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A joke my WWII professor told: What's the difference between German and French paratroopers? The Germans are hunters, the French are the hunted.
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Jan 24, 2015 22:24
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Smoking Crow posted:A joke my WWII professor told: I thought the joke was they were the same guys.
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Jan 24, 2015 22:41
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vintagepurple posted:EDIT: on an unrelated note, how did fraternization go in premodern wars? It seems like it'd be a lot more likely for groups of enemy combatants to accidentally meet up in the days before front-lines and total war. Like, two armies are maneuvering around in campaign, not quite ready to give battle. It seems like some parties of soldiers foraging or scouting or what-have-you might blunder into eachother, and it's not likely they'll feel the seething hatred a russian would feel for a german, for example. Hell, they might be mercs from the same area working for opposing sides. Do they fight or is it more friendly? It goes decently well, with a single exception, which is that denying forage to your enemy is a pretty important strategy so sometimes those little groups have not "blundered into eachother" at all. If they simply meet, things are fine. The rank and file barely care about regional or religious differences--if today's enemy might be tomorrow's coworker, why should we antagonize one another needlessly? They may even have the same common enemy, as in that English account I posted a long time ago, where Imperialists and English in the service of the King of Sweden got pinned down in the same little wood by a bunch of peasants with snaphances and a grievance. The high officers often care about the agendas of the people they're with, but they have this thing where they meet each other courteously when they're not killing each other. It's chivalric, but I'm not sure whether it's an organic holdover from earlier times or a self-conscious imitation of the books they're all reading. For instance, when Gustavus Adolphus heard Tilly had been wounded he sent him his own surgeon, which is why among Tilly's last words were "Your king is truly a noble knight." (Wounded--by a cannonball in some reports, by "field debris" in others--at some pathetic river crossing, only died fifteen days later.) Obsidio Bredana describes fraternization by the rank and file on each side, which would have been made easier by the part where there are Dutch people on both sides. There's even a Nassau in Spinola's service, which confused me no end when I first read the book. Edit: The people I study are, by modern standards, shockingly callous...but nationalism really did a number on the natural human desire not to be a dick when you don't have to. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 24, 2015 23:22
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I've started reading Castles of Steel and am enjoying it quite a lot after Shattered Sword. It's much broader in focus and pays significantly more attention to the personality and history of the admirals and civilian leaders involved, but it's a good read. Von Spee's squadron sounds ready-made for a modern Hollywood movie, complete with hope spot at Coronel and the tragic but inevitable end at the Falklands.
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Jan 24, 2015 23:36
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Nenonen posted:Why don't they just build an aircraft that combines the qualities of F-35 and Osprey? A rock? A rock that kills marines?
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Jan 24, 2015 23:52
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echopapa posted:If you’re going to do a sci-fi combat airdrop, you might as well do it like this. What the gently caress is this?
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Jan 24, 2015 23:59
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Ace Rimmer. What a guy!
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Jan 25, 2015 00:02
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SeanBeansShako posted:Ace Rimmer. More usefully, a .gif from Red Dwarf. If you like British humor in your sic-fi you'll love it. e: what a guy !
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Jan 25, 2015 00:05
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SeanBeansShako posted:Ace Rimmer.
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Jan 25, 2015 00:05
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Nenonen posted:Why don't they just build an aircraft that combines the qualities of F-35 and Osprey? The Hague Conventions wouldn't allow it. Even pilots are humans.
