They're safer than parachutes. I suggest you look up the WWII-era gliders I've been linking to. I'm not referring to hang gliders or parasails or any of those: these are big plywood craft the size of a light cargo plane that can carry jeeps and light artillery pieces. Yes, it's risky, but parachuting at night is even riskier. Probably their most famous use was in Normandy 1944, when glider infantry came down alongside paratroopers.
And as a bonus, they don't require specialist training on our part, since there's a dedicated Glider Regiment pilot who flies the thing to its landing. That alone makes it a better choice than parachuting.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.![]()
I meant didn't a lot of them crash and everyone in them die?
Although I suppose they would be safer than parachutes.
what do you mean I didn't win, I ate more wet t-shirts than anyone elseGliders might get less press than their parachuting cousins, but believe me, there's no shortage of awesomeness if you know where to look. Case in point: Fort Eben-Emael, 1940.
Tactical problem: you're a German commander whose route of advance is blocked by a canal and a massive concrete fortification bristling with artillery. The bridges across the canal are wired to blow if it looks like the Belgians are going to lose them, the fort has twelve hundred men and can bounce any shell you can throw at it (while blasting back with dozens of cannon), and you have no guarantee your Stuka dive-bombers can neutralize the fort for long enough for your troops to get across. What do?
Solution: you land less than a hundred gliderborne infantry on the roof of the fort in the pre-dawn. Gliders are totally silent on their approach and move a lot faster than parachutes (and are less affected by wind). Those infantrymen proceed to clear out gun positions with explosives, flamethrowers, and an honest-to-god secret weapon, the shaped charge. Then they drive the Belgian soldiers into the lower fort and bottle them up there. Meanwhile, more gliderborne troops land on the bridges, defuse the explosive charges, and take the canal defenses. Since the armored spearhead got held up, the glider troops then hold off Belgian counterattacks for twenty-four hours until they're relieved.
End result: less than a hundred glider infantry—understrength since two of the eleven gliders were released early—forced the surrender of one of the most advanced forts of the time, along with over a thousand prisoners. Casualties for the fortress assault contingent, six dead and nineteen wounded.
And that's not superhero fiction; that actually happened. It was widely and rightly seen as the German Fallschirmjaegers's finest hour. Given that, there is absolutely no lack of heroics associated with a glider deployment. Much better than scattering a dozen characters all over the woods by parachute.
edited 3rd Jul '14 3:30:35 PM by SabresEdge
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.Which is why you have a history buff on your team who will be glad to provide options as needed, so long as there's at least some people here who share an interest in the subject and are willing to use that knowledge in-game. (I'm in this game for the history, far more than for the superheroics.)
Somewhat different subject, one advantage of playing two characters is that you can rotate them in and out. While Rai's on active service, for instance, Justina can undergo parachute training. Next mission might see Justina on active service and Rai studying up on Major Fairbairn's course of ungentlemanly warfare.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.I could see it working with certain restrictions—for instance, some of the capabilities might blow out the speaker or disable it through resonance if it weren't specially-designed, or some frequencies need special microphones to carry. Solvable engineering problems, basically. (Probably something similar applies to the Bagpipes of Erich Zahn, come to think of it...) The main issue is still the logistical one of setting up a PA system before you could play into it. That stuff isn't exactly portable.
But, given the type of RP this is, I think the better answer is: would it fit the flavor of the character? That's your call to make, since power levels are all over the place.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.Eh, I'm sure we can work out justifications. Someone like Logistic Fury working in the infamously inefficient German arms industry could very well result in Tiger tanks being sent to France in 1943, or the hilarious German superprojects like the Landkreuzer Ratte
reaching prototype stage before someone finally manages to convince Hitler that it's a waste of Reichmarks.
Just so long as you put thought into it instead of throwing history completely out the window. Artistic license I can deal with and probably even help you justify.
edited 3rd Jul '14 7:37:21 PM by SabresEdge
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.Meanwhile in Germany, a very frustrated superpowered staff officer slams open the door to Albert Speer's office and nearly knocks him over with a tirade of complaints regarding the diversion of resources to the white-elephant superweapon projects, screaming for more Panzers to be built instead, before SS bodyguards manage to subdue her and drag her out of the room...
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.Yeah, that was my conclusion, too. I did consider as many other possibilities as I could, but they came down to seaborne, which would have required that our target be beachfront property, or airborne, which came down to parachute or glider.
Totally unrelated, I suspect the 1940 German bombing of Coventry (in this timeline at least) had something to do their suspicions of the British supers program being located there...
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.It's a lot of fun looking at the big events of WWII and tying in your own additions to them. In reality, Operation Mondscheinsonate—the Coventry raid—happened because of a lucky breakdown in the British codebreaking system. R. V. Jones and his merry pranksters, in charge of the already-sci-fi-worthy Battle of the Beams
, had up to that date a lot of success jamming German navigational system, causing a lot of bombers to dump their payloads on empty fields instead of cities, but for them to successfully position their jammers, they needed the codebreakers to warn them where the Germans were aiming that night. On the night of the Coventry blitz, the codebreakers gave them two targets to choose from and were unable to narrow it down further; the British electronic wizards had to guess, and they guessed wrong.
Now, there's a widely-spread claim that the codebreakers had, in fact, correctly cracked the German code, but they still had to allow the Luftwaffe bombers through or else they'd clue the Germans in to that fact. In real life, all the documentation suggests the opposite. But in this case...
An alternate story could go something like this. Suspecting an infiltration by a superhuman, possibly psychic German spy, the SOE/SIS had, by November, narrowed down the suspect list to five men.* So Jones and his crew prepare a leak that they knew the Germans had to respond to: the location of the British superhero project's headquarters. To each of the five they give a different location; in theory, each one would be guarded.* But in practice, Reality Ensues: there's not enough resources to guard each of the targets, and the RAF—much to the spyhunters' frustration—has to resort to half-measures on the less likely targets. Plus, the Luftwaffe is still conducting its own war; the RAF needs every fighter and every intelligence man to counter them.
One November night the Luftwaffe finally takes the bait. Unfortunately it does so at the site the SIS had judged least likely to be hit; as in our timeline, the defenders are too slow to respond. When all's over, the center of Coventry is gutted. But the Brits have their real prize: the identity of the leak, and the German spy...
edited 5th Jul '14 8:03:17 PM by SabresEdge
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.


And, yes, gliders are pretty cool. I'll get a post up about Fort Eben-Emael; I like my fantasy to have a core of solid reality, because sometimes something happens in reality that eclipses just about anything in fantasy, and that's always amazing to read up on. It's the reason I'm a historian.
edited 3rd Jul '14 9:33:07 AM by SabresEdge
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.