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Gervasius posted:Granddad was just a kid during the war, but his village was occupied by four different armies during the war. He had five brothers and two sisters, only him and two of his brothers survived. The town in Poland that my grandmother on my mom's side was born in no longer exists thanks to WWII. Thankfully her family saw how the wind was blowing during the interbellum and emigrated to Canada.
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Apr 30, 2017 13:07
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One Granddad was in a little wooden minesweeper that swept one of the Normandy beaches, the other flew 30-something missions as flight engineer with the pathfinders, Halifaxs and then Lancasters 1942-43. Despite them both being alive while I was growing up I only really know anything about it because my Mum is into family history and prodded them for enough information to look it up.
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Apr 30, 2017 13:56
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Jack2142 posted:Thats fair, I might have come across as a little unnecessarily harsh, but it is still a little disappointing to find that out about my grandfather who I greatly respected. Not to say he is a bad person and I agree with your sentiment. I still respect him and the sum of his life was more than the few years of military service in the pacific, just its a little I guess disheartening to find out years after he passed away. What's to be disheartened about? His ship was attacked by kamikazes and it was in combat during an important time in World War 2, there's plenty to be proud of. It's not like he was some rear end in a top hat who wrote a book 50 years after the war about how lovely the Sherman is without any actual evidence other than "I used to see Sherman tanks with holes in them quite a bit, cause I was a mechanic."
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Apr 30, 2017 16:10
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My granddad was a frogman during the korean war, he never saw action but was halfway across the pacific on a suicide mission to destroy a bridge 20 miles into north korean territory when they turned the sub around. Apparently they were able to bomb it instead. And that's why I'm here.
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Apr 30, 2017 16:37
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simplefish posted:One grandpa was in the RAF, the other was in the IRA I feel like the "was the one in the RAF a bomber too" joke is a bit too easy to make.
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Apr 30, 2017 16:48
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Jobbo_Fett posted:What's to be disheartened about? His ship was attacked by kamikazes and it was in combat during an important time in World War 2, there's plenty to be proud of. It's not like he was some rear end in a top hat who wrote a book 50 years after the war about how lovely the Sherman is without any actual evidence other than "I used to see Sherman tanks with holes in them quite a bit, cause I was a mechanic." Is this a thing that happened or just a really random example of a weird claim to make about war service? Re: grandpa chat, two stories: My friend's grandma's first husband was a bombardier on a Liberator. He died on a mission to bomb Dortmund or Dusseldorf or some other German city that started with a D. We went to visit my friend's grandma and her neighbor is an amateur historian who did a bunch of research and put together this amazing binder with everything he could find about her husband's war service and his last mission. It started with like his training records and a couple articles from the local paper about him going off to war, then had a bunch of technical documents about the Liberator he flew on and how its bomb sight worked. There were flight plans of the mission he flew and records/pictures of all of the other guys on his plane. Apparently they were over the target and had their bombs armed, then got strafed by a dude in an Fw-190 who got a lucky hit that caused the whole bomber to explode in mid air. They never recovered the bodies - there wasn't really anything left - but the crew were "buried" after the war by some German guys. The neighbor managed to get in touch with some guys that go leave flowers on the grave, who dug up some German records about the mission to intercept the bombers, and in turn the records of the pilot who got the kill. He died a week later in a landing accident when his Fw-190's landing gear wouldn't deploy. The binder was an amazing piece of amateur history. I think I have some pictures of it if anyone is interested. My great grandpa was a Seabee who fought in the Pacific. He was a civil engineer who worked on dams before the war, so when he was drafted he was given the job of leading the teams that set up artificial harbors to bring in the second wave of troops. He went ashore with first wave of Marines on Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Tarawa and a few other places. He was awarded the Silver Star.
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Apr 30, 2017 17:09
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   We make an unsuccessful attack on enemy shipping.  The Luganville raids continue.   The carriers should be taking a peek at Tarawa soon, lets see if we can get some more shipping.  We're still confirming previous kills.
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Apr 30, 2017 17:36
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I love when this thread has a bursts of new posts. Either something exciting happened in the L.P. or there is a cool ww2 discussion going on. To contribute my grandparents. My maternal grandfather was a marine during Guadalcanal campaign. He laid communication lines and he wasn't allowed a gun while he was doing it. I have his service machete which my mom says he never cleaned off, so family rumor is he had to use it in self defense at one point and that isn't rust. My paternal grandmother had two husbands, a Canadian pilot and American Pilot (my grandad). Her first husband, the Canadian, flew planes for the lend lease act over to Britain. He suffered a mechanical malfunction and his plane crashed one year into the marriage. My grandfather, who had grown up with her, consoled her and they got married. Then my grandad was shipped off to Africa and Italy, flew the warhawk and was shot down over Cassino monastery and was presumed dead. He was actually captured and interned. Reason he was presumed dead is that armed pilots were getting shot over there instead of captured, but grandad never brought his service pistol with him. Grandma who was understandably upset at the germans/Italians, joined up to go to war... And was sent out to Australia to work with wounded soldiers. She taught a lot of them how to play tennis as a way of helping them move around.
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Apr 30, 2017 17:37
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Bold Robot posted:Is this a thing that happened or just a really random example of a weird claim to make about war service? Yeah, a guy by the name of Belton Cooper wrote a book called Death Traps about how the Shermans were utter garbage, and, well, death traps. It's complete and total bullshit based solely on his personal experience as a mechanic, but presented as authoritative. Naturally, Wehraboos love it. Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Apr 30, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2017 17:40
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Granpachat: My dad's dad was too old to fight, so he got to sit the war through at home plying his trade as a carpenter and woodworker. My mom's dad was drafted and sent first to Albania and then to Greece; in Greece he was captured by the Greeks, handed over to the British, and spent the rest of the war living relatively comfortably while sitting in a POW camp in India.
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Apr 30, 2017 18:04
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Bold Robot posted:Is this a thing that happened or just a really random example of a weird claim to make about war service? The guy who wrote "Death Traps" was basically a mechanic who, many decades after the war, wrote a book on how the Sherman tank was super garbage and was basically used as cannon fodder much like the stereotypical "RUSSIAN HORDES!" is used. His argument stems from "I was a mechanic and I saw plenty of tanks that got shot up", except thats exactly what a mechanic would see because he's a flippin' mechanic. Anyways, there's much more to complain about the book and author but that's the gist of it.
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Apr 30, 2017 18:10
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Maternal Grandpa was already management at an International Harvester factory, so he stayed stateside and made stuff. Paternal Grandpa got deferments to finish his degree at Notre Dame, then went OCS and worked in logistics. No war heroes here. Just a factory man and someone who gets the food to the troops so they can fight.
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Apr 30, 2017 18:12
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My mother's father tried to enlist, but was declared medically unfit, and got a job as a security guard in a steel plant, and my father's father spent the war in a supply depot somewhere in the midwest. In terms of great uncles, though, I had one who served in the US Army Air Corps in England. I'm not sure what he saw or did there, but he came back pretty much an abusive alcoholic. I had another one who served in the navy in the Pacific, but I don't know where exactly, and a third who was an MP in Europe. Kind of sadly ironic story about him. He was an MP, and knew that the war was going to be over soon, and when it was, the MPs would be the last people to be demobilized, and that the infantry would be some of the first back home. So, he got a transfer. He was killed about a week later.
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Apr 30, 2017 18:28
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My grandmother was a train dispatcher working in a random backwater station in the Reich*, and everything was boring until American fighters suddenly appeared and strafed their trains. Bohemia, not Germany, but Reich anyway.
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Apr 30, 2017 19:21
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Paternal grandfather was a B-17 copilot, then a pilot, from 1944 to 1945 under the 8th AF. He was also deployed in Guam for a while after V-E Day, but as far as I can tell he never flew over Japan. He never said a word about any of this, but I was able to dig it all up by finding his service number, and then a website put up by surviving veterans from the rest of his bombardment group. Paternal grandmother was a secretary in the OSS. She still won't talk about what she did, even though she's almost 90 now and the OSS is long gone. Both grandparents on my mother's side were fleeing for their lives from the IJA. Both made it, thankfully, although they did have a few close encounters.
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Apr 30, 2017 22:30
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Jobbo_Fett posted:What's to be disheartened about? His ship was attacked by kamikazes and it was in combat during an important time in World War 2, there's plenty to be proud of. It's not like he was some rear end in a top hat who wrote a book 50 years after the war about how lovely the Sherman is without any actual evidence other than "I used to see Sherman tanks with holes in them quite a bit, cause I was a mechanic." Your right thats a better way of looking at things. Also while digging through grandpa stuff I found a couple newspaper clips of my other grandpa after he returned home from WWII and scanned them.   Also I think that highlights why Grey is struggling to shoot down bombers (I know its mostly liberators) Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Apr 30, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2017 22:46
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30 April 1943 Italian destroyer Leone Pancaldo, sunk by air attack about 2 miles off Cap Bon. German destroyer Hermes (ex-Greek Vasilevs Giorgios I), damaged by air attack about 2 miles off Cap Bon, later scuttled. Italian destroyer Lampo, damaged off Ras Mustafa, Tunisia (south of Cap Bon), abandoned when ammunition caught fire. These ships were attempting to relieve Axis forces in North Africa, the former two carrying troops and the latter ammunition. US aircraft interdicted them in similar fashion to the Battle of the Bismarck Sea in early March. Both Italian destroyers had been sunk earlier in the war, raised, repaired, and returned to service.
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Apr 30, 2017 23:18
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I think I already told this story, but my grandfather's family owned a furniture factory on Hainan. The Japanese invaded in 1939 and burned it down, and the family fled to what was then Malaya. He was a teenager at the time. When the Japanese invaded Malaya he and his family fled their new homes and hid out in the jungle with the MCP/MPAJA until the occupation ended.
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May 1, 2017 03:30
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Those newspaper stories are pretty great stuff.
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May 1, 2017 03:33
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Adding into grandparent chat. On my mom's side, grandfather graduated as a 2LT in the field artillery, but resigned to enlist and become a lab tech for a general hospital in Europe. Landed DDay+6. Was in Liege during the Battle of the Bulge, and had a story about giving directions to an armored column while standing guard in the middle of the night. He's got some great pictures of post-war Belgium from both the ground and a friend's A-26. Grandmother stayed stateside, but learned to fly P-47s during the war. Her pilots training was how they eventually met. On my dad's side, grandfather was an engineering professor who did a lot of cryogenics research. Most of his younger brothers served, but he taught and apparently did some work for the Manhattan Project stateside. My parents have a letter filed away somewhere for a special gas allowance for him to drive to either Rochester or Oak Ridge for government purposes. There's german family on both sides, but the only story I know is from my mom's side about the family pre-war shutting down their manufacturing plant, hiding the tools in the woods, and going back to work the family farm. I wish I had more details than that.
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May 1, 2017 03:56
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TheDemon posted:I think I already told this story, but my grandfather's family owned a furniture factory on Hainan. The Japanese invaded in 1939 and burned it down, and the family fled to what was then Malaya. He was a teenager at the time. When the Japanese invaded Malaya he and his family fled their new homes and hid out in the jungle with the MCP/MPAJA until the occupation ended. drat
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May 1, 2017 04:01
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One more grandpa chat item. My grand aunt was a nurse in the army. She stayed in the army after the war and served in Korea and Vietnam. She was later one of the women behind this memorial in DC
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May 1, 2017 04:12
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Grandpa chat: Paternal grandfather washed out of pilot school and spent the war driving forklifts at Pearl Harbor. Maternal grandfather was a quarter master for a B-17 group in England. He spent the war
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May 1, 2017 04:51
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Paternal grandfather flew *something* in Papua New Guinea- he told my father it was just weather planes - which in Papua New Guinea was quite brave enough. Dad things he might have flown P40's at the point of the war they were obsolete, which is also a brave thing to have done. Paternal grandmother helped build bombers of some sort..
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May 1, 2017 12:12
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Paternal grandfather was a year out from graduating med school when the Japanese invaded the Philippines, and he joined with the guerrillas as a medic through the occupation. He didn't talk about the war much except to say that about half his class didn't make it to see the end of the war. My maternal grandfather never talked about the war at all.
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May 1, 2017 12:21
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Great-grandpa was a sailor on an airplane tender in the Pacific (that will show up in either late '44 or early '45 in this game, I think... the USS Bering Strait), though I don't know exactly what he did... he died when I was still pretty young, but I remember him telling me the name of the ship and giving me a framed photo of it that he had kept after all that time. Great-grandma worked at a General Electric factory in Ohio, I assume in an administrative capacity because she worked in nursing homes after that, so quite the career change.
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May 1, 2017 12:24
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One grandpa landed at D-day as an intelligence officer. He spoke French so he drove behind the lines in a jeep, interviewing collaborators in liberated towns. His scariest moments were hiding in a crater at Utah beach, and getting overrun during the Battle of the Bulge. The other grandpa was a harbor master in Casablanca during the Africa invasion. He later took part in the Italy invasion during Operation Shingle and later south France during Operation Anvil.
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May 1, 2017 14:23
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Just as a quick aside, does anyone have the full version of the map the game uses? I remember it being posted long ago.
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May 1, 2017 17:16
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  We bring down a Liberator.  For some reason my carriers didn't launch any raids on Tarawa. Which is odd.  The steady drip continues.   My score finally approaches the AI Japanese score.   No bases have changed hands in months.  My rate of air losses has slowed, but I've still lost a lot more than the AI did. We've killed more than they did, but not proportionately more. Three hundred planes were lost this month for two hundred and sixty Allied planes.  Our best pilots are behind us. I move a lot of the survivors to training command.  Our Pools are looking a bit more healthy though.  Ground combat has died down as well.  Thank god for the navy. We sunk 56 ships this month and lost 9.  We have also hit that magical point where we have sunk more ships than I managed to lose last time! I'm now better than the AI!  Feels good!
