117 C/n / msn: Fatalities: Fatalities: 9 / Occupants: 9 Other fatalities: 0 Aircraft damage: Written off (damaged beyond repair) Location: 1.5 mile south of Barksdale Field, Louisiana - United States of America Phase: Take off Nature: Military Departure airport: Barksdale Field AAF, LA Destination airport: Narrative: Although generally overlooked, the 44th Bomb Group was in action against German U-boats even before leaving the U.S. It was patrolling the Gulf of Mexico regularly, even during the operational training of its crews. In fact, one 66th Squadron crew claimed one of these submarines sunk on 10 July 1942 but there is no German loss in the area at this date. However, on the morning of 18 May 1942, another 66th Squadron aircraft was lost shortly after takeoff en route to its assigned patrol. The Technical Report of Aircraft Accident includes the information that the B-24D 41-1117 crashed at 0525 hours approximately one and one half miles south of Barksdale Field, Louisiana. At that time there was a ceiling of 3,000 feet with visibility of about five miles. A moderate rain was falling and a thunderstorm was in effect with considerable lightning northwest of the field. The plane was carrying depth charges and ammunition in case the enemy was sighted. The plane went down a few minutes after takeoff, exploded and burned, with no one having time to exit the aircraft. All were killed. Crew (all killed): 2nd Lt Herbert Welcome Frawley, Jr. (pilot) 2nd Lt James RicE Everhart (co-pilot) 2nd Lt Augustus Holman Tate (navigator) Sgt Mansfield Crabtree (bombardier) Sgt Lewis J Hepler (engineer) Sgt Arlo Vincent Werley (radio operator) Pvt Rudolph McJunkins (assistant engineer) Pvt Herman R Sanneman (assistant radio operator) Cpl Stanley C ANdrews (gunner) These were the first 44th BG casualties of World War II, as these men were attempting to defend the shores of the United States of America while still in the training phase and not fully operational. Edit: Or this... Date: 31-DEC-1943 Time: Type: Consolidated B-24D Liberator Owner/operator: United States Army Air Force (USAAF) Registration: 41-11769 C/n / msn: Fatalities: Fatalities: 5 / Occupants: 5 Other fatalities: 0 Aircraft damage: Written off (damaged beyond repair) Location: Guadalupe Mountain, TX - United States of America Phase: En route Nature: Military Departure airport: Biggs Field in El Paso Destination airport: Narrative: Crashed during a routine night instrument flight. All five occupants of the plane died in the crash. Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Jun 25, 2021 |
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Jun 25, 2021 07:08
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Some random searching found this doctoral dissertation from 2013 which does indicate 15,000+ fatalities during training, and has a section on "causes and prevention", probably some interesting stuff there. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/18529342.pdf This Navy history page says 3257 "other than operational (training and ferry)" fatalities. https://www.history.navy.mil/resear...rld-war-ii.html Max Gergel's "Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide?" has a sad section about his best friend dying after a training crash. quote:Pete came home. Part of his face was smashed and one eye looked off at an angle. He had cracked up the TBF on the qualifying run, riding it to the ground. He had managed to crawl away before it exploded, to drag himself the three miles back to the base, bleeding and in great pain. They told him it was a miracle that he was alive; there was a clot in his bloodstream and sooner or later it would block and the lights would go out.
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Jun 25, 2021 07:11
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Jobbo_Fett posted:
The B-24 was a very capable aircraft, with a higher top speed, longer range, and bigger bombload then the B-17, but it was also (IIRC) a difficult aircraft to fly in formation. In combat the B-24 was also much more susceptible to damage, with the wing in particular being prone to snapping under damage or duress. As for reliability, I do know that the Ford-built B-24s had really lovely build quality for the first year or two of production, as the company had difficulty attracting skilled workers to the Willow Run plant.
