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

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Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Yvonmukluk posted:

I like how this guide describes the lend-lease tanks as 'similar' to their American counterparts, as if the British just happened to possess tanks that were identical to ones the US army was using. Because the US is neutral, you see.

The weird thing is that because of the sheer scale of US industry there were entire variants of tanks that only saw service with other nations. The "medium" there had a totally different turret for example.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 13:14

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:58

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Paper title: "The New World: what is it with that place and fat?"

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 00:04

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Trin Tragula posted:

The only useful thing that "there are a lot of flies" indicates is "They are living in a trench".

TBH not even that. It just tells you that there is a trench, the relative health of the occupants is not indicated.

OwlFancier posted:

Wouldn't a garderobe be pretty easy to spot because of the huge streak of poo poo running down the side of the wall?

The point of the story is that they knew to hit it then because the dude would be in it and they could pinch off the command element.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2016 17:50

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Kajaka is worth watching, if the thread hasn't already.

lenoon posted:

Maybe. It was the No Conscription Fellowship line that a dishonourable discharge is a mark of honour, and they drove that pretty hard in their newspapers and periodicals. I guess without a group or a solid backup telling you that what you did was honourable, you'll look for that from the Army itself.

But then again, now that it's sat ticking over in the back of my mind, what greater victory for the Objector over the military can there be? He's fought for them to legally admit that what he did, and what thousands of other Americans did was honourable. What a victory over the military, over militarism itself! I think that's the principle that's at play here. He wanted recognition as an honourable man, and not from society, or from other COs, or peace organisations, but through sheer bloody mindedness, and stubborn refusal, principle and argument, from the Army itself, that they would acknowledge his refusal to fight as the honourable actions of an honourable man.

"Shoot, you son of a bitch" goes up there with the Frenchmen for steadfast refusal. I'll work out some way of putting it into my commentary to Soul of a Skunk (now 1/10ths done!).

The thing is, it seems that somehow he ended up falling into the non-combat service role that he would have taken had he been offered it, so I guess his logic was that the service he gave was that which in the end was asked of him and he was discharged honourably so he may as well stand up and make the government agree that he was just as valuable to society as someone with a rifle.

bewbies posted:

Why is it that war movies always feature actors that are way, way, way too drat old to be in the army? Hey, I'm 40 year old lieutenant clint eastwood and I'm taking orders from 42 year old tom hanks who must be the oldest infantry captain in the ETO, except then he meets 51 year old airborne captain ted danson and everybody is surprised until 46 year old lieutenant brad pitt walks up only to be outdone by 51 year old staff sergeant brad pitt

No idea why, but it seems it's always been like that. Lt. Col. Benjamin H. Vandervoort was pissed off at being played by John Wayne in The Longest Day, as Wayne was ten years older than he was at the time of filming, making him something like 20 years too old for the role.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2016 19:13

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

pthighs posted:

I was just flipping around in Netflix the other day and noticed there is a Jarhead 2 and Jarhead 3, both of which, judging by the poster art, hilariously seem to be the exact type of macho shoot-'em-up movie the first one isn't.

I watched one of them out of morbid curiosity and then later looked at the IMBD page for the other and realised that I couldn't remember which one I watched. Turns out they both have the same plot outline.

Nenonen posted:

I love the idea of using carrier pigeons for tank communications, but I fear it really was done for the same reason that miners used canaries...

The little gas masks would be adorable though :3:

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 01:44

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Well the Scorpion was replaced largely by the Scimitar which is identical but for the gun. They replaced a short 76mm gun with the Rarden autocannon made famous last thread for having a six round magazine loaded by two three round clips and occasionally deciding to fire all by itself.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 18:58

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Ensign Expendable posted:

2-pdr in the turret, 3 inch howitzer in the hull, that's how we roll motherfuckers!

Except then the 6-pdr that replaced both of those had no HE produced for it, oops.

Which is why those were converted to take the same 75mm round that the Sherman did at the same time the Centaur became the Cromwell.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 23:26

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

PittTheElder posted:

Today I learned that tanks can jump:

That story is actually amazing. It turns out that the troop commander had ended up in possession of a mild steel training tank that had no armour, and the way they found this out is that they managed to totally clear the canal while the other two tanks in the troop didn't quite and had a moment of cartoon teetering before the tracks bit and pulled them up over the edge. The entire book is full of "and then I did something stupid that worked" in the best British tradition :britain:

https://www.amazon.com/Troop-Leader-Tank-Commanders-Story/dp/0750945346

# ¿ Aug 11, 2016 00:52

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Ensign Expendable posted:

The Cromwell was inferior to the Sherman in literally every conceivable way and also came out two years later.

