Extra Credits
Published on 16 Sep 2017Charles XII had gone to the Ukraine hoping for supplies and reinforcements, especially from the cossacks led by Ivan Mazeppa. But Peter the Great was hot on his trail, and had no intention of letting him off that easy.
September 18, 2017
Great Northern War – IV: Clash of Kings – Extra History
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September 17, 2017
American military command and control, as adopted by the Canadian military
Ted Campbell explains why he feels the complex and cumbersome system used by the US Army (and derived from the US experience of raising, training, and running a vast army in WW2) is not well suited to the much smaller Canadian Army, yet has become the “way things are done” in Canada:
The problem, as I see it, with the American command and control system is that it is totally systematic. This is born, to some degree, out of the practical necessity that the US faced in the 1940s when it fielded a force of over 15 million men and women but it, systematic management, became something akin to a cult when Robert McNamara, who had been a pioneer of systems analysis in the US Army Air Corps in World War II and was recruited to be one of Henry Ford II’s Whiz Kids who would use those tools to help reshape American industry in early the post war years, became President John Kennedy’s Secretary of Defence (1961 to 1968). He reshaped the US military using systematic management as his main tool. It works for the administrative management of very, very large organizations … it, American style systematic management, may not work as well as many would hope, but it can, and did, bring order, to a very large enterprise. But it stifles individuality and initiative, which are essential for command ~ even, I have read, American unconventional forces are forced into a very conventional systematic matrix.
Systematic management requires a great deal of rote learning and adherence to doctrine. There is a “school solution’ to every problem and that is the one that second lieutenants and lieutenant generals, alike, are required to offer … there is little room for, say, a Robert Rogers, T.E. Lawrence, Orde Wingate or David Sterling … and, in fact, even the missions of the much discussed US Seal Team 6 seem carefully managed by check lists and risk analysis and other tool of the systems analysts. The notion, as one American special forces commander had, for example, of using local animal transport in Afghanistan in 2001, remains unpopular: systems analysis says that only the latest technology can be employed and officers who break the rules do not become generals because riding horses, rather then helicopters, is not the “school solution.” The fact that it worked didn’t really matter because it violated the process.
Why does Canada follow along, uncritically?
First: we, our military, has long had a “colonial” mindset. Until the 1950s we were, for most intents, a sub-set of the British military. It went beyond “buttons and bows” (scarlet mess jackets and the same rank badges, and so on) and included important traditions, like the regimental system, tactical doctrine and equipment. Canadian officers, especially, served, often, in the British Army, in jobs up to and including (during my service) a Canadian major general serving as commander of a British division that was “on the front line” in West Germany, and attended British training courses. In the 1970s we began to shift, more and more, to be a sub-set of the American military and many Canadian generals have served in senior (but generally powerless) “exchange” postings as deputy commanders of large American formations. They come home deeply influenced by the “American way.” The same things happen to Australian and British generals. The American aim is to have all its allies adopt its systematic approach which will make interoperability (by which the US means doing what they want their way) simpler. Exchange postings, as they are called, with other forces are never bad things, not even when the lessons we learn are the wrong ones … IF we understand what we are learning. My complaint with Canadians serving in senior “exchange” posts with the US military is that the post are less about exchanging information and ideas (learning from each other) and more about indoctrinating Canadians (and Australians and Brits) with US ideas about command and control and organization and management which, to my mind, anyway, are less than useful.
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Mercenaries – War of the Pacific – Russian WW1 Remembrance I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 16 Sep 2017It’s time for another episodes from the chair of wisdom, this week we talk about mercenaries in the war, the influence of the War of the Pacific and Russian WW1 war graves.
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But is it full of eels? If not, feel free to visit the British Hovercraft Museum
In their continuing series of “Geeks’ Guide to Britain”, The Register takes a trip to the former HMS Daedalus, a Fleet Air Arm seaplane training base that is now home to the Hovercraft Museum:
Did you know that the word “hovercraft” was once patented? And did you know that Great Britain is a world leader in the design and manufacture of the floaty transporters, and has been for half a century?
These and other surprising facts – including that some of the largest commercial hovercraft ever to be used in revenue service spent their lives shuttling booze cruisers back and forth across the English Channel – can be found at the Hovercraft Museum, at Lee-on-Solent in the south of England.
A century ago, what is now the site of the museum was known as HMS Daedalus and used as a Fleet Air Arm seaplane base. Back in the early days of aviation, and especially naval aviation, the station was at the forefront of naval and aviation technology alike. Seaplanes and skilled pilots were in great demand by the Royal Navy for anti-submarine patrols, and a new training base had to be set up to fill the service’s demand.
