Pedantic question about standardisation

If you'll read the entire post you'll see that I was responding to a specific statement from PE.

And your response was to raise your post count, or ???, since you were not a party to the conversation in the first place.

- Leigh

No form of fighting is a symphony. But, most wars are won by team efforts. Those who carry out individual feats of heroism generally get their nation's highest honor - posthumously.

Our unit in SEA, being a photo unit for intelligence and recon, had the additional duty of taking pictures of every death. I did not enjoy that Leigh, but it was (more or less) an individual effort. No symphony except the choirs of angels for the deceased. And, if you take an individual, as his commander, and send him out to carry out an assignment and he never returns, that is no symphony either.

BTDT.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

But, most wars are won by team efforts.

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Most wars are won by leadership, which is an individual trait.

You seem to think you're the only person who was ever in combat... wrong.
How many did you put down by your own hand? That's a lot more personal than shooting pix of corpses.

- Leigh

As far as I know, the whether was so bad the day before the landing that Rommel ordered the artillery to withdraw to covered positions in the rear, so that they could stay less exposed to air attacks. It's not just the personal absence of Rommel from the front on the first crucial hours of the "longest day", it's really that the Germans, also in Normandy, had much higher a fire power than they were able to use.

Not a small mistake.

The Desert Fox had made another big mistake when he persuaded Hitler (and Mussolini for what it mattered) that it was not necessary to take Malta in order to arrive to the Suez canal. When he arrived at El-Alamein he was in deep inferiority of means and men, and very far from his support line which basically was at Marsa-Matruk, and not even a man of his military genius could think about winning, or not losing.

Rommel certainly was a great general, but possibly a very weak strategist.

In hindsight it's all very easy.

It should be said that in 1940 Mussolini asked the Navy about the possibility of a war against the British Empire. The answer of the Navy was more or less: "Very bad idea, and don't even think about it if we don't take Malta as the first move". Mussolini thought about it, and without taking Malta.

Diapositivo said:

As far as I know, the whether was so bad the day before the landing that Rommel ordered the artillery to withdraw to covered positions in the rear, so that they could stay less exposed to air attacks.

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This makes no sense.
1) You don't move artillery around arbitrarily. They're more vulnerable to air attack when moving than when emplaced.
2) You avoid moving heavy equipment on muddy roads/off-road if at all possible.
3) If the weather was that bad you would not expect significant air strikes.

- Leigh

As far as I know it makes sense because, actually, in a land war (as WW1) artillery is typically kept covered (defiladed) and only goes on the posizione di tiro, the "fire field"(?), when it has to operate. The fire field is by geometry uncovered and so just like your artillery can hit the enemy, the enemy can hit your artillery.

Heavy artillery takes hours to move. It can never be too near to the enemy (it would fall in his hands in case of a sudden penetration) and it can never be, er, too far. And it must be "covered" from enemy attacks until use.

What I can gather is that, considering that a landing is typically performed in the morning, during the hours before the possible landing the artillery must leave the covered positions and go to positions favourable for shelling, possibly or probably uncovered position. This is risky.

What Rommel presumably did was to order his artillery to remain covered instead of going to the fire fields before the morning.

One of the reasons why the Solstice battle was won by Italy, against all bets, in June 1918 was that two Austrian deserters gave the time of the Austrian attack. The fire fields of the Austrian army were known to the Italian army (which had "air superiority").

So in the night hours before the attack, which obviously begins with a shelling, the Austrian heavy artillery moved to their fire fields. The Austrian attack was to happen on basically all the length of the front (they were so sure to pass that did not concentrate the forces to strike in one point). The Italian artillery moved before them and before the hour of the Austrian shelling shelled the Austrian positions while the Austrian artillery was positioning. That played havoc of the Austrian artillery and greatly diminished their push on that day.

