Load and & Lock vs Lock and Load

There is an interesting report by the US Office of Naval Intelligence on the Battle of the River Plate, with quite a few photos and ship damage reports.  It can be found here, at the Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library, and downloaded for free.

http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org

As for a battle between the Admiral Scheer and a Baltimore–class cruiser, I would bet on the Baltimore-class ship, unless the Scheer got some early lucky hits on gun turrets, as the Spee did on the HMS Exeter.  The USS Salt Lake City, one of our two oldest heavy cruisers in World War 2, with an older gunfire control system than the Baltimores, was able to score hits on the IJN Nachi at ranges in excess of 21,000 yards.  The following comment from the ONI report applies to the Spee’s gunnery.

German shooting was described as quite good, initially, but the accuracy fell off rapidly.
(a) 11-inch opened with two 3-gun salvos, very close and on in deflection.
(b) 5.9-inch also fired at Exeter; no definite hits determined, but many splinters came aboard.

Looking for the most supreme medal/order of each country? Or the most “WW2-like” medal/order of that country? Or just any typical bravery medal of each country?

Japan should be the Order of the Golden kite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Golden_Kite

UK the Victoria Cross: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Cross Personally I tink the DSO it looks better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguished_Service_Order

UK in India, maybe Indian order of merit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Order_of_Merit

Italy could the medal for military valor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Military_Valor

I haven’t had the pleasure of playing Europe 1940 yet, but I have no contempt for the French during the conflict. I would say there were significant reasons to the Third Republic’s ultimate downfall, one of the which was overall poor Allied strategy, which including the misusing of tank divisions and worst of all, not mounting a meaningful offensive into Germany in the opening days of the war.

As for the Soviet Union, which like the French, I have no contempt for, there were many reasons for its initial failure, the purges are one, whilst devastating they alone were not the cause of Soviet ineffectiveness. The main cause was Stalin himself, who was planning an offensive war sometime in 1942, after he thought Hitler would crush England. He made no preparations for defense, thinking that the Germans would never again fight on two fronts as they did over twenty years ago. Obviously, he was wrong. The man went as far to dismiss intelligence reports, which while varied in dates of attacks, came in like a torrent, from multiple sources.

The second was the nature of Red Army’s training and discipline coupled with the strategical and logistical support were in shambles during the first opening weeks on the Eastern Front.

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.  :-)

a few days after i saw this i saw an article in the news about how it was used to intimidate Russia from creating communist puppet governments in the region

Nice. That’s really interesting

Wierdly Norway did provide a safe hiding spot for the Triptz and other ships to hide for a few years  :-D

The Winter War is an amazing tale of bravery on the Finns’ part.