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SeanBeansShako posted:I feel sorry for the poor salvage crews that had to check to see if a badly damaged tank could be salvaged to some degree, especially if all the crew met a horrible end. My grandfather was a staff sergeant in Europe, and cleaning out Shermans was the worst part of his job. Justified or not, he hated the Sherman and blamed the US for some of the crew's deaths.
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Feb 12, 2014 01:32
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:In God's name tell me you do not believe that the choice is between the Red Army's "hordes" and Nazism. People had all kinds of explanations about the Socialist People's Red Army doing horrific things that were directly supported by Glorious Leader Stalin, and now are out for blood on 3 Nazi's.
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Feb 21, 2014 17:28
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WEEDLORDBONERHEGEL posted:I doubt anyone in this thread is a huge fan of Glorious Leader Stalin. I actually was confusing that discussion with some other ones unrelated to this and misrepresented the discussion in this thread.
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Feb 21, 2014 18:06
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Arquinsiel posted:Can I suggest that we just ditch this entire line of discussion and just move on? It's getting hostile and this is a nice thread full of nice people normally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI5B7jLWZUc
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Feb 21, 2014 19:23
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KildarX posted:So nuclear weapons have bought a sort of pax atom or something? When you can only use proxies to fight your wars it seems the ability to get much of anything accomplished via non-economics is limited. That or requires some kind of gentleman's agreement during a war where things are kept strictly military and civilians are protected by both sides. Fat chance on that sticking if one side is destabilized enough that the country might fall apart.
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Mar 3, 2014 19:20
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Raenir Salazar posted:I'm working on some ideas for a cold war grand strategy game and would be interested in maps. Is there like a version of google earth set to 1987? (specifically I'm finding it difficult to figure out where the East-West German border is supposed to be). http://www.ebay.com/ctg/Rand-McNally-Concise-World-Atlas-1987-Hardcover-/2070413
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Mar 4, 2014 21:16
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Ofaloaf posted:Even the post-battle photos? This one was  http://www.civilwaracademy.com/alexander-gardner.html
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Apr 18, 2014 03:52
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khwarezm posted:I was reading a Cracked article and there's a part where it mentions cavalry charges. I could swear that I read somewhere in this thread that getting a horse to run into a very dangerous assortment of swords and spears was actually feasible given the right training, could anyone give me more information on this or on how cavalry charges would have worked in general? The Roman part is actually worse, while yes, auxiliaries would not be identical to the legions, for large portions of the empire's history, the legions were the large majority of the armies in the field. A whole lot of the auxiliaries would also be using chain mail very similar to the Roman style, and would be marching under roman colors. They even straight up equipped auxiliary units in roman equipment when they had extra poo poo lying around, like after Augustus disbanded a lot of the legions, or when the money was flowing in, and they could afford it. During the height of the empire, the legions were the main infantry force, with some auxiliaries yes, while the main auxiliary forces that might look unique were cavalry, archers and slingers. Archers and slingers even would still probably get a mail shirt during the richest times. The times when it would more resemble a hodpoge are early on in Roman history when the Italian allies were still matching the legions manpower 1 for 1 in the armies, and then from 300AD onward, when the empire began relying more and more heavily on germanic mercenaries/feoederati that would have basically just shown up and fought next to the legions. Obviously there are exceptions and such, but in general, during the height of the empire's power and conquets, most of the legions would look mostly similar and "uniform".
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Apr 18, 2014 16:10
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PittTheElder posted:But then how did the AT-AT's get through the shield once they landed? None of that battle makes a lick of sense. The shield would stop turbolaser bolts but was basically a flat/semicircular shield in the sky above the base. The imperials land beyond the shield and walk to the base.
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Apr 21, 2014 05:35
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Xiahou Dun posted:Relevant, vaguely : I went to a st Michael school and church growing up and in every representation of that scene the devil looks really goofy and Michael always has a spear, not a sword.
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Apr 22, 2014 15:22
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Koramei posted:That's why moral relativism is a thing. Hate the people that were assholes in their time, of which Forrest was one, but Roosevelt was mostly not. If you judge them by today's standards everybody in history is an rear end in a top hat, and probably, if you judge us by the standards of 80 years from now, every one of us is an rear end in a top hat too. People have been and always will be terrible and horrible to one another, I don't bother trying to figure out just how bad historical figures were unless it is relevant.
