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simplefish posted:I have a couple of questions about Napoleonics Musketry was very effective at least compared to the modern perception of its effectiveness. A lot of guys were killed by it. When fighting in line, the first rank kneels, the second rank is standing, and the third (optional, the British and Portuguese did away with this) rank is standing offset slightly behind the second rank. It's the job of the corporals to keep guys in place and dress the ranks. The Prussians famously conducted a neat musketry experiment. They built a wickerwork frame approximately the size of a battalion formed in a three deep line of companies, and then had battalions shoot at it from varying distances. Once you get down to 75 yards, about 60% of rounds fired will strike the battalion frontage. Of course in true battle conditions, this would likely be a bit lower, but being 100 yards front of a battalion drawn in line firing platoon volleys would be a really miserable experience. A hypothetical battalion on battalion engagement in a flat field, with a defending force drawn up in three deep ranks, and an attacking force advancing in column of companies. (Ragingly unrealistic, as in the modern battlefield Combined Arms operations between infantry, cavalry and artillery was critically important and effective). The defending force pushes out its Light company, which is tasked to fight in "open" or skirmish order. (Everyone eventually also used complete battalions of skirmish ordered troops - Jaegers, Rifles, Light Infantry, Voltigeurs, Cazadores etc). These guys hang out about 60-150 yds in front of the line, and work in pairs using cover and terrain to try to cause casualties for the enemy. The attacking battalion pushes out its light company, and they fight until someone gets bored, or the attacking force advances to approximately 100yds, maybe a bit further out. Then the defending light company will fall back on the left of the defending battalion and add to the length of the line. The attacking light company will fall back on the left of the attacking battalion and add to the length of the line, as the rest of the attacking battalion evolves in to line from column. The line advances on the enemy. Up to a certain distance, probably anything over 75 yds, whoever fires first has probably made a mistake. The defender has an advantage because the attacker has to issue commands to halt, prepare, take aim, fire, so the defender can probably get an effective volley in first. Usually for infantry drawn up in line, the first volley would be by battalion, in an effort to create the most casualties as rapidly as possible, and then fire could either be maintained by battalion or switched to by company or by platoon to maintain a constant volume of fire. Once it appeared that one formation was wavering, the other formation would order fixed bayonets and advance on the enemy. The smallest effective and reasonable unit of action was the company (or squadron, for cavalry), although in anything Corps-sized or up the smallest unit of action was the Battalion. The "ideal" in all warfare of the era was to soften with artillery, pin the enemy in line with infantry, and attack from a flank with heavy cavalry to start a rout. The relationship between infantry, cavalry and artillery is a bit like rock paper scissors. Infantry in square is not vulnerable to cavalry, which eventually just goes away, but it's extremely vulnerable to infantry in line or artillery. Infantry in line is somewhat vulnerable to artillery and extremely vulnerable to cavalry. Infantry in columns is vulnerable to everything but has substantial mass. Cavalry is not vulnerable to infantry, but unsupported it can't actually do anything against infantry, and it's fairly vulnerable to artillery. Artillery is very vulnerable to cavalry if unsupported, less so to infantry. A single arm can't do that much on its own against another single arm - for instance, cavalry vs infantry is a bunch of guys telling each other how retarded their uniforms look after then infantry forms square. Add a half battery of horse artillery and the infantry are shot to death at leisure by cannon fire until the square disintegrates and the cavalry comes in. If you were Napoleonic era was still quite aristocratic in that a lot of guys on the non-French side were called Duke of Something, but it's not Dukes in the traditional feudal sense where their troops are personally raised. There were regiments, especially in English service, that were raised by private citizens, but they were still subordinate to the overall army structure. The title had very little to do with the level of responsibility, although good soldiers were frequently titled. For instance, Robert Craufurd as a common-born major general in charge of a brigade would still exercise tight control over his subordinates even if they were titled, and many of them would be. Chain of command was very important. You would not have a battalion commander request aid directly from another battalion commander in his brigade or outside of his brigade unless things had gotten very hosed up and the brigade commander was dead, incapacitated, or unavailable. Frequently, battles turned on the fact that the correct guy wasn't able to gather information and issue orders in time. This is why task-oriented orders were much more effective - ie 1st brigade to hold village X, 2nd brigade in reserve, 3rd brigade to hold ridge line to East with artillery park. If you're in charge of 1st brigade, and you get thrown out of village X, unless you get orders to the contrary via a messenger you're getting your guys back in that village come hell or high water, and if it looks like it's impossible you better have already sent a messenger the minute you got thrown out. It's an interesting balance between detail of orders and flexibility. 