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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:this is the most German poo poo of all time Right up there with the Battalion level tailors are the helmet wrappers. "What did you do in the war, daddy?" "I was a helmet wrapping supervisor, I made sure that all helmets were wrapped properly in individual paper wrappers and that all of the corners were folded properly before they were shipped to the supply depots."
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Oct 30, 2018 14:59
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I'd there's any guy who doesn't have to feel too bad about his contribution to the nazi war effort, it's the helmet wrapper.
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Oct 30, 2018 15:02
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Marxist-Jezzinist posted:I'd there's any guy who doesn't have to feel too bad about his contribution to the nazi war effort, it's the helmet wrapper. I imagine that would probably have been a woman?
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Oct 30, 2018 15:03
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Any lady, then
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Oct 30, 2018 15:04
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:this is the most German poo poo of all time it was not even the Nazism, they were like this before the war and they are like this now it's great if you want to buy high quality small electronics from someone. Their handheld mixers are dope and don't break.
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Oct 30, 2018 15:05
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Unemployment in Germany at the height of the Great Depression was like 30% which seems like fertile ground to both political extremism and inefficiency at work.
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Oct 30, 2018 15:21
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pidan posted:I imagine that would probably have been a woman? The actual labor would have been done by women, the management by men.
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Oct 30, 2018 15:24
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Cessna posted:The actual labor would have been done by women, the management by men. and the profits by the man.
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Oct 30, 2018 15:33
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:very different manufacturing techniques made it a lot easier to build a molded slightly more efficient shape This is weering into "MG42 fired too many bullets for the German logistics to handle" territory. Unlike the stupid uniform, a helmet is a substantial improvement in soldier survival, so much so that nobody but the British used Brodie helmets. Americans? A dome. Soviets? A dome. Everyone had domed soldiers but the Brits. Now, maybe the Brits wouldn't have had the capacity to produce non-brodies, but that doesn't meant that Stahlhelm was a bad way to go.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:03
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They pretty much did as much as they could with the Brodie helmets design. I imagine they had more important things to focus on like trying to reinvent weaponry and vehicles or how to get US alternatives.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:06
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JcDent posted:Now, maybe the Brits wouldn't have had the capacity to produce non-brodies, but that doesn't meant that Stahlhelm was a bad way to go. The stahlhelm - and so help me, now I prefer the term "naughty German helmet" - WAS a bad way to go. It required vastly more labor to produce, and it wasn't really that much better than comparable helmets of the time. So, you're in charge of allocating resources and manpower. Would you rather employ: - One soldier with a really good helmet (that still won't stop a rifle bullet) and a helmet-wrapper-supervisor. - Two soldiers with good helmets.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:10
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I think the bigger issue is that the Germans could have come up with something like the M1 or the Ssh-39/40, EDIT: Reread some of the stalhelm process and actually yeah you'd need to retool entirely, but it's a much simpler retooling than, for example, what they did for the changeover from milled MP 38s to stamped MP 40s. And the labor savings would have been well worth it. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Oct 30, 2018 |
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Oct 30, 2018 16:12
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Comrade Gorbash posted:I think the bigger issue is that the Germans could have come up with something like the M1 or the Ssh-39/40, probably without even major retooling. That would have kept the primary advantages of the stalhelm design while significantly simplifying production. They had it! It came up earlier in the thread. In 1939 the Iron and Steel Specialty Division of the Third Reich Research Council (don't make me type it out in German) tested a bunch of helmets from other countries, some captured, some purchased pre-war. They found that none of the helmets were ideal for protection or ease of manufacture. In 1942 they designed a new helmet that had really good ballistic protection and was easy to make. This was initially designed "on the down low," but the design was so good that they decided to show off the results to Hitler. Hitler liked it, but vetoed production because it didn't look German enough. This was the helmet that post-war became the standard East German helmet. It looks a bit funny, but it was just as good at being a helmet - maybe even a bit better than the "naughty German" helmet - and it was vastly easier to produce. Check it out, it is one hot-stamped piece of steel, essentially a "naughty German" helmet adapted to be built using American or Soviet manufacturing techniques:  But, again, it was not put into production because it didn't look German enough.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:24
