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Brother Oni
2014-09-13, 06:55 AM
Real World Weapon, Armour and Tactics Thread XVI

This thread is a resource for getting information about real life weapons and armour and now tactics since we tend to field a lot of those questions as well. The concept has always been that the information is for RPG players and DMs so they can use it to make their games better, thus it's here rather than in Friendly Banter.

A few rules for this thread:


This thread is for asking questions about how weapons, armour and tactics really work. As such, it's not going to include game rule statistics. If you have such a question, especially if it stems from an answer or question in this thread, feel free to start a new thread and include a link back to here. If you do ask a rule question here, you'll be asked to move it elsewhere, and then we'll be happy to help out with it.

Any weapon or time period is open for questions. Medieval and ancient warfare questions seem to predominate, but since there are many games set in other periods as well, feel free to ask about any weapon. This includes futuristic ones - but be aware that these will be likely assessed according to their real life feasibility. Thus, phasers, for example, will be talked about in real-world science and physics terms rather than the Star Trek canon. If you want to discuss a fictional weapon from a particular source according to the canonical explanation, please start a new thread for it.

Please try to cite your claims if possible. If you know of a citation for a particular piece of information, please include it. However, everyone should be aware that sometimes even the experts don't agree, so it's quite possible to have two conflicting answers to the same question. This isn't a problem; the asker of the question can examine the information and decide which side to go with. The purpose of the thread is to provide as much information as possible. Debates are fine, but be sure to keep it a friendly debate (even if the experts can't!).

No modern real-world political discussion. As the great Carl von Clausevitz once said, "War is merely the continuation of policy by other means," so politics and war are heavily intertwined. However, politics are a big hot-button issue and one banned on these boards, so avoid political analysis if at all possible (this thread is primarily about military hardware). There's more leeway on this for anything prior to about 1800, but be very careful with all of it, and anything past 1900 is surely not open for analysis. (I know these are arbitrary dates, but any dates would be, and I feel these ones are reasonable.)

No graphic descriptions. War is violent, dirty, and horrific, and anyone discussing it should be keenly aware of that. However, on this board graphic descriptions of violence (or sexuality) are not allowed, so please avoid them.


With that done, have at, and enjoy yourselves!

Thread V (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?80863-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-V)
Thread VI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?124683-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-VI)
Thread VII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?168432-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-VII)
Thread VIII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?192911-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-VIII)
Thread IX (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?217159-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-IX)
Thread X (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?238042-Got-a-Real-World-Weapons-or-Armour-Question-Mk-X)
Thread XI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?255453-Got-a-Real-World-Weapons-or-Armour-Question-Mk-XI)
Thread XII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?282471-Got-a-Real-World-Weapons-or-Armour-Question-Mk-XII&p=15188540#post15188540)
Thread XIII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?308462-Got-a-Real-World-Weapons-or-Armour-Question-Mk-XIII)
Thread XIV (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?327994-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-XIV)
Thread XV (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?347806-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armour-Question-Mk-XV)

Brother Oni
2014-09-13, 07:28 AM
To put those numbers into perspective the distance between where i understand China's old capital was and it's more distant borders is between 1000 and 2000 miles. Bearing in mind that overland distance is also much greater than crow flies distance the reality is those number will be much lager. That means for a message to move from the border to the capital anywhere from 1 to 2 month's would be quite possible as an upper estimate. Add on distance between your own border and the site of said plains elf invasion and it gets worse. And an army travels far slower than a messenger, the 30 mil per day figure is probably on the high side as an army has slow baggage trains and organizing a large force of troops takes a great deal of time each day at start and end of march.

I feel this depends on the composition of the army and the urgency. The Mongols were capable of moving very quickly (during the invasion of Hungary, it was reported they travelled up to 100 miles a day), but they were mainly a cavalry based army.

While a Roman legion typically managed 15-18 miles during normal operations (this included setting up and breaking down camp with fortifications at the end of every day), forced marches could manage up to 25 miles a day - Caesar often marched his troops ahead of the slower baggage train. Good roads and good weather helped a lot with travels - winter and no/poor roads often made travel near impossible. Vitellius' legions took two months to march from the Rhine to northern Italy in the early spring of 69AD (a quick check says Cologne to Milan is ~400 miles as the crow flies, or ~7 miles a day as a very rough ballpark figure).

Carl
2014-09-13, 08:30 AM
Replying from a non-home computer so my reply may not be up to my usual standards.

Thanks for digging that up for me actually, which fits what i was saying nicely. Yes i was aware that armies could travel with some speed, i just wasn't sure of the exact speed, my estimate was 15 miles a day for normal and 30 for a forced march which fits what you dug up nicely. I deliberately didn't mention the mongols because not only where they cavalry based but their horses where famous for their endurance as a result of what natural selection had done to them over the year's. But that's hardly a normal situation obviously. I'd also point out that over the larger distances where potentially talking about a forced march for any significant stretch would probably be impractical and the baggage train for a several hundred to couple of thousand mile trek overland would be enormous.

Matthew
2014-09-13, 10:16 AM
I feel this depends on the composition of the army and the urgency. The Mongols were capable of moving very quickly (during the invasion of Hungary, it was reported they travelled up to 100 miles a day), but they were mainly a cavalry based army.

Who reported that? Although Mongol armies were highly mobile, the last article I read on the subject took a more conservative view!

Brother Oni
2014-09-13, 10:28 AM
Replying from a non-home computer so my reply may not be up to my usual standards.

Thanks for digging that up for me actually, which fits what i was saying nicely. Yes i was aware that armies could travel with some speed, i just wasn't sure of the exact speed, my estimate was 15 miles a day for normal and 30 for a forced march which fits what you dug up nicely. I deliberately didn't mention the mongols because not only where they cavalry based but their horses where famous for their endurance as a result of what natural selection had done to them over the year's. But that's hardly a normal situation obviously. I'd also point out that over the larger distances where potentially talking about a forced march for any significant stretch would probably be impractical and the baggage train for a several hundred to couple of thousand mile trek overland would be enormous.

Well the only thing faster than a Mongol army were the mechanised infantry of WW2 era, so I agree that they're completely atypical.

That said, the Romans were among the faster of the pre-modern armies, so unless the fantasy army has their immense infrastructure and discipline, it's unlikely they'd be able to manage the same distances (best I heard was 32 miles a day for 3 days). Some checking indicates that the 'regular step' was 29.6km (18.5 miles) with 20.5kg of gear and the 'faster step' was 35.5km (22.2 miles) with the same gear, all in 5 summer hours.

Other famous forced marches were Harold's army marching from the south coast to Tadcaster before the Battle of Stamford Bridge (~300 miles in 2 weeks) then back down again to Hastings in a similar sort of time when William landed (this was through friendly territory though, so less logistical issues).

8-10 miles a day is a more accurate measure if a medieval army is transporting its own supplies across land. I believe that during the Third Crusade, Richard the Lionhearted arranged for his army to be supplied by sea and they managed much faster travel times (I can't find a reference to the exact speed in this case, but I've seen values of up to 20 miles a day for a medieval army).

Interestingly these sorts of speeds are still about typical in today's military - the WW2 Wehrmark managed 40km/day and British light infantry are expected to maintain 24 miles a day while yomping/tabbing (marching with full kit of ~50kg). I guess there's only so much a guy can carry and still march/fight effectively.


Who reported that? Although Mongol armies were highly mobile, the last article I read on the subject took a more conservative view!

The only reference I have for that is the Hungarian invasion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#Invasion_of_the_Kingdom_ of_Hungary), but it's unsourced. The only actual source I have is a 40-60 mile range for an normal speed march: link (http://books.google.es/books?id=Esl_0knhcE4C&pg=PA124&dq=mongol+army+miles+per+day&hl=es&sa=X&ei=FEXTUMalK5OBhQfNioDYBQ&ved=0CEEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=mongol%20army%20miles%20per%20day&f=false).

Galloglaich
2014-09-13, 11:12 AM
Who reported that? Although Mongol armies were highly mobile, the last article I read on the subject took a more conservative view!

Mongol armies would bring as many as 6 horses per rider with them on big raids (tafur? something like that?) which made them potentially very mobile but also subject to some major limitations:

They were enormously dependent on being able to find fodder, water, and sufficient space for a huge number of horses. A major raid of 1 tumen of Mongol warriors (10,000 men) meant up to 60,000 horses had to be provided for. And horses don't last long without food or especially water.

Partly this meant they had to (and did) make very good use of scouts and other forms of intelligence gathering (capturing and interrogating locals, suborning spies and potential allies and so on) to get an accurate sense of the lay of the land around them when they were going on a raid or an attack. Mongol ponies / horses don't need grain the way a lot of Western breeds do, and can live on grass alone, and they can also endure extremes of temperature and environmental conditions almost beyond belief, in order to keep moving efficiently they had to benefit from a certain amount of luck, operated best in specific environments (i.e. the steppe) and scorched-earth tactics, if taken to the extreme of poisoning water supplies and burning fields, could have devastating effects on them. This was demonstrated in Hungary during the period roughly 1241-1340. It also meant that unexpected and sudden weather events like heavy rains, hail or severe drought which reduced the amount of horse fodder could cripple a Mongol army almost overnight.

It also meant that Mongol armies had to remain on the move since that many horses (not counting other pack animals) meant the potential for disease was enormous. When forced to stay in one area they would disperse widely and go on almost constant foraging raids, which had the benefit of further devastating the lands of their enemies (if they were in an enemy zone) but also exposing them to ambush and counter-raid as again seen in Hungary among other places.

So in absolutely ideal circumstances in an ideal environment such as on the steppe, a Mongol army might be able to make 100 miles a day, I don't think that is impossible. In practical terms in most situations it was probably a lot less than that.

But there was another way that people could travel back then almost as quickly, albeit also subject to certain vagaries of weather and climate: the seas and rivers.

A famous late medieval account of a shooting contest in Strasbourg described how the gunners contingent (effectively a small military unit) from one of the Swiss towns (I think it was Zurich) managed to make it all the way to Strasbourg in the unheard of time of 19 hours, traveling down the rivers. That is about 90 miles in one day, only partly on river (mainly the Rhine). These same travel networks were exploited by the military as well as for trade, especially for the movement of guns and supplies.

Maybe someone can figure out how far a medieval ship (galleys and also sailing ships) traveled in a day, I think a typical speed was 3 to 6 knots depending on various conditions but I don't know how long a sailing day would typically be. But I know they could make pretty good time. Same on the rivers and canals - they dug canals between many of the major river systems in Europe starting in the 13th Century. For example Hamburg and Lubeck in the 1390's, which connected the Elbe and the Trave rivers, and thus effectively the Baltic with the North Sea (bypassing the Danish at the Oresund). Apparently the trip took 14 days because there were so many locks, but not all the canals were so steep.

From what I understand they also had similar canal systems in China, even more extensive.

Travel on the rivers and on sea and ocean-going ships of course was also heavily impacted by weather and climate, in some areas certain seasons block travel altogether either overland or on the seas.

Speaking of which the use of ski's was another important high-speed military transportation method used in Scandinavia, Finland and Russia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski_warfare#mediaviewer/File:S._V._Ivanov._Campaign_of_Muscovites._XVI_cen tury._%281903%29.jpg). Along with the skis they had the Troika which was a type of sleigh (or cart, depending on the season) pulled by a team of 3 horses which could maintain a very high speed for a long time.

We also know the Norse Varjag bands would travel an enormous distance in a single season, from the Baltic Coast all the way down to the Black Sea and back in some cases, mainly using the rivers but also having to go through many portages. The Cossacks later resumed these methods, there are many amazing accounts of Cossack river battles involving huge armies, such as you see here

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Surikov_Pokoreniye_Sibiri_Yermakom.jpg

G

Galloglaich
2014-09-13, 11:33 AM
Interestingly these sorts of speeds are still about typical in today's military - the WW2 Wehrmark managed 40km/day and British light infantry are expected to maintain 24 miles a day while yomping/tabbing (marching with full kit of ~50kg). I guess there's only so much a guy can carry and still march/fight effectively.

Whenever I'm reminded of these numbers, which I agree are accurate for the Romans, in the Napoleonic wars, and in WW I and WWII, and I think in some places as recently as Vietnam, I still find them amazing. It takes a lot of discipline to make an army travel that far in a day on foot. The longest road-march I ever did in the Army was 23 miles, and that was at the very end of boot camp when I was probably in the best shape of my life and was only 18 years old. To say it wore me out would be a major understatement. Sore beyond belief, exhausted beyond belief. To do that and better day after day, in sandals no less, carrying a full load, is a remarkable testament to an armies discipline, fitness, and morale (and / or the harsh control of their officers and NCO's).

I know many people these days run Marathons, which is an amazing achievement as well, but it's not quite the same when you are carrying weapons and a rucksack and ammunition and water and everything, and marching in even a loose formation rather than at your own pace.

G

Stellar_Magic
2014-09-13, 12:02 PM
Well backpacking I've managed up to 15 miles in a couple hours with an 80 lb pack. Considering this was cross country with boy scouts in the Big Horn mountains, I can see an army on roads managing twice this number or more with practice and formal training.

Galloglaich
2014-09-13, 12:47 PM
Well backpacking I've managed up to 15 miles in a couple hours with an 80 lb pack. Considering this was cross country with boy scouts in the Big Horn mountains, I can see an army on roads managing twice this number or more with practice and formal training.

That is impressive to me! Seven or eight miles an hour in mountain trails is pretty good time I think. Where was all this when I was (very briefly) in the boy scouts? All they seemed to do was eat cookies and collect dues, and I remember something about knots...

G

JustSomeGuy
2014-09-15, 04:17 AM
Just my experience, but I have run a couple of marathons and a 32 miler before (trainers, t shirt etc) along well worn tracks and paved roads, and they were much easier than walking a marathon in boots and kit going full cross-country. I think the biggest factor is the ground being covered; travelling over a smoothed worn track of any sort is significantly different from unkept moorland and such. Heather, 'babies head' grass mounds, long grass, rocky or boggy ground under vegetation make every step about 3 times slower/shorter/less useful.

snowblizz
2014-09-15, 04:27 AM
, in sandals no less,


Interestingly, what's to say sandals are worse than army boots. I'm thinking it may actually have been a benefit. After all we are better walkers *without* anything on since that's the way we are supposed to walk. I'm reminded of those "feet-shoes", so sandals may well be closer to our optimal than mass-produced lowest bidder army boots.

dramatic flare
2014-09-15, 04:49 AM
Whenever I'm reminded of these numbers, which I agree are accurate for the Romans, in the Napoleonic wars, and in WW I and WWII, and I think in some places as recently as Vietnam, I still find them amazing. It takes a lot of discipline to make an army travel that far in a day on foot. The longest road-march I ever did in the Army was 23 miles, and that was at the very end of boot camp when I was probably in the best shape of my life and was only 18 years old. To say it wore me out would be a major understatement. Sore beyond belief, exhausted beyond belief. To do that and better day after day, in sandals no less, carrying a full load, is a remarkable testament to an armies discipline, fitness, and morale (and / or the harsh control of their officers and NCO's).

I know many people these days run Marathons, which is an amazing achievement as well, but it's not quite the same when you are carrying weapons and a rucksack and ammunition and water and everything, and marching in even a loose formation rather than at your own pace.

G

I'd like to add that in Roman times they had to walk everywhere, all the time, anyway. I'm assuming that you've probably had access to/ your parents had access to a car most of the time instead. I think this scenario is one of those things that can be safely considered incomparable due to the grand difference in major lifestyle transportation.
A second point, more of as a question, would be the type of terrain you knocked 23 miles off of. I bet those impressive Roman speeds are partially due to their impressive Roman roads... not that 23 miles is something to scoff at. *pokes own flub.*



Just out of curiosity, do most ancient/medieval units march with the armor actually on? I would think it would be easier to stow most of it.

Brother Oni
2014-09-15, 05:57 AM
Maybe someone can figure out how far a medieval ship (galleys and also sailing ships) traveled in a day, I think a typical speed was 3 to 6 knots depending on various conditions but I don't know how long a sailing day would typically be.

Pliny the Elder records some very fast voyages (ie intentional speed runs) which measure up to between 4.5 and 6 knots an hour: link (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/TAPA/82/Speed_under_Sail_of_Ancient_Ships*.html).

In particular, the Ostia-Africa voyage of 270nm could be done in 2 days, whereas a more typical voyage was 2.5-3 days. Given the vagaries of the wind for sea travel, I would presume that they sailed around the clock, with different shifts crewing the ship at all hours (if someone knows better, please correct me).


To do that and better day after day, in sandals no less, carrying a full load, is a remarkable testament to an armies discipline, fitness, and morale (and / or the harsh control of their officers and NCO's).

I've heard a good rule of thumb is 10% losses to attrition due to forced marching, from injuries, exhaustion and stragglers. With the Roman army, these men left behind were expected to catch up with their unit when they were able, which implies an excellent espirit d'corps. In contrast, during the Napoleonic era, the provosts would scoop up these loose men instead.



Just out of curiosity, do most ancient/medieval units march with the armor actually on? I would think it would be easier to stow most of it.

Stow most of it on what though? If you had it in the baggage train then you'd be unarmoured in case of surprise enemy attack. There's also the problem of theft when leaving your kit unattended.

The only other option would be for soldiers to carry it themselves and if you're doing that, it's easier to hump it around wearing it than carrying it (from experience, a 15kg mail shirt is much easier to move about with it on than stowed in a backpack). Lower leg armour was unpopular with foot soldiers (more weight to lift with every step) and not many infantry wore armour below the knee.

That said, there were tricks to make marching with gear easier - in the English Civil War, pikemen used to drag their long pikes behind them ('trailing the pike') rather than carry them at the ready on the shoulder.
The more encompassing helmets were often carried at the belt or left on the horse when not required.

GraaEminense
2014-09-15, 10:28 AM
Stow most of it on what though? If you had it in the baggage train then you'd be unarmoured in case of surprise enemy attack. There's also the problem of theft when leaving your kit unattended.

The only other option would be for soldiers to carry it themselves and if you're doing that, it's easier to hump it around wearing it than carrying it (from experience, a 15kg mail shirt is much easier to move about with it on than stowed in a backpack). Lower leg armour was unpopular with foot soldiers (more weight to lift with every step) and not many infantry wore armour below the knee.

Heat would be one main reason -not much of an issue with mail or breastplate, but gambesons and the like can get hot very fast. That also means you require more water, which might be a logistical issue.
That aside, I agree: Armour is easier to wear than to carry.

Galloglaich
2014-09-15, 11:28 AM
Heat would be one main reason -not much of an issue with mail or breastplate, but gambesons and the like can get hot very fast. That also means you require more water, which might be a logistical issue.
That aside, I agree: Armour is easier to wear than to carry.

Didn't the Romans have a sort of T-shaped thing they carried their gear on?

G

dramatic flare
2014-09-15, 12:08 PM
Hmm. I know the Japanese had tatami ( basically, a folding armor that one could carry around in a box when it wasn't time for battle) that came in a wide variety of compositions, though I suppose Europe's more scavenger-style acquisition of armor would make theft a larger problem.

GraaEminense
2014-09-15, 12:39 PM
Didn't the Romans have a sort of T-shaped thing they carried their gear on?
They did, but from what I can see after a quick Google-search they wore their armour and carried everything else.

Brother Oni
2014-09-16, 05:07 PM
My turn for a question: suppose we had a critter with regenerative capabilities that meant that only significant and extensive tissue destruction or sudden and massive exsanguination were the only reliable ways of killing it.

While the former method is easy to picture (pinning it down then setting it on fire or covering in a corrosive liquid), I'm curious what weapons and techniques would be useful to achieve the latter. Presumably in modern day, large calibre rounds or other things that punch big holes in things would be ideal, so let's contrast with how melee weapons would do the trick.

I know triangular bayonets were known for their wounds which didn't close, but the blood loss may be a bit too slow. Large slashing weapons aimed at veins, arteries and other blood rich areas? Amputation of limbs?

Sidmen
2014-09-16, 06:54 PM
If you want to inflict bleeding wounds on an unarmored foe, your best bet for the most damage would be a double-edged sword. One or two handed doesn't matter much (obviously, two handed would give you a better reach), both would result in long, deep gashes that cut through veins and arteries both large and small.

For modern weapons, you'd absolutely want an automatic weapon firing hollow-point rounds. Your best bet would be a PDW chambered for .45 or 9mm - like a MP5 or more modern variant. Those should maximize your tissue damage and open the biggest exit wounds to help in bleeding out. Unless you can get your hands on explosives (massive tissue damage) or really heavy weapons, that should be your best option.

Raum
2014-09-16, 07:31 PM
My turn for a question: suppose we had a critter with regenerative capabilities that meant that only significant and extensive tissue destruction or sudden and massive exsanguination were the only reliable ways of killing it.

While the former method is easy to picture (pinning it down then setting it on fire or covering in a corrosive liquid), I'm curious what weapons and techniques would be useful to achieve the latter. Presumably in modern day, large calibre rounds or other things that punch big holes in things would be ideal, so let's contrast with how melee weapons would do the trick.Much will depend on your critter's anatomy. Assuming something not far from human, you'll want to open a major artery and/or create a wound large enough not to heal before blood loss takes it's course.

I'd suggest large caliber frangible rounds, broad head arrows, or (relatively) wide blades. Even then, location of the hit will probably matter more than the weapon.

JustSomeGuy
2014-09-17, 04:01 AM
Doubt this'll help much, more just playing with my imagination; I picture some kind of heavy hammer with an apple-corer on the end, so it smashes into the creature and pulls out a large plug of flesh. Bonus points for heart extraction.

I figure it'd be too heavy for regular combat, but if the creature can be occupied fighting someone else a specialist could run in and make the hit, snatch team style.

Or put it on some ridiculous oversized weapon, like that german with the hammer thing at the start of 'gladiator'. That'd get around the weight/handling problem, put it on a weapon that already is off the charts. Or some kind of cavalry weapon.

Could the creature be entangled and defeated? Bypassing regeneration etc. entirely, to be destroyed at a later convenience? Nets, whips and ropes, chains, bolas, whatever. Just make sure your studded leather armour isn't patent, or your forces would take a most undesirable appearance!

Yora
2014-09-17, 04:10 AM
To run a pipe through a person, including ribs, spine, and armor, you'd need a huge amount of force. A hammer would be so big that you would have to tie down the target on the ground. There is no way for "a specialist to sneak up" and hit a distracted enemy in the back.
Usually I am with "there are no stupid questions". But in a discussion about real world weapons, this one is stupid. :smallamused:

JustSomeGuy
2014-09-17, 05:40 AM
It wasn't so much 'sneak up' as 'hang back behind q baseline while regular troops engage, and if you spot a particularly static opponent charge out and have a swing at it, then fall back'. But yeah I agree it's a pretty stupid idea. Most of mine are!

A very surgical option - does their heart work similarly to ours? If so, you could find a way to drain their 'residual volume' (might well have the terminology wrong, basically a small amount of blood remaining in the heart so it can continue to function hydraulically) with some kind of vacuum stiletto, or pump a load of air inside. But if you're doing that, might as well pump it full of acid/poison/kryptonite/electricity. Actually, could you shock their heart out of rhythm? Hmmm...

Brother Oni
2014-09-17, 07:02 AM
For modern weapons, you'd absolutely want an automatic weapon firing hollow-point rounds. Your best bet would be a PDW chambered for .45 or 9mm - like a MP5 or more modern variant. Those should maximize your tissue damage and open the biggest exit wounds to help in bleeding out. Unless you can get your hands on explosives (massive tissue damage) or really heavy weapons, that should be your best option.

Interesting. I was under the impression that hollowpoints tended to shed all their energy on impact or inside the target, thus over-penetration was unreliable at best.

I should also qualify that you'd need tissue destruction (eg fire or acid) as otherwise they would regenerate the damage - pulping their internal organs with a shockwave from an explosion would slow them down or temporarily incapcitate them, but you'd still need to cause them to bleed out or actually destroy the tissue to kill them.


I'd suggest large caliber frangible rounds, broad head arrows, or (relatively) wide blades. Even then, location of the hit will probably matter more than the weapon.

Hmm true. Do they make JHPs for a M2 or other GPMG class weapon? I was under the impression that any expanding or frangible round for military applications was banned under the Hague Convention.
Thanks for reminding me about broadheads - the medieval ones were nasty enough, but modern hunting variants just look brutal (I would post a picture of what I mean, but work filters now pick up weapons, which include archery companies).


Could the creature be entangled and defeated? Bypassing regeneration etc. entirely, to be destroyed at a later convenience? Nets, whips and ropes, chains, bolas, whatever. Just make sure your studded leather armour isn't patent, or your forces would take a most undesirable appearance!

Most definitely, just that they're intelligent, quick, powerful and aggressive, so live capture would be difficult at best as they could escape or break through.

I would think having what appears to be a small army of BDSM guys in gimp suits would probably make most things run away in terror, especially when they're also carrying something intended for large diameter deep penetration. :smalltongue:

Your apple-corer hammer is a good idea though and developing it a bit further gives me spears or harpoons intended to be pulled free while ripping a large chunk of flesh with it. If they had bladed one way arms mounted behind the head, which fold when piercing but extend when pulling out, it would aid in the flesh ripping.

While it would raise the chance of the weapon getting stuck in the creature, the additional damage would probably be worth it.

Attaching a rope or chain to the harpoon and firing it from a crossbow would also be fairly effective, especially if mounted to an automatic reel on a vehicle or other fixed emplacement.



A very surgical option - does their heart work similarly to ours? If so, you could find a way to drain their 'residual volume' (might well have the terminology wrong, basically a small amount of blood remaining in the heart so it can continue to function hydraulically) with some kind of vacuum stiletto, or pump a load of air inside. But if you're doing that, might as well pump it full of acid/poison/kryptonite/electricity. Actually, could you shock their heart out of rhythm? Hmmm...

The critter I'm thinking of was inspired by the chiropterans from Blood: The Last Vampire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood:_The_Last_Vampire), so presumably their internal organs are similar as they're derived from human stock. They're large bat-like creatures which feed primarily off blood, with the aforementioned regenerative capability.

http://www.theicecave.org/damage_control/multimedia/blood-plus04.jpg

Eldan
2014-09-17, 07:15 AM
For the apple-core hammer: something like this, maybe? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hole_digger

Storm_Of_Snow
2014-09-17, 07:42 AM
Much will depend on your critter's anatomy. Assuming something not far from human, you'll want to open a major artery and/or create a wound large enough not to heal before blood loss takes it's course.

I'd suggest large caliber frangible rounds, broad head arrows, or (relatively) wide blades. Even then, location of the hit will probably matter more than the weapon.
Ever heard of Butchers Groin?

If a butcher is boning out a joint of meat, they've got the knife in their fist, blade down and edge pointing towards them. If the knife snags then comes free, chances are it's coming straight for the inside of their thigh with a lot of force, where the femoral artery runs close to the surface, and is at very high pressure. :smalleek:

I had a Saturday job years ago, where one of the full timers was a trained butcher who'd seen someone injure himself in that manner - seems that the apron the guy was wearing was pushed out to the horizontal by the pressure of the blood coming out of the wound, and they carried the guy out to the ambulance with his legs drawn up to his body and a pressure bandage around his thigh to keep him alive until he reached hospital.

(I think most processing factory butchers wear chainmail aprons these days to reduce the chances of similar injuries).

Chemicals and drugs might be another weapon though, especially anything that massively increases blood pressure and heart rate, acts as an anticoagulant, and/or can cause thin walled capillaries to rupture.

However, something that basically cores the target probably won't cause massive blood loss unless it's got holes bored in the sides, otherwise the sides will effectively staunch the wound.

Yora
2014-09-17, 07:44 AM
Hmm true. Do they make JHPs for a M2 or other GPMG class weapon? I was under the impression that any expanding or frangible round for military applications was banned under the Hague Convention.

Yes, but the Hague Convention is angreement for real world war. It doesn't apply to any other situations, like police. If you are dealing with supernatural threats or aliens, there is no reason why not make an exception for soldiers in these special cases, or lift the ban entirely.


Interesting. I was under the impression that hollowpoints tended to shed all their energy on impact or inside the target, thus over-penetration was unreliable at best.
They do shed all their energy. Which is partly into deforming the projectile, but mostly into deforming the tissue they went into, which, as I understand it, rips the blood vessels and muscle fibres apart.
Compared to FMJ bullets, hollow points have a greatly reduced chance to overpenetrate. If the round is powerful enough, it will still come out the other side, but for police it's usually highly important to reduce the chance of that happening as much as they can.

How is the regeneration supposed to work? Do wounds heal almost instantly when the pieces of tissue are joined back together? In that case you probably would need outright dismemberment.

Storm Bringer
2014-09-17, 10:51 AM
Interesting. I was under the impression that hollowpoints tended to shed all their energy on impact or inside the target, thus over-penetration was unreliable at best.

I should also qualify that you'd need tissue destruction (eg fire or acid) as otherwise they would regenerate the damage - pulping their internal organs with a shockwave from an explosion would slow them down or temporarily incapcitate them, but you'd still need to cause them to bleed out or actually destroy the tissue to kill them.



Hmm true. Do they make JHPs for a M2 or other GPMG class weapon? I was under the impression that any expanding or frangible round for military applications was banned under the Hague Convention.



the hague convention did ban explosive rounds (for rounds below a certain calibre, see below) and things like dum dum bullets.

But the logic was that these weapons only increased suffering without increasing effectivness, in that a man with a bullet hole in his arm is as hors de combat as a man whose had his arm blown off. The calibre limit on explosive rounds was set at the smallest round capable of making a worthwhile blast radius, i.e. when the explosives added to the effectiveness of the round. So everyone agreed not to use these nasty weapons, and get brownie points for being civilised and restrained, knowing that they were not really limiting their options in a practical sense.

that same treaty also banned the use of poison gas, but when WW1 rolled round, that article kinda got ignored when the powers worked out how to use gas effectively.


on a more recent note, their is a persistent rumour that its against the Hague/Geneva/some treaty or other to use 50 cal or other big rounds on humans, and you must aim at equipment (for example, vehicles, bunkers, belt buckles...). this is not true, as the proliferation of 50 cal sniper rifles indicated. they are called "anti-material" rilfes, but they are perfectly legal to use on humans.



so, all in all, creating a 7.62 or 12.7 mm round with explosives is perfectly possible, if it does allows that round to achieve something useful that it couldn't do otherwise. Killing and/or seriously wounding a troll like creature would be a very good use of Armour Piercing Incendiary (API) rounds currently being made in 50 cal.

Mr Beer
2014-09-17, 05:47 PM
Can these critters be put down with a brain hit and can a human reach their skull easily? If so, you could melee them with a pick & axe bladed weapon. The pick can be used to penetrate the skull and knock them down. The axe blade could be relatively long and thin to optimise for cutting and can be used to slice open the throat of a downed foe.

Mabn
2014-09-17, 06:10 PM
If I wanted to kill a troll and fire wasn't an option I'd want to use ammunition with a large serrated head. The troll would heal over the arrow but the head would cut its insides whenever it moved, so it would get progressively more disabled due to internal bleeding with no outlet for the resulting blood. This would eventually kill it with very acceptable risk to its slayers.

No brains
2014-09-17, 09:17 PM
On exsanguination/regeneration, can the wing-feet's flesh regenerate entirely missing bits of flesh? I thought I had heard that gunshots can produce a 'permanent cavity' where flesh isn't just torn, but pushed out of place entirely. If my understanding of this is true, then any automatic weapon would be excellent for making the monsters bleed because it effectively nullifies their healing by taking away flesh for them to knit back together. The mass removed and the rate of fire combined could remove as much flesh as a severed forearm.

