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Power Khan posted:In Austria, if you want to a carreer in sports, this is the best way to have everything taken care of. You are technically a professional soldier, but you purely work on your sport, with all the facilities and benefits. They also do this in France with the Peloton de Gendarmerie de Haute Montagne, a small military group of elite climbers who split their time between doing mountain search and rescue work and climbing. There's still some of the nationalist pride in climbing in Europe that we never really got as much of in America, but people over there are generally more psyched to have climbers going out to do first ascents in the Himalaya for the glory of France, and having guys on the military payroll to do that makes sense for them.
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Jan 14, 2021 20:51
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Polyakov posted:Helicopter supply and airdrop supply was and is a major part of fighting in the himalayas so i dont quite know what to tell you. Im trying to point out that this is a very useful job that they can do, in addition to their other uses such as being able to go anywhere in the world on incredibly short notice. Yaks could best be described as ponderous in their maximum velocity. I was under the impression that you were talking about paratroopers, not just light infantry who get moved around by helicopter. The result of a paratrooper deployment in the himalayas is a whole bunch of them getting torn around mountain valleys by strange crosswinds, followed by guys landing hard on 45 degree slopes.
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Jan 14, 2021 20:55
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:I was under the impression that you were talking about paratroopers, not just light infantry who get moved around by helicopter. you somehow managed to take away the exact opposite point from the discussion, which was that everyone was saying that although paradropped soldiers are useless in rough terrain, helimobile infantry is much more useful
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Jan 14, 2021 20:59
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Why not just make tiltrotor C-5s? 
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Jan 14, 2021 21:24
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So I'm trying to finish a post I started a long time ago. Did you know the V-2 had a third variant to its guidance system? So the Lorentz company did something fairly amazing in the early 1930s: it developed a blind landing system. Since radar was not a thing, how it worked was two guidance beams would be broadcast on either side of the runway. The landing aircraft has a radio set receiving both signals. When out of alignment it'd produce noise, but when in the approach path, the two signals would create a continuous tone. So a system very similar to this was built to improve V-2 guidance. Two signals broadcast into the sky, a reciever on the V-2 to steer the missile into the continuious signal. This control signal also seems to have been wired into the first guidance system, initially used in tests, of measuing rocket speed by radar Doppler shift, and sending the cutoff signal when the time was right. In order to achieve an accuracy of 250m CEP at a distance of 250 km, "the speed at burn stop had to be 0.5% exact." So this accuracy assist system appears to be completely done, ready for production in the end of 1943. But fortunately it took an entire year for the equipment to be manufactured and issued to Missile units. Another cool thing I found: this site has an example of a high speed low altitude photo run by a Mosquito.
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Jan 14, 2021 21:26
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VictualSquid posted:3 or 4 infantry companies + 1 heavy company with the extras (actual mountaineers and paperpushers) in a separate company Did the shooty mans do any specialized mountain stuff or skiing at all, or was it just light infantry with a platoon of mountain leaders and a platoon of skiers?
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Jan 14, 2021 21:27
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Has anyone tried to catapult troops? It feels like something that Leonardo da Vinci might have come up with but maybe someone really attempted it?
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Jan 14, 2021 21:32
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taqueso posted:Has anyone tried to catapult troops? It feels like something that Leonardo da Vinci might have come up with but maybe someone really attempted it? Please refer to this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iToRAfA-V0s
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Jan 14, 2021 21:34
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Cessna posted:Back in the old days Olympic athletes couldn't be professional athletes. (I.e., You couldn't play pro basketball for the NY Knicks, then go compete in the Olympics.) (This requirement was dropped in 1992.)
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Jan 14, 2021 22:43
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LatwPIAT posted:Did the shooty mans do any specialized mountain stuff or skiing at all, or was it just light infantry with a platoon of mountain leaders and a platoon of skiers? The barracks are in the mountains, so all the marching happens on mountain hiking trails. And in winter you use the skis as strange snowshoes to get you marching done. But none of the mountain climbing that people imagine from the propaganda and no downhill skiing.
