Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

[Latze]

We do not live like our ancestors ,our military could not fight as our ancestors .
And our ancestors could not live like us ,their soldiers could not fight as our soldiers .

But tanks are still cavalry, aren't they?

[ljadw]

Tanks are the modern cavalry,motorized and armoured .But such a cavalry can only operate in a society with the needed infrastructure: the needed roads and bridges, the needed plants, the needed fuel,ammunition,spare parts and ,the most important : a society where the population has the needed knowledge to built these tanks, to operate them and to support and repair them . But 100 years ago, people had not this knowledge,thus today's tanks and even WWII tanks could not operate in 1914-1918 .
Today's trains also could not operate 100 years ago .Neither could today's hospitals, today's schools,aircraft,farmers, etc,etc .

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljadw,

There are two separate points here.

1) These modern weapons didn't exist earlier because the technology to develop and support them for the most part didn't yet exist. We all know that.

2) However, that given, had they been available on the battlefield in earlier times they would likely have completely dominated it.

If your point is that such ahistorical "what-ifs" have little value, then I agree.

However, if your point is that these weapons don't represent a major, outcome changing, leap forward from their predecessors, then I would disagree.

Cheers,

Sid.

[ljadw]

Availability is not sufficient ,other things are needed ,as
people who can build these weapons and their ammunition : such people did not exist .
people who can use them : they did not exist
means to transport them : the railways of 1914 could not transport tanks of 40 tons .
Today's weapons can only be used in today's society ,the weapons of the American civil war could not be used in WWI,or WWII,because the technology to build and use them did no longer exist .And the weapons from 2114 can not be used in 2014 .People in 1914 could not use mobile phones or computers or the electronic cars of today ,or missiles,....
You can't go back from 2014 to 1914 ,neither can you jump from 1861 to 1914 .

[TheMarcksPlan]

the weapons of the American civil war could not be used in WWI,or WWII,because the technology to build and use them did no longer exist...the weapons from 2114 can not be used in 2014 .People in 1914 could not use mobile phones or computers or the electronic cars of today

Thank you for these enriching contributions to the thread, and to those who brought forth these contributions by engaging with with their author.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi TMP,

You forgot to acknowledge the contribution of the administrators who, by their inertia, have allowed this sort of thing to run for many years. The choice other posters face, when presented with this inertia, is to let irrelevant nonsense remain the last post on a thread (which gives all power to the spoilers) or try to counter it. Unlike the moderators, the rest of us have no other levers to pull.

Cheers,

Sid.

[ljadw]

Who started this discussion ? The author of post 234 (who is not me ) who was comparing an F 35 to a WWI aircraft .
I said that all aircraft are competitive and I stick to this .

[ljadw]

There is no proof that the Volksjäger (He 162 ) would have done better during the Battle of Britain than the existing German aircraft .
The He 162 did not exist in 1940, thus you can't say that if he existed in 1940,he would have done better than the Me 109 .
It is the same for the F 35 .

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljadw,

You post, "I said that all aircraft are competitive and I stick to this."

Why?

My observation is that some aircraft are better than others and in some cases so much better that the opposition is demonstrably uncompetitive. The huge disparity in the relative losses of the opposing air forces in the opening phases of Operation Barbarossa illustrate this.

If all aircraft were always competitive, there would be no incentive to improve aircraft, and yet by virtually every parameter aircraft have got better over time.

The proposition that ".....all aircraft are competitive" is ludicrous.

Cheers,

Sid.

[ljadw]

It is not ludicrous.
The disparity in the relative losses in the start of Barbarossa do not prove this : The Soviets has more losses than the LW . This does not mean that the German aircraft were ''better '' (define better ) ,because half of the Soviet losses were non combat losses and because aircraft need humans to fly .The majority of the Soviet pilots were not ready for war, because the Red Army was a peace army. With ''better '' aircraft (those of 1961 ) the Red Air Force would also have lost more aircraft than the LW,because, not only the pilots,but the whole Red Air Force had no war experience and this had as result that a lot of aircraft and a lot of pilots were not operational .
Other point : in WWII other models of aircraft were developed, but NOT because these aircraft would be ''better '' than the aircraft of the opponent : FYI : most combat losses of the USAAF in WWII in Europe were caused not by ''better '',''worse '' enemy aircraft, but by enemy Flak .
And these combat losses were only a small minority of total losses .
USAAF lost in WWII 65,164 aircraft of which 22,948 in combat,21,583 in accidents in the US and 20,663 in accidents outside the US .
Final point : aircraft have not to be ''better '' than those of the opponent,because their role is/was not to shoot other aircraft .
Fighters were only a minority and their mission was not to shoot other fighters,or even other bombers .
The bombers were what the MV were and the fighters what the escorts were : the mission of the escorts was not to look for U Boats,it was to protect the convoys .The mission of the fighters was to protect the bombers,which were more important than the fighters .
You have also a wrong understanding of the word COMPETITIVE, which means :as good or as better than others of a COMPARABLE nature ,and, as you can't compare the F 35 with the aircraft of both WW s,your example of the F 35 is a wrong one . The aircraft of WWI and WWII were competitive ,as were the aircraft of the 50 s,the 60 s, etc .
The mission of the LW in the Summer of 1941 was NOT to shoot as much as possible Soviet aircraft .It was to support the ground forces and to prevent as much as possible,the intervention of the Soviet air force .

