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FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

ninjahedgehog posted:

Hell yeah it is. Avenger and Corsair and Warhawk are good names too, whoever was in charge of naming 1940s-era American planes did a very good job at it

Meanwhile in the UK the Wildcat became the Martlet, the Hellcat became the Gannet, the Avenger became the Tarpon, the Vindicator became the Chesapeake, the Havoc became the Boston and the Warhawk became the Kittyhawk.

We did good names, but we didn't do them for Americans.

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FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

BalloonFish posted:

Land-based bombers were named after British towns (Lancaster, Stirling, Halifax) and it was decided to name American types after similarly mid-tier US cities (Boston, Baltimore, Chesapeake (?)).
Thinking of renamed bombers, I think they did something even cleverer in some cases: Naming bombers after British towns such as Boston or Washington that happen to have slightly more famous counterparts in the US.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

CoffeeBooze posted:

Knowing Saab? There very well may be.
It's designed to be serviced by one trained engineer and five conscripts in twelve minutes, using only hand tools.


Arban posted:

So I have a question.

I once read a description of the air attacks against the Bismarck, that stated that the germans were firing the main guns against the incoming swordfish. this was explained as an attempt to create waterspouts in front of the planes they would fly into and crash. At the time I shrugged it of as an improvised desperation tactic, if it even happened.
A few weeks ago I was on vacation in northern norway, and came across a small museum about the sinking of the Tirpitz. They claimed that the Tirpitz had been firing its main guns against the attacking bombers and even had pictures of a dud shell that had been found some 35 km distant.

Was this an actual doctrine of the german navy? I can't imagine that guns like that would have anywere near the prescision to engage aircraft, although they would certainly destroy any plane they hit.
The waterspout thing was tried a lot by many navies and occasionally worked if I recall correctly. The Japanese even used it for fighter direction, when the escorts spotted a raid inbound they'd fire their guns into the water in the direction of the enemy so that the CAP knew where to go because they didn't use radio direction. I'm not so sure about high angle fire against level bombers but I suppose you might as well give it a crack.

The Japanese also had gigantic "beehive" rounds for battleship main battery guns that were supposed to act like giant incendiary shotgun shells against incoming aircraft. They didn't really work out.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Now I'm wondering if anyone ever tried to make a "PT boat carrier" to deploy swarms of them while out at sea (assuming the water allowed for it of course). It'd have to have been before we got aircraft carriers really figured out, which is a pretty narrow window.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_boat_tender

It was actually in the small window between practical torpedoes and practical submarines, but not far off.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Platystemon posted:

It displaced twenty‐one litres and made less power than the General Motors 6046, which displaced a third the amount and had one‐fifth the number of cylinders.
Yes, so they fitted all available 6046s to Shermans and then still had more Sherman-making capacity so they used Multibanks.

And for what it's worth the reduction in power resulted in no appreciable reduction in performance.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Cessna posted:

You say this like it is no big deal.

I have a scar on my chin from a time on a CAX in 29 Palms when my driver hit an heavy irrigation pipe and brought my tank to a halt. I pitched forward and hit the housing that covers the gunsight; I bit through my lower lip and bled all over the interior of the tank for the rest of the exercise. My gunner mashed his eye into the gunsight; we later learned that he'd received a minor fracture to his eye socket. These were facial injuries, the sort a helmet wouldn't really protect against, but I think they illustrate the fact that you're constantly getting thrown around inside the vehicle with a lot of force. After a long time in the tank driving over bad ground you're going to be covered with minor bruises. Protecting your head with a helmet is vital.

I have an old story from a guy who was in the RAF Regiment with an FV103 Spartan APC. They were fitted with smoke grenade launchers, possibly after they were made, and the controls for the smoke grenades were on a little control box that hung from its wire in front of the commander.

The Spartan is a fast vehicle.

Doctrine was to make a tactical stop by going from full acceleration to full brakes before disembarking infantry.

