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Trin Tragula posted:I'd also like to encourage all the lurkers who feel intimidated by big hulking megathreads to get stuck in and just ask whatever's on your mind about military history. Okay. So, I've read that in the eighteenth century infantry were able to repel cavalry without having to form a square most of the time unlike in the Napoleonic Wars. More broadly from the Pike & Shot era through to the Napoleonic the efficacy of shock cavalry seems to have waxed and waned repeatedly. At the beginning of the Italian Wars gendarmes and other armored heavy shock cavalry were still really effective, then their usefulness seems to decline until the 30 Years War when the Swedes are credited with bring in more aggressive cavalry tactics (although they probably learned those from the Poles) so that for most of the wars of Louis XIV cavalry formed much larger and more important parts of the armies than they had at the beginning of the 17th century, so much so that the ratio of pikes to handguns reversed itself so that there were more pikemen in armies too. Then at some point in the 18th century shock cavalry seems to have faded in prominence once again, until Frederick the Great retrained his cavalry after the first two Silesian wars which ultimately seems to have lead to far more aggressive and effective cavalry during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. So I was hoping that people more knowledgeable could tell me more/correct my misconceptions.
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Dec 7, 2020 03:00
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Thomamelas posted:The French designed for endurance. Almost as fast as the Dutch but they tended to be less seaworthy, but with much greater endurance. They were built to deploy out to French colonies with less support expected. What does endurance mean in this context? More space to store wine?
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Dec 7, 2020 07:15
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I think they actively recruited ex-Gestapo. But I can’t remember where I heard that so take it with a grain of salt.
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Dec 7, 2020 22:20
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1. Did the Swedes reintroduce shock tactics to cavalry in the 30 Years War, was there already a transition going on, or is the use of the caracole and similar tactics overstated so there wasn't much a decline in the first place? 2. Did the ratio of cavalry to infantry in armies increase throughout the 17th century such that during the wars of Louis XIV armies had as much or greater numbers of cavalry than infantry, and if so why did it? 3. If so how did infantry react to these changes, either in tactics or composition? 4. Was there a regression of cavalry tactics in the 18th century, where they became less aggressive again? 5. How did 18th century infantry repel cavalry attacks if they very rarely if ever formed into squares? 6. If so, how did Napoleonic cavalry (and infantry) tactics evolve to make infantry form into squares far more frequently than in the preceding century?
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Dec 8, 2020 06:01
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HEY GUNS posted:in the first place i want you to stop thinking in terms of "regress" and "progress." Most of the sources I've read that discuss the topic seem biased towards the idea that cavalry should be charging the enemy to deliver a "decisive" blow instead of running around shooting at them, and I forgot to put quotations around things like regression. It's why I wanted clarification because the biases seemed so clearly coming through from the authors that I wanted verification from the thread. People really seem to hate the idea of cavalry shooting at the enemy then retreating to reload for some reason.
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Dec 8, 2020 07:14
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Comstar posted:What made the 16th;/17th cavalry actually use pistols or carbines and have any effect when the Napoleonic ones nearly gave up on them for not actually hitting with them? Pistols were useful in the 16th/17th century as anti-cavalry weapons. They were basically improved lances, with better range and armor penetration as a trade off for having to aim and reload them. Against infantry they weren't as effective because a musket has better range and armor penetration than a pistol, and the infantry are probably not going to be as heavily armored anyway. As for why they didn't use them much by the Napoleonic Wars I'm not so sure. I think they would still fire them with a charge at least.
