DECISIVE BATTLES - Pick The Most Decisive and Provide Rationale...

[m21sniper]

Originally Posted by tabs

1. U do realized Hitler interfered with the development of the ME 262..he wanted a bomber. It could have been in service many months earlier and it would have effected the outcome of the air war. Again the development of the Comet and V2 came late in the war when the die was already cast. Also the deployment of the V2 was against civilian targets and not military another Hitler blunder...it seems he was his own worst enemy.

I don't think the Me262 Swallow could have ever had any real impact. They couldn't build the engines. They had hundreds of airframes completed by war's end, sitting there collecting dust, with no engines.

The factory was also totally obliterated on one occasion in a daylight raid as well.

Seems the USAAF bomber campaign did it's job.

Originally Posted by tabs

2. The Germans ceased development of the A Bomb n 1942...just about time the US was getting started. Computers were in a very rudimentary stage...The Brits had captured an enigma machine...and it was the work of the code breakers and not the computer that solve the mystery...Both sides employed radar...the Germans mostly used it for against the British strategic night bombing offensive Late in the war their night fighters were equipped with radar...Radar is a bit of a push as each side continually developed and refined their capabilities.

Allied naval radars were probably clearly superior, but German fighter radar was, as you say, on a par with the best Allied designs.

Originally Posted by tabs

3. The ME 262 was vulnerable upon landing...however by the time it was dribbled into service the Germans had long lost air superiority and it was a matter of too little to late...read #1 comments

The problem the Germans had was that they could either try and focus on the US escort fighters, and let the bombers go unmolested, or focus on the bombers and get ravaged by the escort fighters.

They were just in a no win situation. They simply didn't have the material resources to counter the huge numbers of allied aircraft. The Me262 would not have altered this equation significantly IMO. What's more, their training programs were wholly incapable of replacing their pilot losses.

Originally Posted by tabs

4.The ME 109 saw service in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and ended WW2 still in service (The ME109 was still in service in Spain till the 1960;s) ...So the ME 109 was well past its prime by 1943. However in its day it was the state of the art along with the Spitfire that came along a little later in the 1930's. The FW190 was put in service in 1941 and was becoming long of tooth by the end of 1943. The first Mustangs P-51's were introduced into service in the beginning of 1944...However the plane I would have chosen to fly would have been the JUG or P-47 simply indestructible. This argument of yours is specious on this point.

The P-38 was flying in 1939 and was more advanced than any aircraft you mention here. In fact it was the only US fighter to remain in production for the entire war, from start to finish. It was the pre-eminent US fighter of WWII, though for some reason it's role has been largely overlooked by most. Go figure.

At any rate, it was superior to any piston engined aircraft flown by any nation in WWII, from start to finish.

Originally Posted by tabs

The Panzer Mark V or Tiger I was slow and ponderous, but with that 88 gun ferocious and so heavily armoured it was almost impossible to knock out ...Wittman with his 6 Tigers wiped out a whole Brigade of British Sherman's in Normandy..some 50 tanks without a loss. The Tiger II was an even heavier behemoth...Read comment 6.

This was as much the Allies own fault as anyone else's. The US had over 200 (it might have even been 500, i can't recall...lol) 76.2mm gunned Sherman's in depots in England available for use in D-day, they felt them unneccesary.

Whoops...

The British also offered the US a deal whereby they'd provide us with several hundred 17lber(88mm) guns per month until we got production of the guns in the US up and running so that America could produce a US version of the Firefly Sherman, but we turned them down the offer.

Double whoops...the Firefly Sherman was one hell of a good tank and could take on any German tank of the war head to head.

So in reality German tanks did not possess superior technology at all, the US Army merely felt that the Sherman was "good enough" until they were forced to admit to themselves after D-Day that it wasn't.

