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The Combat 75 Military Surplus Thread. Past, present and future.

spitfire

spitfire

Walty McWaltface
A thread for anything that doesn't fall neatly into the ongoing threads about Tanks, Helicopters and Cold War Aviation.

Indulge your camo fetishes, share your tales of derring do on The Balcony, discuss small unit tactics and how those guys in the movie are Doing It Wrong. Is there a Lancaster bomber on the moon? Did Hitler escape to Argentina*? Military mishaps, heroics and amusing tales all welcome.

Also a thread for sharing the reality of what happens when humans fight humans and the impact on the world around them. There are plenty of articles, podcasts and short films/docs that don't fit readily into an existing thread so this may be the place for it.

A very important thread on the Holocaust that should be used as appropriate is here: Holocaust: the facts

Carry on.



*no of course he fucking didn't, he died in the bunker.
 
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I have been enjoying the We Have Ways Podcast.

wehavewayspod.com

Home – We Have Ways of Making You Talk Podcast

Achtung! Achtung! Comedian Al Murray and historian James Holland discuss all matters Second World War on the podcast.
wehavewayspod.com wehavewayspod.com

It can be a bit chummy but here are some great guests and some interesting looks at what passes as gospel nowadays.

Particularly looking again at the story of the Battle of Britain.

James Holland reckons that owing to the might of the Royal Navy Operation Sealion would never have been a success. Even if the Luftwaffe had managed aerial superiority.

Also the RAF's aircraft and pilot supply lines were never in trouble and the whole thing about there being no reserves left was extrapolated from a comment that there were no reserves left but only in one area.

He makes a convincing argument on both aspects. Not taking away from the efforts of The Few but it was massively more complex than that. Surprisingly...
 
What: like pictures on Victorian Royal Navy warships in colour?

EDD55E83-C18A-4EAD-B4BA-C0C7B5CA62BF.jpeg

Or Second World War Soviet generals?

535343CC-8CED-4960-99B8-3FA3C1FC393B.jpeg

Or that bloke from Yorkshire who signed up to be a Greek Evzone

F29EDA8F-40C0-42F5-8CC3-B4C4347B09A8.jpeg




That kind of thing?
 
A380 said:
What: like pictures on Victorian Royal Navy warships in colour?

View attachment 249223

Or Second World War Soviet generals?

View attachment 249224

Or that bloke from Yorkshire who signed up to be a Greek Evzone

View attachment 249227




That kind of thing?
Click to expand...

This and plenty more. As spitfire said in the other thread, this shall be the home for anything military that moves that isn’t tanks, choppers, or Cold War era planes.

I wanna talk 5th gen fighters, hypersonic re-entry ICBMs and stealth ships- not necessarily tonight, mind :D

I’ll post the maiden question though. I’ve actually looked this up on Google, but I must be daft because I’m still unclear about it. What is actually meant by ‘wired missiles’? They’re not actually physically linked to the launcher by a wire as they fly towards their target, are they? Or are they? I remember seeing a video on YouTube of one being fired in Syria, and it flew weirdly slow for a missile, a s in a wobbly way.
 
T & P said:
This and plenty more. As spitfire said in the other thread, this shall be the home for anything military that moves that isn’t tanks, choppers, or Cold War era planes.

I wanna talk 5th gen fighters, hypersonic re-entry ICBMs and stealth ships- not necessarily tonight, mind :D

I’ll post the maiden question though. I’ve actually looked this up on Google, but I must be daft because I’m still unclear about it. What is actually meant by ‘wired missiles’? They’re not actually physically linked to the launcher by a wire as they fly towards their target, are they? Or are they? I remember seeing a video on YouTube of one being fired in Syria, and it flew weirdly slow for a missile, a s in a wobbly way.
Click to expand...

I have seen wire guided missile. I think the Javelin? Not looked it up though.

Le Voltaire is anchored in Toulon harbour in that pic, the French equivalent of Portsmouth. That's where Mlle. Fire is from. Would have been to the left (port whevs) of this (taken in 2014).

