Milhist Thread: Ok, so get this: we name the army groups 1, 2 and 4...

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Milhist Thread: Ok, so get this: we name the army groups 1, 2 and 4...

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Welp. For once I am up to date with a milhist thread. Briefly.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2020 13:00

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 20:28

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Nessus posted:

This reminds me of the Irish policy regarding downed pilots, which was, broadly, that if they were on a non-combatant mission they would be released, and if they were on a combatant mission they would be interned. This was considerably easier to do for Allied pilots, since they could claim to have gotten lost or perhaps be ferrying planes. This was much harder for the Germans, and so a number of German pilots were hosted (and the Germans were billed).

Folk legend has it that the German pilots were given a five bob note and sent down to the local cinema on the weekends and enjoyed the experience so much that many of them just decided to stay in Kildare after the war. Co-incidentally weekends are when American and British pilots, who were not allowed to mingle with the local population, would "escape" from the Curragh camps and make a run for the border up north.

And while we're on Irish military history, courtesy of someone on Facebook: the Irish Air Corps Apprentice mechanics class of 1970.

Apparently this was taken on their second day at Baldonnel, and not everybody had figured out what cap badges were for. My dad is in the front row, and I am relentlessly giving him poo poo for letting his class look so sloppy.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2021 22:41

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

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.

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/WhenFailureThrives.pdf

https://soldiersystems.net/2021/01/09/when-failure-thrives-institutions-and-the-evolution-of-postwar-airborne-forces/

My favorite:

How could you not post this gem?

comments posted:

Well that shows loud and clear how uneducated you are. First of all, there would be a shock-and-awe style suppression of enemy AAD and C-and-C infrastructure clearing the air for the transports. Then there�s the fact that the troops would jump, assemble and attack at night. And finally, there�s the fact that there�s no faster or better way to get a large number of well-armed troops on the ground a long way from home. Comparing a modern day airborne operation to Market-Garden is like comparing an M1 Abrams to an M3 Grant.

Sure buddy, doing it at night will totally confuse the air defence :allears:

# ¿ Jan 13, 2021 02:14

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

TK-42-1 posted:

What about recon and force recon units? I assume everything they would be designed to do is supplanted by long loiter time UAVs and other remote assets.

That's how you end up blowing up weddings :smith:

# ¿ Jan 13, 2021 19:36

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Mustang posted:

It is definitely not a fundamental task, reconnaissance is performed by dedicated reconnaissance units with their own training pipelines and schooling. However, I do agree with your overall point that there will always be a need for soldiers on the ground conducting reconnaissance.

That's quite a definitive statement to make about the art of "tell me what's over there".

# ¿ Jan 13, 2021 23:24

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

^^^^
Even taking the US 82nd in Saudi Arabia in 1991 as an example, dropping them near a flashpoint forces the decision. Do you want to start that fight too? Probably not really. Iraq running over them means that the next portion of the hypothetical war looks a lot more like 2003 than it ended up actually being in 1991.

Mustang posted:

"Go take that hill"

"Bring me more ammo"

"tell me what's over there"

Sounds simple when reduced down to one sentence but none the less each has numerous manuals telling you how to do it and soldiers that train specifically in those tasks.

Not to mention the unique equipment each unit is fielded with to help them perform those tasks. Just with the recon example, the infantry lack the fancy long range optics that are fielded in large numbers across reconnaissance formations.

You've given the impression with your phrasing in the post I quote that it's a task which non-specialised infantry cannot perform at all, not that it's a task which specialist reconnaissance units are better at.

As was pointed out:

FastestGunAlive posted:

a simple recon patrol by an infantry squad

is in fact a fundamental task of ye olde PBI.

Arquinsiel fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jan 14, 2021

# ¿ Jan 14, 2021 01:06

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Just do like the British and deploy 60 of the Special Boat Squadron to the Mosul area from helicopters in Pinkies and ATV quads, then drive around firing wildly until you have an entire Corps and a bunch of Fedayeen chasing you because someone was 100% sure they were ready to surrender for "reasons". Of course that corps is also now not moving south to deal with either the main or secondary lines of advance, so... mission accomplished? The 5th Corps did eventually surrender too, just six years later! :pseudo:

Then tell nobody about it, let the public be all "why did you send boats to Iraq?", and Damien Lewis gets to write about it in a slightly less racist tone than he normally manages and all the conservative papers love it.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2021 09:00

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Aren't we all?

