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If there's anyone particularly knowledgeable about the American Civil War around, I've been reading a couple of books about the war recently and one of them mentioned briefly that to some extent, larger for the Confederacy, calling the Union or Confederate armies uniform forces isn't accurate, and that training between different regions could vary dramatically. What I'm curious about is how far this goes, if it was a real thing - was it just a question of them all being drilled in the same things with varying quality, or did different units actually receive markedly different training depending on where they were raised?
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Dec 20, 2013 03:04
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Slaan posted:Whats crazy is David Weber's series going from triremes to ironclads in 10 years. To be fair, they also have a cyborg, and later a separate AI feeding them information on how to do most of it and they already had almost everything in place for galleons. They just didn't have sophisticated enough cannon to warrant using galleons at the beginning. Then again, the Safehold series is one where a cyborg in a supersonic atmosphere-capable spacecraft conducts guerilla raids ahead of ironclads and armies with pikes and matchlocks are blown to bits by claymore mines and bouncing betties.
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Jun 13, 2014 04:32
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Speaking of military shotgun use, I've read in a couple of sources that military use of shotguns is pretty much a US-exclusive thing. Anyone know why the US would use them but no one else usually?
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Nov 1, 2014 20:22
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EvanSchenck posted:Are you asking about current practice? Currently most armed forces use shotguns for specific limited roles, and the US is not exceptional in that regard. Combat shotguns are useful mainly because they can fire different types of specialized ammunition, like less-lethal loads for crowd control or breaching ammunition for busting locks and blowing the hinges off doors. For offensive purposes they have a very short effective range relative to other long arms, something like 50-70 yards with buckshot and 100 or so with slugs, as against 300+ meters for an assault rifle. Within that range they're very effective, with the proviso that most types of shotgun ammunition have poor performance against body armor. The upshot is that they're used pretty rarely, but to that extent they are issued by any number of different countries' armed forces. Ah. The article I'd read mentioned that combat shotguns are issued in the US military specifically in expectation of house to house fighting and similar situations, which obviously I don't know if is true or not and wondered if/why their use would be a particularly US thing, which the article said it was, beyond the current focus (as I understand it) on counter-insurgency methods and equipment.
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Nov 1, 2014 22:19
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Any recommendations for a general overview book on the naval war in the Pacific Theater in WW2?
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Dec 9, 2014 11:00
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Gibfender posted:I have the audiobook of this. I don't know how it measures up with its historiography but I feel like I understand things better after finishing it. Eh, not looking for anything in particular within that admittedly broad topic. Doing some Christmas shopping, and I have a nephew who's interested in the naval theater of the Pacific in WW2. Don't think he currently owns any books on the subject and was looking for a good book on it, preferably a general overview.
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Dec 9, 2014 11:55
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Found a very interesting military history book in the university library I work at that I recall this thread recommending earlier - Shattered Sword, an examination of the Battle of Midway. Not sure if it's still recommended or not, but it's been a very enjoyable read so far.
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Dec 18, 2014 22:44
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FAUXTON posted:It's a good read and you are correct In finding it enjoyable. I love the minute detail and bomb-counting, it scratches the Yeah, I'm going to order a copy for my nephew who wants a book on the Pacific theatre of WW2 for Christmas. Only a few chapters in and the book's already gone into extensive detail about the larger strategic factors of the war and the course of events up to Midway. Been a long time since I sat down with a good history book to have a read.
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Dec 18, 2014 22:54
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itch real good.
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P-Mack posted:Only if 45 minutes into the movie, right before the first bombs land, text scrolls up the screen saying "Doctrine isn't an exciting topic, but it is important to understanding why Kido Butai fought the battle the way they did. Please pay attention for this 20 minute lecture." Simple version of any lecture I can think of coming out of the book so far: "At any given point on any level from captain to Tokyo headquarters, assume the Imperial Navy's leadership did the dumbest thing imaginable to an outside observer who knows what the Americans are doing."
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Dec 19, 2014 04:37
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Have to put Shattered Sword down for the night, but god drat Nautilus tried so very hard without accomplishing much of anything, capped off with a faulty torpedo hit against a carrier they didn't know was already doomed. Must have been a very, very frustrating day for that sub's crew.