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May 1, 2017 18:04
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SkySteak posted:Just as a quick aside, does anyone have the full version of the map the game uses? I remember it being posted long ago. Full map is here (87 Mb Tif file:) https://www.dropbox.com/s/74v20bsenbmzaii/WITPAE%20map.tif?dl=0 The source of the map mod is here, with other options for displaying it (hexes on/off etc: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3696410&mpage=1&key=
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May 1, 2017 19:00
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I just realized that in this timeline, all of the R-class battleships have been sunk. Does anyone have the ship reinforcement schedules for the allies and Japan?
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May 1, 2017 19:28
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That ship list is what, 40,000 sailors worth?
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May 1, 2017 19:36
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Thats a really impressive list of capital ship frags. Now I may be confusing this with other WitP LPs, but Grey has lost what the Fuso, a heavy cruiser and a CVL?
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May 1, 2017 21:34
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A bit worse than that, but he's still been doing quite well. Grey's lost 1 battleship (Fuso), 1 fleet carrier (Akagi), 3 heavy cruisers (Chokai, Nachi, Suzuya), and 1 light carrier (Shoho). Also a decent number of destroyers and 2 light cruisers (Naka, Abukuma). Akagi is obviously the most major loss. Only in heavy cruisers is he doing worse than historically, though he's still doing better numerically even there - by this point the IJN had lost 3 old CAs (3/4 of the Furutaka/Aoba-class ships) along with one modern Mogami-class, as opposed to Grey who's lost 3 modern CAs. Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 22:51 on May 1, 2017 |
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May 1, 2017 21:45
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the IJN's CAs mostly rusted at Truk for a bunch in real life anyway.
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May 1, 2017 22:42
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Yeah, Grey is smoking historical Japan. Not having your entire ~gud~ pliots all die in a fantastically horrible carrier battle will definitely give you longevity into 44. Now the American warmachine is really starting to get rolling. Will Grey survive the onslaught of a mountain of ships?
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May 2, 2017 02:55
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Depends if it actually arrives as a mountain.
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May 2, 2017 03:05
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Grandpa chat with a side of terrifying realization, heres the story as they told it: My paternal grandmother grew up on Oahu and her father worked at the navel base as a machinist. He had just returned from work on the morning of the 7th and when the attack started, he crawled under cars to make his way back to the harbor during the attack because the Japanese where strafing cars on the roads. Probably a good thing it took so long, the shop he worked out of was on the dock the USS Shaw was parked at. My Grandmother recounts that "the Japanese where on their roofs cheering on the bombers". Meanwhile my grandfather was on a sub doing exercises out in the pacific, which I can not find the name of at the moment, evidently it was one of if not the first ship back into the harbor after the attack. Now astute readers will note the interesting nature of my Grandmothers recollection of that day. There where never, japanese cheering the attacks on from their roofs. Watching a documentary on the attack with them where a Japanese-American man on the island at the time was interviewed as saying he looked up and said those dam dirty japs'. To put it kindly they did not believe his story. That's when I learned my grandparents where racist.
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May 2, 2017 05:54
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China seems on it's last legs (fingercrossed) and at the very least the South Pacific is just under raids for now rather than a more focused assault. The Allies have lost a -LOT- of BB's, ow. All they likely have is likely going to be just CVL's/CVE's as far as air support until the swarm returns right?
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May 2, 2017 07:57
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On Grandpachat: My dad's father was medic on the baltic front, primarily Norway and Denmark. He came back physically healthy, and not much that he talked about happened to him there. My mother's late father was too young to be drafted, but as was mandatory, he was in the Hitler youth. Come the war's end, he was one of the displaced from Silesia, and around Christmas '45 arrived in a Bavarian village with a slice of bread and an small bag of sugar. He was smuggled out by some aunts to keep him from being drafted when the Nazis decided that children and the elderly were good cannon fodder. My mom's grandmother's husband (mother's side) was a soldier in the war, but taken prisoner - he served under a fellow named Rommel, don't know if any of you know that dude. He was taken prisoner by the English, and ended up in either California or Florida, after the first battle around El Alamein. The first husband of mom's grandmother (father's side) went missing as dispatch rider somewhere in Russia. Her second life partner - they didn't get a permission to marry - died in a concentration camp because he wasn't conformist enough. A few other men in the family died over the course of the war as well, as is par of the course.
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May 2, 2017 10:18
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