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Grand Prize Winner posted:When did the Brits give up their shell weight measurements in favor of metric bore (shell?) diameters? I'm going to guess at the time they joined NATO and everyone realized that logistics would run more smoothly if all allies used a common standard for marking calibers and other things.
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Dec 15, 2013 11:08
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Slavvy posted:I guess I just can't picture how they would be useful in a direct combat role. They seem like something you could only ever use if you had really flat terrain to fight on and a really large battlefield (like the middle east). I can't understand how they were useful in Europe and other places because it seems like if there's some rocks in the paddock, or a river, or some trees or something they become pretty much worthless. I don't know anything about chariots which is really why I'm asking. There preparation and scouting of the battlefield comes handy. Darius chose the battlefield at Gaugamela so that he could use his chariots to their fullest effect, and then he sent his men to further flatten the terrain before the Greeks would arrive. But I don't know if chariots were used in western Europe quite in the same manner or scale. Probably not.
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Dec 16, 2013 00:36
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Ensign Expendable posted:I read about a young lieutenant and her brilliant idea to shoot some Germans with indirect MG fire today. Sadly, the article leaves out how effective this measure was. Is this a thing that someone else has ever tried? Yes, my pre-WW2 Finnish infantry manual has ballistic tables for indirect Maxim fire, for example. It goes into just as much detail as any indirect fire instructions, including air pressure and temperature. I don't know of any specific instances where it was done or to what effect during WW2, it smacks as more of a WW1 thing to me.
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Dec 16, 2013 17:03
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Alekanderu posted:Isn't this anti-air rather than indirect fire? Yes, unless their sniper scopes and the leader's binoculars are equipped with some really warped lenses.
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Dec 17, 2013 21:26
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Transpadanam would mean areas north of the Po, I guess.
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Dec 18, 2013 18:31
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Castle is a medieval English name for a stone fort, imported by Normans. As such it should be used for medieval forts only and I don't read any other technical difference to it. Other languages may have other uses for castrum or entirely different words for types of fortification.
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Dec 23, 2013 16:50
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 Merry Christmas to all war nerds! 
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Dec 24, 2013 16:40
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Italy also sent an expedition (later 8th Army) to fight in the Russian front, and a torpedo boat detachment to Lake Ladoga. Neither of them did too well. The MAS boats were transferred to Finland after the season of 1942.
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Dec 24, 2013 23:35
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Fangz posted:Probably in bad taste for me to post my woodcraft T34-85... That's one way of putting it. (the upgunned T-34 was not even close to being in service at the time!) That's a beautiful craft, although I miss the commander's cupola. And I'm not sure what the printed hatches at the back of the turret are supposed to be... but when I get back to home I'm sure to show what it's supposed to look like (that is, my Soviet-era toy T-34)!
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Dec 25, 2013 00:47
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I know in real life they're ventilation domes, but the printed graphic looks like they're hinged like the engine hatch.
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Dec 25, 2013 01:01
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To continue on the theme National socialist tree ornaments 
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Dec 25, 2013 13:02
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Slavvy posted:How are you meant to see out of this? I realise that stopping people from jabbing you in the eyeholes is good but seriously, where is the vision hole? I think the point in a tournament was to blindly flail at where you thought your opponent might be until someone landed some hits, like two duelling piñatas.
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Dec 26, 2013 20:33
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InspectorBloor posted:I understand why there's still greek there, but why are there all these albanian enclaves to the south? Is that due to recent migration? Refugees from the time when Ottomans conquered the Balkans. So yeah, quite recent, given the history of Italy! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arb%C3%ABresh%C3%AB
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Dec 29, 2013 20:44
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Frostwerks posted:Ahh, so you're a finn then, I guess bikes are less useful than crosscountry folks on skis. Skis don't work too well in summer. Light infantry (Jägers) would use bicycles in summer, skis in winter. A bicycle unit couldn't operate fully on its own, though, and backpacks and tents etc. were carried on trucks and horse wagons. Skis are more versatile as you can easily load all of the equipment on man drawn sleds (ahkio), including heavier weapons like mortars so it's not just a light infantry transport. 
