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A Stranger posted:Actually, this point is completely refuted by modern historiography, see: http://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316985359&sr=8-1 A higher percentage, yes, but a higher percentage of a much smaller base. Comparing Germany to the Allies is much less informative than comparing Germany at the beginning to Germany at the end. And Germany did ramp up war production as the war went on, which meant they were clearly underproducing to start. There is no reason that Germany should produce fewer tanks in 1941 than in 1944 except that they didn't produce as many tanks as they possibly could in 1941. If they really wanted a shot at winning, they would have needed to hit that higher percentage of war production earlier. As it was, they didn't go all-out on war production until they had their backs to the wall on the battlefield, a fatal error. A percentage comparison to the Allies is irrelevant to my argument. Edit: More clearly, just because Germany was on more of a war footing than the Allies as a whole (which is a caricature anyways when you remember that the US and the USSR were on vastly different levels of war footing themselves) doesn't mean Germany was on as much of a war footing as it could be or needed to be. gohuskies fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Sep 25, 2011 |
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Sep 25, 2011 22:25
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Dopilsya posted:
Well, the British didn't remove the cavalry lance from their military arsenal until 1928 I think, and all through WW1 they led pointless attacks in the hope that they would make a breakthrough for the cavalry, who would then run rampant in the enemy's backyard.
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Sep 25, 2011 22:30
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Amused to Death posted:We don't have to discuss WW2. One thing I've always wondered, is there any proof from the era on what Britain's demands may have been if it had won a decisive victory in the War of 1812. We like to portray it as the second war of independence, but given Britain's commitments elsewhere as well as the fact the Americans had now enjoyed over 30 years of independence and had expanded greatly both in area and population(I think the population near tripled going by census figures), the cost in both economics and manpower to try to reestablish British control over the states again would've been asinine and probably aren't realistic. The thing is Maine was still largely British-sympathising. Hell, Nantucket was providing a very large number of the British whalers that Captain Porter and the Essex fought in the Pacific. So the US would probably have lost Maine, and maybe the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, likely in exchange for places like the Chesapeake Bay, New Orleans, and Lake Champlain. Edit: The U.P. would more likely have been turned into a buffer state for Tecumseh's confederation. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Sep 25, 2011 |
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Sep 25, 2011 22:35
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Having just completed my masters dissertation on this very subject, I am actually able to chime in here. The territorial demands that Britain was able to consider very much ebbed and flowed with the tide of the war. But generally, the British only really hoped for relatively minor border rectifications if they saved Canada at all from invasion. In 1812, despite the overall defensive strategy being imposed from the top, the British captured Detroit very early on. It was certainly hoped by some British strategists that the Michigan territory might have been either annexed into Canada or simply detached as an American Indian buffer state. However, all success on this front depended on control of Lake Erie and Native Indian support. The U.S. naval victory at the Battle of Lake Erie denied the British the first of those and the American army victory at the Battle of the Thames and the consequent death of Tecumseh denied the British the second. If anything it was the British that were at most risk of losing territory in Upper Canada on the Detroit-Michigan front by the end of 1813. The most concrete British hopes of conquest were always in the U.S. North East. By the time of the Battle of Plattsburgh in September 1814 the British in fact occupied all of Maine east of the Penobscot river. Truth be told, the Northern New Englanders were by far the most reluctant Americans to wage war with Britain. Indeed, the reason Prevost decided to attack Plattsburgh, NY, at all instead of Vermont was because, by 1814, almost of his British Army supplies were being procured from American sources within Vermont. So important and so ubiquitous were New England suppliers to the British military strategy was based on a policy of trying to avoid giving any offence to the people that lived there. At any rate, the British officials that organised the occupation of eastern Maine compelled the inhabitants of those territories to swear allegiance to the Crown. There is no evidence of any resistance to this measure on the part of the locals. The lasting impression seems to be that they were so indifferent to U.S. citizenship that they were quite happy to accept British rule if that allowed for their trade and livelihoods to carry on unmolested, and the British had always been their biggest trading partners anyway both before and during the war. There is no doubt in mind that the British could have kept Maine if Prevost had then won the Battle of Plattsbugh. Most of the major historians who have written on the matter such as Hitsman, Mahon, Quimby, Black and Turner all more or less agree that conquering Plattsburgh on Lake Champlain would have allowed the British to trade that little spot of New York back to the U.S. in exchange for holding onto Maine. However, they are all also unanimous in that Prevost's failure to take Plattsburgh with an army of 13,000 Peninsular War veterans against a few thousand U.S. militiamen is one of the most embarrassing episodes in British military history. In terms of counter-factuals, the entire New Orleans campaign can be completely discounted. Fundamentally, the British attempt to conquer New Orleans took place AFTER the Treaty of Ghent was signed (which agreed to rectifying all territory to status quo antebellum). Even had the British taken the city, they would only have had to hand it straight back again.
