The only time infantry squares were effective was against cavalry. Most horses won't charge against rifles with bayonets. They were decimated by artillery, and didn't bring enough firepower against infantry.Originally Posted by RichardPF
The only time infantry squares were effective was against cavalry. Most horses won't charge against rifles with bayonets. They were decimated by artillery, and didn't bring enough firepower against infantry.
I don't think folks today can make much sense of the style of fighting fought during the 19th century and before. Whenever I am watching a film on such periods with someone who is seeing them for the first time, they always comment on the way the infantry fought. The squaring off against each other, or the charging through an open field toward an artillery position seems completely incomprehensible to them. Having just watched Gettysburg again, I must admit scratching my head a time or two.
I have watched it again a time or two since you first mentioned it in a post a few days ago.
There is an interesting discussion that is part of the extra material on the DVD.
In the commentary that is part of the "bonus material", historians discuss the merits or lack thereof surrounding Pickets charge.
There were some points made on each side, which given most modern interpretations, was a bit surprising to me.
A couple of months ago, I picked up a book on Picket's charge at the library, I believe. If time permits, I will put in on my Christmas break reading list. A picture of it is in my ACW album. If you're ever interested in reading it, let me know. I always enjoy reading a book with others and kibitzing on it.
Paul (Cmmdre) and I are going to read Perilous Fight together over break. Barring any major catastrophe, I have the week between Christmas and New Years set aside for nothing but enjoyment reading - a real vacation for a change.
That's because most people cannot fathom how low rate-of-fire was at the time. Typical RoF for a muzzleloader was two shots per minute; contrast with the "every man a machinegunner" approach of the modern era.
So no one with package in hand yet???
Not even in sight.
Is there anyone in Italy or the US distributor that can throw a bone?
The last one doesn't have any meat left on it.
Perhaps it's a cultural thing or maybe they are just too busy to post anything with all that they have going right now.
I think that if it was me, I would have asked one of the folks at the warehouse to take a phone pic of the boxes arriving in Ft Wayne and send it to them to post on the KS (or here).
Out of curiosity whose interview did you see? A friend of mine, Will Swenson, just received the highest honor last month.
So while we are agonizing through the hopefully last bits of the wait...
I had posted this on the Aerodrome side of the site once upon a time but not really gotten any response.
It is a game app that I have been working on that is posted on the web that anyone can play for free.
Free forever, no limited time, no advanced version to buy, totally free.
It is a WWI Dogfight game that I created as an exercise for one of the courses that I designed for Yavapai College.
The URL is:
http://www.math-prof.com/BlueMax/BlueMax.html
To get the game to play, you will need to install the free Unity game player.
Just thought I'd mention it.
Here's a slightly more dramatic screen shot from the balloon busting mission:
I miss my "Red Baron" by Dynamix.
Very true.
Your comment on the machinegunner reminded me how WWI shocked the philosophical world. Modernity had posited the idea that man was continually progressing, but the outbreak of a world war and the witness of technology, e.g. machine guns and gas, being used as they were, dispelled that idea.
Clint Romesha, from earlier this year. Please pass on my gratitude to Will for his service. I am extremely proud of the men and women serving today.Out of curiosity whose interview did you see? A friend of mine, Will Swenson, just received the highest honor last month.
Anything been heard about SGN being sent out yet?
Sadly, my money for first normal-distro In Hand is on ABM: "Anyone BUT Me". :(
According to a 3 hour old comment on Kickstarter, no. They are still sorting out the shipment. and tehy promised an update as soon as shipments start.
This tension starts to get higher than on X-mas evening.
On top of all the waiting if Ares sticks with their promise of not shipping to stores until they've shipped to KS supporters I'm afraid they're going to miss out on a huge opportunity to sell product for holiday shoppers. With less than 3 weeks to go they don't have a lot of time for parcel movement left.
One thing about that post.
I believe that they said it was 120 cubic meter of stuff which they calculated to be over 7000 cubic feet.
Any way you slice it I'm sure that's a lot of stuff, but by my calculations:
1 meter = 3.28084ft
3.28084^3 = 35.31467 cubic feet per cubic meter
35.31467 x 120 = 4,237.76 cubic feet
So, if a standard 20' Conex is 1172 cubic feet, a standard 40 is 2390, and a 45 is 3040...
