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What's the oldest known shield like? (not counting your own bones)
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Nov 13, 2013 20:22
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Mans posted:There's a goon in Goons in Platoons that talked about his time spent on a military position in Western Germany that was considered to be destroyed in less than half an hour if the cold war went hot. "x will be destroyed in y minutes when the war starts" is a universal truth that applies to anything, if military hearsay is to be believed. Common example: "Russians built all their vehicles to a lower standard because they were calculated to be destroyed in the first five/fifteen/thirty minutes of combat". Which is obvious hogwash. What good in a mobile war is a vehicle, whether tank or truck, that doesn't manage a 300km march without breaking down?
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Nov 14, 2013 14:31
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SeanBeansShako posted:I wouldn't say it was wrong, just massively simplified. I'm in a hurry so this'll be brief & stupid but rifle maximum ranges can be misleading - sure, the weapon itself is powerful and accurate enough, but most of actual combat, or hits resulting in casualties, take place at much reduced distances. Also I see veekie didn't mention infantry in particular. Field artillery changed the battlefield more than musket ball, I'd say - you would still desire a bayonet or a sword to go with the latter.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:49
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especially with a scope in the trained hands of a marksman.
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:What are some of your favorite military-related songs? Folk songs or marching songs, it doesn't matter. One of the most beautiful and most  songs I know is the Hills of Manchuria, a waltz written by a veteran of the Russo-Japanese war.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWDgs34wilk If you ever need a truly eerie military march, you should go for the old Swedish "Narva March". Supposedly played as Charles XII's army slowly approached Narva amid a blizzard. Nowadays used in funerals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM3t-17Godc
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Nov 14, 2013 23:22
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A word on a (mostly) WW2 phenomenon known as assault guns. When it comes to big clunky chunks of steel, tanks tend to get all the attention, and subsequently assault guns sometimes get portrayed as badly designed tanks, which is a horrible and misleading misconception. What I'd like to show is that assault guns were a broad category of armoured fighting vehicles designed on varying budgets and for varying roles. I'm taking it as granted that when I say 'assault gun', you will understand that I mean a tracked vehicle with a fixed superstructure, rather than a tank with a 360 degree rotating turret. What's less clear is the difference between an assault gun and a tank destroyer (whether Panzerjäger or Jagdpanzer). NOT to be confused with US tank destroyers which had rotating turrets. The term 'assault gun' comes from German 'Sturmgeschütz'. It's a good name for the initial design, if not so much for what it eventually became: the first StuG was intended for direct fire support of infantry assaulting enemy positions. Strictly speaking, the first tanks until FT-17 were assault guns, as they had no fully rotating turrets (though you could excuse the models with sponson guns - the land battleship approach). But why would you support your infantry with such things instead of proper tanks, you ask? Well! Tanks require lots of scarce resources, and German doctrine dictated that true tanks should be concentrated in tank divisions that acted as the offensive spearheads, rather than spread evenly among the infantry divisions as was more the case in the French army. Germany couldn't afford both spreading tanks across all infantry divisions and forming big Panzer divisions, so they went for the budget option: assault gun battalions. StuG III was based on the Panzer III chassis, but was cheaper to produce (and upkeep) without all the complicated turret mechanisms, and at the same time could hold a larger gun than the Panzer III turret and turret ring (at the time) could carry. The original 75mm L/24 gun was just fine for reducing infantry strongpoints. The lack of machinegun was inconsequential as the AFV was meant to act together with supporting infantry. It could, in theory, engage enemy light armour, but it wasn't its purpose at all. It would be at a disadvantage when doing so, as the gun had only a limited horizontal traverse, so close cooperation between crew members was required.  