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Jan 25, 2015 00:20
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vintagepurple posted:Is there a diagram or something of how trench-lines were organized, or how you'd go about taking one? I can picture the basic cinematic setup of opposing trenches with wire between and all, but reading actual accounts portray a much more extensive battlefield. Specifically: This is the image that usually stands for the platonic ideal of a British trench system, from an infantry training manual of March 1916.  X shapes are barbed wire entanglements. In January 1915 the line is very much only contiguous in theory; the engineers on both sides are working flat out to connect up the line left and right, at the same time as they're also trying to build proper reserve lines and communications, and put more wire out, and dig dugouts, and pump all the sodding water out, and etc. And then the enemy launches a local attack, and you probably drive them off again and get your trench back, but the trenches and wire have been knocked to hell by shells and Minenwerfer bombs... IIRC by about mid-1915 British defensive doctrine was changing from "keep the fire trench full" towards only having sentries there (except for two hours each day, one at dawn and one at dusk, when everyone was brought up and standing ready to repel the enemy), with the bulk of the front-line battalion back either in a supervision line or a support line. Dugouts for the blokes were generally kept in the supervision and support lines - especially in areas where No Man's Land was wider than about 300 yards, you'd start off putting them in the fire trench, then sap forward, link up the saps into a new fire trench, and your old fire trench is now a support line. Officers' dugouts and things like aid posts were often dug into communications trenches. quote:There's also accounts of *defenders* fighting not in their trenches but in prepared positions further forward, in shell holes and such. And again talk of moving forward to your firing position. Was it doctrine to move out forward if possible rather than fighting directly from the trenches? It seems logical to me- even if you win the fight you might end up with bodies in your living space, stuff destroyed or broken. You'd rather meet them further up if you could. The other value from fighting from forward outposts is that if they're camouflaged and the enemy doesn't realise they're there, you hide a few machine guns in, they advance around you, and you can then pop up to enfilade them. quote:And finally, I really can't picture the actual trench assault. I imagine the attackers aren't leaping in piecemeal but gathering somewhere near the trench where they're in cover, say a crater, and making the final assault in groups. How did squads co-ordinate while in no-man's land? This depends almost entirely on who you are and when you're going in. To begin with, you want to get as close as possible while still being under cover, so during the nights you start sapping forward, ideally to within 100 yards or so of the enemy if you're not there already. Probably you have some outposts that can be extended, and they become your jumping-off points, where the blokes will gather (as quietly as possible, no mean feat even when you're lucky enough to be in light battle order) before attacking. Assuming you're in the BEF: earlier in the war when artillery techniques aren't so subtle, you'll probably go over the top and then advance in alternate rushes. (At some point you may also come under enemy fire because the barrage has lifted off the enemy fire trench and gone somewhere else.) One squad goes 50 yards, takes cover and lays down covering rifle fire while another squad advances 50 yards past them, repeat until you're in the enemy trench and can set about them. (You know where the cover is because of aerial photography and patrols going out at night to find the best routes.) Hopefully your own machine-guns, if they don't have the advantage of height (which they probably don't) will have a range card so they can provide indirect covering fire into the enemy trenches. By mid-1915, the objective of the rushes will not be to get everyone in the trench straight away, it'll be to get your bomber squads (this is the contemporary British word for a bloke who goes forward toting huge bags of grenades, because the Grenadier Guards are really prissy about who gets to be called a "grenadier"; also why e.g. the "Mills bomb" is called that and not a "Mills grenade") close enough so that they can throw their bombs in. Then everyone gets in the enemy fire trench to cover the bombers while they throw bombs down all the dugouts, and assuming that all goes well you can then try to push forward to your actual objective, which depends on the situation. (This is also why trenches are dug zig-zag fashion, to contain the explosion when an enemy throws something explosive into it, and to stop them enfilading you when they get themselves into it.) If you've done that, you then have a look around and try to work out what the hell else is going on while you stand by for a counter-attack. Later in the war, by 1917 and 1918, crossing No Man's Land gets easier because (among many