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feedmegin posted:The Ethiopians had a bunch of modern weapons unlike the rest of Africa. They straight up slaughtered an invading Italian army attempting to colonise them in the 1890s. 'We have the Maxim gun and they do not' breaks down when they in fact do. Rastafarianism has what other religions don't have: Photographs of their messiah firing a machine gun.  Hyrax Attack! posted:Oh yeah I didn’t like it until played with a group that removed all bills below $20 and kept a fast pace. Land on a property, you buying yes no? Ok pass the dice. We finished in maybe 15 minutes and it was fun. What's better than that is the real rules state that if the person landing on the square does not wish to buy it, it is put up for auction so that all the other players have a chance to buy it. It makes the boring game go much faster still.
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Jan 19, 2021 00:26
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Similar problems with various fighter production - fighters produced and sitting because they didn't have instruments, or guns, or sights. The extreme distribution and workshop methods meant a lot of French equipment was pretty expensive. The S35, again, was a pretty great tank, but it cost almost a million francs. The Morane-Saulner MS406 being a case in point. Production officially began in mid-1938 but only 12 had been delivered to the AdA by the start of 1939. The rate increased from there, with just over 1000 406's being delivered before the fall of France. The lack of Hispano-Suiza engines was the big problem, but M-S simply lacked the capacity to build airframes at the required rate and a second production line was set up at the state-owned SNCAO plant. The dispersed and rushed production led to all sorts of quality and reliability issues with the fighters in service - the electro-pneumatic gun controls tended to lag, the cockpit canopy panels would fall out of the frame, the rudder hinges corroded, the screws holding the engine cowlings on failed, the radios frequently broke and the engines lasted half the expected time between rebuilds. In the end the French government started placing large orders for American Curtiss fighters, which were not only more readily available than the domestic product but generally superior. By 1940 the AdA had 1036 MS406s which claimed 296 kills against the Luftwaffe, while 'only' 316 Curtiss H75s claimed 230. Fewer than 40 Dewoitine D520s notched up 114 - that was a much better fighter than the Morane (and arguably also the Curtiss) but had also been blighted by lengthy dithering and politics over its specification and procurement, was hampered by a lack of high-power aero engines and also suffered big production problems.
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Jan 19, 2021 01:14
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WW2 Data The penultimate German explosives (to date) update is here! There's a trio of pistol, not rifle, grenades on deck, with two HE variants and one hollow charge grenade. How did they all function? What pistol was used to shoot these pistol grenades? How did one load the Hollow Charge Signal Pistol Grenade (Pz. W. K. 42 L. P.)? All that and more at the blog!
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Jan 19, 2021 02:55
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Tulip posted:The go-to book for premodern China when I was coming up was The Open Empire by Valerie Hansen, and I still see it recommended so I figure it's good. Heads up that it is basically a textbook and while it is a significant departure from traditional Chinese histories (i.e. has a lot more detail about social life at the expense of palace/intellectual history), it is still very much not a military history, if that's the subject you're really into. Thanks, I got the first edition of this because it was $1 used vs. $50 for the second edition that seems to be a current textbook. It only goes to 1600 but that's mostly what I care about anyway. I'm not looking for a military history in particular (and in fact I find social histories to be some of the more interesting histories I've read) so this seems perfect.
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Jan 19, 2021 02:59
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Interwar French procurement and production makes modern Canadian procurement look sensible. There was a lot of tension particularly in tank development that led to shifting requirements, but most French arms manufacturers besides the state arsenals were relatively small workshops, and couldn't scale production. The French automotive / tank industry was subsidized by the government through defense contracts, and so there were a lot of little places to keep afloat. The S35, for instance, had its turret made by a separate company from the body of the tank. This kind of distributed manufacturing can work OK, but in practice it meant that component bottlenecks were widely distributed and difficult to identify and solve. They had a really hard time synchronizing the production of turrets and hulls. Wasn't France's industry in general small workshops and family firms because of their demographic decline? The massive drop in birth rates they saw after Napoleon is one of the biggest course changes in history.
