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SeanBeansShako posted:THE TIGER TANK IS UNDER THE HOUSE! This, but with unexploded ordinance.
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Aug 2, 2016 02:55
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I heard the original plan was that it would be a platoon of Hitler Youth at the end, so of course the dumb, inexperienced kids would all have no idea what they were doing and only succeed through sheer force of numbers. Of course, either way, the tank loses in the end. Maybe the final kill count was a little inflated, but it seems a reasonable conclusion. My biggest complaint about Fury was that there should've been even more looting.
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Aug 9, 2016 06:55
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If they were so effective, are armed forces today still using flamethrowers? Or were they banned for being too messy or horrifying?
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Aug 16, 2016 04:50
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Obviously when the Italian armies met on the field, they'd be in it to win it, but there was this whole extra financial dimension to inter-italian warfare because the Italian states had more money to burn than men. They were constantly buying out the contracts of enemy mercenaries, and Federico da Montefeltro actually made a pretty penny selling the promise to not fight against someone. Or am I misunderstanding things and it was like that everywhere else? Italy seems like the perfect place for mercenaries to shop around for employers. Lots of states really close together that are absolutely oozing money and vendettas.
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Aug 19, 2016 18:47
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If Hitler was competent, he wouldn't be fighting Russia in the first place. At least not while he still had a war going on in the west.Mr Enderby posted:I don't really have a problem with what I've seen of Extra Credits, but how the gently caress do you do a video about Federico da Montefeltro without mentioning that he cut a chunk out of the bridge of his nose, to improve his field of view. For the purposes of their style, noses just don't exist. They did depict him with only one eye without ever explaining it though.
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Aug 19, 2016 20:28
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She showed up on the same day a small town in West Virginia mysteriously vanished.
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Aug 22, 2016 04:01
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Yvonmukluk posted:I'm not sure if this counts as milhist, but I just this evening encountered a Patton Truther. By which I mean someone who believes that the US killed Patton to stop him from apparently singlehandedly kicking off WWIII. Did they have an explanation for why MacArthur was allowed to live?
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Aug 24, 2016 00:04
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If WW2 happened 20 years later, would all the belligerents be close enough to the atomic bomb for it to end in a nuclear hellstorm?
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Aug 24, 2016 23:55
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my dad posted:The Hungarian smith was eventually executed by Hungarian fascists. No idea what exactly it was that pissed them off - I imagine he was eventually found guilty of being a decent human being in a world gone insane, and became yet another good man in an unmarked grave somewhere in Europe. I don't know what happened to his daughter, but my best guess would be that she suffered the same fate. Man, I'm not used to thinking of individuals in mass killings as people who had lives of their own until they didn't.  Military history makes you build up such a cognitive dissonance to deaths. One person you know dying can make you depressed for a while, and if you knew everybody who died in any given war, it would make you depressed until the end of time.
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Aug 28, 2016 14:45
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spectralent posted:You'd think but my uncle and grandma don't seem to bear that out. They all seem to have a bit of a "It's a shame but it was what was happening" kind of view on it. Yeah, I guess there's sort of an emergency release valve in the brain for that sort of thing. How did people clean up battlefields back in the day? I mean taking care of the bodies seems simple enough, but how did they clean up all of the blood when there was a battle at a village or city or on somebody's crops? They can't just do daily life when the ground is all bloodstained, can they?
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Aug 28, 2016 19:56
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MikeCrotch posted:Oh god. Lindybeige has a new video. It's called..."Cavalry Was a Stupid Idea". It's clickbait. He's talking mostly about how people didn't physically ride horses into battle for the longest time, and something about how the stirrups weren't as important of an innovation as the saddle that distributed their weight, but he overlooks the most important technological innovation for cavalry: horses big enough to ride.
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Aug 30, 2016 16:24
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Rommel is always that one German officer that a lot of people look at as "one of the good ones," either to hype up how intense the conflict in Africa was, or maybe they just think he's a better person than the other German, Hitler didn't like him too much, maybe he didn't eat as many babies as the more thoroughly reprehensible Goering or Goebbels. I don't know enough about his qualities as a leader to judge myself. It comes across a lot like there's some kind of tsundere thing going on with the allies, like that time that Richard the Lionhearted baked cookies for Saladin, but not because he liked him or anything.
