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White Coke posted:As for why they didn't use them much by the Napoleonic Wars I'm not so sure. I think they would still fire them with a charge at least. Also, they didn't go out of fashion for long. By the American Civil War it wasn't at all unusual for cav to be packing like 4 pistols. Check out this chap for instance.
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Dec 8, 2020 15:11
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Carrying multiple revolvers on horseback is as much a function of how hard it is to reload on horseback as it is any tactical necessity or higher doctrinal reasoning. Especially when we're talking cap-and-ball Civil War revolvers. I mean, I get that, but if your main doctrine is 'charge home with the sabre' Napoleonic-style then you don't need one revolver let alone three, now do you? You're planning to do a lot of shooting. If revolvers had been available to caracole-doers back in the 16th century I'm sure they'd have loved to have them too.
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Dec 8, 2020 17:03
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poisonpill posted:Were cavalry troops generally considered prestigious? You mentioned it could be boring but important work. There’s also the negative connotation to “dragoon”. Why? Depending on period, dragoons aren't considered 'real' cavalry. They're infantry on horses, and looked down on as such as commoners with ideas above their station by fancy noble cav.
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Dec 9, 2020 15:16
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White Coke posted:What was so OK about Cromwellian cavalry? Were they just so good due to being members of the elect? Not religiosity so much; the argument would be I think that not being nobility but rather lower gentry they were less motivated by personal glory etc, and thus more disciplined, which is the difference between 'wins the cavalry battle and rides off to loot the enemy baggage train, contributing no further to the battle' and 'wins the cavalry battle and charges the enemy infantry's flanks/rear, winning the battle'. How much this is true I'm not sure; the differences between Parliamentary and Royal forces are less strong than the 19th century stereotypes might make you think.
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Dec 9, 2020 15:31
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Xiahou Dun posted:People should either watch the whole video and then discuss it or we should just not talk about it all. I like the latter, and that's as someone who watched the whole video and went "O that's an interesting take." This is sort of the mirror universe of chuds saying 'you should watch this 2 hour PragerU video' and then getting annoyed when people don't want to do that, though? Not talking about it at all was the better bet but that's kind of off the table when someone posts that unless you think the whole thread is going to spontaneously practice omerta and just ignore the post altogether.
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Dec 13, 2020 13:04
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White Coke posted:I read somewhere that the reason why the French didn't have a reserve that could have responded to the Germans coming through the Ardennes was that they had deployed a huge number of divisions in the Maginot line, around 50% of them (or maybe it was 50 divisions total, I'm not exactly sure). Was it true that the French over deployed soldiers in the Maginot line, and would they have been able to form a reserve large enough to make a difference if they hadn't? I thought the literal point of the Maginot line was to save on manpower (which France was indeed short on in this period thanks to demographic reasons if nothing else).
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Dec 17, 2020 15:34
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SlothfulCobra posted:I guess that's probably plausible considering France's history before and after the war, but was there anything in particular that was causing civil unrest that they were worried about? Or did they just think that some charismatic officer could take hold of the entire army and coup the federal government without needing some wedge to build public support? I mean there was absolutely precedent for that sort of concern in the Third Republic.
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Dec 17, 2020 17:40
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Cessna posted:Louis Napoleon (the man the "Napoleon" of the Civil War was named after, NOT Bonaparte) Going to be pedantic here but he most certainly was a Bonaparte.
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Dec 22, 2020 16:14
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Comstar posted:The US technically invaded and occupied Iceland to stop any other funny business from happening. Someone should ask Drachinifel his opinion on the chance of German success. Um, no, the UK did actually. The US took over later once the funny business had already happened. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Dec 24, 2020 |
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Dec 24, 2020 20:36
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Xiahou Dun posted:Wait. Iceland still has an Allthing? That's amazing and cool and good. Oldest Parliament in the world iirc
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Dec 25, 2020 12:49
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I seem to recall something about Russia rapidly acquiring more artillery, specifically, too.
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Dec 27, 2020 07:15
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Hyrax Attack! posted:When the British bombed the French fleet at Toulon it led to such bad tensions there were problems when the British and US invaded northwest Africa where Vichy had power. There would have been problems here anyway. Vichy was a Nazi client state. Also you mean Mers-el-Kebir.
