TheSmilingBandit

as far as comptence in planning and actual execution is concerned, many generals in ww2 will trump monty. but the normandy and market garden operations stand out as the tactical highlights of the war, indeed of the 20th century. the amazing thing about normandy is that it was virtually unnoticed by the enemy. imagine, the biggest amphibious invasion in history going undetected. yes, it was a meat grinder for americans and monty was known to ignore large losses.

 

market garden is now being revised by many. people now think monty's plan was brilliant. of course there are still nay sayers. some say even if it had succeeded, the britons will still wait 3 months for all the western forces to veer north and rush through the opening. others say it should have been perceived by monty to be a clear failure even before the first plane took off. but then, where do you think the americans based their helicopter-born assaults in vietnam, lat-am and the first gulf war?

 

the most effective ground campaigns were france with 400,000 french and british encircled by one salient, and kiev where marshall budenny's force of 600,000 was surrounded by a pincer movement between guderian and von runstedt's forces. kursk would have been a bigger encirclement had it succeeded.

yes sabi nila mag le lease sila sa bahay mismo nila! hehehe kaloko nga pinipilit talaga. dahil sa "racial dicrimination" daw kaya sila nag ka ganoon. pero afaik wala naman ganung nangyari.

 

pwede ka bang mag lease sa bahay na tinitirahan mo? or bahay ng asawa mo ng walang bayad?

well, time magazine declared him the best ground commander of the 20th century. they stated the reasons: his undefeated record in north africa against germany's best tank commander, and because he planned and commanded the two maneuvers that represented the zenith of 20th century fighting: the normandy invasion and the arnhem attack. both attacks are unparalled to this day in terms of size of personnel and material involvement, normandy succeeded, but it was eisenhower who envisioned it. monty did the tactical preparation and was overall coordinator. arnhem failed but it was the basis for later successful large airborne assaults.

El Alamein

Allied Forces: 195,000 soldiers; 1,029 tanks; 400+ armoured cars; 750 aircraft; 900 artillery; 1,300 anti-tank guns.

Axis Forces: 110,000 soldiers; 550 tanks; -200 armoured cars; 500 aircraft; 500 artillery, 400 anti-tank guns.

In addition, Rommel was over-extended (due to Hitler's orders) and was under supplied with exhausted troops. Whereas Monty had a fully supplied army with plenty of fresh troops. If Monty hadn't won it would have been a miracle, if he had the same meagre resources as his predecessors, I'm rather doubtful of his success.

Operation Overlord

Allied Forces: 2,000,000+ men (in Normandy alone)

Axis Forces: 1,000,000 men (thruout France)

Again, Monty won it, but by having overwhelming forces and of course with tremendous casualties (200,000+ dead, 800,000+ wounded vs Axis 300,000 dead and wounded).

Market Garden was a total failure and I don't recall there being another massed airborne assault since then. Anyways, that Monty was overrated is just my personal opinion, I feel that Alan Cunningham would have done a better job with far less casualties.

Any opinions on Bernard Montgomery? I've always felt that he was overrated specially compared to Alan Cunningham. If only Claude Auchinlek wasn't a total waste of air for a human being, then Cunningham could have won at El Alemein without the losses that Monty suffered.

The overweening pride that Monty points to Patton also applies to this supercilious bastard as well I think.

Ah, maybe I can point them to do a thesis on the 3000 per

 

Thank you for the help

If they do the 3000 room hotel, good luck, they will definitely need it.

one of the hardest what-if i encounter is how hitler could have finished off britain. sea lion was a no-go. even if the gemans had enough air transports, which they didn't, and the battle of britain won.

 

the most feasible i still see is destuction of british air power (starting 1940 and ending maybe 1942, with no russian front.) they would have to have a fleet of heavy bombers and a special long-range fighter escort developed. people will have to accept that the me-109 was a short-ranged interceptor. and then, germany should gradually build a brown water navy consisitng of frigates, destroyers, cruisers, subs and escort carriers. guadalcanal at least proved that one can grab and maintain a toehold on a beachhead while having an inferior navy. but an air invasion would have been feasible. at least, arnhem proved that one can transport several divisions under the enemy's nose, that paratroopers can hold ground much longer than expected; and seapower gradually strengthened.

