Why so many German WW II armor subjects?

that's seemingly universal. germans did it and even some americans. don't forget captain smith.....he could have left in one of the cutters, in fact, he was supposed to lead the rescue from one. and ismay got shit for his entire life afterwords. why didn't you go down with the ship, mr ismay? even when he was an old man.

on the ships i've seen, it was the only funnel.

PaPaPeng wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I finished a rather interesting battle history of the IJN in WWII recently. I also just got through Miracle at Midway. One of the things that truly disturbed me was this desire to die with thier ship from the lowest rank to the highest. It was insane! You had experienced leaders and sailors developed over a decade or more just throwing themselves away. It just doesn't make any sense at all, thier loss denied the IJN of any further use. I sometimes get the impression that when USN or RN ships went down it tended to make the survivors smarter and warier, both excellent traits in command rank.

The other thing I got was the Japanese may have good ships and men and good tactics at least at night, but the entire strategic command structure was hopelessly flawed. Thier plans were unneccesarily complex, often splitting thier forces in an attempt to create clever flanking moves that turned up nothing. They also allowed no contingency plans for setbacks or reverses.

This is so clear in MaM. They split thier capital ships up into ridiculous fleets hundreds of miles apart. Nagumo could certainly have used the additional AA protection of Yamamoto's group. And there was no possibility of risking these ships, we had few enough planes to handle the job at hand. And sending the invasion force separately is also questionable, weren't they spotted first and gave the game away? They should have just pulled them altogether ala the 3rd/5th Fleets for mutual protection. They had several carriers that were not committed to the schwerpunkt of the whole thing, Alaska indeed what were they thinking? I'm sure it looked swell on paper.

And they had done no what if planning like what if we are spotted before we are supposed to, what if the CVs sortie early and are already there, what if somehow we lose a few CVs. The shock on Nagumo's staff and the other senior leadership was paralyzing, they got zapped because they couldn't make up thier mind if Midway or the carriers were more important. And after they found out they seemed utterly absent of a single coherent thought between the bunch of them.

I am convnced that they could have taken Midway in spite of the loss of the 4 carriers. We were really just holding on by then having lost many aircraft. And it is unlikely we would have caught them flatfooted a second time in one battle. They had sent cruisers in to bombard Midway but then dithered and recalled them. If they'd had even 2 of the smaller carriers with Zeros for CAP to protect the fleet, they likely could have flattened Midway's defeneses with their BBs and CAs and pulled it off anyway. There seemed some uncertainy as to which objective was supreme, sink the US CVs or take the island. They could have really made a stink if they had, resupply might not have been that easy but what could we have done about it? Yorktown was gone, Hornet's air group was a shambles, Enterprise had no torpedo bombers left, just Dauntlesses and Wildcats.

I have come to the conclusion that Yamamoto whatever his good qualities were was not a great strategic or tactical thinker. Nagumo was far to cautious and tended to dither at the wrong moment. You might even say they did us a favor knocking out the BBs and forcing us to rely on the CVs. And missing the oil storage and repair facilities? We were able to repair and refuel just six months later enough ships to break thier backs at Midway. Yeah PH was brilliant, but it was a surprise and most surprises succeed because the victims aren't expecting it especially when you aren't at war with anyone.

Ah well, just one man's opinion.

Frank

One thing overlooked here is that from the government's point of view, military personnel are---and must be---expendable, and it must be shown that they *must* be expendable, so that the enire military acts in the interests of the state and not in their own self-interest. It is all in all a huge deception as well as waste of taxpayer money.

Gernot Hassenpflug wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@nict.go.jp:

I think ther is a difference between say they are expendable as opposed to saying you are going to have to suffer casualties. Noone is the richer for losing experienced men.

Maybe I'm not clear on what you said. I think of the 3rd Battle for Guadalcanal where we lost Adms. Scott and Callaghan and 2 cruiers sunk. OTOH it did break the back of the Japanese resupply missions. I don't think Halsey sent them in there knowing they would die, it was a calculated risk. Certainly it was a possibility (I saw the Halsey movie recently and the 2 scenes before and after the battle were pretty interesting) but it wasn't a suicide mission.

Frank

Gernot Hassenpflug wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@nict.go.jp:

I think ther is a difference between say they are expendable as opposed to saying you are going to have to suffer casualties. Noone is the richer for losing experienced men.

Maybe I'm not clear on what you said. I think of the 3rd Battle for Guadalcanal where we lost Adms. Scott and Callaghan and 2 cruiers sunk. OTOH it did break the back of the Japanese resupply missions. I don't think Halsey sent them in there knowing they would die, it was a calculated risk. Certainly it was a possibility (I saw the Halsey movie recently and the 2 scenes before and after the battle were pretty interesting) but it wasn't a suicide mission.

