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Dick Trauma posted:I've seen a few references to tank destroyers. Did I miss some sort of tank vs. tank destroyer pissing contest in the last thread? Hahaha
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Aug 2, 2016 17:40
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spectralent posted:Ah, I can see where that'd be confusing. The Original Tank Destroyer conversation. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3297799&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=45 Now let us never speak of it again
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Aug 2, 2016 21:10
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It's an unfortunate convention that we talk about guns merely in terms of calibre, when so many other factors can differ. Not just length, but recoil mechanism, metallurgy, the geometry of the round, whether it uses two part ammo and so on... The famous British 17pdr was also a 76 mm gun, but well, there was a reason why that gun needed a hole cut in the back of the turret and the 76mm upgun didn't.
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Aug 2, 2016 23:51
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Don't disrespect guns the length of toothbrushes
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Aug 3, 2016 02:33
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Is it consistent who forms up with whom to form a battalion? What happens if one side gets their poo poo together first?
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Aug 3, 2016 12:08
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spectralent posted:As a thought that just struck me, is the increased amount of mechanisation, as well as the increasingly lighter weight of body armour, a factor in the increased adoption of it in military use? WW2 practically nobody has body armour, but they're also just expected to be walking wherever they're meant to be, right? I figure if your assumption is that you're going everywhere via carriers, airlifts, and that kind of stuff, then maybe making everyone heavier is less of a problem. Or am I completely wrong? I think you are pretty completely wrong, yeah. The load carried by a soldier is essentially unchanged over the years. The lack of body armour is generally because of the lack of effective armour that can stop the full-power rifle rounds used in WWII, and not be incredibly heavy. On the eastern front where SMGs proliferated, body armour was more common. Weight is still a big issue in logistics.
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Aug 3, 2016 15:00
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bewbies posted:Is it true that the average combat load hasn't changed over time? For the US Army right now, for an infantry guy, the basic load (that is, the load you're expected to carry over distance) is 120-130 lbs, or around 70% of body weight. I feel like the kits during the world wars and the ACW and so on were way, way lighter than that, certainly by pounds and probably by proportion also. I'm comparing http://www.45thdivision.org/Pictures/General_Knowlege/combatload.htm to http://thedonovan.com/archives/modernwarriorload/ModernWarriorsCombatLoadReport.pdf and https://www2.kuow.org/specials/militaryweight.pdf I think the 'approach march load' is the right value to compare. Overall it seems like, okay, the load has increased a bit, but not by a ton. Especially if you compare average fitness levels between WWII and today (I expect the latter to be better?) (I do like that the 1944 soldier includes a looted pistol...) Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Aug 3, 2016 |
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Aug 3, 2016 17:11
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I found a fascinating UK government internal document on the matter: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/455089/20150820-FOI06779_The_Soldiers_Load.pdf Skimming, it seems to suggest that yeah, loads have increased, but this was despite efforts to reduce it. At least notionally the target equipment weight of an UK soldier is not changed, even as in practice numbers have crept up.
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Aug 3, 2016 17:32
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It's probably a mix of different factors like geography etc, but personally I suspect the limits of human perception is important. At 300m, a 2m tall standing man is basically a quarter of the length of your thumbnail when held at arms' length. (Back of the envelope calculations here...) A man in cover, or prone will be even harder to spot. It's going to be really, really hard to spot targets smaller than that if you don't know where they are coming from, and aren't in an ideal situation where they are silhouetted against the right sort of background. And trying to shoot at this sort of target without telescopic optics and some kind of bipod/tripod will be difficult, so even if you spot them first, it's smarter to wait till they get closer before engaging.
Fangz fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Aug 4, 2016 |
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Aug 4, 2016 12:25
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Can someone explain what exactly happens in a tank when it is penetrated by an anti tank shell? What actually 'takes out' the tank? Is it the ammunition cooking off? Overpressure killing the crew? The crew directly being killed by spalling/fragments and the survivors deciding to bail out?
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Aug 5, 2016 14:44
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Just make a Ratte already.
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Aug 5, 2016 19:24
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Do they basically have a guy with a sniper rifle sitting watching spots like that all day, in case someone's head appears?