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Sep 25, 2011 23:18
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Dopilsya posted:Japan's military after the closing is oft-times described in fairly regressive terms; for instance, they had early guns from the Portuguese, but after the closing they did not improve on any designs and, in fact turned to more primitive weaponry as somehow more honourable. Is this true or a myth? Honor had nothing to do with it. The point was to ensure the stability of the Japanese political system under the Tokugawa, following a century of often brutal war. Forced disarmament follows logically from this objective, and it must admitted that the Tokugawa shogunate was very successful, since it ruled a peaceful Japan for 250 years. This is sometimes overlooked, because I think people are apt to emphasize the impact of the Perry Expedition over the long period.
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Sep 25, 2011 23:29
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Tab8715 posted:With the on-going World War II discussion what would you say are the most common misunderstandings or "Top 10 Myths" about World War II. One myth that annoys me is that Speer took Germany to full on total war in 1943. This is not true while weapons production did increase under Speer it was not because germany shifted to a total war strategy. Indeed Nazi Germany had already gone to a total war strategy in 1941, What Speer did was raid the industrial reserve (the percentage of factories and machinery reserved to replace losses due to aerial bombardment or equipment failures) and rationalise production by cancelling some of the more insane Nazi pet projects (the Ratte and Maus being probably the most famous cancelled projects), Also he was much more willing to accept lower quality standards in exchange for greater numbers (for example he authorised the construction of modular uboats whereby each section of the submarine was built in different factories and then final assembly was completed in a drydock.)
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Sep 25, 2011 23:43
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SO ANGRY posted:Well, the British didn't remove the cavalry lance from their military arsenal until 1928 I think, and all through WW1 they led pointless attacks in the hope that they would make a breakthrough for the cavalry, who would then run rampant in the enemy's backyard. Huh, I was under the impression that cavalry forces mostly fought as infantry and just used horses for fast transportation by that late date, though I'll be the first to admit my knowledge on the subject is not very extensive. Did they actually Light Brigade their way across no man's land (so to speak)? That's actually really piqued my interest, do you know of any good reading material on the subject? I should say I was particularly curious about examples from when guns were still relatively new, though  .
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Sep 26, 2011 01:54
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Dopilsya posted:Huh, I was under the impression that cavalry forces mostly fought as infantry and just used horses for fast transportation by that late date, though I'll be the first to admit my knowledge on the subject is not very extensive. Did they actually Light Brigade their way across no man's land (so to speak)? That's actually really piqued my interest, do you know of any good reading material on the subject? You're not entirely wrong. The British army took a battering during the Boer Wars. But during their experiences of counter insurgency warfare in South Africa, British cavalry became very important in providing the mobility and firepower required for such warfare. There were still shock cavalry of course in the late 19th century. In fact, the last lancer charge in British army history was during the Boer Wars I believe but don't quote me on that. Nevertheless, by the end of the Boer War, most British cavalry regiments had in fact developed into what were perhaps the best mounted rifle / mounted infantry units in the world. Unfortunately, they developed this just in time for the trenches, barbed wire and machine guns of the Western Front of WW1. Cavalry was almost totally useless in this scenario as a combat arm. Indeed, many later offensives such as Cambrai failed because the cavalry was completely incapable of performing the role they allotted to themselves, i.e. exploiting the breaches made by tanks.
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Sep 26, 2011 02:13
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Agesilaus II posted:The U.S. naval victory at the Battle of Lake Erie Are there details on how this happened? I heard that everything went swimmingly for the British at the start of the war except for the naval stuff and that sounds backwards. My understanding is that the US barely had a navy at the start of the war because Jefferson had made major cuts to defence spending. If that is true, how did they get up to speed on Lake Erie so quickly and successfully? Another neat thing I heard about the War of 1812 was that the New York militia refused to take orders from national army officers and were skeptical that their mandate legally allowed them to proceed onto foreign soil, thereby holding everything up. Confirm/deny please.