When the vehicle stopped the control box continued forwards at 70kph, reached the end of its arc and swung back into the commander's face.

Every.

Single.

Time.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Cessna posted:

It's more likely a non-rate's 1996 Mustang, purchased at 22% APR.
I thought every 1996 Mustang purchased at 22% APR ended up in a ditch by 1997 at the latest?

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

The French Puma Orchidée (Orchid) Battlefield Observation helicopter comes from the acronym "Observatoire Radar Cohérent Héliporté d’Investigation"

Nope, me neither.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Nebakenezzer posted:

(I know gazetted means "made" and this has something to do with some tradition where, I don't know, their name is written down, possibly in The Gazette, but it still throws me slightly.)
By my understanding if you are gazetted it's a promotion for the duration of the war and you revert back to your 'real' rank later and for pensions purposes. I could be utterly wrong though.

Raenir Salazar posted:

IIRC they are hostile, but they happened to have a fairly well developed rules of engagement. They absolutely struck first at military stuff and we're clearly preparing for an invasion, but might have not been like war crimey about it.
The very first thing that happens to them is that one of their ships gets swatted by a high velocity projectile in low earth orbit that we'd recognise as a communications satellite but they might not. My interpretation of what happened in the movie is that both sides thought the other side started shooting first and the conflict escalates from there. It's a terrible, terrible movie but there's actually quite a lot going on behind the board-stiff acting, horrible dialogue and ridiculous central plot.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Dunkirk:

-British soldiers getting shot up at the start in a French town, walk for 5 minutes and are at the beaches of Dunkirk, then wait forever until they get lifted off the beaches or stay behind. Makes no sense for the opening scene.
-The long shot of everyone and everything on the beach was cool, but felt like they spent all their budget for that scene as the later beach scenes didn't look anywhere near the same.
-Not as many bombings/shellings of the beaches as I would have expected
-Very little French representation
-He-111 rear gunners don't sound like that!
-While I liked the multiple stories, it cut too frequently between them without keeping the viewer informed as to when things were taking place. I recall timestamps, but for such a long movie, maybe a different approach would've been better.
-Running out of fuel, gliding all the way to Dunkirk, landing in sand, and then burning down your own plane is very weird considering how he was gliding over lines of men waiting to be picked up and suddenly its night outside. And the pilot never thought to ditch in the sea next to an evacuating boat.


Its been a while so I may be forgetting/confounding stuff but those were my biggest gripes with the movie. Good, but not great.
And the dogfights were bloody awful. Mid War Spits and Buchons waggling their wings at each other in an FAA approved fashion because by God we can't use CGI, everyone knows it looks terrible.

FrangibleCover fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Sep 4, 2019

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

bewbies posted:

That being said, there are two caveats to this answer. A Tico was not designed to win a surface fight -- its primary mission is air defense in support of a carrier. As it happens, a modern carrier wing would fall over themselves to go strike an old battlewagon with no air cover. Like, a single flight of Hornets could put more HE on said Iowa than any ship has ever had put on it in the history of the world. I think, anyway...I'm open to counter arguments.
Agreed here, cruisers fight cruisers. Tico vs. Newport News results in Newport News getting herself owned horribly.

quote:

The other factor is that the Tico could be equipped with a heavy anti ship missile fairly easily. LRASM probably would't cripple an Iowa, but if you need more missile, scaling up is very easy. So, in a couple of months, the Tico can launch a full spread of Super-LRASMs with 3 ton AP warheads and that would be that.
Disagreed entirely, you can't just invent an imaginary battleship killing missile in three months. You can maybe bodge a BROACH into an LRASM or a vertical launch booster onto a JASSM but BROACH still isn't quite what you want.

You could also reactivate a TLAM-N and fire it bearing and range at the Iowa, that should work.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Nebakenezzer posted:

I got a model of HMS Prince of Wales recently, 1/700, waterline, from Tamiya.

