doing report on D-Day...EDIT!

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: Kanalua
in an age of precision laser guided missles, you'd think you'd be greatful that we never have to do any massive invasions like we HAD to do in Normandy. What would youm have the US do, launch an Atomic strike on France, Belgium, Poland, and Germany? I'm sure you'd like that. I bet you hate what we did in Japan with the A-bombs? War is war, it's ugly, people get shot in the throat. That whole platoon died so you can type your opinions on a stupid Internet forum. Be grateful.

um excuse me? did you not read my post with your brain? or did you just skim it unconciously? i said i dont like war but i know it is necessary. take your sh!t somewhere else. i hate people like you that come into threads and change the subject needlessly. go away and do us a favor, trip and fall down some stairs or something.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: IwentsouthTotally wrong about 4000 B-17's were shot down during bombing over Germany.

there goes my knowledge of the b-17s


4000? wow, that seems like a huge loss of aircraft

 

[Mookow]

Originally posted by: Zugzwang152

Originally posted by: dopcombo
Not counting the countless indian-beloved patriot wars. The vietnam, korean wars. The breakup of yugoslavia.
The gulf war. etc. Of course.

And that's just the really famous ones I can think of off hand.

i said GLOBAL conflict. Never again will we have groups of nations battling each other. Now we just have the US and UK beating down Iraq like a playground bully

I would say that it has much more to do with the thing that ended the war against Japan... nuclear weapons. The U.N. usually sits around for far too long to do anything effectively.

 

[Zugzwang152]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: Kanalua
in an age of precision laser guided missles, you'd think you'd be greatful that we never have to do any massive invasions like we HAD to do in Normandy. What would youm have the US do, launch an Atomic strike on France, Belgium, Poland, and Germany? I'm sure you'd like that. I bet you hate what we did in Japan with the A-bombs? War is war, it's ugly, people get shot in the throat. That whole platoon died so you can type your opinions on a stupid Internet forum. Be grateful.

um excuse me? did you not read my post with your brain? or did you just skim it unconciously? i said i dont like war but i know it is necessary. take your sh!t somewhere else. i hate people like you that come into threads and change the subject needlessly. go away and do us a favor, trip and fall down some stairs or something.

not only that, i heard an estimate on the news tonight that even now, with all the technology, military strategists are predicting up to 50% casualties if we have to go into urban warfare in Baghdad to get to Saddam. Ouch.

 

[KK]

I watched a two part story on the japanese part of WWII on discovery this morning. Actually missed the first half of the first part. Some of the things the japanese did was totally unacceptable. I know it's war and all but damn, going into hospitals killing patients with bayonets, shooting the surgeons and orderlies. On a death march as they called it, the japanese order people to dig a pit to bury live people, if the people refused they would get shot. Terrible, I'm glad we did get that war over by using our nuclear bombs. It saved alot of lives. You wonder if we had to fight another war like that, what the american public would say about it.

KK

 

[Atlantean]

I did a report on d-day once. I agree that it was stupid in some ways.

 

[flashbacck]

you gotta remember, these are the days before laser guided bombs and tomahawk cruise missles. The allies had been pushed out of europe and the only way back in was from the sea or the air.

 

[Zugzwang152]

Originally posted by: Mookow

Originally posted by: Zugzwang152

Originally posted by: dopcombo
Not counting the countless indian-beloved patriot wars. The vietnam, korean wars. The breakup of yugoslavia.
The gulf war. etc. Of course.

And that's just the really famous ones I can think of off hand.

i said GLOBAL conflict. Never again will we have groups of nations battling each other. Now we just have the US and UK beating down Iraq like a playground bully

I would say that it has much more to do with the thing that ended the war against Japan... nuclear weapons. The U.N. usually sits around for far too long to do anything effectively.

nuclear weapons are more for brandishing than anything. God knows if the US responds with a full nuclear strike, the world ends that day.

 

[MrDudeMan]

50%??? omg


why exactly are we going to get that many people killed again? why is it so hard to penetrate those cities with minimal casualties? i dont understand how trained soldiers can take such heavy loses against basically civilians and militias (or at least that is as much as i know)

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: KK
I watched a two part story on the japanese part of WWII on discovery this morning. Actually missed the first half of the first part. Some of the things the japanese did was totally unacceptable. I know it's war and all but damn, going into hospitals killing patients with bayonets, shooting the surgeons and orderlies. On a death march as they called it, the japanese order people to dig a pit to bury live people, if the people refused they would get shot. Terrible, I'm glad we did get that war over by using our nuclear bombs. It saved alot of lives. You wonder if we had to fight another war like that, what the american public would say about it.

