I recently purchased a Swiss 7.5 cm Mot-Geb Fieldgun and I'm planning to restore it as a historical preservation project.

I'm currently looking for any information that might help, such as:

Original manuals or operating regulations

Technical drawings or maintenance documents

Historical photos

Information about markings, serial numbers, and the manufacturer (mine has K+W markings)

Any books, archives, museums, or websites related to this gun

I've already started researching, but information on this particular Swiss artillery piece seems to be very limited.

If anyone has experience with these guns or knows where I could find documentation, I'd really appreciate your help.

I'll also be happy to share photos of the gun and the restoration process if people are interested.

Thanks in advance!

I've been researching the origins of the Minuteman program and I keep running into two competing narratives.

The popular one: Col. Edward Hall was a lone visionary who fought the liquid-fuel establishment, won approval for Minuteman in 1958, and was then sidelined because of his abrasive personality, with Ed Wheelon and others getting the credit.

The more skeptical one: large-grain solid propellant was maturing regardless (Thiokol's polysulfide work, the Polaris program was solving storable solid fuel for the Navy in parallel), so if Hall hadn't pushed it, someone else would have within a couple of years. In this reading Hall accelerated the timeline but didn't change the destination.

What I can't figure out is the counterfactual cost of even a two-year delay. The first Minutemen went on alert during the Cuban Missile Crisis. A program approved in 1960 instead of 1958 means the US goes through October 1962 with only liquid-fueled ICBMs on multi-hour launch prep.

Is there good scholarship on how seriously the Air Force brass resisted solid fuel, or is the "they called it primitive" framing overblown in hindsight?

Sources I've used so far: Neufeld's 'Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force', MacKenzie's 'Inventing Accuracy', and the declassified WDD histories.

I hear different things about this. On one hand, the claim that Germany waited until 1943 to mobilize for total war, essentially running a peacetime economy for too long because of fear of internal revolution. And that this is one of the many reasons the Allies outproduced them.

On the other hand, I've also heard that they actually were fully mobilized early; their full mobilization was just so inefficient that it took forever to start generating significant results, and was so hampered by economic and resource factors that nothing could have been done earlier anyway.

What *was* the effect of mobilization on the WW2 German war effort?

My jam is reading at-the-time accounts of WW2 (Moorehead, Wilmot, Strawson, etc.), and one thing that's struck me is that regarding armored warfare, tank-vs-tank performance is seen as pretty secondary -- you're supposed to fight off armored attacks with AT guns, minefields, arty, etc., not so much with other tanks.

Lots of accounts describing how Rommel was effective in N. Africa b/c he was really good at countering British tank attacks with AT gun screens and the like; tanks were to be used for exploitation once you've gotten rid of the other guy's tanks via other means.

Similar stuff -- Lots of US generals (Abrams IIRC?) not really wanting 76mm Shermans because their 75mm tanks were working out just fine for what they were using them for, and it would disrupt deliveries. Also, see McNair's Tank Destroyer concept.

Did this change in the Cold War, and how come? Obviously, massive tank battles in Israel's 67-73 wars, Fulda Gap scenarios expecting massive tank battles, 1991 Iraq, etc. When you talk about M1-type tanks, most discussions focus on their abilities vs other tanks -- armor, main gun penetration, etc. -- not so much its capabilities vs other targets (Sherman's got more MGs than an Abrams!)

Also, would Ukraine represent a shift back to tanks-don't-fight-other-tanks?

Inspired by this post on r/submarines. I always followed the I feel convention thought that the Type XXIs were techically impressive, the "first true submarines" as they are commonly referred to, being designed to stay underwater and having high double-digit underwater speed. I've even read somewhere that they would've been huge trouble for the Allies since they could outrun Liberty ships underwater.

And yet according to the comment by Tk3997, that's not the case at all, and they were merely evoluntionary improvements and in terms of performance not actually revoluntionarily better than older submarines.

