Ask Us About Military History: Remove Balls To Fire Blanks

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Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

a travelling HEGEL posted:

Not to mention that a siege etiquette developed during the 1600s and 1700s, according to which it wasn't dishonorable to surrender after certain criteria had been met (the first breach was made, the first ram touched the gate, etc) but before the final storm. Saves lives, of course, and resources.

This lasted right up until the French Revolution, when a garrison commander who surrendered in the old way was executed, along with his wife, for giving in to enemies of the revolution.

By the state or the revolutionaries? It's unclear.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2014 19:42

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 07:53

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Speaking of which, when was the last time an army crossed the Channel and landed on hostile ground successfully? I can't think of any English examples since 1066 (glorious revolution was naval only I think?)

# ¿ Jun 7, 2014 02:25

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Cyrano4747 posted:

I . . . have to be missing something here, but I've re-read it ten times.

To answer, 1944.

I meant before 1944, obviously. I posted directly after a link saying D-day was an unprecedented historical feat, so I obviously am asking how unprecedented.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2014 02:32

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

Until you get drunk and take the shilling by mistake/trickery and BLAM now you are loving freezing your dick off somewhere along the Spanish/Portuguese frontier.

Considering even northern Spain in winter doesn't get colder than the UK, i'd be more worried about the consistent hot days. Those would be unusual.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2015 22:51

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Trin Tragula posted:

100 Years Ago

Also, the adverts in today's paper are spectacularly boring, so I've clipped the chess problems instead. Anyone dare to have a go at them?

The first one is queen d4-d8, then either pawn f8 promote to knight or bishop f5 depending on what he takes the queen with. Second one is trickier, you start with a queen move to a7, king moves to d5 to avoid mate, your queen moves to b6, then reguardless of what he does you have checkmate with either the pawn or knight.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 18:21

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Tekopo posted:

If you do queen d4-d8, cant black do Kg6 and get out of the trap?

Pawn f8 promote to knight is checkmate if he does that.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 18:44

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

blackmongoose posted:

Yeah, I think the actual solution is promote pawn to knight, black takes with queen, then move the bishop for mate

No, king flees to g8

blackmongoose posted:

Kxf6 , so not mate

Nope, protected by the queen on d8

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 18:50

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

Black losing their queen at that point may as well just resign.

Edit: Yeah, promoting the pawn is the answer.

Yes, but the puzzle is checkmate in 2, not advantage in 2 or checkmate generally (which is why promoting the pawn doesn't work)

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 18:55

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Murgos posted:

Push pawn and promote to knight putting king in check. black Queen takes white knight. White queen moves left one square putting king in check. Queen is protected, kings escape is blocked in all direction.

Left? That doesn't even check the king. Both the checks the queen has (down one, right one) are covered by the black knight so if the queen does those she dies.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 19:30

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Frostwerks posted:

What's OCP mean in this context

Outside Context Problem. Essentially something which is so far out of your reference frame you can't consider it occurring until it does. Coined by Iain Banks, the usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbors were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2015 20:04

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Rabhadh posted:

This is why reddit is so poo poo , you have these absolute dopes who feel they're right about all these things just because they can bury any dissenting opinions.

ftfy

# ¿ Apr 3, 2015 11:37

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Tomn posted:

Modern Era: Man, I don't even know. Something something over-the-horizon missiles that can't be effectively stopped, I think? Also electronic warfare? Maybe railguns will bring battleships back? Though that's all theorycrafting anyways, it's not like anybody has fought a major naval engagement recently.

On that note: Apart from the Falklands War, has there been any naval engagements anywhere since WW2? As far as I know, the Argentinian Navy at the time was essentially old WW2 ships, and all it provided was that aircraft are still dangerous to fleets, but they can be fought off, the same things learnt in WW2 essentially.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2015 18:49

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Cyrano4747 posted:

Frat boys don't also have the potential for a military court martial hanging oover their head. Plus there is a lot more structure authority and observation. It wouldn't surprise me if western militaries in combat zones have lower rates of most non killing offenses.

