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Copernic posted:Where do I find a good introduction -- preferably a book - to military tactics and strategy? Either small squad or large-scale. In a military history thread, this is a very rather vague question - ie. are you talking about Greek hoplite tactics or Mutually Assured Destruction strategies? Also, naval tactics differ vastly from land and air tactics. For instance, naval tactics and strategies changed many times from 1700's to late 1900's. This was fuelled by huge inventions. First, due to transition from sail to steam power, which resulted in faster and heavier ships but which also required coal supplies ever so often. Second, due to invention of radios, which made it possible for high sea navies to transfer intelligence without much delay. Third, the invention of naval aviation, and radar, both of which allowed for fleets to locate (and even attack!) enemy ships beyond horizon for the first time in history. Then we get to nuclear power, missiles and all the post-WW2 stuff. Some of these inventions have had a greater effect on tactics, some on strategies, but all in all it's hard to explain them in a catch-all manner. But there are many books that help you to get started, at the very least. John Keegan's 'History of Warfare', among others, should help a beginner to understand some bits of how warfare has evolved over the millennia. Even if Keegan does have a tendency to drone on and on about Clausewitz's follies while seemingly missing von C.'s point. Kemper Boyd posted:Actually, by the time peace was made in March 1940, the Finnish Army was in a completely untenable position since the main line defense line had been breached in the Russian offensive during February. The main reason why Stalin agreed to peace with almost the original terms was the fact that in his mind, the Allied countries might just decide to get involved which certainly would not benefit him. That, and probably also the fact that the ridiculously unrealistic initial plan had been to take over the place in couple of weeks. At that point the war was finally heading to a favourable direction, but the war was costing a fortune compared to what it was supposed to be, the Red Army needed to be restructured based on the lessons while Germany was still engaged in a war with France and Britain, and there was no guarantee that the Finnish government would surrender, rather than carrying on a prolonged guerrilla war in the forests. Certainly it had become clear that the puppet government consisting of exiled Finnish communists had no popular support. Stalin wasn't the kind of gambler that Hitler was - if he couldn't be sure of winning a fight, he'd rather wait for conditions to change, like in how he slowly but steadily eliminated his opponents in the Party until he could banish or execute all the rest. In Finland's case it was better to wait and maybe try again in late 1940, but by then Germany had defeated France and was now acting prickish toward Soviet Union's intentions. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Oct 8, 2010 |
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Oct 8, 2010 20:35
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DarkCrawler posted:In the Pacific, U.S. Navy singlehandedly destroyed the Imperial Japanese Navy Have you ever heard of Australia?
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Oct 8, 2010 20:40
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I actually find the "French coward" and the "warlike German" meme kind of funny. Back in the day, the French, especially the Normans, were considered the heart of chivalry and all-around badasses. While at various points in history, Germans had a reputation as unreliable cowards. The Spaniards thought of the German landsknechts as such and even as recently as the US Civil War, the German-American units were labelled as "Dutch cowards".
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Oct 8, 2010 20:52
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Kemper Boyd posted:Actually, by the time peace was made in March 1940, the Finnish Army was in a completely untenable position since the main line defense line had been breached in the Russian offensive during February. The main reason why Stalin agreed to peace with almost the original terms was the fact that in his mind, the Allied countries might just decide to get involved which certainly would not benefit him. Stalin had been really hasty in his military decisions before 1941, he had to quickly mobilize and move into Poland to get his slice, and then he quickly moved troops toward Finland for the invasion, which was done piecemeal which really benefited the smaller Finnish army. In February of 1940, the Russians concentrated and made a large assault and rather predictably put the Finnish army on thin ice. Poland, despite its numerical inferiority, was hampered by the belief that the Germans might just take part of Poland and settle with the Allies for it, thusly they deployed heavily along their frontier, which made them very vulnerable to encirclement. Had they deployed along the more defensible river lines, they might have been able to hang on longer. This was one of the factors that hampered the Soviet defense in 1941 as well. Stalin, actually figured the Germans were coming, but he was not eager to provoke the Germans while his army was in disarray. He actually partially mobilized, and this probably prevented worse things from happening in June 1941.
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Oct 9, 2010 03:25
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Panzeh posted:Poland, despite its numerical inferiority, was hampered by the belief that the Germans might just take part of Poland and settle with the Allies for it, thusly they deployed heavily along their frontier, which made them very vulnerable to encirclement. Had they deployed along the more defensible river lines, they might have been able to hang on longer. Very seldom do generals get to make such decisions based solely on what is doctrinally sound. Rather, political requirements often override such considerations; eg. logically Greece should have concentrated all their efforts on defending on narrow front the few approaches to Athens in 1941, but this would have meant abandoning the second largest city, Thessaloniki. It is extremely hard to justify such decisions to your people without either letting defeatism creep into their minds ("war is lost, we can't even defend our borders anymore!") or becoming vulnerable to political attacks.
