To blame the eyeball of US A-10 pilots is a bit of a false premise. Perhaps you should blame who is using the eyeball.
Watch the video of the notorious case where Cpl Hull was killed. The A10 pilots are loitering at 10,000 ft, three miles up-range. They spend some 10 minutes talking to their controller. Then attack, firing weapons at 4000 feet, twice at which point the non-attacking wingman USES HIS BINOCULARS!
These particular guys were Air National Guard with no training on NATO identification procedures.
But back to the point, the A-10 was designed as a tank-busting close support aircraft–not a COIN asset. All the modifications in recent years are designed to allow it to identify and attack targets from further and further away and at higher altitude.
There is a grand idea that all friendly assets will sport an IFF device that has an individual, unforgeable code that will return a signal from a radar ping with ID, GPS location and other data–it still an idea. Together with existing fire-control systems that rely on friendlies uploading their GPS position to update deployment data in the battlefield control system. should work, but doesn’t all of the time. All of this is great for a Desert Storm type fight against a conventional military foe.
But, how does this help a pilot descriminate from, say, insurgents have a brew-up after planting an IED and an Afghan knees-up at a wedding party?
I can see no problem of a loitering sensor platform on a UAV and big-bad fast jets with JDAMS being augmented by the type of COIN craft mentioned earlier and, how about this for coincidence, the US, Britain, Australia and Canada have all called for proposals for such aircraft in the last three months!
Maybe they have found something out.
A hugely expensive proposition for an aircraft that doesn’t really suit USMC close air support needs. Old ships get mothballed for a reason, namely that they’re too expensive to maintain anymore. It would be just another excess of redundant capability and trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist out of some Warthog fetish…
The A-10 was born as a pure tank buster–sort of the new NATO Sturmovik–and its ordinance loads can almost be as much a hazard to friendlies than to the enemy. While it is effective in certain close air missions, most marines and soldiers prefer attack or observation/light attack helicopters and the weapon of choice in a counterinsurgency fight. Although, I have read that the US Army was planning on trying to recondition the old OV-10 Broncos to see if they could be brought back into service as light attack and observation platforms like they were early in Vietnam --before inter-service rivalry between the USA and the USAF force the Army to forgo most of their fixed wing armed fleet IIRC…
No, the benefit comes from being physically capable of flying very high. Current airliner speeds are all to do with certain benefits to the efficiency of the wing that spring from flying under certain transonic conditions, which allow you to have a patch of supersonic air on top of the wing and so give particularly good L/D values.
No, it states that the energy posessed by something quadruples as the velocity doubles. This is not the same thing.
Lift and drag of aircraft do vary with velocity squared, but only up to a certain speed (about 0.3 Mach). Above this compressibility kicks in and these equations go out the window.
Strawman - the statement was that piston engines were rubbish, not propellers. As I am well aware (having recently spend 10 hours in the back of one of the flaming things), C-130s are powered by gas turbine engines.
With most modern weapons, if it’s close enough to take out an engine then the entire aircraft is toast. Only a handful of MANPADS are small enough for that, and with modern weapons there is no need to get into the engagement envelope for them.
Nobody. Draw a force diagram of what you’re suggesting, ensure that the turning moments are zero and then take out an engine. They will no longer be zero in all axes, which is a fundamental requirement for safe hovering flight, unless your lift source is driven by a gearbox from your power source(s). Which is how helicopters and the V-22 do it.
Errr… no, it proved such a design could be made to fly. The fact that nobody has done it since despite major reductions in the frontal area shows you why saying that it “could work” is a bit of an overstatement.
JSF has the same thing (at least in principle). It is something else to go very fundamentally wrong, and just not needed on the Harrier.
No, it couldn’t. Doing so would fundamentally compromise their primary mission of flying off helicopter assaults. The modifications would be massive (an angled deck for starters, as while an A-10 may be able to take off from a ski-jump, it can’t land on one) and mean that it can’t perform it’s primary mission while A-10 operations are ongoing. Harriers can take off and land just like helicopters, so fit in just fine.
The only way to do this is to lift off the nameplate and slide a new ship underneath. Just changing from nuclear to gas turbines is a structural nightmare, let alone the other alterations. What you have in mind may leave the ship so weak it would snap in two while parked in dock.
