Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: JRodda


Ah yes, 'Adler Tag'.

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ORIGINAL: JRodda

Churchill was absolutely correct in his "never have so many owed so much to so few speech". Correct me if I'm wrong here, but is it true that the Luftwaffe was on the point of destroying the RAF, but when the RAF did the accidental night bombing of Berlin it threw Hitler into a rage and prompted him to order the Luftwaffe to switch from bombing the RAF airfields to the terror bombing of the British cities, which saved the RAF? Still in all, you have to admire the British people for standing virtually alone against the Fuhrer in those dark days of 1940-41.

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ORIGINAL: E

Pretty close... a stray* German bomb hit the palace first, to which the British responded with a raid on Berlin. Then Hitler threw his fit.

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Kursk (1943) - A battle that Hitler never should have launched, this huge and bloody battle was a dress rehearsal for Armageddon. It was the greatest battle the world had ever seen, and let us hope we never see anything like it again! The tank clash at Prokhorovka must have been quite a spectacle though.

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ORIGINAL: JRodda
democracies have to stand up to military juntas, as the only thing they seem to understand is superior force.

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ORIGINAL: bigbaba

the outcome of the battle of britain was clear from the beginning. why?

-the germans had not a heavily armed strategic bomber. their medium bombers were designed for tactical operations in combination with their "panzerdivisionen".
and what good is a Heavy Bomber ?, for this battle the Heavy was not needed, it wasn't a planned, take out all of the factories battle, it was a tactical battle, to take over control of the skies, and the sea lanes, (without control of the skies, you control the sea, at least during the day), so the Army could move over and win the war

-the germans (espacialy göring) expected too much from the BF-110 and the combat over britain showed that it was no match for agile hurrican and spitfires.
but the reason it wasn't was the way it was forced to fight, it shouldn't of been a close escourt, once it was tied to the bombers, it was usless, on it's own, it did well

-the BF-109, the german frontline fighter, had a too small range to be effective in fighter sweep&escort missions. thats something i never understand: why did the luftwaffe not developed external fuel tanks for the BF-109? this single technological development would change the outcome of the entire battle since many many german fighters and pilots were lost on their way back home AFTER their mission. a BF-109 with 1/3 extented range would realy make a difference.

the RAF fighters had almost the same range limits, it was the design of the times, plus you have to understand the thinking of the times, a escourt fighter, will never be able to win a fight with a normal fighter, Portal was a strong believer in this, and why the English never went after a long range escourt fighter, the P-51 proved everybody wrong, and changed there minds of what could be done, the LW knew about drop tanks, they had already done there home work before the war, but, it was more buggled plans, silly plans, and not using what they had, the way it could be used, that hurt them, just giving them more fuel, and still going with the same plans, would of worked out the same way, I forget which LW General/or Pilot who said it, but the statement was, once they seen the P-47 flying sweeps in front of the Bombers, he knew the air war was over, the Yanks had learned how to protect there bombers, as long as they tried to fly with the bombers, the LW would always be able to hit them, and hit them HARD, I don't think the LW lost that many planes because they ran out of fuel, they lost planes because they had to break off, or were timid, because they knew they were getting close to bingo

-hitlers influence on startegy and tactic of the luftwaffe coupled with görings incompetence. switching from the RAF ground organization to london wa sa big mistake and cost the germans the possible victory. since hitlers (actualy it was mannsteins) plan to defeat france was succesfull, he viewed himself as a military genius and begunn to interfere more and more in the military operations of the wehrmacht instead of letting the experts doing the job.
for BoB, I think the lack of Intell, that meant anything was more importent then the meddling of the high Commnad, remember that Stumpff disagreed with the order, while Kesselring thought it was a good idea and what they should do

the biggest military achievement was imho the israeli counter attack to the arab surprise attack in the yom kippur war 1973. totaly surprised, outnumberd and more or less alone (US help came after several days and europe was already totaly anti-israeli and pro-arab and did not help the jews in their fight for existence) they stopped nearly 5000 modern russian tanks and hunderts of russian mig and suchois. that was a outstanding preformance of a western army against eastern hordes. the suez kanal crossing of sharons division and the surrounding of a entire arab army at sinai was something like the german "kesselschlachten" in the east front.

the biggest and most impressive anti-terror operation was the israli raid in entebe to free the jew hostages.