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Oct 9, 2010 14:08
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I wanted to re-ask the question about the effectiveness of anti-Axis resistance movements in both theaters. I have a sense that France's take on their contribution to the war effort is a tad exaggerated in terms of actual effectiveness, but I don't know of any historical studies that have considered the question. Did I ask already about the Ethiopian-Eritrean Wars? If not, let me ask: can someone provide a good rundown of the most recent one that ended in 1999? I remember reading that the Battle of Badme had 500,000 total troops and was the largest conventional ground engagement since the end of WWII, but almost no one reported on it. I guess what I'm kinda' looking for is a sense of the quality of strategic and operational planning by both sides, who had the 'better' soldiers in terms of training, equipment, and morale, and any personal recounts by soldiers who participated. I can't get any of the Ethiopian vets in D.C. to confess to being part of the operation (as they seem, understandably, fairly embarrassed for their country over the whole conflict). dividebyzero fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Oct 9, 2010 |
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Oct 9, 2010 21:39
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YET ANOTHER QUESTION: This time about French military operations. I understand that in the mercenary world, recruiters tend to look for special forces-type soldiers with extensive combat experience. I'd heard that among the soldiers most frequently sought after are members of the French Army's 11th Parachute Brigade, especially the French Foreign Legion's 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment. What sort of combat operations are these guys conducting that gives them the sort of experience to make them sought after? Aside from the occasional peacekeeping operation or skirmish with guerrillas in former French Africa, I can't account for this body of experience. Post-OEF, it makes sense. Yet, I've come to understand that these 2eme REP/11e guys were considered pretty much expert, experienced killers before their OEF deployments. Are the French doing much more shady poo poo with these soldiers than they admit, or am I just not knowledgeable enough about their military operations before OEF to understand where this combat experience is coming from?
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Oct 9, 2010 21:55
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dividebyzero posted:
I can't answer your question, but I can tell you why nobody has reported on it. Africa. The Second Congo War is the deadliest war since the end of WWII, having killed 5.4 million people and involved seven nations and over twenty different armed groups. It ended in 2003. It's pretty ridicolous what things escape people's notice.
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Oct 9, 2010 22:52
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Will2Powa posted:I actually find the "French coward" and the "warlike German" meme kind of funny. Back in the day, the French, especially the Normans, were considered the heart of chivalry and all-around badasses. While at various points in history, Germans had a reputation as unreliable cowards. The Spaniards thought of the German landsknechts as such and even as recently as the US Civil War, the German-American units were labelled as "Dutch cowards". Why is this remotely strange or funny? These stereotypes are based on living memory, and that stretches through the 20th and 21st centuries, not the 11th or 16th.
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Oct 10, 2010 20:57
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DarkCrawler posted:As it is made out to be by some Americans? No, at least not in the European Front. Soviet Union made by far the largest contribution, in manpower, number of Germans killed, number of enemy forces tied down (U.S./U.K. never faced more then 20% of the Wehrmarcht), and in the casualties suffered. It was the Red Army that marched to Berlin and who fought the Germans for the three years before U.S. and U.K. opened the second front in Normandy. The Commonwealth and its Allies were fighting the Germans in Africa, Italy etc before the Normandy invasion. It's not like they were sitting around doing nothing until 1944. Also, the Australians gave the Japanese their first defeat on land at Milne Bay in 1942. Australia made a massive contribution to the Pacific War, especially when you consider the small size of Australia's population at the time. (Around 7 million people)
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Oct 11, 2010 08:01
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sos posted:The Commonwealth and its Allies were fighting the Germans in Africa, Italy etc before the Normandy invasion. It's not like they were sitting around doing nothing until 1944. But to be fair, so were the US - starting with Operation Torch in November 1942. However, the amount of troops in North Africa was low due to logistical issues and low strategic significance, so it doesn't quite compare to the meat grinder of the eastern front, or even the battles in Normandy and Ardennes. Eg. in the second battle of El Alamein, Germans and Italians numbered 116,000 men in total, and casualties were over 30,000. At about the same time, in the battle of Stalingrad the German losses were 750,000 casualties and 91,000 captured!!! But Britain (and her Commonwealth allies) and France certainly did fight even before USSR or USA were pulled into the war. Eg. in the Battle of France, Germany lost over 155,000 men dead, wounded or missing, and these were healthy young men and properly trained before the war, not some undernourished Russian POW's pressed into service like could be found in Normandy in 1944 or Volksturm grandpas defending their hometowns in 1945. All in all, pissing contests are fruitless. Some countries had more men and material than others, some countries were forced to fight from the start while some others were in no hurry to get in.
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Oct 11, 2010 15:39
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:Why is this remotely strange or funny? These stereotypes are based on living memory, and that stretches through the 20th and 21st centuries, not the 11th or 16th. Most people who hold these stereotypes don't actually think about them as something recent. People think of something like the "cowardly french" as something that is essential to French people including extending backwards in time. Just think about the google joke where typing in "list of french military victories" returns nothing. France has definitely won battles and wars before, but most people thinking that French are wussies are unaware of that. People tend to hold these essentialist notions about other peoples, but examples like these underlie the fact of how historical circumstance can change dramatically how people are perceived and what ideas we have about them. So you have things like the ancestors of most modern Western Europeans: Goths and Germanics, stereotyped pretty similarly by the Romans as those same Whites stereotype Blacks today in America as thuggish, uneducated savages or Jews were stereotyped similarly to Muslims as religious fanatics. (And yes, I'm fully aware that many people use these memes as jokes without actually believing in their essentialist nature.) Will2Powa fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Oct 11, 2010 |
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Oct 11, 2010 17:28
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I don't want this thread to die, so I'd like to ask about the Korean War. As I understand, after WWII the US and USSR set up hasty spheres of influence in Korea, separated at the 38th parallel. What exactly lead to war?
