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count_von_count posted:A few pages ago, but this is my favorite u-boat sinking as well. Also, the "someone on board" who flushed improperly was the boat's commander KL Karl-Adolf Schlitt. In the WWI to Mid WWII years they were probably meant to be really long range and nigh undetectable scouts.
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Nov 20, 2013 02:57
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quote:However, the Roman military also had a huge political problem, in that armies tasked to actually fight a war tended to be lead by any given year's Consuls. If you have a good general, you're almost certainly not going to have him next year. For every Gaius Marius (who destroyed the Germans), Rome ended up stuck with a Quintus Servilius Caepio (who managed to lose 120,000 men to them, including an army he didn't even command). Rome took one hell of a beating against the Germans because they basically kept giving the top command to bumblers, so at least in that regard, their command structure had some major problems. In fairness though this isn't *that* ridiculous, unless the requirement to have something like 20 years of military service to be eligible to be Consul was waived before Caepio's time? How was military tactics training? Did Rome have anything like a 'High Academy of Military Science', something like West Point to train all of their cadres or was that something that didn't kick in until the 18th century? Seems like the problem with incompetent Consuls could've been partly averted if they had to go through a thorough course in strategy.
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Nov 21, 2013 08:42
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Godholio posted:I'm not a fan of The Art of War, personally. It's about half mysticism and bullshit. Clausewitz is not light reading, just a warning. If that's the kind of thing you're after, Jomini is worth a look. Alfred Thayer Mahan is one of the few comprehensive naval writers I'm aware of. Vegetius was a good read, albeit short. Bwuh? I don't recall any mysticism from my version; the only part that might not be useful in the modern day is the part about the use of fire arrows but even that could be refluffed to incendiaries in general. quote:Yeah, the Art of War was full of nice phrases and general rules of thumb, but I don't think it taught me that much about applied military thinking. It kind of sounds like people have weird expectations as to what the AOW is actually supposed to teach; the general rules of thumb serve as a foundation in which to base applied military thought on top of. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Nov 26, 2013 |
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Nov 26, 2013 21:02
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Godholio posted:Mysticism probably isn't the right word, but the gist of it is "here are a series of catchy I think it would be more accurate to be described as a sequence/series of generalizations about the meaning of waging war effectively. Where Clauswitz I imagine goes into more scientific detail, Sun Tzu is more philosophical; as long as its understood more as a philosophy then saying its a bunch of catchy rules is missing the forest for the trees. Sun Tzu never I believe says "So and so will lose if he doesn't heed my advice" its more probabilistic, "So and so is far more likely to lose if he doesn't abide by these principles." He doesn't think you should always retreat if outnumbered 10:1 in an engagement but that you as a commander should keep your eyes open to all paths and carefully consider the known risks versus the known advantages before acting decisively. quote:I understand the importance of the book as a foundation and I found it interesting in that sense; I'm just saying that at this point, in this society, it didn't tell me anything I haven't already heard (because everyone and their uncle quotes the Art of War). I think its important to read the book along with the history context in which it was written, because people can parrot the sayings all they want but isn't that just hearsay without context? It should be studied directly so that you can critically consider it and apply it to other writings. Sun Tzu is to war what Machiavelli is to politics, both authors hated their subject matter which I think makes them especially important when considered with more modern writings. Modern writings that I highly suspect lack the same level of contempt.
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Nov 27, 2013 02:21
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 Mid-teens here too, I think it says a lot to the books credit that you can grasp its fundamental concepts as a teenager; its way more approachable when your young and is in a better position to influence your thinking.
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Nov 27, 2013 04:30
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Englishman alone posted:Can I offer my services in this Thread. I am an MA student in Kings Collage London on a History of Warfare Course with A specialisation in conflict in the Middle East in particular the Arab Israeli War's I also have extensive knowledge Naval Warfare, Command(in particular that of 19th-20th Century). My Dissertation is on the history of Procurement in the UK in the last Hundred Years. I have a wide knowledge of many other areas from the World War One Logistics and weapon development(for instance I recently did a small project looking in Liddle Hart Archives on early Tank development) To the Falklands War, Colonial Conflicts, Naval Warfare, Counter insurgency and Propaganda. I feel I also have a understanding of the usage of sources and verifying and dealing with sources with the suitable scepticism. How true is the claim(s) that the IDF was actually incredibly incompetent during the various A-I wars and only won because the Arabs were worse? (Off the top of my head they apparently lost track of one of their boomer's) Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Dec 8, 2013 |
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Dec 8, 2013 03:09
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ArchangeI posted:Well, from one perspective this is true for every organized war ever. To a degree but obviously not to the extent claimed that prompted the question. For example we know the Prussian's won fairly handedly thanks to a load of factors during 1870 but they also made some mistakes; but clearly they operated 'fairly well'. If I recall correctly I believe it was claimed/implied that the IDF had consistent systemic problems with competence only to win because the opposing belligerents were worse. I think winning despite systemic incompetence would be quite the rare feat, such as Chiang Kai-Shek winning the 1949 war.
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Dec 8, 2013 03:21
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I.W.W. ATTITUDE posted:I'm looking for recommendations too, but not for any of them fancy readin' books. I just want to know if anyone could point me towards good documentaries about The WWII Eastern Front, The American Revolutionary War, or The 30 Years' War- preferably available on YouTube or a similar video site. And/or good essays or journalism available on the internet, that relate to any of these subjects. I'm looking for stuff that is relatively unbiased and professional, so that disqualifies a lot of stuff that I'd normally run into by just googling around. You can't get any more awesome than this. Honestly, I'ld like to see that sort of presentation for every other war.
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Dec 22, 2013 07:27
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Morholt posted:Interesting how it makes a big deal out of the various communist resistance movements but doesn't even mention the Warsaw Uprising. Except it... Does though? It specifically mentions it.
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Dec 23, 2013 02:45
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The Great Purge of the Red Army to what extent did it cripple the Red Army's readiness for 1941 and to what extent could it have 'helped'? Was there any evidence at all that any subset of the Red Army or any of its surviving Tsarist era officers were plotting against Stalin? The cons as I understand them: 1. A Chilling Effect that probably suppressed initiative and military innovation to some degree; i.e soldiers unwilling to 'interpret' or improvise on their orders to take advantage of the tactical situation? 2. The early theoretical development of what I think the West calls "Deep Battle/Deep Operations" was iirc crippled until the Germans invaded and took until 1943/44 (Bagration) to reach maturity. 3. Loss of expertise or experienced officers in military matters at all levels, meaning the organizational ability to efficiently "respond" to German actions even if the orders made strategic sense couldn't succeed. The only counter argument I've read is that purging so many officers allowed for a newer younger generation of officers to rise up but I honestly can't find a single high ranking officer whose career was helped in particular as a result. Rokossovsky, Malinovski, Zhukov, Konev and Timoshenko who I arguably judge as the best Soviet commanders none of them had an easier time, gently caress Rokossovsky was beaten and imprisoned during the Purges; his performance might've been better if he didn't have some bones broken during the ordeal. As an interesting 'alt-hist' argument, how much more effective would have the Soviet war effort had been, without the Purges, or suppose they ended abruptly early? Also, look at this awesome photograph wikipedia has now for Zhukov and Rokossovsky circa 1945.  Holy cow, that's beautiful and real looking.
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Feb 3, 2014 04:50
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Speaking of tanks, ironically would have attacking at Kursk sooner have helped better than later?
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Feb 14, 2014 06:24
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PittTheElder posted:Probably, but the best option was not to attack it at all, since there was no real reason to do so. I think realistically no matter how "well" the Germans could defend and hold Soviet territory, they would inevitably lose once the other Allies had enough force bearing down on them that it necessitated continued offense in an attempt to knock the USSR out of the war.
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Feb 14, 2014 07:58
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Honestly if I as a civilian wanted to have any nations surplus for everyday use (fantasy scenarios aside) I would imagine that Soviet kit is probably the most practical; if the consensus of it being "easy to maintain" and "high endurance" are true. The BMP is probably easy to make road legal as well.
