Hot answers tagged war
17
"armour" is a bit general, from the fancy gleaming best tournement suit to the few bits of salvaged chain mail stitched onto an archers leather jacket.
Generally the knights and foot soldiers wouldn't march in anything like full armour, medieval battles were fought on agreed sites when the armies were visible to each other - not ambushes or blitzkreig. So ...
15
Perhaps you're thinking of a video game, because I'm sure that what you posit makes no sense whatsoever in hand-to-hand combat.
A shield is just movable armor. It's big enough not to require a lot of accuracy in placement, just a shift toward the direction of attack. Its design, at some minimal level, will resist blows from hand weapons passively, i.e. ...
14
We have essentially three references on this topic. Of these, only Caesar's could have had political motivations, as he was engaged in a campaign against the Britons. His account, however, is only marginal compared to the others, in that he does not clearly state that the Celts went to battle naked. On the other hand, both Polybius and Diodourus Siculus look ...
13
The Mongols wore silk underneath their armor. The benefit of using silk was that if a Mongol warrior was hit with an arrow the silk would not break and they could pull the arrow out by pulling on the silk on each side of the wound and the arrow would come out.
References:
Review of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Mongol War Strategy
Koryo ...
13
Simply because Switzerland was a worse alternative plan strategically than Netherlands and Belgium.
Hitler had a plan to attack Switzerland, named Operation Tannenbaum but the Maginot line could be breached through Belgium and Netherland. So it became needless conflict with no gain.
It is a less known fact that Switzerland (German part namely) was part of ...
11
Basically, the time to put veterans in the front line is when you are in an attacking mode. That is, you put your shock troops in front so that they can actually deliver a shock.
In a defensive mode, you put your less experienced troops in front 1) to give them experience and 2) to have them absorb casualties and spare your veterans. If and when the enemy ...
11
As mentioned in this Wikipedia article, Japan's reasons for attacking the US were mostly because of the US stopping oil and other material shipments to Japan and Japanese belief that further Japanese aggression in Asia (which they were intent on pursuing and not just or even primarily in Philippines) would lead to a war with the US anyway. Thus Japan ...
10
This is a rather long answer outlining the strengths and weaknesses of various nations' midget submarine fleets. If you just want the short answer, skip to the last paragraph. During World War II, the UK, Italy, Germany, and Japan had midget submarines. The US, the USSR, and China did not.
The Royal Navy had two main submarines. The X-class submarine was ...
9
It was not a factor - both the UK and Argentina had signed the Antarctic Treaty, placing all territorial claims south of 60 degrees in abeyance indefinitely.
The full text of the original treaty
I am not aware of either nation having expressed a wish to go back on that treaty, and it was signed over 20 years before the Falklands War.
9
One modern document that is considered a body of laws concerning warfare and predates the Geneva Conventions, is the "Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field, General Order № 100", issued by President Lincoln in April 24, 1863. It was prepared by Francis Lieber and its commonly called the Lieber Code or Lieber ...
9
Here are some rough specs for common planes (as I said in the comment, the endurance depends on various factors).
Sopwith Camel (BR)
combat endurance (at 1000 m) - 2:30 (hr.:min.)
cruise endurance (...) - 5:00
SPAD S.XIII (FR)
combat endurance (...) - 1:30-2:00
cruise endurance (...) - 3:00
Albatross D.III (GER)
combat endurance (...) - 1:30-2:00
...
8
There were many reasons for an invasion:
punishing Naples for its support of the Knights of Rhodes, whom the king Ferdinand I of Naples sent two ships of reinforcements against the Turks, determining a burning defeat of the Ottomans
creating a bridgehead for further operations in Italy, against Naples and possibly Rome (we have to keep in mind that the ...
8
I think what your teacher may have been referring to is not the start of the Korean War in 1950, but the later axe murder incident, a serious border incident in 1976 which involved the deaths of two U.S. soldiers.
The tree that was the object of the 1976 axe murder incident (photo
1984). Deliberately left standing after 'Operation Paul Bunyan', the
...
8
I think this may be a(nother) case of alleged American exceptionalism :) Is there any known intrinsic reason as to why American Civil War generals might have led their troops into multi-day battles as a result of new invention in warfare, or is it perhaps simply the case that this war consisted of a long string of battles, hence also of relatively many ...
7
I believe that often is subjective.
Here are some examples from World War II:
Strafbattalions in Nazi Germany created from prisoners
Dirlewanger Brigade in Nazi Germany was originally formed for anti-partisan actions, but took part in war battles later
Shtrafbats in Soviet Union were created mostly from courted privates and officers or Red Army.