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Dec 30, 2013 11:47
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Slavvy posted:IIRC encirclement wasn't really tactically feasible until Hannibal did it? I remember reading something about evidence of encirclement in the Peloponnesian war. Recorded history of war extends much further back than Rome or Greece, all the way to Megiddo ca. 1457 BC. The ancient Egyptians and their enemies then already had a pretty good idea of how to battle in a sensible manner, even if they just about as often hosed it up. Wikipedia posted:Thutmose seized the opportunity. He set up camp and, during the night, arrayed his forces close to the enemy. The next morning, they attacked. It cannot be established if the surprised King of Kadesh had managed to invert his front lines in time, and prepare for battle. Even if he did that, it did not bring him much help. His forces were on high ground adjacent to the fortress. The Egyptian line was arranged in a concave formation, consisting of three wings, that threatened both Caananite flanks. Both the Egyptians and the Caananites are estimated to have had around 1,000 chariots and 10,000 infantry. The Pharaoh led the attack from the center. The combination of position and numbers, superior maneuverability of their left wing along with an early, bold attack, broke the enemy's will; their line immediately collapsed. Those near the city fled into it, closing the gates behind them. That sure sounds like some fine tactical thinking. Which makes sense - you don't become a God King of a rich realm simply by kindly asking people to join under your command, you have to crush some skulls first and do it better than other skull crushers. As for encirclement, what is a siege if not that?
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Dec 30, 2013 22:22
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Nazis giving honorary military names to Jewish survivors of the Warsaw ghetto uprising would certainly be impressive!
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Dec 31, 2013 00:58
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gfanikf posted:My boss actually has a ski based Lahti behind his desk at work. It owns hard. To be clear, the L-39 'skis' aren't intended for dragging it in snow (as you can tell just by looking at their location) but to prevent the 50kg weapon from sinking into snow and other soft surfaces. You'd also use the ahkio as a firing platform in winter if there's a lot of snow, those skis are still pretty small for a gun the weight of a young lady. I found this series from 1942 that show a rifle being delivered to shooting position.    Late in the war there was also a dual purpose AA/AT full automatic version, as Soviets didn't bother with light tanks anymore. Bonus shot: here's what happens when you fire it in mud. 
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Dec 31, 2013 16:16
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a travelling HEGEL posted:Aren't Russian models unusually good though? I remember hearing that somewhere. Maybe but let's not discuss Irina Shayk here. On the topic of U-boats, how many tons of cargo did the long range submarines transport between Germany and Japan during the war? Did any of it make any strategic difference?
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Jan 3, 2014 19:42
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gradenko_2000 posted:The U-boats modified specifically to become transports to Japan could carry about 200-250 tons of cargo. They carried things like dismantled V-1 and V-2 rockets, dismantled Panther tanks, engines, weapons schematics, and occasionally liaison officers between the two nations. It did not really make any difference - the Japanese didn't (couldn't) do anything with the technology that was shared by the Germans. They had blueprints for their own versions of the Me-262 and or the Komet, but those never went into production even if they were derived from stuff shared through the U-boats. I mean the raw materials delivered back to Germany - did they amount to anything? German industries had shortages on many materials that were readily available in Far East, but how much would such a meager trickle help?
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Jan 3, 2014 20:43
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Saint Celestine posted:It wouldn't. Lets take a look at what was transported in terms of raw materials. The most important, would arguably be Tungsten. It was used in all sorts of German equipment, including tungsten cored shells for tanks and guns, increasing the shell's penetration against armor. I recall from mid-war on Tungsten was in such a short supply that Germans dropped the Tungsten (Wolfram) APCR usage as every ounce was needed for machine tools. That would indicate that it did make some difference, except if there were any Tungsten deposits in German occupied Europe, they must have overwhelmed the amount imported from Japan.
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Jan 3, 2014 21:27
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SaltyJesus posted:Is it true that in WWII more Frenchmen died fighting the allies (under the Vichy regime) than fighting the Nazis? That can't be true, just look at the figures. 85k Frenchmen died defending France in 1940, that's already more than there were Vichy troops stationed in any of the French colonies. Even if every Vichy soldier stationed in Morocco and Algeria had fought to their deaths it wouldn't suffice. The Italy factoid sounds about as credible.
