Illuminati-R-Us

Aye, don’t get cocky Harry.

Harald Hardrada is one of those guys that shows the mobility of some in the Middle Ages, there were plenty who lived nad died within a two mile radius but some travelled from Scandinavia across Russia to Byzantium, into the Middle East, across the Med, back to Scandie and then to England.

Indeed, and all of that travelling ends up with him losing away to Chelsea.

Boom boom!

Oh bravo.

26 September, 1918 - Beginning of the final attack on the Western Front, over a stretch of 65 km. This will last until the end. The AEF will shoot 800 million (!) rounds of Phosgen and mustard gas ammunition until that date.10,600 soldiers gassed, 278 deaths).

Assorted smut and disgrace for today:

1955 - The GDR Volksammer puts the GDR coat of arms into effect (the one with hammer and compass)
1980 - A bomb explosion on the Munich Oktoberfest, perpetrated by a neonazi who manages to get himself killed, leaves 13 dead and 218 injured.
2005 - Lynndie England receives a three year sentence for what she did in Abu Ghraib.

Arneb wrote:26 September, 1918 - Beginning of the final attack on the Western Front, over a stretch of 65 km. This will last until the end. The AEF will shoot 800 million (!) rounds of Phosgen and mustard gas ammunition until that date.10,600 soldiers gassed, 278 deaths).

That sounds very high to me, partly because the AEF was strong on infantry but had to borrow artillery from the French.

That's what I thought when I read it. I thought, "goes to show how inefficient gas attacks are", but I am only lifting these factoids from a website by dedicated amteurs, I am unable to veri-/falsify the information.

If they say it is 1,600 tonnes of gas then there is a rogue thousand in there as a gas shell would weigh c20 kilos. Still a big pile of shells.

As for casualties by gas, you might want to skip this bit, it gets tedious. By 1918 gas shells weren’t deployed to kill but to incapacitate and degrade performance. The great German artillerist* Bruchmuller developed patterns of artillery barrages with different payloads in different areas at different times. He described it as conducting an orchestra, and his work was comparable to th best conductor. The rear areas would be peppered with high explosive to interdict reserves moving up, mix in shrapnel in the rear areas, HE and shrapnel to cut wire, with pre-planned pauses to convince the defenders that an attack was imminent so they would leave their dug outs and then be subject to intense trommelfeuer barrages. Gas was mixed in mainly to force the defenders to put gas masks on which made them slower and less accurate, so deluging British artillery positions with gas slowed down the accuracy and speed of defensive barrages without necessarily causing casualties. Of course then you have smoke barrages that look like gas, gas barrages that look like smoke, gas mixed with shrapnel, and so on.

The British were quick to pick up on Bruchmuller’s tactics and an artillery officer called Uniacke took up the challenge and matched Bruchmuller in ingenuity. The French never picked up the subtleties of barrages and the US, unfortunately, were taught largely by the French. By 1918 the Germans were being subjected to artillery plans of great effect and complexity which were particularly effective against the divisions brought to the west from the east. They had been used to Russian barrages which were little more than firing in the general direction of “away”. It would be like Fuerth somehow ending up in the group stages of the Champions League and having no idea what was being done to them.

TLDR: Gas shells didn’t kill a lot but wounded many and caused great inconvenience.

*yes, I appreciate the incongruity of “great” in this context. And stick an umlaut in there as well.

Edit: typos

It shouldn't astonish me, but occasionally does, that my lack of historical knowledge and the actual warmaking (if you can call it that) will mislead me to a shallow and superficial reading of my source (and I can't even tell if the people who write the pages suffer the same judgement errors). Of course, "gassing" pushes buttons and rings bells with me, but that is from a different context. To understand that killing people and making them suffer might not be the intention of a poison gas attack doesn't come naturally. I'm all the more happy you throw in a truly educated paragraph or two now and then. Thanks a lot.

It just came to me that this is probably the first time since a few fleeting moments at school that I think about WWI with any sort of interest. Better late than never, I guess.

To be fair to you, this is very specialist knowledge that is the result of decades of reading and analysis. Few things in military history are obvious and by the time they have been filtered through mass media and popular memory the true position is usually very different from the public perception.

So, onwards I try to go:

27 September, 1918 - Lots of action at the Western front, BEF attacks the Hindenburg line for the first time. Unsurprisingly, much terrain lost for my boys. One thing that struck me: Of 2,000 American men attacking an outpost along the Hindenburg line 1,540 are lost.

