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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Modern torpedoes, sure, I can see how armor would provide minimal assistance against having your back broken (at best some amount of stiffening, but nowhere near enough). Mines I don't really have a feel for, but I'd guess that the same defenses that were used in WW2 against contemporary torpedoes (i.e. torpedo bulges) would have some effectiveness against mines. Which is to say, not a lot, but potentially enough to salvage your ship instead of seeing it get sunk. Missiles...how are they significantly different from a shell strike, in terms of how they deal their damage? Mid-century steel armor was very effective, and still would be against a variety of threats. Every WWII-era battleship would absolutely laugh off the USN's current anti-ship missile (except maybe Bismarck's amusingly thin deck armor? It'd probably still be fine). This doesn't really tell the whole story, however. First, battleship development worldwide came to a halt right about the time shaped charges became a thing. As such, battleships were protected almost entirely with homogenous steel armor. This worked fine against giant battleship shells, but a modern shaped charge is a different matter...even the teeny adorable Hellfire can (probably) punch through any naval steel armor plate ever fielded, including Yamato's turret face. This brings up an alt history where battleships are built with composite armor, a thing we probably needed but will never have. The second thing is that it is relatively easy to scale up the size of an anti-ship missile, whereas it is not easy at all to scale up the protection scheme of a battleship. Battleships fared better when you had to upgrade an all-gun armament -- as that essentially took a whole new generation of ships -- but there isn't much any passive protection scheme can do to defend against a plane-sized ASM flying at Mach 4. The only reason (everyone but the Russians) don't field missiles like that is there aren't any targets that would require them. As for a modern heavyweight torpedo vs a WWII BB, the good ones had REALLY good underwater protection, even under the keel. Iowa, for instance, was designed to withstand naval mine detonations under the keel from mine systems with many times the explosive power of a Mk48. This isn't to say that you couldn't sink or cripple one with modern torpedoes as you most definitely could, but there seems to be a widespread belief that an Iowa or Yamato would look wind up like one of those decomissioned frigates at RIMPAC after eating one torpedo.
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Dec 7, 2020 15:18
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Memento posted:It's not really a military history question, per se, but uhh, how big is the incoming SecDef Lloyd Austin? He isn't as big as that pic suggests but he is indeed very big; I'd guess 6'5" or 6"6". I met/briefed him in...late 2005 I think...15 years ago, lol. He seemed incredibly sharp and was very soft-spoken. That being said I'd rather not see career military officers in that position even if it would be great to finally have a SECDEF who isn't a middle-aged white guy.
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Dec 9, 2020 15:28
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remember during iteration 54 of the atomic attacks debate when some guy was arguing they should used bombers to drop food instead of bombs? that was cool
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Dec 13, 2020 05:24
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Related to atomic attacks discussion: My own thoughts about Operation Starvation is that it likely would have ended the war sooner had it been implemented as soon as the Marianas were available as bomber bases. It also would have killed way, way, way more Japanese civilians than the firebombing/atomic attacks would have. Had they gone down that route, how do you think modern folk would think of it as compared to the atomic attacks?
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Dec 13, 2020 05:30
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why did the dude have a live 203 round at the ntc?
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Dec 14, 2020 01:07
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I'm still kind of amazed that out of nowhere prager U made the single best "causes of the civil war" video of all time
bewbies fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Dec 15, 2020 |
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Dec 15, 2020 02:22
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I watched Midway this week and was geniuinely surprised how hard they seem to have tried to make it historically accurate. It was still a pretty bad movie but I appreciated the effort
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Dec 18, 2020 20:34
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Patrick Spens posted:Why do you open your mouth? I didn't read the quoted part first and thought this was a curiously aggressive response to a fairly benign post
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Dec 24, 2020 01:15
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We all had to wear earplug cases attached to our BDU collars, with our battalion DUI shoved into it. Note: everyone I served with has hearing damage. I'm actually alright, I have no idea how. edit - everyone I know got a small check from a variety of lawsuits about hearing pro. I'm still doing ok over here
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Dec 26, 2020 07:01
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Lawman 0 posted:So it really was a forgone conclusion? The RN's task force commander definitely didn't think so. Argentine planes landed thirteen bombs that didn't detonate. There's no excuse for that kind of failure rate, but better weapons system maintenance from the Argentines certainly would have put the task force at major risk.