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Sep 26, 2011 02:27
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Actually, The Lancers did have one final and surprisingly successful action on Horseback in 1918 towards the end of the war.
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Sep 26, 2011 02:29
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What would a modern war look like? Let's say China says gently caress-it and invades Taiwan - what happens?
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Sep 26, 2011 02:31
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coolatronic posted:Are there details on how this happened? I heard that everything went swimmingly for the British at the start of the war except for the naval stuff and that sounds backwards. My understanding is that the US barely had a navy at the start of the war because Jefferson had made major cuts to defence spending. If that is true, how did they get up to speed on Lake Erie so quickly and successfully? The Battle of Lake Eerie was a small ship action between what were essentially two squadrons made out of whatever each side could build, buy, or capture in 1812-13. The British force was short of both experienced sailors and guns since everything had to be transported to Eerie overland and naval cannon are heavy and awkward. During the battle Admiral Perry took his ships in close to batter the British with his heavier carronades which resulted in his flagship the Lawrence being totally destroyed. However at that point the two heaviest ships in the British squadron collided and became entangled due to the heavy damage they had sustained making them unmanageable. The remainder of Perry's squadron cut through the British line to rake the two entangled ships from bow and stern and by the time their crews managed to get them separated neither was in any condition to continue the fight. The smaller British vessels made a run for it, got caught, and surrendered.
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Sep 26, 2011 03:26
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EvanSchenck posted:Honor had nothing to do with it. The point was to ensure the stability of the Japanese political system under the Tokugawa, following a century of often brutal war. Forced disarmament follows logically from this objective, and it must admitted that the Tokugawa shogunate was very successful, since it ruled a peaceful Japan for 250 years. This is sometimes overlooked, because I think people are apt to emphasize the impact of the Perry Expedition over the long period. In addition to that, for when there was fighting, a lot of Japanese combat at the time was apparently archery-based, and they used some pretty powerful asymmetrical longbows, which were probably better in trained hands than the matchlock muskets they got from the Portuguese.
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Sep 26, 2011 03:27
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Yeah but it takes a lifetime to train a decent archer. You can give some mud farmer a musket, tell him to point it in the general direction of the enemy formation and shoot.
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Sep 26, 2011 03:44
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INTJ Mastermind posted:Yeah but it takes a lifetime to train a decent archer. You can give some mud farmer a musket, tell him to point it in the general direction of the enemy formation and shoot. That's my point; during that time period there wasn't enough large scale combat for that to be a factor. If another huge war had broken out in that time period we probably wouldn't have seen the technological regression we did.
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Sep 26, 2011 03:48
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LimburgLimbo posted:In addition to that, for when there was fighting, a lot of Japanese combat at the time was apparently archery-based, and they used some pretty powerful asymmetrical longbows, which were probably better in trained hands than the matchlock muskets they got from the Portuguese. Actually, the matchlocks they had almost entirely replaced bows when possible. The japanese bow was actually notoriously short-ranged and low-powered. The Japanese really liked the matchlock in warfare. The problem was that the production was low and localized in a few specific cities, so it couldn't completely take over. Pre-modern firearms are often maligned for their inaccuracy but that had more to do with the fact that they lacked sights and were fired more for rate than for accuracy. Even with smoothbores, marksmen could still often hit targets at decent ranges with a degree of accuracy.
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Sep 26, 2011 03:50
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Dopilsya posted:Huh, I was under the impression that cavalry forces mostly fought as infantry and just used horses for fast transportation by that late date, though I'll be the first to admit my knowledge on the subject is not very extensive. Did they actually Light Brigade their way across no man's land (so to speak)? That's actually really piqued my interest, do you know of any good reading material on the subject? Well, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/books/review/book-review-to-end-all-wars-by-adam-hochschild.html?pagewanted=all is a pretty good book that I recently read, though it focuses more on peace movements throughout he conflict, it does have quite a bit on the senselessness of the conflict militarily and politically. As to when guns were brand new, that's more 14th century stuff I'd think (or earlier), and I'm not really versed on that part of history
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Sep 26, 2011 03:55
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Panzeh posted:Actually, the matchlocks they had almost entirely replaced bows when possible. The japanese bow was actually notoriously short-ranged and low-powered. The Japanese really liked the matchlock in warfare. The problem was that the production was low and localized in a few specific cities, so it couldn't completely take over. I dunno, I've been told there was a fair amount of evidence that muskets weren't used as commonly as once thought, with, for example, forensics evidence showing that at Sekigahara a sound majority of wounds were from arrows. I also don't know where you've heard that Japanese bows were short-ranged and low-powered. I'm not sure about outright power compared to the bows of Western culture, but a Japanese bow will probably have a longer accurate range than the muskets of the time and fire much faster.
