PDA

View Full Version : Index Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIII



Pages : [1] 2 3 4 5 6

Roxxy
2017-03-14, 03:44 AM
As always, here's our resource for RPG players and gamemasters to learn and teach about weapons and warfare.

A few rules for this thread, to copy the great Thiel verbatim:

This thread is for asking questions about how weapons and armor 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 poltics 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.

Thread I (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?24294-Got-A-Weapon-or-Armor-Question)
Thread III (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?21318-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-III)
Thread IV (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?18302-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-or-Armor-Question-Mk-IV)
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)
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)
Thread XVI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?371623-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XVI)
Thread XVII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?392804-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XVII)
Thread XVIII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?421723-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XVIII)
Thread XIX (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?454083-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XIX)
Thread XX (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?480058-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XX)
Thread XXI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?493127-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XXI)
Thread XXII ("http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?503643-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XXII)

Roxxy
2017-03-14, 03:47 AM
I'll repeat an earlier question, since the other thread ran out. If we're dealing with Eberronish tech, and armor is being mass produced, what armors do you think would best lend themselves to this? I'm assuming the biggest issue is fitting the armor to the wearer properly, so I'm guessing that gambesons and maybe brigandine are easiest because you can manufacture them in general sizes and then tailor them to fit the wearer, maybe followed by mail for the same reason, but I'm no armorer or tailor.

On a related note, I posit that, back when there were nobles in my world, they typically studied magic because they had the resources to send their children off to such schools and naturally want access to that power. So, knights knew magic, even if they also knew how to swing a sword. This being D&D, where magic and heavy armor rarely mix, I'm wondering if there's any reason for full plate or three-quarter plate to ever really have been a common thing. The people with the money to buy that armor outright were wearing lighter armor so they could easily cast spells, and mass producing full plate seems a recipe for a lot of problems fitting it.

PersonMan
2017-03-14, 04:02 AM
On a related note, I posit that, back when there were nobles in my world, they typically studied magic because they had the resources to send their children off to such schools and naturally want access to that power. So, knights knew magic, even if they also knew how to swing a sword. This being D&D, where magic and heavy armor rarely mix, I'm wondering if there's any reason for full plate or three-quarter plate to ever really have been a common thing. The people with the money to buy that armor outright were wearing lighter armor so they could easily cast spells, and mass producing full plate seems a recipe for a lot of problems fitting it.

Some notes:

1. Depending on how much time it takes in your world to study magic, knights may not have the time to become masters of martial combat as well as magic - so you may have someone who has basic proficiency with a few weapons, but is primarily user of arcane power.

2. Heavier plate was, I've read, generally a response to developing firearms. Without those, you might not see the "full plate" designs really come into play, unless there's some sort of cheaply-available anti-magic metal to protect you from spells as well.

snowblizz
2017-03-14, 06:55 AM
I'll repeat an earlier question, since the other thread ran out. If we're dealing with Eberronish tech, and armor is being mass produced, what armors do you think would best lend themselves to this? I'm assuming the biggest issue is fitting the armor to the wearer properly, so I'm guessing that gambesons and maybe brigandine are easiest because you can manufacture them in general sizes and then tailor them to fit the wearer, maybe followed by mail for the same reason, but I'm no armorer or tailor.

To be honest, mass producing armour (even up to advanced plate) and mass customizing it was done IRL. Think of armour as off the rack clothes. The padding underneath the armour will "cover sins" so to speak. The absolute best would indeed be custom fitted, but you get quite far by mass made items and minor modifications. People aren't that different, esp with padding.




2. Heavier plate was, I've read, generally a response to developing firearms. Without those, you might not see the "full plate" designs really come into play, unless there's some sort of cheaply-available anti-magic metal to protect you from spells as well.
Well, firearms and crossbows. Generally speaking it's a positive feedback loop. You increase protection a bit (better metallurgy gives a minor boost in armour, say can make plates in relevant enough sizes), and someone makes a better can-opener, so you improve armour again. It's a process that takes some time. Almsot 2 centuries to get to fully plated IIRC and guns were only at the end of it reaching the point where they were poised to suppleant other firepower.

The_Jette
2017-03-14, 08:28 AM
Well, firearms and crossbows. Generally speaking it's a positive feedback loop. You increase protection a bit (better metallurgy gives a minor boost in armour, say can make plates in relevant enough sizes), and someone makes a better can-opener, so you improve armour again. It's a process that takes some time. Almsot 2 centuries to get to fully plated IIRC and guns were only at the end of it reaching the point where they were poised to suppleant other firepower.

You've kinda got that backwards. Crossbows were developed as a way to counter plate armor, which was used because the plates spread the force of a blow across the entire surface. Crossbows would focus all of the strength of the shot into one tiny area (the tip of the bolt) and puncture the plate armor. Firearms were actually developed as siege weapons, and slowly became smaller to deal with cavalry. Plate armor was developed to deal with big freaking swords, and other weapons like the flail and mace. Those weapons were developed to counter chain mail. And, so on, back to the point that people would simply wear thick leather clothes in an attempt to make it harder for people to stab them.

Max_Killjoy
2017-03-14, 09:20 AM
You've kinda got that backwards. Crossbows were developed as a way to counter plate armor...

Considering that the crossbow as a weapon of war in Europe predates "full plate armor" by centuries... probably not.

Unoriginal
2017-03-14, 10:38 AM
You've kinda got that backwards. Crossbows were developed as a way to counter plate armor

Not really, no. Roman and Chinese soldiers had crossbows centuries before the plate armor.

Unless you meant "they improved crossbows to make them able to take on plate armor"


and other weapons like the flail and mace. Those weapons were developed to counter chain mail.

Actually, mace is a counter for plate armor.

Vitruviansquid
2017-03-14, 11:43 AM
Flails were adapted agricultural implements.

Maces have existed long before both mail and plate armor.

Unoriginal
2017-03-14, 12:00 PM
Flails were adapted agricultural implements.

Maces have existed long before both mail and plate armor.

Well, sure, but just like for crossbows, the mace's design turned out to be pretty handy against plate. Sometime with slight changes.

Incanur
2017-03-14, 12:15 PM
If you can mass produce armor, plate armor of hardened steel would the best for at least heavy cavalry and heavy infantry. Without gunpowder weapons to worry about, you would make it reasonably thin and thus light. While sizing is an issue, infantry plate armor (up to three-quarters harness) was mass produced in 15th/16th-century Europe, so this model works.

Brigandines (again, ideally of hardened steel) allow for more comfort and convenience if that's what you're into.

I've never quite been able to wrap my head around the D&D notion of spell failure. Unless somatic components involve serious acrobatics, armor beyond gauntlets and maybe arm harness shouldn't be an issue. I can see how many gauntlets would make precise hand motions difficult, but that's about it.

So I guess the prevalence of armor among magically trained knights would depend on system specifics. In 3.x, most would might simply rely on mage armor or mithral mail shirts if they could afford them.

Snails
2017-03-14, 12:20 PM
While there surely was a feedback loop with respect to crossbows and better metallurgy making it practical to build larger & heavier armor pieces, your 10th century knight proudly wearing mail over padding was already acutely aware of the potential benefits of additional protection for key areas. The incentives already existed to experiment with pieces over the chest, hips, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, in addition to some kind of grieves to cover the more vulnerable lengths of arms and legs.

The original question was whether you could make it from metal such that it was actually worth the additional coin compared to hardened leather or small plates sewn into leather. The original context was additional supplemental pieces over the mail and padding already there.

As overlapping plates became robust enough, it becomes obvious that you could save a lot of weight by foregoing mail underneath -- if you dare.

Crossbows existed long before plate, as their value against mail is obvious. What plate armor encouraged were experiments with much heavier crossbows than anyone would have otherwise bothered with.

Maces were first a counter for mail armor, as a solidly connecting blow with a heavy weapon could deliver force sufficient to break a bone right through the mail, without the implied energy expenditure of shattering numerous metal rings that a sword cut required. The obvious defense to the mace is larger plate pieces or interlocking plate pieces in the most vulnerable areas to distribute the force, like the shoulders, where very powerful downward blows could be delivered.

As plate pieces become more valued and more common, then the mace developed further, as a specifically anti-plate weapon. Flanging is a useful development here from circa 12th century. It actually predates full plating, but, as already discussed, various kinds of plating on the shoulders were already being experimented with.

Max_Killjoy
2017-03-14, 12:57 PM
I've never quite been able to wrap my head around the D&D notion of spell failure. Unless somatic components involve serious acrobatics, armor beyond gauntlets and maybe arm harness shouldn't be an issue. I can see how many gauntlets would make precise hand motions difficult, but that's about it.


It's a reverse-justification for restricting access to armor for "wizards", which goes back to nothing more than early D&D's primitive notions of game balance and recreating tropes/archetypes.

Incanur
2017-03-14, 01:14 PM
The narrative in the (in)famous book (https://books.google.com/books?id=6sAftYT6dsIC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=from+sumer+to+rome+%2B+mace&source=bl&ots=od8UIhyF-c&sig=d7QH9T2OmSJyJn--ZkdYt1p2yNk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwifp_Shx9bSAhVjqVQKHVcfAvAQ6AEIHzAB#v=on epage&q=from%20sumer%20to%20rome%20%2B%20mace&f=false) From Sumer to Rome is the helmet displaced the single-handed mace in ancient Egypt and surroundings. Rather than being good against helmets, the single-handed mace by this account was good against unprotected human skulls and fell out of use after decent helmets became common. Their test mace weighed 1.8lbs and their test helmet was 2mm of copper plus 4mm of leather (a pretty serious helmet).

Now, From Sumer to Rome has lots of issues, but I bet there's some truth to this account. As far as I know, nobody in the 15th/16th century in Western Europe suggested single-handed mace for infantry to use against their helmeted foes. Light single-handed maces, clubs, and cudgels rarely appear as infantry weapons except for reasons of poverty and/or cultural significance. The Germanic warriors who wielded club and shield (https://books.google.com/books?id=QhuVByLAy9oC&pg=PA78&lpg=PA78&dq=germanic+warriors+clubmen&source=bl&ots=j9fP_LeRRc&sig=dfcyGrHpAouiPXoWH9hRFyJjPBw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj5m9LTytbSAhVDy2MKHS7-CIoQ6AEINzAI#v=onepage&q=germanic%20warriors%20clubmen&f=false) (sometimes with a sword at the belt!) fall into the latter category, though they seem to have had some success with their clubs, including against armored cavalry. I don't know how to explain that beyond sheer badassery.

It was specifically in the hands of cavalry that short maces, axes, hammers, and such like impact weapons saw use against armor. By at least the 15th and 16th centuries, these tended to rather pointier and heavier than their ancient counterparts, so that perhaps made the difference as well. Men-at-arms also apparently at times struck two-handed blows with their short (usually around 2ft) maces, at least according to Sydney Anglo's reading of Pietro Monte (IIRC).

So yeah, the idea that maces arose to counter armor might be kind of true in certain periods, but there's likewise evidence that the light one-handed mace initially emerged as cheap and easy way to shatter unprotected skulls.

oudeis
2017-03-14, 01:19 PM
Didn't plate armor in the strictest sense exist long before the medieval period? I'm thinking of the bronze armor worn in classical Greece and the iron lorica segmentata (banded mail, to us D&D types) of the Roman legions. Wasn't the 'muscle cuirass' made of iron as well?

Incanur
2017-03-14, 01:27 PM
Didn't plate armor in the strictest sense exist long before the medieval period? I'm thinking of the bronze armor worn in classical Greece and the iron lorica segmentata (banded mail, to us D&D types) of the Roman legions. Wasn't the 'muscle cuirass' made of iron as well?

Yes, you even had impressive suits like the Dendra panoply (https://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=91940) in antiquity (or is circa 1400 BCE pre-antiquity?). It wasn't as good as 15th/16th-century European plate armor, but still offered solid protection and mobility.

oudeis
2017-03-14, 01:44 PM
The images I found of the Dendra make the user look like a two-legged Dalek, especially the modern recreations. :smallbiggrin:

Tiktakkat
2017-03-14, 04:27 PM
If we're dealing with Eberronish tech, and . . .

Well, I would note that in Eberron material they do manage a considerable amount of plate armor even with mid-level spellcasters available.
And with low-level "artillery" available in some cases (magewrights equipped with eternal wands of fireball or magic missile).
And one kingdom relies heavily on armored spellcasters (duskblades).

So those designers at least felt the combination was "functional".
Which means to some extent your question might also be posed to the optimizers, who I am sure will inform you that while a duskblade is good, CoDzilla is always better, and so on.
And they might note that part of why it "works" is that Eberron sort of caps out around 10th level or so, which limits the power of magic.

I would suggest the best real-world comparison is as I said on the thread about introducing D20 Modern guns to a regular campaign: treat them as funky magic items, as they certainly aren't realistic, keeping the inverse in mind.
That is, strong enough magic is just weird technology.
So . . .
What would be the effect if people had access to modern semi-automatic and automatic rifles, auto-grenade launchers, body armor, and the like along with magic?
Would they make "ordinary" people, arms, and armor, obsolete?
What is ASF% for ceramic plate body armor?

Which really suggests that what is missing from most RPGs is "anti-magic" with a cost and effect similar to that of plate armor to regular weapons.
But I worry how thread-relevant such musings would be.

snowblizz
2017-03-14, 04:36 PM
Didn't plate armor in the strictest sense exist long before the medieval period? I'm thinking of the bronze armor worn in classical Greece and the iron lorica segmentata (banded mail, to us D&D types) of the Roman legions. Wasn't the 'muscle cuirass' made of iron as well?

The muscle cuirass was bronze or leather IIRC, and basically for show. Other regions used similar armours though.

And yes there were sort of plate armours earlier (closer to coat of plates really). But there's no real line of descent from them to the European late medieval full plate. The Romans essentially stopped using the Lorica Segmentata e.g. and mostly used chainmail. And that's really from where the late medieaval plate armour is developed.

Telok
2017-03-14, 11:44 PM
Some notes:

1. Depending on how much time it takes in your world to study magic, knights may not have the time to become masters of martial combat as well as magic - so you may have someone who has basic proficiency with a few weapons, but is primarily user of arcane power.

D&D features magic items that require spellcasting ability to use, some useful spells that last for hours, and a number of spells that require only verbal and material components. So the use of magic while wearing armor is quite possible within the rule set.

If plate was developed in your setting then it will be used. Since your setting has magic, that will be used. The ability of the two to complement each other on the battle field may be imperfect but if it grants any advantage then it will be used.

I would also note that the magic mentioned is quite useful off the battle field too.

rrgg
2017-03-15, 12:28 PM
Didn't plate armor in the strictest sense exist long before the medieval period? I'm thinking of the bronze armor worn in classical Greece and the iron lorica segmentata (banded mail, to us D&D types) of the Roman legions. Wasn't the 'muscle cuirass' made of iron as well?

Bronze could be made by casting, but the problem with iron was that up until the mid to late middle ages there was a lack of bloomeries capable of making a large enough piece of iron. So you had armor made out of smaller iron plates, and mail with iron plates incorporated into it, but nothing the size of a single, solid breastplate.

There's also the fact that the price of iron began to drop dramatically in the late middle ages.

Mike_G
2017-03-15, 01:59 PM
Found a pretty good video on the effectiveness of 18th century smoothbore musketry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cw8ktmlF1A

It's long, but if you skip to about the 11 minute mark, they do a test whee first one trained marksman fires three shots at each of four distances at a single man sized target, and the results are not good. Then they have five men fire volley fire at the same distance against six man sized targets in line, with much better results (duh)

It's just a good illustration that the Brown Bess, with field loads and a lack of backsight, was totally inadequate for picking off individuals, but effective in its role as a volley weapon against enemy formations.

One of the better tests I've seen.

rrgg
2017-03-15, 03:32 PM
I think the fact that the first marksman didn't have much experience shooting muskets or aiming without a rear sight was probably an issue. As a result he was still making guesses about how much he needed to compensate up or down and left or right at the very end of the experiment. Murphey's Muskets (https://youtu.be/1Xu4QQnUJRI?t=6m) has videos where he's managed to achieve much better results with smoothbore muskets. Given that, Col. Hanger's claim that a good shot with a good musket could hit a single target at 80-100 yards seems to hold true.

The volley tests were interesting. Accounting for the fact that they didn't count hits against white space, the results seem somewhat similar to historical trials which involved volley fire against a battalion target. But they still drastically outperformed what was typically expected in combat.

gkathellar
2017-03-15, 04:36 PM
I've never quite been able to wrap my head around the D&D notion of spell failure. Unless somatic components involve serious acrobatics, armor beyond gauntlets and maybe arm harness shouldn't be an issue. I can see how many gauntlets would make precise hand motions difficult, but that's about it.

Well, if we're desperate to justify the rule, it's easy enough to say that somatic components consist of physically manipulating arcane energy with body movement, and that armor causes distortions and variations in the flow of energy across the skin or whatever. Or say it's all mudras? There's various answers, fwiw

But as has been said, it's a reverse-justification for something better addressed with simple non-proficiency.

Lemmy
2017-03-15, 06:01 PM
I've never quite been able to wrap my head around the D&D notion of spell failure. Unless somatic components involve serious acrobatics, armor beyond gauntlets and maybe arm harness shouldn't be an issue. I can see how many gauntlets would make precise hand motions difficult, but that's about it.Well... Armor also make you nearly twice as likely to fail at horse-riding... D&D only cares about "Hollywood Realism", after all.

Galloglaich
2017-03-15, 06:02 PM
You've kinda got that backwards.

I don't think he does...



Crossbows were developed as a way to counter plate armor,

Ah, no. Crossbows actually pre-date plate armor by centuries. The first Church and Imperial laws against the use of crossbows actually pre-dated full coverage with ("chain") mail armor.



which was used because the plates spread the force of a blow across the entire surface. Crossbows would focus all of the strength of the shot into one tiny area (the tip of the bolt) and puncture the plate armor.

It's a plausible sounding theory, but as far as I know there is no evidence that crossbows were invented to be armor-piercing weapons per-se. They were just more accurate, more powerful missile weapons.



Firearms were actually developed as siege weapons, and slowly became smaller to deal with cavalry.

They did start out as siege weapons... in the 9th Century in China. Firearms were being used to kill in sieges in the 13th Century in Europe in several documented occasions, and this was before you had true plate armor.



Plate armor was developed to deal with big freaking swords,

From all the testing done to date, swords really couldn't cut or stab through mail armor, so there wasn't really any reason to upgrade from mail because of swords. Swords were being used against men armored in mail since probably 800 BC.

Swords aren't really armor-piercing weapons unless you are talking about special swords like the edgeless estoc / kanzer family, or longswords (et al) used with special techniques (i.e. halfswording).



and other weapons like the flail and mace. Those weapons were developed to counter chain mail.

The flail, at least the two-handed military one which saw wide use, was actually developed partially to counter plate armor.



And, so on, back to the point that people would simply wear thick leather clothes in an attempt to make it harder for people to stab them.

There is very little evidence of leather being used as armor in Europe.



If you have a DnD game and you want to limit the appearance of plate armor, simply limit the social / economic system so that they don't make blast furnaces or large bloomery forges. That probably never would have happened without city-states, guild system, and certain key technical discoveries like water-wheel (or wind-mill) powered bellows, crank shaft, trip-hammer etc.

But you probably don't get two handed swords either if you do that.

G

Pauly
2017-03-15, 07:49 PM
Maces that predated plate armor were basically a metal (or stone) ball on the end of a stick. Plenty of examples from around the world from South America, to the Pacific Islands to Babylonia/Sumeria to the Indian sub-continent.

The designs that came about in Europe to deal with plate armor were significantly different. They had spikes, flanges and faceted heads. All of these design features are there to impart energy into rounded metal surfaces. You do not see these designs in regions that did nit have plate. At best you have small knobs on the head.

The mace, as we commonly think of it today, is specifically engineered to be an anti-plate armor weapon. It is not a minor adaption to pre-plate maces. In fact maces had basically droppedout of use in Western Europe, as lacking in functionality compared to a sword, prior to the introduction of plate armor

Haruspex_Pariah
2017-03-15, 09:52 PM
Kind of speculative/sci-fi: if there was a drone with a short control range that required the operator to be on the battlefield, would the operator be considered a combatant? As in could you shoot that person even if all they had on them was a drone control device?

oudeis
2017-03-15, 10:10 PM
If the operator is controlling a vehicle that serves a military objective then attacking him would be no different than targeting any other combatant.

Tiktakkat
2017-03-15, 10:57 PM
As in could you shoot that person even if all they had on them was a drone control device?

The act of carrying a personal weapon is irrelevant to the status of combatant.
An unarmed cook or musician who is part of the military is a legitimate target, even if you "bring" the battlefield to him by breaking into a rear area.

Pauly
2017-03-15, 11:16 PM
Kind of speculative/sci-fi: if there was a drone with a short control range that required the operator to be on the battlefield, would the operator be considered a combatant? As in could you shoot that person even if all they had on them was a drone control device?

Short answer is yes.

Longer answer, yes if it is a combat drone, but probably not if it seves a non combat purpose.

Haruspex_Pariah
2017-03-15, 11:35 PM
The act of carrying a personal weapon is irrelevant to the status of combatant.
An unarmed cook or musician who is part of the military is a legitimate target, even if you "bring" the battlefield to him by breaking into a rear area.

I guess that makes sense. I must be thinking about law enforcement, where the threshold for shooting us different.

TripleD
2017-03-16, 12:12 AM
Been seeing a lot of back and forth regarding "Breath of the Wild"'s breakable weapons, and weapon/armor degradation systems in general.

It's almost too broad a question to answer, but how easy would it be to "break" a martial weapon to the point where you would have to replace it?

Obviously this varies wildly based on time period, type of weapon, and material, but any ballpark estimates from an area you are familiar with would be interesting to hear.

Pauly
2017-03-16, 01:14 AM
Been seeing a lot of back and forth regarding "Breath of the Wild"'s breakable weapons, and weapon/armor degradation systems in general.

It's almost too broad a question to answer, but how easy would it be to "break" a martial weapon to the point where you would have to replace it?

Obviously this varies wildly based on time period, type of weapon, and material, but any ballpark estimates from an area you are familiar with would be interesting to hear.

Speaking as a chef, I us metal weapon equivalents on a daily basis and my knives see more action than most swords.

Metal knives essentially do not degrade or wear out from use. Since moving to CS knives from SS knives I have never had a knife wear out. SS knives do wear out, but that's because you need to remove more metal from the edge in the sharpening process, so when I was using SS kitchen knives I would replace them every 2 or 3 years because the blade was losing shape, and I was sharpening them on my stones every 2 to 4 weeks depending on the edge conditions.

I wasn't replacing them because they weren't functional, but because the blade geometry was no longer optimal.
In a commercial kitchen chef's knives take a lot of abuse, they get dropped, they get used to tenderise, they get used to open cans, they getsed to break small bones.

So it-isn't combat stress but it is daily stress of hard work. 6 days a wek abuse for 48 or 50 weeks a year adds up. So the idea that a metal weapon will slowly degrade over time is bunkum. Excessive sharpening will change blade geometry, but even that can be remedied by grinding a new curve to the blade, which will shorten the blade a bit.

What does happen is that blades fail catasrophically i.e. snap. Catastrophic failures happen in 3 main ways.
1) defect in manufacture.
2) the blade is used to do something it isn't designed to, i.e. It gets overstressed
3) a sharp shock snaps a brittle blade, modern Japanese VG10 steel knives are well known for their propensity to snap if dropped, even though they have many other positive features.

snowblizz
2017-03-16, 04:13 AM
Maces that predated plate armor were basically a metal (or stone) ball on the end of a stick. Plenty of examples from around the world from South America, to the Pacific Islands to Babylonia/Sumeria to the Indian sub-continent.

The designs that came about in Europe to deal with plate armor were significantly different. They had spikes, flanges and faceted heads. All of these design features are there to impart energy into rounded metal surfaces. You do not see these designs in regions that did nit have plate. At best you have small knobs on the head.


In a (private) museum in Lima, Peru I saw a gold mace with long spikes, a morningstar really. It was pre-columbian. I told the guide that labelling it "cudgel" was somewhat accurate but the item was clearly a mace or morningstar.


Been seeing a lot of back and forth regarding "Breath of the Wild"'s breakable weapons, and weapon/armor degradation systems in general.

It's almost too broad a question to answer, but how easy would it be to "break" a martial weapon to the point where you would have to replace it?

Obviously this varies wildly based on time period, type of weapon, and material, but any ballpark estimates from an area you are familiar with would be interesting to hear.
It happens regularly. Swords are brought to combat because you expect to lose your main weapon at some point. Mounted knights would be recommended a list of weapons of at least 5-6 weapons to bring. Without being able to go into details I can't speak of, the general principle seems to be it did happen, and it was something specifically considered in eg assises of arms and equipment as the wealthier soldier is expected to have more stuff brought with him, and they didn't do that for the fun of carrying loads of weapons.
A more immediate concern over outright weapon breakage would be simply losing your weapon, torn from your grasp, stuck somewhere etc etc.

snowblizz
2017-03-16, 04:27 AM
There is very little evidence of leather being used as armor in Europe.


G
I ran across such a claim in a book about medieaval battlefields. But it was very vague, a 13th century writer saying a 11th century invasion of Wales had the commoners clad in leather. I've been meaning to post about it here and see if something more solid can be tracked down. Unlike the later books in the series this one didn't have a proper sourcelist, but I'll check what little names I can find in the text later.
So supposedly Harald Godwinsson when invading Wales in 1063 with hsi brother Tostig equipped huscarls with light leather armour and light shields to counter the wlesh guerilla tactics. According to Gerald de Barry writing around 1200. That as much as the book tells me. Be interesting if anyone can nail that more solidly.

Pauly
2017-03-16, 04:58 AM
In a (private) museum in Lima, Peru I saw a gold mace with long spikes, a morningstar really. It was pre-columbian. I told the guide that labelling it "cudgel" was somewhat accurate but the item was clearly a mace or morningstar.
.

I am familiar with the Inca war mace, made of copper, and all the extant weapons I am aware of as well as all the artistic depictions show a disc or star shape macehead, often with little knobs. I have never seen spikes on, or depicted on, an Incan war mace. There was the star mace, but as far as I am aware that didn't end in spikes.

Since gold is not a functional weapon for warfare, My belief is that what you saw had ceremonial and/or religous purpose.

Kiero
2017-03-16, 07:54 AM
Ah, no. Crossbows actually pre-date plate armor by centuries. The first Church and Imperial laws against the use of crossbows actually pre-dated full coverage with ("chain") mail armor.


Crossbows pre-date medieval plate armour by millenia. The gastraphetes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastraphetes)was very clearly a crossbow, occuring at some point before 399BC.

Incanur
2017-03-16, 08:33 AM
Weapons may have broken rather often, at least under the right circumstances. William Patten (https://archive.org/stream/tudortracts00polliala#page/124/mode/2up) wrote that in the pursuit at Pinkie Cleugh 1547, English cavalry had easy access to the swords the Scots had dropped in their fight, so some of them broke three or four swords before returning. Patten also mentioned cavalry striking blows at helmeted heads. He didn't explicitly connect the two, but they could be way the cavalry broke so many swords.

Beyond swords, some styles of lances were expected to break, at least after a few charges. And pikes could likewise break or get hacked up by edged weapons.

Also, technically bronze plate armor predates any sort of crossbow by a thousand years or more.

Mike_G
2017-03-16, 08:48 AM
I think the fact that the first marksman didn't have much experience shooting muskets or aiming without a rear sight was probably an issue. As a result he was still making guesses about how much he needed to compensate up or down and left or right at the very end of the experiment. Murphey's Muskets (https://youtu.be/1Xu4QQnUJRI?t=6m) has videos where he's managed to achieve much better results with smoothbore muskets. Given that, Col. Hanger's claim that a good shot with a good musket could hit a single target at 80-100 yards seems to hold true.


I'm not buying it. They guy in the video even says he isn't using the historical loading drill.

Not with a standard ball. There's just too much windage. Priming from the cartridge means you are using imprecise amounts of powder for primer and charge. I don't think the weapon would be precise enough at 100 yards if you bolted it to the table, unless you had a tight fitting, patched ball, which would slow down loading and wasn't really done by line infantry. Maybe you could train individuals, and have them load more precisely, but that's not how infantry training in the 18th century went.

No rear sight is a big deal. You need two points to define a line, and those two points are the back sight and front sight. Just using the bayonet lug, you're guessing. Guessing is fine when you are trying to hit a company sized mass of men at close range, but not for picking off an individual at a hundred yards

I can put rounds on target at 500 yards all day with iron sights. I know the training that marksman had, and if he is all over the place at fifty yards, I just don't think the weapon is accurate enough for anybody to hit a small target reliably at 100.




The volley tests were interesting. Accounting for the fact that they didn't count hits against white space, the results seem somewhat similar to historical trials which involved volley fire against a battalion target. But they still drastically outperformed what was typically expected in combat.

Combat is always going to have worse results. They tried to stress the shooters, lay some smoke and so on, but until you make a guy think he might be killed, you can't replicate the adrenaline factor, which throws fine motor control to crap.

I think it was a good a test as you're likely to get.

Vinyadan
2017-03-16, 10:15 AM
About swords, there's the spring factor. Each time metal is bent and it returns to its normal form when released (like a spring does), it actually gradually damages itself. Do it enough times, and any spring will break. I think it has something to do with the fact that a spring is a way in which energy is stored and released, but I don't know how it actually works.
The same goes for the blade of a sword. A great number of smaller bendings will break it or cause fatigue cracks. As it was said earlier, however, impurities or construction defects were surely a faster reason for a sword to break.
About high-quality swords and trying to break them, you should really read the difficulties of Roland in the Chanson de Roland:
CLXVIII

Then Rollanz feels that death to him draws near,
For all his brain is issued from his ears;
He prays to God that He will call the peers,
Bids Gabriel, the angel, t' himself appear.
Takes the olifant, that no reproach shall hear,
And Durendal in the other hand he wields;
Further than might a cross-bow's arrow speed
Goes towards Spain into a fallow-field;
Climbs on a cliff; where, under two fair trees,
Four terraces, of marble wrought, he sees.
There he falls down, and lies upon the green;
He swoons again, for death is very near.
CLXIX

High are the peaks, the trees are very high.
Four terraces of polished marble shine;
On the green grass count Rollant swoons thereby.
A Sarrazin him all the time espies,
Who feigning death among the others hides;
Blood hath his face and all his body dyed;
He gets afoot, running towards him hies;
Fair was he, strong and of a courage high;
A mortal hate he's kindled in his pride.
He's seized Rollant, and the arms, were at his side,
"Charles nephew," he's said, "here conquered lies.
To Araby I'll bear this sword as prize."
As he drew it, something the count descried.
CLXX

So Rollant felt his sword was taken forth,
Opened his eyes, and this word to him spoke
"Thou'rt never one of ours, full well I know."
Took the olifant, that he would not let go,
Struck him on th' helm, that jewelled was with gold,
And broke its steel, his skull and all his bones,
Out of his head both the two eyes he drove;
Dead at his feet he has the pagan thrown:
After he's said: "Culvert, thou wert too bold,
Or right or wrong, of my sword seizing hold!
They'll dub thee fool, to whom the tale is told.
But my great one, my olifant I broke;
Fallen from it the crystal and the gold."
CLXXI

Then Rollanz feels that he has lost his sight,
Climbs to his feet, uses what strength he might;
In all his face the colour is grown white.
In front of him a great brown boulder lies;
Whereon ten sword-blows with grief and rage he strikes;
The steel cries out, but does not break outright;
And the count says: "Saint Mary, be my guide
Good Durendal, unlucky is your plight!
I've need of you no more; spent is my pride!
We in the field have won so many fights,
Combating through so many regions wide
That Charles holds, whose beard is hoary white!
Be you not his that turns from any in flight!
A good vassal has held you this long time;
Never shall France the Free behold his like."
CLXXII

Rollant hath struck the sardonyx terrace;
The steel cries out, but broken is no ways.
So when he sees he never can it break,
Within himself begins he to complain:
"Ah! Durendal, white art thou, clear of stain!
Beneath the sun reflecting back his rays!
In Moriane was Charles, in the vale,
When from heaven God by His angel bade
Him give thee to a count and capitain;
Girt thee on me that noble King and great.
I won for him with thee Anjou, Bretaigne,
And won for him with thee Peitou, the Maine,
And Normandy the free for him I gained,
Also with thee Provence and Equitaigne,
And Lumbardie and all the whole Romaigne,
I won Baivere, all Flanders in the plain,
Also Burguigne and all the whole Puillane,
Costentinnople, that homage to him pays;
In Saisonie all is as he ordains;
With thee I won him Scotland, Ireland, Wales,
England also, where he his chamber makes;
Won I with thee so many countries strange
That Charles holds, whose beard is white with age!
For this sword's sake sorrow upon me weighs,
Rather I'ld die, than it mid pagans stay.
Lord God Father, never let France be shamed!"
CLXXIII

Rollant his stroke on a dark stone repeats,
And more of it breaks off than I can speak.
The sword cries out, yet breaks not in the least,
Back from the blow into the air it leaps.
Destroy it can he not; which when he sees,
Within himself he makes a plaint most sweet.
"Ah! Durendal, most holy, fair indeed!
Relics enough thy golden hilt conceals:
Saint Peter's Tooth, the Blood of Saint Basile,
Some of the Hairs of my Lord, Saint Denise,
Some of the Robe, was worn by Saint Mary.
It is not right that pagans should thee seize,
For Christian men your use shall ever be.
Nor any man's that worketh cowardice!
Many broad lands with you have I retrieved
Which Charles holds, who hath the great white beard;
Wherefore that King so proud and rich is he."
CLXXIV

But Rollant felt that death had made a way
Down from his head till on his heart it lay;
Beneath a pine running in haste he came,
On the green grass he lay there on his face;
His olifant and sword beneath him placed,
Turning his head towards the pagan race,
Now this he did, in truth, that Charles might say
(As he desired) and all the Franks his race;—
'Ah, gentle count; conquering he was slain!'—
He owned his faults often and every way,
And for his sins his glove to God upraised.
AOI.

Professor Chimp
2017-03-16, 10:25 AM
When I think of the swords I know that were used by various medieval Middle Eastern and Indian peoples like the scimitar, shamshir, talwar, pulwar and a few more, I can't help but notice that these are all curved, single-edged swords.

Their European contemporaries however, all seem to predominantly use straight, double-edged swords.

Is there a reason why medieval Middle Eastern and Indian civilizations favored the curved, single-edged sword over straight, double-edged ones? Because I know their predecessors in ancient times did use some.

Tiktakkat
2017-03-16, 11:54 AM
I guess that makes sense. I must be thinking about law enforcement, where the threshold for shooting us different.

Well, one thing to bear in mind is that there is often a significant difference between what the "internationally accepted Laws of War" are and what people want the "internationally accepted Laws of War" to be.

Those differences exist between the actual treaties, what certain courts to redefine the treaties as, what various nations have as rules of engagement (or equivalent thereof), and what people write in opinion pieces/show in movies.

Unoriginal
2017-03-16, 01:11 PM
I ran across such a claim in a book about medieaval battlefields. But it was very vague, a 13th century writer saying a 11th century invasion of Wales had the commoners clad in leather. I've been meaning to post about it here and see if something more solid can be tracked down. Unlike the later books in the series this one didn't have a proper sourcelist, but I'll check what little names I can find in the text later.
So supposedly Harald Godwinsson when invading Wales in 1063 with hsi brother Tostig equipped huscarls with light leather armour and light shields to counter the wlesh guerilla tactics. According to Gerald de Barry writing around 1200. That as much as the book tells me. Be interesting if anyone can nail that more solidly.

Leather armor might have existed, but the thing is, in most of the cases a gambeson was just better, as it offered good protections and let you add metal pieces if you ever got hold of them.




It's almost too broad a question to answer, but how easy would it be to "break" a martial weapon to the point where you would have to replace it?

Obviously this varies wildly based on time period, type of weapon, and material, but any ballpark estimates from an area you are familiar with would be interesting to hear.

Difficult to say. One has to remember that weapons and armors were maintained with care in order for them to last longer, and that even weapons and armors that saw battle could be given as inheritance to the next generation, who'd also use them on the battlefield.

That being said, armors being damaged beyond repair is a thing that happened, especially when confronted with ranged weapons or blunt weapons made to bend armor. As for weapons, it also happened, but I'd say that it'd have been more common to just lose it or deciding after the battle that it was too banged up to be sharpened again.


A lot of this depends on the quality and materials involved, though. The Celts, for exemple, had blades that needed to be bent back into shape between fights, due to the soft iron they used. A gambeson were going to get cut or otherwise damaged if a weapon reached it. Chainmal could get holes that needed to be patched up afterward. The wooden shafts of polearms could break more easily than the head. And few things could handle being trampled by an horse well.


Speaking as a chef, I us metal weapon equivalents on a daily basis and my knives see more action than most swords.

