Tied

it hurts to live

there you go 

So on my recent trip to Japan (protip: don't fly for 19 hours with your kids), I took some time out from family to visit Yushukan museum.
 
To bring you all up to speed, this place is the museum attached to the controversial shrine that Japan and China are in a perpetual snit over. The shrine itsef is actually pretty anodyne, if fairly imposing and charmless.

 


 
The museum, however, is pretty fucking sinister. Anyway, I'm sure you didn't click this just to see me repost content, so here are my impressions.

 
1. Revisionism deluxe
 
If you've gotten the impression by now that this place has an agenda, you are absolutely correct. Japanese soldiers are always described in glowing terms ('honourable actions', 'noble warriors', 'honoured dead' etc.), war crimes are ignored whenever they aren't completely rewritten as laudable or necessary (Manchuria is described as an operation to bring regional stability, for instance) and the Emperor was a saint. It gets to the point of being almost admirably ballsy, such as the train from the Burma railway parked at the entrance without any comment whatsoever. Or when the brochure specifically highlights a Japanese flag signed by 25 of the most well-known ‘alleged’ war criminals as a key exhibit.

 


 
In terms of the content of the museum, it is at pains to remind the viewer about Japan’s glorious martial past (glossing over the whole civil war aspect), how it was pushed into a hopeless war by the perdifery of the US/colonial powers, and how the noble sacrifice of its people/Emperor lead to... something, I guess? Sadly, a lot of the place is off-limits to cameras so I can’t show you some of the truly egregious stuff.

 
Finally, the amount of memorialisation gets to sort of strange levels. There are statues, displays and plaques commemorating the brave souls who died in the war – including, and I can’t make this stuff up, a special statue depicting the sailors who died testing a suicide diving suit that the empire was working on in its final hours. There is an entire wing of the museum dedicated to photos and mementos of dead soldiers, sailors and airmen. There is also a section devoted to providing bibliographical accounts (including displays of uniforms and equipment) of the men – again eliding any reference to crimes or atrocities.

 
2. Suicidepalooza

 
Part of this focus on heroic struggle seems to be to include every possible reference to suicidal actions that it can. Every field gun displayed, for instance, helpfully included a note on how the crew had fought to the last man.

 


 
This also extended to suicide weapons. The museum has an Ohka sitting up in the hall (which I wasn’t supposed to photograph, but did anyway), a Kaiten at the centre of the same room, a Shinyo sitting to the side and a model of Kairyu sitting next to it. Each helpfully notes the exact number of airmen/sailors who perished during testing or use.

 

 

 
Finally, the Zero sitting in the entranceway and the Judy sitting in the hall both make mention of their later careers as planes intended for ‘special mission’ purposes. There was also an interview with one of the surviving kamikaze pilots playing on repeat in the main hall.

 


 
My suspicion here is that the obsessive focus on suicide craft has some special meaning to the Japanese nationalists who effectively fund and run the place that I am unable to grasp. This is interesting, as I’ve generally found that the best possible way to get people to contemplate the insanity of total industrial warfare is to talk about Japanese suicide craft and the reasoning that went into their creation. Generally, once you’ve explained this stuff in detail to a person they’re, like, 50% of the way to either total pacifism or a wholehearted embrace of America’s post-war role as the most munificent empire in history.

 
3. Odds and sods

 
Every museum has some interesting little bits and pieces hidden away, and this one was no different. For me, it was seeing the astonishingly crude nature of pre-Edo bows (which were, sadly, verboten for purposes of photography). One of them was literally a bronze-capped branch (complete with copious knots) about 25mm in diameter at the handle and steamed into the familiar yumi shape. The others were various iterations of brutalist single-piece bowering, culminating in a square cross-section bow that looks like a direct ancestor of the modern Japanese bow.

 
For the small arms nerds, there are a few machineguns and cannons to look at.

 


 

 
There was also a single, lonely Chi-Ha to give the armour nerds some succour.

