Arquinsiel posted:I'm working on Signals of War right now, and since it's written by a collaboration of a British and an Argentinian expert I was expecting it to be far less... hilariously negative for the Junta I guess? Might be a good starting point, might not, but it's fun to read at least. Nice, always wanted to read a good book about that conflict myself.
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Jun 2, 2015 02:42
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Arquinsiel posted:I'm working on Signals of War right now, and since it's written by a collaboration of a British and an Argentinian expert I was expecting it to be far less... hilariously negative for the Junta I guess? Might be a good starting point, might not, but it's fun to read at least. Apart from a blind raving hatred of Thatcher... why would you expect the history of an unprovoked invasion undertaken by a brutal military junta to be anything other than "hilariously negative" towards said junta? Like seriously, why would you expect a sober history of the Falklands War to paint the Argentine leadership in any sort of positive light?
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Jun 2, 2015 03:28
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Ensign Expendable posted:There's the old "let's throw away a bunch of tanks because we are Russians and we want our men to die" cliche, then the Soviet team traps the protagonists in a church, and then instead of collapsing the thing on top of them with a loving KV-2 and IS-2 that they have, the scriptwriters unzip their pants and urinate on my culture for several minutes, at which point the protagonists win. So it's like that movie where 300 men couldn't take out 1 medium tank even though they had plenty of anti-tank weapons and could flank it from any direction?
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Jun 2, 2015 03:44
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Something close to $125. So basically Wolf Pelion on Ossa got around $187,000 for "nothing particular".
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Jun 2, 2015 03:56
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Apart from a blind raving hatred of Thatcher... why would you expect the history of an unprovoked invasion undertaken by a brutal military junta to be anything other than "hilariously negative" towards said junta? Like seriously, why would you expect a sober history of the Falklands War to paint the Argentine leadership in any sort of positive light?
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Jun 2, 2015 04:07
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Taiping Tianguo Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Close call at Huazhou The army that would give the God Worshippers their first true fight was not originally sent to deal with the movement, but instead to deal with various bandits and triad groups that had crossed the line from lawless mayhem to outright rebellion. At 30,000 strong, the army is not large by Chinese standards, but should be up to the task. The God Worshippers ranks are alos swelling with Hakka bretheren fleeing the violence, as well as pirates and bandits fleeing the government troops, bringing their numbers up to 20,000. Of the pirate bands, however, most will later defect to the imperialists, with the exceptions of famous captain Luo Dagang and the aforementioned woman bandit Su Sanniang (legend says these two would later marry). The imperial forces, tasked with restoring order, finally turned to God Worshipper territory. In response to several small skirmishes, Li Dianyuan led a force to the village of Huazhou and placed it under a siege cordon, seeing no reason to rush in immediately. Unbeknownst to him, Hong Xiuquan was staying in the village at this time. As soon as he hears the news, Yang Xiuqing rapidly organizes a volunteer army to rescue the Heavenly Younger Brother. Led by Meng De'en, a brave leader and hero of an earlier skirmish with government troops, they move rapidly to save their leader. A serious battle results, but the society is victorious and the siege is broken. Among the dozens of dead is Zhang Yong, deputy magistrate, and the first government official killed in the Taiping rebellion. If the movement had not passed the point of no return already, it had now. Rumble at Jintian Following these events, Manchu lieutenant general Ikedanbu is tasked by imperial commander Zhou Fengqi to lead a larger force to put down the movement. On December 31, 1850, one day before his arrival, the God Worshippers society get an unexpected surprise. Nearly 10,000 of their bretheren have finally answered the call and arrived at Jintian, ready to help however they are needed. Those fit for service are rapidly integrated into the army and final preparations are made for battle. The rebels choose their ground well. They line up for battle on the road to Jintian. Hong leads personally in the center. Yang positions his troops to the left flank along Thistle River to the north. Xiao Chaogui takes the right flank onto a strong position on Pangu hill to the south. The rebels have already set up a system of signal flags to coordinate their actions in battle. Perhaps the Qing troops are careless, not expecting organized resistance on the scale they are to encounter. Maybe they simply scout poorly. Or maybe they see the formidable rebel army and figure they can handle it anyway. For whatever reason, on January 1 they choose to attack head on towards the Taiping center. It does not go well.  The rebel flanks close in as planned and the Qing troops are soon panicked and disordered, retreating in a general rout. Ikedanbu's horse slips while crossing a bridge and he is decapitated by the rebels (Ikedanbu, not the horse). Zhou Fengqi arrives the next day with reinforcements, but he can do no more than rescue a beleaugered group of survivors who had dug in on a hilltop position before retreating himself. And So it Begins January 11th is Hong's 38th birthday. A proclamation is declared listing five rules of the army. I've yet to see two sources translate these the same way, so I'll give my own gist. 1. Obedience to the 10 commandments 2. Separation of men and women. There is no sex in the heavenly army. 3. Obey all laws and regulations (dont be a pillaging, peasant slaughtering dickhead) 4. Be chill and harmonious, dude (harmony involves not having private property and obeying your officers) 5. No retreat, no surrender! The victory at Jintian is celebrated along with the birthday, and it seems as good a time as any to declare that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has arrived. They will not formally change the calendar until later, but when they do, 1851 is year 1. Short on food, the army moves to the nearby city Jiangkou, rich in supplies, and also the home of Wang Zuoxin, the official who started the persecution of the God Worshipper's society. Immediately fleeing the rebel approach, Wang leaves the rest of his clan behind and at least eighty members are killed. Wang himself escapes the rebels only to end up ignominously murdered by bandits. ------ There's something I came across while making the beautiful map up above that I want to point out.  