MReav
2014-09-18, 08:14 AM
How good/bad is the modern M4 and the M16? Reliability, combat effectiveness, etc. The main guy who talks to me about this stuff calls them crap, but he comes across to me as arrogant and opinionated, so I take his statements with a grain of salt.

Mike_G
2014-09-18, 09:13 AM
The M16 got a bad reputation when it was first adopted. It did jam a lot in early use. Part of this was the fact that it was designed to use ammo with very clean burning propellant, and cheaper ammo was used. Part of the problem was that some troops were not issued proper cleaning equipment or trained in cleaning the weapon, and it had to be kept cleaner than the older weapons they were used to.

These issues have been addressed. The M16/M4 does need to be kept clean. All weapons do, but the M16 is less forgiving than (for example) the AK-47.

It's very accurate compared to other modern rifles. It's light, it's pretty maneuverable (esp the shorter M4) and the rounds are moving fast enough to punch through most body armor and a lot of cover, like walls, car doors, etc.

So, it's a good gun when you maintain it. It's not a good gun if you drag it through the mud.

Galloglaich
2014-09-18, 10:40 AM
The M16 got a bad reputation when it was first adopted. It did jam a lot in early use. Part of this was the fact that it was designed to use ammo with very clean burning propellant, and cheaper ammo was used. Part of the problem was that some troops were not issued proper cleaning equipment or trained in cleaning the weapon, and it had to be kept cleaner than the older weapons they were used to.

These issues have been addressed. The M16/M4 does need to be kept clean. All weapons do, but the M16 is less forgiving than (for example) the AK-47.

It's very accurate compared to other modern rifles. It's light, it's pretty maneuverable (esp the shorter M4) and the rounds are moving fast enough to punch through most body armor and a lot of cover, like walls, car doors, etc.

So, it's a good gun when you maintain it. It's not a good gun if you drag it through the mud.

I got kicked off of military.com for getting in an argument with a Special Forces captain about this - it's a touchy subject!

When I was in during the 80's the M-16's we had jammed a lot, to an alarming extent. I've been told not to say that word though the correct term is 'stoppage' since you could usually clear it by working the bolt. But it stopped shooting. The M-60 was really bad too. We were jealous of the Germans who were sometimes using the range with us. I was a medic and we could go to the range almost every week if we wanted to, it made for an easy day and I liked to shoot so I was at a lot of ranges. The M-16's at that point seemed to jam (sorry have a stoppage) almost every other time you shot through a clip, and this was mostly just semi-auto shooting.

But these were M-16 and M-16A1, we didn't have the A2 in my unit when I was in. They say the M2 was better and the M4 is a lot better. To me the fundamental design flaw was still there though (the gas and burnt powder getting ejected into the bolt assembly). I was also told at the time that we had newer rifles in the armory which would be issued for wartime. I know the ones we had in boot camp were very old and not intended for combat (they were already too worn out).

And we definitely cleaned the crap out of those rifles, we were constantly cleaning them to the point I'd call 'immaculate'. There was a 'gotcha' in that cleaning process too: you had to line up a washer in the extractor pin a certain way which if you didn't do it right, would also cause "stoppages".

I've shot AK-47s and while there are definitely noticeably different quality versions of those (more on that in a second), I've very rarely seen an AK have a stoppage, usually due to very substandard ammo (reloads). I'd say most of them were not as accurate as the M-16. The M-16 you could easily hit man-sized pop-up targets out to about 200 meters, like almost every time unless you were an idiot, and you could hit 300 -400 meters targets pretty consistently if you were in a supported (i.e. leaning on something) firing position.

I'm talking regular run of the mill dumb ass recruits here not Green Berets or Army pistol and rifle team snipers or anything. Even the basic infantry seemed to shoot better than the rest of us. People who come from deep rural areas who grew up hunting a lot also seemed to be almost twice as good of shots as your regular basic soldier (myself included).

With the AK the range on most of them seemed to be more realistically around 150 meters for the 'very easy' range and it dropped off rapidly after about 250 meters. The exception is that the really good AK's (Russian, East German, or Czech made) seemed to be almost as accurate as an M-16. Most AK's floating around in the US are Chinese or Romanian made and they are very 'loose'. And I'm talking about the 7.62 x 39 mm Ak's not the 5.5mm caliber ones I never got to shoot one of those.

The German G-3's and the FN-FAL's that we sometimes got to play with seemed to be very accurate and very hard hitting, though with that heavy round you had to compensate more for the drop at longer ranges. We shot a hole through both sides of a Kevlar helmet at 400 meters with a G3 one time. Which sucked because right up to that point the German conscripts were willing to trade anything for a Kevlar helmet (they still had the steel pots back then) but after that they weren't interested.

G

Galloglaich
2014-09-18, 11:07 AM
I'd also add, this is one of the major flaws in movies and action TV shows and cop shows and so on; they always show the good guys running away while generic thugs or heavies shoot at them with rifles from across the street and miss (usually with sparks miraculously bouncing off of thin balcony rails and so on). Ok if the guy has a small revolver or a min-uzi or a Mac 10, I can see somebody getting lucky and being missed. Or if it's somebody who has barely ever shot a gun. But if it's supposed to be some 'heavy' with military or long hard core criminal experience, i.e. somebody who HAS shot a gun more than a few times, shooting at somebody with a rifle within the range of a city block they really shouldn't miss very many of their shots, maybe they miss 20%? Just a wild guess. But most of the shots would hit. Your hero's would be messed up bad, laying around thinking about the next life. If you can't shoot somebody with just about any rifle at that range you are way down the list in terms of skill. And rifle shots are devastating, much more likely to kill and maim than pistols.

The other things, regarding jamming and 'stoppages', from my experience the AK is really unusual in how reliable it is - most automatics (rifles or pistols) have stoppages especially when shooting a lot. And especially if they aren't kept immaculately clean, using the right kind of ammunition, the right kind of magazines etc. Fancy magazines like they often use in movies, with drums and extra mag's taped on to the bottom and so on, contribute drastically to jams. Usually if you are shooting say 100 rounds from an automatic you are going to see a jam. Some automatic pistols will jam every 5 or 10 shots. This is another thing you rarely see in movies.

Finally they never show you how extremely hot the barrels get with just a few rounds shot. I often see movies where the guy is holding the barrel of a gun after firing multiple clips, that thing is like a frying pan left on the stove on high for 5 minutes after you shoot a couple of clips. Even more so with the bigger caliber guns. This is an inherent limitation on automatic weapons, you can't shoot clip after clip after clip. The barrel will be smoking and after shooting a few hundred rounds, it will start to distort - your aim will be off and it may blow up in your face. That's why light machine guns (and heavy machine guns) are designed with quick change barrels. You have to change the barrels like every 3 or 4 belts from what I remember. Not too many at any rate.

Here is a good depiction of an M-60 being fired to the extreme limit, apparently finishing off a worn out barrel (1500 rounds!) until the barrel gets red hot and actually starts a fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGAwrmOapb4

G

Mike_G
2014-09-18, 11:12 AM
I joined the Marines in 1986 and they had just switched to the M16A2. It was fairly reliable. I never dealt with the A1 or the plain old no suffix M16, but everything I've heard seems to indicate they were worse.

The A2 had a burst limiter, which helped keep the rate of fire down and did a lot to prevent burning out barrels, using up all your ammo and building up too much residue in the weapon, so the lower fire rate alone made the weapon more reliable.

We also short loaded the magazines, 28 rounds in a 30 round magazine, 18 in a 20 round magazine, to help prevent failures to load. I'm told this isn't standard practice anymore. But I don't hear many stories about modern grunts hating the weapon like you get from Vietnam era vets, so it seems they've worked out most of the bugs.

MReav
2014-09-18, 11:16 AM
Thank you guys, this has been very informative.

Galloglaich
2014-09-18, 12:56 PM
The New York Times did a video about my buddy Jake Norwood's fencing tournament earlier this year, which is going kind of semi-viral

http://io9.com/heres-why-longsword-fighting-is-now-a-popular-sport-1635406974

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Yora
2014-09-18, 01:28 PM
Assuming you have your common ninja/assassin type guy sneaking up on a guard with a knife in hand. How would he actually kill that guard quickly, quietly, and preferably relatively cleanly?

The common movie methods are slitting the throat, which I would assume gets blood all over your own hands and arms; or stabbing the guy in the chest, presumedly into the heart, but that would mean the knife would have to go right through the ribs. Both seem pretty unreliable.
Might work on a sentry on patrol, but I very much doubt you could do it undetected with other people being around within 10 meters or so.

MReav
2014-09-18, 01:33 PM
Assuming you have your common ninja/assassin type guy sneaking up on a guard with a knife in hand. How would he actually kill that guard quickly, quietly, and preferably relatively cleanly?

The common movie methods are slitting the throat, which I would assume gets blood all over your own hands and arms; or stabbing the guy in the chest, presumedly into the heart, but that would mean the knife would have to go right through the ribs. Both seem pretty unreliable.
Might work on a sentry on patrol, but I very much doubt you could do it undetected with other people being around within 10 meters or so.

Check this (http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/82119503/) out.

Mike_G
2014-09-18, 02:16 PM
Check this (http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/82119503/) out.

That is pretty awesome.

There's not a good way to knife somebody and not get blood all over you. The approved method is to approach from behind, clap a hand over the sentry's mouth while pulling his head back, stab your knife into the side of his neck, and then rip it out the front. This is pretty much guaranteed to kill him, and he won't be able to scream without a voicebox. It will spray blood all over the place, so you may need a change of clothes before going to a nice restaurant.

A stab that doesn't kill quickly leaves a person pretty well able to move and fight and make noise, though.

I've heard that a thrust up into the brain from behind the jaw doesn't bleed much and kills instantly, but that's not something I've seen or trained for. It seems plausible, and fits the idea of an assassin quite well.

Dead people don't bleed much, but dying people bleed a lot.

Roxxy
2014-09-19, 01:15 PM
I read something on another gaming site, and I'd like to know how much truth there is to it. The assertion is that a man who fights with sword and shield typically has a stance with the off hand foot forward and main hand foot back, and moves the main hand foot forward when he swings. The power comes from a lever action in his hips and the torque from his body twisting. If a woman tries to do this, she will be less effective, partly because her hips aren't shaped for that sort of thing. What a woman needs to do is start off with the main hand foot forward and off hand foot back, and move the off hand foot forward when she swings, but twist in the same direction the man is twisting even though her feet are in the opposite positions. Apparently, this takes better advantage of where a woman's center of gravity is and how her hips are shaped, allowing her to put a lot more power into her strike than if she was using the same technique as a man. Neither the man nor the woman is primarily using upper body strength to power their strikes. Now, I don't know physics or anatomy well at all, so I'm not qualified to judge whether or not these assertions are true. What say you guys?

Spiryt
2014-09-19, 01:31 PM
I read something on another gaming site, and I'd like to know how much truth there is to it. The assertion is that a man who fights with sword and shield typically has a stance with the off hand foot forward and main hand foot back, and moves the main hand foot forward when he swings. The power comes from a lever action in his hips and the torque from his body twisting. If a woman tries to do this, she will be less effective, partly because her hips aren't shaped for that sort of thing. What a woman needs to do is start off with the main hand foot forward and off hand foot back, and move the off hand foot forward when she swings, but twist in the same direction the man is twisting even though her feet are in the opposite positions. Apparently, this takes better advantage of where a woman's center of gravity is and how her hips are shaped, allowing her to put a lot more power into her strike than if she was using the same technique as a man. Neither the man nor the woman is primarily using upper body strength to power their strikes. Now, I don't know physics or anatomy well at all, so I'm not qualified to judge whether or not these assertions are true. What say you guys?

I would say this is some weirdly contrived theory.

Watched decent amount of woman MMA, boxing etc. and no woman appears to be striking differently than a man, as far as fundamentals go.

Womans 'centre of gravity' won't differ so much from male, different body shapes will makes way bigger difference than sex.

Classic Jack Dempsey's (several times HW boxing chamion) book

https://archive.org/details/ChampionshipFighting

explains quite neatly some basic striking mechanics.

That in the first place, striking is the transfer of weight, so yeah, generally one will be stepping IN THE DIRECTION of strike, to actually create collision with target.

Of course, it get's much more complicated, especially with the fact that you don't have to strike anyone very hard with SWORD, of course.

Brother Oni
2014-09-19, 02:07 PM
How is the regeneration supposed to work? Do wounds heal almost instantly when the pieces of tissue are joined back together? In that case you probably would need outright dismemberment.

As I understand it, the tissue knits back together in an accelerated version of normal healing, hence why exsanguination works as it still needs 'raw materials' to regenerate.


If I wanted to kill a troll and fire wasn't an option I'd want to use ammunition with a large serrated head. The troll would heal over the arrow but the head would cut its insides whenever it moved, so it would get progressively more disabled due to internal bleeding with no outlet for the resulting blood. This would eventually kill it with very acceptable risk to its slayers.

Wouldn't the healed flesh simply immobilise the head in place? My wife had a sharp piece of glass in her knee for years with no internal bleeding and there's stories of big mean critters (boars, bears and the like) with arrows and other broken weapons sticking out of their hides.


On exsanguination/regeneration, can the wing-feet's flesh regenerate entirely missing bits of flesh? I thought I had heard that gunshots can produce a 'permanent cavity' where flesh isn't just torn, but pushed out of place entirely. If my understanding of this is true, then any automatic weapon would be excellent for making the monsters bleed because it effectively nullifies their healing by taking away flesh for them to knit back together. The mass removed and the rate of fire combined could remove as much flesh as a severed forearm.

Over time yes, but as you've said, displaced flesh is just pushed out of place and it will spring back eventually. In normal animals, the time this takes can be lethal, but not necessarily for our critter. As discussed earlier, large calibre automatic weapons would indeed be the go to tool, but I was asking about melee weapons.


I would say this is some weirdly contrived theory.

I'm with Spiryt on this one. It sounds like it's over emphasising the difference between male and female anatomy and underestimating the damage a sharp sword can do. A simple wrist flick can be enough to cause injury or death if placed well.

JustSomeGuy
2014-09-19, 04:03 PM
Very, very briefly: women's anatomy is less efficient than men's at transmitting force from the torso and hips through the limbs, because of their wider pelvis, the arm hangs at an exaggerated angle through the elbow (so they don't rub or catch) and similarly at the knee (hips being wider but the feet being the same, under the centre of balance) so the knee has a greater lateral angle too. These create inefficiencies during movement which become noticeable at the extremes. Also due to hormonal differences they suffer a significantly lower amount of muscle mass, particularly around the shoulder girdle (apparently this area is more sensitive to testosterone, but that sounds fishy to me) and a less efficient nervous system, which inhibits true maximal force production. I forget why, but i'll check it out after work tomorrow and update if anyone really cares.

It is notable that there is considerable overlap between the sexes (the best women are ahead of the worst men, and usually the mediocre men too), and that women have the same anatomical structure as men so the optimum technique for a man is the same optimum technique for q woman (can't think of any counter examples, but sod's law says there has to be at least 1!).

Brother Oni
2014-09-20, 07:33 AM
On a separate note, I found this photo that I felt was worth sharing:

http://angloboerwarmuseum.com/images/boer/photos_bw/lancer_german%5D.jpg

Information is that this was a WW1 German cavalryman carrying a Model 1893 lance made from rolled steel. Apparently the British still also had lancers, although their lances had bamboo handles and were much lighter.

Presumably this was at the start of the War before trench warfare really set in.

Even in WW2, the Germans still made use of draft horses. During the aftermath of the Falaise Pocket, an American patrol found a dead team of horses that were still attached to the artillery piece they were pulling. Apparently the bridles and other gear were of the highest quality leather with all brass well polished, so obviously the horses and their kit were well looked after and they weren't random horses drafted in from random nearby farms.

Storm Bringer
2014-09-20, 08:16 AM
that pics mid to late war, not early. the trooper has a steel helmet and a gas mask, and both those were brought in around 1916.

cavalry remained on the books of every army in WW1, simply because their was no other option for fast manoeuvre units. they did good service in the early, fluid stages, and continued to serve well on the eastern front and In the mid east, where the force concentrations were lower and their was space to manoeuvre. they tried a few times on the western front, but barbed wire and MGs just stopped and slaughter any mounted troops they met.




speaking of good service, this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yuZ4vowQJc)is a wonderful clip of a cavalry charge in 1917.

The unit in question, the Australian Light Horse, was a mounted infantry unit, I.e. they moved on horses and got off to fight on foot. Most British cavalry was in theory trained to do this, but the old horse regiments kept hankering after the old days of mounted charges. The German advisors instance that "they wont Charge" is based on their normal tactics of, well not charging. Also, note the break down of fire discipline as the Turkish troops loose track of the range and just switch to panic fire, get-lead-down-range mode


in 1914, motor vehicles were still pretty uncommon, and the supporting infrastructure of petrol stations, garages and mechanics hadn't developed outside the of the big cites. they were also not that much more capable than the horse drawn vehicles they were replacing, and not really rugged enough for service life. every army dragooned up civvie trucks for logistics, but the wastage rate was something terrible, so all armys depended on horse drawn wagons for supply needs.

even in ww2, most of the german army was reliant on horse drawn transport, with only the mechanised units having enough motor vehicles to meet their supply needs. only the british and American armies had really finished mechanising by 1940, most of the other armies were still using horses for supplies.

Brother Oni
2014-09-20, 11:51 AM
that pics mid to late war, not early. the trooper has a steel helmet and a gas mask, and both those were brought in around 1916.

Thanks for the corrections. The main point I'm surprised about is that the lance remained in official use until that late.





speaking of good service, this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yuZ4vowQJc)is a wonderful clip of a cavalry charge in 1917.

The unit in question, the Australian Light Horse, was a mounted infantry unit, I.e. they moved on horses and got off to fight on foot. Most British cavalry was in theory trained to do this, but the old horse regiments kept hankering after the old days of mounted charges. The German advisors instance that "they wont Charge" is based on their normal tactics of, well not charging. Also, note the break down of fire discipline as the Turkish troops loose track of the range and just switch to panic fire, get-lead-down-range mode



I can just imagine how fired up the Light Horse were when they finally closed with the enemy after 2800m of bombardment and rifle/MG fire, unable to fire back.

I remember a WW2 incident where Polish mounted infantry charged and dispersed German infantry and were generally doing quite well until a couple of German armoured cars turned up: Charge at Krojanty 1939 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_at_Krojanty).

Storm Bringer
2014-09-20, 12:55 PM
Thanks for the corrections. The main point I'm surprised about is that the lance remained in official use until that late.


armies are conservative beasts, as a rule, and like I said, away form the trenches, the lance still got some use.

The lances looked good on parade, gave the unit something to brag about, and gave a mounted trooper the reach to stab someone lying down, which swords did not.



I can just imagine how fired up the Light Horse were when they finally closed with the enemy after 2800m of bombardment and rifle/MG fire, unable to fire back.


it's not just in ww1 the "unable to fire back" thing was around.


in the flinklock era, it was semi-common that when a unit was sent to storm a fortress, the troopers would not only me made to unload their muskets, but in some cases had to hand over their flints so they could not fire, and so had to push on into melee. troops with loaded weapons tended to stop and fire back, which robbed the charge of momentum, and left the troops milling around, in a firefight with entrenched troops, at short range.


by the time they reached the walls, they were pretty much out of control. the convention of the era that they assaulting troops had the right to ransack the place if they took it was more a recognition by the army commanders that they couldn't stop them ransacking the place without a munity.

PersonMan
2014-09-20, 03:20 PM
Also: WWI wasn't only trench warfare. The Eastern Front was a thing, and often much more mobile than the western one, with a lot of advancing and retreating being done. If you can actually flank people, then cavalry can move to run into and enter melee with troops lying down to fire without exposing themselves to lots of fire.

Galloglaich
2014-09-20, 10:53 PM
Also: WWI wasn't only trench warfare. The Eastern Front was a thing, and often much more mobile than the western one, with a lot of advancing and retreating being done. If you can actually flank people, then cavalry can move to run into and enter melee with troops lying down to fire without exposing themselves to lots of fire.

That's a really good point, we tend to look at WW I (as so much of our other history) somewhat understandably from an English point of view, but a great deal of the fighting on the Eastern Front consisted of massive cavalry battles and raids. Just as down in the Alps a lot of the fighting was based on causing avalanches...

G

Brother Oni
2014-09-21, 03:39 AM
That's a really good point, we tend to look at WW I (as so much of our other history) somewhat understandably from an English point of view, but a great deal of the fighting on the Eastern Front consisted of massive cavalry battles and raids. Just as down in the Alps a lot of the fighting was based on causing avalanches...

That said, the Eastern Front also had some brutal meatgrinder battles which matched the death count of famous Western Front battles like the Somme - Gallipoli (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_Campaign), especially the landings which are remembered every year on ANZAC Day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_Day).

warty goblin
2014-09-21, 09:06 AM
Change of topic, but here's something that folks might find interesting, an account of the archaeology (http://www.academia.edu/3835376/Danti_M._D._The_Hasanlu_Gold_Beaker_in_Context_All _That_Glitters..._To_appear_in_Antiquity) surrounding a fortress sacked and burned in 800 BC. Scroll to the end for some nifty sketches of spiked maces.

Yora
2014-09-21, 03:04 PM
An injury related question, which obviously I really don't want to google:

What kind of battle injury could cause blindness in one eye while otherwise leaving the eye mostly intact. It's something you often see in movies and fantasy art, but does that actually happen or is that just taking artistic liberties because the real thing would be too gruesome to show?

Also, how much would blindness in one eye affect an archer? Rifles are aimed with only one eye, but I've read that good and fast archer don't line up the arrow but "aim" primarily by muscle memory and relying on their eyes to keep track of relative positions of themselves, the environment, any enemies, and how fast and in which direction everything is moving.
If you don't stand still to aim, you'd have a lot more head movement, which might possibly give you sufficient paralax rangefinding to compensate to some extend for lack of binocular vision.
In close combat, a blind eye should get you a pretty significant blind spot, but would that make you unable to work as a professional soldier in a premodern army?

DrewID
2014-09-21, 10:11 PM
Also, how much would blindness in one eye affect an archer? Rifles are aimed with only one eye, but I've read that good and fast archer don't line up the arrow but "aim" primarily by muscle memory and relying on their eyes to keep track of relative positions of themselves, the environment, any enemies, and how fast and in which direction everything is moving.
If you don't stand still to aim, you'd have a lot more head movement, which might possibly give you sufficient paralax rangefinding to compensate to some extend for lack of binocular vision.
In close combat, a blind eye should get you a pretty significant blind spot, but would that make you unable to work as a professional soldier in a premodern army?

Had a good friend in years past who had only one eye. He hunted (rifle, not bow), was excellent at softball, did all sorts of things well that I would have thought would be hindered by the loss of depth perception. Once had a very interesting discussion for half an hour or more (we were driving somewhere) when he wanted me to explain how binocular vision worked ("Do you see two images or what?) Try and explain THAT to someone who has never had it (technically, he lost an eye when he was one year old, but he had no conscious memory of binocular vision).

Having said that, I would think that archery would be slightly more affected, because you have to account for arrow drop more frequently and to a greater degree than most riflemen, and lacking binocular vision, it would be more difficult to get a rapid estimate of range to target. But a sufficiently skilled archer would probably unconsciously perform a series of estimations along the line of "OK, that's a man-sized target, but it appears so-high when I sight it that it's probably about so-far away, so I need to elevate so-much."

DrewID

Mr. Mask
2014-09-22, 04:20 AM
You are faced with tank traps, ditches (that a tank can't cross), barbed wire and mines (AP and AT). You need to bypass these obstacles and make an assault with infantry and tanks, with some air and artillery support. What is the standard procedure for clearing these obstacles for/during an assault?

More specifically, is each obstacle handled separately, or is the method typically used able to deal with several obstacles simultaneously (such as hitting the general area with artillery bombardments)?

Broken Crown
2014-09-22, 05:07 AM
You are faced with tank traps, ditches (that a tank can't cross), barbed wire and mines (AP and AT). You need to bypass these obstacles and make an assault with infantry and tanks, with some air and artillery support. What is the standard procedure for clearing these obstacles for/during an assault?

More specifically, is each obstacle handled separately, or is the method typically used able to deal with several obstacles simultaneously (such as hitting the general area with artillery bombardments)?

The Allied forces in the Normandy Landings used a wide variety (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart%27s_Funnies) of specialized vehicles for clearing and/or crossing obstacles. That was a big enough operation to make the investment in specialized equipment worthwhile; depending on the scale of your assault, you may not have the resources to do this. In that case, artillery is good for dealing with barbed wire, ditches, and some mines and tank traps, provided you don't mind making a mess.

Mathis
2014-09-22, 05:56 AM
I was of the impression that artillery did just about nothing to lines of barbed wire? Wasn't that a major issue during the first world war? Artillery strikes would just jumble the wire a bit but it would still be just as deadly and just as much of a hindrance?

Brother Oni
2014-09-22, 06:55 AM
What kind of battle injury could cause blindness in one eye while otherwise leaving the eye mostly intact. It's something you often see in movies and fantasy art, but does that actually happen or is that just taking artistic liberties because the real thing would be too gruesome to show?

Any injury to the face can cause damage to one eye, be it a slash that's sufficiently deflected by the skull/helmet but not be fatal or an arrow to the face. There's a couple famous examples of an arrow just taking out one eye - the Bayeux Tapestry of the Battle of Hastings where Harold is alleged to have been killed by an arrow to the eye is one; another is Xiahou Dun of the Three Kingdoms fame (part of his myth is his pulling the arrow out with the eye impaled on it and then swallowing his eye due to the belief systems of the time).



Also, how much would blindness in one eye affect an archer? Rifles are aimed with only one eye, but I've read that good and fast archer don't line up the arrow but "aim" primarily by muscle memory and relying on their eyes to keep track of relative positions of themselves, the environment, any enemies, and how fast and in which direction everything is moving.


Depends on whether it's the dominant eye or not. Aiming with just your non-dominant eye is very hard since you can't sight down the arrow or line up the string with the bow to ensure a straight release thus may necessitate finding new a new style of shooting (new anchor points, changing arms, etc).

I've never actually tried closing one eye while shooting so the next time I'm down the range, I'll try both my dominant and non-dominant eye and see how it affects my accuracy/precision.



Having said that, I would think that archery would be slightly more affected, because you have to account for arrow drop more frequently and to a greater degree than most riflemen, and lacking binocular vision, it would be more difficult to get a rapid estimate of range to target. But a sufficiently skilled archer would probably unconsciously perform a series of estimations along the line of "OK, that's a man-sized target, but it appears so-high when I sight it that it's probably about so-far away, so I need to elevate so-much."


Direct fire would probably be unaffected (subject to which eye is lost), but indirect fire would be significantly affected since it's very hard to work out where your arrows have fallen and adjust your aim/draw accordingly. You could probably still get it in the same sort of area, just that it's a much bigger area.


I was of the impression that artillery did just about nothing to lines of barbed wire? Wasn't that a major issue during the first world war? Artillery strikes would just jumble the wire a bit but it would still be just as deadly and just as much of a hindrance?

While you're right that artillery fire was of limited use against barbed wire, it can still blow holes in the wire and open up gaps.

Yora
2014-09-22, 07:19 AM
Barbed wire is made of steel and thus very strong, but also very thin, which allows the pressure wave from an explosion to very effectively move around it rather than tearing it apart, like it would a large plate of steel. The wooden posts would likely be destroyed and the barbed wire pushed around, but it is unlikely to rip. Artillery shells do very little against it.

One solution is an explosive device called the Bangalore Torpedo, which was designed specifically do deal with that problem. It's basically a long pipe filled with explosives, and you can plug several ones together to get a longer one of any length you need. It's then pushed along the ground and detonated, creating a long and narrow crater. Not sure what explosive they use for it, or if it's a special one that does articularly well against the wires, but it's supposed to be pretty effective at carving a path through obstacles. Could probably take care of landmines as well.

Storm_Of_Snow
2014-09-22, 09:31 AM
An injury related question, which obviously I really don't want to google:

What kind of battle injury could cause blindness in one eye while otherwise leaving the eye mostly intact. It's something you often see in movies and fantasy art, but does that actually happen or is that just taking artistic liberties because the real thing would be too gruesome to show?


Could be a small wound to the head that got infected, crept along the orbit bones and damaged the optic nerve, or a splinter of something that's hit the eye and damaged it enough to lead to infection, but not enough to destroy the eye.

Could be an injury to the back of the head that's caused blindness
but not actually damaged the eye. Or they possibly were hit in the eye with something like lime, or a light flash where the person's other eye was protected, but the damaged eye was rendered useless.

If you've ever seen any of the Sharpe tv movies, there's a French Colonel in Sharpe's Battle who's blind in his left eye, with what looks like a cataract over it. So there's always the option of non-battlefield induced blindness.




Also, how much would blindness in one eye affect an archer? Rifles are aimed with only one eye, but I've read that good and fast archer don't line up the arrow but "aim" primarily by muscle memory and relying on their eyes to keep track of relative positions of themselves, the environment, any enemies, and how fast and in which direction everything is moving.
If you don't stand still to aim, you'd have a lot more head movement, which might possibly give you sufficient paralax rangefinding to compensate to some extend for lack of binocular vision.
In close combat, a blind eye should get you a pretty significant blind spot, but would that make you unable to work as a professional soldier in a premodern army?

Initially, probably a fair bit. If they had time to train and get used to the loss of vision from one side, it'd probably not affect them much at all after a short while.


The Allied forces in the Normandy Landings used a wide variety (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart%27s_Funnies) of specialized vehicles for clearing and/or crossing obstacles. That was a big enough operation to make the investment in specialized equipment worthwhile; depending on the scale of your assault, you may not have the resources to do this. In that case, artillery is good for dealing with barbed wire, ditches, and some mines and tank traps, provided you don't mind making a mess.


Ah, Hobart's Funnies.

Flails were also used to deal with barbed wire (although the crew would have to spend time cutting the snagged wire off the flail chains later).

There's also things like Bangalore torpedoes (essentially tubes containing explosives, which get pushed into minefields/barbed wire, then detonated - they're used in the opening of Saving Private Ryan). And I remember seeing something similar which had a small rocket motor dragging a chain of explosive charges to deal with mine fields(Viper IIRC).

And as part of an initial air assault, Daisy Cutters (or anything similar that detonates at ground level) would clear barbed wire. Artillery would work, but you'd need to fuse it correctly and throw a lot of shells at the right area, and you could potentially throw grapnels out as far as possible, hook their chains onto a bulldozer, then drag the lines back as far as you want.

Tank traps would be difficult to remove - dragon's teeth ones would likely too well dug in to be cleared with a bulldozer, and too tough to destroy with explosives. Although you could potentially lay a bridge over them (or possibly just make a ramp, depending on the scale of the traps), then bring in the sappers later to demolish them.

Metal "hedgehog" type traps could be easier - sappers with something like Thermite charges could potentially disable them fairly quickly.

Ditches? Bridge layers would work, as would a simple pavane dropped into the ditch.

Basically, what you really need is the opportunity to get recon images to see what you'll need to get past, and enough time to either bring in the equipment, or, if necessary, design and build it from scratch.

Galloglaich
2014-09-22, 09:47 AM
I think in WW I a lot of the time attacks were pre-staged by guys having to crawl out into the wire with wire-cutters and try to cut it, (to be cleared later) and these in turn were often picked off by snipers. They would typically try to do this at night and the enemy would set off artillery flares (which are somewhat amazing to experience if you haven't ever seen one, they light everything up like noon on a bright day, but the shadows move back and forth as the flare falls, it's very eerie)

I think artillery can cut the wire if it's done just right, but they seem to have had a tough time getting it right a lot of the time.

