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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Paper cartridges were standardized issue for everyone from the early 1700s and had been around since the mid 1500s. Casting bullets by hand is an inefficient waste of time. Why ship 12 lbs of lead to get 10 lbs of shot of dubious quality when you can just ship 10 lbs of mass produced shot? Plus, then you are either relying on your soldiers to measure powder for each shot (lmao) or make paper cartridges (also lmao, since cartridge manufacture is a fairly involved and specialized process) Also, the bullets were standardized to the desired oversize for the bore. Black powder is hideously dirty and rapidly clogs up the barrel with byproducts of the lovely combustion, but soldiers in battle don't exactly have time to swab it out every few shots. So rather than deal with their perfectly sized bullets not fitting down the barrel, they would manufacture a few hundredths of an inch oversized so they could be quickly shoved down a dirty barrel. The downside is that oversized bullets obviously make the gun quite inaccurate, hence the infamous "100 yards or less" accuracy of the typical 18th century musket.
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Feb 13, 2015 14:50
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chitoryu12 posted:Also, the bullets were standardized to the desired oversize for the bore. Black powder is hideously dirty and rapidly clogs up the barrel with byproducts of the lovely combustion, but soldiers in battle don't exactly have time to swab it out every few shots. So rather than deal with their perfectly sized bullets not fitting down the barrel, they would manufacture a few hundredths of an inch oversized so they could be quickly shoved down a dirty barrel. The downside is that oversized bullets obviously make the gun quite inaccurate, hence the infamous "100 yards or less" accuracy of the typical 18th century musket. You mean undersized?
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Feb 13, 2015 14:59
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In The Meeting Place Cannot be Changed a perpetrator tears up a newspaper to use as wadding for hunting rifle / shotgun. The story is set after the Great Patriotic War, so that gun would have to be... well, 20th century, at least. Still, I've never heard of 20th century guns that require wadding that isn't built into the cartridge.
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Feb 13, 2015 15:12
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Now I'm wondering what nation had the dirtiest muskets during combat of the Napoleonic Wars. Goddamn I'm weird. I'd bet on Russia, due their infamous low quality gun powder, but then I remember the Russian Army wasn't the type for drawn out fire fights.
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Feb 13, 2015 15:18
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Did any of the knightly orders take a side during the 30 years war?
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Feb 13, 2015 15:31
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SeanBeansShako posted:Now I'm wondering what nation had the dirtiest muskets during combat of the Napoleonic Wars. Goddamn I'm weird. 
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Feb 13, 2015 16:03
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Animal posted:You mean undersized? Yes, sorry.
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Feb 13, 2015 16:07
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Xander77 posted:Russian soldiers have been known to complain that the Englishmen don't clean their guns with bricks Okay, I am curious how this works. Do please tell! SeanBeansShako fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Feb 13, 2015 |
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Feb 13, 2015 16:16
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Bacarruda posted:A lot of ammo by that point was mass-produced. Fascinated by these. I've never heard of them before. Seems there's a couple in Melbourne still standing.
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Feb 13, 2015 16:52
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100 Years Ago Corporal George Povey was killed on the Western Front by rifle fire a couple of days ago. Nothing particularly unusual about that; except, of course, that the rifles were British. He was shot for quitting his post without reason, a charge that would claim the lives of only four other men in the war. The case is perhaps worth a little examination, and it's a nice excuse to review the process for the blog.
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Feb 13, 2015 17:03
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago I think Horrrrible Histories wrote that Entente shot more of their own soldiers than Gerry/Jerry ever did. True, false?
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Feb 13, 2015 17:41
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JcDent posted:I think Horrrrible Histories wrote that Entente shot more of their own soldiers than Gerry/Jerry ever did. True, false? The British executed 306 by firing squad, the French 600, so you do the math there.
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Feb 13, 2015 17:54
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Xander77 posted:In The Meeting Place Cannot be Changed a perpetrator tears up a newspaper to use as wadding for hunting rifle / shotgun. The story is set after the Great Patriotic War, so that gun would have to be... well, 20th century, at least. Still, I've never heard of 20th century guns that require wadding that isn't built into the cartridge. What's the deal with your gimmick?
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Feb 13, 2015 18:03
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Hogge Wild posted:What's the deal with your gimmick? His deal is that he's extremely annoying.
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Feb 13, 2015 18:26
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The British executed 306 by firing squad, the French 600, so you do the math there. I'm pretty sure the guy was saying that the Germans shot fewer of their own for desertion than the Entente forces did, not that the Entente forces shot more of their own soldiers for desertions than Germans did in battle, which is kind of what it sounds like. Found a website with the slightest of googling that says the Germans only shot 18 for desertion, so that first thing is true.
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Feb 13, 2015 18:29
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cheerfullydrab posted:I'm pretty sure the guy was saying that the Germans shot fewer of their own for desertion than the Entente forces did, not that the Entente forces shot more of their own soldiers for desertions than Germans did in battle, which is kind of what it sounds like. Though I am amused by the image of the French literally carpet bombing and machine gunning their own lines after deciding that their whole army was preparing to retreat too early.
