Best Tank Killer of WW2 continued

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mosquitoman said:
Definitely, good at soft skinned vehicles but tanks were a tougher nut to crack for it. Best anti-tank air to ground weapon would have to be a 500lb bomb. Easier than a rocket to use and more accurate
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As I've already shown, Napalm was the best tank killing weapon. The area of coverage is huge. Hitting the tank was easy, and often more than one tank could be destroyed in a single drop. Napalm burned so hot it would usually explode the tanks fuel and ammo. Even near misses were sufficient to roast the crew and ruin the running gear. Napalm was used quite effectively in the ETO starting in the late spring of 1944, though it is not well publicized.

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Lunatic
 
Napalm is an ugly weapon. Unfortunately, historians tend to ignore the fact it was heavily used starting in mid-1944 for this reason. You will rarely find much detail on its use in the ETO, and many sources will claim that it was only used in the PTO. Somehow, burning Japs alive was more acceptable than burning krauts alive. Who can figure?

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Lunatic
 
Napalm was extremely effective against most targets. It was extremely effective against Japanese pill boxes and cave positions where there was only one entry (common on Iwo Jima). It would consume all the oxygen and sufficate them.

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Lunatic
 
I can see someone up there is trying to get a rise out of me, but I am not going to play the game.

I can see its usefullness but I am glad it is no longer used in that sense. Yes we have more terrible weapons now but I just dont like napalm.
 
I can confirm that Napalm was used in early 1945 against hidden soft targets in southern Germany. There are no documents to proof that it was actually intended to be used against armored forces, like tanks, in that time. I think there is also a colourfilm about such a use. I have seen it on a documentation about the closing months of Nazi Germany.
 
Iwo Jima cave entrances actually had multiple entrances. There were 16 miles of tunnels and 1500 rooms below the surface of the island which is only 7.5 square miles. Many times, "cleared" caves became reinfested with Japanese, not from the surface. Bill Genaust was one of many Marines that entered one of those caves to never return.

Most aerial bombing done to Iwo Jima before the invasion was very ineffective. Napalm was used before the invasion to take out enemy installations and to remove camouflage, but that was ineffective because the Japanese used very little combustible material for camouflage.
 
That is correct.

Lt General Tadamichi Kuribayashi had been assigned to command the garrison of Iwo Jima in May 1944. He had served in the United States as a deputy defence attaché and considered the USA the "last country in the world that Japan should fight." When he arrived he immediately began to reorganise the chaotic defences that were in place and with the arrival of additional troops and Korean labourers began a huge construction programme that included tunnels, caves, gun emplacements, pillboxes, bunkers and command posts, many of which were mutually supporting and linked by a vast underground communications system. Many were so well constructed that the intensive naval shelling and aerial bombing in the weeks before the attack simply failed to damage them. A lot of these fortifications were dug into the soft pumice-like volcanic rock, which mixed well with cement to provide additional reinforcement. Supply areas, ammunition stores and medical facilities were all constructed within the underground tunnel system and when the fighting was at its height, many Marines reporting hearing voices emanating from the ground below them. The tunnel system was so extensive that many of the troops that were defending Mount Suribachi managed to escape to the north before the volcano fell.
http://www.rickard.karoo.net/articles/battles_iwojima.html#Japanese
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John Bradley's son wrote an excellent book about Iwo Jima that gives a good picture of that as well. There are a number of sites that also talk about the extensive tunnel system. The Japanese mastered Prairie Dog warfare.
 
Here is some interesting things I have read about the tunnel systems there.

1. A maze of tunnels

The Japanese on Iwo Jima were so thoroughly dug in that little more than the muzzles of their guns showed above the ground; everything else was hidden in a maze of subterranean chambers and connecting tunnels.

2. 6 - months construction

Garrison commander Lieut. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi had spent six months supervising the construction of innumerable installations around the island. Mount Suribachi was honeycombed with seven levels of tunnels connecting about 1,000 chambers. The network in the hilly northern quarter of the island had tunnels that branched off to incorporate numerous natural caves. The flat center of the island afforded few natural strong points, and the builders, forced to start from scratch, laid out one section of their underground defenses in a neat grid.

3. Defense and counterattack

In most of the defense systems, multiple entrances allowed the Japanese to mount sudden counterattacks from unlikely quarters. The defenders could outflank advancing Marine units by racing unseen through the tunnels to another entrance in the attackers' rear. In case of naval shelling or aerial bombardment, the defenders could retreat deep into the maze.
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x19/xm1923.html
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Here is also a lecture from James Bradley the author of the book you are talking about The Flags of our Fathers. His father was on Iwo Jima.

I mean, get this, for seventy-two-days before the battle, the Air Force came in, and they dropped enough bombs on this tiny little island to make it the single most bombed spot in the entire Pacific War, and then three days before the battle, the Navy came in with enormous battleships, and they rocked the island, shoving shells the weight of Volkswagens, against the island. They resculpted the mountain of Mt. Suribachi. They didn't kill anyone, they only rearranged the sand. See, the Japanese were not on Iwo Jima. They were underground.

If any of you have ever been to Toronto, there are two cities of Toronto really. You're up above ground there are buildings, it looks like a city. You go underneath, there's a whole other city with five-star restaurants, dry cleaners, subways, grocery stores, people are living underground, just like Iwo Jima — 22,000 Japanese troops underground. Now Steven Spielberg's making a movie about this. and you'll see for the first time that everybody thinks it's like European fighting — throw a grenade they pop up, shoot them. Now these guys were underground on a five-mile-long island. There were sixteen miles of tunnels. These tunnels were shellacked. They had electrical systems, lights, ventilation systems, and they connected 1,500 different rooms. They were alive and well, and bombardment could not get them.
http://www.webb-institute.edu/Alumni/bradley_lecture.php
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So yeah I can see where napalm would be effective here however this proves what you say about there being multiple entrances and exits and not just positions with one entry as stated above. The sources are there too for the certain people who require sources to believe what is being said.
 
I read a lot of material on that battle before the latest presentation I gave on Iwo Jima last month. I have also spoken to a couple of guys that were on that "God forsaken place". For the time of the battle, there were about 60,000 Marines against 21,000- 23,000 Japanese defenders. That would have made it the most populated place on earth at the time. With an almost 3-1 numerical superiority, it took the Marines 36 days to secure that 7.5 square miles. It took many months after that to completely clear the island of the Japanese troops.
 
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