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Chamale posted:Cruise missiles are essentially specialized aircraft that can only do kamikaze attacks. An engine, wings, some kind of guidance, and a cargo of explosives. But is a cruise missile a drone
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Feb 17, 2021 00:31
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The FW-190 was a very effective plane that was designed to be rugged and cheap to build, using surplus air cooled radial engines (since the BF-109 used a liquid cooled engine that was in short supply). It turned out to be a very good fighter and mostly suffered performance wise in comparison to the USAAF fighters due to the Germans not having access to high octane fuel, which limited power. The ME-262 should probably be included as well, given it was basically the only operational combat jet of the war.
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Feb 17, 2021 22:15
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The Lone Badger posted:Why is it that infantry rifles have gone through multiple redesign cycles since WW2, but machineguns like the M2 and MG42 just keep on keeping on with minimal changes? Mostly cartridge changes, shortening the gun and adding the ability to customise for things like optics. Most infantry rifles after WWII went from full power to intermediate cartridges which meant a wholly new assault rifle, and then with further updates/modifications usually to increase portability or some other feature the army in question wants. NATO standardisation is also a factor here, as is the debate over battle rifles vs assault rifles which gave us the M-14. Meanwhile as crew served weapons still firing full sized cartridges there's just not been as much need to update things like the MG-42 or M2 since they were already pretty mature. This does depend heavily on the military and how they label changes however - the US has been using the M-16 in some fashion since it came out, but a modern M-16 has a lot of different features to one from the 60s. The Brits went from the L85A1 to the L85A2, where basically every operating part of the gun replaced because of how poor the originals were but the gun looks basically the same. Meanwhile the Russians are more likely to give variants of the same gun different numbers, like the AK-103 and AK-104, which might give the impression they have more different rifles when in reality they're just variants.
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Feb 17, 2021 22:45
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Part of Germany's manufacturing problems stemmed from having an enforced break in building certain arms in the interwar period - this particularly affected German capital ship design which ended up with ships that were inferior to their counterparts weight for weight due to design and construction inexperience and a lack of certain parts (large caliber naval guns for the Scharnhorsts for example). There's also the omnipresent problem for the Germans war industry in WWII in that Hitler wanted to minimise the impact of the war on the home front due to the experience of the blockade in the first world war. I don't know what specific problems that might have caused for the war industry/military designs specifically but it's worth bearing in mind when discussing this (especially straight up poor manufacturing quality)
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Feb 18, 2021 11:08
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Still wild to me that at the Washington Naval Conference the UK wanted to straight up ban submarines. It probably wouldn't have stuck long term but imagine a future war where none of the combatants have been building or using subs for decades and have to start from scratch.
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Feb 18, 2021 16:39
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feedmegin posted:Germany WAS banned from building U Boats for most of the interwar period and no it did not stick. I meant that the UK wanted to ban submarines as a weapon of war in general, not just for the Germans. Submarines were considered one of the biggest threats to the Royal Navy's capital ships and the most expeditious solution was just to get rid of them but they were too useful to other navies to consider it.
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Feb 18, 2021 21:05
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SlothfulCobra posted:Are there people who put spiritual importance on the german emperor, or is this guy talking 100% out his rear end? I am assuming it's weird German speaking Catholics being reverent for the Holy Roman Emperor
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Feb 18, 2021 21:56
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I gotta hand it to those merchant mariners for holding dwarf level grudges Imagine if the F-117 pilot who got shot down held I against the entire nation of Serbia for eternity instead of exchanging cakes every year
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Feb 19, 2021 19:02
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Weren't there also multiple Japanese warships that got clunked by Mk 14s as well?
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Feb 20, 2021 00:52
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BalloonFish posted:I think the implied sentence is "the only time a submarine beat the royal navy's destroyer screen [that was protecting a battleship]" Didn't a U-boat torpedo something in Scapa Flow in WWI?
