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Judakel posted:Could any of you please recommend another book along the lines of The Future of War? Check out P.W. Singer's "Wired for War"
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May 19, 2010 23:49
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Cybor Tap posted:So unbelievably interesting. Favorite Civil War general and why? Sherman. Duh. People in the south STILL hate him, to this day.
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Aug 8, 2010 05:09
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Just read a chapter about the Dardanelles campaign in WWI. Is it my imagination, or were there moments early in the naval and ground campaigns where a brutally aggressive strategy could have forced the issue, and taken no more casualties than the UK ultimately took anyway? Cant speak for the ground campaign, but hindsight is 20/20, and imagine if you were the naval commander. Would you want to ram your shiny new Queen Elizabeth class dreadnought up a narrow strait filled with mines, torpedoes, artillery on the sides and the SMS Goben? Sure it could have worked, but the Admiralty was not willing to risk it, since they imagined the half the fleet sinking in the narrow straits. Edit: The allied forces lost a crapton of ships, mostly older pre-dreadnoughts- 6 battleships sunk 3 battleships damaged 1 battlecruiser damaged 1 destroyer sunk 8 submarines lost But, to risk a significant portion of your Mediterranean fleet was not something they wanted to do. Especially since they tried numerous times to clear the mines, but the minesweepers would come under fire from the shore and turn around. Also floating mines. And torpedoes. Also guns. lots of guns. Guns that were really difficult to spot, and shore bombardment was pretty much in its infancy, so they werent sure if they could reliably silence all the forts. However, who knows? If the Allied forces pulled a Farragut and said "drat the torpedoes! full speed ahead!" and plowed through regardless of losses, they most likely would have lost at least a few more ships, but would the presence of a few predreadnoughts and maybe a modern dreadnought off the horn be enough to force Turkey out of the war? Probably not, since there were no ground for a landing or invasion, so the only option would be to bombard Istanbul. Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Aug 25, 2010 |
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Aug 25, 2010 05:19
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Zorak of Michigan posted:That's actually the part that was making me crazy. They started out the attack in the conviction that losing pre-dreadnought battleships or lighter units would not be a big deal, but then every time they actually lost one in an attack, they'd pull back and try to figure out what went wrong. If they'd made their first push with every available predreadnought, determined not to retreat no matter what, they might have lost six in one go, but the rest might have managed to get up the strait. Every moment of hesitation after the first attack gave the enemy time to lay more mines, position more guns, etc. Well they said that, because keep in mind this is the first time anyones actually tried doing shore bombardment of this scale and range with dreadnoughts. The Turkish guns could only be taken out by a direct hit and it was apparently very hard to spot where your shells were landing cause there were no shell splashes. Anyways, so the allies decided to send more modern ships to help out, like the battlecruisers and the brand new HMS Queen Elizabeth. Except when they sent them, they were under orders not to risk them. This actually held them back. They were also hampered by the fact that they didnt know how many mines or torpedos or what not were waiting in the narrows. We know now that if they had just charged in, they most likely would have forced the straits, but at that time, the possibility of losing most or all of their crappy predreadnoughts as well as a newer ship was a very real possibility.
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Aug 25, 2010 17:20
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Mr. Sunshine posted:It's also an example of the kind of thinking that all the involved nations suffered from, and which helped make the war into the bloody, senseless mess it became. Every combatant nation, from the king down to the lowest soldier, were convinced that their culture, their morale and their warriors were superior to those other fellows, and one good push would send those uncultured cowards running. I disagree! Farragut at the battle of Mobile Bay just rammed through a line of mines while under fire from forts and "one good push"ed his way to victory.
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Aug 25, 2010 17:59
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I'll have to double check, but I recall that it might have been Churchill or other allied leaders who distinctly had the goal of knocking the Ottomans out of the war with the Gallipoli campaign. From the Ottoman perspective at least, they were all ready to abandon Istanbul if British dreadnoughts showed up at the horn.
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Aug 25, 2010 20:00
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Fisher if I recalled, wanted to use the British fleet to land troops in the Baltic, 90 miles from Berlin and in his words - "Tie up a million troops". Probably would have been a military disaster.
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Aug 25, 2010 20:35
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Mr. Sunshine posted:Then again, you got stuff like the Battles of Isonzo, where the Italians mounted no less than 12 offensives in the same little alp valley over 2 years without conquering a single drat kilometer. If at first you don't succeed, try 11 more times? Anyone want to expand on the Brusilov Offensive during WW1? Read the wiki, did he just infiltrate close and bypass strong points?