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljadw,

I did not specify fighters.

The purpose of fighters is to gain air superiority. This primarily requires destroying enemy aircraft in the air or otherwise preventing them taking to the air.

The Germans, by virtue of surprise, experience and generally better aircraft achieved this against many times greater numbers of Soviet aircraft, one of whose main problems was that they were for the most part not very competitive. Just for a start, many had no radios!

Your argument seems to be that the mere existence of an aircraft makes it automatically competitive with all contemporary aircraft. Try convincing the pilots of the Red Air Force's I-15 fighters in 1941 that this was so!

One has to wonder why the Soviet Union stopped production of, or improved, any types of aircraft if the originals were so competitive.

Cheers,

Sid.

[ljadw]

Several wrong points
1 The purpose of fighters is not to gain air superiority
2 Air superiority does not mean to destroy enemy aircraft in the air or to prevent them taking to the air .
3 Losing or winning air battles/ air superiority does not depend on the quality of aircraft, even not on the quality of pilots .
4 To lose 600 aircraft against an enemy loss of 1200 aircraft does not mean that your aircraft or your pilots are better .
5 I did not say that the I-15 fighters of 1941 are better than the present aircraft . I say that they were as good or better than aircraft of a comparable nature : today's aircraft have not a comparable nature of those of 1941 and can thus not be compared .
It was very easy for the Red Air Force to avoid almost all aircraft losses in the Summer of 1941 . How ? By withdrawing the Red Air Force to Moscow or the regions east of Moscow . But ,would that prove that their aircraft were '' better '' ? No ,of course .
You can't use quantity to prove quality .
It is almost impossible to prove that an aircraft was better than another one: you can't compare fighters to bombers, bombers to Stukas, day fighters to night fighters .A day fighter would have made a bad night fighter ,and he opposite .
Not only because they are different, but also because they have different missions and because the military situations are changing .
Hartmann shot more than 300 aircraft . Does that make him a better pilot than a bomber pilot who shot no aircraft ?
The Soviets had, till the end (1990 ) only short range bombers,while the US had long range bombers .
Does that make the US bombers better than the Soviet bombers ? No
The US had long range bombers because they needed such bombers, the Soviets did not need such bombers .
It is the same for tanks : Tiger tanks would not have made the capture of the BEF in 1940 possible ,they would not have made the distance of Sedan-Dunkirk .The Germans did not need them in 1940, but they needed them in 1943. Why ? Because the situation had changed .

[Latze]

the weapons of the American civil war could not be used in WWI,or WWII,because the technology to build and use them did no longer exist...the weapons from 2114 can not be used in 2014 .People in 1914 could not use mobile phones or computers or the electronic cars of today

Thank you for these enriching contributions to the thread, and to those who brought forth these contributions by engaging with with their author.

Sorry. You are right. It was wrong to prompt another absurd post. I will refrain from doing it again.

[ljadw]

Hi ljadw,



The Germans, by virtue of surprise, experience and generally better aircraft achieved this against many times greater numbers of Soviet aircraft, one of whose main problems was that they were for the most part not very competitive. Just for a start, many had no radios!



Cheers,

Sid.

At Schweinfurt US losses were 4 to 1 for the German losses, but US aircraft had radios !
Being competitive or not does not depend on having/not having radios .And,''many '' is very vague ,besides ,is it not a myth ? Did Soviet combat aircraft not have radios ,or were the radios primitive and in some ( how many ? ) cases malfunctioning ?
And what was the effect of this on the outcome of air battles ? And, the losses in air battles were only a minority of total losses .
That the Red Air Force had more aircraft does not mean that in combat it had a numerical superiority
.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljadw,

If "The purpose of fighters is not to gain air superiority", then what are they for?

Cheers,

Sid.