Milhist Thread: Ok, so get this: we name the army groups 1, 2 and 4...

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Milhist Thread: Ok, so get this: we name the army groups 1, 2 and 4...

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Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

ChubbyChecker posted:

Recent studies from a few sources have been debunking the old cartoonish portrayals of Spartans. The declaration of war seems to have been more of a ceremony, so that if a spartiate kills a helot, it's not murder but justified, but there were no death patrols roaming around.

I'd like to read those studies, where can I get them?

# ¿ Jan 7, 2021 13:31

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 12:24

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

feedmegin posted:

2.5 times is 2 orders of magnitude?

(Tsar Bomba x10 would certainly have been....impressive, mind. And rather lethal to Eisenhower one assumes)

Not necessarily, I've read that at some point after Tsar Bomba strength, the explosion will reach the border of the atmosphere and after that point, all additional energy will go towards channeling dirt into space. In other words, the reason eventually everyone stopped making ever larger warheads is that around the point of the Tsar Bomba it becomes loving pointless, as the destruction on the ground stops increasing.

It also means Eisenhower probably would have been safe. Though the effects on the weather would have been horrible, of course. What with that huge wind funnel leading to space and all that

# ¿ Jan 29, 2021 12:00

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Fangz posted:

That doesn't sound right. I mean I think it'll scale more poorly at that point, but making single big bombs vs lots of little ones was always an inefficient (in both ICBM payload mass, and use of fissile material) way to gently caress things up.

A lot of things in physics "doesn't sound right" :shrug:

Human intuition fails quite often

# ¿ Jan 29, 2021 13:47

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Fangz posted:

Lemme re-word.

This sounds completely wrong according to my understanding of physics and I can only conclude that you misread completely. Firstly there is no clear "border of the atmosphere", secondly the Tsar Bomba's fireball radius was a mere 2.5 miles, not reaching the altitude of the plane it was released from, thirdly if there's a large shockwave, the parts of the shockwave near the ground sure as heck don't "know" that the top of the explosion has reached space and decide to stop expanding, fourthly you ignore direct thermal damage and all that fun stuff, and fifth there's ample evidence that large scale explosions can cause arbitrarily large amounts of damage on the ground, see e.g. the damage from asteroid impacts.

So I think your claim is really citation needed.

What I would theorize is actually true is that larger explosions than the largest nuclear explosion ever tested will lead to weird, untested dynamics with stuff like the upper atmosphere, which would cause conventional formulae about nuclear explosion effects to break down. This does not however imply there is a ceiling to the amount of boom.

Crazy old Teller did in fact propose a 10 gigaton bomb. That's 100x the Tsar Bomba.
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bigger-boom/

Yeah obviously, the border to space isn't a literal magic wall, and I think it's really condescending of you to assume I meant that instead of something reasonable. But on your second point: It could be I misremember the details, most of my knowledge stems from books I've read or science articles I've casually read during lunch hour at work, so the details I remember may vary wildly in terms of reliability. You could say I'm more of a Dan than a Duncan. :v:

Also the upper limit I was talking about was probably more something like 200 Mt, not just the 50-57 Mt of the Tsar Bomba. Again, unreliable memories. Too bad blindly googling didn't help, as there is a lot of stuff about nukes cluttering up the internet, and I can't really find anything related to upper limits of nuclear weapons that are talking about this. :shrug:

Edit:

To add some further thoughts into my answer:

a) A nuclear explosion isn't an asteroid strike
b) What the shockwave on the ground knows or not is irrelevant if the blast becomes large enough the upper part suddenly vents into space, this simply means the shockwave can't grow larger after the limit is reached, or only grow larger very slowly, as most of the added energy is now harmlessly vented into space.

Libluini fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Jan 29, 2021

# ¿ Jan 29, 2021 17:00

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Zorak of Michigan posted:

I got curious and tried to find more about nuclear blasts in atmosphere wasting their energy into space and I got nothing in from any source that seemed authoritative. I see it in Wiki/Wikia pages but that's about it. From the perspective of this search engine user, it seems like an idea that got out there and was accepted as fact without ever getting a proper attribution.

The rule about the blast radius varying with the cube root of yield explains everything about the move to smaller weapons. If you double the accuracy of the delivery system, you can make the weapon one-eighth the size. That's more than enough reason to look toward small weapons, as long as your delivery system is better than minute-of-nation.

If you saw it somewhere in Wiki-pages, could you link it? I'm curious to see what they used as sources, as my own search attempts came up empty

# ¿ Feb 3, 2021 15:30

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Cyrano4747 posted:

Frontsoldat comes out of WW1, to the point where the Stahlhelm was sub-titled "Bund der Frontsoldaten" and you also have the Reichsbund Judischer Frontsoldaten. It has a specific connotation of people who were on the sharp end of the new modern warfare you see after 1914. I've also seen "Frontschwein" as a more colorful variation.

Another one that I've been trying to track down a solid date on is Landser. That dates back to at least the decade before WW1 (It shows up in German dictionaries in 1907), and I've seen claims that it's older. That word got dragged through the mud by Neo Nazis pretty effectively, to the point where just looking it up today usually points you at a banned in Germany neo-Nazi punk band. WW1 is where it really gets traction, though, similar to Poilu and doughboy.

The gut feel I have for it is that Frontsoldat is a bit more encompassing and includes basically all veterans of prolonged combat at the front, while Landser has much stronger connotations of rank and file enlisted soldiers. I can't quite articulate why, but I could see describing a Lieutenant or a Captain as a Frontsoldat, but calling anyone north of a Sergeant a Landser would feel really weird.

e;fb

I encountered this in my own stint in the Bundeswehr, but "Frontsoldat" was generally used to describe soldiers who actually fought, to differentiate from soldiers like me, who never left Germany or shot more than targets (or one time, very nearly a deer). If you called a Hauptmann (captain) a Frontsoldat, you better hope it's actually a combat veteran from like Afghanistan, KSK or something, otherwise you better hope he has a good sense of humor. :v:

And yeah, calling a Noncom a Landser would be even worse than calling some random Lieutenant working for 7 years in a staff position a "Frontsoldat". You'd better hope that Feldwebel isn't like, drunk in a bar or something when you call him Landser, or that would go over like one of those fight scenes in a Bud Spencer movie

# ¿ Feb 4, 2021 19:05

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Nebakenezzer posted:

Should I be inferring something about these units from where they are attached? I'm fuzzy on German army organization.

Warning: Hazy, 15-year-old memories ahead

As I remember, attachment of units tells you where they would be going if that larger formation is mobilized someday. E. g. Bataillon 233 would go to the division it is nominally a part of, but Bataillon 73 would instead be attached to the corps it belongs to. So if someone wants to order unit 233 to do something, they'd be forced to go over the general commanding that particular division, while unit 73 gets its orders straight from the general commanding the corps.

Source: I was part of EloKa Bataillon 912, and we were nominally part of something called "Streitkr�ftebasis", which had its own general and everything. But as a support unit, we were also attached to a local division and corps, and if those formations would have ever called up and mobilized (for a large-scale exercise, for example), Bataillon 912 would have been attached to one of them.

Later I heard that the only other electronic warfare Bataillon in the whole Bundeswehr was demobilized (it was stationed down below in Bavaria) and nowadays this would probably mean unit 912 would need to be attached to at least corps-level, as it contains nearly 100% of all e-war assets of the Bundeswehr of today

# ¿ Feb 6, 2021 14:51

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Timmy Age 6 posted:

Thinking about the early days of NATO, when they integrated the West Germans, how was that received? My only knowledge of the topic comes from Tom Lehrer's bit about the Multilateral Force plan for nuclear sharing which is hardly, um, the most contextualized source. If an exercise slotted a German unit in next to a British or an American one, was there a lot of side-eying in case of Dr. Strangelove-like saluting reflexes, or did those exercises take place enough years after the fact that there weren't as many worries about grudges coming into play?

My (Jewish, I should note...) grandfather was a doctor in the US Army at the base in Landstuhl for a couple years circa 1952, and liked to tell stories about how all the neighbors of the house he rented were both polite and very quick to mention that they'd only ever served on the Eastern Front. Never mind the games of chess by mail they were playing with their old PoW camp commandant back in Britain...