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May 7, 2014 17:59
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HEY GAL posted:This morning I came upon my roommate fletching in the sunlight and we had a nice conversation about archery. He had brought his Hungarian bow with him and I took a look at it. JaucheCharly, please PM me with your email address if you want to be put in touch with this guy. I told him about your work and he seemed impressed. I imagine Jauche gets extremely excited whenever a new old bow is the topic of conversation.
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May 8, 2014 15:16
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HEY GAL posted:Also: do any of you remember when I mentioned finding a dude with the fantastic name of Century van Breitenbach? He's in a muster roll from 1681. Man those people would have fit in great with old southern aristocrats. You have singlehandedly increased my interest in the early modern period with your anecdotes.
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May 27, 2014 17:03
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JaucheCharly posted:Speaking of which, where do you keep a 15 foot pike and how do you get from A to B? I don't know poo poo about the early modern period, but I know that alexandrian era phalangites were required to maintain their own sarissas, and had to be able to produce them for inspection. Seems they had to figure it out, and had either some kind of clever way of carrying the thing or strapped 5 of em on a donkey or something. While on the topic, did anyone ever try and introduce shields into the pike squares? I know now from reading more that the early modern pikemen seemed to just rely on their breastplates and helmets for protection, but considering all of the classical world love back then, did anyone try and give them a small shield in the fashion of the phalangites? I know large shields were still sometimes used all the way up until the full switch to gunpowder, and it seems like if the ancient Macedonians could use a two handed spear and shield, so could later period pikemen.
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Jun 3, 2014 21:25
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Kemper Boyd posted:Shields went partially out of fashion because you can't really make a bulletproof shield that's usable. So by the Early Modern period, shields don't make much sense anymore on the battlefield. Of course they had other uses in other contexts, so shields stuck around a bit longer. My point is the pike formation was one of the areas where the extra protection of a shield might come in handy since they are not only being shot at but also stabbed by pikes and are having swords swung at them. I know they were not used much if at all, I was wondering if any general or commander read a bunch of classics and gave it go considering how much the renaissance loved antiquity.
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Jun 4, 2014 02:40
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BurningStone posted:I've always wondered why ancient armies fought in such deep formations. When you've got twelve guys between you and the enemy, what are you doing? The pushing match falls apart with any real analysis, and probably only happened a few times, and not intentionally. You don't arm all of your soldiers with 9 foot spears and train them to fight in a phalanx and then just go "run at those guys and push really hard, hope they did not bring daggers to cut your throat!" It is mentioned as happening, and people extrapolated that it was the norm and not a rare occurrence worthy of note. One of the reasons for deep ranks, is that in battle, routing is always one of the biggest threats. The front lines of a battle are really scary places and a place where a bunch of people are getting maimed and/or killed. Its not crazy to want to run away from that. However, the guys 12 rows back are not in much immediate danger, and will not run away. This can help keep wavering lines in front in check and prevent routs based on a momentary setback as opposed to a real disaster. Long battles would often literally have periods where both sides broke off and stood yards apart getting their breath and rotating out men. There are sources that talk about generals who brought water to battle and such and that implies rotating out soldiers. The Romans were experts at attempting to keep the men in the actual fight as fresh as possible, by rotating the individuals and regiments out.
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Jun 4, 2014 16:55
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HEY GAL posted:Three feet. If they bunch up any closer together, the musketeers will snag themselves on them and you'll have to spend precious seconds unhooking yourself, which has happened to me. Was the bunching a problem on the battlefield? It seems once things get going it would be really easy for soldiers to get pressed in due to either real or threatened attacks and the like.
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Jun 10, 2014 15:09
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JaucheCharly posted:Dudes stole a waggonload of linen to dress a bunch of hookers that look like men and smell like vomit and cheap wine. 30yearswar.txt
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Jun 18, 2014 14:24
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Katanas were valued as good swords back when people were still using them often, and there are stories of sailors dropping tons of money for them when in port in japan, only to buy a piece of poo poo while attempting to buy a real katana. However they were not special death machines and Japanese mercenaries fought Europeans using armor and swords in the 1600's and poo poo and lost.
