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Author Topic: Armchair General General - /AGG  (Read 127075 times)

Guardian G.I.

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this means that a donation of 30 dollars to a developer that did not deliver would equal 4.769*10^-14 hitlers stolen from you
that's like half a femtohitler
and that is terrible
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mainiac

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Re: Armchair General General - /AGG
« Reply #316 on: September 23, 2014, 11:42:30 am »

Not really. The massive air campaign against the Iraqi Army in the Gulf War is both an outlier and commonly overstated. Air supremacy does not have the capability to destroy an Army, as shown very specifically by the attempts of the Luftwaffe in WWII and especially the Gulf War, where despite being harried to hell and back, it was utter superiority in the technology, training, and strategy of treads in sand that buried the Republican Guard.

Bad example, the Luftwaffe had much less bombing capacity during the early war when it had air supremacy.  Aircraft production ramped up from thousands to ten thousands as the war went on and the bombers got much bigger payloads.

Nobody is saying that airpower guarantees victory everytime.  Just that sometimes it can be enough to win a war singlehandedly.  WWII wasn't one of those examples because the Allies didn't develop a large enough strategic bombing force to smother Germany until 1944 and by 1945 when they exhausted German air defenses there were already allied forces invading Germany itself.  But if the ground war hadn't ended things too fast there would have been a collapse of German production due to bombing.
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Ancient Babylonian god of RAEG
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« Last Edit: February 10, 1988, 03:27:23 pm by UR MOM »
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smjjames

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Re: Armchair General General - /AGG
« Reply #317 on: September 23, 2014, 11:48:37 am »

Gotta love those improvised armored vehicles.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Armchair General General - /AGG
« Reply #318 on: September 23, 2014, 11:49:08 am »

Also if the Luftwaffe had kept their bombing campaign to strategic and not civilian targets they would've overrun Britain and bombed her into submission.

Sheb

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Re: Armchair General General - /AGG
« Reply #319 on: September 23, 2014, 12:04:54 pm »

Ahah, those are great Guardian, nice find. :)
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Sergarr

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Re: Armchair General General - /AGG
« Reply #320 on: September 23, 2014, 12:07:33 pm »

Also if the Luftwaffe had kept their bombing campaign to strategic and not civilian targets they would've overrun Britain and bombed her into submission.
"bombing into submission" thing literally never works. You cannot bomb people into obeying you without boots on the ground, and Germany would never had the capacity to invade the British Isles, not with the sheer amount of ships the UK had.
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smjjames

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Re: Armchair General General - /AGG
« Reply #321 on: September 23, 2014, 12:15:58 pm »

Also if the Luftwaffe had kept their bombing campaign to strategic and not civilian targets they would've overrun Britain and bombed her into submission.
"bombing into submission" thing literally never works. You cannot bomb people into obeying you without boots on the ground, and Germany would never had the capacity to invade the British Isles, not with the sheer amount of ships the UK had.

The same problem is at play even now with the fight against terror. Yes we can just bomb their stuff, but to actually clear them out, you need boots on the ground.

Only thing though, as we learned from Iraq and somewhat from Afghanistan, having US boots on the ground only causes more problems than it resolves.
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mainiac

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Re: Armchair General General - /AGG
« Reply #322 on: September 23, 2014, 12:17:33 pm »

Also if the Luftwaffe had kept their bombing campaign to strategic and not civilian targets they would've overrun Britain and bombed her into submission.

I think you fail to understand just how much smaller the airforces were at the time of the battle of Britain.
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Then you get cities like Paris where you should basically just kill yourself already.

You won’t have to think anymore: it’ll be just like having fun!

Loud Whispers

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Re: Armchair General General - /AGG
« Reply #324 on: September 23, 2014, 03:29:12 pm »

Also if the Luftwaffe had kept their bombing campaign to strategic and not civilian targets they would've overrun Britain and bombed her into submission.
I think you fail to understand just how much smaller the airforces were at the time of the battle of Britain.
You can't feed a war effort on carrots, less so an island of 50 million people. A Britain without coal, oil, food and munitions is not one that can fight.

Also if the Luftwaffe had kept their bombing campaign to strategic and not civilian targets they would've overrun Britain and bombed her into submission.
"bombing into submission" thing literally never works. You cannot bomb people into obeying you without boots on the ground, and Germany would never had the capacity to invade the British Isles, not with the sheer amount of ships the UK had.
Ok, people have misunderstood me. Bombing the British citizens merely made them support the war effort harder, I am referring to the attacks on convoys that would have taken place completely unmolested by the RAF.
[And ships do not win vs planes].
There are more things you can do with planes than Blitz everywhere.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2014, 03:32:39 pm by Loud Whispers »
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Sergarr

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Re: Armchair General General - /AGG
« Reply #325 on: September 23, 2014, 03:39:44 pm »

Dude, Britain had a lot of colonies at the time. They would have just moved the production facilities there. In fact, the backup plan for Hitler conquering the British Isles was to move the government to Canada and direct the war from there.

Also German aviation was pretty short-ranged (and in general was oriented onto supporting the land troops), and without carriers, it could never establish a total sea control anywhere more than 200-300 km away from the nearest airfield. You can't sinks ships if your planes cannot reach them.
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Sheb

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Re: Armchair General General - /AGG
« Reply #326 on: September 23, 2014, 03:53:53 pm »

Yeah, because if Germany establish a blockade, Britain will be able to move its industry oversea. Also, there is no way Britain could re-invade across the Atlantic.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Armchair General General - /AGG
« Reply #327 on: September 23, 2014, 04:09:02 pm »

Dude, Britain had a lot of colonies at the time. They would have just moved the production facilities there. In fact, the backup plan for Hitler conquering the British Isles was to move the government to Canada and direct the war from there.
Haha, there is no way you'd be able to move shipyards and factories from Britain to Canada, Africa, India or Australia. Besides, it's a given that the British Empire would carry on fighting, it was even in Churchill's war speech. What's important here is that Britain would either starve and wilt or surrender. No more Western front of any sizeable capability.

Also German aviation was pretty short-ranged (and in general was oriented onto supporting the land troops), and without carriers, it could never establish a total sea control anywhere more than 200-300 km away from the nearest airfield. You can't sinks ships if your planes cannot reach them.
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German mid range bombers could make 1500 km and half that comfortably, if they kept bombing RAF radar, air fields, RN ports, shipyards and factories of all sorts they wouldn't even have to bomb the merchant marine, which is something they would definitely take the liberty of doing if they had air superiority (especially since they continued to bomb the merchant marine even without it).

Culise

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Re: Armchair General General - /AGG
« Reply #328 on: September 23, 2014, 04:35:44 pm »

Sealion is kind of...oh, what's the term for it.  I can't recall...at any rate, it was never practical.  The practical impact of the attacks on British airfields and strategic targets is significant, but the effect of the change of policy to terror strikes is a bit overstated.  The RAF consistently had the benefits of both numbers and the home field (with attendant consequences on those pilots forced to bail out), as well as technological benefits.  Depending on your source (Overy, et. al.), pilot numbers were actually growing throughout this period, as were the number of airplanes actually in the air, in spite of strikes against factories and airfields, with the exception of the peak period in September.  Even during the worst of this period, when 13 airfields were struck, only two were put out of commission for any length of time (that is, more than a few hours), and precisely one Sector Station was shut down at all (two hours).  However, this period ended not just with the change in target priorities, but also by the shift to night raids due to the severe losses the Germans were also taking in their daylight attacks.  In other words, if Germany had maintained their existing target priorities and daylight raids for maximum efficiency, they would also have very efficiently depleted their own aerial forces. 

Also, it's been suggested that they could simply go after the convoys in greater strength.  In addition to the range issues brought up by Sergarr, this is actually exactly what was done - German airplanes were used in not only direct bombing, but were even more critical in scouting for targets that could be relayed to German submarines in the area of operations since they could do this without ever coming into range of the escorts themselves, such as the Flowers which were armed solely to face off against both aerial and submarine foes.  In fact, the aerial situation became bad enough that the Allies actually developed a handful of specialized Hurricane launch catapults for merchantmen (termed CAM, for Catapult Aircraft Merchantman) to combat this, even though each launch would essentially mean writing off the Hurricane due to a lack of places to land the thing.  It's also critical to remember that in many respects, the best naval bombers were also specialized roles for aircraft; you can't just slap a torpedo on the bottom of a Stuka and call it good (though they actually did build a thousand Ju 87R which more or less did precisely that by using drop tanks to boost their range, not to mention the Ju 88 and the He 111J which was aborted due to manpower requirements).  The critical issue blocking German naval bombing was their early disinterest in torpedoes (resolved only after 1942; literally, monthly German torpedo production at the start of World War 2 could be counted on one hand), not to mention the significant land-based pressures placed on the Luftwaffe caused by the launch of Operation Barbarossa in the East - Hitler could not allow the Red Army time to recover from the effective devastation of its officer and NCO corps, not if he wanted to fulfill what was the entire purpose of his ambitions in the first place, and detaching the entire Luftwaffe to go haring off after some ancillary foe trapped on their islands would have had significant strategic consequences. 

That said, if there was some ASB intervention that resulted in a German conquest of the British Isles, it would have significant practical consequences.  Moving the production facilities out of Britain would not have been as practical as the Soviet transfer of industry beyond the Urals due to the lack of railroads or land transportation connecting Canada to the UK, but would not have been completely dire so long as American industry remained beyond German reach.  Political continuity would have been maintained, certainly; while the Royal family spoke strongly about never evacuating Britain (most famously, the Queen-consort's statement that "her children would refuse to leave her, she would refuse to leave her husband, and her husband would never leave Britain", if I recall the paraphrased quote properly), I suspect that if the situation reached the point where both London and the Plan Yellow evacuation points fell to invading forces, they would have been put on the first boat to Canada even if Churchill literally had to personally frog-march each one of them on.  Moreover, they would very likely successfully evacuate the bulk of the British government proper, including Churchill himself (again, by force if necessary).  The major consequences of a fall of the Home Isles would have been the fact that it would have denied the Americans (once they entered the war; I do not believe this would have been altered by a Fall of Britain scenario) a ready staging base just off Festung Europa.  American staging would have relied far more heavily on Iceland (the Greenland-Iceland route that became so essential to naval planning during the Cold War, but in World War 2 could not be covered by land-based aircraft until 1943) and the Azores, with Operation Torch securing preponderance; either southern France (Dragoon) or Italy (Husky, etc.) would have become the primary axis for invasion due to their proximity to staging facilities in North Africa, in spite of the unfavourable terrain, or else the liberation of Britain would have become the first priority, with consequences for the advance further on into northern France. 
« Last Edit: September 23, 2014, 04:40:17 pm by Culise »
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smjjames

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Re: Armchair General General - /AGG
« Reply #329 on: September 23, 2014, 04:39:59 pm »

Sealion is kind of...oh, what's the term for it.  I can't recall..

Amphibious landing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion Pretty much Germany's version of the D-Day landings at Normandy and the operations from there.
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