a lightweight discussion of WW2 aerial ops and the like

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one of the things you learn in the university as a prospective English language teacher is that students can really clutter the test papers in case they don't know the answers to the questions with the hope that if they write long enough something can come up as acceptable , the answer too much method . Once ı had turned a royal failing of mine in the 7th Grade into a story as a term paper ; everybody else went to the library to find one or two books . Though my ultimate effort has to be the half to three quarters of a page ı devoted to Chincilla farming as an answer to - ı think- a grammer teaching method question . The teacher happened to be a girl that had started high school with me , though we were at different classes . She went to teaching and graduated , ı first went to engineering and failed . Would fail in the Education Faculty , too . Not just because of chincilla farming but a general lack of trying , as people will say .

another round of blah blah , instead of 3 or 4 sentences that would be of help .

much of this discussion -or rather monologue- so far has centered on the "widely divergent" views of people who made up the elites of Turkey at the time we joined NATO and beyond . The phrase is in quotation marks only to question its veracity , to be touched upon in the very last posts of this argument , which hopefully are much closer now .

the TV debate to discuss the August 30th , 1922 was finally on , before my hiatus . Not particularly important for any reason but it sure can provide a framework for today's posts . For today's political expediency requires the rifts of yesterday kept alive . For in practical terms the Kemalists , mainstream Left , a minority in the Right , anybody who wants to oppose require idealization of Mustafa Kemal and the rest of the political spectrum must fight this idolatry .

fighting idolatry is cheap , considering the Islamist Goverment . There is a different History show on a different channel , where the host regularly plays old Hymns , regularly mentions "hundreds" of e-mails he "receives" that complain about his "anti-secular stance" and he "bravely" goes on to declare that he will go on playing old Hymns . Everybody , ı repeat everybody , will dig Kemal's remains from the grave to kiss his skeleton feet , if the Goverment loses the next election .

since this is not going to happen -until the elections- it is situation normal , everything in present approved course . Hence the awkward silence in the first minutes of the TV debate that debates August 30th . Anything positive is being Kemalist and it is such a dirty word in 2012 ; one can hardly say much negative on the 1922 thing either ... The female Proffessor saved the day by taking the discussion to 1919 , to talk on stuff that made 1922 possible . The two guys are much better when they can play Kemal the usurper angle , they relish snickering . The 1421 guy reminded only 2000 Turkish troops were killed in this so called Grand Offensive , compared to 11 000 or so losses in the entire War of Liberation . The Journo added we didn't have a clue on how many of that 11 000 were fugitives , thiefs and stuff executed by the Military anyhow . Indeed , the miserable evil Turkish Armed Forces should immediately go on its knees and apologise to the newly elites , for they failed to lose at least 50 000 troops in the course of action . Not only that but also for claiming to have destroyed a 100 000 strong Greek force , the Greek casualties number only 100 and 90 of them were clerks lined up in front of a wall after they had surrendered . Now this is the truth the young ones in Turkey need to learn . For the Old lie , the Journo is adamant the proponents of the Old will write it all wrong even looking in your face . Must be easy to deduce , for the New always writes true ...

the Old has created false heroes , making the true sons of the Nation disappear and replacing them with usurpers . Kazım Karabekir in October 1918 was in Tebriz , Kemal was in Adana . Had the commands been reversed , "Kemal the Jew" would have been caught in the act , taking the best trained troops on a wild goose chase away from the Front that mattered . Though to be honest , ı have myself been on this angle and ı must be the first to admit that in realistic terms that we had two corps in the Caucaus meant they weren't destroyed in Syria .

this Karabekir stuff is nice , he saved the East from the Armenians twice , in 1918 after Brest-Litovsk and 1920 before the Soviet invasion that knocked out Erivan . Though for historical completeness , why no mention he had saved the East once more , before all that ? Last decade's Turkish smartiness on the events of 1915 was blaming Ittihad for being racists , the leaders of the Republic as racist Ittihadists with the local Kurds as murderous thiefs and plundering bandits . Islamists will fail in the glorious conquest of the Middle East on American planning and with American help , for the American planning plans for something else . Those of us who survive the Civil War and foreign intervention will pay , Armenians are into wee hours of the morning on how to spend the booty of 2015 . A lie , of course .

a gross disrespect to the cherished memory of a guy who founded the Turkish Republic and who was not Mustafa Kemal .. Since Kemal was first trying to become the Ottoman Sultan , stopped cold by Karabekir he tried his luck at the Caliphate . Once again defeated the usurper had no recourse left but declaring a republic , so that by becoming the head of state he could destroy the institutions he wasn't allowed to usurp . At times the newlies do not imply Kemal was a secret Jew , they go on with the "fact" that he was illegitimate anyhow .

this is something standart with all kinds of elites loading the dice , whether old or new , Turkish or foreign . Talking of fairness when the underdog , "öküzün trene baktığı gibi bakmak" when the top dog . About a trainspotting cow , the phrase roughly means lack of reaction due incomprehension and stuff . Being an elite means power and definite advantages , possension of which tend to shy away from adjectives like fair and concepts like truth . When the going is good , it is the elites winning on their own , they deserve it . When the going gets rough , it is the enemy backstabbing and likewise .
 
