Ask Us About Military History: Remove Balls To Fire Blanks

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Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

^^^^
I dealt with several people exactly like that in STEM. Admittedly, at least one of the very worst was an MBA though...

lenoon posted:

There are english villages who have a similar structure to their war memorials - Crimea, Boer, then hundreds for WW1 and very few for WW2. No young men left to start families, no young men to send off to the next big fight.

With us it's more of a taking our ball and not going to war deal. The five guys who died in WWII were probably nutters or strongly passionate about Communism or something.

Magical "never healing" wounds seem to be bullshit to me. What is a triangular bayonette going to do that a regular flat(-ish) one isn't? The hole will more or less close up under pressure of displaced flesh and you'll have to move carefully to prevent it tearing open. It's not like a bullet impact where the penetrating object changes shape and direction internally and thus parts of the wound can be violently ejected out the back.
VVVV

Arquinsiel fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Jun 30, 2016

# ¿ Jun 30, 2016 03:21

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 01:31

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

JaucheCharly posted:

a carbon arrow that was fletched with razors.

This sounds insanely dangerous for all involved.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2016 21:23

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

HEY GAL posted:

french as well, you've got the chef de file, "head of the file," chef de serre file, "head of the back of the line," and the chef de demi flle, "head of halfway down the line."

the spanish called experienced dudes lance passades and payed them more. the mansfeld regiment might have as well, a lance passade appears as a witness in one trial, but i don't have their rolls, which are prob. in spain

remember the swedes are not as new, hot, and different as they liked to say they are

Calling someone a lance-something is a way of distinguishing them from a common soldier but not actually promoting them. For more details, see here.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2016 00:29

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Cyrano4747 posted:

Fast googling shows 2.5k flak 88 made before the war, 1k in 1940, 2k in 42, and then it jumps to 3k 5.5k and 7k in the next 3 years.

So yes they cared about air defense early on. No the AAA isn't as thick in the summer of 41 as it is in the winter of 44 but they still have about 5.5k guns to crew.

That's just 88s. By 41 you also have about 800 10.5cm guns plus God knows how many smaller caliber guns. Even as late as 45 the flak towers had 20 and 30 mm to keep low level airspace threatening

Flat numbers doesn't quite cover it though, given that the Flak 88 was used in forward positions as a dual purpose AA and AT gun, while the 105s in particular but the 20 and 30mm too were mounted on ships for their air defence. You kind of need to dig through the manpower used in the specific deployment of them I think. There's a big difference between having 12 10.5 cm FlaK 38's on a Hipper and having that same 12 guns on field carriages with dedicated logistics etc in some field in Germany.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2016 21:06

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

feedmegin posted:

Note that an 88mm that is an AA gun is an 88mm that is not an AT gun (or in a tank)...

Sometimes it literally was that. The French and African campaigns had them doing both jobs, In France is was because British tanks were so solidly built that they could push right up to the AA gun positions and it was just the only gun handy and in Africa the combat moved so fast that there was nowhere to put AA gun positions safely behind the lines that shooting at attacking enemy tanks wasn't also an option. Either way they were purely defensive weapons, unless mounted on a vehicle (which some were).

# ¿ Jul 5, 2016 23:48

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Nenonen posted:

He means the dual purpose guns defending the Reich airspace aren't at the front shooting at tanks and Sturmoviks.

Until the end at least :v:

# ¿ Jul 6, 2016 00:42

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Cardiac posted:

Someone once said that the reason why Christianity had such an easy time in Scandinava (not really though) was due to the afterlife.
So according to Christianity either you go to heaven which is all good, or else you go to Hell, which in comparison to the Norse Hel at least was hot and therefore an improvement both to Hel and real actual Scandinavian winters.
Win-win one could say.

On being told he was going to go to hell for various lifestyle choices by a visiting American preacher during our political kerfuffles of the last few years a friend of mine replied with "good. It's warm and I'll know people".

# ¿ Jul 7, 2016 18:37

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Fangz posted:

Presumably it is fairly straightforward to correct any changes in orbits, because the delta vee wouldn't be that large. We don't use cannons as rockets for a reason.

Are you telling me that the A-team wasn't a documentary? :colbert:

# ¿ Jul 9, 2016 06:38

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Jeff Sichoe posted:

Up-Armour your own satellites and fill LEO with ball bearings?

That's a fuckton of up armouring.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2016 12:52

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

And then it hits the rest of (orbit/radius of bb + spacing) -1 worth of bbs in the same rough location and you may as well have left it on the ground and just sandblasted it with the ground up remains of other satellites.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2016 13:32

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Jeff Sichoe posted:

I understand that, all i'm saying is that it's obvious that armoring a satellite vs debris is a solved problem - it just depends on how far you want to take the theory?

TBH unless your armour magically regenerates at a rate faster than your bb field ablates it then your idea is unworkable the second the orbits are disturbed.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2016 13:59

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Trin Tragula posted:

Ah good, an excuse to write this up properly, which I've been meaning to do for a while.

Does that make some kind of sense?

There I was thinking that it was something like the WWII system where the 4/7th RTR was a combined battalion merging two ruined ones.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2016 09:59

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Makes sense to me. Combat death might be horrible but at least there's good odds that it's a "me or him" situation between you and some other poor shitlord who really doesn't want to be there. Executions are a very personal thing where someone wants you specifically dead and has engaged a professional to ensure it happens in as scary a way as possible. Heck, as pointed out above that very fear is probably the desired result of the concept of executions.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2016 01:31

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Fangz posted:

Really?

I seem to recall accounts that executions were done generally to be as clean as possible, with potentially dire punishments for the executioner if they botched the job. Beheading was generally considered to be a more humane way of getting killed than many of the alternatives. Meanwhile the crowd was not there to be frightened, they were there to be entertained. (I suppose the horizontal cut is being used to show off the executioner's skill?)

From that depiction, I kinda wonder if there's some substantial artistic license being used to empathise the whole martyrdom thing.

Well... yeah. For every story of beheading there's one of drawing and quartering. Or someone has a good idea and we know how those go in this thread...

Even the modern methods are pretty horrific really.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2016 03:17

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

HEY GAL posted:

Dead serious, my friend. A 17th century company flag is this massive piece of thin silk mounted on a staff that the fendrich holds on his shoulder with one hand. On special occasions, especially in areas where the ground is paved, like in city squares or the courtyards of castles, they have a thing where they twirl it. It's called flourishing the flag, displaying the flag, or flag exercises.

The next time you imagine a 30yw battle, imagine that.

This is no way changes how I imagined them.

LordSaturn posted:

and it's bristling with pikes

and it has a hedgehog head on the front

I'll start the wiki

Replace the head with a teeny hedgehog hood ornament holding a pike in one hand pointing forward and a stein or bottle in the other.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2016 23:30

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

xthetenth posted:

Yeah, it'd be something along the lines of pushing to Chicago against the Union or something like that. Also I'm pretty sure military manufacturing isn't nearly as fungible with civilian manufacturing as it was in WWII.

Totally depends on what you're talking about making really. There was a minor kerfuffle here in the papers a year or two back when it was realised that some computer chips made in a factory were, amongst other things, potentially being used in the guidance systems of some Israeli weapons. Some people were of the opinion that this was a breach of neutrality on our part. Eventually everyone stopped caring.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2016 05:51

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

xthetenth posted:

Yeah. It's actually kind of amazing. I wasn't kidding when I said it was dad fiction from Team B.

There's also the stories he wrote trying to suck up to anti-religion types on a sci-fi crossover debates board that's basically humanity kicking the poo poo out of hell. Those are the epicenter of b-movie dad fiction though and I kind of love them.

Wait... how does that make the point he's trying to make? :psyduck:

# ¿ Jul 16, 2016 15:42

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

How is the fight even in question when we all know the old joke about the USMC?

# ¿ Jul 17, 2016 02:13

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Splode posted:

I don't think the author understands how heavy armour is, or the sort of power steam engines can produce.

it also looks like the rear would slew to one side eventually since the "treads" on the wheels point the same direction on both sides.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2016 01:14

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

cheerfullydrab posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Army_Balloon_Corps

But.. but.. the Chief Aeronaut!

Yes, gently caress steampunk and anybody who is into it. It's idiotic.

Captain Oswald Bastable would have words with you.

... if he wasn't too busy thinking about how weird it is to even be reading your posts.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2016 17:03

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Suspect Bucket posted:

Hey, I'm gearing up to photograph my grandpa's submarine photo scrapbook that documents his time on the SS-347 USS Cubera that cover the boat's adventures in Puerto Rico shortly before Guppy modernization. Should I share those pics in this thread, or the cold war one? (Cold war thread is mostly airpower)

Yes.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2016 20:21

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

You could make an argument that businesses not literally owning their workers was the extreme leftism of the day too.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2016 21:23

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Cyrano4747 posted:

There are two key aspects of fascism

I'm not sure any of this post actually makes the case you're trying to make, but I'm tablet posting after some Italians deafened me earlier today so I can't go into it now.

ETA: you can't see because the aquarium building is in the way, but the house I was sitting on the steps of shielded me from the sound until this was directly over my head.

Arquinsiel fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Jul 25, 2016

# ¿ Jul 24, 2016 21:33

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

darthbob88 posted:

That's a different thing. The term I've heard for that CAS circle of death is just "circle of death".

I've also come across the Western allies referring to CAS circular holding patterns as taxi ranks in the ETO.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2016 18:05

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

I'm totally up for this goonvasion of the BBC.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 00:00

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 01:31

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Fangz posted:

Sorry for current affairs stuff, but I couldn't resist.

Poor woman summoned the wrath of twitter upon herself.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2016 17:45

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