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poisonpill posted:Is there any way to win a war without air support, or is it possible to lose a war when you dominate the airspace? If not, the most recent posts are making it look like that was a huge reason for the outcome of WWII. So what changed? Why did Vietnam, OEF, etc. not really depend on airspace? Or am I missing something here? While a perfectly coherent question on its face, the way this is phrased is really open. What is meant by "win a war" and "dominate the airspace"? How flexible is your definition of "war"? Historically, you have stuff like the Winter War where Soviets had air superiority and the result was a win in many aspects but a confusing mess in others. I would also imagine there'd be instances of relatively small-scale warfare where one side has in the order of one plane and the other has none. That sort of gives the side with a single plane "domination" over the airspace but doesn't translate to much of a force multiplier. Similarly, you could imagine a variant of the conflict where the side with no air assets obtains a bunch of MANPADs and "dominates" the airspace in the sense of completely denying it to the other party, while lacking any aerial assets to take advantage of their domination. Does the Colombian conflict with FARC count as "war" and where does the resulting peace deal land on the "win a war" spectrum? If you consider the Egyptian revolution of 2011 "war", then that's an example of a situation where one side technically has total domination of the airspace, but there's no realistic way to take advantage of that technical domination.
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Dec 15, 2020 09:13
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ChubbyChecker posted:I don't think that any amount of bombing would have made Hitler surrender, even if he was the last German alive, because he wasn't the sanest individual. Even Himmler was willing to make a deal (that would have kept him and Nazis ruling). The war wouldn't have ended until there was a new flag on Reichstag. Note that the post didn't say "make Hitler surrender", but "to stop Germany from being a threat." If you nuke every major settlement of a nation to a point of mass starvation and total destruction of all industrial capability and transportation infrastructure, I'd pretty much say that nation is no longer a threat to you. Whether you are able to realistically do that both materially (i.e. have sufficient bombers, munitions, crews etc.) and politically (e.g. without having your population rise up over the absolutely horrific human cost and the morality of what you are doing) is a totally different question. Drop a literal nuke on Reichstag and whether Hitler surrendered in the last seconds before the explosion is kinda immaterial. My hunch is that total warfare (such as WW2) is too messy to allow for complete isolation of a single aspect like strategic bombing from all other aspects of the war. Note that this is not meant to be a weird hot take like "all war bad, ergo war crimes not worth talking about". For what it's worth, I think strategic bombing is a lovely thing to do. But I don't think it'd make a material difference to me personally whether I was killed from starvation due to a blockade, a bomber flying in from 400km away, an artillery piece firing from 10km away, a tank firing from 750m or by a dude throwing grenades through my sitting room window. Now, the latter approaches obviously provide for more fine-grained control of the amount of destruction caused but where exactly the line of "these are acceptable, these are not" falls on that spectrum is a value-specific moral calculation. And that calculus changes depending on whether my house is located next to an ammunition plant/between two bunkers in a defensive line, or somewhere outside of the area of active military operations. Fake edit; Cyrano and Fangz beat me to the point I was trying to make.
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Dec 15, 2020 14:23
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Warden posted:Don't get me started on the Finnish state's past attempts to take Sámi children away from their parents, force them to live at schools and use physical punishments if they were caught talking their native tongue. Also digging up their ancestral tombs and taking the skulls away to Helsinki to be measured. The efforts to "finnify" the Sámi especially through, e.g., banning of the Sámi languages in schools were some old-school racist poo poo. The effects of these efforts are still felt today: In modern Finnish legislation, the Sámi people have limited local autonomy through their own parliament and there's a fairly complex system of special rights afforded to them in certain areas of Finnish Lapland. What is extremely unfortunate is that these rights are tied to the status of a person as a Sámi. As humans tend to do stupid human stuff, a two-tier system has emerged where historically Sámi families who Finnified (i.e. started speaking Finnish) are denied the official Sámi status despite having always lived as part of the Sámi communities and self-identifying as Sámi. There are both political and financial incentives for those in control of the Sámi parliament to limit who gets to participate in local politics and who gets to enjoy from the rights afforded to the "Officially Sámi". I'm related to some affected people through marriage, and it's infuriating to see how people from an undeniably Sámi background are denied their culture and the associated rights just because their parents' parents started speaking Finnish after decades of pressure and concentrated efforts from the national government. E: Sorry, not really milhist.