The juice of this is that artillery, by definition, moves from covered to uncovered position, to go back to covered positions, and those movements belong to the logic itself of the heavy artillery use. These movements can span for kilometres and take hours if I get it right. Moving the heavy artillery to and from the fire field is a very delicate decision which can be liked to the decision by an air carrier to launch its planes (especially if it has no battleship for coverage).

What I wonder is what "covered" (defiladed) means if the menace is an air menace. A battery which is defiladed behind a mount is obviously not reachable by the enemy heavy artillery (because they cannot shoot with a mortar trajectory). A plane, on the contrary, can turn round a hill and attack a battery from every position in principle.

In practice bombardiers don't do complex manoeuvering and maybe the artillery in the rear was more protected by just being farther from the coast, I don't know. But I must have seen a documentary about this artillery mistake by Rommel, misguided by the whether. Or maybe age is taking its toll from my memory

I agree that in WWII and with an air menace all this movement of artillery does not sound very logic.

It might be that the feared attack would be carried with naval artillery.

That's a bit of a nasty response in the basic reading Leigh? Is there a way you could have made your point less personally?

In WWI, The Russian Revolution and Spanish flu had quite a significant impact on the war's end also.

Marc!

I don't understand the comment. My previous post (#356) was not meant to be nasty.

When did we start talking about WWI? All the comments I've read are about WWII.

- Leigh

sorry Leigh - I was slow typing - I was referring to post #354 - I'm not arguing with your point, just the "you seem to think..." para - which reads rather nastily.

Marc!

Steve Smith said:

One word which you should always spell correctly is pronunciation !!

(don't edit your post to make me look stupid!).


Steve.

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I'm susprised I fat-fingered the word that way usually I add extra W's or some other weird character.

munz6869 said:

...just the "you seem to think..." para - which reads rather nastily.

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Good. That was my intention. Glad I succeeded.

- Leigh

Leigh B said:

Most wars are won by leadership, which is an individual trait.

You seem to think you're the only person who was ever in combat... wrong.
How many did you put down by your own hand? That's a lot more personal than shooting pix of corpses.

- Leigh

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Leigh;

Respectfully, you put the enemy down by your own hand, but you put your own troops in harms way by your own orders. Which is harder? I'll wager that seeing your orders lead to the demise of your own friends and associates is harder by far.

In addition, it is harder if you personally are not in combat, only your troops are.

You seem to have harsh words for some of us. I call that collateral damage.

PE

Steve Smith said:

I think they're stolen rather than borrowed. We have no intention of giving them back!


Steve.

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Yes

Curiously when we steal a word we usually give it a more restricted meaning than it has in the original language. Thus the German word ersatz meaning a substitute becomes in English a cheap or inferior substitute. The Hindi word pajamas meaning trousers becomes restricted to a form of night dress.

What can you tell of the American use of the word 'smorgasbord'? I grew up in Sweden and would love your perspective on it.

Gerald C Koch said:

Yes

Curiously when we steal a word we usually give it a more restricted meaning than it has in the original language. Thus the German word ersatz meaning a substitute becomes in English a cheap or inferior substitute. The Hindi word pajamas meaning trousers becomes restricted to a form of night dress.

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In the US, 'smorgasbord' is a type of restaurant, arranged like a buffet with many different dishes in large quantities,
self-serve, with small tables (typically four to eight people).

- Leigh

The word smorgasbord in English seems to take on the additional meaning of a large array of choices. The choices can be food or anything else. I remember reading a film festival described as a smorgasbord of interesting films.

I love a good smorgasbord. Now you've made me hungry!

Gerald C Koch said:

The choices can be food or anything else. I remember reading a film festival described as a smorgasbord of interesting films.

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Good point. I've also heard it used in that context.

- Leigh

lxdude said:

There is very little to fear from ordinary citizens.

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To clarify: there is very little to fear from ordinary citizens having guns. Ordinary citizens having cars- that's another matter. Many more of us die every year because of some dumbass driving way too fast or playing with the radio or talking on the phone or yelling at their kids or being drunk or stoned on their ass.