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Dec 30, 2020 20:15
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FrangibleCover posted:Fuzing, rather than maintenance, but yes. However, the Argentinians can sink every frigate in the world if they're not actually hitting the landing ships. I mean, I guess, but an amphibious operation is going to have a really tough time succeeding if its naval support has to withdraw and/or is otherwise neutralized. I guess I just don't see the Falklands as anything close to a fait accompli. Like, that many bomb strikes were sufficient to effectively end Kido Butai. I don't see why the RN's TF would have fared much better had the Argentines gotten the bombs right.
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Dec 31, 2020 14:32
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reading about the Battle of Okinawa this weekend it seems like the 47 mm anti-tank guns took a ferocious toll on late war shermans. did those things punch way above their weight performance wise somehow? it seems like they were a ways behind behind contemporary stuff in the ETO but they sure did the job there.
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Jan 4, 2021 04:33
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PeterCat posted:Here is a 90 page study of the evolution of airborne units after 1945. Its conclusion is that airborne units existing have more to do with political connections than practical capability. It's extra fun to see all the comments on the website from offended paratroopers. this owns what's the best historical analogue to modern paratroopers
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Jan 13, 2021 01:36
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FastestGunAlive posted:From the marine corps perspective I disagree Mustang posted:I'm coming at it from an Army perspective I loved this conversation. Both of you are right, you're just talking about different things: reconnaissance as tactical task, versus reconnaissance as a mission. Recon as a task isn't going anywhere...every soldier is a sensor and all that. I'd even argue that this idea of EVERYONE being a sensor is going to become more pronounced as network backbones improve and sensor technologies are made available to more and more individual troops. Reconnaissance as a mission, however, is definitely trending towards more specialized units. With all of the newer systems and capabilities recon formations have to manage, this is really a necessity...you can't just plop some random 11 series down in a modern scout vehicle or give him modern ISR gear and expect him to have a clue how it works, which is very different from previous generations.
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Jan 14, 2021 15:37
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Do modern National Guard units have any direct lineage/connection to the various state regiments that fought the civil war? Has there been a 20th Maine or w/e in existed since 186x or did those regiments all get disbanded before the idea of the National Guard came around? This has made me realize I have no idea when the National Guard was even created. A lot of them do! One good example off the top of my head is that most famous of Union regiments, the 69th New York of the ACW's Irish Brigade. They're even still flagged as the 69th. The National Guard claims its lineage all the way back to the earliest colonial militias, so pretty much straight back to the early 17th century. There's still a handful of units with continuous flags back to the colonial era. Civil War volunteer regiments were a bit different -- they were raised by states specifically as regiments of volunteers, then sent off to fight for the federal army. Some had backgrounds as NG/militia units, but it was a slightly different thing. The 69th is a good example: it existed as a militia unit before the war, but was activated and called up as a volunteer regiment right after things kicked off.
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Jan 20, 2021 19:37
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do you ever watch a thing, and afterwards, wonder what the gently caress was that i just watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7F5tef1ACE is one of those things
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Jan 20, 2021 21:03
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Ty Seidule, who some of you might remember from the "prageru" video about slavery and the Civil War that came out of nowhere to piss of a bunch of people a few years ago, has written a book that seems likely to do much of the same and is probably very much worth checking out. The Amazon reviews are also definitely worth checking out. "Lee did more for the reunification of this country than anyone else in history."
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Feb 3, 2021 20:21
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:The confederate generals in the west always get such a bad rap-were they really that awful or were they just getting whipped by Grant and Sherman for 2 years before Lee started getting beaten by them? Was Albert Sydney Johnston really that great and would he have done anything differently if he hadn’t died at Shiloh? The Confederacy’s geographic/strategic situation in the the west seems pretty unenviable, especially compared to the fairly favorable situation they had in Virginia. They weren't in a great spot, but I wouldn't say it was untenable. There were basically three ways into the deep south (we'll use Atlanta as our "deep south" target) from the western side: Nashville --> Chattanooga --> Atlanta (the way they went), Memphis -- Chattanooga -- > Atlanta, and Vicksburg --> Jackson --> Birmingham/Montgomery --> Atlanta. That is a lot of miles to cover, but two armies probably could have done it, especially if they developed interior LOCs. They also had a lot of favorable terrain to make use of, either the mountains and rivers along the TN/GA border, or all of the rough terrain and waterways between Birmingham and Atlanta. If they'd fought a defensive campaign focusing on inflicting casualties in battles and raiding the long and vulnerable Union supply lines, it would have been a serious challenge for the Union armies to get through before their political willpower ran dry. Johnston's approach was probably the closest to this, but...he got fired for having insufficient panache, and indirectly handed the election to Lincoln. It really wasn't possible or smart for the CSA to try and hold any of their coastal cities, lucrative as they were. More and better forts around NO might've helped it stay in Confederate hands a bit longer, but even then, it would've simply been blockaded more enthusiastically. It also wasn't really necessary or even militarily smart to try and hold the Mississippi but it probably wasn't politically feasible to just tell all of the far west they were on their own, and good luck. Although that's essentially what ended up happening in the end.