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Sep 1, 2016 20:11
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The navy found a use for dolphins, but they escaped in hurricane Katrina. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1EBqPZyo88 My favorites are the bits of ordinance strapped to animals. Russia put explosives on dogs and tried training them to run at tanks. Somebody tried using pigeons to steer bombs. America had a very effective bomb developed with little timed incendiary charges tied to a bunch of bats, so that when the bats found little shadowy spots in Japanese buildings, they'd burst into flame. It never saw action because the nuclear bomb came out first.
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Sep 3, 2016 22:57
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So here's a weird question. Every country would like to have the technological edge in their military if at all possible, and nobody wants to be left behind, so naturally everybody will try to be at least as good as their neighbor and replicate any advancements if they fall behind, right? So, is that accounted for in patent laws? Is their a specific exception built into patent laws for that sort of thing, or could, say, the US if it wanted to, launch a bunch of lawsuits against other countries for their usage of nuclear weapons after we were the first to develop them, or other similar things?
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Sep 5, 2016 04:17
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What are the odds that the snipers aimed at the loophole were just being nice at the moment and took the coin as an opportunity to remind the enemy what they could do if they chose?P-Mack posted:Human meat was being sold by the pound in Anqing by the time it fell. God almighty, well this is one of the worst things I've ever heard. I've heard human meat is really bad for long-term sustenance too. If you've got the opportunity for literally anything else, you're better off.
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Sep 7, 2016 21:29
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Miles Vorkosigan posted:Speaking of, in 1491 the author mentions that when Europeans showed up in North America the local's bows were actually better weapons than the settler's guns. How true is that? And for that matter, how much do we know about North American bowmaking? Were they better, worse or different than bows in Europe and Asia? Firearms in 1492 had their issues, but it's a moot point, since native American arrows ain't got poo poo on the suits of armor that the spaniards had access to.
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Sep 9, 2016 06:06
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During the Revolution, Louis XVI's son died of tuberculosis, and a sneaky royalist doctor cut out his heart as a sign of acknowledging the kid's royalty, since that was the tradition for French kings. The heart was snuck out of Paris and bounced around for a couple centuries until it was finally buried in 2004. It's a weird embalming tradition, but embalming is pretty weird in general if you look at it.
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Sep 16, 2016 17:04
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Has there ever been a conclusive answer to "how much damage will make the enemy surrender?"
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Sep 19, 2016 01:08
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I asked mainly because that seems like it ends up as the lynchpin in any counterfactual. There are so many points in history where you can ask your what ifs and from a rational self interest perspective it would be better if somebody surrendered, but it just doesn't happen. Hell, with WWI, it probably would've been better for all parties involved if they all just called it quits after a year or two, but there had to be a winner.P-Mack posted:loving paraguay, brahs Huh, what does that mean? Wikipedia posted:Following the disastrous Paraguayan War (1864–1870), the country lost 60 to 70 percent of its population through war and disease, and about 140,000 square kilometers (54,054 sq mi), one quarter of its territory, to Argentina and Brazil.  ...christ.
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Sep 19, 2016 06:07
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So I know this thread's opinion on LindyBeige and his milhist conjecture is pretty clear, but I'd really like to hear what the thread thinks of his other passion, the one that he named himself after. Dance.
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Sep 24, 2016 00:17
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I've heard things about all that gold and silver spewing out from the new world actually devaluing the precious metals themselves, but I've never seen any more information than just a handy little anecdote. When Charles took over the throne, he walked into a situation where it seemed reasonable at the time to make war with basically everyone, which is a horrendously expensive proposition, especially when everyone included the constituent bits of the empire that were supposed to make him money. On top of all of that, he had already spent a massive amount of money becoming emperor in the first place. I wonder if he would have overreached himself far less if he didn't have all that cash flowing in.
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Sep 28, 2016 16:58
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Yeah, there was the business plot. The whole plan was that they'd take advantage of all the disgruntled veterans who set up a shanty town around DC to unseat FDR. The only problem was that none of the businessmen who had come up with the plot had the military experience or charisma to lead the veterans against Washington DC and the guy they tried to recruit for the purpose didn't want to do it, so it never got off the ground. Other than that, there's not too much. Washington could've done it if he wanted to, but he was fine retiring with all the money congress gave him. I think for the bulk of US history, the federal government wasn't really important to most people, so it was pretty safe from any coup. I guess there's more local things that you could call coups. The way that the Hawaiian government overthrew their queen before getting themselves annexed would count. Also, the civil war.