Two questions: was the Prince of Wales and her sister the only two battleships completed in line with the Washington Naval Treaty?
Not even close, for a start she had three other sisters and they were completed in line with the 2nd London Naval Treaty after the Washington Treaty expired. The previous class of RN battleship, the Nelsons, were heavily affected by the WNT which is one of the reasons for their weird all-forward design. The US built the South Dakota class in accordance with London and the North Carolina class in accordance with Washington, the French built the two Dunkerques and two Richelieus per London, the Italian, Japanese and German capital ship construction programmes ignored the treaties.

quote:

I looked on wikipedia and read about the Hood/Prince of Whales Wales engagement with the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen. I didn't realize that the RN had six destroyers with them, and that the battle was kind of a shambles even before the Hood exploded? The Wales was having serious mechanical issues with her guns, so much so that she sailed with civilian vickers/armstrong engineers, and the ship was so new that the crew hadn't been on a shakedown cruise yet. The Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland on the hood had this plan that Hood and Prince of Wales was going to target Bismarck while two other heavy cruisers shadowing the two would target Prinz Eugen.......but the cruisers didn't know this because radio silence. And then you have the things not done to hood for economic reasons that made it explodable.

I guess my other question is "is 'it was a shambles' fair', because it sure seems like the RN for once could have the warship engagements it really loved, but still miffed it thanks to lack of attention to detail. Prince of Wales would puncture Bismarck's fuel bunkers, which would lead to Bismarck murder eventually, but this seems pretty small
Attention to detail isn't what I'd put it down to. Honestly, mostly sheer bad luck. Bismarck and Prinz Eugen ran into the covering force when it was least well equipped to fight them, PoW's turrets played up and Hood simply should not have exploded. There's an argument to be made that PoW shouldn't have been at sea but that just takes a battleship straight off the books and the passages into the Atlantic has to be covered by only one ship. In my opinion even in the absence of the Counties the best thing for Holland to do is concentrate all fire on Bismarck, she's significantly more dangerous to his force than Prinz Eugen is.

quote:

Also PS could the last battleship HMS Vanguard take the Bismarck in a straight fight
Either Hood or Prince of Wales could take Bismarck in a straight fight. Vanguard should win, but shouldn't isn't will.


Jobbo_Fett posted:

No, because their tanks were poo poo
When do we stop talking about tanks as the single and sole arbiter of military power and start considering the Italian Armed Forces in something approaching a holistic manner?

FrangibleCover fucked around with this message at 10:35 on Sep 5, 2019

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Youre more than welcome to write about how they were a top military because of x, y, and z, but tankettes that can be penetrated by machine guns and lack of turrets, as tankettes generally do, kinda just works against them.

They had some good stuff in the navy, so I'm told, but what would imply good doctrine, tactics, and equipment for their forces? I'll try to expand my knowledge on their artillery, because I believe they had some decent designs when it came to mountainous terrain.
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.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

chitoryu12 posted:

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.
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.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

zoux posted:

That famous Roman Republican, Julius Caesar.

Sounds like I'll give them a miss then, cheers.
In fairness, being stabbed in the back by half the senate because they didn't like how much power you concentrated in yourself probably gives you something to think about for Round 2.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Ensign Expendable posted:

What's so hellish about buying up whatever the US or UK write off?
With the notable exception of the CF-18 contract in the early 80s the Canadians have hosed up every single tactical aircraft procurement since the Clunk. All of them. Ask me about one and I'll tell you why it was the wrong choice.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.
Not a tactical aircraft, a strategic airlifter, but I'll bite anyway.

The bad decisionmaking there was committing to being an expeditionary peacekeepingy sort of armed forces in the American mould in the 1990s and taking until the mid 00s to think that maybe they should buy some planes that let them do expeditionary peacekeepingy sort of things without having to beg a ride off the Americans. It's a good jet but it'd have been handy to have going into Afghanistan instead of just coming out.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Nebakenezzer posted:

BEFORE the F-18 :smug:

So just outta curiosity, mr. cover, what's your opinion on the NSS?
The National Shipbuilding Strategy? I'm not particularly familiar with it and the MilHist thread isn't really the place for it but I think the T26 that's probably going to be selected is a good bet.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

karoshi posted:

Surely the 2019 Bundeswehr is clean??
https://www.dw.com/en/german-soldier-charged-with-plotting-to-kill-politicians-while-posing-as-refugee/a-41766093

"According to Germany's Military Counterintelligence Service, about 200 Bundeswehr soldiers have been classified as right-wing extremists since 2008."