the rough are the times when complaining begins . The bannerman of the itsy bitsy journalism was on the news recently , talking about the lack of reaction on the 20 thousand dead civilians of Syria , something that had never happened "before" . Must be limited to 21st Century alone ... He will of course link it to politics , opponents of the goverment and his movement ; lack of support from Uncle Sam stinks , it looks as if America might turn to somebody else , he needs to paint peoples' hands with blood . To shame people into action before America finds somebody new , somebody who can . Some people out there with keen interest , have been watching the glorious change in Turkey and the belief that America will give the Middle East as fief to Ankara and the zealots' nicely subtle politeness in conversion of the heathen Turks to the realities of the 21st Century . Somebody must have been trainspotting , lack of reaction indeed . Should have sunk Charles de Gaulle and bombed Sicily in Libya .

the newly elites have trouble grasping such stuff , that they are but servants of the West to facilitate whatever currently cooking for Middle East . You should have seen them name calling Julius Ceasar on the grounds that the Syrian Christians had the temerity to suggest they were once Romans and owned the place ; despite the talking Ankara and Ankara's Sunnis were yet to topple Esad . All of these taking place before the springing up of the Arab Spring . At the time when Ankara's subversion against Syria was covert . The treatment of the Syrian Christians as future second class citizens though was not ...

they are just people who think they are meant to be masters of the region ; since their utility is necessary to pull wool over the eyes of the next target -a country whose name is synonimous with a stupid and easy bird-they are also encouraged . NATO and the US Embassy in Ankara refuted the US Chief of Staff , they claim they will protect us from Iranians and the Russians . If this is the case , then we must surely stop protecting NATO and the US from the Iranians and the Russians , on basis of obvious lack of necessity . US Senators McCain and Lieberman have been in Istanbul to reason , the only reasonable thing is we will scorn . Freedom for the Saudis remain , if Democracy is good for a Syrian , it should also be worth dying for oil magnates .

this is obviously the Turkish Foolishness , which the newly elites love to paint in the colours of the Kemalist past . Only because the current crop of the American Juniors have been jerks enough to confuse the 19th Century variant with the true 20th one and asking questions on the non-existant past , we were led to the spectacle of the Journo deriding the concept of the Inner Sea of Asia . Which dried up in some environmental catalysm to drive the Turkish ancestors living on the shores to the four corners of the world , to start the very notion of Civilization , you know the whole bunch of Sumerians and Etrusks , anybody who comes to mind . Calling it unscientific nonsense , seen nowhere else in the world .

the English Wikipedia Aryan article just gives me the urge to produce a day's worth on how the Irish , the "monkeys" of 1840s , to be watched to starve , the untermensch , needed yet another proof that they were subpar and the elites of the day duly provided . On the links between similar sounding Eire and Arya , the Kelts and the peoples of the Middle East , the troublesome Irish and their primitive Brown relatives in Iran . Accidentally gave a long history to the Irish , the whole concept of nobility worked on family trees and bloodlines being more ancient than the anybody else . The formation of a notion on shooting one's own foot and a century of fully scientific work was the result , paying more homage to the masters , providing more appropriate respect to the elites , the White Christians . Hence it was proven in the end : Norwegians founded India , the "oldest Civilization" of the time .

kemal's was veeery scientific at the time , anybody was measuring skulls to see who was superior . We should be at least proud that he declared us coming from Central Asia , instead of a bunch of monkeys on a tree . Going totally scientific , Turkey of 1930s might have been making people with inferior skulls disappear , on the grounds that they were spoiling the genes of whatever superior ape the Turk descended from . People in Europe were doing exactly so . Ours was limited to claiming we invented Civilization and stuff , gave the State propaganda apparatus a basis to claim we were better than our neighbours . And it evolved over time ; a tamer variant that was taught to the students in the 1980s has it that the climate change forced the Huns out to eventually topple the Rome by the waves of migrations . Oh yeah , just look what the "bog dwelling , potato munching , evil smelling" Irish have caused ...

one of these days , ı will also finish my thing on Robert E. Howard's History . It's the 20th Century that matters , that's the one real . Boys and girls , so please do not confuse the newly elites with weird approaches that one can take back to Hyboria and events there about . Even if ı had one post or two on British Intelligence marketing the lost continent of Mu ...

will it convince ? Am so sure it won't . So here's the reverse psychology : Indeed it is true , firehairs clad in golden , silken and steel [panels and plates] exist and them Hyrkanian babes we keep to ourselves . Vilayet seen only in Turkey ? Yeah , correct only in fantasy . Point to the Journo ...
 