Same thing the USAAF bomber generals had to admit to themselves after the Luftwaffe ravaged their bombing formations in the dark early days of the 8th AF's daylight raids. Had the USAAF worked up our bomber doctrine responsibly, and employed the P-38 in the role of LR bomber escort since day 1, and wargamed the P-38 in the role prior to the start of the bomber campaign, the P-51 would have never even been built, or neccesary. Today, the P-38 would be "the fighter that won the war", and the Mustang nothing more than an afterthought.

Originally Posted by tabs

8. I too would classify the Soviet T-34 as the single best tank of the war..simple to mfg, easy to maintain, hard hitting and crude...but it could be easily mass produced. During the fall of 1941 the rains came which turned the Russian roads into seas of mud...this in effect ground the German armoured offensive to a halt...why because the German tanks had NARROW Tracks..the Soviet tanks had wide tracks which allowed them to still move about in the mud. Subsequent German tanks if one notices had wider tracks so they to could move in muddy conditions.

To me the M4A3E8/76 Sherman and GB Sherman Firefly as well as the Panther were all clearly superior to the T-34/85. By the end of the war the T-34 was actually quite outmoded, they suffered absolutely horrendous losses in the battle for Berlin. I think the Sov's lost more T-34s in that battle alone than the US lost in the whole of WWII in the ETO.

[1967 R50/2]

Originally Posted by m21sniper

The P-38 was flying in 1939 and was more advanced than any aircraft you mention here. In fact it was the only US fighter to remain in production for the entire war, from start to finish. It was the pre-eminent US fighter of WWII, though for some reason it's role has been largely overlooked by most. Go figure.

INdeed the kill rate for the P-38 was impressive, especially in the Pacific.

Still I think people tend to forget one of the best: The Corsair. Very flexible, and almost indestructible as well.


Also the allies middle weight bombers were not never matched be the Axis.

Mitchell
Marauder
Mosquito (if you can call it a middle weight)

There are others too....All far more potent than the axis equivalents.

[m21sniper]

The Corsair was a monster, for sure- especially the F4U-1C with the 4x 20mm guns in the wings. I love it's nickname too.

"The ensign eliminator."

Hehehe.

[1967 R50/2]

Returning to the whole land vs. naval battle bias. I would strike Marathon from the list.

Why? While the victory did halt the immediate threat, it did not eliminate it. Darius immediately began to prepare for a 2nd campaign. Of course the Persians returned 10 years later under Xerxes, and it was the Battles of Salamis and Mycale that finally put an end to their outright Grecian ambitions.

Of course the Persians and Greeks continued to meddle in each others affairs...as great powers often do.

[tabs]

The German fighter pilots thought the P-38 was a sitting duck for them, knocking them down with regularity. Heinz Bar in paticular liked the P-38. That is why they were not used in great quanity in the ETO...read Horrido by Trevor and Constable...

In the Pacific it was a different story..the P-38 had range, speed, firepower and was up against a more obslecent fighter plane....Bong and McGuire ran up quiet a few kills using the P-38.

[tabs]

Fuel was the major problem for the Luftwaffe..in the end they didn't have enough fuel to even train their pilots adequately.

If the Lutwaffe was able to introduce the ME 262 at the end of 1943 instead of the fall of 1944 the airwar over Germany would have been quiet different. The ME262 while it had teething problems was apx 100 miles faster then the best the Allies could put up...the P-51...Not only was it quicker but it was heavily armed..

Given the better supply situation and still having air superiority over Germany in early 1944 the Germans would have been able to halt the Allied daylight bombing campaign...

Read The First and Last by Galland and The Luftwaffe War Diaries by Cajus Becker...

[tabs]

So what is your point about the T-34 the USSR lost 1M men during the Barttle of Berlin in 1945, which was more than the US did in the Pacific and ETO during the war...the USSR lost 20,000,000 people...

[m21sniper]

Originally Posted by tabs

The German fighter pilots thought the P-38 was a sitting duck for them, knocking them down with regularity. Heinz Bar in paticular liked the P-38. That is why they were not used in great quanity in the ETO...read Horrido by Trevor and Constable...

