World War II Myths, Misconceptions and Surprises Thread

[miletus12]

The Myth.



9.20 into the Presentation. The Germans put out a mimic BBC broadcast heard on radios by American reporters that gave Montgomery sole credit for the containment of the German offensive around New Years. The truth is that Eisenhower had given Montgomery tactical control of US 9th Army and the half of US 1st Army north of the seam that the Germans had exploited to split 1st Army in two. See Map.



Bradley had bungled the battle badly and Eisenhower took matters into his own hand. In practice, he put Montgomery in charge of the north shoulder and gave the southern shoulder to Patton. The concept of operations, overall, was to stop the German offensive and then squeeze the shoulders of the bulge flat. It was very conservative, very West Point and very Eisenhower. Montgomery played his role within that con-op. Montgomery in his & January press conference spoke about what he did in the north in the battle to shorten the snakelike American lines along the front and what dispositions of American units he made to harden that shoulder up. He was entirely correct and factual. He did not speak of or about Patton's southern shoulder operations, nor did he take credit for them. In some respects, Montgomery could be a pedant or a lecturer who dry explained a problem from the first person. "I saw this situation, so I gave this order to rectify it." It could rub people the wrong way or give the wrong impression. Considering that Montgomery did not have the "social graces" and that he had the personal charm of a sand blaster when he lectured idiots, it is no wonder that folks who knew him, commented that he came across a bit mildly arrogant in delivery at that press conference. That press conference however was not what caused the uproar. 

Drew Middleton, one of the most opinionated and if one might add, stupid of American reporters of the era, took the general war department information releases about the change in command around Christmas and twisted it to gin up a story for his paper. He, the sports reporter turned into the so-called great geopolitical strategist, actually laid the coals for the fires of dissension and distrust between the Americans and British over the Bulge; which flared before Montgomery ever gave his notorious press conference.  

In his New York Times analysis of the move that ran Jan. 6, Drew Middleton pushed back on recent British suggestions that Montgomery be named “deputy commander” to Eisenhower in the theater, elevating him permanently above Bradley rather than allowing the two generals to continue as equals in the chain of command.



“Marshal Montgomery is a tactician rather than a strategist, a soldier who has shown great ability as command, first of an army, then of an army group, but who has not the temperament to assume the role of deputy to General Eisenhower,” Middleton wrote. “… Anyone who knows the marshal and understands his approach to a problem of command cannot conceive of his being happy or successful as deputy ground commander.” 

That was the poison Middleton spewed forth from his typewriter BEFORE Montgomery ever gave his press conference, so one can understand that what Montgomery actually tried to do with the 7 January 1945 press conference was political damage control. 

I might point out, that leaks from Bradley's headquarters and suggestions on how to present the "news" from an "American" slant to Middleton had Bradley's fingerprints all over it. Montgomery was done dirty, when all he was trying to do was be a loyal lieutenant and team player.          
 
======================================================

So, that myth has always bugged me. Montgomery was too good a general, especially with his general public relations skills, to have insulted the Americans intentionally; or to have ruffled Eisenhower once more, especially after the blow-up between them after Market Garden; when Eisenhower angrily bristled at Montgomery's reiterated suggestion for a narrow thrust across the Rhine, yet again, after that disaster.   

[miletus12]

Myths about Pearl Harbor.



Drachinifel and company gets these things wrong.

a. YES, the Japanese planned out their attack against Pearl Harbor in 9 months. They did not even entertain a deviation from Kantai Kassen in the Marianas Islands until Yamamoto pushed the attack plan in January 1941.
b. The torpedo bombers split up with the level bombing planes coming down battleship row coming from the southwest. The torpedo planes with the torpedoes came from in from the west with the intent to loop and u-turn after an overfly. They were briefed to perform that maneuver to overfly, look and get familiar with the very short drops they would have across the middle sound as they attacked battleship row. See maps.





c. The USN high command argued among themselves about moving the fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor.
d. The information about Japanese torpedoes is both correct and wrong. Bu-Ord was absolutely wrong about the range of run; but right about effective range of torpedoes in general. The Japanese fish were just as subject to deep running, and premature detonations as the American fish. The nose wander of the Type 93 was worse than the Mark 15. The Type 95 air dropped torpedo was the only torpedo of the era that used a PID controller to ensure hot straight runs.
e. The Japanese devised their main effort as a counter-air mission with the anti-ship element embedded in the first wave.
f. Kimmel was absolutely derelict, before, during and after the attack.
g. FDR sent out Nimitz (More on Nimitz in a moment.). He left it up to Nimitz as to how PACFLT's command would be handled, whether to clean house or keep Kimmel's team. Nimitz sent Pye off after Pye screwed up the Wake Island relief, and later Nimitz backstabbed Fletcher to slide Spruance in as his chief of staff, but by and large, Nimitz kept Kimmel's team intact and gave them the Knute Rockne treatment to get them to perform for him. I "think" Nimitz should have beached Halsey and Ghormley immediately, but he gave the two men the benefit of the doubt. Nimitz should have convened court martials for the USS California's captain and or the commander of the navy yard. He did not. This probably prolonged salvage operations by a half year because both men were incompetent to taskings. The USS Oklahoma fiasco, and the delay in clearing YFD-2 would have been enough to send those two to the naval disciplinary barracks to make desks and chairs for Captain Bimmington.
h. Side by side replenishment at sea was first demonstrated for liquid fuel transfer, and cross transfer of ammunition and dry stores along sling lines in 1914 by... one Chester Nimitz. There is no reason any navy could not have done the same. The Japanese mastered side by side underway refueling around 1937. The Royal Navy, in the Mediterranean, had achieved it in 1941 though neither mastered dry stores cross-transfer by 1941. I think the RN managed it in 1942 Therefore, there was no reason the BPF could not do it in 1944. NONE. Why they needed the PACFLT to teach, or rather sustain, the BPF, has more to do with the RN not providing the BPF the means and training, rather than the RN not knowing how to do it at all.

[stevep]

Dec 27, 2021 4:41:35 GMT miletus12 said:

Myths about Pearl Harbor.