Metal knives essentially do not degrade or wear out from use.

You're not using them against part-metal, moving targets, though. And they're made with modern techniques.



About high-quality swords and trying to break them, you should really read the difficulties of Roland in the Chanson de Roland


Dude. what.

La Chanson de Roland is not an objective, accurate account of what happened, it's fiction. Roland failed to break his sword because it was a Christian relic, and miraculously indestructible. Literally.

rrgg
2017-03-16, 01:24 PM
I'm not buying it. They guy in the video even says he isn't using the historical loading drill.

Not with a standard ball. There's just too much windage. Priming from the cartridge means you are using imprecise amounts of powder for primer and charge. I don't think the weapon would be precise enough at 100 yards if you bolted it to the table, unless you had a tight fitting, patched ball, which would slow down loading and wasn't really done by line infantry. Maybe you could train individuals, and have them load more precisely, but that's not how infantry training in the 18th century went.

No rear sight is a big deal. You need two points to define a line, and those two points are the back sight and front sight. Just using the bayonet lug, you're guessing. Guessing is fine when you are trying to hit a company sized mass of men at close range, but not for picking off an individual at a hundred yards

I can put rounds on target at 500 yards all day with iron sights. I know the training that marksman had, and if he is all over the place at fifty yards, I just don't think the weapon is accurate enough for anybody to hit a small target reliably at 100.

He was still using military paper cartidges, he just wasn't going through the exact postures outlined in the drill manual. If you want to see some sloppier loading, he has a video where he shows off tap loading with a brown bess (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9hrB-eaajI). He's also done shooting with various .69 caliber Springfield muskets, including an original from 1812 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ-UazWAOSk), and noted that they're a fair bit more accurate than the brown bess, but the brown bess is still accurate enough most of the time.

As far as shooting while mounted on a table goes, the tests in Graz, Austria tried just that with a number of 200-400 year old originals and most of the smoothbores had a maximum spread of about two feet across at 100 meters. And that was with intentionally using lower quality weapons because they didn't want to damage their nicer examples.

Rear sights help a lot. But they've been around almost since guns were invented and yet a lot of people still opted not to used them. You even have examples from the late 19th century of Bedouin tribesmen who acquired modern rifles and then opted to remove the rear sights because they felt that they got in the way. I think shooting without rear sights is something you can probably get the hang of after a while.

Berenger
2017-03-16, 01:29 PM
When I think of the swords I know that were used by various medieval Middle Eastern and Indian peoples like the scimitar, shamshir, talwar, pulwar and a few more, I can't help but notice that these are all curved, single-edged swords.

Their European contemporaries however, all seem to predominantly use straight, double-edged swords.

Is there a reason why medieval Middle Eastern and Indian civilizations favored the curved, single-edged sword over straight, double-edged ones? Because I know their predecessors in ancient times did use some.

The curved blade is better for slashing, cutting motions, the straight blade sacrifices some of this ability but enables you to stab the opponent. Slashing motions are preferrable from horseback (since you risk the loss of your weapon and injury of your hand if you stab it deep into the enemies body during a ride-by attack). So there is that.

But I think you are mistaken in your original observation. Simple as that. While the straight sword is certainly "the" archetypical weapon and symbol of the european knight in the overwhelming majority of (modern) depictions, in reality all sorts of curved blades saw widespread use on european battlefields. The reverse is true of the Middle Eastern and Indian warriors, they are heavily associated with curved blades, but there is plenty of evidence that multiple types of straight blades were in use. I'm sure some of the regulars in this thread have the names and pictures of such weapons at hand.

Galloglaich
2017-03-16, 01:40 PM
When I think of the swords I know that were used by various medieval Middle Eastern and Indian peoples like the scimitar, shamshir, talwar, pulwar and a few more, I can't help but notice that these are all curved, single-edged swords.

Their European contemporaries however, all seem to predominantly use straight, double-edged swords.

Is there a reason why medieval Middle Eastern and Indian civilizations favored the curved, single-edged sword over straight, double-edged ones? Because I know their predecessors in ancient times did use some.

Yes, in a word cavalry. Curved blades of that type, i.e. sabers, are very good for draw-cutting and therefore ideal for cavalry to cut somebody when riding by (either a person on foot or another rider)


HOWEVER,

in the Middle Ages most Arab troops used strait swords. Like this:

Mamluk Swords
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b7/c2/7a/b7c27abb2b3fa448eef8c9260c2e3c26.jpg
These were similar to European swords of the same era but with less pronounced pommels or hand protection.


It's a common myth / misassumption that sabers of various types (talwar, saif, shamshir et al) were being used by Arabs and Turks in the Crusades, but actually those weapons (regional variations of sabers of various types) did not become widespread in the Middle East or South Asia until after the medieval period, basically in the 16th Century, which was also the same time such weapons spread throughout Europe starting from (probably) Ukraine and Hungary. Thus the shashka, szabla, and various other types of European sabers appeared in all their regional variations.

Prior to the late 15th or early 16th Century, the main saber in use in Asia was the Chinese Dao, brought (the hard way) by the Mongols, a simpler type a saber in most of it's typical forms. In Central Europe you also had the Dussack / Tesak family of short curved or saber-like blades which goes back to the early iron age.

Something like this

http://www.swordforum.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=48320&stc=1&d=1140368053

By the 15th Century you started also seeing some single-edged infantry swords in the hauswehr / bauernwehr / rugger / langes messer / krieg messer family start to show up curved, though most remained strait.

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=82542&stc=1

These look superficially similar to certain forms of the Chinese Dao but they are not really from the saber lineage. (With the caveat that the Dao had it's own infantry branches)


You also similarly have the whole falchion family of blades in Europe which are somewhat like a saber in superficial appearance but are really not sabers either.


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/2e/d3/6d/2ed36d78bdfa6a351dd1bc8d958fe747.jpg

G

Berenger
2017-03-16, 02:00 PM
A thought about the reason for the attribution of straight blades to 'western culture' and curved blades to 'eastern culture': a straight sword with a pronounced guard resembles a cross, a curved one with a somewhat exaggerated bent resembles a half-moon. The term 'straight' may also convey a sense of bluntness and honesty while 'crooked' things are recognized as sly or devious. But this leads into the history of 'racial' / cultural / religious prejudices, stereotypes and politics, so I will leave it at that.

Galloglaich
2017-03-16, 02:44 PM
A thought about the reason for the attribution of straight blades to 'western culture' and curved blades to 'eastern culture': a straight sword with a pronounced guard resembles a cross, a curved one with a somewhat exaggerated bent resembles a half-moon. The term 'straight' may also convey a sense of bluntness and honesty while 'crooked' things are recognized as sly or devious. But this leads into the history of 'racial' / cultural / religious prejudices, stereotypes and politics, so I will leave it at that.

Yes, I think this was consciously emphasized from the 16th Century onward and particularly in the Victorian era as a kind of propaganda point used by both sides.

But it seems to be kind of baseless, as sabers were enormously popular in Europe from the 16th century onward and the Muslims still continued to use strait swords even to this very day. Tuareg Takoba swords of North Western Africa for example

http://www.oriental-arms.co.il/photos/items/89/000889/ph-0.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/28/37/99/283799add14950a669e5a5ebb3d4be12.jpg

and the Kasshkara of Eastern Africa seen across North Africa from the West (Chad) to the East in Sudan.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/6f/a3/38/6fa3389f16c5a04147d5d25398642c7e.jpg

Both types incidentally have been involved in warfare in the last few years.

G

snowblizz
2017-03-16, 05:30 PM
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/6f/a3/38/6fa3389f16c5a04147d5d25398642c7e.jpg

Both types incidentally have been involved in warfare in the last few years.

GWhy is the scabbard bulging like that at the botom?



A thought about the reason for the attribution of straight blades to 'western culture' and curved blades to 'eastern culture': a straight sword with a pronounced guard resembles a cross, a curved one with a somewhat exaggerated bent resembles a half-moon. The term 'straight' may also convey a sense of bluntness and honesty while 'crooked' things are recognized as sly or devious. But this leads into the history of 'racial' / cultural / religious prejudices, stereotypes and politics, so I will leave it at that.


Yes, I think this was consciously emphasized from the 16th Century onward and particularly in the Victorian era as a kind of propaganda point used by both sides.

This is most definitely the case. The heraldry of Finland bears this out.

Coat of arms of Northern Carelia, the "battleground" between east and west for a long time.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Pohjois-Karjala.vaakuna.svg/200px-Pohjois-Karjala.vaakuna.svg.png

A similar statement can be seen from the coat of arms of Finland first used in 1583 on the tomb of Swedish king Gustav Vasa.https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Coat_of_arms_of_Finland.svg/116px-Coat_of_arms_of_Finland.svg.png

Pauly
2017-03-16, 07:19 PM
You're not using them against part-metal, moving targets, though. And they're made with modern techniques.
.

My point wasn't that using a kitchen knife and using the sword are the same thing. My point was that the nature of blades is to fail catastrophically, they don't degrade or wear out.

Yes metal fatigue is a thing, but since we're not talking about modern milled steel, the inclusions and other casting flaws will cause a carastrophic failure well before that happens. It's only since the 1970s when Japan, soon followed by other countries, started mass producing defect free steel that steel free from inclusions became widely and cheaply available.

snowblizz
2017-03-17, 05:08 AM
My point was that the nature of blades is to fail catastrophically, they don't degrade or wear out.

Umm yea they totally do. That's why you constantly have to resharpen the edge. If you manage to get a real bad nick you could very well ruin the entire blade. Because taking off metal is easy, but adding something back on is re-forge job. Plenty of old swords would undergo "shortening" because damage to the blade edge had to fixed somehow.

Martin Greywolf
2017-03-17, 05:08 AM
When it comes to sabers, they have a rather complicated history that's also hard to research, especially for people who don't speak any Eastern European language. First thing first, single edged blades aren't specific for any part of the world, they were used wherever there were swords, be it China, India, Japan or Europe. We have examples of single-edged sword-length blades used by vikings, and I'm sure you could find one in pretty much every culture from iron age upwards.

Where it gets a bit complicated is once we start to curve them. This seems to have started somewhere on the central Eurasian steppes, since the same type of blade appears around 700 AD in both China and what would become Hungary (no Hungarians there for the moment, though). These have, at first, straight, single edged blade, but they, both in China and in the west, start to become curved rather quickly, and have the recognizable sabre shape around 800-900 AD. Example (http://www.historicarmsgallery.co.uk/Images/avarsabreheader.jpg). By the by, these types mostly have sharpened and sometimes raised raised back edge.

In Europe, sabre continues to be used in Hungary without interruption. It slightly evolves, around 1000 AD, the point becomes much finer on the magyar sabers, probably to get through mail, Attila's sabre is an excellent example of this, since it's a period fake made by king Solomon. Southern Hungary adopts same saber type as Byzantine paramerion and Chinese liuye dao, but the weapon types aren't that exclusive, since trade is well and alive and nomads have an official presence in Hungary.

Around 1300-1350, Hungarians do with sabers what everyone does with arming swords - they make them longer and slap a hilt able to be held by two hands, and we get bastard sabers and later two handed sabers.

Meanwhile, falchions continue to be used in the rest of the Europe, probably as means of knights chopping through gambesons - these are strictly European curved blades, though the curve is different than saber, not made to slice, but to chop.

Now, around 1320 an interesting thing happens. Charles Robert, an Anjou king in Hungary, allies himself with Poland and Bohemia, and more importantly renewed so-called Czech road, trade route running from central Hungary to Bohemia. This is important, since Hungary used to be not exactly friendly with Bohemia, but now trade flourishes, and with it, ideas can flow. We can't tell for sure, but it's rather telling that many more eastern looking blade types appear in HRE after this point - messers, krieges messers and dussacks all seem to have taken an inspiration from sabre features. They didn't copy them by any means, just took an idea and did their own thing with it on their own blades. Also, in case of dussacks, they almost certainly came from Bohemia itself.

When sabers really come into their own is during Ottoman wars, when what used to be Hungary becomes a frontier line between two superpowers for a long period of time, which sucks immensely for people living there. Both Ottomans and Europeans fighting there take to local weaponry, and it spreads into the rest of Europe and becomes the default sidearm.

Perhaps the most common myth is that mongols introduced saber to Europe - this is simply put, utter bull, since saber was used in both Hungary and Poland long before Genghis Khan was born, and they didn't really make sabers more popular, if anything, they made them less appealing.

As for the middle east, the sources there are scarce, but it seems that they were introduced to sabers at about the same rate Hungary was, every time a nomad culture came around there to serve as mercenaries, they used their own weapons. During most of the Crusades, predominant saracen weapons were straight swords, and this seems to have changed only after Ottomans came to power, at least for non-nomad soldiers. Even Venetians probably faced more sabers from Hungarian and Byzantine wars than from saracens.

Now, as for performance, both arming sword and sabre are about equal in cutting, slicing and thrusting capabilities (extreme majority of sabers isn't all that curved, and most of them have a solid thrusting point of one shape or another). Sabre is a bit better at slicing and arming sword at thrusting, but in general, they are pretty comparable. Sabre is, thanks to its wedge cross-section, much, much more forgiving when you mess up edge alignment slightly, which is why it got reputation for cutting well - it seems way better at it to people who aren't trained really well.

More important factor in why they became popular is to do with manufacture and maintenance - you need less skill and precision to make a single-edged sword than double edged one. A slight error in curvature doesn't matter that much in sabre, but will mess up an arming sword something fierce. Now, that's not to say that there aren't high-end sabre made by extremely skilled smiths, but we need to remember that most of the low grade weapons didn't last for us to examine. Of course, arming sword gives you sword with which you don't have to worry about grabbing it the right way with - also a sword that you can flip once one edge becomes somewhat blunt or damaged.

So, long story short, curved swords were always popular in some shape or form all over the world, it's just the modern depictions that try to give saber to muslims and arming sword to christians. In fairness to them, that is often how illuminations depicted them, especially ones outside of Hungary, and anti-Ottoman propaganda also used Ottomans with sabers imagery. Unfortunately, discussing that would trip us over "no politics" rule.

Storm_Of_Snow
2017-03-17, 05:33 AM
About swords, there's the spring factor. Each time metal is bent and it returns to its normal form when released (like a spring does), it actually gradually damages itself. Do it enough times, and any spring will break. I think it has something to do with the fact that a spring is a way in which energy is stored and released, but I don't know how it actually works.
The same goes for the blade of a sword. A great number of smaller bendings will break it or cause fatigue cracks. As it was said earlier, however, impurities or construction defects were surely a faster reason for a sword to break.

Yes, but for the slightly more scientific explanation, there's two forms of deformation - elastic, where the item returns to (very close to) it's original shape, and plastic, where it's permanently deformed (if you take a steel rod, place the ends in grips then pull the grips apart, it'll stretch elastically, then eventually you'll get an angled thinner region called a Lüders band (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lüders_band (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCders_band)), which is plastic deformation and which will grow in length the more you pull on the rod, until the strain becomes too much and the rod snaps).

But in both cases, you'll get small cracks generated in the item, and with repeated load cycles, those cracks will propagate through the material - the sharper the leading edges of the crack, the quicker it'll propagate (which is why DC-3 maintenenace crews drilled holes in the wings, to blunt the cracks and slow them down), and over a number of load cycles, you'll reach a point where you put too much load through the item for the weakest area to hold and you've got fatigue failure.

Pauly
2017-03-17, 06:54 AM
Umm yea they totally do. That's why you constantly have to resharpen the edge. If you manage to get a real bad nick you could very well ruin the entire blade. Because taking off metal is easy, but adding something back on is re-forge job. Plenty of old swords would undergo "shortening" because damage to the blade edge had to fixed somehow.

Actually taking significant amounts of metal off in sharpening is something that happens with stainless steel blades. Carbon steel sharpens to a finer edge with much less removal of steel. This is due to the size of steel crystals (martensites iirc) that form in stainless steel are much larger than those that form in carbon steel. This is why food sticks like glue to stainless steel frypans, but blue steel CS frypans or cast iron skillets are almost perfectly non stick.

Before I switched to CS a chef's knife would last me 18 months to 2 years before the blade geometry was lost due to repeated sharpening. My current Sabatier is going on 6 years of daily use and has at least another year of life in it.

Even with over sharpening, the blade has not worn out. It just is no longer has optimal geometry. It still functions, it is is no danger of breaking. It was a very common historical practice, one still followed in kitchens around the world today, to regrind and continue using a blade that, for whatever reason, is no longer at an optimal geometry.

Lemmy
2017-03-17, 07:22 AM
Actually taking significant amounts of metal off in sharpening is something that happens with stainless steel blades. Carbon steel sharpens to a finer edge with much less removal of steel. This is due to the size of steel crystals (martensites iirc) that form in stainless steel are much larger than those that form in carbon steel. This is why food sticks like glue to stainless steel frypans, but blue steel CS frypans or cast iron skillets are almost perfectly non stick.

Before I switched to CS a chef's knife would last me 18 months to 2 years before the blade geometry was lost due to repeated sharpening. My current Sabatier is going on 6 years of daily use and has at least another year of life in it.

Even with over sharpening, the blade has not worn out. It just is no longer has optimal geometry. It still functions, it is is no danger of breaking. It was a very common historical practice, one still followed in kitchens around the world today, to regrind and continue using a blade that, for whatever reason, is no longer at an optimal geometry.
But isn't stainless steel way too brittle to be used in combat? I know modern military saber as made of that material, but I assume that's because they are mostly ceremonial these days.

Pauly
2017-03-17, 07:51 AM
But isn't stainless steel way too brittle to be used in combat? I know modern military saber as made of that material, but I assume that's because they are mostly ceremonial these days.

SS is way too brittle to make good blades from.

SS is favored now purely for apparent cleanliness.

Lemmy
2017-03-17, 08:21 AM
SS is way too brittle to make good blades from.

SS is favored now purely for apparent cleanliness.Wouldn't high carbon steel suffer from a similar problem? It's probably not a problem for kitchen knives, but it would make them lousy weapons, no matter how sharp they are.

Pauly
2017-03-17, 09:01 AM
Wouldn't high carbon steel suffer from a similar problem? It's probably not a problem for kitchen knives, but it would make them lousy weapons, no matter how sharp they are.

The basic problem of SS is that the crystal formation is too big.

First problem for edged weapons is that CS just takes a much finer edge. Think of the edge sharpness like pixels in a photograph. The smaller the pixel size the smalle finer the detail, the smaller the steel crystal the finer the edge.

The second problem with SS is that it is inherently less springy than CS, again due to the crystalline structure.

Different SS alloys, high carbon, molybdenum and vanadium all can reduce SS's disadvantages, but CS is superior.

Hoosigander
2017-03-17, 10:15 AM
I ran across such a claim in a book about medieaval battlefields. But it was very vague, a 13th century writer saying a 11th century invasion of Wales had the commoners clad in leather. I've been meaning to post about it here and see if something more solid can be tracked down. Unlike the later books in the series this one didn't have a proper sourcelist, but I'll check what little names I can find in the text later.
So supposedly Harald Godwinsson when invading Wales in 1063 with hsi brother Tostig equipped huscarls with light leather armour and light shields to counter the wlesh guerilla tactics. According to Gerald de Barry writing around 1200. That as much as the book tells me. Be interesting if anyone can nail that more solidly.

I believe the reference might be to Book II, Chapter 7 of Gerald of Wales' Description of Wales. The context is that Gerald is replying to Welsh boasts about the prophecy of Merlin, which predicts the Welsh will regain all the territory they lost to the English, by listing Anglo-Saxon victories against the Welsh. Harold is the last in a string of kings who are named.

"and just as later Harold last of all: who, on foot himself, with an army of infantry with light arms, and adopting the way of life of the country valiantly marched around and penetrated through all Wales, so that he did not leave anyone urinating against a wall." (interesting idiomatic way to say Harold left hardly anyone alive.)

Et sicut longe plenius Haroldus ultimus: qui, pedes ipse, cumque pedestri turba et levibus armis, victuque patriae conformi valide totam cambriam et circuivit et transpenetravit, ut in eadem fere mingentem ad parietam non reliquerit.

The pertinent part is "levibus armis" which just means "with light weapons." Perhaps there is another more detailed description of the invasion in Gerald of Wales' corpus, but this quote doesn't specify anything about leather armor.

Tobtor
2017-03-17, 02:17 PM
From all the testing done to date, swords really couldn't cut or stab through mail armor, so there wasn't really any reason to upgrade from mail because of swords. Swords were being used against men armored in mail since probably 800 BC.

Swords aren't really armor-piercing weapons unless you are talking about special swords like the edgeless estoc / kanzer family, or longswords (et al) used with special techniques (i.e. halfswording).


I agree with all of your points in yuor post except the mail-armour part. True you cant really cut through it (though Thegn Thrand manageds to cut two-three rings reliably, even though they are a good quality steel and welted together, and quite thick). But I have seen many thrusts through historical accurate mail, as long as its a good quality sword.

One example is John Clement doing it with an Ulfberh+t sword in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6woycxQzA0) (around 30-35 minutes in).

Thats with a steel mail. In the 800BC they mails are iron (and true the swords are as well, but it is much easier to harden the sword tip than the entire mail armour). Thus you can easily (ok maybe not easily, but reliably) thrust through mail with a sharp, well made sword.

Vinyadan
2017-03-17, 02:27 PM
About leather, I can think of four cases of it used defensively in Europe. 1. Boiled leather. 2. Cover for shields (Iliad). 3. Little fringes at the borders of Greek and Roman cuirasses to protect shoulders and groin. 4. Used to protect siege machines from fire.

I don't know of any case in which simple leather was used to create full armours.

Also, the Roland thing was mostly a joke :P I just really like that work.

rrgg
2017-03-17, 03:17 PM
David Jones in his 2012 article "Arrows against Linen and Leather Armor" came up with a couple accounts of leather being incorporated into armor:


Historical descriptions of linen and leather armour

The Táin Bó Cuailgne contains a description of linen and leather composite armour worn by the mythical Irish hero Cú Chulainn. O’Rahilly’s translation of the 10th or 11th century version is given by Halpin3 as:

‘Twenty-seven tunics [cneslenti] worn next to his skin, waxed, board-like, compact, which were bound with strings and ropes and thongs close to his fair skin… Over that outside he put on his hero’s battle-girdle [cathchriss] of hard leather, tough and tanned, made from the best part of seven ox-hides of yearlings, which covered him from the thin part of his side to the thick part of his arm-pit; he used to wear it to repel spears [gai], and points [rend] and darts [iaernn] and lances [sleg] and arrows [saiget], for they glanced from it as if they had struck against stone or rock or horn.’

If “the best part” means “the thickest part” this would be butt leather, the hide of the upper hindquarters of the ox, that is used for the soles of boots and shoes. Cú Chulainn was a son of the god Lug, and perhaps could bear a greater weight of oxhide than ordinary mortals.

Another description of linen and leather armour was given by the Scottish historian John Major in 1512. It was quoted and translated by Skene4 as:

‘In panno lineo multipliter intersuto et cocreato aut picato, *** cervinae pellis cooperatura vulgus sylvestrium Scotorum corpus tectum habens in praelium proslit.

The common people of the highland Scots rush into battle having their bodies clothed with a linen garment, manifoldly sewed and painted or daubed with pitch, with a covering of deer-skin.’

The most detailed instructions concerning the making of jacks are in a decree of Charles V of France (reg.1461-1483). It contains the following specification:

`Et premièrement leur faut des dits jacques trente toiles, ou de vingt-cinq, à un cuir de cerf a tout le moins: et si sont de trente-un cuirs de cerf ils sont de bons. Les toiles usees et déliées moyennement sont les meilleures; et doivent estre les jaques a quatre quartiers, et faut que manches soient fortes comme le corps, réservé le cuir.5

And firstly the said jacks should be of thirty layers of linen, or twenty-five, to one deerskin at the least: and if they are of thirty-one deerskins they will be good. Worn and moderately unravelled linen is the best; and the jacks must be in four quarters, and the sleeves must be as strong as the body, except for the leather.`6

The French “cerf” means specifically the red deer (Cervus elephas), and not the smaller fallow or roe deer. The requirement for 25 or 30 layers of linen was incorrectly given as 29 or 30 layers by ffoulkes5, and this mistake has been perpetuated by other authors. The option of 31 layers of deerskin was regarded by ffoulkes as a probable clerical error.

Curzon7 was of the opinion that mail armour was often worn over a leather cuirass, and in 1869 he wrote:

‘A solitary fragment of one of these is in the possession of Mr. Eastwood, which was found in a stone coffin with the chain armour of a knight of the thirteenth century; it is made of two or three thicknesses of leather like that used for the soles of shoes, sewed together with leather thongs.’

The location and archaeological details of the find are lacking.


From his testing he concluded that 28 layers of linen and a layer of tanned ox hide did protect against both bodkin and broadhead arrows much better than linen alone did.

Pauly
2017-03-17, 05:52 PM
I agree with all of your points in yuor post except the mail-armour part. True you cant really cut through it (though Thegn Thrand manageds to cut two-three rings reliably, even though they are a good quality steel and welted together, and quite thick). But I have seen many thrusts through historical accurate mail, as long as its a good quality sword.

One example is John Clement doing it with an Ulfberh+t sword in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6woycxQzA0) (around 30-35 minutes in).

Thats with a steel mail. In the 800BC they mails are iron (and true the swords are as well, but it is much easier to harden the sword tip than the entire mail armour). Thus you can easily (ok maybe not easily, but reliably) thrust through mail with a sharp, well made sword.

Just to back this point up. Knights carried and used rondel daggers for hundreds of years. All the existing tratises show that the purpose of the rondel dagger is precisely to penetrate mail.

But even though swords can and did penetrate mail, we do have to remember that to do it reliably needed a special weapon (rondel dagger, estoc) or a specialized technique (halfswording)

Galloglaich
2017-03-17, 11:53 PM
David Jones in his 2012 article "Arrows against Linen and Leather Armor" came up with a couple accounts of leather being incorporated into armor:



From his testing he concluded that 28 layers of linen and a layer of tanned ox hide did protect against both bodkin and broadhead arrows much better than linen alone did.

Very interesting post. The bit about the layer of deer skin with pitch over the gambeson in the British isle isn't new, it was also associated specifically with the 'Gallowglass' warriors I get my avatar name from in here. The doe hide definitely isn't leather or any kind of armor - pitch over doe-hide has been speculated to be some kind of weather proofing. The protection was in the textiles.

The ox hide mentioned associated with Cu Chulainn is more interesting to me, but again, that's an ox-hide over 28 layers of linen. Now ox-hide is definitely much more protective and generally durable than doe hide, but modern tests also tell us that 28 layers of linen is pretty good protection against early medieval weapons all by itself. Imagine wearing 20 shirts. No doubt the ox-hide would help too (Ox hide is indeed tough, and most 'leather' armor I have ever heard of anywhere in the world was actually made of some kind of Ox-hide, including the leather lamellar known in Steppe nomad and East Asian contexts) but the linen is I think providing the main protection here.

For that matter we have reason to believe that leather stiffeners were worn over or under mail in some cases as well in the 12th-14th Centuries, not necessarily to make it harder to pierce the mail precisely but to make it stiffer.

I also know of some hardened leather armor that was found in Italy and dated to the 16th Century, but it appears to have been tournament armor for some kind of combat sport, presumably with blunt weapons. It's definitely authentic and pretty cool looking though, like something right out of Mad Max. I wish I could remember the search terms but I can't off the top of my head.

Some brigandine and similar types of armor (textile or hide with metal plates attached to the inside) were made of leather as the covering. This one for example

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/33/00/dc/3300dc58a9f2d25b2466d84afdcad978.jpg


This is supposed to be from Estonia, allegedly from the 13th Century but I haven't been able to verify the date.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/24/2b/f6/242bf602231f94fad23894a8033f3fdd.jpg

So there is some evidence of the use of leather as armor in the medieval period, just not much. Compared to the mountains of evidence of mail and all the other types of metal armor the available sources with any hint of using leather are at almost lottery winning ratios.

You do see the buff coat in the 17th Century (I think it may have been some kind of buffalo hide too, now that I think about it) but that is a somewhat different type of warfare going on by then, arguably. Certainly metal armor has gotten much more expensive relative to income of the fighting people than in say 1200-1500.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/h5/h5_15.113.1-5,29.158.885.jpg

In most cases though historically, with leather armor, the main actual protection seems to be coming from either textile or metal armor incorporated into the panoply. Reason being that leather just doesn't seem to stop cuts and stabs very well, at least that is how it appears from modern tests. It depends on the weapon of course but I think 10-15 layers of linen (let alone 28) is much more effective protection than 1/4" -3/8" of leather, and a lot easier to wear too. Leather was also expensive, and I think maybe the reason you do see it sometimes on the Steppe is that for a lot of those people, cattle was their main form of wealth and leather probably actually cheaper than a whole lot of textiles.

Medieval Europe (post Carolingian anyway) had almost the opposite situation. Textiles were plentiful whereas leather was, if not a luxury not exactly dirt cheap.

G

Galloglaich
2017-03-18, 12:00 AM
Just to back this point up. Knights carried and used rondel daggers for hundreds of years. All the existing tratises show that the purpose of the rondel dagger is precisely to penetrate mail.

But even though swords can and did penetrate mail, we do have to remember that to do it reliably needed a special weapon (rondel dagger, estoc) or a specialized technique (halfswording)

Both you and Tobtor make reasonable points here - the vulnerability of mail to stabs is still debated but I think you are right weapons like the roundel dagger and swords with narrow, hardened points could pose much more of a threat than most other weapons. This may have been why they started wearing textile over mail so much in the 12th-14th Centuries.

I'm personally a little bit suspicious about the efficacy of more or less general purpose swords against mail, with all due respect to Mr. Clements, but I know that sort of thing gets debated and goes round and round. No doubt they had armor-piercing weapons going way back - the old Roman Pilum, adapted by the Franks as the Angon and used by them as both a thrown and thrusting weapon, was certainly ideal for punching though armor. As were other weapons like the soliferrum and various picks which can be found way back, daggers of all kinds, and I think maces too had some efficacy against mail clad bodies.

But I still think mail armor was considered good protection and a problem that needed solving, as opposed to the way it's portrayed in genre fiction all too many RPG's as just a kind of 'speed bump' uniform for villains and mooks which protects against 'glancing blows' as some folks in the SCA used to say.

The increasing ubiquity (and increasing coverage) of mail I think led to the development of more and better armor-piercing (or armor ignoring) weapons which in turn led to better armor as well, into the 16th Century.


G

Galloglaich
2017-03-18, 12:20 AM
When it comes to sabers, they have a rather complicated history that's also hard to research, especially for people who don't speak any Eastern European language. First thing first, single edged blades aren't specific for any part of the world, they were used wherever there were swords, be it China, India, Japan.

Very interesting post Martin. Particularly the part about the Bohemian road. I agree the Dao was around for a long time in Central Asia, in fact I would disagree with your timeline, from what I understand it dates back to the earliest use of Iron in China at least. I think the Huns had dao as well as strait swords. But the Mongols I think re-introduced the concept in a big way and got everybody thinking about all of their weapons quite a bit in every part of the world they impacted, especially Eastern Europe, South Asia and the Middle East.

What I was saying though more specifically is that the specialized saber variants known in both Europe (szabla, shashka et al) and the Middle East / South Asia, such as the ones mentioned in the post I was replying to (saif, shamshir, talwar etc.) date from the late 15th - early 16th Century for the most part and don't become widespread until the 16th.

You definitely do see some kind of sabers around the battlefields in Europe in the 15th Century though, they show up in the Swiss art quite often, and not among troops meant to be Turks either. But they are kind of rare.

I also disagree about the origins of the messer. Some messers that you see which are curved (in places like Hungary and also Switzerland) are no doubt influenced by sabers. But the lineage of the messer goes through the bauernwehr and hauswehr to various hunting knives (rugger etc.) and all the way back to the seax if you want to go that far back. The innovation of the nagel and the long pommel-less grip which are kind of the identifying characteristics of the messer goes back to at least the 5th Century AD in Central Europe. Most of these blades were strait.

here is the German wiki on the bauernwehr, if you can read German

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauernwehr

You do also see some baurnwehr with curved blades, but I don't think it's the influence of sabers

https://bladesmithsforum.com/uploads/monthly_11_2011/post-23694-13225929733788.jpg

most are strait like these

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/97/55/b3/9755b3e688814cbf745a063d788aa68b.jpg

Some of them were thin and almost stiletto like

http://www.swordforum.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=41382&stc=1&d=1125661282

For LOTR fans by the way, when Tolkein is talking about the 'long knife' used by Legolas I think he's referring to something like a Bauernwehr or a messer.

I would love to get a good replica of a Bauernwehr they are a really cool variant on the whole seax / bowie knife type of weapon.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/58/2d/50/582d500f5206fe08f83c7fd744ffafb3.jpg

here is a baurnwehr with what looks to me like a hardened or reinforced point.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7012/6423800043_a459bfaa05_b.jpg

G

Tobtor
2017-03-18, 02:57 AM
Just to back this point up. Knights carried and used rondel daggers for hundreds of years. All the existing tratises show that the purpose of the rondel dagger is precisely to penetrate mail.

But even though swords can and did penetrate mail, we do have to remember that to do it reliably needed a special weapon (rondel dagger, estoc) or a specialized technique (halfswording)

I agree. Though it have to be mentioned that the rondel-dagger really did began to develop in the 14th century, a period where mail really began to be covered by another layer (such as a coat of plates). It is much easier to strike at (mail covered) armpits with a dagger than an arming sword. In the 9th-13th century most mail were worn alone (or from roughly 11/12th century with padding, though evidence for early padding is sparse. Most examples and descriptions is much later and refer to gambesons worn as the only armour - most mail parts cannot fit lets say gambesons with 20 layers of linen beneath it).


I'm personally a little bit suspicious about the efficacy of more or less general purpose swords against mail, with all due respect to Mr. Clements, but I know that sort of thing gets debated and goes round and round. No doubt they had armor-piercing weapons going way back - the old Roman Pilum, adapted by the Franks as the Angon and used by them as both a thrown and thrusting weapon, was certainly ideal for punching though armor. As were other weapons like the soliferrum and various picks which can be found way back, daggers of all kinds, and I think maces too had some efficacy against mail clad bodies.

The Clement video is just one example. There is plenty of examples of people getting through riveted or solid metal rings with a sword point. Even when the mail is of a higher quality (smaller rings with better metallurgy) than some historical mails.

Historical accounts (ALSO reliable ones) also have people dying to sword and spear thrusts through mail.

A very good evidence of mail not being weapons proof, is that Harald Hardradas personal mail (named Emma, yes he named his armour after a woman, so when donning his armour he was "inside" a woman - he loved good jokes like that), is famed for protecting against all blows/strikes. If all armour (mail in this context) did that, then it is not a noteworthy ability. It is very clear that if all mails were able to withstand all attacks, then a mail wouldnt be famous for being able to withstand all attacks....

At this time 99.99 of all battle field weapons where: Swords (double edged or saexes), spears, and axes (I am discounting arrows due to the terms used, it clearly refers to close combat weapons).

While maces, clubs etc, might be used from time to time, they were not used much in the height of the mail period (only guy on the bayeux tapestry with a club is Odo who does so not to spill Christian blood). Yes, you can find examples of groups with clubs/maces, but they are rare before the 13th century or so.


But I still think mail armor was considered good protection and a problem that needed solving, as opposed to the way it's portrayed in genre fiction all too many RPG's as just a kind of 'speed bump' uniform for villains and mooks which protects against 'glancing blows' as some folks in the SCA used to say.

Ohh.. I very much agree! Good mail will defend against 99% of all cuts/blows, and likely the majority of thrusts as well. Also even when penetrated, most penetrations are only about 1/2-1inch deep, giving superficial wounds at best (though I have seen historical accurate mails being penetrated 2-3inches, but that was "average" quality mails with a really good thrust). This fit historical accounts of people fighting on for hours with multiple bleeding wounds. If unarmoured parts where cut/thrusted into it could very well mean death or a loss of a limb etc, while wearing mail might protects from most injuries, and those it did not it would transform from deadly/serious into a minor injury.


The increasing ubiquity (and increasing coverage) of mail I think led to the development of more and better armor-piercing (or armor ignoring) weapons which in turn led to better armor as well, into the 16th Century.

It should be mentioned that many of the really specific armour piercing weapons (various poleaxes, ahlspiess spears, estocs) and going around armour weapons (rondel daggers) ass well as various hammers etc (which delivers shock through the armour to hamper/hurt the oponent rather than wounding through cutting up the skin), does not become popular/developed before the 14th or even 15th century, and must be an answer to early plate and coat of plates, rather than mail (which had been used for centuries without any shift from spear-axe-sword as the all dominant weapon systems).

Tobtor
2017-03-18, 05:31 AM
For LOTR fans by the way, when Tolkein is talking about the 'long knife' used by Legolas I think he's referring to something like a Bauernwehr or a messer.


