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Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

HeroOfTheRevolution posted:

a force that was unnecessary because Russia took forever to mobilize, just as von Schlieffen had foreseen.


Actually, I think the general consensus is that the Russians mobilized far more quickly than Schlieffen had anticipated, and in fact had invaded Germany, which is why additional troops were transferred to the east. Rather, the extra troops probably weren't needed, because the Russian armies that were mobilized were so poorly prepared and led that Hindenburg and Ludendorf took care of them easily.

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Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

asbo subject posted:

A thought of mine about the Japanese, is why did the officers run around with swords during ww2?

I realise they never went through ww1 when the Germans were encouraged to shoot the British with the thin legs or waving a pistol around. But surely they understood that making the guy in charge identifiable from a distance was not the best idea?

Or maybe its a myth I have culturally absorbed and Japanese officers did not go into battle waving around swords.

That the Japanese didn't go through the trench warfare of WW1 is a good explanation for a lot of the stuff they did in WW2. Ultimately the Japanese army just wasn't a modern mechanized army the way the Americans/Russians were. Having everyone fix bayonets and run at the enemy actually works against badly trained and disciplined Chinese troops. When they tried that against the American Marines or the 5th Guards Tank Army, they all died, just like the Somme.

Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jun 29, 2010

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

Juno Commando posted:

Yeah, but the Japanese fought at Tsingtao, against the Germans. And they were in the bloody trench warfare of the Russo-Japanese War.

Western observers also saw the results of the Russo Japanese war, as well as the Franco Prussian war, and what did they do in WW1? In fact, both the Germans and the British considered the Russo-Japanese war as an example of how to fight a modern war. It takes more than a few relatively minor skirmishes to really drive the point home. The bottom line is that even when faced against relatively well led and disciplined Chinese nationalist troops, i.e. the Chinese "German" divisions that were trained and equipped by the Wehrmacht in the 1930s, the Japanese army did badly. Japan was primarily a naval power and on land, they were no where nearly as formidable as even a second rate European power. When the Japanese fought against a pre-Barbarossa Red Army at Khalkin Gol, they were completely beaten. When the Japanese sent experienced, battle hardened troops against completely green American Marines at the first battle of Guadacanal, even with Japanese air and naval superiority, they just fixed bayonets and ran at the Americans screaming, and were massacred almost literally to the last man. What they found was that even an inexperienced American was likely to be an excellent marksman, especially since many Marines were recruited from the rural South.

Bonus picture of Chiang Wei Guo, Chiang Kai Shek's half-Japanese adopted son, as a young Wehrmacht officer. He was a panzer commander right up until just before the invasion of Poland.

Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Jun 29, 2010

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
The Crimean and American Civil war weren't quite there yet compared to WW1, because they key weapon of trench warfare, the French 75mm gun, wasn't put into service until the turn of the century. This was the real killer of WW1, and killed far more people than machine guns or poison gas. Artillery of the American civil war and Crimean war were essentially unchanged from the artillery of Napoleon - a long tube on wheels. After you fire a shot, the recoil sent the gun flying back and the crew had to reposition and re-aim the gun. At most you could get off 1 or 2 shots per minute and the second shot mostly didn't land anywhere near the first shot. Mostly it didn't kill that many people and was used more for terror and bombing fixed emplacements.

With a modern hydraulically stabilized gun like the 75, you put the gun down, aim it, and start feeding it rounds. The gun stayed in place and you could adjust your aim while firing and "walk" your fire onto the target (sometimes using an observer on radio), at thirty loving rounds per minute. So basically compared to the American civil war battle field, the WW1 battlefield now had 20x as much steel in the air just from the artillery. Artillery in WW1 was serious business compared to the artillery of the late 1800s. The artillery of today remains essentially unchanged from that first French gun.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

old dog child posted:

Is there a cultural or political reason for why the Vietnamese were so tenacious when it came to resisting/fighting enemies during the modern era? Compared to many of the other Asian nations (or others anywhere), their ability to never capitulate seems to stand out. I am not too familiar with Vietnam, so I'm really curious.

