What have you learned about WW2 recently?

Discussion in 'General' started by dbf, Oct 22, 2010.

  1. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

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  2. Incredibledisc

    Incredibledisc Well-Known Member

    No problem - I followed the link as I was curious myself and when I looked a bit closer I realised that something was off.
     
  3. chipm

    chipm Well-Known Member

    Yes... how strange.
    "Misleading" it putting it mildly.
    Speaking of copyright .....they used the same cover as the original book.?. :)
     
  4. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    I wonder why his estate isn't going after them. They even list Ike as an author.

    by Dwight D. Eisenhower (Author), Antonin Scalia (Author), Richard C. Tallman (Author), & 2 more

    Notice that the real one was written without a ghost writer. Eisenhower did a massive amount of technical writing and planning all through the twenties and thirties and was so good at it that some of his superiors didn't want to release him for command positions. He always made them look good. Worst offender was MacArthur when Eisenhower worked for him in the Philippines
     
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  5. chipm

    chipm Well-Known Member

    It dawns on me......it was VERY unfortunate for the German and Italian Armies that Eisenhower (and his crew) was not born 10 years later than he was. :)
     
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  6. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    ''The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers''
     
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  7. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    I didn't learn this recently but I thought it might be of interest.

    Eisenhower made an emergency landing in a two man Stinson in France. He always had a bad knee after a bad football injury at West Point.

    Underwood took off with Eisenhower as the weather deteriorated, the airfield was hidden by clouds, and the remaining fuel supply was getting low. They elected to make an emergency landing on the deserted French beach—the second forced landing of the day.

    Hansen wrote, "In order to save the plane from the incoming tide, the general and Dick [Underwood] pulled the airplane higher on the beach and in doing so the general wrenched his knee." After securing the aircraft, the pair staggered nearly a mile in the darkness to a road. A soldier, driving a jeep, stopped then stared incredulously at the Air Force pilot and the limping Army general who were both dripping wet and muddy. The GI asked no questions as he rushed them down the road to a warm and emotional reunion at the Granville villa.


    http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2014/December 2014/Eisenhower's-B-25.aspx
     
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  8. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

  9. A-58

    A-58 Not so senior Member

    I've recently learned the the commander of the OSS, Wild Bill Donovan himself participated in the landing on D-Day. Although he did not go in with the first wave, but after eventually going in he was close enough on the line to come under direct fire from German machine gun emplacements. Also he went in at Salerno and Anzio as well. Incredibly stupid in my opinion. What if he was wounded and captured alive? Of course he doesn't strike me as the kind to sing like a stool pigeon right off the bat, but even just losing someone like that could not be a good thing for the intelligence war effort.

    William J. Donovan - Wikipedia
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2019
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  10. A-58

    A-58 Not so senior Member

    While looking up some info on the Battle of Okinawa to support a post I made in a thread over on WW2F, I learned that US forces lost 221 tanks in the campaign (1 Apr - 22 Jun 45). Not many details were available, but two instances that I did find indicated that Japanese artillery was responsible for many tank losses, and in one particular assault, 22 tanks were lost when accompanying infantry failed to link up with them. Of course these losses pales in comparison with operations in North Africa and NWE. In the Battle of the Bulge alone the US lost over 700 tanks.
     
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  11. idler

    idler GeneralList

    The pie's mentioned but Gun Jesus also presents a potted bio of Lord Woolton:

     
  12. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    Saw this quote today and the percentage seems strikingly high:

    "The British later estimated that some 25 percent of civilian casualties from German World War II bombing attacks on their cities, were from friendly fire. That is, British anti-aircraft shells eventually falling back to earth, causing property damage and casualties."

    If accurate, what must the German number be?
     