Unlike Yamato or the carriers at the Phillipine Sea. With almost no aircraft they were little more than targets. You have to weigh the possible results vice the losses. In those 2 cases, it should have been a foregone conclusion. The carriers might have got away if the timing had been better and still drawn off Halsey, but Yamato? At that point it should have been clear (and if it wasn't what does that say about the remaining senior staff) that once she was spotted there was no way she'd get all the way to Okinawa.

Those are clearly 2 different mindsets.

Frank

Frank typed out:

That's a new one to me but I see a delicious turnabout there. Whilst I couldn't wholly back the post-Pilsudski Polish government, I think they foresaw a problem the rest of the world chose to ignore. One wonders how much of the history of the '40s would have changed had the world not suffered through a depression in the '30s. It gave the radicals a weapon to use against the established government.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Gernot Hassenpflug wrote: : : I disagree on that "he was as good as dead". : You mis-understand. I agree with everything that you said, and I did not mean to imply that suicide was an easy decision for Langsdorff.

My point was, had he not committed suicide, it was very likely that the Gestapo would have paid him a visit, or arranged for a suitable... "accident" when he was interred in Argentina. Or, created "accidents" for his family in Germany until he was forced to return.

By committing suicide, he shielded his crew and family from reprisals.

Bruce

Gray Ghost wrote: : : Well I think it was a kind of end of war mentality at play there which is why : she was so lax. BUT I can't even for a minute imagine sending on her way : WITHOUT an escort. While there was sopme fault to apply for the condition of : the ship, his treatment was uncalled for. : My understanding is that the Indianapolis got caught in a "perfect storm" of circumsatances.

First - she was not zigzagging. Why? Intelligence had decided there were no Japanese submarines in the area. How do you know there is no submarine in 100,000 square miles of ocean? I don't know. Certainly not with '40's technology.

Second - The Indianapolis was leaving the Central Pacific, which was under the control of US Navy, and entering the South Pacific, which was under control of the Army - specifically, "Dougout Doug" McArthur. Needless to say, there was no love lost between the two commands. When the Indianapolis did not report in, the Southern Pacific command decided the Indy had not been transferred as expected, and the Central Pacific command was not expecting any kind of arrival receipt. Since she was in this inter-command zone, no alarm was raised when she did not appear/ no arrival confirmation was issued. It was a fluke that some scout plane followed the oil slick back to the (surviving) crew.

Now, you can argue that the Indy should have been zig-zagging, but IIRC, the Lusitania zigged (or zagged) right into a firing solution for the U-boot that got her.

To me, the Indy's captain was sacfificed on the alter of post war ass-covering/career advancement.

Bruce

I'm basically saying, yes, to the politicians and industrial leaders the military are all expendable regardless of how useful they might be in the short term; whereas among the military, there is necessary calculated risk and the knowledge that there will be casualties.

That's an interesting point of view, but I am afraid I don't know enough about the Nazi policies to comment further.

A Jagdpanther type conversion of a Sherman, with the glacis plate continuing right on up for around another four feet would be one odd-looking vehicle.

Pat

Not in Japan...there's no way they were ever going to get that ship back, lest they get funny ideas again. Maybe at Pearl Harbor though. But that would have created a lot of bad feelings in Japan.

Pat

By the time they were sunk, the Yamato and Musashi were acrawl with AA guns, I built the 1/200th scale Yamato, and was amazed by how heavy the AA armament was.

Pat

Ise had those strange antiaircraft rocket launchers added around the stern after she was converted into a battleship-aircraft carrier also, although I've never read how effective they were.

Pat

Yeah, but you have to admire the concept of making 18 inch diameter "San-Shiki" giant shotgun shells, like the Yamato had.

Pat

With the guilt ridden politics of self loathing that marks left of center modern American poltics these days, just about anything is possible. The way things are going with the history-challenged numbskulls being chruned out by US schools, at some point in my life I expect to live to suffer the sight of the US issuing Japan an apology for provoking them into attacking Pearl Harbor. I wouldn't be surprised if some d*****ad like Richard Gere hasn't already spoken up on all our behalf, but I mean at an official governmental level as American policy.

God help us all for what we've become.

WmB

This was a culture that lived to someday prove their service, devotion, love and loyalty to their Emperor (and thus Nippon itself) by falling on their own swords.

I'm surprised ALL of them didn't try to go down with the ship.

WmB

I watched a recent movie on the Yamato last year. As gruesome a depiction of her and her crew's death as one would imagine. From what the living survivors recount, the butcher's bill on the decks of the Bismarck was equally horrendous by any and all measures.

WmB