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Oct 15, 2010 15:27
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lushka16 posted:I don't want this thread to die, so I'd like to ask about the Korean War. Korea was divided, but there were plans for elections in the whole country to reunify it quickly. The elections didn't work out and tension increased between the two parts, and small skirmishes escalated into a full on invasion from North Korea. It is important to note for people who are new to Korean history that by that time, North Korea was by far economically superior to South Korea. The industrial heartland from the Japanese occupation was in North Korea. So when North Korea invaded they could easily push South Korean forces back until the UN intervened. Even as late as the 60's South Korea was poorer than the North, and South Korea was for a long time one of the poorest countries of Asia. Also, they were a military dictatorship until 1987, which is a mindblowing fact that very few Westerners know about. I took classes in Korean Contemporary History in Japan, so go ahead if you have any other questions on the Korean conflict.
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Oct 15, 2010 20:52
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How effective were muskets in the earliest stages of their existance? I ask because I was reading a tabletop gaming forum and there were discussions on how to balance early firearms against bows and crossbows. There's a fellow who drops into each and every thread on the matter and loudly berates people who say that bows were in anyway comparable to even the most primitive guns, with lines like, "This is only said by toxophiles who can't bare the fact that gunpowder weapons outclass any kind of bow in every aspect except rate of fire. It was for more than political reasons that virtually all the major powers of Europe bankrupted themselves to adopt the new technology."
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Oct 15, 2010 22:13
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Jabarto posted:"This is only said by toxophiles who can't bare the fact that gunpowder weapons outclass any kind of bow in every aspect except rate of fire." Rate of fire is . . . kind of important. What is the exact distance at which a matchlock is accurate? What is the distance at which there isn't time to fire? How long does it take a person to run across the difference? For more details, start from this old post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3297799&userid=94004#post376411368
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Oct 15, 2010 23:03
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Rate of fire is pretty important, but firearms were both powerful and a good bit less expensive than crossbows. What's also understated, was that they had a lot more of a morale effect on people under their fire because of the sound of gunfire, which was a lot easier to discern than bowmen firing. Of course, they still weren't the primary weapon until the military science revolutions of the late 1600s and through the 1700s, which resulted in the bayonet and much better quality firearms. Also, artillery came into its own during this period, when cannon were standardized, whereas before it was almost useless unless you had a lot of time to register it toward a target.
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Oct 15, 2010 23:10
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lilljonas posted:
How did south korea go from under alliance occupation to military dictatorship to asian democracy?
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Oct 15, 2010 23:11
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Boiled Water posted:alliance occupation  The Asian development model - Strong authoritarian military government, massive state directed capital investment, export oriented economic policies.
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Oct 15, 2010 23:35
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Jabarto posted:How effective were muskets in the earliest stages of their existance? I ask because I was reading a tabletop gaming forum and there were discussions on how to balance early firearms against bows and crossbows. There's a fellow who drops into each and every thread on the matter and loudly berates people who say that bows were in anyway comparable to even the most primitive guns, with lines like, Initially, I would say that longbows were both more accurate as well as had a greater rate of fire. However, you need to be very strong to use a bow, and it tires you out much more quickly than firing a rifle will.
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Oct 15, 2010 23:54
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Accuracy is not so much of an issue when you're blasting at a tight multi-rank formation of spearmen - and a single musket bullet could, with a hefty doze of luck, incapacitate more than one of them! Then again, AK-47's they weren't.
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Oct 16, 2010 00:02
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Boiled Water posted:How did south korea go from under alliance occupation to military dictatorship to asian democracy? Repeated riots on a national scale. It's sort of a misnomer to say that South Korea was a military dictatorship until 1987. More accurately they were a series of slightly different anti-democratic governments strongly based in the military. South Koreans were often irritated by this and took to the streets to fight riot police and the military, which at best resulted in the current leading member of the junta turning power over to one of his buddies--"meet the new boss". This cycle eventually broke in the late '80s or early 90's for reasons that are not clear to me. Maybe everybody got tired of it? 1987 is often used as the year it changed because that year's national riots were supported by practically the whole population (as opposed to mostly just radical students who could be tarred as commie stooges), but to be honest the president from 1987 to 1992 was another of those junta guys--it was just that he left office when a civilian was elected. His power was probably broken by the 1987 riots. I'm pretty sure that South Korea still experiences a higher than average number of riots for a modern democracy; youtube probably has a copy of the famous video of their national legislature degenerating into a huge brawl.