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Jul 1, 2014 19:24
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Fangz posted:Do rulers ever realise that oh, crap, the heir to the throne is an utter ignoramus, and do something about it, or does no one think of their succession in such responsible terms? Augustus made its his life's work to not have Tiberius succeed him, and was foiled by fate at every turn, when all of his chosen heirs died young.
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Jul 6, 2014 20:31
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Do you have any examples of ancient countries and huge armies? I'm confused by this question, are you implying that there were no massive armies in antiquity? ArchangeI posted:Roman Legions come to mind. "They are Legion" is still used to describe an army that is really, really big, and Rome had, what, 30 of it? A Legion was roughly 6000 men each, with multiple Legions being used to make up larger armies. They had over 100 legions going during the Civil Wars, and Augustus dropped it down to like 50 or something. WoodrowSkillson fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 18:09
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StashAugustine posted:How good were the Romans at it? They were pretty great about throwing up forts for defenses. In terms of the camps, they dug latrine pits at every camp, most likely downwind and by the walls, and any slovenly soldier would be punished. Romans in general were far more cleanly then various other societies before and after them (obviously others matched or surpassed them). The major points are the baths they built in any city they could, and their adherence to cleanliness in general. Socially they looked down on unwashed and smelly barbarians (literally everyone not Roman/Greek/a few other select groups) and took pride in being clean and physically fit. Major Roman cities had running water where the public relived themselves, complete with little channel by your feet to dip a sponge in to wipe yourself, and then rinse it off. They had no idea what germ theory was, but they noticed doctors who kept everything clean tended to have patients live longer. They were not sterilizing things, but they at least knew to wash their hands and equipment at some point, and tried to keep clean surroundings. Roman medicine was not surpassed in many areas until the 1500's and 1800's. In term of fixing wounded people, they got about as good as you could at it without germ theory and things like antibiotics. Legionaries and gladiators got excellent wound care, and skeletons have been found with tons of healed injuries, like stuff that went down to the bone. You were still screwed if you got cancer or various other diseases though.
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Jul 29, 2014 02:08
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Fangz posted:Personally I feel like the phalanx is underrated. The roman defeats of phalanx armies tend to be due to combinations of bad terrain, inexperience, impetuous commanders, or the failure of the rest of the army to support them. Whereas effective phalanx use required high levels of discipline, and strong supporting forces. Inherently the phalanx is limited to even terrain. The Romans abandoned it after fighting the Samnites who kept forcing them to fight in hills instead of cooperating and fighting it out on the plains. The Romans never did face an Alexander level phalanx yes, but they knew how phalanxes work extremely well, and would have most likely forced even highly trained and elite phalanxes to fight in inopportune terrain where the legions would win. It may have been bloodier if the Seleucids or Macedon had better phalangites, but I do not think it would have changed history all that much. If I recall correctly, the Romans toyed with bringing the phalanx back multiple times, with various legions having a division of macedonian style pikemen at different times. As for the shield wall thing, the Romans used shield walls all the time, not just in the testudo. They used a shield wall in a wedge formation against boudicca and used a variation of it when defending against cavalry, the pila functioning as normal spears in this case.
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Aug 2, 2014 20:36
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Pornographic Memory posted:Whenever a wedge formation for anything is used, is there any special way they pick the guy who's at the tip of the wedge? Because thinking about it, it would really suck to be that guy since you're the most obvious target and the most exposed. In the Roman army, that guy is basically guaranteed a shitload of decorations, money, honors, and booty and his family would increase in respect for it. The Romans had a specific award for the first man over a wall or palisade, and men would line up to be that guy, it would not be all that different for a wedge formation. Being seen as the bravest guy in the legion was something many of these dudes aspired for. Honor and glory was really, really important to a lot of people back then, and they took it very seriously. In phalanxes, the front line was basically the worst place in the world to our eyes. 2 rows of shieldwalls bristling with spears, men from 5 ranks over trying to spear you in the throat or side or your legs when you are not looking, your own army in 6-10 ranks behind you pressed close enough that you could not run away even if you tried. Yet you had people fighting over who got to be in the front at the start of the battle, specifically because that's where the honor and glory were won.
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Aug 2, 2014 20:48
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Rabhadh posted:People tend to forget that the classic greek phalanx is long dead by the time Rome come poking around. Even by xenophons time the regular (citizens) phalanx is just a mass of guys with maybe a single officer saying "ok point this way and charge". Part of what made the Spartans so formidable was their system of junior officers, and it was the increased use of professional mercenaries that led to the greek phalanx becoming more open and combined arms oriented/dependant. This led to the Macedonian phalanx with the file officers keeping it all tightly controlled. By the time the Selucids and Ptolemies are fighting Rome the sarissa phalanx had swollen to be huge and unwieldy unlike their predecessors. The Hellenic states were tactically bankrupt by their need to stick with Alexanders innovations while forgetting what made them world beating to begin with. The bigger problem was the lack of supporting units. Alexander's army operated completely on the principle of combined arms. Phalanx in the center, skirmishers/assorted infantry on the wings, heavy cavalry in the wings used to route opposing cavalry and then hit the rear of the enemy infantry. The successor states were locked ina drag out wars that had depleted their reserves of properly trained phalangites and had decimated their cavalry. Instead of the phalanx being a part of the army, it often was the army. Whenever the legions hit one of the successor phalanxes dead on they got theit poo poo wrecked. They were only doing so as part of a larger force though, and normally it was a temporary situation until the phalanx was flanked and fell apart. With supporting units, even the successor phalanxes of the 100's BC could have stood up much better against the legions.
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Aug 2, 2014 21:05
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HEY GAL posted:walle Do you have a sword yet? What kind would you want/have based on your motley approach?
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Aug 4, 2014 13:18
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man, thanks for sharing.
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HEY GAL posted:Not one of my own, and although I have a belt knife I don't have a proper dagger. For a dagger I'd like a stiletto if I can find a reproduction, and for a sword possibly something like "The Renaissance Rapier With A Cirrus Basket" here (doesn't look like I can link to it in particular, so just wordsearch for that phrase): http://www.swords.cz/enbestof.html That's a cool looking sword. Was there any consistency in the swords used by pikemen? I know they all had one as a sidearm since things going to hell in a handbasket was par for the course in the 30 years war. I know all kinds of swords were knocking about until militaries all shift to sabers in the later 1700's. Old longswords, rapiers, sideswords, backswords, broadswords, messers, etc.
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Aug 4, 2014 19:35
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HEY GAL posted:The "proto rapier" is where it's at, in the civilian and military worlds. I don't know if the Scottish have that basket-hilted thing yet. Awesome, those are my favorite swords from the period. Pretty much a slimmed down longsword blade with the cool basket hilts.
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Aug 4, 2014 19:49
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Nenonen posted:If I was rich I'd hire a group of Landsknecht, authentically dressed and equipped, to accompany me wherever I go. Praetorian Guard, the kind that don't want to kill me.
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Aug 8, 2014 14:14
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Fangz posted:Do wedge formations actually work in land battles? What is the rationale behind them? If you have superior troops, it can divide the enemy in two and really gently caress up their cohesion and morale. The Romans used it when super outnumbered by Boudicca at wattling street.
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Sep 14, 2014 16:22
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Tomn posted:I thought Crassus's business model was more "Oh, hey, your house is on fire, good thing us firefighters are here! Only, this is a pretty risky profession, y'know, so would you mind if we asked for payment up front? The deed to your house would be a pretty good start..." All of the above really.
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Oct 23, 2014 18:16
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Space Monster posted:From what ive heard the Parthians gave Roman legions headaches due to their horsearcher military strategy. How did they manage this without the stirrups that the Mongols had? The only discussion about stirrups is centered on heavy cavalry charges and their effectiveness. The people before stirrups designed saddles that mostly compensated for the lack of stirrups. For example; Alexander's Companion cavalry and Parthian Cataphracts both used heavy cavalry charges and they worked very well. For horse archers, this was nowhere even near a problem.
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Oct 24, 2014 13:46
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I forget the specific battle so maybe someone can help/correct me, but I recall reading about a Roman battle where things went roughly and they made a makeshift wall of corpses by driving a spear through 4 of them at a time and into the ground.
