D-Day - 75th Anniversary

[ImissWallyPryor 9,046]

1 hour ago, usmc0331horn said:

I definitely didn't get much out of it.

Stephen Ambrose did much to bring attention to the sacrifices of the WWII generation. This thread was not the place for me to shit on his writing skills or plagiarism.

Edited June 7, 2019 by ImissWallyPryor
Grammer and speling

[Trey3216 15,373]

44 minutes ago, Parliament said:

I can't find the YouTube video again that discusses the demographic impact on Russia...but it was massive.

Something like 70% of Russian men born in 1923 were dead by 1943. It caused a "birthrate ripple" that continues to shwack their birthrate every 25 years. The late 60's early 90's and right now. Or something like that.

Yeah, they got to the point where there Country was something along the lines of 63% female, which is damn near untenable.   Mail order brides aren’t just for show, it’s been a mathematical necessity 

[Trey3216 15,373]

https://twitter.com/DonutOperator/status/1136676068830658560?s=20

[ImissWallyPryor 9,046]

On 6/5/2019 at 9:40 PM, Trey3216 said:

This song always gets me.  My grandad was a tailgunner (no pics).   But it hits the chords and the heart.   

 

 

 

One of my favorite songs of recent years.

My wife’s uncle was a ball turret gunner in the ETO. His plane was shot down, and he spent the rest of the war in a German POW camp. He had a human skull on a shelf in his study at home, and nobody was allowed to ask him about it. Not even his wife. He took that story to the grave. 

He went on to teach high school and was a superintendent of a school district in central Texas. 

[Trey3216 15,373]

I know I posted it on TOS, but I have a pic of my Pap’s plane while on a mission.  I’ll try to upload it to this thread 

[Trey3216 15,373]

imgur

bottom right in the foreground.  Grandpap sitting in the tail guarding the 6.  

[Trey3216 15,373]

This was a run over Germany launched from Netherlands.   

[RPM 26,360]

 

 

[Trey3216 15,373]

Btw, in that photo I posted, the 2nd plane from the top is Bock’s Kar, which is now in The Smithsonian. 

[Deej 76,947]

SIAP...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/05/30/feature/my-grandfathers-secret-d-day-journal/?utm_term=.be45fb2f5f74

[Chad Fuck 17,812]

Btw, in that photo I posted, the 2nd plane from the top is *Bock’s Kar, which is now in The Smithsonian. 

*Flak Bait

Bock’s Car is the B-29 that dropped the second atomic bomb and she resides at the NMUSAF in Dayton.

Bad ass pics though.

[Jkwellborn 6,749]

It was, is, and always will be, about the men next to you.
 

Damn straight. Badasses all around.

[Trey3216 15,373]

14 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:

*Flak Bait

Bock’s Car is the B-29 that dropped the second atomic bomb and she resides at the NMUSAF in Dayton.

Bad ass pics though.

Yep.  That’s my bad. Dad gave me the wrong info 

[Chad Fuck 17,812]

Yep.  That’s my bad. Dad gave me the wrong info 

No harm no foul.

While both planes are very interesting in their own rights, Flak Bait has a truly incredible story. The most combat missions of any American aircraft (maybe of any country?) during WWII. And it’s basically as it was taken off the line after the war. They’re reassembling it (it has been in pieces for storage) at the NASM and I can’t wait to see it when it’s done. They’ve found spent shell casings during the process. I’ll see if I can find a good link.

[Trey3216 15,373]

1 minute ago, Chad Fuck said:

No harm no foul.

While both planes are very interesting in their own rights, Flak Bait has a truly incredible story. The most combat missions of any American aircraft (maybe of any country?) during WWII. And it’s basically as it was taken off the line after the war. They’re reassembling it (it has been in pieces for storage) at the NASM and I can’t wait to see it when it’s done. They’ve found spent shell casings during the process. I’ll see if I can find a good link.