 

but the germans will have to be even richer and more productive than the americans. at guadalcanal, things were basically hopeless for the japanese roughly 90 days after the first landing. after 90 days, there were already 20,000 marines on the island. they had a tank company, an amtrak battalion, a working harbor, 5-inch shore defense guns. henderson already had 200 planes, 90mm AA guns and two operating airfields (the seabees were then constructing 2 more.)

 

also, the germans should be prepared to lose as many men, planes and ships as the americans did in the solomons to even just maintain a toehold on british soil. very tall order.

Peace with the USSR must be kept despite Hitler's personal animosity towards communism.

Peace with the USA must be kept despite FDR's personal wish to join Churchill.

Perhaps if the Luftwaffe had continued building aircraft at the rate asked for by many of their squadron leaders, including Galland. In general, the Nazi planes were superior dogfighters specially the FW190. Just keep pounding away at the airfields rather than the cities and pretty soon the Tommies would've been knackered.

The Kriegsmarine just needed to build more transports as with a stronger Luftwaffe, the Nazis could've pounded the Royal Navy into pieces, assuming of course that the US didn't join in on the side of the Tommies. You can't compare Guadalcanal since the distance between the French ports to England is quite short, furthermore, the British didn't quite have the same Fight or Die concept as the Japanese had, not that they'd have surrendered easily still, but they wouldn't be quite as fanatical.

Harry Turtledove did a great what-if story about this entitled In The Presence Of Mine Enemies.

Thanks

 

Yes, that's what I said. I also suggested that they take up something with regards to food quality but they don't want it since they'll need a nutritionist daw for those.

 

Just wondering, tama ba ang assumption ko? Since they have "management", can they tackle issues on manpower? I also think most HRM students do not venture outside the hotel and restaurant terms.

Hi guys, a little help here.

 

A friend of mine is asking for a good HRM thesis topic. It also needs three viable problems linked to the topic. I've suggested something in relation to manpower planning and development. Since human resource is one of the essentials, they could expound on ideas regarding career ladders, planning transitions and training.

 

Since I am an IT grad, I know nothing about possible topics for HRM. Any ideas? Pa-share naman...

Restaurant Business Model

3 problems

Menu Development to maximize efficiency within the kitchen with a minimum of equipment and supplies and a maximum amount of dishes that can be prepped using similar ingredients.

Table Placement and Crew Management to maximize the floor area of an available space while using the least amount of crew members (include training modules)

Profit and Liability study.

Hope that helps, remember HRM includes Restaurant Management, most HRM students tend to think in terms of hotels.

mybe so but i wonder, with 270 planes and all their bombs and fuel, could you even manage 30 knots, when a battleship is after your blood?

plan z, as agreed in 1939, required a balanced surface and sub-surface force. with enough resources, the germans would have completed the entire plan by 1946. but i suppose your what-if assumes this was possible by 1941 (from the non-existent polish invasion.)

 

alright, the british would have spotted such a large build-up and tapped its commonwealth allies to augment its already strong navy. additional lend-lease agreements with the US would further boost its surface fleet. if, in 1941, the completed german force would stream out of the north sea (not sure if you're assuming france would be overrrun as really happend. the germans would probably not have enough metal for tanks and artillery due to your plan z,) there will be a jutland-type engagement. you're back to world war 1. the french and british army will likely resist your western invasion, given your diversion of resources into your navy. and what will that navy achieve assuming it beats the british on the high seas? invade britain? how many transports and auxillaries can you build? the UK had some 16 divisions inside britain waiting for the germans to invade, whether by sea or air.

 

face it. germany was a land power. it cannot compete with the british at sea. and we usually see that in a long war between a continental power and a sea power, the sea power wins. TBH, i dind't really think much of plan z. resources (and time itself) was simply too big a constraint.

Has the Yamato at Bismark meet? I thought nasa opposite sides of the globe sila.

 

Also, you cannot find ganun kadaming suicide pilots.