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Jan 19, 2021 04:50
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I don't know if characterizing French armament industry as "small workshops" brings the right impression, they had more tanks than the German in 1940 (3200 vs 2500 tanks, granted a huge chunk of them were interwar tanks, but the German also had pz 1 and pz 2 taking up over 50% of their tank force) and expected to have more than 10000 tanks by 1941, they were producing almost as many aircraft as the German were per month by 1940 with smaller population and industry base. The problem was, this was only achieved in 1940 after major reorganization so they were playing catch up.
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Jan 19, 2021 09:39
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Just played Steel Panthers where I could purchase a stand-alone "Anti-Tank platoon" of 8 pairs of anti-tank men with PTRD rifles, and it had me wondering, how did the Red Army in WW2 organize their anti-tank groups? I know the rifles were supplemented with men hurling molotovs, but how and where were these units organized in relation to the normal infantry squads and platoons?
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Jan 19, 2021 15:12
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Tias posted:Just played Steel Panthers where I could purchase a stand-alone "Anti-Tank platoon" of 8 pairs of anti-tank men with PTRD rifles, and it had me wondering, how did the Red Army in WW2 organize their anti-tank groups? I know the rifles were supplemented with men hurling molotovs, but how and where were these units organized in relation to the normal infantry squads and platoons? The soviets had ATR companies everywhere in their organizations, especially early in the war, and it varied a lot depending on the situation. Generally, at lower levels ATRs would be parceled out to squads, but they could sometimes be split into small tank hunter teams with HEAT grenades and molotovs as well as the ATR.
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Jan 19, 2021 15:53
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Tias posted:Just played Steel Panthers where I could purchase a stand-alone "Anti-Tank platoon" of 8 pairs of anti-tank men with PTRD rifles, and it had me wondering, how did the Red Army in WW2 organize their anti-tank groups? I know the rifles were supplemented with men hurling molotovs, but how and where were these units organized in relation to the normal infantry squads and platoons? Tank destroyer teams with Molotov cocktails were separate from antitank rifle squads. I did a video on the former some time ago, Military History Visualized had one on antitank rifles that I was involved with. https://youtu.be/3cYwF0nIjks https://youtu.be/vTusD4OiQZU
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Jan 19, 2021 19:53
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Xiahou Dun posted:Promise I’m not poo poo-posting I’m just in a rush and I promise I’ll make good on this in the evening but there are absolute poo poo tons of primary documents from soldiers in Chinese, I’ve read them, they just rarely get translated because “variety of geopolitical things and me vaguely gesturing at the Cultural Revolution.” It's a phrase I've heard often enough I never thought about the provenance. The translation is mine with an eye towards literary rather than literal (my chinese at this point is hot garbage though so if you think it's poo poo I'm not offended). I'd love to see more of that, like I said my understanding of Chinese military history pre-20th century is not as strong as it probably should be. Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Thanks, I got the first edition of this because it was $1 used vs. $50 for the second edition that seems to be a current textbook. It only goes to 1600 but that's mostly what I care about anyway. I'm not looking for a military history in particular (and in fact I find social histories to be some of the more interesting histories I've read) so this seems perfect. Glad to be of help! MazelTovCocktail posted:I swear I think we had the same Professor for Ancient and Modern Chinese history classes too? Ha, it's possible. He retired before I graduated so I had to get a new advisor.
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Jan 19, 2021 20:22
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Ensign Expendable posted:Tank destroyer teams with Molotov cocktails were separate from antitank rifle squads. I did a video on the former some time ago, Military History Visualized had one on antitank rifles that I was involved with. This is awesome, thanks a lot!
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Jan 19, 2021 20:23
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Tulip posted:I'd love to see more of that, like I said my understanding of Chinese military history pre-20th century is not as strong as it probably should be. Me too. One of the things that really interests me about Chinese and Indian military history is that they seem to have had problems setting up local supplies of horses so they had to import them from abroad, usually from the people who'd also raid and invade them.
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Jan 19, 2021 21:49
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Wait, did the red army formally use Molotov cocktails as antitank weapons? I always figured they were a field-expedient kind of thing.
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Jan 20, 2021 02:26
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MrYenko posted:Wait, did the red army formally use Molotov cocktails as antitank weapons? I always figured they were a field-expedient kind of thing. Nope, they were mass produced at factories and there were manuals and everything.
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Jan 20, 2021 02:37
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T-34-85M Queue: Myths of Soviet tank building: interbellum tanks, Light Tank M24, German anti-tank rifles, PT-76 modernizations, ISU-122 front line impressions, German additional tank protection (zimmerit, schurzen, track links), Winter and swamp tracks, Paper light tank destroyers, Allied intel on the Maus , Summary of French interbellum tank development, Medium Tank T20, Medium Tank T23, Myths of Soviet tank building, GMC M10, Tiger II predecessors, Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf.H-J,IS-6, SU-101/SU-102/Uralmash-1, Centurion Mk.I, SU-100 front line impressions, IS-2 front line impressions, Myths of Soviet tank building: early Great Patriotic War, Influence of the T-34 on German tank building, Medium Tank T25, Heavy Tank T26/T26E1/T26E3, Career of Harry Knox, GMC M36, Geschützwagen Tiger für 17cm K72 (Sf), Early Early Soviet tank development (MS-1, AN Teplokhod), Career of Semyon Aleksandrovich Ginzburg, AT-1, Object 140, SU-76 frontline impressions, Creation of the IS-3, IS-6, SU-5, Myths of Soviet tank building: 1943-44, IS-2 post-war modifications, Myths of Soviet tank building: end of the Great Patriotic War, Medium Tank T6, RPG-1, Lahti L-39, T-80 T-62 T-64 T-72A comparative trials, American tank building plans post-war, German tanks for 1946, HMC M7 Priest, GMC M12, GMC M40/M43, ISU-152, AMR 35 ZT, Soviet post-war tank building plans, T-100Y and SU-14-1, Object 430, Pz.Kpfw.35(t), T-60 tanks in combat, SU-76M modernizations, Panhard 178, 15 cm sFH 13/1 (Sf), 43M Zrínyi Available for request (others' articles):  Shashmurin's career BT-7M/A-8 trials Voroshilovets tractor trials T-55 underwater driving equipment  Light Tank T37 Light Tank T41 Medium Tank M46 Modernization of the M48 to the M60 standard  Pre-war and early war British tank building  Oerlikon and Solothurn anti-tank rifles German tank building trends at the end of WW2 Pz.Kpfw.III/IV Evolution of German tank observation devices E-50 and E-75 development
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Jan 20, 2021 03:52
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Anyone have a good overview of the gyrojet rifle?
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Jan 20, 2021 03:58
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Ensign Expendable posted:Nope, they were mass produced at factories and there were manuals and everything. What does the WW2 Soviet version of a Molotov cocktail look like? My mental picture of one looks like a bottle of gasoline/high content alcohol with a flaming rag sticking out of the top.
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Jan 20, 2021 05:39
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IIRC the Finns made a self-igniting version with pyrophoric material inside, so you could skip the flaming rag. You also want to mix the fuel with something heavy (motor oil, tar, etc) so it sits around as a flaming puddle rather than flashing off as an impressive but useless fireball.
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Jan 20, 2021 05:44
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goatsestretchgoals posted:What does the WW2 Soviet version of a Molotov cocktail look like? My mental picture of one looks like a bottle of gasoline/high content alcohol with a flaming rag sticking out of the top. I cover the different types here: http://www.tankarchives.ca/2017/11/molotov-cocktails.html There are types that are a bottle of flammable liquid (not gasoline) with a source of ignition (match or mechanical device) tied to the side. There is a more advanced variant that is simply fluid that ignites when it touches air. More convenient for the thrower, but absolute hell to transport and a danger to modern battlefield archeologists since there are intact bottles still in the ground.