You state that the primary responsibilities are to people like you in the US, rather than to villagers in Afghanistan in your earlier posts. Now you state that you should be protecting statues in Afghanistan. Make your frikking mind u.
They did. Using bombers optimised for the very type of tactical mission you continuously suggest we should optimise our air forces for. And lost heavily, with atrocious casualties.
Absolutely - sorry, I may not have been clear enough here. I blame a system that sends aircraft out to hunt for enemies using only their eyeballs, with minimal or no comms to forces on the ground and no optics beyond a set of binos. Even a halfway-decent targeting pod would have made it very clear that the orange recognition panels were not in fact “orange rockets”.
I’ve watched it several times after it was leaked (that caused a LOT of bad feeling over here incidentally, after the US refused to release any information to the inquest into how this guy died - it’s a frikking INQUEST!). There were several other major failings in addition to those you describe - notably that they ask the controller for details of any friendly forces in the area, then decide to kill what they’re looking at anyway before he gets back to them to tell them that there are indeed UK forces in the area.
The 10 or so guys we lost to A-10s in 1991 were also killed by ANG pilots. Spot the pattern?
About what I’m suggesting should be done 
It does not and cannot. All that can is improved sensors and keeping eyes-on for substantial lengths of time - or best of all, guys on the ground who can get in close.
As I understand it, what they’re after is essentially a manned-UAV. Afghanistan and Iraq are very, very congested electronic environments, and there is basically no room in the spectrum for more UAVs - plus UAVs are badly affected by IED jammers. Hence the growth of aircraft to fulfil that role, with the guys looking at the imagery on board. This seems mostly to be done by Beech King Air aircraft, which apparently go by the name of “Funny-Looking King Airs” or FLKAs.
sorry but i can’t see the link between A-10 , NATO and how can Hitler won the war 
Maybe, if he had A-10s and NATO on his side, he could’ve defeated Russia
What the Hell was wrong w/ those guys? What part of “don’t engage w/out positive ID” could they not understand?
And I want to sincerely apologize for my govt’s behavior regarding the refusal to release the info. My country’s a real jerk like that (Although, when the Abu Gharib photos were released, my dad felt the man who came forward w/ them should’ve been executed for treason) they know they can basically get away w/ anything. Like that ski lift accident in Italy. So many innocent people killed. BTW, are you from the UK, pdf27? Because when you mention the UK guys getting killed, you have an “it’s Personal” feeling to it.
The 10 or so guys we lost to A-10s in 1991 were also killed by ANG pilots. Spot the pattern?
I guess training 1 weekend a year isn’t quite enough?:oops:
It does not and cannot. All that can is improved sensors and keeping eyes-on for substantial lengths of time - or best of all, guys on the ground who can get in close.
That to me, troops on the ground, is the very definition of COIN. Guys who can get in close & actually CONFIRM that the target is good to hit. Airpower is a SUPPLEMENT to ground power, not a replacement.
As I understand it, what they’re after is essentially a manned-UAV. Afghanistan and Iraq are very, very congested electronic environments, and there is basically no room in the spectrum for more UAVs - plus UAVs are badly affected by IED jammers. Hence the growth of aircraft to fulfill that role, with the guys looking at the imagery on board. This seems mostly to be done by Beech King Air aircraft, which apparently go by the name of “Funny-Looking King Airs” or FLKAs.
“MANNED-uavs” Hmm. So much for the Air Force’s idea to replace all manned aircraft w/ UCAVs. And I for one would HATE if they made autonomous UCAVs (Terminator anyone?) BTW, I have a pic of that Beechcraft, it has all these aerials on it like a pincushion.
BTW, what are your assessments of Tom Clancy & Larry Bond? Are they ill-informed & biased? Both basically claim the AMRAAM is a 100% successful silver bullet while Russian arms are way bellow 1% effective. And they say the F-117 is COMPLETELY INVINCIBLE. (But how’d the Serbs shoot several down? Act if God?) I honestly don’t know how 30 HARMS failed to take out 1 Serb radar. Was it mobile like an SA-8 platform? But Mr Clancy gets the “Seal of Approval” from our military. Although Larry Bond, when he had France & Germany team up against nato (The used the “Francmark” as currency of the Eurcon state. He gave the French the Rafale jet & ANL missiles while Germany only had Phantoms w/ Sparrows (The F-4F NEVER HAD AIM-7s) He also gave Poland a fleet of F-15s.
Yeah, I can hear you guys laughing through my modem. He gave an impoverished East European country one of the most powerful jets of all & France all the cutting edge weapons but left Germany w/ 30 yr old Tech. Plus he had the French start the war, but the Germans did all the fighting & dying while the French sat on their rears screaming insults.
Isn’t that racism?
I couldn’t even stomach trying to read his latest books. The plot was all rinse-repeat w/ new names for the cast. Every male lead even fell for a red-head in each book.:rolleyes::evil:
But please, if you can find a modern war book that doesn’t read like a sales brochure for Lockheed Martin or a Televangelist screed to smite unbelievers, let me know. I prefer a novel where the victor isn’t predetermined by here the book was printed.
Although the SA-2 only had a 1% PK in 'Nam & even less today. The SA-3 were ‘Completely ineffective’ (Despite taking out 2 F-117As) SA-5 no success in Libyan use. SA-6, Yom Kippur PK 2.3% while 16 batteries wiped out in Bekaa valley w/out a SINGLE KILL. The SA-8 only got one plane in Lebanon '82. SA-9 'Totally Ineffective". The SA-7 in Yom Kippur, 500 missiles fired, just 4 kills. SA-14 'Mixed Results. - “The Dictionary of Modern War” Edward Luttwak & Stuart Koehl
Um, are those figures for Russian SAMs correct? I got them ‘word for word’ from the book mentioned (It was listed at $45 but I only paid $5. Is that because the book is junk?) Note that most of those missiles were used against Israel. And that the Muslim countries & Russia don’t agree w/ Israel’s ‘assessments’ Someone has to be lying & Russia & the Middle East nations are notorious for dishonesty as well as everything evil under the sun. I don’t want to sound racist, but when every Muslim fighting force in history does SO POORLY even w/ massive numerical superiority & technological parity or sSUPERority even, I have to ask, “Is it just them?” But our own battles in the Middle East proved that Saddam & others were legally retarded when it came to waging war. In 2003 he did even worse, despite learning our power in 1991. Did he really think the 125mm on a T-72 would work in Iraq where it failed in Kuwait? Nothing less than a point blank hit from a 152 or 203 mm gun would even scratch it. Or a 500lb IED:lol:
Was there any time when Arab armies actually OUT FOUGHT Israel? Succes by Insurgents & terrorists don’t count, I’m talkin’ head to head, army to army. (I must admit, I feel it’s a shame Israel didn’t exist before WW 2. Just Imagine Hitler’s reaction if he invaded & found out how wrong he was about the Jews being ‘inferior’. If anything the Israelis are truer SuperMen than the make-believe Aryans. They’ve never been defeated. But strangely, they don’t win many Olympic medals.
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Hmm. I’d have thought that one could reduce drag & increase speed/range simply by using improved skin on the aircraft. That wouldn’t call for redesigning the whole plane. When the DB605AS was fitted to the Me 109G, the engine cowling was ‘completely redesigned’, improving streamling & performance in addition to what the engine itself added. The result was stil called the Me 109G.
Agreed, but 1940s radio sets were tiny anyway. The real weight in modern aircraft is in the optics, lasers and radars needed for most modern weapons, and for their cooling systems.
I’ll retract my claim on the radio, as I recently looked at a cutaway of a Spitfire I. The radio was far smaller than I pictured. The reason I mentioned the Predator was because I wanted to point out how small & lightweight its Optics & laser are. How much does the Predator sensor package weigh anyhow? Surely the Thermal Imager & laser could be fit on a Spit, right? Planes like the Hellcat even carried a radar. (Modern radar the size & weight of the APS-19A would be more powerful & effective)
Do you know anyone who’s been out in Afghan? I know a lot, and one of them (Rfn Andrew Fentiman RIP) was even killed a week or so ago. One thing that is universally the case is that the target location is never known until seconds before bomb release. Additionally, high quality optical information from the aircraft is required before release is authorised - hence older aircraft being of little use.
