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Despite the acronym coincidence, people from dmv should absolutely not be licensedCyrano4747 posted:Antitem is probably better with very limited time. Also closer to non battlefield stuff. Cheers. I’ll look into bull run as well
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Apr 16, 2024 00:15
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FastestGunAlive posted:Despite the acronym coincidence, people from dmv should absolutely not be licensed It's a two-for-one deal!
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Apr 16, 2024 00:17
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Cessna posted:Edit to add: Also, carrying pre-loaded cap-and-ball cylinders is a BAD idea. Yes, it's done in a few Western movies. In reality, DO NOT do it. You're carrying around what is essentially a pre-loaded six-barrel firearm with a VERY delicate firing mechanism (the exposed cap) in your pocket. To give an idea of how heavily discouraged this was cap-and-ball revolvers weren't usually issued or sold with spare cylinders. (Yes, you can buy them now, along with cylinder pouches, but that's for trick shooters or modern non-cap-and-ball pistols, this wasn't really done historically.) It was much more efficient and vastly safer to just carry another pistol. Presumably you could load the powder/wadding/shot but leave the caps off? It’d be slower to prepare than you really want but a lot faster than having to do the whole thing.
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Apr 16, 2024 01:30
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FastestGunAlive posted:Milhist thread, I’ve lived in the dmv for three years and haven’t gone to any battlefields. I am sorry. I want to go to one before I move. Antietam and Gettysburg are both equal distance away. Which will be better for nearby amenities? Wife and kid will probably only be good for a couple hours before it’s time to go eat / find something more engaging for kids Balls Bluff outside of Leesburg is also a good little battlefield park. It’s a skirmish by 1864 standards, but was a significant battle of 1861. Fredericksburg is good with the extra fine benefit of visiting Fredericksburg itself.
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Apr 16, 2024 02:11
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tokenbrownguy posted:Those RND posts are pretty depressing. Just patriotic kids getting let down by every level of their leadership. "Just patriotic kids getting let down by every level of their leadership" - a pretty good 7-word summary of my 7000-word deep-dive. Might as well head straight into the denouement, and we'll see the end result of that leadership failure. Royal Naval Division at Antwerp and "The Affair at Moerbeke" - Part 3 (In which we actually get to Moerbeke) A Long Walk In The Dark In the last part, we left the 2nd Brigade of the RND on a train, safely on their way to the Channel and home. The 1st Brigade and three of four Marine battalions had walked around the Belgian countryside before finding their railway route cut off by a German advance and then walking across the Dutch border and into a four-year internment. That leaves the only unit unaccounted for as the Portsmouth Battalion of the Marine Brigade, RND, which had been instructed to serve as rearguard for the delayed withdrawal of the 1st Brigade. The chaotic handling of the Brigade, Commodore Henderson (OiC of the Brigade)'s pause at Zwyndrecht, the exhaustion of the men and the continual flows of refugees out of Antwerp all meant that an hour after the order to march for St. Gillaes-Waes was given not only were the Marines still standing at the western side of the pontoon bridge at Burcht but their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Luard, had not actually been informed of the immediate destination or the overall plan for the withdrawal. Luard was put out not only by the lack of orders but the sight of dozens of Naval Brigade sailors milling around without any apparent leadership, and with men wearing cap tallies with the names of multiple different battalions mixing together. With German shells more frequent and landing ever closer to the east bank of the Scheldt, Luard took control, began calling out battalion names and marshalling the men into groups. Still bearing in mind his general orders to cover the Division's withdrawal from the rear, he eventually found a naval officer to place in charge of the new formation, and looking at his map decided they should head for the market town of St. Niklaas, nine miles to the southwest and on the main railway line to Ghent (running parallel to but several miles south of the line that the rest of the Brigade were heading for at St. Gillaes-Waes). Luard recruited a Belgian civilian to act as guide, placed him with the RNVR officer at the head of the sailors and then arranged his own Marines at the rear. However, the naval officer managed to lose contact with his guide almost as soon as they set off, took a turning off the main road and lead the men down narrow lanes between farms and woodlands. The sailors set the familiar too-fast marching pace, forcing Luard to pass message for a halt as soon as he judged they had placed a safe distance from any German advance.  Sketch of the route of the Portsmouth Battalion of the Marine Brigade under LtCol Luard. Route of the 1st Brigade, that the Marines was supposed to be covering, shown in the dotted line. It should be mentioned that although the frequency with which the RND got lost or took the wrong route during its withdrawal was in large part due to its officers severe lack of training and experience in fieldcraft, they were also woefully under-supplied with adequate maps. There were not nearly enough, and those that were available were usually outdated and most were either large-scale maps of Antwerp (which therefore didn't show the outlying villages, roads and railways that were now the Division's interest) or small-scale ones of Belgium as a whole, which didn't show enough detail of the roads the men were trying to travel. They were also in an unfamiliar foreign country, in the dark and to a man were tired, hungry and nervous. The march was resumed and reached the village of Broekkapel, four miles short of St. Niklaas. They found the streets full of naval ratings, again without much apparent order or leadership - these were predominantly men of Collingwood