Tank and anti-aircraft gun found in German cellar

[TEKNOPUG]

V8 Fettler said:

irocfan said:

an interesting point regarding the Russians... had messrs hitler and 'heini' himmler not been on the bullst racial purity kick there is a good chance they could have taken the USSR out of the war. When the Germans first invaded there were a LOT of people who welcomed them for 'rescuing' them from uncle Joe. Unfortunately the various psycho squads were worse than what they had before. Imagine all the freed people not tying up the Wehrmacht as partisans, indeed fighting FOR them. Also imagine the Wehrmacht not having to bail out the Italians in Greece and thereby delaying Barbarossa by 3 months.....

Invading the USSR in late March 1941 would have been an impossibly muddy experience.

In any realistic scenario the Germans cannot the defeat the USSR; not enough men, not enough hardware, supply lines too long. Equally, there's no realistic scenario where Japan can defeat the USA for similar reasons.

The Greek resistance to the Italian invasion and subsequent intervention by the Wermacht is over-played as a reason for the failure of Barbarossa, as noted above.

Similarly there is no realistic scenario where the Germans can defeat the British Empire, given that the latter controls the world's ocean trade, whilst the former is trapped in continental Europe, with ever reducing resources. Russia may well have fallen if Moscow had been captured - certainly Stalin would have be removed from power and who knows how the nation would have held up after that. Britain was never going to be invaded, so there was no realistic way of knocking them out of any war. It then just becomes a resources/productivity numbers game or a race for the "bomb".

The Pacific war is somewhat different. Certainly the US could out-produce Japan on every level but there were still key opportunities missed by the Japanese early on in the war, that could have swung it decisively in their favour. It's worth mentioning also that that Japanese war with the US/UK was very much secondary in men, machinery and priorities over their conquest of China.

[Halb]

I recall a programme dedicated to the main three plans that the Germans had for taking the USSR. The one that took them south through the oilfields and then swing north to Moscow was (in hindsight) the one that looked set to work. I cannot recall the reasons for not doing that one. And as said, the NAZIs had potential allies waiting in Belarus and Ukraine just itching to help smash the Russians....
The Russians also being able to bring in divisions and aeroplanes thanks to the Japanese non-aggression pact also helped.

[Negative Creep]

TEKNOPUG said:

Negative Creep said:

In a way it is odd we revere the spitfire so much when it's sole purpose was to end lives. Perhaps the most beautiful killing machine ever made?

Sole purpose was to shoot down enemy aircraft, surely? A strategic bomber is somewhat different, if the strategy is to bomb civilians.

But not in a way that would prevent harm to the enemy crew members. Seeing the two airworthy Lancasters fly past last year was an incredible sight, but there was still something sinister about the way they banked in. Not trying to get into the ethics or warfare, but at a base level a weapon is designed to kill, just as a car is designed to take you from one point to another or an item of clothing stops you from being naked

[vonuber]

My grandad helped close the falaise pocket as part of the polish army. Sadly he died before I ever met him.
Seemed an interesting chap, started the war fighting the Russians when they invaded Poland (which everyone ignores for some reason), escaped to the UK via Spain and then ended up back in Germany via France.
He married a german girl too; couldn't go back to Poland though. Didn't fancy getting shot by the Russians.


I

[Tango13]

This is a good read,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Beneath-Sea-Submarine-...

I've often wondered if the steel and manpower that was effectively wasted building the capital ships would have had a decisive effect if it had been invested in U-boats instead?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/books/dp/0349110689/ref=sr...

Argues correctly in my opinion that the atomic bomb only ended the war, it was the Allies use of radar that enabled them to win it.

[V8 Fettler]

TEKNOPUG said:

V8 Fettler said:

irocfan said:

an interesting point regarding the Russians... had messrs hitler and 'heini' himmler not been on the bullst racial purity kick there is a good chance they could have taken the USSR out of the war. When the Germans first invaded there were a LOT of people who welcomed them for 'rescuing' them from uncle Joe. Unfortunately the various psycho squads were worse than what they had before. Imagine all the freed people not tying up the Wehrmacht as partisans, indeed fighting FOR them. Also imagine the Wehrmacht not having to bail out the Italians in Greece and thereby delaying Barbarossa by 3 months.....

Invading the USSR in late March 1941 would have been an impossibly muddy experience.

In any realistic scenario the Germans cannot the defeat the USSR; not enough men, not enough hardware, supply lines too long. Equally, there's no realistic scenario where Japan can defeat the USA for similar reasons.

The Greek resistance to the Italian invasion and subsequent intervention by the Wermacht is over-played as a reason for the failure of Barbarossa, as noted above.

