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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:not real good actually. there were a few modern guns at the dardanelles, but even these were fairly inadequate. the existing defenses in the dardanelles were supplemented by a lot of mobile heavy guns (not by naval standards of course, these are like 5.9" and the like, but quite heavy by field gun standards). although these guns could not significantly damage a predreadnought battleship barring extreme luck, they were very useful in dispersing, harassing, and destroying minesweeping vessels and destroyers, which were necessary to clear the channel for the big ships to blast away at the fixed positions. Massie also says that by that point the die was cast and shelling Constantinople wouldn't have changed anything.
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Mar 18, 2020 14:53
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:i'll have to read it again - i know that at that point the Ottomans were going to side with the central powers so that wouldn't have changed, but i have to imagine it would have a material effect on the Ottoman empire's ability to prosecute the war successfully Nah, it's just the capital. The administration was ready to just move inland. Best case scenario you've blown up a few buildings and really pissed off the turks. Worse case you lose half the fleet sailing back.
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Mar 18, 2020 15:09
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Thing is if you have the space on the carrier, particularly because you've started with a battlecruiser hull and slapped a flight deck on top, then there's no reason not to install that secondary armament.
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Mar 18, 2020 16:12
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Squalid posted:yeah that's the most likely explanation. It certainly fits the description. But there are so many more possibilities! It's a coke factory, so literally any impurity in the coal that they're burning out.
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Mar 21, 2020 18:28
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Ensign Expendable posted:They usually wouldn't, but infantry isn't always there when you need it. This is why organic combinations of tanks and infantry were very important. Having part of a tank crew dismount and set up a perimeter around the tank with small arms is not unprecedented. Yeah this is where the film takes large liberties to set up the endgame it wants. There's an enemy infantry force marching towards a rear area which has been detected, but there's only tanks (still 4 at this point) that can get there in time. Except this conversation happens in mid afternoon and the troops show up at the crossroads in late evening so there is a lot of time to do something about it. In this scenario Jason Isaacs scrapes together every warm body he can and puts them on the tanks.
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Mar 22, 2020 01:38
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ilmucche posted:bumrush one side is exactly what they did lol, and the defenders got absolutely smashed. Such a bizarre decision that I guess was made for tv History is full of generals making absolutely terrible decisions that get their soldiers all kills, from allies who don't bother to coordinate, to amateurs who don't bother to learn their craft, to professionals who don't bother to learn their craft.
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Mar 22, 2020 11:24
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hard counter posted:i've also got a similar question and i'm not sure if this is the right place to ask but lately i've polished off a few books like matterhorn and the naked and the dead, which are war novels going about the lives of soldiers written at mostly the level of a platoon with maybe a few isolated dips into the perspectives of field officers and general staff during conflict https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0330509...=aa_scomp_srdg2
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Mar 23, 2020 20:49
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There was a revolution in 1968. Then again in 1976. Then again in 1980.
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Mar 27, 2020 01:04
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Things can also happen for a multitude of reasons. The leaders of the American Revolution were almost certainly more than a little aware that their personal wealth and influence depended upon revolution. But tens of thousands of soldiers didn't sign up to fight for that. It's one of those little historical ironies that one of the reasons for the American revolution was that the colonists wanted to expand into French colonial territory and start a war with France and England didn't, France supported the Americans in their struggle, then the Americans ended up just buying Louisiana from Napoleon.
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Mar 27, 2020 21:42
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SlothfulCobra posted:I feel like often people are really more stumbling over themselves to justify a revolution being a revolution with its context in the evolution of ideology and philosophy and even throwing some personal moral judgments in there, which can lead to the idea that there are no "bad" revolutions, because if a big movement to change things has bad intentions, then it doesn't qualify. It's a weird circular logic kind of thing that sometimes seem like it's getting in the way of understanding why people do what they do by invalidating their beliefs. There are plenty of 18-20th C revolutions that fizzled after the revolutionaries took their first town/city, then sat about and set up committees while the King's men regrouped and proceeded to overrun them.
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Mar 27, 2020 23:09
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VanSandman posted:Let me refine my question: If I wanted to become an ace, as in five airframe kills, which gunner position would I like to be in if I had to be? You wouldn't, but tail or nose, with the caveat that those positions are also the ones most likely to get you killed.