Drachinifel and company gets these things wrong.

a. YES, the Japanese planned out their attack against Pearl Harbor in 9 months. They did not even entertain a deviation from Kantai Kassen in the Marianas Islands until Yamamoto pushed the attack plan in January 1941.
b. The torpedo bombers split up with the level bombing planes coming down battleship row coming from the southwest. The torpedo planes with the torpedoes came from in from the west with the intent to loop and u-turn after an overfly. They were briefed to perform that maneuver to overfly, look and get familiar with the very short drops they would have across the middle sound as they attacked battleship row. See maps.





c. The USN high command argued among themselves about moving the fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor.
d. The information about Japanese torpedoes is both correct and wrong. Bu-Ord was absolutely wrong about the range of run; but right about effective range of torpedoes in general. The Japanese fish were just as subject to deep running, and premature detonations as the American fish. The nose wander of the Type 93 was worse than the Mark 15. The Type 95 air dropped torpedo was the only torpedo of the era that used a PID controller to ensure hot straight runs.
e. The Japanese devised their main effort as a counter-air mission with the anti-ship element embedded in the first wave.
f. Kimmel was absolutely derelict, before, during and after the attack.
g. FDR sent out Nimitz (More on Nimitz in a moment.). He left it up to Nimitz as to how PACFLT's command would be handled, whether to clean house or keep Kimmel's team. Nimitz sent Pye off after Pye screwed up the Wake Island relief, and later Nimitz backstabbed Fletcher to slide Spruance in as his chief of staff, but by and large, Nimitz kept Kimmel's team intact and gave them the Knute Rockne treatment to get them to perform for him. I "think" Nimitz should have beached Halsey and Ghormley immediately, but he gave the two men the benefit of the doubt. Nimitz should have convened court martials for the USS California's captain and or the commander of the navy yard. He did not. This probably prolonged salvage operations by a half year because both men were incompetent to taskings. The USS Oklahoma fiasco, and the delay in clearing YFD-2 would have been enough to send those two to the naval disciplinary barracks to make desks and chairs for Captain Bimmington.
h. Side by side replenishment at sea was first demonstrated for liquid fuel transfer, and cross transfer of ammunition and dry stores along sling lines in 1914 by... one Chester Nimitz. There is no reason any navy could not have done the same. The Japanese mastered side by side underway refueling around 1937. The Royal Navy, in the Mediterranean, had achieved it in 1941 though neither mastered dry stores cross-transfer by 1941. I think the RN managed it in 1942 Therefore, there was no reason the BPF could not do it in 1944. NONE. Why they needed the PACFLT to teach, or rather sustain, the BPF, has more to do with the RN not providing the BPF the means and training, rather than the RN not knowing how to do it at all.

  miletus12 ,

  Skimmed through parts of the video as don't have time to read it all.  A couple of quick comments.

c)  Unfortunately people in most of Europe can't see the video due to restrictions applied by the EU on data protection and which for some reason even seems to still apply to the UK.  Any alternative way of viewing it please or can you give a quick summary.

h)  To be fair to Drach he doesn't say the RN couldn't do side by side replenishment but that it was used to astern replenishment.  Coupled with the fact that the UK was pretty much running on empty by 1945 and had concentrated largely on teeth to make best use of resources in a dire situation.  As such it didn't have the resources to provide such replenishment so far from its bases and it makes sense to use USN ones already in situ but that of course meant having to learn a change in methods.  This might have been done occasionally in the Med but its not something that the RN could afford to train a large part of its fleet to do in the off chance it might be needed in the midst of such a conflict.

  One thing that does seem to be wrong, given what you said was the caption title for that section, that the Japanese had the most advanced mobile fleet replenishment in 1941.  Whether Drach actually knew about that I don't know as he was a guest on the site but that does seem to be something that can be complained about.

  Steve

PS - you might want to ask one of the team to change the thread title, say to something like misconceptions and myths as this 2nd post doesn't have anything to do with Montgomery or the Battle of the Bulge.  Especially if you will be covering any other such stories.

[miletus12]

Dec 27, 2021 12:09:58 GMT stevep said:

PS - you might want to ask one of the team to change the thread title, say to something like misconceptions and myths as this 2nd post doesn't have anything to do with Montgomery or the Battle of the Bulge.  Especially if you will be covering any other such stories.

Thanks for the suggestion.

The North African campaign myths.




a. Rommel was "presented" as the clean German general. The post WWII allied governments were complicit in presenting this German "fiction" to give the defeated "west" Germans a "hero" to inspire them to cooperate with the West to create the Bundeswehr.
b. I could add that Rommel was further guilty of the same kinds of war crimes as other German generals whose area commands used slave labor to construct the West Wall in France. Refer to the video for his war crimes in North Africa. Yes, he was a war criminal. 
c. As for the tactical acumen that Rommel supposedly had; one must remember that Rommel had German signals intelligence units and the Italians (SIS) who supplied him with very accurate intelligence about British desert army intentions, plans and movements until Auchinleck and Montgomery in sequence tightened up British army signals discipline. It is debated whether British or American intelligence uncovered the American leak in the Cairo American embassy via the inept American military liaison officer, but that source of information was also instrumental in giving Rommel a situational awareness edge to explain some of his early astonishing victories. Rommel still had to show tactical skill to use his advantages to exploit this intelligence edge, but once the intelligence advantage he enjoyed, disappeared, so did his "miraculous victories".         
d. Though the video does not cover the other point that is oft overlooked, it must be understood that the majority of Rommel's troops for most of the North African campaign, especially the hard marching and hard fighting infantry, were ITALIANS. The Italians also supplied most of Rommel's logistics and transport support. Rommel and his DAK was very much an element of the Italian Xth Army functionally. Rommel, in many ways, reminds one of MacArthur and Alamo Force, in the way that the German general used his Deutsche Afrika Korps to execute some elements of tactical evolutions, while the "allies" contributions to the overall schema are lost in the popular imaginations (During Gazala, The Trieste division's role in saving the beleaguered Germans. See Map for this example.)


e. "Rommel" could also be something of a ghost written sock-puppet. 

In the afternoon [30th May] I personally reconnoitred the possibilities for an attack on Got el Ualeb [the Sidi Muftah box] and detailed units of the Afrika Korps, 90th Light Division and the Italian Trieste Division for an assault on the British positions next morning. The attack was launched on the morning of the 31st May. German-Italian units fought their way forward yard by yard against the toughest British resistance imaginable.[...] Nevertheless, by the time evening came we had penetrated a substantial distance into the British positions. On the following day the defenders were to receive their quietus. After heavy Stuka attacks, the infantry again surged forward against the British field positions.[...] Piece by piece the elaborate British defences were won until by early afternoon the whole position was ours. The last British resistance was quenched. We took in all 3,000 prisoners and destroyed or captured 101 tanks and armoured cars, as well as 124 guns of all kinds.



— Rommel

The problem with that quote is that Liddell Hart wrote it when he helped edit and translate "The Rommel Papers" from the "recollections" of his German co-author as to what Rommel "said" and "wrote" in his diary..  
      
 Yeah. There is very little evidence that this event happened the way "Rommel" presented it. Refer to a. 


 

[lordroel]

Dec 27, 2021 15:21:45 GMT miletus12 said:

Dec 27, 2021 12:09:58 GMT stevep said:

PS - you might want to ask one of the team to change the thread title, say to something like misconceptions and myths as this 2nd post doesn't have anything to do with Montgomery or the Battle of the Bulge.  Especially if you will be covering any other such stories.

Thanks for the suggestion.

So what name should i give the thread, if you want to.

[miletus12]

Dec 27, 2021 15:24:54 GMT lordroel said:

Dec 27, 2021 15:21:45 GMT miletus12 said:

Thanks for the suggestion.

So what name should i give the thread, if you want to.

Perhaps call it, "WWII Myths that need correction." Or something similar?

[lordroel]

Dec 27, 2021 16:18:29 GMT miletus12 said:

Dec 27, 2021 15:24:54 GMT lordroel said:

So what name should i give the thread, if you want to.

Perhaps call it, "WWII Myths that need correction." Or something similar?

Okay, will let my trolls do some magic.

[miletus12]

Myths about Market Garden...



Article.

Once out of Normandy, it transpired there was no agreed Allied policy for how to advance into Germany, which evolved into a slanging match between Monty, favouring a narrow thrust (led by himself), and Eisenhower, advocating a broad (and multinational) front. Britain and America had approved, and never changed, Eisenhower’s basic broad-front war strategy, but Monty continuously badgered him to abandon this policy and attack with a single, overpowering rapier-like thrust into Germany. Finally, Ike agreed to let Monty try his single-thrust theory and approved his plan to drive sixty miles straight through Holland and enter Germany via an airborne carpet of paratroopers.

The outcome was Operation Market Garden of 17–25 September. Eisenhower halted the advance elsewhere whilst Monty attacked; the scheme was very ambitious and, for many reasons, failed. Of the operation, Montgomery stated:

In my – prejudiced – view, if the operation had been properly backed from its inception, and given the aircraft, ground forces, and administrative resources necessary for the job – it would have succeeded in spite of my mistakes, or the adverse weather, or the presence of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps in the Arnhem area. I remain Market Garden’s unrepentant advocate.

While Omar Bradley later praised Monty for the general idea of the thrust to Arnhem:

Had the pious teetotalling Montgomery wobbled into SHAEF with a hangover, I could not have been more astonished than I was by the daring venture he proposed. For in contrast to the conservative tactics Montgomery ordinarily chose, the Arnhem attack was to be made over a sixty-mile carpet of airborne troops. Although I never reconciled myself to the venture, I nevertheless freely concede that Monty’s plan for Arnhem was one of the most imaginative of the war.

Market Garden would always remain a thorn in Monty’s side: when he described the operation as ‘ninety percent successful’, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands observed: ‘My country can never again afford the luxury of another Montgomery success.’ After Arnhem, Montgomery antagonised the Free Polish Parachute Brigade, led by the (admittedly) prickly Major General Stanislaw Sosabowski, by making them a scapegoat for Market Garden’s failure. In a monstrously unjust slur on their fighting skills, he wrote to Brooke, reporting (incorrectly) that the Poles had fought ‘very badly and the men showed no keenness to fight’, declaring he did not want them under his command and suggesting they be sent to join General Anders’ Polish Corps in Italy. The fact that he wanted to palm them off on another theatre supports the contention that the Free Poles were fine fighters, and that Monty’s intemperance was founded – yet again – on a clash of personalities. This, at a time when he was critically short of manpower.

The popular history as presented about Market Garden (See video) contains a lot of myths and lies. Montgomery certainly reframes history (lies) to mask the magnitude of the disaster. The whole plan, as the Americans understood it, was to cut off the German 15th Army and make the Canadian attack into the Scheldt a lot easier. It was the PLAN Eisenhower authorized to strike at the Zuider Zee.

The main tactical fault has always been laid on Browning's planning of the operation and specifically the British First Airborne. He maldistributed his troops and selected the wrong drop zones around Arnheim, it is true. But he was not the only boob to screw up the operation.

Lewis Brereton, the guy who lost MacArthur's air force. Remember him?

There are myriad and highly involved reasons for the failure of the operation.

The operation was doomed to failure as soon as Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton, commander of the 1st Allied Airborne Army, decided to carry out airlifts over two to three days – thus ensuring that any element of surprise was completely lost.

Crucially, the US Army Air Force was unable to fly the airborne forces in two lifts on the first day. Only 1,550 aircraft were available, thus the force had to be landed in three lifts. RAF transport Command requested two drops on the first day but Major General Paul L. Williams of the IX US Troop Carrier Command did not agree.

Brereton’s limited use of ground-attack aircraft over the battlefield, protecting supply drops while escort fighters were in the air, also contributed substantially to the outcome. So too did the absence of glider coup de Main tactics.

General Urqhart failed to understand he had to drop onto Arnheim Bridge.

The Allied Airborne Army’s poor choice of parachute drop zones and glider landing zones were too far from the objectives. General Urquhart decided to land the whole British Division 8 miles from the bridge, rather than drop the parachutists much closer to it.

However, Urquhart had to plan an entire operation in only 7 days and so when faced with stubborn opposition from fellow commanders, he had little option but to accept the situation and move on. Nevertheless, these failings in the plan effectively sealed the fate of ‘Market-Garden’ before it began.

General Gavin made a huge mistake.

I've always blamed Gavin and the 82nd for the largest part of the failure, but they really did have their hands full with counterattacks (and early on, expected counterattacks) from the east, something which is rather glossed over by Ryan. Gavin still failed by not securing at least the southern end of the bridge before the town was occupied by the 10th SS and the Kampgruppe they threw together in support, but one might suppose that he thought (since all of them had been assured by Browning there were no real German troops in the area) that he could snap it up any time fighting against scraped together rear area reserves. This isn't to say that Browning was totally to blame either, just that Gavin's mistakes aren't as bad as I'd always thought. Really, it just adds up to delays in every area and every stage of the battle that when added together just couldn't be overcome. One might blame Montgomery for the entire plan, but I find that hard to do. It was certainly risky, but if XXX Corps had only arrived a bit faster, if any of the delays had not happened, it would have worked, 9th and 10th SS or not.

6.30 to 8.00 in the video covers Nijmegan. Then 18.00 to 20,00 covers the Grossbeck Heights and Browning's endorsement of Gavin's monumental screwup.

Actually, Gavin's mistake cost 36 hours of delay to Horrock's 30th Corps advance. THAT hurt.

Sure; there was a lot of lying to cover up the many mistakes made by the principles, but why lie about the actual plan's objectives and the chain of events that led to the disaster. Why round-robin the blame? Why blame the Canadians and the Poles? Why blame O'Connor? Why blame Horrocks?

Some myths needed to be laid on to make the bloodbath and the destruction of the British 1st Airborne seem justified.

What is your analysis of the plan for Operation Market Garden?



It was a very bad plan, right from the top and right from the start. Montgomery tried to impose his plan against the instructions of Eisenhower and his own War Office. In any airborne operation, the British Army left the planning to the Royal Air Force or consulted them. Montgomery refused to do that and was convinced that the RAF was cowardly. He had no idea about airborne operations but he laid down the law. General “Boy” Browning then told the American air force commanders the plan but they pointed out that it couldn’t be done.



This was because the airborne distances were greater than the calculations Browning had made and that they couldn’t stick two gliders behind each tug aircraft. The days were also shorter and, crucially, this meant that they couldn’t have two lifts on the first day. All of the assumptions were completely turned upside down and Browning should have said to Montgomery, “We must re-think the whole thing.”



The other problem was that the aircraft, paratroopers and gliders landed on the wrong side of Arnhem, eight miles away from their target. This meant that the paratroopers lost all surprise, which is the one weapon that airborne troops need. If you don’t have surprise and are too lightly armed you’re going to get a very bloody mess. I’m afraid that’s exactly what happened.

Quesada's air staff could work fuels, loads and hours aloft. Browning's army staff apparently could not.  And who sided with Browning over his own air force? Brereton.

Let me remind the reader about the lies stated to justify the sacrifices...

It was a bad mistake on my part – I underestimated the difficulties of opening up the approaches to Antwerp ... I reckoned the Canadian Army could do it while we were going for the Ruhr. I was wrong ... In my – prejudiced – view, if the operation had been properly backed from its inception, and given the aircraft, ground forces, and administrative resources necessary for the job, it would have succeeded in spite of my mistakes, or the adverse weather, or the presence of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps in the Arnhem area. I remain Market Garden's unrepentant advocate.

That is as close to a mea culpa, one could expect from Montgomery and it is remarkable for the honesty expressed.

As a coda, I suggest that if Eisenhower had intervened, as he did during the Battle of the Bulge, to at least fix the mistakes that Brereton made by grounding US tactical air power, that the progress by Horrock's tanks up the "Highway of Death" would have the needed air support. I also agree with de Crevield. Brereton should have been court martialed and cashiered for his role in botching the air component of Market Garden, both in transportation of the paratroopers and in resupply and in that grounding of his fighter bombers.

HE as much as Browning deserves the primary operational blame for the failure.

[575]

As a comment - and no I haven't read everything on Market-Garden - some years ago on vacation in Britain I bought Sebastian Richies Arnhem Myth and Reality. Really interesting as the author is/was the RAF Historian.
He traces the employment of Airborne through WWII ending at Arnhem. Concludes that even if successful the operation would have made much progress for a swift raid into Germany because of the overall supply situation - Walcheren still being in German hands prohibiting supply from Antwerp.
He also makes a lot of the decision process and lack of Transport Units on the Continent prohibiting a single jump with all the implications. BTW he state that Arnhem was the most successfull jump in getting the first wave down on the LZ's in concentration but hampered by the need to guard the LZ's for followup jumps.
Lots more of course but some year since my full read.

[miletus12]

Lots of bologna sandwich in that "official" account. 

The Myths still confound the official history and make it hard to understand why the US torpedo crisis was different and unique. It was a combination of insane Congressional and US Navy politics which allowed the Connecticut delegation to create and maintain a US government civil service monopoly on torpedoes and freeze private enterprise. 

It was legal chicanery which froze out Bliss Leavitt, the one US private torpedo maker out of designing or building US torpedoes. 

It was parsimonious funding of $150,000 1930 constant dollars, smaller than the USN's ICE CREAM budget, from 1933-1937 that fumble dorked the testing program. 

It was the incompetence of key individuals: Harold Stark (Bu-Ord and later CNO, who was removed for his ineptitude.), William Blandy *(Bu-Ord, later the Atomic Playboy, when the torpedo crisis hit, who was fired for being too slow to act.),  Ralph Christie (program supervisor for the Mark 5 influence feature and the Mark 14 and 15 torpedoes, who failed to validate the weapons for obvious reasons (See below, for why he was ultimately fired and beached.).), James Fife (Just an evil politician in uniform who impeded genuine progress and reform and conspired against his superiors, during the torpedo crisis. He was finally done in by Hiram Rickover who fixed his hash and avenged the Silent Service by his force out.), Thomas Withers (First incompetent Comsubpac, who was fired and sent to manage a drydock.), Robert English (Second incompetent Comsubpac killed in a plane crash.) and Claude Swanson (Incompetent Secretary of the Navy who dropped dead in office.), who combined via coincidence in toto to ruin the device's development.     

One can measure the turnaround of the Torpedo Crisis to two dates. mid-February 1943 when Charles "Uncle Charlie" Lockwood became Comsubpac and one month later when Stark was told to pack his bags for England because he was through as CNO. King, his successor, received a blistering report from Lockwood, endorsed by Nimitz about the torpedo crisis causes and effects. Blandy ultimately gets the boot after he spends nine months generally obstructing progress with cover-ups while his bureau tries various in-house fixes on the sly, until one George Hussey in December 1943 finally pulls these things together. To be fair to Blandy, he did actually start Bu-Ord remedial programs for a score of torpedoes to REPLACE the defective Mark 14, but King was tired of excuses found out about the coverup and fired him for inefficiency. The "Atomic Playboy" ironically post war managed to grab hold of the USN atomic bomb testing program.



He was another James Fife.       

Here is what the printed record shows.

1. The torpedo testing program was supervised by Bu-Ord from 1934 to 1937. Included in this test program was a fight between Bu-Ord and Bu-Ships. Who were the two admirals who fought over whose budget would eat the costs of the targets that might be damaged?

Rear Admiral Harold Rainsford Stark, 1934–1937 Bu-Ord.
Rear Admiral Emory S. Land, (March 16, 1933 – March 16, 1937)

There were two practice shots to test the torpedo detonator function using old Mark 10 torpedoes. One function test succeeded. The other failed. With this result the Mark 14 and Mark 15 (not tested in the two runs) was certified by Stark as weapon proofed, over the protests of Ralph Christie and Bliss Leavitt engineers.    

2. Rear Admiral Land started putting outrageous numbers of torpedo tubes on US destroyers, once he got wind of the test results. His reason? He reasoned that if the function failure rate wass fifty percent in perfect range conditions, then extra launchers would be needed for large salvoes of fish.

3. The magnetic influence feature of the American torpedoes, it is claimed was never globally tested. This may have been the case with the British and German test programs which failed to conduct such tests outside of northern Europrean waters. but the USN sent a brand-new cruiser, the USS Indianapolis, on a series of cruises with the developer of the American version of the magnetic influence feature, Ralph Christie, aboard to test the feature from the equator to the region off Connecticut. Christie discovered to his surprise that the magnetic influence feature failed to function in direct congruence to the field flux lines orientation latitudinally of the Earth's magnetic field. He suggested a rheostat be included in the signal amplifier circuit and a set of tuning tables be developed to enhance the and / or adjust the sensitivity of the magnetic influence feature in the Mark 5 element of the Mark 6 exploder. Stark rejected the recommendation. No one has ever explained WHY during WWII, that Christie, who knew the magnetic influence feature DID NOT WORK from the Indianapolis tests, insisted his submarines out of Fremantle continue to use that feature. It is to be noted that Christie put two of his more technically gifted submariners, Chester Nimitz Jr. and James McCallum to develop the rheostat and compile the tuning tables he thought would fix the Mark 6 exploder's magnetic influence feature. That did not happen until post-war and under other men.       

Blair, Clay, Jr. (1975), Silent Victory, Philadelphia: Lippincott, p 62.         
    
Now it should be noted that the original program manager for the Mark 14 torpedo was Ralph Christie.  This person ran afoul of Charles Lockwood, Thomas Kincaid, and James Fife. Of the three officers, Fife probably should have been cashiered and beached for the incompetence for which Christie was blamed out of the Fremantle submarines poor performance. Christie was cashiered instead because he failed to follow security protocols with regard to MAGIC, refused to follow Comsubpac recommendations regarding the magnetic influence device which he, Christie, designed, and then told Admiral Kincaid, his boss, to go to hell over the radio.  Getting Husband Kimmel's son killed and losing Sam Dealey did not help his cause, either. Fife helped bury Christie in those proceedings. Fife was a master of USN politics who wanted Christie's job and of course credit for Christie's successes.

One really hates James Fife after reading Blair's "Silent Victory". 

4. Other errors in the official accounts one notes *(See videos.).       

5. The USN had developed a pre-WWII anti-circular run device. It worked. The problem was that it was part of the tail control rudder steer assembly and added six inches to the length of a torpedo. US destroyer torpedoes could carry the device because at 24 feet long that 6 inches could be added to the standard Mark 15 torpedo as part of the tail cone with no sweat. The Mark 14 torpedo was 20 feet 6 inches long and it was conformed tight in length to the existing US submarine torpedo tubes of boats built after the V-class.  It should be remarked that the Mark 14 was the smallest of the 21 inch torpedoes used by WWII submarine users. The usual length of German and Italian torpedoes was 23.5 feet. Japanese Type 95 was similar in length at 23.6 feet. The British Mark VIII was 21.5 feet long and the British Mark X was 23.45 feet long. All of those fish had anti-circular run collars fitted. The Mark 14 did not. The fish, it was decided, did not need one.     
6. The background on the USS Tinosa and Captain Mommsen dropping derated torpedo warheads from a ninety-foot-tall crane onto a steel plate, are true. What is not stated clearly; was why that firing pin jammed in its guides. It was supposed to be driven by a shotgun shell into a detonation charge. The problem was that the entire GUN assembly was placed so as to be at right angles to the direction of torpedo travel or parallel to the plane of impact. In other words, the IDIOTS who designed the Mark 6 exploder, installed the contact pistol SIDEWAYs instead of vertical to the vector of impact. The pin was not the problem. The guide rails were. They bent under the side forces imparted and the pin jammed in the travel. The Japanese propellers taken off the shot down Zeroes were slippery and of a light aluminum alloy so that they could move fast enough before the rails bent and jammed the courser steel pins that were original issue with the gun assembly. Pig grease also helped slicken the guides. The ball switch mentioned, was a tack-on cover our rumps feature of no practical effect whatsoever, mandated by George Blandy, the atomic playboy, who was in charge of Bu-Ord at the time all of this offal hit the screws. It was meant to show that something had been done to fix the contact exploder. The contact exploder still was mounted sideways instead of parallel to the vector of impact. That ball switch was for the benefit of Admiral King who was about to court martial everyone at Bu-Ord for making these mistakes and being obstructive.

7. The USN changed its vending practices in the middle of the war. Goat Island and the Alexandria Nuthouse (The two US government torpedo factories.) had turned into Brewster Aircraft type disasters. Changes in management and bringing in private businesses management teams to re-order those establishments were undertaken as in-war remedies. In addition to these facts; Westinghouse, General Electric, Bliss Leavitt and a halfd a dozen other companies either took up torpedo production or began research into replacement torpedoes for the Marks 13, 14, and 15. Instead of 144,000 American dollars for torpedo development in 1930-1937, the US government spent 1 BILLION dollars in WWII to develop 39 different models of torpedoes. That money resulted in;

a. acoustic ASW torpedoes in 1943.
b. electric lead acid battery torpedoes (Copies of the G7e, the Mark 18s) in 1943.
c. oxygen or rather hydrogen peroxide torpedoes in 1944 (Ralph Christie's designs of 1929 updated to fit Mark 14s).
d. silver zinc seawater battery torpedoes in 1945.  
e. wake-homers in 1947. 
f. wire-guided torpedoes after the Korean War.
g. Multichannel function sonar fire control for torpedoes in 1957.                  

IOW, the USN did due diligence and made the largest investment in naval ordnance in its history between 1942 and 1945 and by far, the torpedo was the most intensively developed piece of ordnance of WWII costing half the price of Project Manhattan. 

8. They never did get the Mark 14 to work properly until they changed the front end out completely. The USN took inspiration from Italian torpedo designs for some of the fixes.  In war, they adopted British torpedo explosive filler, tinkered with the Mark 5 influence feature based on Christie's pre-war work and engaged the University of Washington Engineering Department to develop an entire new type of magnetic influence exploder feature (Mark 9) which actually worked on a principle somewhat similar to how steel cased land mines were detected which did not work either. Postwar the UoW did develop a proximity fusing which would work, but by then the idea was hit to kill ASW weapons, including ASW torpedoes. Work on a keel-breaker did not become important again until there was a largish Russian surface fleet to sink. Then two methods of keel-breaking were employed; a WWII JAPANESE method used to shatter the USS Hornet and USS Indianapolis among other US ships, and a still top-secret magnetic influence method.  About the only thing I know about that method, is that it does not use the magnetic influence feature as seen in the Mark 5. It is a proximity-fuse based system that works because I have seen it tested.       

[miletus12]

Yup, that is the T-34. Great tank?

Try this on for size.



The truth is that the T-34 eas a good tank for the Russian way of War as it existed in 1941. Note that statement. The Russian way of war was numbers and formulas as epitomized by "scientific Marxist theory". Which is a reminder, that the commissars' generals were as incompetent as tacticians as the Czar's generals. They fought by the book and did not pay much attention to nuance and subtleness.

Sounds exactly like the Americans? So why was the T-34 so different from the Sherman?

It was designed to meet RUSSIAN criteria, and that means, it was during WWII, a quick build throwaway weapon among a host of such types of Russian throwaway weapons. One expects this result from the kind of evil government that treated its citizens as state enemies and throwaway weapon systems.

The T-34 was used as an excuse by the Germans to explain their defeat. The Russians claimed that they did not have T-34s in sufficient numbers to stop the Germans.

The problem is that both sides needed the T-34 as a lie to cover their strategic (Germans) mistakes or tactical (Russian) incompetence.

Armor.

Armor on a T-34 shattered like GLASS. If the armor was so good, why was the short barrel Panzer III knocking T-34s out by the hundreds? Spalling from the impact of shells flaked off razor shards from the inside face of the plates that razor blade ricochetted and chopped Russian tank crews to hamburger. Russian crew survival chances from such non-penetrating hits, was (see video) was about 15%. Sherman crews? 80%. One would like elasticity in the armor. Not glass shatter effect.

Infantry kills.

The T-34 did not like panzer truppen. Panzer grenadiers liked to climb on Russian tanks open hatches and drop grenades down in the fighting compartment. Or the Germans would throw a lighted gas-rag soaked and wicked beer bottle filled with gasoline on the engine deck and set the tank on fire. Chances of a Russian crew bailing out? About 30%. Sherman? 70%

Ammunition.

Russian tank ammunition propellant liked to catch fire if you looked at it funny. The Sherman was BAD as to this problem, but the T-34 was much worse.

First look and first shoot.

When one ranks the tanks for this feature, the best to worst was...

1. American
2. British
3. ITALIAN
4. German
5. Japanese
6. Russian
7. French

Postwar the French improve a lot. Russians? Korean War, unless the Americans drove into an ambush, they usually got the drop on the enemy T-34s and shot them up. And even in an ambush, the Americans target served faster. Two tanks that should match up on paper as equals, the kill exchange was 4 T-34s dead for every Sherman lost. And the Sherman crews lived. Remember the razor blade effect.

Speed.

The Russians used an obsolete crash gear box. Paper T-34 tactical speed of 25 km/hr on broken ground was practically 15 km/hr. The Shernan was twice as fast functionally and it could road march between breakdowns of about 300 kms. (2 fuelings.) The T-34 could manage strategic mobility on paper equal to this feat, but in practice it usually was railed to the front, massed to the line of departure and was killed within 30 minutes of contract with enemy. If it lived through the operation it broke down (gear box seized up or the suspension snapped or the tracks came apart.) within 100 km of the start line. There was a REASOM that about half of the armor the Russians sent to their eastern armies in Manchuria when they attacked the Japanese was in the form of British and American lend lease tanks. Manchurian railways were horrible, there was a paucity of flatbed railcars and locomotives and the tanks, therefore had to road march to the line of departure, in some cases up to 500 kilometers from the railheads. Shermans can do it. T-34s cannot. I do not know about the Valentines the Russians had, but I think those would do better than the T-34.

Guns.

The Russian 85/50 with APCR was inferior to the 76/50 US composite rigid. Machine guns were a wash, but that American M2HB that was supposed to be on the Sherman as Stuka dissuader, was able to poke holes in the rear of a T-34. The DShKa had no comparable result.

Combined arms.

If one looks at the films of Russian tanks in the attack, one notices Russian infantry BEHIND their tanks. One notices the lack of artillery support aside from the Russian mortars, which is good, except that mortaring your own (convict) infantry and chasing them forward with NKVD file closers is not the way to combine infantry and tanks, is it? And why charge in a Russian version of a slow Banzai charge? Nine million Russians were killed, a lot of them mowed down by German machine guns. That was the Russian infantry. Want to guess what 35,000 Russian T-34s were doing?

And to destroy a German Wehrmacht myth. The Russians never numbered better than 3 to 2 at the point of contact in men or machines. The east front Germans were just inept. Not snowed under. The Russian generals were actually BETTER than their German opposites. Their tactical doctrine justg was casualty intensive.

Accuracy of the main gun while on the move.

1. Americans
2. British
3. ITALIANS
4. Germans
5. French
6. Russians
8. Japanese

At the halt with the condition of ambush.

1. Germans
2. ITALIANS (Semovente crews were sharpshooters.)
3. Americans
4. British
5. French
6. Japanese
7. Russians

Part of that was crew training. Americans trained like artillerymen. Part of it was tech. German sights were overcomplicated, British sights were "average". American sights were designed for rapid acquisition as in point anhd shoot. Russian sights were "German" in complexity and lousy in the look and shoot parameters.

Ergonomics.

The Russian T-34 is laid out to have the least internal volume workspace practicable to minimize surface strike area and reduce tank silhouette. The ergonomics applied; refer to look out, comfort of ride and the stick in the mud. Ground pressure is a measure of these attributes of stick in the mud. The T-34 bogged as often as the Tiger or as often as the Sherman. In addition the T-34 traveled with all the effects on the crew of a cement mixer. There is a reason the Sherman had padded seats and the Russians loved the Sherman for it. At least in the Sherman, one did not break cocyii on steel saddles or plates. One could move inside a Sherman and shift around without losing feet or hand to the machinery and move ammunition without blowing oneself up. This affects gun service. The T-34 gun crew could get off one shot every minute. Germans could manage four shots. The Americans trained for six and exceeded this rate. British? Well, the Churchill is a disaster. Expect three to four shots from a well trained British crew until the ready ammo is used up, then it is Russian rates for those guys. The Cromwell is about the same.

Fuel Stowage.

Right next to the faulty wiring and the amnmunition and with the crew in the fighting compartment. How does that sound? Like long pork about to be barbecued. Do not forget the sparks from the razor blade effect striking other hard metal.

Build quality.

These are Russians. Communist Russians. Welding was a chicken shadow soup evolution. 8,000 manhours to build a 1940 T-34. In 1943, this was cut down to 3,000 manhours. What? No lights, no horns, tack welding, electronics was not waterproofed. No radios. Communication by shouting or kicking each other. Ha. Heat treating? Nope. Turret basket? Nope. Amputation events were a regularity. Ammunition bins? What are those? Burn baby burn.

Stalin order.

Don't drive the T-34, rail it or lorry it. Sabotage excuse for the relative breakdown rate *(100 breakdowns after a 50 kilometer road march around the time of Stalingrad.) Tank crews who abandon tank in battle get to join the crfminal infantry and participate in glorious suicide assaults being encouraged by NKVD file closers. This is Stalin, so it makes sense to him that all the brittle cannot shoot flatiron amputation machines are being sabotaged by their own criminal tank crews.

Gunner's sights.

As previously covered, if present, the gun sights were over complicated. What the video does not mention is that the range scales cut into the sights to stadia bracket the target were wrong. So was the ballistic tables for the 76/50 gun. This was corrected for the 85/50 gun.

Ammunition.

The Russians either had good shells and rotten propellant or the obverse. It caught fire for no reason or exploded in the tube at shots out or jammed in the breech, rendering the gun useless. But in every case, the Germans describe the results as unbelievably absurd.

Cannot see to drive.

Russian T-34s would self immolate without the Germans even shooting at them. T-34s would often drive into ravines or off hills and tip over and blow up or catch fire. When caught in groups, one T-34 would see the Germans and engage, while the rest milled around in confusion like drunken sheep waiting for the Germans to pick them off at leisure.

Russian quantity.

The video claims 2 to 1. My own research suggests 3 to 2. The Russians suffered 9 MILLION combat deaths. The Germans lost 5.5 million combat deaths. The exchange ratio I have covered above. But 45,000 T-34s killed and 12,000 survivors in 1945; the tank was an engineering disaster. The SHERMAN, if produced in Russia to American standards would have measureably outperformed the T-34 in combat on the Eastern Front. Lend Lease Shermans did, with a near 1 to 1 exchange rate with German tanks in the east. In the WEST the Germans were whacked at the AFV exchange rate of 1 to 1 also.

In Korea when T-34s encountered Shermans, as previously mentioned, the exchange ratio was 4 to 1. One has to take into account, that tanks fight as part of combined arms teams and tank crew training accounts for 70%-90% of combat success, but the T-34 myth is exactly that, a pack of propaganda.

[miletus12]

Here is a myth; the American soldier was eager to avenge Pearl Harbor.

The common belief is that the American racist attitude led to an intense urge to get at the Asian enemy and extirpate him.

“Before we’re through with ‘em, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell.” – Admiral Halsey (December 1941)

Aside from the observation, that a man who makes such a statement and means it, is not exactly mentally fit for the stress of command; one would assume the USN was mentally prepared to "hate the enemy".

How about the American army?

Uncensored WWII-era surveys show US troops' surprising thoughts about Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor

Edward J.K. Gitre
December 7, 2021

Tuesday is the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which killed 2,400 civilians and sailors, wounded nearly 1,200 Americans, and damaged or destroyed 19 naval vessels and 328 aircraft.

It also thrust an ambivalent nation into World War II.

Stories abound of young men joining up after Pearl Harbor. But how did US troops respond when they learned of the attack?

Thanks to an Army survey program launched the very next day, we know what was on the minds of GIs in the Army's Ninth Infantry Division, which was stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the US's largest military installation.

President Franklin Roosevelt's declaration of war on Japan on December 8 may have braced many Americans for the fight ahead, but the concerns of most men of the Ninth, it appears, had little to do with events in Washington, DC, or in Hawaii.

In fact, getting US troops to take the Imperial Japanese Army seriously was more difficult than some histories of the Pacific war would suggest.

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Summary: Elmo Roper Jr. (Roper Polling) suggested opinion polling as a morale measuring tool to the army. For reasons of service cohesion and fear of criticism, Secretary of War Stinson forbade the practice. Marshall allowed it on the sly, because he needed data. The 9th US Inf. was selected as the Guinea pigs. They were mobbing up at Ft. Bragg, NC and could be slipped a secret survey without most objectors noticing it.

The results were... "not too good".

"Don't, for God's sake, take away furloughs right now. Don't get excited about Japan. Be calm and remember that we need furloughs more so now than before. To take away all furloughs now is not needed in this division yet—war organization will take time—and we don't want AWOL's," cautioned another respondent.

Soldiers were more concerned about their furloughs than about fighting the Japanese. Further surveys of the army showed the American soldier was not motivated to "hate the enemy" enough in the opinion of the American high command. One understands all the "Why We Fight" films and other Hollywood generated indoctrination generated as a result?

In the end... This program of propaganda and artificially generated racism had a curious effect.

Some had gained the appreciation Marshall wanted them to have.

"There is something I hate to admit, but we did not win our battles because the Americans was better than the Japs. On the contrary, the Jap had it all over us, both Officers & men. It was our superiority in (material) strength & equipment," confessed a combat infantry (man) stationed in the Mediterranean.

The thing is, that remark came from a man who fought Italians and Germans and had yet to experience Japanese soldiers as an enemy. How would he have formed an opinion like he expressed unless:

a. He based it on his experience fighting Italians and Germans.
b. He extrapolated his experience to what he was shown in the propaganda films and applied his experience to what he expected the Japanese were?

BTW, for the record... he was correct.

[575]

Danish combat troops - male and female - were eager for deployment to help the locals in whose neighbourhood the'd go to get a better life; to participate in making a difference out there.
By 2003 the constituency was somewhat ready to go fight terrorism at least their elected politicians were so. We apparently had the highest casualty rates in Afghanistan per capita of NATO. There was no real questioning the National participation and young peoples continued going for national service and enlistment regardles of casualties.
Perhaps some reason was the rather intense media coverage from an unexpected angle - did You whatch "Armadillo"? It was never really spoken against like the Vietnam war where we of course didn't participate but were vocal on the sideline. And returning casualties were televised!
Though also apparently the realization among journalists that this was special and there be no need to condemm the troops; just doing the job and at times dying during the process.
When troops were pulled out nobody really did anything but shrug.

Then Parliament sent off a Frigate to West African waters against pirates without a negotiated agreement as where to unload captured ones. For which we have one pirate with an amputated leg hospitalized in Ghana and who certainly will be transported to Denmark for trail and treatment; his compatriots will follow at some time. Its foolish action but shoulders are just shrugged.

Soldiers have all kinds reasons of why to go on deployment. Government might not like those and in past times wanted to imprint the right reason. Don't expect your troops or population to follow such.

[miletus12]

Some "fun" facts (I use sarcasm here. There is nothing funny about any of these facts.), to negate the mythology.

