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vintagepurple posted:And one more, some units had frontage markers and they were a lot closer together than I'd imagine hundreds of men, even in a two-deep line, to be. Did regiments fight with rear lines behind the fighting two or were they packed much tighter than I think?
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May 11, 2014 03:57
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jng2058 posted:Off the top of my head, Lieutenant General (CSA) Leonidas Polk, sniped by a cannon.
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May 15, 2014 20:55
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Ah sorry, yeah I was specifically looking for anything by dive bombers since they seem to be the most 'accurate'.
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May 19, 2014 22:30
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cosmosisjones posted:Just finished Guns of August today and with hindsight being what it is I just wanted to reach back and shake the poo poo out of some of them. Any other good books on WW1? Edit: If you can find a physical copy for a reasonable price grab it. The photographs and maps are quite nice.
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May 29, 2014 08:35
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Cyrano4747 posted:I also wonder what the down-pressure was. Those tracks look really loving wide, even taking into account just how huge the whole thing is. No numbers or anything, but I'm willing to bet that it applied less pressure per square inch than a Sherman. Sadly the war didn't work out the way its designers thought and "Big as a house and slightly less mobile" didn't turn out to be the best form factor for armor.
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Jun 19, 2014 19:24
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Vegetable posted:Earlier in this thread somebody mentioned how the USSR was able to raise divisions very quickly to replace losses in Barbarossa. My question is: How did they mobilize so quickly and in such numbers? Was it expected by any of the European powers, or even the USSR themselves, that the USSR had such manpower in depth? Because it seems we tend to judge the Nazis as crazy for tangling with the USSR, but surely they wouldn't have invaded if they knew the USSR was so numerous as to be essentially unbeatable. I bet smashing Russia looked totally doable.
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Jul 1, 2014 00:52
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space pope posted:I read onoodas book a few years ago and if I recall correctly he had his rifle, a few grenades, and some ammunition. Mostly I think his and the other holdouts' priority was subsistence. Some times they would burn rice stores and the police would shoot at them but they weren't setting up ambushes or conducting raids.
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Jul 29, 2014 19:22
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JcDent posted:Hey guys, a Wolfenstein LP thread inspired question: what was the worst tank of WWII to see service?
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Jan 3, 2015 08:07
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gradenko_2000 posted:Someone else will have to chime in for a specific make and model, but Italian tanks were riveted together and so could be disabled/destroyed by British hand grenades, if they didn't rattle themselves apart from firing their main gun first.
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Jan 3, 2015 08:22
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INTJ Mastermind posted:Loving the guy in the back with a sniper rifle. It's a crossbow!
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Jan 6, 2015 23:13
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Tomn posted:What exactly would the tactical advantage of the Segway Brigade be compared to just running around?
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Jan 6, 2015 23:55
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Cyrano4747 posted:Serious question: how is this better than a actual mule? Also you can't ship mules 20 to a container. Well, you can, but the results aren't pretty. Edit: Robots don't wander off, they don't bolt, they don't bite, they don't get sick, nobody has to watch them, and they don't suffer when they get shot. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Jan 7, 2015 06:59
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Kaal posted:You can't expect a mule to follow you into combat, and you can't strap an automatic grenade launcher to a mule and remotely control it. Also DARPA's LS3 can already carry twice the weight limit of a real mule (400 lbs), and has a much smaller logistics requirement. Animals need to eat constantly. Every single day, whether they do anything or not. Big animals need to eat a lot just to maintain bodymass. A horse needs 15,000 calories a day just to not starve. Double that if you want it to work. Pasture has something like 200 calories per pound. You can do the math yourself there, it's a shitload of grass. Big animals need a lot of room and a lot of care. They have to be able to exercise and move around or they get sick and die. They need to do this all the time, even when they aren't working. At night they need a covered place to sleep. Someone has to take care of them because they are huge and stupid and get into trouble and get eaten by bears and bit by snakes and people try to steal them. If you want to move them they need specially outfitted trucks, planes or ships to get them around. On the other hand that robot needs about gallon of gas a day. It only needs the gas if you want it to go somewhere, otherwise it doesn't need anything. It needs someone to look after it a few minutes a day, a major overhaul maybe every month, or whenever it breaks down. When it isn't working, it can be safely locked in a shipping container with 20 of its friends and ignored until its needed. When it needs to be somewhere far away it can be stuffed in any old box and shipped.
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Jan 7, 2015 07:40
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Phone posting so I can't quote Cythereal but I really enjoyed The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.