As he is an old Anglo-Saxon scholar, I would think he means a Sax/Seax. WHich of course as you indicate is basically the same concept as a messer. Seax/sax can be used about both working knives, long battle knives and shorter swords. In the old norse text you sometimes see modifications such as hand-sax, long-sax etc indicating their use. It should be noted that the old norse also have another word for knife, but that seem restricted to smaller eating knifes etc.

Similar in the bog finds from the 200 century we find that there are two sets of belts an inner (for personal things like a small knife and purse with a comb etc), and an outer (with a "sax" and strike a light). These are essentially like messers.

"combat knives" from Illerup
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/d3/9d/23/d39d234c2a2cbb7ed60ba4cc3ae4d5eb.jpg

Short single edged sword from Vimose (as well as a few other weapons):
http://natmus.dk/typo3temp/GB/3d0635fdf4.jpg

That one have a flat "tang" to fasten the grib, like many later messers.

A very similar sword from a grave (burnt grave) from Funen also late Roman period.

http://museum.odense.dk/imagegen.ashx?image=/media/1508547/Sv%C3%A6rd.jpg&width=100&constrain=true

Clistenes
2017-03-18, 10:22 AM
The act of carrying a personal weapon is irrelevant to the status of combatant.
An unarmed cook or musician who is part of the military is a legitimate target, even if you "bring" the battlefield to him by breaking into a rear area.

That is a very recent concept. For the longest time armies had a tail of non combatants who weren't considered soldiers, like cooks, servants, prostitutes and washerwomen. Yeah, those could be killed, raped or enslaved, but so could be any random peasant they found while looting and burning a village in enemy territory.

Tiktakkat
2017-03-18, 01:52 PM
That is a very recent concept. For the longest time armies had a tail of non combatants who weren't considered soldiers, like cooks, servants, prostitutes and washerwomen. Yeah, those could be killed, raped or enslaved, but so could be any random peasant they found while looting and burning a village in enemy territory.

At that rate, the idea of not killing, torturing, or enslaving any enemy soldier you get ahold of is a very recent concept.
Since the question involved using a drone, the answer is clearly for that period when such concepts are active.

Mike_G
2017-03-18, 03:05 PM
Kind of speculative/sci-fi: if there was a drone with a short control range that required the operator to be on the battlefield, would the operator be considered a combatant? As in could you shoot that person even if all they had on them was a drone control device?

Late to the party here, but if they are controlling a drone, how are they different from an artillery gunner, who may not have a useful weapon on him once you break through the lines and reach him?

I'd expect a drone operator would get even less mercy than an infantryman from the guys who have been getting hit by drone strikes that they can't defend against.

He's totally more of a target than a cook or medic or other non-shooter in uniform.

snowblizz
2017-03-18, 05:07 PM
You do see the buff coat in the 17th Century (I think it may have been some kind of buffalo hide too, now that I think about it) but that is a somewhat different type of warfare going on by then,

In Scandinavia moose hide was used alot I understand. Unsurprisingly.



Reason being that leather just doesn't seem to stop cuts and stabs very well, at least that is how it appears from modern tests.
Medieval Europe (post Carolingian anyway) had almost the opposite situation. Textiles were plentiful whereas leather was, if not a luxury not exactly dirt cheap.

G
Well buffcoats do seem to have provide quite adequate protection against swords and pistols. Seeing that they ended up being fairly ubiqutous taking up the "slot" similarly to gambesons.

Galloglaich
2017-03-18, 10:11 PM
At that rate, the idea of not killing, torturing, or enslaving any enemy soldier you get ahold of is a very recent concept.


That part anyway is definitely not true. Killing prisoners wasn't standard practice back in the medieval period, it was done sometimes and by some leaders / armies, but by no means all. Each approach had it's advantages but some of the strongest armies (like Poland) routinely spared their vanquished foes, and it paid dividends in future alliances.

G

hencook
2017-03-19, 02:50 AM
Question:
How do I handle arrow volleying? So the player uses a spell to instantly communicate to a group of archers 500 feet away, 100 feet up. If the archers were prepared to fire as soon as the player gave the go ahead, in what time could I expect the arrow to arrive, and would there be a reduction in damage? How accurate could I expect the archer volley AOE to be, if the PC gave shined a flashlight at them? How long would it take for an archer to take aim?

PersonMan
2017-03-19, 05:37 AM
I'll go ahead and ask some questions in response, because there are variables that are pretty big factors in questions like this I've seen / asked.

1. How well-trained are the archers in question?
2. What is the target like? Are they just firing at a lit-up point, or do they have a formation / big monster to shoot at?

---

My own question: Is there information on the cost of firearms, in the early 16th / late 15th century? Exact numbers aren't too important, I'm mostly looking for information relative to the price of other weapons / armor.

hencook
2017-03-19, 06:49 AM
Expertly trained. Arbalests, the works. The scenario in question has our party with a bunch of archers at their disposal. Generally they're just going to "radio" in for a barrage, at no monster in particular.

Kiero
2017-03-19, 10:12 AM
About leather, I can think of four cases of it used defensively in Europe. 1. Boiled leather. 2. Cover for shields (Iliad). 3. Little fringes at the borders of Greek and Roman cuirasses to protect shoulders and groin. 4. Used to protect siege machines from fire.

I don't know of any case in which simple leather was used to create full armours.

Also, the Roland thing was mostly a joke :P I just really like that work.

Your number 3 are called pteryges. Roman officers sometimes wore leather corselets, though I think it was more a fashion statement than a practical piece of armour, or else something worn under a bronze or iron cuirass.

Tiktakkat
2017-03-19, 11:17 AM
That part anyway is definitely not true. Killing prisoners wasn't standard practice back in the medieval period, it was done sometimes and by some leaders / armies, but by no means all. Each approach had it's advantages but some of the strongest armies (like Poland) routinely spared their vanquished foes, and it paid dividends in future alliances.

G

So you acknowledge that it was done.
And without any hesitation or particular consideration when it was.
Particularly when one considers sieges, where a full sack and slaughter was the standard for all leaders and armies if a surrender was not made in a timely fashion.
As for advantage, when no ransoms were possible, then feeding and guarding prisoners became significantly less likely. Even when they were, conditions were generally so poor as to make immediate execution considerably more merciful.
And let us note that sometimes those that spared their vanquished foes reaped dividends of continued war - Caeser for example, precipitated a slaughter after their victory in Africa because they blamed previous mercy for making them fight the same foes again.

So as part of a group of options - killing, torturing, enslaving - it is absolutely true.
Just because it was not done all the time, by everyone, in every circumstance, does not make it false. Attitudes regarding prisoners of war were very low for the vast majority of known history.

Berenger
2017-03-19, 12:11 PM
At that rate, the idea of not killing, torturing, or enslaving any enemy soldier you get ahold of is a very recent concept.

That's just plain not true. You'll have to backpedal very far to defend some remnants of that statement.

You can't tell us that the very concept of not killing / enslaving (or "torturing", but what do you think happened to the tortured persons after the torture?) every prisoner of war is "very recent" and prove this by the occurence of killings and enslavements in the aftermath of battles in certain circumstances. Instead, you would need to prove that there were no known and practiced alternatives to these options. If this was true, there would never have been ransoms. There would never have been exchanges of prisoners. There would never have been a defeated force that got conscripted into the winning side's army. There would never have been prisoners that got released due to swearing Urfehde (oath of truce).



Just because it was not done all the time, by everyone, in every circumstance, does not make it false.

It totally falsifies your claim that there was "no concept" of something else than the three options you named. How don't you see that?

Kiero
2017-03-19, 02:25 PM
So as part of a group of options - killing, torturing, enslaving - it is absolutely true.
Just because it was not done all the time, by everyone, in every circumstance, does not make it false. Attitudes regarding prisoners of war were very low for the vast majority of known history.

That's absolute nonsense. Social conventions (simple reciprocity - they guy you capture today could be your captor of tomorrow), and more importantly the income you could receive from ransom made it rare that rich/noble prisoners were killed out of hand. That goes back to antiquity and guest friendship, never mind feudalism and the medieval era. Even pirates in antiquity preferred to capture and ransom, rather than murder people on ships they'd taken. Only those who couldn't pay were enslaved.

Clistenes
2017-03-19, 03:43 PM
At that rate, the idea of not killing, torturing, or enslaving any enemy soldier you get ahold of is a very recent concept.
Since the question involved using a drone, the answer is clearly for that period when such concepts are active.

Yeah, but the post isn't about real-world drones, but about some alternate world where drones require an operator in the battlefield. The poster said it was SciFi but the technology sounds less advanced than our own, more like Steampunk Fantasy stuff...

It may be that in that alternate world cooks and musicias were legitimate military targets, or they may not...

Anyways, if the character is operating a war machine, then yes, he or she should be considered a soldier to all effects in every world and culture.

Tiktakkat
2017-03-19, 04:34 PM
That's just plain not true. You'll have to backpedal very far to defend some remnants of that statement.

Not even close.


You can't tell us that the very concept of not killing / enslaving (or "torturing", but what do you think happened to the tortured persons after the torture?) every prisoner of war is "very recent" and prove this by the occurence of killings and enslavements in the aftermath of battles in certain circumstances. Instead, you would need to prove that there were no known and practiced alternatives to these options. If this was true, there would never have been ransoms. There would never have been exchanges of prisoners. There would never have been a defeated force that got conscripted into the winning side's army. There would never have been prisoners that got released due to swearing Urfehde (oath of truce).

Not even close.
All I would have to demonstrate is the preponderance of references to the mass killings of prisoners after battles, with a lack of condemnation for the practice beyond references to the loss of income or the usual denunciations of the cruelty of enemies.
And note, I said "any". Clearly exceptions can and were made.


It totally falsifies your claim that there was "no concept" of something else than the three options you named. How don't you see that?

Because you are projecting an absurd standard for both proof and attitude in relation to action in an attempt to invalidate the statement, even while resorting to desperate parsings of your own statements to somehow exclude your acknowledgment of what was clearly the default expected behavior.
And of course, I didn't say "no concept".


That's absolute nonsense. Social conventions (simple reciprocity - they guy you capture today could be your captor of tomorrow), and more importantly the income you could receive from ransom made it rare that rich/noble prisoners were killed out of hand. That goes back to antiquity and guest friendship, never mind feudalism and the medieval era. Even pirates in antiquity preferred to capture and ransom, rather than murder people on ships they'd taken. Only those who couldn't pay were enslaved.

Case in point of parsing:
Pirates preferred ransom to killing, and preferred enslavement to killing.
The second part outright acknowledges that what I said is correct. So right there you have invalidated your challenge without me having to do anything else.

Then of course you have "murder" rather than "kill", a neat bit of realignment trying to force the issue.

As for reciprocity and feudalism and all that, are you seriously suggesting that ancient history isn't chock full of betrayals? That the Middle Ages aren't defined more by fratricide, patricide, and general betrayal than they are by actual loyalty to the death? Uh huh.

But do tell, exactly when were those international treaties regarding prisoners actually signed?
Let's see the first one was . . . between the Romans and Parthians?
No wait, between the Western Franks and the Eastern Franks!
The Normans and the Scots then?
Maybe it was the Hapsburgs and Bourbons?
Gee, I'm not seeing any actual recognition in the history books of any of this before the 19th century.
I wonder why?
It is almost as if . . . why, it is almost as if people rather expected an ominous fate for prisoners!
Something becoming even more pronounced during the social upheavals of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, with those formerly ransomed nobles being butchered left and right.

So yes, certainly, if you redact what I wrote from:
"At that rate, the idea of not killing, torturing, or enslaving any enemy soldier you get ahold of is a very recent concept.
Since the question involved using a drone, the answer is clearly for that period when such concepts are active."
In response to:
"Originally Posted by Clistenes
That is a very recent concept. For the longest time armies had a tail of non combatants who weren't considered soldiers, like cooks, servants, prostitutes and washerwomen. Yeah, those could be killed, raped or enslaved, but so could be any random peasant they found while looting and burning a village in enemy territory."
Which in and of itself tacitly acknowledges precisely what I wrote by the way, into:
"At that rate, the very concept of not killing, torturing, or enslaving every enemy soldier you get ahold of is a completely recent idea, with absolutely no occurrences before the 19th century when the first Hague Convention was signed."
Well then, yes, I would go from a bit of hyperbole to pretty much completely inaccurate.

Of course without that convenient redaction, then well . . . it is your objections that are "plain not true" and "absolute nonsense".

Storm Bringer
2017-03-19, 04:49 PM
Yeah, but the post isn't about real-world drones, but about some alternate world where drones require an operator in the battlefield. The poster said it was SciFi but the technology sounds less advanced than our own, more like Steampunk Fantasy stuff...

It may be that in that alternate world cooks and musicias were legitimate military targets, or they may not...

Anyways, if the character is operating a war machine, then yes, he or she should be considered a soldier to all effects in every world and culture.

bear in mind, in a sci-fi setting, you don't know what sort of sci-fi ECM/jamming might be in play that would mandate a Line of sight or other short ranged transmitter to ensure control of the drone. its been reported that the Russians and Iranians have been able to jam or otherwise interfere with UAV satellite control links, and I would assume the US also has that capability, but simply isn't admitting that it can do that.

Also, if the drone is organic* tactical asset for the infantry, rather than a robot plane, then having the operator on the ground with the infantry makes sense, as they would not only be on call and available whenever the grunts needed them, but they would have a better understanding of the grunts perception of the battlefield and thus could understand the limits of what they could see better (something that may be obvious to a drone op form 300 meters up may be hidden form a grunt at ground level, in ways the drone's POV might not make clear), and interpret their directions better ("1 want you to flatten that building right their" works a lot better when you can point out the building in question to the other guy face to face, rather than trying to describe which of the 70 identical brown mud huts you mean to a guy in Tennessee looking at a sat photo).

we already have drone operators who use small, man launch-able drones (https://c1.staticflickr.com/6/5587/14600545860_f56134e2bf_b.jpg)for recce work, controlled by short range radio links and a tablet and X box controller (http://www.90percentofeverything.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/pop-men-xbox.jpg). that can and have gone out on foot patrols in Afgan, so the idea of a drone operator flying is drone while under fire (http://i.imgur.com/jhvSvLP.jpg)is already a reality**.



* organic= integrated part of the unit, as opposed to a attachment from another unit. for example, a squads MG team is a organic asset, but a explosives search dog and handler would not be,


** that particular photo is of demonstration troops showing off RnD toys and testing how it works in a stateside training ex, but I know us brits have used these types of drones out in afgan, so the point stands.

Mr Beer
2017-03-19, 05:34 PM
we already have drone operators who use small, man launch-able drones (https://c1.staticflickr.com/6/5587/14600545860_f56134e2bf_b.jpg)for recce work, controlled by short range radio links and a tablet and X box controller (http://www.90percentofeverything.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/pop-men-xbox.jpg). that can and have gone out on foot patrols in Afgan, so the idea of a drone operator flying is drone while under fire (http://i.imgur.com/jhvSvLP.jpg)is already a reality**.

Yeah, I was confused about this being called 'science fiction' hypothetical when battlefield drones are happening right now.

Storm Bringer
2017-03-19, 06:27 PM
Yeah, I was confused about this being called 'science fiction' hypothetical when battlefield drones are happening right now.

its a fairly recent development, only really happened in the last few years, and its been somewhat overshadowed in the publics mind by the use of UAV's like Predator, which is much better known and tends to cause some people to conflate "drone" and "UAV" as synonymous terms.

plus, while the US and brits both admit to using drones, I don't know how much Is actually out in the public domain about them. most of what I know is form low level restricted briefs I got on RSOI.

in short, unless you knew where to look, and what to look for, its would be quite easy for a layman to miss their deployment entirely.

Kiero
2017-03-19, 06:28 PM
Case in point of parsing:
Pirates preferred ransom to killing, and preferred enslavement to killing.
The second part outright acknowledges that what I said is correct. So right there you have invalidated your challenge without me having to do anything else.

Then of course you have "murder" rather than "kill", a neat bit of realignment trying to force the issue.

Pirates most definitely defaulted to enslavement, because that meant money. When Pompey was sent to deal with the pirate menace in the Mediterranean in the last century BC (instigated largely by Rome defeating the major naval powers of the age, and doing nothing to settle what their navies would do afterwards), they weren't killing senatorials. They were capturing them and extracting ransoms, which was costly and annoying, not terminal. Also noteworthy that he didn't kill most of the pirates he captured, either, but settled them on better lands than those they'd been living on, to try to give them an alternative livelihood.

It's not a "realignment", killing captives in cold blood is murder and much more difficult for most people than killing in battle. I'd suggest you read into the works of Dave Grossman on the topic of killing, it's some interesting stuff and not easy for the majority of us to do.


As for reciprocity and feudalism and all that, are you seriously suggesting that ancient history isn't chock full of betrayals? That the Middle Ages aren't defined more by fratricide, patricide, and general betrayal than they are by actual loyalty to the death? Uh huh.

I'm saying they were the notable exceptions, not the rule. Otherwise those customs wouldn't have survived - yet we have countless anecdotes of just those things happening. When Henry V tells his men "no prisoners" at Agincourt, they're annoyed, because they were counting on being able to make money from ransoms. They didn't relish killing for its own sake, nor do most warriors.


But do tell, exactly when were those international treaties regarding prisoners actually signed?
Let's see the first one was . . . between the Romans and Parthians?
No wait, between the Western Franks and the Eastern Franks!
The Normans and the Scots then?
Maybe it was the Hapsburgs and Bourbons?
Gee, I'm not seeing any actual recognition in the history books of any of this before the 19th century.
I wonder why?
It is almost as if . . . why, it is almost as if people rather expected an ominous fate for prisoners!
Something becoming even more pronounced during the social upheavals of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, with those formerly ransomed nobles being butchered left and right.


Do you understand what a social convention is? You know ancient cities had no police force or "town guard" or anything remotely like that, because convention maintained order. If you had a problem with someone, you went to your patron, to talk to their patron and sort things out. Guest friendship (first written about in the Iliad) and other such ties worked the same way.

In the wars between the Diadochi in the Hellenstic era, trained pikemen were hard to come by. You either controlled Makedonia and had them at source, or relied on settlers from Hellas who were trained to fight that way. Either way, they were precious and scarce, and the convention that arose was that you didn't kill surrendering pikemen, you offered them a job. It was hard to break a pike block, even after they'd lost a battle, so it was win-win for everyone. They signalled their surrender by raising their pikes vertically. However, the Romans weren't aware of this convention, and carried on killing even after surrendering pikemen had given the signal.

In Caesar's war against the Gauls, his armies killed tens of thousands in battle - but captured many times that to sell into slavery. Because that meant money for the victors. A good way for a commander to make themselves popular with their men. And the primary means a Roman senatorial expected to enrich themselves.

They didn't require international treaties, just elites raised in the same way understanding that was how people dealt with each other.

Again you seem to be stuck in a modern mindset where there has to be something written down somewhere, that everyone has signed up to, in order for a behaviour to be practised.

Berenger
2017-03-19, 06:47 PM
@Tiktakkat:

Well, english isn't my first language, so let's get the possibility of a misunderstanding out of the way first: I read the sentence "At that rate, the idea of not killing, torturing, or enslaving any enemy soldier you get ahold of is a very recent concept." as fully equivalent to the sentence "Until very recently, no commander considered or employed other options than a) killing, b) torture or c) enslavement when deciding the fate of captured soldiers." If you feel that the meaning of your original statement differs from my paraphrasis, please try to point out how.



All I would have to demonstrate is the preponderance of references to the mass killings of prisoners after battles, with a lack of condemnation for the practice beyond references to the loss of income or the usual denunciations of the cruelty of enemies. And note, I said "any". Clearly exceptions can and were made.
I don't think that you did or could demonstrate this. Of course, "A Comprehensive Account of the Treatment of Prisoners of War in Human History" is a rather tall order for a discussion at the scope of this thread so none of us will be able to prove his point of view anytime soon. But I'm quite certain that mass executions of prisoners did come with contemporary condemnation, outrage and flattering monikers like "Slayer of X" that indicate that you did something that was considered out of ordinary behaviour.



Because you are projecting an absurd standard for both proof and attitude in relation to action in an attempt to invalidate the statement, even while resorting to desperate parsings of your own statements to somehow exclude your acknowledgment of what was clearly the default expected behavior.
I don't feel anywhere near desperation at this point. I also have no idea which portion of my post constitutes an a mention of a "default expected behaviour" let alone an acknowledgement that, in a further step, would need to be excluded from anything.



And of course, I didn't say "no concept".
Again, maybe I somehow missed some crucial point in translation, but: If a concept is very recent (these were your exact words), isn't the reasonable conclusion that said concept is unknown to people that lived before these very recent times? If this is a misrepresentation of your statement, how so?



As for reciprocity and feudalism and all that, are you seriously suggesting that ancient history isn't chock full of betrayals? That the Middle Ages aren't defined more by fratricide, patricide, and general betrayal than they are by actual loyalty to the death? Uh huh.
I'd say, in general terms, that ancient history (and medieval history and modern history) actually are more defined by adherence to laws and customs than by their denial. It's just that violations of any code of conduct are noted and remembered and normal behaviour is, well, normal. If betrayal were the norm and fidelity a rare exception, there could be no betrayal, since there won't be any trust to violate in the first place.



But do tell, exactly when were those international treaties regarding prisoners actually signed?
Let's see the first one was . . . between the Romans and Parthians?
No wait, between the Western Franks and the Eastern Franks!
The Normans and the Scots then?
Maybe it was the Hapsburgs and Bourbons?
Gee, I'm not seeing any actual recognition in the history books of any of this before the 19th century.
I wonder why?
It is almost as if . . . why, it is almost as if people rather expected an ominous fate for prisoners!
Something becoming even more pronounced during the social upheavals of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, with those formerly ransomed nobles being butchered left and right.
I don't really know how to answer to this. Either you don't know that international treaties just weren't a thing back then but people could still agree on things (In this case, I just don't know where to start to educate you.) or you do know that international treaties just weren't a thing back then but people could still agree on things (In this case, I just don't get why you are being dishonest in such an aggressive and obvious way). Seriously, this is like disbelieving the existence of gladiators in the roman empire because no one took a photography of one.

Mr Beer
2017-03-19, 07:42 PM
its a fairly recent development, only really happened in the last few years, and its been somewhat overshadowed in the publics mind by the use of UAV's like Predator, which is much better known and tends to cause some people to conflate "drone" and "UAV" as synonymous terms.

plus, while the US and brits both admit to using drones, I don't know how much Is actually out in the public domain about them. most of what I know is form low level restricted briefs I got on RSOI.

in short, unless you knew where to look, and what to look for, its would be quite easy for a layman to miss their deployment entirely.

Makes sense, put like that it's easy to miss.

Tiktakkat
2017-03-19, 08:01 PM
Pirates most definitely defaulted to enslavement, because that meant money. When Pompey was sent to deal with the pirate menace in the Mediterranean in the last century BC (instigated largely by Rome defeating the major naval powers of the age, and doing nothing to settle what their navies would do afterwards), they weren't killing senatorials. They were capturing them and extracting ransoms, which was costly and annoying, not terminal. Also noteworthy that he didn't kill most of the pirates he captured, either, but settled them on better lands than those they'd been living on, to try to give them an alternative livelihood.

Conversely, Caesar had the pirates who held him for ransom crucified.


It's not a "realignment", killing captives in cold blood is murder and much more difficult for most people than killing in battle. I'd suggest you read into the works of Dave Grossman on the topic of killing, it's some interesting stuff and not easy for the majority of us to do.

But it is not what I wrote.
Nor does it bear out given say, what Crassus did after the Third Servile War.
Or that 12,000 are said to have died when Pompey stormed the Temple in Jerusalem.


I'm saying they were the notable exceptions, not the rule. Otherwise those customs wouldn't have survived - yet we have countless anecdotes of just those things happening. When Henry V tells his men "no prisoners" at Agincourt, they're annoyed, because they were counting on being able to make money from ransoms. They didn't relish killing for its own sake, nor do most warriors.

"Notable exceptions" do not occur generation after generation, war after war.

Henry V killed the prisoners at Agincourt only when he feared defeat. However . . .
Did his troop refuse the order?
Was he condemned in the historical record?
Clearly it was less "You unspeakable monster!" and more "No ransoms? Sucks to be you!"


Do you understand what a social convention is? You know ancient cities had no police force or "town guard" or anything remotely like that, because convention maintained order. If you had a problem with someone, you went to your patron, to talk to their patron and sort things out. Guest friendship (first written about in the Iliad) and other such ties worked the same way.

I am well aware of what social convention is.
You know ancient cities had riots, right? And street gangs? General criminal activity?
You do know just how many stories there are about people violating Guest Right and getting thoroughly punished for it there are, right?


However, the Romans weren't aware of this convention, and carried on killing even after surrendering pikemen had given the signal.

So . . . another example proving I am right.
Ummm . . . thanks?


They didn't require international treaties, just elites raised in the same way understanding that was how people dealt with each other.

Which is all well and good - until you get out of your little social group.
And then the Romans are slaughtering your pikemen.


Again you seem to be stuck in a modern mindset where there has to be something written down somewhere, that everyone has signed up to, in order for a behaviour to be practised.

Not even close.
I simply recognize the difference between social conventions that are too often observed more in the breach and actual social structures that harshly condemn and preferably punish the actual actions.
Would you like me to start citing the death rate of ordinary soldiers while held as prisoners of war?
Should we consider the functional differences between enslavement or "surrender and be hired to keep fighting or else"?

Once again, what I wrote is fundamentally true.
It is not absolutely, graven in stone, utterly unalterable, performed by everyone, without the least hint of anything else.
Oddly, I never suggested such.
Instead it is others insisting that the exact opposite is true . . . even while giving one example after another that, oh yeah, it kinda, sorta, did happen all the time.


@Tiktakkat:

Well, english isn't my first language, so let's get the possibility of a misunderstanding out of the way first:


I read the sentence "At that rate, the idea of not killing, torturing, or enslaving any enemy soldier you get ahold of is a very recent concept." as fully equivalent to the sentence "Until very recently, no commander considered or employed other options than a) killing, b) torture or c) enslavement when deciding the fate of captured soldiers." If you feel that the meaning of your original statement differs from my paraphrasis, please try to point out how.

So then . . .
You misread my statement, projected a specific and absolute interpretation on to it, and insist that I must defend that.
And I actually explained that at length previously.


I don't think that you did or could demonstrate this. Of course, "A Comprehensive Account of the Treatment of Prisoners of War in Human History" is a rather tall order for a discussion at the scope of this thread so none of us will be able to prove his point of view anytime soon. But I'm quite certain that mass executions of prisoners did come with contemporary condemnation, outrage and flattering monikers like "Slayer of X" that indicate that you did something that was considered out of ordinary behaviour.

Okay then . . . demonstrate such to prove me wrong.
Even simpler, demonstrate that "Sayer of X" was not considered an honorific.
In fact:
"The early years of his long reign were dominated by civil war against powerful generals from the Anatolian aristocracy. Following their submission, Basil oversaw the stabilization and expansion of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire, and above all, the final and complete subjugation of Bulgaria, the Empire's foremost European foe, after a prolonged struggle. For this he was nicknamed the Bulgar Slayer (Greek: Βουλγαροκτόνος, Boulgaroktonos), by which he is popularly known."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_II

That kinda, sorta, rather sounds like they were honoring him by calling him that, doesn't it?


I don't feel anywhere near desperation at this point. I also have no idea which portion of my post constitutes an a mention of a "default expected behaviour" let alone an acknowledgement that, in a further step, would need to be excluded from anything.

Why should I feel desperation? I haven't had to backtrack anything.
You, and others disagreeing with me, have repeatedly proven my point with "exceptions" that demonstrate precisely what I am saying, along with phrasings that endorse what I said.


Again, maybe I somehow missed some crucial point in translation, but: If a concept is very recent (these were your exact words), isn't the reasonable conclusion that said concept is unknown to people that lived before these very recent times? If this is a misrepresentation of your statement, how so?

The concept
as a default.
"Hey, let's take prisoners and treat them well for the purpose of exchanging them unharmed at the end of the conflict for our equally unharmed and relatively well-treated prisoners" is a very recent concept.
This is in contrast to "Hey, let's take prisoners and use them for hard labor for the rest of their lives, however long that may be." Or, "Hey, let's take prisoners and use them for hard labor until the war ends, assuming they don't die before then." Or even, "Hey, let's take prisoners for the sole purpose of recruiting them under duress." Or even, "Hey, let's take prisoners and ransom them for serious cash." Those are very radically different concepts, and you are going to have to look long and hard to find any truly significant exceptions to them before the Hague Conventions. (Well, at least the discussions that led up to the Hague Conventions, say the Crimean War and American Civil War.)


I'd say, in general terms, that ancient history (and medieval history and modern history) actually are more defined by adherence to laws and customs than by their denial. It's just that violations of any code of conduct are noted and remembered and normal behaviour is, well, normal. If betrayal were the norm and fidelity a rare exception, there could be no betrayal, since there won't be any trust to violate in the first place.

And I would say the exact opposite for ancient and medieval history. Codes of conduct have a strong tendency to be ex post facto (chivalry coming after knights were being supplanted by mercenary armies, bushido coming after Tokugawa ended the pretty much constant civil war, and so on).
Does that mean John the Blind didn't charge nobly to his death at Crecy?
Not in the least.
Does it mean the brutal fratricide of the War of the Roses, or the depopulation of the Thirty Years' War happened before Crecy?
Not those either.
The fact is, acts of generosity and mercy feature so prominently precisely because they were so unusual in those times. It really astonished people when someone didn't slaughter

As for modern history . . . the Hague Conventions prohibited the bombing of cities from the air.
They had to add a supplement to the Hague and Geneva Conventions covering perfidy.


I don't really know how to answer to this. Either you don't know that international treaties just weren't a thing back then but people could still agree on things (In this case, I just don't know where to start to educate you.) or you do know that international treaties just weren't a thing back then but people could still agree on things (In this case, I just don't get why you are being dishonest in such an aggressive and obvious way). Seriously, this is like disbelieving the existence of gladiators in the roman empire because no one took a photography of one.

I am well aware that international treaties weren't a thing back then.
You seem to be unaware that, even when confessing it, that international standards of behavior weren't a thing either, and that people really didn't agree on all that much as opposed to recognizing their self-interest (in regards to ransoms) and acting accordingly.
I am however aware that, at least in Europe, you had things like Papal Proclamations, declaring to all and sundry that crossbows were an abominable weapon, fit only for use against the Saracens. Do tell, what year did everyone in Europe agree to stop using crossbows?
Or perhaps we should discuss the Papal proclamations regarding when combat was lawful, reducing the number of "lawful" days to fighting to what was it, less than 50? How many wars fit into those limits?
How about the inviolability of emissaries? Defenestrations of Prague ring a bell?
And then there were the bilateral treaties that actually survived to their expiration dates. I'm pretty sure I can keep my shoes on to tally those.

Perhaps the problem is you are challenging me in such an aggressive and obvious way that leaps wholesale into dishonesty when you repeatedly cite points that contradict your claims that prisoners were always treated with dignity and respect, and that massacres were barely known before international treaties outlawed them.
Perhaps if you say, said "Gee Sam, isn't that a bit too harsh? People were certainly less than pleasant, but they weren't that unrelentingly savage, even in ancient and medieval days. They even managed to develop a system of parole to go with ransoms that held surprisingly well across international lines", I might be inclined to say, "Well, maybe I am being a bit too cynical, but let's face it, being a POW was never a guarantee of survival at any time, nor has the treatment of captives and conquered civilians ever been particularly pleasant. Being a cook or armorer as a camp follower or being a cook or armorer in uniform has pretty much always been equally likely to get you killed if your side lost." (In case you have forgotten the actual context of the comment.)

MrZJunior
2017-03-19, 08:27 PM
Why did grenades and mortars fall out of style in the 19th century?

I can see grenades becoming less useful as people switched from matchlocks to other methods of ignition, but my understanding is that grenades persisted after the changeover.

Mortars seem to become less common after the American Civil War before reappearing around the First World War.

Gnoman
2017-03-19, 08:58 PM
Mortars and grenades fell out of favor well before the ACW, closer to the Napoleonic era. The reason was fusing - to be useful, a mortar needed to detonate in a relatively narrow altitude band, as it would do almost nothing if it burst too high (fragments and blast too dispersed to do real damage) or too low (most of the fragments and blast wasted themselves in the earth). There was also the very serious danger that, because the shell fuse was lit seperately from the mortar itself, that if the weapon didn't go off you'd blow up the crew. Explosive shells didn't really become useful again until the advent of reliable fuses that could be lit by the artillery piece going off, which happened around the time of the ACW.

Grenades had a different problem. They were very cumbersome to use in battle due to the awkward method of lighting them, were a little unstable, and (due to the low power of black powder) of limited effect. They became useful again in WWI because of the nature of trench warfare combined with friction ignition (you just had to pull out the pin holding the spoon, or pull on a bead, or with some models just striking it very hard to light the fuse) and greatly improved explosives.

Berenger
2017-03-19, 09:07 PM
In a nutshell...


Perhaps the problem is you are challenging me in such an aggressive and obvious way that leaps wholesale into dishonesty when you repeatedly cite points that contradict your claims that prisoners were always treated with dignity and respect, and that massacres were barely known before international treaties outlawed them.

...to be honest, I can't even tell whether you are trolling me on purpose or actually believe this is what anybody wrote.

VoxRationis
2017-03-19, 09:38 PM
Is there a good rule of thumb for the amount of reach a person has for a given length of weapon (assuming we break the weapons down into categories such as two-handed hafted weapons, one-handed swords, etc.)? Assuming a wielder's maybe 5'8''?

Tiktakkat
2017-03-19, 10:02 PM
Mortars and grenades fell out of favor well before the ACW, closer to the Napoleonic era.

On the other end of that, why didn't mortars come back into favor among "Western" (American, British, and French at least) armies until after WWII?

Was it just prejudice against them as being too "simple"?
Or just an excessive favor for them, particularly among nations with more conscripts and supply line issues (Soviets, Imperial Japanese, Israelis)?
Bureaucratic and/or service inertia?
All of the above/something else?

Gnoman
2017-03-20, 02:08 AM
I am not sure why you think that Western armies didn't use them. It wAs the British who reinvented the weapon in 1915, and a French refinement is the basis for essentially all modern designs. All armies used mortars of various caliber quite extensively during WWII. The Soviets and Japanese made particularly good ones, but they were not unique in using the weapon.

Martin Greywolf
2017-03-20, 02:44 AM
Is there a good rule of thumb for the amount of reach a person has for a given length of weapon (assuming we break the weapons down into categories such as two-handed hafted weapons, one-handed swords, etc.)? Assuming a wielder's maybe 5'8''?

Well, it depends on the weapon. Maximum total reach is arm length of person + length of weapon. If you ballpark and round up a bit, you could arrive at 1m (3 feet) + weapon length. That's the extreme range, though, and doesn't take things like footwork into account. Another thing it doesn't model is that once you get past measure of greatest effect for a given weapon, it becomes a lot less effective - sure, you can grapple with a sword, and it helps, but it's nowhere near as good as hitting someone with the sharp bit properly.

One handed weapons usually have under a meter of length, so your reach is 2m tops there, two handed swords are 1-1.5m, polearms are usually at 1m-3.5m, mostly because you hold them differently. It all depends, though, a katana has shorter reach than arming sword for the most part, being a slashing weapon, and a short one at that, despite being two handed weapon.

Do keep in mind these ranges are maximum for extended thrusts, in case of far range for polearms and 2h weapons, it's the lancing range (let go with one hand and stab as far as you can). For super long polearms, well, they don't work unless you're in a formation, so it's usually a moot point in most RPGs. Since you need to brace them, their reach is usually just length of weapon minus a few cm/inches.

Also, there are tricks - leaning stance of I.33 as interpreted by Roland Warzecha gives you about 50 cm (2 feet) more of reach.

Note: All metric/imperial conversions are imprecise because 1) I'm lazy and 2) they are ballpark numbers anyway.

Thiel
2017-03-20, 03:19 AM
I am not sure why you think that Western armies didn't use them. It wAs the British who reinvented the weapon in 1915, and a French refinement is the basis for essentially all modern designs. All armies used mortars of various caliber quite extensively during WWII. The Soviets and Japanese made particularly good ones, but they were not unique in using the weapon.

Indeed. The Stokes-Brandt mle 27 and its variations were ubiquitous all across Europe between the wars and became the basis for just about every infantry mortar in use at the time. The only exceptions I can name off hand is the Japanese Knee-Mortar which isn't a traditional mortar at all, and the British two-inch mortar which was based on a Spanish designed 50mm mortar.

Max_Killjoy
2017-03-20, 08:49 AM
On the other end of that, why didn't mortars come back into favor among "Western" (American, British, and French at least) armies until after WWII?


Mortars and grenades were used extensively by "western" armies in WW2.

