|
SimonCat posted:SFC Gordon, also a sniper, was armed with a CAR-15. Point is though, the more elite units are allowed a lot more freedom in their gear and weapons compared to normal troops. I don't doubt the point, but I don't think your example here is indicative at all: as a sniper Shughart wouldn't have been using an M16 anyway, and I thing Gordon was Shughart's spotter (who is a sniper, yes) and would be using an assault rifle, and the CAR-15 was Delta a Force standard issue at the time. That Delta Force has different issue weapons, and that Delta Force snipers use a sniper rifle instead of an M16, doesn't show that they have more freedom, just that they receive different weapons.
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 07:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 12:31 |
|
|
Hyrax Attack! posted:Related question, could a US soldier in Vietnam (or even today) choose to use an AK or something similar, or would their officers tell them to knock that off? MP5 Submachine Gun in about three variants HK53 Carbine M16A2 Assault Rifle FN Minimi Squad Automatic Weapon FAL Para Battle Rifle G3 Battle Rifle None of which were standard issue in the Regular Army. The FAL was sort of in service as the L1A1 SLR but they were semi-automatic only and had fixed stocks, the Para version folded up and was acquired from captured Argentinian stocks. An addendum to Cessna's point about the sounds of weapons, the M16A2 is reasonably similar to the AR-18 (Armalite) favoured by the PIRA and was used on SAS operations in Northern Ireland. I'm sure that wouldn't be the only reason it was chosen but it could help. I have actually heard of some of these weapons ending up in Regular service, there's a photo out there somewhere of a soldier in Gulf 1 with a Minimi and I've heard a story about a border post in Northern Ireland ending up with an M16A2 with M203, which they kept even though they didn't have the grenades for it because it looked very cool. What your officer doesn't know can't hurt them.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 12:48
|
|
|
Saint Celestine posted:Ehhhhhh.... IJN Hiei got sufficiently hosed up by 5"s, 6"s, and 8"s that she was crippled and sunk the next day. you're not really countering the idea that 6" guns can do most of what 8" guns do
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 13:03
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:you're not really countering the idea that 6" guns can do most of what 8" guns do But everybody who has 6” wishes they had 8” anyways.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 14:18
|
|
|
There's a seven eight nine joke in there somewhere
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 14:22
|
|
|
It’ll all about the length. No one wants a mortar.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 14:24
|
|
|
Sick of always bursting in air
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 14:35
|
|
|
Platystemon posted:It’ll all about the length. It’s not the length it’s the traversal.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 14:39
|
|
|
Her: What are you doing?! Me: Bracketing https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1184826425859293189 Whoops zoux fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Oct 17, 2019 |
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 14:44
|
|
|
There are really many references in both fiction and documentaries that marines would end up shooting AKs in firefights because their own rifles failed. I don't know the truth of the matter, but with that much smoke, you'd think there was fire.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 15:05
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:you're not really countering the idea that 6" guns can do most of what 8" guns do In Neptune's Inferno, didn't the author state that the difference in firepower between a 8" gun and a 14" inch one doesn't double, it goes up exponentially? Also Mr. Abstraction, let me ask this question for you: did weather affect World War 2 Radar? If a squall was between two groups of ships, were one effectively hidden from the other? I know you were thinking of weather as cosmetic, but in both World Wars it could have serious effects. The Italian fleet, for example, was more or less built for daytime engagements with no radar, which is why the British only engaged their surface fleet at night or in poor visibility. In contrast, the Japanese fleet trained a poo poo-ton for fighting at night without radar, and (in Neptune's inferno anyway, ) were often more effective than some American ships with radar, as the innovation was still so new American captains were not exploiting it fully.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 15:10
|
|
|
Hyrax Attack! posted:I read that following the capture of Vicksburg, because of European imports the Union captured thousands of rifles that were superior to those in Grant’s army and he had his troops replace their weapons with better choices. Regarding Grant, the Army of Tennessee was actually pretty well equipped by this time, so it seems...questionable? that they'd want to replace their own rifles with more or less equivalent captured ones. It is certainly true though that they captured a ludicrous quantity of quality rifles though...somewhere between 50 and 60 thousand, which was at least double and probably more like triple the number of soldiers in the Army of Mississippi put together. In fact, it was standard practice at the time for each soldier in the trench/hole in/around Vicksburg to go out for the day with 4 or 5 loaded guns just so's he wouldn't have to bother with the irritation of reloading all the drat time. There were a couple of examples of the CSA having superior equipment. CSS Virginia is probably the most famous example, but I'm more partial to Arkansas which is one of the more comical episodes of the entire war. This advantage was extremely short-lived though. CSA cavalry was generally better equipped early in the war, as they had useful shorty shotguns and heavy pistols instead of the terrible muzzle loading carbines(about half of which were still smoothbore) of the Union cavalry. It is generally thought that CSA 12-pound Napoleons (the standard Civil War cannon you see everywhere) were better than their northern counterparts, but this too swung back the other direction as the CSA lost access to the metal needed to build the guns and the north ramped up its war industry. There were also a handful of one-off things, like the Whitworth Rifle....both small arm, and artillery. The artillery piece was particularly impressive; its ballistic performance wasn't that far off from a WWI-era field gun, which put it far beyond any contemporary artillery pieces. I've no idea about Vietnam, but it was fairly common to have an old AK stash around more remote FOBs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lots of soldiers threw one or two in the backs of their vehicles as a just in case measure. This was probably against the rules, but no one really seemed to care as long as you kept track of your issued weapon, the loss of which is a world-ending incident.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 15:13
|
|
|
Speaking of the civil war and for no other reason: who is the most overrated general in US history? Also interested in overrated generals/military leaders from other countries and eras of course.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 15:24
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:you're not really countering the idea that 6" guns can do most of what 8" guns do The San Fransisco was most likely the ship that landed the crucial hit that killed Hiei's power steering and caused flooding in the steering gear room, which stranded her in range of air attack the following day. It's specified that the hit that did it was 'two large shells', and the US forces had 5", 6" and 8" shells. In addition there's mention of possible penetrations, with later flooding possibly being a result. That would almost certainly be 8" shells. http://www.combinedfleet.com/atully03.htm In addition to battleships at close range, 8" shells have something to offer against cruisers.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 15:28
|
|
|
I'm still curious why larger shells have a longer effective range than smaller ones, given that the guns have equivalent muzzle velocities.Tree Bucket posted:An important question: have you thought of any Paranatural references to sneak into this game-? I honestly hadn't given it any thought...the comic isn't exactly nautical in theme. Some of the other responses to this question that thought you were talking about military cryptids are pretty amusing though...and of course, humanity's history on the ocean is rife with stories about strange monsters roaming the deeps. Nebakenezzer posted:In Neptune's Inferno, didn't the author state that the difference in firepower between a 8" gun and a 14" inch one doesn't double, it goes up exponentially? Entirely fair, and thanks for the note. This is one of those things that is basically just waiting for me to build the systems involved so I can experiment with it; right now I not only have no weather, I have no radar either. The in-game HUD is limited to a few lines of text in the top-left corner. zoux posted:Speaking of the civil war and for no other reason: who is the most overrated general in US history? Also interested in overrated generals/military leaders from other countries and eras of course. On the basis of being mythologized by a substantial fraction of the population, Lee.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 15:30
|
|
|
Captain America from generation kill did carry an AK with him for a while, until his troops made him throw it away. Not sure of the veracity of GK, though.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 15:32
|
|
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:I'm still curious why larger shells have a longer effective range than smaller ones, given that the guns have equivalent muzzle velocities. look at the energy, not just the velocity. energy is force and distance. assuming the same velocity, but a 2.5x increase in mass, the 8" projectile will have roughly 2.5x the kinetic energy.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 15:37
|
|
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:I'm still curious why larger shells have a longer effective range than smaller ones, given that the guns have equivalent muzzle velocities. Bigger bullet = more energy.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 15:38
|
|
|
Dance Officer posted:Captain America from generation kill did carry an AK with him for a while, until his troops made him throw it away. Fruity Rudy was real dammit.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 15:40
|
|
|
Nebakenezzer posted:In Neptune's Inferno, didn't the author state that the difference in firepower between a 8" gun and a 14" inch one doesn't double, it goes up exponentially? The amount of damage a shell does is related to the size of its bursting charge. The charge is dependent on the internal volume of the shell, and hence scales roughly proportional to the cube of the radius. A larger shell has a larger bursting charge - the British 8in AP shell had a 5.2 kg bursting charge, while the bursting charge for the 14in Mk VII's AP shell was 22 kg. The HE round for the 6in gun used by the 'Town's and other British cruisers of a similar age had a 3.6 kg bursting charge, less than the 8in's AP round (their AP round had a 1.7 kg charge. However, a smaller gun will fire faster, and more guns can be carried. A triple 6in turret weighed about as much as a twin 8in turret. The 6in gun would also fire a little less than twice as many rounds per gun as the 8in. This meant that a British cruiser with twelve 6in was putting out 122 kg of explosive per minute, while a similarly sized cruiser with eight 8in was putting out 124.8 kg. In other words, both ships would do a similar amount of damage to a target if every round hit. Given that the 6in cruiser is firing more shells, though, it is more likely to score a hit, so will, in the long term, do more damage. Nebakenezzer posted:Also Mr. Abstraction, let me ask this question for you: did weather affect World War 2 Radar? If a squall was between two groups of ships, were one effectively hidden from the other? Radar was not especially affected by bad weather. Some radars could be damaged by wind and water damage, but this was minimised by the design of the radar housing. Rough weather could make it harder to track targets, as the ship's roll brought the target in and out of the beam, but this was only really a problem with ASW radars, which were trying to track targets low to the water. Nebakenezzer posted:I know you were thinking of weather as cosmetic, but in both World Wars it could have serious effects. The Italian fleet, for example, was more or less built for daytime engagements with no radar, which is why the British only engaged their surface fleet at night or in poor visibility. This isn't quite right. There were several engagements between the Royal Navy and the Italian Navy in daylight, and in good visibility. Of the three major fleet actions - Calabria, Cape Spartivento and Matapan - the first two were fought in daylight, and with good visibility. Warspite would score one of the longest-ranged hits in the history of naval warfare during the Battle of Calabria. There were also several cruiser actions in daylight, such as the Battle of Cape Spada. The RN had trained for battle at night, unlike the Italian Navy, but this choice was motivated more by the possibility of battles with the IJN and USN. Both of these navies had refitted their ships for action at long ranges during the 1920s, but the RN had not been able to do so. Instead, they planned to neutralise the American or Japanese advantage at range by fighting a close-range night action. Randomcheese3 fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Oct 17, 2019 |
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 15:45
|
|
|
zoux posted:Speaking of the civil war and for no other reason: who is the most overrated general in US history? Also interested in overrated generals/military leaders from other countries and eras of course. Lee. He lost yet his name and statues are everywhere.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 16:03
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:look at the energy, not just the velocity. energy is force and distance. assuming the same velocity, but a 2.5x increase in mass, the 8" projectile will have roughly 2.5x the kinetic energy. bewbies posted:Bigger bullet = more energy. This is not a sufficient answer to the question. They might have more energy, but ballistic trajectory in the absence of air resistance is purely a function of angle of fire and muzzle velocity. Those guns shooting on the moon would have exactly the same range. The answer basically comes down to how air resistance scales with larger shells relative to the energy. To an approximation, the amount of energy you lose is proportional to the cross sectional area of the shell. Thus scaling proportionately, a larger shell loses energy at a rate about the square of the size of the shell. Meanwhile, the amount of energy it has - and therefore needs to lose if you want to lose a given amount of Velocity^2 - is based on its mass and therefore scales at the *cube* of the size of the shell. Hence, bigger shells retain more velocity longer if the shells are the same shape, and to get decent range with a lighter projectile you need something long and thin.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 16:04
|
|
|
zoux posted:Speaking of the civil war and for no other reason: who is the most overrated general in US history? Also interested in overrated generals/military leaders from other countries and eras of course.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 16:08
|
|
|
FrangibleCover posted:Patton. Lee's myth is dead, Patton's myth lives on. He’s on the winning side at least. Plus he has way more negative stories floating around. I’ve never heard anything negative about Lee’s personal behavior. I can’t think of a Patton highway.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 16:17
|
|
|
Milo and POTUS posted:Obviously (!?) UFOs aren't from outer space but there's more than a few former pilots who say they've clearly seen them. Surely there's a similar phenomenon with old mariners, right? There's a lot of mirages and poo poo you can see, plus unknown wildlife both dead and alive, etc. In World War II, L Ron Hubbard had the ship he was in charge of repeatedly attack "Japanese subs" that were in actuality random stuff on the seabed/bottom of bays.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 16:18
|
|
|
Randomcheese3 posted:The amount of damage a shell does is related to the size of its bursting charge. The charge is dependent on the internal volume of the shell, and hence scales roughly proportional to the cube of the radius. A larger shell has a larger bursting charge - the British 8in AP shell had a 5.2 kg bursting charge, while the bursting charge for the 14in Mk VII's AP shell was 22 kg. The HE round for the 6in gun used by the 'Town's and other British cruisers of a similar age had a 3.6 kg bursting charge, less than the 8in's AP round (their AP round had a 1.7 kg charge. However, a smaller gun will fire faster, and more guns can be carried. A triple 6in turret weighed about as much as a twin 8in turret. The 6in gun would also fire a little less than twice as many rounds per gun as the 8in. This meant that a British cruiser with twelve 6in was putting out 122 kg of explosive per minute, while a similarly sized cruiser with eight 8in was putting out 124.8 kg. In other words, both ships would do a similar amount of damage to a target if every round hit. Given that the 6in cruiser is firing more shells, though, it is more likely to score a hit, so will, in the long term, do more damage. This does ignore the concept of armoured warships, though. If your six-inchers can't penetrate the armour and the eight-inchers can, the eight-inchers have more options.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 16:19