Consider this- whenever you're on the road you're having to trust every other person who is out there at the same time as you. How many times has a car coming toward you on the road had a drunk, sleepy, distracted or reckless driver behind the wheel? You'll never know, because lucky for you, that wasn't the moment they veered into your lane. That concerns me a lot more than getting shot. We hear about the mass shootings and they are horrible, but we read every day about people dying in car wrecks, say "That's too bad" and head right back out on the road. I'd rather see us concentrate on better driver training and stricter sentencing than on banning firearms. Many more lives are at stake.

Two street racers killed this guy a few miles from here on a two-lane road I've been on many times. Look at the one punk's sentence. I see Ricky-Racers like this a lot. If they knew they were going to be severely punished for racing maybe they would think twice about it.

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lxdude said:

To clarify: there is very little to fear from ordinary citizens having guns. Ordinary citizens having cars- that's another matter. Many more of us die every year because of some dumbass driving way too fast or playing with the radio or talking on the phone or yelling at their kids or being drunk or stoned on their ass.

Consider this- whenever you're on the road you're having to trust every other person who is out there at the same time as you. How many times has a car coming toward you on the road had a drunk, sleepy, distracted or reckless driver behind the wheel? You'll never know, because lucky for you, that wasn't the moment they veered into your lane. That concerns me a lot more than getting shot. We hear about the mass shootings and they are horrible, but we read every day about people dying in car wrecks, say "That's too bad" and head right back out on the road. I'd rather see us concentrate on better driver training and stricter sentencing than on banning firearms. Many more lives are at stake.

Two street racers killed this guy a few miles from here on a two-lane road I've been on many times. Look at the one punk's sentence. I see Ricky-Racers like this a lot. If they knew they were going to be severely punished for racing maybe they would think twice about it.

Dead Link Removed

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Then why let kids in the USA drive at ages like 15? In the UK it's 17 and they are bad enough then.

cliveh said:

Then why let kids in the USA drive at ages like 15? In the UK it's 17 and they are bad enough then.

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These guys were 18 at the time. IMO, they should have been made an example of, instead of getting little more than a slap on the wrist. This kind of recklessness is at its worst in teenagers, but many older drivers do very dangerous things, and when something bad happens, they generally get off easily. There's a mentality that it's an accident, but that's seldom all there is to it.

My point is that amid all the hollering to ban guns, there are other things that could be done which have no constitutional implications and would result in a far greater reduction in death, suffering and grief, if that's what we're after.

as in all-you-can-eat for folks who should eat no more?

RalphLambrecht said:

as in all-you-can-eat for folks who should eat no more?

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That was one of the things that nearly shocked me when I first set foot in the US - portion size. My goodness. And then to have an all-you-can-eat situation. I immediately gained about 30 lbs of weight (14kg) in my first year here. Then, luckily, I thought better of it and carried on doggie bag style, taking half of it home for next day.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

Then, luckily, I thought better of it and carried on doggie bag style, taking half of it home for next day.

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Good idea. Most of the portions seem to be enough for two. Some English pubs seem to be making larger servings now too. This is in contrast to some of the fancy restaurants where you need a magnifying glass to find your food.


Steve.

cliveh said:

In the UK it's 17 and they are bad enough then.

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I'm surprised that there are so many 17 year old drivers around given the insurance costs. My son is 17 and it would cost £2,500 to insure him. That isn't going to happen.
He is trying to start up his own gardening and landscaping business at the moment which would obviously be much easier with a van. The only option at the moment is to buy a van registered and insured in my name which I can park up outside a client's house the evening before a job then pick it up for him the next day. A bit like a mobile shed!
It has the added advantage of giving me a gig wagon for the weekends so I'm not complaining!


Steve.

Steve Smith said:

This is in contrast to some of the fancy restaurants where you need a magnifying glass to find your food.


Steve.

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It's right under the sprig of mint (or is that basil?).