Germany went into Adolf's War poorly prepared, and it soon became obvious that even a 50mm high velocity anti-tank gun was barely adequate when facing tanks as heavy as Matilda II, T-34 or KV-1/2. Not only was the production of long 75mm anti-tank guns inadequate in 1941, the production of the heavier Panzer IV chassis wasn't picking up nearly enough (and Panzers VI and V were still far away from completion). Pz III turret ring just couldn't carry the 75mm high velocity guns (at first L/43, then L/48), but the chassis itself was more than sufficient to house the much heavier gun. So abracadabra, the assault gun becomes a tank destroyer, supposed to ambush approaching enemy tanks and swiftly change position... yet still gets called as an assault gun. Which makes sense, perhaps, as the basic job of assault gun battalions remained the same. But with great power comes a great responsibility: German Panzer reserves were always on the low side, so the assault gun/tank destroyers often had to stretch to act as panzers as well. Which they did more or less badly, depending on how good their crews were. Late in the war, there were also some changes - one in three StuG platoons was to be equipped with 105mm gun for added HE firepower, and as Panzer IV went out of fashion the chassis was turned into StuG IV. At the same time, Panzer divisions had become so depleted that sometimes tank battalions were fitted with assault guns.  Panzerjägers were a related development. Germans had plenty of captured French and Czech tank frames to work with, and some of these were turned into self-propelled anti-tank guns, or Panzerjägers, tank hunters. They were open topped vehicles acting in place of anti-tank guns but able to reverse out of positions immediately after exposing themselves, thus avoiding the inevitable retaliatory barrage that a dug-in infantry anti tank gun battery would have had less luck with, even if they were motorized rather than relying on horses. Some of these were absolute mongrels - Russian gun on a Czech chassis and so on.  In addition, late in the war there were the Jagdpanzers - including Jagdpanzer IV (based on Panzer IV), Jagdpanther (based on Panzer V Panther) and Jagdtiger (based on Panzer VI - you guessed it - Tiger). These were basically equivalent to the StuG but geared more for offensive anti-tank warfare than supporting infantry. In the case of the long barreled Jagdpanzer IV (75L/70), the Jagdpanther (88mm) and the Jagdtiger (128mm), the base models also wouldn't have been able to carry such heavy anti-tank guns. Logically StuG should have been called Jagdpanzer III from 1942 on, as that's what it became. However, this was a design dictated by necessity, rather than design by preference. Beggars can't be choosers.  TL;DR: Early war German assault guns were mobile infantry support platforms. Mid and late war they took the additional role of tank hunters, when they weren't straight up used as tank replacements.
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Nov 15, 2013 23:33
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The interrupter gear doesn't stop the blades when you shoot, which would disastrous. It syncs the gun with the propellor so that shots can only be fired when the blade is in a certain, non-blowupabble position. This way you can change the speed of the propellor without having to worry about getting your shots off. Another even kookier approach used in French and German interwar designs was to place a gun within the engine, to fire through a hollow propeller hub. Here's Bf-109 with two synchronized 13mm mg's and a 20mm autocannon firing through the propeller axis. 
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Nov 16, 2013 16:10
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SlothfulCobra posted:What would happen if that gun overheated? Would the plane's engine just explode? I'm sure this would be impossible. If the gun ever could become that hot (and since engines run hot already, it would need to be really hot to make a difference), its mechanism would sooner jam itself. But airplane autocannons also had very limited amount of ammunition, like a second or two's worth, so I don't think they'd heat up nearly enough even if the pilot shot all his ammo in a single burst.
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Nov 16, 2013 17:14
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Their most hilarious anti-mine method from the Germans was zimmerit. Having developed a mine/bomb a soldier could attach to a tank via magnet, the Germans begin pasting ridged clay onto their tanks, adding days to construction time. The ridges would prevent the mine from sticking to the hull and the tank moving was expected to shake it off, as they assumed the allies would also use magnetic mines. They never did. This description isn't quite accurate. The principle was to add some distance between the steel hull and the outer surface by adding a sufficiently thick non-magnetic layer, thus weakening the effectiveness of any magnets. The function of the ridges was to increase the thickness while keeping the zimmerit layer lighter (and presumably quicker to dry) than if it was an equally thick even layer. Before Hafthohlladung the Waffen SS developed a smaller non-magnetic sticky bomb, HL-handgranate, which relied on glue for its stickiness. What could possibly go wrong?
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Nov 17, 2013 12:36
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Farecoal posted:How effective were the various European resistance movements during World War 2, particularly the French? What's effective here? In principle they weren't a very effective military force, with the exception of Soviet Union where there was plenty of operational space for both communist and nationalist partisans, and stretched German supply lines to prey on. Even there they'd take a bad clobbering whenever they chose to directly confront the occupiers. German response to open resistance was always disproportionate violence aimed at local civilians (see death of Heydrich), which also kept the resistance underground. Even in Yugoslavia the partisan forces knew their limits, and Tito's headquarters were overrun by German paratroopers at one time. Paris uprising started just before Allied forces marched in, to give the communist resistance some political clout in post-war France. Warsaw uprising was a similar attempt at liberating the city so Red Army couldn't take that honour, but it was a premature move. But then the resistance had other functions - providing intelligence, helping with SOE operations, assisting Jewish refugees and Allied airmen stay underground and escape, preparing sabotage missions etc. This activity was especially significant in preparation to major conventional offensives like Overlord or Bagration. Wikipedia posted:A 1968 report from the Counter-insurgency Information Analysis Center details the results of the French Resistance's sabotage efforts: "In the southeast, 52 locomotives were destroyed on 6 June and the railway line cut in more than 500 places. Normandy was isolated as of 7 June. The telephone network in the invasion area was put out of order and beginning June 20, the railway lines of France were rendered inoperable, except in the Rhone Valley where the line Marseilles-Lyon was kept open by the Germans despite heavy engagements with [partisan] units.... Although the German local reserves were able to reach the front area despite resistance action... marked delays were achieved against the movement of strategic reserves. The French claim to have delayed up to 12 divisions for 8 to 15 days"
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Nov 18, 2013 01:13
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:Didn't the Soviets pause outside the city for the duration or the Warsaw uprising? This is still a point of contention. The Polish version goes that Stalin ordered his armies to halt to get rid of the Home Army, while the Russian version goes that the Red Army was forced to halt its advance for rest and refit after having spent all their energy advancing from Pripet to Vistula. The Red Army units approaching Warsaw were actually pushed back by German counter-attacks so I don't find the Russian version too unlikely. Could Soviets have saved the city if they really wanted to? Possibly, but Warsaw wasn't important enough strategically or politically for them to try it.
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Nov 18, 2013 01:44
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a travelling HEGEL posted:They do take the plum for these things, though. Have you ever been walking around Vienna, minding your own business, and then out of nowhere FLAK TOWER, looming out of the city like the concrete cover over Chernobyl? It's unnerving, man. Go about your life, do whatever you please--the FLAK TOWER doesn't give a drat. Were FlaK towers really worthless, though? To me it seems like it's an idea that could have been worthwhile for some non-German major cities too - elevating your heavy AA batteries above tree and rooftops while providing a heavily reinforced and defended shelter for your civilian population. AFAIK none of them were destroyed during war, and the Berlin Zoo tower provided direct fire support to defenders of Berlin and in general stood as a resistance strongpoint to the very end. But no disagreement here that the concept is quite boggling in comparison to what everyone else at the time was doing. Maybe one day people will see them as a romantic remnant of mankind's past, just like medieval forts do today (which must have inspired fear and terror in serfs). Nenonen fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 20:33
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Koesj posted:The black/yellow patches with the red stars are indeed branch insignia, top one is a pipeline units one The center top one is road construction - two wheels on bottom and a steering wheel at top. Pipeline badge has no wings (Mercury, patron of travelers?), either.
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Nov 22, 2013 18:02
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Why was the idea of a permanently neutral Belgium not repudiated after the First World War? Belgium not being able to coordinate with the allies until after a declaration of war against her was a major hindrance so why not remove it when the Germans are incapable of preventing it? Do you see viable alternatives? Everyone wanted to adjust to peace and there was no longer a threat, so holding an eternal grudge against the defeated Germany by forming a sort of proto-NATO (totes not intended against Russia anymore!) would have been unseemly. There's no way of knowing which way the political winds would blow ten or twenty years later - in an alternate history, maybe France actually ended under fascist rule while German republic prevailed. AdmiralSmeggins posted:I thought it might, and only did it this one time by means of an introduction, oh well. Ah, but you failed even in doing so. Should have gone with quote:Yours truly,
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Nov 23, 2013 14:20
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A sloth of bears. A school of gay hitlers.
