Nimitz

[brian brian]

Monty takes it on the chin sometimes for the results of Operation GoodWood, where he went up against a quality opponent well supplied and lost hundreds of tanks. But then there is no glory in being the guy doing the 'soak-off' attack. (Monty pins down the Panzers while Bradley breaks out).

[wfzimmerman]

ORIGINAL: brian brian

Going back to "Dug-Out" Doug MacArthur, time and again I see Allied players take it out of the dug-out in Manila, which I feel is a mistake. The US can afford the 5 BP more than any other power in the game. It will take the Japanese at least an extra impulse or two to deal with that unit. Sail it away and the Japanese are freed up to use that impulse or two or even more on objectives farther out in their desired perimeter.

One of my test scenarios is Day of Infamy, and the setup allows putting a FTR and a couple of subs in Manila as well. do you think those extra sacrifices are worth it?

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: borner

Monty gets way too much credit. He beat an out of supply army, that had only 4 good German div's and a Brigade, when he had more and finally better equipment. (300 Shermans before the improved mk IV's, M V's and Mk VI's were around).

Warspite1

That`s a pretty narrow criteria to base whether a general has done a good job...By that flawed reckoning the Nimitz / MacArthur question is redundant - neither deserve any credit post Midway for beating the Japanese. How many Essex-class carriers did the U.S have? Avenger / Hellcat / Corsair vs Zero / Kate / Val. Why does Zhukov get any praise for Stalingrad? So in Operation Uranus he beat a mixture of weakly armed and under strength Romanians, Hungarians and Italians to surround the Germans so what? So post landing and consolidating the beachhead at Normandy (a Monty production by the way) Bradley, Patton, Simpson, Hodges et al deserve no credit for beating the German Army?
I don`t think so.

[brian brian]

I've never played Day of Infamy. You'd have to deploy a bunch of CPs to use ships or planes in Manila, and you'd probably lose all those for no point. The Japanese go first I would presume. But it's hard for the Japanese to flip units in general, and especially in a jungle hex. Until they do, Doug is worth 5 defense and can throw a -2 on an attack via HQ Support, one time only of course.

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: borner

Monty gets way too much credit. He beat an out of supply army, that had only 4 good German div's and a Brigade, when he had more and finally better equipment. (300 Shermans before the improved mk IV's, M V's and Mk VI's were around).

I was under the impression that by then Rommel had at least some "Panzer IV Specials" with the long 75 mm KwK 40 L/43.

IMHO Monty was a superb organiser, trained his men well, planned carefully and very importantly instilled in them a belief in victory. He does appear to have lacked dash post El Alamein but his caution was born of the number of times superior German mobile tactics had delivered the Commonwealth forces serious defeats. He knew time was on his side.

Ultimately the lengthened resistance in North Africa encouraged Hitler to pour heaps of men and equipment into Tunisia where they were eventually all captured or destroyed, meaning they weren't used on the Eastern Front or to defend Sicily or Italy.

Cheers, Neilster

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Neilster

ORIGINAL: borner

Monty gets way too much credit. He beat an out of supply army, that had only 4 good German div's and a Brigade, when he had more and finally better equipment. (300 Shermans before the improved mk IV's, M V's and Mk VI's were around).

I was under the impression that by then Rommel had at least some "Panzer IV Specials" with the long 75 mm KwK 40 L/43.

IMHO Monty was a superb organiser, trained his men well, planned carefully and very importantly instilled in them a belief in victory. He does appear to have lacked dash post El Alamein but his caution was born of the number of times superior German mobile tactics had delivered the Commonwealth forces serious defeats. He knew time was on his side.

Ultimately the lengthened resistance in North Africa encouraged Hitler to pour heaps of men and equipment into Tunisia where they were eventually all captured or destroyed, meaning they weren't used on the Eastern Front or to defend Sicily or Italy.

Cheers, Neilster

Ah, are you giving Montgomery credit for some plan to lure additional Axis forces into North Africa? Was Montgomery a reincarnation of Ghengis Khan?

