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DerLeo posted:It probably goes without saying, but naval artillery greatly varies in effect depending on how and where it hits. Lutzow at Jutland took over 20 hits and only sank a day later, while Invincible took a shell in the turret which sparked a flash fire in the magazine, literally snapping the ship in half and leaving six survivors. But in general, naval gunfire is probably less effective at sinking ships than one might imagine - usually if you get sunk by surface fire, you went down to a sudden accident like Invincible or spent hours under fire gradually getting plastered into ineffectiveness and sink later due to flooding and no ability to control it. With regards to Jutland, the British had a training problem, evidently, in that powder hoist doors were often left propped open to increase reload speed, which made them one penetrating hit to the turret away from exploding. A little tidbit about that -- Beatty's flagship at Jutland, the HMS Lion, almost suffered a similar fate, but the turret commander, after receiving a mortal wound when Q turret was hit, got the hoist door closed and ordered the magazine flooded. Without that stroke of luck, battlecruiser squadron and Britain's newest superdreadnought squadron would have been left leaderless steaming straight for the High Seas Fleet. In that case, the Germans might have been able to profit enough out of the confusion to reduce or entirely remove Britain's superiority in capital ships, which would not have boded well for an allied victory in WWI.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:47
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ArchangeI posted:Was Fuso or Yamashiro sunk by gunfire in Leyte Gulf?
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Nov 14, 2013 19:57
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gradenko_2000 posted:The other side of this coin was that a turret flash fire did happen to one of the German battlecruisers with nearly-disastrous results. It didn't blow up the whole ship, but it did cause enough damage that the Germans figured out what happened and how to prevent it. That the Lion escaped total destruction possibly may have worked against the Brits because they didn't think anything was wrong with how they were doing things. My point with regard to the Lion in particular is that the battlecruiser squadrons as well as 5th Battle Squadron were on an almost literal course for annihilation. I've never been terribly impressed by Beatty versus Jellicoe as a wartime admiral, but Beatty was just a few minutes away from ordering a course change when his flagship failed to explode. If it hadn't failed to explode, a sizeable portion of the Royal Navy was on course to be gobbled up by the entire German fleet, which was the strategic objective every German admiral hoped to accomplish and the thing that kept Jellicoe up at night in cold sweats. Basically, and I really don't think this is overplaying it, true disaster at Jutland could have effectively ended the war in favor of the German Empire virtually overnight. wdarkk posted:Fuso was destroyer torpedoes, Yamashiro was basically "all of the above, at once". In the end, though, my point is that battleships just aren't terribly good at killing each other, if we look at the historical record since the start of WWI, in an unusual parity of armor and firepower. No bid COVID fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 20:16
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DerLeo posted:Is it really that drastic though? If Beatty lost his entire command, that puts the UK down 10 capital ships, but Germany:UK is still 21 (assuming no losses) to 27. It imperils England greatly but at some point the High Seas Fleet would probably have to enter a full engagement, maybe later the same day, and they'd have to win that with a quite considerable margin to beat out the UK's higher rate of construction.
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Nov 14, 2013 20:32
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gradenko_2000 posted:I don't know about winning the war per se, but without the Battlecruiser Squadron, the High Seas Fleet can pick and choose it's battles almost at will. The morale shift and whatever happens afterwards would be enough to throw things like the blockade and therefore late-war unrestricted submarine warfare into ahistorical paths. The historical lesson here is important too, I think. After a tactical victory and a strategic defeat at Jutland, the High Seas Fleet never sortied again to attempt a general engagement. British superiority kept the entire German surface fleet bottled up for the rest of the war, which was a strong incentive towards submarine warfare. Also, I think the legend/myth of Trafalgar is terribly important -- it amplifies the moral and political impact of victories and defeats at sea. I'd hazard a guess that a disaster at Jutland would have been far more politically painful than the defeat at Gallipoli, for example. Edit, just to add: If there's any good plan after completely destroying enough of the enemy's fleet to remove their numerical advantage, it would be to just head straight back to port. If Hipper and Scheer had managed to destroy Battlecruiser Squadron and maul 5th Battle Squadron, then hosed off back to Wilhelmshaven, the British would be left wondering just what the hell happened, and what's wrong with the bloody ships, while the Germans could make good all their damaged ships and seek a general engagement with numbers even and morale in their favor. No bid COVID fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 21:14
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DerLeo posted:Everything else you and unluckyimmortal have said is well taken, but that I have to nitpick on: Room 40 can still read all the German fleet's radio communications, so while the High Seas Fleet can decide whether to sally or not the decision to give battle is going to rest with Britain.
