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re: WWII Buffs – what was the most audacious action by a US unit in the war?
Posted on 5/15/19 at 2:44 am to jchamil
Posted on 5/15/19 at 2:44 am to jchamil
quote:
Pretty sure I've posted this before, but my grandad was a POW for 2.5 years in Japan after having his plane hit by a kamikaze and being picked up by a patrol boat. Until the day he died, he held no ill will towards most of the Japanese. He said they were just 20 year old boys doing what they were told just like he was
Got great uncles that fought in the Pacific, they believed otherwise. Hated Asians till the day they died.
This post was edited on 5/15/19 at 7:17 am
0
Posted on 5/15/19 at 4:09 am to VolsOut4Harambe
quote:
Storming a fricking beach littered with mines and lined with armed Nazis.
If you look at the numbers the guys who were in the first wave of boats on the American beaches had a 1-in-3 death rate.
I can’t even fathom what that must’ve been like.
Posted on 5/15/19 at 7:35 am to Jim Rockford
quote:
quote:
One not widely-known fact about the Doolittle Raid is that likely over 100,000 Chinese were killed by the Japanese as a result of the raid during their aggressive search for the Doolittle raiders.
quote:
And nobody ratted them out. Even deep in the throes of Mao's cultural revolution, the Doolittle Raiders and Flying Tigers were revered.
China was still ruled by the Nationalists in WWII.
The Communists actually benefited a good deal from the Japanese occupation as the Nationalists were beat to shite by the Japanese, and the Soviets turned over a lot of war material and northern territory to the Communists after the Japanese surrender.
This post was edited on 5/15/19 at 7:38 am
Posted on 5/15/19 at 7:46 am to blueridgeTiger
I would say Midway. Instead of retreating to protect our coast we chose to try to ambush a larger force. If we lose our pacific navy is almost nothing for 6 months. That delays everything and allows the Japanese to entrench themselves in the south pacific even more. We probably lose Hawaii as well.
This post was edited on 5/15/19 at 7:46 am
Posted on 5/15/19 at 11:00 am to blueridgeTiger
Merrill's Marauders fighting in the China burma campaign ....always outnumbered but inflicting more casualties on the Japanese
Posted on 5/15/19 at 11:02 am to blueridgeTiger
I'm going with "vaporizing a city". In a war filled with audacious moves, dropping atomic weapons takes the cake. Turning the heart of a city into radioactive plasma trumps everything else.
There were many more brazen and brave acts taken during the war, but the decision to just end a hundred fifty thousand people, half in the blink of an eye and half subject to various forms of slower deaths while also making most of a city just... disappear... was so absurd that nobody believed the initial reports coming from Hiroshima.
Then we did it again.
If that's not audacious, the word has no meaning.
There were many more brazen and brave acts taken during the war, but the decision to just end a hundred fifty thousand people, half in the blink of an eye and half subject to various forms of slower deaths while also making most of a city just... disappear... was so absurd that nobody believed the initial reports coming from Hiroshima.
Then we did it again.
If that's not audacious, the word has no meaning.
This post was edited on 5/15/19 at 11:36 am
Posted on 5/15/19 at 2:53 pm to TigerstuckinMS
I see your point. We should have refrained from using the A-bomb and commenced Operation Downfall. We could have easily defeated the Japanese by 1947 with very few American casualties and our precision bombing of military targets would have minimized civilian casualties during the battles.
Posted on 5/15/19 at 3:56 pm to stateofplay
quote:
Merrill's Marauders
Stone cold killers.....truly men to be feared. I met a whole bunch of them about 15 years ago due to my great uncle being one of them. Almost all of them became very religious men
Posted on 5/15/19 at 4:11 pm to VolsOut4Harambe
Accept certain marine divisions did it more than a few times in the Pacific.
Posted on 5/15/19 at 4:18 pm to TigersFan64
Yes
Posted on 5/15/19 at 4:26 pm to Jim Rockford
Oppenheimer bet that it might not work at all.
Teller originally brought up the atmosphere being set a fire.
Bethe led the team that concluded no it couldn't happen.
But that was years previous to the test. And that work would lead to Hydrogen bombs.
I think Fermi was the one that brought up the bet on the atmosphere as a joke. I think he was also the one that brought a tub of sunscreen and was smeering it on, trying to pass it around as lark.
Teller originally brought up the atmosphere being set a fire.
Bethe led the team that concluded no it couldn't happen.
But that was years previous to the test. And that work would lead to Hydrogen bombs.
