Re: Many things

--- Thomas Barclay <kaladorn@magma.ca> wrote:

> 4) Afghanistan: John, Adrian may not have it 
> entirely right, but I'm afraid the NG flyboy that 
> dropped the bomb may have gotten a bit 
> trigger happy. The Canadians are over there 

Undoubtedly.  Someone dropped the ball.  Possibly the
pilot, possibly someone in his chain of command,
possibly someone who had the information on his desk
that the Canadians were running around playing Cowboys
and Indians and failed to push that information to
bombdroppers.  

> active theatres. And 4 guys isn't much to the 
> USA.... you guys kill more soldiers than that in a 
> typical weekend excercise! For us, that's 10% of 

Bullshit.

There have been 7 training deaths in the post-9/11
time frame and it's to the point that we've heard
rumors that the brass is considering an Army-wide
safety standdown for a day or two to reasses.

> 9) WW2: John, hate to break it to you buddy, 
> but the Germans were going down in any event. 

Sure.  After a lot more time, bloodshed, and probably
after Britain had to sue for peace leaving the
Russians to it.

And would the Russians have won with the Luftwaffe
actually involved in the campaign?  Probably.  But not
definitely.

> Yanks had the bomb (sort of). But in-theatre, 
> the T-34s and the Russian Air Force (often 

T-34 has got to be the most overrated tank in history.
 Sure it was nice, but practically every tank in the
US front line units was a 76-armed varient.  And
nearly every time the 76-armed M-4 met a T-34 the
latter came out the looser.

> under-rated, but unjustly so) would have 

The Red Air Force would have been eaten for lunch by
the USAF.  Sorry, but that's the way it is.  The USAF
was designed to destroy the Luftwaffe and they did so.
 Nearly 70%, IIRC, of the 1944 Luftwaffe was deployed
against the USAF/RAF strategic bombing campaign.  If
they had been present the Red Air Force would have
been meaningless.  The Red Air Force was designed to
provide close air support and not much more.

Besides, in Korea the Russians did not show terribly
well, and that was flying far superior aircraft to the
'Mericans. 

> savaged the US forces if it had ever come to it, 
> and the battle hardened soldiers who'd fought 
> their way to the Reich itself could have pushed 
> the US Army into the sea without the bomb. 

Or the war-weary soldiers who'd just barely trudged
the whole way would have refused to fight one more
stupid war against their recent allies and done a 1917
on their high command.

> BTW: I have read accounts from US sources that 
> suggested that the US would not have been 
> able to deploy another atomic warhead after 
> Nagasaki for some months, perhaps even a 
> long enough period for the Russians to push 
> the Allied armies into the sea. I've seen 

Probably.

John

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