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ORIGINAL: EUBanana

Check out the World War 1 versions, they managed about double!

http://www.uboat.net/wwi/boats/most_successful.html

226 ships for the most successful!

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ORIGINAL: Johan_Banér
Makes me wonder how many WitP players use a proper convoy system of 20+ merchants escorted by 5+ PC/PG/DE/DD/SC/PB/E. The thinking isn't that the escorts are there to protect the merchants, instead the merchants are bait for the vile subs [:D] to make it easier to find them buggers [;)]

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ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

My Dad was an MP in the ETO.  During the Battle of the Bulge, most combat support units had to give up ~10% of their strength to provide infantry replacements.  The CO "selected" the volunteers (the troublemakers) and my Dad said he never saw them again. [X(]

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ORIGINAL: EUBanana

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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

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ORIGINAL: latosusi

RN submarine captains were best in the world. (And still probably are)

[8|]

I wonder if 'American submarine captains were best in the world (And still probably are) would also earn a [8|]...

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ORIGINAL: wdolson

My father disliked the MPs. He was never in trouble, he's the sort who always flew way below the radar, but he said he ran into many who thought they were some kind of tin pot dictator. I've seen the same from civilian police too, so not much has changed.

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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
I doubt you could give me a reasoned argument how RN submarine captains were inherently superior to all Dutch, Japanese, American, German, Italian and other navies that used submarines in WWII. That is my point.

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Now, I'll hear your arguments about why their skills should be higher in game terms (e.g., skills of 75-80 or so versus below 60 for aggression, leadership, whatnot), but ex nae on the anfaeoybae, eh?

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ORIGINAL: EUBanana

I did read something the other day about how Churchill got flak from Roosevelt because there were 30 British divisions sitting in the UK for pretty much the whole war, FDR and the US commanders wanted to know why they weren't in Africa contributing, and thought Churchill was either holding out on them or overly paranoid about invasion threats.

The answer was they were ill trained and ill equipped, paper divisions, of almost no military value. And this persisted almost the entire war. The number of Brit divisions fit for purpose was a pretty small fraction of the total.

...So then imagine what the low priority Indian military was like... Churchill didn't care about Japan at all really, he was very Europe focused.

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ORIGINAL: cantona2
How mamy divisions did the British field in Europe and Africa? I didnt know there were so many!

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Having said all that the Indian Army had exhausted this manpower pool by mid 41 during the expansion

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The deal Gandhi struck with the British in 1942 is what turned the whole situation around. The atrocities in Burma also helped convince quite a few Indians that if they had to side with somebody, the British were better than the Japanese. Hence the Indian army starts out awful, but it gets better.

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Cripps spent much of his time in encouraging Congress leaders and Jinnah to come to a common, public arrangement in support of the war and government; however, the Congress leaders felt that whatever Cripps might say, his political masters were not interested in granting the complete Indianisation of the Viceroy's Executive Council, its conversion into a Cabinet with collective responsibility, or Indian control over Defence in wartime. They were also suspicious of an opt-out clause which Amery was rumoured to have offered the Muslim League in any putative Dominion arrangement. There was too little trust between the British and Congress by this stage, and both sides felt that the other was concealing its true plans.

The Congress stopped talks with Cripps and, guided by Mohandas Gandhi, the national leadership demanded immediate self-government in return for war support. When the British remained unresponsive, Gandhi and the Congress began planning a major public revolt, the Quit India movement, which demanded immediate British withdrawal from India. As the Imperial Japanese Army advanced closer to India with the conquest of Burma, Indians perceived an inability upon the part of the British to defend Indian soil. This period concurred with the rise of the Indian National Army, led by Subhas Chandra Bose. The British response to the Quit India movement was to throw most of the Congress leadership in jail.

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ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

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ORIGINAL: crsutton

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ORIGINAL: Offworlder

I would agree that some Indian units were quite green, since the best were fighting elswhere. But the few British forces available were decently trained as far as I know.

What really pisses me off is the state of the armoured forces in India. They are grossly understrength and amateurs at best. Was this real or just a game thingy?

Real.

For those interested in the subject, I highly recommend reading "Forgotten Armies, The Fall of British Asia 1941-45" by Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper. In truth, the state of the British and Indian army could not have been worse in 1942 for many reasons. The experienced British troops quickly shipped over from the Middle East performed poorly due to lack of any sort of jungle training, and as Alan Brooke commented, the British army had not recovered from the WWI gap. (The loss of a whole generation of young officers who would just now be reaching the rank of colonel and brigadier). There were experineced men, but most of the troops in Asia at the start were not the best.

