Comments by "Nicholas Conder" (@nicholasconder4703) on "Military History not Visualized" channel.

Their greatest success was probably the sinking of the Queen Elizabeth and Valiant at dock in Alexandria. This raid succeeded in temporarily reducing the Royal Navy's dominance in the Mediterranean for the first 6 months of 1942. Fortunately for the ROyal Navy both ships settled onto the harbor bottom upright and with their decks above water. Had the Italian Navy been aware how successful their special forces had been, they could have been more aggressive and potentially completely severed British supply routes through the Mediterranean by starving out Malta.
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Bob Crisp, a British tanker, said that the M3 Stuart was a great tank in battle. It was fast, light, and reliable.
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It's a strategy the surface units of the Kriegsmarine would have been well advised to follow after the Norway debacle.
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@partytor11 TIK is an anarcho-capitalist. I have tried pointing out the issues that his political and economic stances have, but like many people he doesn't seem to be able to ask his own question of himself, "But is that really the case?"
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@68Boca I would argue his politics do come into it, but only when TIK talks economics. It is when he starts talking economics that I find he goes off the deep end into a weird world that ignores base human nature. I have actually argued with him about this, but he is so caught up in the "Austrian School" (i.e. anarcho-capitalism) of economics that he cannot see how ignoring the effects of greed and the lust for power on the market place blow this entire economic theory out of the water. He also doesn't seem to grasp the fact that government predates economics and the market economy. Rather like how Marx and Engels ignored anthropology, history (the real stuff, not their imagined world) and the darker side of human nature when they created Communism.
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10:30 and 13:15. As a former artilleryman, I confirm that you are right. Those guns and mortars are way too close together. One enemy artillery round hitting the ready ammo would blow these guys to kingdom come. Even near misses would take out a substantial number of these men manning the guns and mortars. These officers obviously need remedial training.
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At Savo Island the Japanese training came to fruition, while conversely the Allied commanders were lax and were extremely poorly deployed. The same with the Japanese initial attacks. They were well planned and well executed against mostly garrison troops who were less well equipped and less well trained. Even then they suffered some really close calls up until Midway. The Americans had trained for a different type of battle (exchanges of gun fire, not torpedo attacks at night), and so were caught unprepared. It also helped the Japanese had the best torpedo of the war.
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I would add one caveat to these figures. These numbers represent only those tanks that have been photographed and geolocated, so it is very likely this understates Russian tank losses. Destroyed tanks that are in Russian territory, tanks that have been lost due to poor maintenance or an inability to repair them, or tanks that have not been photographed and geolocated won't be included in this list. However, that said, Oryx is a great database.
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@Mortablunt If you don't take crew survivability into account. Each of those tanks where the turret comes off means an entire crew killed. That is the major downside of the Russian tanks.
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@Infectious Legume Actually, the USN Atlanta Class was designed as an AA cruiser equipped with the American dual-purpose 5" guns, and was not really suited for fleet actions. The fact that Juneau and Alaska were present at the Battle of Guadalcanal either shows how desperate the Americans were for ships at the time of the battle, or the commander who assembled the fleet didn't think the vessel's specialization would affect its combat ability.
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@IrishCarney The problem for the Axis is that, unlike the Americans, they did not have a weapon that was the equivalent to the dual-purpose 5" gun. Their only option was a standard light cruiser with 6" primary armament and 3" AA guns (basically Konigsberg and Leipzig class cruisers). Lacking a dual purpose surface/AA gun hurt the Kriegsmarine (it is probably one reason the Bismark was sunk), and they were incapable of producing an AA cruiser like the Atlanta Class. And, it should be remembered that although Atlanta herself was "expended", she survived at least one Long Lance hit (800 lbs of TNT will ruin your day) and over a dozen shell hits (quite a few of these being American-made 8" rounds from the USS San Francisco). In spite of this, Atlanta was almost saved, but the damage control parties were unable to prevent the progressive flooding of the ship and she finally sank about 18 hours after the battle. USS Juneau survived one torpedo hit during the same battle, but was unfortunate enough to be hit by a torpedo fired by a Japanese sub the next day, which hit a magazine and destroyed the ship.
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@francescoboselli6033 I think that would only have ticked off the Americans even more. They are very sensitive about having an inviolate homeland (conveniently forgetting, of course, that British and Canadian troops entered Washington, DC, in 1814 and burned the White House).
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One thing that is telling against the Russian tanks is their improper usage by the Russian Army. Most videos we see indicate the Russians are not using combined arms warfare, and their infantry are poorly trained and do not support their tanks properly. I would add, however, that there are definite design flaws in the Russian tanks that lead to unnecessary deaths of the crews.
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However, if you had more tanks you would have instant replacements, rather than waiting for the damaged vehicles to be repaired.
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@0thPAg Well, if that's the case, then we will go with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense figures, which are even worse for Russia.
