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Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

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Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#81

Post by bluekeybox »

bluekeybox wrote: post #49
arethuza wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When Nazis attacked the USSR, was there an advance warning?" Stalin had plenty of advance warning - there were even people defecting from the German ranks and telling them that the Germans were coming (they were probably shot for their troubles). Even after the invasion started Stalin refused to believe the reports coming from frontline units for a long time after the invasion started. See: http://www.simonsebagmont…

Intelligence information is speculative and absolutely cannot be compared to an official warning.

Don't understand the downvotes, but just to explain: with intelligence information, there is always a possibility that it could have come from an unreliable source or a source who purposefully tried to mislead. With an official ultimatum such an ambiguity is absent.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#82

Post by crikli »

DrCatbox wrote: post #61
eftpotrm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just running out of fuel but general supply line issues. Blitzkrieg (around which the German forces had been designed) was predicated on the assumption that you could quickly overrun a territory before the defenders could react to it. Which works fine in Poland and, to a degree, France (though that was partly due to some interesting internal politics in France at the time) but where's the first defensible border…

I have heard this kind of storytelling before, where the outcome of the WW2 is attributed to the failure of the German army on the eastern front and the discussion is focused on finding factors for that failure. However such a storytelling tends to discard or fade the importance of Russian endevaours, ingeniuity and sacrifice. Another kind of storytelling would focus in finding factors which made Russia the ultimate…

I don't see that anyone is discarding or fading the role of the Russian military, but without General Winter (a coin termed by the Russians) the outcome would have been different.

There's an excellent book I bought at a library sale a couple years back, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege (http://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Be...) that really tells the story well.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#83

Post by smallblacksun »

akdubya wrote: post #65

Any battle tech that's an order-of-magnitude cheaper to kill than to produce is destined for obsolescence. You can see this happening now with main battle tanks, which are easily knocked out by IEDs and increasingly sophisticated man-portable missiles. It will be interesting to see what happens to the manned air superiority fighter over the next couple of decades now that unmanned drones are being deployed on a wide…

Few M1s have been destroyed or badly damaged by insurgents in Iraq. Their use has declined since the invasion not because they are too vulnerable, but because they are less useful without enemy tanks to engage and using them against infantry in urban environments risks heavy civilian casualties.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#84

Post by hernan7 »

FlowerPower wrote: post #6

"Just as Western Civilization staggered and faded after the fall of Rome, Western Civilization has never really recovered from the shock of the Great War. Cultures which endured and developed over a thousand years were wiped out, never to return again. Western culture, abstract thought and artistic development: nothing important has developed since 1919; we’re still reeling from the shock." What a load of bollocks. T…

Or maybe he heard of situationism, dada, etc., and classifies them under "nothing important".

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#85

Post by philwelch »

DrCatbox wrote: post #61
eftpotrm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just running out of fuel but general supply line issues. Blitzkrieg (around which the German forces had been designed) was predicated on the assumption that you could quickly overrun a territory before the defenders could react to it. Which works fine in Poland and, to a degree, France (though that was partly due to some interesting internal politics in France at the time) but where's the first defensible border…

I have heard this kind of storytelling before, where the outcome of the WW2 is attributed to the failure of the German army on the eastern front and the discussion is focused on finding factors for that failure. However such a storytelling tends to discard or fade the importance of Russian endevaours, ingeniuity and sacrifice. Another kind of storytelling would focus in finding factors which made Russia the ultimate…

Russia's success hinged on two things: their massive geographic advantages and the use of scorched earth tactics.

I don't want to minimize the fact that Russia bore a lot of casualties (more than any other country) in the process of defeating the Germans and pushing east, but frankly most wars are won and lost by the factors that existed before the first shot is fired, including population, logistics, and geography. If Stalin had done a better job, maybe Russia wouldn't have suffered so many casualties; if Hitler had done a better job, maybe they would have suffered even more. But there's no way Germany could have actually won, just as there's no way the South could have actually won the American Civil War.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#87

Post by philwelch »

jxcole wrote: post #63
crikli wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Manoeuvre warfare is fantastically effective when the circumstances allow for it, but the available conditions, technology and personnel can sometimes make it ineffective. For instance, the German Blitzkrieg was extraordinarily effective against the static French defences in 1940, but the same forces and tactics came unstuck in 1941 when faced with a vicious winter and the Russian scorched earth style of defence." N…

Ok come on, there was no need for them to go to war with Russia AT ALL, if Hitler had focused on Britain and waited until the West was completely defeated (a few years at the most), he would not have lost. Russia divided the Germans in a way that was unnecessary.

Britain had the naval and air power to hold off Germany. Russia had sprawling territory and the winter; Britain had the English Channel. Germany would have been better served to win the North Africa campaign; that might have actually left Germany with a defensible position.

On the other hand, the entire purpose of the Nazi regime was to conquer eastern Europe, enslave or exterminate its population, and resettle Germans there. Victory required a successful invasion of Russia.

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#89

Post by Jd »

I don't think anyone has pointed this out in a comment yet...

What is better with very expensive but obsolete machinery than to people use their machinery to duke it out. Will things explode and sink "at great cost" ? Well yes, that's sort of the point. It is even more costly to keep them afloat and maintained.

To those who think this is cruel, European powers periodically fought wars with each other for thousands of years before 1914, they just never were quite as catastrophic (enter chemical weapons and, later, nukes). Hell, the Catholic church tried to ban jousting many times since... you guessed it, people frequently died trying to poke each other with sticks for the sake of scarves from pretty ladies.

Hooah!

Re: Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea

#90

Post by philwelch »

smallblacksun wrote: post #83
akdubya wrote: post #65

Any battle tech that's an order-of-magnitude cheaper to kill than to produce is destined for obsolescence. You can see this happening now with main battle tanks, which are easily knocked out by IEDs and increasingly sophisticated man-portable missiles. It will be interesting to see what happens to the manned air superiority fighter over the next couple of decades now that unmanned drones are being deployed on a wide…

Few M1s have been destroyed or badly damaged by insurgents in Iraq. Their use has declined since the invasion not because they are too vulnerable, but because they are less useful without enemy tanks to engage and using them against infantry in urban environments risks heavy civilian casualties.

Also, they're harder to fit on the streets.
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