battalion (with a proportion of Hawkes) who had fallen behind the main march and also found themselves going off-route. Luard found a barn full of hay, ordered it to be pilfered to make into bed piles and called for an hour's rest. As Luard was falling asleep, he was tapped awake by a Lieutenant Commander Robert Crossman, RNVR, who had determined that he was senior naval officer present and was asking Luard for advice on what to do with his men. Luard instructed him to get the men into batallions, companies and platoons as best he could and agreed to lend four sergeants-major and some NCOs to manage the naval companies. With the sailors lined up on the road, it was agreed that the Marines should be split and march in front and behind the naval party to maintain order and a good pace. With stamina and morale falling continually, Luard marched for three-quarters of an hour at a time with a quarter-hour rest period. The naval men were nervous, with some being convinced the Germans were right on their tail, while others threw away their ammunition to lighten their load. Two sailors were wounded in negligent discharges due to poor weapon-handling by tired and jumpy comrades. The march reached St. Niklaas and Luard organised the sailors into a field near the centre of the town while the Marines protected both the rear and secured the route ahead. Luard noted that there were only five naval officers present and no visible petty officers in a group of approximately 400 naval men. He noted that Lieutenant Commander Crossman was 'highly energetic' but had a tendency to get distracted, wander from place to place and to give streams of orders and counter-orders. In fact Luard was not to know that Crossman had been concussed by a shell strike in the trenches at Antwerp, given a sedative injection by his battalion Surgeon and been carried out of the lines on a stretcher. While the force was waiting at Zwyndrecht he woke up, left his stretcher and gathered a dozen or so ratings around him before joining the march. None the less he had been right in his deduction that he was the senior naval officer present. It was by now nearly 5pm on October 9th. There were no trains to be had at St. Niklaas, and there were reports from passing Belgian troops that the German force was approaching the town from Lokeren, eight miles to the west (this was the same thrust that, unknown to Luard and his party, had seized the railway at Moerbeke). Kemzeke, the next station west along the other railway from St. Gillaes-Waes (where the rest of the Brigade had gone) was the obvious new destination. Luard sent one of his battalion officers, Major Burge, and a small party of marines forward to Kemzeke on requisitioned bicycles to make arrangements as the main formation marched. On the march to Kemzeke the usual problem emerged, as the naval ratings, still nervous of Germans behind them, set a blistering pace. LtCol Luard started off marching with LtCdr Crossman near the head of the naval brigade, and was able to regulate the order of march and the pace. He heard calls from the ranks urging a faster pace - "Push on, push on, the Germans are after us!" - and managed to steady the men by shouting "If there are any at all they are in front, and by marching as you are, you are marching on top of them." This led to an easing of the pace. But, preferring to be with his men at the rear since his tasked order was to be the rearguard, and not being in the chain of command for the naval battalions, Luard changed his location. Almost immediately not only did the pace accelerate but the sailors overtook the leading Marine company. Arrival at Kemzeke village was at around 8pm, and there was confusion by reports that Major Burge and the waiting trains were at the next station westward, one mile away. Time was lost as the march set off down the wrong road out of the village, was turned around and then marched down the right route to the station. The train consisted of a mix of carriages, vans and open wagons and totalled around 50 vehicles. It already had a good load of refugees aboard, but eventually all of the men under Luard were loaded aboard and the train set out westwards. The Affair at Moerbeke - Mutiny or Misunderstanding? It stopped for water just before Moerbeke station - unknown to any of the British men on the train this was where the German 1st Bavarian Brigade had taken the village, set up firing positions in houses around the station and set up a derailment for any west-heading train. Very shortly after getting under way from its water stop, the train came under light rifle fire and then came to a sudden stop.  Google Earth imagery of Moerbeke station from 2009 - the tracks have since been lifted entirely. In 1914 Moerbeke was a three-arm junction. The train with its mix of Belgian civilians and British RND men approached from the bottom of the image, on a long-since dismantled line the course of which is still indicated by the curved arc of trees. The main line ran left-right across the image, with the junction where the modern side-road is. The station building is the small square brick structure now serving as the town library. Some of Luard's officers ran back along the train, one dragging with him two German soldiers taken as prisoners. A German squad had attempted to climb on the engine once the train had been stopped, but had been literally beaten back by Marines riding in the leading carriage in a fistfight - these were the prisoners. Other German troops in nearby buildings had fired on the engine and then attacked in support of their comrades trying to capture the engine. There had been confusion from shouts of 'English!' from nearby buildings, but several of the Germans had been killed in exchanges of rifle fire. Luard went to the front of the train, where he found Major French leading around 30 Marines in laying down rifle fire on the station building, from which the Germans were sending back heavy return fire. Two Marines were on the engine, attempting to get the train moving. Although they managed to get the engine's wheels spinning, it could not move the heavy derailed train. Luard could see and hear rifle fire from further away, and in other directions, than the station and began moving back down the train to organise other men in defence. As he did so he heard a shout of "We have to hand in our arms, Colonel Lywood says so!" Lieutenant Colonel Lywood was Luard's executive officer and 2iC of the