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zoux posted:Modern artillery officer: This is the M119A3 Howitzer, it can fire M1 high-explosive and M913 HERA up to 2 km. Langer Max, Betsy the Sniper, Boshe Buster, Scene Shifter, Schwerer Gustav, Dora... The practice almost certainly didn't end with WWII either, I just can't think of any examples of individual guns with names.
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HEY GUNS posted:how large are the rocks? we didn't measure that part Size of a bishop's head
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Previous posts Chase the hyperlinks for the rest in the thread. The tanker war post archive Iran-Iraq: The long stalemate, 1985-86 I’ve cheated myself out of a lot of the relevant content for ‘85 here by doing the tanker war and aspects of economic war as its own topic, but now we really start to get into that being relevant to whats going on, so return to those posts if you want a bit more background on what’s going on and why in the gulf. But now we are really at the stage where both sides are lodged. Iraq cannot take offensive action, this is for a combination of reasons, primarily military, it has managed to stabilise itself quite effectively, but a failed offensive might give Iran all the opening it needs to actually break the deadlock. Saddam is now playing the long game, he is attacking Iranian trade and working to try and isolate them diplomatically and generally speaking it is working very well for him. But what Saddam really wants at this stage is peace, he has made his gamble and lost, and he is very aware that the ongoing war is just bleeding Iraq dry. Iran continues its aggressive posture, the primary reason for this in my view is because it is a revolutionary and also very fractured state. That means that in its very fractured and chaotic structure you have people jockeying for position as those positions are still up for grabs and very fluid. One very quick way to the top is success on the battlefield that seems to elude most of their commanders, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t dozens of people more than willing to give it a go. This is endemic throughout the Pasdaran particularly, with personal clerical militias being employed to attack as almost a demonstration of one’s own piety and as a status exercise. The efforts they have made to make the whole Pasdaran apparatus work together have started to bear fruit but its all a bit too late. The entire state however has been pivoting towards Khomeini’s stated view of a pan Shia superstate and as a result you have a lot of dangerous nutters in charge. However, this is starting to become rather untenable, there is the growth of a movement of people who will eventually push for peace, but it’s still quite dangerous to push that line too hard lest you be denounced and sidelined. Nobody wants to be the first to blink. Destruction of Iran’s economy. The two warring nations however are not the only ones who are actually really starting to want the war to end. The Gulf Cooperation Council, the association of Saudi Arabia and friends (UAE, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman and Qatar) has been extending aid and loans to Saddam for years now and are starting to get tired of how much this war is costing them and Iran keeps putting holes in their lovely tankers. Saudi Arabia particularly is taking this moment to try and muscle in to mediate and increase their influence, King Fahd perhaps wished to emulate the diplomatic successes of his predecessor, King Khalid who is widely credited for the establishment of the GCC. Sadly, neither of them was really up to the standards of King Faisal, Khalids predecessor, who had his problems do not get me wrong but good god he was a far better leader than Saudi Arabia has had since. However, at this stage the Arab monarchies have pretty much identified the rub, Iran will not win, and Iraq will not lose, can we all get back to making money now?  King Fahd of the KSA So, King Fahd sends an emissary to Iran to talk peace. Offering them several concessions, including an immediate stop of aid to Iraq if they were to sign the ceasefire, along with an offer of monetary compensation separate to that. I don’t know the figure, but I imagine it was significant. They gave Iran a gift of refined oil in significant quantities which enabled them to increase their airforce readiness. Remember that Iranian oil refining was concentrated in Khuzestan and along the shores of the gulf, which makes sense because that’s where the oil is, but it also renders it vulnerable to Iraq attack, and they had done so relentlessly. Iran had Hezbollah release the Saudi council it has kidnapped in Beirut at this stage as a reciprocal show of good will. They proposed a counteroffer where the GCC contributed to the overthrow of Saddam, stops all aid and in return Iran would reign in the Pan-Shiite ambitions and make peace with whatever government replaced Saddam. They would not budge on removing Saddam. The problem is that the GCC had no real credible way of overthrowing Saddam, and if they start plotting such and it goes wrong that is going to be a major PR disaster and also probably get Saddam really pissed. They don’t have much of a credible army at this stage in any way. Fahd however would try to wriggle in a deal by involving the US. But the US responded that they had no plan to replace Saddam either, and weren’t going to embark on such an enterprise. So, Fahd’s grand plan as peacemaker fell through, he was not going to embark on anything so dangerous without at least US acceptance if not their active support. With that avenue scuppered, the only way to end the war quickly was to make somebody flinch. They decided to do this the very simple way, by cratering the oil market. I covered this a while ago in brief as part of the tanker war but there’s a little bit more to it.  So, since the oil shock of the 70’s and the skyrocketing of prices, the USSR had really started increasing its rate of oil extraction at a prodigious rate. This allowed them to balance their books, because the USSR was totally divorced from the system of international trade and currency exchange their economy relied entirely on large ticket exports to get them the foreign currencies they needed to buy abroad. You could not exchange the rouble for the dollar, pound or anything else, it had to be done via intermediaries or often very literally by barter, where finished goods would be exchanged for finished goods between the USSR and other nations. (This is really broad stroking it, but you get the idea). However, oil was an ideal way for the USSR to supplement its international budget, previously they had relied on gold export but that is far less lucrative than oil. The CIA had taken note of the increasing rate of the USSR’s gold sales in this period which indicated deep seated structural problems with their economy that they were just burning cash to sustain. The USSR was fighting a huge war in Afghanistan that seemed to have no end, it was entangled in the Star Wars provoked race with the USA, development of economies elsewhere in the world was driving up raw material costs that they desperately needed, and the central planning system was desperately inefficient and breaking down. Their rate of gold sales had quadrupled since 1980 and it was clear that oil sales were plugging an even larger hole in soviet finances. Iran extracted 80% of its state revenue from oil exports that it needed every Rial it could get to buy arms. Iraq extracted about two thirds of its state revenue from oil, but it had access to international finance. The USSR and Iran did not. It would also increase Saddams dependence on the KSA and the rest of the GCC which was not a bad side effect, (well, until you make the murderous despot so desperate he decides to invade one of his major creditors, but who could have seen THAT coming.) So, Fahd concocts this plan along with the CIA to increase the extraction rate of his oil wells from 2mn barrels per day to the full capacity of 10mn bpd. He won over the royal council partly on the strength of punishing members of OPEC that were offering discounts. At this stage OPEC generally acts as a production and sale distributor, they control the price of oil by in part assigning everyone production quotas and set prices to maintain price stability, however in war that gets thrown out the window. It is also stated to be a way to wear out European oil producers who are currently selling North Sea oil at a lower price than OPEC sets. So, Fahd and the US get their way, it seems a master stroke, it defeats two major enemies, the USSR and Iran and ends the war quicker. For the US it would have the same effect but also would provide a significant kick in the pants to US industry who were still getting over the hangover of the oil shortages of the 70’s. The US would contribute to this by letting its currency value fall, the dollars value as the primary exchange currency of petroleum would essentially mean that as well as the decrease in price due to increased supply, each dollar you got for your oil would also be worth less. The USD would drop in value by nearly 40% over the next year and a half, this would make US exports more competitive and aid in the growth of the 1980’s.  