British team in Burma begin lost Spitfire hunt

@cernel

So sad. :(

@Private:

Here is a different take that resonates for me:

I have seen it argued that both Germany and Japan* were strategically weak. Both lacked natural resources and needed access to those from elsewhere to maintain their war machines.

In the case of Japan that required secure supply lines from the East Indies, which their naval losses and strategic myopia denied them.

Germany needed to conquer territories that would secure those resources.

By contrast the allies were resource rich. Command of the seas gave access to resources from across the globe. Japan challenged US command of the Pacific for only a very short time frame. German U Boats did cause the Allies difficulties in the Atlantic for a longer period of course, but denying global resources to the UK is not the same as denying them to the USA, let alone gaining them for Germany.

Axis supremacy needed victory after victory in the face superior Allied production and manpower. The Allies only needed to deny them a sufficient proportion of those victories.

Of course, those that faced the Axis onslaught did not perceive any such “inevitable” Allied victory. And for a time those victories did keep coming …

*I include Japan in this answer because one of the reasons why Germany lost WW2 is that Japan never diverted enough allied resources away from the European theatre.

I agree with this, but that may not even fully capture all the reasons Germany lost.  In terms of just pure industrial production capacity Germany could not compete against the US, especially with the latter protected by its isolation from bombing.  I recently read an interesting book, Death Ride, that made much of Germany’s failure to develop long-range bombers, and with much of the USSR’s industry moved well East of Moscow Germany could not bomb it.  Göring apparently preferred lots of little short-range bombers to fewer and larger long-range bombers.  It also made much of the Germans’ decision to divert part of its Eastern Front ground forces to Italy leaving them under-supplied and outnumbered in Operation Citadel.  The near-impossibility of maintaining distant supply lines, despite Göring’s assurances that he could make up for it, have been discussed to death.

All-in-all, I think the reasons are so many that in retrospect it would have taken a near-miraculous perfect storm of events for Gemany to have emerged victorious.

Pink Flyod is what I grew up on in Junior and Senior High…can’t say anything else that would get me in trouble… :wink:

I love Oasis’s first US album.  Wonderwall, Morning Glory, and Champagne Supernova are songs I can use to reference every major event in 1995-6.

Mayonnaise, what else would the French use on the fries?  Well not just the French.  I suppose it is not less strange than using vinegar with your fries, malt vinegar if you can get it!

@wittman:

My friend and I play while drinking

I like the way you phrased that, rather than saying “My friend and I drink while playing”.  It sort of implies that Axis & Allies is an accompanying activity which makes the primary activity of drinking more fun.  There’s probably a potential marketing concept there for the folks at WotC.

@nutbar:

@cminke:

buffalo bills!!!

I’m a Bills fan because of C.J. Spiller who was a Clemson player and I’m a diehard Clemson fan

do you remember the days of Doug Fluty?

If you go into tactics, then the main reason for the weaker performance of the Me 109 probably was the weak bombers of the germans. I mean, the only planes capable of defending the He 111 or -even worse- Ju 78 was not the bombers themselves but their escorts. So, if the germans had paid more attention to heavy bombers (something that Göring fortunately did not understand), these could have take care for themselves longer and the escorts would have had time to watch their own back also.

I would agree with you F_alk, the Germans just followed different trains of thoughts with the British regarding the use of bombers after WWI. However, my point still stands, I have yet to see stats heavily favoring the 109 over the Spit. If you want to compare the Spit MK II vs the Bf-109 (the types that were used during the BoB), the MK II had speed and maneuverability over the 109 (though the 109 could outclimb the Spit).

As this has been posted with the authors permission, i guess that he will have a look at the forum to see how we react.

@El:

Aftermath of War: A Lesson from History
–------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Nick Robertson

…

On May 28, 1453, two of the greatest armies in the world ended an epic 52-day battle on the border of Europe and Asia. On one side the 100,000-man army of Sultan Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire and the forces of Islam were attempting to capture one of the world’s greatest cities — Constantinople (now Istanbul). On the other side, behind the supposedly impenetrable walls of the city, were the defensive forces of the west — the 10,000 man force led by Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI.

Well, i think the description here is over-exaggerated. Byzantine was kind of a “vassal” of the Ottomans for about 200 years at that stage. Its empire was the city. The city was historically and culturally great, but the number of citizens has been declining, from plague sweeping over it (AFAIR twice), from being raided by Venetians (who then imposed the “Latin Empire” and looted it thoroughly), and other internal struggles.
The forces of the “west” never were forces of west, they were forces of the east: non-catholic, greek instead of latin etc.

