Text 8306, 79 rader
Skriven 2005-01-31 17:53:46 av Gary Braswell (1:123/789.0)
   Kommentar till text 8277 av Ed Hulett (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: Ww 2
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Ed Hulett -> VERN HUMPHREY wrote:

 EH> VERN HUMPHREY -> ED HULETT wrote:
 VH>>>> But let me point out that in 1917, Germany DID defeat Russia.  The
 VH>>>> Russians collapsed, signed the peace of Brest-Litovsk, and freed
 VH>> the
 VH>>>> Germans to send their forces west -- almost crushing the Allies
 VH>> before
 VH>>>> the American Army was fully formed.

 EH>>> Russia collapsed because the people just didn't want to fight for the
 VH>> Czar a
 EH>>> longer. It was during then that the Russian revolution began and the
 VH>> army ju
 EH>>> didn't want to fight Germany. The Czar also made himself supreme
 VH>> commander o
 EH>>> the Russian army while having no real military strategic knowledge at
 VH>> all.

 VH>> Nevertheless, the Germans DID beat the Russians in WWI, and given the
 VH>> brutality of Stalin's rule, they had a good chance of repeating the
 VH>> performance.  In fact, at first many Russians welcomed the Nazis as
 VH>> liberators -- until they found out how brutal they were.

 VH>>>> So there was some possibility that the Germans could repeat their
 VH>>>> earlier victories.

 EH>>> There was some possiblity, in fact, they did chase Britain out of
 EH> France at
 EH>>> Dunkirk. It wasn't until the US joined the war and helped defeat
 EH> Germany in
 EH>>> northern Africa and then invaded Europe that Germany was on the
 EH> defensive.

 VH>> True -- they could have won, but for a few fatal mistakes.

 EH> They could have won even after the US entered the war. Had the weather
 EH> favored them longer at Bastogne, they may have broke free and at least
 EH> prolonged the war.

 EH> Tonight, Sunday, on the History Channel they had a program about secret
 EH> weapons of WWII and later. If Germany had been able to build some of the
 EH> planes and weapons that had been developed, they could have bombed the
 EH> US. They had a stealth flying wing bomber that looks very much like the
 EH> B-2 Spirit. Had they been able to produce more it might have turned the
 EH> war in their favor.

That is the Horten. I saw it a few years ago in the Garber facility. I have
some pics if you are interested. Both the Germans and Japanese developed some
really forward looking aircraft in '44 and '45, stuff that we are only today
just making work.

Even had they developed these aircraft in large numbers, I doubt it would have
changed much.

Believe it or not, 1945 saw the largest production of German aircraft in  WII.
But they had two major shortages, fuel and pilots. And what pilots they had
were trained for a matter of hours, not weeks or months, but hours, before
being sent up.

Even with superior aircraft, they would have been shot out of the air by our
pilots who all were far more experienced.

The Germans and Japanese doctrine was to have a small pool of extremely good
pilots, while the US decided to have a very large pool of good pilots. In the
end attrition took out the core of the Axis pilots since they did not send
their most experienced back to train. They kept them out there, year after year
until one day, the odds caught up with the elite.

About a year ago, top secret files were declassified in the UK. It showed they
had numerous opportunities late in the war to kill Hitler himself. They decided
he was by that time, too great of an Allied asset. His delusional commands did
more to bring the Reich down than dozens of divisions could have.

Now had they developed these weapons earlier in the war and produced them in
large numbers, it could have been very ugly.

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