Adolf Hitler's 'lost fleet' found in Black Sea

@RJL518:

The real question to be asked is how would a battle have gone if the Missouri and Iowa took on the Super-Battleships Yamato and Musashi.  
As Samuel Eliot Morison, author of the History of US Naval Operations in World War II, once said…“What a brawl that would have been!”
Even though the Yamato and Musashi had 18.1 inch guns compared to the 16 inch of the Iowa class, the Iowas were still faster and still had better range.  
But who knows.  
IMO it would have depended on the tactics and strategy of the captains in a great battle at that time.

And it was a match-up that nearly happened.  Yamato and two of the Iowa-class battleships, Iowa and New Jersey, missed each other by only a few hours in the area of the San Bernadino Straight during the closing stages of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.  And if Musashi hadn’d been sunk the previous day, there would have been the potential for a two-on-two fight.  I’d have given a lot to get tickets to watch a slugging match like that.

One interesting technical difference is that even though the belt armour of the Yamatos was thicker than that of the Iowas, its performance might not have been better by comparison.  Japanese industry wasn’t capable of producing 16-inch armour as a single block, so the Yamato belt armour was in two layers rather than monolithic, which reduced its effectiveness.  Also, the Class-A armour components of the Iowa’s defenses were more advanced than the grade of armour used on the Yamatos, and thickness-for-thickness had better resistance to penetration.  On the offensive side, the 16-inch AP shells fired by the Iowas were heavyweight designs, with a greater weight relative to their diameter than the 18.1-inch AP shells fired by the Yamatos (2,700 lb vs. 3,219 lbs), and they were fired at nearly the same muzzle velocity (2,500 ft/s vs. 2,600 ft/s) because the Iowa guns had longer barrels relative to their bore (50 calibers vs. 45 calibers).

I enjoyed it and it has caused me to reevaluate my opinion of Lee.
Have now elevated him  above genius for his thinking how best to win the war and see how he envisaged the South’s only real chance for victory. I always thought him wrong to refuse to go West when asked, but see how necessary he was in the plan of things.
You know I hold the Western defeats dear and wish a Bragg replacement had been found earlier, only acknowledge now it could not be Lee.
My search for the answer goes on.
I know the whole Confederate heirachy( and modern military thinking)would have baulked at the idea of promoting someone two ranks(and not West Point), but how would the army have fared with Cleburne at the helm?
I know it is not a credible choice as he had two immediate superiors in the army(though Hardee refused) as well as two unused Full Generals outside of it.
I would like to read about Hardee and fathom why he could not see himself in the role. He did have the Army’s confidence. He is also another reason Cleburne could never have had the Army, having always been his superior.

@legion3:

Naturally though, I voted for the USSR,  :wink: the opportunity to knock them out of the war or at least to take and hold Moscow, a major road, rail and communication hub with no equal in the Soviet Union, was available in the early fall of 41 had the Germans not been diverted and thus delayed in the turn south into the Ukraine. Another Hitler directive.

I take a few issues with this, It is VERY common to overestimate the value of moscow. Because moscow was such a hub, it would be very easy to link the railroads behind moscow, they are not that far apart. The russians built ALOT of railroad in WW2, and this would have been a very small challenge for them. They could probably have made Gorky their new capitol. losing moscow would not have been the end of russia by far.

As long as the russian army is alive and well supplied, russians would win this showdown. What the hitler directive did was to divert the panzers south, to help with the capture of kiev, What this move did was to encircle 700 000 russian soliders and to hasten the capture of Kryvbas and Krivoy Rog, which where the main prodcution of russian steel, dealing another devestating blow to the russian economy. This move severy reduced the resuplyment of the red army and encircled alot of the russian prewar division. This means that the 700k soliders they encircled was among the best equipped and best trained russian divisions. I could very easily argue that if the germans had gone for moscow instead, then these divisions and the increased russian production could have made the summeroffensive of 42 impossible, and the russian winter counterattacks in the winter of 41/42 that much more devestating. It was already devestating because of the of the 18 siberian divisions (guessing about 500K soliders). If you double the number of trained soliders, then the germans would probably have been lucky to even hold moscow, and if they tried, a stalingrad situation might have developed.

Imperious Leader nailed the last comment.

Japan entered the War with the West with 51 Army Divisions; however 27 where already in use in China. Thirteen of the remaining divisions were facing the Red Army. Japan was willing to head to war with the Allies with ten to eleven availiable divisions!

Japan would quickly start recruiting from it’s 73 million population, but Japan kept the same habit of attacking the Allies with smaller forces.

@Raunchy:

At least 749 U.S. sailors and soldiers would be dead by dawn.
Code-named Exercise Tiger, the ill-fated D-Day dry run was at the time America’s costliest incident of the war (only Pearl Harbor was worse).

:roll:sigh, people just dont know anything about history

But very interesting article, I dont blame you for the  author being an imbecile

I haven’t gotten to “Day of Battle” yet, I am just finishing up “An Army at Dawn.”  With the template he uses, he gathers a lot of personal journal entries and witness accounts. So I think it would be fair to say that there will be a high probability that he will shed some light on Italian battle plans he may have had.  I know he goes in depth about Operation Husky which would be a given. Even if there is not that much substantial info about that specific topic, I would still suggest buying and reading the books.  Its probably one of the best historical war narratives I have ever read.

@Audacity:

Very interesting.  Can you direct us to published material about this?

I certainly can. My best source is “THE SS, Hitlers Instrument of Terror” by Gordon Williams. It was actually Himmlers idea to incorporate Muslims into SS units as an experiment. They used their new power to quickly murder “religious infidels” including Jews and were eventually given only police authority because of their lack of obediance to SS order. They had their own special collar tabs but were never issued an SS Honour cuff on the sleeve. Himmler had these units engaged in the Balkans, around Greece and a few other minor battles. They were actually fought VERY poorly and were taken off the front lines. For the rest of the war, the units that weren’t disbanded were used for anit-partisan activities and were “attached” to another SS unit but did not have the title SS.

It was a brief experiment that elated Himmler. Hitler has little to do with it as far as I know.

PS – thanks for all the Karma while I’ve been out sick for the last month. You guys rock.

That’s pretty sweet,I’m going to Russia to see about digging up a T34 and bringing it home. :wink: