Monday, June 29, 2009

Lost Victories

Since my headers includes books, I felt it time to include one. The Book is "Lost Victories: The War Memoirs of Hitler's Most Brillant General" written by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein. This is a memoir of a rather good German Field Marshal whose claim to (Western) fame is the fact that he was one of main developers and pushers of the famous French Campaign in 1940 (through the Ardennes, over the Meuse at Sedan, on to the Channel, BEF escapes at Dunkrik). While he was pretty good on that one, his Eastern Front exploits put that to shame. But since they were against Russians/Soviets, they are not so well known to most Americans.

Well, Germany lost the war so you guys know how the ending goes. Manstein requested to be relieved of his command in early 1944 and refused to come back later so he really did sit out the last part. He survived Hitler's nuttiness and was captured when Germany was plowed under in 1945.

Since I haven't written a book review before forgive the rambling.

Okay, the book. This book is NOT for the casual war nut. I am not even sure its for a serious war nut. Manstein is proof that just because you are a brillant man in another field, that does not automatically translate into the ability to write well. Compared to Guiderian or Rommel this book is a TOUGH read. Both had a much better writing style that moved on quickly and still gave you some good data. Manstein's book is a serious look at high level warfare and how it works (or not). I am talking strategy and operational levels. Most of this book deals with Army Level Command or higher, and that doesn't make much "fun" reading. This book requires you to work at it and think about what exactly is going on. Not something a causal reader looking for a good "war book" is going to get into. It helps to have a good background about what is happening, and you better be able to figure out a map becuase you will be referring to one a LOT. When you have several Army Groups worth of space (on the EASTERN FRONT mind you), you are talking hundreds of miles of operations.

Now, if you do dare this book it gives some seriously good insights into how Hitler's mind works. Manstein had some seriously interesting comments on this. Some were pretty standard, but he hit on some that make perfect sense but hadn't occurred to me. Such as Hitler's total inability to think long term operationally or strategically (the furthest out Manstein could get him to really think was maybe 2 weeks, tactically ok, but an absolute distaster if you are trying to think operationally, and words are not in existance to describe how bad this is strategically). He also helped to flesh out some more well known "Hitlerisms" such as "no retreating allowed". He had some serious great input as to how the SS and Luffwaffe Field Divisions seriously boned the regular military in terms of replacements and this was made worse by the fact that the new full strength divisions usually had no vets and so got torn up in combat until they learned. I had never thought about that angle other than the old units were short men, but he was absolutely right.

Overall, this book is a work for a scholar to read. If you are one, hit it. If not, I would recommend Guiderian to start. I am thinking this is proof of the B.H. Liddell Hart Rule: If Hart wrote the foreword, its a thinker's book.

(Hart was one of the first theorists of mechanized warfare in history. He was in the British Army, but due to some of the quirks that accompany the "first great thinkers" in any occupation, he never became famous outside of historian circles).

Thursday, June 25, 2009

The Lennon Rule

Michael Jackson is dead.

And I don't care.

Reasons: The John Lennon Rule. The Fame Going to Your Head Rule. Media General Stupidity Rule.

Game Over

Well, as much as I was unsurprised by how things turned out I am still sorry they did. I am talking about Iran and the crushing of the protests. I am in no way surprised by this, I have held that the Iranian Clerics and the Revolutionary Guard was way to brutal and ruthless to be over turned by demonstrations for as long as I can remember. Unless the RG refused to do something, or the regular armed forces joined the protestors what happened in Iran was ineviable.

A couple of observations.

First, anyone who ever thought that peaceful protest and peaceful revolutions are the way to go always should have gotten a brutal wakeup call. When you are up against something like the RG and the Clerics, they don't care about bad press or world opinion or moral high ground. They care about POWER period. And they will use it whenever they can to maintain it or expand their own.

Second, the UN has again proven pretty weak. Not even so much as a nasty letter.

Third, I don't envy the POTUS on this one. For him, this was a lose-lose situation. He can't invade and put some bullets in some well deserving heads due to public opinion and the liberal establishment in his party base (ironic though, the guys who yell the loudest about freedom sure don't seem to be really worked up about this one). He can't really come out and give strong verbal support for partially the same reason, but also when he has to either put up or shut up he would loose a lot of face and pull when he has to shut up due to issue one. He has to say something, and since he was trying to balance he looked weak and/or waffling or like he didn't really care about the cause (liberty folks, Iranian version, but its liberty none the less). Really, no where he could really go on this one with out catching flak. I don't envy him for that. I would have done it differently, but I am not the president so it doesn't matter.

