Posted on 01/18/2024 8:08:54 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Dated May 25 and delivered by plane while the Yorktown was about a hundred miles from Oahu, the report that Nimitz read was sobering...
One day ahead of schedule, on May 27, the Yorktown limped into Pearl Harbor. The next morning, after Nimitz had cut orders voiding the safety rule of spending a day purging her tanks of stored aviation fuel, the Yorktown eased into Drydock Number One. The caissons closed behind her, and pumps began draining out the water. With at least a foot of water still remaining in the drydock, men in waders gathered to inspect the hull. One of them was Nimitz. After staring at the burst seams and other damage on the hull, Nimitz turned to the technicians and said, "We must have this ship back in three days." After a long silence, hull repair expert Lt. Cmdr. H. J. Pfingstag gulped and said, "Yes, sir."
Within minutes the first of 1,400 repairmen, who would work around the clock, swarmed into the drydock to begin repairing the Yorktown. To satisfy the enormous power needs of the repair crews the Navy contacted Leslie Hicks, president of the Hawaiian Electric Company, who arranged a series of rolling blackouts in Honolulu...
At 11:00 a.m. on May 28, Drydock Number One was flooded and the Yorktown was towed into the harbor with workmen still busy aboard. On the morning of May 30, more patched than repaired but fit enough to fight, Yorktown steamed out of Pearl Harbor. With an air group composed of aircraft from three carriers, Yorktown sped to a rendezvous with the Enterprise and Hornet at "Point Luck" to participate in one of the most decisive battles in naval history.
(Excerpt) Read more at defensemedianetwork.com ...
Hitler was a cunning politician who didn't understand military strategy or tactics, and fought the war like it was a bus schedule. Each time he faced a big decision he always chose wrong (started trying to conquer Eurasia years before remotely ready to start; didn't close the bag at Dunkirk; didn't finish up in North Africa and take control of the canal and middle east oil before launching Barbarossa; launched Barbarossa instead of not, or instead of waiting a couple extra years; pulled 3 divisions out of the prep for Kursk and sent them to Italy where the terrain naturally favored the German defenders; the Bulge).
My pleasure!
Different, smaller torpedo with the same fusing problem.
Hitler didn’t have enough men to conquer the Soviet Union.
At Stalingrad the Romanian, Hungarian and Italian armies were destroyed and hitler lost over 1 million soldiers.
Stalingrad wasn’t the turning point of the war it revealed that the Germans had already lost.
It's not just that. Hitler attacked the Soviets during the Battle of Stalingrad. During winter. His Generals wanted to retreat. The war would have ended in a stalemate if he could retreated to Poland and then fortify. The Allies' invasion of Normandy would have failed if Hitler could send more troops.
I think that Hitler is way overrated as a leader. He eventually led his country to utter destruction.
He was always hyper aggressive and knew the Allies wanted to avoid war, eventually they figured him out and he wasn’t so smart anymore.
What he did have was the best army in the world (by far) in 1940, 1941. The Germans were using blitzkrieg (combined arms) tactics while everyone else was using WWI tactics.
The problem is that if you can’t win the war in a couple of years the other side eventually adopts your tactics and your advantage disappears. (Ex: the South in the civil war).
He was attacking in the South because he needed the oil. The need for oil drove his strategy.
The Axis could have won the war by winning the war in North Africa.
Knocking England out of the war and seizing adequate oil supplies before attacking the Soviets would have made the difference.
After the war German generals said the same thing.
At some point, the Soviets and the Nazis were going to fight. So the best thing Hitler could have done was to knock out the Allies like you said in North Africa and make sure Stalin had to stay in Moscow.p
Those tactics were adopted/adapted by Patton and others in the US armed forces, but the UK and USSR never did that, relying instead on US industrial might to gain overwhelming advantages in firepower. Until they ran out of the basics, the German army maintained its vaunted ability to regroup and counterattack with alacrity. Due to his own lack of comprehension and ability, Hitler wasted that capability with untenable attacks, mired in his delusions that a decisive counter was possible.
While the Antwerp offensive was a remarkable effort (20-some divisions seemingly conjured out of thin air), arms and equipment shortages were already biting. German forces were up to standards on paper only, and told they had to go as they were.
The allied response was to seize and hold major crossroads like Bastogne because the French road system was mostly still of medieval origin, and the German tanks needed to zigzag through those crossroads and along the modern road surfaces to make their objectives and their timetables.
It took a mighty effort by the US and UK, nevertheless. The German failure in The Bulge accelerated final collapse by a couple of months.
Both air-launched and sea-launched were inadequate for more than a year. The Navy, Army, and Marines still kicked the hell out of them regardless. :^)
By the battle of Kursk the Soviet army was already more mobile than the German army thanks to the 500,000 trucks the US sent to Russia during the war.
In 1944 during the destruction of the German army central group the Soviets used encirclement tactics to overwhelm the German army.
I’ve seen US army studies showing that during the war the British and American army’s suffered 1.5 causalities vs 1 to the German army.
The Soviets had a 3 to 1 loss compared to the German army.
No matter the Germans ran out of men.
In battle, the element of surprise cannot be underestimated.
Thanks blam.
I read it all.
Kudos. YouTube’s generated transcript is nice to have, but as the saying goes, it’s not that the bear dances well...
Classic!
:^)
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