other things) the artillery doctrine starts shifting back from complete destruction of the enemy to just suppression of the enemy. You'll get a short hurricane bombardment to cut the wire followed by a creeping barrage, which will move forwards at something like 50 or 100 yards every minute, and you follow behind as close as possible. This is why one of the more unfair jokes in Blackadder is the one where he asks Melchett "Does the plan involve getting out of our trenches and walking very slowly towards the enemy?" You walk so you don't run into the back of your own barrage, or slip and fall and stab yourself with your own bayonet, or drown in a flooded shell-hole. It's safe to walk because the line you're walking towards is getting hammered by the barrage, so the enemy is still down in the dugouts taking shelter. (Barrages will probably lift a few times for a few minutes at a time before zero hour; this tempts the enemy to come up, then the barrage restarts and they get shelled again - it also means that when the barrage finally lifts for good, they won't come up immediately.) You walk up, get in the trench before the enemy can get out of their dugouts, and then the bombers start throwing explosive gifts down. (Often a Tommy will be able to just yell "Hands up, Fritz!" and they'll all come up calling "Kamerad" and take themselves off to the rear as prisoners.) If you're really in the pink, you can do all this while being supported by tanks, and you probably now have plenty of Lewis machine-guns and Stokes mortars that you can carry forward to set up a proper defence. quote:How do you go about retreating from a trench? Do you go through perpendicular communication trenches or do you clamber out and go overland? If it's your own trench, you can probably retire down the communications trench to the next line, unless the enemy has dropped a shell in it or blown up a mine underneath it. Otherwise you have to get out and do a runner until you find another hole. If you can't do either, then it may well be that for you Tommy, der var iss over! quote:And how do the attackers secure their position? I'm picturing a situation where platoons are squashed end-to-end from shore to Switzerland. How do you go about securing the bits of trench on either side of the position you've taken? You have two worries - what's in front of you, and what's on either side of you. If your flank is open, the enemy can just walk down the trenches to that side and then attack from two (or three, if it's really not your day) sides at once. (Of course, at some point your attack has to end and a unit will move forward knowing they'll have to hold the line two ways for a while.) Ideally you push so far forward that you've taken an entire trench system. (This is very difficult.) More likely you end up at an intermediate point which has enemy communication trenches running into it from front and rear, so you grab any old crap that's lying around and use it to barricade the trench. (If you're lucky, a bloke turns up with some wood or some rolls of barbed wire that you can use.) If either of your flanks are in air, you do the same thing to stop up the trenches to your flank. Once you're immediately secure in this way, the other thing you need to do is turn the trench round. Trenches are one-way things with a front and a back. Here's a cross-section.  Bolt-holes are often referred to by British sources as "funk-holes", as in, the place you hide when you're in a funk. (As far as I know, nobody ever played slap bass in them.) They're little scrapes big enough to hold a couple of blokes who are being shelled. Wherever possible, you dig funk-holes and dugouts into the parapet, not the parados. This stops explosives falling into the trench and right down the dugout stairs. (German dugouts often had a staircase with one or more right-angle turns and a landing to catch anything chucked down the stairs by some miscreant.) So you now need to shift sandbags around, build a new fire-step on the other side of the trench so you can fire out of it, repair the damage that your barrage has just caused, get the wire sorted out, etc and anon... quote:Is the image of being able to walk the frontline, in a trench, from end to end false? I'm not clear on whether a trench line had ends or whether it was a continuous mass, and I've never been able to picture taking one bit of front without the rest following- you've got this trench but a thousand yards down there's more trench where the attack failed- those guys are still in the same trench as you, no? In theory, the line by winter 1915 is completely contiguous and you can walk from Nieuport to the Swiss border and never have to come out of a trench. Rivers happen, though. So do brooks and streams. They have to be bridged somehow. And on your walk it's almost certain that somewhere you'll arrive at a point that's just been attacked, or had lots of shells dropped on it, or a mine blown under it, and there's a stretch where the trenches have collapsed or turned into a crater. quote:It seems like a doomed proposition from the word go. You take the trench opposite your position but you're now in a trench with enemies on either side shooting down the trench at you, potentially. So you literally can't