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oXDemosthenesXo posted:Are we still posting links to old effort posts? My one and only real contribution to this thread was my grandfather's WWII Combat Dope Sheets a couple of years ago. I can dig up the rest of the posts pretty easily. This would make a dope gang tag.
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Dec 6, 2020 23:39
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How probable is it that the helmet-wrapper-supervisor positions and similar superfluous spots existed as sinecures of sorts? A supervisory position to hand to a political ally who lacks any actual skills as a way of rewarding them and keeping them close but also without giving them any real responsibility
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Dec 6, 2020 23:40
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Trin Tragula posted:I'd also like to encourage all the lurkers who feel intimidated by big hulking megathreads to get stuck in and just ask whatever's on your mind about military history. Hear him, friends! Nenonen posted:Happy Finnish independence day, btw. Ask me anything about Mannerheim's knights or something It's a subject I know nothing about, aside from this vague impression you were on the edge of other people's kingdoms/empires, and I most definitely salute Finland being on the periphery of the Russian/Soviet empire and managing to thread that needle pretty well.
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Dec 6, 2020 23:43
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Effortposts: on mah blog So it's a cold fact of life lots of people like doing effortposts ITT, and this soon leads to blogging. Some, like our current IK EnsignExpendable or JobbaFett have dedicated blogs to milhist stuff, while people like me have blogs that *mostly* have milhist stuff. Because mine is most, not entirely, I'm'a gonna just quote the milhist relevant stuff. If it seems interesting to you, click it or don't! On the Fw 200 Condor Part 1, Part 2 A twelve part series I wrote for AI's Aviation thread about a decade ago on German Naval Airships in WW1, titled Achtung Zeppelin! A two part series on the Heinkel 219 "Owl" night fighter. Part 1: A Fledgeling in Search of Parents and Part 2: Combat and Bird Puns On the Junkers 290, the very rare large transport and maritime recon aircraft. 1. Actual Facts. 2. The Myth of Flights to Japan. 3. Did the Ju 290 Make Secret Flights to Atlantis?!? The Convair B-36 'Peacemaker' I Watch it so You Don't Have To: Disney's Victory through Airpower If you want to understand strategic bombing as the World War people understood it, it is not bad. Also, gifs Tankom 1/144 P.1000 Ratte I build a model and learn about Germany's hypothetical ultra-tank A three part post on the Soviet/Russian Kirov class battlecrusiers, and their amazingly depressing cousin, the Ural spy ship. On Amerika Bombers, right now an 8 part post. Getting accsess to a university library let me trace big aircraft production in the Third Reich from the early 1930s to after its total collapse. Lots of related themes, including 1) why were the Nazis so bad at it, 2) why the He 177 proved to be a gypsy curse on Luftwaffe aviation, 3) why the Fw 200 and BnV 222 were civilian-developed stopgaps that never saw replacement, 4) why the Nazis had a longstanding obsession with creating bombers to strike at America, and 5) why the fourth point was a insane complication the Third Reich stapled to pretty much all their big aircraft plans.
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Dec 7, 2020 00:30
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Trin Tragula posted:I'd also like to encourage all the lurkers who feel intimidated by big hulking megathreads to get stuck in and just ask whatever's on your mind about military history. Alright I'll have a go then. I read a lot of ww2 memoirs and things and like to try to research little details during or after such as what did x ship look like, how big was y rifle etc. I've been looking but probably someone who knows how to look for this kind of thing can help me, I've never really understood the hierarchy of naval ships in ww2 I get my Destroyers and Corvettes mixed up with Cruisers and Battleships. I keep hoping I'll stumble across a big diagram while I do my little searches online but never have. Just something that is concise and has the biggest ships at the top and the littlest ones at the bottom and a little blurb of why. This comes from me recently reading about the Battle of the River Plate, The Sinking of the Scharnhorst, the one about the Bismarck, and some stuff about the Pacific. This thread is awesome by the way, thanks for reposting those German uniform critiques.
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Dec 7, 2020 00:48
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Nebakenezzer posted:No! While the Sunderlands flew post war, the Shackletons also had a kitchen. The reason I asked this (old thread) is that you were talking about the Short Sunderlands, and then you mentioned the Short Shackletons, but I thought the Shackletons were made by Avro, and I didn't want you to get incredibly politely lynched by any Canadian Avro tragics.