the very latest of the show was a "well detailed" claim on similarities between the coup plotters of 1960 and the leader of the 1730 uprising , getting raised eyebrows from the female proffessor , who is trained as an historian . In basical terms as it was taught to me when ı was in high school , the Ottomans of 1730 were wasting state funds for fun and Patrona Halil was a bandit who took advantage of the uncomfortability of the population . ı think this line of teaching was about making the success or otherwise of the Ittihad attributable to the popular support they had for saving the country ; if they weren't supported they would have been toppled like the rebels of 1730 . The new line makes Patrona some sort of anti-hero who wants nothing for himself but brings order to country and some sense to the Ottomans . And naturally the Ottomans are not wasting state funds for fun , there have been far too wars and people need the diversion while all the entertainment is provided by "privatization of public lands" , the state allowing ownership of land to the highest bidder and lots of buildings being done with the money obtained and so on .

though the relevant thing would be the swift end of the anti-hero , who was immediately wasted by the new Sultan whom Patrona himself put to the throne . Then the drift is clearer , in the eyes of this lunatic . Even if any road accident happens the system is flexible enough to get rid of trouble , and any capable enough anti-hero should stop bothering , he will lose his head very literally . ı don't know how people get this "counter-coup" idea , the coup plotting journalist who came up with the notion that the young offficers "are restless" has been in jail for the last 5 years ... Even the Prime Minister has talked against criticism against the chief of goverment general in terms of barriers to the Nation's rise to glory . When in just two years ago , criticism against the then non- goverment but kinda pro coup plotter generals were helping the Democracy , it is indeed treason today ... Only for the very few that follow Turkish conspiracies and stuff , the revelation of the month is that the newly elites now claim the Deep State does not exist despite their strenous claims of victory against it to the extent of getting Barrack Hussein to White House , while the Opposition are happily shouting it does , is in cahoots with the American Deep State and blowing up ammunition depots ... People never learn that it is unfair to play with history and facts and whatever .

americans will be blamed , for they deserve it ... The newly elites think this is a battle for the mind of American Juniors and a swift re-arranging of the past will be enough to woo them Yanks away . Considering they are better read into the foibles of the Ottomans , Ike detailing the Paperclip mechanism on a very low priority to find the looted "sections" of French Archives on the account that Adolf had them looted in the first place and this 19th Century variant became "alive" again because of this ; ı fail to see how the Americans will be impressed with what happened 3 centuries ago to keep the newlies on top . No need for that in the first place . The destruction of this country calls for "balanced interaction" of the new and the old , there is no planning of Washington to reverse the last 10 years and remove the new from the palaces to the dungeons as they have done with the old ... The newly elites fear their methodology is now applied against them but the comeback of the old will be very hobbled . There is still too much bulk in Turkish State to be toppled by the miracle like application of the seperatist movement alone , there will be a three way Civil War in this country ; and American Juniors will see there is nothing to this rage people have been talking about .

if any road accident happenz and guys lose their heads and if ı still exist in CFC , ı promise ı will be around to say "Doh!"
 
have developed a writer's block while cross-referencing the fuller version of this at home . Maybe a loser , but ı would like to do one something in my life , even if it will never see the light or whatever . Since ı was trying not to be the full r16 in this particular thread and the "ongoing" discussion required me to be , ı have taken the liberty of reserving a few posts to babble in discussable stuff ...
 
reserved
 
obviously the argument that would arise here is one that this country would have been a battleground by discrete measures , a behind the scenes or rather perfectly visible tug of war between the Soviet Union and the West . And the NATO membership prevented this . By making the country an undisputable member / slave / 2nd rate partner / equal of the West ; just scratch the option / options you don't like ...

one could argue avoidance of such an eventuality in the 1950s and beyond is made irrelevant by the direction this country is headed .

Spoiler :


recently -though the process has been ongoing in fits and starts even before we got into NATO- Turkey has been transformed to become a , actually the only one example of Moderate Islamists ruling and succeding . (Please no mention of other countries , we in Turkey only hear how great we are )

this transformation was achieved by summary arrests -justified or by the orders of the kangaroo courts- of anybody who looked like an obstacle ; those who bother to read me need no reminders that ı have practically hundreds of posts ranting on the subject . It has been a spectacular ride at times ; one married dude who couldn't get it out of wedlock , called for the Police to examine the assembly of traitors , coup plotters and agents of Israel hiding in the advertisement sector , 'cause the model he wanted said "No." A channel showing children cartoons didn't like the success of a rival network and ı soon learned why ı was finding Gwen of Ben Ten / Ultimate Alien etc. so cool , turns out evil Americans are loading TV shows with subliminal images and when slowed down properly one can always see the word "Sex" around the image of Gwen ; as such Muslim Turkish kids shouldn't watch such cartoons and should prefer the proper channel .

if you are asking why the CEO and directors of the rival channel were not arrested it would have been too soon , too much 'cause the State Channel was not happy with its ratings and hit before the cartoon guys . The managers of the rating agency were arrested on charges of economic graft , nothing came out of it and no ratings are currently announced . No surprises , why should rich people - the ones advertisement sector is interested in- ever watch the State Channel ?

this naturally smacks of how Adolf Hitler rose to power by 1938-39 . An history teacher of the Air Force Academy showed a clip that compared Adolf and the PM to the cadets and got a year and half of jail time . At the same week , the PM had his customary scathing attack on people who opposed his political career , adding how democratic he was and how he build highways . Yes , he is asking for a National car brand , too .

