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JcDent posted:But I don't got one thing: how the gently caress did IJN and IJA get into a dick measuring contest that likely made the war easier for Allies? Well, you see, the inherent nature of the samurai tradition meant that any potential rival, equal but not under your vassalage, meant that they must be diminished or destroyed lest they challenge you. Or it could be just human nature, like how the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe would squabble to the detriment of the German war effort, or how BuOrd refused to admit to their fuckups, to the benefit of the Japanese navy.
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Dec 5, 2014 02:42
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JcDent posted:But I don't got one thing: how the gently caress did IJN and IJA get into a dick measuring contest that likely made the war easier for Allies? They had spent literally their entire existence in battles for strategic priority and for funding and were part of a very militaristic state.
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Dec 5, 2014 02:47
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HEY GAL posted:This is also why white Fascists are described in the history books as doing things because they are Fascists/Nazis, but Asian Fascists are described as doing the same goddamned things out of ancient notions of "honor" and "shame." If a hundred years is ancient, sure. I have lost count of the times American treatments of the Second World War try to suss out the Nazis' motivations while disposing of the Japanese junta with a wave of the hand. That's true. I've also noticed accounts of the Anglo-Zulu war tend to ignore the relative generalship skills of Prince Ntshingwayo and Prince Dabulamanzi, even though they are crucial to understanding the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift.
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Dec 5, 2014 03:00
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JcDent posted:But I don't got one thing: how the gently caress did IJN and IJA get into a dick measuring contest that likely made the war easier for Allies? This is me trying to quote a CGSC paper from memory but this guy argued it was something like this: - Feudal Japanese culture created a very clannish environment which was essentially transferred over to the officer corps of the early INJ/IJA. - Ineffectual national leadership of the emperor during the late 19th century allowed each branch to create its own fiefs and so on without much interference as they were being developed into modern forces - As the armed forces grew along with Japanese ambitions, resources became more and more scarce, missions became more demanding, and centralized leadership became even weaker which led to even more competition between the branches - Officers brought up in this environment through the first few decades of the 20th century were in charge during WWII
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Dec 5, 2014 03:03
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bewbies posted:- Feudal Japanese culture created a very clannish environment which was essentially transferred over to the officer corps of the early INJ/IJA. The Meiji Restoration was largely carried out by samurai from two feudal domains, Choshu and Satsuma. They had a rivalry but they found common ground to work together against the Tokugawa Shogunate and modernize the country. As part of the modernization process the feudal domains as social and political structures were officially dissolved, but most of Japan's political leadership during the Meiji Period and for some time afterwards were either former Choshu/Satsuma retainers or their descendents. Notably, when the armed forces were being modernized guys from Satsuma gravitated to the navy and guys from Choshu went into the army. This established interservice rivalry early on, and it became part of the military culture for the long term, even after the significance of the domains had gone away in most other respects.
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Dec 5, 2014 04:45
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Which reminds me. If anyone can find a book or article on World War 1 military units from the Second Reich that weren't Prussian, I'd love to read about them. I know some of the German states that joined the Empire by treaty rather than conquest had their own militaries, like Bavaria and Saxony, but what did that look like on the ground? What's the command structure like? Is there a different "national character" for a Saxon unit or something? I know the Imperial officer corps is mostly Prussian...what happens to bright young noblemen from other states? Edit: Much of the scholarship on the second Reich focuses on Prussia because that's the state that ended up leading the whole thing. This is, obviously, too narrow an approach. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 05:13
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JcDent posted:But I don't got one thing: how the gently caress did IJN and IJA get into a dick measuring contest that likely made the war easier for Allies? Interservice rivalries existed in virtually every 20th century military. In the United States, for example, you have the 1949 Admiral's Revolt, when Navy-Air Force rivalries boiled into a public conflict. So certain degree of Navy-Army rivalry was not (and is not) unheard of. Now, why were Japanese rivalries so pronounced? There wasn't one single reason, but rather bunch of interacting forces that made the Army and the Navy loving hate each other. Part of it was budgetary. Even with its massive military expenditures during the 1930s and 1940s, the Japanese economy couldn't give both branches everything they wanted. If the Navy got more carriers, then the Army didn't get more tanks. Since both sides wanted to go to war with the most capable force possible, they had an incentive to undermine the rival service and get a bigger slice of the pie. A bigger budget also carried with it political power (you could use military contracts to reward zaibatsu for their political loyalty). Furthermore, getting the lion's share of the budget served as a "gently caress you" to the rival service. Demographically, the Navy and the Army often drew from different sections of Japanese