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Generation Internet posted:Fred I just wanna take this moment to seriously encourage you to take your claims to our resident military-historian thread so I can read their reactions: Dear GI, I appreciate your invitation but I simply do not have the time. Some years ago, before I wrote my book on Operation Sea Lion (320 pages), I participated in a forum discussion on ArmchairGeneralForum. It went on for several years with 15.000 postings. It became a legend and was given the acronym TTTSNBN - The Thread That Shall Not Be Named. Why? Pick your own choice. The most typical thing about Sea Lion discussions is that everything is always taken out of context. There is no other way for those many in total denial. That is why I wrote a book. To put it in context. There are many other books on Operation Sea Lion, most writers have conferred very little German material and many write to "please" their audience. And that is not Germans....  ..They just want to forget about it.Now I am working on a project, more like a study of a study, on what could have happened in the Pacific with a very different US leadership. I even use the WitP strategic game as a sort of filing cabinet to keep track of both sides' units and materiel. It's quite cool. I'm putting it up on Kindle as the story progresses. Here is the first one: http://www.amazon.com/Saving-MacArthur-Book-Time-Essence-ebook/dp/B018F2QMEW/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1450099198&sr=1-1 As I finish the project I hope to "put it all in context". So far I have finished six eight-chapter books and I have made the beginning of May '42. The Japanese are still held up in the Philippines. They have been rejected from the Moluccans... There are, of course, a couple of pre-requisites that differ from the RL. It's in the books. Actually, I believe they can still be read for FREE at Kindle. I'm not yet exactly sure about their system. Anyway, it's not for the money.
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Jan 15, 2016 00:14
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| # ? May 18, 2024 09:32 |
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Yes, let the derail flow through you. We all check this tread to validate your deeply held convictions on historically narrow topics. Please oh wise wheraboo tell me more.
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Jan 15, 2016 00:16
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RestRoomLiterature- posted:Please oh wise wheraboo tell me more. No, I couldn't do that. I don't want to derail the thread...
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Jan 15, 2016 00:23
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Fortunately for all concerned, Nazi Germany had hilariously incompetent leadership and the whole thing would be funny if they hadn't killed so many people. Sealion was a pipe dream, just like almost every other grand strategic vision Germany had.
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Jan 15, 2016 00:25
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nothing to seehere posted:Please, refute the points in the following essay about the infesability of Sealion. http://www.philmasters.org.uk/SF/Sealion.htm  That reads like a loving parody, like a big fat joke on a British Islands invasion as organized by, I dunno, dumb Italians. That's way dumber than the kind of poo poo we tell in dumb Carabinieri (one of our police forces) jokes, and trust me, those jokes are really really dumb. Christ, Mel Brooks has it right, the best way to stop Fascism is to make clear the big joke it really is, because people won't care about how abhorrent it is but will care about not looking like idiots.
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Jan 15, 2016 01:00
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fredleander posted:(If you don't have any I recommend my book - https://www.fredleander.com). The Let's Play subforum is not the place to advertise your product. Please go away.
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Jan 15, 2016 01:01
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Yes, to bring this dumb as poo poo derail around, Hitler was dumb as poo poo too, but still smart enough to know Sealion wouldn't work (unlike some Sunday morning quarter backs in this thread)--as the great vast majority of all scholarship agrees, which is one of the main reasons he turned to Russia (not to mention that being what he wanted anyway). The thinking being that if Germany could defeat the Soviet Union, the British problem would wrap itself up as without the threat of Russia intervening the British psyche (Churchill's) would not be enough to sustain the UK, alone, in the face of Nazi Europe. ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Jan 15, 2016 |
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Jan 15, 2016 01:17
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Invading Britain would involve invading Wales and Scotland. Nobody wants to do that, they speak funny.
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Jan 15, 2016 01:22
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And Churchill authorized the use of poison gas against any attempted German landings.
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Jan 15, 2016 01:28
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"I admire Leander’s efforts I feel that they fall far short of his goals and that is work is poorly researched and organized. He is extremely biased and has not bothered to check his facts" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9197754811/thehundredyearsw This guy wrote than enough words about your book Fred. Please exit to the left. Grey bring on the Kido Butai
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Jan 15, 2016 01:33
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I really preferred the grandparent derail to this one. My grandfather was too young to be conscripted, but not too young to be put in a forced labour camp! Also not too young to see his buddy get decapitated by an Allied bomb! ...he didn't talk very much about the war.
