March 5, 1943: first flight of the Gloster Meteor, the Allies’ only operational jet plane during WW2, from RAF Cranwell.

I herewith confirm my continued existence.

August 21, 1942: German soldiers on Mount Elbrus, Europe’s tallest mountain. This was about as far as the German army would reach in the Caucasus. And the feat itself didn’t work wonders in German propaganda: Hitler was livid when he heard about it and thought it was a complete waste of time.

See https://europebetweeneastandwest.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/hubris-arrogance-on-europes-everest-mt-elbrus-a-metaphor-of-german-defeat-in-the-east/ for a recounting of this story.

August 29, 1944: American troops of the 28th Infantry Division march down the Champs Elysees, Paris, in the ‘Victory’ Parade.

From https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/index.html?dod-date=825

@captainwalker said in On this day during W.W. 2:

(…) the airborne invasion of Holland (Operation Market Garden) (…)

Thanks for sharing this. However, Operation Market Garden didn’t happen in Holland, but in the eastern part of the Netherlands. Holland is in the west.

It’s a pet peeve of mine: ‘Holland’ is frequently, but inaccurately, used as a synonym for ‘the Netherlands’. Unfortunately, this happens so often that many people have come to believe that the two are actually the same. Even the Dutch government only recently stepped away from this habit.

Aged only 51, Napoleon Bonaparte died on St Helena May 5, 1821. Arsenic poisoning has long been believed to be the cause of his death, but at present, the original diagnosis of stomach cancer is considered more likely.
Opinions on Napoleon’s many deeds and achievements will probably diverge forever, but if anything, he was a memorable figure.

I could try and say something intelligent about this myself, but there’s a vast array of well-documented posts on Quora about this: https://www.quora.com/If-Japan-had-attacked-the-USSR-in-1941-instead-of-the-United-States-at-Pearl-Harbor-would-the-USSR-have-been-defeated

Once the Soviets knew that Japan wasn’t going to attack (from the famous journalist/spy Richard Sorge), they felt safe to move troops from the East towards Moscow. Whether they would have done that anyway if Japan would have fought, is a matter of speculation. Maybe they would just have given up on that theatre in order to save Moscow - after all, the only real damage that Japan could have done, would have been the loss of a vast but sparsely populated and extremely remote part of Siberia that would have been a logistical nightmare to occupy.

C’mon, we can’t blame a man modeling himself after Charles de Gaulle for trying to make France a more important and interesting factor in the war! But now that we’re at it, let’s have the Dutch! and the Greeks, Yugoslavians, Poles! A separate Chinese communist faction, Indonesian freedom fighters, the resistance! And Finland of course, a separate Axis nation.

Seriously, from a gaming point of view, I agree that we don’t want to add more rules, and I also think that it’s slightly pointless to have France as a separate nation at all. It can never do much, and has no income…. no fun playing it. For simplicity, it could simply be removed, by just assuming that we would be a little bit further in the war.

Maybe my eyesight isn’t all that great, but I’m having a hard time seeing all the units at this resolution., especially the German ones. How many Germans are there in Eastern Poland? It seems to me like the Russians can hit that force, but I’m not sure, and I can’t readily distinguish the Russian planes either.
One thing I do see though, is a single Russian inf in Amur while there are also 12 Russian inf in Buryatia. I think that’s one too many?

They’re very nice, well done. But, a pet peeve of mine: the US flag is the current one. During World War 2, the 48 star flag was used because Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states.

@midnight_reaper Thanks, I was not aware of that.

March 5, 1943: first flight of the Gloster Meteor, the Allies’ only operational jet plane during WW2, from RAF Cranwell.

@ladymccormick Generally speaking, I wouldn’t recommend using speculative forum posts as source material for a university thesis. Anyway, for some more details, see: https://coolinterestingstuff.com/did-hitler-escape-to-spain
But I don’t really believe it, as I already explained in my 2016 reply to this topic (see above).

@superbattleshipyamato

No, we’re not. He changed his story and kept changing it. Witness accounts did not conform anything he said.
I’m not an expert on this, but what I found seems pretty convincing to me.

