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You confiscate all the weird poo poo your guys accumulated and replace it with authorized equipment when the unit is pulled out to refit. Until then trying to prevent enlisted men from pocketing something cool they found is an impossible task.
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Feb 26, 2023 23:47
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Picking up gear is one thing, ditching his rifle is quite another, though...?
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Feb 27, 2023 00:08
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They seemed to already be stranded behind enemy lines (due to their bridgehead collapsing), so the officers he was with probably didn't give that much of a poo poo if he dropped his rifle.
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Feb 27, 2023 01:26
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Germans were also way, way freer about using enemy equipment than most other militaries. I'm pretty sure I've talked in here about the Beutwaffen codes and how they actually gave German military designations to foreign gear. The Maschinenpistole 717(r) was the PPSh in German service, for example. This was done on an ad-hoc basis by people near the front just using poo poo they found, of course, but it was also done on a more systemic basis with captured weapons and ammo collected and re-issued, usually to rear echelon areas. A ton of reserve / occupation units in France were armed with captured French and Polish weapons, for example, and a lot of the local E. European auxiliaries who did some of the heavy lifting in the Holocaust were armed with Soviet rifles. Of course not all of it was rear-area only. SMGs and semi-auto rifles in particular got a lot of work at the front, and the Germans if anything had a higher opinion of the SVT-40 than the Russians did. None of which really applies to this case, but the larger point is that a German soldier ditching his rifle and grabbing Soviet weapon isn't something that would make monocles pop. I mean, usually you'd probably want the rifle back into circulation, but obviously the level of give a gently caress for that when you're cut off and wandering as a small group behind enemy lines is nill.
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Feb 27, 2023 01:55
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That was a fantastic read, thankyou. "But at one door someone gave us cake although he told us that he himself had suffered a lot in a German camp. But he had resolved to give something edible to anyone who was hungry and knocked on his front door."
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Feb 27, 2023 01:59
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It was a good read! I keep meaning to digitize my grandfather's war notes. He typed them up fairly well. He was in a USO outfit, which is a pretty unusual job. Hopefully the post has inspired me to get off my rear end to do it.
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Feb 27, 2023 02:06
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Cyrano4747 posted:Germans were also way, way freer about using enemy equipment than most other militaries. I'm pretty sure I've talked in here about the Beutwaffen codes and how they actually gave German military designations to foreign gear. The Maschinenpistole 717(r) was the PPSh in German service, for example. This was done on an ad-hoc basis by people near the front just using poo poo they found, of course, but it was also done on a more systemic basis with captured weapons and ammo collected and re-issued, usually to rear echelon areas. A ton of reserve / occupation units in France were armed with captured French and Polish weapons, for example, and a lot of the local E. European auxiliaries who did some of the heavy lifting in the Holocaust were armed with Soviet rifles. Yeah, my gramps was in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front and he was actually officially issued a Russian weapon, along with a lot of other guys. He called it a "tommy gun" so I assume it was some form of PPSH.
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Feb 27, 2023 09:55
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Yeah, my gramps was in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front and he was actually officially issued a Russian weapon, along with a lot of other guys. He called it a "tommy gun" so I assume it was some form of PPSH. Almost certainly. I don't have numbers or anything, but anecdotally the PPSh appears to have been the most commonly issued foreign small arm, at lest in terms of actually being issued to front line troops. It helps that the ammo was functionally identical to the 7.63 Mauser pistol cartridge (i'm pretty sure it was the cartridge that 7.62 Tokarev was developed from) which means that it wasn't a problem for them to manufacture their own, new ammo for the guns rather than relying only on captured Soviet stores.
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Feb 27, 2023 14:41
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Yeah, my gramps was in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front and he was actually officially issued a Russian weapon, along with a lot of other guys. He called it a "tommy gun" so I assume it was some form of PPSH. My grandpa was also there and his descriptions use "pepescha" and "tommy gun" interchangeably so I think this is accurate. Also talks about "british tommy guns" during his stint in Italy, which I suppose would be a sten gun.