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Feb 3, 2021 22:35
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Acebuckeye13 posted:I'd argue this is absolutely incorrect. The Mississippi was the single most important trade route on the entire North American continent, and control of the river had a massive impact on both the Confederate and Union economies. It wasn't for nothing that New Orleans was the third largest port in the United States and by far the largest city in the Confederacy (Population 170K in 1860, compared to only 40K in Richmond), and losing it so early in the war was an unfathomable blow. I'm not arguing that it had no value, just that holding it was militarily impossible and thus a huge waste of resources. It might not have been possible politically, but ceding the river and everything west of it would've been a very smart move strategically. Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Yeah it occurred to me that Vicksburg was this huge disaster for the confederacy, but really only because New Orleans and Memphis had fallen a year earlier. Holding those two much more economically, industrially and geographically important cities would mean nobody would have ever heard of Vicksburg. The Union navy could certainly blockade the heck out of the Mississippi as far as international trade went, but for internal trade and movement holding the Mississippi from Memphis to New Orleans would have been huge for the South. Moving stuff...where? If the port of New Orleans is closed off to international shipping, the only thing the river is really good for is moving stuff north and south along the western fringe of the Confederacy. The Confederacy couldn't have accessed the Ohio, and the Mississippi doesn't have a lot of west-running tributaries. It would've been nice to have, but it absolutely wasn't strategically decisive. bewbies fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Feb 4, 2021 |
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Feb 4, 2021 02:51
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Once again you're ignoring the value of closing off the river to the Union. You're literally proposing that best move militarily would have been to improve the enemy logistic network and give up your largest city! Once again, I said that holding the river was a military impossibility, not that doing so would've been a nice thing for the CSA. It should have been clear to all at an early stage that any position that Union gunboats could dominate was not tenable. Obviously, in doing so you concede the river's utility to the enemy, but that's probably a better outcome than losing multiple major battles and tens of thousands of irreplaceable soldiers in order to try and keep it! Also I didn't say the river had no west-running tributaries, just that it didn't have that many, which is a major reason why it wasn't more useful to the CSA. I didn't make a typo, the Arkansas river runs east. It is interesting you bring up the Memphis-Charleston railroad though...it is a great case study of why fighting to keep the river was a dumb idea. The CSA was, in part, fighting to keep the last 10% or so of that line open for business...and made the mistake of engaging an enemy in gunboat and river resupply range in order to do it. It is a perfect example of why fighting an enemy near a river they controlled was a terrible idea. Had that battle occurred somewhere other than the riverbank, Union advantages would have been far less pronounced. I'm curious what you think the real losses were to the CSA when they lost the river. The loss of New Orleans was enormous, but what is your assessment of the river's economic/strategic value once that port was closed off or lost?
