02-02-2005 20:37									#91
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Whatever. These are just some of the reasons why what I said is right.

Last edited by techumseh on 02-02-2005 at 20:46

	03-02-2005 09:24									#92
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quote: 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.

	03-02-2005 09:30									#93
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quote: 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.

quote: 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.

	03-02-2005 09:32									#94
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quote: 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.

	03-02-2005 09:34									#95
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quote: 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.

	03-02-2005 09:35									#96
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quote: 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.

quote: 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.

	03-02-2005 09:38									#97
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quote: 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.

	03-02-2005 09:43									#98
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quote: 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.

	03-02-2005 09:43									#99
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quote: 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.

quote: 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!

	03-02-2005 09:45									#100
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quote: 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/milit...rt/1986/RMF.htm

quote: 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.

	03-02-2005 09:50									#101
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quote: 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.

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

Nothing to add?

	03-02-2005 09:54									#102
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quote: 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.

quote: 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.

	03-02-2005 09:58									#103
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quote: Originally posted by Ted Striker Read the link: http://www.globalsecurity.org/milit...rt/1986/RMF.htm

What a horrible layout.

My poor eyes...

	03-02-2005 10:02									#104
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quote: 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?

quote: Nothing to add?

No, you don't.

	03-02-2005 10:08									#105
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quote: 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.

quote: 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.

	03-02-2005 11:06									#106
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quote: Originally posted by Ted Striker 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. 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.

You lost this one Ted. Time to move on.

	03-02-2005 11:10									#107
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quote: Originally posted by techumseh You lost this one Ted. Time to move on.

you haven't refuted his points you just ignored them.

	03-02-2005 11:28									#108
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Word

I wasn't the one that gave up with, "whatever"

	03-02-2005 11:37									#109
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quote: Originally posted by Geronimo If the atom bombs were less harmful than the firebombings then they do not deserve any special attention for their use. How can we condemn the US government for switching from a more harmful weapon to a less harmful one? Furthermore, if the atom bombs were less harmful than the firebombings and the US populace believed that atom bombs were so terrrible that they could end a war all bythemselves how is this horrible? It was precisely this fear of atom bombs which prevented ww3 and I doubt anyone sees that as a bad thing. In the final analysis if everything in your post is correct none of it makes a whit of difference. Use of the atom bombs was at worst no more immoral than the firebombs and in any case the war ended right after they were used. So far Monkspider has revealed the truth about two widely believed myths. 1. The Mongols did not exist. 2. the atom bombs had no effect on the decision of the japanese government to surrender. Such insights! Where can I find out aout the other misconceptions you have discovered?

Dude, you totally miss the point.

	03-02-2005 12:11									#110
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quote: 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.

Saying only that some urban battles were bloody says absolutely nothing about the the difference between urban anf island combat. I don't see how you can make that conclusion from this example.

quote: 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.

Someone thinks highly of himself.

	03-02-2005 12:27									#111
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quote: Originally posted by Geronimo you haven't refuted his points you just ignored them.

His own reference, the paper from the USMC college, refuted them. First, he claimed the Kwantung Army had NO artillery or tanks. When I provided numbers showing aproximate strengths, he claimed they were incorrect. Then he misleadingly quoted his source to attempt to refute my figures on the strength of the Kwantung Army, using figures from March, 1945. He conveniently failed to site the figures for August (the time of the Soviet attack) cited in the paper, which were very close to the ones I originally gave. When this "error" was pointed out, he grasped at the word 'obsolete' to justify his erroneous claim that the Soviet victory in Manchuria "... was no astonishing feat, and the Soviets would have been completely inept if they had not succeeded there."

His own source cites this quote: "to mount such a campaign after being bled for four years in Europe represented a major achievement." (see the complete sitation above) His attempts to minimize this accomplishment have been refuted by the the US Marine Corps University Command and Staff College, which he originaly cited (incompletely and selectively) to try to prove his case. This intellectual amnesia is proof of the weakness of his case. In any event, the issue is settled and he is not worth arguing with anymore.

	03-02-2005 12:32									#112
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You think T34-85's were properly matched by half their number of tin cans with 47mm cannons? The disperity of equipment forms a broader gulf than Case White (the German campaign in Poland).

What war did you read about?