1st brigade may be tasked to hold Village X, but the Corps commander won't say "keep 4eme de la ligne in the village firing from loopholes and blockhouses, blockade the streets in a grid pattern, use your Voltigeur regiment separated by companies to skirmish from the broken ground to the south of the village, keep your brigade level artillery in reserve, and keep the 21eme de la ligne in reserve at location Y." You'd just kind of assume the Corps guy was decent enough to do a good job. Most of these guys had been fighting together or in various wars for decades, so there was a lot of competence. Messengers frequently got lost or killed. They were usually young lieutenants with decent families mounted on very good horses, and the headquarters staff would have a pool of them at brigade, corps and army level getting successively larger. Send two at a time usually. Once the battle gets going, you better hope that your initial assigned tasks were reasonable and that your brigade generals and colonels can react to situations effectively. Everyone issues messengers in both directions - could be a battalion asking permission to withdraw, or counterattack, against issued orders, could be a brigade asking to move up in support, or an army requesting a brigade in reserve to detach a battalion or two, or a corps telling a brigade that they were on their own. Commanders had to be fairly confident in their subordinates, because things change more rapidly on the field than the ability of commanders to acquire information, issue orders, have those orders be received, understood and executed. Plus, messengers could get out of order, or pass each other, or have all kinds of things happen that made the orders or requests difficult to interpret. As a result, commanders tended to sit fairly still in a decent observational position so that they could see with their own eyes, and so that messengers could easily find them. The battalion commander sits on a horse behind his battalion so he can see what's going on with his battalion and the others in his brigade. The brigade commander sits on a horse at a higher point so that he can see all of the battalions in his brigade. The corps commander, etc, etc. Of course, battlefields got smoky pretty fast, so there were issues in observing who was where and doing what - hence the brightly colored uniforms, the specialized headgear, and the elaborate regimental standards. If you're lucky, you scout the ground and can plan the fight in advance, and the fight goes roughly to plan. If things don't go to plan, you're reliant on your subordinates to understand the operational plan, adapt to the changing situation, and execute effectively with limited oversight. If you're unlucky, you get surprised in an area you don't expect to fight, and your chain of command is disrupted early in the battle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamanca Salamanca is kind of interesting and shows some of the limitations and successes of Napoleonic command control and communications - the French are initially disrupted and part of their force effectively destroyed in part due to a rupture in the chain of command of the army, but recover somewhat effectively because a division commander (Clausel) of an unaffected division is smart enough to see that the Allied line is likely vulnerable and acts on his own initiative to force his division and another in to a counter-attack, and assumes command of the army. However, since time has been lost and much of the force destroyed or scattered, it's unlikely that the situation was actually reversible - losing your two most senior leaders in the early going is a recipe for disaster, since nobody knows where orders should come from. Clausel's attack is repulsed by a divisional commander reacting to the local situation on his own initiative, and the army commander allocating central reserves to meet the threat, the latter acting essentially to plan. It also shows the importance of literal visibility to enemy movements, since the fact that the French didn't see the allies deployment left them at a disadvantage. edit: pre-battle drawings are a lot less common than for Hey Gal's people, I think because most armies at this point had an engineering group which was tasked with providing maps and scouting to create maps. So in that sense, there are pre-battle drawings, but they're a little less ad-hoc. In the Peninsular war, you'd have maps for every likely fortified position on the Portuguese frontier. KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Aug 2, 2016 |
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Aug 2, 2016 14:22
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Siivola posted:From the historical minis thread: These are really good but guys would mostly not have looked like that at any point in time unless they were in barracks. Uniforms were a mishmash of looted poo poo that you liked better. You probably kept your headgear, the coat, and that's about it. Stuff wears out fast.