The (communist)Vietnamese had the benefit of a few fairly charismatic leaders, and the communist party which gave the whole Viet Ming organization a unified purpose. The president of South Vietnam wasn't terribly worried about fighting the war - the Americans can deal with that, but he better not let any of his generals get too successful in the field.

Other than that, it was mostly the matter of the North being secure behind their borders in the knowledge that the Americans will never dare cross it, or in the case of fighting the French, sanctuaries in China, and having an unlimited source of material support from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union and the US have so far been incapable of defeating their respective Afghan insurgencies for largely the same reason - whatever they did in Afghanistan, the Taliban/Mujahadeen could always retread and regroup across the mountains into Pakistan, and had unlimited amounts of American and Chinese material support.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

Royality posted:

Surely the simplest answer is that America was fighting a war abroad that its army didn't want to fight? What care would the average American soldier have for that country? They were there against their will whilst the Vietcong were defending their homeland and their ideology against a country who were reluctant to be there in the first place.

Isn't it the same in Afghanistan? The American's and British are now fighting a war they don't want any part of, whilst the Taliban are as fierce as ever, and seeing the reluctance on the part of the Allied forces only become more determined. It's fairly clear that the war in Afghanistan is being lost and the Allied forces only remain due to a sense of duty rather than desire - no army can win when they don't have the spirit for it.

Ideology isn't going to protect you from carpet bombing. The Viet Ming legitimately out-strategied and defeated the French in a conventional battle at Dien Bien Phu. They did it the same way Napoleon would have done it - concentrate superior force, take the high ground, and most importantly have 10x as much artillery as your enemy. Whether the Americans wanted to fight or not, they still beat the Vietnamese/Taliban in every engagement. They can never WIN, because they can never cross into North Vietnam or Pakistan to attack the enemy bases.

The British tried for years to subdue Afghanistan and the North West Frontier, before realizing what the Romans realized about the Germans 1500 years ago, or what the Persians realized about the Greeks. The money you spend training and equipping regiments in Britain and then sending them around the world to be picked off by snipers in the Afghan hills is much more effectively spent simply buying off/arming the half of the Taliban/tribal leaders that hate you least, have "your" Afghans run the place, and then keeping them around as allies and vassal kings. It doesn't make for great victory parades, and it requires an amount of skill in subtle diplomacy, and a good amount of secret slush funds and shady weapons deals, but it's about the best anyone can do. Anything more is going to be a lot of blood and treasure for not very much gain.

quote:

And they beat the Chinese with their village defence forces/reserves, while their main army was still in Cambodia.

"Beat the Chinese" is a bit much. The Chinese took all of their tactical objectives in 1973, the Vietnamese could do little to stop them. The Chinese lost far more men and material than they expected, of course, but this was due largely to Chinese incompetence and bad timing - China at the time was still in the throes of the Cultural Revolution which had thrown the entire country into chaos, and the force that invaded Vietnam was largely a second rate local defence force, as the bulk of the regular Chinese army was stationed on the Soviet border facing off the Russians.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
Britons really don't have any reason to be smug about their stance on slavery, because it wasn't because the average 19th Century Briton was any more enlightened than his American counterpart, but because the circumstances were very different. There wasn't a massive population of African slaves in Britain, slavery for Britain meant slavery on the plantations of their Caribbean colonies. Whether these slaves were free or not meant nothing to the average Briton living in Britain, they had no particular reason to defend it. The plantation colonies were composed of a large majority of slaves with a very small plantation owner class. These would have been for the abolition of slavery in any case once they realized it was easier to pay people to work rather than whip them. After the slaves were freed and became small farmers and whatnot, the plantation owner class still owned everything and ruled, or in the worst case, they just went back to their estates in Britain.

