The Japanese superbattleship YAMATO…most powerful surface warship ever put to sea before the introduction of the Nimitz class aircraft carriers…

To me…J2 is the best time to attack…oh and we just played a game where the UK player decided to attack Japan on turn 1!!!.  now with that happening and the US didnt enter the war…Japan kicked some serious booty all through Asia…needless to say…Japan won this one…i played Japan by the way…and yes i did tell the Uk player what he was about to do…he didnt listen…pity :-(

@Captain:

@RJL518:

The Japanese superbattleship YAMATO…most powerful surface warship ever put to sea before the introduction of the Nimitz class aircraft carriers…

Not a fan of the Yamoto personally as it was not the right weapon for that war. Japan would have been much better putting all those resources into a fleet carrier or two.

Very true Captain…but the Japanese really didnt know that yet when the war was just starting…but i do agree with that they could have built a two Shokaku class carriers for the price of one Yamato…but the Yamato was the most beautifull ship i have ever seen in ww2.  A floating battlefortress…

Reprint of this game due out in November.

https://www.amazon.com/Avalon-Hill-Allies-Anniversary-Strategy/dp/B0734BWNV9/ref=pd_rhf_dp_s_cp_39?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B0734BWNV9&pd_rd_r=HWQ8W7QG8FAR8RE04H7J&pd_rd_w=QRTRp&pd_rd_wg=0OXeN&psc=1&refRID=HWQ8W7QG8FAR8RE04H7J

Operation Anthropoid was the code name for the assassination of Schutzstaffel (SS)-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office, RSHA), the combined security services of Nazi Germany, and acting Reichsprotektor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.[1] The operation was carried out in Prague on 27 May 1942 after having been prepared by the British Special Operations Executive with the approval of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile. Wounded in the attack, Heydrich died of his injuries on 4 June 1942. His death led to a wave of merciless reprisals by German SS troops, including the destruction of villages and the killing of civilians. Anthropoid was the only successful assassination of a senior Nazi leader during World War II.

Heydrich was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and an important figure in the rise of Adolf Hitler; as a Nazi potentate, he was given overall charge of the so-called Final Solution (Holocaust) of the Jews in Europe. Despite the risks, the Czechoslovaks decided to undertake the operation to help confer legitimacy on Edvard Beneš’s government-in-exile in London, as well as for retribution against Heydrich’s harsh rule.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Anthropoid

Just want to hear your thoughts on a military operation designed to kill only one man.  Even if that man was SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SS-RSHA!

The Second Battle of Kharkov was an Axis counter-offensive in the region around Kharkov (now Kharkiv)[8] against the Red Army Izium bridgehead offensive conducted 12–28 May 1942, on the Eastern Front during World War II. Its objective was to eliminate the Izium bridgehead over Seversky Donets or the “Barvenkovo bulge” (Russian: Барвенковский выступ) which was one of the Soviet offensive’s staging areas. After a winter counter-offensive that drove German troops away from Moscow and also depleted the Red Army’s reserves, the Kharkov offensive was a new Soviet attempt to expand upon their strategic initiative, although it failed to secure a significant element of surprise.

On 12 May 1942, Soviet forces under the command of Marshal Semyon Timoshenko launched an offensive against the German 6th Army from a salient established during the winter counter-offensive. After initial promising signs, the offensive was stopped by German counterattacks. Critical errors by several staff officers and by Joseph Stalin, who failed to accurately estimate the 6th Army’s potential and overestimated their own newly trained forces, led to a German pincer attack which cut off advancing Soviet troops from the rest of the front. The operation caused almost 300,000 Soviet casualties compared to just 20,000 for the Germans and their allies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Kharkov

Was Stalin right to order this operation against oncoming German forces on the Eastern front?

The Battle of the Coral Sea fought from 4–8 May 1942, was a major naval battle between the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and naval and air forces from the United States and Australia, taking place in the Pacific Theater of World War II. The battle is historically significant as the first action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other, as well as the first in which neither side’s ships sighted or fired directly upon the other.