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Mar 28, 2020 02:12
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When you realise you need to poop you'll decide you'd rather get coronavirus.
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Mar 28, 2020 13:11
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feedmegin posted:So uh what are the Marines planning to do if one of their opponents brings a tank, going forward? Sort of seems like an important capability to lose entirely. In addition to still being one of the most powerful armies on the planet, they can call upon the actual US Army.
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Mar 28, 2020 19:35
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Stairmaster posted:how are they supposed to get the tanks there without a beach head. If you've launched your amphibious landing onto an armoured division then you already done hosed up.
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Mar 29, 2020 01:38
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LingcodKilla posted:Yeah you would think that. There’s literally no reason for them to exist as a separate force besides tradition. Their mission could be rolled into the Army and be just a MOS/warfare device with the Navy. Replace master at arms or some such nonsense. Yeah. The role is important and required, but there's no reason for them to exist as a separate force any more than the Parachute/Air assault divisions need to be a separate force.
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Mar 29, 2020 15:57
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Artillery should be its own service branch, if that had happened then the US wouldn't have defunded its Tank Destroyer capability. Then the Marines wouldn't have to worry about needing tanks.
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Mar 29, 2020 21:10
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If you have Amazon Prime, check out 'How to command a nuclear submarine': https://www.amazon.co.uk/For-Your-Eyes-Only/dp/B07RD9WYN3/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=submarine&qid=1585524446&s=instant-video&sr=1-1 Old 4 part BBC documentary following the Perisher Course.
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Mar 30, 2020 00:28
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Pyle posted:Thanks. That's clears thing at least in the Napoleonic era. How are things nowadays? I understand that SF, Rangers and Seals are considered elite. There was a great thread where one goon wrote everything he had done to become a US Army Ranger. He wrote every detail of his training and then Opsec stormed the thread and he had to delete it. 'Eliteness' in a modern professional army is a bit of a different concept. After all, everyone is expected to be able to fight and do their job. There's a bit of culture and a bit of history to being able to claim to be elite, but in modern organisational terms it usually refers to units that have specific tasks that require extra training and acceptance requirements (i.e. Paratroopers both need to know how to parachute, but also be psychologically okay with the idea of not having a 'rear area' that's safe). e: but basically it's just a natural thing. The harder a job is to get into the more elite it is perceived to be.
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Mar 30, 2020 19:47
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It's easy to criticize disasters in hindsight, but nobody had done what the Allies were trying to do before. Dieppe showed you cant just try to seize a port in a coup de main. Anzio showed that if you dont get the gently caress off the beach and as far inland as possible on the first day then you will find yourself stuck with not enough space to deploy to break out but too deeply committed to evacuate safely.
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Mar 31, 2020 23:21
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Murgos posted:Also, Joe and FDR had a genuine relationship. Lol no, FDR thought he had a genuine relationship with Stalin even as Stalin was getting ready to impose puppet states across Eastern Europe. Re: second front and lend-lease, you will find that people fighting a war against an enemy that literally want to exterminate them and who are suffering tens of millions of casualties are unimpressed with "well we arent willing to put our own skin in the game quite yet, but we will give you some tanks and guns so you can fight and die a bit more!" Yes in the grand scheme of things the arsenal of democracy wins the war. But framing the argument that way makes it pretty clear that you have substantially different values on Russian and US life.
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Apr 1, 2020 13:05
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Grognan posted:Amendment III in the US constitution makes more sense given light of this. The UK had a particular problem because after the Civil War, Cromwell's suppression of the Irish, and the Jacobite rebellions, every constituent part of the country hated the standing army. Building a permanent military presence was a message that 'we want the option to burn your homes at short notice' and the very suggestion caused political difficulty. So the UK never invested in Barracks in peacetime and kept a small standing army, and when we needed to surge and deploy the result was a need to resort to Quartering. Which fulfilled the prophecy.
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Apr 3, 2020 08:41
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The Star Wars.
