[HN Gopher] Tricks of Trench Warfare (2020)
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Tricks of Trench Warfare (2020)
Author : Tomte
Score : 148 points
Date : 2021-06-14 04:23 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gru.gq)
(TXT) w3m dump (gru.gq)
| skinkestek wrote:
| > The method that actually worked was to get a few boys with
| rifles up on the parapet and have them shoot down into the
| trenches, killing everyone they could. Faster, more efficient,
| and no silly buggers with grenades flying back and forth.
|
| It sounds so easy when written this way :-/
|
| Also if anyone is interested in WW2 sniping the Finnish sniper
| "white death" might be an interesting starting point.
|
| He went to extreme lengths - and was very successful.
| ovi256 wrote:
| Simo Hayha, nicknamed "The White Death", was not just a
| successful sniper, using a rifle, but also a successful
| ambusher, surprising enemy small groups like patrols and
| devastating them using an automatic submachinegun.
| unwind wrote:
| Wikipedia knows more [1] as usual.
|
| _Hayha is believed to have killed over 500 men during the
| Winter war (inculding 259 killed by sniper rifle), the
| highest number of sniper kills in any major war._
|
| That is just ... gruesome.
|
| I was confused when I looked at this article, I misread the
| URI as "gnu.org" (laptop screen too far away, thanks Covid
| WFH) and started trying to figure out the analogy they were
| making for a paragraph or two. :)
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > That is just ... gruesome.
|
| Finland ended WW2 as an independent country, the only
| European one that borders Russia (along with Norway I
| guess, but the bulk of Finland is far closer to Russia)
|
| The alternative would've been substantially worse
| skinkestek wrote:
| > That is just ... gruesome.
|
| Yep. But the alternative were worse. Anyone who hasn't been
| occupied by Stalin era Soviet should be very happy.
|
| As a kid I heard a bunch of stories from my dad who had
| friends in Finland and also from my friends who had been
| there.
|
| One was that the Finnish soldiers always carried a backpack
| on night patrol so they could safely backstab anyone they
| came up behind in the night and couldn't identify as if it
| was one of theirs it would end in a blanket or something
| anyway.
|
| Another was that of Finnish troops not being to careful
| when they packed the hay they slept in so some of it would
| fall on the ground.
|
| Only there would also often be a mine there as well.
|
| Oh, and most of the time the Russians stopped to examine
| the hay there was just hay on the ground but sniper fire
| from the hillside behind it.
|
| As Wikimedia points out: the Finnish were lucky because of
| Stalins great purge, but still they should not be messed
| with.
|
| Oh, another one, from air combat, this one I learned later
| from a book probably: according to that source the planes
| the Russians used for the invasion of Finland had landing
| gear that had to be lowered using a pulley system. Again,
| according to that source, some Russian planes were lost
| after the Finnish pilots figured out this and started
| ambushing them while they approached landing.
| handrous wrote:
| That last one smells a bit, since landing and take-off
| are great times to ambush an aircraft _regardless_ , so
| if you can do it (that is, the enemy is very bad at
| deploying AA to protect their airfields and aren't
| otherwise maintaining air superiority near their
| airfields) then you already would be, no matter how they
| deploy their landing gear.
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| How many times do you think he pooped or peed in his pants?
| pchristensen wrote:
| I love this account of the Russo-Finnish Winter War -
| https://ar.to/2010/08/red-blood-white-snow
| grugq wrote:
| The Finnish war gave us the term "Molotov cocktail." When the
| Russians began bombing Helsinki they claimed that the bombers
| were dropping food to the Finnish people. The Finns made a joke
| that bombs were Molotov's bread baskets, or picnic baskets,
| etc. Molotov was the Soviet Foreign Minister.
|
| When the Finns started using glass bottles with gasoline and a
| burning rag as anti tank weapons, they made the joke that these
| were Molotov cocktails to go with the Molotov bread baskets.