Oil price per year. Note the increase brought on by the oil shocks of the 70’s rendering Soviet extraction capacity investment profitable. Displayed in 2017 dollars. So, July 1985 the KSA increases production to 6mn bpd, then by January of 1986 they hit capacity of 10mn bpd. The oil tumbles as shown in that chart, its only stopped when the US oil industry objects and the price is attempted to be stabilised around the $30 mark. This immediately ruins Iran almost entirely, their state income drops by 66% completely destroying their foreign arms budget, now all they have to fight with is their dwindling human resources. Iraq is deeply unhappy but the KSA and USA soothes Saddam with new credit and intelligence support, and Saddam does understand that it is far more damaging to Iran than to him. The USSR increases export rates of gold yet again but they are starting to run out of manoeuvre room.  At the same time Iraq ratchets up its attacks on Iranian shipping, the new Mirage F-1EQ’s having come into service enabling Iraq to strike deeper into the gulf with their Exocets and using buddy refuelling stores could reach out even further to beyond Qatar. This is particularly dangerous because as the price of oil drops, Iran’s capacity to lure in tankers to the danger zone by offering discounts on the price also drops. The same discount of say $2-3 per barrel representing a much higher proportion of that revenue Iran would receive. Iran starts to get desperate. There was some chat about exactly how Iran employed its soldiers, particularly militia, so I thought I’d dedicate a little bit on it. This backdates somewhat because this information has come up before but not in a cohesive way.  Basijj soldiers, wearing the distinctive headband of the organization. Iran has been using child soldiers in the Basijj for a long time, ever since the establishment of the Basijj militia in conjunction with the Pasdaran in 1982. The Pasdaran draw from the Basijj to replenish losses or swell numbers for larger assaults. To use a not completely accurate analogy, think of the Basijj as a territorial reserve for the Pasdaran. They are not at the front full time but will go out there for part of the year. Their training is rudimentary at best and as I mentioned before children as young as 12 are recruited. They would be recruited from school, given 2-3 weeks of training then sent to the front for a 1-2 month “tour” before returning if they survived. They would then return to class until they were needed again for the next offensive or until the school holiday period arrived, it is incredibly perverse to think about, to the extent of rather than going to Bognor Regis for your half term break you get to go get gassed in the marshlands of Iraq. However, Iran was able at this stage to mobilise up to 200’000 Basijj for major assaults, compared to a standing strength of around 500’000 Pasdaran and around 300’000 regular soldiers. The Basijj drew from all walks of life, the majority of them were educated and indeed recruited directly from school. As mentioned previously, the average age of recruitment for a POW Basijj militia member was 14, aided by the fact that parental consent was not required. I will transcribe a few instructive quotes from POW’s interviewed in Iraq by a sociologist during the war, it outlines some of the various reasons people joined. “We are Shiite Muslims, not Sunni. Only a small proportion of Muslims are Shiite, but ours is the true faith. Since the beginning of Islam, we have been fighting and dying for our rights. Imam Ali became the leader of the Muslims but was martyred while reading the Qur’an. (Imam Ali being the last prophet of Islam, regarded as the successor to Muhammed by Shia, Sunnis differ and say Muhammed had no successor) We are not afraid to be martyred for Islam, like Imam Hussein. (Another major prophet of Shiism killed after the battle of Karbala by forces of the Umayyad caliphate). “I was too young to fight, I was a little boy who wanted to play with guns. When they gave me a real one, I’d never been happier. But when I went to fight and shoot people I was petrified.” “I’m not very religious so I don’t know much about Martyrdom, it’s true that martyrdom is very important to Shiites. We learn of the Imams and how they died, but I didn’t go to war to die for Islam, I went to defend Iran and I think most of us went for the same reason. No-one influenced my decision. At 14 I could decide things for myself, I wanted to go to war, so I went.” So, we have a broad spread of reasons as to why these people signed up. Iran would offer many incentives beyond the religious one to get children into the front lines. The wage for a married Basijj militiaman of 16 was equivalent to that of a standard paper pushing civil servant. Should they survive they were given preferential treatment for university admissions and other benefits. It also granted a significant degree of social status upon both the fighter and their family. A recurrent theme seems to be that of just kids, who have no real concept of their own mortality signing up. The regime would select people for their uses often dependent on their reasons. The really religiously devoted ones would be used for very dangerous missions, such as reconnaissance into minefields at night and Iraqi positions to get them to reveal themselves in preparation for further assaults. Frequently given their Qur’an, their grenades if they were lucky and a pat on the rear end before being sent over the top. They were broadly speaking sent out there to die, if they came back it was fortunate. The patriotic and educated were selected for specialised light infantry and infiltration roles, where they would be sent to try and slip through Iraqi positions to attack from the rear. The rest were employed as generic assault infantry, used wherever bodies were needed. To provide some perspective on what that employment in battle was. From an Iranian POW: “[We] boys who attacked the Iraqi’s were a very important weapon because we had no fear. We captured many positions from the Iraqis because they became afraid when they saw young boys running towards them shouting and screaming. Imagine how you would feel. Lots of boys were killed but by that stage you were running and couldn’t stop, so you kept going until you were shot or reached their lines.” From an Iraqi officer: “They come on in their hundreds, often walking straight across the minefields, triggering them with their feet … They chant Allahu Akbar and they keep coming, and we keep shooting, sweeping our fifty mills [sic] [machine guns] around like sickles. My men are eighteen, nineteen, just a few years older than these kids. I’ve seen them crying, and at times, the officers have to kick them back to their guns. Once we had Iranian kids on bikes cycling towards us, and my men started laughing, and then these kids started lobbing their hand grenades, and we stopped laughing and starting firing” Assault on Al-Faw. Dawn 8 & 9.  