Scouty Solomani

Quora: What are some little-known facts from World War II that fascinate you?

Grant Corriveau In the Navy twice. First as an Avionics Technician. The second time as a Seabee. and Hugh Weller-Lewis, MA Literature & Social Sciences, The Open University (1991)

• A Discovery in Labrador is Revealed to have World War 2 origins

In 1977 a team of scientists were exploring northern Labrador for a geomorphological study. Labrador is a lightly populated region of Canada in the northeast.

The team came across a cluster of canisters that, judging by their rusty appearances, had been there for decades. The canisters were upright, were about four feet tall, and were filled with mechanical components. The team felt that these were put there by the Canadian military but were not sure what they were.

A more specific map where these canisters were found:

A photo of the site:

Four years later it was revealed that the canisters were placed there by the crew of a Nazi submarine in October of 1943. The U-boat was U-537.

The canisters were automatic weather station monitors and transmitters. During World War 2, monitoring the weather for the Atlantic Ocean was important for strategic reasons and the Germans were at a major disadvantage. Weather systems predominantly move from west to east so the Allies were able to predict the weather much more accurately than the Germans.

The Germans tried weather ships, but they were easily spotted and captured. They also tried aircraft, but those were unreliable. And so the company called Siemens designed small and clandestine automatic weather stations to be placed in various areas in the North Atlantic including Spitsbergen and Greenland.

So for the only time in World War 2, a German military operation took place on mainland North America. The area was picked because the Germans felt it was isolated enough to avoid discovery and the equipment was marked Canadian Meteor Service (non-existent) to conceal its German identity.

The automatic station (retroactively named Weather Station Kurt) was meant to operate for six months on its nickel-cadmium batteries but actually stopped working after only one month.

The weather station was forgotten about for over three decades until a scientific team accidentally found it in 1977. A retired Siemens worker found out about the discovery in 1981 and revealed its true origins. Today the canisters from Weather Station Kurt are on display in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, Ontario.

On display:

Edit: Because of the interest this answer has generated, I am adding links to articles about other clandestine German weather stations from World War 2:

North Atlantic weather war – Wikipedia

Greenland in World War II – Wikipedia

Secret German weather base uncovered after 72 years

Very much a Scouty adventure: don’t cause trouble, just observe and report. And avoid getting detected, killed, or captured.

But the race-based Solomani Confederation doesn’t have a scout service: just dedicated Confederation Navy sensor & observation platforms.

“Violent supremacist organizations, eager to grind the universe under their jackboots, are such bullet-headed bores.”

“Without the wealth and technology of the Solomani Rim, they don’t dare cross the border: just shout endlessly about how much better they are. Endless streams of propaganda, yes, but no incoming fire.”

“I guess that’s the benefit the common Imperial subject gets. Not a bad reward, even compared to the yummy new markets the Imperial corporations won in the war.”

“The big men get their fat treasure chests, and the little men get their single solid gold sovereign? Better than usual!”

Vietnam Artillery Firebase Tactics

With its strong focus on air mobility and the “no front” environment, I can see a video like this be a favourite among Imperial Marines. At least, it gets the basics across — “never thought about soil issues before” — and the emphasis is on a protected position to emphasis an offensive force.

And they were successful: “The fire base concept surpassed the most optimistic expectations. Occasionally the enemy was able to penetrate the defenses and take a heavy toll of personnel and equipment, but he never was able to take an American fire base.”

This becomes even more apparent, if we consider that in total around 8000 firebases were established between 1961 to 1973, although most of them were temporary, as such only a fraction of that numbered existed at any given time.

Now, if there was a safe/secured zone behind you – representing victories which you can build on – instead of just losing all your gains when you won your battle, and move on.

But that’s the thing: in a real “no rules, no uniforms” guerilla war, you aren’t going to win unless the enemy decides to gives up. And if he has no intention of giving up, ever, that leaves some form of concentration camp ops/mass genocide/ethnic cleansing to finally pacify the area.

Note that Imperial forces are not obligated to uphold the Imperial laws of War, even as they enforce it on all non-Imperial forces.

(Yes, I keep on saying this, over and over again. That’s because this fact MATTERS.

The well-groomed Noble smiles, and smiles, and is flawlessly polite and respectful: but don’t be deceived. Should he deem it necessary, he will sign the order to exterminate your entire nation: men, women children, and anything, everything else.

Fortunately, an Imperial world have to work really hard to get that kind of treatment.)

Firearms & Grappling in Space

A nice, in-depth discussion!

Not quite as useful, but good background material.

M K Okay. I like your video a lot but I don’t know about your analysis of weapons, fighting, and fighting methods.

When it comes to firearms, you have to take into account the relationship between weapon and function. When it comes to the toxic gasses released by propelling a projectile, that’s not that big a problem. When it comes to penetrating power possibly holing a hull, a lot of solutions are possible from ignoring the problem (a nine mm hole is essentially a slow leak you can patch with your hand), to lowering the speed and thus the energy of a projectile by lowering the amount of propellant behind it, or designing projectiles in such a way as to make them lethal to flesh (see, “Glaser safety slug”) but less harmful to a solid surface.

Knives and other bladed weapons of various sorts are pretty common in the belt as is the use of tools as weapons and that would lead to places that it would take a while to write about so we can safely pass over that to get to unarmed combat.

You talk a lot about grappling but much of grappling only works because of the presence of gravity. Leverage-based martial arts techniques like locks and breaks are a matter of getting an advantage over an opponent and applying a lock. That is a question of speed, precision and technique, but the rest of the wrestler’s repertoire—things like pins, and throws—are based on having gravity as an aid to the technique in question with their lethality deriving from the thrower’s ability to throw an opponent in such a way as to have gravity do fatal damage to the recipient in the form of skull and or spinal fracture.