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Aug 7, 2016 15:51
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I'm glad they boozed up the pig first.
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Aug 8, 2016 23:10
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Phanatic posted:What's specifically the difference between blitzkrieg and deep battle? I'd say that the biggest difference is that Blitzkrieg is a colloquialism used in a more descriptive sense on how the Germans ran their wars for the period of 1939-1942. Deep Battle is an actual, written down doctrine. Overall the difference is that Deep Battle emphasised wider frontages and significant use of reserves.
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Aug 12, 2016 16:35
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Does anyone know how well the square bullets would have worked? I assume 'not very'?
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Aug 13, 2016 10:05
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I assume flamethrower guy is just loving around, Mad Max style. Interesting that he doesn't get body armour. Is that significant?
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Aug 15, 2016 19:32
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In principle WP are smoke rounds, and flamethrowers are asphyxiation weapons for use against fortifications. Napalm is definitely an anti-personnel weapon, though.
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Aug 16, 2016 11:27
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Am I right in believing that despite the dramatic effects as shown in various photos and videos, ordinary HE would be a lot more lethal than WP rounds for artillery?
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Aug 16, 2016 16:46
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The principle of an ordinary explosive is that there's an oxidiser and a fuel mixed together, that react chemically to produce a lot of energy. Think about chemistry class, and those balloons they pop with hydrogen and oxygen mixed in together. In gunpowder the equivalent is charcoal/sulfur, and the oxidiser potassium nitrate (saltpeter). In a fuel air explosive, though, you *only* supply the fuel, dispersing it through the air, and making use of ambient oxygen as the oxidiser. The result? You get a much bigger bang for your buck, because you save about half the mass of the bomb. EDIT: ^^^ WP is nasty stuff, but I think my understanding of the events where it's allegedly used is that they represent on-the-field 'improvisations'. I don't see them being stocked as doctrinally 'here, use this in case you want to shoot a hospital'. Which is sort of how it's presented in, ahem, the aforementioned Spec Ops game. Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 17:46
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Re: the earlier star fort conversation, are there documented cases of troops from bypassed strongholds raising havoc behind lines?
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Aug 17, 2016 11:31
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So, um, the square bullet version of the Puckle gun might actually work and be reasonably accurate! https://youtu.be/wFhqyvCTA1I
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Aug 17, 2016 19:52
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Watching the guy manhandle a tank shell in that video... How dangerous is that activity? Do bad things happen if you drop the thing? On that topic, I remember watching an old film about some kids scavenging a MG from a downed German bomber during the Battle of Britain. There's this one scene where they hold a cartridge in a vice and hit the primer with a screwdriver and a hammer. In the film there's a ping and the bullet ricochets all over the place. I assume that's unrealistic?
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Aug 19, 2016 13:11
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Additional safety question - In videos of guys loading and firing old guns and artillery, you see a lot of safety precautions like cleaning out the residue, swabbing down the barrel in case of left over embers, placing a wooden block to shield against stuff coming out of the fuse hole etc. In a real battle, do any sufficiently brave people cut corners on parts of these procedures to improve rate of fire?
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Aug 19, 2016 18:27
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Hunt11 posted:That is true. The issue though is that the person leading Germany at the time was not the least bit rational and the Allies were quite determined to make sure that they did not have to fight Germany again in another thirty years or so. I think you are misreading what the poster meant by 'pointless'.
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Aug 22, 2016 16:44
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I think people are ignoring the political context here. If we are talking 'butthurt taiwanese guy' then the political context is generally with the benefit of hindsight from the cold war, and from an anti-CCP perspective. In which case, if you accept the Chang Kai-Shek argument that a communist takeover of China is actually a greater threat than Imperial Japan, then you can make the case that a strategy that ignores China is one that would win one war faster but lose the next. The argument that yeah, giving more support to China would lead to the RoC ploughing that into fighting commies, and that the Soviets will eventually come in anyway, become actually arguments for the policy, and the symbolic power of western involvement probably shouldn't be ignored. So I'd say that yeah, the Pacific strategy made sense for the US, but Taiwanese guy wants something else - he wants an alternate history where the PRC was nipped in the bud.
