Yes, but tenacity in defense is not the measure of quality (when they are literally stranded and will be executed if they abandon their posts). In addition, IJA equipment was terrible. Terrible. They had no arty worth mentioning. They had crappy rifles (and worse pistols not that that matters). They had crappy MGs. Like all the axis forces, they had abysmal intelligence. Their attack doctrine seemed to be "Charge!" (aka, "Banzaiiiiii!").

Guadalcanal, in fact—a point at the very apex of Japanese success, this was the IJA at its very best—showed how entirely useless they were against quality troops that were well led. What did they do? They walked into artillery and MGs and literally died to the last man for zero gain. Zero. As raptor said above, in a real battle vs a modern army, they always lost, badly. Always. Malaya was a perfect storm for them. Had the UK forces been even competently led (instead of terribly led) they'd have lost, or at least been slowed for months—and that is with utter air superiority assumed for their side.

IJA troops are near the bottom of my list, frankly.

That doesn't disparage the Marine and Army units that fought them. Their suicidal nature on defense made them fight when any rational force would have surrendered. But the IJA never even managed a pyrrhic victory with their tenacity, merely defeat. Sure, they killed a lot of troops for nothing.

So you'd have line infantry that would all die, killing many of the enemy if it was defense (and almost none on attack)—but they'd almost always lose the battle. Hope you have massive reserves as every unit put onto the line entirely dies.

From what I understand logistics is an interchangeable term with supply, and tho USA was a unrivaled manufacturing machine at the time transport of all those materials 1000's of miles over open ocean kept the delivery numbers lower than than the production numbers. I would think the British had a better logistical system in place as the production was closer to the delivery location than the Americans, so a british unit could be on the front in days as opposed to weeks or months for the American unit.

Now as R&D goes I feel the Germans were unrivaled at the time, true the Allies had the bomb earlier but I understand the Germans had started earlier developing the weapon and were closer to fielding it but the research wasn't a top priority for the Germans unlike the Allies. The Germans also didn't prioritize the ME 262 or the rocket programs like they should've, and I believe either one of those would've would've changed the outcome of the war if they were ready 6-18 months earlier.

Intel is without question goes to the Allies.

As far as the Soviets winning the Eastern front single-handedly I'd have to point out 1 important factor that hasn't been mentioned yet- weather. The German army was crippled by the Russian winter. All those magnificent German open field tanks got bogged down in the soft Russian mud and broke down or froze. The much lighter and nimbler T-34 remained mobile and made short work of the heavier german armour and disrupted the German supply lines to the front leaving the troops to starve and freeze. The Germans made the same mistake in Europe, those open field tanks were easy targets once they were trapped in the narrow roads and hills of France. The Germans has a much better tank program than anyone in the war but they were too specialized and proved vulnerable once out of their element. It would be a disservice to the russians to say the weather saved their bacon, but TBH if the winter wasn't as harsh as it was the Germans would've destroyed the Soviets on the eastern front with ease.

US logistics and supply (the mechanism for moving men and materiel to the front) was unrivaled. No one was in the same league, not by a wide margin.

One, the Germans were not even close to an atomic bomb. Not remotely close, and from captured records their weak research was going the wrong direction anyway.

I say that German R&D was in fact negative, not positive. The wasted resources experimenting instead of producing. Engineering is not just building stuff, it's building stuff efficiently, and in a cost-effective way. Having limited industrial capacity, then sending it running in 100 different directions is just dumb. In addition, like their tank, their jets, etc, were not ready for operational prime time in terms of keeping them flying (not to mention having fuel to fly them). The Germans in fact had large numbers of Me262s constructed, but they never managed to fly more than a small number of sorties per day—a tiny fraction of the number of planes theoretically available.


Yeah, General Winter surely played a role.

In addition, they won at great cost. Even in victory their K/D vs the Germans was not good. The sheer death toll on the part of the CCCP is often used to show they did the heavy lifting, but instead to me it shows that they won in spite of being a bad force that cared nothing for their own troops. They fought more germans in the East, but they lost more for each German they killed/captured by a wide margin than the US and UK did in the west.

Lend-lease was not the majority of Russian arms, but it played a critical role that cannot be ignored. Note also that in the absence of US aid to the CCCP, they might have been forced to move even more troops from the far east. This, combined with increased German victory (many early battles where the CCCP held back or slowed down German advances were very near-run things, after all) might have encouraged the Japanese to move (they were held back due to fear of another drubbing at the hands of the Soviets).

No, you're not mistaken. But they did manage to frack the concept up. At the time it was thought that sheer weight of firepower, be it from aircraft or artillery or naval assets would flatten the enemy and allow us to simply walk in and take the territory. Since that never happened even once in the entire war, we were forced to reconsider our attitude. Then we screwed it up again in Korea and Vietnam. Then we just ended up copying the WW2 German model.

Harsh? No, not really. Marines don't think like that. Marines think in terms of mission accomplishment. Simply winning a battle or a war is not accomplishing the mission. The fight must be won, and it must be won without undue casualties. Every dead or wounded Marine is a Marine who isn't around to fight later. Every casualty is blemish on our reputation as a fighting force. It is difficult to explain.

You are correct, the Germans had abandoned bomb development in 1942 on de-prioritized the project while the Americans made development one of the highest priorities, spent many millions, spied heavily on the german research and grabbed as many german scientists as they could lay their hands on.

