Post by Dark Cloud on Dec 30, 2014 13:45:44 GMT -6
Montrose,
An actual response to the post subject. And you read it. No spate of free association because a name or number sounds familiar. Unprepared to answer, but...
Of course, I don't know squat about any of this, but it sounded not unlike the issues that surrounded the Springfield carbine. And again, it sounds like the proponents and opponents of weapon systems disagree over the Glossary of Terminology, and try to include or omit items in certain columns that conflict with their view or redefine them at will. Not dissimilar stuff happens today, he illustrates. This is similar to the conflicts illustrated in The Rules of the Game by Andrew Gordon about the Royal Navy and the Battle of Jutland. The disturbing relationship between officers and what is the beginning of the British military-industrial complex.
For example, England had two competing Director Firing systems, chose the wrong one (by an officer, Dryer, over the annoying Pollen)while the Germans refined the old system of turret firing and sighting with a better visual system to get on target faster than the British visual. This roughly corresponds to the difference in design of the American carbine/rifle to the AK design. The American was superior and more powerful per shot but required relatively high maintenance in time and circumstance not always available. Also, increased training. The VC weapon was inferior but worked near always, and being rapid fire compensated for per shot inaccuracy. They said, anyway.
In naval warfare, two nations used the term 'battlecruiser' for very different type ships that were not intended to fight other capital ships at first but were anyway. The term is still used for both.
The affection for the accurate long range rifle over rapid fire was an issue through WWII, and the armies moved to rapid fire. Not unlike the affection for cavalry.
These issues are reflected in the second article. And right off, the Glossary of Terminology issue appears. The problem is, these aren't wars you can win, but rather police actions for limited, short term police goals: keep the peace, allow civilian institutions to take their place. So, are they still 'wars?' Is using the term 'war' for such different goals and durations as wrong as using the term 'battlecruiser' for both a lightly armored but fast and highly armed ship and a slightly slower, heavily armored and slightly lesser armed one? Britain took pride in its larger guns and shells (too easy to make phallic insecurity jokes)but was being hit by a 12 inch ap shell really less dangerous than being hit by a 15"? In theory, yes. But you have to hit them, the fuzes need work, and the shell has to penetrate, three attributes not true of the RN battlecruiser force, and only one was true of the RN battleships: Jellicoe's guys hit the target with crappy ammo. Beatty's could not.
Gordon's main concern is with what became the benefit/cancer of "Signals" in the fleet. As refinement and peacetime success with communications at sea by flag got more complicated, Signalmen became valuable and specialized and their work was deemed too Yeomanry for officers to learn (in the days when Engineering and Deck officers were ignorant of each other's duties. Fisher, who went insane, had a HUGE fight to overcome this crap) and far too complicated for those not schooled in it. (True, there were 500 flags and gabillion of combinations to be viewed at distance in battle provided you lost no halyards to hoist them.) Basic questions about how this would work in battle (terribly! who knew? Well, Tryon and some others....) were never addressed properly, and when officers became dependent upon obeying their Flags officer, their sense of responsibility diminished. You could fight that or roll with it and deal with the reality. Jellicoe dealt with the Navy he inherited and did okay. The RN Custers - like Beatty - often got hammered because they actually believed the Etonian crap that worked so well at the Somme for the Army as well. Tryon's attempts to instill command instinct within the system backfired badly with the HMS Victoria fiasco. But history shows him to have been correct in intent.
Further, nobody in the RN thought that naval battle would be much further than 10k yards, but in the very first battles they opened fire at 20k odd yards, and percent of hits per fired ammo for both navies hovered between 1 and 3 percent in open ocean battle throughout the war. Like the 7th, they could fight one battle and then had to return to base. The reality is, there was no correlation between the weapons available, understanding of their use and limitations, relevant training for most likely scenarios, and learning from experience in either or any navy even through the NEXT war.
This is EXACTLY true of the 7th as well, and reflects problems in how military minds and their civilian overlords actually think, or allow themselves to think. Whatever your views, which I'd like to hear, on Fallows, he at least raises all these issues that SHOULD be discussed in public. At least much more than it is at present. And, they should be bloody well SOLVED. You know, a break with tradition. A fad, if you will.
Scales claims he himself was responsible for not demanding the weapons be cleaned in Vietnam:
"By evening, we were sleeping beside our M16 rifles. I was too inexperienced—or perhaps too lazy—to demand that my soldiers take a moment to clean their guns, even though we had heard disturbing rumors about the consequences of shooting a dirty M16." That took courage, so he impresses me.
