The Second World War.

[Dr Pepper]

Originally Posted by Ennath

Not to nitpick, but that was the '56 war. The pass was blocked by the paras, preventing any Egyptian forces from interfering with ops further east, but then Sharon got overambitious and tried to clear the whole pass. That's where things started to go wrong. Not "badly wrong", but wrong nonetheless.

I accept the correction. I offered it as yet another example of a para operation which went wrong. Sharon got into quite a lot of trouble over it if my history memories are correct-not the least because he acted without authorisation from his higher HQ. And a significant (for the Israelis) number of casualties resulted. Yet seizing a piece of key terrain in a surprise operation by paras is exactly the sort of operation they are best used for. Once again poor intelligence....

As someone noted above-good intelligence doesn't guarantee success....poor intelligence usually guarantees failure.........

[Historian]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

I remember seeing old 1930s Soviet film footage depicting early Red Army paratroopers rolling down the wings of a rather quaint looking aeroplane. It doesn't look like a very pleasant experience for them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNEbBe-_Ak4

Originally Posted by cyber200

Tupolev TB-3- Apparently the world's first cantilever-winged 4-engine heavy bomber, introduced in 1932.

They were actually obsolete and officially out-of-service by 1939, but in fact the Soviet Air Force still had over 500 of these early-1930s relics flying at the time of the German invasion, and they served in both the bomber and transport roles right through to at least 1943, with a handful still active at the end of the war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEFsdZSEjiU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_TB-3


I'm guessing that exit route over the wing is dictated by the lack of any cargo door/hatch in the rear fuselage, the only door seems to be directly over the rear portion of the wing. (see 4:10 in the video clip)

It has to be said though, the pilots of these things were every bit as brave as the mad buggers throwing themselves off the wing- Flying a daylight bombing raid in a TB-3 at 130mph flat-out when there were Me109s around can't have been much fun...

[scoundrel]

The Tupolev TB3 has a rather impressive resume in WW2, given that it was not even supposed to be in service anymore, being so out of date. But for all its technical limitations, the TB3 was nothing like as out of date as it looked to be on paper. I don't think the Russian services had much else flying which was as physically big as this aeroplane, and even purely as a transport, big is useful. But the bit in the wikipedia article about the Zveno Project is a revelation to me; it is very clear that in some departments the Russian forces were way ahead of their time in technical development and sheer technical imagination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zveno_project

Britain never really addressed the problem of escorting daylight bombers over the normal range of daylight fighters at all. America, which was much more technically innovative than Britain, did not come up with technical solutions for long range escorting of daylight bombers much more sophisticated than drop tanks, which only extended the range of their mainstay daylight fighter, the Republic P47 Thunderbolt, by a few hundred miles. It was only when the Merlin-powered variants of the North American P51 Mustang reached the Eighth Army Air Force that it was really able to operate as intended in its bombing role.

The concept of unescorted self-defending bomber formations mounting deep penetration raids into Germany was pretty much exploded after the appalling disasters of the Schweinfurt-Regensburg raids, especially the second one on 14th October 1943, in which 291 bombers flew, 60 were shot down, 17 were so badly damaged that they were scrapped after landing and 121 were catagory C damaged (repairable, but repair cost is above book value). Only 93 got back with minimal damage. There was a long string of Atlantic storms from mid October 1943 and into February 1944, which would have prevent mass daylight attacks on Germany anyway, and this saved face for the Eighth Air Force; because after Schweinfurt General Arnold took the responsibility and on his own authority ordered that all daylight raids be suspended until the means existed to escort them the whole way there and the whole way back again.

General Arnold knew that the P51B was on its way, and indeed some units already had them well before Schweinfurt, but he needed whole wings of them, lots of wings of them. Incidentally, the Mustang was originally built by the North American Corporation for the RAF and to an RAF specification, but the RAF also bought over 900 Merlin variant P51s under lend-lease in late 1943 and many RAF wings also escorted the Eighth Air Force deep into Germany. These missions made good use of trained and experienced fighter pilots who were gathering dust before D Day and after German daylight fighters became rare as rocking horse manure in Northern France due to the RAF/USAAF attacks on their airfields.

But returning to the Tupolev TB3 and the Zveno Project, we can see that Russian planners were considering the long range penetration mission with a realistic and jaundiced eye at a time when the RAF thought that lightly armed, slow and small payload light and medium bombers were exactly what it needed and were going to win the war.

[stardust2003]

Just wondering if there was any body armour used in these massive beach assaults.. in D Day and also on the Japanese beaches.

The guys were facing a barage of machine guns.... and shrapnel ..... did anyone think of wearing body armour ?

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by stardust2003

Just wondering if there was any body armour used in these massive beach assaults.. in D Day and also on the Japanese beaches.

The guys were facing a barage of machine guns.... and shrapnel ..... did anyone think of wearing body armour ?

The state of the art was not very high in WW2: no kevlar in those days, for example. British Commonwealth air forces experimented with flak suits but found them unsuitable in the very cramped interiors of most British bombers. However, when the USAAF experienced casualties from bits of their own aeroplanes flying off when hit by flak and inflicting both wounds and blood poisoning on their air crews, they adopted the British flak suits and found them useful. There was more room inside a typical American aeroplane and the flak suits didn't get in the way nearly as much.

[SanteeFats]

Originally Posted by stardust2003

Just wondering if there was any body armour used in these massive beach assaults.. in D Day and also on the Japanese beaches.

The guys were facing a barage of machine guns.... and shrapnel ..... did anyone think of wearing body armour ?

For troops attacking a beach there were a couple of concerns. The weight of the vests available then were pretty heavy. The thought was one it would slow down the wearers and two if only wounded during the initial assault a soldier would drown before he could be rescued. Not that many were.

[rupertramjet]

Originally Posted by haroldeye

The last operational British Para drop was Anguila in 1969. Not very war-ry but an op nevertheless.

Speaking from the heart, the days of the Paratrooper are long over. Modern weapons systems, radar, interception by both fighter and ground to air missiles, make the chance of a drop being successful, about zero! Watch a Hercules lumber in to drop troops and you would get what I mean!

Helicopter based landings are far more effective, Sierra Leone and the rescue of the British Troops there, is an example.

Although not an operational drop, a squadron of SAS were dumped into the South Atlantic near the Task Force during the Falklands War,

There was a major training drop this year with British and US units.

[Ennath]

During the 1983 Grenada invasion, elements of 75th Ranger Regiment made a para-drop at Point Salines.

[hound dog]

Came across an interesting German documentary, the narration is dubbed in English, and has English subtitles when people are interviewed, on the Schnellbootes of the war, "Stuka's of the Sea". It's broken into five parts, total watching time a little over an hour. . The link to the first part, for those interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RIYtptmpiI

[rotobott]

Just flicked through an alleged documentary called Hellstorm,about German suffering in WW2, it's probably what the Nazi's would like us to believe, it starts with Hitler saving Germany from corruption, then it cuts to Dresden WTF nothing in between, up to 400,000 dead there apparently, more like 25,000.Lots of graphic images including the results of the USAF straffing the last giraffe in the zoo It then gets really nasty about the Russians, I'm all for freedom of speech but this was made this year, and some people will believe it

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4661358/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2