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Splode posted:Is it the panther or the tiger that's gears break before it runs out of fuel. I can never remember. The Germans absolutely painted giant iron crosses on their captured tanks (often with a swastika or two for good measure, just to be sure). The Western Allies obviously didn't have as much need for captured vehicles (apparently small arms were much more sought after). No idea about the Soviets but they have that hilarious quote re: Tigers and Panthers so I'm guessing they didn't much care.
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Aug 1, 2016 23:41
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HEY GAL posted:i don't know a drat thing about the mechanics of wargames, so if this happens other people would have to be in charge of the actual moving dudes around bit. like they did at the time, we could then make decisions by bitchy, bitchy committee. If it's anything like his other campaigns, you just order him to advance to a spot on the map he has shown you, and then marvel as everyone around you does THE ABSOLUTLY WORST WRONG THING IMAGINABLE. No worries, they think the same about you.
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Aug 3, 2016 12:50
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Nebakenezzer posted:The Smithsonian aviation magazine did an article on the creation of the Tu-4; by itself, successfully reverse engineering the world's most complex warplane was quite a engineering feat. Stalin initially wanted a totally accurate reproduction, but Tupelov gently pointed out that with all Soviet factories using metric, the Tu-4 was going to have to be built in metric as well - unless Stalin wanted to invest in completely bespoke imperial machine tools. That makes me wonder: Can anyone talk about how Lend-Lease was actually handled at an organizational level? Did the US government decide what to send based on what they decided they didn't need but could be useful for others? Could other states just send in a wish list like it was Christmas and Uncle Sam might bring a nice country its very own Sherman 76mm? Was there a shopping catalogue? Was there a system of value, so that you could get B-25s OR Shermans, OR a few B-25s and a handful of M3 Stuarts? Who decided what went where?
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Aug 3, 2016 15:46
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:I think there's some pretty liberal interpretation with the housecarl and knight in as much as those weapons wouldn't all be carried by one guy. Indeed I don't think the housecarl would carry the spear or smaller axe at all, and I doubt they would carry both a sword and a seax. My only other real complaint is the armor for thee knight. The coat of plates he's supposed to be wearing (the leather thing) I understand to be more typical of 50 years later. This is ironic given that the great helm is of an early 13th century type. Was it so unusual for a medieval soldier to wear equipment together that was wildly out of date? I mean a helmet is a helmet is a helmet, if you take good care of it it might last 50 years.
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Aug 3, 2016 18:05
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Hogge Wild posted:what are you shortening to 'op'? Tier One Operator Who Operates
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Aug 4, 2016 18:39
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Next time on the History Channel: Aircraft Carriers of the Renaissance! Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci proposed not just heavier-than-air flight and submarines, but submarines capable of carrying aircraft, as early as 1482, more than 500 years before the Imperial Japanese Navy? Were Japanese planners reading Da Vinci's secret notebooks in 1935? More next Tuesday at 1:30pm/2:30PST! And right after that: da Vinci's mechanical designs were very advanced for his time. How could he have designed heavier-tan-air vehicles and submarines without anything to go on? Were Aliens the inspiration?
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Aug 4, 2016 20:08
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Western press claims communist revolution will break out in USA when pigs fly. Another victory for the proletariat!
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Aug 8, 2016 23:21
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bewbies posted:I think Fury is the first movie I've seen that actually got the way bullets sound and tracers look right. I always appreciated that. Wasn't that actually a plot point in Thin Red Line, where one of the officers who was in the pre-war army where you could be a LT at 40, and was now taking orders from someone who was in his early 30ies?
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Aug 9, 2016 16:19
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Trin Tragula posted:you haven't already been gassed to death by carbon monoxide off the engine, What prevented the designers from using a device known to the modern world as an exhaust pipe?
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Aug 10, 2016 00:31
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:And then the M1/Leopard 2 happened; and today, after living through the Iraqi occupation, the latest upgrade to the M1 Abrams is rumoured to push it to 93. metric. tons. Tankchat! While at the same time, multiple countries have what are essentially light tanks in wheeled configuration, particularly to support airborne or expeditionary forces. The Germans have an honest to God tankette in the Wiesel.
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Aug 10, 2016 18:02
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Ensign Expendable posted:The Cromwell was inferior to the Sherman in literally every conceivable way and also came out two years later. Is sloped armor just really difficult to make or why did they decide to go with a box tank in tyool 1943?