not that he is planning political solutions based on gas chambers and crematoriums . The highways and the car brand id what is supposed to do , in addition to public transport and stuff ; it's just his desire to establish himself as unchallengeable , finger in the eye . He is not a fool , knows he was allowed by Uncle Sam to talk tough against anybody and nothing lasts forever and who giveth can also taketh . He and his party are trying to make their gains irreversible , by dint of symbolisms .

the official ceremonies that celebrated the Days of the Old Republic were so stale and boring , tending to be military parades and PT sessions of students in stadiums watched only by their families . Especially such stadium stuff was the hallmark of the Warsaw Pact in the past , smells North Koreanish in the 21st Century . Yeah , as soon as the laws passed the Party started having meetings in the stadiums -recently "liberated"- and they are bragging how they fill the venues to 100% capacity . And the military parade now has Municipality officials -those who ticket you for littering- on motorcycles marching before the tanks and APCs -luckily for them nobody has yet come up with sending them to Syria . In the democratization of celebrations visiting the statues of Kemal is banned for everybody except the highest official in the town and this year's October 29th saw widespread clashes in Ankara when Radical Left organized a march to Kemal's Mouseleum . It was banned by the Goverment , making it obligatory for the Main Opposition Party to join the demonstrations . People called for National Unity , the PM reminding that he would "perform his duty" at the official parade and everybody should follow suit . The beatings and pepper-gassing -on some of some 200 000 people who joined according to police count- made it to Western Media too and finally the Police gave way . The Goverment denies commanding the Police to do so . It is just like the Goverment calling the Israeli President a murderer and so getting Barack Hussein Obama elected as the President of the United States of America but it is the State and not the Goverment that promises Autonomy to the seperatists , eventually ...

this is not an anti-Goverment diatribe . They are the goverment since 2002 , right?

they are trying to control everything for ever and get a little surprised that they can't . They sure can plan for winning every election to 2023 , to 2071 , to 15985 if they want to , it's within their rights as a political constituency ; but those some 10 000 plus people who booed goverment ministers at the tennis match -where Williams beat Sharapova- are not terrorist hooligans .

such language erode the trust between people and the state -which still transcend all the stuff the newly elites are yapping about State for People , not People for State . Actually does a lot to confirm the opposition allegations that there is a secret agenda to destroy the Secular Republic and reverse Kemal's Revolutions .

makes it much easier for actual , real , clear and present ( as mentioned in a phrase with the word danger ) plans to weaken and utterly destroy this country as the final move . This new Turkey -and ı imply more than the Goverment- can not prevent , stop , contain , even win the Civil War to be ; with the present tendencies . With an unchecked belief that promise without delivery is the way to go and blaming others always solves the problem . It's not a decade yet when they decided trains should go faster and money be saved without upgrading the relevant infrastructure . Soon a train went off the rails and the culprit ? The drivers , emigrees from Bulgaria , hence Bulgarian spies who didn't like the new Administration who prayed to Allah 5 times a day so they just crashed -without killing themselves , proves they were trained saboteurs . The removed Railroad official actually shouted to this effect to a journalist at a football game ...



this year's October 29th had an extra : Explained by the President's health problems due to eardrums , the Aİrforce jets didn't thunder over the VIP chalet at the parade but flew in the distance . Following the June 22th attack on Russian shipping , nobody in Turkey actually thinks a parading Phantom could accidentally loose a drop tank , accidentally within range of the chalet , accidentally filled with jelly and accidentally fitted with a phosphorous igniter . As if goverment generals aren't goverment generals .

that's the fear of Russians for you . It becomes visible only when it appears Uncle Sam is not that keen to keep his "friends" one thousand percent safe .

( this post is also related to post#86 that follows on the next page )
 
also reserved
 
ı wanted to write something on the aerial fighting in Korea , went to this weird Turkish forum and asked for anything that might be useful , linking to my posts in this thread to give the context . Was told ı should have provided some historical background like the combat camera footage from a P-47 equipped American Fighter Group , maybe the 358th . If you are really interested in such stuff , you might have seen the reel where a plane strafes and gets the target , widely accepted to be a Tiger , destroyed with a huge explosion . Got to be a fluke ; 12.7mm API rounds deflected from the vertical turret side to weaker 25 mm thin top armour over the side . From a few scale models ı have seen in magazines , ı know the area held horizontally placed 88mm rounds . Though when an intel type sees it , he might well imagine it's a new capability , a breakthrough of ominious significance as Russian planes have to carry 37mm guns to get Tigers .

moving to aerial fighting in Korea itself , it is reported from the Russian sources that the Russian pilots in theater believed the F-86 had a tail warning radar , 'cause surprising one was tough . Nothing funny , history shows in the waning days of the WW2 thousands of radar sets -described to a be shoe box size device trailing some hundreds of meters behind- were distributed to American fighters , though by then anybody on the tail was likely to be a Friend . Finally a Sabre was forced to belly in on a beach , it was taken to the main MiG base and the Russian pilots got to sit in the cockpit . They figured it out immediately , the bubble canopy of the Sabre allowed a much better view out , Americans were simply looking back .

