New answers tagged military
3
First of all - if you go by USA definition of "branch of the military", Soviet VDV were not one. Until dissolution of USSR in 1991, they were a part of Ground Armed Forces branch - a quite independent one, but still with less independence than, for example, US Marine Corps. Moreover, due to the difference in how budget was allocated in USSR and USA, soviet ...
4
Within the frame given, without a Polish state in existence, there are basically two main possibilities for the army the individual would have served in: Russian Imperial Army, or Prussian army. The individual pictures might be just a visiting friend or family member… Also take note that there seems to be no place called "Soboleik", but three places called ...
5
Castle building is a slow process, and people rarely start a new one.
Most of the suitable and advantageous places were already occupied by castles built earlier. Most castle owners would only embark on small upgrades: A stone wall to replace a wooden palisade, a tower strengthened, the lords living quarters upgraded to fashionable style...
So usually one ...
36
In Volume I of his four volume biography of Robert E. Lee, Douglas Southall Freeman outlines (Chapter 4, pp 81-82 (html page)) the calculation of Lee's graduating score of 1966.5 out of a maximum 2000; an average of 98.3%.
N.B. The line General Merit is the total of the preceding lines (thus in modern terminology the overall Cadet Performance Score).
It ...
11
According to the book Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point
By Stephen E. Ambrose, the ranking system at West Point was established early on, c. 1819. Following a proposal by the War Department:
[Sylvanus Thayer] so constructed the merit roll that it eliminated practically all subjective feelings, while it took into account nearly everything a ...
14
Beg to differ with answers and comments regarding the US Army's lack of standardized hand signals in the World War II period; it most certainly did have hand signals and they were taught in basic infantry training. Hand signals did not originate with the Viet Nam war. Movies such as “Band of Brothers” and “Saving Private Ryan” were not anachronistic at all ...
2
It's a complicated question which does not admit a yes/no answer. Even saying "there was a spectrum in attitudes" would be a simplifications. The right answer, I think, is a two-dimensional mosaic. I will not attempt to give a comprehensive answer, just make a number of observations:
The analogy between NKVD and SS is not a very good one. A better (still, ...
0
Yes,The NKVD was hated and feared by the regular Army because it had arrested Marshal Tukhachevsky (and others), who were tortured and killed by orders of Stalin in the late 1930s, while other Marshals, such as Rokossovsky, were imprisoned until they were needed after the Winter War with Finland in 1939-40, and the German invasion in 1941.During World War II,...
-2
He is a senior police officer of Birmingham City Constabulary in the pre-WW1 era.
7
Are there recorded incidents of the Gentlemen Pensioners protecting the monarch in the 16th century?
Notwithstanding the claims made in the source cited in the other answer, it appears that the answer to the question
are there any specific recorded incidents where the Gentlemen Pensioners managed to fulfill their role as a bodyguard in the 16th century?
is actually yes. Specifically they acted as bodyguard to Queen Mary I during Wyatt's rebellion.
A ...
2
Are there recorded incidents of the Gentlemen Pensioners protecting the monarch in the 16th century?
It would appear that the answer is no. This article states that the Band of Gentlemen Pensioners:
were part of the standing force, although they did not, except on the field of battle, perform the regular duty of guarding the King's person. This function fell to the Yeomen of the King's Guard, a military body established by Henry VII immediately after the ...
1
Probably even more so
Average member of Wehrmacht (from common soldiers to lower officer ranks) didn't have much contact with SS. First of all, Wehrmacht always had single chain of command and there was never equivalent of political commissar, although political indoctrination increased towards the end of the war. Wehrmacht also had their own system of ...
4
The NKVD was regarded as being "in the way" by the regular military, as related by e.g. Vasili Chuikov in The Battle For Stalingrad. Chuikov conceded that the NKVD had some usefulness in motivating the troops (he encouraged his men to join the Communist Party). But their military usefulness was limited; or at least the Communist Party was coming to this ...
3
If the question is about NKVD troops, then the answer is "no". The NKVD troops were not hated or otherwise frowned upon.
At the time of WWII NKVD (domestic commissariat) was a very wide ministry, not just the "secret police" as you can sometimes read on modern Internet. NKVD included all the police, the firefighters, the border guards and so on. When ...
24
There were 3 power centers in the USSR: Party, Secret Police (VChK, GPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB, KGB), and Army. All were very different.
Party: no "muscle" (except for the KPK), but officially infallible and supreme in media
Secret Police: best informed (both internal and foreign affairs), can eliminate any individual, but relegated to secondary status by ...
4
This is a good question, but it looks to me that the present answers disavow the natural complexity of the terrain that had to be navigated as well as Karl XII's (generally anglicised as "Charles" or "Carolus") complex position in the beginning of his Poltava campaign.
Summary
I've decided to structure this as a "concise" summary as well as a longer ...
3
Edgar Allan Poe was a highly literate man who had enrolled in the University of Virginia, at a time when few people completed grade school, never mind high school, or enrolled in college.
"Collegiate" is a requirement for being an officer in the U.S. army today, and even in those days, was extremely helpful. A college professor of rhetoric named Joshua ...
2
There were two ways to open the bomb bay doors: Electro-hydrolic and a manual crank.
Bombs had a pin that was tethered to the Bombay by cables. When the bombs fell, it pulled the pin. They also had a spring wound fuse and vanes that would unwind the spring as the bomb dropped. These were set to detonate the bomb at a specific altitude.
Bombs were ...
0
It seems unlikely that the minimum height requirement for a Swiss guard would have been as high as 5'8.5" in earlier times, even though it might hold today.
The 5'8.5" minimum would put a man at about the 40th percentile today in the Western world (Europe and North America). The desire is for "guards" of above average height, with the shortest guard being ...
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