The tragedy of that "charge" in World War I wasn't that the Newfoundland soldiers died in epic combat, man-on-man, but that they got hung up on their own barbed wire and were simply machine-gunned to death by the Germans as they struggled to get through. Those that did manage to stagger into No Man's Land were picked off because they were the only soldiers crossing the open gap between the lines.

In a war marked by human wastage, the charge of the Newfoundland Regiment on the Somme was an appalling low point.

The simple point is that as soon as we realized the capability of the Zero we easily and quickly designed a plane(s) capable of combating it.

The Yak-3 didn't enter the war until 1944, at which point the war had massively turned in Western Theatre. For the bulk of the conflict, they were using the Yak-1.

The Mig 25 and Mig 31 are both interceptors, they are designed to fire from distance and evade. The Su 35 is designed for Air Superiority. We have held the edge in our capabilities for years compared to them.

Every expert I know of is skeptical of China's claimed Railgun weapon. As to why they would bother mounting it and making claims, why not? It is brinkmanship, making us think they have more capabilities than they do.

The laser rifle is a crowd deterrent weapon. It would serve almost no purpose in infantry combat because it cannot kill. Yes, it can burn things and cause pain, but that is all. Again, this was claimed to be far more effective than experts think during our diplomatic arguments over China's use of blinding lasers on aircraft. We have no hard evidence of it's capability.

Yes, Russia could sell such a missile to our enemies versus using it directly against us. The problem is that as soon as they do so, the genie is out of the bottle. It will be reverse engineered quickly and could be USED AGAINST THEM. No country gives or sells away it's absolute top level weaponry except to it's most trusted allies. Allies which, for all intents and purposes, know that using such a weapon against another nation state risks full out retaliation against not only them but the country that sold it to them.

Our carriers are excellent mobile platforms, but they are not our only way of mounting air strikes. If we were somehow in a conventional war situation, we could easily fly over and base our aircraft in allied countries for combat. Most of our nuclear capable aircraft are not carrier launched anyway. Even if somehow all of our carriers were taken out and somehow our SAC bombers were destroyed as well, we would still have more than enough land launched and submarine launched nuclear warheads to easily blanket our enemies.

My points remain:

1. It is in the greatest interest of our enemies to boast about weapon capabilities even if they are not effective yet.

2. Most well regarded experts consider many of these weapons to either be still in the research stage, early production stage (IE not available for years), or they are wildly over hyped.

3. There is no logical reason for our enemies to use these weapons or proliferate them to their closest allies unless the weapons can prevent a nuclear response. Merely mentioning a weapon that would have such a capability creates a situation that could lead to nuclear war, like SDI did. I don't know if you recall, but I do clearly, how massively freaked out the Soviets got over our SDI claims. For two years they started threatening nuclear war as being inevitable if we continued on the path we were, all the while aggressively trying to destabilize our relations with our allies. 1983 to 1985 was pretty fucking tense, not Cuban missile crisis level maybe, but damn scary. Putin has acted similarly over our attempts to set up a missile barrier in former satellite states of Russia, although we still haven't got to the SHTF level of the early 80's.

The Zero's Chinese performance was ignored by the U.S. command prior to pearl harbor, dismissed as exaggeration. That's actually the crux of my point.

Exceptional moments do not change the rule.
Yes on occasion a wildcat would get swiss cheesed and not go down, but 99% of the time when swiss cheesed they went down.
Yes, there were wildcat aces that did fairly well (and Zero aces that did even better), but 99% of wildcat pilots were just trying to not get mauled.

Hellcat didn't enter combat till mid 1943, and it is the correction to the mistake. The F6F should have been the front line fighter at the start of the war... and could have been made sooner had Japanese tech not been ignored/dismissed as exaggeration.


Russian quantity as quality? At the start they were shot down at a higher ratio than the manufacturing counter ratio (by a lot). It was a white wash in favor of the Germans.
It took improvements in Russian tech to turn the tide in the air. Lend-lease only constituted about 10% of their air force at the peak. Russia had to improve their own forces, so they did. By the end, planes like the yak3 were par with the best.


The Mig31 is a slower Mig25 with a digital radar. Their version of the F14, not really ahead of the times, par maybe.