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Feb 21, 2021 20:43
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SerCypher posted:It was a different war, but Moltke famously responded to the Kaiser's meddling in 1914 Deployments with: Apparently the German train timetable nerds were insulted by von Moltkes insinuation that the couldn't work out new plans on the fly lol
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Feb 25, 2021 01:37
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Tulip posted:Interestingly I ran into an argument about this recently - apparently the consensus among current WW1 specialists is that they very likely could have but Moltke was opposed to the change of plans for other reasons and "can't" is a good substitute for "won't" when arguing with a superior. Yeah I have heard similar, that the German High Command really wanted a crack at the French there and then and so did not want to change their plans. This basically meant throwing the mobilization planners under the bus by implying they weren't competent enough to change the timetables (especially since in a 1 on 1 fight with the Russians, Germany almost certainly wins anyway. I mean look at what happened historically)
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Feb 25, 2021 12:01
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Imagine if Hitler had been given the medication JFK had got that made him extremely horny (allegedly) What kind of a world would contain Nymphomaniac Irish Hitler
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Feb 28, 2021 00:30
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Tulip posted:So this is kind of a fun thing - as much as Americans joke about how everything they eat is corn in some form or another, corn that goes into people's mouths is like 9% of the corn we make in the US tops (that 9% also includes "industrial"). Like 27% goes to ethanol, mostly to make fuel already. That grim world is already here it's just instead of war it's "jockeying over congressional subsidies." Also there has already been a food price crisis in 2010 which was in part a result of food production going to biofuels, and a contributory factor to the Arab Spring; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932012_world_food_price_crisis
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Mar 2, 2021 18:28
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Can you imagine the lawsuits if you had to try and feed your horses of some agribusiness land lol Just endless cycles of biofuel producers suing farmers suing the soldiers whose horses ate their crops.
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Mar 3, 2021 14:05
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SeanBeansShako posted:Vaguely related, I watched Waterloo as I usually do every one or two years and it still cracks me up the movie barely shows you why the Union Brigade is attacking. Just a brief shot of a battery being briefly sabered without mentioning the whole scattering a divisional level amount of men before they run out of steam and are lanced. Bad cav island can't even catch a break on film
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Mar 4, 2021 18:57
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Yes, though modern tanks have a lot more options in terms of camera mounted weapons that can be directed at troops on foot harassing you. Not to mention that they are much more resistant to the sorts of AT weapons infantry can bring (like that Challenger 2 in Iraq that got hit with over 70 RPGs and survived)
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Mar 5, 2021 00:44
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Situational Awareness
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Mar 5, 2021 18:56
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White Coke posted:How much scorched earth denial of supplies did the Russians do in WW1, and how does it compare to WW2? Much less The Russian supply situation was a complete shambles in WWI thanks to a combination of corruption and incompetence - soldiers were regularly starving at the front lines despite the country producing more than enough to feed them because food was just rotting in supply dumps for lack of transport.
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Mar 7, 2021 21:49
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Raenir Salazar posted:I was watching random clips of Man in the High Castle since apparently it's ended and so my youtube reccomendations have blown up with them, but how plausible is it that into 1962 Japan doesn't manage to produce their own atomic bombs when IIRC in the real world Japan had made decent progress but was probably mostly constrained by the same lack of resources Germany was dealing with due to fighting the second world war? How does Japan need twenty years and borrowed designs to finish their own? China coming out of the civil war and occupation needed 20 years but Japan it seems like shouldn't need that long? I feel like this is one of those "because otherwise the plot doesn't happen" answers
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Mar 8, 2021 00:42
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By the time of planning Barbarossa, Hitler was unbelievably popular with the German people and the military for orchestrating the fall of France, and so there was no way any member of German high command were going to protest about the invasion of the USSR. Not that they really wanted to - basically every high level general was extremely enthusiastic about the prospects of a war against the Soviet Union, including ones who had been very nervous about a war with France - Hitler nearly got couped for wanting to go to war with France too early. Once you've decided that you are going to invade the USSR and there's no prospect of changing that, all your planning has to follow that logic. Supply problems if the campaign lasts too long? Well, it will be over quickly anyway. Not enough food? We'll take it from the civilian population, gently caress the consequences.