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Nov 24, 2013 10:46
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Is Onfim the youngest known early historical author, as in the youngest person to have produced attributable (signed or otherwise) historical written documents?
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Nov 26, 2013 20:16
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Bacarruda posted:Stormtroopers/arditi spearhead the attack, supported by coordinated artillery fire (HE, shrapnel and/or gas). They neutralize strongpoints and break through the weakest portion of the line. Following infantry mop up any remaining pockets of resistance and exploit the breakthrough. Tanks are also handy for punching holes in enemy lines and expanding breakouts. It starts to fall apart once the enemy counterbarrage breaks the phone line connecting you and your artillery batteries with your assault troops, making runners the only viable option for coordination - meanwhile the defender has mostly intact underground phone lines and can coordinate his actions with zero delays.
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Nov 27, 2013 09:00
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VanSandman posted:Why didn't the trench war of WWI turn into a very nasty underground war? It did, in areas especially suitable for mining operations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hill_60_(Western_Front) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vimy_Ridge
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Nov 27, 2013 09:16
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Alan Smithee posted:Anyone got a good write up on why the bow and arrow is so ubiquitous in pretty much every culture? Paleolithic missile technologies such as slings, spear throwers or bow and arrow are ubiquitous because they're truly ancient, economically viable even in the direst of conditions and highly effective both in hunting (incl. fishing) and warfare, giving a noticeable edge over a mere javelin or thrown rock. Early technologies related to survival spread like a wildfire so you only needed one guy fiddle with the basic premise and soon everyone on this planet would be acquainted with it. Except Australians. My theory is that northern Australians were under no threat of invasion across the Strait of Torres so there was no pressure to try to adopt a technology that wasn't a particularly great improvement over spear throwers in hunting and actually looked more like a child's toy. Snobs. Bow and arrow also has the temporal benefit over other missile weapons in that while you can only improve a sling to a certain point, there's no theoretical limits to how much potential energy the bow can store. In this regard the bow is much like muskets, a simple basic design that offers unlimited improvability.
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Nov 27, 2013 15:44
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Squalid posted:Places like Australia which were very isolated from most of the human population just never figured it out. They weren't that isolated, in that there was some exchange with New Guineans. Who did have bow and arrows. It could be that the people who were in contact just didn't think it was of use to them. AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Any bored gradeschooler with a rubber band can rig up a simple bow and arrow using their fingers and a pencil. I think just about any place with stretchy animal tendons available could come up with the bow and arrow It's different trying to achieve something that you already know will work than by chance stumbling upon a concept and then making it kill things. Presumably everyone here knows how to make fire with some sticks and it's a really simple concept, but it becomes a lot harder if nobody ever showed or explained it to you. Including telling you that you can make fire all by yourself. But enough about that, it's impossible to tell and it's not pertinent to the thread. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Nov 27, 2013 |
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Nov 27, 2013 20:04
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Trench_Rat posted:after the fall of France the UK was offered an armisitce by Germany. Was the this delivered official through diplomatic channels or like radio propaganda broadcast. If i understand correctly it involved handing over some colonies to germany and retaining a symbolic army/navy Through Hess.
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Nov 28, 2013 20:13
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a travelling HEGEL posted:
It's not that an impregnable fortress built in the 20th century couldn't stop the enemy army (for a while), it's that it wasn't impregnable. With WW1 experiences in mind, the French built the Maginot line, Germans built the Siegfried line, Soviets built the Stalin line, Finns built the Mannerheim line, etc. They all were breached. Any doctrine based on static WW1-style defenses failed during the war. WW1-style deep trenchlines worked if you lacked quickly reacting motorized reserves - the heavily fortified line gave time for your infantry reserves to reach the hotspots. Likewise if you didn't have adequate anti-tank weapons your infantry could take shelter inside their bunkers and let enemy tanks pass while taking potshots at their supporting infantry (hoping there were no bunker busting tanks). Otherwise you were better off with not getting fixated over any particular position. More particular to the Patton quote, once you knew the location of a fortified position and estimated the thickness of its concrete crest, it was only a matter of arranging an aerial bomb or an artillery shell big enough to breach it. Especially by 1944-45 when all the major armies had ways of destroying or crippling even the thickest pillboxes by direct fire, and radar let you pinpoint the supporting artillery batteries.
