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Gnoman posted:The first confirmed distillation of alcoholic beverages (distillation was discovered in the 1st century, but seems to have been used only for alchemical use for centuries) took place in the 1400s. The strongest known Roman wine was Falernian, which is estimated at about 15% ABV. Watering wine was a Greek custom adopted by the Romans, and was more a way of stretching the wine supply than it was a means of diluting the alcohol content. Presumably, just because we don't see it described explicitly in literature doesn't mean it wasn't done, in any case. Freeze distillation at least is pretty easy to do even by accident in a cold environment.
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May 9, 2017 09:43
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Cyrano4747 posted:It's also important to remember that life expectancy wasn't anything like it is today. I'm sure people with all sorts of high impact jobs (farmer, laborer, miller, fisher to name a few) had bodies by the time they were 35 that had joint problems similar to what you see with a pro athlete today. If you live in the 21st century and can reasonably expect to make it to 80 that's a really big deal. If you can expect to be in the ground before 50 it's not half the issue. I remember a study of the skeletons of knights from the 14th-15th century indicated they had a lot of wrist and rotator cuff issues due to constant swordfighting and practice.
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May 9, 2017 11:32
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You'd think a skeleton would be more careful about taking caring of its joints. Second biggest health concern for them after Turn Undead
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May 9, 2017 11:36
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FastestGunAlive posted:You'd think a skeleton would be more careful about taking caring of its joints. Second biggest health concern for them after Turn Undead Well man, they are the most common generic fantasy NPC around next to giant spiders. They need to work and eat, they are thin and bones!
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May 9, 2017 12:31
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gohuskies posted:German soldier carrying a PPSh - I haven't seen real statistics but anecdotes say this wasn't uncommon on the East Front. I wonder how they handled ammo resupply, were there enough that is was worth it to produce and distribute PPSh ammo? Others have already noted it's a soviet soldier, but the short answer is captured stocks. The Germans used a lot of captured weapons and they would just stockpile captured ammo for that purpose. A bunch of it was re-issued to second line and occupation formations (there are a lot of pictures of the Ukranian Auxiliary Police carrying captured soviet weapons), but there are TONS of pictures out there of Germans using some of the equipment that there wasn't a great German substitute for. In particular you see this with sniper m91/30s and SVT-40s. In both cases they just supplied from whatever ammo they captured off the soviets. Here are a couple quick photos of Germans with SVTs in use. Those are pretty common to find around 41/42 because of how rare German autoloaders were and how superior the SVT was to the G-41   feedmegin posted:Presumably, just because we don't see it described explicitly in literature doesn't mean it wasn't done, in any case. Freeze distillation at least is pretty easy to do even by accident in a cold environment. poo poo, my dad accidentally freeze-distilled some wine when I was in high school. Left a few boxes of cheap wine in the car overnight during a really bad winter. The result tasted like poo poo, but it sure was stronger.
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May 9, 2017 14:35
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Cyrano4747 posted:poo poo, my dad accidentally freeze-distilled some wine when I was in high school. Left a few boxes of cheap wine in the car overnight during a really bad winter. Freeze distillation invariably tastes like poo poo. Applejack, Brewdog "beers", whatever. With conventional distillation you're driving off the nasty higher alcohols in the tail-end of distillation so as long as you have the good sense to throw those away they won't wind up in what you're drinking. With freeze distillation you're just concentrating all that nasty fusely stuff so it winds up tasting pretty bad.
