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PittTheElder posted:The 15th century army would get wrecked nearly every time I'm sure. Greater state capacity means the 18th century army is going to be much bigger, and I don't even know what the 15th century army is supposed to do against field artillery guarded by lines of musket infantry. March away I guess? Withdraw into their impenetrable stone castles! Happy Finnish independence day, btw. Ask me anything about Mannerheim's knights or something 
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Dec 6, 2020 21:12
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LostCosmonaut posted:
They weren't designed to destroy tanks, though. It's an obstacle, although unlucky tanks could get stuck like with any obstacles.
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Dec 7, 2020 05:30
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Zorak of Michigan posted:I agree with all this but I want to add that many BB-lovers seem excited about the armor. Modern ships aren't armored, and people look at the old BB designs and think that armor must somehow mean they're tougher than modern ships. That might be true if the threat was enemy BB guns. The modern threats are missiles, torpedoes, and mines. It's impossible to armor a ship against torpedoes and mines and nearly impossible to armor one against missiles. Modern defenses are about active protection (shooting down the threat before it hits) and mitigation (localize damage to the compartments near the impact, keep the ship afloat). In 2016 the Taiwanese accidently fired one of their anti shipping missiles, and it homed on a fishing boat 75 km away. It ripped right through the boat's superstructure, killing the captain and injuring three crew but luckily didn't explode, I assume because the warhead didn't hit anything solid enough to trigger it. It's also lucky that it found a target before continuing to Chinese territorial waters.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsiung_Feng_III_missile_mishap https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36680899
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Dec 7, 2020 05:37
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The Lone Badger posted:IIRC early grenadiers were burly chaps with special training who threw iron bombs. Then they phased out the actual grenades as being useless but kept the 'grenadier' title on the existing regiments (who were regarded as being elite). Maybe it's just a lingual coincidence, but in German a mortar is called Granatenwerfer, literally grenade thrower.
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Dec 10, 2020 05:03
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HookedOnChthonics posted:Why would a liaison aircraft be roped to a truck, driven onto a landing craft, and sailed across the channel, rather than assembled in the UK and flown? This is presumably some time after the battle of Cherbourg. Besides to what Alchenar said, it would be easier to stay together with the HQ that way. If the unit goes by ship and you are told to follow by plane there's a non-zero chance that a) you get lost, b) something bad happens on the way there (Allied air superiority doesn't remove the risks of getting shot down by Jerries or friendlies), and c) you have to land on some rough patch that you haven't seen up close before and you crash.
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Dec 10, 2020 15:21
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Everyone: "We'll build a wall around our city to keep invaders out." China: "Aha! We'll build a wall along the border to keep invaders out!" Athens: 
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Dec 11, 2020 20:18
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For that matter, it funnels your scouts/spies as well, making it more convoluted to plan a raid or attack. Not that scouting parties cannot get across the wall, but without horses they are less capable. Rivers are both barriers and transport routes. It is far more efficient to fortify strategic locations along a river and at other geographic chokepoints than to build long walls across plains. 
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Dec 12, 2020 00:05
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I'm loading all my RPG dice into my musket and see what damage they'll roll!
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Dec 12, 2020 09:52
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Cessna posted:Soviet reenacting should get a LOT more attention. It's so much cheaper! Their stuff is readily available and costs about 1/2 to 1/3 of it's German equivalent on a piece-by-piece basis, and you need less of it! Suggestion if you're poor as dirt but want to re-enact Nazis: be a Brandenburger disguised as a Red Army soldier. It's cheap and you get to be a special Nazi super soldier and there's no fear of photos of you circulating on the internet dressed as a Nazi. Other re-enactors will just love you!
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Dec 14, 2020 19:56
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The best gun design of WW2 was the Erma EMP 44 it's a series of tubes And this is the best design of post-war era 
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Dec 15, 2020 15:21
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:E: in somewhat milhist news, today is the 12th anniversary of that guy throwing his shoes at George W Bush. Never forgotten. Are the shoes on display somewhere?