I've mentioned a lot of the unattractive weirdness of the Taiping leaders, and it might seem like a safe bet that religious fanatics who started a war that killed 20 million are the "bad guys" as far as popular history is concerned. This is emphatically not how the rebellion is actually viewed in China. For example, the Jintian Uprising is one of 8 events commemorated on the Monument to the People's Heroes in Tiananmen Square.  Non-communist historians as well are often surprisingly sympathetic to the movement. For all of their faults, and overlooking the horrific human cost of their crusade, the Taiping goal of overthrowing foreign domination, eliminating corruption, and modernizing a nation that was rapidly falling behind remain laudable. Their egalitarianism, their respect for women's capabilities, their dedication to building a utopian future all resonated with China's later revolutions. The Taiping Revolution is in this view a double tragedy; both because it happened, and because it failed. Anyway, sorry for the short post. Next time I'll get into where the Taiping went next, and hopefully a little background on why the imperial army sucks so bad and gets wrecked so often.
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Jun 2, 2015 04:37
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Arquinsiel posted:By "hilariously negative" I mean that the Argentinian author doesn't even manage to make a case for there being any legit claim on the islands. It reads as a pro-British, almost "just war" kind of book. Well, if you invade an island filled with people who don't want you there and have repeatedly said that they don't want you there (to the tune of 99% negative) because the islands were technically part of a nation that you were part of several hundred years ago then yeah, I'd say your claim is kinda sketchy. I frankly don't get the moral stance that Britain wasn't in the right in the Falklands. Their sovereign territory was invaded and their citizens were taken under hostile occupation. That is as clear cut a casus belli as you are ever going to get. It wasn't like the British had thrown the Spanish of the islands ten years prior or like the Falklanders (or even a significant part of them) desperately wanted to join Argentinia and were kept from doing so by the brutal boot of British oppression. How else was that book supposed to lay out the case?
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Jun 2, 2015 04:44
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Arquinsiel posted:By "hilariously negative" I mean that the Argentinian author doesn't even manage to make a case for there being any legit claim on the islands. It reads as a pro-British, almost "just war" kind of book. Sounds pretty accurate, then. ArchangeI posted:Well, if you invade an island filled with people who don't want you there and have repeatedly said that they don't want you there (to the tune of 99% negative) because the islands were technically part of a nation that you were part of several hundred years ago then yeah, I'd say your claim is kinda sketchy. I frankly don't get the moral stance that Britain wasn't in the right in the Falklands. Their sovereign territory was invaded and their citizens were taken under hostile occupation. That is as clear cut a casus belli as you are ever going to get. It wasn't like the British had thrown the Spanish of the islands ten years prior or like the Falklanders (or even a significant part of them) desperately wanted to join Argentinia and were kept from doing so by the brutal boot of British oppression. How else was that book supposed to lay out the case? -B-but... Thatcher! Tories! It involved them so Britain must have been at fault!
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Jun 2, 2015 04:45
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Thatcher may have been in the right but operation Black Buck is completely inexcusable.
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Jun 2, 2015 04:59
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Thatcher may have been in the right but operation Black Buck is completely inexcusable. Cool as poo poo, though.
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Jun 2, 2015 05:06
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Cool as poo poo, though.  But my logistical chains!
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Jun 2, 2015 05:07
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So the wikipedia article for Black Buck says that the US flew B-52 raids against Iraq from the Continental US, and I'm pretty confused as to why, given all the regional allies. Are all B-52s considered a strategic asset that can't be based outside the US or something?
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Jun 2, 2015 05:18
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Hey great stuff as usual. Chinese history has always been a big gaping gap in my knowledge. What kind of sources are you using for these posts? In some ways your posts remind me of a lot of the Chinese historiography I've read on earlier periods, with a lot of care taken to describe the actions and motives of particular leaders, for example in Arglebargle's posts on the Three Kingdoms. I've heard this tendency to focus on individuals in modern accounts comes from the long tradition of Chinese Chronicles, which are our main sources for most significant events in Chinese history. So basically i'm curious how theTaiping Rebellion was recorded at the time, and how the tradition of Official Histories influenced modern social and Marxist historians interpreting these events.
