Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXII

[snowblizz]

On further research, most of the claims of dogs attacking Soviet tanks by mistake are sourced to a Zaloga book I don't have access to. Since I don't have access, I can't check his sources, but Zaloga's usually only wrong when his sources are bad, so I am not inclined to dismiss it easily. I did find out that one of the other major problem was that the dogs would run up and patiently wait for the tank to stop (having been trained on stationary vehicles), which got them machine-gunned, and the final straw was that the dog handlers had a small mutiny after too many cases of having to shoot the dogs they'd trained after the animal ran back to Soviet trenches.

Yes, that's about what wikipedia had to say about it as well. The initial proces was too compex, having dogs drop the bombs and escape. The training was deficient and didn't prepare them for "live conditions" properly. Amongst others, the sound and smell of a Soviet tank isn't the same as a German which was probably the main problem.

It's mainly the common "Pavlovian mistake" so to speak and the slapstick humour that paints the Soviets as bumbling fools (which they did plenty of anyway) I object to in the story. Ie the dogs didn't run back under T-34s to blow them up (though it was a long front, it could have happened somewhere am sure).

They even had some success later on.

[Brother Oni]

With regard to animals in combat, there's the revenge of Olga of Kiev on the Drevlians who killed her husband (wiki link).

After killing the Drevlians' best and brightest (which judging from the way they died, wasn't saying much) in a variety of ways, she sieged their city. They begged for mercy and she relented, asking only 3 pigeons and 3 sparrows from each house.

Later on that night, her soldiers tied sulphur soaked rags to each bird, ignited them, then released the birds. The birds went back to their nests in the eaves and dovecotes and set the houses' roofs alight. Since the whole city caught alight at pretty much the whole time, there wasn't much the Drevlians could do, so there wasn't much resistance when Olga's army moved in later.


Geese have been used as guard animals since they're loud, territorial and from all accounts, have a mean streak a mile wide.

I've heard of bee/wasp hives also being used by the Celts against the Romans as a swarm of angry stinging insects is great for breaking up a tight formation, although I can't find a reference for this at the moment.

In a modern setting, there was Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken (yes, really) for both Iraq wars where chickens strapped to the outside of armoured vehicles were used as chemical weapon detectors, much like canaries in a mineshaft.

There's Private Wojtek, a Syrian brown bear adopted by Polish forces during WW2. He took part in the Battle of Monte Cassino, helping transport artillery shells.

Wikipedia has a article on the other uses of animals in combat: link.

[oudeis]

*reads article about Olga....

She was canonized?!?!? Do her icons hang next to St. Attila and his Holy Hand Grenade? What kind of show was the Church running over there, anyway?

[Tobtor]

*reads article about Olga....

She was canonized?!?!? Do her icons hang next to St. Attila and his Holy Hand Grenade? What kind of show was the Church running over there, anyway?

In Northern and Eastern Europe, the main thing for being canonised was that you did something cool, and had the backing of your (important) family. I man Canute the Holy (a Danish saint), didnt do much aside from plunder York, and later plan an invasion of England (during the preparations he was killed by a revolt - surely a such a holy man going about gods work of planning Viking invasion of heathen... England?... derserves to be a saint). Churchly things weren't as (that is: at all) important.

Animals on combat: in the legendeary Sagas you have cattle (holy cows/bulls) being rushed in front of armies to scare/break the enemy. It could have some basis: even though iron age/medieval cows where smaller than present day counterparts, an angry bull is likely good at breaking a shield-wall....

[Brother Oni]

Animals on combat: in the legendeary Sagas you have cattle (holy cows/bulls) being rushed in front of armies to scare/break the enemy. It could have some basis: even though iron age/medieval cows where smaller than present day counterparts, an angry bull is likely good at breaking a shield-wall....

Speaking of which, two more regarding sneaky use of animals:

During the reign of Emperor Ningzong of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Song were attacked by the Jin tribal army, which were fended off. However the Jin cavalry still managed to besiege the Song camp. Their general, Bi Daibi had a cunning plan to escape - in the middle of the night, Song war drums started sounding and the suspicious Jin stayed away. After about three days, the drumming died down and when the Jin went into the camp, they found goats tied to trees with their hooves resting on drums - the Song had left three days ago.

In the Warring States period, during the siege of Lu, the defenders got a thousand bulls, covered them with purple silk cloth with lurid colours, fixed daggers on the horns of the bulls and tied oil soaked straws to the animals tails. They then pointed them in the direction of the enemy and lit the straws. Unsurprisingly, this caused panic among the besieging Yan troops and helped break the siege.

