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xthetenth posted:Have lefty muskets been found? That'd be fascinating. Flintlock line era expressley does not have southpaw muskets because the left and right would interfere with drill.
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Jul 29, 2017 15:54
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The thing to remember about those lovely lmg designs is that there was a period in firearms development where they were thought of as "automatic rifles". Think less Spandaus on the Somme and more 2-3 round bursts snapped at individual targets that would be a pain to hit with a bolt action because of distance, movement, cover, etc.
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Jul 29, 2017 16:07
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That still doesn't excuse their magazine designs imo. Unless... did guns like that predate the widespread use of multiple, detachable magazines? (Go gently, I have no idea what the gently caress I'm talking about)
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Jul 29, 2017 16:18
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Kind of. Detachable mags for straight walked cartridges (pistols and smgs) had been a thing since before ww1 but making detachable mags for bottle necked cartridges is a lot tougher because if they tilt in feeding you get a jam. The solution right up until the mid 30s was stripper clips or funky feed arrangements like the Bren. The BAR was pretty unique in managing it in the 20s, and that was done with a small mag.
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Jul 29, 2017 16:24
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Well, the original machine gun, the gatling, used a hopper.
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Jul 29, 2017 18:12
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Gravity fed and straight walled cartridges. Feeding bottlenecked cartridges from a spring loaded mag is something that gets hosed up even today. Hell, magpul basically founded their company on fixing follower tilt issues with 30 round AR mags.
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Jul 29, 2017 18:18
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Flintlock line era expressley does not have southpaw muskets because the left and right would interfere with drill. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jul 29, 2017 |
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Jul 29, 2017 18:38
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Fangz posted:Well, the original machine gun, the gatling, used a hopper.
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Jul 29, 2017 18:39
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Cyrano4747 posted:The thing to remember about those lovely lmg designs is that there was a period in firearms development where they were thought of as "automatic rifles". Think less Spandaus on the Somme and more 2-3 round bursts snapped at individual targets that would be a pain to hit with a bolt action because of distance, movement, cover, etc. On the other hand the chauchat substantially predates it, occupies that same role, and appears to be better in every conceivable way. It might be an automatic rifle rather than a true machinegun but it looks like a pile of shite compared to all the other automatic rifles as well.
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Jul 29, 2017 18:53
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Maybe the Italian special forces were so good because all the smart guys joined them to avoid having to go into a standup fight with their lovely MGs, crapy tanks and all-bolt-action-rifles are the same rifles. By the way, WWI exhibit at the Czech army museum in Prague is a great way to lose any interest in bolt actions, since there's so many of them on display and all of them look the same. Small wonder we don't get many WWI-abouts FPS games.
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Jul 29, 2017 19:54
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JcDent posted:Maybe the Italian special forces were so good because all the smart guys joined them to avoid having to go into a standup fight with their lovely MGs, crapy tanks and all-bolt-action-rifles are the same rifles. Funny enough when we did get a WWI FPS game it was filled with experimental automatic weqpons. I miss the Call of Duty bolt-action rifles. They were satisfying to use when you got good.
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Jul 29, 2017 20:19
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I’m sorry that it’s been over 2 months since I last did one of these, I’ve been writing bits and pieces of my thesis during the day and so the last thing I’ve wanted to do at night is come home and read and write more. However I have a break and so I’m going to pick up where I left off. In retrospect looking back at this I’m sorry it’s quite so long, I just ended up sitting down this morning and not stopping on the Stark and Vincennes incidents because I find them fascinating from a systems failure standpoint and how small errors can magnify. You can probably skip those and not miss much of the narrative, I recommend you read it because it’s fascinating, but still. Also be slightly wary of my account of the USS Vincennes, I think I’m as right as I can be but it’s deeply confusing to read about, and the three different accounts of it I read all disagree in places. I have had to split this into two parts because it exceeds the character limit. Previous posts. Part 1: Historical context Part 2: The Armies, the Objectives and the beginning. Part 3: The Initial year - Saddams assault. Part 4: Iraq is driven out of Iran, 81-82. Part 5: Iran starts its assault into Iraq, 82-83. Part 6a: The Tanker War, 82-86. The Tanker War, 87-88. To recap a little on the conclusions of the last post we left off 1986 with Iraq having staged its longest range airstrike of the war, striking from Basra all the way down to the island of Larak just of Bandar Abbas at the mouth of the Gulf. This was a technically complex operation involving 9 tanking mirages and 3 strike mirages. Iraq had been performing these strikes all down the gulf as Iran attempted to move their oil operations out of range. This final attack at Larak would be the last straw for Iran who would start aggressively attacking traffic shortly afterwards. This along with the Stark Incident would finally draw the US into the Gulf and the starting of Operation Earnest Will. France would also be drawn in by separate events which we will cover. The final stages of the Tanker War are perhaps the most interesting because as one US Admiral would put it, it was the spread of irregular warfare to the high seas. Iran could not hope to compete qualitatively with the USN, but they could fight clever and indeed they would. USS Stark. How the plane and the Stark came into contact. Back in the previous post near the start I mentioned Kuwaiti political manoeuvrings to secure safety of passage from both the USSR and the USA for its ships, it did this by playing the two off against each other, the USSR looking for a route back into the Gulf after the Afghanistan shambles, and the US by a fear of letting the USSR back in. The US was softly involved The Stark was a part of the routine patrols in that area and was patrolling along the Saudi Arabian coast just off the war exclusion zone, most conflict had taken place further to the south of the Gulf so far and no US Navy ship had been attacked to date.  Dassault Falcon in Iraqi Airlines colours. The plane that would attack the US stark was a Dassault Falcon 50 modified to carry two Exocets, for a considerable period of time we did not know what plane it was that attacked the Stark, US intelligence had assumed it was a modified Mirage which was capable of carrying a pair of Exocets rather than just one. However the truth is slightly more interesting and would only come to light after the fall of Saddam. There are two stories, the first is that a group of Iranian Airforce deserters would seize the Dassault Falcon 50 used to ferry the future President of Iran around, Akbar Rafsanjani, they would fly that plane to Iraq and defect. The other is that Iraq bought two Dassault Falcon 50’s from France as a stop gap until the Mirages were ready for use. Whichever is true and I can’t really find anything convincing either way, General Shaban, head of the Iraqi Air Force would request that Dassault fit them with the appropriate Exocet attack radar used by the Mirage fighter along with the hardpoints and ECM necessary to use it in an offensive role. At this stage he was likely looking for anything with wings that could sling missiles into the gulf. However crucially he did not have them fit IFF receivers so there was no way for the pilot of the plane to know what he was shooting at other than it was a surface contact. This plane would be used primarily to attack the Larak terminal as it had the range to make it down there and it had a civilian profile and would typically stick to civilian flight routes to avoid detection, launch its missiles at long range and then run. It would also be used to just sweep the gulf for targets, and it was while on one of these missions on May 17th that it would come across the USS Stark just off the exclusion zone.  