Yes, as a matter of fact I do. Over 200 families in my town have husbands in the 10th Mountain Division Fightling In Afghanistan right now. I always buy beers at the Legion for some the guys when they get back & we talk all the time. They seem to really like the A-10 & think a lot of my ideas, (the ones you don’t think would fly, so to speak) a really great. You do have my sympathy for the late Mr Fentiman. (What is ‘Rfn’ exactly?) When I was saying that a GPS could be set on the ground, I was giving an extreme example of how easy it would be to fit a JDAM on anything that flies. I could’ve use a large kite or a balloon for example. I do know that a plane should have at least enough ‘brains’ to not hit the wrong hut.
I’ve seen a Chally 2 powerpack (~1200 BHP) and an early model Merlin (also ~1200 BHP). The Merlin is about half the size and weight, and the disparity just grew over the course of the war - late model Merlins of about the same size were putting out ~2000 BHP. As for the racing cars, they run at a level of unreliability that would be utterly unacceptable in an aviation context, although at similar specific powers.
I certainly know that ground vehicle engines way far more per HP than plane engines. You had implied that there is NO CAPACITY FOR ANY manufacture of WW 2 class HP piston engines in this day & age. I was using a tank engine as an example of a piston engine which is rated to a similar amount as a WW 2 plane. BTW, it only took a few years for pistons to evolve from the 695 hp RR Kestrel VI to the massive 2,200 hp Wright Duplex Cyclones of the B-29, so if it can happen then, then it could happen again. W/ computer controlled lathes & other tooling, a person can make pretty much anything he wants if he can afford the materials. If the US asked Pratt & Whitney to turn out some new cyclones, it’d only take a few weeks for some new ones to roll off the assembly line. [Although, strangely, the only plane engines designed in Germany are pistons of 100 hp & below. They don’t design turbines (not aircraft, ship or tank at least) or turboprops or turboshafts. & only a few rocket motors are designed by them (for missiles not space launchers.) I may be wrong, but I’ve spent months trying to find out otherwise, but there is NO DATA ANYWHERE which says otherwise.]
Ummm… no. A turbofan has essentially one moving part, and that requires naff-all maintenance. Mean time between overhauls on a modern commercial turbofan engine is roughly the same as the total life of some piston engines
I meant repair as in "Taking a few 20mm HE rounds head on. Can a turbine withstand that kind of damage & ever run again? I’ve seen P-47 engines w/ half their cylinders shot away & the engine still worked. & some of those engines were made to run at 100% again. Some that weren’t were cannibalized. A turbine w/ that level of damage is finished, good only for scrap. But I’ve seen A-10s & Su-25s make it back w/ one whole engine shot away, so they beat any single engine jet. Plus my dad’s worked both on jet & piston engines, as well as helicopter turboshafts. He prefers the piston engine from the maintenance perspective. And he has 40 years of experience.
But what about Serbia, or Iraq in 1991. Both recent wars, and with very different air defenses to deal with.
Well COIN isn’t really intended for those kinds of enemy. Plus Predators & AC-130s have propellers but we used them against Iraq & Serbia just fine. But bunker busters on Aircraft Hangars & submunitions on runways (delivered by VERY BRAVE RAF Tornado pilots) Won Air Supremacy early on. The few MiGs who made it off the ground didn’t last long. Even an unarmed EF-111 brought one down! (God, those Iraqis were pathetic.) Then the B-52s carpet bombed all those divisions which were graciously retarded enough to make themselves stand out in the open desert rather than hide in towns & cities. The A-10s, Apaches & Cobras reduced their conspicuously parked T-72s like target practice while our Abrams wiped out what was left. Their SAMS were wiped out w/ decoy drones & HARMs in an event called “Poohbah’s Party” , mentioned here:
Serbia was different due to politics & the fact that the Serbs actually concealed their armor in towns, used decoys AND used human shields. But their air defenses were even less of a threat than Saddam’s, except for losing 2 F-117As. How DO you shoot down a invisible jet w/out getting your own radar slagged by a HARM? We royally screwed up against Serbia. (Since we were trying to stop a GENOCIDE, we should’ve put more pressure on the Serbian people by carpet bombing Belgrade & the rest of Serbia. w/ our B-2s every night. Every bridge, train station, powerplant, regardless of civilian casualties. If their army was intent on murdering unarmed women &children, then their homes, wives & children shouldn’t be sacrosanct either. Eventually those killers would’ve gotten the point. Clinton let too much slide, especially after Srebinica. Serbia clearly didn’t fear us since we went out of our way to spare their civilian populace any suffering.:rolleyes: The ONE time a people DESERVED to be burned Dresden/ Hiroshima style. Their army had places called ‘RAPE camps’ for Christs sake! In comparison, the SS Totenkophverband were the Knights of the Round Table.:evil: (I grew up watching Serbia’s horrors every evening on the news & asking why America let it go on for so long. All those children in Sarejevo getting legs blown off by Serbian mortars, seeing the skeletal survivors of Serbian Extermination Camps. It was the Holocaust in miniature. But the monsters get only 10-20 year sentences, no Death penalty, no Life Sentences. And no rank & file soldiers charged. The whole Bosnian Serb ‘Army’ should be shot. They scarred me for life)
Ummm… No. There were targets over Serbia that had 30+ HARMs fired at them and still worked. An enormous amount depends on how good the radar crew are.
