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VikingSkull posted:when Stalin says that they couldn't have won without American help, I tend to believe him I wrote a big post on this in the D&D thread, but basically: the USSR grinding Germany into paste was EVENTUALLY inevitable once Germany invaded and started committing atrocities behind the front line, which pretty much permanently ruled out any kind of conditional settlement. However, what the US materiel supply gave the Soviets was the ability to outperform and (crucially given how loving huge Russia is) outmaneuver the Germans during the crucial years when they were rocking their industry back across the Urals. Without American trucks and poo poo the Soviets are on the same plane as the Germans during this time regarding supply and manpower movement, restricted to the rails and what limited road stock is in theater already. Would Russia have eventually beaten Germany? I don't doubt it, the Soviets were beyond furious at the Nazis and once they got their poo poo together the Germans had virtually no successes at stopping them even temporarily. But it ALREADY cost them 20 million dead with American help. Without American aid, that number only gets bigger. So they would have "won" the war, and then the country falls to loving pieces.
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May 2, 2016 04:44
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I wasn't actually aware it was THAT much, Jesus Christ. That's an enormous multiplying factor. Now consider that while supplying all that poo poo the US was also supplying the British Empire, and fighting the Pacific Theater effectively on its own. Basically MassivelyBuckNegro posted:saying that the us was irrelevant in wwii is like the 'gently caress you dad school' of wwii historiography.
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May 2, 2016 06:47
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Today on "And You Thought YOUR Force Was Incompetent", the Japanese Aircraft Carrier, Shinano. What, you thought I was going for the Taiho? Taiho's good, but everyone knows that story by now. Gander at this. Wikipedia posted:Though severe, the damage to Shinano was at first judged to be manageable.[20] The crew were confident in the ship's armor and strength, which translated into lax initial efforts to save the ship.[25] This overconfidence extended to Abe. He doubted the sub's torpedoes could inflict serious damage, since he was well aware that American torpedoes were inferior to Japanese torpedoes in both potency and accuracy. He ordered the carrier to maintain its maximum speed even after the last torpedo hit. quote:At 06:00 her list had increased to 20 degrees after the starboard boiler room flooded, at which point the valves of the port trimming tanks rose above the waterline and became ineffective. The engines shut down for lack of steam around 07:00, and Abe ordered all of the propulsion compartments evacuated an hour later. He then ordered the three outboard port boiler rooms flooded in a futile attempt to reduce the carrier's list. He also ordered Hamakaze and Isokaze to take her in tow. However, the two destroyers only displaced 5,000 metric tons (4,900 long tons) between them, about one-fourteenth of Shinano's displacement and not nearly enough to overcome her deadweight. The first tow cables snapped under the strain and the second attempt was aborted for fear of injury to the crews if they snapped again. The ship lost all power around 09:00 and was now listing over 20 degrees. At 10:18, Abe gave the order to abandon ship; by this time Shinano had a list of 30 degrees. As she heeled, her flight deck touched the water, which flowed into the open elevator well, sucking many swimming sailors back into the ship as she sank. A large exhaust vent below the flight deck also sucked many other sailors into the ship as it submerged. quote:Post-war analysis by the U.S. Naval Technical Mission to Japan noted that Shinano had serious design flaws. Specifically, the joint between the waterline armor belt on the upper hull and the anti-torpedo bulge on the underwater portion was poorly designed; Archerfish's torpedoes all exploded along this joint. The force of the torpedo explosions also dislodged an I-beam in one of the boiler rooms which punched a hole into another boiler room. In addition, the failure to test for water-tightness in each compartment played a role as potential leaks could not be found and patched before Shinano put to sea.[37] The executive officer blamed the large amount of water that entered the ship on the failure to air-test the compartments for leaks. He reported hearing air rushing through gaps in the water-tight doors just minutes after the last torpedo hit—a sign that seawater was rapidly entering the ship, proving the doors were unseaworthy.[38]
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May 2, 2016 15:43
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Generally speaking you don't keep going at full speed when you get blasted by a torpedo, on your zigzag course out away from land that was supposed to prevent you from running into that submarine that just nailed your rear end. That and "lax" damage control after four torpedo hits, all of which actually exploded (the main flaw with American torpedos in WWII was them not exploding). Shinano was killed by her design flaws but by not reducing speed, the flooding happened exceptionally faster. There's also trying to get two destroyers to tow a Yamato-class hull and not ordering an abandon-ship until you're thirty degrees over, an hour after you've lost all power and two hours after you ordered the engine room crew out.
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May 2, 2016 18:50
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Frosted Flake posted:Does anyone know where historiography has settled on Italy in WW2? I have no idea where contemporary historiography has settled, but my money's closest on some match between A, B, and C. The Italian Army had four major spheres of combat in WW2 proper--the Balkans, North Africa, Russia, and Italy Proper. The Balkans and North Africa were hopeless shitshows based on what I recall, particularly the Balkans, where the Italians got their asses handed to them by the Greeks. The Russian Front, on the other hand, featured an Italian army of 235,000 that got smashed to pieces during Little Saturn, but managed to extricate half of its fighting men in the face of numbers sometimes reaching 9 to 1, and hold out for nearly three months overall. Italy itself... it's almost impossible to gauge the fighting strength of the Italians there because of what a clusterfuck Italy was, politically. Overall I'd say the Italians were no more strong or weak than any other Axis power as a pure military force, but they suffered early from the afflictions of fascism and Mussolini kept on dramatically overgauging his country's ability to wage modern warfare.
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May 6, 2016 14:50
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