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I was watching some old WW2 era military films, this one was on the Yorktown and was shot sometime in 1944. The Narration refers to a clip shot in 1943, the USS Yorktown gets an admiral who is described by the narrator in the following manner "besides our skipper, we have an admiral aboard, a seadog whose been a naval flyer for over 20 years." so according to this documentary this dude's been flying naval missions since what? 1923/24? I didn't think naval aviation was that old, I would assume no one in the US Navy at least was doing naval stuff until maybe the 30s, am I unaware of the Navy doing aerial stuff in the 20's besides maybe doing experiments?
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Mar 20, 2022 22:51
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Are towed anti-tank/direct fire artillery guns still a thing in use in modern warfare or did their position get taken over by light armored vehicles with cannon/launchers on them?
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Apr 27, 2022 23:32
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bewbies posted:Russia and China are both still big fans of towed AT guns. The PLAA even modernized theirs to the point where it can still threaten modern tanks. They're a big part of the firepower suite at the light combined arms brigade. whats the reason for this? Cheaper to manufacture than putting them on some sort of tracked vehicle? Seems like non-self propelled things would have big problems with counter battery fire or being flanked by motorized things.
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Apr 28, 2022 18:21
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Historically if one where to defect with either a tank or plane during a time of hostilities, how was that accomplished without 1) Getting blown up by enemy forces accidentally and 2) getting discovered and blown up by your own guys? Is it just go forward until you find some dudes to surrender to and yell into your radio at them? I can't think of anything specifically off hand beyond that time a dude landed a mig in Florida and managed it because air traffic control wasn't paying attention.
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May 2, 2022 23:58
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How did bike mobile forces work in WW2? Like is it just to supplement for the inability to have enough motor units to get people to where the fighting is, so they load all their gear into the truck and pedal til they need to get their gear? Seems like they'd be ridiculously vulnerable to strafing and ambush considering they probably need to stick to roads and are basically a relatively slow and unarmored group that needs to ditch their bikes to get into cover .
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May 15, 2022 21:24
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Cyrano4747 posted:I was at a lecture years and years ago where none other than Christopher Browning of "Ordinary Men" fame addressed that. Is there a big reason that France didn't go full fash along with Germany and Italy? I assume the primary reason being they didn't have many gripes about the fall out of the first world war and the left/center in the country where far more resilient to being bullied out of the government.
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Aug 27, 2022 19:21
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Would v2 rockets be effective battlefield artillery today? Not, rockets made better, but if some dude went and copied the exact engineering design docs for the v2 and the only difference was he had satellites for knowing exactly where a target was.
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Sep 16, 2022 14:22
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Xakura posted:The issue wasn't that they didn't know where London was. I said battlefield artillery. I assumed the bigger issue with using v2s against the front line or logistics is that you only had a general idea of where stuff is and when you had a more specific idea a dude, a radio, and a artillery battery was a faster way to blow it up. Edit: unless the nazis where actually trying to hit targets in london and the rockets where so inaccurate that it just looked like terror bombing. Defenestrategy fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Sep 16, 2022 |
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Sep 16, 2022 14:54
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I dont know if this is exact right thread for it , but what happened to the various kingdoms of Africa to make it so that by the time of european colonization it seemingly goes uncontested for the most part by local kingdoms and you end up with africa effectively sliced by brit, france, belgium, et, al?
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Sep 25, 2022 20:40
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:A good effort post So what I'm getting from this is largely that Europeans basically hung out in coastal trade ports and basically drew boundries on a map telling other euros to stay out and when they actually tried to do things like actually govern beyond these port areas the locals revolted pretty immediately, that about right? Thanks for the post.
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Sep 26, 2022 02:49
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Whats the shelf life on ammo given a climate controlled room? Does this change when you go from talking about bullets to bigger stuff like dumb bombs or hellfire missiles?
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Sep 27, 2022 14:36
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Has there been any research released on MOS/position with worst casualty rate for "modern" warfare(gulfwar to now)? I'd assume it might have to be something involving either artillery or helicopters due to the proliferation of counter battery and cheap anti-air devices, and the fact helicopters lust for the blood of their operators and passengers by default.
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Sep 27, 2022 17:56
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MikeC posted:Military observers were very commonplace in the 19th ans 20th century. German, French, and British observers traveled to the US for the ACW and American generals traveled to Europe to observe their conflicts. They were mainly there to observe the effectiveness of tactics and equipment and relay that back home to improve their own military. Back the it was relatively easy to avoid harm as everyone dressed in distinct uniforms and the action wasn't conducted at such long distances that you couldn't stand back and still see what's going on What do "the observed" countries get out of it? I assume that as a union general or diplomat you don't want a random french dude walking around your lines and maybe getting a really really really unlucky bullet to the leg. Is it just a quid-pro-quo understanding of you let our guys hang out and we'll let yours?