Thus came about the “temporary” Naval Seaplane Training School at Lee-on-Solent, with the new training school being based around a large local property, Westcliffe House. Slipways and hangars were duly erected, with the former leading down into the waters of the Solent itself; of the latter, one of the original J-class hangars, capable of being erected by just 15 men, survives to this day.
[…]
To truly appreciate the hovercraft, one should actually ride one of the things. This is easily done by a short journey along the coast from Lee-on-Solent to Britain’s only scheduled hovercraft service, which operates between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.
Operated by Hovertravel, whose sister company Griffon Hoverwork also builds the craft operated by the company, the service runs about every half an hour during the day, with more frequent services during the morning rush hour and a gradual winding-down into the evening.
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September 15, 2017
Attempted Military Coup in Russia – The Kornilov Affair I THE GREAT WAR Week 164
Published on 14 Sep 2017
The situation in Russia further escalates as Lavr Kornilov attempts to gain complete power with a military coup. The result is a disaster for him and thousands of armed Bolsheviks in the streets of Petrograd.
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September 14, 2017
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick: The Vietnam War Is the Key to Understanding America
Published on 13 Sep 2017
Nick Gillespie interviews Ken Burns and Lynn Novick about their new documentary series: The Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War led to more than 1.3 million deaths and it’s one of the most divisive, painful, and poorly understood episodes in American history.
Documentarians Ken Burns and Lynn Novick have spent the past decade making a film that aims to exhume the war’s buried history. Their 10-part series, which premieres on PBS next week, is a comprehensive look at the secrecy, disinformation, and spin surrounding Vietnam, and its lasting impact on two nations. The 18-hour film combines never-before-seen historical footage, with testimonies from nearly 80 witnesses, including soldiers on both sides of the conflict, leaders of the protest movement, and civilians from North and South Vietnam.
A two-time Academy Award winner, Burns is among the most celebrated documentary filmmakers of our time, best-known for the 1990 PBS miniseries The Civil War, which drew a television viewership of 40 million. He and Novick are longtime collaborators, and in 2011 she co-directed and produced Prohibition with Burns. In 2011, Reason’s Nick Gillespie interviewed Burns that film and the role of public television in underwriting his work.
With the release of The Vietnam War, Gillespie sat down with Burns and Novick to talk about the decade-long process of making their new film, and why understanding what happened in Vietnam is essential to interpreting American life today.
Produced by Todd Krainin. Cameras by Meredith Bragg, Mark McDaniel, and Krainin.
Full interview transcript available at http://bit.ly/2x0e5U4
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The art of leadership and other secrets
In Taki’s Magazine, Steve Sailer remembers the late Jerry Pournelle, including a helpful leadership tip he once shared:
I didn’t meet Jerry until 1999, but I’d known his son Alex in high school. The Pournelle family asked me to go with them to Kansas City in August 1976 to the science-fiction convention at which Heinlein, the central American sci-fi writer of the 20th century, received his lifetime achievement award. (But I had to be at college that week.)
But Jerry, one of the great Southern California Cold Warriors, had a remarkable number of careers, starting as a teenage artillery officer during the Korean War, which deafened him in one ear. (At the lunch table, he’d choose his seat carefully to position his one remaining good ear next to his guest.)
He once recalled a question from the Army Officer Candidate School test:
Q. You are in charge of a detail of 11 men and a sergeant. There is a 25-foot flagpole lying on the sandy, brush-covered ground. You are to erect the pole. What is your first order?
The right answer is:
A. “Sergeant, erect that flagpole.”?
In other words, if the sergeant knows how to do it, then there’s no need for you to risk your dignity as an officer and a gentleman by issuing some potentially ludicrous order about how to erect the flagpole. And if the sergeant doesn’t know either, well, he’ll probably order a corporal to do it, and so forth down the chain of command. But by the time the problem comes back up to you, it will be well established that nobody else has any more idea than you do.
He also quotes Dave Barry’s breakdown of Pournelle’s monthly columns for Byte magazine:
In 1977 Jerry paid $12,000 to have a state-of-the-art personal computer assembled for him, supposedly to boost his productivity. By 1980 that led to his long-running “Chaos Manor” column in Byte magazine in which he would document his troubles on the bleeding edge of PC technology. As fellow word-processing aficionado Dave Barry explained jealously, Jerry got paid to mess around with his computers when he should be writing:
Every month, his column has basically the same plot, which is:
1. Jerry tries to make some seemingly simple change to one of his computers, such as connect it to a new printer.
2. Everything goes hideously wrong…. Sometimes there are massive power outages all over the West Coast. Poor Jerry spends days trying to get everything straightened out.
