Ask Us About Military History: Remove Balls To Fire Blanks

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VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

SeanBeansShako posted:

I just stumbled across this in a war gaming forum.

I think we need to know all about it. I demand somebody tells me more about this thing!

This seat arrangement used to be common. Many early Streetcars were like this.

I saw a similar vehicle once in real life. It was an historic vehicle belonging to a firefighting department. It was pulled by draft horses. Didn't go faster then a brisk walk.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2014 21:54

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 07:27

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

HEY GAL posted:

Think it's called "a joke."

Yes, but is it a modern joke or a cold war era joke? Is it an American joke or a Russian joke?
Historians should want to know this, right?

# ¿ Aug 2, 2014 09:49

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

Thinking about this makes me notice that I don't know much about the early war Africa and Middle east actions. Wouldn't Italy be still at war with the British over the colonies? And wasn't access to oil an issue there too?

# ¿ Sep 29, 2014 14:50

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

my dad posted:

The gently caress!?

There are so many factual errors in the series that it boggles my mind.

Could you make a list of the most important ones, please?

# ¿ Oct 13, 2014 00:05

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

Koesj posted:

e: VVV yeah, what I was getting at is that with 1970s 'attack' aircraft having twice the payload of a WWII bomber and a modern destroyer displacing as much as a 1940s heavy cruiser, there has been some amount of nomenclatural inflation.

I think you mean deflation.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2014 22:31

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

Phobophilia posted:

Meanwhile they made the jerrycan, which while significantly more complex than other fuel containers, came together into a thing of engineering elegance.

Well they had those amazing engineers who could take something that should fall apart immediately once someone looks at it, and they turned it into something that functions several times before falling apart.
If those engineers end up with a "boring" project where nobody is interested in adding a useless extra features those guys made amazing stuff. Like the Jerrycan or the E94/KEL2.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2014 11:41

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

JaucheCharly posted:

German wartime substitutes for chocolate and coffee (made from acorns) probably don't range high up in the taste scale.

There is a higher quality coffee wartime substitute (made from figs) that was advertised a lot by bio-stores a few years ago. It was supposed to be very healty and tasty if mixed with real coffee. I never got around to buying some.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2014 19:55

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

Kaal posted:

Is "trupp" the equivalent of the American "fireteam" (i.e. 1/2 or 1/3 a squad)?

If I remember correctly Truppe is more the equivalent to the American squad.

Rotte is still used to describe a row of soldiers in a larger formation that runs sidways to the face of the formation. And sometimes in fantasy board/computer games to describe targeting.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2015 10:12

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

HEY GAL posted:

Yeah, that's Reih for the guys I study. The English say "file" for both Rotte and Reih, but I think the Parliamentarians in their war were often Swedish-trained and the Swedes fight six deep so one Rotte would make a Reih. Since that's not always the case, I translate the different German words with different English words.

Now I am getting doubtful at my own memory. Rotte & Reihe are files in the two possible directions (like rows and columns in a spreadsheet), but I am not 100% sure anymore which one is which.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2015 11:05

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

JaucheCharly posted:

If you fall in, Reihe is the dudes in a row back to front, Glied is the guys right and left to you.

Thanks. I do remember Rotte being used as a synonym for Glied.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2015 12:24

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

Trin Tragula posted:

In theory, the line by winter 1915 is completely contiguous and you can walk from Nieuport to the Swiss border and never have to come out of a trench. Rivers happen, though. So do brooks and streams. They have to be bridged somehow. And on your walk it's almost certain that somewhere you'll arrive at a point that's just been attacked, or had lots of shells dropped on it, or a mine blown under it, and there's a stretch where the trenches have collapsed or turned into a crater.

Are rivers bad places to attack or good places? And why?

# ¿ Jan 25, 2015 01:12

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

That reminds me of something:
I was once watching a WW1 movie (that didn't pretend to be a documentary), and there was a scene where they tried to have some guys in plate armor leading an assault on a trench.
They all got killed.

Did something like that really happen? I think that movie was about the Austrian/Italian front, iirc.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2015 12:49

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

Trin Tragula posted:

100 Years Ago

Things are about to get rather busy. Today sees the start of the Second Battle of Ypres, and it's a battle that will have major ramifications for the rest of the war. And not just because the Germans have unleashed poison gas for the first time, falling squarely on Zouaves from Algeria and completely shattering the line at the northern base of the Ypres salient.

What did the Germans expect from the Gas attack, if they didn't expect it to make the French vacate their trenches?

# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 12:35

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

ArchangeI posted:

I once asked John Ringo on a forum why German soldiers in his book still wore fieldgrey given that flecktarn has been used for decades. He replied that the PE uniform was kinda grey and then changed the topic.

But the modern German PE uniform is blue. Soldiers jogging through the Forrest are even nicknamed Smurfs.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 18:27

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

I got a question about naval boarding & prizes.
When I read about the age of sail, there seem to be warship that are captured and change sides several times during their career. And the sailors and officers seem to rely on prizes to make their pay acceptable.
I have heard of some prizes in WW2, but those seem to be threated as exceptional events. And payment of prize money seems to have stopped in WW1.
But presumably it had already become a rare event by then. Did that happen with the rise of steamships, or did it take a while after that? Or did it even become rare earlier then that?

Also, when was the last time a warship was captured at sea in reusable condition? Excluding ships surrendering at the end of a war, I suppose.

# ¿ May 14, 2015 12:02

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

This is probably the wrong thread, but what is the idea behind those small statues on extremely high poles? Why not make a large statue, or a statue the can be seen without aid.
And was there an era that they are especially associated with?

# ¿ Jun 3, 2015 15:36

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

Disinterested posted:

I'm going to write another fascism post soon, I've been researching and brewing.

I think it'll be either

A) Another post talking about different types of fascism - and how they apply to different countries. So addressing Nazism vs Italian fascism, whether we can call nationalist Spain 'fascist', and then move from there to other movements that have been called fascist (possibly a future post): 'islamofascism', South America, former Yugoslavia, today's Russia.

B) A post on the intellectual underpinnings of fascism, starting with the German Romantic tradition: Herder, Fichte. etc.

C) Something more specific, starting with the role of race in fascism - starting with anti-semitism.

Can't decide, but if I'm being methodical it should be A! All three will likely come soonish.

If anyone has any questions about fascism or anything I've posted before let me know and I'll fold that in too.

I would be like to read some info about how much the Japanese were influenced by Fascism. They are usually called Fascist, but I don't know how much overlap there actually was.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2015 12:48

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

Disinterested posted:

Bow 2304:

In which direction does that thing shoot? It looks strange either way.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2015 16:22

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

xthetenth posted:

The direction the ends are pointing now. When it's strung it looks kinda like this: �. The middle gets bent a lot and the ends stay kind of straight.

So, when it is strung it looks like a normal recurve bow?

# ¿ Jun 11, 2015 17:20

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 07:27

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

How did they decide which ship gets which color of dyed shells? Those must have been funny meetings.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2015 12:52

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