which should lead to a discussion of the general tendencies of the Russian combat aircraft . After the traumatic experience of the War , where their fast interceptors (MiG-3) failed to find anything to intercept , their dogfighters (I-16s and the biplane '15s) suffered at the hands of the Jagdflieger equipped with the much faster Me-109 , and the fine tuned improvements like the La-5/7s would try hard to down Fw-190Fs and run out of ammo quite a few times , Russians gave up specialization in air to air and built only interceptors . ı don't get any LOL , Whats these days , probably because ı immediately try to explain myself . In this case the altitude requirement to get to bombers meant a large wing area , decreasing thrust in Troposphere necessitated starting with lots of engine in the first place and the absolute need for rapid climbs to altitude required minimum weight . The result was an airframe that could dogfight like a dream , something the Russians then went onto hobble with cockpits buried into fuselage for just a little more speed , weapons unsuitable for dogfighting , avionics omitted for savings in weight and financial cost . With so little amount of fuel that the planes would be good only for defending their airfields ... Russian jet designers accepted it from the very beginning that they could not win an aerial clash with "sure to be superior" American designs .

in a brilliant example of sorts , Russians were to reverse engineer the F-86 and the Sukhoi OKB was chosen for the task and the result was the massive Su-7 Fitter , an attack aircraft . A Russian made Chinese copy of Sabre would have meant lots of dead Russian pilots ; they had studied any aspect of the Luftwaffe experience well enough - they had enough prisoners . Including the massive economic and industrial capability of America and how it translated into bone crushing numerical and techological superiority at the front . The Russian jet was meant to be available in high numbers- for the opposing sweeps would inevitably shoot down a lot- , capable of operation from grass and even mud with minimum support -for the opposition would quickly make any fixed airfield a most uncomfortable place and convert anything caught on the ground to scrap metal- , fast -to catch recon , attack and bomber planes and hopefully run from fighters / escorts- and finally cheap and easy to produce -because the Kamikaze like missions the Russians were expecting to fly in combat required the proverbial horde . Su-7 beginning life as a Frontal fighter got a nuke and a frivilous range for its designers and the Red Air commanders agreed it didn't stand a chance in the air , or attacking deep behind the Front . Air International , an aviation magazine of worlwide repute has it that an Indian pilot test-flew a Fitter and the only thing he could say was "Why?" ... A Russian '86 would meant fighting the way enemy was all about and the Indians put the tail of the Su-7 that ate a Sidewinder in 1971 and still came back in some museum .

one might say exactly the same process was taking place in the West , but then the nearest American equivalent , the F-105 was the way the Tactical Air Command of USAF survived and defeated SAC attempts to take over the entire bunch and the F-110 , the Air Force Phantom would have happened even without MacNamara .

a word on the rigid control the pilots of the Russian jets had to follow : Exactly the same rationale , Americans would be superior in tech , there was no point in trying to match them blackbox for blackbox , but a positive ground control would mean Russians could bring in more jamming power to disrupt enemy communications and search , more power to burn through enemy jamming and spoofing , and a ground based air defence . How coincidental it is that a primary MiG tactic from 1950 to 80's has been luring enemy fighters to guns or SAMs ? This for defence , in the attack Russians were bound to have numbers and the initiative and as we all know they weren't planning to go deep in the first place . The Russian strength laid in numbers of the Red Army , even their aerial offensives would be about faciliating the advance of the tanks and not something any proponent of the "Aerial Strategy" would have espoused .
 
so this is a pecularity of the Russian mind , steeped in the steppes to disregard the value of human life and see the troops as pawns to be gambited in sort of a chess game ? Well , it happens to be the way the US Army fought the Second World War , and won ... Which the Soviets were themselves forced to do after they wasted the KV in 1941-42 .

ı am one of those guys who read just one book and claim to get it , whatever the issue might be . As such ı have the Turkish translation of one book on the fall of France , written by Andre Maurois and published first in 1940 , trying to explain why they lost . A primary reason : super duper German tanks , the unpenetrable Skoda as ı call that myth . Americans took it to heart , they figured out they couldn't fight the Panzers on an equal footing and shaped their army accordingly . Since Germans had no armour to talk much about in the Great War , almost the entire experience of Allied tank crews had been against soft targets , infantry and artillery crews , rear area supply echelons and the like . It was valid for the theoricians to stress the need to get own tanks behind enemy lines , where they would be able to bring about the dislocation and eventual destruction .

the era was one of where Armour proponents were trying to steal the entire show by calling for all tank armies and other branches were resisting by all means possible . A net result worlwide was an upper limit for anti tank weapons ; reading from Osprey series it seems some 400-500 kilograms is the top limit where troops can move a wheeled object on the battlefield by muscles alone . In the context of late 1930s that meant 37 / 40 mm weapons were all that the Infantry could accept as an anti-tank defence and tanks could be designed accordingly , remember tanks did not fight tanks . Every army in the world had tons of light tanks , some designs even lacking cannons since machine guns were effective for the job . Sherman , the bane of Allied tankers , the underarmed-underarmoured deathtrap was a masterpiece in 1940 when it was first mooted . Mounting the '75 , the celebrated artillery piece , carrying tons of ammunition , it would wipe out soft targets at will . Resisting the return fire , 'cause it was properly armoured in the context of 1940 .