How good the radar crew are? How good do you have to be to evade 24/7 multi-spectral satellite recon, recon drones, Mach 5-6 missiles flying at you each time you turn on anything. Plus the HARM has an autopilot, even if the radar goes quiet, the missile will still fly toward the source. I’ve seen footage of a HARM HITTING the dish of a radar station on autopilot alone. And if the radar switches off and STILL by some miracle, avoids a direct hit, the SAMs won’t have any guidance. Unless they have an Active Radar &/or Infrared back up. I don’t recall Serbia having anything more modern than SA-3s
Schuultz I pmed you
I’m currently a member of the British Army (Royal Engineers TA). So yes, it’s very personal.
Thing is, they do the job that people keep suggesting for reconditioned old designs, have been doing it for some years now, and do it many times better than any reconditioned or new build old design could ever hope to.
Of Tom Clancy’s work, Red Storm Rising was pretty good, but the rest was fantasy (if a rather entertaining one). I’ve not read Larry Bond
The difference isn’t in the weapon itself, but in the way it is used. NATO doctrine and systems are extremely effective, while those of most users of exported Russian weapons (which are emphatically NOT the same as those the Russians used - in Soviet times the export versions were referred to as “monkey models”) are incompetent to put it charitably.
Incompetence on NATO’s part - the single F-117 shot down flew down the same route three nights in succession. The third time the Serbs (not being total fools) had parked a SAM battery right underneath it, which promptly shot it down.
As I understand it the “home in on last recorded position” function of the missile wasn’t working too well, so they were reduced to using lots of them in series to force the radar to stay off the air. IIRC it was eventually taken out with an ALARM.
Red Storm Rising is, as mentioned, pretty good. The Third World War by General Sir John Hackett is also pretty good, although the ending leaves a bit to be desired.
Probably true for those fired at the Israelis - as mentioned before, these are “export model” missiles which are radically less effective than the Soviet ones would be, and additionally all Arab armies have massive institutional, cultural flaws which make them ineffective. The biggest one is the mindset that “knowledge is power” - which means that anyone finding out something new will do everything in their power to make sure nobody else finds out, which sabotages training like you wouldn’t believe. Add in the fact that in most Arab countries a competent army would be a threat to whatever tinpot dictator is in charge this week and the complete non-existence of professional NCOs on the western model and you have a massively ineffective army. The Soviets had some of these problems (lack of long-service NCOs being partially made up for by giving the better conscripts the role after a tough course, and the KGB to keep an eye on the army), but nowhere near as severely. The quality of general education in the Red Army would also have been much higher, leading to better use of the weapons.
It came close on the Golan during the Yom Kippur war, but prior to that you’re back to either the Ottomans (if you count the Turks as Arabs - which I don’t) or the Crusades. In either case, Western armies were frankly slapped stupid by their opponents on multiple occasions.
You can. Unfortunately most of the improvement comes from reduced weight - the majority of drag comes from the cross-sectional shape of the wing rather than the surface properties.
Rifleman. He was serving with 7 RIFLES, on attachment to 3 RIFLES as an Assault Pioneer.
