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Scratch Monkey posted:Clancy wrote two good books: Red October and Red Storm Rising. It was all downhill after that. And Red Storm Rising was written in large parts by Larry Bond. In effect, it was the first "Tom Clancy" Book.
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Nov 6, 2011 13:38
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atomicthumbs posted:
ftfy
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Nov 11, 2011 16:28
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Frozen Horse posted:This is really interesting in conjunction with the book on the USAF in the early years of US involvement in Vietnam. Apparently the US command was worried about China suddenly involving themselves in Vietnam as they had in Korea. This fear seems more remote if China was busy with the USSR and that little bit of cultural revolution, etc. at the time. Would it have been far more likely that China would decide to stab North Vietnam in the back while they were busy fighting the south?
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Apr 29, 2012 00:04
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Oxford Comma posted:Imagine the unholy shitstorm that would've happened had MacArthur crossed into China, as he wanted. The Coldest Winter does an amazing job of showing how nuts MacArthur was. That's one of the things I really don't get about MacArthur. Even during WWII he often comes across as highly incompetent (Defense of the Philippines comes to mind), yet he was (and is?) revered as a great general. I understand that Soldiers liked him because he shied away from assaulting strong Japanese positions head on, but a lot of his generaling seems to have been based on "What could go wrong?" and "Those Intelligence estimates are way too high.".
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Apr 29, 2012 12:14
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Leaving aside also the minor fact that Japan has people who at some point in their life operated propeller driven planes off of straightdeck carriers. They do not have experience in running a supercarrier and its airgroup.
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May 1, 2012 20:08
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Taerkar posted:IIRC most of the US Navy shipbuilding, especially of the large displacement hulls, was limited to the Eastern Seaboard and not the West Coast. If the US Pacific Fleet was crippled and Pearl Harbor isolated, then the IJN could have potentially struck the Panama Canal, resulting in the need for all USN ships to go around South America to get to the Pacific. The Japanese had very severe fuel problems all throughout the war, sending KB to the Panama Canal would probably have been a one way trip. Shattered Sword is really the best account of the battle, because it goes into ridiculous detail and disspells a great many myths about the battle. Like the battle being anywhere near close, or the Myth of Japanese superiority. There is even a part in about the decisiveness of the battle (spoiler: it wasn't all that decisive). The whole battle was a clusterfuck for the Japanese from start to finish, and even taking midway wouldn't have improved their overall strategic position at all. The entire premise was flawed, with the Japanese plan basically assuming that the Americans would behave in the most stupid way possible. Hell, when they wargamed the operation beforehand, they ran through a scenario similar to the one that actually happened, and suffered crippling loses there as well. But they handwaved it away because "the Americans won't do that, seriously, now let me show you how we defeat their fleet in a nighttime surface action".
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Jun 4, 2012 18:39
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Craptacular posted:Did NATO countries ever send aircraft over to Warsaw Pact countries for airshows? I'm not sure there even were any major airshows in the pact area. I certainly haven't heard of any. Flyovers and military parades, sure, but airshows where the general public could see aircraft up close?
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Sep 30, 2012 19:43
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_firehawk posted:Don't forget about the old people and their pacemakers. Or what effect it has when your strike destroys the only two modern life support systems in the country, causing their inhabitants to die. Because of US Imperialism. You murderer.
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Oct 26, 2012 19:55
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durtan posted:A 180 degree turn takes 8 minutes to complete and will cover about 235 miles at full-speed/altitude flight profiles. I love the story of one Blackbird pilot told about a mission over Libya: They had to outrun some missile so the accelerated to mach 3+. Then they headed back to Sicily before turning west to meet up with their tanker which was waiting over Gibraltar. They started to throttle back over Sicily and still overshot the tanker. Conclusion: The Blackbird has a braking distance measured in continents.
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Nov 23, 2012 00:49
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wdarkk posted:Well, they have to get them into the upper atmosphere, which is hard when they won't fit on your missiles. And considering that they are one of the few countries who have apparently managed to fail a nuclear test...I wouldn't worry too much about the chances that they will actually work. Right now, they are bombs in being.
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Jan 14, 2013 23:39
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Psion posted:Made the front page around here (in the PNW It's actually pretty funny, the wall in question isn't actually on the former border, it was moved after reunification. What made that part special is that a bunch of influential artists painted it after reunification happened, so it is more of an art installation than a historical monument. Plus, apparently it wasn't being torn down to be discarded but torn down to be moved a little out of the way to allow access to a new bridge. It was, apparently, supposed to be rebuild somewhere else.
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Mar 5, 2013 13:51
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) even. The photo I saw showed at least one significant intact chunk of wall and a bunch of protestors, so it looks like they didn't raze the whole thing.
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TheFluff posted:A lot of Swedish Cold War military spending was of a similar character; it would look very appropriate in an action movie but ended up being of questionable utility. Take a look at this place: Right, so how long until your "King" starts making demands to the UN from his hidden mountain lair?
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Mar 31, 2013 21:25
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Warbadger posted:It's amazing and sad how many of the comments for both of these videos boil down to people in absolute denial that a combat loaded tank could explode, absolutely certain that such a large explosion had to be faked like loving 9/11 truthers. Even half the people claiming it is possible seem convinced it's loving diesel fuel. But someone could get hurt! 
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Jun 4, 2013 07:43
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MrYenko posted:Name me the last time that anyone designed a multirole aircraft that went on to be a huge success. Go ahead, I'll wait here. The Tornado serves as a front line interceptor/fighter, strike craft and recon/EW plattform, and it was pretty much designed with all that in mind, by a comittee, in a multinational evironment. Of course, nowadays it would have to be stealth and probably carrier-capable at least.
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Aug 23, 2013 09:35
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mlmp08 posted:Grover has an innate need to shove multiple systems into one platform. And then add lasers to it.
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Aug 24, 2013 18:39
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Speaking of the Davy Crockett, I can't help but think that the shielding on that thing must have been non-existent. So, how dangerous was it to handle for a prolonged period of time (relative to, say, an x-ray technician)?
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Sep 12, 2013 10:53
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Pictured: John McCain with a plane he hasn't crashed. Yet.
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Sep 17, 2013 00:04
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Mortabis posted:No, he was in the plane next to the one that had the bomb blow up I think. He jumped out of the cockpit and rolled into the man-overboard net. Then proceeded to the ready room because damage control is for peasants.
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Sep 17, 2013 20:31
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hogmartin posted:This must have been posted earlier in the thread but we watched this in boot camp (2002): I thought every man aboard a ship being trained in DC was what made US ships so hard to sink in WWII (especially compared to the Japanese, where it was "welp our DC guys died in the fire, time to abandon ship. Nippon Banzai!"). How the hell do you go from a tried and working system to one that has been found wanting in the same test?
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Sep 18, 2013 12:28
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Cyrano4747 posted:It wasn't just DC in WW2. Ship design had a lot to do with it, as did institutional practices when it came to things like fueling and ammo handling. Plus, the Japanese were actually pretty drat good at damage control. They had a lot of really terribly crippled ships make it home and get repaired just to get shot up again. Also, they got really situationally hosed in a couple famous battles. Caught with a bunch of airplanes on the deck getting rearmed and fueled when American dive bombers show up overhead? You're pretty hosed. I'm not sure how you can call a navy that lost an aircraft carrier to a single torpedo because the DC officer decided to vent fuel fumes through the entire ship "pretty drat good at damage control".
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Sep 18, 2013 14:53
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Cyrano4747 posted:You also can't generalize about the competence of an entire military based on a single error or a single individual. By that logic the US sucked at both airborn operations and air-ground coordination because the 82nd airborn had a few PIR's shot to poo poo by American AAA during the invasion of Sicily. Considering that he was in charge of DC on one of Japan's premier combat ships, I would assume that he was considered one of the most competent officers. At the very least, he was a product of their DC training and/or followed standard procedures, and he failed spectacularly. That at least implies that the training or the procedures weren't "drat good". And it should be noted that the carrier lost by the US at Midway was almost saved, had not that submarine shown up. Yorktown took at least as much punishment as any of the Japanese carriers lost and remained afloat and was in the process of being put in tow. quote:Against that, however, you have to weigh the loving tons of Japanese ships that were mauled in early war combat, steamed home, were repaired, and came back out. I'm awful with Japanese ship names, but there was a cruiser during Midway (edit: The Mogami) that was absolutely ravaged by dive bombers and saved by really competent DC. That's just a single example. Lots of their surface war ships got banged up during the fighting in and around the Solomons in '42-43 and got back to an anchorage to be repaired and fight again. Fair point about the Mogami, but she is always rolled out as the single exception to the otherwise poor Japanese DC. You can simplify it down to "Japanese DC was a lot worse than allied DC". Pretty much everything I have read (inlcuding Shattered Sword) agrees on that. Especially the distinction between specialized DC parties and the USN approach of training every sailor in DC. If the DC parties died, the Japanese haad nothing to fall back on, while the USN had a ship full of sailors who could do the job.
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Sep 18, 2013 17:10
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Handsome Ralph posted:Sorry to interrupt A-10 Chat, but today marks 30 years since Col. Petrov decided not to start WWIII. One of the few times where "Na, its probably nothing" was the correct response to an alarm bell going off.
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Sep 27, 2013 01:02
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At first blush I'd say it is some sort of amphibious tank dveloped for the marines. Kinda like the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Vehicle_Tracked The armor around the tracks looks fairly similar.
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Sep 27, 2013 03:21
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I don't know, the LTV(A)-4 had a short large caliber gun. The vehicle in the picture has a long barreled, small caliber gun, so I would guess it is a LVT(A)-1, or maybe a modification.
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Sep 27, 2013 03:37
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Mortabis posted:One was shot down in Panama. Another one in Desert Storm.
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Sep 27, 2013 19:05
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I'm sure the survivors of an asteroid impact will happily go dig the supply containers out of the craters the ICBM slammed them in.
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Oct 15, 2013 17:38
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Smiling Jack posted:Unlike the Iowa the A-10 does not explode and kill a large component of the crew. I daresay an A-10 exploding would kill 100% of its crew.
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Nov 27, 2013 22:24
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McNally posted:I'm sure it might if you had used ammunition that had been improperly stored for four decades. Or if the pilot was gay. And lets be honest here, the airforce is pretty gay.
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Nov 27, 2013 23:14
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Davin Valkri posted:The Navy's explanation that a "gay" saboteur stuck a detonator in the powder which caused the explosion, I think. They even made up a story about how he did it to get back at an officer who had broken up with him. Oh, and the guy they framed died in the explosion, too.
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Nov 28, 2013 00:23
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Shithead Deluxe posted:You just know WTF is a military acronym somewhere... Wire, Terrain Following
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Dec 13, 2013 20:44
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Oxford Comma posted:Atomic weapons against Argentina? I would say lol but it was Thatcher. The story goes that she wanted to launch a single, inert Polaris at Buenos Aires with a note saying "Next one is live".
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Jan 7, 2014 15:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yep that sure is a story Are you telling me that second hand stories on the Internet are not valuable primary sources? 
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Jan 7, 2014 19:02
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Cyrano4747 posted:World War 2 memoirs are full of dudes who wanted to fly Mustangs and ended up flying transport aircraft, getting stuck as bombardiers or navigators, etc. Christ, the worst are the poor fuckers who got drawn off to be glider pilots. They got the twin fun of having one of the highest death/injury rates of any pilots in the USAAF PLUS all the fun of getting to be infantry for a couple of weeks after "landing" with their cargo. Was it the British or the Americans who didn't even train their glider pilots as infantry but still leave them in the combat zone for the entire operation?
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Jan 14, 2014 20:50
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Wouldn't networking several receiving dishes together allow you to track a stealth plane, then? Provided that they are far enough apart to pick up the deflected energy.
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Jan 18, 2014 18:00
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mlmp08 posted:edit: For news, MEADS was cancelled. Sucks to be Germany and Italy right about now. Germany has pretty much the same Patriot/Stinger combination the US uses, no? I think the Rolands have been retired. So we could probably just latch onto whatever the US does to upgrade the Patriot.
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Jan 19, 2014 01:01
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Flux Wildly posted:I'm curious about how ejecting from that was supposed to work. It transforms first so that the dish is out of the way, haven't you watched Macross?
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Jan 25, 2014 12:27
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Snowdens Secret posted:I don't recall any Army-side lessons along the lines of "this tank was supposed to go super fast, but it turned out to have pathetic range and break down all the time" but I'm positive they exist. I mean, not counting the Sgt York but that was so egregious we didn't buy many. Well there is the Sheridan, which was going to be this amazing new light tank that could fire missiles out of its gun except firing the gun damaged the fire control of the missiles, was airdroppable except half of them broke the one time they actually tried and which was armored with aluminium.
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Jan 26, 2014 09:43
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And a good part of the motorization were trucks captured in the overrun countries. What that means for the spare parts situation is left to the reader's imagination.
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Jan 26, 2014 22:18
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Cyrano4747 posted:Keegan's excellent. He's got a couple of books which really redefined the way non-military historians looked at military history (Face of Battle in particular) and all of his stuff is just generally a great mix of accessibility while actually having a scholarly argument. Keegan's A History of Warfare is silly, at best. He literally claims the Samurai doomed their country because they followed Clausewitz. He wants western armies to engage in ritualized warfare again. He calls the Maya Empire primitive.
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Jan 26, 2014 22:27
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Alaan posted:Several SU-25s got knocked out by anti-aircraft fire and the Russians even lost a TU-22M Backfire. Georgia claims at least 10 shoot downs, though that may be a touch high. I can only imagine the shitstorm it would cause if a USAF general had managed to get a B52 shot down because of poor recon beforehand.
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Jan 28, 2014 07:00
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