Way lower profile than the Sherman had, apart from the speed and being the point where cruiser tanks started to move towards being MBTs.

I should probably effortpost on British tank designs sometime, you can see a lot of incremental improvements with some false starts along the way and a general trend between the Tank, Cruiser, Mk I (A9) and the Challenger II.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2016 19:12

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

OwlFancier posted:

The story about the canal jumping Cromwell is a relatively good illustration of the latter category save for the good fortune of the tankers. You shouldn't really be stumbling on an enemy camp on the other side of a hedgerow by accident with your tank squadron.

Actually it's a spectacular fuckup on the part of the troop commander and he admits it. He was supposed to be leading a recon platoon spotting for artillery and accidentally crossed enemy lines and found himself and his unit surrounded by Germans. The canal jumping was literally them just driving in a direct line back to where they knew there were no Germans, not a planned move.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2016 23:42

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Nebakenezzer posted:

What Mr. Owl Fancier said. My additional two cents would be I think the MBT was also the result of something else: having the goddamn time to perform the RnD on a tank that would remain useful for a decade at least. Once you get deep into World War 2, the planning horizon is "better than the other guy's".

The weird thing to me is that the Leopard I seems to have been built with the same kind of thought process that led to the Cruiser tank philosophy but with the assumption that all infantry would at least be motorised so the Infantry tank was effectively a dead idea at that time.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 00:00

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

The Leopard I had a real gun, and nobody was thinking they'd be charging around like cavalry in them. Also, when the HEAT bogieman can penetrate 350mm of armour, you're kind of out of options.

Why is the "realness" of the gun relevant? At no point did the British cruiser designs have a gun that wasn't as close to the best AT gun available in that day, with the possible exception of the Cromwell's 75mm. Note that I am not saying that German designers came out of the MBT-70 program saying "what we need is a fuckton of Cruiser tanks like the British wasted time on" but there was definitely a similar element of assumption at work that drastic compromises needed to be made, with the result that it went fast, had a big gun and very little armour except on the front. As it turns out, both schools of thought were wrong and you can armour against the threats of the day without sacrificing mobility or striking power, with the bonus utility of the tank being usable as a drying rack too.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 00:38

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

The difference is that the Leopard's gun is also a perfectly fine HE-shooter. tbf there were no more AT-only guns around, but that's because cruiser tank doctrine was just completely wrong from the beginning. The Crusader was designed in 1940, the same year as the Sherman, but its 40mm gun didn't have an HE shell.

The big deal with cruiser tanks is that the Brits legitimately believed that they could force a breakthrough with infantry tanks, then pour cruiser tanks into the gap like horsemen and then go gallivanting around the rear lines without any infantry riding along. In practice, that never even happened once. The Germans never believed in that, the Panzer divisions always brought a ton of motorised infantry along with them. Leopards were not fast to exploit breakthroughs, they were fast to contain breakthroughs.

Another thing is that the Brits had a real option in stacking armour, or at least putting on their tanks. Matildas were nigh-impenetrable in 1939. The Leopard designers didn't have that at all, nobody in the West really knew how to stop HEAT.

Also, I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the Leopard Is were reliable, and not utter trainwrecks.

The gun on the Cruisers was the Ordnance QF 2 pdr, which was the same gun on the Matilda II and the Valentine until the Ordnance QF 6 pdr was mounted on them. Coincidentally at the same time they mounted it on the Crusader Mk III. There was literally no difference in Cruiser and Infantry tank armament post Matilda I. The 2 pdr actually had a HE shell designed for it but it was never manufactured for some reason. The 6 pdr did have one and eventually they were simply bored out to match the 75 mm Gun M3 making the Ordnance QF 75mm and simplifying logistics. This was again mounted on both the Cromwell and the Churchill. Also it's kind of beside the point but the "CS" variants of the Cruiser designs usually had a short wide-barrelled gun, but in a moment of pure :eng99:

they were only issued with smoke shells early on.

