Re: Retrograde skirmishers

Stiltman wrote:
> > >The German U-Boat scare, while formidable in the early stages of
the
war, was
> > >all but useless by the end phases.  Why?  Because they had no other
recourse
> > >other than the U-Boats... which meant that once the Allies figured
out
how
> > >to sink them effectively, they were horribly ineffective.
>
> > What did the Allies sink them with--battleships? I'd say that
> > DD's, and even more so land-based air, would qualify as
> > skirmishers.
>
> Land-based aircraft qualify as skirmishers?  Uhhhh... let's see.  The
> Luftwaffe's role in sitting right beside the Wehrmacht in cutting
through
> just about every army in Europe until Hitler squandered away the main
> assault force in southern Russia comes to mind.  Land-based aircraft,
acting
> completely on their own, sunk the battleships Tirpitz, Prince of
Wales,
and
> the battlecruiser Repulse, and pretty much sent civilization in both
Germany
> and Japan right back to the stone age.  90% of Tokyo was on fire one
night
> out of every three, and I won't even go into Hiroshima.
>
This thread has been going on for quite a while. As far as I can tell,
Stiltman has a tendency to change the terms of reference just as it
suits
him. We were discussing space 'naval' warfare, which shifted to wet
'naval'
warfare, specifically the U-boat war, in search of analogies for events
in
fullthrust. In terms of naval warfare, which includes battleships and
carriers, I would agree that destroyers, as well as U-boats and the
land-based air used in the battle of the Atlantic (long-range recce
planes)
would qualify as skirmisher as stiltmans described them before in FT
terms..
The use of aircraft in land warfare and in naval warfare proper (for
sinking
ships) were not relevant to the discusisons of the U-boat battle of the
Atlantic

> No... I don't think aircraft of any sort would qualify as skirmishers
in
the sense I'm thinking, i.e. where you don't confront
> much of anything head on and just hit and flee.  Fighters of whatever
sort
(whether in real life or in FT) are very head-on
> war materials.

What do you call 'confront head on' ? In the tone you use, this sounds
like
a manly duel, standing toe to toe. No airplane can do that. They all
have to
move in, hit and move out, which I had understood formerly to be your
definition of a skirmisher. It just depends on the kind of 'hit' it deal
out
in whether you have the effect of a Spitfire or a B-52.

Greetings
Karl Heinz