battalion. Luard replied "Colonel Lywood has no authority to say so" and then made a loud shout, "I am in command of this train and there is to be no surrender; all men are to stand by their arms!" The exact circumstances of 'The Affair at Moerbeke' did not come out until a court of investigation in the following weeks. At the time, in a dark railway siding in an abandoned Belgian village, LtCol Luard was not aware of what had happened while he was at the front of the train. When the attack began a body of sailors left the train and began firing on the Germans, and in turn that drew fire onto their part of the train. Lieutenant Commander Oswald Hanson, RNVR, of Benbow Battalion, almost immediately appeared on the scene and called out that the sailors should surrender rather than risk the civilian refugees, especially women and children. Sailors began laying or throwing down their rifles and calling out the order to surrender. Another (unidentified) RNVR officer came to the rear of the train where a Royal Marine Lieutenant was organising a defence and delivered the order to surrender, claiming "we are entirely surrounded at the other end of the train. None of my men have any ammunition, and owing to the women and children in the train it is no use resisting." Other Marines recalled hearing sailors shout that all their officers were dead. Captain Stockley, RM, protecting the side of the train near some houses, recalled Hanson coming up to him and telling him the train had been surrendered, and that LtCol Lywood had given the order to do so. Stockley told Hanson that Lywood was not his commanding officer and he would not accept the order. For his own account, Lywood was in an open truck with Lieutenant Commanders Crossman (he of the concussion) and Hanson when the train came under attack. He reported that a woman with a child was killed in the opening volleys of fire. Hanson told him that "his men were not fit to fight" and Lywood's own assesment of the sailors were that they were "all to pieces". Crossman said that he estimated they had no more than five rounds of ammunition per man. Lywood told the inquiry that, at the time, he knew that there were around 4000 Germans at Lokeren and initially estimated that there could be approximately 1000 German soldiers in the vicinity of the train. Crossman ventured "I must surrender, I can do nothing. What do you think?" and Lywood reported his reply to him as "Well, I do not see you can do anything else. They have got us." LtCdr Hanson agreed.  The sketch map of Moerbeke in 1914, prepared by Major French as part of his testimony to the inquiry. The Major - understandably in the circumstances - misjudged the direction of north. In reality it lies to the bottom-right corner of his map, not the bottom edge. Major French, directing the initial counter to the German attack, was told that Lywood had ordered a surrender. He 'bolted down the train', calling for the LtCol, and on finding him was told "We must surrender for the women and children." French replied "Surrender be damned, I am not going to take orders from you." He went back down the train, calling out "There is no surrender!" before finding LtCol Luard, who on being told of Lywood's decision exclaimed "Nonsense!" - but it was unclear whether he was dismissing Lywood's order or French's report of it. Major Burge had a very similar encounter, having previously heard a voice calling for the naval party to lay down their arms and initially thinking this was an unfamiliar Royal Naval terminology for ceasing fire. Both Majors managed to get a grip on their men and continue the defence, with Maj. French repelling a German attack from under some adjacent cattle trucks. Both also heard Lywood calling for a surrender and to lay down arms a second time. Maj. French again found Luard, now directing men in setting up a position in and around the signal box, and told him "For God's sake go and put the hat on Lywood, he is doing it again."  Modern image of Moerbeke with the buildings drawn in French's map superimposed - his 'House A' is the station building in red. His 'Houses C' are in yellow. The train was not actually lying straight, but would have been stopped on the curved line as it approached the junction. Shortly after this Captain Stockley reported to Luard and told him of Lywood's surrender order. He stated that he got no response from Luard, despite repeating his report. On getting no reply for several minutes, he turned to Majors French and Burge: Cpt. Stockley: "What is to be done? I can't get any reply from the Colonel." Maj. Burge: "Neither can we." Cpt. Stockley: "Is it right we are to surrender?" Maj. French: "No certainly not. We will get the men together and clear off." Maj. French (to Maj. Burge): "The little man is off his head, and we must take charge." Around this time Lywood himself was near the front of the train, but was apparently unseen by any of the other officers. He was engaged in getting the civilians off the train on the side away from the station where the majority of the fire was coming from. This done he "then considered the situation better, and thought that we might well cut through". He guided the refugees through a gap in the railway yard fence and directed them to the nearby Dutch border. He then gathered a group of half a dozen or so sailors and, unable to locate LtCol Luard for specific orders, had them lie down and keep up firing ahead of the train to prevent it being surrounded. Lieutenant Fraser, RNVR, was told by a sailor that the order to surrender had gone out. When the man was unable to say who had given the order, Fraser continued to try and get sailors out of the train and into firing positions. LtCdr Hanson approached him "in a frightful state" but said nothing coherent beyond "it is all my fault" before running off into the dark. Briefly left alone, only hearing rifle fire from all directions in the darkness, Fraser then located a party of sailors who said "they were damned if they were going to surrender, and were going to march on." They also reported that they "We have tried to get [the other fellows] out, but they will not come." In the dark and confusion of the attack, which lasted no more than 20 minutes, only the two Majors reported directly hearing Lywood give the surrender order, and only one - Major Burge - actually saw him (Maj. French only reported hearing his voice, even though the man was close behind him in the