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Oct 16, 2010 04:27
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Boiled Water posted:How did south korea go from under alliance occupation to military dictatorship to asian democracy? As mentioned before, after the war turned into a stalemate South Korea turned into an autocratic republic with a military junta. While some people disagree with the term military dictatorship, in practical terms it was only ruled by generals who used torture and other means of suppression to maintain their power. The only times new people got elected was when power shifts within the junta lead to another general being more powerful, or after assassinations such as the 1978 assassination of Park Chun-Hee. So supreme power was tossed back and forth between very ruthless generals while the population got involved in increasingly massive and very violent demonstrations. These demonstrations escalated from the 80's and onwards as South Korea had evolved from a dirt poor agricultural backend of Asia into a manufacture powerhouse with a rapidly increasing middle class while still being politically run as a banana republic. What interests me most of this is how central South Korea was (and remained unto this day) for US control over Asian interests, and how little interest there was in doing anything against the military junta. While I know that most imperial Western countries were fond of backing dictators while saying that they fought "the enemies of freedom", American soldiers have always been the pillar that supported South Koreas safety and I kinda wish that they had done at least something to prevent all out student massacres and attacks on demonstrating civilians as late as in the 80's. But then, post-WW2 is a complete mindfuck to me anyway. Pretty much all of Western Europe turned into a battle between dictatorships and democracies. A battle where all the most vile aspects of dictatorships became obvious to everyone as the aftermath of the defeats of Italy and Germany showed the full extent of the death camps, the secret polices, the summary executions, the complete disregard of human rights. And what does France, UK and the US, who by now have enough political, military and economical power to do pretty much whatever they want for at least a decade or two, decide to do? "Whoop di do, Portugal, Spain and Greece, we know you are the same rotten apples as Italy and Germany was, but you stay out of the war, so keep up the good show for a few more decades. We're off to bugger around in South East Asia, maybe kill some Vietnamese later!". Argh!
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Oct 16, 2010 09:40
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Basically, in all of those countries the likely alternative to a right-wing junta would have been a total communist takeover and sliding into the Soviet bloc, at least as far as CIA saw the situation. USA also had contingency plans for a military takeover of Italy in case the communists would have won in elections.
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Oct 16, 2010 10:59
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A little off topic but if you want a pretty good idea on what the cultural and social environment was like in mid 1980's South Korea then watch this film. It's pretty drat good. This was recommended to me by a Korean friend and got me hooked on Korean films. Memories of Murder http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0353969/
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Oct 16, 2010 12:00
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Nenonen posted:Basically, in all of those countries the likely alternative to a right-wing junta would have been a total communist takeover and sliding into the Soviet bloc, at least as far as CIA saw the situation. USA also had contingency plans for a military takeover of Italy in case the communists would have won in elections. You have to be pretty retarded to think that the alternative to Franco was a Soviet puppet communist state, but then, CIA has a history of retardation.
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Oct 16, 2010 16:53
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lilljonas posted:You have to be pretty retarded to think that the alternative to Franco was a Soviet puppet communist state, but then, CIA has a history of retardation. Well, Franco and Salazar were probably more likely to stay in line with NATO than more democratic leadership, and we didn't want to give the Soviets an inch. We perceived Stalin's interest in actually getting something out of WW2 as aggressiveness, when he was actually willing to split Europe up. He was quite willing to hand Greece over as a favor, for example.
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Oct 16, 2010 17:13
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Jabarto posted:How effective were muskets in the earliest stages of their existance? I ask because I was reading a tabletop gaming forum and there were discussions on how to balance early firearms against bows and crossbows. There's a fellow who drops into each and every thread on the matter and loudly berates people who say that bows were in anyway comparable to even the most primitive guns, with lines like, I would argue that firearms didn't truly surpass the longbow in terms of outright firepower man for man until the introduction of the Minié ball in the middle part of the 19th century. The main reason for this is the longbow's amazing effectiveness at useful combat ranges. This is due to several factors: its rate of fire (a trained longbowman could fire 10 rounds per minute at a maximum, with a useful ROF of 6 rpm), its accuracy at distance (a platoon of longbowmen could reliably hit a man size target at 300m, and the arrows carried their energy more efficiently to that distance), and the effectivness of the projectile (for a given amount of energy, arrows were generally much more effective than contemporary bullets). Basically, if you put a platoon of longbowmen and a platoon of Napoleonic soldiers in a field and had them battle to the death, I think the longbowmen would win without casualties. That said, in terms of operational military application, firearms were pretty decisively superior from the introduction of the matchlock onwards. The biggest reason for this was the simplification of training: it took decades for a longbowman to become militarily useful, but it took only a few minutes to train a conscript to use a firearm. Ammunition was lighter and easier to carry, and firearms were better suited than were bows to martial combat (especially after the adoption of the bayonet). This of course is why we saw the rise of the conscript army and the professional officer soon after the introduction of military firearms (the New Model Army being the most prominent example).
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Oct 18, 2010 14:54
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bewbies posted:Basically, if you put a platoon of longbowmen and a platoon of Napoleonic soldiers in a field and had them battle to the death, I think the longbowmen would win without casualties. That's likely true. But a longbowman needs to be trained from childhood in order to develop the strength needed to be effective. On the other hand, you can give a barefoot farmer a musket and 2 weeks of training on loading, firing, and marching, and he'll be a decently effective soldier.
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Oct 18, 2010 22:00
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INTJ Mastermind posted:That's likely true. But a longbowman needs to be trained from childhood in order to develop the strength needed to be effective. On the other hand, you can give a barefoot farmer a musket and 2 weeks of training on loading, firing, and marching, and he'll be a decently effective soldier. Dude, he said that already. Third paragraph.
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Oct 18, 2010 22:05
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Modus Operandi posted:A little off topic but if you want a pretty good idea on what the cultural and social environment was like in mid 1980's South Korea then watch this film. It's pretty drat good. This was recommended to me by a Korean friend and got me hooked on Korean films. Seconding this...awesome scene at the Blue House towards the end that I think really summed up the brutal wackiness of Korean politics at the time.
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Oct 18, 2010 22:13
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I disagree with your assessment, bewbies, in a few places.bewbies posted:The main reason for this is the longbow's amazing effectiveness at useful combat ranges. This is due to several factors: its rate of fire (a trained longbowman could fire 10 rounds per minute at a maximum, with a useful ROF of 6 rpm), its accuracy at distance (a platoon of longbowmen could reliably hit a man size target at 300m, and the arrows carried their energy more efficiently to that distance), and the effectivness of the projectile (for a given amount of energy, arrows were generally much more effective than contemporary bullets). Basically, if you put a platoon of longbowmen and a platoon of Napoleonic soldiers in a field and had them battle to the death, I think the longbowmen would win without casualties. There are a few problems with these statements. While you are correct about rate of fire, your point about accuracy is mostly false. In the tests shown in Strickland & Hardy's "The Great Warbow" only the lightest of arrows could even reach that far, and even then without enough energy to kill. I think you mean 200 metres. It was not a man-sized target that they practised on but one at least 2 metres in diameter. A man-sized target would be, given the parabolic trajectory, an even smaller target than if firing straight on. Arrows were less affected by drag, it is true. However, Alan Williams' tests in "The Knight and The Blast Furnace" show that guns imparted absolutely tremendous amounts of energy by comparison, to the point that it really doesn't matter out to the maximum range of these arrows, because the gun will still kill you quite readily. I know you're just speaking informally with your last point, but it's worth mentioning that not all Napoleonic platoons are created equal. Portuguese Cacadors and Jager regiments had rifles, which increased the individual soldier's accuracy quite substantially, even without minie balls. Beyond that, tests in the 1790s by the Hanoverians showed that at 100 paces a target representing a line of infantry was hit 75% of the time by men armed with muskets. That number dropped to 37% at 200 and 33% at 300. The point stands, however, that muskets were by no means so inaccurate that a group of bowmen could kill them with impunity. It is also worth mentioning that, depending on the size of the field, the musketeers could fire without any fear of being hit until the longbowmen moved up to engage them. quote:That said, in terms of operational military application, firearms were pretty decisively superior from the introduction of the matchlock onwards. The biggest reason for this was the simplification of training: it took decades for a longbowman to become militarily useful, but it took only a few minutes to train a conscript to use a firearm. Ammunition was lighter and easier to carry, and firearms were better suited than were bows to martial combat (especially after the adoption of the bayonet). I mostly agree with you, though it didn't take decades to train a serviceable longbowman, but closer to half-a-dozen years, if that. Still, the week of instruction necessary to create an adequate arqubusier is a substantially shorter period. I also do not know what you mean by martial combat, but it sounds like you mean hand-to-hand fighting. I really do not think this is the case, as longbowmen often carried personally-acquired secondary weapons, such as swords and bucklers or war hammers. In some arrangements they were even given pikes as weapons for close fighting, which are undeniably superior due to reach alone to muskets mounted with bayonets. quote:This of course is why we saw the rise of the conscript army and the professional officer soon after the introduction of military firearms (the New Model Army being the most prominent example). I wouldn't call 200 years "soon after". It took a significant change in ideas about governmental authority and nation identity, and a great deal of centralisation of power, for any of this to be possible. In an odd twist, professional armies led by officers showed up in Europe well before conscription in units such as the French Gendarmes or Spanish Tercios. This twist only works, of course, assuming one doesn't count the infrequently-used medieval levy as conscription, and the semi-permanent stipediaries of the familia regis as professionals. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Oct 18, 2010 |
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Oct 18, 2010 23:24
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It's also important to assess archery and early firearms as weapons systems functioning as part of a combined force. It's disingenuous to compare firearms to longbows because longbows were only used by the English, and their abilities were exaggerated by superior generalship. Battles like Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt showed the effectiveness of the longbow when English leaders carefully prepared and created the conditions conducive to its use. At the battle of Patay, the English messed it up and didn't have time to prepare the field, which resulted in their longbowmen being massacred on the run. Arguably the success of the longbow was due less to its superiority as a weapons system and more to the difference in ability between French and English leadership--the Plantagenets being very good, and the Valois and their deputies being indifferent at best and crap at worst. Anyway, most armies used archery only as a supplement to infantry and cavalry armed with melee weapons. Crossbowmen would advance at the outset of battle and fire on the enemy, hoping to inflict some amount of casualties and demoralize the enemy. Then, men-at-arms and knights, whether mounted or afoot, would advance and clash in melee combat. In this context the advantages of firearms (less bulky ammunition, greater killing power and armor penetration, ease of use, low cost) were even greater than might be indicated otherwise. The core of medieval armies was mounted, armored fighting men. The English army of the Hundred Years War was optimized specifically to deal with this kind of army, which is why, when handled correctly, it was able to inflict such severe damage on the French. Absent these conditions, the sheer mass of a cavalry charge would break the enemy, and their speed would ensure that men on foot wouldn't escape alive. The only way to prevent this was with a wall of spears, which the English provided by placing broken stakes in the ground, and others provided with big blocks of guys holding actual spears. Later Spanish tactics had troops armed with the arquebus acting as skirmishers. They lingered near the tercio pike squares, firing on the enemy to disrupt his formation, inflict the odd casualty, and prevent opposing archers from targeting the relatively unprotected pikemen. When the enemy threatened, they retreated behind the cover of the pike squares, and after the wave broke on the rock of the tercio, they advanced again to fire and prevent the enemy from reforming, etc. All the "work" was done by the pikemen, the arquebusiers just helped them out as a screening force.