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@Panocek Flying turrets have been a feature of tanks since at least 1940. Look at some of the images from the Eastern Front of German and Russian tanks with displaced turrets, not to mention the photo of Wittmann's Tiger, to see this. Part of the reason for the "flying turret" syndrome is the increased loads of propellants required to hurl the shells downrange. The other is that Russian turrets are lighter than their western counterparts. However, I don't think most tanks store ALL their ammunition in the turret. Having the ready ammo in the turret will probably fry the crew if it ignites, but would lack the sheer mass of propellent required to fling the turret skyward. Having all the ammo in a relatively confined space is the problem. The other issue is that because it is the propellant that is igniting, all you need to do is raise the temperature in the turret or ammo storage area sufficiently to make a single bag ignite. Once that bag ignites, there is a very high likelihood it will make the others ignite as well, causing a chain reaction. Because of the speed at which propellant burns, the process appears to be instantaneous. Having worked in the artillery, I can tell you from first-hand experience how hot that stuff burns. I still remember standing 50m away from a burn pit on the other side of an 5m high earthen berm and feeling like I just opened an oven door.
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I have made this comment elsewhere, but people tend to forget that carriers really did not come into its own until around 1939-1940. The reason for this was the lack of aircraft capable of carrying ordinance that could actually cause major damage to battleships. You can see this from the initial deployment dates for these aircraft to their respective fleets" 1936: Fairey Swordfish (RN) 1937: Douglas Devastator (USN); Vought Vindicator (USN) 1938: Blackburn Skua (RN) 1939: Nakajima B5N "Kate" (IJN) 1940: Aichi D3A "Val" (IJN); Douglas Dauntless (USN) So, given this timeline, it is easy to see why even carrier-equipped navies didn't realize the full potential of the carrier. They just didn't have that much time to evaluate the effectiveness of their new weapons, and develop the doctrine and tactics to utilize them to their fullest potential.
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If you watch TIK's Battlestorm Stalingrad series, the Germans did more or less try to encircle/cut off Stalingrad from the rest of the USSR, but 6th Army was stalled at the Don for quite some time before they were able to cross that river and reach the Volga north of the city. 4th Panzer Army tried to cut off the city in the south, but were also stalled short of their objectives initially. So, it turns out that the Red Army managed to put up sufficient resistance to completely derail the initial plans that Paulus and Hoth had for isolating the city and eventually taking it. These battles caused so many casualties, and the two armies so starved of reinforcements that they didn't have enough troops to properly cut off the city and take it.
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There are several reasons for the early German and Japanese success. First, in Japan's case, they were fighting foes who were garrison troops, who were often not as well trained or prepared for war. Both nations were facing peacetime armies with various levels of training and morale. Second, both Japan and Germany had well trained troops and had developed efficient methods of fighting by integrating all arms (air power, tanks, artillery, etc.) into their offensive actions. Both forces initially had better fighting doctrines than their opponents. Third was leadership. Many officers and politicians that the Germans and Japanese were facing were not up to the task for a variety of reasons. In France in 1940, one major issue was the lack of reserves. Churchill was astonished when he found out the French had NO reserves to counter the German offensives.This ran counter to all military doctrine, and the Allies' experience from 1918. So, rather than luck, their initial successes were due to planning, combat doctrine, leadership and troop quality. Luck was part of it, but both Japan and Germany made their own "luck".
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@jeroylenkins1745 I wasn't arguing about the configuration of the firing line, but the distance between the guns in the firing line. I know the film makers are doing this for effect, by unless there was dire need, you wouldn't place the guns or mortars that close together. The only time we ever set our guns up that close together was during ceremonial salutes.
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@0thPAg I am well aware of that. Ukraine is basically using a formula based on crew in BTRs and BMPs, tanks and something else I cannot remember. However, if the documents that were supposedly obtained from the Russian Ministry of Defense are accurate, then Ukraine has done a reasonable job of documenting losses. I will reiterate the word "supposedly". However, the fact that newly mobilized Russian conscripts, T-62s and 1950's artillery pieces are showing up on the battlefield are strong indicators that Ukraine may not be far off in their calculations.
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@АлександрХрамов-д5е I'm always amazed that bots like you don't even insert references when they make outlandish statements like this.
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@Infectious Legume Yes, and I am probably going to keep getting flak over that typo. My excuse is that I wrote that late at night. Yeah, that's the ticket.
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From what I have read, in a lot of cases the British and colonial troops in Malaya were poorly lead, poorly trained and had poor morale. It also doesn't help when your opponent uses the jungle to outflank your positions, attack at night and charge your position en masse.
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One of Germany's problems with using aircraft carriers was their limited access to the ocean (causing resupply issues) and "cramped" fighting environment. The difference between the war in the Atlantic versus the Pacific was maneuvering room. One could easily move into range of your target, then leave after the strike in the Pacific. In the Atlantic, the distances were smaller, leaving little room for hit and run tactics. This is part of the reason why British carrier losses were fairly high in the first half of the war (the other being lack of sufficient escorts).
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One other reason for invading the Philippines is that the archipelago contained a friendly population, while the Formosan population would have been either neutral or hostile. This meant that the Americans would receive a lot of intelligence and support from the local population, versus none.
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I suspect one reason the German generals never talked about the battles around Rzhev is because they were rather like WWI battles fought with WWII weapons. It lacked the impressive flanking and encircling movements the Wehrmacht loved to trumpet at this time in the war. These battles were also defensive in nature, protecting an unglamorous transportation hub, rather than a famous city (Rome) or the Reich itself. It lacked a recognizable name or feature that could be used for propaganda purposes. In this it is rather like the nearly forgotten campaigns by the Americans in the Solomons (apart from Guadalcanal) and New Guinea, and even the Burma campaign.
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