Jump to content
Battlefront is now Slitherine ×

gunnergoz

Members
  • Posts

    2,933
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by gunnergoz

  1. Regarding subject of thread, I think that, no matter what else we say, Japan would have done something to cause a war with the USA, given that they felt mortally threatened by the US oil and steel embargoes, by our diplomatic maneuvering to isolate them, and also given the xenophobic nature of their military-political leadership.

  2. I'd love to see (and would pay for) a bootstrap strategic campaign module for CM:N. Better yet, a strategic/operational/tactical 3-layer cake of CM deliciousness. Pick your Army (strategic), pick your Corps (operational) and pick your Division (tactical.) Want to play Patton's armor from the breakout into Germany? Fine. Want to play US airborne with drops through 1944-45? Great. Want to play British Guards from Normandy to Holland? Have at it.

    Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?

  3. Very impressive little production about the dogfighters but as with a lot of aerial CGI, I question the hairpin turns that the aircraft are depicted as making while at full speed. It's easy to do it in CGI but not so much in real life. Much such CGI just seems too immediate in both time and distance, at least as compared to aerial gun camera footage I've seen.

    As to the Soviet Storm series, I started watching and was somewhat impressed with that too. I generally don't care for re-enactment in such documentaries but this being Russian made, it had a bit more authenticity in my mind. Russians well remember that war and they are pretty convincing re-enactors of it, at least as compared to American ones I've seen. I think a modern Russian audience would actually be more discriminating about such a documentary series. After all, they revere the memories of the dead lost in that war and to this day, most modern Russian newly wed couples' first act after getting married is to go lay flowers on the local war memorial. 25 Million dead a couple of generations ago will do that to you.

  4. Hmmm, I'd always though the US were trying to adopt a flexible "modular" arrangement so that the basic building block was the battalion and then higher formations were clipped together in a mission oriented organisation. I believe that extended out of the whole "Pentatomic" disaster.

    Or it could be a highly developed mechanism to "stuff the lads around", which seems to be the end result, if not necessarily the original intent, of most Army policy.

    There is still an effort being made to assign battalions to divisions that have some historical lineage connection to the division. It is not being made easier by recent changes to organization and doctrine.

  5. The current US system of lineage, CARS (Combat Arms Regimental System) in theory serves to enhance unit morale and cohesion by celebrating unit history and continuity. in practice, however, the Army's penchant to rename and reflag entire units from battalion through division, tends to dilute the effect and frustrates soldiers no end. One day you might all be members of, say, x battalion, y regiment, z division and overnight the army decides to redesignate you as, say, a battalion, b regiment, c division. Usually such changes are due to army downsizing and concurrent efforts to keep older historical units on the active rolls, but it also can't help but aggravate soldiers who may have formed a sense of unit identity and attachment to the old designation.

  6. Funny, I just finished reading Hitler's wartime conferences and towards the end he discusses flying in 15cm infantry howitzers to beef up troops engaged in street fighting in the Balkans, specifically for the purpose of bringing down strong points in buildings.

    Spielberg or not, almost nothing surprises one when one reads enough history books. Darn near everything that can be envisioned, has been tried on the battlefield at least once.

  7. Inhumane as opposed to what? The Union soldiers at Fredericksburg? The Soviets at Stalingrad? The Volkssturm deserters swinging from lamp posts? At least the US had the capability and forebearing to remove psycholigical casualties from the frontlines when they possibly could, and there were lots of them. I'm not aware of any of the other major players who operated similarly

    Thanks for the hyperbolic and irrelevant comparisons. Inhumane compared as to what could and should have been done if the army was not enamored of the corporate production line model of management. Inhumane as in sticking unprepared green replacements in the front line with no attempt to integrate them and leaving the integration, if any, up to the squad and platoon leaders that were at that point likely just trying to survive themselves.

    Sure, the US psychological treatment of "shell shock" victims, then in its infancy, was better than in other countries, but that is not the same as the subject we are talking about - the replacement system.

  8. Is the supposedly faulty US repacement system just another myth? What kind of replacement system would work? Men are killed and there is no way around that. Either the core of old timers remain to build upon or a new unit is built. Which one is better? Do you pull the unit out of line or leave it in line in reserve to train new replacements or just feed in the replacements as needed and train as the battle goes on?What was wrong with the US replacement system?

    It did not in any way respect unit cohesion and treated individual GI's as numbers to be plugged in to any unit that needed bodies. So you might train in the US with one unit, gain combat experience overseas, bond with your unit buddies, be hit, recuperate and be sent to an entirely different unit, even though your original unit might need replacements too.

    Also, it threw replacements into combat with almost no training or preparation in the units that they joined. You might just be trucked up and thrown into the foxholes with complete strangers. In the stress of combat, the veterans tended to look after each other and let the new replacements either make it or not, on their own. A lot of replacements died without squad mates not even bothering to learn their names.

    The system basically neither respected unit cohesion nor individual experience (or inexperience) with the result that there was a lot of needless wastage (i.e. deaths) in new replacements.

    The only place it seemed to work somewhat was with US airborne units, which to some degree had time to withdraw and absorb new replacements before going into combat.

    After the war the US Army came up with other systems (e.g. Cohort) that trained units as units, and replaced casualties in a more methodical and rational manner, while the unit was not in the thick of fighting. No replacement system can be absolutely fool proof in wartime but the US WW2 system was positively inhumane and insensitive to the GI's subjected to it.

×
×
  • Create New...