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Amazon alert! Kindle sale on Wicked War, about the US invasion of Mexico in 1846 is on sale for $2.99. https://www.amazon.com/Wicked-War-L...trKUMQkzkUq-Z_o
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Dec 9, 2018 02:44
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I saw They Shall Not Grow Old last night. It's a really good narrative with lots of actual veterans talking, probably from the BBC oral history archives. The footage is great and well chosen to support the theme of "this is what it was like for the poor SOBs on the front line". The restoration job they did to fix the frame rate, colorize, and make it 3D was amazing. Just as the story gets to the trenches for the first time it switches from scratchy, sepia-toned footage to full color 3D and the transition is breathtaking. It's a nice bit of history, but an impressive technical achievement. Mark my words, this will win awards.
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Dec 13, 2018 17:44
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Cessna posted:My dude, just wait 'til you get to Vietnam. "The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam" by James William Gibson should leave anyone with even a passing acquaintance on the subject frothing at the mouth, throwing furniture, and smashing lamps angry. I recommend it highly for an insight into just how hosed up and backwards American strategy in Vietnam was.
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Jan 14, 2019 20:20
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm only up to the introduction and I'm already furious: Now I have to dig up my highlights. I highlighted a LOT going through that book.
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Jan 15, 2019 09:14
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Milo and POTUS posted:It hasn't been touched in months I'm pretty sure. Damned shame. Pfah. It's still fresher than most of the items sampled.
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Jan 23, 2019 04:23
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Nebakenezzer posted:As someone who also lives in the grim and frostbitten north, can I just say "get in the sea" is a great way to say "gently caress off and die." Ghormley approached command as a bureaucratic exercise. He had a very narrow scope of focus at that. For example, he was assigned a command ship parked at Noumea and stayed there for his entire tenure. It was cramped and poorly equipped to host a busy headquarters engaged in land, sea, and air combat over hundred or thousands of miles of ocean. To him, the Guadalcanal campaign was an endless series of messages about supply shortages and casualties. When Halsey took over he actually visited the damned island they were fighting over. He also kicked the French governor out of his villa and took it over as his HQ. Between better facilities and a first-hand appreciation about conditions on Guadalcanal he had an entirely different viewpoint on the campaign. He viewed it as a struggle against an enemy he could hurt, not as a depressing paperwork exercise. He saw with his own eyes that conditions were rough, but the troops were willing to take it; supplies were low, but they could make do. Ghormley wasn't the least bit aggressive. Halsey was, if anything, too aggressive. If he'd lost a battleship to torpedoes in confined waters we'd have never heard of him again. But he did have a fine sense of what you actually do with a military force: hit the enemy at every opportunity. Halsey's most famous order, turning Fletcher's carriers loose was "Strike. Repeat, strike." That's exactly what you do, send your subordinate commanders out with instructions to actually fight the enemy. Oddly, he gets credit for a simplistic (but morale boosting) order like that, while Callahan was criticized for calling out "We want the big ones" at the Friday the 13th battle; a target allocation order is arguably the most important guidance a commander can give in a naval battle (see also Dogger Bank in WW1). I should dig up my notes on Callahan, I last posted about him 2 threads ago. So to summarize, Ghormley was a bureaucrat in a situation that needed a fighter. A combat leader needs a proper perspective and an aggressive attitude. Once a combat leader was installed, the Allied forces started winning, not just hanging on.
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Jan 23, 2019 21:36
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Trent Hone's book on the development of USN tactics has an excellent section on Callaghan's intentions and why he acted the way he did at 1st Guadalcanal: he knew his cruisers were outgunned by Hiei and Kirishima at anything but point-blank range so he was desperately trying to stay unseen as long as possible. Unfortunately his force had no chance to work as a team prior to the battle and his choice of cruising formation was bad and all hell broke loose instead. I'm going to have to pick that up !
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Jan 24, 2019 01:35
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https://www.amazon.com/Equality-Impossible-Martin-van-Creveld-ebook/dp/B00UVLE20W https://smile.amazon.com/Privileged-Sex-Martin-van-Creveld-ebook/dp/B00EX5PJC2/ Also he's written a lot of books about Israel and the IDF, and I am not going there. Yeah, gently caress Creveld.
