The History Thread!

I need time for a proper write up. Like I said this was the start of the era where patterning started to slowly give way to factory processes slowly.

I will start with patterning when I get a chance then go into how early industrialization like improved casting and powered machines affected it.

It won't be too much. I will also try and dig up a few things for you.

Colt will be (naturally) a major focus for looking at weapons manufacturing during that period.

Not really for Colt. They had various issues getting production methods down. This resulted in variable quality and issues with the guns reported by several users including the US Marines and US Army. It really wasn't until around the 1860's that Colt really got their manufacturing ability rolling. By then they had been matched and surpassed by other companies like Springfield who manufactured over a million of the Model 1861 Rifle-Muskets. Even before that the British Lee Enfield 1853 had already been made in large quantities. For repeating rifles the Spencer Repeating Rifle was huge success compared to its more complex and expensive competitor Winchester lever action.

Significantly more is owed to Pratt and Whitney the tool makers then to Colt.

Ok Patterning which started around the start of the Victorian era works like this. The vast majority of the gun parts are still hand crafted. Mechanisms, barrels, stocks, etc. What they did is they picked a design they wanted and made a copy as best as they could and as ideally as they could. They would then use this weapon as the basis all other weapons would measured against. They had to be fairly close in terms of measurements for the weapons to be acceptable. They would make a few such high quality weapons and store them in a room called the pattern room. They would use it take measurements to double check their standards. The first widely patterned weapon was the British Brown Bess musket. The patterning meant it was easier to make large batches of the weapon to arm the British army.

This was some of the earliest standardization for weapons before more advanced techniques caught up. This meant you could have some interchangeable parts between weapons in the batches from that manufacturer.

Push forward a little further in time a few decades and machines powered by various means did things like lathe and cut grooves in barrels and help carve stocks. They also helped shape metal thanks to the use of jigs and other devices. Casting was important for some large metal parts as forging by hand was not only time consuming but not very precise.

Hand finishing of the parts was still required to remove burs and make alterations to the pieces to be more accurate. In general though these newer machines meant more guns could be churned out not only faster but with accuracy per piece.

Move even further forward to the first bolt action rifles in the late 1800's and it is thanks to machines being able to be more accurate and precise. Electrically powered tools was a huge boon. Improvements in tools, parts, and general precision pretty much meant fire arms with more fine requirements could be made and often in quantities that would have dazzled the gun makers in the mid 1800's.

Really the biggest improvements were the tools for metal working in general. For the chosen time frame you specified at the start was when various machines were starting to appear that meant making gun parts got a bit easier. Before that nearly all the gun parts were hand forged and custom fitted for each weapon specifically. Mechanisms were difficult to repair and required a smith skilled in the repairs.

One thing that remains constant for weapons manufacturing is they still require manual labor to assemble all the machined parts into a single unit. Even the GE Gatling guns require a lot of hands on attention to fully assemble.

For your WWII type manufacturing skip to 7 minutes and 27 seconds. It gives a small peak at the process.

edited 17th May '15 3:17:01 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Just quickly, but thank you very much. This will take some work but sorting it will be much easier and also closer to actual history now I know this.

My manufacturing knowledge has always been civilian orientated, so knowing this has helped lots.

Now it's a matter of sorting the mechanics we have in mind for it...

Does anybody here have any research or information on what hitters plans were for post war euroupe if he were to win I'm trying to write a essay on it for are world war 2 unit in social studies

While there's no major consensus on specifics, this page might be useful as a starting point.

Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction go into it in some detail. Western Europe was to be industrialized, Central/Eastern Europe was to be forcibly depopulated through starvation and slavery and then resettled with Germans. In the long term German Europe would compete against the US and Britain with its resource and industrial base.

There also the "continentalists and globalists" debate, about whether Hitler wanted to rule Europe or to create a global empire.

According to him anyway, he never intended to conquer the British Empire, they just forced him to invade the Isles.

Though that does bring darkly amusing images of German and Japanese soldiers meeting up and shaking hands on the banks of the Mississippi River.

If he invaded Russia wouldnt that mean he also wanted Asia as well, at least?

Nevermind Africa?

edited 18th May '15 12:43:11 PM by Aszur

Just as far as the Urals, really: the southern oilfields, plus the Ukraine breadbasket and the industrial centers. East of that, Russia is too underdeveloped to do Germany much good.

But they need to conquer Siberia! Where else would Hitler send his exiles to?

My own take would be that as far as Hitler was concerned, conquering Europe and conquering the world were very much the same thing.

Would he have been content to let Africa just be, what with it being filled with black people and that being a terrible thing because Hitler?

I very much doubt he would have been content or stopped and nothing but an absolute conquer of Europe, Africa, and Asia. I mean, he did ally with the Japanese, which is basically promising them he would not attack them. And if there is something Hitler did, was not fulfill that sort of promise.

The Americas would have come later. Probably.

In Hitler's vision, the world would have been dominated by three major power-players: Germany in control of Europe, Britain with its overseas empire, and the US with control of North America. Everyone else would be bit players at best; Africa probably would be of significance insofar that it sat astride the trade route between Britain and its colonies.

He was rather offended when Britain and the US both turned out against him, and spent a lot of time blaming Zionist influence in Hollywood and Washington DC. Although he did get correct the whole death-struggle between Germany and the USSR for control of Europe, albeit for very different reasons than he thought.

edited 18th May '15 3:39:20 PM by SabresEdge

Well. He declared war on the U.S first.

At some point he changed his mind about the US. He wrote us off as "half-jewified and half-negrofied" and didn't expect us to put up much of a fight in any reasonable amount of time. He didn't get the memo that FDR has been preparing for war for some time by that point or that America's Jews and black population could dish out as much a fight as any German any day.

I think he got pissy when Britain declared war, suspecting rightly that the US would be bankrolling Britain. At which point we got on Hitler's shit list, and since we were there we had to be a member of the Judaeo-Bolshevik conspiracy...

Really, declaring war on the US was at least internally consistent insanity. Everyone knew the US was controlled by shadowy Zionist cabals; everyone knew the USSR was controlled by shadowy Zionist cabals. Hitler had the hope that if he could knock out the USSR fast enough, he could fortify Europe up to the point that it'd be invasion-proof.

What came first? The declaration of war, or the writing of "half negro and half jewish" thing?

edited 19th May '15 8:34:18 AM by Aszur

About a month after.

Which one...?

My bad. The comment came a month after Hitler declared war on the US.

Breaking from subject: TIL that the name of the "Order of the Garter", and its motto of "Honi soit qui mal y pense" ("shamed be he who evil thinks") started out as an in-joke.

Apparently, it referenced an incident when King Edward III's mistress dropped her garter during a dance, and the King picked it up while saying the Medieval French equivalent of "get your minds out of the gutter", which quickly spread to become an in-joke among the King's closest companions.

Nice to know that the great traditions of British royalty stem from such high-minded heroics.

edited 19th May '15 2:11:19 PM by SabresEdge

He'd already written similar things in the Zweites Buch in 28.

Darn it, Hitler! What did we ever do to you?