Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "Three Stories of the Dreaded \"88\"" video.

  1.  @vinylsp  Monty largely ran on BRITISH supplies from British factories: food, small arms, etc. The only thing that both commanders really were fighting about was GASOLINE/PETROL. What had happened was that Adolf started hitting London with V-2s. Then Winnie demanded that Monty do something about same -- seeings how the launches were happening between Arnhem and Nijmegan in Holland -- on the island there -- in the massive river delta of the Rhine. Then Monty pitched Market-Garden to Eisenhower who said, "Yes." Ike did not staff out M-G for one-second. Tedder tried to stop the scheme, as he knew Monty all too well. As part of M-G, Monty requested 2,000 GMC 2.5 ton trucks. Ike said, "Yes." Thus my own father lost his steed to Monty. He got a prompt vacation from the Red Ball Express. With the loss of these 2,000 machines, Patton and Hodges lost their gasoline supply -- for it was being trucked up to them. Now you have the full picture -- that was kept Top Secret for Y E A R S after the war. Even C. Ryan did not know that M-G centered on stopping the V-2 bombardment of London... did not know that the island between the two cities was where the SS was firing said V-2s every night. We ALL know that Monty had his entire army group sitting on its ass for a FULL week before M-G. If the normal ground campaign had simply continued, 21st AG would've certainly over-run the island LONG before M-G even started ! Winnie, Monty, and Ike stopped the war for a full-week. The Nazis considered this event to be a bloody miracle. That's why German morale came up out of the grave during this hiatus. This flip in the flow is not something that historians want to dwell on. Yes, the German armies in the West really DID collapse during August. This one-week delay extended the war into 1945. Prior to the halt, the Krauts were just throwing their rifles away. Aachen would've been surrendered as an open city. Yup.
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  2.  @brianpayne4549  Rommel famously was unable to stop British tanks UNTIL he used FLAK 88 guns -- in 1940. That stunt was what led Adolf to put him in command of the DAK. Rommel did so over robust protest. The FLAK crews had the shells, but had never trained to shoot enemy tanks with them. The PAK rounds were a last-minute engineering idea -- on the hair-brained notion that FLAK units might be set-upon by enemy tanks. Who could have knowed?
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  3. Your thumbnail shows a PAK 43 weapon. It's not capable of being used in a FLAK role. That ought to be made clear. It's also the last evolution of the design -- being brought out in 1943. The delay was due to the gun's carriage. In the PAK 43 design, the cost and height of the weapon was reduced quite a bit. Like all PAK, it suffered the fundamental weakness of not surviving artillery and mortar fire. Most American accounts of 88 fire were in error. They were actually receiving 105mm fires. Such howitzers were just everywhere and were the standard counter-infantry response from a German infantry division -- which would not have any FLAK 88 guns.
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  4.  @TheHistoryGuyChannel  This just shows that the Army and Internet don't know everything. The Krauts dropped the height, added a gun-shield and crafted the true PAK43 -- as described. Its artwork is available in countless S&T war games. And this is exactly what the technical manual is illustrating. The Krauts DID NOT re-mount existing FLAK 88s to achieve this. They never had enough AA as it was. The US Army plainly was not aware that Speer had re-engineered the 88 for PAK duties and had also re-engineered its mount -- all to speed up production. [ One-piece, two-piece, three piece barrels were proto-typed. Rifling the long barrel was the rate-limiting step. Hence the frantic re-designs. IIRC, Speer settled on a two-piece barrel for the PAK43.] What made it a PAK43 was the redesigned gun barrel, something that even Speer brought up in his war auto-bio. Adolf gave the PAK43 AAA priority as it was stopping all enemy tanks. (The earlier marks of FLAK 88s were still in full production for the home front.) They could not remotely crank out enough of the new cruciform platforms so they improvised by slapping the very same '43' gun on previously used// freshly made split-tailed chassis -- which was at the time termed a PAK43/41 in German usage... to distinguish that it's a re-mount. The troops usually called it 'the barn door' gun because of its awkward size. It's this PAK43/41 improv that the Internet has latched on to. BTW, the improv version was cheaper and more common, especially in the west, so it's no real surprise that the US Army boys screwed up. Neither the PAK43/41 nor the PAK43 could function as AA guns. They both had gun shields - which are quite missing from AA guns of large caliber. Later in the war, after the USAAF went gonzo strafing Luftwaffe assets, bullet shields were retro-fitted PDQ. Lastly, the PAK43 and the earlier FLAK marks could -- and famously did -- fire while limbered. (See Rommel, 1940) The PAK43/41 had split tails and was only viable in set defenses // 'PAK fronts.' This latter tactic was picked up from the Soviets. Ten and more PAKs would gang-rape enemy tanks when in column/ narrow advance.
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  5.  @joelellis7035  That wasn't it. Both the KM and especially the Luftwaffe were wholly Nazified. Yes, there was LOTS of full-on Nazi indoctrination in such units. And then, many officers would flunk on issues of color blindness and eyesight. You might not in period films that you don't see eyeglasses on USAAF or RAF personal, flying or ground based.
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  6.  @fredlougee2807  The island between Arnhem and Nijmegen in Holland IS in the Rhine delta. Yup.
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  7.  @ericdoberstein8872  You are describing the 94mm // 32 pounder AA gun. It was made famous during the V-1 blitz. Bing around for all the details. It was twice the weight of the Swedish-German FLAK 88 -- so it was totally unsuitable for forward deployment. (The German 88 was designed and proto-typed by the Swedes even before Adolf arose. Their original version was given the fake name FLAK18 (in the Nazi era) -- so as to lead observers to (incorrectly) assume that it was a very late-war German design. The 88 started out as the German 77mm FLAK which really WAS a WWI gun. This particular gun is actually mentioned in the script of Casablanca by 'Rick' as he sits in a Parisian café. His line passes with no notice today. It seems to be a script typo. But, it was not.)
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  8. I read that those guns had been retired in 1968. Well, you just can't trust the Internet anymore.
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