I think Fermi was the one that brought up the bet on the atmosphere as a joke. I think he was also the one that brought a tub of sunscreen and was smeering it on, trying to pass it around as lark.
Posted on 5/15/19 at 4:27 pm to VolsOut4Harambe
quote:
Storming a fricking beach littered with mines and lined with armed Nazis.
Nothing comes close.
Yup - led by Norman Cota. One bad arse mofo.
Posted on 5/15/19 at 4:33 pm to blueridgeTiger
dropping a fat stinky load onto 2 japanese cities
This post was edited on 5/15/19 at 4:39 pm
Posted on 5/15/19 at 4:38 pm to fjlee90
quote:
The rangers who scaled Pointe Du Hoc come to mind for me
LINK
quote:
Pointe du Hoc, a prominent position along the coast of Normandy, was a focal point of the amphibious assault by U.S. forces during the early morning hours of D-Day, 6 June 1944. The cliff top (sometimes referred to as Pointe du Hoe) is located between Utah and Omaha Beaches and sits atop overhanging cliffs up to 100 feet in height. The careful and thorough planning of the Normandy invasion determined that several key missions would require painstakingly accurate execution in order for the invasion to go as planned, and one of those missions was the capture of Pointe du Hoc. As such, Allied planners named Pointe du Hoc one of the most dangerous German defensive positions on the Norman coast
When Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley told Rudder of the assignment, the Ranger officer could not believe what he had heard, but he understood the importance of the mission at hand. In his memoir, A Soldier’s Story, Bradley wrote, “No soldier in my command has ever been wished a more difficult task than that which befell the thirty-four-year-old Commander of this Provisional Ranger Force.” An intelligence officer on the staff of Rear Admiral John L. Hall, the commander of naval forces supporting the landings at Omaha, claimed that the mission could not be accomplished by the Rangers, adding that, “Three old women with brooms could keep the Rangers from climbing that cliff.”.
Rangers lead the way
This post was edited on 5/15/19 at 4:40 pm
Posted on 5/15/19 at 4:56 pm to TigersFan64
quote:
That was pretty audacious. Early in the war and far from a certainty that any of them would come back alive. It was pretty risky. A Japanese fishing trawler did spot them and it was sunk; not sure if it got off a radio transmission, but that's why they had to launch the bombers earlier than planned and at a greater distance out than planned. One not widely-known fact about the Doolittle Raid is that likely over 100,000 Chinese were killed by the Japanese as a result of the raid during their aggressive search for the Doolittle raiders.
One of the pilots did a interview with CBS on the 60th or 70th anniversary, they never knew what they were training for.
He said they were two days out of Pearl aboard the carrier, when it was announce they were headed for Tokyo.
Posted on 5/15/19 at 5:01 pm to blueridgeTiger
Operation Fortitude
LINK
The Japanese were about to send suicide subs loaded with plague infested fleas to California.
quote:
Operation Fortitude was the code name for a World War II military deception employed by the Allied nations as part of an overall deception strategy (code named Bodyguard) during the build-up to the 1944 Normandy landings. Fortitude was divided into two sub-plans, North and South, with the aim of misleading the German high command as to the location of the invasion.
LINK
quote:
We should have refrained from using the A-bomb and commenced Operation Downfall.
The Japanese were about to send suicide subs loaded with plague infested fleas to California.
This post was edited on 5/15/19 at 5:08 pm
Posted on 5/15/19 at 5:17 pm to blueridgeTiger
quote:
2. The Doolittle Raid. It took balls to fly a B-25 off a carrier deck.
Not only that, but after bombing Japan they all ran out of fuel well short of their safe landing zone and had to ditch their planes. Many of the pilots relied on the local citizens of ally friendly countries to help them get back to their units.
Posted on 5/15/19 at 6:18 pm to blueridgeTiger
quote:
I see your point. We should have refrained from using the A-bomb and commenced Operation Downfall. We could have easily defeated the Japanese by 1947 with very few American casualties and our precision bombing of military targets would have minimized civilian casualties during the battles.
Negative. Our precision bombing in 1947 were an oxymoron and would have one "decision maker" on trial for war crimes today. Those two bombs saved lives.
Posted on 5/15/19 at 6:39 pm to Sidicous
quote:
My Uncle did that after serving 3 tours in Europe and becoming a literal Ace fighter pilot.
What was his name?
Posted on 5/15/19 at 6:49 pm to blueridgeTiger
Tarawa landing was pretty brutal
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