Mike Scholl
Posts: 9349
Joined: 1/1/2003 From: Kansas City, MO Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: JWE Mr Sidney has made certain representations about the Japanese economic infrastructure and production capability that are, in my view, naive, indefensible and quaintly asiocentric. Sid's views are expressed in the "IJA 'Reinforced' Divisions" thread of the Scenario Design sub-forum. These conclusions are wrong. Sid has no understanding of how production systems work in practice. I am opening a thread here (there), but since it is not a scenario design issue, I am also opening this thread on the general open board. That would seem to be the best place to put this nonsense into its appropriate dustbin. John W. Eldredge jw.eldredge@cox.net aka JWE I was one of those having the discussion with "El Cid", and will admit that he's sometimes as hard to pin down as a greased eel. I will state categorically that I have never seen anything that would support the notion that the Japanese understood Assembly Line Mass Production as it was practiced in the United States until after the Second World War. Japan had been making preparations for war since the early '30's, and had been at war since 1937. Yet when the war ended, they still had not completed the change-over planned for their basic infantry weapons. They designed some solid weapons (ie. the 100mm DP gun) but rarely built them in enough numbers to be of significance. The Zero went into production in 1940, the Merlin-powered Mustang in mid-1943, yet the US produced 15,000 P-51B's and D's in just over 2 years compared to less than 10,500 Zeros in 5 years. The Japanese simply were not in the same league with the US in a war of attrition..., which meant they had to use their young men in place of material. Those young men fought with the courage of desperation; but the US met it with the certainty of overwhelming material superiority..., and the courage of it's own young men. The Japanese trusted in the willingness of their troops to die, and the US in producing more than enough ordnance to kill them all if necessary.
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