|
I'll take the Ise, queen of the seas.
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2015 22:04
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 4, 2024 12:46 |
|
|
Cythereal posted:Also a lack of pressing need. Panthers weren't particularly common, much less their bigger brothers, and tank-on-tank fights were much less frequent on the western front than the history channel would tell you. Infantry, artillery, and air power all killed tanks effectively and often, and the western allies had lots of all three. This has been said multiple times and it isn't true. Panthers by 1944 made up a full 50% of German tank division tanks. All the rest of the stuff is generally true with Shermans being good tanks and AT guns being the main killers. But by Normandy and beyond IF they saw a tank it had a fairly good chance of being a Panther. If the Germans were on an offensive they were using a tank division, so while you might not have seen a lot of it in terms of pure numbers averaged across the front, every time there was an important action tanks fought tanks to some extent. Also allied air power was completely useless in killing tanks.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2016 07:36
|
|
|
Mans posted:But the scenario where the mighty uber-Panther mowed down countess matchbox Shermans who were hopeless in defeating them never happened. Ambushes, shooting first and infantry decided tank combat much more than long range honor duels. There is no reason claim that we are sawing to that extreme position. The facts are: the Panther was a fairly common German AFV, on par with the panzer IV. The Sherman, while a good tank, in its 75mm configuration could not penetrate a Panther from the front at all, and the 76mm had real trouble. In the major armored operations in the Normandy campaign tank divisions from both sides met more often then not. There no reason for hyperbole. The Sherman 76mm should have been available for allied armored divisions for Normandy, that it was not was as bad a mistake as the lack of cold weather gear, which by the end of the year caused thousands of allied casualties. It was a mistake that should not have been made. One among many, but that doesn't excuse it.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2016 08:21
|
|
|
Acebuckeye13 I agree with you pretty much all the way but for this:quote:The Army certainly made mistakes that cost unnecessary numbers of lives, but it's arguable that not having 76mm Shermans on D-Day was one of them. It is not arguable. Yes the Panther would have been best if it was firing over 1000 meters away over open ground. Then its superior optics and gun would have told. But it is still a better than a Sherman 75mm at 300 meters in dense cover, and more often than not it was in an ambush position, not the other way around. Surrounded by their own infantry. That you dismiss frontal armor that negates your gun 100% of the time and a gun that can negate your armor 90?% of the time through some arcane formula of speed and endurance is nonsense. The fact is in an equal engagement the tank that acquires a target first and engages tends to win. How you can say a better tank for the allies wouldn't have saved many lives is ridiculous. As for them not being common? Yes strictly speaking they would not have been common for american units since the majority of the German armor was opposite of the British. But they both had a lot of Shermans AND saw a lot of tank on tank combat. The tip of the spear is an extreme minority, but it sees the majority of combat and the vast majority of armor.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2016 09:28
|
|
|
pthighs posted:My math class in school I took a class on Japan at war and one of the books we read, it might have been Saburo Sakai's, claimed leading up to the war the entire populace was militarized to such an extent that they actually taught trigonometry to grade schoolers using artillery and torpedo plotting.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 21, 2016 08:51
|
|
|
Congrats grey.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2016 22:01
|
|
|
RestRoomLiterature- posted:If be interested to read more on this if you have links or referrals Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Bix is really good.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2016 20:13
|
|
|
Bozart posted:Here's a shot in the dark and slightly OT - is there an equivalent for Victorian England? Amazon only yields crap about poetry, sexuality, and barely reviewed surveys of the period. How the heck did they manage a world spanning empire? Doesn't help that I'm not a Brit. If you would like a counterpoint to all the horrible poo poo the Japanese Empire was pulling you can check out Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis. Lots of stuff about the East India Co. in there.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2016 16:06
|
|
|
Also germany was a top 2 nation in terms of steel quality and engine design. US planes really suffered until we got english engines. Japan and the US are really interesting because they went very different directions with lovely domestic engines. Japan stripped out all extra weight making their planes fast but vulnerable. US built giant engines and built a giant plane around it. The P47 really is a loving monster.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2016 03:49
|
|
|
Jobbo_Fett posted:I'm curious as to why the Speed at altitude is always different vs compared aircraft. Prob just ripping it from official reports that all used different altitudes in their tests.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2016 04:12
|
|
|