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Jan 26, 2019 23:31
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HEY GUNS posted:great milhist drinkers of history: alexander, churchill, gallas, who's the fourth On second thought, the fourth should be the private soldier in every army ever.
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Jan 27, 2019 22:10
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FAUXTON posted:Performance-wise, I'd say the Polikarpov Po-2. It was so slow and lovely that axis interceptors could barely fight the drat things since they'd stall out trying to position for a shot, but on the other hand the VVS leaned right the gently caress into how slow and lovely it was, and used it as a night bomber where they did their bombings while gliding without the engine running. I'd go with the Fairey Battle over the Po-2. The Battle made the RAF less effective in direct proportion to the number built. The Po-2 found a niche where it was useful. Night harassment bombers operating from forward airfields are exactly where you want you box kites with an outboard motor. Keeping the enemy from getting a good night's sleep in moderately useful. But their real impact would have been preventing any German unit in range from firing up a generator, stringing some lights, and fixing Panzers all night. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Feb 5, 2019 |
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Feb 5, 2019 06:45
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Cyrano4747 posted:Ambrose is really bad about this. I have a whole love/hate thing with him. I’m sure I posted that rant either in this thread or it’s predecessor. It was already both, but that should be in the OP of the next one.
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Feb 5, 2019 17:38
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Instances of "I'm going overseas to a huge meatgrinder of a war" probably played a factor for the 40s.
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Feb 6, 2019 09:18
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Cessna posted:I'm sure the WWII-era pilots were happy to go from F4F Wildcats to F6F Hellcats, or from P-51Bs to P-51Ds, and so on. Ironically, USN pilots hated the switch from the F4F-3 to the -4. The -4 added an extra .50 in each wing because the british wanted the extra firepower in their Lend Lease birds. The cost for that was, iirc, 14 seconds of firing time. Since 4 .50s was plenty against what the IJN was flying in 1942 and 43 that was a substantial cut to their useful firepower.
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Feb 6, 2019 19:02
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Tias posted:From a quick suggestion when you type in "fashwave" on youtube. I ain't loving clicking on any of those, but you're welcome to: America.avi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzIZdWucQpg
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Feb 10, 2019 09:28
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HEY GUNS posted:none of you knew how to loving use'em and you still don't Hey diddle diddle Send the pikes up the middle ?
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Feb 11, 2019 09:20
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Cessna posted:Hey, I did a few public-battle reenactment events in the early 2000s where I wore Soviet and / or German uniforms, so no political/entertainment career for me. As I've said about video games before (mostly WW2OL), somebody has to play the bad guys. In the taking your turn sense, not the "fanatically collects memorabilia" sense.
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Feb 20, 2019 05:58
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aphid_licker posted:The 86 is a kinda good-looking plane It is. Looks vaguely Italian in a way.
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Feb 21, 2019 18:51
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Tree Bucket posted:Thanks for the Bismark answers, thread. I guess their plan did actually come close to working, were it not for one torpedo in the wrong spot. The Prince of Wales managed to start a fuel oil leak, which really didn't help.
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Feb 22, 2019 03:29
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Saint Celestine posted:In hindsight, the best move for Lutjens to make would have been to finish off the POW and immediately head back to Germany the way he came. Probably. A quick repair, re-arm, re-fuel port visit in Norway and back out, but with the British down two capital ships ? The convoy system would have broken down, scattering the transports for the U-boats to run down at will. Slim Jim Pickens posted:Apart from Halsey, I can't really think of any naval officers in WWII who were really willing to throw their capital ships into an attack like that. The real nuts are always destroyer commanders, or escort ships if you give them half a chance. Note that DD squadron commander in 1942 Burke ended up as CNO for a long stretch.
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Feb 22, 2019 08:12
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Schadenboner posted:What sites could I go to read about the use of armor during the Battle of Grozny and the Yugoslav Civil Wars in English, ideally something decently in-depth (without going all There's one game in the wargaming community on the topic of Grozny https://www.atomagazine.com/Details.cfm?ProdID=42&category=4 The game in the issue is a good treatment of the subject. For specifically tanks in the conflict, checking the sources in the articles in that issue, I see Tanks in Chechnya, M. Baryatinski, 1999. Also this looks right up your alley, For All Seasons: The Old But Effective RPG-7, Lester Grau, Foreign Military Studies Office, Ft. LEavenworth, KS. No date.
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Feb 25, 2019 04:03
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about penetration or spalling or whatever?)
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darthbob88 posted:Second Happy Time, AKA "American Shooting Season". 609 ships sunk, with 3.1 million tons of cargo, in exchange for 22 U-boats. I'll go with this one, our ASW response right after our entry into the war was abysmal and got a lot of people killed. Savo Island is a close second, but we can partly blame that on an Australian admiral. Four heavy cruisers sunk and over a thousand dead right at the start of a campaign that would rely heavily on cruisers was really bad.
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Feb 25, 2019 20:19
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FMguru posted:Dunkirk evacuation and Normandy invasion weren't battles, but were pretty major operations. The British destroyer HMS Glowworm ran into the Hipper at short range. The Glowworm didn't manage any torpedo hits due to fancy maneuvering on the part of the cruiser, but the Glowworm did manage to ram. Her captain was awarded the Victoria Cross based on the German captain's testimony. This is not normal for WW2 naval combat: 
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Feb 26, 2019 04:00
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N00ba the Hutt posted:Honestly, I think the better play with such a sea monster would be to just disappear a few troop convoys, but the IJN seems unlikely to abandon the chance to shoot things that can shoot back in favor of glorified commerce raiding. Right. 5th or 3rd fleet loses a lot, in fact most of their major surface and aviation combatants. This still leaves dozens and dozens of CVEs to fly off anti-kamikaze CAP and support the invasion campaigns. The Battle of Surigao Strait with 1 BB and 1 CA plays out exactly the same. Samar happens just the same, with maybe the Musashi in line ahead behind the Yamato. Kurita still goes swimming at least once. This scenario does nothing but increase the butcher's bill, the surrender is not delayed one single day.
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Feb 28, 2019 06:56
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SlothfulCobra posted:I feel like this thread would appreciate this video. Slow motion footage of a Sherman firing where you can see the shockwave in the air, and the...uh...artillery deflective properties of watermelons. Watch the whole video, they end up firing a Russian 152mm gun, which is just loving huge. And yes, the round actually deflects off of a watermelon. It's all truly fantastic footage. The Ticonderoga at Midway discussion is overly focused on the kinematics. The real advantage it brings is a CiC full of trained operators. They'll set up good intercepts on all the incoming strike groups and the Wildcats will take care of breaking up the strikes.
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Mar 1, 2019 22:46
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FrangibleCover posted:Have they got the communications facilities to do that? I doubt the Tico can talk to the Wildcats or the WW2 Carriers so they'll probably be reduced to flashing information to another ship to be broadcast for the fighters. True. However, the experience of the operators in the CIC counts for something. The Tico's CIC would definitely have been in put charge of the whole defense, and those operators have seen what communications failures can lead to in exercises. They'd either move an appropriate radio set to the Tico, or jury rig something that can talk on the appropriate frequencies. Given even a week to run exercises, they could make a start on imposing some radio discipline. One thing I'd want to do is to bring the CAP leadership on board and show them how complete a picture the CIC actually has.
