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Subject: America's Worst Enemy in History
mongyu    1/2/2008 8:16:10 AM
The title says it all: Who do you think has been the greatest enemy ever to threaten America? My vote goes to the British hands down. No other country ever came as close as the British to physically ending the United States in our history. The Germans and the Japanese were formidable in their own right, but neither [or even both] could reasonably invade the United States. The Soviet Union had the theoretical potential to destroy the United States, but I think everyone agrees that this was not a practical capability in the way the British Empire's ability to take Washington DC was. The Soviets were a dangerous enemy ideologically in the way it could convert adherents in America, but they never out-did the British who successfully supported a rebellion in the United States by funding, arming, and giving moral support to the Confederacy. So what country would you choose?
 
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paul1970    and back   2/5/2008 11:59:49 AM


 
I said at the ranges you claimed it would not penetrate plate.  You are such a  LIAR.
the ranges I quoted are the ones from the various studies and where people were found dead on the field from archery fire....... and about that test you just quoted............you missed a very relevent point..... that last word is a hint.

I also demonstrated that you get one aimed shot where the arrows would actually penetrate into the Human body through armor to  poerce to do any damage at all at what is substantially  arquebus range. or about 20 meters. the very whites of your eyes range you claim {You overlooked that Nichy? That is called MEAN EFFECTIVE RANGE)
 
 
you did not demonstrate it. you just mentioned that you would only get one shot without showing any evidence for this. theory again... its like you think these people can fly and not actually have to travel the distance on the ground. and you also miss that the charges were not conducted en mass and thus were engaged by archers who were not even the target at leasure.... (check out Potiers)

And as I pointed out the contemporary Spanish Tercio DID wear armor-specifically as pike defense. The english imitated this to some extent.  
 
tercio has nothing to do with longbows. whether they wear armour as a counter to other pikes or not is irrelevent... the English imitated tercio's????? when, where and in what way? or do you just mean tercio as a general pike and shot term since the word tercio was used for ECW formations that obviously bore no relationship to a tercio.

So that is the double LIE.
 
 
?????? that makes no sense. whats a double lie?

And as usual Paul 1970: you are wrong on the interpretation of your so called facts..

Maybe you shopuld go back and take a course in reading comprehension? In do not contradict myself in the mosaic I build up. Its applied physics against rhetoric. Physics wins every time.
 
not my facts... the facts of people there and the writings of the historical experts saying what actually happend on the battlefield........ this always beats theory. your theories would have the longbow armies beaten all the time and the English having to change because of this... but they won and did not change till into the16thC........

For example, how fast could French cavalry charge that last 500 meters, Paul?  15 meters per second. or 33 miles an hour which is slow for a burdened horse. You need to do that math before you ask me a stupid question like that. Means the horseman, at the gallopwill be in some kind of MER for about 15 seconds and possible direct fire lethal range for 5? One flight before the horseman cuts the archer down? There was a reason English men at arms mixed with the archers carried SPEARS.
 
I asked you how fast they DID charge.... NOT A THEORY QUESTION. how fast did they ACTUALLY charge at????
you have done another theory.... we have documented fact of the time of the French charges and the distance covered... try using it rather than THEORY....
 
if they could have covered the distance in the time you THEORISE and they were only being shot at by so few arrows then WHY ON EARTH DIDN'T THEY BREAK THRU AND WIPE THE ENGLISH OUT?????
either they took a damn sight longer than you speculate (hint... recorded down for you) or the archer fire and dismounted men at arms were far superior than even the romantics you moan about claim...   :-)
 
and what planet are you on to suggest that the French cavalry are going to charge from 500m????????????????? WHAT IDIOT WOULD DO THAT WHEN YOU CAN ADVANCE TO <250m WITHOUT EVEN BEING ENGAGED............... YOU?????.......... :-) THEY DIDN'T CHARGE FROM 500m AT CRECY.......
AND STOP USING THE TERM GALLOP. THEY DIDN'T CHARGE AT THE GALLOP. the French didn't charge at the gallop and neither did the NMA... not even Ruperts lot went at a gallop.

A burdened frightened man can run about 5 mps, which means he  takes about 100  seconds to cross that ground. He is subject to lethal range fire for half that distance or 50 seconds; if he is lightly armored that is about ten vollies of unaimed fire or five of aimed fire. If he is an armored  tercio with an arquebus he has a direct fire advantage MER of 3x or more. over an archer against an equivalent armored target, if he hits anything at all. Si
 
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Ehran       2/5/2008 12:49:28 PM

For example, how fast could French cavalry charge that last 500 meters, Paul?  15 meters per second. or 33 miles an hour which is slow for a burdened horse. You need to do that math before you ask me a stupid question like that. Means the horseman, at the gallopwill be in some kind of MER for about 15 seconds and possible direct fire lethal range for 5? One flight before the horseman cuts the archer down? There was a reason English men at arms mixed with the archers carried SPEARS.

