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my dad posted:So, who's going to organize the bets for the next big "HEGEL vs Rodrigo Diaz" fight? For what purpose? Very heavy shields such as the pavise had their place on the battlefield at certain times, but it seems evolution of mainstream shields would favour shields such as the kite, evolved from the more primitive early medieval circular shields. The almond shape of the kite shield allowed it to retain much of the relatively lightweight characteristics of the conventional shields, while it extended protection to the lower body, and particularly to the leg, therefore achieving most of the desirable effects of earlier large rectangular shields (the scutum, for example) without being quite as bulky. The prolonged shape also happened to be better at accommodating the shield-bearing hand and forearm and allowed more ergonomic strapping setups to emerge. In short, I think that kind of shape provided the most efficient protection - cumbersomeness ratio for both the typical horsemen and footmen of its period which didn't provide much else in terms of sophisticated protective bodywear. But as any piece of technology, such style of shields also became effectively obsolete as other factors changed. E;fb, and with basically the same point. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Nov 13, 2013 |
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Nov 13, 2013 20:07
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Farecoal posted:For pretty borders. If you don't mind books written immediately after the revolution: A good overview of the revolution itself, including hostilities, was written by Edwin Dingle in "China's revolution 1911-1912": https://archive.org/details/chinasrevolution000821mbp A summary of economic, social and political conditions in the immediate aftermath, including foreign policies towards China, is covered in Bland's "Recent Events and Present Policies in China": https://archive.org/details/recenteventspres00blan The more long-term period of Yuan Shih-kai's government was also described in "American Diplomat in China" by Reinsch: https://archive.org/details/americandiplomat00reiniala Also, the Cambridge edition on China history provides an excellent primer on a whole range of topics, but unfortunately doesn't cover military matters in great detail.
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Nov 14, 2013 00:34
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E: Nevermind. VVVV Just to add context to Hegel's response; I wrote that those books I recommended were written in a popular, approachable style, but overlooked Farecoal's request for more modern sources, so I deleted the post as irrelevant. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 00:48
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PrinceRandom posted:War is really depressing. Does it ever get depressing reading about real people killing real people? Of course. That's why I personally prefer reading about restoring order and politics of post-conflict societies rather than about conflicts themselves. That way the lesson becomes "how to deal with violence and its legacy".
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Nov 14, 2013 11:00
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Nenonen posted:"x will be destroyed in y minutes when the war starts" is a universal truth that applies to anything, if military hearsay is to be believed. Common example: "Russians built all their vehicles to a lower standard because they were calculated to be destroyed in the first five/fifteen/thirty minutes of combat". Which is obvious hogwash. What good in a mobile war is a vehicle, whether tank or truck, that doesn't manage a 300km march without breaking down? Isn't it the NATO powers that built their AFVs to withstand short burst of activity, but incapable of prolonged operations without maintenance? I though the Soviet design philosophy - at least in the Cold War - was to make sure that their tanks would survive on their own, without engineers for as long as possible - which would make sense, considering their tradition of strategic thinking.
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Nov 14, 2013 14:39
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:This is a question with no right answer, but I'd like to know: What are some of your favorite military-related songs? Folk songs or marching songs, it doesn't matter. What HEGEL posted up-thread is a great example. According to a legend, when the Fifth Bohemian crusade moved against the Hussites at Doma˛lice, it was the sound of this hymn sung by the Hussite column that broke the crusaders' morale and sent them fleeing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiYzysQKqGI
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Nov 14, 2013 22:44
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Ensign Expendable posted:
It did work - it made their tanks look 
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Nov 17, 2013 11:40
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Farecoal posted:How effective were the various European resistance movements during World War 2, particularly the French? And were there similar resistance groups in areas under Japanese occupation? Anti-Japanese movements were very active, and very numerous, but not equally distributed throughout the Empire. Notorious examples would include Viet Minh and Korean partisans, both of which started their campaigns before the official WWII timeline, and rose to become leaders of their respective countries. In Burma, Malaya and the Philippines, resistance was often led by Chinese expatriates, Communists, and by guerrilla forces trained by the previous colonial masters. Various freedom-fighter armies also emerged in China, where modern politically charged "banditry" had a long and illustrious history. However, particularly in New Guinea and throughout the Dutch East Indies, the natives often chose to collaborate with the new regime, which - while brutal - wasn't as unpopular as the Dutch administration, and Indonesian revolutionary elites, including Sukarno, found the new climate more conductive to their political aims. Likewise in Burma there's a plenty of reports of Burmese troops surrendering to the Japanese, or even joining their assaults (some particularly notable ones come from the battle of Moulmein, but records of these early events are generally too chaotic for me to tell how significant this switching of allegiance was), and anti-British elites were quite happy to accept Japanese invitation to participate in a new government. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 15:42
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Farecoal posted:How effective is chainmail at protecting from early firearms? Less so than plate armor? Mail wasn't designed to deal even with arrows. Consider that it's basically a lot of tiny holes connected with each another. It's easy for any sufficiently powerful projectile to find a way through. Increasing density and sophistication of riveted / welded joints can marginally improve effectiveness in this area while making the mail overall less practical. Mail has seen application in modern cwarfare, including in protective headgear of some tank crews, but most often not to protect against bullets - rather as a form of anti-shrapnel protection, or to add a layer of blade resistant material underneath bullet resistant, but easily shredded fabrics.