In the American south, freeing the slaves would have meant (and did mean) major social upheaval, to say the least. Millions of former slaves had to somehow live in peace with their former owners. This is a process that in some respects is still not complete in the US even today. For example, Brazil, another country with a somewhat similar circumstances, was also very late in abolishing slavery.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

Boiled Water posted:

alliance occupation

:wookie:

The Asian development model - Strong authoritarian military government, massive state directed capital investment, export oriented economic policies.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

Comrade_Robot posted:

Not all German tanks were 'high quality panzers' -- the Germans were not magical tank elves or something, and in fact all medium tanks were roughly similar, most combatants having made the same decisions about tradeoffs between gun, armor, and speed. (Dimitri Loza, who commanded Shermans in the Red Army, had nothing but praise for the Sherman.) The Panther, which some classify as a medium tank, was as heavy as the M26 Pershing, and much heavier than the Sherman.

While it is true that the Sherman tank was outmatched by (for example) the Tiger, it is important to remember that tank-on-tank combat was comparatively rare in the ETO. It was far more common for tanks to be used to support infantry. Given that one M26 Pershing took up the space of 2 M4 Shermans, it is possible that more Pershings could have been developed and shipped to Europe, but many more infantrymen would have died.

There is that quip about the first rule of gun fighting - have a gun. The Panther may have been better on paper, but the few that were built spent most of the time on the side of the road waiting for repairs or fuel. The net result was that the average German soldier went into battle equipped with exactly 0 Panthers and maybe an assault gun if he was lucky, while the average American came to the fight with enough Shermans to blot out the sun.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

EvanSchenck posted:

If your rifle experiences a serious enough malfunction that it actually needs to be field-stripped during a firefight, the relative ease of disassembling a Kalashnikov versus an AR is probably not going to make a difference in how screwed you are. The main things are how prone the weapon is to jamming and how easy it is to clear jams when they occur, and with the kind of basic maintenance that every soldier is supposed to perform on his weapon, the difference between the current iterations of the M-16 and AK aren't big. The AK probably has an advantage in that you could get yourself covered in mud and still be good to go, and also it's supposed to be tough enough to clear a bad jam by slamming the charging handle with an instrument. But in practical terms the difference between the weapons is pretty small.

That said, the AKM is objectively a better weapon because it has sexy wood furniture.

Compared to its Vietnam-era contemporary AK-47, the M16 rifle and ammunition were both significantly lighter while being no less lethal, so that was a considerable advantage. The M16 was also arguably more accurate - although "accurate" is a pretty woolly term for these kind of things, the M16 had superior recoil characteristics and could more easily be fitted with optical sights which in theory would help with accuracy.

The accounts I've read from various reconnaissance type units in Vietnam almost universally rate the rifle as superior compared to the AK, which was also available to them if they so desired. The problems with powder and cleaning could easily have been ironed out during testing before widespread issue, it is inexplicable why they weren't.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

Rabhadh posted:

I don't want to continue this derail to any regard, but an amazing thing that I read recently (in Niall Fergusons War of the World) was that the US supported the Khmer Rouge (and China) against Vietnam. I mean christ, thats politics at its lowest ebb.

The US and China were more or less cooperating on the foreign policy front for most of the 1980s up to 1989, with Tiananmen and the collapse of the USSR. The American documentary Red Dawn makes reference to this. Americans purchased Chinese weapons through Pakistan to supply the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, including (if some books on this are to be believed) supplying captured Russian shoulder launched SAMs and other weapons to the Chinese in order to copy and send back to Afghanistan. American Stingers were later supplied due to the Russian SA-7s being...not very good. The US and China also supported Jonas Savimbi's UNITA against the Warsaw Pact backed MPLA and Cuba (whole units of Cuba regular forces were deployed to Angloa :stare:)in the Angolan civil war. Savimbi himslef was trained in China.

In the late 80s there were plans for the US to massively upgrade the Chinese Air Force and Navy with American equipment. For example the Super 7 project, to upgrade Chinese Mig-21 derivatives with American engines and avionics. Unfortunately TAM put a stop to most of those plans. Notable survivors include the American supplied GE LM2500 engines, which power most American non-nuclear surface warships also powering some Chinese warships and the Chinese fleet of S-70 Blackhawks which were flown as recently as the 2008 earthquake.




