[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.