3. Finally…Jerry gets his computer working again approximately the way it used to, and he writes several thousand words about it for ‘Byte.’
I swear it’s virtually the same plot, month after month, and yet it’s a popular column in a magazine that appeals primarily to knowledgeable computer people.
I like to imagine Steve Jobs circulating “Chaos Manor” columns to his executives with scribbled annotations suggesting that some people would pay good money to not have to go through all this.
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September 13, 2017
Adpocalypse Update – Out Of The Trenches Platform – Italy Trip I THE GREAT WAR
Published on 12 Sep 2017
Thank you to yukka.nl for the programming effort and support with the OOTT platform.
OOTT-Platform: https://outofthetrenches.thegreatwar.tv
September 18 – Meeting at Kobarid, Slovenia: http://bit.ly/Kobarid
September 19 – Meeting at Vittorio Veneto, Italy: http://bit.ly/VittorioVeneto
September 20 – Meeting at Lagazuoi: http://bit.ly/LagazuoiWW1
Merchandise (EU): https://shop.spreadshirt.net/thegreatwar/
Merchandise (US): https://shop.spreadshirt.com/thegreatwar/Flo has a few news to share with you concerning the YouTube “Adpocalypse” and more.
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September 12, 2017
Inside A British WW1 Airbase – Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome I THE GREAT WAR Special
Published on 11 Sep 2017
Visit Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome in Essex: http://www.stowmaries.org.uk/
The Royal Flying Corps and later the Royal Air Force maintained aerodromes and airfields around Great Britain for defence against German Zeppelin and Gotha Bomber raids. But would a WW1 aerodrome actually work?
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Great Northern War – III: Young and Violent – Extra History
Published on 9 Sep 2017
Flush from his victories against Poland-Lithuania, Charles XII of Sweden sets his eyes on an even greater enemy: Russia. But its ruler, Peter the Great, is no pushover: as the Swedish troops advance, he burns down the countryside and leaves them starving and exposed as a ferocious winter sets in.
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September 10, 2017
British Malaya – US Equipment – Boobytraps I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
Published on 9 Sep 2017
It’s time for another exciting episode of Out Of The Trenches again, this episode talks about British Malaya in WW1, the French and British equipment the US troops used and traps.
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Special Air Service (SAS) – The Falklands Campaign
Published on 13 Jul 2016
Special Air Service (SAS) – The Falklands Conflict
When Argentina invaded the Falklands in April, 1982, Britain dispatched a large Naval Task Force to recapture the Falklands. Steaming south with the British fleet were D and G Squadron of the SAS, with supporting signals units.
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Barbarossa: Why such high Soviet Losses? – Explained
Published on 20 Jun 2017
The Red Army suffered heavy losses during Operation Barbarossa, but it also inflicted heavy losses on the Wehrmacht. This means it was not just some helpless giant, but it also begs the questions, why were the losses so high? This video discusses several factors and refers heavily to current academic research namely from Alexander Hill and David Stahel.
Military History Visualized provides a series of short narrative and visual presentations like documentaries based on academic literature or sometimes primary sources. Videos are intended as introduction to military history, but also contain a lot of details for history buffs. Since the aim is to keep the episodes short and comprehensive some details are often cut.
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September 9, 2017
The Seven Years’ War
Published on 19 Nov 2016
The Seven Years’ War essentially comprised two struggles. One centered on the maritime and colonial conflict between Britain and its Bourbon enemies, France and Spain; the second, on the conflict between Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia and his opponents: Austria, France, Russia, and Sweden. Two other less prominent struggles were also worthy of note. As an ally of Frederick, George II of Britain, as elector of Hanover, resisted French attacks in Germany, initially only with Hanoverian and Hessian troops but from 1758 with the assistance of British forces also. In 1762, Spain, with French support, attacked Britain’s ally Portugal, but, after initial checks, the Portuguese, thanks to British assistance, managed to resist successfully.
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September 8, 2017
Attempted Military Coup in Russia – The Kornilov Affair I THE GREAT WAR Week 163
Published on 7 Sep 2017
The situation in Russia further escalates as Lavr Kornilov attempts to gain complete power with a military coup. The result is a disaster for him and thousands of armed Bolsheviks in the streets of Petrograd.
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