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Dan7el posted:I serioudly doubt there are all that many atheists on the front lines.... Really? I mean, really?
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Jul 18, 2010 15:12
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DarkCrawler posted:So, the 442nd Infantry Regiment. How come they were so goddamn badass? Probably a lot of it was because they were all volunteers, and full of a lot of people very much motivated to prove themselves in the face of discrimination.
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Sep 6, 2010 18:04
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Revolvyerom posted:I work retail, and one of the regular customers I see several times a week is always wearing a Korean War Vet cap, and a half dozen pins/etc stuck in it. I struck up a short conversation with him, and found that A) they were given summer clothing to wear while fighting in mountain weather, and B) it was not really a fun time for anyone. When I tried to end the conversation on a bit of a lighter note to make him feel better, "At least you made it back intact", I got "No, I'm missing three toes thanks to frost-bite." Wikipedia's Korean War page is actually quite well written and cites its sources. Check that out, and if you want to know more look for some books. For all that its known as the "forgotten war" there's plenty of literature about it. Edit: Is should note that the main Korean War page is very concisely written, and then links you to other pages giving more details of specific parts of the war, some of which aren't as well done. As usual Wikipedia is a nice starting point for an overview, but don't rely on it for details. LimburgLimbo fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Nov 22, 2010 |
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Nov 22, 2010 09:54
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Boiled Water posted:While talking unreliable weapons; I've heard (as in mentioned in random tv-shows) that the bullup rifle they're using isn't very good. Is this the same M16 horror story or just hearsay? Who's "they"?
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Dec 12, 2010 17:09
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Trench_Rat posted:was the Crimean war or the Russo-Japanese war, world war zero? personaly I tend to lean towards Russo-Japanese war due to extensive use of trenches and modern communications. If your definition of a World War is that a large number of nations take part in it, then it's definitely the Crimean War. If you mean World War zero in the sense of the immediate predecessor to World War One and having similar technology, etc. (which your comment about trenches and modern communications would suggest), then it's definitely the Russo-Japanese war. You kind of have to say what you mean by World War zero or its pretty meaningless.
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Dec 13, 2010 15:31
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Trench_Rat posted:I meant world war zero by the use of technology Considering that a lot of the weapons and tactics used in the Russo-Japanese war were the exact same ones used in world war one, which took place only 10 yeas after, there's not really much to debate, is there.
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Dec 13, 2010 15:53
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lilljonas posted:No, pre-samurai Japanese used shields, like during the Kofun period. The common soldiers prior to the samurai periods are depicted with shield and sword. The use of mantlets never stopped, and was used in sieges even after the introduction of arquebuses. The few times they fought with foreign armies (Mongol invasion and the two Imjin War campaigns in Korea) they met enemies using shields. So they clearly knew what a shield was and why they are great to have in many cases. I seem to recall that William Wayne Farris said that there was evidence that every time the Japanese sent expeditionary forces to Korea they basically ended up adopting the Korean way of fighting, which included using shields, so they used them in some situations it would seem. Of course I read that book like 5 years ago, so I could be misremembering. Anyway it could just be that they didn't like them enough to continue to use them or their specific way of fighting caused them to fall out of favor. It wouldn't be the first time in history that people once used some technological innovation only to later abandon it. LimburgLimbo fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Feb 1, 2011 |
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Feb 1, 2011 14:22
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lilljonas posted:That sounds weird, as it was actually the other way around with the Imjin War. At the start of that war the Koreans were technologically behind Japan and relied on bows with a smattering of ineffective handguns, and subsequently had most of their army completely wiped out by the superior Japanese forces at the start of the 1592-93 campaign. After that they soon developed arquebus weaponry and tactics, both taking hints from the Ming Chinese armies that saved their bacon and the Japanese armies that had mauled them so badly on land. Ah, I should've been more specific. The book I read this in only talks about Japanese warfare between 500-1300. There were apparently a couple of times when Japan sent forces over to Korea in that time period. And I don't mean that all of Japan stated using shields, I mean that specifically the forces in Korea, for the time that they were there, realizing that the tactics which they used in Japan were ineffective, mimicked the Korean way of warfare. But like I said this is all stuff I read years ago so I could be misremembering. The book was Heavenly Warriors: The Evolution of Japan's Military, 500-1300. I don't have my copy on me so I can't look it up to confirm/
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Feb 1, 2011 16:08
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DarkCrawler posted:Jesus Christ, I couldn't even imagine what kind of nightmare an invasion of Iran (especially if it is done at the same time as Iraq and Afghanistan!) would be. I think that just could do it for the U.S. You know, end it as a superpower. People forget just how big the US is. If the US wanted to I have no doubt it could take over Iran, but it would have to go into an actual war footing to do so; start up the draft, etc. Which isn't going to happen.