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Sep 26, 2011 04:06
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Someone once told me that the English "gently caress you" gesture with two fingers comes from captured English archers being repatriated with these two fingers cut off so these archers could not longer use their bows. By holding them up they were showing their opponents they had their fingers still. Is this true?
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Sep 26, 2011 05:38
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Oxford Comma posted:Someone once told me that the English "gently caress you" gesture with two fingers comes from captured English archers being repatriated with these two fingers cut off so these archers could not longer use their bows. By holding them up they were showing their opponents they had their fingers still. Is this true? I've heard that as well, but it's apparently not true. http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/pluckyew.asp
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Sep 26, 2011 05:42
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LimburgLimbo posted:I dunno, I've been told there was a fair amount of evidence that muskets weren't used as commonly as once thought, with, for example, forensics evidence showing that at Sekigahara a sound majority of wounds were from arrows. It is true that the number of guns at Nagashino, which was usually assumed to be 3000, was probably around a third of that, and that guns were not as integral to Nobunaga's victory as often assumed (being positioned behind a fence behind a river with his attackers going at him piecemeal was kind of nice for him). But people didn't really run around with bows in Edo period Japan and they didn't give up on the gun, it was rather that the Tokugawa government was completely centered around demilitarizing their feudal lords and making sure that there were no-one around that had enough military muscle to ignite a new era of civil war. Everything from the road structure to the administration structure were put in effect to sap military strength from local rulers. Cutting down on the manufacturing of guns is pretty drat vital if you don't want any potential civil wars. The biggest myth is that Japanese detested guns because they were "dishonourable". The bows were quite crappy compared to the guns, and the samurai themselves were eager to pick up the guns, which were restricted to the rich elite until they started to mass produce them. I remember one account of a countryside noble who was mocked at Sekigahara by his allies, simply because he brought a regiment of archers. That is not something you do if bows had some super qualities that guns don't have, or if it is considered more honourable.
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Sep 26, 2011 05:52
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Any of y'all know of good sources on engagements of the Hussite wars? Doesn't matter to me whether it's pop-history or serious scholarly works, although I don't wanna spend more than 40 bucks on a book if I can avoid it. Also, is it true that the Hussites were some of the first full-on gunpowder armies? In my head the traditions of land combat in Europe kind of go from the 'chivalric' style of endless chevauchee and interminable loving sieges of the high middle ages to the Hussite wagenberg and handgonne field fortifications, which weren't mobile enough to be fully effective so you then see pike-and-shotte formations that gradually up the percentage of 'shotte' until by the late 17th century there's pretty much no pike left. Am I missing anything dramatic?
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Sep 26, 2011 06:08
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gohuskies posted:A higher percentage, yes, but a higher percentage of a much smaller base. Comparing Germany to the Allies is much less informative than comparing Germany at the beginning to Germany at the end. And Germany did ramp up war production as the war went on, which meant they were clearly underproducing to start. There is no reason that Germany should produce fewer tanks in 1941 than in 1944 except that they didn't produce as many tanks as they possibly could in 1941. If they really wanted a shot at winning, they would have needed to hit that higher percentage of war production earlier. As it was, they didn't go all-out on war production until they had their backs to the wall on the battlefield, a fatal error. A percentage comparison to the Allies is irrelevant to my argument. They did ramp up production, but at the cost of sustainability and quality. They cut corners in important places in order to make up for their inferiority in other places and made heavy use of forced labor in order to ramp up production. The nazi's kept gambling everything on their next scheme in the hope of winning and the idea that Hitler at least tried to do well for the german people is highly overrated. The main point of the book I linked is to show that this idea that Hitler somehow cared too much for the german people's economic wellbeing to commit everything to winning the war is a total myth, it's a very good book and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know about the economic background of world war 2. See also this post: Ferrosol posted:One myth that annoys me is that Speer took Germany to full on total war in 1943. This is not true while weapons production did increase under Speer it was not because germany shifted to a total war strategy. Indeed Nazi Germany had already gone to a total war strategy in 1941, What Speer did was raid the industrial reserve (the percentage of factories and machinery reserved to replace losses due to aerial bombardment or equipment failures) and rationalise production by cancelling some of the more insane Nazi pet projects (the Ratte and Maus being probably the most famous cancelled projects), Also he was much more willing to accept lower quality standards in exchange for greater numbers (for example he authorised the construction of modular uboats whereby each section of the submarine was built in different factories and then final assembly was completed in a drydock.)