|
| It's strange how Soviet propaganda ("we're dropping food!")
| lives on in English by way of a Finnish joke from 80 years ago.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Yes standing exposed on top would expose you to fire from the
| support trenches.
| fnord77 wrote:
| > once the sniper nest was located, call in an artillery strike.
|
| did they have radios? Or would they send a runner?
| nine_k wrote:
| A phone. Field phones were very much a thing during WWI and
| WWII, with point to point wiring laid down very soon after
| gaining control over the territory, or even before that.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| also carrier pigeons:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_pigeon
| inglor_cz wrote:
| In the pre-transistor times, radios were heavy and used a lot
| of energy. Even in WWII, field radios weighed about 35-40
| pounds. A soldier with a radio could not carry a lot of other
| equipment.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCR-300
|
| Vacuum tubes are a clumsy technology.
| tigerlily wrote:
| Maori invented trench warfare in the 1800s. Their fortifications
| were surrounded by palisades, and they dug trenches beneath,
| shooting hapless British soldiers from the gaps between the
| ground and the bottom of the wall.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I expect that trench warfare is a natural side effect of
| enclosure trench systems used when taking a fortress. Obviously
| field fortifications are older than that, but I mean the
| variety that implies firearms and artillery.
| svieira wrote:
| Fra Giocondo (among others) would like a word with you:
|
| > The second siege was that of Padua in 1509. A monk engineer
| named Fra Giocondo, trusted with the defence of the Venetian
| city, cut down the city's medieval wall and surrounded the city
| with a broad ditch that could be swept by flanking fire from
| gun ports set low in projections extending into the ditch.
| Finding that their cannon fire made little impression on these
| low ramparts, the French and allied besiegers made several
| bloody and fruitless assaults and then withdrew.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastion_fort#Effectiveness
| WalterBright wrote:
| The Civil War saw trench warfare.
| svieira wrote:
| Indeed - the battle of the Crater in Petersburg is an eery
| foretaste of the WWI battlefield.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Crater
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Fortifications and trenches are waaay older. I think the romans
| were the first to master it.
|
| But I am not sure, if what you describe qualifies as trench
| warfare.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| The Romans were something else. I was reading about the
| period around the Illyrian uprising recently, and learned
| that at that time, standard practice for a legion was to
| build a massive fort, trenches and all, every night they
| camped.
|
| It's pretty incredible (and often terrible) what humans with
| hand tools can do when sufficiently organized and motivated.
|
| The basic concept of a trench with something like a wooden
| barrier proximate goes back to neolithic times. Interestingly
| most of these sites we've found seem to not be fortifications
| but rather something ceremonial. It's ambiguous.
| w0de0 wrote:
| A pivotal moment in the Koran is known as "The Battle of the
| Trench."
| enkid wrote:
| You have a source for that?
| comicjk wrote:
| It's true, though it wasn't the first use of these
| techniques. They beat the British this way at the battle of
| Gate Pa.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tauranga_campaign
| jammaloo wrote:
| There's a good video on this event, by
| [LindyBeige](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6QhW5S8Gk4).
| Their videos are very informative and entertaining, but
| very focused on Britain.
| fho wrote:
| ... and tanks ;-)
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| No they didn't.
| taylorfinley wrote:
| If you're in to security at all and are not already familiar with
| The Grugq, you will likely really enjoy his talks and writings.
| It's fitting that an expert on deception uses an avatar that
| projects the image he wants you to have of him. Don't be too
| jarred when you watch a talk and realize the avatar is part of
| the smoke and mirrors!
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > The simplest implementation of this trick was leaving shiny tin
| cans, or other enticing targets for snipers to zero their sights
| on at the front. Germans would leave cans on the parapet for
| snipers to shoot at. Due to the high contrast and easy visibility
| of these targets, they were attractive for naive snipers to use
| while adjusting their sights. A grave and often fatal error.
|
| Wait so... they just put out tin cans and the enemy snipers would
| shoot them because their sights needed to be tuned? That doesn't
| feel like it makes any sense. For one, you can't shoot the can
| unless your sights are tuned, so I guess they're taking multiple
| shots? Was it really so hard to invent a sight that could be
| tuned without firing to give away your position?
| grugq wrote:
| There is a lot involved, but the basic idea is that your rifle
| and sight need to be calibrated to match _from_ where you're
| shooting _to_ where you're shooting. The journey to the sniper
| hides was long, arduous, grueling, and not exactly guaranteed
| to be hassle free. You might be stumbling over miles of dirt
| with stray wires, holes, dead bodies, broken equipment, rubble,
| and so on, at night, in pitch black. Then wandering through
| narrow trenches packed with people going both ways, again with
| dead bodies, stray wires, holes, and broken kit. There is a non
| zero chance that the scope you sighted in yesterday could get
| tapped or knocked, and it will be out of alignment by the time
| your arrive at your hide.
|
| The use of debris was a simple way to sight in. You tell your
| spotter that you're gonna shoot that tin can just by the
| sandbag over there. They tell you where you're hitting so you
| can adjust your sights. Naive snipers would fall for this
| trick, but later on experience taught to use puddles instead.
| radiokicker wrote:
| Even modern day rifles need a handful of rounds to sight in. I
| assume due to the massive casualties suffered by both sides
| they were sending up troops to the trenches with little time to
| prepare.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Sniper rifles in ww1 where custom conversions of the standard
| infantry rifles or in the early war actual hunting rifles.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You can use a tool called a collimator to boresight a rifle in
| the field, but it's only so effective. And back then they
| didn't have technology like floating barrels.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Why didn't they shoot the other way to adjust their sights
| though? This feels like an obviously terrible idea?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Why didn't they shoot the other way to adjust their
| sights though?
|
| The other way? So at their own troops?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I mean... sure? Or to the side? Was it really so hard to
| find a large region in which there were obviously no
| allied soldiers? Like... people weren't wandering around
| outside the trenches right?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You would definitely never shoot back along your own
| axis, or into your flanking formations. You just can't
| have enough situational awareness on who may be there.
| This is such an absolute that even when prosecuting an
| active firefight you would ask for permission to fire
| cross-boundary.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| Why not have a berm in the rear area that's designated
| for sighting in rifles? This is common in today's
| environment.
| pwg wrote:
| Because that only allows for you to sight in at that
| range.
|
| Unless that range also exactly matches the range to the
| enemy targets, from your current nest, you won't be
| properly sighted in for your intended targets.
|
| The ranges over which snipers make kills is sufficient
| that even a very small miss-alignment of the sights
| translates to a miss (often by many yards) at the target.
| According to Wikipedia [1], the sniper record is 3,540m
| (3,871 yd). That is 3.5km - imagine targeting something
| 3.5km away, firing, and having your shot hit the target.
|
| Even in 1916, while sniper's may not have operated at
| 3.5km distances, they could easily have been operating
| across 500-1000m distances (the Wikipedia article lists a
| 1918 record of 1,280m (1,400 yd) or 1.2km). Even at those
| relatively shorter ranges, the margin for misalignment is
| still tiny. You have to actually sight the rifle in for
| the actual range, the actual elevation (whether you are
| shooting uphill or downhill) the current wind conditions,
| etc. And still hit a rather small target. Aligning to
| some other fixed berm will not be nearly accurate enough.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_recorded_sniper
| _kills
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Maybe my imagination isn't up to snuff here, but I'm
| imagining not an active firefight, but a sleepy waiting
| game in the trenches.
|
| Why can't you have the situational awareness that nobody
| is there just by looking with your eyes? Are you saying
| that risk of shooting objects on your enemy's side and
| giving away your position is lower than the risk of
| accidentally shooting someone on your side when firing at
| a rock in an open field? It just... doesn't make any
| intuitive sense to me.