AslanCross
2017-03-20, 08:58 AM
Can anyone name this particular type of sword (http://www.oriental-arms.com/item.php?id=4047)? It's of Indian origin; I saw them being used in a Gatka demonstration, but unlike the khanda and the tulwar, I can't find the name for this particular type.

They're also visible in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nSkn-nKTFc), at around 1:02.

VoxRationis
2017-03-20, 10:01 AM
Is there any credit to the idea, in such games as D&D and The Elder Scrolls, that wearing armor is a skill that requires particular training (besides, obviously, strength enough to comfortably move with a significant amount of added weight)? Note that I'm just talking about wearing the armor here, not putting it on; if an experienced squire put fitted plate onto a plowman, could the plowman handle the wearing just fine?

Incanur
2017-03-20, 11:52 AM
For super long polearms, well, they don't work unless you're in a formation, so it's usually a moot point in most RPGs.

People fought with full 16-18ft pikes outside formation. Giacomo di Grassi, Joachim Meyer, George Silver, and others gave instructions for dueling with the pike. We have accounts of battlefield duels with the pike. Some pikers fought in open order, keeping no ranks, etc. Antonio Manciolino recommended the lancia over shorter staff weapons such as the spiedo. I'm not sure exactly how long Manciolino's lancia was; it may not quite have been the full 16-18ft, but it was long enough to outreach the partisan/spiedo by an arm's length while held in the middle.

So there's a surprisingly amount of evidence that extremely long staff weapons were effective in single combat.

Galloglaich
2017-03-20, 12:03 PM
So you acknowledge that it was done.
And without any hesitation or particular consideration when it was.
Particularly when one considers sieges, where a full sack and slaughter was the standard for all leaders and armies if a surrender was not made in a timely fashion.
As for advantage, when no ransoms were possible, then feeding and guarding prisoners became significantly less likely. Even when they were, conditions were generally so poor as to make immediate execution considerably more merciful.
And let us note that sometimes those that spared their vanquished foes reaped dividends of continued war - Caeser for example, precipitated a slaughter after their victory in Africa because they blamed previous mercy for making them fight the same foes again.

So as part of a group of options - killing, torturing, enslaving - it is absolutely true.
Just because it was not done all the time, by everyone, in every circumstance, does not make it false. Attitudes regarding prisoners of war were very low for the vast majority of known history.

Actually, you clearly don't know the history of this at all.

Certain polities, including the Mongols or the Roman Empire, practiced a kind of 'no-quarter' (killing and mass-enslavement) policy against certain enemies - except when they were made into vassal states for various reasons. But that was not necessarily the norm. Particularly in the middle ages.

You seem to assume that it was commonplace to either kill, torture, or enslave a population of a captured city for example, when it was actually far more common just to rob them and leave. Many towns got sacked multiple times and yet still existed. True sackings in the mass-murder / enslavement sense were rare enough as to stand out in the chronicles and history books.

Now this didn't last, during the 30 Years War in the 17th Century sacking / burning etc. was commonplace. But in the middle ages, depending on the army responsible, it was not necessarily the norm.

Same for armies, when one army defeated another army, depending on the precise time and place, it was more common to just take their arms and release them. For example at the Battle of Grunwald / Tannenburg in 1410, the Polish king released 14,000 German prisoners, and only held a few dozen for ransom, the latter all Teutonic Knights or high ranking mercenary captains in their pay. Armies that did massacre prisoners etc. were more often either Crusaders (or in the Reconquista), or involved in nasty civil wars, or were from places (for example France) where people who weren't aristocrats weren't necessarily considered humans. But even there when war went on long enough systems ended up being put in place where petty ransoms were paid and so on. Even in the 100 Years War for example.

http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1465

this is a good overview of that particular subject.

http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1465


Releasing enemy troops was actually the most common approach in many parts of Europe like Italy, Flanders, or in most of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as in Poland and Bohemia and so on (for the latter, except for Crusades). That kind of thing even survived conscription in fits and starts, and went on even during the American Civil War up until roughly the middle of the war. It ended around 1863 because both sides started re-conscripting 'paroled' soldiers and forcing them back into the battle line, in contravention of the parole agreement. That is when they started building POW camps because they didn't know what to do with the captives, with the infamous results of those camps becoming death zones.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/parole.html

G

Galloglaich
2017-03-20, 12:06 PM
People fought with full 16-18ft pikes outside formation. Giacomo di Grassi, Joachim Meyer, George Silver, and others gave instructions for dueling with the pike. We have accounts of battlefield duels with the pike. Some pikers fought in open order, keeping no ranks, etc. Antonio Manciolino recommended the lancia over shorter staff weapons such as the spiedo. I'm not sure exactly how long Manciolino's lancia was; it may not quite have been the full 16-18ft, but it was long enough to outreach the partisan/spiedo by an arm's length while held in the middle.

So there's a surprisingly amount of evidence that extremely long staff weapons were effective in single combat.

This article refers to the repeated use of pikes and similarly sized staves as personal defense weapons on the road, as mentioned for example in the autobiography of Buenvenutto Cellini. It seemed to be a standard expectation for use in open spaces particularly on the road.

https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/apd.2015.3.issue-1/apd-2015-0004/apd-2015-0004.xml

G

Galloglaich
2017-03-20, 12:08 PM
That's absolute nonsense. Social conventions (simple reciprocity - the guy you capture today could be your captor of tomorrow), and more importantly the income you could receive from ransom made it rare that rich/noble prisoners were killed out of hand. That goes back to antiquity and guest friendship, never mind feudalism and the medieval era. Even pirates in antiquity preferred to capture and ransom, rather than murder people on ships they'd taken. Only those who couldn't pay were enslaved.

This seems to be the main reason in Central and Eastern Europe.

Tiktakkat
2017-03-20, 01:04 PM
I am not sure why you think that Western armies didn't use them. It wAs the British who reinvented the weapon in 1915, and a French refinement is the basis for essentially all modern designs. All armies used mortars of various caliber quite extensively during WWII. The Soviets and Japanese made particularly good ones, but they were not unique in using the weapon.

Not "didn't use them", just used them to a rather lesser degree.

Yes, the French made a great 81mm mortar, and the Americans had a 107mm mortar for chemical use, but they and the British just didn't use them as much as the Soviets, Japanese, and eventually Nazis.
Meanwhile the Soviets favored 120mm mortars, with 160mm and 280mm mortars for higher level support.

After WWII, mortars among the NATO armies continued to be minimal compared to Soviet/Warsaw Pact armies, until pretty much the tail end of the Cold War when automatic and direct fire mortars started coming into production.

So I'm not sure why you would think there were no differences in tactical preferences.

Deadmeat.GW
2017-03-20, 01:05 PM
Julius Caesar for example was considered really exceptional in the way he treated the pirates that captured him.

http://www.livius.org/sources/content/plutarch/plutarchs-caesar/caesar-and-the-pirates/

Just for information, if it shows up in history books in detail it usually means it was exceptional.

Battle of the Gulden Spurs in Flanders where they killed a fair amount of the captured knights was one such exception, that was not the common thing to happen.

Tiktakkat
2017-03-20, 01:32 PM
Actually, you clearly don't know the history of this at all.

Actually, I know the history quite well.


Certain polities, including the Mongols or the Roman Empire, practiced a kind of 'no-quarter' (killing and mass-enslavement) policy against certain enemies - except when they were made into vassal states for various reasons. But that was not necessarily the norm. Particularly in the middle ages.

Well, it was certainly the norm for them. So, right there you have just contradicted yourself.


You seem to assume that it was commonplace to either kill, torture, or enslave a population of a captured city for example, when it was actually far more common just to rob them and leave. Many towns got sacked multiple times and yet still existed. True sackings in the mass-murder / enslavement sense were rare enough as to stand out in the chronicles and history books.

So you don't consider the treatment of a population during a sack to be "torture". You know, the beatings, rapes, additional killings, all that stuff. Well, I suppose you can choose to define it that way. I happen to consider that rather brutal, but that's me.
Yes, many towns got sacked multiple times and still existed. How much of their population did they lose with each sacking? And how many towns were sacked and disappeared or lost significant status?


Now this didn't last, during the 30 Years War in the 17th Century sacking / burning etc. was commonplace. But in the middle ages, depending on the army responsible, it was not necessarily the norm.

So once again we have a period where it is absolutely the standard, but according to you it just isn't.


Same for armies, when one army defeated another army, depending on the precise time and place, it was more common to just take their arms and release them.

And yet another exception.


For example at the Battle of Grunwald / Tannenburg in 1410, the Polish king released 14,000 German prisoners, and only held a few dozen for ransom, the latter all Teutonic Knights or high ranking mercenary captains in their pay. Armies that did massacre prisoners etc. were more often either Crusaders (or in the Reconquista), or involved in nasty civil wars,

Of course you fail to note that the reason so few were held for ransom is that such a large number were killed during the battle, something otherwise considered "unusual".
But how about the Hunger War 4 years later, which caused widespread famine from the scorched earth tactics?
Which of those was really the "exception"?


or were from places (for example France) where people who weren't aristocrats weren't necessarily considered humans. But even there when war went on long enough systems ended up being put in place where petty ransoms were paid and so on. Even in the 100 Years War for example.

And even more exceptions from your standard.


http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1465

this is a good overview of that particular subject.

From that overview:

Ransoming a defeated member of the military elite became seen as indicative of much that was civilised about Western European aristocratic culture in the final 400–500 years of the medieval period. By contrast, those who slaughtered, mutilated, or enslaved members of the aristocratic elite were considered inherently ‘barbarous’.

So really, only the aristocratic elite were entitled to special treatment. Everyone else . . . not so much.
But despite said aristocratic elite being the minority, you want to insist their treatment was the default while the treatment of the majority of troops was the exception.


Releasing enemy troops was actually the most common approach in many parts of Europe like Italy, Flanders, or in most of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as in Poland and Bohemia and so on (for the latter, except for Crusades).

Except for all the times when it wasn't that you already noted of course.

When the number of exceptions exceeds the number of standard cases, then you really need to consider whether or not you have the wrong standard.

Incanur
2017-03-20, 02:22 PM
This article refers to the repeated use of pikes and similarly sized staves as personal defense weapons on the road, as mentioned for example in the autobiography of Buenvenutto Cellini. It seemed to be a standard expectation for use in open spaces particularly on the road.

https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/apd.2015.3.issue-1/apd-2015-0004/apd-2015-0004.xml

G

Good stuff, thanks for sharing. William Harrison (https://books.google.com/books?id=4qwDICPz6OoC&pg=PA238&lpg=PA238&dq=the+excessive+staves+which+divers+that+travel+t he+way+do+carry+upon+their+shoulders+whereof&source=bl&ots=tiujULqf7i&sig=juUunuSyGgWUtPK05vJnXnv7uSE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwijnIDX5eXSAhXEGJQKHcA8D8YQ6AEIITAB#v=on epage&q=the%20excessive%20staves%20which%20divers%20that %20travel%20the%20way%20do%20carry%20upon%20their% 20shoulders%20whereof&f=false) also wrote about people carrying 13-14ft pikes while traveling and how this prompted others to carry pistols.

As far as the treatment of defeated populations went, it seems to have varied a lot. At times you certainly had wholesale slaughter, as Jorg von Ehingen described as happening during his service with the Portuguese in wars against the Moors. On the other hand, the chivalrous ideal of treating the weak with kindness and compassion likewise existed, at least on paper.

Mr Beer
2017-03-20, 02:24 PM
Tiktakkat,

This is where we started:


At that rate, the idea of not killing, torturing, or enslaving any enemy soldier you get ahold of is a very recent concept.

But in fact, Galloglaich and others have provided numerous examples of where not doing this was a concept that was known and practised earlier than very recently. You have not been able to refute those examples.

If you had started with 'killing, torturing, or enslaving enemy soldiers was common until very recently', you may or may not be wrong but you could be legitimately still discussing the matter. However, you set yourself a bar too high to jump over and as a result of that, you have been demonstrated to be wrong.

Arguing about it further is just making you look mulish.

Clistenes
2017-03-20, 02:42 PM
bear in mind, in a sci-fi setting, you don't know what sort of sci-fi ECM/jamming might be in play that would mandate a Line of sight or other short ranged transmitter to ensure control of the drone. its been reported that the Russians and Iranians have been able to jam or otherwise interfere with UAV satellite control links, and I would assume the US also has that capability, but simply isn't admitting that it can do that.

Also, if the drone is organic* tactical asset for the infantry, rather than a robot plane, then having the operator on the ground with the infantry makes sense, as they would not only be on call and available whenever the grunts needed them, but they would have a better understanding of the grunts perception of the battlefield and thus could understand the limits of what they could see better (something that may be obvious to a drone op form 300 meters up may be hidden form a grunt at ground level, in ways the drone's POV might not make clear), and interpret their directions better ("1 want you to flatten that building right their" works a lot better when you can point out the building in question to the other guy face to face, rather than trying to describe which of the 70 identical brown mud huts you mean to a guy in Tennessee looking at a sat photo).

we already have drone operators who use small, man launch-able drones (https://c1.staticflickr.com/6/5587/14600545860_f56134e2bf_b.jpg)for recce work, controlled by short range radio links and a tablet and X box controller (http://www.90percentofeverything.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/pop-men-xbox.jpg). that can and have gone out on foot patrols in Afgan, so the idea of a drone operator flying is drone while under fire (http://i.imgur.com/jhvSvLP.jpg)is already a reality**.



* organic= integrated part of the unit, as opposed to a attachment from another unit. for example, a squads MG team is a organic asset, but a explosives search dog and handler would not be,


** that particular photo is of demonstration troops showing off RnD toys and testing how it works in a stateside training ex, but I know us brits have used these types of drones out in afgan, so the point stands.

I must admit that I thought the poster was speaking of General Atomics MQs type of drones...

Galloglaich
2017-03-20, 03:02 PM
Well, it was certainly the norm for them. So, right there you have just contradicted yourself.

I was talking specifically about the medieval period, so the Romans were before that (by Romans I meant the Classical Romans, ala Julius Caesar etc.). The Mongols certainly were an exception to the rule so to speak, and they were not the only one. The Swiss were also very harsh against military captives, though not necessarily against civilians. The French and the Spanish tended to only spare aristocrats for example when on campaign in Italy, but this worked against them whenever they were on the losing side. The Italian soldiers and the peasants massacred many retreating French and Spanish armies on their way out of Italy. Quite a few never made it.


How much of their population did they lose with each sacking? And how many towns were sacked and disappeared or lost significant status?

Well, that is a very good question, and the answer is, it depended very much on who did the sacking. I know for example that the city of Bergen was sacked something like 15 times in the period roughly 1350-1500, but it didn't seem to suffer enough to actually reduce the population nor the general prosperity. It was partly burned on one occasion but none of these incidents seem to have resulted in mass casualties.

On the other hand, when the Mongols sacked Kiev they basically put an end, at least for a while, to it's operation as a city and the destruction was complete enough that one observer many years later (Fra Di Plano Carpini) noted that the land surrounding the city for nearly a days ride was covered in skulls.



And yet another exception.

I think what you are missing is that it was not universal. I said several times, it was done by some people, and in some kinds of conflicts. Crusades for example, any conflict across an ethnic / religious divide could be that way. Civil Wars could as well.


Of course you fail to note that the reason so few were held for ransom is that such a large number were killed during the battle, something otherwise considered "unusual".
But how about the Hunger War 4 years later, which caused widespread famine from the scorched earth tactics?
Which of those was really the "exception"?

Actually, the casualties in that battle weren't that high. The Teutonic Knights lost most of their key people but they were in the front ranks of the battle and for the most part, unwilling to surrender. Some of the urban militia forces were devastated but they too were among the elite and in the front ranks. The largest estimates for casualties I've seen were 8,000 dead and wounded, which is much less than the number who were released on 'parole'.

This was not unusual at all, if necessary I could cite dozens of other similar medieval battles were the casualties were very low and prisoners were released en-masse. I can also cite at least a dozen with wholesale massacres but that was not as commonplace.

As for the Hunger War, you certainly don't understand that conflict. The 'scorched earth' tactics meant literally the burning of crops etc., but it was on a small scale. There wasn't large scale mass casualties, the main problem caused was famine from burnt crops followed by an outbreak of plague.




So really, only the aristocratic elite were entitled to special treatment. Everyone else . . . not so much.
But despite said aristocratic elite being the minority, you want to insist their treatment was the default while the treatment of the majority of troops was the exception.

You obviously didn't actually read the article- it was about how they have found out that there was a system in place where by the common troops were in fact also ransomed, usually for very small sums. I think one guy was bragging about being ransomed 10 or 11 times.




Except for all the times when it wasn't that you already noted of course.

When the number of exceptions exceeds the number of standard cases, then you really need to consider whether or not you have the wrong standard.

Yes, and sometimes when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I guess the 'take no prisoners' attitude is cool in movies and genre fiction because it seems more badass, but it's just not the typical historical reality in a medieval context. Try to remember, I was talking about the medieval context specifically.

Romans - not medieval.

30 years war / 17th Century - not medieval.

If you need this to be the way you are saying for some reason, then by all means believe what you like. But that doesn't make it so.

G

Tiktakkat
2017-03-20, 03:07 PM
But in fact, Galloglaich and others have provided numerous examples of where not doing this was a concept that was known and practised earlier than very recently. You have not been able to refute those examples.

I don't have to because they are the exceptions and not the standard.
What I wrote remains the standard - people did not think of doing something else with captives except under rather unusual circumstances.
Digging up what 2? 3? 6? limited examples (far from "numerous") while making generic claims interspersed with acknowledging those claims don't hold for a great swath of the wars during the period does not actually change the standard to what is demonstrated in those examples.


[If you had started with 'killing, torturing, or enslaving enemy soldiers was common until very recently', you may or may not be wrong but you could be legitimately still discussing the matter. However, you set yourself a bar too high to jump over and as a result of that, you have been demonstrated to be wrong.

And as I said, if the counters had started with, "I think you aren't giving enough credit to the alternatives", you may or may not have been wrong but you could be legitimately still discussing the matter. However, you set yourself a bar too high to jump over and as a result of that, and presenting every one of your claims with exceptions and qualifications, you disprove them even as you make them.

Mike_G
2017-03-20, 03:14 PM
I think the issue here is dealing in absolutes.

The idea that not executing or enslaving everybody was unheard of until recently is not absolutely true. But tehre were examples of it happening, so you aren't willing to concede.

Mass executions happened in some times in some places. And parole, ransom, conscription etc also happened in some times and some places. And executing prisoners and civilian population didn't exactly go away in modern times, so it's really not a case of it was the norm in antiquity and not the norm in the modern age, so much as it varied tremendously from one place and time to another. You were better off surrendering to the English in the Hundred Years War than to the Japanese in WWII, for example.

Vinyadan
2017-03-20, 03:25 PM
A couple of things.

The Romans gave some rights to cities that surrendered before the ram hit the walls. Once the walls were hit, however, even if the city had surrendered, no rights would have been recognized, and everyone in there would be at the complete mercy of the Romans. You can imagine the psychological impact this had on the besieged.

Mortars were used to exhaustion on the Italian front of wwi. If you take a walk in those valleys, you can see the craters. However, the definition was looser back then, and comprised siege cannons, bombards, and howitzers, and generally meant weapons being used to fire with high arches.

Storm Bringer
2017-03-20, 03:30 PM
I must admit that I thought the poster was speaking of General Atomics MQs type of drones...


to be fair, be might well have been. "Drone" as something distinct form "UAV" is quite a recent shift in terminology, so while I may take "drone operator" to mean something along the lines of a small spy drone or something like the "throw in the air and it follows you" drones you see in COD or Mass Effect, the poster might well have meant the "unmanned plane" type like the MQ series or its equivalents.

it that case, yhea, thiers no need for him to be in the line of fire, he can sit in a bunker somewhere and do the same job.

Carl
2017-03-20, 03:45 PM
Yeah, but the post isn't about real-world drones, but about some alternate world where drones require an operator in the battlefield. The poster said it was SciFi but the technology sounds less advanced than our own, more like Steampunk Fantasy stuff...

It may be that in that alternate world cooks and musicias were legitimate military targets, or they may not...

Anyways, if the character is operating a war machine, then yes, he or she should be considered a soldier to all effects in every world and culture.

Very relevant point, allways think carefully about how your world got to how it is and ask yourself if some of your base assumptions about how people and societies will act are valid. A significant change in the nature of society could easily lead to very different views on what's right and wrong in a whole range of situations. At the same time, try and avoid falling into the trap of "they ignore such conventions because they're bad guys", whilst there's a lot of basis in that based on IRL precedents of recent times, it can create a situation where it comes off hamfisted.


Is there any credit to the idea, in such games as D&D and The Elder Scrolls, that wearing armor is a skill that requires particular training (besides, obviously, strength enough to comfortably move with a significant amount of added weight)? Note that I'm just talking about wearing the armor here, not putting it on; if an experienced squire put fitted plate onto a plowman, could the plowman handle the wearing just fine?

Just re-quoting this as i thought it was an interesting question and it seems to have gotten lost in the melee.

Tiktakkat
2017-03-20, 04:01 PM
I think the issue here is dealing in absolutes.

I agree.


The idea that not executing or enslaving everybody was unheard of until recently is not absolutely true.

I agree with that too.
Which isn't a problem, as that was never my assertion.


But tehre were examples of it happening, so you aren't willing to concede.

Actually, I am quite willing to concede that..
In fact I already acknowledged that arguing as you do here is a reasonable challenge to what I did say, as opposed to opposite absolutes. Twice even.

What I am not willing to concede is a claim of "Here is an example of merciful behavior in the pre-modern. Therefore, such was absolutely the standard of behavior for the entire pre-modern period."
You clearly disagree with that as well.


Mass executions happened in some times in some places. And parole, ransom, conscription etc also happened in some times and some places. And executing prisoners and civilian population didn't exactly go away in modern times, so it's really not a case of it was the norm in antiquity and not the norm in the modern age, so much as it varied tremendously from one place and time to another. You were better off surrendering to the English in the Hundred Years War than to the Japanese in WWII, for example.

I agree.
And I would add that the Hague/Geneva Conventions seem more acknowledged in the breach than the observance at times, thus so much for any actual change in attitude.

However, I would suggest though that the underlying attitude is fundamentally different.
Pre-conventions, mercy was "Hey, look at me! I'm being decent and merciful, unlike everyone else!"
Post-conventions, lack of mercy is, "Hey, look at me! Piffle on your conventional morality! I'm going to kick a puppy and drown a kitten next just to be even more different!"
That is a major change at the idea level, with a significant impact on battlefield behavior on both the winning and losing sides.
Which was the core of my original statement, particularly in relation to the drone operator compared to cooks or camp followers.

Galloglaich
2017-03-20, 04:42 PM
However, I would suggest though that the underlying attitude is fundamentally different.
Pre-conventions, mercy was "Hey, look at me! I'm being decent and merciful, unlike everyone else!"
Post-conventions, lack of mercy is, "Hey, look at me! Piffle on your conventional morality! I'm going to kick a puppy and drown a kitten next just to be even more different!"
That is a major change at the idea level, with a significant impact on battlefield behavior on both the winning and losing sides.
Which was the core of my original statement, particularly in relation to the drone operator compared to cooks or camp followers.

But this just isn't actually true. Very generally speaking, in the medieval period, within Europe itself, it was far more common, like a ratio of 10-1, for most captives to be released or ransomed than killed or enslaved. I only cited one example because it's not worth the effort to cite 20 examples, but I could if pressed to do so.

To be clear, with the exception of Crusades or Muslim invasions, it was much rarer to massacre large numbers of military prisoners, or to murder the majority of the population of a captured city, for example, in the 14th century than it has proven to be in the 20th or 21st. Even adjusted for scale, technology and population growth, WW II was much bloodier than any conflict in Europe during the medieval period, with the exception of the early Mongol invasions and to some extent, the later Ottoman wars. The only thing which comes close to comparing within Europe was the 30 Years War but that is as we've noted several times, a much later time period.

It just wasn't the typical thing to kill / torture / enslave as you were suggesting. And there were a lot of reasons for that which have everything to do with the nature of war and politics in the medieval period.


Nor was the medieval the only period like that, I think wholesale massacres within Europe were fairly rare prior to the Romans as well.

G

DerKommissar
2017-03-20, 04:51 PM
[Sorry if the pictures are to large - I don't know how to put them in 'spoilers'. If somebody explains me how to do it I can edit the post to put them in spoilers if they are too large...]

On the topic of sabres:

I just got back from vienna and they have a lot of nice weaponry on display. One I liked very much was this sabre which is called the Sabre of Charlemagne (though it seems it was never in his possesion). It dates back to 900-950 AD and seems to be of hungarian type and is very well preserved:

https://s18.postimg.org/7tce23495/IMG_1732.jpg


https://s11.postimg.org/naem9i243/IMG_1734.jpg


_______

On a different topic:
There were some armors which had a holes on some part. I was discussing this with my girlfriend, she meant it was maybe for heat management, I can also imagine it was to save weight or just as some kind of ornament. Does anyone of you have an idea about the purpose of these holes?

https://s9.postimg.org/4u2yg49gf/IMG_1329.jpg

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll
2017-03-20, 04:54 PM
I don't know, medieval and pre-modern contemporary sources that I've read tend to make a big deal out of massacres, while prisoner exchanges, paroles and such-like are treated as unexceptional, mundane business-as-usual warfare. Magdeburg was NOTABLE, not the norm. The Mongols were NOTABLE, not the norm. The examples of clemency we're all giving you aren't treated as exceptional in contemporary sources, but as routine warfare. The exceptions we're giving you are treated as just that, exceptional, in contemporary sources. Were what you're saying true, that clemency was seen as "Hey look at me, I'm being decent and merciful, unlike everyone else", you'd see a reflection of that in primary and contemporary secondary sources, but you simply don't. What you do see is what you claim only happens today, the "Hey look at me! Piffle on your conventional morality!" thing.
Where they ARE treated as exceptional, is in Victorian pseudo-history, with the Victorian obsession with making all history out to have been a bloodbath.

Generally speaking, your treatment of conventional norms strikes me as naive. Yes, there are exceptions, yes there is crime in cities and villages where rule of law is rule-of-convention. But how is that crime PERCEIVED? Was it "Oh, and old Bestiality Carter over by Slice way beat up and robbed his neighbour again, what a shame", or was it "Can you believe that Bestiality Carter over by Slice way beat up and robbed his neighbour! I can't imagine such a thing! Something has to be done!". The former statement is one of the behaviour being a norm. The latter is one of the behaviour being against the norm. Meanwhile, a situation where rule of law is enforced would run something like "Can you believe etc... I can't imagine such a thing! We already have laws about this, call the guards!". The difference isn't that in rule-of-convention, crime is normal, the difference is that in rule-by-law, there's established precedent as to how to deal with crime, whereas rule-of-convention has oral histories and figuring-out-punishment-as-you-go.

Edit:

The 30 Years War plays into the "Religious-War" exception to the previous rules as well, though G hasn't outright stated that as much. It is... complicated somewhat by the inclusion of non-Protestant powers on the Protestant side of the war, however. You can also treat it as a Civil War within the HRE + interventions, which sometimes has exceptions, as in a civil war the boundaries between civilian and combatant become blurred. Again, this has to do with dehumanization of the "other" in religious conflict, which leads to atrocities. These were just as exceptional and with the same causes then as they were today.


As for the holes in the armour, to allow for breathing near the armpits, perhaps? Some sportswear have similar meshes in or around the armpits. Weird that they're so far forward, however, but perhaps the closest they could get without risking the functional arm movement of the moving pieces.

Max_Killjoy
2017-03-20, 05:07 PM
I don't know, medieval and pre-modern contemporary sources that I've read tend to make a big deal out of massacres, while prisoner exchanges, paroles and such-like are treated as unexceptional, mundane business-as-usual warfare. Magdeburg was NOTABLE, not the norm. The Mongols were NOTABLE, not the norm. The examples of clemency we're all giving you aren't treated as exceptional in contemporary sources, but as routine warfare. The exceptions we're giving you are treated as just that, exceptional, in contemporary sources. Were what you're saying true, that clemency was seen as "Hey look at me, I'm being decent and merciful, unlike everyone else", you'd see a reflection of that in primary and contemporary secondary sources, but you simply don't. What you do see is what you claim only happens today, the "Hey look at me! Piffle on your conventional morality!" thing.
Where they ARE treated as exceptional, is in Victorian pseudo-history, with the Victorian obsession with making all history out to have been a bloodbath.


It's amazing how much damage the Victorians did the study of history of all sorts. There are so many things that "everyone knows" that are dead wrong, that date back to some Victorian writer.

Incanur
2017-03-20, 05:20 PM
Jorg von Ehingen didn't make a big deal out of massacring "infidels." He described the rank-and-file troops as having orders to kill the women and children, "which was done." As you see, it was thoroughly matter of fact.

Of course, that's from the middle of the 15th century, so arguably getting out of the medieval period, and in the context of religious/ethnic conflict.

Mr Beer
2017-03-20, 05:21 PM
Tiktakkat,

Your response to my post and also the personal message you sent to me are quoted below. I have removed the criticisms you made regarding another poster in your PM.

This sums to a rambling and somewhat bizarre response, you seem to be under the impression that we've been going back and forth for a while on this topic with each other, when in reality I made one post addressing you.

The fact remains that your initial assertion was incorrect, and has been demonstrated to be incorrect, mainly because you overstated your initial position to such an extent that you're outright wrong.

I can see that you've been trying to downplay what you initially said in various posts, without openly admitting that's what you're doing. So I suppose that what you are trying to pretend that you claimed has not been disproven (or proven, of course). But what you actually claimed, has definitely been disproven. And that's why your continued posts are making you look mulish.


I don't have to because they are the exceptions and not the standard.
What I wrote remains the standard - people did not think of doing something else with captives except under rather unusual circumstances.
Digging up what 2? 3? 6? limited examples (far from "numerous") while making generic claims interspersed with acknowledging those claims don't hold for a great swath of the wars during the period does not actually change the standard to what is demonstrated in those examples.

And as I said, if the counters had started with, "I think you aren't giving enough credit to the alternatives", you may or may not have been wrong but you could be legitimately still discussing the matter. However, you set yourself a bar too high to jump over and as a result of that, and presenting every one of your claims with exceptions and qualifications, you disprove them even as you make them.

Text of personal message:

"Do you know what looks mulish?
Parsing you claims with "except for this" and then declaring them to be absolute conditions.

Do you know what also looks mulish?
Acknowledging multiple instances of direct evidence then dismissing because you don't want to have to qualify your claim.

<Reference removed as mentioned above>

And do you know what really looks mulish?
Calling someone mulish while refusing to moderate your own position.
Particularly when you do so after paraphrasing what that person said about presenting a moderate position to begin a discussion in the first place while not actually acknowledging that he suggested it already.

Of course all that rather pales when you consider that looking mulish is pretty much the default mode of arguing for that thread. Everyone knows everything, anyone who disagrees is completely oblivious, and there is no room to compromise about anything.
And then you are shocked when the attitude is thrown back at you, and shocked again when they aren't impressed by you expressing that shock."

Galloglaich
2017-03-20, 05:25 PM
It's amazing how much damage the Victorians did the study of history of all sorts. There are so many things that "everyone knows" that are dead wrong, that date back to some Victorian writer.

Ironically part of the reason the Victorians abhorred the medieval period as so barbaric is that so many medieval voices were more tolerant than they were about a whole slew of 'moral' issues ranging from homosexuality to prostitution to probably things like management of prisoners too.


However, I wouldn't try to argue that the medieval people were necessarily more moral, one can certainly find plenty of absolutely brutal villains in the middle ages too, I think the reason for this being the norm was simply due to the very mixed up, horse-trading nature of politics and war and economics in the medieval period. Today's enemy was indeed quite often tomorrow's very necessary ally. Nobles were all inter-married and had need of complex alliances with one another which tended them toward moderation at least some of the time, towns and city states generally preferred peace so long as their rights were being respected and the trade allowed to flow... mercenaries often knew one another too and knew that what comes around goes around.

And the Church certainly did have a moderating influence, they controlled a lot of the narrative and reputation and they used that to try to blunt excessively bad behavior. In the post-pagan era, they even had a name for it 'Fama', and if you did things that the Church thought were nasty, it could cause you problems. This was a problem in fact for many of the Crusading Orders including the Teutonic Order who the Church thought was far too brutal. On the other hand the agenda of the Church and the agenda of peace or "being nice" were not always in synch either, but it was close enough that it did change things. The Church banning slavery of fellow Christians for example contributed to the end of slavery within Europe (and their cynical repeal of it in the Early Modern period led to the African slave trade among other horrors).


Basic pragmatism played a strong role. One of the results of the Hunger War for example was that they worked out deals to prevent that kind of 'scorched earth' fighting in the future, a rule which did last quite a while on the Latin side of the fence. The main impetus in this case was to prevent further outbreaks of plague, which was closely associated with famine. Where it broke down was in conflicts between the Latin / Greek (I.e. Russian Orthodox) and Latin / Muslim divides, although even there you could see some moderating exceptions. But the worst excesses tended to be along these kinds of fault lines.


Warfare has a tendency to get ritualized and moderated over time and when affinity networks exist that are sufficiently robust to allow it, and disruption fades enough for panic to fade, the worst excesses of human nature eventually take a back seat to making money and uniting against other common enemies. This was certainly the conscious policy of the Poles for a long time, as they knew the Turks literally had a rule that they could not go more than x number of years at peace with their Christian neighbors, whereas the Germans, Czechs, Swedes etc. could be more reliable in peace (up to a point, obviously). So whereas they could and did form alliances with the Turks and the Tartars, they knew that these could only last so long, usually no more than 3 or 4 years whereas for example when they made alliances with the German cities in Prussia in the 1450's, that lasted as long as the Kingdom of Poland did, more than 3 centuries.

G

oudeis
2017-03-20, 05:26 PM
I wasn't familiar with the Sack of Magdeburg until it was brought up in this thread, but this section from the Wikipedia article seems to make it clear in context that it was considered an exceptional and unacceptable breach of the norms of warfare:


The devastation was so great that Magdeburgisieren (or "magdeburgization") became an oft-used term signifying total destruction, rape, and pillaging for decades. The terms "Magdeburg justice", "Magdeburg mercy" and "Magdeburg quarter" also arose as a result of the sack, used originally by Protestants when executing Roman Catholics who begged for quarter.

Galloglaich
2017-03-20, 05:31 PM
Jorg von Ehingen didn't make a big deal out of massacring "infidels." He described the rank-and-file troops as having orders to kill the women and children, "which was done." As you see, it was thoroughly matter of fact.

Of course, that's from the middle of the 15th century, so arguably getting out of the medieval period, and in the context of religious/ethnic conflict.

That was basically a Crusade, essentially. Such conflicts were often really brutal. in the case of the expedition von Ehingen was involved with, too brutal. They did better in the earlier Crusades when they created a viable kingdom and treated their Arab subjects well. but in Ehingen's era things had already gotten really nasty on both sides of the Med, the Moors et al were already running brutal slave raids against Southern Europe which would continue into the 19th Century.

They, in turn, were p / o'd about being thrown out of Spain in the Reconquista. It was already a nasty sectarian war in other words.

Galloglaich
2017-03-20, 05:34 PM
I wasn't familiar with the Sack of Magdeburg until it was brought up in this thread, but this section from the Wikipedia article seems to make it clear in context that it was considered an exceptional and unacceptable breach of the norms of warfare:

Unfortunately though that kind of thing became increasingly common in the Early Modern period. Even before the 30 Years War (the 1527 sack of Rome was a similarly ghastly atrocity) but especially from that time onward. As others have pointed out that was basically part of a series of sectarian religious wars which were being orchestrated by powerful and highly ambitious absolute monarchs, who ultimately created the modern nation State out of the smoking ruins of Europe.

Max_Killjoy
2017-03-20, 05:50 PM
Unfortunately though that kind of thing became increasingly common in the Early Modern period. Even before the 30 Years War (the 1527 sack of Rome was a similarly ghastly atrocity) but especially from that time onward. As others have pointed out that was basically part of a series of sectarian religious wars which were being orchestrated by powerful and highly ambitious absolute monarchs, who ultimately created the modern nation State out of the smoking ruins of Europe.

I sometimes wonder if that period also contributed to some Victorians imagining that warfare had always been at least that bloody and vicious in all times and places prior, and passing that "truth" on as received fact to later generations.

Tiktakkat
2017-03-20, 06:08 PM
I don't know, medieval and pre-modern contemporary sources that I've read tend to make a big deal out of massacres, while prisoner exchanges, paroles and such-like are treated as unexceptional, mundane business-as-usual warfare. Magdeburg was NOTABLE, not the norm. The Mongols were NOTABLE, not the norm. The examples of clemency we're all giving you aren't treated as exceptional in contemporary sources, but as routine warfare. The exceptions we're giving you are treated as just that, exceptional, in contemporary sources. Were what you're saying true, that clemency was seen as "Hey look at me, I'm being decent and merciful, unlike everyone else", you'd see a reflection of that in primary and contemporary secondary sources, but you simply don't. What you do see is what you claim only happens today, the "Hey look at me! Piffle on your conventional morality!" thing.