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Sep 26, 2011 10:09
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Agesilaus II posted:In terms of counter-factuals, the entire New Orleans campaign can be completely discounted. Fundamentally, the British attempt to conquer New Orleans took place AFTER the Treaty of Ghent was signed (which agreed to rectifying all territory to status quo antebellum). Even had the British taken the city, they would only have had to hand it straight back again. I suspect there would be a real temptation to tell Brother Jonathan that treaties notwithstanding, His Majesty's Government would be administering New Orleans from now on (with an invented figleaf of legality), and if Brother Jonathan didn't like that then perhaps he could complain to his best friend Napoleon about it. But that would be a HORRIBLE idea in the long run - British policy post-1814 towards Brother Jonathan could be summed as up as "giving him what he wants will never be as annoying and expensive as fighting him", and the temporary benefit in taxing traffic on the Mississippi would be well outweighed by making a permanent enemy of the Americans.
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Sep 26, 2011 10:28
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Any of y'all know of good sources on engagements of the Hussite wars? Doesn't matter to me whether it's pop-history or serious scholarly works, although I don't wanna spend more than 40 bucks on a book if I can avoid it. I can't really advise you on books to go for, but I can tell you straight off the wagenburg was never really adopted beyond the Czech lands, and so to call it one of the 'traditions' of European land combat is misleading. The Hussites were likewise not 'full-on gunpowder'. Crossbows and melee weapons still played a substantial role in their tactics. Regarding siege and siege tactics, these shifted over the course of the 13th and into the 14th centuries, most notably because of developments in field artillery and engineering which allowed the production of more effective siege weapons, trebuchets and catapults, in the field. This, along with some political changes, shortened siege. The adoption of effective cannon made a series of independent fortifications, the castle system of the middle ages no longer worth maintaining, but it did not put an end to siege, nor indeed protracted siege. The siege of Florence in the war of the League of Cognac, for example, lasted nearly 10 months. I'm not huge on late medieval warfare, but your link between the Hussites and the adoption of pike and musket warfare is unlikely at best. The Swiss mercenaries that made the pike square so popular don't see much use until the Burgundian wars, a full 40 years after the end of the Hussite Wars. And it isn't for another 10 years, in 1487, that the first landsknecht regiments are formed. What's more, the effective amalgamation of pike and gun into a singular formation doesn't really happen until the tercios of the 16th century. While the proportion of arquebussiers does increase into the 17th century, it is truly not until the invention of the socket bayonet that the pike completely loses its place on the battlefield, though the plug bayonet certainly helps it on its way. The plug bayonet was no true replacement for the pike, though, as evidenced by the crushing Jacobite charge against government forces at Killiecrankie. The government men did not have enough time to affix their plugs before they were eating Highland steel. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Sep 26, 2011 |
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Sep 26, 2011 12:16
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coolatronic posted:Are there details on how this happened? I heard that everything went swimmingly for the British at the start of the war except for the naval stuff and that sounds backwards. My understanding is that the US barely had a navy at the start of the war because Jefferson had made major cuts to defence spending. If that is true, how did they get up to speed on Lake Erie so quickly and successfully? Rent-a-Cop has more or less answered your first question fairly succinctly in terms of tactics. All I would add is that the key to victory on the Lakes was essentially a war of who could build the most ships the fastest. On Lake Erie the British lost that ship building war and were at a disadvantage from American heavier firepower. On Lake Ontario on the other hand the British went so far as to build the HMS St Lawrence – a three deck, 112 gun, first rate ship of the line. Although it never saw action (not surprisingly because Commodore Isaac Chauncey USN was not so foolish as to contest control of Lake Ontario with his frigates against that monster), what's so hilarious about this is that so determined had the British become by 1814 to assert their naval supremacy against the U.S. that they went so far as to build arguably the most powerful battleship in the world at that time ON A loving LAKE! I don't know about you, but that amuses me to no end. Your second point about the militia is indeed one the most fascinating things about the U.S. war effort. For this phenomenon you can largely thank Jefferson, who is (speaking as a fairly unbiased Scot) probably one of the worst U.S. presidents in my view. The majority of Americans among you will be much better informed about him and his politics than I am. However, his belief about the innate tyranny of central (federal) government and its powers extended to a distrust of a national army. Therefore he kept the numbers of federal soldiers very small and envisaged that an army of citizens in arms (i.e. states militia) could and would be called upon to defend the nation from invasion. The problem with the militia system is that it is entirely defensive. Militiamen joined the militia on the understanding and indeed on the legal requirement that they would be employed to repel invaders. If they were attached to a