Don't US soldiers have more stringent rules of engagement about when they can fire than US cops at the moment?

# ¿ May 31, 2015 17:31

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Cyrano4747 posted:

anti-malarial quinine water + anti-scurvy limes + medical gin = the drink of empire

# ¿ Jun 14, 2015 19:48

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

feedmegin posted:

Isn't that basically what I'm saying? The Royal Navy prioritised ships of the line over making super-frigates, because it was facing off against France. If France wasn't a factor and its priority was America, it could a) use some of that admittedly precious oak for American-style frigates, or more likely b) use those ships of the line to establish British control of the Western Atlantic. The US frigates are nice ships and obviously a sensible choice given the US's strategic situation, don't get me wrong, but they're not something Britain didn't know how to make which is kind of how the OP came across.

I think what Alchenar is saying is than Britain couldn't built Frigates to the same standards that Americans could at the time, because the resources whern't there for the UK but were for the USA>.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2015 17:25

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

sullat posted:

And just because one side is "bad" or has suspect motives, doesn't mean the other side is automatically"good".

The Americans were revolting for what today would be considered entirely good reasons (lack of representation and devolved power to the Thirteen Colonies). The fact that the tax being placed on them was much less than their Old World brethren and entirely to pay for their own defense, and one of the things the Americans' wanted the power to do was continuously expand westwards into the natives, just provides some awkward details of what they did with their newfound power.

Besides, it is that surprising that different countries present their histories to their people in different ways? America spends a lot of time mythologising the American Revolution, while Britain barely touches it in its history education. Canada presents the War of 1812 as a great victory over American invaders, while America's either ignore it or treat it as a respond to perceived British injustice.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2015 22:08

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

HEY GAL posted:

i hope they know more about their war than my subjects do about theirs then

Hahahahahaha no.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2015 17:56

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

HEY GAL posted:

And

and and and AND!

The American air force bombed Milan during the second world war and all the government poo poo from my period after '23 is gone. The Mansfeld Regiment was mustered in in 25.

Welp, so how screwed is your research?

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 19:27

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Don't forget, the lessons European countries took from the Siege of Port Arthur, which was that heavily fortified positions could be taken under direct assault, but with high causalities and a few months work on sapping. This wasn't valid in WW1, one reason which being the ease of reinforcement and counterattack, not possible in the case in Port Arthur.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2015 23:02

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Fangz posted:

Do these generals in WWI tend to tour the front lines ever?

Quite a bit, actually. 78 British officers of general rank or higher get killed during the war, mostly from artillery barrages when touring the front line. When these deaths happened I don't know, so they might occur mostly in the later stages of the war.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2015 17:33

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Wasn't the Harrier an actually decent VTOL aircraft aswell?

# ¿ Aug 30, 2015 00:40

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Cyrano4747 posted:

Don't be so sure. Internet archiving is in loving dire straits, and that's when stuff isn't consciously altered by people who have the ability to do so.

A person I went to grad school with was big into researching the colonial natives who fought for the colonial powers during the various wars of decolonization. She made major use of various online forums set up by those people and their families to keep in touch, organize their communities (they're frequently reviled by the people from the old country who emigrated after the war for non-related reasons) etc. One of the biggest problems she had was community leaders altering other people's posts or deleting them altogether if it didn't fit in with the memory and social consciousness that they were trying to shape.

We'll figure out a better way in the future, but as it stands it can be really hard to work with. gently caress, just look at the archives of these very forums. There are huge swaths that are just lost to time.

