Any WWII buffs?

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I should hasten to point out that it was the BRITISH who conquered the German's Enigma code machine, and thus helped win WORLD WAR II. Check out Wiki on Alan Turing, who by the way invented the computer. Had we not been passing information to Patton, he would have had a much harder time chasing Rommel out of Africa. We also developed the jet engine in a top secret sort of way, and used the jet powered Meteor to knock down German rockets.

As for the Germans developing a nuclear bomb, that's nonsense. They never came close. Their scientists rejected all the current thinking because it was by Jewish Physicists ! !! They never had refined Plutonium. As for a "dirty bomb", what were they going to blow up? Radium? They did have the Jet Fighter, the ME-262. If Hitler had listened to the aircraft designers, it could have been formidable.

My question for you Yanks is: why did your Navy and Marines keep using the same failed tactics over and over in the Pacific?? They would bomb an island, then invade and suffer HUGE casulaties. Why didn't they use some Napalm like incendiary bombs to torch an island, then invade???

~Excuse me temper, but Bloody Hell!! !

What passes for History Textbooks over there??
Do you even know who Edward Murrow was ???
Do you know we thank him for his contribution??

It's the "Big One", by the way. When I'm in a pub, and some lout says "Yanks this and Yanks that", I respond that he should bloody well get down on his knees and that the Yanks for what they did during the "Big One".

The truth was that since Navy and Marine officials rarely got along well which caused some problems in some invasions. Actually napalm was used but you clearly forgot that the Japanese fortified these islands pretty good unlkie Guadalcanal. Sapian, Tinain and Guam were pretty good since we controlled the air in the Marianas Campaign. Tarawa wasn't huge in causalities rates by marine standards. Peleliu was high for the 1st Marine Division because it was the taste of what Iwo Jima and Okinawa were to be. Iwo Jima was high causalities due everything was underground so bombing and bombard was ineffective. Okinawa was basically letting us come towards the Japanese defenses lines in the south while little resistance so yeah it was high rate of causalities. The whole island hopping plan was effective because Rabaull was cut off from supplies and it is destroyed by Navy carrier plane attacks. You also realize that British and French mess up big time with their amphibious landing in WWI. So it was USMC that made the doctrine of amphibious assaults which all the allies used in WWII. Also photo reconnaissance was not as good as today but it was still effective anyway.

Excuse me, but we're discussing WWII ! !
You Yanks had incendiary bombs. (Remember Dresden??)
Why didn't the USA Navy bomb each island with incendiary bombs wall-to-wall?
You used Tanks equipped with flame-throwers, and Marines with backpacks to flame the Japanese tunnels, but suffered HUGE casualties each time ???

The U.S. Navy had incendiary shells more likely used by Battleships and Heavy Cruisers but not for landing bombardment. The Navy Carrier planes didn't have incendiary bombs at all I believe unless they were only give to F4U Corsairs planes. Your term of "heavy" casualties is actually an under statement because the casualties rate were not high until late 1944 into the final months of the war. Incendiary bombs in the Pacific were used on the Japanese Home Islands, note Tokyo was completely destroyed by USAAF B-29s using incendiary bombs. If we used those bombs, the Southern Pacific then our troops and allies were more likely to hit as well as the Japanese. You clearly overlooked my early statement because it was all WWII and the Japanese-American Pacific War. The reference to the doctrine of amphibious assaults is also true because we figure out the problems. It was military service rivalry why some bombardment like Tarawa was like three hours. The higher officials really never got along well though the Navy and Marine Corps were sister services in the Department of the Navy. I actually study the Japanese-American Pacific War well. Also an armour piercing bomb used by divebombers were more likely effective to due it can go through its target then blow up causing more damage. Also most of these islands had an airfield which needed to capture in one piece to be used against the Japanese. In truth, incendiary bombs were more likely used by land-based aircraft and bombers than carrier planes due to the risk of having the whole ship burst into flames though U.S. carriers were far better the British due to easier to repair quicker (wooden flight decks) while the British carrier would take longer to repair (steel flight decks).

Americans British, that's a joke. The Russians beat the Germans... we just kept a relatively small rear action going to draw off some of the German army. When the Russians and Germans fought, the casualties were in the tens of millions.

Yeah the Russians took the real beating in the millions of her civilians and military. The Americans casualties are no where near the bloodiest war that America was in, The War between the States or the American Civil War.

It has been argued that Hitler signed his death warrant when he put his sig on Operation Barbarossa. The question is how much longer would it have taken for the Russians to arrive in Berlin? The Nazis would have had to pull troops out of Europe over time, and it's quite possible that Stalin would never have let up. This is where the matter of various secret weapons come in. The Russians had a few up their sleeve, too. Of course, the T-34 was genius.

Yep those T-34's were pretty good tanks.

Like the AK-47, it was not the level of sophistication (that belonged to the German Tigers) it was their level of DURABILITY. Running on diesel, they could survive a direct hit that would send a petrol powered tank into a fireball. The fuel could rupture and spill everywhere, and just lay there ! !! Bloody Genius ! !

Actually that what historians called it because if you look at it, most of our allies fought near their territories like the British with India and Burma and the U.S. was fighting the Japanese in almost every island that we landed on. Okinawa is a fine example because it was the U.S. ground forces that were on land thought the Royal Navy was on the sea. I first heard this title at Mason from the head of the History Department because he specialized in Japan and this is what it is really called. Ironically it was more of allied military actions than U.S. vs Japan literally. I'm not sure where the title came from but it is something to look into I guess.

Last edited by JerryHatake on 03 Aug 2008, 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Those Russians were indeed smart and creative when it came to weapons of war.

Thankfully, Hitler wasn't a great tactician or that willing to listen to superior generals. German General Heinz Guderian was ready to push to Moscow and probably could have put the Soviets out of the war had it not been for Hitler's obsession on psychological vs STRATEGIC warfare

Yes and no. The russians could not have done it without help from the Americans in the form of equipment and raw materials. If America had not been shoving a full quarter of its capacity down the maw of the russian wave, it would have been very different on the eastern front for a variety of reasons, namely Stalin and his purge of the army in the thirties.

Let's not forget about Africa.

Africa was an important turning point in the war. The Italian effort was mostly a joke IMO. The German Afrika Corp was an army worthy of respect and fear, though.