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Nov 20, 2013 23:30
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:So the Military History thread in D&D, is it as bad as I fear it is? It is the usual WWII megathread and no topic lasts enough to receive interesting answers, but ironically the worst posts so far have been submitted by Ask/Tell MilHist regulars trying to make their opinion of D&D known. SA drama 
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Nov 24, 2013 00:33
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INTJ Mastermind posted:Because when you already have perfectly good boats and perfectly good tanks. Why waste time designing and manufacturing a boat-tank when you can just shoot your tank from a boat? Plus, once you're tired of shooting at stuff from the ocean, you can just land your tanks and now your navy has turned into an army. You have rivers that need military patrols, you need reasonably sized and protected guns permanently emplaced on these patrol boats, and you have great quantities of battle-tested turrets equipped with just the required sort of guns. What you don't need is dozens of tons of excess steel weighting your river craft down without adding any benefit, all the while requiring all sorts of extra maintenance and precautions. But hey, maybe you will sometime need one extra, commandless tank stuck in riverbank mud to sway a decisive battle to your advantage?
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Nov 24, 2013 01:33
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Frostwerks posted:But everybody knows tanks are most dangerous in gangs. A gang of tanks. You are correct. Henceforth every river barge shall be issued with an independent tank battalion 
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Nov 24, 2013 11:59
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Lindybeige is chronically wrong, and he puts himself forward as an authority. Whether or not it's just his opinion he expects people to treat it as credible historical fact. As such he deserves to get ripped. Would you be able to elaborate? I've seen quite a few of that guy's videos and he came through as an utterly insufferable know-it-all (which was cemented when he made some videos about "People care about global warming? More like sheeple!  ")
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Nov 26, 2013 16:06
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You all are forgetting that he's actually a wild beast, thank you very much < >
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Nov 26, 2013 19:59
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WWI was a much more dynamic and varied conflict than people usually give it credit for, and key actors such as Douglas Haig are unjustly ridiculed as mentally deficient, rigid fossils despite their actual record... Nevertheless, it's difficult to write about this topic without a more specific starting point.
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Nov 26, 2013 23:47
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I need to go to bed, so no long posts now, but Haig specifically - while suffering from certain negative characteristics - played an important role in thoroughly reforming the British system of logistics, and training, in reviewing new technologies, and in slowly but certainly increasing tactical flexibility of lower level command. Furthermore, there is a lot of research from the 50s and 60s conducted among his veterans, including common footsoldiers, that basically paints him in a much more positive light than the revisionary academic writing of the later 1960s. One of his big problems, though, was a tendency to draw ambitious plans without giving clear instructions to his subordinates; I think some historians basically called him "the armchair general" because he was more likely to give a posteriori criticism of an operation than positive instructions prior to the operation.
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Nov 27, 2013 00:31
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Actually, I'd recommend this article as a starting point; it's a relatively recent (1989), polemical piece by one of his best known advocates - and it's infinitely better written than anything I could come up with: http://www.westernfrontassociation.com/great-war-on-land/john-terraine-essays-on-leadership-and-war-1914-18/192-field-haig.html
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Nov 27, 2013 00:44
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From the military point of view? The one that was closest to American POW camps, and at the same time furthest away from the Soviets. At that point the rational thing to do would be to find the most favourable way to surrender, not to fight a delaying war without a win-scenario.
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Nov 27, 2013 11:19
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So according to these reenactors, the 30 Y war was basically the deadliest mosh / pogo pit of all times.