 


 
Finally, outside of the museum there was an example of a weirdo-gun: a bronze cannon which was taken in an re-rifled at the end of its life.

 


 
4. Conclusion

 
All in all, I found the visit interesting but a bit ominous. Worse, I fear that this sort of thing is more portentous in terms of where Japan is headed than anyone wants to admit. I guess I can only hope that the country, which seems to be going through some sort of transition, doesn’t begin indulging in its worst tendencies again as pax Americana wanes.

 

 

New ammunition I received today...
 
Project SALVO and related, 6.35x53mm Simplex, 6.35x53mm Duplex, .22-30 Light Rifle, .25-30 Light Rifle, .27-30 Light Rifle, .22-06, .22-06 Triplex:


 
Miscellaneous, 4.32x45mm US Experimental, 5.56x38mm FABRL, 6.35x48mm Winchester pre-SAW Ballistic Test, .280/30 British Type C, a brilliantly preserved 6mm SAW, way better condition than my other one, 7mm High Velocity, 7.62x51mm NATO (LOL), 5.2x68mm Mondragon:
 

 
Flechettes, 5.56x45mm Steyr annular-primed polymer-cased flechette, XM144 SPIW, 5.56x45mm AAI flechette, XM110 SPIW flechette, XM645 SPIW flechette, 5.56/4.32 sabot for XM70 rifle, .330 Amron Aerojet, 9.53x76SR Winchester:
 

 
5.56x25 Hercules telescoped caseless, 4.7x21 DAG/HK caseless prototype, 5.56x30 Hughes Lockless, 4.73x33 DM11 DN/HK telescoped caseless for G11, 5.56x24 US caseless, 7.62x34 US caseless, 5.56x45mm M855 composite case (I think this is an AAI round, but I'm not sure), 6mm SAW long aluminum case:
 

All Animea is shit.

The preference is for non-anime/manga avatars, but there's no strict policy against it.

There's a certain critical mass a forum can reach where everyone has cartoon avatars and I'd like to avoid that. You can imagine a certain kind of person with a serious technical background getting on a forum and seeing Japanese anime girls everywhere and that driving them away, I'm sure.

Phencyclidine is right, its the 120
 
and ANIMEA avatars are not welcomed to SH 
 
REMOVE ANIMEA 

Phencyclidine is right, its the 120
 
and ANIMEA avatars are not welcomed to SH 
 
REMOVE ANIMEA 

No he isn't.

Panama Papers are out, turns out Poroshenko's illegally hiding a shitload of cash, who could have known.

I think we all know who Mike Sparks is voting for:
 

i feel young again! 

A naval force of such great power, never to be seen again.... 

 
Tanking up!

http://thesovietarmourblog.blogspot.ru/2015/05/t-72-soviet-progeny.html
 
Only just found this and seems to be a very good write up so far.
 
Edit: nah fuck dat this is a fantastic resource. Shit, it would probably be a good introduction to newbies about cold war tanks as it goes into great detail about all kind of things like APDS vs APFSDS, NERA mechanics and etc. It's amazingly comprehensive, feels better than Zaloga's books honestly.

So for those who may not have seen very many projectile types (Aka, people who aren't Meplat, D.E. Watters, Collimatrix, Sturgeon, Alex C. Ulric, etc), what I'm talking about regarding angled jacket cuts in the Remington Golden Saber is this, it also shows that Remington in general seems to have a thing for brass jackets.
 

 
Left to right, Winchester 180 gr FMJ target .40 S&W, typical brass case copper jacket, nothing special it's just range ammo mostly, SIG Sauer Elite Performance 165 gr JHP, .40 S&W, Remington Golden Saber 165 gr JHP, Remington UMC 180 gr FMJ target load 10mm Auto (note that it also has a nickel plated case and a brass jacket), and an Underwood custom load with Starline brass and a Hornady XTP 155 gr JHP in 10mm, also have some basically identical loadings from Buffalo Bore with a 180 gr XTP instead (I had to use some 10mm Auto casings for this since I didn't have any UMC or XTP rounds in .40 S&W on hand.)
 