G

AgentPaper
2014-09-22, 12:25 PM
Apparently, one way Dragon's Teeth in particular were dealt with was by simply having a bulldozer push dirt onto them until you can just drive over. Of course, this is made more difficult when there's also pillboxes mixed in with enemy soldiers firing back at you with machine guns and rockets and such, but if you can clear those out or at least suppress them well enough for a while, it wouldn't take very long to actually do it (most dragon's teeth are only around 3-4 feet high).

Storm Bringer
2014-09-22, 12:51 PM
Apparently, one way Dragon's Teeth in particular were dealt with was by simply having a bulldozer push dirt onto them until you can just drive over. Of course, this is made more difficult when there's also pillboxes mixed in with enemy soldiers firing back at you with machine guns and rockets and such, but if you can clear those out or at least suppress them well enough for a while, it wouldn't take very long to actually do it (most dragon's teeth are only around 3-4 feet high).

any obstacle is only a obstacle if it is covered by fire. the whole point of barbed wire and tank traps it to hold up an attack to let you shoot it more.




I was of the impression that artillery did just about nothing to lines of barbed wire? Wasn't that a major issue during the first world war? Artillery strikes would just jumble the wire a bit but it would still be just as deadly and just as much of a hindrance?

that was mainly a problem with the shells being used in the early stages of ww1. The shells in service were mainly shrapnel shells for use on troops in the open, which indeed did not do too much against wire. the other problem was that the massive demand for shells and resulting rapid expansion of production ment that a high percentage of shells were duds, which did sod all.

high ex shells later in the war worked a lot better against wire.

Galloglaich
2014-09-22, 01:10 PM
that was mainly a problem with the shells being used in the early stages of ww1. The shells in service were mainly shrapnel shells for use on troops in the open, which indeed did not do too much against wire. the other problem was that the massive demand for shells and resulting rapid expansion of production ment that a high percentage of shells were duds, which did sod all.

high ex shells later in the war worked a lot better against wire.

That explains why barbed wire didn't seem to be as much of an issue during WW II

G

Storm Bringer
2014-09-22, 01:25 PM
That explains why barbed wire didn't seem to be as much of an issue during WW II

G


that, and the fronts were more fluid, and the tactics to break into a trench system were perfected in ww1, allowing troops to flow around strongpoints and not get hung up so much.

a lot of the problems in ww1 were down to the armies trying to maintain a army larger than any ever before, and invent new tactics in the middle of a war of attrition.

The British went into the war with a tiny army and had to recruit and train a mass army form scratch. the French, and germans both had mass armies, but most of that mass was second rate reservists or conscripts with poor training, who needed time to work up that it was often impossible to give them. the Russians and the austro-Hungarians both had pretty poor quality troops even before attrition took its toll.

the net result was that most of the men in the trenches were, by peacetime standards, barely trained, poorly led and only really good for holding the line. it took years to create and substain a core of veterans who could carry out complex attack plans and succeed.

PersonMan
2014-09-22, 02:09 PM
Not to mention high up leadership issues. Late in the war, the majority of French generals were hated by their men due to the continued use of tactics that resulted in massive losses - they just didn't adapt well enough, even with things like the horribly failed Alsace-Lorraine offensive which saw their troops defeated by reservists due to machine guns and artillery fire shredding them during their charges.

WWI's trench warfare was the result of flanking and fortification, which eventually resulted in the western front consisting of a massive line of dug-in positions. In the second world war, there was no time or need - in '39, the Wehrmacht's offensive in Poland wasn't opposed by enough troops to force the kind of dodge-the-fort flanking of 1914. In 1940 when they went west, the Blitzkrieg ended things before they had a chance to stagnate (which was part of why it was used - a repeat of WWI's trench warfare was absolutely not what Hitler wanted to pull Germany into, and he knew that it didn't have the resources for it). It worked even better than intended, and the ground fighting in the west was over. When Operation Barbarossa came around, it saw a similar situation to the eastern front of the decades before, except that it was in two distinct phases. First, the Wehrmacht's attack rolled over the Soviet Union, then it stalled and the Red Army pushed them back; not long after the Germans just didn't have the men and material needed to fight on the scale they needed to.

I don't know too much about Italy, but what I heard of the African campaign was that it also involved a lot of moving around.

Add to this that tanks were both more developed and a core piece of the Wehrmacht's strategy, plus the addition of air power making easily-bombed trenches less of a safe haven for infantry, and you get a situation where trench warfare just isn't the meat grinder it used to be.

A boiled-down explanation is simply:

Firepower - mobility = trench warfare
Firepower + mobility = not trench warfare

Rhunder
2014-09-22, 02:43 PM
The main thing to remember was going into WW1 that trench warfare was the new hip thing. Prior to that, most wars were fought in lines such as the revolutionary war or the American civil war. Especially between self respecting countries like England and France. But the invention of machine guns and use of trenches created a new style of warfare that was ground breaking and created the fastest evolving forms of battle.

As for the injury question, the only story I know is of Xiahou Dun. It's said he was shot in his eye by an arrow. He later pulled the arrow out with his eye. Then ate his own eye. Not sure why.

Storm Bringer
2014-09-22, 03:00 PM
see, people think that no one saw trench warfare coming, but they did. in 1914, the pass out exercise for a officer train at Sandhurst (the british officer training school) consisted of building and defending an entrenched company position. trenches were used in the US civil war, and several minor wars in the Balkans and the ruso-japanese war as well. the data was their to draw the conclusions, if anybody wanted to.

what wasn't really seen was that these company and battalion positions would get joined into a single, continuous line.


I don't know too much about Italy, but what I heard of the African campaign was that it also involved a lot of moving around.


Africa was, basically, a series of outflanking moves as both sides tried to turn the other southern (desert) flank. it was only in a few places along the whole African coastline that inland terrain let a army anchor both ends on their line, like at El Alamien. it was effectively won by allied sea power strangling the axis logistics. allied intel was routinely able to pick up which transports were carrying the most important cargos, where they were in the convoys, and direct targeting airstrikes on the right ships, especially oil tankers.

Italy was actually pretty a straightforward frontal grind, as that hilly terrain made it easy for the germans to hold and give ground slowly. even then, the ww1 trench lines didn't spring up, with defences instead being series of interlocking strongpoints that could cover each other (which, by the way, is the way we'd do it now, if we needed to).

Galloglaich
2014-09-22, 04:48 PM
First, the Wehrmacht's attack rolled over the Soviet Union, then it stalled and the

Before the stall there were apparently some really heavy duty pitched-battles, and some massive sieges against heavily prepared positions (Sevastopol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sevastopol_(1941%E2%80%9342)) for example) and after the tide turned there were many more massive sieges and set-piece battles throughout Eastern Europe (Kursk, Breslau, etc.). Stalingrad itself where the tide turned was possibly the most massive siege battle of all times by at least some measure. Of course this was also the case in the south in Italy and in the West, which can be seen largely as a series of fortified defensive lines being breached by the allies, sometimes at enormous cost (like in the Hurtgen forest).

Since the end of the Soviet Union, a lot more records have come to light. For example this is a superb lecture by a former Army War college instructor Colonel David Glantz on the true intensity of the Soviet - German war.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Clz27nghIg



I don't know too much about Italy, but what I heard of the African campaign was that it also involved a lot of moving around.

There were some really big set-piece battles in North Africa as well, El Alemein, Tobruk. If you look at the scale of the first battle of El Alemein, it lays bare the reality of WW II - we tend to think of it as all tank battles, but that battle involved 70 tanks and 96,000 troops on the German side, and 179 tanks for 150,000 troops on the Allied side. So it's almost really like a WW I battle to some extent.



Add to this that tanks were both more developed and a core piece of the Wehrmacht's strategy, plus the addition of air power making easily-bombed trenches less of a safe haven for infantry, and you get a situation where trench warfare just isn't the meat grinder it used to be.

Yes tanks, for sure, were a major difference. Even at the end of WW I the tanks were starting to break it back open again - I think that is for sure one of the major differences from WW I. But there were still many battles which did not involve a lot of tanks. Planes, tactical fighters and pinpoint bombers like the Stuka particularly, may have also played a really important role. A stuka strike could definitely blow a hole in a defensive line which dwarfed the effects of even a heavy artillery round.



A boiled-down explanation is simply:

Firepower - mobility = trench warfare
Firepower + mobility = not trench warfare

Perhaps, but I think the Devil is in the Details as it often is in warfare.

G

Brother Oni
2014-09-23, 04:00 AM
As for the injury question, the only story I know is of Xiahou Dun. It's said he was shot in his eye by an arrow. He later pulled the arrow out with his eye. Then ate his own eye. Not sure why.

Filial piety. Back in those days, the Chinese believed that everything you were was a gift from your parents, so rather than throw the eye away and show disrespect for his parents' gift, he ate it.
I believe the line in Romance of the Three Kingdoms was 'Essence of my father, essence of my mother; I cannot discard you' before he swallowed his eye.

Xiahou Dun's eye swallowing was regarded as a pretty extreme act and definitely not typical, so no injured soldiers eating their amputated limbs (cannibalism was often simply because there was no food available).

The line between cultural values, philosophy and folk religion is very blurred, so I'm afraid I can't go into much more detail on this board.

snowblizz
2014-09-23, 05:21 AM
A boiled-down explanation is simply:

Firepower - mobility = trench warfare
Firepower + mobility = not trench warfare

That's actually quite succinct. I was reading an article in a wargaming magazine pondering this, and asking "why didn't anyone figure out based on the Russo-Japanese war what would happen, eg with firepower and marching into said". The answer as presented was that in the Far East there was space, space for armies to outflank. Whenever frontal assaults where carried out the casualties were quite steep, but the number of such incidents was quite low. On the WW1 Western front space is much more limited, after all the German attempt at outflanking through Belgium was the one and only possibility, once that got stuck the sea prevented further flanking.

Zizka
2014-09-23, 10:02 AM
Cavalry remained on the books of every army in WW1, simply because their was no other option for fast manoeuvre units. they did good service in the early, fluid stages, and continued to serve well on the eastern front and In the mid east, where the force concentrations were lower and their was space to manoeuvre. they tried a few times on the western front, but barbed wire and MGs just stopped and slaughter any mounted troops they met.

Cavalry did see service on the Western Front throughout the whole war, not just the mobile periods of 1914 and 1918. My old Professor Bill Philpott always used to shock callow students (like me) with a photo of French cavalry wandering around on grassy fields during the 1916 Somme offensive...behind the German lines. Once the French broke the German trench line with their infantry-artillery assault they let the cavalry loose.

The problem wasn't that there was no role for cavalry but that (a) they had lost their shock role in the face of superior firepower and (b) the operational gap (between strategy and tactics) hit them especially hard. When the conditions were right - as in the Hundred Days offensive of 1918 - they went right back to exploitation, pursuit and scouting.

It's also worth remembering that, as with the Middle Ages, there are a series of cinematic and popular misconceptions about World War One. Pretty much everyone understood that charging machine guns with horsemen was dumb. Instead the cavalry operated - as they had in prior colonial wars - as mounted infantry. Owing to the lack of mobility - only primitive trucks and tanks - they were still the fastest moving thing on the battlefield and were used to plug gaps or exploit successes.

EDIT: Anyone interested should read David Kenyon's PhD thesis "British Cavalry on the Western Front 1916-1918" which can be found in pdf format here:
https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/bitstream/1826/3032/1/D%20Kenyon%20Thesis%20corrected.pdf


I think artillery can cut the wire if it's done just right, but they seem to have had a tough time getting it right a lot of the time.

Artillery was the primary wire-cutter in WW1. The big problem was that you needed a lot of shells and for those shells to be of the right type (HE) and quality. The infamous First Day of the Somme has a lot to do with the British having too few shells, too many of which were useless shrapnel, and too many of which were so badly made that they were duds.

The French attacked on the same day as the British and made significant gains for few losses, among other reasons because they had this worked out.


The main thing to remember was going into WW1 that trench warfare was the new hip thing.

Julius Caesar used trenches. They weren't the new thing; million man armies, sustained by popular nationalism and supported by industrial societies whilst fighting in a (relatively) cramped area were.


I...was asking "why didn't anyone figure out based on the Russo-Japanese war what would happen, eg with firepower and marching into said". The answer as presented was that in the Far East there was space, space for armies to outflank.

Oddly, one of the main lessons European armies took away from the Russo-Japanese war was that aggressive bayonet charges (especially those of the Japanese) would, whilst being very bloody, succeed. Of course, the real difference between the wars was that the Russians were operating at the very end of their logistics in Manchuria whilst on the Western Front the front-lines and the industrial/population centers were very close together.

WarKitty
2014-09-23, 03:42 PM
So a pretty basic question:

How hard would it be to coat a functional modern blade with a softer metal that wouldn't be suitable for making a blade on its own?

Thiel
2014-09-23, 04:13 PM
So a pretty basic question:

How hard would it be to coat a functional modern blade with a softer metal that wouldn't be suitable for making a blade on its own?

Depends on what you mean by coating. Electroplating shouldn't be that hard to do.

Yora
2014-09-23, 05:23 PM
The choice of process depends on the metal and what you want to do with the modified blade.

If for example silver acts like a toxin that prevents regeneration of tissue it touches, it's a lot easier to make a silver blade than if you actually need a silver edge to cut through a creatures magical hide.

WarKitty
2014-09-23, 05:35 PM
Unfortunately WoD isn't terribly clear on the topic. It does seem like the direct cutting surface would need to be made of silver however.

warty goblin
2014-09-23, 05:55 PM
Unfortunately WoD isn't terribly clear on the topic. It does seem like the direct cutting surface would need to be made of silver however.

In that case I guess you'd probably just have to have a silver blade tongue-and-grooved or sandwiched into the steel body. And get used to the fact that you'll have to sharpen the thing a lot, and that every time you get into a fight with somebody using a genuine steel blade, yours is gonna be chewed to hell.

A better option, go with a conical, triangular or diamond-profile silver point on a shaft of some more sensible material. Forget cutting, and go for impalement.

Mr Beer
2014-09-23, 06:53 PM
In that case I guess you'd probably just have to have a silver blade tongue-and-grooved or sandwiched into the steel body. And get used to the fact that you'll have to sharpen the thing a lot, and that every time you get into a fight with somebody using a genuine steel blade, yours is gonna be chewed to hell.

A better option, go with a conical, triangular or diamond-profile silver point on a shaft of some more sensible material. Forget cutting, and go for impalement.

Do you think it possible to have some kind of modular socket on a knife, so broken silver tips could be replaced quickly without the need to go back to the combat jeweller? This would also allow for different tips, so one optimised for werewolves, another one with a toxin load, another plain steel combat point etc.

warty goblin
2014-09-23, 07:26 PM
Do you think it possible to have some kind of modular socket on a knife, so broken silver tips could be replaced quickly without the need to go back to the combat jeweller? This would also allow for different tips, so one optimised for werewolves, another one with a toxin load, another plain steel combat point etc.

My experience is that any time you are taking apart something designed to withstand hitting things, it's going to take some time. Particularly since, in the case of a stabbing point or cutting edge, you need the attachment mechanism to be fairly close to flush with the surface of the blade if you want anything more than a superficial cut. So my gut answer is not really.

You could probably have the entire blade socket into the hilt via some sort of bayonet-style mechanism, and just swap those out. On the other hand you could just have two knives each with a hilt of their very own, and not have to deal with swapping them out at all. This strikes me as more convenient, and less prone to getting your face ripped off by a werewolf because it inconsiderately didn't give you time to swap blades before commencing with the face-ripping. That seems a genuine perk to me, although the local werewolf population probably feels differently.

This would however be in keeping with my view that one should pretty much always go with the simplest and most durable tool that's capable of its intended use. Bells and whistles break, and then you either gotta fix 'em, or put up with a crappier version of the simple tool you should have used in the first place.

Mr Beer
2014-09-23, 07:50 PM
Yeah that makes sense, I think by definition a melee weapon would be difficult to make with modular replacement parts that aren't vulnerable to being snapped off or jammed in combat.

Knaight
2014-09-23, 11:33 PM
Interestingly, what's to say sandals are worse than army boots. I'm thinking it may actually have been a benefit. After all we are better walkers *without* anything on since that's the way we are supposed to walk. I'm reminded of those "feet-shoes", so sandals may well be closer to our optimal than mass-produced lowest bidder army boots.

Terrain gets really relevant here. Foot travel along roman roads in warm conditions is one thing, for which sandals are fine. Thick mud full of who knows what? Less so.

On a different point - what's typical of modern chemical weapons? What chemicals are used, how are said chemicals delivered, etc.?

Brother Oni
2014-09-24, 02:54 AM
On a different point - what's typical of modern chemical weapons? What chemicals are used, how are said chemicals delivered, etc.?

Depends on the end goal of the weapon and the characteristics of the chemical agent. Chemical weapons are usually divided up into how they affect the body (blood, nerve, blistering, etc) and the typical characteristics of modern military grade chemical weapons are ease of delivery over a wide area with quick speed of action, with high safety until the weapon is launched or armed.

Nerve agents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve_agent) (eg. Sarin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin), VX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_(nerve_agent)))are fairly fast acting and typically distributed in aerosol form, so inhalation is the primary vector, although absorption through the skin can also happen. They can be delivered through a variety of methods, most commonly through bomblets through missiles, although the Tokyo subway attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin_gas_attack_on_the_Tokyo_subway) had small packets of liquid sarin which were pierced and sarin's high volatility (it evaporates easily) did the rest of the work.

Blistering agents like mustard gas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_gas) do exactly what they say on the tin - cause blistering on people. It was used most famously in WW1 and could be delivered by artillery shell, spraying by warplanes (it was a heavier than air gas, so it tended to sink). It's a not very corrosive though and women's stockings were sufficient to stop it (which were used by various highland regiments who wore kilts during WW1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnHSAY9AkvU)).

Hydrogen cyanide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_cyanide) is classed as a blood agent, although it's mainly delivered by inhalation for military purposes. The Zyklon B (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyklon_B) version of it is infamous for its use in the Nazi concentration camps.

Pulmonary agents are things like chlorine gas, which attack the lungs. Again, famous for use in WW1 where the attacking side used to simply use the prevailing wind to deliver the gas from the safety of their own trenches, usually just by opening huge canisters of the gas and standing well back.


Moving away from gases and liquids, we have solid forms. These are generally less toxic as they're harder to deliver to the target, so typically aren't used for military applications (in rough order of decreasing effectiveness: injection, inhalation, oral, transdermal).

Ricin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricin) was investigated, using a 'dust cloud' delivery system so that the targets would inhale it, maximising its potential toxicity, but they had issues getting it to work and was dropped in favour of sarin. It has also rumoured to have been used by militaries not as developed as NATO or former Warsaw Pact countries, and if I remember correctly, it was just bomblets filled with ricin powder delivered by missile/rocket.

Botulinum toxin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin) and Tetanospasmin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetanospasmin) have also been investigated due to their high toxicity, but again their solid nature prohibits easy dispersal and they're significantly harder to synthesise than ricin.

Note that the nature of powders make it easy to deliver by things like letters, if you remember the various terrorist attacks over the years, but mailing an envelope full of ricin to your target isn't exactly a military tactic. :smalltongue:

This has been a bit of a whistle stop tour, so if you'd like more information just ask (assuming I haven't been picked up by a government agency in the mean time) or follow through on those links.
I've deliberately not included biological weapons as they're a different class of weapon, even though they share many of the delivery issues and solutions.

Edit: I've just realised I've forgotten about incapcitating agents (eg tear gas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tear_gas) and military grade stink bombs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stink_bomb)) and things that have a side effect as a chemical weapon (White Phosphorous (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus) or Agent Orange (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_orange)).

WarKitty
2014-09-24, 11:08 AM
WoD is irritatingly vague on the relevant points here. The specific language is an injury "caused by" silver, but it's not entirely clear what the causation would be. It is worth noting that mere contact with silver isn't really an issue - the weapon still has to be able to break the skin by normal means.

Carl
2014-09-24, 11:33 AM
Also remember that how skin and how flesh react to substances varies, salt is a great example, spill it on your skin, no problem, get it in a wound and ow, ow, ow, ow.

Lilapop
2014-09-24, 04:46 PM
WoD is irritatingly vague on the relevant points here. The specific language is an injury "caused by" silver, but it's not entirely clear what the causation would be. It is worth noting that mere contact with silver isn't really an issue - the weapon still has to be able to break the skin by normal means.
Sounds like it has to get into the victim's bloodstream. In that case, there probably are enough chemicals containing various metals that are fluid at room temperature - just use it like a poison on a regular blade. And if it has to be reasonably pure, coating everything but the very edge of a regular steel blade should be enough. You could even get back to the earlier idea of a swappable part, a rod you set into the fuller or something.

WarKitty
2014-09-24, 08:09 PM
Sounds like it has to get into the victim's bloodstream. In that case, there probably are enough chemicals containing various metals that are fluid at room temperature - just use it like a poison on a regular blade. And if it has to be reasonably pure, coating everything but the very edge of a regular steel blade should be enough. You could even get back to the earlier idea of a swappable part, a rod you set into the fuller or something.

Really silver's the only thing that would be an issue. Though I have to admit a poisonable weapon could be handy for other things. The only other metal, iirc, is wrought iron, and that would probably be simple enough to just have a blade made from it. And really blades in these cases are a thing you hope you never have to use, because if you're close enough to not be shooting you're probably in trouble.

Actually, how hard would it be to get a quickly poisonable blade?

Brother Oni
2014-09-25, 02:35 AM
Actually, how hard would it be to get a quickly poisonable blade?

It depends more on the poison being administered. If you had some sort of highly toxic sticky paste, then very easily as you'd just smear it over any blade and sufficient quantity should remain when you stab it into them.

The problem is, if you want a poison that incapacitates them quickly in a fight, you might as well just stab them again. Poison use tends to be from a distance (eg. Amazonian tribesmen with blowguns smearing their darts on poison frogs) or for assassination (eg. Georgi Markov's ricin dart to the leg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_Markov)) and neither method of delivery is particularly quick acting - ideally you want a nerve agent or sedative in an inhalation or injectable form.

There's an exception for potassium cyanide as our biology is very vulnerable to it, but then it would depend on the rate of dissolution in your bloodstream plus adrenaline is a hell of a combat drug.

If we're talking about oWoD Garou, then mere contact with silver causes burns and irritation - from the fluff, a tengu's (were-crow) sensitivity to gold was discovered during interrogation when the interrogator's gold wedding ring accidentally brushed it. I'm not sure about the crunch and it'd probably depend on the ST.

I'd think an standard steel blade with ornamental grooves that have been filled or electroplated with silver should be sufficient to have both a fighting weapon and take advantage of silver as warty said.
A sticky paste with flecks of elemental silver may not be enough to trigger additional damage, but may be just enough to make the Garou angry, which isn't a good thing.

WarKitty
2014-09-25, 02:30 PM
Talking nWoD, not old. Poison would mainly be useful against creatures that just don't take damage properly from a normal weapon. Though with werewolves you're probably already in trouble if you're close enough to be using a blade.

Brother Oni
2014-09-26, 04:58 AM
Talking nWoD, not old. Poison would mainly be useful against creatures that just don't take damage properly from a normal weapon. Though with werewolves you're probably already in trouble if you're close enough to be using a blade.

I'm not familiar with nWoD, so if you say the crunch requires stabbing them with a silver weapon (and not just electroplated or engraved steel with silver) then stabbing with a silver weapon is what you need.

Again in oWoD, 'normal' poisons were of limited use against garou outside of breed form as they could just regenerate it and fancy spirit/bane imbued toxins were needed, which had a much faster speed of action and higher toxicity than mundane toxins.
As mentioned earlier, a lot of the time it's quicker to just stab them again than to use a poisoned weapon - this doesn't mean using poison is less lethal, just generally not any faster and is more a 'belt and braces' approach to assassination in case you don't get them with the first attack.

Carl
2014-09-27, 03:53 AM
Okay got a question. Been putting together a bunch of trek concepts and amongst those i want to try and check i'm not totally off base on a couple of concepts.

The first is a heavily modified form a Mek'leth, (image of an unmodified one below), rotate the grip 90 degrees or so downward to produce an almost nightstick/police baton grip and just as importantly modify the blade design such that in addition to it's existing cutting and stabbing surfaces it also possess the ability to catch and trap an enemy blade in a similar manner to many polearm designs, granting the same ability to manipulate the enemies weapon to break the weapon, or pull it from their grasp, or force them into an off balance position where a coupe de grace can be delivered. Basic leverage physics and what i know of polearms and nightsticks in action suggests it could work, particularly in the intended employment where their used in pairs with one acting as an advanced form of parrying dagger, the blade gripped so it runs the length of the forearm whilst the offensive grip places the blade with the majority extending forward for offensive work, (much how nightsticks are employed). But i wanted to run the concept passed you lot first. Also note i'm not trying to combined a blade with a nightstick here, it was just when writing this piece it was the only melee weapon i could think of with a similar grip, i hadn't even thought of the similarity till now.

Picture:

http://www.warpdomain.com/images/costumesandprops/props/klingon/KLINGON%20HARD%20FOAM%20RUBBER%20MEK%E2%80%99LETH. jpg

The other weapon is another modified trek weapon, this time in the form of a modified Lirpa. I've had no luck finding a decent image sadly, most of them are of fan art and fan made examples that differ considerably in general dimensions from the ones seen on enterprise. Effectively they're quarterstaff's with one end weighted, (presumably a counterweight for the other end), and the other posses a half circle shaped bladed end. Much like an actual quaterstaff both ends are employed, but the bladed end is favored for obvious reasons.

My modified version replaces the existing blade with a very long and broad spear pointed that is intended to be able to stab and slash equally well, with the weighted end becoming a broad fan or half clamshell shape suitable both for bashing when required and as a makeshift shovel. As the later probably implies it's more of a survival weapon intended for use against wildlife and the like than a weapon of war, with the versatility to be set against a heavy charge, or used slashing style against smaller prey, with a combination makeshift shovel and bludgeon for when tripping a target or simply using a less than lethal option is proffered. Naturally i don't expect anyone to be using both ends simultaneously, a la D&D double weapons, more they've got the option of switching from one to the other by changing grip as the situation demands, much like with a traditional quarterstaff switching ends.

Also how practical would it be to make stiletto style melee weaponry that was sufficiently well balanced to be throw-able?

Yora
2014-09-27, 05:13 AM
I am not quite sure what you are trying to do, but this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNU5LJCKmhw) might be useful to you to get a clearer idea of how such things might work. He also did a video on the klingon blade.

Brother Oni
2014-09-27, 07:38 AM
The first is a heavily modified form a Mek'leth, (image of an unmodified one below), rotate the grip 90 degrees or so downward to produce an almost nightstick/police baton grip and just as importantly modify the blade design such that in addition to it's existing cutting and stabbing surfaces it also possess the ability to catch and trap an enemy blade in a similar manner to many polearm designs, granting the same ability to manipulate the enemies weapon to break the weapon, or pull it from their grasp, or force them into an off balance position where a coupe de grace can be delivered.

So a bladed tonfa?

Also, Holy Run-on Sentence Batman - and I thought I was bad. :smalltongue:




The other weapon is another modified trek weapon, this time in the form of a modified Lirpa.

The Lirpa (http://www.starfortressproductions.com/catalog/lirpa.jpg) looks much like a Monk's Spade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk%27s_spade) variant, so I don't see why it can't work.

Carl
2014-09-27, 10:54 AM
So a bladed tonfa?

Also, Holy Run-on Sentence Batman - and I thought I was bad.

Sort of, like i said i also envisage the weapon as having the ability to catch and manipulate the enemies weapon, i'll try and explain that more below, also thanks on the link to monks spade.

p.s. i'm Dyslexic so run on sentabnces are pretty normal for me.


I am not quite sure what you are trying to do, but this might be useful to you to get a clearer idea of how such things might work. He also did a video on the klingon blade.

I couldn't find his video on the klingon blade sadly :(, but that video was useful, although those blades of riddicks have the grip rotated far more than i was meaning, (i can probably cut up my prior linked picture to put the handle i the right place at an appropriate angle).

What i meant with the catching and manipulating part refers to a documentary i saw years ago, the name escapes me so I've had no luck digging up a video, but in it a history professor demonstrated several techniques with what he claimed was a halberd, (i can describe the weapon if you wish), in which he used the shape/s of the axe and hammer heads on the business end of the blade to catch the enemy swordsman's blade between the blade/hammer and the haft of the weapon, and then depending on the technique used, twist the blade out of the enemies grasp, break the blade in half, or force it through an arc that moved the enemies center of balance forward or backward, leaving them off balance and unable to effectively respond as he disengaged their blade from his weapon to then deliver a fatal blow. The two examples i remember involved him overbalancing the enemy forward so he finished bent double allowing him to bring the axe blade down on the back of the neck, and another that overbalanced him backward leaving him on his back on the floor where the conical point on the butt of the haft could be brought on the chest armor.

The idea here is to have some similar capability here, but that would require a modified blade design from the traditional mek'leth. Certainly you would lose the extra reach and butt technique capabilities of the weapon described above, but i see that as being compensated for by the ability to keep an enemies blade bound with one weapon while another weapon in the other hand is able to attack. The video's point about martial arts also touches on part of the concept, with the weapon held reversed so the blade runs parallel to the forearm for most of it's length you could use a martial arts forearm blocks to catch weapons, and if the blade can bind you have the option to then use your full body mass with much shorter radi for leverage to manipulate the enemies blade, giving you a significant advantage in doing so. I hadn't actually planned to design the blade shape in detail but i think i'll have a yow for you.

Talakeal
2014-09-27, 05:40 PM
Is it possible to swim in armor?

I have seen several people on forums claim that it is not a big problem at all, and others (like my DM) claim that it is flat out impossible and if you fall into the water wearing metal armor you sink like a rock and drown no matter what.

I have personally tried swimming with a 30 pound iron weight belt around my waist, which made it extremely difficult and tiring to swim, but not impossible for short periods of time. But then again that isn't as heavy or as evenly distributed as a full suit or armor, and I am by no means an in-shape person or trained swimmer.

Carl
2014-09-27, 06:33 PM
Easy answer, can a modern infantryman swim whilst carrying all his gear? That easily weighs more than plate armour's. Hell even with weaponry added on it would probably be less.

Brother Oni
2014-09-27, 07:46 PM
Easy answer, can a modern infantryman swim whilst carrying all his gear? That easily weighs more than plate armour's. Hell even with weaponry added on it would probably be less.

Doing some reading, while modern soldiers do swim in full gear, they make use of their equipment and packs as a floatation device, so it's not as heavy.

I've found a video of someone swimming in nearly full samurai armour (looks like gusoku rather than o-yoroi - if that was properly waterproofed, you'd probably float and be able to swim much like a swan :smalltongue:), which is known as oyogijutsu: link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLcT5J7yg9k).

Someone's tried it in 50lb western harness and he reckons it's possible if they're strong enough: link (http://vimeo.com/13634653).
Later on in the video, he recounts a story where a knight was able to cross a river, walking along the bottom and making the occasional leap for a breath of air.

Note that none of this is very good for the armour - the tester mentioned that his plate harness was oxidising after only 20 minutes due to the chemicals in the pool: link (http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=20316).



I have personally tried swimming with a 30 pound iron weight belt around my waist, which made it extremely difficult and tiring to swim, but not impossible for short periods of time. But then again that isn't as heavy or as evenly distributed as a full suit or armor, and I am by no means an in-shape person or trained swimmer.

The guy mentioned that he couldn't do the breast stroke due to the articulation restrictions of his armour, so that may be something to bear in mind.