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Sep 6, 2010 03:38
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Can someone describe in more detail the Iran-Iraq war? specifically the use of Chemical weapons? what was used and how was it used? Since I think this is one of the first cases after world war 1 that chemicals were used in a battlefield? (Agent Orange in Vietnam dosent count)
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Sep 13, 2010 01:14
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Where is this Fulda Gap that is mentioned in every Cold War Europe plan ever? And why was it so crucial?
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Feb 6, 2011 08:03
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Looking at that map with the soviet armies, What are we talking about? In terms of numbers and equipment ?
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Feb 8, 2011 05:50
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Italy wasn't the greatest adversary either, if I recall, they tried invading the same valley like 9 times and failed at it every time.
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Feb 9, 2011 03:15
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Metrilenkki posted:They actually tried it 12 times averaging one every three months, and they sold it to the men by pressing a gun to their necks. This is just a terrible failure in leadership. How the gently caress did this debacle happen and who let it continue ? Why did the italians think that "Hey, it failed the past 5 times, THIS time, itll work!" I imagine they used roughly the same tactics or whatnot everytime as well. Was the leadership that incompetent?
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Feb 9, 2011 20:40
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How are those F-14s still operational?
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Sep 11, 2011 23:02
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Boiled Water posted:Same way other 70's aircraft are still operational. Through maintenance and tech updates. Yeah, but an F-14, I assume, is way more complex then a car, and its not like the US is giving them parts and updates. I guess they managed to learn how to maintain them on their own?
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Sep 12, 2011 00:51
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Can it be safely argued that fighting in the trenches on the Western Front ranks near the top on the list of most inhospitable conditions in the history of war? Eastern front of WW2 was pretty loving bad. Gallipoli on the Turkish side was pretty bad. Napoleon's retreat from Moscow was pretty bad. China in WW2 was pretty bad. Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Sep 14, 2011 |
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Sep 14, 2011 04:05
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Oxford Comma posted:As bewbies said, even if they only spent a month or so on the front lines, I'm shocked that the French didn't mutiny before the war ended. If one had to spend four years getting shelled and running into machine gun fire..... Uh... They did mutiny. About half the divisions on the front line mutinied actually.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Army_Mutinies_%281917%29
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Sep 14, 2011 05:14
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Admiral Snackbar posted:The Panther was a miserable abortion of a weapon The panther, once all of its problems were taken care of, was one of the better tanks in the war wasn't it?
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Sep 22, 2011 04:24
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Amused to Death posted:So what about the Tiger II, a formidable beast of a heavy tank, or a mechanical nightmare that really had no chance regardless of it's good points? Mechanical fuel guzzling nightmare to operate. Maybe, just maybe, it might be good if you had a solid support structure for it coupled with air superiority...
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Sep 23, 2011 05:00
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Did the Italians do anything competently during WW2? Edit: Submarine raid on Alexandria is the only thing I can think of
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Sep 25, 2011 18:45
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I think hes being sarcastic, and comparing the map to the American contingency plan, which also involves multiple units airdropping in to seize Pakistani nuclear assets and what not.
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Sep 30, 2011 03:52
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Occasionally though someone comes up with a really awesome retarded idea. What the gently caress? Did they really just airdrop and launch an ICBM? Thats pretty amazing. \/ Varyag, its the same class as the one the Russians actually operate. It ain't no Nimitz class, but if it were operational, its not a shitbox. Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Oct 7, 2011 |
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Oct 7, 2011 05:41
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What was Manstein's Backhand blow operation during the summer of 43'? The one that was scrapped in favor of Operation Citadel? I know about the Kharkov one, but cant seem to find any information on what the one in the south designed to push the Soviets against the Sea of Azov was.
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Nov 21, 2011 08:59
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wins32767 posted:The backhand blow actually happened. It was a counterattack in response to Star and Gallop, the offensives that took place just after Uranus (the one that encircled the 6th Army at Stalingrad). See the Third Battle of Kharkov. Was there a submitted plan for another such strategy in the summer of 43'? I thought I read somewhere that Manstein wanted to repeat it in the south, but Hitler and OKW chose Operation Citadel instead of Mansteins.