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Mar 8, 2021 10:47
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Alchenar posted:The IJA did make a play for India and it ended badly on the border for them. The IJN also made a play for Australia and it ended badly in the Coral Sea. It should be noted that the Japanese considered ceasing expansion prior to Midway as they had by and large achieved their territorial goals but couldn't realistically threaten Australia by that point. They continued to go on the offensive because they wanted to bring the Americans to a decisive battle to bring them to the negotiating table, and felt turtling up in the island chains wouldn't be the best way of beating the USN.
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Mar 9, 2021 13:11
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Raenir Salazar posted:I actually legit feel that Italy gets unfairly maligned due to the outsized popular misconceptions of Italian effectiveness. I think a lot of stuff that happened pre USA and USSR entered the war gets overlooked tbh, with the possible exception of things like the Battle of Britain and sinking the Bismarck.
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Mar 9, 2021 21:04
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Sure - I meant Barbarossa
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Mar 10, 2021 00:35
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Zeta Gundam is the best Gundam anyway 08th MS Team is probably the most Milhist thread Gundam series though
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Mar 11, 2021 00:57
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The two incompetent officers (Captain America and Encino Man) weren't combat infantry officers, but were intelligence officers suddenly thrust into command because 1st recon were reorganised into a hummvee mounted unit in order to pose as a feint - the US military knew that the Iraqis considered Marines 1st Recon an elite unit and so the US advertised their presence to distract attention. You can't really blame the officers here since they were never expecting to do this job. I can't remember the name but Encino Man's suckup sergeant was apparently a dickhead during the events of GK, but later lead a unit through a vicious firefight and was apparently an extremely effective and brave combat leader. Some marines depicted in the show were involved and said they were incredibly impressed by his leadership. It takes all kinds I guess.
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Mar 22, 2021 11:18
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I don't believe loft bombing was used in WWII, you either need advanced computers to calculate your trajectory or to be lifting something like a nuke (or both). The FW-190 didn't have anything like that so I doubt it was ever used in that fashion. The FW-190 was pressed into service in the ground attack primarily out of desperation - by mid-late 1943 Germany had suffered major losses to its existing ground attack aircraft (primarily Ju-87s) and needed replacements. The FW-190 handled well at low altitudes and was rugged and stable, but was not a dedicated strike aircraft and so had to perform very low altitude runs to get accuracy and could not carry heavy bombs. By the time the FW-190 was being used in a strike role Germany was on the back foot anyway and FW-190 took heavy casualties throughout 43 and 44 in the face of increasing Soviet air superiority.
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Mar 23, 2021 13:09
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German also had a lot of problems fielding a replacement for the Ju-87; the Luftwaffe was well aware it was obselete but the projects intended to replace it were not satisfactory and not fielded in large numbers. There was also the issue by 1943 of the Allied strategic bombing campaign which had the primary purpose of destroying the Luftwaffe's ability to fight and therefore demanded fighters to counter it despite the critical need for ground attack fighters on the Eastern front at that time. The FW-190 sounds like an improvisation in that role - it was designed purely as a fighter and bomb racks had to be added to aircraft that went to strike units as the plane wasn't designed for that role originally.
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Mar 24, 2021 01:22
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I feel like when people say CAS in relation to WWII it's a catchall term for CAS/interdiction/any other low altitude attacks against ground targets, rather than the specific CAS mission we would understand today.
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Mar 24, 2021 12:35
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Raenir Salazar posted:Am I misremembering from Sharpe but wasn't there an initial English expedition force that landed in northern Spain which prompted Napoleon to come in and chase them off and after that it's his brother/relative that's handling things after that? Yes - the British landed in Corunna 1808 but were forced to flee after Napoleon himself invaded Spain. The British returned in 1809 via Portugal and stayed put, with Soult primarily in command of the French army. Napoleon's older brother Joseph was installed as king after the overthrow of the Spanish monarchy.
