The Ultimate Battle of Impractical Vehicles

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The Battle of Britain….

@aequitas-et-veritas

Count me in with my Sturmtiger! That will help destroying any positions like our own Seelow Heights. I’m sure our accompanying infantry (all in half tracks) will like me in urban warfare. An associate of mine has chosen a Tiger 2. So much power and strength! We can hardly lose with king.

As for the original question, I would choose a German tank that was sent to Norway after the invasion, and stayed there for the whole war. I would destroy it to make it look like the resistance destroyed it, and then I would hide and make a new life in the US or UK.

CWOMarc,

I grew up watching war movies with my Dad and now have a decent colection on DVD, maybe 250+.

Although he(my Dad) is a BIG “Patton” fan, and that’s his all-time favorite war movie, he always said “Battleground” was the best for showing how it really was.

He still phones me whenever either Patton, or Battleground come on TV. I’ve made sure he has those and several others to watch whenever he wants to.

Thanks for your suggestions.

“Tall Paul”

@Tall-Paul Just how many books?

The most underrated naval commander was Raymond Spruance, who assumed command at the Battle of Midway following the damage to the Yorktown, and commanded at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June of 1944.  Overshadowed by Halsey, he never would have fallen for the Japanese carrier lure at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

As for underrated battles, probably the most decisive underrated battle was fought prior to WW2 starting, between the Japanese and the Russians at Nomohan/Khalkin-Gol on the northeastern border of Manchuria.  The Japanese decided after their shattering defeat by the Russians that it would be safer to attack south for resources to sustain the China war than to attack the Soviet Union.

The other would be the campaign to isolate Rabaul from August of 1942 through February of 1944, which aside from costing the Japanese heavily in irreplaceable warships and transports, also essentially destroyed their carrier air power far more thoroughly than the losses at Midway.

Lastly for simple unbelievable guts and determination, the low-level attack by B-24 Liberators on the Ploesti oil refineries on August 1, 1943.

I know you didn’t ask me but, If I could have set up a rondezvous with a supply ship, with food, fuel and ammo (although I am pretty sure the GS had plenty even after the fight) and had enough food and fuel to make that rondevous then I might have risked making a run for it, at night, trying to avoid a general fight. Get past the cruisers, try to out run them and lose them if possible. But it would have been difficult and all the cruisers had to do was shadow. German (or even Spanish)  ports were awfully far away. And eventually something bigger would show up if I couldn’t lose them.

If I could not arrange the resupply then no, it would have been a waste to even try
and ship’s captains rarely make suicide charges…some do but not most. A ship would have to have a decent shot at making some friendly port.

And the River Plate while wide at its mouth and looks very big in maps/photos (Montivedio is on the big entrence) is not a very manueverable body of water, (we were in port at Buenos Aires once) you would be forced to stay in the channel for quite some distance and given how the Brits fight they probably would have violated the soverignty and fired on the ship in the channel. Who knows?

I spent 6 years at sea and any sailor with an ounce of salt learns to respect the power and danger of the seas. Sailors have two enemies, the other guy on the other ship and the ocean. Get beaten by one and you might not (if they don’t pick you up) survive the other.

German ships did elude the British Radar many times during the war, not sure if any of these ships had it.

You know the more I think about it making a run was probably, given the cirumstances, not a good idea.

:-o
  Barbarossa was started too late to get the job done by the onset of winter, but they had to wait for the rains to let up and the dirt roads to dry out anyway. that pretty well covers the "too damned BIG " part of the problem.
  :roll: