Comments by "Primmakin Sofis" (@primmakinsofis614) on "TIKhistory" channel.

They could out-turn Spitfires and Hurricanes, had a respectable climb rate and a decent service ceiling, and they had both powerful armament and fairly plentiful ammunition. The Zero was fantastically maneuverable -- at lower speeds. At higher speeds, its controls became stiff. It could also not dive very well. The key to fighting the Zero was keeping the speed up, and using boom and zoom tactics against it. As to the Zero's armament, its two 20mm cannons were fed by drums holding only 60 rounds (a belt-fed 20mm cannon wouldn't appear until the A6M5). Once those were expended, it was left with just its two 7.7mm machine guns.
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@kimobrien. Japan took what was French, Dutch and British. Japan turned south after the U.S. had imposed its oil embargo. Since Japan could no longer get that vital commodity from the U.S., it looked to the Dutch East Indies and its oil field to fill the void. Japan had no interest in tangling with the Soviet Union after being roundly defeated by the Soviets in 1939. So stinging was the defeat Japan signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviets. This also contributed to Japan turning its eyes south.
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Harris was an ideologue, and a throwback to previous eras. He basically viewed refusing to fight as cowardice.
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Contrary to what is sometimes stated, Dresden did have military production within the city.
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Then there was the VT proximity fuse, which help defeat the V1 and the Kamikaze. The VT fuse was also used to great effect in U.S. Army artillery during the war.
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"Dresden was a warcrime, not a genocide." Well spoken. Then the July 1943 attack on Hamburg was as well, right? You know about Hamburg, yes? People don't seem to get this, but the reason for the mass casualties at Dresden was because of the freak occurrence of a firestorm. Remove the firestorm, and Dresden would be a footnote in the bombing campaign. Does anyone remember the raid on Chemnitz which occurred the night after Dresden by close to the same number of bombers? No, they don't, because no firestorm resulted and thus casualties were limited. Contrary to what some think, firestorms could not be created on command. If they could, then the RAF would have burned up another half-dozen German cities shortly after Hamburg and quite possibly have won the war (based on the German initial reaction to Hamburg).
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@Baamthe25th The Soviet had tons of oil, at best, the problem would be in refining it and that's not unsolveable... World crude oil production in 1940 (average barrels per day): USA = 3,697,000 (62.9% of global total) USSR = 608,197 (10.4% of global total) World refining capacity in December 1940 (barrels per day): USA = 4,461,100 (58.1% of global total) USSR = 899,700 (11.7%) Most people probably don't realize that the United States was the world leader in crude oil production back then.
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Dresden did have industrial firms engaged in military production. It was also a transportation and communication hub.
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Here's the simplest version: Dresden was an area raid just like dozens of others Bomber Command had conducted previously. What separates Dresden from (most) of the others was that a firestorm resulted. Without that firestorm, there are no mass casualties. The night after Dresden, 718 RAF bombers hit Chemnitz. Why does no one talk about that? Because no firestorm resulted, and thus no mass casualties. The first major firestorm was at Hamburg in July 1943. No one who protests about Dresden seems to remember that one either.
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@SirBoggins China under Chiang Kai-Shek was able to hold off the Japanese invasion for 8 years, so it's obvious why Stalin only then invaded Manchuria in the summer of '45. There was also the matter of the non-aggression pact signed by the Soviets and Japan in the aftermath of the Battle of Khalkhin Gol (a battle in which the Japanese were roundly defeated). Maintaining this pact benefited both sides, as the Soviets didn't have to worry about their Pacific flank, and the Japanese didn't have to worry about the Soviets coming after them.