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Dec 7, 2020 00:49
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Memento posted:The reason I asked this (old thread) is that you were talking about the Short Sunderlands, and then you mentioned the Short Shackletons, but I thought the Shackletons were made by Avro, and I didn't want you to get incredibly politely lynched by any Canadian Avro tragics. Hahaha fair Short Shackletons? Yeah, that's not right
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Dec 7, 2020 01:01
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LoudPipesSaveLives posted:I've been looking but probably someone who knows how to look for this kind of thing can help me, I've never really understood the hierarchy of naval ships in ww2 I get my Destroyers and Corvettes mixed up with Cruisers and Battleships. I keep hoping I'll stumble across a big diagram while I do my little searches online but never have. Just something that is concise and has the biggest ships at the top and the littlest ones at the bottom and a little blurb of why. There's definately a hiarchey insofar as what individual ship can beat up whom, but it's probably easier to understand as "there's a bunch of ship classes, each built for different jobs." Destroyers: Fast, heavily armed, zero armor. Originally invented to protect dreadnoughts against newly invented torpedo boats, they branched out into protecting against submarines, aircraft, and generally screening larger ships, as well as getting torpedoes for sinking larger ships. Destroyer Escorts: destroyers built for escorting civillian ships. Less guns, just as much AA, slower. Corvettes: If there is such a thing as a naval millita, this is their ship. An extremely cheap and cheerful escort ship focused around fighting submarines. The most famous of these were the Flower Class corvettes, which were de contented enough that they could be built by civilian shipyards, based on a whaler design, depth charges, sonar, a gun, as miserable as a U-boat to serve on. PT boats: "Patrol-torpedo" boats were short range small boats that carried a few torpedoes to huck at larger ships. Cruisers [various]: This is probably the most confusing class. Cruisers in the age of sail were largish, long endurance ships that could 'cruise' and raid enemy merchant shipping. This turned into an intermediate class between the very big, enormously expensive heavy armor battleships, and the unarmored destroyers. In the middle pretty much defines them. They can take on smaller naval ships like destroyers, etc, and run away from battleships as the "some armor: approach has its virtues. A destroyer in turn could outrun it, and a battleship could cripple a cruiser without too much of a fight. But then it gets more confusing because cruisers become specialists as well: heavy cruisers have bigger guns and heavier armor, light cruisers are like extra beefy destroyers, being faster and with lighter armor, anti-aircraft cruisers specialize in exploding' aircraft; battlecrusiers are crusiers with a battleship's guns but with a crusier's speed and armor.... battleships: enormous, super expensive both to build and maintain, giant guns of terrible destructive power, very heavily armored. The battleship exists to fight other battleships - and exists as a trump card. This gets almost old school "line of battle ship" type thinking, since the equity of battleship firepower in one fleet has to be matched or beat by the other if you just shout 'get 'em' at the enemy fleet.
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Dec 7, 2020 01:39
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To add even more fun the distinction (and I use that term loosely) between light and heavy cruisers more or less resulted from the Washington and London naval treaties between the two world wars. Before even that you had armored cruisers and protected cruisers, and depending on which country and when you're talking about there are Battlecruisers and Battleship Cruisers.
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Dec 7, 2020 01:44
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Nebakenezzer posted:battleships: enormous, super expensive both to build and maintain, giant guns of terrible destructive power, very heavily armored. The battleship exists to fight other battleships - and exists as a trump card. This gets almost old school "line of battle ship" type thinking, since the equity of battleship firepower in one fleet has to be matched or beat by the other if you just shout 'get 'em' at the enemy fleet. Have improvements in missile technology basically made battleships and their insane guns obsolete now?
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Dec 7, 2020 01:47
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So where do frigates fit into the naval ship hierarchy? Both historically and in the present day.
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Dec 7, 2020 01:48
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 AT ditches seem doctrine purist to me honestly, it's right in the name.
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Dec 7, 2020 02:04
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Memento posted:Have improvements in missile technology basically made battleships and their insane guns obsolete now? There's a number of issues with battleships, but the short answer is that pretty much everything they can do, aircraft carriers can do better. They're really expensive for what utility they provide: it takes a lot of fuel to move a 50kton ship, and a lot of people to man it. In exchange you get guns that can shoot over the horizon but not a whole lot beyond that. They can really pummel that area, sure, but to get into range to do that, you pretty much need air superiority, because otherwise enemy bombers will mission-kill you by wrecking your unarmored superstructure. Your engines, gun magazines, etc. may be OK but you won't be able to do any damage until you get extensive repairs. But if you have control of the skies, why not just send your planes in to do the job instead? Planes give your weapons ranges of hundreds of miles, and if one plane gets shot down it's no big deal compared to losing a battleship. EDIT: towards the end of WW2 you saw battleships, and cruisers, being relegated largely to "big surface area to stick AA guns on", the better to protect the aircraft carriers they were escorting. TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Dec 7, 2020 |
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Dec 7, 2020 02:12
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Where do carriers fall in the structure/doctrine purist chart for "battelship"?
