WARNING! Volatile subject within. Enter at your own risk! You've been warned!

[StSanta]

Hm, well, I've often heard that the allieds had fewer targets, hence fewer kills. This has a common sense quality to it, and is pretty solid.

On the other side of the coin, and this is also a point worth considering, the Germans were (in the later stages of the war) hopelessly outnumbered. Andy asks what use the superior skill of a 100-200 kill LW pilot was when some unknmown allied pilot managed to sneak up on his 6 and shoot him down. I must say - the skills gave him 100-200 kills *before* getting shot out of the sky. An argument can be made that no amount of skill/kills do you any good if you get shot down, but that's really a tangent.

Getting lots of kills and surviving for several missions when you're heavily outnumbered, fatigued and flying aircraft that are technogically inferior to the enemy'splanes is an accomplishment. With the shortage of some metals and places for development bombed, it's pretty amazing these guys got any kills at all.

Take a group of 20 P-51's and let them escort 10 B1-17-s in Aces High. Let them meet 10 109G10's. Count the kills. I can guarantee you that unless the 109's turn tail and run after the first pass, most of them will be shot down with few allied losses.

So, you *could* say that the allied aces got their kills flying better equipped planes and with a numerical superiority. *In general* that is. The difference between the average allied ace and the average German ace would be experience - the latter has more combat experience.

It was an ugly war. But the firebombing of Hamburg (where I have relatives), the needless waste of so many allied crews doing things that *should* be punishable (geneva convetion, bombing civilian targets) trying to do something that was *proven* to have the opposite effect just pisses me off. It irritates me to such a degree that I could be convinced to grab a 109 to shoot down those f00kn instruments of death who due to the inept moral standards of the allied high command were used to commit mass murder on civilians.

Conversely, the German bombings of London and other cities lights up an anger, even hatred in me that'd send me running to the nearest Hurricane had I been old/young enough to fight during the BoB.

I don't care *who* ordered it - the winners or the losers. Those who gave the command are still to be loathed, prosecuted and punished for such a horrific crime.

Not only a crime against the enemy civilian population. A crime against *their own citizens*; brave young men send to die *bombing civilians*. It's so unbelievably morally bankrupt it's enraging. It shows such a cynicism, lust for revenge and lack of respect towards your own men it is laughable. Or would be if the consequences weren't so severe.

Before someone yells "holocaust", I might as well say that this isn't what we're discussing here. It is not subject to debate that the holocaust were probably one of the most henious acts mankind has committed against itself and that the stopping of it is a just cause. At least not to me. But we're discussing something else right now.

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StSanta
JG54 "Grünherz"
"If you died a stones throw from your wingie; you did no wrong". - Hangtime

[Suave1]

 

Originally posted by Downtown:

Tell me why we fought Iraq for Kuwait? How are things in Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Korea?  Are they better today than they were before we went to war for/over them?

Why we fought Iraq for Kuwait ? .An evil man commited what ammounts to armed robery on a giant scale for one. Secondly, the same reason that we fought Hitler, and indirectly the USSR for the Persian gulf. And that is becuase the war machine still runs on petroluem. It is good that we keep it out of the hands of madmen .

Are thing better for Iraq or Iran ? When did we liberate them ? As for Korea and Kuwait, you bet your ass. We saved South Korea and Kuwait, we haven't saved North Korea.. yet .
As for Somalia I share the opinion of my contemporaries that fought in task force Ranger. We should've finished the job, we served no greater good by leaving those africans to the mercy of the warlords. But that decision wasn't made by an american soldier .

[StSanta]

Heh American foreign politics are as dirty as the knickers of a Russian crack potato  .

Comes with the territory of being a superpower I guess.

"Let's liberate Kuwait!"
"Ok, from who?
"Saddam!"
"Big deal. Besides, didn't we use to back him?"
"Oil, man, oil. Saddam is not our friend anymore, he took his ball and left."
"Oh, ok"
"Ok, now he's gone. Let's put back the old dictatorial government and call it a liberation"
"Good idea. I bet the suckers back home think we did it because we are such decent people."
"Hm, we haven't messed with South America for a while have we?"
"No, last thing we did was the Echelon electronic tapping from European businesses. Bet BMW didn't know what hit them."
"Who the hell are they to say ANYTHING? We saved their bellybutton in WWII!"
 


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StSanta
JG54 "Grünherz"
"If you died a stones throw from your wingie; you did no wrong". - Hangtime

[Naso]

ROTFL  

<Applause>

[Suave1]

You're right santa, Saddam was the real victim . You've exposed our scheme to further the evil Kuwaiti imperialization.

We told Kuwait the way they run their country is wrong, but they don't listen. What our we gonna do force them to do it our way by military coercion ? We could easily do that, but that would be wrong .

[sky_bax]

Tough topic here.