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Aug 23, 2016 14:24
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I don't want to make this a huge digression, but I'd kinda like to register my skepticism over the (population growth rate based) methodology behind estimates of death tolls during stuff like the Great Leap Forward, and also the basic idea of comparing death tolls from direct repression on an island regime with foreign support, and from massive famine due to gross incompetence during a period of technological and diplomatic (self-)isolation. There's not really any good examples of rapid industrialisation of a large rural country without massive bloodshed, and you can compare China with say India where in the latter you do avoid massive catastrophes - but the decline in mortality is a lot slower. Between 1950 and 1970 the death rate in China basically dropped by 2/3s while in India it only dropped by 1/3. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Birth_rate_in_China.svg/300px-Birth_rate_in_China.svg.png vs http://www.geocases2.co.uk/images/populationindia/populationindia_figure_3.jpg You can see that the GLF stands out as a big peak in the Chinese graph mainly because of the much lower numbers before and after it - but that at its peak it was *equal* to India's average throughout the 1950s. If Chang Kai-Shek remained in control of China and decided to delay reform, we might not see single disasters like the GLF... but China could be racking up death tolls roughly on the scale of the GLF every year without anyone noticing. Fangz fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Aug 23, 2016 |
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Aug 23, 2016 16:33
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P-Mack posted:We know the comparison to Taiwan is useless which is why we called it as such. But I don't know that direct comparison to India is particularly enlightening either. To clarify, I'm not saying it helped the cause of industrialisation to have giant disasters, I am saying though that if you embark on a gigantic program of industrialisation with few experts on hand then mistakes are going to be made. The only real way to avoid those catastrophes would be to bring in foreign advice and assistance, but for obvious reasons nobody in that time particularly wanted to assist China rising to a position where it could challenge their strength. I don't think that would have been different under Chang, and Chang would have the additional problem of having to fight against rural communist sympathies every step of the way. Comparing to India isn't great, but it's hard to think of any closer comparison. EDIT: Also, I think the US was pretty naive about the prospect of democracy in all sorts of countries in this period. All sorts of dictators were supported on the basis of 'I'm sure they are serious about long term democratic reform, just a matter of time'. Taiwan didn't have democracy until the 80s, well after Mao's death. Fangz fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Aug 23, 2016 |
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Aug 23, 2016 17:28
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P-Mack posted:
FWIW the fall in 60-61 in particular is more due to the cancellation of the GLF policy (with 60 being the peak year in terms of deaths), the rolling back of centralisation efforts, and the refocus on agriculture and agricultural imports rather than industry and exports. I think the general situation in the GLF can't really be reduced to 'because Mao'. That's certainly a big part of it, but there's also the growing rift with the USSR, the desire to develop socialism with Chinese characteristic, internal conflict between the rightists and leftists, overconfidence because of the success of land reforms and the first five year plan, the lack of competent managers at pretty much any level of the decision making hierarchy.
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Aug 24, 2016 03:03
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Phrasing it as 'letting the Russians have half of Europe' implies a certain clarity about the implications of the long term trajectory of a whole bunch of countries that is really only available in hindsight. It was naive to trust the Russian assurances, but you can't really escalate distrust into "therefore we should fight a war because we don't think you are really putting Poland and East Germany on a pathway to eventual self-governance". It's not like a bunch of the Western Allies weren't also trying to hold on undemocratically to various territories in this period either.
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Aug 24, 2016 15:00
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Crazycryodude posted:(Quick, throw out something that has nothing to do with WWII so people will stop beating the Unthinkable horse!) So as a newcomer to the thread, would someone please explain to me what exactly the deal with windows is that seems to come up now and again when talking about early modern stuff? Something about shooting into windows? What's remarkable about this? People talked about shooting out of windows but really that's a small part of the contribution of windows to early modern culture. You might want to look up the word defenestration...
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Aug 24, 2016 16:59
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Why DID they shove those people out of windows, anyway? Were windows a new fangled invention at the time and all the coolest people were doing it? Did windows circumvent any possible bullet proof magic? Was it somehow astrologically desirable?
