Empress Theonora posted:

It's more like "the Sherman is literally the only tank I can identify by sight because I'm a WW2 equipment dunce", actually.

edit: are there, like, ww2 tank flashcards or something. i'm kind of embarrassed i can't even tell a t-34 from a....... well, that's the only tank i can name.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

"The Panzer II's main combat drawback was a poor anti-tank performance" or, you know, the fact that it was obsolete by the time WW2 started, and the armor on it was almost worthless...


His description of the Panther tank makes me assume he was jerking off as he wrote it.

SeanBeansShako posted:

So uh, what is happening to the on going stuff still being worked on like the Taiping/Polish Soviet War and a few other mega post projects goons in the last thread were doing? they going to keep going and repost the older stuff when they are done?

JcDent posted:

Warlord Games have you covered from Biblical warfare (and earlier) to pikes to WWII and even far future. Near future, too, if you count Judge Dredd.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

The problem is that "Best X of WWII" often falls flat or has some individual bias that tarnishes the argument. Do you look at the potential a design had? Do you look at the various strengths and weakness and, if so, which variant(s) do you compare? Do you examine combat reports where only tanks fought eachother, or do you allow air-to-ground reports or combined arms actions?

There's no denying the T-34 is a good/great (Choose one) tank but "Best of X" always bugs me.

Admittedly, I'm weird and a grog so

Saint Celestine posted:

Bovington has a working Tiger 2 right? I wonder why they weren't able to use it for the movie.

Trin Tragula posted:

Never forget that the first tanks came about because of a project by the Navy to build a land-based weapon for the Army that the Army didn't want

spectralent posted:

Yeah pretty much those.

Also Centurion was created from a Cruiser specification, though it either was immediately or became designated an MBT*.

*I don't know which, it's not an era I'm a huge nerd for.

Ensign Expendable posted:

The core of the Soviet urban assault team was the concept of an assault group. The table of organization for an assault group could vary depending on what unit it was formed by, but the general idea was the same. A few tanks and SPGs would accompany a group of infantry (between two squads and an entire company) along a street. The first echelon consisted of two tanks, driving on opposite sides of the street and keeping an eye on the opposing side's windows. Fire from the tanks' cannons, the roof-mounted heavy machinegun, and small arms of the infantry would clear out snipers and Panzerfaust crews hiding in the upper floors. Fire from the second echelon of tanks was aimed at street level anti-tank measures.

The group also had towed artillery and mortars available to them, usually a 76 mm divisional cannon. For more difficult demolition work, big guns (up to 203 mm) could be requested to fire either indirectly or roll up the street and get close and personal. Satchel charges or tank guns were commonly used to open up new routes around enemy strongholds. Well timed progress of armour meant that Soviet tanks could stop 100-200 meters from the target of a scheduled artillery barrage, help out with their own fire, and then immediately drive into the territory to make as much use as possible of the suppression effect.

The 1st Belorussian Front suggested the following composition of assault groups: "1-2 mounted machinegun units, 1-2 DShK machineguns, 1-2 sapper units, 3-8 flamethrowers, 2-3 chemists with smokescreens and incendiary chemicals, an anti-tank rifle unit, 3-4 guns of all types (45, 76, 122 mm, and sometimes even 152 mm), and 2-3 tanks and SPGs". Regular infantry units fighting in the city were also well supported: "Each infantry battalion was reinforced with a SU-76 battery, a SU-152 battery, a company of sappers, and was supported by one mortar regiment, the division's artillery regiment, which included all the division's mortars, 76 mm and 45 mm guns firing directly from the front lines, one burst from the division's rocket artillery, and howitzer batteries."

Of course, simply barreling down the street with a tank company wasn't always the best way of doing things, as the Germans tended to not play fair and set up complex ambushes or attempt to seep through Soviet front lines and attack the rear. Advance scouts had to uncover their plans and deal with them. One way of doing that was dragging up some rockets into the house across the street and suddenly opening up a hail of hellfire on the unsuspecting Germans.



Of course, eventually, you'd have to get into the building and fight in it. Here's the method for doing that, explained in comic book form! "Assault Group: Advance! A submachinegun around your neck, ten grenades at your disposal, courage in your heart, go!"

"Approach the enemy by hidden ways: trenches, ditches, breaches in the walls and fences. Move while prone. Use craters and ruins, you can hide well here. And then: a brave dash forward.
You will enter a labyrinth of rooms and obstacles, full of danger. Not a problem, a grenade in each corner! Enter the house with a friend: you and your grenade. Both of you should be dressed lightly: you should leave your rucksack behind, the grenade shouldn't have a fragmentation sleeve. The grenade goes in first, you go in after. A burst from your submachinegun at the ceiling remnants, and move on.

Another room, another grenade. Turn, one more grenade! Forward again! The enemy can counterattack. Do not be afraid. The initiative is in your hands. Use your grenades and submachinegun more tenaciously.

Sweep any suspicious corner with your submachinegun. Don't delay!

Blind the enemy in any way you can and strike from the darkness. Stab the confused enemy with your knife or chop them with your shovel."

Tias posted:

So I just finished The Dollops podcast on the Iraqi war, and it was amazing! Entertaining and informative in equal amounts. Do you lot know of any good podcasts about modern/contemporary warfare that are reasonably impartial and well done? I don't like Hardcore History, but in that vein...

HEY GAL posted:

my subjects, on the other hand, would fit in nowhere else in world history but the early 17th century. except for wallenstein, sadly. Deprivatize yourself and face to Hapsburgs.

edit: and loving dudes was not Fritz's problem. everything else was his problem.

