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GeneralTacticus
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of Melbourne, Australia
Dec 2001
time: 15:23
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quote:
Before condeming a practice, you should read a few memoirs of German soldiers during the latter half of WW2. They suffered from acute supply shortages, ammunition, gas, food, you name it they lacked it. |
And you credit this to the carpet bombing of German cities?
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The Germans had produced hundreds of Me-262's but they sat still in a Bavarian forest due to a lack of fuel to fly them. This was accomplished by airpower. |
Yes, it was accomplished via the bombing of the Ploesti oilfields. NOT via bombing German cities.
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Yes the killing was indiscriminate, yes it was horrible, but that is the face of modern war. |
Doesn't mean it was a good thing.
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As for effectiveness, Airpower was far more effective in WW2 than most give credit. Airpower alone will not win a war, but in WW2 it was often the deciding factor between the victor and the beaten. |
Well, yes. Airpower won the war in the Pacific, which I would call pretty significant - however, this was naval airpower, NOT the huge wings of land-based heavy bombers that Harris wanted.
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GeneralTacticus
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of Melbourne, Australia
Dec 2001
time: 15:23
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No, and if I did I wouldn't take them as history lessons. In any case, sub warfare was instrumental in strangling them Japanese economy, but it would have been pretty useless had teh Japanese fleet already been crippled.
EDIT: not already crippled.
Last edited by GeneralTacticus on 24-12-2002 at 06:22
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Kontiki
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Canada
Aug 2001
time: 00:23
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I can't even remember. I signed up when I was bored at work one day. To the best of my recollection, I was thinking about Disneyland (don't know why) and the Tiki birds thing popped into my head. How I turned that into Kontiki I have no idea. Funny thing is, someone (can't remember who) PM'd me asking about my name and told me that it meant something.
EDIT: Just checked my old messages. Lars-E sent me this and here was my reply:
Re: Kontiki
quote:
Lars-E wrote on 16-08-2001 12:25:
Did you know that Thor Heyerdahl had a raft called Kontiki?
I'm not even sure who Thor Heyerdahl is, so I'd have to say no. Actually, my handle is completely meaningless - it's just something that popped into my head when I was registering.
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Kontiki
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Canada
Aug 2001
time: 00:23
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Just for the sake of curiosity, who the hell is Thor Heyerdahl?
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Sheik
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I decided I needed something that had to do with civilization or history. I thought Sheik was a good choice. Also Sheik is defined as an Arab tribal leader and a man "held to be irresistibly attractive to romantic young women."
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Mad Bomber
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Columbus, Ohio
Nov 2002
time: 00:23
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quote:
Originally posted by GeneralTacticus
And you credit this to the carpet bombing of German cities? |
No. i said that I was a proponet of Airpower, however there were many factories litterally destroyed in Germany due to British and American raids.
Carpet bombing was the result of the inaccuracy of the bombing systems in WW2 planes, and the lack of decent fighters to escort bombers during daylight (one of Harris's biggest flaws was to focus only on heavy bombers)
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Yes, it was accomplished via the bombing of the Ploesti oilfields. NOT via bombing German cities. |
Yes but may innocent civilians died in those raids too.
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Doesn't mean it was a good thing. |
No it is not a good thing, but it was a necessary thing, there is a difference.
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Well, yes. Airpower won the war in the Pacific, which I would call pretty significant - however, this was naval airpower, NOT the huge wings of land-based heavy bombers that Harris wanted. |
The B-29's made a significant contribution to the pacific as well. The raids on Tokyo, Kobe, and Sapporo were as devastating to Japan as the Hamberg raid was to Germany.
Let me also clarify, I am not a desciple of Harris, Harris had many flaws, much like Mitchell, and Lemay did for the U.S. As they focused too much effort on Heavy bombers and ignored CAS, still Harris gets a very bad rep for his contribution to the war effort in WW2. The man did his duty, what more can you ask of him?
Last edited by Mad Bomber on 25-12-2002 at 05:05
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GeneralTacticus
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of Melbourne, Australia
Dec 2001
time: 15:23
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quote:
No. i said that I was a proponet of Airpower, however there were many factories litterally destroyed in Germany due to British and American raids. |
Yes, there were; however, the main use of airpower that Harris wanted was to just bomb enemy cities into rubble in the hope of breaking civilian morale, not the targetting of factories.
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Carpet bombing was the result of the inaccuracy of the bombing systems in WW2 planes, and the lack of decent fighters to escort bombers during daylight (one of Harris's biggest flaws was to focus only on heavy bombers) |
And the fact that they didn't really care what the bombs hit so long as they hit something, which meant that a lot of resources were wasted on bombs that acheived very little.