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Dec 19, 2014 05:32
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CeeJee posted:There is a bit in Shattered Sword that basically goes "The Japanese Navy had planned for everything except for the Americans wanting to fight" that I think neatly describes it. I found it hard to believe the chapters talking about Yamamoto and company's friends for operations MI and AL until I looked up a couple of other sources. That's comic book levels of absurdly dysfunctional military leadership, and the war games in preparation for the operation where Yamamoto deemed a nameless subordinate playing the Americans doing something very close to what they ended up actually doing to be cheating and therefore ignored as impossible is something goddamn Hollywood would probably hesitate to put in a movie. Not that the American carrier strikes weren't behaving like a video game scenario where you (in this case, the Japanese carriers) face a few waves of easily dispatched enemies from various directions before the boss shows up.
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Dec 19, 2014 14:06
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Finished Shattered Sword after about ten hours, skipping most of the appendices, and it was a pretty enjoyable read. I had been under the impression that the Japanese took a lot more losses than four carriers and a heavy cruiser, but evidently not. Two things stick out to me about the battle of Midway overall: that God was having a sadistic laugh at the USS Nautilus, and that the Japanese military leadership was a song and dance away from going "You have failed me for the last time" in their utterly absurd dysfunctionality. When the Americans did not deign to follow Yamamoto's script, the Japanese floundered, and the entire strategic goal of the offensive boggles my mind in how wasteful and pointless it was. Even if the Japanese had invaded Midway, it seems like it would have been a slaughter of epic proportions for basically no meaningful gain.
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Dec 19, 2014 21:28
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Alchenar posted:Had the US been able to launch a coordinated strike from all their carriers that arrived together then they likely would have. "Coordinated American strikes" and "the Battle of Midway" are two concepts which do not go together, I've learned.
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Dec 19, 2014 21:39
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xthetenth posted:I seem to recall the US having to honor the possibility of the Japanese trying to move in for a surface action, and so couldn't pursue. That limits them to one day, which in turn puts the onus on the scouts to allow targets to be hit earlier and more often. After all, the strikes launched destroyed all Japanese carriers that were available for them to hit, iirc. That's what the book said, yeah. I had just been under the impression that the US air strikes inflicted significantly more damage than they did. Eliminating four Japanese carriers and a heavy cruiser was a neat hat trick, but my assumption going into the book was that the strikes had sunk several ships besides the flattops.
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Dec 19, 2014 21:44
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Azran posted:That reminds me: in "Nothing to envy" I noticed how in numerous times the author uses the term "asian culture". I thought that term was a big no no in modern times, alongside others like the concept of biological race (instead of sociocultural) when talking about stuff like North Koreans eating rice or sleeping in the floor. Some other times she says "confucian tradition" which makes more sense I think? I am wrong? It's problematic to read too much into it, but there are and were some serious cultural differences between Asian and European/American nations, particularly with regards to their militaries. To name an example from Shattered Sword, the senior US admiral at Midway functionally abdicated overall strategic command to his subordinate Admiral Spruance at one point, who at one point happily went to sleep so he could be well-rested for the next day, citing in an interview that he trusted his subordinates to know their business and wake him if need be. I got the distinct impression that nothing of the sort would have been imaginable for Yamamoto, Nagumo, Yamaguchi, or the other Japanese flag officers.
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Dec 20, 2014 00:09
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brozozo posted:I recommend reading the appendix about the planned amphibious assault of Midway. It's pretty That's one of the appendices I did read, yeah.
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Dec 20, 2014 18:57
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Only one of my grandfathers served in WW2, but for him it was a hilariously easy and relaxing time. He was in the US Navy and spent the entire war on a ship patrolling the coast of Brazil in case Germany tried to raid the area. His ship never fired on anything but training targets.
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Dec 21, 2014 14:33
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Paternal grandfather spent the entire war on a US Navy ship (he never said what ship beyond that it was small) patrolling the Brazilian coast for u-boats, never saw a minute of combat. Maternal grandfather was in the Army, had just reached Hawaii getting shipped out when Japan surrendered. My father has an almost identical story to my maternal grandfather, just with Vietnam ending right as he was getting shipped out. 
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Dec 22, 2014 04:45
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Looking for a book recommendation. Got Shattered Sword for myself, and am now looking for any similar books, preferably covering some aspect of the Pacific War or other naval conflict that I might be able to find at my local B&N or library. Already have and enjoyed Castles of Steel.
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Jan 13, 2015 04:52
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I've started reading Castles of Steel and am enjoying it quite a lot after Shattered Sword. It's much broader in focus and pays significantly more attention to the personality and history of the admirals and civilian leaders involved, but it's a good read. Von Spee's squadron sounds ready-made for a modern Hollywood movie, complete with hope spot at Coronel and the tragic but inevitable end at the Falklands.