federal army that went onto the strategic offensive and invaded Canada the legal requirement for the militiamen to serve disappeared. In consequence, General von Rensselaer in his Queenstown campaign of 1812, General Dearborn in his attempt on Montreal in winter 1812, and General Hampton in his campaign against Montreal in 1813 all suffered sudden reductions in their force strength when their militiamen simply refused at the border to leave American territory and went home. This was not in any way unique to New York militiamen but was common to all states militiamen during the War of 1812. Another interesting factor was that there were often conflicts and rivalries between regular, federal army officers and state militia officers. Because the U.S. military machine at the highest levels was was still so relatively infantile there was no way of ensuring the seniority of federal officers over militia officers. This was all the more problematic because States could in effect just make “some guy” a major general. Major General Some Guy by merit of his militia rank would then out rank any federal brigadier generals who, not surprisingly, felt that as professional, regular soldiers they should have automatic seniority over any militia officers. One notable example is the conflict between Major General von Rensselaer and Brigadier General Smyth that crippled the Queenstown campaign almost before it began. Smyth, a federal officer, simply refused almost point blank to follow the orders of von Rensselaer. One could find many other examples however. As a counter point, I should also point out that during British incursions into U.S. territory the militia did on occasion prove their mettle. At Bladensburg the militia showed their inexperience and indiscipline and were promptly routed allowing the British under Ross to walk into Washington and torch the place. At Baltimore and New Orleans, however, they proved to be much more stalwart and resilient, beating the British back into the sea as it were. If you are interested in this kind of thing, one of the best discussions of the U.S. army in the War of 1812 is Robert S. Quimby's book "The U.S. Army in the War of 1812: An Operational and Command Study", Michigan State University Press, 1997
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Sep 26, 2011 13:25
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Oxford Comma posted:Someone once told me that the English "gently caress you" gesture with two fingers comes from captured English archers being repatriated with these two fingers cut off so these archers could not longer use their bows. By holding them up they were showing their opponents they had their fingers still. Is this true? I too can confirm this old story as pure bollocks.
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Sep 26, 2011 13:31
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LimburgLimbo posted:I also don't know where you've heard that Japanese bows were short-ranged and low-powered. I'm not sure about outright power compared to the bows of Western culture, but a Japanese bow will probably have a longer accurate range than the muskets of the time and fire much faster. I've heard this too. Doing some poking around it seem to be that in translations of Musashi's Five Rings he says this: quote:The bow is also suitable on the battlefield, for making strategic charges and retreats; because it can be fired rapidly at a moment's notice from the ranks of the lancers and others, it is particularly good for battle in the open fields. It is inadequate, however, for sieging a castle, and for situations where the opponent is more than forty yards away. Now this could be a mistranslation, and the 'yard' is actually a much larger Japanese unit of measurement, or it could be that Musashi was talking about armoured opponents, or another factor that I had not considered. However, because not all opponents on the Japanese battlefield were armoured, and likewise neither were the horses, it is reasonable to interpret that he means any opponent. If you look back at the debate I had with Bewbies earlier, where he claimed 300m as the effective range of the European longbow while I would put it at 200m you can see why the Japanese bows would seem absolutely wimpy by comparison. Hell, 40 yards is within range for muskets to absolutely gently caress you up. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Sep 26, 2011 |
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Sep 26, 2011 13:34
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Trouble Man posted:I suspect there would be a real temptation to tell Brother Jonathan that treaties notwithstanding, His Majesty's Government would be administering New Orleans from now on (with an invented figleaf of legality), and if Brother Jonathan didn't like that then perhaps he could complain to his best friend Napoleon about it. No. I don't think that was ever going to be a genuine temptation for the British. As far as keeping hold of New Orleans in the event of a British victory DESPITE the Treaty of Ghent goes, that is a nonsensical claim. If anything Britain had been at war with Napoleonic France for twenty years precisely to uphold the international system of treaties. What a British victory at New Orleans would have done, I feel, is reinforced to everyone that the entire War had been a strategic stalemate. The honour of British arms, if you like, would have been left intact. Instead, the fact that the British are defeated at New Orleans added to the illusion that the U.S. won the war outright. As you quite rightly say, the British quite simply didn't want war with the U.S. Never wanted it in fact (although the British worked loving hard at starting the war nevertheless). After the exhausting war with Napoleonic France, the British really just wanted the American War done and dusted. Thus they sent thousands of Peninsular War veterans to finish the job (with mixed results) but at the same time also desperately negotiated for peace.
