WWII air war myths

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That #10 has always puzzled me, we sacrificed America lives for France to be free, but when it comes to them supporting our decisions or policies we don't seem to want to extend to them the freedom to make up their own minds.
 
muscogeemike said:
11. Maybe not a myth but that the war against Japan had huge racial overtones.
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A quick look at US propaganda would suggest that that is no myth. The dehumanising of your enemy is quite normal in wartime and when that enemy is of a different race it is easy to use that in your propaganda. The Japanese did the same.

It was Laurens van der Post who wrote that in denying another man's humanity you diminish your own.

Cheers

Steve
 
Edgar Brooks said:
1/. The Spitfire I could easily turn inside the 109E; there wasn't, in fact, much to choose, but RAF pilots felt safer, due to the Spitfire's benign stall warning.
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I think the Bf109 has the better accelerated stall characteristics as quoted in " FIGHTER COMBAT COMPARISON No.2: Bf109E-3 vs Spitfire MkI " but if the Spitfire is pulling its max instantaneous 'g' at a given airspeed the Bf-109 has to pull more 'g' to turn inside of it..not going happen.

More importantly is the question of which aircraft could pull more 'g' at a given airspeed and which one pisses more airspeed away in doing so. The one that has the greater "Specific Excess Power (SEP)" has the advantage.
 

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krieghund said:
More importantly is the question of which aircraft could pull more 'g' at a given airspeed and which one pisses more airspeed away in doing so. The one that has the greater "Specific Excess Power (SEP)" has the advantage.
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Most important is which aircraft could out turn (or otherwise out manoeuvre) an opponent when caught at a disadvantage in a real combat situation. In the RAE tests,

"The Spitfires and Hurricanes could follow the Me.109 round during the stalled turns without themselves showing any signs of stalling."

A British test pilot,flying the Bf 109 reported.

"From all this dog-fighting I am certain that if the pilot of a Hurricane or Spitfire finds himself attacked by a Me.109 he can easily out-turn it, and can lose it straight away by doing any violent manoeuvre; the Me.109 just cannot be made to do a really quick manoeuvre because at high speeds the controls are much too heavy, and at low speeds the slats come out, causing the ailerons to snatch, followed by the aircraft stalling if the manoeuvre is done more rapidly. "

Now obviously this is not empirical data but one fighter pilots opinion. He does however have the advantage of having flown both aircraft.

Steve
 
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We would have that push eventually in the ETO. We were already in a shooting war with German U-boats two months prior to December 7th. The USS Kearny (DD-432) was torpedoed (not sunk) with the loss of 11 sailors on October 17th. The USS Reuben James (DD-245) was sunk on October 31st with the loss of 115 sailors. We had Hitler on our mind, not Japan.


We actually declared war on April 6, 1917. First American troops in combat was spring 1918.

From Wiki.....

Impact of US forces on the war

On the battlefields of France in spring 1918, the fresh American troops were enthusiastically welcomed by the war-weary Allied armies in the summer of 1918. They arrived at the rate of 10,000 a day, at a time that the Germans were unable to replace their losses. After the Allies turned back the powerful final German offensive (Spring Offensive), the Americans played a central role in the Allied final offensive (Hundred Days Offensive).

In a little over 6 months of combat Americans lost 117,000 killed, 206,000 wounded. I wouldn't call that "barely" entering the war.

Steve
 
FLYBOYJ said:
Nothing YET but I have seen discussions like this turn into pissing contests so please don't second guess my comments, it will piss me off!!!!!!!!!!
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Fair enough,I was only stating a widely accepted historical fact.

Cheers

Steve
 

Don't get me started on the Santa Monica incident. That jackass is responsible for the deaths of four people. A convicted felon, con artist and a reckless individual who will take everything he can away from his victims. There is a whole lot going on with that.
 
The above is a mixture IMO of:

1. genuine myths
2. wrong statements against 'myths' that are actually true or mainly true.
3. opinionated statements in opposition to other opinions where there's no actual myth factually speaking
4. statements which set up straw men of 'myths' which aren't common beliefs among minimally well informed people.

An exampe of 2 is 'myth' PH attack was a surprise. There's no evidence it wasn't a surprise in the immediate tactical sense of morning of Dec 7. An imminent war with Japan v. the Anglo-Americans in SEA was no surprise by a few days before, but an attack on US territory proper, was, at the time. In hindsight that might seem irresponsible, but hindsight needs to be factored out.