The Blackhawks were notable for their superior high-altitude performance compared to anything else available to the Chinese and heavily deployed in Tibet. Thanks Uncle Reagan! :china:

Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Jan 21, 2012

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
The theory of infantry combat is that a rifle on the battlefield is a pretty insignificant thing in the whole galaxy of stuff that goes bang - the average rifle has 30 rounds per mag and are usually not squeezed off on full auto. Compared to, say, a squad machine gun, rifles just don't do a lot of the shooting. When I went through the army, the popular quip is that all you guys with rifles are really just there to protect the squad machine guns, your squad is really just there to protect the company machine guns, etc.

There's a bunch of conclusions you can draw from that context, one of which is that unless you suppress your machine guns too, most of the firing on the battlefield is going to be unsuppressed anyway.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

Zionist_en_fuego posted:

EDIT: ^^^^^^^ Now that seems much more plausible. But what about suppressed weapons for low intensity stuff like COIN?


They ARE being used a lot more than in the past, given the type of fighting that goes on today, and improvements in the technology and materials have made them more practical too. Equipping EVERYONE with a suppressor is still far off though.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

quote:

machine guns

Of course I don't mean riflemen literally just huddle around their machine guns and nothing else. What it was trying to get across is that individual rifles aren't nearly as important as machine guns which comprise the bulk of the unit's firepower.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

This is extremely arguable. Large squads, like those fielded by the Marines, are able to put out good quantities of fire with their rifles and SAWs alone. This was, of course, not the case prior to the widespread adoption of large capacity select-fire weapons.

Nowadays the role of the Platoon MG as an instrument of suppression is one it performs very well until the platoon is faced with an enemy on a front too long for these to cover reliably, or in concentrations too geographically disparate for the MGs alone to deal with. Seeing as an American platoon has only two MGs, and Soviet-based platoons are three squads of ten men to a squad, plus the command squad, you can see how this might be tricky. While the MG can do the suppression work of a fire team or two, and is thus more valuable than an individual rifleman, it is, for obvious reasons, not as portable and thus not as flexible as the rifleman's weapon.

SAWs are machine guns.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
Putting silencers on machine guns isn't practical yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o-RL6FjGEQ

Note the silencer is glowing and possibly on fire after only a few bursts.



The Chinese produced and fielded a tank destroyer in the 1990s.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

billion dollar bitch posted:

3) Thoughts on Taiwan's chances in a war with China? I like how their mbt is basically an M-48.


Depends on what the Chinese want to do. If they just want to blockade Taiwan they could probably do it. If they want to actually invade, and the Americans don't get in, they might be able to do it but probably not. Taiwan has a huge army and could potentially mobilize millions of men, so any invasion would probably have to be on a scale bigger than Normandy. If the Americans do get in then the world has bigger problems than Taiwan.

There are Taiwanese cities within rifle range of the mainland.

quote:

4) Are paratroops actually still used, or have high-capacity helicopters pretty much made parachuting obsolete?

They were used in Iraq. It is widely questioned whether the operation was actually necessary, as opposed to being strictly to "prove" the usefulness of mass parachute jumps.

Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Jan 31, 2011

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

Boiled Water posted:

What is the deal with China and Taiwan anyway? Is it a puppet state? Is it a part of China? What's going on?

Read the wiki. Relations between China and Taiwan have been improving very quickly recently, "a sudden breakout of peace" in the word of The Economist. At this point the chances of war between Taiwan and China are remote.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
The Americans lost 2,000+ helicopters in Vietnam fighting essentially World War 2 light infantry (no MANPADs). Helicopters aren't F15s, more like lightly armoured IFVs that can fly for a bit, in any serious fight they're going to get shot a lot.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

The Downfall posted:



Also, me and some of my history buddies were chatting today and one said he read somewhere that Poland was asked by Germany to ally with them and fight against the French, British, and USSR. I find this hard to believe since the only reason why Hitler invaded Poland was his personal hate of the Slavic people. And of course wanting to control Europe.


Poland joined Germany in their invasion and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1938.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaolzie#Part_of_Poland_.281938.E2.80.931939.29

The German conquest of region sort of glosses over the fact that the new nations of Eastern Europe weren't exactly best buds with each other prior to the war, and had lots of little territorial disputes left over from the Versailles treaty, something that Hitler milked to the hilt. So it was pretty awkward for everyone.

Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Jun 3, 2011

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
I suppose the Japanese navy probably has the edge over the Italian med fleet, how about the Italian air force vs the Japanese air force?

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

SeanBeansShako posted:

Well, they were good at occupying locations and taking the brunt of some of the Soviets with volunteers with the Germans during Barbarossa :smith:.

The threat of being captured by the Red Army really makes you think about your priorities in life.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
Everyone forgets there were still 1.3 million Japanese troops in Manchuria in 1945. The ineffectiveness of the Japanese army in conventional mechanized warfare was really laid bare when the 6th Guards Tank Army arrived to deal with them, mostly without leaving the comfort of their IS-2s.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
This map on Wiki is great. It looks like the American contingency plan for when Pakistan's government falls.



Love how they threw in a couple of mass parachute jumps (1st Guards Airborne Division) and amphibious assaults in the rear for good measure.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

esquilax posted:

The American contingency plan for when Pakistan falls is a Russian invasion of China?

Yes. Using Russia and Mongolia as staging areas.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
I think all this hand wringing over Vietnam is exaggerating a little to the other end of the spectrum. The US *did* win in Vietnam in conventional engagements,and most of their engagements were conventional engagements against a conventional enemy. The North Vietnamese and Giap were probably much more capable than the Americans expected, but the Americans were still the side with the B52s and the NVA may as well have been the best conventional army in SE Asia in the same way the Iraqis were the best conventional army in the Arab world.

I *do* think the US lost Vietnam for political reasons, the simple political reason was that they didn't dare launch a land invasion of North Vietnam for fear of a large Chinese intervention a la Korea, together with whatever the USSR had up its sleeve. The mistake was that they thought that with enough bombing from the air and defeats on the ground in the South, they could force the North to eventually give up. They couldn't. The North Vietnamese replaced everything they lost the next day from Soviet/Warsaw pact assistance, and just kept plugging away.

If Nixon had the cahones to just throw up his arms and invade North Vietnam, it would have been all done. The Chinese at the time were in the throes of the Cultural Revolution and virtual civil war, and may have stayed out, and in any case the Chinese army of the late 1960/70s were much less formidable than the one of 1950s and would have been no match for the US. Not to mention that the Chinese at Soviets at this time were getting pretty suspicious of each other and were building up along their own borders.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
Your post doesn't disagree with mine? The US probably couldn't win without invading the north, there was no political will to invade the north, therefore the south was lost for political reasons. Commiting hundreds of thousands of additional troops? IIRC The US had more than 1 million troops in the south at the height of the war. You'd think that all the talk about the Japanese in the pacific would have put to rest the idea that indominatable Oriental fighting spirit was ever a match for American firepower.

As for your fatalistic argument that the will of the people can never be broken, the US has successfully propped up plenty of unpopular authoritarian governments all over the world, South Korea and Taiwan were doing just fine and were contributing troops to the war effort in Vietnam no less. For an invasion of North Vietnam the US could request additional troops from South Korea/Taiwan, and with the promise of American equipment would have gotten them. To argue that just because South Vietnam/Iraq were incompetently managed, the situation will never improve and the only solution is retreat is the kind of defeatist idea that doomed the US war effort.

Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Oct 5, 2011

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

gohuskies posted:

US troops peaked at 543,482, so no, you did not recall correctly. And there were definitely huge differences in the legitimacy of the South Vietnamese regimes and other authoritarian governments we propped up. Read War Comes To Long An, the book I linked (seriously, $0.01) and you will understand the depth of popular resentment among the South Vietnamese people. "Incompetently managed" doesn't even begin to describe it.