| openasocket wrote:
| You need to keep in mind the distances here. For
| calibrating your rifle you're shooting at targets several
| hundred yards away, making it much harder to tell if the
| area is clear. This also isn't happening on a football
| field, the area around the trenches is going to be scored
| with secondary trench lines, foxholes, communications
| trenches, big craters from artillery, etc. And the people
| in there aren't exactly trying to make themselves known,
| they are going to keep low and you may not even be
| visible if they are in a little offshoot of a trench or
| something. The secondary lines are also going to be
| relatively densely populated. Odds are if you try to
| shoot at a target a couple hundred yards behind the
| trench lines, the round is going to be within a dozen
| yards of someone's head. You probably wouldn't hit
| anyone, but if someone stands up at the wrong moment...
| an even bigger danger is if your shot goes high. If your
| shoot goes above the rock you're aiming for, it will keep
| going further back into the lines. Given that this would
| be 30 caliber ammo and there's no body armor, that bullet
| would still be going fast enough to kill someone 1.5
| miles out, maybe 2 miles. Someone very familiar with the
| area and with good situational awareness might be able to
| guarantee there's no one between them and the target, but
| not for a mile out.
|
| The other big factor is what your buddies in the trench
| will think of this arrangement. If they know it's you
| shooting over their heads they will be absolutely pissed,
| and probably face some sort of discipline from officers.
| If they DON'T know it's you shooting in their general
| direction (which they probably won't unless you make sure
| to tell everyone in advance) it will probably prompt
| return fire. If they can tell from the sound or muzzle
| flash that the shot came from their trenches, they may
| think a sniper infiltrated their lines, which will merit
| a particularly aggressive response.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if someone, somewhere during the
| war did this, but it certainly wouldn't be condoned.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Why can't you have the situational awareness that
| nobody is there just by looking with your eyes?
|
| The entire setup of an army, all its communication
| mechanisms, and systems of control and safety measures,
| are focused on telling you about what is happening
| forward along the axis.
|
| Trying to figure out if it's safe to fire backwards is
| going to be massively error-prone as nobody is set up to
| tell you this and asking it is going to cause massive
| confusion.
|
| Also, you can hit things that you can't see, with
| ricochet and fall of shot.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Hmm, I'm not militarily experienced obviously, so I'm not
| going to push this any more. I guess my last statement is
| that I believe you're correct, but it still seems like
| the creation of an additional system to safely designate
| a calibration target would be beneficial, especially to
| the side. Giving away your position sounds more error
| prone.
|
| Other comments about what calibrating actually means seem
| to have filled in that missing intuition though.
| pwg wrote:
| Are your questions also coming from a standpoint of
| modern tech. such that a sniper could accurately measure
| range using a modern rangefinder?
|
| This was circa the 1916-1918 time-frame. Modern range
| finding equipment did not exist, and what did exist at
| the time very likely required someone carrying a rather
| large range finding target over to the enemy lines to use
| to determine range (with the obvious negative result to
| that poor individual).
|
| With no easy way to determine range (distance to target)
| beyond eyeball estimates, the only real way to sight in
| the sniper rifle was by taking test shots at a target and
| watching where one's bullet actually lands as compared to
| that target.
| usefulcat wrote:
| As mentioned in TFA, the preferred target for sighting
| was a puddle of water.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| I dont understand. The entire point is to tune the sight
| to the range where the other trench is. How the hell
| would shooting in a random direction do anything useful
| other than tell the enemy where you are.
| yonaguska wrote:
| Another point, if you were a sniper, you would be
| sighting your rifle to specific ranges based on landmarks
| where you'd to see the enemy. So you're not just sighting
| your rifle, you are also figuring out approximate
| distances.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Ah, that's interesting. Didn't know that.
| Breza wrote:
| Yeah, there's a lot of math behind distance shooting.
| Tons of variables to consider.
