Shattered Sword did that already, complete with a long section on the myths and mythmakers of the Battle of Midway.
Also, Fire in the Sky did a decent job busting the myth of "Zero uber alles". It pointed out that the Japanese push was blunted by P-40s and F4Fs, and that the Japanese were already on the ebb when the real Zero-killing fighters were rolled into the theatre.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.![]()
Go to almost any forum dealing with Paradox Interactive games - you'll find at least a few revisionist historians who deal even with modern times.
![]()
The Pacific also talked about that. Up until Midway the superiority of the Zero was not really that pronounced, as it was mostly against Devastators (which aren't really designed to go up against other aircraft, being a torpedo bomber) and the Buffalo (which was really the only early American plane that sucked). The Wildcats performed well against the Zero, and also the Dauntless too despite being a dive bomber (most likely because it's slightly more maneuverable than the fighter). And by 1942 anyway the Buffalo was now replaced, as well as the Devastator (by the Avenger).
edited 3rd Nov '15 11:17:43 PM by entropy13
The Dauntless was built very tough, but the most successes they had weren't in trying to pick dogfights with Zeroes; it was when they were flying in formation, immediately above the ocean surface so they couldn't be ambushed from below, with a whole battery of tail gunners scanning for targets.
A Zero might be able to plough into that formation from ahead and above and break it up, but that was unlikely because the time that Dauntlesses typically adopted that formation was on their way home from the target. So, most of the time, the Zero had to try to chase them to kill them, and it'd be facing the concentrated fire of several tail-gunners firing from a stable platform as it made its approach.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.What I'm specifically talking about (and what was also specifically shared in the book) was the time when they already did their dive and they either missed a "returning formation" or they really had to break up because of flak. It was supposed to be the point where they were at the most vulnerable, but for a Zero-Dauntless meeting it's more of "difficult, but can pull it off" for the latter rather than "you're already dead".
I think that there needs to be a broader non-American centric coverage of the Pacific War; at least here in the US, the campaigns featuring mostly other allies (i.e Commonwealth, Dutch, French, Nationalist Chinese) appear to be generally cast as sideshows to the "main" efforts led by the United States.
Yet the largest ground campaign against the Japanese featuring Western forces (the Second Sino Japanese War typically involved larger formations), fought in the jungles of Imphal-Kohima in eastern India, was so vicious that it was dubbed the "Stalingrad of the East". Meanwhile, the IJN's Curb-Stomp Battle that crushed the Royal Navy's Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean Raid and a combined Allied task force in the Java Sea could make the US Navy's losses at Pearl Harbor seem light.
Indeed, the very centre of the Battle of Kohima
was fought over the Tennis Court
of the Deputy Commissioners' Bungalow.
I doubt there's a mention of the British Pacific Fleet
, either.
And one last mention of Kohima, and rather fitting for this time of The Poppy — The Kohima Epitaph, which lies in the War Cemetery in Kohima
:
For your tomorrow, we gave our today"
edited 4th Nov '15 9:01:09 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnImphal-Kohima Campaign involved a two Corps-sized force at best for the Allies and several divisions for the IJA. The Philippines Campaign involved two Armies (6th and 8th), and the Japanese forces numbered in the hundreds of thousands constituted in three armies. In terms of land area they're roughly comparable (as northern Burma and its surroundings is roughly the size of the whole Philippine archipelago), so "density" is also higher for the latter.
edited 4th Nov '15 4:29:51 PM by entropy13
![]()
The British Pacific Fleet is actually well noted in US histories for its compare and contrast experiences against kamikazes with the US Navy, namely the oft-repeated notion of the Royal Navy's armored flight decks allowing British carrier crews to absorb and recover from damage much quicker than their American counterparts.
Just noticed on the Wikipedia frontpage, would've missed this otherwise: just a few days ago, on Nov. 1st, Gunter Schabowski passed away.
Lots of people claim credit for opening the Berlin Wall. Schabowski can honestly claim to be one them; also, he did it as something of an accident. Mary Sarotte's Collapse documents this bit of history in close detail, but it boils down to this: the Berlin Wall fell amidst joy in the streets and utter miscommunication and confusion in the Party leadership. Schabowski's very much unplanned announcement that it was due to open "as far as I know, immediately" was in large part responsible.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.How bad is the situation? It's this bad
.
As a history buff of sorts, I ought to be fuming at this... yet I'm somewhat numb inside due to how garbage my country's government has been at protecting far too many things related to the country's history.
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiotIt's interesting how the Greeks and Romans saw not only their gods but the gods of other nations as being equivalent to their own. For example, today we often think of Norse gods Tyr, Thor, Odin and Frieda(?) and that Classical and Norse mythology as being two very separate things, but when writing about the Germanic tribes, Tacticus said that they worshipped Mars, Hercules, Mercury and Isis.
edited 5th Nov '15 12:05:49 PM by SantosLHalper
@ Lesser-covered fronts of World War II: The Longest Day is on one of the channels here again, and it reminds me — how much media covers Commonwealth Forces in North-Western Europe? Or even the other D-Day beaches that weren't Omaha, in particular the Canadian-led Juno beach?
Keep Rolling OnNot nearly enough.
Things like the Canadian forces' exploits or the Commonwealth-commanded Polish forces sealing the Falaise Pocket at Mont Ormel is barely given any mention; every once in a while you'll find passing mentions of the Polish role at Market Garden, but that's pretty much it. The Canucks are pretty much forgotten in popular memory.
edited 7th Nov '15 10:44:39 AM by SabresEdge
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.I believe we discussed why this is. It is partly due to cultural myopia that is a sort of natural human thing in general. The US history or roles are not as important or lauded in certain events in UK history and vice versa. Which is true everywhere really. In terms of publicly consumed history this tends to be more pronounced as people are people want to know more about "their side" then the "other side". It probably doesn't help that the US produces so much publicly consumed history it saturates the market in general.
It is partly why it is a reasonable if not difficult challenge to be a rounded historian to find reasonably accurate and presentable sources and stitch together a historical narrative without too much bias.
Doesn't help that you could literally write large volumes about the various views on a single subject alone even relatively small events.
Who watches the watchmen?If you can track it down, the three-part mini series, "The Valour and the Horror", is a pretty good account of the Canadian experience in WW 2. It's pretty controversial and it pissed off a lot of "experts" in military history, and some veterans, but it is good viewing, if harrowing at times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Valour_and_the_Horror
covers the shows and the controversy they caused.
I found Battlefield
to be a relatively objective documentary series.
edited 7th Nov '15 5:50:44 PM by entropy13
What I didn't like is the narrator in the last two seasons of Battlefield. By his accent, he's American (but that's not the problem lol), and my issue is that he's speaking too fast with odd emphasized syllables. The episodes are all roughly the same in length, but with the second narrator there are more seconds where he doesn't speak than with Pigott-Smith (the narrator for the first four).

Now I'm just waiting for a revisionist approach to the Pacific War and the Japanese Empire.