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Feb 13, 2015 19:03
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Of course, desertion wasn't the only military crime that you could be shot for. Incidentally, I've been poking the British figures with a stick and there's a couple of interesting things about them. The first one is that there's two different figures knocking around. The most-quoted one is 306, but a more accurate total is about 346; this includes 37 men convicted of murder and at least 3 convicted of mutiny, who weren't given pardons in 2006 because their offences weren't strictly military in nature. I've also realised that this figure doesn't include any Indian Army soldiers, and I know that at at the very least, quite a few were executed for their part in the Singapore Mutiny (they were convicted by court-martial), which makes me wonder whether the true number of "soldiers executed by Britain" shouldn't be somewhat higher. 346 does include askaris from the King's African Rifles, Canadians, New Zealanders, and at least one West Indian and one South African. (I've also just trawled the appendix of Blindfold & Alone, and although the text gives the 346 figure, the appendix at the back appears to only list 344 names. Hmmm.)
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Feb 13, 2015 19:15
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chitoryu12 posted:Though I am amused by the image of the French literally carpet bombing and machine gunning their own lines after deciding that their whole army was preparing to retreat too early. Blocking detachments?
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Feb 13, 2015 19:27
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chitoryu12 posted:Though I am amused by the image of the French literally carpet bombing and machine gunning their own lines after deciding that their whole army was preparing to retreat too early. The French total is probably higher because of the whole mutiny thing.
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Feb 13, 2015 19:46
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cheerfullydrab posted:Blocking detachments? Can somedy tell me more about them, especially if the Western allies used them in WWII.
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Feb 13, 2015 19:55
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sullat posted:The French total is probably higher because of the whole mutiny thing. Whole mutiny thing? I thought mutiny was a naval thing?
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Feb 13, 2015 20:06
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sullat posted:The French total is probably higher because of the whole mutiny thing. And having a bigger army.
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Feb 13, 2015 20:29
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SquadronROE posted:Whole mutiny thing? I thought mutiny was a naval thing? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Army_Mutinies Were you thinking of the Germans? The French navy wasn't very important in WWI. JcDent posted:Can somedy tell me more about them, especially if the Western allies used them in WWII. Blocking detachments are loosely defined but their main job was to stop routing troops. They were also authorized to shoot those soldiers if they continued to retreat without orders. There's no doubt that this happened, but their primary purpose was just to stop them, rather than mow down everybody they see. There was no equivalent formation in the Western Allies. MPs mainly worked in the back-lines and obviously couldn't summarily execute people. And front-line executions happened, but soldiers only had tenuous authority to do so.
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Feb 13, 2015 20:30
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Where would I go about learning more about the Battle Axe Guard that was at Dublin Castle in the 1600-1700s? Specifically trying to find members.
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Feb 13, 2015 20:54
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Taerkar posted:The Battle of the Bismark Sea is a good example of the use of Skip Bombing and related tactics. Reading this, it talks about mast height bombing being done around 900 feet from the target. Was the forward momentum really just so much that this would score a hit against the side of the ship? It's a good 3 football fields, but football fields really aren't that long unless you're actually playing on one.
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Feb 13, 2015 21:16
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Frostwerks posted:Reading this, it talks about mast height bombing being done around 900 feet from the target. Was the forward momentum really just so much that this would score a hit against the side of the ship? It's a good 3 football fields, but football fields really aren't that long unless you're actually playing on one. Well they're zipping along at like 250mph.
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Feb 13, 2015 21:18
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Frostwerks posted:Reading this, it talks about mast height bombing being done around 900 feet from the target. Was the forward momentum really just so much that this would score a hit against the side of the ship? It's a good 3 football fields, but football fields really aren't that long unless you're actually playing on one. At 250 mph they would cover that 900 feet in about 5 seconds. Skipping wouldn't slow them down that much. Edit: Here's some tests filmed by the British in 1943 that shows how it worked. Bombs could be skipped on land, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zBp1NCbAr0 (sorry, I see embedding is disabled) Deteriorata fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Feb 13, 2015 |
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Feb 13, 2015 21:28
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Oracle posted:Where would I go about learning more about the Battle Axe Guard that was at Dublin Castle in the 1600-1700s? Specifically trying to find members. They might have the rolls still available, or at least be able to point you in the right direction.
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Feb 13, 2015 22:42
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Deteriorata posted:At 250 mph they would cover that 900 feet in about 5 seconds. Skipping wouldn't slow them down that much. I was talking about mast height bombing Frostwerks fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Feb 13, 2015 |
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Feb 13, 2015 23:24
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Frostwerks posted:I was talking about mast height bombing I think we're both a bit confused. In further reading, it seems that both were used on the same run. The first bomb was dropped about 900 feet out to skip (hence my confusion about your question), while the second was dropped "mast-height" with the intent to hit the ship directly at the water line, from about 60-100 feet away. The advantage of this was that it made targeting easier. If the bombs were released early, the first would detonate beneath the ship, while the second would skip into its side. If released late, the second would miss but the first would likely skip right onto the deck.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:45
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Fo3 posted:Fascinated by these. I've never heard of them before. Seems there's a couple in Melbourne still standing. There's on the centre of the CBD underneath the cone of a shopping centre (Melbourne Central), with a small museum in it.