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Cyrano4747 posted:

This won’t solve the idiots with klan tattoos but at lest it won’t be acceptable to try to pass off literal Nazi poo poo as warrior culture crap.
An hour of whacking off to how owned the Confederates got by the US ARMY BEST IN THE WORLD?

big dong wanter posted:

OK, imagine if gay black hitler was in charge for a second
how would have the uk/us/etc invasion of france have gone without the eastern front?
like if hitler had thought "hey i've got a 1000 year reich why start a two front war?"
im curious because from what i've read about operation overlord it was pretty touch and go and seems great fodder for a tabletop game
Leaving aside the sheer Liberace-in-a-Vantablack-catsuit level of this gay black hitler because the invasion of the Soviet Union was the whole point, the Nazi economy probably just cooks itself as it runs out of poo poo to steal from countries it just invaded and gets the living poo poo bombed out of it. Overlord isn't going to look anywhere near recognisable, I wouldn't like to speculate as to when and where the liberation of Europe would start but there's a non-specious argument that says the Allies grab the Italian islands, nibble at the edges a bit and then give up and finish off Japan before opening the debarquement with multiple tactical nuclear weapons.

Overlord being touch-and-go makes for a good story but honestly it was pretty much a foregone conclusion just due to the weights of forces assembled. If Hitler releases the Panzers they do exactly what they did at Sicily and Salerno and Anzio: Run at the beaches and then get swept up by naval gunfire and air interdiction. If Omaha fails then following elements of 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions get put onto Utah, which was wildly successful. It's not that the guys on the ground weren't brave or that their efforts were meaningless but too many new things would have to go wrong for the whole invasion to be kicked back into the sea.

And then we'd have been back a year later and it would not have been allowed to go wrong that time.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Russia wouldn't get any support from the Allies, and the divide between East and West would likely be even greater.

A short list of changes include:

-North Africa is conquered by the Germans, or at the very least many more battles take place on the blistering sands.
-While the Tiger tank would likely be developed, built, and sent to the desert, the Panther tank never materializes.
-Certain Soviet technological developments fail to occur: the KV-1s are built in greater numbers, but the IS series likely wouldn't materialize. Similarly, planes like the La-5, may also not show up.
-Populations in the baltics and ukraine endure more time under Soviet oppression; how will this affect them?
-More effort placed on anti-shipping from the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine, as the lack of arctic convoys frees up more ships for duties elsewhere.
-The Battle of Britain changes entirely, with more Luftwaffe aircraft and personnel based in northern France, similarly with North Africa.
-Japan's border with Russia becomes a wild card. Are more units sent to it? Less? Or do things stay the way they were in "our timeline"?
-Potentially no G43/K43 series of guns, no STG44, not until M1 Garands and Thompsons arrive in Germany via capture.
Oh no, we're actually going to do this, aren't we? Gay, Black Hitler has arrived. I'm mostly agreed with you apart from the Grand Strategic points.

- North Africa was logistics limited for the Axis, not manpower limited. They can put 5 million more men in Tripoli if they like but they're going to starve to death. They can maybe send their best equipped units but their best equipped units tend to be SS and the SS tend to be horrible so it'll more or less balance out.
- The Battle of Britain involved the majority of the striking power of the Luftwaffe, a couple of extra Geschwaders from the Polish border aren't going to make much difference. The Luftwaffe not being withdrawn to refit for Barbarossa makes some difference but the danger period for Britain had passed and the likely result is further city bombing until the days close in too much to do a lot of flying.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

It's significantly different. Swingfire is a SACLOS missile. Brimstone is fire-and-forget and will be fired indirectly, possibly with the aid of UAV spotting though not required.
Swingfire was ACLOS in its later variant and could be fired indirectlyish because you could dismount the firing control and hide in a bush, then shoot the missile over a ridgeline or a wall using its incredible manoeuvrability. Regardless, the question is one of doctrinal role, whether it's intended to provide extra firepower to infantry and reconnaissance formations as a replacement for FV438 Swingfire and FV102 Striker or whether it's part of a new doctrinal concept. The answer to that question is that it's for Poland, not the UK, so it's a replacement for Szturm-S at best.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

ChubbyChecker posted:

I read the Wikipedia article for HMS Speedy, and found out that Napoleon sold her to the Papal Navy! Pity that O'Brien didn't put that in the book :haw:
Makes sense, after fighting a 32-gun xebec-frigate and then getting captured you'd expect her to be quite holy.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.
At this point I'd like to remind the thread of the word Obsolescent:

Collins English Dictionary posted:

If something is obsolescent, it is no longer needed because something better has been invented.

Dreadnought rendered all other battleships obsolescent, they weren't useless but they were no longer needed in the procurement sense. Obviously Pre-Dreads did sterling work in coastal defence, shore bombardment, minor fleet engagements, involuntary minesweeping and many other second line tasks but nobody was going to go out and order a Pre-Dread.

Also in 1941 the Swordfish was obsolete as a dive bomber, obsolescent as a torpedo bomber and state of the art as a carrier anti-submarine aircraft all at the same time. That's where they really excelled, lifting significant loads from short decks and keeping them aloft for extended periods.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Platystemon posted:

I would be interested in reading more about this.

What’s the primary factor? Expansion of the driving band?
Charge temperature, I think. Some modern MBTs have charge temperature sensors so that they can adjust for the ballistic differences.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

JcDent posted:

Hold on, why did the sighting hoods prevent firing dead ahead or astern?
Because the muzzles of the superfiring turret, when pointed forwards, sit directly above the sighting hood of the deck level turret. If you fired you'd kill the entire sighting crew with overpressure.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.
Excuse me, I have a question. Once you have the capability to accelerate multi-ton projectiles to an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, why are you doing fights between spaceships? If someone is pissing you off get a big old lump of rock, put it at 0.99c and crack their loving planet in half.

Then of course they'll try to do the same so you need a way of stopping big fast rocks, like other big fast rocks from a carefully calculated angle.

Then they'll do the same thing so now your rock needs to be able to dodge.

Basically a future space war is going to look like the slowest, highest stakes game of Pong ever played.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

JcDent posted:

Children join pre-dreads in the "involuntary mine-clearing" category.
Are Children Obsolete?

Tab8715 posted:

...the most effective military operation since much in the allied commando raid on the Nazis Uranium Research Facility.
I'm interested by this. Had the Heavy Water Raids not come off and German Heavy Water production continued unimpeded, what would the effect on the war have been in your opinion?

Cythereal posted:

I think they don't give much of a poo poo about the real history and want to tell their idea of a dramatic story. Instead of focusing on how mind-bogglingly absurd the entire Japanese strategic processes leading to Midway were. A good Midway movie could have the makings of a real good black comedy, Japan losing the carriers (and a heavy cruiser) in a pointless battle that could never win what Japan hoped for on a strategic level and was borne of a pants-on-head insane strategic vision planned and promulgated by a martinet.
I am super loving here for The Death Of CARDIV 1

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Tab8715 posted:

The background is the Houthi’s attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure. Reading about it, I think it’s the most effective military operation since much in the allied commando raid on the Nazis Uranium Research Facility.

Tab8715 posted:

From what I remember over the whole situation, none. The Nazis weren’t going to right direction in uranium enrichment so in the end it wouldn’t have mattered but at the time it was definitely a real concern.
So what exactly are you trying to say here? The Houthi attack is the most effective military operation since a military operation that had no effect?

zoux posted:

What are the biggest US intel failures (besides Iraq)
Thinking you have to ascend stairs to get to the first floor of a building?

I'm minded to agree with Pearl Harbor and more broadly the events of Dec 7th/8th across the Pacific as the most major intelligence failure in US history. From a position of great suspicion the Japanese managed to achieve total strategic, operational and tactical surprise across 11000km of ocean and eight time zones with multiple independent operations, hundreds of ships at sea unspotted, thousands of aircraft... And apart from "Those Japanese are up to something" nobody expected anything like it.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Schadenboner posted:

I think it needs the term "warfighter" in there (or is that no longer in vogue since it admits we're, you know, fighting wars?)
The American Conflictist? Peacekeeping Actioneer? Limited Interventionizer?

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Schadenboner posted:

Other than Jutland and Tsushima were there ever actually Decisive Battles of the type envisioned by the doctrine, like during WW2 for example?

Granted those two were p.decisive?
See, I'd argue for Taranto. It didn't do a huge amount of damage in the way that you'd expect a Decisive Battle to do, but it created conditions in which the RN could move around the Med much more freely and imposed a level of timidity on the Regia Marina that essentially changed the fight from two roughly equal forces facing off to the British attempting to pin a Fleet in Being. I'm happy for someone to make a counterargument but I at least think there's room for a discussion.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

ponzicar posted:

A mix of oxycodone, cocaine, and methamphetamine, tested on concentration camp prisoners. It's amazing just how many way the Nazis were terrible.
The article becomes much less sad when you stop reading "Dee Nine" and start reading "Dicks"

Wolf Kemper posted:

the aim was to use Dicks to redefine the limits of human endurance


Polyakov posted:

I wouldnt say that was really a battle as envisaged. It was certainly decisive but it wasnt really a fleet on fleet engagement as i think was envisaged by people that followed that doctrine.
Yeah, Taranto opens up questions about the nature of Decisive Battle doctrine. You kind of get "soft DB" where you use one or more major engagements of enemy seapower (Taranto, Matapan; Any two or three from Coral Sea, Midway, Philippine Sea, Leyte) to seize control of the seas and then exploit and you get "hard DB" where if you don't have all of your battleships and all of their battleships smushed together in a big pile it doesn't count.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

xthetenth posted:

Don't forget the Solomons Campaign. Santa Cruz and Eastern Solomon Sea also matter, especially if you count Coral Sea as anything more than a prelude.
All three are sort of attritional battles more than decisive ones, but Coral Sea gets to have a crack at the big boys club because it knocked two decks out for Midway. I did say it was a questionable pick.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

HEY GUNS posted:

unless you're swedish, then regiments are brigades.
We still have this. LatwPIAT and I know a Russian guy who we talk about Cold War stuff with and a constant bone of contention between us is whether or not a Brigade is real and whether a Regiment is an important operational building block of an army or a collection of stupid toasts with a goat attached.


KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

those 50mms are more along the lines of a grenade discharger than an actual mortar. basically a better way of delivering rifle grenades. everyone loved these things in the interwar years, the poles also had one and the Japanese "knee mortar" is probably the most famous. the launchers were man-portable at about 10-15 lbs. they usually had fixed angles for launch and used a kind of dial-the-range system on the shell itself. the Japanese system was pretty clever in that you just screwed a charge in to the base of a frag grenade, so you didn't need to carry totally separate shells - just the bases.
Shoutout to the British 2" mortar! Hugely simple, fixed charge/variable angle system where you just kinda point the tube at the bad guys and guess an angle, then adjust. One per platoon and apparently they saw more use for smoke delivery than they did for HE. Battlefield obscurants aren't as sexy as explosions though, so we don't talk about them.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Panzeh posted:

The ultralight mortars were also not very useful weapons because chucking hand grenades several hundred meters is not a very good use of a crew served weapon. Most militaries throughout the war phased them out gradually, though the Chinese, always desperate for more firepower made good use of US 60mms in direct-ish fire(the US mortar of this type was probably the most effective).