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Jan 14, 2021 23:15
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brains posted:yes, but what then? you can drop a battalion or brigade or even a division of light infantry anywhere, but how do you sustain them? how do they move, how do they repulse threats greater than other light infantry? it's never solely a matter of getting troops on the ground- there is a lot more involved in sustaining the fight and the logistical tail involved. when you have to continually airdrop supplies because their reserves are measured in hours, is it really that effective? the argument here isn't the sole value of rapidly getting troops into a location, but the overall usefulness as a fighting force. This... is what I've been saying? They're pointless, but the theoretical reason for their capability is that they're more mobile than an LHD. For what it's worth, the contents of one LHD aren't going to do any better than an airborne brigade, they're still not mobile infantry and while they've got some heavy kit it's a rounding error compared to a proper heavy formation. You're going to need a lot more investment in the capability than just the one. PeterCat posted:https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/WhenFailureThrives.pdf Actually checks ...they cut aircraft numbers without cutting infantry, didn't they? I think that the use of the C-17 fleet as the point of comparison is perhaps slightly disingenuous given the size of the rest of AMC but they're still going to struggle to do much more than two brigades in one drop. I actually think I could perhaps stand behind my 72 hours number, but perhaps not to literally anywhere and they're going to have to pull their fingers out.
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Jan 14, 2021 23:21
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Considering it's tangential to sportssoldaten what's with the south korean pro starcraft players who play for a particular branch's pro team? I could see it being an exceedingly unlikely draw for the us military recruitment but the RoK has compulsory service right?
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Jan 15, 2021 00:51
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Neophyte posted:Why not just make tiltrotor C-5s? Ah, yes sir, we did consider that! Executive summary Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Jan 15, 2021 |
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Jan 15, 2021 01:12
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taqueso posted:Has anyone tried to catapult troops? It feels like something that Leonardo da Vinci might have come up with but maybe someone really attempted it? Only aircraft carriers have catapults, and they already have planes.
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Jan 15, 2021 01:16
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Milo and POTUS posted:Considering it's tangential to sportssoldaten what's with the south korean pro starcraft players who play for a particular branch's pro team? I could see it being an exceedingly unlikely draw for the us military recruitment but the RoK has compulsory service right? Yes, South Korea has mandatory service. The military esports players are doing normal service and playing in their off-hours. To get an actual sports exemption, you need to medal at the Olympics or get gold in the Asian Games. It's been discussed in relation to esports recently but nothing has come of it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_South_Korea The US Army Esports Team is a recruiting drive on Twitch - they temporarily got driven offline since chat kept asking about their favorite war crimes. https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-esports-game/
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Jan 15, 2021 01:30
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VictualSquid posted:The barracks are in the mountains, so all the marching happens on mountain hiking trails. And in winter you use the skis as strange snowshoes to get you marching done. But none of the mountain climbing that people imagine from the propaganda and no downhill skiing.  But... but... downhill skiing is just overland skiing down a hill... how... I... but...
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Jan 15, 2021 05:18
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LatwPIAT posted:
They are related, sure, but "downhill skiing is just cross country skiing down the hill" is a pretty hot take in my view. Skills in one are useful in learning the other, but for one the gear is completely different.
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Jan 15, 2021 10:32
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Loezi posted:They are related, sure, but "downhill skiing is just cross country skiing down the hill" is a pretty hot take in my view. Skills in one are useful in learning the other, but for one the gear is completely different. Ah, downhill skiing in that sense. I thought they meant, literally, going downhill on skis. 
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Jan 15, 2021 12:37
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LatwPIAT posted:Ah, downhill skiing in that sense. I thought they meant, literally, going downhill on skis. I meant gong downhill on skis faster then you could run or more importantly skiing without furs. I was exaggerating a bit, while i was in we did 1 day of a normal skiing course at the start of skiing training, and at the end after spending 2 days walking a circuitous route up a mountain we skied back down the normal way.
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Jan 15, 2021 13:02
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LatwPIAT posted:
No, just no. Not even close. The gear and skills are completely different. Next time you're in Colorado I can show you.
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Jan 15, 2021 16:35
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Cessna posted:No, just no. Not even close. The gear and skills are completely different. Yeah, I just misunderstood "downhill" to mean descent, rather than the alpine sport family. (I also suspect I'm used to somewhat hybrid forms of skiing, where people adopt Alpine/Telemark techniques to cross-country skis and use cross-country skis for recreational alpine downhill skiing. It's a slope, one way or another you're going to get to the bottom.  )Did you ever do the USMC winter course in Norway?
