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chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

FAUXTON posted:

Iirc they didn't train them so much as coax them to the front, get them drunk as poo poo, and then get the gently caress out of the way.

It would actually be quite hard to get an elephant drunk! As I recently learned, if you had 7% ABV alcohol (like a strong beer or weak wine) it would take about 7.1 gallons to get an elephant drunk. Presumably they wouldn't consume much hard liquor.

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chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Yeah, the US has historically had a lot of teetotalers and temperance movements, usually with a religious backing. They tried getting a dry army in the Civil War, which didn’t exactly work out.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

GotLag posted:

US and Soviet tanker helmets protected the wearer's head from the tank, not from bullets or shrapnel.

For that matter, no helmets protected from bullets until Kevlar. A steel pot helmet might deflect a glancing blow from a rifle or MG, but even a pistol at close range will barely be stopped. Helmets protected from bumps, raining debris from artillery strikes, and minor fragments.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

So you acknowledge that a close range pistol shot will be stopped, yet do not consider this protection from bullets? Also, how much more protection do you think kevlar helmets offer?

The greatest threat to a soldier in WW2: being shot at close range in the helmet with a .45.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Fangz posted:

What's with this helmets stopping bullets nitpicking?

Yes, helmets were designed primarily to stop shrapnel until quite a lot later.
But yes, helmets can also in limited cases provide protection from bullets.
And yes, protection from pistol calibres is still some protection, given the proliferation of SMGs during WWII.

Here's a test by Soviets during WWII focusing on shooting various guns at helmets.

http://tankarchives.blogspot.com/2017/08/whose-helmet-was-better.html

This shows
(a) that helmets can be protection, at least sometimes.
(b) the degree of protection they offered is something the Soviets cared about.

EDIT:

I mean I don't know why we're finding the idea of firing a .45 ACP at a Stahlhelm ridiculous given that I suspect a pretty big proportion of bullets fired at Germans in WWII was from the PPSh.

Because most of those bullets, statistically, aren’t going for the portion of the head covered by a helmet. Protecting from SMGs and handguns was a happy accident, not the main reason for their existence or the main threat to be protected against.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Phanatic posted:

No, it's not. Pure alcohol is just pure alcohol, it's not something dissolved in something else.

You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could make this post that you never stopped to consider if you should.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014


It looks jumpy but slow, so the recoil is probably gentle to the soldier even if it throws off your aim. General doctrine is to keep it on semi-auto anyway, so the actual full auto firing would have only been used up close or for suppression.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Phanatic posted:

You can also see the barrel stutter as it moves backwards, as each individual round in the burst first.

If you didn't watch the FW video, what's going on is that the barrel, the receiver, the whole action, the magazine, are all recoiling, and since there's no ejection due to the use of caseless ammunition, it fires all three rounds in the burst before all that stuff reaches the travel limit. So all three rounds in the very-high-ROF burst leave the barrel before the recoil is felt, with the idea being that the burst will be very tight. The rifle was a competitor in the US Advanced Combat Rifle program, and the objective of the program was to deliver a rifle with double the hit probability of the M16. Idea is that the first rounds you fire are the most likely to be on-target, to maximize hit probability with them. HK did this with the three-round burst, other competitors did it by firing flechettes, and/or multiple projectiles from the same cartridge. None of them actually provided the hoped-for increase in accuracy so it didn't justify replacing the M16 with anything.

But in single-shot mode or full-auto mode, the G11's rate of fire wasn't ridiculously high. So I was wondering what the felt recoil was like when most of the mass of the rifle is oscillating with every single shot. In that second video there it shows the soldier shooting semi-auto about halfway through, and yeah, it looks pretty jumpy. But in full auto the ROF is under 500rpm, considerably slower than a full-auto M16, so it's probably not all that bad.

A big problem with any replacement project for the M16 and M4 is the requirements are often so high that they’re unattainable. You’ll see demands for 100% increase in hit rate while also being perfectly reliable while dirty and just as affordable as the M4, which is essentially impossible to manufacture with current technology.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

feedmegin posted:

Our heritage is burgers burned into hockey pucks and sausages blackened on the outside yet somehow still raw on the inside. While being rained on.