society. Although this didn't guarantee rivalry, it created circumstances that made Army-Navy tensions much more likely and much more severe. As previous posters have mentioned, part of this divide stemmed from pre-Meiji and Meiji-era clannishness. Certain families sent their sons into the Navy, other families sent their sons into the Army. Navy families only married people from other Navy families (or at least from non-Army families). Admiral Soemu Toyoda once said he'd rather have his daughter marry a beggar than a sailor. This had the effect of importing clan rivalries and turning them into interservice rivalries. It also deepened the social and cultural barriers between the services, which created some serious interpersonal problems between Army and Navy officers (who were unlikely to know, like, or trust each other). In a general sense, the Navy and the Army generally came from different parts of Japan. The Army tended to be more rural, the Navy more coastal (although there were clearly exceptions. Tojo, for example was born in Tokyo). Bottom line, there was a lot of social baggage that made interservice and interpersonal relationships between Japan's armed services really rocky. The Army and the Navy also had diametrically-opposed strategic goals. The Army wanted to expand into China, Manchuria, and Mongolia, a theater of war where ground forces would dominate (and thus securing the Army as the dominant force in Japanese military planning, society, and politics). The Navy wanted to expanded into Southeast Asia and the Pacific, a theater where their warships and amphibious troops could excel (and make the Navy top dog in Japan). This partly explains why Navy and Army commanders didn't play well together. Navy men saw no reason to spend time and effort helping the Army succeed, knowing that the success of an Army operation would give the Army extra strategic and political capital. Both branches were also highly politicized and had clear political ambitions (military officers played major roles in Japanese politics during the 1920s-1940s and Japan was arguably a junta by WWII). This was partly a symptom of their rivalry, but it also exacerbated their clash further. The Army had close ties to the Mitsui zaibatsu and the Rikken Seiyukai party. The Navy sided with Mitsubishi and the Rikken Minseito party. Being on opposite sides of the political fence made compromise and cooperation between the Army and Navy extraordinarily difficult. e: To clarify, there was a lot of dysfunction in IJN-IJA relations and it bit them in the rear end a bunch. But sometimes things did run smoothly. The evacuation of Guadalcanal is an example of a really successful joint operation (and there are other examples, especially in the 1941-1942 period). Bacarruda fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 05:18
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SeanBeansShako posted:I seem to recall Japanese Army discipline in WW2 for the common grunt of the IJA was pretty rough stuff more associated with Victorian era armies. There's a reason my great-grandparents on both sides of my family emigrated from Imperial Japan during the late '00s/early '10s, and it wasn't because America/Mexico were amazing lands of opportunity they wanted to be a part of. Especially not Mexico. Bacarruda posted:e: To clarify, there was a lot of dysfunction in IJN-IJA relations and it bit them in the rear end a bunch. But sometimes things did run smoothly. The evacuation of Guadalcanal is an example of a really successful joint operation (and there are other examples, especially in the 1941-1942 period). Interservice co-operation is a lot easier when each side isn't blaming the other for their own failure. Honestly I'm more fascinated by the role the massive zaibatsu played in the war. They were definitely way more influencial than almost any other private company I can think of, with the exception of the British East India Company, and at one point there were literally 6 companies that made almost everything. It still exists to a lesser extent today in Korea and Japan but they're nowhere near as powerful as they were in WW2.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:39
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Can I ask you an unrelated social question, Don Gato? I heard somewhere that the common descriptor for a person Asian descent in Mexico, regardless of their actual ethnicity, is Chino/a. True/False? edit: Can you tell us stuff about the military history of Mexico? What the hell happened after the Conquista? Like, all we hear about up north is El Grito de Dolores and the revolution, and not a very detailed account. In the years between 1500 and 1800, what was Mexico's role in the Spanish military machine? A staging ground for expeditions to South America and Asia? Or what? edit 2: that's a really broad question, isn't it? How about any tidbits that interest you? A sweeping generalization is fine too. Grand Prize Winner fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 06:55
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JcDent posted:I might be going in over my head, but Japanese charges operate on a nigh incomprehensible sense of honor, duty and mind over matter. Soviet "human waves" (don't know if they're ever shown with bayonets) are shown as cold officers just throwing men forward because communism. When you hear stories of Americans or British "fix bayonets", it's always a heroic last ditch effort that saves the day (or, going on stories about Ray Rescorla, just a punctuation mark). After WWII, it's basically THE British thing to do. "The poo poo's all buggered, lads, but we're not yet dead. Fix bayonets!" And it's never mass bayonet charges. Why? Because mass western bayonet charges lost all their luster in WWI. This is ironic, because the Japanese doctrine that, among other things, led to banzai charges was born on WWI battlefields where the Japanese were careful observers and made their conclusions about artillery, élan, the inferiority of defense etc. It was a radical development of infiltration tactics combined with focus on direct fire, commander autonomy and pursuit. In the end the dogmatic way of teaching this doctrine at academies led to inability of many officers to cope with other forms of war than aggressive infiltration, and the focus on autonomy of low level command allowed them to throw away lives.