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Dec 21, 2020 13:26
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As one last gently caress-you from the poo poo year that has been 2020, I lost someone very close around Christmas. Talking with the various officials made me realize I know jack-poo poo about how militaries across time have approached the aftermath of "one of our dudes died". How have the practices of taking care of KiA or DoW personnel, including contacting the next of kin, changed through-out times? Are modern practices relatively uniform across nations, and if so, how and when did we reach those standards? Is the standard US WW2 movie "wife at home sees a chaplain and an officer walking to the door" trope true to reality, and still the current SOP? I assume getting bodies back home is a relatively new thing? When did the "CO writes a letter to next-of-kin" become a thing, or is it another movie thing?
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Jan 1, 2021 14:50
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Thanks for all the replies, super interesting stuff! I assume that for, say HEY GUNS' dudes, there's no kind of a formal process with letters or so (based solely on my stereotype'd notions), but what about e.g. Rome (which I assume had more of a bureaucratic component), ACW or the Crimean war?
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Jan 2, 2021 11:41
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Perestroika posted:As it happened his next video suggested by youtube was along the lines of "No, Hitler was totally a real socialist", which somehow had a length of 4 and a half hours. It was about that time that I decided I'd rather bail on that channel. I've been enjoying his Stalingrad thing, but I have absolutely zero intent to click on the weird long multi hour videos on the precise nature of socialism.
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Jan 4, 2021 23:57
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Going over my dad's estate, I found a souvenir from his time as a conscript in the Finnish Defence Forces in the 80s. He served as a medic in the "class" 3/80 (i.e. the third "class" of 1980). Every year conscripts would enter service in three classes, s.t. those of class N who go to reserve NCO or Reserve Officer schools in class "N", would be the conscript NCOs (i.e. squad leaders) and officer candidates (i.e. platoon leaders) of class N+1. Running three classes per year ensured that the army had available, at all times, a pool of conscripts still in service but with basic training complete. The downside, naturally, is that the thing is a bit complicated and the conscripts are around for longer than is strictly necessary for their training. Modern FDF has only two classes per year. So, the souvenir is a magazine called "Sirpale" ("fragment"), and it's the official magazine of the North Karelia Artillery Battalion and the North Karelia Artillery Guild. It seems it's the first issue, which is kinda cool. The North Karelia Artillery Battalion was its own separate garrison in Ylämylly, near the large-by-Finnish-standards town of Joensuu, some 75 kilometers from the Finno-Soviet border.  While the garrison itself was small, it became somewhat famous as the book "Unknown Soldier" by Väinö Linna, one of the most famous Finnish books of all time, starts there. I believe the garrison was closed in 1996, but the area is still in some limited military use. The magazine has a bunch of text, but for now I'll just post some images with translated captions. Let me know if you are interested in the text as well, and I'll see whether I can conjure up some time to translate. This ended up being quite a few pictures, so please let me know if it's too much and I'll edit some out.  FRAGMENT 3/80  Oh-Hoh! Hold.... Hold.... Hold....  The Soldier Home, a coffee, and a doughnut save the evening  Top: You can find almost anything in the Soldier Home Bottom: There's a quite room, a music room, a photo developement lab and, naturally, a library  You can watch TV, play Novuss or billiards, read magazines and spend your free time.  