  13. chipm

    chipm Well-Known Member

    The Universal Carrier -
    I have not read how many were produced just from 1940-1945, but i am guessing in the area of 15-20 Thousand.?
    At any rate, there were A LOT of them made, way more than i had realized.
    I never knew they had that much appeal or use.
    I am still not sure about their cruising speed or range, but yeah, i guess it was a Very Useful vehicle :)
     
  14. Ewen Scott

    Ewen Scott Well-Known Member

    You are way off target with your estimate for WW2 Universal Carrier production. I've seen various figures for total production of these vehicles ranging up to the 113k on Wiki which includes pre and post war versions of similar vehicles. My estimate is something approaching 90k of the basic Universal Carrier alone and not the larger versions. A quick look at some of my sources revealed the following.

    Canada alone produced nearly 29000 plus 5000 of the enlarged Windsor carrier which only began to appear in late 1944.
    Nearly 20000 of the enlarged T16 version were produced by Ford in the USA for lend lease use (not sure where they all went as they are rare in photos of British units and only 96 went to Russia)
    Australia produced about 5500 per one very old source I have of which 1500 went to China.
    New Zealand produced approximately 540

    In addition there were another approximately 26000 Loyd Carriers produced.
     
  15. Ewen Scott

    Ewen Scott Well-Known Member

    Just found this which details UK carrier production. It details nearly 50k Universals (the OP carrier was a version of the Universal) but only approx 17k Loyd carriers, so I don't know what the correct firgure is for the latter. To that needs to added the overseas figures. So we are up to c 85k before adding in the larger vehicles.

    http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index....nd-loyd&catid=45:transport-carriers&Itemid=55

    Re the T16, I've found sources quoting 13k, 16k and 20k for the production run.
     
  16. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    Seems high, doesn't it?
     
  17. A-58

    A-58 Not so senior Member

    The Chance Vought aviation company designed and initially built the F-4U Corsair, a naval fighter plane. Because of the demand during WWII Chance Vought, like all other manufacturers, subbed out additional production of their planes to other companies. The Brewster Corporation (manufacturer of the famous/infamous Brewster Buffalo) was one of the companies to open up a production line for Chance Vought Corsairs. The Brewster corporation only built 735 planes and then went bankrupt. The F3A-1 (Corsair Mk. III) was the designation for the Brewster-built F4U-1.
     
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  18. Ewen Scott

    Ewen Scott Well-Known Member

    Brewster was badly mis-managed during WW2 with several changes of management forced on them by the US Govt in an attempt to improve matters. Although who decided in 1936 that an old car factory in the centre of a city was a good place for an aircraft factory I don't know. All the aircraft produced had to be broken down for transport to Roosevelt Field for test flying. The building still exists today as the HQ of the airline jetBlue.

    The Corsairs they produced were supposed to be of inferior quality but this was not borne out by USN records, but they were more expensive than those produced elsewhere. 430 were delivered to the RN but were only used for training and second line duties. The USN actually cancelled the Corsir contract in May 1944 and the last Corsair, and Brewster produced aircraft, rolled off the production line on 1 July 1944.
     
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  19. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Quoting an old post from 10 years ago:

    "There was rather a good article in the first issue of 'Britain at War' magazine. There were more statistics in there but it did seem that a fine line was walked between the morale effect of Flak and it's lethal side effects.

    {the article} Said it's possible that c.16,360 British civilian war dead were a result of their own defences.
    A report into an attack on 17th/18th January 1943 found that 20%-27% of dead or seriously wounded could be directly attributed to 'friendly' AA (this 20% figure seems to also apply to contemporary studies of raids on Pompey and Coventry).

    The rough conclusion (while admitting we'll never really know) is that of 60,595 UK civillian deaths during ww2, using a worse case scenario of 27%, it's possible that c.16,360 were a result of their own defences."

    WW2Talk - Injuries from the sky

    Something that sticks with me whenever I'm looking at AA guns.
     
  20. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    Applying that same worst case ratio to German air raid casualties of 410,000 (est.) would yield a total of 110,700.
     

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