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Nenonen posted:[cool post on WWII assault guns and turretless tank destroyers] I forget if this was posted in the last milhist thread or a different one, but this guy was mentioned in relation to this topic, as a lot of Panzerjagers were his "designs", to the extent that you can really call an improvised vehicle mating wildly disparate parts that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Becker Nazi Germany really pushed it to the limit with pressing captured materiel into service.
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Nov 16, 2013 00:30
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Were land mines used much in World War I? They seem like they'd be an appropriate weapon for static warfare revolving around heavily fortified defensive lines.
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Nov 17, 2013 03:58
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ArchangeI posted:If you are 70 and still in the job of stabbing dudes in the face with a pike you did something fundamentally wrong along the way. Since this post got me wondering, what would retirement look like for an old soldier in this era and earlier? Would he even be able to retire? If so, how would he support himself?
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Nov 27, 2013 22:49
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Slavvy posted:I wonder at the accuracy of these figures, I remember reading that the soviet method of testing armour effectiveness was...less than scientific. They would repeatedly shoot the same tank using multiple munitions, which would weaken the armour and skew the results. Also 'destroyed' could just mean disabled and ditched by the crew, or ditched and not recovered by enemy forces in time, or ditched then destroyed by heavier weapons. To be fair, captured German tank supplies for testing are probably pretty limited and I'm going to guess fabricating armored plates of the same quality and composition of German ones just for testing is quite impractical as well in the Soviet wartime economy.
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Dec 2, 2013 16:00
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Ghost of Mussolini posted:What matters to Italy is that it finishes the war on the right side. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeVWupFBkA8 (it was a lot easier to find this video than to find and copy/paste a lengthy section from the book  )For content, I recently read Beevor's D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, and basically he makes Montgomery sound like a pompous, incompetent rear end all the way through, though with a few random nods to his "undoubted abilities" or something like that, though said abilities are never really supported by the text. So, what exactly was Montgomery good at? I know he made his name beating Rommel in Africa, but how much of that was due to being a good general, and how much was due to America's entry into the war and material superiority over the Germans? I hear and read a lot of disparaging opinions of him, but he had to have something good about him I assume, since the Eight Army went through a few commanders before sticking with Monty.
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Dec 4, 2013 17:11
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meatbag posted:In Beevors Berlin 1945, he says that soviet troops were baffled by hollow toothpicks. Poor russians He also points out that the relative material wealth found in German homes really pissed off the Russian soldiers something fierce, because if the Germans had it so good, why the hell did they want to come to Russia and steal and destroy all the Russians' stuff?
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Dec 5, 2013 15:28
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Shermans are all well and good, but how many tank destroyers would it take to take down an M1?
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Dec 6, 2013 20:05
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Hogge Wild posted:Was it Turtledove that had a book about South African whites conquering whole Africa with their Spartan like society? Turtledove had a book where Afrikaners gave the Confederacy assault rifles.
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Dec 7, 2013 01:31
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Raskolnikov38 posted:A bit off topic but how do you get thread stats like that? Click on the number of replies when viewing the forum topic list or your bookmarks in the user control panel.
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Dec 8, 2013 03:18
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Bacarruda posted:Didn't stop the Germans from doing it... Yeah but that's an artillery vehicle, essentially, that isn't really meant to be shot at, whereas a tank that can't withstand small arms fire is pretty much retarded, since then what's the point of putting the rockets on a tank instead of just a truck or half track?
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Dec 8, 2013 05:05
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Taerkar posted:It's entirely the creation of one guy who thinks that the M113 is the pinnacle of military design. Everything that comes out of him is distilled crazy and horrible youtube videos. MiGs Beware: AeroGavins are Armed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwHqLtK_TpY This is what somebody really believes.
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Dec 11, 2013 16:22
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I remember reading that they used .50 cals (mounted on halftracks in a quad mount) in a similar way in Korea, though then again I've also heard they used just about every weapon possible for indirect fire there (like tanks) since it was so hilly and largely static warfare.
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Dec 16, 2013 17:16
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EvanSchenck posted:Niall Ferguson's deal is that he is very talented, educated at the very best institutions, and wrote very good work early in his career, but rather than continuing to do serious history he chose to work his way into a position as court historian and pet intellectual for British and American conservatism. Pankaj Mishra's fierce takedown of Ferguson in the Guardian is a great read and a good explanation of why Carlin's citation of The Pity of War turned me right off. He's basically a Tory piece of poo poo who writes books about how we'd all be better off if stuffed shirt Brit aristocrats had ruled the world forever. I remember Niall Ferguson...fondly...for being one of the first authors to introduce high school aged me to the idea that I should take all my history reading with a grain of salt, since there isn't one "history" that's universally agreed on, but a lot of view points, and some of them are crackpots. The War of the World has to be one of the most disturbing books I've ever read, both for the detailed descriptions of genocidal atrocities during WWII, but also for taking all the bloodshed he's detailed and saying "it's a real shame this all happened, since all our self-destruction has made us too weak to keep our boots on the Third World hordes' throats and they're going to inevitably overtake the West now."
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Dec 27, 2013 03:23
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Well keep in mind that Germany occupied almost all of Belgium, and a decently sized chunk of France. That's not really something you can just let go.
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Jan 11, 2014 00:24
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Was there any such thing as "reverse lend-lease"? Did the other Allies send anything to the Americans in return for their material aid, or was killing Germans payment enough? I understand lend-lease was basically supposed to be free poo poo for other countries in support of the war effort, but surely there'd be some things the Americans might be interested in getting their hands on other Allies could provide too.
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Feb 6, 2014 01:53
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Ensign Expendable posted:The USSR sent the UK and USA a KV-1 and T-34 tank each for trials. I remember reading about that on your blog, yeah. It's actually kind of what got me wondering if other nations had paid back, in some way, American material assistance. Also thanks for all the answers so far, folks 
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Feb 6, 2014 22:38
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I'm almost finished with Tooze's The Wages of Destruction, and it was a lot more engrossing than I expected so it's whet my appetite for more. Are there any similar books on the war economies of any of the other WWII combatants? Especially the Soviet Union would be interesting, since Tooze repeatedly mentions that the German "armaments miracle" was overblown, while the Soviet armaments production effort really was incredible by comparison.
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Feb 20, 2014 19:16
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FishFood posted:This may not be the best thread to post it, but this is the only thread I can find with any military theory in it, and dammit, I want your opinions! Apparently the Air Force has killed the A-10. I know it was an old plane (that means it's military history, right? That's probably technically on-topic in this thread, but more contemporary military issues tend to come up a lot in this thread and I believe this exact subject was discussed recently: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3373768
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Feb 28, 2014 01:35
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ArchangeI posted:"Comrade Chairman, I will be shot for this, but you are a bit of a dick sometimes." Let's be honest, if you were in Stalin's position it'd be hard to resist the temptation to gently caress with people like that. Granted, to get to where Stalin was you'd have to be a complete rear end in a top hat to begin with...
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Mar 15, 2014 18:01
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gradenko_2000 posted:My favorite story about the Il-2: That reminds me of something in an Osprey book I have about the P-39 Airacobra (P-39 Airacobra Aces of World War 2), which has a photo of the plane flown by Ivan Babak and later Grigorii Dol'nikov. On the side of it (so the photo's caption tells me) they have painted on it, "From the Schoolchildren of Mariupol". Which is pretty funny because, for anybody not familiar with planes, the P-39 is an American plane that was provided under Lend-Lease. Maybe the school got together and wrote a letter to Roosevelt? jaegerx posted:I was thinking in theatre. Didn't count the pacific. I'm sure America had more overall. They took whatever they could get initially since the Germans annihilated the Red Air Force at least as completely as the Red Army on the ground during Barbarossa, taking hammy-down Hurricanes from the RAF for instance, but they didn't take everything they could get once they had gotten past the crisis period. Several aircraft types were given to the Soviets but not used in front line service, or only used in small numbers. They were provided with Spitfires but didn't use them much because apparently ground troops mistook them for German fighters a lot, resulting in friendly-fire incidents. I believe they were also provided with P-47s but chose not to use them because they had aircraft like the IL-2 which already performed the ground attack role adequately, and had no need for high altitude air superiority fighters. On the other hand the aforementioned P-39 was a plane that the Americans and RAF pretty much could not ditch fast enough because it had short range and lovely high altitude performance, which made it pretty worthless for their needs in every theater but perhaps the Mediterranean. The Soviets though loved them because they were heavily armed, were manufactured with much higher and consistent quality than domestic aircraft, and most Eastern Front air combat was at low altitudes and fought by aircraft based very near the front lines. The Osprey book even mentions, while talking about the Tatar ace Sultan Amet-Khan, that at one point his squadron actually established a fighter base behind German lines so they could harass German transports flying aerial resupply missions 
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Mar 21, 2014 03:53
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War bonds would be a pretty similar thing, though I doubt you could put them to a specific unit or toward a plane or whatever, instead just it being a generalized contribution to the war effort. I vaguely remember some news paper ads or propaganda posters one of my history teachers had on their class room wall advertising war bonds, pitching them like "if you buy this amount in war bonds you will pay for one of these things for our soldiers, buy war bonds today!" edit: gradenko_2000 posted:Weren't war bonds effectively the same thing, just less desperate, less melodramatic and more organized? Tooze's Wages of Destruction mentions that the Germans didn't want to issue war bonds (or, iirc, any other kind of public bonds) because if the public failed to buy them in sufficient numbers it would undermine the Nazi regime since it would be a tangible demonstration of the public's antipathy toward the government and party. Pornographic Memory fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Mar 21, 2014 |
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Mar 21, 2014 05:37
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Phobophilia posted:Could you give details on how they pulled this off? Unfortunately no, I was wondering how myself but the book only says that they did it without any more elaboration. The only real question would be how they got supplies there, I think, since most of the "runways" they'd be flying off of in the Eastern front would just be grass or dirt in the first place.
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Mar 21, 2014 16:48
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PittTheElder posted:What's the deal with all the high masts and faux-rigging on those cruisers? Radio masts and guy-wires to support them? You'd still need a guy sitting in a really tall place to spot stuff for you before they invented radars or put spotter aircraft on ships.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:47
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Are there any real examples of land or sea AA totally defeating sizeable air attacks on their own? It seems like lots of armed forces invest crazy amounts of money and resources into AA guns or SAMS or whatever, but at the end of the day none of them are ever as good at killing planes as another airplane.
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Apr 4, 2014 05:49
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Many of the most productive areas, in terms of farming, industry, and natural resources, were the areas occupied by the Germans. The USSR managed to move an impressive amount of industry, but obviously you can't take mines or farms, or all your industrial equipment and workers, with you. Much of the Ukraine and Belarus weren't liberated until 1943-1944, and being the scenes of heavy fighting, would not be in shape to contribute greatly to economic productivity immediately after being reoccupied.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:09
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I wish political cartoons of today were like that. If somebody made political cartoons of Ted Cruz farting in Obama's face it would be an improvement over whatever trash they're churning out today. Not even pretending to bother with fancy metaphors they are too clumsy and dumb to properly utilize, just outright say "this guy I dislike is a poophead and so I am drawing this picture of even more poop being placed on his head."
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Apr 13, 2014 17:48
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Xlorp posted:How not-simple of an exercise in logic is it to game out the exploitative stunts and idiotically obsolete strategies before you commit a generation of your country's blood? Can it be done or is the problem always too big? For what its worth, Prussian officers invented modern tabletop wargaming as a way of simulating campaigns in the early 1800's, specifically playing a game called "Kriegsspiel", which had been noted as being part of the staff training that enabled them to win the Franco-Prussian War. So, by WWI, the idea of gaming out potential campaigns should have been pretty established, though I have no idea on the specifics or if the rules would have taken into account the major technological advances between the Franco-Prussian War and World War I.
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May 15, 2014 01:32
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Shimrra Jamaane I appreciate you taking one for the team and torturing yourself with execrable television/history for our amusement.
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May 28, 2014 02:14
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Frostwerks posted:To be perfectly fair if you were writing a history paper on world war 2 in the 1800s, it kinda seems like a D is a generous grade. "What the gently caress is this kid writing about an army conquering Europe using water tanks for? And flying machines dropping explosives? And Communists, taking over Russia? Is he on opium?"
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May 29, 2014 04:26
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Ensign Expendable posted:In proud Soviet tradition, tanks received factory designations. Sometimes they were just numbers (212, 111, 240) indicating the factory, sometimes the factory indicator was a letter. In cases of tanks, the letter would be replaced with a T when the army referred to it (exception: BT series), while the three letter code would be prefixed with a T. This was in no way confusing, except Kirov Factory was the best factory[1] and its chief engineer was the brilliant and handsome Joseph Kotin[2], they did everything in their special way. If the tank series had a special name (like the KV), it might get used instead of T, making things like "tank 220", "T-220", and "KV-220" the same thing. Oh, also they loved reusing the special indices: the KV-3 could refer to the T-150 or the "second KV-3", tank 233. Was this system the result, or the cause, of excessive vodka consumption? Or was it a self-reinforcing feedback loop where the guys giving these things names were constantly hammered, making their names even more confusing, thus requiring further alcohol consumption by those who have this "system" inflicted on them to try and cope?
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May 30, 2014 20:51
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Well, the Battle of the Bulge took place during the winter, so they got that much right I guess.
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Jun 1, 2014 21:22
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Davin Valkri posted:Does that mean that Ace Combat is a correct and accurate description of aerial warfare? Yes, in real life fighter planes can carry well over 100 missiles for a single sortie. No other way to bring down the flying battleships.
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Jun 2, 2014 05:29
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It was expected that aerial bombardment would be ridiculously more lethal against civilian populations than it turned out to be in reality is one thing I remember reading a long time ago.
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Jun 10, 2014 03:58
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Don't forget flamboyant clothes.
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Jun 11, 2014 18:18
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Most of what I've read on the P-39 was that it was pretty well-received by the Russians, though they were kind of cast-offs from the Western Allies since it was the exact opposite of the typical high alt/long range fighter the Americans and British favored. Lend-lease of that particular plane to the Russians accounted for half of all its production, it saw service with several Guards units, and Bell designed a much upgraded version, the P-63 King Cobra, essentially for Soviet use since 2/3 of its production went to the Soviets. Supposedly pilots liked it for much the same reasons tankers might like the Sherman over the T-34 - every plane had a radio, they had much more consistent and higher quality of manufacture, and Soviet-made cockpits often used a material that would often turn yellow and cloud up over time, whereas American planes had cockpit glass that would actually stay clear.
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Jun 14, 2014 17:15
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I'd also appreciate an explanation of some issues with 1493, since I'm reading through it right now. I'm not sure if 1491 also has similar problems, but it seemed like a stronger book whereas 1493 reads like a cash-in that covers a huge array of topics with not much focus or depth.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:13
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Vegetable posted:Earlier in this thread somebody mentioned how the USSR was able to raise divisions very quickly to replace losses in Barbarossa. My question is: How did they mobilize so quickly and in such numbers? Was it expected by any of the European powers, or even the USSR themselves, that the USSR had such manpower in depth? Because it seems we tend to judge the Nazis as crazy for tangling with the USSR, but surely they wouldn't have invaded if they knew the USSR was so numerous as to be essentially unbeatable. I'd think that any large, bureaucratic state that practices universal conscription on a scale large enough to maintain a millions-strong army would be able to draw huge numbers of men into the armed forces pretty quickly. That means that you have a system already in place to keep track of and reach large numbers of people to bring them into the army every year, and men who had already served their term of conscription would still be reservists subject to call up at short notice for some time afterwards. I think the real shock to the Nazis was less that the Soviet Union had so much manpower at their disposal - the real shocker was more that the Soviet state could suffer such catastrophic losses of territory and manpower, and not suffer some sort of political collapse like Tsarist Russia did. edit: and to add on to what Ensign Expendable said, keep in mind that in the interwar period the USSR was an international pariah state that was more or less expecting that, at some point, would have to fight a massive war of national survival. Granted, WWII didn't exactly get off to the sort of start they had envisioned, but they had been stockpiling arms, building up defense industries, propagandizing to the people, and building up their armed forces for almost two decades to this end (with some setbacks like the purges) by the time the Germans invaded. Pornographic Memory fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 01:56
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Yes I'm an American. Incidentally is there any special reason that we call it "the draft" and not "conscription"? Is it because it sounds too European (aka is a big word)?
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Jul 1, 2014 02:29
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LimburgLimbo posted:In that period many people referred to any SMG as a Tommy Gun. Keep in mind the Thompson was one of the first successful SMGs, especially in the US where it entered public consciousness more than just about any single firearm ever. It's the same as how people say Kleenex instead of facial tissue. Though it does make me wonder how the Tommy gun would have entered Soviet consciousness since a lot of its fame was tied to being a gun used by gangsters. Did the Soviets make much propaganda hay out of mafia-related crime and violence? It seems like it'd be pretty easy, "look whats happening in the capitalist world, they have all these gangs running around killing people left and right, isn't it so nice we have Comrade Stalin in charge keeping you safe from this gangsterism that's taken hold in the west?"
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Jul 4, 2014 14:26
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Tevery Best posted:They did it all the time. I've seen a 1950s Polish newsreel that touches on the subject, I can grab it and provide translation later. Maybe after the war but it definitely had some notoriety predating the war for its association with Prohibition-era gang violence, most notably in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The Thompson was not manufactured until 1921, precluding any chance of WWI service, and the number of Americans serving in the interwar period would have been a very small.
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Jul 4, 2014 14:42
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