In an attempt to strengthen its defensive position in the South Pacific, Japan decided to invade and occupy Port Moresby (in New Guinea) and Tulagi (in the southeastern Solomon Islands). The plan to accomplish this was called Operation MO, and involved several major units of Japan’s Combined Fleet. These included two fleet carriers and a light carrier to provide air cover for the invasion forces. It was under the overall command of Japanese Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue.

The U.S. learned of the Japanese plan through signals intelligence, and sent two United States Navy carrier task forces and a joint Australian-American cruiser force to oppose the offensive. These were under the overall command of American Admiral Frank J. Fletcher.

On 3–4 May, Japanese forces successfully invaded and occupied Tulagi, although several of their supporting warships were sunk or damaged in surprise attacks by aircraft from the U.S. fleet carrier Yorktown. Now aware of the presence of U.S. carriers in the area, the Japanese fleet carriers advanced towards the Coral Sea with the intention of locating and destroying the Allied naval forces. Beginning on 7 May, the carrier forces from the two sides engaged in airstrikes over two consecutive days. On the first day, the U.S. sank the Japanese light carrier Shōhō; meanwhile, the Japanese sank a U.S. destroyer and heavily damaged a fleet oiler (which was later scuttled). The next day, the Japanese fleet carrier Shōkaku was heavily damaged, the U.S. fleet carrier Lexington critically damaged (and later scuttled), and Yorktown damaged. With both sides having suffered heavy losses in aircraft and carriers damaged or sunk, the two forces disengaged and retired from the battle area. Because of the loss of carrier air cover, Inoue recalled the Port Moresby invasion fleet, intending to try again later.

Although a tactical victory for the Japanese in terms of ships sunk, the battle would prove to be a strategic victory for the Allies for several reasons. The battle marked the first time since the start of the war that a major Japanese advance had been checked by the Allies. More importantly, the Japanese fleet carriers Shōkaku and Zuikaku – the former damaged and the latter with a depleted aircraft complement – were unable to participate in the Battle of Midway (the following month) while Yorktown did participate, ensuring a rough parity in aircraft between the two adversaries and contributing significantly to the U.S. victory in that battle. The severe losses in carriers at Midway prevented the Japanese from reattempting to invade Port Moresby from the ocean and helped prompt their ill-fated land offensive over the Kokoda trail. Two months later, the Allies took advantage of Japan’s resulting strategic vulnerability in the South Pacific and launched the Guadalcanal Campaign; this, along with the New Guinea Campaign, eventually broke Japanese defenses in the South Pacific and was a significant contributing factor to Japan’s ultimate defeat in World War II.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Coral_Sea

In the terms of the Pacific War, how did this battle change the shape of the campaign before the battle of Midway?
How do you guys think Midway would have went if the Japanese carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku were present at the battle alongside the other carriers?
Neither side saw each other during this battle and yet it happened.
Pretty much declared a draw, what do you guys think?

The Bataan Death March (Filipino: Martsa ng Kamatayan sa Bataan; Japanese: バターン死の行進, Hepburn: Batān Shi no Kōshin) was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war from Saisaih Point, Bagac, Bataan and Mariveles to Camp O’Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, via San Fernando, Pampanga, where the prisoners were loaded onto trains. The transfer began on April 9, 1942, after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II. The total distance marched from Mariveles to San Fernando and from the Capas Train Station to Camp O’Donnell is variously reported by differing sources as between 60 mi (97 km) and 69.6 mi (112.0 km). Differing sources also report widely differing prisoner of war casualties prior to reaching Camp O’Donnell: from 5,000 to 18,000 Filipino deaths and 500 to 650 American deaths during the march. The march was characterized by severe physical abuse and wanton killings, and was later judged by an Allied military commission to be a Japanese war crime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Death_March

Considered a war crime, the Bataan Death March was a dark day in the US Army’s history as well as a black page of World War II.
Do you guys believe that this WAS truly a war crime or not?
Do you guys think that it compares to Germany’s war crimes in the European Theater?
I know that this is a touchy subject, but im looking for opinions and objectivity.