As for the actual idea of using Cruiser tanks like cavalry squadrons, it was achieved a few times in Africa but modern defence in depth second line deployments resulted in them running up on AT gun emplacements sharpish and getting blown up pretty quick or just breaking down due to poor reliability. The M3 Stuart was early on regarded as what the Cruisers should have been by some of the tank crews in the desert, but at that point they were just using them for any task that required a tank due to their reliability and armament.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 02:14

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Koesj posted:

German designers came out of MBT-70 thinking "we need to make Leopard II", with the biggest bestest gun+ammo in the west.

This is correct, I fluffed the order of design in my head. Thanks for catching that.

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

Did the British seriously forget to have HE shells for all their tanks?

Yeah, for a brief period early on they really did just totally gently caress up there and assumed that machine guns would be good enough for the most part. That's why you get stuff like the A9 MkI having two machine gun turrets beside the driver's position and an extra coaxial with the 2 pdr. Some sources claim that it was just a sort of "40 smoke, whatever HE you can cram in there" deal, but others claim it was a fully smoke shell affair. There wasn't an AP round available for the weird 3-inch howitzer they had on them either, not that it would have been particularly high velocity. It was a terrible idea, but they tried it anyway.

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

Like I said, the Sherman was designed around the same time as the Crusader. The most modern British tank was a cruiser, and it had engine problems, no armour, and no HE shells. Who on Earth looks at that and takes inspiration?

Both the Crusader and Churchill were actually in production by late 1940 (although the fall of France prompted a bit of a rethink of the Churchill's design delaying it a bit.), while the requirements for the Sherman weren't even formalised until late 1941. In terms of WWII tank development that's basically a whole generation of a gap, but the Churchill lucked out into being a similarly decent chassis for upgrading and ended up actually serving until the end of the war without anyone deciding they needed to waste time going back to the drawing board.

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

Not just like cavalry, moving fast and taking up good positions. Expressly, pouring through a breakthrough and zipping around like hussars. The British did this against the Italians once, and never again. Good riddance.

It was an idea of questionable merit in Africa but obviously worthless in Europe. The image of tanks "steaming" around firing broadsides was a really weirdly attractive one for a certain type of officer though. This isn't even getting into the weirdness of the light tank and universal carrier cavalry units which were kind of sort of intended to be dragoons I guess?

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 04:21

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

JaucheCharly posted:

The article is worth reading.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/science/mary-roach-grunt-excerpt-ieds-bombs-stryker.html

Seconding this. Great read.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 17:22

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

The Infantry Tank Brigades were actually independent and penny-packeted out to support Infantry Divisions and the Armoured Divisions had , not that that's really much better. Armoured Divisions actually had two Armoured Brigades which were, weirdly, composed of three Regiments rather than three Battalions. By 1940 they had integrated the motorised Infantry Battalions into the Brigades and there was a third "lorried" Battalion as part of the Special Group. "Lorried" is a wonderfully vague term at that point, which seems to mean "only has to walk sometimes".

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 18:35

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

Jesus christ it just gets worse and worse. What the hell is the difference between Light tanks, Light Cruiser tanks, Close Support cruiser tanks, and Heavy Cruiser tanks?

I saw a light armoured brigade and a heavy armoured brigade in the divisional structure, and just loving assumed that infantry tanks were with the heavies. Nope, just more "Heavy Cruiser Tanks".

In order: piddly small, no gun bigger than a 15mm Besa MG, basically a glorified tankette. Usually a Vickers Light Mk VI at that point, but might be a Tetrarch or an earlier model.
Tank, Cruiser Mk I (A9) with 2 pdr.
Tank, Cruiser Mk I (A9) or Mk II (A10) with that 3.7" howitzer I mentioned earlier.
Tank, Cruiser A9 Mk II (A10) with 2 pdr (originally intended to be an infantry tank! :eng99).

Why am I using both the Mark and the A number? Wellll...

Thing is, because of how things rolled out the production of stuff wasn't quite ready to replace these early Cruisers with the later Tank, Cruiser Mk III (A13 Mk I) or Tank, Cruiser Mk IV (A13 Mk II) entirely, so all of them saw combat in France in June 1940. Because gently caress you and your wish to easily keep poo poo straight in your head.