Considering how many Jews died on the Eastern Front, this is some dark comedy

# ¿ Feb 6, 2021 19:49

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

SlothfulCobra posted:

I've been reading a couple fantasy stories, and I started wondering what kinds of tactics would an army use to fight like a non-humanoid threat. I know that there's like group hunts of boar, but what if there was a stampeding herd of like a thousand boar, or if they were a herd of giant pigs that if an army couldn't stop, they'd go destroy a city? Would like a shield wall be good? Maybe a pike square? Or would it be better for a bunch of mounted cavalry try flank and divert the herd like a bunch of cowboys? What if they were like wolves or velociraptors?

What if there were some kind of giant monsters that you had to fight with infantry? How would you leverage like a hundred infantry against a dragon? (I guess, disregarding any fire-breathing, since pretty much no medieval army is optimized to deal with that, and if there is magic in the world, there'd probably be magical countermeasures available contingent on the nature of magic).

I feel like there's probably been more thought and effort and easily accessible real-world examples of what tactics a more modern army with guns would realistically do against that kind of threat, but fantasy stories all kinda just wing it without much consideration.

Some authors thought about this. In one case, I remember a fantasy Roman army fighting insectoid monsters, and the monster army managed to adapt by attacking with sickle-like claws from above, which avoided the shields and hit the fantasy Romans directly in the head, with gruesome results. I think they adapted back by improving their helmets or something?

Another author went the other way and made an army of fantasy goblins and ogres to directly counter-act shield walls and knights. The fantasy goblins would attack in huge masses, all armed with bows, pinning the shieldwall into place, while the ogres were formed up in huge groups with heavy armor, to just plow through the shieldwall and open up the human army to getting swarmed. The humans would attack the ogres with heavy cavalry, but training and heavy armor made the ogres perfectly capable of slaughtering the knights. And since the tiny goblins (called Sranc here) were vulnerable to being run down by horses, that combination worked out very well. For the monsters, that is.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2021 09:40

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

aphid_licker posted:

I wanna say that this is a riff on the Romans encountering some guys in the Balkans peninsula who had weird curved hacking swords. They updated something about their armor on the fly in response. Falxes?

e: cool-seeming writeup here: https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Falx

That would either be an amazing coincidence or an amazing act of research for an author who freely admitted he wrote that series because of a bet he couldn't combine Roman legions and Pokem�n. :allears:

Cessna posted:

Why not just:

Because it's hard to fly and use magic when in this formation

# ¿ Feb 8, 2021 22:02

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

The easiest way to deal with wild boars is just to sleep in.

They're most active in the morning, and if you stay in bed until lunch time, the threat of charging boars solves itself

# ¿ Feb 8, 2021 22:52

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Acebuckeye13 posted:

It's probably worth noting that while setting a tank on fire is a good way to make it irrecoverable due to wrecking the armor and internal components, the primary value of setting an enemy tank on fire is that it's the one sure-fire way to ensure it's knocked out. Even if you see the crew bail out, they can always get back in�but a tank that's on fire is guaranteed to be out of the fight. IIRC this lead to many crews in World War II being trained specifically to keep hitting an enemy tank until they could see flames, at which point they'd move to the next target.

So, looks to me like you could counter this by adding a fire-suppressant system and some kind of theater fake flame system with (harmlessly) exploding capsules. Would make your tank look like it's on fire after a hit, but the anti-fire system makes sure real fire isn't a problem. Tank crews trained like this would be absolutely blindsided if the "killed" tanks move on and keep firing back!

# ¿ Feb 14, 2021 08:07

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Comstar posted:

You want to replace smoke launchers with a fireworks launcher?

Why not combine both? Smoke to hide, and it starts with fake fire to make the enemy think your tank is already dead, so they won't even try to shoot you anymore. Win-win!

# ¿ Feb 14, 2021 12:47

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

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.

You could also strap a guy with joystick in front of a modern cruise missile and it would work out equally well, I'm sure. So that's not a good argument.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2021 14:13

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

aphid_licker posted:

The Nazi brown coal ramjet was a triumph of German engineering unparalleled until at least the H&K G11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippisch_P.13a

If there's ever a Captain Planet remake, I want this thing to show up. :allears:

# ¿ Feb 17, 2021 21:00

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Cessna posted:

I'll also point out that it wasn't "Type XXI descendants are still in service."

It was "American Fleet Submarines with mods taken from the theories used in the Type XXI but made practical still in service," i.e., the GUPPY program.