[Clistenes]

Speaking of which, two more regarding sneaky use of animals:

During the reign of Emperor Ningzong of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Song were attacked by the Jin tribal army, which were fended off. However the Jin cavalry still managed to besiege the Song camp. Their general, Bi Daibi had a cunning plan to escape - in the middle of the night, Song war drums started sounding and the suspicious Jin stayed away. After about three days, the drumming died down and when the Jin went into the camp, they found goats tied to trees with their hooves resting on drums - the Song had left three days ago.

In the Warring States period, during the siege of Lu, the defenders got a thousand bulls, covered them with purple silk cloth with lurid colours, fixed daggers on the horns of the bulls and tied oil soaked straws to the animals tails. They then pointed them in the direction of the enemy and lit the straws. Unsurprisingly, this caused panic among the besieging Yan troops and helped break the siege.

You know, I have read a ton of these almost animesque gambits in stories about chinese wars, and honestly, many of those doesn't seem like they should work (just like most of the tactics of St. Olga of Kiev shouldn't work)... I wonder if most of them aren't just fabrications made up to enhance the reputations of those generals...

[Brother Oni]

You know, I have read a ton of these almost animesque gambits in stories about chinese wars, and honestly, many of those doesn't seem like they should work (just like most of the tactics of St. Olga of Kiev shouldn't work)... I wonder if most of them aren't just fabrications made up to enhance the reputations of those generals...

While I would agree that these stories are often embellished after the fact to inflate the reputation of the generals (often intentionally as having a reputation for being a sneaky so-and-so can and was used to an advantage), never underestimate the ingenuity or lunacy (often both simultaneously) of ideas springing from people put under pressure especially with the added incentive that they get to stay alive. I also suspect that there's some confirmation bias going as well - the daring plans that get lucky are remembered but the same daring plans that don't get lucky aren't.

I would also never discount how despite how blinding obvious deception looks after the ruse has been discovered (hindsight is 20/20 as they say), at the time everything looks normal to the target. This can be due to human psychology (eg the sunk cost fallacy) to a lack of information leading to the wrong decision, to deliberate disinformation from the enemy; from the Empty Fort Strategy to the elaborate disinformation campaigns of WW2's Operation Mincemeat and Operation Fortitude, deception has a long standing tradition in military strategy.

[Storm Bringer]

to add to Brother Onis post, it also helps if the deception plays into the pre-existing beliefs of an opponent, due to confirmation bias.


For example, the Fortitude deceptions worked, not because the Germans somehow failed to spot the million odd troops, tanks and ships sat in southern England and realise that a invasion was imminent, but because they believed, and were helped into to believing, that

A) the main thrust of the invasion was going to be land in Calais (the "obvious" place to do it, and the easiest),

B) the prep for the "real" invasion was just a diversionary plan to make the Germans commit reserves early before the main strike in Calais,


The fact that the British had compromised the entire German spy network in England basically meant that their most valuable and informative intel source was feeding them false data that happened to coincide with their existing beliefs about what the Allies would do.

[Blackhawk748]

There's Private Wojtek, a Syrian brown bear adopted by Polish forces during WW2. He took part in the Battle of Monte Cassino, helping transport artillery shells.

"...and was subsequently promoted to corporal." Their corporal was a bear...that is several kinds of awesome.

I got a question about the Scorpio. Im looking at it and it really just looks like a big crossbow. According to Wikipedia it sounds like they used it almost like a sniper rifle, or they'd group them together and use them almost like modern machine guns. Can anyone elaborate on this?

[Mike_G]

Going back a bit, but here is a pretty interesting video of longsword techniques versus plate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi757-7XD94

This falls under "don't try this at home." Pretty sure the guy winds up with a concussion, and how the unarmored guy still has both his eyes is beyond me. While I sure as hell wouldn't try this without more protection, I think the techniques look very authentic and they seem to know what they're doing.

I've just cleaned up too much trauma and seen too many things go wrong to practice that way.

[Blackhawk748]

Going back a bit, but here is a pretty interesting video of longsword techniques versus plate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi757-7XD94

This falls under "don't try this at home." Pretty sure the guy winds up with a concussion, and how the unarmored guy still has both his eyes is beyond me. While I sure as hell wouldn't try this without more protection, I think the techniques look very authentic and they seem to know what they're doing.

I've just cleaned up too much trauma and seen too many things go wrong to practice that way.

Neat, half swording. Always cool to watch, though im pretty sure hes holding it wrong.

Heres another video on have swording.

[Brother Oni]

I got a question about the Scorpio. Im looking at it and it really just looks like a big crossbow. According to Wikipedia it sounds like they used it almost like a sniper rifle, or they'd group them together and use them almost like modern machine guns. Can anyone elaborate on this?