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Nov 14, 2013 21:23
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brocretin posted:I don't reckon a phalanx would be very useful against the Parthians - it strikes me as far, far too slow and unwieldy to engage horse archers. Cataphracts might be dissuaded from a frontal charge, but those soldiers are still gonna take it from constant bombardment and if they break, then the entire formation is pretty useless. I think I'm correct in saying that the phalanx only functions as intended in relatively enclosed areas like the mountainous portions of Greece.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:36
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Well, the thing is, if you're going to wear a sword as a fashion accessory or to win a fight versus one other guy, it's going to be long and skinny. If you're going to use it to cut brush or a bunch of limbs or pike heads off, it's going to be fatter and heavier and shorter. Basically, I think what's at play here is that courtiers probably often took their dueling swords with them when they went to go play officer.
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Nov 16, 2013 21:31
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a travelling HEGEL posted:These dudes have decades of professional experience.
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Nov 16, 2013 21:48
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Koramei posted:I don't know why so many people discount thin(ner- they're really not even that thin) swords. They are perfectly good at killing people. Slashes are more cinematically impressive, but in most cases, a thrust through your vital organs is actually more lethal. And even with comparatively heavier swords, going through someone's leg or whatever isn't easy. (and slicing someone's hand off is not that hard even with a thin sword)
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Nov 16, 2013 23:12
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gradenko_2000 posted:I could be completely wrong on this, but I thought the lesson that the Entente needed to learn was to attack on a narrow front. Broad offensives would just get thrown back by the second echelon of the German defense-in-depth, but if you just took a small slice of trench and held on tight you could stay there. Was I getting it backwards?
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Nov 17, 2013 00:20
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It's funny, up until this moment I assumed I just misunderstood the whole zimmerit thing somehow. I always figured that zimmerit must have been used in response to some real threat, and when the Germans stopped applying it to new tanks it was simply a late war cost-cutting measure that ultimately didn't really hurt them too much. But the actual story is so much funnier.
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Nov 17, 2013 05:32
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Leyte was a mess, but it occurred far too late in the war to actually change any outcomes. The primary fuckup committed by the US was Halsey leaving a bunch of escort carriers, destroyers, and various types of transport ship effectively uncovered in the face of a fairly sizable but by no means huge Japanese task force. That same task force ended up breaking off its' attack against the uncovered transports and escort carriers when a handful of American destroyers got in the way, launched a bunch of torpedoes at the Japanese force, laid down smoke screens, and ultimately got shot to pieces. That handful of destroyers probably saved thousands, if not tens of thousands, of American lives in the process. If not for Halsey's fuckup, Halsey might have been able to bag all of Kurita's center force, which probably wouldn't have mattered all that much because all the capital ships in center force were destroyed within a year of the Battle off Samar (which is what that particular piece of the Battle of Leyte Gulf was called). On the other hand, Kurita could have probably inflicted pretty serious casualties before center force was stopped. I doubt that would have mattered, even in the intermediate term, because any losses Kurita could have inflicted would have been replaceable.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:30
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It's funny, every time I read about WWII in the Pacific for any reason I am again shocked at the waste of resources represented by the Yamato and Musashi, particularly in light of Japan's serious material disadvantage and the fact that neither ship actually managed to engage the enemy to any effect that even remotely justified their existence. I've read, although I don't know whether or not this is actually true - that the design documents have been lost or destroyed for the Yamato class, and as both reside deep under the Pacific now, many specifics of their designs are and will forever remain unknown. I think that's a shame, but I also find it rather darkly funny. Edit: On the subject of Halsey and Leyte Gulf, the following detail cannot be omitted: Halsey received the following message after he hosed off leaving Taffy 3 undefended: quote:TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS quote:The message (and its trailing padding) became famous, and created some ill feeling, since it appeared to be a harsh criticism by Nimitz of Halsey's decision to pursue the decoy carriers and leave the landings uncovered. "I was stunned as if I had been struck in the face", Halsey later recalled. "The paper rattled in my hands, I snatched off my cap, threw it on the deck, and shouted something I am ashamed to remember", letting out an anguished sob. RADM Robert Carney, Halsey's Chief of Staff (who had argued strongly in favor of pursuing the carriers), witnessed Halsey's emotional outburst and reportedly grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, shouting "Stop it! What the hell's the matter with you? Pull yourself together!" Recognizing his failure, Halsey sulked in inactivity for a full hour while Taffy 3 was fighting for its life – falsely claiming to be refueling his ships – before eventually turning around with his two fastest battleships, three light cruisers and eight destroyers and heading back to Samar, too late to have any impact on the battle. No bid COVID fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 19:58
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Just goes to show that Germany does not hold a monopoly amongst the Axis powers on building completely worthless giant-piece-of-poo poo vehicles and ships.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:09
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I've always loved that wikipedia entry. quote:L-Tower was demolished after the war and replaced by a very similar looking building by T-Mobile. This is so cute: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haus_des_Meeres
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Nov 18, 2013 20:25
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They were quite effective at providing a reliable shelter to a relatively tiny minority of each city's population. Again, just a comically inefficient use of resources.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:39
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Not only that but he threw his uniform cap on the floor and stomped on it, then sulked for an hour before ordering his force to assist Taffy 3. People were literally dying while he sulked. This isn't Achilles we're talking about, this happened in 1944.
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Nov 18, 2013 21:12
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wdarkk posted:The idea behind the Yamato class was that any challenger would be too big to fit through the Panama Canal. If the US had known their true size earlier we might have put more priority on getting the Montana class built and then who knows what they would have done with them, or if they'd have built fewer aircraft carriers. Remember that the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940 specified the construction of 18 aircraft carriers and 7 battleships, which is a very fortunate ratio. Remember that Pearl Harbor hasn't happened yet, and even Taranto is a few months away. Nevertheless Congress is going all in on aircraft carriers: "The modern development of aircraft has demonstrated conclusively that the backbone of the Navy today is the aircraft carrier. The carrier, with destroyers, cruisers and submarines grouped around it[,] is the spearhead of all modern naval task forces."
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Nov 18, 2013 23:02
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Is the degree of tumblehome represented on that Dutch frigate accurate for the time, or is it just kinda amateurish perspective?
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Nov 19, 2013 21:55
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Slavvy posted:I'm sorry if this has come up before but I'm lazy. It depends on what sources you go by, but the formation, called the Quincunx, was generally deployed with the hastati manipules in the front, with wide spaces between them, the principes manipules behind them, covering the gaps, and the triarii either in a solid line or in a similar formation with gaps. This meant that units could, in theory, fall back in good order through the line behind them. It's a lot more likely that the line behind could advance as cohesive manipules. The Quincunx formation allowed the youngest men in the best physical shape to tire out the enemy, gain some experience, and have a fairly safe route back through a line of veterans once they started to tire or panic. In the time frame of the Camillan and Polybian military systems, this was used to fairly good effect against a bunch of different enemies of Rome. As far as the question of parade drills go, some of Rome's greatest military strengths related very strongly to drill and marching. Much of the history of Rome's military victories is of smaller forces of Romans destroying much larger numbers of non-Romans. There's surely some exaggeration going on, but think about it this way -- you've got a huge blob of men that you just aim at the enemy and tell them to charge. They get snarled up on the front ranks and lap around the sides of the blocks of enemy soldiers, failing to gain ground because they're in square formation. It turns into a grinding slog. None of your men are resting, and you have effectively very little tactical control over them. Suddenly, most of the enemy's front line begins to fall back in fairly good order. They pull back, and though your men are tired they give chase, straight into a second line of veterans, who have been waiting for the opportunity. That's when things start to get ugly. However, the Roman military also had a huge political problem, in that armies tasked to actually fight a war tended to be lead by any given year's Consuls. If you have a good general, you're almost certainly not going to have him next year. For every Gaius Marius (who destroyed the