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Dec 15, 2020 19:28
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vuk83 posted:IDK, they had a combat drop in OIF And Urgent Fury. The original plan was for Rangers to land in C-130's at the army airfield, but mid-flight they learned that obstacles had been placed on the landing strip so they switched to a parachute landing, seizing the airfield and clearing the obstacles. In general there is still a purpose for parachute drops. You can just put so much more men or equipment on a cargo plane and have them move faster over a greater range, than with a helicopter fleet. Such capacity isn't needed that much outside a WW3 setting, but I would say there is somewhat of a 'fleet in being' thing going on. When you have the capability to suddenly drop entire divisions, with artillery and light vehicles (including light tanks and IFV's), anywhere, it forces your enemies to consider the potential threat to supposedly safe areas and keep substantial reserves.
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Dec 15, 2020 20:11
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Lawman 0 posted:Re to this: Who has the most competent army in sub Saharan Africa? I'm trying to think of a way to answer this, and I'm stuck on what to gauge. Many African nations have experience about battling insurrections, mostly not very good. South Africa probably had the most experience with fighting bush wars during the apartheid years, but I'm not sure how much of that former institutional knowledge is left nowadays. Otherwise these are hard to compare! SA does have the most advanced defense industry too. In conventional operations comparison is also hard, because there have been really few conventional conflicts in Africa lately. My assumption is that Ethiopia has the most experience from fighting Eritrea and also occasionally rolling over Al Shabaab in Somalia. Peacekeeping operations would probably be the most relevant way of comparing their competence but I don't know if there's any public data about their relative performance.
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Dec 16, 2020 19:47
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The Lone Badger posted:If the mech unit has to go somewhere with roads and without expected enemy contact, would the APCs be used as transport or would everyone get on trucks because they're cheaper to run? Would the carriers also be transported on trucks or how would they follow? For strategic transitions, this or train transport is preferable to save on maintenance time needed, but not always practical. Note that mechanized infantry is not just infantry put on tracks, they're a specialized unit trained in mechanized warfare and organized to fit in the constraints of an infantry fighting vehicle or tracked APC. Just look at how ridiculous the organization of a Bradley platoon looks with three squads split between four vehicles. 
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Dec 17, 2020 05:31
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:It's probably a more accurate read to say that the Maginot line was built to ensure that the next war with Germany would be fought on Belgian soil rather than French. As a bonus you can then trust on Britain joining the war even if they otherwise didn't. A sole Germany vs. France war ca. 1940 is an interesting hypothetical in itself. Hitler settles disputes with Czechoslovakia and Poland without war and aims at France instead. Germans will neither invade Belgium nor immediately attack the Maginot line. If UK stays neutral, does France have enough naval power and reach to North Sea to block Germany's trade? Would U-boots be able to harm France's supply?
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Dec 17, 2020 19:48
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Cessna posted:Also the late war: Actually the opposite of that. If it was fragile then Hitler would have been shot by someone else than Hitler, much sooner than April 1945 and at the very least everything would have collapsed at that point rather than dragging on for another week or so. Nazi totalitarian command was really firm in 1945, it just was getting crushed alive.
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Dec 17, 2020 23:12
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Xiahou Dun posted:Not being lovely cause we all make typos, but this gave me the hilarious image of French soldiers neatly arranged in pleated dough and stuffed up then fried and served with a scallion soy sauce or like a mala oil and it made me chuckle really hard. https://youtu.be/CIjTseb14Fk
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Dec 18, 2020 08:07
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Xiahou Dun posted:That looks so god drat fun. I wanna get liquored up and throw around/knock over big, inflatable tanks. want age 25-70 guy to come over and jo in my inflatable tank yard. mutual touching and stuff but nothing more than that... im not gay. its all real scale. then after you finish you can stomp around and hurl the tanks and trucks like a superman (dont puncture they are my sons) we can do this until 4 am or until we get tired. also i have lots of imitation crab meat in my freezer that i need to get rid of so you can have a bunch when you leave. its all perfectly good we just got too much!!!
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Dec 19, 2020 07:03
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Makes them think twice about all their other fake programs, airfields, initiatives, etc Revealing your cards to your enemy is not alarming, it's dumb. Making a pointless fake bomb run that could result in your own plane shot down is criminally stupid.
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Dec 19, 2020 23:28
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Its a fake airfield, what's gonna shoot it down? Interceptors, engine breakdowns, flak on the way. Would you take the mission?
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Dec 20, 2020 01:03
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You don't have to go across the border for Finnish colonialism, it's not like Finns haven't been exploiting Lapland for resources and trying to assimilate the indigenous people there. Even today it's easy for capitalists in Helsinki to dream of building a railroad to connection to the Barents Sea, ah the reindeer herders will have to adjust!