Fourth, this means trouble for our boys in Iraq and to a lesser extent Afghanistan. The Iranians will either use this as an excuse to try and divert attention by some overseas adventurism or will think that the POTUS is weak and they can start trying to cause trouble with the JAM again (Iranian backed militia that we have crushed before).

Its a shame we can't do some old fashioned gun-running to the other side here and foment some nice rebellions. Of course that didn't work to well for us the last time, but I can't think of a better group of people to cause trouble for.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

42 equals the 75mm Gun

After all the work up, we now finally get to the actual artillery piece. The Gun that started the revolution, broke the 1000 year box and made a whole profession go "hmmmmm".

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the French 1897 Mle.

An actual, functional French 75mm in action at Fort Sill (photo complements of the author).


A close up picture of the French 75 Mle, slightly modernized with rubber tires for towing with motor vehicles (also from the author).

Okay, so its a cannon. No, its not. This is the FIRST MODERN CANNON ever created. The older black powder weapons had been brought to their evolutionary end in the late 1880s with several changes and developments.

First, we had improvements in metalluragy which had led to new alloys, better steel and therefore stronger guns capable of taking greater pressure and force. Which was great due to the second development which was the development of new chemical propellents which replaced black powder. Black powder was dirty, corrosive and didn't work well in the damp and wet. Several types of new propellent and explosives were developed during this time, the most commonly used being cordite (which we still use). These propellents would have blown older bronze or iron guns apart unless they were built with heavier barrels which in turn meant you couldn't move them. With steel guns, you could use this stuff and still have a mobile gun with the added bonus of increased range, less smoke and greater reliability.

The other two improvements were mechanical in nature. Number three development was the invention of a easy to use and reliable breech loading system. This was called the "Nordenfelt Essentric Screw" and it allowed the use of fixed ammunition (i.e. a shell, its propellent both put together in a brass shell casing). You rotated a lever and moved a solid breech block either down and out of the way to eject and reload a shell, or move the block up and lock the breech closed to fire.

But it was the fourth development that really rocked the artillery's world and was a pure work of the French Army. This was the Long Recoil System (or if you want the technical jargon, a hydro-pneumatic recoil system). Although the original idea had been worked on by Krupp, they were unable to make it work due to leaks of the hydrallic fluid and loss of air pressure. The French hit on the design and assigned several engineering officers to work on it starting in 1892. They fixed the issues by 1896 and started production in 1897. This system allowed something that had never been done before in artillery history and that was the ability to shoot without having to relay and reaim the gun for every shot. The long recoil system absorbed the increased blast and pressure and allowed only the gun barrel to move backwards on the rails with the force being absorbed by the air pressure and hydrallics. The carriage remained motionless and when the gun moved back into firing position it was aimed in the exact same spot.

So, what does all of this translate into? Well, here is some raw data: 75mm caliber (roughly a 3 inch shell, weights 5.5 Kgs), max range of 6860 meters (compared to about 3000 meters for a Napoleon), a self traverse (i.e. the barrel could be moved left to right without moving the gun carriage) of about 6 degrees (not much, but remember this was the first gun that could move AT ALL), and a elevation of about 29 degrees. Most importantly (for the French) was its rate of fire: maximum theoretical rate was 30 rounds per minute, actual sustained rate (what you can shoot over a long period of time) was 15 per minute.

Pardon the pun, but this gun blew away it competition. The first truely modern artillery piece.

But here was the rub, it fit the designed need of the French military. The French wanted a rapid firing, accurate artillery piece that was mobile enough to keep up with the infantry and cavalry and could swamp the opposing enemy with firepower, usually in a direct fire (i.e. we can see them from the guns as we shoot). The French got that. But if you look at what they actually built it was a lot more that that. It could shoot accurate INDIRECT fire (shooting at something you can't see from the guns). For the first time, an army had actual artillery that could really reach out and effect the battle from a real distance. Or, if your mind had a sneaky twist, you could effect things outside the immediate battle area (the rear, units moving forward, supply dumps, road intersections, headquarters and so on). These guns added DEPTH to the battlefield and made the battlefield a whole lot bigger. And made artillery a whole lot more complex with a whole lot more problems.

Which I will hit on in the next post.