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Apr 11, 2020 09:47
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MikeCrotch posted:it's cool just be a sailor on a Royal Navy warship! I mean those missile defences are pretty advanced and the Argentinians have, what, A-4's with dumb bombs? What could go wrong? You would be extremely likely to be fine. Sheffield lost ~20 killed and ~20 wounded. Glamorgan lost 3, Atlantic Conveyor 12. Plymouth took 4-5 bomb hits and just suffered 5 wounded. The warships that were sunk took extremely few casualties amongst the crew. The painful losses were from the troop transports at Bluff Cove, which were bad but for hits on packed transports could have been far worse. e: there are good answers to this question, but they're opportunities to talk about niche silly wars nobody reads about because nothing actually happened. Either the war is one sided, in which case the blind test of which participant you would be results in a 50:50 chance of a horrific experience, or the sides are evenly matched in which case you have a 100% chance of a terrible experience. War is bad. Even the Anglo-Zanzibar War which lasted 45 minutes resulted was really really bad for the participants on one side. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Apr 11, 2020 |
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Apr 11, 2020 15:20
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Gunnery practice was a thing in the Age of Sail, and naval officers talking shop or writing papers would have arguments over whether you wanted to fight at range or just get yardarm to yardarm and fire broadsides faster than the other guy. The fact that those debates happened says that accuracy was a real option.
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Apr 13, 2020 22:38
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Oh wait I missed the context. In that case the PT boat just sits on the frigate's stern and shoots away the rudder, then bits of the rigging for fun, then demands surrender.
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Apr 13, 2020 23:15
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Captain von Trapp posted:What do we mean by "at range" for an age of sail cannon? 250 yards? A thousand? Two thousand? My knowledge of this class of weapons is zero. Massive number of variables here, but two skilled frigates might shoot it out at 800 yards. You could go for rigging at that range but probably not expect to do much to the hull of a ship.
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Apr 13, 2020 23:26
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I think my favourite recurring theme of military history is that of professional militaries publicly eschewing prostitution, but privately accepting and working with the reality of it. Like that brothel on Pearl Harbour that had regular check-ins from Navy surgeons because gently caress-it, if you want to keep VD rates down then that's the most practical solution, which then had to end after a newspaper found out and started a moral panic. Or german garrison troops being forbidden from fraternisation with the locals but still getting issued condoms in their rations for... reasons.
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Apr 17, 2020 13:09
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Cyrano4747 posted:Fun fact - "curry" as a term is a purely british invention. They basically called any sauce they encountered in South Asia a "curry." If you've ever wondered why curries are so insanely diverse that's why. Imagine if someone rolled through the US tomorrow and applied the same word to everything from BBQ sauce to ketchup to gravy. 'Corn Syrup varients'
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Apr 19, 2020 00:03
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The Grand Battery was Napoleon's big contribution to battlefield tactics (it's possible he didn't literally invent the idea, but he's the first general to really implement it. He was an artilleryman after all). If you want it explained in a sentence and you know about WW2, it's exactly the same development as Guderian's proposals for massed concentration of tanks as opposed to British and French doctrine. Before Napoleon an army's artillery would typically be penny-packeted out amongst the infantry to given them a morale boost and have local effect. Napoleon said 'gently caress that, you're wasting the guns' and reorganised the artillery into its own arm with its own commander. The army would now mass its artillery towards single targets and use concentrated fire to eliminate them one after another, typically starting with enemy batteries. Napoleon was a guy who really understood firepower and what it could and could not achieve.
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Apr 21, 2020 19:59
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Mr Enderby posted:I think you could sell it when you left, so it was a way of getting a job with a cash payout on retirement. It's worth noting that while of course this was all about entrenching the aristocracy and upper middle classes in their place in the top rungs of society, contemporary this was a system that everyone saw as a way of getting the upper classes to run the state and pay for the privilege.
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Apr 22, 2020 10:21
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feedmegin posted:Also, you really want the people running your Army to be those who have a stake in the current system lest the proles get uppity ideas. You've got it backwards. It's the Royal Navy, and the Royal Air Force, but just the plain old Army. There's a reason for that. The Navy promoted via merit, but that just meant that being a member of the gentry wasn't sufficient to guarantee you success. It was still pretty necessary to getting your foot on the first few rungs on the ladder, and whether or not you would be picked out of 'merit' depended a lot on patronage.
