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Alchenar posted:They didn't exist because you'd construct them at a siege. This isn't true. Scorpio, for example, weren't constructed at seiges. Basically, some siege weapons got lugged around from place to place, others got constructed at the siege. Some got constructed from kits, others got constructed from plans with raw material. The Romans occasionally used scorpio in non-siege battles, too, like Bedriacum.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:23
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Alchenar posted:e: ^^ yes, yes, the Romans did use siege weapons in battles. But then the Romans were the kind of people who did this sort of engineering solution. After the Romans it doesn't really happen. I'm pretty unsure of your general claim that seige engines were always constructed at battles, even non-Roman ones. I know that, definitely, they sometimes were constructed at the siege, and with some of them there was no possibility of them being transported (gigantic trebuchets). When you say 'constructed' at the site, are you saying that they were assembled from parts that were brought along, or built from the ground up? Are you saying the iron portions of the machines would be forged on-site?
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Nov 14, 2013 19:32
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Fangz posted:Tons of examples, but best documented is WW2 Soviet army. And to put another perspective, the average mobile army back in, say, the 30 years war would have a very large number of 'camp followers', who were not just prostitutes but did a lot of actual logistical work.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:44
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vuk83 posted:When did modern military recruit training start. As in full metal jacket, boot camp style? In history, various fighting forces have had more or less organized training regimes. You'd have to be more specific.
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Nov 14, 2013 20:47
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veekie posted:Didn't that go all the way back to the Roman professional armies? It went back a lot farther than that, depending on what you mean by 'boot camp'. If someone means 'training meant to turn ordinary civilians into fighters in a short period of time', then I don't really know. If it's just 'highly organized cadre training', then basically since forever.
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Nov 14, 2013 20:52
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Cavalry question: I've heard it asserted that the Hakkapeliitta, Finnish light cavalry, didn't actually exist and weren't actually used by Gustavus Adolphus. Is there any truth to either their existence or their definite disproof?
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Nov 15, 2013 00:14
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Hogge Wild posted:
Thanks, that clears that up nicely. Do you know if the battle cry is also apocryphal, or is that a real thing? To add some content of my own, there's an interesting bit in this text about Australian aboriginal semi-ceremonial warfare: http://www.sacred-texts.com/aus/cat/cat.htm quote:THEIR mode of fighting is most cruel. They have long spears barbed in rows and, sometimes double rows for one foot from the point. In the case of a quarrel between two men, they stand about 20 paces apart, and each throws his spears at the other's thighs. For warding off these spears each warrior has a shield made of light wood, which is used with the utmost dexterity. After a few turns they close in, and each man offers first his left thigh to the other to be stabbed with the larger spear. This they continue in turns, and the one who falls first is the vanquished, but often the combat ends in a free fight in which many men are wounded. The relatives grow angry and resentful as the combat proceeds, and then clubs, firesticks, stones, etc., as well as spears are used. The victims are sometimes crippled for a few weeks and suffer greatly. Charcoal is rubbed over the wounds to keep the flies off.
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Nov 15, 2013 13:42
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Nenonen posted:But airplane autocannons also had very limited amount of ammunition, like a second or two's worth, so I don't think they'd heat up nearly enough even if the pilot shot all his ammo in a single burst. Sorry if this seems like a nitpick, but the typical fighters with nose cannons had quite a bit more than that, from between six and twelve seconds. The Yaks had 8 and 9 seconds, the Ta 152H-1 had 9 seconds, for example. I think you may be being misled by the P-39, I don't have figures on that but I know that autocannon was a beast with clunky ammo.