Except when you do see it.
Look at William the Conqueror's Razing of the North, or the Black Prince's chevauchee's across France.
Do you find them referred to with horror and condemnation?
Or just, "Meh. C'est la guerre."
Or, "And they saved us by teaching those ne'er-do-wells a lesson!"
What was so notable about the Mongols compared to others, particularly the early Russian tsars, other than the Mongols being "foreign"? The same applies to how "horrible" the Northmen were, or what a "scourge" Attila was compared to the Romans.
Really it becomes a case of:


Where they ARE treated as exceptional, is in Victorian pseudo-history, with the Victorian obsession with making all history out to have been a bloodbath.

That same problem applies to early modern, modern, and post-modern revisionism, all of which set out determined to place a spin on things.
For that matter, even Medieval and Renaissance sources are full of spin, as noted above, and tempered by the religious and civil war exceptions noted below.
Do we remember Agincourt for the desperate battle against incredible odds, or for the slaughter of the prisoners?
Does that qualify for the civil war exemption, even though the loss of the ransoms was considered notable?
And was it notable for the loss of the ransoms or for the "cruelty" of the massacre?


Generally speaking, your treatment of conventional norms strikes me as naive.

Quite the opposite - I am brutally (excessively perhaps, I won't deny that) cynical.
When there are punishments like drawing and quartering ubiquitous throughout history for captured opposition leaders, talking of "mercy" and "ransom" for prisoners as the norm is what comes across as hopelessly naïve.
Actual mercy was never more than a convenience, to be tossed aside when need demanded it or circumstances made it unnecessary.

Or not.
Whose spin are we to believe:
The winner's versus the loser's?
The contemporary writing for his boss versus the later commenter writing for his boss?
The moralist writing to highlight his point versus the agitator writing to promote his values?
The historian simply looking to record it all versus the guy writing to make a buck?
The annoying cynic versus the annoying optimist?


The 30 Years War plays into the "Religious-War" exception to the previous rules as well, though G hasn't outright stated that as much. It is... complicated somewhat by the inclusion of non-Protestant powers on the Protestant side of the war, however. You can also treat it as a Civil War within the HRE + interventions, which sometimes has exceptions, as in a civil war the boundaries between civilian and combatant become blurred. Again, this has to do with dehumanization of the "other" in religious conflict, which leads to atrocities. These were just as exceptional and with the same causes then as they were today.

And how many wars fall into those exemptions?
How many wars were civil wars in disguise, or religious wars in another form?
Those lines wound up being blurred so much it becomes, as I said, difficult to take them as other than the norm, and treat the few "international" wars remaining as the standard for vaguely decent behavior.

Mind you, I don't deny that they were often particularly savage, even by the standards of the time.
The thing is, too many of the wars qualify for such to have them be the exception rather than the rule.

Spain for example.
From 732-1492, everything was either a religious war, a family based semi-civil war, or both. When the Hapsburgs showed up in 1516, they began a series of wars with France that routinely brought religious issues in due to the French alliances with the Ottomans, more religious wars with the Reformation, and more semi-civil wars often with family issues over control of various parts of Italy. When those finally managed to burn out they turned to political wars against anti-monarchical forces that were just as brutal as the religious wars.
So when would you say Spain ever managed to have reasonably "standard" wars with the usual "norms" regarding prisoner exchanges and the like? There really just isn't that much room for such in there.

Max_Killjoy
2017-03-20, 06:15 PM
Given how reliable they've been so far, if Galloglaich, Kiero, Mr Beer, Mike_G, Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll, etc, are all saying something about history, I tend to give that consensus decent weight -- especially when it matches up with my impression of the same thing.

Gnoman
2017-03-20, 08:07 PM
Not "didn't use them", just used them to a rather lesser degree.

Yes, the French made a great 81mm mortar, and the Americans had a 107mm mortar for chemical use, but they and the British just didn't use them as much as the Soviets, Japanese, and eventually Nazis.
Meanwhile the Soviets favored 120mm mortars, with 160mm and 280mm mortars for higher level support.

After WWII, mortars among the NATO armies continued to be minimal compared to Soviet/Warsaw Pact armies, until pretty much the tail end of the Cold War when automatic and direct fire mortars started coming into production.

So I'm not sure why you would think there were no differences in tactical preferences.

61mm and 81mm mortars were ubiquitous in all branches of the US military. In the Army, for example, there was one 60mm mortar for every 60 riflemen (each infantry company (three platoons, ~180 men) had an organic weapons platoon containing two machine guns and three mortars). Each battalion (three companies, around 600 officers and men) had a weapons battalion containing 8 machine guns and 6 81mm mortars. Starting at the regimental level, they start adding 105mm howitzers instead.

In other words, the US army generally had almost as many mortars on hand as it did machine guns. The Marines had a slightly lower ratio (more machine guns and riflemen due to those being more useful in the intended mission of Marines), but were fairly close.

The British used slightly fewer organic mortars at the infantry level, due to the nature of desert warfare - they substituted Bren gun carriers (carrying 1 machine gun or 1 Boys anti-tank rifle) for the mortars to give mobile direct-fire support instead.

The US also had 107mm heavy mortars. While these were designated as "chemical" mortars due to their ability to fire gas rounds, they were perfectly capable of firing high explosive rounds, and were used massively in that role. Depending on tactical considerations, each infantry battalion was provided with 12, 24, or occasionally 48 of these weapons. The first combat use was in Sicily in 1943 (upon entry into the war, the Army decided that the 1928 model needed longer range to be useful, and took most of a year to turn out an improved model) and was immediately in high demand.

The Russians used a 120mm mortar (a slightly improved copy of the French Brandt mle 1935) quite extensively, and made rare use of a 160mm mortar (a scaled up and modified 120mm that had to be modified for breech-loading, only ~500 were built) that was slightly too large to be a practical weapon, and was closer to a stubby howitzer in operation. 61mm, 81mm, and 107mm weapons were used in similar proportion to that of the US army. Although the 120mm weapon fired a heavier shell slightly further (16kg at 5000m as opposed to 11kg at 4000) mobility and rate of fire suffered, and the US preferred to use howitzers at that point. The Germans captured large stocks of the weapon and ammuntion, liked it, copied it, and improved it.

The Japanese did use a unique light mortar (the famous "knee mortar", which launched a standard Japanese grenade much further than any rifle-mounted launcher and was light enough to be carried by one solder strapped to the knee (hence the nickname - it was NOT meant to be fired from the knee)), but that was simply the Japanese coming up with an idea nobody else did.

Mortars were used extensively by all parties in the war. A very few weapons were unique to one country or another, but that is simply the effect of different doctrine and tactical considerations. Your premise is invalid.

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll
2017-03-20, 08:49 PM
Except when you do see it.
Look at William the Conqueror's Razing of the North, or the Black Prince's chevauchee's across France.
Do you find them referred to with horror and condemnation?
Or just, "Meh. C'est la guerre."
Or, "And they saved us by teaching those ne'er-do-wells a lesson!"
What was so notable about the Mongols compared to others, particularly the early Russian tsars, other than the Mongols being "foreign"? The same applies to how "horrible" the Northmen were, or what a "scourge" Attila was compared to the Romans.
Really it becomes a case of:

Let's see. First of all, I've never heard "Razing of the North", the usual term is "Harrying". And it is called out as unusual in writings, with contemporary writers calling it a "stain upon his soul".
The Black Prince is an interesting case. By some accounts, he literally got his name from his reputation as abnormally vicious, which hardly helps your point of his actions being normal. By other accounts, however, his actions are highly exaggerated. The largest black mark against him, the Siege of Limoges, was documented as having 3000 casualties by the French-speaking chronicler Jean Froissart, but a letter from the Black Prince himself to another noble says he took over 200 noble prisoners, and a letter from an abbot outside of Limoges says there were only 300 casualties, which isn't too bad at all for a medieval siege of a whole city.
The Mongols are notable in purposefully massacring entire cities to gather a reputation of terror, with the explicit intention of trying to intimidate all other cities to surrender without a siege or any resistance. As for the Tsars, I'm interested as to what they did that you seem to believe is equivalent. Ivan the Terrible was pretty bad for the nobles, and for Novgorod, which he sacked, but again, that was treated as NOTABLE by oral histories of Russia.
Vikings were considered horrible not because they were outsiders, but because their attacks were difficult to predict and defend against. You can consider them terrible in the way that a storm is terrible. They didn't murder indiscriminately, and they took prisoners primarily for ransom. They were known to also release prisoners without asking ransom, as in following the Sack of Paris, as they feared that a plague had followed the army home in punishment for sacking an abbey.
Attila you're right, he wasn't much of a scourge really. He exacted tribute, and so long as the tribute was payed, he kept his peace, and the Romans hated him for that, so they gave him a terrible name. The only contemporary report of anyone who actually met him called him "restrained in action", and "gracious to supplicants and lenient to those who were once received into his protection". I can't recall any cases where he actually did anything you could call terrible. You could argue that that just means that his "Scourge" acts were normal for the time, but the worst I can find is that he sacked a few cities, nothing about what he did to the populace, just normal storming-of-cities.


That same problem applies to early modern, modern, and post-modern revisionism, all of which set out determined to place a spin on things.
For that matter, even Medieval and Renaissance sources are full of spin, as noted above, and tempered by the religious and civil war exceptions noted below.


That's... not what revisionism is. Revisionism isn't "let's set out determined to place a spin counter to the current spin", revisionism is "Let's not assume the current spin is true, and try to see what happens". This will, obviously, end up with writings that is a-la-moment, in fitting with the current zeitgeist. But each wave is also a "fresh eyes", returning to the primary sources and physical evidence, as old "facts" are discovered to be forgeries, and new discoveries that couldn't be encountered in the previous wave are accounted for.
Victorian historiography is notably bad. Their historiographical process was little more than "read a chronicle written by the king's paid man, and doesn't this make us feel much better for being modern oh-ho-ho-ho". I exaggerate obviously, but their history was quite terrible, and Victorian histories written of places outside Europe are honestly close to laughably un-usable.
And Medieval and Renaissance sources are of course always presented with the "contemporary" caveat, and all that implies, both "they were reasonably close to the place and time of the event", and "they were emotionally and financially tied to the people and concepts of the event". These are always accounted for whenever I or any other decent historian uses them. That's a basic principle of the study of history. Do you honestly think I read, for example, al-Tabiri's chronicle, and take him at his word, and never consider "He was a paid member of the court of the Caliph, so when writing about the War of the Brothers' he would make out al-Amin to be much worse than al-Mamun, the ancestor of his patron?" (Fun fact, in this particular civil war, al-Tabiri almost always uses the regnal name of al-Mamun, but almost never the regnal name of al-Amin, betraying his biases oh so very subtly, despite his outward efforts to present an unbiased history).



Quite the opposite - I am brutally (excessively perhaps, I won't deny that) cynical.
When there are punishments like drawing and quartering ubiquitous throughout history for captured opposition leaders, talking of "mercy" and "ransom" for prisoners as the norm is what comes across as hopelessly naïve.
Actual mercy was never more than a convenience, to be tossed aside when need demanded it or circumstances made it unnecessary.
Perhaps "naive" isn't the right word, you're right. I meant something more like, simplistic. Your categorization of rule-of-law versus rule-of-convention said that because there was crime in rule-of-convention, it was as if there WAS no convention of peace, or no norm of justice. Of course, there's also crime in rule-of-law states, so does that mean that there's no law there? Of course not. That's my point, I didn't mean "naive" in the sense of "lah-de-dah everything was fairies and happiness", but in the sense of "over-simplifying".
And



And how many wars fall into those exemptions?
How many wars were civil wars in disguise, or religious wars in another form?
Those lines wound up being blurred so much it becomes, as I said, difficult to take them as other than the norm, and treat the few "international" wars remaining as the standard for vaguely decent behavior.

[...., removed quote to quote separately below, so I could reply to two similar paragraphs at once]

From 732-1492, everything was either a religious war, a family based semi-civil war, or both. When the Hapsburgs showed up in 1516, they began a series of wars with France that routinely brought religious issues in due to the French alliances with the Ottomans, more religious wars with the Reformation, and more semi-civil wars often with family issues over control of various parts of Italy. When those finally managed to burn out they turned to political wars against anti-monarchical forces that were just as brutal as the religious wars.
So when would you say Spain ever managed to have reasonably "standard" wars with the usual "norms" regarding prisoner exchanges and the like? There really just isn't that much room for such in there.

Yes, many wars had religious themes tied in. Many wars had related nobles on multiple sides. These hardly make them civil wars or religious wars. Just because Sancho II of Castile and Alfonso VI of Leon were brothers doesn't make their wars a civil war, because there was no "state" or "country" for them to be within. It was a civil war in the sense that there wasn't much violence, prisoners were well treated, and conduct was civil. And if that's not a civil war, I'd honestly be hard pressed to characterize many wars as civil wars. TBH, on further reflection, I would back down my earlier mention of the 30YW as a quasi-civil-war, because the HRE was certainly not a state either. The same is true for "semi-religious" wars. Let's see, you had wars on the borders of 'Christendom", to use a contemporary term, and you had wars against "heretics" within, but I could hardly in good conscious label French-Austrian wars as religious wars simply because the French were allied with the Ottomans, despite the efforts of the Austrian propagandists. I don't see any evidence that the Austrians committed any atrocities against the French, especially when compared with their simultaneous campaigns against the Ottomans, which fall into the religious war exception.

No, most of these wars that you characterize as semi-religious or semi-civil-wars to try to fit them into our well documented exceptions were in fact quite serene. The period between the Hundred Years War and the Thirty Years War were quite peaceful, in fact. That's why the Thirty Years War was so shocking, because it followed a good long period in which warfare got quite 'civil'. The rules of warfare had stressed "honour" and respect for your adversary, and all sorts of great things like that. The Thirty Years War was an explosion of tensions that were dammed up by years of conflict that didn't feel "real". Rules of battle written up by professional mercenaries with mutual respect were taken as granted


Mind you, I don't deny that they were often particularly savage, even by the standards of the time.
The thing is, too many of the wars qualify for such to have them be the exception rather than the rule.

I really quite disagree. When you consider how much war there's been over the years, the atrocities are quite rare. Again, I'm highlighting those wars that are notable. The hundreds of thousands of small wars went on without atrocity. Perhaps all that's changed in the last 50 years is that direct conflict has become much more rare, for whatever reason (a whole separate debate I won't get into).




I do have to restate that you said that there was no concept of mercy before the modern age, to which the others have retorted that of course there was, with proof. You've since moved the goalposts to that there WAS a concept of mercy, but it was rare and exceptional, to which I and others have retorted that it was the atrocities that were considered exceptional at the time. Your move.

Incanur
2017-03-20, 09:36 PM
The period between the Hundred Years War and the Thirty Years War were quite peaceful, in fact. That's why the Thirty Years War was so shocking, because it followed a good long period in which warfare got quite 'civil'. The rules of warfare had stressed "honour" and respect for your adversary, and all sorts of great things like that. The Thirty Years War was an explosion of tensions that were dammed up by years of conflict that didn't feel "real". Rules of battle written up by professional mercenaries with mutual respect were taken as granted

Wait, what? 1453-1618 was not a peaceful period for Europe by any stretch of the imagination. Nor would I call it the height of chivalry, honor, or whatever you want to call it. Knights in shining armor like Pierre Tarrail (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Terrail,_seigneur_de_Bayard) existed, but they got shot and killed by firearms. The rules of war primarily applied to elites, who frequently received good treatment when captured. Of course, sometimes they died gloriously in battle or less nobly in the pursuit.

Some mercenaries played nice with one another in this era, sure, but others had fierce vendettas and tended to massacre their competitors, as the Swiss did. The Italians Wars, for example, were a thoroughly brutal affair, perhaps epitomized by the previously mentioned 1527 Sack of Rome. There was some chivalry and mutual respect, absolutely, especially for nobles and such. At the same time, battles had high casualties both in the fighting and in the route, and civilians suffered abuses and sometimes rose up against occupying forces.

And that's just one of the many major conflicts in Europe 1453-1618. England tore itself apart in the War of the Roses, as another example. And of course continuing crusades against "infidels" in the Iberian Peninsula, the later Wars of Religion in France, etc. ad infinitum.


When you consider how much war there's been over the years, the atrocities are quite rare. Again, I'm highlighting those wars that are notable. The hundreds of thousands of small wars went on without atrocity.

This strikes me as a leap. It depends what you count as atrocity, but I suspect most small wars involved at least extreme unpleasantness for noncombatants (privation, coerced labor, terror, etc.); many undoubtedly killed some number of noncombatants.

wobner
2017-03-20, 09:46 PM
Is there any credit to the idea, in such games as D&D and The Elder Scrolls, that wearing armor is a skill that requires particular training (besides, obviously, strength enough to comfortably move with a significant amount of added weight)? Note that I'm just talking about wearing the armor here, not putting it on; if an experienced squire put fitted plate onto a plowman, could the plowman handle the wearing just fine?

I am by no means an expert on the subject, but as the question seems to have gotten lost to other discussions, i thought i'd reply.

I've read, heard from, alot of people claiming that it takes no skill to wear armor or move around, that its basically just walking, i've heard these same people claim properly fitting, i should say "Rigid", armor does not impede movement. Ive then seen these same people walk about rather clumsily and struggle to fully raise their arms(i'm looking at you lindy beige)
Though by no means exhaustive, i have never seen anyone in a suit of armor without some impedement to their range of motio. However well fitting or balanced any armor is, it is additional weight. As someone who has lost alot of body weight, that is something that takes serious getting used to(i'm talking balance and even coordination here). And as it has hinges, bolts, etc, it has limits to its range of movement. High quality may have fewer, but i've never seen someone able to exert the same range of motion in armor that they can out of armor.
And just as you can twist someones wrist the wrong way and bring them to their knees, i imagine wearing, again "rigid", armor creates more of these types of scenarios.
I was always taught in school, and someone correct me if i am wrong, that many of the deaths in agincourt were due to people essentially drowning in the mud in their armor, or being so mired in it that the unarmoured long bowmen were able to slaughter them. That alone tells me it impedes movement even properly fitting and with skilled individuals.
Obviously i am not talking a "turtle on their back" scenario

Even discounting this though, i would point that its not just a matter of being able to wear the armor, but properly use it. Armor is essentially a worn shield, The overall goal may be to not get hit in battle, but in armor its also a goal to use the armor to deflect the blow, to counter the blow. Gallogliach i believe it was, posted a rather silly clip from a movie, showing the actors body into certain attacks in the course of the fight. While it was silly(it included more than a few twirls), it illustrated the point. If you need to learn to properly use a shield in battle, then you certainly need to properly learn to use armor in a similar fashion. And as every armor has its weak points, vunerabilities, learning where these weakpoints are and how not to expose them to your enemy, certainly seems like a skill that while not required to wear the armor neccessarily(dnd) certainly would improve the effectiveness of the armor(Elder scrolls)

my two cents, hopefully others more informed will correct me.

Mike_G
2017-03-20, 10:47 PM
I'm not sure if it's really "training" but you need to get used to wearing armor. If you just put a man in heavy armor for the first time and sent him out to fight, he would have some trouble.

It is more weight, most helmets cut your field of vision somewhat, and some armor can restrict range of motion. But I'd think just wearing it while you train to fight would be fine. I don't think you need "armor training."

But if heavy armor is totally new to you, I think a penalty to skills is totally reasonable for game purposes.

And fighting styles differ a bit for unarmored and armored fighting. Unarmored, you need to not get hit at all, pretty much. In armor, you can accept some hits fairly safely, so you need to learn what is a dangerous attack that needs to be avoided and what is something you can shrug off while you make your own attack.

Thiel
2017-03-21, 02:18 AM
The Germans were enthusiastic mortar users as well. They started the Second World War with 5 cm and 8 cm mortars. During the war they stopped making the 5 cm because it didn't deliver the punch they needed and replaced it with a new short barrelled 8 cm mortar. They also started to make a 12 cm after they encountered them in France and Russia.
They also used countless captured mortars

When West Germany was allowed to rearm they put mortars in basically every formation they could get away with.

snowblizz
2017-03-21, 05:05 AM
England tore itself apart in the War of the Roses, as another example.
I believe it is more correct to say the English nobility tore itself apart. IIRC the lowerclass was much less affected and over the period the economy actually grew despite interludes of upheaval. Mostly because if you weren't in proximity of battles and sieges no matter who was boss, you had taxes to pay. While the period covers some 20 years or so, most of the time there was peace, the interlude were brief and violent. The most destructive wars are the ones that drag, like the 30YW.


Unfortunately though that kind of thing became increasingly common in the Early Modern period. Even before the 30 Years War (the 1527 sack of Rome was a similarly ghastly atrocity) but especially from that time onward. As others have pointed out that was basically part of a series of sectarian religious wars which were being orchestrated by powerful and highly ambitious absolute monarchs, who ultimately created the modern nation State out of the smoking ruins of Europe.



The 30 Years War plays into the "Religious-War" exception to the previous rules as well, though G hasn't outright stated that as much. It is... complicated somewhat by the inclusion of non-Protestant powers on the Protestant side of the war, however. You can also treat it as a Civil War within the HRE + interventions, which sometimes has exceptions, as in a civil war the boundaries between civilian and combatant become blurred. Again, this has to do with dehumanization of the "other" in religious conflict, which leads to atrocities. These were just as exceptional and with the same causes then as they were today.

Regarding the 30YW, I guess we have to say it's complex. At various timepoints different aspects have been emphasized. There was a definitive religious dimension to the 30YW. There were definitive religious tensions implicit in the HRE that had been suppressed by compromise the Emperor (Augsburg peace) was increasingly feeling he didn't have to honour any longer, partly to to resurgent Catholic pressure. It also started with a fairly brutal put-down of the protestant bohemian peasantry, that most protestants didn't bother with. The ousted Bohemia king was ofc protestant and thus the wrong religion form the perspective of Catholism too. Some of the most uncompromising sides in the conflicts were the Calvinists and Lutherans (nothing divides ppl as effectively as the minor differences) who sometimes sides with Catholics rather than each other.
However, likewise, for some religion wasn't a big deal or take more pragmatically. Wallenstein was an opportunist catholic (born protestant) and the common soldiery wasn't bothered much of their religion when signing up as mercenaries. I recall the diary of one such who changed religion eg as it suited his work. And as long as you stayed in your pikeformation none cared overmuch about your religion, good mercenaries were hard to come by.
At the same time on the bigger scale Catholic France fought Catholic HRE (and before that supported the protestant forces), heck, it was Catholic *cardinals* fighting against their ultimate boss' chosen champions. Which segues nicely into the second major theme.

Valois-Habsburg rivalry (which would be a theme for the 1700s too). The reason for France to pick their side was naturally because Habsburg Europe was gaining strength and was a direct threat to Valois France. So we have a essentially a dynastic war mixed into this as well.

It wasn't just religion and dynasties shaking, new players are rising to changing economic considerations. I guess one could call this the opportunist real politik theme. The Dutch war of independence has been pottering on for ages already by this time but gets dragged into the bigger war. The Danish intervention. The (minor) English involvement and to soem degree subsequent internal problems. Minor wars all around the main confligration really (eg Mantuan war). And ofc my favourite the Swedes. Who for the first part of the war are involved in a dynastic struggle in Poland. The reason the Danish tried intervening in the 30YW was to forstall Swedish involvement threatening the Danish-Swedish powerbalance. It didn't end so hot and almost cost the Danish king his crown and the Danish their country (who lost a vital part of it, after having allied *with* the Emperor), despite the fact Denmark wasn't a participant in the war! Not so hygge that. :smallbiggrin: For the Swedish the strong imperial positions were a potential threat to their Polish "problem" and Denmark could not be allowed to improve their positions either, hence the Swedish got involved to protect their co-religionists. *cough*

The Swedish intervention itself really touches on all parts, they had a major self-interest in a powergrab to make themselves the preeminent Baltic power. They had at the time the "moral reason" of religious zeal. And were financially backed by the French for the dynastic rivalry reasons.

As to civil war. I would say so, to a certain degree. Eventually it became a civil war between peasantry and soldiery. Which is where a lot of the brutality came, not necessarily the religious aspect, though there was it's fair share of that. The way soldiers were recruited and expected to support the armies (not in the least their pay, ie lack thereof) led directly to fair bit of the atrocities. Hungry soldiers robbed the peasant, whatever their respective religions.
The reason it lasted so long was ofc that there was a lot of external financing/resources being pumped in. A similar war could not have been fought previously as there would not have been an economic foundation for it.



Now this didn't last, during the 30 Years War in the 17th Century sacking / burning etc. was commonplace.
I was thinking about this recently. Say if you were being super pragmatic about it and only a large capital city was left. Eg in the 1600s Danish-Swedish wars the Swedish army stood outside Copenhagen and had they been able to break it open there'd be no Denmark left, essentially. The might have been a time to shoot some heated cannonballs into the city and see how much you could set it a light for a bit a of sacking. Which also lead me to think would it be possible?
Fires destroyed most of London in 1666 so one would think it was a real danger. Obviously, robbing a place was more preferred then burning it down, but sometimes, in hindsight it might have helped the larger goal.




I know for example that the city of Bergen was sacked something like 15 times in the period roughly 1350-1500, but it didn't seem to suffer enough to actually reduce the population nor the general prosperity. It was partly burned on one occasion but none of these incidents seem to have resulted in mass casualties.Wanted to adress this specifically. I read a book on Baltic piracy and Bergen came up a lot :P. What would often happen, since it was mostly trade wars, that in a trading city like Bergen there'd be plenty of outsiders from each faction present who'd be able to limit the destruction somewhat. The Hanseatic Germans e.g. helped defend the town against their fellow leaguers at least once, and warned the other towns people at other times. While the material damage mattered a lot, for a trading palce it would have been the loss of people that really would have ended a town. And even then if it was in place of strategic significance someone would make sure it was rebuilt quite often. Bergen was definitely one of those places. Sometimes moved to a different place for defensive reasons or that geography changed. The land raising in Scandinavia being significant a medieval port city would not remin as such into earlymodern times e.g.

VoxRationis
2017-03-21, 06:32 AM
I am by no means an expert on the subject, but as the question seems to have gotten lost to other discussions, i thought i'd reply.

I've read, heard from, alot of people claiming that it takes no skill to wear armor or move around, that its basically just walking, i've heard these same people claim properly fitting, i should say "Rigid", armor does not impede movement. Ive then seen these same people walk about rather clumsily and struggle to fully raise their arms(i'm looking at you lindy beige)
Though by no means exhaustive, i have never seen anyone in a suit of armor without some impedement to their range of motio. However well fitting or balanced any armor is, it is additional weight. As someone who has lost alot of body weight, that is something that takes serious getting used to(i'm talking balance and even coordination here). And as it has hinges, bolts, etc, it has limits to its range of movement. High quality may have fewer, but i've never seen someone able to exert the same range of motion in armor that they can out of armor.
And just as you can twist someones wrist the wrong way and bring them to their knees, i imagine wearing, again "rigid", armor creates more of these types of scenarios.
I was always taught in school, and someone correct me if i am wrong, that many of the deaths in agincourt were due to people essentially drowning in the mud in their armor, or being so mired in it that the unarmoured long bowmen were able to slaughter them. That alone tells me it impedes movement even properly fitting and with skilled individuals.
Obviously i am not talking a "turtle on their back" scenario

Even discounting this though, i would point that its not just a matter of being able to wear the armor, but properly use it. Armor is essentially a worn shield, The overall goal may be to not get hit in battle, but in armor its also a goal to use the armor to deflect the blow, to counter the blow. Gallogliach i believe it was, posted a rather silly clip from a movie, showing the actors body into certain attacks in the course of the fight. While it was silly(it included more than a few twirls), it illustrated the point. If you need to learn to properly use a shield in battle, then you certainly need to properly learn to use armor in a similar fashion. And as every armor has its weak points, vunerabilities, learning where these weakpoints are and how not to expose them to your enemy, certainly seems like a skill that while not required to wear the armor neccessarily(dnd) certainly would improve the effectiveness of the armor(Elder scrolls)

my two cents, hopefully others more informed will correct me.


I'm not sure if it's really "training" but you need to get used to wearing armor. If you just put a man in heavy armor for the first time and sent him out to fight, he would have some trouble.

It is more weight, most helmets cut your field of vision somewhat, and some armor can restrict range of motion. But I'd think just wearing it while you train to fight would be fine. I don't think you need "armor training."

But if heavy armor is totally new to you, I think a penalty to skills is totally reasonable for game purposes.

And fighting styles differ a bit for unarmored and armored fighting. Unarmored, you need to not get hit at all, pretty much. In armor, you can accept some hits fairly safely, so you need to learn what is a dangerous attack that needs to be avoided and what is something you can shrug off while you make your own attack.

Thanks! I'll keep armor proficiency feats, then.

Kiero
2017-03-21, 07:01 AM
I believe it is more correct to say the English nobility tore itself apart. IIRC the lowerclass was much less affected and over the period the economy actually grew despite interludes of upheaval. Mostly because if you weren't in proximity of battles and sieges no matter who was boss, you had taxes to pay. While the period covers some 20 years or so, most of the time there was peace, the interlude were brief and violent. The most destructive wars are the ones that drag, like the 30YW.


Worth contrasting the War of the Roses with the much more destructive English Civil Wars, which dragged in a much broader cross-section of society, and ranged across the whole of the UK and Ireland. Along with a lot of disruptive grassroots movements, like the Levellers, Diggers and so on.

Incanur
2017-03-21, 08:30 AM
Lots of common soldiers still perished in the War of the Roses, most famously at Towton 1461. Given the English population at the time, a rather high percentage of the population took up arms at some point and a rather high percentage died in the hostilities. It wasn't a total-war scenario of targeting civilians, I'll give you that, and better conforms to norms of chivalry or regulated warfare than other conflicts of the 1453-1618 period.

snowblizz
2017-03-21, 09:23 AM
Lots of common soldiers still perished in the War of the Roses, most famously at Towton 1461. Given the English population at the time, a rather high percentage of the population took up arms at some point and a rather high percentage died in the hostilities. It wasn't a total-war scenario of targeting civilians, I'll give you that, and better conforms to norms of chivalry or regulated warfare than other conflicts of the 1453-1618 period.
I wasn't saying loss of life didn't occur by any means. Thousands died, but mostly in battles and there weren't armies criss-crossing the land eating it bare either. The majority (IIRC) of the battles even happened in roughly the same area, a days march or so from London. And the same narrative tended to reapeat, rival claimant invades with army, marches towards London, battle ensues, victor enjoys the welcome of the Londoners who always rooted for them anyway/knew the good king would sotp the usurper, is crowned new/fealty is reaffirmed king, loser goes in exile plotting next instalment in series. Same Historical Channel, Same Historical Time, Same Historical People.


Worth contrasting the War of the Roses with the much more destructive English Civil Wars, which dragged in a much broader cross-section of society, and ranged across the whole of the UK and Ireland. Along with a lot of disruptive grassroots movements, like the Levellers, Diggers and so on.
Yes Kiero, that's a very good way of putting it. The War of Roses was most impactful on the top of the societal pyramid (trying hard to make a point that doesn't somehow sound as if those lower down wasn't affected or mattered). The ECW tended to churn everything around. But then it concerned ideas much deeper socially than who was nr.1 and who benefited from royal patronage. As much as ostensibly that's how the ECW sorta played out officially speaking. More armies marched around despoiling more of the countryside forcing more people to make a "us or them" decision.

Galloglaich
2017-03-21, 10:05 AM
Lots of common soldiers still perished in the War of the Roses, most famously at Towton 1461. Given the English population at the time, a rather high percentage of the population took up arms at some point and a rather high percentage died in the hostilities. It wasn't a total-war scenario of targeting civilians, I'll give you that, and better conforms to norms of chivalry or regulated warfare than other conflicts of the 1453-1618 period.

Yes but you are of course aware for the reason for the large casualties at Towton - the Starks and Lannisters, sorry, Yorks and Lancasters, had agreed beforehand to a 'no-quarter' policy for that particular battle, precisely because the previous several battles had been so inconclusive due to the parole and ransom of prisoners, that the war was just dragging on and on, to the detriment of the nation.

From the wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Towton#Aftermath): Before the battle, both sides had issued the order to give no quarter and the Yorkists were in no mood to spare anyone after the long, gruelling fight.[66] A number of Lancastrians, such as Trollope, also had substantial bounties on their heads.[14] Gregory's chronicle stated 42 knights were killed after they were taken prisoner

This kind of reasoning is actually also what led to the total war policies of WW II to some extent. Dan Carlin makes this point in his excellent "logical insanity" podcast, which has to do with Air War in the 20th Century. The idea was increasing the brutality would help prevent the kind of bloody stalemate they saw in WW I, i.e. it would be a crueler but much shorter war. But of course, they didn't realize that the war could just go on with the increased brutality on all sides.

http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-42-blitz-logical-insanity/

I think this in fact was the same mentality increasingly adopted by princes in the Early Modern period. It was hard to consolidate power within the medieval system, due largely to the rights and perrogatives of the various estates. In the 16th Century you saw princes + lawyers go after the peasants first to eliminate their traditional rights, which leads to the peasant war. Then they start tangling with the independent knights and former ministerial families, which leads to another war. Eventually they consolidate power, and opt for control over the sort of chaotic but lucrative churn that led to the wealth and innovation of the Renaissance. It was the wealth of the New World and Pacific Rim that ultimately made all this possible.

And I agree with you snowblizz on several of your points, the 30 Years War was certainly a very complex war, with many factors. Yes the soldiers vs. the peasantry (and sometimes vs. the burghers) was a major factor. And I think your most important point was this one:


The reason it lasted so long was ofc that there was a lot of external financing/resources being pumped in. A similar war could not have been fought previously as there would not have been an economic foundation for it.

I agree with the first part 100%, and provisionally with the second. My caveat is that there certainly was enough money in the medieval period for wars of that type. It's just who had the money. Look at the money Venice was able to direct toward containing the Ottomans. A 3,000 ship navy! Financing the Hungarian Black Army and the Croats, and dozens of island bases around the Med, all the while up to their neck in the politics of the Italian mainland and all over the rest of Europe. The Venetians and others could see the need for this because the Ottomans were an existential threat, but they couldn't have justified it to conquer Latin Europe. In the medieval period, the cities had plenty of money, but they did not direct it toward conquest for the most part, but rather toward consolidation and expansion of their trade and manufacturing systems, and in making their cities, cathedrals and town halls into glittering monuments to culture and art. It was a different kind of priority.

The money from the New World and the spice trade and sugar and everything in the 16th -17th Centuries went into the pockets of the princes, who were able to use that as muscle to overturn the old medieval systems, and build absolute monarchy. The Game of Thrones or 'Hausmachtpolitik (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausmachtpolitik)' as the Germans called it. Religion and sectarian conflict certainly wasn't the only factor, and without a doubt many of the princes and probably most of the soldiers were quite cynical, but the social context that allowed for the kind of ruthless policies which defined the Early Modern era and led to the creation of thee modern State and the official establishment of Absolutism in 1648 were fueled by that religious sectarian conflict, this is what gave them the social and political support they needed. Fear of the religious outsider.




G

Galloglaich
2017-03-21, 10:12 AM
Yes Kiero, that's a very good way of putting it. The War of Roses was most impactful on the top of the societal pyramid (trying hard to make a point that doesn't somehow sound as if those lower down wasn't affected or mattered). The ECW tended to churn everything around. But then it concerned ideas much deeper socially than who was nr.1 and who benefited from royal patronage. As much as ostensibly that's how the ECW sorta played out officially speaking. More armies marched around despoiling more of the countryside forcing more people to make a "us or them" decision.

I am not that well read on it, but didn't the ECW also contain religious sectarian elements? Calvinists vs. other protestants vs. Catholics?

G

Kiero
2017-03-21, 11:41 AM
Yes Kiero, that's a very good way of putting it. The War of Roses was most impactful on the top of the societal pyramid (trying hard to make a point that doesn't somehow sound as if those lower down wasn't affected or mattered). The ECW tended to churn everything around. But then it concerned ideas much deeper socially than who was nr.1 and who benefited from royal patronage. As much as ostensibly that's how the ECW sorta played out officially speaking. More armies marched around despoiling more of the countryside forcing more people to make a "us or them" decision.

Absolutely, much larger armies too. Not surprising since the population was bigger, but it was a national event, rather than the more localised War of the Roses. Especially after the reforms giving rise to the New Model Army severed the ties of Parliamentary forces to specific regions.


I am not that well read on it, but didn't the ECW also contain religious sectarian elements? Calvinists vs. other protestants vs. Catholics?

