From: Allan Goodall <agoodall@a...>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 09:00:04 -0500
Subject: Re: A bunch of different stuff from the Digest
> On 27 Sep 2004 at 17:16, The GZG Digest wrote: > From: J L Hilal <jlhilal@yahoo.com> down to > > 300-m in WW2 and down to 50-m in Vietnam. I mostly lurk on here these days, and I only get the digest, so I missed this. Combat ranges (I'm assuming you are talking about rifled musket engagement ranges) during the American Civil War were not usually at 1000m. You had sharpshooters hitting targets at 800 yards, and maybe out to 1000 yards, but the vast majority of rifled musket combat fell in the 50 to 150 yard range (even though the rifled musket was capable of longer range fire). This has been rather well described by Brent Nosworthy in _The Bloody Crucible of Courage_. > In particular, some naval propellent cordites are prone to sweat Just an odd bit of synchronicity, as I've been reading about the invasion of the Pacific island of Peleliu (September to November, 1944). They mentioned that there's still a lot of unexploded ordnance on the island, which can be dangerous due to its unstable nature. A friend of mine went to the Somme battlefield earlier this year. There are still a couple of people killed each year due to unexploded ordnance from World War I, though most of it is probably best described as "death by misadventure". The son of the woman whose B&B he was staying at died this way. He found an old Mills bomb. It exploded when he tried to clean it. With a grinder. Old rusty unstable bomb + heat from friction + sparks = evolution in action. > Although it was presented in the US press as a disaster, it did The U.S. press did not present it as a disaster. What they did was juxtapose the positive spin of the U.S. military prior to Tet with the unexpected (though intelligence suggested that the VC were building up for an offensive as early as November, 1967) violence of the Tet offensive. Here's a link to an essay on this very topic, by Don North, a reporter in Vietnam at the time. http://historynet.com/vn/blvcassaultonembassy/index.html The third paragraph mentions the conclusions drawn by Army historian William Hammond. Hammond wrote in 1988, "It is undeniable that press reports were more often accurate than the public statements or the administration in portraying the situation in Vietnam. In the end, President Johnson and his advisers put too much faith in public relations." The idea that the Vietnam war was lost due to the press turning on the military is still very much pervasive -- particularly in the military -- as the comments on this list have suggested. I thought I'd present the counter argument. > From: Robert Makowsky <rmakowsky@yahoo.com> I'll also point out that Piquet is very good for co-operative play. This is a variation of playing the game that some folks actually prefer. I'm going to be gaming out an alt-history engagement with a friend who isn't as strong, tactically, as I am. We are gaming it for his novel. We did a co-operative game once before for a battle in his novel and it worked very well. Another area where Piquet works well is in solitaire gaming, since you don't know who will win the initiative next or what cards will come up. > From: Beth This sums it up very nicely. I happen to like the system because you see things happen in Piquet that you don't see in other games but you do see in real life. I think it's a lot of fun.