Posted on 04/20/2015 4:11:08 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
“26 of our tanks were destroyed during the 24-hour period.”
...as you described yesterday so painfully!
If I recall the figure from Richard Frank’s “Downfall” correctly, the Japanese knocked out something like 660 tanks during the Battle of Okinawa. Roughly the equivalent of three armored divisions. And that was without the technologically sophisticated anti-tank weapons found in the European Theater.
It was just another reason American planners stomachs turned when they thought about invading the Home Islands.
The Sounds of Liberation from The Depths of a Concentration Camp
On April 20,1945, five days after Bergen-Belsen was liberated, survivors sang at a Shabbat service. The BBC recorded that touching moment.
Something to contemplate in the interminable survivability vesus light weight and maneuverable tank argument.
There are still the names of a few “old friends” on this map, such as 11th Panzer and 2nd Panzer Divisions. Also appearing are 352nd Infantry, which fought in Normandy, 716th Infantry which had been a static “fortress” division in Southern France, and 553 VG Division, which defended Nancy in the Battle of Arracourt. My guess is that those units don’t have the strength they once did.
And if I’m not mistaken, for the first time the map shows more area to the east, including those sectors currently being fought over by the Red Army. None of those units are on the map, but I suppose Ivan hasn’t been forthcoming about what he’s up to.
The “survivability” factor we didn’t count on was that the Japanese infantry were not expecting to survive. The basically made themselves “smart weapoins” on the battlefield and in the sky, with a human brain acting as the onboard computer.
Indeed Ivan has not.
That defines "a desperate battle."
In fact, it just doesn't get any more desperate than that.
Just doing some rough numbers, consider that today Honshu’s population is about 70 times Okinawa’s. What a nightmare.
April 20 was Hitler’s birthday. He crawled out of his bunker for the last time to award medals of valor upon young German boys.
So he may have underestimated the intensity of the Japanese resistance. Or maybe his ego told him to be a conqueror.
Just doing some rough numbers, consider that today Honshu’s population is about 70 times Okinawa’s.
But in April 1946, there would have been considerably fewer, all starving to death.
Yeah, patting the little German boy on the cheek. Really creepy.
“Hey kid, it’s my birthday. Here’s a panzerfaust; now go take on some T34s.”
Yeah, unfortunately, you’re right. I’m a role playing gamer and one site I used to go to a lot called World War II “The Great Socialist War” with the Democratic, National and International Socialists fought along with the addition of a traditional monarchy like Japan.
But the Japanese were able to predict the move, since the American pattern was always to move under air cover. They correctly deduced we would want south Kyushu for air bases and staging areas to invade Honshu.
By August there will be 14 divisions contributing to total forces of 900,000. Allied intelligence will pick up on the big buildup although will not find all of the reinforcements. Still, it will be enough to set off alarms in Washington and Honolulu.
True, we did not plan or need to take all of Kyushu, but the fearful cost of attacking such a force should have triggered reconsideration of the whole operation.
Thank goodness we had the bombs and thank goodness they worked.
One little violation of henkster's law. What if the Japanese did not surrender after Nagasaki and the American high command concluded the only way to pull off Olympic would be to employ several newly built bombs in a tactical manner to take southern Kyushu?
The history of Szczecin, began in the 8th century, when West Slavs settled Pomerania and erected a new stronghold on the site of the modern castle.[6] Since the 9th century, the stronghold was fortified and expanded toward the Oder bank.[6] Mieszko I of Poland took control of Pomerania between 960 and 967 and the region with the city of Szczecin became part of Poland in 967.
In Europe, the boundaries, the rulers and the populations all moved around quite a bit over a thousand years. But the usual pattern from about 1250 onward in the Baltic is the cities and larger towns were primarily German, while the countryside was Slavic/Baltic Germanic. The next to last big population movements in Europe were in 1946, when a lot of Germans, Hungarians and Poles moved west. At the end of a gun barrel.
Sure are a lot of salients on that p4 map
Probably the smart move, after the recent history, it wouldn’t have been wise to keep them living together.
“It was just another reason American planners stomachs turned when they thought about invading the Home Islands.”
My father was a Naval Cadet in the summer of 1945 in GA training to support the invasion of Japan. I might not be here if they hadn’t dropped the A-bombs!
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