G

Indeed, as if the political and social strife weren't enough, there was a strong religious angle to it as well. Puritanism in all its strains in particular was a driving force behind the Parliamentary cause, for example, seeing themselves as purging the last vestiges of Catholic (and insufficiently pious Protestant) influence. Cromwell's Ironsides (his very successful cavalry) were expected to be devout, and their officers were all Puritans. The Diggers and Levellers were non-conformist, Protestant radical movements.

In Scotland you had the Covenanter cause, tied into an argument about the official doctrine of the established (Presbyterian) church. And of course there was Ireland, where some of the worst atrocities took place, with it's old clashes between Protestant settlers and Catholic natives. That added just another seam of strife into the whole mess.

Galloglaich
2017-03-21, 01:21 PM
What is the difference between Calvinists and Puritans exactly? Didn't the Puritans get kicked out at some point? When the Church of England or Anglican Church or whatever it is, get re-established as the dominant religious organization in the UK?

Kiero
2017-03-21, 01:27 PM
What is the difference between Calvinists and Puritans exactly? Didn't the Puritans get kicked out at some point? When the Church of England or Anglican Church or whatever it is, get re-established as the dominant religious organization in the UK?

Both are Reformed Protestant creeds. Presbyterians are Calvinists. But Puritans were extremists, their primary goal was to drive out (what they saw as remnants of) Catholic influence in the Church of England.

While they were strongly associated with Cromwell's reign and became very unpopular after the Restoration of the monarchs, the major migration started in the 1630s.

snowblizz
2017-03-21, 02:25 PM
What is the difference between Calvinists and Puritans exactly? Didn't the Puritans get kicked out at some point? When the Church of England or Anglican Church or whatever it is, get re-established as the dominant religious organization in the UK?

As a note, we can't really talk about it here. It's a violation of board rules really. The puritans essentially emigrated because they couldn't push their extreme views on the majority. Banning Christmas was very unpopular amongst the general public for one, being able to introduce it in his Restoration bought Charles II a lot of browny points (his brother was less politically savvy).
Others were stamped out, like the Levellers and Diggers, because they were a threat to the established order of society, shared ownership, eqaulity of sexes and all kinds of stuff various later political movements ahve borrowed. Calvinists, Lutherans, Puritans and Catholics all had issues with them there. The New Model Army was strongly Leveller/Digger in symphaty, which turned into a bit of an issue too.

Many of the American protestant churches are various splits of the protestant movement who emigrated when the major lines of religions reasserted themsleves in various places. Basically going to America to start afresh with their vision of an utopian society.

There was a "Bishop's War" on the early 1620 between Charles I and the Scots as he tried to impose his religious view on them. James II got ousted since he was a Catholic. All of this ties back into the English reformation and Wars of Roses really too. And mirrors the streams of thoughts that were suppressed up until the 30YW and then got free reign.

Like the medieaval period the 1600s is still a time when we can't easily divide up religion and society and so on. Lacking any real political ideology even what was in the main probably economic concerns (eqaulity of land and such) tended to be shaped into a religious form.

Galloglaich
2017-03-21, 04:23 PM
the 1600s is still a time when we can't easily divide up religion and society and so on. Lacking any real political ideology even what was in the main probably economic concerns (eqaulity of land and such) tended to be shaped into a religious form.

That was true in the medieval period too like with the Hussites and the Cathars and their many other similar heresies.

The Hussites get lumped in with protestants for example in posts upthread to do with the 30 Years War but they were really a bit different because they had for example very liberal views about women. Possibly because their sect was formed before Syphilis hit Europe.

Kaspar
2017-03-21, 06:29 PM
Where there any foreign NATO troops stationed in Norway during the 1970-1980? I know there were a lot of US and UK forces in West Germany, even nukes, but what about Norway?

Khedrac
2017-03-22, 03:23 AM
I don't know about stationed, but it was a common place for British soldiers to go for arctic training exercises.

Edit: This article (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/norway-nuclear-target-us-marines-russia-politician-weapons-a7390386.html) (from Nov 2016) suggests that there have been no permanent postings, but quite a lot of pre-positioned equipment.

Storm Bringer
2017-03-22, 03:40 AM
I know that the Royal Marines Commando were going to be deployed to Norway in a hot war (hence the artic warfare training), but weren't kept there permanently, as the northern parts are not the sort of place you want to stay if you can avoid it.

Khedrac
2017-03-22, 04:28 AM
I know that the Royal Marines Commando were going to be deployed to Norway in a hot war (hence the artic warfare training), but weren't kept there permanently, as the northern parts are not the sort of place you want to stay if you can avoid it.

Interestingly I just spoke to a colleague who is ex-UK army (though not old enough to have been serving in the 70s) and he reckons that there would have been Royal Marines up at the north end of Norway "most of the time". What that actually means is more debatable, unfortunately I no longer work with colleagues who would have been serving then (or close to then).

Storm Bringer
2017-03-22, 07:07 AM
Interestingly I just spoke to a colleague who is ex-UK army (though not old enough to have been serving in the 70s) and he reckons that there would have been Royal Marines up at the north end of Norway "most of the time". What that actually means is more debatable, unfortunately I no longer work with colleagues who would have been serving then (or close to then).

yes, their would have been some, but "some" in this case would be a company or two that were either on a arctic warfare exercise, doing initial training for arctic warfare, or supporting other such exercises, etc. there would be a small permeant support contingent that looked after equipment and other such admin tasks, but it would not be a thousands strong standing army like BAOR* was.

the skills involved in artic warfare are like any skillset, you need to be taught them, and to keep practicing them to stay good at them, so troops would be constantly cycled though the north, both freshen their skills and to familiarise them with their intended areas of operations if the war went Hot.



*BAOR= British Army On the Rhine. later renamed to British Forces Germany.

Mike_G
2017-03-22, 08:57 AM
The US Marines trained in the northern part of Norway as well. In the 1980s, anyway. I don't think we have any permanently stationed up there, but it's a good place to train for arctic warfare and test equipment in the cold.

If a shooting war with the USSR had started, Norway would have been a theater of war, and I expect troops would have been deployed. marines make the most sense, since they can be rapidly deployed from the sea, so maybe that's why the UK and US Marines trained up there.

Vinyadan
2017-03-22, 09:16 AM
About US deployment (and general NATO) troops:

The US had troops and a-bombs in many countries in Western Europe; they actually still do.
There were two kinds of troops: the occupation troops for the defeated Axis powers and the protection troops graciously deployed in allied countries. With time, they ended up merging in function: having strategic lookouts and forward bases, while containing Moscow, protecting allies and keeping an eye on them.
However, the numbers in ex Axis countries were always much greater. There are various reasons for this, of which position (W Germany near the Iron Curtain, Italy strategically located in the Mediterranean and near the Balkans) is very important, but past history also gave a lot more leeway for troop deployment over local governments.

Today, Germany still houses a foreign international force. It gets smaller over the years, but there still are Danes, Britons, French, Americans, Canadians, Belgians, and possibly many more.

Italy only houses Americans (AFAIK). The largest bases are the Aviano USAF base in the North, an aeronaval base and a large radar installation in Sicily, and a now inactive submarine base in Sardinia. Right now there's probably more US military personnel in Italy than in Afghanistan.

Atomic bombs are still given by the US to allied nations as a way to give them deterrence without having them developing a nuclear program. They also are a security concern, since they need to be stored and protected adequately, and a few countries may not be doing that. The US bombs abroad are: about 20 in Belgium, about 20 in the Netherlands, max. 90 in Turkey, and about the same in Italy. They once were many more (around 7000 in total) and deployed in more countries, among which GB and South Korea.

There are right now 330 US marines stationed in Norway, and it's the first time since WWII that foreign troops have been posted on Norwegian soil. They got there two months ago. So, no stantial foreign NATO troops in Norway during the Cold War.

Lemmy
2017-03-22, 09:20 AM
Would it be feasible to make a saber (or another curved blade) with reach similar to that of a rapier?

Gnoman
2017-03-22, 09:45 AM
The zhanmadao saw service in 9th-century China, while the nagamaki was used in 10th-16th century Japan. These have a blade length similar to a rapier, and have a curve to the blade.

MrZJunior
2017-03-22, 10:12 AM
I would bet that US Navy anti sub patrols out of Iceland stopped in Norway occasionally.

Lemmy
2017-03-22, 10:34 AM
The zhanmadao saw service in 9th-century China, while the nagamaki was used in 10th-16th century Japan. These have a blade length similar to a rapier, and have a curve to the blade.Were these blades used one-handed? Also... If they have the same blade length as a rapier, but are curved, wouldn't they have lower reach?

Raunchel
2017-03-22, 11:59 AM
Dutch marines also trained in Norway, and if war would have broken out, they, together with West German, British, and American marines would have fought there.

Carl
2017-03-22, 02:46 PM
This kind of reasoning is actually also what led to the total war policies of WW II to some extent. Dan Carlin makes this point in his excellent "logical insanity" podcast, which has to do with Air War in the 20th Century. The idea was increasing the brutality would help prevent the kind of bloody stalemate they saw in WW I, i.e. it would be a crueler but much shorter war. But of course, they didn't realize that the war could just go on with the increased brutality on all sides.

There was a lot more going on there than pure terror tactics though. Harris's specific reason for choosing the area bombing strategy used was the harsh limitations on maximum accuracy imposed by several factors, (notably the relatively poor target marking capabilities available at the time), which meant trying to level an entire city was the only way of reliably also taking out any industrial targets at all. Ultimately pioneering work done by amongst others 617 squadron eventually morphed with further technological advances into true precision bombing. But there was a lot more behind the city leveling raids than pure terror for the sake of terror.

Mr Beer
2017-03-22, 04:30 PM
There was a lot more going on there than pure terror tactics though. Harris's specific reason for choosing the area bombing strategy used was the harsh limitations on maximum accuracy imposed by several factors, (notably the relatively poor target marking capabilities available at the time), which meant trying to level an entire city was the only way of reliably also taking out any industrial targets at all. Ultimately pioneering work done by amongst others 617 squadron eventually morphed with further technological advances into true precision bombing. But there was a lot more behind the city leveling raids than pure terror for the sake of terror.

There's also the fact that for a long time, Britain had about zero ways to really bring the fight to Germany, other than bombing. Churchill was not exactly in a position to run Operation Overload solo.

Of course the effectiveness of the campaign can be argued and from what I've read, it didn't really start to bite into the war economy until late in the war anyway. Hindsight is 20/20...I don't really subscribe to the whole 'Bomber Harris was a war criminal' way of thinking.

Storm Bringer
2017-03-22, 05:01 PM
There's also the fact that for a long time, Britain had about zero ways to really bring the fight to Germany, other than bombing. Churchill was not exactly in a position to run Operation Overload solo.

Of course the effectiveness of the campaign can be argued and from what I've read, it didn't really start to bite into the war economy until late in the war anyway. Hindsight is 20/20...I don't really subscribe to the whole 'Bomber Harris was a war criminal' way of thinking.

one of the reasons the bombing took so long to bite is not only the limits of early war bombing technology, but the degree of "reserve" capability in German industrial system, as they were working on relatively under-utilized basis until Albert Speer was allowed to rationalise the whole set up.

Deadmeat.GW
2017-03-22, 05:28 PM
Actually...some of the bombing runs were acts of terror and atrocity.

Firebombing with as intention to cause a blaze which would wipe civilians was done and purposely so.

'Bomber' Harris has been quoted several times in regards to his intention to pursue a full out war against all of Germany.

Another quote ...

But in November 1941 the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command said he had been intentionally bombing civilians for a year. “I mention this because, for a long time, the Government, for excellent reasons, has preferred the world to think that we still held some scruples and attacked only what the humanitarians are pleased to call Military Targets. I can assure you, gentlemen, that we tolerate no scruples.”

And the net result of it all...

Bombing German cities clearly did have an impact on the war. The question, though, is how much. The post-war US Bombing Survey estimated that the effect of all allied city bombing probably depleted the German economy by no more than 2.7 per cent.

2.7%...it is substantial and the specifics of which part of the economy was affected had a bigger impact (e.g. ball bearing manufacture, oil production and storage, ...)

In the end Harris embraced the limitations it seems because it allowed him to get away with doing what he wanted to do in the first place and that was total bombing warfare against any and all targets and in that aspect Dresden with its 25000 to 35000 victims, 25000 from the city itself (there is some indirect evidence that the refugees that were in the city were not counted and this may have added as many as another 10000 victims but there is no direct evidence sadly enough as these people were not from the region and nobody was really keeping track of them at this point in the war) was a war crime under any of the terms the US and the UK were applying at this point.

And it was not the only place that this was starting to get done sadly enough.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/10-of-the-most-devastating-bombing-campaigns-of-wwii-2.html

If you check the top ten of worst bombings you do have London in it but...then you check the dates and the numbers for the other 9...

Mr Beer
2017-03-22, 05:29 PM
one of the reasons the bombing took so long to bite is not only the limits of early war bombing technology, but the degree of "reserve" capability in German industrial system, as they were working on relatively under-utilized basis until Albert Speer was allowed to rationalise the whole set up.

Yeah, Speer is an interesting figure, he's one of those guys you don't know whether it would have better if he wasn't around or not. His control of the war industry was masterful and likely kept Germany fighting longer than otherwise, on the other hand he avoided destroying a lot of infrastructure during Hitler's final paroxysms of rage.

pendell
2017-03-22, 06:03 PM
Yeah, Speer is an interesting figure, he's one of those guys you don't know whether it would have better if he wasn't around or not. His control of the war industry was masterful and likely kept Germany fighting longer than otherwise, on the other hand he avoided destroying a lot of infrastructure during Hitler's final paroxysms of rage.

He also planned To assassinate Hitler with gas (https://books.google.com/books?id=fR0afUUXVOkC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=speer+gas+bunker&source=bl&ots=2NFi4YdFX4&sig=qAqdu5aDo_VXC4kY_xifk7UNM5s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFi4a9m-vSAhWGvBQKHbisD00Q6AEIMjAD#v=onepage&q=speer%20gas%20bunker&f=false). This was foiled by the installation of an anti-gas chimney on the bunker. He was also implicated in the 20 July plot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot), but not arrested , evidently because he still had Hitler's trust.

The second is a matter of public record; the first is only from his own testimony, which might well be a lie.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Vinyadan
2017-03-22, 06:32 PM
I personally see the bombings of WWII as a prosecution of a process which was already happening during WWI. You have the trenches, you have important enemy hubs beyond them, and so you devise ways to hit them. In WWI, it was Zeppelins over london and German artillery bombing Paris - if you ever visit the church of the Madeleine, you may still notice a St. Luke whose head was exploded by a grenade. (23 years earlier, another unrelated bomb had exploded inside the church, killing the anarchist carrying it.)
In WWII you have the Channel and the Atlantic Wall as trenches, and better developed aviation and rockets as ways to strike beyond it. It probably also is worth saying that the Germans started the practice of terror bombing during the war, and that a right of retaliation is generally recognized. If that's right or wrong, well, that's another story. I however don't fully accept the targeting difficulty theory: Cologne was reduced to a mass of ruins, but the Ford industries, which were helping the German war effort, suffered little damage. Other allied air attacks in Italy had the purpose of destroying everyday life, like randomly killing horses on country roads.

Carl
2017-03-22, 07:38 PM
Actually...some of the bombing runs were acts of terror and atrocity.

Firebombing with as intention to cause a blaze which would wipe civilians was done and purposely so.

'Bomber' Harris has been quoted several times in regards to his intention to pursue a full out war against all of Germany.

Another quote ...

But in November 1941 the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command said he had been intentionally bombing civilians for a year. “I mention this because, for a long time, the Government, for excellent reasons, has preferred the world to think that we still held some scruples and attacked only what the humanitarians are pleased to call Military Targets. I can assure you, gentlemen, that we tolerate no scruples.”

And the net result of it all...

Bombing German cities clearly did have an impact on the war. The question, though, is how much. The post-war US Bombing Survey estimated that the effect of all allied city bombing probably depleted the German economy by no more than 2.7 per cent.

2.7%...it is substantial and the specifics of which part of the economy was affected had a bigger impact (e.g. ball bearing manufacture, oil production and storage, ...)

In the end Harris embraced the limitations it seems because it allowed him to get away with doing what he wanted to do in the first place and that was total bombing warfare against any and all targets and in that aspect Dresden with its 25000 to 35000 victims, 25000 from the city itself (there is some indirect evidence that the refugees that were in the city were not counted and this may have added as many as another 10000 victims but there is no direct evidence sadly enough as these people were not from the region and nobody was really keeping track of them at this point in the war) was a war crime under any of the terms the US and the UK were applying at this point.

And it was not the only place that this was starting to get done sadly enough.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/10-of-the-most-devastating-bombing-campaigns-of-wwii-2.html

If you check the top ten of worst bombings you do have London in it but...then you check the dates and the numbers for the other 9...

Be careful how you interpret statements like that. My own information on the matter comes from a book i own on the history of 617, (it's now somwhere in storage sadly), which is built from a variety of sources and Harris made it clear to Barnes Wallis that he would happily have chosen an alternative if a viable one had existed. Since he could within the technological limitations not do otherwise however he saw it as an awful necessity to pursue a strategy of totally demolishing enemy cities and everything therein. There was absolutely a deliberate element of targeting civilians. But that was an inevitable, logical, and required result of the policy of indiscriminate bombing forced on them by the technological limitations. Not a case of everyone going "lets bomb civilians because where mustache twirling villains, muahahahaha". And thats an important distinction that needs to be remembered.

The munich raid especially puts lie to the claim that harris bombed civilians for the hell of it. He came to 617 with the idea of them marking for one of his big 1,000 bomber raids on the rail yards there. It wasn't repeated. But between all the other targets he needed them to go after with actual bombs and the practical limits of operational tempo the squadron could maintain, (and the difficulties in training anyone else to do the same job), it wasn't practical to repeat it. A man however who was interested only in bombing civilians for the hell of it would never have considered such a raid that offered, (and in practise did), eliminate collateral damage to the area surrounding the rail yards, (one apartment building was hit, it was an SS barracks though so it worked out). It was however hugely effective and paved the way for eventual future developments in technology that made it more practical to achieve on a widespread basis.

There's a big difference between bombing the hell out of civilians and going out of your way to wipe them out in the hopes of breaking the enemy's will to fight because it's your only effective large scale means of harming the enemy's ability to persecute the war and going out of your way to bomb civilians because you just want to kill civilians in job lots for the hell of it.

Pauly
2017-03-22, 08:19 PM
For bombing designed to terrorize and kill civilians you really have to go to the Luftwaffe. It started with the bombing of Frampol in Poland.

Deadmeat.GW
2017-03-22, 10:13 PM
I never said he was doing it for the hell of it, he did it as part of a deliberate and planned strategy based on the available resources and on his personal understanding of the way this would work.

There was no 'lulz, lets bomb Dresden or Hamburg in a specific manner to create a fire storm to cause as much damage as possible'.

It was premeditated after they managed to do it once accidentally, flattening everything and killing or injuring as many people as possible by purposely creating a firestorm definitely was the target of these raids later in the war.

That is quite premeditated, if it was in a murder case for a single victim it would have been quite clearly been pointed out that it was all planned and prepared on purpose.

Whether or not that was solely due to the limitations of the technology is still up for debate.

Harris was a cold and calculating man when it came to doing his job.
There is a reason a lot of RAF men called him Butcher Harris instead of Bomber Harris.

He clearly subscribed to the maxim the ends justify the means and he was willing to push hard on his men to do the job.

Harris did not bomb the Germans for amusement but because he believed utterly that it was the best way to destroy the German will to fight and their industry.
And by attacking the populations he could strike at both his targets instead of just at the military targets.

After all, whether they broke from the bombing or died and therefore could not work or fight in both cases he got the result he was aiming for.

More enemies destroyed, less resources for the enemies and reducing their capacity to produce.

dramatic flare
2017-03-22, 11:41 PM
For bombing designed to terrorize and kill civilians you really have to go to the Luftwaffe. It started with the bombing of Frampol in Poland.
You could also look at the IJA, who bombed Shanghai during both the first and second battle of that city for the expressed purpose of both wiping out enemy soldiers and breaking the enemy will to fight.

Pauly
2017-03-23, 02:04 AM
I

Harris was a cold and calculating man when it came to doing his job.
There is a reason a lot of RAF men called him Butcher Harris instead of Bomber Harris.


RAF, and RAAF and RCAF and RNZAF aircrew calling him butcher had nothing to do with the attacks on civilians. They called him butcher because he ordered the bombing campaign to continue despite horrific casualty rates amongst air crew.

Martin Greywolf
2017-03-23, 03:41 AM
Were these blades used one-handed? Also... If they have the same blade length as a rapier, but are curved, wouldn't they have lower reach?

The ones mentioned weren't used one handed if you could avoid it, and just FYI, I'd take anything about them being used against cavalry with a massive grain of salt.

There was a bastard saber used in Hungary circa 1300-1500 and beyond, though. The idea was to apply the same principle to a sabre as to a bastard sword, and it seems to have worked decently well. Illuminations from Chronica Picta show them being used one handed by horsemen, but having recently recieved a replica of one, I wouldn't really want to use it one handed while on foot. They seem to have been favored by people who didn't carry a shield (definitely horse archers, and probably well armored nobles) for that reason.

As for reach and trusting capability, you, as most people, severely overestimate the curve 99% of sabers have. Here's an example (http://www.swordforum.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=67040&stc=1&d=1185111404) of one survival, currently IIRC in National museum in Budapest. Note how the tip is slanted to bring it in line with the hilt for better thrusts. Here (http://historic.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000056/pic/000078.jpg) is a selection of typical sabers for Hungary from 900-1300, some of these are Magyar (crossguard slanted a little forwards, with spheres at the end), most are a fusion of Magyar with western type of arming sword (crossguard without the spheres). No blades deviate from the line of the hilt more than about 5 cm at the tip.

There are generally two types of sabre, one with widened tip, and one without. The widened tip ones do sacrifice nimbleness of the point in exchange for increased cutting capacity, the ones without it are either wide along the entire length and behave like falchions, or are narrow(er) and are functionally almost identical to arming swords (they slice sliiiightly better). Lumping all sabers into one category is about as correct as lumping every arming sword together - early almost viking types are very different in their characteristics from the later, anti-mail designs.

pendell
2017-03-23, 08:44 AM
WRT bombing, I point you to the US Strategic Bombing Survey (https://web.archive.org/web/20080528051903/http://aupress.au.af.mil/Books/USSBS/USSBS.pdf). There's a tolerably good summary at Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Strategic_Bombing_Survey).

High points ,as I see them. some from here and some from other sources:

1) The US attempted precision daylight bombing using the Norden Bombsight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norden_bombsight), specifically to hit military targets and avoid civilian casualties.

2) The British conducted night-time area raids with the ostensible objective of "de-housing" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehousing) the German industrial sector, at least in part because their own precision attacks were faring poorly. In other words, the civilian population was not 'collateral damage' ; the civilian population was the intended target.


3) Strategic raids on factories and tank works proved ineffective. Reason: While the bombs knocked down buildings and caused a lot of superficial damage, it turns out that machine tools are actually pretty tough. It was possible to get the lines operational again in short order.

4) Similar problems occurred when attacking ball-bearing or aircraft factory plants. Again, while damage to the buildings was fairly easy, doing lasting damage to the underlying equipment and putting a factory out of business permanently proved to be a much more daunting task. No indispensable industry was permanently crippled by bombing during the course of the war.

5) What was effective was attacks on transportation systems ; preventing trains and trucks from delivering fuel, ammunition, oil, or other supplies to combat troops. This had the effect of isolating the enemy in place , such that armored formations were rendered little more than steel pillboxes. Their mobility -- the primary asset of modern armor -- was neutralized.

Oh, and the Norden Bombsight? Turns out it's a lot more useful in always-sunny New Mexico than over Europe. Evidently the designers had never anticipated the weather phenomenon known as "clouds". That's without the additional strain of combat. Getting a bomb within a mile of the primary target was sometimes a difficult achievement.

These issues are why the US resorted to fire-bombing Japan later in the war; in addition to all these troubles over Germany, Japan was a much longer range and high winds were even more of a problem as discussed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Initial_attacks_from_the_Marian a_Islands).

Given the choice between ineffective high-precision attacks and effective firebombing, the US chose the second. Cue Grave of the Fireflies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_of_the_Fireflies). It's why the Germans were never brought to war crimes charges for the early bombing or their submarine campaign; because everything they did , we were forced to do as well. Such is modern war.




Respectfully,

Brian P.

Max_Killjoy
2017-03-23, 08:59 AM
What's the old quip... "The Americans area-bombed precision targets, and the British precision-bombed area targets"... or something like that.

The limits of technology. Getting worked up over supposed "war crimes" by the Allies in WW2 is an exercise in myopic hindsight.

Lemmy
2017-03-23, 09:03 AM
The ones mentioned weren't used one handed if you could avoid it, and just FYI, I'd take anything about them being used against cavalry with a massive grain of salt.

There was a bastard saber used in Hungary circa 1300-1500 and beyond, though. The idea was to apply the same principle to a sabre as to a bastard sword, and it seems to have worked decently well. Illuminations from Chronica Picta show them being used one handed by horsemen, but having recently recieved a replica of one, I wouldn't really want to use it one handed while on foot. They seem to have been favored by people who didn't carry a shield (definitely horse archers, and probably well armored nobles) for that reason.

As for reach and trusting capability, you, as most people, severely overestimate the curve 99% of sabers have. Here's an example (http://www.swordforum.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=67040&stc=1&d=1185111404) of one survival, currently IIRC in National museum in Budapest. Note how the tip is slanted to bring it in line with the hilt for better thrusts. Here (http://historic.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000056/pic/000078.jpg) is a selection of typical sabers for Hungary from 900-1300, some of these are Magyar (crossguard slanted a little forwards, with spheres at the end), most are a fusion of Magyar with western type of arming sword (crossguard without the spheres). No blades deviate from the line of the hilt more than about 5 cm at the tip.

There are generally two types of sabre, one with widened tip, and one without. The widened tip ones do sacrifice nimbleness of the point in exchange for increased cutting capacity, the ones without it are either wide along the entire length and behave like falchions, or are narrow(er) and are functionally almost identical to arming swords (they slice sliiiightly better). Lumping all sabers into one category is about as correct as lumping every arming sword together - early almost viking types are very different in their characteristics from the later, anti-mail designs.

I see. Thank you both for your answers. :smallsmile:

Carl
2017-03-23, 10:13 AM
What's the old quip... "The Americans area-bombed precision targets, and the British precision-bombed area targets"... or something like that.

The limits of technology. Getting worked up over supposed "war crimes" by the Allies in WW2 is an exercise in myopic hindsight.

Basically my point all along.



I never said he was doing it for the hell of it, he did it as part of a deliberate and planned strategy based on the available resources and on his personal understanding of the way this would work.

There was no 'lulz, lets bomb Dresden or Hamburg in a specific manner to create a fire storm to cause as much damage as possible'.

It was premeditated after they managed to do it once accidentally, flattening everything and killing or injuring as many people as possible by purposely creating a firestorm definitely was the target of these raids later in the war.

That is quite premeditated, if it was in a murder case for a single victim it would have been quite clearly been pointed out that it was all planned and prepared on purpose.

Whether or not that was solely due to the limitations of the technology is still up for debate.

Harris was a cold and calculating man when it came to doing his job.
There is a reason a lot of RAF men called him Butcher Harris instead of Bomber Harris.

He clearly subscribed to the maxim the ends justify the means and he was willing to push hard on his men to do the job.

Harris did not bomb the Germans for amusement but because he believed utterly that it was the best way to destroy the German will to fight and their industry.
And by attacking the populations he could strike at both his targets instead of just at the military targets.

After all, whether they broke from the bombing or died and therefore could not work or fight in both cases he got the result he was aiming for.

More enemies destroyed, less resources for the enemies and reducing their capacity to produce.

Sorry if i came off bad then, i see a lot of people assume that people like harris bombed the hell out of civilians because they liked killing the enemy and where bloodthirsty bastards, rather than the real reason they chose that strategy.


WRT bombing, I point you to the US Strategic Bombing Survey (https://web.archive.org/web/20080528051903/http://aupress.au.af.mil/Books/USSBS/USSBS.pdf). There's a tolerably good summary at Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Strategic_Bombing_Survey).

High points ,as I see them. some from here and some from other sources:

1) The US attempted precision daylight bombing using the Norden Bombsight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norden_bombsight), specifically to hit military targets and avoid civilian casualties.

2) The British conducted night-time area raids with the ostensible objective of "de-housing" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehousing) the German industrial sector, at least in part because their own precision attacks were faring poorly. In other words, the civilian population was not 'collateral damage' ; the civilian population was the intended target.


3) Strategic raids on factories and tank works proved ineffective. Reason: While the bombs knocked down buildings and caused a lot of superficial damage, it turns out that machine tools are actually pretty tough. It was possible to get the lines operational again in short order.

4) Similar problems occurred when attacking ball-bearing or aircraft factory plants. Again, while damage to the buildings was fairly easy, doing lasting damage to the underlying equipment and putting a factory out of business permanently proved to be a much more daunting task. No indispensable industry was permanently crippled by bombing during the course of the war.

5) What was effective was attacks on transportation systems ; preventing trains and trucks from delivering fuel, ammunition, oil, or other supplies to combat troops. This had the effect of isolating the enemy in place , such that armored formations were rendered little more than steel pillboxes. Their mobility -- the primary asset of modern armor -- was neutralized.

Oh, and the Norden Bombsight? Turns out it's a lot more useful in always-sunny New Mexico than over Europe. Evidently the designers had never anticipated the weather phenomenon known as "clouds". That's without the additional strain of combat. Getting a bomb within a mile of the primary target was sometimes a difficult achievement.

These issues are why the US resorted to fire-bombing Japan later in the war; in addition to all these troubles over Germany, Japan was a much longer range and high winds were even more of a problem as discussed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Initial_attacks_from_the_Marian a_Islands).

Given the choice between ineffective high-precision attacks and effective firebombing, the US chose the second. Cue Grave of the Fireflies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_of_the_Fireflies). It's why the Germans were never brought to war crimes charges for the early bombing or their submarine campaign; because everything they did , we were forced to do as well. Such is modern war.




Respectfully,

Brian P.

I'd add a couple of addendums to that. Bombing was perfectly capable of wreaking a factory. The problem was each bomb has a limited destructive radius as you noted and the limitations made completely plastering the factory in bombs was mostly a no go. During the war the estimate was that just 4% of all bombs fell within a 1 mile radius of the target. Between navigation issues for the bombers and limitations of target marking accuracy the bombs would generally be dropped very higgledy piggledy.

You're not wrong about the difficulties of finding targets from high altitude. Precision bombing required precise target marking and the pathfinders where not very precise. It was so bad that when 617 switched to precision bombing they rapidly took over target marking duties for their targets themselves. using diving attacks first with Lancaster's, then later with a Mosquito, and eventually switching to a P-51 Mustang. At Munich Harris basically had 617 take over from the pathfinders. They flew to the target, the mosquito dropped white flares, and then the squadron's lancasters dropped 22 bombers worth of green flares on those, then the mosquito raced around overhead directing the bomber streams in and onto the target fr as long as the fuel lasted. The result was few bombers got lost and all aimed their bombs at the right spot with corrspondingly good effects. A dozen prior raids had only lightly damage the yards, that raid put them out of action till after the war.

Deadmeat.GW
2017-03-23, 01:23 PM
RAF, and RAAF and RCAF and RNZAF aircrew calling him butcher had nothing to do with the attacks on civilians. They called him butcher because he ordered the bombing campaign to continue despite horrific casualty rates amongst air crew.

Indirectly it did, he was willing to take high casualties to get the job done, in that aspect he was a cold and calculating man.

It was not that he did it for amusement but because in his understanding this was the best way to use bombers with the technology and equipment available to them.

AslanCross
2017-03-23, 06:16 PM
Were these blades used one-handed? Also... If they have the same blade length as a rapier, but are curved, wouldn't they have lower reach?

The zhanmadao and nagamaki were two-handed. I think the closest thing to a curved, single-edged, one-handed sword to what you are looking for is the langes messer.

VoxRationis
2017-03-24, 12:31 PM
So this is going to be a rough question to answer: does anyone have a good comparison of what production costs were for different armor types in the same economy? I ask this because I'm trying to do a rewrite of the d20 system and I'm on armor right now. I understand that plate armor is expensive (partially because it's custom-made, partly because of the large amount of metal required, partly because of the quality associated with the work), but it's my understanding that mail is in fact much harder to produce on account of the immense amount of effort it takes to make that much metal wire, form the rings out of the wire, and then individually attach them. The PHB model of having all the different armor types on different racks in the same store is unrealistic, since different cultures usually make different armor types according to technological and economic factors, but what if you could go into a store and buy all these armors? How would lamellar, scale, mail, and plate compare?

Kiero
2017-03-24, 01:02 PM
The Romans mass-produced mail; they had workshops doing nothing but in northern Italy, for example. If it doesn't need to be customised, and there are elements of the manufacture that don't require specialist skills, then it isn't as costly to produce as you might think. It's also an armour that can outlast it's owner and be passed down, with maintenance and minimal adjustment for the new owner.

Mike_G
2017-03-24, 03:00 PM
Were these blades used one-handed? Also... If they have the same blade length as a rapier, but are curved, wouldn't they have lower reach?

Rapiers are pretty much the upper limit of length for one handed swords. Any blade better at cutting, like a sabre, will need to be wider, and therefore heavier for the same length. Rapiers are pretty heavy in themselves, but the weight is concentrated pretty far back, which makes them easier to use for a weapon of that weight, but bad a cutting. You don't want a sabre with all the weight back near the guard, because it will not cut as well.

That said, sabres aren't generally all that short. They are pretty similar in length to other one handed cut and thrust swords.

Pauly
2017-03-24, 11:31 PM
So this is going to be a rough question to answer: does anyone have a good comparison of what production costs were for different armor types in the same economy? I ask this because I'm trying to do a rewrite of the d20 system and I'm on armor right now. I understand that plate armor is expensive (partially because it's custom-made, partly because of the large amount of metal required, partly because of the quality associated with the work), but it's my understanding that mail is in fact much harder to produce on account of the immense amount of effort it takes to make that much metal wire, form the rings out of the wire, and then individually attach them. The PHB model of having all the different armor types on different racks in the same store is unrealistic, since different cultures usually make different armor types according to technological and economic factors, but what if you could go into a store and buy all these armors? How would lamellar, scale, mail, and plate compare?

It depends entirely on the technological level of the society, as well as the relativelive abundance and quality of the iron they are working with.

Generally speaking it is harder to manufacture larger pieces of armor. It is harder to manufacture hardened/hugh qulaity steel. It requires more skill to manufacture acrticulated armor. But as the manufacturers become more proficient the price comes down, or the quality goes up.

Galloglaich
2017-03-27, 03:42 PM
So this is going to be a rough question to answer: does anyone have a good comparison of what production costs were for different armor types in the same economy? I ask this because I'm trying to do a rewrite of the d20 system and I'm on armor right now. I understand that plate armor is expensive (partially because it's custom-made, partly because of the large amount of metal required, partly because of the quality associated with the work), but it's my understanding that mail is in fact much harder to produce on account of the immense amount of effort it takes to make that much metal wire, form the rings out of the wire, and then individually attach them. The PHB model of having all the different armor types on different racks in the same store is unrealistic, since different cultures usually make different armor types according to technological and economic factors, but what if you could go into a store and buy all these armors? How would lamellar, scale, mail, and plate compare?

it depends on the time and place. In the Roman era, their (very rough) equivalent of plate armor, (the lorica segmentata that you so often see as a kind of shorthand for Roman Legionaires in genre films and art), was actually cheaper than their mail (the lorica hamata) which was in use for a lot longer.

Due to the high degree of contracting and subcontracting in the guilds, and the large amount of automation, metal production in general and armor production specifically was much more efficient and therefore cheaper in the middle ages than for the Romans. The Romans basically relied on slave labor. The medieval people relied on power from water wheels (and to a lesser extent, wind mills and animals) to power complex machinery that did a lot of the work. For example water wheels ran the bellows in the bloomery forge that made the iron, and powered the trip hammer which allowed them to hammer the iron out into sheets etc., as well as lots of other tools like drills and fine saws and so on. Thanks to the machines, specialization and subcontracting systems, a single guild workshop in 15th Century Augsburg or Venice could produce more than 100 Roman slaves could.

There are several videos you can watch of a water powered trip-hammer in action. Here is one

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

Mail couldn't be automated quite as much, though the medieval artisans did have the technology of the draw plate which was a big advantage over the Romans.

in the early to high medieval period, mail was gradually becoming cheaper mainly because of iron getting cheaper and then the draw plate. In the Late medieval period plate armor got much cheaper and much better, it went from an exotic luxury to almost commonplace work gear, peaking around 1520, whereas mail got cheaper too but much more slowly. In the Late Medieval era they also made new and more expensive types of mail, for example tempered steel mail and mail with links so fine you literally can't get a pin through them. The latter were for wearing under your street clothes in a civilian context, from what I gather. Mail like that was very expensive.