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Sep 11, 2011 17:29
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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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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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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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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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dokmo posted:Here's a nifty table from Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction: Holy poo poo did the Russians make a lot of mortars. I've never heard anything about Russian mortar use in WW2, can someone tell me about this?
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Oct 9, 2011 19:33
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Oxford Comma posted:How did capital ships of WW1 and WW2 target their guns? Did they just estimate a ship was X yards away at a certain degree, and there was a table the gunners used to calculate the elevation and powder load needed? If so, how were these ships able to accurately calculate distances back then? The first analog computer targeting systems were actually developed before WWI (though I'm not sure at what point and to what extent they became standard use; there were auxiliary units which used manual control thoughout WWII), and rangefinders have been around for a couple hundred years. This wikipedia article is kinda poorly organized, but has the basics.
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Oct 13, 2011 02:06
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Boiled Water posted:Did anything change or is it still visiting hours at that war memorial thing? What's that all about anyway? What do you mean by change? It's still controversial and nothing has really changed. Anyone can go there and prey, it's open to the public, etc. I live like 15 minutes walk from Yasukuni and I can assure you that there's people there all the time. It's a normal shrine by all appearances.
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Oct 22, 2011 14:26
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Why wouldn't you just lace the cigarettes with cyanide in that case? Because people who smoked it would die very quickly and you'd only cause a few casualties. The effects of opium wouldn't be obvious as quickly, and even if they knew of it a lot of people would probably smoke it anyway.
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Dec 12, 2011 07:22
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Nenonen posted:In contrast, not a single Challenger 2 has been destroyed by enemy fire. Well, much like the debate about 'destruction' of M1s going on here, perhaps no Challengers have been completely destroyed but they have definitely been penetrated by RPG-29s, and apparently on the front armor no less.
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Dec 24, 2011 03:40
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Zionist_en_fuego posted:EDIT: I have some great english language sources if anyone is interested in learning more about Hybrid Warfare and the 2006 war. Interested in this. Are these accessible online?
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Dec 26, 2011 12:04
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Retarded Pimp posted:There was a big complaint that the .30 caliber M1 Carbine didn't have enough power to penetrate the heavy coat the Chinese soldiers wore. It was essentially a light, fast, small diameter pistol cartridge, about 100 grains and 2000fps, fast for a pistol anyway, but nowhere near the energy of a medium rifle cartridge. I could see it losing enough energy after 75 yards to have trouble going through multiple layers of fabric. Fast for a pistol? It has more energy than anything but really hot .357 magnum loads, and about twice the energy of .45ACP. It's not going to be stopped by a quilted cloth coat. This is a pretty baseless myth that's been debunked in the past.
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Dec 28, 2011 05:01
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Pyle posted:What? Today? I need to know more. Where and when? I always thought that the winner of the bayonet charge is the guy with the round in the chamber. There was one time the British made a bayonet charge in one of the Gulf Wars. That's it as far as I know. Bayonets are pretty much useless as modern combat weapons, though they have their uses for crowd control etc., and soldiers are going to need a knife anyway, so you might as well make it mountable to a gun.
