Captured equipment can be very much of a mixed blessing if you’re trying to actually use it on the battlefield, especially big complicated pieces of equipment like tanks which are notorious for requiring a lot of maintenance and spare parts. Supplying spare parts to your own guys for your own tanks is already enough of a challenge; it can be downright impossible if your captured enemy tanks use components which aren’t an exact match for what your own factories produce. Ditto for ammunition: I don’t know if the Germans had 45mm guns on any of their tanks, but if they didn’t I can see why they would have replaced the KV’s 45mm gun with a flamethrower. When the French battleship Richelieu switched to the Free French side in 1943, and went to New York for a refit, the shipyard workers – whose experience and measuring tools and (literally) nuts and bolts were based on the imperial system of weights and measures – had all sorts of headaches working on the vessel, which had been built using the metric system. Sometimes the best use for captured equipment is study rather than combat, a good example being the T-34, which gave the Germans a considerable shock when they they saw the shells from their Panzers bouncing off of it. Once they had recovered from their embarrassment (among other things, at discovering that the supposedly backward Russians had successfully produced a diesel engine powerful enough for a tank, something which Germany had failed to do), they created their own version of the T-34, the Panther. Another good example is the Akutan Zero, an A6M Zero which crashed in the Aleutians during the diversionary operation for the Battle of Midway. The pilot was killed, and from the air the plane looked like it had been totalled, but in fact it was barely damaged. U.S. forces found it about a month later. It was dismantled, shipped to the States, reassembled, then throughly evaluated by test pilots. This told American pilots, and American aircraft designers, everything the needed to know about the Zeros’s strengths and weaknesses.
Best posts made by CWO Marc
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RE: On this day during W.W. 2
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RE: 👋 Introduce or Re-Introduce Yourself (Current)
@Intrepid said in Introduce or Re-Introduce Yourself (Feb. 2019):
for the last three years given more time to A&A games […] > I have a huge interest in customizations such as map-making and other printed resources, as my professional background is as a graphic designer. My other hobbies include WW2 history and carpentry/woodworking/fabrication.Sounds to me like the perfect combination of interests and skills! Welcome to the forum, and looking forward to seeing pictures of your eventual war room.
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RE: On this day during W.W. 2
Thanks for this excellent picture of a great ship’s demise. Earlier in 1941, Ark Royal famously launched the torpedo-bomber attack which jammed the Bismarck’s rudder, delivering the German battleship to the pursuing British naval units who otherwise would have failed to catch her.
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RE: CWO you OK ?
Hi everyone,
Sorry to have been absent for so long; this is the first time I’ve logged into my forum account since the pandemic started. I’m fine, and I appreciate the expressions of concern; I’ve simply had to devote my time and my mental energies to dealing with the new situation we’re all living through. I’ve sidelined – for the moment – a lot of normal activities, including (sadly) my daily visits to the forum because I need to maintain my focus on working from home and dealing with the surreal environment in which we’re all living. Who ever thought that grocery shopping, a normally mundane task, would turn into an experience similar to the movie The Andromeda Strain, which features a multi-level biological research laboratory which requires increasingly severe sterilization procedures as one goes form level to level? Anyway, I hope everyone is doing okay.
All the best,
Marc -
RE: On this day during W.W. 2
@Wittmann said in On this day during W.W. 2:
@captainwalker Stukas: now I am excited!
And on that subject, note that the photo correctly shows (for the spring 1942 period) conventional Stukas, not the Ju 87G Kanonenvogel tankbuster version which entered service about a year later and first went into combat at Kursk. The Ju 87G is easily recognizable by its large underwing 37mm cannon pods. To put things in perspective, this was the same caliber gun which was the main weapon of the early versions of the Panzer III.
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RE: Global or Anniversary for better 6 player game?
Given that your players are a mixed group with different levels of experience at various other A&A games, I think your best option would be a two-part strategy: start with Anniversary, play a few games to get everyone up to speed, then make the jump to Global. In terms of size and complexity, Anniversary is nicely positioned between the 1942 game and the Global 1940 game, so it’s a good tool for transitioning from the former to the latter. Jumping straight into the deep end of the pool might be less comfortable for the less-experienced players in the group; ideally, you want to set up a situation where the whole gang gets into Global with more or less the same level of skill and enthusiasm, so that nobody feels like an odd man out.