One thing typically mentioned with swimming in armour is that with a mail shirt or hauberk, it's possible for a soldier to get it off and swim to the surface before he drowns. Depending on the plate harness and how it's attached, this may not be possible and a sinking soldier may not have the presence of mind to cut his armour away, even if it could be.

Carl
2014-09-27, 08:24 PM
Doing some reading, while modern soldiers do swim in full gear, they make use of their equipment and packs as a floatation device, so it's not as heavy.

Fair enough.



Done a bit of GIMP editing of a Mek'Leth image to produce something closer looking to what i envisage. Note however this is very much a chop job and some proportions are probably imperfect from an ideal design PoV, the same chop job issue means the handle is probably longer and has a greater curvature than would be ideal, in fact a curve if it existed would probably be reversed. The Lettered zone's are area's designed to catch an enemy blade, with C being used in the offensive forward grip and A and B in the reverse defensive grip. I'd also assume a sharp edge even if one isn't shown unless it would interfere with effective holding of the blade without cutting yourself. Hopefully this makes the concept a bit clearer for you to evaluate.

http://s3.postimg.org/4plh3uywf/MEK_LETH_MODIFIED.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/4plh3uywf/)

Yora
2014-09-28, 05:06 AM
I am afraid I still have no idea what you are trying to create there.

Sounds like what a jitte is made for, and the Japanese design is very, very simple:

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q207/bubba_roggowski/manga-nihon/jitte.jpg

Carl
2014-09-28, 07:08 AM
Let me do some more images for you. First an image of what is technically a police nightstick, though the image calls it a tonfu and they're basically the same thing. it should make the grip i mean clear. This grip is very close to what I've been calling the reverse grip, he has it stuck out slightly instead of running parallel to the forearm because his armor is so bulky.

http://www.tonfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/PoliceBaton11.jpg

The next image is an example of a taekwondo forearm block, (this is the simplest to show, the high block, but in my limited time with it i learned mid and low blocks for blows from a variety of angles) which is an obvious application of the reverse grip.

http://www.diyhealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/taekwondo_high_blocks_image_title_dbwsy.jpg

Okay a couple more images using my modified design image, I've put a hand+writ combination in place to make the grip clear as a simple Blue Oblong, the Green rectangle represents and exaggerated sword/axehead/weapon haft/e.t.c.


http://s29.postimg.org/vxjujwm3b/MEK_LETH_EXAMPLE_1.jpg
http://s29.postimg.org/u70tif4k7/MEK_LETH_EXAMPLE_2.jpg
http://s29.postimg.org/o3enkrown/MEK_LETH_EXAMPLE_3.jpg


Once an enemy blade catches in those slots clockwise or counter clockwise movement will force it to twist, and lateral and vertical movements can force it to move in those directions as well.

Also remember what i said about unnecessary curves in some places and this being very rough.

Zizka
2014-09-28, 10:07 AM
Here's an interesting painting by the Flemish artist Sebastien Vrancx (no precise date but presumably from the first half of the seventeenth century) of a defended building being stormed. Note the man on the middle right using a flail.

http://i.imgur.com/6UZKTGy.jpg

Roxxy
2014-09-28, 10:56 PM
How much can scoliosis inhibit one's ability to engage in medieval combat? We know Richard III did fight, but how severe was his case? If he were a footsoldier instead of a king, would he have had more trouble with his medical condition?

Yora
2014-09-29, 05:05 AM
That probably depends a lot on the severity of the condition. Though it's of course much more a problem when actually fighting instead of directing other people fighting. A major question would be how much his men would accept a military leader who can not fight himself. Though given that he was king, there probably wasn't much they could do about it.

--

As I understand it, the modern system of officers and enlisted men is a carry over from when soldiers were devided into nobles and commoners. Which is why we have noncommisioned officers, since nobles wouldn't go directly in tough with the rabble. And if I remember correctly, pretty much all modern militaries are modeled after the European model as a result of 19th and 20th century colonialism. Now nobility is almost nonexistent and rank based on education and training, but the structures are essentually the same.

But are there other models how to organize the hierarchy of an army? I am imagining a highly egalitarian movement that identifies itself strongly by rejecting the notion of elites. Nonfraternization with the troops seems very much out of place there. However, even in civilian organizations, it's generally considered good practice to hire top level leadership from outside rather than promoting staff by seniority, since it just doesn't seem to work so well if you make someone the boss of his long time coworker and friends. Though in a social environment based primarily on kinship groups and clans, leadership because of seniority might be perfectly normal in everyones eyes.

Any useful information you might be able to share?

GraaEminense
2014-09-29, 05:45 AM
The British system at least was heavily reformed after the Crimean War in the 1850s. Huge losses and several major screw-ups combined with proper journalism from the front lines finally made it obvious that a system where officer commissions were bought and sold left far too many twits in command. Somewhat rational in a semi-feudal society where rich men raised their own regiments to play soldier and paid for the whole thing, but not after the industrial revolution.

The early Red Army let troops elect their own leaders from the ranks, not sure how far up that went. A rational way to do it in the middle of a messy civil war and could conceivably be a good way to find squad leaders and non-commissioned officers even under normal circumstances, but popularity isn't really a good alternative to a military academy in the long run. Also requires highly motivated troops, or you'll have officers elected because they are the least likely to do anything that will get anyone shot at...

Brother Oni
2014-09-29, 05:51 AM
As I understand it, the modern system of officers and enlisted men is a carry over from when soldiers were devided into nobles and commoners. Which is why we have noncommisioned officers, since nobles wouldn't go directly in tough with the rabble. And if I remember correctly, pretty much all modern militaries are modeled after the European model as a result of 19th and 20th century colonialism. Now nobility is almost nonexistent and rank based on education and training, but the structures are essentually the same.

I know the Rifle Regiments during the Napoleonic eras were different in that the officers fought alongside their men with the same equipment, in contrast with other regiments where officers went into combat with a sword and maybe a pistol.

In modern militaries, rank is also (supposedly*) based on ability and aptitude, so it's more of a meritocracy than anything else. In the British army at least, nobility also doesn't have any effect - Prince Harry passed Sandhurst as 2LT as he didn't go to university, thus doesn't have a degree (a university graduate who passes Sandhurst starts off as a lieutenant), so there are fellow Officer Cadets he would have trained with at Sandhurst that he would be obliged to salute and call sir/ma'am.

Also unlike back then, modern militaries like promoting up from the ranks and you can't just buy a commission anymore.

*I've heard enough stories and read enough Terminal Lance to know better.

Broken Crown
2014-09-29, 11:06 AM
As I understand it, the modern system of officers and enlisted men is a carry over from when soldiers were devided into nobles and commoners....

But are there other models how to organize the hierarchy of an army? I am imagining a highly egalitarian movement that identifies itself strongly by rejecting the notion of elites. Nonfraternization with the troops seems very much out of place there. However, even in civilian organizations, it's generally considered good practice to hire top level leadership from outside rather than promoting staff by seniority, since it just doesn't seem to work so well if you make someone the boss of his long time coworker and friends. Though in a social environment based primarily on kinship groups and clans, leadership because of seniority might be perfectly normal in everyones eyes.

Any useful information you might be able to share?

The only historical attempts to get away from this model that I can think of were in various revolutionary armies (starting with the French Revolution), where the aristocratic officers were generally seen as enemies of the people. Various alternatives were tried (I think some units experimented with electing their officers), but they all seemed to revert fairly quickly to the model of a professional officer corps. Usually there was a period of the officers being supervised by political commissars, to ensure their loyalty, but again, the authority of the commissars was generally soon reduced to keep them from interfering with the officers' decisions. In practice, competence proved to be a much more important quality in a general than ideology.

I suppose guerilla forces also have a rather different command structure, but I'm not sure you could run a regular army on such a decentralized model.

Storm Bringer
2014-09-29, 12:24 PM
I know the Rifle Regiments during the Napoleonic eras were different in that the officers fought alongside their men with the same equipment, in contrast with other regiments where officers went into combat with a sword and maybe a pistol.

In modern militaries, rank is also (supposedly*) based on ability and aptitude, so it's more of a meritocracy than anything else. In the British army at least, nobility also doesn't have any effect - Prince Harry passed Sandhurst as 2LT as he didn't go to university, thus doesn't have a degree (a university graduate who passes Sandhurst starts off as a lieutenant), so there are fellow Officer Cadets he would have trained with at Sandhurst that he would be obliged to salute and call sir/ma'am.

Also unlike back then, modern militaries like promoting up from the ranks and you can't just buy a commission anymore.

*I've heard enough stories and read enough Terminal Lance to know better.



As I understand it, the modern system of officers and enlisted men is a carry over from when soldiers were devided into nobles and commoners. Which is why we have noncommisioned officers, since nobles wouldn't go directly in tough with the rabble

While the Rifles officers made a fetish out of being riflemen and using long arms, I must point out that regular line infantry officers did not stand at the back of the battle ordering thousands to their deaths, but marched alongside and often in front of their own troops, and generally tried to lead by example. if you watch Gettysburg , in particular Picketts Charge, you can see the officers are in front of their men, waving their swords about and being obvious so their men can see them and follow their lead.

majors and colonels were normally on a horse, ahead of their battalion, observing the enemy or delivering orders to someone.



As for an alternative to a professional officer corps, things like elective leaders have been tried, but they tend to revert to traditional methods sooner or later, simply because professionals, are well......pros. I know a lot of units in the US Civil War elected their initial officers, but they were then subject to the normal professional methods, and were promoted, fired etc as if they were career officers.

Yora
2014-09-29, 01:29 PM
Guerilla command structures might be something to look into, as that is probably a lot closer to how warriors are organized in the context I am thinking of, than 19th/20th century armies.

Mike_G
2014-09-29, 01:53 PM
Professional officers are a good thing, but that's not the same as "nobles" leading and "commoners' following.

Elected officers are popular, but may not be any good. Purchased commissions mean your leaders are wealthy, but not necessarily any good.

If you are setting up an hierarchy, you could say that every soldier begins as a private, and once that solider earns promotion to, let's say, corporal, which means some time served, and being in charge of a small unit, and actually being selected for promotion. Then that soldier is eligible to apply to Officer Candidacy School, where they will be taught about big picture stuff like tactics, strategy, logistics, etc. Things a private doesn't need to know to do his job, but an officer does.

If you do that, your junior officers won't be brand new to the military, and they will have actually done the job of the troops they command, so they will have a better understanding of what the job is.

You'd still have trained officers, but now veteran NCOs wouldn't be led by a 21 year old with a college degree and 90 days total time in service.

Yora
2014-09-29, 02:16 PM
Moving from the very bottom through the ranks seems a much more logical approach. I believe in some cases NGOs can go through a second training to become officers even if they had not qualified when they first enlisted, but that appears to be the exception rather than the norm.
Aside from tradition, why is it that some people can start their military career at a higher rank than most others can ever achieve even with long and distinguished service?

I see it making sense in World War 2 when you needed lots of troops and you couldn't be picky with selecting only people who bring brainpower in addition to physical fitness. But with modern high-tech armies, isn't there a need for relatively highly educated specialists rather than just raw manpower?
Now that I am thinking of it, I believe all fighter pilots appear to be officers. Has that always been the case, or is that a more recent development?

Mike_G
2014-09-29, 02:24 PM
Moving from the very bottom through the ranks seems a much more logical approach. I believe in some cases NGOs can go through a second training to become officers even if they had not qualified when they first enlisted, but that appears to be the exception rather than the norm.
Aside from tradition, why is it that some people can start their military career at a higher rank than most others can ever achieve even with long and distinguished service?

I see it making sense in World War 2 when you needed lots of troops and you couldn't be picky with selecting only people who bring brainpower in addition to physical fitness. But with modern high-tech armies, isn't there a need for relatively highly educated specialists rather than just raw manpower?
Now that I am thinking of it, I believe all fighter pilots appear to be officers. Has that always been the case, or is that a more recent development?

You can be fairly unsophisticated as a thinker and be a decent rifleman. Strong enough to hump your gear, good at taking direction, skilled at basic tasks. You wouldn't say any professional linebacker has the brains to coach in the NFL.

Storm Bringer
2014-09-29, 02:41 PM
Moving from the very bottom through the ranks seems a much more logical approach. I believe in some cases NGOs can go through a second training to become officers even if they had not qualified when they first enlisted, but that appears to be the exception rather than the norm.
Aside from tradition, why is it that some people can start their military career at a higher rank than most others can ever achieve even with long and distinguished service?

Short answer, at least in peacetime armies: humans just don't live long enough to work all the way form private to general. You'd just get too old to keep up before you'd get to rank that wasn't involved in front line duties.

in wartime or other periods of massive expansion, it's possible to go all the way, but generally it




I see it making sense in World War 2 when you needed lots of troops and you couldn't be picky with selecting only people who bring brainpower in addition to physical fitness. But with modern high-tech armies, isn't there a need for relatively highly educated specialists rather than just raw manpower?


rule 1: armies are always undermanned and underfunded for what they are doing.




Now that I am thinking of it, I believe all fighter pilots appear to be officers. Has that always been the case, or is that a more recent development?

it's been the case pretty much since the start, but some pilot jobs were done by NCOs, notably gilder pilots in WW2 and some chopper pilots. Piloting is a specialist skill, and so armies tend to give them officer scale pay to keep them.

Brother Oni
2014-09-29, 02:44 PM
While the Rifles officers made a fetish out of being riflemen and using long arms, I must point out that regular line infantry officers did not stand at the back of the battle ordering thousands to their deaths, but marched alongside and often in front of their own troops, and generally tried to lead by example. if you watch Gettysburg , in particular Picketts Charge, you can see the officers are in front of their men, waving their swords about and being obvious so their men can see them and follow their lead.

majors and colonels were normally on a horse, ahead of their battalion, observing the enemy or delivering orders to someone.

I never implied otherwise. The French officers exhorted their men very often, which made them favourite targets for enemy sharpshooters.


Moving from the very bottom through the ranks seems a much more logical approach. I believe in some cases NGOs can go through a second training to become officers even if they had not qualified when they first enlisted, but that appears to be the exception rather than the norm.
Aside from tradition, why is it that some people can start their military career at a higher rank than most others can ever achieve even with long and distinguished service?


Put basically, leadership potential.

In the British army, if a basic soldier shows any aptitude for leadership (not just teamworking), they can be put forward into the selection process for officers (it was the RCB when I applied, but I think it's the AOSB these days), like any other officer candidate. Being an enlisted soldier or even a NCO has different requirements to being an officer and some people simply don't have the right personality, mindset or mental ability to be one.

If you had a requirement that only experienced personnel could apply to be an officer, it would make recruiting and maintaining officer numbers very difficult, plus it's harder to mould the new officers into exactly how the regiment wants them.

Roxxy
2014-09-29, 02:44 PM
That probably depends a lot on the severity of the condition. Though it's of course much more a problem when actually fighting instead of directing other people fighting. A major question would be how much his men would accept a military leader who can not fight himself. Though given that he was king, there probably wasn't much they could do about it?Well, we have accounts that Richard killed at least one knight in his final battle, and he died charging straight at Henry Tudor, so he could fight to some degree. The thing is, although his scoliosis could be concealed with clothing, it had to be effecting his mobility to some degree. Maybe that's manageable on horseback, but what if we was just another foot soldier, maybe a halberdier? What if it were an individual with a more severe case than Richard's? Would I be correct in suggesting that drawing a longbow would have been very difficult for Richard?

Mike_G
2014-09-29, 03:26 PM
If you had a requirement that only experienced personnel could apply to be an officer, it would make recruiting and maintaining officer numbers very difficult, plus it's harder to mould the new officers into exactly how the regiment wants them.

I'm willing to live with that.

The joke is the difference between a 2nd lieutenant and a private first class is that the PFC has been promoted once.

The less funny part of that joke is that the 2nd lieutenant can do a lot more damage.

Really specialized jobs like surgeon, pilot, etc can start as officers to attract and retain people, but those aren't generally command positions.

A flight leader will have started as a pilot and moved up, an infantry platoon leader should have been a rifleman at some point.

You can't be a sergeant without having been a private, I don;t see why you can jump right to Lieutenant.

I do see a different track. You'd start as a private, then once you made NCO, you could request a commission, or stay as enlisted. Your request would be subject to testing/selection.

And most 2nd lieutenants are colleges grads, most Corporals (in the US) would be in their early 20s, so the age thing is about the same.

Lilapop
2014-09-29, 03:42 PM
Well, we have accounts that Richard killed at least one knight in his final battle, and he died charging straight at Henry Tudor, so he could fight to some degree. The thing is, although his scoliosis could be concealed with clothing, it had to be effecting his mobility to some degree. Maybe that's manageable on horseback, but what if we was just another foot soldier, maybe a halberdier? What if it were an individual with a more severe case than Richard's? Would I be correct in suggesting that drawing a longbow would have been very difficult for Richard?
As others said, it totally depends on severity of the symptoms. If I'm not intentionally slacking in posture, you wouldn't be able to notice my scoliosis. And while my back tends to just hurt "for no reason" from time to time, it doesn't really interfere with what little sports I did in school and the like. An extreme humpback in a medieval society, however, would possibly be an outcast (if not saved by the fact that he is a member of the nobility) and never get drafted at all.

Archery is actually kind of therapeutic for light cases, as it promotes balanced and evenly spread body tension. I didn't get to shoot anything heavier than ~40 lbs, so my assessment might be off the mark for 100 lbs and up. Though I understand that english laws and customs of the time were designed to build up archery skills, including the physique, from an early age, so they'd have a bit of a headstart in that regard.

Raum
2014-09-29, 04:48 PM
If you had a requirement that only experienced personnel could apply to be an officer, it would make recruiting and maintaining officer numbers very difficult, I have to disagree. There are plenty of enlisted personnel as (or even more) potentially capable than second lieutenants. You would lose the pool of officers who are just there to pay for a degree...not necessarily a bad thing.


plus it's harder to mould the new officers into exactly how the regiment wants them.Why? Training doesn't need to change. Screening could even be more extensive since you can screen active duty candidates by far more criteria than you can HS aged civilians.

Just use Mike G's suggestion to keep a non-command track open for professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and engineers. That keeps your niche technical expertise.

Aedilred
2014-09-30, 02:11 AM
Well, we have accounts that Richard killed at least one knight in his final battle, and he died charging straight at Henry Tudor, so he could fight to some degree. The thing is, although his scoliosis could be concealed with clothing, it had to be effecting his mobility to some degree. Maybe that's manageable on horseback, but what if we was just another foot soldier, maybe a halberdier? What if it were an individual with a more severe case than Richard's? Would I be correct in suggesting that drawing a longbow would have been very difficult for Richard?

Yeah, Richard was regarded as a capable warrior both in person and in command: he apparently downed two well-regarded knights on his final charge (one of them fatally) and had been one of Edward's top generals, including during the campaign against Scotland in 1482 when he captured Berwick, and at Barnet, where he led the vanguard and was wounded. The extent of his scoliosis isn't entirely clear, though, and it may not have been excessively pronounced (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-27610788), especially since he was still relatively young when he was killed (33).

Zizka
2014-09-30, 02:56 AM
Short answer, at least in peacetime armies: humans just don't live long enough to work all the way form private to general. In wartime or other periods of massive expansion, it's possible to go all the way.
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/images/paintings/da/large/bbo_da_80015_large.jpg

For those who don't recognise him:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_William_Robertson,_1st_Baronet


Robertson was the first and only British Army soldier to rise from private soldier to field marshal.

Brother Oni
2014-09-30, 03:23 AM
I'm willing to live with that.

The joke is the difference between a 2nd lieutenant and a private first class is that the PFC has been promoted once.

The less funny part of that joke is that the 2nd lieutenant can do a lot more damage.

Oh indeed. 'As dumb as a Second Lieutenant' is a common saying over here.

I do see the merit in your proposal, but if you're trying to recruit people, limiting access isn't a good thing. There are people who want to be in the military no matter what, but there are some who would make competent officers but aren't willing to do it for an enlisted salary for however long it takes.

Again, I do see that you might not want such people in the military, but for certain positions (logisitics for example), you don't need or want the best and brightest there, who would be more useful in a more important role. As Storm Bringer said, armies generally are undermanned or underfunded for what they're currently doing so often anybody competent (or at least not dangerously incompetent) will do.



Really specialized jobs like surgeon, pilot, etc can start as officers to attract and retain people, but those aren't generally command positions.

We do that here as well under the Professionally Qualified Officers program. They get sent through an abbreviated course at Sandhurst to teach them how to iron their clothes and march in a straight line (known informally as the 'Tarts and Vicars' course), then get sent off to be doctors or whatever in the appropriate regiment.

I am exaggerating a bit, as the PQO course is starting to include more actual combat training to help the OCs adjust to life in a warzone so they don't feel completely out of their depth when they get sent to Afghanistan or other hotspots.



A flight leader will have started as a pilot and moved up, an infantry platoon leader should have been a rifleman at some point.

You can't be a sergeant without having been a private, I don;t see why you can jump right to Lieutenant.

I do see a different track. You'd start as a private, then once you made NCO, you could request a commission, or stay as enlisted. Your request would be subject to testing/selection.


We're heading well into the differences between the militaries now, but all non PQOs are trained up as infantry officers, then post Sandhurst, get sent off to their regiment for further specialised training.
As mentioned earlier, any enlisted with leadership potential often get put forward into the officer selection process and our process is open to other nationalities (there were four other enlisted soldiers on the RCB Briefing with me, one of whom was a Kiwi who we joked was trying to join a proper military).

One entertaining thing I heard, is that enlisted who pass the selection process then get sent on an 'officer enrichment' course where they go to museums, theatres and other such cultural pursuits as there's a minimum level of sophistication expected of a British Army Officer. :smallbiggrin:



And most 2nd lieutenants are colleges grads, most Corporals (in the US) would be in their early 20s, so the age thing is about the same.

As I said earlier, over here, all university graduates start off as Lieutenants in recognition of their degree.


I have to disagree. There are plenty of enlisted personnel as (or even more) potentially capable than second lieutenants. You would lose the pool of officers who are just there to pay for a degree...not necessarily a bad thing.

That's implying that all people who join the ROTC are capable of passing the officer selection process. I don't know the ins and outs of your process, so I can't comment in detail on how it differs.

As Mike G said, if there are enlisted personnel that are capable and are willing, to become officers, then they should be put forward. Making it a requirement to be an enlisted first would be an issue in times of rapid mobilisation (WW2 for example), but then again, rapid promotion is also possible.



Why? Training doesn't need to change. Screening could even be more extensive since you can screen active duty candidates by far more criteria than you can HS aged civilians.

Again this boils down to differences between militaries. Over here, there each regiment tends to have its own personality - a Blues and Royals officer is very different to a Royal Logisitics Corp officer so in the post Sandhurst training, they get inducted into their regimental culture along with their additional role training.
In comparison, I believe someone mentioned that the entire top leadership of a US regiment gets changed every 3-5 years, so there's significantly less continuity.



Just use Mike G's suggestion to keep a non-command track open for professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and engineers. That keeps your niche technical expertise.

Again it depends - you can't have a regiment full of officers and no enlisted (who would do all the actual work? :smalltongue:). For example, the Royal Engineers have enlisted with university degrees - it's just that they don't have the right attributes or desire to be officers, even PQOs.

Storm_Of_Snow
2014-09-30, 05:50 AM
On the subject of promotion by merit, or by purchasing commission, I'd just like to point out that Napoleon Bonaparte was in the first group, and Arthur Wellesley was in the second, and probably would never had made high rank if he couldn't have bought it.

Pilots = Officers. During WW2, there was the rank of Sergeant Pilot, which was for a non-commissioned pilot. The rank was mostly phased out subsequently, and any military aviator these days is almost certainly a commissioned officer.

Mike_G
2014-09-30, 07:29 AM
For every Wellesley, you have a handful of Cardigans, Lucans, Raglans, Braddocks, Chelmsfords and Burgoynes and that's just off the top of my head.

Napoleon was a pretty decent general, for a guy who was a mere merit promotion. That whole conquering most of continental Europe thing is generally regarded as an accomplishment.

Purchase is one way of getting officers, but it doesn't correlate to talent. Because one decent general made rank that way does not exonerate the system.

Zadhadras
2014-09-30, 09:18 AM
In a socially stratified system, purchased commissions offer numerous benefits. One of the problems with standing armies is that they have a tendency to try and take over. Historically, they are a source of much instability. Purchased commissions help ameliorate that problem by 1) Limiting the officer pool to the upper classes, who have a stake in continuing the existing system 2) preventing the rise of New Men like Napoleon 3) the purchase acts like a bond to guarantee a level of good behaviour. 4) Ensuring that the officers were rich enough that they would be less tempted to pillage and cheat soldiers out of pay.

Brother Oni
2014-09-30, 09:47 AM
In a socially stratified system, purchased commissions offer numerous benefits. One of the problems with standing armies is that they have a tendency to try and take over. Historically, they are a source of much instability. Purchased commissions help ameliorate that problem by 1) Limiting the officer pool to the upper classes, who have a stake in continuing the existing system 2) preventing the rise of New Men like Napoleon 3) the purchase acts like a bond to guarantee a level of good behaviour. 4) Ensuring that the officers were rich enough that they would be less tempted to pillage and cheat soldiers out of pay.

On the downside, you end up with an army commanded by rich incompetent people with the people actually good at doing the job kept out of where they would be most useful.

As mentioned earlier, the Crimean War, specifically the Charge of the Light Brigade, pretty much put paid to the purchased commission system.

Mike_G
2014-09-30, 10:27 AM
In many organizations, you don't get to just start at the top. You don't get to be a Police Chief or Fire Chief without being a street cop or firefighter first. Before I could become a Paramedic, I had to be an EMT. As an EMT I learned to assess a patient and handle the chaos of prehospital emergencies before I could go to medic school and be able to do real damage with drugs and endotracheal tubes and electricity.

So I firmly believe that no 21 year old should lead a rifle platoon unless he or she has spent a year or two as a rifleman. Not gone to school and learned to polish boots and align rows of ribbons, but done a tour doing the actual job.

As far as social stratification, it's bad for society and the military. My personal feeling is that the only way to manage an upper class is periodic vigorous application of the guillotine.

Yora
2014-09-30, 10:50 AM
Aside from training and experience, why is there such a clear cut that separates sergeants from lieutenants? (At least, I believe there is.) Couldn't you just have a single continous progression of superiority? Is there a real break between the requirements to lead a squard and a platoon that is inherently different from the difference between a platoon and a company?
Or in other words, is the transition from NCO to officer an arbitrary one, or is there an actual significant change in requirements?

Carl
2014-09-30, 11:25 AM
@Brother Oni: I'd take it from this piece your ex military? Would you be willing to comment on a piece of worldbuilding for me if so, looking for someone to look at the organisational structure and equipment ratios for problems or flaws.

Yora
2014-09-30, 03:32 PM
As another question, how practical is it to fight with a polearm indoors? I am having an idea for a story and I don't like how everyone is always swinging around swords when spears and their like seem to have been the weapon of choice for so many more people and cultures. But can you fight with a reasonably sized polearm, say 2m in length, inside of buildings? Or would it be much more sensible to drop it and draw a long knife or an axe? I've seen some naginata tournaments and they seem to be fighting at very close ranges but with a lot of space to move around (though fighting for points and not for survival might quite possibly make a major difference on how close they get to each other).

Incanur
2014-09-30, 03:47 PM
As Miyamoto Musashi (http://www.uvm.edu/~asnider/IDAS_2011_CD/Teachers/Steve%20Llano's%20Materials/Strategy%20Books/Book%20of%20Five%20Rings%20-%20Musashi.pdf) wrote, staff weapons aren't much use in confined spaces. In general, you don't want a polearm indoors. Obviously certain structures are spacious enough, but most aren't. But shorter polearms could work; in 1448 Margaret Paston (http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=27330&view=previous) wrote for short poleaxes to keep by the doors.

rs2excelsior
2014-09-30, 11:19 PM
Aside from training and experience, why is there such a clear cut that separates sergeants from lieutenants? (At least, I believe there is.) Couldn't you just have a single continous progression of superiority? Is there a real break between the requirements to lead a squard and a platoon that is inherently different from the difference between a platoon and a company?
Or in other words, is the transition from NCO to officer an arbitrary one, or is there an actual significant change in requirements?

In a lot of ways, yes. Generally if an enlisted man is going to go for officer training, at least in the US military, he (or she) does it before reaching high enlisted rank. So senior sergeants usually are split clearly from officers because they more than likely will never BE officers, either because they turned down OCS or never got the chance (this is my understanding at least, if someone knows differently please correct me). There's a divide in the training received by an officer and a senior sergeant--most of the latter's leadership skills come from experience. And there is a mental divide between enlisted men and officers that's probably a holdover from more stratified societies, but still exists nonetheless.

And besides, a First Sergeant or Sergeant Major is probably a veteran with a good decade or two of experience, a 2nd Lieutenant is probably a 20-something just out of college or OCS.


As another question, how practical is it to fight with a polearm indoors? I am having an idea for a story and I don't like how everyone is always swinging around swords when spears and their like seem to have been the weapon of choice for so many more people and cultures. But can you fight with a reasonably sized polearm, say 2m in length, inside of buildings? Or would it be much more sensible to drop it and draw a long knife or an axe? I've seen some naginata tournaments and they seem to be fighting at very close ranges but with a lot of space to move around (though fighting for points and not for survival might quite possibly make a major difference on how close they get to each other).

Not very. As someone who has tried to maneuver a spear (~7-8 feet long) indoors, it's pretty awkward. Not too bad if you are just advancing, but if you need to turn around or maneuver through a doorway that's not straight ahead... it'd be pretty easy for someone with a smaller, more manageable weapon to close in and take you down.

Brother Oni
2014-10-01, 02:28 AM
So I firmly believe that no 21 year old should lead a rifle platoon unless he or she has spent a year or two as a rifleman. Not gone to school and learned to polish boots and align rows of ribbons, but done a tour doing the actual job.


I firmly agree as does the British military, which is why newly deployed lieutenants usually get babysat by a senior NCO (at least a sergeant, if not higher).
I was talking to a RLC LT that was deployed to Bosnia less than 6 months out of Sandhurst (his request) and he had a Staff Sergeant looking after him.


Aside from training and experience, why is there such a clear cut that separates sergeants from lieutenants? (At least, I believe there is.) Couldn't you just have a single continous progression of superiority? Is there a real break between the requirements to lead a squard and a platoon that is inherently different from the difference between a platoon and a company?
Or in other words, is the transition from NCO to officer an arbitrary one, or is there an actual significant change in requirements?

There are plenty of ranks inbetween SGT and LT (between 5-6), but as rs2excelsior said, soldiers who show leadership potential get put forward earlier rather than later before they get too ingrained in their habits.
I can't say definitively about the change in requirements - you're better off asking someone who actually served (we have a USAF LTCOL on the board who would probably be well placed to answer any questions you may have).


@Brother Oni: I'd take it from this piece your ex military? Would you be willing to comment on a piece of worldbuilding for me if so, looking for someone to look at the organisational structure and equipment ratios for problems or flaws.

I'm not actually ex-military (I applied but failed the medical). Quite a few here are either serving or former serving military if you want to post it generally, or you can still forward it if you don't mind me looking at it.


I've seen some naginata tournaments and they seem to be fighting at very close ranges but with a lot of space to move around (though fighting for points and not for survival might quite possibly make a major difference on how close they get to each other).

Reinforcing other answers, if you're in a long corridor, it's fine. In a room with furniture or narrower dimensions, it's very awkward.

With naginata tournaments, only a certain part of the weapon is scoring, thus it directly influences how they fight. For a more obvious example, take a look at a kendo tournament.

