Comments by "mpetersen6" (@mpetersen6) on "Military History not Visualized" channel.

  1. Saddam and Gerald Bull tried. 100cm
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  2. Which as a historian is his job description. If an author discards facts to fit his opinion he is a historical novelist at best. At least that's honest. But with history the truth is often muddled. Details get lost. The people who might have known what happened in a certain instance quite simply aren't there minutes or seconds later. The same event seen from multiple viewpoints can have wildly different descriptions.
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  3. It wasn't useless to the Allies. Just that much less steel that could have gone into a sub, x number of armored vehicles, tank crews, infantry etc.
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  4.  @guidor.4161  Some of it was trying to be on the right side of history. Some of it trying to look good at home. The worst example imo was Argentina. For some nations who did join the Allies any material contribution they could have made was outweighed by basing agreements. A good example would be Brazil. While Brazil did have units in the Italian Theater (the most multi-national theater of the war) their biggest contribution was the use of airbases for anti-submarine patrols. Mexico largest contribution was the 300k people doing farm work in the US. Of the neutrals the two that have the least clean hands were probably Sweden and the Swiss. Both allowed manufactured products to be sold to the Axis. And allowed transit of their territory to a certain degree. To be fair both were stuck between a rock and a hard place to a degree. The Swedes did sell a limited amount of manufacturing turned goods to the allies but shipping in anything other than Swedish hulls would be a problem
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  5. As was the idea of fighter pilots. You are only as good as your last engagement. There are no prizes for second place. Except for a telegram and a gold star for mom and dad
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  6. Quite possibly they did not want to remember details. Or they did too vividly and kept it to themselves. Bill Mauldin came up with a fictitious society in Up Front. The Society of Them's That Been Shot At. It had members from every army. Plus, be it tanker, dogface or pilot. You are only as good as your last engagement.
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  7. Underestimating them if push comes to shove generally doesn't go well unless you have strategic depth
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  8.  @Ilia1138  The Poles has a number of choices. All of them bad. Ally with the USSR. Ally with Reich. Attempt to be neutral. It's never good to be the smaller guy in between two bullies. No matter which one starts the fight you're gonna get hit. The Poles had more industry than one might think. In fact both they and the Czecks developed some really good small arms. Plus they had an extremely good intelligence service. After all they were the ones who cracked the Enigma originally. It's just they really didn't have any really good defensible natural borders.
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  9.  @effexon  One adjustment was the substitution of steel for copper in coinage. Another was the use of silver for wiring in the Manhattan Project. Another case of material substitution is replacing the cast iron surface plates used in industry for inspection purposes with granite and in some cases glass. Not because of a materials shortage. But because the production of high quality cast iron surface plates simply could not be rushed and the skilled hand scrapers who produced them were needed for other work.
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  10. Add in the fact that the USSR operated their rail network on a different gauge
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  11. The US was the country least vulnerable to copper shortages. Even then they had to make adjustments. And this was with access to copper from mines in the western US, the Upper Great Lakes along with Chile. The much more critical shortages in metal were in the alloying elements such as molybdenum*, tungsten etc *aka Molly be damned
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  12.  @markharrison2827  My father* was also in an artillery unit but they didn't have the issue of empty cases after each fire mission. His unit was equipped with 155mm Long Toms. Using seperate powder bags. I can see where there would be some effort made into recycling spent shell casings for artillery rounds using them. Even if it means shipping them all the way back to the US, UK or somewhere in the USSR to be re-used or melted down. After all your logistical train runs both ways. Instead of just running the ships, trucks or rail cars empty they might as well carry something. But there are limits. If attempting to recover and reuse spent casings puts your trained personnel at risk beyond those normally involved in combat operations then in my opinion it's not worth it. Let's say an artillery unit has been shooting and they need to move fast due to enemy action. First priority is the people, second is the guns, third is any excess ammunition you cannot destroy in place. At the very bottom of the list are mess kits, spent shell casings etc. *even being around things that made loud booms for around 4 plus years plus working in a loud industrial environment his hearing was quite good.
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  13. I remember a line from a Polish official in the 1930s regarding their geopolitical position. Something to the effect that "on one hand we will loose our freedom, on the other we will loose our souls". Hell of a spot to be in.
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  14. As I replied to one of the above posts. Be it tanker, dogface, gunner or pilot. You are only as good as your last engagement. And your last engagement could very well be your last. And for how many they never saw it coming
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  15.  @Zakatak-mf4iq  Ivan Ivanovich
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  16. Plus Smiling Albert had the luxury of fighting a defensive campaign in a country practically made for it.
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  17. Why do the French line their roads with trees. So the Germans can march in the shade
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  18.  @MajinOthinus  Well it sure didn't help German logistics. They either had to regauge the track, transfer the cargo or switch out the trucks on the rail cars. Probably easier to re-gauge the track
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  19. Lesson No.2: See Lesson No. 1
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  20. Another thing that needs to be remembered here. Anti-friction or rolling element bearings, which includes Ball Bearings, Tapered Roller Bearings, Cylindrical Roller Bearings, Thrust Bearings, Angular Contact Bearing have standard sizes that can be broken down into various series, groups and classes. As an example. A common 6210 ball bearing. The 6 means it is a radial type design. It carries the load at right angles to the axis of rotation, the 2 means it is a 200 series bearing. This means the OD and width are drawn from a set of dimensional standards in relation to the ID. The 10 means it has a 50mm ID. It doesnt matter who made the bearing they are interchangeable. Another thing. While a ball bearing has balls in it. The balls themselves are not called ball bearings. The are simply steel balls manufactured to a certain tolerance. Once the balls, the cage that holds the balls and the inner and out races are combined into an assembly does it become a ball bearing.
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  21. The real question is "what did the Italians think of James Mason" 🙄
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  22. Plus the indecision on what to arm their aircraft with
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  23. Destroying a factory building is one thing. Destroying the heart of the factory, the Machine Tools, is an entirely different matter.
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  24. If there was a major element of luck involved it was in the Japanese indecision on arming the torpedo bombers
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  25.  @juanzulu2755  And here the Italians were sitting on Lybian oil and they didn't even know it
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  26. The difference between the Wermacht and the modern German army in terms of unit descriptions most likely has to do US influence in the 1950s
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  27. One thing it was probably very good at was causing the troops on the receiving end to soil their drawers
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