ROVAJÄRVI - Into this magnificent wilderness of Lapland, Lt.General Uolevi Poppuis and his Finnish Artillery built an training area between 1949 and 1956. Rovajärvi is still the main artillery training area used by FDF. 1100 square kilometers (430 sq mi) in size, Wikipedia claims it's one of the largest - if not the largest such area in Europe. Location on a larger map:   Top: ON THE WAY TO THE UNKNOWN 1st picture: Preparing to set off 2nd picture: Plenty of ambiance in the boxcar 3rd picture: A "zoo" (during the stop in) Nurmes 4th picture: Enough time to get hungry many times 5th picture: Last look at civilization before "forestation" Bottom: Railroad transportation from Ylämylly to Misi  Top: LIFE AT THE TRAINING AREA Top left: Training Artillery Battalion 1 in formation to start the exercise Top right: A "native" checking out the camp Mid left: The mess, where bellies get full Mid right: Part of the motor pool Bottom left: A HQ squad in action Bottom right: Eagle - center -- "Eagles are listening" Note: The last caption is a bad pun: The Finnish title of the movie/book "Where Eagles Dare" literally translates back as "The eagles are listening".  FDF SHOW  Top: Fire direction Top left: Orders being given out Top right: "Mission received, move out!" Bottom left: Fire Direction Battery commander, reserve officer candidate Suomalainen receiving directions from the battalion commander Cpt. Harviainen Bottom right: Enemy has been located  Top: "Forward observer team, positions!" Mid: Communications must work even during movement Bottom: ... a company of enemy troops, FIRE  Left: Preparatory patrol at work Right: Guns arrive  Left: We're in a hurry now, the battery must be ready to fire quickly Right: "Check First"  Left: "this's only the first position, many many more to go" Right: Mission accomplished for now, as is evident from the faces alone  Left: "The brain trust": cpl. Hyppänen calculating, lt. Klemetti training. Right: Preparatory patrol, move out!   Two variations of the theme "ATTENTION, FIRE"  Target approximately 800 meters away - Accurate sighting -  Fire - Hit - Smoke - Target destroyed  1st picture: "Gun 1 ready to fire" 2nd picture: Propellant being packed 3rd picture: Parliament's standing committee on defence observing the exercise 4th picture: There it goes 5th picture: Empty case out, full back in to ready for new shot  Top: Prepare for AA fire with personal weapons! 1st picture: Jets straight ahead 2nd picture: ... left place ... 3rd picture: ... lead 200 ... 4th picture: ... ATTENTION ... 5th picture: ... FIRE From some kind of a competition:  1st picture: Bronze patrol arrives 2nd picture: and being congratulated by the commander 3rd picture: 3rd patrol of the battery at the finish line, drinking some juice 4th picture: ... and the 1st patrol 5th: "WE're good, believe me Sepe"  Oh Holy Barbara! Preparing for the General of the Artillery Nenonen's Competition for Opening Fire  Left: Serious faces before the competition Right: At the start, the judges explain the simulated situation to the leaders  Left: CP being set up in a hurry Right: Telephone squad ready to spring into action  Left: Measurement patrol, led by cpl. Torniainen Right: "The best FO team of the wilderness" at work (those standing up are judges)  Left: "You gonna get that done?" Right: "Don't you hurry me up, I'll get those coordinates"  Left: "What, speak up!" Right: "So how did this go, half-charge..."  Dismount!  Left: Move, you're in front of the collimator sight!" Right: "MOVE, MOVE, we're in a hurry now!"  Left: "Sure, stand there, it's not like this is heavy or anything. Right: IT'S OVER!  Finally! GOODBYE MISI!
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Jan 12, 2021 13:40
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LatwPIAT posted:
They are related, sure, but "downhill skiing is just cross country skiing down the hill" is a pretty hot take in my view. Skills in one are useful in learning the other, but for one the gear is completely different.