MrYenko posted:The Allison V-1710 is a superior engine to the Merlin in a lot of ways, particularly in ease of manufacture, excepting that the single-speed, single-stage supercharger gives it a relatively low critical altitude. Development of turbochargers was progressing rapidly (the P-38 used turbocharged V-1710s to great effect, and shows what the engine is really capable of,) so a two-speed, two-stage supercharger like what was used in late Merlin models was never developed for the 1710. (Allison eventually produced one, and it was used in the XP-51J, but never in a production aircraft.) How much of that though was after we got all that juicy R&D from the brits when we joined the war? The engine was a real dog in 1941/2, which is when things really mattered.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2016 05:59
|
|
|
Grey, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Ise got in some hits on a fleet carrier, it is more than I hoped.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2016 05:38
|
|
|
At least in the ww2 ken burns documentary he started to make a case for large scale union agitation in 1945. Plus the army's policy of leaving divisions in the field for literally the entire war without rest and refit was becoming a strain. It is one of those things where we will never know but there is certainly a case to be made for some sort of negotiated settlement after crisis at home.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2016 09:04
|
|
|
Crazycryodude posted:Dude starts crying and goes drat near catatonic because of some security padding. I can think of very few examples of people with thinner skins. Almost all the admirals and generals were like that. Clark, MacArthur, Bradley, Montgomery were all extremely vain and immediately shut anyone out that wasn't part of their circle that worshiped them.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2017 21:54
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:how do you post this list and not include Patton Well specifically I was talking about it in regards to them being able to command. Patton had his issues obviously but I've never really read anything where he really hosed over the troops by playing favorites or politics. I know he got men killed going after his son in law but that is the only thing that comes to mind. Patton really seemed to shun politics more than most, correct me if I'm wrong.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2017 03:56
|
|
|
P 43 huh? Amazing how you can still see something new after all this time.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2017 20:46
|
|
|
Coffeehitler posted:P-43s have been around for a while, middle of last year or so? It has been the first time i have seen them.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2017 08:38
|
|
|
Shoot me closer so I can hit this helldiver with my sword.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 18, 2017 13:24
|
|
|
HannibalBarca posted:if unthinkable went forward what do you think the exchange rate of shermans:IS2s would have been Considering tank on tank combat was so rare it is always going to be a win for the sherman. US logistical support, tank reliability, and a massive advantage in things like burn rate, crew comfort, and communications are always going to tell. The only thing the soviets had going for them comparatively were a much more experienced military and better operational planning but had the war gone on another 2-4 years the US could have caught up with that too. Lend lease wise the biggest thing for the soviets was shells, lack of artillery rounds was the basic limitation for them being able to sustain offensive tempo '43 onward. Without lend lease the soviets would have still won ww2, it just would have taken them 2 more years to do it. So you take that out of the equation vs the US and it is going to be a problem for Stalin.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2017 10:59
|
|
|
Jobbo_Fett posted:Yes, it did, as it was a the main way to ship things from the east coast to the west. The Japanese had a plan to attack the canals, but it was cancelled due to the end of the war. That being said, even if the Japanese had attack the canals, its unlikely it would've done a lot of damage, as the planned attack was something along the lines of one or more planes dropping a few bombs on the locks and thats it. There were also plans for a commando raid from submarines using shaped charges on the locks. Also highly unlikely to work.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2017 14:58
|
|
|
aphid_licker posted:Dropping bombs on Chinese people arguably probably shouldn't do much to improve your odds against the USN I suppose. Not really true. The biggest limiting factor early on is flight time so giving a pilot an extra 100 hours over china would have at least doubled life expectancy. It seems to me no one really had a great training program in ww2.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2017 16:39
|
|
|
If canadians really want some bloated military industrial complex I'm sure we your neighbors to the south can donate a little of ours.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 9, 2017 17:26
|
|
|
Buffalo had the most aces per number of planes produced.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2017 00:31
|
|
|
3 DONG HORSE posted:Isn't that because the USSR air force fuckin sucked against Finlands and does not at all represent the relationship between the Zero and Buffalo? Unless I'm thinking of the wrong model Sure but even in the short time they were in service in the south pacific the british/commonwealth got 4 aces out of the thing. That is a lot for such a short service and only 500 built. It had a lot of problems but it wasn't a bad plane. They overloaded the ones sent to the pacific, they had old engines, they overheated, etc. With a few modifications though they could turn with a Ki-43, out dive a zero, and that is no joke. The allied air forces just sucked early war. Finns had the advantage because they were doing stuff like finger fours, two man teams, close in gunnery way before anyone other than germany so they got the most they could out of it.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2017 17:20