1. 2/3 of Americans were drafted to fight in WWII. In Vietnam, of the troops in country, 2/3 of the those who fought, volunteered.
2. Nazi death camps killed at least 11 million human beings. Ask an American and if they know about the camps at all, they will tell you 6 million people were killed. They forget the Romani, political prisoners, religiously persecuted, gays, artists, intellectuals, and whoever else fell into categories the Nazis defined as "subhuman" including the mentally and physically challenged. They were mass murdered in the same system.
3. Referring to (2) the Germans killed 13 million Russian civilians. Stalin killed another 7 million. The Japanese killed 14 million Chinese, 1 million Filipinos, an equal number of Koreans, Indonesians and some 50,000 + Allied POWs.
4. Americans head hunted Japanese soldiers in New Guinea. This was in retaliation for the Japanese eating Allied prisoners of war. Seriously, it was a common practice for Japanese cannibals to medically amputate an arm or leg off an Australian or American and eat that as ingesting the spirit of their enemy.
5. How many Axis soldiers reached the United States? 400,000 of them. Many were overflow from British operations.
6. Referring to headhunting in 4? The decapitation rate in Saipan was 60%. 
7. The Americans actually were fairly well disciplined. They only committed about 35,000 sexual assaults of record. Globally. That is about half the recorded British cases in Europe.
8. Tokyo, not Berlin was the most heavily damaged city via means of aerial bombardment. 
9. It was not the atomic bombs alone, but the Russian attack on Manchukuo, the neutral nations' collective rejection to act as go-betweens for Japan and 5th Fleet and 20th Air Force operations combined that caused Hirohito to agree to a surrender. HE was the one who had to quit, not the Japanese imperial government.
10. The Soviet Union fought the bulk of the Germans. The British held the Germans at bay between the Fall of France and German-Soviet war, and the Americans supplied 2/3 of the physical means to beat the Germans.  THAT is the fundamental way the Big Three actually beat the Germans. Not one of them alone could have done it. Special notice of British geography. Gatekeeper is an important role and advantage when it comes to WWII.   
11. WWII can be broken down into these main components, er wars:
a. Sino-Japanese war.
b. Precursor period in Europe and Africa. *This includes Ethiopia and Spain and all German and Italian aggressions committed prior to Barbarossa.
c. British-Italian war. 
d. German-Soviet war.
e. Japanese-American war.

--Structurally the initial German aggressions can be considered next country over invasions for the purposes of loot and plunder for the main war against the Soviet Union. The 1940 French campaign falls into this precursor period.
--The western allies were an adjunct to the German-Soviet War. Still, they tied down 3 million Germans in the air campaign and denied the Germans the parity they needed to stop the Russians.     
--Britain's war in Africa and the Mediterranean was against the Italians. The German component was an adjunct. And in that respect the Americans show up as an adjunct to the British.
--The CBI was a sideshow. The main war, the Japanese found they had, was a two-front war. Chinese to the west, Americans to the east. They were winning in China. How were they doing in the east? Not too good. 

12. The UK lost her empire. 
13. The South Americans fought in Europe. An example is the Brazilian expeditionary CORPS in Italy.
14. WWII started at the Marco-Polo Bridge.
15. Pearl Harbor was actually expected and predicted. What made it work was American arrogance and Japanese "luck". And the Hawaii command asleep on duty.
16. US entry into WWII can be pegged at the invasion of Iceland.
17. Most middle level Nazis (Werner von Braun, Gerd von Rundstedt) skated scott-free of their war crimes. So did most Japanese war criminals. Was Kondo, Nobutake hanged for the 25,000+ dead slaves, who dug out those submarine pens at Rabaul on his order?  How about Hirohito? Or the commander of unit 731 who murdered 200,000 Chinese in medical experiments? 
18. Most of the military transport on the Eastern Front was Mister Ed, not Mister Ford until 1943. The Germans used 400,000 trucks (300,000 of them French) during Barbarossa, but by January 1942, most of the looted trucks were broken and the French were not able to "supply" new ones, no matter how hard the Germans pressed Vichy. The Russians got 400,000 trucks from the American, and built 100,000, but Mister Ed still accounted for 1/2 their military land transport. Estimates are that 5 million horses died in Russian service. Stalin treated his horses better than he treated his "convict" infantry. His incompetence killed 9 million of them with a lot of German help.
19. It was not the French civilians or the French troops who lost the 1940 French campaign. That was purely the French high command, and I mean Gamelin, Huntziger, Weygang, Petain et al. Those "people" were either traitors or incompetents. Make a choice. Criminality was present in the cases of Huntziger and Petain. Gamelin was incompetent. 
20. Winston Churchill liked de Gaulle. It was Roosevelt who hated his guts. 
21. The French resistance was "there". The Titoists and the Dutch fought harder. 
22. Even then, it was known that Churchill was less than the grand strategist he thought he was. The joke; "Hide the Balkan maps!", was a carryover from WWI. Some of his schemes for Norway and the Baltic Sea and Sweden, ignored Orville and Wilbur Wright and William Moffett and John Holland and geography, topology and weather and common sense. The only other allied war leader who was this "uniquely unqualified" for military operations and strategy was Stalin. 
23. FDR was about as naive as Machiavelli or Sun Tzu. If nothing else; he on the jobbed as assistant secretary of the American navy in WWI. He clearly knew enough to outwit Churchill and Stalin and Hitler at every turn and get the war he wanted.            


 

[lordroel]

Jan 2, 2022 7:46:18 GMT miletus12 said:

Some fun facts.

1. 2/3 of Americans were drafted to fight in WWII. In Vietnam of the troops in country, 2/3 of the those who fought, volunteered.
2. Nazi death camps killed at least 11 million human beings. Ask an American and if they know about the camps at all, they will tell you 6 million people were killed. They forget the Romani, political prisoners, religiously persecuted, gays, artists, intellectuals, and whoever else fell into categories the Nazis defined as "subhuman" including the mentally and physically challenged. They were mass murdered in the same system.
3. Referring to (2) the Germans killed 13 million Russian civilians. Stalin killed another 7 million. The Japanese killed 14 million Chinese, 1 million Filipinos, an equal number of Koreans, Indonesians and some 50,000 + Allied POWs.
4. Americans head hunted Japanese soldiers in New Guinea. This was in retaliation for the Japanese eating Allied prisoners of war. Seriously, it was a common practice for Japanese cannibals to medically amputate an arm or leg off an Australian or American and eat that as ingesting the spirit of their enemy.
5. How many Axis soldiers reached the United States? 400,000 of them. Many were overflow from British operations.
6. Referring to headhunting in 4? The decapitation rate in Saipan was 60%.

Think 2 and 3 are not fun facts miletus12 .