IIRC, American Folklife Center is archiving SA. Not sure how extensive that is, or if they just got a snapshot at some point instead of live monitoring, but stuff on SA has a slightly better than average chance of being stuck in a archive somewhere.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2015 23:33

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Cyrano4747 posted:

I think Archangel is on to something but to elaborate a bit:

With the construction of the modern nation state in the 18th-19th century (especially the 19th) you also have a major push towards creating a monolingual society. When central government becomes that important having everything in a single language of governance becomes a big deal. Eventually this gets swept up in increasingly strong national identities. The French are a perfect example of this. What we consider French today is really just the dialect that was dominant in central France and Paris. In the 19th century there was a huge push in the educational system to force children to learn that version of French to the detriment of Provencal/Savoyard/Bretan/etc. You have additional pressures as the bureaucracy becomes more and more important as a source of employment and income for the rising middle class. If you're a man from Gascony that wants his son to grow up and get a good job in government you sure as poo poo want him speaking Parisian French perfectly and really don't give two shits if he can understand 100% of what his grandmother is saying.

In Hegel's time? Even languages that we consider extremely consolidated today were dialectic as gently caress and entire sub-regions had distinctly different languages. This is an era when you could drive from London to Cardiff and hear people speaking English, Cornish, and Welsh, and that's ignoring dialects of each. I have no proof of this, but I strongly suspect that being at least somewhat multi-lingual was much more common, even for your average John, Johann, or Jacques, than it was today simply because it was much more necessary and people grew up hearing a lot more of them. Think less people speaking in perfect foreign tongues about complex topics and more the roughly functional breed of multilingualism that you can hear in a lot of working class first generation immigrants.

As an aside, it strikes me that the countries that still retain the strongest dialects are those where that process of centralization in the 19th century was either imperfect or started really late. Germany is the prime example of this in my mind and to this day it's extremely common to find Germans who speak both perfect High German but also a strong regional dialect that they grew up with - and anyone who says dialects are easy has never tried to understand an Ost Frissian.

How did this process evolve in England? Like, in Wales/Cornwall/Scotland there were attempts to marginalize native languages, but was there any effort in England to get people in the South East/West country/North to speak more like londoners?

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 15:06

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Koramei posted:

Relatedly, is there evidence for English getting more homogenized since the internet? I do think in my experience British people are a lot more familiar with American terms, but that might just be anecdotal. Maybe TV is the bigger influence there anyway.

I believe some linguists did a paper on this and divergence has actually increased recently. Don't have a link handy however.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 20:52

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Tomn posted:

Are you suggesting that there is such a thing as "enough pike and shot"?

But more seriously I've always been a bit fuzzy on what went into the ECW, particularly the aftermath. Something something, Parliament revolts, and then the king's head comes off and suddenly there's a military dictatorship except that disappeared too for some reason? Come to think of it, books on what happened AFTER the Parliamentary victory would be pretty informative as well.

While it's not a book, the Revolutions podcast (same guy who did History of rome) has a series on the ECW which I found informative all the way up to the restoration of the monarchy.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2015 10:35

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

HEY GAL posted:

Yesterday I scanned a proviant-rechnung, provisions accounting list, for part of some cavalry companies Mansfeld led in 1624, a year before he raised the regiment that's my main concern. It's not for all the companies, just two or three of them; presumably, the captains of the other companies kept their own books.

The book is bound in what I think is rawhide, tied shut with leather thongs. It's in very good condition.

A cavalry company in this period is about thirty combatants, which means about sixty or seventy men total since each combatant has at least one Jung, assistant or servant. They go through ridiculous amounts of hay, straw, grain, bread, meat, live cattle, etc, but here's Mansfeld's company's beer account.

A cask of beer a day for several weeks, and that's not counting Ferner Extra Ordinarii, when they tap a cask when someone comes to visit or something. Multiply that by seven and that's how much beer Mansfeld's entire cav compliment consumes.

Edit: I'm saying things like "group of cavalry companies" because as far as I know cavalry is not organized into "regiments." So the muster rolls for these guys will say things like "Seven Companies Of Cavalry Led By Wolff Von Mansfeld."

What's the In per person consumption? Do we have any idea on the average volume of a cask?

# ¿ Sep 24, 2015 12:06

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Trin Tragula posted:

So it's page 666 and I've got to follow HEY GAL? Of course. How appropriate.