The same deficiencies are to be seen in grappling techniques that seek to overwhelm or control the opponent which leads to the opening of the set of questions that arise from the idea that grappling techniques are less effective in an environment where the lack of gravity might make it possible for the one being grappled to simply lift his opponent and take him along with him as an annoyance.

Final analysis: given television’s need for drama, firearms, and physically silly fight-scenes are here to stay.

Raw Vilani Power

Never underestimate the ability to “set the context”, to be “the bland uncontroversial corporate framework” that everyone builds their lives around.

After all, “Bliss” is far more famous than ALL the much more dramatic, artistic, award-winning photographs out there.

And, incidentally, there is absolutely nothing wrong with “Bliss”. No secret conspiracy, no hidden “command & control” plot. People like peaceful quiet landscapes, so Microsoft delivered. I certainly have no right to complain!

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“…and, as the world was in eternity pass, so it will be in eternity future…” as the Vilani chants would goes. No growth and no decay, no gain and no loss, no great revolutionary passions or driven innovative spirit.

Just a quiet, undisturbed calmness.

“The Solomani may laugh: but the quiet green hills were here before them, and will be here long after those noisemakers are gone.”

Well, I do like the quiet green hills: but as part of existence, and not as the only thing in existence. After all, the New Jerusalem — a blessed, holy, busy city — is as much a part of eternity as any reborn Edenic garden would be.

“People matter.”

The Joys of Kill-Chains

The shift from cheap offensive to cheap defensive technologies is a big part of the reason why the Imperium avoids major — and expensive! — dirtside commitments.

Better to stay in space, where money, technology, and expensive training talks loudest, has the biggest returns, and bears the smallest blood price for the dominant power.

DARPA for short is world renowned as the most advanced military think tank in the world. Their sole purpose is to use the billions in funding they receive every year to brainstorm how future wars will be fought, and to come up with new weapons to fight them with. Their latest development is nothing short of a revolution in warfare, and a way to ensure that the United States maintain its untouchable fighting edge over any near-peer adversary.

Strokes beard over the question, “How can we get the enemy to gut his own economy, while preserving ours largely intact?”

I don’t think China actually did this, at least not as a deliberate plan anyways. And if they did, they didn’t think it through, considering the ongoing problems Chinese manufacturers have with their missing customers.

That being said, I can definitely see a corporate-oriented Noble consider pulling off such a stunt. It would be a demanding course of action, requiring a truly deep understanding of the way your adversary thinks, at least to the level of Uncle Ho of North Vietnam.

Not easy… but possible.

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Incidentally, the propaganda arm of North Vietnam (1960s) was absolutely light-years ahead of Chinese propaganda of the 2020s, in terms of sophistication and effectiveness.

I’d even dare suggest that the rather stodgy Soviet propaganda efforts of the 1980s are of a noticeably better quality than current Chinese efforts.

Fanatical Military Units

In fact if you look at that scene from Enemy of the Gates where the NKVD they are there with machine guns and whistles and going “Right! Attack!” and everyone attacks and then they fail and then they start whittling their way back and the NKVD like “No no no! Don’t come back we’ll shoot you!” and then they end up shooting them…this is pretty much the opposite of what actually happened.

In fact at one part the battle the regular rifle division units and the 10th NKVD are fighting side-by-side, and the Germans attack, and some of these units flee. And there’s a report from the Soviets themselves saying most of the guys who fled were NKVD guys, not the regular outfit. They — the regular rifle division units stayed where they were and died on the battlefield, and it was the NKVD guys who fled. So yes it’s almost the complete opposite of that scene from Enemy of the Gates…

…and…

The questions about the combat effectiveness of SS Division Nord were answered on the first day of battle [the 1st July 1941]. Against determined Soviet defenders the division broke and ran. Panicky SS troops streamed past the Corps headquarters. There was total confusion at the fronts. The division operations officer could only account for two of the six battalions.

Major General Demelhuber declared that his division was not fit for combat operations on the morning of July 2nd. Losses in the SS Division on July 1st included one regimental commander, one battalion commander, and 600 men…. The SS division was moved into defensive positions behind the Finnish border after its panic on July 1st.

Now while the 169th Infantry Division was assembling its forces for a crossing of the Kuola River and the assault on Salla, there was another panic in the SS division…. This episode evidently started when General Demelhuber, believing that his division was under an armored attack and having no confidence in his troops, ordered a withdrawal that turned into a panic…

On this occasion some of the guys fled fifty miles to a bridge, where they told the guy in charge of the bridge to blow the bridge because they were being chased by the Russians… which they weren’t. So they actually withdrew the division on the 6th of July and… yeah. So the division had actually fled twice, and it was because of this that the German and Finnish units in that area were no longer strong enough to go all the way to cut the Murmansk railway.

And it may have been this incident — plus others — which convinced Mannerheim that the German troops that were in Finland were pretty poor, and thus the Germans as a whole were not particularly great fighters. which might be why he decided not to advance further than necessary during the Continuation War. So, going back to foamies original question: this SS division was fanatical — it was party political — but it did suffer significantly higher casualties and was maligned by poor performance now.

And that’s just one more reason, why I have a soft spot for the Imperium.

The rather pragmatic, bottom-line oriented leadership isn’t particularly impressed about mad shouting about the Leader, or the Race, or God, or the Revolution, or the People.

“Just talk to me about proficiency, and effectiveness, and results, and operational goals met.”

Gas Attack

The Imperium will be quite displeased, with the violation of the Imperial Laws of War.

(Laws that don’t apply to Imperial forces, by the way.)