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Nov 7, 2014 22:39
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HEY GAL posted:I spoke poorly and should clarify. The flags thing is central for the identity of the company. The cannon/pontoon bridges thing is more important for determining who won after the battle. In case the outcome was unclear, people will bring up whether you took flags/cannon/pontoons, and how many, to help them figure out who won. All three of them are symbolic, but they're symbolic in different ways. Never stop posting.
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Nov 8, 2014 16:04
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Libluini posted:That series of effort posts about WWI, which then turned into a blog (I regularly read it now), made me think of a similar project, but with a favourite thing of mine, the history and aftermath of the battle in Teutoburg forest. Just crosspost it, no one will mind.
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Nov 9, 2014 17:08
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HEY GAL posted:The similarities are obvious. I know you have answered this before, and I failed to save the response. What would be a good book on your period? This thread has only made me realize how little I really know about it. I know you mentioned any book on the period ends up complex, that's not an issue.
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Nov 18, 2014 14:56
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I do not actually want this, but god drat you could probably have a separate thread just for tank/tank destroyer chat.
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Nov 22, 2014 19:41
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JcDent posted:I guess the iron here is full of coal, that's where the "folded a thousand times" myth comes. The katana is perfectly good sword for what it is. Its a weird sword in that the blade heavy as hell but is about as long as most other cultures one handed swords. They mostly were not fighting dudes with steel armor so it was perfectly good for stabbing and cutting against what most opponents would be wearing. It was also, like European swords, a secondary weapon the vast majority of the time. Japanese dudes fought European dudes back in the day, and their swords were not magically better nor significantly worse. The katana is made with the softer, lower quality iron in the center with hardened high quality steel welded along the edge. Europe made swords the same way until the 1100-1200s or so when better steel making technologies became widespread which meant the whole sword was made out of the high quality hard and springy steel. A katana can not bend as much before it is permanently bent/broken since the core is softer iron that won't spring back. In general medieval European swords get more length and effective cutting area from the same amount of steel. JaucheCharly posted:Swords were classified as inferior melee weapons. Inferior even to spades. Take a look at the melee weapons that people used when storming a trench. It's a bunch of clubs or spades. Where's the guy here that gave us the rundown? You shoot people, because it's safer and better at stoping them, you stab them with a bayonet or sword, they still go on and might hurt you too. That's why you have veterans from everywhere tell that you use your spade to chop at the neck, because that's pretty likely to knock out or kill a person instantly. You can safely assume that using a sword to chop somebody's head off in front of other people is a ritualized execution, not that it's a particularly great (and easy) option to kill people. Taking off a person's head with a single strike is also a test of skill that takes expertise. Do you mean specifically in WWII and WWI? Because swords were pretty goddamn popular and used a hell of a lot right up until WWI. A dude with a sword would have a huge reach advantage over the spade guy and just stab him before he got close enough to hit him in the neck. Now swords were completely a waste of metal and time to equip and army with of course since yeah, the few times you would need it other stuff is almost as good, and that metal would better be used to make guns. WoodrowSkillson fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Dec 4, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 09:03
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Fangz posted:This is probably an impossible question to answer definitively because no one is going to donate their old antique weapons to be tested to (potential) destruction. In addition swordmakers were very varied in their technique, both within Japan and around the world. I'm confused by the terminology in this, by hard steel, do they mean tempered hardened steel or brittle poor quality steel? in general sword production moved away from pattern welded blades once the technology and resources for producing swords from entirely tempered steel were available. For example, british sabers in the 1700s would not have a soft iron core and a hardened steel edge, the whole thing was tempered hardened steel.
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Dec 4, 2014 17:59
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Taerkar posted:Is that true on an individual scale or more of a unit scale? Polearms and spears (and especially pikes for obvious reasons) strike me as being something that are a bit of a liability when you're mano-a-mano, but rapidly become superior the more of you there are with them. Shields are the biggest what if. One on one with no shields the reach of a polearm is a huge advantage, a shield can let you close far more safely. The dude with the longer weapon can always just back up while still threatening the sword guy. Obviously anything can happen, especially if one is way more skilled then the other, but on average the spear dude wins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_IIHlFOEiI
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Dec 4, 2014 19:18
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