Location of the Iranian terminals throughout the gulf. The question about the attack was for a long time whether it was deliberate or accidental, the Iraqis would refuse to allow the pilot to be interviewed and there was speculation that Saddam organised this attack in order to draw the USN into the gulf proper. There were also theories that it was revenge from a capricious dictator over the Iran-Contra affair, however it’s hard to imagine that a man as politically cunning as Saddam Hussein would have thrown away his best lever on Washington for more support and arms in a fit of pique. Also interviews done with former generals of the regime all tell the same story of panic in the aftermath with dread of a US military reprisal, with Tariq Aziz especially pushing for an immediate apology by Saddam who quite wisely took that advice and smoothed matters over, agreeing to pay significant reparations of $27 million to the families of the victims. The attack itself. The Falcon would take off from Iraq at around 8pm and would be immediately picked up by one of the E-3 Sentry AWACS planes used by the USAF as part of the ELF-1 force designed to defend Saudi Arabia and based in Dhahran. It was observed to fly the typical attack route for Iraqi Mirages. The Sentry would then start feeding its radar telemetry to the USS Coontz, who was docked in Bahrain at that time, the Coontz did not have its own radars active but would then pass the data along to the USS Stark. Given the extent of US support to Iraq and antipathy to Iran at this time the contact would be marked as a friendly strike aircraft. This would prove fairly crucial to the confusion that would happen next. The Captain of the USS Stark, Captain Brindel was informed of this new contact, however he would largely leave the handling of the matter to his CIC crew. He was more concerned with upcoming engineering inspection with the Stark scheduled to move to the Atlantic for joint exercises and so did not enter the CIC but continued to the Bridge and then back to his cabin. The Stark would detect the Falcon on its own radar at around 70 NM of range. At this the Iraqi fighter was observed moving its course towards the USS Stark, its course would take it to a point only 4 NM away from the ship, and as it approached the USS Stark started to detect emissions from its targeting radar. The radar operator on the Stark asked to transmit a warning to the contact but was instructed to wait by his commanding officer, Lt. Moncrief. It was also at around this point that the XO of the ship, Lt. Cmdr. Gajan would walk onto the bridge and observed the ongoing proceedings. The USS LaSalle, also docked in Bahrain and the flagship of the Starks fleet would check that the Stark was receiving the AWACS track. The track itself was becoming extremely erratic, the modifications to the Falcon had left it aerodynamically lacking as you might imagine. At a range of around 33 NM the track would change course and head directly towards the USS Stark, however in the court of inquiry afterwards it was recalled that nobody was particularly aware of this change in course, or indeed that the plane would release its missiles shortly afterwards. Official Iraqi records indicate that the pilot would identify a blip on his radar at a range of 20 nautical miles and would fire off both of his missiles other the following 5 nautical miles of travel and then turn tail to get out of there. It’s notable that this launch distance was about half what a Mirage would attack at, probably due to the jury rigged nature of the radar and the plane itself. At this range the Exocet would take around 2 minutes to travel the distance. The Stark was at Readiness Condition 3, which would have been appropriate for the conditions it was sailing in. This meant that its air and surface radars were on, its weapons were ready to be put into action in short order and a third of the crew were on duty. However under that condition the CIC was meant to be fully manned and it was not, and there was a general air of laxity on the ship, with neither the Captain nor the XO involving themselves with the contact overly. In a vacuum you can see why not, it was marked as friendly, there had been no attacks this far north in the gulf, however while such lapses undoubtedly take place every day it didn’t wash as a reason after the fact given the deaths of crewmen and near loss of the ship.  Stark listing badly. At the time of launch the lookout saw a bright red flare on the horizon but did not identify it as a missile launch. A course change was also observed by the radar operator and his commanding officer Lt. Moncrief had the captain summoned to the CIC, and it was at this point that he ordered the radio operator to issue the warning to the contact. This happened about a minute after the first launch, at roughly the same time the second missile would be launched at a range of 15NM. Very shortly afterwards the EW technician would detect a radar lock on to the Stark which would continue for around 10 seconds, this was identified as the contacts radar by the technician but was more likely one of the Exocets seeker heads. At this stage a crewman would go to arm the SRBOC chaff launcher and Lt Moncrief would move to arm the CIWS Phalanx, however he only moved it to standby mode and did not arm its radar so it had no means of detecting the incoming missile. However the ship was still at low alert status, so outside the CIC nobody had any idea that there was any potential danger. He would also order the ship to lock on to the plane with its radar to underline the point to the pilot that this was a warship and not a tanker. Owing to problems with the superstructure obscuring the target this would only be achieved when the target was 10NM away. At around this time however the forward lookout observed the tail plume of one of the Exocets, it appeared as a small blue dot moving erratically coming in at 15 degrees off the port bow, however it was far too late to do anything at this stage, he would shout the warning a few seconds before impact and then take cover. Fortunately at this stage the Exocets warhead would turn out to be a dud. The missile would tear through the ship and set fires all through the ship, the majority of the missiles body would breakup throughout the ship, including the warhead, but one piece would punch all the way through and exit through the starboard side. The rocket motor however would come to a rest in a crew berth area and burn out the remainder of its fuel and kill every man in the berth where it landed. It still took seconds for the crew to really register that their ship had taken a missile hit, the majority just felt a dull thud and assumed it was something like the chaff launcher going off or just a malfunction. However at last the bridge would sound General Quarters, the second missile would be called out maybe twenty seconds before its impact, but it was far too late to do anything about that one either. And the warhead on the second missile would explode in the bow of the ship, and shortly afterwards 37 of the ships 205 crew would be dead. The Aftermath. The Damage Control efforts are interesting in of themselves as a story, but I’m not going to go too far into them because it’s not really directly relevant, but it was a genuinely heroic effort in many ways in which the whole crew would distinguish themselves. However the finding of the board of inquiry afterwards is that three people were largely to blame, Captain Brindel for not appreciating the gravity of the threat despite a couple of near misses and not being present to supervise matters. The XO Lt Cmdr. Gajan who did not take over from Lt Moncrief or direct proceedings in any way, and finally Lt. Moncrief himself, the Tactical Action Officer who did not act quickly enough or decisively enough to enable the ship to defend itself in fully arming the Phalanx or delaying arming the Chaff launchers to such a time as it would have been pointless to launch them. Captain Brindel and Lt. Moncrief were both Court Martialled after the event, Lt. Cmdr. Gajan was referred to an Admirals Mast, a non-judicial board of inquiry. I’m also going to gloss over the proceedings, Captain Brindel and Lt Moncrief were permitted to retire and resign respectively, the Lt. Cmdr. had a letter of admonishment placed in his record judging him to have been derelict in his duties and would stay on in the navy, though would never be promoted and would retire in 1993. The point of this rather long story was both to relay the events of the Stark Incident, but also to point out that the US was pretty well aware of what happened and why, it was largely the fault of Iraqs indiscriminate attack policy and a bad series of bungles by the crew of the vessel. But the quick payment of compensation by Iraq and the resignation of the officers involved enabled this potential huge problem for US support to Iraq to be glossed over. However Iran, ever capricious would claim responsibility and claim responsibility, with Rafsanjani, then the Parliamentary speaker, saying “Our officers devised a plan which called trouble in the joint US-Saudi-Iraqi plot and resulted in a US Frigate being hit. This is a military secret which we cannot reveal. But if one day the US wants to follow up the matter in court we will present our evidence”. However on a separate occasion Rafsanjani would also call the attack a conspiracy by Saudi Arabia and the US to blame Iran for killing Americans. They would gloat endlessly about this with PM Mousavi saying, “The Great Satan is trapped” and encouraging the US to order more flags to drape over the coffins of its soldiers. This inconsistent approach caused confusion in the press at the time and only aided Reagans response to the crisis, which was to blame Iran as the real villain, for refusing to negotiate with Iraq to end the war, which was certainly an interesting spin on events. However it didn’t really matter, Iran had no advocates left. US involvement in the gulf was accelerated dramatically with USN ships starting to escort cargo ships in the gulf, especially notably a ship of military supplies bound for Bahrain to shore them up against possible Iranian aggression. With Iran setting up silkworm ASM batteries all around the gulf and firing them against tankers many politicians in the US feared an all-out war. The situation would soon come within a hairs breadth of proving them right. Operation Earnest Will.  