|
|
|
FrangibleCover posted:Patton. Lee's myth is dead, Patton's myth lives on. The myth of lee as “better general, just lost because he had less people and equipment” lives on from what I’ve seen.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 16:25
|
|
|
zoux posted:Speaking of the civil war and for no other reason: who is the most overrated general in US history? Also interested in overrated generals/military leaders from other countries and eras of course. It has to be Douglas MacArthur, in part because he thought the greatest general in history was Douglas MacArthur.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 16:41
|
|
|
The thing about Lee is that he wasn't that terrible a general, as I see it. When he was on the defensive, he won victories, and he was well liked by his troops. The problem with Lee is that he was a terrible offensive general. He'd take stupid risks, underestimate his opposition and get his men killed. But he was fine at Fredericksburg, and masterful at Chancellorsville.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 16:41
|
|
|
Longstreet and Little Mac for most underrated
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 16:45
|
|
|
The thing about Lee was that he was a loving traitor
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 17:04
|
|
|
LingcodKilla posted:He’s on the winning side at least. Plus he has way more negative stories floating around. I’ve never heard anything negative about Lee’s personal behavior. I do like the minor boomer conspiracy theory that Patton was assassinated by the US government, via a low-speed traffic collision and fortuitous development of a blood clot. Grumio posted:It has to be Douglas MacArthur, in part because he thought the greatest general in history was Douglas MacArthur. I still don't understand what Macarthur thought he accomplished.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 17:11
|
|
|
FastestGunAlive posted:The myth of lee as “better general, just lost because he had less people and equipment” lives on from what I’ve seen. Grant was underrated for a long time, never minding that all of the less successful Union generals had the same manpower and equipment advantages. e: also lol MacArthur, just lol
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 17:12
|
|
|
Fangz posted:This is not a sufficient answer to the question. They might have more energy, but ballistic trajectory in the absence of air resistance is purely a function of angle of fire and muzzle velocity. Those guns shooting on the moon would have exactly the same range. Thank you. So the short version is "it comes down to air resistance", which is something I do not want to bother with realistically simulating, mostly because it throws the aiming logic all to hell (and this is not a game where I expect the player to have to manually aim their guns). Sounds like I'll have to figure out some other way to represent scaling the maximum effective range...which could be as simple as "the guns just won't try to track targets that are more than X distance away".
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 17:12
|
|
|
P-Mack posted:Grant was underrated for a long time, never minding that all of the less successful Union generals had the same manpower and equipment advantages. He knew the future of war wasn't clever maneuver it was meat grinding
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 17:13
|
|
|
Grumio posted:It has to be Douglas MacArthur, in part because he thought the greatest general in history was Douglas MacArthur. For all of MacArthur's flaws, of which there are ALOT, his Inchon operation was brilliant in every way.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 17:13
|
|
|
Saint Celestine posted:For all of MacArthur's flaws, of which there are ALOT, his Inchon operation was brilliant in every way. KPA hosed it up hardcore though
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 17:17
|
|
|
Was it really brilliant, or did he just get lucky?
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 17:17
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:Was it really brilliant, or did he just get lucky? It's an interesting question - it was certainly a very clever idea, which the KPA could have easily prevented by mining the Incheon harbor. Now, of course the interesting operational counterfactual question is - what decision does MacArthur make after advanced reconnaissance parties discover the harbor is mined? The KPA was in a bad way at that point anyway, and I'm not sure how meaningful the invasion was to the overall prosecution of the war. It certainly liberated Seoul ahead of time, but the UN forces were already breaking out of the Busan perimeter so if resources had been diverted to supporting a broad advance perhaps a similar effect could have been achieved.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 17:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 12:31 |
|
|
^ Its ~200 miles from Pusan to Seoul, a broad push out from Pusan would have worked and recaptured Seoul, but it would not have been the decisive victory that Inchon was.Gnoman posted:Was it really brilliant, or did he just get lucky? Brilliant. He personally pushed for the landing to be at Inchon, instead of at Kusan(sp?) further south. His reasoning was that a landing further south would work and relieve Pusan, but not be significant, whereas Inchon would cut off everything south of Seoul. Obviously there was luck, but it wasn't as if the UN forces walked in blind. There was a large deception campaign, they planned and trained for it pretty extensively, and most critically, sent in special forces ahead of the landing to scout the channel and tides, etc. Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Oct 17, 2019 |
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2019 17:21
|
|