Its called a what-if scenario, you know, like a FANTASY thing. Also, no, the Yamato and Bismark never did meet considering the Bismark sank before the Yamato was commissioned.

dude, fitting 200 airplanes on one midway-class carrier is a physical imposibility, unless you do a really far-out modifaction. i would put your air strength to 1,800 - 2,000. capital ships operating without escorts? possible. think ww1 scenario for battleships. for carriers, still possible, the way the british used them. carriers don't need scouts as much as they need escorts. no submaries to worry about. just 30-knot battleships.

Come to think about it, even with just 137 aircraft going kamikaze on each battleship, carrying 4000 pounds of explosives and fuel (external), that would pretty much sink every battleship.

Yeah I know it was cheesy of me to min-max, but everything I mentioned were all technologically feasible during WW2.

You want a studied what-if scenario? What if Hitler hadn't bungled the Polish affair and WW2 had begun 2 years later with the full Plan Z of the Kriegsmarine all launched and ready for action.

the condition is supremacy in the high seas. it doesn't matter from what point in the globe you start. you can assume you have access to unlimited supplies and replenishment (but not of lost ships,) whether in your base or at sea (though you run the risk of your supply ships being destroyed.) your can choose which location you can base from, at what lattitude you wish to come and challenge your opponent, whether day or night.

 

i always go with the battle ship and my opponent the carriers. i wonder why.

 

my force: 15 iowa-class battleships modified by removing B turret and replacing that with additional AA guns. the 12 5" guns will be reduced to 6 to make way for more 40MM and .50 cal guns. same engine to provide a flank speed of 30 knots and boosts to 35 knots.

 

my base? various supply depots within the visayan island group (Cebu, bacolod, panay, leyte, etc..) all those islands offer several points that can be modified for deep-draft capital ships.

 

your carriers? stick to WW2 actual deployed vessels.

With these things these carriers can pack in up to 270 planes each.

Since you are an all battleship force, don't really need much in terms of fighter strength, on the other hand, the Corsairs were pretty versatile beasts, so let's call it only Chance-Vought Corsairs (the ones modified to pack 4 20mm cannons instead of 6 .50 cals) and can carry up to 2 x 1,000 pound bombs in addition to the 2000 pound drop tanks (or a 2000 pound bomb) that allow it to reach up to 3200 kilometers. With wing reinforcements so that they can use the Japanese Type 93 torpedoes instead of the 2000 pound bomb in the centerline.

So that would be up to 4,050 fighters, with all the pilots of course trained to do a mass kamikaze attack on the battleships in ONE massive strike. Somehow I don't think that there are enough AA guns to stop 270 planes from crashing down on EACH battleship.

Okay, enough with the fantasy leanings, during WW2, each type of ship had its own uses. A fleet with only carriers, or only battleships, is in for a rude awakening. Even the much maligned and underappreciated destroyers and of course, my personal faves, the Cruisers, are really needed to scout for the opponents.

ok, let's move back to capital ships. which of the two groups would you choose if you were to drive the other group out of the high seas:

 

15 battleships or 15 fleet carriers?

What are the range?

Weather?

Fuel Status?

Ammo Status?

Type of BB and CV?

Based upon the following conditions, I would go for the carriers.

What are the range? 400 kilometers away

Weather? Crystal clear blue sky at dawn.

Fuel Status? Full fuel for everything.

Ammo Status? Full ammo load for everything.

Type of BB and CV? 15 Bismark or Yamato class BB vs. 15 Nimitz Class CVNs carrying full squadron loads of Super Hornets (hmmm ... or maybe Tomcats).

Okay, I know this is insane of course. LOL. A nice what if scenario, if you've watched the movie The Final Countdown, what if they didn't return to the present, what would have happened?

Discussions on "What If" scenarios moved to The Art of War Thread.

Has anyone here read the 16XX series by Eric Flint (with many other co-authors).