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Feb 14, 2014 08:51
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MrYenko posted:If you want to do a job with an airplane, it will cost X. If you want to do the same job with a helicopter, it will cost X*3=Y. If you then want to have some of the same characteristics of a fixed wing airplane in a VTOL platform, that will cost Y*Z=V, where Z is the number of senators you have to buy to ram the project through congress. I thought the Harrier kinda filled an important strategic niche for Britain nu? Its not like they could afford super carriers.
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Feb 18, 2014 06:05
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I'm working on some ideas for a cold war grand strategy game and would be interested in maps. Is there like a version of google earth set to 1987? (specifically I'm finding it difficult to figure out where the East-West German border is supposed to be).
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Mar 4, 2014 20:58
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HEY GAL posted:Other way around; the volley, or similar things when everyone in a platoon fires at once, are newer. And those start becoming viable only when formations start getting thinner. If your formation is five deep (which is already comparatively thin) it would hurt people if you all fired at once. (Confirming this, French hospital records from the early early 1700s show that front-rank men would be burnt or even wounded by their rear-rank comrades' fire, since French drill at the time didn't require that the rear-rank men turn a little.) But in Sharpe when the British are sinking the Danish fleet Sharpe describes what its like being on the receiving end of platoon fire. 
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Jun 1, 2014 20:25
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Ensign Expendable posted:
I wonder if the Soviets could have made it to the Rhine if they had Pattons in 1944.
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Jun 2, 2014 00:24
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There's also this Flash Presentation which is itself pretty amazing.
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Jun 2, 2014 03:07
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Ensign Expendable posted:I'm glad to know that World of Tanks reflects armoured combat accurately. I haven't played in a while but doesn't it? Two teams hiding out behind cover sniping at each other until enough tanks concentrate at one point of the map and roll over the over team? Sure there's no infantry, pillboxes, minefields or anti tank gun emplacements/ambushes to contend with but some fights probably end up decently close no?
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Jun 2, 2014 06:39
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Mojo Threepwood posted:I have learned a ton from this thread, especially the consensus that the outcomes of the American Civil War and World War II were more lopsided that I had thought in my Turtledove added mind (the South never having a chance, and the German wartime economy being a mess rather than possessing mad-scientist efficiency.) To be fair, Turtledove's what if involved Britain and France leaning on Lincoln which while unlikely is at least plausible; Turtledove never doubted the economics of the fight. Paul Kennedy wrote about the American Rebellion and generally the gist was fighting a war across 6000 miles of ocean was really difficult and expensive when the British arguably made more money trading with the United States post war anyways. So unless the British somehow crushed the Americans really early they were going to fight an long drawn out insurrection they couldn't put down before the next inevitable French-English war in Europe broke out. World War I from what I've read probably could have been a really close thing if the American's don't enter due to the French army having problems and the Russian withdrawal from the war.
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Jun 9, 2014 05:30
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Spacewolf posted:Yes please? Didn't Enterprise have decent looking Uniforms that looked evolved from NASA uniforms?
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Jun 16, 2014 17:17
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to get the ability to PM or the like...)
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Nenonen posted:I'm sorry, did you say Bagration 70th anniversary? Heard you guys say 'The most awesome and most decisive offensive operation of all time.' e: This gets me every drat time. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Jun 22, 2014 |
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Jun 22, 2014 19:44
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Azran posted:Is this a good documentary, by the way? Production values seem good at least, or is it a History Channel-level production? It's seemed like a good documentary to me, it pairs up well with the Pobedeteli site.
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Jun 26, 2014 05:04
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Taerkar posted:It is really hard to overstate just how much of an industrial change Russia saw in the opening part of the 20th century. Large parts of it were still pretty much agrarian communities with peasants and all before the revolution. They had some industry, but nothing compared to what they had at the start of WWII. That's the T-34-85 iirc, the 76mm model was probably the backbone of the tank forces by late 1942. Another thing about the M-R Pact, the USSR had been trying desperately to get security agreements with France and Britain to contain Germany; for example the Soviets and the French had an agreement to defend Czechoslovia, but particularly at Munich repeatedly told the Soviets off and so they decided not to be the next country offered on a plate.