The P-38s IMMEDIATELY brought US heavy bomber losses down to sustainable levels. That's from mission 1. From the very first mission that P-38s escorted US bombers to the target at no point did US bomber losses ever cross into unsustainable territory ever again. And that's with no work ups, no war gaming, no dedicated escort doctrine and a LOUSY twin engine fighter training program.

The Lighting and it's pilots for all intents and purposes were just thrown into the game with no preparation whatsoever and virtually no exprience at all in those sorts of high altitude operational conditions.

And sometimes those P-38s were fighting deep inside Germany while outnumbered 10:1 or more against the cream of the crop of the early war Luftwaffe.

All they did was get the job done.

The USAAF did everything it could to make the P-38 seem unsuitable because admitting they had a plane from DAY ONE of the air war in the ETO that could have escorted our bombers all the way to Berlin and back was simply not going to happen. Too many careers at stake, too many questions to answer about how they let thousands of our boys die needlessly in unescorted raids to prove their beloved mantra of "the bomber will always get through."

The early models (F/G/H) had some severe limitations but these were all fixed in the J models with the dive brakes and powered aileron boosters, and with the introduction of heated flight suits (SEVERE frost bite was a very real problem in the early birds).

A P38J could outturn and (hugely) out climb a P51D mustang, match it in a dive, and had far more effective firepower, no engine torque turning/gunnery issues due to it's contra-rotating props, and comparable range. It also offered twin engine reliability as well.

Originally Posted by tabs

In the Pacific it was a different story..the P-38 had range, speed, firepower and was up against a more obslecent fighter plane....Bong and McGuire ran up quiet a few kills using the P-38.

P-38s were extremely succesful flying in the Med vs the Luftwaffe and the Italians. Their exploits at The Battle of the Bismarck Sea in particular are the stuff of legend.

As far as the Japanese having obsolete fighters, i don't think a Fw190 or Me109 pilot would -ever- want to get into a turning fight with a Zero, and the Frank was as good a fighter plane as any piston engined German fighter, if not better.

The Frank could even intercept B-29s at operational altitude, something that the Fw190d and Me109 would have been very hard pressed to do.

The P-38J/L were phenomenal aircraft (the L could carry the same bombload as an early war B-17 Flying Fortress!), and the cancelled P-38K(not put into production because it would have meant shutting down the line for 2 weeks to do some minor retooling- which shows you just how important the plane really was) would have been even better.

The P-38 did have it's flaws though, mainly in the area of the cockpit and ergonomics, which were reportedly just not good compared to say, the Mustang.

[m21sniper]

Originally Posted by tabs

Fuel was the major problem for the Luftwaffe..in the end they didn't have enough fuel to even train their pilots adequately.

They didn't have enough pilots either. Their training program proved to be wholly inadequate. The Me-262 would not have changed that.

If the Lutwaffe was able to introduce the ME 262 at the end of 1943 instead of the fall of 1944 the airwar over Germany would have been quiet different. The ME262 while it had teething problems was apx 100 miles faster then the best the Allies could put up...the P-51...Not only was it quicker but it was heavily armed..

The Me262 fighter factory got bombed to oblivion by the 8th AF, that would probably have made it impossible to field them in any real numbers in 1943 in any case.

Given the better supply situation and still having air superiority over Germany in early 1944 the Germans would have been able to halt the Allied daylight bombing campaign....

The Germans never managed to cause unsustainable loss rates among US bombers from the very first day they were deep escorted by P-38s all the way to thier targets, and by 1944 the US had so many fighters running "Ramrod" fighter sweeps that i just don't think the Me262 would have made any real difference. What's more, the US escort fighters did as much real damage to the German war machine(particularly the LOCs- rail engines and trucks) when released for strafing runs on their return leg as the heavies did themselves.

