Daniel Keep wrote:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
Walter Bright wrote:
...
It's like if you gave the Spartan Leonidas a Henry repeating rifle -
he still would have lost at Thermopylae. But there is little doubt
that one Henry repeating rifle is worth a hundred spear-chucking
wicker-armored immortals.
Sometimes I run these crazy calculations: how much modern firepower
would be just enough to turn the odds in a classic battle? At
Thermopilae, I think two Vickers with enough ammo would have been just
about enough. Also at the Lord of the Rings 2 night castle defense, one
machine gun would have sufficed (better protection and fewer assailants).
Andrei
You mean the battle of Helm's Deep? I think you'd need more than one
machine gun. If the wall had held and the orcs had been forced to come
up the front ramp, then it might have been enough... but the bomb
Saruman gave them took out the wall meaning that you'd have two streams
of Orcs coming at you.
The thing is, there is this narrow ravine leading to the castle. A
well-aimed machine gun would have wreaked havoc at the assailants before
any of them would have reached the wall. Indeed, I think none of them
would have actually gotten to the wall, including the bomb itself.
I reckon a machine gun covering the main entrance and perhaps some
razorwire and flamethrowers inside the wall from the breech. That'll
learn 'em.
Oh, yah - I thought barbwire would have been an incredibly effective
passive defense. After assailant troops advance through the ravine and
go over multiple layers of barbwire, machine gun starts mowing them
down. Under fire, the barbwire makes it virtually impossible to either
advance or retreat.
This exact scenario happened in WWI, e.g. Somme. The Germans were very
organized logistically and had planted plenty of barbwire. When the
British did the human wave shtick, all Germans had to do was to let them
advance a little before opening fire. 57000+ casualties in one day
alone...
Andrei