An actual response to the post subject. And you read it. No spate of free association because a name or number sounds familiar. Unprepared to answer, but...
Of course, I don't know squat about any of this, but it sounded not unlike the issues that surrounded the Springfield carbine. And again, it sounds like the proponents and opponents of weapon systems disagree over the Glossary of Terminology, and try to include or omit items in certain columns that conflict with their view or redefine them at will. Not dissimilar stuff happens today, he illustrates. This is similar to the conflicts illustrated in The Rules of the Game by Andrew Gordon about the Royal Navy and the Battle of Jutland. The disturbing relationship between officers and what is the beginning of the British military-industrial complex.
For example, England had two competing Director Firing systems, chose the wrong one (by an officer, Dryer, over the annoying Pollen)while the Germans refined the old system of turret firing and sighting with a better visual system to get on target faster than the British visual. This roughly corresponds to the difference in design of the American carbine/rifle to the AK design. The American was superior and more powerful per shot but required relatively high maintenance in time and circumstance not always available. Also, increased training. The VC weapon was inferior but worked near always, and being rapid fire compensated for per shot inaccuracy. They said, anyway.
In naval warfare, two nations used the term 'battlecruiser' for very different type ships that were not intended to fight other capital ships at first but were anyway. The term is still used for both.
The affection for the accurate long range rifle over rapid fire was an issue through WWII, and the armies moved to rapid fire. Not unlike the affection for cavalry.
These issues are reflected in the second article. And right off, the Glossary of Terminology issue appears. The problem is, these aren't wars you can win, but rather police actions for limited, short term police goals: keep the peace, allow civilian institutions to take their place. So, are they still 'wars?' Is using the term 'war' for such different goals and durations as wrong as using the term 'battlecruiser' for both a lightly armored but fast and highly armed ship and a slightly slower, heavily armored and slightly lesser armed one? Britain took pride in its larger guns and shells (too easy to make phallic insecurity jokes)but was being hit by a 12 inch ap shell really less dangerous than being hit by a 15"? In theory, yes. But you have to hit them, the fuzes need work, and the shell has to penetrate, three attributes not true of the RN battlecruiser force, and only one was true of the RN battleships: Jellicoe's guys hit the target with crappy ammo. Beatty's could not.
Gordon's main concern is with what became the benefit/cancer of "Signals" in the fleet. As refinement and peacetime success with communications at sea by flag got more complicated, Signalmen became valuable and specialized and their work was deemed too Yeomanry for officers to learn (in the days when Engineering and Deck officers were ignorant of each other's duties. Fisher, who went insane, had a HUGE fight to overcome this crap) and far too complicated for those not schooled in it. (True, there were 500 flags and gabillion of combinations to be viewed at distance in battle provided you lost no halyards to hoist them.) Basic questions about how this would work in battle (terribly! who knew? Well, Tryon and some others....) were never addressed properly, and when officers became dependent upon obeying their Flags officer, their sense of responsibility diminished. You could fight that or roll with it and deal with the reality. Jellicoe dealt with the Navy he inherited and did okay. The RN Custers - like Beatty - often got hammered because they actually believed the Etonian crap that worked so well at the Somme for the Army as well. Tryon's attempts to instill command instinct within the system backfired badly with the HMS Victoria fiasco. But history shows him to have been correct in intent.
Further, nobody in the RN thought that naval battle would be much further than 10k yards, but in the very first battles they opened fire at 20k odd yards, and percent of hits per fired ammo for both navies hovered between 1 and 3 percent in open ocean battle throughout the war. Like the 7th, they could fight one battle and then had to return to base. The reality is, there was no correlation between the weapons available, understanding of their use and limitations, relevant training for most likely scenarios, and learning from experience in either or any navy even through the NEXT war.
This is EXACTLY true of the 7th as well, and reflects problems in how military minds and their civilian overlords actually think, or allow themselves to think. Whatever your views, which I'd like to hear, on Fallows, he at least raises all these issues that SHOULD be discussed in public. At least much more than it is at present. And, they should be bloody well SOLVED. You know, a break with tradition. A fad, if you will.
Scales claims he himself was responsible for not demanding the weapons be cleaned in Vietnam:
"By evening, we were sleeping beside our M16 rifles. I was too inexperienced—or perhaps too lazy—to demand that my soldiers take a moment to clean their guns, even though we had heard disturbing rumors about the consequences of shooting a dirty M16." That took courage, so he impresses me.