WWI

[Aubrey Maturin]

4 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

I think you're paraphrasing slightly there, if I remember correctly.

Artistic license.

[beefybake]

11 hours ago, Shotgun said:

Acknowledged but as you note; these were junior officers. The ones making the decisions kept themselves well away from harm.  And this was over a century ago. I think a lot has changed since then. The closest we get now is Prince Ginger playing sojers until "Oh darn, the media gave away his location so we'll have to bring him home."

Wasn't his job somewhere relatively safe, calling in the air strikes .

[WhiteRoseKillie]

12 hours ago, Shotgun said:

I miss the days when Kings and the aristocracy led armies into battle and fought alongside them. Bring that rule back, apply it to Presidents and Prime Ministers too and we'll be living in peace and harmony 'till the end of time.

I've often said that one of the requirements for being in a position of power (e.g. MP) which could see the country's youth sent into combat, was that your own offspring must be first to be called up when the forces need cannon fodder. We'd soon see which Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria conflict was a "moral imperative" rather than a continuation of Western (i.e. US) capitalist expansion then.

One of the most stomach-churning images I ever saw was that Pious cúnt Blair sitting in the front row of a service in memory of young men and women who had died to ensure that Blair got his "legacy".

[NotThePars]

49 minutes ago, WhiteRoseKillie said:

I've often said that one of the requirements for being in a position of power (e.g. MP) which could see the country's youth sent into combat, was that your own offspring must be first to be called up when the forces need cannon fodder. We'd soon see which Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria conflict was a "moral imperative" rather than a continuation of Western (i.e. US) capitalist expansion then.

One of the most stomach-churning images I ever saw was that Pious cúnt Blair sitting in the front row of a service in memory of young men and women who had died to ensure that Blair got his "legacy".

Didn't Herbert Asquith lose one or two sons at the front during WW1?

[Bell™]

On 07/07/2020 at 23:27, Gaz said:

Funny enough I was reading a bit about the pals' batallions, and in particular McRae's Battalion, earlier.

Now, I'm no military strategist, but who the f**k thought it was a great idea to have entire villages serve in the same fucking battalion, meaning that when the battalion was inevitably wiped out by whatever shite tactics they were using that day entire villages were losing almost their entire stock of working-age men?

It took me about 15 seconds of reading this to realise it was a shite idea.

I think a main reason for Pals Battalions was, as has been previously mentioned, the instant camaraderie that would be created near-instantly, rather than a unit having to be together for months. The British Army's doctrine at the time was unchanged from Napoleonic tactics, whereby they'd fire rife volleys while advancing and then have a bayonet charge. The French doctrine was exactly the same. The winners of a bayonet charge are likely to be the side with the best morale or esprit de corps, and the best discipline. Most bayonet charges result in one side surrendering or running away, so there are usually less fatalities, and the battle continues.

The European forces all sent military observers to watch the American civil war (where the bayonet charge wasn't really used, and instead they just stood 50-100 yards from each other and fired until one side was dead) but only the Prussians actually studied the goings on with any detail and learned from it - the rest just thought it was a mess and dismissed it entirely. Prussia experimented with what they learned in the Franco Prussian war of 1870-71, and then developed the tactics they used when a unified Germany swept through the low countries in 1914. The French and British armies still thought it was 1814 and expected to be able to do the volley-advance-volley-charge routine, which doesn't work against entrenched men with machine guns. it was 1916, i think, before the British Army officially changed the doctrine and accepted that it wasn't going to work. 

The Lee Enfield rifle being issued in 1914 had a 10-round magazine, but also a cut-off to make it function as a single-shot rifle, so they could have the second rank advance while the first was reloading. That the Army requested a feature which deliberately made one of the most advanced military rifles of the time function the same way as a gun from forty years earlier is another example of the leadership at the time being completely out of touch with reality.

 

[dee_62]

On 08/07/2020 at 09:52, Tynierose said:

One of my real regrets is launching my entire collection into the tip.  they were great, for you Tommy the war is over,  get digging round eye,  banzai,  f**k you fritz etc etc 

Same here - had loads of those magazines!  "Gott in Himmel", "hande hoch", "Schnell, schnell"  or "Mein Gott" etc etc

[AL-FFC]

On 07/07/2020 at 22:32, dirty dingus said:

Watched a time team special on this big f**k off flame thrower they made during WW1 pure steam punk killing machine so that gives WW1 the slight edge as it seemed more horrible with things like mustard gas the gatling guns and hand to hand crazyness.