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Jun 2, 2015 05:55
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Strategic bombers had been based outside the US throughout the Cold War, although in peacetime it was more of a thing with the earlier B-47 which lacked true intercontinental range. B-52s plastered Vietnam from regional bases as soon as they got the logistics in order, and that was pretty much what happened after a while in Desert Storm too: tons and tons of bombs transported to Saudi. At least the fuel was already there! With the WoT B-52s and B-1s have been flying out of the Gulf and Diego Garcia, although a couple of 'kick in the door' type ops were done from the continental US (Serbia, Libya) with B-2s involved. The latter are nowadays able to forward deploy from Diego and Guam IIRC (check the clamshell hangars in Gmaps) so I'd pose that US 'strategic' assets have very much kept up with being stationed outside the country. Do note that tens of thousands of nuclear warheads and the whole gamut of delivery systems - Missiles, jets, rockets, artillery, ships, subs, hell even backpacks - were deployed in Canada, Greenland, Europe, North Africa, and East Asia. And some those those things still haven't been removed.
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Jun 2, 2015 05:58
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So why on earth would you fly a B-52 mission against Iraq out of CONUS? Or is wikipedia full of poo poo, and those were just the ferry flights or something? e: Nope, apparently they've operated out of RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia. Still crazy that they were flying strikes in Kosovo and Iraq out of Missouri. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Jun 2, 2015 |
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Jun 2, 2015 06:00
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ArchangeI posted:How else was that book supposed to lay out the case? ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:-B-but... Thatcher! Tories! It involved them so Britain must have been at fault! I mean, it totally gels with what I already knew myself, but I was really not expecting it from an Argentinian.
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Jun 2, 2015 06:06
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PittTheElder posted:So why on earth would you fly a B-52 mission against Iraq out of CONUS? Or is wikipedia full of poo poo, and those were just the ferry flights or something? No, Wikipedia isn't full of poo poo. It was done for various operational, logistical, and security reasons which I for the most part really don't remember. Basically Desert Storm was a pretty rationally run thing from the air side at least, but they still developed their planning with a healthy mix of Cold War heritage thinking (CONUS basing is more secure from interdiction), convenience of running at least the initial missions with full domestic log support to get a feel for things (I want to say including contractor stuff regarding certain munitions), and waiting how the dice rolled wrt local basing (do we want our showpiece murder machine operating from Arab soil? Will the Germans open up their bases so our ammo stocks there can be used? - yes to the former no to the latter). quote:
You fly from the place where you're set-up and prepared. And it wasn't that hard to pull off with the big boys compared to the absurdity that was Black Buck. We should probably get iyaayas here to explain.
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Jun 2, 2015 06:14
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We continued to do this throughout the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan. On a fundamental level, the idea was that adding a dozen hours to a flight mission was less of an issue than adding to the already overburdened logistical requirements within the operational theater. They couldn't be based in Iraq itself due to safety concerns, and to the extent that allied NATO and regional nations were willing to host aviation assets conducting active bombing strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, those hangars were dedicated to shorter-range aircraft that required them. Also there's the whole nuclear-capability issue. It's inefficient, but it's just easier than staging an entire heavy bomber wing in Germany and constantly soothing political feathers.
Kaal fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Jun 2, 2015 |
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Jun 2, 2015 07:54
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Arquinsiel posted:By "hilariously negative" I mean that the Argentinian author doesn't even manage to make a case for there being any legit claim on the islands. It reads as a pro-British, almost "just war" kind of book. They had no "legit" claim on the islands. Hitler had a 100x more legit claim on all of Europe than the Argentinians did for the Falklands to put it in perspective. bloodsacrifice fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Jun 2, 2015 |
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Jun 2, 2015 07:58
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bloodsacrifice posted:They had no "legit" claim on the islands. Hitler had a 100x more legit claim on all of Europe than the Argentinians did for the Falklands to put it in perspective. Really?  Please tell me more.
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Jun 2, 2015 11:01
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Apart from a blind raving hatred of Thatcher... why would you expect the history of an unprovoked invasion undertaken by a brutal military junta to be anything other than "hilariously negative" towards said junta? Like seriously, why would you expect a sober history of the Falklands War to paint the Argentine leadership in any sort of positive light? The best (and saddest) part of the entire war was when Argentina lost their precious battleship and tried to hide the fact with a heavy dose of censorship. Of course that didn't work out as planned, since it's hard to hide thousands of dead people in a war revolving around some really small islands.
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Jun 2, 2015 11:17
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bloodsacrifice posted:They had no "legit" claim on the islands. Hitler had a 100x more legit claim on all of Europe than the Argentinians did for the Falklands to put it in perspective. Congratulations on your terrible post.