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Jan 20, 2021 05:46
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Why did they issue each soldier with a mix of fuel types (one KS and two #1 or #3)?
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Jan 20, 2021 06:09
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The Lone Badger posted:Why did they issue each soldier with a mix of fuel types (one KS and two #1 or #3)? I never read any reason for this, unfortunately.
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Jan 20, 2021 06:12
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The Lone Badger posted:IIRC the Finns made a self-igniting version with pyrophoric material inside, so you could skip the flaming rag. Finnish molotovs used two storm matches tied to the side (the other was a spare). Flaming rags were never used, that would be really inconvenient to handle in action. The original intent was to use them for blinding tanks with smoke by splashing them at the front, then it was found out that the engine intakes in T-26 and T-28 were really accessible. Later tanks were better protected so the blinding effect was still practised later, but effectively fell out of use as better weaponry became available. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Jan 20, 2021 |
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Jan 20, 2021 08:13
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My guess: you use the KS bottle as an ambush weapon because it self-ignites. Once there is some flames and smoke on/around the target it becomes safer to light the match on your other bottles and throw them?
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Jan 20, 2021 08:25
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Lawman 0 posted:Anyone have a good overview of the gyrojet rifle? Forgotten Weapons has a video each about the pistol and rifle/carbine versions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3IiWjdbUZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98c2t_uK5Uo
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Jan 20, 2021 15:22
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I committed a.. thing. It's more a romp through battle RPG than an exercise in historical authenticity, so I can't promise you won't hate it.
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Jan 20, 2021 17:14
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Nenonen posted:The original intent was to use them for blinding tanks with smoke by splashing them at the front, then it was found out that the engine intakes in T-26 and T-28 were really accessible. Later tanks were better protected so the blinding effect was still practised later, but effectively fell out of use as better weaponry became available. I meant to ask this, how does one disable/kill a tank with a Molotov? Using them as makeshift smoke grenades makes sense. When you say the engine intakes were accessible, I'm picturing a guy physically running up to the tank, opening a hatch, and tossing the Molotov in. Which sounds kind of insane on its face, but I'm learning that anti-tank warfare is full of "expect the unexpected" scenarios...
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Jan 20, 2021 17:28
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EggsAisle posted:I meant to ask this, how does one disable/kill a tank with a Molotov? Using them as makeshift smoke grenades makes sense. When you say the engine intakes were accessible, I'm picturing a guy physically running up to the tank, opening a hatch, and tossing the Molotov in. Which sounds kind of insane on its face, but I'm learning that anti-tank warfare is full of "expect the unexpected" scenarios... Tank engines breathe air; they need an intake and an exhaust just like a car. Even if they're covered or protected they can't be airtight. If you get burning gasoline (or whatever the Molotov has) in, there's a pretty decent chance of lighting the engine/fuel/tank on fire, which is bad for the tank and its crew.
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Jan 20, 2021 17:33
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Cessna posted:Tank engines breathe air; they need an intake and an exhaust just like a car. Even if they're covered or protected they can't be airtight. To expand on this, even if it doesn't light poo poo on fire on the inside, tank engines need oxygen to combust their own fuel. If you've got a fire burning on the air intake it's going to be very oxygen-poor, which can stall the engine. My understanding is that fixing this is something that can require people to get out of the vehicle, which if you're in a situation where enemy soldiers are close enough to be lobbing molotovs is a very bad idea. Even if the tank and crew are basically fine it can still immobilize it, which may very well be good enough for the immediate situation.