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May 9, 2017 14:54
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Bij bolszewika! Supplementary episode: I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT FOR MONTHS AND ITS FINALLY Previous episodes Like lava, our nation: Its surface cold and hard, dry and putrid by station, Yet the flame inside shall ne'er lose its intensity; Let us spit on the shell, descend to profundity. So this is something I wanted to talk about before I took a long, long hiatus from this: TRAINS. We stopped discussing the war around the period of the Minsk operation, in Summer of 1919. I promised I would make a supplementary post and add some bio blurbs, and as much as I might do the latter at some later time, I completely forgot whose biographies I wanted to expand or add. So that can and will wait. For now, I'd like to tell you about a weapon that was one of the most salient features of both the Polish-Soviet War and the Russian Civil War: the armoured train. The prevalence of this weapon in the East is a consequence of the great distances and open spaces unknown on the Western Front. For that reason, Imperial Russia built and operated several of those, while in the West you hear nothing of them after 1914. An armoured train can quickly and safely transport forces and offer mobile fire support - but neither of these functions are relevant in the context of trench warfare. Meanwhile, when you look at the great expanses of eastern Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, or Russia, you quickly note that rail transport is the key way of manoeuvering, as there are few roads that can be used as supply lines. Moreover, the less impressive and defensible trenches of the Polish-Soviet War and the Russian Civil War meant that the conflicts remained reliant on mobility, and trains were far more reliable and available than tanks. Both artillery and air power were not available in sufficient quantities to reliably challenge and threaten an armoured train - thus it could function as an offensive weapon. During the Polish attack on Vilnius, we could see how important rail transport could be on both operational and strategic scale. Although in theory it should be easy to deny to the opponent, doing so would utterly hamstring either side's supply capabilities and as such was rarely done. Armoured artillery trains completed the trifecta by giving the train a role on the tactical level as well. The Red Army loved armoured trains. During the period we are discussing it operated several hundred of them, although relatively few could be committed to the Polish front at any given time; the number peaked at over thirty in the summer of 1920. In March of 1919, the armoured trains of the Red Army were divided into light and heavy, in August of 1920 - into field shock trains (Type A), equipped with 76 mm guns, and fire support trains of Type B (107-120 mm guns) and Type W (152-203 mm guns). The crews - between 37 and 172 men, depending on the exact train and its specific makeup - were mostly made up of volunteers, wholeheartedly dedicated to the revolutionary cause, it should therefore come as no surprise that they frequently exhibited bravery, elan and offensive spirit. Starting in October 1919, the trains were also supposed to be outfitted with a trainborne infantry force of three companies each, although this was often not the case. With or without the extra infantry punch, an armoured train was still a formidable opponent, frequently capable of spectacular success. Many a time did the White Russians find their lines broken by a rogue train capturing a railhead deep in enemy territory. This did not happen on the Polish front, as the commanders were typically too afraid of strong defences to attempt such raids. The Soviets typically employed armoured trains in divisions of two or three in order to make better use of their firepower. The ones on the Polish front were well armoured and usually armed with three to five 76 mm guns (sometimes also 120 mm guns) as well as ten to twenty heavy machine guns. The crews were made up of sailors and Communist Party members, and as such typically not as well trained as their Polish counterparts, but they made up for it with initiative and determination. The trains operated alongside cavalry and were deadly to Polish infantrymen, who usually did not have enough artillery support to chase an armoured train away. They were widely considered the best weapon the Soviets had to offer. The Poles had used about eighty armoured trains over the course of the war, but usually fewer than twenty were available at the front. In 1919, most of those were improvised flatbeds with sandbags and machine guns, over time, this would improve and they could be replaced with modern, well-armoured units or captured Russian, German or Austrian equipment. They were typically armed with two or three field guns (mostly Russian 76 mm or French 75 mm) as well as six to twelve heavy machine guns. They included an armoured locomotive, two or three artillery cars, one or two machine gun cars, a carriage for an infantry unit, and two to four platforms with rail repair gear (there were no rules on the order these were meant to be deployed in, so this is just a list rather than an outline). This made them longer and less mobile than their Russian counterparts, and, as such, a better target for artillery. After the Summer of 1920, most non-combat cars were discarded to make the trains more mobile, but until the end of the war they suffered from insufficient armour and armament. The crews numbered from forty to ninety troops, with forty or fifty more manning the supply train kept in the rear. The Polish army did not use its trains as effectively as the Soviets. The commanders had little idea of what they could do and what they needed to operate, and tactics were usually improvised. Polish trains usually did not work together, even when more than one was available in any given area of the front; this only changed during the Battle of Warsaw in August of 1920. However, due to the lack of own motorised or mobile troops that could be used as reserves, they were still very important as mobile fire support platforms, and sometimes their arrival was all that was needed to win an engagement. They were widely used for raids into enemy territory, to ship reinforcements to combat zones, patrol areas unmanned by friendly forces and in cooperation with cavalry forces. The crews had high morale and were well trained. And yes, train duels happened. Polish armoured trains were given names. There were no clear rules on how they were to be named: some were given women's names ("Danuta", "Rzepicha", "Goplana"), others were named after important historical figures ("Bartosz Glowacki", "Stefan Czarniecki", "Chrobry") or places ("Reduta Ordona"), others still after military officers ("General Sikorski", "General Dowbor", "General Sosnkowski") or with whatever random word sounded appropriate ("Boruta", "Msciciel", "Smok"). Many of them - although modernised - would remain in service after the war and fight in World War II.  Locomotive of Bartosz Glowacki, 1919  Boruta and its crew at Rawa Ruska, 1919  Danuta's locomotive in 1919
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May 9, 2017 15:04
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Okay, now I want to see a movie where armoured trains duel each other.
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May 9, 2017 15:15
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I wanna see one where they accidentally head towards another on the same track and can't shoot because all the guns are on the sides and all go well this is awkward
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May 9, 2017 15:41
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aphid_licker posted:I wanna see one where they accidentally head towards another on the same track and can't shoot because all the guns are on the sides and all go well this is awkward "Ramming speed!"