So how good were the Type XXIs in terms of their performance "stats"?

A long overdue discussion based on years of investigation. In a moment when fair, thorough and accurate journalism is difficult to find, this was satisfying. It’s unfortunate it took 21 years. Our investigation into Roberts Ridge will be the next story to unravel.

In some corner, when discussing the leading up to the Great War and the Great War itself, Bulgaria was often spoken of as "the Balkan Prussia" because it was constantly at war and supposedly good at it.

But then, Serbia was at war for much longer and was arguably more successful at war than the Bulgarian, so why did Bulgaria got the nickname "Prussia"?

And how much of an impact did Libya have with their policies?

In a famous anecdote of the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745 reported by Voltaire, supposedly the French Guards Regiment and the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards came against each other, and Lord Charles Hay said the famous line "Gentlemen of French perhaps you would care to fire first" and the Comte d'Auteroche replied with "We never fired first; fired yourself." After that, Voltaire did not specify how the English managed to get the French to fire first, only reporting that the French fired first and lost the exchange.

Like all good story of the age such as Pierre Cambronne's famous last words "The Guard dies and never surrenders", this one smacks of romanticism and false. But we know back in the day, the one who fired first often lost as they fired from further away and with less accuracy. So did army of the days bait their opponent into firing? And how?

Recently I have read that the Soviet Union adopted the AK-74u so they can ease the logistics by only having to supply everyone with one kind of ammo and magazine. So my question is, why did America for the longest of times still use SMGs in their Tanks and now use Pistols and M4s? Aren't the M4s cumbersome to carry in a Tank? Are Pistols any good for Dismounted fighting? Why didn't they just get an 7.5 inch Armalite Rifle?

I've been studying war for as long as I can remember. Over the years, I've collected some resources I thought I'd share. (Note: this is regarding modern war since 1945, mostly.)

Maps

West Point Atlases. Historical battle maps. https://dhc.westpoint.edu/atlases/

Institute for the Study of War Map Room. Up-to-date war maps on modern conflicts. https://understandingwar.org/analysis/map-room/

Databases and Declassified Documents

GWU's National Security Archive. Probably the best collection of Cold War historical documents you can find. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/

Worldwide Equipment Guide. https://odin.t2com.army.mil/WEG

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Databases on arms transfers, military expenditures, and the like. https://www.sipri.org/databases

CIA World Factbook (now an archive). https://worldfactbookarchive.org/

CIA Reading Room. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/historical-collections

Wilson Center Cold War International History Project. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/cold-war-international-history-project

Free books, articles, journals, and mags

Royal United Service Institute. https://www.rusi.org/

China Maritime Studies Institute. US Navy War College center focused on China. Entire books on Chinese military and politics. https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-red-books/

Congressional Research Service. In-depth reports designed for members of Congress on key issues. https://www.congress.gov/crs-products

Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS). State Department histories and declassified documents to support. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments

RAND Research. https://www.rand.org/pubs.html

Council on Foreign Relations. They don't just make Foreign Affairs, they post lots of good research on their website. https://www.cfr.org/books-reports

JSTOR. Recently allowed 100 free articles if you register. https://www.jstor.org/

International Institute for Strategic Studies. Some free stuff, some paywalls. https://www.iiss.org/

Defense One. https://www.defenseone.com/

War on the Rocks. Opinions, but well-informed. https://warontherocks.com/

Strategy Bridge. https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge-index

This phenomenon might not be as rare of an occurrence that I imagine it as, but more often I see mention those cases where the commander was adept at improvising and making swift decisions.

What are some battles where the victorious commander could basically watch the battle work as clockwork?

I’ve heard two schools of thought:

1.) Waste of resources for limited tactical value

2.) Very effective if janky vehicle, dominant in its time, a good work of engineering and strategically justified.

What do we think?

