Common Misconceptions - Technology & War 

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Cracked me up too XD

I am not French, I am Belgian. H.Poirot Our friend here is from Austria 🇦🇹, he is not German, maybe somehow through magic 🪄 similar views might be there 😂.

well as far as I know US military was testing out new doctrine out there. and not without a successes either they were pretty much winning the war until the social noise about "hurrdurr brutal soldiers doing nasty things in vietnam why did we even send those boys there" and the drama that arose back in their homeland because war was shown to the wide public for the first time. Imagine kinda like tsushima in russo-japanese war but instead with russians winning it but the citizens being upset over realisation that war is a nasty thing.

@MehrumesDagon The American "bodycount doctrine was stupid and it didn't bring America close to victory. On the contrary, it incentivised false statistics, and massacres on civilians to get the body count number up.... because if the enemy lost more men than they could replace then the war soon be won the US Military promised. However, this promise turned out to be false. Truth is that the US Military had no idea how many Vietcongs and North Vietnamease army men were out there. So while the US Military promised a soon victory in 1967, those dreams were soon scattered with the tet-offensive in 1968. And the tet-offensive was far from this outstanding American victory like the mainstream narrative goes, because even despite the Vietcong leadership got totally wiped out in the cities and the vietcong took heavy losses, the war still progressed as before with equally high losses for the Americans as previous years. And while the Americans won the battle for the cities, they also at the same time lose all the control of the countryside as units were moving from the countryside into the cities to take them back. So the war continued. And American solidiers got tired of this stupid bodycount doctrine, because the military leadership just saw them as expandable materia that could be replaced with new recruits if someone died when a careerist officer wanted his medals and promotions. The stupid and costly fighting to take Hamburger hill is a typical example of this doctrine. In other wars Armies fight to gain control over vital areas - the Normandy beachhead, the Caucausus oilfields and so on.... But in Vietnam the Americans just attacked the worthless Hamburger Hill to kill Vietcongs, and then they just abandoned this hill soon after, even if many men had fought and died to get it, and within a few months would the Vietcong be back in control over it. So all this crap made the morale in the American Army to fall apart, and fragging became common from 1969 and onwards, and the unreported numbers are surely higher than even the official statistics. And the reason was simple, the solidiers were throwing handgrenades at their own officers because they didn't wanna die in some pointless offensive. And the search-and-avoid operations became common as well as more fraudgelent reporting of bodycounts, so that the leadership would be happy with the numbers and not try to play more aggressive and the send the men out on dangerous missions to get the bodycount number up. All in all did the morale fall apart and a continuation of the war was no longer possible for Americas part, as the men refused to obey their own officers. So who is the blame for the defeat? The US Military and its stupid doctrine. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lFvcuuS5eUI.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Hpr1HYZDzHY.html

nattygsbord You have the right point, but it's oversimplification to say body count is stupid. In a war of attrition, number is ultimately a factor, it's just that's never what warfare is about.

nattygsbord loved this comment

“To win 1000 battles is not the acme of military excellence, but to break your opponent without fighting.” -Sun Tzu (heavily paraphrased I might add)

Charles Lathrop a phrase that can be applied to almost the entire history of Germany

haha good one

Germany before unification

"Please, excuse him, he hasn't slept since 1945."

@@deltoroperdedor3166 >a phrase that can be applied to almost the entire history of Germany And France. And Italy. And Poland. ANd AHHHH MOTHERLAND

Even small innovations no one thinks about have helped the western world getting an edge over Asia, Arabia and the rest. Just things like church bells, clocks and glasses. The first thing gave us the experience of iron melting that allowed us to make the first cannons. And the glasses allowed a highly skilled precision worker to double his service life, even he passed the age of 30 and his eyes was starting to turn shitty. And this process of making better glass then allowed us to make telescopes and microscopes and using our skills in making mechanical clocks into making high precision tools with microscopic precision.

+nattygsbord I am pretty sure, that cannons in their early form originated in China, but I see your point.

edi True, to a degree, but I'd argue that the development of full plate harnesses came about as armorers figured out how to make plates of steel large enough to make the armor from and not necessarily a result of being able to make better steel. Longswords came about as a result of plate armor and fighting men needing a better sword to get around plate armor by being designed more for thrusting into small gaps in the armor rather than trying to cut exposed parts of the body. Rapiers came about more as fashion item and for personal defense than as a counter to any particular form of armor or as the result of any particular technological breakthrough/advancement in metallurgy.