Map of the attacks and counterattacks around Al-Faw Iran is starting to see its gains eroded in 1986, the Iraqi’s have recaptured the south of the Majnoon islands, they don’t seem to be able to make progress in Kurdistan, at Basra or in the marshes. Iraq was roaming pretty much unchecked in the gulf and the west was making noises about an international coalition intervening in the gulf to keep the peace. They were also as outlined starting to run out of cash, fast. They returned to Basra and the south, that representing probably the most favourable terrain they had to fight on where they had not bogged down. They decided to target the Al-Faw peninsula in southern Iraq. Taking this piece of land would cut Iraq off from the gulf entirely, crucially completely negating Iraq’s navy which was based at Umm-Qasr. This would prevent the export of oil to Kuwait via the newly completed pipeline and potentially enable an encirclement of Basra itself as well as enabling more pressure to be put on Kuwait especially, where Kuwait City is Iraq’s major port of ingress for military aid. Iran mobilises as many men as it can, particularly relevantly the 200’000 Basijj militia previously mentioned. It now had around a million soldiers at the front, it was committing a fifth of them to the Al-Faw assault. They had tried and tested their bridging techniques and equipment and trained extensively, carrying out mock beach assaults in the Caspian Sea beforehand. They brought their very best Pasdaran and regular army units. The sector they were targeting had 15’000 Iraqi soldiers in. Iraq badly bungled their signals intercept, convinced that the attack would land in Basra itself or in the Majnoon islands, falling for a carefully constructed Iranian disinformation campaign where they sent their largely useless-in-this-context armoured divisions to the Majnoon sector very obviously. The Iraqi commander of the 7th Corps, General Shawket considered himself protected by the half mile wide Shatt-Al-Arab and the tail end of the rainy season and so was not prepared in any way shape or form. The weather would prove a major impediment to the effectiveness of Iraqi weapons and particularly the airforce in the crucial opening stages.  A photo of typical Iranian bridging arrangements from later exercises. They drew heavily on North Korean assistance to develop their techniques. February 9th, the attack launches. A diversionary attack was conducted north of Basra by an Iranian infantry division following up several waves of attack by Basijj militia. This drew away two Iraqi divisions from the south of the front. Subsequent to that on the same night they assaulted the island of Om-al-rasas, which lies at the midpoint of the Shatt-Al-Arab right at the edge of Khorramshahr. At this point the newly created Iranian 41st assault pioneers put in an almost biblical effort, erecting a pontoon bridge between their side of the Shatt to that island over the span of 6 hours. They assaulted at two other points, one near Abadan around 20km to the south, taking advantage of a sandbank that stretched partway across, the next at a narrow point in the river (narrow in this context being 400 meters) some 30 km further south near to the town of Al-Faw itself. The Pasdaran brought up their light river boats to support the landings and frogmen had secured the other banks before the crossing began. It was a spectacular success. Iran established a pontoon bridge before the end of the first night at Abadan which permitted artillery and trucks across. They dismantled it during the day to hide it from Iraqi air attack which was scrambling to respond. However, they were badly impeded by the end of the rainy season and made little impact. Iraq did respond quite quickly, dispatching a special forces brigade to retake the Khorramshahr island, doing so after two days of bitter fighting. Forces near Basra repelled Iranian attempts to cross north of Khorramshahr. The republican guards armoured division was dispatched from Baghdad for Basra and every available engineer and shovel was sent to fortify the south of Basra. All Iraqi forces south of Basra were in retreat. They didn’t really have an idea of the scale of the issue at this stage because of their lack of reconnaissance. However, Iran was moving quicker. Iran moved from their bridgeheads in the south rapidly north, employing their helicopters by night to drop light infantry behind the Iraqis to disrupt and prevent their retreat. They brought up two AShM batteries to the south of Al-Faw which blocked any Iraqi naval attempts and resulted in the Iraqi navy scrambling to remove the critical Iraqi radar station in the area and the silkworm battery they had that covered the approaches to Bandar to the east, fortunately their separate command structure had enabled them to make appropriate preparations to do so, they saw the attack coming even if the army refused to believe it, the Iraqi marine corps would acquit themselves well as they managed to maintain order and a brigade of them blocked Iranian attacks up the main al-Faw highway long enough for reinforcements to arrive . Some Iraqi forces would continue fighting to the bitter end, but Iran had control of the peninsula from the 19th onwards. The rain cleared three days later on Feb 12th where it became apparent this was a major assault. They immediately started deploying mustard gas to slow the Iranian advance and another armoured and infantry division were brought in to reinforce the southern lines. However Iraqi resistance in the south had collapsed entirely. After four days Iran controlled the majority of Al-Faw. For 2’600 casualties they had taken the area and inflicted 6’500 casualties on Iraq. They now reinforced and prepared for the Iraqi counterattack. As the rain cleared the Iraqi airforce got into action, employing their Tu-16’s and 22’s to attack staging areas, it was during this point that they lost another Tu-22 to an F-14 and a Tu-16 to a HAWK missile. They also suffered 6 other plane casualties. Despite the growing criticality of the situation Iraq was still convinced there would be an attack at Majnoon so committed no further forces there for another 6 critical days. Iraqi General Shawket employed significant quantities of chemical weapons delivered via artillery to try and keep the Iranians off balance and stop them massing to attack him to good effect, however in the marshy terrain they would prove limited in effectiveness as the shells tended to bury themselves in the mud and either not go off or vent a lot into the ground and water table. Iran would pull its exhausted Pasdaran off the frontline and replace them with Army divisions, more suited with their heavier equipment to holding the area. It took until February 18th until the Iraqis recognised this as the major offensive, not just a diversion, in part because a shot down Iranian pilot would tell them that in interrogation.  Iranian soldier on the Al-Faw peninsula Saddam took personal affront at the loss of so much Iraqi territory and required it be retaken immediately. Shawket avoided Saddams immediate displeasure and was kept in command of his forces that were to attack along the Shatt-al-Arab, but General Rashid was given the republican guard who would attack the central area and offered the General that his daughter, Lumma Rashid, would marry Saddams Son Qusay in event of victory, Qusay being Saddams less mad son. A feudal but apparently very effective motivator, a few months later they would marry and would remain married until Qusays death in a fight with US forces in 2003. So, on February 21st Iraq would counterattack along 3 axes, the three roads that ran the length of the peninsula and converged at Al-Faw. There was vicious fighting around the city of Siba where Shawkets column would shell the city viciously but not break through. In the centre areas advance was slow due to the return of the rain which turned the marshes into an almost impassable bog, the Iraqi columns managing maybe three miles a day and employing heavy amounts of chemical weapons to try and clear out Iranian positions. Along the southern road General al-Jebouray and the third Iraqi column was advancing very quickly, the coastal road and area more suited to his tanks. He would manage an advance of nearly 30 kilometres along that road before he ran into heavy Iranian defensive positions who inflicted a surprise shock with their TOW missiles that he had been specifically briefed they did not have which brought him to a sudden stop. He was saved from significant damage in part by the Iranians poor marksmanship where they were expending on average 10 missiles per hit. Now here we get the start of Saddams real beef with Kuwait. Looking at the map you may notice Warbah and beneath it Bubiyah island. Access to this would permit Iraq to quickly outflank Iranian positions by crossing the three-mile-wide stretch of water between it and Al-Faw. Iran warned Kuwait to not permit Iraq to use it, underlining this with their silkworm batteries currently very pointed at Kuwait City. Artillery fire had become a daily soundtrack to life in Kuwait City to underline the point. The Emir of Kuwait complied and warned Saddam to not attempt this, as did the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on pain of losing all material support from their nations. This would deeply humiliate Saddam who did not appreciate having his leash yanked like that and would be remembered four years later. Saddam would authorise his airforce to use its airspace and would infiltrate observes onto there. Kuwait pretended not to notice. Iran would launch an unsuccessful attack in Kurdistan at this stage that will get covered later. Back in the south Iran committed significant quantities of Pasdaran and Basijj in the area, particularly against Shawkets column in the east but they could make little impact and they took Siba and destroyed the bridge there. However, when they tried to push on, they were stopped by Iranian fortifications and proceeded no further before the offensive ended on March 13th. Both sides stabilised and established trench lines, extending the misery yet further.  Iraqi T-54 derivative (I think Type 69) engaged in fighting along the Al-Faw peninsula. Iraqi counterattacks had been very bloody, inflicting 34’000 casualties on Iran, of which at least 10’000 were chemical weapon casualties. Iraq suffered 7’000 casualties in their attack. Iran controlled significant quantities of the Al-Faw peninsula and effectively shut Iraq’s navy out of major operations in the gulf for the foreseeable future. The marshy terrain of the area had nullified Iraq’s mechanized advantage as it had elsewhere. It has also demonstrated the limitations of chemical weapons specifically, now roughly 80% of Iranian regular army units have full protective gear, though only 40% of Pasdaran units do so. General Shawket would survive his lack of readiness owing to his fierce fighting in the counterattack, but he was sacked and replaced as head of the 7th corps by General al-Jeboury. The head of Iraqi intelligence, General Shahin was also sacked, replaced by General al-Duri. Not the same al-Duri as the dangerously psychopathic general who was first brought up in the initial Iraqi assault into Iran in 1980/81. The new head of Iraqi intelligence was regarded as one of the most capable of Iraq’s senior staff. Combat would continue at a low level on Al-Faw for the remainder of the year. Dawn 9  The front and major offensives of 1986. Given Iraq’s heavy pressure on Al-Faw Iran would launch an attack in Kurdistan on February 22nd entitled Dawn 9. Significant quantities of Pasdaran would attack under cover of a snowstorm in the mountains of the Penjwin valley. This weather grounded the Iraqi airforce and prevented spotters from reporting their assault until they were on top of Iraqi positions. A simultaneous assault too place towards Halabja in the south. These attacks were supported by significant Kurdish irregular elements. However, their initial attacks did not go well when they moved past Iraqi border fortifications and came up against the defences of the cities of Rawandaz and Sulaymaniyah. The KDPI fighting on the side of Iraq would cause significant problems in mountain skirmishes with the KDP and PUK. The Iraqis would start to employ napalm against Iranian formations once the weather cleared via the unusual method of using their Il-76 aircraft, flying above the envelope of the SA-7 at 2000+ metres they would push several 200 litre barrels with a fuse out the back that would airburst at 100 meters and ignite it spreading it everywhere. The Iraqi general in command of the northern front General al-Khazraji, counterattacked pushing the Iranians back a few miles from their advance which ended their offensive. Iran would come back round and try again in Kurdistan in April. They launched an assault at Rawanduz which was heralded by a fierce attack from the KDP into their rear areas with the Iranians attacking the front. They would make steady progress towards Rawanduz for several days until Iraq redeployed one of its mechanized divisions to reinforce the area and stopped them. Iran would commit their best regular infantry division to the area which got the attack rolling again briefly before further Iraqi reinforcements arrived. They would launch another smaller assault in the north, taking the town of Mangesh behind the front which lies between Mosul and the Turkish border. This was conducted by around 1000 Kurdish fighters supported by Iranian paratroops, this put them in striking range of the Kirkuk to Dortyul pipeline and Iraq responded heavily, dispatching three brigades with heavy air support along with their own Kurdish fighters to the area and they retook the town after a brief but heavy fight. Iran would respond by bombing the Zakho bridge, the major land link for oil export between Iraq and Turkey, though failing to destroy it. This particularly betrays Iran’s frustration or increasing desperation to risk alienating Turkey at this stage. Consequences of the Dawn offensives. Iran had proven it was still very dangerous, employing a genuinely quite brilliant attack to take the peninsula, but they again got bogged down when Iraq brought in its armoured forces. Realistically they had no chance of taking Basra from Al-Faw, it was foolish to think so, but they didn’t have that many options remaining. It successfully alleviated some pressure on their southern ports and made life more awkward for Iraq to attack into the gulf both by air and sea. They are really risking burning their bridges internationally by keeping fighting and even threatening to escalate into Turkey itself. This bites them hard almost immediately.  Hafez al-Assad, who reminds me of Basil Fawlty whenever I look at him. I do not know why. To this point Hafez Al-Assad of Syria has been a very good friend of Iran. He is in the uncomfortable position of being a Secular Ba’athist Arab state supporting a theocratic Shia mainly Persian state against another secular Ba’ath Arab state. There’s a reason for this that I won’t get into, but it puts him in the camp of people who actually don’t want a radical Shia theocratic regime in Iraq. Which is what the Al-Faw offensive was threatening. He would tell Iran in no uncertain terms that Iraq was Arab, and he would not allow them to occupy it, they wanted Saddam bleeding but not dead. This was the culmination of a long period of increased tensions. Iran was displacing Syrian influence in Lebanon with Hezbollah and had been for some time and their constant verbal attacks on the USSR were a significant embarrassment given the USSR’s backing of Syria. To underline his point Assad ordered a halt to weapon shipments to Iran, turning back one of his container ships. Iran responded by cutting Syria off from oil and Hezbollah started a minor war against Syrian backed militia in Lebanon. Assad would approach Jordan and KSA to try and negotiate a rapprochement, which King Hussein of Jordan would grab with both hands. With the support of 18mn barrels of oil per year free of charge supplied by the KSA he visited Syria and Iraq. Double what Syria had been receiving from Iran. However, Assad took that offer and went back to Iran. Inviting them to outbid the Saudis. The Kremlin leant hard on Assad to try and get him to take the deal with the rest of the Arabs as part of their recent charm offensive in the Arab world more generally to try and get their proxies on the inside. However, Iran would commit to matching the Saudis offer and resuming oil shipments and guaranteeing they would not install an Islamic regime in the event of them winning the war. This meant that Syria would publicly maintain his alliance. He did continue to try to play both sides, teasing the reopening of the Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline. But Saddam saw straight through the scheme and told King Hussein that he was not prepared to make the first move, ending that particular idea. Turkey and Iran’s relationship was also on the rocks. The Iranian bombing of the bridge had upset Turkey, and the Turkish price for vital consumer goods had upset Iran because it was exorbitant. Starting in late 1986 the PKK under Ocalan launched an attack in Anatolia, killing twelve Turkish soldiers, Turkey responded with a huge operation into Iraqi Kurdistan which killed 165 PKK fighters and they conduced a huge manhunt in the area where they captured several Iranian supported Kurdish fighters. A heated exchange would begin, Khomeini would openly criticise Turkey and declare Ataturk a tyrant. Turkey would station troops along the border and start shipping more material to Baghdad, though not weapons. They were concerned, 1.5 million Iranian refugees were in Turkey and they had reliable evidence of a significant Iranian Quds force presence that could spark a major religious riot in the area. Iran for its part was deeply alarmed at Turkish forces going and attacking their Kurdish proxies in Iraq and feared them getting drawn in against Iranian regulars. This growing of tensions would lead in part to threats against the Iraq-Turkey pipeline and the further Karbala offensives that would take place later that year in August. Iraqi Diplomatic plays and Iranian unrest. Saddam at this point decided that if Iran held such a significant part of Iraq that he would have to take part of Iran to try and initiate a territory exchange. The attack would fall in the central area of the front around the area of Mehran which had been identified as a weak point by satellite intelligence provided by the US and France along with their own photoreconnaissance. Iraq assembled two reinforced divisions of 25’000 men in the area who were arranged against a single Iranian reinforced Brigade of around 5’000. The attack was largely unremarkable, it was competently executed, Iran quickly recognised it couldn’t hold this particular area and retreated back to the Zagros mountains. The Iraqis expanded to take the town of Mehran and a large area surrounding it then dug in. Saddam would then offer peace and an exchange of land for land, al-Faw for Mehran. However, Saddam has actually gained very little from this, he refused to let his troops pursue and do serious damage to the retreating Iranians, he has encamped in Iranian territory out on a limb in hurriedly erected fortifications and hung up a sign saying “come and have a go if you think you are hard enough.” An unwise challenge to make. Iran was in a bit of internal turmoil. Khomeini was very ill, at an age of 86 he had a pretty good innings, but the Iranian government was divided over whether he should have surgery to try and save his life. Rafsanjani, Khamenei and Montazeri however scuppered this endeavour because they feared his death would cause the Iranian people to lose faith and just peace out of the war with Saddams offer. The line of succession from Khomeini was also at this stage unclear and that needed resolving. The three men however differed on what to do with Saddams offer. Montazeri wanted to end the war and stop the bloodshed, he viewed continuing on as a waste of life. However, Rafsanjani and Khameini outvoted him and convinced Khomeini to come down on the side of continuing the war until Saddam was ousted. However as is the way with all triumvirates, they also immediately fell out on how to continue the war. Rafsanjani said that Iran needed to make friends to secure the weapons they needed to win. Khameini however said that Iran would only win by sticking to its principles of faith in god and rejecting any compromise with foreign power. This debate between factions in Iran has not yet been settled in Iran and continues to this very day. The one thing they could agree on was the rejection of Saddams offer and the preparation and execution of the Karbala offensives. These were named after the historical battle of Karbala. A major unifying historical event for Shiism. Karbala offensives.  One of the IRIAF AH-1’s. The first Karbala offensives was in the Mehran sector on June 30th, 1986. 100’000 soldiers, many of whom were Basijj militia would batter the Iraqi defences for two days in a series of softening attacks until Iranian regular forces would send two armoured and two mechanized divisions who would push Iraq out of Mehran and back into Iraq itself. Rafsanjani would travel there on the 3rd of July to proclaim the liberationof the town, Iraq tried to interrupt with another counterattack, but Iran had recently come into the possession of large quantities of parts for their AH-1 Cobras and they performed a large scale air attack on advancing Iraqi tanks who were unaware that Iran’s helicopter fleet was back in action after they received significant parts shipments from Israel. 30 of them appeared and savaged the unsuspecting Iraqi tanks, destroying nearly 70 of them in this initial engagement. casualties among Iraq’s T-62 and T-72 tanks in a one-sided firefight lasting only half an hour. Iran took the moment to counterattack with its Pasdaran forces and the Iraqis fell back. Unfortunately for Iraqi General Ibrahim Saddam was in a bad mood that day and had him recalled to Baghdad and then shot. Iran’s first counteroffensive had gone well, for 12’000 casualties they had inflicted 5’200 Iraqi casualties, but more critically had destroyed 80 Iraqi tanks in total. Iraqi casualties were mounting with the end of the dawn offensive and the start of the Karbala offensives and Iraqi manpower was beginning to be stretched thin along the front. Saddam sent another peace offer to Tehran, however the Iranians were emboldened by success and turned them down flat, Rafsanjani again called for the deposition of Saddam and threatened that he had 650’000 men assembled for the final assault. However, Iran would not be so foolish as to attack in the centre, instead they would return to Kurdistan. As mentioned earlier, Turkey has started making inroads into Iraqi Kurdistan in their pursuit of the consistent mission of the Turkish nation. This was intolerable to Iran who were concerned Turkey might try to grab land in the north on the pretext of fighting Kurdish terrorists. They were to launch the second Karbala offensive before too long. On August 31st they attacked at Rawanduz, with the aim of taking the city, opening the road to Erbil and Mosul and cutting off Iraqi oil exports and fracturing off Kurdistan from the nation. They would assemble three army divisions and five Basijj-reinforced Pasdaran divisions in the area, however they were stopped cold by two dug in Iraqi divisions outside Rawanduz who were reinforced rapidly by helicopter borne forces who drove them back six miles from the city.  Kor al-Amaya terminal. Iran would launch simultaneously Karbala 3 in the Al-Faw peninsula, Iraq had established a small garrison aboard the Kor al-Amaya offshore oil terminal, they had an early warning radar there to monitor the upper end of the gulf, They took it in short order and destroyed the radar there, which blinded the Iraqi navy to Iranian ship movements resupplying Al-Faw. Iraq would retake the platforms in a helicopter borne assault three days later on September 4th. But the radar was permanently out of action.  