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Jan 7, 2014 10:44
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Here, have some beautiful handpainted art presented by Red Army to their Finnish friends (timg'd for dog balls):   These should need no explanation...  "You are rotting in trenches, meanwhile Krauts are chasing your wives at home." The most common theme in Soviet propaganda, and not entirely untrue, either. I do like though how the artist has presented the German soldier as some dark Guido-like character. Also, no one in Soviet Union knew how to draw a German swastika apparently.
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Jan 13, 2014 08:11
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Hogge Wild posted:Hahahaha! Where did you find them? http://sa-kuva.fi/ (search for 'juliste') There's some hilarious gems buried beneath the 160 thousand Finnish army photos there. Like this message written to a church door:  "Fyck Fynland"
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Jan 13, 2014 08:26
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What ever childhood traumas Onfim was suffering from, at least he wasn't drawing furry asslicking porn. TTBOOK...
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Jan 13, 2014 21:28
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gradenko_2000 posted:Here's a question: What is (was?) STAVKA? What does it mean, what does it stand for? I ask because Guns of August was still referring to the Russian high command as STAVKA which kind of stood out because I had always associated it with the Red Army. In addition to what Fangz said, Stavka is any headquarters, most commonly in western literature used for the Red/Tsarist Army's high command. But you could just as well refer to any Front or Division HQ as a Stavka.
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Jan 14, 2014 16:22
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I don't know if that's a battle that tanks can win. Active defenses preclude supporting infantry as they might end up peppered by defensive shrapnel. Meanwhile we will never come to a point where the material requirements for destroying a tank are going to be more expensive than building it was. But you can't look at tanks separately from other arms, you have to provide context. 25 years from now, infantry might have effective anti-artillery shell point defense systems that make armoured vehicles pointless anyway. We really don't know, just like people didn't foresee demise of the battleship.
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Jan 14, 2014 21:54
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feedmegin posted:Everyone had a gun back then in Europe too. Gun control didn't become much of a thing til like the 30s at the earliest. That sounds suspect. Everyone never had a gun on the whole continent, let alone one suitable for military operations. Eg. Finnish independence activists had pretty much no useful rifles at the time of Russo-Japanese war despite the country being a hunter's heaven. Japan wanted to support insurgence within the Russian empire so they acquired a boatload of rifles and ammo to be delivered to the insurgents, but the plan failed and the weapons ended up in Russian hands.
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Jan 20, 2014 20:48
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cheerfullydrab posted:Russia had a serious revolution in 1905. It was simultaneously crushed and reforms were made. There's no indication that with no war, any other revolution would have created a different result. The weakening of the mechanisms of control caused what happened in 1917. Removal of the Tsar was inevitable. However the Bolshevist takeover is far from being a certainty in all what-if scenarios. Bolsheviks were very weak and the October revolution probably would not have succeeded if Germany hadn't helped Lenin back to Russia.
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Jan 22, 2014 08:03
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Cardiac posted:Even the civil war that followed was not a guaranteed victory for the reds. Also the anti-Bolshevist forces couldn't agree on anything. Britain tried to goad Finland into marching to Petrograd but White Russian generals sought to restore Russian empire as a whole, including the Finnish Grand Duchy, whereas the Bolshevik government was the first to recognize Finnish independence. Supporting all peoples' right to self-determination, a concept very topical at the time thanks to Woodrow Wilson, was a very effective tactic for the party.