By D-day the Luftwaffe had for all practical purposes been completely destroyed as an effective fighting force. When the Allies made their landings on 6 June 1944 they were opposed by exactly 2 German fighters.

Read The First and Last by Galland and The Luftwaffe War Diaries by Cajus Becker...

I will put them on my list.

Originally Posted by tabs

So what is your point about the T-34 the USSR lost 1M men during the Barttle of Berlin in 1945, which was more than the US did in the Pacific and ETO during the war...the USSR lost 20,000,000 people...

My point is that by the end of WWII the T-34 was largely outmoded.

In 1941-42 they were beasts though.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

Well, I could rephrase that and say the entire Operation Barbarossa was one of the biggest military blunders of all time because it led to battles that Nazi Germany could never win and, had Barbarossa never happened, Germany would probably still control all of Europe today. Ditto for Hitler's declaring war on the U.S.

What does a whore have to do with a decisive battle?
Oh, you said Barbarossa. Never mind.

[tabs]

When the Allies made their landings on 6 June 1944 they were opposed by exactly 2 German fighters.
One of the 2 was Pips Priller...

No matter what you say the German fighter pilots thought the P-38 was a sitting duck for them...Read Horrido by Trevor and Constable

Also are you going to argue with Adolf Galland...about the difference the ME262 would have made if it had been introduced earlier?

Can you say Schweinfurt and Black Thursday...on a couple of missions the US lost about 120 bombers in October of 43. This caused the US command to discontinue daylight raids until early 1944 when the P-51 was introduced. Read Martin Caidins Black Thursday...

The T-34 always suffered horrendous losses..The Russian idea of maneuver was to line up 20,000 men and say charge, if that didn't get er done they would line up another 20,000 and do it over again until the Germans caved... Read Hitler Moves East and Scorched Earth by Paul Carrel. Also Guderian's and Manstein's memiors.

[tabs]

Also read The Last 100 Days by Toland and The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan..

[tabs]

OHHH Yeah.."Varus WHERE are my Eagles." Augustus Caesar

[m21sniper]

Originally Posted by tabs

When the Allies made their landings on 6 June 1944 they were opposed by exactly 2 German fighters.
One of the 2 was Pips Priller...

No matter what you say the German fighter pilots thought the P-38 was a sitting duck for them...Read Horrido by Trevor and Constable

To some of the top aces ANY plane was a sitting duck.

The problem with the early Lightnings were their dive problems which the Luftwaffe pilots could exploit by diving away, and thier poor initial roll rate.
Once it was rolled though, the P-38 would out turn any other US fighter, and out climb any other US fighter as well. The J model and later Lightnings corrected both the dive compressibility issues and the poor initial roll rate, and those planes were as good if not better than anything the US put in the skies in WWII.

The top 2 US fighter aces of WWII both flew P-38s, which i would suggest is no coincidence.

Originally Posted by tabs

Also are you going to argue with Adolf Galland...about the difference the ME262 would have made if it had been introduced earlier?

But it couldn't have been introducted much earlier than it actually was, the factory was destroyed in a bombing raid. By the time it was rebuilt and Me262s were again rolling off the line, it was already too late.

Originally Posted by tabs

Can you say Schweinfurt and Black Thursday...on a couple of missions the US lost about 120 bombers in October of 43. This caused the US command to discontinue daylight raids until early 1944 when the P-51 was introduced. Read Martin Caidins Black Thursday...

There were no P-38s escorting on Black Thursday, and by the time the P-51D was introduced the P-38s had already brought the loss rates down to acceptable levels.

"Throughout the summer and fall, Eighth Air Force bomber crews were experiencing a monthly attrition rate of 30 percent, while Luftwaffe pilots died at a rate less than half that of the Americans. Of the 35 aircrews that arrived in England with the 100th Bomb Group at the end of May 1943, only 14 percent of the men made it through the 25 missions required for rotation. The rest were dead, wounded, missing, psychological cases or prisoners of war. The message was clear: Bombers could not survive beyond the range of fighter escort. After Black Week, Eaker called off further penetrations and pondered his dilemma. The American daylight bombing campaign against Germany had reached a crisis point.