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I think this conversation has kinda gotten weird. I don't think it was really originally that "Germany should have used the brodie helmet in WWII". The original reference wasMilo and POTUS posted:Stahlhelm was a pretty good, simple to make design too IIRC. which is (a) untrue, the helmet was hard to make and (b) not terribly clear whether we are talking about WWII or WWI. If we are talking WWI trench warfare the Brodie has several clear advantages over the Stahlhelm. Then the conversation went on to the idea that Cold War (or designed from scratch WWII) era helmets look more like the Stahlhelm than the Brodie, which is okay, true, but the Stahlhelm wasn't designed for WWII! What it really means is that unanticipated by both the designers of the Brodie and the Stahlhelm, the sorts of battle fighters were involved in after WWI required more neck protection than shoulder protection from fragments. In the context of later helmets, a more appropriate comparison would be comparing the German decision to continue building the relatively complicated WWI Stahlhelm (with some modernisation), with the later helmets like the mass produced M1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz1VYxSFyMQ EDIT: Or the thing above, yeah. Fangz fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Oct 30, 2018 |
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Oct 30, 2018 16:27
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Cessna posted:So, you're in charge of allocating resources and manpower. Would you rather employ: This is actually a pretty interesting question. In the contemporary US, the answer is emphatically #1, and if you get it wrong, congress is going to be asking the tough questions. It'd be cool to see actual data from WWII on this though. Like, how much better was the German helmet? How many more serious injuries did it prevent vs an inferior design? Was that number worth the cost increase? And so on.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:28
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bewbies posted:This is actually a pretty interesting question. In the contemporary US, the answer is emphatically #1, and if you get it wrong, congress is going to be asking the tough questions. http://tankarchives.blogspot.com/2017/08/whose-helmet-was-better.html Obvious caveats apply, of course.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:29
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Fangz posted:http://tankarchives.blogspot.com/2017/08/whose-helmet-was-better.html From that report: quote:When shooting with a rifle at 800 meters using a mod. 1908 bullet (counting all hits), Soviet helmets were penetrated 7.7-10% of the time, and German helmets were penetrated 34.5% of the time. The PPSh penetrated German helmets 41.4% of the time, but Soviet helmets only 11.5-11.7% of the time. The TT could penetrate German helmets 38.8% of the time, compared to 12.4-13% for Soviet helmets. Even the Nagant could penetrate German helmets 29% of the time... Okay, let me revise my question above. quote:So, you're in charge of allocating resources and manpower. Would you rather employ:
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Oct 30, 2018 16:33
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Fangz posted:http://tankarchives.blogspot.com/2017/08/whose-helmet-was-better.html this is bad rear end It is really strange though (and probably wrong) that they seemed more interested in testing resistance to headshots at 800m than they were testing against blast frags from HE. Were the Russians under the impression that helmets were supposed to protect against direct small arms fire? Even modern helmets can't do that. edit - i take that back, i actually think the ECH can resist assault rifle rounds bewbies fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Oct 30, 2018 |
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Oct 30, 2018 16:35
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Fangz posted:I think this conversation has kinda gotten weird. I don't think it was really originally that "Germany should have used the brodie helmet in WWII". The original reference was
EDIT: Also that once you put all those factors into play, the seemingly contradictory statements that Germany switching to the brodie would have been a bad idea and keeping the stalhelm was a bad idea are both true for different reasons. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Oct 30, 2018 |
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Oct 30, 2018 16:39
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bewbies posted:this is bad rear end It's probably difficult to design testing that consistently exposes these helmets to fragmentation weapons. I assume the assumption is that if your helmet can hold up under glancing fire from small calibre bullets that might cover shrapnel as well.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:40
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Comrade Gorbash posted:And that if you just look at it from the end user perspective, it would appear the Germans made a better choice because of the the first and fourth statements, but once you also consider the second, third, and fifth then it becomes clear the Germans made a foolish decision while the Brits made at least a defensible one and maybe a wise one. far fewer brits died/were wounded in the second world war than the first HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Oct 30, 2018 |
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Oct 30, 2018 16:47
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Fangz posted:It's probably difficult to design testing that consistently exposes these helmets to fragmentation weapons. I assume the assumption is that if your helmet can hold up under glancing fire from small calibre bullets that might cover shrapnel as well. out at aberdeen some army engineers hands just started shaking and he doesn't know why
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Oct 30, 2018 16:57
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Cessna posted:First and foremost, they weren't adjustable. No, really - you had to get one that was the right size for your head, like a hat. They came with 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, or 62 cm liners and corresponding shell sizes. You could not swap a different sized liner into a non-corresponding shell. Think that makes logistics easier? That. Is. Hilarious.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:59
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JcDent posted:This is weering into "MG42 fired too many bullets for the German logistics to handle" territory. Unlike the stupid uniform, a helmet is a substantial improvement in soldier survival, so much so that nobody but the British used Brodie helmets. Americans? A dome. Soviets? A dome. Everyone had domed soldiers but the Brits. Britain did deploy a domed helmet (Mk.III) from 1944 onwards in response to research indicating that the Brodie wasn't the best design if the shrapnel isn't coming from above you. Obviously by 1944 the capacity squeeze was reduced and there was no direct threat to the UK so the situation is a little different but there was capacity to do it.
