Favorite WW2 Fighter Plane

For me, it would depend on if I was the pilot, or the air marshall…

Pilot - BF109. The later spits outperformed the later bf’s, but 1940, in a straight dogfight, the 109.

BUT…
If I was looking at it and commanding at the high level, the hurricane. Easy to fix, easy to produce, fast turn around for reload/refuel, easier to train on, fighting over your own territory with a full tank. Yep - the hurricane.

Saints and Soldiers is really good equipment-wise, the movie itself is mediocre. It’s on Amazon prime instant video. It’s set in the opening days of the battle of the bulge. The only thing I noticed is that the Germans who shoot 70-plus American POW’s at Malmedy are regular Wehrmacht and not SS, but whatever.

@EricTheGreat12:

Although no one in my family fought in the Second World War, my great grandfather was in the Canadian Army during the First World War.

He was a messanger, and unfortunately he got gassed up pretty badly. I don’t remember how long he was in the war, but I do remember records saying that he fought in the battle of Passendale. He later got brought back to Canada after he got shot in the leg   :-(

My grandmother tells me that he never talked about the war; he never even kept any part of his uniform. But at least my grandmother kept his medals and she still has a photo of him in his military uniform :-D

I wished I had asked more questions to my relatives.
I believe one serviced Halifaxs in India though on reflection
I was unaware whether they were based there, others served
in the Merchant navy or in the Fire service etc.

One account I recently read about the gassing in WW1 was
a doctor treating two patients, the Chlorine gas was so strong
on them that he left the room to be sick.

The Italian ones are new to me, only because they were never discussed.  However there are plenty of records of the ones in action during the Phillipines and South Pacific Campaigns (JFK, etc.) which gave them plenty of heroic press.

ME 262

The recent Lybian Civil War has been one of the more interresting post WWII conflicts.

It is amazing how much resources Hitler put into the defense of the British owned Channel Islands. He demanded between 10 to 25% of all Atlantic Wall material get dedicated to these Islands.

Lucky for us, Hitler was really dumb and was a terrible commander. He crippled his air force, threw away an army (6th), wasted his Kriegsmarine,he made Normandy an allied victory.
I believe that Germany would have won if they had been a competent military mind as head of state, or even if Hitler just didn’t interfere in military decision.

KurtGodel7, very good post, thank you.

I’m still not convinced however, I’ll reply to a few of your points below further:

Germany desperately needed the Russian oil by 1943 (as well as Russian grain which I will discuss further below).  That they failed to take the Caucasus during this time was their last realistic chance at victory, IMO.  However, had they taken the oil wells, but with the Russians destroying them in the process as was quite likely, would the Germans be able to restore the flow of oil in sufficient time? It might take months, even years to rebuild the necessary infrastructure in the best of circumstances, let alone during a brutal war.  The German industry was already hard pressed to supply the necessary armaments and did not have a great deal of experience with oil industry in the first place.  I think they would not have been able to do this.

The same idea goes for the chromium, vanadium, etc., though this would be less difficult for the Germans to accomplish (or mitigate as you also suggest) than the oil problem.

While Germany might have been able to supply an equivalent amount of money, material and engineers to work on their atomic program, there simply were much fewer top nuclear physicists in all Europe than existed in the US.  Consequently, it would have probably cost more and taken longer than the US program for this reason alone.  I have no doubt they could have eventually done it, but I don’t see how they develop nuclear weapons before the allies developed a delivery system that could get through their defenses.

The German V-2 was a technological marvel, but other than size, no more advanced than the rockets being built by Dr. Goddard.  After the war, when Dr. Goddard was able to examine a captured V-2, he was convinced the Germans had stolen his work.  And the Germans might have because most of his designs were on file in the US patent office, available for public viewing (which the Germans did prior to the war).  I think had the Americans wanted to (and Dr. Goddard certainly did) they could have built a superior rocket in a couple months and have it mass-produced in six.  As the A-bombs designs at that time were quite heavy, it might have taken longer than that to build a nuclear capable rocket…but how much longer?

Alternatively, the Allies could have either copied the German jets to enable a delivery system, or devise other means (boats/submarines? special ops?) to deliver these weapons.

In addition, I consider the German attack on Russia to be about food as well as oil  The Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe, and helped the Germans tremendously in 1943.  But food was scarce in 1944 and onward.  Partly this was due to Russian recovery of territory.  But it was also because the Ukraine was normally not sufficient by itself to feed Germany (the year of the capture of Ukraine by the Germans was one of the best years for Ukrainian agriculture as the weather was nearly perfect).  Of course, the poor treatment of the Ukrainians by the Germans did not lend itself to helping this problem either. In order to assure itself of adequate food, I think the Caucasus (the next logical food source) was needed.