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Feb 27, 2023 15:30
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Perestroika posted:Since this is the borderline general history thread anyway: I'll be in London in a few weeks, are there any museums or exhibitions particularly worth checking out? I'd imagine the Museum Of London is worth a look, but apart from that? V&A Tate Modern National Gallery National Portrait Gallery Also if the weather’s decent, plan on grabbing a coffee and just hanging out for an hour in Trafalgar Square British Museum Natural History Museum Imperial War Museum i’m a little late to museum chat, but I also want to point out the Hunterian Museum, reopening “spring 2023.” It’s a museum of anatomical samples owned by the Royal College of Surgeons. It’s probably big enough to occupy a lazy afternoon wandering around and gawking at weird poo poo. I went a few years before covid and it’s an extremely cool, bizarre, utterly unique experience. I’m not saying it’s a must see, especially if it’s your first trip to london which has absolutely centuries worth of stuff to experience, but I’m sure there’s someone reading this thread who has never heard of it and is now going to plan a trip to london to check it out. The Hunterian, by the way, is one of dozens or hundreds of small, specialized, or just eccentric museums in greater london. half of them are just some aristocratic weirdo’s curio cabinet from the 18th century which has somehow survived as a permanent collection. The big museums of london are some of the best in the world, but there’s a huge ecosystem of smaller places which would get top mentions in almost any other city.
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Feb 27, 2023 16:20
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fartknocker posted:See also "tommy gun" being used often in Korean War accounts, or even some Western-written stuff of the Russians in World War II, which is almost certainly describing the PPSh with a drum mag. The Korean War "tommy gun" descriptor can apply to one of a few guns, including the Thompson. In that timeframe, the Soviets were riding themselves of the PPD and PPS by sending them overseas in large batches. PPSH had also been spread far and wide. These were used by both the DPRK and PRC, and some by the ROK as captured materiél. The PRC was rather fond of the Thompson at the time, using both old lend-lease, captured, or imported guns, and domestic copies. There you have four subguns, three of which (Thompson, PPD, PPSH) had drum magazines available. When coming under concentrated fire from close range, every SMG may as well be a Tommy gun.
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Feb 27, 2023 20:17
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Hello friends. So I wondered if anyone here, far more knowledgeable than I might help me with a tank ID in a bit more detail. My grandad was a kiwi tanker during ww2, as a radio operator and loader I think. I was wanting to know if anyone could roughly pinpoint what model the Sherman he called home was. I scanned a bunch of his photos a while back, so I thought some of you might be interested. Album https://www.flickr.com/gp/kineticreality/qbt6C28Q07
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Feb 28, 2023 08:55
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:My grandpa was also there and his descriptions use "pepescha" and "tommy gun" interchangeably so I think this is accurate. Yeah I think it is common for modern people who play a lot of games and watch a lot of movies to be really knowledgeable about all this stuff but for the people who were actually there it wasn't as important. Grandpa didn't get to play Call of Duty and fire thousands of rounds out of every single WW2 weapon. He had no idea what the names of the enemy planes flying overhead were, he was more busy hitting the dirt. I had a "Well Askhully" sort of friend back in highschool who was a big milhist nerd (long before I was) and he was always asking my grandpa stuff and getting annoyed when my grandpa just kind of didn't care about certain details. Like he'd always try to pin down specific details, but according to grandpa, he was a loving teenager and it was cold and wet, one tundra was the same as another. "What towns in Italy did you see Grandpa Grapes?" "Hell if I know, they were usually burnt rubble."
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Feb 28, 2023 09:52
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lil bip posted:Hello friends. Looks like an M4A2 , which was the lend-lease version, later in the album there looks to be firefly as well. That's a great set of pics, although people should watch out for all the dead fascists at the end of page 2, did your grandad take those?
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Feb 28, 2023 12:01
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lil bip posted:Hello friends. Jobbo_Fett posted:https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3785167&pagenumber=15&perpage=40#post462873198
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Feb 28, 2023 17:33
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lil bip posted:Hello friends. M4A2 (Sherman III) small hatch. This version has quick-fix ammo stowage improvements applied, a vane sight, and extra storage boxes, so likely it went through the full British refitting process.
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Feb 28, 2023 17:34
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What does the defense of Taiwan look like in a theoretical invasion by the PRC? Not that I suspect anyone is privy to high level intelligence or whatever, but notionally from public sources is the ROC assuming that the US will come to the rescue and their defenses and such are a delaying tactic till US PACOM can roll in and do something or is every large enough beach mined to the gills and the island itself is littered with bunkers, caves, air defenses, and such that they are going with the idea they could hold the island from air and sea assault.
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Feb 28, 2023 19:56
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Xi Jinping alt account spotted.
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Feb 28, 2023 20:02
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Cessna posted:Xi Jinping alt account spotted. If I was Xi Jinping, I would not lower myself to post in SomethingAwful. I would tell my intelligence apparatus to do that.