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Home-Made War Rakes
To follow up on a post I added to a different thread yesterday, here’s something I put together last evening: a home-made war rake, also known as a croupier stick. It’s made from a 12" x 3/8" wooden dowel (the arts and crafts section of my local dollar store sells them at $1.25 for a pack of six), a coffee stir stick sawn in half, and a drop of white glue. Unit cost: about 20 cents; assembly time: about five minutes (not counting the time it took for the glue to dry). The edge produced by the saw cut wasn’t completely smooth, so I used a nail file as improvised sandpaper to touch it up. To produce a good bond, I used two heavy books to press the components together while the glue was drying, since the glue company’s recommended practice of “clamping” is a bit difficult for an object that’s a foot long and less than half an inch wide. The end of the rake can be used either vertically to move individual sculpts, or horizontally to move massed formations of units. One pack of dowels and three stir sticks will produce six war rakes, which will serve the basic needs of a six-player game of Global 1940; two packs and six stir sticks will produce rakes for all nine Global player nations (with three spares which could be used for neutrals and for house-ruled additional player nations). An added refinement would be to paint the sticks in the appropriate national sculpt colours, if a deluxe version of the rakes is desired.
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RE: 👋 Introduce or Re-Introduce Yourself (Current)
@dan-hamilton said in Introduce or Re-Introduce Yourself (Current):
Hi everyone. I am new to this forum :relaxed:
Welcome aboard!
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RE: JAPANESE OPERATION C
Ceylon and Madagascar do indeed occupy strategic positions in the Indian Ocean, but in order for a hypothetical Japanese occupation of these islands to have had a serious effect on the Allies the Japanese would have had to establish large and well-equipped naval and air bases there, keep them regularly supplied with food and fuel and ammunition, and defend them against Allied countremeasures (such as blockade and/or invasion). Considering how far these islands are from Japan, and considering how much trouble Japan (which had an inadequate marchant shipping capacity and inadequate convoy defenses) had with the logistical support of its much-closer holdings in the Pacific, I doubt that a large-scale, long-term Japanese presence in the Indian Ocean would have been a realistic proposition. Note by the way that Japan did occupy the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which are south of Burma and west of Thailand; the effects of this occupation were marginal (except to the local population) and by the end of the war the garrison was starving.
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RE: 20 Years of Axis & Allies .org
The site has been such a well-established part of my life for such a long time that it was a bit of a shock, upon seeing that this is its 20th anniversary, to take a step back and realize just how long a time it’s been and how much the A&A game has evolved during that interval. Many of the unit types and player nations available today in Global didn’t even exist at the time, which makes those days look like ancient history (which isn’t a bad thing, given that many A&A players are history buffs). As the previous post said, here’s to another 20 great years!
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Wreck of USS Hornet Located
WW II aircraft carrier found more than 75 years after it sank in the South Pacific
The Hornet was best known for its part in the Doolittle Raid in April 1942, the first air attack on Japan, and the Battle of Midway.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/uss-hornet-second-world-war-wreckage-1.5019915
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RE: 20 Years of Axis & Allies .org
@Midnight_Reaper said in 20 Years of Axis & Allies .org:
@CWO-Marc As for what we did and did not have back in 2000, I made a small chart
Great chart, Midnight Reaper; it brings back lots of memories. A further point to note is that, in Classic, only the infantry sculpt was nation-specific and was based on authentic WWII designs; the equipment sculpts started following the same design principle with Europe / Pacific / Revised, though it took a long while to achieve (by combining E1940.2, P1940.2 and 1941) a full array for everyone except France. We were also treated to some neat special-category sculpts: the German blockhouses in D-Day, the American and German trucks in Bulge, and the entirely-other-war sculpt set of 1914. Another nice development in the official games has been the addition of China, Italy, ANZAC and France to the original five powers (US, UK, USSR, Germany and Japan). And in the early days, people who wanted extra types of units (or extra colours to represent other countries) had to make do with third-party products like the Xeno and Table Tactics ones or the Enemy on the Horizon expansion set, the quality of which was uneven and the availability of which wasn’t always great. Things certainly have changed.
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Last Doolittle Raider Passes Away
Last of WW2 ‘Doolittle Raiders’ Dick Cole dies aged 103
10 April 2019
Dick Cole, the last veteran of a World War Two bombing raid on Japan in retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor, has died. He was 103 years old.
The famed Doolittle raid was named for then Lt Col Jimmy Doolittle, who led the first US strikes against Japan during the war in 1942.
Retired Lt Cole was Lt Col Doolittle’s co-pilot in the lead plane.
The raid, which included 16 B-25 bombers and 80 crew members, helped boost morale after Pearl Harbor.
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RE: Last Doolittle Raider Passes Away
As a footnote: I once read a book on the Doolittle Raid in which the author commented that James Doolittle’s family name was somewhat ironic because, on the contrary to “doing little,” the man was actually a powerhouse with a long list of accomplishments in various aviation-related fields, both theoretical and applied. He was, among other things, a test pilot and an aeronautical engineer, a record-setter and a prize winner, with many of these accomplishments pre-dating the outbreak of WWII in 1939 (at which time he was a reserve officer in the Air Corps, having resigned his regular commission in 1930; he returned to active duty in the Air Corps in 1940). WWII added more items to his C.V., the Doolittle Raid being the most famous example but by no means the only one.