push the front up unless you push the *entire* front up. This was the million-franc question that basically took everyone the better part of the war to successfully answer - what's the optimal width of an attack? Too narrow, and you can only physically get so many blokes and shells into the small space you're advancing into, which limits how far forward you can go before the enemy just cuts off the base of the re-entrant and surrounds you. Too wide, and you can't get enough power at any given point to go forwards. (The answer is, it depends what you're trying to do and when in the war you're trying to do it. Bite and hold is fine to shove the enemy off one hill, but marching to the pre-war borders one hill at a time is not a feasible strategy for winning the war.) Right, now it's time to write about today before it turns into yesterday... Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 00:21
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Hogge Wild posted:The Hague Conventions wouldn't allow it. Even pilots are humans. Thank you. Yes, we deserve basic human rights. (Unlike Marines)
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Jan 25, 2015 01:09
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Trin Tragula posted:In theory, the line by winter 1915 is completely contiguous and you can walk from Nieuport to the Swiss border and never have to come out of a trench. Rivers happen, though. So do brooks and streams. They have to be bridged somehow. And on your walk it's almost certain that somewhere you'll arrive at a point that's just been attacked, or had lots of shells dropped on it, or a mine blown under it, and there's a stretch where the trenches have collapsed or turned into a crater.
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Jan 25, 2015 01:12
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tonberrytoby posted:Are rivers bad places to attack or good places? And why?
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Jan 25, 2015 01:43
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You may have killed half my men and taken half my artillery, but I've got all of your pontoon botes. Me's a winner.
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Jan 25, 2015 01:47
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Having a trench line go from the channel to the border and not having to leave it sounds like a really cool sort of mega project.
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Jan 25, 2015 01:48
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tonberrytoby posted:Are rivers bad places to attack or good places? And why? Practically speaking its hard to cross rivers, most real rivers (not creeks or streams) are usually either wide, fast flowing, or deep. These attributes make it disadvantageous when crossing since its such a struggle to do. Bridges make rivers easy to cross but are narrow places that can be easily destroyed or reinforced to prevent crossings. Crossing a ford or shallow stretch is hard when you are carrying fighting equipment, and if you get caught crossing you have no cover, no easy way to retreat (its hard moving through water) and hard to advance. On the plus side if you can surmount these obstacles by hoping that the enemy doesn't patrol its rivers or river crossings you can attack from an "impossible" direction and have surprise on your side.
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Jan 25, 2015 01:52
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Chillyrabbit posted:Bridges make rivers easy to cross but are narrow places that can be easily destroyed or reinforced to prevent crossings. Crossing a ford or shallow stretch is hard when you are carrying fighting equipment, and if you get caught crossing you have no cover, no easy way to retreat (its hard moving through water) and hard to advance.
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Jan 25, 2015 01:54
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Huh, did not know about the British carrier strike on Germany during WW1. Seaplane carrier strike, targeting a German zeppelin base, but I didn't know about the British code-breaking, either. Interesting stuff about a side of WW1 that I knew little about beyond the British defeating the Germans at Jutland.
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Jan 25, 2015 01:58
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Raenir Salazar posted:Having a trench line go from the channel to the border and not having to leave it sounds like a really cool sort of mega project. A single barbed wire going through that length, concertina style so it's several times the geographic distance. You don't weld pieces together, there's a metal works at the Swiss border that is making the wire and millions of men are carrying it north in shifts night and day.
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Jan 25, 2015 02:01
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Nenonen posted:A single barbed wire going through that length, concertina style so it's several times the geographic distance. You don't weld pieces together, there's a metal works at the Swiss border that is making the wire and millions of men are carrying it north in shifts night and day. 
