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Post by yanmacca on Jun 21, 2016 13:06:13 GMT
Enjoy yourself Tom, and I hope the weather is fine.
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Post by quincannon on Jun 21, 2016 13:38:55 GMT
I rarely shoot messengers, and save my ammunition for those that wrote the message.
If its all over the internet then it must be the god's honest truth.
A Corps d Elite "battalion" of forty commanded by a very junior in rank 1st Lieutenant. Does that not give you pause as to the amount of research and knowledge that went into that paragraph?
What was Cooke's duty assignment at Washita, what company did he belong to? Would you need a Corp d' Elite "battalion of 40 for God sake" to lay in ambush to catch stragglers running away? Why, if they were sharpshooting Annie Oakley type sure shots, were they not employed, as you would normally employ such folk. for long range fire? When you start asking questions such as these the story falls apart.
More later, but this is the same old crapola, a mirage at Lincoln, Company E riding over the horizon to meet their fate,3 miles away supporting distance. The tall tales of Martini, Kanipe, and Thompson, greatest Indian fighter in the west.
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Post by yanmacca on Jun 21, 2016 13:43:24 GMT
That's why I post this stuff, if I find something that is out of the ordinary then I will share it with everyone, otherwise this stuff will remain unchallenged, and other unsuspecting green horns will fall foul.
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Post by quincannon on Jun 21, 2016 14:00:08 GMT
I know why you do it. I have no problem with that. My problem is with the clowns that make this stuff up.
I looked and could not find Cooke's duty assignment, but he was a junior 1LT, more than likely a company officer, and maybe he was given a detail for some specific purpose. Have no problem with that at all. Where I do have a problem is with turning that detail into a Corp d' Elite, and all that other bullshit, that serves only their agenda of making the Clown Prince of the Western Plains into some super soldier. The embellishment of truth, deliberately for purposes of agenda or puff, is a frigging lie. So that leaves only two possibilities regarding these folks, they are either liars or stupid, and seeing that their fiction is so easily seen through perhaps stupid liars as well.
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Post by yanmacca on Jun 21, 2016 14:17:56 GMT
Jeez, I was working in a restaurant this morning and a guy turned up to fix the coffee machine, when he got it working he kept on giving me free cappuccinos, and I am buzzing now, I had the same thing happen to me in San Francisco when me and the missus went into a Chinese restaurant, the waitress kept filling up my cup with strong coffee, I refer to that episode as “death by coffee”
You would think that after being influenced by the British and later the French, that the US Army would have had different types of infantry and cavalry, but I cannot find any reference to this, it looks like they kept it straight and simply.
I know that this is off topic, but to understand just how the US military worked is crucial to finding out how things went wrong in 1876.
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Post by yanmacca on Jun 21, 2016 14:36:31 GMT
Another little skirmish, this time from 1864; linkThe officer did well in this engagement, but blotted his copy book with this one; link
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Post by quincannon on Jun 21, 2016 15:07:24 GMT
Ian: Our British and French experience did not have a whole lot of influence on us organizationally. In fact the British experience had a reverse and negative effect/
You see a lot of discussion on the private thread about the 2nd Amendment, and that amendment centers on militia for a reason. We were very suspicious of large standing armies from the outset and resolved to meet our defense requirements with a barely existent army and local militia that could be called to the colors in time of need. Adams then Jefferson put all their defense chips on an adequate navy thinking that the Atlantic was the vast moat to the castle. We had a few frontier skirmishes in the Ohio country, and our Legion by and large took care of that.
After the Louisiana Purchase though it became very apparent, very fast, that the army must expand to police the frontier, and protect westward expansion. To do this the army over the next fifty years was increased incrementally, and whether it be Infantry or cavalry the organizational construct was toward a general purpose force, little more than a better than average armed constabulary. The exception was the artillery. We created five regiments of artillery for coast defense purposes, meant to man installations like Forts Sumpter and Monroe, a network of installations up and down the east coast, but mainly in the harbor areas. We did not even have any field artillery, save equipment sets that would be manned when necessary for field service.
We were piss poor, had not time nor money for anything fancy, and that is just the way the Congress and the American people wanted it
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Post by yanmacca on Jun 21, 2016 15:25:18 GMT
When did things change, I know that the US Army had troops in China and the Philippines and fought a war in Cuba, there were some huffing and puffing with the Mexicans too, so the US military did flex its muscles after 1900.