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Aug 11, 2016 18:40
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xthetenth posted:Their knowledge is things happened in the east, Enemy at the Gates, and things based on bitching by German commanders that they always seemed to get attacked by superior numbers of Soviets (a much bigger disparity than they had over the front, which should set alarm bells ringing but apparently 11 time zones means literally limitless people). Plus the Russian Steamroller had been a staple of European thinking for almost a century by that point. If nothing else, it was a convenient explanation for the German generals as to how they could have possibly lost the war (seeing how they had excellent soldiers, outstanding tanks and the objectively best generals in the world).
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Aug 13, 2016 01:10
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spectralent posted:What relevance to military service could this possibly have? They don't want you to spend too much time on your camouflage.
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Aug 13, 2016 16:54
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Nebakenezzer posted:I'm not sure if this is the same ballpark, or even the same sport, but they give similar tests when applying for low-wage jobs with big organizations. The tests are not really there to catch people who plan to be lazy or devious; it's to catch the people who plan that and don't have the intelligence/social awareness to lie about it. We might get criminals and slackers, but by God, they will be smart criminals and slackers!
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Aug 13, 2016 23:08
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The Belgian posted:Sounds like they've insulted your honour. You know what to do. sue sue sue
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Aug 14, 2016 18:06
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Isn't there also a story where he took a prospective officer to lunch and failed him instantly when the guy salted his food without checking if it needed to be salted first?
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Aug 14, 2016 18:54
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Hunt11 posted:The nation state only began to emerge in the 20th century. Also can you explain that blanket statement as there were quite the collection of bastards just before Napoleon, let alone all the history that proceeded them. The 20th century is when the nation state finally erradicated all other forms of state organization (primarily when colonialism finally died its well deserved death), but the statement that it only began to emerge in the 20th century is utterly absurd and flies in the face of all available evidence. The 19th century was all about nationalism and people really, really, really wanting to form nation states. There were plenty of wars about it. Germany alone had three.
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Aug 16, 2016 19:50
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Cyrano4747 posted:edit: of course refusing to procreate as the ultimate "no gently caress YOU dad" would just be the ultimate F der G thing to do. I've always wondered if his war making wasn't in part because he really, really, really wanted to show his father what you really used an army for. And it conveniently also completely bled the army his father had created white. I can imagine good old FdG was very cut up about that. MrMojok posted:Do historians seriously study whether some fellow could get it up or not? At least in Early Modernity, the health of the monarch is considered to be representative of the health of the realm, so a monarch not being completely healthy is BIG loving DEAL HOLY poo poo YOU GUYS. A monarch not being able to further his line would be double plus ungood because that invited all kinds of issues. So any historian must assume that decision made by people in that era were informed by these considerations. So yeah, if you really want to understand FdG and his court, you kind need to know if he could get it up. For science.
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Aug 17, 2016 00:04
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Disinterested posted:It's 20 battalions with their own Lieutenant. That's approx 3 ranks too low. Is that because their Captain is off running the regiment while the Major is off running the division, or are they just dead?
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Aug 17, 2016 01:28
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Disinterested posted:They're mostly dead, but it's actually not as big of an organisational challenge as you might imagine as presently there is one company with a reported strength of 12 soldiers. I have a feeling that this war might not end well for the Germans.
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Aug 17, 2016 01:57
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SimonCat posted:The radio operator having to balance the hull MG34 on his head absolutely slays me. Watch his Maus review to see an actual tanker identify two issues that make the tank almost completely useless in like thirty seconds.
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Aug 17, 2016 22:36
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HEY GAL posted:this almost dead slightly-post-teen is the perfect choice Knowing early modern court politics, they were desperate because no one wanted to take the job (because in early modern politics YOU NEVER VOLUNTEER FOR ANYTHING because if you do it's on your own dime until the government can be arsed to pay you back, which may not actually be during your lifetime) and Wallenstein didn't say no in time.
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Aug 17, 2016 22:54
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Reminder that Schlieffen was absolutely convinced that the French wouldn't attack into Alsace at the start of the Great War, because that would be utterly idiotic.
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Aug 18, 2016 15:51
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Pontius Pilate posted:Watched from my balcony jets circling back to the lake for the Chicago air and water show while catching up on this thread. Good stuff. From that horrifying Warsaw story the narrator mentions how getting shot in a full stomach is much worse than an empty one. Any truth to that or just an old soldier's tale? Presumably a full stomach means that your digestive tract is working and draws extra blood, whereas on an empty stomach there'd be less blood in the area where you got shot. Which is good. Kinda. Before antibiotics, a gut shot just meant your death was slow and painful, anyway.