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Sep 27, 2022 21:13
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has there ever been a case where a fifth column of expats have proven significant in a war or has it always just been a brand of xenophobia.
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Sep 28, 2022 16:49
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Fangz posted:People who emigrated from certain countries have been useful in terms of intelligence work, yes. I'm asking for more grandiose stuff like forming a militia, performing wide spread acts of sabotage to aid invaders, literally turning over a city, or the like. Intelligence gathering and relaying is important, but all the big ones I can think of off the top of my head are all performed by intelligence agents of the states who get transferred in to the country*and not by a large group of random expats *Black Tom Bombing or the Pearl Harbor Intelligence Gathering for example Defenestrategy fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Sep 28, 2022 |
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Sep 28, 2022 17:04
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zoux posted:You rarely see Aphrodite whisk away comely combatants from certain death these days. Maybe its because warriors just arent has comely any more? The gun has made everyone far too ugly.
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Sep 28, 2022 21:59
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Was reading through a ukraine thread and the below post happened and it got me curious. This isnt an invitation to kramer into that thread and dog pile dude if its not a good thesis.DarklyDreaming posted:Also the US army ended up having to completely re-invent the wheel between WW2 and Korea because everyone was a raw recruit/fresh West Point graduate with almost no WW2 veterans in leadership roles. The reasons why are complicated and not worthy of a derail So milhist nerds is this right? From what I remember between the wars the army did a fair draw down but I couldnt imagine that most divison and staff officers where canned or left in the interwar years especially with a bunch of generals leaving and the prospect of getting a star or two on the horrizon before retirement as a potential carrot to stay in.
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Oct 3, 2022 14:45
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Cessna posted:Yes. If anything, it understates how bad things were in 1950. Do the American army learn their lesson from this and in times of relative peace try to maintain some semblance of institutional knowledge and dudes who are actually good at their jobs rather than dudes with no other options? I guess the time periods for that would be between Vietnam and Gulf war, and then Gulf War and Afghanistan.
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Oct 3, 2022 22:48
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Nessus posted:They were at least aware of the issue and made attempts, although their failure to fully implement Jim Channon's ideas are still felt to this day. quote:His concept was that a new generation of "warrior monks" would utilize paranormal abilities and countercultural principles to better prevail in future conflicts with the nation's adversaries[ Thank you for making me aware of this.
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Oct 3, 2022 23:14
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Do submarines carry guns on them beyond maybe an emergency pistol to hunt game if somehow the sub gets destroyed and there are survivors on a life raft that make it to an island or something? I assume that shooting a gun in a submarine would be kinda really stupid dangerous and that if an enemy has managed to get aboard and get inside an active sub everything is beyond hosed anyway. On that matter do guns even come in emergency supplies for downed helos/aircraft?
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Oct 9, 2022 21:03
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Whats the most remote, lonliest base occupied by a military force? Not counting various boats/subs/etc. Like is there a tiny base in the rear end end of alaska occupied by like fifty people whose only job is make sure russians/vampires dont invade? edit: Thinking about its there's probably a russian base off the middle of the kara sea thats literally there for no reason. Defenestrategy fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Oct 10, 2022 |
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Oct 10, 2022 18:43
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These are all good answers to me. What i was getting at is assume youre in charge of making one persons life as dull and as miserable as possible with little to no chance of getting killed in the military. Where would you assign them if you could assign them literally anywhere. I excluded subs, aircarriers, and the like because from what ive seen carriers have a ton of people on them, subs seem like they would be interesting if for no other reason that the excitement of constant death surrounding you if anyone fucks up, larger ships eventually have to dock, and, I suppose something like the ISS is out for the same reasons as submarines. Im only limiting it to modern times because i assume that kinda thing doesnt exist in the past because of the logistics required to maintain a useless patch of dirt like that doesnt exist, but if you got one I wanna see it. Defenestrategy fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Oct 10, 2022 |
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Oct 10, 2022 20:40
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Can someone give me a brief overview of medieval prisoner exchanges? So when nobles get captured they get ransomed right? How do you do this without quick communication and universal banking? Is there a standard rate, knights worth y, dukes x, barons z? Is it always in currency? What about commodity? Subject to negotiation? Does ability on the battlefield matter in the likelyhood of ransoming? Like if baron von good strats is capped and hes far more valuable not being a genius strategy guy than any amount of money do they just execute him? Defenestrategy fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Nov 4, 2022 |
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Nov 4, 2022 18:25
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Why are creeping barrages even a thing? Why not just artillerize the opposing trench until the theoretical time it takes to cross no mans land and then let up?