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Feb 4, 2021 03:24
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Acebuckeye13 posted:New Orleans was the third largest port in the country, but was functionally useless to the Union so long as the Confederacy controlled at least some part of the river. The longer Vicksburg stands, the longer the Union has to rely on railroads and lesser-developed or navigable waterways to transport food, finished goods, raw materials, and manpower from the Midwest to the East or for export (or vice-versa). The cascading effects are probably incalculable, but they were well understood at the time—which was why the Union spent so much effort and manpower to capture Vicksburg, which involved some insanely risky maneuvers from Grant to succeed. NO as a port was never particularly critical to the Union war effort; taking it or blockading it was much more about the economic damage it did to the south (which as I'm sure we both agree was substantial). Really, once NO fell, a lot of the value of the river to the CSA went with it. I'm sure we agree that denying the river's use to the Union would've been great, but again, not worth the stupendous cost in manpower and material that was spent trying to maintain it. In any case, the Tennessee and particularly the Cumberland rivers ended up being a lot more important to the Union supply effort in the west. I really don't know how much economic value the river had to the north during the war. My impression was that there was comparatively little movement of economic value over the Appalachians, but I've never really read any serious studies to that end. The Mississippi LOC was of course used to sustain the Department of the Gulf, but other than the Red River fiasco, I'm unaware of any major operations that would've made use of the lower Mississippi. Panzeh posted:The dispersed geography combined with the rivers meant that Union numerical superiority counted for more, and Davis couldn't reinforce them. This is absolutely true, which is why I think they should have adopted a strategy that consolidated lines and made best use of interior LOCs. I concede that it might not have been politically feasible but militarily speaking it made a lot more sense. quote:Oh, and abandoning the Mississippi was absolutely not in the cards- in particular, once the river was closed, percussion cap production would taper off, then nose dive as some of the materials needed were mined in Mexico. I've never heard of this -- if true, how did they get percussion caps after the summer of 63? bewbies fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Feb 4, 2021 |
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Feb 4, 2021 16:32
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Panzeh posted:A very aggressive reclaiming of distilleries got enough copper to make caps through 1864. The CSA did manage to find a chemical substitute for the mercury but copper would've still been a problem had the war continued. My recollection was that it was the loss of the copper mines near Chattanooga that really put the CSA in a panic about its copper supply. Do you have some more info on Mexican imports? I'd never heard they were so much more important than the copper basin production. White Coke posted:How important was Kentucky to controlling the Mississippi? I've seen a Lincoln quote about how he needed to have Kentucky in order to win the war, but there are lots of Lincoln "quotes". Didn't they declare neutrality? That portion of the river was one of the most important strategic contests early in the war, though not all of it was in Kentucky proper. Taking Cairo (which on that weird MO/IL/KY border triangle) was one of the most significant (and in my opinion underrated) logistical victories of the war. A HUGE portion of the supplies that would eventually make it down the Cumberland were staged there. The battle at Island 10/New Madrid was another really big deal, it also just sort of got forgotten as Shiloh happened right about the same time. Relating to this discussion, that was probably the point at which everyone should have recognized that traditional riverine forts were completely inadequate to keep modern armored gunboats from doing more or less whatever they wanted, and the end result really foretold exactly what would happen on a much larger scale at Vicksburg the following year. It was also a pretty inspired bit of very early joint warfare.
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Feb 4, 2021 21:25
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The 109 varied from world-beating to competitive throughout the war; the Spitfire was the only other fighter to do this wire to wire for the entire era. The 190 was mostly better than its contemporary 109 equivalent. The DB series engines were the best or near-best inline LC engines throughout the era. The 262, for all its problems, was a remarkable technical achievement and rightly scared the poo poo out of everyone who flew against it. The Ju-88 and its descendants were consistently among the best medium bombers of the era. 88 and Bf-110 (and descendants) night fighters were far and away the most successful types in their respective roles, though a lot of that metric comes down to opportunities. The Flak 18/36 family of guns were consistently excellent in both AA and AT roles throughout the war. I'd argue the Type IX U-boat was the most effective pound-for-pound weapon of the entire war, though serving on one would have sucked serious rear end. Type XXI descendants are still in service, though its service with the Germans was less than spectacular. The Wurzburg radar family were arguably the best systems of their type, and the various tricks and ideas used to try and neutralize them are some of the best stories of the war.
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Feb 17, 2021 22:21
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Cessna posted:If we're comparing German v. Allies designs, the USN's Fleet submarines - Gato and later - were vastly more effective and efficient than the U-boats. What's your metric for this? The U-boats sank a lot more tonnage in a far less permissive environment despite being less than half the displacement of their American equivalents.