By the time there were any large numbers of 262's Germany had lost the pilots to fly them, thus too late to be of any use.

They were not even pointing in the right direction in 1942.

Had we not gotten the german scientists, of course, many of them would not have been used for a german a-bomb, but exterminated, instead.

The fact that Hitler delayed the 262 project to make it a fighter-bomber didn't help either. Neither did his love of BIG and ultimately useless tanks, like the Maus.

In my eyes the strengths and weaknesses of the forces in WWII are:

British:
Strengths:
Attitude, Tenacity, Ingenuity
Weaknesses:
Equipment, leadership, slow to adapt to new ideas

Americans:
Strengths:
Strong industrial base, Attitude, leadership
Weaknesses:
Equipment, slow to adapt to new ideas, sometimes does not listen to allies

Russians:
Strengths:
Manpower, climate, rugged equipment
Weaknesses:
Leadership, low technology, attitude

Germans:
Strengths:
Mentality (Prussian), technology
Weaknesses:
Leadership, manpower, industrial base (post US entry)

Japanese:
Strengths:
Fanatical Attitude, Infiltration
Weaknesses:
Leadership, manpower, Fanatical Attitude, industrial base

It is by no means a complete list, feel free to add to it, oh, and before a flame is started, the 'not listening to allies' bit refers to the sometimes difficult co-operation between the US and British forces, not just in Normandy and Africa, but also during Drumbeat when we warned the US to organise convoys and darkened shipping and ports when the US entered the war but it took them some months to actually implement it, thus helping the Second Happy Times.

+1

If you take the Japanese line infantry you also have to take their rifles, rations, boots, etc. :down:

They did well on small islands where they had months to dig in and prepare. Put them on offense and it was a bit like mowing down zombies.
:cool:

You also have to take into account their total inflexibility in battle. No matter how much the situation might change they would follow their original battle plan to the letter.

My mistake for misunderstanding; I thought we were combining attributes of all the nations that fought. So, you know, fanatical, dedicated IJA infantry supported by Soviet artillery, German armor, the US Navy, logistics, and aircraft, and mostly US/UK S1 through S5.

Country Boganistan
Infantry - Australian
Armored divisions -German 1941 model with 1944 equipment and US manufacture capability and reliability
Air Force - US 1944 model
Navy- US 43\45 model
Artillery US-1944 model
Command model - British
Logistics US - 44' mode

Well yeah but along with the IJA troops you also get the IJA Officers and NCO's to lead them, as well as the IJA training and discipline practices. That makes the IJA Infantry what it is but it also gives it the tactical inflexibility that I mentioned earlier.

I say if you took an IJN infantryman gave him German weapons, conscripted him in numbers like the Russians and had him lead by an American they would be unstoppable. :O:

Fixed :woot:

I mean lead on the Squad Level. US NCOs and LTs were some of the most inventive leaders in the war. :03:

EDIT: Oh I see what you did... wasn't Rommel stopped one time? By an Englander at that!

I say that American and British Airborne Forces were the best Light Infantry of the war. Fact. :yep:

Sicily, Normandy, Burma, Holland, New Guinea, Bastogne, Corregidor. Both on the offense and defense they proved indomitable against opponents many times their size and strength.

What really stopped Rommel was a lack of supply and the Quattara depression. Not minimizing the part played by the Desert Rats at all, but Monty wasn't the greatest of the commanders, it was Auchinlek after all that picked the defensive position at El Alamein to halt the German advance. What Monty was good at was preparation before an attack, which is something he could only do with a static front which was the antithesis to Rommels wide flanking advances with the Afrika Korp, if the Quattara depression had not existed, and the Italian fleet had control of the Med, Rommel would have taken the Suez, although admittedly I must also give credit to the RAF for their attacks on the supply trains of the Afrika Korps.

The fact that the British Army seemed to implement a revolving door approach to commanders in the desert theatre indicates how desperate we were for some good news, for some victories in the only theatre we had left for our ground forces after France, it indicates that and the pressure those commanders were under. Some delivered, others could not. Monty was lucky to inherit a favourable static defence position, a tired enemy, and fresh new tanks and men. He built those up until he outnumbered the enemy and then struck, furthermore, he struck at a time when the hero of the Afrika Korps wasn't there, which hampered their decision making process. It took eleven days to create the breakthrough needed for the Eighth army to start its push westwards.
It was after El Alamein that Monty started to pick things up, flanking maneuvers and the like over at the Mareth Line, and he fared well at Medenine against the odds, and he managed to adapt at Caen, turning the British thrust into a lure to draw the German forces in and allow the US forces to flank them, likewise he was crucial at the Battle of the Bulge.
As a defensive commander, Monty excelled, but in large scale attacks...well...Market Garden. :damn:
But, he was a curious chap, and a recognisable figure, like Churchill, and he provided a victory in Africa...and that's what was required of him.

He was a fantastic detailed planner and really got into the low level detail of planning down to the number of shells and ration packs available. He always liked to make sure that he had an overwhelming advantage before attacking and even then was sometimes reluctant until his planning was complete.

To be fair to Monty, he was the 'Churchill' of the Desert, he was also good at making public appearances, doing talks, improving morale, with his trademark hats. He was a figure the forces could rally around. :yep:

He also took chances and appeared to care little for the consequences.