|
We're back! Well done Grey on both the baby and the WiTP fronts. Looking forward to another incredible ride. I'd like to claim the mightily lovely HMS Hermes - long may she remain largely ineffective!
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2015 14:15
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 4, 2024 01:18 |
|
|
Clunk! A hit but no explosion! Is going to suddenly be something we look forward to and that's going to take some time to adjust to
|
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2015 11:12
|
|
|
You know, I think for all that we like to tease Grey about spectacular plans that just somehow don't come to fruition (remember Iwo Jima?), there were some outrageously ballsy plays in the first WITP. Operation Castration, carriers duking it out about 10k from land based fighters, taking out a fleet carrier and then casually sauntering home to Sydney springs to mind. Unless I'm remembering it wrong, that is. Grey+the ridiculous combined power of the Kido Butai is a recipe for insane antics, and we certainly shouldn't seek to restrain any and all (especially if they're ever so slightly ill-thought through) schemes.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2015 14:10
|
|
|
Grey, giant wrecking ball kido butai and the search for a decisive battle are like peas in a pod
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2015 14:52
|
|
|
While doing the big writeup of the Iwo Jima debacle, it really started to blur into one - there's still a bit of me that thinks the (irl) invasion of Iwo Jima was somehow the second battle, and that the one in the greyverse was an early attempt at Island hopping.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2015 09:51
|
|
|
Ikasuhito posted:No, we can go even deeper. We should publish a book, "The Pacific theater of World War 2 as told by Grey Hunter" It can include not only his first play through, but this one as well simultaneously (Hell even his first botched attempt.) All told as if it was a legit history book. Like the enormous nerd I am, I've been dying to do this ever since the first thread was winding down. In the end I think I wrote up maybe five or six thousand words before I realised I should get on with my entirely unrelated phd.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2015 10:44
|
|
|
I was wondering Grey, did you ever feel there was a turning point in the last WitP? Some point when you thought "ok this is going my way from now on"? I'm rereading the original LP on the archive, and it seems like the Battles for Rabaul and when you mauled the carriers at Truk are the first sustained high points of the campaign - from there you just keep getting more powerful.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2015 17:57
|
|
|
Fred, stop signing your posts - you'll get probated again.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2015 13:54
|
|
|
Remember that we romanticise the living poo poo out of the war, and there's nothing more romantic-heroic than the stringbags being flung against the Bismarck, and winning.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2015 14:14
|
|
|
fredleander posted:Sorry, forgot - happens automatically. Is "F" OK.......:-).... Your posts are really good so I don't want you to get probated so: Don't sign your posts at all, even "F", we know who you are and I'm sure if you keep up the detail someone will even end up getting you an avatar so we'll know even more. Also! Don't use smileys like :-), we don't really do that here. But we do have loads of emoticons you can use, so  in this context should do it!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2015 21:13
|
|
|
If he's still alive at this early point, could I grab a lucky ace instead of a lucky ship? That dashing Wrigglesworth - if, of course, that wasn't a randomly generated name.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2015 13:21
|
|
|
Happy Christmas to Grey, and to grognards good night!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2015 15:48
|
|
|
Yeah in the context of 20th century history "30 years", "Russia" and "recently" don't really go together. Every fifteen years let alone thirty was a major major change.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2015 22:59
|
|
|
But the scale of the map changes anyway, there's no way that projection can be consistent. India is tiny!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2016 12:18
|
|
|
I'm still slightly surprised there's been no grey hunter War in the West game! Not that I don't love WITP - to the extent that I read through the old one about once a year while commuting - but I thought you'd be right on it!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2016 14:03
|
|
|
Is there going to be an admiral's edition style reworking of WITW at some point?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2016 17:53
|
|
|
In essence then, the most likely Alternate history scenario for an attempted Sealion would probably have been a considerably shorter war. edit: Mein Furher! The Wehrmacht have captured the South-Eastern portion of Kent and are advancing on Canterbury! Aha! Excellent! We have captured some airfields that can be replaced by a guy using a horse drawn roller on one of England's 8 billion fields! lenoon fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Jan 6, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2016 18:06
|
|
|
Even without that essay it's not difficult to understand why it would have failed (and of course us being afraid of it was simply that, fear - not always rational). Normandy went well due to complete and uncontested naval superiority and overwhelming control of the air coupled with planning, equipment and a literal gently caress ton of kit. Compare one issue - seaborne resupply. Normandy: secure beaches, specialist landing gear, sink enormous floating docks into strategic points. Sealion: we'll just take Dover and make it immediately ready for operations! Dover isn't even a good starting point of an invasion. So we lose Kent! Aside from some airfields and bits of the radar network bugger all is on the coast anyway. The impact is on morale rather than any strategic loss - especially with the navy then blockading supply, sealion ends with the most experienced German divisions doing POW farming in the very fields they were trying to fight through. Britain was never 100% cut off from the empire throughout the war. The happy times of the u-boat fleet made a huge impact, that goes without saying, but we were never truly and completely isolated. It plays really well into the deliberately constructed propaganda image of "very well then, alone!" To have embattled Britain constantly under threat of a credible invasion, but we should be able to separate fear and propaganda from military reality. Before the North Africa campaign we were also the home base for the vast majority of allied combatants - would have been like walking into a barracks with "tommies gently caress kids" pinned to your chest!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 7, 2016 01:20
|
|
|
I read a great piece somewhere about Britain in ww2 being the ultimate in fan fiction, and Churchill being a massive Mary Sue author self insert. At the time I thought it was pretty good, and only later realised that lots of the history we have of the Second World War is pretty much fan fiction already - it's a rare book that says "history is all about chance events, so hosed If I know!"
