Humanities desk
< January 14	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	January 16 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 15

First purpose-built/dedicated courthouse

What are the earliest known purpose-built or dedicated courthouses? Neutrality^talk 00:19, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

List of oldest buildings contains some very old structures built for public use, though whether they had court-like functions as well as other public assembly functions is hard to say. Look at 5,500-year-old Sechin Bajo in Peru, or 4,600-year-old Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan. The earliest purpose-built-for-justice-functions buildings I've found so far are the original basilicas in the Roman Forum, the Basilica Aemilia and Basilica Fulvia, built in 179 BC. Bet you get a better answer soon. 184.147.116.166 (talk) 01:20, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The three ancient Athenian courthouses in the Agora date from c. 420-380 BC, and this source mentions no other function they may have had, which is as close as an archaeologist is likely to get to saying they were purpose-built. Our article on Law court (ancient Athens) suggests that many trials may have been held in other places, sometimes out of doors. --Antiquary (talk) 10:09, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tanks, instead of men, in the front-line of Normandy landings?

Why did not the allied military planners deployed tanks in the first line of Normandy landings? Men were sent in the front line by landing boats, who were shot dead immediately by German machine-gunners just as the front door of the boats were lowered (as can be seen in this video, 10:15). But instead of sending men in the front-line, if tanks were sent first, human casualties could have been vastly reduced. The tanks could have destroyed the first line of German defense; after that, troops could be sent under the protective cover of the tanks. Also, these obstacles, which were meant for unarmored landing crafts, could have been easily overcome by the tanks. --IEditEncyclopedia (talk) 02:16, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tanks are very heavy, making it difficult to land them without a port. I believe they did have some special tanks designed to be able to float for the landing, but they didn't perform well, and many sank. To carry normal tanks you would need much larger landing ships, with much deeper drafts, and that means they couldn't come as close to the shore, so the tanks would be submerged when they launched. The Germans did have a heavy tank designed to run along the bottom of the water, using a schnorkel to get air for the engines and crew. Something like that might have worked. StuRat (talk) 02:26, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why didn't they bomb the sh*t out of them before they landed? For once that might work. Or did they and the machine gun nests were that tough? Why is it only the Germans with the supervillain superguns? Those would've come in handy. Can go through a meter of concrete. Was saturation bombing with napalm to the point of conflagration not invented yet or too cruel? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:42, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

They did, or at least they tried to. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:52, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The problem was a lack of precision in the bombing. Many of the German fortifications were built into the sides of cliffs, so safe from bombing from above, with only small openings to fire through. Thus, the only way to take them out, pre-invasion, would be to shoot shells directly through those openings, which were too small of a target for ship's guns. During the invasion, they could be taken out at short range, or from behind, but that put the attackers at extreme risk. German infantry on the beach was in foxholes, with camo, so hard to spot, much less hit. Had the invasion been delayed a couple years, and atomic bombs been available, I wonder if they would have been used to clear the beaches. The radiation might cause cancer in many of the landing forces, but they wouldn't have known this at the time, and even if they had, short-term danger may well have trumped the long-term threat. StuRat (talk) 16:20, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I just found that the allied forces did have DD tank and Landing craft tank. --IEditEncyclopedia (talk) 03:37, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not enough to make "shoot 3 rounds at Nazis and die" obsolete. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:42, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your questions are all good and military commanders at the time considered them all. As you can read at our articles and their child articles, leading with standard tanks was a no-go. The Nazis had planned for this, and the beaches were covered in tank obstacles - they would have been sitting ducks. In fact, one of the main objectives of the initial wave of infantry was for battlefield engineers to clear the obstacles off the beaches so ordinary tanks could land in numbers. As for "bombing the shit out of them", they tried. This actually worked very well at some of the beaches, which were taken with relative ease. Most of the dramatic problems occurred at Omaha, and to a lesser extent Utah beach. Mainly this was due to bad weather at these locations. The bombers, unaided in 1944 by GPS or other technology, could not spot their targets accurately through overcast skies, and many beachfront fortifications survived the bombings unscathed. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:03, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Couldn't they just skip the landing at Omaha Beach, where by far the highest number of casualties occurred? A real-life case of Murphy's law! Everything that could go wrong, did. Would scrapping that particular site, and reaching it by land from troops landed at the other beaches instead, have jeopardised the success of the operation as a whole? Eliyohub (talk) 04:18, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, everything did go wrong! For the benefit of people unfamiliar with the battle of Normandy, Omaha was a disaster. After the previously mentioned failure of bombing to actually take out the fortifications, strong seas caused the landing craft to land in a disorganized manner. Many individual infantry units landed both in the wrong place (putting in terrain they did not have a plan for) and in a scattered fashion, separating troops from their commanders. The extreme disorganization prevented the battlefield engineers from clearing the beach in a timely manner, and also put a huge delay on firing coordinates being communicated to warships that were supposed to provide artillery support. Now, as to the question itself, I dunno! If you read about the aftermath at each beach, you get the impression that the landing of men and materiel was occurring at an impressive pace at every beach, and if anything, Omaha did succeed in forcing the Germans to keep their troops spread out. Furthermore, it could be argued that the Allies ultimately needed every inch of beach available to them, since their makeshift harbor was wrecked by high seas just a few days after the landings. I'm pretty sure I've read everything Wikipedia has about Normandy, but I don't recall any examination of whether all five beaches were actually needed, or if this was just an effort to avoid putting all of the eggs in one ~~beach~~ basket. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:29, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The question makes certain implicit (and explicit) assumptions about the use, availability, and capability of tanks – not to mention about the German defences – that are not necessarily accurate. Among other factors, the Germans littered the beaches with Czech hedgehogs and other obstacles specifically to restrict the ability of armored vehicles to approach their fortifications. (The hedgehogs also extended into the water, with the intended purpose of stopping or tearing the hull of any deep-drafted, heavily-laden landing craft.) Fortifications and soldiers were armed with an assortment of antitank weapons (from the handheld Panzerfaust up to 88mm guns). The Nazis were evil, but they weren't necessarily stupid.

