What's new
USCHO Fan Forum

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • The USCHO Fan Forum has migrated to a new plaform, xenForo. Most of the function of the forum should work in familiar ways. Please note that you can switch between light and dark modes by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right of the main menu bar. We are hoping that this new platform will prove to be faster and more reliable. Please feel free to explore its features.

POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

Status
Not open for further replies.
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

The Hitler Channel!

We used to call it "Hitler and hardtack" because it was all either WW2 or the Civil War.

They had a show with (for the time) amazing animations about aerial battles during WW2 that was out of this world. Really, really good stuff about the performance of the fighter models and the advanced tactics they used. tldr: we lucked out: the Germans had superior machines but they were atypically dense in tactics and they didn't have strong pilot training; the Japanese OTOH has inferior planes but they were brilliant strategists and, early on anyway, they gave their pilots the initiative. It was only later when their AF basically became the Washington Generals.

If the Luftwaffe had had the same determination and aggressiveness as the Wehrmacht the Brits might well have lost the air war of the Battle of Britain and the invasion might have gone the other direction.
 
Last edited:
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

It was only later when their AF basically became the Washington Generals.

IIRC, they lost a lot of their experienced pilots and had to go to new guys, right? Plus, losing more carriers as time went on gave them less to work with.
 
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

We used to call it "Hitler and hardtack" because it was all either WW2 or the Civil War.

They had a show with (for the time) amazing animations about aerial battles during WW2 that was out of this world. Really, really good stuff about the performance of the fighter models and the advanced tactics they used. tldr: we lucked out: the Germans had superior machines but they were atypically dense in tactics and they didn't have strong pilot training; the Japanese OTOH has inferior planes but they were brilliant strategists and, early on anyway, they gave their pilots the initiative. It was only later when their AF basically became the Washington Generals.

If the Luftwaffe had had the same determination and aggressiveness as the Wehrmacht the Brits might well have lost the air war of the Battle of Britain and the invasion might have gone the other direction.
I remember that show. It was ****ing brilliant.
 
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

I thought the Zero was supposed to be the best plane in the Pacific.
 
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

I thought the Zero was supposed to be the best plane in the Pacific.
It was until the Hellcat II was introduced. The first Hellcat lacked, well, everything in comparison to the Zero.
 
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

Thankfully Goering had the same military leadership skills as Sniffles.

Although at least he served in the first war, and was one of Germany's top aces. Like Arnold at Saratoga, if his history ended there he'd be a national hero instead of a pariah.
 
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

It was at the start of the war, but Japan didn’t innovate the way the US did. Look at the difference between what the US had on hand at the start of the war (Dauntless, Buffalo, Flying Fortress) and what we were producing by the end (Mustangs, Black Widows, Lightning, Superfortress). Japanese were still building Zeros.
 
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

IIRC, they lost a lot of their experienced pilots and had to go to new guys, right? Plus, losing more carriers as time went on gave them less to work with.

Yes, they lost everybody of value in the first half of the war. Meanwhile, the RAF was picking up great pilots from all the nations the Germans had occupied, so they only got stronger, and of course the US was perfecting industrialization of military labor and began churning out technically proficient pilots from farm boys in the span of about 7 months. We won the war with clipboards.
 
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

Thankfully Goering had the same military leadership skills as Sniffles.

I've read (no idea whether it's true) that there has been a reevaluation of Goering as a military strategist and he's now consider better than cromulent.

Goering's issue was in the political sphere where a lot of his activity was counter-productive for the greater German effort. IIRC it was Goering who used bureaucratic skullduggery to destroy the German hardwater program in order to divert the resources back to his projects. And of course Goering's hard core political attacks on Jews in science academia resulted in all of the following being lost from the German side to the Allied side:

Hans Bethe, Felix Bloch, Max Born, Albert Einstein, James Franck, Fritz Haber, Erwin Schrödinger.

As in, holy sh-t!
 
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

Some comic relief

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="und" dir="ltr">i- <a href="https://t.co/QznSnTZkJ1">pic.twitter.com/QznSnTZkJ1</a></p>— marisa kabas (@MarisaKabas) <a href="https://twitter.com/MarisaKabas/status/1185271074067566592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 18, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
I've read (no idea whether it's true) that there has been a reevaluation of Goering as a military strategist and he's now consider better than cromulent.

Goering's issue was in the political sphere where a lot of his activity was counter-productive for the greater German effort. IIRC it was Goering who used bureaucratic skullduggery to destroy the German hardwater program in order to divert the resources back to his projects. And of course Goering's hard core political attacks on Jews in science academia resulted in all of the following being lost from the German side to the Allied side:

Hans Bethe, Felix Bloch, Max Born, Albert Einstein, James Franck, Fritz Haber, Erwin Schrödinger.

As in, holy sh-t!

He told Hitler he could bring the British to the peace table through air power alone. And he might have been right except his plans were terrible. There was no strategy to his attacks on the island. They were scattered, had little practical effects and destroyed the morale of his pilots. If his attacks were concentrated with hundreds of bombers attacking a single city it could have been devastating. Instead some were sent to London, some to Liverpool, some to Birmingham etc. The smaller attacks were much less effective. One historian says when you look at the combined force thrown against England in the summer and fall of 1940 vs what the Luftwaffe accomplished it is one of the greatest military failures ever.
 
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

I've read (no idea whether it's true) that there has been a reevaluation of Goering as a military strategist and he's now consider better than cromulent.

Goering's issue was in the political sphere where a lot of his activity was counter-productive for the greater German effort. IIRC it was Goering who used bureaucratic skullduggery to destroy the German hardwater program in order to divert the resources back to his projects. And of course Goering's hard core political attacks on Jews in science academia resulted in all of the following being lost from the German side to the Allied side:

Hans Bethe, Felix Bloch, Max Born, Albert Einstein, James Franck, Fritz Haber, Erwin Schrödinger.

As in, holy sh-t!

How many Solvay attendees were chased out of their country or even Europe between WWI and WWII?
 
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

For a great look at WW2 week by week check out Time Ghost on YouTube. The host is Indy Neidell, who hosted The Great War week by week on that channel.
 
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

It finally happened. He sh-t or p-ssed himself on tv.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Trump took one question from a reporter at the end of the NASA event and proceeded to rant about a variety of topics for more than 7 minutes without interruption. He then abruptly got up and left he room. <a href="https://t.co/q1ZXhdbjEq">pic.twitter.com/q1ZXhdbjEq</a></p>— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1185238507121500162?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 18, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
Re: POTUS 45.59: It Was a Great Phone Call

He told Hitler he could bring the British to the peace table through air power alone. And he might have been right except his plans were terrible. There was no strategy to his attacks on the island. They were scattered, had little practical effects and destroyed the morale of his pilots. If his attacks were concentrated with hundreds of bombers attacking a single city it could have been devastating. Instead some were sent to London, some to Liverpool, some to Birmingham etc. The smaller attacks were much less effective. One historian says when you look at the combined force thrown against England in the summer and fall of 1940 vs what the Luftwaffe accomplished it is one of the greatest military failures ever.

At first they did focus well on the industrial and military points, but over time got distracted to go for the big psychological targets. In the end that left the RAF with what they needed to hold out and bring the air war to Germany itself. Had the Germans stuck with their plan it very well could have worked, but as you point out they vastly misplaced their energy.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top