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Feb 14, 2015 01:43
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sullat posted:Take that example... It took nearly a year for the US to admit that their torpedoes didn't work, and then a bit longer to fix them. That sounds like the inflexible but proud Japanese? Whereas when the Japanese went on the defensive, they quickly changed their tactics to create incredibly tenacious island fortresses that required an appalling amount of casualties to root out. Sure, they didn't quite realize that the US was "in it to win it" until it was too late to gracefully tap out, but the notion that they were honorbound automotons is orientalism at its finest. I remember earlier in the thread someone posted some prewar Japanese intelligence on the U.S. military, and they made exactly the same claims about Americans as we did about them-- inflexible, hidebound, etc. I think it's just a really popular idea that your enemies are somehow "faking it," that your guys really know their poo poo but their guys are dumb, simian goons-- usually because of something about their Culture that is weird and bad to you-- who will fall apart the moment they go off-script. In fantasy war settings, whether it's Lord of the Rings fantasy or Tom Clancy "realistic" fantasy, this is usually portrayed as literally true.
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Feb 14, 2015 01:44
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Sometimes, both sides are full of simian goons who don't know what they're doing.
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Feb 14, 2015 01:59
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P-Mack posted:Sometimes, both sides are full of simian goons who don't know what they're doing. grey hunter's war in the pacific LP is amazing, because every time the AI does something catastrophically stupid, everybody shrugs and go "still not as stupid as [thing that actually happened]"
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Feb 14, 2015 07:33
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P-Mack posted:Sometimes, both sides are full of simian goons who don't know what they're doing.
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Feb 14, 2015 07:36
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This is understandably a broad question, but what were Russo-Chinese relations like during the Cold War? I'm going through Robert Dallek's Nixon and Kissinger and I keep getting the impression that the two nations were at some point downright antagonistic towards each other. I do know that there was a split (purely along ideological lines?), but I don't know how deep the rift ran.
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Feb 14, 2015 12:40
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Splode posted:grey hunter's war in the pacific LP is amazing, because every time the AI does something catastrophically stupid, everybody shrugs and go "still not as stupid as [thing that actually happened]" It's more interesting to watch the simultaneous Alikchi-Windy LP because obviously you can see the assumptions they are making with incomplete information about the other. gradenko_2000 posted:This is understandably a broad question, but what were Russo-Chinese relations like during the Cold War? I'm going through Robert Dallek's Nixon and Kissinger and I keep getting the impression that the two nations were at some point downright antagonistic towards each other. I do know that there was a split (purely along ideological lines?), but I don't know how deep the rift ran. Pretty much fucing terrible. Stalin had actually tried to gently caress Mao before the Communists took over China, not wanting there to be a large socialist revolution out of his control. Mao, bizarrely, didn't take it personally and loved Stalin. Relations then soured when de-Stalinisation started for the same reason. Vietnam only made it worse as Russian aid shipments were robbed blind by China before half the poo poo got to Vietnam. Once Kissinger starts to use this animosity as leverage obviously the break becomes more or less complete, along with things like the Chinese attack on Vietnam. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Feb 14, 2015 |
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Feb 14, 2015 12:50
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Don't forget border tensions between them that lead to actual shooting a few times. Didn't escalate into a formal war, but still, there was some unpleasantness.
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Feb 14, 2015 13:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is understandably a broad question, but what were Russo-Chinese relations like during the Cold War? I'm going through Robert Dallek's Nixon and Kissinger and I keep getting the impression that the two nations were at some point downright antagonistic towards each other. I do know that there was a split (purely along ideological lines?), but I don't know how deep the rift ran. A lot of it comes down to the fact that Stalin thought Chiang was going to win and decided to go against Mao. For quite a while it looked like Chiang was going to be the guy who would reunify China and put it together to make it a power, but that disappeared as the resistance to Japan proved not to be as effective as he thought. There's a gradual deterioration of relations between Stalin and Chiang, though, and eventually there's a break. As the war went on, Stalin became friendlier to the Chinese communists. That all being said, as Disinterested mentioned, Mao became a lot less friendly to the USSR when Stalin died, and the 60s really pushed them apart. When Nixon put in the crowbar, he didn't need to pull hard.
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Feb 14, 2015 14:01
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100 Years Ago Having now managed to build up a seven-day buffer, it's seriously hard to keep my head straight with what's going on today. Because all my thinking is about the next update I'm going to write, and loads of completely different things are going on... Ahem. On the north of the Eastern Front, the Russians suddenly become aware of the scale of the shafting that's in progress. The British Army's preparations to give battle at Neuve Chapelle are winding up; gunners recently returned from India are being given a crash course in the newest heavy howitzers, and how to lay down indirect fire, which is a very new concept for them. And I'd also like to exhort everyone in the strongest possible terms to leave alien waters alone!
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Feb 14, 2015 21:23
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