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cheerfullydrab posted:Unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific starting on day 1 of the war was definitely because of racism. Hahahahaha No.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:32
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I think of either the miniskirted ladies from the original Star Trek or bearded Royal Navy sailors fiddling with signal flags.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:37
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So, I got my copy of Franz Michael's collection of translated Taiping documents. I'm reading through Yang Xiuqing's paper on military tactics. Most of it is concerned with a system of flags and gongs for signalling, but I did find a neat part where he warns of the Manchu demon's crafty tricks-Dong Wang posted:Sometimes they conceal gunpowder and shot inside an umbrella, so that anyone picking up the umbrella and opening it will explode the gunpowder inside the umbrella handle, the shot causing him injury.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:39
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^ Haha, the ultimate gently caress you gunpowder attack. ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:I think of either the miniskirted ladies from the original Star Trek or bearded Royal Navy sailors fiddling with signal flags. Now there is an interesting combination combined together. Or terrifying, depending on your interest.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:40
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revolther posted:You don't hear stories about Japanese and US forces crossing battlefields to come together for Christmas dinners or soccer matches. It goes back to the colonial history of treating all non-European descended cultures as beastly slave dogs to be mastered, and if they resist violent unreasonable barbarians to be snuffed out. Which was the exact reasoning used. Are you an idiot? The Japanese, by their own willfull decisions, repeatedly defied any conditions for a cease fire. Not to mention their brutality against "natives" that exceeded that of the Nazis, and wasn't tempered by any festivals.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:43
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revolther posted:You don't hear stories about Japanese and US forces crossing battlefields to come together for Christmas dinners or soccer matches. It goes back to the colonial history of treating all non-European descended cultures as beastly slave dogs to be mastered, and if they resist violent unreasonable barbarians to be snuffed out. Which was the exact reasoning used. This is a spectacularly bad post and it is wrong about everything.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:46
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It was actually kind of artistic, it is sort of rare for any one post to bring this thread to such a screeching half so effectively.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:53
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Times like this, I miss that crazy artillery shell slinging bear.
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Jun 26, 2015 22:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:Never. I really try to get the gently caress away from that phrase because it leads directly to the most lazy, overly-sentimental crap writing possible. Rather than being a useful shorthand for the importance of understanding the past they use it as a loving thesis and/or misguided call to action. See also: "never again."  That is a much better quote and I greatly appreciate that you took the time to lay it all out for me and all the other dumb asses in the thread.I feel like the Holocaust and other comparable events demands a certain brutal teaching style in order to appropriately understand the context and ideology that led it in the first place. Klaus88 fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Jun 26, 2015 22:55
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SeanBeansShako posted:Times like this, I miss that crazy artillery shell slinging bear. There are no bears in Japan - that's why they can't establish the co-prosperity sphere against the will of the imperialist tyrants
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Jun 26, 2015 22:56
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:I think of either the miniskirted ladies from the original Star Trek or bearded Royal Navy sailors fiddling with signal flags. Oh Yeoman Rand  
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Jun 26, 2015 23:00
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steinrokkan posted:There are no bears in Japan - that's why they can't establish the co-prosperity sphere against the will of the imperialist tyrants There are totally bears in Hokkaido. wdarkk fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Jun 26, 2015 23:00
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wdarkk posted:There are totally bears in [url=]http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2008/03/15/our-lives/the-lowdown-on-hokkaido-bears/Hokkaido[/url]. In the Yamato view, the Hokkaido peoples are less human than the bears they share their island with. In short, anything that takes place at Hokkaido is no more a part of Japan than an event taking place at Eastern Timor is matter of portugal.
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Jun 26, 2015 23:03
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Taerkar posted:Hahahahaha Yeah, if that were racially motivated, we probably would have used torpedoes that worked.
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Jun 26, 2015 23:27
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At what point did the British Empire and the United States make amends for the Revolutionary War/War of 1812?