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Mar 25, 2021 17:34
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The other thing about Gulf War 1 is that because of the fact that the coalition was very worried about the capability of the Iraqi army, the buildup was taken very seriously and a seriously huge amount of force was thrown at Iraq in what turned out to be overkill. Compare the 2003 invasion when the military have their assessment of how much money and troops it would take to occupy the country, and Rumsfeld told them they were being too pessimistic (in part based on how much of a pushover Iraq turned out to be the first time round) and cut the troop allowance drastically with catastrophic results (assuming you think that a good outcome was ever possible).
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Mar 29, 2021 11:31
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Solaris 2.0 posted:Are there any good, and recent academic articles/books/documentaries about the Persian Gulf War? I recommend Gulf War One by Hugh McManners, it's a collection of first hand accounts from the war including many high up Coalition leaders.
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Mar 30, 2021 22:18
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Trin Tragula posted:Nobody who's writing in English seems to know what's up with Renault. It just goes from, he has zero interest in developing armoured fighting vehicles in 1915, he explicitly tells the French Army's tank pioneers to gently caress off in December 1915 (which is why the first French tanks were built by Schneider and Saint-Chamond); and yet by July 1916 he's personally got his drawing board out to design the FT, for reasons unknown. Someone from the Deuxieme Bureau showed him a photo of the window where Jean Jaures got shot and asked "any questions?"
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Apr 4, 2021 21:05
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xthetenth posted:What would happen, and would there be any possibility for listening if the Germans say 'So are we good?' after being stopped at the Marne? Absolutely not. Both sides have lost over 100,000 killed by the end of the battle of the Marne in just over 2 months of fighting. There's just no way politically for that to happen and accept the status quo ante bellum. Not to mention, the Germans are sitting on 90% of Belgium and the industrial heartlands of France with all the raw materials that entails. The Germans are absolutely in the driving seat when it comes to negotiations - they want recompense for all the people they've just lost and there's no way that France, whose leaders have by some accounts helped engineer the current war with Germany, are even going to think about handing over even more French soil to the Germans.
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Apr 7, 2021 00:25
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Nothingtoseehere posted:The allied bombing campaign easily could have shifted secondary targets or decided the target had been neutralized - coincidently around the time this plane went up. The threat to the Luftwaffe by the late war was not so much airfields being bombed but German planes getting hunted down by USAAF escort fighters who conducted fighter sweeps against airfields or chase interceptors back to their home bases. This became a particular problem when it came to training new pilots; in addition to fuel shortages there were limited time windows pilots could do training flights without the risk of getting shot down in the process being unacceptable.
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Apr 9, 2021 00:45
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aphid_licker posted:They're also a nightmare to drop bc you're flying along the runway straight and level for multiple seconds As the RAF found out when multiple Tornados got shot down in the early part of Desert Storm
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Apr 9, 2021 11:02
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One issue with handheld anti-tank weapons is a lot of them have a tendency to scramble their users brains. In the French army for example, you are allowed to fire a recoilless rifle in training 3 times, ever, due to traumatic brain injury concerns.
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Apr 15, 2021 00:23
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Fangz posted:"Okay kids, the US will be run by Spec-ops Colonel Murderhands Killski now that he beat Joe Biden in a duel, the East Coast will shortly be cleansed by radioactive fire. Sorry but those are the rules." Listen, fat
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Apr 21, 2021 14:18
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I would rather watch Lindybeige than anything by the History channel
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Apr 24, 2021 13:04
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Important to remember that as you get later into WWI the thing that really kills attackers is not the initial crossing of no-mans lands, but the shelling and fire from hidden trenches behind the first line that you couldn't originally see. Battle Tactics of the Western Front covers the debates British high command had about lines Vs other methods of attack, the advantage of lines being it's the most efficient way to get as many people as possible into the fight with the hope you'll overwhelm the enemy. Officers talked about the terrible decisions you have to make in such an attack - once you send a wave over it's almost impossible to tell what has happened to them; if they were all immediately killed sending another wave just gets men killed, if the first wave got to the enemy sending in another wave might be the difference between those dudes living and dying and the attack succeeding.
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Apr 26, 2021 00:38
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