KK

what they did is not supposed to be part of war... they're classified as "war crimes". it was really sick what they did... and yet most people don't even know about it :|

there's an upcoming documentary where some ex-soldiers that committed war crimes confess on screen.

 

[Zugzwang152]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan
50%??? omg


why exactly are we going to get that many people killed again? why is it so hard to penetrate those cities with minimal casualties? i dont understand how trained soldiers can take such heavy loses against basically civilians and militias (or at least that is as much as i know)

casualties include fatalaties + woundeds....and its because they will undoubtedly have to differentiate between civilians and combatants. and the civilians will be aiding the combatants...all a huge greay area, and when you have to stop and think before shooting, then you get hurt.

 

[Scouzer]

Originally posted by: Zugzwang152

what i dont understand is why this war even happened. i thought in world war 1 germany had to submit to the wishes of other countries and get rid of its military force...

at the end of WWI, the Allies signed a pact to create the League of Nations to enforce world peace. The US was the only Ally to not sign in. Needless to say, the League fell apart, allowing Hitler to rise and declare the Third Reich...the rest is history, and after WWII, The United Nations was formed. This time, America was definitely in, and we haven't suffered a major global conflict since.

The League of Nations was designed in such a way if talks failed there was NOTHING that could be done to FORCE people to do things. It was a step in the right direction, but a dysmal failure.

The League fell apart after Hitler rose.

The United Nations has a security council that does a much better job at...forcing people to do things. Not that they're ancy to do it, but they can.

Anyway, back to the thread.

The beaches were bombed to hell from bombers and the navy. Yes, it was bombed to hell, and no, AA did not stop that. The low and slow C47's managed to drop paratroops (albeit not easily)...the bombers could do it fine. But what you fail to understand is that the Germans had concrete bunkers and holes deep in the ground that wouldn't be destroyed by anything minus a direct hit. Direct hits are not common in World War 2 technology.

So the Germans just hid in their holes during the bombing. When you land your own troops, you can't keep bombing the same piece of ground, so the Germans came out of their holes, manned their positions, and nailed Allied troops.

Once again, the 'good' German troops were superior to the majority of 'good' Allied troops, so we can't get cocky like modern Americans can. When I say good, I mean German Regulars, as opposed to Polish people forced into the German military. This is somewhat invalid however as most 'good' German troops were not on the beaches.

Woah woah...I just saw your city post. Okay, picture this. Your Joe Grunt soldier. Take a look out your window. How many places can people shoot you from? How many hiding places are there? Look at all those windows, vehicles, houses... Cities are some of the most difficult fighting there is!

Where are all the other war buffs?

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: Zugzwang152

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan
50%??? omg


why exactly are we going to get that many people killed again? why is it so hard to penetrate those cities with minimal casualties? i dont understand how trained soldiers can take such heavy loses against basically civilians and militias (or at least that is as much as i know)

casualties include fatalaties + woundeds....and its because they will undoubtedly have to differentiate between civilians and combatants. and the civilians will be aiding the combatants...all a huge greay area, and when you have to stop and think before shooting, then you get hurt.

ah that makes a lot more sense now that you put it like that. i did see blackhawk down and now i do realize how it would be possible...

man i hate thinking about this but i have learned a lot already and i want to learn about it. i guess the more people that are educated, the less likely something like this

will happen again

 

[Zugzwang152]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: Zugzwang152

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan
50%??? omg


why exactly are we going to get that many people killed again? why is it so hard to penetrate those cities with minimal casualties? i dont understand how trained soldiers can take such heavy loses against basically civilians and militias (or at least that is as much as i know)

casualties include fatalaties + woundeds....and its because they will undoubtedly have to differentiate between civilians and combatants. and the civilians will be aiding the combatants...all a huge greay area, and when you have to stop and think before shooting, then you get hurt.

ah that makes a lot more sense now that you put it like that. i did see blackhawk down and now i do realize how it would be possible...

man i hate thinking about this but i have learned a lot already and i want to learn about it. i guess the more people that are educated, the less likely something like this

will happen again

yeah, sucks to be a soldier going in, knowing you or your buddy right next to you is going to come out on a stretcher.