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Dec 7, 2020 02:14
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Also for the whole shore bombardment thing being able to do it from hundreds of miles offshore with something far more destructive than a 16" HE round that'll also be at least as accurate is a very good thing.
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Dec 7, 2020 02:18
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Trin Tragula posted:Things that aren't WWI Oh look, I can change the thread title.
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Dec 7, 2020 02:26
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Camrath posted:So where do frigates fit into the naval ship hierarchy? Both historically and in the present day. People with the boat-smarts can say more about age of sail frigates. Post ww2, frigate became the name of essentially the standard fighting ship class, because it did almost everything all the old ship classes did with precision munitions and advanced sensors.
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Dec 7, 2020 02:44
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Does anyone have book recommendations for reconstruction after the US civil war? There are hundreds of works about the actual war, but the reconstruction seems glossed over so frequently.
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Dec 7, 2020 02:48
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Whoa, some of my old German uniforms posts got salvaged. Thanks! If anyone has any more questions or wants photos, let me know. SeanBeansShako posted:Doesn't Cessna also have a time share on a Soviet tank for reinacment purposes? Yes, although I haven't spent time on it since Covid. Cessna fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Dec 7, 2020 |
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Dec 7, 2020 02:48
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Lesgoon posted:Does anyone have book recommendations for reconstruction after the US civil war? There are hundreds of works about the actual war, but the reconstruction seems glossed over so frequently. The republic for which it stands covers reconstruction and and the gilded age. I've barely dug into it but it seems very well researched and full of absolutely blood boiling information.
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Dec 7, 2020 02:50
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Trin Tragula posted:I'd also like to encourage all the lurkers who feel intimidated by big hulking megathreads to get stuck in and just ask whatever's on your mind about military history. Okay. So, I've read that in the eighteenth century infantry were able to repel cavalry without having to form a square most of the time unlike in the Napoleonic Wars. More broadly from the Pike & Shot era through to the Napoleonic the efficacy of shock cavalry seems to have waxed and waned repeatedly. At the beginning of the Italian Wars gendarmes and other armored heavy shock cavalry were still really effective, then their usefulness seems to decline until the 30 Years War when the Swedes are credited with bring in more aggressive cavalry tactics (although they probably learned those from the Poles) so that for most of the wars of Louis XIV cavalry formed much larger and more important parts of the armies than they had at the beginning of the 17th century, so much so that the ratio of pikes to handguns reversed itself so that there were more pikemen in armies too. Then at some point in the 18th century shock cavalry seems to have faded in prominence once again, until Frederick the Great retrained his cavalry after the first two Silesian wars which ultimately seems to have lead to far more aggressive and effective cavalry during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. So I was hoping that people more knowledgeable could tell me more/correct my misconceptions.
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Dec 7, 2020 03:00
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Nebakenezzer posted:If we're posting effortposts/blogs, I have a few I believe this is the thread you're looking for. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3585027&userid=127245&perpage=40&pagenumber=8#post454915546
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Dec 7, 2020 03:11
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Shamed with my unfinished effortpost series...
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Dec 7, 2020 03:27
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Camrath posted:So where do frigates fit into the naval ship hierarchy? Both historically and in the present day. I'm phone-posting at 2.15am, so this will be brief, but if no-one has done so I'll try for a fuller answer tomorrow. In the Age of Sail a frigate was a fully-rigged ship with a single gun deck ('fully-rigged' meant it had three masts all carrying square sails - the complexity of Age of Sail ship classifications is that it could be done by sail plan, hull type or intended role...or all three) with a hull designed for speed, handling and good sea-going qualities. They were intended for use as cruisers, for harassing enemy merchant trade, for scouting for a battle fleet, running messages and despatches, carrying troops for landing parties and lurking off enemy coasts on reconnaissance duties. In the 19th century the advent of steam propulsion and armoured hulls led to a proliferation of new types (or at least new classifications) and frigates were replaced by ironclads, steam sloops, cruisers and so on. The term re-emerged in WW2 when the Royal Navy needed classifications for the multitude of new escort types it was building. There were already 'sloops' in service as general-purpose light warships but they were more like large destroyers or small cruisers in design and build. The smaller, slower, simpler escort types intended primarily for combatting submarines needed a different designation and the historical term 'corvette' was adopted (originally a French term from the Age of Sail for a ship that was similar in design and role to a frigate but smaller and not always ship-rigged). When larger anti-submarine escort types were developed they were classified as 'frigates' since they were larger than corvettes. To this day in the Royal Navy frigates are general-purpose warships with ASW as their primary role while destroyers are general-purpose warships with air-defence as their primary role. Frigates are smaller than destroyers but it's the roles that make the difference. Other navies (like the French and Russians) use the term frigate for an all-purpose warship that is bigger than a corvette (a frigate usually packs a missile system of some sort, which a corvette or an OPV does not) and smaller than a destroyer. However, some (i.e. The Netherlands) don't have destroyers and their frigates are equipped for air-defence work while also being general purpose. Basically outside WW2 a frigate just means a small-mid-sized multi-role warship that can do everything except slug it out in set-piece battles with stuff bigger than it is. And that's the short answer...