Pre war code breaking v Japan had nothing to do with Enigma. The US had read both Japanese diplomatic and naval codes, but off and on, as was generally the case with codebreaking, v the Germans as well. All types of communications read at various times were not read all the time, as stuff like code settings within a given encryption system were reset, or plain language codewords for various things within the encrypted messages were changed. It took some time to get back to fully reading and understanding, and late 1941 was such a 'dark period' wrt Japanese naval codes. Anyway there's no evidence the Japanese made radio transmissions which would have given direct warning of the specifics of the PH attack. The Mobile Force itself followed strict radio silence. It was ominous that the force's transmissions (known by the by idosyncrasies of particular transmitters or operators aboard the various ships even when the message couldn't be read) disappeared in November, but that wasn't conclusive evidence that the force would attack PH, rather than support operations elsewhere.

In case 3 USAAF bombing v German industrial targets was eventually devastating, so 'B-17/[B-24] destroyed German industry' is a matter of opinion and degree (assuming leaving out the B-24 isn't supposed to be the 'myth'). Wholly destroyed German industry in a timely way, eliminating the need for major land campaigns? obviously not; did so by themselves?, also not; but the wholly contrary statement 'USAAF HB's didn't destroy a lot of German industry, particularly in 1944' would be factually false.

An example of 4, 'Britain doomed in WWII till US entered'. Who actually says that? Britain might eventually have been doomed if Hitler never attacked the USSR, *and* the US never got involved in the war, but it's a very low threshold of historical knowledge to know that the Germans had a potentially big problem on the Eastern Front by December 1941, not having knocked the Soviets out by then, that they didn't have prior to June 1941 when facing basically only the British Empire. It's very debateable anything the British did or could do by themselves, without the Soviets *or* the US (especially extending that to no semi belligerent help like Lend Lease), would ever have defeated Germany. So, it could eventually have ended up in a German victory, in a longer war (perhaps on and off over a long period, like the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars).

Joe
 
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Thanks Steve because that was the first time I had ever heard of that. 1914????
 
A4K said:
I disagree but it dosen't matter. The British had given a version of 'the bomb' (the machine that could crack the Enigma codes) to the US, as the Japanese were using a version of Enigma aswell.
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No, we hadn't; the U.S. had devised their own machine, called "Purple," which concentrated on Japanese codes. They brought one here, but the gift wasn't reciprocated, largely because we only had six, and they were working flat out, so one couldn't be spared. American Intelligence was not happy (to put it mildly) to be refused, and the situation didn't change until 1942, when the first true machines, called "Adam" "Eve," were built in Dayton, to Alan Turing's design.
 
A4K said:
Who was using the bomb then, and why didn't they let Pearl know? The goal was to interpret IJN messages AFAIK. (Maybe an example of Churchill's Coventry sacrifice, to not alert the Germans that their codes were being read?)
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Another load of twaddle (where the Hell are you getting this tosh?) We knew that a town, in the Midlands, was to be a target, but the Germans always used codenames, so it was not known which one it was, or exactly when, and it was assumed (wrongly) that it would be West Bromwich, where the Spitfire factory was centred. When the raids started, Churchill was on his way to the country residence of Chequers, but immediately turned round, and returned to London, to try to coordinate the emergency services, hardly the action of a hard-nosed politician, delighted to allow his countrymen and women to die. You do yourself no favours by repeating this disgusting lie.
 
One more piece of evidence that disproves the notion, IMO, that FDR/Joint Chiefs/George Marshall etc. knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl and did NOT warn Kimmel and Short......

War Warnings were sent to all Pacific commanders in the days leading up to the attack. Telling them to take any action necessary to prepare for hostilities with Japan.

Last two were sent on November 27 and December 3.

Steve
 
The quote from an American officer I posted above was from one of the four man team that delivered "Purple" to Bletchley Park. He doesn't sound that unhappy.

In July 1942 we handed over all the plans and diagrams for Turing's Bombes to the Americans,hence their first tests in early 1943.

In early 1943 we had about forty 3 rotor bombs on line. This leapt to 90 by the end of the year as the US versions came on line.

By war's end there were well over 300 3 rotor and 4 rotor bombes spread on both sides of the Atlantic,I'd need to check the exact number.In any case I'd call that cooperation.

Cheers

Steve
 

I am sure I read somewhere that Liverpool was the expected target. Perhaps the intelligence was so vague that all that could be assumed was that a major target that wasnt London or the south coast was to be hit.
 

Where did you learn your history? Whatever teacher told younthat should be fired.

Want to know why we did not enter the war until 1917?

Wait for it, wait for it....

We did not declare war until 06 April 1917

In that one year of war we still comitted over 4,000,000 fresh troops , and lost over 117,000 soldiers and over 200,000 wounded. So please don't take the US contribution lightly. Before 1917 it was just not our war yet.

Now this has nothing to do with WW2, if you wish to discuss the US contribution to WWI, then please do so in the WWI section.
 
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