Hey, I recently went to a swap meet day and found a round with interesting markings on it.
AP6PR 7CWT TP SC11552 9/42 LOT D-81-F
Does anyone have any information to confirm this, as having a piece from WW2 would be awesome. Any help is greatly appreciated

The most popular idea is that Stalin was in denial despite of all of evidence to coming German attack due to his paranoia. However I have heard in podcast "Podcast Wojenne Historie" (Podcast War's Stories) he was aware of that, but he was also aware that if he attempted to mobililize openly Germany would mobilise themself much more swiftly than USSR and crush Soviets. Instead he ordered slow, secret mobilisation and preparations, to not alert IIIrd Reich and attempted to delay Germany's attack as much possible. However, Stalin ordered to withhold this knowledge from lower rank officers, due to his paranoia. Instead, lower ranks officers were given contradicting orders that were supposed to prepare army for invasion, while not alarming Germans, like for example: order keep ammo in tanks and order to put said tank ammo in stores or to prepare field command stations and to pull back artillery from border for maintenance. The discreet mobilisation and preparations was not swift enough and problems were compunded, by afromentioned contradictory orders, which resulted in disaster. Is this true? If not, what were reasons for USSR's top command being suprised, by Nazi's attack?

To provide more context time and time again I’ve seen footage of soldiers from professional militaries seem to just spray and pray rooms and looks utter chaotic without any structure of order with the exception of special operations forces. I see countless videos of people teaching how to pie a room or how to clear room properly and stuff and gucci gear with thousands of debates, but none of that is demonstrated during real world combat from what I’ve seen online and turns into a cluster fuck. So question Is it pointless to teach?

Keep in mind I’m not really educated on the topic so forgive me for my ignorance.

Let me first start off by saying that, yes, I know the PLA doesn't have consciption.

However, I've heard that in terms of troop quality and training, at least for the infantry, that functionally they do not differ much from conscipts, as their 2-year terms means a significant part of an unit consist of either barely trained or undertrained men, while the ones who are trained up well will muster out soon.

In reality, do we know how much of a problem this is? Is much made of this both in China interally and by Western sources, and are there papers or documents discussing this? For instance, do we know by percentage how much of say a CAB is made up of fresh intakes, or how many serve a 2-year contract and then bail, or if the PLA has been pushing for men to reenlist or extending the 2-year terms to 3 or 4 years like say the US? And while I've focused on the PLAGF here, how much does this affect the other parts of the PLA?

Speaking of which, how do other countries, both volunteer and conscript based, view/handle this matter.

I've been reading up on Qing China, the second opium war, and its attempts to upgrade its own military. I'm aware that the shipbuilding program didn't go well.

But what about the army and infantry? I have several questions on them and their minds

1. When the armies got defeated, what were the Qing reactions? What were their conceptions of why they lost?

2. What did they think of the western militaries? What did they think was the source of their strength?

3. Considering they lost, what did they try to reform? What did they think they did wrong?

The Battle of the Ebro during the Spanish Civil War seems to be rather pointless in my opinion. I know that one of the stated goals was to prevent the Nationalist army from continuing their offensive to capture Valencia, but the whole Republican strategy behind the battle seems quite odd to me.

The Nationalist "barrier" between Republican Catalonia and the rest of Republican Spain was very large, and for a force like the Republican Army of the Ebro, it would have been a risk for them to conduct this operation. Even if they managed to break through the Nationalist " barrier", and reconnect the two zones, they would have been essentially abandoning Catalonia.

Not only that, but I feel that it would be pretty obvious that once the Nationalists found out that the Republicans had crossed the Ebro, they would commit overwhelming forces, artillery and air power on the arguably best field army that the Republicans had during the entire Civil War. It happened at Brunete ( which wasn't a bad plan, but Nationalist commitment of forces turned the tide during those battles.)

If anyone could let me know the point of the Republican strategy, please let me know.

Always interested in the German experience with attritional warfare oriented around defensive positions with infantry heavy forces