LOL
My record against US Marines. 17 and 0. There ain't a Marine OR a man alive who can take me. Case closed lil fella.
Yes at times Marines did lead shore parties. I never once said Marines NEVER went ashor. But the Marine officer who went ashore did NOT lead a group of Marines. He led a group of sailors.
I do not learn my history from classes. That's inherently lazy and High school classes teach you nothing about history. Also lets face it. Most teachers are uh well not quality products. Read the papers written by the people who took part in events, find books by people who actually took part in events. Dudley Knox is excellent, Samuel Elliot Morrison even better (though atad bit racist at times).
Big Jim, th bit about Royal Marines is well documented, especially as the Royal Navy moved into the modern age. As weaponry got more complex the Royal Navy believed a Royal Marine were the experts in handling artillery because they lets face it, Cannon are inherent parts of good land combat. Also the Royal Navy did not want to have to establish even more schools. They were having enough problems establishing other training programs needed to fight a modern sea war (By modern I'll start with the period after the first Ironclad HMS Inflexible). So they turned to the Royal Marines. A great source for this is a book called the WAr At Sea which documents the problems all Navies had with basic human performance after weapons and battles became so good and happened so fast it challenged the fighting mans ability to respond. A good example is compare Jutland to Trafaglar. The Battle of Trafalgar took the better part of a day or so. HOWEVER the actual battle took over 3 days from the time the ships on both sides started maneuvering to fight to the time fighting actually commenced. During this whole time the fleets could actually see each other. Even as late as the middle to later 18th century things hadn't changed much. Ships moved at best at around 14 knots, ranges were short, ships were not all that maneuverable so basically all sea battles ran as follows, a day to close range, about a day to set up opening positions, and a day to fight.
Now take Jutland, the first really huge fleet contact since the days of sail. The fleets moved at average speeds of over 20 knots. Many times the average sailor couldn't see the enemy. Weapons were destructive at over 10 times the ranges that weapons USD to be considered effective. From the time the fleets at Jutland were aware of each other until the time shells were actually flying was a matter of minutes. Within 20 minutes two ships had already blown up. All this time both fleets were still using communications methods and fleet control philosophies developed in the 17 and 1800s. No wonder it was a mess. Just think, the opening part of Jutland happened a time frame of over 60000% faster than any previous Naval Battle. Yet training methods hadn't changed.
War At Sea is by the way an excellent reference about why Royal Marines manned the gun turrsts in British Naval Vessels. One of the heros of Jutland was in fact a Royal Marine who was the turret captain of Q Turret on the HMS Lion (Sir Admiral David Beatty Flagship) This Major kept the Brits from losing yet a Third Battlecruiser in the opening minutes of Jutland (and most likely saved the Brits in doing so, I have NO idea what they would have done had Beatty been lost in the opening minutes, his actions MAY have been somewhat questionable BUT he was one of two admirals in the Royal Navy at the time who had initiative and thrived despite his training). The Lion took a hit in her Q Magazine which started on fire. The turret captain took it upon himself (without waiting for the bridge to authorize it) to have the magazine sealed off then flooded. He died in the process but the ship survived.
By the way. You CAN lift everyday provided you do flexibility exercises and change your routine everyday. Which I do. Or did the reference to kickboxing get by ya? Can't kick box unless you're flexible. 🙂
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