Carl
2014-10-01, 03:32 AM
Fair enough, you just seem really knowledge about the real world militaries.

The piece was allready posted here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?360030-EFGT-Organisation-and-Equipment), but i basically got no feedback on it of the sort i wanted. If you have any context questions feel free to ask.

Everyone else should feel free to look in as well btw :).

rs2excelsior
2014-10-01, 12:38 PM
I firmly agree as does the British military, which is why newly deployed lieutenants usually get babysat by a senior NCO (at least a sergeant, if not higher).
I was talking to a RLC LT that was deployed to Bosnia less than 6 months out of Sandhurst (his request) and he had a Staff Sergeant looking after him.

This too. Properly done, at least in the US (and apparently British) Army, the Lieutenant is the platoon's commander, but the platoon's Sergeant First Class (senior enlisted soldier and second in command) acts as his adviser and helps carry out the day-to-day operations of the platoon. Most 2nd Lieutenants have virtually no experience, while their senior enlisted men have plenty, so the new officer has a valuable resource when it comes to running his platoon. It is a delicate balancing act, though, since the Sergeants MUST respect and follow the Lieutenant. So the new LT has to make sure he exerts his authority, but not to the extent that he ignores the advice of the veteran enlisted. That's where most of the problems arise.

Galloglaich
2014-10-01, 02:23 PM
The only historical attempts to get away from this model that I can think of were in various revolutionary armies (starting with the French Revolution), where the aristocratic officers were generally seen as enemies of the people. Various alternatives were tried (I think some units experimented with electing their officers), but they all seemed to revert fairly quickly to the model of a professional officer corps. Usually there was a period of the officers being supervised by political commissars, to ensure their loyalty, but again, the authority of the commissars was generally soon reduced to keep them from interfering with the officers' decisions. In practice, competence proved to be a much more important quality in a general than ideology.

I suppose guerilla forces also have a rather different command structure, but I'm not sure you could run a regular army on such a decentralized model.

Electing leaders of armies was very common in the medieval and even into the early-modern period to some extent, particularly in German, Slavic and Scandinavian areas. In the pre-Christian era this was the norm. Some of the titles of nobility used today, Herzog for instance in Bavaria (which roughly translates to Duke now days) were originally elected positions which gradually became hereditary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herzog

The term Voivode had the same meaning in Poland and some of the other western-Slavic countries, not sure about Eastern Slavic areas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voivode

The Swiss Confederate armies were famous for electing leaders on the very verge of battles sometimes (especially when contingents from several different cantons joined together in the field). The Vikings did this as well.

Even the Romans used to do this in the early Republic in some cases.

This was sometimes done in Hanseatic expeditions and naval fleets as late as the 16th Century.

But just because leaders were elected didn't mean discipline was harsh (typically it was) nor did it mean that very humble people typically got elected war-leader. Usually the people who were the most wealthy and powerful also had the most popularity and support in such an election. The process of electing leaders however allowed for a medium ranked, but very skilled military leader to take precedence over other leaders who were of higher official rank or wealth, but did not have as much battle experience. It gave a kind of 'wiggle room' to the military organization which was a bit more pragmatic. hard for us to understand today but it seemed to work.

This was a major improvement over the 'pure' feudal system in which the precedence of rank took precedence over everything, which sometimes contributed to huge blunders and catastrophes such as at Agincourt or Nicopolis, but even in these kinds of armies there was a kind of consensus among the warrior elite, it was just a smaller number who had any say and the say each person had was derived of their social status at least as much as skill - certain warriors would rise in the former if they conspicuously displayed the latter, but only to a point. Guys like Boucicaut are perhaps an example of that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Le_Maingre

G

Brother Oni
2014-10-01, 02:30 PM
This too. Properly done, at least in the US (and apparently British) Army, the Lieutenant is the platoon's commander, but the platoon's Sergeant First Class (senior enlisted soldier and second in command) acts as his adviser and helps carry out the day-to-day operations of the platoon. Most 2nd Lieutenants have virtually no experience, while their senior enlisted men have plenty, so the new officer has a valuable resource when it comes to running his platoon. It is a delicate balancing act, though, since the Sergeants MUST respect and follow the Lieutenant. So the new LT has to make sure he exerts his authority, but not to the extent that he ignores the advice of the veteran enlisted. That's where most of the problems arise.

That reminds me of a story that RLC LT had - they were trying to find a site to set up a logistics base and the LT found a quiet spot near a main road, not too far away from rail links with plenty of hard standing (concrete/tarmarc'ed ground). He thought it was quite a good spot, his Staff took one look and said "It's ****, sir.".

The SSGT turned out to be right and they had to relocate elsewhere. :smallbiggrin:

Galloglaich
2014-10-01, 02:41 PM
maybe someone else who knows Civil War history can answer this better than I, but didn't some early US Civil War regiments elect leaders as well?

G

Storm Bringer
2014-10-01, 03:27 PM
yes, they did, and they were, to my knowledge, not any better, or worse, than appointed or self-chosen officers. it got warm bodies to fill the spaces in the rank charts, and then the harsh realties of war weeded out the unfit until only those at least moderately competent officers were left.

Raum
2014-10-01, 05:40 PM
Aside from training and experience, why is there such a clear cut that separates sergeants from lieutenants? (At least, I believe there is.) Couldn't you just have a single continous progression of superiority? Is there a real break between the requirements to lead a squard and a platoon that is inherently different from the difference between a platoon and a company?
Or in other words, is the transition from NCO to officer an arbitrary one, or is there an actual significant change in requirements?The "broad strokes" difference is that officers look after the goals while sergeants look after the men. Of course that's overly simplistic but it's not easy to distill centuries of tradition, custom, and law into a simple functional job description. This is part of why academies and officer candidate schools tend to be harder than basic training in many ways - they try to instill that tradition in the proto-officers.

There will also be a lot of crossover - particularly at the lower officer ranks where they're still learning the job. A good company level sergeant could do a company commander's job. They have in situations with heavy losses among the officers. It's also worth noting that elite forces often pay less attention to rank than to expertise. A special ops team may pass functional command to whomever has the most experience or expertise relevant to the operational goal. The officer is still accountable - being accountable is part of his job.

None of that stops enlisted from becoming successful officers. I'd actually like to see the metrics...what percentage of mustangs are successful compared to academy grads. Judging by history, the former enlisted are more successful than your average academy grad during times of conflict. I'd guess casualty rates alone show that...anyone have access to a convenient database of personnel during historical conflicts?

Brother Oni
2014-10-02, 02:36 AM
There will also be a lot of crossover - particularly at the lower officer ranks where they're still learning the job. A good company level sergeant could do a company commander's job. They have in situations with heavy losses among the officers. It's also worth noting that elite forces often pay less attention to rank than to expertise. A special ops team may pass functional command to whomever has the most experience or expertise relevant to the operational goal. The officer is still accountable - being accountable is part of his job.


I remember an incident from Sniper One where a squad was involved in a firefight and the sergeant was in command. Reinforcements turned up in the form of another squad including a pair of officers (one of whom was a major or something similarly high I believe) and they both deferred to the sergeant as the officer on the ground, since passing on the information regarding the situtation wasn't particularly feasible when you're ducked under a wall with incoming fire whistling around you.



None of that stops enlisted from becoming successful officers. I'd actually like to see the metrics...what percentage of mustangs are successful compared to academy grads. Judging by history, the former enlisted are more successful than your average academy grad during times of conflict. I'd guess casualty rates alone show that...anyone have access to a convenient database of personnel during historical conflicts?

There's the Vietnam war statistics (http://www.americanwarlibrary.com/vietnam/vwc4.htm), but that just lists casualties by rank and not whether they were former enlisted.

I know Russian sniper tactics during WW2 specifically targetted officers, which was so successful that the German command were forced to give battlefield promotions to many sergeants just to have bodies in the lieutenant roles.

I can't think of any specialised database of what you want without investigating each individual casualty.

Galloglaich
2014-10-02, 11:38 AM
Riverine warship armed with cannon 1420's - 1440's

http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/manuscripts/e-codices/film/zbz-Ms-Rh-hist0033b/zbz-Ms-Rh-hist0033b_151r.jpg

Source is

Ms. Rh. hist. 33b
"War technology" (Illuminated Manuscript)
Caption: Paper · 168 ff. · 30.0 x 21.0 cm · Upper Rhine · about 1420-1440

G

Telok
2014-10-02, 02:58 PM
Riverine warship armed with cannon 1420's - 1440's
...
Source is

Ms. Rh. hist. 33b
"War technology" (Illuminated Manuscript)
Caption: Paper · 168 ff. · 30.0 x 21.0 cm · Upper Rhine · about 1420-1440

G

Oh dear god, another five pages of this again?

Mike_G
2014-10-02, 03:21 PM
Brace yourselves.

Medieval naval cannon debates are coming.

Carl
2014-10-02, 03:23 PM
This feels so appropriate right now, (courtesy of tvtropes):

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/avatar_shipping_war.jpg

Incanur
2014-10-02, 04:35 PM
Going back to the giant windlass-drawn crossbows employed for target shooting in 18th-century Europe, I just learned it's possible to shoot 30+lb .50-cal sniper rifles while standing without a rest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3BUnHiv6AA). One 18th-century target crossbow with an estimate draw weight of 840kg (1,848lbs) weighs 9.85 (21.67lbs) without it's windlass. I was a little skeptical that such crossbows could be shot effectively without a rest, but now I'm convinced that a strong shooter could manage it.

Additionally, depending on the exact power stroke and efficiency, that 1,848lb crossbow could theoretically deliver 300-400+ J up close. An initial energy of 375 J would be enough to pierce munitions-grade 16th-century breastplates at 50+ yards according to Alan Williams's numbers.

Such tantalizing speculative calculations make me wonder why there's little if any evidence of heavy crossbows used after the fashion of 16th-century heavy muskets before the muskets rise to prominence. Of course, by 16th-century English accounts, heavy muskets did significantly better against armor than our hypothetical 1,848lb crossbow would do. And heavy crossbows certainly saw widespread employment in the early 16th century, though more at sieges than in the field by the evidence I've seen. And Chinese crossbowers according to one 11th-century manual did apparently wield their crossbows in much the same rotating-volleying fashion as 16th-century Japanese soldiers and 17th-century European soldiers wielded their arquebuses/muskets.

In any case, the heavy windlass-drawn crossbow delivering 350-450 J is a potential option for any nongunpowder fantasy setting that wants a weapon somewhat analogous to the heavy musket: cumbersome, awkward, and slow but extreme powerful. It could theoretically pierce even 2.5mm hardened steel and padding up close with a direct hit. Needless to say such crossbows may well actually perform worse than my speculative calculations, which are based on Payne-Gallwey's famous shot with a 1,200lb weapon.

Galloglaich
2014-10-03, 09:30 AM
Brace yourselves.

Medieval naval cannon debates are coming.

I doubt it. I'm not making any claims, I'm just posting primary source evidence. Not much to argue about. I'm going to continue posting these when I have time, as there are a lot of them.

I'm going to do my best to keep the signal to noise ratio up on this, I'm not going to debate it, just provide data.

G

Carl
2014-10-03, 01:34 PM
@Incaur: First there's the issue of mass training people to use such things, could a shooter trained from an early age like English long-bowmen fire something like that? Sure. But i doubt the average soldier, even the pro one's would have anything like the strength. The kind of from youth training that actually distorts the skeletal structure is just way beyond simple bodybuilding levels of stuff.

The other question is: what was the rate of fire of those early muskets. If you don't want to tire the winding arm , (which would kill the ability to fire it without a stand), your going to need serious reduction, probably 100-200 to 1 ratio's. assuming a 1 foot long winding handle and a 2 foot draw distance that means 30-60 revolutions to **** it, i doubt with that kind of handle force required anything much about 1 revolution every 2 seconds would be reasonable, so your talking 1 to 2 minutes of winding to **** it. I know muskets are slow firing, but i think they're faster than that...

lol @ censor system...

Galloglaich
2014-10-03, 02:07 PM
@Incaur: First there's the issue of mass training people to use such things, could a shooter trained from an early age like English long-bowmen fire something like that? Sure. But i doubt the average soldier, even the pro one's would have anything like the strength. The kind of from youth training that actually distorts the skeletal structure is just way beyond simple bodybuilding levels of stuff.

The other question is: what was the rate of fire of those early muskets. If you don't want to tire the winding arm , (which would kill the ability to fire it without a stand), your going to need serious reduction, probably 100-200 to 1 ratio's. assuming a 1 foot long winding handle and a 2 foot draw distance that means 30-60 revolutions to **** it, i doubt with that kind of handle force required anything much about 1 revolution every 2 seconds would be reasonable, so your talking 1 to 2 minutes of winding to **** it. I know muskets are slow firing, but i think they're faster than that...

lol @ censor system...

Real cranequins don't seem to take that long. Leo took about 20 seconds to span this one and wasn't trying very hard to go fast (nor is he super used to it I don't think)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjYQEyC4m10

G

Carl
2014-10-03, 02:22 PM
That's a 450lb draw though, where talking bows 4 times the draw weight which dictates 4 times the reduction and thus at least 4 times the time, more if the draw distance is greater, (which is could be). I time that at 15 seconds to span it meaning you'd be looking at a minimum of a minute with the same draw distance for a 1800Lb'r.

Incanur
2014-10-03, 04:59 PM
The other question is: what was the rate of fire of those early muskets.

That's debated. Based on my reading of 16th-century sources, I suspect competent operator could load and fire a heavy musket in around 40 seconds when fresh. You also get estimate like two shots in three minutes, or 90 seconds per shot. Humphrey Barwick expected musketeers to fire once for every 80 yards advancing enemy infantry marched. It depends on marching speed but this likely amounts to at least one shot per minute.


If you don't want to tire the winding arm , (which would kill the ability to fire it without a stand), your going to need serious reduction, probably 100-200 to 1 ratio's. assuming a 1 foot long winding handle and a 2 foot draw distance that means 30-60 revolutions to **** it, i doubt with that kind of handle force required anything much about 1 revolution every 2 seconds would be reasonable, so your talking 1 to 2 minutes of winding to **** it. I know muskets are slow firing, but i think they're faster than that...

I don't know the exact power stroke of those big 18th-century steel crossbows, but Payne-Gallwey's 1,200lb crossbow was about 7 inches. He wrote that he could span a crossbow with a power stroke of 5.5in in 12 seconds with a windlass, and that it took hardly any strength at all - a child could do it or some such.

Though reconstructions have yet to confirm this, it's worth noting that composite European crossbows according to theory should be more efficient than steel ones. Composite crossbows of countless different designs and sizes saw widespread use through the 15th century and probably in the early 16th century. And there's at least one extant 15th-century bolt that weighs in at 177 grams (over 6 ounces). We don't know with any accuracy how powerful 15th-century composite crossbow were, though we do that armorers tested quality harnesses against strong crossbows and that circa 1500 Pedro Monte considered the crossbow and the couched lance the weapons most likely to threaten a knight in armor.

I can't wait to see high-quality reconstructions of 15th-century composite crossbows to see what they were really capable of.

Carl
2014-10-03, 05:37 PM
I don't know the exact power stroke of those big 18th-century steel crossbows, but Payne-Gallwey's 1,200lb crossbow was about 7 inches. He wrote that he could span a crossbow with a power stroke of 5.5in in 12 seconds with a windlass, and that it took hardly any strength at all - a child could do it or some such.

As an engineer i'm telling you this is flat out pure bull****.

For a child to do it your talking getting it down to the 1-2 pound range on the handle. Even with an 18 inch handle and a 7 inch draw you'd still need to put the thing through about 60 revolutions to do that. That means a 12 second span time needs the crank turned at 300rpm, and a shorter crank handle would only increase that. No human being is doing that.

AgentPaper
2014-10-03, 05:53 PM
As an engineer i'm telling you this is flat out pure bull****.

For a child to do it your talking getting it down to the 1-2 pound range on the handle. Even with an 18 inch handle and a 7 inch draw you'd still need to put the thing through about 60 revolutions to do that. That means a 12 second span time needs the crank turned at 300rpm, and a shorter crank handle would only increase that. No human being is doing that.

300rpm isn't that fast. That's 5 cranks per second, which if you've only got a 1-2 lb force to move against, seems fairly reasonable. Your average child today probably couldn't do it, but a child from back then used to hard work and with significantly better muscle tone could probably handle it. Though it'd probably be a lot easier to have something like 10 lbs or resistance and only need to do one crank per second.

For the record, by child I'm assuming something in the 10-12 range.

Carl
2014-10-03, 06:01 PM
300rpm isn't that fast. That's 5 cranks per second, which if you've only got a 1-2 lb force to move against, seems fairly reasonable. Your average child today probably couldn't do it, but a child from back then used to hard work and with significantly better muscle tone could probably handle it. And by child I'm assuming something in the 10-12 range.

Emphasis mine. Pro Cyclers in a sprint hit about 170rpm max. 300 rpm is ludicrous regardless of the force, i doubt a human could spin a no force, (beyond friction), crank at that speed, let alone even a low force one.


This (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVT-dNWt3I8) and this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztl7nmqhqeo) are 300 rpm.

Brother Oni
2014-10-03, 06:03 PM
As an engineer i'm telling you this is flat out pure bull****.

For a child to do it your talking getting it down to the 1-2 pound range on the handle. Even with an 18 inch handle and a 7 inch draw you'd still need to put the thing through about 60 revolutions to do that. That means a 12 second span time needs the crank turned at 300rpm, and a shorter crank handle would only increase that. No human being is doing that.

Well Tod, the guy who spanned the 450lb one earlier, shot a 1250lb one and he reckons he could span that in 30 seconds if he was more familiar with it (he took 36 seconds in the filmed attempt, although it was a windlass rather than a cranequin): link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEOeZTV9wiA).
Edit: it took ~8 revolutions and 9 seconds to just span it, with the remaining ~27 seconds to remove and setup the windlass.

As for a child, it depends on the age. My 6 year old can just about lift 12lbs using both hands and Tod mentions his 7 year old daughter can span a 900lb crossbow using the appropriate tool.

As for spanning speed, wouldn't that depend on the gear ratio of the cranequin/windlass? Todd spanned the 450lb one with a 96:1 cranequin - wouldn't more efficient ratios be possible?


For the record, by child I'm assuming something in the 10-12 range.

My 10 year old daughter can lift ~20lbs if that's any help.

Carl
2014-10-03, 06:25 PM
As for spanning speed, wouldn't that depend on the gear ratio of the crannequin/windlass? Todd spanned the 450lb one with a 96:1 crannequin - wouldn't more efficient ratios be possible?

Gahhh, gonna have to do a piece on Torque.

Torque is the force of anything rotating. In this case i'm going to take the simple example of an old style ungeared rope reel.

The Rope winds onto a cylinder a half a foot in diameter and the crank driving it is 1 foot long.

Torque from a force applied to a rotating object is T=RF where F is the force applied and R is the radius at which it occurs.

So in our case to determine how much torque is produced we can say that R=1.

Lets assume the cranking force is 1 Lb. That means total Torque produced is 1 foot pound.


Now to determine the force on the rope we reverse the equation using the radius of the spool. Which is 0.5. This gives us a rope pulling force of 2Lb.

But how much rope is pulled in you ask? Well in one revolution it's going to be equal to the circumference of the spool. Which is determined by 2xPiexR. In this case that means it pulls in Pie feet of rope. But wait, how far did the end of the crank move your wondering? Same formula. It moved 2Pie feet.

So as you can see the crank length acts as additional reduction. You can't change it and maintain the same force on the crank without altering the torque, and thus the gearing of the system.



What this means for crossbows is that if you know the draw force of the crossbow, the power stroke length of the crossbow, the length of the crank handle, and the desired or actual force on the crank handle you can determine the required revolutions. All force measurements must be in the same units as each other, and all distance measurements must be in the same units as each other too.


The way to do it is simple:

First divide the draw force by the crank force. Then multiply the draw distance by this number. hen divide that by 2xPie. The finally divide by the crank length.



Incidentally 30 seconds doesn't sound totally unreasonable if it's only a 7 inch power stroke, even at modest RPM's. For a 30rpm crank speed it equates to about 5Lb's crank force.

AgentPaper
2014-10-03, 06:28 PM
Emphasis mine. Pro Cyclers in a sprint hit about 170rpm max. 300 rpm is ludicrous regardless of the force, i doubt a human could spin a no force, (beyond friction), crank at that speed, let alone even a low force one.


This (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVT-dNWt3I8) and this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztl7nmqhqeo) are 300 rpm.

Sure, but that's with much more than 1-2lbs of force for the cyclers, plus a fairly long crank. For reference, I have a 100-ft measuring tape that winds up using a small crank about 1.5 inches long. That's probably less than a lb of resistance, but I can wind it at least 5 times a second without much trouble. If the crank on the crossbow is significant;y longer than that, then yeah, doing that at 300rpm isn't really possible, but then you can handle a lot more than 1-2lb of force.

Also worth mentioning is that these things usually have two cranks (well, one crank with two sides), so you can use both hands. With that in mind, 10lbs of resistance should be fairly simple for even a young child who does farm work most days. I don't know the math on that, but assuming it scales appropriately, then you'd only need to wind it at 30rpm or once every 2 seconds.

Carl
2014-10-03, 06:35 PM
Sure, but that's with much more than 1-2lbs of force for the cyclers, plus a fairly long crank. For reference, I have a 100-ft measuring tape that winds up using a small crank about 1.5 inches long. That's probably less than a lb of resistance, but I can wind it at least 5 times a second without much trouble. If the crank on the crossbow is significant;y longer than that, then yeah, doing that at 300rpm isn't really possible, but then you can handle a lot more than 1-2lb of force.

I'd be shocked if an actual tackometer showed you doing more than 200rpm on your tape measure but that's besides the point here. As i noted above, you can't use a handle that small without drastically increasing the force you have to apply or the number of revolutions you have to make. For dropping from an 18 crank toa 1.5" crank your talking multiply one of those 12 times.


Also worth mentioning is that these things usually have two cranks (well, one crank with two sides), so you can use both hands. With that in mind, 10lbs of resistance should be fairly simple for even a young child who does farm work most days. I don't know the math on that, but assuming it scales appropriately, then you'd only need to wind it at 30rpm or once every 2 seconds.

Outside of some very exotic designs that i don't think they had back then, one crank or two only effects how many arms you can have in, but it doesn't make each revolution count for two for reduction purposes, and double sides designs are very hard to crank fast unless fastened down as a rule, they tend to lose a lot of power rocking side to side.

I think it's also important to be clear, when you said child i'm thinking 5-8 year olds who can lift surprising amounts, but more than a couple of pounds for a half a minute or more? Not a chance IMO.

Now go upto 9+ i agree a 5-10lb weight's not impossible.

Brother Oni
2014-10-03, 06:59 PM
Incidentally 30 seconds doesn't sound totally unreasonable if it's only a 7 inch power stroke, even at modest RPM's. For a 30rpm crank speed it equates to about 5Lb's crank force.

Note that in my edit, Tod was managing ~53rpm with that windlass (8 revolutions in 9 seconds). Most of the time is spent attaching and removing the windlass safely.



I think it's also important to be clear, when you said child i'm thinking 5-8 year olds who can lift surprising amounts, but more than a couple of pounds for a half a minute or more? Not a chance IMO.

Now go upto 9+ i agree a 5-10lb weight's not impossible.

Pushing around 5lbs for half a minute? Perfectly possible for standard 5-8 year old, it's just motivating them to do it. As I said in my last post, Tod's 7-year old daughter can span a 900lb crossbow.

I think you're seriously underestimating what a child can do. There's a big difference between what they can physically exert and what they can be motivated to exert.

Carl
2014-10-03, 08:35 PM
Note that in my edit, Tod was managing ~53rpm with that windlass (8 revolutions in 9 seconds). Most of the time is spent attaching and removing the windlass safely.

Bear in mind he says it's a 90 odd to 1 reduction ratio, but he doesn't say if that includes the crank handle factor. If it doesn't the actual force required is probably no more than a couple of pounds. 60rpm isn't unbelievable for that, 30rpm was my chosen minimum rate for noticeably higher forces, with the 4.5Lb's an actual 90 odd to 1 ratio would actually produce being at the very lower limit of that.


Pushing around 5lbs for half a minute? Perfectly possible for standard 5-8 year old, it's just motivating them to do it. As I said in my last post, Tod's 7-year old daughter can span a 900lb crossbow.

I think you're seriously underestimating what a child can do. There's a big difference between what they can physically exert and what they can be motivated to exert.

I don't want to give out too many IRL detail's here so all i'll speciiclly say is that i actually have experiance with children in physichial; activities their motivaited to do in the age ranges of 3 up.

Could a young child turn a handle with 5 or 10lb's of force on it? Sure. I mean with the size of handle in that video it would need to be secured somehow because their arms are nowhere near long enough to securely hold the bow and turn the crank, the end of the crank would be too far away for any effective grip when it's on the other side of the crossbow from them.

Could they do that for a half a minute or a minute? Yeah i believe so.

Could they do it easily, (i.e. not tired after one or two goes)? Almost certainly not. Exceptions do exist amongst those who are more physically mature for their age than the average, 8+ can absolutely do that kind of thing for protracted periods in my experience.

Also a 900Lb bow is a big drop from 12000 odd Lb's, your talking a one-third drop in crank force for the same crank, and if the child where to sue an even higher geared crank than an adult would it would become even easier. But the claim i originally "called" on was talking about a child spanning a 1200Lb'r in 12 seconds as easily as an adult. A crank that would allow that would have to be very light force wise to avoid tiring the child, and turning that crank in 12 seconds, nah not gonna happen.

AgentPaper
2014-10-03, 08:56 PM
But the claim i originally "called" on was talking about a child spanning a 1200Lb'r in 12 seconds as easily as an adult. A crank that would allow that would have to be very light force wise to avoid tiring the child, and turning that crank in 12 seconds, nah not gonna happen.

The claim was simple that "a child could do it", not that they could do it as easily as an adult, or even as quickly for that matter.

Roxxy
2014-10-03, 09:40 PM
I'm working on a modern tech fantasy military, and I want to hear how it sounds. The nation it serves has a large coastline, island territories, several overseas military commitments, and the need to be able to carry out humanitarian interventions. I'm thinking of having a two branch structure. The army is the defensive branch, and the navy is the strategic branch.

The army is for protecting the homeland. It is not for overseas commitments. It operates the standard array of units one would expect of a modern army, plus an air force and a coast guard. The army uses as many reserves as possible, rather than relying on active troops, and is tasked with any disaster relief operations necessary. It hasn't seen combat in a long time, and it doesn't have much prestige. This is largely because nobody is likely to invade this country in the foreseeable future, so the army hasn't really been seen as a priority in a while. In the event of invasion, it would enact conscription, which is currently not practiced but remains legal in emergency situations.

The navy is tasked with carrying out the strategic interests of the nation, ensuring global security, and protecting territorial waters. This means that it is responsible for carrying out overseas military commitments and humanitarian interventions. To do this, it has a surface fleet complete with three carrier battle groups (one for home and two for abroad), a modest submarine force, a marine corps, and an aid corps. The marines are very well trained and armed, and there are more active duty combat troops in the marine corps than in the army. They handle the ground component of overseas military commitments and interventions. Basically, if ground troops are needed overseas, they are going to be marines. The aid corps is the portion of the navy that handles the humanitarian side of things. Handing out aid and working to stabilize war torn regions is a very different task than waging war. The aid corps is basically the hearts and minds section, and is composed of civilian auxiliaries, not sailors. They operate with naval police for protection, but heavily armed troops are seen as a detriment to waging peace. The marines are kept close just in case, but they only show up when things go down. The idea is that occupation is done with helpful nice people, not armed warriors marching down the streets, but the warriors will show up if some warlord wants to go after the helpful nice people. In contrast to the army, the navy is considered a vital force, and it sees combat with some frequency. It is seen as a world class force, and has a lot more funding than the army does.

In the event that a third world dictator needed to get toppled or something, could this approach (marines and naval aviation stamp out the regime, civilian auxiliaries handle the rebuilding of the country while the marines stay out of sight as much as possible but ready to intervene if necessary) work? Can the idea of having one force for home and one for abroad work?

Incanur
2014-10-03, 11:33 PM
Just to clarify, Payne-Gallwey wrote that "with a windlass a boy could bend the thickest of steel bows." This claim is hardly precise and may well be exaggerated. And while Payne-Gallwey's text remains a key source, he got plenty wrong. Up into the early 15th century at least, using military crossbows required strength. A crossbower benefited as much from strength as archer, spanning with belt hooks and other systems that demanded might. Payne-Gallwey asserted that this all changed with windlasses, cranequins, and steel bows. Maybe, but it's also conceivable that the heavier weapons had winders made so only strong shooters could use them or at least stronger folks could wind faster. And gaffles or goat's-foot levers, which remained common throughout the 16th century, certainly required strength to span heavy bows.

As mentioned previously, it's unlikely steel bows led to an increase in performance over horn-and-sinew composites. To the contrary, steel bows probably shot slower because of lower efficiency. And, while bulkier, composite bows are much lighter and thus likely more effective for extremely heavy draw-weight bows. (See this thread (http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=7516&page=9&pp=30) for various pictures of composite crossbows, some of them quite large.) I suspect steel bows partially replaced composite ones primarily because of easier maintenance and lower cost. Composite bows required specific skills to manufacture, and as hardened steel become more common it made economic sense to go with steel bows. And composite bows could have issues with moisture and whatnot, while steel bows could be kept strung indefinitely without losing strength and only need protection from rust, though they could become brittle in very cold weather.

The whole trajectory of trajectory of crossbow development confounds any simplistic narrative of technological progress. Ancient Chinese crossbows had intricate and compact trigger systems, long power strokes like 21st-century crossbows, and grid sights. On the other hand they were spanned with both hands and feet, either standing or sitting, apparently without any mechanical aid. Winders of some sort apparently existed, but weren't too common. Then crossbows supposedly continued to improve over the ensuing centuries, and in 11th-century China you had the claim that crossbowers should operate in separate units that practiced rotating volleys, and that the crossbow was the best weapon even at the distance of five feet. Yet crossbows didn't save China from Mongol conquest, and afterward you have a source marveling at ancient bronze crossbow triggers in relation to contemporary ones made of antler. So in at least some respects crossbow technology declined after the Mongol conquest, possibly in part because of firearm development. But a group of northern barbarians - this time the Manchus - end up conquering China *again*, employing some gunpowder weapons but relying significantly on bows and arrows no so different from those used over the last thousand years or so. (The Manchu bow was particularly awesome as shooting heavy arrows.)

In Europe you have overflowing praise for the power of the crossbow in the 11th century, its dominance in the following centuries, and then it's partial fall from grace in relation to the English bow - which really wasn't that great technically - in the 14th and 15th centuries. Circa 1500 crossbows - mainly composite according to period art - happily coexist with guns and notably appear in the hands of mounted soldiers. As late as the mid 16th-century, an experienced French commander - Raimond de Fourquevaux - valued the crossbow over the gun, though at the same time he recognized the gun's practical dominance. It's unclear whether the French crossbows of the early 16th-century used composite or steel bows, and how they were spanned.

Brother Oni
2014-10-04, 02:55 AM
Bear in mind he says it's a 90 odd to 1 reduction ratio, but he doesn't say if that includes the crank handle factor. If it doesn't the actual force required is probably no more than a couple of pounds. 60rpm isn't unbelievable for that, 30rpm was my chosen minimum rate for noticeably higher forces, with the 4.5Lb's an actual 90 odd to 1 ratio would actually produce being at the very lower limit of that.

Ah we're talking about different spanning mechanisms.