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Sep 29, 2016 06:04
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Aristotle was wrong about a lot of things, but his writings were still handy reference material for a while. There were inaccuracies all over the place, but his work was what was copied and distributed all over Europe, Northern Africa, and Western Asia in an age before it was at all feasible to create a new work that is slightly more right and publish it at anywhere near the scale. If you really need more information in a field that Aristotle was pretty dated on, you can hunt down lesser works or scholars to get it more right, but it's so much easier to check
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Oct 4, 2016 22:07
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Nenonen posted:I'm afraid the recipient won't be able to make out the chalked message after the shell bomb has been delivered to its target even if it was a dud I was just about to ask if they ever found cheeky messages on the old unexploded ordinance that they find every so often all over Europe.
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Oct 6, 2016 19:46
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There's a lot of implausible parts of the bible, but knocking a guy down by hitting him in the face with a rock isn't one.
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Oct 7, 2016 17:49
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Phanatic posted:The gently caress it is. People are making arguments about the historical real-world accuracy of slings based on the number of sling bullets the mythical David brought along with him to fight the equally-mythical Goliath. Might as well argue that castle walls were obsolete because someone knocked some down by blowing a horn this one time. There's a theory on the walls of Jericho that the marching around blowing horns was actually to cover the sound of sappers underneath the walls.  But really, it's no different than how they use tapestries, paintings, and drawings to deduce details about contemporary things. Sure there may be some inconsistencies, but there's reason to believe that contemporary writers know a thing or two about how equipment was used and whatnot. Just because there's all these knights riding snails doesn't mean that those helmet styles never saw the light of day, and maybe you should forgive the writers of old for spinning all these details into a parable of faith and because nobody's going to preserve their raw receipts for three thousand years. SlothfulCobra fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Oct 8, 2016 |
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Oct 8, 2016 03:39
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Jerry was a titan with jungle cats that attacked on his word, but Tommy fought him off until at the last moment some guy named Joe Sherman came in to help.
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Oct 8, 2016 17:40
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Oh come on, that's almost exactly an Ork vehicle.
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Oct 9, 2016 07:26
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OwlFancier posted:Some people say tanks shouldn't have bow MGs any more, and they're right, they should have bow pikes instead. Why shouldn't they? Do the MGs on the other parts cover that area sufficiently, or do they think it's redundant to the main gun?
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Oct 14, 2016 16:50
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well if all the brain's gone, then water will just get in through whatever hole the brain escaped through.
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Oct 15, 2016 07:29
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"The bulk of the fighting " is a bit of a nebulous concept, but they did do the bulk of the dying, by far, as illustrated by this graphic from wikipedia.
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Oct 25, 2016 17:54
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I know that most of the Germans were killed by the Russians, I posted that mainly because Russia has this massive chunk, whereas the rest of the allied powers (excluding the chinas) barely register in comparison. I suppose only counting military deaths also skews things by leaving out a lot of the death toll from the bombings. There's a really good infographic youtube video where they break down all the deaths of World War 2, and it all seems pretty straightforward, a lot of people died in the first part of the war, but then it pans over to the bar for Russia and starts showing German and Russian deaths go up, and up, and up...really puts things into a horrifying perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWUaDMuMATM
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Oct 26, 2016 01:57
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Ensign Expendable posted:The ability to look up Soviet records to compare to German versions of events will never not be amazing. I read about a battle where (as the Germans claim) two Mechanized Corps' worth of T-34s drove into their ambush and 90% of them were destroyed. Actual Soviet tank losses for that day, across the entire Front: 5. Turns out, it was an assault of 5.5 tanks. That lone half-tank barely got away.
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Oct 27, 2016 17:16
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I read an anecdote once about Richard Feynman taking a visit to the uranium refining facility and being horrified. He had to plead for permission from the brass to tell the laymen enough so they wouldn't get themselves killed.