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D-Day Special Tank Variants
Here’s a BBC article – which includes drawing and/or photographs – about Hobart’s Funnies, the modified Churchill and Sherman tanks which were used in specialist roles on D-Day: the AVRE, DD, Crab (a.k.a. Flail), Bobbin, Fascine, Ark and Crocodile.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160603-the-strange-tanks-that-helped-win-d-day
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RE: D-Day Special Tank Variants
@Midnight_Reaper said in D-Day Special Tank Variants:
@CWO-Marc
I like how the article glosses over the fact that the U.S. Army, in its infinite wisdom, turned down the use of any of the funnies other than the DD Shermans - most of which sank to the bottom on the American beaches. I suppose you can’t have every decision be the right one…-Midnight_Reaper
Yes, that was a bad decision, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that the DD Shermans were launched into the water at a greater distance from the beaches than the British did in their own invasion sector. As Barnee notes, the Americans made more good decisions overall than bad ones during the course of the war, but it’s regretable that some of those bad decisions were avoidable because they were partially driven in part by stubborness and pride and (in the case of officers like Admiral Ernest J. King) a certain amount of Anglophobia. The US entered the war two years after Great Britain, which was good in one sense (they were fresh – in contrast with the British, who had taken quite a beating for the past two years) but bad in another sense (they were novices – in contrast with the British, who had a lot of hard-won experience under their belts). Armies and navies, unfortunately, sometimes have to make their own mistakes in order to learn from them, rather than believing what their allies tell them. Human nature, I guess.
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UK World War Two Bombing Site Map
UK World War Two Bombing Site Map
Here’s something that may interest folks who like data and statistics about WWII:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50056395
UK World War Two bombing sites revealed in online map
16 October 2019A new map that plots every German air raid on the UK during World War Two has been released online.
A researcher from the University of York used wartime intelligence reports to compile the Bombing Britain database (http://www.warstateandsociety.com/Bombing-Britain) of more than 30,000 locations.
Dr Laura Blomvall, who carried out the research, said the raids stretched from the Orkney Islands to the Isles of Scilly.
The map has been launched to mark the 80th anniversary of the first raid.
German bombers attacked the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh on 16 October 1939. The last raid was a V2 rocket attack near Iwade in Kent on 29 March 1945.
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Wrecks of WWII Carriers Kaga and Akagi Located
Battle of Midway: World War Two Japanese carrier wrecks found
21 October 2019
Deep sea explorers have found two Japanese aircraft carriers that were sunk in battle in World War Two.
The carriers were among seven ships that went down in the Battle of Midway, a major air and sea battle fought between the US and Japan in 1942.
One ship, the Kaga, was discovered last week, while wreckage from another carrier, Akagi, was found on Sunday.
Until now only one other ship sunk in this battle had ever been found - the American vessel USS Yorktown, in 1998.
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RE: Wrecks of WWII Carriers Kaga and Akagi Located
@barnee said in Wrecks of WWII Carriers Kaga and Akagi Located:
@CWO-Marc
yea Spruance steaming away at night was a smart move. I wonder if Halsey was in the same situation if he would have. I kinda doubt itAgreed. Ray Spruance was an excellent combat officer – he and Halsey spent the last few years of WWII alternating command of the 5th Fleet / 3rd Fleet, which was actually the same force whose name got switched every time the two admirals rotated, much to the confusion of Japanese naval intelligence – but he was very different from Bill Halsey in terms of style and personality. Spruance was precise and analytical; he certainly didn’t lack aggressiveness (when he made a decision to attack, he sent in “everything that wasn’t bolted to the flight deck”), but before making his decision to attack he would carefully weigh all the factors of the situation, which sometimes translated into over-cautiousness. Halsey was a hell-for-leather type – sort of the naval counterpart of George Patton – whose fighting spirit greatly inspired his men (the enlisted sailors loved him, not least for the fact that he could drink and swear as well as any of them), but this sometimes translated into recklessness. After the war, someone – I think it was Spruance himself – said that it would have been better if Halsey has been in command at the Battle of the Philippine Sea (where the IJN lost hundred of planes and pilots, but managed to save the bulk of its fleet) and if Spruance had been in command at the Battle of Leyte Gulf (where Halsey fell for a Japanese decoy operation, and compounded his error by leaving no covering force to guard the San Bernardino Straight).
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RE: On this day during W.W. 2
Great picture! The part about “skimming the flight deck so close that the flames singed the beard of one of the Yorktown gunners” brings to mind another kamikaze-related incident (this one from April 1945) in which a Japanese Zero crashed into the USS Missouri, an event involving two dramatic photos (shown in the links below):
A picture of the plane just as it’s about to hit the ship:
https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/465278205223784252/A picture of the one-in-a-million-chance aftermath, in which one of the plane’s machine guns ended up jammed down the barrel of one of Missiouri’s 40mm guns:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/7iv32k/uss_missouri_bb63_a_40mm_barrel_is_seen_impaled/