Using the scorpion to snipe high value targets is what I've heard from Roman re-enactors, as the bolts/stones they fire are of limited use for attacking walls (too light) and the Romans had heavier gear (onagers and catapaults) to handle that job.

At a firing rate of 3 shots a minute, it stands to reason that clumping enough of them together and staggering the firing cycles would have the effect of a modern rapid fire weapon.

Unfortunately I'm failing to find any sources regarding their use on the battlefield, but thanks to the surviving works of Vitruvius, there's very detailed instructions on how to build at least one type of scorpion in Chapters 10 and 11 of Book 10 of the Ten Books of Architecture (English translation link).

[PhoenixPhyre]

So I have a question (mostly theoretical): how salvageable was armor? To restrict the range, I'm thinking of the era when most people were wearing breastplates up to full suits of plate. A common fantasy (and game) trope is that you kill a dude wearing +N armor of shininess and you can take it off his corpse and immediately wear it yourself. My uneducated guess is that that's improbable. Both for reasons of damage (killing someone wearing armor may or may not involve damaging the armor itself) and of fit (uh, your dwarf isn't going to be wearing the plate armor made for an ogre).

So to focus the question: for the period of time when most combatants were wearing armor over most of their bodies, are the following assumptions realistic (assuming the victors remain in control of the battlefield for an indefinite period)? Were there types of armor that were easier to salvage than others?

1. The victors can always salvage the metal armor for scrap (ie the armor requires a complete rework to be usable).
2. The victors can usually salvage pieces of armor. A helmet here, a shield there, a breastplate from that dude that lost a head, etc.
3. The victors can almost never salvage an entire outfit from a single person and have it wearable without professional refit.

[Mike_G]

So I have a question (mostly theoretical): how salvageable was armor? To restrict the range, I'm thinking of the era when most people were wearing breastplates up to full suits of plate. A common fantasy (and game) trope is that you kill a dude wearing +N armor of shininess and you can take it off his corpse and immediately wear it yourself. My uneducated guess is that that's improbable. Both for reasons of damage (killing someone wearing armor may or may not involve damaging the armor itself) and of fit (uh, your dwarf isn't going to be wearing the plate armor made for an ogre).

So to focus the question: for the period of time when most combatants were wearing armor over most of their bodies, are the following assumptions realistic (assuming the victors remain in control of the battlefield for an indefinite period)? Were there types of armor that were easier to salvage than others?

1. The victors can always salvage the metal armor for scrap (ie the armor requires a complete rework to be usable).
2. The victors can usually salvage pieces of armor. A helmet here, a shield there, a breastplate from that dude that lost a head, etc.
3. The victors can almost never salvage an entire outfit from a single person and have it wearable without professional refit.

Most armor should be usable or repairable.

Lots of men were killed by stabbing through gaps in armor, hitting where it wasn't, so the armor may be fine. Driving a weapon through armor is really difficult (or why wear it) so the best way to attack is to go around it, or knock him down, stand on his neck and stab him through the visor. Alternately, many men in the best armor may just be knocked down and captured rather than killed, so their armor becomes prized loot.

Weapons like warhammers or flanged maces that were designed to fight armored men might damage the armor pretty badly, but I would think it would still be usable with some repairs, or parts of it may be usable.

As far as wearing somebody else's armor, that depends on the type. Really good plate armor was custom fitted, but a mail hauberk or coat of plates or something like a breastplate should fit within reason. A five foot tall man shouldn't be able to loot armor from a 6 foot tall man, but average sized people should be able to wear basic, run of the mill armor.

Armor is expensive, and designed to take a beating, so it's almost always going to be worth taking.

Repairing armor should almost always be possible. Mail can be repaired by replacing the damaged rings. Plate is harder, but less likely to be damaged in the first place.

[Max_Killjoy]

Even if plate armor is beat to hell, it's still quality steel in many cases, and I'd imagine that armorsmiths would still take it as scrap.

[Knaight]

As far as wearing somebody else's armor, that depends on the type. Really good plate armor was custom fitted, but a mail hauberk or coat of plates or something like a breastplate should fit within reason. A five foot tall man shouldn't be able to loot armor from a 6 foot tall man, but average sized people should be able to wear basic, run of the mill armor.

It's better armor than nothing in the 5' and 6' case - sure, it doesn't fit well, but as it's too big and not too small that can be worked around to an extent. The 6' person taking armor from the 5' person, not so much.

[Blackhawk748]

Ok, this isn't a weapons question, but you're the guys to go to for ancient history, so im asking you. While looking up Roman technology i just read that they apparently had semi mechanical grain harvesters that where pushed by oxen. Wikipedia sadly has very little to say on this matter and it really only had this picture:

Spoiler: Gaelic Header

Show

It is believed that either Romans or the Belgae Gallics before them, invented a simple mechanical reaper that cut the ears without the straw and was pushed by oxen.

Thats it, thats all they had on it. We are talking about a mechanical reaping machine being invented over 2000 years ago, forgotten and only recently (in the historical sense) recreated and this is all they have to say. So now i want to know more about this thing, such as how it could have theoretically worked and so on, cuz this is freakin awesome.

Edit: Actual weapons question. I was watching The Last Legion and i got to the beach scene and saw these weird weapons on wagons. They looked like a crate with multiple slots in them, sort of like a really small hwacha, and they fired what appeared to be solid iron bolts. The really odd part was, they seemed to fire them by hitting the rear of the bolts with a blank of wood that was released from tension.

The weapon seems at least semi plausible, if very short ranged, im just curious if its real.

[Vinyadan]

For whatever reason I did some research about harvesting, sickles, scythes, and that stuff in the Roman world a while ago. What I remember about that machine is that it only worked with a kind of grain that was native to that land, so it can be supposed that it wasn't Latin-made. It also was seen as quite similar to a kind of shearing machine in use in Australia in the XIX century.

The fact that it only cut the heads was important, because it meant that it didn't lose much. Even today, sickles are used for manual harvesting, because you use them to cut the head. Later you get there with scythes and remove the shafts. Using scythes causes a loss, I think because the head would fall on the ground. The Romans didn't have scythe and sickle in the shapes we know today, but they did have a smaller and a larger falces which they used in a similar way.

Maybe I'll find the book I got the info from.

[Vinyadan]

The book is: "Bringing in the Sheaves: Economy and Metaphor in the Roman World", by Brent D. Shaw, in the chapter/essay "Sickle and Scythe/Man and Machine". It's partially readable in Google. If I can find a full access, I will post a short summary.

[Blackhawk748]

The book is: "Bringing in the Sheaves: Economy and Metaphor in the Roman World", by Brent D. Shaw, in the chapter/essay "Sickle and Scythe/Man and Machine". It's partially readable in Google. If I can find a full access, I will post a short summary.

Neat, gonna have to look into that myself.

[Martin Greywolf]

Most armor should be usable or repairable.

Lots of men were killed by stabbing through gaps in armor, hitting where it wasn't, so the armor may be fine. Driving a weapon through armor is really difficult (or why wear it) so the best way to attack is to go around it, or knock him down, stand on his neck and stab him through the visor. Alternately, many men in the best armor may just be knocked down and captured rather than killed, so their armor becomes prized loot.

Well, not really. While armor fighting with swords would, in a perfect world, not touch any armor at all (except gussets), that was rarely the case. First main problem is that things do go wrong, and smacking someone with a steel bar may be what you need to not be stabbed, so you go for the sword blow to the helmet that won't penetrate, but will (with any luck) at least stagger.

Another problem is that "avoid the armor" only really applies to anti-armor sword fighting. Warhammers, pollaxes, halberds maces and all the other wonderful toys don't have that - one of the first pollaxe plays in Fiore is basically "smack him in the side of his helmet as stronly as you can". You said so yourself, the main issue here is that fighting against armored opponent with a sword is usually a bad idea (there are some specialized anti-armor swords out there, but they seem to be either pretty rare or meant for trials by combat, Fiore has two examples of latter), and you only do it if there isn't a better weapon handy.

That said, there's damage and then there's damage. A dented plate isn't much of a problem, but if someone got a hit strong enough to actually part/tear steel, you're better off selling that particular piece for scrap. How often each type of damage was depends on a host of factors (quality of material, foot vs mounted engagement etc), and we don't really have enough hard data to be able to tell for sure from historical evidence.

As far as wearing somebody else's armor, that depends on the type. Really good plate armor was custom fitted, but a mail hauberk or coat of plates or something like a breastplate should fit within reason. A five foot tall man shouldn't be able to loot armor from a 6 foot tall man, but average sized people should be able to wear basic, run of the mill armor.

You actually can use armor from people who have a pretty different body shape, but you'll be pretty uncomfortable - greaves especially are infamous for the chafing they can cause. You will also be loud because the pieces of armor will clank together a lot more. In DnD terms, I'd just slap a penalty to various things on top of the armor that isn't made specifically for you, if I ever felt the need to bother.

