h a l f b a k e r yRomantic, but doomed to fail.
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I was reading some history about bloody WW1 and WW2
battles, and I keep thinking that lot of the bloodshed
could
have been avoided if soldiers had a phalanx type shield.
Instead of running through the mud or a beach
completely
unprotected, why not carry a bullet proof shield in front?
If
soldiers were in formations of 3, then 2 soldiers would
carry the shields in front while the one who stayed
behind
could lob grenades etc at the machine gun positions.
There might even be a little gun sight through which the
back soldier could fire at opportune moments. I would
imagine a swarm of 1,000 soldiers in such arrangement
would be very difficult to stop. It would be like having
to
deal with 333 human powered mini tanks.
Something tells me that this idea is too obvious to not
have
been tried before. It can't be because of honor, because
by end of WW1 that concept was long dead. There has
to
be some technical drawback.
Is it because the material that would stop incoming
machine gun fire is too heavy to carry? Or is it because
the
force of the bullets is too strong? Or is it because it's not
really bullets that we're talking about but heavy duty
artillery that's shredding the soldiers to bits? Or is it
because speed and staying low to the ground edges out
any
benefits to carrying a shield but being little slower, and
upright?
... and then I think if we go back a bit let's say to the
time of the civi war, phalanx shields must have surely
been handy back then. It can't take much to stop a
relatively low velocity bullet.
French creeping around armour
https://s-media-cac...2e18e0c5cde90b5.jpg
..eerily like a 2CV [not_morrison_rm, Feb 09 2017]
One gazillion pics of WWI armour ideas
https://www.google....IGw&biw=925&bih=435
[not_morrison_rm, Feb 09 2017]
[link]
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// Is it because the material that would stop incoming machine gun fire is too heavy to carry? // |
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Yes ... and too cumbersome. |
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// Or is it because the force of the bullets is too strong? // |
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//Or is it because it's not really bullets that we're talking about but heavy duty artillery that's shredding the soldiers to bits? // |
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Most casualties are produced by crew-served weapons, particularly mortars and field artillery. |
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// Or is it because speed and staying low to the ground edges out any benefits to carrying a shield but being little slower, and upright? // |
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I think a better tactic in each of those wars would have been to pull our people back to, say, South America. Then we could have kept on going and snuck into Germany from the East while they were all over here, and locked the door from the inside. |
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Built-in Lithium-ion battery, charged via USB ... like the Tesla, and just about everything else these days ... |
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//then 2 soldiers would carry the shields in front while the one who stayed behind could lob grenades etc at the machine gun positions.// |
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You're going to have to arrange for the machine guns not to shoot back. |
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Single soldiers with fake shields. Soldiers Walking on silts. Smoke. Bicycle mounted shields. Fake tanks. Tunnels. Two soldiers carry 10 paper doll soldiers between them. |
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If we had been there, we would have confused the hell out of everyone, and then died. |
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An Army paperwork error kept my dad out of some of the worst of it. |
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Purely by coincidence I was looking at WWI personal armour 2 weeks ago. All the contestants came up with different versions...see links |
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//Most casualties are produced by crew-served weapons, |
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Ah, that's just rumour, most casualties came from trying to open the bully beef cans after Hun saboteurs had pulled off the key thingy... |
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The problem with armor is that once you enter close quarters you'll probably be very clumsy and at a disadvantage. The idea of a shield is that you can throw it away at the first moment when it becomes cumbersome. |
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//The idea of a shield is that you can throw it away at the first moment when it becomes cumbersome. |
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And just at that moment, the other machine gun open up... |
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So what's really needed is recursively nested set of shields, from big (Maxim repelling) to a really teeny one for when the Hun has run out of ammo and is reduced to attacking with toffee hammers. |
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