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Oct 30, 2018 17:13
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Also I probably should have bolded that IIRC because yall jumped on me like I was the naughtiest of germen and it was 1945. I could have swore someone came up with some reasons it was a decent design even regarding manufacturing but I will never make that mistake again :-p
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Oct 30, 2018 17:18
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Milo and POTUS posted:That. Is. Hilarious. The rationale was that they didn't want the "little guy/big helmet" look, so their soldiers wouldn't end up looking like Dark Helmet from Spaceballs. And it goes back to the "tailored" mentality behind uniforms. Look at those SS smocks - remember how I said that the actual manufacturing of the smocks was pretty crappy, while the wool uniforms were tailored? That's because those weren't viewed as the real uniforms. They were something that you put on over a uniform, but took off when you were marching in front of the cameras on a parade. You went to war in your dress uniform, but covered it with a camouflage smock. Once the fighting was over you took off the smock, prettied up your uniform, and stomped around in parades. That was the ideal. That's great if you know you can count on victories like 1938/1939/1940. You want a quick campaign, maybe even one without a fight (1938), followed by a snappy-looking parade in front of the cameras for propaganda. Your soldiers will look good in the newsreels. But in a serious war, like what they faced against the UK/USA/USSR? Forget it.
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Oct 30, 2018 17:20
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Fangz posted:Complicated designs are probably not that bad if you can just crank them out on a big stamping machine, less good if you have to individually hand assemble everything. Wasn't it a thing that the soviets were keen on nabbing various metal stamping specialists from the Germans after WWII? Yes. Before the war German engineers produced a number of innovations in ultra heavy metal stamping and extrusion. As the war ended both the Americans and Soviets sought to seize both technical experts on the subjects as well as examples of the necessary machinery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpgK51w6uhk While this technology was extremely important to the construction of advanced jet and missile components, I'm not sure to what extent this expertise extended to smaller manufactured components.
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Oct 30, 2018 17:21
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honestly my takeaway from this all this uniform chat is that fashion considerations play a larger role in military uniform design than most people realize
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Oct 30, 2018 17:22
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This uniform chat is amazing. Feel free to continue this as long as you guys like.
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Oct 30, 2018 17:24
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FrangibleCover posted:Britain did deploy a domed helmet (Mk.III) from 1944 onwards in response to research indicating that the Brodie wasn't the best design if the shrapnel isn't coming from above you. Obviously by 1944 the capacity squeeze was reduced and there was no direct threat to the UK so the situation is a little different but there was capacity to do it. The wiki article for the mk. III helmet claims that it wqs designed in 1941, but not issued until 1943 due to "production issues". This is kind of baffling to me, how do you have production issues so bad that you can't put a lump of metal through a press for two years? Fangz posted:It's probably difficult to design testing that consistently exposes these helmets to fragmentation weapons. I assume the assumption is that if your helmet can hold up under glancing fire from small calibre bullets that might cover shrapnel as well. The shape of the helmet can affect whether or not it actually prevents a piece of shrapnel from hitting bare skin, Stalhelms protect more of the back of the head, and the ears, though I can't really say if their inefficiency of production has anything to do with that.
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Oct 30, 2018 17:28
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Cessna posted:Once the fighting was over you...stomped around in parades. That was the ideal. The persnickity detailmongering predates Nazism and postdates it, but this poo poo is Nazi as hell.
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Oct 30, 2018 17:33
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Cessna posted:Ever see photos of the Warsaw uprising of 1944?