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Sep 26, 2011 13:59
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Agesilaus II posted:No. I don't think that was ever going to be a genuine temptation for the British. As far as keeping hold of New Orleans in the event of a British victory DESPITE the Treaty of Ghent goes, that is a nonsensical claim. If anything Britain had been at war with Napoleonic France for twenty years precisely to uphold the international system of treaties. What's more, it's not as if Britain could have held on to New Orleans for long, assuming that violation reignited the war. Of course, in this world of counterfactuals the assault on the city was not, in fact, doomed before it even began, which means that either the American walls were manned by men without weapons or exceedingly well-armed scarecrows.
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Sep 26, 2011 14:06
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Agesilaus II posted:On Lake Ontario on the other hand the British went so far as to build the HMS St Lawrence – a three deck, 112 gun, first rate ship of the line. Although it never saw action (not surprisingly because Commodore Isaac Chauncey USN was not so foolish as to contest control of Lake Ontario with his frigates against that monster), what's so hilarious about this is that so determined had the British become by 1814 to assert their naval supremacy against the U.S. that they went so far as to build arguably the most powerful battleship in the world at that time ON A loving LAKE! I don't know about you, but that amuses me to no end. This actually is pretty hilarious in its absurdity, perhaps it's a metaphor, a totally pointless piece of work for a totally pointless war. I looked up the ship on Wikipedia and it says it was decommissioned in 1815, and sold for scrap in 1832. So after building a monster ship it really did spend it's whole life sitting at dock for 15 years? 112 guns though, they weren't loving around. Looking at its armament, I'm not sure about firepower in terms of weight fired, but in actual numbers the ship carried more guns than HMS Victory  . In a vague way it kind of reminds me of the German V weapons, impressive, terrifying, and strategically useless.
Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Sep 26, 2011 |
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Sep 26, 2011 15:10
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Agesilaus II posted:You're not entirely wrong. The British army took a battering during the Boer Wars. But during their experiences of counter insurgency warfare in South Africa, British cavalry became very important in providing the mobility and firepower required for such warfare. There were still shock cavalry of course in the late 19th century. In fact, the last lancer charge in British army history was during the Boer Wars I believe but don't quote me on that. Nevertheless, by the end of the Boer War, most British cavalry regiments had in fact developed into what were perhaps the best mounted rifle / mounted infantry units in the world. Actually the last British Cavalry charge was the battle of Battle of Omdurman in 1898 where the 400 men of the 21st Lancers (accompanied by a novice war correspondent named Winston Churchill) charged a group of 2500 Sudanese infantry and forced them to retreat. The last cavalry charge by British affiliated forces iirc was October 1918 when some Australian cavalry successfully charged Ottoman infantry and routed them at the battle of Aleppo?. While the last successful cavalry charge was by some Italian Cavalry in 1943 on the eastern front where they successfully repulsed a russian attack with a cavalry charge.
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Sep 26, 2011 15:58
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Amused to Death posted:This actually is pretty hilarious its absurdity, perhaps it's a metaphor, a totally pointless piece of work for a totally pointless war. I looked up the ship on Wikipedia and it says it was decommissioned in 1815, and sold for scrap in 1832. So after building a monster ship it really did spend it's whole life sitting at dock for 15 years? 112 guns though, they weren't loving around. Looking at its armament, I'm not sure about firepower in terms of weight fired, but in actual numbers the ship carried more guns than HMS Victory The hilarity and absurdity I feel is compounded that with so many guns on board and with so few supplies, I think it is unlikely that there was enough shot and powder in all of Canada to provide the St Lawrence with enough ammunition for more than maybe one or two broadsides at most. Ferrosol posted:While the last successful cavalry charge was by some Italian Cavalry in 1943 on the eastern front where they successfully repulsed a russian attack with a cavalry charge. I doff my czapka to you, sir. I havn't encountered the history of the Italian cavalry on the Eastern front before.
