Wait why is Mac being sent to China anyway. In OTL, I believe a few of the reasons no major US forces were deployed to China were to due to the corruption in the regime, the difficulty in getting them there, and fact that island hopping was considered a better way to eventually take the war to Japan.
Remember the Texas! The United States in World War II (an alternate history)
- Thread starter galveston bay
- Start date
marathag
Banned
XX Bomber Command was Major.
Supplying a ground army across the Hump was not possible, but air wings were
marathag
Banned
yes.
And what a boondoggle that was too, but it got Bombs on Japan, something FDR wanted ASAP.
a ground army couldn't do that. The war wouldn't be won by fighting the IJA in China
Wouldn’t the amount of men and material involved be enough of a deterrent for a Formosa invasion? Reading up on Operation Causeway, it sounds like Formosa would involve over 500k troops including logistical support. Since Formosa was a colony of Japan it wouldn’t be a leap in logic to assume that the fighting would be similar to Saipan or Tarawa (or TTL’s equivalent). Whereas the Philippines are occupied territory that sounds like a much worse bleeding sore for Japan than OTL. Got to save the leave-behind troops and our Filipino allies too, right?
Just some ideas. Source
The Mohawk was sturdier, but was still crippled by the common, far too light, armament of one .30 cal and one .50 cal. The worst feature of this is that it was entirely unnecessary to have that weak of an armament. The Finns would up have a pair of .50 cals, in the fuselage and four 7.5mm (i.e. .30 cal) in the wings with no noticable loss of performance (it is important to note that these were ex-French Curtiss 75) and Curtiss itself produced single versions of the P-36 with armament of 2x .50 and 4x .30 (P-36D which also had an upgraded engine raising the top speed to 311mph) and the "E" model (with EIGHT .30 cal a la the Hurricane and early Spitfires).
The biggest advantage of the P-40 was, of course, much higher top speed, even after the addition of seal-sealing tanks and pilot armor, the "B" version of the aircraft was clocked at 352mph.
One of the really major WI of the Battle of France involves the Curtiss 75. The French rather quailed at the price of the Hawk, and kept putting off any sort of large scale purchase expecting the Bloch MB-150 series to fill their needs. The -150 series proved to be something of a dog's breakfast with well over half of the total production never being deemed combat ready (the first 157 airframes were never issues, behing held in storage pending upgrade to a truly combat capable configuration and many of the rest never having propellers and tail assemblies mounted). While it is doubtful that they could have saved the day, it is worth wondering how much different things might have gone if the French had be able to operation an extra 500-700 reasonably competitive fighters (the Hawk was slower than the Bf-109 but was apparently considerably more maneuverable and able to absorb more damage and stay in the air than the limited number of remaining Dora and early Emil variants). In combat the Hawk 75 had a likely 5:1 kill ratio vs the Luftwaffe (actual claims put the ratio at better than 10:1, 290 kills/80 probables against 29 Hawks lost, but claims are always inflated).
Well, I know the footprint of 279 of them was 15.8 square miles in spring of 1945, with the Mid-summer footprint for a single aircraft being 3-4.7 square miles.
McPherson
Banned
The same as most of the Herr was not beaten by the Russians fighting them in Russia... I think that the IJA had 55 US division equivalents of troops fighting the Chinese Nationalists or about 2 million men. That is a lot of Japanese infantry not fighting Americans, British or Australians.
A single B-29 was functionally by weight in logistics spent per sortie in support was equal to a rifle company in combat action for about a week.
That is a lot of gas, ammunition, parts, and maintenance for one airplane.
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Whatever the kill ratio was it had a lot to do with the French being on the defense and picking their tactical engagements. Other factors were the Germans not yet being perfect at escorting bombers. IIRC the bulk of the kills were bombers. A third was the distance factor for damaged aircraft. The defending pilot has a quarter or less distance to make a emergency landing on a friendly airfield. The Germans fighters or bombers damaged often would not be lost had a friendly airfield been four or five minutes away. French hawks 75s with the same or worse damage more often survived when they could make a emergency landing before the engine seized or the pilot bled out. This is not different than in the BoB, the RODEO & CIRCUS operations or the Allied air offensives of 1943-45 & the German air offensives the same years. The defender can achieve a favorable attrition rate.
I've also seen it claimed the French fighter pilot of 1940 averaged significantly more flight hours than the Germans. While a lot of that would be negated by inferior combat tactics it counts in lower accident rates & better general aircraft handling. I've wondered if anyone has any reliable comparisons in this available?
Is that just the rifle company, or include its slice of artillery, engineering, tank & antitank, & other support. Two very different numbers obviously.
The Allies counted a 'division slice' at different ammounts for differing circumstance. For the first 90 days of the OVERLORD op it was figured at 44,000 men per div HQ. That comes to 1,630 men for each of the 27 rifle companies in a US infantry division.
Oh, absolutely. Nonetheless, at risk of another slight derail here, what might the impact be of 500-600 fewer bombers available for the Blitz (or perhaps a few hundred Hawks that could supplement Fighter Commands numbers in the early days) or, more directly, interdicting the evacuation at Dunkirk or supporting some of the reasonably significant French counterattacks made during the terrible six weeks.
marathag
Banned
Losses of your own airforces are a good way to check, and the Hawk 75 had the lowest loss rate of the French Fighters.
Didn't hurt that typically the Hawk equipped unites were all in all, had better pilots with more experience
P-40C was probably the best mix of speed and maneuverability, but the 'D' model onward was a whole different Curtiss model, with little interchange with the previous models, despite looking very close. Curtiss beefed up the alread strong structure, so much more weight on the same size wing. Was no longer the nimble Model 75 that delighted pilots, but to a too heavy dog
It is. The impact, especially in the less often discussed but hugely effective mining campaing of the Inland Sea, Korea Strait, and approaches to the Home Islands of the "average" B-29 was also arguably greater than that of an infantry company.
Large. I've seen a couple efforts to calculate this. Without checking accuracy or assumptions they do not favor the German Air Force in any way. The actual losses were significant in both he Polish & western campaigns. Back of the envelope calculations suggest that in terms of ratio of aircraft to ground forces engaged in combat the GAF was at its best in the Polish campaign, and due to poor replacement rates, in decline from then on.
Sounds like the ideal place for MacArthur.
You mean that MacArthur can work miracles? I always thought that he was a decent general but very much into shows. Also as for the corruption at the time, good luck, MacArthur would probably have a better chance at convincing the few officers that might come with him to not use racial slurs than solve that mess.
Actually quite the opposite.
MacArthur is, possibly, the most overrated U.S. Army officer this side of George Armstrong Custer (admittedly there are other strong contenders) by the American general public. Had he spent 1/4 the effort he did burnishing his image on actually fighting the war (including getting rid of the worthless boot lick sycophants who spent the entire war doing nothing but issues glowing press releases) American and Australian losses would have been lower across the entire SW Pacific Theater.
I have an entire pre-packaged MacArthur rant, but most folks around here can likely quote it from memory, so I'll spare the thread yet another push outside of the thread's parameters.
I see what you mean. I did remember watching a few history documentaries that mentioned that.