dark). Although the Germans fired one shell from a field gun, shortly afterwards the rifle fire diminished. Major French's efforts at the front of the train (possibly in tandem with those of LtCol Lywood, that the rest of the Marine officers seemed to be unaware of) had cleared a way forward. He reported to Luard that the way to the west was clear and recommended that the group should move, while Major Burge began assembling the men ready to move. Luard agreed and gave the order to advance. While virtually all the surviving Marines rallied to him to begin the march, the vast majority of the naval party, save for a small group under Lieutenant Fraser, were nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile Lywood had already run forward with his small party of sailors, with the intention of scouting the way to Selzaete. Various witnesses state that sailors threw down their rifles and sat in their place, while others ran back along the track towards Kemzeke. Some simply refused to leave their place in the train at all. Others had removed their boots from their blistered and swollen feet as they got on the train after the long march of the previous day and, in the darkened rush, could not get them on again. These men, and others who had made an initial response, were then swept up in the confusion of the surrender order coming from their own officers and LtCol Lywood. Reports were also made that some of the exhausted sailors near the rear of the long train simply slept through the incident. Those who surrendered, those who ran and those who slept, were all captured by German troops within the hour. As it was, of the approximately 800 men who embarked on the train at Kemzeke, only around 200 made an escape down the railway, across country and to Selzaete, where a final train took them to Ostend. They were overwhelmingly Marines of the Portsmouth Battalion, with around two-dozen sailors with them. These, and the small number who avoided internment at the Dutch border, where the only remnants of the 1st Brigade to return to Britain. Several dozen were casualties at Moerbeke and approximately 550 became prisoners of war.  A 1937 British Army map of Belgium, itself an updated version from a WW1 survey. I have added the likely routes taken by Luard's Marines and the naval stragglers in light blue. The likely routes of the 1st Brigade to the Dutch border in dark blue. Rough direction/distance of the German advance in red. The routes to Selzaete taken by the survivors of the action at Moerbeke and those from the 1st Brigade who refused to cross the border in yellow. Among those captured was Lieutenant Commander Hanson. Just one day after the The Affair at Moerbeke he was in a group of prisoners being marched under escort. One of the men made an attempt to escape and when a sentry made to shoot him, Hanson flung himself on the sentry and attacked him. Such an act carried the death sentence under the German Military Code. Hanson's own acting senior officer moved to have the sentence mitigated, which was backed up by the German commandant since Hanson was 'clearly overwrought' by the recent events. However the calls for clemency were refused by the new Military Governor of Belgium and LtCdr Hanson was executed by firing squad later than day.
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Apr 16, 2024 14:33
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I know Gettysburg specifically was preserved as a historic site, but what about the other ACW/eastern theatre battlefields?
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Apr 16, 2024 14:37
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Alchenar posted:I know Gettysburg specifically was preserved as a historic site, but what about the other ACW/eastern theatre battlefields? Vicksburg is pretty well preserved.
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Apr 16, 2024 14:40
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FastestGunAlive posted:Milhist thread, I’ve lived in the dmv for three years and haven’t gone to any battlefields. I am sorry. I want to go to one before I move. Antietam and Gettysburg are both equal distance away. Which will be better for nearby amenities? Wife and kid will probably only be good for a couple hours before it’s time to go eat / find something more engaging for kids First Manassas is small and easy to understand/picture in your head on the battlefield, which makes it pretty rewarding. That portion of the battlefield park is dead easy to visit and walk. If you want to understand Second Manassas, which overlaps but is much larger and more complicated, you have to drive around to different areas to get out and walk. It's still very cool. Antietam is a relatively compact area and you can see a lot of the areas of interest by walking a series of trails. Each trail is not too long but they can add up to a chunk of mileage if you do a lot at once. I've only visited one time (on a very sunny and hot July day - I almost got heatstroke) but I'm gonna to go back again sometime for sure. Gettysburg is even bigger/more spread out, but is a fantastic visit. You would spend multiple days if you really want to absorb the whole thing, but a quick visit is still doable because you can drive almost the whole battlefield area and visit particular spots of interest. This one will really reward a little homework ahead of the visit so you can decide what you want to look at if you aren't going to do a huge long tour of the whole thing. You should do all of them if ACW is of interest to you. All these battlefield parks are preserved reasonably well and it will really put you in touch with the history. There are also a zillion minor spots of interest, especially on the Virginia side of things, though most of them aren't worth it on their own for the ACW content unless you're hardcore, but they're cool to catch when you're nearby for something else (Fairfax Courthouse, the Falls Church, Fort Stevens, Brandy Station, etc). One of my recommendations for these more minor spots is Fort Washington. It wasn't really a factor in the ACW, but it's a big-rear end fort on the Potomac that is a cool short visit on a nice summer day. glynnenstein fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 15:17
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Make sure you stop at Dirty Billy's in Gettysburg. His hats are (chef kiss). Also get the french onion soup in the basement of the Dobbin House.
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Apr 16, 2024 15:19
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The Lone Badger posted:Presumably you could load the powder/wadding/shot but leave the caps off? It’d be slower to prepare than you really want but a lot faster than having to do the whole thing. Just bring another pistol.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:59
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FastestGunAlive posted:Milhist thread, I’ve lived in the dmv for three years and haven’t gone to any battlefields. I am sorry. I want to go to one before I move. Antietam and Gettysburg are both equal distance away. Which will be better for nearby amenities? Wife and kid will probably only be good for a couple hours before it’s time to go eat / find something more engaging for kids Fredericksburg is also pretty easy to visit from the DMV (sometimes - traffic can also be insane on that stretch of 95 as I'm sure you know) and has the benefit of some of the key places being located pretty much entirely in the modern city of Fredericksburg. Marye's Heights/the Sunken Road are basically next to downtown, so when the wife/kid are bored you can go get some lunch, go shopping, walk along the river side of the battlefield, etc., really easily. That portion of the battlefield is also a pretty short walk. You'll probably still want to drive around if you want to hit all the major spots (a lot of them are a mile or two apart) but if walking is an option you could also actually just ride the train there instead of driving. The VRE station there drops you off like less than a mile from Marye's Heights if "riding the train" is something that your family might find novel maybe do that. Bonus: George Washington's childhood home is also basically across the Rappahannock from Marye's Heights if that's appealing at all. Jamwad Hilder fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 17:07
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Cessna posted:Just bring another pistol. This. The thing to keep in mind is that, doctrinally, very few people had a need for extra pistols. They were close range self defense weapons and of rather limited use on a battlefield. Which, frankly, is true of modern militaries too - a pistol is your "oh gently caress" gun, not what you grab to go on patrol or clear a house. Pretty much the only people who would have a use case for reloads are people who were doing something where closing to close range was a given, volume of fire was at a premium, and sometimes if they didn't have two free hands. Cavalry are the classic example, but also boarding parties on ships and your typical bar room/back street self defense. And time and again the solution that those people came up with wasn't to try and reload the gun in the moment, but to just carry a fuckload of pistols. Case in point: this portrait of an ACW cavalryman:  There's certainly more than a touch of posing for the camera involved in how it's displayed (especially with how they're shoved in his belt) , but that's a pretty realistic load out. There are plenty of accounts of cav battles where people are emptying one and grabbing another.
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Apr 16, 2024 17:42
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Actually speaking of, I recently had a thought about age of sail ship combat; while the emphasis tends to be on the guns, I'm given to understand that marines up the masts are also common, trying to shoot officers and whoever is manning the top side guns. But what weapons are they firing, and how ridiculous is it for them to be trying to reload them up there? Would they just be moving around in the rigging for maximum sight lines? Would a fighting ship construct specialty positions?
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Apr 16, 2024 18:31
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Actually speaking of, I recently had a thought about age of sail ship combat; while the emphasis tends to be on the guns, I'm given to understand that marines up the masts are also common, trying to shoot officers and whoever is manning the top side guns. But what weapons are they firing, and how ridiculous is it for them to be trying to reload them up there? Would they just be moving around in the rigging for maximum sight lines? Would a fighting ship construct specialty positions? They would be up in the "fighting top" which is a platform up near the top of the mast. Here it is on the USS Constitution:  Notice that there's a bunch of lines anchored to the bottom of it. The main purpose is to be an anchor point for rigging, the fact that you can do this is just a nice happy accident:  This is also where you'd have the people running around to make in-combat repairs to rigging and do other ship stuff. It's also where the people doing the work up top in the sails for normal sailing poo poo would stand around when they weren't needed out on the rigging. It's a lot safer to stand on that platform until you need to do your thing than it is to just dangle off a mast. Fun fact, they had to replace Constitution's foretop in I think the 70s, which itself was from the 1920s restoration - I think to make it more period accurate to the 1810s. Anyway, that foretop is now in the DC Navy Yard museum and if you're a sailor or marine who's in the are and re-enlisting they'll do reenlistment ceremonies on it. Here's an NHHC article about Constitution's fighting top. edit: as for the rest of it, the'yre using the same muskets as anyone else. Ship to ship ranges are pretty close, and a smooth bore musket is minute-of-man accurate to ~100-200 yards. They'd also do poo poo up there like throw grenades onto the deck of the other ship if they were right in on top of each other. As far as reloading goes it's a pitching deck very high above the ocean so I can imagine it wasn't easy, but it's not like you were hanging onto the yards with your thighs while you tried to do it. Just step back to the middle of the platform and do your thing. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 18:41
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Are routs a thing in modern warfare, ww1 and beyond, just like one side going, "oh we're getting super hosed." and everyone just cutting and running hard?
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Apr 16, 2024 18:41
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As I carefully position my revolvers to point at my nuts, I explain to the photographer that these are my sex-shooters 
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Apr 16, 2024 18:42
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Someone probably knows better, but the other thing I think is important to keep in mind about marines in the age of sail is that their role is basically to help keep order on the ship, help with menial labor, and fill mostly the same role that modern marines do today - meaning that they are seaborne infantry and equipped more or less like regular infantry. While they certainly fought in ship-to-ship combat from fighting platforms, their primary role is to be infantry when the ship needs something done on land. You're probably not going to want to use your sailors if you have to send a landing party somewhere potentially hostile, that's not the role they are trained for.
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Apr 16, 2024 18:43
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Nenonen posted:As I carefully position my revolvers to point at my nuts, I explain to the photographer that these are my sex-shooters that's what they mean by cappin' balls
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Apr 16, 2024 18:49
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Defenestrategy posted:Are routs a thing in modern warfare, ww1 and beyond, just like one side going, "oh we're getting super hosed." and everyone just cutting and running hard? this is the classic modern example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death
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Apr 16, 2024 18:49
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Defenestrategy posted:Are routs a thing in modern warfare, ww1 and beyond, just like one side going, "oh we're getting super hosed." and everyone just cutting and running hard? Also in the Battle of France, at Sedan there were French divisions that just noped the gently caress out of there after being subjected to an 8 hour air attack. 
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Apr 16, 2024 19:01
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Cyrano4747 posted:Cavalry are the classic example, but also boarding parties on ships and your typical bar room/back street self defense. And time and again the solution that those people came up with wasn't to try and reload the gun in the moment, but to just carry a fuckload of pistols. This also ties to the mythology of the two-gun gunfighter of the old west. You see this in movies and games:  But in reality blasting away with two pistols at once was probably a waste of ammo and only done out of desperation; it only comes up a handful of times at most in legit sources. But people often did carry two pistols - they'd fire one with their good hand, then drop or holster it and use the other with the same hand.
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Apr 16, 2024 20:20
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Defenestrategy posted:Are routs a thing in modern warfare, ww1 and beyond, just like one side going, "oh we're getting super hosed." and everyone just cutting and running hard? I'm reading An Army At Dawn and there has been several cases mentioned during the first amphibious landings in North Africa of troops coming under fire or getting shelled and just turning and running en masse before their officers got them stopped and turned around. I'd never read up much on Operation Torch and jesus was it a huge clusterfuck at the beginning.
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Apr 16, 2024 20:34
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SlothfulCobra posted:Well there was a lot of hubub about the the Aleutians even ultimately the action there was fairly minor in the grand scheme of the war. There were a lot of worries, and as part of that, a lot of the locals were placed in internment camps to 'protect' them from the war, and I think those camps had worse conditions and lasted for longer after the war than the japanese internment camps in the contiguous US. Much less people know about it because suppression of the media in Alaska was a lot more aggressive. Interestingly enough, this was also the most recent violation of the 3rd Amendment, because not only did it forcibly evacuate the native inhabitants but it also quartered troops in their homes: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1944647
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Apr 16, 2024 20:52
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Wasn't there a 3rd amendment case about housing troops in DC after Jan 6th? I got a question about bridges. What's the typical lifespan of a bridge launched by combat engineers? For example pontoon bridges from ww2. There were a bunch deployed in the last few months of the war to cross major rivers. Were they all dismantled as soon as real bridges were captured? Did they continue to serve as civilian bridges for a while after the war?
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Apr 16, 2024 21:18
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So hey, going to do a quick bit of analysis here just because I can: See that fella circled in blue there? That's a LOT of rope he's carrying up with him - more than you'd ever normally want to carry up the rigging without specific cause. He's almost certainly replacing some kind of battle damage - probably that arrangement circled in red. You can see the lines twisting in on themselves and not actually stretching anywhere useful, just dangling uselessly from the block. It seems like the line snapped or was shot away. What was it attached to? Well, take a look down at the bit circled in green - you can see another block whose lines seem to be scattered and dangling around uselessly. From the position of the block, it seems like the line in question was probably a lift - that is, one of the lines that can pull up the ends of the yards. Now the lifts aren't the only things holding the yard up - you can just about see the collar holding the yard to the mast - but without the lifts you can't balance the yards properly to get maximum effect out of the wind, and you're putting extra strain on the collar. And indeed, if you look on the other side of the mast up where the red circle is, you can see there IS a line leading down towards the other end of the yard, but with no corresponding line on this side, which most likely confirms that this is in fact a damaged lift. I'm not entirely certain I'd consider a damaged lift a super high priority in the middle of a battle, but I guess if you have the spare hands, why not fix everything you can when you can? That being said, the blocks in question kinda confuse me, and this diagram should probably help explain why:  As you can see, usually lines run through blocks through the sheaves which are in the "side" of the circular block, but this painting seems to depict the lines running through the cheeks instead. There are deadeyes that do this, but these are almost always only used for shrouds and other standing rigging, i.e. lines that are fixed in place and aren't intended to move. It's possible that this is depicting an older version of a block that I've not seen before, but it definitely feels a bit weird to me. Furthermore, the circled blocks don't seem to have multiple sheaves like in the diagram and only has room for one line running through it, which is somewhat odd - if those blocks were part of the same line, the line wouldn't actually have gone anywhere and would only have run back and forth between the two blocks, which would be useless. You'd want an extra sheave somewhere so that the line can run through the two blocks to provide mechanical advantage, and then run one end down to deck so that someone can actually haul on it there to actually make the lifts do anything, while the other end is secured to the becket to provide an anchor point after running through the appropriate sheaves. It may be the case that I'm missing something here but I'm a little inclined to suspect artist failure instead, either of a failure to understand what they're seeing (though the rest of the rigging doesn't seem too bad) or a failure to depict what they wanted people to see. Still, even if that was in fact a mistake and not just my misinterpreting or not knowing something, it's pretty neat that the rest of the painting can be analyzed and translated pretty well. Edit: just had a shower realization but you wouldn’t actually need multiple sheaves in this scenario but you WOULD need to secure one end to the becket on the block by the mast, so that it goes through the becket, down to the block on the yard, back up through the block on the mast and then down to deck. The painting doesn’t seem to depict that, though, nor does the damage look like you’d expect from that scenario - if a ball managed to come by perfectly enough to sever every line there, you’d expect to see a bit of line dangling from the becket, a length of line through the block on the yard, and nothing else because the weight of the line running down to deck should have dragged the severed line out of the block and back down to deck. Also thinking about it further this repair feels a little late - the ship’s guns aren’t going to be able to elevate enough to cause this kind of damage at musket range so it must have been a shot fired at longer range that caused this, which means they would have waited until drat near boarding range to even begin running this rather lengthy repair. I guess they might have taken a while to find a line of the appropriate diameter out of storage or have been busy with other things until now, but if they’re this close in you might have thought they’d want all hands standing by to board soon. Tomn fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Apr 17, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 23:26
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Someone probably knows better, but the other thing I think is important to keep in mind about marines in the age of sail is that their role is basically to help keep order on the ship, help with menial labor, and fill mostly the same role that modern marines do today - meaning that they are seaborne infantry and equipped more or less like regular infantry. While they certainly fought in ship-to-ship combat from fighting platforms, their primary role is to be infantry when the ship needs something done on land. You're probably not going to want to use your sailors if you have to send a landing party somewhere potentially hostile, that's not the role they are trained for. Something I came to appreciate when reading through all that RND Antwerp stuff was how different the role of the Royal Marines was back then. We are (I am, at least) so used to thinking of the Marines as a specialised amphibious infantry, commandos and SF (as they have been since WW2) that the idea of the Marines moving in brigade-sized units consisting entirely of light infantry was surprising. In that context, the idea of the RND wasn't so different from the Royal Marine Light Infantry, to give the Marines at Antwerp their official name that they would retain until the 1920s. But the experiences of the RND rather prove your point about sailors not being trained for land warfare...especially sailors who are reservists or fresh recruits. In the age of sail another purpose of marines was to protect the ship, and especially its officers and command centre, from boarding either in battle or at anchor. In the RN (on ships provided with marine contingents) the quarterdeck was always guarded by marines and in action would be virtually surrounded in an 'infantry square' formation. Key compartments like the holds, magazine, spirit locker, bread locker and the great cabin had a Marine sentry round the clock. Since marines were also there to protect the ship's officers from the crew if it came to it, they would often be responsible for manning the guns on the quarterdeck and working the lines and rigging of the mizzen mast (to reduce the number of sailors needed to be on the quarterdeck). Marines could not be ordered to perform sail-handling duties but were permitted to do so as volunteers - on some ships the mizzen mast was worked entirely by Marines. The Marine berth was between the wardroom and the messdeck, again to ensure the safety of the officers. Echoes of that arrangement lingered until just after WW2. On cruisers and battleships it was usual for the second rearmost gun turret to be worked by Royal Marines (recalling their traditional role manning guns on the quarterdeck and the location of their berthing). During WW2 the size and sophistication of guns and the changing role of Marines saw this change to the Marines usually being assigned the parts of the secondary and AA battery. I believe that in the 1900s (pre-WW1/early Dreadnought era) the RN experimented with training Royal Marine bandsmen as rangefinder/plotting table/Dumaresq operators.
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Apr 17, 2024 00:44
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PittTheElder posted:Actually speaking of, I recently had a thought about age of sail ship combat; while the emphasis tends to be on the guns, I'm given to understand that marines up the masts are also common, trying to shoot officers and whoever is manning the top side guns. But what weapons are they firing, and how ridiculous is it for them to be trying to reload them up there? Would they just be moving around in the rigging for maximum sight lines? Would a fighting ship construct specialty positions? Snipers in the fighting tops could be very effective given how close the range could get in a ship-to-ship engagement. An anonymous French sailor ensconced in the mizzen top of his ship with a musket killed Nelson at Trafalgar. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Apr 17, 2024 |
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Apr 17, 2024 01:15
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Tomn posted:I'm not entirely certain I'd consider a damaged lift a super high priority in the middle of a battle, but I guess if you have the spare hands, why not fix everything you can when you can? You know how in an office job you carry around a folder to look busy and avoid getting roped into unpleasant tasks? "Yeah bosun I'd love to grab a cutlass and join the boarding party but, uh, the mainmast jib spinnaker needs a quick tune up."
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Apr 17, 2024 01:17
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BalloonFish posted:I believe that in the 1900s (pre-WW1/early Dreadnought era) the RN experimented with training Royal Marine bandsmen as rangefinder/plotting table/Dumaresq operators. I don't recall ever reading about this but it may very well be true and makes an intuitive sense. Bandsmen would know their way around fiddly devices with lots of precision moving parts (their instruments) and were both trained specialists and largely idle whenever there wasn't a call for providing music or bugle calls. I'll look through my books on fire control development and see if I can chase down any information. As for the Royal Marines in the prewar era, there was a sporadic but consistent effort to turn them into what the U.S. Marine Corps was becoming in the same era: a professional amphibious-capable infantry force under naval control. This was directly tied into the Admiralty's preferred prewar strategy of seizing Frisian islands such as Sylt or Borkum as temporary advanced bases for torpedo craft to watch the German North Sea bases in the hopes of getting the earliest possible notice of a German battlefleet sortie, which would then be intercepted in a pincer movement by two British battle fleets and destroyed, leaving the Baltic open for potential landing operations or even coastal bombardment raids. Anyone who tells you this wasn't Admiralty strategy is either misinformed or Nicholas Lambert, who is a blockhead.
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Apr 17, 2024 01:37
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Someone probably knows better, but the other thing I think is important to keep in mind about marines in the age of sail is that their role is basically to help keep order on the ship, help with menial labor, and fill mostly the same role that modern marines do today - meaning that they are seaborne infantry and equipped more or less like regular infantry. While they certainly fought in ship-to-ship combat from fighting platforms, their primary role is to be infantry when the ship needs something done on land. You're probably not going to want to use your sailors if you have to send a landing party somewhere potentially hostile, that's not the role they are trained for. Are marines more expendable than sailors because they’re faster to train?