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Jan 11, 2012 18:15
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THE LUMMOX posted:Up until some point in the 1930s Japan really had the west convinced that they were "the good ones." An oasis of modernity and progress in the stagnant orient. They wore suits, used western style buildings, sent students to western schools, and had massive lobby groups throughout America and Europe promoting their image. They probably would have been allowed to continue indefinitely had they not started stepping on western toes. Up until the military took over the government in ~1932, the Japanese were pretty much the "good guys" in the East. They were an aggressive expansionist empire, but then so was every Western power of the era. They tended to be fairly ruthless sometimes, but were seen as relatively fair. In their earlier exercises of modern military power, such as their response to the Boxer Rebellion and the Russo-Japanese War, they were noted by observers as being much better behaved and composed compared to many of their Western counterparts, especially the Russians, who had a tendency to loot and rape pretty frequently. Ultra-nationalism had been fomenting for a while in Japan, but it wasn't until the democratic government was basically replaced by rightist military leaders that everything really went to poo poo, there was a shift to much greater brutality in the Japanese military culture, and the really bad massacres began to occur. If you look, it just so happens that all the really bad poo poo from Japan happens around or shortly before the partially successful coup in 1932; beginning of comfort women stations, the Mukden incident leading to the Second Sino-Japanese War, etc. Up until then they were basically another empire trying to carve out a piece of mainland Asia before everyone else did.
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Feb 28, 2012 17:48
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SeanBeansShako posted:Speaking of the Boshin War and a little earlier, what would have happened if Japan was like 'no gently caress you' to Perry and didn't open up to the west. In all likeliness, yes. Without modernizing there would have basically been no way that Japan could've resisted the foreign powers, and they definitely would've come knocking, at some point.
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Mar 29, 2012 08:50
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SeanBeansShako posted:That would make some interesting alternative history then. I take it the reason they wanted Japan to modernise as well as trade but also some sort of block to anymore expansion in the area? I'm not sure if the US wanted Japan to modernize, per se. I think they might've been just as happy if Japan didn't, and they could just keep trading rights with them. But as was, the Japanese basically bought everything they needed to modernize from the Western powers, and the west was perfectly happy to take their money, never thinking that they'd really become a notable power. Up until the Russo-Japanese war, at least. The Japanese holding their own on land, and kicking the teeth in of the Russians at sea during the Russo-Japanese war, had pretty far reaching effects. It was basically the Japanese who broke the back of imperialist adventurism in Asia, and also disproved the darwinian belief by much of the West that Asians were incapable of holding power.
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Mar 29, 2012 16:48
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Rabhadh posted:Did Japan have any major resources that the Europeans/Americans wanted or did they just want to open the place up as a market for their products? Because having major resources at that time period just about guarantees an invasion of some sort. If its the latter, then the powers got just what they wanted. Except Russia. Japan is pretty resource poor, so there wasn't much that I'm aware of. When Perry first came by one of the things they were looking for was rights to whale fishing in Japanese waters, I've been told.
