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

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

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Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

my dad posted:

Scary stories.

Drunken Soldier stories (Or more drunk than usual, depending on period)

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 00:20

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 07:28

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

spectralent posted:

Bask in it.

It also has a second version with a fat turret but it's not as aesthetic.

also an early version with a pointy turret, also not aesthetic

The hull MG mount is making me cry a little.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 02:20

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Dick Trauma posted:

I've seen a few references to tank destroyers. Did I miss some sort of tank vs. tank destroyer pissing contest in the last thread?

Careful, some posters here have PTSD regarding that.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 17:46

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Fangz posted:

The Original Tank Destroyer conversation.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3297799&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=45

Now let us never speak of it again

I could only make it a few pages. So Bad.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 21:37

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Jamwad Hilder posted:

If you have the time you should stop in Bayeux for half a day or so, it's maybe 25-30 kilometers NW of Caen. They have a pretty good WW2 museum but what you should really check out is the Bayeux Tapestry. In my opinion it's one of those "can't miss" things in Normandy if you're a history buff.

I only stopped in Caen to see the fortress there, but that was neat too.

In Paris you should definitely go to the French Army museum. There are six or seven different exhibits focusing on different time periods or themes, and the entire place is really fuckin' cool.

The tapestry was closed when I was in Bayeux, but we did happen upon The WWII museum by chance while driving back from Utah beach. It was a very good museum.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 14:19

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Phanatic posted:

That's a persistent myth. It's untrue for a bunch of reasons.

*good stuff*

In addition it matters a lot more where the round hits than the size of the round when you're talking about carbine/rifle rounds. A 5.56 (or 5.45 or 7.62x39 for that matter) has more than enough power to go through a person at normal combat ranges (Zorak's aforementioned 300m or less) that it's not like a larger and heavier 'Full Sized' rifle round gives any advantage for 'lethality'. If anything the terminal ballistics of 'carbine' rounds might actually make them more forgiving as to placement, esp. if they fragment inside the poor SOB that catches one.

Now if body armor becomes more and more widespread and cheaper then you might see some shifting towards heavier rounds again, but that's not likely with asymmetrical warfare.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 22:24

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Also note that the thing about thicker armor to stop KE projectiles is that you're also going to have bits of that armor coming through with the penetrator if it makes it through. There are spall liners and such to help with that though.

I've seen claims that the softer (Brinell Hardness) armor on the M4 Medium actually helped the crews survive penetrating hits due to less spalling, among other contributing factors.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 16:20

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Riveting is easier than welding, especially when dealing with large plates of steel. Welding is stronger but catastrophic when done badly.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 16:42

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

I think the M3 Lights were riveted until the A3 version.

And later M3 mediums were welded too, I believe?

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 17:07

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

HEAT also didn't handle spinning all that well during the early years of its use, which was another thing that kept it out of high velocity guns for a while, unless you go with the mad science esque approach that the French used with their... 100mm I want to say?

Later HEAT became Fin Stabilized (the FS you see in some designations) and I think they used freely rotating rings to pass through rifled barrels. Or if you're British you just use HESH instead.

Nowadays most everyone uses smoothbore guns so it's fins for everyone.

Taerkar fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Aug 5, 2016

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 17:58

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

HEY GAL posted:

is that...good?

No, 93 tons is approaching "No bridge can handle this, and neither can many roads" territory

bewbies posted:

So I just got spun up on the latest iteration of Abrams upgrades and their solution to the next generation of missiles is just to slap more ablative armor on the thing and no poo poo I'm not kidding you it's new curb weight is no less than 93 tons. God bless America

That's because you're not cleared for the G.R.O.V.E.R. defense system.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 18:11

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Gotta think that's going to be hell on the M1's mobility and suspension.

Quick, someone get them a copy of a report on the problems with German Heavies in WWII.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 19:16

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Ablative armor for everyone! Renegade Legion makes a sudden and surprising comeback.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 20:36

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

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.

That's also fed by the rather poor intelligence the Germans had regarding Soviet troop strength. There was no way the Soviets still had any reserve after all that they lost, right? (Take three?)

# ¿ Aug 15, 2016 14:43

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Where was Nixon on the ol' Civilization scoreboard? How much higher was he than Dan Quayle?

# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 18:10

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

The secret is that every subforum other than the one you're currently posting in is terrible.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2016 16:49

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Cyrano4747 posted:

Their vulnerability to air power is the big one. A CV of any era after about the 20s can generally clown on a BB from WAY outside it's effective range. A battleship being bombed and torpedoed by aircraft launched from a carrier 100 miles away has zero ability to respond. Just look at the fate of the Yamato

This only gets worse as improvements in missiles make armor more and more pointless. By the time you hit the 70s a missile cruiser is going to kill a traditional big gun battleship as well.

I think that most carriers were faster than battleships anyways, so even if the BB could survive constant air attacks it would almost certainly never catch the carrier, even allowing for potential distance drops due to launching/recovering planes.

Hell just look at how the BB's role changed from 'Kill Enemy Ships' to 'All of the AAA, ever'

# ¿ Sep 30, 2016 18:44

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

turn it up TURN ME ON posted:

What was weaponry like for the British army during the Zulu and Boer wars? If I recall correctly it's single shot breech loading cartridge based rifles, right? Did the guns have magazines for extra shells? Was artillery used, like gatling guns?

I'd love to know more about that era in the British Army.

Martini-Henry and then later the original MLE for rifles.

The M-H was single shot.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2016 19:03

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Battleships also can't project power like a carrier can. Until recently a BB could only maybe impact 20-30 miles from any coastline and developments in anti-ship missiles made that more dangerous. A carrier can sit 100 miles away and threaten anything hundreds of miles inland.

Now the BB was more important in the ETO, at least the Tripitz, because there was less of a need for carriers outside of the mid-Atlantic due to all of the land-based aviation. (Edit) also anti-ship weapons for planes were still in their relative infancy at that point.

Taerkar fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Oct 1, 2016

# ¿ Oct 1, 2016 00:31

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

MikeCrotch posted:

This video covers a lot of the usual nonsense myths around US armour in WWII, including the whole Ronsons thing. Recommended watch.

Main points are:

1. "Ronsons" as a nickname for Shermans are anachronisms and there is no recorded evidence of it ever being used during the war
2. The whole "Shermans lighting on fire a lot" thing is probably due to Death Traps and the fact that Belton Cooper saw a lot of burnt out Shermans, what with working in an armoured maintenance company and all. This doesn't mean that Shermans burned up at any greater a rate than any other tank. It's also probably tied up in the different ways countries counted kills.

To add to the 2nd bit you don't get handy kill notifications in real battles so it wasn't uncommon for there to be a 'Shoot until it burns or otherwise deforms' practice regarding enemy vehicles, especially if you were in a defensive fight. After all if you're not going to retain control of the battlefield at the end then anything you don't wreck can potentially be recovered and put back into service. Especially if it's American.

spectralent posted:

Also, while there are 75mm Shermans to the end of the war, Eisenhower requested no more be sent after January 45. They were certainly still being made, and if the war had miraculously gone on longer it's entirely possible they'd have eventually have to send more.

They also had MG ammo everywhere and, if you were British, probably even more 75mm ammo just tossed wherever it could go.

quote:

Also, while there are 75mm Shermans to the end of the war, Eisenhower requested no more be sent after January 45. They were certainly still being made, and if the war had miraculously gone on longer it's entirely possible they'd have eventually have to send more.

I've personally wondered if you wouldn't see more 75mm Shermans get replaced with 105mm ones if the war dragged on. There was an article or two posted by the Chieftan on WoT's website where pretty much every armor commander they talked to wanted more 105s.

Taerkar fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Oct 4, 2016

# ¿ Oct 4, 2016 22:53

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

I just noticed that thing has 6 wing turrets below the main deck.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2016 01:37

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Fangz posted:

I've heard this argument about strategic bombing but I'm not overall persuaded.

Look at the US production over this period:

https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/BigL/img/BigL-p59.jpg

Again you have the same pattern of rapid growth for 1-2 years, then a plateau.

I think it's more likely that there was slack in the system that Speer could take up. I can believe that strategic bombing did damage German industry but the idea that it would have grown at 5% per month indefinitely without it just isn't credible.

How much of that plateau for the US was due to a scaling back of military production?

# ¿ Oct 12, 2016 21:13

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

What amphibious landings have failed? The only examples I can think of are incredibly amero/euro-centric such as Dieppe (more of a failed raid?), Gallipoli (Though more a failed exploitation than landing) and the Bay of Pigs (CIA clusterfuck)

# ¿ Oct 19, 2016 19:26

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

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.