 
Elite Performance and Golden Saber side by side, note the previously mentioned deep cuts that go laterally on the Golden Saber, and how shallow the cuts are on the elite performance (you can really only see them from the top.)
 

 
And compared to an XTP, note that unlike the Elite Performance, the stress cuts go very deep and quite a ways down the jacket.
 
We really need a top side view of things to show how they're different though.
 

 
 
Both the Elite Performance and Golden Sabers have very wide cavities, this is pretty typical of rounds designed specifically for defensive use as people are rather thin skinned and you can get them to expand to a large size easier when hitting something soft, note that the Elite Performance has a second hollow cavity in the center, my theory is Xzibit helped design the round because he heard SIG Sauer liked hollow points so he added another hollow cavity so you can expand while you expand. Modern JHPs can get away with wide cavities versus human targets even with things like thick clothing and still penetrate deep enough to do their job, the XTP is obviously different, the cavity is very narrow and, while it's hard to see, not as deep as the other 2, this is because the XTP is more of a multi purpose round, and controlled expansion is really the name of the game here where in addition to working well against human attackers, It's also designed to work well against medium-thick skinned game targets (they offer them in various calibers and weights, some for rifles) where you really need to penetrate very deeply as many animals have much thicker skin and tougher/denser bone structures then people do, they also need to go through more flesh aswell, so controlling the expansion all the way through the target so it doesn't stop early is very important. I'd also like to point out that, for pistol JHPs, Hornady XTPs tend to also be exceptionally accurate in my experience. (HORNADY, SPONSOR ME PLEASE, I'LL WHORE MYSELF OUT MORE THEN ALL OF TFB!)
 
And some, "just for the fuck of it photos", here you go.
 
2 .40 S&W and 1 10mm Auto that was donated from one of the magazines from the Glock 40 pictured and a Size 12 Custom Air Jordan for scale (poorly to scale at least). (If you're wondering why the baseplate is on the floor, It's because I'm not risking damaging a $700 optic for a dumb photoshoot I'm doing for something I'm getting no real gain from, this fucking post would've been up 30 minutes sooner if I didn't have to remove that goddamn cocksucking plate everytime, plus it doesn't fit in my bedside holster with the sight on, need to get a new one.)
 

 
 
And, since people sperg alot about comparisons to rounds next to the .50 BMG, 1 .40 S&W and 1 10mm Auto next to an M8 API .50 BMG and an Inert 20mm casing from WW2 that someone turned into an ashtray, the bullet is a perfect replica, but when you pull it out it's actually an old fashioned lighter that uses a thick as fuck wick. (I've never unscrewed it from the ash tray to check the headstamp to see exactly what 20mm caliber it is, as this is something that belonged to my long dead great grandfather that I actually treasure alot, but judging from the OAL and the case width, I'm 99% sure it's a 20x110mm Hispanio.)
 

 
Welp, that was a waste of time probably, but, things we learned.
 
1. Remington is really into Nickel casings, even for range ammunition, which is really nice actually with brass jackets, and
 
2. JHPs are quite different from each other, actually look into what you're buying and what it's intended for because they're not just a class of projectile you can throw a blanket around.
 
I hope you enjoyed my shitpost.

Some goof ball on an M60A3
 

This is something I've never grasped.  With a pistol it makes sense to go two-column, single feed because you need room around the top for the transfer bar, slide rails, and other jazz.  Also because designers are lazy and like to copy the BHP magazine.  But on an SMG you have plenty of room to fit everything in because SMGs are bigger than pistols.  Even in a mag-in-grip design like an uzi, there's still plenty of room for two position feed.
 
So why do so many SMGs use two column, single position feed magazines?  M3s do, MP-38/40s do, UMPs do, and several others.

>tfw no catering truck mounted M2HB

Ya, its to bad they can vote 

Somewhere Tied just got really angry and he doesn't know why.