What made German Wehrmacht so Effective in WW2, 1939-42 (Mexican, economic, Japanese)
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...in general German fighters had the 2cm gun, whereas Hurricanes / Spitfires had small machine guns. German panzer Mark IV had a 75mm (short) gun whereas the British Mathilda had 2 inch guns. The reason for this is simple: it takes more time to develop carriers (tanks, planes etc.) for heavier guns. Germany started 3 years ahead of the Allied...
For fighter aircraft, this actually worked the exact opposite way. The 109 was designed around the mid-1930s thinking that having 2 7.92 machine guns in the fuselage made for decent armament. That left Messerschmitt free to do what he did best: Design a beautiful, slim, high-efficiency wing. This was the Me109s main design feature - Messerschmitt even put the gear hinges and hydraulics in the fuselage, to preserve that gorgeous wing as aerodynamically perfect as possible.
Now enter the Spitfires and Hurricanes with their 8 machine guns, and I suspect some Teutonic cursewords were heard....
So poor Messerschmitt had to break out the hacksaw and somehow squeeze some more dakka into a wing that absolutely was not designed for carrying any sort of gun at all. You either put a machine gun with a Rube Goldberg belt feeding system that involved a roller at the wingtip - bringing your armament up to 50% of that of the enemy's aircraft - or you squeezed in a 20 mm machine cannon that put an ugly bump in your beautiful wing.
They made it work, but it was most certainly not an effect of thinking ahead and developing a well-armed fighter ahead of time. (The engine-mounted 20mm came later yet.)
Compare and contrast with the Hurricane, who flew into the war packing a solid punch already and whose admittedly less pretty wings were deep and wide and provided room for all sorts of modifications.
Now, the 20 mm cannon lived well in the nose of the Me110, but that was the plane that had to have an Me109 escort during the Battle of Britain - hardly a distinction for a fighter aircraft.
Against the Japanese the British even had more boots on the ground than the USA.
Boots on the ground that lost, and retreated, or were captured. The U.S. won the war in the Pacific. Without the U.S. Navy, and Marines the British would haven't stood a chance.
Totally wrong I gave you the facts but your mind appears too conditioned for them to sink in. Of the three main allies the USA was the poor performer. The losses they suffered in Europe were horrendous. They never had a decent general with some of them buffoons. Read what I wrote again and absorb them. From mid-1942 onwards the British army was the finest in the world suffering not one defeat or reverse. Against the Japanese the British even had more boots on the ground than the USA.
After France in 1940, the British ensured command of the sea, starved Germany and Italy of resources (inc fuel), determined where the battlefield(s) were to be and started to roll and never reversed.
Yes, the US Army did not perform that well in the European theater. Having to often rely on an abundance of men and equipment to win battles. The US Army entered the war with little to no experience when it came to organizing and running a large military. Their inexperience was very obvious to anyone that knows WW2.
That said, the performance of the British Army though out the war was overall not very good. We know this because the British suffered some of the most humiliating military losses in their history during the war, often at the hand of armies much smaller then their's. Then you have the long list of strategic blunders made throughout the war where British men and equipment were squandered pointlessly. France 1940, Greece, Norway, Crete, Malaysia, The Dieppe Raid, etc.
Even in the Pacific theater the British were foolish in their strategy choosing to get bogged down fighting the Japanese in Burma throughout the war. A theater of little significance to the overall war effort. Meanwhile the US Navy, who ultimately deserve most of the credit for defeating Imperial Japan. Had trashed the IJN and had laid complete waste to Japans merchant fleet. Something very useful against an Island nation reliant on foreign materials and supplies.
You are allowing your national pride to cloud your judgement.
Totally wrong I gave you the facts but your mind appears too conditioned for them to sink in. Of the three main allies the USA was the poor performer. The losses they suffered in Europe were horrendous. They never had a decent general with some of them buffoons. Read what I wrote again and absorb them. From mid-1942 onwards the British army was the finest in the world suffering not one defeat or reverse. Against the Japanese the British even had more boots on the ground than the USA.
After France in 1940, the British ensured command of the sea, starved Germany and Italy of resources (inc fuel), determined where the battlefield(s) were to be and started to roll and never reversed.
They lost the Dodecanes campaign around August 1943 btw.
Boots on the ground that lost, and retreated, or were captured.
The Fourteenth is still the Forgotten Army, it seems.
You should read up on Field Marshal Slim - brilliant general, probably one of the best of WWII.
His corps retreated in good order to India during the Japanese invasion of Burma, and he was put in charge of the Fourteenth with the objective of taking Burma back. This he did.
He turned his army into probably the best jungle fighters of WWII, routed several Japanese armies in set-piece battles, managed a logistics situation that would have made lesser men throw up their hands in disgust and in the process had his staff develop the first large-scale aerial supply system.
The retreat to the Chindwin river was the largest single IJA defeat of WWII.
Sigh:
Right after the retreat at Dunkirk, up until early 1941, the British had:
Destroyed the German surface fleet.
Neutralised most of the French fleet by sinking or starving it of fuel.
Disabled a major part of the Italian fleet.
Freely moving around the Mediterranean.
Starving Germany and Italy of food and resources with the effective Royal Navy blockade.
Beat the Luftwaffe over Dunkirk.
Beat the Luftwaffe in the misnomer the Battle f Britain as Britain was never threatened.
Pushed the Italians out of East Africa.
Decimated the Italian army in North Africa.
Were about to take all the southern Mediterranean coast.
Germany was being bombed from the air with raids of over 100 bombers - 150 over Nuremberg - using the new navigational device, Gee.
A massive air bombing fleet was being assembled.
A matter of weeks after the US entered WW2 the RAF launched a 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne.
The RAF shot down over 700 German fighters over Continental Europe in 1941.
Were supplying the USSR with tanks and equipment. 40% of the tanks used at the vital Battle of Moscow were supplied by the British, depriving their own forces of tanks in Singapore.
After the small BEF (only 9% of all allied forces in France) left France in June 1940, the British went on the rampage. So much so Franco told Hitler the British may win and he would not join in with Germany, fearing British occupation of Spanish territory. The Turkish ambassador stated Britain will win as it has a pool of men in its empire to create an army of 45 million (later an army of 2.6 million moved into Burma).
In 1941 the British:
Suppressed an uprising in Iraq;
Beat the Vichy French in Syria;
Secured Iran and the oil by invading.
The British determined where the battlefields with the Axis were going to be.
After France 1940 Germany never had a significant campaign victory over the British Commonwealth ever again in WW2.
That's all great but doesn't change the fact that the Red Army defeated Germany. I'm not dismissing the efforts of the British but you sound worse than the Americans with whom you take issue.
Considering England's horrific moral track record regarding the subjugation of the indigenous people of her colonies, I would think you would be a bit more humble.
The German armor that rolled into Poland and France was predominantly Pz Is and IIs. The majority of German armor had, at best a 37mm -- the 75s were in very short supply. The Germans had better command, better doctrine, better air support, and an understanding of combined arms operations.
Correct. The French had many better tanks than Germans, but that was the exception until Barbarossa. British tanks were in general of lesser caliber than their German counterparts until American Sherman and Grants started to arrive in numbers at El Alamein.
More decisive than caliber was combined arms doctrine plus in France 1940 the leadership and also part of the population was defeatist.
Part of the combined arms warfare was IMO that the Allies had a lot of old general officers who either still fought WW1 or thought tanks by themselves "will always get through". The US fired / retired a lot of general officers before entering WW2 and that was for the better. The Soviets had the additional handicap of dual leadership military / political where communist cronies prevented effective unit leadership as a result of the Great Purges. They paid dearly for this.
Boots on the ground that lost, and retreated, or were captured. The U.S. won the war in the Pacific. Without the U.S. Navy, and Marines the British would haven't stood a chance.
More history from Hollywood. 2.6 million matched into Burma. The USA had nowhere near that many troops on the ground. The Soviets even committed more on the ground that the USA. The Eastern Fleet was operating off Malaya and the British Pacific fleet off Okinawa. The Soviets got onto Japan proper while the US troops were 350 miles away in Okinawa - who made heavy going of it. The A-bomb never made the Japanese surrender, it was the thought of fighting Soviet troops on their own land.
More history from Hollywood. 2.6 million matched into Burma. The USA had nowhere near that many troops on the ground. The Soviets even committed more on the ground that the USA. The Eastern Fleet was operating off Malaya and the British Pacific fleet off Okinawa. The Soviets got onto Japan proper while the US troops were 350 miles away in Okinawa - who made heavy going of it. The A-bomb never made the Japanese surrender, it was the thought of fighting Soviet troops on their own land.
The Pacific war was a naval war. The annihilation of the IJN along with its merchant fleet, combined with the fact that the USAF turned most Japanese cities into a smoldering ruin was largely the reason why Japan surrendered. To be honest a lot of the infantry based campaigns engaged in during the Pacific War proved to be rather pointless. Burma, New Guinea, and Iwo Jima spring to mind.
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