|
|
|
Gort posted:Is a six-foot soldier even desirable? I'd have thought having less to shoot at, being able to cram into smaller foxholes, being easier to drag off the field, eating less and so forth would have been more useful characteristics as a soldier than "Can lift heavier weights more easily". i forgot where exactly i read it, probably in beevor's stalingrad but in it they said the first men to die were all the soldiers over 6 feet on the march to siberia from malnutrition and exposure.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2017 18:30
|
|
|
thank you grey big fan of the pogues and your threads.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2017 08:56
|
|
|
TildeATH posted:Has anyone ever described a way that the Japanese could have won? I just can’t even conceive of one. And I don’t mean with space alien tech but just a realistic even if highly improbable scenario. It just seems, every time this comes up, I can’t ever understand how they even thought to go to war. It wouldn't have been easy but I think people tend to get obsessed with production numbers. Small countries have beaten larger countries before. What would japan have needed? Basically they would have needed to make the war so costly that the us populace would have rebelled and forced the government to sit down for a negotiated settlement. So a couple midways but reversed and a couple more tarawas at the least, probably they would have needed to get india to revolt as well. Ultimately the japanese were too successful and both pushed forward unnecessarily and failed to recognize what conditions led to success (a common effect with victory, you really only learn well with defeat). So with those two in mind they needed to keep their carriers concentrated which means no coral seas, and always engage under air cover which means no midways. The core idea they started the war under, which had been around since the 20s, of creating a perimeter and then slowly falling back using their superior position to trade favorably with the US, a sort of naval deep battle doctrine the soviets used, was a sound strategy. The problem is they completely abandoned it for midway because their was so much pressure to keep winning so we will never actually know if it would have done a much better job at fighting the US.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2018 19:06
|
|
|
Captain Postal posted:Don't hit Pearl Harbor. The US had a raging hard-on for staying out of international wars - Japan could have done whatever the hell it wanted to whoever the hell it wanted provided the US could wring its hands in anguish wishing that it would all just stop and go away. The strategic objective of Japan was DEI oil and Chinese labor and resources, and the only people who gave a gently caress about DEI were too busy elsewhere to do more than protest-then-accept a Japanese invasion, and no-one gave a gently caress about China except the Chinese. I 100 percent disagree with this. Parts of the republican section of the government were isolationist but the democrats were raging interventionists and FDR was personally part of a faction within that had a hard on for China and would literally have used any pretext to go to war eventually just as Wilson had with WW1. There is no history where the US stays out of WW2 with FDR in the white house, just timelines where it takes longer.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2018 11:59
|
|
|
Again I disagree. Imagine the US pulling a stalingrad in 42, losing over a million men. While they probably would have fought on there is no guarantee with something that unknowable.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2018 16:26
|
|
|
Hammerstein posted:Yes and No. This also requires Churchill to suddenly give while he still possesses Burma and India which I don't really see. He was willing to commit genocide in Bangladesh I don't think he would be willing to give up unless the Japanese had thouroughly kicked him out of the region. Plus the Philippines being an open neutral port to the allies would create a very fertile breeding ground for incidents like the Lusitania.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2018 13:30
|
|
|
Hammerstein posted:Well, what could Churchill have realistically done ? A Japanese navy which does not have to deal with the US, would have been free to lock down the Indian ocean and wreck every port from Colombo to Mumbai. The idea the Japanese navy could operate independently forever in the Indian oceans is the same type of strategic blindness that led to Midway. So long as the british had India (and here Japanese could have perhaps done a political solution if they weren't so crazy) they had basically unlimited access to land based air that could cover their rear end. Sure the Japanese had a good raid but that was surprise more than anything else. As for Burma proper, a nightmare logistically which is what really slowed both sides down. Even if you had the greatest general the world ever known he would still need to build all the roads and railroads they had to do historically and the same goes for the Japanese. So even without the US Churchill is basically going to be in the same situation as history for at least a couple years because the hard fact is Japan was at the end of its logistical tether with regards to Burma/India. So yeah, in terms of hypotheticals I see the Brits holding India/N Burma, I see the US entering the war eventually pretty much all of the time. I really only see it if the US just threw men into a meatgrinder early and enough died to get the press in a frenzy. If the US had the same disaster as the nazis had in winter 42/43 with Stalingrad + Tunisia and well over a million dead and captured I could easily see enough anger in the US calling for an end to the war. The Japanese already had the plan (which they didn't follow) and the US had enough really bad generals that makes it seem at least minimally possible.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2018 16:26
