Bear Down Wildcats

Merkin wrote:This is a fascinating twitter account, thanks Chi for finding and sharing it.

My pleasure! It's a daily must read for me.

Merkin wrote:

That is Williams Field, I think. A lot of those planes were still there in the mid sixties. Are they gone yet? I suppose that place is covered in houses and shopping malls now.

Williams Field is now Mesa Gateway Airport. Surrounded by a shyte load of strip malls and houses.

RichardCranium wrote:

Merkin wrote:

That is Williams Field, I think. A lot of those planes were still there in the mid sixties. Are they gone yet? I suppose that place is covered in houses and shopping malls now.

All those planes were gone by the 70s at the latest. And yeah Williams field is now a private airport with actual scheduled commercial flights surrounded by city.

Such a shame that almost none of those planes were preserved. Still a fair amount left around though unlike many other WWII planes.

The world's biggest grave robbery: Asia’s disappearing WWII shipwrecks

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-in ... _clipboard" target="_blank

The story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... /14832457/" target="_blank

What a great story. Have to wonder if the Germans buried him or the locals? Would think if it was the locals that they might have returned his tags at some point

sounds like his body was just left in the woods somewhere and wasn't found for 70 years.

I imagine there are 100s of thousands of bodies on the Eastern Front that will never be found.

I really liked that diggers show on Netflix where they found these old bunkers destroyed by artillery and bombing attacks, and dug them up. Artifacts were given to museums, and bodies sent to military cemeteries so they could be with their fellow soldiers.Also provide resolution to their families what happened to them.

But people got upset, said they were desecrating the tombs, so they stopped the show.

Good note to America here, monuments to hate are destroyed:

This twitter feed has been such an eye-opener for me. Because the Soviet Union was ostensibly on our side against the Nazis, we whitewash their aggression in the early days of the war. I had heard of course that their invasion of Poland was not to save the Polish people, and how they jumped in at the end against Japan to snatch up a bunch of strategic islands, but my teachers and textbooks skipped over this Finnish adventure.

Didn't Patton want to keep on going to Moscow? Recall reading at least one German general wanted to make peace with the Allies and combine forces since many knew that Bolshevism was the true enemy.

Finns held out longer than anyone thought they could with far less men and equipment, but had better soldiers and leadership. Invaders always have a harder time against people defending their homeland. Believe 300,000 Soviets were killed in the battle for Berlin.

However, you cannot ever beat anyone who has unlimited men and equipment, and no regard for human life when you have limited resources yourself like the Finns and Germans did. Both suffered greatly under the Soviets after their defeats.

Yep. The russians won solely because they had 0 concern for the welfare of their soldiers and had them slaughtered in human wave charges; and because of all the damn trucks and planes and trains we gave them.

the USSR only had a population in 1939 of 188,000,00 compared to 131,000,000 in the United States. Yet the Russians had about 10,000,000 military deaths in the war compared to our 410,000.

A main reason why the Finnish did so well in the winter war was that in the 3 to 4 years prior to it the Russian military had its purges of almost all of its experienced officers and leadership were murdered.

Cruising Netflix the other night, saw a 1943 documentary by Frank Capra called Battle of Russia (Why we fight).

What a load of propaganda bullshit.

For one, Capra talked about how rich Russia is.

But my biggest gripe is when it was talking about the Germans invading the USSR from Poland, without one mention that the Russians had already invaded Poland while allied with Germany. Also talked about the German troops in Finland, also without mentioning the Russian invasion of Finland.

League of Nations was mentioned as the organization pushed for peace, also without mentioning the USSR was kicked out after their invasion of Finland.

yep. lotta whitewashing going on. i enjoy reading memoirs and stories of people who were on the losing side as well. even if they were wrong it helps to know what they thought about the war and everything.

Awesome. The original B-17 the Memphis Belle is scheduled to finish it's approximate 15 year renovation in time for the 75th anniversary of it's 25th mission.

scumdevils86 wrote:Yep. The russians won solely because they had 0 concern for the welfare of their soldiers and had them slaughtered in human wave charges; and because of all the damn trucks and planes and trains we gave them.

the USSR only had a population in 1939 of 188,000,00 compared to 131,000,000 in the United States. Yet the Russians had about 10,000,000 military deaths in the war compared to our 410,000.

