Posted on 09/22/2020 7:55:17 AM PDT by w1n1
Those were members of Penal Battalions - you screw up: show cowardice, political non-compliance, etc. and you were sent to them. They went in first to set off the anti-personnel mines and other no-chance operations. Those that survived one battle were sent back to the "relative safety" of front-line infantry.
In the '80s I worked with some anti-Khomeini Iranians who had a bootleg tape about the Iraq-Iran war. It showed Australian doctors trying to fix hundreds of children blinded in the war.
Khomeini sent them, with their parents' blessings, to fight the Iraquis. They went in ahead of the infantry, waving their little green books of Khomeini's sayings, tripping the ping mines as they went along. The ping mines were set to explode waist high on a man, so the kids, being shorter, caught the blast in their upper bodies, hence all the blindness.
After the Atlantic Conference in 1942, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to focus the war effort 80/20 on Germany/Japan. The decisiveness of victory at Midway came as surprise to the Americans who managed to seize the initiative with one hand tied behind their back, as it were.
Hitler’s decision to declare war on the U.S., often seen as a huge miscalculation, may have been made in an effort to keep Japan in the game.
BTW, the Doolittle Raid lead to the Battle of Midway. The Japanese wanted to establish forward bases further east to prevent a repeat of the Doolittle embarrassment. In the event, the attempt only accelerated their demise.
After VE Day, Eisenhower was showing off flail tanks to General Zhukov, who remarked that he just marched infantry to clear mine fields.
I’d even push it back to PH. Once our industrial might hit stride it was over for Japan. They were simply out built and out fought.
Not sure this is accurate. I don't usually cite Wikipedia as a source, but you can read its account of the "Niihau Incident" here.
Goering said that he knew the jig was up when he saw fighters over Berlin.
The mission of the 8th Air Force prior to D-Day was to defeat the Luftwaffe fighter arm. The bombers were live bait, and they knew it. They attacked Berlin because from 1943 onward the Luftwaffe would not send up fighters to intercept bombers except over Berlin. The P-51s were not there to defend the bombers, their mission was to shoot down Luftwaffe fighters.
One has to wonder what might have happened if instead of Hitler invading Russia, he took over England first. England was preparing not just for the invasion, but their likely loss....well, according to my watching of Foyle’s War, which everyone should see.
My neighbor served a full tour in bombers and then fighters.
United States Army Air Corps
In other words, about average for 'Am Shooting Journal'.
“2. Another horrific face when the Russians moved through open fields they would force convicts to walk ahead of the troops and tanks. This often cost the convicts their lives but it would spare the Russian army and allow them to continue to advance.”
Nope. Per Russian and Ukrainian sources it was common practice to empty towns and cities of all civilians and force them to march in front of the Soviet army to clear mine fields and expend German ammo. The CCP used this same tactic in Korea with their ‘volunteer army’ advancing in from of the PLA.
You’re right. My Dad was a bombardier in a B-24 as a member of the Army Air Corps. He resigned as a reservist in 1956 when it was the Air Force.
It was ‘Army Air Force’. My father was in the Army Air Force... In S. England (Christchurch, I think), he worked on P 51’s, then after Normandy, he went as far as Fulda Gap
He told me some hair raising stories
Hitler was never interested in invading England. He just wanted Britain to recognize Germany hegemony on the continent and leave Germany alone. The Luftwaffe was doing a good job of rolling up the RAF in southern England, a precondition for an invasion. The invasion would have been difficult and expensive, even with air supremacy over the Channel.
Hitler initiated the Blitz in order to break British morale and force them to sue for peace, which caused the Luftwaffe to abandon the campaign against the RAF in the south of England. An ME-109, flying from a base in northern France, only had enough fuel to fly to London, fight for five minutes and return to base. Many fighter pilots were lost crashing into the Channel. Worse for the Germans, the Blitz gave the Allies moral cover for attacking German population centers. In the end, for every ton of bombs dropped on Britain, the Allies drop 350 on Germany.
Speer points out that Hitler considered war with Russia inevitable, and everyday Russian arms production shifted the relative advantage towards Russia and away from Germany. If not the delay caused by bailing out Italy in Greece, and the general distraction of bailing out Italy in North Africa, the invasion of Russia might have succeeded.
The real what-if is “What if Doenitz had had 300 U-Boats in September 1939?”
I LOVE the P51.
There are still a few of them around, with beautiful paint jobs. I saw them in Florida.
Thanks, I didn’t realize that Russia was in an arms race at the time that threatened Germany.
Regarding subs, a bigger what if is the potential weapons Germany may have had if they had waited for 5-10 years. What made the invasion of Poland so vital as early as 1939?
Germany had the economic rebound advantage on so many other nations, obviously, the Depression was fully raging in the USA and would have lasted for many more years.
He loved them too. The saying was: “If you heard it coming .. it was already too late for you.”
This is absolute BS. The crews quickly figured out that they couldn’t statistically survive 25 missions. The morale was plummeting.Bomber crews were signed on to do 25 mission tours but what most didn’t know was that from 1942-1943 air losses were so common that it became statistically impossible for a bomber to complete a full tour.
That is one reason why Jimmy Doolittle was sent to take over the 8th Air Force from Eaker. Doolittle changed tactics and the air war changed in favor of the bomber crews to the point where the mission count for rotation was upped to 30 then 35 missions by the end of the war
Fighter cover to and from the targets didn’t hurt.The irony of the change installing Jimmy Doolitlte was that the change he made - which was blatantly obvious all along - was opposed by the bomber crews prior to Doolittle’s arrival.The bomber crews wanted to see fighter escorts protecting them, and successfully lobbied for deploying the fighters in sight of the bombers. Obviously, what you actually want a fighter to do is not to sit around looking protective but to go find the enemy fighters and hit them first.
The German fighters had been taking off, organizing in formation, and getting into position to make an attack, all unopposed. Doing that was an entirely different proposition when under attack from a powerful force of P-51s.
Doolittle decided to turn the fighters loose on the Luftwaffe and destroy their fighters instead of staying tight with the bombers. He turned hunters loose against hunters.
Everyone around Hitler voted against the Invasion. Goering said it was unnecessary, the Luftwaffe would send Britain to the negotiation table. The Navy said they didn’t have the power to invade, it would suicide.
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