Germans), Rome ended up stuck with a Quintus Servilius Caepio (who managed to lose 120,000 men to them, including an army he didn't even command). Rome took one hell of a beating against the Germans because they basically kept giving the top command to bumblers, so at least in that regard, their command structure had some major problems. Rodrigo Diaz posted:Mail was indeed designed to deal with arrows. It would not do to have an armour that could not cope with one of the most common threats on the battlefield, and other pointed weapons like spears and swords would pose similar problems. This article: http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html will be of interest to you. I would be interested to see tests of historical and modern produced mail against spear thrusts though, I find myself a lot more skeptical of mail's ability to resist a solid spear thrust, although the article you linked does have some slightly frightening anecdotes: quote:...the horseman who struck Philip the knight, for verily the Franks have all been astounded on account of that blow which pierced two layers of links (back and front) in the knight's coat of mail and did not kill him. No bid COVID fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Nov 21, 2013 |
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Nov 21, 2013 08:16
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I looked it back up because it never actually made sense to me this way, but my memory turned out to be correct and the events themselves nonsensical. Belgium was effectively non-neutral through the 1920s, but began to pull out of the Allies in the early 30s, and by 1936 had made a formal declaration of neutrality and ceased open cooperation with France. This was mostly a Belgian initiative and so you might say that the idea of a permanently neutral Belgium was resurrected by the Belgian government just in time to gently caress up defensive planning for WWII.
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Nov 23, 2013 06:46
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I recently reread Robert K Massie's Peter the Great, and I was reminded of a couple things that always really bothered me about the Pruth campaign. As a tiny bit of background, the Tsar had recently won an overwhelming victory at Poltava against Sweden, which terminated Swedish interference in Russia, Poland, most of the Baltic States, and Finland, the latter two not being independent countries at the time but Russian reconquests. The King of Sweden, Charles XII, was left in exile in the Ottoman Empire, at the time not yet in its "sick man of Europe" phase but still having a difficult time winning wars against western powers. At Charles' urging, the Ottomans repudiated a 30-year armistice that they had concluded with Russia in 1695, and brought an army, about 200,000 strong, north into Bessarabia to invade Russia. The Tsar pulled together a force of about 50,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, and relying on local prices rising up to aid him, went to meet the Ottomans. It was a strategic disaster, as the princes either never rose or failed to provide enough strength to balance out the numbers. Still, there were a couple elements of the campaign that presaged the increasing difficulty the Ottomans would face over the 18th century -- while Peter didn't have enough infantry to engage the Ottomans without risking envelopment (indeed, envelopment is what happened!) his cavalry got around into the rear area of the much larger Ottoman army and began to sever their strategic supply lines and destroy their stockpiles, while the Janissaries took sharp casualties in the early fighting and were "disinclined" to attack again. All in all, if Peter had enough men to provide a stand-up fight to the Ottomans, it could have, by my reading, been a classical "underdeveloped country fields a horde, gets destroyed" military disaster for them. The two things that have always really bothered me are: 1. When Russia was actively fighting Sweden's army on the Russian western frontier, they raised an army of about 250,000 total, and refused to engage the Swedes without significant numerical superiority. This served them very well, and the combination of attrition and numerical superiority more or less won the war for Russia before Poltava even occurred. On the Pruth, however, Peter only drew on a small fraction of the forces he had just recently raised, and therefore almost ruined himself. Why? Why not pull together an army of 150,000 or so instead? They were already trained and armed, just dispersed. 2. Why not sortie the fleet from Azov, while they're at it, force the straits of Kerch, and bombard Constantinople to set it on fire? People of the time knew of the dangers of great fires in cities, and Constantinople was (by what I've read) mostly made out of wood at the time. Why not inflict a serious moral and strategic blow that way? If a Russian fleet controlled the Sea of Marmara there wouldn't be any opportunity to reinforce the Grand Vizier's army in the Balkans. The Pruth campaign has always bothered me rather a lot, simply because it seems to me that it could have been a crushing defeat for the Ottomans, and a Russian army at the gates of Constantinople in 1711 would change, well, most of the course of European history since 1700. Imagine no Crimean war, no angry Serbians gunning for the Archduke in 1914, and possibly no Balkan wars in general after the Russian victory.
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Dec 12, 2013 19:14
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