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Aug 22, 2016 00:39
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Jobbo_Fett posted:It would've also been a lot better if the Germans weren't forced to delay Barbarossa until mid-June. Much better. An attack in Mid-May runs straight into the tail end of the spring thaw, meaning that the Panzers never get the kind of breakthroughs and wide ranging encirclements they did in reality. The Soviets wouldn't have felt under intense pressure to counterattack at every opportunity and would have been able to mobilize fully before committing forces to battle, simply because they weren't losing units at such a fast pace. There would have been a real chance that the Soviets hold onto the really important industrial areas in the western part of Russia and don't suffer the disruption of production that came with the evacuation. All that would have shortened the war by at least a year, if not more, and probably would have saved millions of lives. In all seriousness, the whole "Balkan campaign caused a delay that meant Barbarossa failed"-thing is problematic for several reasons. The first, as I said above, is that the necessary good weather simply wasn't there before mid-June. The second is that the forces committed to the Balkans weren't actually scheduled for Barbarossa, and after they were done they went into the operational reserve instead of straight to the front. The third is that the Germans suffered massive logistical issues throughout Barbarossa, with the Luftwaffe forced to use bombers to fly fuel to the forward Panzer divisions because ground based supply units couldn't keep up. Throwing more units into an overstretched logistics network won't help you at all. The fourth is the frankly ridiculous idea that capturing Moscow ends the war, and that the Germans were within X weeks of capturing it (where X < length of Balkans campaign). Both notions are problematic at best. Moscow is not a small city, and it was one that the Soviets would have defended to the death. It would have made Stalingrad look like an ugly football riot. Even if the Germans reach it before winter, it is by no means certain that they will be able to take and hold it. And even if they take it, the war would continue. Capturing Moscow in 1812 did not end the war, as Napoleon found out (he was no doubt somewhat annoyed by this). While Moscow was important to the Soviet war effort (mostly as a transportation hub), it was by no means critical. The comparison to Berlin in 1945 simply does not take. By the time of the Battle of Berlin, the Allies had already captured the Ruhr and with it the heart of the German war industry. By comparison, the Soviet industry had relocated behind the Ural mountains and was safely out of reach of the Germans. So, yeah. Even if the Germans hadn't gone into the Balkans, they couldn't have attacked sooner. Even if they had attacked sooner, they couldn't have used the forces they sent to the Balkans. Even if they had used the forces for Barbarossa instead, it wouldn't have helped. Even if it would have helped, it wouldn't have been enough.
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Aug 25, 2016 16:28
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Cyrano4747 posted:I agree with your broad points but I think you're undervaluing Moscow. It was vital as the bureaucratic and administrative hub fir a highly centralized state. Would taking it end the war? No but at the very least there would be a lot of very unhelpful chaos as everything and everyone was evacuated to the rear. Yeah, but the entire narrative is that the Germans were this close to taking Moscow and winning the war. Which they weren't, on two counts. That means that starting the campaign earlier, even if it were possible, doesn't mean the Germans win, unless they somehow manage to drive the Soviets beyond the Ural in one campaign, which is just not physically possible.
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Aug 25, 2016 16:55
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hard counter posted:Aside from the big names like Clausewitz and Jomini, are there any other writers of military theory that are worth looking into (preferably authors whose texts have already been translated)? Mahan and his The Influence of Seapower was hugely influential on early 20th century naval thinking.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:26
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Cythereal posted:That would be my point, yes. Mahan failed to anticipate their development (in the case of the carrier) or the maturation of the submarine. Mahan wrote his theories in a naval world ruled by the battleship and did not anticipate the rise of two new types of warship that completely up-ended things once the technologies and doctrines involved matured. So Clausewitz and Jomeni are irrelevant because neither predicted COIN warfare?
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Aug 25, 2016 22:01
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A good talk by Wargaming's pet historian about the unspeakable ones, they who lurk in the shadows beyond, destroyers of cats and devourers of sanity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ho8TU_JpoI
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Aug 27, 2016 00:33
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Nebakenezzer posted:A good post, thanks. WWII Germany was decidedly not self-sufficient in food stuffs. The entire point of the Generalplan Ost was that they would starve the Soviet civilians to death to produce food for the Reich.