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Oct 19, 2010 06:42
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EvanSchenck posted:Later Spanish tactics had troops armed with the arquebus acting as skirmishers. They lingered near the tercio pike squares, firing on the enemy to disrupt his formation, inflict the odd casualty, and prevent opposing archers from targeting the relatively unprotected pikemen. When the enemy threatened, they retreated behind the cover of the pike squares, and after the wave broke on the rock of the tercio, they advanced again to fire and prevent the enemy from reforming, etc. All the "work" was done by the pikemen, the arquebusiers just helped them out as a screening force. It's worth noting that this tactic (used by Catholic forces until the 30YW) ultimately proved inferior to the line tactics which allowed shot and pike to function independently. A large part of this was tactical flexibility and maneuverability. Tercio squares were very difficult to maneuver other than pointing them right at the enemy and letting them go to work. It's much easier to wheel a part of a line or let one segment fall back into reserves.
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Oct 19, 2010 09:42
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:While you are correct about rate of fire, your point about accuracy is mostly false. In the tests shown in Strickland & Hardy's "The Great Warbow" only the lightest of arrows could even reach that far, and even then without enough energy to kill. I think you mean 200 metres. It was not a man-sized target that they practised on but one at least 2 metres in diameter. A man-sized target would be, given the parabolic trajectory, an even smaller target than if firing straight on. I should have been more specific: I was referring to a unit equipped with Edwardian-era bows, the 200+ lbs draw weight. In the Strickland and Hardy book, their tests were conducted with a 150 lbs bow, which was still able to shoot a full weight arrow 250m. The biggest bows (eg, not like the ones recovered from Mary Rose) could easily kill even lightly armored troops at 300m, and could fire a lighter arrow out past 400m. As for accuracy, I was not describing a single archer hitting a man-sized target, but rather a fire platoon element. They would have had no difficulty scoring a hit on a man at 300m, let alone a tightly packed formation. quote:Arrows were less affected by drag, it is true. However, Alan Williams' tests in "The Knight and The Blast Furnace" show that guns imparted absolutely tremendous amounts of energy by comparison, to the point that it really doesn't matter out to the maximum range of these arrows, because the gun will still kill you quite readily. The issue wasn't really energy so much as accuracy. At the maximum range of a 200 lbs longbow, a smoothbore musket, even fired in volleys, was simply not an effective weapon. First, to discuss the oft cited Hanoverian test, I've not yet seen a proper explanation of these results. Quite simply, we do not know what "33% at 300 paces" really means: does it mean that 33% of the balls hit the target at 300 paces, or does it mean the formation firing a volley hit the target collectively 33% of the time? Considering that the British, during the Brown Bess era, thought "as a general rule, musketry fire should not be made at a distance exceeding 150 yards and certainly not exceeding 200 yards, as at and beyond that range it would be a mere waste of ammunition to do so", I must conclude that the latter is the case. So, essentially what we are looking at, if we again assume the Hanoverian tests are accurate, is that a formation can hit a 20 ft x 6 ft wide (I think, this is from memory) target with at least one ball at a distance of 230m approximately a third of the time...and this in test conditions, presumably using patched balls, well maintained equipment, and not while under fire. Compare that with the oft-cited directive from Henry VIII that no archery range was to be shorter than 200m, and compare it with even the most reasonable estimates of the effective ranges of longbows. Quite simply, I see absolutely no way that a musket-equipped platoon could close to within the 100m or so they would require to be effective without taking catastrophic casualties. quote:I mostly agree with you, though it didn't take decades to train a serviceable longbowman, but closer to half-a-dozen years, if that. Is there a definitive source on this? Most longbowmen were trained from childhood (much as knights were), which is what I was loosely quoting; if you have something more concrete on how long it took to train a previously untrained adult I'd like to see it. quote:I really do not think this is the case, as longbowmen often carried personally-acquired secondary weapons, such as swords and bucklers or war hammers. In some arrangements they were even given pikes as weapons for close fighting, which are undeniably superior due to reach alone to muskets mounted with bayonets. I cannot find a record of a substantial force of bowmen fighting with pikes; I'm sure this was done in a limited capacity (although in that case I would argue they become more like heavy infantry with bows rather than bowmen, and the effectiveness of them as longbowmen would have been accordingly reduced due to their having to carry a massive pike in lieu of ammunition). In any case, I think by any reasonable measure that a musket/bayonet armed force was more dangerous in CQB, due both to the power of the firearm at close range and due to the effectiveness of the bayonet/musket combination as a hand to hand weapon; longbowmen and their "personal weapons" would have been very ill-suited to taking on a well disciplined Napoleonic platoon at hand-to-hand ranges. Also of particular note, bayonet-equipped infantry was less vulnerable to cavalry, which of course was the greatest threat to the bowman. bewbies fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Oct 19, 2010 |
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Oct 19, 2010 15:30