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Nov 16, 2013 17:57
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a travelling HEGEL posted:Nah, you can do that. Look at half the guys in the engraving I posted. They've dropped the pikes and gone either to their swords (which I wouldn't have done, still too big--but then again my eyesight is so bad that if I stand at the butt end of a pike the point is blurry) or their cinquedeas or something (which would have been my choice). A friend of mine in England has a poker that started out life as a cavalry officer's sword from 1550 and has been poked into fires ever since then. The handle of it is worn away but maker's marks and the rest are still visible enough to verify what it was but it's in just terrible condition. The blade is snapped off about 1/3 of the way down too, something that happened around WWI when someone used it to lever open a locked door. Everyone knew it was this old sword they just thought it was fun to use it as a poker. They gave the scabbard to a theatrical society at some point, too, or they just lost it and thought that'd sound better. Things that make historians cry.
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Nov 17, 2013 20:48
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Jeez.
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Davincie posted:Yeah I can't be bothered about that sort of stuff when you can walk around in tons of museums and just see piles and piles of similar swords. Now if it were a rare weapon or model, then maybe. I don't think you can see piles of swords from 1550.
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Nov 17, 2013 21:07
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Godholio posted:Citing the Somethingawful forums in homework might not be a good idea.1 I'm a big fan of "Private Communication" myself. Private communication is badass as a source. On the above reenactor bit: I learned how to spearfish on a catwalk-- basically, where the salmon are running upstream (and sometimes the trout coming down) some tribes will build catwalks across the rivers and spear the fish as they jump up. One thing I definitely notices was that an overhand stab is a hell of a lot more accurate. I can't really figure out why, thinking about it, but there's something about the downward motion that made it easier for me, at any rate, to consistently hit the target. I notices this was true as well with bo practice. Obviously, in both those cases it's very different from using a pike or a war spear-- I was using a thin, light spear in the first instance, and a heavy but evenly-weighted bo in the second, but the difference seemed to be in hand-eye coordination, mostly. Something about the downward angle felt more natural. However, the overhand thrusts are, if you're not expert, really tiring. Just holding it up there, you do all these little micro-corrections. The guys who taught me laughed at me, and said that it reminded them of being kids and practicing this for the first time-- they could hold their spears up and cocked and it didn't tire them much at all. So I could propose an alternate interpretation for reenactors preferring an underhand thrust: They're very far from expert with the weapon, and it's a lot less tiring to do it that way. Even though I found it easier to hit, they may be aiming at targets big enough that they don't care so much or notice so much accuracy. If they never put the hours into doing it from above, they'd probably get tired very fast doing it, so they might try it, notice it tires them out really quickly, and decide not to do it. And if you don't practice it, specifically it, you'll never improve from that state. You may cite this as "Private Communication". Koramei posted:I may have read this in a really sketchy source, but most of the time the feudal Japanese armies would just sally out and meet the enemy on the field. The castles were there more to just impress the peasants and be administrative centres/ palaces. They were partially important, mostly to keep dynastic integrity, as in, if someone really wanted to kill off your whole clan, they'd have a tough time doing it. There were a few mountain fortresses and strategic ones, but mostly they were in towns and so it was rare when the local lord would think it advisable to not defend the entire town and region. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Nov 26, 2013 |
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Nov 26, 2013 21:36
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Pornographic Memory posted:Shermans are all well and good, but how many tank destroyers would it take to take down an M1? One if you shot it out of a trebuchet at the tank.
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Dec 6, 2013 20:08
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Koesj posted:Yeah I was about to say, that doesn't really strike me as being a very loaded term in the English language. Robin Hood had a band. You should have heard their techno-funk version of Greensleeves.
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Dec 20, 2013 00:04
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cargo cult posted:Did the mongols actually send out emissaries bearing crosses, pretending to be the Kingdom of Prestor John only to slaughter any enemy ambassadors who showed up? Cause, goddamn. Incredibly unlikely, since the Mongols were incredibly emphatic about respecting ambassadors. Where did you hear this?