SlothfulCobra posted:

Did they have an explanation for why MacArthur was allowed to live?

chitoryu12 posted:

A few months after World War II ended?

lenoon posted:

Would have been a big giant shitshow, but however it played out, it would have been politically and militarily, and probably economically, impossible for the Western Allies to contest the USSR's influence in Western Europe. No extension of the war is needed to see that there was bugger all that could be done about it, no matter how hard Churchill bleated.

xthetenth posted:

Inversely I really want to give Pappenheim a tank.

Raenir Salazar posted:

Prussia versus "Germany" maybe?


Why? Face punching aside he's a good presenter in that and I like his genuine appreciation for military history.

Hunt11 posted:

Can anybody recommend me some good sources on the creation of the clean Werhmacht myth?

HEY GAL posted:

come for the good analysis, stay for the hilariously out of date discussion of computer games

SeanBeansShako posted:

That campaign was garbage,

Ensign Expendable posted:

Hm, what's this, a book by an alleged "internationally recognized expert on the Eastern Front"?



Welp.

Edit: he also based the entire thing on loving SS records and just shrugs and goes "there's no way to establish Soviet losses so let's just take the SS claims at face value".

Chump Farts posted:

Hey all, I'm going for a History MA and in the big leagues now. I'm doing a historiography on how perspectives of the two main armies in WWII changed as time went on and the Russian archives released. My bibliography so far is:
Alan Clark: Barbarossa.
David Glantz's Stalingrad Volume 1.
Michael K Jone:' How the Red Army Triumphed
Heinz Guderian: Panzer Leader
Max Hastings: Inferno
Cornelius Ryan: The Last Battle

I'm ordering Chuikov's "Battle of Stalingrad"
Glantz's Volume 2 for the Stalingrad series
and Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer

Any suggestion on other works to include? I'm thinking Manstein and Halder's accounts, but I'm wondering if "Survivors of Stalingrad" by Reinhold Busch or maybe Liddell's books can help out, too.

Books or primary source thoughts would be extremely helpful.

Chump Farts posted:

Thank you for the ideas. I haven't thought about the war crimes angle yet, and I'm sure that is worth looking into, if not in the scope of this paper (20 pages max), then later.


Thank you for the resource! I'm still lacking here, which is why I'm trying to express ship Chuikov's memoirs. I don't know how I'd even begin getting to see the material available from the 1991 archive release other than as it appears in newer works.


Great minds must think alike! I'm hoping there I hit on some interesting themes because I'd like to eventually do my thesis on the topic. I'm fascinated in how myths about the war have permeated into society, but don't know if there is a way for me to track why Combat Mission put "human wave" into the Russian move order or why Enemy at the Gates and Call of Duty One really had to show off the blocking detachments.

HEY GAL posted:

read the myth of the eastern front, too

Hunterhr posted:

From pages back but I did this too.

thatbastardken posted:

SlothfulCobra posted:

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.

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

I've always been sickened by the hypocrisy of the Allies when it comes to submarine warfare in WW2. Unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic after the Laconia Incident was evil, but Day One unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific was totally cool because Japanese people don't count. That's an ugly position, only accepted because the Allies were the winners and all the moral gray areas of WW2 get subsumed into "good war" narrative.

Arquinsiel posted:

I recognise that a distinction exists and maybe in some D&D style post-death judgement where a deity adds up your moral points to determine which of the nine alignments you fit into and thus what afterlife you get that slim distinction matters. Really the thought process of both sides of unrestricted warfare boils down to "sure, maybe this ship is full of material and personnel irrelevant to the war... but what if it's not?" so may as well fire torpedoes and hope you never find out you sank the SS. Kitten Transporter.

HEY GAL posted:

a couple samurai travelled to mexico in the 1500s, that was cool

Ensign Expendable posted:

3.7 cm Pak

Queue: Renault R35, R35 in German service, Medium Tank T1E1, T-55, Strv m/38 and m/39

Available for request:


T2E1 Light Tank
Christie Combat Car T1 and Convertible Medium Tank T3
M3A1
Combat Car T4


Medium Tank Mk.II
Medium Tank Mk.III
A1E1 Independent
Vickers Mk.E


LTP
T-37 with ShKAS
ZIK-20
T-12 and T-24
T-55
HTZ-16
Wartime modifications of the T-37 and T-38
SG-122


Otto Merker's tanks



TK-3/TKS
Trials of the TKS and C2P in the USSR
37 mm anti-tank gun


SR tanks
Type 95


Renault NC
Renault D1
Renault R35
Renault D2
Renault R40


PzI Ausf. B
PzI Ausf. C
PzII Ausf. a though b
PzIII Ausf. A
PzIII Ausf. B through D
PzIV Ausf. A through C

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

The time Vikings went Crusading is an amazing epic story that I'm surprised is not a series of movies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Crusade

Ensign Expendable posted:

Libluini posted:

This sounds more and more like this guy wanted to write about rats and just got terribly confused when putting his pen on paper. He must have been a medieval peasant

Mycroft Holmes posted:

This conversation made me think. We know the Nazis tried to rework pretty much every facet of German culture and life, even to the point of starting their own christian denomination. What did the Nazis do about Christmas?

Trin Tragula posted:

@FlowersForSale1886

Go and boil yer head, you great Prussian ninny! #gstk #rulebritannia #inkitchenerwetrust

*Kaiser attempts to sue an enemy civilian during a war*

Mycroft Holmes posted:

ISIS vs the Afrika Corps

Argas posted:

The old lore is that the Mon Calamari ships were civilian vessels converted into warships, with the largest ones being pleasure liners. They'd generally be worse at focusing firepower than Imperial star destroyers and were not as well armed, but had redundant shield generators. No idea how much of this has been kept with the new canon.