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Aug 2, 2016 14:50
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HEY GAL posted:Some other reasons for that difference: for sure, personal command is no longer a thing, the highest rank that is expected to take serious personal risk is a colonel. and messengers are everywhere, you have to find something for all those loving useless rear end third sons to do my dudes definitely think in terms of a more dynamic battle than yours do
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Aug 2, 2016 15:54
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HEY GAL posted:do your generals and colonels have personal bodyguards? because my high officers are loving surrounded by otherwise redundant dudes in really spiffy outfits, sometimes entire companies of them not the same way. the colors have their own fancy guards (company of Grenadiers in fancy hats, senior noncoms with polearms, a scared shitless 14 year old with a dirk) but generals just have a cloud of officers around them first ones are staff officers, who are usually pressed in to taking over commands when poo poo goes bad - eg Chef de Batallion with a staff job suddenly is now your chef de batallion of a regiment of the line because the old chef and his XO got killed, or the current chef ain't getting it done. also the same kind of guys you described but now the bossman just is like "go tell this guy to do this thing" and they go off and do it, rather than only standing around. then their servants (batman, grooms, etc) serve as bodyguards in addition to their real jobs.
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Aug 2, 2016 19:32
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Let's consider the French perspective. The plan of battle is to push French assets forward to the Dyle line as the Belgian frontier fortifications delay the Germans, and to link up with the Dutch in Zeeland. The starting point is the French border. The goal is to have a defensive line that is roughly anchored in the north on the Waal or Hollandsdiep, coming south through prepared defenses in the Gembloux Gap (big flat bit in the middle of belgium) and anchoring on the south at the top of the Maginot line near Sedan. Gembloux represents the biggest risk since it has few natural terrain features to aid the defender, and was the axis of offense in WWI. The Allied warplan was to engage the Germans from a series of defensive positions moving from East to West through the Gembloux gap with a majority of the heavy assets of the Allied armies to blunt the German offensive and stall it somewhere in front of Namur and Belgium, ideally. The war kicks off. French armies move forward in the north towards the Gembloux gap. The planned movements were largely achieved, but due to the short resistance of the fortresses along the frontier the advancing Allied formations did not have time to prepare defenses or reach their objectives in all areas before being attacked by the Germans. The best Allied formation (1st French Army) is now being heavily engaged by the German Army Group B - see the Battle of Hannut and the Battle of the Gembloux Gap. All things equal, the French are doing OK. 1st Army withdraws after an extensive delaying fight for Hannut, but is in pretty good shape and has given the Germans a fairly bloody nose. The French are fighting the battle they want. 7th Army (the 2nd best Allied formation) is pushed north to Breda and leading elements cross the Waal to engage the Germans The plan is being executed, 1st Army is still strongly in contact with Army Group B and fighting a strong defensive action between Gembloux and Wavre, and the link up with the Dutch has been achieved. However, the engagement of 1st Army means that it's unable to reorient to support formations further south when the Germans launch a heavy (primary) offensive on an axis from roughly Arlon to Sedan. The French aren't sure this is anything beyond a spoiling attack to draw 1st army south off of Army Group B, and anyway, 1st army is too heavily engaged to pivot away from Army Group B. By the time they figure out that the Ardennes is the primary offensive, X Corps (local reserve, two front-line infantry divisions, two recon formations and an independent heavy tank battalion) are committed to a sharp fight around Sedan and Stonne, but there's no way that they can retake the key positions from the Germans who have arrived in strength, who are then able to exploit. The French try to pull 7th Army down from Breda, but at this point driving a couple hundred kilometers back and forth means that the serious offensive power of the armored divisions of the cavalry is non-operational. The only real issue for the Germans in taking Sedan in terms of traffic congestion was the inability to get artillery or artillery shells forward. Exploration was another matter, but once you're across the Meuse, it's over. Things that might have been decisive in favor of the Allies: 1. Not attempting to defend the Netherlands. Probably politically untenable, could potentially be decisive. 2. Not relying on the Gembloux Gap defenses. The original battle plan was to retreat basically to the French-Belgian frontier; this was politically untenable as well but possibly decisive. 3. Better deployment of armored assets. 1 DLM as part of 7th army lost almost all their tanks without being seriously engaged due to operational losses. Those two formations plus a couple other front-line infantry divisions have a chance of retaking Stonne, at least, where the French can command high ground above Sedan and the river, but there was no way that these forces would be deployed in a sector that wasn't very suited to armored warfare. Plus, if you lose in the center of Belgium and Calais, it doesn't matter what happens in the Ardennes. 4. A better mobilization plan. The forces covering Sedan were under strength and disorganized due to reshuffling of assets. If they had been in place since the start of the war, training to fight on that terrain, it might have made a difference, but probably would not be decisive unless more assets than X Corps were available to immediately counterattack. 5. German battle plans were captured and ignored, nice work. Could have been decisive at least in earlier identification of Sedan as the main axis of offensive.