Longswords were not developed to defeat plate armour, but because of them. With good enough armour, no shield was required allowing the use of two hands on one weapon (yes, polearms existed before, but that put speermen into a huge disadvantage against ranged weapons). To defeat plate armour you best take a poleaxe.1) The sword would be your back-up weapon. Higher purity steel and forges allowing to heat-treat larger pieces allowed bigger swords. Bigger swords have a ranged advantage and are more intimidating. Similarly, the forges allowed the production of plate armour where before only scale armour like brigandines were possible. Helmets had to be riveted together from smaller pieces, whereas later, they were hammered into shape from a single plate in many cases. I'm not an expert on rapiers, but I do think that civilians wanted to keep the range advantage of a longsword, while having a lighter and more agile weapon. Many early rapiers cut well enough to seriously wound an unarmoured opponent. Combine that with the range and tip-speed, the rapier becomes a quite impressive weapon for civilians. I guess slender blades were also to show off the smiths skill, just like the fancy guards and gold and jewellry inlays. 1) the second best weapon is a mace together with a shield. After the opponent was knocked down, you typically would finish him off with a rondell dagger. Stabbing though gaps in the armour was more of a last resort thing, just like flipping a sword around and using it as a warhammer. Swords became more thrust-centric because they needed to fight more and more people wearing mail armour. The problem was that swords were the best weapons against unarmoured or lightly armoured opponents, but more and more people were wearing armour. If you carry only one melee weapon, you probably still go for a sword and hope that most enemies you'll face have enough unarmoured spots to slash and stabb. This does not mean that swords became thrust-centric because of plate armour. If someone wears a breastplate and helmet, you could still use a 1796 light cavalry sabre. Gambesson and mail however, force you to thrust.

Yes, the iron source played a great role. Woodz-steel in India, the same in Damascus and Ferrum Norricum for the Romans (which came by meteor and allowed them to make actual plate armour 500+ years before anyone else repeated that feat in Europe!). Any blacksmith can attempt to make a knife, but the quality was in most cases was abysmal. However, over time iron purification evolved considerably and in the high middle ages it already surpassed the technology of the Japanese from the 16th c. Pretty much any smith could get their hands on quality iron. If they had a decent forge and the knowledge, they could all make knives, with enough experience even swords. Over time, the gap between knife smiths and sword smiths decreased and the guild fought fiercely to protect their privileges. That was the time the messer family emerged. At the beginning they were only 50cm blades very similar to khyber knives, but soon they even became comparable to longswords. The hilting and one edged blade were for legal reasons (not so much weapon law, but guild, however in osme places double edged swords were for nobility and war only).

Just found it on Amazon..nice

Whats always amusing / terrifying is the difference between the climes of effectiveness beforehand and gloomy after action reports.

Lame. It’s no fun if your the biggest fish in a small pond. Although I think the biggest issue is whether or not Star Citizen will enable as much strategic game play as we hope. Everything hinges on how everything balances out, and regardless of what CIG claim they want, what they can deliver may be very different. As far as I’ve studied history, there were few idiot commanders in history. They just made a tiny mistake, and that was their undoing. And frequently, that mistake wasn’t even under their control. The mistake was, perhaps most often, getting involved in a war with the wrong country at the wrong time, and frequently, the enemy gave them little choice. Thus, if there is ANY advantageous way to fight in Star Citizen, it will be abused. That includes methods that degrade both the complexity and enjoyment from combat... especially those two.

What a coincidence! I've just finished watching the whole of your Operation Market-Garden video.

Andres - what did you think of it? That's my oldest history documentary, so be nice! :) Slane - I am working towards more. They just take time to get them right.

Still waiting for Stalingrad ;) I thought it was great. Different timing from usual, but still great. I really liked the way you portray the territory occupied by the different units, that should make a comeback.

Axel Pingol - Surprisingly, it was intentional. Waffenamt believed that weapons would have to be upgraded and replaced too often to justify mass production. In retrospect, they were wrong, but without the benefit of hindsight it made logical sense. Also, the fact that funds were stretched thin surely played a role. (Source: Vol 1 “Panzer Truppen: Complete Guide go Creation and Combat Deployment of Germany’s Task Force)

TIK it was the Ford company who was specialised in this technology. There most important designer went to Russia to instruct the Soviets how to design there production process (source The Marshall Foundation) . Wikipedia ‘ to construct an integrated automobile-manufacturing plant at Nizhny Novgorod. Many American engineers and skilled auto workers moved to the Soviet Union to work on the plant and its production lines, which was named Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod (GAZ), or Gorki Automotive Plant in 1932.’

