Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

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Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

From the historical minis thread:

DiHK posted:

https://m.thevintagenews.com/2016/07/30/priority-see-surviving-images-veterans-napoleonic-wars-hd-color-2/

I'm just gonna leave these colorized photos of Napoleonic soldiers right here.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 14:40

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:21

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

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.

Like the article says, these were taken during a memorial parade for Napoleon.

This dude is cool as hell, can someone tell me more about Napoleon's mamelukes?

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 14:58

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Ataxerxes posted:

V��PELI LEMMINK�ISEN P�IV�KIRJA

Yesss I've been waiting for this.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 16:00

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

I think there's two answers to that. Firstly, a helmet isn't just a helmet, there was considerable development in protective equipment across the centuries until people finally decided "gently caress it this steel nonsense isn't working any more". The knight's helmet, for instance, is basically a steel bucket riveted from plates. The man-at-arms below has a sallet raised from a single sheet of metal, which is much more difficult, but also stronger.

Second, dressing fashionably was as much a thing back then as it is now. These people generally had the money to spend, so I can't really see why they wouldn't buy the latest styles. Imagine combining the latest tacticlol plate carrier with one of those goofy steel helmets from East Germany.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 18:18

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

xthetenth posted:

As a thought experiment, how many places you can shoot a person are actually going to be lethal?

Immediately lethal? Very few, I'd guess? You have to either cause massive shock, catch the heart at the right part of the cardiac cycle or hit the brain. Then there's the "might as well not bother calling the doc" sort of lethal where you hit them in a big artery or the lungs or clip the heart or whatever, but there's really no telling how far they'll chase you before keeling over. Beyond that it's various shades of survivable.

E;fb

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 23:14

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

OwlFancier posted:

I imagine it depends rather a lot on the individual whether being shot makes you think "oh gently caress I'm going to die" and whether that causes you to switch off or get pissed.

I think Rory Miller wrote about that. For some reason crooks would always keep running even despite getting shot, while many cops would just sit down and perish � like extras in the movies. He figured he had to start training his fellow cops to not keel over and play dead when they got shot in practice, because otherwise they'd go on to do that in real life.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 23:18

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

xthetenth posted:

Also just developing a way to get consistent good welds sounds may or may not have happened and even if it had it may not have reached the maker of the tank's production lines. You need all of that to get it done. Did the US do any riveting? They were generally the leaders in process tech so I wouldn't be surprised if they were pretty much all welding all the time, although they might have just done big complex castings like loving maniacs guessing by the Sherman's development.

Sure did! Both the light and medium tanks M3 were riveted together. (They may have started welding Stuarts at some point though.)

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 17:02

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Xerxes17 posted:

The issue of going lighter than present means that you're taking an additional step backwards in terms of toughness. The range of threats that a tank is really worried about is a shorter list than the same for an IFV.

Isn't part of the problem with IFVs that they have to carry a bunch of people and all their crap, which means you can't load it down with armour? Conceivably you could replace the peeps with steel plating and you'd have a really tall, undergunned tank.

I'm telling you now, the future of warfare is prop fighters and Panzer IIs made out of composites. :science:

Edit: Actually, wasn't the Leopard developed because of basically this same problem back in the day?

Siivola fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Aug 6, 2016

# ¿ Aug 6, 2016 00:20

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

While I'm all for the dashing stuff, that really sounds like a neat and helpful thing for the poor bloody infantrymen. :shobon:

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 20:21

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Kemper Boyd posted:

The Finnish infantry brigades are supposed to use tractors, trucks and buses for strategic mobility though. Besides, the only thing they're good for is for being a force-in-being anyway since they have almost no AA or AT gear.

Hey, when I was in the army our company had a whole machine gun on an AA mount! :downs:

(On the one hand, I was light infantry, but on the other, we lorried everywhere because gently caress trying to run a sissi company's command post with nothing but the gear you can carry.)

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 20:54

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

The Army has a bunch of old-rear end buses painted drab olive and they're used to transport people to exercises, so they have enough vehicles to get by in peacetime. But yeah, there's a law that the military can appropriate whatever gear it needs to operate, and that would probably mean they'd end up ~~stealing~~ borrowing some poor farmer's John Deere to pull a gun, and his neighbour's lorry to transport the crew.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 21:47

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

hogmartin posted:

* one of the questions was "I sometimes pretend I am dead and nobody can see or hear me (y/n)".

Oh man military psych test questions are magical. A Finnish classic is "I have considered a career as a florist (y/n)".

# ¿ Aug 13, 2016 15:08

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

lenoon posted:

You know what're really loving great? Castles.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2016 13:12

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Ensign Expendable posted:

"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."

You could make a sweet metal song around this. :black101:

# ¿ Aug 15, 2016 20:17

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

I've understood warfare in Italy at the time was mostly about sweet maneuvering and not so much actual pitched battles, to the point that some mercenary band got loving wrecked because they played too rough and everyone else involved decided that poo poo wasn't cricket. Is this one of those pop-hist things again? :ohdear:

# ¿ Aug 18, 2016 22:35

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Well, that sure was :smith:

as poo poo.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 15:25

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Endman posted:

Speaking of Italian hats, what was the purpose of the Mazzocchio? (The sausage-like cloth wrap on the top dude's helmet in this picture):

My two guesses might be fashion and possibly also keeping the sun and rain out of your eyes. From what I've seen, the roll is generally worn with helmets that don't have any kind of brim.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 07:26

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

An old favourite, now in high definition courtesy of a blog.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 14:52

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Zereth posted:

Wasn't it because firing it was easier than unloading it properly?