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2016 00:45
|
|
|
What the christ just happened
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2016 18:00
|
|
|
I guess an occasional salutary reminder that the grog world is divided into two groups: People like us who really enjoy ridiculously in depth games of strategy and planning. and Hitler apologists
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2016 18:03
|
|
|
My great grandfather went AWOL at Dunkirk and spent the war living in the south of France - the other died while serving with the BEF in 1938.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2016 21:15
|
|
|
Drone posted:Before the war even started? Yep, he joined the army, got TB in Cardiff, died. The state of the British army in both world wars was massively hamstrung by the incredibly poor health of the working class conscripts - one of the major reasons for the establishment of the NHS post-war was the metrics on childhood disease collected through wartime conscription. Edit: the real crime here is people somehow believing that the Catalina was the best floatplane of the war and not the majestic Sunderland. lenoon fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Jan 10, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2016 01:52
|
|
|
There's an interesting bit in max Hastings' book on the Pacific theatre, Nemesis about how macarthur was a continual wanker and essentially whiny baby throughout his entire career, except for his "redemption" during the occupation. I don't know about that (especially because I dislike Hastings) but I've yet to read a single defence of the man that would hold up to even the slightest scrutiny. The Philippines were not his personal fief, and shouldn't have been treated as such.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2016 09:51
|
|
|
This thread is already weirder than the whole last one put together. Please Grey, save us! Sink the enterprise!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2016 23:44
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2016 12:29
|
|
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.
|
Already started a series of effort posts!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2016 18:57
|
|
|
Drone posted:
"What the wild men of the world will do when the last Lee Enfield wears out I do not know". I've seen WW1 issue (with stamped makers marks) lee enfields in use on cattle raids in Africa - they're still absolutely everywhere.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2016 14:40
|
|
|
Randarkman posted:Years back I watched some Doctor Who episode having had the show recommended to me by a friend (I did not end up liking it), set during the blitz in WW2 and the doctor held some speech about how incredible it was that as Europe was burning and being conquered by Hitler one tiny Island nation stood up and said "no". Is that the type of poo poo that British people are taught to belive about WW2 because thinking Britain only a "tiny island" (or whatever it was he said that was close to that) in 1940 is so incredibly disingenious it boggles the mind. Every nation has it's ridiculous conceptions of what the war meant, what they did and who won it. Britain's national myth is of the plucky bravery of John Bull standing up against the menace of the mighty Edit: Also British, did history throughout school. We learn the wars, and we basically learn the following things: WW1, age 7-18: wasn't it terrible? All very patriotic, total waste of time, good poetry through, everything important happened on the western front and largely in Belgium and northern France, who cares about the rest, let's be honest, oh, also there was this one black soldier called Walter Tull and he was promoted and that was cool wasn't it, isn't it good that we're so tolerant as a nation. There were some guys from "the empire" whatever that was there as well and they were strong fighters and our hindu, muslim and sikh students should be proud of them for volunteering to fight so nobly. There was no discrimination. But gosh, weren't the trenches bad? WW2 aged 7-14: The Home Front, for several years. The Blitz. The spirit of the blitz. Mysteriously the blitz ended but the war carried on???????????????? WW2 14-18: Weimar Germany. Hitler. Hitler again the next year. MORE HITLER. Conditions in Germany, weird Nazi social science experiments. Why was that dastardly fellow elected anyway? The failure of appeasement, declaration of war MYSTERIOUS GAP 1939-1945 The COLD WAR, communists are bad and Stalin was so evil. lenoon fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Jan 26, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2016 18:45
|
|
|
We actually didn't learn about Dunkirk, and my whole understanding of that is shaped by a bit in Spike Milligan's first war memoir: What was it like? A cock up, lad. A bloody cock-up
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2016 10:38
|
|
|
I feel like that would rob us of one of the great mysteries of life - just what is Grey up to?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2016 08:30
|
|
|
Reuben Sandwich posted:
Something that not a single US soldier who landed there in the greyverse can say. Because they're all dead
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2016 09:26
|
|
|
Does a grognard become a grogdad or a dadnard
|
|
#
¿
Mar 24, 2016 08:09
|
|
|
Grey: Carefully sets CAP over crib every night Frau Jaeger: wtf
|
|
#
¿
Mar 24, 2016 09:17
|
|
|
Well done to you and your missus Grey! Congrats!
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2016 08:52
|
|
|
It'd mean that he could pretty much seize all of China with the forces he's already got there, I think? Stopping Chinese respawns means it should (eventually) stop being a largely pointless manpower sink.
|
|
#
¿
May 3, 2016 19:32
|
|
|
I'm just imagining the Japanese army fighting Hans Moleman at this point
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2016 17:24
|
|
|
Nah the Tirpitz was targeted by what, six or seven heavy bomber raids over 1942, before the Lancasters finally got two tall boys into it on two different fairly massed raids, while it was stationary with the location exactly pinned down and them all flying over it relatively unmolested. That's off memory, might be wrong on some details, but it still took a fuckload of Lancasters and Halifaxes and then even more albacores and British naval strike craft to even get a hit. It just counted when they did, those Tallboy bombs are shipfuckers alright. Edit: actual details above! I stand corrected. I do know there were more raids before the successful one, where level bombing Lancasters, stirlings and Halifaxes achieved gently caress all Edit 2: holy poo poo the Wikipedia attacks on tirpitz gives you an idea of the accuracy levels! lenoon fucked around with this message at 18:02 on May 19, 2016 |
|
#
¿
May 19, 2016 17:55
|
|
|
Good luck on all your stuff going on grey. It's pretty amazing you can keep this up with all of it happening! Rangoon is looking good, onwards to India!
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2016 09:27
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 4, 2024 01:18 |
|
|
Japanese odds 1:31 gently caress. Might have to think about this a bit more.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2016 08:30
|
|