Hiroshima: a (probably overly long) exposé

[techumseh]

Whatever. These are just some of the reasons why what I said is right.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
btw

I am pretty sure that those japanese tanks couldn't even really hurt the russian tanks

the T34 was roughly on the order of the panther (a bit worse) and the russians had tanks that were the match of tigers

US doctrine was to send 5 shermans against one tiger (our tanks were a lot weaker...)

our shermans way overmatched the japanese tanks

japanese tanks were more comparable to what was being used at the beggining of the war in europe

Jon Miller

The Panther was build after the German capture a few T-34. So the tanks were almost equal. The Russian also had JS 2, KV-1 and KV-2 and they were almost equal of the Tigers. The King Tiger was superior to all, but the Germans only had 62 of them. The American Pershing M-26 (90 mm) tank which did see action in small numbers did very well against all Gerrman Tanks.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by techumseh


My figures are pretty close to those of your source.

Not really. Plus you overlook that whole OBSOLETE thingy. Those Japanese tanks were basically worthless and were not deployed as armor groups but scattered among the army as field pieces. Japanese had no idea how to use them.

It seems that your source, the US Marine Corps University Command and Staff College, pretty much agrees with me.

No they don't. They are talking about the importance of Soveit era combined arms tactics and study the Manchuria campaign as a textbook way of executing that.

They could have f'ed up and still rolled that Kwangtung army.

But get real, it was a lopsided affair, get over it.

The Soviets fending off the Nazis when they were inside of Moscow, now THAT was extraordinary.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Admiral


According to everything I've seen, this is incorrect. The Dresden raid, and Hamburg as well, was conducted by Britain's Bomber Command. I do not know if USAF units were involved in either, but if so, they did not have any autonomy, and reported to Bomber Command.

The USAF did take part in the day part raids, even though their targets were supposedly listed as miltary targets.

The "Marshalling Fields," whatever those were. The RAF had it's target listed as the City Center.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Sikander


The Soviets used a hand picked force in a set piece surprise attack. They used everything they had learned in the previous 4 years about mobile warfare against a Japanese force that was scattered over too wide an area, had many of its best formations and personnel transferred to other fronts, had little experience of mechanized warfare and had weapons which were generally two generations behind the Soviet equipment. The result was predictable, the reactions of the enemy in such a situation are almost irrelevant. Only bad luck / bad weather can slow an attacker who has so many advantages.

Regarding the Anglo-Americans vs the Germans on the Western Front, for most of the summer they were penned up in bad terrain with not overwhelming numerical advantage against a foe which was superior in mobile operations and more skilled tactically in general. The Germans were ahead in tanks by at least one generation, but this hardly offset the Allied advantage in firepower from land and sea based artillery and aircraft. The main advantage of the Allies was that they were able to reinforce more efficiently than the Germans while applying an immense amount of firepower to somewhat offset their tactical ineptitude. They wrested control over the battle area and wore the Germans down to the nubs and managed to take good advantage when the line collapsed.

Both side played to their strengths, and this result too was inevitable except for the small prospect that the Allies might have somehow failed in the initial stages of the operation. The breakout phase did show some good intitiative and skill, especially considering that most of the American units that were conducting it were green or little experienced.

The Soviets fought on a much grander scale in the East at the same time, had a greater numerical advantage than the Western Allies (of troops actually in place on the line), equivalent tanks to their enemy and many more of them, a longer line which was less well-defended (in terms of men per mile) and had experienced troops all along the line. It is no surprise that they managed to take twice as much territory as the Allies as their line was more than twice as long and the terrain was open. Though the road network in the West was far superior, the Soviets were able to operate from rails directly to their supply sources while the Anglo-Americans had enormous difficulty supplying their thirsty forces from the cramped beach-head to the lengthy truck convoys after the breakthrough. This reduced perhaps significantly the gains that could have been made in 1944.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Blitzkrieg was developed on the plains of Western and Eastern Europe, which included cities.

Totally different from amphibiously assaulting a fortified island.

Two words: Leningrad and Stalingrad. These are examples of how bloody urban warfare was. That's why I said there's no pratical difference attacking an enemy entrenched inside a city or on an island.

Originally posted by Ted Striker
I'm sure your tactics would have worked better than the Marine and Army commanders on the ground that ordered this very thing.

Surely they could be wrong.

Not only I have the advantage of hindsight, but I am uninvolved. This is often a critcial advantage for finding the correct plan/action/etc, such as watching a game of chess.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by molly bloom


Oh dear. Don't know much about WWII and the Allied bombing campaigns in Europe do you?

I've seen this attempt to absolve Americans from general 'beastliness' in Europe before, and it was unconvincing then.

You seem to have fallen, hook line and veritable sinker for Nazi propaganda (originating with that well-known fount of truth, Goebbels), David Irving's various tomes absolving virtually anyone who was a Nazi from doing anything bad at all, and a gaggle of right wing and left wing post war revisionists who all leap up and down going:

'See? The Allies were just as bad as the Nazis!'


In the absence of hard evidence you guess that Dresden's industries was located in some unspecified suburbs.

Coventry was a mediaeval city, with a preserved mediaeval core, but with a mixture of light and heavy industry around that inner core.

Why do you assume that Germans treated their Baroque cities with greater care for historic buildings than the British did, and on what evidence?

You speak about the Marshalling Yards as if they were some great distance away, but what do you think the purpose of Marshalling Yards is?

"Dresden was home to any number of high-tech engineering firms all working flat out to supply Hitler’s war machine. One was Carl Zeiss-Jena, the lens-making company which was churning out optics for bomb sights, artillery sights and U-boat periscopes. Many of these factories relied on slave labour from concentration camps. In fact, the Dresden Yearbook for 1942 boasts that the city was “one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich.”

Dresden was also the site of one of the most important railway marshalling yards in eastern Germany. It was a nodal point on the network with hundreds of thousands of troops, guns and tanks being shunted through Dresden on their way to the eastern front. Politically, the city was solidly Nazi. Hitler’s visits were met with wild enthusiasm. There was an SS barracks in the suburbs. Hundreds of Hitler’s enemies had died on the blade of Dresden’s electric-powered guillotine. One way or another, Dresden was a “legitimate” target for the allied bombers (if bombing of any city can be regarded as legitimate).

Ironically perhaps, Dresden’s tragedy was not to have been bombed far earlier in the war. If it had been, things might have been different. But for years the city was beyond the reach of allied aircraft. Dresden seems to have been lulled, quite literally, into a false sense of security. As a result it failed to build the kind of deep, air-raid shelters with blast shutters and air-filtration systems which was the norm elsewhere in Germany (and which probably saved millions of lives). Dresdeners made their own arrangements – in basements, cellars, under stairs, where so many were to prove utterly vulnerable to the rain of high explosives and incendiaries. "

http://www.sundayherald.com/40093

The casualties from the bombing never reached Irving's inflated figures- under 40 000 is the figure supplied by emergency services in Dresden in the aftermath, not the figures altered and forged by Irving and Nazi propaganda.

The idea that somehow Americans had pure motives, bombing with precision only industrial, strategic targets is hilarious. I suggest you research the accuracy (or otherwise) of WWII bombing runs.

You might be greatly surprised. After all, these were the same Americans who in their bombing runs in China managed not to hit the industrial/strategic targets they were aiming for, but Chinese civilians and homes instead.

Are we then to believe that the American pilots or the aeroplanes in the European theatre were of a different, higher calibre? I think not.

Good info, I had been wondering what those Yards were for.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Sikander
The Soviets used a hand picked force in a set piece surprise attack. They used everything they had learned in the previous 4 years about mobile warfare against a Japanese force that was scattered over too wide an area, had many of its best formations and personnel transferred to other fronts, had little experience of mechanized warfare and had weapons which were generally two generations behind the Soviet equipment. The result was predictable, the reactions of the enemy in such a situation are almost irrelevant. Only bad luck / bad weather can slow an attacker who has so many advantages.

Yes, the Soviets had some advantages, yet the Kwantung Army had more than 10 years to build fortifications. They had numerous concrete bunkers and fortresses for example, that the Germans didn't have. Against such a foe one usually expect a bloody, drawn out operation, yet that's not the case.

The Soviets were also using mostly T-34s - their elite troops were still stationed on the Western Frornt.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Two words: Leningrad and Stalingrad. These are examples of how bloody urban warfare was. That's why I said there's no pratical difference attacking an enemy entrenched inside a city or on an island.

There is this thing called a supply line.

An island has a supply line that has to be kept alive by water.

An island is also much much much more difficult to stage attacks against because there is a limited amount of staging area and cover available. And again, all those guys and equipment have to come by boat.

Surely they could be wrong.

Not only I have the advantage of hindsight, but I am uninvolved. This is often a critcial advantage for finding the correct plan/action/etc, such as watching a game of chess.

I'm sure the Urban Ranger Doctrine could have saved the day!

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Yes, the Soviets had some advantages, yet the Kwantung Army had more than 10 years to build fortifications. They had numerous concrete bunkers and fortresses for example, that the Germans didn't have. Against such a foe one usually expect a bloody, drawn out operation, yet that's not the cast.

Why would an offensive army waste 10 years building defensive fortifications? Secondly, they changed their defensive plan at the last minute, which would have rendered those "fortifications" useless. Read the link:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1986/RMF.htm

The Soviets were also using mostly T-34s - their elite troops were still stationed on the Western Frornt.

No, many of the guys on that offensive were Soviet elite troops, some of the best in the world.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
There is this thing called a supply line.

An island has a supply line that has to be kept alive by water.

An island is also much much much more difficult to stage attacks against because there is a limited amount of staging area and cover available. And again, all those guys and equipment have to come by boat.

I am not sure what you are talking, Ted. I was pointing out that cities were (still are) hard to attack, that the Nazis failed to take Leningrad and Stalingrad at the height of their power.

The flip side of the coin is enemy in a city can attack out, while an enemy on an island without ships is completely stuck. So you cannot bypass a city without a large screening force, but you can ignore islands once you destroyed the airbases and ships. Unless you need them for your own airbases and ports.

Originally posted by Ted Striker
I'm sure the Urban Ranger Doctrine could have saved the day!

Nothing to add?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Why would an offensive army waste 10 years building defensive fortifications?

That's because the army stationed in Manchuria was for occupation. It's there to guard against the Soviets more than anything else, after they got whooped twice.

Originally posted by Ted Striker
No, many of the guys on that offensive were Soviet elite troops, some of the best in the world.

As I said, they were mostly using T-34s. I am not saying they weren't good, but not as good as those using IS monsters, say. I also don't recall they had any of the Soviet Guards divisions there.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Read the link:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...t/1986/RMF.htm

What a horrible layout.

My poor eyes...

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


I am not sure what you are talking, Ted. I was pointing out that cities were (still are) hard to attack, that the Nazis failed to take Leningrad and Stalingrad at the height of their power.

The flip side of the coin is enemy in a city can attack out, while an enemy on an island without ships is completely stuck. So you cannot bypass a city without a large screening force, but you can ignore islands once you destroyed the airbases and ships. Unless you need them for your own airbases and ports.

That's blanket logic that is completely wrong.

Hitler's generals told him to bypass Stalingrad because it would chew up too many resources and fast moving armor is not suited for long gruelling urban warfare. It was completely bypassable and didn't need a screening force.

In the case of the islands in the Pacific, they were attacked for a reason. Duh you're going to ignore an island if it is not strategically important.

What the hell is your point anyway?

Nothing to add?

No, you don't.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


That's because the army stationed in Manchuria was for occupation. It's there to guard against the Soviets more than anything else, after they got whooped twice.

The Kwangtung Army by definition was an invasion force. While it is true some were there to guard against Soviets, any defensive plans were abandoned at the last minute when the Soviets returned in 1945.

As I said, they were mostly using T-34s. I am not saying they weren't good, but not as good as those using IS monsters, say. I also don't recall they had any of the Soviet Guards divisions there.

Soviets were much much better than the Japanese Army, who basically got rolled. It was a bunch of Blitzkrieging armored divisions sweeping in against disorganized infantry who had no armor protection or any anti-tank weapons or artillery to speak of.