'Hajo' Herrmann's Craziest Idea

Mr drgondog
I was refering mainly to operational reasons . But since you mentioned it i consider it propable that if heavy casualties were caused by the raid among the civilians , the not familiar with the cruelty of war Americans citizens just might lose control and execute any crew member .
British citizens occasionaly shot german crew. Americans were certainly better than japanese and soviets at Pow treatment but were not angels either.I suppose you know that thousands german soldiers starved to death in american prison camps immediately after the end of war, german pilots murdered by american gi s and also waffen ss . Not to mention the favorit sport of parachute shooting .And thousands japanese service men were murdered while swimming. And since you have lived in Japan in immediate post war years you know the behavior of the occupation forces.
But i did not had the intention to start a heated discussion,i just wrote my opinion for the topic. The machines had the capabilities butthe mission was un doable because of the ultra.

Jim - it really isn't worth dignifying your comments with a response.

wow...someone is really into "revisionist" history, aren't they?

Too bad, there's actually a huge amount of factual literature out there and they seemed to have missed it....

Dave - I suppose we did write most of the histories. I wonder if Jim is from the former East Germany or elsewhere in Eastern Bloc - which might explain his persistant "America is monster' attitudes....

I'd like to think so, Bill, but lately I've had conversations with school kids who are putting out the same garbage.

My sister (40 year teaching vet) invited me in for a guest teacher spot for WWII history within American histrory and I was absolutely shocked at the abysmal level of understanding of the kids. They were respectful (must 'do' in her classes) but mostly ignorant,

I closed by telling them that they must understand WW's I&II, Korea and Vietnam to understand our global posture in the world - all necessary for them to make informed decisions regarding how our Representatives will spend THEIR money in the future. The last comment stimulated some great discussion with about 25% of the class.

It is unbelieveable to me to see 'today' and contrast 'yesterday' wrt World History. I suspect that my high school education may be equivalent to most University Freshman/Sophmore level history courses today. The good teachers are handicapped and the social activists are too focused on how we need to focus on One World participation to bother with Constitution and Republic form of Democratic processes.

I really do expect a major blow up soon

There was a suggestion by one of Italy's test pilots for bombing New York.

He would fly the record breaking Piaggio P.23R to New York carrying a single 1000kg bomb. To save fuel he would cut off one, then two, of its three engines, arriving over taregt on one engine. After dropping the bomb he woul dfly out to sea as far as fuel would allow, and then would ditch the plane in the ocean. He would then be picked up by a waiting Italian submarine.

http://www.riverpool.com/images/Piaggio P.23R.jpg
http://www.aviastar.org/pictures/italy/piaggio_p-23r.jpg

As early as 1940 the possible use of the 6 engined seaplanes (BV 222 BV 238) for this purpose was considered with U-Boats or other ships supplying fuel and bombs was favored by Ernst Udet Gen Hans Jeschonnek.
Luftwaffe Over America by Manfred Griehl page 22

I can't let the off topic PoW post above go unclarified and feel I must leap to the defence of my transatlantic allies when I read this nonsense.

The "myth" of the mass deaths in US camps stems from a book by James Baque,a Canadian novelist, entitled "Other Losses: An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners of War at the Hands of the French and Americans After World War II".

It is a shoddy revisionist history full of the most basic historical and mathematical errors.

The real figures were published in a rebuttal by Stephen Ambrose and Gunther Bischof entitled "Eisenhower and the German PoWs: Facts Against Falsehood". Both men are historians not novelists.
In a nutshell.

The German annual death rates in US hands (1%) and French hands (2.6%) were a whole order of magnitude less than for US PoWs in Japanese hands (27%),German PoWs in Soviet hands (35-50%),or,worst of all,Soviet PoWs in German hands (60-80%). They were comparable to, but probably higher than, the annual death rate of US PoWs in German hands (1%).

Baque made a lot of the temporary enclosures used by the Americans to deal with the sudden influx of PoWs at the end of the war. It is well known that,for obvious reasons,Wermacht personnel were very keen to surrender to a Western ally rather than the Soviets.
The worst US temporary enclosures were the 16 "Rheinwiesenlager" ("Rhine meadow camps"). 557,000 PoWs were held from April to July 1945 in the six worst of these: Bad Kreuznach-Bretzenheim, Remagen-Sinzig, Rheinberg, Heidesheim, Wickrathberg, and Büderich . The Maschke Commission would later tabulate 4,537 parish-registered deaths in these 6 worst RWLs, 774 from the others. They thought the actual death toll might be twice this, but were skeptical of an eywitness claim of 32,000 deaths.

