LongLeftFlank

Yeah, it did seem like they didn't know how to end it. Allied airpower was definitely a big problem for the DKM, but most submariners were buried at sea in their iron coffins.

You missed it; someone, the same person I think came out of nowhere and gave my Makin thread 1 star (Terrible). Now they've done the same here. I'm just curious why I have been singled out for such hatred; it isn't keeping me awake at night though. I'm just wondering whether there's some Japanese (or Korean) wargamer lurking out there who has grog knowledge that might be useful in this project. Unfortunately, he may also be harbouring some kind of Steiner14 style revisionist agenda -- those people are always the first to scream racism -- and something I posted has rubbed him the wrong way. His first "drive by" seems to date from when I posted that picture captioned "We only see Japs when they're dead and we like it that way." Which is purely a historical reference, not a statement of belief on my part. I cry when I see the pictures of those young Japanese kids heaped up in the Tenauru muck after being slaughtered... such a waste. Becoming a dad has made me a real softie.

Wikipedia? Who's doing the writing, pray tell? Someone with an axe to grind, maybe? And who are they quoting here?

My understanding was that ACM Harris was instrumental in getting 617 Squadron up and running for the "Dam Busters" operation and subsequent "special operations". A lot of commanders (and CEOs) would -- and did/do -- bridle at having their best and brightest personnel pooled into unproven undertakings using highly experimental technologies. For a soulless butcher hell bent on incinerating German children, the man seemed to actually have a great deal of vision and a human, though gruff, touch. The Hamburg strike was aimed at Germany's largest port complex, a large part of which was in..... wait for it, the Old Town. The firestorm was an unexpected bonus. And by the way, the Germans tried the exact same tactic on Southwark in 1941 -- setting the London docks (a highly legitimate military target) alight using a lethal mix of HE and incendiaries. My dad (aged 11 and just returned from Cornwall) watched it from Harrow hill. But with Barbarossa looming, the Luftwaffe couldn't deliver the total payload needed to ignite a firestorm; the Hamburg old town was also a lot older (wooden) than Southwark (brick). So besides Dresden, which is a bit of an outlier event for numerous reasons, can you name other German cities targeted by the RAF for large scale non-precision bombing that contained few or no industrial targets? I doubt many such places existed; the Industrial Revolution in Europe was a highly urban phenomenon, and as of the 1940s industry was still labour-intensive. In other words, located by definition in the industrial districts of cities, and closely hemmed in by the homes of their workers. Commuting was highly unusual for the European proletariat. Look, I have no doubt the Brits took a grim satisfaction in bringing the war home to the German population who had now supported a maniacal leader in beginning a second apocalyptic war 25 years after the first. And the RAF leadership was taking its orders from a capital where you could already look across miles of bombed flat ruins. But there's no serious argument to be made that "terrorizing" the German population via mass bombing was anybody's primary aim. German civilian suffering was certainly a matter of profound indifference to the British at that point. But as I noted above, even after American entry into the war, neither the fact nor the ease of victory were a foregone conclusion; the British had vastly more existential concerns than ratcheting up the pain factor for German civilians. At significant cost; the losses in the Nuremberg raids of February 1944 almost broke Bomber Command. P.S. Reichman, I am already deeply suspicious of that paper based on a brief scan. What sources does the author cite that the 3 hour gap was deliberately engineered to kill firemen? None, I'll bet. The author is a mid level military officer checking a box to move up in his career, not a reputable historian. Unless he can cite primary sources, it's just some guy spouting off like the rest of us.

Wow, the Sniper strikes again. 1 star. I'm really curious: who the hell are you, dude, and why do you dislike this undertaking so much? Do you think the quality is bad? You can PM me if you like; I won't share publicly. Do you think we're all a bunch of racist rednecks who are getting our jollies killing Asiatics or something? Nothing could be further from the truth, for me anyway. Sure, I despise the Tojo regime almost as much as I do the (white) Nazis, but I am also really interested in accurately recreating how the Japanese army and SNLF prosecuted the war after 1943, even though their overall cause was hopeless owing to US industrial might and strategic warfare (e.g. subs).