which left the occasional heavy tank that might have been encountered . Bristling with thick armour to survive in breakthrough battles where the threat would be field artillery firing almost pointblank and carrying big guns to deal with bunkers , the heavy tank was already accepted to be a threat for the normal types the Armour proponents espoused . Guderian mentioned the Char B1 and 2C in 1937 or so , in his Achtung Panzer , mentioning they might have to field some long 75s on a limited number of Panzers . Limited , because the heavies were also limited in numbers ; standardizing on long 75s and following Naval norms calling Battleships to be capable of resisting their own weapons would have driven the costs out of the ceiling and limited the numbers of vehicles that could be bought , Panzer commanders would lack clout , for they wouldn't have troops to command and Guderian might fail in his -justifiable- desire to become the overall commander of the German Army one day .

then France fell and the Allies justified it with the thousands of the tanks Germans had , some of them monstrous heavies . American response was swift , propaganda seeps even to analytical thinkers . They put their antitank weapons on vehicles . The explanation that America had to ship its forces across the oceans and transport requirements limited American vehicle size is certainly valid , though it could have been worked around . Americans chose to field lots of Battlecruisers , thin clad but strongly armed to engage German Superbattleships , using the Naval analogy once again . In case they had to fight the Germans immediately . The Tankdestroyer force was to be a swift unit to move fast to the point of contact with the enemy , avoid head on contact -for Americans were bound to lose that way- and engage in surprise attacks from the flanks where the thinner side armour of hostile armour would be within capabilities of the ordinary ammunition of the American guns .
 

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Why do you reserve posts as if there was someone replying to you in this thread?
 
not that anybody cares but this thread is supposed to be a reference of sorts that one can find easily and use in argument . Commentary on the current Turkish political scene - to justify whether a neutral Turkey could have happened during the Cold War- on the other hand requires a certainly biased and subjective r16 approach . Can't claim this or that is soo true -only because ı say it so will decrease the value of this thread , and ı get lots of opportunities to be me elsewhere in the forum .

nobody ever expects this thread to be valued either , apart from when it becomes clear some questions were already answered ; it is just that it is a question of time .
 
You are incorrect but maybe it is your english. Supply shaping demand: That is supply of news (from border) shaping demand (news about rebels) as none of the journalist dare to report about the insides of Syria for many reasons.

But overall I like your posts. Gj

Although the germans didn't really have super tanks neither.
 
got to have a break here :

the web suggestions that the Imperial Japanese tested or was just about to test a nuclear device in Korea , about the time of Nagazaki stem mostly from the frantic efforts of the Internet Nazis to laud the achievements of the Third Reich . One might have seen lots of "convincing" arguments on the practicability of the Virils and Hanebus of the Luftwaffe who took an august personality better known as Hitler to the South Pole to live inside the world , which by the way is kinda cheekily reported to be discovered in 1561 by some dude from Hamburg or else ... It becomes really uphill when one questions why the Nazis lost , if they were so good ; just as an example why didn't they have the bomb ?

the said internet Nazis explain this by they were so close , but Russian hordes physically occupied the country , meaning the work had to be taken somewhere else and the traitorous surrender of May 8th , meant cargo going to Far East was turned over to Americans , some primitives who lacked enough weapon grade material and Hiroshima and Nagazaki were possible only because of the capture of the U-234 . ı might be wrong about the pennant number but the essence is that , hence the glory of the Reich saved . Real easy for Americans to disprove though . So the story was slightly modified to give the Japanese the secret and the residue of production efforts .

getting to real life , without much of the trappings of being r16 - meaning this post intends to be a discussion of the Japanese efforts in a rather more honestly way . ı don't have any particular data to the state of their research , can not define a percentage with regards to how close they were to having a nuclear weapon , nor can't offer any proof to my claims whatsoever .

the Japanese were trying to end the war from June 1944 , the Battle of Marianas which explicitly put Japanese Mainland within range of B-29 . ı have a few posts in CFC on the notion that the limits of the Japanese expansion in WW2 were expressly decided to keep Homeland safe from that bomber and the loss of the islands like Tinian , Guam and Saipan made it imperative for Tokyo to give up . A counter-argument that should arise here is that the Japanese had already given up the Aleutians in 1943 , which were also in range of Japan proper . The thing is there was no way Japan could beat the USA within the context of the 1940s in a military sense , Japanese aimed for a "ceasefire" at least - to absorb their conquests in Indonesia and SouthEast Asia to further develop their industry and war capability and any deal would have seen the return of the Aleut Islands . By 1943 they were out on a limb , totally undefensible and a drain on Japanese logistics and there was a retreat , something that doesn't really square with the fanatical defence of everyplace else . What made peace inevitable after Marianas was the loss of the Japanese carrier potential ; now there was no way to bomb bomber fields in Central Pasific or around Alaska . B-29 was expected to be extremely tough in the air for any regular interception effort ; and everybody knows the defence against special capabilities require an almost 100% success rate ...
 