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Jan 15, 2016 01:33
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Decoy Badger posted:I really preferred the grandparent derail to this one. My maternal grandfather was 15 in 1945, so too young as well. Lucky for him he was a American. He was the oldest child. His dad was a a designer at Buick and spent the war as the plant manager at Buick's Whittier complex (not sure what they were building). So the worst thing he had to worry about was ration cards and school dances. ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Jan 15, 2016 |
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Jan 15, 2016 01:48
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Two of my grandfathers and a great-grandfather (... who didn't make it back) were in the Soviet (not Russian --- lots of non-Russians fought, and died in it) army, but no fancy boats for them, just infantry. One of them war apparently quite a badass with the machine gun, though, even though I am certain that medal citation is probably somewhat exaggerated.
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Jan 15, 2016 02:00
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Decoy Badger posted:...he didn't talk very much about the war. My grandfather was the same. I had really no idea what he did back in the war, so it was an odd surprise when I was ten years old and told to get a vacuum cleaner out of their hallway closet one time to see an officer's sword tucked away in there. With a swastika on it  He spoke about the war maybe three times when I was old enough to remember and usually was very, very drunk. He was in the Siege of Bastogne apart of the 10th armored division CCB. We have a copy of the NUTS letter that they sent home to the families of the soldiers there. Grandpa would say goodnight to his friend in a nearby foxhole and see a crater there in the morning, stuff like that. Probably the most hosed up thing was when they heard about a thing that happened in Malmedy. Some time after that Grandpa had to transport some German POW's around and they  tried to escape . I guess I know where he got the sword then.He got wounded not too far from I think the Rhine. His tank got hit while sitting up top. If it was closed he would have died. Lost most of his gastro tract with it, would forever set off metal detectors due to the docs not taking out all the shrapnel but lived a long life hating war.
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Jan 15, 2016 02:44
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So I kind of want to talk about amphibious invasions in general, mostly because I wrote my dissertation on Overlord and the subject fascinates me a little. The main thing is: they're hard. Everyone knows the classic Omaha Beach "Saving Private Ryan" scene, but that's only a tiny amount of what's actually going on and what needs to get done. I'm going to talk about Normandy, but this applies to any amphibious assault that isn't taking a literal bar of sand in the middle of the Pacific. Including, dare I say it, Sealion.  incoming, but I'm sure this thread won't mind too much.One thing to keep in mind is that Overlord was the single largest operation of its type in history, so the numbers below would be scaled down for a normal invasion. The first thing that anyone did, before anything else, was set up a way to get supplies across. I've actually looked at the documents, written in early 1942, where they're talking about how to get enough oil across to supply an invasion (WO 107/75 at the National Archives in Kew, in case someone's enough to go looking). The planners established what needs to be moved across and what problems they could encounter a full two years (and change) before the invasion launches, and then immediately proceed to go into how to accomplish the task. Necessary stockpiles of jerry cans are already being accumulated by this point, as well. Keep in mind, this is just oil, and this is in March 1942 - three months after the Americans enter the war and Churchill decides Sealion definitely isn't happening. Things snowball from there - pretty much the next two years are spent planning for Normandy. Again with the oil (it was the first document I looked at and it's kind of stuck with me), you see not just one method of shifting stuff across and landing it, but more like three or four. There's the Mulberry harbours, of course, then underwater pipelines, then various types of barges and so on. The total estimate, in 1943, was 10,000 tons (imperial) per day of oil, just for the British Army forces. Not the Americans, or the Canadians, or even the Royal Air Force, just the British Army. I could go on and on, but it's nearly 2am here so I'll wrap this atrocious mess of a paragraph up. I'll talk more about it at some other time if people are really interested, but most of it's in the same vein.Hitler wanted to do something very similar, against a much heavier fortified target, with less amphibious experience and a MUCH weaker navy, in 1940/41. Literally just after defeating France, and with next to no preparation. No, converting barges does not count. The weather ALONE nearly scuppered Overlord several times, so I'm just going to tentatively say that Sealion wasn't going to succeed barring act of Wolfenstein. To tie this back into the thread itself (sorry, Grey!), this is the sort of thing those little squares on the map are doing when you set them to plan for an amphibious attack. Also, a lot of the experience the Americans had in the Pacific went into the planning for Overlord, so I'm sure Overlord in your Allies LP went a lot differently. Something something sending the cooks on before the line infantry something. On the family topic: I had one grandfather serve aboard the HMS Glory as the war was wrapping up, and the other I think may have worked in a factory in Birmingham (UK, not Alabama). He died before I thought to ask him  No real stories from the navy grandfather, either, aside from that he once saw a sailor walk into a spinning propeller. Nothing from the grandmothers, unfortunately, although one of the great-grandparents was a Home Guard volunteer? My family history is a little obscure.
