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Disinterested posted:Am I the only one looking for a phantom Kallikaa post? Occasionally, a post will fail to display in a thread until someone else posts.
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Mar 31, 2015 17:31
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IM_DA_DECIDER posted:Yeah, when he told me his war experience (he was barely understandable at that stage), he said he was in Norway and then the south-east (Romania?) as some sort of combat engineer. I really wish I'd been able to understand him better. Before the SA was disbanded, the SS wasn't much of a show. Sorry to say it, but anyone joining the SA out of conviction was either a sociopath or a violent retard, if not of conviction, a careerist who made some bad life choices. It's not really something that you'd put on a résumé. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Mar 31, 2015 |
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Mar 31, 2015 18:46
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FAUXTON posted:I'd love to see something like this, but more from a historical POV - the origins of stuff like the Rangers, Special Forces, Marine Raiders, SEALs, etc. No doubt. I was in a hurry for some reason when I typed it up but yeah I'd love to see the genesis of these groups. I'd imagine that a very few go waaay back but a few were born out of a world war/post world war necessity for increasingly specialized mission. Again, interesting stuff.
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Mar 31, 2015 18:48
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JaucheCharly posted:Before the SA was disbanded, the SS wasn't much of a show. Sorry to say it, but anyone joining the SA out of conviction was either a sociopath or a violent retard, if not of conviction, a careerist who made some bad life choices. It's not really something that you'd put on a résumé. Depends when, really. I could see someone joining the SA in like 1934 for purely careerist reasons and at the time they made that choice it probably wouldn't seem a bad one, if rather mercenary. If it's more like 1928, well, yeah. 
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Mar 31, 2015 21:15
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Frostwerks posted:No doubt. I was in a hurry for some reason when I typed it up but yeah I'd love to see the genesis of these groups. I'd imagine that a very few go waaay back but a few were born out of a world war/post world war necessity for increasingly specialized mission. Again, interesting stuff. Same, to reiterate  I do wonder if there's some lineage behind some of the older ones, like whether the Continental Army had a primordial version of the Army Rangers, or whether there were mission-specific detachments which later became specialized long-term I.e. "Corporal, go run a night raid on this fort with a handful of men of your choosing" becoming "Wow Corporal, you're good at infiltrating forts so we're having you do it full-time, pick 35 men to train" and "Ok the general staff is deploying the fort infiltrator guys for this and our role is to advance when we see their signal."
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Mar 31, 2015 21:20
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Apparently the majority of the Canadian and American ones trace their lineage to the The Devil's Brigade. There was a pretty decent film made about it.
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Mar 31, 2015 21:36
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feedmegin posted:Depends when, really. I could see someone joining the SA in like 1934 for purely careerist reasons and at the time they made that choice it probably wouldn't seem a bad one, if rather mercenary. If it's more like 1928, well, yeah. Joining the SA in 1934 would have been a very short episode.
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Mar 31, 2015 21:43
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Making excuses for someone joining either organisation is straying dangerously close to "clean wehrmacht" territory.
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Apr 1, 2015 00:43
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The lesser-known "Clean Sturmabteilung" argument.
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Apr 1, 2015 01:38
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hard counter fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Jul 8, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 02:38
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SeanBeansShako posted:Which carrier was it? I don't remember, maybe it was a battleship. I do remember he was one of the Bikini Atoll guinea pigs and died of cancer a few years ago.
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Apr 1, 2015 05:12
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I don't suppose that's related to the fork stabbing is it?