Physics here, gentlemen, and cretin



Herald

herald i have to wonder about your number for a burdened horse's speed.  an absolutely primo thoroughbred running his heart out over a groomed track carrying the tiniest jockey they can find doesn't quite crack 40 mph and that's after being lovingly conditioned for months by the finest in modern vet science.  you want us to believe that horses burdened by 300 plus pounds of rider and iron trying to move in formation over less than stellar ground under fire are going to offer up more than 80% of that performance level? 
are you familiar with the old aphorism garbage in, garbage out?

 
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paul1970    H and fantasy Genoese   2/6/2008 6:59:43 AM


 It seems that you don't understand what I see. That the longbow was showered upon the unarmored Genoese crossbowman and that they in turn acted as an obstacle so that they mobbed up and tripped the French horse. Therewith,  English foot  like Hannibal's soldiers 1560 years  peeled the onion and ate it.

Why the Genoese foot failed.

They, the Genoese, had the means AND TACTICS at hand to tear the English line to ribbons, if the French  had listened to  them.  It took the Maid of Orleans to get the French to finally understand.

http://www.hobby2000.be/figurine/benmv73.jpg"> Genoese Crossbowman 1356.  Notice the LACK of body armor.



I will just concentrate on the Genoese bit here rather than all the other rubbish.
the strange thing here H is that you slagged off numbers I quoted from Nicole..... you then go on to use him as a source for the Genoese. you obviously didn't bother to read the whole book that the article relates to otherwise you would have seen that they are armoured.....
then you go out of your way to find a picture of an unarmoured crossbowman from 1356..... why did you not just post a picture of one from the battle of Crecy..... oh yeah! they are wearing armour and that doesn't suit your argument at all.
 
not only do they wear armour but these are the best troops available in Europe.... professional experienced elite troops....high morale, well equiped, wearing the best armour available to them....
so in theory the crossbows should be better than the longbows... but in reality they are outshot and turn tail. if the arrows were no causing casualties at the 150m range through the armour then why did the Genoese retreat???? why did they not just carry on trading shots knowing that they were safe and their slower rate of fire would have its effect and the English would be forced back or to charge down into them and thus into the French countercharge..... the answer is simple. the lonbows did cause casualties. yes it could have been different if they had brought their pavices, yes it could have been different if they had covered up... yes the retreating Genoese and all those down on the field may have disrupted the first attack by Alecon, (although how considering who far away from the English they were....)  why they advanced to 150m when their range is far more than this? accounting for the rain?????? their prefered effective range?????? the distance required by the French to move past and form up to charge by cavalry??????? or just not knowing that the English can range out to beyond 200m????????.who knows........... but the fact remains that those arrows did cause casualties at 150m and the sheer number coming in was too much for them to bear.
 
now back on point... translate this to the less well armoured, slower firing, less accurate ECW armies.........
 
 
Paul
 
 
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paul1970    Ehran. cavalry charge   2/6/2008 7:14:09 AM



For example, how fast could French cavalry charge that last 500 meters, Paul?  15 meters per second. or 33 miles an hour which is slow for a burdened horse. You need to do that math before you ask me a stupid question like that. Means the horseman, at the gallopwill be in some kind of MER for about 15 seconds and possible direct fire lethal range for 5? One flight before the horseman cuts the archer down? There was a reason English men at arms mixed with the archers carried SPEARS.

Physics here, gentlemen, and cretin



Herald


herald i have to wonder about your number for a burdened horse's speed.  an absolutely primo thoroughbred running his heart out over a groomed track carrying the tiniest jockey they can find doesn't quite crack 40 mph and that's after being lovingly conditioned for months by the finest in modern vet science.  you want us to believe that horses burdened by 300 plus pounds of rider and iron trying to move in formation over less than stellar ground under fire are going to offer up more than 80% of that performance level? 

are you familiar with the old aphorism garbage in, garbage out?



this is what I have been banging on about. he chooses theory (bad at that!) and ignores the reality of what actually happened on the battlefields....
I can understand that his knowledge of the period is not great and he does not have the groundign in it but it must be harder to come up with this sort of half backed theory (he is supposed to be an engineer??? someone who relies on facts and accuracy...) than actually looking at what happened in reality so one wonders why he does it when anyone reading up a little will see it for the smoke it is.
 
cavalry manouever is at the walk and charge at the trot for this period. everything is about formation and intimidation rahter than raw speed and shock.
 