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Jan 15, 2016 03:01
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Omobono posted:
To be fair the Italians were one of the few that actually pulld it off 
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Jan 15, 2016 03:05
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The Germans couldn't even invade Norway without losing a poo poo ton of destroyers and cargo ships, against a country that, by-and-large, refused to believe that Hitler would invade them and were incredibly unprepared. Sure, the Allies helped with Britain providing a lot of naval assets, but assume for a second that they would have to attack a location that brings them much closer to the RN and RAF... and you quickly realize that it wouldn't work without hand-waving a lot of issues such as air support, naval support, supply/logistics, and so on. If the Germans had years to practice amphib landings, build the appropriate vessels to do so, and develop more support... you still ignore giving the English that same benefit. It just doesn't work. We're talking about an operation that was hastily thrown together in 1940 that was to occur in 1940 without the means to achieve it.
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Jan 15, 2016 04:41
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Jobbo_Fett posted:The Germans couldn't even invade Norway without losing a poo poo ton of destroyers and cargo ships, against a country that, by-and-large, refused to believe that Hitler would invade them and were incredibly unprepared. Sure, the Allies helped with Britain providing a lot of naval assets, but assume for a second that they would have to attack a location that brings them much closer to the RN and RAF... and you quickly realize that it wouldn't work without hand-waving a lot of issues such as air support, naval support, supply/logistics, and so on. Don't forget what happened to the Blucher.
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Jan 15, 2016 04:56
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Jobbo_Fett posted:The Germans couldn't even invade Norway without losing a poo poo ton of destroyers and cargo ships, against a country that, by-and-large, refused to believe that Hitler would invade them and were incredibly unprepared. Sure, the Allies helped with Britain providing a lot of naval assets, but assume for a second that they would have to attack a location that brings them much closer to the RN and RAF... and you quickly realize that it wouldn't work without hand-waving a lot of issues such as air support, naval support, supply/logistics, and so on. Isn't fred Norwegian? Maybe he wants Sealion to be a success so he can imagine his country didn't gently caress up. "They totally would've got you too guys "
Splode fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Jan 15, 2016 |
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Jan 15, 2016 04:58
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Night10194 posted:Don't forget what happened to the Blucher. ...I've never even heard of a land-based torpedo launcher, until now.
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Jan 15, 2016 05:25
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Night10194 posted:Don't forget what happened to the Blucher. Yup! Just another bloody nose the Germans can recover from, surely!
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Jan 15, 2016 05:31
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LeadSled posted:...I've never even heard of a land-based torpedo launcher, until now. I learned about it when I visited the Occupation Museum in Oslo. They're really proud of loving up that cruiser. Also where I learned they voted in the death penalty just long enough to hang Vudkin Quisling, then immediately repealed it once he was dead.
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Jan 15, 2016 07:22
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Night10194 posted:I learned about it when I visited the Occupation Museum in Oslo. There's a reason why "Quisling" means Traitor in Norwegian 
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Jan 15, 2016 07:53
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VX-145 posted:(WO 107/75 at the National Archives in Kew, in case someone's This is interesting - I'll check out the document next time I'm in Kew! I actually work in first and second world war history and heritage management, but on Conscientious Objection and the experiences of the men who refused conscription. That's a real derail and a half though, I should probably take it to the military history thread! Seeing as my maternal family has no massively interesting WW2 stories, I asked my step-dad what his father had got up to. He left school in 1943, wanting to become a doctor, but was picked up and sent to (of all places for a conscript to go) the Fleet Air Arm (which I did know). He ended up piloting a Firefly (which I didn't know), and trained in anti-shipping strikes off the coast of Scotland, only seeing active service in 1945. Some of his diaries are apparently kicking around, as he died earlier this year after a long period of being unable to speak or write, which I will try and find. Apparently his enduring memory was of how many of his friends died during training, either cannoning into the firth of forth on bombing exercises, or being lost in the north sea on navigation training. He didn't get shipped out to the Pacific, and, from what my step dad remembers, went on only a single mission "in anger", dropping bombs on commercial shipping off the European coast.
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Jan 15, 2016 12:29
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Splode posted:Isn't fred Norwegian? Maybe he wants Sealion to be a success so he can imagine his country didn't gently caress up. "They totally would've got you too guys I've seen Frenchmen arguing enthusiastically for how great at war the Germans were for similar reasons. I'm particularly fond of the one that ended with the rhetorical question "if the Americans had all these wonder weapons like you say they did, why didn't they build them and end the war early?"
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Jan 15, 2016 16:04
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Mans posted:To be fair the Italians were one of the few that actually pulld it off Also the Dutch 
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Jan 15, 2016 16:05
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Jobbo_Fett posted:There's a reason why "Quisling" means Traitor in Norwegian English, too. Thanks for the loan word.