	03-02-2005 12:36									#113
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quote: Originally posted by techumseh His own reference, the paper from the USMC college, refuted them. First, he claimed the Kwantung Army had NO artillery or tanks. When I provided numbers showing aproximate strengths, he claimed they were incorrect. Then he misleadingly quoted his source to attempt to refute my figures on the strength of the Kwantung Army, using figures from March, 1945. He conveniently failed to site the figures for August (the time of the Soviet attack) cited in the paper, which were very close to the ones I originally gave. When this "error" was pointed out, he grasped at the word 'obsolete' to justify his erroneous claim that the Soviet victory in Manchuria "... was no astonishing feat, and the Soviets would have been completely inept if they had not succeeded there." His own source cites this quote: "to mount such a campaign after being bled for four years in Europe represented a major achievement." (see the complete sitation above) His attempts to minimize this accomplishment have been refuted by the the US Marine Corps University Command and Staff College, which he originaly cited (incompletely and selectively) to try to prove his case. This intellectual amnesia is proof of the weakness of his case. In any event, the issue is settled and he is not worth arguing with anymore.

Now you're just being dishonest.

I said they had very few artillery or tanks, and those that they did have, were basically useless, and they had no idea how to use them anymore. That's fine, if you want to exaggerate. But Japanese armor in that case was basically useless.

The only thing you really have is that last quote from the link that I provided.

If the Soviets HADN'T have won in Manchuria, now THAT would have been an extraordinary event. Consider that the Japanese got whooped the first two times they went up against them in 1939 anyway, against a much different Soviet Army that was a much different force where the idea of Blitzkrieg wasn't even known about yet.


The Soviets were NHL All Stars, and the Kwangtung Army were the little kids from the Disney Movie the Mighty Ducks. Okay that's a wide exaggeration but you get the point, which is that there was an extreme mismatch. You're comparing a force that was at its height against a force which was at its worst.

	03-02-2005 14:39									#114
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quote: Originally posted by notyoueither You think T34-85's were properly matched by half their number of tin cans with 47mm cannons? The disperity of equipment forms a broader gulf than Case White (the German campaign in Poland). What war did you read about?

Yes, in fact the T-34s in this case were more useful than any of the heavier tanks would have been because of their excellent cross country mobility and lesser strain on the supply system for fuel and ammunition. They could easily dispatch the best of the Japanese tanks with their main armament as it was (even a .50 caliber machine gun could do so though at shorter ranges), and their armor was good enough to defend against anything but mobility kills vs the Japanese guns. The use of these tanks was optimal, not a disadvantage.

As for the "four years of being bled white", that might have been a factor had the Soviets been forced to deploy anything like their entire force. Instead they were able to pick their most useful elements at will and package them into a well balanced task group. This operation was a showcase of the best the Soviet Army had to offer and I in no way want to diminish that, but to compare it to say Okinawa which had a ratio of force to space at least an order of magnitude greater for the defender and was an amphibious operation is comparing apples and oranges.

	03-02-2005 15:00									#115
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quote: Originally posted by techumseh His own reference, the paper from the USMC college, refuted them. First, he claimed the Kwantung Army had NO artillery or tanks.

No, Ted didn't.


In any case, as an examination of the Iraq-Iran combat would demonstrate, superiority in terms of either numbers of weaponry or type of weaponry counts for little if that weaponry keeps breaking down, your intelligence and morale is non-existent and instead of using the weaponry as intended, you are forced to use mobile warfare units as the equivalent of stationary bunkers, only without the protection afforded by walls of concrete and sandbag emplacements.


Anyone who wants to read about the effect of the atomic bombs on the state of mind of the members of the Japanese cabinet and of the emperor of Japan should read 'Japan's Longest Day' compiled by the Pacific War Research Society and William Craig's 'The Fall of Japan'.

Both are quite illuminating.

	03-02-2005 21:10									#116
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quote: Originally posted by molly bloom No, Ted didn't.

Yes, he did.

quote: The Japanese army in Manchuria at that time was basically a bunch of n00bs, with no armor or artillery whatsover, with a serious depletion of manpower, no elite units, and a lack of manpower.

	04-02-2005 09:00									#117
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Maybe you missed this part:

quote: The Japanese Army was short in more than manpower. They were severely deficient in aircraft, engineer support, communications and armor. What few tanks the Japanese did possess were armed with 57mm guns and were grossly overmatched by the Soviet T-34's.

Stop playing dumb. You know the difference between literal and figurative.

The point is that the little armor they did have was basically useless to them.

	04-02-2005 11:07									#118
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Be nice Ted. He knows that his main argument is lost, and this is all he can get to save face. Let the man have his dignity.

	04-02-2005 14:49									#119
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quote: Originally posted by techumseh Yes, he did.

I suspect you're being a little obtuse: since Ted's conversion to Eurocommunisticism, he's shown himself to be more than a little adept at the strategic employment of irony and sarcasm.


Exactly how serious (in an academic way) do you think Ted was being when he referenced 'n00bs' in the same paragraph as information on Japanese armour and artillery ?

My guess- not very.