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Jan 15, 2021 18:14
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LatwPIAT posted:Did you ever do the USMC winter course in Norway? No, that's generally reserved for the 2nd MarDiv/Lejeune jarheads. In the FMF I was 1st/3rd MarDiv, specifically in a UDP company that bounced back and forth between Pendleton and Okinawa/Fuji. Edit: And, full disclosure, I've never skied, despite living in Colorado. I went straight to snowboarding, I'm no two-planker. My wife skis a lot, though, and she has different rigs for downhill and x-country. Cessna fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Jan 15, 2021 |
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Jan 15, 2021 18:53
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Does anyone have any good recommendations/readings/papers about the Bekaa valley turkey shoot / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mole_Cricket_19 ? Specifically anything more in depth about how the IAF managed to accomplished it?
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Jan 16, 2021 06:33
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Cessna posted:No, just no. Not even close. The gear and skills are completely different. I can ski and ski down hills, but I haven't ever done any downhill skiing as in the sport. We had to ski down some hills while loaded up with gear and carrying a RK95 when I was in the FDF (I was in Recon/Ranger company). We also did some live-fire exercises where we had to ski into position, shoot at targets and set up explosives. My hands shook so badly that it took me like three tries to lit the drat fuse. Warden fucked around with this message at 09:03 on Jan 16, 2021 |
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Jan 16, 2021 08:51
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While watching a klan dokkkumentary, I thought I'd look up a bit about The Birth of a Nation. According to Wikipedia there was also a sequel made, and oh boy!quote:The Fall of a Nation is a 1916 American silent drama film directed by Thomas Dixon Jr., and is a sequel to the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith. Dixon, Jr. attempted to cash in on the success of the controversial first film.[1] The Fall of a Nation is considered to be the first ever film sequel.[2] Based upon The Fall of a Nation, written by the director, the film is now considered lost.[3][4] It's the OG Red Dawn!  The film is now lost, but you can read the novel it's based on at Project Gutenberg. This is what the invasion of America would apparently look like: 
Nenonen fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Jan 17, 2021 20:34
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Cessna posted:No, just no. Not even close. The gear and skills are completely different. You should go check out some of the 10th Mountain Division huts sometime, if you haven't already. Some of the approaches to the huts follow the same routes used for training in the 1940's, and there's wartime graffiti carved into a number of trees. On this note modern gear is indeed very specialized but back in the 40's ski gear was much less differentiated by application. Through WWII and earlier the gear was leather boots, wood skis, and early cable telemark bindings, which would have been the state-of-the-art for flat, uphill, and downhill skiing. Speaking from experience, descending from New York mountain with a heavy pack is absolutely no joke even on modern equipment and doing it on those planks in poo poo boots would have been terrifying.
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Jan 17, 2021 21:25
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Here is a recent military histroy question. I been playing Cold Waters, a sub sim game about a fiction NATO v Soviet WW3. My question is how many torpedoes would take to sink a Sub? I am sure it depends on the warhead size and how close the explosion is but, the answer is one right?
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Jan 18, 2021 01:14
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ScottyJSno posted:Here is a recent military histroy question. However I think one good hit would likely be able to "mission kill" almost any submarine even if the submarine did not sink and could be repaired or limped back to base. Maybe you'd want two for one of those big Red Octobers, but even there you might well disable it long enough for Reagan to nuke the red away.
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Jan 18, 2021 01:19
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Considering the relative fragility of subs and the damage a modern torpedo does, I wouldnt put any money on a sub surviving a single torp hit anywhere on it. Any torpedo-indiced Damage control on a surface vessel is already a hair-raising scenario, damage control underwater....
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Jan 18, 2021 02:03
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As far as I'm aware, a torpedo against any oceangoing vessel is going to be a one-hit kill barring exceptional circumstances. Against ships, modern torpedoes are devastating, able to break the ship's back by exploding underneath the keel. And subs have no armor to speak of, plus explosions underwater are really nasty since water is uncompressible.
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Jan 18, 2021 02:20
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Doesn't the pressure hull function as armour? Ofc hull damage that a surface ship would barely care about would destroy a submarine in seconds.