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Aug 2, 2016 20:13
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SeanBeansShako posted:Amusingly, they are improvising with a lot of 2nd Empire uniform stuff in those photographs. The Hussar didn't look right but I don't pretend to be a clothes guy.
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Aug 2, 2016 20:14
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Ainsley McTree posted:Alright yeah that's what I'm missing. For some reason I thought France and Belgium/Netherlands were allies before the war but Google tells me they didn't join until Germany attacked. There it is then, RIP Yeah, to be clear there was significant coordination between the Belgian government and France, and somewhat less so between the Dutch and the Allies, but it did not extend to "Go ahead and station troops on our soil" since both the Low Countries were strictly neutral. The prepared defenses in the Gembloux gap and along the Dyle line were 100-200km from the jumping-off points of the allied troops, so it took them a couple days to roll forward and get organized. The Allies assumed it would take 8-14 days for the Germans to reach the Dyle in any kind of force, and it took just about four. Even in prepared positions, it takes a while to get everything sorted out. Plus, since the Belgians were doing the funding of the defenses, they weren't that good. They severely underestimated armored and motorized capabilities and just didn't have that much money.
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Aug 2, 2016 23:55
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The Panther is simultaneously overrated and underrated. It's Scroedinger's cat.
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Aug 3, 2016 00:00
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xthetenth posted:I think my favorite part of the South American dreadnought race is the Rivadavia class' ordering shenanigans. Don't forget that the cost was super low due to the US steel trusts!
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Aug 3, 2016 15:23
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Ataxerxes posted:The foreword and the first entry: post this poo poo as much as possible
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Aug 3, 2016 15:26
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Loadout for Chancellorsville for the Union, source below: Musket Cap box - 60 rounds Cartridge box - 60 rounds Bayonet Personal sidearm / knife / etc Canteen Knapsack 8 day's rations Blanket Rubberized blanket Overcoat Change of clothes Shelter half About 75lbs all told including weapons, which for some reason the author neglects. Supposedly, the average Confederate infantry loadout was more like 14lbs not counting weapons, but that's more a product of necessity than anything else, I would think, as well as the fact that most Confederate armies lived off the land by design. https://books.google.com/books?id=k...lder%22&f=false I would say that 75lbs is a fairly standard max load for guys that are expected to walk. This was kind of a cool project: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/11011316/Military-kit-through-the-ages-from-the-Battle-of-Hastings-to-Helmand.html You can see about the same poo poo until 1944, which is when guys are primarily delivered to the battlefield with conveyances other than legs. Of course, they're also using specialist loadouts (Airborne, Marine Commando, etc) for the more modern stuff, which is annoying and not directly comparable. Edit: Average weight for a 20 year old male in 1880 appears to be ~130lbs from a clothier's table, so by extrapolation assuming that weight is standard in 1860 the Union loadout at Chancellorsville was approximately 60% of body weight, quite a bit lower than the modern infantryman's ratio. KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Aug 3, 2016 |
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Aug 3, 2016 17:14
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If you're on the Western front as the allies, you also get on the radio to some artillery or ideally jabos to come blast the poo poo out of the position. You don't need to engage in a tank duel, so why bother?
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Aug 9, 2016 20:32
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really its about getting your guys to good spots with adequate food, weapons, ammunition and paying them on time
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Aug 9, 2016 21:11
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The anti-spall face masks are terrifying.
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Aug 9, 2016 22:24
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Jarhead was good.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:14
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The Type 3 wasn't poo poo, probably, but only a hundred or so were produced.
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Aug 10, 2016 01:55
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spectralent posted:I don't want to join in on a dogpile but it also had better positioned/protected ammo than the first shermans. Too lazy to find dates, but did the Cromwell really enter service before wet-rack Shermans?