Similarly there is no realistic scenario where the Germans can defeat the British Empire, given that the latter controls the world's ocean trade, whilst the former is trapped in continental Europe, with ever reducing resources. Russia may well have fallen if Moscow had been captured - certainly Stalin would have be removed from power and who knows how the nation would have held up after that. Britain was never going to be invaded, so there was no realistic way of knocking them out of any war. It then just becomes a resources/productivity numbers game or a race for the "bomb".

The Pacific war is somewhat different. Certainly the US could out-produce Japan on every level but there were still key opportunities missed by the Japanese early on in the war, that could have swung it decisively in their favour. It's worth mentioning also that that Japanese war with the US/UK was very much secondary in men, machinery and priorities over their conquest of China.

Germany doesn't have to defeat the British Empire to defeat Britain, just sever the trade links in the Atlantic, the First Happy Time being the only period where that could occur. Vanoc's radar guided attack on U100 was a key pivot point in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Japan's fate was sealed by the attack on Pearl Harbour, the US would never accept anything other than unconditional surrender. As someone once said, the primary effect of the attack on Pearl Harbour was to increase the capability of the US Navy (US ship building programme increased tonnage and capability exponentially).

[Mr_B]

Mr_B said:

Breadvan72 said:

Blokes in sheds vs blokes in sheds. Bring it!

Most Secret War by RV Jones. Utterly fascinating read of the scientific intelligence war.

Forgot to add the book was also used as the basis for a TV documentary which is well worth a look too.
First of 6 parts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf5caj9ZhpQ

[robm3]

TEKNOPUG said:

The T-34 is probably the best tank insomuch as the impact it had on future designs as well as the course of the war. A fully tested, properly built Panther would no doubt have been king of the battlefield v like-4-like numbers. Until the next new design came along.

There's a t34, Panzer mk4 , StuG 3 and other stuff in a town in Slovakia called Banska Bystrica. All sitting outside with no bother (and have been for the last 30 years).

When you look closely at the T34, the castings are just horrible especially around the turret base, it was obviously rushed in production, whereas the Panzer is, relatively speaking, immaculate.

[TEKNOPUG]

V8 Fettler said:

TEKNOPUG said:

V8 Fettler said:

irocfan said:

an interesting point regarding the Russians... had messrs hitler and 'heini' himmler not been on the bullst racial purity kick there is a good chance they could have taken the USSR out of the war. When the Germans first invaded there were a LOT of people who welcomed them for 'rescuing' them from uncle Joe. Unfortunately the various psycho squads were worse than what they had before. Imagine all the freed people not tying up the Wehrmacht as partisans, indeed fighting FOR them. Also imagine the Wehrmacht not having to bail out the Italians in Greece and thereby delaying Barbarossa by 3 months.....

Invading the USSR in late March 1941 would have been an impossibly muddy experience.

In any realistic scenario the Germans cannot the defeat the USSR; not enough men, not enough hardware, supply lines too long. Equally, there's no realistic scenario where Japan can defeat the USA for similar reasons.

The Greek resistance to the Italian invasion and subsequent intervention by the Wermacht is over-played as a reason for the failure of Barbarossa, as noted above.

Similarly there is no realistic scenario where the Germans can defeat the British Empire, given that the latter controls the world's ocean trade, whilst the former is trapped in continental Europe, with ever reducing resources. Russia may well have fallen if Moscow had been captured - certainly Stalin would have be removed from power and who knows how the nation would have held up after that. Britain was never going to be invaded, so there was no realistic way of knocking them out of any war. It then just becomes a resources/productivity numbers game or a race for the "bomb".

The Pacific war is somewhat different. Certainly the US could out-produce Japan on every level but there were still key opportunities missed by the Japanese early on in the war, that could have swung it decisively in their favour. It's worth mentioning also that that Japanese war with the US/UK was very much secondary in men, machinery and priorities over their conquest of China.

Germany doesn't have to defeat the British Empire to defeat Britain, just sever the trade links in the Atlantic, the First Happy Time being the only period where that could occur. Vanoc's radar guided attack on U100 was a key pivot point in the Battle of the Atlantic.

That confirms my point though. There was no way that the Kriegsmarine could defeat the RN and sever trade links with the rest of the Empire. Hence there was no way that Germany could defeat the Empire.

[TEKNOPUG]

robm3 said:

TEKNOPUG said:

The T-34 is probably the best tank insomuch as the impact it had on future designs as well as the course of the war. A fully tested, properly built Panther would no doubt have been king of the battlefield v like-4-like numbers. Until the next new design came along.