Pratt don’t in any way have the capability (wrong sort of tooling). If we were very lucky and found all the drawings (needle in a haystack job - I’d be stunned if you got more than 10% of them). While most things are possible with 5-Axis tooling, many of them are very difficult and slow, and programming the tooling takes an awfully long time. With complex machines like that, furthermore, you often find critical features (e.g. tempering of poppet valve seats) that aren’t fully contained on the drawings and take some experimentation to get right. You’re probably looking at over a year to get production quantities of engines available.
If you’re in range of 20mm, you’re flying way too low - because it puts you in range of a whole lot of more lethal systems, and a 20mm is a big beastie - far too big for insurgents to tote around.
You do realise that this would have caused at least a hundred times the number of civilian casualties we were trying to prevent, right? Furthermore, it would have been a war crime under the strict legal definition that the British Army works too (and I assume most other NATO forces too) and so would have destroyed any potential NATO coalition.
Ummm… few points here. All three sides did exactly the same sort of thing, and committed atrocities against each other - but the Serbs got the worst press. Furthermore, the link between the Bosnian Serbs and the Republic of Serbia was never very clear and provable - about as close as that between Sinn Fein and the IRA. On that basis the UK would have been justified in carpet bombing Boston, MA on a regular basis.
Additionally, NATO went to war with Serbia over the status of Kosovo. When the war started the evidence of war crimes was frankly pretty thin, amounting to perhaps 20 or so civilian deaths in murky circumstances caused by security forces trying to fight Muslim Insurgents. Sound familiar? Kosovo was fought largely because the west had got fed up with the Serbs over Bosnia, not because it was uniquely horrific.
It isn’t as hard as you might think, especially if you aren’t too particular about siting your radars away from civilian areas. A great deal depends on how well your systems are networked together.
That is a good question.I believe that Hitler made three very important mistakes.1,Switched bombing buring the Battle of Britain from RAF airfields to civilian targets and I know what people say that he was trying to force British public opinion into surrendering,but in fact by switching to bombing cities he done two things,A,allowed the RAF to repair their airfields and B, stiffened the resolve of British civilians. 2,Invaded Russia,we all know what a catastrophe that was, 3,Failing to instigate Operation Green,the invasion of Ireland.Ireland came close to being invaded.There are photos taken by the Luftwaffe of the major ports in Ireland such as Cobh with its hugh natural harbour,Cork and Kinsale.If Ireland had been invade instead of Russia a very different picture could have emerged.
Yes, it would have been a very good idea to invade Ireland so that Germany had to supply troops largely cut off by the RN on the other side of England, Scotland and Wales so that German troops occupying Ireland with no amphibious attack capacity could pretend to threaten England from the west.
Particularly as Op Green was at best subsidiary to Sealion, so it would have been suicide to pursue Green without Sealion.
But the ultimate insanity would have been to occupy Ireland, thus freeing the hugely grateful British from the need to protect themselves from the Irish and drawing in endless numbers of German troops trying to subdue the Irish, a task in which the British failed to succeed for several centuries.
This may have bogged down even more German troops than invading Russia managed, but with vastly fewer casualties on both sides and for a lot longer with no clear result on either side.
Not true that Sealion had to take place before Green.France had already fallen,french ports were in German hands,ideal for supplying forces in Ireland.You may also forget that in Ireland the IRA or Irish Republican Army was keen for German support in attacking Britain.Also in Ireland there were many fortifications left over from British colonial rule.Many of these fortifications were positioned at the entrances to harbours such as Cork;which was photographed by the Luftwaffe.
The Royal Navy at that stage in the war could easily have been overwhelmed.America was not in the war yet.The Nazis had sent a number of spies from both the SD and Abwher to Ireland,most notably Hermann Goertz.
Basically there was local help in the event of an invasion,e.g. IRA;there were many fortifiactions left in good condition,e.g.Fort Camden in Co.Cork which had capability of launching torpedos from land;a spy network made up of German and Irish personnel;a some what weakened RAF,if bombing of airfields had continued instead of switching to civilian targets;a U.K. cut off by share distance from U.S. help.Also from Irish ports access to an immence sea board,with many sheltered harbours.
How were the Germans going to get there, swim?
Things Hitler could have done to win WWII?
