Does the Russian Tor-M1 render most of the USAF worthless?, page 9

Originally posted by aaaaa
Barbarrosa was lost before it began for 3 big reasons:

It was not a 'lost' campaign before it began for the following reasons...

1. Hitler failed to reach terms with the British before turning east.

Britain were bankrupt before Hitler turned his attention East and without US lend lease and general aid Britain would have never been able to affect the outcome to a continental campaign against Russia but would have been destroyed quickly had Hitler gained overland access of the ME by means of the Balkans.

2. 20 German divisions, including elite airborne and armor units, were chewed up in North Africa, Greece and the Balkins in support of Mussilini's failed adventures before the attack,

Simply not true as Germany suffered very few casualties and not any large drain on equipment in any of those campaigns before the campaign in the East. Please define what you mean by 'chewed up' as beside for the paratroops ( that got pretty decimated as you say) that could have been rebuilt no significant losses were suffered. In fact North Africa took up all of 1 armored divisions and parts of other divisions to form a army group consisting of men equal to about 3-4 regular divisions as deployed in the East later. They were simply there to boost the effectiveness of the Italian army ( basically to provide leadership and a hard core that could punch trough British defense or prevent breakthroughs) and that they did very effectively being a massive drain on British resources for years to come. North Africa proved that Britain could not even effectively deal with less than half a dozen German field formations and Churchill were quite aware of how this made the British army look in Stalin's book considering the quite more than a hundred he had to put up with right from day one.

which also pushed the starting date back into June instead of early May.

There exists no historical basis for this statement that has is nearly as obvious as you suggest. If you want to discuss it lets but don't pretend wide agreement where there is non.

3 The total failure of Nazi economic management in putting Germany on a total warfighting economy.

It was not a total failure as they apparently turned out to have the capacity to destroy all their European opponents short of the Soviet Union and even there some consistent German tactical and strategic choices would have quite likely netted them Moscow and Leningrad long before the cold came. People love to pretend that Russian soldiers did not freeze to death or that Russian tanks always worked in the snow but when looking at the historical evidence it quickly becomes clear that the Russian counteroffensive were largely made possibly by their possession of Moscow without which such would not really have been possible or very effective.

It is widely accepted that Churchill did everything in his power to delay the opening of a second front in Northern Europe in order to bleed the Russians as much as possible,

Churchill hardly had that kind of power in my opinion even if one would get that impression from reading that nearly 5000 pages he self righteously , and deceptively, calls " The second world war". Since i like Churchill i wont say anything nastier than that and there is certainly far more than one good reason to actually read the series.

which Stalin cooperated with by setting his generals against each other in the dash to Berlin.

Oh really?

D-Day was launched when the real fear became that Russian tanks would reach Gibralter by the end of 1945.

D-day was imo launched so late to ensure that the Balkans and possibly large parts of central Europe ( including even France) would fall to the SU. The idea of the powers that be seemed to have been a continental power in Europe against a continental power in North America but as with all such complex operations reality intervenes and you make do. D-day was in my opinion launched to prevent another 1943 where the SU advanced but at great cost; thus to speed up their progress as added armored formations in the East would have treated the SU's breakthroughs with as much disrespect as before. Without the reallocation of formations west 1944 would have been another year of slow grinding progress for the SU allowing the German economic and technological base to expand far more than it did in 1944.

P-40 and truck shipments to Russia were key elements in the offensives of 1944, prideful communist boasting notwithstanding.

American boasting notwithstanding the true 'second front' of 1944 did not in my opinion change the outcome of the war in Europe even if it ensured that the French still had a free France after and that a few million lives were saved.

The mobility and alternative opportunity afforded by these were critical in Soviet success.

It was critical in terms of their ever deeper penetrations by 1944 but not in terms of their capacity to resist further large scale German strategic offensives.

While the Germans were using horses the Russians had trucks, and with- out source materials at hand, I believe I'm accurate to state that by '44 over 75% of the trucks in the system were American.

The Germans had trucks too , not surprisingly really, but since they were by 1944 on the defensive it's best to give up massive mobility ( the more trucks the quicker supplies can be made to move in respect to advances or general resupply) and focus on the production of the arms to fortify more fixed defenses. If you have one tank and it's advancing against a fleeing enemy it's best you have many trucks to keep it supplied on the advance but on the defense you can stack the ammunition outside the tank and stage your major defensive positions around rail heads. Basically the USSR could afford to build many more tanks because they got so many trucks by lend lease but those factories could very well build trucks instead.

Back to modern affairs:

The secord world war was a very modern war and the next one might not be so different after all is said and done ( nuclear/chemical/biological weapons expended).

I still don't see how an Army manned by unwilling conscripts that finds itself beset with hazing and prostituion scandels (BBC) can be considered an effective fighting force.