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Jan 8, 2014 17:01
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The Entire Universe posted:It's unsettling to get this slow creep of horror as you realize these are pictures of war brutality as experienced by a young kid. And not the semi-sanitized experience of a young kid hiding in subways as London gets the hell pounded out of it. People getting hacked up with swords, run through by cavalry, chased down and slaughtered. All the while this kid is dutifully drawing pictures, seemingly oblivious to the human toll of the world being ripped apart around him. Maybe he actually was a complete blubbering mess, maybe he was a total I drew lots of pictures of planes bombing the poo poo out of buildings and dogs ripping off people's arms and stuff. I did not see such things, I used my 'imagination'.
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Jan 13, 2014 16:16
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and wanted to make sure he drew accurate accounts of wanton destruction.
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Koesj posted:Well you and I probably saw that poo poo on TV. No, I never saw a dog rip a dude's arm off on TV. I wasn't even really allowed to watch violent movies, the most I saw was old John Ford Westerns where the guy'll grab his chest as he gets arrowed. They're really awesome and interesting drawings partially because of how similar they are to stuff I would have drawn and also that I am a really terrible artist because they're actually better than anything I could have ever managed.
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Jan 13, 2014 16:26
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PittTheElder posted:You could probably get away with it. Isn't Downton Abbey just class divisions all over the place? I imagine you could pitch that sort of thing to an American TV exec now. It wouldn't be a class division; the majority of English pilots went to state schools.
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Feb 12, 2014 00:41
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Arquinsiel posted:Not true. I've seen figures as low as one in ten, which is still high as a proportion of population but nowhere close to a majority. Most of the personal accounts I've read have been from random dudes who volunteered to avoid being in the infantry too, but anecdotal etc. Can you cite your sources, please? http://www.raf.mod.uk/history/whowerethefew.cfm One third weren't even officers. About 20% were foreigners. Leaving out those who were foreigners, I'm assuming you're not going to argue any of those 33% of saergents were Etonians et al. What is true, obviously, is that being upper-class made you much, much, much more likely to be selected as a pilot, and that those who became pilots who weren't educated at "public" school were educated at technical colleges and provincial universities, it wasn't a bunch of cockneys and costermongers getting into the pilot's seat. The book The Flyer: British Culture and the Royal Air Force 1939-1945, although I don't have it with me, as well as RAF official history on sergeant-pilots, is where I'm drawing my info from.
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Feb 12, 2014 01:07
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Arquinsiel posted:Well the most recent one I've been reading it this in which the author is "of officer potential" despite not having attended a public school and is then offered a six-month course at university as part of his training. He does come off as being rather upper class though, even not having attended public school. TO be clear, what I'm saying: Most British pilots did not go to 'public' schools like Eton, but instead went to state-funded schools. This includes the 33%-ish of pilots who were not officers, and a proportion of the officer-pilots. Most of these non-'public'-educated pilots were staunchly middle class or upper middle class, not lower-class, and class divisions were still massive between pilots and ground crew. Did you mean that only one out of ten pilots were actually 'public school boys', with 'public' again in the British sense, meaning Eton and other schools we'd call 'private' in the US?
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Feb 12, 2014 01:26
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Arquinsiel posted:Yup. Totally my mistake there, sorry man. No problem, just glad the interesting fact I learned remains a fact. Anyone have nominations for "Craziest British Officer of WWII?" I nominate Alfred Wintle, who went on a hunger strike to get his Vichy French jailers to polish up their appearances.
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Feb 12, 2014 01:43
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hogmartin posted:Depends on what end of the crazy spectrum, but I nominate F. Spencer Chapman. Cool, I'd never heard of him. Sounds like a warlike Muir. Really interesting.
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Feb 12, 2014 01:49
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Koramei posted:Also, they didn't not use iron 'cause it wasn't readily available; they didn't use iron 'cause obsidian is better than early bronzes (which were produced in the Americas), and people aren't gonna make leaps in metallurgical technology (to make better bronzes, then iron and steel) when they see no point to it. If most of the stone available in the ancient Near East and Europe wasn't completely crap, there's a good chance it'd never have been replaced there either. We just got into this in another thread, but no, this isn't a sufficient explanation. There's plenty of obsidian in Greece, too. The reasons why metallurgy developed the way it did in various places is highly contingent on a lot of different stuff, and is really interesting but it's not just availability of materials. It's why Milos was such an important trade island in the Mediterranean, it's huge obsidian resources.