Russia pretty well realized they weren't winning a straight fight with Germany. They defaulted into winning by attrition, which is always easier when you're the ones being invaded. The entire plan was maximizing deaths and counting on home field advantage, sheer numbers and winter to win. They were losing soldiers at about twice the rate of the Germans, but when the entire strategy is maximizing casualties...

I'm reading a book about the Allied campaign in Italy and there's a story about how the only 3 English phrases the Russian ambassador knew were "yes," "no" and "second front." Russia's whole focus was realizing they couldn't win the battles but could outlast Germany in attrition. Attrition is a nice way of saying hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths.

The war of attrition worked pretty well for the Federals in the US Civil War too, unless you happened to be one of the casualties. Like the Germans v. the Soviets, the Germans and Confederates had the better generals. Finished a book a couple days ago by a Prussian officer who fought on the side of the Rebels. Even with less troops and weaponry, they still defeated the poor leadership of the Federals, who had much more manpower and equipment. The Rebs were constantly starving, even during the early stages of the war.

UAEebs86 wrote:

Just finished a book this morning on the way in: D-Day Through German Eyes.

Germans fought with a passion, since they were defending a unified Europe from invaders. Just a slaughterhouse, and the Germans had fortified positions and MG-35s and MG-42s which were so powerful that they went through several soldiers at once, along with a massive firing rate.

One thing the Germans were shocked about, was that the Allies were completely mechanized. The Germans even at that stage of the war still relied on horses, esp. on the eastern front. Believe the Germans used 3 million horses during the war.

I'll defend Grant in the Civil War. Earlier leaders (looking at McClellan here) fought a slow war focused on battle strategy that missed the Union's massive advantage in manpower and infrastructure. Grant realized Lee couldn't work through constant pressure and threw it on.

I'll always credit Grant for that. He made Lee fight a type of war Lee couldn't win. It wasn't a war marked by genius tactical flourishes, but it served the larger goal of winning as soon as possible. McClellan's cautious approach would have strung the war out until one side just didn't want to fight anymore. Grant engineered an end.

One of the interesting discussions in the book I'm reading is a discussion of how a general has to have empathy for soldiers, but can't have too much empathy because too much empathy makes it impossible to pull the trigger on necessary strategies that have tremendous human cost. It's an interesting concept, that to be an effective leader, there has to be a level of coldness to human loss and suffering.

That was such a sad movie I have not been able to watch again.

For those that are interested but not following this twitter account daily, the invasion of the Low Countries has begun; Hitler’s plan to trap the Allied army by invading Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg and then swinging troops through the Ardennes Forest to encircle the responding forces.

Chicat wrote:For those that are interested but not following this twitter account daily, the invasion of the Low Countries has begun; Hitler’s plan to trap the Allied army by invading Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg and then swinging troops through the Ardennes Forest to encircle the responding forces.

One of th few accounts I follow on Twitter. It's awesome

Who does this remind you of?

This is amazing just in itself about one of the brothers.

Good riddance

Enjoy hell bitch.

Don't recall hearing about this.

Me either. Had no idea nazi terrorism was a thing before the war started. I know there were Nazis in the US and they has rallies, but not that.

Reminder - Real heroes may have secret identities, but they don't have capes.

Wreckage Of WWII Aircraft Carrier Found In The South Pacific Ocean

More than 75 years after the aircraft carrier USS Hornet sank in a World War II battle, researchers have uncovered its wreckage 3 miles under the South Pacific Ocean.

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/12/69386409 ... paign=news

Just so few soldiers and sailors left from WW2. That gunner was 18, now 95.



More images:

UAEebs86 wrote:

I just started reading the book about him that was published this month last night. Great story.

Richard Cole, last WWII Doolittle Raider, dies in Texas
https://news.yahoo.com/richard-cole-las ... 00850.html" target="_blank

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . well, they definitely took part! Just not as one of the allied nations.............

Eh the queen is technically mostly German herself anyways

Merkins post is blank, what is it?

scumdevils86 wrote:Merkins post is blank, what is it?

Looks like it was deleted. Here is a screen cap I took: