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Crasscrab posted:If I remember correctly Churchill wasn't a fan of Slim. It was more that he didn't know him or focus his attention much on that theatre. From London the Indian front was basically a long serious of fuckups and everyone got tarred with that brush. Slim was way more competent than any of his superiors and wasn't afraid to speak his mind, which meant that his name kept cropping up a bit when personal conflicts happened. It's telling though that when Leese (possibly accidentally) sacked Slim the army from Brooke downwards rallied unanimously on Slim.
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Oct 14, 2012 17:09
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Rabhadh posted:Once those 2 nukes had been used, how long was it until the US had another nuclear weapon? They had another Fat Man-type plutonium bomb on the mainland undergoing final assembly. There are somewhat conflicting stories in memoirs about the exact timeline but general agreement is that the bomb could have been assembled and on Tinian ready to go around August 20th or 21st, just under two weeks after the August 9th bombing of Nagasaki.
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Oct 14, 2012 17:16
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ArchangeI posted:Gaddafi was killed by a mob. I like to say he was Mussolini'd out of power.
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Oct 14, 2012 17:45
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Wasn't one of his sons killed by an airstrike? Or was that one of Saddams sons? (or both)
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Oct 14, 2012 17:56
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Saddam's sons were killed in a firefight.
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Oct 14, 2012 18:10
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Rabhadh posted:Once those 2 nukes had been used, how long was it until the US had another nuclear weapon? We already had one. The target was Sapporo. The core was about to be loaded onto a truck to be shipped out of Los Alamos on the 10th, so it would probably have made it to Tinian on about the 19th. After *that*, the capacity for Hanford was about 3 cores per month.
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Oct 14, 2012 20:30
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Phanatic posted:The B-29s were over Japan, and yes, it was literally leveled flat in areas: It should also be noted here that due to the construction of many japanese buildings (being of wood, and not more modern materials) that assisted in the destruction levels that you see today.
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Oct 14, 2012 21:07
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Blckdrgn posted:It should also be noted here that due to the construction of many japanese buildings (being of wood, and not more modern materials) that assisted in the destruction levels that you see today. Entire cities made from wood and paper construction make excellent targets for firebombs. Note the modern Western-style concrete / masonry buildings in that picture appear to have survived mostly intact.
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Oct 14, 2012 23:06
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INTJ Mastermind posted:Entire cities made from wood and paper construction make excellent targets for firebombs. Not that you can't burn down European cities from the air just fine, just ask Hamburg or Coventry.
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Oct 14, 2012 23:22
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Skillness622 posted:I hate to drag the thread back with another WW2 question, but Grey Hunter's excellent LP has me wondering, has there ever been a comparison or study between British air defences in the summer of 1940 and Japanese air defences in 1945 once the B-29 raids really swung into high gear? I've read a throwaway line in Max Hasting's Nemesis comparing the two situations but I havent been able to find a comparison of organisation/doctrine etc. I'm not aware of any formal study, but I can give you a basic contrast. Ironically enough the Germans, despite all of their blustering about the impunity of their homeland and Goering's boasts and everything else the Germans figured out very early on how vulnerable cities were to bombing (it is suggested that they "tested" this during the invasion of Poland). They started developing a dedicated air defense network soon after, to include the ridiculous flak towers, a radar network, and an in-depth review of their interception tactics. By 1943, they easily had the best air defense network in the world both at night and during the day and of course they extracted a huge toll from the allied bombers during the early months of their campaign. I've always thought it one of the more farsighted and ultimately effective decisions the Nazis made during the war. The Japanese completely missed the boat. They calculated that the home islands would only come under attack from 1) short/medium range bombers from Russia and 2) carrier based planes, neither of which posed any significant strategic threat and both of whom could be easily handled by their existing interceptors. They simply did not heed the warning that the B-17s and B-24s provided, that the US was capable of producing an incredible high performance, long range machine like the B-29, and so they did not attempt to develop any high-performance high-altitude interceptors or guns, nor did they implement any sort of layered defense. The Japanese were really shocked when they realized that the B-29s could range the home islands from way the hell over in India, and as soon as that happened they started scrambling to try and patch together a defensive network. It was too late by that point though; their guns couldn't reach the B-29s, their fighters were generally poor performers at high altitude and were not optimized to fight bombers anyway, and their radar network was primitive and very ineffective. Despite all of this they actually did quite well against the B-29 raids early on. They had a ton of fighters to spare, the B-29s had no escort and had all sorts of mechanical issues to deal with, plus they were at the extreme limit of their combat raidus and had little room for error. Wiki cites 9 raids (the operation was called "Matterhorn") with a loss of 125 B-29s to all causes and ~35 to enemy aircraft, which is about as bad a result as you'll see anywhere. The flying conditions, particularly the weather, were about as bad as we've ever seen and were a huge break for the Japanese. When the Marianas opened up things got a little bit better for the B-29s, but not much. The nasty weather continued to make organized raids difficult and the Japanese were getting a little bit better at interception, so the loss rates on the early missions from the Marianas were extremely high (5% or so). The results also weren't great: the bombers would inevitably get separated on their ingress due to weather, the distance, mechanical difficulties, or other things, and this made bombing far less accurate and interception much easier. It was only the performance of the B-29s that kept them from being really devastated. Eventually of course they figured out the firebombing tactics (individual planes strung out on a long line at night) took advantage of the Japanese weakness in night defense plus it minimized the problems with weather, distance, mechanical reliability, etc. Plus the P-51s started operating off of Iwo Jima around the same time; those forces together proved to be far too much for the remaining Japanese planes.