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Jun 25, 2021 07:18
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Acebuckeye13 posted:The B-24 was a very capable aircraft, with a higher top speed, longer range, and bigger bombload then the B-17, but it was also (IIRC) a difficult aircraft to fly in formation. In combat the B-24 was also much more susceptible to damage, with the wing in particular being prone to snapping under damage or duress. Sure but it flying lower than the B-17 and being more suscepti le to battle damage isn't at play for the stateside stuff. Don't kmow about the Ford stuff so I'll take your word for it. As for difficult in formation, I've seen a few "crash reports" that mention mid-air collisions. Ultimately, the only reason why the B-24 is given the blame here is because it outpaces everyone else in deaths, but even the P-47 and P-40 had more accidents.
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Jun 25, 2021 07:34
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 i really like these ww2 era editorial cartoons e: has there ever been a thread for them? ChubbyChecker fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Jun 25, 2021 |
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Jun 25, 2021 13:00
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I was just walking around the Sekigahara battlefield for the first time in 15 years. The new museum is alright if rather succinct on the history, and also it gets the emblem and spelling of the Shimazu wrong. Also apart from a very rusty blade and some musketballs everything there is a replica compared to what you will find in the Nagoya Tokugawa, Edo-Tokyo museum, etc. Also the music tracks they use for the 4d rumbling and spraying shows aren't nearly as good as Kessen's. As for the battlefield itself there are now plentiful explanations in English at the sites and leading towards it accompanied by beautiful art by the same man who draws for Koei's Nobunaga's Ambition series. However, and I'll need to check my old albums and perhaps my memory is too rosy, but I recall the area between the station and Ishida's encampment being almost wholly pastoral with only a few single story houses, and when I stood on that hill it was so quiet I'd swear you could close your eyes and hear tens of thousands screaming as they charged into battle. Yesterday when I looked from that spot there were several large, garish, multi-storey buildings between it and the station, and incessant loud traffic from a nearby bypass. Still worth visiting, but not ideal. Or as good as I remember, at any rate. Anyway, have any of you returned to a historal battlefield and found it diminished?
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Jun 25, 2021 13:20
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I feel nothing posted will top Wellington seeing Waterloo post Lion's Mound.
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Jun 25, 2021 13:30
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I just finished Ian Toll's Twilight of the Gods and he suggested that the B-29 was a pretty big unfinished mess when it was put into action towards the end of the war. The engines were very unreliable at first which naturally made accidents more common.
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Jun 25, 2021 14:17
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Dance Officer posted:This article came up in the Katawa Shoujo LP. (go read it, it's interesting) I'd like to know how much of it is true, though. I skimmed the article and found this quote somewhat sus: " The Soviets killed more of their own soldiers than total U.S. combat deaths." Are we really to believe that the soviets executed > 300,000 of their own soldiers during the war?
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Jun 25, 2021 15:43
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quote:yielded her all That's quite a euphemism.
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Jun 25, 2021 15:47
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sullat posted:I skimmed the article and found this quote somewhat sus: " The Soviets killed more of their own soldiers than total U.S. combat deaths." Are we really to believe that the soviets executed > 300,000 of their own soldiers during the war? I'm going to defer to EE on this as he's the resident Soviet military expert, but I suspect that this is going to be one of those things where it is highly, highly dependent on how you define killing your own soldiers and how you count them. For example, how do you count penal battalions? Random googling shows that about 460,000 people cycled through them during the war. Various commanders used them differently, and had different rules about getting out of them. Some generals only released people who were wounded in action, for others it was enough to serve in one battle. So is someone who gets swept into a penal battalion and dies during an assault counted as "killing your own soldiers?"
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Jun 25, 2021 16:16
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Krivosheev tallies up all noncombat total losses (accidents, disease, executions) at 541,920. It's hard to believe that more than half were shot. It's possible the author is conflating conviction of desertion (376,300 instances) with execution, which was definitely not guaranteed.
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Jun 25, 2021 16:43
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Ensign Expendable posted:Krivosheev tallies up all noncombat total losses (accidents, disease, executions) at 541,920. It's hard to believe that more than half were shot. How many people were executed as part of the purges, and is it possible the author added them to the WW2 tally?
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Jun 25, 2021 16:46
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Jobbo_Fett posted:How many people were executed as part of the purges, and is it possible the author added them to the WW2 tally? I don't have that data sadly, only data on wartime losses.