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Nov 27, 2013 20:25
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I would have a question related to pikechat: Once I read somewhere that the janissaries were so effective largely because of their ability to employ very individualistic tactics, basically infiltrating rigid European pike formations, and breaking them with swords. While pikesmen would be paralyzed in such close quarters combat, the janissaries, trained to fight on their own, without need for a formation, would thrive in the chaos they caused. Of course, I can't quite retrace this argument, and some of the stuff Hegel's been writing about makes me doubt this hypothesis. There's also the fact that janissaries did in fact fight as compact units, even developing modern tactics parallel to Europe at least up to the volley fire revolution, and the notion of them as loosely organized warriors seems at odds with that. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Nov 27, 2013 |
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Nov 27, 2013 22:55
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It seems that having some truly strategically positioned fortresses littered throughout your territory, overseeing chokepoints and communications, wasn't useless even throughout the WWII. Hero Cities / Hero Fortress of the USSR come to mind, so do fortified cities of China. Those positions often did give way to the assaulting force, but not without causing some much needed delays and disruption. What could be considered wasteful is fortification systems that considered entire national frontier to be strategically vital, and didn't have much regard for enemy's ability to circumnavigate huge swaths of these forts. It ddin't work for France, it didn't work for Czechoslovakia (though some nationalists still claim "If only we had defended ourselves, our forts would have bloodied Hitler's nose!", which is nonsense), and ultimately it didn't work for Germany.
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Nov 29, 2013 10:51
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Flesnolk posted:Probably my last thing on this 'cause it's getting closer to TFR talk, but does this work the same way for stuff like stone and concrete (say in an urban setting) or is your typical building material not hard/thick enough to stop a good round? Page 13 of this document begins listing recommended protective thicknesses for direct hits inflicted by projectiles ranging from 7.62 mm to 75 mm in quite a bit of detail. http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA423950 Conclusion: Soil and rubble are your friends. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Dec 4, 2013 |
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Dec 4, 2013 23:08
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a travelling HEGEL posted:Yeah, but 20th century generals are less likely to celebrate it on an aesthetic level. I read excerpts from diaries of a Nazi concentration camp guard who poetically contemplated how Autumn's falling leaves juxtaposed against the camp's courtyard reminded him of the circle of life and stuff like that.
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Dec 5, 2013 19:14
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How many Thirty Year War people have starred in an anime?
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Dec 5, 2013 21:46
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Mycroft Holmes posted:So, I was re-reading my copies of Harry Turtledoves Worldwar series and I had a question. How would Gulf War era technology (minus stealth) fare aginst WWII circa 1942? In the book the humans can't keep up with the alien forces in technology, but they manage to eke out a white peace, trading most of the world for their independance. The wiki article has more information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwar Throw a Seawolf / Los Angeles submarine into the Pacific, destroy the Japanese navy before they even realize something's going on. Then nuke Tojo's house for good measure.  Those books sound really stupid even for military Sci-Fi. The aliens managed to harness the incredible energy required for interstellar travel but didn't think about utilizing it in warfare? OK. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Dec 7, 2013 |
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Dec 7, 2013 00:15
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Perestroika posted:I'm used to it in the way of e.g. "Er könnte jetzt rausgehen, aber er ist sich dazu zu bequemlich.". Appparently it seems to be a local thing from where I grew up, though (lower saxony). It's enough of a common use to be taught in German as a foreign language lessons. These words have also been borrowed by non-German vernaculars (Czech, at the very least) in this very role. In short, it's an euphemism and not the primary meaning, but it's very much understandable.
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Dec 7, 2013 18:59
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a travelling HEGEL posted:Dudes, there's like...a hundred thousand different varieties of German and some of them are mutually incomprehensible, and I can't speak any of them well. You're all right. Or none of you are right. Wit an attitude like that there would be no wars to talk about. 
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Dec 7, 2013 19:20
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BurningStone posted:This is a bit of a different question, but it seems the American Civil War is of great interest to non-Americans. I have to ask, why? As an American it's a very important part of my country's history, and one of my ancestors fought in it, so its attraction for me is obvious. But why the attraction for those who don't have a personal tie? I wouldn't say it's too well known by people without a keen interest in (military) history. Sure, people know about abolitionism and Lincoln, but most (even those with background in Social Studies etc.) would be hard pressed to name a single battle, perhaps with the exception of Gettysburg. To those who fancy history, it's an accessible study in what happens when late industrial weaponry enters the battlefield, as well as the most visible means of a fundamental political transformation taking place in the USA. Perhaps it's different in the UK and the Civil War is more widely studied there? But I've spent a year of uni studies in England, and based on that have no reason to believe so.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:50
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Small quantities of material were traded between Germany and Japan (rubber specifically was available in Japan post-1941, I believe tungsten as well), but the magic of organic chemistry was Germany's main weapon. The Auschwitz III / Monowitz concentration camp is a notorious complex in which synthetic polymers were mass produced. It's worth noting, though, that Germany wasn't the only country suffering from rubber supply deficiencies. The US relied on rubber from South-East Asia, and when this region became hostile, Americans had to utilize synthetic materials as well. In short, if you have the right hydrocarbons, you can basically play an alchemist 
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Dec 10, 2013 12:34
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Well, some castles also basically became towns of their own.
