Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 July 31

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July 31

Has there ever been a full-scale assault rifle battle with nothing to hide behind?

So much of modern gunfighting seems to be about hiding behind cover and concealment, what's it like when it's an empty plain with neither plants nor hills more than a few inches tall? Though I suppose it'd probably be a very poor country to have a full-scale battle with no vehicles or heavy weapons and everyone's just duking it out with assault rifles. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:34, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Pickett's Charge and the Charge of the Light Brigade come to mind, although they probably didn't have AR-15's. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:11, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Technically ARs aren't assault rifles anyway. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:51, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

That depends on who you believe. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:32, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Come on. Encyclopedia here. You are not supposed to spread the silly idea that technical facts are a matter of belief. They are or aren't (I dunno nor care), period. Gem fr (talk) 11:56, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm going by the AR-15 style rifle article. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:03, 31 July 2019 (UTC) [Actually 13:36. The autosign bot failed me.]

So that "Light" in "Light Brigade" in no way could have led to associate AR to Armalite ? --Askedonty (talk) 15:44, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Traditionally, a rifle for an assault was efficient and not an hindrance if it carried a bayonet which could be efficiently used. Assault rifles have to be efficient for storming an entrenchment, which means fire for more than several seconds. --Askedonty (talk) 14:15, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

The AR-15 does not have a burst select, so it is not an assault rifle by the U.S. military definition. But, anyone can make up a definition and apply it however they like. My experience is that most AR-15s have an effective range of about 200 yards, which is well below the cutoff for an assault rifle. So, again, they don't meet the U.S. military definition. 199.164.8.1 (talk) 14:40, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

If you're talking about just one side having no cover, I'm sure that happened constantly during the first world war and during the invasion of Normandy (think Saving Private Ryan or pretty much anything else depicting an attack on enemy fortifications). If you're talking about neither side having cover, I really don't think that's possible without both sides deliberately committing to such an engagement. Otherwise you'd pretty much need both groups to have advanced on an open area and somehow missing that the other group was out in the open and not falling back behind cover themselves (or setting up some kind of ambush). On some level even open fields are going to have changes in elevation that would give opportunities for cover when shooting from the prone position. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 02:26, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes both sides. If Hollywood is right they sometimes did this when it was mostly hand weapons like swords but if you can run faster than them (lighter armor perhaps?) you still had the option of running without being shot forever with AKs while trying to shoot backwards. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:49, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Leaving aside the lack of contemporary assault weapons, Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg comes nowhere close to meeting this scenario of having "nothing to hide behind", at least for the Union Army. The Confederate infantry forces were advancing across slightly undulating but mostly open ground, toward higher ground defended by the Union forces. Most of the Union riflemen were protected by a 260 yard long stone wall. They were crowded in four deep with ample ammunition and would pop up to take a shot and drop down safely to reload. As a result, the engagement was a total defeat for the Confederates. The Union forces took about 1500 casualties. The Confederates took over 5,000 casualties and nearly 4,000 of their troops were taken prisoner, out of a force of 12,500, in a one hour period. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:05, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Similarly, the Light Brigade was attacked by artillery from three directions; not a case of neither side having heavy weapons. --76.71.6.164 (talk) 05:10, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Yeah I honestly don't even see small skirmishes (like at the squad or platoon level) like this happening in the modern era. You'd need utter and complete failures on both sides to wind up running into each other in an open field having no cover within reach. Like I said, it's reasonable to happen when one side is fortified, but why would two hostile forces get out in the open with each other? Side A would see Side B's troops from the as they approached the area, would halt, and then plan an engagement/call in air or artillery support/something other than walk into battle. And if Side A were crazy enough to just walk out there and try to engage Side B, why would Side B just sit there as they approached? And this is presuming everyone's on foot. Nowadays even if you're out in the desert you'll have a vehicle to use as partial cover. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 05:22, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

This kind of weapon is recent, and was design precisely because soldiers were taking cover. So it would make no sense to use AR without cover.

Now, some war factions had child soldiers believing they were somehow bulletproof "child+soldier"+bulletproof&source=bl&ots=bInUq0-Jsa&sig=ACfU3U3vSsavPl-AXiqrMsFzWkW0zmaqnw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjr4tnNjt_jAhXjyIUKHfOBDRAQ6AEwE3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q="child%20soldier"%20bulletproof&f=false and behave accordingly. So, I guess the Irak-Iran war can qualify as an answer to you question, although I doubt those children were all equipped with guns in this instance.