 

[Kanalua]

Originally posted by: Zugzwang152

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: Kanalua
in an age of precision laser guided missles, you'd think you'd be greatful that we never have to do any massive invasions like we HAD to do in Normandy. What would youm have the US do, launch an Atomic strike on France, Belgium, Poland, and Germany? I'm sure you'd like that. I bet you hate what we did in Japan with the A-bombs? War is war, it's ugly, people get shot in the throat. That whole platoon died so you can type your opinions on a stupid Internet forum. Be grateful.

um excuse me? did you not read my post with your brain? or did you just skim it unconciously? i said i dont like war but i know it is necessary. take your sh!t somewhere else. i hate people like you that come into threads and change the subject needlessly. go away and do us a favor, trip and fall down some stairs or something.

not only that, i heard an estimate on the news tonight that even now, with all the technology, military strategists are predicting up to 50% casualties if we have to go into urban warfare in Baghdad to get to Saddam. Ouch.

You are both the idiots...

In the last Gulf "War" experts were predicting high percentage US military casualties...never happened...
In the war on terrorism in Afghanistan, the "experts" were predicting high American causualy percentages....never happened...
The news people estimate things all the time about war, they have their own agenda...

About my earlier post, MrDudeMan, you are not only an idiot, but you can't comprehend reading for sh|t. you asked: "WTF was the strategy here? throw as many guys at them as possible until we overcome them? well, that surely is not the best way to approach it. i know we "blanket" bombed the beaches before dropping troops..."

I answered..."in an age of precision laser guided missles, you'd think you'd be greatful that we never have to do any massive invasions like we HAD to do in Normandy."

You sit behind your computer questioning 1940s military strategy when the only war you've seen is on CNN.
You said: "but i dont understand why we had to throw tons of troops and drop them off in the sea especially knowing that most of them would be ripped apart by machine gun fire... realize i am no military general and i dont know crap, but this is just stupid and there had to have been a better, less costly way."
The only alternative we had didn;t exist yet, and that was nuclear weapons. So it was our only choice, you retard... America was a war machine that was low on options. Bomb the crap out of them? Bombs are a finite material, and the 1940s technology of bombing was not your high precision kill fest like it is today, it was slow, inefficient, inaccurate and expensive. Think planes, lives, materials, dumb@ss...
We could've waited for the A-Bomb, but think of all of France/Belgium/Germany as one radioactive wasteland. And it still would've taken years to produce enough A-bombs to do the job.
So go jack off in front of your new computer receipts...my answer was in response to your question....options?

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan
guys there is no need to have a tone in your voice toward me or play know-it-all


no, i didnt know that el-fenix, but that isnt the point. war is stupid, we all know that, but airplanes were invented back then, right? we should have just bombed the F*ck out of it.

we did. we had bombers over head and battleships and cruisers pounding the german fortified positions along the coast line... but you know what? bomb sights back then sucked. and the weather wasn't all that great that day either. and you pretty much had to be lucky to take out a concrete reinforced bunker that was designed to withstand they pounding that you gave it. we could have pounded the place for a week and sure, we would have caused a lot of damange but the nazis woulda known exactly where we were coming

i dont know much about the war, and if there were battles that were a lot worse, then im sorry i didnt realize it.

i guess you are right...there might not have been any other way. but, why was it crucial that we had that piece of ground in the first place? i cant find a clean definition pertaining to that.

well the part of it was that the obvious crossing was at calais. so we didn't want to actually go there. so we made the germans think we were going there. normandy was pretty much the second shortest crossing from the staging areas in southern england, but it was far enough that the germans would take a while to move forces from calais

what i dont understand is why this war even happened. i thought in world war 1 germany had to submit to the wishes of other countries and get rid of its military force...

yeah, and the other countries wussified out when they saw gemany becoming militant again and thought that maybe they could pacify germany.

as for war... don't be too quick to judge it... a lot of historians refuse to study anything beyond structural reasons why a war was won and tend to miss the picture. war is a primary driving motivator of society. it created the modern state. it helped fuel the industrial revolution. and technology developed for war purposes serves manys people in very positive ways.

 

[MrDudeMan]

man i sure am glad 99% of this forum is not like you kanalua

 

[Mookow]

Originally posted by: Zugzwang152

Originally posted by: Mookow

Originally posted by: Zugzwang152

Originally posted by: dopcombo
Not counting the countless indian-beloved patriot wars. The vietnam, korean wars. The breakup of yugoslavia.
The gulf war. etc. Of course.

And that's just the really famous ones I can think of off hand.

i said GLOBAL conflict. Never again will we have groups of nations battling each other. Now we just have the US and UK beating down Iraq like a playground bully

I would say that it has much more to do with the thing that ended the war against Japan... nuclear weapons. The U.N. usually sits around for far too long to do anything effectively.

nuclear weapons are more for brandishing than anything. God knows if the US responds with a full nuclear strike, the world ends that day.