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Jan 15, 2016 16:27
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Night10194 posted:Also where I learned they voted in the death penalty just long enough to hang Vudkin Quisling, then immediately repealed it once he was dead. Quisling got off light. If ever a man deserved to be tied into a sack full of hungry rats and thrown into the sea, it was him.
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Jan 15, 2016 16:55
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Jobbo_Fett posted:There's a reason why "Quisling" means Traitor in Norwegian Doesn't it in every country...? Did you know that Quisling was a "CBE" - Commander of the Order of the British Empire..? He was also accused by the Russians to be a spy for the British....  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidkun_Quisling I'm not derailing - just responding to others derailing...
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Jan 15, 2016 17:19
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jaegerx posted:"I admire Leander’s efforts I feel that they fall far short of his goals and that is work is poorly researched and organized. He is extremely biased and has not bothered to check his facts" Not bad from a "total denier".... ...Tks for posting.Here are some others: http://www.fredleander.com/testimonials.php (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 15, 2016 17:23
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It's so impressive that you have so much confidence in the ability of the German fleet to support an operation that Grand Admiral Raeder believed (and told Hitler) to be fundamentally impossible, and probably existed only as a smokescreen for BARBAROSSA. HERCULES was probably quite doable, but SEALION would have accomplished little more than the destruction of most of the German military.
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Jan 15, 2016 17:59
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Of all the hills to die on, Operation Sealion seems like an odd choice Unless you are a resurrected Wehrmacht officer, brought back from the dead for the purposes of starring in John Ringo novels?
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Jan 15, 2016 18:10
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   This could have gone badly.  Now, I do these in advance, but I'm guessing there were cries of “No Grey, Don't shock attack you fool!” - Up yours mate. Up wherever your species traditionally shoves it. With nowhere to flee, two whole divisions surrender to us.  We take another poorly defended base in the south.   I love hitting these big ones.   For the love of.....  STOP GOING IN IN SMALL NUMBERS WITHOUT FIGHTER SUPPORT!  At least we take another base in Borneo.   Oh yeah, I've got a small force invading America.   Changsha continues to be bloody, but it also continues to go our way in destroyed squads – I need to rest up our troops for a few days it seems.  We destroy the 10th Army group.  I need to divert troops to take out this mini doom stack. A dread stack?  They are also pushing back at Sinyang.  The Chinese are really on the offensive! Then again, they've been sitting here since the start of December.   Lots of brutal fighting in China, but we are making progress in the Philippines.  Every day you mock me!
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Jan 15, 2016 18:25
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MikeCrotch posted:Of all the hills to die on, Operation Sealion seems like an odd choice Administrator in the Amazon TV Special "Man in the high castle." I like the show, I liked the book, but when I am forced to do the mental gymnastics that results in Germany actually winning WW2 things get a bit difficult.
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Jan 15, 2016 18:29
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Rhymenoserous posted:I like the show, I liked the book, but when I am forced to do the mental gymnastics that results in Germany actually winning WW2 things get a bit difficult. For starters, don't make the mistake so many do and think about "What would it have taken for Germany to beat the Western Allies?" Think about "What would it have taken for Germany to beat the Soviet Union?" Nazi Germany died in western Russia.
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Jan 15, 2016 18:36
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Grey Hunter posted:
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Jan 15, 2016 18:47
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lenoon posted:I actually work in first and second world war history and heritage management, but on Conscientious Objection and the experiences of the men who refused conscription. That's a real derail and a half though, I should probably take it to the military history thread! That could be really intresting though. My dad was very involved in the (more recent to present day) Conscientious Objection movement but I actually know very little about how WWII "offenders" were treated - Poorly I imagine. I don't usually frequent the military history thread but if you do ever get around to posting about the subject there, would you mind pointing me in that direction? (a mention in this thread should do)
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Jan 15, 2016 18:53
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Already started a series of effort posts!
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Jan 15, 2016 18:57
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Cythereal posted:For starters, don't make the mistake so many do and think about "What would it have taken for Germany to beat the Western Allies?" Think about "What would it have taken for Germany to beat the Soviet Union?" Man in the High Castle actually diverts in FDR dying in 1933 and the US never really getting out of the depression so both the russians and the brits get the snot kicked out of them because they don't have Uncle Sam bankrolling them.
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Jan 15, 2016 19:05
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The RMS Rangitiki was one of the three "Rangi" boats operated by the New Zealand Shipping Company. Both she and her sister ship Rangitata survived the war, but their fellow, the RMS Rangitane was sunk by the German raider Orion 300 miles east of New Zealand. After the war, Rangitiki served as a passenger and cargo ship before being sold to Spain in 1962 and broken up for scrap in Valencia.
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Jan 15, 2016 19:07
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