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Dec 5, 2014 09:06
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Earlier in the thread someone explained that the "human wave" tactics used by the PLA during the Korean War were actually sophisticated infiltration tactics; were the infiltration tactics used by Japan similar at all?
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Dec 5, 2014 12:04
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Speaking of PLA and infiltration tactics, did anyone look into the link that I gave? The parts about rifle and grenade usage treat this, it's pretty interesting and worth the time.
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Dec 5, 2014 12:48
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JaucheCharly posted:Speaking of PLA and infiltration tactics, did anyone look into the link that I gave? The parts about rifle and grenade usage treat this, it's pretty interesting and worth the time. nobody reads, this is the internet
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Dec 5, 2014 13:00
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JaucheCharly posted:Speaking of PLA and infiltration tactics, did anyone look into the link that I gave? The parts about rifle and grenade usage treat this, it's pretty interesting and worth the time. I got through the entire Armies of Sand and Snow (or Snow And Sand) and most of the "their tanks are going to gently caress us up, you guys" CIA report. I could read it. Especially since I don't understand what infiltration tactics is. I blame videogames. 1. Can someone explain what's infiltration tactics and how are they different from aggressive infiltration? 2. Why is NATO is using M2 while Russians have gone through several different HMGs?
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Dec 5, 2014 13:54
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Hey HEY GAL this has been posted like a million times and I forgot what your opinion on it was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=625iTKITRoA I watched Alatriste one day (and fell asleep during a swordfight) because I'm writing a tabletop game about being Swedes who destroy all of Germany for vague reasons.
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Dec 5, 2014 14:39
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JcDent posted:2. Why is NATO is using M2 while Russians have gone through several different HMGs? Why replace something that's already perfect? Actually, outside of the US, I thought a lot of NATO forces used their own thing(s) right after WWII. But really, the "Ma Deuce" is a really good gun. It's like the AK pattern rifles, it's a good gun and has only really needed tweaks here and there. Browning knew what he was doing.
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Dec 5, 2014 15:20
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JcDent posted:2. Why is NATO is using M2 while Russians have gone through several different HMGs? The DShK was the first Russian HMG. Later, the Russians developed the 14.5mm round for AT rifles. But after WWII, AT rifles were obsolete, leaving the Russians with a bunch of leftover 14.5mm ammo. So the KPV was created. I'm not really sure what prompted the development of the NSV. Supposedly, they wanted a lighter HMG, but the DShK is about the same weight as the M2. The main NSV factory is in Kazakhstan. So, after the breakup of the USSR, they created a new HMG, the Kord.
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Dec 5, 2014 16:15
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YF19pilot posted:Why replace something that's already perfect? Actually, outside of the US, I thought a lot of NATO forces used their own thing(s) right after WWII.
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Dec 5, 2014 16:45
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Apropos of nothing, but man is the Swiss way of war so awesome. I'm not talking about their current every man a franc-tireur strategy, but when they had their peak in the medieval ages. It's pretty awesome reading about multiple battles in which the other side is in a prepared position, or moving into the normal order of battle, and the Swiss just come in, see them, and charge headlong right at them. They took bad casualties, but they kicked rear end for a while. All for being disciplined and in huge pike blocks.