This reminds me of the great Wolfgang the Bratty Man of the Cold War.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Before photographs, descriptions of people would include a ton of detail on their appearance, gait, clothing (most people had little clothing to change into), accent and languages spoken, etc. As much as everyone could remember. If you had an ambiguous situation, you'd use eyewitnesses to an incident and people who knew the person to corroborate their identity.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

zoux posted:

I was going to say that violent revolutions rarely stop when the regime is overthrown and they end up eating each other, but is that true on balance? I wouldn't necessarily count wars for independence as revolutions, we didn't exactly hang George III in 1783

It depends on the motivation and whether the people leading the revolution think that killing the people in charge is not only okay, but necessary. The American Revolution took place an ocean away from the main government they were fighting against, but the Continental Congress didn't start demanding the execution of loyalists. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson weren't saying to behead the governors who didn't join their side. Seizures of property and exile, yes, but not murder. When the Crown acquiesced to independence, the war was over. British soldiers went home, 80+ million loyalists remained and became Americans. Relations even remained positive enough that both nations engaged in trade and diplomatic relations immediately after the war ended, though the War of 1812 was a rocky moment.

With the French Revolution, there was a sense that the royals and aristocrats were directly and personally responsible for everything and people like Robespierre hyped the people up into wanting heads on pikes. He glorified the idea of terrorizing the populace to keep the peace after a revolution, and the bloody revolution had created factions that were equally willing to kill for power; when you make your revolution about storming the palace and killing the people in charge, it becomes hard to stick around as a peaceful-minded group and maintain any semblance of authority. Now you have a government where all the different people vying for power are the kind who are fine with killing for it, and killing becomes the order of the day.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

ChubbyChecker posted:

80+ millions?

I completely hosed up that typing. It was over 80 percent of the loyalists.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

PittTheElder posted:

I thought the surprising thing was that cops fired into a crowd of civilians and then some of them were actually convicted for manslaughter. I guess the victims were white though.

There’s a possibility it was an accidental discharge that started the shooting. Lots of witness accounts differ.

There’s a big problem with people trying to earn woke points by interpreting history from a modern perspective and applying their own morality, which is where you get takes like “American independence was all about rich people trying to get richer and no common man had any reason to support the revolution.”

Remember that when the Founding Fathers excluded the right to vote from women and black people, the average person on the street wouldn’t have much problem with it either. They weren’t any worse than was normal for the era.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

I made an effort post about Italian WW2 machine guns in an older thread. It's astounding how much effort they put into ignoring all established knowledge in firearms design.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

FrangibleCover posted:

What were the Italians going to use proper tanks for?


Italian-French Border


Italian-Swiss Border


Italian-Austrian-Yugoslav Border triple point

Of course they had poo poo tanks, should we bash Uzbek Submarines next? Meanwhile in 1935-36 the CR.32 was doing so well in Spain that it broke the brains of the Italian Air Force and they ordered another biplane fighter in 1938. The Navy were building the Littorio class battleships which were probably the best battlewagons in the world when the first one was launched and nigh obsolescent when the third one was commissioned. Italy was a first tier military in 1935 that failed to keep up into 1940 when they actually needed it.

Also the Brixia entered service in 1935. It was definitely innovative but I'm prepared to accept a difference of opinion as to whether it was good.

If you’re going to build tanks based on your local conditions, you should try not invading Africa with them. The tankettes were pretty useless even there.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Jobbo_Fett posted:

The Carcano is also the only major rifle design to reach large scale production numbers of all the major nations that had a hole in the magazine well for the clip to drop out of. As a nation that fought in the desert. And we've already spoken about the machine guns with oilers attached that were hosed immediately.

I don't know of any cases where the Carcano's clip hole was a problem. The rifle is actually a quite good one and the 6.5mm round was ahead of its time in going to smaller, lighter ammunition. They had more issues with trying to switch to a 7.35mm round at the exact wrong time to completely rework your supply chain.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

FrangibleCover posted:

It's kind of weird how Italy, Sweden and Japan all had 6.5mm class rifles and then went "oh gently caress everyone else is doing it differently" and went for 7.5mm class rifles instead. I wonder if it was just national peer pressure or if early intermediate cartridges weren't worth it without select fire rifles.