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Jan 13, 2015 10:51
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PittTheElder posted:Well drat, I can now definitely understand why a barn owl might signal impending doom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDmRmRb2OpE Especially the second half from the POV of the prey. Look at how locked on that owl is for the entire attack. Its entire body rotates around its head to the point where it looks almost fake.
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Jan 16, 2015 01:18
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PittTheElder posted:Is it common for American servicemen to wear their fatigues while on work travel or something?
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Jan 16, 2015 22:03
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Chamale posted:What kind of travel would this be? I remember in Canada after the Parliament Hill shooting, soldiers were advised not to wear their uniforms in public. Rhymenoserous posted:Basically the guy in charge of branch x steps out of his porch one morning licks his thumb and sticks it up in the air and goes "Yes... the wind is blowing north west today so therefore soldiers traveling for duty must dress for duty during their travels."
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Jan 16, 2015 22:17
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I'd like to revive an interesting little side discussion from a few pages back about lost knowledge. My two favorite examples in the military realm are cement and the cure for scurvy. Around 400 AD the techniques Roman engineers had developed for creating hydraulic cement were lost. For the next 1300 years everyone had to use masonry and mortar that dissolved when it rained if they wanted to build anything big and tough. It wasn't until the 1750's that John Smeaton rediscovered a way to formulate a concrete that would harden underwater and resist the elements. In 1747 James Lind, in one of the first controlled medical experiments in history, discovered that citrus fruits could cure men who were ill with scurvy and prevented healthy men from contracting the ailment. In 1790 the Royal Navy adopted the idea and lemons became a part of every sailor's ration. By 1911 members of Scott's Antarctic expedition are dropping left and right from scurvy, and nobody knows why. The knowledge had been lost through a series of misunderstandings, bad guesses, and general ignorance of biology and chemistry. In 1907 Axel Holst and Theodor Frølich accidentally rediscovered that citrus cures scurvy in guinea pigs but it wasn't until Albert Szent-Györgyi discovered Vitamin C in 1930 that the cure for scurvy was firmly back in the scientific mainstream.
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Jan 31, 2015 19:58
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Again, nobody understood the process under which their knowledge was founded.
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Jan 31, 2015 21:25
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Arquinsiel posted:Most of those are operating on the conceit that the aliens are perfectly logical and don't fight because the outcomes are predictable and fixed, so humans not giving a gently caress and trying anyway is an OCP to them.
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Feb 4, 2015 18:26
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Interesting. My grandpa used to have something like this (but only with a single chamber, not two) and he said he thought it was from the civil war. Were they niche items for weirdo survivalists at that point or something?
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Feb 13, 2015 09:27
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Wasn't it true that Hellenistic combat often came down to phalanx shoving matches? Personally I can't see how the shoving match idea would have worked. It would have made it impossible for the first few ranks to even use their spears. Imagine being chest-to-chest with a guy and trying to stab him with something 2m long. A later Macedonian sarissa could be longer than twenty feet. Unless the enemy was ten ranks deep it'd be tough to stick anybody at all with that thing if the front ranks were mashed together. It also seems to me that if two big walls of armored dudes smashed into each other and started shoving the front ranks would very quickly end up trampled or asphyxiated. It doesn't take very many people pushing in a crowd to crush the people at the front. If you want to see what a formation specialized for cheek-by-jowl slugging matches looked like take a post-Marian Reforms Roman Legion for example. Tough armor, tall shields, and short, stabbing swords. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Feb 17, 2015 |
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Feb 17, 2015 22:47
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WoodrowSkillson posted:No one in a melee weapon battle would want to be so densely packed they cannot even defend themselves. The phalanx was tightly packed but in an ordered manner, and everyone was covered by a sturdy shield and can duck behind it, jump back at least a little, etc. The Romans did not try and create a crush situation either. It was strictly regimented how much space each legionary had to fight, and the entire point was to allow each man to adequately defend himself. Each man was supposed to have 3 feet between him and the man on either side, and each rank is 6 feet behind the other. Edit: If the measurement is essentially from the center of each soldier 3' is actually pretty tightly packed. If you figure the average armored man is probably 20ish inches wide at the shoulder that only leaves about a 16" gap between each man. That seems like enough room to stab or throw but not enough to permit an enemy to move between files. Anyone who's actually tried this kind of thing want to weigh in? Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 00:38
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Arquinsiel posted:I'd be reading it as 3' from my shoulders to yours and WoodrowSkillson's were we in the front rank. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 01:08
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Ensign Expendable posted:The Russians have almost a tradition of scuttling vessels in order to block their own harbours. I can't remember why, I'm not a Navy guy, but maybe it's worth sacrificing a few vessels that can be raised and repaired at a later date to save more valuable ones that are inside the harbour or keeping the enemy heavy guns out of range of your port town. Bonus points if it's on some shithole tropical island and half his guys are going to die of yellow fever or malaria trying to fix the damage. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Feb 28, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 05:00
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SquadronROE posted:Except that the Aubrey novels need a dictionary when you read them. It's basically just 19th century technobabble.