If you look at medieval economic data, mail looks to be generally more expensive than plate armor in the 1400's. As in, a single mail shirt can cost more than twice what an entire 'proofed' harness costs, though you also see cheaper mail.

Lamellar I suspect would be much cheaper than either plate or mail, since all you have to do is lace together those little lames, and you don't need skilled labor for that (just to make the lames which by the 1200's could be mass-produced with machine power).






As for all you people arguing about bomber hariss and the WW II terror bombing, you should really listen to Dan Carlin on that subject. If you are into history at all, particularly WW I, the Mongols, ancient Greece, or the Romans, run don't walk to download his stuff. I promise you, you will learn new things and be very entertained in the process. Trust me on this one if you ever learned anything from any of my posts.

G

theasl
2017-03-27, 04:54 PM
Were Roman centurions and other officers armed the same way as the legionaries (post-Marian reforms)? From my admittedly cursory searches, I can only find that they had a gladius, but worn on the left instead of the right as a sign of rank, and that they used shields (presumably the standard scutum). Presumably they would have used the same armor as the normal legionaries, as well, but I can find no mention of any other weapons (javelins, for example) or armor.

Storm Bringer
2017-03-28, 01:30 AM
Were Roman centurions and other officers armed the same way as the legionaries (post-Marian reforms)? From my admittedly cursory searches, I can only find that they had a gladius, but worn on the left instead of the right as a sign of rank, and that they used shields (presumably the standard scutum). Presumably they would have used the same armor as the normal legionaries, as well, but I can find no mention of any other weapons (javelins, for example) or armor.

they appear to have worn similar types of armour, with additional badges of rank (for example, centurions wore a helmet plume running left to right (http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/romans/images/soldiers/centbigest.jpg), rather then front to back like the troops). that stick the man in the photo is carrying is another badge of rank, similar to swagger sticks (http://www.hadjin.com/images/MK_Turkish_Army_Syrian_Front_1915_with_Swagger_Sti ck.jpg)or the British armies pace stick (http://www.arborfield-september49ers.co.uk/aoba_reunion2010sat-01_files/image014.jpg).

Shields were used, but they might have used different types of shield, again as a badge of rank. Centurions would have javelins and such, but the higher ranked officers would not, as they would not be expected to lead charges and such (that's the centurions job), so they had a sword and shield for self defence.

Martin Greywolf
2017-03-28, 02:04 AM
Armor prices strike once again.

1) Available iron

This wasn't that much of a problem, most of the time. Iron is one of the most abundant substances on this planet, even on the surface, and many, many places have it. It may not always be iron that's all that good for weapons or armor, but it's still servicable - take Japan as an example of such a situation.

Where you don't see iron armor is where people don't really have technology to make it - this could be for any number of reasons, and included, at times, steppe nomads. Once they reorganized themselves into societies that could make iron, they promptly did, as can be seen a lot in eastern Europe during migration era.

A place that has good iron ore, however, will swiftly become a centre of trade for arms and armor because of it.

2) How hard is it to make per unit of population

I think people answered how difficult mail and plate are to make per unit, but there's one detail people often forget. Mail is modular to a ridiculous degree. Plate has to be fitted to the individual most of the time, or has to be hampered in one area or another (weight, coverage, mobility, not creating blisters) to compensate. Mail fits all sizes, and can therefore be passed down the generations and down the ranks. If a local lord gets a new suit of mail, fitted to him, he may well give his old one to one of his less rich retainers as a reward.

That means that if you don't have a sudden zombie apocalypse, the total amount of available mail keeps growing, driving the price down.

Moreover, plate is harder to make on a metallurgical level, and if you mess up, you kinda have to toss out the entire component - with mail, you just toss out a few rings.

And lastly, mail is easier to repair if a massive damage was done to it.

The larger point here is that for the more modular types of armor (mail, lamellar, scale), they get cheaper over time if a culture keeps producing them.

3) Armor on racks

Not as silly as you think. As with all things, there were different grades of quality to armor, and while a Ferrari-grade mail has to be fitted, Lada-grade mail was often done by comission, or was stored and issued to militias without any of these concerns. If it fit really, really badly, local armourer/quartermaster/whatever would gladly adjust it or you... for a fee, of course.

So, best of its class armor, no racks, low quality armor yes racks. Especially with quartermasters having more freedom in general, they may well decide to sell you some from the local militia armory.

4) Lamellar and scale

These two types are not used all that much, and for a good reason.

For lamellar, it gives you almost no ability to bend over in it whatsoever, and has a pretty substantial gaps as a result. It was also made of leather reasonably often in case of steppe nomads (for rank and file, top dogs could afford metal lamellar or mail). You could perhaps consider coat-of-plates a direct evolution of lamellar vests, it solved a lot of the mobility and gap problems - mostly because it was worn over mail as an additional level of protection. That said, lamellar is very easy to make, you can do so at home with nothing but leather-sewing kit and some thick leather, or leather string and metal plates.

Scale is more flexible (not as flexible as mail), but has a problem of allowing thrusts from below to bypass a lot of the protection, and is fiddlier to make tham lamellar armor, because scales tend to be pretty small. It was fairly rare, and I'd say it was something of an experimentation of how to solve some problems of lamellar armor. Again, it was worn on top of mail as often as not, just like abovementioned coat-of-plates.

5) Final price

What will determine final price of armor is how used it is in an area. A suit of plate will probably cost a lot less than lamellar in, say, Paris, and high end stuff will cost hell of a lot more than the equipment available to common soldier.

Kiero
2017-03-28, 08:53 AM
Were Roman centurions and other officers armed the same way as the legionaries (post-Marian reforms)? From my admittedly cursory searches, I can only find that they had a gladius, but worn on the left instead of the right as a sign of rank, and that they used shields (presumably the standard scutum). Presumably they would have used the same armor as the normal legionaries, as well, but I can find no mention of any other weapons (javelins, for example) or armor.

Centurions were the highest-ranked men expected to participate in the fighting line. Legates and other officers were only ever expected to direct from behind the line, thus armour (and a shield) were less functional in nature. As mentioned, some higher officers wore leather corselets (the sort you'd wear under a bronze cuirass) by itself.

Centurions might wear mail, or scale, or a cuirass. Their equipment wasn't necessarily standard issue like that of their men. They'd be more likely to have heirloom armour, rather than the state's mass-produced stuff (if we're talking late Republican/Principate).


Armor prices strike once again.

1) Available iron

This wasn't that much of a problem, most of the time. Iron is one of the most abundant substances on this planet, even on the surface, and many, many places have it. It may not always be iron that's all that good for weapons or armor, but it's still servicable - take Japan as an example of such a situation.

Where you don't see iron armor is where people don't really have technology to make it - this could be for any number of reasons, and included, at times, steppe nomads. Once they reorganized themselves into societies that could make iron, they promptly did, as can be seen a lot in eastern Europe during migration era.

A place that has good iron ore, however, will swiftly become a centre of trade for arms and armor because of it.


That's overly simplistic. Firstly, the only "technology" you need to work iron once you've got it out of the ground is the ability to make fires hot enough to work it. That means a source of coal or charcoal. Which in much of Europe, occur close to sources of iron, making it easy.

Secondly, nomads don't need to be able to make things themselves to enjoy the usage of them. They can trade, raid or tax/extort them out of settled communities under their "protection". Which is exactly how they equipped themselves, and their nobles had a lot of gold. Nomads don't live in isolation from the settled peoples under areas they ride through, they depend on them for their existence.

Iron is impractical if you're always on the move and frequently under the elements. It rusts. Bronze and other materials are much more durable, and thus preferable if you spend a lot of your life in the saddle.

Galloglaich
2017-03-28, 11:11 AM
Ok the production of iron,

To some extent my perspective on this jibes with Greywolf, namely, production of iron is fairly easy -so long as you are just making small pieces of iron. Small pieces of iron lend themselves well to making mail or lamellar, or certain types of coats of plates / integrated metal / textile armor. Iron ore is indeed everywhere but quality varies a great deal. The quality of iron production centers seem to hinge on four factors:


Quality of local ore
Availability and quality of fuel
Quality of materials to make bloomeries / forges
Industrial capacity to make large forges


Higher quality ore means less work to 'clean' it up to make pure iron. And pure iron is kind of the starting point to make decent steel. You need very pure iron to make large metal plates. Fuel is a big demand and many areas were deforested to provide fuel for the metal industry. Local materials limited how large bloomeries could be made. More sophisticated societies could make big blast furnaces which were vastly more efficient.

So for example, in the earlier medieval period (migration era through late Carolingian or early High middle) in England a lot of iron was being produced in temporary bloomery forges in large forests. This led directly to the elimination of said forests due to the constant cutting and burning of trees to make charcoal. It also polluted streams which were often used for water-wheel power and / or for sluices to wash ore and various other purposes. Eventually England used up a lot of their forests and the local authorities clamped down on the people making the iron who were often of a kind of roaming outlaw / outcast estate. More permanent iron making industrial systems in the towns existed but weren't as well developed as on the continent until the Early Modern period, though England was also making use of peat and coal for fuel on a significant scale as early as the 12th Century (when we already see regulations being passed to control smog and smoke).

In Sweden, the iron forging was done in the forests as well but along a more systematic manner in rural estates. Their iron industry seems to have benefited a great deal from the presence of local clay that had asbestos in it, making it possible to make larger blomery forges and even blast furnaces. This is actually somewhat similar to Southern India, Sri Lanka and the Punjab region where they made the famous 'wootz' (i.e. "Damascus") steel billets that were exported all over the world, except they had even more special properties in the clay they used for their crucibles including probably trace elements of vanadium and other rare metals. There is also a tribe in Africa, the Haya, that was able to make true steel as early as 50 BCE partly because they were situated near some good clay.

In some towns in Germany (including Rhineland, Swiss, Austrian etc.), Flanders and some of the Slavic Central European polities (notably Czech and Slovak, but also Polish and Hungarian and others) you saw the early development of full scale blast furnaces. This is really key, because the difference between a bloomery forge and an actual blast furnace while mostly boiling down to scale, makes a big difference in both the size and quality of the iron being produced.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/GermanyFirstBlastFurnaceMiniatureDM.jpg/640px-GermanyFirstBlastFurnaceMiniatureDM.jpg

So for example here is a probably quite accurate model of a High medieval blast furnace. The tower on the left is the actual furnace. Bricks would be special fire bricks maybe with asbestos or other trace elements and manufacturing techniques to make them able to withstand high-heat. Fuel and ore come in on those small barges in the shallow canals. Medieval Central and Northern Europe had a lot of these canals which linked the various rivers. Though shallow (often as little as 16" - 24") they were sophisticated and had locks etc. The canals were almost like a medieval railroad.

A blast furnace like that could produce large billets of steel, known by various names such as 'osmunds', they were traded all over Europe and well beyond.


This, by contrast, is a simple bloomery forge. Most iron around the world was made in little chimney's like this. Or sometimes directly in the clay-ground by digging a hole. The process is pretty simple, you put fuel in the bottom, ore in the top, light it up and let it 'cook' all night'. The chimney provides air flow to help heat it up to very high level (you need around 2,000+ degrees). The slag melts off first, then you get a puddle of iron, as well as some higher-carbon steel depending on what you cook with it (migration era would put in wolf and bear teeth and bones, which added both carbon and some phosphorous).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/%C5%9Awi%C4%99to_%C5%9Al%C4%85ska_piec_p.jpg/320px-%C5%9Awi%C4%99to_%C5%9Al%C4%85ska_piec_p.jpg

Smaller bloomeries create smaller pieces of iron. Also 'dirtier' pieces depending on how good you are at it. There were also larger bloomeries which utilized mechanical air flow, but these again often depended on having the right kind of clay so you can make those really high temperature fire bricks.

This for example (from the 15th Century Schloss Wolfegg housebook) is basically a glorified bloomery, not a true blast furnace, but it can produce fairly large, high quality iron billets. Notice the bricks.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Hausbuch_Wolfegg_35v_H%C3%BCttenwerk.jpg/800px-Hausbuch_Wolfegg_35v_H%C3%BCttenwerk.jpg

If you have large pieces of iron it's much easier to make large swords and large metal plates. If you have small and 'dirty' pieces of iron coming out of a small and crude bloomery the your smith has to spend hours 'fixing' the iron by hammering out the slag, and then laboriously forge-welding small pieces together to make larger pieces (or bolting them together the way you see on a lot of early migration-era helmets). This means an immensely larger amount of work, with much higher chance of failure, and as Greywolf noted, a mistake can mean having to start all over again.

Especially a pain in the arse if you are having to hammer this iron yourself (as most people would in Europe prior to circa 800 -1200 AD depending where) instead of using a big water-powered trip hammer like in the later medieval world.




So if you are a Scythian nomad or a Mongol, cranking out little bits of iron to distribute around the tribe for people to make into mail or lames isn't too hard. Your main problem is fuel. But if you can find fuel (even peat or dried out dung probably) you can make a simple bloomery forge wherever you camp out for a few weeks. You probably also know good places on your 'circuit' of roaming your territory where there are good places for example that have the right clay, wood for fuel, and a stream.


If you are a Carolingian to High medieval French Lord, you probably want to bring in a Cistercian abbey to set up a nice large scale bloomery where you can make iron, and you may have just the right spot to put it. If you are an Italian City-State or a Flemish, German or Czech Free City, you can maybe build a true blast furnace and make iron armor and weapons on a large scale, with fuel and ore and fire bricks imported from wherever you want them anywhere in the world (including wootz steel billets from India). Swedish peasant clans seem to have also been able to set up these kinds of operations.


On Armor on racks

This did definitely exist, and it was very cheap. often thinner and made of iron rather than steel but definitely affordable. I disagree that mail was exactly 'one size fits all' but it was probably easier than plate armor, yet 'off the rack' plate armor seemed to also exist, including proofed Milanese harnesses which show up in shop inventories as far away from Italy as Poland.

The most common type in Central Europe seems to be the 'platendist', some kind of coat of plates or brigandine.


Generally, the whole social structure and economy, as well as some peculiarities of locally available materials like clay or coal, contribute to the cost, quality and ubiquity of iron, steel, and all ferrous artifacts.

Galloglaich
2017-03-28, 11:24 AM
Another Medieval bloomery operation (I think). Looks like a craft guild workshop.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/78/16/ce/7816ce47e28247d85e302b58bf772de9.jpg

This is a steel billet somewhat similar to the ones they traded in the middle ages, which I forgot to post in the previous post. I think this one is supposed to be wootz though.

http://www.oriental-arms.co.il/photos/items/11/001411/ph-0.jpg

Galloglaich
2017-03-28, 11:35 AM
Centurions were the highest-ranked men expected to participate in the fighting line. Legates and other officers were only ever expected to direct from behind the line, thus armour (and a shield) were less functional in nature. As mentioned, some higher officers wore leather corselets (the sort you'd wear under a bronze cuirass) by itself.

Centurions might wear mail, or scale, or a cuirass. Their equipment wasn't necessarily standard issue like that of their men. They'd be more likely to have heirloom armour, rather than the state's mass-produced stuff (if we're talking late Republican/Principate).


IIRC there was two types of scale or scale armor, lorica squamata and lorica plumata ('fish scale' and 'bird feather' armor respectively). Not sure if that is what the Romans actually called them but these are the terms used by modern scholars or real deep enthusiasts.

I think this was worn by cavalry and some kind of elite soldiers like signifiers (standard bearers) and maybe Centurians depending on the exact period. I think this stuff was around post-Marian reforms. I can't remember all the details but the finer scale armor (I think that is the plumata but not certain) was a neat design in which tiny scales are bent 90 degrees and actually wired into the mail, so it's actually a combination of mail+scale armor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorica_plumata

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorica_squamata

This is plumata I believe, antique

http://www.cotasdemalla.es/historia/plumatav.jpg

Somebody trying to remake it

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/f5/0f/bf/f50fbf1b080b0451bb4a31d36e4a6168.jpg


G

BayardSPSR
2017-03-28, 03:56 PM
Ok the production of iron,

...

Generally, the whole social structure and economy, as well as some peculiarities.

Wow. It wasn't directed at me, but thanks for the fantastic post.

Galloglaich
2017-03-28, 07:20 PM
Wow. It wasn't directed at me, but thanks for the fantastic post.

You are very welcome. It's really nice to know that people appreciate the effort.

G

Martin Greywolf
2017-03-29, 02:33 AM
That's overly simplistic.

Of course it is. There are entire libraries written about the topic, and we're trying to summarize here.



Firstly, the only "technology" you need to work iron once you've got it out of the ground is the ability to make fires hot enough to work it. That means a source of coal or charcoal. Which in much of Europe, occur close to sources of iron, making it easy.

I think that Galloglaich already demonstrated that you do need certain tech levels to produce good quality iron and steel. Materials are, for the most part, already there, figuring out how to combine them to get arms and armor that work is the trick.



Secondly, nomads don't need to be able to make things themselves to enjoy the usage of them. They can trade, raid or tax/extort them out of settled communities under their "protection". Which is exactly how they equipped themselves, and their nobles had a lot of gold. Nomads don't live in isolation from the settled peoples under areas they ride through, they depend on them for their existence.

Sure, nomads can get steel armor, problem is that it will be much, much more expensive and rare there than in a city that produces it, and we're not talking a few percent either. And it will be of the lower quality and not fitted for the most part, since they can't exactly afford to hang around a city (they may well not be able to conquer the city). Mongols were the exception here rather than the rule, since they did conquer cities that could make good mail and lamellar armor.

Which is why nomadic Cuimans in 1300s still used leather lamellar armor, despite the fact they lived right next to mail-heavy (we're talking most of heavy cavalry has horses armored) Hungary.



Iron is impractical if you're always on the move and frequently under the elements. It rusts. Bronze and other materials are much more durable, and thus preferable if you spend a lot of your life in the saddle.

This is simply not true. It doesn't matter if you're a nomad or European noble, you're spending most of your time in the saddle, and it rains, snows, hails and whatnot on all of your equipment. You have to take care of it no matter what your culture happens to be. The differences between nomads and European soldiers on campaign aren't all that great when it comes to living conditions.

Making sure steel doesn't rust is simply something you have to deal with - the rich deal with it by throwing money at the problem (gold or silver plating), the less rich will have to use lard instead.



This did definitely exist, and it was very cheap. often thinner and made of iron rather than steel but definitely affordable. I disagree that mail was exactly 'one size fits all' but it was probably easier than plate armor, yet 'off the rack' plate armor seemed to also exist, including proofed Milanese harnesses which show up in shop inventories as far away from Italy as Poland.

Mail may not be literally one size fits all, but it's pretty damn close, especially for non-fitted mail. I'd say that it is more universal than modern shirt sizes (S, M, L, XL, XXL, XXXL). As for off the rack plate, well, depends on what you call plate, cuirasses and some other components are doable (and were done), but full plate needs to be fitted.

Galloglaich
2017-03-29, 12:39 PM
This is simply not true. It doesn't matter if you're a nomad or European noble, you're spending most of your time in the saddle, and it rains, snows, hails and whatnot on all of your equipment. You have to take care of it no matter what your culture happens to be. The differences between nomads and European soldiers on campaign aren't all that great when it comes to living conditions.

Making sure steel doesn't rust is simply something you have to deal with - the rich deal with it by throwing money at the problem (gold or silver plating), the less rich will have to use lard instead.



yeah, having to live with your kit out in the elements was apparently a really significant problem. It is one of the reasons for gold or silver plated spurs too.

From the records it sounds like the unarmed servants / valets that accompanied knights or men at arms spent most of their time cleaning and maintaining armor, weapons and horse harness stuff that was getting messed up by weather.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7171/6436365063_19b65aa94c_o.jpg

I'm not an expert on the metallurgy, but I think what they did for weather proofing plate armor was to 'blacken' the armor or 'bronze' the armor. Blackened plate armor was very common among rank and file soldiers, mercenaries, militia etc. in the 15th Century. It's why the Hungarian 'black army' got it's name (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Army_of_Hungary), and it was also the reason for the name of at least 10 other mercenary or condotierre or landsknecht companies I know of with names like "Black band (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Band_(landsknechts))" see also this other black band (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Bands) and this one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arumer_Zwarte_Hoop), "black company" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Company) and so on. I think the true 'white' harness was only for dudes who were in the field on a more rare basis.

This explains how the process was done

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

Mail was also heat treated in some kind of (probably similar) way to prevent rust, and all kinds of armor also seems to have been painted. Then when mail got rusty anyway they used to put it in a barrel full of sand, roll it around a bit to scrub the rust off, then put oil on it and heat it a little, and voila, new shiny armor.

And as for textiles, that famous textile armor in the Hebrides and Scotland with doe skin and pitch covering seems to be some kind of weather proofing.

In Asia lacquering armor was common. I think they still had trouble with the threads rotting. I also remember I think Alexander's army had problems with their linothorax getting funky and rotting off their bodies.

G

Clistenes
2017-03-29, 02:52 PM
yeah, having to live with your kit out in the elements was apparently a really significant problem. It is one of the reasons for gold or silver plated spurs too.

From the records it sounds like the unarmed servants / valets that accompanied knights or men at arms spent most of their time cleaning and maintaining armor, weapons and horse harness stuff that was getting messed up by weather.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7171/6436365063_19b65aa94c_o.jpg

I'm not an expert on the metallurgy, but I think what they did for weather proofing plate armor was to 'blacken' the armor or 'bronze' the armor. Blackened plate armor was very common among rank and file soldiers, mercenaries, militia etc. in the 15th Century. It's why the Hungarian 'black army' got it's name (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Army_of_Hungary), and it was also the reason for the name of at least 10 other mercenary or condotierre or landsknecht companies I know of with names like "Black band (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Band_(landsknechts))" see also this other black band (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Bands) and this one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arumer_Zwarte_Hoop), "black company" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Company) and so on. I think the true 'white' harness was only for dudes who were in the field on a more rare basis.

This explains how the process was done

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

Mail was also heat treated in some kind of (probably similar) way to prevent rust, and all kinds of armor also seems to have been painted. Then when mail got rusty anyway they used to put it in a barrel full of sand, roll it around a bit to scrub the rust off, then put oil on it and heat it a little, and voila, new shiny armor.

And as for textiles, that famous textile armor in the Hebrides and Scotland with doe skin and pitch covering seems to be some kind of weather proofing.

In Asia lacquering armor was common. I think they still had trouble with the threads rotting. I also remember I think Alexander's army had problems with their linothorax getting funky and rotting off their bodies.

G

The soldiers in the spanish Tercios often water-proofed their armor painting it black (probably with cheap pitch-based paint) rather than greasing it with lard, with allowed them to save time and money.

The high command wanted them to keep their armor silvery and shiny, and forbade them to paint their armor black and commanded them to keep it well greased instead, but since the Tercios often had to fight long, hard, deadly campaigns without pay (due to economic troubles) the officers avoided telling those unpaid soldiers to buy lard to grease their armor and turned a blind eye when they painted them black instead... I mean, telling a hungry, unpaid soldier to buy grease for his armor rather than bread for his stomach? yeah, sure way to start a revolt...

Galloglaich
2017-03-29, 04:10 PM
The soldiers in the spanish Tercios often water-proofed their armor painting it black (probably with cheap pitch-based paint) rather than greasing it with lard, with allowed them to save time and money.

The high command wanted them to keep their armor silvery and shiny, and forbade them to paint their armor black and commanded them to keep it well greased instead, but since the Tercios often had to fight long, hard, deadly campaigns without pay (due to economic troubles) the officers avoided telling those unpaid soldiers to buy lard to grease their armor and turned a blind eye when they painted them black instead... I mean, telling a hungry, unpaid soldier to buy grease for his armor rather than bread for his stomach? yeah, sure way to start a revolt...

It's incredible how good the Spanish were at keeping troops going on the mere promise of pay (plus whatever loot they could snatch of course) but this seems to have contributed to the reputation of those same Spanish troops toward civilians and captives.

I wonder if they were actually painting them black or 'blackening' them by simply putting oil on them and putting them into the forge (or a camp fire). I've seen some hints of lacquered armor in Europe but I've been shouted down by academics when I have asked about it, according to them it was only done in Asia. There was enough back and forth between Europe and Asia though that it seems likely most technologies especially military related moved around quite a bit.

G

Lemmy
2017-03-29, 04:29 PM
What crossbows had the loading/cocking mechanism that gave the biggest bang for your buck... i.e.: What (non-modern) crossbow could be used by someone relatively weak and still deal just as much damage as if it were used by someone stronger?

Carl
2017-03-29, 04:33 PM
I would assume Cranquien, but any leverage system is going to be trading Rof for power so it's a tradeoff. ideally you want as much power as you need to hurt your enemies and no more.

Galloglaich
2017-03-29, 04:47 PM
What crossbows had the loading/cocking mechanism that gave the biggest bang for your buck... i.e.: What (non-modern) crossbow could be used by someone relatively weak and still deal just as much damage as if it were used by someone stronger?

I would guess belt hook plus foot stirrup with a not-too-powerful crossbow, but that is just a guess. Cranequin seems to be relatively easy in terms of strength if it's a fairly weak crossbow, but from what Leo Tedeschini says it's not so easy with a powerful one. Cranequin's, being expensive, tended to mostly be used when they needed to be. Windlass is probably the easiest I think in terms of pure strength, but both cranequin and windlass require some significant skill / training to use effectively.

Goats foot / wipe type (lever based, so to speak) were used on horseback with weaker crossbows. Even a 150 lb crossbow can be pretty dangerous.

Personally, I've found nearly every method for spanning a crossbow (both replicas of old type ones and modern hunting weapons) that I've ever tried pretty hard, and I'm not a weak person. I suspect it just takes a lot of experience and building up the right (specific) muscle groups.


It's actually similar with fencing. Last weekend I was training a group of guys who came to our fencing practice from a bachelor party. They were all fit and most of them were experienced martial artists, but after a couple of hours of training when we cut them loose to spar with each other, they were having a hard time holding the swords up for fencing after a fairly short interval. Even with small sabers that didn't weigh a lot. It was reminder to me that you have specific muscles that you need to build up to do specific actions, and that takes a little while.

G

Carl
2017-03-29, 05:42 PM
I thought the cranequin was the geared one, guessing i got that and windlass confused, lulz.

Galloglaich
2017-03-29, 06:30 PM
I thought the cranequin was the geared one, guessing i got that and windlass confused, lulz.

it is the geared one, and i would have assumed it was the easiest but Leo mentioned that it was hard on the high poundage one. It might not have been big enough or made right, I don't know. A lot to learn about all this stuff. I wish I could answer more definitively.

Carl
2017-03-29, 07:02 PM
Well it all depends on the gear ratio and diameter of the winding drum and the length of the crank arm. Geared can be inferiour to ungeared if you get enough of that wrong.

Pauly
2017-03-29, 07:23 PM
The metallurgy with blackening is that you are creating Fe3O4 oxide (black tarnish) instead of Fe2O3 (active red rust). Fe2O3 flakes off from the underlying steel/iron causing more exposue to air and more rust.

The process is still used to season iron and steel frypans today. The process works better with salt in the oil, which is why its called seasoning.

Mr Beer
2017-03-29, 07:36 PM
The metallurgy with blackening is that you are creating Fe3O4 oxide (black tarnish) instead of Fe2O3 (active red rust). Fe2O3 flakes off from the underlying steel/iron causing more exposue to air and more rust.

The process is still used to season iron and steel frypans today. The process works better with salt in the oil, which is why its called seasoning.

Every day is a school day.

VoxRationis
2017-03-29, 08:58 PM
Quick question: In a fight between a fleet consisting of Qing-era war junks (of the sort we see Nemesis one-shotting in that one painting) armed with Mysore or Congreve rockets, and a fleet of galleys of no larger than quinquereme size, what sort of numerical advantage would the galleys reasonably need to win?

Mr Beer
2017-03-29, 10:09 PM
Quick question: In a fight between a fleet consisting of Qing-era war junks (of the sort we see Nemesis one-shotting in that one painting) armed with Mysore or Congreve rockets, and a fleet of galleys of no larger than quinquereme size, what sort of numerical advantage would the galleys reasonably need to win?

What are the galleys armed with? Where is this engagement taking place? What are the weather and water conditions? Are the opposing fleets starting at maximum effective range for the longest range weapons or closer in? How many fighting crew are there on each vessel and what weapons are they armed with?

Kiero
2017-03-30, 04:01 AM
Quick question: In a fight between a fleet consisting of Qing-era war junks (of the sort we see Nemesis one-shotting in that one painting) armed with Mysore or Congreve rockets, and a fleet of galleys of no larger than quinquereme size, what sort of numerical advantage would the galleys reasonably need to win?

They're relying on rockets as their primary weapon? They're almost as likely to hit each other with those as they are what they're aiming at.

Note that by the time fives became the primary warship, they routinely had artillery and often decent-sized marine complements as well (archers and hoplites/legionaries). So the junks are going to be dealing with a hail of iron bolts, then arrow volleys, before being rammed and/or boarded. What a five can't usually do (due to being decked) is empty their benches of oarsmen to act as boarders - that could be another 250 men.

The fives are faster (a galley under oars is faster than a sailing vessel over short distances in all but the most favourable winds for the sailor) and better able to fight. Unless their crews have never seen a rocket before, I think your answer is skewed the wrong way.

Even if you limited the galley fleet to smaller triremes (which often lacked artillery, and couldn't carry many marines), they'd still have archers and the ability to empty their benches to board an enemy vessel. Can a junk deal with each galley potentially disgorging two hundred men in a boarding action?

VoxRationis
2017-03-30, 06:57 AM
What are the galleys armed with? Where is this engagement taking place? What are the weather and water conditions? Are the opposing fleets starting at maximum effective range for the longest range weapons or closer in? How many fighting crew are there on each vessel and what weapons are they armed with?

Sorry, that was a paucity of details. I'm basically suggesting a white-room scenario. Just off the coast, no adverse weather, a light steady breeze from the side of the engagement. Everyone starts beyond engagement range but within sight range. Team Galley gets composite bows, swords, spears, and slings. Team Junk gets the same, but also fire lances and fire arrows, and possibly grenades.


They're relying on rockets as their primary weapon? They're almost as likely to hit each other with those as they are what they're aiming at.

Note that by the time fives became the primary warship, they routinely had artillery and often decent-sized marine complements as well (archers and hoplites/legionaries). So the junks are going to be dealing with a hail of iron bolts, then arrow volleys, before being rammed and/or boarded. What a five can't usually do (due to being decked) is empty their benches of oarsmen to act as boarders - that could be another 250 men.

The fives are faster (a galley under oars is faster than a sailing vessel over short distances in all but the most favourable winds for the sailor) and better able to fight. Unless their crews have never seen a rocket before, I think your answer is skewed the wrong way.

Even if you limited the galley fleet to smaller triremes (which often lacked artillery, and couldn't carry many marines), they'd still have archers and the ability to empty their benches to board an enemy vessel. Can a junk deal with each galley potentially disgorging two hundred men in a boarding action?

I said no larger than fives. Dromons and liburnians, or ships like those, are more likely to be found in most cases.

Edit: What I'm really looking for is a good method by commanders would judge whether to commit to naval engagements in a war between these two parties, assuming normal conditions.

Kiero
2017-03-30, 07:31 AM
Sorry, that was a paucity of details. I'm basically suggesting a white-room scenario. Just off the coast, no adverse weather, a light steady breeze from the side of the engagement. Everyone starts beyond engagement range but within sight range. Team Galley gets composite bows, swords, spears, and slings. Team Junk gets the same, but also fire lances and fire arrows, and possibly grenades.

A sling is not terribly useful on a ship, why wouldn't team galley have archers?

You know "fire arrows" are largely mythical, right?


I said no larger than fives. Dromons and liburnians, or ships like those, are more likely to be found in most cases.

Edit: What I'm really looking for is a good method by commanders would judge whether to commit to naval engagements in a war between these two parties, assuming normal conditions.

I haven't proposed anything larger than a five, and I said fives (quinquiremes) would probably massacre them. Even threes (triremes) would do well, especially if piloted by Rhodians or Arcanarnian pirates. A junk has nothing on the speed, acceleration and maneuverability of a Mediterranean galley.

Liburnians are smaller even than threes and carry tiny oarsmen complements, that's completely changing the rules of the game.

snowblizz
2017-03-30, 07:43 AM
I haven't proposed anything larger than a five, and I said fives (quinquiremes) would probably massacre them. Even threes (triremes) would do well, especially if piloted by Rhodians or Arcanarnian pirates. A junk has nothing on the speed, acceleration and maneuverability of a Mediterranean galley.

Junks would likely have a large advantage in a higher freeboard (I think the term is), ie same benefits a "roundship" enjoyed over galleys in Europe.
Ramming would be unlikely to be effective I think so they'd have to board where the advantage would lie with the junk.

Lemmy
2017-03-30, 07:50 AM
I would guess belt hook plus foot stirrup with a not-too-powerful crossbow, but that is just a guess. Cranequin seems to be relatively easy in terms of strength if it's a fairly weak crossbow, but from what Leo Tedeschini says it's not so easy with a powerful one. Cranequin's, being expensive, tended to mostly be used when they needed to be. Windlass is probably the easiest I think in terms of pure strength, but both cranequin and windlass require some significant skill / training to use effectively.

Goats foot / wipe type (lever based, so to speak) were used on horseback with weaker crossbows. Even a 150 lb crossbow can be pretty dangerous.

Personally, I've found nearly every method for spanning a crossbow (both replicas of old type ones and modern hunting weapons) that I've ever tried pretty hard, and I'm not a weak person. I suspect it just takes a lot of experience and building up the right (specific) muscle groups.


It's actually similar with fencing. Last weekend I was training a group of guys who came to our fencing practice from a bachelor party. They were all fit and most of them were experienced martial artists, but after a couple of hours of training when we cut them loose to spar with each other, they were having a hard time holding the swords up for fencing after a fairly short interval. Even with small sabers that didn't weigh a lot. It was reminder to me that you have specific muscles that you need to build up to do specific actions, and that takes a little while.

G
I see. Thanks, G. As usual, your post is great. :smallsmile:

Kiero
2017-03-30, 07:56 AM
Junks would likely have a large advantage in a higher freeboard (I think the term is), ie same benefits a "roundship" enjoyed over galleys in Europe.
Ramming would be unlikely to be effective I think so they'd have to board where the advantage would lie with the junk.

True, a higher freeboard is partially effective against boarding. However, the images of junks I can see don't look like they'd be significantly higher out of the water than a five.

Why wouldn't ramming work? Are junks significantly sturdier-built than galleys? Do they have no rudders or oars in the water that can be sheared?

Also since the question was nothing larger than a five, why don't they have artillery (since fives did routinely)?

snowblizz
2017-03-30, 08:19 AM
True, a higher freeboard is partially effective against boarding. However, the images of junks I can see don't look like they'd be significantly higher out of the water than a five.

Why wouldn't ramming work? Are junks significantly sturdier-built than galleys? Do they have no rudders or oars in the water that can be sheared?

Also since the question was nothing larger than a five, why don't they have artillery (since fives did routinely)?
I can't say for sure now large a "five" is, but it would naturally depend on junk in question. Same as trying to board a frigate would be easier than a 1st rate. From a book on medieaval combat I just read the advantage of the roundship seemed quite large. Similarly junks would ton for ton, be able to carry more soldiers contra sailors.

A junk like a roundship is much more solidly built than galleys were. Junks tended not to have oars I'd say, the ones that did used a very different set-up and method to rowing though with near vertical oars. The areas that made junks did make oared warships, not sure if they are considered junks. I need to see if I got my Osprey books on the Far Easter warships somewhere.

It was also my understanding, I could swear I just read it in a book, that ramming was not practiced by the larger later galleys and was more a thing of antiquity than the medieaval period.

Obviously I'm thinking of somewhat larger types of junks here than maybe was envisioned. They did build absolutely massive ones though.

Kiero
2017-03-30, 08:33 AM
I can't say for sure now large a "five" is, but it would naturally depend on junk in question. Same as trying to board a frigate would be easier than a 1st rate. From a book on medieaval combat I just read the advantage of the roundship seemed quite large. Similarly junks would ton for ton, be able to carry more soldiers contra sailors.

A junk like a roundship is much more solidly built than galleys were. Junks tended not to have oars I'd say, the ones that did used a very different set-up and method to rowing though with near vertical oars. The areas that made junks did make oared warships, not sure if they are considered junks. I need to see if I got my Osprey books on the Far Easter warships somewhere.

It was also my understanding, I could swear I just read it in a book, that ramming was not practiced by the larger later galleys and was more a thing of antiquity than the medieaval period.

Obviously I'm thinking of somewhat larger types of junks here than maybe was envisioned. They did build absolutely massive ones though.

A "three" (we have surviving wrecks to measure) is around 120 feet long, 18 feet of beam, with a draft of 4 feet. They are low to the water, sleek and fast. A "five" wouldn't necessarily be a great deal longer or wider, but it would potentially be higher since you have to fit two men on the top two banks of oars, not just one.

I'm only talking about galleys of antiquity, since the original question talked about quinquiremes/fives. They still rammed, it was the Romans who preferred to board only. Hellenistic navies still rammed and used artillery, though they weren't as adept at the former as navies from the Classical era, who didn't have artillery or ships big enough to carry more than a handful of marines. Later galleys didn't even have rams, so of course they wouldn't risk their ship by ramming.

A three's marine complement was traditionally 10 hoplites and 4 archers. By contrast a Roman five might have 50 legionaries as marines. A three also has 170 oarsmen, a five would have 230. In desperate actions, those oarmen might arm themselves and come off their benches to assist the marines and sailors. Harder in a decked five, than an undecked three, though.

Galloglaich
2017-03-30, 09:49 AM
The metallurgy with blackening is that you are creating Fe3O4 oxide (black tarnish) instead of Fe2O3 (active red rust). Fe2O3 flakes off from the underlying steel/iron causing more exposue to air and more rust.

The process is still used to season iron and steel frypans today. The process works better with salt in the oil, which is why its called seasoning.

Thanks, very interesting. I should have thought of that i have a cast-iron skillet.

I wonder if there is a rule on meat vs. fish for armor... ;)

G

BayardSPSR
2017-03-30, 02:18 PM
Sure, nomads can get steel armor, problem is that it will be much, much more expensive and rare there than in a city that produces it, and we're not talking a few percent either. And it will be of the lower quality and not fitted for the most part, since they can't exactly afford to hang around a city (they may well not be able to conquer the city). Mongols were the exception here rather than the rule, since they did conquer cities that could make good mail and lamellar armor.

Which is why nomadic Cuimans in 1300s still used leather lamellar armor, despite the fact they lived right next to mail-heavy (we're talking most of heavy cavalry has horses armored) Hungary.

It's relevant to mention how nomadic societies usually produce armies. The Mongols under and after Chinggis/Genghis were thoroughly well-organized to a degree exceptional for the period, let alone for a nomadic society.

The thing that's most likely to inhibit a nomadic society's use of armor (in the absence of a large, friendly, settled population) is the fact that if you own armor, your family has to be able to carry it when you move, in addition to everything else you own that doesn't have legs (including your house). The weight's going to be prohibitive unless you're going from one war to the next in very short order.



Separately from that, something's been bothering me for a while, so it's about time I asked. In any army that fights in a formation of multiple ranks, the combatants in the frontmost ranks are taking on a vastly disproportionate amount of risk. Aside from cases where we have documentation of higher pay for whoever stands in the front, how would pre-modern forces decide whose life to risk?

Galloglaich
2017-03-30, 03:21 PM
Separately from that, something's been bothering me for a while, so it's about time I asked. In any army that fights in a formation of multiple ranks, the combatants in the frontmost ranks are taking on a vastly disproportionate amount of risk. Aside from cases where we have documentation of higher pay for whoever stands in the front, how would pre-modern forces decide whose life to risk?

That's actually a very good question. And the answer is, sadly, complicated like most good questions of this type.

In a nutshell though, very broadly speaking, you can say that the front ranks were often a prestige position in the European armies, and often taken up by the best protected elite, including personal bodyguards of nobles or chieftains and so on. This was particularly the case when the noble or chieftain (etc.) was himself fighting in the front ranks.

In the later medieval world when they had learned to more often put the leader somewhere that they could make tactical and operational decisions, the front ranks were still taken by better equipped, better paid troops, though this depended on the specific strategy of the battle in question (sometimes the best troops were held in reserve for example, but the best protected were often in the front)

The Swiss for example often had the front rank(s) of pikemen wearing almost full armor even while the rearmost ranks had less or none. One of the main reasons for this I think is so that the enemy couldn't stand off outside of range and pepper the pike square with bullets / bolts / arrows / darts / rocks / javelins and thus weaken them.

http://68.media.tumblr.com/a97d66767c33cb7d133a05e800c47a94/tumblr_inline_nq56egxGS31rtdfb6_400.jpg


By contrast, the Ottomans sometimes had a strategy (at least in some battles) of putting cannon-fodder so to speak in the front ranks specifically to absorb and exhaust the charge of 'Frankish' cavalry. For example at Nicopolis, but also many other battles. Sometimes these were even troops pressed from very recently conquered territories. Serbs and whatnot. This strategy proved effective especially against Seignorially led armies (particularly the French who were by far the worst about this) which tended to throw tactics to the wind in favor of an impetuous charge.

Then again, in other battles the Ottomans used well-armored Sipahi cavalry up front and Janissaries with large steel shields, while relatively unprotected (and 'disposable') Ancinki light cavalry and (less disposable but equally unprotected) unarmored Janissaries came behind.



It's an important strategic decision where you put the 'hard' troops. Sometimes in a kind of paper-scissors-rocks kind of way, the hardest troops are also vulnerable to the 'softest'. So as Latinized Europeans learned some of the Ottoman strategies they would increasingly accompany their heavily armored lancers with light cavalry (Hungarian / Serbian style Hussars etc.), cavalry archers or mounted crossbowmen, to fend off other light cavalry. This way the knights couldn't be overwhelmed, lassoed and pulled off their horses, and dealt with by other devious strategies common on the Steppe.

Back in ancient Greece and Rome, you saw something similar with cavalry but also light infantry like Velites and Peltasts and so forth.

And even up into WW II, operational theory (and to a large extent I think, evidence of practice) usually dictated that tanks were best used in exploiting a breakthrough while infantry+artillery did the actually breaking through. Tanks being vulnerable to infantry when up close. There were also special assault tanks and assault guns, like the Matilda and the Churchill and the ISU-152 and so on, but these had a more limited role and value than the general purpose tanks like the Pz III, Sherman, and the T-34 (arguably).

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/Beachhd_Btlefrnt/Photos/335.jpg

G

Kiero
2017-03-30, 05:56 PM
The Swiss for example often had the front rank(s) of pikemen wearing almost full armor even while the rearmost ranks had less or none. One of the main reasons for this I think is so that the enemy couldn't stand off outside of range and pepper the pike square with bullets / bolts / arrows / darts / rocks / javelins and thus weaken them.


My understanding of both the hoplite and Makedonian (ie pike) phalanx in antiquity was the same. The richest/best-equipped men fought in the front ranks, the poorer/less-well-equipped men in the ranks behind.

VoxRationis
2017-03-30, 06:07 PM
A sling is not terribly useful on a ship, why wouldn't team galley have archers?

You know "fire arrows" are largely mythical, right?
Truly? Then what did the hwacha fire? I was under the impression that arrow-like structures with small rockets attached were referred to in English as "fire arrows." Or is the hwacha mythical as well?



I haven't proposed anything larger than a five, and I said fives (quinquiremes) would probably massacre them. Even threes (triremes) would do well, especially if piloted by Rhodians or Arcanarnian pirates. A junk has nothing on the speed, acceleration and maneuverability of a Mediterranean galley.

Liburnians are smaller even than threes and carry tiny oarsmen complements, that's completely changing the rules of the game.

For the record, "no larger than" means "the maximum size of any ship in this fleet is that of a quinquereme, and many ships in the fleet, even most, are smaller than that," not "the fleet in question is composed of quinqueremes." I'm sorry for the lack of clarity, but the inclusion liburnians and dromons is not changing the rules of the game.

Max_Killjoy
2017-03-30, 06:37 PM
Truly? Then what did the hwacha fire? I was under the impression that arrow-like structures with small rockets attached were referred to in English as "fire arrows." Or is the hwacha mythical as well?


The hwacha is not mythical. But it used rocket arrows, not fire arrows.

A "fire arrow" is a conventionally "launched" arrow or bolt, with the head somehow set on fire. They were a specialty weapon, and not used in mass volleys in normal combat as depicted in movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTd_0FRAwOQ

Kiero
2017-03-30, 06:38 PM
Truly? Then what did the hwacha fire? I was under the impression that arrow-like structures with small rockets attached were referred to in English as "fire arrows." Or is the hwacha mythical as well?

I mean regular arrows you set on fire. Which is largely impossible. If you mean a specific device that isn't an arrow set on fire, don't say "fire arrows".


For the record, "no larger than" means "the maximum size of any ship in this fleet is that of a quinquereme, and many ships in the fleet, even most, are smaller than that," not "the fleet in question is composed of quinqueremes." I'm sorry for the lack of clarity, but the inclusion liburnians and dromons is not changing the rules of the game.

Then my original points stand. The fives of the leading element will have artillery and loads of marines/archers. The threes that might make up the bulk of the fighting force could rely on archery, speed and ramming. Things of a liburnian size are more likely to be messenger and support vessels, rather than join the others in the line of battle. If the latter make up most of the force, you have to wonder why they're even taking to the water to contest it.

rrgg
2017-03-30, 08:06 PM
You know "fire arrows" are largely mythical, right?


The idea that fire arrows are "just like regular arrows, but better" is largely a myth. There are lots of situations where they wouldn't really be that effective.

However they were still pretty common during sieges and naval combat. Especially in East Asia. In fact, one of the earliest military uses for gunpowder (back before the proportions was really suitable to act as a propellant) was a flammable mixture used to make fire arrows.

Pauly
2017-03-30, 08:49 PM
Historically what ended the reign of the galley in the Mediterranean was the development of the broadside and line of battle formation. The battle of Lepanto, the last major action fought between galley fledts was described as a land battle on floating platforms.

It was a long standing tactic in galley warfare to lash the galleys together to form an impenetrable obstacle that doubled as a much more stable platform for shooting. Sailing vessels can't really do this for fear of entangling their righing.

Before the development of the broadside galleys could se their superior short term maneuvering to assault sailing ships from angles where they couldn't bring sufficient firepower to bear. And galleys survived into the early 1800s pirating sailing merchant vessels and avoiding ships with significant broadsides.

Outside of the Med, galleys were impractical because of their inability to handle heavy seas.

Junks were more clumsy to maneuver than western square rigged galleons (and later designs). They were more like caravels.

Basically the galleys would be able to avoid combat until they had an advantage of some type and then swarm the junks. If the gallley admiral were stupid enough to try a mano a mano head on engagement his captains would probably rebel

snowblizz
2017-03-31, 03:56 AM
I'm only talking about galleys of antiquity, since the original question talked about quinquiremes/fives. They still rammed, it was the Romans who preferred to board only. Hellenistic navies still rammed and used artillery, though they weren't as adept at the former as navies from the Classical era, who didn't have artillery or ships big enough to carry more than a handful of marines. Later galleys didn't even have rams, so of course they wouldn't risk their ship by ramming.

Ironically I was thinking of the later useage of galleys since the Qing dynasty mentioned was about 1600s onwards.


Sailing vessels can't really do this for fear of entangling their righing.

Before the development of the broadside galleys could se their superior short term maneuvering to assault sailing ships from angles where they couldn't bring sufficient firepower to bear. And galleys survived into the early 1800s pirating sailing merchant vessels and avoiding ships with significant broadsides.

You'll find find battles in the 100YW period where they did exactly that, lash together the sailingships. It didn't turn out so well for the French though.

Galleys were the backbone of the in-shore Baltic fleets of Sweden and Russia in the 1700s-1800s. The shallow draft and manouvring around island and narrows gave some edge to the ships who could point-and-shoot. There's some famous paintings from the period where one can see dozens of galleys pouring fire into a larger (shallow-drafted) ship-of-the-line (kinda).

rrgg
2017-03-31, 05:03 PM
Sorry, that was a paucity of details. I'm basically suggesting a white-room scenario. Just off the coast, no adverse weather, a light steady breeze from the side of the engagement. Everyone starts beyond engagement range but within sight range. Team Galley gets composite bows, swords, spears, and slings. Team Junk gets the same, but also fire lances and fire arrows, and possibly grenades.



By the time the Qing came to power the Chinese were using matchlock muskets and western-style cannons. That's going to make it extremely difficult for even a much larger Roman fleet to get close. Even if it were an earlier Chinese fleet armed with simpler guns and firebombs I think the Romans would be in trouble. Although I couldn't give a specific "you would need x number of triremes to win".

Clistenes
2017-03-31, 05:46 PM
War junks had reinforced hulls and their holds were divided into several watertight sections, so a galley's ram would be near useless... even if it managed to breach the hull, the junk wouldn't sink.

Also, junks often had relatively low boards, but the Chinese often built wooden walls on war ones, like a forecastle that would cover the whole length of the ship:


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JOS5zecJZRg/VZfdyl_8n-I/AAAAAAAAA1U/GCc_raTn460/s1600/fuchuan.png
http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/3d6b54e382fd4af8acd0ca08674abd2c/transport-transportation-navigation-china-war-junk-after-drawing-by-b48cg5.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Chinese_war_junk_from_Zheng_Ruozeng%27s_Chouhai_tu bian_%281562%29.jpg/220px-Chinese_war_junk_from_Zheng_Ruozeng%27s_Chouhai_tu bian_%281562%29.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/Radpaddelsch.jpg/180px-Radpaddelsch.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Tiangong_Kaiwu_Ship.jpg/220px-Tiangong_Kaiwu_Ship.jpg

Lemmy
2017-04-02, 03:32 PM
I have a few questions about weapon weight... I have some idea about what might be the answer, based on my knowledge of physics, but I prefer not to assume, so I want ask you guys:

1- At what point, if any, would a melee weapon be considered "too light"?

3- How would that point change between slashing/piercing weapons and bludgeoning ones?

3- When it comes to weapons... Would there be any use for a material that's considerably heavier, but otherwise identical to steel (i.e.: has similar hardness, ductility, etc)?

Vinyadan
2017-04-02, 04:21 PM
You can kill a man with a 200 gram or 300 gram hammer, but you can't with a 10 gram hammer. You can kill a man with a 10 gram sword, but a sparring opponent with a normal sword would easily push it away with his own, if they came into contact; there's also the fact that some weight in certain places helps slashing.
In general a piercing weapon doesn't need much weight, if not for parrying and such. Instead, you need to be able to impress strength on the weapon so that it gets through. This means that you will sometimes attach a weight to it and use it as a spike on a hammer. Other times you will use mechanic implements (bows). Smallswords however were very light, and only meant for piercing. You also have knives, which pretty much only need to be sharp and pointy to be effective. Bayonets and spears used the shaft to impress strength. Knights used their super heavy horses.

Dane war axes were lighter than wood axes. Their blade was much thinner, because men are softer than wood, and so they lost some weight and overkill power (and solidity) which would have come at the cost of speed.

In general, a war mace is lighter than a sledgehammer. However, mauls were used in war not only to drive spikes into immobilized armoured opponents, but also as a "true" weapon.

I don't know about heavier steel. Higher weight generally means higher density; maybe as a radiation shield? But it would be good for sword training. Some Japanese schools use oversize wooden training swords to make using a lighter weapon easier.

Mr Beer
2017-04-02, 05:20 PM
A metal that's denser than steel but otherwise exactly the same might have better armour piercing qualities. I'm not sure of the physics, but perhaps the spike on a warhammer would be more effective at piercing plate if it were denser than a larger steel spike of the same weight.

Other than that, the only benefit I could think of for such a weapon material over steel would be for superhumanly strong but human sized warriors. So you get a weapon that looks relatively normal but is far more massive. However, it's likely cheaper to just use steel and make the weapon thicker.

Pauly
2017-04-02, 08:37 PM
Generally speaking most one handd weapons weighed between 1 and 1.5kgs. There are some lighter examples such as small swords and some heavier examples such as basket hilted rapiers.

What I infer from that is that there is an optimum weight for one handed weapns which is based on a speed -v- damage trade off. If a weapon is too heavy it will be too slow and if it is too light it fails to do sufficient damage.

For two handed weapons designed to be used dynamically (i.e. Not pikes) the weight band is wider from 1.8 or 2 kgs up to about 4 kgs. But with two handed weapons there is a wider variety of lengths/purposes/usages. Which again infers there is an optimal speed to damage point, although that point is less well defined with 2 handed weapons vis a vis one handed weapons.

As for a metal denser than steel. Lead was known to be used to add mass to a sword pommel and to addd extra mass on some some flails, but generally it wasn't widely used. If the hypothetical metal exsted you couls use it to make sword pommels smaller. It prbobly would be an advantage for polearms such as a poleaxe where you could make smaller denser heads that theoretically would have superior penetrating power than steel heads.

Because weapons fall into certain weight bands, and I will assume that my earlier inference is correct and this is optimal from a speed -v- damage trade off. Then if the hypothetical metal is made into sword blades then the swords will have to be less thick and less wide than steel blades. At which point you could well come into problems with the blades lacking sufficient strength. So for swords you would need to completely re-engineer the geometry. Maybe it would be useful for estocs and similar armor punching blades, but for cutting blades like sabers and falchions maybe steel would be better.

Incanur
2017-04-02, 09:21 PM
Certain one-handed sidearms were as light as 1lb (453g), most notably the smallsword. While the smallsword has a poor reputation, the weight of the evidence indicates that it was/is at least a decent sidearm for an unarmored duel. A lot of 18th/19th-century sidearm swords were under 1kg (2.2lbs).

Denser steel would be excellent for bullets, whether for firearms or slings. It'd probably be good for certain arrowhead designs and for other projectile weapons.

Pauly
2017-04-02, 10:48 PM
Certain one-handed sidearms were as light as 1lb (453g), most notably the smallsword. While the smallsword has a poor reputation, the weight of the evidence indicates that it was/is at least a decent sidearm for an unarmored duel. A lot of 18th/19th-century sidearm swords were under 1kg (2.2lbs).

Denser steel would be excellent for bullets, whether for firearms or slings. It'd probably be good for certain arrowhead designs and for other projectile weapons.

While some sabers, spadrons,hangers, etc. were lighter than 1 kg many were very close, 800g generally being the lightest except for small swords and variations of the small sword.

The other factor is that the very light sidearm, below 1kg is generally associated with the gunpowder era. Earlier sidearms from the era where armor was relatively common generally start at around 1 kg. Yes there are lighter examples, but it is very uncommon for weapoons from that era to be significantly lighter than 1 kg.

Martin Greywolf
2017-04-03, 02:18 AM
The chief question you need to answer when looking at weapon range, especially melee weapons, is "what will it go up against?". With smallswords meant for training or duelling only, you go as low as c 500g in rare cases, for most of the weapons used in military, it's almost always in 800 - 1800 grams range, with the upper limit being rather extreme and seen in bastard swords that are rather questionably one handed (you can usually only stab with them when on foot).

Thing is, ince you have a battlefield sidearm, you're not going to be facing just other sidearms/swords, you're going to be up against spears, daneaxes, halberds, pikes and whatever other polearms there are. You need to have enough mass in your weapon to be able to at least redirect and ideally directly block blows from those weapons.

Of course, not all eras are equal. Most medieval one handed sideswords tend to be in the 1000 - 1300 gram range, since they would be facing two handed axes, but many later Ottoman footman sabres can be as little as 700 - 900 grams, since there weren't that many polearms, and bayonets were primarily thrusting weapons (i.e. needed much less force to be parried).

Interestingly enough, you see something similar with katanas - sengoku jidai katanas are usually heavier (battlefield use mostly), edo period tend to be lighter (duelling mostly). The range is, again, about 800 - 1500 grams.

As for weight to cause damage, unless you go stupidly low, you could compensate for that rather easily by putting more of the mass towards the tip, that increases your effective mass when you hit something. Where you do need significant weight is at armor penetration, but swords were never meant to do that with inertia - that's what maces are for. I have a bastard sword and a bastard sabre that are almost exact same weight and length, but the saber is significantly more choppy thanks to weight distribution. To have an idea how light you can get with this approach,. early and high medieval knobbed maces had heads with weight around 300 g.

Last note: being able to block a daneaxe with a sword doesn't mean you'll be able to stop their biggest forehand from above blow with ease - you most likely won't. It means you'll be able to stop the quick, hard hits they do from the shoulder, and be able to redirect the big eff you stuff. If you have at least a gambeson and a helmet, you may also be able to slow the big blow enough to make it ineffective (well, not able to actually cut you at least), but this can and does cause bruising more often than not.

DerKommissar
2017-04-03, 05:37 AM
I have a question for you:

I read about the 8.8 Flak from WWII, that it was used a lot in fighting ground targets. On Wikipedia its high penetration power is given as a reason for that. Could one of you explain to me, why the penetration was higher than e.g. the PAK 40 and why it was overall so much better than anti-tank guns that were specifically designed for that purpose? It seems it was also successfully used against Bunkers and Ships…

Thanks in advance!

Kiero
2017-04-03, 05:47 AM
Last note: being able to block a daneaxe with a sword doesn't mean you'll be able to stop their biggest forehand from above blow with ease - you most likely won't. It means you'll be able to stop the quick, hard hits they do from the shoulder, and be able to redirect the big eff you stuff. If you have at least a gambeson and a helmet, you may also be able to slow the big blow enough to make it ineffective (well, not able to actually cut you at least), but this can and does cause bruising more often than not.

A block is the least skilful, and likely least successful form of defence against an attack. Stopping an attack dead on your weapon/shield/forearm/whatever is the worst option, since you're absorbing all the energy of that attack.

A parry, ie deflecting the attack aside into a new direction of motion, is better, since you only absorb a fraction of the force. That could be combined with a redirect - sending the attack in a direction of your choice, not merely away from your body.

An intercept/interrupt, ie interfering with the attack before it's even completed it's motion, is better still. Especially for redirecting.

Brother Oni
2017-04-03, 07:08 AM
I have a question for you:

I read about the 8.8 Flak from WWII, that it was used a lot in fighting ground targets. On Wikipedia its high penetration power is given as a reason for that. Could one of you explain to me, why the penetration was higher than e.g. the PAK 40 and why it was overall so much better than anti-tank guns that were specifically designed for that purpose? It seems it was also successfully used against Bunkers and Ships…

Thanks in advance!

TL,DR: Bigger guns makes bigger holes.

Long answer:
The 8.8cm Flak was originally designed to be an anti-aircraft weapon, so it has project its shell to a high altitude. This requires a great deal of energy in the form of propellant as you're fighting against gravity while you're trying to get distance.
When you then aim this thing at a target at ground level, you no longer have to fight against gravity, so it gives your shell additional power against a target (especially for kinetic penetrators).

One of the issues with re-tasking an anti-aircraft gun for ground targets is elevation - the barrel often cannot aim low enough to hit a comparatively close range ground target, so they took the 8.8 base and developed it as a specific anti-tank gun, the Pak 43.

The Pak 43 used a variety of shells, but the APCR variant (a kinetic penetrator) had a 8.8cm calibre shell, with a range of 3km and muzzle velocity of 1130 m/s; in comparison, the Pak 40's APCR had a 7.5cm calibre shell, with a direct fire range of ~1.8km and muzzle velocity of ~990m/s.


Longer answer:
This sounds like a homework question to me, so I'll carry on with a brief explanation of the main factor for penetration: these type of shells depend on kinetic energy to penetrate their targets. The harder your shell hits the target, the more likely you will penetrate; in physics terms, this is defined as kinetic energy and is equal to 0.5 x mass x velocity2.

For KE, the bigger the better so if you look at the equation, if you double your projectile mass, you'll only double your KE, but if you double your projectile speed, you'll quadruple your KE, so throwing an object faster hurts more than throwing a larger object.
Throwing an object very fast requires a lot of energy, which is stored in the form of propellant in a shell. The 8.8cm had a larger cartridge (the part of the projectile that holds both the shell and the propellant) in both diameter and length compared to the 7.5cm, so it could store more propellant and hence throw its shell faster.

There's more complicated factors in play here (eg projectile surface area to permit propellant thrust, projectile integrity and hardness, etc), but I'm out of time, plus your eyes have probably glazed over by now.

snowblizz
2017-04-03, 08:29 AM
TL,DR: Bigger guns makes bigger holes.


Should probably also be mentioned that the idea to build a highpower anti-tank gun hadn't kicked in as there had been no need for one. The Flak 88 had properties a anti-tank gun would need at a time when those needs had not been realsied yet.

Think the standard antitank gun was something like 37mm gun (or even smaller) at the start of the war which quickly became rather underpowered as the war gained momentum. (most) Inter-war tanks were not developed much and were puny compared to what was deployed once it all started (with the caveat that most ww2 tank projects started before it started to some degree).

Storm_Of_Snow
2017-04-03, 08:35 AM
Larger shell, longer range, higher muzzle velocity from the 88 - don't know whether the variety of rounds available might also have made the 88 more useful for general use rather than just an anti-tank role (the Pak 40 needed Tungsten for one of its rounds, which was in short supply), but it could well be another reason it stayed in use when more heavily armoured tanks came into service (plus you can point it back at the sky and put it back into the AA role when you don't need it for artillery duty).

It was also in service during the Spanish Civil War, so there'll have been more people who know how to use one compared to later guns.

Carl
2017-04-03, 11:21 AM
As noted above you need a shell with a lot of KE and Momentum, (momentum is Mass x Velocity), to get to high altitudes effectively. Those just happen to also be good qualities for an anti-tank gun. But no one really realised this at the time. Anti-tank weaponry development was really still in it's infancy at the start of WW2 with some nations still fielding very large calibre, (>50cal, or some smaller calibre with a propellent charge bigger than a 50 cal), rifles as anti-tank weapons. Nobody had even considered an anti-tank gun in the size rnage of 88mm, or any other big AAA gun, so no one had made the connection between the way good AAA statistics also made for a good Anti-Tank weapon.

Max_Killjoy
2017-04-03, 12:53 PM
As noted above you need a shell with a lot of KE and Momentum, (momentum is Mass x Velocity), to get to high altitudes effectively. Those just happen to also be good qualities for an anti-tank gun. But no one really realised this at the time. Anti-tank weaponry development was really still in it's infancy at the start of WW2 with some nations still fielding very large calibre, (>50cal, or some smaller calibre with a propellent charge bigger than a 50 cal), rifles as anti-tank weapons. Nobody had even considered an anti-tank gun in the size rnage of 88mm, or any other big AAA gun, so no one had made the connection between the way good AAA statistics also made for a good Anti-Tank weapon.

Yes and no. The US was already working on AT guns based on AA guns before the war. (The 3" gun on the M10 tank destroyer was developed from the 3-inch M1918 AA gun, for example.)

Storm Bringer
2017-04-03, 01:00 PM
I have a question for you:

I read about the 8.8 Flak from WWII, that it was used a lot in fighting ground targets. On Wikipedia its high penetration power is given as a reason for that. Could one of you explain to me, why the penetration was higher than e.g. the PAK 40 and why it was overall so much better than anti-tank guns that were specifically designed for that purpose? It seems it was also successfully used against Bunkers and Ships…

Thanks in advance!


As others have said, the reason purpose built AT guns were weaker was that the 88mm FlAK was that people, planning off existing and projected tanks, believed that they only needed guns in the 35-45mm range.

Such guns are much smaller, and easier to move, hide and fight than the 88mm was, so it made sense to use a smaller gun that could do the job (like how we don't issue .50 cal rifles to our line infantry, when 7.62 and 5.56 will do the job with a smaller, more handy weapon). A quick search found this image, which shows a 37mm PAK 35 in front of a 88mm PAK 43 (http://forum.valka.cz/files/pak35_36_pak43_146.jpg) (based of the 88m FLAK guns), which shows just how much smaller and easier to hide the 37mm was.

In short, during the pre war build up, the 88mm was simply overkill for AT work, with a few exceptions just starting to come into service, almost no tank needed that much gun to beat.


Should probably also be mentioned that the idea to build a highpower anti-tank gun hadn't kicked in as there had been no need for one. The Flak 88 had properties a anti-tank gun would need at a time when those needs had not been realsied yet.

Think the standard antitank gun was something like 37mm gun (or even smaller) at the start of the war which quickly became rather underpowered as the war gained momentum. (most) Inter-war tanks were not developed much and were puny compared to what was deployed once it all started (with the caveat that most ww2 tank projects started before it started to some degree).

Yhea, the Germans in France nicknamed their 37mm guns the "Türklopfer" (Doorknocker), since all it did against the Allies heavy infantry tanks was "announce its presence" by pinging shells off the thick frontal armour. that led to a crash program to up-gun the German tank fleet, but even in 1941 they were still struggling with the t-34 and Kv-1 tanks in Russia.

BayardSPSR
2017-04-03, 04:09 PM
Yhea, the Germans in France nicknamed their 37mm guns the "Türklopfer" (Doorknocker), since all it did against the Allies heavy infantry tanks was "announce its presence" by pinging shells off the thick frontal armour. that led to a crash program to up-gun the German tank fleet, but even in 1941 they were still struggling with the t-34 and Kv-1 tanks in Russia.

Conversely, if I remember correctly the Soviets had developed a high-velocity 57mm anti-tank gun at the start of the war, but ceased production to simplify logistics after finding that existing weapons were sufficient to deal with the the German tanks of the day, only to reintroduce the weapon later in the war as heavier German armor started to appear.

Meanwhile, the Germans were bringing Soviet anti-tank guns into service as quickly as they could capture them (which was pretty quickly, at least in 1941), to be better able to deal with the better-armored Soviet tanks.

So part of the reason there was so much use of the 8.8cm Flak was pre-war intelligence failures.

As far as I can tell, the 8.8 was used in an anti-tank role less frequently later in the war (and never in the same concentrations as in North Africa), but it had already earned a fearsome reputation at that point, and I suspect Allied tankers might have started to misidentify all German anti-tank guns as "eighty-eights."

DerKommissar
2017-04-03, 04:21 PM
Thank you guys for your answers! I think its now clearer to me why the penetration achieved was higher.

Was the 8.8 Flak also able to have a higher rate of fire?

I guess the targeting system should also work quicker, as it was build to shot down fast and 3 dimensional moving airplanes - does this make a difference when using against ground vehicles?

As to the targeting system itself (this might be too specific, but maybe somebody knows):

The German Wiki page on the "Flak 41" names the "Kommandogerät 41" as targeting system. I couldnt find it in the english version, so I give a short summary of what it says there:

The "Kommandogeräte 41" was a computer which optically traces the target. The data was automatically (!) computed into an "M"-Value (the plane) and a "T"-Value (the point where you aim at in order to hit "M"). The data was transmitted to the 4 Flaks of a Flak Battery and to each of their horzontal and vertical measuring instruments and the instrument which adjusted the timer of the grenade. The operator had to manually change the aiming of the Flak till it matched the calculated "T"-Value.

Does any one of you know how the computation of optical impulses to create an electronic target aid worked? I can imagine it nowadays with digital camera technology and laser/gps systems, but in the description its called a "mechanical analog computer", so I have no idea how that worked especially if you have a very limited window of oportunity with fast moving planes...

Storm Bringer
2017-04-03, 05:31 PM
Thank you guys for your answers! I think its now clearer to me why the penetration achieved was higher.

Was the 8.8 Flak also able to have a higher rate of fire?

I guess the targeting system should also work quicker, as it was build to shot down fast and 3 dimensional moving airplanes - does this make a difference when using against ground vehicles?

As to the targeting system itself (this might be too specific, but maybe somebody knows):

The German Wiki page on the "Flak 41" names the "Kommandogerät 41" as targeting system. I couldnt find it in the english version, so I give a short summary of what it says there:

The "Kommandogeräte 41" was a computer which optically traces the target. The data was automatically (!) computed into an "M"-Value (the plane) and a "T"-Value (the point where you aim at in order to hit "M"). The data was transmitted to the 4 Flaks of a Flak Battery and to each of their horzontal and vertical measuring instruments and the instrument which adjusted the timer of the grenade. The operator had to manually change the aiming of the Flak till it matched the calculated "T"-Value.

Does any one of you know how the computation of optical impulses to create an electronic target aid worked? I can imagine it nowadays with digital camera technology and laser/gps systems, but in the description its called a "mechanical analog computer", so I have no idea how that worked especially if you have a very limited window of oportunity with fast moving planes...

right, a analog computer is one that uses gears or other physical means to represent variables in a maths equation. so, you would have inputs like altitude, speed, etc all as dials you turned to adjust to match the given values needed, and it would then use these to produce a output (in this case the point of aim).


while the planers might be flying fast, the 88mm was meant to engage targets flying high up on level bombing runs (hence the high speed shells, to reach that height), which would extend the engagement window to several minutes in some cases, which made aiming a much easier task. Against low flying planes, smaller calibre AA guns (like the 20mm and 40mm autocannons) were used instead.

the computer couldn't take the inputs directly form a optical sight. instead, you had a bloke looking though it who shouted out the approximate height, speed and bearing of the target (he had various methods of judging them, but I don't know specifics, but likely based on co-incidence range finding), and another man who was inputing them into the computer, which then transmitted its output (the firing solution) via electrical wire to the gunner aim dials, who then raised and aimed the gun. its not what we would call "automatic" today, but it was "automatic" in the sense that it told the gunners the firing solution without someone having to do the maths longhand and then yell it out to the gun layers.

the whole set up sounds similar to what was done on naval ships of the time, just on a smaller scale.

now, all this Is fine if you have a clear, distinct target (like a bomber on its bomb run), but it wasn't meant or really able to work for ground targets. it was more a way to get all 4 guns In the battery firing at the same aim point so you only had to adjust one point of aim rather than 4. for ground targets you needed a different sort of sighting system, normally a much simpler (in comparison) one that was mainly a telescopic sight with a Stadiametric rangefinder (Wiki that word and you'll find a description of how that works). the fire control computer would be far too clumsy to give meaningful fire control against ground targets, so the Flak would be fired under local control, and over open sights on the gun (or a ground sight like those used for tanks and AT guns)



As far as I can tell, the 8.8 was used in an anti-tank role less frequently later in the war (and never in the same concentrations as in North Africa), but it had already earned a fearsome reputation at that point, and I suspect Allied tankers might have started to misidentify all German anti-tank guns as "eighty-eights."

short answer; kinda

longer answer: the FlAK 88 was phased out in favour or dedicated, purpose made 88mm AT guns (the PAK 43). as well as intermediate calibre 50mm and 75mm PAK guns, so their was less need to use a AA gun in a AT role, as suitable AT guns were produced.


but your right, their is a high chance that a lot of mid calibre AT guns were ID'd as 88mm by nervous allied tankers, just like a lot of german tanks were assumed to be Tigers tanks until proven otherwise.

Pauly
2017-04-03, 07:44 PM
Other people have hiton the main points, but a few other points.

Because the 88 had a larger shell it retained killing power at longer ranges than smaller shells. For example 75L70 in the Panther and JagdPanzer IVL70 had better penetration below about 500 meters similar penetration for 500 to 1500 meters but the 88 had more penetration from 1500 meters. Air resistance slows down lighter objects more quickly.

The 88 had larger crews so the supply of shells could be kept up at a faster rate. Which means for practical purposes the 88 had a higher sustained fire rate than dedicated ATGs, even though on paper the ATGs had similar firing rates. The downside of this was that the 88 was a bigger softer target to return fire.

The FLAK 88 really built its reputation in the western desert and the steppes of Russia. In both environments the enemy tankers had aggressive doctrnes and the Germans had great success using their tanks to lure enemy tanks into kill boxes where the 88s were in camoflaged prepared positions. The 88 was able to fully utilize its superior lange range performance in conjunction with smaller ATGs and tanks providing support. Also many British-tanks of the time were not issued with HE shells and were unable to respond directly to 88s.
Later in the war when terrain closed ranges and enemy tanks were better able to target 88s with HE shells at range the FLAK 88 became much less effective, but still retained its earler reputation.

Carl
2017-04-03, 07:48 PM
@Storm Bringer. I believe eventually systems did develop that could autonomously input, but they were late war. The real issue was that IRL the computers couldn't calculate fast enough. Naval systems had the same issue with dive bombers. Good little video i got linked to on another forum once, gets a few bits wrong in comparison to naval systems, but that has to do with Ship's generally being able to handle complicated machinery better in a mobile form:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWtQz7qp_v8

Lemmy
2017-04-03, 08:37 PM
Thank you all for your answers. I really appreciate it. :smallsmile:

Squared
2017-04-04, 12:16 AM
I apparently cant't post links. Just search for U.S. Navy analog computer training video. Very cool stuff, very well explained as to how it all works.

^2

DerKommissar
2017-04-04, 01:19 AM
Thanks for the explanation, you guys are awwsome! ☺

One thing about the aiming computer, it says in the wiki (quote)
"Bei Tag wurde mittels des Raumbildentfernungsmessers (Em4mR) auf Basis 4 m das Ziel optisch erfasst und verfolgt. Diese Werte wurden in den Kommandorechner automatisch („Kommandogerät 41“) eingegeben."

Translation: "During the day the coincidence rangefinder [?] was used to optically trace the target on a "basis 4 m". This data was automatically entered into the Comando computer ("kommandogerät 41")"

It seems at some point there was a direct optical input which was analogely computed? How does that even work haha ;)

As explained by stormbringer: human measuring optics and shouting variables, other human punching them into computer - this could probably be done with 17-18th century mechanic calculators. But the direct link optical - computing puzzles me when theres no digital computing in use...