Paul
 
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Nichevo       2/7/2008 10:23:07 AM

 

cavalry manouever is at the walk and charge at the trot for this period. everything is about formation and intimidation rahter than raw speed and shock.

 

Paul


Yeah, Herald, remember the poor suckers were willing to line up and get massacred for like millennia over there.  Entirely unwilling to learn about shoot-and-scoot, dispersed maneuver, etc.  In some wise this was due to the weapons' limitations - volley fire of massed men being the only way to kill at a distance - but remember their entire scorn of the lessons of our ACW.  They kept on marching in those same waves, right into the cauldrons of WWI, because they simply wouldn't learn that weapons tech had advanced past the ability of naked men to walk into it.  Never mind the introduction of high explosive - "machine guns?  Duhh, what's that?  We don't even want our guys to have repeating rifles, they'll just waste ammo" was the rule.

Bwahahaha ... if you can't be a good example, you can still be a terrible warning.
 
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paul1970       2/7/2008 11:50:28 AM
1. So the damned Genoese bowman wore a mail shirt. Look up garbadine-and I don't mean the twill 19th century weave..
2. English army tests are conclusive as to what a longbow can do. In English units the arrows are useless against plate beyond roughly 75 feet or modern pistol shot. or reconstructed arquebus or musket in direct aimed fire.
3. A horse is a horse. The only charge rates which I've ever seen measured worth a damn in BATTLE are US Army rates taken during the Civil War when somebody actually bothered to time an actual cavalry charge by several hundred men over known measured ground [Brandy Station]. Assemble 700 French knights in 14th Century armor and have them charge uphill on wet grass through trenches and abattis and we'll see the results. Until then the 6th Pennsylvania charging Stuart's canister firing horse artillery over a 1100 yard run over badly broken and heavily defended ground and John Buford's pocket watch timing them do it, will have to do. 33 miles an hour.

Get stuffed.

Herald
 
1 you posted a pic of him wearing the wrong armour for Crecy. you even wrote next to it.... and I quote "Notice the LACK of body armor." that is presumably to back up the article you posted about them. (now you claim it is garbadine. wonder why you said "lack of body armor" then when you knew he did he some form of armour on......  hmmm...)they did wear armour as I pointed out earlier.. if you bothered to read Nicole's and others books about the battle then you would have noted that they were armoured. a search for them on Crecy would show them wearing mail... so you must have gone out of your way to find that pic you are either a very bad researcher or you are posting incorrect infomation in an attempt to make the science work for you. from you putting the quote in I am now assuming that you are doing the latter.
 
2 they show they pentrate at close range. AND>>>>>>>the ECW of the hypothetical clash DON'T WEAR FULL PLATE. they will be taken out at the range the Genoese were.
 
3 the fact that you say that and then use US cavalry figures shows that you have not even bothered to research or avoid using what you found and had to go time travelling again.. the French charged at a trot. all the books say this (which if you knew the time period then you would have known prior to posting it) gain, you either do poor research or you are deliberately trying to mislead to further your science.
as for wanting to assemble French cavalry... they do.. all the time at re-enactment meetings (and there are a bloody lot of them for you to choose from). or if you don't like that idea then why not try READING A BOOK ON THE SUBJECT.
 
Paul
 
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Herald12345    You've been answered, cretin.   2/7/2008 2:37:11 PM
Go read it at the Nazi carrier thread. You might LEARN something about mathematics applied to WAR.

And then go get stuffed, cretin.

Herald

 
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Herald12345    Can you do time motion across a fixed frame?   2/7/2008 8:19:07 PM
Example of burdened horses charging.

Do so if you can.

The speeds vary by horse but on average are > 25 mph.

Herald

 
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Yimmy       2/7/2008 10:17:24 PM
Herald, what's with your behaviour on the boards recently - do you know what "get stuffed" means?
 
 
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Herald12345    One sharp cookie, Yimmy,   2/7/2008 11:06:16 PM

Herald, what's with your behaviour on the boards recently - do you know what "get stuffed" means?

 

 Slang. Circa 1950s English. Don't know if it originated in England, or arose on both sides of the Atlantic at the same time.

I most certainly do; as do you.

After discussing with one braindead his barge nonsense suggestion for Iraq, and then this yoyo with his fantasies about Crecy, and with another fanboy who wouldn't know a compressor from a plenum chamber in a jet about his favorite "object fixation" I become irritated.

Why can't the cretins try to learn something or analyze facts in a reasonable manner? Its not like the stuff I use is that hard to understand or the mathematics is too hard to comprehend..

Is it too much to ask?

Herald
 
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