Japanese Fire Balloons actually hit something important

Cook

Banned
But that's because they WERE very effective, and actually had a chance to change the course of the war. By the time the Japanese firebombs were being used, the war was basically won.
The V-2 was neither effective nor potentially decisive and by the time they came into use German defeat was inevitable. The V-2 strikes on England averaged 2 deaths per missile, not exactly a good return on investment in something that consumed more resources than a B-17 bomber. The only way the V-2 could have been effective was if it had had an atomic warhead.
 
The entire purpose of the fire balloons was to cause fires in the timber forests of the American Northwest and thus deny the USA the resources from the area.

Of course they didn't get that even in the 30's and 40's firefighting wasn't so hopelessly incompetent as to stand back and let all of Oregon go up in flames.
 
I think a successful fire balloon strike would severely increase air raid paranoia amongst West Coast denizens. It'd be like the early days of '42 all over again, with false alarms and panicked anti-air barrages being thrown up in response.
 
The V-2 was neither effective nor potentially decisive and by the time they came into use German defeat was inevitable. The V-2 strikes on England averaged 2 deaths per missile, not exactly a good return on investment in something that consumed more resources than a B-17 bomber. The only way the V-2 could have been effective was if it had had an atomic warhead.
Most of the misses against London were due to British intelligence leaking direct hits as overshoots, thus the Germans corrected for the non-existent overshoots, and the V2s fell short from then on.
 
Probably only useful if carrying a biological warhead....something which is possibly going to happen in APOD btw.
 
The V-2 was neither effective nor potentially decisive and by the time they came into use German defeat was inevitable. The V-2 strikes on England averaged 2 deaths per missile, not exactly a good return on investment in something that consumed more resources than a B-17 bomber. The only way the V-2 could have been effective was if it had had an atomic warhead.

I wasn't referring to the V-2, but the V-1, in response to the following:


Well the British never admitted the damage that the V Weapons were doing on London primarily to avoid public panic and to deny the Germans intelligence on their accuracy, I think news reports at the time attributed them to "gas explosions" or something. The Germans were so anxious to gain information on where the V-1's where landing that they sent the Double Agent Eddie Chapman back into Britain to report on how much effect they were having on Lindon, Chapman immediately reported back to MI5 and they used him to feed back false information that resulted in subsequent V-1's undershooting London. :)

V-1s were fairly effective, especially from a morale standpoint. They were designed to help break England's will to fight.
 
Most of the one man kills 60 people incidents involve totally unarmed victims.

Small town USA in 1945 is going to be a different story.
 
It wasn't going to be successful, the fires would have been contained and allowed to run out of fuel if they were too big, and extinguished completely where possible.

He's wondering what it would have mattered if they had stepped back and said "eh, Oregon, screw them!"

It would have mattered since timber was used in quite a lot of products, so losing big chunks of the US timber supply would be bad in that respect. Furthermore, losing the forests in the first place would be bad whether or not they had any direct economic value.
 
I wasn't referring to the V-2, but the V-1, in response to the following:




V-1s were fairly effective, especially from a morale standpoint. They were designed to help break England's will to fight.

They didn't work either, they were certainly good at killing innocent people but they never could have been a game changer. As well as the MI5 deception operation as theattacks went on the RAF and the Air Defence Artillery were getting better at shooting them down. They were a terror weapon but they didn't break British morale, the Germans had tried that with larger scale air raids in 1940-41 and it didn't work, the British and Americans spent most of the War trying that on Germany with thousands of heavy bombers and that didn't work either. The Nazis spent millions of marks on the V-Weapons and got very little real return, even the V-2's payload was far less than what a Lancaster or B-17 could carry, I think Vin Braun himself admitted post war that as military weapons they had been failures.
 
He's wondering what it would have mattered if they had stepped back and said "eh, Oregon, screw them!"

It would have mattered since timber was used in quite a lot of products, so losing big chunks of the US timber supply would be bad in that respect. Furthermore, losing the forests in the first place would be bad whether or not they had any direct economic value.

Pretty much, basic moral of the story: What is Oregon timber used for? Rifle stocks.
 
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