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Jun 25, 2021 16:51
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I think Hastings quotes a count of two entire divisions worth of executions during Stalingrad, which I recall Expendable as having explained as nonsense before.
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Jun 25, 2021 16:53
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One nuance that's often missed is that sentencing to a punishment wasn't necessarily followed by said punishment. In many cases it was deferred until after the war with the accused being given a chance to "pay for their crime in blood" in a penal unit. As Cyrano mentioned, it's up to the author to interpret these casualties as executions.
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Jun 25, 2021 16:59
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Scratch Monkey posted:I just finished Ian Toll's Twilight of the Gods and he suggested that the B-29 was a pretty big unfinished mess when it was put into action towards the end of the war. The engines were very unreliable at first which naturally made accidents more common. it had a couple of inherent design issues (nacelles wrapped so tightly around engines that overheating had to be guarded against and maintenance was difficult) but it was mostly just a huge evolutionary leap technologically speaking, and had all the teething troubles that programs like that do while procedure catches up with technology the b-29 program cost half again as much as the manhattan project; it was an incredibly ambitious program there is a fantastic aspect of the story though where after a few notable engine fires all Tibbets' chosen pilot candidates refused to fly it so he secretly trained up a pair of WASP and had them do circuits around an airfield while he took the others to task. but one of the first cohesive b-29 crews was co-ed 
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Jun 25, 2021 18:41
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Ensign Expendable posted:One nuance that's often missed is that sentencing to a punishment wasn't necessarily followed by said punishment. In many cases it was deferred until after the war with the accused being given a chance to "pay for their crime in blood" in a penal unit. As Cyrano mentioned, it's up to the author to interpret these casualties as executions. Oh right, so a 'death recorded' kinda deal.
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Jun 25, 2021 19:30
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Ensign Expendable posted:One nuance that's often missed is that sentencing to a punishment wasn't necessarily followed by said punishment. In many cases it was deferred until after the war with the accused being given a chance to "pay for their crime in blood" in a penal unit. As Cyrano mentioned, it's up to the author to interpret these casualties as executions. Isn't this pretty common in militaries?(sentencing =! Actual punishment) I remember hearing about this with british court marshals in WW1 - sentences to death for desertion often weren't applied or were commuted
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Jun 25, 2021 21:12
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The US sentenced 49 to death for desertion but only this poor guy actually got it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Slovik quote:Eisenhower confirmed the execution order on December 23, noting that it was necessary to discourage further desertions. The sentence came as a shock to Slovik, who had been expecting a dishonorable discharge and a prison term, the same punishment he had seen meted out to other deserters from the division while he was confined to the stockade. Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Jun 25, 2021 |
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Jun 25, 2021 21:46
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Here is the "meaty" paragraph of that article:quote:And this was just in the continental U.S. There were many thousands more wrecks and deaths overseas. Looking at totals for the entire war is even more sobering. The U.S. suffered 52,173 aircrew combat losses. But another 25,844 died in accidents. More than half of these died in the continental U.S. The U.S. lost 65,164 planes during the war, but only 22,948 in combat. There were 21,583 lost due to accidents in the U.S., and another 20,633 lost in accidents overseas. Do those numbers sound plausible to people who study this stuff? Or is the fact that the article contains almost no citations and questionable digs at the soviets enough to rule these numbers as wrong?
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Jun 26, 2021 00:03
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Holy poo poo, I can scarcely even imagine what 60,000 planes looks like. The scale of WW2 is a bit staggering sometimes.
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Jun 26, 2021 00:08
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The author of that article has foolishly decided to present operational losses as "accidents", but they aren't the same thing.