The area of danger in the Straits of Hormuz, well within Iranian missile range. This operation was designed to protect US flagged Kuwaiti tankers on their path through the Gulf and would be the responsibility of CENTCOM a joint command commanded by a particularly aggressive Marine. General Crist would take command and he would fire so many officers from what had previously been quite a quiet command that officers who were fired first were often rotated back in apparently without his notice. Kuwait essentially bullied the US into this operation in the first place in the interest of containment, and the USS Stark incident sped up the process. It would be criticised as the US stepping into an open ended conflict which would cost American lives and provoke Iran into doing something stupid with open support for one of Iraq’s major financier, Kuwait. All of these criticisms were completely correct, there isn’t really any other way of putting it. However the US did have a significant interest in keeping the gulf open, and the Iranians looked to be getting ready to close it with their buying of silkworms from China and placing them all up and down the gulf. Iraq was pleased greatly at the US entering the Gulf, Iran was confused and angry, they viewed their attacks on shipping as fair game as retaliation for Iraqi attacks on their shipping, Iraq started the war, started the Tanker War and Kuwait was funding them. The US was stepping in and denying them a legitimate war target in their eyes, this was not long after the attempted rapprochements with them by the US and the Iran-Contra affair and so the sudden change from a reconciliatory US to pretty much an open adversary confused and enraged them. Again, I find it difficult to find fault with that particular assessment of the situation. The USN was not happy generally at this, it was very focused on Atlantic and Pacific command and didn’t much enjoy having to commit resources to CENTCOM when it wasn’t even commanded by a sailor. I will touch on the internal politics but as ever it goes a lot deeper than I will have the time to go into here without getting really off the topic. Use of the Middle East Force. The MEF had existed since 1949 to maintain US presence in the gulf, and had been long regarded as a bit of a backwater, it would play little role in a potential World War 3 and the Gulf had been pretty safely US aligned for most of the cold war. However it would fall to the MEF to organise this mission. In the wake of the Stark Incident they would cooperate deeply with Iraq to avoid any repeat of the incident, with a direct UHF frequency being established for the warning of Iraqi planes by US ships. This would prevent any further incidents. It also expanded the ELF-1 surveillance force integration with Saudi Arabia and would attempt to keep a lid on Iranian silkworm sites. The USS Constellation would arrive in the area in early 1987, and every time that the Iranians started readying their silkworm sites it would aggressively orbit its jets nearby and the Iranians would stop preparations. While confident its ships could defend itself MEF decided that it would take pre-emptive action in the southern gulf to stop Iran readying its silkworms to fire in order to stop the issue arising. Earnest will was scheduled to start in mid-July, in early July Rafsanjani would warn, “If the enemy gets crazy, Iran is ready for a confrontation, we are ready to sink American Ships.” This warning would come just over a week before the first Earnest Will convoy was due to set out, it looked very much like something unfortunate was about to happen, and it was. Each Earnest Will convoy was slated to be escorted by at least 2 MEF warships with air cover from the Constellation carrier group and the ELF-1 forces radar coverage. Convoy One – SS Bridgeton hits a mine.  SS Bridgeton, when it was Al Rekkah. The first convoy, due to set out on the 22nd of July consisted of a Belknap class CG, USS Fox, the lead ship of the Kidd DDG’s, USS Kidd, and an Oliver Hazard Perry FFG, the USS Crommelin. They were escorting an oil supertanker of 401’000 tons, the SS Bainbridge (Formerly Al Rekkah) and a LNG carrier, the SS Gas Prince (Formerly Gas Al Minagish), both reflagged Kuwaiti carriers owned by Chesapeake Shipping, a post office box in Delaware. The USN placed liaison officers aboard the two ships to ensure nothing went wrong. Initially the USS Fox took the lead with the Kidd and Crommelin to its port and starboard rear quarters with the two tankers following directly behind. It passed through the Straits of Hormuz without incident with all ships at high readiness, the Navy it seemed had learnt some lessons from USS Stark and were acutely aware that they might get shot at. However they were not molested by either the small boat threat or by the silkworm batteries and soon passed through the danger zone and out into the gulf proper. Farsi island.  Farsi Island, Bridgeton mine strike just to the west. The Iranians buzzed the convoy with a formation of F-4 Phantoms but cut it out fairly quickly once the ships locked their tracking radars onto them, and during the early hours of July 24th, ELF-1 reported that Iranian small boats were manoeuvring near Farsi Island which caused the commander of the convoy to order the convoy to wait near Bahrain in order to do the passage in daylight. As they made the transit to the south of the island there was no sign of the Iranian speedboat attack. However at 7am the USS Bridgeton struck a mine. Fortunately nobody was injured of the 31 people aboard and the flooding was largely contained by the large oil tanks acting as compartmentalisation. It was however impossible to stop the tanker, it would take three nautical miles to stop from its 16kt speed which would take it clear through any minefield anyway, so the captain ordered it to slow to 3kts and to assess the damage. The damage was fairly extensive but not significant, a 5 by 9 meter hole had been ripped in the steel of the tankers hull and 4 of its 31 compartments were flooded, it would have put any of the escort ships that hit it in significant danger of sinking. The Bridgeton’s skin was around 30mm thick, whereas the escorting ships was only around 10mm, the Bridgeton was mostly empty air at this stage whereas the escorts were brimming with fuel and weapons. At this stage the captain of the Bridgeton would radio his escorts and advised them to take cover behind him. The supertanker could sustain damage of this type far better than any of the USN ships. Sailors were posted on the bows of the ships to shoot any suspicious objects in the water. The Iranians had laid two lines of mines, the convoy hit the first but not the second and would reach Kuwaiti waters 8 hours later. It would encounter a Soviet convoy heading south and would pass on the information about the mine strike to them. The Soviet convoy was led by a Natya class minesweeper.  Unfortunately this convoy had been highly publicised in its departure, and it was not the best image, with the proud warships of the USN clustered up behind the very ship they were meant to be protecting. This humiliated the US who cancelled all proposed press trips to Kuwait, and the Kuwaiti government would refuse to extend visa extensions to the press that had previously been offered, and the Press Information Centre due to be opened at the Kuwaiti Hilton would be quietly and quickly dismantled. US Response. Iran would be incredibly smug for the following weeks, with the Prime Minister Moussavi saying, “The US Schemes have been foiled by invisible hands.” Their ambassador to the UN Said Khorassani stated, “We are pleased to see the tanker hit, but those mines might have been there months or years, they might be ours, they might be somebody else’s.” Everyone knew it was them but given that no lives were lost the US decided to stay its hand. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Adviser of the Carter Administration would fume publically that the US had not flattened Farsi Island in retaliation. I tend to agree with Brzezinski in this matter, while the argument at the time is that it would have the danger of escalating the situation with Iran and they wanted to avoid that. Despite the fact that in a very literal sense the only people on Farsi Island are Iranian military personnel. I don’t think that letting Iran essentially get away with an action that might well have killed US servicemen, it was only luck that it didn’t, would give them any incentive to stop, they were very obviously enjoying seeing the US with egg on its face and this was precisely the way to ensure that they would try it again. And next time they might not be so lucky, and indeed eventually ran out of luck. The small boat activity that the AWACS planes detected was the Iranians laying that minefield, as became obvious to the commander of MEF’s naval component Admiral Bernsen the next day, they could not have been swept in advance even without the US’ crippling deficiency in mine warfare in the area. Three tankers had passed through that area the previous day without incident. This was an obvious aggressive action by Iran targeting US troops and I think tolerating it, retrospectively, was a mistake by the US. Though ultimately they have nobody but themselves to blame, the Russians were prepared with minesweeping vessels, it was known the Iranians had that capability and they did nothing to prepare for it and ultimately got what they deserved for that. However they would be ready for the Iranians next attempt and would attempt to catch them in the act. I have covered the whole mine issue before, so I’m just going to link back to that post here and push on as if people have read it. But in short, the US had let its Mine Countermeasure Capability wither away to the point where it was barely existent, it was farmed out to NATO allies who didn’t want to get caught up in the gulf. Mine Warfare The US would eventually catch the Iranians red handed with their boarding of the Iran Ajr, a roll-on car ferry converted to lay mines. Their allies would turn up with support from modern minesweeping vessels and Iranian mines would be pretty thoroughly swept. However the Frigate USS Samuel B Roberts (also covered in that mentioned post) would suffer another mine strike that would almost sink it. The Filipino Monkey. During this period of increased tensions, when Iranian ships often coming into close contact with US vessels, there were several close calls caused by anything from IRGC over-eagerness and fervour, to faulty radios or just good old fashioned dick waving. Iran was usually the instigator in these matters and would get a pair of its Phantoms shot down by US F-14’s when they strayed too close to one of the AWACS patrols. However there was the appearance of a man on the radio, who would attempt to deliberately inflame tensions. He became known as the Filipino Monkey due to his heavily accented English. During a confrontation between a US Navy ship and an Iranian Civilian ship he cut into the conversation addressing the Iranian ship and saying, “Now I’m going to blow your rear end out of the water.” Which was hastily countered by the US ship. This particular voice started out in 1984, he would play music, taunt sailors and make an assortment of barnyard noises and curses in English and Filipino. It was largely regarded as harmless, right up until the moment that he started nearly getting people shot. He would usually interfere in Iranian attempts to search neutral shipping, on two occasions where an Iranian navy ship was interrogating a container ship about his cargo the monkey would break in and reply, “Rockets, grenades, tanks, missiles, atom bombs, all bound for Iraq.” Or words along those lines, which caused no small amount of consternation for the captain of the civilian ship in question. During a separate confrontation between an Iranian warship and the USS Hawes FFG, the Iranian was locking its radar on the Hawes and the Hawes was warning it repeatedly to cease it the monkey would break in with, “Iranian Warship, you’re gonna get it now”. It is interesting to note that the spiritual successor of the Filipino monkey would re-emerge in 2007, where Iranian speedboat manoeuvres were harassing USN manoeuvres in the area, a voice came over the radio with warnings of, “I am coming at you and you will explode”, which came within a hairs breadth of the US ships firing at the Iranians. (Part 1 of 2)
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Jul 29, 2017 21:06
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(Part 2 of 2) Iran fires its silkworms.  Iran would ratchet the tension once more in October of 1987, a silkworm site on the Al-Faw peninsula would fire a missile at Kuwaiti Shuaiba oil terminal where the SS Sea Isle City (formerly Umm Al Maradex), had just docked after the end of an Earnest Will escort run. As it approached its target Kuwaiti soldiers would fire SA-7 Strela MANPADS at it but none would connect and it would strike the unfortunate tanker, severely wounding the American captain and causing significant damage to the superstructure. Ayatollah Khomeini would call this a heroic deed in a relatively rare direct public statement. President Khameinei would say, “The Western Media are silent, but I can tell you that a missile has hit an oil tanker over which the US flag was fluttering. Where the missile came from, the Almighty knows best.” A victory over America was celebrated throughout the campus of the University of Tehran where Khameinei made that pronouncement. The Iranians were pushing their luck, they were doing the clever thing, once they decided they must fight the US they were attacking in the grey areas, Earnest Will technically only covered ships under active escort, the Sea Isle City was at anchor and not under active escort at the time. The Iranians were trying to make the US look weak and avoid direct retaliation and worry the moderate Arab states into thinking the US wouldn’t protect them so they would yank support from Iraq. However, it was a US flagged ship and the US captain of it had been very nearly killed, there wasn’t really a way the US couldn’t respond, Iran had pushed its luck too far. Operation Nimble Archer. Reagan would dismiss airstrikes on the silkworm sites because they were covered by Iranian anti air and he really didn’t want captured US pilots paraded through Tehran, flattening Farsi Island was dismissed as disproportionate retaliation. So they settled on the destruction of the Rashadat oil platform complex which was manned by Iranian military personnel and used as observation posts and launching points for helicopter attacks.  Rashadat oil platform, of a very common design. It is also appropriate at this stage that the lead ship chosen for the task of destroying the platform via Naval gunfire, the USS Kidd, was under construction for the Iranian navy of the Shah at the time of the revolution before being taken over by the USN. The taskforce consisted of 4 DDG’s who would destroy the platform by gunfire with anti-air cover from the Belknap CG USS William H Standly. With the platforms to be boarded by SEAL teams who would be based on the FFG USS Thatch with air cover in the form of F-14’s. The ships steamed up to 5000m off the platform and transmitted a warning, “Rashadat, this is the US Navy, we will commence firing on your position at 1400 hours. You have 20 minutes to evacuate the platform.” In response to that the Iranians evacuated the platform pretty quickly, a supply tug requested a delay due to engine trouble, but a repeat of the warning caused that problem to be resolved very quickly and the small ships cleared the area. The four destroyers would move steadily closer and bombard the two platforms of the complex with over 1000 rounds of 5 inch ammunition for an hour, one of the two platforms was completely ablaze, and the other was badly damaged and tilting due to one of its legs being shot away. The SEALs demolished both platforms, another platform in the field despite not being one of the targets was also abandoned by the Iranians and they would go on and board it as well, recovering Iranian codes, coastal defence plans and other intelligence. The platform was accidently set ablaze by a charge meant to destroy radar equipment and it burned heavily. The upshot of this operation was a significant amount of shade thrown at the DOD spokesman about the 1000 rounds fired at a stationary target, though the majority of those were wasted rounds trying to knock out the legs, which were skinny and quite tough targets. But beyond that the targets were relatively insignificant and didn’t do much to reassure Kuwait. Shortly after the attacks the Iranians would fire more silkworms into Kuwait, they were not dissuaded. This missile was aimed at Sea Island, a major Kuwaiti oil terminal, it was Kuwait’s major loading facility for deep draught supertankers. The blast was heard in Kuwait city nearly 30 miles away and a 200 meter foot column of dense smoke rose over the facility and it was set afire, however firefighting tugs managed to get the blaze under control, but Kuwaiti exports were significantly affected for the month it was repaired. The US response in Nimble Archer really achieved very little other than provoking that attack, in response to it the US supplied I-HAWK missiles to Kuwait and manned it with US personnel. They also developed a system of ten large barges equipped with large metal grid radar reflectors to draw off silkworm missiles. Given the silkworms targeting system, where it would home in on the first large target it saw these proved very effective and defeated the next attempt, the missile went straight through one of the radar reflectors with it not being strong enough to trigger the detonators, tore up its control surfaces and it plummeted into the sea shortly afterwards. However the I-HAWK missiles had failed to even detect the silkworm launch. Kuwait would take matters into its own hands and offered Egypt a $20 billion financial aid package in return in part for Egyptian military assistance. Mubarak, still ostracised after the Camp David Accords would grab this with both hands as his way back into the Arab world’s good graces. Operation Praying Mantis. During the time between the Stark Incident and the start of Praying Mantis there would be a fair few close calls, there were two near shoot downs of Iraqi Mirages by US ships, however there would be the USS Samuel B Roberts incident. I go over this in the mine post linked above, but a US frigate would strike a mine and nearly sink in April of 1988, and this would cause the US to take action. This would come in the form of Operation Praying Mantis. Reagan finally decided to make a decisive point. Much discussion happened, strikes on land targets were ruled out, it was going to be another attack on platforms in the gulf, but also they were to set out specifically to sink an Iranian navy frigate. Specifically the Salaban, a ship with a nasty reputation that would deliberately shoot out the crew quarters of neutral shipping with its 4.5 inch gun. The Salaban and its sister ship the Sahand were both guilty of deliberate attacks on what they knew to be civilian targets carrying no military cargo. The mission was comprised of 4 groups of ships, Bravo, Charlie, Delta and Foxtrot, B group was to destroy the Sasson oil platform and then attack the Rakesh oil platform. Charlie was to attack the Sirri platform, and Delta was to sink the Salaban or any other frigate was on station in the Strait of Hormuz. Foxtrot was the USS enterprise and its escorts who would provide air cover.  