Dragases. The battle for Constantinople is considered one of the greatest and most important confrontations in history.

Constantinople was one of the most vital possessions of the Christian world. The city was the capital of the East Roman — or Byzantine — Empire ever since the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great selected it as his new capital in 324 AD. Constantinople was the gateway between Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam.

It was vital as a symbol, and still had some meaning for trade, though Genoa and Venice were more important, using the Mediterranean Sea for trade (while Constntinople was important for land trade).

Though, Constantinople was a “buffer” between teh Latin Christianity and Islam. As long as it stood, the westerners cared not too much (except in the Reconquista (sp?)). After it fell, Islam found its way to the borders with the west.

The city rested by the Bosporus, a watery straight which was the most important artery of international trade. Trade ships from Venice, Genoa, England, France, and much of Europe traveled past Constantinople to the eastern Black Sea ports which connected the European continent to the major trade centers of India and China. The wealth that traveled on this route built the economic power of the Western world — a 15th century version of today’s globalization of trade.

The main shipping trade routes did not go through Constantinople anymore. It once was important for the city, true, but in 1450 it already had changed. It still had importance in the trade with the Black Sea (and thus, with part of the Rus), but it did not control the trade routes, as it did a few hundred years ago. The black eastern sea ports were not important for the trade with India/China after the Varangians had been defeated there, that trade went through Arabia.

As the battle for Constantinople began, the Ottomans unleashed man’s newest weapon, artillery, to breach the city’s massive walls. Shortly after the shocking breakthrough, the Ottomans accomplished what had been deemed impossible for over a millennium — the fall of Constantinople. There was horror and disbelief as the forces of Islam routed the Western army. Panic swept across Europe. The vital trade routes to the East were now under enemy control, and an alien army with strange beliefs threatened to march through Europe.

The “shocking breakthtough” was a small unguarded unclosed door called “Kerkaporta” or “Kerkoporta”. “alien army with strange beliefs”, well this is after the Crusades and Reconquista, the Europeans probably though they knew what would come.
A very emotional writing style all the way up to now, something that i feel inappropiate here.

Was this the end of the Western world? Quite the opposite. What seemed at the moment a knockout punch to Europe ended up causing great change. It literally forced the discovery of a new world.

the conclusion “forced” is discussable: “helped” would be better IMHO.

Constantinople had been Europe’s center for intellectual studies for centuries.

For centuries long past, when it finally fell. It was non-catholic, looted by catholics. Even then, it still had amassed a lot of historic valuable scripts and other things. Most that we know of the Ancient Greek had been saved by them. So, it was not hte center for studies, but a main archive, which the west didn’t care about to visit or use for its own good.

…Many who lived inside the city’s walls devoted their lives to studying and preserving history’s classical past. When the Ottomans conquered the city, many of these intellectuals fled to Italy. This flight from war was directly responsible for the acceleration of one of the most important periods in Europe’s history, the Renaissance.

Correct.

Classic ideas, locked inside the walls of Constantinople for centuries, broke free and spread out across Europe. Isolated city-states began to gradually dissolve. For the first time in history, nation states — like Spain and Portugal — emerged. The Renaissance brought Europe into an age of light after an age of darkness.

Not fully correct: Portugal and Spain (that is Catille and Aragon) existed for about 100 years by then. The Renaissance did not happen in nation states, but in the Italian city states.
I would not support this way of concluding that tghe fall of Byzantine lead to the rise of nation states. Not without further explanation that is.

Since Constantinople’s fall blocked overland trade routes to the spice markets of South and East Asia, the emerging nation states needed new routes to the riches of the East. The Great Age of Exploration began. Brave men such as Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and Magellan circumnavigated the globe to find new routes across vast, unknown oceans. In the process they discovered the world — and many of its secrets, treasures and mysteries.

Notice that above it’s “trade ships”, why Constantinople is important, here it is overland trade routes. Again, memerging nation states are mentioned, which is discussable. The rest is correct to my knowledge.

…

i skipped the rest of that discussion, my only comment: far stretched :)
The only thing in common is the loss of a war. The important (for the west) fled of intellectuals and access to old sources and the change to the commerce system are not present in Iraq.