F15 is faster than either mig29 or Su27 (roughly Mig31 speed).
F16/F18, at altitude, are moderately slower, but a wash at sea level.

Why would they shoot and run?
We have awacs, we would know they are coming, so the only chance to shoot would be at max range. Max range shots are throw-away shots, they basically won't hit unless the target is unaware, which it won't be unaware because of the RWR. Just a slight turn and the missile can't follow after tens of miles of coasting and losing energy.


Chinese railgun is in sea trials, right now. Not some lab test. It wouldn't be on a ship without first having the gun proven, the mount proven, the fire control proven, stationary testing completed, etc.
2025 is the estimate for fleet wide usage.
Try finding a picture of a U.S. railgun aboard a U.S. ship.


Why would a laser rifle not work, when you can buy crap like this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7baI2Nyi5rI
There's ones made in China, too : https://www.sanwulasers.com/customurl.aspx?type=Product&key=7wblue&shop=
That will light paper on fire ~instantly, and it's just a pitiful hand held laser pointer.
An actual weapon would be orders of magnitude stronger than a handheld toy.
It's an excellent covert operations weapon, silently blinding and starting fires form kilometers away.


Russia does not need to sink a U.S. carrier for no reason.
And the U.S. has no interest in giving Russia proper a need to defend from a U.S. carrier. For the very reasons you mentioned.


What Russia can do is proliferate such a missile, and effectively deprecate the U.S. carrier group as a military unit.

We need carriers to get our air force to wherever we need it to be.
If everyone had these missiles, we would have no way to deliver our air force by naval means.

Russia has land access to Europe, Asia, Africa. They can send planes to anywhere they need to go, from land bases. Russia doesn't /need/ a navy.

Most of the planet does not have a navy worth sinking. It's just us. This is the kind of weapon that disproportionately affects us.

-scheherazade

No, it's just not germane.

You are ignoring they clearly identified the ship before jamming emergency channels and attacking it and it's lifeboats, war crimes even if they hadn't identified it, war crimes even if it was Egyptian.

You are also ignoring that the American ship apparently never fired (it certainly would have if it were Egyptian)and was identified, and that specifically American and international radio frequencies (not all frequencies, the jamming was targeted) were jammed, so there's only evidence they knew it was not a combatant, and none to indicate they thought it was one.

Yes, if we didn't have the tapes that were hidden for decades, that lie that they thought it was an enemy combatant might still fly. (It would not excuse the war crimes) Because we do have the tapes and testimonies proving they knew it was American, or at the extreme least given every possible doubt had confusion as to who the ship belonged to, that long standing excuse no longer stands up and another explanation for why they secretly knowingly attacked their allies and hid that fact must be correct.

@newtboy,
"...there was only one combatant here. *facepalm"

Are you forgetting or ignoring that this incident occurred during the '6 day' war? Israel killed a whole ton of Egyptians in similar fashion that day too. I was making the very modest suggestion that arguing they mistook an American spyboat for an Egyptian spyboat is plausible, more plausible IMO than deliberately attacking an ally.

Can be misleading, or can be apt. In this case, this is just one of many times Israel intentionally attacked Americans, so it's not misleading.
Also, there was only one combatant here. *facepalm

This is about how someone we call allies have acted undeniably criminally by committing multiple war crimes against us that we conspired to hide for decades, not how we treated actively aggressive enemies that attacked us and our allies first. Also, we're talking about crimes delineated in the 1949 revision and ratification of the Geneva Convention, so WW2 isn't covered. Duh.

Facts, like multiple undeniable war crimes against America, crimes that directly led to American murders, you mean?
If I find you on my street and cover you with a tarp before I beat you to death to footloose at 120 db so you can't protest, "I thought it was a known terrorist....i didn't see or hear anything to indicate it wasn't besides my friends who told me it wasn't." isn't going to work as an excuse. That's basically what we have here.

Your"illustration" is not a bit on topic, and seems like floundering excuses for the indefensible war crimes of Israel.

And then we can largely agree. Can we agree even further though that listing only one combatants crimes can become misleading?

America dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Prior to that they fire bombed virtually every other Japanese city, killing 100 thousand in Tokyo alone.

The fighting on the ground on the islands reads like one long list of horrific war crimes against dehumanized Japanese victims again and again...

I know the illustration shouldn't be necessary, but presenting a single sided selection of choice facts can be extremely misleading, and the video here, like many on Israel today, does exactly the same thing.

Thanks for the context. I was initially taken aback by her tweets. That said, sinking to her attackers' level is probably not the best way to combat them, if for no other reason than the ammunition it gives people like this BlackPilled guy.

Don't get why this movie was so popular, it had so many problems! The main one being they have a futuristic afro society (awesome!), but it's a monarchy (oh), and one that is determined by single combat (what?). It's not even fair single combat, the panther tribe gets to take performance enhancing drugs. Then the king loses and there is a coup because they don't like the new guy. Are they not smart enough to have a modern democracy? Did they learn their lesson after the coup? Nope!

Let's put aside that vibranium makes no sense and just say they have super technology - flying cars, lasers, etc. Yet they are running around with swords, spears and war rhinos! They put a lot of lip service towards helping people world-wide yet their own people are still living in huts! Why do they have a segregated military, when is that ever good?

Killmonger was a decent villain though, I'll give them that, mostly because most superhero villains are one dimensional mindlessly evil fools.

Old cartoons like this are to new cartoons....What Lone Wolf Mcquad was to "The Texas Ranger". The original went to war with the cartels, from great distances with his sniper rifle, to close up with his Mac-10's, to murderous hand to hand combat. "The Texas Ranger" and his side kick shot their guns out of their hands

Good analogy except isn't there is a real purpose for having a bad cat. To effectively defend yourself from criminals or what the 2nd amendment meant to defend yourself from a bad government. Now where the line is that prevents us from driving around in tanks or having missiles to just owning a cute little kitten is... I cannot say but I would think having a standard issue combat rifle (ar-15) is within the reasonable limits. Just my take on it.

"There's no other legal tool available to the public capable of mass murders with so little effort."

I disagree. Petrol and cars/trucks. Both are legal and easily used to commit mass murder (and have been). I'll add swords (long knives) into this with a caveat - you need to be a highly trained swordsman to commit such an atrocity.

Cars are so dangerous that they have killed more people in the US in the last 50 years by accident than guns have on purpose. It took 50 years of concerted effort by subsequent US administrations to get the yearly death toll by cars lower than that of firearms (the curve for cars only recently dipped below that of firearms).

Knives can cause as much or more vascular damage than a typical firearm wound. The difference is that knives require the smallest interpersonal confrontation distance (it is hand to hand combat - people don't like this), and to consistently achieve high levels of vascular damage requires a higher degree of training.

The right of non-restricted people to own firearms has little affect on murder rates. E.g. Australia has a higher rate of firearm ownership now than before its lauded firearms laws came into effect in 1997. The majority of studies done on this topic conclude that the restrictions had no effect (or no measurable effect) on the continued reduction in firearm fatalities.

I think the greatest issue in the US is that some people see the use of firearms as a solution to some problems where it is not a good solution. I.e. it is a cultural issue.

Two of the best combat aircraft ever made.

@noims -- My grandfather had about 10 war stories that he rotated through telling, pretty much exclusively after one of my uncles "broke the dam" by asking him to recall things as they were at the Oshkosh air show standing next to a P-47 airplane like he had worked on.

By the time that happened, my grandfather was in his 80's and in very good physical and mental shape (cattle rancher that did daily work manhandling heavy feed bags around, etc.) but had a quirky personality because he was 90%+ deaf. I don't think that was a result of the war, hearing problems seem to run in the family.

Anyway, he frequently used those hearing problems as an excuse for not having to interact with people. He had hearing aids, but he'd turn them off most of the time and just ignore people. I think some of that was being an introvert, and some was probably lingering "shell shock" / PTSD effects. But overall he really adjusted back to civilian life just fine. Got a degree in education on the GI Bill and taught and coached basketball to High School students, then worked as a small-town Postmaster, and eventually retired to work the ranch. I don't think any of us in his family, including his wife and children, thought of him as being "impaired" by the mental effects of the war. But it was clear that some of what he experienced had a very deep, lifelong effect on his outlook.


I wrote out the 3 stories of his above because they seemed to be the ones that had the most emotional impact on him. To me, it was interesting that a lot of stuff outside of combat hit him the hardest. He also had more traditional "war stories" stuff about victories and bravery, like when his unit captured / accepted the surrender of a young German pilot in a Bf-109 who deserted to avoid near certain death from flying too many missions after the handwriting was on the wall that the allies were going to win. But by far, he got more choked up about the other stuff like having to knock that French girl off her bike and seeing starving civilians and being unable to help them much.

Like you said, more banal stuff side-by-side with or against a backdrop of horror. I think it's pretty much impossible to imagine what those sorts of experiences in war are really like and what being in those situations would do to us mentally. And then WW2 in particular just had a massive impact on the entire generation. Basically everybody back home knew multiple people that went away and never came back. Then when some did come back, they were clearly different and yet reluctant to talk about what happened. Pretty messed up time to live through, I guess.

Possible, but I don't really think so. I think that the Medical minds of the time thought that physical shock, pressure waves from bombing etc. as you described, were a (or perhaps THE) primary cause of the psychological problems of returning soldiers. So the name "shell shock" came from there, but the symptoms that it was describing were psychological and, I think precisely equal to modern PTSD. Basically, "shell shock" became a polite euphemism for "soldier that got mentally messed up in the war and is having difficulty returning to civilian life".

My grandfather was an Army Air Corps armorer during WWII. He went through basic training, but his primary job was loading ammunition, bombs, external gas tanks, etc. onto P-47 airplanes. He was never in a direct combat situation, as I would describe it. He was never shot at, never in the shockwave radius of explosions, etc. But after the war he was described as having mild "shell shock", manifested by being withdrawn, not wanting to talk about the war, and occasionally prone to angry outbursts over seemingly trivial things. Eventually, he started talking about the war in his mid 80's, and here's a few relevant (perhaps) stories of his:

He joined the European theater a couple days after D-Day. Came to shore on a Normandy beach in the same sort of landing craft seen in Saving Private Ryan, etc. Even though it was days later, there were still LOTS of bodies on the beach, and thick smell of death. Welcome to the war!

His fighter group took over a French farm house adjacent to a dirt landing strip / runway. They put up a barbed wire perimeter with a gate on the road. In one of the only times I heard of him having a firearm and being expected to potentially use it, he pulled guard duty at that gate one evening. His commanding officer gave him orders to shoot anyone that couldn't provide identification on sight. While he was standing guard, a woman in her 20's rolled up on a bicycle, somewhat distraught. She spoke no English, only French. She clearly wanted to get in, and even tried to push past my grandfather. By the letter of his orders, he was "supposed" to shoot her. Instead, he knocked her off her bike when she tried to ride past after getting nowhere verbally and physically restrained her. At gunpoint! When someone that spoke French got there, it turned out that she was the daughter of the family that lived in the farm house. They had no food, and she was coming back to get some potatoes they had left in the larder.

Riding trains was a common way to get air corps support staff up to near the front, and also to get everybody back to transport ships at the end of the war. On one of those journeys later in the war, my grandfather was riding in an open train car with a bunch of his buddies. They were all given meals at the start of the trip. A short while later, the track went through a French town. A bunch of civilians were waiting around the tracks begging for food. I'll never forgot my grandfather describing that scene. It was tough for him to get out, and then all he managed was "they was starvin'!" He later explained that he and his buddies all gave up the food that they had to those people in the first town -- only to have none left to give as they rolled past similar scenes in each town on down the line.

When my mother was growing up, she and her brothers learned that they'd better not leave any food on their plates to go to waste. She has said that the angriest she ever saw her dad was when her brothers got into a food fight one time, and my grandfather went ballistic. They couldn't really figure out what the big deal was, until years later when my grandfather started telling his war stories and suddenly things made more sense.


A lot of guys had a much rougher war than my grandfather. Way more direct combat. Saw stuff much worse -- and had to DO things that were hard to live with. I think the psychological fallout of stuff like that explains the vast majority of "shell shock", without the addition of CTE-like physical head trauma. I'd wager that when the docs said Stewart's father's shell shock was a reaction to aerial bombardment, that was really just a face-saving measure to try to explain away the perceived "weakness" of his condition.