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Nov 15, 2022 18:38
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Fangz posted:Wouldn't you just napalm the trenches? instead wouldn't you just use thermobarics? pretty hard to sit in a dugout when there isn't any air.
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Nov 15, 2022 20:35
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Has there been a battle which continued far on past the point it was worthwhile to fight just because one side or the other thought they had sunk way too much into a lost battle to quit now Basically looking for the most horrifying version of sunk cost fallacy.
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Dec 9, 2022 04:43
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What are some examples of attempted functional in situ modifications of equipment soldiers have made that ended up wide spread? The only one I know about is dudes putting extra crap on tanks in an attempt to uparmor them.
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Dec 22, 2022 21:00
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SeanBeansShako posted:Improvised sandbag or bed sheet covers for steel helmets when in not enough supply. Explain that second bit, because how is a bed sheet cover gonna replace a steel helmet.
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Dec 23, 2022 07:14
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Fuschia tude posted:Ersatzminister Fenstersturz von Platt is the plucky bureaucrat protagonist of my WWI alt-history novel I'd read it. SeanBeansShako posted:Obviously it was helmet covers yes. Durp. Although the idea of a soldier going "poo poo I don't have a helmet" and fashioning some sort of ersatz protection via sandbag and some rope was somehow very believable to me.
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Dec 23, 2022 18:06
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Anyonr want to knowledge dump what the ground level ww2 north africa campaign looks like? I assume in desert climates youre pretty much stuck maneuvering to either protect sources of water or assaulting towards sources of water.
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Dec 29, 2022 04:20
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Whats the SOP for reintegrating naval dudes who get their boat blown up? Like say the carrier uss john goatse gets torpedoed and a large amount of the crew are saved and end back up in friendly hands what happens to dudes who could physically return to duty? Do they get a physocal and a bunch of time off? Do you get "survived an explosion" bonus? Does everyone get spread among the fleet or do they keep the crew, fill in the blanks, and give them a new ship?
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Dec 30, 2022 20:37
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Would these kinds of muzzle loaded pistols be good as basically a parrying weapon? Id imagine theyd be fine since theyre made out of a chunk of wood and some metal so youd basically have a club of wood after shooting some jerk in the stomach. Of course I could be wrong and theyre terrible for that or too expensive to be used like that. I mean ive seen old italian dueling manuals expousing the use of capes so i'd imagine the pistol would be as good.
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Jan 5, 2023 19:00
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Speaking of cav, horses are skittish creatures who are prone to killing themselves in ridiculous fashion even in the best of time. How do you train them to have a mini explosion go off right over their head?
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Jan 6, 2023 16:45
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A one stroke penalty for a bombing raid seems kinda harsh.
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Jan 8, 2023 19:54
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What does the defense of Taiwan look like in a theoretical invasion by the PRC? Not that I suspect anyone is privy to high level intelligence or whatever, but notionally from public sources is the ROC assuming that the US will come to the rescue and their defenses and such are a delaying tactic till US PACOM can roll in and do something or is every large enough beach mined to the gills and the island itself is littered with bunkers, caves, air defenses, and such that they are going with the idea they could hold the island from air and sea assault.
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Feb 28, 2023 19:56
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Cessna posted:Xi Jinping alt account spotted. If I was Xi Jinping, I would not lower myself to post in SomethingAwful. I would tell my intelligence apparatus to do that.
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Feb 28, 2023 20:09
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zoux posted:The cold war thread in TFR (?) regularly debates this issue, I'd ask there or read some of the old conversations about them (they happen monthly) Think I'll check it out. Thanks! The question I was trying to get at was on a continuum of "try to cross this line and find out" is it France/Belgium or Korean DMZ.
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Feb 28, 2023 20:16
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How wide spread where the issuing of hand thrown anti-tank grenades in WW2 such as the hawkins grenade, panzerknacker, etc?
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Apr 1, 2023 18:46
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I saw a british world war 2 training video, the gist of which was "If you're being strafed by a plane everyone get down and start volley firing at it". Instead of in the case of the video seeking cover in the densely wooded area five feet to their side. Is doing that really gonna be effective? Even if it is, is downing one plane and maybe one pilot worth your company taking some amount of MG fire and casualties? is a pilot even gonna notice they're taking shots unless they actually get hit in a vital area?
Defenestrategy fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jun 5, 2023 |
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Jun 5, 2023 17:58
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 18:30 |
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How common is straffing runs on infantry between WW2 and Vietnam. I'd assume that a plane would have a hard time acquiring targets that aren't either in vehicles or in prepared positions without advanced sights, so I'd assume a gun run on dudes walking around on patrol or advancing to a position on foot would be fairly rare.
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Jul 6, 2023 17:52
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