M-26 vs JSIII

@abworsham4

Unfortunately, the powers of both sides are not comparable to any of the games, so we can’t just play it out with side switching house rules (and other stuff too, but I’m just saying a new setup will need to be designed). The Soviets were even less modernised than in 1941. The real question is Germany. If Germany fights with the Soviets, (depends on what Hitler’s short term plan is) the outcome is uncertain, especially with Italy’s allegiance. It Germany fights against the Soviets, the Soviets would probably fall, especially if Japan can be convinced to jump into the war.

@abworsham4

Any part of the Missouri that gets hit is going to get serious damage, as long as Gustav’s shell is not launched at less than half of the maximumcrange.

Germany had essentially two options here. 1) Capture the city quickly, before the defenses could be built up. 2) Capture it via siege.

I don’t think that creating an urban combat situation, in which Germany attempted to capture the city street by street, would have been viable. In typical combat situations German soldiers had a 3:1 or 4:1 advantage in combat effectiveness over their Soviet counterparts. But in urban, street-to-street fighting the ratio was about 1:1. Germany could not afford anything even remotely approaching that 1:1 ratio, which is why something other than street-to-street fighting was necessary.

Von Manstein wrote that during the Barbarossa operation of '41 there had been a perfectly good opportunity to take Leningrad. But that this was wasted, allowing the Soviets to fortify it.

The other option would have been to do a better job of putting it under siege. This would have entailed tightening the cordon around the city, preventing just about anything from making it through. I think there was a case when Germany attempted exactly that. However, at the same time the Soviets were attempting to break the siege, so each side’s offensive encountered the other’s. From a tactical view there may have been more Germany could have done. But I think the real problem was strategic: the Soviet Union had too much military strength. A discussion on how to address that problem is probably outside the scope of this thread.

I don’t get what’s meant…

-AW talks about the Battleship Howe.
-Then IL says Howe was a Battleship like Hood.
-Then CWO points out the hood was a battlecruiser.

No one is saying the Howe was a battlecruiser?  And everyone agrees it was a battleship.  So what’s the point of the whole conversation? lol

Germany wins this matchup.

The IIIJ has a 50mm L60. I would take that against the Valentine any day.
Might need to hit it in flank, but with the extra 10MPH I would hope I could manoeuvre around it, if my first shell(unluckily) bounced off the frontal armour.
Its puny 2 Pounder would not bother me much I suspect.

I don’t know much about the 25-pounder, but as regards the famed German 88: it was excellent in both its original role as an anti-aircraft weapon and in its later additional role as an anti-tank gun, but I’m not sure how well it would work as “traditional artillery”.  Anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft guns are both intended to work as direct-fire weapons, which basically means shooting in a straight line at a target you can see (at virtually no elevation for an anti-tank gun and at a very high elevation for an anti-aircraft gun).  The 88’s high muzzle velocity was well suited to both jobs.  Field artillery and divisional heavy artillery, on the other hand, are often called upon to deliver indirect fire: plunging fire against targets which can’t be seen (a classic example being WWI artillery barrages).  This requires lower muzzle velocity and different sighting mechanisms than the 88 had.

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.  :-)

really interesting thanks. :-)