Sasson platforms aflame. Bravo group was two destroyers and an LPD, designed to look like an Earnest Will escort mission. The LPD carried eight helicopters, four of which were Cobras to destroy the platform. The group approached its target and warned them to evacuate, roughly half of the crew of the Sasson platform chose to evacuate, and the remainder manned the deck and the dual 23mm 2A7 AA cannon and screamed for support from their headquarters. They asked for an extension, were granted it, and ended it by firing on the helicopters with their cannon, despite them sitting safely out of range. It was quickly shot by the 5 inch gun on one of the destroyers and the rest of the Iranians left on the platform decided that evacuation was the best choice, the tug that had left returned and picked them up and then the platform was destroyed. There was however a bit of a scare at the next platform when a ship approached at 25 knots and was identified as a warship by one of the Cobras, his initial identification was that it was an Iranian Saam-Class frigate and missiles were loaded to sink it. Fortunately the commander of the group waited for an absolutely positive identification, it was a Soviet Sovremenny destroyer with an inquisitive captain who wanted to observe proceedings.  Sovremenny Destroyer Charlie group was comprised of a Cruiser and two frigates, and its attack followed a similar course, some Iranians stayed and fought, then rethought their life choices after the initial bombardment. However in this case some of them stayed to the end and gave one of the SEAL helicopters a scare as it tried to land forces when one of the 23mm guns came back to life. The platform was set on fire and strafed repeatedly by the helicopters until finally the platform stopped firing. Iranian retaliation. In response to the early attacks the Iranians, especially the IRGC and their fast motor boats started attacking oil and gas platforms in the southern gulf, indiscriminately attacking everything that moved and wasn’t shooting back. They attacked tankers with RPG-7’s and heavy machine gun fire. They reciprocated by attacking several oil platforms with rocket launchers. In some cases they allowed the crew to get off first, in most however they either allowed a pathetically small amount of time, of the order of two minutes, or just opened fire. Perhaps even more tragically, the platforms attacked were owned by the Emirate of Sharjah, part of the UAE, Iran earned revenue from the platforms attacked and was liable for half of the cost of the repair inflicted by its own attacks. This reinforced the perception of the IRGC as madmen who cared little about who they attacked. As they continued however they would be caught out by the Enterprises planes, who were in the area looking for an Iranian LHD, several A-6 Intruders armed with cluster bombs and 500 pound laser guided bombs attacked the speedboats, scoring some hits but more importantly causing them to break off their attacks.  IS Joshan. The Iranian Navy would also sortie. Group C would catch the Iranian navies Joshan, a French built Combattante-2 patrol boat, which was armed with Iran’s sole remaining Harpoon. The Joshan was out for blood and didn’t heed the warnings to stop, claiming it was on routine patrol. However it drove straight at the US group. The ships steamed nose in to reduce their cross section and launched chaff and turned on their jammers, firing a Standard missile in Surface to Surface mode back at the Joshan. The incoming harpoon went straight past the cruiser flagship of the group and hit the water, given the behaviour of the missile it seems likely that the radar was active at launch, but failed shortly after, given that it hadn’t been maintained officially since 1979, this meant that the missile saw the chaff cloud, locked onto it and then received no further guidance. The Standard didn’t miss, exploding and shredding the radar of the boat, the group would proceed to methodically sink the Joshan. The wreck of the Joshan had drifted into a group of civilian dhows so its sinking was delayed until it left the area, another standard missile was tried, then a harpoon until finally they decided to use gunfire, a shell hit the Johan’s magazine and it went down. The Iranian Air force would try to avenge the Joshan, with three F-4’s coming into view, the cruiser hit one of them with a standard missile and they all decided to disengage, with the damaged one limping back to Bandar-Abbas. Quite what the Joshan was thinking is an interesting question, he was a missile boat with one missile going up against 3 much larger warships. It’s probable that the captain considered his options and decided possible death from fighting a superior force was far preferable to certain death had he gone back home, on this day of all days and said he declined to engage the USN. It is very likely he would have been shot given the fact that the government still didn’t trust the professional military, especially the Navy and Air Force. Sinking of the Sahand.  IS Sahand Group D was hunting a frigate, they didn’t know which one, one of the groups radar helicopters fixed its position and reported it as just having left Bandar Abbas and was heading to support the IRGC attack on the oil fields. At this stage however a group of A-6’s Intruders moved in to intercept, there was some confusion in the mission as both the surface group and the air group were looking to sink her. Messages from the surface group had apparently gotten lost and were never reported to the air group. One of the Intruders dove out of the clouds to a height of below 100 feet and passed alongside the target, clearly identifying it as the Sahand, it opened fire at him with AAA and handheld SA-7’s. The Intruder popped flares and climbed, he radioed a warning to the ship that he was going to sink them in five minutes, he moved to stand off range and fired a harpoon and dropped his 500 pound bomb, both of which struck their target, the ship was wounded but still capable of taking action, so the Intruder released his last two 1000 pound bombs, one of which struck the target and caused it to burn heavily. The Sahand however didn’t sink, the oncoming Group D and another intruder from the Enterprise launched another two harpoons, unaware of each-others activities, both harpoons hit the Sahand and removed any possibility of it fighting back, striking the bridge and the engine area. However it still wasn’t over for any survivors left aboard the ship with another group of planes launched from the enterprise striking it with walleyes and several more 500 pound bombs. The problem they had when trying to sink the Sahand was that the 500 pound bombs were just not making the effective impact in terms of putting holes in the bottom of the ship. They made a right mess of the superstructure but were not successfully sinking it. However the Sahand would never fight again and would sink sometime later. Finding the Salaban.  