Moreover, tanks wouldn't survive without close, coordinated support by infantry. They weren't and aren't a magic bullet.

Of course, there were certainly tanks present at Normandy. Landing craft tank (LCT) certainly existed and were used to great effect. (And at certain hazard—26 LCTs were lost in the Normandy invasions.) Modified LCTs were also used as gun platforms for self-propelled guns to provide artillery support. A handful of LCTs with the designation LCT(CB) ("concrete buster") carried 3 Sherman Firefly tanks each, armed with 17-pounder guns and tasked with destruction of fortifications. And there's a whole bunch of specialized vehicles that were designed to overcome some of the challenges of amphibious attack by tracked vehicles, including the aforementioned DD tanks and the even-more-outlandish Hobart's Funnies. (Not to mention some of the weapons that were tested but didn't make the cut, like the Panjandrum.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:58, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks TenOfAllTrades, very good, informative and logical answer. --IEditEncyclopedia (talk) 06:46, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The documentary, Journeys to the Bottom of the Sea - D-Day: The Untold Story can be found online; this related BBC article may be of interest: "BBC NEWS | UK | The tanks that didn't land on D-Day". news.bbc.co.uk. 2002. 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:5841:24B7:531B:71A (talk) 07:43, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The specialist armoured vehicles of Percy Hobart's 79th Division were offered to the US forces but were turned down by Omar Bradley on the grounds that “accepting the Churchills would require retraining our tank operators and maintenance men and a complicated separate supply chain for spare parts.” See Hobart and His Funnies: Gen. Omar Bradley and the D-Day Controversy. That, combined with the US DD tanks being launched too far out (see BBC link above), which meant that many of them were swamped and sank, led to the US landings having very little armoured support in comparison to the British and Canadian beaches. Alansplodge (talk) 09:38, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Our 741st Tank Battalion (United States) article records the "loss of 27 of the 32 DD tanks before they reached shore". Alansplodge (talk) 16:36, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We should mention some of the other downsides of standard tanks. In addition to being too heavy to cross water effectively:

1) They are less maneuverable than infantry. They can't climb steep hills, for example.

2) They are more exposed than infantry. They can't hide from frontal fire in a shallow ditch, for example.

3) They have less of a view of the battlefield. A few small "windows" doesn't give a total view of the situation, although in modern tanks I suppose they can put cameras all over them to provide the full view they need, without risking the crew with too many openings.