I think he meant the German Bundesmarine, not whatever ideas the Americans stole for their own designs. We just straight up used two Type XXIII and one Type XXI U-Boat after the war and all our models designed later are basically improvements on the basic models. I think no German engineer ever gave a poo poo about what the Americans were doing with their boats, the design philosophies were simply too different.

The modern class 212 submarines are basically the best in the world at what they do, which is being silent as gently caress when underwater.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2021 23:19

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Cessna posted:

We got to look over U-505 in detail; we took photos, did material inspections, you name it. I've directly compared a US Fleet Boat and a Type IX U boat as a result. In my opinion - based on my surveys - the U-boat is garbage. Just off the top of my head, it had:

- Bad welds seemingly everywhere. The thing had a really sexy pressure hull, with cool curved ends so that "on paper" it had a deeper crush depth. But when you see it in person you see that it was sloppily assembled - I would be VERY hesitant to dive in that sub. In contrast the Fleet Boat had a simple flat-ended cylinder for a pressure hull. It isn't as robust on paper, but it was built correctly.

- No shock mounts anywhere. The German stuff was just put together - bolted to racks, welded together. Much of the delicate stuff on US subs was shock mounted, making it much more resilient.

- Wood EVERYWHERE. storage lockers, bulkhead liners, overheads, seemingly everywhere you looked there was wood. The whole boat, from stem to stern, was a firetrap. In contrast the US sub had very few flammable fittings.

- A complete lack of ergonomic considerations. The US sub was a luxury yacht in comparison; it had water distilleries, a much better galley, more comfortable bunks (I've slept in both), hell, even air conditioning and an ice cream maker. This may sound silly, but that sort of thing matters a lot. Exhausted, miserable sailors don't fight as well as well rested, well fed, confident sailors.

- This isn't just limited to "quality of life" items; the stuff on the U-boat just wasn't well thought out even in weapon systems. For example - on the U-boat, shells for the deck gun had to be handed up through the hatches, one at a time, and passed to the gun bucket-brigade style. The US subs had sealed, waterproof "ready round" magazines right next to the gun. You won't see that when you compare "on paper" stats, but in a real fight it would make the US sub's gun fire much faster than the U-boat's, probably by at least double.

- Simple firepower. The US sub had 6 torpedo tubes forward, 4 torpedo tubes aft. The U-boat had 4 tubes forward, 2 aft. The US sub can do a lot more damage in an attack.

Want me to continue?

Yeah, that sounds like something build by Germans, alright. But I should point out that the way German industry worked, seeing bad welds on just one Type IX doesn't mean all of them had bad welds, the U-505 could just have been one that was made exceptionally lovely.

If you want to feel true horror, by trawling the web through some random German pages about U-Boats, the Type IX was described as a vast improvement in terms of comfort for the crew, when compared to the earlier Type VII submarines.

Cessna posted:

Yes, the German navy used WWII submarines as research boats. U-2540 (a type XXI) was raised in 1957 and retired in 1982. Of the two type XXIIIs, one sank in a gale in 1966, the other was scrapped in 1969.

In comparison, the US converted 52 submarines to "GUPPY" standards after WWII, a few of which were still in service with Taiwan and Turkey until the mid-2000s.

Yeah, but we also built better ones, improving on the designs. Continuing to use designs the original builders decided where obsolete doesn't really make me think better of what the US was doing. I guess it was cheap, at least?

Though I'll have to hand it to the US-industry, at the very least they managed to build their first after-war submarines without accidentally using brand-new anti-magnetic steel which then turned out to corrode on contact with sea water. (Class 201 was basically cursed, and had to be mostly replaced with the later Class 205)

# ¿ Feb 17, 2021 23:51

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Cessna posted:

Or maybe it was one of the better ones, and other U-boats just sank in the middle of the Atlantic the first time they made a serious dive.

Now don't get sassy with me, Cessna. You saw one boat out of like 200. This would be like me visiting some old US-boat sitting in a Russian museum and high-fiving the Russian curator about how bad all US-submarines are.

quote:

The US used those GUPPY upgrades to keep more boats in the water for relatively little money in the early days of the Cold War, but that wasn't all they did. At the same time they developed and built lots of completely new submarines with innovations like teardrop hulls and nuclear power.