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Apr 1, 2015 05:19
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Frostwerks posted:Is there anyone who would be willing to do like a huge rear end effort post on like special forces, mainly those in the United States Armed Forces? Like what different groups are primarily tasked with and stuff like that? You can read wikipedia but it's not a particularly interesting read That's a huge subject. What specifically would you like to know about? Vietnam-era SOF stuff is quite interesting and provides the origins for most modern special forces troops. I can talk a little bit about LRRPs, MACV-SOG, the SASR, and the NZ SAS, the A-teams, and the early UDT/SEAL teams. SAS operations in the last half of the 20th century are worth talking about, given their role in Malaya and the various brushfire wars in the Middle East. I'm not highly-knowledgeable about modern SOF stuff, but I can give you a decent rundown of the role of SOF in the invasion of Afghanistan during 2001-2002, which is a pretty interesting case study in the use of special operations forces. FAUXTON posted:I'd love to see something like this, but more from a historical POV - the origins of stuff like the Rangers, Special Forces, Marine Raiders, SEALs, etc. This would take a series of effort posts, which I would be more than happy to do! I'll do things semi-chronologically, with occasional standalone posts for notable operations or units. We'll start off with Germany's Brandenburgers and their role in the invasions of Poland and the Low Countries. The coup de main at Eben Emael merits mention. Then the creation of the Commandos and their underwhelming early performance. As time goes on, we can get into the Commando's growing success and professionalism and mention their operations in the Med, Vaagsoy, mainlaind Norway, St. Nazaire, Dieppe, and many other places. I'll cover LRDG and the SAS's operations in the desert. Once the desert campaign concludes, we'll go into the LRDG (and the SBS's) role in the Aegean campaign. Special forces in the Italian campaign will make for a couple good posts. The Commandos, SBS (Anders Larssen's VC action), and the US-Canadian First Special Service Force. From there, I'll discuss the SAS's operations in Occupied France, the role of the Rangers and Commandos in the Normandy landings, and the activities of various Allied special forces during the liberation of Europe. In the Pacific, there's the Marine Raiders and the short-lived Paramarines. And in Burma, we have the Chindits and Merrill's Marauders, plus Combined Operation's forces in the region. Back to the Germans, I'll go over Skorzeny's exploits and the role of the Brandenburgers during the Operation Rösselsprung attempt to capture Tito (a really interesting case study in the use of SOF in intelligence-gathering and internal security). I'll also mention the German's use of airborne troops in counter-partisan operations in France. Naval special forces are a unique subject, so I'll dedicate a couple of posts to them. I'll go into No. 62 Commando, the X-craft crews, Z Special Force, the Combined Operations Pilotage Parties, the Beach Jumpers, the UDTs, the Special Boat Section, X Mas, kaiten pilots and the German frogmen. Finding stuff for Russians is going to be difficult, since most of their raiding operations was done by ad hoc troops. Viktor Leonov's exploits are quite interesting. Japan never had much in the way of special forces, although it may be worth mentioning their Army and Navy airborne troops. If there's anything else you guys (and gals) would like me to add, I'd be happy to discuss it. For anyone interested in the subject, Time-Life's "The Commandos" is a very accessible read on the subject re: Allied and German special operations during the war. If you want more on naval stuff, "The SBS in World War II: An Illustrated History" is also quite good.
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Apr 1, 2015 05:26
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Bacarruda posted:That's a huge subject. What specifically would you like to know about? You are the best
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Apr 1, 2015 05:50
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Bacarruda posted:That's a huge subject. What specifically would you like to know about? However, the book that got me started down the SOF path deviation from my WWII Arnhem obsession was this: The Commandos at Dieppe: Rehearsal for D-Day: Operation Cauldron, No. 4 Commando Attack on the Hess Battery August 19th, 1942. No idea of the reputation of the author, but there's some totally  stuff about a gunfight in an orchard that you really need to read.
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Apr 1, 2015 06:06
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Arquinsiel posted:So huge that you can get a book out of every little SOF action you can name, and I can't even remember half the ones I have read. I look forward to reading your posts. Dieppe was an insanse clusterfuck for many reasons. The Commandos' actions there were something else (there were even a few Rangers tagging along as observers). Bacarruda posted:
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Apr 1, 2015 06:22
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JaucheCharly posted:Joining the SA in 1934 would have been a very short episode. The thing is, gramps was Austrian, so I don't really see how he could have joined the SA under conditions that were either a bit strange or really bad.
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Apr 1, 2015 06:41
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I keep meaning to buy Peter Young's wargaming books that he published in later life. They're pretty foundational what with it being around the time that Don Featherstone was starting to take the unprecedented step of "writing the rules down" and "selling them in a book". Also of note is that he wrote a fuckton of Osprey books on all kinds of stuff. And I have a teeny metal version of him, because Bolt Action does weird things. The book I linked to is pretty great as a starting point because it gave a decent over-view of how the Commandos were formed and trained, what kind of expectations there were of them as a force and how the US military head-honchos reacted to the elite British raiding force and what it meant for the Rangers as a unit in addition to the actual subject of the raid. If there's one weakness to it it's that it focuses more on No.4 Commando and not so much on No.3 Commando at all. There's still plenty of and  in there to inspire though.