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Post by quincannon on Jun 21, 2016 16:44:45 GMT
It changed when we acquired an empire by default in 1898 thanks starting a war over sugar in Cuba, in which we picked up the Philippines and Puerto Rico and a few other assorted gems of Spanish culture and gross mismanagement. 1901 is a big year in that regard realizing that these places needed troops to police them every bit as much as the western frontier did two or three decades earlier.
Mexico will have a stable government the next time hell freezes over, and thus it has always been. They are a great people mind you, and I love that culture, but they are a most corrupt and unstable place, and either there revolution du jour, or their drug dealers have been causing concern since 1845 for the United States. The only reason the 1st Cavalry Division was created in 1921 was to patrol the Mexican Border, not as a combat capable unit to fight modern war.
We never do anything with our military, naval, or air forces that we don't absolutely need to do, and at that it is usually five to ten years before we realize the requirement.
Cincinnatus runs deep in the American conscience and culture. In 2016 Cincinnatus is going to get your ass blown away.
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Post by yanmacca on Jun 21, 2016 19:25:51 GMT
Well just before the second world war the US Army turned the page for me, you started to ditch the old French artillery pieces and developed a more modern 105mm howitzers and heavier 155mm gun, you still kept a fair number of Schneider based 155mm howitzers that you modernised in the inter war period but on the whole you up graded a lot of stuff.
The US Army also saw the need for a tank mounting a 75mm gun in a fully revolving turret, and that was down to watching events in Europe. But your biggest change was arming your troops with automatic pistols and rifles, as these are the bread and butter of your infantry units, just a quick look at the weapons used by every else will show that bolt-actioned rifles and even revolvers (we still used the old Webley) were still standard.
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dave
Brigadier General
Posts: 1,679
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Post by dave on Jun 21, 2016 21:35:52 GMT
All this chat of fine, well trained soldiers who are able to leap tall buildings reminds of that great American Classic, Heartbreak Ridge: "Sergeant Webster: Major Powers and I are building an e-lite company of fighting men.
Highway: The only thing you could build, Webster... is a good case of hemorrhoids."
Only in America! Regards Dave
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Post by quincannon on Jun 21, 2016 22:43:57 GMT
The word elite, like hero is so overused that it has become meaningless.
It is also destructive and is detrimental to the mission of those who are the true elites in this world, who are very few. In the UK for instance the only ones that fall into that category, to my knowledge, are the Special Air Service, and Special Boat Service. In ours probably only two as well, SFOD Delta (or whatever thy are calling themselves today) and the Navy SEALS.
All of the rest including our Special Forces and Rangers, and like type forces in the UK, France, Germany, South Korea, Japan, and a few of our adversaries as well are extremely well trained soldiers, which will eventually be everyone's standard of excellence, before the century is out
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Post by yanmacca on Jun 22, 2016 13:35:26 GMT
The US Rangers were trained by the British commandos, they were sent to Scotland and went through a rigorous training schedule, It wouldn't surprise me if there is still some camaraderie between the survivors of both units to this day.
I wonder if the US Rangers and the British 3rd Commando brigade still have links?
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Post by quincannon on Jun 22, 2016 13:57:58 GMT
That is only true for the 1st Ranger Battalion, which was activated in Northern Ireland, and to some lesser extent the Provisional Battalion, drawn from the 29th ID, to temporarily replace the 1st when it deployed to North Africa for Torch.
The 3rd and 4th were raised in North Africa, with a cadre from the 1st, and trained by them. The 2nd and 5th, The Sunoco Rangers, were activated at Camp Forrest, Tennessee (now Arnold somethingorother for the USAF). The 6th was originally a field artillery battalion that was converted. Can't remember exactly where that happened, but it was in the Pacific Theater.
I am pretty sure that they don't maintain any contact. I would suspect that the 3rd Commando Brigade has close contact with the USMC though. They really aren't commandos anymore, and commandoes when designed for your service was nothing more than a stopgap for marines, to make up for the absence of your fleet marine force which was not only absent but nonexistent.
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Post by yanmacca on Jun 22, 2016 14:07:27 GMT
Dam that movie Darby's Rangers!
There is a fierce rivalry between our Marines and Paratroops, I must say though that I have a high regard for Marines as fighting troops, but to jump out of an aircraft over enemy territory, really takes some guts.
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