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Jan 25, 2015 02:05
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100 Years Ago John Chilembwe does something that might make even the most rabid Empire haters of today sit up and go "steady on there, mate". The German government is busy painting Britain as a nation not afraid to use starvation tactics against an enemy, what with those concentration camps they used against the Boers and everything. And the Battle of Dogger Bank goes off; once again, the opposing naval forces appear to have gone to battle with their shoelaces tied together. tonberrytoby posted:Are rivers bad places to attack or good places? And why? Trying to attack over a river is shite, for pretty obvious reasons; the blokes all have to come across a really narrow space which is easily shot at, and of course all the bridges have been blown up so now they have to build their own. Except as soon as the enemy sees a pontoon bridge appearing, every gun in firing distance is going to deliver some ordnance, and then everywhere else in the general vicinity is going to get some hate too on general principle. There's a reason you get a 50% penalty in Civ for doing it. Trying to attack a trench at a point where a watercourse splits it in two is less effective than it might seem on first thought. (It may well be a useful point of entry for raids, though.) The trench is built as far onto the bank as possible without falling in the water. If it's only narrow, you can probably build a barrier across with some time and ingenuity. You can only send so many blokes against the end of the trench before they start tripping over each other, and while they come across they've got the same problems as anyone else coming through No Man's Land. As far as I know nobody got sufficiently desperate to put their blokes on rafts and float them into the middle of a trench system, which if nothing else is a highly amusing thought. (I'm sure Winston Churchill would have tried it if there were any water near Plugstreet.) If it's only a small brook or stream, it wasn't unknown for engineers to try to dam it and then divert its course somewhere else so the bed would run dry and they could fill in the gap. This is possibly one of the things Alex Letyford was trying to do at the start of the month to keep the water out of his trenches. Raenir Salazar posted:Having a trench line go from the channel to the border and not having to leave it sounds like a really cool sort of mega project. The phrase "mega project" makes me wonder how feasible it would be to try this in Dwarf Fortress? Set up shop near a goblin settlement and begin trench warfare...
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Jan 25, 2015 02:12
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Did the different belligerents have different styles of trenches, or did the British, Germans, French, et al all converge on the same general trench philosophy? EDIT: Trin Tragula posted:
It is a pretty Good Idea, isn't it? Empress Theonora fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 02:19
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Rincewind posted:Did the different belligerents have different styles of trenches, or did the British, Germans, French, et al all converge on the same general trench philosophy? The Germans famously had excellent trenches, and the British and French lovely ones. The Germans tended to build their trenches on well sited, *dry* locations, while the allies, intend on claiming every last inch of their territory, would end up digging in on floodplains, and end up with trenches half full of mud. Nice trench.  lovely trench. 
Fangz fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 02:51
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xthetenth posted:I thought the joke was they were the same guys. in 20 years
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Jan 25, 2015 03:14
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HEY GAL posted:They're terrible places to have at your back because it'll gently caress up your retreat. Also bridging them or finding a ford is a lot of work. I remember Caesar fought the (Germans?) with the river at his back so that his troops would not have anywhere to retreat.
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Jan 25, 2015 03:19
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Castles of Steel is making me feel downright sorry for the German navy. They keep trying so very goddamn hard, but between defensively-minded German leadership at the highest levels, enormous British successes in codebreaking, superior British naval leadership, and very streaky luck, the only German successes have been isolated cases against elderly British ships suffering from very poor command and control decisions, plus the Emden. The book has to call it a lucky success when the Germans blunder into a British trap and lose a heavy cruiser in exchange for crippling one British battle cruiser.
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Jan 25, 2015 03:28
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Everyone loves pulling off that double-envelopment these days, but it really seems like commanders were always concerned about the morale of their men that of the enemy. Being surrounded forces you to fight to the last, whereas getting routed means you get pursued and hacked down by cavalry. I remember hearing of Chinese and Korean commanders putting their backs against a river to galvanise their forces. Meanwhile, Mongols were known to mostly surround an enemy, leave a weak spot in their line for their enemy to break through, and then slowly harry them down, never giving an opportunity to reform up,
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Jan 25, 2015 03:38
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Animal posted:I remember Caesar fought the (Germans?) with the river at his back so that his troops would not have anywhere to retreat.
