|
HEY GUNS posted:When was kerosene invented? Kerosene has been around for a long rear end time. Commercially available in the USA since the 1850s, before that kerosone was more of a adhoc "distill it yourself" fuel like Anshu posted.
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 04:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 06:41 |
|
|
Captain von Trapp posted:It's a Cold War / airpower thread. I'm not sure there's been a discussion involving personal firearms ownership in the whole thing. Yeah, a lot of times it's virtually indistinguishable from this thread.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 04:34
|
|
|
bewbies posted:so, I don't think it's terribly likely we see unmanned aircraft in combat roles anytime soon unless there is some sort of revolution in network hardening or everyone goes in on the idea of autonomous aircraft. While I generally agree with your points I don't understand this one. We've already had unmanned aircraft in combat roles for a long time. I don't think unmanned aircraft will entirely replace manned aircraft in the forseeable future, but they do have potential. Maybe we'll see something like manned aircraft working with and supplemented by unmanned aircraft.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 05:02
|
|
|
howe_sam posted:Yeah, a lot of times it's virtually indistinguishable from this thread.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 06:35
|
|
|
and of course, there's also the potential for UAVs to increasingly be used in non-combat roles too. As for example with the MQ-25, which looking at wikipedia the navy may spend up to $13 billion on the program, and order dozens of drones.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 06:44
|
|
|
I don't see UAVs getting drunk and banging the locals.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 08:13
|
|
|
spiky butthole posted:I don't see UAVs getting drunk and banging the locals. the instant we develop a sapient AI, the military robots will buy a lifted truck at 20% apr
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 08:38
|
|
|
HEY GUNS posted:the instant we develop a sapient AI, the military robots will buy a lifted truck at 20% apr Requesting OBE...
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 08:57
|
|
|
Lol if you are reading this thread and not the cold war thread. It's covered nuclear annihilation and the nuances of drones and autonomous war multiple times over!
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 09:11
|
|
|
One night off base and they’ll come back with more adware bars than your grandma’s browser
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 10:10
|
|
|
Squalid posted:yeaaah. . . don't think i could stand to look at TFR for longer than five minutes without beginning to tell someone owning a gun measurably makes you less safe and increases the chance of early death. . . Sorry it's a serious problem i have Lol, let me tell you about cycle asylum.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 11:37
|
|
|
Uncle Enzo posted:Yes, I apologise for forgetting wrought iron. I'm not a historian of metal working and my knowledge is mostly contemporary and hands-on, so my experience with wrought iron is purely from books and not on the top of my head. I agree that omitting it (and mixing it up with steel in some contexts) was a major oversight, about an hour after I posted I realized my mistake. Thanks for adding that information, I was hoping someone would. Haha it's all good, you seemed to know enough that it was probably a brain fart but I figured I'd go into more detail just in case. Im a professional blacksmith specializing in historic ironwork so I care A Lot about this particular subject. Captain von Trapp posted:I'd never really thought about that. How sharp were the swords of antiquity on a scale from straight razor to log splitter? How much did it change from the bronze age to the late middle ages? I agree with everything CM Kruger said but want to add a little bit. When we talk about sharpness we are really talking about two things: the geometry of the edge and the fineness of grit that was used to shape it. Geometry includes both the overall shape (is the bevel two straight lines that meet? Two curves? Convex or concave?) and the angle it was sharpened at. Felling axes are typically sharpened with quite a narrow bevel, but a convex curve, so the edge is able to bite deep but won't chip easily, that convex curve supporting the edge with more "meat" around it. Compare that with something like a paring chisel, which is hollow ground then given a final bevel on a stone. Very thin, usually taken to a higher grit than an axe because push cutting requires that fineness. If you want to look more at sharpness and sharpening, I highly recommend the Science of Sharp blog The swords and daggers I've handled (14th-16th century) varied a bit. They all had edges at least partially intact and were what I'd call "pretty sharp" except the one baselard which I'd call "sharp I guess". Peter Johnsson mentions being able to feel the edge through his museum gloves in some instances. Note how vague the terms are here. There doesn't seem to have been a perfect standard of sharpness, and all the weapons I handled were Western European. There's almost certainly a different desired sharpness on e.g. a kilij or tulwar. A caveat on identifying sharpness with surviving examples: Most museums won't let you do test cuts with original pieces, and it's not abundantly clear how much they've been resharpened or dulled through misuse by later owners. It is hard to estimate how much some drunk vampire might want to bash around a suit of armor with a falchion just to see what would happen.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 13:32
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:I do wonder if modern datalinks make companion drones viable. Give each F-35 a couple of drones to carry extra munitions, jamming equipment (useful as a HOJ decoy even if the jamming doesn't defeat the missile), and sensors, then slave them to the mother aircraft control. Wouldn't an aircraft with similar range, speed, LO, and handling characteristics as an f-35 be pretty similar in cost to the f-35? I'd think the bulk of the cost comes from those factors which are going to be the same for an unmanned aircraft. A supercruise jet engine is a supercruise jet engine.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 13:44
|
|
|
sure now do the manning and support costs
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 13:47
|
|
|
Squalid posted:would it make a difference if say, some American company were to put up a constellation of tens of thousands of low earth orbit satellites to provide the world with near global coverage of broadband internet? Not really. The hard thing is that broad spectrum RF jamming is very, very easy to do, and having more satellites doesn't really provide any additional burnthrough. Cessna posted:While I generally agree with your points I don't understand this one. We've already had unmanned aircraft in combat roles for a long time. This is true, I was phone posting and got careless with terminology. By "combat" in this case I meant like the heavy UCAV/Group 5 UAS/F-35 replacement class of system. But yeah, the MUMT (manned-unmanned teaming) thing is pretty much the direction everyone is looking right now. That solves a lot of the issues out of hand, and provides some really useful possible capabilities at relatively low risk. We're even doing primitive versions of it with Apaches already. The big question there is how to manage crew workload...you can't exactly fly a 5G fighter and its drone sidekicks simultaneously, so no one is quite sure how that will work as yet.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 14:18
|
|
|
HEY GUNS posted:holy crap, today i goddamn learned. Thank you. I volunteer at a fort where we leave both cast iron and bronze guns out all winter long. We don't feel the need to coat them with any grease and the weather doesn't effect them significantly. In the blackpowder era they may have coated the inside of an iron bore with some kind of grease to prevent rust-- I've also heard of gunners firing their iron guns regularly to "scale" the rust off. This is completely unnecessary in the case of bronze tubes. The outside of the cannons were kept from rusting with various mixtures of black paint (if iron) or lots of polishing in the case of bronze/brass. It was (and is) much more difficult to maintain wooden gun carriages. There is at least one campaign where rotten carriages for the siege guns was a decisive factor. There are various recipes for paint for the carriages with toxic ingredients like lead or arsenic to prevent rot and wood-boring insects. If anything it's even worse for modern historic sites since when the wheels rot there's no ready source of properly made spoked wheels. We have used Amish woodworkers in the past. As for muskets, these were kept armory bright in most nationalities/ eras, so scrubbing off the grease and rust was definitely a never ending chore for common soldiers.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 14:33
|
|
|
Even on display pieces the elements can do a number. The Washington Navy Yard started a big conservation effort a bit back for the hundreds of lawn ornament cannons they have. They were doing standard naval paint on some of the more modern stuff but they were also having bad problems with some of the older stuff turning to poo poo. Crests on old Spanish bronze cannon being worn off is something I recall being an issue. Googling turns up this decade old forum post but I swear I remember there being an article about them finally getting serious about it. https://www.n-ssa.net/vbforum/showthread.php/164-Washington-Navy-Yard-cannons-show-extensive-corrosion
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 14:39
|
|
|
Can't remember where I read it, maybe Neptune's Inferno, Shattered Sword, or this thread, but dive bombers gradually lost their role as rockets on planes came into use. I can see how that goes, as dive bombers gamble on when to pull out versus ensuring a hit, while rockets are more point and shoot, and make up for inaccuracy with sheer volume of fire. But as this thread has pointed out, rockets weren't really up to the task of destroying tanks. Scaring the poo poo out of tankers and destroying the rest of their unit's vehicles can and does make up for it, and it's not like tanks shrug off the damage but rockets just aren't bombs. Did the calculation of dive bombers shifting to using rockets happen in the Pacific as well? I imagine rockets wouldn't do as much to warships (although any hits are sure to do damage and kill sailors) but there's also plenty of softer targets on islands.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 22:00
|
|
|
Squalid posted:yeaaah. . . don't think i could stand to look at TFR for longer than five minutes without beginning to tell someone owning a gun measurably makes you less safe and increases the chance of early death. . . Sorry it's a serious problem i have Me too but most of the time you’d barely know that was a TFR thread.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 22:40
|
|
|
drgitlin posted:Me too but most of the time you’d barely know that was a TFR thread. Hell, I’ve been reading that thread for years after it was linked here before and basically didn’t know it was in TFR.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 22:56
|
|
|
Argas posted:Can't remember where I read it, maybe Neptune's Inferno, Shattered Sword, or this thread, but dive bombers gradually lost their role as rockets on planes came into use. I can see how that goes, as dive bombers gamble on when to pull out versus ensuring a hit, while rockets are more point and shoot, and make up for inaccuracy with sheer volume of fire. But as this thread has pointed out, rockets weren't really up to the task of destroying tanks. Scaring the poo poo out of tankers and destroying the rest of their unit's vehicles can and does make up for it, and it's not like tanks shrug off the damage but rockets just aren't bombs. Did the calculation of dive bombers shifting to using rockets happen in the Pacific as well? I imagine rockets wouldn't do as much to warships (although any hits are sure to do damage and kill sailors) but there's also plenty of softer targets on islands. Not really. Boats, even completely unarmored ones, are really loving big and there's a limit to how much HE you can pack in a WW2 era rocket. Bombs don't stop being the airborne above-waterline ship killers until ASMs really become a thing in a big way. Like, it says something that literally skipping a bomb across the surface of the water like a stone so it plows into the waterline of a ship was the preferred method at the end of the war if you weren't a dive bomber, as opposed to just stacking on a poo poo ton of rocket tubes. You do see them get use on ground attack poo poo, though, same as in Europe.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 22:57
|
|
|
Argas posted:Can't remember where I read it, maybe Neptune's Inferno, Shattered Sword, or this thread, but dive bombers gradually lost their role as rockets on planes came into use. I can see how that goes, as dive bombers gamble on when to pull out versus ensuring a hit, while rockets are more point and shoot, and make up for inaccuracy with sheer volume of fire. But as this thread has pointed out, rockets weren't really up to the task of destroying tanks. Scaring the poo poo out of tankers and destroying the rest of their unit's vehicles can and does make up for it, and it's not like tanks shrug off the damage but rockets just aren't bombs. Did the calculation of dive bombers shifting to using rockets happen in the Pacific as well? I imagine rockets wouldn't do as much to warships (although any hits are sure to do damage and kill sailors) but there's also plenty of softer targets on islands. I know what you're talking about, though I'm not quite sure of the deets. I think specialized dive bombers in the European theater were superseeded by other aircraft types that could do the job as well and didn't need to be quite as specialized, giving up some accuracy for flexibility. I know the Dauntless in USAAF service was called the A-20, but I don't think it saw extensive use. I just flicked through the IL-2 Stormavik wiki, and it mentions the pilots using 20mm cannon to crack armor. In the Pacific dive bombers and torpedo bombers remained till the end of the war.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 23:02
|
|
|
For use over land, purpose built dive bombers with like dive brakes and poo poo were mostly replaced by multi-role fighter bombers that were doing horizontal bombing at very low levels. You lose maybe a degree of pinpoint accuracy, but you make up for it by having a faster self-escorting strike package that's not a one-trick pony. Later war AAA was also much more dangerous and prevalent; a flat-out horizontal 100-500 foot pass gives you a lot less time over target and it's harder for gunners to lead effectively. It's also very hard to hit battlefield targets like tanks from airplanes. Instead, you're trying to hit rail yards and truck parks and locomotives and supply dumps. These are pretty big and relatively soft targets, so dropping a few bombs from a fast mover at low altitude is basically just as effective as a "pinpoint" single-bomb dive. Hell, even the Germans pretty well gave it up in the ETO and replaced the Stuka with FW-190s. Nebakenezzer posted:I know what you're talking about, though I'm not quite sure of the deets. I think specialized dive bombers in the European theater were superseeded by other aircraft types that could do the job as well and didn't need to be quite as specialized, giving up some accuracy for flexibility. I know the Dauntless in USAAF service was called the A-20, but I don't think it saw extensive use. I just flicked through the IL-2 Stormavik wiki, and it mentions the pilots using 20mm cannon to crack armor. In the Pacific dive bombers and torpedo bombers remained till the end of the war. The SBD was the A-24. Used in the Pacific a bit, not too much in Europe if at all. Tales of IL-2 strikes on armor are greatly exaggerated. I am sure they occurred at times, but the primary value was striking the operational level logistics tail and immediate rear areas like artillery parks and airfields.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 23:13
|
|
|
Nebakenezzer posted:In the Pacific dive bombers and torpedo bombers remained till the end of the war. Ships are a lot bigger than tanks, though.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 23:38
|
|
|
Argas posted:Can't remember where I read it, maybe Neptune's Inferno, Shattered Sword, or this thread, but dive bombers gradually lost their role as rockets on planes came into use. I can see how that goes, as dive bombers gamble on when to pull out versus ensuring a hit, while rockets are more point and shoot, and make up for inaccuracy with sheer volume of fire. But as this thread has pointed out, rockets weren't really up to the task of destroying tanks. Scaring the poo poo out of tankers and destroying the rest of their unit's vehicles can and does make up for it, and it's not like tanks shrug off the damage but rockets just aren't bombs. Did the calculation of dive bombers shifting to using rockets happen in the Pacific as well? I imagine rockets wouldn't do as much to warships (although any hits are sure to do damage and kill sailors) but there's also plenty of softer targets on islands. Not at all, rockets were never going to make up the disparity produced between 1 large bomb and 6 small/medium rockets. Studies in rocket accuracy pre-war (or during) for the British and Russians noted that rockets had somewhere between a 2 and 5 percent hit rate (from what I recall of the stats). If you wanted to hit a larger area with a bomb, you would swap to cluster munitions, which weren't incompatible with Dive Bombers. The low use of Dive Bombers in Europe vs the Pacific has more to do with the nature of combat involved in either theater. In an European theater of operations, you are facing an enemy that has a lot more air defense weapons and large distances that, frankly, end up being better for the Allies on the strategic level of "Carpet Bomb everything" and the tactical level of Close Air support with fighters that doubled as bombers. And when your P-47 or P-51 can carry a 1k pound bomb and 6 rockets, you can engage targets at will, or jettison stores and still be a threat to enemy fighters or bombers. In the Pacific, and against boats specifically, the Dive Bomber filled a great role along with the torpedo bomber. You're splitting your enemy's AA defenses between both high and low targets, force the ship to turn away/into torpedos and while also dodging bombers in their dives. And when those Dive Bombers drop 1k pound bombs, they will have a better effect, and survivability then flying level and close to the enemy ship (see: poor accuracy at distance). As for the softer targets on islands, again it becomes more a question of "What planes can be fitted with rockets, and what can we have flying over territory without having escorts dedicated to them?" Your F4U isn't a dive bomber, but it can carry Tiny Tims, smaller missiles, or bomb(s) so why not just load that with those and not have to worry about escorts or, worse yet, trying to locate your enemy in a dense jungle. TL;DR Dive Bombers became extinct because their tactical and strategic role became obsolete. The increased use in rockets was due to the Americans (among others) wanting to have their aircraft provide for multiple roles. Nebakenezzer posted:I know what you're talking about, though I'm not quite sure of the deets. I think specialized dive bombers in the European theater were superseeded by other aircraft types that could do the job as well and didn't need to be quite as specialized, giving up some accuracy for flexibility. I know the Dauntless in USAAF service was called the A-20, but I don't think it saw extensive use. I just flicked through the IL-2 Stormavik wiki, and it mentions the pilots using 20mm cannon to crack armor. In the Pacific dive bombers and torpedo bombers remained till the end of the war. Specialized dive bombers were superseded because their role was obsolescent by 1944. Attempts were made to replace the specialized dive bomber with fighters that were modified to fill in that ground-support/CAS role, namely the A-36 and the P-38 but they ran into the, at the time, unknown issue of compressibility. As for the 20mm's cracking armor, it would depend a lot on angles, tank model, distance, and which parts specifically are being targeted/hit.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 23:52
|
|
|
Specialised (land-based) dive bombers were obsolete in 1939. Every time the Ju87 was used in a circumstance where the Germans didn't have complete air supremacy they would get torn apart. They were slow, flimsy, and the attack profile of a dive-bomb makes you incredibly vulnerable both to ground fire and any fighter in the vicinity. For reasons posted they remained relevant in naval air warfare to the end, but there's a reason the UK, US and USSR all built attacker designs and didn't seriously consider building a land-based dive bomber.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 01:03
|
|
|
I thought in the Ju 87's case, it was less the concept of dive bomber was obsolete and more the particular design was obsolete. Man, I guess this makes the He 177 even dumber, huh
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 01:15
|
|
|
LRADIKAL posted:Lol if you are reading this thread and not the cold war thread. It's covered nuclear annihilation and the nuances of drones and autonomous war multiple times over! Too much of it is wanking over military hardware no one gives a poo poo about. This thread at least pretends to touch on the actual interesting parts of history.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 01:26
|
|
|
Nebakenezzer posted:I thought in the Ju 87's case, it was less the concept of dive bomber was obsolete and more the particular design was obsolete. The concept was fine for the early war when there weren't proximity fuzes or the same advances in air defense. Air superiority certainly helped, but it still wasn't as bad as some people make it out to be. The problem with the He-177 and the Ju-88 and other planes was trying to make a design far too "multi-purpose" than could logically or feasibly work. As a heavy bomber, the He-177 would've been fine in its role, technical issues aside.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 01:30
|
|
|
Jobbo_Fett posted:As a heavy bomber, the He-177 would've been fine in its role, technical issues aside. If you ignore the bullshit engines that caught fire all the drat time.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 01:36
|
|
|
Vincent Van Goatse posted:If you ignore the bullshit engines that caught fire all the drat time. Hence "would've", and how the problem was eventually rectified.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 01:39
|
|
|
Beamed posted:Too much of it is wanking over military hardware no one gives a poo poo about. This thread at least pretends to touch on the actual interesting parts of history. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 01:41
|
|
|
My favorite bit of "mostly went obsolete at the tail end of WWII" aerial weapons trivia is that the last aerial torpedo attack on a non-submarine target was done in 1951 by AD Skyraiders, which used them to knock out a dam during the Korean War.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 01:56
|
|
|
Beamed posted:Too much of it is wanking over military hardware no one gives a poo poo about. This thread at least pretends to touch on the actual interesting parts of history. Please don't kinkshame 
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 06:17
|
|
|
There is a place in my heart for both threads. Re:cannon chat remember most models of tank in ww2 didn't exactly have the thickest of roof armour, even in milhist lite games such as war thunder the humble cannon can humble even the toughest of machines. For instance the mk103 30mm the Germans had was pretty effective once they managed to do a top down run, but 1 fw190 Vs a few hundred t34s on a push is going to get limited results when whatever it takes out is replaced in days. Whilst the il2 is famed, the entire 8th airforce probably did more damage to armour just by wiping out the plants and cause German engineers heads to spin as their production lines got nucleated time and again.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 07:47
|
|
|
Jobbo_Fett posted:The problem with the He-177 and the Ju-88 and other planes was trying to make a design far too "multi-purpose" than could logically or feasibly work. But the Ju-88 did work in a large number of roles throughout the war. Surely Germany ended up getting excellent value from the design?
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 09:31
|
|
|
Nebakenezzer posted:I know what you're talking about, though I'm not quite sure of the deets. I think specialized dive bombers in the European theater were superseeded by other aircraft types that could do the job as well and didn't need to be quite as specialized, giving up some accuracy for flexibility. I know the Dauntless in USAAF service was called the A-20, but I don't think it saw extensive use. I just flicked through the IL-2 Stormavik wiki, and it mentions the pilots using 20mm cannon to crack armor. In the Pacific dive bombers and torpedo bombers remained till the end of the war. IIRC the wiki says IL-2s used plenty of rockets on vehicles with good effect, but that this was from an unreliable record. Tias fucked around with this message at 12:15 on Jul 15, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 10:30
|
|
|
Everything else being equal, would a ship traveling in saltwater get better fuel economy than the same ship in freshwater? I know this seems stupid,
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 11:41
|
|
|
Milo and POTUS posted:Everything else being equal, would a ship traveling in saltwater get better fuel economy than the same ship in freshwater? I know this seems stupid, Edit: Nah, I was being dumb and that reply was nonsense. I was fumbling around whether a ship sitting higher in more dense saltwater would incure less drag than one sitting lower in freshwater, and whether that would lead to the freshwater ship having marginally lower fuel consumption but I managed to get my brain in knots and confuse myself. BalloonFish fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Jul 15, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 11:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 06:41 |
|
|
khamul posted:I volunteer at a fort where we leave both cast iron and bronze guns out all winter long. We don't feel the need to coat them with any grease and the weather doesn't effect them significantly. In the blackpowder era they may have coated the inside of an iron bore with some kind of grease to prevent rust-- I've also heard of gunners firing their iron guns regularly to "scale" the rust off. This is completely unnecessary in the case of bronze tubes. The outside of the cannons were kept from rusting with various mixtures of black paint (if iron) or lots of polishing in the case of bronze/brass. It was (and is) much more difficult to maintain wooden gun carriages. There is at least one campaign where rotten carriages for the siege guns was a decisive factor. There are various recipes for paint for the carriages with toxic ingredients like lead or arsenic to prevent rot and wood-boring insects. If anything it's even worse for modern historic sites since when the wheels rot there's no ready source of properly made spoked wheels. We have used Amish woodworkers in the past. I take it you're not firing them though. Presumably, much like a seasoned cast iron pan, the protective coating will burn off. It seems rust was an issue if gunners were firing their guns to remove it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 12:06
|
|