I have started on the effortpost of British tank design, but it'll take a while to get everything done. It was a total clusterfuck early on before they simplified down a bit.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 19:07

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Mazz posted:

Also I know the argument kinda passed, but the Leo I wasn't really another look at the "Cruiser tank" idea, it was fast because armor was seen as a pointless trait in the HEATFS era before composites. Not getting shot is a much better way of staying alive, and speed is a commodity in that regard (along with all the other advantages mobility entails). It's not really a great comparison if you're trying to validate on doctrine there.

I did mention before that it was just an interesting coincidence that in both situations they just decided "gently caress it, go fast, big gun". If you want to talk doctrinal use you could probably make a case for it being designed for the same combat situations that the US tank destroyer doctrine was intended to handle but never encountered and the similar end result.

Really it's just interesting to see how many times people have decided they need a big gun that moves fast but comparatively little armour.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 20:01

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

Name one

Crusader, Cromwell and Comet, to varying degrees at varying times. The Crusader is debatable but for the early desert war where it fought nothing but the earlier marks of Panzers II through IV it was at least competitive.

ETA: arguably you could claim the infantry tanks were a product of the same doctrinal split, in which case the A12 Matilda II was a top end tank of its day and the Churchill was a solidly upgradeable workhorse like the Sherman.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 21:10

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

I'm not fully sold on the Matilda just because of how slow it was. Sure, it was competitively armed and well armored, but tactical mobility was poor due to the top speed and weight. It got a good rep due to the armor, and in a WoT featureless plain that might be fairly useful, but in an actual by-God tank battle I'm not convinced.

On the other hand it got the nickname "queen of the desert" because of how it handled on sand and against German tanks of the day it was a monster. Amusingly the Italian tanks it fought would have been better off dismounting the crew and siphoning the fuel into bottles for them to light on fire and throw at it. In 1940 it was one of the best tanks in the world, but that changed quickly.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 21:53

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

How exactly do you define a cruiser tank? I can only see them as the specific products of cruiser doctrine, otherwise any fast tank suddenly becomes a cruiser even if the designers had zero intention to follow interwar British design principles.

It says "Tank, Cruiser Mk Whatever (A#)" on the TO&E.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 22:13

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

I mean... it's roughly the same bore? Yeah, totally the same gun :colbert:

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 23:59

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Ensign Expendable posted:

What kind of Christians were Christian enough to be shot at with regular bullets? Was it only the proper kinds, or did they admit that even the Eastern Orthodox heretics deserve a proper round bullet?

If they got hit by the square bullet then clearly they weren't Christian or else God would have prevented it :colbert:

# ¿ Aug 13, 2016 09:43

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

HEY GAL posted:

anyway, i showed my brand new sheath for my dagger to my hauptmann and he said "that's not suitable for a common soldier". showed it to a friend of mine and he said "as soon as you get hungry you'll sell it."

Thanks for the vote of confidence, dickbags. The friend in question is the same guy who killed my prisoner a few weeks ago

I bet you your sheathe to my hat that you won't sell it next time you're hungry.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2016 18:59

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

HEY GAL posted:

no, this means from far enough away the glacis just looks like an almost featureless low slope

you can't see the thing from high up, if you try to get closer the defenders will start shooting, and theoretically maps and plans of the fort you're besieging might exist, but where? and how would you get them?

Ask nicely?

# ¿ Aug 15, 2016 01:42

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Was fatal at least. Patton got stuck on them after being all :agesilaus:

about no fort being able to stand up to his genius. Ended up having to just go round and leave forces to bottle them, which was totally fine with the USA's manpower advantage at that time and probably wouldn't have worked in any other war or will ever work again.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2016 02:32

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

A lot of WWII combat situations are the result of a weird balance in tech where things like this are possible but would now just not happen due to our ability to simply blow the poo poo out of them with a single flyover.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2016 03:15

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

Thanks to a mix of reinforced concrrte and urbanization, the cities themselves have become semi-fortified positions in ways they weren't in the past. You can see it now in Aleppo, but there are earlier examples like Stalingrad or Sarajevo.

That's not so much "built to withstand shelling" so much as "designed to make things nastier if you shell them" though, so the whole philosophy of fortifications seems to have changed to just making it really hard to root out those guys hiding there rather than a giant castle on a hill.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2016 04:45

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

This is one of those weird physics things where an empty flamethrower is more dangerous to the operator than a full one. Even then, not by much.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 03:34

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

"Congratulations Heinz! You are now 1st platoon!"

