1. #101
    joeap's Avatar Senior Member
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Posts
    3,999
    Originally posted by danjama:
    But it seems that's impossible. The P51 flyboys ended the war single handedly, lesson over
    I thought it was Biggles.
    Share this post

  2. #102
    danjama's Avatar Banned
    Join Date
    Apr 2005
    Posts
    6,363
    Originally posted by joeap:
    <BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by danjama:
    But it seems that's impossible. The P51 flyboys ended the war single handedly, lesson over
    I thought it was Biggles. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

    Apparently not
    Share this post

  3. #103
    R_Target's Avatar Banned
    Join Date
    Jul 2004
    Posts
    3,686
    Originally posted by danjama:
    Horseback, what about Bomber Commands role in the 1943-1945 period? I'm not just talking about Spitfires here. I just want people to look at the bigger picture.

    But it seems that's impossible. The P51 flyboys ended the war single handedly, lesson over
    You're free to start you're own "Bomber Command Roxxorz" thread.
    Share this post

  4. #104
    "Good post I just disagree with this point...come on, it was the Red Army as a whole that inflicted most of the damage (artillery and T-34s too remember) on the German Army.

    I don't recall biplanes bombing German industry or wiping out the Luftwaffe. Heck the Soviets started building better planes that shot down more LW planes in the east than their early stuff..."

    This is true, but I was making more of a generalization, and I should have picked my words more carefully . And I shouldn't have forgetten about the Zis-3, considered the best artillery piece of the war, some are still being used today. On the other hand, the T-34 was a great design, poorly constructed, but made more cheaply and in greater numbers,which accounted for its success. But this is for another thread.
    The Fortresses and Lancasters effectively smashed Germany's war industry, and the Spits had great success at destroying the German planes. Of course the Soviet equipment did not do quite the same thing, and the losses were much heavier, but it was still very destructive. The Po-2, for instance, is only second to the Cessna 172 in numbers manufactured, and they flew vital scouting and recon missions that allowed the Sturmoviks and Peshkas to do their jobs, and even carried out demoralizing night raids. It did not shoot down any 109 to my knowledge, but it is a very significant piece of the war effort, arguably just as much as the Mustang. I was shocked to find that a design from 1933 continued to be built into the 1950s and even served in Korea and beyond.

    The majority Russian planes were in my mind excellent in design. However, because of pressure from Stalin, lack of resources, and poor working conditions, the quality of the planes made them junk. Pilots had no basic necessities like radios, Yaks would just fall apart without warning even before being hit by German guns, and planes never performed to specifications. Even the "mighty" La5 and Il-2 would have suffered from these problems; Sturmovik pilots received "Hero of the Soviet Union" award after only ten missions, because the life expectancy was so low. If random failure of components/manufacturing quality was modeled in this game, no one would ever take up a Russian plane, but it's not, and this is partly why everyone thinks the other planes are purposely downgraded, but I won't get into this either. However, by sheer numbers of these planes and the will, pride, and stuff that I cannot even imagine, going through these pilots and soliders, the effect is, well, history.

    "Germany was the mousehole that the Jagdewaffe fled into out of the reach of the RAF and the P-47 groups. They were damned if they were going to come out to face the big dog, and that required the little dog to come in and force them out."-Horseback

    I agree with this, and this scenario makes much more sense to me than "Mustangs did it all by themselves" or "the Mustang can do anything" that I see all too often. It was a team player, just like every other plane/vehicle/soldier, a cog in the machine.

    "They didn't, and I shed no tears for that fact, or for the people who for whatever reason served that system."

    But I cannot share your view here. Nazism is abhorrent, and sometimes it's weird to imagine anyone fighting under that banner. But imagine if you were that 18 year old kid, naive and unable to fully understand death, being forced to fight. They were no different than our good ol' boys fighting, or soviet kids. Their reason was homeland and family rather than government and leader. Imagine what it is like to live with constant fear of bombs falling on your house, because in this war, even civilians are considered "game". The US never (except Pearle Harbor and a few random balloon attacks) had a bomb dropped on its soil. You can't just expect the young soldiers and citizens to just lay every tool and weapon down and say, "Hitler and Nazism is evil, I have a conscience, I won't serve this evil" even though they may have thought this (at least by war's end)? Could you really do it if you were in that situation? In social experiments people willingly applied painful/nearly lethal electrocutions to animals and to a man (actor) simply because they were told to by a person with a position of authority, ie doctor/scientist. That's just one reason why war is the way it is: the "right thing" or the "good guy" is never clearly defined. Americans probably shot just as many chutes as Germans, and Germans probably saluted to their adversary with jammed guns and let him go home as often as the Americans did.
    Share this post

  5. #105
    horseback's Avatar Senior Member
    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Posts
    5,052
    <span class="ev_code_YELLOW">"They didn't, and I shed no tears for that fact, or for the people who for whatever reason served that system."</span>

    But I cannot share your view here. Nazism is abhorrent, and sometimes it's weird to imagine anyone fighting under that banner. But imagine if you were that 18 year old kid, naive and unable to fully understand death, being forced to fight. They were no different than our good ol' boys fighting, or soviet kids. Their reason was homeland and family rather than government and leader. Imagine what it is like to live with constant fear of bombs falling on your house, because in this war, even civilians are considered "game". The US never (except Pearle Harbor and a few random balloon attacks) had a bomb dropped on its soil. You can't just expect the young soldiers and citizens to just lay every tool and weapon down and say, "Hitler and Nazism is evil, I have a conscience, I won't serve this evil" even though they may have thought this (at least by war's end)? Could you really do it if you were in that situation? In social experiments people willingly applied painful/nearly lethal electrocutions to animals and to a man (actor) simply because they were told to by a person with a position of authority, ie doctor/scientist. That's just one reason why war is the way it is: the "right thing" or the "good guy" is never clearly defined. Americans probably shot just as many chutes as Germans, and Germans probably saluted to their adversary with jammed guns and let him go home as often as the Americans did.
    Here’s my problem with that view: Those guys were in the main, dupes of an evil system, no doubt about it, BUT they were also military assets that had to be eliminated if the war was to be won. I have great respect for their effort and skills, BUT I’m freakin’ ecstatic that they lost. I spent some of my first few grade school years in Britain while my career Air Force Dad was stationed there (Jan. 1961-June 1964), and there were still neighborhoods in many English cities that were showing the effects of the German Blitz twenty years later. Whole blocks of London had yet to be rebuilt, because as an Ally the United Kingdom got relatively few of the benefits of the Marshall plan that Germany and France received. The fields around the various houses we lived were spotted with carefully sited blockhouses which were intended to serve as strong points if the Germans managed to make a successful landing. Our neighbors in Ipswich had lots of stories about that time, and some of them were frankly horrifying for a boy of seven.

    The Germans started a war and waged it ruthlessly against civilians and soldiers alike. The stories about strafing columns of French civilians so that the confusion would slow the progress of British and French reinforcements heading to the front in 1940 aren’t all propaganda, and the practice was even more common in the East. The razing of Coventry is not a myth, any more than the bombing of Warsaw, or any of a dozen others in Europe and the former Soviet Union, all of which preceded by a year or two the Allied bombings of German cities.

    The majority of those young men who grew up under the Nazi system saw it on newsreels and heard it on the radio and approved of it because they were taught and believed that that was the way the strong treated the weak. They weren’t nearly so much like those good ole boys who had been working in American fields and factories a couple of years before as you might think. Have you read about what they were taught in their schools and public institutions at all?

    Knoke’s book was reasonably frank about it, although most German memoirs about their war experiences and upbringing tend to skip over that aspect of German life and culture during that period.

    The only way that most of them were disabused of that upbringing was seeing their country taking a thorough beating, and then having their conquerors extend a hand to lift them back up to their feet.

    Now, here’s a little news for you. I’m a child of the fifties and sixties, a military dependent right up to the day that I raised my own right hand and swore an oath to protect and serve during the Cold War. I know damned well what it means to live under the threat and constant fear of bombs falling on my home, and I had the added ‘advantage’ of seeing people and places who were damaged by the last war first hand. I have an uncle who fought his way across the Pacific and gave up his life long ambition to be a missionary because he never got over his hatred for the Japanese, and even though he realized it wasn’t what God required of him, he just couldn’t let it go (one of his jobs at the end of the war was helping get US and Allied PoWs back from the Phillippines and Japan—he understood brutality in combat, but treating another human being like that…).

    I won’t pretend to you that I would have been a conscientious objector had I been born and raised in Nazi Germany; it doesn’t matter what I would have done. What matters is that they were propping up a vicious and evil system, and that it had to be stopped. I have no sympathy for them because far too many better raised and morally responsible men died or were physically and emotionally damaged while stopping them. I’m glad as can be that they were stopped, but I deeply resent the cost, especially when I think that we might never have had a Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, or Jimmy Carter in the White House had better men lived through that war.

    We can ponder all we want about how it isn't all black and white, but the reality is that once the gray gets past a certain shade, you have to draw a line and be ready to pay the price. If we as a people aren't prepared to do that we don't deserve all the goodies we have today as a result of our ancestors' earlier sacrifices.

    cheers

    horseback
    Share this post

  6. #106
    danjama's Avatar Banned
    Join Date
    Apr 2005
    Posts
    6,363
    good post
    Share this post

  7. #107
    Firstly, I wasn't calling you out, or trying to be offensive to you. I made the great blunder of forgetting about the US experiences during the Cold War, and I forgot to consider that possibly you did have those terrifying experiences. It is especially wrong on my part because in the East we had similar fears and precautions, and I apologize.