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Feb 28, 2023 20:09
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The cold war thread in TFR (?) regularly debates this issue, I'd ask there or read some of the old conversations about them (they happen monthly)
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Feb 28, 2023 20:11
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Defenestrategy posted:What does the defense of Taiwan look like in a theoretical invasion by the PRC? Not that I suspect anyone is privy to high level intelligence or whatever, but notionally from public sources is the ROC assuming that the US will come to the rescue and their defenses and such are a delaying tactic till US PACOM can roll in and do something or is every large enough beach mined to the gills and the island itself is littered with bunkers, caves, air defenses, and such that they are going with the idea they could hold the island from air and sea assault. I have a friend from Taiwan who probably 30 years ago now was in the military there and was stationed on an island between Taiwan and the mainland. His unit's mission n the event of a PRC invasion from the mainland was to survive for 90 seconds.
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Feb 28, 2023 20:11
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Defenestrategy posted:What does the defense of Taiwan look like in a theoretical invasion by the PRC? Not that I suspect anyone is privy to high level intelligence or whatever, but notionally from public sources is the ROC assuming that the US will come to the rescue and their defenses and such are a delaying tactic till US PACOM can roll in and do something or is every large enough beach mined to the gills and the island itself is littered with bunkers, caves, air defenses, and such that they are going with the idea they could hold the island from air and sea assault. Most of the Taiwan is mountainous jungle with the majority of the population living around the coast. It's enough of a pain to move through the center of the island that people generally just don't : it's still mostly inhabited by native minority groups after almost 500 years of Dutch, British, Qing, Japanese and ROC control. I'm not a military guy, but I did live in Taiwan/the ROC for a while and even as a fit young guy who grew up hiking and mountain climbing, the center of the island is an experience if you go off the carefully maintained hiking trails. Your hiking options are "gravel path that involved bulldozers to make" and "cliffs covered in vines and giant spiders". What I'm saying is I would really, really not suggest fighting against an irregular military force in central Formosa. It's going to be a very bad time.
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Feb 28, 2023 20:11
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Probably be spiky enough that they can't just get steamrolled in 48 hours and give international sanctions a chance to do their thing. Ukraine is a useful example. If Putin's decapitation strike had worked, military resistance collapsed after a few days, and a pro-Kremlin regime was in place in a week then chances are the world would have just accepted it as a fait accompli and not bothered with sanctions etc. Why suffer through a lack of Russian gas, lack of access to Russian/Ukrainian wheat and raw materials (especially the various noble gasses extracted as by-products of the steel industry), and general pain in the rear end if it was a done deal? But Ukraine held out, Russia got bogged down, and the political calculus shifted as far as things like sanctions go. Is this realistic for Taiwan?  Beats me. But I doubt China wants to find out what Russia-scale sanctions look like, and the risk of taking long enough that the US/EU get around to sanctioning isn't something to be sniffed at. Now, this would also really gently caress up a lot of other economies around the world, so I suspect the Chinese are kind of hoping that the US/EU won't be willing take the reciprocal economic pain. That said, the fact that Europe kind of grew a backbone and swallowed a bitter pill re: Russian gas has got to be an unpleasant surprise for Beijing.edit: zoux posted:The cold war thread in TFR (?) regularly debates this issue, I'd ask there or read some of the old conversations about them (they happen monthly) Lol I legit thought that's what thread I was in when I typed that answer. edit 2 : and yes, it's in TFR
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Feb 28, 2023 20:13
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zoux posted:The cold war thread in TFR (?) regularly debates this issue, I'd ask there or read some of the old conversations about them (they happen monthly) Think I'll check it out. Thanks! The question I was trying to get at was on a continuum of "try to cross this line and find out" is it France/Belgium or Korean DMZ.
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Feb 28, 2023 20:16
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I think you are better off asking Xi what form a Chinese invasion will take. Whether it will be a full PLA committment, whether they want something they can turn around and pretend was just a training exercise, or whether they are huffing their own farts and think if they bomb a bit and send a small taskforce the locals will welcome them with open arms. There's just too much uncertainty.
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Feb 28, 2023 20:30
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yaffle posted:Looks like an M4A2 , which was the lend-lease version, later in the album there looks to be firefly as well. That's a great set of pics, although people should watch out for all the dead fascists at the end of page 2, did your grandad take those? Oh poo poo, yes I forgot about those. Yeah I believe he did as he basically went from Egypt through to Italy and then headed home from there I think. He died when I was a kid, so I never got to ask him much about it. I don't believe he talked at all about his experiences with my Dad or my Nan. Just this photo album that I had which all his photos were in and attached descriptions. Thanks for all the tank info folks, really cool to know!