As I said, completely different design philosophies. German submarines went down a different tech tree and developed their own innovations. Like for example, improving Diesel, electrical motors and fuel cell technology. After all, Germany wasn't allowed to use nuclear technology in military applications.

Using nuclear technology in German submarines would also have run counter to what German submarines were supposed to do after the war: Silently stalking and killing Russian submarines in the event of a war.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2021 00:20

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Arrinien posted:

Tangentially related to uboat chat, when did countries start giving full names to all their ships/subs, rather than just a letter/number designator? Canada's first subs were CC-1 and CC-2, but we name them these days. The US seems to have already been using full names since before WW2. Uboats are famously just U-###, and the Deutsche Marine still does that today. Didn't the KM also not have names for their destroyers and small craft either? Soviet subs were K-whatever. Does the Russian navy name all their subs these days? Curious if there's some sort of rationale behind the conventions.

Bundesmarine submarines tend to get inofficial nick-names, which is kind of a tradition with German number-ships like U-Boats and torpedo boats. Sadly, they tend to stay nearly unknown outside the service.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2021 15:59

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

ArchangeI posted:

There are pretty massive gaps in the U-xxx name lists the Kriegsmarine used, perhaps in order to confuse allied intelligence.

I took a look at the massive name list on the German Wikipedia. Turns out the name gaps show up later, with notes like "Bauauftrag nicht vergeben" / "construction contract not given", or "construction aborted" and "construction aborted due to bombing", so the real reason is the Nazis losing the war. :v:

The naming list goes up to U-4870, a type XXIII which actually was officially ordered, but the construction could not begin in time before the war ended. The Deutsche Werft started working on some parts, and then it was over.

The last U-Boat actually making it into the water was U-4714, another type XXIII. Launched on 26th April 1945, could not be readied for action, self-sunk on 3rd May 1945.

If you are interested and have some (a lot) time to waste, here's the complete list of all German U-Boats.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2021 22:51

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Acebuckeye13 posted:

I don't think that really factored into it�even though Germany was strategically falling back from 42 onward, the StuG III was still used in plenty of counter-attacks, and in the quote I posted above it was compared favorably to the Panzers even at Kursk. Its success really came from the fact that it managed to combine good armor and armaments with training and tools that allowed the crew to make the best use of their vehicle. There's a reason it was the single most produced German tank* of the war.

*Assuming your personal definition qualifies it as a tank

I like to apply Bundeswehr-logic to this. If we're calling our cute little six-wheeler a tank, the StuG III qualifies, too.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2021 14:21

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Pryor on Fire posted:

This may be a really dumb question but does modern infantry even have the capability to march anymore? If there was some EMP disaster or whatever and all the trucks stopped working would the 1st infantry even be able to march from Kansas to Minnesota to prevent the Canadian invasion or is there just no plan for that?

Marching is still a requirement for basic training, at least here in Germany.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2021 13:26

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

ThisIsJohnWayne posted:

Yeah, for physical training. I have done that too. Still never thought we'd be expected to march longer than a couple dozen miles if it mattered? Everyone has a fuckload of support equipment including infantry, which I have been, and I've never seen anyone march with loving diesel generator on their back. Without -any- transportation a unit can't do alot or for very long.

E. Ok, I'm talking about "will this formation be expected to operate to normal standards if you take away all their transportation" not "will you have to walk if you join the army". If I'm being an rear end in a top hat as well as wrong then I apologise. I learnt something new.

Also, only to point this out, the loss of all motorized transportation would lead to the immediate collapse of the global food distribution network and a nasty global famine.

If there is still a war going, the soldiers in question will supply themselves by looting and killing the civilians with the bad luck of living in their path

# ¿ Mar 3, 2021 17:18

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

SeanBeansShako posted:

Plundering the population does not end well.

Human history, condensed down into a single sentence.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2021 17:23

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

ThisIsJohnWayne posted:

Or learn the local language and settle down, maybe start a brick factory, make some homestyled plum wine and join the local anarchist commune. I hope there's good surfing

Good Ending Unlocked

# ¿ Mar 3, 2021 18:48

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

ThisIsJohnWayne posted:

Aaaah. That's what you all have been thinking about, that clears it all up. Yeah I have no disagreement with that, foot patrol for days ain't special for anybody. I'm really not intending any offense here, but I didn't include foot patrol while on deployment under the headings "warfare" or "fight". That's... no, what I'd call it is actually unimportant.