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Nov 28, 2013 22:01
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Anyone who's educated in military matters who can think about fortresses without being awed by the intellectual work that went into them has mind problems. Is the 20th century so different from all earlier periods, or is he just wrong?
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Fangz posted:That is all well and good if you have those toys, and plenty of time to use them, but that is not always the case. Yep, there's obviously a ton of possible scenarios. But if your enemy is bound to a strategy of static defense and having no real way of counter-attacking, like the Finnish army was in the Mannerheim line 1939-40, it's a matter of spending a few days or weeks figuring out how to use heavy artillery most effectively. The bunkers are not going to move, and it's too late for the enemy to build back up defensive lines, so you might as well take your time demolishing them if you can't go around them. In that particular scenario it's not a waste of resources for the defender to build fortified lines, as they have no real alternatives. But in the end, it's only going to act as a speed bump and by 13 May 1940 everything is falling apart.
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Nov 28, 2013 22:57
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Alchenar posted:Or you just bypass them. In the case of Mannerheim line, no you don't. Or you get Suomussalmi/Raate road, or you go to Kollaa River only to meet with Simo Häyhä. The Karelian Isthmus is significant because it's the shortest route between Leningrad and Helsinki, a narrow isthmus and the only approach with a road network of a sort. North of Lake Ladoga you're stuck to one or two roads.
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Nov 28, 2013 23:09
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a travelling HEGEL posted:Hey now. Watch yourself. I have no idea what the metric system means, and despite my current place of residence, don't intend to start now. Cuius regio, eius mensurae.
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Dec 2, 2013 06:08
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Slavvy posted:The AK is regarded as being pretty heavy for it's class AFAIK, but being only the second weapon of it's kind ever made that's forgivable. It was certainly lighter than the assault rifle archetype, the Stg-44. No no no, read again, the gun is the Swedish Automatkarbin 5, not the Soviet Avtomat Kalashnikova 47. 
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Dec 3, 2013 20:58
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Arquinsiel posted:What I've been told is that Marshall Aid was funnelled north and used to rebuild industry while the south was just kept agricultural for <reasons> but I suspect the sources had a reason for wanting me to hear that version. The north had all the big industries before the event. If you want to keep the industrial workers happy & non-communist (one of the purposes of Marshall plan), you mostly want to invest there, building big expensive factories to where there is no supporting infrastructure, workforce or significant resources just doesn't make economical sense anyway.
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Dec 3, 2013 22:28
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Pornographic Memory posted: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. In part the 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein's victory in the desert is slightly diminished by how the basis for his eponymous victory was laid down by Auchinleck. It's not THAT demanding to come up with something when your enemy has been stopped dead on tracks in front of your superior force by your predecessor and you have a railway while your enemy's supplies have to be trucked in from Libya. Monty could take his dear time to micromanage a battle plan In addition, Germany could no longer just willy nilly toss an endless supply of men and panzers and petrol to stroke Rommel's and Mussolini's egos. Germany had bigger worries in the vast Eastern Front, especially after Stalingrad. That the flow of superior US equipment started reaching the 8th Army at that time helped, too. I don't mean to say that the 2nd Alamein was just good luck on Monty's part, but the table was catered ready for him so that he could binge on the bits that he liked the most - elaborate battle plans. Once it came to the pursuit he failed in keeping up with the DAK.