IS Salaban Two more Intruders and their F-14 escort found another ship on their way back to the Enterprise, they were vectored to investigate a contact from one of the ships of Group D near Larak Island. They had found the Salaban which opened fire at them despite them being well out of range of their SA-7 missile and guns. The intruders had left between them two harpoons, four rockeye cluster bombs and one 500 pound bomb. The leader decided to use his bomb, dove from 20’000 down to 12’000 feet to impart speed and dropped his 500 pound bomb, it penetrated the ship just above the waterline on the starboard side and exploded in the engine room crippling the ship. However it was judged too risky to go to low altitude to use the cluster bombs and harpoons were impractical because the ship was so close to land that the seeker head would have been unreliable. Also at this time group D came under missile attack, it’s still unknown whether it was silkworm missiles or Sea-Killer missiles from one of the frigates, however at this point the USN decided to generally disengage, light was fading and their original orders had only been to sink one ship in retaliation for the Roberts and they had two. So the new strike from the enterprise was recalled and everyone disengaged. The Salaban was towed into Bandar Abbas. Up to this point there had been no US casualties, but at the end of the day a marine Cobra went missing after challenging a ship and reporting a radar lock and was lost with all crew. It seems likely that it crashed after attempting an evasive manoeuvre. However Iran had stepped past a line that the US had previously drawn, it fired Silkworms at USN ships. Fortunately none hit, but they had fired at the USN’s floating command base, the Hercules floating barge but it missed after defensive action by the ship guarding it, the USS Gary. They also fired at group B in the south of the gulf. However perhaps in a wise move the US prevaricated on whether this has happened, the attack involving the USS Gary was not reported and the attack on Group B was heavily downplayed and in light of the successful operation it wasn’t pursued. It seems likely that in the chaos of the attack the radical portion of the Iranian armed forces gained enough momentum to fire off the silkworm missiles on the grounds that their navy was being taken to pieces and they had no other way of fighting back. A defecting Iranian navy officer would observe that they knew full well they were inviting suicide in doing so, the mullahs grasp on the Navy had gotten to such a stage that they were forced into suicidal actions like launching missiles at US ships, like the Joshan trying to take on 3 ships by itself. It was very much a classic case of political officers having you shot if you hesitated, so you did it and prayed you came out alive. Fortunately Iran regained its sanity after the day and didn’t attack again and didn’t dispute the US’ story that no silkworms had been fired. It was a bit of a silly arbitrary distinction set by Reagan as these things tend to be, why is one silkworm considered worse than say a harpoon or the several sea killers that were launched. The US didn’t want to have to back up its earlier threats of flattening the silkworm sites within the Iranian AA defences, and the Iranians didn’t want to force them to do so either. French involvement. I mentioned France earlier on and then didn’t elaborate, but they have been in the area all along this story, largely protecting their own ships, during Praying mantis the Clemenceau launched fighters to provide backup to the Enterprise when the Iranian air force looked like it was going to attack. They supplied significant intelligence with regards to the Iranian silkworm sites to the US and had a generally good working relations when it came to protecting the area. France had several dealings with Iran and got its hostages released with a combination of threats and bribery, they had previously been deeply involved with Iran and in the area in general. So when Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy terrorist group in Lebanon took several French hostages France would negotiate with Iran, agreeing to repay a $1billion loan taken out under the shah if they would cooperate. (Allegedly, there is no direct proof but the hostages were released and then a month later the repayment was promised, so I will state it as fact with this one caveat.) I will go into France more when I do the Hezbollah aside and talk about Iran’s meddling abroad during the war. But not in this post. Conclusion of Mantis. From this point onwards, US ships were taken seriously by Iran and were able to stop attacks on tankers pretty much at will if they were in the area with either their presence or a few warning shots. Praying Mantis was what needed to happen in my view back when Iran first mined the SS Bridgeton, the weak responses only encouraged Iran and did nothing to actually resolve the situation. The US spent a lot of time dithering, once they decided to act they really needed to act in a decisive way. Iran was not stupid, they were taking calculated risks that they could force a dithering US to leave with a few casualties, thinking the country would fold in a Vietnam like way. In delaying like they did the US gave them every chance to be proven right. They dodged a bullet that they didn’t lose a cruiser to the mine that the Bridgeton hit, which might well have had dramatic effects on their willingness to fight, yet they continued to court disaster, and again nearly got it with the Samuel B Roberts. Robocruiser – USS Vincennes and Iran flight 655. This is the final major incident of the tanker war, and it had a great contribution to ending the war at large, it would be one of the largest catastrophes of the war, and shared many similarities with the USS Stark, poor decisions made by a USN captain would result in the death of 290 souls aboard Iran Air Flight 655.  USS Vincennes The USS Vincennes was one of the new Ticonderoga guided missile cruisers just completed in 1985 and was the first to be assigned to the gulf. She was under the command of Captain Rogers, an aggressive and ambitious captain who was in charge of the pride of the USN in terms of new ships its high degree of automation in the new AEGIS system lead to the nickname Robocruiser. On the morning of the incident he would start by chasing off Iranian speedboats who were harassing a German Merchant, he had strayed off his assigned zone by going to its assistance, by itself not a bad thing but it would have a significant impact on the events to follow. Shortly after this the Vincennes helicopter approached to 2 miles from Iranian speedboats still further north, ROE at the time forbade it from going within 4 miles but the helicopter went to just over 2 miles before the boats opened fire at it. Upon hearing this the Vincennes went to flank and went a further ten miles north and prepared to attack the Iranian speedboats and would call for air support from the USS Forrestal. Two other ships, the USS Sides and USS Montgomery would move to support should trouble develop. Several of these ships would turn towards the Vincennes and the Montgomery who were the two nearest ships, the Vincennes was also moving at them and would go into the Exclusion zone. Neither side blinked and before too long the US ships opened fire with their 5 inch guns and destroyed a speedboat. It is important to note that throughout this Captain Rogers was preoccupied with this surface engagement which was happening concurrently with the problem in the air. Flight 655 had been delayed in its departure, and was picked up by the Vincennes as it moved to take off, unfortunately for them it was from a combined Military and Civilian airfield. The Vincennes Tactical Information Coordinator identified it as a possible F-4 Phantom. The IFF detector had picked up a civilian signal, USS Sides also picked up the civilian contact and so it was assigned a probable civilian contact.  Another Airbus A300 in Iran Air livery, similar to flight 655. However when the Vincennes scanned the target again he picked up a military transponder from the same bearing, this was likely an F-14 warming up on the airfield that the airliner had just left. The officer in question then updated the track of flight 655 to be that of an F-14. The track was assigned the identifier TN 4474. USS Sides had assigned TN 4131 to the same target at a slightly different time, however it did not realise that this was the same track that the Vincennes was declaring as 4474, so it reported its own target 4134 over the net. This lead to the first real manufactured mistake. The Vincennes system picked that up and changed the target number on its tracking system to 4134, as far as the Vincennes was concerned, 4474 had disappeared. There was now only 4134 which was identified by the CIC staff as an F-14, it is worth noting at this stage that the Vincennes systems only reported a civilian IFF from the contact, but owing to the chaos in the CIC that information got lost. They then checked the schedule for any flights, but because 655 had been delayed it did not match their data. There was also an Iranian P-3 Orion being unhelpful in the area orbiting at around 50NM, it wasn’t actually there to track the Vincennes but could well have been from the perspective of the commander. The Vincennes challenged TN 4134 over military frequencies, which obviously the civilian airliner could not receive, they would repeat the challenge on civilian frequencies but for whatever reason the flight did not receive or respond to the area despite Iranian airlines being ordered to monitor those frequencies. Flight 655 was heading directly for the USS Vincennes at this time and at this time Captain Rogers announced his intention to shoot down the contact at 20NM to the USS Sides and the rest of the ships in the area. The display that Captain Rogers was using to conduct this fight however did not show altitude data, all it showed was an incoming F-14 heading at him in the middle of a surface action. There was added confusion with Lt. Cmdr. Lustig of the Vincennes who was in charge of both Vincennes air defence and force air defence who was severely overworked and so unable to give his full attention to the Vincennes problem with his other responsibilities and the Captain was too concerned with his surface engagement. The Captain of the USS Sides had his own contact updated to show an F-14 to on data from the Vincennes, but he was viewing its altitude, it was climbing steadily and wasn’t following an attack profile. He didn’t see why it was necessarily a threat, tragically however he assumed that the new AEGIS cruiser with its more sophisticated radar and dedicated AAW team had a better idea than he did.  