Zakho bridge, might not look like much but it was a major logistical link between Iraq and Turkey. The second Karbala offensive however would stop on September 7th, Iran believed it had made its point with Turkey and switched to using the Kurds as guerrilla forces in concert with pasdaran light forces. They would attack a water reprocessing plant near Kirkuk with the PUK in tow, conduct a helicopter borne assault which took the Dukan dam blacking out Kirkuk and the KDP would reach the Zakho bridge and shell it with mortars, blocking it for two days. Baghdad had to put republican guard units in the area to try and contain the Kurdish guerrilla fighters. However, despite some impressive tactical successes, there was no real material gain from these attacks. Iran had managed to retake its land but little more. The war remained at a stalemate. A brief update on the air war The heavy Iranian attacks elsewhere pulled Iraqi planes out of the gulf, this enabled Iran to get back on its feet, they re-established proper SAM coverage over Kharg and organised enough of an air superiority mission to contest the airspace. Only the Mirage-F1EQ was employed against Kharg at this stage owing to its modern nature and ECM equipment with their Su-22’s and MiG-23’s keeping out of the dangerous area. However, the predictability of the Iraqi attacks leads to them losing 8 planes to Iranian F-14’s in the northern and central gulf. Despite their success however the airforce remained in the regime’s bad graces, pilots were warned not to publicise their aerial victories which were frequently granted to the Pasdaran instead who were set up as the true vanguards of the revolution. Information on the air campaign would remain tightly controlled until the late 90’s. Even after that the Pasdaran would pressure to keep the Iranian Air Forces role quiet, even going so far as to stop the screening of a documentary about the IRIAF’s F-14’s in 2012. However, despite Iranian victories Iraq would soon step up its activities again once pressure abated with General Shaban supervising the increase in targeting of Iranian infrastructure conducting several successful attacks on the Esfahan steelworks in central Iran, its surrounding power infrastructure and also the Parchin munitions work near Tehran. Iran would respond with several missile attacks against Baghdad, however Saddam took Shaban’s advice and continued attacking infrastructure targets rather than using planes on cities. Shaban would also orchestrate attacks much deeper into the gulf at this time, even hitting the Bandar Abbas terminal at Larak in late 1986, using 9 Mirage F1-EQ’s as tankers and 3 as strike aircraft with 2 dedicated jamming aircraft. Thinking this out of range of Iraq, there was minimal defences there, and Iraqi aircraft dropped 12 500kg bombs, wrecking one supertanker and critically damaged 4 others. This diverted significant air defence assets to this area. They would fire yet more missiles into Iraqi cities, but Saddam again did not rise to the bait. How things stand 86 into 87  Iranian women undergoing basic pistol training to join the basijj. So, as we end 1986 the Iranian government is suffering repeated hammer blows to its economy. They had a cumulative drop of 13% in its ability to export crude from Iraqi attack both directly and also in scaring off tanker owners. The absolute cratering in the cost of oil and the value of the dollar meant that it lost half of its oil revenue in a 6-month period. Iranian GDP is at this point near as dammit equivalent to the Iraqi GDP, despite its three times larger population. They are running short of recruits for their militias and in a hotly contested debate arm women for the first time, the blow being softened by those women tending to be the widows of dead Pasdaran, they are assigned to some domestic security posts. Conscription is widened with universities being shut down as the professors are conscripted to run the army’s administrative functions, some government departments shut down completely as civil servants are subject to the same treatment. Bribery is on the rise to get even basic levels of governmental functionality done in a timely fashion and desertion is starting to become a real problem. Even Rafsanjani’s designated pilot defected with his Falcon-50 to Iraq. That plane would be one of the candidates for the 3 possible Falcon 50's iraq possesses that is repurposed to fire Exocets that hit the USS Stark in 1987. Iran is close to financial collapse. Iraq is faring slightly better, the GCC has given it a huge grant to compensate for the loss of oil revenue and it has started to export more of its goods, depriving its citizens somewhat but the cash needs to come from somewhere, it is catastrophically indebted but is not in danger of financial collapse. It is in danger of manpower collapse as its economy is now almost entirely run off the backs of Turkish, Egyptian and Palestinian guest workers. Kurdistan is beginning to get close to open insurrection and will prove constant thorn in their sides. The Iraqi army is now 700’000 strong out of a population of around 16 million, or around 4.5% of the total population. They have almost every able-bodied military age man in uniform. They are getting close to running out of people. Iraq has also proven incapable of really attacking, the humiliating defeat when they tried to at Mehran and the constant Iranian pressure has cost them dearly over this last year. Saddam can not really afford any more mistakes like the loss of Al-Faw or Mehran again, the Iranian proficiency at waterborne assault was a nasty shock. He needs to find a way to make Iran bleed and to do so quickly before he makes another mistake. Iraq has also not yet fully rid itself of the cronyism, General al-Duri (the incompetent one) would have one last nasty surprise in for Saddam, left as he had been in charge of 3rd corps north of Basra. The Iranian leadership are a very dangerous combination of both overconfident and desperate at this stage, riding high off what was admittedly a very well executed offensive. Khomeini issues a Fatwa declaring the war must be won by the Persian new year of 1987 which effectively ends the policy argument about what to do. Khomeini was well aware of the damage the war was doing to Iran, it had actually by this point served its purpose. The Islamists were now firmly in control, dissent was quashed, the Kurds were dead or driven into Iraq and the MEK and Khuzestan Arabs relatively quiescent along with the Baloch’s and Azeri minorities. They now need to stop spending money on guns and start spending them on basic necessities for their people. However, this overconfidence and the orders from the Supreme Leader mean that Iran is going to make a series of mistakes in an attempt to end the war quickly and this will lead to some very concerning internal conflicts. At sea this results in a ratcheting up of tension and attacks on neutral shipping which will bring the US into the gulf in force that we have already covered, this will effectively nullify their ability to attack Iraq and their allies economically. On land we will cover the specifics next time, but it will revolve around some of the largest battles and probably the highest rate of deaths in the war, where Iran tries to go in the front door of one of the most fortified cities in the world, Basra. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 14, 2019 20:53
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LatwPIAT posted:Dora... The Exploder?
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Oct 14, 2019 21:20
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LatwPIAT posted:Langer Max, Betsy the Sniper, Boshe Buster, Scene Shifter, Schwerer Gustav, Dora... https://www.instagram.com/p/B3XQugOC4Se/?hl=en
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Oct 14, 2019 21:33
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Millennial FO (through binoculars): That is an absolute unit. In awe at the size of that lad. Call in fire mission on one chonky boy, oh lawd he comin, grid coords 69 420 over *radio crackle* Also inform HQ that that's a yikes from me, fam
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Oct 14, 2019 21:37
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zoux posted:Millennial FO (through binoculars): That is an absolute unit. In awe at the size of that lad. Call in fire mission on one chonky boy, oh lawd he comin, grid coords 69 420 over *radio crackle* Also inform HQ that that's a yikes from me, fam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dull_Gret
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Oct 14, 2019 21:42
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HEY GUNS posted:dulle griet was named after a meme. there's also a painting of the meme I love the devils in this style of painting so much   Polyakov posted:
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Oct 14, 2019 22:22
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Squalid posted:I love the devils in this style of painting so much
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Oct 14, 2019 23:09
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That dude is very reminiscent of Bosch, did they grow shrooms in the low countries in the 16th c.
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Oct 14, 2019 23:12
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I'm imagining him dropping the spoon and just looking so sad.