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May 9, 2017 15:55
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Please describe a train duel and what the gently caress it would look like. How does that work? Is it more along the lines of two AFVs engaging each other or an artillery duel?
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May 9, 2017 16:25
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Without even looking I'm positive this has been exhaustively defined by some loving anime show somewhere.
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May 9, 2017 16:26
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Two Civil War armoured trains on parallel tracks having a land-monitor duel.
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May 9, 2017 16:30
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zoux posted:Without even looking I'm positive this has been exhaustively defined by some loving anime show somewhere.  This but with guns blazing.
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May 9, 2017 16:31
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HEY GAIL posted:probably not visibly so. i mean, i have no doubt that if historians were examining my bones and JaucheCharley's bones hundreds of years after we died they would see that i have a little bump on the middle finger of my right hand from writing a lot and terrible knees and ankles from walking around carrying heavy things, while JaucheCharley was an archer, but on the outside neither one of us looks different I have bone spurs on my feet from skiing and that probably took only about 200 days of doing it. It really doesn't take a lot to noticeably deform your body. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 16:37 on May 9, 2017 |
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May 9, 2017 16:33
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Cyrano4747 posted:Please describe a train duel and what the gently caress it would look like. How does that work? Is it more along the lines of two AFVs engaging each other or an artillery duel? Like pong, but you're trying to avoid the ball instead of hitting it.
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May 9, 2017 16:33
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Cyrano4747 posted:Please describe a train duel and what the gently caress it would look like. How does that work? Is it more along the lines of two AFVs engaging each other or an artillery duel? Honestly I'm not sure. I think both happened, and the latter was more common. Remember the gun car usually went at the front of the train, so there was nothing blocking forward fire.
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May 9, 2017 16:44
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Cyrano4747 posted:Others have already noted it's a soviet soldier, but the short answer is captured stocks. The Germans used a lot of captured weapons and they would just stockpile captured ammo for that purpose. A bunch of it was re-issued to second line and occupation formations (there are a lot of pictures of the Ukranian Auxiliary Police carrying captured soviet weapons), but there are TONS of pictures out there of Germans using some of the equipment that there wasn't a great German substitute for. In particular you see this with sniper m91/30s and SVT-40s. In both cases they just supplied from whatever ammo they captured off the soviets. The PPSh-41 and PPS-43 could be fed regular 7.63x25mm Mauser ammo used for the C96 pistol, as 7.62x25mm Tokarev is basically the exact same cartridge loaded to a higher strength. Along with captured ammo, the Germans could just use regular German-produced C96 ammo.
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May 9, 2017 16:47
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chitoryu12 posted:The PPSh-41 and PPS-43 could be fed regular 7.63x25mm Mauser ammo used for the C96 pistol, as 7.62x25mm Tokarev is basically the exact same cartridge loaded to a higher strength. Along with captured ammo, the Germans could just use regular German-produced C96 ammo. You know, I've run across this a couple times but I'm skeptical for two reasons. 1) the C96 wasn't exactly common issue in WW2. I doubt that they would have high enough production to feed into the supply lines for military needs, and almost certainly not enough that it would be more common that captured soviet ammo. 2) Open bolt SMGs like those need really beefy ammo to run. The have massively heavy bolts because of their open bolt nature and to reliably cycle need hot ammo. It's not uncommon to find specific SMG loads for "pistol" calibers that end up basically being +P. People with 9mm SMGs today, for example, frequently have problems running their guns with normal (decent quality - I'm not talking Wolf) 9mm ball like you would put in any pistol. The fact that 7.63x25 Mauser would be underloaded compared to x25 Tok really makes me wonder if it would reliably cycle those guns at all. edit: the russians also made hot x25 Tok specifically for those guns. People having to be careful not to buy old surplus SMG ammo for their surplus warsaw pact pistols was a thing about ten years ago.
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May 9, 2017 17:10
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aphid_licker posted:I wanna see one where they accidentally head towards another on the same track and can't shoot because all the guns are on the sides and all go well this is awkward  The artillery wagon goes in front of the locomotive, that way the train can support its own advance. In front of the artillery wagon there are flat cars filled with sand bags, both as protection and for ramming through barricades (the sandloaded wagons could be released at speed to crash into enemy barricades/trains from a safe distance).