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Oct 14, 2012 23:51
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This is quite an interesting bit of propaganda about the the bombing of Dresden at the time. http://bcove.me/an6co82a The UK used the Dresden bombing results to base their civil defence plans for nuclear attacks. The scarecrow device was a bomber exploding. General China fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 00:46
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bewbies posted:ridiculous flak towers How well did those work by the way?
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Oct 15, 2012 01:00
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The Nuclear Secrecy Blog (which is great btw) had a nice post about the post-Nagasaki timeframe for more bombs.
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Oct 15, 2012 01:02
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Farecoal posted:How well did those work by the way? And what were they? I'm not sure I ever heard about those. Or rather how did they come to existence?
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Oct 15, 2012 01:04
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steinrokkan posted:And what were they? I'm not sure I ever heard about those. Or rather how did they come to existence? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flak_tower
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Oct 15, 2012 01:10
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Yeah, sure, I just hoped someone would have some sort of special insight compared to Wikipedia, as people here often do.
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Oct 15, 2012 01:19
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Farecoal posted:How well did those work by the way? Well they're still there. And in the Battle of Berlin they were literally the last points of organised resistance.
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Oct 15, 2012 01:21
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http://www.wartourist.eu/TWTNewsletter/TWT_2011_01_final_lores.pdf I found this article linked from one of the wikipedia pages; it's pretty interesting and gives a more in-depth view towards both their construction and their use.
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Oct 15, 2012 01:34
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During the Stalingrad campaign, did the Axis have any idea of the massive Soviet forces about to eviscerate their flanks, or was it total strategic/operational surprise?Crasscrab posted:Another little known fact is that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were recommended to be detonated at 1,900 feet above their targets. Little Boy, used on Hiroshima, was detonated at 1,968 feet and Fat Man, used on Nagasaki, was detonated at 1,650 feet. This was done to ensure a maximum amount of damage. Once the timer had counted through 15 seconds, a barometric pressure switch would kick in that was supposed to measure the altitude of the bomb, but it was also still just a minimum counter since the bomb designers did not feel confident on basing the altitude estimates from barometric pressure, since it can vary according to local conditions. The final and actual trigger for the bomb was a radar altimeter, which was activated after the pressure had reached a certain point.
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Oct 15, 2012 02:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:During the Stalingrad campaign, did the Axis have any idea of the massive Soviet forces about to eviscerate their flanks, or was it total strategic/operational surprise? Well around Stalingrad the Axis had set up the Romanians, Italians, and other sundry participants on the flanks while the main German forces fought in the center at the city itself because the Romanians/Italians/Bulgarians were not considered up to the task (which was true). The Germans received increasingly panicked reports from their buddies on the flanks about massive Russian buildups, but of course, they laughed it off as "those crazy non-Aryans, scared of everything". When the encirclement actually hit the Romanians and co got absolutely steamrolled because they had next to no anti-tank weaponry and their morale was totally shot anyway. So the Germans ended up surrounded before they could really do anything about it.
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Oct 15, 2012 03:32
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Flippycunt posted:Well around Stalingrad the Axis had set up the Romanians, Italians, and other sundry participants on the flanks while the main German forces fought in the center at the city itself because the Romanians/Italians/Bulgarians were not considered up to the task (which was true). The general aversion from on high for German units to withdraw only exacerbated this, right? As in, the sensible retreat was not considered until too late. I've not read as much about this campaign as many on here, this is just what I remember from Shirer's history or elsewhere... so feel free to correct me if this is bullshit.
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Oct 15, 2012 03:46
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LLCoolJD posted:The general aversion from on high for German units to withdraw only exacerbated this, right? As in, the sensible retreat was not considered until too late. I've not read as much about this campaign as many on here, this is just what I remember from Shirer's history or elsewhere... so feel free to correct me if this is bullshit. The bad strategy part of the prelude to the disaster (insofar as launching Fall Blau in the first place) was wanting to take Stalingrad at all costs instead of merely bypassing it and also bombing the city so hard that all the rubble created just made for better defensive ground.
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Oct 15, 2012 04:34
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Can anyone recommend a good documentary or book that talks about the Iran Hostage Crisis or the U.S.'s action in South America during the cold war? I also just got through watching Thirteen Days which was pretty great. Any other movies like that? edit: I also just got my hands on CNN Persepctives: The Cold War which I think is the most amazing thing I've seen in a long time. http://www.amazon.com/CNN-Perspectives-Presents-Cold-War/dp/B000ELYCPO Waroduce fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 07:05
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gradenko_2000 posted:It's my understanding that Hitler's repeated no-retreat orders only came into play after flank-smashing was over and done with and 6th Armee was already mostly surrounded. Not taking Stalingrad is a hindsight decision because you don't know it'll turn into this massive quagmire and it is a major crossing point over the Volga that it would be quite nice to deny to the Soviets. Also there's a tank factory there. The really stupid decision was to bring 6th Army's two Panzer divisions into the city to help with the fighting (even the the extent of right before the offensive ordering the crews out to fight as infantry due to manpower depletion). If they are held back from the front as a mobile reserve then it isn't outside the realms of possibility that when the Soviet offensive came they could have been used to smash one pincer and then turn to face the other. At the very least, they would have been far better employed getting the rest of the line North and South of Stalingrad pushed up to the Volga to deny the Soviets staging areas on the western side of the river.
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Oct 15, 2012 10:06
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Alchenar posted:Not taking Stalingrad is a hindsight decision because you don't know it'll turn into this massive quagmire and it is a major crossing point over the Volga that it would be quite nice to deny to the Soviets. Also there's a tank factory there. There was also the thing about Hitler being right about not retreating during the previous winter, which would probably have been disastrous in the face of Soviet counterattacks. In general the whole concept of Fall Blau was pretty clever compared to later German operations. Attempting to deny Caucausus with all that oil to the Soviet was probably the best strategical choice for the Germans in 1942. Of course the thing was that the German army was overall depleted from Barbarossa and in true Hitler fashion, they tried to do everything at once which didn't work out for them in 1941 and worked even less in 1942. The Kursk offensive and the Ardennes offensive on the other hand were purely idiotic.
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Oct 15, 2012 14:38
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If you want to talk about what the Germans should have done on the Eastern Front, then the obvious answer is 'don't start a war with the USSR'. If we are talking about Fall Blau then saying you don't think Stalingrad should have been taken is effectively saying that you think they should have gone all out for Baku. Which is absurd.
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Oct 15, 2012 15:08
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Alchenar posted:If you want to talk about what the Germans should have done on the Eastern Front, then the obvious answer is 'don't start a war with the USSR'. If we are talking about Fall Blau then saying you don't think Stalingrad should have been taken is effectively saying that you think they should have gone all out for Baku. Oh, sorry, what I meant was that Hitler's tendency to make plans to seize resources and so was the dumb part, considering it tied up forces into a long-shot offensive over vast distances and poor supply lines (hey, kinda sounds like Barbarossa again). Going for Stalingrad wasn't dumb, considering all the shipping on Volga and so on.
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Oct 15, 2012 15:33
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Alchenar posted:Not taking Stalingrad is a hindsight decision because you don't know it'll turn into this massive quagmire and it is a major crossing point over the Volga that it would be quite nice to deny to the Soviets. Also there's a tank factory there. That they decided to throw two Panzer divisions into the effort to take it does, I agree, show that strategic priorities shifted from this original plan, to say the least.
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Oct 15, 2012 16:34
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gradenko_2000 posted:While I mostly agree, the chapter on Stalingrad in Showalter's Hitler's Panzers made the assertion that the city was only a secondary objective, that they originally did not want to take it purely for its own sake, but rather as a means of interdicting the Volga River, cutting off everyone south of it and Astrakhan and covering the flank's of the force moving into the Caucasus. That's kinda what I meant. The important thing was to interdict the Volga.
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Oct 15, 2012 17:23
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Alchenar posted:That's kinda what I meant. The important thing was to interdict the Volga. There was no need to attack Stalingrad for that- the river was cut further north and all river traffic was stopped there.