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Dec 7, 2020 03:33
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P-Mack posted:Shamed with my unfinished effortpost series... Unfinished?! Goddamnit, how does it end?!
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Dec 7, 2020 03:36
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Last one made it to 501
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Dec 7, 2020 03:47
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After successfully not ever catching up on the last thread like I kept vaguely gesturing to myself I would, I look forward to doing the same with this thread. Also look up Bruce Bairnsfather's WWI comics if you've never seen them - I just got a small collection of them and they're great.
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Dec 7, 2020 04:00
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This map I love was in a book called "Chronicle of the Century" that I read as a kid, usually while sitting on the toilet: Also about those sitty German uniforms, would the paratrooper helmet been better than the regular steel helmet? Or was that needlessly complicated too? Edit: I guess I never posted pictures on a forum like this. It's the one with the Russia as an octopus, Scandinavia as dogs, etc. Grimnarsson fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Dec 7, 2020 |
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Dec 7, 2020 04:03
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Thanks for all the good replies, the post about the levels of armour on each type helped with 'ranking' them in my head. I think part of my confusion is due to the way their roles changed through the course of the war as air craft carriers and submarines became more of the threat while battleships, at least the german ones anyway, became chained tigers. I have a bad habit of taking away the wrong interpretation of what I read though. Did Germany ever attempt an aircraft carrier?
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Dec 7, 2020 04:08
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The Nazis built most of one,ohe Graf Zeppelin. Once things got rolling they realized their vanity project was not gonna be the best use of resources and it never got completed.
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Dec 7, 2020 04:18
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:There's a number of issues with battleships, but the short answer is that pretty much everything they can do, aircraft carriers can do better. They're really expensive for what utility they provide: it takes a lot of fuel to move a 50kton ship, and a lot of people to man it. In exchange you get guns that can shoot over the horizon but not a whole lot beyond that. They can really pummel that area, sure, but to get into range to do that, you pretty much need air superiority, because otherwise enemy bombers will mission-kill you by wrecking your unarmored superstructure. Your engines, gun magazines, etc. may be OK but you won't be able to do any damage until you get extensive repairs. But if you have control of the skies, why not just send your planes in to do the job instead? Planes give your weapons ranges of hundreds of miles, and if one plane gets shot down it's no big deal compared to losing a battleship. I agree with all this but I want to add that many BB-lovers seem excited about the armor. Modern ships aren't armored, and people look at the old BB designs and think that armor must somehow mean they're tougher than modern ships. That might be true if the threat was enemy BB guns. The modern threats are missiles, torpedoes, and mines. It's impossible to armor a ship against torpedoes and mines and nearly impossible to armor one against missiles. Modern defenses are about active protection (shooting down the threat before it hits) and mitigation (localize damage to the compartments near the impact, keep the ship afloat).
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Dec 7, 2020 05:13
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LostCosmonaut posted:
They weren't designed to destroy tanks, though. It's an obstacle, although unlucky tanks could get stuck like with any obstacles.