I wanted to comment on the LW pilots being "above the rest" comments.

Take the 325th Fighter Group`s experence on July 30, 1943 for example in which they recieved a Distinguished Unit Citation. They were flying P40`s against superior 109`s of time, and they were outnumbered 2:1 or more.

Here`s a clip of the well documented story:

"On 30th of July 20 P-40s of the 317th and 16 P-40s of the 319th Squadron took off on a fighter sweep, to rendezvous over Sardinia. As they turned to fly south over the west part of the island, they were attacked near Sassari and 20 miles north of the rendezvous point where they were to meet the 319th coming from the east. The attacking force consisted of 25 to 30 Me-109s and Ma-202s, bringing the estimated total of enemy aircraft engaged to between 40 and 50 planes. Radio communications with the other squadron was poor, and repeated inquiries received no answers, so the 319th was unable to locate the battle. In the brief, intense battle that occurred, 20 P-40s engaged 40 to 50 and destroyed 21 enemy aircraft. General observations on the encounter show that in addition to the 21 victories and 4 probables reported, there may have been many more. It is believed that Lt. Robert Sederberg, who singly went to the aid of a fellow pilot who was being attacked by 5 Me-109s, in addition to destroying one Me-109 for sure, scored at least four victories. Lt. Sederberg was last seen engaged in combat with 5 Me-109s. Many months later he was reported a prisoner of war in Germany."

Now if they had better pilots, with better aircraft, and a numbers advantage of 2:1, how could you lose that fight?

They did, and in a bad way.

Anyone who says the LW pilots are better than any other pilots in the world needs to take a good look at themselves.


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Skybax
328thFS ~ 352nd FG
Blue Nosed Bastards of Bodney


[This message has been edited by sky_bax (edited 08-29-2000).]

[Nath-BDP]

You take 1 encounter of a theatre where all the worst LW pilots were sent to...

[vadr]

I think I've made it clear that I don't think that German pilots were in any way superior to the pilots of other nations.

I am suprised to see that story resurrected by Skybax, as it's been debunked before. FYI, there were probably not more than 70 Me 109's in the entire Italian theater on the day this engagement occured. It's extremely unlikely that a FG armed with P40s shot down 1/3 of the Luftwaffe presence in Italy during one encouter. I'm almost certain I can dig up documention that says only 8 or so 109s were lost that day in the entire Med.

<S> to the 325th, but I got 2 words for ya: Over Claiming.

Edit - I managed to at least dig up the German OOB.

In northern Italy in July 1943, the only LW Fighter units were I and II JG77, plus the Geschwader Stab. At full complement (these were not) that would amount to between 52 and 76 aircraft, total.

OOB is here (with dates and bases):

 http://www.uwm.edu/People/jpipes/JG77.htm

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Vadr
Kommandeur, III/JG 2 'Richthofen'
CM, S3 Team/Parser
       vadr@jg2.org        
Combat Flightsim Business Forum      




[This message has been edited by vadr (edited 08-29-2000).]

[Karnak]

The way I see it is that the Allied bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo and Osaka were a mistake, but....

The Allies (US and UK) were not trying to conquer another nation for evil purposes as the Germans were when they bombed Warsaw, London and Coventry or the Japanese were when they bombed Shanghai and other Chinese cities.  The Allies were trying to end a war they hadn't asked for, using the tools they had and tactics they thought would shorten the war.

These are the differences I see between the Allies aerial campaigns and those of the Axis.


Here's a thought:

The Germans bombed London and Coventry to break British morale and the British were defiant.

The British and Americans REALLY bombed Hamburg, Dresden, Osaka and Tokyo (120,000 dead) to break the will of the German and Japanese people and the Germans and Japanese were defiant.

The Americans dropped Nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan surrendered.

Maybe the heavy bombing to break the will to fight wasn't wrong, but simply MUCH harder to reach than was thought.  Maybe it took the blunt shock of Nuclear weapons to do it.  The conventional weapons just didn't have enough "shock" punch.

I don't want to change this to a "should we have dropped them or not" discussion, but I want to address, briefly, my thoughts on that subject because I have mentioned Nuclear weapons.

I know that many, many lives, both American and Japanese, were save by those weapons.  We had an invasion plan and, unlike the Germans, the Japanese knew exactly where we were going to land.  The Japanese had fortified those points to the best of their ability, which was on par with what the Germans could have done had they known where we were coming.  We estimated, conservativly, that we would incur one million American casaulties and inflict three to ten million Japanese casualties in the first part of the invasion.
A further thought is that those two, horrifying events (and they are horrifying regardless of whether one thinks they should have been dropped or not), gave the world a preview of what Nuclear armegeddon held in store for us.  The US and USSR didn't have to throw nukes at each other in 1962 to find out how horrible it was.  We already knew.  It wasn't some abstract concept.  We KNEW what it would be like.  Perhaps that knowlege saved humanity.