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Jun 2, 2015 11:26
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Its a terrible post but strip out the hyperbole and I have a hard time arguing with a statement like "Argentina had as legitimate claim on the falklands as Hitler did on Paris". Given the legitimacy of both claims is exactly zero.
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Jun 2, 2015 11:32
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That was my point but if you look at it as pedantically as possible you can read it as "Hitler was Awesome"
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Jun 2, 2015 11:40
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"He had no right to kill that dude. To look at it from another perspective, Hitler was 100x as justified to kill the Jews." "dude what" "obviously I'm saying neither was legitimate you pedantic fuckstain"
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Jun 2, 2015 11:45
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Freudian posted:"He had no right to kill that dude. To look at it from another perspective, Hitler was 100x as justified to kill the Jews." It was really obvious what he meant, dude. Jfc
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Jun 2, 2015 12:37
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I agree with bloodsacrifice. Hitler was excellent.
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Jun 2, 2015 12:39
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Hitler's stated claim on Paris was "those darn poles... 'attacked' us, then these darn French declared war in support". Whereas the junta's claim was "uh our ancestors found the place about 300 years ago, also it's closer."
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Jun 2, 2015 12:39
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Klaus88 posted:You're telling me this anime is actually less historically accurate then world of tanks. How unrealistic is World of Tanks? I haven't played in a long, long time. EDIT: To be clear, besides the engagement ranges and the lack of infantry. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Jun 2, 2015 |
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Jun 2, 2015 12:47
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gradenko_2000 posted:How unrealistic is World of Tanks? I haven't played in a long, long time. WoT uses the thickness of the armour on the tiger II to model it's toughness without taking the whole awful metallurgy into account. It also includes the leopard with the design requirement specs, even though the tank never actually existed and would not have been capable of meeting those requirements. wehraboo wet dream simulator. Ensign Expendable is the one to post about it though, he's done several posts on his blog about it.
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Jun 2, 2015 12:51
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gradenko_2000 posted:How unrealistic is World of Tanks? I haven't played in a long, long time. Your tank doesn't fire on the crosshairs but instead somewhere within a cone of inaccuracy, no matter how stationary you are. Everything about armor pen, modules, and damage is a dice roll. Also they have neatly-appointed battles with two teams of equal size where you can have as many tigers on the field as T-34s. Those T-34s by the way can fire every two seconds from the 57mm gun, and the tigers about every eight from their 88mm.
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Jun 2, 2015 12:54
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FAUXTON posted:Your tank doesn't fire on the crosshairs but instead somewhere within a cone of inaccuracy, no matter how stationary you are. Everything about armor pen, modules, and damage is a dice roll.
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Jun 2, 2015 12:58
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Well I think the main thing is that it treats tank combat as a game of hitting each other repeatedly to deplete hp, and not 'get hit in the wrong place and you're hosed'.
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Jun 2, 2015 13:05
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Fangz posted:Well I think the main thing is that it treats tank combat as a game of hitting each other repeatedly to deplete hp, and not 'get hit in the wrong place and you're hosed'. That too. Just kill a tank by plinking away at its leading road wheel.
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Jun 2, 2015 13:08
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Are there any good realistic tank videogames? Or has nobody done it because the reality is tank warfare is boring and poo poo?
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Jun 2, 2015 13:10
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Splode posted:Are there any good realistic tank videogames? Or has nobody done it because the reality is tank warfare is boring and poo poo? There's a line past which realism stops being a worthwhile addition to gameplay, things like your tiger crew being a bunch of green-rear end kids with a handful of lovely shells because the Reich is loving collapsing, or spawning as a tank crew waiting on the side of the road for retrieval within friendly territory because you had a gasket blow out and then stripped a bunch of teeth off the transmission coming to a halt, or in a DD Sherman that capsizes in the surf 300yds from shore at Normandy.
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Jun 2, 2015 13:15
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Wasn't there that one Sherman roguelike?
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Jun 2, 2015 13:17
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Splode posted:Are there any good realistic tank videogames? Or has nobody done it because the reality is tank warfare is boring and poo poo? I kinda like how it's done in Men of War, though it intensely understates how hard it is to repair a tank, and the training requirements to drive one.
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Jun 2, 2015 13:19
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Splode posted:WoT uses the thickness of the armour on the tiger II to model it's toughness without taking the whole awful metallurgy into account. E: Here's a chart from Technology of Tanks to demonstrate what I mean: 
T___A fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Jun 2, 2015 |
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Jun 2, 2015 13:34
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I went looking for Ensigns Expendable's tank blog and it's  .I'm kinda curious though, does Ensign run any other blogs? By the way, your English is excellent.
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Jun 2, 2015 13:36
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