For me is simple: leave military choises to soldiers! Beside the fact that Hitler fought in WWI and he was decorated for bravery twice times at the time he became leader of German he was already crazy. He removes capable generals that doesn’t agree with him (see Heinz Guderian and Adolf Galland) and ignore common military sense, shot and retrat means that you can shot another day but Hitler doesn’t accept this tactic.
For me noticeable errors:
- believe that the Germany could win against all Allies at the same time, too much battles at the same time is not fattible;
- believe that the Germany could win against USA, an example, Germany produces about 1000 airplanes at month, USA produces about 6000 airplanes in the same month;
- insist on conquer Russia, thousands of squared kilometers of absolutly nothing of strategic significant, while North Africa can be very useful with his strategic reserve of higly useful materials;
- use a politics to keep high generals for their loyalty not for their capability ignoring the fact that they are the first reason for defeat, Goering for example;
- insist on divert important resources from so long needed frontline vehicles for project that a man with healty mind can understand are waste of resources (example Mauss or fighter-bomber version of Me 262);
- ignore the suggestions and the requests from commanders on field, like Rommel asking more supplies in North Africa or all high commander in Russia that suggest that Stalingrad can be conquered with simple siege instead a direct assault;
- divert resources from front-line to insane thing, like use train to move Jews instead to move food;
- press into service combat weapons not tested or not completely tested, in mechanized war reliability is a weapon like hitting power;
- ignore lessons from WWI, an example, the central Empires must surrender also because the naval block cuts off all supply lines, a defect never resolved, everyone knows that Uboat cannot win the maritime war alone;
I hope that i don’t write reason already discussed in this thread.
Do you actually know where Ireland is? I think there are other websites for silly remarks.I refer you back to my last posting.
I find most, if not all of your post pretty ludicrous.
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As asked already, how would the Germans get there?
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What would the Germans do when they got there? What, if anything was the strategic value of Ireland in 1940?
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How would they sustain themselves once there?
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Why would the IRA support the Nazis? Simply because they were fighting the British I suppose? The suppositions seems very strange and I imagine that very much like in places like Latvia the IRA would then form their own little Einzatsgruppen to hunt out loyalists and Brit supporters. Incedentally would this have include the Mass Extermination of the Protestant population of Northern Ireland, or would they have simply been used as slave labour.
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If the Royal Navy could have been ‘easily’ overwhelmed at this stage of the war, then why wasnt it?
I think you need to put quite a bit of thought into your answer before it becomes anywhere near lucid or believable. Right now it sounds like of of those Turtledove fantasies…
Cheers
And the IRA, assuming they were a factor at all, might have a hard time supporting another occupier. They weren’t at all ideologically in line with the Nazis. I believe another element of extreme rightist Irish fascists (Blue Shirts maybe?) fought in Spain and perhaps a few went along with the Nazis as well…
As for the plan to invade Ireland, it would have been a great way to strand the Wehrmacht like shipwrecked castaways…
Agreed.
But as Sealion was incapable of landing forces in England because, among other things, the river barges wouldn’t survive the weather on many days just crossing the Channel, how were they going to get to Ireland?
And what were they going to do there once landed and within range of aircraft from England?
Ditto.
Supplying Ireland how? Through a RN blockade after the Germans landed in Ireland?
You forget that the IRA was not in control of Ireland; could not control it; and that de Valera’s government was ruthless in suppressing the IRA.
How does that assist the Germans in threatening England once they’re ashore?
How does that weaken Britain’s position when Ireland is neutral and responsible for its own defence?
Really?
Then why didn’t it happen?
True, but Britain managed to fight on for the first couple of years of the war without America being involved, during which time it managed to extricate itself from Dunkirk and hold the Germans in North Africa on land; win the Battle of Britain in the air; and at sea defeat the Graf Spee and sink the Bismark.
So? Goertz and other German spies landed in Ireland didn’t achieve anything. Most were rounded up and imprisoned sooner or later, as was Goertz.
The same applied to England with Mosley’s blackshirts and some elements of the ruling classes. But do you think they really reflected the majority opinion?
The IRA was a tiny minority in Ireland and was being rooted out by de Valera’s government.
That would be very handy if the RN sailed in line of battle in front of the launching points.
I can’t see that invading Ireland was going to hand victory to Hitler. And, even allowing for his lousy strategic and tactical judgment at critical times, neither could he.