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Jan 24, 2015 23:36
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Huh, did not know about the British carrier strike on Germany during WW1. Seaplane carrier strike, targeting a German zeppelin base, but I didn't know about the British code-breaking, either. Interesting stuff about a side of WW1 that I knew little about beyond the British defeating the Germans at Jutland.
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Jan 25, 2015 01:58
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Castles of Steel is making me feel downright sorry for the German navy. They keep trying so very goddamn hard, but between defensively-minded German leadership at the highest levels, enormous British successes in codebreaking, superior British naval leadership, and very streaky luck, the only German successes have been isolated cases against elderly British ships suffering from very poor command and control decisions, plus the Emden. The book has to call it a lucky success when the Germans blunder into a British trap and lose a heavy cruiser in exchange for crippling one British battle cruiser.
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Jan 25, 2015 03:28
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CeeJee posted:There is also a bit which could have come straight out of a bad Hollywood movie where the plucky hero has crucial info but is blocked by a dumb superior. The British are not the heroes.  I got up through the assault on the Dardanelles (but not yet Gallipoli) before going to bed last night, and parts of this stuff are hard to believe with how farcical and lucky a lot of events are.
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Jan 25, 2015 17:36
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Finished Castles of Steel and enjoyed it quite a bit. I'm not familiar enough with serious military history scholarship to critique it, but I recommend it to anyone interested in the naval theaters of WW1, including the Dardanelles operations leading up to and including Gallipoli, plus odd side ventures like the airships which I didn't realize anyone had ever taken seriously as weapons of war. On a personal level, I found the German navy in general very sympathetic throughout the war, always outnumbered, outgunned, and out-lead by an enemy that also enjoyed tremendous success in breaking their codes - puts the Enigma cracking and US breaking of Japan's codes during WW2 in some perspective. Hollywood could definitely make a movie about Spee's squadron or the wacky political antics of Beatty, Churchill, Fisher, and Jellicoe.
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Jan 26, 2015 20:57
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Phobophilia posted:On a large scale, Britain's foreign policy for the last century or so has been to prevent any one continental European power from ever gaining hegemony over Europe. Germany, an amalgamation of a bunch of smaller Germanic states, was suddenly a powerhouse and on the up-and-up. Britain wanted to keep some kind of balance of power going between France and Germany. And beyond that, Britain had a major case of "No one but us is allowed to have a powerful navy." They saw Germany's attempt to build a serious worldwide navy to secure and defend their empire as an innate, existential threat to Britain.
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Jan 28, 2015 17:35
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Which is exactly what it was. The funny part: Wilhelm and Tirpitz envisioned being Britain's ally, a partner and equal to rule the world with.
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Jan 28, 2015 18:41
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PittTheElder posted:Yeah, Wilhelm in particular really did think that they needed the navy before Britain would respect them, but once they did they could just be partners in crime, happily ruling the world forever. This was particularly stupid on his part. Well, the US kinda pulled it off, but that was after Britain's glory days ended.
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Jan 28, 2015 20:43
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Grand Prize Winner posted:This is gonna be a broad question, but what were some of the weirder kinds of ritual warfare? Are there any that survive in modern society, not counting sports but not limited to states? Do gangs go in for single combat? No joke, I think a serious argument can be made for professional sports as a replacement for that kind of ritual warfare.
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Jan 29, 2015 23:03
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HEY GAL posted:Of course, it doesn't take the kind of lifetime commitment that being a knight would. It's kind of funny that a man who's dedicated his entire life (and lots of money) to being the elite of the elite can have his poo poo wrecked by a bunch of ordinary people with a length of ash, a few ounces of steel, and a good idea. Didn't the Catholic church try to ban the crossbow as inhumane for basically that reason, or is that an urban legend?
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Jan 31, 2015 02:52
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Slavvy posted:Probably the coolest thing I've ever seen. No need for it would be my guess. The RAF's existing inventory was doing fine (I think, not a RAF scholar) and it was clear to most that jets were going to be the next big thing.
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Mar 11, 2015 00:48
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Jobbo_Fett posted:F.18/37 was for a 1937 specification. The RAF was pretty good about numbering/indexing their specifications. Ah, was not aware of that.
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Mar 11, 2015 01:07
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Would you say though that America considered invading Italy on the notion that the people would welcome them with open arms? I don't think so. As I understand it, the invasion of Italy was more "They're an Axis belligerent causing problems in the Mediterranean, and they need to be taken out of the war."
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Mar 16, 2015 23:12
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The question of MacArthur recently came up in another subforum, arguing whether he was one of the worst generals in US history or one of the better ones, and as a fairly amateur fan of military history I took the viewpoint that he was one of the most problematic in US history. I'm curious what the consensus of more serious military historians is on the man.
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Mar 21, 2015 19:29
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gradenko_2000 posted:I would say yes. The Japanese were pretty much completely exhausted by the end of the Russo-Japanese War, but the Russians were fighting at the rear end-end of a single rail-line and had to sue for peace themselves. The take-away was that determined offensive effort really could force decisive results in a war, without making the connection that the Japanese basically had to accept whatever they could get in the peace talks because they couldn't fight any longer and that things would have been vastly different if the nations in question had far better infrastructure, ergo Western Europe. This also had interesting consequences for the Japanese in terms of strategic and military lessons learned, which would end up costing Japan dearly in WW2. They took away from the Russo-Japanese War the idea that one or two decisive victories could force an enemy that on paper is far larger and economically superior to the bargaining table for a favorable peace, and went into WW2 with this fundamental strategic belief. It may even have been accurate in the case of the British and Dutch when the Japanese smashed their colonial holdings and sank their Pacific fleets - if they had stopped there, they might well have been able to force the British and Dutch to swallow the Japanese victories, especially given the shitstorm in Europe. Unfortunately, the Japanese also thought that all this applied to the United States. Again, it could possibly have been accurate if they stopped with the Philippines and other distant holdings. As it is, Japan turned into a pretty good case study in the strategic lessons from the last war being inapplicable to the next one.
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Mar 24, 2015 20:40
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feedmegin posted:There is zero chance the British Empire would have just let the Japanese hang on to everything they took in the East, assuming the war against Hitler was won (if it was lost, of course, there wouldn't be an independent Britain to contest the matter anyway). As proved to be the case postwar, the Japanese attack was an existential threat to the whole idea of colonialism. That's not really my point. I think it's possible that, had Japan only attacked the British and Dutch colonial holdings, the Pacific War with the US might have been significantly delayed. Popular support in the US for war with Japan was lukewarm until Pearl Harbor, and although I agree with Yamamoto's assessment that war between the Japanese Empire and the US was inevitable I don't think it had to happen as early as it did and I'm not sure the British would have had the forces and will to do a lot about Japan in the absence of American hostility to Japan. Given that WW2 effectively ended the British Empire as it had been regardless, I don't think it's all that absurd that Britain might have sued for peace if the US wasn't involved in the war against Japan.
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Mar 24, 2015 22:26
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feedmegin posted:It did signal the end of the British Empire, yes, but noone in Britain knew that at the time or for a decade thereafter. Like, Churchill was all about continuing the British Empire for ever more. 'I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire' as he said in 1942. Again,assuming Germany had been beaten or fought to a draw and a peace, there was no way the RN wasn't steaming east to rectify the situation. There's no way there'd be a lasting peace with Japan occupying a bunch of British colonies, and really absent an actual credible invasion of India or something I don't see why there would even be a temporary cessation of hostilities. Fair enough, I don't know much about the RN past WW1. Which I suppose only reinforces my original point that Japanese military leadership took to heart (the wrong? were there any right ones?) lessons from the Russo-Japanese War, creating a fundamentally flawed strategic vision for WW2, which was an entirely different kind of war from the RJW and against very different opponents. Actually, that makes me curious. Were there any useful lessons Japan could have taken away from the RJW for WW2, or were they fundamentally different wars with little to no meaningful (positive) lessons that could have been taken from the former and applied to the latter? Cythereal fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Mar 24, 2015 |
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Mar 24, 2015 23:44
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wdarkk posted:I think he means the broader WW2, since Japan wasn't exactly in good shape before August Storm. This is what I meant, yes. For example, it seems to be widely agreed upon that the RJW taught the IJN to worship the idea of one or two decisive battles fought with maximum speed and firepower as the way to bring the US to the bargaining table. I'm curious if anyone more knowledgeable about the conflicts thinks there actually are any useful lessons Japan could have learned from the RJW or if WW2 was a fundamentally and utterly different conflict where experiences from the previous war do not apply.
