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dublish posted:You've just hit on why it's pretty pointless to try to rank generals like that. I'm curious which biographer gradenko_2000 was reading. Grant by John Mosier and Sherman by Steven E Woodworth
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Jun 18, 2015 19:11
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Delivery McGee posted:In other news, I like to imagine armies "foraging" as like this: whatconfederatsthinkshermanliterallydid.gif
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Jun 22, 2015 12:43
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Klaus88 posted:Is there ANY scenario that ends with Nazi Germany winning WWII? Aside from, not being Nazi Germany in the first place? There's two probable points of divergence: 1. Germany manages to hammer out a peace deal with Britain, perhaps the BEF is never rescued from Dunkirk and the Luftwaffe never switches to the Blitz and the RAF is beaten up and the combined drop in "national morale" sends them to the negotiation table. Germany still invades Russia later on because Hitler's still at the helm, but they have a better shot at it since they don't have the Western Front to worry about. 2. Barbarossa goes off much better than historical and they manage to capture Moscow, maybe even Leningrad, and that causes the collapse of the Soviet Union. In both cases, the real answer is that no, there is no scenario that ends with Nazi Germany winning WW2 because both of these scenarios involve a political reaction which we cannot reliably predict (insofar as no counter-factual can ever really be proven). There was no way that Germany could have physically occupied the British Home Islands, and while they maybe could have physically occupied the Soviet Union from the pre-war border to ... let's say Saratov, the Soviets weren't ever going to stop fighting short of some cataclysmic event like the Communist Rapture, so it's really just a question of time and casualties.
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Jun 22, 2015 17:26
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I apologize in advance for the vagueness of that question.
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PittTheElder posted:Isn't the real question how this could possibly have happened though? The Germans taking Moscow means they aren't doing something like encircling Kiev, and then that's drat near a million Soviet troops that are freed up and will certainly threaten the line of supply supporting a drive on Moscow. The Germans couldn't have launched the lunge towards Moscow in Aug/Sep - even if they took Smolensk that much earlier, setting up the rail lines that quickly would have been a physical impossibility. As well, Guderian's swing south to encircle Kiev lead directly into conditions conducive to Typhoon: the Soviet armies across from Army Group Center launched a counter-attack in late Sep that incurred so many casualties as to significantly weaken their defensive lines and enable the initial thrust in October in the first place. The Germans taking Moscow as a hypothetical is something I would still envision as happening in late Nov/Dec 1941, especially if Hitler does not at the 11th hour add a dozen new objectives to Typhoon like Tula and Kalinin, although I do acknowledge that a successful capture of Moscow is very far-fetched any way you slice it.
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Jun 22, 2015 19:59
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ACW music, you say? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwSZgLLqPy8
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Jun 26, 2015 15:11
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wdarkk posted:Nuclear Secrecy had a post about that. A Lancaster would do, right? They did carry those 10k Tall Boys, or was it a question of size?
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Jun 26, 2015 18:14
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PittTheElder posted:Didn't they need the B-29 if only to drop atom bombs? No point doing one without the other. From a bit back, but one of the primary factors for the B-29's development was so that the US would have intercontinental striking power against Nazi Germany in the event that England fell. I don't think they developed it specifically for the atom bomb.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:13
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Saint Celestine posted:
Yeah seriously we're only at first Isonzo. This is going to be a long war.
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Jul 7, 2015 17:00
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Trench_Rat posted:why did the US navy still keep Torpedo Bombers after the battle of midway? Someone must have done the math on them and realized they contributed nothing to the war effort. Torpedoes (and the bombers that carry them) are incredibly effective anti-ship weapons (just ask the Repulse and the Prince of Wales). Just as long as you don't give enemy fighter CAP free rein to install ventilation on them with extreme prejudice.