Actually, the evidence is that the defeat at Isandlwana was not due to shortage of ammunition, but rather technical issues surrounding said ammunition and weaponry. For example, a large portion of the ammunition was carried in wooden boxes that were screwed down. While that meant that the ammunition was safely and properly delivered to the site of the fighting, it also meant, especially with only one screwdriver available, that soldiers could run out of ammunition because the boxes could not be opened quickly enough when it was being expended in large amounts. Another problem was with the rifles which had a bad matchup between bullet and ammunition charge. Or in other words, the rifles overheated because of the high rate of fire. There were other components to the British loss regarding ammunition and the rifles, but this'll be enough.

I thought the thing with the overheats was that it was only a problem thanks to how spread out the British line was set up. If the line had been concentrated closer to the camp, there would've been more working guns at any given area, allowing jammed and overheated rifles to be fixed under the cover of comrades with functioning rifles. As it was, with a spread out skirmish line, a few failures left major holes in the British kill zone, allowing the Zulus to break through the line and turn the battle into a chaotic melee. A tighter deployment and/or laagered camp would've let the British keep the Zulus at arms length for longer, and probably carried the battle. If Isandlwana was lost due to technology malfunctions rather than complacency and command incompetence, why wasn't it repeated? The British pretty much massacred the Zulus at every other engagement during the war, using the same tech as they had at Isandlwana. Which would suggest that something other than tech issues were the root cause of the Isandlwana defeat.

Boo, he also neglected to mention that France was under Napoleon III, the Emperor of Phail. Napoleon III is the Leroy Jenkins of the late 19th Century.

@@johnd2058 And nobody gave a single shit.

Contrary to what it may seem, a revolver in muddy trenches isn't what you want. There are giant gaps around the cylinder. If mud gets in that, it's not gonna just work. Semi automatic pistols are more complicated, but by that time they were reliable enough to not be a problem. The 1911 went through US military trials with no real reliability issues, and the P08 luger has been put through mud tests and still functioned fairly well even though the same type of test. Well made bolt action rifles aren't inherently inferior to lever actions either. Maybe for trench raids, but I'd rather have a BAR than either.

@@Tinfoil_Hardhat The 1911 is good, P08 is better per InRange mud tests. Assuming I'm American or French I probably can't have a P08 and it isn't really compatible with my other choices (lever, Bowie knife). Revolvers can be fired from inside a great coat pocket or an oiled canvas bag, so I can keep it clean. They are also much easier to clean than a P08. Check out Paul Harrell's shooting a revolver from a pocket vid. And the stopping power of a 45 revolver and 1911 are both good. Some of this comes down to goals. An M1917 Enfield isn't bad all around but I ONLY care about trench raid defense or offense because it determines MY rate of survival. People across no man's land died from machineguns & artillery. I don't really care if I miss people them with my lever gun. The BAR looks really good on paper, but I've never seen one positively reviewed (too heavy). I'd probably prefer a stationary Lewis gun if I was assigned a machinegun. I'd prefer a BAR gun for trench defense, but it isn't ideal for hauling across no man's land AND back in the middle of the night. Especially the getting back part. In any case, I for sure prefer Lever gun/revolver to some of the weapon combos that were issued in mass like Lebel & 32ACP pistol or a 1903 & Colt Pocket Hammerless.

Same artillery superiority nearly allowed Germans to win WWI.

If it weren't so difficult I expect someone might have managed it by now.

If you want to conquer the world, the best way would be to acquire the United States, China, Russia, and Japan first. provided you had the logistics and administrative know-how to keep everything running smoothly up to that point, those four countries would give you the industrial capacity to fuel your army for decades, provided France doesn't wise up and nuke your factories.

Ryan Cauffman Sure! Let's start with the 3 most powerful countries first! I don't see ANYTHING wrong with that plan. *evil laugh*

Reg Ner go big or go to gulag

Ryan Cauffman Why would you want Japan

I think he meant the food wasn't talking as much back then

But has food really changed that much over the years?

I think he wanted to write conservation

-conversation- _preservation_

merci segnor

They eat the consonants...

Delicious buttered French Consonants.

omg lol

Man, it's always the French that have to correct someone's pronunciation.

Forgive us, we probably got used to have whole Europe surrenduring to us in early XIXth century.

whole europe? it wasn't even half of europe all the french conquered were loose states or countries in civil unrest when they met the russians well that was a different story

Totalferdox you should refresh your knowledge of the era

BananaCriesSheep already holding the ground

-Pierre Dudoret Then A brilliant Frenchman discovered that by properly folding a white flag, it could fit beneath a beret, freeing the French soldier from choosing between it or his cigarettes and copies of Guide Michelin. The rest, as we say, is history.