100 Years Ago

I both love and hate the first day of a big offensive. It's great because there's so much going on and so many stories to tell. It's shite because there's too many stories to tell and far too much going on all at once. This is a triple-header.

Of course, thanks to the Anglo-centric state of English-language scholarship, the shortest post is about the biggest offensive, as the French Army gets stuck in at Second Champagne (and achieves something) and Third Artois (and doesn't). Say, which attack was Louis Barthas going to be in? Wasn't it Third Artois? Of course it was. Poor bugger spends most of the day marching confusedly around a mud-pit, which is at least slightly better than having to go over the top.

Next we have the story of the BEF's diversionary attacks at Hooge Chateau and Aubers Ridge, including yet more proof that where there's a lovely end of the stick to be got, the Indians will have that lovely end shoved right in their faces.

And then we have far too many words about the Battle of Loos, in which some drunken Scotsmen rampage through a French town; nothing unusual about that, except this time, they're going to get medals for it instead of fourteen days' Field Punishment Number One. Sadly, the tactical disadvantages to using drunken Scotsmen soon become apparent...

Your hyperlinks to the other two posts in the Second Champagne post are missing.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2015 21:18

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Hazzard posted:

I badly want a series about modern engineers who are thrown back to the Renaissance and make their living by being battlefield engineers. Modern mechanical knowledge bolted onto period materials. Introduce Newtonian Physics a few hundred years early and a society can save piles of money on building materials.

First job: Hope someone has a solar powered calculator, and frantically write down trig and log tables.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2015 10:05

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

my dad posted:

Then again, the traditional Partizan anti-tank tactic was staging fake tank-stealing raids, waiting for the Nazis to bring in anti-armor weaponry to fight off potential stolen tanks, and then stealing those in a real raid. Which implies a number of propeller hat wearing buffoons in the Nazi mid-level command too.

How do you stage a fake tank stealing raid? Surely to get them to roll out the anti armour stuff, you'd need to hit a tank depo pretty hard, and by then you could just attack the place where anti tank stuff is stored in the first place.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2015 15:44

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Fangz posted:

The Nazis were fantastically lucky though.

In France? Yes. In the rest of their wars? Not particularly.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2015 16:29

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Tomn posted:

A little late, but I'll note that the very reason why cavalier has that definition is because that was the stereotype of the Royalists at the time.

As for why cavaliers were called cavaliers, they tended (not entirely or overwhelmingly but enough to be noticed) to be drawn from aristocrats, i.e. people with the money to raise and regularly ride horses. In combat they WERE excellent cavalry and could put the hurt on anything they charged. The problem was that being a bunch of independent-minded aristocrats they also tended to chase whatever they broke, with the result that they'd smash what they were thrown against, run them off the field, and then whoop, suddenly the Royalist army has no more cavalry.

Isn't that exactly what happened at the Battle of Edgehill? Royalist cav beat Parliamentary cav, and instead turning round and attacking the Parliamentary Parliamentary just kept chasing the cav, therefore allowing the Parliamentary infantry to win?

# ¿ Oct 12, 2015 22:40

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

I think they get to about a pikes length from each other, and try to stab each other while being shot at by musketeers: I might be wrong though, wait for HEY GAL to come out with the correct answer.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2015 20:30

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

How prevalent was Astrology around the 17th century? You've talked quite a bit about soldiers superstitions and rituals (understandably) but how was Astrology seen and used by people in the 17th century?

# ¿ Oct 14, 2015 20:38

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Keldoclock posted:

The first programmable modern computer is agreed to be the the Colossus codebreaker, made by the British in December 1943. What are you referring to? The Z1? It's not versatile enough to be called a computer as we understand them today.

The Z3. Konrad Zuse did develop his ideas, you know

# ¿ Oct 16, 2015 21:36

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Libluini posted:

Wikipedia is poo poo, news at eleven

Also you are totally wrong about the Z3. The Z3 had no specialized task, it was a programmable digital computer which could do whatever you programmed it to do. The Colossus only could decrypt things and you indeed would need to do a lot of wrangling with the thing to make it do anything else.