We all have our reservations for lack of more accurate knowledge. Compared to the type of conscript the SU won the second world war with one can hardly complain about what they have now. The disparity in training, organization and human material, is most certainly far far less than it was in those days in respect to other NATO powers if not the US itself. Remember that other NATO armed forces routinely showed up what could be done with smaller budgets and better training standards. The Canadians still probably have the best ASW capability in NATO and British submarine training routinely fails American servicemen who did not have problems with the American system. Soviet pilots may have flown less hours than the US but so did the rest of NATO and that certainly did not prevent them from scoring well in exercises...

I'm just saying that whatever they issues they were far greater in 1941 and they were overcome against a army that certainly had better relatively training standards then than the US does now.

I don't see how special forces that botched Beslan and the Moscow theatre hostage crises and provided no definitive victories in Chechnya can be considered world class.

The fact that a dozen or more of the Russian special forces ( in the perimeter ) got picked off by accurate long ranged sniper fire enabling the escape is often talked about as that would indicate that they were up against a forced trained and armed as they were. The Moscow theater crisis were resolved quite effectively in my opinion and we will never imo know for sure if those people were in fact killed by gas ( as reported so widely) or killed by the hostage takers. Whatever the case may be the special forces can hardly take the blame for certain officers who on good or bad authority expected the agent to incapacitate and not kill.

I don't see how a navy that is unable to sortie more than 1 boomer at a time and stage only limited exercises with attack subs can shut off Atlantic traffic. They could not even raise the Kursk by themselves.

Not out on patrol when the world is largely dancing to your tune is hardly a big deal ( the US national debt suggests they better be out patrolling to terrorize everyone into acceptance of dollar hegemony) and as far as western sources go think the Russian navy has 14 active SSBN's that could deploy in times of crisis. If one looks at the weaponry they certainly have more than enough cruise missiles in their submarine forces to ensure that convoys will not reach Europe in time or strength enough to change anything. That is not mentioning their blackjack and backfire aircraft that are more than able to interdict Atlantic traffic at great cost to those who require convoys for survival.

I don't see how an air force that lacks pilots with many hours of flying experience and training defeats one that does.

They will rely mostly on their SAM defenses to deal with aircraft and their own aircraft will have to do not much more than disrupt SEAD/DEAD and ward of B-52's/B2's.

Originally posted by aaaaa
Putting aside the typically antagonistic tone of Stellar's response to my post, his following points can be addressed:

If you find the truth to be antagonistic ( or just those who try to introduce some?) that isn't something i can help you with but since your mature enough to ' put it aside' we can, per your request, 'move on'.

Britain was bankrupt in 1940-

Meaning they had no substantial gold reserves left ( were in the process of shipping their last reserves in from the 'colonies') and basically selling of their corporate assets to Wall street ( and thus their European masters) for cents on the Pound. They were in fact bankrupt before they even declared war on Germany and at least some scholars have suggested that they HAD to declare war at that point if only to keep up the facade of control and general resistance.

That didn't stop them from deploying forces that tied down Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine manpower and resources, or stop bombing raids on Germany.

Tying down the 'Kriegsmarine' so effectively that German submarines did seriously affect Britains resource 'train' accross the atlantic and from the colonies? Why were the Germans so effectively able to get past the British "blockades' on so many occasions and why did they so often find out where German capitol ships were by noting the impacts of 11/15 inch shells?

The 200,000 German soldiers stationed in Norway alone would have been a welcome addition to an invasion of the USSR.

Men they had in relative generous amounts but the roads and trains can carry only so much supplies and a additional ten badly equipped ( where were the motorised and mechanized elements supposed to come from?) foot infantry divisions would not have changed the outcome in Russia as they won it ( Well the army won it and then Hitler threw it away as at Dunkirk and in North-Africa later) with rather less than they used anyways.

May 15 was the original target date of Barbarossa, consult the index in Guderian's "Panzer Leader" to read Hitlers orginal orders.

I am well aware of the original date and why they could not and did not invade then. Check on the prevailing weather conditions if you really want to discuss this issue as the forces involved in the Balkans were not significant enough to postpone the invasion over.

North Africa was a small detachment of troops but a major drain on equipment and fuel supply for Germany.

It was not a major drain at all as the closeness of success and the consequences for the British empire were quite obvious to one and all. The Italian merchant navy performed very well ( some say heroically; Rommel got the same per day fuel and general supplies as American armored formations got in 1944 in France while he had a chance to win) and even thought the Italian capitol ships could not make themselves count, for various reasons we can discuss later, the escort ships certainly worked very hard to protect the convoys on which backs Rommel basically achieved victory. Germany had 'massive' ( far more than they had engines to use it with ) fuel supplies after the capture of France and low countries and in Russia they frequently supplies themselves from massive Russian rail-head supply depo's that so frequently fell into their hands.

As for the Balkans and Greece, Crete alone took the resources of 4 German divisions and cost 4,000 lives and scores of aircraft.

Do you have any idea how many aircraft the RAF lost and how badly the RN got mauled for their 'efforts' to protect and evacuate the doomed expedition? They lost all their heavy equipment considering the highly mechanized nature of the divisions deployed that is another huge loss that managed to inflict completely insignificant casualties while in Greece.

Mountain and airborne/paratroop ( in some circle's confusing the two will land you in very warm water) divisions are less than half the size of regular divisions and considering the fact that they were designed for these type of specific instances you have to use them somewhere and use them when it matters; having paratroop/airborne divisions and assigned transport sitting around idly
is very costly not to mention the strategic ineptness of allowing the enemy to respond to such strategic 'aces' without them even having been employed. Crete and Greece was a devastating setback for the North-African campaign and if those formations were kept in North-Africa O'Connor ( or whoever they sent after he got captured really; they were 'winning' that fast)

After 10 weeks the Italian Tenth Army was no more. The British and Commonwealth forces had advanced 800 km, destroyed about 400 tanks and 1,292 artillery pieces, and captured 130,000 POWs. In contrast, the British and Commonwealth forces suffered 494 dead and 1,225 wounded. However the advance stopped short of driving the Italians out of North Africa. As the advance reached El Agheila, Churchill ordered that it be stopped, and troops dispatched to defend Greece attacked by the Italians. Also, on January 11, 1941, the HMS Illustrious suffered a crippling dive-bomber attack, allowing the first troops of the German Afrika Korps to begin arriving in Tripolitania (Operation Sonnenblume), and the desert war would take a completely different turn. [3]

Given other setbacks suffered during the early war years, the Allied troops of Operation Compass were highly publicized and became renown as "Wavell's Thirty Thousand," which was used as the title of a 1942 British documentary chronicling the campaign.[4]

en.wikipedia.org...

Not perfect a source but you can work from there to discover which side were strategically far, far worse off for the Crete/Greece 'debacle' ( and that's being generous in not calling Churchill a inept bumbling fool for his choices in this instance) so early on. North-Africa never needed to have turned into a actual front as O'Connors brilliance ( not the ineptness of the Italians; they did well considering their equipment, training and general situation) ensured that the Brits had a very real chance of taking the vital ports before Rommel ever appeared on the scene.

You may also read BH Liddell Hart's "The German Generals Talk" chapter 13 for background. This is history, not your dismissive trash talk.

This is history as you say and i can quite honestly call this my area of 'expertise' if for nothing other than the shear volume of reading i have done on the topic. Considering Hart's relative sanity i don't have to read that particular chapter to realise who benefited most by the capture of the Balkans and that the late spring of 1941 ensured a later Barbarossa independent of the inept strategic efforts Britain launched in the region at that time.

Churchill played a major role in dissuading Roosevelt and Marshall from launching a cross channel invasion in 1943, who were all for it. There are too many sources to quote that refer to this reality.

And the reason i am not denying that to be the case. That being said a cross channel invasion in 1943 would have been a bloodbath of epic proportions for the Allies and would have probably reigned in Soviet efforts considerably. Churchill probably got it 'right' in that failure ( ANZIO on much larger scale with even less options or simply 'back into the sea') in 1943 would have precluded another serious attempt in 1944 and thus a second world war lasting well into the decade with both sides deploying nuclear weapons.

Stalin set Zukov against Koniev in a race to capture Berlin that cost more than 100,000 Soviet soldiers thier lives in an unneccessary bloodbath, read both general's memoirs or serious Stalin biography to get a flavor of that contest.

So suddenly it takes a Machiavellian plot by Stalin to get a hundred thousand Soviet soldiers killed? Didn't Stalin order Koniev to halt so that Zhukov could catch up and how is that a, 'fair' anyways, 'race'? Sounds more like a insurance policy and the choice to take Berlin suburbs with tank armies ( Zhukov) was not required considering how it could have been reduced by the artillery divisions ( and almost armies one can say) of that time. There was not in my opinion any good operational excuse for the half a million casualties the SU suffered in the operations around Berlin and it's clear that it was a strategic decision ( Stalin's) to capture as much as possible as fast as possible so as to enable a better post war negotiating position with the allies.

Hostage crises that are resolved effectively in your opinion when all or a substantial portion of the hostages are murdered? How sick is that?

So accidents are now murder? You mean the US armed forces murdered at least a hundred thousand Iraqi's in their latest criminal invasion of Iraq?

14 SSBN could be deployed by Russia in a crisis? Crew training and experience are essential for that to happen, as is equipment that is maintained and reliable. It is fantasy to suggest that a Russian navy that does not exist could do this.

It is a 'fantasy' that western defense and intelligence specialist apparently consider 'real' but i really don't care as they don't really need them to ensure their current strategic dominance.

They can not even conduct a successful missile test lately.

So how many missiles tests and launches have they had over the last say five years and what was the failure rate? Lets just compare it to 'world' standards and get some 'facts' involved as i am quite tired of these vague allusions to the 'reality' that the Russian armed forces just evaporated over the last decade.

Continued..