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Dec 5, 2014 16:51
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Can I ask you an unrelated social question, Don Gato? I heard somewhere that the common descriptor for a person Asian descent in Mexico, regardless of their actual ethnicity, is Chino/a. True/False? After (hell, even mostly during) the Conquista the Spanish operated almost as much within the structure of the Nahuatl system as within the Old World system. That is, they used the Aztec model of conquest wherein defeated states gave tribute in goods (shipped to America) and soldiers, the soldiers (backed by a Spaniards with artillery) where then used to repeat the process. We have records of city-states* petitioning the crown saying 'hey, you took 2000 of our best young men a few years ago, any chance we can get them back?' The answer is no, they died in some godforsaken jungle trying to starve out some Mayans or they ended up in the far north and locals their ambushed them and butchered them. The Spanish never really had to worry about Mexico being take in the way it had to worry about a few other places because there's this big rear end desert-y area to the north and a big jungle to the south. So expansion there sort of had it's own logic disconnected from European rivalries. Eventually there's a pretty horrific population collapse in the Nahuatl areas and that peters out, but by then Spain's pretty secure in where it wants to be. It has the mines it needs, food to feed the slave plantations in the Caribbean, and any native cities with any readily lootable goods have been picked clean. Although the Philippines <-> Mexico was a pretty big leg of the silver from Potosi -> China trade route, I wouldn't really call it a military staging point. I mean, aside from tamping down the rebellions in Mexico, there's not a lot for a military to do there. Until the whole place gets restive and starts acting up anyway. *more like 'ethnic state thingies sometimes centered on a city' I think my favorite Mexico story is a Nahuatl language document noting the arrival of some strange ambassadors who came over on a ship from the Philippines. They had a predatory walk, very sharp curved swords, funny sandals, but did their hair like women.
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Dec 5, 2014 17:57
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Fangz posted:Almost by definition, the vast majority of katanas would be of the lower quality types. Similarly, western and chinese weapons would be very different between high class weapons and the stuff you are trying to equip your ordinary footsoldier with. If this chart is to be believed, it seems like the high carbon steel being used might have had a lot of sulphur or phosphorous (I think? I am not super strong on that side of metallurgy) which would make them more brittle, because I can conceive of no reason why a sword made entirely out of HC steel would be noticeably mechanically inferior to other types. It is worth remembering that the best steel in the world until the Bessemer process is crucible steel (e.g. Wootz) which is super high carbon and was used to make entire swords. It may also be, however, that this chart is calling all-steel the "poorest method" because it is the least traditional. A lot of the benefits of hard edge, soft back construction is given in vague truisms (the soft back "absorbs the impact") but I have never heard of any mechanical study of this, and I honestly cannot envision how that would work. quote:Another point is that Japanese swordmakers were working with very poor quality base materials. A lot of the 'art' of katana construction is really about correcting for shortcomings in the steel used - folding and refolding helps burn off impurities, and even out inconsistencies in the carbon content. The basic technique of pattern welding was fairly widespread across the world, though obviously different cultures implemented it slightly differently. Folding does not burn off impurities, it forces them out mechanically. The impurities we are worried about in particular are silicates, which don't exactly burn well. quote:Medieval melee theorists were generally convinced that polearms beat swords. Like gently caress they were (what the gently caress even is a melee theorist). The only person I have ever encountered to rank weapons in this way was George Silver who was not only way post-medieval (Paradoxes of Defence came out in 1599) but a tremendous English nationalist. Thus the brown bill, the most English of weapons, is the best. All relative inferiority/superiority is therefore derived from how close a weapon is in shape and usage to the brown bill.
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Dec 5, 2014 18:20
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1493 had a bit about samurai who were abroad at the time Japan was closed to foreign trade being unable to return and instead finding work in the new world guarding Spanish silver shipments. There was an enormous amount of military effort put into guarding the gold and silver, but it was mostly naval or port fortifications, not ground troops. As the mines got less productive and more money was spent to provide for the colonies themselves, Spain got less and less of the desperately needed cash. This does give us the neat story of the time the duke of Alba walked in on Charles V, who was staring intently out the window for some time. He asked the emperor what he was looking at. "I'm trying to find the walls of Cartagena. For what I'm spending they should be visible from here."