| Loughla wrote:
| If you want a walk down the maths involved - check out an
| app called Strelok (Pro) by Igor Borisov. I have no
| affiliation with this person or this app, other than I
| use it for extra-long-distance shooting calculations with
| a conventional rifle and/or air-rifle shooting
| calculations.
|
| It's seriously astounding the math and thought that goes
| into shooting at long range. It makes me realize why I
| used to miss all the time as a kid; it's not just point
| and shoot.
| jtms wrote:
| I don't believe there were very accurate rangefinders like
| we would have today so they really needed to zero their
| sights on the exact area they anticipated their targets
| being. They could accurately discover the range via test
| shots, adjust their scope, aka "zero" it. I don't think
| they had mildots on their optics back then
| ballenf wrote:
| The wind conditions would have been different?
| gccsf wrote:
| I did not expect such a low quality comment from hacker
| news.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| ditto!
|
| edit: wow you made a new account just to tell me you
| thought my question was dumb
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| If this is your standard for terrible posts, you can't
| have been on either HN or the internet long.
| newsbinator wrote:
| > A periscope could be affixed alongside the head to allow the
| scout to manipulate the dummy head and observe the environment.
|
| > The scout would raise the head above the trench and attempt to
| get shot by a German sniper. Apparently the sensation of a bullet
| slamming into a target held mere inches above your head while you
| were smoking through it was rather bracing.
| dugmartin wrote:
| > The method that actually worked was to get a few boys with
| rifles up on the parapet and have them shoot down into the
| trenches, killing everyone they could. Faster, more efficient,
| and no silly buggers with grenades flying back and forth.
|
| The American's brought shotguns ("trench guns") to do that work.
| It was seen by the Germans as violation of the law of war.
|
| "On 19 September 1918, the German government issued a diplomatic
| protest against the American use of shotguns, alleging that the
| shotgun was prohibited by the law of war."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Model_1897
| JackFr wrote:
| The Thompson submachine gun also picked up the nickname "trench
| broom".
| philwelch wrote:
| Though the war ended before the Thompson was in production,
| this was absolutely the intended use. Similar to the BAR, it
| would later see service in a world war much different than
| the one it was designed for.
| pixodaros wrote:
| The obstacle to that method was that someone had to go over the
| top, cross several yards of ground, and then look down into the
| next straight section of trench. If there was someone waiting
| with a MG or a rifle, Mr. Brave got shot and then everyone had
| a casualty in the open to deal with plus Jerry around the
| corner.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Don't you need to get to the enemy trench to use those? Isn't
| preventing that the whole point of trenches?
| jccooper wrote:
| Attacks would commonly get to the first line or two of
| trenches; the trick was keeping them, given counterattacks.
| There were many lines of trenches still in front.
| [deleted]
| grugq wrote:
| There was two years of war before the British had figured out
| how to do trench raiding effectively. By late 1916 they had
| the "storm trooper" tactics completely figured out, something
| the Germans wouldn't manage until 1918. The Germans on the
| other hand, developed very good defense in depth tactics.
|
| A trench system is made of three lines of trenches in
| parallel, covering a mile or more in depth. The front line
| trench is the combat trench, where the fighting is supposed
| to take place. Then there is the support trench, which houses
| units for work parties and counterattacks and so on. Then the
| reserve trench which houses more work parties and has units
| resting from front line duty. Units would spent a week or two
| in the trenches, then rotate into the rear for a while to
| rest and receive replacements.
|
| As the war progressed everyone basically learned that the
| front line trench was rubbish. It would be destroyed,
| overrun, shot up, etc. There was no point in holding it with
| a lot of troops because they'd get wiped out before they
| could do much of anything. The Germans switched to a front
| line that was just fortified shell holes with machine guns.
| This was very safe against artillery because there was no
| trench to target. It was effective against infantry attacks
| because the machine guns could wreak havoc on men with
| rifles. The support and reserve trenches would be real
| trenches.
