Interesting Military Facts & Stories You Discovered

[Husky_Khan]

The only vessel currently serving in the USN to have sunk an enemy ship in action is the USS Constitution.

The second to last one was a Frigate that wasted an Iranian ship in the late 80s which retired a few years ago

Oh yeah I guess all the ships sunk in the Persian Gulf War and Libya Intervention we're by airpower.

 

[Harlock]

Must be pretty rare these days for anyone to have a ship that has seen a real fight. Maybe some of those second hand ships sold off to South America or SE Asia perhaps? Pretty sure HMS Victory is the only European ship left either

 

[PsihoKekec]

Was the last ship to shoot down an aircraft the USS Vincennes?

 

[bintananth]

Must be pretty rare these days for anyone to have a ship that has seen a real fight. Maybe some of those second hand ships sold off to South America or SE Asia perhaps? Pretty sure HMS Victory is the only European ship left either

Museum ships mostly. The Japanese still have the pre-dreadnought Mikasa.

USS Constitution is the oldest one in commission and seaworthy. HMS Victory is not seaworthy and permanently drydocked.

Mikasa was an exception to the battleship scrapping in the aftermath of the Washington Naval Treaty. Her hull is enncased in concrete and she isn't going anywhere anytime soon under her own power.

 

[Husky_Khan]

Was the last ship to shoot down an aircraft the USS Vincennes?

IIRC the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault carrier shot down an Iranian drone back in 2019 though the Iranians dispute this.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

American ‘Candy Bomber’ Who Dropped Sweets Over Former Soviet West Berlin for Kids Dies at 101 (theepochtimes.com)

 

[WolfBear]

Aqaba, a Jordanian town off of the Red Sea... apparently has an Underwater Military Museum. Likely the only purposely made underwater military museum as well I would imagine.

Aqaba Launches the First Underwater Military Museum

Off the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea, you can explore the first Underwater Military Museum. If you're a history buff and diver, then this might just be the place for you...

blog.padi.com

Here's a video with loud pretentious music playing over it.

Gotta give the Jordanians credit for making a new museum so cheaply!

 

[Bacle]

Very interesting video on 'new gen' warfare from 2018 about the Ukraine/Russia situation as it was then, and the lessons learned.

 

[Bacle]

 

[gral]

As I said somewhere else, absent further information, I really doubt that last take.

 

[Captain X]

Well, Russia is in search of friends, and could probably use the money, so one just never knows.

 

[PsihoKekec]

Russia and France will sell military tech to anyone and Russia is a bit cheaper than France.
I have slight feeling though that Brazilian attempt to build submarines would go even worse than Indian attempt.

 

[gral]

Well, Russia is in search of friends, and could probably use the money, so one just never knows.

Plenty of internal resistance to Russian equipment in the Brazilian military; add to that the fact that none of the 5 UNSC members really wants the SSN builders club to expand, and the probable result is it won't happen anytime soon(as in the next 5 years; after that, God only knows).

Also, one big thing that the guy on Twitter somehow ignored when posting: it was the Brazilian government who ratted the guy out - when the spy contacted the Brazilian Embassy, the Brazilian Embassy told the FBI.

I have slight feeling though that Brazilian attempt to build submarines would go even worse than Indian attempt.

Brazil has (partly) built(3 IKL Type 209/1400 and 1 improved unit) submarines before and is building(4 Scorpene) submarines now - the Brazilian SSN is supposed to be an enlarged Scorpene sub. However, the French assistance deal explicitely provides no assistance to reactor design(merely hull design), and that is the biggest problem right now.

 

[PsihoKekec]

The story of the official Waterloo diorama

In 1829 the British army proposed the creation of an museum and wanted a scale model of the Battle of Waterloo as its central exhibit. The 32-years old topographer and the son of a British officer, William Siborne , received the commission.

Despite having missed the battle he developed a passionate interest in the event and stayed for eight months in the Waterloo area studying the topography. (He actually stayed in La Haye Sainte farm.) When Siborne was in Paris he saw the military models at Les Invalides and was impressed with them.
Peter Hofschroer has traced the thoughness with which Siborne examined accounts of the battle and examined Siborne's archive. He found out how passionate and devoted to his project he was.

• - William Siborne sent a questionnaire to all surviving British officers and to the German forces in Wellington's army, he conducted voluminous correspondence with surviving English, French, and Prussian veterans
• - he has spent 8 years investigating the deployment of troops, forces' dispositions, comparing accounts from official dispatches (including Wellington's own), from printed memoirs
• - sent a questionnaire to the Prussian General Staff and to the Ministry of War in Paris
• - obtained a copy of the papers of the Prince of Orange
• - spent 8 months surveying the battlefield, and using techniques and equipment he had developed.
• - cross-referenced all this material and sought corroboration
• - marked up Wellington's, Blucher's and Napoleon's positions on the map
• - 2 years were spent in constructing, painting and modeling the terrain
• - sent his plan to Wellington for approval

Wellington took offence at the presence of Prussian troops on the diorama and did his best to ruin the makers reputation and career.