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Jun 26, 2015 23:34
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sullat posted:Yeah, if that were racially motivated, we probably would have used torpedoes that worked. Torpedoes are expensive and surely even duds should sink their inferior ships 
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Jun 26, 2015 23:45
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Kanine posted:At what point did the British Empire and the United States make amends for the Revolutionary War/War of 1812? Sorry old boy, about that war we fought and all. Pip pip! S'alright partner! YEEEHA! Seriously though, what exactly do you mean? like, when did it become apparent neither side was going to invade each other?
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Jun 26, 2015 23:50
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chitoryu12 posted:There were a few efforts to make pinfire cartridges (which incorporate the firing pin into the rim), but these aren't a very good cartridge because they're basically rimfires that have to be inserted one way into the chamber. You had the successful but short-lived needle guns like the Chassepot and Dreyse. About a hundred different attempts to build cartridge-firing pistols without infringing on Rollin White's patent, of which the cupfire system is only one. And the end of the century brought us truly revolutionary machines like the Maxim Gun and glorious insanity like the Mars Automatic Pistol.
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Jun 26, 2015 23:54
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Klaus88 posted:
You're right on one thing and wrong on another. You're correct about teaching the holocaust requiring a certain blunt directness. It's a subject where you have to talk about everything from racial discrimination to euthanizing the mentally disabled to institutionalized rape, and those are some of the more palatable topics. There is absolutely no way you can hold a conversation about it without establishing first and foremost that things will be spoken about directly and in clear language. I also strongly emphasize that people shouldn't be afraid of offending anybody, and that the base assumption is that everyone is engaging in the conversation with the best of intentions. When someone says something a bit unfortunate I help them find the core of the idea they're getting at and direct it in a more positive direction. It's a bit like teaching a sex ed class to middle schoolers in a way - you just need to grit your teeth and talk about penises and vaginas because polite euphemisms are just going to lead to confusion and problems down the road. The thing you're wrong about is the dumb rear end comment. The amount of good, intelligent conversation about history in general that happens in this thread is staggering and stands as a testament to the fact that you don't need a degree to engage in critical analysis of the past. Then you've got the odd clusterfuck like that Japan comment upstream a bit, but for a forum on the internet open to the public this is pretty goddamned exceptional.
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Jun 27, 2015 00:20
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Kanine posted:At what point did the British Empire and the United States make amends for the Revolutionary War/War of 1812? Not necessarily the Revolution/War of 1812, but the 1871 Treaty of Washington settled pretty much all the outstanding grievances between the UK and the US. What? 1871? It's almost as if the Grant administration wasn't entirely corrupt and incompetent...
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Jun 27, 2015 00:32
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There was still enough tension in the early 1900s that War Plan Red was a thing, but even by WWI that was pretty low on the list of things to worry about. Quite a change from the first half of the 1800s when the US recruited the army they fought the Mexican-American War with in decent part by telling Irishmen they'd be fighting Britain.
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Jun 27, 2015 00:36
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Cyrano4747 posted:The thing you're wrong about is the dumb rear end comment. The amount of good, intelligent conversation about history in general that happens in this thread is staggering and stands as a testament to the fact that you don't need a degree to engage in critical analysis of the past.
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Jun 27, 2015 00:37
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HEY GAL posted:i just post about dudes who drink Speaking of dudes who drink...