So here's a question for whoever's listening. I am putting together a comprehensive "PTO mod pack" to release together with my Makin scenario, and I have two different choices as to how to represent the dense jungle (High Bocage, though crazy-quilt instead of "walls", with plentiful "gaps") that covers the interior of the island. It appears that some special rules apply to the bocage .bmp files, because all my attempts to "thin out" the vegetation on the lower storey (boccage.bmp) without removing it altogether have failed. I've tried both Photoshop and GIMP, but these particular models seem to ignore all my attempts at alpha channeling. Has anyone else had better luck? Choice 1 is to show it "as it is": I added some banana leaves to the lower storey and left the upper storey (boccage2.bmp, which is also Hedge) using the CMBN default. Advantage: WYSIWYG. Drawback: total pain in the ass to navigate, Target, etc. There's no toggle for Bocage the way there is for trees. Choice 2 is to make the lower storey invisible: i.e. only "sticks" appear except in odd cases, like on either side of "gaps". Sometimes you get "all sticks" like you see here in the foreground; sometimes you get a little shrub that actually looks quite tropical without any further modding (upper left of screenie). Advantage: a hell of a lot easier to see where your guys are. Drawback: visually appears that they have a LOT better LOS than they actually do; for example, that mortar team in the background actually can't see through the second hedgerow. Oh yeah, my question is: I can release both these mods with my PTO pack, but which one should be the default? My inclination right now is option 2: Makin is a battalion scale attack and is going to be chaotic enough to manage as it is. On the other hand, having that extra "Fog of War" is extra authentic given the theatre. My ideal solution would be for those "sticks" to have a little bit of foliage on them, but to be generally see-through. I have a nice bamboo leaf mod all done, but alas, as I said before it's all or nothing, it seems, and my alpha channeling attempts have been all for naught. BTW: this is a small quicker-loading PTO test map I use, not my Makin map; there are no hills that size on the latter.

As a foxhole-eye-view depiction of men in combat "Battleground" (1952?) has much to recommend it and is one of my favourite war films. Very similar pov to the excellent BoB Ardennes episodes. Also a vastly superior "Battle of the Bulge" film to the awful travesty of that name. SPR alas, has not stood the test of time with me. The comic-book hand of Spielberg is too evident after scene 1. It's as much (more) a tribute to WWII media than to WWII vets. Kudos to him and Hanks for gettjng it right with BoB.

Dude, this paper was written in 1998, and not very well it seems. The passages above do not speak directly to official policy or even private opinions at the time. Show me a contemporary quote or source that uses the terms "terror bombing" or anything like it to describe RAF strategy or aims. Yes, I get that "dehousing" German workers and undermining German support for their war were indeed part of the rationale at the time; but the primary aim was always to undemine German warmaking potential by strikes on infrastructure. The Nazi war machine was the existential threat; its strength had to be sapped by any means possible. And as Jon has suggested above and I noted in another thread, what seems obvious in hindsight with the benefit of on the ground surveys and other side interviews simply wasn't obvious at the time at all. The kamikaze -- the world's first truly effective "Smart bombs" were a terrible shock, as were V2 rockets and jet fighters. God alone knew at the time what the Nazis or the Japanese militarists were going to pull out of their arse to, if not turn the tide, make finishing the job all the more difficult and bloody. The RAF returned to costly daylight bombing and poured resources into special units (e.g. 617 squadron) to hit Peenemunde, U-boat pens, etc. Churchill knew what the Nazis were still capable of; he had far more important priorities than "terror" or revenge, although I'm sure incinerating Hamburg etc. helped get Stalin off his back re the "second front." No, the Allied leaders were in no position to pull punches with these particular enemies pretty until Dresden when it was clear that Germany was finished. But even then.... those Alpine redoubts!

OK Jon, seems like you've hammered this particular nail right through the board at this point. Peregrine doesn't seem like one of those apologists who believe that the strategic bombing was an act of pointless savagery or at best bloodthirsty revenge for the Blitz (i.e. a "war crime"), feeding postwar German neurotic revisionism that "we really didn't behave all that much worse than our enemies." A point of view all too readily abetted by self-hating leftists here in Canada.

Not quite following you. The Gamers?