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Dec 21, 2020 05:07
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It would probably be an okay crossfit exercise.
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Dec 23, 2020 12:03
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Cessna posted:Of all the strategies to push, he could have done a lot worse. "We will deal Al-Qaida the decisive death blow by invading... Iraq! They will be completely unprepared for it!"
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Dec 24, 2020 00:33
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HEY GUNS posted:i hate crossfit so no I bet no one has ever asked you to participate in a Passion Nenonen fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Dec 24, 2020 |
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Dec 24, 2020 08:55
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PittTheElder posted:Yeah, and a British force had already left to go start laying mines in Norwegian waters too. And just a month earlier Allies had their operation underway to occupy a corridor from Narvik to Sweden to Finland, in a friendly manner, to assist Finland against USSR (and, totally coincidentally, halting shipments of Swedish iron to Germany). Something that Russians seem to have known because they suddenly were willing to settle on their wins and sign a truce. I don't know if Germany knew just close it was, but given that British press was talking about it prior, they probably were expecting it.
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Dec 25, 2020 22:10
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Britain also considered bombing Soviet oil fields because they were supplying German armies at the time. Short term tactical gains seldom work for long time strategic wins.
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Dec 26, 2020 22:18
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"Two years from now our enemy will be undefeatable/will have nukes" sounds like an effective line for any proponents of a pre-emptive strike, it seems.
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Dec 27, 2020 10:11
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SlothfulCobra posted:I wonder if Scandinavia would've suffered less overall if they held down a united front against the Germans. Germany and Soviet Union would not have allowed this because it was contrary to their interests. After Winter War there were talks of a union between Sweden and Finland where Gustaf VI Adolf would have been the head of state and Carl Gustaf Mannerheim the commander in chief, but Moscow wouldn't have any of it so it was buried.
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Dec 27, 2020 19:18
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If we have to look for one clear culprit for WW1, then toxic turbo nationalism should be it.
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Dec 27, 2020 19:21
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:There's so many little things wrong in this image I can't take it. Yep, the Harley Davidson 47 'Thunderbikes' with sidecars are misrepresented!
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Dec 28, 2020 21:49
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Tias posted:That's reminds me of a good example of how tonedeaf the Soviet puppet state during the Winter War was: They immediately set about instituting a 40-hour work week and land reform - two things that the Finnish government, while not exactly a socialist paradise, had legislated into being over a decade prior It's like they resurrected Otto Kuusinen and the rest of the puppet government from napthalene and Otto looked at the paper he had put in the coat pocket in 1918. "Ah, these must be the things that the Finnish serfs and comrades want!" The "government of Terijoki" (nicknamed so because according to Soviet propaganda, the workers of border village Terijoki elected it on the first day of war) was an interesting bunch in itself. Here are my two favourites: The Minister of Enlightenment Inkeri Lehtinen was the daughter of two Finnish MP's. Her mother Sandra Lehtinen was elected in the first democratic election in 1907 and her father Juho Lehtinen in 1917. She was ten when the family fled from Finland to Soviet Russia. Although she soon returned to Finland with her mother, she chose political activism and went back as the rising fascist movement was making life difficult for Finnish communists. Her father and husband were both executed in Stalin's purges but she remained loyal to the cause. After WW2 she regained Finnish citizenship and lived in Finland until 1997. She was only 31 when she was named a "minister", it must have been a tad scandalous back then given how some people think of young female politicians 80 years later! The Minister of Defense Akseli Anttila was surprisingly experienced for his task. He had had a brief stint on the Red side in 1918, then escaped from prison camp (by dropping down to the barracks loo's hole) via Sweden and Norway to Russia where he joined the communist party. He joined an international cadet course and as he didn't speak Russian, he participated in quelling the worker's strikes in Petrograd and the Kronstadt uprising. Later he was lightly wounded in fighting against White Finnish 'tribal expedition' that attempted to incite rebellion among the Karelians against Soviet rule. And his story continues according to Wikipedia: quote:After working as a teacher in the Bolshevik military academy, Anttila joined the Frunze Military Academy in 1930 and graduated 1933. He served in the Red Army in Karelia and was a military advisor in the Spanish Civil War in 1936–1939. He also served as a colonel in the staff of the general Dmitry Pavlov who commanded a brigade of Soviet tanks. Anttila was wounded in the Madrid Front and was promoted to the rank of brigadier commander equivalent to the rank of brigadier general.[1] He certainly had an interesting military career and the phoney post as a MoD doesn't take away from that. He might actually been the most competent minister at his job of the Kuusinen cabinet. For example the minister of agriculture Armas Äikiä was a poet and son of a shoemaker, as far as I know he was only named to the job because he was a good demagogue and because there weren't a lot to choose from after the Purges.