Gem fr (talk) 12:10, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

References

Iron Cross and MBE

Garbo, Juan Pujol García, was awarded the Iron Cross and made an MBE during the Second World War. Our article says this made him "one of the few – if not the only one – to receive decorations from both sides" during the War. Can we find anyone else decorated by both sides in this war, and was anyone decorated by both sides in the First World War? (For clarity, I'm not interested for this purpose in the innumerable German princelings who had British decorations prior to the First German War, and then went on to get something from the Kaiser during it. Only those awarded gongs by both sides actually during the conflagration) Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 14:41, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim? 70.67.193.176 (talk) 15:13, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Although Mannerheim's GBE was awarded in 1938 and so wasn't during the Second World War. Alansplodge (talk) 17:44, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

The page that gave me his name said he qualified for the First World War, but I don't know the history well enough to know which honours are relevant there - he holds Russia, Swedish and German honours for the period 1914-1918 but it would depend on who Finland was allied with when. For the Second, I also see French and Finnish honours as well as Nazi but am again unsure who was on which side when. If the question only asks for British honours then I agree he doesn't fit the criteria. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 18:53, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I didn't read the article that closely, but this article has stories of several soldiers who fought for both sides during the war. That may provide a starting point for your research. --Jayron32 16:50, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

(P.S. if you want to expand beyond the world wars, apparently Rick Jolly holds this distinction for the Falklands conflict, Florence Nightingale for the Franco-Prussian war, and Götz Schlicht for the Cold War.) 70.67.193.176 (talk) 16:10, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Help!

My Alerts message, which says 99+, is stuck at red throughout. Sometimes I make it gray by clicking on it and then clicking away from the dialog box that it opens, but whenever I close and then open Wikipedia again, it becomes red again, and there's no easy way to tell whether I get a new alert. Georgia guy (talk) 16:36, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

This message would be better suited at WP:VPT than here. This desk is primarily for finding references related to humanities questions. --Jayron32 16:46, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I think you need to click on each alert one by one in order to clear them all. Why didn't you clear them as they appeared? --Viennese Waltz 19:12, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I cleared it 4 times; each one took the number down to a smaller number; first to 78, then 53, then 28, then 5. Georgia guy (talk) 19:38, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Why so freakin' many alerts? Are you constantly getting hacking attempts? In any case, is there a way to disable it? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:54, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

The notification system has existed for a very long time now. I don't think it's particularly surprising that many people could have 99+ alerts from undos, mentions, successful mentions, talk page messages etc etc (depending on what you enabled). I myself had that until very recently. If you click on the icon so the alert box pops out (and you can see what it's about) or even visit the notification page, without explicitly clearing (marking as read or whatever) the alert, it should remove the red alert icon so you can accumulate 99+ even if you are aware of what most of them are about and have checked them out when you considered it necessary. Ditto for notices. Recently there was a bug which meant this did not happen, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#The notification button and [1]. At least for me, actually marking as read all my alerts (and notices) resolved this problem hence why I no longer have 99+ but maybe not all figured it out and someone suggested in that VPT thread it didn't work for them. Nil Einne (talk) 05:56, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

The OP can adjust Preferences | Notifications to prevent getting stuff they don't want to see. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:14, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Sure, but it's not clear the OP didn't want to see any of these alerts. As per my point, the fact they were not marked as ready at the time doesn't mean they weren't checked out and desired. Nil Einne (talk) 14:20, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Maybe the OP will come back here and clarify. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:48, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Agra Pequena

Do we know what Agra Pequena area refers to? [2][3]. Is it the same as Angra Pequena? Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 19:23, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Almost certainly, given the context, though it's odd the same typo would appear twice. Britannica spelled it correctly showing that Angra Pequena was the name used in 1884, as does this news article. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 20:15, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

In Portuguese, agra pequena makes no sense, but angra pequena does. 2A00:23C5:CDAD:6500:34F0:5D70:7172:F66A (talk) 17:40, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

The second of @Eddie891:'s links says it's in southeast Africa, but Angra Pequena is in southwest Africa. It just struck me, would Agra Pequena make sense in Spanish? DuncanHill (talk) 17:46, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

In Portuguese angra means "cove" and pequena means "small". The German colonies were in south west Africa. See pt:Angra Pequena. 2A00:23C5:CDAD:6500:34F0:5D70:7172:F66A (talk) 17:54, 1 August 2019 (UTC)