Recent content by VinceReeves

Ah, the racist nonsense that everyone from the Middle East is a crazy religious fundamentalist towel head. Especially if they don't like the Coalition. I'm wasting my time here.

Well, that's true, but what I'm trying to get at is what anthropologists call "charismatic authority". It just seems to be a historical constant that people never seem to be impressed when they are conquered by "smartness", be it greater mobility or technological superiority. This goes back to...

Well, the point I'm making is that the modern way generally isn't very successful when trying to hold somebody else's territory. There's a belief that wars can be won quickly and cheaply by mobility or technological superiority, but it rarely works out that way. I think you have to beat the...

We'll just have to agree to disagree then. I think the "Blitzkrieg" style of mobile warfare is to some extent a false economy. It looks very impressive with lots of quick, resounding victories, but the victor ends up owning a lot of territory with restless populations, and a large amount of...

That's true to an extent, but the Wehrmacht philosophy was war of manoeuvre, which was repeated in Russia, the Western Desert etc. Whenever they were involved in a static battle, their record wasn't particularly impressive (though they were often outnumbered in these situations). i.e. the...

Think Italy was the worst. It was obviously an impetuous decision by Mussolini to get involved. The French were unlucky to be attacked while they were re-equipping - another couple of months and the Luftwaffe would have had a hard time against them. Besides, if the French Army were so...

Skua for me. The most effective Allied bomber during the Battle Of France, and it belonged to the Royal Navy.

I agree that none of the planes listed in the poll should be there. Anybody who thinks that the Skua was a bad plane doesn't know anything about it. It's a toss-up between the Seamew and the Buccaneer, and I'm going with the Seamew.

I think it's Iwo Jima - it's the only battlefield I can think of that was absolutely primed to be a death trap. The Japanese worked out every fire position on the island, and anywhere that was potential cover was mined and booby trapped. They then pre-ranged every yard of ground from their...

Russian armour is the crucial factor here. The Japanese don't have any credible GA aircraft until the last couple of months of the war, and we don't know how they would have fared as they weren't really committed to combat. Assuming the battle is in China/Manchuria/Korea/Siberia, it's...

In Dunstan Hadley's "Barracuda Pilot" he mentions that all FAA pilots expected to fly single-engine types were trained on the Harvard, but pilots who would go on to fighters would be additionally trained on the Master. His course got a brief fling on the Master when they returned from Canada...

I'm not sure they were direct equivalents, though. My understanding was that the Texan/Harvard was a general purpose trainer, whereas the Master was more of an advanced trainer for fighter pilots.

From what I can remember, I don't think 255 IAP was ever entirely equipped with P-47's. Its operational mount was the P-40 up to and including the Petsamo-Kirkenes offensive in 1944, and possibly until the end of the war. I think the Russians simply didn't like the size of the P-47 - they...

As far as I'm aware, only one VVS squadron received the P-47, which was 255 IAP of the Northern Fleet (VVS-SF). My understanding is that the Russians didn't like them, found no use for them, and so they didn't see combat.

I think when people think of "magic" or "the occult" they think of the supernatural, but that's not how it really works. Magic does work, but it works psychologically, not supernaturally. Nazism was an almost entirely magical regime - it worked by manipulating symbols to affect the...