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Jan 18, 2021 02:37
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Depends on the kind of torpedo being fired. Aerial torpedos are much smaller than ship/sub launched ones. One of the large subs with multiple pressure hulls might be able to survive a hit by one of those. Also are we discussing near miss or direct hit? *Might, as in the real answer is probably classified, but just educated guessing.
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Jan 18, 2021 03:24
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I've heard that the Germans didn't like American soldiers using shotguns, or British soldiers using serrated bayonets in WWI and that they threatened to execute anyone they captured using these weapons. Is that true, and were there any other weapons that were considered similarly criminal in WWI?
White Coke fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Jan 18, 2021 |
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Jan 18, 2021 03:44
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i'd imagine it unlikely, considering both sides were already actively employing mustard gas and other horrific, unimaginably gruesome ways of killing each other? the modern idea of the criminality of certain weapons seemed to come about afterwards; horror from the experience of gas attacks in the Great War lead to a series of international treaties banning the use of inhumane and cruel weapons like gas or landmines, and even then some major powers, such as the US, still to this day are not signatories. this sounds reminiscent of urban legends surrounding some weapons, like "using .50 caliber directly against personnel violates the Geneva Convention so shoot next to them" -type claims.
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Jan 18, 2021 03:59
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brains posted:horror from the experience of gas attacks in the Great War lead to a series of international treaties banning the use of inhumane and cruel weapons like gas or landmines, and even then some major powers, such as the US, still to this day are not signatories. I read an article that made the argument that these bans were really only possible because of the sheer impracticality of gas as a weapon of war. Conventional weapons are generally more effective (more damaging ton-for-ton, easier to manufacture/store/deploy) for dealing damage, and the problem with denying territory to your opponent (such as with gas or landmines) is that you also deny that territory to yourself, and you need to be able to maneuver just as much as they do. Signing treaties banning a weapon's use is easy when you don't ever plan to use the weapon anyway. If for some reason you do find a use for it, well, breaking the treaty is not very hard.
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Jan 18, 2021 04:13
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The bit about shotguns is a pretty common thing that I've seen various places, and there appears to be at least a bit of truth to it; https://www.historynet.com/the-1918-shotgun-protest.htm Also "sedated bayonets" is top tier.
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Jan 18, 2021 04:16
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The thing about shotguns is fairly well known and documented, as the Germans formally protested them in September 1918. The Wikipedia article on the Winchester 1897 has a quick summary of it. I think a book I have at home that I can check tomorrow which has more details on it, unless someone beats me to it.
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Jan 18, 2021 04:18
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'You are all jealous, the boche won't expect a bayonet coated in Ether in the gut!' I think he means serated.
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Jan 18, 2021 04:19
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LostCosmonaut posted:The bit about shotguns is a pretty common thing that I've seen various places, and there appears to be at least a bit of truth to it; https://www.historynet.com/the-1918-shotgun-protest.htm really interesting, and it seems like the main argument against it by the Germans was that shotguns were too efficient. the irony of protesting such a weapon was not lost on the people of the times: quote:The German protest elicited mostly derision from American newspapers. This response, from the New York Sun, was typical: “It is hardly necessary to point out how ridiculous is this protest from a government that has used in war every foul means known to a foul mind. The inventors of poison gas objected to the use of a clean bullet!” quote:The German government did not reply to Lansing’s letter, and no Americans are known to have been executed for carrying shotguns or for having shotgun ammunition. Fighting ended with Germany’s surrender on November 11, 1918—four months to the day after it discovered that Americans had brought shotguns into combat.
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Jan 18, 2021 05:11
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During WWII I know Italy had a weak industrial base, especially compared to Germany. Is there a reason Germany didn’t do more to equip their ally with decent guns and tanks? Even if Italy couldn’t build these themselves, having access to better equipment seems well worth the investment for Germany in getting better results in Africa and other fronts. Especially with how the US wasn’t shy about sharing with their allies. Was Mussolini insisting on using homegrown stuff? I’m reading The Day of Battle and the Italians were trying to defend Sicily with Renaults and seems like would have been in Germany’s best interest if they had Mark IIIs. Hyrax Attack! fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Jan 18, 2021 |
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Jan 18, 2021 05:55
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