Ted Fields something that the US military dont seem to master properly

@@fulcrum2951 Que vietnam

Ted Fields human intelligence is the reason we fight each other because fighting what used to be predators is now a sport or a business

hehe, nice one 😋

i dont get it

The text reads "avoid to avoid", so MHV cut out the audio of himself reading that portion of the text.

thanks. overlooked that one.

Diesel engines are not some magic cure all to the "Oh god, the tank is on fire" problem. Soviet T-34s burned as profusely as pretty much any other WWII tank. In fact the biggest reason why tanks "brew up" is due to ammunition burning, hence why later model M4 Shermans with "Wet" ammunition storage caught fire less often than early shermans or basically any other tank of the war.

Both British and American tanks used petrol engines. Most British/US tanks were fitted with aero engines or derivatives. A diesel engine at that time would have to be specifically designed for the task, whereas powerful petrol engines though originally designed for aircraft were already available in large numbers or were at least tried and tested (I.e. the Liberty engine of WW1 vintage). For example late war British cruiser tanks (and also the Centurion) used the Meteor engine which was effectively a Merlin without a supercharger. The US often fitted Sherman tanks with radial engines a design commonly fitted to aircraft, this is what gives the Sherman it's high profile. Some Sherman's even had an engine made of 5 car engines bolted together. The difference was the Germans were purpose building tank engines but still choosing petrol as opposed to the US and UK who were using existing designs. The USSR was really alone in it's use of diesel, they were much bigger on tanks in the pre-war era than the US and UK who's budgets were only shrinking. The image of a burning tank is most probably due to crew sabotage on them leaving the tank or the custom of shooting a tank until it caught fire (to ensure it was knocked out), as well as the ammunition burning as the other commenter said

Citation needed. During WW2 we never supported Germany not sent any form of supplies. We sent Britain, France, Canada and Russia (after being betrayed by Hitler) with weapons, tanks and supplies. Not sure why we would supply our enemies with then-highend radios.

I think he meant before the war.

I believe radio was more relevant during the first years of the war, rather than the battle of Kursk, mostly because during Barbarossa, the only soviet tank capable of mounting radios was the KV.(mostly known as KV-1). However, this changed, altough the soviet radios were in poorer quality than the german ones.

USSR lack of radios (1 in 10 tanks) was a factor in 1941-42. But by mid 1942 the Brits were shipping a lot, and by 1943 the US flooded with radios - from that time until the end of the war, 60% to 80% of USSR tanks were equipped with allied radios. So by the time of Kursk, the lack of radios were not really a factor. (Same thing for trucks to supply - US sent a lot of reliable trucks - some served in USSR until about 1980s.....)

The problem in Russia at the time was Stalin purged his generals. The tanks the Soviets had T34 made the German tanks look like a toy. As well while the Soviets had lost 2 million men due to mismanagement by Stalin, they had 200 million more to fight.

Ever hear the truism, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics? btw, it can only be correctly understood in proper context. Otherwise, the cart gets put before the horse.

I observed the same asinine idiocy during my '04/'05 tour (OIF II, the war was in '03 btw). Too many high ranking careerists who got promoted by being dutiful glorified admin clerks with piss poor tactical sense. They latched onto anything new and lost sight of the basics and fundamentals all too often. A more Jason Borne and less James Bond approach would have achieved much more success with much less expense imo.

Could you explain your reasoning on why artillery did not contribute heavily to the outcome of the F-P war? I agree that Prussian leadership was significantly superior, but as artillery is generally the biggest killer in war, why wouldn't having VASTLY superior artillery guns be important?

Yes, Iraq was poorly trained. But Iran at that time have some of the contemporary U.S. weapons, like the F-14.

The war was a stalemate. At the end the prewar border between them remained the same. Iran was led by Religious leaders ignorant of basic military doctrine instead of the well trained but mistrusted professional military commanders. The Iraqi army was led by party and tribal appointees. Iran had it's larger population but it's military equipment was from the West who refused to supply ammunition, spare parts and replacements. Iraq had supplies coming in and probably satellite intelligence for both the Russians and Americans. It's smaller population always meant a smaller army. Saddam Hussein would not have dared to attack the Shah's large modern well trained army backed by the USA with intelligence and resupply. He thought he saw a weak easily defeat-able enemy and he gambled with his peoples lives. None of his own sons served at the front.

Thank you!

@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized No trouble

Intel Conversations with History: Brian Urquhart ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dfuJ4W-wqI4.html

Good luck. You will succeed. 🙂