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Mar 2, 2019 01:26
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At some point I intend to read Micah S. Muscolino's The Ecology of War in China: Henan Province, the Yellow River, and Beyond, 1938-1950. When I'm in a sufficiently geeky mood.quote:Like all socioeconomic systems, militaries have metabolisms. Nature’s
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Mar 2, 2019 21:56
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Acebuckeye13 posted:That one's rad as gently caress because it's got an actual V12 Merlin on the inside: Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner and all-time grand champion in the "my car is cooler than your car" competition. Nominations for second place are now being accepted. Pro-click of the pro-clicks mllaneza fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Mar 9, 2019 |
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Mar 9, 2019 07:30
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Acebuckeye13 posted:From what little I can tell it was mostly cheap US surplus. They had at least a unit of P-47s that flew in the Pacific theater (The only Mexican unit to see overseas combat, apparently), but they didn't even get their first jet aircraft until 1960. That's a cool gun and I want one. Mexico only ended up accepting 1000 of them, but they did see enough field service to prove that they were very finicky for cleanliness and quality of ammo. I say use 'em, they're a self-loading rifle chambered in a hard hitting round (7mm Mauser) so the PC s should be worried and the GM can kill off some red-shirts, but they might plausible jam when it a PC is staring down the muzzle of one. Danann posted:How deadly were the various Allied (and Axis I guess) subchasers, torpedo boats, frigates, corvettes, minesweepers etc. when they faced enemy submarines? Was it mostly because getting seen (and shot at) by one blew the surprise away from a submarine's position or were they very successful in getting kills on submarines? Not very lethal per se. An SC wouldn't have as many depth charges as a destroyer, her crew wouldn't be as experienced or as well trained, and her sonar would be an older model. They're a pretty good match for a sub on the surface, a 3" or 40mm main gun isn't going to penetrate the pressure hull, but they can keep the gun crew on the sub suppressed. A sub will have a slight edge in surface speed, but it's going to cut the patrol a bit short if it tries to get away on the surface at full speed. An SC does have one truly lethal piece of equipment: the radio. That can call in planes and "real" ASW units. A sub who has been noticed by a surface warship isn't interested in the details. They're running away just as hard from a 110' SC as from a late-model Flower-class with 4" guns. Any escort handled with even a modicum of aggression is going to result in a submerged sub that the convoy will outrun. tl;dr Not very, but just forcing a sub to dive saves the convoy.
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Mar 11, 2019 07:18
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Amazon is having a Kindle sale on some of Norman Friedman's books. British Battleships, Fighters Over the Fleet, British Cruisers (WW1&2), Naval Firepower, and Fighting the Great War at Sea are all $1.30. Other authors seem to be included, I see DK Brown's Rebuilding the Royal Navy, Dodson's Kaiser's Battlefleet, and Burt's British Battleships. I've got Friedman's British Battleships loaded now, the illustration quality is high. Diagrams are very clear, and the photos are reproduced at an acceptably high quality. https://smile.amazon.com/British-Battleship-1906-1946-Norman-Friedman-ebook/dp/B019EJVJT8/ e. https://smile.amazon.com/Armoured-Trains-Paul-Malmassari-ebook/dp/B01NCU46DV/
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Mar 11, 2019 18:48
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Zorak of Michigan posted:You beautiful bastard, you. My tally ended up at 26. I don't even care about the Seleucid Empire ! That should still be taught in service academies. Gnoman posted:It seems kind of odd that they name-check an American naval officer so much, no matter how respected that officer is. Along with everything else said, which is spot on, JPJ provides a towering example of preparation, inspiration, and pure bloody mindedness that few captains ever met. Captain Pearson aboard the Serapis was no slouch, he had a crew that would stand up to as much as JPG's, and he was the only captain to bring him to battle after many fruitless cruises. THis isn't as bad an article as they have it flagged, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Flamborough_Head
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Mar 13, 2019 03:21
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chitoryu12 posted:I think a better question for the debate would be "What peer conflict had one side win due to superior technology?" It's really easy to list conflicts where one side has repeating rifles and the other side has spears and cowhide shields, but that's a conflict that's basically impossible for the lower tech side to win except for attrition. It's more interesting to think of cases where technology made a different but both sides weren't hundreds of years apart from each other. WW2 in the Pacific. The US had an overwhelming advantage in numbers, sure, but they also had an edge in technology that would have given them the win even at even numbers. Radar-directed anti-aircraft fire with proximity fuses made USN task forces effectively invulnerable to air attack. Radar sets you could fit on airplanes, and the SG radar with a PPI display were game changing technological advancements. A hypothetical 4 Unryu-class CV versus 4 Essex-class CVs with their appropriate escort groups c. 1944 would give the USN a heavy advantage in search and air defense. And by that point they had a CiC in every ship, so coordination of offensive and defense air ops would be much easier.
