Comments by "Simon Nonymous" (@Simon_Nonymous) on "Imperial War Museums" channel.

  1. Soviet casualties at Kursk were higher than Axis losses, but we all know who won the battle.
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  2. Sorry to make you last in my list of replies Mick but yes. I read The Real Cruel Sea about 10 years back, and I was flabbergasted by how badly the MN suffered in the way you describe, and how the basics like pay stoppages when your boat was sunk were at first deemed normal. Rightly, a lot of this was amended during the course of the war, but I take my hat off to them; they bought the cost of our freedom with their lives.
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  3. No, it was Alan Clark who attributed it to Ludendorff I think, but when later pressed as to the origin of the phrase, it is claimed he said he made it up. Apologies if I've not remembered totally correctly, but it's in Corrigan's "Mud, blood and poppycock' book.
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  4.  @kemarisite  usually when there is a global war on and they would like protection from the enemy who keep wanting to sink them. We didn't seem to have an issue on our side of the pond.
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  5. Small fact correction if I may - radar cannot penetrate any solid body of water. The centimetric radar allows smaller objects such as conning towers, periscopes, and snorkels to be picked up. Basically radar cannot 'see' anything smaller than its own wavelength I think.
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  6. Brad, I thought the same when we visited last year.. so we are going again this year.
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  7.  @richardvernon317  interesting information - I wish YTubers would try to stop passing this off as a world beater when it wasn't and probably could never have been without a massive cash injection that the country couldn't afford.
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  8.  @kemarisite  that's a helpful explanation Frank - there may be someone out there who knows better than I - but the real lesson from 1917 was that convoys did work, and did work rewally well, hence they came in here pretty quickly in WWII, no ifs, no buts. King's refusal to accept that was the start of the problem; as I understand him, if he wanted black to be white, it would be so. A matter of authority in a nation at war seems unlikely. Thank you for your response - I am usually wrong, so appreciate hearing what you said.
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  9.  @trolleriffic  very well written; this was a very complex problem. Reducing the argument to typical British stupidity, or typical Labour government, or a US conspiracy really does miss a lot of the real issues with the aircraft. I'd go as far as saying the subtitle of this video and its general submission that this bomber was perfect is misleading - like many prototypes, there were gaps between what it should be able to do on paper, and what the engineers of the time could actually get it to do without an endless supply of money. It's also worth mentioning that Polaris was being developed at the same time.
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  10. 0:27 and that is not a .303 round. A shame this has to only be about Spitfires, when both the Gladiator and the Hurricane took the .303 Browning into the air first, and the Hurricane was right up there with initial experimental cannon fits; they had the same issues as the Spitfire fits, strangely enough. Otherwise - a great collaboration, and the later wing types on the Spitfire are a really good story of how to get the best balance. Controversial? Not really, just an arguing point for the armchair warriors out there!
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  11. You said 'we'.
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  12. Yes I just spotted that straight away; I think it's a 30-06 rather than a 7.92 x 57
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  13. Very good; the revisionist historians are well worth a read, and they do a lot to address perceptions that were shaped the post war writings of Churchill, Lloyd George, and Liddell Hart. You may not end up agreeing with them, but they go a long way to asking us if our commonly held beliefs are based on facts or not.
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  14. it was indeed; a single seater intended as a fighter rather than bomber, it was also unusual in that the port engine rotated in the opposite direction to the starboard engine in order to try and reduce torque effects.
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  15. Adding to the general consensus here, to win the battle Germany would have had to have damaged the British fleets to the point where the blockade of Germany could not be enforced. The German fleet ran for home, the RN remained in command of the battlefield. Your presenter could have explained how Germany's fleet had prepared to fight the RN in a close blockade, not a distant blockade, hence their attempts to coax the RN out to fight. Your presenter could also have considered that Germany chose to start this arms race.
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  16.  @mattbowden4996  me too - your last sentence there sums it all up nicely!
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  17. I'd suggest the people who wrote the script for the video read Clay Blair's two books on this subject. His detailed research makes interesting reading, and doesn't always support certain common assumptions.
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  18. It was also a weapon that was fully developed and tested, and used available ammunition. Indeed lightweight with a high rate of fire, they were the best available at the time - of course 20mm cannons and .5" BMG come along eventually, but this video makes quite clear the introduction of the 20mm was not a smooth process.
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  19. Me too!
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  20. And indeed, how many correct decisions did he make, which don't get recognised as quickly. The loss of tonnage and cargo was bad, but percentage wise, a fraction of what was delivered possibly. Every loss or injury is an individual tragedy of course, but the human losses in PQ17 would have been a quiet day in WWI, in 1944 Normandie, or especially on the Eastern Front where these supplies were heading.
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  21. @ that's fair enough, thank you for expanding.
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  22.  @Sugarmountaincondo  well said. Have you read 'the Real Cruel Sea' as it details what merchant mariners faced, and it's not a pretty story.
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  23.  @mattbowden4996  excellent summary of German intentions, even if I disagree they achieved what they set out to do.
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  24. Great video - and happy anniversary too!
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  25.  @gcox7013  well explained; if bart1842 was quoting from this video, then the video has made (another) error.
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  26. Perhaps research a bit more. Churchill did say that if Hitler invaded hell, he would at least make a decent refernce for the Devil. Ie - my enemy's enemy is my friend. I would not call that sympathy, I'd call it good realpolitik, and no one really seems to have any good alternatives apart from A Bomb the Commies. (Which in 1941 wasn't really an option was it?)
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  27. Greetings from the UK; I have to agree that it is a tricky exercise to say one engine alone was the most important, and the Double Wasp is a good contender.
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  28. We'll be down in Oct to visit. Interesting to see the TT. 35 Mosquito you have, that Airfix are trying to pass their new Mosquito kit off as a Mk. XVI bomber but it's a TT.35. (They used the one at Cosford as the template.)
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  29. And how is the weather in Beijing numbnuts? He'd more balls than you.
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  30.  @dovetonsturdee7033  a comprehensive and helpful reply - I am indebted to you. Thank you.
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  31.  @dovetonsturdee7033  yes, I think I read a lot of this in Clay Blair's books on the U Boat war. Thanks mate!!
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