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Jan 15, 2021 10:32
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Pinball posted:I'm currently reading Europe's Tragedy by Peter H. Wilson, and I'm starting to realize I may have bit off more than I can chew in terms of Thirty Years' War history books. I got it in my head to learn about the war after realizing it was one of the deadliest wars in Europe and I knew next to nothing about it. I normally read things that are more social history as opposed to super- focused troop movements, and this is granular to the point of confusion. I'm about a third of the way in and I still don't understand how the Holy Roman Empire's system of governance works or why exactly this war was so deadly, but I did learn exactly how many people were deployed in which groups at the Battle of White Mountain. Any recs for something a bit more focused or easier to read? Maybe a biography of Ferdinand or this von Mansfeld guy who nobody seems to like? An acolyte of the Curious Goon clan had been pouring over books in their chamber for weeks to no avail. In desperation, they knocked on the door of the masters' meditation chamber. An old master opened the door and invited the acolyte in. "I do not understand the functioning of the Holy Roman Empire and the reasons behind the 30 Years War", the acolyte said, bowing their head. "Despite my weeks of reading, I can not get the big picture or what caused it." "In this world, you can collect butterflies for two reasons. Those who do it for the first, collect them for their beauty, appreciating them as individuals. Those who do it for the second, do it to understand why it rained today. Only one of these people will ever be happy." "I think I understand what you are saying, master, but what if I wish to understand the monsoon?" queried the acolyte in wonderment. "You are in search of the droplet that fell the dam during a monsoon," admonished the master. "Thank you master. Perhaps, then, I'd wish to know who built the dam, and why it was so fragile," considered the acolyte. "In the case of the Holy Roman Empire," sighed the master, "your answers lie in the memoirs of hundred generations of beavers and trees." In that moment, the acolyte was enlightened. (sorry)
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Jan 28, 2021 09:31
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Tias posted:Can we talk about Finnish uniforms 1939-1945? I'm about to paint some war dolls and I can't really work out the right shade of gray/blue for Finnish winter uniforms - so any kind of contemporary colour documentation would be neat. Thanks! 1939: Army is so poor, many reservists are only given a belt, a hat emblem and a weapon. See e.g. image on this page: https://plus.iltalehti.fi/talvisodan-alku-kotivaatteissa-rintamalle/ (paywall, but image should load). Here are some colored pictures to use as references (dunno about color balance) from 1941-1945:  1941, coastal artillery troops at Mäkiluoto  1942, in Petsamo  1942, shows a navy uniform  1942, fighting in Poventsa  1942, lieutenant on a log  1944, during Lapland war? ETA: Model m/22: Frieze jacket and pants. Color is "steel gray", which would "remain in use to 1990s", so checking some more recent photos from e.g. the 1980s might be cool. Jacket collar and pants dark grey. Model m/27: Frieze jacket described as brown \w English influence. Color too close to red army clothes, limited use during war. Model m/36: German-style frieze jacket and pants of grey color. Summer blouse of lighter grey color. Most common gear during the continuation war. Continued in conscript use to 1960s, so searching for post-war pictures might be a good source for better quality color images. Another edit: See image of m/22 great coat here. Note darker collar: https://www.varusteleka.fi/fi/product/sa-m22-36-mantteli-no3/57750 Loezi fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Feb 15, 2021 |
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Feb 15, 2021 15:31
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SubG posted:Rule, Slide, Military, Field Artillery, With Case, 10-Inch Where, when and how did this naming scheme originate? I haven't really seen it used anywhere outside of the military context but absolutely loved in when I was in charge of the platoon CP and the associated equipment. All the check lists were so wonderfully easy to use when alphabetized in this way. It's especially hilarious in Finnish, where long compound words are the norm. The FDF was recently looking for a "vastatykistömaalinosoitustutkakalustojärjestelmäinsinöörierikoisupseeri", roughly translating as "counter-artillery target designation radar equipment system engineer special officer".
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Feb 23, 2021 14:14
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In my highly limited experience, bicycles are a great mobility multiplier of an individual combatant and their personal gear, but limits the ability to haul squad/platoon/company level assets below even of what is possible on foot. You can have two walking dudes pick up a generator to carry between them, but can't do the same on bicycles. At the same time, having even a single working truck with a ton of bicycles would probably boost an infantry company's mobility by a huge factor over a foot-mobile unit equipped with a single truck. Obligatory image:  Interestingly, this might be scenario where winter and snow actively improve mobility: troops on skis, equipped with pulks, are probably gonna be able to haul more stuff than a similar sized unit on foot or on bicycles. The speed doesn't hold up to what's possible on bike, but the offroad capabilities are significantly better.