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Nov 21, 2011 16:26
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wins32767 posted:I take your point within the larger historiography, but he was proposing doing exactly what he'd done at Kharkov, which was wait for the Soviets to over extend then counter-attack them. I looked at the map of the Eastern front prior to Citadel, Was he proposing just to let the soviets make the first move then? Or was he anticipating a move in the south near the sea of azov? Also, wouldnt the soviets catch on, and defeat the strategy by just slowing down their advance? Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Nov 21, 2011 |
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Nov 21, 2011 18:05
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Why did torpedo nets on the side of ships fall out of use? They were common on almost all Battleships during WW1, but you don't see them at all by the time WW2 rolls around.
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Feb 2, 2012 00:13
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I knew about the torpedo blisters, but I was referring to the booms and nets they would hang off the side of WW1 era dreadnoughts, but nets being replaced makes sense. How effective were torpedo blisters in protecting the ship?
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Feb 2, 2012 15:50
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Rent-A-Cop posted:They did a pretty good job when torpedoes actually hit them, but they slowed the ship down. They were only around for a short time as a stop-gap and a retrofit for older ships. Newer ships had internal layouts that kept essential machinery centrally located and placed non-essential compartments along the outside of the hull to soak up torpedo hits. About how many torpedoes could a ship take? I imagine every hit still lets in a few hundred tons of water and slows the ship down.
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Feb 2, 2012 16:23
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Taiho - otherwise known as "How to turn your vessel into a massive floating Fuel-Air bomb"
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Feb 2, 2012 19:54
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Even if he did, a couple hundred nukes is still a viable enough deterrent. Whats the point between 600 nukes and 6,000 nukes?
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May 8, 2012 23:39
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gradenko_2000 posted:I learned this from a Tom Clancy book, so forgive me if I'm horribly wrong, but it's not just about the number of warheads, but also the specific lay-out across the various delivery systems. I really dont think anyone should be quoting Tom Clancy for the purposes of real-life scenarios. This is the United States were talking about, we'll still have our nuclear triad of SLBMs, bombers, and ICBMs. Even if we dropped down to 600 weapons, and Russia as well, since its a mutual drawdown, thats still enough weapons to completely obliterate a hostile country and make the prospect of nuclear war not worth it. Russia isnt going to try to decapitate the US with a first strike, cause we'd still have enough weapons to utterly destroy them. Why do you think China only has a few hundred warheads? Cause thats enough of a deterrent.
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May 9, 2012 17:04
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What are those Japanese battleships surviving on that previous page? The only one I can think of is the Nagato?
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May 21, 2012 23:05
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Nenonen posted:Vehicle aesthetics is a subjective topic. At least M3 Medium Tank looked like a tank, unlike Type 4 Ka-Tsu: What the gently caress is that?! What could that possibly be used for that it wouldn't get immediately blown away? Im struggling to think of a mission for that tank, with what I assume would be a blow-up-at-the-slightest-touch Long Lance on it?
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May 24, 2012 00:49
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Nenonen posted:The fourth crusade was extremely successful, even more so than the first one. Define "successful", cause if you mean "looting and pillaging Constantinople" then yes, if you mean "actually reaching the holy land' then no.
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Jun 19, 2012 22:11
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm also getting a vague recollection of a battle in the Western Front where a German army was pocketed by the Allies and they ended up losing a significant number of horses for their logistical arm, but the name escapes me at the moment. Falaise?
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Jul 9, 2012 17:32
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Sotore posted:I've spent a good amount of time studying and watching documentaries on WWII. One of the documentaries highlighted Hitler's "blunders", one of which struck me the most: the battle for Stalingrad. For the Nazis to have prevailed, a whole slew of things needed to fall into place, and everything that went badly for the Nazis needed to have turned out best case scenario. And the list is tremendous too! For example: Better tanks faster, Started war with Pzr4s and Panthers in 41 or 42. Heavy bombers Goring not being loving useless. Ribbentrop not being loving useless. Dunkirk being successful. Not having to waste time on Mussolini's stupid balkans bullshit. Sinking a lot more convoys, both Atlantic raiders like the two Scharnhorsts/Bismarck, and the Uboats Mussolini not being loving useless. Having a useful luftwaffe and Kreigsmarine to execute an operation sea lion. Executing a successful sea lion. You could literally go on about stupid hypotheticals, but then, if one of these things happen, it throws off the entire rest of events. Like if Sea Lion happened and failed or was a decisive victory, regardless, it would have thrown off the timeline of the Russian invasion, African campaign, etc etc. The funny thing is, even when you get past all of this military stuff, the basic groundwork remains that the Nazi state wasn't capable of sustaining its economy without pillaging its client states or conquered territory. So really, for the Nazis to win world war 2, they need to stop being Nazis. Fat chance of that happening.
