RE: MiG pilots got worse

[Marc James Small <msmall@infi.net>]

At 06:26 PM 3/18/02 -0500, Daniel T. Fahey wrote:
>One of the reasons the US did not have a strong tank was the task of getting
>them to Europe.  Still we should have had a more robust tank, earlier.  Even
>our tank tactics were stupid. Why we did not mount a 90mm cannon on the
>Shermans until it was too late.
>
>The same thing happened with our planes. The US seemed to lag on building
>the better plane, until the end of the war. Yeah we did build the A bomb
>first, but barely.
>

Good heavens!  US aircraft were competitive at all times during our part of
the Second World War:  it was our tactics and operational doctrine for
their employment which were greivously at fault.  Once these were cured,
the rest was a simple matter of attrition.  And we shouldn't sell the
Sherman tank short:  Patton was applauded by the Assembled Multitudes
(including such sterling tankers as Collins, Middleton, Walker, and Abrams)
when he commented after the War that his armored thrusts would have never
gotten out of Normandy if he'd had to rely upon the mechanical
unreliability and logistical nightmares which were the PZKPFW IV and
Panther and Tiger tanks.

And no one but no one was anywhere close to the US in building the bomb.
The British had the theory down but lacked the money for a Manhatten-sized
project;  the Germans didn't even have the theory right.  Their bomb
project was axed by Speer in 1943 as it was at least ten, if not fifteen,
years from achieving even a sustained reaction, such as the US had already
attained at Soldier's Field in Chicago in 1942.

Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +276/343-7315
Cha robh bąs fir gun ghrąs fir!