theyeti

Nope, close to 50% is about right. The British and Canadians landed 75,214 men, and the Americans landed 57,500. Plus the Americans had twice as many airborne troops involved as the British did. When you put it all together, the Americans made up about 47% of the invasion force. (source)

Are there any simple, easy to check facts that you haven't screwed up?

theyeti

Amen-Moses

Nice of you to completely ignore the naval figures!

Amen-Moses

Amen-Moses

The V1 was initially designed primarily as a shorter range weapon that could be deployed accurately against targets up to 20 or 30 miles distant. When launched against London this sort of mechanism would be completely useless as any form of accurate guide of distance as it works on airspeed and not on groundspeed. A five knot headwind or tailwind would put you miles off target.

Most V1's did in fact overfly or underfly their targets and the ones we had in our museum (which admittedly could have been from a later cost cutting period with reduced capabilities) did not have any form of operating timer. Many of the V1's we have dotted around the various museums and private collections were salvaged from the marshland around London where they fell after running out of fuel.

One of the first indications that the V1 was on target was that the engine cut out, for shorter range anti ship use the V1 would have dived on target under power for maximum damage so I doubt that any of the V1's used against Cities used any sort of timer.

I used to work voluntarily in the RAF museum workshops during my RAF service, I got into it after working on a variety of historic aircraft during training, especially memorable being the TSR2 and Javelin.

When I was posted to south Wales I became involved with the renovation projects there, specifically at that time was a complete rebuild of a Mosquito and the renovation of a private collectors Messerschmidt bubble car, the same collector asked us to check out his V1 (a bit surprising as he wasn't registered as even having one) which we did, I was amazed at how simple and crude it was, almost as if someone had made it out of old saucepans but hadn't bothered to melt them down first.

Amen-Moses

theyeti

Yeah, I also ignored the people running POW camps back in England and the US. The people on the boats weren't storming the beaches, they weren't parachuting behind enemy lines, and they weren't dying by the thousands. They were just there for bombardment and logistic support. You clearly implied that Americans made up only 25% of the beach forces. Here it is again:

"btw only about 25% of the Normandy forces were US and we gave you the more lightly defended beaches. "

And even if you include the naval personel, you're still wrong. Americans then made up over 1/3 of total personel.

Your attempt to downplay the sacrifice of thousands of people who died protecting your country, among other things, is downright despicable. You should be ashamed.

theyeti

theyeti

Have you bothered looking any of this stuff up, or are you just making it up as you go? The ones used against London and other cities had a timer. Sure, it wasn't very accurate, but it worked often enough to cause some damage and irritate the allied air defenses. Since the bomb was set off with a sensitive contact detonator, it wouldn't help to have it dive under power (most of the blast would have been wasted digging a crater if that were the case). The page I linked to explains why the V1s lost power:

Thus the loss of power was a consequence of the aiming device tilting the weapon downward. It was not caused by running out of fuel.

theyeti

Amen-Moses

I'm not downplaying anything, the figures I used come from the D-Day museum which happens to be just down the road, the web site you linked to even says the figures it gives are suspect.

I have all the respect in the world for those who died fighting against the axis powers in WWII but you aint one of them, what I take issue with is the blatent attempts to rewrite history by those around today, Hollywood is by far the worst offender in this.

When I watched SPR and the line denegrating Monty came on all I wanted to do is go to London and piss on the statues of US generals we have erected there to honour them, if you want some damn respect (not your fathers or grandfathers but the present generation) then learn to give some first!

Amen-Moses

Amen-Moses

OK I'll say this again cause maybe the first time I didn't write it loud enough:

The ones in our fucking museum did not have this device! They did not have a little propeller on the front nor did they have any connection to the elevator control system from any sort of timer!

Now I have already admitted that maybe they were a later less costly model and also suggested why they may have done away with such refinements for long ranges when the device was originally designed for shorter ranges and would have needed such refinements. Also possible is that the device was a later development of course but I'm pretty sure all our V1's were from the last few months of the barrage in early 45.

Last week the newspapers carried two page articles about the spy planes flying over London as part of the anti terrorist efforts and they had pictures and specs for them. Guess what, the pictures were wrong and so were the specs, how did I know? I used to work on the bloody things that's how I knew.

Amen-Moses

sullster

Amen-moses claims that Field Marshall Montgomery,(Monty), was a military genius and helped all the American generals out.

Well, I beg to differ. Montgomery's performance in the Normandy campaign was not evidence of genius. He failed to achieve his D-Day objective of taking Caen and actually dithered in front of the city for a month. Following the American led breakout at St.Lo he painstakingly advanced in his area. The greatest failure of Monty in the Normandy theatre was his inability to help close the Falaise pocket and bag the Germans.

Montgomery biggest blunder was Market-Garden which Eisenhower went along with. It was a plan which the pompous self promoting Monty figured would get him up there with Wellington. Without first securing the port of Antwerp which he said he would to Ike, he committed three airborne divisions and his 30 Corps to grab a series of bridges and cross the Rhine above the WestWall. There were 2 WaffenSS divisions in the area of Arnhem which destroyed the British 1 Airborne. The dangerously exposed flanks, which the "genius" Monty ignored, became the avenue of constant German attacks against the US airborne divisions and the slow moving British armor. The battle ended up being a major defeat for the Allies. Thank you Monty.

Military genius- my ass!

Lamunus

Shocking, military leaders make mistakes.

Shall we discuss General Clark's invasion of Rome, perhaps? I find this particularly painful, as 100,000 British soldiers lost their lives as a result of Clark running for glory to capture Rome, allowing the whole German 10th and 14th Divisions to escape complete encirclement and destruction. It undermined the entire Battle of Monte Cassino and disgraced the memory of the thousands of American, British and indeed Polish troops so Clark could get his name in the history books.

Market-Garden was a result of Monty's desire for a quick victory resulting in an overestimation of the strength of the Allied hand, and we payed dearly. However, it should be borne in mind that responsibility for the debacle has been the source of continuing controversy.

But without Monty's marvelous success at the Battle of El-Alamein, many more Allied soldiers would have died later in a bid to free North Africa. Indeed, it is possible Churchill would not have survived such a defeat and peace would have been made with Germany.

Lamunus

sullster

Lamunus,

Thank you for your reasonable response. Amen-moses is making me think that you Brits have gone bonkers. Also, we are so off the main point of this thread that it is funny.

What you say about US General Mark Clark is absolutely true. He was a moron and one of the worst generals. I do not dispute your point that he mismanaged and screwed up the Italian campaign.

The strange thing is that the only reason there even was an Italian campaign was because of Churchill. He wanted an invasion of the Balkans and settled for Italy. The Americans just wanted to concentrate on a cross-channel invasion at first.

My rage at Monty was mostly motivated by the comments of Amen-moses. If you and I agree that Monty was not God, and I see that you don't think so, then we can talk. Monty did well at El-Alamein. He was a detail man and when he was ready to attack he usually had every angle covered. That is what will always be the mystery of Market-Garden. It was put together so quickly and not thought out enough. It was uncharacteristic of Monty. It must have been mostly due to the euphoria of the German collapse after the Falaise Pocket.

What I find iritating about Monty was his ability to make everything seem like it was all his original plan, no matter what happened. Many generals do this and many US ones did also,yet it was one of his maddening traits.

I wish there was a WW2 discussion board.