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Jul 7, 2015 20:07
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Nenonen posted:Or have torpedoes that fail due to differences in Earth's magnetic field across the globe. Or due to any reason in general. Both Germany and the US tried to get cute with magnetic detonators and the former experienced failures with them in during the Norwegian campaign that they turned around and fixed relatively quickly, but "luck" had nothing to do with the USN's troubles: even their contact detonators sucked because the testing methodology for both the contact and magnetic detonators was not good, and BuOrd refused to own up to their mistakes for so long. Even if we grant that not being able to anticipate the magnetic field change across an ocean was beyond the ordnance developers (I really don't think they'd be that shortsighted though), there's just no excuse for filling torps with concrete for test shots then wondering why war shots don't work right when you never accounted for the weight.
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Jul 7, 2015 21:05
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Hitting the other guy really really hard with the opening punch and then making it very costly for him to claw back the position he had before the war started is not, on its face, a bad strategy, but the opening punch could have been stronger (no carriers at Pearl) and the whole "making it very costly" part never quite materialized. If it was going to work, they should have been bleeding the USN white from the word go, not taking 1 to 1 losses as in Coral Sea, much less outright losing trades as in Midway or Guadalcanal.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:37
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I haven't posted in this thread in ages, but on the topic of "US Fleet boats had it so much better than U-boats": 1. The ice cream maker was so that sailors could still get the dairy part of their diet, since at the time you couldn't really "store" milk easily any other way 2. The showers were mostly for the cooks, since they prepared the food, not for the whole boat 3. The air conditioning was to prevent the electronics and mechanical devices from getting fouled by the humidity while operating in the Pacific
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Nov 5, 2015 18:51
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Prop Wash posted:Which makes sense considering that a "lieutenant" is just a term for someone who holds a position (tenant) in lieu of the captain. It literally means "placeholder." That's why a First Lieutenant outranks a Second Lieutenant in the US army - they're the first and second, respectively, to take command in the absence or death of the captain. This is an incredible bit of insight. Thank you! It never occurred to me that lieutenant was literally "in lieu of" and "tenant" stuck together like a compound word flitting in your face the entire time.
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Jan 9, 2016 06:49
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Someone tell me about Napoleon, goddamnit. His left leg was significantly longer than his right.
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Jan 10, 2016 04:13
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AFAIK it was a good design: dive-bombing can be hella accurate, but even if you have air supremacy, flak is going to catch up to you and you're going to have a bad time because your attack profile is going to be predictable. Strafing is safer and more versatile, and while guns and rockets might not be enough to destroy tanks, it's more than good enough to destroy most anything else, and it's enough to cause mission kills of tanks. The Il-2 fought this way and was better off for it.
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Jan 21, 2016 14:01
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I'm sorry for bringing back tank chat, and especially fictional tankchat, but was there ever a tank design that resembled the C&C: Red Alert's Heavy Tank and Mammoth Tank, with two main guns in the turret? Would that have even been physically/technically feasible?
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Jan 26, 2016 14:07
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StandardVC10 posted:I was talking with my parents about history the other day. What were the changes that allowed armies in Western Europe to switch from massive, static trench networks in World War I to more maneuverable warfare with infantry mainly dug in smaller foxholes and things of that nature by World War II? I mean I sort of get the broad strokes of it but my understanding could be totally inadequate. World War I trench warfare happened because while artillery and infantry assault tactics existed to allow and cause breakthroughs, men on foot traveling across artillery-scorched ground could never move fast enough to get into the enemy's rear areas before the enemy could marshal more troops to plug up the breakthrough. Horses moved faster than men, but cavalry was too few in number and too vulnerable to small-arms fire to act as the exploitation force. The big thing was tanks, and mechanization and motorization in general, to allow troops to move faster than an enemy's ability to react to breakthroughs. Radio also played a big part because commanders could maintain contact with troops that were exploiting these breakthroughs, as it was also an issue in WWI that even if you made it past the enemy's front, you then had no way to get word on how to proceed farther. Aircraft also played a big part because you could have more accurate reconnaissance into areas beyond what you could see from the ground.
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Feb 4, 2016 11:03
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Truckchat: when I was still on a WW1 dig in 2014 (holy poo poo Trin Tragula you have been doing this for a while now) one of the things that stood out to me was German trucks that had to run on steel wheels because Germany didn't have any more rubber to make wheels with. How did that work? What did that look like?