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Jul 1, 2014 08:44
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Freudian posted:Is there anyone in this thread who'd like to ramble about the Wars of the Three Kingdoms? Unfortunately I never researched it although I wanted to read Romance. I did write a paper about the Warring States period where Qin unified China into a single polity for the first time; this was to examine whether it had a functional balance of power system or not. It's interesting because for a short time it looked like one might actually fully develop, contain the Qin and the Chinese intrastate warfare and competition could continue indefinitely (I imagine unification would probably happen inevitably once firearms were developed and propagated like in Japan). However instead Qin seemed very good at sniping various countries ally's to change sides or stay neutral in key conflicts, such as bribing officials to convince a King or two into saying "It isn't my problem." so the enemy alliance collapses and Qin can pick enemy states off one by one until he unites the whole thing, dies, has an incompetent son take over resulting in possibly the most epic civil war of all time between Chiang Yu and Liu Bang; the latter would win and found the Han dynasty and modern China is born. The whole period is pretty amazing in of itself.
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Jul 6, 2014 17:00
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You can trace the Rurikovich's to Rurik and a hypothetical descendent of the Prophet Mohammed back to him can't you? That's gotta be easily 700's.
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Jul 8, 2014 03:48
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apseudonym posted:Does anyone have any recommendations of books on Eastern Front combat? I've read lots of strategic stuff but I'd love to find something that goes more into the tactical levels than strategic, especially from a Soviet perspective. Ah there was a good one I've read, My Just War: The Memoir of a Jewish Red Army Soldier in World War II I liked it a lot, the guy surviving was a miracle in of itself.
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Jul 9, 2014 06:01
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SocketWrench posted:Don't forget that the German tank ace, Michael Wittmann, got his start with a STuG and did a poo poo load of damage with it. It wasn't until about 43 that he got into a Tiger I. I like that clip I always see of King Tigers probably had every combat ready King Tiger at the time.
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Jul 12, 2014 16:31
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I know this might count as a silly counter-factual but how much would have putting a radar set and as many radio's as they can into their heaviest load bearing long range bomber would have helped the Japanese as a sort of proto-AWACS from the onset? Edit: Or was the power issue too much of a problem for an early awacs to have been effective? Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Jul 24, 2014 |
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Jul 24, 2014 07:32
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Saburo Sakai posted:Saburo Sakai  I remember reading his book in highschool and having it completely change my view of WWII and how the people fighting for the Axis were generally ordinary blokes too.Although it was kinda weird for me at the time how he married his second cousin or something. Its kinda shocking how he survived the entire war. I'd watch the hell out of a movie based on him.
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Jul 29, 2014 23:15
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bewbies posted:So I just finished Red Moon Rising which I thoroughly enjoyed. I really didn't know much about the space race in general and couldn't have even told you who Korolev was prior to reading said book. What was awful about him again, all I know is he gets quote mined a lot by Moon Landing Hoax people.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:07
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Don Gato posted:Also depending on who you asked, he brutally punished slaves who hosed with his precious rockets. Even in the best light, Von Braun comes off as a guy who REALLY likes rockets and saw the Nazis as a means to an end, even if it meant a shitton of human rights violations along the way. "I aim for the stars, but sometimes I hit London*" and all that. I don't particularly see designer the V2 as something that makes him anymore awful then Heisenberg for the Atomic bombs; at least Braun had space travel in mind from the outset. There doesn't seem to be much evidence that he had any control over the treatment of the slave labourers or a say in their use.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:42
