Comments by "" (@BobSmith-dk8nw) on "The Development of US Navy Tactics (1939-1945) - ...to Global Domination" video.

  1. There's a thing ... That Nations tend to have their smart people gravitate towards their most important service. Thus - with the British the smart people went in the Navy and the ... not as smart people went in the Army. With the Germans the smart people went in the Army and the ... not as smart people went into the Navy. With Israel - the whole country is in the military. As the British had the Channel - we in the US - had two Oceans ... so - you can guess where our smart people were. This isn't to say that there weren't any smart people in the "Junior" service so to speak it just seems that the dummies made more trouble. One thing, if you look at their attitude towards Aviation, the Navy was a lot more realistic in their appreciation of what aircraft could and could not do - where as the Army was all wrapped up in this Air Power Bull Shit. The thing with the Army Air Power Advocates - was that their ideas for what Air Power would become and the way it would be used - were wrong. Time and time again in looking at what the Air Power Advocates actually thought - it was over blown horse shit. Thus - you had Bomber Harris in the UK stating that they could win the war with Air Power alone. They'd just bomb the Germans until the people rose up and over threw Hitler - which never happened. In the US - you had the Bomber Mafia - who were so concerned with their Bomber Doctrine - that the bomber would always get through - that they worked to reduce the use of Fighters. The very idea that Bombers would require Fighter Escorts was Anathema to the Bomber Mafia and the only way things like Drop Tanks could be developed was by creating some fiction as to the reason for them - like extending range for Reconnaissance Aircraft. Of course here - the Air Power Advocates - couldn't say that they wanted to develop Bombers to go attack someone's industrial centers - they had to say that these aircraft were Anti-Maritime Aircraft - to defeat enemy Navies that would cross our oceans and attack us. The problem with this - was that Heavy Bombers - which could attack factories - were largely useless at attacking ships. They had to fly high to avoid the flak and the ship could see the bombs drop and just steer away from them. Air Power was very important in WW II but none of it's use turned out to be what the Air Power advocates of the '30's had anticipated. With at least the US Navy (which I know enough about to comment on) they would seem to have had their ideas about Aircraft in line with the actual capabilities of the aircraft they had to use. Thus - when aircraft were weak, short ranged and fragile - they saw them as such - but - as the aircraft got better - their attitudes towards them changed. Anyway - this is all a very simplistic POV on this but something I've noticed and thought was interesting. [shrug] .
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