Definitely a lot of cool history about that plane 

[Chad Fuck 17,812]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flak_Bait

https://www.airspacemag.com/airspacemag/hundreds-holes-iflak-baiti-180954662/

[Player 4,576]

I was there today, and noticed that every Texan had a small state flag in front of their marker.



I don’t know who did that, but it certainly offered a unique perspective. Maybe it was one of the alumni band members.

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

On 6/5/2019 at 9:43 PM, 4th and 5 said:

I will be standing on this beach soon, imagining what kind of a man could get out of an LC, wade thru water encumbered by gear, carrying an M1 Garand in a bag, just looking for some kind of cover from the fire above with their friends falling all around them. 

Probably gonna need a moment away from the wife and kids.  

When you stand there on the beach listening to the docent talk about what was waiting for these kids before they waded ashore, and you see the size of the beach, and realize that they were caught in multiple cross fields of fire it gives you a hard knot in your stomach just wondering if, and how you would have handled the situation.

[Jkwellborn 6,749]

It’s amazing that anyone even made it to the beach. Much less up it.

[PRONG HORN 3,158]

2 hours ago, Player said:

I was there today, and noticed that every Texan had a small state flag in front of their marker.

 

In a place like the D Day cemetery you want to stand out from the other graves because of state pride?  If there isn't a flag by state for each grave, it makes Texans look like a-holes.  If a family member didn't put a Texas flag on a grave, leave it alone.  

[tx 3 putt 77,542]

77 years. Thanks to all the D Day vets still out there !

[Message Board User 12,396]

Thread.

 

[GopherRock 1,770]

John has a long mustache. 

[Knoxtnhorn 6,066]

3 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

77 years. Thanks to all the D Day vets still out there !

Yep.  14 year-old just got a lesson about Pointe Du Hoc before watching the Mav game.

[TwiceHorn 31,562]

On 6/7/2019 at 9:12 AM, Chad Fuck said:

This.  When Hitler was told of the industrial capacity of the United States, he simply didn't believe those reporting to him.  The numbers were so large in comparison to Germany's industrial capacity that he thought there had to be an error.  Along with underestimating the ability of the Russians to replace losses, this sort of willful ignorance to reality prevented Germany's success.  All the techs type stuff the Germans were doing (ballistic missiles, IR sights, jet aircraft) were all very eye-popping.  But even when they were maxing out production, they could never compete with the West on that front.  While it makes for interesting History channel fodder, it was never going to happen.  The Russians hordes were going to come knocking or Western industrial might was going to overwhelm them no matter what.  In the end, it was a combination of both.

What's kind of fascinating is that they could muster just enough material to make tanks and aircraft and other materiel.  But they couldn't keep their machine tools up.   All the raw material and the factory capacity (and it was the same factory capacity for the tools as the actual weapons) was dedicated to war materiel.  Like all their gear-cutting machinery was wearing out by 1943-4 or so, so all their tanks had fucked up transmissions because the gears were shitty.

[Sbbruin 21,898]

Started this yesterday.

[Sbbruin 21,898]

12 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

What's kind of fascinating is that they could muster just enough material to make tanks and aircraft and other materiel.  But they couldn't keep their machine tools up.   All the raw material and the factory capacity (and it was the same factory capacity for the tools as the actual weapons) was dedicated to war materiel.  Like all their gear-cutting machinery was wearing out by 1943-4 or so, so all their tanks had fucked up transmissions because the gears were shitty.

The American industrial war output was absolutely astonishing.  In ‘39 we were producing 800 planes military planes annually. By ‘43 we were producing 8,000... per month.  Ships and tanks and all manner of war machine production were similar.

[Sbbruin 21,898]

On 6/10/2019 at 1:45 PM, Jkwellborn said:

It’s amazing that anyone even made it to the beach. Much less up it.

And Ike and the Allied command knew it would be this way.  But it had to be done.  To make the decision to send thousands to certain death had to have been a heavy, heavy burden.