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Dec 8, 2020 09:54
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Charging home with the sabre usually involves substantial reforming and you should shoot at the other dudes on your way in, so yeah, you should have a pistol. Napoleonic cav carried pistols. Your primary way that you are supposed to be decisive on the battlefield may be the sword but that is not the majority of the work that the cavalryman does. It's almost all picquet, outpost, and recon. Guns are very convenient for this purpose. Would they be facing other cavalry more often while performing picquet, outpost, and recon, or infantry? Comstar posted:The French per-revolution had some bad cavalry. I have read that one of the reasons they changed to heavy cavalry charging instead of using pistols was previously they would ride up, shoot their guns at 10 feet, miss competently with every shot, and then get charged while trying to reload. One of the reasons for Napoleon's success I think was how he inherited a new tactical theory that had been built up after the 7 years war. Was it just don't reload in front of the enemy? I've read that Frederick the Great retrained his cavalry after the War fo the Austrian Succession but from what to what I don't know. Did the Prussians influence French development? KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Arguably Cromwellian horse was OK because it was drawn from non-traditional British Cav sources. What was so OK about Cromwellian cavalry? Were they just so good due to being members of the elect? ChubbyChecker posted:Caracole was a useful tactic because only part of the infantry was equipped with muskets, and the og muskets had a slow rate of fire. When armies started to use faster firing muskets and more musketeers its effectiveness diminished. And Swedish cavalry didn't charge intact infantry formations, they used musketeers and lighter field guns to support their cavalry charges. Caracole seems to me to be the gunpowder equivalent of horse archers riding around an enemy shooting arrows at them, and like horse archers their biggest weakness was an enemy armed with superior ranged weapons. ChubbyChecker posted:The Polish infantry wasn't very good, because the Polish nobility didn't want to pay taxes for it, partially because that would have helped the king. They also saw the proper use of infantry differently. The Poles and Russians adopted pikes later then other European armies, but they were enthusiastic adopters of guns. They saw infantry as support for the cavalry, so they'd usually have the infantry entrench in a good position and shoot at any enemies that got close while the cavalry reformed behind them. Consequently infantry made up a much smaller proportion of their armies since cavalry was the dominant branch. As infantry got better at fighting cavalry coped by trying to reform along Western lines. Russia succeeded but Poland didn't.
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Dec 9, 2020 01:59
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ChubbyChecker posted:The quality of Polish cavalry stayed quite good even after there wasn't an independent Polish state. And the lancers even had somewhat of a renaissance during and after the Napoleonic wars because of the Polish uhlans. Ugh. I meant to say they reformed their militaries along western lines, not just their cavalry. And yeah, Polish lancers were so good everyone else copied them down to the uniforms, a lot like the Hussars.
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Dec 9, 2020 04:56
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The Northern Wars 1558-1721 by Robert I. Frost is a pretty good book that deals with state and military evolution in Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and Russia. It's especially interesting because it tries to counter a lot of conventional wisdom about things like the failure of Poland as well as the general backwardness of Eastern Europe. It's what got me curious about the received wisdom of things like the caracole. It also covers things like the development of Sweden's conscription system and military evolution.
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Dec 9, 2020 20:50
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HEY GUNS posted:Cavalry is prestgious in this order: Lancers; Cuirassiers; Arquebusiers; That light cav everyone who isn't from the Balkans call Croats; Dragoons. Where do Hussars fit in this, and what distinguishes an Arquebusier from a Dragoon?
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Dec 9, 2020 21:57
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HEY GUNS posted:wrong politcal entity; i study germans. also what we translate as lance is a very long rapier-lance hybrid called a koncerz. It was developed as a pikeman killer. Pike destroyer doctrine. I thought the Winged Hussars used really long, hollow lances to outrange pikes.
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Dec 10, 2020 00:52
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Can someone explain the British 77mm HV gun to me? I've read the wikipedia article about it several times but I can't wrap my head around it.
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Dec 10, 2020 04:07
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Gaius Marius posted:Everything in german is named that way though. They have no sense of style or elegance for naming. I'm no expert but I think the German language has more than one word.
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Dec 10, 2020 09:33
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When did over engineering become a problem for the Germans? Was it the Nazi's fault, or did it happen earlier?
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Dec 11, 2020 01:27
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HEY GUNS posted:Earlier. You will never be as happy or as profoundly at peace as a german contemplating a Mechanism Someone, please post pictures of over engineered sharpened sticks.
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Dec 11, 2020 02:22
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Chamale posted:
No wonder the Romans lost at Teutoburg.
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Dec 11, 2020 02:49
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If you could somehow work in Xerxes watching his fleet get destroyed at Salamis that'd be pretty cool.
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Dec 11, 2020 08:00
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In the previous thread someone mentioned the Whitworth rifle. Wikipedia says that polygonal rifling predates Whitworth but that it fell out of favor until he seems to have reintroduced it. 1. Did Whitworth create or reintroduce polygonal rifling? 2. If he reintroduced it why did it fall out of favor in the first place?