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Mar 29, 2012 17:20
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Koesj posted:While I do think it's applicable in this case, using any kind of 'take-off' model to explain its rapid development is a pretty contentious issue in the historiography of modern Japan (and developmental economics in general btw). I wasn't really referring to a modernization theory type of take-off model. I think the Japanese basically already had the institutional background to develop, so it's not like the take-off model where the idea is just putting in the infrastructure leads to development. There were enough pretty enlightened people after the Meiji restoration that they knew what they needed to do, and they set out specifically with the intent to modernize, in order to avoid being taken over by the Western powers. But they also know that they had to modernize as quickly as possible, so they basically began straight up buying what they needed in the interim, while also hiring foreign advisors, which is what I was referring to. They also didn't neglect to begin to build their own industrial infrastructure, however, which is why by the 1900's they could make pretty much everything themselves. Edit: For example, if you'll forgive the copy and paste from wikipedia, this is what the Japanese fleet looked like during the Russo-Japanese war. 6 battleships (all British-built) 8 armored cruisers (4 British-, 2 Italian-, 1 German-built Yakumo, and 1 French-built Azuma) 9 cruisers (5 Japanese, 2 British and 2 U.S.-built) 24 destroyers (16 British- and 8 Japanese-built) 63 torpedo boats (26 German-, 10 British-, 17 French-, and 10 Japanese-built) Almost entirely bought from the western powers, presumably at considerable expense. But it turned out well for them, because as soon as they won the Russo-Japanese war, money came flooding in, because the Japanese government was then accepted as a major power (whereas before they were looked down upon as just some uppity Orientals), and all the sudden banks all over the world were willing to loan to them. LimburgLimbo fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Mar 30, 2012 |
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Mar 30, 2012 05:57
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The SARS Volta posted:I suppose this is as good a thread as any to ask this: Those are Zouaves http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zouaves That's actually pretty cool that a movie saw to put them in the background like that.
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May 2, 2012 02:17
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Nenonen posted:What did Germans have that would have required the direction of heavy AA guns to deal with? Pz I, II, III and IV could all be knocked out by standard AT guns. V and VI didn't come in numbers until Allied armies were driving full steam towards Berlin, and by then there were also heavy AT guns that were better suited for the job than AA guns. The AA guns were also needed more desperately to guard targets against Luftwaffe strikes especially early in the war when Germany was on the offense, and losing them and their crews to enemy artillery in the frontline would have been terrible. Germans didn't do what they did because it was the best use of the AA asset, they did it because they were out of options. Earlier AT guns had a drat hard time with some German tanks. Also range is a huge factor; one of the big things about the 88 was that it could take down Allied tanks from ridiculous ranges for the time, where less powerful Allied guns sometimes couldn't touch German tanks until they got within a couple hundred meters.
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May 14, 2012 10:50
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Nckdictator posted:Here's a drawing of every Royal Navy ship lost in World War II. I wish these were nice flat copies so I could stitch them together. It looks like they're pictures taken with a camera, with a slightly different angle, so they can't be easily put together.
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May 20, 2012 22:00
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Nckdictator posted:http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2010/11/quiet-images-of-great-loss-and-heroismbritish-navy-losses-1945.html Here's where I found it, a few more views there. Thanks, it's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.
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May 21, 2012 00:03
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At any rate, every reliable number for penetration I've seen specifies the angle. There's pretty much no way anyone doing experimentation wouldn't be noting the angle of impact.
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Jun 6, 2012 19:32
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Mans posted:Is there any purpose for MBTs in modern conflicts now that war has shifted from organized armies with clear fronts to insurgency style attacks against an occupying force? IFVs equiped with explosive ordinance seem to be the way of the future. I think the idea is that we've been seeing a lot of asymmetric conflicts, that doesn't mean that they will all be that way. You still need to have an armored force, even if it isn't going to be your most useful tool in every battle.
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Jun 17, 2012 15:09
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SlothfulCobra posted:Any nation that's well-off enough needs to have an army to exert its influence on weaker nations and show friendly nations that they're helping in whatever mess they've gotten into. I've read about the US leaning on Japan to try to get the to send forces to help in Iraq, regardless of how we're the reason that they're not technically allowed to have a proper military. It really is just a defense force, though. They have no real offensive capability. It would be effectively impossible at any level to project force of any reasonable level outside their borders. Also they actually did send some forces to Iraq, but they were almost literally babysat by Australians who were there to make sure they weren't in any situations where they needed to actually take shots in anger. Edit: uinfuirudo posted:The Jietai was formed in 1954, which is a year after the end of the formal war part of the Korean war and is probably a sign of why it was created, the real impossibility of being a nation state without a military during the cold war. LimburgLimbo fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Jul 11, 2012 |
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Jul 11, 2012 07:59
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Frosted Flake posted:Just a quick question: What was the Marine Corps doing during the American Civil War? The Marine Corps back then was still really small, and was primarily used for its original duty as combat compliment to ships. They fought in some ground battles, but their contribution to the war was fairly small. The Marines didn't really become famous until later on after the Civil War when their use as shipborne troops meant they were they were the troops of choice for all sorts of small struggle on foreign soil.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:12
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Don't know if it's supposed to be on there or not, but the whole film of Battle for Marjah is actually on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9Pq5JZ2Fd8
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Sep 1, 2012 01:19
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SeanBeansShako posted:Bren Guns were used up to around the early nineties with the British army I believe. Until they finally developed a LMG that wasn't rubbish. If by 'developed' you mean 'bought Minimis', then yeah
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Oct 4, 2012 00:06
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Nenonen posted:"At 8:15 this morning His Majesty the Emperor, son of Amaterasu, took the form of Sun and spread his warm embrace across Tokyo." No, the US intentionally never attacked the person of the Emperor, because they knew that it would gain them nothing, and that in all likelihood it was only his word which would stop everyone from fighting completely.