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Jan 20, 2021 17:41
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AIP tanks when
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Jan 20, 2021 17:46
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Cessna posted:Tank engines breathe air; they need an intake and an exhaust just like a car. Even if they're covered or protected they can't be airtight. I take it modern MBTs are better protected, or can you immobilize an Abrams if you hit it with a Molotov in just the right spot?
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Jan 20, 2021 18:10
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Solaris 2.0 posted:I take it modern MBTs are better protected, or can you immobilize an Abrams if you hit it with a Molotov in just the right spot? It's not really possible to engineer your way out of basic chemistry and thermodynamics. Internal combustion engines need oxidizer and that means either from the atmosphere or from an internal source, and there are VERY good reasons you do not want compressed strong oxidizers inside your tank in any significant quantity, so if you can deprive the atmosphere of oxygen then that engine is going to fail.
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Jan 20, 2021 18:16
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TAOFLEDERMAUS also did a video shooting some Gyrojets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJAXpyt8-oQ
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Jan 20, 2021 18:28
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I saw a video that mentioned that China's internal airlines are bad because most of their airspace is military-controlled so that the civilian airlines only have relatively narrow corridors that they have to spend a lot of time waiting for them to clear of traffic. So what does the Chinese military need with all that airspace? If it's not around the borders it doesn't seem like it's actively needed for defense.
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Jan 20, 2021 18:35
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SlothfulCobra posted:I saw a video that mentioned that China's internal airlines are bad because most of their airspace is military-controlled so that the civilian airlines only have relatively narrow corridors that they have to spend a lot of time waiting for them to clear of traffic. They don't want people to overfly their bases I assume. For example there's stuff like second-strike ICBMs that they could be paranoid about people spotting.
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Jan 20, 2021 18:46
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Fangz posted:They don't want people to overfly their bases I assume. For example there's stuff like second-strike ICBMs that they could be paranoid about people spotting. Or over their camps.
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Jan 20, 2021 19:02
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Do modern National Guard units have any direct lineage/connection to the various state regiments that fought the civil war? Has there been a 20th Maine or w/e in existed since 186x or did those regiments all get disbanded before the idea of the National Guard came around? This has made me realize I have no idea when the National Guard was even created.
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Jan 20, 2021 19:13
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Solaris 2.0 posted:I take it modern MBTs are better protected, or can you immobilize an Abrams if you hit it with a Molotov in just the right spot? You could, in theory, because again, tanks have engines that require air. Put enough burning liquid in there and things will go badly for the tank. You are vastly more likely to die in the process of attempting this than the tank.
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Jan 20, 2021 19:24
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ChubbyChecker posted:Or over their camps. It's easy enough to see the camps by satellite, the significance of bases is that overflights could give more up to date and detailed data on the deployments of assets which could be militarily sensitive. The camps are pretty out of the way anyway, AIUI.
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Jan 20, 2021 19:28
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Do modern National Guard units have any direct lineage/connection to the various state regiments that fought the civil war? Has there been a 20th Maine or w/e in existed since 186x or did those regiments all get disbanded before the idea of the National Guard came around? This has made me realize I have no idea when the National Guard was even created. A lot of them do! One good example off the top of my head is that most famous of Union regiments, the 69th New York of the ACW's Irish Brigade. They're even still flagged as the 69th. The National Guard claims its lineage all the way back to the earliest colonial militias, so pretty much straight back to the early 17th century. There's still a handful of units with continuous flags back to the colonial era. Civil War volunteer regiments were a bit different -- they were raised by states specifically as regiments of volunteers, then sent off to fight for the federal army. Some had backgrounds as NG/militia units, but it was a slightly different thing. The 69th is a good example: it existed as a militia unit before the war, but was activated and called up as a volunteer regiment right after things kicked off.
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Jan 20, 2021 19:37
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Do modern National Guard units have any direct lineage/connection to the various state regiments that fought the civil war? Yes, some do. And some go back even further: Wikipedia link.
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Jan 20, 2021 19:38
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