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bewbies posted:I should have been more specific: I was referring to a unit equipped with Edwardian-era bows, the 200+ lbs draw weight. In the Strickland and Hardy book, their tests were conducted with a 150 lbs bow, which was still able to shoot a full weight arrow 250m. The biggest bows (eg, not like the ones recovered from Mary Rose) could easily kill even lightly armored troops at 300m, and could fire a lighter arrow out past 400m. Could you please present a source for the 400m point? I have not seen any sources claiming that as an engagement distance in war. While I know there were Mongol archery contests that had arrows going out that sort of distance and beyond it was my understanding that these were flight arrows designed for range, not killing. I also question, somewhat, your point that they could kill lightly armoured men at 300 metres. What do you mean by 'lightly armoured'? quote:As for accuracy, I was not describing a single archer hitting a man-sized target, but rather a fire platoon element. They would have had no difficulty scoring a hit on a man at 300m, let alone a tightly packed formation. Fair enough, though I haven't seen reference of archers being organised by platoon. For the sake of argument, what size of group are we talking about? quote:The issue wasn't really energy so much as accuracy. At the maximum range of a 200 lbs longbow, a smoothbore musket, even fired in volleys, was simply not an effective weapon. That is certainly true, but that does not mean it was harmless. Consider the battle of Killiecrankie, where the initial engagement distances were at least 400 metres and MacKay's troops were firing uphill no less. The damage done was, obviously, minor, but it stands that they were not forced to close with the Jacobites in order to fire upon them. quote:First, to discuss the oft cited Hanoverian test, I've not yet seen a proper explanation of these results. Quite simply, we do not know what "33% at 300 paces" really means: does it mean that 33% of the balls hit the target at 300 paces, or does it mean the formation firing a volley hit the target collectively 33% of the time? Considering that the British, during the Brown Bess era, thought "as a general rule, musketry fire should not be made at a distance exceeding 150 yards and certainly not exceeding 200 yards, as at and beyond that range it would be a mere waste of ammunition to do so", I must conclude that the latter is the case. Philip J. Haythornthwaite's "Napoleonic Infantry" is my source for this, and he doesn't elucidate on the Hanoverian results either, sadly. He does, however, provide a few other tests. quote:a musket achieved a range of 1,030 yards at 45 degrees elevation, but such statistics are irrelevant to what happened on the battlefield, where 300 yards might be regarded as the maximum practical range. The 1841 test showed that at 150 yards a target twice as high and twice as broad as a man was hit three times out of four, but not at all at any greater range, nor were any hits registered on a target twice as wide at 250 yards. However, the archers at the butts were also not under fire, likely with well-maintained equipment, so their accuracy was also substantially increased. quote:Is there a definitive source on this? Most longbowmen were trained from childhood (much as knights were), which is what I was loosely quoting; if you have something more concrete on how long it took to train a previously untrained adult I'd like to see it. I have not seen much evidence of children being trained with the longbow as a matter of course. Lattimer speaks of it, but he only assumes that other children were trained as he was. Roger Ascham's Toxophilus, meanwhile, makes mention of it mainly in ancient times, and does not justify it on martial grounds but on morals and health. I say half-a-dozen years based on the medieval and early modern precedent of 14 years of age being legal adulthood, at which point Henry's law expects them to practice with bows, and men of 18+ years commonly participating in military activity. I'm not thinking of a good archer at all, merely one who is serviceable. quote:I cannot find a record of a substantial force of bowmen fighting with pikes; I'm sure this was done in a limited capacity (although in that case I would argue they become more like heavy infantry with bows rather than bowmen, and the effectiveness of them as longbowmen would have been accordingly reduced due to their having to carry a massive pike in lieu of ammunition). In any case, I think by any reasonable measure that a musket/bayonet armed force was more dangerous in CQB, due both to the power of the firearm at close range and due to the effectiveness of the bayonet/musket combination as a hand to hand weapon; longbowmen and their "personal weapons" would have been very ill-suited to taking on a well disciplined Napoleonic platoon at hand-to-hand ranges. Also of particular note, bayonet-equipped infantry was less vulnerable to cavalry, which of course was the greatest threat to the bowman. The double-armed man was certainly not employed en masse, no. I am not so sure about the ineffectiveness of archers in a melee. While this was certainly true of earlier groups of bowmen the Plantagenet longbowmen seem to have taken part in quite a lot of close-in fighting. Most famously they did this in Agincourt against a French force severely hampered by terrain, weather and floundering horses, but they also engaged more formidable foes at the battle of Auray. After finding their arrows had little effect on the well-armoured French men-at-arms they threw down their bows and took up their close-range arms. They were certainly vulnerable to cavalry, of course, but they were by-and-large experienced fighters. While a close range musket blast would do horrendous damage to a group of charging archers, I was thinking of strict bayonet vs. whatever the archers had. EvanSchenck posted:Arguably the success of the longbow was due less to its superiority as a weapons system and more to the difference in ability between French and English leadership--the Plantagenets being very good, and the Valois and their deputies being indifferent at best and crap at worst. I agree in cases where the longbow proved extremely successful, such as the battles cited, but not for the course of the whole war. The French had access to some extremely skilled generalship in the form of Bertrand du Guesclin, as well as strong leadership from Joan of Arc and the 2nd Earl of Buchan. quote:Later Spanish tactics had troops armed with the arquebus acting as skirmishers. They lingered near the tercio pike squares, firing on the enemy to disrupt his formation, inflict the odd casualty, and prevent opposing archers from targeting the relatively unprotected pikemen. When the enemy threatened, they retreated behind the cover of the pike squares, and after the wave broke on the rock of the tercio, they advanced again to fire and prevent the enemy from reforming, etc. All the "work" was done by the pikemen, the arquebusiers just helped them out as a screening force. I think you're selling the arquebus short. Consider Bicocca, where they fired into the Swiss pikes and absolutely devastated them, or at Ceresole where, mixed with the pikemen, they wrought terrible damage on the opposing forces.