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Jan 1, 2021 22:47
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Anyone landing in a neutral country was interned and potentially traded for resources/aid/etc, or casually 'escaped' to fight again. Depends on the side and country they landed in. Uh, this might not have been as good idea as you would think. Warning, the Wiki link below contains descriptions of human rights abuses that you might not want to read if you are in a sensitive mood, suffice it to say that the camp was led by a sadistic Nazi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wauwilermoos_internment_camp#Conditions,_human_rights_violations,_and_inspections quote:Wauwilermoos housed military internees of various nations, including England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia, and the USA.
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Jan 10, 2021 00:23
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wins32767 posted:That gets me thinking about a similar question. The trench lines are crossing some non-trivial sized rivers: You dig the trench on a bridge, duh! ...there's no need to have a continuous trench to the edge of water, you can still control the area with overlapping lanes of fire from both banks, obstacles and mines.
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Jan 12, 2021 08:05
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Loezi posted:
St. Barbara is the patron saint of artillery men  Alchenar posted:If you had to be stationed anywhere on the frontline in WW1, right up on the coast at Nieuport is where you'd want to be. Did Gunboaty McGunboatfaces ever bombard lines in this area? Did they have coastal batteries to support the loose end?
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Jan 12, 2021 20:23
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While watching a klan dokkkumentary, I thought I'd look up a bit about The Birth of a Nation. According to Wikipedia there was also a sequel made, and oh boy!quote:The Fall of a Nation is a 1916 American silent drama film directed by Thomas Dixon Jr., and is a sequel to the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith. Dixon, Jr. attempted to cash in on the success of the controversial first film.[1] The Fall of a Nation is considered to be the first ever film sequel.[2] Based upon The Fall of a Nation, written by the director, the film is now considered lost.[3][4] It's the OG Red Dawn!  The film is now lost, but you can read the novel it's based on at Project Gutenberg. This is what the invasion of America would apparently look like: 
Nenonen fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Jan 17, 2021 20:34
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The Lone Badger posted:IIRC the Finns made a self-igniting version with pyrophoric material inside, so you could skip the flaming rag. Finnish molotovs used two storm matches tied to the side (the other was a spare). Flaming rags were never used, that would be really inconvenient to handle in action. The original intent was to use them for blinding tanks with smoke by splashing them at the front, then it was found out that the engine intakes in T-26 and T-28 were really accessible. Later tanks were better protected so the blinding effect was still practised later, but effectively fell out of use as better weaponry became available. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Jan 20, 2021 |
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Jan 20, 2021 08:13
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My guess: you use the KS bottle as an ambush weapon because it self-ignites. Once there is some flames and smoke on/around the target it becomes safer to light the match on your other bottles and throw them?
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Jan 20, 2021 08:25
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Finnish late war blinding smoke grenades demonstration in April 1944  Here is the splash of a self-igniting smoke bottle without the acid ingredient that makes it ignite when in contact with oxygen. Notice how well the liquid is stuck to the glacis of the T-34.  Now with live bottles. It looks like three bottles have been thrown here. Tank crew is using the on board extinguishers.  And here on a KV.  Another blinding weapon used was two stick smoke grenades tied together with a piece of rope, thrown at the gun barrel like bolas. Quick quiz, what is the target tank?? Answer -> T-50, Finland captured one and it's on display in Parola. Only 69 were built. Such a cute, albeit expensive, little tank!  And here you have two pairs of the smoke grenades with string on T-34. One pair has been caught on the barrel, the other has fallen on the fender.
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Jan 20, 2021 19:40
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If you forget all the bad things done by Hitler, you'll notice that Hitler did nothing wrong.
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Jan 29, 2021 16:25
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Weka posted:He killed Hitler, which was bad because iirc he was a blameless fellow. Hitler's last actions: poisoning a dog, persuading a young dame to kill herself, and killing the head of a sovereign state. What a piece of poo poo!
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Jan 30, 2021 21:48
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