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Aug 27, 2016 22:00
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Delivery McGee posted:Edit: Jellicoe wasn't THAT great, on the whole. He was the next best thing to Nelson, but ... using Nelson's tactics and kinda-maybe winning the big battle of his time, not a decisive victory like Nelson had. I'd swap him out for a destroyer guy in the all-star team, to cover all the bases. Okay, this touches on a question we might have answered before but which I can not remember: Nelson was known (or is known today) for his great reliance on individual initiative of his captains - the whole "No Captain can do very wrong if he puts his ship alongside the enemy"-thing. I also understand that the Royal Navy pretty much declared him one of the lesser Gods of Warfare as soon as he died. People keep saying that in the rough century between Nelson's death and the start of WWI, the Royal Navy became an organization that de-emphasized initiative and rewarded blind obedience to flag signals, because they misinterpreted Nelson's command style. My question is this: what did the Royal Navy think Nelson did to make them come to that conclusion? How come no one challenged that view of Nelson? Fangz posted: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? Napoleon was fairly capable in terms of logistics. For real logistics fuckups you need someone like Erwin "My supply line runs through hundreds of kilometers of desert and across a sea that is heavily interdicted by the enemy, let's attack anyway because lol so random" Rommel.
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Aug 29, 2016 11:34
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Polyakov posted:
RECONNAISSANCE MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU DO IT?
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Aug 30, 2016 19:04
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HEY GAL posted:what a strange practice Do you have to pay people when they die in battle/on campaign? If not, was there ever a General who deliberately accepted a costly battle so that he wouldn't have to pay his guys as much/at all?
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Aug 30, 2016 22:56
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Cocksmith posted:how many bears would it take to beat a tiger ii one, at sufficient velocity.
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Aug 31, 2016 00:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:Personally I also find it much easier to work with a physical book when I'm writing. Sticky notes on parts in referencing and marginalia are still faster for me than bookmarking and highlighting a pdf. Work expands to fill screen space available. If you have three monitors you'll still have at least one open book in your lap and another face down next to the keyboard.
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Sep 1, 2016 16:06
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gradenko_2000 posted:2. Did the Entente ever consider opening up another front by landing along the Baltic coast, the way Churchill planned in WW2? They planned that so hard they built 3 giant battlecruisers to support it. Fisher and Churchill are, like, the dream team of "No seriously guys, I have a great idea!"
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Sep 2, 2016 15:30
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bewbies posted:I'm a little hesitant to respond as it seems like you kind of have some sort of axe to grind here, but just to be clear, I offered this in terms of comparison to the rest of the Werhmacht and to the Allied air forces. No one is suggesting they didn't do loads of repugnant stuff (or at least I'm not). The comparison to the allied airforces just falls flat on its face. Three years before Dresden, the Germans had already launched a campaign of targeting culturally significant British cities, specifically for their cultural value. The fact that the Germans carpet bombed fewer cities out of existence does not absolve them, because that was not caused by superior ethics but by weaker resources. Had the Germans possessed something like the 8th Air Force, they would have quite happily leveled British cities. A serial killer caught after two victims is not morally less bad than one caught after ten.
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Sep 2, 2016 18:27
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HEY GAL posted:if you force them into a place where they have no food so they start deserting to your army, you win twice Until you have so many soldiers you outstrip the land's ability to feed them and lose your army. But wining twice and losing once is still a net win I guess.
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Sep 7, 2016 16:40
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MikeCrotch posted:Do you reckon the AH troops had one of those identification guides, but instead of the tank/plane/ship silhouettes it's portraits of General Cadorna and co with "DO NOT SHOOT THIS MAN" next to them "His imperial and royal Majesty would like to congratulate Gen. Cadorna to yet another very successful offensive at the Izorno and would like to offer his most heartfelt encouragement to continue operations in this sector."
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Sep 8, 2016 13:19
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SeanBeansShako posted:I always feel a little sorry for this guy despite some of his gently caress up's now, you got all those weird issues on top of living in your uncles shadow. There is that story where Wilhelm II just kind comes to visit him during late July 1914 and goes "yeah, the mobilization is off we are only going to fight Russia, see to it chop chop" and Moltke just starts crying because goddamn he just wants to have a loving world war like the one he planned for is that too much to loving ask? And then Wilhelm is all "Your uncle could have done it". I mean drat.
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Sep 8, 2016 20:09
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