I'm more into Sci-Fi and Fantasy:

1. Andre Norton
   
2. Anne McCaffrey
   
3. David Drake
   
4. David Eddings
   
5. David Gemmel
   
6. David Weber
   
7. Elizabeth Moon
   
8. Eric Flint
   
9. George R.R. Martin
   
10. Glenn Cook
    
11. Harold Coyle
    
12. Harry Harrison
    
13. Harry Turtledove
    
14. J. R. R. Tolkien
    
15. James Hogan
    
16. John Ringo
    
17. Katherine Kurtz
    
18. Mercedes Lackey
    
19. Patricia McKillip
    
20. Piers Anthony
    
21. Poul Anderson
    
22. Raymond Feist
    
23. Robert Adams
    
24. Robert Asprin
    
25. Robert Heinlein
    
26. W. E. B. Griffin
    

Oh there are just too many to mention.

thanks for giving time replying on my question. re qualification of membership the by laws did not mention anything about a foreign national who can be a member of the association. the only members that are inluded are as follows lessee, homeowners and lot owners. i think that those members are very broad and not specific. how can we identify if the foreigner is a legit member? their wives are the one who owns the lot, their wives are the one are written on the tax dec and finally as a foreign national they have a waiver that as a foreign national they are waiving their interest or their rights on the conjugal property. hope you can enlighten me about this matter

 

thanks

Based on your post, it includes lessees, homeowners, and lot owners. Are the foreigners lessees? (Obviously they can't be homeowners or lot owners.) If so, they can be members, however, as homeowners and lot owners, their wives are the only ones allowed to be members. I hope this helps.

correction: the french were "part" of the allied victory in ww1 and even in ww2. in the latter, the belatedly organized french army took part in the final drive into germany.

you forgot the french fleet with four battleships. this is one one interesting "what if." supposing right after the germans overrun southern france, the remnants of the french army, airforce and navy retreated to french-held north africa and decided to fight on? with more than 200,000 soldiers, a small airforce and four battleships, they could have helped bottle up the italians and eventually germans in north africa and make a counter-invasion of southern europe by americans and british far easier.

oh i forgot completely, if they were 20 feet of each other abreast, the yamato would win for sure: at 20 feet, their main guns will bang and clang against each other when swivelling so the yamato, with bigger and more guns, will dent and bend the bismark's guns in a few minutes, nya! ha! ha! ha!

Tower and Hive Quintology by Anne McCaffrey.

as of 1939, the royal navy alone would have more tonnage in ships than japn and germany put together. the US would have an equal tonnage but most of these are world war 1-vintage ships and all battleships are pre-washington treaty level.

 

if i were the axis, i'd fight in inland seas like the channel area, the med, or around the japanese islands. topography and shoreline can easily negate one's numerical superiority (think salamis, tsushima straight, even leyte gulf in a narrow sense.) the germans, though far from having a high seas fleet as of 1939, had a passable "brown water" navy capable of fighting a littoral battle. the japanese, on the other hand, have preserved much of their pre-washington battleships even after they were forced to scuttle some of them to comply with treaty requirements.

In a straight out fight (without placing the terrain into consideration), who would win?

i don't have the numbers right now but you might. check the bismark's draft and height of hull above water in relation to the yamato's. also check the size and height above water of their respective superstructures. if the bismark is considerably lower than the yamato, then the yamato doesn't stand a chance. first, the yamato can't lower its guns below horizontal (that's why it couldn't shoot at destroyers at close range at leyte gulf.) second, the bismark would love a close-in fight. deck armor is not critical up close since shells will just deflect due to the low elevation. the yamato's waterline armor is thicker but the bismark has a very wide beam for its weight and its compartments are miniscule. that's why the bismark was able to stay afloat even after receiveing so many hits from the rodney and king george v.

Look, if you keep optimizing the fight for the Bismark, rather than setting strictly in terms of firepower and armor and speed, then of course you can influence the outcome. LOL, you can even set it that the Yamato has no powder, no fuel, and no crew, then I'm sure it'll lose.

The way to compute the respective strengths is to assume equal quality of crew, fully loaded fuel and ammo bunkers, bright clear weather with no cloud cover or islands, starting off out of range of each other.

your assessment is correct in that the yamato could commence fire from (only a slightly) longer distance. but that's just one scenario and it assumes a clear day with ideal conditions. the thing is, no gun-to-gun battle between BBs was ever won and lost past 20,000 meters. the reason's simple: accuracy past 10,000 meters falls to a very large degree. no, the battle will be won and lost from distance less than 10,000 meters.