We're looking at two 40' Conexes assuming perfect packing. Anyone ever SEEN the inside of a packed 40' container? It's a LOT more crap than you'd expect, and thus takes a while to unload even with both doors open since there's not enough clearance for a forklift and you can only get a few people in unloading at a time at first.
A 45' container should have plenty of height for a forklift to unload it.![Name: trailerdimensions[1].gif
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The problem is: If the Euros had been paying attention to the American Civil War, they would have seen presaged just about *everything* which happened in WW1. Mechanized Infantry -- 1st Bull Run, and pretty-much every battle afterward, influenced by the railroads. Rapid-fire weapons -- Wilder's "Lightning" Brigade, Hoover's Gap, 1863. Effect of accurate artillery on fortifications -- look up Quincy Adams Gillmore. Importance of sea commerce, and disruption thereof -- 'nuff said. Submarines -- _Hunley_, _David_, etc. Heck, they even had aerial reconnaissance, thanks to Thaddeus Lowe (including the first "aircraft carrier" -- a barge from which Lowe lifted his balloons).
Sidebar re trailers: There's also the problem of "is the floor sturdy enough to hold a forklift?"; I saw a program once where a heavy-lift tow-truck team had to be called out to extract a forklift which had fallen through the floor of a trailer.
There is a saying,"Those who fail to learn from the lessons of history are destined to repeat them." or something like that.
I have some experience in this area. Everything should be shrink wrapped on pallets. One guy with an electric pallet-jack pops them out of the container, the forklift driver picks them up and moves them to another zone. That's where they are checked, unpacked, checked again, and sorted. From there it's out the door or to the shelf. Organization is the key to a quick turn around.
So it sounds like no one has received their package through the normal channels yet,
or at least no one here has stated that they have received their package yet, yes?.
Just to quibble here, the dimensions of a standard ISO container are 10, 20 or 40 feet by 8.5 feet by 8. We generally use manual or electric pallette trucks to load and unload (cheaper than a forklift and less likely to fall through the (likely to be flimsy and poorly maintained) floorA 45' container should have plenty of height for a forklift to unload it.
(currently spending FAR TOO LONG looking at ISOs and their application to military shipping!!!)
Wasn't there an update from Ares saying the kit was still being sorted?
Sebastian mentioned that a comment was made about 4 A.M. on Kickstarter that they are still sorting out the shipment. and they promised an update as soon as shipments start.
Going to be tight for shipping to overseas buyers before Christmas. Less than three weeks and in some countires customs will hold things up. Plus the huge volume of mail at this time of year might mean it is a New Year gift for some.
Just spitballing here, but it strikes me that Ares doesn't have enough (and sufficiently steady) volume to have their own distribution center in the US. Probably it's some contracted service, complete with a "we'll get to you when we get to you" mentality. That might help explain what (to us) seems like slow processing, intermittent updates, etc.
Well they did mention they have to unpack everything then sort it, assemble into 1000 different orders with different options for each order package. It actually sounds like a mammoth task requiring really good systems, probably it is all going to be done by hand. Giving the picking required for each unique order, the checking, the packing and the shipping, this would have to take a lot of man hours.
OK, I'll bite :-) playing devil's advocate, if you are well organized, shouldn't 2 people be able to do, say, 10 orders per hour easy? Sort your list based on the major contents, batch print your mailing labels, then it's slam together a box, one person reads contents while the other drops them in (captain-check, smoke-check, map-check, done!), slap on label and pile by door for UPS. By that logic with 4 guys working 10 hours we should have 600 shipped already :-)
Anyway that's roughly the "logic" that led me to guess that the elapsed time is more about waiting to reach the top of some resource queue, but that once things got cranking it should go pretty fast.
Not that I know anything about it, I've never done anything more than a few hundred coalated mailers for church or the PTA
Fred nothing wrong with your logic, unless they have only 1 guy! We dont know though if they have have the stock in the warehouse yet (it should be there as they were expected 27Nov) but they are also about to process payments etc for Galaxy Defenders, not that this should effect anything. Still they probably did nothing on the Thanksgiving weekend, cracked the container open Monday/Tuesday and started sorting. I wouldn't anticipate receipt in the US till late next week at the soonest, though I'd be delighted to be wrong
When they unload the trailer, they are not only checking in the Kickstarters but all the items going to distributors plus what they will keep in stock for later distribution. Then they are put into assigned stocking areas. Then the orders come out to be filled. Even though they promised to ship the KS customers first they might want to have them all packed before they ship. It sounds like Ares is using a fee warehouse (?) So it all depends on the manpower they allot.
That's one large trailer full of small parts.
So the answer to my question is "no" nothing heard about shipping out yet
Delivery by Christmas to US addresses seemed to me like a cakewalk a week or two ago, but now we are under three weeks.
Tis the season for shipping channels to get really stressed (I would say taxed, but that might have an entirely different meaning to some).
As Keith has said, not only is the volume an issue for the warehouse, but they have other customers and projects to deal with. We'll just have to wait it out, but I'm getting more skeptical that a delivery is going to be in hand by Christmas (and I"m only two states away from the warehouse).
Even though he did it in jest, I'm starting to think that I shouldn't have discounted Coog's "Pick a Date" of Oct. 18th 2014.
I think the whole ACW as a premonition of WWI is a bit overstated. Don't forget the "Euros" had the Franco-Prussian war (and Austro-Prussian War) which also had many features of the ACW. In both those conflicts the Prussians made effective use of their extensive rail network for rapid mobilization, concentration and supply of their armies, which is exactly what they did in August 1914. Notably both the Prussians and French had breech loading small arms (Chassepot and Dreyse needle gun), whereas in the ACW breech loaders were limited to specialized units and Union cavalry. Tactically these small arms had a greater range and ROF than ACW weapons and could be loaded and fired from cover. The Prussians also had their breech loading steel Krupp artillery pieces. The French had the mitrailleuse which was ineffectively deployed, but nevertheless was an automatic weapon. So they or at least the Prussians had experience with much of the technological advancement in weaponry and logistics evident in the ACW well before WWI.
However, it could be a good guess for the Victory and Constitution deliveries!Even though he did it in jest, I'm starting to think that I shouldn't have discounted Coog's "Pick a Date" of Oct. 18th 2014.
The Prussians did at least twig to the value of the land-based tech -- which makes the appalling screwup of the '14 offensive even that much more incomprehensible (until one realizes: Schlieffen's "plan" was supposed to tell the German Staff "it is *impossible* to accomplish what you want; so you need to come up with a wholly different plan").
ACW breechloaders were uncommon, to be sure; but they were steadily increasing in number throughout the conflict . If it weren't for that mental-defective Ripley running Union procurement, all of the Union's new-build of rifles could have been not only breechloading, but *repeating*, rifles (for an example of what a Union army so-equipped could accomplish, see Nashville '64; if memory serves, much of the army had been re-equipped with non-muzzleloaders of various types).
The Franco-Prussian War, as it turned out, was decided more by Emperor Napoleon's ineptitude (on the field, and in the diplomatic arena) than anything else. There were some previews of German organizational efficiency, this is true; but when faced with the complete lack of same from the French, well, the outcome was a foregone conclusion; so it didn't really provide any useful data. The ACW lasted long enough to provide much more usable data.
Thanks for the idea Coog.However, it could be a good guess for the Victory and Constitution deliveries!
Here is a good book on the Marne that I read a couple of months ago. It gives good insight on what went wrong.
Herwig, Holger. "The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World"
http://www.amazon.com/Marne-1914-Ope...e+of+the+marne
I'd go further, much of the technical "novelty" about the ACW is actually a sort of US chauvinism, and in many ways, at least initially the ACW was very backward - Moltke may have been partly right when he said "we have nothing to learn from armed mobs". The many "firsts" claimed by the ACW turn out to be seconds or thirds, and the lessons already were being assimilated back in Europe. Particularly on the naval side, where the many ironclads are very much a generation behind the British and French. Possibly more tellingly, the tactics in use on land were to all intents Napoleonic in nature, both sides using the same drillbook which was firmly fixed in the early part of the 19th C. Having said that, the transformation from Moltke's "armed mobs" to the Union Army of 1865 is damned impressive, and while the cavalry arm may have lacked finesse as battle cavalry, they were undoubtedly the finest mounted infantry in the world.
If pushed, I would say the real precursor to WW1 was the Russo Japanese War
Ducks for cover
Yes, but how many of them ever saw action? _Warrior_ never so much as snapped a gun-lock in action; _Gloire_, same. Meanwhile, the US (and CS :) ) were acquiring actual battlefield data on what happened with ironclads -- and not just on the battlefield, but the REMFwork as well.
"All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life."
Mainly a byproduct of the weapon being used -- muzzleloaders are infamously slow, and progressively less accurate (it's worth noting: A ML's accuracy goes away altogether after ~40 shots; now look how many shots most INF of the period carried...).
My personal favorite unit of the ACW, tho', was a whole other kettle of fish -- Wilder's "Lightning" Brigade. Four regiments of mounted infantry, carrying Spencer repeaters. The Battle of Hoover's Gap showed what rapid-moving and -firing troops could accomplish; it was expected to take *three days* to get the main force of AoCumberland to the Gap, but Wilder's bunch pulled it off in *one*. (OK, admittedly part of it was a colossal Rookie Mistake on the brigade's part -- they were told to trot into the Gap; they Galloped. When they realized they were "in the breeze", they could as easily have retreated; instead, they decided to hold until relieved, and in the process shot the hell out of two Rebel brigades. "If it's stupid, and it works, it isn't stupid." :) ) Again: Real-World Data being acquired.
See above -- most Union "cavalry" was closer to dragoons; it was the Rebs who went for the "traditional" cav model.
Mm -- had the Russians been somewhat more ept, maybe someone would have noticed; as it was, most of Europe looked on it as "a couple of savages slapping each other around; nothing for Real Men to take notice of". (One of the negative aspects of the Victorian Era was the flamboyant bigotry of the period; it's part of why WW1 so thoroughly demolished the era.) The ACW, OTOH, was pretty-much entirely "folks indistinguishable from us"; the Europeans had to come up with some serious excuses to justify ignoring that one.
Yet Europe needed help from the armed mobs in both world wars.I'd go further, much of the technical "novelty" about the ACW is actually a sort of US chauvinism, and in many ways, at least initially the ACW was very backward - Moltke may have been partly right when he said "we have nothing to learn from armed mobs".
Ducks for cover
Just saw the comments about the Gettysburg movie. Was there for the week that Pickett's charge was filmed (my unit was Co I, 2nd South Carolina). Brought chill when we were on the actual battlefield doing the opening scene of the charge. The part when Gen Lee comes riding down before the charge was not planned but just happened and was left in the movie. Had a great time being there and helping make that movie.
Is there any way that you could post the part of the movie that shows your Company?
I want an autograph at Origins.
I can picture that scene. There were many memorable ones in that film. I love the scene when Chamberlain is being relieved after the charge securing Little Round Top, and the other Union officer asks if he could shake Chamberlain's hand. That one gets me every time.
This movie was the start of my exploration into ACW.
Damn - I thought that the US entered the World Wars to fight for Freedom and Democracy, or at least enlightened self interest? Not that that has anything to do with the original point about the ACW, but I would also point out that "Europe" didn't need the USA in either of the World Wars, they (we) were killing each other very effectively without outside intervention.
As for the First world War, the US brought only fresh meat, no technical or tactical innovation as far as I can see, and while the immense industrial strength of the USA cannot be understated, it also has to be said that that strength had not been brought to bear by 1918, as can be judged by the fact that most of the equipment used by the US Army was from French or British sources. That of course is an over-simplification. The threat of those masses of fresh troops and the industrial colossus that would arrive in 1919 certainly forced the German hand in 1918, leading to their defeat.
WW2 is a different matter. I can happily argue that the greatest contribution the USA made strategically was providing the trucks and tinned food that allowed the Soviets to fight a mobile war and beat the Germans, and I feel that would at a fundamental level be true. I will also point out that all that "Lend - Lease" aid was actually paid for, in fact the UK only stopped paying for it very recently, so some of that "help" came with a big bill.
The problem is that would also belittle the tremendous commitment and sacrifice the US people made, they really were the "Greatest Generation". As a Brit I'm eternally grateful that the US joined the war on the side of the Allies, but that shouldn't blind us to the historical record.
I think this may be construed in some places as trolling, so I'll creep back to my cave - wake me when SOG arrives
I'll pass on taking the bait.
If I had a nickel for every time I bit my lip and kept my mouth shut, I'd be touring the world First Class, for the rest of my life.
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