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Jun 26, 2021 00:41
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VictualSquid posted:Here is the "meaty" paragraph of that article: flying is an inherently risky activity; training lots and lots of cadets to fly at once in as expedited a fashion as you can manage magnifies a lot of those risks. a usaaf training field also is basically a modern international airport in terms of frequency of takeoffs and landings, number of planes being controlled by the tower, etc., but instead of nicely filing in and out along ils corridors they're just all hanging out in nearby airspace i know a little about wwii usaaf flight training; the basic course is roughly this, with each stage lasting 9 weeks and with around 75 hours of flight time in which to practice and master all skills: * introductory period flying PTs (primary trainers), light, uncomplicated civil general aviation aircraft, most famously the Kaydet. this was basically equivalent to civilian air training, and was taught by mostly civilian flight instructors. pilotage, elementary navigation, airport procedures. cadets would also do all the typical boot camp PT and rifle drill and start classroom work on mechanics, meteorology, principles of radio communication, etc. it was advanced coursework delivered at an accelerated pace; typically days were scheduled with classroom work in the morning and practice flights in the afternoon or vice versa. by the end of this phase pilots would be doing cross-country flights other airfields. * pass-or-wash-out check-ride * intermediate period flying BTs (basic trainers), most notably the BT-13 Vultee  . these were bigger, faster planes that acclimated pilots to the higher airspeeds and landing velocities of performance warplanes, but simplified a lot and were built for durability. cadets focused in this stage on adapting to the higher cockpit workload and lower margin of error of advanced aircraft. they also studied instrument flying in BTs and with sim time in Link trainers and learned formation flying.* pass-or-wash-out check-ride * ATs (advanced trainers), most famously the T-6 Texan. These were very close to frontline combat aircraft with performance engines and retractable gear. pilots would start to get some tactical instruction and practice combat maneuvers. this is also where pilots are diverted into their future specialties; bomber and transport pilots learned multi-engine trainers like the AT-17 Bobcat *pass-or-wash-out check-ride * graduate to transition school, learn a specific airframe, and enter a unit
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Jun 26, 2021 00:57
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:The US sentenced 49 to death for desertion but only this poor guy actually got it. I don't think this man should have been executed and I bet it did have something to do with having a criminal record. But article posted:The cook took Slovik to an MP, then his company commander, who read the note and urged Slovik to destroy it before he was taken into custody. Slovik refused. He was brought before Lieutenant Colonel Ross Henbest, who again offered him the opportunity to tear up the note, return to his unit, and face no further charges; Slovik again refused. Henbest instructed Slovik to write another note on the back of the first one stating that he fully understood the legal consequences of deliberately incriminating himself, and that it would be used as evidence against him in a court-martial. But Jesus God if three increasingly higher-ranked officers say "hey man you're confessing to a death sentence. Tear up the note, go back to your unit or even a different one and we'll say no more about it" maybe he should have taken the urgent prompting and taken the way out he was offered. Maybe it did have to do with his past, but this dude sure as hell had a chance to change his mind. Way way more than anyone else gets that's for drat sure.
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Jun 26, 2021 01:15
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The issue is that everyone knew those sentences got commuted to prison. He fully expected that he would get the lesser penalty. He just had the bad luck to pull that in the middle of the Bulge.
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Jun 26, 2021 01:23
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Uncle Enzo posted:But Jesus God if three increasingly higher-ranked officers say "hey man you're confessing to a death sentence. Tear up the note, go back to your unit or even a different one and we'll say no more about it" maybe he should have taken the urgent prompting and taken the way out he was offered. Reminds me of a story from the Royal Navy I read, although this story has a far happier ending: quote:I once saw [Robert Lowry] handle a case of insubordination in an original way that led to the very best results. In those days it sometimes happened that a hasty-tempered young man, who felt either restless or aggrieved under naval discipline, would strike a superior in order to be dismissed the Service, even though such dismissal would be accompanied by a sentence to imprisonment with hard labour. A young ordinary seaman on board the Ramillies, who had been going wrong for some time, finally put the hat on his previous misdeeds by refusing, in unpardonable language, to obey an order given him by the captain of the forecastle. He was therefore brought up before the Commander, who forwarded the case to be investigated by the Flag Captain.
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Jun 26, 2021 01:37
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Uncle Enzo posted:I don't think this man should have been executed and I bet it did have something to do with having a criminal record. But It's like the guy who dies in a flood and asks god why he didn't save him. And gods just like "bro I sent boats"
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Jun 26, 2021 01:43
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