I haven't heard from CoonDog in some time, so while uniforms modding is not at all my core competency, I took a swing at retailoring a couple of his IJA mods -- which were designed to fit the British infantry wireframe (short tunic) -- to fit the more Japanese looking cut of the German LW uniforms. I also added a rikusentai lapel badge. The results are far from perfect but are fit for use. If anyone else wants to give this a shot, let me know.

The going is painfully slow, even crossing this relatively flat, narrow island. Watch your step, brother: the enemy can be anywhere. Crouching with a grenade ready behind a dense bank of sand and matted tree roots. Lying in brackish muck at the bottom of a taro pit. And in the groves of swaying coconut palm, it's snipers. In the trees, or behind 'em. Those trunks'll deflect a bullet. But you won't, soldier. At this point, the US is facing Tactical Defeat, having exceeded 10% casualties. Eliminating all 4 remaining cement bunkers will eke out a Minor win. But they haven't been located yet. And to win bigger, the US needs to eliminate 80% of the defenders -- about 4 times the number killed up to now. Without losing more than about 50 more men.

(relocated this post from a different thread as seems more relevant here) The use of the atomic bomb was controversial within the upper stratum of US policymaking that knew of its existence -- and such objections as existed were moral ones; there was really no military argument to make. Sending a single A-bomber was infinitely more economical and safer (for US personnel) than sending a thousand with incendiaries. There was at least one guy (name escapes me) in the State Department who advocated for a "demonstration" strike in a visible location offshore before using the thing for real. But Truman decided to go live, on the advice of his commanders, who did not believe such a demo would make any impression on the fanatical Japanese leadership and would merely waste time. Various other motivations have been ascribed to the decisionmakers' haste, mainly in hindsight (e.g. they were afraid the Russians would occupy all of Korea and Northern China). But I never personally bought those arguments. On no particular documentary evidence, I suspect that in spite of quiet Japanese overtures offering to discuss a not-quite-unconditional-cessation-of-war, some US leaders thought that a people whose mothers threw their babies off cliffs rather than surrender (that got a LOT of press back home) were so far gone from "human" that they might not quit even if all their major cities were laid in ashes. So why not "get on with it" (and not "waste" the very limited stockpile of Bombs)? before they "dispersed" their remaining warmaking potential in some (undefined) manner or perhaps devised some kind of improved antibomber/antiship weapon (again undefined, but the Kamikaze had also come as a nasty shock in 1944, so nothing was put past them) that would further protract the war. Again, concerns only disprovable in hindsight but keeping people awake at night then.

Jon, I suspect he meant it wasn't observed much in practice by either side, which nobody would seriously argue. Moral misgivings about the bombing weren't entirely hindsight, although they came at a point where survival was no longer at stake for the Allies. The Dresden raids, whose devastation was eagerly publicized by Goebbels, did draw a certain amount of "is this really necessary at this point?" type criticism from neutral states and some of the American public. And did result, I believe, in the stand-down of further such raids..... on the Reich. Not on Japan of course.

Do you get headaches at all, SB? Any strange memories of sitting in rooms with old ladies discussing flower arranging?

The most powerful scene in "We Were Soldiers" was actually the homefront one, when the 101st garrison wives start getting KIA telegrams and nobody has a clue what to do. Very moving.

(Do not cry for us, insects of the grass).

My earlier prediction comes all too true! 4 GIs down to one well-thrown grenade. 2 squads -- the entire right wing of my envelopment -- are routed.

Burn in hell, Yankee swine! One thing the Fleet didn't leave us short of was explosives, and we Navy Pioneers don't depend on cowardly tanks to deliver them!

Just noticed somebody rated this thread "1 star" (Terrible). First sir, let me apologize for the valuable time you so clearly totally wasted reading my tripe. And second, what may I do to improve your customer service experience in the future? EDIT: If you are perchance offended by my occasional use of the derogatory term "Jap", I am sincerely trying to be sparing in its usage (when I use it, it's usually a quote reflecting the hatreds of that time, just as "Kraut" was an equally dehumanizing term aimed at a blond-haired enemy). And in my scenario design I am also striving to give the young Imperial Navyrikusentai, underequipped, underfed and sent to die, the respect of their historical capabilities, as opposed to cardboard enemies for the US to slaughter.