Yeah, thats sort of my point. Nukes keep countries from going to all out war, b/c if they are about to conquer the other guy, he just might decide to launch. When was the last time that you saw anyone start a full scale invasion of a country with nuclear weapons?

 

[Zugzwang152]

kanalua tkae a fvcking seat. I specifically said that 50% figure was for urban warfare in baghdad. in 1991 the US did not invade the capital. we stopped short because of the high casualty figure and made saddam surrender. read carefully before posting your dictionary at us.

 

[Scouzer]

Damn...I like good World War 2 threads, but I see this one is going no where. Bummer.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan


i thought b-17's could fly high enough that they wouldnt be shot down...or is that totally wrong

Totally wrong.

Omaha Beach was the place in which there was mass casualties. There are MANY factors you are not considering in your late Monday morning quarterback of an opinion.

First off, there was no such thing as strategic bombing, and bombing sights were far from accurate. The technology just was not there yet. The same was true for fire control. The big guns on the ships all over shot the beach by a long shot due to shoddy fire control. There just was no computers to do the complex math needed, and the ships were warned not to hit the beach itself and leave huge, uncrossable craters for our troops and their vehicles.

You're looking at WWII with a push-button, Nintendo state of mind. You MUST consider the technology of the time. At the time, the only way to take an enemy was to throw overwhelming forces at him fast and hard. Today, we can strategically bomb the fortified position into smithereens. Then, we could not. The best we could hope for then was to "soften up" a position with our artillery and bombs.

Also, amphibious landing tactics and machines were in their infancy. We were trying something entirely new. Even Hitler and Germany in all it's might never had the ability to make large scale amphibious landings (that's why England survived so long).

You must also consider the urgency of the situation. Stalin had expected the allies to invade Europe a full year before the 1944 invasion. There was a lot of pressure on the allies to get it done.

If you think the loss of life at Normandy (Omaha beach in particular) was bad, read about the Civil War or WWI. During the trench warfare of WWI it was not uncommon to lose 10,000+ men in one attack. in comparison, Omaha beach had casualties of about 2400.

Give our guys a little more credit. Calling it "stupid" is rather short sighted.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: Scouzer
Damn...I like good World War 2 threads, but I see this one is going no where. Bummer.

yeah, ill bet you can guess who ruined it

 

[Zugzwang152]

well put amused.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan


i thought b-17's could fly high enough that they wouldnt be shot down...or is that totally wrong

Totally wrong.

Omaha Beach was the place in which there was mass casualties. There are MANY factors you are not considering in your late Monday morning quarterback of an opinion.

First off, there was no such thing as strategic bombing, and bombing sights were far from accurate. The technology just was not there yet. The same was true for fire control. The big guns on the ships all over shot the beach by a long shot due to shoddy fire control. There just was no computers to do the complex math needed, and the ships were warned not to hit the beach itself and leave huge, uncrossable craters for our troops and their vehicles.

You're looking at WWII with a push-button, Nintendo state of mind. You MUST consider the technology of the time. At the time, the only way to take an enemy was to throw overwhelming forces at him fast and hard. Today, we can strategically bomb the fortified position into smithereens. Then, we could not. The best we could hope for then was to "soften up" a position with our artillery and bombs.

Also, amphibious landing tactics and machines were in their infancy. We were trying something entirely new. Even Hitler and Germany in all it's might never had the ability to make large scale amphibious landings (that's why England survived so long).

You must also consider the urgency of the situation. Stalin had expected the allies to invade Europe a full year before the 1944 invasion. There was a lot of pressure on the allies to get it done.

If you think the loss of life at Normandy (Omaha beach in particular) was bad, read about the Civil War or WWI. During the trench warfare of WWI it was not uncommon to lose 10,000+ men in one attack. in comparison, Omaha beach had casualties of about 2400.

Give our guys a little more credit. Calling it "stupid" is rather short sighted.

dude you have a good post but you dont need to say i am short sighted...im 17 for crying out loud. i never claimed to be an expert. actually i claimed to be an idiot. i am not trying to quarterback the war, i am trying to understand it.

and to me, it was stupid.

i give them all the credit in the world. i am sitting here because of them. but it was stupid to lose so many lives. i hate that it had to happen but it did and i know that.

 

[Scouzer]

Boy oh boy...if you're this upset over senseless loss of life...do yourself a favor and don't look at the Russians in World War 2...


Which in my opinion won the ground war anyway. <Kindling to spark thread to jump to life...albeit off topic >