There's a t34, Panzer mk4 , StuG 3 and other stuff in a town in Slovakia called Banska Bystrica. All sitting outside with no bother (and have been for the last 30 years).

When you look closely at the T34, the castings are just horrible especially around the turret base, it was obviously rushed in production, whereas the Panzer is, relatively speaking, immaculate.

Quite. The T-34 had a lot of short-comings. Quality was poor. Many were literally driven straight out of the factory and into battle. The 2 man turrets and poor radios another. However, the rough castings and generally poor quality of the T-34 doesn't impact their ability when you build 35,000 of them and another 23,000 T-34-85s. That's more than Germany's entire armoured vehicle output through the entire war. Conversely they only made 6,000+ Panthers.

There were other, unexpected issues with Germann tank production and quality. Many were built using foreign or slave labour. This had a dramatic effect on quality and reliability. When they were stripping down a Panther for restoration at Bovington, they found many of the oil galleries in the transmission stuffed with cigarette butts!

[QuantumTokoloshi]

robm3 said:

TEKNOPUG said:

The T-34 is probably the best tank insomuch as the impact it had on future designs as well as the course of the war. A fully tested, properly built Panther would no doubt have been king of the battlefield v like-4-like numbers. Until the next new design came along.

There's a t34, Panzer mk4 , StuG 3 and other stuff in a town in Slovakia called Banska Bystrica. All sitting outside with no bother (and have been for the last 30 years).

When you look closely at the T34, the castings are just horrible especially around the turret base, it was obviously rushed in production, whereas the Panzer is, relatively speaking, immaculate.

A T-34 was recovered from under 3 feet of peat in a swamp in Estonia in 2000. They actually managed to get the thing started after a few hours of work. The vehicle may have been rough but it was well suited to its operating environment and worked, especially with the larger 85 mm cannon.

http://www.diving.ee/articles/art035.html

In the battle for Stalingrad, the tanks would roll out of the factory straight into combat outside the factory, not surprising quality was somewhat variable.

Edited by QuantumTokoloshi on Wednesday 8th July 13:44

[Scuffers]

better video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7boxp1Sk2w

[TEKNOPUG]

This is a very good read btw http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1114

[julian64]

Breadvan72 said:

Frank told me that at times in Normandy his squadron was based at forward airstrips with the enemy just a field or two away. His log book during the Falaise pocket engagements showed multiple ten minute sorties per day. Take off, rocket enemy armour, land, re-arm, take off, rocket enemy armour, land, re-arm, and so on, all day. Dive the Typhoon to 1000 feet, release the weapons, pull like a bd, black out from the G, and wake up at the top of the climb. You were regarded as a softie if your aircraft had any rivets left on its underside after stonking a train. Pull up too late and you would follow the rockets into the target, which was not a good thing.

Before Falaise, during a relative lull a little while after D Day, someone flew the sqaudron hack (an Auster, or maybe a Cub) back to Britain to collect the mail and some kegs of beer. This bloke duly returned with the letters and booze, and also brought the squadron dog. Back home, the station was guarded by what the RAF called "Brown Jobs" or "pongos"; that is to say, British infantry. The dog had therefore, naturally enough, been trained by the pilots to bite anyone wearing an army uniform. The problem with this was that the Squadron had bee issued with army battledress to wear whilst deployed at the forward airstrips in France. Thus the dog leaped out of the Auster and set to chasing everyone up and down the field.

You will recall that in the Clostermann book there is a photo of a line of pilots being given medals by some visiting bigwig on a forward airstrip somewhere in Normandy, whilst FW 190s are strafing the other side of the field. Frank recalled something similar happening at his field. His Flight sat drinking beer outside their tents while they cheered as the other Flight a few hundred yards away legged it for the slit trenches as FWs came in over the hedgerows.

Frank was not supposed to do 100 ops, but he was forgotten about by admin. One day just before VE Day the CO asked him what the Hell he was still doing there as he should have been sent home ages ago. So they filled in a form, gave him a DFC and sent him back to London, where he went on the town, a young man, alive and unwounded, with wings and a desirable medal ribbon on his tunic. There were some WRENs about. He had fun. He deserved to have fun. RIP Flying Officer Wheeler DFC.