Some economical and cultural tidbits:
1825 - First departure of a public railway, Stockton to darlington
1859 - The building of the Hofbräuhaus in Munich begins. Welcome, our American and Japanese friends, here'st to a happy binge.
1945- First issue of Der Tagesspiegel in Berlin. That's a literal translation of Daily Mirror, but Tagesspiegel ist the paper for the cultivated, liberal bourgeoisie, and it was on parents' breakfast table years before I was even born, and still is.
1978 - Zero-issue of die tagszeitung (taz), a heavily leftist-alternative publication that could only only have erisen in the very peculiar biotope of the burrough of Kreuzberg in West Berlin in the 70s. The paper has been on the bringk of financial collapse ever since, and it delivers very non-mainstram opinions to this day, even though it, too, has taken the "Long March Through the Institutions" as '68er activists called it.

Heid the Ba wrote:Aye, don’t get cocky Harry.

September 27th, 1066 - William the Conqueror/Bastard and his army of approx 7,000 - 10,000 men set sail from the mouth of the Somme river, heading for England.

Arneb wrote: Of course, "gassing" pushes buttons and rings bells with me, but that is from a different context. To understand that killing people and making them suffer might not be the intention of a poison gas attack doesn't come naturally.

I’d forgotten you are a pulmonologist, the injuries aren’t theoretical to you.

Lianachan wrote:

Heid the Ba wrote:Aye, don’t get cocky Harry.

September 27th, 1066 - William the Conqueror/Bastard and his army of approx 7,000 - 10,000 men set sail from the mouth of the Somme river, heading for England.

Still just Billy the Bastard at this point, it’s the EU all over again . . .

Heid the Ba wrote:

Lianachan wrote:

Heid the Ba wrote:Aye, don’t get cocky Harry.

September 27th, 1066 - William the Conqueror/Bastard and his army of approx 7,000 - 10,000 men set sail from the mouth of the Somme river, heading for England.

Still just Billy the Bastard at this point, it’s the EU all over again . . .

Let's face it folks, is there anything that ISN'T the EU's fault?
See.

Re "gassing", I have never seen a heavy inhalational lung injury and count myself lucky for it. The "context" I was referring to was that of 25 years later.

Ah, of course.

Oh, not to forget: 20 years ago today -

]

Arneb wrote:Oh, not to forget: 20 years ago today -

The image doesn't show for me.
Maybe this works better:

That's it, thanks a lot.

28 September - Broad attacks deep into German-held territory in France and Flandres. Hindenburg and Ludendorff agree that armistice talks have to begin immediately - the Kaiser OKs that a day later.
RAF is involved in heavy action, the los of 424 men since Sep 15 are the worst in the war 15,5 losses for every 100 missions flown.

Some cultural tidbits today:
1745 - First performance of God Save the King, honouring George II.
1924 - First round the world flight tour ends in Seattle, with two out of four planes reaching their starting point
19671987 - First airing of Star Trek - TNG

Arneb wrote:1967 - First airing of Star Trek - TNG

Oh?

Oops. Fixed.

29th September, 1918 - Ludendorff in depression, he and Hindenburg demand armistice talks from the Kaiser, and a new government. He agrees. BEF set a new record: 943.947 grenades fired in a day.

Military stuff:
480 BC: The Athenians undrer Themistocles put an end to Persian expansion into the Aegean in the battle of Salamis. Had that one ended differently, we'd probably learn Ancient Farsi at school, not Ancient Greek and Latin.
1760 - Fort Detroit is the last French holdout to capitulate, without a fight, to the Perfidious Albion in America.
1941 - That day sees one of the crimes under Nazi rule that merit the expression "Zivilisationsbruch", a breakdown of civilisation: The massacre of Babi Yar, in which 33,000 Jews are killed, on e by one, by memeber of the Whermacht, Sicherheitsdienst, Secret Field Police and a brigade of SS men. Yevgeny Yevtuchenko wrote a poem about that day, and it was set, inimitably, terrifyingly, hauntingly, to music by Dmitry Shostakovich

Arneb wrote:
1741 - That day sees one of the crimes under Nazi rule that merit the expression "Zivilisationsbruch", a breakdown of civilisation: The massacre of Babi Yar, in which 33,000 Jews are killed, on e by one, by memeber of the Whermacht, Sicherheitsdienst, Secret Field Police and a brigade of SS men. Yevgeny Yevtuchenko wrote a poem about that day, and it was set, inimitably, terrifyingly, hauntingly, to music by Dmitry Shostakovich

1741?

Oh my fat fingers- - 1941, I corrected it in the original.