P-47 Tank busters

[Grendel]

Originally posted by Brenjen
[B
the Finnish troops even trained stray dogs to eat under german tanks & then strapped explosives to them & turned them loose.
[/B]

Uh. No. SOviets. Not Finnish. And it didn't work.

[Bruno]

Bronk,

...about Rudel not being a Nazi.

A Nazi is or was a member of the NSDAP, which Rudel was not. Thus technically he was not a 'Nazi'. If can post anything to dispute that please do, like Rudel's NSDAP number for example...

Brenjen,

I doubt he enjoyed his time in the SS if he wasn't a member of the nazi party

Membership in the SS didn't not require Nazi party membership. Many members of the SS were never members of the NSDAP. Rudel spent the war years in the LW on the eastern front.

Rudel was a member of the General-SS or Allgemeine-SS. I not going explain the complexities of the 3 branches of the SS but here they are: Allgemeine-SS, Waffen-SS and SS-Totenkopfverbande. Rudel joined the Allgemeine-SS in the 30s and once the war began he was listed as 'inactive'.

The 'Allgemeine-SS' were both the unpaid, volunteer territorial SS units and the various SS offices staffed with paid, full-time personnel. From '34 - '39 the 'Allgemeine-SS' was to serve as 'police auxiliary'. To be called up and deployed in cases of civil disturbances or political unrest. 'Allgemeine-SS' units would also be used to maintain order / serve as guards during various Nazi party events etc...

Rudel was as right-wing as they come, he was a Hitlerite and a full supporter of Hitler's goals in the east.  You may agree with Oldman in that:

That's close enough to "Nazi" for me.

and that's all fine and good I just wanted to point out that Rudel never joined the NSDAP, which is a myth that gets thrown out quite often.

Toad,

In the game you've got to be about 10X closer than RL for them to even get painted on the screen

I have np seeing the 'dots' on the ground. It maybe a setting issue but IMHO everything seems small in AH, including aircraft at 200 yards. HT has said everything is modeled to scale and I believe him but things do seem small all the same.

[Bruno]

Ofcourse, the cute part of Bruno is that he just takes things too seriously In this case, he should have considered our usage of the term "Nazi" not as someone literally holding an official membership of the NSDAP

There's a real meaningful difference in being a real member of the NSDAP and the modern usage of the term 'Nazi'. Many of them legal. If Oldman or any anyone else wants to claim Rudel is a 'Nazi' then great...

My post are more of an 'fyi' then a call to argue.

I have np arguing but look at the claims folks are making in this thread. Even in regards to Rudel's credited claims, they don't know what they are talking about.

[Toad]

Originally posted by Bruno

I have np seeing the 'dots' on the ground. It maybe a setting issue but IMHO everything seems small in AH, including aircraft at 200 yards. HT has said everything is modeled to scale and I believe him but things do seem small all the same.

You can see cars driving down the highway or cars in a parking lot from 30K; I can't see a GV sitting on a runway until I'm inside his gun range.

I'm sure setting is some of it; I don't have the latest, greatest video card. OTOH, my system specs are well above the "minimum" required.

Sorta seems like a "min system" should be able to see GV's sitting on a runway from a LONG ways out.

But, heck... so many concessions have been given to the GV part of the game that I'm sure this won't be addressed either.

[Bronk]

Hehe Bruno guess it's like "what the definition of "IS" is".
Technically a Nazi... no.
 Member of the SS which started out as bodyguards of Nazi political leaders... Yea he close enough to be called nazi in my book.

So if you are a lawyer he is no Nazi.
To everyone who looks past the legalese ...Nazi.


Bruno for your defence of the technicalities.

Bronk

[Angus]

This was one goodie:
""the Finnish troops even trained stray dogs to eat under german tanks & then strapped explosives to them & turned them loose."

Really !! ? I have never heard of that, that has to be 1 of the best ideas of the war, I wonder how they trained them to distinguish bad guy tanks from the good guys."

Well, be it the Russians or others, there is another wild idea that was tested by the brits.
BATS WITH INCENDIARIES. The idea was to drop lots of bats over an enemy city at night. The bats carried timed incendiaries. Since they seek out attics and rooftops and such to hang-in, they are actually homing into the best place to start a fire. Then "fooomp".
The idea worked, - a bat escaped and started a fire. Project scrapped.

Oh, and interesting that the only thing unveiling a person as  a Nazi is the NSDAP number. What number did Hitler have? 1 perhaps

[Brenjen]

The article I read said it was Finnish troops that trained the dogs & it worked very well until the Germans began shooting stray dogs that approached them. How they distinguished friend from foe? I don't know the details, maybe they turned the animals loose one at a time when the need arose. like firing an AT round, you only do it when you SEE the enemy.

 The bat thing was tried by the United States against a mock Japanese town, they used mexican brown bats & that idea worked perfectly they claimed. It was deemed unessescary with the success of the atomic bomb. I was unaware the Brits tried something similar with bad results & cancelled the project.

[Elfie]

IIRC, German officers regardless of which branch of service they belonged to, were NOT allowed to join a political party. SS units may be an exception here, since they techically were not a part of the Wehrmacht.

[Bruno]

IIRC, German officers regardless of which branch of service they belonged to, were NOT allowed to join a political party. SS units may be an exception here, since they techically were not a part of the Wehrmacht.

Not necessarily...

The Wehrmacht had a tradition, and for the most upheld that tradition through out WW2, that officers were not to be active members of political parties. In fact in the old Reich's army it was forbidden to belong to any political organization. Of course that doesn't mean that they didn't support or favor one party or leader over another.

§ 26 of the Wehrgesetz:
Politik in der Wehrmacht.(1) Die Soldaten dürfen sich politisch nicht betätigen. Die Zugehörigkeit zur NSDAP oder zu einem der ihr angeschlossenen Verbände ruht für die Dauer des aktiven Wehrdienstes.

Basically states that members of the Wehrmacht, who were members of political party, could not actively work for said party, they were 'inactive'. After the July '44 plot against Hitler serving members of the Wehrmacht were prohibited from joining any political party.

There were of course exceptions. The Luftwaffe, for example, was most modern branch of the Wehrmacht and as such was much more closely associated with the NSDAP. In fact Hitler is quoted as saying:

I have an imperial army, a catholic navy and a National Socialist air force

There are plenty of examples of Luftwaffe personnel belonging to the party, Walter Nowotny for one. However, membership in the NSDAP was generally rare among Luftwaffe airmen and was actually frowned upon by others.

The SS is a separate issue. Most of the leadership within the SS were members of the NSDAP, there are notable exceptions. However, back to Rudel. he held a low rank in the Allgemeine-SS and never joined the NSDAP. In fact most of the rank and file SS were not even German and not members of the party.

[Charge]

IIRC when they decided to merge the SS into the army organization the Wehrmact didn't really like the idea, and I can understand why.

I have read Rudel's book and it is very clear that he believed Hitler to be right even whe he was clearly going insane. I was under the impression that "nazi" ideology was not too important to him except that they fought against bolshevism and he didn't really understand why the western allies were not fighting the Russians, too.

To me he was Hitler's devoted lapdog and considered Hitler next to god without any critizism.


"LOL...OK, I have nothing against the Finns (best Rally drivers in the world) but do you notice they say they werent Nazi symathizers in WWII, yet they all jump in to defend a Nazi they perceive to be slighted?"

 Bait (TM)?

-C+

[straffo]

Originally posted by Grendel
Uh. No. SOviets. Not Finnish. And it didn't work.

If I recall correctly those dog where used to the sound of Russian engines friendly kill isn't

[Killjoy2]

HEY    My thread has been hijacked.  

It's clear the 396th thought they could kill a tank with 50's from the gun camera footage.  

They have a couple of examples of 396th gunning a tank posted on their site.  My own thoughts would be that they sometimes could disable a tank with 50's but relied on rockets and bombs for the most part.

The 395th were the "Tank Dusters" and the 397th were the "Jabo Angels"