1610754670458.png
 
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spitfire said:
James Holland reckons that owing to the might of the Royal Navy Operation Sealion would never have been a success. Even if the Luftwaffe had managed aerial superiority.

Also the RAF's aircraft and pilot supply lines were never in trouble and the whole thing about there being no reserves left was extrapolated from a comment that there were no reserves left but only in one area.

He makes a convincing argument on both aspects. Not taking away from the efforts of The Few but it was massively more complex than that. Surprisingly...
Click to expand...

That was roughly the conclusion of the Sandhurst War Games, in 1974: that the Germans would have made it across the Channel and established a beachhead, but wouldn't have been able to sustain the cross-Channel supply lines in the face of the RAF and Royal Navy throwing everything they had at them.

In terms of military surplus hardware, have a battleship, HMS Vanguard:

HMS-Vanguard-at-anchor-1080x675.jpg


vanguard-guns-blazing.jpg


Vanguard was pretty much surplus before she was even finished, and for a while was known as Portsmouth's most expensive luncheon club before she was scrapped in 1960.
 
In both world wars the War Department picked one of the heavy freight engines used in Britain and built or requisitioned examples for use overseas. A lot of them weren't repatriated and were taken on by the railways of wherever they'd ended up, hence two generations of British freight engines in Iraq:

tony_207.jpg


Great Central / LNER O4 class 2-8-0, originally built for the War Department as part of a WW1 order but not finished until 1919 and sold to the LNER, and then requisitioned and sent to Iraq in 1941. Seen here on the scrap line at Baghdad in 1966, at which time there were a few of this type still working in Britain.

PXfx2AD_td7sVGYuZGXSvrWJM7mT-eB31CvevtRCQgLHIkCuyP7nVYey9tC58PPMKIwzc6dnhwgnYAFVPwXDyY0yziJkP51-vjbuxok


LMS 8F, sent new to Iraq about 1941. This picture was taken in 2003, and AFAIK the engine is still there. There are also two of them on the bottom of the Red Sea.
 
T & P said:
I'll post the maiden question though. I’ve actually looked this up on Google, but I must be daft because I’m still unclear about it. What is actually meant by ‘wired missiles’? They’re not actually physically linked to the launcher by a wire as they fly towards their target, are they? Or are they? I remember seeing a video on YouTube of one being fired in Syria, and it flew weirdly slow for a missile, a s in a wobbly way.
Click to expand...

spitfire said:
I have seen wire guided missile. I think the Javelin? Not looked it up though.
Click to expand...
Javelin is fire-and-forget, not wire guided. Perhaps you're thinking of MILAN?

As Would Be said, yes they are connected by wire, with a range of up to a couple of miles. Simple, reliable, can't be electronically jammed, doesn't necessarily require continuous line of sight.

Some torpedoes are wire guided too, which allows them to be steered or commanded in other ways like loitering.
 
mauvais said:
As Would Be said, yes they are connected by wire, with a range of up to a couple of miles. Simple, reliable, can't be electronically jammed, doesn't necessarily require continuous line of sight.
Click to expand...
The TOW missiles do need a line of sight as they are optically guided. The electronics in the helicopter keep the missile in line with the cross hairs on the sight. If the sight can't see the missile the electronics don't know where to steer it and it will veer off course.
 
xenon said:
I am reading Blood Metal and Dust at the moment. The story of what went wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A lot of military info. vehicles, equipment tactics. Not just politics.
Click to expand...

Have you read An Intimate War by Mike Martin? It addresses failures in Afghanistan. I can't speak as to how valid what he says is, but it's a very interesting read.

There's an interview with him here Interview - Mike Martin and he has a Twitter that's worth a look.

There's a whole world of interesting things with the Defence Cultural stuff and anthropology and some of the controversies about that too, as well as the 77th Brigade (UK unit that now deals with that kinda thing) having become a thing that the conspiracy theorists go on about.