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Yes but may innocent civilians died in those raids too. |
Not nearly as many as died in Hamburg or Dresden, and it hard a much greater impact on the German war effort.
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No it is not a good thing, but it was a necessary thing, there is a difference. |
No it wasn't a necessary thing. If the Allies wanted to target German airpower, they could have gone for the airfields; if they wanted to go after the oil, they could have targetted the oilfields. The massive carpet-bombing, for the most part, was killing for it's own sake, to terrorize the German population.
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The B-29's made a significant contribution to the pacific as well. The raids on Tokyo, Kobe, and Sapporo were as devastating to Japan as the Hamberg raid was to Germany. |
Only after the war was essentially won. After Midway, Leyte Gulf, and the Phillipine Sea, the IJN had ceased to exist and the war was merely an expensive mopping up operation.
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Let me also clarify, I am not a desciple of Harris, Harris had many flaws, much like Mitchell, and Lemay did for the U.S. As they focused too much effort on Heavy bombers and ignored CAS, still Harris gets a very bad rep for his contribution to the war effort in WW2. The man did his duty, what more can you ask of him? |
Maybe to do it better, without being obsessed with promoting his own view at the expense of efficiency? The resources spent on heavy bombers could probably have been much better spent on other things - winning the battle of the Atlantic, for example, or targetting things that had some actual miltiary significance, like airfileds or critical factories (this was done occasionally, but not most of the time).
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Mad Bomber
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Columbus, Ohio
Nov 2002
time: 00:23
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Actually Harris tried to target factories, and the like in the fall of '39 and Bomber command suffered a casualty rate of 12% for his effort, then he regrettably changed to a night bombing campaign. His "idea' of bombing German cities to destroy German morale was simply smoke to avoid the embarrasment of admiting that his daylight campaign had failed miserably. Not that this mattered much, When the US started their daylight bombing they could only get 1 in 200 bombs within 100 ft of the target. The main restriction of any heavy bombing campaign in WW2 was the bombsight itself.
Admittedly Harris was shortsighted, but we are looking back 60+ years later, he did the best that he could do, and in the end the bombing campaign against Germany WAS effective, despite the civilian deaths.
BTW Cities were not targeted because they were cities, every city targeted had a military significance to them, even Hamburg. Airfields were targeted heavily as well.
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Mr. President
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The leaves that are green turn to brown
Jul 2001
time: 15:23
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Picture it - Tasmania, 1996 or so. Bill Clinton is projecting American power to places with hard-to-pronounce names. Absolutely nothing is happening in Tasmania. Well, almost nothing: a young American expatriate is walking to school with his friend.
Friend: You're from America, right?
American expatriate: Right. 
Friend: Why do we always hear about "Clinton" ordering troops around? He's not in charge of the army, is he?
American expatriate: Well, technically he is. The President is also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Friend: Heh-heh. I can just imagine you doing that! "Press the Big Red Button and blow up Iraq, General Johnson!" Heh-heh, heh-heh.
[Laughter.]
American expatriate: You realize they'd never make me the President?
Friend: Why? You're good at making speeches.
American expatriate: You don't know? You've never talked to me all these years?
Friend: Can I be the vice-president?
That's not exactly how it started (no-one can remember exactly how these things start), but the name stuck. Ever after, when he saw me walk into the classroom, he'd get up and give a mock salute and say "Mr. President, premission to press the Big Red Button and blow up Iraq?" When my enemies gave me crap in the schoolyard, I'd threaten to have my Secret Service goons whack them.
I graduated from junior high school many a year ago, but I still like logging on to websites and seeing "Welcome back, Mr. President".
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Maquiladora
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Maquiladora - foreign owned assembly plants on the US-Mexican border, which take advantage of cheap Mexican labour, importing components duty free and export to the US for low cost. Also the name of a Radiohead B-Side.
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Az
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MACEDONIA - It's the name of the sovereign country to the north of Greece
Apr 2000
time: 07:23
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UberKruX, that George Carlin quote is hillarious, esp. since I downloaded it from one of his monologues. 
If you downloaded it too, try his "Airlines" monologue, or "the little things" 
I've been thinking about changing my loginame for some time, but Dalgetti, or 'Dal' went pretty good so I had my doubts. But then I saw that movie 'The Bone Collector', with Denzel Washington. It had this demon Azazel in it, and it sounded rather Israeli and nice so I took it. ( It is a hebraic name btw, but the name of a demon, just as noone will name his kid Lucifer )
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24-12-2002 03:15
ACK!
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