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Dec 4, 2013 20:40
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Flesnolk posted:Well I have no idea why I thought it was useless, then. Perhaps I was thinking of police armour, or reports I remember of soldiers being killed by small arms fire despite the armour? Thanks! During OIF there was media cry over the fact that US soldiers were not provided with the best ballistic vests on the market, so many soldiers opted for spending their own moneys to protect themselves. You might be thinking of that one. There's always been ways of stopping bullets, but until recently they've either been too wieldy for infantry (steel plates) or too costly to equip an entire army with. Fortunately though infantry tends to suffer casualties more often from artillery and mortars than bullets, and even a steel helmet goes a long way in elongating a grunt's expected lifespan even if it's not bullet proof. Eg. I think my favourite form of bullet proof vest is the Victorian version consisting of multiple layers of silk. It worked! But as you might imagine, it cost a fortune and was out of reach of an ordinary infantryman and was mainly used by statesmen. For instance, a certain Archduke of Austria wore such a vest on his trip to Sarajevo. Unfortunately he was shot in the neck. Flesnolk posted:Probably my last thing on this 'cause it's getting closer to TFR talk, but does this work the same way for stuff like stone and concrete (say in an urban setting) or is your typical building material not hard/thick enough to stop a good round? Concrete works if it's thick enough, but many contemporary building materials (cinderblock etc.) are too brittle and thin to withstand any rifle fire before the wall just crumbles away. Architects also used to put a lot more leeway in the supporting structures, resulting in supporting walls adequate for a fortress. Thus it depends on the urban setting. A medieval European town is very different to a modern suburb. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Dec 4, 2013 |
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Dec 4, 2013 22:26
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gradenko_2000 posted:Why didn't the British have tank destroyers, apart from the ridiculous Archer? As well, why didn't the assault gun concept catch on with the Western Allies? Is it somewhat accurate to assume that the infantry-support-role thing of the Shermans and Churchills and whatnot was the assault gun equivalent? Same as with most others: their doctrine didn't call for turreted tank destroyers, which were a case of American exceptionality at its best. Early in the war, Brits did use portees (AT gun on a truck bed) which functioned a bit like tank destroyers, but more out of necessity than doctrine. They also did receive L&L tank destroyers, some of which they equipped with their own 17 pounder gun (Achilles). But most of all they didn't see benefit in specialized tank destroyers, apart from stuff like Archer which was only to fit a big gun on an old chassis. Eventually they managed to stick their excellent 17 pounder gun in a Sherman turret, even if they didn't initially have a HE shell available for it so it was more like having one tank destroyer in support of four tanks. Brits simply didn't see a problem with a Cruiser tank only having solid shot ammo for the main gun. Slim Jim Pickens posted:Stugs totally rocked the Allies though. They were so small that they could hide pretty much anywhere, and whenever a Sherman got knocked out from somewhere unseen, people assumed there was a Tiger around or something. StuGs have nothing compared to Hetzer*, a tank destroyer based on Czech tank chassis so small that it makes me wonder if the crews had to invent some version of "Don't ask, don't tell". The whole thing is barely two meters tall and has sloped glacis and sides. *probably not called by that name during the war. Likewise the M10 TD wasn't called Wolverine by US troops during the war - Brits called it that in their own use, but unlike the Civil War general meme, it didn't spread.
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Dec 6, 2013 21:40
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Cumshot in the Dark posted:Maybe a Christmas sale would help. Ha ha he he someone call 911 I'm dying here!  ( )
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Dec 8, 2013 16:00
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Mycroft Holmes posted:They are all based on colonial troops, so they are only competent enough to put down internal rebellion. If they were more competent they would have overthrown the colonial regimes. That's over-generalizing it, many of them were/are based on Soviet training and doctrine while some others have since been trained by western powers.
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Dec 8, 2013 20:58
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Englishman alone posted:You here of many a horror story of Arab officers in Western advanced training programs who under any other system would never advance to such seniority. Please get a spellchecker plugin or check it yourself. For your own good. Also separate paragraphs.
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Dec 8, 2013 21:17
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Slavvy posted:edit: isn't the s-tank basically a modern Stug? The intended use is basically the same AFAIK. Not either doctrinally or tactically. Germans built lots of StuG's on tank chassis because they couldn't afford building as many tanks with 75mm guns. Meanwhile peacetime Sweden built Stridvagn-103's rather than turreted tanks because they thought it would fulfill the intended role just as well. But the Stridvagn-103 was always designed for the role of a turretless tank rather than WW2 assault gun.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:26
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Changing gears for a minute I found the picture of crossbowmen firing at a high angle I'd been looking for: The range here appears to be about two meters. Are we sure those bolts aren't lawn darts? Is charging the enemy with your lances pointed at the heavens a standard cavalry tactic for this era?