the Japanese efforts grew frantic as time went by . By January 1945 , they eschewed Neutrals like the Swiss and went directly to Stalin . Offering peace to him . The essential thing about the rise of Extremisms in the 20th Century is the notion that the Soviet Union was a cancer and the Capitalist Democracies of the West would look away while the treatment was being conducted -foolishly allowing the militant victors tearing Russia to bits and grow big enough to challenge the said effeminate Democracies later , on an equal footing . Indeed Tokyo would either like an Alliance against the Anglo-Saxons or Stalin passing their surrender note to Washington . He did neither ; he didn't have a B-29 or the unitary payload . Yet ...

though plundering Germany was sure to turn up something .

the primary Japanese failing in August 1945 was that they had misjudged the US Industry -as always . Hiroshima was a surprise only in the fact that Americans had produced enough weapons grade material . Nagazaki was a surprise only in the fact that Americans had produced enough weapons grade material -for a second bomb .

nagazaki was also a surprise for the Americans , too . The mission itself is widely reported to be fraught with difficulties , a General , Twining perhaps , throwing up as the nuke carrier was stuck with fuel problems and socked in weather . And the Japanese were still fighting . Once again , a glaring thing with the Civ game ( ı have I and III ) is the way that one builds the Manhattan Project Wonder and everybody gets nukes . The Japanese had it that the second bomb was a Plutonium device , proving the US couldn't have a third bomb . Americans finally re-started conventional raids on the 12th and that broke the straw . ı believe Wikipedia once had a line about Tokyo being the target for August 15th .

so why doesn't History tell it all ?

history is written by politics . The policy of the United States in the post war era was to be replacing the Colonial Empires by the dint of economic prowess and undisputed prestige , to be protected from misfortunes by nuclear blackmail . Which won over "sanity" in Washington by the risk of Germans fielding the Ta-183 Huckebein -with air-to-air and ground missiles from airfields protected by SAMs . The new approach manifested itself with the USAAF part of the bombing of Dresden ; the fall of Remagen Bridge on March 5th was unexpected . With the end of Germany in sight , now that troops were across the Rheine , Washington went the whole way with Tokyo Raids to show gloves were totally off ... Whatever they would do they would look kitten like innocents compared to Stalin's Red Hordes afterall .

the blackmail aspect required a monopoly of nuclear capacity . A declaration that the Japanese were not that delayed in the race for weaponasing could have been a justification for the twin bombings of the Japanese cities "after" the surrender , but we must remember in 1945 the USA had no intention of being ashamed for the missions of the 509th ... The Japanese were "Asiatics" , of a colour that wasn't white , pummeled heavily yet they were there , right ? Might have encouraged the European Colonialists to try their chances , never minding the Red Menace from Moscow . The whole argument for USAF was how they would destroy anything that stood in the way of US Foreign Policy , they wouldn't like a discussion of how the Japanese were ... Similarly the USN was all for Conventional warfare -now that the USAF had cornered the new toys-and the same thing could also work against the arguments of the Navy , since the-starving-due-to-Naval-Blockade Japanese were ... you know .
 
a couple of things on the non-existant German Heavies , though can not guarantee there will be anything fresh .

the concept of tank in 1915 was invented to cross the beaten zone between the trenches ; wire and fire were parts of a system where each increased the efficiency of the other part . Wire delayed attacking infantry , increasing their vulnerability to artillery and machine gun fire and wire was also protected by the said defensive engagements . The first British idea on a tank was a "ship that carried 50 marines" to the other shore , the enemy trench . French work was simultenous and it concentrated on a mechanized wire cutter . When the ship idea failed , due to impracticalities of the time , the British also studied wire cutting , soon arriving at the notion of using tracks to crush the wire belt , to clear a path for the following waves of infantry .

a lightweight joke takes you to the times when such stuff will be possible

at this point one must challenge the notion that the concept of a tank was truly revolutionary at the time . It was bodily taken from the naval practice ; ships had been carrying armour for half a century in 1915 . The RN was instrumental in drawing the specifications for the tracked combat vehicles for the British Army . The tanks were to be ships protected by plates from hostile fire , they would carry machine guns not only to engage enemy troops but to protect themselves from "close-in" enemy attention -with grenades , burning rags or pistol shots taking advantage of hatches and any openings on the hull for crew to see outside - just like ships would take measures against boarding parties . And foremost would avoid direct fire of enemy artillery , by the time the potential and vulnerabilities of armour against large caliber shells were well understood . The machines of the day would not survive fire from field guns firing on flat trajectories . Hence they -the British machines were given 6 pounder Navy guns , suitable for winning a duel with Artillery on the open . Due to possibly higher muzzle velocity and increased rate of fire .

modern naval practice called for turrets , though they were expensive to make and the hull of the British tank was optimised for trench crossing and you were kinda worthless in WW1 if you couldn't cross trenches . French heavies are regularly ignored in any discussion of tanks of the Great War as they couldn't cross trenches , disregarding whatever merit they might have had otherwise . Returning to the British Heavy , with tracks running across the hull and the impressive height meant a turret was impractical and the older version of gun mounting had to be emulated with the cannons placed in sponsons .