People in charge of ordnance departments are well known for making decisions that don't necessarily match reality on the ground because they think they know better. Think the people who wanted Germany to have a semi-auto rifle, but also had to be able to be operated exactly like a bolt-action if the gas system didn't work and couldn't have the barrel tapped for a gas port.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

zoux posted:

Are the Slade books worth reading, I mean I can get into a Clancy book even knowing that he's full of poo poo and a facist

The concept behind The Salvation War is far better than the execution.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Like the basic idea (the Apocalypse happens but nobody checked on human technology since medieval times and the demons get curbstomped) is interesting, but even the basic writing is just okay before you get to Slade being an rear end in a top hat.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Raenir Salazar posted:

IIRC The Demons are for their credit decently quick to react and adapt to the situation they find themselves in. IIRC they adapt very rapidly through centuries of organizational and tactical evolution to adapt to the humans they're facing. If they had realized it isn't a far stretch to imagine they would have tried various far more damaging means of striking at humanity.

Also Slade thought Gen. Patraeus was the greatest modern US General to Ever Live and made him a 5-Star General/Supreme Commander of UN & US forces.

You can imagine the huge smile on my face when the news broke about him leaking classified docs to his reporter mistress canning his career.

Petraeus had some really embarrassing hero worship before that. Call of Duty: Black Ops II depicted him as the Secretary of Defense in 2025.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

fwiw our family is literally french jews but my dad's dad was in the Wehrmacht, and my cousin was telling me how badass it was that my grandpa mowed down enemy hordes (in Italy mostly so uh, ok United States Army cousin) when he was in and out of Iraq deployments and I was about 10. He's still pretty loving fash adjacent these days too.

Generally you can assume that anyone who's super hooah about machine gunning people and unironically getting American flags or Spartan helmets tattooed on them is a step away from going full fash. They're just looking for the right push.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Phanatic posted:

Is there hard evidence of the Soviets dropping cluster munitions disguised to look like toys during the Afghanistan invasion? Or is it a case of kids being curious and getting maimed by UXO and the story growing with each telling?

I'm going to suggest that they didn't do that purely because it's such a fanciful "evil empire" narrative that it sounds like it came from cheap fiction.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Tab8715 posted:

Is there such a thing as military without a county?

I’m curious how to define terrorists vs. the military of another country.

Or how do governments decide this isn’t the government of a country but just a bunch of terrorists that happen to be there physically.

It's a nebulous question that doesn't really have a good answer, but mostly seems to depend on diplomatic recognition. The Taliban controlled the majority of Afghanistan before they were overthrown by the War on Terror, but they were considered an illegitimate terrorist group by all but like 3 countries. Meanwhile, the US initially refused to recognize the People's Republic of China but they eventually established enough control and stability of China as a nation that they received increasing recognition (including from first world countries and American allies like Canada and Austria) until the UN finally gave them official recognition as the legal government in 1971.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

That exact same shape is used by the BLU-43 Dragontooth, which were in use in the 1960s and 1970s. The shape provides drag that allows the mine to land softly without needing a parachute. It would be like saying that the identical color between Humanitarian Daily Rations and cluster bomb munitions was an intentional attempt to kill civilians, rather than two sides of the same organization not talking to each other.

The way they describe the "bird bomb" indicates that the report is likely taking terrified civilians who don't know much about the technology in use at face value. The PFM-1 looks nothing like a bird unless you're a 5-year-old who just grabs cool stuff thinking it's a toy, and your dad sees you pick it up from 40 feet away. Chances are the rest of those bombs don't "look like matchboxes" but just bear a vague resemblance by virtue of being a small rectangle.

chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Sep 17, 2019

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Also, there's a good suggestion that the PFM-1s were green not because they were intentionally made to look like toys, but because the stocks they used were designed for use in Europe where they would be naturally camouflaged.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

https://twitter.com/OozeBear/status/1174003490030530560

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

bewbies posted:

good god no

An M224 throws a round that weighs a little less than four pounds a little more than 3 km. I don't have any idea how high they go or what the muzzle velocity is, but that is a lot of kinetic energy. I had to haul an 81mm mortar baseplate a significant distance exactly one (1) time and that is not an experience I ever want to repeat under any circumstance.

