Cool Hobbies/Interests/Whatever

[C-Mag]

Medium Bombers like the B-25 are seriously cool, and frankly have been overshadowed by the big bombers of WWII. The B-25, the B26, A26, etc. Allies and Axis also had great medium bomber/multi-role aircraft. Like the Mosquito and Ju 88. These things were just very cool due to capabilities and flexibility.

[Montegriffo]

Medium Bombers like the B-25 are seriously cool, and frankly have been overshadowed by the big bombers of WWII. The B-25, the B26, A26, etc. Allies and Axis also had great medium bomber/multi-role aircraft. Like the Mosquito and Ju 88. These things were just very cool due to capabilities and flexibility.

You say that but it's a bloody good job Herman didn't have any heavy bombers to drop fascism all over London with.
Medium bombers were great for a bit of precision bombing but when you are trying to flatten whole cities you need a heavy bomber and some decent size payloads.

[Speaker to Animals]

If they could have brought huge flights of heavy bombers over London, they would have built them and done that. The English completely fucked them up over the channel, dude.

To carry out effective strategic bombing, you have to win the air war. To win the air war you need air superiority (they didn't have air superiority) to achieve air dominance (they never achieved that because they lacked air superiority). Once you have air dominance, then you can start flying nonstop strategic bombing sorties over the enemy's cities and other primary targets.

The United States and Great Britain together were actually the better air powers. The German thing is hype. They had some good ideas, but it's not like we didn't have those ideas available either. They were doing weird shit because they were desperate.

It's sort of like the American Civil War. The South was overwhelmingly in the losing position of that war. Their desperation is what led to them building weird armored boats and submarines.

Because the Allies were winning, and because we had the best aviation industries, we were pumping out really advanced bombers and fighters for the day. Not wonderweapons, but advanced aircraft for the time. Meanwhile the British invented the Chain Home System, which was a network of radar screens to see exactly when German aircraft and rockets were coming, and were able to intercept them. The shit we put on our heavy bombers back then was really advanced for the day.

[Montegriffo]

If they could have brought huge flights of heavy bombers over London, they would have built them and done that. The English completely fucked them up over the channel, dude.

Not sure that was the full reason.
Plenty of light and medium bombers made it over the channel and they brought fighter escorts with them.
Goering just didn't recognise the importance of strategic bombing until too late.

The German head of air force development in 1936, General Walther Wever ardently pushed for a strategic bomber force that would have been equivalent to the British at least, but he was killed in a plane crash in 1936 and his successor, Erhard Milch, and Goering killed all his plans for big bombers. Goering came to regret his decision later.

German military strategy was all about blitzkrieg not long drawn-out wars of attrition. The Luftwaffe was geared towards ground support and precision bombing.
By the time they realised their mistake, they no longer had the resources needed to build heavies and escort fighters in high enough numbers.

[TheReal_ND]

They never had the resources to support anything, let alone a ground invasion. That's why everything hinged on the blitzkrieg. Nobody else had the resources at that time either so the idea was to knock them out fast. The German campaign was not designed to be drawn out they never had the resources for it. It was designed to be a roll of the die.

[Speaker to Animals]

That is what the South should have tried. They should have taken D.C. fast, and then split the western cities off from the Yankreland East.

[brewster]

German military strategy was all about blitzkrieg not long drawn-out wars of attrition. The Luftwaffe was geared towards ground support and precision bombing.
By the time they realised their mistake, they no longer had the resources needed to build heavies and escort fighters in high enough numbers.

They never really had the resources to fight an air war of attrition the way the 8th Air Force did doing daylight bombing. The 8th didn't have air superiority for a long time, but could replace aircraft and trained men, which the Germans could not. Even before the strategic bombing, the Germans simply didn't have the capacity and resources for it, or for building tanks for that matter. Once the US and Soviets plants tooled up, they were done.

I've always wondered "what if" Barbarossa hadn't happened. Had Hitler simply consolidated his hold on Europe and N Africa without sending resources east, and continued to build, I doubt an Allied invasion would have been possible. Lots of books say he simply started the war too soon against the advice of his Generals.

[Speaker to Animals]

Yeah, they had to move fast, but there was no way across the channel so they were fucked.

History would be very, very different had the English not defended the channel like they did.

[TheReal_ND]

German military strategy was all about blitzkrieg not long drawn-out wars of attrition. The Luftwaffe was geared towards ground support and precision bombing.
By the time they realised their mistake, they no longer had the resources needed to build heavies and escort fighters in high enough numbers.

They never really had the resources to fight an air war of attrition the way the 8th Air Force did doing daylight bombing. The 8th didn't have air superiority for a long time, but could replace aircraft and trained men, which the Germans could not. Even before the strategic bombing, the Germans simply didn't have the capacity and resources for it, or for building tanks for that matter. Once the US and Soviets plants tooled up, they were done.

I've always wondered "what if" Barbarossa hadn't happened. Had Hitler simply consolidated his hold on Europe and N Africa without sending resources east, and continued to build, I doubt an Allied invasion would have been possible. Lots of books say he simply started the war too soon against the advice of his Generals.

Hitler explains the motivation for it in Mein Kampf, (frankly amazing everyone acts all clueless about it.)

When WWI ended after the Germans signed the armistrice Hitler noted how England didn't quit blockading Germany which caused over 100k of his countrymen to starve. Hitler wrote about this in his diary. He said he never wanted it to happen again which is why he gunned for Ukraine.

[TheReal_ND]

Interesting side note about Ukraine. Apparently in some areas they have like six feet of top soil and nobody knows why.