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Dec 27, 2020 07:19
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ChubbyChecker posted:I checked the numbers. The Swedish iron ore was higher grade than elsewhere, so about 60% of the prewar iron for Nazi Germany came from Sweden. It had the most importance during the late -39 and early -40 after the West had stopped trading with Germany and before Germany had conquered Belgium and France. During that critical period about 75% of the German iron came from Sweden. For the rest of the war the percentage was about 20%. Sweden stopped the iron ore trade only in November 1944, so they definitely didn't mind collaborating with the Nazis. To be fair to them they had Nazis to their west in Norway, their east in Finland and their south in Denmark. There was very definitely an element of 'trade with us or we'll occupy your poo poo'.
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Dec 27, 2020 11:41
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SlothfulCobra posted:while Britain wanted to muck about and be dominant over the continent. No? It didn't want anyone else to be dominant over the continent, especially the land superpower doing its best to build up a fuckoff huge navy, which is a different statement.
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Dec 27, 2020 17:44
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*glances at the White House, which is on fire*
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Dec 29, 2020 21:24
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sullat posted:If the ship were able to be sunk, they wouldn't have called it the 'Invincible'. cough
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Dec 30, 2020 18:25
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Pryor on Fire posted:The Regia Marina was more of a symbolic threat. That's a funny way to spell 'fleet in being'. It tied up a bunch of the RN throughout most of the war after all. Edit: I could have been an American citizen. Only reason I'm not is the tax situation, really, and it turns out now that a) I'm back in the UK and b) a senior computer toucher, that actually does make a financial difference for me quite aside from the hassle of having to file US taxes from abroad every year.
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Dec 31, 2020 15:42
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PeterCat posted:You can always renounce your citizenship if you feel that bad about it l. This is pretty hard to do, btw, and you might get to pay an exit tax as well. Impossible if you don't have another citizenship, actually, because under international law stateless people aren't supposed to be a thing.
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Dec 31, 2020 16:18
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Warden posted:If somebody uses the name “Freedom War” today, they are either old and probably from a well-off, conservative family OR an extreme right-wing hatemonger. And if someone uses “Class war”, expect a Soviet apologist. I mean, I'm sure you're not wrong, but I'm not sure the Soviet guy is wrong either.
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Dec 31, 2020 20:56
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Rockopolis posted:"Oh, you're not Mrs Brydon? Then I'm afraid I have some bad news to deliver." Na Elspeth Flashman was fine
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Jan 3, 2021 08:19
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Weka posted:Aren't you conflating what were basically two almost entirely different societies, Mycenean and Classical Greek? But the people in the Iliad were heroes to classical Greeks, who didn't know much about Mycenae as a culture beyond that.
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Jan 4, 2021 23:30
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Rather like saying modern Englishmen must be like Newton since they revere him. As an Englishman...no, I really don't, and if I did it would be for 'being kinda smart' rather than an actual hero? Whereas Achilles or Hector for example actually were admired as such by classical Greeks.
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Jan 5, 2021 10:28
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Polyakov posted:No its named for HMS Hood of the Royal Navy which was named for Admiral Samuel Hood. One of the nice things about Star Trek is that it isn't just 'America in space' (mostly - over the opening sequence of Enterprise, depicting the history of human spaceflight but missing out frigging Yuri Gagarin, let a veil be swiftly drawn). There's a USS Buran, USS Emden, etc.
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Jan 6, 2021 18:09
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:the economics of killing off a poo poo ton of slaves every year are extremely unrealistic I suggest you check out the Caribbean sugar colonies in the 18th century.
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Jan 7, 2021 14:00
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bewbies posted:this owns Dragoons (og definition). Lightly armed infantry with a means faster than Shanks Mare to get to vital places on the battlefield quickly and then defend them on foot.
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Jan 13, 2021 10:39
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Platystemon posted:French tanks were surprisingly decent for the early war, but they didn’t have a lot of them and they were not deployed intelligently. I was under the impression they had quite a bunch actually?
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Jan 18, 2021 18:30
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MazelTovCocktail posted:Really? I mean this was a county that had the greatest difficulty in defeating Ethiopia without tons of poison gas (not to take anything away from the Ethiopians and holding them off), which honestly was something the British and French had done dozens of times in Africa and other areas (without poison gas). The Ethiopians had a bunch of modern weapons unlike the rest of Africa. They straight up slaughtered an invading Italian army attempting to colonise them in the 1890s. 'We have the Maxim gun and they do not' breaks down when they in fact do.
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Jan 18, 2021 18:36
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PeterCat posted:I do know that the Alabama Army National Guard specifically linked itself units of the Confederate Army. The 167th Infantry links itself to the 4th Alabama that fought for the Confederacy. I note their wikipedia entry very studiously fails to mention the Civil War...