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Feb 28, 2023 20:31
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Defenestrategy posted:Think I'll check it out. Thanks! The main island is sufficiently far from mainland that you don't need a constant readiness, there is time to lay obstacles if PRC starts gathering an invasion force. Meanwhile Kinmen is so close that they are pretty much a tripwire, and so they have a history of being much more trigger happy there.
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Feb 28, 2023 20:38
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Anecdotally, the Taiwanese conscript force is widely regarded as a pointless waste of time in Taiwan, best avoided if possible and basically a place to get bullied around by the professional soldiers. My father has one story from his time in the force where his unit was stationed on one of the outlying islands as the defense force. They ran a drill where the regulars simulated invading the island, and it fell so fast that there was a minor scandal and the unit was rotated somewhere less important. Ukraine might be causing people to sit up and take notice again but it'll take a while to change the culture. Fangz posted:whether they are huffing their own farts and think if they bomb a bit and send a small taskforce the locals will welcome them with open arms. To be honest if there is any invasion at all it'd be because Xi has given up on the idea of the Taiwanese peacefully integrating with China so they'll probably avoid THAT idiocy at least.
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Feb 28, 2023 20:45
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Hopefully the way the entire world came together to oppose a revanchist invasion in 2021 would inform that decision.
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Feb 28, 2023 20:56
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zoux posted:Hopefully the way the entire world came together to oppose a revanchist invasion in 2021 would inform that decision. 2021?
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Feb 28, 2023 22:01
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Look, I have become unstuck in time
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Feb 28, 2023 22:04
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Defenestrategy posted:What does the defense of Taiwan look like in a theoretical invasion by the PRC? Not that I suspect anyone is privy to high level intelligence or whatever, but notionally from public sources is the ROC assuming that the US will come to the rescue and their defenses and such are a delaying tactic till US PACOM can roll in and do something or is every large enough beach mined to the gills and the island itself is littered with bunkers, caves, air defenses, and such that they are going with the idea they could hold the island from air and sea assault. One thing to keep in mind as China's capabilities increase, their options also increase. To the point that it might not even look like a D-Day invasion but more of a naval blockade as the PLAN grows in size and capability. The need to quickly take the island dissipates as a priority if the PLAN becomes confident they can keep the USN at arms length.
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Feb 28, 2023 22:42
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Raenir Salazar posted:One thing to keep in mind as China's capabilities increase, their options also increase. To the point that it might not even look like a D-Day invasion but more of a naval blockade as the PLAN grows in size and capability. The need to quickly take the island dissipates as a priority if the PLAN becomes confident they can keep the USN at arms length. You still need to do it quickly if you want to avoid non-military retaliation. The Chinese very much would like to have Taiwan, but it's not just stalling out and getting the island relieved by the USN that they need to worry about. Sanctions cut both ways, and it would absolutely suck for both the EU/US and China, but at the end of the day they've got a lot more riding politically on economic stability. An extended blockade is kind of their worst case scenario, as that gives everyone else PLENTY of time to hem and haw and drum up support for escalating economic pressure. If they do it what they want and need is a fast take over that makes non-military responses seem pointless.
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Feb 28, 2023 22:48
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Tomn posted:
I think past experience would suggest you should never underestimate the fart huffing ability of a dictator with a cult of personality.
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Feb 28, 2023 23:05
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War on the Rocks has had some good pieces on China-Taiwan the last few years
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Feb 28, 2023 23:35
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Dropping explosives on Taiwan is a good way to wreck TSMC etc., and thus your whole reason for being there.
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Mar 1, 2023 00:00
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That's not why China "wants" Taiwan, they see the possibility of Taiwan being used as a military base outside China as a big deal. Particularly because Taiwan as a political entity is just the old government of China from a civil war that hasn't properly ended.
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Mar 1, 2023 00:07
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Even that's a secondary reason. They want Taiwan because they believe it is legitimately part of their country and being wrongfully held by a bandit government. That doesn't make their claims valid, but it can't be dismissed either.
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Mar 1, 2023 00:12
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wiegieman posted:Dropping explosives on Taiwan is a good way to wreck TSMC etc., and thus your whole reason for being there. China's interest in Taiwan is far more ideological than practical.
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Mar 1, 2023 00:13
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Cessna posted:Xi Jinping alt account spotted. Leaked video from Jinping's side hustle as a Youtuber. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX5hcbzZCow
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Mar 1, 2023 00:27
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