They also loved the knee mortar earlier on to the point where Chinese arsenals made clones.

Panzeh posted:

Which is why they left infantry TOEs in most major combatants as the war went on. They are vastly outmatched in indirect fire by 81mm mortars and too clunky for use like modern grenade launchers.


Yeah, this is a far superior crew served weapon than a 50mm mortar or a british 2in mortar, or even the Brixia, which is a sort of semi-automatic take on this weapon but not really.
Apart from the Germans (who replaced them 1:1 with short 80mm class mortars, showing that they liked the role but wanted extra punch) and Soviets all major combatants retained their Commando mortars until and beyond the end of the war. In American, British, Commonwealth and Japanese accounts they were beloved. Indeed, the 2" was "phased out gradually" enough that it still hasn't left Indian service.

Commando mortars are still useful and still in service in many militaries around the world. Most have been improved upon greatly and the French LGI F1 2" mortar that they hold at the squad level is very modern and rather technically impressive. The main reason for this, I should expect, is that you could carry five of them for every Mk.19. Saying that a Mk.19 is a more useful crew served weapon than a 2" is true, but an Oerlikon is a more useful crew served weapon than a Mk.19 and proportionately heavier. Additionally, and I will keep hammering this point until it goes home, they can lay smoke and they can do it faster, more densely and further away than a UGL could hope to.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Nenonen posted:

And Soviets were drowned in a sea of anti-tank rifles, which were dual purpose and as such more useful than a tiny mortar.
Is bad at both purposes really better than good at one purpose?

I should also say that German and Russian attempts at small mortars were rubbish. The German 5cm mortar somehow managed to weigh three times what the British one did with the same size of bomb and the same range and the Soviet equivalent was more than twice the weight and fired a marginally smaller bomb a decent bit further. The Soviets also had a tiny 37mm mortar that turned into a spade, which wasn't a good weapon and probably wasn't a good shovel either.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Mr Enderby posted:

And how does you assessment of the plausibility shift if I tell you that the gardener, and therefore presumably the nco/officer, was from Glasgow.
In that case it's very plausible up until the story ending "And that's why I won a DSO." rather than "And that's why I walk with a limp."

This one does keep on turning up though, from the nickname of the Japanese "Knee Mortar" (actually try to fire a Type 89 Grenade Discharger from your knee and go home with your femur in a bag) to a story I once read of a Portuguese soldier in the Ultramar War direct-firing his FBP M/986 from a position braced against his stomach, presumably using his rock-hard abs. I'm starting to believe it's doable in certain circumstances just because if it wasn't, why would people keep claiming it is?

Mortar gaslighting.

Panzeh posted:

No, you mischaracterized my argument. My argument is that light mortars were an awkward compromise- they were bulky as gently caress with their ammo for an indirect fire weapon with bad range and meager firepower. The 2-in mortar had almost no value as an HE weapon, and no value at all as an indirect fire weapon. They were issued as singletons in platoon HQ elements, in the british army. The Germans and Soviets had light mortars at the beginning of the war and largely found them worthless. The role and need was there, but light mortars were a terrible solution for it.

The US 60mm mortar was used similarly to 81mm mortars in separate platoons. It was probably the best performer but also the heaviest. The Chinese actually liked using these over open sights, despite their bulk, probably due to a lack of other heavy weapons.

Lo and behold, we have far better ways nowadays to chuck grenades about the size of the 2-in mortar shell and you don't have to lug around a mortar for it.
Support your position. You can keep claiming nobody liked light mortars until you are blue in the face but if they really are useless and there are better ways to do what they do, why do people keep buying them?

FrangibleCover fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Sep 20, 2019

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

bewbies posted:

I don't know if a 60 mm mortar counts as light but those things were absolutely indispensable in Afghanistan.
Yes, this is precisely the family of weapon we're talking about. On one side we have people making nebulous claims about how they're bad at everything. On the other side we have armies buying truckloads of the things because they're so good.