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Sep 26, 2011 16:56
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Ferrosol posted:Actually the last British Cavalry charge was the battle of Battle of Omdurman in 1898 where the 400 men of the 21st Lancers (accompanied by a novice war correspondent named Winston Churchill) charged a group of 2500 Sudanese infantry and forced them to retreat. The last cavalry charge by British affiliated forces iirc was October 1918 when some Australian cavalry successfully charged Ottoman infantry and routed them at the battle of Aleppo?. While the last successful cavalry charge was by some Italian Cavalry in 1943 on the eastern front where they successfully repulsed a russian attack with a cavalry charge. As for the Italians, if you are thinking of the engagement in Isbusenskij (probably not how its spelled correctly) in 1942, that was the last considerable cavalry charge against regular forces ever. The Savoia Dragoon regiment outflanked soviet infantry and artillery positions, using sabers even. The rest of the Italian forces took the town. Since then there have been other charges, but either against irregulars or on a very small scale. Another relevant WW2 charge was in Yugoslavia in 1942, again featuring the Italians, who routed a considerable amount of partisans around Poloj (in what is now Bosnia I think).
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Sep 26, 2011 18:41
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Ghost of Mussolini posted:Italy was totally unprepared for war. Well, it's more Italy was very well prepared for war - in about 1935. They militarised earlier than everyone else (the Fascists having come to power earlier, I suppose) and thus had obsolete gear in 1939 that would have been top-notch a few years earlier. The Soviets had something of the same problem.
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Sep 26, 2011 19:01
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feedmegin posted:Well, it's more Italy was very well prepared for war - in about 1935. They militarised earlier than everyone else (the Fascists having come to power earlier, I suppose) and thus had obsolete gear in 1939 that would have been top-notch a few years earlier. The Soviets had something of the same problem. Didn't Mussolini declare war with 3/4 of the Italian merchant marine outside of the Med, often even at the docks in Allied harbors and so directly impounded? He rushed into the war, because of the speed of which the Germans defeated France, and he wanted a slice of the cake as well.
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Sep 26, 2011 19:48
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feedmegin posted:Well, it's more Italy was very well prepared for war - in about 1935. They militarised earlier than everyone else (the Fascists having come to power earlier, I suppose) and thus had obsolete gear in 1939 that would have been top-notch a few years earlier. The Soviets had something of the same problem. Therefore, while there was a sort of Fascist impulse for the armed forces to be strong and modern, they weren't supposed to be that strong or independent, as they might get uppity regards to Mussolini (and they finally did in '43). The Italian army was as fit for war in 1935 as it would be 5 years later, i.e. not ready at all. Profound problems regarding training, proper officer independence, and structured logistical organization did not pop up between 1935 and 1940. Edit: OperaMouse posted:Didn't Mussolini declare war with 3/4 of the Italian merchant marine outside of the Med, often even at the docks in Allied harbors and so directly impounded? Ghost of Mussolini fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Sep 26, 2011 |
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Sep 26, 2011 19:55
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Was there any real chance that Great Britain would have made peace with Germany after France fell so quickly?
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Sep 27, 2011 00:56
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Perhaps if Germany completely dominated in the Battle of Britain and was eventually able to continue the blitz perpetually. But there's a lot of history there that would've had to be changed there. Given it lacked a decent heavy strategic bomber though I think it would've needed near full air superiority to pull off a decent bombing campaign. Even with that I think British aircraft production would kept up enough to never have allowed for this, maybe if the kriegsmarine had been able to pull off a better blockade of Britain, but I don't think they had the numbers in U-boats in 1940.(correct me if I'm wrong)
Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Sep 27, 2011 |
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Sep 27, 2011 01:12
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Was there any real chance that Great Britain would have made peace with Germany after France fell so quickly? There are a few changes to history that could have brought about Britain making peace after Dunkirk. In the first instance my personal opinion is that it would only have taken Lord Halifax to become Prime Minister instead of Winston Churchill to bring about this outcome. Assuming this did not indeed happen then the Germans would have needed to accomplished a few things. The first was destroy the RAF. Had the Germans stuck to bombing British airfields instead of switching to city targets then this might have been achieved but it is very dubious whether air supremacy in itself would have been sufficient to allow the Germans to invade the British Isles. Beyond that the list of counter factuals becomes substantial: Germany destroys enough shipping to starve Britain out; Hitler does not decide to invade Russia; America for one reason or another does not enter the European war etc.
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Sep 27, 2011 01:30
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