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Aug 24, 2016 18:03
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OwlFancier posted:And yet my takeaway is "Why the gently caress did anyone invent the wheellock?" I think the answer lies in the difference between peacetime and military technology. Wheellocks make sense in peacetime. Only a few well-to-do people will have pistols so the complexity of the weapon is not as much of an issue. Meanwhile the idea of a weapon that is ready to fire whenever makes for a massive advance as a personal defence weapon and wheellocks do fire faster than flintlocks. So even once flintlocks were invented wheellocks had a niche for a while. The advantage of flintlocks, meanwhile, come into play when you are talking about outfitting large armies. Simplicity and ease of maintenance become a big deal.
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Aug 24, 2016 20:39
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aphid_licker posted:Clockwork solve all problem Check out http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/14/story-of-cities-hitler-germania-berlin-nazis
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Aug 24, 2016 21:42
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I don't really think Moscow being a transport hub would have meant much more that make it really straightforward for the Soviets to throw everything they had at the city.
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Aug 25, 2016 23:18
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Nenonen posted:But transferring and organizing all those units and supplies would have been much more complicated and inefficient. What do you do if a tank corps north of Moscow needs replacements from a factory south of Moscow, but Moscow is lost? Well you better hope that rail yards east of Moscow aren't clogged and unable to let the replacement train go through. Well, I'm assuming that Moscow wouldn't stay lost for very long, what with the attackers being at the extreme end of their supply and the whole host of troops slated for the winter counteroffensive descending like a ton of bricks.
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Aug 25, 2016 23:49
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spectralent posted:Man, one of the things just clicked with me after I'd watched the wargaming guy's video: He mentioned part of the idea the americans were operating on was that it was impossible to stop a blitzkrieg attack because concentrating enough antitank guns in one spot to beat them back was thought to be impossible. It just clicked that one of the things that must've changed as well was the availability of bazookas, panzerfausts, etc so you did, in fact, have a shitload of "antitank guns" in concentration at every point of your front. I don't think that's really the case. For example, on the Eastern Front, while Panzerfausts did take a heavy toll on the T-34, I'm not aware of any real concerted attack beaten off by such weapons. What concerned the Soviets was less achieving the initial breakthrough but the possibility of counter attack. Meanwhile in defense, situations like Kursk illustrated that the 'blitzkrieg' could indeed be stopped - and without use of any rocket propelled anti-tank weaponry.
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Aug 27, 2016 21:43
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What would people pick as a Nightmare Team of military leaders? Grigory Kulik in charge of armour, George McClellan in charge of military intel, Gaius Terentius Varro commanding the infantry, Napoleon Bonaparte handling the logistics?
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Aug 29, 2016 11:21
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Fo3 posted:I don't understand this at all. I don't know why you're dissing on economists so hard. Consider the effects of an import tariff whose effects are to set the import price of grain to X+10, where X is the international market rate. Then our domestic grain grower would naturally set his domestic price to be as close to that as possible. Thus, as long as he is producing enough to satisfy the domestic german market, he's enjoying the full benefits. But, suppose he now doubles his yield. Then there's a problem - domestic supply is now fully satisfied, which means his surplus supply has to be sold on the international market, for a lot less. That means proportionally, his profit from improving his yield is a lot less than without the import tariff. Is he gonna bother if he's living a comfortable and happy life already? Maybe not. In a sense, protectionism sets up pseudo-monopolies in each state, which insulates local industries from the effects of new innovations elsewhere. In the same way that monopolies don't tend to innovate, neither do these protected industries under many circumstances. "If a farmer could improve yields and profits they would" is overly simplistic, because it doesn't consider the factor of risk, and opportunity costs. A businessman earning 50k might be very keen on risking losing 20% of his profit (10k) in return for potentially doubling his yield and making 50k. A businessman under a tariff system earning 200k already is going to be rather less keen risking losing 40k (again, 20% of his profit) in return for making that same 50k on the international market. The decision making frameworks change. Fangz fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Aug 29, 2016 |
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Aug 29, 2016 14:59
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Or Russian officers before Stalingrad? Rokossovosky seriously needs an award for *something*.
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Aug 29, 2016 19:27
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Tevery Best posted:Have you ever seen a picture of the guy? His parade uniform was more like scale mail. Yeah but I bet none of those are for taking an astronomical amount of bullshit in his early career.
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Aug 29, 2016 20:18
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