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Fangz posted:The moral position of Heisenberg is something that is very much in debate. I think there's little question that had Heisenberg been successful in delivering Hitler the nuclear bomb, he'd be hugely maligned today and a big black mark on the field of theoretical physics. Even today people question things about whether Heisenberg really was trying to make the bomb, whether he was sabotaging the project, whether he was just incompetent, whether he had much of a choice in his involvement. Woops! I meant Oppenheimer, Regarding the Manhattan Project. Cyrano4747 posted:You don't operate that high in the Nazi hierarchy without getting your hands dirty. I don't have any specific, juicy anecdotes at my fingertips, but just the network of really sleazy professional associations you have to join and party connections you have to maintain and keep to rise up through the administrative ranks to head a major project means at the very least that on some level you actually believe in the National Socialist program or you're willing to roll with it and consort with some real fucks to further your career. There's a level of responsibility past which "I was just doing my job" ceases to be a real answer anymore. Sure but the question is did that happen to that extent; and to what extent is that morally culpable when that probably does happen all the time in the Military-Industrial Complex everywhere of people needing to do politics to do the work they actually wanting to do. Say you want to work on a new quantum computer design but to get funding the military insists you keep an eye open for dual-use purposes; and to keep that funding you need to rub shoulders with military-quasi politicians at events and so on. Isn't that the same? It seems odd to single out Braun for that if the evidence doesn't bear fruit for him having a say regarding the treatment of the labourers. quote:Also, I doubt anyone who's ever visited the factory at Mittelwerk can maintain a good impression of the man. He steadfastly denied visiting the actual camp (where the prisoners slept) at Dora-Mittelbau, but he openly admitted visiting Mittelwerk (where the rockets were constructed inside a loving mountain) on numerous occasions. Conditions there were abysmal, inmates were treated awfully (even by camp factory standards) on the line, and death was frequent. Between the factory and the camp more workers died building the rockets than were killed by the fuckers when launched. You can get tours of Mittelwerk today and if you're ever in the general area of Thuringia I highly recommend it. Doesn't the wikipedia page for Braun though mention he was disgusted by Mittelwerk's conditions? I think there's no doubt he rationalized a lot of stuff away but I think we need to reassess what blame we're assigning him.
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Jul 31, 2014 17:33
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Speaking of Rome and Fabian tactics, Extra History: The Punic Wars I like these videos a lot, I really hope they do more for some other conflict; perhaps the American Rebellion? Greene sounds really interesting.
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Aug 2, 2014 21:11
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SeanBeansShako posted:Just don't get them started on Napoleon III. I just saw this on Imgur and I wanted to link it but you beat me by a mile. One of the commenter's has a good idea, it'd be cool to see the kit of their antagonists for those battles.
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Aug 4, 2014 03:42
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Koramei posted:Some WW1 battlefields 100 years later. The crazy thing for me is the sheer number of what appears to be shell craters.  Why did stick grenades (the kind that the Germans and Soviets seemed to like) fall out of use and now we have these weird peanut/grapefruit shaped things?
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Aug 5, 2014 04:09
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MrYenko posted:IIRC, This is from a mid-late eighties FEMA brochure. There was a post from another forum that said something along these lines regarding England's targeting plans; basically the Soviets had somehow managed to entirely neutralize the British nuclear thread entirely through the single ABM battery outside Moscow and some other hypothetical capabilities. Fake Edit, found it after 5 minutes: Irbis from Stardestroyer.net posted:The Moscow ABM system was far from being marginal. It was (and remains) a very important component.
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Aug 5, 2014 18:15
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BurningStone posted:Two grenade stories from when I was obsessed with the Pacific island fighting: Although the Japanese also had a strong baseball presence themselves so this assumption I imagine could backfire eventually.. 
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Aug 5, 2014 18:50
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SocketWrench posted:There'd be less engine breakdowns, yeah, but everything else would still break, maybe even moreso with that much more power put to them. I imagine a high powered modern engine would shred some of those transmissions in the heavier tanks. Part of the problem here was that the Germans according to a friend of mine had hit the limits as to how much further they could up-gun and up-armor the Panzer IV's and generally needed a new main battle tank. So they had to develop something that could fit the long barreled 75 or the 88. And well, if you're being massively outnumbered anyways why not try to go for the quality advantage?
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Aug 8, 2014 17:05
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Taerkar posted:Except they didn't even have any significant quality advantage. The big cats were mostly a waste. The King Tiger sure, but something like the Panther was needed and I think the Tiger itself generally performed well.
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Aug 8, 2014 17:42
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