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Feb 17, 2021 22:33
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Cessna posted:228 US subs sank 9.8 million tons of ships. (~43K tons per sub) First, a 1:1 comparison isn't really valid. The US fleet boats were mammoth submarines compared to the Type IXs. It is like comparing a cruiser to a battleship. Second, simple tonnage sunk doesn't account for the environment they had to operate in: for the most part, US subs were beating up on a deaf and blind kid, while the U-boats pinned down a substantial portion of the world's naval combat power in the Atlantic. BalloonFish posted:No doubting the Type IX's effectiveness and it was a good design for the use it was intended for and put to. Much better than the old-fashioned and undersized Type VII. But the Type IX was still really just a double-hulled take on submarine design from WW1 and was only slightly bigger than a USN S-boat. The Germans called the Type IX a U-Kreuzer while the USN considered the S-boat barely fit for Pacific service. And the Type IX was much closer to the S-boat in terms of technology than it was to something like a Gato. And none of the Type IXs had properly sorted engines. All true (especially the engines) but the IXs were not designed to fight a Pacific war. The US built subs for its specific operational requirements, the Germans, for theirs. When you account for the relative size/complexity/cost of the two philosophies, the IX made sense for its particular mission, and its simplicity/cheapness was a huge advantage...one which the Germans, as this thread discusses exhaustively, were rarely excited to take advantage of. bewbies fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Feb 17, 2021 |
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Feb 17, 2021 22:48
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Cessna posted:Sorry, I disagree. The US fleet subs sank well over twice the tonnage per sub built. Smaller, shittier subs don't get points because they were smaller and shittier. Agree to disagree! Interesting thought you'd take this position considering your obvious interest in the cost value analysis of WWII equipment. quote:Yes, Allied ASW was much better than Japanese ASW. This doesn't make U-boats better. This is true, but it does impact the effectiveness of the system. In other words, why comparing simple tonnage sunk/boat is not a good methodology.
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Feb 17, 2021 23:02
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Cessna posted:Want me to continue? This is all cool info, but you're really talking past my point. You're absolutely right that American fleet boats were Cadillacs compared to U-boat Fiestas, but that isn't a valid comparison. They're not the same class of vessel. Random googling of some authoritative-looking old forum post suggests a Type IX cost around $1.2 mil in 1943 (using the 1940 RM/$ exchange rate of 2.5). Your old museum boat cost 5 times that. If you're spending that much more per boat, you'd really better be getting a lot more capability. As an admiral or CINC, and knowing that my resources are badly strained, I'd much rather have 5 Type IXs than one Balao. (note: if anyone has any better numbers than what I was able to google I'd love to see them) Anyway, back to my initial point: it is hard to name a WWII-era system that did more than the Type IXs did on a pound-for-pound basis. I am sure that you're right the American boat was nicer, more comfortable, more advanced, better protected, etc, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Aside: the V2/U-boat comparison is pretty telling when it comes to German economic mismanagement. Libluini posted:I think he meant the German Bundesmarine, not whatever ideas the Americans stole for their own designs. I was actually thinking of the Zulu/Whiskey/Romeo boats, although this is another good example. bewbies fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Feb 18, 2021 |
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Feb 18, 2021 02:23
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:What some Type IXs benefitted from was entirely circumstantial. I agree with most of what you're saying, but if the U-boats' success was due entirely to "circumstance" then the same applies -- more prominently -- to US subs. Or really, to any weapons system ever that took advantage of favorable circumstances. Cessna posted:"Ocean going submarines intended to sink enemy ships." By this logic, light cruisers and battleships are directly comparable on a ship-for-ship basis. It doesn't hold water (lol). quote:And, more to the initial point - the German military of WWII has the popular reputation of "quality over quantity." This really was more the point -- that there are several examples of WWII German war gear where this stereotype doesn't apply (ie, Bf-109, Stug III, U-boats, etc). As it happens, these examples were consistently among their most effective systems both tactically and strategically/economically. WWII-era subs in general punched far above their weight, the Type IXs most of all.
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Feb 18, 2021 17:03
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Moderately cool AMA happening over in the otherwise terrible reddit history thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/lrgvep/hi_reddit_im_ty_seidule_historian_army_officer/
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Feb 24, 2021 19:31
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PLA procurement is probably worse and certainly more corrupt than anything in the west despite a highly centralized system. I think it is really more the nature of the business than the politics surrounding it.
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Feb 25, 2021 18:15
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quite sure, yes
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Feb 25, 2021 18:28
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Raenir Salazar posted:We can I imagine I suppose that we can only really observe from the outside and that limits our information; but looking at the equipment the PLA has been fielding and producing, their tanks, afvs, apcs, missile defence, planes, and of course their new ships, doesn't it seem like a functional system though? They seem to be at the least, are making progress in advancing and producing new systems and catching up in capability? I feel like if they were more corrupt or worse, that there should be at least some observable failures? Well, this kind of gets into what actually defines "corruption," but at least insofar as PLA day-to-day and acquisitions go, they're an entirely different order of magnitude from most of the west. To this end, Xi's anti-corruption efforts are in large part taking on the PLA directly, which is really something to watch. . Basically, corruption is baked in to how the PLA does business, and seriously altering that model likely will have significant effects on readiness and acquisitions programs. Insofar as their acquisitions programs go, remember first that many -- if not most -- of their high profile programs are heavily subsidized by industrial espionage, intellectual property theft, and extra- or unlicensed production/modification. That being said, these things and their issues with corruption don't necessarily mean the system isn't functional -- it most definitely is. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it has some significant long-term advantages over western/democratic systems when it comes to acquisitions programs. Namely, external politics and flow of information are largely non-factors.