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Jan 25, 2015 03:53
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Animal posted:Thank you. Yes, we deserve basic human rights. By the time any F-35 related project takes off, you'd already be retired!
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Jan 25, 2015 04:40
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Phobophilia posted:Everyone loves pulling off that double-envelopment these days, but it really seems like commanders were always concerned about the morale of their men that of the enemy. Being surrounded forces you to fight to the last, whereas getting routed means you get pursued and hacked down by cavalry. Art of War mentions this as well, always leave an opening so they'll retreat out and they won't fight to the last man. Rokosovssky I've heard was fond of this as well. I think the new emphasis on encirclements came about because high command really wants to make sure those divisions stay destroyed despite the additional cost to you.
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Jan 25, 2015 05:03
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Modern deep battle or air/land battle concepts try to encircle, but the pockets are miles across, like you see in WW2. No individual solder can look around and say "Oh God, we're trapped." In Hey Gal's period you could stand in one place and see every combatant for both sides at once, at least if there wasn't too much smoke or weather.
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Jan 25, 2015 05:16
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I think encirclements are in vogue these days due to the increased reliance on having supply lines. An encircled force can no longer launch artillery shells with impunity, whereas the encircler can.
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Jan 25, 2015 05:18
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Things have changed since the early modern period in terms of where the political will to fight and warmaking capabilities reside that mean destroying the enemy is much more of a priority in the 20th-21st century. Granted, it may well be a shibboleth in practical terms.
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Jan 25, 2015 05:52
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I wonder if it has something to do with the rules of war. Back in the day, surrounded soldiers know they are dead if they fall into the hands of the enemy. More modern armies at least believe they have the option of giving up and being treated humanely, and hence in general do not fight to the last drop of blood.
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Jan 25, 2015 06:25
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Fangz posted:I wonder if it has something to do with the rules of war. Back in the day, surrounded soldiers know they are dead if they fall into the hands of the enemy. More modern armies at least believe they have the option of giving up and being treated humanely, and hence in general do not fight to the last drop of blood. The French were weirded out severely when the Spanish refused to surrender at Rocroi, and even then the Spanish ended up surrendering on terms. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 06:32
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Tevery Best posted:I've got something that might interest you. I translated a minor part of Jozef Pilsudski's account of the 1920 war, wherein he harps about how much he hates trenches. This guy is a really good writer or the guy who translated him his either or perhaps even both. The start of that third paragraph is kinda evocative of Ambrose Bierce.
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Jan 25, 2015 07:35
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Frostwerks posted:This guy is a really good writer or the guy who translated him his either or perhaps even both. The start of that third paragraph is kinda evocative of Ambrose Bierce.
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Jan 25, 2015 07:49
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Rincewind posted:Did the different belligerents have different styles of trenches, or did the British, Germans, French, et al all converge on the same general trench philosophy? The Germans have the luxury of choosing the ground. When they first fall back from the Marne, and later during the fall-back to the new Hindenburg Line, they can choose their positions for such qualities as having commanding fields of fire and such. This is often the high ground, and so their trenches are usually better sited because of this. The British and French have two other drawbacks. For one, it takes their respective high commands a while to acknowledge that they're going to be sitting in these things for a while, and they're concerned about breeding a defensive mentality amongst their troops who are going to be attacking and for real breaking through any day now, so they neglect defensive doctrine, which includes optimizing your trench system, even once the line stretches to the sea. Secondly, for all that, they are the attackers, so they don't get to practice good defense against major offensives, since the Germans don't really launch a lot of offensives against Allied trench lines. The British and French, on the other hand, are attacking all the time and giving the Germans a hell of a lot of practice at learning how best to build your defenses and fine-tune the accompanying doctrine.
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Jan 25, 2015 08:05
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HEY GAL posted:The guy who translated him is Tevery Best. Well hat's off to whoever.
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Jan 25, 2015 08:19
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