Congratulations to Mr. Prewitt. It should be noted, however, that France’s highest order of merit is called the Legion of Honour (Légion d’honneur), not the Legion of Armour, and also that France doesn’t actually have knighthoods in the same sense as Britain does. “Chevalier” (knight) is indeed one of the Legion of Honour’s five levels, and the name is a holdover from the days when France still had an aristocracy, but the French nobility system went out the window with the French Revolution. I once saw a series of amusing cartoons depicting what life in France would be like today if the Bourbon monarchy hadn’t fallen, and one of them showed an irate air traveler standing at the ticket counter of “Royal Air France” and telling the ticket agent “But I’m a baron and I have a confirmed reservation!” The agent replies, “I’m sorry, sir, but the Duke of So-and-so has precedence over you, so we gave him your seat.” In fairness, the same sort of thing actually happens in real-life republican France. A few years ago, there was scandal involving one of the major D-Day anniversaries (I think it was the 50th one), when the French government contacted various hotels in Normany and appropriated some of their existing reservations so that various French officials could have rooms for the event. Some of those rooms, however, had been reserved by foreign veterans of the D-Day invasion. When the story broke on the front page of French newspapers (under such headlines as “Our Liberators Insulted!”), public opinion was outraged and the French government beat a hasty retreat. The prevailing editorial opinion over this affair was: Do this to our own citizens if you want, but don’t do this to the heroes who ended the occupation of France.
Most underrated WWII weapon
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How about the allied landing craft as underrated weapon of war? If I have to get specific, I’d have to say the LCVP or Higgins boat; but LCAs, LCIs, LCM, LSTs, etc also played integral parts in winning the war. Over 20,000 Higgins boats were built during the war and they were the work horses of the allied landing operations over the course of the war.
No less an authority than the Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight Eisenhower, declared the Higgins boat to have been crucial to the Allied victory on the European Western Front and the previous fighting in North Africa and Italy:
Andrew Higgins … is the man who won the war for us. … If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs, we never could have landed over an open beach. The whole strategy of the war would have been different.[2][3][4]
The Higgins Boat was used for many amphibious landings, including Operation Overlord on D-Day in Nazi German occupied Normandy, and previously Operation Torch in North Africa, the Allied invasion of Sicily, Operation Shingle and Operation Avalanche in Italy, Operation Dragoon and of course the Pacific Theatre at the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Battle of Tarawa, the Battle of the Philippines, the Battle of Iwo Jima and the Battle of Okinawa.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgins_Boat
The invasions of North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, and numerous Pacific campaign landings would not have been possible without the plethora of landing craft designed for the purpose. Not only were they crucial in landing the assault forces right on the beaches, they were capable of bringing in much needed supplies to sustain the invasion and evacuated countless casualties to hospital ships. Hitler and German high command did not believe that the allies could supply a large invasion force over an open beach, they were wrong. Despite not possessing a sizable port in Normandy, the allies were able to not only sustain their forces ashore but also buildup men, equipment, and supplies for the breakout as well. Heck, you know it was crucial to the war effort when no less than Eisenhower sings it’s praises.
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Thought part of the problem with Japan aircraft was that they had small numbers of ‘expert’ pilots whereas the US rotated their pilots back to training schools so we had a large number of ‘good’ pilots. So when the ‘expert’ Japanese pilots were shot down they were replaced by ‘newbies’ that could not compete with the scores of ‘good’ US pilots.
Yes, and this situation was compounded by the fact that the US Navy put a lot of effort into searching for and rescuing downed pilots. US surface ships, submarines, and particularly PBY Catalina flying boats picked up a great many downed flyers in this way. This allowed these valuable, highly trained men to return to combat and/or to serve as flight instructors back in the States. It was also good for the morale of pilots going into combat, since they knew that they had a fair chance of being rescued if they were shot down. The Japanese, by contrast, placed less importance on the rescue of downed pilots (and/or had fewer resources to devote to this activity).
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Spies
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Dare I say… “Identifiable Minority Groups”? lol…
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The Red Air Force is underrated.
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@rjpeters70:
… half truck.
…half trucks and armored fighting vehicles…
Yes, I would also say that! -
The guy who set up Hitlers microphone. No way would Germany have started or kept fighting without him.
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bacon
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Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw-Haw
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Here’s a weapon which could more properly be described as “low-profile” rather than underrated: the proximity-fused anti-aircraft artillery shell. Proximity fuses were essentially miniature radar sets, built small enough to fit in a shell and tough enough to withstand the tremendous kick of being fired from a gun. They were quite a technical achievement and they increased the chance that a shell would bring down an airplane even if it didn’t hit it directly. The Americans kept the proximity fuse very hush-hush; if I recall correctly, it was restricted to being used at sea, where unexploded shells couldn’t be recovered by the enemy and studied for their secrets.
Another effective weapon whose details were kept secret from the American public was the shaped-charge warhead. I own a laminated WWII magazine advertisement page which tells Americans about a revolutionary new anti-armour weapon called the bazooka; it makes the point that GIs are finding it very effective against German tanks, but it adds that the exact details of how it works and what it looks like can’t be revealed. As it happens, the Germans knew all about the Munroe Effect (discovered as far back as the 19th century) and had their own shaped-charge anti-tank weapon: the Panzerfaust. An amusing example of the public on your side being kept in the dark more than the military people on the enemy side.
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