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Although much agreed, this is off: If Hitler had let his generals run the war, (Hitler rants against Jews, Slavs, Roma, ETC, but does not lay down a start date for invading Poland) the war would not have started by Germany. Stalin would have started the shooting with Finland, the Baltics, and possibly Poland also. Germany would then (if the Generals had their way) been in the (real history) S.U. position of rescuing half of Poland from Stalin.Germany/Nazi myths, there are so many.
Germany would have won the war if Hilter had let his generals run it - false. He pushed them into many of their early victories, but then defeats later on. If you take out the early victories, who knows where WWII goes.
Crystal Meth, Culture, and political motivation.Man for man, the Wehrmacht got more out of their troops than other nations - true. Even with all the books i have read, i still can't fully understand how it was possible. They are just people, just like soldiers from other nations. Still, with less support forces, less mechanization, they did more with less from start to finish.
You wouldn't happen to have the Luftwaffe's reports on first encountering the long-range escorts (P-51s) over Europe? I would kinda imagine this being a major shock for the Luftwaffe, with some immediate emergency meetings to figure out how to deal with this?
Thank you. Just wondering if the Luftwaffe leadership and pilots fully appreciated what the long-rage escort meant for them.Hi,
I did a blog post on this a couple of years ago, which can be found here, including an early German report titled 'Mustang as Escort Fighter': Mustang P-51B entry into service - Air War Publications. The German report had been intercepted and decrypted by the British.
Cheers,
Andrew A.
The paper does state that only 25% of the problems could be directly attributed to poor workmanship with another 20% possibly prevented by good workmanship so the majority of problems were due to other causes.That is so bad AND typical it is laughable. As I said, for these fiddles to work management must be involved from the very top downwards. "Automatic welding adjacent to critical welds was prohibited after February 1943" so they decided what was "bad workmanship" after the event. Allowing "ringers" to sit tests is as old as testing itself, it is only allowed when people want it to happen. What part did the "great and good" who were experts in the field play, was everyone involved in ship building advised of the problems associated with SAW welding? Certainly not, because the great and the good were just learning themselves. The experts who wrote this piece don't seem to have the imagination to see any other scenario than the one presented by their retrospectoscope. If you have a new super duper welding machine it is perfectly reasonable to complete as much of all weld joints with it. If the operator doesn't know that you need run on and run off plates to do the weld properly whose fault is that? Try telling a welder in 1940 that welding out the last few inches of a weld with manual electrodes will cause the ship to split in two, until it happens and becomes common knowledge, with pictures and explanations it is as stupid an idea as soldiers marching across a bridge causing it to collapse through resonance (which also happened). A shipyard, welding or fabrication shop is a different world. Everyone who has worked in on has tales of apprentices being sent for "sky hooks", "tartan paint", "metric adjustables" or "long stands" because young people in a strange environment are very gullible. You may think it is perfectly obvious that laying down uncoated electrodes or "slugs" and welding over them is "cheating" but that is only because you know it is. In principle what is the difference between that and a backing strip or EB insert? Where did the slugs come from? In 1990 I was involved in a shipment of pipes from Bethlehem Steel to Europe, they were unable to provide a tally list of pipe number heat number and length for shipment which means they did not operate any sort of QA system in house, yet during the war some poor kid was held responsible for ships sinking. In 1992 I rejected half a dozen pipes that had had a "gash" repair to longitudinal SAW seams as bad as anything you read about on Liberty ships, but the welders were working to a procedure approved by the company, they dont see the client specification that states "blow throughs shall not be repaired". The managers even tried to say to me "I dont know why they tried to do that", well they tried to do THAT because you told them to do THAT. As late as 1995 I had a British quality assurance manager ask me "what is an arc strike, what is the problem with them"? When I explained the problem he said he would sack the operator that caused the arc strike, he never considered sacking himself, the ffing idiot.
I try to put myself in the shoes of the engineers making the decisions at the time. What knowledge did they have to draw on and what tools did they have to solve the problems? In the Comet case there was very limited experience with pressurized aircraft and certainly no massive computers to run simulations. I don't see how they could have anticipated the problem.Indeed not; but you did say 'square' and a 'reply' was the simplest way to refer to the popular myth. My apologies if I offended you.
The Buffalo didn't deserve a poor reputation from its time in Malaya either. The RAF had five active Buffalo squadrons (~60 aircraft) to patrol and protect a territory as large as the the entire UK, which in autumn 1941 had over 70 active Spitfire/Hurricane squadrons.I think the Buffalo's poor reputation has been debunked fully here, at least from the Finnish point of view.
Although much agreed, this is off: If Hitler had let his generals run the war, (Hitler rants against Jews, Slavs, Roma, ETC, but does not lay down a start date for invading Poland) the war would not have started by Germany. Stalin would have started the shooting with Finland, the Baltics, and possibly Poland also. Germany would then (if the Generals had their way) been in the (real history) S.U. position of rescuing half of Poland from Stalin.
If Stalin looks to be the greater of two evils in Europe, do we see Britain (if no WW2, likely without Churchill as PM) allying itself with Germany and (a yet to be invaded) Poland against the USSR?I was assuming that the Nazi invasion of Poland was still on. But your are right. It is an interesting what if. Stalin was as impulsive as Hitler when i came to killing folks, but when i came to strategic thinking... He probably would have kept nibbling away at eastern Europe until Germany attacked. Given a few more years to rebuild before Germany attacks them, who knows how powerful the Soviet Union would have been. Strong enough to go toe to toe with the Nazis? IIRC, the generals were not super pumped about invading Poland so early.
My issue is with the words poor and workmanship, it implies that poor work is the result of a poor workman, since the top boffins in USA and UK were still figuring out what was going on and what was important, some kid out of school shouldn't end up in court. The report mentions that an SAW machine was used with two wires instead of one when not set up for it. On line pipe welding it is impossible to produce a satisfactory weld with a single wire weld. It is normal practice to have 4 and 5 wire welding, in 1986 I saw a 12 wire welding set up in a shipyard in Japan, to me single wire welding is "poor workmanship" to start with. The main issue is about what is or was a "critical weld". It turned out that almost any weld could be critical, even a gash weld of a safety rail or footway. The Alexander L. Kielland disaster which killed 123 people in 1980 was traced to a 6mm fillet weld attaching a sonar sensor which eventually caused a leg to come off the platform and the whole rig to capsize. Alexander L. Kielland (platform) - WikipediaThe paper does state that only 25% of the problems could be directly attributed to poor workmanship with another 20% possibly prevented by good workmanship so the majority of problems were due to other causes.
In defence of the workers and their supervisors the US did not have a significant ship building industry before WWII and they were alll learning on the job. On the other hand Table 4 shows significant differences between yards, with Oregon and Calship looking particularly bad. As the old saying goes A fish stinks from the head.
Still, holding allied pilots. Interning their aircraft...
Their last mission was to transport a hoard of Nazi gold, priceless art, FW190s and Spitfires to be hidden in a tunnel in Austria. FACTI'm following the Atomic Lancaster thread.
The Black Lancaster Squadron. No official documentation. No markings. Only reference; YouTube.
Were they real or myth?
Beat me to itThe BF109-F was hurried into production because of the P40-E
Great minds think alike.Beat me to it
The BF109-F was hurried into production because of the P40-E