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Feb 25, 2021 20:16
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Weka posted:The PLA is almost certainly more corrupt than western militaries but I don't know about their procurement process. The article you linked says it's difficult to tell. If you or anyone else had any web based stuff on PRC military procurement, surrounding corruption or not, I'd be very interested. This is a decent quick intro. Establishing the JLSF was a huge first step to reforming their entire acquisitions system, but it is still relatively new and facing a LOT of organizational inertia. They're also seriously doubling down on this idea that civilian organizations have a major role to play in future military tech, which means a more focused partnership between the two halves (they call it "military-civil fusion").
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Feb 26, 2021 15:41
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:Ok. Can I ask a bit more on your thoughts here? It seems like you're taking a very...linear view of warfare. Like, everything is perpetually an offensive or something. Look at an IBCT. They have a lot of trucks, but not enough to haul everyone simultaneously. There are some major tradeoffs here: they're easier to deploy strategically and lighter to sustain, but obviously do not have the tactical mobility of an SBCT or an HBCT. How then would you use an IBCT? In defensive roles, in areas where static position isn't as problematic, in areas where sustainment is challenging, etc etc. Not every military action is a long offensive maneuver. (caveat: the army wants to motorize the IBCTs.) Anyway, I did a lot of ruck marching. Our patrols in OIF/OEF were oftentimes dismounted or partially mounted. Walking places, sometimes carrying a ton of gear, is still a critical aspect of tactical mobility. Having a truck or a helicopter to give you a ride was always preferable, but not always possible.
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Mar 3, 2021 21:51
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The Lone Badger posted:Does the commander at least have a screen which displays the locations of all friendlies and reported locations of all known enemies? The US Army does, it is the amusingly named Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2), which is a subcomponent of Army Battle Command System (ABCS). It integrates both satellite (Blue Force Tracker) and terrestrial radio (EPLRS) into what is supposed to be a single operational picture. The reason I typed that out isn't because anyone might find it interesting (no one finds it interesting) but because these systems are a central part of an emerging tactical problem: our vehicles have all become very loud electronic emitters. In order to fully participate in ABCS, a tank or brad has to put out signals over high-bandwidth terrestrial UHF, satellite, plus good old VHF for old-timey voice comms. As APS systems come on line, they'll have their own fairly substantial RF signature through their radars, all in addition to all the noise and dust and heat that a track always puts out. Also, maybe soldiers haven't turned their cell phones off. Point being, the army is starting to realize this is a huge problem on a battlefield where low observability is very important and so a lot of very tough decisions are coming down the pipe as to the value of SA versus the value of low observability.
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Mar 5, 2021 16:48
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yall should load it into CMANO and have at. I think IJN wins
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Mar 9, 2021 20:55
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I've never seen generation kill, but I thought jarhead was a pretty realistic war movie. the hurt locker made me more mad then any movie I've ever seen before or since and I maintain an active vendetta against the "director" and "screenwriter" I was deployed for a total of ~36 of 60 months, which didn't seem ridiculous at the time, but now looking back it seems absolutely ludicrous.