|
| This system of fortified shell holes with supporting strong
| points from the support trench was "defense in depth." The
| opposition could "overrun" the front line, but they'd still
| have pockets of machine gun nests on their flanks and behind
| them. Eliminating every single machine gun nest was extremely
| slow and so... that is how defense was achieved. Not with a
| single strong trench, but with a system that could absorb an
| attack, slow it down, and reduce it with machine guns.
|
| [anecdote: during an offensive one officer solved the
| "eliminate all the machine gun nests" problem by taking a
| German prisoner and making him stand up on a stump in no mans
| land pointing out every nest. The officer would prod him with
| his pistol and demand more information, until all the machine
| guns were located and neutralized. Only then was the poor
| German allowed to get off the elevated and exposed position.]
|
| The offensive solution to this system was with artillery box
| barrages, storm trooper infiltration, and tanks (to some
| degree). The real solution was to spend years besieging
| Germany and bleeding her dry so that by late 1918 there was
| no manpower, materiel or morale to fight. Attrition wins.
|
| Infiltration tactics were basically sending small units of
| men, say a section (8 men) or platoon (40 men) through the
| fortified shell hole system at night. That way when the
| attack began, the men were miles inside enemy territory
| already and could ambush the strong points, etc. This was
| what the British began doing by late 1916. Germany gets
| credit for inventing it almost two years later because, they
| had a really cool name (storm troopers!) and the enemy always
| has cooler better stuff than you do. And the British didn't
| like a system that gave all the initiative to young officers,
| particularly the officers later in the war who came from
| civilian life to fight only for the duration, can't have
| those types ruining things for the career officers from good
| families, etc. etc,
|
| The trench raid was the primary way of defeating the trench
| system. It begins with a creeping barrage and the box
| barrage. The artillery fires on the front line trenches until
| the time when the infantry assault elements are supposed to
| arrive. Then it lifts and moves to targets further back. It
| stays on those until the time when the infantry is supposed
| to arrive then, and then lifts and moves forward again.
| Creeping barrage. The box baggage was where the artillery
| fences the area being assaulted with fire along the flanks.
| This produces a sort of box, where artillery is firing along
| two sides and one creeping barrage at the back. The idea is
| that the area within the box will be dealt with by the
| infantry assault units while the artillery prevents
| reinforcements and counterattacks.
|
| It is a brittle system because there is so little information
| flow between the front line assault units and the artillery.
| If the times scheduled for the advances don't match with
| reality the infantry can fall behind the protective screen.
| When this happens, I.e. the creeping barrage walks too far
| forward for the infantry to keep up, then the enemy can come
| up from their dugouts and man their defensive positions. This
| is, obviously, very bad for the Poor Bloody Infantry.
|
| Anyway, the short answer is that trenches were attacked all
| the time and clearing trenches was an important activity.
| There were night raids as well, which is a whole other thing.
| That's where the hand to hand fighting comes into it. That's
| an entire other subject, including how the armies had to
| invent modern hand to hand combat training.
|
| These days if you're in the military you're taught basically
| two technica, one to incapacitate and one to kill. Then
| everything else you learn is a way to setup either of those
| two techniques. Guy standing up? Ok, get him on the ground
| and crush his throat. Guy has a knife? Get him on the ground,
| safely, and crush his throat. Guy has a bayonet? Get him
| on... and so on. The French system was based on crushing the
| throat. With thumbs. Very... brutal. I'm not sure how much it
| was used, but that is what was taught,
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| This was very interesting, thanks.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "That's an entire other subject, including how the armies
| had to invent modern hand to hand combat training."
|
| From what I read about the german infantery in WW1, is that
| most troops learned about the technics about effective hand
| to hand combat only on the frontlines, directly from the
| Frontschweinen (frontpigs, veterans). Who told them mostly,
| that what they learned in the drills with fancy bayonett
| swinging, they should forget and just use their sharpened
| shovel. Or a rock, or a grenade to hit with it. Anything.
|
| By WW2, all those was integrated into proper infantery
| training. Improvised, brutal and effective.
|
| But the modern german army, doesn't teach hand to hand
| combat at all anymore, except for officers, special forces
| or military police and as far as I know, also only in a
| very limited way.
| zelos wrote:
| If you get enough men to walk slowly towards a trench
| protected by machine guns, eventually some of them will get
| close enough to use a shotgun.
|
| (Actually, trench warfare by later WWI had developed
| significantly since the early war, it wasn't just sitting in
| trenches or sending mindless waves of troops over the top)
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You would suppress the trench using fire support, so that
| they have their heads down and not able to fire back,
| allowing you to approach it.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Shotguns where more for trench raiding along with improvised
| clubs etc
| hutzlibu wrote:
| The hypocrysis of the german government/army of that time, is
| staggering. They were the the ones, who introduced chemical
| weapons, poison gas, to the battlefield - and then cried about
| shotguns?!
|
| Oh and later, when the war was lost, it was of course the fault
| of the communist and socialdemocrats, who stabbed the army in
| the back and not of the glorious, heroic army. And there are
| still lots of people glorifying the Kaiserreich. I am glad its
| gone.
| meinersbur wrote:
| They were not the ones who introduces gas warfare into WW1.
| It was the French:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrHFEPu_ANI&t=80s
|
| The Hague Convention of 1899 banned chemical warfare, with
| the US being the only ones to not have signed it.
|
| Doesn't mean that the Germans weren't hypocrits, the
| complains about shotguns might have been rooted in wanting to
| point fingers back: https://youtu.be/fvrIVZn1jH8
| lainga wrote:
| Same with flechettes, to which end they were stamped with
| "INVENTION FRANCAIS, FABRICATION ALLEMAND" ("Invented in
| France, made in Germany").
| greesil wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons_in_World_W
| a...
|
| The French used tear gas first, the Germans were the first
| to use chlorine. There's a big difference between these
| gasses.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Yes, you cannot really compare tear gas with chlorine.
|
| One gives you trouble breathing and is used widely
| against civilian demonstrants, because it is very mild -
| the other one - the one the german army was first to use
| - kills or cripples your loungs in a horrible way.
|
| But I rather leave this debate.
|
| P.s. I tasted some tear gas, it is certainly not nice.
| But thats it. It doesn't actually harm you, unless you
| have a precondition. Chlorine on the other hand is just
| pure deadly poison
| greesil wrote:
| I mean, it was war. Conventions are nice, but my read on
| both world wars nobody actually cared, they just
| practiced tit for tat.
|
| The comment I was responding to made what I interpreted
| as a false equivalence.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| You have a,very distorted knowledge of WW1 and the post war
| years in Germany.
| marton78 wrote:
| Care to elaborate?
| Bost wrote:
| > The hypocrysis of the german government/army of that time,
| is staggering.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons_in_World_War_.
| ..
|
| All sides started to develop these weapons before the war,
| and apparently it's the Germans who were capable of deploying
| these weapons sooner and with greater success.
|
| What you present here nothing less than a one-sided
| propaganda. It reminds of French villages hundreds of
| kilometers far from any WWI front line, deep in the rear with
| memorials dedicated to "Innocent children fallen in the great
| war" followed by a list of some 10 to 15 male names.
|
| Innocent children, the throat cutter sort, same as those from
| the other side.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Is it fair to call the ones who were declared war on
| "throat cutters"? Especially since they almost certainly
| didn't want to be there anyway.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I think the French were first.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Oh wow. Some of these were rather gruesome! I really liked having
| a fake head that snipers would shoot - there by allowing you to
| calculate where the sniper was.
|
| This sounds like something that could still be employed. Any
| snipers out there to know how to counter this?
| philwelch wrote:
| My favorite part is the part where you smoke a cigarette
| through the fake head for added versimlitude. The enemy sniper
| must be thinking, "is that a papier-mache head? Can't be, he's
| having a smoke".
| Vecr wrote:
| Suppressors, not shooting fake targets (spotter optics,
| possibly IR), having multiple snipers coordinate so they can
| fire a single round each all at the same time and go somewhere
| else before they get shot at. The last is probably the most
| important.
| paulluuk wrote:
| I don't understand how suppressors would work against
| figuring out the elevation angle of a sniper shot.
|
| Likewise, wouldn't multiple snipers all firing on the same
| fake target simply give away the number of snipers and all of
| their individual elevations?
| geoduck14 wrote:
| I think the multiple snipers each fire at separate targets.
| One sniper per target. All at once, everyone fires (killing
| any threats), then running like hell before someone else
| jumps up and grabs a gun.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| How would you figure out the elevation angle of a sniper's
| shot? It's not like you can do forensics when you are being
| shot at.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Could, but a lot of modern warfare is incredibly one-sided with
| one side being technologically superior to the other. They
| wouldn't even risk deploying snipers if there's a chance of a
| counter-attack via artillery. Or ground forces for that matter.
| First and second Gulf War were started by a massive air raid
| that took out most of Iraq's defenses, tanks and
| infrastructure.
|
| That said, just because they may have military superiority
| doesn't mean they can actually win a war on someone else's home
| turf.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Snipers were pretty frequent in Iraq, despite the US's
| technological superiority.
| samus wrote:
| The British did just that during the Boer wars, against an
| opponent that engaged in guerilla warfare on their home
| turfeand had access to modern weaponry. They gained control
| of the country by partitioning it with blockhouses,
| strongpoints and barbed wire fences, scorched earth tactics,
| involving indiscriminate destruction of farms, and forced
| resettlement of many Boers into concentration camps.
| Fortunately, many of these tactics have gotten out of
| fashion. Also, this required the deployment of hundreds of
| thousands of troops for many years, which could be justified
| economically only by the diamonds mined in not-yet-South
| Africa.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "That said, just because they may have military superiority
| doesn't mean they can actually win a war on someone else's
| home turf. "
|
| A military superior force _can_ win a war against a enemy
| population, but it cannot claim then anymore, to fight for
| those people.
| snypher wrote:
| Sniper units are often deployed behind lines and spend hours or
| days in observation. They may arrive on site well in advance of
| their target and be very sure of identity before firing.
|
| Also, a marksman deployed with an infantry unit will support
| small arms fire (~200 yards) with range extension out to say
| 800 yards. A dedicated sniper team could be taking targets out
| as far as 3,000 yards. So perhaps a infantry marksman would be
| more willing to take a shot at a closer target given they are
| part of a squad, where a sniper team won't shoot at a tin cup
| or fake head in case they give away their position. It's worth
| just waiting another hour and see if that guy patrolling comes
| by again etc.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Modern day snipers, yes. WW1 snipers were in front trenches
| and sniped at the opposite trench, a couple of hundreds of
| meters away if so far.
| docdeek wrote:
| As an Aussie schoolkid I remember learning about the ANZAC
| retreat from the trenches in Gallipoli after hacking together a
| way to fire their rifles using dripping water, and I always
| thought that was pretty neat:
|
| "Invented by Lance-Corporal William Scurry, 7th Battalion, AIF,
| these 'drip' or 'pop off' rifles fired at intervals to convince
| the Ottomans that the Anzacs still occupied their trenches.
|
| The drip rifle incorporated two ration tins. The top one was
| filled with water, while the empty bottom one was attached to the
| trigger by a piece of string or wire. Before leaving, a soldier
| punched a small hole in the upper tin to allow water to trickle
| into the lower one, which eventually toppled over, pulling the
| trigger."
|
| https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/drip-rifle-gallipoli
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