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Oct 16, 2012 12:36
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bewbies posted:Despite all of this they actually did quite well against the B-29 raids early on. They had a ton of fighters to spare, the B-29s had no escort and had all sorts of mechanical issues to deal with, plus they were at the extreme limit of their combat raidus and had little room for error. Wiki cites 9 raids (the operation was called "Matterhorn") with a loss of 125 B-29s to all causes and ~35 to enemy aircraft, which is about as bad a result as you'll see anywhere. Didn't the B-29 have a radar controlled gun? How effective was that?
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Oct 16, 2012 17:19
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Also both the B-52 and the Bear have tail guns. Have these ever scored any air to air kills? Oh, according to wikipedia, B-52s shot down two (or three) MiG-21s. Nice. billion dollar bitch fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Oct 16, 2012 |
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Oct 16, 2012 18:09
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billion dollar bitch posted:Also both the B-52 and the Bear have tail guns. Have these ever scored any air to air kills? Yes. I've actually been to Fairchild AFB and seen one of the B-52s in question.
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Oct 16, 2012 18:13
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Page Two, tsk. Here's a theoretical "What if" to rustle everyone up. Early 1940's, Turkey. German manages to grease up the government early, forgoes Italy in their little shindig in North Africa, and instead launches the Afrika Korp on a campaign through pro-axis Turkey in an attempt to stamp out the Caucasus fields and assist with the Eastern Front. What happens? Feasible? Rommel gets trounced by angry Russians?
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Oct 18, 2012 01:20
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Blckdrgn posted:Page Two, tsk. His tanks run out of fuel and he has to hitchhike to Baku. e: comedy option: Turkish government gets couped by Russia/UK like Iran. sullat fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Oct 18, 2012 |
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Oct 18, 2012 02:09
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Blckdrgn posted:Page Two, tsk. The Caucasus is pretty mountainous, so I imagine that unless the Germans bought some of Christie's crazier designs, his tanks won't be much use.
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Oct 18, 2012 02:18
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sullat posted:His tanks run out of fuel and he has to hitchhike to Baku. I wonder how viable the comedy option would be. Iran had a pretty long history of being dominated by Britain or Russia or both. Turkey, on the other hand, didn't. Other than the Ottoman Public Debt Administration and post-war occupation, the Turks had done their own thing for a couple of hundred years. I don't think the allies had nearly enough pull within Turkey to do something like that.
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Oct 18, 2012 02:25
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Blckdrgn posted:What happens? Feasible? Rommel gets trounced by angry Russians? Impossible. Turkey was unfriendly to the Axis. Before the war this was mainly a factor of German support for Italy, which was rightly regarded as a threat to Turkish neutrality. Mussolini had in fact directly named Turkey as an enemy to Italy's ambitions (along with Greece, Egypt, and Britain) and was well-known for his "Mare Nostrum" plan to dominate the entire Mediterranean Sea. Italy also held the strategic Dodecanese off the Turkish coast. There was also the recent memory of the Treaty of Sevres, which would have awarded a large part of Asia Minor to Italy. Italy had also engaged in aggressive wars against Ethiopia and Albania. Once the war actually began, German activities in the Balkans were quite alarming. They drew Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria into the Axis and sponsored significant territorial realignments, and they also conquered Greece and then Yugoslavia in support of Italy. Turkey's sympathies were most definitely with the Allies, and President Inonu moved towards cooperation with Britain in the late 1930s. As war loomed in 1939, Inonu quietly communicated to London and Paris his opinion that the only way to stop Hitler and Mussolini was by a France-UK-USSR Alliance, which Turkey would also be willing to join. Rather than German troops invading the USSR through Turkey, Inonu envisioned Soviet troops moving in the opposite direction. After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, however, he registered that it would be impossible to stop Hitler without the Soviets, and Turkey adopted a definitive policy of neutrality which entailed a balancing act between the two sides. Turkey supplied strategic resources like chromium to Germany during the war, to keep relations good, but at no point did they seriously consider active collaboration with the Axis. Poking around on the internet, I found some articles indicating that the closest Turkey came to allowing its territory to be used for an attack on the USSR was in 1940, when Inonu turned down a proposal by France to use Turkish territory to bomb Baku, which was supplying oil to Germany under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
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Oct 18, 2012 03:11
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Here's a more obscure question: Relatively dubious sources credit the Zaire/Congo civil war with claiming 2.5 million lives. Can anyone give me a decent summary, or point me towards a good source on the subject?
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Oct 18, 2012 03:20
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So.... how about war industries of the second world war? This thread has enlightened me about the feudal mess that was the Nazi administration, but how did, say, the Italians perform?
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Oct 18, 2012 03:46
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