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There was a Leyte Gulf derail in the GiP Ukraine thread and I was recommended to cross-post this here:bees everywhere posted:I know it has nothing to do with Ukraine but I have enjoyed the Leyte Gulf chat. In case anyone is interested, my grandpa was on the USS Louisville (heavy cruiser and Oldendorf's flagship at Surigao Strait). After he passed away I was given a CD with a digital "cruise book" that was supposedly put together by the crew after the war. I figured a few of you would be interested so I took some screenshots from the relevant chapters and posted them here (imgur) edit: I'll post one more chapter since it's Memorial Day Weekend and I'm thinking about the old man, this is the chapter immediately following Surigao Strait: Kamikaze  (pictures of KIA/WIA)
bees everywhere fucked around with this message at 03:11 on May 28, 2023 |
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May 28, 2023 02:35
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 10:35 |
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Tomn posted:Not strictly military history per se but I figured this might be a good place to ask. For a few years I was the guy stuck with writing the operations orders and so I came to learn a lot about the military decision-making process. In my experience, there is a lot of careful attention paid to being extremely clear and concise. Certain words have a very strict doctrinal definition (especially any kind of "task") so those words are chosen carefully. The best-written plans are those that issue a clear task & purpose to all while giving subordinate units enough time and autonomy to make their own effective plans and conduct rehearsals at different levels.
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Jun 4, 2023 18:37
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As an 11B we were always taught that the purpose of our hand-to-hand combat training (which was mostly BJJ with a dash of bayonet/knife training) was so that we could hold the enemy down until backup arrived with a real weapon to finish them off or capture them. I only ever met 1 person who actually needed to use this training and that was exactly what happened to him.
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Jan 15, 2024 18:38
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Euchre is also big in the Cincinnati/NKY area. Spades is still the card game of choice in the US Army since WW2.
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Jan 21, 2024 18:12
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D-Pad posted:Really liking the thread title considering I just had a conversation with my mom last night about whether my elderly father still has 50lbs+ of gunpowder stored haphazardly in a mystery location in one of the packed to the ceiling storage sheds from when he used to be big into reloading and whether I might blow myself to bits when he dies and I have to clean those sheds out. Just make sure it's only gunpowder and not TNT, since TNT will actually become volatile and touch-sensitive if it hasn't been stored properly and starts to sweat out nitroglycerin. edit: relevant clip from Lost https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgo5c1FgPMk&t=64s bees everywhere fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 22:59
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Benagain posted:Since we're talking about sight lines one of my favorite memories is from a trip to Ireland. I visited castle ruins on a rainy day and had the place to myself for an hour and a half, and the castle nerd kid in me got to geek out over how awesome it was to be able to stand and see how each gatehouse over watched the previous one, how the approach meant attackers were exposed to as much fire as possible, all that cool stuff. This reminded me about seeing the old destroyed Soviet tanks in the mountains in northern Afghanistan. There were quite a lot of them and in some places there were still mujahideen fighting positions carved into the ridge lines. It felt like going to a US civil war battlefield and seeing horse skeletons right where they fell. There was one particular mountain road that we drove through where it was obvious that the Soviets were just completely hosed due to the way the road winded up the mountain, back and forth leading into a saddle with two hilltops overlooking it. Driving up that road would have exposed them to crossfire from both hilltops in a compact area with absolutely zero cover. At the top, the road itself became terrifying since it was almost too narrow to drive on with a steep vertical cliff leading down into the valley. At the bottom of the valley there were probably a dozen tanks still sitting there, picked clean of valuable metals long ago but too heavy to move what remains, so they've become elaborate tombstones, almost like a sunken warship.
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Apr 19, 2024 14:59
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Chamale posted:The protagonist of Come And See was played by a 14-year-old, Aleksei Kravchenko. He suffered PTSD and his hair turned grey. He went on to get a degree in theater but didn't appear in another movie until he was 30. I don't know about PTSD but the grey hair thing is an urban legend according to wiki: quote:Contrary to what some rumors suggest, though, Kravchenko's hair did not turn permanently grey. In fact, a special Silber Interference Grease-Paint, alongside a thin layer of actual silver, was used to dye his hair. This made it difficult to get it back to normal, so Kravchenko had to live with his hair like this for some time after shooting the film. Fun fact, Kravchenko also played a Soviet soldier in the 2019 film The Painted Bird, which has a similar plot to Come and See. That film also has Barry Pepper playing a sniper, similar to his role in Saving Private Ryan.
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May 16, 2024 20:30
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 10:35 |
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Cessna posted:if you've ever spent time on a military base you know weird sex / relationship stuff goes down. Not exactly milhist but now I need to share my anecdote about this because it was one of the weirdest things that ever happened to me and it cracks me up whenever I remember it. I was an operations NCO at the BN level and one time we had a compliance inspection coming from the brigade level, I had several additional duties so it was very busy for me. For the training inspection, they sent some gruff, no-nonsense NCO with zero sense of humor and a stick up his rear end. I had a feeling he was going to ding me for absolutely everything he could so I did my best to shmooze him. When he went to type up his report, our internet went down at BN, so I invited him back to my place for lunch, he could use my internet to finish his slides. He said that's a great idea so we left. I gave myself a pat on the back, thinking this was turning out well. As soon as we got there, I gave him my desk and asked if he would like a coffee. He started typing away, so I brewed the coffee and brought it into the room. Immediately I noticed two things, 1 he is on my PC and not his NIPR laptop, 2 he is on adult friend finder and there is a live stream of a woman masturbating on my monitor. I said "well that's a pretty lady" and he started going on and on about how him and his wife were into swinging. He spent the next 45 minutes telling me about swinging clubs and giving me a VERY DETAILED overview about the swinging culture on the base. He never did his slides and he wouldn't shut up about it until we got back to BN. After that, he immediately turned back into a gruff a-hole and barely spoke to me ever again. But he did give us a good review to the Colonel, so I guess my plan worked out.
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May 17, 2024 17:27
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