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Apr 22, 2020 13:08
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It says something both about the government and culture in the south that many states felt it necessary to criminalise the promotion of abolition in the south.
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Apr 22, 2020 15:03
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SlothfulCobra posted:I don't think Washington was that impressive as a man outside of happening to be the guy given the helm at the founding. He was okay and didn't have an major failings, which is about as much as you can hope for out of anybody, and he didn't face any big opposition since the rest of the founding fathers were pretty agreed on the fact that America should have some kind of government. There are vanishingly few saints in history, the people we remember and revere are picked typically because they were precisely the right person in the right place to bend history the right way. Churchill is my go-to case study for this. There isn't a big statue of him outside Parliament because he was a typical-for-his-time racist, unapologetic imperialist, and terrible armchair general. He gets a statue because he's the guy who refused to negotiate peace with Germany when every other plausible candidate would have. The right guy at the right moment.
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Apr 23, 2020 19:00
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Raenir Salazar posted:I blame Bush Senior for mismanaging the fall of the USSR and the former Soviet bloc as setting up much of the sociopolitical conditions that enabled Putin to rise to power in the resulting vacuum. Eh, there's a variety of views about how we could have better handled Russia (I lean towards 'they wouldn't have accepted more help'), but: a) Lol Bush Senior was not in charge of the USSR, you have to give these people some agency. b) the fall of the Soviet Bloc resulted in the extremely rapid integration of the vast majority of Eastern Europe into the Western democratic order. There are lingering issues of liberalism we can all see today and the world was all too slow to intervene in the Balkans when things started to fall apart there, but given the range of scenarios that are obvious from an event of this magnitude we definitely ended up on the significantly optimistic side of things. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Apr 24, 2020 |
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Apr 24, 2020 10:30
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Slavery would have died out, not because the South would have voluntarily given it up but because as the North managed to wrangle control of the Federal government they would have slowly strangled it. That's the whole reason the war started.
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Apr 24, 2020 23:19
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Geisladisk posted:"don't worry guys we got this no need to invest in any more manufacturing or even work round the clock" Well that's the illustrative problem in the Nazis launching a world war but not having a plan to fight it. The men mobilised to invade France were scheduled to go home to harvest the crop that Autumn in 1940 (bold assumption that France would fold). Hitler cancelled artillery shell contracts in mid 1941 on the assumption the USSR was about to fold. Luftwaffe strategic bomber programmes were cancelled on the basis the war wouldn't last long enough for them to be relevant. And the whole lot ran off looting and forced loans from the occupied territories.
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Apr 25, 2020 23:22
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drgitlin posted:Post-war Japan and Germany? The important caveats for Japan and Germany is that the 'problem they solved' is 'genocidal regime with limitless imperial ambition', which is very difficult to make worse, and the solution involved the US if not occupying then required to establish a permanent military presence to act as a guarantor of peace in the region for 75 years and counting. The lesson is that yes it's technically possible, but to make it work means being willing to sign and honour a blank cheque.
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Apr 30, 2020 22:00
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Don Gato posted:We had a very large reconstruction effort in South Korea due to South Korean infrastructure literally not existing after the Korean War, and the pre-War infrastructure was only for things the Japanese had declared were essential to Japan. Of course the first few decades, their politics were very... murderous, if still popular in modern Korea for very complicated reasons. Actually yeah, South Korea is probably your go-to example of starting from very little and building up to stable-democracy. Many decades of effort, along with a unifying external threat to focus on.
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Apr 30, 2020 23:58
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I mean, what's our success metric? I think the number of stable contiguous democracies that have lasted longer than 100 years can be counted on the fingers of one hand? (depending on when you want to start counting the British Imperial possessions)
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May 1, 2020 08:45
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Jack2142 posted:I blame the French and their 5 Republics. Well exactly. You might say that S Korea's journey to democracy has been flawed and bumpy, but actually do the line by line historical comparison and they've been a fantastic success. Liberal democracy is rare, relatively recent, and in most countries where it is embedded there was some form of civil war over the issue.
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May 1, 2020 12:38
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