The Indian army presented a facinating picture. The most amazing thing is that the Indian army fought at all. By 1941 Most Indians were thouroughly "sick" of the British. The most respected Indian leaders (Gandhi, Nehru) were in prison along with about 30,000 other members of the Indian Congress party. After the miserable show of the British in Malaya and Burma, thousands of Indians were flocking to the Indian National Army (to fight the British). In India proper in 1942 there was open rebellion, riots and numerous acts of sabatoge and mutiny. And, due to the bungling of the govenment, a famine was starting in Bengal that was to last well into 1943 and cause millions of Indians to starve to death. The Indian army was treated as inferior, short of decent officers and full of the racial and ethnic discontent.

When one looks at the state of things, it is amazing that the British maintained control and eventually built the Indian army up to the best army in Asia and was able to employ over 2 million Indian soldiers in the drive to reposses their colonial possessions.

There is also the small fact that the Indians fought with the British because they were promised their independence after the war was over.

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ORIGINAL: Dobey

Actually having a quick look through the OOB, the British units that come into theatre later don't look too bad to me. An example is the 2nd Tank Reg at 75Experience, 75 Morale.
I think you might have been looking at an Indian army unit.

Overall I think unit experiences are a lot better now. In original WITP I noticed that even most of the US National guard units started the war on Dec 7th with higher morale and experience than most Japanese forces or other allied troops (Something like 65\70 from memeory).

In relation to commanders I do agree that overall, non-US commanders (particularly naval) do tend to range from mediocre to down right awful. I doubt there is any national bias intended, most probably it was just assumed that because most ships bigger than a cruiser are US therefore most TF's will be lead by US ships so other commanders perhaps didn't get the same level of attention to detail.

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ORIGINAL: EUBanana

... I don't see much historical basis for a lot of that suck.

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ORIGINAL: EUBanana

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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
I doubt you could give me a reasoned argument how RN submarine captains were inherently superior to all Dutch, Japanese, American, German, Italian and other navies that used submarines in WWII. That is my point.

I never said they were.

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Now, I'll hear your arguments about why their skills should be higher in game terms (e.g., skills of 75-80 or so versus below 60 for aggression, leadership, whatnot), but ex nae on the anfaeoybae, eh?

It's not fanboyism to note that RN submarine commanders have a blanket stat of 60 and want something done about that. And that RN admirals in general suck, and that I don't see much historical basis for a lot of that suck.

I think it's kinda sad you think it is fanboyism.

And I think the subs aren't even the best example.

Victor Crutchley in game has leadership 31, inspiration 37, naval skill 52 and aggression 44 (!!!). I know why - because all people thought of when statting him up was Savo Island with the PacWar blinkers on. But this is a man who captained the most successful British battleship of all time, and drove that battleship up a fjord while under fire to tangle with some DDs. Lets just leave his contentious competence out of it for a second for fears of fanboy accusations - aggression 44? No. Simply - no. The logic behind those stats was clearly "He lost Savo Island, lets make him suck".

There is simply no justification for those dire stats, none at all. He did have a bad fight but that doesn't mean he sucked golf balls through a garden hose.

Admiral Kimmel had rather bad fight himself but his stats are in the sixties.

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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
You've got a point re: the low skills of a number of UK forces, be it naval or otherwise. But it's a far logical cry from saying that low in game skills should be adjusted upwards (reasonable, pending evidence) to stating that UK sub commanders are and have been the best in the world.

For USN submarines, I'd kill for blanket early war skills of 60 for my commanders. There are absolute dregs out there and, as PP have indicated, some halfway decent ones. I'd support a similar distribution of skills (or lack thereof) for RN submarine skippers, akin to what the USN is experiencing before the heavy weed out. Prove that of the hundreds of RN subs that there weren't a few dregs that bring down the average that need to be replaced with PPs.

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

2. inability for a Corps and Army commander to get along and act professionally - they were both in theatre for a reasonable amount of time and neither did what they should have.

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac
they were both quite contemptuos of the Japanese

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ORIGINAL: wdolson

The US had replacement training units and did what they could to keep divisions at full strength.  There were times when units got depleted though.  During the Ardennes, few units, if any were at full strength after the first few days of fighting.  During island campaigns in the Pacific units would usually get pretty depleted and would have to be withdrawn to rebuild after the island was taken.

The British had similar problems under the same circumstances.  By early 1945 they were dissolving units to feed into front line units as replacements.  By that point, they had exhausted almost the entire population pool of fit young men.

Bill