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Feb 15, 2014 19:31
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Koramei posted:Hm I'm not sure I agree that it wasn't at least the principal factor (in the Americas, me throwing the Old World in was dumb But that's the whole argument: you're saying that they had obsidian, which is pretty cool, and it's better than early bronze, so they didn't develop bronze. Greece--and the whole area around there--also has obsidian, so it's not a sufficient explanation for why one civilization developed bronze and the other didn't: it isn't even a possible influence, since both civilizations had obsidian. And it's in the history of America thread, starting around here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3577206&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=31
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Feb 15, 2014 21:28
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grover posted:Ugh, that thread is painful to read. There's a way better thread about mesoamerican history here in A/T: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3497724 Yeah, that's the claim I mention in the 'painful thread, that there were cultural reasons. I agree that Diamond's pack animal explanation is not a sufficient one, and that definitive answers are largely not reachable due to record destruction and lack of continuity between those civilizations and modern ones. I shouldn't have said they didn't develop bronze, that was just dumb. What I meant was they didn't use bronze in large-scale applications in the same way, or have the same sort of production chain.
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Feb 15, 2014 21:44
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Koramei posted:That Ask/Tell is so very judgmental towards D&D is kind of weird when like 3/4 of the posters overlap. The Aztecs, on the other hand, did develop bronze, they just didn't build up a big bronze technology and industry thing. And who are the people who invented bronze who didn't have access to obsidian, please? To the best of my knowledge, Turkey is vaguely waved around as bronze-development central, and they also had obsidian.
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Feb 15, 2014 22:04
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Koramei posted:The Aztecs didn't develop Bronze, they also got it from other people who had made it before; it had been around in Mesoamerica for the better part of a thousand years by the time the Spanish arrived. That they didn't develop it further, but rather used obsidian, was the entire point of my original post (incidentally I said they had bronze in that post). Okay. So you're comparing two civilizations, neither of whom developed bronze, both of whom got it from somewhere else, and both of whom had access to obsidian. And your explanation for the widespread use of bronze in one for practical purposes vs. the other is that they had access to obsidian. But both civilizations had access to obsidian. quote:And Mesopotamia, China, Persia, Serbia/Romania. And the chalcolithic weapons and tools that I've seen (e.g. Sumer and pre/early-dynastic period Egypt) are near universally flint or copper, where are you getting this idea that obsidian was so readily available? That it was available isn't to say it was common. Colin Renfrew and Malcolm Wagstaff. Also, obsidian is not a good thing for most tools. It's good for blades, it's bad for pretty much anything else. So this whole conversation is a bit odd because bronze and obsidian compete in only one domain: blades. In terms of fasteners, bars, hinges, bolts, rings, armor, etc. etc., obsidian doesn't even enter into the conversation. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Feb 15, 2014 |
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Feb 15, 2014 22:27
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Koramei posted:That makes sense I suppose It was imported to Egypt pre-Bronze age, so yeah, it was also widespread in the Mediterranean. Can I ask why you thought it was more widespread and ubiquitous in mesoamerica?
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Feb 15, 2014 23:36
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Tevery Best posted:I've recently started attending lectures on chosen elements of political history in Mesopotamia up to and before Hammurabi. It's been very interesting, we've started with the Akkad state and Naraam-Sin (the first ruler in the area to deify himself - very interesting stuff, particularly how exactly he went about it) and are working our way from there. How'd he go about it?
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Feb 28, 2014 22:22
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On ship names, there's the HMS Mimi and HMS Toutout, which means 'meow', and 'woof' in French slang. Their original names were "Cat" and "Dog". The guy who named them was a bit of a weirdo, to put it mildly. He had a lot of hosed-up tattoos he liked to show his subordinates.
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Mar 16, 2014 20:34
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