[Neilster]

Ah, are you giving Montgomery credit for some plan to lure additional Axis forces into North Africa? Was Montgomery a reincarnation of Ghengis Khan?

Err...probably not [:)] and it wasn't planned but that's how it turned out.

In general, a significant part of Allied strategy from day one was to keep the Axis busy in disparate theatres. At first there was a hope that something like a revolution in Germany would end the war before a terrible re-run of WW1 really started. That's why any bizarre scheme involving expeditionary forces traipsing off somewhere like Finland or the Balkans was given serious consideration before the invasion of France.

The Allies decided to invade NW Africa for a variety of reasons but one was to tie down as many troops as possible to take the strain off the Russians. In this they were quite successful, although they were massively helped by Hitler's monumental command incompetence. Blind Freddie could see Africa was a lost cause and that attention should turn to bolstering the Italians.

Cheers, Neilster

[micheljq]

ORIGINAL: Neilster

ORIGINAL: borner

Monty gets way too much credit. He beat an out of supply army, that had only 4 good German div's and a Brigade, when he had more and finally better equipment. (300 Shermans before the improved mk IV's, M V's and Mk VI's were around).

I was under the impression that by then Rommel had at least some "Panzer IV Specials" with the long 75 mm KwK 40 L/43.

IMHO Monty was a superb organiser, trained his men well, planned carefully and very importantly instilled in them a belief in victory. He does appear to have lacked dash post El Alamein but his caution was born of the number of times superior German mobile tactics had delivered the Commonwealth forces serious defeats. He knew time was on his side.

Ultimately the lengthened resistance in North Africa encouraged Hitler to pour heaps of men and equipment into Tunisia where they were eventually all captured or destroyed, meaning they weren't used on the Eastern Front or to defend Sicily or Italy.

Cheers, Neilster

The dreaded german Tiger tank was in north africa also, it was the first time he saw active service if I am correct. There was not a great number of them, but anyway the whermacht could stop a whole allied column with a few of them carefully positionned.

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: micheljq

ORIGINAL: Neilster

ORIGINAL: borner

Monty gets way too much credit. He beat an out of supply army, that had only 4 good German div's and a Brigade, when he had more and finally better equipment. (300 Shermans before the improved mk IV's, M V's and Mk VI's were around).

I was under the impression that by then Rommel had at least some "Panzer IV Specials" with the long 75 mm KwK 40 L/43.

IMHO Monty was a superb organiser, trained his men well, planned carefully and very importantly instilled in them a belief in victory. He does appear to have lacked dash post El Alamein but his caution was born of the number of times superior German mobile tactics had delivered the Commonwealth forces serious defeats. He knew time was on his side.

Ultimately the lengthened resistance in North Africa encouraged Hitler to pour heaps of men and equipment into Tunisia where they were eventually all captured or destroyed, meaning they weren't used on the Eastern Front or to defend Sicily or Italy.

Cheers, Neilster

The dreaded german Tiger tank was in north africa also, it was the first time he saw active service if I am correct. There was not a great number of them, but anyway the whermacht could stop a whole allied column with a few of them carefully positionned.

You are correct but I think the discussion was mostly about the period around the battle of El Alamein. The Tigers operated in Tunisia several months later.

Cheers, Neilster

[SLAAKMAN]

AAARGH! So many great points.....so little time! [X(] I hope to address these points over the next few weeks eventually though. Regarding the French sitrep of 1940 I will say that I compare it to the Soviet situation; Great equipment, low spare parts, low readiness, faulty organization, logistics and tactical doctrine, mediocre high commands and leadership and almost non-existant reconnaisance. (I feel that the game needs to reflect this more. I admit that Im a hairsplitter).[:'(] Case in point;