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May 9, 2017 17:24
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Nenonen posted:
We've got a dozen movies about loving D-Day and no one has ever made one about this? gently caress, just make it a time traveling Fast & Furious movie. Vin & Crew go back to stop the Soviets from annexing Poland. "This isn't about communism or democracy. . . it's about family" *drifts a train across a frozen lake*
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May 9, 2017 17:42
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Cyrano4747 posted:You know, I've run across this a couple times but I'm skeptical for two reasons. http://www.jaegerplatoon.net/MACHINEPISTOLS2.htm talks about the Finnish experience, stating that the Finns specifically ordered the production of 7.63, though they note that "one can only question how reliably these weapons functioned". I can't verifying the Finnish archives they base this on but it seems legit. quote:During Winter War Finnish military bought one million rounds of 7.63 mm x 25 Mauser from FN. Using this kind amount of ammunition only with less than 400 Mauser M/96 pistols issued to home front troops simply does not make any sense. The conclusion if pretty obvious - the 7.63 mm x 25 Mauser cartridges were issued also to units using captured Soviet weaponry in 7.62 mm x 25 Tokarev calibre.
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May 9, 2017 17:48
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Cyrano4747 posted:We've got a dozen movies about loving D-Day and no one has ever made one about this? 
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May 9, 2017 17:51
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Cyrano4747 posted:We've got a dozen movies about loving D-Day and no one has ever made one about this? quote:March 13th 1918: Second part of the Reds main offensive in Vilppula front begins. Somehow they had received intelligence claiming that in Vilppula railway station located just behind White Army frontline had a train loaded with explosives. So they decided to start the attack by sending a train without crew, its steam engine pressure raised to the max and all safety valves closed. The idea was to cause huge explosion in the railway station and use the chaos created by it as a diversion at moment they would start the attack with armoured train, which waited for the explosion just behind their lines. With the "ghost locomotive" the Reds sent three flatcars, one of which contained 30-kg of pyroksite (explosive) and pile of stones on top of this explosive charge. But the plan failed miserably - the intelligence was false and there was no train in the Vilppula station. The "ghost train" succeeded rolling through the frontline and to the station, where it hit the obstacle and stopped. After this two brave railroad emplyees entered the locomotive and opened the safety valves. Crew of the Red armoured train waited a while for the huge explosion, which never came and then decided to try attacking anyway. But as the "ghost train" had already alerted the Whites and attacking armoured train found itself under heavy fire of small arms, machineguns and artillery. White field guns scored direct hit to its locomotive after which the train retreated fast behind the Red lines. the grandfather of VBIED was not a spectacular success  
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May 9, 2017 17:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:We've got a dozen movies about loving D-Day and no one has ever made one about this? Or Mad Max.
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May 9, 2017 17:55
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Hunt11 posted:Or Mad Max. Or Transarctica. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60OkMuX_H2o&t=2914s Nenonen fucked around with this message at 18:03 on May 9, 2017 |
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May 9, 2017 17:56
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If I were to make an effortpost and scan some pics from books I own to put in there, is that a violation of  ?
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May 9, 2017 17:58
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Cyrano4747 posted:We've got a dozen movies about loving D-Day and no one has ever made one about this? 2Bold 2Bolshevik 
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May 9, 2017 18:25
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MrMojok posted:If I were to make an effortpost and scan some pics from books I own to put in there, is that a violation of 
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May 9, 2017 18:57
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Hunt11 posted:Or Mad Max. "Our world is mud and fire"
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May 9, 2017 19:02
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Gonna die historic on the Reading Rail.
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May 9, 2017 19:06
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Nenonen posted:
Also in case the rail has been destroyed and you don't notice because it was right past a turn and you had not time to brake. Derailing a flatcar filled with sand is bad, but derailing an entire artillery car or worse would be disastrous. Cyrano4747 posted:We've got a dozen movies about loving D-Day and no one has ever made one about this? make happen pls, goon project
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May 9, 2017 21:01
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Disinterested posted:I have bone spurs on my feet from skiing and that probably took only about 200 days of doing it. It really doesn't take a lot to noticeably deform your body.
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May 9, 2017 22:08
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This may be a bit of an oddball question, but how well would individual US companies compare to total Japanese or German industrial output in 1939 and 1944? In other words, how many Fords or Willys-Overlands would you need to match the two foremost Axis powers?
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May 9, 2017 22:14
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Ford was bigger than italy.
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May 9, 2017 22:26
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Stairmaster posted:Ford was bigger than italy. Hell Ford and Opel in Germany alone probably were. (I know not really but it's too easy to make fun of Italy during the WWs)
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May 9, 2017 23:02
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Crossposting from the PYF Awful Graphs thread:
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May 10, 2017 00:42
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Holy god that's. . . jesus. 
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May 10, 2017 00:51
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What the hell happened on August 10 1941?
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May 10, 2017 00:52
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Tevery Best posted:What the hell happened on August 10 1941? From wikipedia: President Roosevelt and his representatives came aboard the Prince of Wales for a Sunday prayer service with Churchill, who later recalled the event as "a deeply moving expression of the unity of faith of our two peoples." Churchill selected the hymns himself, ending with "Our God, Our Help in Ages Past".[22] Divine intervention, clearly.
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May 10, 2017 00:55
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