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Mar 4, 2021 12:30
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Dance Officer posted:Throw that generator on the back of the bike, tie it down, and start pedaling. It's not that hard. A 50kg hunk of metal 50cm x 50cm x 75cm is not something you just "throw on the back of the bike", especially in scenarios where you also need to carry a rucksack of personal equipment. At the same time, some sort of a bicycle attached cart thingymabob might be useful in the same way a pulk is useful, but I don't think those are quite as standard equipment as pulks are for ski-mobile infantry.
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Mar 4, 2021 12:44
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Dance Officer posted:You're not Dutch, so I don't blame you for not knowing, but this isn't a problem. I'm not, but I did use bicycles a bunch during my military service -- including attempting to transport e.g. engineering materiel with them, as shown in the image above -- but I suppose I'm just bad at bicycles, then 
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Mar 4, 2021 19:12
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The Lone Badger posted:For that matter, do new tanks try to have thermal camouflage where they're only hot if seen from behind? Or at least try to keep the turret cold to be able to hide hull-down? Dunno about stuff in general, but part of the Finnish BMP-2 upgrade program was thermal camouflage: 
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Mar 5, 2021 10:05
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Ataxerxes posted:Oh, just came across this. A Finnish dude wrote a study on the social dynamics of a Finnish infantry company after WW2 and it seems there is a free, official English translation: https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/74160 This is a good link that got buried in the RN-IJN slapfight, straight to my reading list.
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Mar 10, 2021 07:38
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Platystemon posted:What would airpower look like in such a scenario? This is me talking completely out of my rear end, but I'd suppose that while constructing new airfields is probably comparatively trivial, getting meaningful amounts of fuel and ordinance to them is a going to be the bottleneck. You'd probably have a bunch of airfields along the railroad to protect it from enemy CAS and bombers, with some further back basing bombers that would attempt to disrupt the enemy logistics. I can't imagine any kind of a solid line forming further away from the main supply route, so you could probably just do surprise bomber raids by going around the main ground conflict. Covering the whole "front" with radar is probably not feasible at the time. In case you, as the Japanese, planned to improve the supply situation by building more railways, that's gonna take a good while too. IIRC, the Burma railway construction proceeded from both ends at once (not possible in this scenario) and still took a quarter of a million people over a year to span about 400 km. Even if you assume the terrain is so much easier that you average 500km per year despite building from one end only, it'll take you about 3 years to lay track from Harbin to Irkutsk and a further 5 years to lay track from there to Yekaterinburg. After that, you'll still have a cool 1500 kilometers to go before reaching Moscow. As for effectiveness of air power in general, on one hand you are essentially trying to identify enemy forces hidden inside a forest the size of Europe, which is a pretty limiting factor. On the other hand, there are probably going to be only a handful of acceptable roads for the enemy to use as supply routes at any time, and a single railroad, so just projecting air power along those is probably going be reasonably effective; any assets sufficiently far away from the supply routes might as well not exist. On the third hand, you're gonna want to use those same roads later, so maybe ruining the road network is not in your own best interest? I'd love to hear someone more knowledgeable than me give their take.