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Dec 23, 2013 11:16
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Douaumont specifically is famous because it didn't hold out - it was poorly manned and captured virtually by an accident by less than 100 Germans. When the French counterattacked at Verdun, the fort proved itself to be more useful because it was aided by the general decisive force of trench warfare - artillery fire. In the end, it perished due to the same reason - artillery fire, despite being a massive complex hidden underneath layers of solid material; the force of the Frenc attack made it impossible to maintain connection between the fortress and the rest of the front. Basically what I'm getting at, with WWI the answer is always artillery.
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Dec 23, 2013 11:39
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a travelling HEGEL posted:Christ, build an airfield somewhere else in the same general region. Dien Bien Phu is by far the most prominent piece of flat land in a mountainous, fractured terrain extending dozens of miles in all directions. Also, the air strip was already there, inherited from the Japanese and with a lot of assets that couldn't be easily transported.
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Dec 23, 2013 19:20
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He was quite successful in inspiring / supporting allied regimes in Central Europe. He also managed to pull off some international political projects such as the civic code, and I think at one point he had a good enough shot at maintaining a fragile status quo with Alexander. So perhaps had he not wasted lots of resources on pet projects and propping up personal acquaintaces in Southern Europe, I guess his position could have been much more tenable in the long term perspective.
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Dec 24, 2013 15:04
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The 1914 Christmas story always bums me out - for a day, there was a bright spot of hope, then it all went to poo poo. 
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Dec 24, 2013 16:41
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Fangz posted:Who would win, Santa or an army of Napoleonic Mongols, led by Gay Black Hitler, with a company of Tank Destroyers in support? That's a question for which we may never find an answer. What we do know, however, is whether Gay Stalin & Gay Superman would defeat Supersayan Hitler. http://storyprovider.blogspot.cz/2012/06/supperman-and-stalin-love-story.html Now also in audio form: http://thefpl.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=88:episode-55-the-ship-vas-crash-like-boom&catid=1:podcasts
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Dec 24, 2013 17:34
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Slavvy posted:Can't remember where, but I remember reading that dug up knight skeletons exhibit pretty extreme bone deformation from being so physically conditioned from such a young age. They would likely have been as fit as high-level professional athletes are today, without the added bonus of modern nutrition and training knowledge. Few years ago there was a novelty piece of news according to which professional athlete oarsmen of today were unable to match performance of ancient trireme crews. http://reporter.leeds.ac.uk/press_releases/current/ancient_greece.htm The problem with this sort of research is that both physical and psychological conditioning to perform a specific task - in this case operating a trireme - significantly boosts one's performance compared to somebody who's got just as much training, but not towards the same task. Also, these boosts are not necessarily measurable using the methodology used in this experiment since they are rooted in restructuring of neurological pathways and brain cortexes responsible for managing and gatekeeping muscle activity rather than in metabolism.
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Dec 27, 2013 00:53
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The 30yw's windfall forced lots of Germans to move to America... Hence it indirectly helped them. QED.
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Dec 27, 2013 01:13
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a travelling HEGEL posted:It's a festival even though it literally means target practice because that's what the civic exercise of arms was back then, a semi-regular party which involved shooting competitions, etc. Americans should be quite familiar with this concept - colonial militias basically participated on their mandatory firing exercises only if the organisers promised enough free beer / punch / poison of choice.
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Dec 29, 2013 00:49
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a travelling HEGEL posted:That's the same university that drove a dude to suicide over copyright. Who, when, why? The only similar story I know involves the person who got bullied by JSTOR / MIT, and Google doesn't return anything.
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Dec 30, 2013 00:33
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veekie posted:As I recall the Japanese invasion of Malaya used bicycles heavily. Not really an expert to know the details though. Japanese invasions everywhere utilized bicycles. Though it should be noted they were no miraculous super-mobile devices. If I remember correctly, of the entire force involved in the battle of Bandjermasin, Borneo, only four bicycles survived the long and strenuous march from Balikpapan to Bandjermasin. The natural adversities encountered by the Japanese in East Indies were often just way too great for a humble bike.  It should also be realized that the Japanese Army was built on a rather crude foundation of support and logistical units, and individual soldiers were expected to be more self sufficient and less "pampered" than their Western counterparts, which put further strain on survivability of bikes. As a grim illustration, consider the following image:  The white parcels carried over necks of these men are urns with ashes of their fallen comrades. There was no service for taking care of remains, the Japanese soldier was meant to carry them on his own until they could be shipped to Japan. That's just one of many examples of how the Japanese were too overburdened and too un-supported to take full advantage of bicycle troops - a fine concept in theory - and in practice were forced to always fall back on conventional marching and use of pack mules (and human pack mules).
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Dec 30, 2013 13:23
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