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Oct 30, 2018 17:38
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Pornographic Memory posted:honestly my takeaway from this all this uniform chat is that fashion considerations play a larger role in military uniform design than most people realize YES. Fashion is HUGE. It's all about sending a message. The Nazis "focus grouped" their uniform designs in 1935/36. They brought in groups of young women and had them evaluate potential uniforms for attractiveness. Like I said above, think about what a Wehrmacht uniform is designed for - to look good in propaganda films. Combat effectiveness was not a consideration until 1941 or so, and ease of production didn't come into play until after that. Compare a 1918 uniform to a 1940 uniform: 1918:  1940:  The 1940 uniform is tighter. It is more tailored. This makes it look sharper and cleaner - again, it looks better on parades, more streamlined and modern - but the fact is that a baggy uniform is more practical in combat. The 1940 uniform has much more complex insignia. Look at the collar - they all have "Litzen," those little bars on the collar. In WWI these were only for "Guards" - that is, elites. In WWII all soldiers had them, the message being "you're all elites now." (As an aside, sewing that litzen is horrible. You have to fold the cloth, sew it to a backing, then sew that to the collar. It's miserable.) The 1940 buttons are shinier, there are complex pockets. Again, this is to look good, not for combat practicality or ease of manufacture. It's all about sending a message - these soldiers are going to fight a fast, decisive, modern war, then look good in the victory parade.
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Oct 30, 2018 17:43
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The wiki article for the mk. III helmet claims that it wqs designed in 1941, but not issued until 1943 due to "production issues". This is kind of baffling to me, how do you have production issues so bad that you can't put a lump of metal through a press for two years? For example, say you're running your helmets through a paint machine on a conveyor belt at some point. Does your new helmet fit into that machine? Does the machine put a complete and even layer of paint on the new helmet? If the answer is no to either, can you just make a small change to how the helmet is put into the machine to solve it? What if we change the paint composition or the pressure in the sprayer? If none of that works, do you redesign the machine or the helmet? Is the problem that some helmets fit and some don't, and if so, can you tighten up your tolerances enough to fix it without having to redesign anything? Every single one of these questions requires testing, and you might have go back and start over at any point. EDIT: Which probably still shouldn't really take two years, but if it's at the bottom of your priority list, behind things like "produce some of ANY kind of tank holy poo poo" and "apparently sub machine guns are really important this round, and our SMG production capability currently consists of a cleared patch of dirt," then two years doesn't sound too bad. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Oct 30, 2018 |
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Oct 30, 2018 17:44
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HEY GUNS posted:i would argue that it's this that is the essence of fascist uniform making. The war is thought of primarily as an image. And they believe they'll always win without physical effort. Opposition isn't real, which is why they whine so hard whenever they face any. Exactly, see my posts right above this one about fashion and sending a message.
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Oct 30, 2018 17:44
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Cessna posted:Exactly, see my posts right above this one about fashion and sending a message. have you read walter benjamin? you'd love him. "fascism is the aestheticization of politics." also i bet that ww1 dude is about my size and i am cursed to wear things that are too big for me.
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Oct 30, 2018 17:48
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HEY GUNS posted:i would argue that it's this that is the essence of fascist uniform making. The war is thought of primarily as an image. And they believe they'll always win without physical effort. Opposition isn't real, which is why they whine so hard whenever they face any. This makes perfect sense regarding the uniform design, but I can't reconcile it with the whole "you must be prepared to lay down your life and become a martyr for the People in the face of the perfidious [fill-in-the-blank]" thing that was also big in Fascism. Were the two messages intended for two different audiences?
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Oct 30, 2018 17:52
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HEY GUNS posted:have you read walter benjamin? you'd love him. "fascism is the aestheticization of politics." He's hugely influential as regards my analysis of bad-guy uniforms, yes.
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Oct 30, 2018 17:53
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Davin Valkri posted:This makes perfect sense regarding the uniform design, but I can't reconcile it with the whole "you must be prepared to lay down your life and become a martyr for the People in the face of the perfidious [fill-in-the-blank]" thing that was also big in Fascism. Were the two messages intended for two different audiences? What about this? (I'm just as unsure as you, just thinking out loud.) Sometimes the story is that you succeed. Sometimes the story is you die gloriously and sentimentally. But the common thread is that it's a story and you're the main character. You're the hero. You never really have to do anything real, that's the part you make up and blunder into and fail at, because the story is what counts. It's your real life but you approach it as though you are acting. This is a movie for these guys--a video game for the modern ones. Edit: When the Soviets didn't instantly succeed and usher in perfection, they developed a number of theories as to why and then turned on each other. I always wonder if the Nazis, had their project laste more than twelve years, would have done the same. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Oct 30, 2018 |
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Oct 30, 2018 17:55
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Cessna posted:He's hugely influential as regards my analysis of bad-guy uniforms, yes. thumbs loving up
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Oct 30, 2018 17:56
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