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Apr 17, 2024 01:44
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Tomn posted:So hey, going to do a quick bit of analysis here just because I can: I just want you to know that I appreciated this delightfully nerdy post.
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Apr 17, 2024 02:36
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BalloonFish posted:Something I came to appreciate when reading through all that RND Antwerp stuff was how different the role of the Royal Marines was back then. We are (I am, at least) so used to thinking of the Marines as a specialised amphibious infantry, commandos and SF (as they have been since WW2) that the idea of the Marines moving in brigade-sized units consisting entirely of light infantry was surprising. I'd argue that the commandos/SF thing is, much like with Airborne, almost entirely a product of media portrayals. Marines and paras have a lot in common. They're both fundamentally light infantry that can rapidly deploy someplace that isn't normally reachable, and if they get caught out by the enemy's heavy elements are pretty roundly hosed.
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Apr 17, 2024 02:37
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zoux posted:How long would it take someone of the era to load a cap-and-ball revolver? It loads a mite slow and you'll soon find out It can get you into trouble, but it can't get you out
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Apr 17, 2024 06:24
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Vicksburg is pretty well preserved. My pain is I do want to do an Eastern theatre battlefield tour, but I don't want to be on a tour where I'm bringing the average age down two decades just by showing up
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Apr 17, 2024 07:03
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Someone probably knows better, but the other thing I think is important to keep in mind about marines in the age of sail is that their role is basically to help keep order on the ship, help with menial labor, and fill mostly the same role that modern marines do today - meaning that they are seaborne infantry and equipped more or less like regular infantry. While they certainly fought in ship-to-ship combat from fighting platforms, their primary role is to be infantry when the ship needs something done on land. You're probably not going to want to use your sailors if you have to send a landing party somewhere potentially hostile, that's not the role they are trained for. If you have to put ashore a landing party it will certainly contain sailors as well. A first rate has about a company sized force of marines nominally.
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Apr 17, 2024 10:14
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BalloonFish posted:I believe that in the 1900s (pre-WW1/early Dreadnought era) the RN experimented with training Royal Marine bandsmen as rangefinder/plotting table/Dumaresq operators. This was certainly practice by WWII, resulting the bandsmen suffering a higher percentage of casualties than many other parts of the British Armed Forces. In action, they would be in the 'Transmitting Station', with the fire control instruments. This was buried deep in the ship, making it hard for them to get out as it sank.
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Apr 17, 2024 10:36
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Alchenar posted:My pain is I do want to do an Eastern theatre battlefield tour, but I don't want to be on a tour where I'm bringing the average age down two decades just by showing up Wait too long and youll bring the average age up!
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Apr 17, 2024 13:04
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Alchenar posted:My pain is I do want to do an Eastern theatre battlefield tour, but I don't want to be on a tour where I'm bringing the average age down two decades just by showing up It's fine. I've done a bunch of east coast battlefield stuff and while you certainly have a contingent of olds who might be awkward or a little too into Robert E Lee the only actually gross poo poo I've seen has come from younger dudes.
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Apr 17, 2024 13:09
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Likely a different answer for each site, but how similar is the terrain today compared to when the battles were fought? Is there generally a sense that it is pretty close? I imagine 150 years could really change things.
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Apr 18, 2024 00:10
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Battlefield preservation is the field of cultural preservation from which I first learned how a property can have multiple periods of significance and those periods can conflict. The open field upon which the Union forces charged Marye’s Heights from out of the city of Fredericksburg is now filled in with houses constructed primarily from the 1890-1930s. The neighborhood, Fairview Heights, is significant in its own right for embodying the 20th century industrialization of Fredericksburg. Yet the historic neighborhood absolutely impacts the historic integrity of the battlefield. Indeed, the battlefield once got a grant a couple decades ago to buy and tear down a few houses. Incidentally, Fairview Heights got its name from first building up around and then filling in the city’s old fairground. Be aware that the best bar and casual restaurant of Fredericksburg , Sunken Well Tavern, happens to be in that neighborhood and right by that portion of the battlefield. The dinner specials, nightly after 7pm, are phenomenal and even the regular menu, while less flashy, is superb. Then Balls Bluff taught me that, for preserving greens space, battlefield preservation is not intrinsically ecological or wild land conservation. Balls Bluff received a grant to cut back a swath of trees to return the field to the open dimensions in which the two armies faced each other. Man Asses is the battlefield that instigated the congressionally appropriated battlefield preservation grants. Encroaching development made the imminent loss of the historic battlefield a national issue. Political pressure forced congress to scramble and acquire the land at the development-driven high prices and maintain it in perpetuity as public land. Had the land been preserved sooner, it could have been acquired at a far cheaper price and ideally, in congress’s view, by someone else. Thus, they then began appropriating funds to support other people acquiring and preserving battlefields in the United States. As Antietam was endorsed, I’ll just point out that it was one of the battlefields that was preserved at an early date as a military park under the maintenance of the War Department until transferred to the National Park Service in 1933.
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Apr 18, 2024 03:19
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