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Oct 14, 2012 16:10
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Nenonen posted:That sounds a lot like "Churchill forbade attacks on Hitler because he was more useful alive". Even if it were true, would they have had any realistic means to do anything to the contrary? In the last 100 years how many heads of state have been killed in air or cruise missile attacks? Gaddafi? Yeah, you're right, I was thinking of the recommendation by Ruth Benedict to keep the Emperor's position intact after the surrender of Japan. I thought that I had heard she also advised not to intentionally attack the Emperor during the war, either, but I can't find a source for that, so I can't say for sure. At any rate it was actually good he stayed alive, because he was able to call for the surrender of the country when there were still elements who probably would have fought to the death otherwise.
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Oct 14, 2012 16:47
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DarkCrawler posted:I know this thread kind of frowns on alternate history but would Operation Downfall really been as big of a blood bath as the article and number of Purple Hearts stamped in preparation would lead you to believe? Probably. It would have been pretty drat bad if the Japanese fought as hard as we thought they were going to, and especially if it came down to street-to-street fighting. It is, of course, hard to tell, exactly how effective all the ad hoc units the Japanese were throwing together would have been, and really the Japanese army was pretty thoroughly broken at that point, but it would have been an incredible waste of life. More than that, I shudder to think about what might have happened during the campaign. Frankly I would not be surprised if there had ended up being mass rape a la the fall of Berlin.
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Dec 4, 2012 18:13
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INTJ Mastermind posted:Such a slow and low-lying ship seems like a great target to ram! Or were the wooden ships of that era not really designed for that kind of action? Actual combat effectiveness was bad in the sense that the advent of WW2-era infantry anti-tank weapons didn't allow one man to go head-to-head with a tank, but it meant that they had something which could damage and destroy tanks, whereas before they had effectively nothing. This was huge in that whereas before armor could operative with relative impunity, now they needed to have infantry escort, and couldn't commit themselves to getting close to enemy positions without putting themselves in considerable danger. Tanks certainly could take down infantry in the open from 1000 meters, but that's not going to happen to guys in foxholes on the reverse slope of a hill, or hundred meters or so beyond the treeline of a forest. Really one of the biggest advantages of armor is its combination of mobility and firepower, and when infantry got manportable antitank weapons, it seriously reduced the former, because now tanks couldn't make tactical maneuvers as easily; they had to either stay ~100m away from possible positions where antitank teams cold be hiding, or they had to bring an infantry escort with them, effectively reducing to the speed of men. Basically small AT weapons didn't make armor obsolete by any means, but their spread had considerable tactical ramifications. I'm less familiar with the modern situation, but my understanding is that the situation is somewhat similar, except rather polarized, in the sense that cheap AT weapons, like the RPG-7 are apparently virtually ineffective against modern MBTs, but then you have high-end AT weapons like the Javelin, Metis, Kornet, etc. which are supposedly walking death to armor.
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Dec 16, 2012 18:40
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