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Jun 27, 2015 00:44
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Rent-A-Cop posted:There were a whole bunch of ideas that were ingenious, novel, silly, just plain nuts, or some combination of the above in this era. The pinfire cartridge is one of the more practical and more successful ones. 1820ish to 1900ish was a period in which new guns and cartridges were being invented so fast that they were often obsolete in as little as a year. The needle guns were an especially interesting idea, for those unaware of how they worked. They were paper cartridges similar to those of old, but the percussion cap was embedded within the paper casing in front of the powder. A long needle-like firing pin would be launched forward by a spring upon pulling the trigger, travel through the gunpowder, and hit the percussion cap. As you can imagine, this produced tremendous stress on the firing pin (it was literally surrounded by an explosion) and they tended to break within a few hundred shots. The paper cartridge also didn't seal the breech as well as a metal cartridge, which led to at best a release of pressure at the breech and consequently lower velocity and at worst high pressure, scorching hot gas spraying in your face on firing. Despite the problems, the Dreyse and the Chassepot (its French competitor) were both highly advanced for their time: they were breech-loaded bolt-actions (albeit single-shot), allowing soldiers to reload several times faster while prone than someone with a muzzleloader could while standing. It wouldn't be until the 1860s and 1870s when the United States standardized rifles using metallic cartridges as their service weapons. Of course, those had their own problems. The Springfield 1873 "Trapdoor" rifle and carbine used cheaper copper cartridges at first. Unfortunately, copper is way too soft and ductile to be used for cartridge cases and they would often expand too much to be removed by the extractor or even tear apart when trying to extract them. This has often been cited as one of the causes of the American loss at Little Bighorn (Custer's troops' guns were jamming left and right), but the real reason was more that Custer underestimated his opponents and was operating on faulty intelligence that led to him accidentally fighting a battle at a gigantic numerical disadvantage. Still not the wonkiest metal cartridge design. The British used rolled brass foil instead of solid metal for their early .577/450 Martini-Henry cartridges. Ask how many times those tore during extraction.
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Jun 27, 2015 00:57
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JaucheCharly posted:How about some more posts? Oh gladly, i'll try and do some more semi-effort posts, but i guess perhaps in the medieval thread?
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Jun 27, 2015 01:01
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chitoryu12 posted:They were paper cartridges similar to those of old, but the percussion cap was embedded within the paper casing in front of the powder. Why?
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Jun 27, 2015 02:03
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HEY GAL posted:i just post badly fixed
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Jun 27, 2015 02:04
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HEY GAL posted:i just post about dudes who drink Speaking of violent, drunk young men, I've been reading The Three Musketeers. For some reason, I remembered Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d'Artagnan acting like romantic knights. But the actual book portrays them as basically just like your guys. Do you know of any other books that similar heroes?
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Jun 27, 2015 02:05
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Water Margin. The legendary bandit heroes of the gallant brotherhood are a bunch of murderous psychopaths not averse to occassional cannibalism. It's like kung fu Scarface.
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Jun 27, 2015 02:09
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golden bubble posted:Speaking of violent, drunk young men, I've been reading The Three Musketeers. For some reason, I remembered Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d'Artagnan acting like romantic knights. But the actual book portrays them as basically just like your guys. Do you know of any other books that similar heroes? anyway, literally everything the 17th century produced--Cervantes, Grimmelshausen, Moscherosch's book has something about soldiers/ex-soldiers/bandits in it that got excerpted and published on its own as Unter Raeuber, that's pretty good sociological or journalistic works on modern american cities also work, like the dude who was a consultant on The Wire hung out in baltimore and wrote about it. i read a lot of modern nonfiction and true crime
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Jun 27, 2015 02:14
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In most normal cartridges, the primer is positioned at the back of the powder. This causes it to burn back to front, expelling some unburnt powder down the barrel. If the barrel isn't long enough, some of that unburnt or still burning powder goes flying out the barrel instead of contributing energy to the bullet (this is why shortening the barrel of a gun gives you bigger muzzle flash and blast while also decreasing velocity). By burning the powder front to back, they would minimize the loss of gunpowder out the barrel. They also wanted to use it to let them put less powder in the cartridge (since better efficiency means less powder is needed for the same velocity) and position the percussion cap deep within the cartridge and away from accidental detonation. In practice, it put massive stress on the firing pin (Prussian soldiers were issued two spares with their rifle) and the lack of a sealed breech due to the cartridge being paper rather than expanding metal meant that any potential gains were lost out the back instead of the front.