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Feb 5, 2016 17:03
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MikeCrotch posted:I love the bit in The Dead Hand where Thatcher finds out that Reagan actually wants to eliminate all nuclear weapons, and her reaction is just I just finished this book yesterday. The description of the Soviet bio-weapons program set my skin a-crawling multiple times, though I did gain a better appreciation for the Soviet leaders during the Cold War, which I'd never be able to tell apart otherwise.
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Feb 6, 2016 01:19
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This is a bit of a contemporary question, but is there a standard armament for UN peacekeeping forces, or a reference of what it was across various peacekeeping missions?
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Mar 30, 2016 03:15
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What was the last amphibious landing that the Japanese did in WW2? Opposed (like Wake) and unopposed (like Malaya/Philippines) if those are different. For that matter, I'm not exactly sure if the Malaya and Philippines landings were opposed. Were they?
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May 26, 2016 07:11
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You'd have to do a ton of military handwaving to create a scenario where the Germans manage to drive to Moscow, take it, and hold it without it turning into some Stalingrad-esque fiasco. And even when you do that, you'd still have to do a ton of political handwaving to presume that the Soviets would surrender or pursue an armistice or something. That rules out the possibility of Germany "winning" WW2 at any point past June 22 1941. There's probably some point before that, but after the Fall of France, where you'd only have to do the political handwaving to have Germany and the UK sign a peace treaty or armistice (maybe with the military handwaving to produce a Battle of Britain that doesn't reinforce British national morale), but you can't have a Germany that doesn't invade Russia eventually and still have Hitler as its leader. And even if you managed to do all that, you'd still have a Russia lead by Stalin that probably has its own designs on Germany anyway (but don't mistake this to mean that I buy into the counter-factual BS about the invasion of Russia being a defensive move or whatever). That rules out the possibility of Germany "winning" WW2 at any point before June 22 1941, as well. So no, I don't think Germany could have won WW2.
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May 27, 2016 15:34
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You're probably more right than your simplistic analogy would suggest. It's notoriously difficult to produce a historically-accurate strategic-level result of the 1941-42 campaign in wargaming because the Germans did a number of things right, and the Soviets did a lot of things wrong. But put even a marginally more competent human player behind the Soviets and the outcome of Barbarossa never gets as far as it did.
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May 27, 2016 16:30
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Jumpingmanjim posted:What did King George VI do in the war, aside from visit the troops etc? Did he have a role in commanding the war effort or was that left up to Churchill and the war cabinet? I believe it played a key part in sinking the Bismarck
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May 28, 2016 10:18
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The part where Anthony Hopkins' John Frost says he cannot accept the German surrender always cracks me up. Balls of steel.
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May 30, 2016 09:03
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After reading Shattered Sword, it takes active effort to enjoy the 1976 Midway movie with Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda.
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Jun 2, 2016 13:59
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Nine of Eight posted:I remember reading an article by some wargamer, so have your salt shaker at the ready, about how applying soviet doctrine allowed him to do awful things to other wargamers who were used to NATO tactics. As for actual academia, maybe Ensign Expendable has something? I remember that article as well. I think the thesis was that Warsaw Pact strategies were a lot more straightforward and direct and less reliant on micromanagement, which made them far more "beginner-friendly" than NATO strategies that needed finesse. Like, if the Warsaw Pact player "just" needs to send a bunch of tanks straight down the Fulda Gap, but the NATO player needs to do something like "launch ATGMs, then fall back, wait for the tanks to show up again, launch ATGMs again, fall back, keep trading space for time", then the Warsaw Pact player has a far lower learning curve. I don't know how that would hold up under repeated plays, though, and my reading is that it's more of an "interface gap" than a reflection of the tactics themselves.
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Jun 2, 2016 14:52
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Mycroft Holmes posted:How is Robert McNamara remembered? Is he seen as good or bad? I was just watching Fog of War and he really sidesteps around some of the questions. If you thought McNamara was dodgy in Fog of War, you should really check out The Unknown Known by the same director.
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Jun 7, 2016 17:06
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