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Oct 14, 2019 23:12
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Squalid posted:Do you have the name of the source where you got the personal accounts of Iranian POWs describing their motivations? I think I remember reading that like three years ago but I could never find it again Khomeini's Forgotten Sons: The story of Irans Boy Soldiers by Brown is the original source for i believe all of those particular quotes, there is also a printing in French which i believe is the same book broadly, or covering the same interviews, with a different title which i know exists from the Iranian born sociologist who did the investigation alongside Brown at the time called L'Islamisme et la mort: Le martyr revolutionaire en Iran by Khosrokhavar (Everything about it is in French so i dont know precisely what went on but its referenced alongside it in some places). They have been requoted in other books as well, notably Vanguard of the Imam by Ostavar, Iran-Iraq by Razoux and Essential Histories: The Iran-Iraq War by Karsh which is where i read them. I havent read Browns book myself because its difficult to find
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Oct 14, 2019 23:49
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Polyakov posted:Khomeini's Forgotten Sons: The story of Irans Boy Soldiers by Brown is the original source for i believe all of those particular quotes, there is also a printing in French which i believe is the same book broadly, or covering the same interviews, with a different title which i know exists from the Iranian born sociologist who did the investigation alongside Brown at the time called L'Islamisme et la mort: Le martyr revolutionaire en Iran by Khosrokhavar (Everything about it is in French so i dont know precisely what went on but its referenced alongside it in some places). They have been requoted in other books as well, notably Vanguard of the Imam by Ostavar, Iran-Iraq by Razoux and Essential Histories: The Iran-Iraq War by Karsh which is where i read them. I havent read Browns book myself because its difficult to find It's an annoying feature of the Iran-Iraq War that Iran's relations with the west were so bad the contemporary reporting on events from Iran's side was terrible. However they had much better access to Iraq, where Saddam set up a potemkin pow camp where he could show off his benevolence to western backers. The prisoners there got extra special treatment basically in exchange for poo poo talking the Iranian regime, but once interviewers got past the canned responses they were made to memorize most of the accounts seem fairly honest. At least it's a better source than "my Bulgarian friend who was totally on the front with the Iranians like for real." Actually looking at these quotes again and your description of the source I'm pretty sure I read something else but the interviews probably came from the same place. On the subject of unverified accounts journalistic accounts from wars, there are a bunch of extremely cool but also extremely unreliable descriptions of duels from the Russo-Japanese War.  There's a bunch of these stories of officer's challenging each other and then fighting it out in front of their men like they were playing Dynasty Warriors or something.
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Oct 15, 2019 01:23
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While it's true one has to be somewhat careful, Brown's account as I understand its history seems very dependable and is a good illustration of the differences. Brown himself was not there as a journalist, or actually even as I said incorrectly a sociologist. He went there as a teacher as part of the efforts of a swiss children's charity to care for child POWs, he wrote after his four year stint teaching them, a memoir about his experiences. Stage managing that for that length of time would be pretty much an impossibility which marks the distinction in his account reliability compared to the front page of the Washington post from that era in terms of its reliability. Not that journalism is neccesarily inherently dishonest, just that it is more easily mislead due to the shorter time scale or pressure to produce copy than what is essentially a document written by someone who thought it important to share their experience, not something written to shift newspapers but to record.
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Oct 15, 2019 01:57
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zoux posted:That dude is very reminiscent of Bosch, did they grow shrooms in the low countries in the 16th c. Postdates him too. I assume Bosch was an influence? Anyway I like Old Pete. The Triumph of death is not a cheerful painting but man it'll leave an impression on you.
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Oct 15, 2019 02:08
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Squalid posted:
Not vouching for the accuracy of this story as it relates to the Russo-Japanese War, but this was an actual thing that happened in the 19th century for British officers fighting in India. It seems to be more concentrated to the late 18th-first half of the 19th century, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear of it in later periods of the Raj. I would love to know if any of these are true about the Russo-Japanese War. It would be a pretty wild thing if Dynasty Warrioring your counterpart on the enemy side was just a Thing you did in 19th centuries armies across Europe.
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Oct 15, 2019 02:14
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Grenrow posted:Not vouching for the accuracy of this story as it relates to the Russo-Japanese War, but this was an actual thing that happened in the 19th century for British officers fighting in India. It seems to be more concentrated to the late 18th-first half of the 19th century, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear of it in later periods of the Raj. I would love to know if any of these are true about the Russo-Japanese War. It would be a pretty wild thing if Dynasty Warrioring your counterpart on the enemy side was just a Thing you did in 19th centuries armies across Europe.
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Oct 15, 2019 02:16
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Polyakov posted:While it's true one has to be somewhat careful, Brown's account as I understand its history seems very dependable and is a good illustration of the differences. Brown himself was not there as a journalist, or actually even as I said incorrectly a sociologist. He went there as a teacher as part of the efforts of a swiss children's charity to care for child POWs, he wrote after his four year stint teaching them, a memoir about his experiences. Stage managing that for that length of time would be pretty much an impossibility which marks the distinction in his account reliability compared to the front page of the Washington post from that era in terms of its reliability. Not that journalism is neccesarily inherently dishonest, just that it is more easily mislead due to the shorter time scale or pressure to produce copy than what is essentially a document written by someone who thought it important to share their experience, not something written to shift newspapers but to record. oh yeah, I didn't mean to suggest those statements weren't reliable, I actually meant the opposite. The bad kind of reporting is the sort that relies on second or third hand accounts from unnamed sources. As I recall the Swiss charity basically just had access to one camp which was much nicer than the kind of places most Iranian POWs ended up. Journalists were given relatively good access to that prison where the captured child soldiers were used as propaganda against Iran. The surprising thing is how candid the Iranians seem in the interviews, given the documented brutality in so many of Saddam's other prisons. They seem to have been expected to say "Khomeini BAD" in interviews but for the most part were able to speak pretty freely. One of the  things I remember in an interview was some kid saying "in hindsight 14 years old is probably too young to decide to go to war ( ), and now that I'm a grown up mature 17 year old I don't think I'd volunteer again."Grenrow posted:Not vouching for the accuracy of this story as it relates to the Russo-Japanese War, but this was an actual thing that happened in the 19th century for British officers fighting in India. It seems to be more concentrated to the late 18th-first half of the 19th century, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear of it in later periods of the Raj. I would love to know if any of these are true about the Russo-Japanese War. It would be a pretty wild thing if Dynasty Warrioring your counterpart on the enemy side was just a Thing you did in 19th centuries armies across Europe. I don't know about that specific story but there are so many similar accounts it seems almost certain it was a thing in the Russo-Japanese War. There was one Russian called Aleksandar Lekso Saicic who was granted a lifetime annuity by the Emperor for winning one duel on horseback, presumably like the fourth battle in The Duelists. Squalid fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 02:29
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HEY GUNS posted:i have also seen a relatively small gun from some minor italian statelet cast with the motto GOD HAS PUT INTO MY POWER ALL THAT I TOUCH, which i always liked If that's not the ultimate slogan for artillery, then I don't know what is.
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Oct 15, 2019 04:31
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HEY GUNS posted:names for big guns i have heard Pretty sure I've used all these in borderlands 3
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Oct 15, 2019 04:43
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FuturePastNow posted:If that's not the ultimate slogan for artillery, then I don't know what is. The Sun King would argue with you...