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Jan 22, 2014 09:41
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Can we go back to that line about living conditions being better than civvy life even in WWI? I mean, if the guy's talking about life in the trenches then he's obviously full of poo poo (tried to read the article twice but the Beeb's site seems to crash this crappy laptop), but wasn't there a huge logistical tail behind the front? I would not be surprised if even enlisted men were doing better than otherwise. Well, that and units were rotated to and from the front so usually they didn't spend much time rotting in the trenches. Stealing this from Wikipedia: quote:On an individual level, a typical British soldier's year could be divided as follows:
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Jan 24, 2014 07:59
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It looks like this warming climate of ours is good for some things, such as getting lost WW1 Alpine troopers a proper burial...quote:In the decades that followed the armistice, the world warmed up and the glaciers began to retreat, revealing the debris of the White War. The material that, beginning in the 1990s, began to flood out of the mountains was remarkably well preserved. It included a love letter, addressed to Maria and never sent, and an ode to a louse, ‘friend of my long days’, scribbled on a page of an Austrian soldier’s diary. drat that's chilling. Then again Ötzi died a violent death, too, and had blood of four different people on his weapons, so this is far from being the oldest milhist related relic from the melting snowcaps.
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Jan 24, 2014 17:51
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Retarded Pimp posted:I think the biggest reasons are diesel fuel doesn't tend to light up when you get hit by a HEAT round like gasoline often did and diesel engines usually make more low end torque. This sounds awfully lot like an old myth springing from a bad war flick, maybe Patton or Battle of the Bulge. It doesn't quite work that way, at that temperature anything will vaporize. What's more important is how your ammo is arranged in the fighting compartment, and with Shermans (pre-wet rack models) and T-34's a penetrating hit could instantly kill the whole crew. An engine fire is less dangerous in this regard, the crew still has time to get out. Or what Ab13 said.
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Jan 25, 2014 08:43
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gradenko_2000 posted:For that matter, what did they use the TB-3 and Pe-8's for in WW2? I know that they never really pursued a strategic bombing campaign against Germany, but they apparently produced 818 of the former and 93 of the latter. Russian pre-war heavy bombers turned out to be too slow for effective use in other than night bombing roles and for most part ADD (Long Distance Aviation) relied on two-engine bombers like DB-3/Il-4, B-25 and A-20. Notably TB-3 motherships carrying I-16's were used to bomb Romanian targets in autumn of 1941.
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Jan 27, 2014 19:59
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There's also the fuel question. Axis countries had very limited oil production, which decisively affected their strategy making (ie. Japanese entry to war, Fall Blau). Synthetic fuel production remedied this a little bit but was expensive. For Axis minors this shortage was so acute that Finnish army converted captured Soviet flamethrower OT-130/133 tanks back into T-26 tanks and some army trucks were also converted to run on woodgas, which was standard for civilian cars.
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Jan 29, 2014 16:21
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Fangz posted:Horses aren't that bad as a logistical tool. Under some terrain conditions they can be more mobile than motor vehicles. And when you run out of food, they can make a handy snack. OTOH there is a limited supply of them, and at some point you'll start harming your agricultural production by stripping countryside of not just young men but all horses as well. Also you risk making enemies with PETA.
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Jan 29, 2014 16:26
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Finnish reindeers had it the coziest
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Jan 29, 2014 17:42
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Frostwerks posted:Could any horse be gunbroke past adolescence or was it you can't teach an old horse new tricks territory? In some account I read, farm horses that were used in the front panicked after the war every time they saw an airplane, thinking the Sturmoviks are coming again. Horse PTSD. The Entire Universe posted:Speclops Bronies in arms.
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Jan 30, 2014 06:25
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Fascinating how a conflict 100 years ago still manages to spark heated debate like that.quote:In his article, Gove said dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War and satirical programmes such as Blackadder, combined with leftwing interpretations of the war, had allowed deeply unpatriotic myths to take hold, and had led some to denigrate the "patriotism, honour and courage" of those who served and died. What's more, they depicted the Virgin Queen as an utter twat!  
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Jan 30, 2014 12:25
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Kemper Boyd posted:WW1 was really the moment when the citizens of all nations involved should have risen up and hanged their leaders. No one really gained anything from the whole ordeal. OUR monarch was deposed and executed as a consequence. I don't know if that really improved anything militarism-wise, though...
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Jan 31, 2014 16:46
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How rude of the marshalls, they should have borrowed a couple of their Order of Lenin ribbons so the rookie wouldn't be embarrassed. If I were a Red Army officer, I would be grabbing Iron Crosses from dead or surrendered enemies as trophies and wearing them with pride. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Feb 3, 2014 |
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Feb 3, 2014 08:40
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