Obviously the Soviets were lying because Stalin.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2016 05:23

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

For you tank-loving types that haven't gotten a chance to go to it recently, WoT's The Chieftan has done a 'quick' walkthrough of Bovington.

Part 1 (of 3) starts here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdi3YliY_nQ

# ¿ Nov 5, 2016 18:57

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Comrade Koba posted:

Surely you mean a Platoon, Infantry, British, Mk.1944?

Don't be silly.

It wouldn't be a Mark, it would be a Revision.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2016 06:49

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Only three guys in the first wave of Utah survived? WTF.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2016 16:26

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Hunt11 posted:

I feel like the best chance for Germany to win would have Britain move for peace talks with the Axis powers after France fell. This may be a biased view, but I feel that with Britain out of the war, then coordination between the Soviet Union and the US would have been much more difficult, and the Nazi's would have been able to devote more resources to Barbarossa that could have prevented it from turning into the poo poo show that it did in real life.

That invites the GBH question of how post-war relations between the US and USSR would have been with Churchill out of the picture

# ¿ Nov 19, 2016 16:57

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Nebakenezzer posted:

Y'know its a good question. I'd suggest maybe a year's subscription to AFV monthly? Finding a book on tanks that is general, factual, but not "You've most of your way through a history undergrad" weighty is difficult.

https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/tanks-of-the-second-world/9781473859326-item.html?ikwid=Tanks&ikwsec=Home&ikwidx=34

?

Thread, this is coming out soon:

https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/for-want-of-a-gun/9780764352508-item.html?ikwid=Tanks&ikwsec=Home&ikwidx=3

I need to start rating this badly immediately.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 04:18

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

This time it'll be different. We've got better tactics and better equipment and better people than they do.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2016 01:11

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

150km is I believe a general reference to the average life of the final drive on the Panzer V "Panther" tanks. Replacing the unit requires heavy equipment, removing the hull roof above the driver and assistant, everything in the way, and the maneuvering the bulky unit out of that hole in order to put in a new one.

Many people dismiss anything from the Soviet Union (aka Ensign's translatws posts on his blog) as propaganda.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2016 20:06

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Raenir Salazar posted:

Thanks!

Did you mean Ensign "Translates"?

I love how when I use him as a source he appear causes certain people on the internet to go apoplectic with rage.

Yeah, phone typo.

And it is special how much people will twist themselves in knots over official reports, esp. since most of the Nazi records were destroyed IIRC.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2016 05:21

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Phanatic posted:

This ignores opportunity costs. Boeing makes money when we order a JDAM and use it to create a hole in the desert somewhere. That might be good *for Boeing*. But it's not good for the economy as a whole unless you ignore the other things we could have done with that money that could have created something more useful than a hole in the desert.

The economy as a whole is rarely a concern for the shareholders.

The only way that war is good for an economy is to be the economy that id's left standing when your competition is ruined.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2016 22:24

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Many wars of antiquity were against economic competitors so as long as you win you're better off than your foe.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2016 00:20

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Christmas is still winning, checks out.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2016 01:30

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

They already have a forward OP in July.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2016 02:27

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Some bits of the Honorverse fall pretty bad into the 'These political groups are terrible' lines, mostly along the common lines of many sci-fi writers.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2016 05:42

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Plutonis posted:

Wow! It makes you wonder how the Nazis did so much conquering if they were a plucky state with so many disadvantages.

By being the least bad early on mostly. Inertia's a hell of a thing to overcome in warfare. The issue is that most of the Wehrabooism isn't about the early years of the war, it's all about 1943 and later when all of the big hardware starts to show up. The cats, the jets, the rockets. When the Nazis were sinking deep into both desperation for that wunderwaffe and the later stages of craziness, denial, and wackiness that have been building up in the various parts of their leadership and industry.

Taerkar fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jan 9, 2017

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 17:55

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

chitoryu12 posted:

Along with medical care, first world armies like to issue good body armor to their soldiers. If you're armored up, you can take a .30 caliber rifle round straight to the chest and keep on truckin'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQi7iknSKy0

Ugh, that video title is just a wonderful example of how much 'Hero' is overused.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 17:31

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 07:28

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

HEY GAIL posted:

the largest shotgun in the world

Technically the San Shikidan round doesn't count since it doesn't separate until after leaving the barrel, but it got up to 46cm in size.

Think skeet shooting with a battleship's main battery.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2017 19:41

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