What I was thinking about was conventional war between peer nations. ie China, Russia et al vs US. Uhm, sorry?

If motorization on a global level stops being a thing, those nations will break up and cease to exist, so the question is meaningless as there will be no war between non-existent nations. I mean, maybe they or some successor states will one day form up again after a massive population crash or after the motor is re-invented or whatever, but in your question as written, all those nations will be incapable of doing anything besides maybe surviving if they can get their poo poo enough together, but I doubt it.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2021 22:28

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

As someone who likes milhist as well as anime, they are two flavors that never go well together.

I'd consider The Legend of the Galactic Heroes future milhist anime. A perfect mix.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2021 21:04

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Yeah, 1917 is a bit late to affect the outcome of a war going from 1914-1918. :v:

It's like asking "What could Hitler done differently to win WW2 after shooting himself in the head?"

# ¿ Apr 6, 2021 15:27

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

I'm pretty sure prussians started goose stepping around Frederick the Great's time.

Also, that map has been in the map thread before and iirc it's not actual government propaganda, it's from a LIFE magazine or something.

I'd hope at least the actual US-government at the time would know that Japan was on their side

Edit:

My favorite is "Straits of Horror". :allears:

# ¿ Apr 7, 2021 12:36

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

feedmegin posted:

On the lines of future war predictions, there's The War In The Air, written in 1907 by HG Wells (yes, the War of the Worlds guy), which predicts something even more apocalyptic than what we actually got. Gets a bit Yellow Peril, though.

This reminds me, Hans Dominik, the author of "Die Macht der Drei" (untranslated, so only in German, but really influential in the development of German SF) postulated that after the experience of WWI, all future wars would be decided by huge armadas of "Luftkreuzer" (basically a mix of fighter and bomber) and be over in days. He liked to compare the length of past wars to WWI to show that wars would get progressively shorter the more destructive the weapons in play were, and while it's true that WWI was shorter than the 30-Years-War, he also vastly underestimated the ability of industrialized nations to replace losses in both soldiers and material.

He also rightly predicted that submarines would get even more important than they were in WWI, but then went completely off the rails with his predictions of future battleships carrying so immensely massive guns and armor, fights would be decided by special "torrent grenades" causing ships to capsize with near-misses. :v:

# ¿ Apr 7, 2021 12:44

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Fangz posted:

I find it very unlikely the allies would stop bombing a target just because they lost a bomber.

Since it was just one plane, I would guess it was a straggler from bombing runs on a completely different target, so no-one on the side of the allies noticed something wrong besides "oh yeah, I guess the AA of our (real) target shot them down, I guess"? :shrug:

# ¿ Apr 8, 2021 14:26

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

What gets me every time is that one dumb general who just landed with his troops on a contested beach, ignoring all warnings, and then promptly got mowed down by Turkish MGs

# ¿ Apr 23, 2021 19:02

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Cessna posted:

Operation "All The Eggs In One Basket" going as planned, I see.

Yeah, my first reaction to that was "But what if a German U-Boat manages to torpedo it when it's loaded up real good with all the troops?"

# ¿ Apr 28, 2021 10:57

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

FuturePastNow posted:

Amphibious Assault Barge would be a pretty soft target but during the landing it would be surrounded by dozens of warships there to protect it and bombard the beach. The U-Boat would have to get through a wall of destroyers first.

WWI-destroyers? So the assault barges are basically dead as soon as the fighting starts. :v:

Edit:

Thinking about this some more, this WWI assault barge would probably go down when German artillery starts bombing them. As Gallipoli showed, WWI-ships have a hard time hitting targets on land, and I'm not really sure a major operation like this could be a surprise, anyway. An actual attempt would have, in all probability, ended with all barges sunk, some other British ships included.