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Aug 11, 2016 20:36
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the assessment that there wasn't much blitzkrieging going on in 1944 is only correct if you think the word can't apply to the Allies.
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Aug 12, 2016 13:59
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the KV is like twice as heavy and 50% faster the Matilda was weird and bad
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Aug 12, 2016 14:33
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Alchenar posted:It's a really massive stretch to compare the Battle of France 1944 to the Battle of France 1940. I don't agree with your understanding - just because the maneuver based combined arms exploitation of space occurred after a phase of attritional warfare (driven primarily by terrain) doesn't negate its characteristics.
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Aug 12, 2016 18:04
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The idea of cruiser tanks running roughshod in the rear areas of the enemy is hilarious. You could achieve superior results with UCs and the Daimler Armored Car.
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Aug 12, 2016 18:26
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Arquinsiel posted:Crusader, Cromwell and Comet, to varying degrees at varying times. The Crusader is debatable but for the early desert war where it fought nothing but the earlier marks of Panzers II through IV it was at least competitive. I'm not fully sold on the Matilda just because of how slow it was. Sure, it was competitively armed and well armored, but tactical mobility was poor due to the top speed and weight. It got a good rep due to the armor, and in a WoT featureless plain that might be fairly useful, but in an actual by-God tank battle I'm not convinced.
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Aug 12, 2016 21:47
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The Soviets didn't like it that much, which is basically good enough for me.
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Aug 12, 2016 22:05
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spectralent posted:It was KV-tier impregnable; the degree of armouring outstripped anything the Germans had in common service at the outset of the war. Strategically, not going to make a difference at all; even a vehicle that's totally impregnable can be bypassed, or just surrounded and wait to run out of fuel, and you're right being slow as poo poo wouldn't help. But probably a huge pain in the rear end regardless. Sure, the tank was a pain in the rear end, but just look at the Battle of France '40 edition. Tactical superiority doesn't matter if you can't do the other things right, and building a great, expensive, heavy, slow tank probably inhibits you from doing the other things right.
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Aug 12, 2016 22:10
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The only thing remotely similar to August Storm is Gulf War 1.
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Aug 12, 2016 22:25
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Saint Celestine posted:I don't see how anyone gets into that mindset, when if you look at Bagration or August Storm, they just such brilliantly planned and executed operations. racism / anti-communism with a big ole side of ignorance, mostly
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Aug 12, 2016 22:48
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Star forts just trigger the mathematical side of me so god drat hard. Scientific Warfare, baby. I think a factor that gets underestimated in battles like Stalingrad is that once a battle hits a certain scale it has inertia and ignores sunk cost. Sure, the Germans don't really want to keep pouring guys in to the rubble of the city, but they've already spent thousands of men to get to this point, and if they just get another regiment of rested troops they can take the houses on the other side of the street in the next sector and victory is just SO CLOSE YOU GUYS.
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Aug 15, 2016 13:40
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Endman posted:C'est magnifique, mais c'est ne pas la guerre! I disagree with your earlier assessment that the French don't understand war.
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Aug 18, 2016 02:40
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I enjoyed the synchronized azimuth indicator on the tank which is somehow superior to the "use mk 1 eyeball to look at obviously visible part of hull to see which direction hull is pointing" germans, man.
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Aug 18, 2016 22:43
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Ensign Expendable posted:Tank ammunition isn't that unstable. I've read about complaints of ammo falling out of racks while driving on bumpy terrain, and it didn't mention anyone dying. It will make a loud noise, though. I would think the danger for ammo falling out of racks is it causing injury to crew due to its weight.
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Aug 19, 2016 13:39
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For quite a while, navies avoided superfiring turrets because they were worried about blast damage (especially to sighting hoods for local control).
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Aug 20, 2016 00:30
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xthetenth posted:Not the US, because they already knew it'd work because of the worst drat idea ever, the double decker turret. The double decker was amazing, it was like what a child would draw, or what xzibit would make.
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Aug 20, 2016 01:24
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Wasn't there an effort to have a separate War Literature/Art/Movies thread? While it's an interesting discussion, I don't think it belongs here.