The ...
7
The What
Here are details on the incident from Wikipedia:
A number of reports about German troop movements reached Allied high command, including details about the identity and location of German armoured formations. Station X at Bletchley Park monitored and decrypted German Ultra intelligence reports and sent them to senior Allied commanders but they ...
7
The Review Article, Antony Kalashnikov (2012) "Differing Interpretations: Causes of the Collapse of the Soviet Union" Constellations:
"there is a correlation between mediums of writing and the "factor of collapse" they tend to espouse."
"that the historiography is best classified by "factors for collapse", and that these are: economic, nationalities, ...
7
There are many techniques used by military recruiters. You can find a list on Wikipedia. To sum up:
There are a lot of very poor people in the USA too. As in your county the people recruited don't have better options. This is called "poverty draft" in many articles.
Recruiters give you hope that they will pay for your education
A recruiter interviewed in ...
7
First of all, seeing as to how more than one SE user has questioned the seriousness of the Cuban missile crisis, let me try to outline how tense things were at the time.
The Cuban missile crisis is the only time ever that any section of the US military has mobilised to DEFCON 2. The erstwhile SAC was at DEFCON 2 while the rest of the armed forces were at ...
6
According to this paper from Penn's Population Studies Center, perhaps to go somewhere safer?
But it is not difficult to find conditions equivalent to combat in
American cities. In Philadelphia, the death rate for black males aged
20-34 in 2002 was 4.37/1000, 11% higher than for troops in Iraq. A
slight majority of the deaths were from homicide ...
6
One good example of a major plan being modified during a campaign is the exploitation conducted by Task Force Butler during Operation Dragoon (68th anniversary today!)
VI Corps commander, MG Lucian Truscott took elements from various units and put them into a fast-moving task force, led by BG Fred Butler (his Asst Corps Commander). They raced 235 miles ...
6
It makes sense that in formations, everyone uses the same arm to hold the shield since the benefits of order in the formation far outweigh those of individual strengths. For example, hoplites carried their shields on their left arms, covering also those to their left.
Anyone who was trained to be a hoplite would learn to use the shield on their left arms ...
6
Yes, both World War I and World War II involved South and Central America.
WWI
Here is a list of South American countries that severed relations and those that declared war. Sourced from here.
April 7, 1917 Panama declares war on Germany
April 13, 1917 Bolivia severs relations with Germany
October 6, 1917 Peru severs relations with Germany
October 7, ...
6
In most cases, they would forage (or pillage) from neighboring areas. As in invading army, they had no qualms about taking whatever they wanted or needed. In situations where they were sending troops considerable distances or for prolonged periods of time, they had to develop other methods.
In some situations they would create relay stations, which would ...
6
In the Kronstadt Rebellion soviet forces advanced over seasonal sea ice to attack a rebelling naval fortification.
Once again, at the Battle of Ogdensburg, during the War of 1812, British forces attacked American forces over the frozen St Lawrence river. In this case coming under artillery fire whilst on the river, which must have been interesting.
6
To take one example, in 1935, Hitler negotiated the Anglo German Naval Treaty (details in the link).
Anglo-German Naval Agreement
This treaty "broke" the Versailles Treaty because it gave Germany naval tonnage limits ABOVE Versailles. It was a bilateral treaty between England and Germany, concluded without consulting the other Versailles signatories, ...
5
"Prisoners" fall into two categories. The first is military men court-martialed for cowardice, or other offenses, that are given a chance to redeem themselves. The second is criminals sent to war.
The first kind of prisoners were quite common particularly in totalitarian societies such as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union (e.g. in World War II).
The ...
5
The earliest written reference to a war was between Sumer and Elam in 2700BCE.
The earliest battle we have a written account for is Megiddo... Thutmose III vs. The Caananites, lead by the city of Kadesh. The Egyptians won, and tossed up a bunch of monuments to celebrate the victory, wrote a bunch of scrolls on the topic, and so knowledge of the battle was ...
5
Algeria was more then a colony, there were French Départements in Algeria, from 1848 on until 1962 it was an integral part of the French motherland.
See Wikipedia or the french wikipedia article for the French départements in Algeria
This does not mean, that Algerians were full citizens.
See also Process of Colonization:
Algeria was formally ...
5
Switzerland isn't much of a "prize." It has about 16,000 square miles, and about 4.5 million people in 1940 making it twice the size of New Jersey, with about as many people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland On both counts, it is one of the smaller countries in Europe, and less worth having.
On the other hand, Switzerland maintains a policy of armed ...
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