    Of course it is great that Nazism ultimately fell, and I am aware of the horrible things that the people under it did. I hope to make it clear that not everyone was innocent, or not unaware of their government's policies. But to me it seems that normal, morally good people were utterly brainwashed. I have seen some reels of the propaganda, and indeed it is disturbing and even revolting. The government essentially shaped the views of the children of its nation, showing reels in classrooms, and creating "Hitler youth" programs to essentially create mindless, desensitized and inhumane soldiers. I don't feel sorry that Nazi Germany lost the war, but still one must feel something for the needless loss of life, and barbaric tactics to turn citizens into machines. The Fascists were evil, and I resent their ways, but I do not resent the men who died, nor do I resent the Germany of today. Being a Ukrainian by birth, and after hearing countless stories of the brutality of the Germans, and the utterly inhumane treatment of millions of my own people, I vehemently despise Nazism, but I do not resent those men. I feel that although under the banner of Nazism, they were still normal people, who only did these things because of brainwashing, propaganda, desensitization, etc which was sometimes beyond their control. And yes, I never saw the war, I was never there, so I understand my opinion doesn't matter. But no one I know feels resent either. No veteran of Ukraine, or from Poland that I know feels resent against the ordinary soldier or citizen of Germany, despite what they endured, and despite what they saw.

    I have little knowledge about the Pacific theatre, but I am aware of the great brutality the Japanese had toward their prisoners of war. But it was a similar issue. The culture of Japan was so vastly different from that of the West. It was isolated for hundreds of years, and went from a medieval warring society to one of the greater technologically advanced nations in mere decades. But old habits die hard, and the ancient and in this case, brutal traditions remained. There was no concept of surrender, men preferred to die than to be taken prisoner, or to be shamed. In their eyes it was honorable to die, in ours it was honorable, and I personally think, more courageous to live. The Japanese because of their culture alone thought of Americans and westerners as cowards. I think it is a great shame that that aspect of culture had to manifest itself in such a way that it led to Japanese men violently and mercilessly torturing Americans, and flying sealed up planes into ships. Despite this, I can't say I hate the men, or I hate Japanese.

    Now, our way of doing things was much different. I am not trying to say that Americans were not brave, and that they were on the same level as a nazi or Japanese soldier. It is indeed a terrible loss, that many good men were killed. It does bring me sadness to think about it, and sometimes I feel a strange sort of guilt, that I glorify the war by playing this game a little too enthusiastically. But the situations were different for each nation, and there was more behind the brutality of that war than just hate, or evil. Even the innocent were corrupted, and I feel sorry for those that were and that had to do what they did.

    "We can ponder all we want about how it isn't all black and white, but the reality is that once the gray gets past a certain shade, you have to draw a line and be ready to pay the price. If we as a people aren't prepared to do that we don't deserve all the goodies we have today as a result of our ancestors' earlier sacrifices."

    I agree with this entirely, and the line must be drawn, and I feel that we ought to pay tribute to our own forces who made great sacrifices for our cause, men who didn't return to their mothers, wives, and children. But I don't think that we should resent the men who ended up on the other side of the line. Resent will just breed more hatred and anger, rather than gaining understanding, and maybe the wisdom to not repeat our mistakes.

    Again, it was not my intention to insult you or belittle your beliefs, sometimes I don't say what I mean to, and please do not take my comments the wrong way. I respect your opinion, but I am only offering my own.
    Share this post

  8. #108
    Von_Rat's Avatar Senior Member
    Join Date
    Jun 2004
    Posts
    1,900
    I am aware of the great brutality the Japanese had toward their prisoners of war. But it was a similar issue. The culture of Japan was so vastly different from that of the West. It was isolated for hundreds of years, and went from a medieval warring society to one of the greater technologically advanced nations in mere decades. But old habits die hard, and the ancient and in this case, brutal traditions remained.

    actually during the 1905 russo japanese war the japanese were a model of correctness in dealing with prisoners. they treated them strictly according to the conventions of war that were accepted at the time.

    the differance beteewn their behavior then and later, was that in ww2 japan was ruled by a brutal military dictorship that encouaged the mistreatment of prisoners.

    in a nutshell i blame the japanese goverment for the artocitys, not japanese culture.
    Share this post

  9. #109
    actually during the 1905 russo japanese war the japanese were a model of correctness in dealing with prisoners. they treated them strictly according to the conventions of war that were accepted at the time.

    the differance beteewn their behavior then and later, was that in ww2 japan was ruled by a brutal military dictorship that encouaged the mistreatment of prisoners.

    in a nutshell i blame the japanese goverment for the artocitys, not japanese culture.
    Fair enough. I know less about the Russo Japanese War than the Pacific War, so I stand corrected, thank you.
    Share this post