The changes eventually made to Operation Pointblank in 1944 came from several sources. Major General James H. ‘Jimmy’ Doolittle replaced Eaker as the Eighth Air Force commander on January 6, 1944. Doolittle’s experience as commander of the Northwest African Strategic Air Force during Operation Torch had convinced him of the critical importance of fighter escorts to the success of bombardment. With a fighter-escort advocate at the helm of the Eighth Air Force, the doctrine of air superiority took on greater importance. Not only would bombers continue to strike key aircraft industries, but increasing numbers of American fighter escorts would aggressively attack the Luftwaffe as the Germans rose to attack heavy bomber formations. The American fighters would also dive below 20,000 feet in search of enemy aircraft in the air and on the ground.

Building on engineering projects in 1943, the Eighth Air Force mounted wing and belly tanks on its Lockheed P-38 Lightning and Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighters."

http://www.historynet.com/operation-pointblank-evolution-of-allied-air-doctrine-during-world-war-ii.htm/3

The P-38 could have been doing this mission from day 1 of the air war in the ETO. And had the plane been properly vetted in realistic operational wargames the early model P-38s problems could have been largely corrected before a single plane ever took the war to the Germans. This was not done, obviously...and thousands needlessly died as a result.

Originally Posted by tabs

The T-34 always suffered horrendous losses..The Russian idea of maneuver was to line up 20,000 men and say charge, if that didn't get er done they would line up another 20,000 and do it over again until the Germans caved... Read Hitler Moves East and Scorched Earth by Paul Carrel. Also Guderian's and Manstein's memiors.

While true, the T-34 was still outmoded by wars end by several other tank designs. I'd have preferred a Panther, an M4 "easy eight" or a GB Firefly over a T-34 personally- if it was my tail on the line. I think anyone would.

The T-34 made it's name for itself in the early-mid war time frame. Against early war PzIII's it was highly dominant and was still very comparable to the PzIV series.

[tabs]

The top 2 US fighter aces of WWII both flew P-38s, which i would suggest is no coincidence.

Yep Bong and McGuire...as mentioned in an earlier Post in this Thread Out of the SW Pacific

[m21sniper]

Originally Posted by tabs

The top 2 US fighter aces of WWII both flew P-38s, which i would suggest is no coincidence.

Yep Bong and McGuire...as mentioned in an earlier Post in this Thread Out of the SW Pacific

Yep.

Charles Lindburgh flew some operational sorties with them in P-38s as well.

[tabs]

it couldn't have been introducted much earlier than it actually was, the factory was destroyed in a bombing raid. By the time it was rebuilt and Me262s were again rolling off the line, it was already too late.

Its amazing then that German war production actually increased to its highest level during 1944 at the height of the Allied Bombing Campaign...Read "Inside The Third Reich"by AlbertSpeer.

[m21sniper]

Originally Posted by tabs

it couldn't have been introducted much earlier than it actually was, the factory was destroyed in a bombing raid. By the time it was rebuilt and Me262s were again rolling off the line, it was already too late.

Its amazing then that German war production actually increased to its highest level during 1944 at the height of the Allied Bombing Campaign...Read "Inside The Third Reich"by AlbertSpeer.

This is true, but at the same time, imagine how high it would have been had there not been a bombing campaign.

It boggles the mind.

WWII was such a stark contrast. It brought out all the very best and very worst of humanity, all at the same time.

[tabs]

One of the things that Speer did was decentralize war production so that the Allies could not bomb one factory and have production cease on that model.

[m21sniper]

He was a logistical and industrial wizard, no doubt. It's probably a damn good thing he wasn't the Fuhrer.