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Nov 8, 2016 03:27
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If you think about it, it makes sense that vikings wouldn't attack fortified areas. Can you imagine trying to haul siege equipment around in those boats? It'd ruin their schtick of showing up, pillaging whatever they can, and skedaddling before a countering force can be mustered to take them out like the waterborne equivalent of horse nomads. What seems weird to me is how they seem to crop up all of a sudden out of nowhere. Was the technology to make naval raids like that just recently developed? Were they there all along and just never bothered with Roman territories while the empire was strong and just picked on Germans up to that point?
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Nov 10, 2016 21:00
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There was an explosion of literacy in that era in general, especially with the printing press helping things along. In a roundabout way, it was responsible for the whole war to begin with.
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Nov 11, 2016 07:44
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I'm focused on the large battles because those are the ones that actually matter when you have a war spanning a political sphere that ecompasses thousands of star systems. Also, the Imperials are poo poo when it comes to the make-up of their fleet. They have TIE fighters, and they have gigantic star destroyers, and very little in between. As a rebel commander, you're not going to get some Imperial equivalent of a Fubuki-class destroyer carrying Long Lance torpedoes loving up your Jutland-in-space kind of day. You're going to have swarms of TIE fighters with their weak-rear end lasers, and maybe some TIE bombers giving you a few scratches and dents. You need swarms of your own fighters to make that annoyance no longer a problem: some deet to hold off the clouds of gnats, while you focus on climbing up the loving mountains. You don't need fighters with astromech droids, hyperdrive, in-atmosphere flight, loving locking s-foils. You need the here and now, and that's loving A-wings. And it was the setpiece battles that won the war for the alliance anyways. The empire had just come out with the TIE Interceptor, which was even faster, while the Alliance was moving back away from the A-wing to the slower B-wing. If it weren't for the Empire's habit of gambling all of its resources on big fancy displays of power in the middle of nowhere out on the outer rim, the Alliance would never have been able to destroy the bulk of the imperial fleet along with the head of the imperial government. And it weren't B, X, or Y-wings that dealt the most damage when capital ships were so tightly packed they could hardly move.
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Nov 12, 2016 17:39
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Crazycryodude posted:The Executor was a huge waste of resources, sure it looked impressive but they managed to build a grand total of ONE, at an obscene cost, and it was destroyed by an A-wing. The Empire would've been far better off if they'd invested the resources used to build the Executor into a few tried and tested Victory II's or better yet a pile of Lancer point defense frigates to keep the bombers off the big ships. I'll give you the Defenders, though, throughout the war the Empire was hampered by their lack of screening capability against Rebellion bombers. Well, no. Vader's personal Executor was the poster boy of the ship class, but by the time of the battle of Endor, Fondor and Kuat had cranked out least 4 more out of what would later be many Executor-classes. They were probably past the point of diminishing returns, but the Empire's entire tactical methodology revolved around massive singular starships maintaining their local swarms of speedy TIEs rather than distributing throughout a whole fleet. It even seems to make sense when you consider how at the battle of Endor there were so many Star Destroyers they got in the way. I'd rather take a couple more Executors than waste resources on another stationary space station built around a massive weapon with a piddly firing rate that's only really good for getting rid of rebel-friendly planets. 'Course the second one was all a gambit to draw out the rebel fleet, which I can't argue with, considering how it worked, but they didn't bother to clear out the hostile natives around the shield generator that was the lynchpin of their entire plan, and everything fell apart from there. And of course, the Empire's habit of building obscenely huge and expensive warships actually came in handy when the one man in charge, along with his number two man bit the dust. The massive warships served as rallying points for the remnants of the Empire once they weren't receiving orders anymore. They kept the imperial cause alive after there wasn't an Emperor to hold things together. Although I suppose setting up your army to continue the fight long after it's been lost is a concept of dubious merit.
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Nov 13, 2016 00:39
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SimonCat posted:Not to the Serbs, to them it's still current events. They're kinda like Confederates that way. Well, considering Kosovo broke away less than a decade ago, and there's still a lot of unrest about the whole thing, it still is current events, and as such is a lot more complicated than one side just being out of touch angsty bad sports about the whole thing.
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Nov 13, 2016 00:52
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How has modern warfare changed how countries deal with POWs? I know the US has taken to just tossing some of them into a hole in Cuba and forgetting about them, but are there still traditional POW camps? Do countries dealing with insurgencies have some sort of rehabilitation system?
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Nov 16, 2016 19:56
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