 

Think it was Nazi megastructures that mentioned it but Hitler refused to use mustard gas as he seen the effects of it when he fought in the first world war. They had it but didnt want to use it.  When you consider the other sh*t they done in WW2 its astonishing his morals stopped at using mustard gas

[Shotgun]

12 minutes ago, dee_62 said:

Same here - had loads of those magazines!  "Gott in Himmel", "hande hoch", "Schnell, schnell"  or "Mein Gott" etc etc

"Pig-dog" has long been a favourite of mine. Interchangeable with the original German "Schweinehund".

[Carnoustie Young Guvnor]

On 08/07/2020 at 09:31, Grant228 said:

I know a few people that served with him and apparently he was a good officer and an all around top bloke. 

Which makes sense, when your gran is the head of the army you don't need to worry about your career and having to do blokes over to get to the top so to say. 

I know a guy did security for him. Said he was a sound guy, pretty normal, until he was drunk when he became an arrogant c**t.

[Carnoustie Young Guvnor]

On 08/07/2020 at 10:25, renton said:

There was a real issue with communications in WW1. Wireless Radio was its infancy and totally unreliable, the telephone system worked fine but lines could be easily cut by artillery fire. That left runners - men carrying written notes.

Tactically that meant a long decision cycle between a situation developing and being able to do something about it. Telephone communications were thus preferred but that meant placing HQs at sites with existing exchanges and telephone systems, which in the North French countryside in 1914 meant only the stately Chateaus. In addition to that the sheer size of the front that HQs were responsible for meant placing them in locations where they  could establish telephone hubs to all units farther up.

The lack of reliable communications at tactical level meant that troops communicated via runners, pidgeons, flags, semaphore and whistles. The upshot of that was it was difficult to change a plan once in execution. Or to adapt to changing circumstances.

That never really changed throughout WW1, and one of the mitigations of that was to add a high degree of formalism to the stages of battle: Break in, Break Through and Break Out. That is, to get onto an enemy postion, to defeat local enemy forces and finally to move into terrain behind the main enemy line with a high degree of freedom to manouvere.

The last phase remained stubbornly beyond all sides for the duration. More complex artillery (for example the rolling barrage) and engineering tactics allowed armies to achieve break in at high but tolerable cost. Tanks and the German Storm Trooper tactics revolutionised Break Through tactics, bit the limits of mechanical reliability of the former, and human endurance for the latter, meant that the Break Out phase never occurred. Haig's last, successful offensives from August onwards were predicated on breaking through opposition at local point, and then switching the point of attack to somewhere else, to stretch the Germans and force a retirement rather than to get in behind and roll up the German line.

it should also be noted that in WW2, the main changes were to the mechanisation of armies and far more complex and reliable communication nets. That reduced the time and therefore cost of the Break in and Break through stages, yet the rate of casualties during those phases was not really lower than in the First War: Long range artillery and automatic weapons placed a premium on casualties and 20 years of advancements more or less cancelled out improvements infantry concealment. During those intense periods of violence causalty rates in places like Alamein or Normandy or Cassino, rivalled the Somme, but the big difference was on achieving the aims of those phases in a few days, through greater flexibility and quicker decision making, rather than battering away for weeks or months. 

Funnily enough I saw a small piece on a regiment from Newfoundland. They were the only ones on the first day of the Somme to achieve their objectives and were reading to break out but didn't know whether they were supposed to or not and had to wait for orders. Apparently if they moved straight away they could have made big gains, but the breakdown in communications you describe hampered them.

[tongue_tied_danny]

1 hour ago, Carnoustie Young Guvnor said:

Funnily enough I saw a small piece on a regiment from Newfoundland. They were the only ones on the first day of the Somme to achieve their objectives and were reading to break out but didn't know whether they were supposed to or not and had to wait for orders. Apparently if they moved straight away they could have made big gains, but the breakdown in communications you describe hampered them.

Same story at Gallipoli. 

At the Battle of The Nek the preliminary naval bombardment ended seven minutes early but the Aussie troops in the trenches waited until the time that it was supposed to end before going over the top. This gave the Turks seven minutes to get their shit together and the Aussies were annihilated. There was no communication whatsoever between the ships offshore and the soldiers in the front line.

 

[Carnoustie Young Guvnor]

8 minutes ago, tongue_tied_danny said:

Same story at Gallipoli. 

At the Battle of The Nek the preliminary naval bombardment ended seven minutes early but the Aussie troops in the trenches waited until the time that it was supposed to end before going over the top. This gave the Turks seven minutes to get their shit together and the Aussies were annihilated. There was no communication whatsoever between the ships offshore and the soldiers in the front line.

