How a statistical formula won the war (1 Viewer)

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I think I can remember something about the plotting by statisticians of bullet holes on an outline of the aircraft and where there were few to no bullet-holes, was where the bullets had hit the Allied planes that didn't make it back. Therefore more armor was put into those places. It seemed to have worked as a strategy...

Sounds like a good idea, in leu of anything else.
 
Found it the M27-46 Pershing Tank was the US tank that could conduct a slug-fest with a German Tiger and have a hope of winning and it was only getting introduced in 1944-1945!
 
Peter Riedel's book, "German Air Attache" makes intresting reading also describes how he accurately and legally compilled US aircraft production during his time in Washington. With this he was able to predict the production figures from 41 onwards.
 
So did this information get to Germany from Peter Riedel considering the name seems German?
 
Peter Riedel's book, "German Air Attache" makes intresting reading also describes how he accurately and legally compilled US aircraft production during his time in Washington. With this he was able to predict the production figures from 41 onwards.

If you do your homework and check your sources, this is something that can be done now. Same as back then. Open societies are full of usefull information for those that look.

But as somebody posted, did anybody do anything with it? Probably not. Why, my guess would be the powers that be in the Nazi Party were banking on a short war and finding out the other side was going to far outstrip your production capabilities would put a big hurting on your plans for success. As stupid and short sighted as that may sound, it is most likely accurate.

The Ostrich Affect is pretty common when the going gets bad for totalitarian regimes.
 
The Ostrich Affect is pretty common when the going gets bad for totalitarian regimes.

This is extreme nitpicking, but

In popular mythology, the Ostrich is famous for hiding its head in the sand at the first sign of danger. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder is noted for his descriptions of the ostrich in his Naturalis Historia, where he describes the Ostrich and the fact that it hides its head in a bush.

There have been no recorded observations of this behaviour. A common counter-argument is that a species that displayed this behaviour would not survive very long. The myth may have resulted from the fact that, from a distance, when ostriches feed they appear to be burying their head in the sand because they deliberately swallow sand and pebbles to help grind up their food. However, ostriches that are threatened but unable to run away may fall to the ground and stretch out their necks; as their necks are the same color as sand, within a desert this camouflage could be mistaken for having disappeared or being buried.

:)

Ostrich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
So did this information get to Germany from Peter Riedel considering the name seems German?

Yes the information did get back. But as Timshatz quite rightly pointed out it was ignored. Ridel describes what a mess the organisation was during Udet's leadership.
 
the Falaise gap shows what thousands of Jabos could do

Air Superiority is the real statistic.

When the weather broke in the Ardennes Peifer learned how far he could walk in a day, while the victors flew overhead at 400 mph..

The rest is all just burning scrap metal.
 
Like so
 

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Ok, interesting picture. I didn't really know that information about the ostrich burying its head in the sand. Any WWII destroyed convoy photos to post?
 
I didn't know T34's could penetrate the front armor of Tigers and Panthers.
The German tanks seem to have fairly thin armor on their sides which could make them even more vulnerable to being destroyed from hits in this area.

The IS-2 and IS-3 weighed about the same as a Panther while the Pershing was slightly lighter. However, the Soviet tanks seem to have better armor protection than the Panther and the IS-3 seems particularly impressive in this regard.
 
The IS-3 never saw combat in World War II. It only arrived to take part in the Victory Parade in Berlin. The British were shipping their A41 Centurion to Europe with the 22nd Armoured Brigade when the war ended; this would have been something to rattle the Germans.

The Tiger and Panther were both more than capable of destroying the IS-2 well beyond the range that the IS-2 could react. Especially since the IS-2 had purely made armour; a problem which was discovered but allowed to remain. It was theoretically invincible when taking on Tigers and Panthers head-on but the crews were reporting losses and the German crews were reporting kills at distances up to 1,000 m.
 

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