[AUS-97HORN 11,824]

1 hour ago, Sbbruin said:

And Ike and the Allied command knew it would be this way.  But it had to be done.  To make the decision to send thousands to certain death had to have been a heavy, heavy burden.

He literally wrote a "we fucked up. the invasion failed, its 100% my fault"  letter and had it ready to send to Roosevelt & General Marshall, along with his resignation as SHAEF.

 

The only General to actually get on an ivasion beach during the first wave was Teddy Jr.  and everyone literally thought he was going to die on the beach.    The casualty assumptions of the first wave were 95%.   I cant imagine giving the go command knowing you just sentenced ~5,000 Americans to die in the next 24 hours.

[Trey3216 15,373]

Saved “Why We Fight” for today, knowing that’s why we put that many young men at risk to destroy the evil of the 3rd Reich.  Thank God for the men that went in there, those that made it home, and God rest those who didn’t.   The military and productive might of America saved the world from the continuation of that horrific terror.   God Bless them all 

[4th and 5 4,920]

We spent a few days there touring with an incredible guide. I took hundreds of pics...here are just a few. 

[MissingInAction 25,204]

The engineering and design of the German bunkers is fucking impressive.

[Chad Fuck 17,812]

The engineering and design of the German bunkers is fucking impressive.

Yeah but they were buggy whips in the age of the automobile. The Germans themselves proved the folly of the fixed fortification in 1940.

[MaybeACoordinator 8,349]

15 hours ago, AUS-97HORN said:

He literally wrote a "we fucked up. the invasion failed, its 100% my fault"  letter and had it ready to send to Roosevelt & General Marshall, along with his resignation as SHAEF.

 

The only General to actually get on an ivasion beach during the first wave was Teddy Jr.  and everyone literally thought he was going to die on the beach.    The casualty assumptions of the first wave were 95%.   I cant imagine giving the go command knowing you just sentenced ~5,000 Americans to die in the next 24 hours.

I had a prof who had a prof at UT whose job during the war was to select bombing targets for the US AAF. He was an economist who knew the Nazi economy well...So these were not military targets per se and most were right in the middle of German cities. Our bombers were not 100 percent accurate and by the end of the war, in some instances, like Dresden, Tokyo, and obviously Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we gave not a single fuck about civilian casualties.

So my prof said, this old prof of his would get in the car with his wife every Friday and drive around downtown Austin looking for people whose parking meters had expired. He'd then top of their meters for them, saving them a ticket or a tow. This went on for decades. (Maybe TxTow's dad, haha)

[Eskimohorn 5,644]

Yeah but they were buggy whips in the age of the automobile. The Germans themselves proved the folly of the fixed fortification in 1940.

Coupled with competent mobile defense and counterstrikes, the Allies could have been crushed. How else would they have defended France without fixed positions along the beachheads?

[Chad Fuck 17,812]

21 minutes ago, Eskimohorn said:

Coupled with competent mobile defense and counterstrikes, the Allies could have been crushed. How else would they have defended France without fixed positions along the beachheads?

You're correct, IF they'd had those things.  But they didn't.  Instead they had a rotten and restrictive command structure and as referenced upthread, the economic game was up as soon as the US entered the game for real and Russian factories moved east of the Urals.  Rommel knew this.  He just did what he could with what he had.  

The bunkers look cool though and did a decent job of holding up the Allies for less than 24 hours.

[workswithseed 2,121]

42 minutes ago, Eskimohorn said:

Coupled with competent mobile defense and counterstrikes, the Allies could have been crushed. How else would they have defended France without fixed positions along the beachheads?

This video is pretty good showing their side of the defense of France on D-Day.

[Trey3216 15,373]

2 hours ago, Chad Fuck said:

You're correct, IF they'd had those things.  But they didn't.  Instead they had a rotten and restrictive command structure and as referenced upthread, the economic game was up as soon as the US entered the game for real and Russian factories moved east of the Urals.  Rommel knew this.  He just did what he could with what he had.  

The bunkers look cool though and did a decent job of holding up the Allies for less than 24 hours.

They also didn't perceive that the US, Canada and GB would have the commitment and fortitude to send tens-hundreds of thousands of troops into a turkey shoot knowing full well that casualty rates would be unforgivably high.  They grossly miscalculated our resolve  

[Chad Fuck 17,812]

4 minutes ago, Trey3216 said:

They also didn't perceive that the US, Canada and GB would have the commitment and fortitude to send tens-hundreds of thousands of troops into a turkey shoot knowing full well that casualty rates would be unforgivably high.  They grossly miscalculated our resolve  

That's for danged sure.

[HouTex 1,894]

They also didn't perceive that the US, Canada and GB would have the commitment and fortitude to send tens-hundreds of thousands of troops into a turkey shoot knowing full well that casualty rates would be unforgivably high.  They grossly miscalculated our resolve  

Not sure if this is your assumption, but the casualty rate on DDay was not even close to unforgivably high. Of course the first few waves on Omaha Beach had casualties, but in the scheme of things it was not unexpected or unreasonably high.

[Trey3216 15,373]

1 hour ago, HouTex said:

Not sure if this is your assumption, but the casualty rate on DDay was not even close to unforgivably high. Of course the first few waves on Omaha Beach had casualties, but in the scheme of things it was not unexpected or unreasonably high.

I’m really talking about the perception Germany had of US engagement.    That we would not make such a harrowing decision for fear of losing too many and thus, not go through with said plan.   
 

but the first few waves didn’t just have casualties...there were entire companies that had 90% casualty rates.   That’s pretty damn close to unforgivably high.  It was also necessary 

Edited June 7, 2021 by Trey3216

[BillyGoatHill 4,312]

1 hour ago, HouTex said:

Not sure if this is your assumption, but the casualty rate on DDay was not even close to unforgivably high. Of course the first few waves on Omaha Beach had casualties, but in the scheme of things it was not unexpected or unreasonably high.

But it easily could have been.

Allied commanders had thought that casualties could be as high as 40%. Dropping in and landing 130-150,000 troops in a day and that relates to 60,000 casualties. That would have equaled or come close to British casualties during the first day of the Battle of the Somme in WWI. Which is still considered a huge clusterfuck and unneeded waste of life by the British. That picture with Ike and the Airborne troops prior to them loading their planes (?)...He did that because his commanders (and he personally) thought that Airborne troops could suffer as high as 70-80% losses. He went there to show respect and say goodbye to those he thought he was sending to their deaths. The Germans did not have the flexibility for others to take command or control when needed, unlike the US did when a sergeant or corporal was often the highest ranking personnel left and was expected to take charge and did with great success. The German high command wanted to send in the Panzers from the Pas de Calais area on D-Day, but Hitler personally denied them the permission to act. Could have been a much longer day for the Allies if they were able to. The corporal was a bungling, egomaniac that overruled  many a German officer /commander, or Army, which ultimately helped us to win the war sooner rather than later.

[BillyGoatHill 4,312]

1 hour ago, Trey3216 said:

I’m really talking about the perception Germany had of US engagement.    That we would not make such a harrowing decision for fear of losing too many and thus, not go through with said plan.   
 

but the first few waves didn’t just have casualties...there were entire companies that had 90% casualty rates.   That’s pretty damn close to unforgivably high.  It was also necessary 

This ^^^^.......😢

 

 

[HouTex 1,894]

I’m really talking about the perception Germany had of US engagement.    That we would not make such a harrowing decision for fear of losing too many and thus, not go through with said plan.   
 
but the first few waves didn’t just have casualties...there were entire companies that had 90% casualty rates.   That’s pretty damn close to unforgivably high.  It was also necessary 

No where close to unforgivably high casualties. No one expected us to waltz in unopposed. There was the Atlantic Wall and it was fortified. It’s remarkable that casualties weren’t even higher across the landing zones. Of course, the casualties were absolutely necessary in order liberate Europe.