In the video that Galloglaich linked (this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjYQEyC4m10)), he spans it in ~15 seconds taking ~15.5 revolutions and this is the cranequin with the 96:1 gear ratio.

In the video I linked (this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEOeZTV9wiA)), he spans it in ~9 seconds taking 8 revolutions, but he doesn't state the gear ratio of the windlass. He does say it's hard work though, but given that's a 1250lb draw crossbow, I'm not surprised.


I'm working on a modern tech fantasy military, and I want to hear how it sounds. The nation it serves has a large coastline, island territories, several overseas military commitments, and the need to be able to carry out humanitarian interventions. I'm thinking of having a two branch structure. The army is the defensive branch, and the navy is the strategic branch.
[snip]
In the event that a third world dictator needed to get toppled or something, could this approach (marines and naval aviation stamp out the regime, civilian auxiliaries handle the rebuilding of the country while the marines stay out of sight as much as possible but ready to intervene if necessary) work? Can the idea of having one force for home and one for abroad work?

How large is the country and how rich is it? That would dictate the size of its standing military.

I see no reason why your proposed structure wouldn't work - I believe it's how the US National Guard exist.


Ancient Chinese crossbows had intricate and compact trigger systems, long power strokes like 21st-century crossbows, and grid sights. On the other hand they were spanned with both hands and feet, either standing or sitting, apparently without any mechanical aid. Winders of some sort apparently existed, but weren't too common. Then crossbows supposedly continued to improve over the ensuing centuries, and in 11th-century China you had the claim that crossbowers should operate in separate units that practiced rotating volleys, and that the crossbow was the best weapon even at the distance of five feet.


You're probably well aware of this, but with a longer power stroke, you don't need such a high draw weight. Chinese crossbows didn't get that much higher poundage than their bows.

Carl
2014-10-04, 04:20 AM
Not got time to check that one brother oni, work soon, will have a look later.

@Incaur: Thanks for the specific quote.

@Agent Paper: Prior to the quote from incaur i was working under the assumption of how the same phrase would be applied in my part of the world. If the task would tire a child but not an adult you wouldn't claim "even a child could do it". The actual phrasing is more ambiguous than that however.

@Roxxy: I'll get back to you later.

Storm Bringer
2014-10-04, 04:31 AM
I'm working on a modern tech fantasy military, and I want to hear how it sounds. The nation it serves has a large coastline, island territories, several overseas military commitments, and the need to be able to carry out humanitarian interventions. I'm thinking of having a two branch structure. The army is the defensive branch, and the navy is the strategic branch.

The army is for protecting the homeland. It is not for overseas commitments. It operates the standard array of units one would expect of a modern army, plus an air force and a coast guard. The army uses as many reserves as possible, rather than relying on active troops, and is tasked with any disaster relief operations necessary. It hasn't seen combat in a long time, and it doesn't have much prestige. This is largely because nobody is likely to invade this country in the foreseeable future, so the army hasn't really been seen as a priority in a while. In the event of invasion, it would enact conscription, which is currently not practiced but remains legal in emergency situations.

The navy is tasked with carrying out the strategic interests of the nation, ensuring global security, and protecting territorial waters. This means that it is responsible for carrying out overseas military commitments and humanitarian interventions. To do this, it has a surface fleet complete with three carrier battle groups (one for home and two for abroad), a modest submarine force, a marine corps, and an aid corps. The marines are very well trained and armed, and there are more active duty combat troops in the marine corps than in the army. They handle the ground component of overseas military commitments and interventions. Basically, if ground troops are needed overseas, they are going to be marines. The aid corps is the portion of the navy that handles the humanitarian side of things. Handing out aid and working to stabilize war torn regions is a very different task than waging war. The aid corps is basically the hearts and minds section, and is composed of civilian auxiliaries, not sailors. They operate with naval police for protection, but heavily armed troops are seen as a detriment to waging peace. The marines are kept close just in case, but they only show up when things go down. The idea is that occupation is done with helpful nice people, not armed warriors marching down the streets, but the warriors will show up if some warlord wants to go after the helpful nice people. In contrast to the army, the navy is considered a vital force, and it sees combat with some frequency. It is seen as a world class force, and has a lot more funding than the army does.

In the event that a third world dictator needed to get toppled or something, could this approach (marines and naval aviation stamp out the regime, civilian auxiliaries handle the rebuilding of the country while the marines stay out of sight as much as possible but ready to intervene if necessary) work? Can the idea of having one force for home and one for abroad work?

yes, it could work, but I'd propose having a large standing air force as well. it fits with the nations aims for global reach, and a large military Airlift capability would be a godsend on humanitarian missions, not to mention supporting the Fleet abroad.

Also, I'd expect it to have acquired bases (or basing rights) at several strategic locations (like the UK did with the Falkland's, Singapore, etc, or the American in Kuwait), which would be needed to support the fleet away form home waters. the need to garrison and protect these bases would help the marines justify their extra size and abilities.

Thiel
2014-10-04, 05:18 AM
To do this, it has a surface fleet complete with three carrier battle groups (one for home and two for abroad), a modest submarine force, a marine corps, and an aid corps.
As a rule of thumb you need three ships in order to have one on permanent station overseas. One on station, one in refit and one in transit/working up. It varies somewhat from type to type but with something as complex as an aircraft carrier that just about as good as it's going to get. With lighter units you can do various tricks such as changing crew while the ship is on station.

SiuiS
2014-10-04, 05:24 AM
My 10 year old daughter can lift ~20lbs if that's any help.

How do you mean, lift? Cuz my friends and I were toting forty and fifty kinds weights at that point for chores and backpacks in the 15-40# range. I hadn't been used to said chores, I changed custody at 10.

AgentPaper
2014-10-04, 05:31 AM
I'd be shocked if an actual tackometer showed you doing more than 200rpm on your tape measure...

As you mentioned, mostly irrelevant now, but I ended up testing this out and while I couldn't count out 300 revs over a minute (I can't count 3 digit numbers that fast), I did count out 25 revs over 5 seconds a few times in a row, without needing to do anything special. The crank is 1.5 inches long in case that matters, and adding a pound or two of resistance likely wouldn't change much, since it's mostly just hard to move my hand around that fast.

Incanur
2014-10-04, 05:57 AM
You're probably well aware of this, but with a longer power stroke, you don't need such a high draw weight. Chinese crossbows didn't get that much higher poundage than their bows.

According to surviving sources (http://historum.com/asian-history/69030-han-dynasty-crossbow.html), 300-400lbs was common.

Brother Oni
2014-10-04, 07:38 AM
How do you mean, lift? Cuz my friends and I were toting forty and fifty kinds weights at that point for chores and backpacks in the 15-40# range. I hadn't been used to said chores, I changed custody at 10.

If I give her a 10kg bag of rice to carry, she can follow me around the warehouse with it. I haven't started trying to assess her maximum rep if that's what you mean, plus her backpack is around the 10kg range.


According to surviving sources (http://historum.com/asian-history/69030-han-dynasty-crossbow.html), 300-400lbs was common.

Hmmm, reading more of that source indicates that spanning was done from a sitting position, so it would be a kind of 'leg press' motion with the arms to help.

Thanks for that link, as it gives a nice ballpark figure of 6 stone (石) for a Han era crossbow. As you've mentioned that's about 400lbs: 6 stone = 720 catties or jin (斤), 1 jin was ~250g in the Han era (http://chinesecoins.lyq.dk/weights.html), so 180kg = 396lbs, which is just about the limit for spanning with a belt hook or other simple mechanical aid for western crossbows.

I wonder if the difference in draw length made a significant difference in spanning difficulty. My instinct says yes as the same weight moved over a longer distance means more work/effort required.

Matthew
2014-10-04, 08:32 AM
Going back to page 1 and the subject of wearing armour whilst on the march ...

... I recall reading in the Itinerarium Peregrinorum that the soldiers in Frederick Barbarossa's army complained bitterly about having to march "under arms" whilst in enemy territory. That tells us two things, it was advisable to march in armour when danger threatened, and soldiers did not like to march in their armour. Going back to the Roman example, there is an incident where Caesar's legions are caught unarmoured by the Gauls and half have to fight them off whilst the rest get equipped (this is from memory). In this case they were setting up camp, I think, but worth checking out if you have the time.

With regard to swimming in armour, it is possible for very short periods, but it is very tiring and problematic, increasingly so as the panoply gets more all encompassing and/or heavier, assuming the individual in question can swim in the first place. Joinville recounts a knight jumping from a galley to a smaller boat and missing, he disappeared beneath the sea and presumably drowned.

Galloglaich
2014-10-04, 10:02 AM
I think the steel prod crossbows, which seem to have first appeared in Burgundy were considered better, and they were easier to manufacture (not to say easy, but easier) they seem to have come out of Flanders. The Swiss said they were better anyway. The composite prod weapons remained in use in areas subject to extreme cold, such as in the Baltic, in the Tyrol, and in Switzerland. Composite prod were subject to problems from moisture, but performed better than the steel prod in the severe cold, according to Swiss and Teutonic Order sources they actually got more efficient when it was colder, whereas the steel prod weapons could snap (which could be devastating to the marksman and / or people around him).

Crossbows were definitely used in the open field and show up in the art across Europe in major battles throughout the 14th-15th Centuries, and a bit into the 16th, both in the hands of cavalry and infantry. Cavalry scouts carried them as did lancers (mainly for use as backup especially against light cavalry) and each "lance" formation typically had at least one mounted crossbowman with them. The town militias were principally made up of crossbowmen and these were only very gradually replaced with gunners, often marksmen were deployed in 'forlorn hope' skirmisher formations with a crossbow banner as a mixture of hand-gunners and crossbowmen. They were also mixed in with the main infantry formations much in the way pikemen and arquebusiers were later.

Spanning did not seem to be a problem and one of the advantages of the crossbow was that it required a little less strength to span and importantly - to hold at ready, than a self-bow did. The spanning devices, particularly the cranequin, were sophisticated and expensive in their own right. Crossbows seem to have been considered the most accurate, longest ranged and hardest-hitting weapon on the battlefield until the musket began to fill that niche in the 16th Century. In the art from the 1470's era Swiss chronicles you see crossbows being used alongside both the short barreled proto-arquebus and longer barreled firearms like muskets.

I think the decline of the weapon had more to do with cost and specialized nature of manufacturing (which left it in a solid niche as a hunting weapon for nobles into the 18th Century) not just of the weapon but also the ammunition (including incendiary, fowling, color-marking and explosive bolts) and arguably the wider range of skills required to use it, which was less amenable to rapid training than the guns were. One of the persistent myths to come out of the legendary status of the longbow was the idea that crossbowmen could be more easily trained, actually this wasn't the case when it came to the more powerful 'military grade' weapons. The shooters of the cranequin, windlass or even goat-foot spanned weapons were specialists paid almost as much as lancers (especially if they were mounted), whereas the simpler types of crossbows were issued to relatively untrained rural militia. They look similar but are really two different animals altogether.

A mistake spanning an 800 or 1000 lb draw weapon could be deadly, the strings and the composite prods in particular required special care in the field to keep them from being degraded, and the spanning process required both strength and agility born of practice to do efficiently.

G

Incanur
2014-10-04, 11:58 AM
I think the steel prod crossbows, which seem to have first appeared in Burgundy were considered better, and they were easier to manufacture (not to say easy, but easier) they seem to have come out of Flanders. The Swiss said they were better anyway.

I'd love to see a source specifically contrasting steel prods with composite ones. From what I recall Maximilian was initially mistrustful of steel crossbows but also eventually used them effectively. In terms of efficiency, composite crossbow would have had to have been woefully inferior to the best composite bows to perform worse than steel. The only modern test (https://web.archive.org/web/20110226224030/http://www.historiavivens1300.at/biblio/beschuss/beschuss1-e.htm) of European-style composite crossbows I know of did produce worse performance than steel, but I suspect the makers didn't really know what they were doing (i.e. they weren't as skilled as the best historical composite crossbow manufacturers). Of course, the Swiss also could have preferred steel crossbows because of their known advantages: easier maintenance, better durability, more compact, etc. A heavy steel crossbow obviously hits plenty hard even if it was not terribly efficient.


Crossbows were definitely used in the open field and show up in the art across Europe in major battles throughout the 14th-15th Centuries, and a bit into the 16th, both in the hands of cavalry and infantry. Cavalry scouts carried them as did lancers (mainly for use as backup especially against light cavalry) and each "lance" formation typically had at least one mounted crossbowman with them.

Yep! And from what I've seen, the Germanic sources circa 1500 - such as Paul Dolnstein's sketchbook - show what look like composite crossbows, especially in the hands of cavalry.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Hausbuch_Wolfegg_21v_22r_Scharfrennen.jpg/800px-Hausbuch_Wolfegg_21v_22r_Scharfrennen.jpg

http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk50/Dstaberg/Dolnstein/Dolnstein_Light_horse2.jpg

The French continued to field crossbowers in large numbers through the first quarter of 16th century. Blaise de Monluc recounted commanding crossbowers and the effective volleys they gave, though he seems to have thought guns superior. Raimond de Fourquevaux as late as 1548 argued that crossbows were better than guns. Unfortunately, neither Monluc nor Fourquevaux went into any technical details about crossbow prod material or spanning method. The only hint about French crossbows is that Monluc wrote that he had his crossbowers hold their crossbows in their left hands after they ran out of bolts to use as makeshift shields when fighting with the sword. Doing this with a heavy steel crossbow would be awkward, so I suspect early 16th-century French crossbows were either composite or relatively light steel models. The bigger reconstruction in the test linked above had a draw weight of 616lbs with 9in power stroke and only weighed 6.6lbs itself. Payne-Gallwey's 1,200lb crossbow with a 7in power stroke weighed 18lbs itself.


Spanning did not seem to be a problem and one of the advantages of the crossbow was that it required a little less strength to span and importantly - to hold at ready, than a self-bow did.

As noted above, this depended on the spanning method. Gutierre Díez de Games's account (http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/gamez_evans.pdf) of crossbows bent from the waist presents the weapon as requiring great strength. He also notably depicted Spanish and French crossbowers armed with such crossbows holding their own against and even defeating English archers in naval and coastal encounters.


I think the decline of the weapon had more to do with cost and specialized nature of manufacturing (which left it in a solid niche as a hunting weapon for nobles into the 18th Century) not just of the weapon but also the ammunition (including incendiary, fowling, color-marking and explosive bolts) and arguably the wider range of skills required to use it, which was less amenable to rapid training than the guns were. One of the persistent myths to come out of the legendary status of the longbow was the idea that crossbowmen could be more easily trained, actually this wasn't the case when it came to the more powerful 'military grade' weapons. The shooters of the cranequin, windlass or even goat-foot spanned weapons were specialists paid almost as much as lancers (especially if they were mounted), whereas the simpler types of crossbows were issued to relatively untrained rural militia. They look similar but are really two different animals altogether.

Yes, though it's also worth noting that many 16th-century military writers did not consider effective gunners easy to train and in fact wrote exactly the opposite. Fourquevaux complained that many if not most of the gunners of his time used the weapon poorly, Humphrey Barwick and Sir John Smythe emphasized the importance of drilling gunners extensively, etc.

Roxxy
2014-10-04, 01:49 PM
How large is the country and how rich is it? That would dictate the size of its standing military.

I see no reason why your proposed structure wouldn't work - I believe it's how the US National Guard exist.About 100 million population, no land borders. Ranks in the top ten in terms of economy. Imagine a country like Australia, but significantly wetter and able to support a much higher population. The army tends to get pushed to the wayside in favor of the navy, since nobody sees an invasion as realistic, so the navy is bigger both in terms of personnel and funding. National guard could be a good comparison, since, aside from units that have to be active to function (such as garrisons and search and rescue, and a significant portion of the coast guard), the army much prefers reserves over active troops. Basically, the nation has a massive and very capable navy, but has made the trade off of having a small army so that a lot of money can be spent on social programs.


yes, it could work, but I'd propose having a large standing air force as well. it fits with the nations aims for global reach, and a large military Airlift capability would be a godsend on humanitarian missions, not to mention supporting the Fleet abroad.THe structure is Army at home, Navy abroad, so I would imagine that the Navy would form a large strategic air arm that basically acts like an air force.


Also, I'd expect it to have acquired bases (or basing rights) at several strategic locations (like the UK did with the Falkland's, Singapore, etc, or the American in Kuwait), which would be needed to support the fleet away form home waters. the need to garrison and protect these bases would help the marines justify their extra size and abilities.Yes, they do have these. Another justification for the size of the marines is that they are undertaking a lot of roles that, in other countries, would fall to the army. The marines have a ton of overseas garrisons, plus rapid reaction forces, plus the troops needed for any intervention that is undertaken, and the army isn't assigning troops to any of these tasks. They are staying at home as a purely defensive/disaster relief force. With defense against invasion not being taken seriously, the army has fallen to a size smaller than the marine corps.


As a rule of thumb you need three ships in order to have one on permanent station overseas. One on station, one in refit and one in transit/working up. It varies somewhat from type to type but with something as complex as an aircraft carrier that just about as good as it's going to get. With lighter units you can do various tricks such as changing crew while the ship is on station.Hmm. Maybe go for carriers about half the size of a Nimitz, and build something like a dozen, while using land based aviation for self defense so the carriers can focus on missions abroad?

Lilapop
2014-10-04, 08:06 PM
[...] often marksmen were deployed in 'forlorn hope' skirmisher formations with a crossbow banner as a mixture of hand-gunners and crossbowmen.
I remember that term being used for units that will most probably suffer pretty high losses, mostly twohanded swords breaking up pike blocks. Doesn't really match up with ranged weaponry. Is there more to it than I knew?
Oh, and I'm not sure what to think of this translation. Haufe, or the modern form Haufen, literally means heap, and is often used referring to a group of people (or anything else that isn't physically stackable in normal use) the same way as the english "bunch".


In the art from the 1470's era Swiss chronicles you see crossbows being used alongside both the short barreled proto-arquebus and longer barreled firearms like muskets.
"Alongside" meaning in the same formation, or just on the same battlefield?

Carl
2014-10-04, 09:19 PM
@Roxxy:

First reducing a ships size rarely produces a proportional reduction in capabilities. In fact it's often a greater reduction. This is because several things, notably the powerplant don't scale up or down in proportion to size. A particular factor for Carriers is that the escort ship requirements don;t decrease overmuch which would require a significant uptick in tonnage there, (not necessarily a bad thing given how impotent Carriers have proven to be in exercises against each other).


The second bigger issue is that the minimum amount of power you need to be able project in military terms is determined by the minimum threat level your planning department says you have to handle. It's no use having the numbers to run all over the globe if you lack the ability to concentrate enough raw force to do any good.

In that respect you also really have to consider the geopolitical situation. How secure are their oversee's bases. If their secure enough and well distributed enough you just don't need carriers for airpower projection against land based targets. Their still important in naval combat for the utterly vital AWACS role and for the amount of aircraft they can contribute to the ASW role. But if they lose their primary strike requirements in terms of mission profile they start to move strongly towards the white elephant end of the spectrum.

rs2excelsior
2014-10-04, 09:57 PM
The army is for protecting the homeland. It is not for overseas commitments. It operates the standard array of units one would expect of a modern army, plus an air force and a coast guard. [...]

The navy is tasked with carrying out the strategic interests of the nation, ensuring global security, and protecting territorial waters. This means that it is responsible for carrying out overseas military commitments and humanitarian interventions. To do this, it has a surface fleet complete with three carrier battle groups (one for home and two for abroad), a modest submarine force, a marine corps, and an aid corps. [...]


THe structure is Army at home, Navy abroad, so I would imagine that the Navy would form a large strategic air arm that basically acts like an air force.

Keep in mind that the trend has been in the opposite direction in modern militaries. Both the USAF and the RAF began as branches of the army of their respective nations (they were originally the US Army Air Corps and the Royal Flying Corps, respectively). As airpower developed in both tactical and strategic terms in the interwar years, both formations split off into their own independent branches. A lot of this, to the best of my understanding, was the idea that the people best equipped to handle an air war are those who do nothing BUT handle the air war, rather than splitting the attention of officers who were trained in and are experienced with ground warfare anyhow. So I would recommend a separate strategic/tactical land based air force, as well as a separate coast guard.

Splitting off to just US military (because that's what I'm familiar with), the US Marine Corps is technically a part of the US Navy, the chains of command are largely separated. They both fall under the supervision of the Secretary of the Navy, but from there the Chief of Naval Operations controls the USN, while the Commandant of the Marine Corps controls the USMC. That being said, in combat conditions there is usually an officer in charge of all forces in an area, including perhaps those of a different branch. Modern combat operations get complicated that way.

Now, that's not to say all US aircraft are under the command of the USAF. All four major branches actually have pilots: the Navy has their carrier-based strike and transport aircraft; the Marines operate their own strike craft, helicopters, and transports; and the Army operates helicopters and I think they might have some transports as well. And yes, the USMC does operate its own tactical support fighters, but they're the exception--the Marines are supposed to be able to operate independently, far from support and with relatively small forces, so it makes sense that they would have their own planes to augment whatever Naval airpower might be available, rather than relying on Air Force bases which may not be available.


I remember that term being used for units that will most probably suffer pretty high losses, mostly twohanded swords breaking up pike blocks. Doesn't really match up with ranged weaponry. Is there more to it than I knew?

The context in which I've heard that term was in the Napoleonic wars. It was a relatively small, usually elite force sent to storm a part of a fortification and open the way for the main body. And yes, they generally took heavy casualties.

Raum
2014-10-04, 10:21 PM
I remember that term being used for units that will most probably suffer pretty high losses, mostly twohanded swords breaking up pike blocks. Doesn't really match up with ranged weaponry. Is there more to it than I knew?
It was used to describe the leading assault troops during the Napoleonic era. The company put together to be first into the breach of a fortification - often volunteers expecting immediate promotion. If they lived.

Flame of Anor
2014-10-04, 11:11 PM
It was used to describe the leading assault troops during the Napoleonic era. The company put together to be first into the breach of a fortification - often volunteers expecting immediate promotion. If they lived.

That's certainly the sense in which I've seen it used.


Oh, and I'm not sure what to think of this translation. Haufe, or the modern form Haufen, literally means heap, and is often used referring to a group of people (or anything else that isn't physically stackable in normal use) the same way as the english "bunch".

Well, it is a bad translation--but that's because it's not really a translation at all. It's just a phonetic rendering. A misleading phonetic rendering, but it's unarguably the standard term.

Galloglaich
2014-10-04, 11:40 PM
It was used to describe the leading assault troops during the Napoleonic era. The company put together to be first into the breach of a fortification - often volunteers expecting immediate promotion. If they lived.

The medieval context isn't nearly that grim, it just means a smaller formation which does not hope to expect to engage the main enemy column alone (unless it is routed), but can maneuver around and skirmish and attack weak spots, retreating back to the protection of the main column if necessary when under pressure. They had some which were heavy infantry (halberdiers or two-handed swordsmen, usually under a banner with crossed axes) and some which were marksmen (typically under a crossbow banner). Sometimes their job was to protect standards, cannon, or VIP's, other times they were just roaming around, on the flanks of and ahead of the main formations and engaging opportunistically.

It was a pretty standard strategy and it's well documented.

And yes I mean crossbowmen mixed together with gunners of various types, not just in the Swiss chronicles but also in the Wolfegg manuscript and many others of the same (late Medieval) era.

G

Broken Crown
2014-10-04, 11:54 PM
Keep in mind that the trend has been in the opposite direction in modern militaries. Both the USAF and the RAF began as branches of the army of their respective nations

The Royal Naval Air Service would beg to differ: The RAF was created by amalgamating the RFC and RNAS. True, the RNAS did branch off from the Royal Flying Corps in 1914, but the RFC itself was created in 1912 from the early air elements of both the Army and the Navy.

SiuiS
2014-10-05, 04:11 AM
If I give her a 10kg bag of rice to carry, she can follow me around the warehouse with it. I haven't started trying to assess her maximum rep if that's what you mean, plus her backpack is around the 10kg range.

Ah, I thought you were arguing based on an estimated upper range. My faux pas.

Brother Oni
2014-10-05, 04:53 AM
Ah, I thought you were arguing based on an estimated upper range. My faux pas.

Not a problem, it was just that Carl seemed to be underestimating the abilities of a child to heft a load about and I've got anecdotal evidence of what my own children can do.

I think my wife would be very unhappy if I started teaching my daughter how to clean and press (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_and_press). :smalltongue:

Edit: I mentioned it to the missus and the glare she gave me pretty much said it all...

Yora
2014-10-05, 06:15 AM
Does anyone know the origin or background of this ludicrous fantasy sword?

http://www.bladerealms.com/Kit-Rae/Kilgorin-Sword_of_Darkness.jpg

I've come across this atrocity countless times since first coming to the internet and it seems to have established itself as the archetypical "kool" fantasy sword. Apparently it's called Kilgorin Sword of Darkness, but who designed it and for what purpose?

Mr. Mask
2014-10-05, 06:17 AM
Here's a topic for you. Sorties of small naval attack craft swarming at larger warships, in the past or present navy. Could it work?

They'd basically be small torpedo boats with one or two shots, intended to take casualties similar to fighters and bombers if not in greater numbers. If a chance arises, they might also try boarding enemy ships (though that isn't an easy task in the modern day).

Yora
2014-10-05, 06:32 AM
That sounds basically like how torpedo boats were used. Early destroyers were designed specifically to take them out and away from the larger battleships.

Boarding seems unfeasable, simply because of the amount of people on the ships. A battleship can have thousands of crew, while on a torpedo boat you wouldn't really have the men to form a boarding party. It would likely take dozens or more torpedo boats to ferry enough marines to take a large ship, and it would make more sense to have dedicated boarding crafts than to try to put marines on torpedo boats.

Raum
2014-10-05, 09:08 AM
The medieval context isn't nearly that grim, it just means a smaller formation which does not hope to expect to engage the main enemy column alone (unless it is routed), but can maneuver around and skirmish and attack weak spots, retreating back to the protection of the main column if necessary when under pressure. They had some which were heavy infantry (halberdiers or two-handed swordsmen, usually under a banner with crossed axes) and some which were marksmen (typically under a crossbow banner). Sometimes their job was to protect standards, cannon, or VIP's, other times they were just roaming around, on the flanks of and ahead of the main formations and engaging opportunistically.Interesting - what's the origin of the term? Wikipedia links it to middle Dutch "verloren hoop" (lost troop)...but I prefer to verify Wikipedia when possible. :)

Raum
2014-10-05, 10:07 AM
Here's a topic for you. Sorties of small naval attack craft swarming at larger warships, in the past or present navy. Could it work?Yes, it can work. You'll take high casualties if the enemy can respond so it's usually an act of desperation.

In the Battle off Samar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar), Halsey took his fleet out of position which left an opening for Kurita's task for to attack the US landing force. The only ships left to protect the landing force were six escort carriers (~28 planes each) and their screens totaling three destroyers and four destroyer escorts. Kurita had four battleships, six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and eleven destroyers . Long story short (I recommend reading "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" for the long version.), the US destroyers and destroyer escorts attacked, laying smoke to screen the escort carriers from fire and making torpedo run after torpedo run (making runs even after running out of torpedoes in some cases).

Kurita made several mistakes, including ordering a "General Attack" rather than attacking in organized formations. In the end he retired after a battleship took damage from bombers, three heavy cruisers were sunk, and some other damage. The US lost two escort carriers, two destroyers, and one destroyer escort. They did, however, turn Kurita and protect the ~200,000 troops fighting on Leyte.

Jon_Dahl
2014-10-05, 10:45 AM
Ok, so when you hunt an elephant, you need a heavy-caliber rifle, right?

What happens if you shoot an elephant with an automatic weapon that uses 5.56×45mm NATO or 7.62×39mm? Such as M249 or M60? Or M4A1...

I'm just thinking that I could put modern forces (3 to 5 PCs) against dinosaurs and very large predators. What would happen if a mated pair of T-Rex (both unusually large and protecting their offsping) surprised four fully-armed Navy Seals or US Army Rangers in an environment that would give the T-Rex advantage, such as their natural hunting ground?

Yora
2014-10-05, 11:12 AM
I would assume the main problem with such big targets is penetration depth and "stopping power". I am almost certain a 5.56 bullet will hurt an elephant or tyrannosaurus, but will it be able to penetrate deep enough to reach vital organs? Damaging the lungs should not be too difficult, but how long would it take before that kills the beast? And getting all the way through to the heart might not even be possible. The penetration depth would be something like shoting through three or four humans. And I don't know about elephants, but the brain of a tyrannosaurus would be tiny compared to its body size, so probably not much chance of taking it out with a headshot.

If I had to fight a tyrannosaurus, I think I would at least a 7.62 machine gun with plenty of ammunition. With a .50 you'd certainly be on the safe side. An assault rifle would probably able to kill it eventually, but that could take a very long time when you're trying to run away from it. Having military non-fragmenting bullets would probably be an advantage. What good are hollow points if you can't even get through the skin?
Unless you have armor piercing ammunition, I wouldn't be surprised if a submachine gun wouldn't hurt him at all. There are stories of big crocodiles who have survived SMGs to the face and a tyrannosaurus would be build a lot sturdier.

Broken Crown
2014-10-05, 11:49 AM
Another excellent example of the use of torpedo boats against larger units was the Battle of Surigao Strait (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Surigao_Strait#The_Battle_of_Surigao_Str ait_.2825_October.29), which took place a few hours before the Battle of Samar. Japanese Admiral Nishimura was taking his force through confined waters at night, with the intention of attacking the American landings the next morning (hopefully combining his attack with Kurita's). It was a risk, but he was counting on the darkness to provide him with cover, not knowing how much American radar had improved over the past couple of years. The American Admiral Oldendorf used his force of PT boats and destroyers to throughly cripple Nishimura's fleet, before finishing it off with his battleships and cruisers.

Fast attack craft are still in use by many modern navies, though usually armed with guided missiles rather than torpedoes these days. They are especially useful in confined waters, where they can get close to their targets without being targeted themselves, and where larger ships have limited maneuverability. They're not as good for power projection, simply because their small size means they're not very seaworthy and don't have much range.

Jon_Dahl
2014-10-05, 02:50 PM
I would assume the main problem with such big targets is penetration depth and "stopping power". I am almost certain a 5.56 bullet will hurt an elephant or tyrannosaurus, but will it be able to penetrate deep enough to reach vital organs? Damaging the lungs should not be too difficult, but how long would it take before that kills the beast? And getting all the way through to the heart might not even be possible. The penetration depth would be something like shoting through three or four humans. And I don't know about elephants, but the brain of a tyrannosaurus would be tiny compared to its body size, so probably not much chance of taking it out with a headshot.

If I had to fight a tyrannosaurus, I think I would at least a 7.62 machine gun with plenty of ammunition. With a .50 you'd certainly be on the safe side. An assault rifle would probably able to kill it eventually, but that could take a very long time when you're trying to run away from it. Having military non-fragmenting bullets would probably be an advantage. What good are hollow points if you can't even get through the skin?
Unless you have armor piercing ammunition, I wouldn't be surprised if a submachine gun wouldn't hurt him at all. There are stories of big crocodiles who have survived SMGs to the face and a tyrannosaurus would be build a lot sturdier.

So basically you can kill a T-rex with small arms fire, but not quick enough to prevent your own death, right? That's interesting and would be great in my game.

AgentPaper
2014-10-05, 03:08 PM
Does anyone know the origin or background of this ludicrous fantasy sword?

http://www.bladerealms.com/Kit-Rae/Kilgorin-Sword_of_Darkness.jpg

I've come across this atrocity countless times since first coming to the internet and it seems to have established itself as the archetypical "kool" fantasy sword. Apparently it's called Kilgorin Sword of Darkness, but who designed it and for what purpose?

Did a google image search and a bit of digging, looks like it's made by a Canadian guy named Kit Rae (http://www.kitrae.net/fantasy/). From the image, it looks like that's specifically the Kilgorin II (http://www.kitrae.net/fantasy/uc1239_kilgorin_-_var_ad.html). It really doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to be a "kool fantasy sword", being a design of his own invention (along with many many other "kool fantasy swords", some of which are even more absurd (http://www.kitrae.net/fantasy/KR0054A_ad.html)).

Gnoman
2014-10-05, 04:01 PM
Here's a topic for you. Sorties of small naval attack craft swarming at larger warships, in the past or present navy. Could it work?

They'd basically be small torpedo boats with one or two shots, intended to take casualties similar to fighters and bombers if not in greater numbers. If a chance arises, they might also try boarding enemy ships (though that isn't an easy task in the modern day).

As mentioned, this was the principle behind the Motor Torpedo Boat, which evolved into the Submersible Torpedo Boat, which became the Attack Submarine. Torpedo Boat Destroyers proved so capable of handling the destruction of these that the surface variant was relegated to patrol duty after the 1920s, and vanished entirely after 1945, as using them against any escorted adversary was pure suicide unless you outnumbered the enemy to a ludicrous extent, and the addition of torpedos to Torpedo Boat Destroyers gave all of the benefits for vastly less cost than the equivalent power in MTBs, resulting in the class simply being designated a "Destroyer". Even then, the vastly greater range and power of the weapons on larger ships rendered swarm tactics essentially ineffective, as a cruiser or battleship could begin hitting long before the lighter unit's weapons came into range, and a shell designed to puncture heavy armor belts went right through an unarmored target. Light units occasionally did triumph over heavy ships, but these actions were fought out of pure desperation, and any victories usually had more to do with mistakes on the part of the opposition (for example, the Japanese at the Battle Of Samar believed that the desperate attacks by light units were a trap designed to draw in heavy IJN units to an area where they could be cut off and destroyed by US battleships) than the merits of the tactic.

The first revival of swarm tactics began in the late 1950s when the USSR experimented with replacing the torpedo tubes on their obsolete PT boats with the then-brand-new "Styx" antiship missile, resulting in the ubiquitous Komar and Osa missile boats. This sort of ship would have done well in the mid-century as disposable attack assets (as long as absoulutely nothing spotted them before they got into range, as a single hit from anything larger than a machine cannon would practically vaporize them), due to the extremely rudimentary point-defense systems of the era, and would continue to do well against third-rate navies that still lack comprehensive defensive weapons. By the 1980s, the very small salvo size (and complete lack of any reloads) that they could generate were simply too small to get through a modern warship's defensive umbrella, and they've been relegated to patrol duty.

A second revival began in the Middle East in the early 2000s in the form of speedboats carrying suicide charges or soldiers firing hand-held antitank weapons such as RPG-7s. Although not combat tested, it is highly unlikely that they would triumph against defenses intended to shoot down sea-skimming supersonic missiles.

Mr Beer
2014-10-05, 04:35 PM
Ok, so when you hunt an elephant, you need a heavy-caliber rifle, right?

What happens if you shoot an elephant with an automatic weapon that uses 5.56×45mm NATO or 7.62×39mm? Such as M249 or M60? Or M4A1...

I'm just thinking that I could put modern forces (3 to 5 PCs) against dinosaurs and very large predators. What would happen if a mated pair of T-Rex (both unusually large and protecting their offsping) surprised four fully-armed Navy Seals or US Army Rangers in an environment that would give the T-Rex advantage, such as their natural hunting ground?

I think if the T-Rex pair were able to get close before being fired upon, they could easily tear the humans apart.

You would need accurate fire from a heavy calibre rifle to put something like that down in a single shot. Assuming your humans are not armed with that kind of weapon, I think they are in deep trouble. Rapid fire from lighter rifles will kill elephants for example, but not quickly. Poachers will hose down an elephant with an AK47 and then wait for it to die.

I suspect the squad's machine gun might overwhelm a T-Rex with several seconds of continual fire. But I think the best bet would be anti-tank weapons, a couple of RPGs would surely do the job.

The other thing to consider is that the T-Rexs might run panic and run when exposed to the noise of gunfire.

Carl
2014-10-05, 04:54 PM
As mentioned, this was the principle behind the Motor Torpedo Boat, which evolved into the Submersible Torpedo Boat, which became the Attack Submarine. Torpedo Boat Destroyers proved so capable of handling the destruction of these that the surface variant was relegated to patrol duty after the 1920s, and vanished entirely after 1945, as using them against any escorted adversary was pure suicide unless you outnumbered the enemy to a ludicrous extent, and the addition of torpedos to Torpedo Boat Destroyers gave all of the benefits for vastly less cost than the equivalent power in MTBs, resulting in the class simply being designated a "Destroyer". Even then, the vastly greater range and power of the weapons on larger ships rendered swarm tactics essentially ineffective, as a cruiser or battleship could begin hitting long before the lighter unit's weapons came into range, and a shell designed to puncture heavy armor belts went right through an unarmored target. Light units occasionally did triumph over heavy ships, but these actions were fought out of pure desperation, and any victories usually had more to do with mistakes on the part of the opposition (for example, the Japanese at the Battle Of Samar believed that the desperate attacks by light units were a trap designed to draw in heavy IJN units to an area where they could be cut off and destroyed by US battleships) than the merits of the tactic.

The first revival of swarm tactics began in the late 1950s when the USSR experimented with replacing the torpedo tubes on their obsolete PT boats with the then-brand-new "Styx" antiship missile, resulting in the ubiquitous Komar and Osa missile boats. This sort of ship would have done well in the mid-century as disposable attack assets (as long as absoulutely nothing spotted them before they got into range, as a single hit from anything larger than a machine cannon would practically vaporize them), due to the extremely rudimentary point-defense systems of the era, and would continue to do well against third-rate navies that still lack comprehensive defensive weapons. By the 1980s, the very small salvo size (and complete lack of any reloads) that they could generate were simply too small to get through a modern warship's defensive umbrella, and they've been relegated to patrol duty.

A second revival began in the Middle East in the early 2000s in the form of speedboats carrying suicide charges or soldiers firing hand-held antitank weapons such as RPG-7s. Although not combat tested, it is highly unlikely that they would triumph against defenses intended to shoot down sea-skimming supersonic missiles.

This somewhat overstates their vulnerability. In practice long range naval gunfire was painfully inaccurate even against targets the size of battleships until the post WW2 period when ever improving barrel and shell designs started drastically decreasing the inherent inaccuracy of gunfire. In addition Cruiser and Battleship guns had limited rates of fire compared to destroyer guns, which compounded the inaccuracy issue. This is very evident by the fact that during the run up the the final battle of the Bismark chase 3 destroyers spent the night harassing Bismark with unsuccessful torpedo runs. Despite facing a battleship and being in much larger vessels than a patrol boat they where able to repeatedly close into torpedo range and escape without damage.

Also missile patrol boat's are still heavily used by the Chinese who actually build them in useful numbers. Ton for Ton Missile Patrol Boats can and do still put more missile in the air than any other launch platform, carriers included, and newer designs are beginning to introduce genuinely useful point defense measures for them. The issue they've generally had in actual use is that very few navy's can justify building them in useful numbers because of their range limitation's. The're just not broad role enough for most purposes.

rs2excelsior
2014-10-05, 08:55 PM
The Royal Naval Air Service would beg to differ: The RAF was created by amalgamating the RFC and RNAS. True, the RNAS did branch off from the Royal Flying Corps in 1914, but the RFC itself was created in 1912 from the early air elements of both the Army and the Navy.

Ah, I did not know that. As I said, I'm more familiar with US military organization and history than UK.

I was also under the impression that the RFC was formed in about the middle of WWI (1915-1916); I had no idea it was actually a pre-war organization. So that's two new things I've learned.

Incanur
2014-10-05, 09:12 PM
Interesting - what's the origin of the term? Wikipedia links it to middle Dutch "verloren hoop" (lost troop)...but I prefer to verify Wikipedia when possible. :)

In Raimond de Fourquevaux's 1548 manual the term is "Enfans perduz" - literally "lost children." It's translated to "forlorn hope" in the 1589 English version, probably because of English familiarity with the Dutch term thanks to the wars in the Low Countries. Both names sound grim. Fourquevaux described this formation as beginning the battle and operating in coordination with the cavalry. In typical 16th-century fashion, Fourquevaux's forlorn hope consisted of gunners backed by pikers, although notably he wanted some archers and crossbowers mixed in with the gunners is possible.

Storm_Of_Snow
2014-10-06, 04:02 AM
As mentioned, this was the principle behind the Motor Torpedo Boat, which evolved into the Submersible Torpedo Boat, which became the Attack Submarine. Torpedo Boat Destroyers proved so capable of handling the destruction of these that the surface variant was relegated to patrol duty after the 1920s, and vanished entirely after 1945, as using them against any escorted adversary was pure suicide unless you outnumbered the enemy to a ludicrous extent, and the addition of torpedos to Torpedo Boat Destroyers gave all of the benefits for vastly less cost than the equivalent power in MTBs, resulting in the class simply being designated a "Destroyer". Even then, the vastly greater range and power of the weapons on larger ships rendered swarm tactics essentially ineffective, as a cruiser or battleship could begin hitting long before the lighter unit's weapons came into range, and a shell designed to puncture heavy armor belts went right through an unarmored target. Light units occasionally did triumph over heavy ships, but these actions were fought out of pure desperation, and any victories usually had more to do with mistakes on the part of the opposition (for example, the Japanese at the Battle Of Samar believed that the desperate attacks by light units were a trap designed to draw in heavy IJN units to an area where they could be cut off and destroyed by US battleships) than the merits of the tactic.

The first revival of swarm tactics began in the late 1950s when the USSR experimented with replacing the torpedo tubes on their obsolete PT boats with the then-brand-new "Styx" antiship missile, resulting in the ubiquitous Komar and Osa missile boats. This sort of ship would have done well in the mid-century as disposable attack assets (as long as absoulutely nothing spotted them before they got into range, as a single hit from anything larger than a machine cannon would practically vaporize them), due to the extremely rudimentary point-defense systems of the era, and would continue to do well against third-rate navies that still lack comprehensive defensive weapons. By the 1980s, the very small salvo size (and complete lack of any reloads) that they could generate were simply too small to get through a modern warship's defensive umbrella, and they've been relegated to patrol duty.

A second revival began in the Middle East in the early 2000s in the form of speedboats carrying suicide charges or soldiers firing hand-held antitank weapons such as RPG-7s. Although not combat tested, it is highly unlikely that they would triumph against defenses intended to shoot down sea-skimming supersonic missiles.
As an observation, those last ones are effectively maritime "technicals".

Torpedo boats may have shallower draughts than more mainstream vessels, so, while less stable far from land, they could potentially operate up river - either as patrol boats, to attack enemy targets, or to hide before performing guerrilla style attacks. Depending on the geography, they may even be able to be transported across land from one river to another.

They could also be made from materials like wood or fibreglass, which means they can be constructed in small concealable workshops, rather than shipyards, and may have massively reduced sensor profiles, making them more difficult to hit with radar-guided weapons.

Yora
2014-10-06, 06:18 AM
Also missile patrol boat's are still heavily used by the Chinese who actually build them in useful numbers. Ton for Ton Missile Patrol Boats can and do still put more missile in the air than any other launch platform, carriers included, and newer designs are beginning to introduce genuinely useful point defense measures for them. The issue they've generally had in actual use is that very few navy's can justify building them in useful numbers because of their range limitation's. The're just not broad role enough for most purposes.

I believe Chinese military doctrine until recently has been to focus entirely on defense with no plans for long distance opperations. To protect the coast from naval bombardment and to escort coastal transport shipping, short-range ships should be entirely adequate.

Brother Oni
2014-10-06, 07:16 AM
I believe Chinese military doctrine until recently has been to focus entirely on defense with no plans for long distance opperations. To protect the coast from naval bombardment and to escort coastal transport shipping, short-range ships should be entirely adequate.

As you've noted, their plans on that have certainly changed as there's not really much need for an aircraft carrier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaoning) to just protect your coastline and coastal shipping.

Carl
2014-10-06, 07:19 AM
I believe Chinese military doctrine until recently has been to focus entirely on defense with no plans for long distance opperations. To protect the coast from naval bombardment and to escort coastal transport shipping, short-range ships should be entirely adequate.

Your quite correct, and if the latest class is anything to go by they still are institutionally at least, (it's only i think 12 years old with more in the construction pipeline). I just didn't mention it before because i didn't want to clutter things up.

Boci
2014-10-06, 09:50 AM
So a friend of mine said that bronze it a better material for blades than iron is, and that the reason humanity transitioned from bronze to iron is because the latter was more plentiful, not because it was a superior choice (which only became true once we had perfected how to make steel). Is that true?

Brother Oni
2014-10-06, 09:57 AM
So a friend of mine said that bronze it a better material for blades than iron is, and that the reason humanity transitioned from bronze to iron is because the latter was more plentiful, not because it was a superior choice (which only became true once we had perfected how to make steel). Is that true?

They're quite correct. Bronze alloys were indeed a better material than iron for weapons, it's just that getting the tin became increasingly difficult (some cultures in the Mediterranean were going all the way to Cornwall in England to get it, which was no mean feat back then), so a lack of resources forced them to make the switch to the more plentiful iron once they worked out how to extract it.

I can find citations for all of the above later if you like.

Spiryt
2014-10-06, 10:13 AM
This discussion was around many times, and it's hard to talk in absolutes.

But in general, if we define 'blade' as a metal, working part with edge, then iron likely wasn't really worse than bronze in most cases.

At least it completely replaced bronze in all applications, and started the evolution of straight swords into longer and more diverse forms.

Perhaps the pattern welding techniques made iron bodies more desirable.

In any case, combinations of differentially treated and worked iron(s), with usually small strip of actual steel only as very edge became very dominant up to later medieval period in Europe, when monogamous steel blades started to appear.

Boci
2014-10-06, 10:27 AM
They're quite correct. Bronze alloys were indeed a better material than iron for weapons, it's just that getting the tin became increasingly difficult (some cultures in the Mediterranean were going all the way to Cornwall in England to get it, which was no mean feat back then), so a lack of resources forced them to make the switch to the more plentiful iron once they worked out how to extract it.

I can find citations for all of the above later if you like.

If its not too much trouble, I would like to read up on the subject in more detail. If for no other reason than because Spiryt seems to suggest the issue isn't that clear.


This discussion was around many times, and it's hard to talk in absolutes.

But in general, if we define 'blade' as a metal, working part with edge, then iron likely wasn't really worse than bronze in most cases.

Okay, so was there something bronze was objectively or near objectively better at?

Galloglaich
2014-10-06, 10:35 AM
Regarding the 'forlorn hopes', I think this is a very ancient approach to combat, the late medieval and early modern enfant perdue is really in my opinion just a more sophisticated and better armed variant of the ancient peltast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peltast) and velite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velites) skirmishers of the Greeks and Romans, who proved to be so crucial to successful infantry warfare in their time. The hoplite and legionairre heavy infantry get all the credit but apparently couldn't win battles on their own. Equivalent light-infantry skirmisher forces in the migration and earlier medieval period proved to be extremely effective, they were the basis and greatest strength of the Franks, and notably of the Almogavar mercenaries who devastated so much of Greece in the 14th Century, ala the Catalan Grand Company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_Company). It's a necessary part of warfare, the Yin to the Yang of the heavy column.


This discussion was around many times, and it's hard to talk in absolutes.

But in general, if we define 'blade' as a metal, working part with edge, then iron likely wasn't really worse than bronze in most cases.

At least it completely replaced bronze in all applications, and started the evolution of straight swords into longer and more diverse forms.

Perhaps the pattern welding techniques made iron bodies more desirable.

In any case, combinations of differentially treated and worked iron(s), with usually small strip of actual steel only as very edge became very dominant up to later medieval period in Europe, when monogamous steel blades started to appear.


You can say that Bronze weighs about 10% more than equivalent iron / steely iron / steel weapons.

On the other hand Iron (especially steel and steely iron) are much more subject to corrosion than bronze is.

Actual performance of blades seems to be superior for steel certainly, there seems to be a flexibility issue with Bronze which for example required them to rivet the grip onto the blades of a lot of their swords, at least for a long while, whereas ferrous blades were made with a tang, something we don't really see with Bronze weapons. Presumably this is due to the enhanced flexibility of the ferrous weapons.


One thing I don't myself fully understand though about the whole Iron / Bronze thing, is at what point did they learn to make springs out of bronze? I checked a while back to verify that they do make springs out of copper alloys now days, this used to be the basis of my understanding about the principal differences between ferrous and copper alloy weapons, the former could be made 'springy' through the correct combination of alloying and tempering; the latter could not. But at some point they figured out how to make bronze springs, so my question to any engineers here is, is a bronze spring like a steel spring and if so, could you make a bronze sword with a tang that can flex and twist the same way a steel sword does when you watch it on a high-speed camera?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Cassiterite-43265.jpg
This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterite) was the major problem with bronze, I think


I agree though that the most important reason for the replacement of bronze with iron was the two ingredients required for the former (tin or arsenic or zinc - but most importantly tin which had been mined-out in the Near East during the late Bronze Age and had to be imported from as far away as England) vs. one pretty ubiquitous ingredient for the latter; certainly for arrow-heads and spear-points bronze is not markedly inferior to iron.

G

Spiryt
2014-10-06, 10:48 AM
Okay, so was there something bronze was objectively or near objectively better at?

Objectively, bronze is much easier to 'maintain' - much less chemically reactive, at least in circumstances that would be relevant to human use then - this would mean corrosion most of the time, of course.

Some writings out there, like Wiki, also claim that it generally resists material fatigue better than most steel alloys.


You can say that Bronze weighs about 10% more than equivalent iron / steely iron / steel weapons

You can also looks at this differently though - similarly shaped blade will be 10% denser, potentially penetrating a bit more readily.

This might have been the reason why copper alloys lasted much longer as percussion weapons in particular.

Galloglaich
2014-10-06, 11:05 AM
Objectively, bronze is much easier to 'maintain' - much less chemically reactive, at least in circumstances that would be relevant to human use then - this would mean corrosion most of the time, of course.

Some writings out there, like Wiki, also claim that it generally resists material fatigue better than most steel alloys.

One of the reasons we have so many bronze artifacts from the Classical era and comparatively so few iron. Iron gets eaten up by nature unless you keep it nice and oiled and / or develop a good patina on it. We are so used to stainless steel (which makes terrible swords) these days that we have forgotten about the essential nature of ferrous metals.



You can also looks at this differently though - similarly shaped blade will be 10% denser, potentially penetrating a bit more readily.

This might have been the reason why copper alloys lasted much longer as percussion weapons in particular.

yes it might be more correct to say bronze maybe doesn't make as good of swords, or long blades, as steel, but for most other things it is probably at least as good.

The weight issue maybe a little bit more of a problem with armor, but it's so marginal. For that matter the Romans continued to use bronze or brass helmets well into the late Iron Age.

One wonders then why did iron / ferrous alloy replace bronze for things like axe, spear, and arrow heads (or did it?) and maybe we are left with the economic / production reasons.


Another nice advantage of bronze is that you can make so many identical weapons (arrowheads or spearheads for example) in a standardized manner very quickly, without as much work as with ferrous equivalents.

G

warty goblin
2014-10-06, 12:00 PM
Actual performance of blades seems to be superior for steel certainly, there seems to be a flexibility issue with Bronze which for example required them to rivet the grip onto the blades of a lot of their swords, at least for a long while, whereas ferrous blades were made with a tang, something we don't really see with Bronze weapons. Presumably this is due to the enhanced flexibility of the ferrous weapons.
G

I think the entire hilt as a separate piece that's riveted to the blade was really only true for the very early bronze swords, the Mycenaean type As, and to some extent the Bs. By the time of the Mycenaean type C swords, the entire hilt structure was part of the same casting as the blade. By later blades this included both the 'guard' structure (insofar as bronze swords had handguards), and often even the silhouette of the pommel. I'm less familiar with the evolution of mainland European/British Isles bronze swords, but I don't think I've ever even seen a reference to a sword from those regions with an entirely separate hilt construction. I unfortunately know basically nothing about Chinese or other Asian bronze working, so it's possible that the separate riveted hilt was more popular there.

It's worth noting that the Chinese did make bronze swords with tangs.

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h156/william-m/2009411113852428.jpg

In Europe I suspect the tang never became a thing with bronze swords since there really wasn't much reason for it. Riveting organic plates to the grip structure seems like it should work just fine; it certainly does for knives and so forth.

Brother Oni
2014-10-06, 12:38 PM
If its not too much trouble, I would like to read up on the subject in more detail. If for no other reason than because Spiryt seems to suggest the issue isn't that clear.

To be fair, Spiryt's right in that it's not all that clear cut, simply because it was so long enough (~1000 BC).

The Phoenicians were the main importers of tin and their source of it, the Cassiterides or Tin Isles, was a closely guarded secret: Wiki page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterides), link 1 (http://phoenicia.org/britmines.html). There's been some dispute whether the Cassiterides was Cornwall or some other tin rich island.

Following through a little bit on other comments, bronze alloys are generally harder than wrought iron (0.04-0.08% carbon content), with a Vickers hardness of 60–258 compared to wrought iron's 30–80, so they would be better at holding an edge.
As Galloglaich said, it mostly depends on the use: the Roman pilum was made with a soft iron head which deformed on impact so the targets couldn't just throw them back (link (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dVtuQidyB0sC&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=roman+pilum+soft+iron&source=bl&ots=e3eYvd8ECv&sig=z9LB23_BsCaDENonM6dz2JHHke4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WtIyVLzSFc_KaN3Jgig&ved=0CFAQ6AEwCw#v=onepage&q=roman%20pilum%20soft%20iron&f=false)), thus there are plenty of uses where a soft iron is good enough.


Okay, so was there something bronze was objectively or near objectively better at?

Due to its greater density, bronze was popular for mace heads and other bludgeoning weapons, even in the late medieval era: link (http://www.andrewbottomley.com/medieval-bronze-mace-head-probably-1516th-century-good-condition--ref-6450-75-p.asp).

Galloglaich
2014-10-06, 12:59 PM
I think the entire hilt as a separate piece that's riveted to the blade was really only true for the very early bronze swords, the Mycenaean type As, and to some extent the Bs. By the time of the Mycenaean type C swords, the entire hilt structure was part of the same casting as the blade. By later blades this included both the 'guard' structure (insofar as bronze swords had handguards), and often even the silhouette of the pommel. I'm less familiar with the evolution of mainland European/British Isles bronze swords, but I don't think I've ever even seen a reference to a sword from those regions with an entirely separate hilt construction. I unfortunately know basically nothing about Chinese or other Asian bronze working, so it's possible that the separate riveted hilt was more popular there.

It's worth noting that the Chinese did make bronze swords with tangs.

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h156/william-m/2009411113852428.jpg

In Europe I suspect the tang never became a thing with bronze swords since there really wasn't much reason for it. Riveting organic plates to the grip structure seems like it should work just fine; it certainly does for knives and so forth.

What a beautiful long, elegant bronze sword I don't think I've ever seen one that lovely, thanks for posting.

I stand corrected, I was afraid I might have gone out on a limb with that tang thing. Chinese seem to have been very advanced with bronze but not quite as much with steel. I know the Chinese were using differential hardening and different alloys in their blades by around the 5th Century BC. Or at least that was my understanding, is that correct?

http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/images/sword04.jpg

I'm so used to seeing the riveted sword blades, can you define precisely when these went away to be replaced by the solid-hilt and the tang, such as in a timeline for different regions? When did the use of tangs on bronze swords begin? Was that limited to China? I'd never heard of it before.


G

Galloglaich
2014-10-06, 01:01 PM
Also how long is that sword you posted?

G

warty goblin
2014-10-06, 01:36 PM
What a beautiful long, elegant bronze sword I don't think I've ever seen one that lovely, thanks for posting.

I stand corrected, I was afraid I might have gone out on a limb with that tang thing. Chinese seem to have been very advanced with bronze but not quite as much with steel. I know the Chinese were using differential hardening and different alloys in their blades by around the 5th Century BC. Or at least that was my understanding, is that correct?

http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/images/sword04.jpg

I'm so used to seeing the riveted sword blades, can you define precisely when these went away to be replaced by the solid-hilt and the tang, such as in a timeline for different regions? When did the use of tangs on bronze swords begin? Was that limited to China? I'd never heard of it before.

So far as I know, they were limited to China. Like I said, my knowledge of eastern bronze working is well approximated by zero. I haven't spent very much effort in trying to find resources for the area/period, but I certainly haven't stumbled on any.

The bronze ages in the Mediterranean, north Africa and Asia Minor are fortunately much easier to find stuff for. The usual chronology and typology has recognizably sword sized weapons showing up in Crete by way of the Levant around 1700 BC. These are the Mycenaean type A, and many (but maybe not all, see pics) have an entirely separate hilt construction that's riveted to the blade, which is often of great length (at least as far as European bronze swords goes). I've seen numbers up to 30+ inch blades, which for a European bronze sword is huge. These are also sometimes called bronze rapiers, just to annoy everybody.


http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/images/sword21.jpg
These are very nice.

http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/images/sword10.jpg
This one has a gold handguard structure, and it looks like the tang is integral to the blade maybe?



The Mycenaean Type B shows up around 1600 BC, although the Type A would apparently persist for another few centuries as well. These had partially integral hilts, with a sort of tab that fit into the organic hilt components, but did not yet run the entire length of the hilt. Rather like a lot of kitchen knives. Dan Howard, in Bronze Age Military Equipment, argues that this is a surprisingly sturdy construction (an argument he also IIRC applies to the Type A), and is capable of making cutting attacks without breaking at the hilt. Some authors I've read suggest that the scene in the Iliad where Menelaus' sword snaps at the hilt is an authentic memory or somesuch of this sort of issue with early bronze swords, but I find this hard to buy.


http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/images/sword50.jpg


By c1450 BC, we get around to the Type C, which has an integral hilt and horn-shaped hand guard that curves back towards the hand. The hilt does not yet include the pommel though.
http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/images/sword210.jpg
Around 1250, the Type Dii shows up, which has the fully integral pommel structure as well. There's a whole bunch of different types that show up around this period, all with a hilt structure that includes a lobe that outlines the pommel, some with more sophisticated sorts of guard as well. Some of the later type Gs have what is in essence is a cruciform guard, and massively sturdy hilt construction. Apparently some examples have a sort of I-beam profile in the hilt, the idea being that the organic grip components would be fit into the gap, and then the crosspieces of the 'I' bent back to hold the hilt scale more securely in place.

Here's (http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=274293#274289)a rather amazing picture of a Type G, still in the hands of its owner after three thousand years, if you scroll down a bit



Unfortunately, so far as I know, nobody has done a similarly thorough typology for the bronze swords of western Europe, the British Isles, and Scandinavia. I do know that continental European bronze age people really like leaf-shaped blades, and not infrequently used multiple part all-bronze hilt construction as well. As I said, I don't know of any riveted designs like the Type A, although they certainly did rivet organic hilt components onto the hilt structure. Maybe by the time the sword spread that far, the separate hilt construction was already obsolete and was never adopted outside of the Aegean and near east.





Also how long is that sword you posted?

G
They are apparently of sufficient size to be considered two handed, and can have hexagonal cross sections. Apparently they're found with terra cotta warriors dating from the early third century BC, and some of the bronze weapons found in that context are alloyed with molybdenum. Unfortunately that's the sum total of my knowledge about those swords, I'd really love to know more though.

Brother Oni
2014-10-06, 04:19 PM
They are apparently of sufficient size to be considered two handed, and can have hexagonal cross sections. Apparently they're found with terra cotta warriors dating from the early third century BC, and some of the bronze weapons found in that context are alloyed with molybdenum. Unfortunately that's the sum total of my knowledge about those swords, I'd really love to know more though.

According to this site (http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/shaanxi/xian/terra_cotta_army/pit_2.htm), they were 86cm (34") long with apparently a 10µm thick oxide film containing 2% chrome.
Note that these weapons were still sharp despite being buried since the 2nd Century BC.

I found this page on China History Forum regarding the metallurgy of the Qin bronze swords, but it's a bit beyond my level of understanding: link (http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/topic/17605-qin-bronze-swords;-chromium-chroming/).

I also found this earlier probably ornamental sword from the Spring and Autumn period (7th-4th Century BC) , the Sword of Goujian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Goujian):


http://oi53.tinypic.com/sli6p1.jpg

Here's a thread with some really pretty swords: link (http://historum.com/asian-history/38919-chinese-swords.html).

Incanur
2014-10-06, 10:04 PM
As awesome as such bronze swords surely were, it's important to remember that hardened steel swords could be both harder and tougher. Even some Roman swords had edges harder than any bronze. And bronze armor performed about like wrought iron or at best low-carbon steel in the two tests I know of, despite being somewhat heavier. In theory the best hardened bronze armor might have been equivalent to air-cooled medium-carbon steel.

Broken Crown
2014-10-06, 10:20 PM
Okay, so was there something bronze was objectively or near objectively better at?

Cannons. Bronze has a lower melting point and is more ductile than iron, which means that, all other things being equal, cast bronze guns have fewer internal defects than cast iron guns, and the defects they do have will cause fewer problems. This means that bronze guns are a lot less likely to explode - always a desirable feature. Of course, bronze was also far more expensive than iron.

According to N.A.M. Rodger's Naval History of Britain, this may have been the real advantage of the long-barreled culverins used by the English fleet against the Spanish Armada: The greater weight of the column of metal meant fewer defects. Effectively, the English had figured out how to make useful guns out of cast iron, at roughly one-tenth the cost of bronze guns. This enabled England, a relatively small and poor country, to arm its fleet just as well as Spain's.

(As previously noted, iron also corrodes much more easily than bronze. This applies as much to the combustion products of gunpowder as it does to oxygen.)

---

Edit: Terminology.

Lilapop
2014-10-07, 03:14 AM
(As previously noted, iron also corrodes much more easily than bronze. This applies as much to the combustion products of gunpowder as it does to oxygen.)
This is probably even more important at sea than it is on land. And isnt naval power much more relevant for a small island country like England?

Boci
2014-10-07, 07:28 AM
So if I understand it correctly:

Bronze was slightly denser, and better for bludgeoning weapons and cannons. It also oxidized less, but this was presumably less important, except maybe at sea where salt and water would accelerate rusting. But maybe not even then.

For short blades like knives and daggers, no material was better than the over.

For longer, straighter blades iron was generally considered superior, but there were some techniques by which such blades could be forged from bronze, but such blades were rare. Iron was also arguable more versatile due to the different densities at which it could be smelted, so you could make things like javalins heads that would deform to prevent them being used a second time by the enemy. However arrow heads were arguable better suited from bronze.

Is that roughly how the two compared, if we ignore scarcity?

Mr. Mask
2014-10-07, 10:05 AM
If you had a race of flying/bird people, I wonder how their technology would evolve around their unique position. Let's assume they have hands, and possibly arms separate from their wings, as anything else makes it hard to develop tech (unless they have slaves) and difficult to use it.


Some kind of gloves with iron talons come to mind, to enhance any natural talons the creature is born with.

Gliders would likely be big in the culture, allowing a team of fliers to carry more supplies between points (or might even allow fliers to shift between resting on the glider and pulling it, to make greater distance).

Something like sling stones they can drop in battle, more specifically something that won't be easily blown off course in the wind which will hit the ground with great force when dropped. Not likely to be good against a single target at anything but close range, but could probably be dropped on formations.