Yeah, to unload a muzzle-loading gun you generally need to stick a screw on your ramrod and use that to pull the bullet out.

You might want to pour water or something in there first, just in case.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 09:28

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

HEY GAL posted:

hello thread!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxPB76pmWss

You're the best.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2016 18:36

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

I think a case could be made it's still relevant for moving platoon-sized and bigger blobs of people around. It's easier to keep track of them when they're all standing in one place, and making orderly queues and such is way less a pain in the rear end.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2016 19:40

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

OwlFancier posted:

The value of guns is that the settlers would be able to use them without training

This is a weird argument, because effectively using a muzzle-loading gun without maiming yourself involves a very specific skillset.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2016 16:41

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

OwlFancier posted:

Well yes you need to be able to operate it without blowing yourself up but once you know how to use it, it requires minimal practice to be able to use it effectively. You point it at the thing you want to kill, you fire it, you reload it.

Whereas using a bow requires quite a lot of training to be effective with. You need the strength to fire it and you need to get your motions and stance right to shoot accurately, as well as needing to be pretty fit in order to keep firing for very long.

I'm hardly arguing that one can become a successful archer overnight, but I feel you're seriously underselling the practice required to actually shoot a gun worth a poo poo. Aiming with a gun is just as much about motions and stance (and breathing and trigger pull and), and good loving luck trying to reload a musket in a proper battlefield hurry. At least you can't quadruple-load a bow by accident. :v:

Hell, I'd even contest the idea that a gun doesn't require any fitness, considering how huge early muskets in particular were.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2016 17:21

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Fangz posted:

'Good quality plate' seems to be something that gets thrown around a lot. But would I be right in suspecting that it's a bit misleading as phrasing, because while you can theoretically design plate thick enough to defeat all sorts of things, realistically availability and quality of plate is very variable?

Yes, but also sorta no, I think. Making a single-piece breastplate is tricky business because you first need a big piece of tough steel, and then you need to shape and harden it just right. But on the other hand, making armour was a big industry, and I'd imagine there were a lot of good smiths to go around if you had the money to pay.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 12:40

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Hey Nenonen, post about that thing Nenonen Senior invented that made Finnish arty rock during the war, tia. :finland:

# ¿ Sep 20, 2016 22:36

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

SquadronROE posted:

I've always wondered - ever since firearms became commonplace on the battlefield, how important has it been to protect soldiers' hearing? I'd expect that a modern battlefield is amazingly loud, do you normally wear hearing protection at all so you can still hear things going on afterwards?

Modern helmets have cutouts and rails for mounting ear protectors, or at least more room around the ears for it. The best stuff is the active kind that only filters out loud noises like gunfire, and I think they include squad intercoms and poo poo nowadays as well.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2016 16:14

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

SeanBeansShako posted:

I'm researching hats.

Let me just say that this man is living the dream.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2016 09:10

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Come on, the Brits were Spitfireaboos already during the war, and it's never gone away. :britain:

# ¿ Sep 25, 2016 22:02

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Boiled Water posted:

But as posted above they were uniquely awful. Except possibly for Finland. Is there nothing bad to say about Finland? Clean Finn-magt?

Paging Kemper Boyd to the thread. I bet he has some quality dirt.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2016 11:56

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

cheerfullydrab posted:

They paid for their sins with . . . always being known as a willing ally of Nazi Germany. Those are real consequences.

Does anybody outside this thread actually care about that? Even Finns go "oh no we waged a totally separate war against the Soviets, honest!"

Basically all I've ever seen people say about Finland in WWII is some variation of "woo Simo H�yh�, rah rah, gently caress the Soviets". Some people even idolize Lauri "Larry Thorne" T�rni without pausing to think about how he volunteered for the SS in the middle of the Lapland War.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2016 13:13

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

I seem to remember you mentioning it was actually guys with swords and shields that gave pike formations a hard time.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2016 22:33

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

On the way to a castle to look at suits of armour, and maybe some artillerly as well.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2016 11:58

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

...all the museums are closed on Mondays. :negative:

# ¿ Oct 10, 2016 12:51

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Kurosawa died eight years ago, so unless there's a forgotten master film hidden in an underground bunker somewhere, you're outta luck.

But oh man I'd kill for that movie.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2016 17:37

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

I found a picture of Hey Gal.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2016 12:07

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Tias posted:

Case in point: The Russian Federation now issues a Zhukov medal. You get i for using ingenuity to win battles you're not supposed to win!

What, like ones in Ukraine or something?

# ¿ Oct 22, 2016 19:25

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Kemper Boyd posted:

Started today with thesis work. Realized I probably need to track down which regiments were with Tilly at Magdeburg. Smoked a cigarette.

If I don't restrain myself at all I'll end up with a thesis the length of a doctoral thesis and that's not probably worth it unless someone pays me to write one.

Also Kemper Boyd posted:

I have blossomed out into a flower whose name is IDEOLOGY and whose petals are PSYCHOANALYSIS, POST-STRUCTURALISM and IF I'M THE FIRST TO WRITE ABOUT THIS I CANNOT BE WRONG

But sincerely, good luck with the project!

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 12:03

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

It never stops catching me off guard how there were Japanese and Korean slaves in Portugal in the late 1500's. They are on entirely opposite sides of the world, you're not supposed to cross hemispheres like that!

# ¿ Nov 18, 2016 14:36

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Oh my God those are adorable. :swoon:

# ¿ Nov 18, 2016 20:20

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:21

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

spectralent posted:

Girls und Panzer is Good.

It's a sports series, but the sport is tank battles. It's not even skeevy.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2016 23:42

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