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Jun 27, 2015 02:15
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chitoryu12 posted:In most normal cartridges, the primer is positioned at the back of the powder. This causes it to burn back to front, expelling some unburnt powder down the barrel. If the barrel isn't long enough, some of that unburnt or still burning powder goes flying out the barrel instead of contributing energy to the bullet (this is why shortening the barrel of a gun gives you bigger muzzle flash and blast while also decreasing velocity). By burning the powder front to back, they would minimize the loss of gunpowder out the barrel. They also wanted to use it to let them put less powder in the cartridge (since better efficiency means less powder is needed for the same velocity) and position the percussion cap deep within the cartridge and away from accidental detonation. Edit: Admittedly I'm no expert so I may be very wrong Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jun 27, 2015 |
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Jun 27, 2015 02:35
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Rent-A-Cop posted:I'm skeptical of that reasoning. Do you have a source? From what I've always understood it was simply because the bullet was the only thing solid enough to attach the priming compound to. Attaching it to the paper would have meant the soldier would have to be very careful about correctly aligning primer and firing pin. Attaching it to the back of the bullet means the primer always ends up in the same place, where the (very long) pin can hit it. It also provides a solid surface for the pin to strike against. There's secondary sources like this one and this book, but I need some more time to find primary sources. It would be really nice to actually find design documents.
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Jun 27, 2015 02:39
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HEY GAL posted:what, exactly, did you think a musketeer was before this? because when i was a child i thought it was some sort of sworn brotherhood or something, because of the adaptations of those books, not the books themselves. turns out nope, it is a dude with a gun Well, my entire childhood memories of it come from the Muttketeer episode of Wishbone, which makes them look like heroic knights with rapiers. As for the other stuff, I can sadly only read English books.
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Jun 27, 2015 03:02
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Internal politics can make a huge difference in a nation's ability to wage war. Politics is what made Russia drop out of WW1 a year before it officially ended. If Lincoln had lost his re-election campaign the south would have won the American civil war despite being at a disadvantage in essentially every possible aspect. this isn't right is it? it doesn't sound right but then I know nothing about the American Civil War
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Jun 27, 2015 03:30
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Koramei posted:this isn't right is it? it doesn't sound right but then I know nothing about the American Civil War It's debatable. Had Lincoln lost reelection, he would have left office in March 1865. His opponent in the 1864 election, George McClellan, was running on a peace platform that he had personally and publicly rejected. If you assume that the only difference is McClellan winning, the war likely would have ended in much the same way. If you start imagining other divergences (military defeats result in McClellan winning, or a much larger peace faction emerging in the 1865 Congress), then Confederate victory looks more likely. We're getting pretty close to gay black Jeff Davis though. By the time the 1864 election took place, the South was doomed.
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Jun 27, 2015 03:39
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dublish posted:It's debatable. Had Lincoln lost reelection, he would have left office in March 1865. His opponent in the 1864 election, George McClellan, was running on a peace platform that he had personally and publicly rejected. If you assume that the only difference is McClellan winning, the war likely would have ended in much the same way. If you start imagining other divergences (military defeats result in McClellan winning, or a much larger peace faction emerging in the 1865 Congress), then Confederate victory looks more likely. We're getting pretty close to gay black Jeff Davis though. By the time the 1864 election took place, the South was doomed. Yeah, anything that would have changed things that drastically was not happening in 1864- the Confederate armies simply weren't capable of that(there's probably something to be said that they never were). A McClellan victory would've meant no reconstruction, though.
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Jun 27, 2015 03:44
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dublish posted:It's debatable. Had Lincoln lost reelection, he would have left office in March 1865. His opponent in the 1864 election, George McClellan, was running on a peace platform that he had personally and publicly rejected. If you assume that the only difference is McClellan winning, the war likely would have ended in much the same way. If you start imagining other divergences (military defeats result in McClellan winning, or a much larger peace faction emerging in the 1865 Congress), then Confederate victory looks more likely. We're getting pretty close to gay black Jeff Davis though. By the time the 1864 election took place, the South was doomed. Pretty much. It was a very real concern at the time, though. When Lincoln met with Frederick Douglass that August, he asked for help with a contingency plan to get as many blacks as possible out of the south during his lame duck period.
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Jun 27, 2015 04:05
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Didn't Lincoln muse that if he lost the election he only would have pushed that much harder to finish the war by the time of Little Mac's swearing in? Of course, had McClellan won he would have been pretty on board with preserving slavery in the south, so even back in the Union the South would have won. e: VVV 
PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Jun 27, 2015 |
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Jun 27, 2015 04:21
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:McLennan.
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