I pray to God that what we are discussing here never raises its spectre from the history books.  Lets remember what happened and keep it in the past.

Never again.

Sisu
-Karnak

[sourkraut]

Santa -
Now why'd you have to go and ruin this nice civil discussion?
Sour

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Sour
JG-2 Richthofen

"Hey - someone has to be the target...."

[StSanta]

sour, oh come on.

Ok, I'll tell you what.

EVERYONE WITHOUT A SENSE OF HUMOR, DON'T READ OR RESPOND TO MY POSTS.

It was a joke. A thing one should, if good, laugh about.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Big deal.

I haven't ruined anything.

Now stop pestering me.

 

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StSanta
JG54 "Grünherz"
"If you died a stones throw from your wingie; you did no wrong". - Hangtime

[sky_bax]

Yes Vadr resurrection.   And remember I agree with you for the most part here.

But bebunked? Not really.

Here is a post from Spades on the event. (Spades quotes in BOLD

=============================================

---------------------------------------------
(other party quote)

There is a wealth of written material on this engagement. The fight occured over Sardinia, July 30, 1943. The Luftwaffe actually lost 21 fighters, all Bf-109's to 1 P-40 downed. The following is attributed to the AAF archives, in reference to this engagement: "The poor tactics and coordination displayed by the enemy pilots indicated that the were inexperienced and had little knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of their own Me-109's or the allies' P-40's."
---------------------------------------------

This fight is mentioned in "Air War Europa" and probably in some other books about the USAAF/P-40, but according to Jochen Prien, a German research writer, this claim was highly inaccurate.

This fight took place between Alghero and Oristano, south east of Sardinia around 09:40 and 10:10 in the morning, between Bf109G-6s of III./JG 77 and P-40s of the 325th. FG. (and some P-38s...?)

Interestingly the kill inflation is about the same 5x

LW -> 5 kills -> according to 325th 1 loss
US -> 21 kills -> according to LW only 4 losses (1 KIA, 3 WIA)

The additional loss was on a later flight that day, 1 MIA

Because of the small number of LW units based in Sicily its fairly easy to find out who was involved in which fight.

---------------------------------------------

(other party quote)

Martin Caidin writes that the Luftwaffe pilots were very green and the P-40 pilots were veterans with a great deal of experience and very aggressive.
---------------------------------------------

I don't know about the pilots of the 325th, but it is indeed correct that III. Gruppe of JG 77 had just received a bunch of green pilots

---------------------------------------------

(other party quote)

Odd? Yes it is odd. The lack of experience combined with poor leadership led to a painful initiation for the young German airmen.
---------------------------------------------

Can't disagree with that, but poor leadership at unit level can't be the cause. In war you have to deal with the situation as its given...the Luftwaffe played the cards it was dealt...and in 1943 Italy it had no choice but to commit green pilots, whatever the quality of the combat duty leadership.

On the other hand, the events from this more objective pov sound much less spectacular:

---------------------------------------------

(other party quote)

...up to 30 (probably as few as 12) Bf109G-6s of III./JG77, with a number of green pilots vs 20 P-40s of the 325th FG with, like you described, seasoned pilots, outcome 4-1 outcome in favor of the 325th.

=============================================

Overclaiming yes, but a valid occurance and a good point here.

The point I was trying to make is that LW pilots being the best pilots is a bogus statement. Not saying you said that, just see that comment often.

325th pilots were experenced and knew the P-40 well. These LW pilots were not a skilled and underestimated the P-40`s better zoom climb performance, roll rate, and turn rate.



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Skybax
328thFS ~ 352nd FG
Blue Nosed Bastards of Bodney

[dynamt]

Most if not all pilots in the LW were members of the Nazi party.

Nuff said!

dynamt

[vadr]

Ummmm.... so sky-bax, aren't we agreeing here? Did I miss something? Actual LW losses were 4? Right? To 1 for the 325th?

I think we are agreed on all other points. The LW obviously lost the fight, I just want to make sure we get the numbers right.

btw, III/JG77 was in Russia on this date.  

<S>!

PS -

 

These LW pilots...underestimated the P-40`s better zoom climb performance, roll rate, and turn rate.

I've often made that same mistake when fighting the 352nd in WB.  

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Vadr
Kommandeur, III/JG 2 'Richthofen'
CM, S3 Team/Parser
     vadr@jg2.org      
Combat Flightsim Business Forum      


[This message has been edited by vadr (edited 08-29-2000).]

[Minotaur]

You can argue "The Best" forever, this is relatively subjective to opionion.  

The truth remains "LW pilots were the most successful pilots of WW2 concerning A2A victories"

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Mino
The Wrecking Crew

"Mino I love you man but that is a bunch of baloney."
Funked