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Dec 10, 2013 00:48
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Everyone knows that the French lowered the conscription age to 5 years after the 1917 mutinies duh. Learn your history. And it worked brilliantly - everything from rifles to uniforms had to be miniaturized, which meant you used fewer resources to equip them. Also shallower trenches would suffice.
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Dec 11, 2013 06:36
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Koramei posted:I don't normally care about modern military stuff even slightly but whoah Meh, it's all been done  Flesnolk posted:And while I'm asking ship questions, how is naval warfare even supposed to work now that the age of battleships and firing cannons at other ships/things you can actually see is over? See the Malvinas War.
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Dec 12, 2013 05:45
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Panzeh posted:It's really odd to call it the "Continuation War" because it was basically fought for the same reasons Romania did, as though Russia was going for another try after the Winter War or something. It was a revanche war. Romania didn't go to war over Bessarabia in 1940 but for Finnish public opinion the war of 1941-44 was a continuation of the 1939-40 war with slightly better odds (the odds being influenced by factors such as 'having shells for artillery'). Also, Russia was totes going for another try after the Winter War, but then Hitler remembered all that 'bensraum in the east poo poo and went all "gently caress you Stalin, I'm gonna include Finland in my sphere of turd!" crazy and Stalin was like "okay, you're the boss! don't punch me pls" Btw. Winter War is just a Finnish nationalist thing. Soviet publications referred to it as "the Finnish border conflict" akin to Khalkin Gol.
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Dec 12, 2013 19:20
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Alekanderu posted:Scandinavia: Denmark, Norway, Sweden P.S. Fennoscandia: Scandinavia, Finland, Karelia and Kola 1sometimes also including Estonia, Latvia and/or Lithuania, for political/historical/whatever reasons (they are observers in the Nordic Council) All in all, the terms are politicized and muddled and useless, unless one wants to talk about geography. Eg. Denmark hasn't been part of Scandinavia after they lost all of southern Sweden and Norway, but apparently that doesn't matter. Nor did the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal cut Denmark from Europe. You just can't get rid of the Danes.
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Dec 12, 2013 19:56
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Fangz posted:Um, no. In the earlier parts of WWII, the British made a deliberate decision to divide their tank force into Cruiser tanks (mobile exploitation), and Infantry tanks (slow, heavily armoured infantry support), as can be seen in the Crusader vs Matilda series. The Germans in fact ended up doing something similar - the Tiger was basically the German infantry tank. Ships but on land was a WWI thing. No, I don't think you can compare Tiger to Infantry Tanks. Tiger was essentially as fast as and, with its wider tracks, more mobile than Panzer III and IV. Infantry tanks like Matilda and Churchill (16km/h) were far too slow to stay in formation with Cruisers like Crusader or Cromwell (64km/h!). Assault guns filled German infantry's needs for dedicated armour support. Tiger compares more closely to KV-1 heavy tanks. Interestingly enough the design work on both began in 1937, no doubt drawing conclusions from the Spanish Civil War.
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Dec 14, 2013 13:21
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gohuskies posted:No, this applied to the Germans as well, look at their tank guns. Look at 1942 and early 1943, where they have the Panzer III with the longer-barreled 50mm/L60 for use against tanks and the early Panzer IV models with the short barreled 75mm/L24 for lobbing HE. Same kind of split as in Allied armies - one specializes against enemy armor, one against enemy infantry and fortifications. I don't know why people forget about the German tank guns early war and then accuse the Brits and the US of doing something that the Germans were just as guilty of. The roles might be superficially similar but it's not quite the same doctrine, though. If you look at BT (cavalry tank) and T-26 (infantry tank) you'll notice that they had the same 45mm gun but the difference came up in speed and organization. Nor did Germans think that Panzer III could do without HE shells, a fetish that apparently only the Brits had. Marks III and IV had differing capabilities, but they still were medium tanks arranged into mixed Panzer regiments/battalions and were supposed to do anything that a medium tank would do. Ie. break through enemy lines, wreck poo poo and drive on. The British system starts to get a little bit confusing later on when you have Cromwells carrying 95mm HE lobbers and Churchills wielding 57mm high velocity guns... :uk:
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Dec 14, 2013 23:23
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