# ¿ Aug 17, 2016 01:49

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Delivery McGee posted:

*--It's okay to be ironically racist against the Irish now, as long as you're not English, innit? The would-be Baron Blaney says it's okay. (Long story, but my boyfriend is the heir to an Irish castle the English burned down. Actually that's the whole story, it was shorter than I thought.)

There are rules for it. It's a complex situation. Like if the dude is a would-be Baron then there's a strong chance it'd be the same as being English on the scale of "great craic" to "kicked to death outside Copper's".

# ¿ Aug 17, 2016 05:22

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Grand Prize Winner posted:

Is it okay if you're an American of vaguely-Irish descent among other Americans of vaguely-Irish descent? "My grandmother was from Logh Alan so that's why I'm a drunk," kinda thing.

Due to the complexities of the rules this is actually worse than being Prince Phillip.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2016 05:53

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

All those people he regularly insults? Dude is a legendary troll TBH :allears:

# ¿ Aug 17, 2016 06:04

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

xthetenth posted:

I've found the best practice is mocking the prejudice, not the people. There's plenty of material too.

There's a certain value in going for broke and surviving via shock value.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2016 17:00

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

OfficialGBSCaliph posted:

Maybe she funded a kneecapping!

Don't be silly.

Drill bits are cheap.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2016 06:58

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Disinterested posted:

The French Legion of Volunteers meanwhile took a million years to turn up to the front and then exploded and was never allowed back.

Reminds me of the Irish nationalists that went to Spain to help Franco. Brought no gear so Germany equipped them with dyed green M1935 uniforms and Kar 98s enough to sort the whole Battalion, which immediately marched up a hill, engaged in some spirited but ineffective friendly fire then marched back down and stood around guarding stuff until they were sent home before the war ended.

Those competent fuckers are the party in government now :negative:

# ¿ Aug 18, 2016 07:57

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

So because I am a sucker for this kind of thing I picked up a discounted copy of Mark Urban's "Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the SAS and the Secret War in Iraq" in a local bookshop. Unlike the reviews claim it is not "a heart-stoppingly vivid account of the Iraq conflict," and is actually a rather slow paced moan about inter-allied politicking around Basra and really rather boring. On the other hand, towards the end it gets all :smug:

about the "victory" achieved over the various insurgent groups in Iraq and mentions how the region seems to have been somewhat stabilised which kind of made sense when it was published in 2010 but now is just :allears:

as gently caress.

TL;DR of the book is "the SAS used US intelligence infrastructure to mount a capture operation every day, feeding intel gained there back into the infrastructure, for six years".

ETA: there's also a little bit of :smug:

about the SBS patrol Zero Six Bravo in the initial invasion, but THAT story is actually :black101:

as gently caress.

Arquinsiel fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Aug 18, 2016

# ¿ Aug 18, 2016 19:58

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

If you get it for like three pounds it'll keep you going for a day or two, but there's nothing really new in it and it reads like a dude pre-emptively making excuses for the shitshow that came after publication. I'm not sorry I spent seven euro on it for bus reading, but it ain't what I was expecting for a book endorsed by the Daily Mail.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2016 20:32

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Cyrano4747 posted:

The best part of that panther video is that the speedometer goes up to 100 loving KPH.

edit: this may explain my VW's goes up to 160 MPH.

TBH I can see there being a little windmill on the top of the tank connected to the speedometer which will tell you how fast the tank is falling after you've driven it off a cliff.

Dude's accent is driving me mad. I can't quite place it and he pronounces some stuff in a really familiar wrong way.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2016 22:37

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:58

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

chitoryu12 posted:

He's an Irish soldier who moved to the US and served in the Nevada Army National Guard (two tours in the Middle East) as a tank commander. He's qualified on both the M1 Abrams and M2 Bradley for gunnery. This is why he's able to speak so well on the ergonomics of armored vehicles: he knows it firsthand.

Well I more mean how he pronounces "traverse" like he's saying "Travers'" etc. It's an Irish accent trait I've heard before, but I can't remember where from. I'm really enjoying the actual tank talk, because he's got a good rules of thumb to evaluate them with.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2016 01:14

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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