Couple of quick links on the military and anthropology stuff here. It's the Human Terrain System and the anthropologist Montgomery McFate that are the things to look for.

foreignpolicy.com

The Army Needs Anthropologists

With the quiet death of the military's controversial Human Terrain System, America's soldiers have lost a guiding light that is needed now more than ever.
foreignpolicy.com foreignpolicy.com

Army Anthropologist's Controversial Culture Clash

Seven years ago, Montgomery McFate was sitting in a bar in Washington, DC, trying to figure out what to do with her life. She was an unemployed, overeducated Army wife with advanced degrees in anthropology and law from Harvard and Yale — and few career prospects. University jobs were out. Her...
www.wired.com www.wired.com
 
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WouldBe said:
The TOW missiles do need a line of sight as they are optically guided. The electronics in the helicopter keep the missile in line with the cross hairs on the sight. If the sight can't see the missile the electronics don't know where to steer it and it will veer off course.
Click to expand...
Yes - but being able to see the missile isn't exactly the same as being able to see the target. The alternative is laser guidance, which can be disrupted en-route, e.g. smoke.
 
LynnDoyleCooper said:
Have you read An Intimate War by Mike Martin? It addresses failures in Afghanistan. I can't speak as to how valid what he says is, but it's a very interesting read.

There's an interview with him here Interview - Mike Martin and he has a Twitter that's worth a look.

There's a whole world of interesting stuff with the Defence Cultural stuff and anthropology and some of the controversies about that too, as well as the 77th Brigade (UK unit that now deals with that kinda thing) having become a thing that the conspiracy theorists go on about.

Couple of quick links on the military and anthropology stuff here. It's the Human Terrain System and the anthropologist Montgomery McFate that are the things to look for.

foreignpolicy.com

The Army Needs Anthropologists

With the quiet death of the military's controversial Human Terrain System, America's soldiers have lost a guiding light that is needed now more than ever.
foreignpolicy.com foreignpolicy.com

Army Anthropologist's Controversial Culture Clash

Seven years ago, Montgomery McFate was sitting in a bar in Washington, DC, trying to figure out what to do with her life. She was an unemployed, overeducated Army wife with advanced degrees in anthropology and law from Harvard and Yale — and few career prospects. University jobs were out. Her...
www.wired.com www.wired.com
Click to expand...

Have added to my list, cheers. Good articles too. What he says about the conflict industry, uselessness of seaking to manage conflicts as a series of repetable metrics.
 
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LynnDoyleCooper said:
Have you read An Intimate War by Mike Martin? It addresses failures in Afghanistan. I can't speak as to how valid what he says is, but it's a very interesting read.

There's an interview with him here Interview - Mike Martin and he has a Twitter that's worth a look.

There's a whole world of interesting things with the Defence Cultural stuff and anthropology and some of the controversies about that too, as well as the 77th Brigade (UK unit that now deals with that kinda thing) having become a thing that the conspiracy theorists go on about.

Couple of quick links on the military and anthropology stuff here. It's the Human Terrain System and the anthropologist Montgomery McFate that are the things to look for.

foreignpolicy.com

The Army Needs Anthropologists

With the quiet death of the military's controversial Human Terrain System, America's soldiers have lost a guiding light that is needed now more than ever.
foreignpolicy.com foreignpolicy.com

Army Anthropologist's Controversial Culture Clash

Seven years ago, Montgomery McFate was sitting in a bar in Washington, DC, trying to figure out what to do with her life. She was an unemployed, overeducated Army wife with advanced degrees in anthropology and law from Harvard and Yale — and few career prospects. University jobs were out. Her...
www.wired.com www.wired.com
Click to expand...
What I heard is that no one in West Belfast remembers the McFate person, despite her claims of having researched the 'ra.
 
mauvais said:
Yes - but being able to see the missile isn't exactly the same as being able to see the target. The alternative is laser guidance, which can be disrupted en-route, e.g. smoke.
Click to expand...
With TOW you need to be able to see at least the missile from the helicopter. If smoke was obstructing the target you can at least keep the cross hairs on where the target should be to guide it. Not sure what happens if the missile disappears into the smoke but the IR flare on the back of the missile is quite bright so may be easier to track than that of a laser.
 
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