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Dec 7, 2020 05:30
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Zorak of Michigan posted:It's impossible to armor a ship against torpedoes and mines and nearly impossible to armor one against missiles. Modern torpedoes, sure, I can see how armor would provide minimal assistance against having your back broken (at best some amount of stiffening, but nowhere near enough). Mines I don't really have a feel for, but I'd guess that the same defenses that were used in WW2 against contemporary torpedoes (i.e. torpedo bulges) would have some effectiveness against mines. Which is to say, not a lot, but potentially enough to salvage your ship instead of seeing it get sunk. Missiles...how are they significantly different from a shell strike, in terms of how they deal their damage? WW2-era armor was heavy, which made it both expensive to build and expensive to run the ship (more weight -> bigger engines and more fuel needed). Modern ships as I understand it operate on the assumption that the best defense is to not get shot at, and your backup defense is active because no passive defense is adequate against every threat anyway. But I don't feel like it necessarily follows that armor would be totally ineffective against all the munitions that might be thrown at a modern ship.
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Dec 7, 2020 05:34
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Zorak of Michigan posted:I agree with all this but I want to add that many BB-lovers seem excited about the armor. Modern ships aren't armored, and people look at the old BB designs and think that armor must somehow mean they're tougher than modern ships. That might be true if the threat was enemy BB guns. The modern threats are missiles, torpedoes, and mines. It's impossible to armor a ship against torpedoes and mines and nearly impossible to armor one against missiles. Modern defenses are about active protection (shooting down the threat before it hits) and mitigation (localize damage to the compartments near the impact, keep the ship afloat). In 2016 the Taiwanese accidently fired one of their anti shipping missiles, and it homed on a fishing boat 75 km away. It ripped right through the boat's superstructure, killing the captain and injuring three crew but luckily didn't explode, I assume because the warhead didn't hit anything solid enough to trigger it. It's also lucky that it found a target before continuing to Chinese territorial waters.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsiung_Feng_III_missile_mishap https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36680899
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Dec 7, 2020 05:37
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Lesgoon posted:Does anyone have book recommendations for reconstruction after the US civil war? There are hundreds of works about the actual war, but the reconstruction seems glossed over so frequently. "Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877", by Eric Foner, is the definitive text on the topic. It was first published in the 1980s, but an updated edition got put out a few years ago. Its over 700 pages and very detailed, so it might be a bit more then you are looking for.
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Dec 7, 2020 05:45
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Missiles...how are they significantly different from a shell strike, in terms of how they deal their damage? Anti-Ship missiles have hefty warheads with modern designs, so imagine about a ton equivalent of high explosives going off next to the hull and it's also a focused charge. Armor isn't going to stop that. Even near misses from heavier bombs could crack or buckle ship armor. Add in stuff like pop-up attack weapons and you'd have to put on a crazy amount of armor to even have a chance.
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Dec 7, 2020 06:26
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Gaius Marius posted:The Nazis built most of one,ohe Graf Zeppelin. Once things got rolling they realized their vanity project was not gonna be the best use of resources and it never got completed. Cool thanks, now I can do some more reading:)
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Dec 7, 2020 06:32
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The other thing about battleships in modern combat is that while the hull may be heavily enough armored to stand up to anything short of a nuke, the sensors and communications systems are not. Seems like you could mission-kill one about as easily as a non-BB. Sure it's still afloat but it won't be able to contribute much to the ongoing battle.
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Dec 7, 2020 06:33
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FMguru posted:The other thing about battleships in modern combat is that while the hull may be heavily enough armored to stand up to anything short of a nuke, the sensors and communications systems are not. Sometimes they even do it to themselves! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_South_Dakota_(BB-57)#Second_Naval_Battle_of_Guadalcanal quote:Shortly thereafter, at about 23:30, an error in the electrical switchboard room knocked out power aboard South Dakota, disabling her radar systems and leaving the ship all but blind to the Japanese vessels approaching the force. By this time, Hashimoto's ships had inflicted serious damage on the American destroyer screen; two of the destroyers were torpedoed (one of which, Benham, survived until the following morning) and a third was destroyed by gunfire. This compounded South Dakota's problems, as she had to keep clear of the burning wrecks. By being forced to turn in front of the burning destroyers, the fires backlit South Dakota and highlighted her presence to the Japanese ships. At 23:40, she engaged Hashimoto's ships with her rear turret, which accidentally set her Kingfishers on fire, but a second salvo knocked two of the three burning aircraft overboard and blew out the fire on the third. Power was restored and she fired five salvos from her main battery at a range of 5,800 yd (5,300 m), but the shock of firing the guns caused further electrical failures, disabling her gunnery and search radars for five minutes shortly before midnight. Upon reactivating her search radar, South Dakota picked up numerous Japanese vessels directly ahead. These were Kondō's ships, and they immediately launched a volley of torpedoes at South Dakota, though they all missed.[18][19] Been a bit since I've read it, but Neptune's Inferno covers it pretty well.
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Dec 7, 2020 06:41
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