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Oct 19, 2010 21:33
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Speaking of early firearms, why wouldn't have they been used to fire small diameter shot (like a modern smoothbore shotgun) instead of ball ammunition? The early arquebus was basically a huge fuckoff shotgun, so loading that thing with heavy buckshot woulda been awesome even at range. Or not?
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Oct 21, 2010 15:18
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Could you please present a source for the 400m point? Sure. First, from a purely theoretical standpoint, I calculated a max range for a 200 lbs bow with a 32" (81cm) draw (as big and bad as bows get, essentially) firing a 1100 grain arrow. Assumptions as follows, based off of data/formulas from this site, which is pretty cool by the way: Bow energy: 890n Arrow weight: 1100 grains (71 grams) Arrow BC: .06 (this is a pure but low-end estimate, based off of a BC of .04 at the tip and .12 on the fletches) Air density: 1.2 kg/m3 (20 degree C at sea level) Bow efficency: .9 (a simple bow is generally more efficient than a modern compound bow, which usualy has efficiency levels of between 80 and 90%) Using these inputs we get a initial velocity of 76.8 m/s (for reference, a 445n bow with a 30" draw gives an initial velocity of 52.4 m/s). That is good for a max range of around 470m, which is using (I assume) a fixed drag curve model. As for written sources, the two that I have are "Bowmen of England The Story of the English Longbow" by Donald Featherstone, and "Longbow – A Social and Military History" by Robert Hardy. Both loosely cite maximum ranges of 400 yards, and the Hardy book specifically cites the Henry V's household bowmens' practice range length at 600 paces, which if we again assume a 30 inch pace, is 460m. quote:I have not seen any sources claiming that as an engagement distance in war. Well, this is something of a different issue. 400m is a long goddamn way, even for a modern rifle. At that distance, people look very, very small, and there is a really good chance of terrain, vegetation, or atmospheric conditions prohibitively interfering with accuracy. That said, the 300m range that I cited was what I was considering the maximum useful range. quote:I also question, somewhat, your point that they could kill lightly armoured men at 300 metres. What do you mean by 'lightly armoured'? Essentially any sort of leather, mail, or light plate armor that was less than 1mm thick. The typically cited penetration of a proper arrow at 300m was an inch into oak, which would have been sufficient to penetrate any of the above. Thicker plate armor is obviously a completely different monster of course. quote:Fair enough, though I haven't seen reference of archers being organised by platoon. For the sake of argument, what size of group are we talking about? I was thinking of a modern platoon size, 40 firers or so. quote:That is certainly true, but that does not mean it was harmless. Consider the battle of Killiecrankie, where the initial engagement distances were at least 400 metres and MacKay's troops were firing uphill no less. The damage done was, obviously, minor, but it stands that they were not forced to close with the Jacobites in order to fire upon them. I'm not totally sure what your point is here. Of course a smoothbore musket is physically capable of shooting long distances, but it isn't a militarily useful tactic. quote:I say half-a-dozen years based on the medieval and early modern precedent of 14 years of age being legal adulthood, at which point Henry's law expects them to practice with bows, and men of 18+ years commonly participating in military activity. I'm not thinking of a good archer at all, merely one who is serviceable. This is probably a good estimate; that said, in speaking of the monster bows with which I did the calculations above, I would bet the training would have to be almost daily in order to get the necessary strength in a 4-6 year time period. As an aside, the strength of those guys must have been pretty amazing. Has anyone ever gotten to try a full sized longbow? I've never shot a bow in my life so I don't really have any frame of reference for just how difficult it must be. quote:I am not so sure about the ineffectiveness of archers in a melee. While this was certainly true of earlier groups of bowmen the Plantagenet longbowmen seem to have taken part in quite a lot of close-in fighting. I suppose I'm operating under an assumption that Napoleonic-era conscripts would be somewhat categorically more formidable in CQB just due to the fact that they would be in a proper formation and as such they could conduct a coordinated charge. If we're talking about 1 v 1 kind of fighting my money would probably be on the medieval soldier.
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Oct 21, 2010 17:28
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pigdog posted:Speaking of early firearms, why wouldn't have they been used to fire small diameter shot (like a modern smoothbore shotgun) instead of ball ammunition? The early arquebus was basically a huge fuckoff shotgun, so loading that thing with heavy buckshot woulda been awesome even at range. Or not? That's what the blunderbuss is for, but those don't show up until the 1600's. That said, the use of shot instead of a single round ball prior to that seems to have been extremely rare if it was done at all, likely because of the ineffectiveness of shot at ranges where you would normally fight as an arquebusier, and the reduced power of shot would make it more difficult to pierce armor. It is definitely round ball, for example, that shot off Götz von Berlichingen's hand. It was not, as wikipedia implies, a carriaged gun but a hand cannon.
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Oct 21, 2010 17:32
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Awesome thread, I love it. What're your top 5 alternate history turning points in historical battles and their implications? Rommel driving tanks onto Normandy beaches, Ney spiking cannon etc.
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Oct 21, 2010 17:47
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