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Dec 12, 2020 03:13
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ulmont posted:Square bullets were considered to be more damaging at the time or at least by the inventor. Imagine the power a weaponized Rubik's Cube would possess.
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Dec 12, 2020 07:30
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This article somewhat answers the question I had regarding the rare use of infantry squares to fight off cavalry during the 18th century. It seems that armies would often be formed into what was essentially a giant rectangle, with grenadiers filling in the gaps between two main lines of infantry. Grenadiers were also deployed at the flanks of battalions, where they could be relied on to wheel around to better fire on the flanks of an enemy when possible so it seems that they were regarded as more reliable units who could perform more complex roles even though they no longer used grenades or were otherwise equipped differently than line infantry.
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Dec 12, 2020 23:34
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ChubbyChecker posted:That link is a pro-click for people interested in 18th c. tactics. Indeed. Everyone should stop relitigating the morality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and instead talk about the morality of platoon fire and oblique order.
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Dec 13, 2020 20:13
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bewbies posted:why did the dude have a live 203 round at the ntc? Attempted heroic sacrifice.
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Dec 14, 2020 02:38
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Wasn't the US planning to air drop herbicide on Japan to destroy their rice crops?
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Dec 14, 2020 22:55
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BalloonFish posted:This bit reminded me of something I read recently: Source?
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Dec 16, 2020 20:54
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I read somewhere that the reason why the French didn't have a reserve that could have responded to the Germans coming through the Ardennes was that they had deployed a huge number of divisions in the Maginot line, around 50% of them (or maybe it was 50 divisions total, I'm not exactly sure). Was it true that the French over deployed soldiers in the Maginot line, and would they have been able to form a reserve large enough to make a difference if they hadn't?
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Dec 17, 2020 02:40
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I tracked down the quote. It's from A World at Arms by Gerhard Weinberg. He says: "General Gamelin, who both insisted, against the advice of his generals, that the main French reserve, the French 7th Army, be assigned to the rush into Holland at the extreme left flank, and also that half of the total French forces available be assigned to the Maginot Line, so that there were no readily available reserves of any kind". pg. 124-5 So if the French hadn't over committed to the attack in the Low Countries they'd have had an army in reserve. According to Wikipedia it had three infantry divisions, two motorized divisions, and one light mechanized division. So it probably wouldn't do much against an Army Group assuming it could have responded in time. Jobbo_Fett posted:Even if the French over-allocated at Maginot, it didn't prevent breakthroughs of the Maginot Line, whether before or after the secret talks of capitulation had started. They started pulling units away from it to make up their losses in Belgium so by the time the Germans attacked it might have been severely undermanned.
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Dec 17, 2020 04:21
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Xiahou Dun posted:Could I get this in French? If it's reasonably practical I like to read the original for nuance. There isn't a footnote, nor is it attributed to anyone so I don't know the precise source for where Weinberg got his info there. It was partly why I asked about it, since I didn't recall any specific source being mentioned. If you want to read the book, I'm using the paperback edition of A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II New Edition by Gerhard L. Weinberg.
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Dec 17, 2020 06:05
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feedmegin posted:I thought the literal point of the Maginot line was to save on manpower (which France was indeed short on in this period thanks to demographic reasons if nothing else). That was a factor. There was a pre WW1 booklet about how the French need to increase their birthrate to avoid being outnumbered by the Germans. It had two Frenchmen fighting five Germans, which were the comparative birthrates at the time, on the cover. Are there any good books or other sources that talk about how France's slow demographic growth effected it in the 19th and early 20th century?
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Dec 17, 2020 18:53
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OctaviusBeaver posted:The Germans had an absolutely massive column of vehicles and troops heading into the Ardennes. Hundreds of miles long IIRC attacking at a very narrow point. As it happened the French weren't expecting it but if they had a couple of divisions in the right spot it could easily have caused the worlds biggest traffic jam, and if they didn't keep air supremacy it would be a massive target. They only had a few months of fuel reserves (~6 months) which eased after they beat France since Romania fell into their orbit, but if France holds out then Germany is on a ticking clock. The French and British can import whatever raw materials they need from the rest of the world and can buy manufactured goods from the US while Germany can't. I think if France survived the initial confrontation then their chances started looking quite good in the medium to long term. If the Soviet Union wanted to it could prop up Germany for awhile, at least regarding raw materials. Then you have the possibility that the Soviets will be dragged into the war directly. The French considered bombing the Baku oilfields but the British shot that idea down.