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Oct 15, 2019 05:32
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Squalid posted:I don't know about that specific story but there are so many similar accounts it seems almost certain it was a thing in the Russo-Japanese War. There was one Russian called Aleksandar Lekso Saicic who was granted a lifetime annuity by the Emperor for winning one duel on horseback, presumably like the fourth battle in The Duelists.
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Oct 15, 2019 05:39
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Siivola posted:This story's been making the rounds on the Internet and I'd really love a citation that isn't just some Montenegrin newspaper from three years ago. lol ok maybe I was a bit too credulous with this story. I was suckered in because it at least specified the people involved. Somebody here tried to dig up the source tl;dr his obituary might mention he got a metal for winning a duel but we have other sources. Also he died in 1911 jumping out a second story window of a burning palace trying to save historic books? Dude sounds badass even if this story is mostly made up. One thing the guy in the link notes is that in this story, and in the duel in the newspaper story I posted, and in at least one other I read, the author always slavers over how sharp and awesome the katanas used by the Japanese were. However during the Russo-Japanese War, most Japanese officers would have been equipped with lovely European style mass produced sabers. You can see this illustrated in the contemporary photograph and Japanese print below:   So that itself is a pretty clear indication that these were at least a bit. . . embellished. I doubt the author of that newspaper article was anywhere near the fighting and might have never even seen a Japanese soldier.
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Oct 15, 2019 06:52
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Accorging to a folk tale this fellow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_De_la_Gardie owned a massive cannon whose barrel read "Kymmenen peninkulmaa kannan/ ja vieläkin terveiset annan. Kun tällä laulan / ei Räävelissäkään akat naura." ("I reach to a hundred kilometers and still bring greetings / when I sing with this even the hags of Revelia (modern day Tallinn) won't dare laugh.") Obviously no-one in the 1500's/1600's had a cannon that could shoot a hundred kilometers, but like tales do it has lived a life of its own.
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Oct 15, 2019 07:48
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zoux posted:That dude is very reminiscent of Bosch, did they grow shrooms in the low countries in the 16th c. They grew themselves, actually: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_semilanceata Also, some biologists think the more out there medieval / ren artists may have gotten ill with ergot fungus from food with rye in it, leading to LSD-like bad trips, among a host of other terrifying symptoms.
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Oct 15, 2019 09:28
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zoux posted:I don't want to get all current event so no one report me but these 50 B61 bombs an Incirlik, if they fell into Turkish hands, would it make Turkey a nuclear power? Do they have aircraft that can carry these bombs, or could they be repurposed? Or is it even something to be concerned about. Just to shortly follow up on this with more detail, the B61s all have full safety/PAL/manual disable functions that must be activated (or deactivated) correctly to achieve any sort of nuclear detonation as the warheads themselves are extremely physics based in operation. You can’t just blow up a nuclear bomb and get a nuclear explosion, you have to very accurately trigger the fission and fusion stages. You can get dirty bomb functionality but it’s probably a lot easier to do that domestically vs attacking a major US installation and stealing B61s. This doesn’t include the possibility that the underground storage facility (assuming it’s the same setup as European storage) is actually secure enough on lockdown that Turkey can’t actually get to those bombs and secure them before Tomahawks start raining into Incirlik from every major body of water around Turkey. I won’t get into the politics side of it because Turkey getting control of those bombs likely means they killed/captured several thousand USAF/NATO servicemen to do so, and probably still don’t have any feasible way to use them in the short or even medium term. It’s not a good idea for anyone involved. Mazz fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 12:58
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zoux posted:I don't want to get all current event so no one report me but these 50 B61 bombs an Incirlik, if they fell into Turkish hands, would it make Turkey a nuclear power? Do they have aircraft that can carry these bombs, or could they be repurposed? Or is it even something to be concerned about. Either through a link in the cold war thread or here I was just reading about something relevant. Nuclear bombs like the B61 have to be armed on the ground, and they have this little 1950s stove-like panel to do that. On this panel, they also have a setting specifically to make the bomb unusable in the event of a capture. (Makes sense, espeically as the US via NATO loans out nuclear weapons.) You enter a code, adjust the settings, and press a button, and something happens internally, the PAL circuitry melts down, power connectors get guillotined, etc. Then your only options are to send the bomb back to the factory to get rebuilt, or you try to build a new bomb using the plutonium core.
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Oct 15, 2019 13:15
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bewbies posted:here's a video of a spitfire and 190 flirting with each other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDeglorsv_8 Speaking of which, I dunno if anybody posted this yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSNNNMYmTKQ
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Oct 15, 2019 13:52
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Does it end with the historians working there jamming him between the bogies of one of the tanks and reversing hard? If not, sorry no click.
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Oct 15, 2019 13:53
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zoux posted:I don't want to get all current event so no one report me but these 50 B61 bombs an Incirlik, if they fell into Turkish hands, would it make Turkey a nuclear power? Do they have aircraft that can carry these bombs, or could they be repurposed? Or is it even something to be concerned about. Setting off a plutonium-core nuclear bomb requires millisecond precision. The detonators have different delays worked into them, and the nuclear code for each bomb is an encrypted list of these delays so that the detonators can go off with the correct timing. Without this code, the bomb can't be set off. Also, even trying to steal a warhead outside of an active nuclear exchange would lead to staggering military consequences for Turkey.
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Oct 15, 2019 15:55
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You guys are really ruining a lot of spy thrillers here.
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Oct 15, 2019 16:03
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zoux posted:You guys are really ruining a lot of spy thrillers here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nH1DwQP2Xs ...there's a lot to unpack there
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Oct 15, 2019 16:08
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I've never been a fan of lindy but that latest video where he talks poo poo about the Hetz was too drat far over the line. Talk poo poo about the big cats all you want but don't dare to drag my compact TDs through the mud. Seriously how could anyone possibly hate it? It's adorable! And it fits neatly in the nearest bush of your choosing!
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Oct 15, 2019 17:04
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Serving inside of it might make one hate it.
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Oct 15, 2019 17:07
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bloody hell no tank destroyers
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Oct 15, 2019 17:11
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Hetzers gonna hetz my dude.
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Oct 15, 2019 17:26
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Warad posted:I've never been a fan of lindy but that latest video where he talks poo poo about the Hetz was too drat far over the line. Talk poo poo about the big cats all you want but don't dare to drag my compact TDs through the mud. Great German armored vehicle because it’s based of a Czech design!
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Oct 15, 2019 17:38
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LingcodKilla posted:Great German armored vehicle because it’s based of a Czech design!
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Oct 15, 2019 17:56
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HEY GUNS posted:the czechs are loving great at technology Bren gun!
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Oct 15, 2019 18:08
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CZ-75.
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Oct 15, 2019 18:22
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