In the most simple terms possible: The Colossus was like a printer. Theoretically it could do something else besides it's task, but that would need a lot of effort to do. The Z3 was more like the later home computers in that it wasn't specialized on a single task. If you take the time to learn the weird programming language Konrad Zuse wrote, you could do anything with it a later computer like the C64 could do. Welp, you'd need a better monitor of course but you get the gist.

Your last paragraph is weird and wrong bullshit, so I assume you would have deleted it if you hadn't forgotten to proofread your post and just be nice and ignore it.

The only thing really missing from the Z3 was conditional branching (IF X then Y ELSE Z), so it's not fully equivalent in instruction set to modern programming, but it's been proved that doesn't stop you emulating whatever a C64 could do if you have enough time and memory, just in pratise.

The thing is the Germans never really used it for much, Konrad Zuse only developing it as a aid to civil engineering projects in the first place, and such much of the potential benefit from having such a good machine available to them was lost. It was used for a few things, but not nearly as much as it could be, and Zuse didn't do much of academic note afterwards IIRC.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2015 12:31

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Libluini posted:

The German army still has problems with its retarded civilian procurement. Since the Ukraine-crisis, we had to raise the amount of our battle-ready tanks by 33% and take over command of the new NATO-fast response brigade. Which leads to "hilarious" poo poo like the Bundeswehr having to rebuy and refit Leopard II-tanks we had discharged a couple years earlier. We paid for the tanks, we paid for proper discharge of them, now we have to pay again to get them back into service. The refit costs more than brand new tanks, but the civilian bureaucracy controlling procurement didn't want to pay for new tanks, you see.

Only two of our helicopters are working and last time I checked, both of them were still at Cape Horn, helping our frigate hunting pirates. Then after we wanted to send weapons and ammo to the Peshmerga, we barely made it: First our Dutch-NATO partner was supposed to transport the stuff, but the transport plane broke down. Then our transport planes broke down. As in, first one then a second one. Luckily the third plane in this mess got repaired fast enough to get the weapons to the Peshmerga, just in time for this weird G36-scandal to confuse them.

The G36 has some aiming trouble in some edge cases, which the assholes in procurement tried to suppress, to protect Heckler & Koch apparently. Now everything is confused, since we of course still need to use the G36, since it has replaced all of our old G3s and there sure as hell isn't enough money nor time to magic up a replacement and issue is to the entire army at once. The problem is mostly a German one, since allmost every other nation on Earth would look at the slight decrease in accuracy when the gun gets too hot and just shrug.

Also I remember hearing from the Dutch in WWII! Didn't they fight like only seven days or something before the Wehrmacht overran them?

And I though the UK military was a clusterfuck.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 16:37

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Did the problems that applied to continental mercenary armies even apply during the English Civil War? Given that parliament had to finance a army before it was raised,and early on in the conflict there was no central figure borrowing money to finance the army (like a king) it might be that they actually had steady cash flows and weren't all in piles of debt. Maybe, at least.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2015 11:52

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Besides, the subs are reaching the end of their design life, and (may) be replaced soon.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2015 19:47

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Cyrano4747 posted:

There are ~320 million people in the US today. Assuming that your figure of ~20 million is accurate that would be a touch over 6% of the population. Is 6% "fairly common?" Depends on what you're talking about.

There is still a significant rural component to the US and plenty of people do poo poo outdoors, but there is a loving gigantic urban population, many of whom have never so much as seen a cow in person much less needed to prepare food in the field.

And then there's the fact that America Is Not The World. America has alot more open spaces to be apart from civilization in that most of europe for one, so that means something common in America is not going to be in the rest of the western world.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2015 18:54

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 07:53

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Geography wise, maps would definitely be usful: I've ignored most of the "and they marched to X" stuff because I have no idea where things are relative to each other.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2015 10:50

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Ask Us About Military History: Remove Balls To Fire Blanks

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