Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 172 posts

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#161

Post by WalterBright »

softcactus wrote: post #157
WalterBright wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that it took 16,000 88 flak shells to bring down one bomber. I infer the success of the flak was due simply to quantity. I've also read numerous times that the searchlights would find and "pin" a bomber so that the crews could dial in the coordinates for firing. Wouldn't need that with radar guided guns. I well know the death rate for B-17 crews - my father flew 32 missions in 1944 in one. The casualty rate wa…

> I read that it took 16,000 88 flak shells to bring down one bomber. I infer the success of the flak was due simply to quantity. I am not trying to be pedantic, just wondering out loud. 16,000 shells per bomber sounds like a lot, but I am sure you are familiar with the statistic that 250,000 small-arms rounds were fired for every insurgent killed in Afghanistan, and 25,000 rounds fired per kill in WWII. I can't find…

He said many of the men cracked under the strain. Some would deal with it by drinking themselves to oblivion.

> He sounds like an amazing man.

He was, but I'm rather biased :-)

He told me once he wouldn't trade that experience for anything, and wouldn't do it again for anything. He also said that when he felt down, he'd think of the men he knew who didn't get the chance to live, and would fix his attitude.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#162

Post by WalterBright »

softcactus wrote: post #157
WalterBright wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that it took 16,000 88 flak shells to bring down one bomber. I infer the success of the flak was due simply to quantity. I've also read numerous times that the searchlights would find and "pin" a bomber so that the crews could dial in the coordinates for firing. Wouldn't need that with radar guided guns. I well know the death rate for B-17 crews - my father flew 32 missions in 1944 in one. The casualty rate wa…

> I read that it took 16,000 88 flak shells to bring down one bomber. I infer the success of the flak was due simply to quantity. I am not trying to be pedantic, just wondering out loud. 16,000 shells per bomber sounds like a lot, but I am sure you are familiar with the statistic that 250,000 small-arms rounds were fired for every insurgent killed in Afghanistan, and 25,000 rounds fired per kill in WWII. I can't find…

> 250,000 small-arms rounds were fired for every insurgent killed in Afghanistan

To be fair, only a small part of that is aimed. Much of it is "covering fire", the intent of which is to cause the enemy to hide while your guys advance. There are also soldiers who do not wish to kill, and do not aim their shots.

The larger point is that if the accuracy of the flak were doubled with radar guidance, it would have been impossible for the 8th AF to continue the mass bombing campaign. If 5% are lost on a mission (and that did happen now and then) repeatedly, then it ain't long before there isn't an Air Corps left.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#163

Post by chaostheory »

gumby wrote: post #154
chaostheory wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who’s going to pay for it? Health insurers are still trying to avoid it. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/11/29/5672649... https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/06/07/7304045...

That’s like saying “who will pay for clean power” or “who will pay for firefighters?” or. “Who can afford to pay for safer building codes?” In the long term we all benefit.

Yes, but someone has to be willing to pay for it. I'm not wrong.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#164

Post by inkblotuniverse »

colinsane wrote: post #159
lisper wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you outsmart it every time you use a condom Not really. All you're doing is moving the needle a tiny bit so that in the next generation there will be fewer people inclined to use condoms. > if Darwinism leads to such an apparently contradictory behavior What contradictory behavior are you referring to? The ability to suspend disbelief is useful to survival in all kinds of situations, especially in our ancestral env…

> All you're doing is moving the needle a tiny bit so that in the next generation there will be fewer people inclined to use condoms. so you claim, yet condoms have been around for generations now and my perception is that their use has only increased over generations. am i mistaken in this? > What contradictory behavior are you referring to? i said "apparently contradictory": on first look it appears to be contradic…

It's easier to just eat your competition's babies. That's the adaptation that evolved when scientists ran the limited-resources experiment with insects.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#165

Post by greedo »

aidenn0 wrote: post #113
greedo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit off on his age in 1989; he was actually 75. Otherwise he would have been pretty young to have served in WW2.

65 in 89 implies 18 in 1942; that doesn't seem too young to me?

He would have been 17 at Pearl Harbor. IIRC, the average age of a US soldier in WW2 was around 26. Either way, he was 75 in 1989, so his age when the US entered WW2 was 27, roughly matching the demographics.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#166

Post by [deleted] »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #87
jacobolus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US was not in any significant danger of being directly invaded during WWII. It would have been an incredibly costly logistical nightmare for the would-be invaders, very unlikely to succeed. US worries were legitimate (atrocities perpetrated against civilians, future control of Europe/Asia, the international economic order and security of global trade networks, etc.) but “urgent” invasion wasn’t one of them.

The fear was that Germany could occupy a South American country and use that to launch attacks on the U.S. this never happens obviously, but one could imagine it if the wars in Europe and Russia had gone differently.

[deleted]

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#167

Post by dang »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #80
pram wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternate perspective: I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't talk about it because theres not much to say. I was either standing or sitting some place on guard duty, wired up on an insane amount of caffeine and nicotine, trying not to go insane for the 12 hour shifts. The only thing that punctuated the boredom was the daily mortar attack alarms lol

Quoted post unavailable.

Personal attacks are not ok on HN, and neither is perpetuating flamewar, which you did a whole bunch of here. We ban accounts that post like this repeatedly, so please don't do it again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#168

Post by Nomentatus »

Nomentatus wrote: post #76
gerikson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fussell references the belief among GIs that the Germans had better kit. It's one thing to objectively assess this after the fact, it's quite another to get hit by an 88mm in Normandy and not see the Hurricane obliterate it. The Wehrmacht fought tenaciously in Western Europe using second-rate troops compared to the Eastern front where the real struggle was. Defending is easier than attacking, and the defenders were i…

Right. The big panzers were terrible to encounter if they ever managed to get to the front line, but they rarely did, and there they broke down quickly and were often abandoned. They were also more vulnerable than they looked. On the Russian front the tankers learned to pop the turrets off by radio-controlling their fire and hitting the turret at roughly the same time with 3 or four smaller tanks or guns. The sheer v…

Re that vibration: steel is the most elastic substance we know of. The Germans were relying on gravity to keep the heavy turrets on the tank, and that works if they're hit by only one shell at a time.

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#169

Post by agapon »

agapon wrote: post #51
hef19898 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian blood, British intel and sheer stubborness and US industry won WW2. A fact that both sides of the Iron Curtain down played and ignored throughout the Cold War.

Don't package all Soviet nations of the time into "Russians". Especially at this time.

This got flagged. I wonder why? Offended Russian imperialists?

Re: The Real War 1939-1945 (1989)

#170

Post by dflock »

chaostheory wrote: post #163
gumby wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s like saying “who will pay for clean power” or “who will pay for firefighters?” or. “Who can afford to pay for safer building codes?” In the long term we all benefit.

Yes, but someone has to be willing to pay for it. I'm not wrong.

In a national/publicly funded national health system, that system (i.e., taxpayers) should fund it, because better mental health in the population will improve the economic performance of the nation, increasing tax receipts etc...

That is, if they can get over that calvinist/puritan mental health == weakness/stigma thing, which seems to be slowly happening.

Post reply on HN