[Eskimohorn 5,644]

You're correct, IF they'd had those things.  But they didn't.  Instead they had a rotten and restrictive command structure and as referenced upthread, the economic game was up as soon as the US entered the game for real and Russian factories moved east of the Urals.  Rommel knew this.  He just did what he could with what he had.  
The bunkers look cool though and did a decent job of holding up the Allies for less than 24 hours.

I think I understand your point, but I was responding to the “folly of fixed fortifications”. If Germany was to hold France they would need them. When they were conceived, Germany had a superior air force (or thought they could at least hold their own). And, in theory, they had a mobile defense of elite troops and functioning supply lines.

Hitler’s dysfunctional command structure, especially as the war progressed, is irrelevant.

[Chad Fuck 17,812]

I think I understand your point, but I was responding to the “folly of fixed fortifications”. If Germany was to hold France they would need them. When they were conceived, Germany had a superior air force (or thought they could at least hold their own). And, in theory, they had a mobile defense of elite troops and functioning supply lines.

Hitler’s dysfunctional command structure, especially as the war progressed, is irrelevant.

That last bit doesn’t really correspond to the first bit.

Yes, they would need fixed fortifications to hold France. The idea being if they could delay the Allies long enough to bring their mobile reserve to the field they might have had a chance to repel the invasion. As it was, they only held for a few hours at Omaha, the fortifications’ greatest success. On the other beaches the Allies moved past them fairly quickly.

So turning to the mobile reserves, every history of the invasion notes that nobody wanted to wake Hitler up to get the permission to move those mobile forces. And the generals in the field who knew that’s what it was going to take to stop the invasion were paralyzed to move those forces without that permission. I’m not sure how you square this evidence of ineffective command structure with the idea that that very structure was “irrelevant.”

[Eskimohorn 5,644]

That last bit doesn’t really correspond to the first bit.

Yes, they would need fixed fortifications to hold France. The idea being if they could delay the Allies long enough to bring their mobile reserve to the field they might have had a chance to repel the invasion. As it was, they only held for a few hours at Omaha, the fortifications’ greatest success. On the other beaches the Allies moved past them fairly quickly.

So turning to the mobile reserves, every history of the invasion notes that nobody wanted to wake Hitler up to get the permission to move those mobile forces. And the generals in the field who knew that’s what it was going to take to stop the invasion were paralyzed to move those forces without that permission. I’m not sure how you square this evidence of ineffective command structure with the idea that that very structure was “irrelevant.”

With respect to fortifications being a relic of past as you said, thats not exactly true. Had someone like Rommel had clearly coordinated defenses and properly managed their grand strategy, the Allies would have had many more difficulties clearing the beachhead. Fortifications were absolutely necessary and were never counted on alone of repelling a 3-pronged invasion. It was not the Maginot Line.

[AUS-97HORN 11,824]

 

[GhostOfTomJoad 9,358]

Spent D-Day in MN at Fort Snelling paying respect to my grandfather (Staff Sargeant, Army, WWII). My grandmother and their oldest daughter (who died as a teenager 50 years before them) is also there.

Then I met with a cousin and retrieved the final medals from my great uncle (Grampa's younger brother, Lt Jr. Grade, Navy). He received the Air Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross for action in the Pacific. He sank a Japanese fighter off Honshu in July of '45 from his F6F Hellcat. On August 6th of '46-his last day in the service as he was headed home to MN and his bride the next day-he was killed when a young cadet in their trainer made a mistake. This was at Cabaniss Field outside of Corpus Christi. His funeral was the day before his 24th birthday.

Had some polishing to do.

[WhatTheBuck 28,807]

On 6/6/2021 at 12:16 PM, tx 3 putt said:

77 years. Thanks to all the D Day vets still out there !

Thanks more to those who gave up their lives on that day.