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Mar 22, 2021 01:54
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Count Roland posted:I'd also like to learn more about the sort of warfare featured on the show. I'm thinking of one scene to use as an example. The humvees were going down a road and were ambushed by a zeus (AA gun) firing on them. They immediately stopped and leapt off their vehicles into a ditch, before finding the zeus and taking it out with an airstrike. Why did they stop, and why did they leave their vehicles? In other parts of the show they engage the enemy from inside their humvees. I'm curious about these sort of tactical procedures and decisions involved when fighting with unarmoured vehicles. The vast majority of ambushes in Iraq were initiated by IEDs, but you'd do more or less the same thing if you were targeted by a heavy automatic weapon or indirect fire or had an impassable obstacle; anything that forces the convoy to stop. The basic react-to-contact on ambush for all non-armored vehicles in that scenario is to do a "herringbone" maneuver (basically you just pull off the road in the opposite direction of the truck in front of you) while escort vehicles or gun trucks move to positions where they can put some fire on whoever is shooting at you. If a vehicle was disabled, you then dismounted, got to cover, and eventually created a secure perimeter to work on the affected vehicle(s), dealing with casualties or prepping to demo it or whatever else needed doing. Air support was usually the go-to fire support option (and years of over-reliance on this seriously atrophied our more traditional fire support capabilities). Frequent convoys had target reference points established for the TACP to use; if you're lucky you might even have a JTAC or FO riding with you. So, as you're clearing and securing the ambush area, they're calling for fire based on need. Something as big as a 23mm gun is a very juicy target, so it'd get vaulted up the targeting priority list. Conversely, if you were under fire but no vehicles were disabled and there weren't any obstacles in your way you'd just roll on through and shoot from your vehicles as required. ChubbyChecker posted:i like a good takedown, what was bad about it? One scene in particular I remember was when they just left the FOB in the middle of the night to go do....something, and while doing so "split up to cover more ground" and basically just ran around the city at night like idiots while out of uniform. It was supposed to be a super tense scene but I was literally laughing at it in the theater which got me a lot of dirty looks. The whole movie was just a nonstop stream of nonsense like that. I'm sure the portrayal of EOD folks was even more appalling to those guys: they're some of the most meticulous and professional people you'll find anywhere (like, to the point of annoyance to everyone else), so portraying them as reckless cowboys was miles off the mark. I don't have any issue with unrealistic war movies in general -- I enjoy Rambo and the like. The thing that really grinds my gears with the hurt locker is how the screenwriter played up his having been embedded with a unit for months and how he was bringing the gritty reality of modern war to the big screen and all this, and then the whole thing they actually made is even less plausible than Rambo. I didn't see the director's next movie but I did see an interview she did with it, wherein she explained "zero dark thirty" is a "military term for 30 minutes after midnight" which, no lady, that isn't what it means.
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Mar 22, 2021 14:21
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The 190F was at least as good if not better in the fighter/bomber role than the P-47 or Typhoon, which is to say it was pretty much as good as it got in that era. Its biggest limitation was its combat radius, which wasn't a huge deal on the Eastern Front, particularly in the strategic situation in which Germany found itself after the F variants hit the ground. It was as fast as anything in the theater on the deck and was thoroughly competent as low altitude fighter once it dropped its bombs. One of the things regularly overlooked was the quality of Wehrmacht air-ground comms; their later airborne radios were the best air-ground sets in the world along with the USN's ARC-5. The 190F's radio set (the amusingly named FuG 16) was a significant-if-not-sexy force multiplier. Also I know I've said this before but close air support by the current definition was really quite rare in WWII. The RAF did it to some degree starting in 1942 and really led the way for the Allies, though that was really more like ground attack suggestions than true CAS. The USAAF didn't get on board with it until at least the summer of 1944 if not later (they didn't use the same frequency bands for air and ground radios before that, which, lol) though the USN/USMC were doing it in the Pacific years earlier. The VVS didn't do CAS at all at any point during the war; they used tactical air power almost exclusively in interdiction roles. bewbies fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Mar 24, 2021 |
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Mar 24, 2021 03:32
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SerCypher posted:So they'd use IL-2s to go after convoys or units in transit, or broadly against an enemy advance rather than get called in to deal with a pesky tank or bunker? Kinda. The VVS would basically send fleets of IL2s (and Pe-2s and Tu-2s and etc) to hit tactical targets of any type at ranges such that didn't have to worry about the proximity of friendly troops. This greatly simplified ground support but limited the meaningful help they could give troops in contact. As an aside, no WWII plane could reliably target a bunker, and tanks were...iffy...at best. There's a lot to suggest the IL-2s biggest wartime contribution was a mix of psychological and inconvenience (ie, forcing movements at night -- which, don't get me wrong, is a really big deal), while the tank-busting records of the western allies has been thoroughly debunked. Rudel claiming like 500 tanks by himself is just lol. Air power was fantastic against crunchies in rear areas on all fronts and by all air forces, but they just didn't have the gear to do precision attacks on hardened things in that era.
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Mar 24, 2021 03:51
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