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Apr 1, 2015 06:42
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IM_DA_DECIDER posted:The thing is, gramps was Austrian, so I don't really see how he could have joined the SA under conditions that were either a bit strange or really bad. We had about 100.000 illegal nazis (as in secretly registered illegal party members) by 1938, so that wouldn't be such a surprise. It's not weird, but your gramps was a true believer in action and not just words if he was in the SA or the party before 1938, after that it could mean anything. E.g. Waldheim was in the SA Reitercorps, he claims that he only did join, so that he could practice his favourite pasttime, riding. After the Anschluss it became quite hard to get into the party, as this stirred alot of people who wanted to ride the wave and the party didn't want their kind. You had to jump through alot of hoops to become a member and had to prove that you were already a true believer before they came to power and that you aided the party, have party members vouch for you etc. Not an easy task, people waited years to have their cases approved. I'd have to look up the precise numbers, but from the top of my head, by 1945 there were around 700.000 party members in what was formerly Austria, which was the highest density of party members in all of the Reich's territories. e: If we're talking about a person with academic background, there's a good chance that the person in question was in one way or the other engaged with the SA and later the SS. Just quite recently my university published a study about how the university and it's personel and students were engaged with the party, with some quite disgusting flowers from the material that I saw tangentially. Looking for somebody with a clean slate there is like looking for hay in a stack of needles. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 06:58
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100 Years Ago We're looking at the trench newspapers that are sprouting up everywhere on the Western Front, as the blokes look for ways to stave off boredom and more efficiently share latrine rumours. Herbert Sulzbach comes down with some 'orrible lurgy, Roland Garros scores the first proper* fighter kill of the war with his reinforced propellor, it's Bismarck's 100th birthday (unconfirmed rumours suggest that some electrically-wired German dugouts kept the lights on by using his revolving coffin to power a large dynamo), and there's a lovely full-page advert for Kutnow's Powder, king of patent medicines. *IIRC there was a French prototype fighter that carried a machine gun and scored a few kills back in August 1914; it got around the shooting-through-the-propellor problem by using a pusher design, but quickly bumped up against the wider problem of how any pusher plane that isn't the Wright Flyer is absolutely shithouse compared to a puller. HEY GAL posted:How many of your guys get executed for killing one another? Because that's my subjects' principal problem, loving around on watch or even desertion is much less of a thing. Although I did encounter a guy who showed up drunk to watch once; the Gefreyter told him to give him his musket and go back home and he wouldn't say anything. A private or junior NCO getting roaringly pissed and shooting his mate, or an officer or SNCO that he had a serious grudge against, was a thing that happened a few times a year. The reason why a lot of websites will tell you that 306 men were shot by the British Army and I prefer 346 (as my opening bid) is that the second number includes 40 men convicted of murder who were not included in the general pardon given to the 306 who were convicted of military offences. Of course, if the officer was extremely generally unpopular, it was quite an easy thing to arrange an accident for him the next time he went up the line... The question of military murders is such a goddamn rabbit hole. Of the soldiers shot for murder, most of them were defended properly and the Army usually went to very great pains to ensure that FGCMs hearing a murder case were not convened hastily and included people with legal experience who knew what they were doing. Had they committed similar crimes back in Blighty, they would almost certainly have had a civilian trial by jury and been hanged. (There are a couple of cases that have crappy elements to them, but the procedural flaws don't necessarily make the convictions unsound, because of the sheer weight of evidence.) However, there's a very good reason I emphasise "soldiers". That's because only just over half of the murderers were actually soldiers. (13 British, two Canadians, one white Sudefrikan, three men of the Cape Coloured Regiment, one West African askari and two West Indians.) For the rest, we have a few mule porters in the Mediterranean, and the rest were men of the Chinese Labour Corps. (The existence of which, by the way, is another excellent thing to bring up when people try to make a moral case for the First World War based around the need to defend freedom and liberal democracy Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 14:13
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago  
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Apr 1, 2015 15:03
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"That's a flying groundnut scheme, son."
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Apr 1, 2015 15:21
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Best April Fools Day Ever. I really need to finish Japanese ammo ASAP...   I'm not sorry about the potato pics, I'll get around to them eventually to get better quality ones.
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Apr 1, 2015 16:28
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Best April Fools Day Ever. I really need to finish Japanese ammo ASAP... That's one sexy item. I can't wait for high quality photos/scans of everything.
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Apr 1, 2015 17:00
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Crossposting this from the WoT thread, should probably have posted it here instead. So I'm reading the internal Swedish evaluation of the British (BAOR) 1973 evaluation report on the S-tank, and it's a loving riot. The Swedish observers have a lot to say about the British army's poo poo. Archive documents are usually drier than Sahara, but this is genuinely entertaining reading. On gunnery skills: quote:The gunnery practice was finished by two tests with a gun camera, one against a fixed target and one against a moving one, as per usual Swedish standard. The results were bad. The first time the results may possibly be explained by the gunners not taking the trial seriously, but even after they had evaluated their own results and re-did the test the results were very bad. It is possible that more training could have improved the results somewhat, but the more likely explanation is that a large portion of the British gunners simply aren't suited for their job as gunners. In some cases, problems with bad eyesight were apparent. It should be noted that British tank personnel is not tested in the same way as Swedish personnel before being assigned as tank gunners. quote:Both the methods the tank crews used for engaging targets and their laying skills were unacceptable and clearly worse than that of the average Swedish crew. On command style and discipline: quote:Exercise of command was relatively tame and commanders rarely supervised anything. The subordinates were left with a lot of freedom to solve rather ill-defined problems on their own. When it came to looking after their equipment, the personnel was rather sloppy and nonchalant. quote:The readiness (in a broad sense of the word) at the BAOR appears to be rather low. quote:Radio traffic was very lively, but rarely contained orders. On observation and crew resource management: quote:The number of targets detected was on par with the performance of Swedish crews. However, the time to open fire was in most cases far longer than can reasonably be expected. In part, this is due to lack of training on the tank, but more importantly it's also due to the way the British crews work together. The tank commander always have to give orders about everything and the gunner is forbidden from opening fire on his own initiative when he spots a target, unlike in Swedish regulations for tank crews. Just like in the 1968 trials, it has been impossible to convince the Brits to try the Swedish method, which is also employed by the Germans for example. The reason cited by the Brits is that tanks carry so few rounds that the commander cannot risk the gunner opening fire on a non-essential target and that the gunners in general aren't all that good at neither judging the importance of a target nor at adjusting their fire. (...) This severely limited the advantages of the S-tank's duplicated controls. On tactics: quote:(in a discussion on delaying fights) The target marker equipment made this exercise an excellent and very illustrative example of how not to fight this type of action (in both Chieftain and the S-tank). quote:Coordination between infantry, artillery and tanks is nonexistent. On civilian relations: quote:Very little attention is paid to the fact that the unit is exercising on private property. Careless driving on public roads and the maneuver area isn't delimited. Damage to planted fields is frequent despite good opportunities to choose routes over fields where the harvest has already been taken in. Apparently the property damage costs for a similar exercise in the same area last year were on the order of 10 million SEK (about 62 million SEK today, ~6 million EUR). These damages are paid for by the German authorities. There's a lot more of this. Should I keep on translating?
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Apr 1, 2015 18:34
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TheFluff posted:There's a lot more of this. Should I keep on translating? 
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Apr 1, 2015 18:39
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JaucheCharly posted:Joining the SA in 1934 would have been a very short episode. No it wouldn't. They even had a Panzer corps! - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_Corps_Feldherrnhalle They just didn't have any political power after the Night of the Long Knives, but the organisation was still around. You can see them doing their thing in Triumph of the Will for instance.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:50
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Trin Tragula posted:Of the soldiers shot for murder, most of them were defended properly and the Army usually went to very great pains to ensure that FGCMs hearing a murder case were not convened hastily and included people with legal experience who knew what they were doing. Had they committed similar crimes back in Blighty, they would almost certainly have had a civilian trial by jury and been hanged. (There are a couple of cases that have crappy elements to them, but the procedural flaws don't necessarily make the convictions unsound, because of the sheer weight of evidence.) Unlike the trial of the dude who mentioned (ever so politely) that he was promised 15 Soldi a day and was getting 13. They killed the poo poo out of that guy, and the paragraph given to his defense in the document was only about three inches long. Multiply two Soldi per day per soldier for an entire regiment, and that's a lot of cash that's going to...someone
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Apr 1, 2015 19:53
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feedmegin posted:No it wouldn't. They even had a Panzer corps! - Could you point out how being doormen and dummies for parades and then getting swallowed by the WM, put through the meatgrinder and the crumbs formed into a last ditch "Panzerkorps" in Oct. 1944 constitutes anything else than a dead end? For giggles you could research how many operational vehicles they had by then. You'd had to have some really low aspirations or a mental defect to sign up for something like that.
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Apr 1, 2015 20:20
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Arquinsiel posted:Do you even have to ask? Was this before or after that infamous NATO tank gunnery contest?
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Apr 1, 2015 20:25
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JaucheCharly posted:Could you point out how being doormen and dummies for parades and then getting swallowed by the WM, put through the meatgrinder and the crumbs formed into a last ditch "Panzerkorps" in Oct. 1944 constitutes anything else than a dead end? For giggles you could research how many operational vehicles they had by then. You'd had to have some really low aspirations or a mental defect to sign up for something like that. They signed up in 1934 for something happening in 1944? That's quite the deadly premonition there.
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Apr 1, 2015 20:27
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Jobbo_Fett posted:They signed up in 1934 for something happening in 1944? In 1934, the Nazis had just taken over the country and joining the SA was a help in promotion, especially in state-run things like academia; on the other hand, you didn't know at the time that the Nazis were going to start a war with anyone let alone the entire world and Germany as a whole would end up turbofucked in ways that Imperial Germany could never have imagined. In the specific context of 1933-1934, I could see someone joining the SA purely for selfish ends (especially given how people who were specifically not Nazi friendly got purged from state employment) without them actually signing up for, like, invading half of Europe and gassing all the Jews. I'm not saying I approve, mind you, I'm just saying an SA recruit in 1934 wasn't necessarily a hardcore Nazi.
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Apr 1, 2015 20:47
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SeanBeansShako posted:Was this before or after that infamous NATO tank gunnery contest? Don't know when that was but this was in June 1973.
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Apr 1, 2015 20:49
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feedmegin posted:In 1934, the Nazis had just taken over the country and joining the SA was a help in promotion, especially in state-run things like academia; on the other hand, you didn't know at the time that the Nazis were going to start a war with anyone let alone the entire world and Germany as a whole would end up turbofucked in ways that Imperial Germany could never have imagined. Edited to reflect my points and added emphasis I don't think some junior G-man was really expecting the same turn of events when he decided to join a political party during the Rise of the Reich: Part 3.
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Apr 1, 2015 20:53
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You'd have a really hard time to join the party in 1934. e: Oh wait, if you did service in the HJ, SA or SS etc. (no mention if you'd need to have signed up before the stop), you could become a party member. Let's assume that this would have been the cheap ticket. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 21:08
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HEY GAL posted:Unlike the trial of the dude who mentioned (ever so politely) that he was promised 15 Soldi a day and was getting 13. They killed the poo poo out of that guy, and the paragraph given to his defense in the document was only about three inches long. Have you posted about that one here before? Because I want to know more.
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Apr 1, 2015 21:12
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Is anyone aware of a good comparison of the acquisition and operational costs between different types of ship/boat during the world wars? IE, how many submarines could you build/operate for the cost of a battleship, etc?
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Apr 1, 2015 21:19
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SeanBeansShako posted:Was this before or after that infamous NATO tank gunnery contest? Expand upon this, please.
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Apr 1, 2015 22:49
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While googling this contest (the Canadian Army Trophy presumably?) I learned that the Dutch army has a union?quote:The 1979 competition was held at Range 9, Bergen Hohne. The US built Range 10 at Grafenwöhr for the CAT competition training, it was used later for the actual 1981 competition. There were 20 platoons competing from Belgium, Canada, the United Kingdom, West Germany and the United States. The Netherlands team did not compete due to a contractual issue with their military union. This was the first year that the USA team finished other than last place (4th place). Also, apparently the targets for this thing are some 1,600 to 3,000 meters away. Modern MBTs are loving crazy. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 22:53
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ArchangeI posted:Expand upon this, please. Basically this, I made it sounds more exciting than it was. Sadly no drunken BOAR tank crews in ladies dresses 'invading' Montreal like I made it sound like. Just a decline in tank gunnery standards. Note following the results of each contest the fact by the late eighties the British NATO forces weren't even attending, jesus. Winners don't do vast amounts of booze and treat things as a free holiday I guess. SeanBeansShako fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 22:57
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