@superbattleshipyamato

There certainly were. The link I gave before, quotes Admiral Chester Nimitz: “We had about 4.5 million barrels of oil out there and all of it was vulnerable to .50-caliber bullets. Had the Japanese destroyed the oil, it would have prolonged the war another two years…”.
It’s also not too difficult to find a picture of those facilities, which indeed look like very tempting targets:

I suppose AB Worsham asked about the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility because if a lot of fuel would have already been stored there at the time of the attack, any third Japanese wave would have been unable to destroy that fuel.

When reading up on this, I came across the name of a very interesting fellow: Captain Mitsuo Fuchida. He was the leader of the first wave, and his accounts of what did or did not happen have been highly influential in (re-)writing history. Here are a few more links:

https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2016/december/commander-fuchidas-decision

https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1601&context=nwc-review

And while I didn’t read all of that, it seems that no third wave was launched against the oil containers because (a) the Japanese didn’t think of them as very important, and (b) no third wave had ever been planned to begin with. It was only when Fuchida was questioned by what must have been some amazed American interrogators after the war, that he began to realize that the celebrated Japanese victory had actually not nearly been as devastating as it could have been, and that his own role in the whole affair was not nearly as glorious as he would have liked it to be. So he began to change his story in later years, and the whole affair of him and other Japanese officers urging Admiral Nagumo to launch a third wave, was really Fuchida’s fabrication and never actually happened that way.

@abworsham4 said in Japanese 3rd Wave at Pearl Harbor:

Question: How much of the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility was in use on December 7, 1941?

Nothing. According to https://www.asce.org/about-civil-engineering/history-and-heritage/historic-landmarks/red-hill-underground-fuel-storage-facility :

Work on the first tank was completed in September 1942

I could try and say something intelligent about this myself, but there’s a vast array of well-documented posts on Quora about this: https://www.quora.com/If-Japan-had-attacked-the-USSR-in-1941-instead-of-the-United-States-at-Pearl-Harbor-would-the-USSR-have-been-defeated

Once the Soviets knew that Japan wasn’t going to attack (from the famous journalist/spy Richard Sorge), they felt safe to move troops from the East towards Moscow. Whether they would have done that anyway if Japan would have fought, is a matter of speculation. Maybe they would just have given up on that theatre in order to save Moscow - after all, the only real damage that Japan could have done, would have been the loss of a vast but sparsely populated and extremely remote part of Siberia that would have been a logistical nightmare to occupy.

@captainwalker said in On this day during W.W. 2:

(…) the airborne invasion of Holland (Operation Market Garden) (…)

Thanks for sharing this. However, Operation Market Garden didn’t happen in Holland, but in the eastern part of the Netherlands. Holland is in the west.

It’s a pet peeve of mine: ‘Holland’ is frequently, but inaccurately, used as a synonym for ‘the Netherlands’. Unfortunately, this happens so often that many people have come to believe that the two are actually the same. Even the Dutch government only recently stepped away from this habit.

An interesting idea, but I don’t think such an Axis strategy would be very likely to occur, for various reasons:

1. Russia. There was not going to be anything “instead of Barbarossa”. It wasn’t just a strategic issue, it was also an ideological one. Fighting Bolshevism and conquering “Lebensraum” in the East were key components of what the Nazis stood for.
2. Spain. Hitler and Franco were not exactly good friends. After their single meeting at Hendaye, Hitler was so annoyed at Franco that he told Mussolini he’d rather have four of his teeth pulled than ever have to talk to Franco again. Likewise, Franco was very mistrustful of Hitler, and even made arrangements for his succession in case he would be detained by the Germans. Franco wanted not only Gibraltar, but also a part of French Morocco, which Hitler was unwilling to give him because it would have jeopardized his relatinshup with Vichy France.
3. Turkey. The Turkish government made every effort to stay out of the war in spite of diplomatic attempts by Germany and Britain, who each wanted to lure Turkey to their side. Turkey only declared war on Germany in 1945 in order to join the winners when the outcome was no longer in doubt.

August 29, 1944: American troops of the 28th Infantry Division march down the Champs Elysees, Paris, in the ‘Victory’ Parade.

From https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/index.html?dod-date=825