the paradigm shift posted:

What do you mean by trains

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Fearless posted:

Yeah but we didn't do it this time

or the last time, really

Trin Tragula posted:

A whacking big long fing wiv an engine onna front

Xiahou Dun posted:

My penis!?!?

Nebakenezzer posted:

hush, "a noble spirit enbiggens the smallest man"

icantfindaname posted:

Are there any popular audience, at least relatively, English language books on the Russo Japanese war?

Fearless posted:

When the Harper gov't rolled out that ludicrous War of 1812 bicentennial as a way of trying to gin up Canadian nationalism, a part of that was a lapel pin that all CF members were expected to wear. The LCdr that I worked for showed up for work not long after they were issued without his and when questioned he said his pin had been accidentally smashed with a hammer and thrown into a field.

That's my contribution to the study of the War of 1812, thanks for listening.

Tree Bucket posted:

When WW2 aircraft are described as having "cannons," what do they mean exactly?

White Coke posted:

I once got into an argument with a Canadian who was claiming that Canadians were the ones who burnt the White House, and after I said that it was done by British Army regulars, he said they were honorary Canadians. After I asked him why Canadians shouldn't also be considered responsible for every war crime committed by the British Army before independence (which I said should be considered 1931, although 1982 is probably a more correct date), he proceeded to call me a Trump lover.

Gnoman posted:

The last is oddballs - stuff that didn't fit neatly into any system. Heavy cannon for ground attack (such as the 75mm mounted on later B-25s), the long cannon experimentally mounted on the Me 262 to destroy a bomner with ine shot, stuff like that.

icantfindaname posted:

Are there any popular audience, at least relatively, English language books on the Russo Japanese war?

Polyakov posted:

Rising sun and tumbling bear by Richard Connaughton

Solaris 2.0 posted:

What would the consequences of a British loss had been? This is 1982 and the Cold War is very much in full swing - I image NATO get's embarrassed that one of their members surface fleets gets destroyed by a non-communist aligned state, and the Soviets win a major diplomatic coup by default. In addition, the UK itself is probably thrown into turmoil and the Thatcher government collapses. The "special relationship" with the US is probably strained as suddenly the RN can't adequately protect the North Atlantic. Maybe China tries to make moves to force the UK to hand over Hong Kong early?

As for Argentina, the military Junta survives at least for a while longer. I'm sure they get massive amounts of Soviet / Eastern Bloc aid throughout the rest of the 1980s and become a pain in the side of the US.

Solaris 2.0 posted:

Also, what lessons were learned from the Falklands war?

FastestGunAlive posted:

“Britain almost lost: if a few more of their ships had been sunk they’d give up” doesn’t sound like Britain almost lost to me

Solaris 2.0 posted:

They lost 6 surface ships. When was the last time a major naval power lost that many in a conflict especially to a non-peer opponent?

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

You've narrowed this definition so tightly that I suspect the answer is "never"

Solaris 2.0 posted:

Right, but that's my point, it feels like that should be a big deal. I mean I am sure the Falklands War is a huge deal in UK and especially Argentinian circles but as an American I had only barely heard of it, and I never even knew the UK had lost so many ships.

I thought it was fascinating and figure I'd ask the thread since I can't of many modern naval engagements. People don't have to respond to my question if they don't feel like it. I just thought it was interesting.

Solaris 2.0 posted:

So I was browsing the COLD WAR/AIRPOWER thread and they had a good discussion regarding The Falklands war. Specifically, the British actually came pretty close to losing? Like if the Argentinians had knocked out a few more support ships, or even a carrier - it would have been over.

I never thought much about this conflict before, so went down the Wikipedia rabbit-hole and holy moly does this war not get enough attention outside of the UK/South America. It's the only large scale naval battle I can think of in the last 40 years, and it's equally impressive that a suppose top tier Cold War power nearly lost most of their surface fleet to a non-peer opponent.

Some questions for the thread:

Did the British come as close to losing as I stated? What could the Argentinians had done differently to actually defeat them?

What would the consequences of a British loss had been? This is 1982 and the Cold War is very much in full swing - I image NATO get's embarrassed that one of their members surface fleets gets destroyed by a non-communist aligned state, and the Soviets win a major diplomatic coup by default. In addition, the UK itself is probably thrown into turmoil and the Thatcher government collapses. The "special relationship" with the US is probably strained as suddenly the RN can't adequately protect the North Atlantic. Maybe China tries to make moves to force the UK to hand over Hong Kong early?

As for Argentina, the military Junta survives at least for a while longer. I'm sure they get massive amounts of Soviet / Eastern Bloc aid throughout the rest of the 1980s and become a pain in the side of the US.

Also, what lessons were learned from the Falklands war?

Acebuckeye13 posted:

The US likely wouldn't have let Britain lose the war. Though the US was ostensibly neutral, had Britain lost a carrier the US was prepared to give them an older US ship to replace it.

Alchenar posted:

It's also an area where you run into problems being lax on defining 'not peer' in terms of actual capabilities. Iran is not a peer competitor to the USA, but if a war starts with a carrier group transiting the straits of Hormuz then you are going to see a lot of US ships on fire.

Koramei posted:

Yeah I feel like characterizing the Argentines as some completely backwater nothing entity mischaracterizes it a bit. Didn’t they have completely state of the art anti-ship missiles?

Acebuckeye13 posted:

The US likely wouldn't have let Britain lose the war. Though the US was ostensibly neutral, had Britain lost a carrier the US was prepared to give them an older US ship to replace it.

Solaris 2.0 posted:

While I appreciate the usual glib responses that SA is lovingly known for. I'm being serious.

They lost 6 surface ships. When was the last time a major naval power lost that many in a conflict especially to a non-peer opponent?

Seems to be there is a realistic alt history where the Argentinian military is a little better organized and puts a whole lot more hurt on the British.

I mean whatever, this thread argues all day if gay black Hitler could have won in the east but I guess bringing up a suppose British defeat in the Falklands is "fantasy".

Solaris 2.0 posted:

While I appreciate the usual glib responses that SA is lovingly known for. I'm being serious.

They lost 6 surface ships. When was the last time a major naval power lost that many in a conflict especially to a non-peer opponent?

Seems to me there is a realistic alt history where the Argentinian military is a little better organized and puts a whole lot more hurt on the British.

I mean whatever, this thread argues all day if gay black Hitler could have won in the east but I guess bringing up a suppose British defeat in the Falklands is "fantasy".

Polyakov posted:

Whens the last time that there was any major naval combat involving a major naval power post WW2? (Or even post WW1 to be honest). Even in those where navies were fighting inferior ones they still took losses.

Argentina is stretching itself to attack the task force as it is, the falklands are not actually that close to Argentina. It realistically only has one way of preventing the UK doing what it wants and that is air attack. Its navy would get utterly demolished by SSN's if it tried to actually seek a surface action. Its not really a question of a bit more organisation it requires some serious altering.

The Falkland islands task force was around 120 ships. 60 RN, 60 civillian, the argentines would sink 7 of those and damage several more. To call that "most of" is deeply misleading (6 of around the 40 or so combat ships that were in the area were sunk (of which 2 are landing and support so not directly combat ships)). These losses are mainly focused around the Battle of San Carlos and various attacks en route using their 100 or so planes that has the range. Their operations tempo was as high as it could be attacking the RN enroute, and it had failed to make a good dent to the point where you have the battle of san Carlos. We can talk about what if they had hit a carrier sure, but thats not really likely to happen, the reason Sheffield got hit is its doing radar pickets to stop that happening, theres a lot of ground they need to cover and not get shot down to get within range of a CV which gives them an extremely high risk of getting harriered. Radar pickets by definition are not well covered by the CAP, they are there to make sure the CAP can hit the plane before it hits the important ship. Even if a carrier does get hit theres no guarantee its going to go down, Exocet is quite a light missile.

By the end of the battle of San Carlos the argentinians are out of Exocets and are having to do super low runs with dumb bombs (admittedly with some degree of success). However they have lost around a quarter of their airforce doing this because going in for a bomb attack on a modern ship is very dangerous, the RN cant deal that well with exocet attack but it can deal perfectly adequately with you having to physically drop something on them, Argentina are also suffering the usual attrition to maintainance that you get in a war as well as those being physically shot down.

The reason they are having problems with their bombs detonating is that they are having to go in super low to lose themselves in radar clutter so they dont get picked off by harriers or missiles at range, they cant go higher without suffering unsustainable air losses so the dud rate of the bombs is not really a changeable quantity.

Once we get on the island in general, Argentina cannot sustain its garrison at all, its ships cant make it past the RN's submarines even if the surface fleet isnt there. Their troops are cold, miserable and alone and really dont want to fight. If the UK gets any significant force ashore then its over for Galtieri, about half the attacks made by the UK was against the numerical odds with the rest being around parity and the Argentines generally speaking crumbled in relatively short order because their morale was gofawful. Even with the loss of more ships at San Carlos the soldiers are still there, there are more on the way (further major landings will take place over the ensuing weeks) and more support ships not in the immediate area and even if you destroy enough of the logistical tail to make a long term campaign on the Falklands difficult the Argentine army only has a couple of weeks of resistance left anyway.

Though to address your question more directly, one thing we see is intense development and deployment of CIWS like Phalanx leading to things like CRAM etc. People were aware of the danger of AShM's but it brought it into sharp focus that you cant just rely on long range missiles to stop them. There were various implications for the defence of the island itself of course but the major thing was underlining the severe danger of missiles to ships. (Backed up by later the same decade the tanker war).

Solaris 2.0 posted:

Anyway if anyone has good reading/podcast/documentaries regarding this conflict feel free to PM me or share. I'd definitely would love to learn more.

FastestGunAlive posted:

I did not mean my answer to be completely sarcastic. I would still question the idea that Britain almost lost after losing six ships. Was the morale of the troops low enough that mutiny/surrender/refusal to fight was a possibility? Did any of the tactical commanders seriously consider surrender/cease fire or communicate to higher that they were at risk of failing their mission? Did strategic and political leadership seriously discuss surrender or cease fire after losing six ships?

quote:

The struggles with hiding and defending the fleet led to difficult questions about how best to use Britain’s two small aircraft carriers, HMS Hermes and Invincible. They were the greatest assets in the British task force and their air wings the best defense against Argentine air attacks.39 They also were the greatest British vulnerability, however, and they dictated the deployment and tactics of the entire task force. Woodward wrote of the “inescapable truth that the Argentine commanders failed inexplicably to realize that if they had hit Hermes, the British would have been finished. They never really went after the one target that would surely have given them victory.”40 Woodward’s solution was to keep the carriers as far out to sea as possible, almost exclusively using them for air defense.

Lawman 0 posted:

Was it possible for the Argentinians to sink the Invincible or Hermes at all?

Solaris 2.0 posted:

Seems to me there is a realistic alt history where the Argentinian military is a little better organized and puts a whole lot more hurt on the British.