# ¿ Jan 14, 2021 16:46

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Cessna posted:

Back in the old days Olympic athletes couldn't be professional athletes. (I.e., You couldn't play pro basketball for the NY Knicks, then go compete in the Olympics.) (This requirement was dropped in 1992.)

The workaround for many countries, notably the USSR, was to say that the athlete was really in the army and pay them army wages while they trained.

Notably the Irish army runs the Equitation School as a multi-purpose training organisation and prestiege generating tool. Basically a uniformed advertisement for the horse breeding industry here.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2021 22:43

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Raenir Salazar posted:

Italy I think iirc did licence German equipment IIRC, probably planes/engines?

e: Ironically Germany did "provide" (re forced) Italy to use the enigma which I think contributed to Italy's worsening performance in the Med?

Offhand I am aware that the Italians used the 88, and checking this was from a pre-war purchase. Other than that :shrug:

# ¿ Jan 18, 2021 06:51

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Nessus posted:

They probably figured Mussolini would send such tanks either to Africa (And they had someone there to manage German tanks themselves, thank you) or to Yugoslavia to shoot at partisans (in which case, why not give him the second-tier or lightly used tanks?)

The organisation in Africa was pretty much that dude ordering around a few Germans and a lot of Italians anyway. Italian units outnumbered Germans by two or three to one depending on the year.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2021 08:13

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Nebakenezzer posted:

WTF, why? It's not like anybody who's an actual threat to the nation of China can't get that info anyway.

Making it illegal to even try get it is enough to stop most people getting ideas.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2021 20:17

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

The Wikipedia article only covers laws from 2002, but lol if I'm going to go digging through Chinese legislation to try find out when it was first made illegal...

# ¿ Jan 24, 2021 00:17

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

ChubbyChecker posted:

dunno, haven't read much about that revolution, but i wouldn't trust duncan's works without further proof, because i'm familiar with his earlier works.

This is the first step on the road to academia in any field.

The second step is applying this to literally everything.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2021 20:45

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Natty Ninefingers posted:

You say it like it�s a bad thing.

Step three is: "yes, that means you" :negative:

# ¿ Jan 30, 2021 01:28

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

All this talk about blast radii reminds me of this:
https://twitter.com/BitsHammer/status/1080576295208071168

Makes you wonder if somehow, somewhere, there's a vacuum-preserved chunk of dinosaur flesh floating around up there.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2021 02:42

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Mystic Mongol posted:

So my question is, given that he's old enough that he doesn't give a presentation as sharply as he used to, and I'm not a film student and will be recording on an iPad, are his concerns accurate? Would people be interested in hearing what he has to say about his experiences during and after the war? I'd cut any dead air but the final result would be pretty rough.

The answer is, as always, :justpost:

. Please let him know that us internet weirdos want to hear his stories.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 23:12

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Cessna posted:

Yeah, there's NO WAY that someone could lift their shield to block something coming at their head and still fight. Better redesign their helmets.

Take this with several heaps of salt, because I am quickly checking names of stuff to try remember what I was told in Latin class at least 20 years back now, but: it wasn't the helmets that they redesigned.

What happened was the falx were actually just really good at injuring the sword arm and very difficult to block against, so what the Legions did is they took the Manica as worn by the Murmillo gladiators and started using them to protect their sword arms. I was told that you can see the Manica on Trajan's column, but I can't find any evidence of that on a quick visual skim. I can find it on the bas-reliefs taken from the Tropaeum Traiani though, for what that's worth.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 15:13

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Cessna posted:

There's no doubt that the Roman army altered their armor in response to the weapons used in the Dacian War. The Romans were quick to copy other people's designs - the Spanish short sword/gladius, Celtic chain mail, etc.

I'm poking fun at the sci-fi book that had the Romans alter their helmets in response to a threat from above when, in fact, they already used their shields to deal with threats from above and their helmets were already designed to deal with threats from above.