(source of technical data is "Allied Artillery Of World War One by Ian V. Hogg)

Monday, June 15, 2009

Oh God My Eyes

Folks, I watch and collect war movies. I have seen a lot of them, and have collected quite a bunch over time. I have, thanks to Vulcan Video in Austin, seen a good many foreign war movies. And now even more thanks to my wife. Which leads us to this little gem, "Come And See" by Elem Klimov. This movie is a Russian flick and won numerous awards. Sean Penn even commented on how great it was. Yeah, well if we needed more proof he was a moron we have it now.

For those who saw my Facebook warning, I will hit a bit more detail. This movie was about a young teenager who joins up with the Partisans in Byelorussia to fight the Nazis. Now, we all know that a) partisan warfare is a highly unpleasant type of warfare, b) the Eastern Front was probably the NASTIEST part of WWII with two highly motivated groups of very nasty people trying to outdo the other in nastiness, and c) any movie made in the USSR about WWII is going to be overboard on the nastiness. So with this formula I was expecting a pretty vicious movie. My wife, upon learning I had ordered this from Amazon, told me that she had seen it and WOULD NOT ever watch it again (her high school took her and her class when they were 16 to see it and I would say that was child abuse).

My response: "Oooooo, I have to see this now."

Yeah, that will teach me.

This movie was absolutely disgusting, made very little sense other than "See how evil the Nazis are", and appeared to be an experiment in cinema as to how to portray war in film. It had lots of allegory and innuendo, and was over the top on symbolism (the only thing missing was a giant flashing sign that said "Nazis Suck" in the background continually flashing). It had several characters who were plain nuts and made no sense unless you could dig down for the deeper meaning (for a war film? dude, war is hell and Nazis suck, what more do you need?) and even then it was iffy for the mental hookup. It showed two villages being exterminated (the piece de resistance was the second village which took 45 minutes to show it getting entirely burned down and all associated crimes with it), several rapes (very unpleasant and I skipped over them, I can imagine what my wife was thinking when she saw this at age 16), torture, a very liberal use of flamethrowers, the after effect of mines, the old "how many bodies can a rifle bullet go through?" trick, cripes you get it.

This thing was more of a "Faces of Death" than an actual movie. Like I said earlier on Facebook, this was a combination Shock French Art Film, Ingmar Bergmann, and hyper violent "Saving Private Ryan". Only make sure you pull the worst parts from all of those movies and combine them.

I am keeping this movie to use against Andy, but I honestly don't know if I can stand to watch it again.

Avoid this turkey, it hurts.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

BOOM!


Today I got to have fun. US Weapons with a Artillery Live Fire right over our heads. And they PAY me for this...
Update: Photo from the other day, I couldn't get it to download via the BB. This is the Middle Impact Area on Fort Sill. To your right at a greater distance is a hill called "Blockhouse Signal Mountain". The little dot on the top is the blockhouse. This is the world famous location known to all artillerymen (urm, Western ones anyway). The big cloud of dirt is an impact from a 155mm shot from behind us by a M777 battery. Way behind us...

Monday, June 8, 2009

I love my job...

As I am still working on the linking thing (and this article couldn't link), I just copied it whole from New Scientist. The comments I left off as they took a severe left turn about why waste money and resourses when babies are starving, etc. I will couple this with the fact that I was at the Fires Center of Excellence Fires Seminar this last week and got to walk through the displays of new stuff. But first read the article.

New Army Rifle Fires Laser-Guided Smart Bullets With Onboard Targeting Chips
New rifles with explosive rounds can be told where to detonate
By Dan Smith Posted 06.05.2009 at 5:09 pm 10 Comments

Smart Rifle: You won't see the rifle or the bullet until it's too late
It would be hard to describe a bullet as smart, but what if that bullet was laser-guided, radio-controlled, and carried an onboard targeting CPU? The US Army has announced the creation of the XM25 rifle, which can fire a new type of explosive round that fit that exact description. Imagine the implications: hitting targets inside buildings or hiding around walls. Whoa.
First, the scope on the rifle has a laser that gauges the distance to the target. The soldier can set exactly where the 25-millimeter bullet will detonate by adding or subtracting 3 meters from that point. Then, the scope will send a radio signal to a chip inside the bullet telling it how far it should travel before exploding.
Now, here’s where things get truly nuts: Each bullet has a small magnetic transducer that interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field, generating a tiny alternating current every time it spins as it speeds toward the target. Measured against the gun's specially calibrated rifling, this means the bullet can keep track of how far it has traveled in real time. Whoa, again.