USS Sides The Vincennes was manoeuvring violently to try and bring its second gun to bear on the small boats as its forward gun had jammed. These manoeuvres was causing general chaos in the CIC as loose equipment fell off the consoles and scattered everywhere adding to the chaos in the room and certainly in no way improving decision making. As it developed the crew of the Sides evaluated TN 4134 as a possible commercial pilgrimage flight but unfortunately that information didn’t reach the captain of the Sides as the CIC officer went to deal with it and told them to shut up. The Tactical Information Officer of the Vincennes observed what the Sides was observing, it was slowly climbing up to 9000 feet, he stated it was a possible civilian target to Rogers, who busy with dealing with the surface engagement and merely acknowledged it with a raised hand. If I had to guess I would say he didn’t process that statement at all. The Sides locked its radar on to the target, which would usually cause even the more aggressive of pilots to react, but the plane did not move, they would repeat their challenges to the target but receive no response. The plane was also not emitting any radar signals at all, not even the usual weather radar of civilian flights. Captain Carlton of the Sides classified it as an F-14 which was not a threat, on the grounds that it was not following an attack profile or emitting signals and was travelling slowly and the F-14 has no real anti surface warfare capability. Plus it was sitting in the middle of the commercial airline flight path that the US surface ships had strayed into chasing the Iranian speedboats. 655 was now only 18NM from the Vincennes and closing fast and the reports were becoming conflicted as to what was going on with the target with the perception in the CIC being that the target was descending. As soon as the target hit 10NM the Vincennes fired and shortly afterwards shot down flight 655 with the loss of everyone aboard. Confusion reigned thereafter for a while, the initial recount of actions given by Admiral Crowe were fundamentally wrong, some of which I can believe were accidents, others I can’t. He stated the airliner was outside of its prescribed air corridor (It wasn’t), it was travelling at high speed (It wasn’t), that it had been sent numerous warnings (It had), and that it was descending in altitude (It wasn’t, but the CIC of the Vincennes thought it was). Initial US reaction to it was supportive of Captain Roberts’ actions, the incorrect reporting of events on top of the massive US antipathy to Iran meant that they found few defenders, 74% of the US public surveyed thought Iran to blame for the incident. Captain Rogers would say after the incident, “I regret the outcome but not the decision”. It’s fairly easy to see what went wrong, it was a matter of chaos, people being called on to do too many jobs. But Captain Rogers put the ship where it was, and it was his responsibility to account for the fact that they were in civilian air traffic area and he shot down a target that as evaluated by the captain of the USS Sides was not a threat and had at least some question marks over what it was. He was too distracted to make the decision he made. There are of course other interpretations. It is also a matter of serious discussion as to whether the USN dispatched the cruiser far too quickly in response to the silkworm threat without taking the time to properly prepare it. I won’t go into it here because it would take at least as many words again and this is getting oppressively long already. Iran’s Aftermath. Iran tried to make as much capital out of the incident as it could, inviting everyone who owned a camera and an outlet to publish to come and look at the bodies as they pulled them from the gulf. People prepared for a significant wave of terrorism in retaliation or further attacks into the gulf. People would be suspicious when Lockerbie happened shortly afterwards that it was Iranian revenge. It’s possible that an attempt would be made to murder the wife of Captain Rogers with a bomb in her car in 1989, but there is no conclusive proof that it was linked. The main problem Iran really had with the shoot down of flight 655 is that nobody cared, there was no wave of outrage in the international community about the shoot down, and there wasn’t even significant steam in the UN for a condemnation. Iran had burnt so many bridges with the world that it had nobody on its side any more. Its cities were heavily damaged by Iraqi Scuds and even their denunciations or mass outrages were mild compared to what they had said earlier in the war. It couldn’t fight on at this stage, it was losing and losing badly. It wanted out of the war, one of the primary worries that it had was that this incident would derail ceasefire negotiations. Conclusions. The Tanker war is really fascinating to me, it’s one of the few times that US power really felt a limit in the 20 or so years of 1980-2001. It showed a real development from the Iraqis in terms of how they fought the war, they fought it with a sort of ruthless cunning. Iraq desperately wanted the US in the theatre, they knew that the only way that would happen was in getting Iran to start attacking the Gulf. Iran had no reason to start the war because they were dependent on the sea for trade far more than Iraq. But Saddam placed them in a situation with no way to win, they couldn’t do nothing about Iraqi attacks, they tried to skirt around the US’ sensibilities but eventually stepped over the line and invited the severe pasting that they got. They were caught by the US’ close collaboration with Iraq, though that too was of their own making, they made the US their enemy far more than they needed to, a lot of that was hard to avoid given the nature of the revolution. But you can’t thumb your nose at the world’s largest superpower and expect to get away with it forever. Especially the degree of enmity they earned in the US it meant they couldn’t successfully turn getting one of their own airliners shot down into a diplomatic win. It also showed the really nasty side of economics, this was a war founded almost completely on economics, the Iranians cut off Iraq’s exports through Syria, so Iraq retaliated by hitting them back because they could survive on loans alone. Saudi Arabia’s complicity in dropping the oil price was really a mortal blow that Iran could not survive. US responses to Iran generally were weak in my view, Reagan was not really as hawkish as people remember him being when it came to military actions, you see it in Lebanon and again here in the Gulf. But this was the time that he needed to be resolute, he pushed for US involvement in the gulf, leaving aside whether that was the right choice he then had to be willing to back that up with stiff action to keep US personnel safe, he failed on that right up until Praying Mantis. You can choose to intervene or not intervene, but if you intervene don’t gently caress about with half measures. Next time we will get back to the actual war and stop with these long asides. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jul 29, 2017 |
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Jul 29, 2017 21:06
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HEY GAIL posted:yeah the dudes close up around the early 18th c iirc. they have feet of distance between them in the 17th--which is reflected in the drill, they swing their muskets around themselves in a pretty wide arc when setting it butt-down to load Yeah, I was asking about your time period primarily. Are there lefty guns from then? OwlFancier posted:On the other hand the chauchat substantially predates it, occupies that same role, and appears to be better in every conceivable way. I think Lebel is well suited to sticking into a magazine because of the way the cases are angled. A lot better than basically every other rimmed cartridge because it can actually rest on its necks without rim interference. However, the Chauchat is not a particularly great example of magazines working well.
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Jul 29, 2017 21:15
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Man, this tanker war stuff is fascinating. Thanks!
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Jul 29, 2017 21:16
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Polyakov posted:In retrospect looking back at this I’m sorry it’s quite so long, You apologize for nothing, these are great.
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Jul 29, 2017 21:46
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xthetenth posted:I think Lebel is well suited to sticking into a magazine because of the way the cases are angled. A lot better than basically every other rimmed cartridge because it can actually rest on its necks without rim interference. However, the Chauchat is not a particularly great example of magazines working well. That's sort of my point, if France can make a gun that works better than your interwar gun, before the first world war, while still drilling speed holes in the magazine, you've hosed up somewhere.
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Jul 29, 2017 21:48
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xthetenth posted:Yeah, I was asking about your time period primarily. Are there lefty guns from then?
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Jul 29, 2017 21:59
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Enough beatings will make them right-handed, so why bother?