 

the only possibility to yamato's favor is a line confrontation involving 2 or more BBs on either side. the addage that two is better than one cannot be better demostrated than with battleship fighting. one's effectiveness by adding a second battleship is more than tripled. of course, you have exceptions. at the denmark strait, the bismark managed to fight off two BBs. days later, with a sleepless crew, it failed against two more british battleships.

 

so here's a curved ball: i think the yamato and musashi would win against the bismark and tirpitz tandem if the fight began at 40,000 meters.

Though, here's a bigger wargame for you. The IJN + the Kriegsmarine vs the US Navy + Royal Navy in one massive affair with their 1939 TO&E, how long would the fight last? (Assuming optimal weather conditions).

I once saw a documentary where it was implied the Yamato crew was never in top shape. This was from interviews of those Japanese sailors who survived the Yamato's destruction, or were reassigned prior to it. The basic idea was the Yamato was the apple of the eye of the Japanese navy and the crew did not go through the usual rigors of training, they were mostly in dock or just cruising in friendly waters. Main point, they were not battle-hardened. The implication was the Yamato will lose any fight in open waters. I didnt see the whole documentary.

 

I think the Bismark (and the better-trained crew) will win a one to one fight against the Yamato. Very easily.

The way the IJN considered the Yamato was that it was the flagship for the entire IJN, only the best and the brightest got assigned to her in the beginning, it was only later in the Pacific War (1943) when the Musashi entered service, that the crew was split to man both behemoths, and their replacements were not as rigidly trained (also due to the losses that the IJN suffered in the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway). The Bismark only had the one crew without the splitting that was done to the Yamato. Based on the original profiles of both ships, I would venture that the Yamato would have pounded the Bismark into the sea quickly enough.

first, don't think of the yamato as some kind of floating anvil, or any battleship for that matter. even the best battleship is susceptible to secondary caliber fire (from 8-inch cruiser guns or even 5-inch destroyer guns.) it's main armore may not be penetrated by hits elsewhere could start fires, knock out communication lines or k*ll enough number of sailors to force it to withdraw.

 

as i said, cylic rate of fire is only half the story. but let's reserve that for a few more things: first, radar is needed for long-range firing and no battleship engagement was ever decided at long range, by only only the first or second salvo. both fighters close in and inevitably switch to visual sighting. this is the case even when the kirishima got busted by washington during a night engagement at guadalcanal.

 

the yamato, on a clear day at long range, might get the range sooner using a combination of radar and its huge optical sights. but no battleship was ever sunk with just one or two shells. the two combatants will invariably close to point-blank range, assuming they can still fight. and at close range, the bismark's gunnery was proven effective.

 

going back to who can heave more shell over time. if we go by just machine rate of fire, the yamato can throw 45 shells in five minutes as against the bismark's 60. but get this: at ten miles, the shell has to travel at least 6 seconds. and you cant change your elevation and traverse without first seeing where your last shot landed (either an explosion hit or a 100-foot water fountain.) then your re-aim and fire. now, the bismark's shells travel at a very flat trajectory and at a much higher velocity than the yamato's. that means that even with a similar cyclic ROF, the bismark can fire the next salvo sooner and more accurately. in fact, the only other BB that can match the bismark's firepower rating is the new jersey and the latter had better take the bismark out at long range.

 

lastly, we go to actual performance. one thing the war books tend to overlook is the fact that the bismark had the best shooting record of all battleships that saw engagement. it dueled with three enemy battleships and it found the range for each within 4 salvos. no other BB can boast a similar record. the yamato, on the other hand, wasn't able to train its main guns at destroyers on a clear day at close range. it hit one destroyer with a shell at leyte gulf and it was a dud.

 

so my conclusion is that in a one-on-one engagement, the bismark will likely pound the yamato deaf-dumb and blind after 10 salvos (slightly less than 20 minutes.)

Gratias tibi ago magister, will check this out next week.

The Stars and Stripes, an alternate history of the US Civil War by Harry Harrison is a good read for any alternate history buffs.