War links

[erudito]

On longbows. On arrowheads. On bows.

Performance tests of a Japanese WWII tank.

Wondering why victory in the Cold War is not talked about more. (The 20th anniversary of the 1989 revolutions is coming up.)

What do you get for winning a quiz in Somalia?
The winners -- a team from Farjano district -- were given a first prize consisting of one AK-

Comments

[findalexh]

Ah, the longbow, yet another example of the Anglophiles miserably failing at basic history.

When the guys from the Royal Armouries admit that they don't know anything about the hardness of period arrows you have to wonder where these guys and many a published author are getting their information from.

http://www.swordforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79261

and when the people from the period clearly thought arrows couldn't penetrate armour;

http://www.swordforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46005

you have to wonder exactly what was happening during this period and the answer is pretty straight forward and common sense. DeVries and Verbruggen pretty well nailed it over 50 years ago and yet people still can't get their heads around it.

Stirrups

[erudito]

All I can say is stirrups.

Congenial myths are very hard to kill.

After all, what really differentiating English and French armies was command-and-control. As soon as the French got their command-and-control up to the level of English armies, they won pretty rapidly.

Re: Stirrups

[thorfinn]

Can you clarify for me what the myth is? That the longbow penetrates plate armour? If that's the case, I wasn't even aware that *was* a myth... It seems silly on the face of it. Maybe I'm just a bit too informed about engineering material properties, and have read too much real stuff about actual evolution of tools of war.

Re: Stirrups

[erudito]

As I understand it, yes, the claim is "longbows could pierce plate".

And yes, you are probably too engineering/science informed to even consider it.

[assassinus]

Someone posting on Youtube about that Japanese tank said "is not a tank - its a one way ticket to heaven".

God Lorenzo, this is a mammoth post!

Yes it is

[erudito]

Mostly due to the Taliban captive piece.

[assassinus]

Yes, my reading also says that Longbows did not penetrate mid - late 15th c armour

[findalexh]

They couldn't penetrate the padding worn under the armour...

Arrows arrive more slowly than a cricket ball from Brett Lee, with a whole lot less weight.

[thorfinn]

Your average longbow fired arrow may not penetrate full plate armour, no.

But not everyone on the battlefield is wearing plate - I'd hazard a guess that very very few people on the battlefield were wearing full plate. It's not exactly a cheap item available to the common soldier... Your warhorse is certainly not fully covered either, and if you're wearing full plate, you're not walking more than a short distance before you fall down and are unable to move, so if your horse is down, so are you.

And a freak arrow through the eyehole will still kill you, or an interesting hit on a weak joint can penetrate and injure... and when you're hit with a couple of hundred arrows, odds are good that something bad is going to happen.

[thorfinn]

I'm not saying they're a great anti-heavy-cavalry weapon - that's clearly not the case. :-) But stick a block of pikes in front of the archers, and you're pretty much set for defense, since the cavalry can't reach the archers effectively, and the archers can nail anyone else approaching, provided they don't run out of arrows.

[thorfinn]

Well, yes. Original root causes of conflict are generally resource driven - grievances are an excuse. The problem is though, once those grievances are entrenched and you've actually killed people, fixing the original resource issue is *not* sufficient to remove the grievances.

"Limited war" is no such thing - once you've gone to war, you're pretty much going to have to either: kill everyone or quit fighting in the zone, if you want it to stop. And in these modern times, enemies you make can and will come to you, and blow you up at home. Via suicide, if that's what it takes.

It doesn't take much to be able to sustain conflict.

Grievance

[erudito]

you're pretty much going to have to either: kill everyone or quit fighting in the zone, if you want it to stop
Actually, no, all you have to do is convince the other side that further effort is useless. That may take a lot, but it does not require even close to killing everyone.

Of course, that "further effort is useless" thing works both ways. Easier to decide if living with the consequences seem less bad.

The "entrenched grievance" claim is dubious. Witness (West) Germany and Japan becoming American allies after WWII.

Re: Grievance

[thorfinn]

Mmm, true. Some grievances do seem to "stick" - but why some do and some don't seems a little unclear. Convincing the other side that further effort is useless is not a trivial thing to do, essentially.

Admittedly, it can be done, but it's going to have to be handled a lot smarter than it's being handled right now. And as I think is suggested, it's not about addressing the "grievance" necessarily, because the grievance is often just an excuse and a rallying cry, and nothing to do with the cause of the problem.

That works in all directions too.

Re: Grievance

[erudito]

that further effort is useless is not a trivial thing to do, essentially
Often, no. It took occupying Berlin and nuking two cities to end WWII, after all. Though the former was partly about making it absolutely clear to the Germans that they had really, really, lost after the "stab in the back" post WWI myths. And unconditional surrender minimising areas of disputes between the Allies.

Admittedly, it can be done, but it's going to have to be handled a lot smarter than it's being handled right now.
You have to move into an area where you are not faced with a choice between the corrupt and the fanatic. But that would require working with the existing tribal authority structures. A difficult mindset for denizens of modern industrialised democracies to get too.

And yes, framing things based on your own preconceptions and prejudices is a pretty general human trait. Easier to do the less you know about the others.