WWII-Era Bomb Scare

@Private:

Here is a different take that resonates for me:

I have seen it argued that both Germany and Japan* were strategically weak. Both lacked natural resources and needed access to those from elsewhere to maintain their war machines.

In the case of Japan that required secure supply lines from the East Indies, which their naval losses and strategic myopia denied them.

Germany needed to conquer territories that would secure those resources.

By contrast the allies were resource rich. Command of the seas gave access to resources from across the globe. Japan challenged US command of the Pacific for only a very short time frame. German U Boats did cause the Allies difficulties in the Atlantic for a longer period of course, but denying global resources to the UK is not the same as denying them to the USA, let alone gaining them for Germany.

Axis supremacy needed victory after victory in the face superior Allied production and manpower. The Allies only needed to deny them a sufficient proportion of those victories.

Of course, those that faced the Axis onslaught did not perceive any such “inevitable” Allied victory. And for a time those victories did keep coming …

*I include Japan in this answer because one of the reasons why Germany lost WW2 is that Japan never diverted enough allied resources away from the European theatre.

I agree with this, but that may not even fully capture all the reasons Germany lost.  In terms of just pure industrial production capacity Germany could not compete against the US, especially with the latter protected by its isolation from bombing.  I recently read an interesting book, Death Ride, that made much of Germany’s failure to develop long-range bombers, and with much of the USSR’s industry moved well East of Moscow Germany could not bomb it.  Göring apparently preferred lots of little short-range bombers to fewer and larger long-range bombers.  It also made much of the Germans’ decision to divert part of its Eastern Front ground forces to Italy leaving them under-supplied and outnumbered in Operation Citadel.  The near-impossibility of maintaining distant supply lines, despite Göring’s assurances that he could make up for it, have been discussed to death.

All-in-all, I think the reasons are so many that in retrospect it would have taken a near-miraculous perfect storm of events for Gemany to have emerged victorious.

@CWO:

Thanks for those two links HKL.  I agree that HMS Calypso would be a stretch as a present-day survivor, since she was burned to the waterline; “relic” would perhaps be a better characterization than “survivor”.

It’s too bad that the German WWI battlecruiser Goeben (later the Tukish warship Yavuz) didn’t get preserved.  She was in service until 1950 and in existence until the 1970s, when Turkey offered her for sale to West Germany.  West Germany turned down the offer, so she was sold for scrap in 1973.  Sad.

That is sad.

Cuba is omitted because the US holds an open ended lease for complete jurisdiction and control of Guantanamo Bay and Cuban authorities have absolutely no jurisdiction on the premises. It is for all intents and purposes, American soil. Furthermore, the US and Cuba have no diplomatic relations. So, if anything it is actually more of an occupation than a legit overseas military installation.

But I see your point. I would probably put it on the map. I didnt make the map you see. I just put it up because it was related to the other topic and I found it interesting.

Clearly you did too. ;-)

New York ‘lone wolf’ was one hour away from finishing his bomb
She also praised the New York Police Department, saying, “I think they handled it well.”
Officials with the NYPD, which conducted the undercover investigation using a confidential informant and a bugged apartment, said the department had to move quickly because Pimentel was about to test a pipe bomb made out of match heads, nails and other ingredients bought at neighborhood hardware and discount stores.
Two law enforcement officials said Monday that the NYPD’s Intelligence Division had sought to get the FBI involved at least twice as the investigation unfolded. Both times, the FBI concluded that Pimentel lacked the mental capacity to act on his own, they said.
The FBI thought Pimentel “didn’t have the predisposition or the ability to do anything on his own,” one of the officials said.
The officials were not authorized to speak about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity. The FBI’s New York office and the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan both declined to comment on Monday.
Pimentel’s lawyer, Joseph Zablocki, said his client was never a true threat.
“If the goal here is to be stopping terror … I’m not sure that this is where we should be spending our resources,” he said.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly defended the handling of the case Monday, saying the NYPD kept federal authorities in the loop “all along” before circumstances forced investigators to take swift measures using state charges.
“No question in my mind that we had to take this case down,” Kelly said. “There was an imminent threat.”
Added Kelly: “This is a classic case of what we’ve been talking about �� the lone wolf, an individual, self-radicalized. This is the needle in the haystack problem we face as a country and as a city.”
Authorities described Pimentel as an unemployed U.S. citizen and “al-Qaida sympathizer” who was born in the Dominican Republic. He had lived most of his life in Manhattan, aside from about five years in the upstate city of Schenectady, where authorities say he had an arrested for credit card fraud.
His mother said he was raised Roman Catholic. But he converted to Islam in 2004 and went by the name Muhammad Yusuf, authorities said.
Using a tip from police in Albany, the NYPD had been watching Pimentel using a confidential informant for the past year. Investigators learned that he was energized and motivated to carry out his plan by the Sept. 30 killing of al-Qaida’s U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, police said.
Pimentel was under constant surveillance as he shopped for the pipe bombmaterials. He also was overheard talking about attacking police patrol cars and postal facilities, killing soldiers returning home from abroad andbombing a police station in Bayonne, N.J., authorizes said.

Saints and Soldiers or A bridge to far

Speaking of medium bombers, I feel for the Japanese bomber crews who operated the Betty, which was a flying gas can. Although it must be nice to have a 20 mm cannon for a tail gunner.

… also they did not have an affective way to kill russian supply lines…the soviets did…

I’m not sure of the ground war (though the Germans were heavily outnumbered at the time and barely trying to hold their own), but the German U-Boat fleet really crippled Russia-British shipping for awhile in the Archangel area.