[Knaight]

You actually can use armor from people who have a pretty different body shape, but you'll be pretty uncomfortable - greaves especially are infamous for the chafing they can cause. You will also be loud because the pieces of armor will clank together a lot more. In DnD terms, I'd just slap a penalty to various things on top of the armor that isn't made specifically for you, if I ever felt the need to bother.

This only goes so far - the 6' to 5' case is probably functional, but if the other person is sufficiently smaller than you you're just out of luck. Sure, you might be able to partially close a breastplate or something, but something like a mail hauberk made for someone with a torso a foot lower in circumference than yours? Good luck with that.

[snowblizz]

Edit: Actual weapons question. I was watching The Last Legion and i got to the beach scene and saw these weird weapons on wagons. They looked like a crate with multiple slots in them, sort of like a really small hwacha, and they fired what appeared to be solid iron bolts. The really odd part was, they seemed to fire them by hitting the rear of the bolts with a blank of wood that was released from tension.

The weapon seems at least semi plausible, if very short ranged, im just curious if its real.

I know I've seen that movie, I can't recall specifically that thing, but I strongly suspect it's total fantasy. Even when they manage to place something not totally wrong they mangle it into something weird.

There's an old Greek/Roman scorpion/ballista that is described as a cube but it was a bit a larger IIRC, but also not as box per see, it had a frame to take the stresses of the weapon. I'd guess it that they were going for but without actualy doing the research.

[Galloglaich]

The harvesting machine is real, it was apparently a Celtic or British invention, it shows up in some kind of art (I think a relief?) and the Romans mentioned it. Terry Jones has some info about it in the BBC series and / or book "Barbarians".

Increasingly it looks like the Celts, whatever that means precisely, the people who used Celtic languages or what have you, had a lot of impressive tech. Cities with water systems, good roads, very advanced metallurgy, weapons and armor, musical instruments, all kinds of stuff.

Armor would definitely be picked up if possible. It was often some of the most prized loot on the battlefield. The only time it didn't was for example sometimes when they had to run ASAP after a victory or there were too many bodies to deal with etc. Even if the armor was messed up they would often cut it up into pieces and make jack of plates or brigandine for example, make a vambrace or some kind of other limb armor out of a piece from a breastplate. Good iron or even steel for the later medieval period was quite valuable.

Fitting in somebody else's armor, especially when you are talking about a full harness, was not necessarily all that easy though. Chances are you would have to have a blacksmith fix it for you first. There are numerous legal disputes, including some that led to major riots between nobles and burghers, over ill-fitting armor which was sometimes blamed by the armorer on the customer having gained weight since the original order was placed. In one case a powerful Polish nobleman, who was the leader of the Polish army at the time in a major war, got himself killed in Krakow when he and his servants roughed up an armorer - twice- over just such a dispute.


The ancient Slavs used to surround their settlements with deadfalls of branches as a protective barrier, and they would keep their beehives in them. This served a double purpose as honey was a major export for them, but the bees would also attack anyone trying to climb over.

[Kiero]

More likely the continental Celts (and possibly those of southern Gaul) than the Britons. They were master metalworkers and carpenters, they invented the barrel, for example. That's not a trivial thing when you consider the design and tooling required.

[Lemmy]

What did people use for the sole of their shoes? When did they start using rubber? In fact, when did rubber first show up and/or become relatively common in Europe?

[Blackhawk748]

What did people use for the sole of their shoes? When did they start using rubber? In fact, when did rubber first show up and/or become relatively common in Europe?

I know that some people used to use multiple layers of hide ala the Native American moccasin. I think some other used wood.

[Max_Killjoy]

What did people use for the sole of their shoes? When did they start using rubber? In fact, when did rubber first show up and/or become relatively common in Europe?

Historically, the late 1800s, starting with "croquette shoes" in the UK and the first canvas-top, rubber-sole sneaker-like shoes in the US.

[Pauly]

What did people use for the sole of their shoes? When did they start using rubber? In fact, when did rubber first show up and/or become relatively common in Europe?

First thing is hat heels ween't invented until the 1600s or so. Before that everybody had flat soled shoes.

The choices for soles were leather or hobnails.

Leather, good on smooth surfaces, but had no grip so it was very dificult to walk up a hillside if it was slippery or wet.

Hobnails provided good grip in slippery and soft conditions, but lost their grip on hard surfaces. The Romans used hobnails, but I don't know when they were invented.

Your choice was something that's good for city and roads and bad at cross country (leather) or somethingthat good at cross country and bad at roads and cities (hobnails)

While (expensive) rubberized soles were used earlier it wasn't until aferWW2 that large scale plasticized soles were readily available that were good for multipurpose conditions.

[Lemmy]

Man... Walking must have sucked in the olden days.

Once again, thanks for the information, guys.