And if they try landing far enough from the frontlines, the troops would attempt landing in good range to get surrounded by German reserves on their way to the front*, even if for some reason the German Empire completely misses a fleet operation of that size

*I'm assuming here an ongoing offensive to try to keep attention from the landing operation so the attackers have at least a chance to land before getting massacred, but then again this would mean German reserves mobilizing and heading to the front, which means the landing operation ends up spilling brigades into an ocean of enemy soldiers. Somewhat of a Catch-22

# ¿ Apr 29, 2021 16:21

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Randomcheese3 posted:

The plan was to land on beaches to the west of Ostend. These were covered by a few German batteries, with the main one being a battery of 6in guns at Raversyde. These were to be engaged by the RN's three 15in monitors, while its force of 12in monitors pushed the pontoons to the beaches. The monitors displayed fair accuracy along the Belgian coast in 1916-17, especially in combination with air spotting. The problem with Gallipoli was that the Ottomans were able to position Army field guns and howitzers in dead ground, where they couldn't be spotted from the ships. These could do little to a battleship, but effectively prevented minesweeping, which in turn made it hard for the battleships to move into position to engage the fixed forts. Against the forts at the mouths of the straits, the battleships managed to do some quite serious damage. There's no reason to think that the fixed German batteries here would have come through it any better.

The landing might well have been able to achieve surprise. It was a relatively small operation, using only the ships of the Dover Patrol, and landing ~three miles from the Allied front line. The British had kept strict security around the assault troops, the lighters and the monitors, to ensure that there were no leaks. It would have been a night landing, further reducing the effectiveness of the German batteries, and a smoke screen would have been used to keep the assault force hidden from the shore until the last minute.

The German corps tasked with defending the area believed that a landing was likely to come east of Ostend; the beaches to the west were backed by a tall seawall, which would make an assault much more difficult. The beaches to the east were also better positioned to threaten key bases such as Bruges. However, the British found that the Mark IV tank could, with minor modifications, climb the seawall with little issue. The land behind the beaches was mainly marshy. This would make it hard for the Allies to advance out of the beachhead, but also made it hard for the Germans to counterattack. As far as the possibility of encountering German reserves go, this was unlikely. The operation was planned to coincide with the Third Battle of Ypres, going on further inland. There were few German reserves based around Ostend, and they wouldn't be advancing along the coast to get to Ypres.

At the same time, it was acknowledged that the British were taking a risk, but since the likely maximum losses were a single division and a few monitors, the risk was thought to be relatively minor; even an absolute calamity would see fewer losses than Gallipoli.

Hey, that's an interestingly in-depth description of the plan, thank you!

Though my mind zeroed in on two possible failure points: It would really suck if it turns out the Mark IV's couldn't deal with the real seawalls and if the secret gets out before the landing, boy those poor bastards

# ¿ May 2, 2021 16:18

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Raenir Salazar posted:

I feel like this is a question better suited for the Cold War thread but in terms of modern capability you have a lot of trade between China, the US, Japan, Australia and Taiwan so simply refusing entry of shipping does a lot of harm (to both sides) without needing any kind of capability.

From there the next question is "How to keep China from trading with the rest of the world"; you can't do anything about overland trade through neutral nations through central asia. So you're looking at shipping that travelings along China's coast to Europe and Africa through the Straits of Malacca.

Blocking the straits is probably the least risky and militarily most optimal strategy since you're well away from China's forces in the SCS's and stand off ability that makes interfering with their coastal shipping not worth the cost.

Blocking the straits is probably fairly easy for the USN as China isn't likely for a long time ever going to have the ability to contest it far away from their air and ballistic missile coverage. I don't know enough, maybe bewbies has an idea of what China could do to get around that that isn't the Belt and Road.

The moment the USN does this, global industry will just collapse. I guess if you want to try out some sort of "End Mankind Without Nukes" - suicide pact scenario, you could try that. But the moment people in the US realize what happens a week after the blockade starts, whoever gave the order ends up dead in a ditch and peace negotiations start up

The "best" I can see happening is the US leveraging what they have left in terms of national chip building capability to draw out the inevitable, but this would just lead to a massive break-up of NATO, since a lot of our own industries are very vulnerable to having their supply from China interrupted. The political fall-out from an attempt to sea blockade China is too large and enormous, it'll be worse than Imperial Germany's decision to torpedo every ship in the ocean

Nenonen posted:

Murmansk, Vladivostok, what are those? And then you have the Trans-Siberian railway and recently North/South Transnational Corridor that goes to the Persian Gulf in Iran.