That said, modern light mortars do have a "handheld mode" but that just means using them without a tripod, you still have a baseplate that goes on the ground.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKk8UH-jhrw

Now imagine that on your shin.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

How about the interwar Italian side-mounted grenade launcher?



The big problem is it was connected to the trigger mechanism of the rifle, so you needed to swap the bolt between the rifle and the grenade launcher depending on which you wanted to fire. Still badass as hell.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Grumio posted:

All this talk of rifle grenades and super light mortars makes me think something like the M79 would have been very popular with WW2 armies.

Is there anything about the M79 and similar grenade launchers (that can be fired from the shoulder) that were out of reach by WW2 armies, technologically speaking? Different propellants?

I posted the interwar Italian grenade launcher before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTT3Vmfu--w

You had to swap the bolt between the rifle and the grenade launcher to fire, so it wasn't as useful as it could have been. The grenades were also not very effective.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Randarkman posted:

I've also heard a competing but much less repeated myth, that Coco Chanel was involved in designing the German army uniforms. Though I think that one's essentially been debunked as a myth as well. Really the design was mostly just derived from the older uniforms throughout the 20s and 30s until it arrived at the point where we recognize it as the "Nazi uniforms".

Coco Chanel was absolutely a Nazi spy, though. One who took advantage of her connections with the party to get her competitors and unwanted employees sent to concentration camps for her own benefit.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Arquinsiel posted:

The Jawa ones being bolt action rifles just seem particularly odd, because they still have the whole bolt there. The Sterling is a little bit more "black metal tube" than the SMLE is, so it's not as obvious how it works.

When you actually see it on film it's not an issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDonCjhFdC0

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Siivola posted:

That's literally what they did for Rogue One and it's actually kind of jarring to spot a pistol made out of an AR lower and camera kit.

The prequel and sequel trilogies did have a surprising amount of real firearms in use. They had some completely constructed guns to fit with the more overtly sci-fi aesthetic (which was intentional to show it as a "Golden Age" compared to life under the Empire), but Naboo security had guns based on Calico submachine guns and air pistols.





The sequel trilogy updated the E-11 to the F-11, but they had stuff like ATI AR-15 stocks on them.



My personal favorite for obscurity is this rifle that's based on a Bergmann pistol:



As for costumes, try to count all the used items on this Death Trooper:

chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Sep 22, 2019

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

GotLag posted:

Did the Germans ever use a heavy machine gun on the ground in WW2?

The MG 42 and MG 34 were general purpose machine guns meant to serve in all of these roles. The American definition of "heavy machine gun" today usually means something .50 caliber or above, but back then it more commonly meant a large emplaced machine gun that could put a lot of fire down. The Maxim and its descendants like the Vickers were classified as heavy machine guns despite being mostly .30 caliber because they were physically large and heavy. The MG 42 and MG 34 mounted on a tripod served in this role.

If you mean high caliber guns, the Germans didn't make much use of .50 cals at all and usually went right from .30 caliber machine guns to 20mm autocannons. The MG 131 was 13mm, but that was an aircraft gun. Some 20mm anti-air guns could be tilted down to fire at ground troops, but that's about it.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Panzeh posted:

There was a complaint in 1944 from an officer on inspection that motor squads were carrying 4 brens because having a vehicle integral to the squad allowed them to carry plenty of ammo for the things. His complaint was very peacetime, that this was eroding marksmanship in the infantry.

I'm legitimately surprised no officers fought to have the Bren issued with a Breda Modello 30 attached magazine to decrease the chance of soldiers losing them.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

The Lone Badger posted:

My (extremely suspect) understanding is that the SAW was intended to be easily fired from the shoulder like a rifle, as opposed to LMGs that were intended to be fired prone or propped on something.