Jeez, I had no idea! What an asshat! Reading this stuff gives me -- again -- the broad sense that the "bulge bracket" of US generals -- the division and corps commanders who had spent their careers in the interwar Army -- were a bunch of posturing clowns. (Oh, and our own generals were much the same, by the way, although maybe a touch less press hungry). No wonder the fighting men liked their top generals -- the guys who made sure they went into combat with superior numbers and firepower and piles and piles of gear -- but largely despised their field commanders as vain, incompetent and out of touch. In contrast, it seems like the guys who started the war as majors, colonels and brigadiers and then moved up, were a better class of leader, especially men like Ridgeway, Gavin, MacAuliffe, Cota and Buckner, who actually spent time in the front lines and knew the strengths and weaknesses of their forces and their enemies. P.S. "Death Valley", Saipan. Yeah, what a bunch of slackers for not just waltzing through this paradise....

Terrific story! thanks for sharing. Sounds like Mr. Kerner senior was a classic BAR gunner -- the reliable "squared away" guy in the squad entrusted with the best weapon. At age 23, he would have been a "senior citizen" by infantry standards, I'd guess, so that extra maturity might have helped too (kids grew up quicker back then). Probably also why he was the one climbing on top of the pillbox handling the gas can. Per my last post, it's guys like him who seem to do the bulk of the "work" in this kind of slow, remorseless combat. No doubt the rest of the squad was watching from a safe distance. It's kind of a pity that "The Pacific" never really showed that stuff (maybe the Iwo episode did, which I haven't seen), even though I'm sure Sledge and the other advisers would have showed them if they'd asked; it was all just one giant Spielberg "mad minute" shoulder-to-shoulder epic shootout after another. Yes, that stuff happened too (and generally wasn't captured on camera since the cameramen were busy not being killed), but it was by far the exception. I have an old buddy, an American, who is a psychologist and does a lot of work doing PTSD interviews for the VA; basically, since veterans and their widows get extra money for it, a lot of WWII, Korea and Vietnam vets have come out of the woodwork to confess their nightmares, usually prefacing it with "I've never told a living soul, and always expected I would take this story to my grave." Doc-Patient confidentiality prevents him from sharing, but I've been able to fill him in on a little history here and there, for context -- the Ramadi campaign in Iraq created quite a few clients, for example. I still have my granddad's trench knife (unused AFAIK); he was an RFC aircraftsman in the Great War. He was lucky; most of his mates from London went to the trenches and many never returned. He said nothing about his war, just left a few fading photos my Mum now has.

As the action moves inland, I'm really getting a feel for that "union road crew" dynamic you see in most PTO combat footage. After the initial scramble ashore, the terrain breaks up the frontage into dozens of isolated firefights, often starting with a Yank taking a bullet. The GIs, many seeing their first combat, become edgy, paranoid and reluctant to move; the command structure is basically non-functional. infantry-armour cooperation is nil even in spots tanks can get to. Artillery is similarly useless and hindered by trees. So the assault is carried forward by noncoms, Wignam's "gutful men" who also do most of the actual killing: sergeants and leaders of weapons teams (including BAR gunners), with the mass of each squad following cautiously behind, at best providing covering fire, but really just spectators. I must say, the game represents these dynamics very nicely indeed. With each squad spread across multiple squares, it is seldom that more than a few men can bring their weapons to bear at once. And the Green troops need to be husbanded very carefully indeed, with an eye to both their Morale and Exhaustion levels, which erode rapidly. This scenario will eat impatient players alive, even though you outnumber the enemy over 3:1 and have 30 AFVs to his none.

Yo, JK's pimpin' me around.... But for the most part, Dad, the only time we see Japs is after they're dead. And we prefer it that way. I am playtesting in "Designer" mode, so FOW is off. I just watched a pair of Japanese snipers crawl 20 yards (no AI orders) along a thicket (hedgerow) and then open up on a US squad that was Hunting 30m away past their flank, pinning the squad and hitting one GI. There is no doubt these men will be killed in the next 2 minutes, but not before they render one or possibly 2 previously unblooded US squads Shaken or perhaps Rattled. And after enough of these bumps, the American commander runs out of fresh troops to press home his attack.

Thanks, Heinrich et al. Bunker complex hidden in taro pit (I thumbed the rez up all the way).