I guess the 1 million figure I recall was all allied forces combined, but that's still huge, the US forces alone would still have outnumbered the North Vietnamese. I don't agree with your assertion that the US didn't have the manpower to invade the north. They were already fighting the NVA in the south, go on the offensive and you'll just be fighting them in the north. The insurgency in the south would not have continued without the North concentrating all their efforts in supplying them.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
The Indian Navy has operated an effective and useful carrier air arm for years, and have flown lots of sorties against the Pakistanis in their various wars. India is a much poorer/less well run country than China. You can't measure progress using the USN as a yardstick for everything.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

gohuskies posted:

India and China's carrier needs are different, though. China already has the capability to win a fight for Taiwan and the South China Sea - they've got hundreds of anti-ship ballistic missiles on the mainland to win the fight with a USN carrier group there. The reason they are trying to develop a carrier arm is because they are looking to the East. They are reliant on oil coming from the Middle East through the Indian Ocean, and particularly on the Straights of Malacca being open to their shipping. That's out from under the umbrella of their land-based assets. So they need a carrier arm that can sail away from shore and win a fight with whoever they are fighting. That's why I think the USN is a reasonable comparison - they're trying to fulfill a mission that India's Navy just doesn't have on its plate, and that the USN does. And it's one that they haven't done since the Sung dynasty, so it's reasonable to expect that they couldn't do it right now.

The Indians do all of those things. Warships have uses other than "pitched battle with the USN on the high seas".

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

gohuskies posted:

The Indians could not hold the Straights of Malacca against a USN carrier battle group. The Chinese want to be able to. It's pretty simple. And warships do things other than pitched battle on the high seas, but that is what China wants its fleet to be able to do, at some point in the future, and that's why they are starting a carrier arm and why that arm has a long ways to go.

The Americans were actively arming the Pakistanis and supplying them by sea in 1971.

http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/NAVY/History/1971War/Games.html

quote:

INS Vikrant was on patrol north of Andaman Islands blocking the approaches to Chittagong when, on December 15th, late in the evening, the BBC announced the entry of the 'Big-E' task force in the Bay of Bengal. The broadcast added that the U.S. task force was to make for Chittagong to evacuate the stranded American citizens. This was a bolt from the blue. I conjured up a situation of a direct confrontation. I waited for instructions from the Naval Headquarters but none arrived. It was later at night that I decided to proceed south anyway, to intercept the 'Big-E' before she could enter the war zone. It was near midnight when the Midshipman on Watch approached me on the bridge and sought permission to ask a question. I nodded, and he said, "Sir, what would you do when you sight the Big-E?" This question was no doubt uppermost on my mind, but without any hesitation I replied, "You do not have to worry, young man. America is a friendly country, so I would wish the captain of the 'Big E' a good morning and ask him what I could do for him." The midshipman was not convinced and added, "What if the 'Big-E' opened fire against us?" I replied, "I have been educated in the Naval War College, and I understand the American psychology well. If the 'Big-E' attacks us, Abraham Lincoln would be turning in his grave."

Throughout that night INS Vikrant continued her sortie south, and our air recce covered an area to a depth of 500 miles. There was no sign of the U.S. task force, so in the absence of any instruction from the Naval Headquarters I turned back north to rejoin my patrol area. As the day dawned, BBC broadcast amplified its earlier report: that having entered the Bay of Bengal from the Malacca Straits, the U.S. task force had proceeded west instead of going north to Chittagong. On reflection I felt that my reactions in the warlike situation proved the value of my tenure at the NCC. As a postscript to this anecdote, soon after the victory of the Indian Armed Forces, one of the foreign celebrities that visited India was the renowned naval leader Admiral S.G. Gorshkov, Chief of the Soviet Navy. During his visit to Bombay he came onboard INS Vikrant. I had known the Admiral well earlier during my tenure in Moscow as the Indian Naval Attaché. The Admiral congratulated me and asked, "Were you worried about a battle against the American carrier?" He answered himself: "Well, you had no reason to be worried, as I had a Soviet nuclear submarine trailing the American task force all the way into the Indian Ocean."

I thought to myself, it is not easy to convert a cold war into a hot war. Cold war is brinkmanship and only posturing. When the chips are down, you do not play cat and mouse games but come prepared to hit hard to vanquish your adversary.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
I've just re-read Stephen Tanner's A Military History of Afghanistan from Alexander the Great to the fall of The Taliban. It's a pretty good light read. I wish some parts were as detailed as others though, there's lots of detail about the first Anglo-Afghan war and the retreat from Kabul but barely 3 sentences about the third Anglo-Afghan war.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

Why wouldn't you just lace the cigarettes with cyanide in that case?

I think that's probably crossing the line into straight up chemical weapons.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
This thread is starting to eat its own tail because I've posted this before. The ACW was very different from WW1 because the French invented modern artillery in 1891.

The artillery of the ACW could fire 1 or 2 rounds per minute and had to be aimed after every shot because when you fire the loving gun goes flying off into the bushes. It was basically Napoleonic-era bullshit and wasn't really of much use other than against fixed fortifications and when the crew could get off a few cannister rounds at close range before being over run.

The French 75mm hydraulically stabilized gun could fire 15 rounds per minute, faster than a bolt action rifle, and because of the hydraulic stabilization, every round tended to land in the same general place. This was serious business.

The whole face and imagery of war changed. Machine guns? Yeah they're good out to what 600 meters? Whatever. Things change when you've got hundreds of these artillery pieces that can accurately hit targets out to 6 km. When that happens you better start digging *a lot* of trenches, even the HQ and support troops that are far away out of small arms range, or most of your army will be dead before any of them ever lay eyes on the enemy. Even then something like 75% of battle casualties in WW 1 and 2 were caused by artillery. Soldiers started wearing steel helmets in WW1 and still wear helmet today primarily because they protected the head from air burst shrapnel which had become the biggest killer on the battlefield.

I'm constantly surprised that the French don't get more credit (if you could call it that) for this innovation, I guess tube artillery just doesn't look as cool in action as machine guns or P-51s.

Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Dec 13, 2011

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pw-2yMC5BE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GX_EmhpGJI

A former Cambodia child soldier shows us how to find and defuse mines. :sun:

Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Dec 21, 2011

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
An RPG-7 isn't a Mig-25, when you have to make estimates on not much more than a few blurry satellite photos. You can buy/get an RPG-7 pretty much anywhere for a couple of bucks, so the US military's estimate of the effectiveness of the RPG-7 was probably from scrounging up a couple dozen RPG-7s and shooting them off.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

What was the absolute worst plane to see widespread use in WWII?

The Boulton Paul Defiant was put into widespread use by the RAF. It turned out to be pretty useless because the whole idea of a "turret fighter" just didn't work.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
At the onset of the first Gulf War in 1991 people unironically thought Iraq was going to become a new Nazi Germany. They were by far the most advanced and militarily powerful country in the Arab world, after all.

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

The Downfall posted:

Alright, well I've dug my head into the holocaust and came across this picture. On the Jewish Virtual Library this is also in the National holocaust museum (I've been there)

http://i.imgur.com/vTJmP.jpg
That picture is captioned on these sites to be a German Einzatsgruppen Commando

When that is clearly a Russian soldier (I can't really tell the exact year and style uniform) and he is also holding a Mosin Nagant Carbine it seems. No German rifle was that short. This is the first time I've actaully researched the Holocaust and alot of the stuff I'm finding on official websites is not adding up :psyduck:

E: Fixed some markup

quote:

This is the first time I've actaully researched the Holocaust and alot of the stuff I'm finding on official websites is not adding up :psyduck:


quote:

alot of the stuff I'm finding on official websites is not adding up :psyduck:

1/10. Too obvious.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

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Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin

Alchenar posted:

In case anyone who isn't a troll is reading, it was actually fairly common for Axis soldiers to use captured Soviet weapons (especially a couple of AT guns). In quite a few photos from Stalingrad you'll see Germans with PPsH's, for example.

That rifle looks more like a 98k than a Mosin anyway.

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