Some of the best units in the north had yet seen little fighting. Had they been kept in reserve they could have been used for a decisive counter strike. But now they had lost much fighting power simply by moving to the north; hurrying south again would cost them even more. The most powerful Allied division, the 1st DLM (Division Légère Mécanique, "light" in this case meaning "mobile"), deployed near Dunkirk on 10 May, had moved its forward units 220 kilometers (140 mi) to the northeast, beyond the Dutch city of 's-Hertogenbosch, in 32 hours. Finding that the Dutch had already retreated to the north, it had withdrawn and was moving to the south. When it reached the Germans again, of its original 80 SOMUA S 35 tanks only three were operational, mostly as a result of breakdown. [:(]

http://www.madcowssteakhouse.com/viewto ... 58&start=0

[panzers]

Well, I haven't read all the threads here, so forgive me if I'm being redundant. With that being said: Nimitz had a plan, and a very legitimate plan the would guarentee the final outcome if the war. Strategically, it was, by far, the best plan, maybe a little more bloodshed, but it was more of a gurantee that it was going to happen when the two of them were duking it out with Roosevelt. The problem I have is that McCarthur had the Eisenhower syndrome. He was a peoples general except he fed our citizens thousands of miles away with something that was very sinsitive to us back home and took it as a PR movement to get what he wanted. I think that was very selfish on his part and it could have possible made the war last significantly longer because of the danger that the Japaneese could have easily broken through our lines of supply by attacking in the rear, My opinion about his rediculous "I shall return" statement is that it was used as a PR ploy to fool the American people that he, not Nimitz, was the war hero out of all this, when all along we have Nimitz here that was far superior a tactitioan and, oh, by the way, AN ADMIRAL IN THE PACIFIC!!!!!, it just so happened to work out for us because the japaneese were not prepared to attack our rear areas, and they certainly had the capability to do that at that time for we sent pretty much our whole army and navy to the Leyte gulf leaving us dangerously thin in some of the most strategically important places behind the lines like Truk, the biggest Japaneese naval outpost on the Indonesian area as well as all the mineral and oil resiurseful areas that could have completely cut off all their line of suply, much like what happened to Germany just a few months earlier in Romainia. All these were thousands of miles to the south and southeast. It just so happened thar the Japaneese were so focased based on their Samauraii history, that they were concerned about one thing, and one thing only: you will not get our homelands. It was because of this, they pretty much lost what remained of their naval might where all they really had to do is let McCarther have is way.( you don't think they knew of the importance of this) and then send all their shit to the rear and render the phillipenes useless again. I give him credit for having the kohunas to plan out the strategy as best as you can do it, but had the Japaneese not been so blinded to their own code, this war could easily have lasted until 1946. I, myself, think Mccarthur is a selfish, pompus ass, for convincing a very sick man in Roosevelt and bullying Nimitz into what the people want to hear. I don't give a shit what he did in Korea! this is World War Two and the Japaneese had to be vanquished and fast because there were already holding us back behind the line with their cave, sniper like mentality. It could have caused us thousands more lives had it not worked out the way it did. Anyway, that is my take on the situation. To say I hate Mccarthur for what he did is a gross understatement. As it was, he was made to be the famous Gerneral that he was and because of the folk hero that he was, guess who got to stand up at the docks of the USS Missouri in September? Not Nimitz, but the PR whore on, arguable, the greatest battleship of all time. Yes, it was an army Gerneral in the pacific, not an Adniral of the Pacific. Makes me want to puke everytime I rhink about it.

[Neilster]

panzers...man...paragraphs! [:'(] [:)]

They make reading so much easier.

Cheers, Neilster

[Stabilo]

ORIGINAL: SLAAKMAN

AAARGH! So many great points.....so little time! [X(] I hope to address these points over the next few weeks eventually though. Regarding the French sitrep of 1940 I will say that I compare it to the Soviet situation; Great equipment, low spare parts, low readiness, faulty organization, logistics and tactical doctrine, mediocre high commands and leadership and almost non-existant reconnaisance. (I feel that the game needs to reflect this more. I admit that Im a hairsplitter).[:'(] Case in point;

I love the story of the french high command trying to get some informations about the German assault at Sedan - but they just couldn´t because their telephone personal went to lunch and left the staff without communication...