The Doolittle Raid, also known as the Tokyo Raid, on Saturday, April 18, 1942, was an air raid by the United States of America on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on the island of Honshu during World War II, the first air strike to strike the Japanese Home Islands. It demonstrated that Japan itself was vulnerable to American air attack, served as retaliation for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941, and provided an important boost to American morale. The raid was planned and led by Lieutenant Colonel James “Jimmy” Doolittle of the United States Army Air Forces.

Sixteen B-25B Mitchell medium bombers were launched without fighter escort from the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8) deep in the Western Pacific Ocean, each with a crew of five men. The plan called for them to bomb military targets in Japan, and to continue westward to land in China—landing a medium bomber on Hornet was impossible. Fifteen aircraft reached China, but all crashed, while the 16th landed at Vladivostok in the Soviet Union. All but three of the 80 crew members initially survived the mission. Eight airmen were captured by the Japanese Army in China; three of those were later executed. The B-25 that landed in the Soviet Union was confiscated and its crew interned for more than a year. Fourteen complete crews, except for one crewman who was killed in action, returned either to the United States or to American forces.[1][2]

After the raid, the Japanese Imperial Army conducted a massive sweep through the eastern coastal provinces of China, in an operation now known as the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign, searching for the surviving American airmen and inflicting retribution on the Chinese who aided them, in an effort to prevent this part of China from being used again for an attack on Japan.

The raid caused negligible material damage to Japan, but it achieved its goal of raising American morale and casting doubt in Japan on the ability of its military leaders to defend their home islands. It also contributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s decision to attack Midway Island in the Central Pacific—an attack that turned into a decisive strategic defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) by the U.S. Navy in the Battle of Midway. Doolittle, who initially believed that the loss of all his aircraft would lead to his court-martial, received the Medal of Honor and was promoted two steps to brigadier general.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid

The 75th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid. 
Maybe the biggest morale booster that the USA could have ever had at this stage of the Pacific War.
It totally changed and upgraded American morale and gave the Japanese something to be concerned about from here on in.
Even though the actual attack did little, do you guys think that it really did a lot?

i would like to see a Leyte Gulf movie…the greatest naval engagement of world war ii and maybe all of history and there is not a single film on the subject

Operation Outward was the name given to the British World War II program to attack Germany by means of free-flying balloons. It made use of cheap, simple balloons filled with hydrogen. They carried either a trailing steel wire intended to damage high voltage power lines by producing a short circuit, or incendiary devices that were intended to start fires in fields, forests and heathland.

A total of 99,142 Outward balloons were launched; about half carried incendiaries and half carried trailing wires.

Compared to Japan’s better known fire balloons, Outward balloons were crude. They had to travel a much shorter distance so they flew at a lower altitude – 16,000 feet (4,900 m), compared with 38,000 feet (12,000 m) – and had only a simple mechanism to regulate altitude by means of dropping ballast or venting lifting gas. This meant the balloons were simple to mass-produce and only cost 35 shillings each (approximately equivalent to £86 in 2017).

The free flying balloon attacks were highly successful. Although difficult to assess exactly, they had an economic impact on Germany far in excess of the cost to the British government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward

I found this interesting little tidbit of World War II information during this time.  A little different IMO.
What do you guys think?

The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in camps in the interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who lived on the Pacific coast. Sixty-two percent of the internees were United States citizens. These actions were ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt shortly after Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

Japanese Americans were incarcerated based on local population concentrations and regional politics. More than 110,000 Japanese Americans, who mostly lived on the West Coast, were forced into interior camps, but in Hawaii, where the 150,000-plus Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the population, 1,200 to 1,800 were interned. The internment is considered to have resulted more from racism than from any security risk posed by Japanese Americans, as those who were as little as 1/16 Japanese and orphaned infants with “one drop of Japanese blood” could be placed in internment camps.

Roosevelt authorized the deportation and incarceration with Executive Order 9066, issued February 19, 1942, which allowed regional military commanders to designate “military areas” from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire West Coast, including all of California and much of Oregon, Washington and Arizona, except for those in government camps. Approximately 5,000 Japanese Americans voluntarily relocated outside the exclusion zone before March 1942, and some 5,500 community leaders arrested after the Pearl Harbor attack were already in custody. But, the majority of nearly 130,000 mainland Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated from their West Coast homes during the spring of 1942.

The United States Census Bureau assisted the internment efforts by providing confidential neighborhood information on Japanese Americans. The Bureau denied its role for decades, but this was finally documented in 2007. In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the removal by ruling against Fred Korematsu’s appeal for violating an exclusion order. The Court limited its decision to the validity of the exclusion orders, avoiding the issue of the incarceration of U.S. citizens with no due process.

In 1980, under mounting pressure from the Japanese American Citizens League and redress organizations, President Jimmy Carter opened an investigation to determine whether the decision to put Japanese Americans into internment camps had been justified by the government. He appointed the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to investigate the camps. The Commission’s report, titled Personal Justice Denied, found little evidence of Japanese disloyalty at the time and, concluding the incarceration had been the product of racism, recommended that the government pay reparations to the survivors. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Civil Liberties Act, which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government and authorized a payment of $20,000 (equivalent to $40,500.84 in 2016) to each individual camp survivor. The legislation admitted that government actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion (equivalent to $3,240,067,530 in 2016) in reparations to 82,219 Japanese Americans who had been interned and their heirs.

Of 127,000 Japanese Americans living in the continental United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 112,000 resided on the West Coast. About 80,000 were nisei (literal translation: “second generation”; American-born Japanese with U.S. citizenship) and sansei (“third generation”; the children of Nisei). The rest were issei (“first generation”, immigrants born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship by U.S. law).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans

Considering what is going on in America today, and i am NOT looking for a discussion on today’s political situation mind you, do you guys agree with what America did 75 years ago with Japanese, German and Italian-Americans at that time?

The Wannsee Conference (German: Wannseekonferenz) was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and SS leaders, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942.

The purpose of the conference, called by director of the Reich Main Security Office SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, was to ensure the cooperation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the final solution to the Jewish question, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to Poland and murdered. Conference attendees included representatives from several government ministries, including state secretaries from the Foreign Office, the justice, interior, and state ministries, and representatives from the Schutzstaffel (SS). In the course of the meeting, Heydrich outlined how European Jews would be rounded up from west to east and sent to extermination camps in the General Government (the occupied part of Poland), where they would be killed.[1]

Soon after the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the persecution of European Jewry was raised to unprecedented levels, but indiscriminate killing of men, women and children began in June 1941 after the onset of Operation Barbarossa against the Soviets. On 31 July 1941 Hermann Göring gave written authorization to Heydrich to prepare and submit a plan for a “total solution of the Jewish question” in territories under German control and to coordinate the participation of all involved government organisations. At Wannsee, Heydrich emphasized that once the mass deportation was complete, the SS would take complete charge of the exterminations. A secondary goal was to arrive at a definition of who was formally Jewish and thus determine the scope of the genocide.

One copy of the Protocol with circulated minutes of the meeting survived the war. It was found by the Allies in March 1947 among files that had been seized from the German Foreign Office. It was used as evidence in the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials. The Wannsee House, site of the conference, is now a Holocaust memorial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conference

I know that i have touched upon a very touchy subject, but the Wannsee Conference is still an important part of WWII history.
Some of the highest ranking Nazi officials, such has Reinhard Heydrich, head of the RSHA department of the SS, Heinrich Muller, head of the Gestapo and Adolf Eichmann decided to implement the “Final Solution.”
It was at this place that the Holocaust was truly born.
Im more interested in what you guys think of the people that attended this get together.
Were they truly evil at heart or just following the orders of Hitler and Himmler?
I want YOUR OPINIONS on these people, not historical facts.
I want to say that I am a Jew and i have studied WW2, the European Theater, the Pacific Theater, North Africa, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany since i was in grade school.
I am 47 years old.
I have had my share of prejudice.
You cannot offend me and i hope that no-one else will be either.
Be candid in your thoughts as well.
This conference was set up to decide how to destroy a certain race of people and the enemies of the Third Reich.
I just want to know what you World War II experts think about this also.
Take care and Happy New Year!