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Dec 5, 2014 18:38
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About the whole polearms/reach thing: really long weapons have drawbacks too. Like, if you're a single guy with a pike, the chance that someone can actually parry aside your pike and grab it is sort of not fun. With stuff like that, you really want a buddy or two or a couple hundred buddies to stab them when they try to do so.
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Dec 5, 2014 19:02
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Yeah, for 1-on-1 it's the shorter polearms- and preferrably multifunctional ones like a poleaxe or halberd - that reign supreme.
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Dec 5, 2014 19:41
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What about zweihanders and such?  I was also under impresion that poor people never got real proper swords. Short stubby bits out of lovely metal at best, and most would have spears and shields (before armor made shields obsolete, which is still a bit of a mindfuck for me). Also, I never implied that M2 is bad. It's just strange that Russians are taking so long to come up with a suitable alternative.
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Dec 5, 2014 20:07
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The Japanese at Kalkhin Gol (which btw. happened because a random Major from an important family thought that the Slav Untermenschen would be easy prey derp) tried to use infiltration tactics, occassionally with tactical success, because a shoot out with the RKKA would have been a really bad idea for them due to artillery, armor, and aerial inferiority. The Soviets, in WW2 against the Germans, also developed similiar tactics at situations where shootouts with the Germans would have been a bad idea. Basically, if you close in, your effectively drag down a materially and/or technologically superior enemy to your level, and then you presumably beat him by experience.
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Dec 5, 2014 20:15
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JcDent posted:Also, I never implied that M2 is bad. It's just strange that Russians are taking so long to come up with a suitable alternative. The DshK entered service only five years after the Ma Deuce, though.  As I understand it, the NSV was a strange offshoot from a project for a new MMG (which was eventually won by the PK) and was adopted because it was lighter and had a faster rate of fire than the DshK. As for the Ma Deuce, it had its problems. Took them almost 80 years to adopt a variant (the M2A1, introduced in 2010) on which you don't have to manually adjust the headspace and timing with every barrel change anymore. Considering that this with depressing regularity caused clueless enlisted men to either create a nonfunctional gun or one that would blow up in their faces upon them trying to fire it, they sure took their time with that improvement.
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Dec 5, 2014 20:31
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Can I ask you an unrelated social question, Don Gato? I heard somewhere that the common descriptor for a person Asian descent in Mexico, regardless of their actual ethnicity, is Chino/a. True/False? Based on my personal experience, true. quote:edit: Can you tell us stuff about the military history of Mexico? What the hell happened after the Conquista? Like, all we hear about up north is El Grito de Dolores and the revolution, and not a very detailed account. In the years between 1500 and 1800, what was Mexico's role in the Spanish military machine? A staging ground for expeditions to South America and Asia? Or what? I can try to do a broad overview, but I have to go to work soon. Disclaimer, I'm just an amateur and have read a lot of Spanish and English books on Mexico and this is going to be a very broad strokes overview. During the colonial period Mexico's main purpose was to be the cash cow for the rest of the empire. At some points, over half the tax received by the Spanish Empire came from the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Colonial soldiers were used to extract tribute from locals, sometimes in the form of soldiers who could extract tribute from locals, repeat ad infinitum. By 1810 the Spanish Empire was in bad shape. Mexico wasn't producing nearly as much silver and gold as the Spaniards needed to fuel their empire and Napoleon's invasion of Spain had shattered the old government and created a new Napoleonic puppet state. In Mexico, a conspiracy led by Miguel Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende* planned to launch a revolt against the Viceroy's government, but they were discovered. In desperation, Miguel Hidalgo rushed to the town square of Dolores, ordering his men to ring the church bell to summon the people to the square. Interestingly, I've read multiple sources that all give different speeches for what he actually said to the crowd, but the end result was the same. Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe, long live Ferdinand VII (haha), and death to the bad government. This is traditionally considered the birth of the nation despite the fact that they didn't win their independence until 1821, in the same way that the Declaration of Independence is considered the birth of the US even though the war lasted until 1783. Over 600 peasants joined Miguel Hidalgo's plea for independence, creating the first army of Mexico. Hidalgo and Allende marched their rag-tag army through the countryside towards Mexico City, killing every Spaniard they came across. As they passed through towns, their ranks swelled as more and more disaffected citizens tagged along. By the time they reached the outskirts of Mexico City, the small mob had grown to an 80,000 man army, more than enough to challenge the Royalist army, despite the lack of such unnecessary things as training, artillery guns and regular guns. The Viceroy had managed to throw together an army of 2,000 loyalists to challenge the rebels, but against such overwhelming odds they might as well have been trying to stop a hurricane, although the rebel army took massive casualties due to their lack of modern weapons. More disastrous for the Viceroy than the loss of the men was that the rebels had also captured the artillery pieces the royalist army had, giving them some much needed artillery. Here is where it gets interesting. There was now no royalist army standing between Miguel Hidalgo and Mexico city, and he could strike a huge blow to the Spanish power in the country by taking the Viceroy and the city hostage. Yet, despite the pleas from Ignacio Allende, Hidalgo chose to retreat to Guadalajara instead of marching forward. Historians still debate why he chose to fall back. Theories range from claims that half his army deserted after the brutal battle to word a second Royalist army marching towards Mexico City to reinforce the Viceroy. Personally, I believe that the main reason is because unlike Ignacio Allende, who was a captain in the Spanish Army before the rebellion, Miguel Hidalgo wasn't a military man. He was just a priest of a small town, who had been thrust into a position of leadership due to his rallying speech at Dolores, and the brutality of the battle horrified him. Now why he didn't listen to Allende, I have no idea. Will this decision bite him in the rear end later? Most probably! I have to go to work now, but hopefully I can type another wall of text after work. It's just going to take a while, since I left the books about Mexican history in Mexico with my grandparents because I am dumb so I'm doing this mostly from memory. *There is actually very little documentation about the conspiracy, so other than Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende there is no proof of who else was there. Besides, a secret conspiracy that leaves around tons of paperwork saying exactly who was in the conspiracy is probably going to get discovered and purged very quickly. EDIT: Oh sweet Jesus this is a lot longer than I thought it was going to be.
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Dec 5, 2014 20:35
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Wootz steel is pretty interesting stuff though. "It should also be mentioned that a discussion is taking place on nanotechnical effects in Damascus steel. A research team in Dresden headed by M. Reibold and P. Paufler has found large quantities of nanofilaments of cementite in museum weapons as well as carbon nanotubes. These are thought to contribute a powerful hardening mechanism. These reports are barely one year old, but the findings are very interesting and may perhaps go some way towards explaining some of the historical descriptions that exist of the extreme properties of Damascus weapons in relation to edge sharpness, impact resistance, bendability and toughness. Direct measurements on museum weapons show, however, that the mechanical properties are roughly equivalent to modern tool steels and were far better than in mediaeval weld-forged European "damasced" weapons". These were developed firstly to resemble Damascus weapons in appearance, by using two different steels which after repeated welding and folding produced patterns in the completed blade, and secondly as far as possible to minimise the effect of the large quantity of slags these steels had. The slags were finely divided with repeated folding and weldforging which entailed very substantial total deformation. Damascus forging from a wootz ingot, on the other hand, meant minimal forging deformation." http://zoomin.idt.mdh.se/course/Goran/Reproduction_of_Damascus_steel_wootz_patterns_and_blade_forging.pdf
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Dec 5, 2014 20:54
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Don Gato posted:Miguel Hidalgo This is entirely the wrong thing for me to focus on in this effortpost (a village priest managing to rally 80,000 men with a desperate plea is...something to contemplate), but..."Miguel Hidalgo"? My Spanish is kinda rusty, but doesn't that translate roughly into "Mike Gentleman"? That's sorta awesome.
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Dec 5, 2014 21:07
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JcDent posted:I got through the entire Armies of Sand and Snow (or Snow And Sand) and most of the "their tanks are going to gently caress us up, you guys" CIA report. I could read it. Especially since I don't understand what infiltration tactics is. I blame videogames. Can you post a link? I missed this somehow. Magni posted:The DshK entered service only five years after the Ma Deuce, though. Was this because it was assumed that you should know what you're doing if you're manning the .50? Didn't the Bundeswehr use what was basically an MG42 rechambered for NATO 7.62 for loving ages, too?
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Dec 5, 2014 21:49
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You talk about the MG3 in the past tense. It's still going strong.
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Dec 5, 2014 21:59
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Yeah, the MG3 has been in use since '68, and they've only recently started phasing it out in favour of the HK121.
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Dec 5, 2014 22:00
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There we go then. I guess that shows that firearms are an entirely mature technology because improvements are coming so slowly and gradually now, as opposed to the 19th and early 20th century when guns would become obsolete in a matter of decades.
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Dec 5, 2014 22:04
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Some Finnish sniper rifles have parts made in the Czarist era. From Wikipedia: "Though the 7.62 TKIV 85 sniper rifle has been modified extensively compared to the standard Mosin-Nagant rifle, the use of the old receivers in these rifles makes them arguably the oldest small arms in current use by any military. Some of the parts used may date back as far as the 1890s." 
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Dec 5, 2014 22:16
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Chamale posted:That's true. I've also noticed accounts of the Anglo-Zulu war tend to ignore the relative generalship skills of Prince Ntshingwayo and Prince Dabulamanzi, even though they are crucial to understanding the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift. If you want a book that really does a good job of describing the Zulu tactics and has a genuine respect for them as soldiers, read Mike Snook's two volumes on Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift.
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Dec 6, 2014 03:20
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Slavvy posted:Can you post a link? I missed this somehow. http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0001066239.pdf There you go! As for MG3, I first found about it when browsing Lithuanian military website (I was interested in what our guys are using) and found it hilarious. Basically the same Hitler's Buzzaw, by the look of it. Then came the video game gun boom and it was everywhere. I wonder if there's correlation between wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and sudden increase in variety of guns in games. Before the 2008 crisis (thanks, banks), there were plans to arm our lot with G36K or c's, but that got kind of scrapped and for the next years, our lads and ladies stayed armed with AK-4, a Swedish version of G3. They were nicknamed "oars", because, as the saying goes, "if the Russians attack, we're going to have to beat them to death". I'm seeing G36's appearing in pictures now, so maybe the gov't finally decided to give the military the money it promised NATO it would. So, can I ask again: so what is infiltration tactics? Hogge Wild posted:Some Finnish sniper rifles have parts made in the Czarist era. Some of those parts might have been used to kill Russians for over 120 years.
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Dec 6, 2014 03:30
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From my limited understanding, infiltration tactics as employed in the Korean War is just infiltrating at night through gap between enemy line to surround them, then attack with superior force from all side except a purposefully left open retreat route, which also has unit waiting in ambush. The battle is preferably finished before the morning to minimize the UN firepower advantage.
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Dec 6, 2014 03:41
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JcDent posted:So, can I ask again: so what is infiltration tactics? This has been addressed earlier in the thread. Bacarruda posted:Communist tactics in Korea/Vietnam certainly utilized sudden, massed infantry attacks to overwhelm enemy defenses. But these tactics had a certain degree of calculation and sophistication. It wasn't just a 100 guys screaming through a field hoping the enemy only had 99 bullets. Communist tactics generally used a combination of infiltration, suppressing fire, surprise, shock, and weight of numbers to achieve success. Usually, Communist attacks would be preceded by a small group of infiltrators (sometime these would be specially trained soldiers like VC sappers). These men would cut wire obstacles, kill sentries, and clear defensive positions. This would create a breach the main follow-on force could exploit en masse.
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Dec 6, 2014 03:47
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Tomn posted:This is entirely the wrong thing for me to focus on in this effortpost (a village priest managing to rally 80,000 men with a desperate plea is...something to contemplate), but..."Miguel Hidalgo"? My Spanish is kinda rusty, but doesn't that translate roughly into "Mike Gentleman"? Closer to Mike Nobleman, but yeah that is his name. Technically it's actually Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo-Costilla y Gallaga Mandarte Villaseņor, but outside of the most formal circumstances you'd just say his name was Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. Typing out that gets tiring for me so I just call him Hidalgo. And yeah, the fact he rallied such a large army is amazing. The Grito de Dolores was on September 16th, but the battle of Monte de las Cruces where he beat the Viceroy's army was on October 30th. The main reason a random preacher managed to get an army of 80,000 men in a little over a month was because he allowed the mestizos and indians to join, who for obvious reasons were not big fans of the Spanish government. Also, don't picture this as a militia like what happened in the American Revolution, they were closer to a very big angry mob who were pissed about years of abuse and starvation. They had no training and barely any equipment, but they made up for that in anger and a desire to loot those massive Spanish haciendas they were forced to work for.
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Dec 6, 2014 03:47
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