 

Actually very similar thing happened at the Somme. They had dug ten tunnels under the German lines to set off huge mines under each. That was to happen at 7.28 am, and the attack would begin at 7.30. What was described as the most famous footage of WWI though the first time I'd seen it was a huge explosion. 

Well that one was detonated early, at the arbitrary decision of the area commander, at 7.20, maybe for the camera who knows. That gave the Germans a good bit of warning, and at the same time the shelling moved to their reserve trenches so they knew it was coming and were ready by the time it started.

[tongue_tied_danny]

2 minutes ago, Carnoustie Young Guvnor said:

Actually very similar thing happened at the Somme. They had dug ten tunnels under the German lines to set off huge mines under each. That was to happen at 7.28 am, and the attack would begin at 7.30. What was described as the most famous footage of WWI though the first time I'd seen it was a huge explosion. 

Well that one was detonated early, at the arbitrary decision of the area commander, at 7.20, maybe for the camera who knows. That gave the Germans a good bit of warning, and at the same time the shelling moved to their reserve trenches so they knew it was coming and were ready by the time it started.

Interestingly, pretty much the opposite happened during the Brusilov Offensive on the Eastern front in 1916. The Russians had a much shorter barrage than was usual before they attacked. They made it across no man's land and broke through while the Austrian troops were still sheltering in their dug outs.

Gotta say, I'm quite interested in the Eastern Front but it's barely mentioned in most documentaries or books.

 

[Carnoustie Young Guvnor]

1 minute ago, tongue_tied_danny said:

Interestingly, pretty much the opposite happened during the Brusilov Offensive on the Eastern front in 1916. The Russians had a much shorter barrage than was usual before they attacked. They made it across no man's land and broke through while the Austrian troops were still sheltering in their dug outs.

Gotta say, I'm quite interested in the Eastern Front but it's barely mentioned in most documentaries or books.

 

Aye you don't hear much about it. I've been getting more and more interested in the Eastern Front in WWII recently as it happens. Beyond mental.

Those Russians have always been smart.   You watch these things and wonder if they could have had a creeping barrage and ran behind it or attacked at first light and all sorts of different things. It was just senseless really, a human meat grinder.

[tongue_tied_danny]

The trenches on the western front ran from the Belgian coast all the way to the Swiss border.

Here's the extreme north.

And here's the south...

The Battle of Dunes was fought between British and German forces on the Belgian beach on 10/07/17.

 

 

Edited July 9, 2020 by tongue_tied_danny

[BillyAnchor]

On 08/07/2020 at 03:06, Hillonearth said:

The one thing I always thought weird about Commando books was the different noises Axis troops made while expiring...the Germans usually pegged it with an "Aa-rrgh" while the Japanese seemed to favour an "Aiii-eee" approach.

Reported for racism

[dorlomin]

Three of the largest battles in human history were going on simultaniously. Verdun, which was beyond intense, a tiny are of land scrapped over by huge armies. The Brusilov Offensive, when the Russians came close to knocking Austro Hungaria out the war. And the relief operation to take pressure of off those two, the Somme.

It destroyed 4 of histories great monarchies, the Ottomans, Austrians, Germans and Russians. It set the stage for the collapse of European imperialism (which only became obvious 27 years later). In many ways it was the birth of our modern world of technology and states out of a world of agrarian aristocracy and empires.

[Hillonearth]

29 minutes ago, BillyAnchor said:

Reported for racism

Aa-rrgh!

[aaa]

1 hour ago, Carnoustie Young Guvnor said:

Actually very similar thing happened at the Somme. They had dug ten tunnels under the German lines to set off huge mines under each. That was to happen at 7.28 am, and the attack would begin at 7.30. What was described as the most famous footage of WWI though the first time I'd seen it was a huge explosion. 

Well that one was detonated early, at the arbitrary decision of the area commander, at 7.20, maybe for the camera who knows. That gave the Germans a good bit of warning, and at the same time the shelling moved to their reserve trenches so they knew it was coming and were ready by the time it started.

I remember watching a programme about tunnel warfare during WW1, the massive explosion which left the Lochnager crater was the largest ever explosion until the first atomic tests if I remember correctly.

 

[Carnoustie Young Guvnor]

18 minutes ago, aaa said:

I remember watching a programme about tunnel warfare during WW1, the massive explosion which left the Lochnager crater was the largest ever explosion until the first atomic tests if I remember correctly.

 

That's the one that's the footage that apparently is the most famous from WWI. That explosion gave the Germans eight minutes extra warning.  There's a great documentary about the people that tunneled under the trenches, maybe the same one.