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@beefy1212 I have trepidation about watching the video, because I suspect it will repeat the myriad of questionable claims about Dresden that always seem to get mentioned. The shift from incendiary to explosive starts in the spring of 1944, as control of the strategic bombers was handed over to SHAEF in preparation for D-Day. 433 Squadron began operating at the start of 1944. The most commonly carried bomb load by its Halifax bombers from that start through to its last use of the Halifax in mid-January 1945 was 16 x 500-lb bombs. That load was carried by 35.3% of bombing sorties. The next most frequent load was 9 x 1,000-lb and 4 x 500-lb (11.7% of bombing sorties). All loads involving incendiaries accounted for only 8.6%, with the most frequent being 1 x 2,000-lb bomb and 1,080 x 4-lb incendiaries (4.4%). 433 Squadron started flying the Lancaster at the start of Feb. 1945. For the remainder of the war, loads which included incendiaries accounted for 41.0% of bombing sorties; the other 59% of sorties carried explosive bombs only. (Against Dresden itself, 433 Squadron dispatched 7 Lancasters, all of which carried 1 x 4,000-lb, 5 x 500-lb, and 4 x 250-lb bombs -- no incendiaries were brought by the squadron.) 106 Squadron dispatched 16 Lancasters which attacked Dresden. Five carried 1 x 4,000-lb and 8 x 500-lb, while two carried 1 x 4,000-lb and 11 x 500-lb. Seven carried 1 x 500-lb and 1,650 x 4-lb incendiaries, while two carried 2 x 500-lb and 1,950 x 4-lb incendiaries. Dresden became a catastrophe for one simple reason: a firestorm was created. Had that not happened, casualties would have been far lower, and the raid on that city would be no more noted than the raid on Chemnitz which occurred the very next night, attacked by nearly as many bombers. (The three biggest firestorms of the war in terms of casualties: Tokyo in March 1945, Hamburg in July 1943, and Dresden in Feb. 1945.)
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@Edax_Royeaux German U-boat torpedoes were no better for the first few years of the war.
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I remember a documentary where it showed you what the RAF did, 1st they used blast bombs to break most of the windows in the given area, 2nd They used the Cookies to put craters in the roads to impede emergency services 3rd,Then they would drop the incendiaries to cause fires and storms through the increased airflow through the broken windows. Yes, the Operational Research Section did much to determine the most effective way to spread fire, and worked out what you mentioned. (We should remember that fire is an excellent tool for destroying infrastructure.) The ORS also figured out that the 30-lb incendiary bomb was not as efficient a weapon as the 4-lb, which is why the 30-lb incendiary was discontinued as a weapon. That said, the idea that all Bomber Command did was area raids on German cities using incendiary bombs is wrong. In reality the RAF went after plenty of other targets (with varying degrees of success). The peak year for incendiary bomb usage by the RAF, both in terms of tonnage and percentage of total bombs dropped, was 1943. Typical bomb loads changed considerably in 1944, with high explosives accounting for the vast majority of the loads, and fire-raising raids comprising a much smaller proportion of missions. In 1945, the RAF actually dropped more tons of bombs on oil targets than did the 8th Air Force. There is a lot to the subject of the Strategic Bomber Offensive. It's a more complex matter than many realize.
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@PunishedRalph I think the jury is out, whilst they didn't cause a total Industrial collapse until the end of 44 Bomber Command's campaign against the Ruhr from March to July 1943 caused German military production, which had been increasing at about 8% per month, to stagnate for the following eight months according to the German's own records. It didn't return to sustained growth until March1944. It grew into the spring and summer, but peaked in July, after which it began to decline, falling rapidly toward the end of the year and continued to fall in 1945.
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@horsem.d.7979 The Zero was excellent -- if you tried to fight it to its advantage (slow-speed aerobatic dogfighting). If you instead kept the speed up and used boom-and-zoom tactics, the Zero did not fare well.
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If Hitler was insane, what does that make Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, the latter three who also racked up significant body counts of their own?
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@MrDwarfpitcher Also, flimsies was of course the nickname, the Allies were incredibly wastefull with their fuel at the start. That's because they could afford to be. The U.S. in 1940 was producing almost 62% of the world's oil, an average of nearly 3.7 million barrels per day of the global total of almost 5.8 million barrels per day.
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TIK, I suspect I will have much to say after I've watched the video. But from first checking your sources, I notice there is nothing there that talks about Bomber Command's previous raids (e.g. The Bomber Command War Diaries by Martin Middlebrook or Chris Everitt), or books which discuss why Bomber Command operated the way it did, or primary source documents (e.g. the squadron ORBs) which show the bomb loads actually carried operationally. Such sources are critical in putting the aerial bombing campaign into proper context. Many seem to think all Bomber Command did was nighttime incendiary area raids of German cities, but the reality is different. The peak year for incendiary bomb usage, both in terms of total tonnage dropped and as a percentage of all bombs dropped, was 1943. There is a definite shift in typical bomb loads in the first quarter of 1944, and incendiary raids go from being common in 1943 to being infrequent in latter 1944 and 1945. Other targets, and high explosive bombs, take precedence. For example, Bomber Command actually dropped more tons of bombs on oil targets in 1945 than did the USAAF. The air war, just like the ground war, is a complex topic, with many interrelated factors.
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The most important fact was that the high casualty total at Dresden was the result of a firestorm. Absent that firestorm, the Dresden raid would be but a footnote in the history of the bombing campaign. Contrary to what some think, firestorms could not be created on command. If they could, Bomber Command would have done so in the summer of 1943 and quite possibly have won the war.
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There aren't many eyewitnesses to the concentration camps or the brutalities of the Eastern Front remaining either.
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On the other hand, the British Merlin and the U.S. R-2800.
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14:08 -- "Similarly, producing tanks, bullets, ships, and planes does not equal economic growth. If it did, building a fleet of ships, sending them out to the middle of the Atlantic, and then sinking them, would produce an economic boom." What you describe sounds very much like what Emmanuel Goldstein wrote in "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchial Collectivism" in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
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One of its most important productions was oil. The U.S. accounted for 61.8% of global oil production in 1938, and this percentage steadily increased in subsequent years. In 1945, the U.S. accounted for 66% of global oil production.
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@livingtribunal4110 Only if it results in a firestorm, as was the case at Tokyo. But firestorms are freak events, completely unpredictable, and could not be created on command.
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@pebo8306 Aside from the Bf-110 there were their Ju-88 buddies and the Me-410's,and the 262's,plus all that ordinary fighters who flew"Wilde Sau"Add to that deadly accurate radar-guided flak! Unless, of course, the radar is jammed by Window/chaff, Carpet, Piperack, Mandrel, or Shiver; the night-fighter direction radio comms jammed by Airborne Cigar, Jostle, or Tinsel; and the night-fighters shot down by Intruders or their bases subjected to Firebash attacks. The reason the B-29s flew low over Tokyo was because the Japanese night defences were not good at lower altitudes, and it allowed the B-29s to carry greater payloads. Over Germany, that would not have been required. The RAF was able to (sometimes) do quite effective fire-raising raids from 20,000-foot altitudes. Had the B-29s been used over Europe, even the most distant German targets would have been well within its range, so high altitude raids would have been carried out.
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@Boxmediaphile The reason for the switch in tactics came down to the fact that conventional high-altitude daytime raids aimed at industrial complexes were not achieving the desired results as they had over Germany. The jetstream winds at those altitudes caused significant reductions in accuracy, and the B-29s were operating at close to their limits. Washington was impatient for results, so Gen. LeMay switched tactics. He reasoned the mostly wooden cities of Japan would burn more readily than had those of Germany; the more dispersed nature of Japanese industry would be impacted by wider spread, general damage to the target area; and by bombing from a lower altitude in nighttime, the strain put on the B-29s would be reduced and they could carry a larger bomb load. To facilitate that last point, LeMay had the B-29s stripped of their defensive armament, other than the tail guns, to lighten the aircraft. The first mission under the new tactics was the raid on Tokyo. The crews, without most of their defensive guns and flying much lower than had been the case, expected to suffer heavy losses. It turned out the March 30-31 raid succeeded beyond anyone's expectations. Aircraft losses were few, and the bombing caused the creation of a firestorm, which is why the casualty total in the city was so high, estimated to be about 100,000. It was the single-most devastating raid on a city in WWII, with the casualty total exceeding even those of the atomic bombs.
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@tedarcher9120 that wasn't really true in 1945 anymore as soviets had new oil refining equipment delivered by lend-lease and also romanian oil Even so it was still well below what the U.S. was producing. 1944 | 1945 crude oil production (average barrels per day) USA = 4,584,000 | 4,695,000 USSR = 765,027 | 424,529 Romania = 71,560 | 95,266 Romania provided a nice boost to Soviet totals, but even combined it was less than one-fifth of U.S. production.
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@beefy1212 I plan to. I find TIK's videos are usually quite good. But the air war is an interest of mine, and something I have been reading about for years. (Heck, I restarted a project to meticulously record the bomb load and other mission details from squadron Operation Record Books.) I find the air war, just like the ground war, is a complex topic, and there are A LOT of factors going into it that are overlooked or excluded in videos on the subject. (TIK himself said in another video the air war isn't a focus of his, so I kind of doubht the books listed as sources for this video are enough background context.) In terms of running out of explosive bombs, the RAF did run low of its own supply of MC bombs in 1944 such that it was forced to use its older GP bombs, and use American GP and SAP bombs in considerable numbers. But raids intended primarily as fire-raising attacks peaked in 1943, and considerably fewer seem to have been conducted in 1944-45. The squadron ORBs shows a definitive shift in ordnance from incendiary to high explosive. Part of this was the increased focus on transportation as a target, as explosive bombs are better at wrecking railways than incendiaries.
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Just like USN submarines, however, German U-boats were saddled with poor torpedoes for a good portion of the war.
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