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Feb 28, 2015 07:09
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chitoryu12 posted:In 1848, Robert Minturn of Grinnell, Minturn & Co. (one of the leading trans-Atlantic shipping companies of the 19th century) made a statement before a parliamentary committee that teetotalism is actually encouraged by American shipowners and often a condition for a bonus paid, typically a 10% return on the insurance premium. They made up for it by packing up lots of hot coffee (which is a clean beverage like alcohol, as it was boiled to brew it). Teetotalers have always been prominent in the United States, likely due to this nation's heavy focus on religion and religious morality, hence why we actually suffered from Prohibition.
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Mar 19, 2015 00:25
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cheerfullydrab posted:What was the best destroyer ever built?
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Apr 4, 2015 22:30
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TitoLeibowitz posted:It seems like the advantages of a turret (protection, firing arc) would at least occasionally be outweighed by the cost, space, and machinery necessary to build a rotating gun.
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Apr 5, 2015 03:23
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Luigi Thirty posted:The problem wasn't the cost of the turrets, the problem was that it was too goddamn expensive to replace the entire fleet of pre-dreadnoughts that it just obsoleted in your navy overnight.
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Apr 5, 2015 03:35
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FAUXTON posted:What was their argument? "That was ours when it sank 400 years ago and the state entity which had claim to it has long since disappeared for a variety of reasons and those coins aren't even going to be considered legal tender but since it was us at the time we claim that loot" or more of a national history antiquities thing? Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. v. Unidentified Shipwrecked Vessel, 657 F.3d 1159 (11th Cir. 2011) cert. denied, 132 S. Ct. 2379 (2012). Brief. Full Text.
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Apr 6, 2015 20:48
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FAUXTON posted:Also, regarding Spanish loot, good points. I'd just assumed it was a suit to claim the treasure as cultural heritage (I.e. putting it in Spanish museums rather than letting it be hoarded in foreign countries or sold off at Sotheby's) but the state entity thing didn't seem too reasonable since the treasure wasn't some kind of state-tied law or treaty IANAL so anyone more familiar feel free to correct that.
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Apr 6, 2015 21:31
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Keldoclock posted:Where do the defenses actually take place?
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Apr 7, 2015 23:55
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John Wilkes Booth did more to destroy the South with one bullet than William Tecumseh Sherman did with an entire army.
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Apr 9, 2015 23:57
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xthetenth posted:Middle East mainly IIRC. Israel taking risks with an old ship and getting the Eilat sunk, coming back in the Yom Kippur War with missile boats and a modicum of combined forces and winning handily, and the Tanker War phase of the Iran-Iraq war through US escort ops into Operation Praying Mantis.
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Apr 11, 2015 19:32
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Frostwerks posted:Wasn't there a battle in the (now) American Southwest between some native tribe and either Spanish or Mexican (cannot remember the era) involving a siege of like a fortified mesa or something that was only cracked when they brought cannon in? I think it's a current reservation but I cannot for the life of me remember the name.
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Apr 11, 2015 19:42
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Throatwarbler posted:I thought Mount and Blade was really fun from a gameplay perspective but I could never complete any of the quests because every character and location has a Polish name that is 1000 characters long with no vowels and I can't keep straight who I am supposed to kill/marry or where. I would just sort of ride around being a bandit until some noble insulted me and then crush him, burn his towns, and scatter his armies to the wind.
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Apr 15, 2015 06:58
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cheerfullydrab posted:All these, including, the joke I posted, could be done with either the pocket knife or the dagger, both also specified. I just can't understand what you need with a weird in-between knife, something with a little handle and a big blade, that it's so very necessary for everybody that it's specified in the basic rules that govern your awful knightly order. e;fb.
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Apr 17, 2015 08:29
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HEY GAL posted:That doesn't explain the holes though:
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Apr 20, 2015 07:14
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golden bubble posted:Getting back on topic, I know that modern car factories can't easily convert to tank factories like in WWII. But what would a war economy look like today if two major powers got into a prolonged, conventional conflict? IE, how would a Call of Duty economy function?
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Apr 22, 2015 00:09
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