The SAW is basically a step between old light machine guns and automatic rifles (like the BAR, RPK, and Bren) and heavier GPMGs (like the M60, PKM, and M240). As technology advanced, assault rifles and battle rifles became capable of putting down similar amounts of fire as the old magazine-fed LMGs. The M249 takes the basic idea of a GPMG and scales it down to use lighter ammunition, creating a belt-fed machine gun capable of being operated effectively by a single soldier. This allows for increased squad-level firepower by letting you put even more rounds down range without needing a dedicated MG team.

Definitions can get nebulous. The M2 Carbine can technically be classified as a submachine gun (because the cartridge is similar to a magnum pistol round) or assault rifle (because out of that barrel the ballistics within combat ranges are only slightly below standard intermediate rifle rounds).

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

Whales were a CIA op to destabilize the fishing markets of Chile and Peru. Sperm whales meaningfully compete with human fisheries even today, at their peak they may have greater consumers than all of humanity. The Soviet Union recognized this alliance between the first-world and the whales, and made necessary countermeasures against both. As always, they approached the whales with amicable terms, but were rudely rejected and even betrayed with a fluke-smack to the Soviet diplomatic vessel. Thus the retaliatory strikes against hostile fleets of whales were a necessary component of the struggle against capitalism

Found the ArdentCommunist alt.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014


chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

ChubbyChecker posted:

Let's see what Wikipedia says:

Early beds were little more than piles of straw or some other natural material (e.g. a heap of palm leaves, animal skins, or dried bracken). An important change was raising them off the ground, to avoid drafts, dirt, and pests. 23-5 million years ago, before the advent of humans, apes began creating beds composed of a sleeping platform including a wooden pillow

Genetic analysis suggests that the human body louse, which lives in clothing, may only have diverged from the head louse some 170,000 years ago, which supports evidence that humans began wearing clothing at around this time. These estimates predate the first known human exodus from Africa, although other hominid species who may have worn clothes – and shared these louse infestations – appear to have migrated earlier.

Sewing needles have been dated to at least 50,000 years ago (Denisova Cave, Siberia) – and uniquely associated with a human species other than modern humans, i.e. H. Denisova/H. Altai. The oldest possible example is 60,000 years ago, a needlepoint (missing stem and eye) found in Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Other early examples of needles dating from 41,000-15,000 years ago are found in multiple locations, e.g. Slovenia, Russia, China, Spain, and France.


So the technology for making comfortable beds existed about 50k years ago.

Depends on how you define “comfort.” A thin mattress stuffed with straw and a thick mattress stuffed with feathers are both the best thing the wealthy could get in different places and time periods, but of radically different comfort.

I think medieval Europe would be the first time and place that the wealthy would be guaranteed to have a bed of the shape and comfort that we recognize today. The Early Modern period is when beds (rather than piling furs and blankets on the floor or a bench) would reach even farmers and start becoming the main place to sleep at home.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

What leads you to this conclusion?

Just examining evidence of ancient bedding and having slept on a variety of different thicknesses of mattress and different fillings over the years. Roman mattresses are noticeably far thinner than modern ones and they were often stuffed with hay or reeds rather than soft feathers. I can attest that it’s not fun to have straw poking out of the mattress!

Even that is far better than what medieval peasants got, which was often just a blanket and maybe some furs.

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chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Chamale posted:

With many military history anecdotes, something that happened sometimes can become exaggerated into something that was commonplace, or part of doctrine.

Also the simple fact that countless tests from groups like InRange conclusively prove that the AR-15 and AK don’t come close to matching the myths about their respective reliability. The only time the M16 legitimately struggled was the early stages when it was intentionally issued without cleaning kits or proper instructions on maintenance, which smells of sabotage to make the M14 look good.

Keep in mind that soldiers aren’t necessarily weapons experts, even special forces. There’s no guarantee that a Ranger whose M4 jams actually understands how unlikely the malfunction is or exactly what caused it, or that his stolen AK would suffer the same problem in the same situation, but thinks his status gives him special ability to speak on the subject.

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