Nenonen posted:

1) They lack punch. If you are firing HE, they don't really do anything. If you are firing smoke, it won't last long.
Better than grenade launchers.

quote:

2) The previous point is made worse by the inaccuracy of the things, especially if there is any sort of wind and turbulence then the high trajectory and light weight of the munition means they will scatter all around so even if you had all your measurements correct (which you never have) you will never hit the target.
Better than grenade launchers.

quote:

3) Despite being marketed as 'light', they still weigh enough that a light mortar crew is not going to stay together with riflemen without the dude/duderellas with the mortar and the dude/duderellas with the shells winding down.
RK 62 - 3.5kg empty
PKM - 7.5kg empty
Average patrol mortar - 5kg empty
If your mortars can't keep up, neither can your machine guns.

quote:

4) Because you still want them to have some mobility and you don't want a big crew and you still want them to carry rifles instead of focusing on mortaring all day long, you have to limit the amount of shells they bring to a fight. And because the light mortar lacks punch, this cumulates their suckiness. First couple of shells are wasted in ranging and then a few minutes of heated fire will run you out of ammo.
The way the Parachute Regiment did it in the 40s was that every single person in the platoon jumped with a couple of mortar bombs, which gives you plenty. Even if you cut that down to account for guys carrying heavier weapons you can still man pack plenty of bombs, or use a vehicle to carry ammunition even in units that don't have enough vehicles for everyone like most light infantry units.

quote:

5) Carrying a bunch of illumination shells with you in the day time brings this number down even further. But if you don't bring those illumination shells with you to combat and are cut out of supply when the night falls, welp.
Welp I guess you pull out your prolific night vision goggles, night vision scopes, thermal imagers and assorted magic that any military worth a drat has at the squad level now. Do you want to tell me that the Carl Gustav is bad because it can launch illumination rounds and if it doesn't then then opportunity cost of not doing it makes it suck?

quote:

6) The weight is not a problem if you are mechanized, in which case you should bring along a real mortar.

7) Mountain infantry and other such special forces may benefit from having some sort of light portable indirect support, but they suck in general as a branch of arms. Don't fight in the Alps, just don't.
I'm not going to explain to a Finn what Light Infantry is useful for. Personally I don't like light infantry much but I won't pretend they don't exist.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Won't somebody complain about the brixia!?
:reddit:
I... I kind of like the Brixia. It's trying to be something really interesting and while it's failing quite badly it's heartening to see it try. It's the military equipment equivalent of a terrier with three legs sprinting into a wall.

FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.

Nenonen posted:

The man carrying the mortar is also carrying a rifle.
Yes, which is why I quoted a weight for a rifle so that the comparison was fair. 8.5kg is not really a significantly greater amount of weight than 7.5kg and the PKM is bloody light for a GPMG. If I was being mean I'd have talked about the equally common 11.8kg FN MAG.

Cessna posted:

Automatic grenade launchers - like the Mk-19 I mentioned earlier - are great. You can just walk them onto a target, whump, whump, whump, and suppress it into oblivion.

Of course, mine was in a turret on an AAV. It must be miserable for the grunts who have to carry them, but that's what you get for going in open contract.
Oh yeah, they're great on vehicles but for infantry they're really heavy and if you want to complain about the way that light mortars chew through ammunition you've seen nothing yet. The Warsaw Pact had slightly lighter 30mm models that are probably the uppermost possible end of practically infantry portable HE chuckers even while being chauffeured around the battlefield by a personnel carrier. And they can't do smoke.

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FrangibleCover
Jan 23, 2018

Nothing going on in my quiet corner of the Pacific.

This is the life. I'm just lying here in my hammock in Townsville, sipping a G&T.
One hundred and thirty thousand shaft horsepower of steam turbine and they can't find enough spare steam to get the creases out of their trousers?

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