Smart Bullets In Action: Trenches are no longer a safe place to hide The Army has proposed the uses can range from hitting enemies hidden in trenches (as pictured above), or even hitting a sniper hiding in a building by setting the range about a meter beyond the window. They are also proposed as a smarter alternative to grenade launchers, which can serve the same purpose but be less accurate and have limited range, making them more prone to collateral damage.
The Army will begin field tests with the XM25 system soon, with hopes of deploying it into regular duty by 2012.[New Scientist]

Neat stuff. Sci-Fi gear in real world. That goes double for the stuff at the seminar. M777s (the new howitzer), the new ADA systems, the NLOS system (think a Javelin type missile fired from the bed of a truck, but with a range of 80 kms and guided by satellites). The proof that I had "grown up" in terms of neat stuff was the Command and Control Vehicles they had come up with. A Bradley M3 IFV that was completely redone and had 4 computer systems and radios. You could run a battalion CP while driving on the road and not miss a beat. And it looks exactly like every other M3 Bradley so there is no "SHOOT HERE" sign because of too many radio antennas.

Tech rocks.

Monday, June 1, 2009

The Odd Side of History

This post deals with an odd situation I ran into in Ukraine. Background: WWII is being fought, a minority of Ukraines hate the Russians so much they side with the Nazis. However, thanks to Hitler's brillant plan of "displace the sub-human slavs" many more decide to fight as partisans. The USSR beats back Germany and eventually rolls their butts right out of Ukraine. Here comes the fun part. Many of the Ukrainian guerrilla groups decide that the Soviets are just as bad as the Nazis and keep fighting them as hard as they had the Nazis. Added to this situation is the large amount of criminal/outlaw gangs that have sprung up due to the vicious warfare that has ruined much of this area and the great terrain (mountains, forests and broken ground, perfect for the old irregular action). The result is a 5 year war going from 1945 to 1950 in which the Ukrainian Nationalist groups are slowly ground down and crushed by the Red Army and Special NKVD Groups. In the USSR days (and still today in Russia) this conflict was known as the "War against Various Armed and Bandit Gangs".

Odd name isn't it. This name was actually a sop to the Ukrainians as they didn't want all of their Nationalist groups lumped in with those that were actually criminal gangs. Here is where it gets strange, at least for me. WWII and things around that time are pretty untouchable here in the US. It was a straight up war against groups that everyone agrees were the "Bad Guys". In Ukraine, I saw how history can be modified or changed or how it can actually be veiwed differently. Sure there is some of that in the US (especially in the south), but time has really dulled it. Not here. Which leads to the oddness of it for me.




This is a picture of the memorial to all the soldiers who died fighting in the War against Armed Groups and Bandits. It has my wife's grandfather's name on it. He was an officer who survived WWII and was killed while on patrol in this region when his patrol was ambushed by Ukrainian partisans. If you are thinking that this memorial is somewhat neglected you are spot on. It is 50plus years old to start with, but I was struck by how run down this particular grave yard was. Part is due to the fact that Ukrainians do not mow their grass (the grass grows short so they fail to see the need), but there is a definate sense of neglect. It felt like many of the people here really didn't want this here but out of respect for the dead they let it be.


This is another memorial. Note the trident symbol in the center. This is one that is commemorating the abolishment of Serfdom and Ukrainian Nationalism. It was torn down by the Soviets in 1946 and put up in again in the 1990s. It is well kept, in the center of town and flaunts Ukrainian Nationistic symbols. I have video of others that were about the same thing but with Ukrainian Flags and the National Ukrainian Army Flag (the partisan flag). These were usually right next to sites that commemorated Soviet soldiers who died fighting partisans or bandits. Here is were the odd feelings really hit.

The Soviets won the fight, and in Russia and to some Ukrainians they were the good guys. To many others they were not. While they lost their war, their cause ended up winning. And they now have numerous memorials to them proudly displaying the Ukrainian Trident and their flags. And the memorials to the "winners" crumble away and are neglected.

I am not sure if I am sad about this or not. I firmly side with the Nationalist on this issue while understanding why they lost. But it is hard to see a neglected grave or memorial to a fellow soldier. Its harder still when its your wife's grandfather. It doesn't help that these newer memorials are usually right next to the older ones and degree of care really sticks out. This was not a nice war (yeah, I know that is a statement rich in the "WTF"), but I have to tell you the stories I have been told by my wife's side are pretty nasty. I'll spare you but I have a new appreciation for how things went down in Kansas and Missouri in the Civil War. I guess every country goes through stuff like this. Part of a country growing up.