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Jul 29, 2017 22:08
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this unironically happened to my dad in the 50s school system 
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Jul 29, 2017 22:15
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Tias posted:this unironically happened to my dad in the 50s school system He deserved to be punished for his sinister ways.
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Jul 29, 2017 22:47
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The National World War I museum and memorial in Kansas City is very cool. Even aside from the museum pieces, the monument is just really cool 1920s art deco.   As for the displays inside, pretty good and interesting, although I had a couple gripes: There are decidedly some duplicate exhibits, such as just having the same rifle with the same description in three different areas for no discernable reason. Also in exhibits with a ton of items in a display case, in some cases they were very clearly numbered and labeled with descriptions to read and in other cases it's like 60 items lined up with the numbers either not present, so you're counting X number of items over to correlate the description, or in one particularly frustrating display case, they had over a dozen different types of grenade and projectiles hanging from lines, and rather than putting the number on the line, the number was on the ground several feet below the suspended grenades, making it an exercise in spatial awareness in order to correlate the grenade floating in front of you 3 inches from another grenade with the numbers on the ground. The main museum is underground, below all the stuff pictured above.
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Jul 29, 2017 23:38
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Oh my god I can't stop laughing (Make sure to turn on subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5r-AyTPN3M
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Jul 29, 2017 23:52
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 miss me with that ‘weapon accuracy’ poo poo. im shooting everything. im laying down cover fire. im shooting the walls. im shooting my teammates. im shooting myself. my accuracy is 100% yall just dont know what im aiming at
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Jul 30, 2017 00:08
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OwlFancier posted:That's sort of my point, if France can make a gun that works better than your interwar gun, before the first world war, while still drilling speed holes in the magazine, you've hosed up somewhere. That poo poo's difficult and every gun is its own engineering problem. It's worth noting that concerns about reliability were one of the reasons the Garand used en blocs. The thinking of the time was that it was not only inherently more reliable than a magazine that can be damaged, lost, made poorly, etc but that having a hole in the bottom of the gun also provided another entry point for dirt to foul the action. The Breda in particular was using old-ish tech by the time it was accepted (1930 was a bit late to be making a clip fed LMG) but not egregiously so. It's not as simple as taking your design that you've been working on the last 3 or 4 years and just sticking a new feed system on it.
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Jul 30, 2017 00:11
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It also seems worth noting that both Japan and Italy did not have anywhere near the level of industrial expertise as the other major powers. It shouldn't be too surprising that they both had issues designing and manufacturing weapons.
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Jul 30, 2017 00:29
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 I'm the dude doing the cool "On my back hop to my feet" maneuver
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Jul 30, 2017 03:49
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Cyrano4747 posted:That poo poo's difficult and every gun is its own engineering problem. It's worth noting that concerns about reliability were one of the reasons the Garand used en blocs. The thinking of the time was that it was not only inherently more reliable than a magazine that can be damaged, lost, made poorly, etc but that having a hole in the bottom of the gun also provided another entry point for dirt to foul the action. The Breda is technically a detachable box magazine gun, and the mag is fairly easy to replace if you have spares. They just only issued one and gave you a bunch of clips to reload it.
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Jul 30, 2017 03:52
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Also since the video doesn't include firing, here's one that does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-D3nN4QycM
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Jul 30, 2017 04:46
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Jobbo_Fett posted:
I'm the guy doing a roll straight into the line of fire of the guy lying down behind me.
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Jul 30, 2017 09:29
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Jobbo_Fett posted:
Is this from a movie? If not, our old Oberleutnant would have snapped all our necks for this shitshow.
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Jul 30, 2017 09:40
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Libluini posted:Is this from a movie? If not, our old Oberleutnant would have snapped all our necks for this shitshow. I think its North Korean, not entirely sure.
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Jul 30, 2017 13:08
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Jobbo_Fett posted:
Hell yeah *flicks fidget spinner*
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Jul 30, 2017 13:10
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101st jojo battalion looking good.
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Jul 30, 2017 15:45
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M4A2(76)W in the USSR Queue: PzII Ausf. a though b, PzII Ausf. c through C, PzII Ausf. D through E, PzII Ausf. F, PzII trials in the USSR, Marder II, Field modifications to American tanks, Israeli improvised armoured cars, Trials of the TKS and C2P in the USSR, Polish 37 mm anti-tank gun, T-37 with ShKAS, Wartime modifications of the T-37 and T-38, Tank destroyers on the T-30 and T-40 chassis, 45 mm M-42 gun, SU-76 prototype, ZIK-7 and other light SPG designs, SU-26/T-26-6, SU-122 precursors, SU-122 competitors, Light Tank M5, Medium Tank M3, Tankbuchse 41, s.FH. 18, PzVII Lowe, Tiger #114, Chrysler K, A1E1 Independent, Valentine I-IV, Swedish tanks 1928–1934, Strv 81 and Strv 101, Pak 97/38, 7.5 cm Pak 41, Czechoslovakian post-war prototypes, Praga AH-IV, KV-1S, KV-13, Bazooka, Super Bazooka, Matilda, 76 mm gun mod of the Matilda, Renault FT, Somua, SU-122, SU-122M, KV-13 to IS, T-60 factory #37, D.W. and VK 30.01(H), Wespe and other PzII SPGs, Pz38(t) in the USSR Available for request:  IM-1 squeezebore cannon NEW  L-10 and L-30 Strv m/40 Strv m/42 Landsverk prototypes 1943-1951 Strv m/21 Strv m/41 pvkv m/43 NEW Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Jul 31, 2017 |
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Jul 30, 2017 16:38
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M3 Medium, then everything but the Swedish stuff.
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Jul 30, 2017 16:50
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I had wondered why the US responded to an Iraqi attack by attacking Iran, that makes a bit more sense that it was in the context of the tanker war and that Iraq said they were sorry.
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Jul 30, 2017 16:52
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Can someone tell me about left handed people? My Grandad was just too young to sign up for WW2, being in his mid teens when it ended, but still got stick for being left handed in school. Caned a couple of times and made to write with his left. How old is this and how wide spread was the practise? Also, on pikes. I've been told Pikemen in the English Civil War had shorter pikes than on the continent, but haven't been able to find any sources to back this up. And the last war where pikes were used by Britain, France and other major European powers (Russia and Sweden excepted) was the War of the Grand Alliance, or the Nine Years War. British Musketeers stil fought with fire by march or counter march. The book I read on this has led me to believe they were using the Swedish Method from the 30 Years War to arrange pike and shot, but this was not explicitly stated. There's also a quote I remember from the French Revolution "If we are not yet Athenians or Spartans, then we should endeavour to become them." This is attached to men using pikes in the French Revolution, due to believing they were still a relevant weapon. The Generals were not happy about this, but couldn't win them over. And I've seen depictions of a Colonel Pike leading a regiment with companies of pikemen in the War of 1812. They used a short musket in addition to their pike (11-12ft) and short sword, but again, can't find a proper source to back it up.
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Jul 30, 2017 18:34
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Hazzard posted:Can someone tell me about left handed people? Anecdotes are not data but: My grandma would sometimes hit me for using my left hand to write or eat. This would have been southern California, 1993 or so, very Catholic family (I was cut out of her will because my mom's an atheist of protestant descent).
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Jul 30, 2017 18:48
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As far as militaries were concerned left handedness was something to be trained out of people at least as far as things like weapons training went through WW2 at least. Not sure when they stopped caring so much. Old military weapons aren't exactly lefty friendly.
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Jul 30, 2017 18:52
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