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Aug 22, 2016 14:15
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cheerfullydrab posted:This is a thread that shys away from any speculative discussion of politics in war like a prancy bay horse drafted off a Pomeranian estate to haul a gun in front of Stalingrad in '42. fixed this one for you
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Aug 22, 2016 14:59
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My boy Berthier was the genius behind the modern staff system (if you're considering S-jobs in modern armies). The Romans had some of what you're talking about developed. In the late Republic: Legatus legionis was the CO, 3-4 year term, heavy authority Tribunus laticlavius was XO, learning from the legatus legionis The praefectus castrorum was third in command and held something like an S4 role with a dash of S3 The tribuni angusticlavii were five junior tribunes supposed to learn from the legatus legionis, probably picked up the other roles as necessary. If cohorts acted independently, they would likely be nominally commanded by a tribune, with the most senior Centurion taking the XO role for the cohort. The commander of the speculatores would hold equivalent S2 and S6 roles As you can see, there was some formal assignment (praefectus castrorum and speculatores commander especially) but a lot of the jobs were assigned ad-hoc by the legatus legionis to the tribunes, who were in theory supposed to be able to fill these roles as needed.
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Aug 22, 2016 22:05
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Horse-drawn artillery of all kinds is neat. Here's a decent-looking translation of some articles about the Superiority of the Austrians: http://www.napoleon-series.org/military/organization/Austria/Artillery/c_Smola.html try like halfway down, seach for Thielemann. There are some interesting comparisons of time to set up etc, and then some interesting points on practical application.
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Aug 22, 2016 22:50
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HEY GAL posted:what is a division? what is a corps? is it like what i mean when i say "armada" (a very large armed force collected for a certain aim, whether on land or on the sea, english speakers only remember one of them because we don't have that word in our language) By the Revolution, both are a formal unit of military organization. The basic tactical unit of the regiment/battalion is the same as for your guys - nominally about 1,000 men for infantry, more like 400 for cavalry, but in practice of course these are more like 600 infantry and 230 cavalry once a campaign begins. The French organized in to Brigades, which is a (set, formal) grouping of 2-5 battalions from the same combat arm, with a brigadier in charge. You can figure on roughly 2,000-5,000 men in an infantry brigade. Brigades could also be split, and short brigades of 2-3 battalions were frequently designated as demi-Brigade later on. I think brigades (brigada) in your era were more integrated combined arms formations that were assembled ad-hoc. From there, multiple brigades are grouped in to a division of roughly 10,000 infantry with some small supporting artillery. There were also pure cavalry divisions of roughly 3,000-4,000. Then you group multiple divisions in to a Corps, roughly 30,000-50,000 men, under the command of a full General, with complete sustainment, staff, and combined arms capability. You can think of it thus for the Revolution: The Army is the strategic maneuver element. Once the Army is big enough (call it 60,000 plus?), maneuver warfare by necessity completely shifts to corps moving separately in coordination (march dispersed, fight concentrated). Once your corps arrive in the correct area of operations, your corps are the operational maneuver elements. The corps commanders are tasked with operational objectives and use the divisions within their corps to accomplish these objectives. I think that the major difference between your "Armada" and a Napoleonic corps would be that the corps is not collected for a specific objective. It's a permanent establishment with its own staff (the individual divisions within the corps may change, but the corps command is independent from the divisional command structure, and the most senior divisional general does not command the corps, for instance).
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Aug 23, 2016 14:22
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CoolCab posted:yeah as I understood it immediately after the fall of Germany the Soviets probably would have had little trouble rolling over the remainder of Western Europe had it come down to a conventional war This isn't some sort of August Storm situation. It would not have been pretty for the Soviets, either.
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Aug 24, 2016 14:29
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lenoon posted:Laughing at the "final position of armies" image from the Operation Unthinkable wikipedia entry. You can't read too much in to that because Soviet divisions were smaller than American divisions, and there was no Corps structure in the Red Army. The Army in the Red Army was roughly equivalent to the Corps in the West; the Front would be analogous to a western Army. Roughly 4:1 manpower advantage in favor of the Soviets is probably enough to put it in the win column eventually but that's a lot of dead guys on both sides.
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Aug 24, 2016 16:32
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my dad posted:I'm of the opinion that if either side thought they had a decisive advantage at that point, they would have pressed it, justifications be damned. I'm with you.
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Aug 24, 2016 16:52
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