Cyrano4747 posted:

If you all want an accessible and decent book on those check out “Seven Frigates.” A good chunk of it is about the way they came about and were built. It’s solid if you don’t have background in naval history and want something readable.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

The end sort of hints at it being in other languages too with that French card. Maybe for distribution to the international section of Shanghai? Even then, that portion of the city was taken on December 8.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

feedmegin posted:

The Ethiopians had a bunch of modern weapons unlike the rest of Africa. They straight up slaughtered an invading Italian army attempting to colonise them in the 1890s. 'We have the Maxim gun and they do not' breaks down when they in fact do.

Hyrax Attack! posted:

Oh yeah I didn’t like it until played with a group that removed all bills below $20 and kept a fast pace. Land on a property, you buying yes no? Ok pass the dice. We finished in maybe 15 minutes and it was fun.

Neophyte posted:

Tankception

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

dig up or whatever man

Cessna posted:

I'm not good at extemporaneous comments, it's a lot easier to answer questions. Anything you want to know about German infantry crap?

Cessna posted:

"Ocean going submarines intended to sink enemy ships."

Yes, US Fleet subs were more expensive. Comparing them on a straight up basis is going to lead to problems, either from trying to find the right exchange rate (currency exchanges are notoriously wonky in wartime, let alone the problems of comparing the cost relatively well paid US union shipyard labor to Nazi slaves) or trying to compare the relative opposition they faced or relative scarcity of targets - or any other form of evaluation. It's hard to come up with an exact comparison.

But, that said, I stand by my initial point, that US Fleet boats were more effective and efficient than U Boats. Effective, in that they completely swept the seas of Japanese merchant shipping, while the U boats lost their war badly. Efficient, in that on a sub for sub basis they sank a lot more enemy tonnage than U boats.

And, more to the initial point - the German military of WWII has the popular reputation of "quality over quantity." Supposedly their stuff was just better engineered than Allied equivalents. ("German engineering.") But here in one of the iconic systems of the war - U boats - we can directly see that compared to a US Fleet submarine the most directly comparable and contemporary U boat design is cheap trash.


This cannot be overstated enough. Maritime welding was one of the unknown secret weapons of the war. One of the volunteers at the museum in the late 90s was a retired welder who had worked at Mare Island shipyard during the war, he was an absolute artisan with a torch.

When he saw photos of the welds on the U-505 he just laughed.


Absolutely! We had a conference at Bowfin in - '97? '98? I forget exactly when.

Bowfin had some great people then, but we often disagreed with their approach to preservation. In particular, Bowfin went out of their way to keep their sub clean, shiny and polished. That plays well with tourists, but excessive cleaning can harm historic fabric over time. I.e., polish a brass plaque (like the one with elevation angles on a gun) every day for decades and eventually the markings will wear off.

In contrast, Russ Booth's philosophy on Pampanito, which I thoroughly agree with, was to keep as much machinery in operating or close to operating condition as possible. At one point we had three of the main diesel engines running. Sure, it made messes, but a freshly run engine will last a lot longer than one sitting and rusting. (I can talk about this at great length if anyone is interested.)

That said, Bowfin had some great people. In particular one of their curators was working on her PhD at the time, and moved from Hawaii to San Francisco to get a job at the then-new Hornet museum at around the time I left California. I wish we were still in touch, but after a few years there she ended up taking an academic position somewhere in Northern Canada and disappeared.

Molentik posted:

More sub stuff; here is some very nice colour footage of U.S.S. Cod and the Dutch O-19 which ran aground on a sandbank.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF0OVO1QXJ0

See that dark rectangle on the side of the Dutch sub? That is a double torpedo laucher on a rotating mount for side shots, which is pretty unique for a sub I think?

Cessna posted:

That wouldn't have worked, because the Pampanito doesn't have propellers. That was part of the conditions the Navy puts on museum ships, that they can't drive under their own power. There may be (and probably are) exceptions to this, but this was part of the conditions the sub was held under.


When I worked there the sub was at Pier 45 and the O-Brien was parked on the other side of the city, just south of the Bay Bridge.

SubG posted:

Has anyone done a similar tabulation for the other Confederate non-submarine torpedo boats armed only with a spar torpedo (CSS David, CSS Scorpion, and so on)?

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

Xiahou Dun posted:

Might need some giant scare quotes around "learn the local language" there, bub.

Remulak posted:

Fits with the postwar (racist) American impression though, and and least in the book helps drive plot with the differences between the two groups. I couldn’t make it through S1 of the show but it seemed to be going that direction as well.

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

Rondel daggers came about in a time when the bits of mail protection started becoming really small. You can stab somebody through a mail shirt with a straight sword or larger dagger, but if you're trying to stab somebody under the arm pit you need a more specialized dagger.

"germany had free imperial cities. italy had free cities."

You're just sort of associating words here. A Free Imperial City was a particular legal status, it didn't let them become the dominant political force in Germany.

In any case, the average farm size in Italy was even smaller than it was in Germany c. 1933