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Mar 14, 2021 15:01
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Burma was absurdly difficult terrain compared to most of the terrain of the proposed route, I don't want to underestimate the challenge of the undertaking but I think they could have built out track quite a bit faster. Still works out to 900 days at 5km/day to go from Harbin to Yekaterinburg just along a great circle completely ignoring terrain features like Lake Baikal. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Plus, the transsib alone was sufficient to supply the giant army used by the Soviets for the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation (1.5m troops, 20k artillery pieces, 5k tanks, 3500 airplanes), so no reason to believe that the same thing, repaired and augmented, would not be able to sustain a hypothetical Japanese offensive going the other way assuming the resources were available to be shipped. As the Soviets, you have something like 500-600km to assault from Vladivostok to Harbin, and a similar distance from the Mongolian border to both the sea and Mukden/Shenyang with supplies you've been stockpiling 4-5 months using 136,000 rail cars and up to 30 daily trains, partially using forces already available in the area. You are also able to destroy a significant proportion of the defenders at the onset of the operation when using ordinance is the easiest for you and your logistical tail is the shortest. As the Japanese, a similar 600km deep dive from the border gets you about half-way to Irkutsk. From Irkutsk, you need an even larger buildup to reach Novosibirsk via Krasnojarsk (~1600km), followed by a third offensive to Yekaterinburg (~1500km), after which you can begin your final assault to Moscow (1500km away). At every step, the enemy logistics get easier and easier while yours get harder and harder. You are either moving at the pace of your rail buildup, meaning the Soviets have time to do a buildup similar to the real one in Irkutsk even if caught completely pants down (working from the assumption that the capture of Vladivostok is a fait accompli), or you extend beyond it and leave yourself vulnerable to any disruption to your rail-link of life. The distances are just pant-shittingly bonkers.
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Mar 15, 2021 11:00
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Wingnut Ninja posted:[I]n 1945 no woman could join the WAVES who had a child under 18. There was, however, no provision for a woman who acquired a child after joining up which presented more than one dilemma and legal problem for the Navy. 
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Mar 17, 2021 08:07
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bewbies posted:IFPC and M-SHORAD Googled M-SHORAD, found an article with this helpful image+caption combo: 
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Mar 29, 2021 14:51
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Count Roland posted:I don't know if it goes over this topic specifically (I doubt it) but The Design of Everyday Things is well renowned: It's a really nice book, and the theory on affordances is neat. The basic idea is that any object has a bunch of affordances, or things you think it allows you to do based on you just observing it. The go-to example is door handles. Most door handles afford both pushing and pulling (looking at a door handle, both are reasonable things to try and do), which makes them kinda bad design-wise as only one of those is gonna work. So optimally you'd want something that can reasonably only be pushed (e.g. a flat plate) on the push side of the door, and something that evokes pulling more than pushing (e.g. a really long vertical bar) on the pull side. You try to eliminate or minimize the false affordance. E: You might also want to check the Standup Maths video on the "average person" thing, as it has links to relevant period air force reports in the description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbiveCNBOxk Loezi fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Apr 7, 2021 |
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Apr 7, 2021 23:10
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:The book looks neat as well. I wonder how much of its theories/axioms apply to software user interface design? A ton, I've seen it used as a textbook. This is getting wildly off topic, but also consider checking out Steve Krug's books "Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited" and "Rocket Surgery Made Easy".
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Apr 8, 2021 09:45
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ChubbyChecker posted:How good were the WW2 rifle grenades and platoon level light mortars? Why did some countries use them and why others did not? And what did their enemies think about them? This is me talking out of my rear end, but on the conceptual level, the ability to lob small explosives further than you can toss them is excellent. The idea of having your riflemen be able to do the lobbing with their rifles is a nice idea, but I believe the specific execution of any rifle grenade system is just a bit too fiddly to be truly useful. You tend to need gas-redirection thingymabobs, special ammo, etc. to do it properly without ruining the rifle. For anti-infantry stuff, separate grenade pistols (perhaps models you can attach to your primary firearm) are just handier and faster to use way even if they do add a bit of weight. For anti-vehicle uses, there's stuff like LAWs are just straight-up better in every way. With regard to light mortars on the platoon levels, I suppose it's the question of whether you prefer the speed associated with a platoon commander just shouting at his one mortar, or the flexibility of having a larger asset attached at the company/battalion level, which you can then either keep together for bigger firepower or distribute based on the situation.
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Apr 16, 2021 07:32
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feedmegin posted:Praisegod Barebones and his mates From last page, but this is the most Terry Pratchett name I've ever seen a real person have.