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Mar 25, 2015 02:23
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Boiled Water posted:Did anyone at any point go "oh my this is a waste of human life" or is it 200 years too soon for that? It was happening during the American Civil War at least. The growth of media giving people removed from the front lines a look at the suffering and casualties of war did a lot to bring those things into public awareness. Doubly so given how optimistic and cheery everyone was at the start, bringing picnic baskets to the first major battles of the war.
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Mar 28, 2015 21:14
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I just finished reading a fairly interesting book if you're interested in naval history and ship design, The World's Worst Warships by Antony Preston. The book is pretty short and has only a brief section on each ship, but I found it interesting in that most of the entries weren't so much poorly designed examples of normal ship patterns but experiments in technology or tactics that ended up not panning out, or were grossly misused from their intended purpose. Preston takes into account six main factors in ship design and claims (I'm not knowledgeable enough to judge how accurate this book is) that each example in the book was a critical failure in at least two: cost, perceived threats to the navy, the nation's industrial capacity, design competence, the operating environment of the ship, and incorrect post-battle analysis. List of ships featured in the book: American Civil War monitors (United States) Turret Ship HMS Captain (Britain) Vitse-Admiral Popov and Novgorod Coast Defense Ships (Russia) Armored rams HMS Polyphemus and USS Katahdin (Britain and United States) Armored cruiser Rurik (Russia) Dynamite cruiser USS Vesuvius (United States) Powerful class protected cruisers (Britain) Borodino class battleships (Russia) Destroyer HMS Swift (Britain) Viribus Unitis class dreadnoughts (Austria-Hungary) Normandie class dreadnoughts (France) AA class fleet submarines (United States) 'Flush-decker' destroyers (United States) K class submarines (Britain) HMS Courageous, Glorious, and Furious, light battlecruisers (Britain) Fast battleship HMS Hood (Britain) Omaha class scout cruisers (United States) HMSwS Gotland hybrid cruiser (Sweden) Duquesne class heavy cruisers (France) Deutschland class 'pocket battleships' (Germany) Condottieri class light cruisers (Italy) IJNS Ryujo aircraft carrier (Japan) Mogami class cruisers (Japan) Yamato class super battleships (Japan) Bismarck class battleships (Germany) Implacable class fleet aircraft carriers (Britain) Hydrogen-peroxide submarines (Various) Alpha class nuclear attack submarines (Russia) Type 21 anti-submarine frigates (Britain) La Combattante-type fast attack craft (France)
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Apr 3, 2015 22:41
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Saint Celestine posted:Why were the Viribus Unitis class dreadnoughts failures? I would assume something with their crappy underwater armor protection? For WW1, 3 guns each in 4 triple center-line turrets seem like a great idea. Paraphrasing this book's analysis: The Viribus Unitis was designed to counter the Italian dreadnought Dante Alighieri, believing Italy to be AH's most significant naval adversary. However, there were three main issues with the Viribus Unitis. 1. Construction. Due to the way the Austro-Hungarian Navy was organized and run, the Hungarian side had veto power over any major expenditure that didn't involve the Hungarians. Four ships of the Viribus Unitis class were authorized, and Hungary demanded that one be built in a Hungarian shipyard. The only Hungarian shipyard of note wasn't large enough to build anything like the VU, and so the size and cost of the VU were restricted by the need to expand the Hungarian shipyard and what it would be capable of. The result was a rather unhappy compromise, and the Hungarian shipyard crew had no experience with building ships this large. There is evidence that this Hungarian-built ship, the Szent Istvan, was not constructed as solidly as the three Austrians. This is also the ship that the Italians torpedoed and sank. 2. Poor stability. The VUs were not very seaworthy and had a tendency to heel badly in rough seas or, as experience proved, when damaged underwater. This design flaw is mostly blamed on the cost restrictions imposed by point 1. 3. Poor underwater protection. The VU series was designed with anti-torpedo armored cells on the hull, a technique the French also tried with no notable results, but the VU's primary architect, Siegfried Popper, declined to give the innovation any serious testing. Making matters worse, the only anti-torpedo bulkheads on the VUs were a single centerline bulkhead on each deck and no longitudinal bulkheads at all. This both made the ships very vulnerable to flooding from underwater attacks and exacerbated the stability problems due to the lengthwise bulkhead. Problems 2 and 3, to a great extent caused by problem 1, made the VU extremely vulnerable to underwater attack, and it was precisely that form of attack that sank two of the four VUs commissioned. While the ships had excellent armament for the time, there is also evidence that all four ships suffered from mechanical reliability issues and faulty armor design in general. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Apr 4, 2015 |
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Apr 3, 2015 23:12
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