China's geostrategic challenge stems from her coast being surrounded by a bunch of more or less US allies and bases - Taiwan, South Korea and Japan in particular. My understanding is that China has improved relations with Philippines in the past decades, so blockading the South China Sea access would be much harder but OTOH you would basically have to place a partial blockade on the other side of Malacca straits and some other places and it would be difficult for China to completely break that blockade.

As far as I am concerned, a China blockade will never happen. The attempt to blockade China in the modern age is so stupid, it's like planning for evil aliens to ally with you so you can arm your soldiers with their ray-guns. It's just total nonsense. :colbert:

# ¿ May 8, 2021 17:49

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Nenonen posted:

It's a far fetched hypothetical, for sure, but so is blockading Russia/USSR. USA and her regional allies have planned for exactly those scenarios since WW2 so is it total nonsense when it affects US defense budgets and everything?

It is total nonsense because the USSR didn't supply the entire world with chips, rare earths and other poo poo. If the US today decided to blockade China, my company would be bankrupt in short order, and that entire part of industrial production would tumble down so fast it'll break the light barrier

The resulting world-wide unrest would get so bad it'll put an end to the war shortly after

In my opinion, everyone knows a trade blockade of China is as workable as global thermonuclear war: There are plans, sure, but no-one expects it to happen, or even wants it. The US military budget is like 90% grift feeding the military-industrial complex anyway. The greatest joke I've ever read was a news article about the US suddenly noticing they had accidentally begun to supply their own military with Chinese PCBs. That was years ago, but it was a good summary of the problem of a "China Blockade" in a nutshell.

I wish I had bookmarked that article, it was great comedy. :allears:

Acebuckeye13 posted:

Generally the problem is that a lot of things seem impossible until they aren't.

Generally the problem is that a lot of things seem possible, until it turns out they aren't.

Do you have an actual argument, or is this supposed to be The Day Platitudes Attack?

Libluini fucked around with this message at 18:09 on May 8, 2021

# ¿ May 8, 2021 18:06

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Nenonen posted:

But they still have plans for it, no? That's all I'm saying. It's not total nonsense if real military professionals at Pentagon think about it. "Total nonsense" would suggest to me something like Flying M-113 Gavin All Weather AFV/Interceptors or Sexual & Racial Minority Austrian Painters.

Well yes, but by this definition, nuclear war is also a ridiculous idea. Kennedy and Khruschev sure were goons for making GBS threads their collective pants in 1962!

I don't want to get into Clancy Chat� but I just don't think we are wise enough to predict what weirdness the future holds for us or rule anything out. We just witnessed four years of a WWE Hall of Famer steering the western super power and we are on the second year of a pandemic, seemingly random things that could have gone even worse and can repeat. Then we have climate change which we already know is going to have massive geopolitical effects during our lifetimes. But things would have to be extremely dire for things to get as silly as the discussed scenario.

All good points, I guess I'm just biased because I don't want to lose my job because the US starts a stupid world war, ha ha :v:

I'd fully expect a China blockade to end up with the Russian Federation gleefully supplying the PRC to weaken the USA, and the EU eventually (if they're not already start neutral) breaking out of NATO and joining up with China to help end the blockade before their economies fully collapse. I expect full on actions of desperation if the US ever gets dumb enough to get the ball rolling

# ¿ May 10, 2021 19:06

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

FastestGunAlive posted:

Up or out isn�t perfect but it keeps from bottle necking and it forces people to stay competitive, educated, and career relevant. The marine corps has started actually looking at promoting officers early more aggressively (it has been very very rare) just to further incentivize performance and staying in

This sounds like a good way to get excellent captains and corrupt and useless admirals. I seriously hope admirals are also fired and replaced regularly, or this system is doomed to end with an entrenched caste of mummy admirals slowly crumbling to dust in their offices, while all promising captains below keep getting fired since there is no free spot to promote them into

# ¿ May 21, 2021 12:32

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 12:24

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

FastestGunAlive posted:

Not sure what you mean. There are time in service limits/mandatory retirement ages so admirals aren�t �slowly crumbling to dust�. They�re up or out. Also check out how many navy captains and admirals get fired on like, a yearly basis? It�s a lot.

Well, as long as admirals are removed regularly, I guess the system works. :shrug:

# ¿ May 21, 2021 15:09

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Milhist Thread: Ok, so get this: we name the army groups 1, 2 and 4...

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