operational experience would soon make it clear that long barrels were vulnerable to getting mud or soil inside to get useless when crossing the trenches , which entailed extreme attitudes while moving forward . The same thing also bedeviled the front armed assault guns of WW2 , even tanks with long barrels like the Panthers . A solution was shortening the barrels . Tanks , even today , are poor in observation , there wasn't much chance for WW1 crews to spot enemy artillery first anyways ; plus the tanks were meant for massive assaults in any case , concentrated by the hundreds for large scale offensives . The Artillery had grown by leaps and bounds ; any operation would be supported by insane amounts of guns with their own spotters . Hence the tanks could rather concentrate on German machine guns . Which meant the requirement for a duel with the artillery , with the attendant need for flat trajectory quickly fell by the wayside .

combat experience soon developed into one where British tanks supported by artillery barrage and protected by infantry following closely behind would concentrate on what lay directly ahead in their front up to 100 meters or less , firing guns and cannons at an enemy that didn't have much chance of firing back . Machine guns while lethal to infantry , couldn't do much harm to tanks . It seems Germans were generally fixated with firing onto the tanks even when they saw their Maxims were having absolutely no effect . Crushing machine guns under tracks saved ammunition , broke hostile morale . It would form the basis of much in the future .

which in the end meant that any new tank project that required a cannon would be happy with a short barrelled weapon with little recoil - saving weight, complexity and cost , as there was no need for long distance firing because there wasn't the experience of long distance firing . The ammunition would be of HE , to engage positions the tank couldn't crush under the tracks , like machine guns in thick woods or houses , with a few poorly prepared strongpoints also included in the target list . Properly armed / prepared defensive sites that could bite back severely were to be avoided , just like ships avoided coastal fortresses if they could . Such tough targets were to be reduced by heavy artillery , gas , sappers or a combination of those named .
 
the British deserve a special "mention" here , though ı have been on this for quite a few times . For starters they seem to be really into this Social Classes thing ; a magazine ı had in 1990s talked about a then recent rememberence on how a Colonel had to curry favours of two of his Lieutenants as they were of this "higher caste" , as proven by their speech and demenour or whatever . Returning to the discussion of tank development proper , in practically every army of the world of the time the acolytes of armour saw an opening to steal the show , converting their service into a mechanized force and taking advantage of transformation to rise faster , to be commanders and even more . And they were expressly resisted for that , a general that has risen to command some 10 000 men or so can not be stupid enough to not to see the potential of tanks in combat . But protecting his chances to further promotion is obviously something else .

which finally resulted in compromises everywhere , tanks going to infantry in general and their numbers bound to increase in time . Britain , with its unique requirement to impress the Germans to redress their "griveances" in the East and not against France -where they were bound to be a negative influence against British standing in the world with any kind of success- had to field a Continental Army one day and their land power was much tied to Cavalry , commanded by aristocrats with influence all around . So they invented a new cool category of armour , the Cruisers . Light tanks were the same light tanks everywhere , to roam behind enemy lines as soon as the line was breached , to emulate Lt. Arnold's Music Box , a single tank that laid waste to lots of German units in 1918 . Infantry tanks were to help breaching the line with thick armour and the disputes with other branches meant they could not travel faster than a walking man , remember the Infantry part in the Infantry Tank . Cruisers were the fast and big light tanks that would look good in newspapers and newsreels .

and the Artillery Branch had to be stopped from making a mess as well . Meaning the British tanks were singularly ill-armed with regards to cannons . The 6-pounder was immedaitely dropped after the war , since it was of the Navy to begin with . To be replaced by a "three-pounder" that has been described as feeble . British tankers gave up the right to fire HE in practical terms . Infantry tanks didn't even need cannons in the first place , they were to machine gun and crush Germans ... Cruisers finally got the two-pounder , an excellent weapon for the time since there was nothing else . Infantry tanks too got the same weapon as their branch was already fielding it as the towed anti tank gun . Not that they were to use it to "effect" , the reason was in the attack , the infantry would have its anti tank guns in the back , after the location was captured there would be digging and the foot soldiers would be vulnerable to a hostile armoured counter-stroke . Infantry tanks were meant to cover this gap with their "anti-tank guns" until the Infantry had its guns emplaced , the notion that tanks could fight defensively was not to the liking of the theorists of the day . Even if some British authors make a claim for Matilda Mk. I as a mobile machine gun post . It's correct to assume the general stance : to save money to have tanks the British armour proponents used low powered commercial engines and they couldn't field an all-rounder . A tank that could fight other tanks , support Infantry and survive some of the return fire . The British could not carry armour plate and guns at the same time or go reasonably fast if they attempted to .

not that other powers were doing it right ...
 
Jesus. Did you really have to quadrupal post that?
 
Well it might be a great post or not I don't know because it is bit disturbing for me to read (.) (,) between the spaces, why you write that way? I sense you are from Turkey but also in Turkey peoples also don't put spaces before and after nokta, why is that?
 
I <3 this thread.
 
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