 

[Aaron Fox]

The story of the official Waterloo diorama




Wellington took offence at the presence of Prussian troops on the diorama and did his best to ruin the makers reputation and career.

Given how much of racist pricks the British were (and still are)? I'm not surprised.

 

[Laskar]

An anecdote from Victor Suvurov's book on the invasion of Czechoslovakia. It has... newfound relevance.

So when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, a motorcycle platoon of the Reconnaissance Battalion of the 6th Guards Motor-Rifle division was stopped north of Prague.

While cleaning their weapons, somebody brought out a large bottle of Czech plum-brandy, and the cleaning session became a lot more cheerful. The men were cleaning their guns with gasoline, which wasn't supposed to be done but it made everything so much faster. They were smoking as well, and someone threw his cigarette butt into the bucket of petrol. Laughing, one of the other men kicked the bucket. The bucket tumbled in the air and landed on the motorcycle that they had siphoned the gasoline out of, and whose tank was still open. Fwoosh.

In seconds, the motorcycle was a black-charred frame.

That cheery spirit evaporated instantly. Cleaning weapons with petrol was forbidden, and the destruction of state property was sure to land them in front of a tribunal and behind bars.

The platoon commander wandered away and fell to pieces, but one of the squad leaders came to his senses immediately and lined the platoon up and gave them their cover story.

"Platoon! We were assaulted by a dark blue Skoda, with three Czechs inside of it! The license plate was obscured by mud! They threw a molotov cocktail at us, and as we were cleaning our weapons, we were completely unable to return fire."

After drilling each man on the details to make sure they had the story straight, the sergeant sent word up to the company commander. The company commander himself came up to investigate with several other officer. After observing the scene of the crime, the company commander called the soldiers over one by one and interrogated them, asking each a few questions before calling for the next. Finally, he called that one sergeant over.

"Fair weather we've been having Sergeant, yes."

"Eh, quite boring. I'll be happy when it does something other than drizzle."

"Yes. It rained pretty good last night," the company commander said, testing the ground with his boot. "And the ground is still soft. You said that the Czechs came in a Skoda?"

"Absolutely."

"But then where are the tire marks? I don't see any Skoda tracks."

The sergeant knew he was up shit creek right then, because the company commander was a skilled recon man. But he also had pride in his company, and did not want to see them come to trouble.

"Sergeant, where you buried the bucket and rags you used to clean your guns, do a better job. And have the whole of the platoon tramp over the earth. It must not look disturbed!"

They cleaned up the evidence, but no commissar or special investigator was ever assigned to the field of battle against the Czech counter-revolutionaries, who were clearly in the pay of western intelligence services. However, when the company commander tried to submit his report, the battalion commander turned the report over in his hands.

"I'll sign it, but you must re-write it and add that an anti-tank grenade launcher, an RPG-7B, was destroyed along with the motorcycle. One of our men dropped one in a swamp while we were passing through Poland, and we couldn't get it out."

The company commander wanted to object, but he saw a certain look in the battalion commander's eye, and knew that there would be no objecting. So he re-wrote the report and submitted it, only for it to come back again and again for a rewrite.

When the report reached the desk of the rear commander of the Carpathian Front, who had to sign off on all battlefield losses, the reconnaissance motorcycle had evolved into a wonder-machine. Not only did it have a machine gun and an RPG-7B rocket launcher, but it had two active infra-red sights, a rangefinder, and an R-123 radio transmitter. Furthermore it must have been designed for work in polar conditions, as two fur coats were lying on top of it, and it had been towing a 200-liter trailer full of spirits.

The rear commander scratched his chin, and passed the report to his assistant.

"Send this back to be rewritten and have him add... say..."

"In the 128th Division, we lost a BTR in the River Elbe."

"As a result of counter-revolutionary action?"

"Yes."

"Splendid. Have him add that to the report."

 

[Husky_Khan]

Well, Russia is in search of friends, and could probably use the money, so one just never knows.

If Russia needs friends they can just invade one of their neighboring former SSR's and carve out some new ones from the resulting special military operations.

 

[SchrodingersWehraboo]

And so on and so forth as the thread is updated.

 

[ATP]

And so on and so forth as the thread is updated.

Idiot Putin could take Kiev then and there.Now,it is possible only with nukes or waves of consprict.KGB colonel never should become tsar.

 

[PsihoKekec]

Man who never wanted to ride in fighter jet accidentally ejects himself

A man who was terrified by his retirement gift from co-workers — a ride in a fighter jet — grabbed the ejector handle in a panic and was launched through the skies 2,500 feet above the ground, says the official government report on the incident.

The ride on March 20, 2019, had been arranged as a surprise gift to the 64-year-old man, who was leaving his job at a French defense contractor. His co-workers took him to the Saint-Dizier air base, 100 miles east of Paris, and announced he would be flying in a Dassault Rafale B.

And if not for a malfunction of a system, French Air Force would be a Rafale short.