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Jan 21, 2021 15:05
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Nebakenezzer posted:Haha, wow. I assume everybody there would have been super embarrassed to have the president witness a nuke test a couple ordered of magnitude bigger than planned. 2.5 times is 2 orders of magnitude?  (Tsar Bomba x10 would certainly have been....impressive, mind. And rather lethal to Eisenhower one assumes)
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Jan 26, 2021 22:47
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Fangz posted:What do you actually mean by dictator here? Someone who gained power by non democratic means? Someone who came to power outside of the usual method of succession? Or do they have to rule or attempt to rule until death or deposition? Because that usually is where the evil comes in. Well, hang on. The Roman Empire was very explicitly NOT a monarchy, they were rather firm on the matter in fact, and especially not a hereditary one (note that the one doesn't go with the other - see also the HRE or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) . What makes them less legitimate here? feedmegin fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Jan 29, 2021 |
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Jan 29, 2021 10:17
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Cessna posted:Goebbels gave his infamous Sportpalastrede (Sports Palace Speech) in February 1943 in which he talked about the need for total war to save Europe from the Commies. Unlike previous speeches it spoke of recent "misfortune" and admitted that defeat was possible, so it's safe to say your average German would have figured out that things weren't going well. Also your average German citizen had a family member out on the Eastern front or knew a neighbour that did. Yes censorship existed of course but that's not watertight and anyway doesn't help when someone is home on leave.
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Feb 2, 2021 23:23
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Right, but 107mm is 4.2" and 122mm is 4.8", so it's weird in both systems. IIRC sometimes guns were given a nominal size slightly different from the real size because their ammunition wouldn't be compatible with another gun that was that size, to avoid confusion (and barrel explosions). 75mm vs 76mm for example. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Feb 5, 2021 |
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Feb 5, 2021 10:58
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the paradigm shift posted:peak milhist for me recently was watching one of those expert breaks down movie scenes things about ancient warfare and he's complaining about the way the scots are dressed in braveheart I mean they were kind of famous for the schiltron even, which is kind of necessary when you're on the Even Worse Cav part of Bad Cav Island. Also in that movie Braveheart technically bangs a preschooler iirc. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 11:04
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Beardless posted:It's an alternate spelling of POG, which stands for Person Other [than] Grunt, ie any non-combat personnel. Also, y'know, the band
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Feb 16, 2021 11:02
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Pryor on Fire posted:You probably already know this and it's just a typo, but the V2s were definitely ballistic missiles, not cruise missiles. V1s also existed though.
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Feb 16, 2021 21:26
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Nessus posted:Would the V1 have qualified as a cruise missile as we understand them? I thought it was essentially a highly specialized aircraft but you could have, in theory, put a guy with a joystick in front. Wikipedia claims it is fwiw 
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Feb 16, 2021 21:53
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White Coke posted:Wouldn't have mattered much if you'd lived in the Soviet occupation zone. I mean a) we're talking while the war is still going on and b) the Soviet occupation zone was pretty porous for a while after the war anyway. Note the Soviets didnt get super serious about enforcing the internal border until the 50s and the Berlin Wall didn't go up until 1961. Literal millions of people left before then.
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Feb 17, 2021 18:49
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Trin Tragula posted:You're thinking of Our World War (although I prefer episode 2); and, to the contrary, they ensured all mod cons by making it possible to fry eggs on the engine, at the cost of only a 14% increase in one's chance of having an arm taken off by the exposed flywheel, a highly attractive bargain for the average squaddie. I liked the tank one because the lads were from Levenshulme, Manchester where I used to live
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Feb 17, 2021 23:24
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Nessus posted:I think it is probably telling that with the exception of the V2, which required a lot of specialized knowledge, all of their designs were easily replicated or their innovations taken on after the war. I mean, yes? Once you have the blueprints its easy to replicate poo poo. Until then not so much because eg first generation jet fighter development is simply hard - compare the Me262 to the American first go with the Airacomet. The Nazis were building stuff out of the same physics as anyone else, not secret Nazi unobtanium. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Feb 17, 2021 |
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Feb 17, 2021 23:29
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Tias posted:Isn't there a case where the Luftwaffe equips their best fighter ace with the newest iteration of the Me (or maybe 190) and he is clowned on by a P-51 and writes a super angry review where he says German planes are inferiour? It's in Soldaten I think. To be fair, what would you say in captivity, 'I got shot down because our gear sucked' or 'I got shot down because I sucked'
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Feb 18, 2021 13:55
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