To put these numbers in context,in the spring of 1945 the US held 3.4 million PoWs,the British 2.15 million.

Once again recourse to the surviving documentation and the facts puts the sort of revisionist and sensationalist nonsense that some people will use to sell a book to bed.

I'm not sure what all this has got to do with Hajo Hermann and his slightly bonkers ideas!

Cheers
Steve

drgondog said:

I wonder if Jim is from the former East Germany or elsewhere in Eastern Bloc - which might explain his persistant "America is monster' attitudes....

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A bit offtopic, but I doubt anyone in Eastern Bloc considered or was indoctrinated to the America is a monster attitude during communist regimes.. if that is what you hint at. Quite the opposite, the US had a largely positive view on it. Exactly because people know very little of it, and had an automatic disbelief in any communist propaganda/news. There were hardly many fans of communism in Eastern Bloc.

The reason this positive attitude has changed drastically was two fold. People expected a lot of US and were very very disillusioned when they find that US was not much different then Soviet - they expected a sort of a liberatior and got themselves just another superpower. Second thing was the series of a wars in the past two decades waged by US against other countries, meddling with their affairs all the time, and with the news full of images of US planes bombing somebody again. With progressively less good reason... in time this established the current picture the US as war-mongering state, that finds an excuse every year just to further its interests under worn-out slogans such as 'fighting terrorism' with badly camouflaged reasons for oil. And this is not only Eastern block but an increasingly european attitude.

I have read something very interesting in Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. He identifies a course of downhill when a great power can no longer keep its positions, others do not easily accept the status qou and is engaged in more and more wars. Its usually a sign of decline. I do not intent to hurt anybody's feelings with that.

jim said:

Atlantic ocean is huge . Certainly randevoys were possible. However the alleis had broken the german codes and all such randevous were intercepted 100% by late 43 . The milk cows resupply U boats were all lost because all their randevous messages were broken by Ultra.The amazing is that Donitz never admitted that fact which was more clear than the sun .Thus was guilty for the deaths of thousands german sailors.

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Complete, and utter, nonsense; the Germans never knew that Enigma was broken. They thought that it was completely unbreakable, especially when the German Navy added an extra wheel to their machines.
When HMS Bulldog captured an Enigma machine, the crew were careful to wait until the German U-boat crew were below decks, and couldn't see what they were doing, and the Admiralty ordered that the sub should be scuttled, to keep the Germans from knowing what had happened.
In 1942, two members of HMS Petard's crew lost their lives, while securing a four-rotor machine, plus code books, from U-559; though they recovered the items, they died when the sub sank. The staff at Bletchley Park worked under total secrecy, and word never got out, which meant that even Hitler's messages were being read in 1945, hardly likely if the Germans knew their codes were broken; your comment is an insult to the dedication of the thousands of code-breakers employed there.

British citizens occasionaly shot german crew. Americans were certainly better than japanese and soviets at Pow treatment but were not angels either.I suppose you know that thousands german soldiers starved to death in american prison camps immediately after the end of war, german pilots murdered by american gi s and also waffen ss . Not to mention the favorit sport of parachute shooting.

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More nonsense, since all weapons had to be handed in as soon as the war started, with only Home Guard members (who were under military rules) allowed to handle them. There were incidents, in 1940, when over-zealous Home Guard members fired at parachutes, unsurprising with stories of disguised parachutists serving in France; unfortunately they often fired at their own side, and at least one pilot (Czech, I think) was killed. Farmers were allowed to keep shotguns, for control of vermin (which didn't include Germans); anyone caught shooting a prisoner (and potential source of intelligence) would have been imprisoned. Any shooting of parachutes was taught to the Allies by German pilots, who practised it in France, and delighted in flying above parachutes, near Malta, so that they collapsed.

End result would be similiar to the Doolittle raid. Minimal bomb damage in return for all aircraft lost.

Why would anyone throw aircraft (and crew) away in such a manner?

davebender said:

End result would be similiar to the Doolittle raid. Minimal bomb damage in return for all aircraft lost.

Why would anyone throw aircraft (and crew) away in such a manner?

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Propoganda.

Crew was to be a single pilot, who would be retrieved by a submarine waiting for him.

Losing all aircraft while inflicting minimal damage doesn't paint a terribly impressive picture of your war effort.

16 aircraft, each dropping 1000kg of bombs ( Doolittle raid) can do a little more damage, and get more notice ( propaganda), than ONE aircraft dropping 1000kg of bombs.

The Japanese didn't know all the Doolittle raiders had been lost, also didn't even know where they had come from until they interrogated captured crews.

Edgar Brooks said:

Any shooting of parachutes was taught to the Allies by German pilots, who practised it in France, and delighted in flying above parachutes, near Malta, so that they collapsed.

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I think there is enough evidence to say that men descending in parachutes were shot at by all sides.

There is no evidence to support the idea that this was commonplace or in any way a "normal" practice.

The principal controlling factor may well have been a feeling amongst pilots that "There,but for the grace of God,go I".

Didn't Dowding disagree with Churchill over the shooting of Luftwaffe pilots in parachutes during the BoB? Dowding argued that since they were descending over enemy territory (for them) they were already effectively PoWs and as such were not legitimate targets.
This of course begs the question whether a pilot descending into friendly territory,from where he might soon be back in the air to kill you,is in fact a legitimate target. Some men,on all sides,did deem them to be.
Cheers
Steve

Also keep in mind that explosives were not the only consideration. Chemical Agents as well as radioative warheads were considered as well.

Edgar Brooks said:

Complete, and utter, nonsense; the Germans never knew that Enigma was broken. They thought that it was completely unbreakable, especially when the German Navy added an extra wheel to their machines.
When HMS Bulldog captured an Enigma machine, the crew were careful to wait until the German U-boat crew were below decks, and couldn't see what they were doing, and the Admiralty ordered that the sub should be scuttled, to keep the Germans from knowing what had happened.
In 1942, two members of HMS Petard's crew lost their lives, while securing a four-rotor machine, plus code books, from U-559; though they recovered the items, they died when the sub sank. The staff at Bletchley Park worked under total secrecy, and word never got out, which meant that even Hitler's messages were being read in 1945, hardly likely if the Germans knew their codes were broken; your comment is an insult to the dedication of the thousands of code-breakers employed there.

More nonsense, since all weapons had to be handed in as soon as the war started, with only Home Guard members (who were under military rules) allowed to handle them. There were incidents, in 1940, when over-zealous Home Guard members fired at parachutes, unsurprising with stories of disguised parachutists serving in France; unfortunately they often fired at their own side, and at least one pilot (Czech, I think) was killed. Farmers were allowed to keep shotguns, for control of vermin (which didn't include Germans); anyone caught shooting a prisoner (and potential source of intelligence) would have been imprisoned. Any shooting of parachutes was taught to the Allies by German pilots, who practised it in France, and delighted in flying above parachutes, near Malta, so that they collapsed.

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I have decided to limit myself to just reading this forum since i realized that my opinions are very un popular but i will post this final post to defend my self from the attacks
Mr Drgondog
To answer your question i am from Hellas (Grece to the Anglosaxons) and you have my real name in the pm that i sent you because i like sign my opinions. I dont hate America, i just believe that all sides of history must be known ,even the least known. Usually victors write the history books and its our duty to find all the truth
Mr Edgar Books
I have no idea how i insulted the code brakers!!!!
Indeed Germans did not specificaly know that their codes had been broken. Had not solid evidence . But many germans suspected the fact. Some were sure about it. Like the radioman of U 196 ( write from memory) . How? FROM THE EVENTS ! Submurines being attacked in the vastness of the oceans ,always AFTER sending a message, convoys evading the wolf packs like having a sixth sence, british cruisers finding the german tunkers in mid atlantic like being in a small lake ,germans convoys and air transports to africa ALWAYS being intercepted, and many many othet incidents. Several people proposed the fact to Doenitz he just did not want to accept the fact, under the negative influence of some scientists too. By late war Germans started to realize at last that they had leaks,the extreme measure of secrecy in Hungarian 1945 attack being a reaction
Again ,HOW I INSULTED THE CODE BRAKRES?
Mr Brooks,Mr Stona
You call me ( at best) inaccurate, but at your post you confirm that thousands Germans POWs starved to death in American prison camps and that ,occasionaly German crew were killed on the ground in england! I would also recommend read german memories from western prison camps especially french.
As for parachute shooting you are wrong . It was very often by american pilots late in the war. German young pilots were instructed at all their schools to open their parachutes at the last posiible moment because of that. In all german pilots memories that i posses and flew at that stage of the war, ALL report the paracute shooting. I can write from memory at least 6-8 known german pilots killed at their parachutes or strafed on earth. True i know 2-3 german pilots with suspitious behavior as well but the scale of american habit was unique.
I believed that all the above are well known facts ,but apparently was wrong. ( I cant imagine what would be the reaction if i suggested that Pearl Harbor attack was known to Roosvelt !!!)
Just my opinions. No need to attack me.