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Sep 15, 2012 01:36
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Phanatic posted:The first people up against the wall after the revolution are always the revolutionaries, because you cannot trust those people to sit down and shut up like they're supposed to. I don't think this happened in China, did it? I dont remember mass purgings of Mao's inner circle, at least not executions. Maybe?
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Oct 18, 2012 17:25
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Magni posted:For most of the Cold War, yes. With the caveeat that the Soviets could throw in Cat B or C troops from their strategic reserves to clean up the mess depending on how bled dry everyone is. (The Soviets maintained large stocks of old equipment for these reservist formations and simply calling them up would take several weeks.) Do they still keep stocks of WW2 era equipment around? I.e. could there be Cat C troops rolling towards the Rhine in T34/85s and stuff?
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Oct 18, 2012 20:44
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is kind of a specific question, but I've been trying to figure out how to simulate how an Enigma Machine actually works, partly because I want to write a simulator for it as a programming exercise. I keep trying to make heads and tails of these instructions, but I end up just getting more and more confused and the decryption never comes out right. There is a book, called "The Code Book" by Simon Singh http://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323 That has an entire chapter on how Enigma works and how they cracked it. I have it, and looking at it now, it seems to describe it pretty well, with diagrams too. And yes, if an ancient computer in ww2 could figure out Enigma, im pretty sure a modern machine should have no problem brute forcing it. Does this help- " The machine has several variable settings that affect the operation of the machine. The user must select three rotors from a set of rotors to be used in the machine. A rotor contains one-to-one mappings of all the letters. Some Enigma machines had more than 3 rotors which just added to the number of possible encryption combinations. The other variable element in the machine is the plug board. The plug board allowed for pairs of letters to be remapped before the encryption process started and after it ended. When a key is pressed, an electrical current is sent through the machine. The current first passes through the plug board, then through the three rotors, through the reflector which reverses the current, back through the three rotors, back through the plug board and then the encrypted letter is lit on the display. After the display is lit up, the rotors rotate. The rotors rotate similar to an odometer where the right most rotor must complete one revolution before the middle rotor rotated one position and so on. As the current passes through each component in the Enigma machine, the letter gets remapped to another letter. The plug board performed the first remapping. If there is a connection between two letters, the letters are remapped to each other. For example if there is a connection between "A" and "F", "A" would get remapped to "F" and "F" would get remapped to "A". If this isn't a connection for a particular letter, the letter doesn.t get remapped. After the plug board, the letters are remapped through the rotors. Each rotor contains one-to-one mappings of letters but since the rotors rotate on each key press, the mappings of the rotors change on every key press. Once the current passes through the rotors, it goes into the reflector. The reflector is very similar to a rotor except that it doesn't rotate so the one-to-one mappings are always the same. The whole encryption process for a single letter contains a minimum of 7 remappings (the current passes through the rotors twice) and a maximum of 9 remappings (if the letter has a connection in the plug board). In order to decrypt a message, the receiver must have the encrypted message, and know which rotors were used, the connections on the plug board and the initial settings of the rotors. To decrypt a message, the receiver would set up the machine identically to the way the sender initially had it and would type in the encrypted message. The output of typing in the encrypted message would be the original message. Without the knowledge of the state of the machine when the original message was typed in, it is extremely difficult to decode a message." Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Oct 19, 2012 |
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Oct 19, 2012 05:03
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Fornadan posted:Could you really brute force an Enigma message with a WW2 era computer though? It was a combination. Human lazyness on the part of German operators sometimes used repeated keys, and some messages would often contain words that the British knew would be in there. I.e. Reports from Weather ships would contain the German word "wetter" for weather. Given a few breaks, and with Turing's help, they narrowed it down from 1.59x10^19 combinations to like 1 million combinations. The British built a bunch of machines called "bombes" that worked on solving these every day. My book says on lucky days they could decipher a message within an hour. Obviously much of it was caused by German rigidity and their idea that Engima was completely unbreakable. So no, it wasn't "brute force" but deducing a likely combination to narrow down the "brute" force work. Even a modern day computer would take a while to "brute force" Enigma I think, but if you made a set of parameters, it could do it within a few seconds or minutes I think.
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Oct 20, 2012 00:54
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