Equipment will have to be light. If there's any armour, it'll have to be light and not get in the way of flapping.

Some kind of parachute or backup glider would be welcome, so the bird person can safely descend if their wings give out, but most are too heavy to be worth it if you're flying by your own strength.

Hard to say which weapons would be more suitable for flying infantry. For ground infantry with flying/gliding capabilities, however, I expect it wouldn't be too much out of the norm (light, and depending on their arm strength). Ground infantry can bear heavier burdens, as well.


Any thoughts?

Yora
2014-10-07, 11:15 AM
Have there been sabres or sabre-like weapons made from bronze? As bronze swords go, I can only think of relatively short and broad straight swords or heavy, cleaver-like ones like khopesh or kopis.
What would work well for a mounted army using only bronze?

Spiryt
2014-10-07, 11:37 AM
Have there been sabres or sabre-like weapons made from bronze? As bronze swords go, I can only think of relatively short and broad straight swords or heavy, cleaver-like ones like khopesh or kopis.
What would work well for a mounted army using only bronze?

Where the idea that kopis etc. are heavy stems from, anyway?

As far as bronze and cavalry goes, it should be remember that serious cavalry use most probably occurred post Bronze Age indeed.

I don't recall any sabres made from bronze.

As far as 'working' for bronze army - anything, preferably as long as possible, to have some reach.

Details would belong on particular culture and degree to each it actually creates 'specialist' weapons.


It's not like all horsemen ever were using sabers.

Kopis made of bronze could very well be used by cavalry, for example. Xenophone writes about 'recommending' kopis for cavalry use. Obviously in his time those would be ferrous.

Galloglaich
2014-10-08, 09:19 AM
Speaking of horsemen, playing Mount and Blade got me thinking about cavalry fighting a lot lately. One thing I wonder: many warhorse breeds (or types, some types of warhorses really weren't breeds at least not initially) were trained to use some kind of version of an ambling gait, like the tolt of the Icelandic ponies. I used to be confused why you would want to make your warhorse into a traveling horse, since often these were not the same animal. But it now seems to me that the ambling gait could be very useful in close combat when you are wheeling and circling about in a melee trying to cut with swords / sabers (axes) or stab each other with lances, and also for "almost close" combat when you are shooting at each other with bows or crossbows. I bet it would be a lot easier to re-span a crossbow on horseback on a horse doing an ambling gait than most others, and sitting still is almost suicidally dangerous in a lot of cavalry actions.

G

Mr. Mask
2014-10-09, 08:59 AM
Discussing undersea technology from an undersea sapient species in the science thread in the science board. It came up as to what weapons and tactics the underwater persons would use in battle.

Knives and spears were the first thought. You could also strangle people fine, or make use of a tool similar to scissors. Ranged combat is trickier, even really powerful crossbows would have a terribly short effective range. Dropping heavy stuff in harder to arrange, though you could have whales drag along giant boulders above then cut them loose so they land on stuff, or something to that effect.

More advanced weaponry would likely be a number of electricity based "bombs", powered harpoon guns, and torpedoes. You might even get some early torpedoes through creative devising.

Galloglaich
2014-10-09, 09:40 AM
Discussing undersea technology from an undersea sapient species in the science thread in the science board. It came up as to what weapons and tactics the underwater persons would use in battle.

Knives and spears were the first thought. You could also strangle people fine, or make use of a tool similar to scissors. Ranged combat is trickier, even really powerful crossbows would have a terribly short effective range. Dropping heavy stuff in harder to arrange, though you could have whales drag along giant boulders above then cut them loose so they land on stuff, or something to that effect.

More advanced weaponry would likely be a number of electricity based "bombs", powered harpoon guns, and torpedoes. You might even get some early torpedoes through creative devising.

Nets, knives, harpoons, and tridents. Metals should be bronze (but where do you smelt bronze underwater?). I don't think crossbows would work. Some kind of sling based spear guns might be plausible, but I don't know how you could make those without rubber or synthetic equivalent. maybe some kind of animal fiber. Not many realistic options for anything truly long range. Maybe steam-punk style clockwork swimming automata with stingers or dart-guns.

Having whales drag rocks sounds ridiculous to me...

Using animals to fight for you somehow can clearly be done, we do it in the real world with dolphins and sea-lions. Lots of scary venomous creatures in the sea. if you could control sea-snakes or poisonous jellyfish types, probably quite dangeorus. Or barracuda or sharks... killer whales.

G

Carl
2014-10-09, 09:41 AM
Depends if they can develop a compound that burns underwater that can be stored. Chemistry would be hard underwater but it doesn't have to be energetic to make a decent missile weapon, especially not if they devlop bypass technology.

I mean there is evidence of a surface skimming torpedo from cira 13th century and the mythbuster recreation, after teething trouble's, worked. So i think primitive underwater torpedo's are a real possibility. Of course if they're amphibian's then they could well develop all up gunpowder and the like quite easily.

The big problem for an underwater society besides chemistry is metal working. Both are vital to advanced tech.

Yora
2014-10-09, 10:06 AM
I just heard the claim that composit bows store more energy than bows made from a single piece of wood, and so they are more powerful.
That sounds highly dubious, to say the least.

Any idea what actual fact was being misquoted here?

I believe the real advantage is a more compact size. The amount of "power" you get from a bow shot should always be identical to the muscle power you use to pull it.

Spiryt
2014-10-09, 10:17 AM
I just heard the claim that composit bows store more energy than bows made from a single piece of wood, and so they are more powerful.
That sounds highly dubious, to say the least.

Any idea what actual fact was being misquoted here?



This is absolutely correct, although being 'composite' or not is obviously not the key feature here.

Composite materials just allow bowyer to shape bow in such a way that allows much more efficient energy storage for given work put into it.


The amount of "power" you get from a bow shot should always be identical to the muscle power you use to pull it

That's absolutely not correct.


You can easily construct 2000 pounds bow that will be outperformed by 50 pound one, if you do it poorly enough.



Reflexive shapes of composite bows used in Asia in particular generally allowed to outperform even the best selfbows with heavy arrows.

With lighter arrows the difference usually was even greater.

And composite bows weren't always compact either.

Galloglaich
2014-10-09, 10:35 AM
Depends if they can develop a compound that burns underwater that can be stored. Chemistry would be hard underwater but it doesn't have to be energetic to make a decent missile weapon, especially not if they devlop bypass technology.

I mean there is evidence of a surface skimming torpedo from cira 13th century and the mythbuster recreation, after teething trouble's, worked. So i think primitive underwater torpedo's are a real possibility. Of course if they're amphibian's then they could well develop all up gunpowder and the like quite easily.

The big problem for an underwater society besides chemistry is metal working. Both are vital to advanced tech.

A clockwork torpedo that releases a swarm of sea-nettles?

G

Mr. Mask
2014-10-09, 11:00 AM
G: Not sure about tridents, though they're thematic to the sea. A broad spear head ought to inflict more serious damage for less weight. Of course, it depends on the materials at hand, as some might be suited more for multiple small points rather than a wide blade (Aztec swords come to mind). And if armour was a problem, multiple narrow spikes might serve as a compromise between AP and damage, and make it harder to remove the thing when it's thrust in.

When you say a sling based spear gun, do you mean like an atlatl? Similarly when you talk about harpoons, are you thinking of throwing them?

Not sure why whales dragging rocks is a weird idea to you. It's not much different from bladed chariots or tying sharp stuff to an animal, just that it makes use of the lighter weight of objects and the behemoth strength of whales. While this'd be good for structures, something like dragging a net of blades might be better for battles.


G&Carl: The materials they can make use of underwater is a good question. A water resistant metal like bronze would be good, though as mentioned working it is tricky. You might be able to load some into a cast then lower it into a steam vent or the area around a volcano, or something to that nature.

The torpedo from the mythbusters is a good example of how you can get some of those surprisingly early. You might even be able to build in something like a hydro propeller which helps to steer and maintain speed. Of course, using a powder weapon underwater would be a heck of a trick, as you need it dry with enough air to burn. Advanced chemistry would, someone pointed out, likely work in gas forms rather than liquids, so we might want to consider an explosive gas like methane instead (still leaves the problem of igniting it, of course...).

Wind-up torpedoes are a possibility, if you can get enough power in the spring to propel them with usable force. Not familiar enough with the strength to weight of springs to work this out.

snowblizz
2014-10-09, 11:21 AM
For under water weapons, the pistol shrimp is pretty darned nifty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKPrGxB1Kzc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheidae

AgentPaper
2014-10-09, 11:22 AM
Discussing undersea technology from an undersea sapient species in the science thread in the science board. It came up as to what weapons and tactics the underwater persons would use in battle.

Knives and spears were the first thought. You could also strangle people fine, or make use of a tool similar to scissors. Ranged combat is trickier, even really powerful crossbows would have a terribly short effective range. Dropping heavy stuff in harder to arrange, though you could have whales drag along giant boulders above then cut them loose so they land on stuff, or something to that effect.

More advanced weaponry would likely be a number of electricity based "bombs", powered harpoon guns, and torpedoes. You might even get some early torpedoes through creative devising.

Undersea seems like it would be much harder to develop ranged combat as a whole, and most likely it would simply not develop at all, at least not the way we're used to. Small sharp things are of course just as dangerous as always, so daggers would be fine, and thin stabbing spears should work well too, though they would be a bit more vulnerable since it's much harder to turn the spear around to smack someone with it, limiting the ways you can attack with it. Smaller swords and stabbing swords would probably work well, but the larger swords probably wouldn't be worth it. Swords would likely favor wider, flatter blades to make it easier to "cut" through the water.

Axes and Picks would probably translate better than you'd think, since much of their mass is concentrated in one point with a relatively small cross-section. You'd probably want it to have a metal handle to keep that cross-section as small as you can as well. Shields are great underwater, since it's harder (though certainly not impossible) to maneuver around them, and you combine metal and wood to make it essentially weightless (though still difficult to move around). This combined with spears being an effective weapon might give you combat resembling ancient hoplites, or perhaps the later pike warfare.

Most metals would need to be imported from aboveground, either through specialized outposts of the sea people who operate aboveground furnaces in some way, or just trade with existing ground dwellers, trading pearls and sponges and seafood for weapons. One notable exception is Lead, which can just about be worked with using Hydrothermal vents, which can be as hot as 400-464 degrees Celsius. Not enough to melt lead, but enough to get it soft enough to forge into weapons or armor. The density of lead actually makes it a great material for under-water, since you can have a nice heavy pick or axe or whatever without it needing to be very large, making it easier to push through the water compared to a similar weight in iron or bronze. Probably not strong enough to work as a sword blade, but you could certainly make spear heads, daggers, picks, and axe heads out of them. Hitting hard stuff with them would cause them to deform pretty fast, but they would be easier to repair without relying on surface outposts/dwellers, so it's probably still more convenient. I'd expect lead to be the most common form of weapon, with imported bronze swords, spears, etc being a superior but much more expensive and rare option for the upper classes.

Also worth noting, is that aluminum is another metal with a low enough forging point that it could be worked using thermal vents. Of course, aluminum is, historically, very hard to come by, being even more rare and precious than silver and gold back in the day, so it wouldn't be a common weapon, and it's lightness can actually be a downside for many underwater weapons, but it could be used to make swords without relying on surface forges. This, combined with it's rarity, might make it into a sort of symbol of independence and sovereignty for the ruling elite, showing that they aren't reliant on the crazy surface dwellers. Of course, a good steel, bronze, or even iron blade makes for a much better and more durable sword, since like lead aluminum is fairly soft, but it also doesn't corrode and, like lead, doesn't require you to find a surface forge to fix it when it's damaged. Probably not a very practical weapon, but it could be favored by some, probably for it's use as a status symbol more than anything else.

The 3D nature of underwater would have an effect on warfare as well. I'd expect two main types of warrior: the heavily armored foot soldier, with heavy armor (lead, bronze, tough hides, whatever works) and weapons, who marches along the sea floor, giving up vertical mobility for a sturdy footing and better defenses, and a lightly armored infantry that forgoes heavy armor (or perhaps any armor at all) and uses lighter weapons, but maintains their ability to swim over the top of the enemy freely, letting them attack their enemies from the flanks, the rear, or even from directly above, though most likely they'd spend most of their time fighting other light troops to maintain "air superiority" of a sort. And while heavy troops may favor being on the seabed, they could also use flotation devices (as simple as a few bits of wood) to allow them to swim up and over their enemies as well, though these would probably be too bulky to really fight effectively in.

Mr. Mask
2014-10-09, 12:27 PM
Good point with long spears that turning them is slower. Movement in general will be changed underwater, of course, so it won't necessarily be easy to dodge around a spear.

To be fair to swords, they wouldn't be too bad. You can't effectively cut, but you can still thrust, and slice/saw people in two. Still, as you say, big swords aren't really that great underwater. Objects feel lighter, so you could try to wield a long sword for the purpose of sawing people in two when they come close. But aside from supposedly being easier to dislodge from victims, I'm not sure how that advantages it over a spear.

I don't think I agree with the point about axes and picks. If you smack yourself in the leg with a claw hammer hard and fast, you could end up hospitalizing yourself. If you press it into your leg without the velocity, it barely even hurts. The reduced velocity of swung weapons is a serious detriment, even if it leaves the possibility that they can be used. While reducing the size of the handle would be useful to reduce drag, your arm seems to be the main concern in terms of drag.

Shields also have the advantage that most of the swung two handed weapons and powerful missile weapons that disabled them on dry land aren't very viable underwater (pikes still work). Swimming with a shield might be a concern, depending on how well you can design it for that.

One concern to keep in mind is how well heat travels through water, so when operating in an area of 400 degrees, you're going to get cooked as well. Lead is a good idea for its low heat requirements, but I'm not sure it'd be resistant enough to corrosion. Aluminium would be nice. Makes me wonder how accessible various minerals would be from underwater mining.

Of course, on corrosion, whether these are salt-water dwellers or fresh-water ought to make some difference, and whether you want to use these tools all the time or if they can be kept in water-proof sheaths/containers most of the time.

Asia had some impressive floats they wore with their armour, which probably could be fought in. Of course, it depends on how heavy the armour is, as you could wear some very heavy stuff if you only need to walk around the sea floor (like a deep sea diving suit, something like 200 pounds of armour). Of course, being able to wear armour depends on how much of what materials you can scrounge, and it will make your movements more sluggish (imagine wearing a 30 layer gambeson underwater), as well as what weapons you're trying to ward off (also how precious mobility is compared to armour). How many of what kinds of sea-creatures factions can bring to war will make a difference.


Blizz: Maybe some kind of explosion-powered clamp that causes the same effect? Could be interesting.

Yora
2014-10-09, 12:41 PM
This is absolutely correct, although being 'composite' or not is obviously not the key feature here.

Composite materials just allow bowyer to shape bow in such a way that allows much more efficient energy storage for given work put into it.



That's absolutely not correct.


You can easily construct 2000 pounds bow that will be outperformed by 50 pound one, if you do it poorly enough.



Reflexive shapes of composite bows used in Asia in particular generally allowed to outperform even the best selfbows with heavy arrows.

With lighter arrows the difference usually was even greater.

And composite bows weren't always compact either.

Then I do indeed have not the slightest clue how bows work. Still something learned, I guess. :smallbiggrin:

Spiryt
2014-10-09, 01:07 PM
Then I do indeed have not the slightest clue how bows work. Still something learned, I guess. :smallbiggrin:

All the physics is also somehow fuzzy in my mind, but it's not all that tricky.

Bow is essentially a spring, you store energy in it by exerting certain force over certain distance - multiplying F by S givens you work.

So you have that potential energy in bow.

But bow are in fact not equal, so shape, the way it bends and how, how much of the bow works etc. - will determine how 'well' can you bend the bow so how much energy can it store.

All is determined by solid laws of mechanical advantage, leverage, etc.

How much, in centimeters, will bow ends move, bending, for every centimeter the string center is pulled back.


It obviously can get complicated really fast, but for starts, visualization of angle between string and bow 'horn' is very important and rather easy.

See here, for example, the illustration of a siyah of some reflexive bow:

http://de.academic.ru/pictures/dewiki/115/siyah.jpg


See how string is attached to it, and you can imagine, step by step, how string transfers force and efficiently bends the bow.

Now see the illustration of a very stupid fantasy crossbow

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090812071517/pathfinder/images/thumb/4/48/Assassin.jpg/541px-Assassin.jpg

You can easily imagine, that pulling that string towards you will be extremely inefficient way of bending the arms - since the direction in which they will bend is pretty much perpendicular to the S (road) of the string (it's very nocking point, to be precise).

So pulling ^ and hoping something will bend ><... Not very smart.

If that string was draw at the end of the nocks, like it should, it would make way more sense, though this crossbow is still badly drawn.

Carl
2014-10-09, 02:05 PM
Of course, using a powder weapon underwater would be a heck of a trick, as you need it dry with enough air to burn. Advanced chemistry would, someone pointed out, likely work in gas forms rather than liquids, so we might want to consider an explosive gas like methane instead (still leaves the problem of igniting it, of course...).

Wind-up torpedoes are a possibility, if you can get enough power in the spring to propel them with usable force. Not familiar enough with the strength to weight of springs to work this out.

Depends, some stuff will burn or decompose underwater, (and they exist), and can be lit with something other than fire, (you just need to get a chemical on it that will generate a heat producing reaction), and you've got a primitive steam producer. Use a high bypass design and you've got yourself a primitive if functional torpedo. Obviouslly if you can get actual gunpowder, even better, you just need to keep it dry and chemically ignite it, once lit it should stay lit and burning.

Also a crossbow type contact gun may work underwater. I.e. you stat the enemy with it to release the catch and the spring then drives the crossbow bolt into them. Would be a really good armor piercer. Also bottom infantry are only viable if the enemies infrastructure is there, if they live in floating mobile cities in the mid altitudes your forced to fight off the bottom. Flotation is of course an option for armour.

Compressed air is also a possibility and easy to mass produce if you have super deep diving capabilities, the catch is producing something that can safely contain it.

And yes a compound bow has more power, it's related to a lot of factor's, but mostly multiple thin strips are better "springs" than one thick one for the most part. The way it can let you work in strong spring material's that you could never make a bow out of on it's own really helps too.

Honest Tiefling
2014-10-09, 05:26 PM
I did a quick search, but if this has been addressed then I apologize. I am no weapon expert (or I wouldn't be asking you people!) but I have read that slings were favored over bows in some regions due to some factors such as the ease of training and acquiring ammunition until bow making technology took off in the middle ages. I assume the sling was used a lot for volleys, so how does it compare for accuracy at range? I also assume that there is a reason no one put a slinger on a horse for some reason as well.

This is for a campaign that is much less technologically advanced then your standard DnD game, somewhere around the Iron Ages, with a few advances from afterwards tossed in. So bow-making isn't fantastic yet, at least not in all regions.

Carl
2014-10-09, 10:33 PM
The Wiki does say that ancient texts claimed 400m range in arcing trajectories. No idea what a more straight one would look like.

The big problem really with slings is that they have fairly poor characteristics vs armor. You probably could produce a really good projectile, but by the time you van do that you can probably produce a better bow. Not sure how tiring they would be to use though.

Honest Tiefling
2014-10-09, 10:55 PM
I thought lead bullets were the best ammunititon, and it doesn't take a lot of metal working to get that far. Also, the same wiki article implies that incan slings might have broken steel swords. I would have thought that they'd be great against armor in an era without the english longbow or better composite bows.

Carl
2014-10-09, 11:34 PM
Simply put slingstones aren't especially heavy by arrow standards and aren't going to be going especially fast. They obviously have to have decent momentum to carry as far as is claimed, but where not talking any kind of huge advantage over an arrow, and an arrow has a sharp steel or iron point. A slingstone is soft as hell lead and is quite broad.

Everything about an arrow means it's going to use it's impact energy better than an equivalent sling-stone, even a lead one.

Mr. Mask
2014-10-10, 12:17 AM
I'd say slings were more effective against armour than bows, given similar emphasis on armour penetration (length of the sling, heaviness of the stone, etc.). Of course, they're a high skill weapon, even more than bows. If you don't practice a lot, you look like the kids with slings in protests (they'll still near take your head off, if they ever hit their mark). Even stones thrown by hand are hard to armour against, and that's a pretty poor throwing mechanism (to be fair, arrows do better thrown by hand than you'd expect).


Carl: Crossbows as hand-to-hand armour piercing specialist weapons sounds neat. And compressed air weapons could also take off among the underwater people. Going to consider what they might do with the compressed air, and how compressed they can get it.

Carl
2014-10-10, 01:06 AM
I'd say slings were more effective against armour than bows, given similar emphasis on armour penetration (length of the sling, heaviness of the stone, etc.). Of course, they're a high skill weapon, even more than bows. If you don't practice a lot, you look like the kids with slings in protests (they'll still near take your head off, if they ever hit their mark). Even stones thrown by hand are hard to armour against, and that's a pretty poor throwing mechanism (to be fair, arrows do better thrown by hand than you'd expect).

I'm curious could you explain your reasoning. I may be missing something but everything i know about physics says arrows would trample slingshot into the floor against armor as they're worse in both piercing and blunt force trauma aspects than an arrow.


Carl: Crossbows as hand-to-hand armour piercing specialist weapons sounds neat. And compressed air weapons could also take off among the underwater people. Going to consider what they might do with the compressed air, and how compressed they can get it.

Well to compress, fill a container that's open at the bottom with air at or near the surface, then carry it as deep as possible, seal the bottom at the new compressed volume, and there you go, instant compressed air. If you can go to the bottom of somewhere like challenger deep with it you've got 15,000PSI available in potentia. Obviously unless your very close to the surface the exterior pressure will sharply reduce this, but 10,000PSI in any light reaching parts should be doable with a deep enough section of ocean.

Brother Oni
2014-10-10, 02:22 AM
I'm curious could you explain your reasoning. I may be missing something but everything i know about physics says arrows would trample slingshot into the floor against armor as they're worse in both piercing and blunt force trauma aspects than an arrow.

A possible suggestion for the proposed increase in blunt force trauma with soft lead sling bullets - they deform on impact, thus more kinetic energy is imparted to the target, much like a hollowpoint round.

Of course padding is going to mitigate that, as will shields (the sling bullets would probably batter the hell out of the shield, but would be unlikely to over penetrate, whereas an arrow would cause minimal damage to the shield but still have a chance to injure the wielder) and it's telling that there's very little mention of slingers in a warfare situation once armour improves - by the time of the Middle Ages, only the Spanish and Portugese are using it against the lightly armoured Moors.

Interestingly some sling bullets dating back to 1st Century BC reinforce their use as military weapons because of the writing engraved on them. In typical soldier black humour, they range from the name of the military unit (so the enemy know who they're fighting) to insults ('Take this' and 'Ouch') and sarcasm ('Catch!'). :smallbiggrin:

Mr. Mask
2014-10-10, 02:29 AM
Carl: Knowledge of rocks, mostly. It hurts more than it should to get struck with a stone, even when armoured. Heavy things and dense things are particularly effective against armour; there was even some experiments with lead armour for this reason near to the world wars (that is, for its density). Against heavy armour, arrows have been known to be surprisingly ineffective. I may be able to dig up some accounts of slings doing well against armour, but so far I'm mostly finding examples of sling stones burying themselves in flesh like bullets.


Wow... that is a lot of psi. The sea people would likely be limited by the strength of their pressure containers, and would see the technology improve as their materials did. There might be concerns to their own pressure thresholds depending on the kind of sea creature they are. If they could get 10,000psi or more... you could build some nasty stuff with that. Hard to work out the exact details of what that would allow, but short ranged torpedoes or even airguns might become possible (I'm not familiar enough with water to guess at effective ranges).


Oni: "Catch!" is a new one to me :smallbiggrin:.

I think slinging becoming rarer has more to do with slinging traditions being unusual, and much of Europe lacking ties to the places which kept up a slinging culture. It really is a high skill job. Still, I'll look into the matter again, since it has been brought up.

Carl
2014-10-10, 02:48 AM
@Mr Mask: the problem is that according to the wiki the average lead sling "bullet" is only 28g's, (0.99 ounces). Arrows went a lot heavier. And given the probable size of such a small "bullet and the almond shapes good ballistic coefficient the average war arrow was almost certain to have higher drag meaning it would need to leave the bow with more momentum to reach the same max range. At the limits of range the momentum will be similar, so striking power will be mostly similar, except one's sharp and doesn't deform much. And at close ranges the arrow will totally outmatch the sling bullet in mass terms. Heavier sling bullets where used but they had correspondingly shorter range.

@Oni@ That would actually make them worse, not better because the deformation increase the deceleration time, reducing force applied and sheds energy in the process of deformation. That said against unarmored target's, blunt force may be more deadly, (armor would really mitigate this), though a suitably broad headed arrow would be as good.

Also dense materials in armor is totally different. Anything going through armor has to move the material the armor is made of aside, so high density increases the energy required to do so.

Brother Oni
2014-10-10, 07:12 AM
Carl: Knowledge of rocks, mostly. It hurts more than it should to get struck with a stone, even when armoured. Heavy things and dense things are particularly effective against armour; there was even some experiments with lead armour for this reason near to the world wars (that is, for its density). Against heavy armour, arrows have been known to be surprisingly ineffective.

As Carl said, dense materials make armour harder to penetrate, as there's more material to get through per unit volume.

Heavy plate harness (anything over 2mm so gothic plate for example) is pretty much impervious to all non-gunpowder weaponry and does a pretty good job at stopping bullets too.



@Oni@ That would actually make them worse, not better because the deformation increase the deceleration time, reducing force applied and sheds energy in the process of deformation. That said against unarmored target's, blunt force may be more deadly, (armor would really mitigate this), though a suitably broad headed arrow would be as good.

Wouldn't the deformation result in a larger surface contact area to transmit the force though? Most sling bullets cause their damage by smacking a large area rather then putting a deep hole in you like an arrow.

That said I agree that there is energy loss via deformation, but if deformation shedding energy is bad for penetration, then why are hollowpoints more effective on soft targets than standard ball? This isn't a challenge by the way, just a question.

Mr. Mask
2014-10-10, 07:23 AM
And why is dense material harder to penetrate, do you believe?

Carl
2014-10-10, 09:40 AM
@Oni:

Glad you asked about hollow points as that lets me explain this in a really easy way.

Simply put for a very long time most weapons of war we've used have had excessive penetrating capacity against flesh. Shoot them at someone with no armor and they'll either go in deeper than they need to. They waste energy over-penetrating their targets. Hollow points are an attempt to create an answer to that be producing something that becomes wider on impact producing a larger wound cavity in diameter terms at the cost of penetration depth.

Yes the hollow point deforming costs energy too, but so long as the penetration depth loss from that and the loss from the wider wound it creates doesn't cause it to penetrate insufficiently the end result is still a better weapon.

Broadheads are to arrows what hollowpoints are to bullets btw.


Regarding armor:


Also dense materials in armor is totally different. Anything going through armor has to move the material the armor is made of aside, so high density increases the energy required to do so.

Emphasis mine this time.

Basically moving armour material aside requires, (outside of 2000m/s+ impact speeds), you to overcome the tensile strength of the material so it will deform, then through that deformation move the material aside by accelerating it to a velocity that moves it aside faster than the projectile or blade edge or whatever is moving at after it's shed energy doing that.

Conservation of momentum which i talked about in the prior thread dictates the minimum velocity and thus energy loss required to do this, but for high tensile strength values it will actually rather exceed this.

The actual force required to overcome tensile strength and the mass to be moved aside will, (for a given fixed thickness of armour), increase in direct proportion to the contact area.

Thats why something that spreads on impact will perform poorly against armour, it increases the armours ability to absorb the energy instead of the target, and why Bodkins where more effective than broad-heads.


Also regarding the PSI, early torpedoes ran on 350PSI, though they did have pneumatic engines, (that is engines that run entirely on compressed air without combustion). I also believe with extreme enough PSI you could use a forced rupture of a tank as an explosive, you'd need a way to compromise it's integrity or raise the pressure, (probably through modest heating of 25 Celsius or so), really rapidly to be much use and it would still make a real explosive look poor, but underwater pressure waves are really, really bloody deadly, it could afford to be bad and still be dangerous as hell.

Gnoman
2014-10-10, 10:21 AM
@Mr Mask: the problem is that according to the wiki the average lead sling "bullet" is only 28g's, (0.99 ounces). Arrows went a lot heavier. And given the probable size of such a small "bullet and the almond shapes good ballistic coefficient the average war arrow was almost certain to have higher drag meaning it would need to leave the bow with more momentum to reach the same max range. At the limits of range the momentum will be similar, so striking power will be mostly similar, except one's sharp and doesn't deform much. And at close ranges the arrow will totally outmatch the sling bullet in mass terms. Heavier sling bullets where used but they had correspondingly shorter range.

@Oni@ That would actually make them worse, not better because the deformation increase the deceleration time, reducing force applied and sheds energy in the process of deformation. That said against unarmored target's, blunt force may be more deadly, (armor would really mitigate this), though a suitably broad headed arrow would be as good.

Also dense materials in armor is totally different. Anything going through armor has to move the material the armor is made of aside, so high density increases the energy required to do so.

You're overlooking something very, very important. An arrow that fails to penetrate transfers a fairly small portion of their kinetic energy into whatever they hit. A failure to penetrate almost always results in the arrow glancing off the target rather than being stopped. This is true of any "penetrator" weapon. Arrow vs. sling bullet has a lot of parallels to sword vs. warhammer. There wasn't a lot of difference in weight between swords and warhammers of the same general use, as the physics of the situation dictated the broad parameters, but hammers were a lot better at transferring their energy because the armor actually stopped the blow instead of redirecting it, while a blade striking with the same force would either cut through, or it would fail to cut and slide away, wasting nearly all the energy. The same is true of a sling bullet. A sling bullet would strike the armor, flatten out, and either stick to the armor or fall to the ground, transmitting 100% of the energy it posessed.

Slings were (and are) extremely deadly weapons, but they're also short ranged and extremely difficult to use. Once shepherds and hunters switched to the easier and more flexible bow, or the even easier crossbow to defend their flocks and provide meat for the table, it became militarily useless due to the training time.

Knaight
2014-10-10, 10:31 AM
I'm curious could you explain your reasoning. I may be missing something but everything i know about physics says arrows would trample slingshot into the floor against armor as they're worse in both piercing and blunt force trauma aspects than an arrow.

There are a few big things. One is that a lot less energy is lost to air resistance, your assumption of comparable end velocities is questionable at best. This gets particularly notable when firing downhill, as slings benefit more from the potential energy of the height on account of losing less to air resistance. Another is that heavier sling glandes can and have been used for armor piercing - these show up particularly often with staff slings. Then there's the matter of wounds. Slings are going to be much more effective at inflicting blunt trauma through armor. The shape of the glandes also makes them much less likely to deflect - an arrow can easily hit armor at a bit of an angle (this is particularly true with later plate, but it holds for mail and similar), change direction slightly, and slide off. A sling glande isn't likely to do so.

Then there's the special case of strikes on limbs. Limbs are often comparatively unarmored (it depends on period and specifics, obviously, but the torso was generally significantly better armored than limbs). A glancing blow with an arrow produces a cut, and even a good one often goes right through and does comparatively little damage. Sling glandes are liable to break bones, or at least do a lot of tissue damage from their sheer size. They are also more difficult to extract.

Jon_Dahl
2014-10-10, 11:27 AM
This is not the right thread for this question, but...

I want an assault rifle in my game that was designed 2021. Got any ideas? I was thinking about airburst weapons, but this weapon has to be used in drive-by shootings. I know that an assault rifle is not the best choice either, but humor me and suggest an assault rifle.

My players are knowledgeable of weapons of all types, so I'm under pressure here...