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Mar 18, 2019 19:12
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PittTheElder posted:I recommend picking up a copy of The Making of The Atomic Bomb. On top of introducing nuclear physics at a basic level, it's also just a really good loving book. Or Mehaffey's Atomic Accidents. That's current through Fukushima. Oh god, so many things in that book piss me off. But ! Instead of being afraid of a nebulous and mysterious threat, I can think of dozens of British scientists and engineers looking at the next best thing to an open-face reactor and go "Dudes, what the gently caress! and get on with my life. Shimrra Jamaane posted:Too bad there aren’t a million books and documentaries on the horrors of coal plant related deaths which has killed exponentially more people than nuclear energy aside from the actual bombs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9eHp7JJgq8 mllaneza fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Apr 1, 2019 |
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Apr 1, 2019 03:28
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Kinda forgetting 1984 (1949), aren't we? And there were radio dramas fretting about the bomb aired in 1945/46. Philip Wylie's unjustly forgotten "Blunder: A Story of the End of the World" was printed in 1946 and turned into one of the first television sci-fi stories in 1951.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKrj1ymJzmo C'mon people. 1954.
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Apr 2, 2019 02:32
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Milo and POTUS posted:That original Godzilla wasn't a sfx tour de force or anything (seriously, kong still looks better and it was decades earlier) but I'll be damned if it isn't a really good movie regardless. "Don't worry sweetie, we'll be with daddy soon." e/ Of all the posts to snipe with...
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Apr 2, 2019 08:00
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:some people are too stupid to live I wasted a reply :-(
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Apr 3, 2019 00:12
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Instead of a few big bombs, the Soviets ended up equipping IL-2s with small shaped charge bombs weighting only 2.5 Kg each. They could carry like 200 of these, and so when they dropped them on a target it had the effect of a cluster bomb. Probably wouldn't totally destroy a tank, but it could cause a lot of damage, and of course destroy any trucks or unarmoured vehicles. What you do with those is find a supply convoy and fly down it spamming bomblets the whole time. This is really rough on trucks, you can hit dozens in one pass. Now a Panzer regiment is out of spare parts, fuel, and ammo. That's worth the whole four ship IL2 element you sent after it.
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Apr 7, 2019 01:23
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Don Gato posted:People often have a rose tinted view of the past. In the 60s, Mexico was de facto ruled by an authoritarian one party system where all dissent was brutally crushed, to the point that in Mexico that period is known as the start of the Dirty War, but a majority of people are saying that's way better than the present because I guess the economic growth and increasing inequality makes the repression bearable? Also because those people who just wanted to get on with their lives could pretty reliably avoid doing a "dissent", whereas these days if you accidentally look at a cartel member funny your whole family's heads end up in plastic bags.
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Apr 8, 2019 00:27
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Mosquitos haven't been eradicated in my neighborhood (there's a lake a half mile away), but two years worth of releasing large batches of sterile males have dropped them below "nuisance" all the way to "rarity". In season, I used to have dozens on the ceiling over every lamp in my apartment. The last decade or so I don't recall having two visible at once. Eradication, no. Seriously suppressed, yes. It helps that California mosquitoes don't think I'm tasty; Massachusetts ones sure did when I was a kid.
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Apr 10, 2019 03:14
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FishFood posted:Kind of a loose historical question, but I'm wondering if anyone has good recommendations for shows/movies/books that do a good job of capturing the mindset of historical people, rather than having very "modern" characters. Master and Commander is one of the better examples of this. All the characters are very much in-period with their attitudes and beliefs. It's also 20 great books you'll read straight through.
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Apr 24, 2019 02:57
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shame on an IGA posted:C.S. Forester's The General Oooh !!! Yeah, that's an uncanny portrayal. I vote this now.
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Apr 25, 2019 08:33
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