Yeah well nobody mentioned the use of Manica so :colbert:

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 18:29

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

I would not put it past them to just build a giant fort around the outback and slooooooowly shrink the internal space so they could murder emus.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 21:13

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

It'd have been very different if they had been raised by emus.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 21:39

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Greg12 posted:

actually, saying a really over the top stupid and wrong thing is a good joke if it is done well, and the greatest comedic character of the last forty years, Homer Simpson, is proof.

as a person who laughs, I appreciated the attempt.

This entirely relies on us knowing who Homer Simpson is to get the joke.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2021 01:31

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

feedmegin posted:

Also, y'know, the band

That's an anglicisation which implies something pretty funny in a very "I am 15 and you don't know how I just insulted you" kind of way.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2021 12:49

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Cessna posted:

lol at "in theory," these are Nazis we're talking about.

The Fieseler Fi.103R Reichenberg:

This is different because he is not at the front :colbert:

# ¿ Feb 16, 2021 23:41

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Uncle Enzo posted:

Does anyone else get a really dark vibe from this aircraft? This has always struck me as this frightening, ugly slapped-together monstrosity that treats humans like bullets. Just shooting them up at the sky and after they finish their attack run gently caress them, their life is forfeit.

There's no overstating how evil the Nazis were, but most of their stuff is more or less comparable to other powers stuff. This plane looks like it was designed by genocidal monsters trying to kill as many people as they could on their way out. I guess it isn't milhist really, but this particular contraption has always made me feel sad and kinda sick inside. To me this is about as depressing as you can get without talking about gas chambers or killing fields. Even nuclear armageddon seems more lighthearted although that makes no sense.

Honestly the main thing I get from it is that it is childish. Gaius Marius's response isn't far off, and as The Lone Badger points out, it's the airborne equivalent to stamping your foot and refusing to go to bed.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2021 06:24

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

The Home Guard pikes were a result of a rhetorical point taken literally. Then they had them, so may as well take a few photos for the laugh.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2021 14:13

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Tulip posted:

This is absolutely not just limited to planes and boats. I've been reading up on trains (cuz I live in in New York and it just feels kind of appropriate), and holy crap rapid transit systems get out of hand crazy fast. The one transnational expert who seems to be on top of the data that I follow thinks there's significant institutional factors - like governments that lack their own engineering side tend to get clobbered much more readily, and relying on post-hoc lawsuits rather than up-front red tape as a check is way more expensive for everyone. A really funny thing that he's found is that "English as the primary language" is one of the strongest correlates for high cost construction.

Military spending is an interesting particular case because, at least to Americans, it's the one part of the budget that's impossible to cut, and so contractors have near carte blanche to ratchet things up into oblivion.

Let me tell you about Ireland's new childrens hospital...

# ¿ Feb 25, 2021 17:29

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Tulip posted:

Oh no, I want to believe that Ireland doesn't suck.

Please never visit or ask about Ireland ever again.

"Ireland is great! No problems at all ever!"

# ¿ Feb 25, 2021 20:50

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

^^^^
Video unavailable it seems.

Ensign Expendable posted:

Reminder that this is a military history thread, not a modern politics thread. The only thing I want to read about Ireland is the Battle of Clontarf or how the British fleeced them over Comets or whatever.

That "or whatever" leaves me with far too much wiggle room.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2021 20:14

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

MikeCrotch posted:

Imagine if Hitler had been given the medication JFK had got that made him extremely horny (allegedly)

What kind of a world would contain Nymphomaniac Irish Hitler

Look, I've already been asked not to talk about current Irish politics...

# ¿ Feb 28, 2021 04:03

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

This is terrible news. I'm sorry for your loss. He was a good poster and will be missed.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2023 16:39

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 20:28

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Tomn posted:

The Imperial War Museum was pretty decent from what I recall, but it's been like a decade since I was last there. Unsurprisingly it's a military history museum, so yeah.

Apparently they basically cleared out the ground floor. I've not been back since but a whole pile of cool tanks and guns that were there now are not there.

Perestroika posted:

Currently I'm probably most interested in late medieval and early modern periods, though certainly not exclusively. Exhibits staged like a particular situation/environment where you can sort of walk through and really immerse yourself in it are a particular plus.

You want to head into the Tower of London. There's a surprising amount of early Tudor stuff in there for a Norman fortification.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2023 01:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Milhist Thread: Ok, so get this: we name the army groups 1, 2 and 4...