Best WW2 Videogame you have played!

@ABWorsham4

Definitely a very odd battle.

Probably the Somua S35.

Near equal road speed and superior off road speed, better armour overall, and a shorter height (always important for hiding).

Also, at the time the Germans were winning, so I can call in artillery or infantry to help out if necessary, and more of those than my enemies could (at least in terms of combat effectiveness).

A lot of it is probably due to bias toward France and Germany during this time period in general though.

I’ll say before researching I overestimated the Somua S35’s “superior to most German tanks in the Battle of France” capabilities and severely underestimated the M3 Lee/Grant’s “hopelessly obsolete against the Japanese” capabilities, at least on paper.

I think I was confusing the M3 Lee/Grant with the Stuart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQFbgmayQ-E

I just got the HTC vive and picked up this game, and I must say it really is amazing (esp. for us WW2 geeks).  You are in a U-boat during WW2.  It can be single or multiplayer up to 4 people (some ship features like loading torps. can be put on auto if you don’t have a full crew).  I must say the realism is amazing.  The game does not assign you a role, but to be efficient the people playing need to split up resp. to complete the mission.  You are talking to these people, and running all over the ship to get the job done.  It is so realistic the other day when I was playing I had a bit of flatulence and my first thought was “can’t do that here, will stink up the ship”, just to remember a couple seconds later “uh, I am in my living room!”.

It is not just the underwater stuff.  You can go above deck and fire the 88 to take down merchant shipping, or fire the AA to knock down enemy aircraft.  When the boat is getting depth charged you have to seal the leaks and pump out the excess water.

I am not big into gaming systems.  XBOX and the playstation were not a big deal, and although I owned an xbox I almost never played it.  VR is different.  20 years from now people are going to look at the present gaming systems the same we look at 1970s ‘Pong’.

@KurtGodel7:

As you pointed out, actually capturing the city was unnecessary. But having captured the city, Hitler was very determined to hold onto it. Abandoning it would have presumably meant having to recapture it later; and once again suffering that same 1:1 ratio during the recapture.

One thing I’m wondering: why would Germany have to (or even want to) recapture at great cost a city that it was unnecessary (and indeed counterproductive) to capture in the first place?

A Jagdpanther of course. Beautiful shape. With sloping frontal armour and the L71/88.
Love the scene when one breaks over the crest in Normandy in Band of Brothers.

@221B:

While they probably would never fight it out directly against each other, I think that the submarines of that era could be compared to each other in terms of how well they did (and how well they potentially could have) against merchant marine ships.

I’d have to place them in this order with regards to their potential:

Japan Germany US UK Italy

Of course, the Japanese squandered the potential of their subs by using them to attack warships, rather than merchant ships.  So in order of actual performance, I’d say this order:

US (Japan was devastated by lack of supplies) Germany UK Italy Japan.

Part of the reason for my placing Germany below the US is because the allies, particularly the British developed effective defenses which the Japanese did not (and the Germans did not need to as they were a continental power).  Not sure where to place Russia, but since (like Germany) she is a continental power, there was very little, if any, efforts regarding submarines that I am aware of.

I’d also like to point out that Germany had some very interesting submarine ideas on their drawing boards, but either chose not to (or were unable to) develop these in any meaningful fashion.

Thoughts?

Good post, and I agree with what you’ve written. I’d like to expand on what you’d written about Germany’s very interesting sub ideas. Late in the war, Germany had begun building highly advanced Type XXI U-boats. These were built in sections, to allow for a faster rate of production. These submarines had more in common with postwar nuclear subs than with their WWII contemporaries.

Most WWII-era submarines were intended to spend most of their time above water, surfacing only when threats were detected or battle expected. Type XXI U-boats were intended to spend nearly all their time underwater. The batteries of Type XXIs lasted several times longer than normal subs’ batteries before being recharged. These subs had a snorkel–a snorkel which allowed them to run their diesel engines and recharge their batteries while still submerged!

Type XXI subs had a rubber coating, making them far more difficult to detect with radar or sonar. Even if a sub was detected, it could use its battery-powered electric motor to quietly move to some other place. These subs could also move quickly! Unlike other WWII-era subs, Type XXI subs moved more quickly under the surface than they did on the surface. This was because of their hydrodynamically advanced, streamlined design. These subs also had very sophisticated electronics suites, perfectly suited to an underwater game of cat and mouse. These U-boats could fire large numbers of torpedoes in a small space of time; allowing them to strike a devastating blow and then disappear.

Most torpedoes of the era were diesel powered. Compressed air was mixed with diesel fuel and burned, thereby turning the torpedo’s propeller. The compressed air used in this left a trail of bubbles–a trail which both alerted people to the torpedo’s arrival, and provided a path back to the launching submarine. In some places, that bubble trail would glow at night due to phosphorescent microorganisms. Japan’s torpedoes used compressed oxygen with which to burn diesel. That meant a much smaller bubble trail, and significantly longer-ranged torpedoes. (The Allies’ bubble trails consisted mostly of nitrogen gas, which of course is useless for burning anything.)

Germany used electric torpedoes. These had the advantage of being much quieter and more difficult to detect than diesel-powered torpedoes. And of course they left no bubble trail. The problem with Germany’s early electric torpedoes was that the batteries weren’t that good, causing the range to be too short. But batteries improved throughout the war, thereby extending the torpedoes’ range. While Germany’s electric torpedoes never came close to the range of Japan’s Long Lance torpedoes, they nevertheless had a very respectable range by the war’s end. When that range was combined with the overall stealth and sophistication of Germany’s Type XXI U-boats, the effect was absolutely devastating.

Or would have been, had those Type XXIs seen service. In 1944, Albert Speer ordered the construction of large numbers of Type XXI U-boats. Some of those Type XXIs were in the testing/working up phase when the war ended. None saw action against the enemy. A smaller version–Type XXIII U-boats–appear to have been very effective in limited action against the enemy. However, Type XXIII U-boats could only carry two torpedoes each, and were limited to coastal duties.

If you’re looking at physically discernible traits in posterity (i.e., the baby boom generation), I’d say they would require considerable epigenetic or even genetic alterations in the parents (i.e., the people living there at the time). That’s not a very likely effect from such levels of pollution. If anyone was affected in any way, it seems more probable that their overall health would suffer to some degree, but it would probably be difficult to attribute that to any specific factor. An extensive epidemiological study may be able to demonstrate some effects, but I don’t know whether anybody has done one.

Also, it’s uncertain how much of the oil even reached the beaches or the fishing grounds. It seems obvious that the marine ecosystem could handle less oil, over a much longer period of time, and at various locations, much better than the massive BP spill. So a lot of that WWII tanker oil may have evaporated, or sunk to the bottom, or gone down with the ship and slowly dissipated.

I don’t think that the war itself would have played a major role in deciding to either clean up or ignore any oil that may have landed on the beaches. If the oil would have arrived in a town like, say, Biloxi, then people would have probably cleaned it up because it posed a direct threat to the livelihood of the local fishermen. On the other hand, if it would have landed in a remote location, it would likely have been ignored, simply because environmental awareness was not exactly a major concern in the 1940’s, war or no war.

In each case, I’m only speculating - we’d need to look for contemporary reports to know the truth.

And of course, the petroleum flavor does little for the shrimps, so I don’t think too many were eaten.  :-)

cuz im cool like that. 1st deggree black belt as well.

@Fishmoto37:

My favorite–They Were Expendable with Robert Montgomery and John Wayne. Has been since I was a kid and when I was a kid the Dead Sea was only sick.

Great Movie!