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Dec 18, 2020 02:21
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Wasn’t there still fighting going on in Norway when France fell?
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Dec 18, 2020 03:19
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Wasn't cavalry used throughout the war on the Eastern Front in WW1? Were they anything other than mounted infantry by the end?
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Dec 18, 2020 06:33
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Cessna posted:Yes. Cavalry was also used by the Germans in the invasion of Poland in 1939 - they had more cavalry than the Polish. It was used in France in 1940, it was used extensively on the Russian Front of WWII, etc., etc. Would cavalry have been useful on the Western front to exploit a breakthrough? Were there a lot of cavalry units sitting around waiting in 1918, or had they been dissolved? My great grandfather joined the Canadian cavalry in 1916, so I've always wondered if he was very smart or very stupid for doing so.
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Dec 18, 2020 18:17
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Kemper Boyd posted:Later on of course Finland itself created ideas of doing a colonialism themselves in the parts of Karelia which remained under Soviet rule, but that's another story. Surely they were merely trying to liberate the inhabitants of Very-East Finland, who were of course entirely indistinguishably Finnish from the rest of Finland's Finnish people.
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Dec 21, 2020 03:04
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Why do tanks have smoothbore guns?Cessna posted:Of all the strategies to push, he could have done a lot worse. "Humans have a preset kill limit..."
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Dec 24, 2020 00:40
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Ensign Expendable posted:Two is that HEAT jets decrease in effectiveness greatly if the projectile is spinning. There are two ways to go about correcting this, one is to make a rotating sleeve that engages with the rifling while the warhead stays still, the other is to just go smoothbore and stabilize the projectile with fins. Turns out fins are pretty good for stabilization, just as good as rifling, so kinetic penetrators also became finned. Are fins in general just as good as rifling, or are they as good once a certain amount of speed, pressure, or whatever is achieved? bewbies posted:I didn't read the quoted part first and thought this was a curiously aggressive response to a fairly benign post Same.
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Dec 24, 2020 02:20
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Didn't the British have a sabot round they used during WWII that had some problems? What were they and how were they corrected?
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Dec 24, 2020 05:13
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The Battle of Bladensburg is definitely the greatest American military disaster, since the Canadians keep claiming to have burned down the White House.
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Dec 24, 2020 09:32
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Trin Tragula posted:Far preferable to being in the PBI, let me assure you What is the PBI? I'm sure you don't mean the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, or Palm Beach International (Airport).
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Dec 26, 2020 23:38
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A fact that seems to pop up a lot is that the Germans thought that the Russians were going to be unbeatable by 1916, and therefore they needed to go to war as soon as possible while they still had the advantage. Where does this fact come from, and is there any truth to it?
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Dec 27, 2020 04:45
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Xiahou Dun posted:I think this question is ill-phrased because it has two parts : what the Germans thought and what was most likely to happen. The former is theoretically possible to determine assuming you can find, say, a bunch of diary entries by, like, everyone in German high command going, "Yeah, we deffo want to do X," and you have [reasons] to trust that they're accurate ; the latter rapidly gets into weird counterfactuals and you're talking about what various countries are like after multiple years of some of the most brutal war ever done in human history. The reason the question is in two parts is because I've seen the specific year of 1916 pop up often enough that there's probably some source that they get it from, but I can't find it so I don't know how authoritative it is, or if it's even contemporary. As for second part, I asked because I want to know if there's any hard data that could validate the fears of 1916 being some kind of a turning point. Was there a certain amount of railroad tracks that would'v been built, a certain number of artillery pieces that would've been produced, or just that the population would have grown enough to somehow be insurmountable for Germany? Assuming the German General Staff was afraid of how powerful Russia was growing, what was the metric they used to quantify its power? Ultimately, yes there's more to warfare than material superiority, but it certainly helps so I don't think it'd just devolve into counterfactuals about gay, black, Imperial Russia.
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Dec 27, 2020 05:50
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