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May 22, 2021 10:23
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human garbage bag posted:But the low casualty rate would explain that, free college isn't very useful if you're dead. Somehow I doubt people today would sign up to participate in a ground war in China for free college when they could instead be a truck driver and make $60k+ a year. This whole thing has a massive "we could prevent crimes if we just made the prison sentences longer" vibe. E: By which I mean it has that same energy of "well, any *rational actor* would..." energy which completely ignores everything about humans ever.
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Jun 14, 2021 23:11
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Fangz posted:Generally speaking, what puts people off from signing up to fight in wars is not casualty rates, but the belief that their contribution will be meaningless. Even if people think that the ~reality of war~ is that they will suffer, if they will suffer meaningfully then that's heroism. Soldiers getting killed doesn't put people off - heck, it gets put in propaganda films, and presented with posthumous medals. A lot of people died? Well then, all the more reason to join up and AVENGE THE FALLEN, MAKE SURE THEIR SACRIFICE DOESN'T GO TO WASTE etc etc Also especially young males are loving magnificently good at going "well, sucks to suck for those guys but clearly I won't be dying, I'm the protagonist of my life, after all"
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Jun 14, 2021 23:16
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VostokProgram posted:Is there any historical evidence to suggest that universal conscription keeps the military more integrated with civil society, while volunteer-only militaries become a class apart? It's a claim I've seen thrown around sometimes. Probably the closes you'll get to an AB-study on this is Finland vs. Sweden/Germany/<insert another Western European country>, but even there the experiences with WW2 are so drastically different, I dunno how you would go about drawing great conclusions from like 3 data points.
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Jun 15, 2021 20:46
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What's the take on Mark Felton's stuff on youtube?
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Jun 18, 2021 13:59
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I think I asked this a couple of threads back, but I can't find the post (and I don't recall anyone answering): are there any good documentaries about the Korean war as a whole? Something like Ken Burn's Vietnam stuff would be optimal, but even a 1 hour high-level thing would be nice.
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Jun 20, 2021 12:29
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Polyakov posted:CNN's The Cold War has an hour long episode on Korea. Its not in fantastic detail because its only an hour but its good for what it is. (Honestly id reccomend just watching the whole series too). Thanks, this looks real good!
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Jun 20, 2021 14:08
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Phanatic posted:The gun would be a Destructive Device but as long as you're just firing solid rounds, not HP or incendiary or AP, you're good to go. This led me down a rabbit hole of figuring out what the definition of an AP round is in the US. So it seems to me that ammunition can be "armor piercing" if and only if it is designed to be used in a "handgun": 27 CFR § 478.11 posted:Armor piercing ammunition. Projectiles or projectile cores which may be used in a handgun and which are constructed entirely (excluding the presence of traces of other substances) from one or a combination of tungsten alloys, steel, iron, brass, bronze, beryllium copper, or depleted uranium; or full jacketed projectiles larger than .22 caliber designed and intended for use in a handgun and whose jacket has a weight of more than 25 percent of the total weight of the projectile. The term does not include shotgun shot required by Federal or State environmental or game regulations for hunting purposes, frangible projectiles designed for target shooting, projectiles which the Director finds are primarily intended to be used for sporting purposes, or any other projectiles or projectile cores which the Director finds are intended to be used for industrial purposes, including charges used in oil and gas well perforating devices. Handgun, in turn, is this thing: 27 CFR § 478.11 posted:Handgun. So, uhh, I'd imagine the Sherman, having no stock, would fall within "has a short stock". The gun is kinda designed to hold itself up, and I assume it is indeed designed to be fired by the use of a single hand. So a Sherman might be a handgun, then?
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Jun 21, 2021 09:07
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Groda posted:What was Finland's involvement in the invasions of Russia after the Revolution? I know relatively little about this, and would love to hear from someone more knowledgeable, but a good starting point on reading about this would probably be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimosodat.