|
|
|
I love my Ise
|
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2018 02:15
|
|
|
well as you know i always felt we tried to go a xAK too far
|
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2018 17:24
|
|
|
You need to keep at it and take chungking
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2018 18:20
|
|
|
I think the biggest argument against the battlecruiser design like the hood isn't that on paper its a bad idea to have something fast with big guns, but that the admiralty seemingly couldn't stop itself from sending them against their one true enemy the battleship
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2018 17:10
|
|
|
Lord Koth posted:The battlecruiser design was fine, even against battleships (assuming you didn't actually leave them in a slugging match). The British problem was that they completely disregarded safety protocols and ship features in order to improve their firing rate - as in they left anti-flash doors open and stacked ammunition and powder in hallways for speed in reloading. That's what likely doomed Indefatigable, Invincible and Queen Mary (and nearly Lion) to exploding at Jutland, and probably caused the quick exit of Hood against Bismarck as well. For a counter example, and acknowledging they were built sturdier to begin with, you can compare to the German battlecruisers where they only lost one during the withdrawal due to irrecoverable flooding, while all five of them had taken moderate to heavy damage during the battle. Wasn't there also an issue with british shells at jutland? If so I feel like saying they were "fine" putting them against battleships seems a little too generous and the germans just got extremely lucky. I can't really think of many other examples of battlecruiser engagements other than kirishima and she was savaged as well. dtkozl fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Jul 25, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2018 19:46
|
|
|
Use the money to preorder the new cards then resell them to gamers with loose wallets the month after release for a 50% return on your investment.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2018 17:21
|
|
|
There was also some anecdote where after the war the soviets were eating dinner with some us generals and one of them asked how the soviets got through german minefields. He answered that they just went through them which turned into "the soviets force prisoners to explode mines with their bodies" when the reality was the general was remarking they took less casualties pushing through with pioneers as opposed to spending way more time under german guns trying to go around.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2018 21:17
|
|
|
The argument behind the soviets doing it by themselves is that by stalingrad they had seen very little of that lend lease and what had arrived was still being sorted. Plus as far as axis troops outside of the eastern front it had not reached the roughly 1/3 in w europe 2/3 in east ratio that there was at the end of the war, so the soviets did basically beat them at stalingrad by themselves. That being said, without lend lease they would have been unable to sustain operational tempo to push to berlin by '45 and if had remained soviets vs axis there is a chance there would have been some sort of armistice called and maybe even minor territorial concessions made to the axis. So it is very true the soviets broke the wehrmacht by themselves in 42-43, not true they won the war.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2018 00:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 4, 2024 12:46 |
|
|
Lord Koth posted:Isn't this the school of thought that sprung up among contrarian historians in the latter half of the cold war, that has since been debunked once we got access to the actual records when the Soviet Union collapsed? Not that the initial school of thought that the Soviets only won due to Lend-Lease was particularly accurate either, but there were multiple areas, well before Stalingrad, where Lend-Lease supplies proved incredibly vital to their successes. For the US shipments, while the actual shipped weapons weren't incredibly vital (even before they started getting rerouted due to US entry into the war), the logistical benefit of the enormous number of trucks and supplies shipped was huge. I dunno, I just saw a battlefront forums post years ago where the guy did the math showing the percent of lend lease the soviets had received by stalingrad was so small compared to their own production as to be insignificant and that it really started ramping up in time for their 43 offensive. That could be wrong but I've found it hard to find evidence since then to prove that point one way or the other. As for saying "they proved vital to success" that is something almost impossible to prove for a specific instance because if a unit was supplied with hurricanes they might not have won because of the hurricane but because they were just in the right place at the right time. Due to logistics you are always going to put all the allied stuff in a few units. Or with your example for the battle of moscow, the number is 25% but they were only 6% of total tanks, and proving that matildas and valentines were critical in the defense and counterattack and that the soviets just couldnt have shuffled around some more of their light tank battalions to get the same effect is going to be extremely hard to prove. It isn't as if the matilda or valentine were so superior they were giving the germans trouble anywhere in 40-41. I'm not saying your wrong, I would just like to see some compelling evidence. Them being only 6% (this is from wikipedia) to me points to their relative insignificance.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2018 17:39
|
|