4) In some situations they are slower than infantry, such as turning around, or dealing with obstacles that infantry can just run around. StuRat (talk) 17:32, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Look at the difference between the US and UK landing beaches. Particularly the 79th Armoured Division and the failures of the US Duplex Drive Shermans, when they were launched too far off the coast. The UK landings were successful, as they were supported by armour, just as you describe. The US landings were poorly supported by armour, and suffered as a result. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:55, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Partly, one suspects, because of the failure of the armour used in the 1942 Dieppe Raid, when the Canadian tanks had been unable to deploy off the beach and were all immobilised by either by mines or anti-tank guns. There was a considerable effort not to repeat the same mistakes. Alansplodge (talk) 22:06, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This article says of the Omaha Beach landings: "The 743rd Tank Battalion actually reached the beach largely intact... 40 of the 48 tanks allocated to the western end of Omaha beach arrived safely. On the eastern flank the situation was far worse... only 18 of the 48 tanks allocated to the eastern beaches arrived intact". Alansplodge (talk) 17:58, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to the comments already made above about the inefficiency of the bombardment, starting the bombardment sooner would have given the Germans more time to react. I don't have a reference, but I'm pretty sure there were serious measures of decoy and secrecy used to prevent the knowledge of a Normandy invasion, and thereby keep German reserve divisions away from the area. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 13:15, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

They could disguise the bombardments by doing so at multiple locations, over multiple days. Eventually the Germans would stop sending reinforcements to wherever was being bombarded at the time, especially if they were hit by air strikes whenever they were on the roads. StuRat (talk) 21:33, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but only to a point. France has a long coast, and your air force is limited. Defences around Calais were hit heavily as decoy, it being the logical invasion point, but across the rest of the coast, you can't even pretend to hit more than a very limited number of the anti-invasion defences. Also note that precision bombing technology was very much in its infancy. The British had almost none of it, from what I recall reading. "Carpet bombing" cities was standard British tactics. The Americans had something in that regard (precision bombing technology), but still extremely limited by modern standards. The American pilots were instructed to go to great lengths to make sure such bombs did not fall intact into German hands. Maybe others can source this? Eliyohub (talk) 07:49, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Americans had the Azon, a radio-guided bomb of about 500kg. It was highly experimental, had mixed success, and was never deployed in great numbers. Regarding making sure the bomb didn't fall into enemy hands, that was handled by the engineers. The original plan was for a time-delayed bomb, but all time-delay fuses have a non-trivial failure rate. Instantaneous contact fuses, however, had a nearly 100% success rate. These fuses were used at the expense of penetration to ensure the Germans would not recover the guidance package from a dud (indeed, construction workers are still finding unexploded ground-penetrating bombs across Europe). The British were largely slaved to carpet bombing due to their insistence on operating at night to minimize losses. The Americans operated during the day so they could better see their targets, and when they wanted to hit something specifically they usually opted for low-altitude level bombing. Someguy1221 (talk) 08:16, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This interview with military historian Antony Beevor says that the US bombing was innacurate because "...the Americans didn’t want their bombers to fly along the coast because they would be exposed to flak. Instead they came in over the invasion fleet and of course they were afraid of dropping their bombs on the landing craft so they held on a few seconds more, meaning their bombs fell on open countryside rather than hitting the beaches". The same article also asserts that "Even on Omaha beach, despite the great American myth, casualties were lower than expected and on the Gold, Juno and Sword beaches the Allies got away very lightly". Alansplodge (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Precision bombing of that era was largely done by dive bombers. StuRat (talk) 22:59, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In the pacific, yes. Allied dive bombers were rare in the European theater (see Dive_bomber#World_War_II), with the notable exception of British Naval actions and the American Apache dive bomber. The solution to hitting a specific target in that theater was more often to either lower the bomber's altitude, or send more bombers. Someguy1221 (talk) 00:01, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

US Supreme Court

Why are there only eight justices depicted on the first photograph of the US Supreme Court?--Hubon (talk) 05:09, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"The number of sitting justices fell to eight before an act of 1869 provided for nine justices, one for each of the judicial circuits established in 1866."[1] (photo taken in 1869) --2606:A000:4C0C:E200:C03A:9D20:31EF:82F7 (talk) 05:24, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c) Because there were only eight justices at that time (1869). See Supreme Court of the United States#Size of the Court, Judiciary Act of 1869, and Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant#Judicial appointments. Newyorkbrad (talk) 05:27, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Like now. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:16, 16 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to all of you for answering!--Hubon (talk) 18:59, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Source for Helen Suzman quote

[2] Can anyone help me finding the Hansard reference to this quote which took place in the South African Parliament? Amisom (talk) 19:19, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

South African Hansard can be searched here. You may need some patience to find your quote - "embarrass" brings up 25 hits. 184.147.116.166 (talk) 23:49, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I had a quick go at finding a date for this from other sources, but it's only repeated anecdotally as "once in parliament" or "in a celebrated exchange". None of the sources even say who she was replying to, except that it was "a minister" [3] "a cabinet minister" [4] or "a certain minister" or even "an irritated minister". [5] I'm always a bit suspicious when there are no corroborating details. Alansplodge (talk) 09:11, 16 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]