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Aug 5, 2021 16:12
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This came up in YouTube recommendations and I don't want to click on it but I kinda want to click on it
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Aug 16, 2021 17:51
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Arbite posted:Is there anywhere with very exact figures on Finnish munitions just before the Winter War started? Like, exactly how many artillery shells etc. there were? A random website gives these numbers for artillery on 30.11.1939: quote:76 mm: 205 800 total shells = 720/gun A different page on the same website says there were, at the onset of the war, 32 000 total shells for the 112 Bofors AT guns (37mm); 100 842 total shells for the 360 mortars (81mm) and about 156 million 7.62mm rifle rounds for the 254 581 rifles. According to the same website an estimated total of 508 966 artillery shells were fired during the war by Finns. Wikipedia gives these total ammunition production numbers for the duration of the war: quote:Rifle (7,62 mm) 43 350 000 pcs Both the random website and Wikipedia do have citations, but they all point to paper books I don't have access to, so who knows. Edit: Quick math indicates that if all the numbers above are right, then the stockpile of artillery shells would have been a grand total of 46 434 remaining shells (including production) at the end of the war. Which, uh, is not much. Loezi fucked around with this message at 11:22 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2021 11:17
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Glah posted:Contrasting this to Continuation War where for example (according to wikipedia) in just the Battle of Tali-Ihantala it is estimated that Finnish artillery fired about 120 000 shells in two weeks. Shows how Finnish military had taken the lessons from Winter War. Funnily this shows even today, when Finland still has one of the largest artillery forces in Europe. I guess the old adage about militaries always fighting the last war holds true in this occasion. I wonder how large artillery force with parts of it being not so modern pieces would fare in modern battlefield with drone spotters and the like. I fear that not so well... Based on the recent purchase of K9 Thunderers and new counter-battery radars. I also recall reading a public National Defence University study that had a bunch of estimates about the hit-ratios and the resulting cost-effectiveness of destroying various kinds of drones at various ranges with various weapons systems, and there seems to be a new one about peace-time defense against hostile acts conducted using off-the-shelf mini drones in built-up environments. There's clearly awareness that drones are a thing and that artillery needs some new stuff.
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Aug 17, 2021 12:11
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Phanatic posted:Am I alone in thinking that while Saving Private Ryan had some amazing special effects it was mostly a bunch of mawkish Hollywood bullshit and was totally eclipsed as a "war movie" by Band of Brothers? I'd imagine a bit part of the general perception regarding Saving Private Ryan is a thought process that goes something along the lines of "I saw a headline about how veterans were getting PTSD from watching the landing scene, so clearly it must be superbly realistic and faithful to reality in every way." PeterCat posted:I don't like band of brothers so much because it [..] does a lot of clean Wermacht comparisons. It's been a while since I watched BoB, what's this in reference to?
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Aug 26, 2021 08:09
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Ghost of Babyhead posted:I remember this being the obsession of just one particular person... does he have a following now? No, aerogavins are the brainchild of "An elite group composed of military professionals, aircraft and ground vehicle designers and civilians dedicated towards creating an excellent U.S. military capable of defending freedom both at home and abroad that has a moral compass" known as the Combat Reformers. Who are these experts? Anonymous, of course. But there are many and they are experts and it's not just one dude, no sir!
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Aug 28, 2021 11:57
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Fangz posted:Last I checked, the guy has moved on to appearing on right wing talkshows with the conspiracy theory that James Bond (I forget if he includes the movies) are actually secret messages from Ian Fleming about the Illuminati and all the events depicted actually literally happened. This all checks out, http://www.jamesbondisforreal.com/ is linked from the AeroGaving treatise.
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Aug 28, 2021 12:18
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A cool 16min video about how the British marines tried to land in a small Finnish town to burn it down during the Crimean war, but were repulsed by local seal hunters (and some Russian infantry, but who cares about them). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me8U2LtNVlw Set captions to English.
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Aug 29, 2021 08:55
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Sanguinia posted:from the American perspective it would not seem to be necessary to win the war What do you mean by "win the war" here?
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Aug 30, 2021 08:02
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