I remember as a child a chap called neville browning when I used to play around stapleford aerodrome. He was always a fun chap to be around and always nice as pie to me. I think it was him that made he hate flying from a very young age.
I was always a bit shocked to find out about his war time exploits as he seemed like such a nice grandad type. Bit of a loony by all accounts. I'm not sure that combat in any form is very healthy for the psyche

[Negative Creep]

QuantumTokoloshi said:

A T-34 was recovered from under 3 feet of peat in a swamp in Estonia in 2000. They actually managed to get the thing started after a few hours of work. The vehicle may have been rough but it was well suited to its operating environment and worked, especially with the larger 85 mm cannon.

http://www.diving.ee/articles/art035.html

In the battle for Stalingrad, the tanks would roll out of the factory straight into combat outside the factory, not surprising quality was somewhat variable.

Edited by QuantumTokoloshi on Wednesday 8th July 13:44

I can imagine being simple enough to allow quick production and good enough to avoid being shot by the NKVD were at the forefront of your average Soviet designer

[vonuber]

The Germans were fairly innovative though, developing things like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StG_44

[princealbert23]

Mr_B said:

Most Secret War by RV Jones. Utterly fascinating read of the scientific intelligence war.

This one is too http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Secret-Sword-Military-...

[IroningMan]

T34 was very rough-and-ready, with a poor main armament and woeful crew survivability, but it was certainly fit for purpose. Panther was technically superior in every respect - but not particularly well-suited to a Russian Winter.

Given that both were on the battlefield at a time when we were still building Valentines - and sending them to Russia - one thing that's less open to debate is that British tank design was criminally poor.

[V8 Fettler]

TEKNOPUG said:

V8 Fettler said:

TEKNOPUG said:

V8 Fettler said:

irocfan said:

an interesting point regarding the Russians... had messrs hitler and 'heini' himmler not been on the bullst racial purity kick there is a good chance they could have taken the USSR out of the war. When the Germans first invaded there were a LOT of people who welcomed them for 'rescuing' them from uncle Joe. Unfortunately the various psycho squads were worse than what they had before. Imagine all the freed people not tying up the Wehrmacht as partisans, indeed fighting FOR them. Also imagine the Wehrmacht not having to bail out the Italians in Greece and thereby delaying Barbarossa by 3 months.....

Invading the USSR in late March 1941 would have been an impossibly muddy experience.

In any realistic scenario the Germans cannot the defeat the USSR; not enough men, not enough hardware, supply lines too long. Equally, there's no realistic scenario where Japan can defeat the USA for similar reasons.

The Greek resistance to the Italian invasion and subsequent intervention by the Wermacht is over-played as a reason for the failure of Barbarossa, as noted above.

Similarly there is no realistic scenario where the Germans can defeat the British Empire, given that the latter controls the world's ocean trade, whilst the former is trapped in continental Europe, with ever reducing resources. Russia may well have fallen if Moscow had been captured - certainly Stalin would have be removed from power and who knows how the nation would have held up after that. Britain was never going to be invaded, so there was no realistic way of knocking them out of any war. It then just becomes a resources/productivity numbers game or a race for the "bomb".

The Pacific war is somewhat different. Certainly the US could out-produce Japan on every level but there were still key opportunities missed by the Japanese early on in the war, that could have swung it decisively in their favour. It's worth mentioning also that that Japanese war with the US/UK was very much secondary in men, machinery and priorities over their conquest of China.

Germany doesn't have to defeat the British Empire to defeat Britain, just sever the trade links in the Atlantic, the First Happy Time being the only period where that could occur. Vanoc's radar guided attack on U100 was a key pivot point in the Battle of the Atlantic.

That confirms my point though. There was no way that the Kriegsmarine could defeat the RN and sever trade links with the rest of the Empire. Hence there was no way that Germany could defeat the Empire.

There were no uboat losses Dec 1940 to Feb 1941, the RN couldn't accurately detect them at night. At that stage, if Doenitz had perhaps 60 uboats on patrol (traditional design, nothing fancy) then the UK is finished (can't build enough ships to balance losses inflicted by uboats, can't reduce the effectiveness of the uboats). There is no technical reason why Doenitz couldn't have had his 60 uboats on patrol late 1940, but - fortunately - Hitler had little understanding of the potential of the uboats

[jmorgan]

V8 Fettler said:

There were no uboat losses Dec 1940 to Feb 1941, the RN couldn't accurately detect them at night. At that stage, if Doenitz had perhaps 60 uboats on patrol (traditional design, nothing fancy) then the UK is finished (can't build enough ships to balance losses inflicted by uboats, can't reduce the effectiveness of the uboats). There is no technical reason why Doenitz couldn't have had his 60 uboats on patrol late 1940, but - fortunately - Hitler had little understanding of the potential of the uboats

That was the gist of my understanding. Hit early with enough and we may well have been at the table signing away stuff for a peace treaty. The political will was partly there for that.