Invasion of Tarawa Fails

[TabascoOne]

Out of sheer curiosity, what is the name of the church in which Curtis LeMay is a saint? Our Lady of Superior Firepower?

The Church Of The Immaculate Gray Lady. Saint Curtis is the patron saint of urban redevelopment

On an unrelated note, how does that work? Granted the German and French winters are nothing compared to what the panzers faced outside Moscow, but it certainly gets well below freezing. Surely some kind of additive existed that could keep the radiators from freezing solid.

[Serafina]

On an unrelated note, how does that work? Granted the German and French winters are nothing compared to what the panzers faced outside Moscow, but it certainly gets well below freezing. Surely some kind of additive existed that could keep the radiators from freezing solid.

Wrong quotetags.

Anyway, the stuff tended to freeze well below zero.
So, if an additive did exist (don't ask me), it simply did not work below a certain temperature.

[JBG]

I read somewhere that the cost of 20(?) B-29s was similar to that of a new battleship, though build times were somewhat different.

An Iowa cost around US$125 million, a B-29 around US$669,000 (which was a lot of money for an aircraft in those days). So, one could get 186 B-29s for the cost of an Iowa class BB.

Thanks Stuart. Now I'll have to root out where I read it. A nagging, whiney voice keeps saying Friedman ( I have his BB book, and a wonderful book it is too ) but he is never that wrong.

In terms of cost, I was merely thinking of the number on the Govt cut cheque. The facilities to produce large ships and aircraft are quite different, starting with the philosophy of just how to build such things. There's a nice passage in "Running Critical" where the head of General Dynamics, with a Douglas then a GD Fort Worth background gets to know about how ships are built, let alone the problems at Electric Boat.

After making my comment then reading subsequent posts about conversion of industrial capacity, I had a weird picture in my head of a CA or BB up on blocks at Wichita in the depths of winter being re-wired!

A thought on the cancellation of the Lions - the British bought a lot of czech armour plate before WW2 as the battleship holiday and the depression had reduced British armour plate manufacturing capacity and they were wanting to rearm soonest by the end of the '30s.

"From a combat point of view, gasoline catches fire more easily than diesel fuel, which is a major disadvantage when your tank gets hit in a battle; gasoline-engined tanks are more likely to burst into flames, explode, and/or kill you."

Simon, some say that the Germans referred to those petrol M4s as Ronsons as they caught alight so easily! Anyway, diesel is less volatile and diesel engines are better suited due to their torque characteristics to moving heavy vehicles. There is a long and very informative thread on HPCA about the M4 that you might like to read.

[JBG]

Out of sheer curiosity, what is the name of the church in which Curtis LeMay is a saint? Our Lady of Superior Firepower?

The Church Of The Immaculate Gray Lady. Saint Curtis is the patron saint of urban redevelopment

On an unrelated note, how does that work? Granted the German and French winters are nothing compared to what the panzers faced outside Moscow, but it certainly gets well below freezing. Surely some kind of additive existed that could keep the radiators from freezing solid.

Moscow winters are much more extreme than German or French ones. There was an additive - heat. Keep the engine running or build a fire under it. Of course there are some fairly strong OH&S objections to fire under petrol fired vehicles!

[Sea Skimmer]

Anyway, the stuff tended to freeze well below zero.
So, if an additive did exist (don't ask me), it simply did not work below a certain temperature.

This is what anti freeze is for as I mentioned, but anti freeze does not work as an additive, it’s a physical replacement for a large portion of the cooling water in the radiator system. The number one anti freeze used in WW2 would be ethylene glycol though the less toxic and more expensive Propylene glycol was also used. Both are still in massive use today. In modern cars we use a 1:1 mix of anti freeze and water, at that ratio Ethylene glycol prevents freezing down to -30 degrees F. The Russian winter however easily got this cold at night outside of Moscow in 1941. The best Ethylene glycol can do at IIRC 75% ratio to water is about -60 degrees F. in Russia… things can get that bad too. But usually not.

Now why the Germans didn’t have this, its because as a bulk replacement for water, you need a colossal volume of it for not just thousands of tanks but also tens of thousands of support vehicles. German logistics in Russian struggled to move forward the basic fuel and ammo rations required to push forward the offensive. Replacement men, weapons, winter clothing and winterization supplies like anti freeze and less viscous motor oils just couldn’t come forward in time. Hitler gambled on taking Moscow before the snow came, and failed.

Many vehicles went into Russia in the summer of 1941 with anti freeze in the radiators. But to fix various problems you had to drain the radiators, and they’d spring leaks, and they’d overheat and boil over, and every time all that could be added back in was plain water because it was available. Even if you did have anti freeze it would only be a 1:1 ratio in the summer, because the boiling point also matters. Too much anti freeze lowers the boiling point, and thus the engine overheats more easily. This is not good either.

Moscow winters are much more extreme than German or French ones. There was an additive - heat. Keep the engine running or build a fire under it. Of course there are some fairly strong OH&S objections to fire under petrol fired vehicles!

Indeed, if it got cold enough that was the only solution at all, build a fire and warm up the whole block. Either that or guzzle fuel running the engine all night long and never let it cool off in the first place. Latter for the winter of 1942 the Germans came up with radiator fittings to let one vehicle warm up another. This meant that say a tank platoon could keep only one tank instead of five tanks running through the night, then use it to start the others. The Russians didn’t need to bother with stuff like this nearly so much because they had air cooled engines with winter oils already. So when morning broke the T-34 swarm was ready to go, while Panzers would still be immobilized. That turned into more then one disaster.

[Simon_Jester]

Many vehicles went into Russia in the summer of 1941 with anti freeze in the radiators. But to fix various problems you had to drain the radiators, and they’d spring leaks, and they’d overheat and boil over, and every time all that could be added back in was plain water because it was available. Even if you did have anti freeze it would only be a 1:1 ratio in the summer, because the boiling point also matters.

Why would you want antifreeze in your engine in the summer anyway? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep the stuff in reserve until you're going to need it?

In terms of cost, I was merely thinking of the number on the Govt cut cheque. The facilities to produce large ships and aircraft are quite different, starting with the philosophy of just how to build such things. There's a nice passage in "Running Critical" where the head of General Dynamics, with a Douglas then a GD Fort Worth background gets to know about how ships are built, let alone the problems at Electric Boat.

Care to paraphrase?

Simon, some say that the Germans referred to those petrol M4s as Ronsons as they caught alight so easily! Anyway, diesel is less volatile and diesel engines are better suited due to their torque characteristics to moving heavy vehicles. There is a long and very informative thread on HPCA about the M4 that you might like to read.

I'd appreciate a link, but if you don't have one handy, better that I dig for it than that you do.

[Sea Skimmer]

Why would you want antifreeze in your engine in the summer anyway? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep the stuff in reserve until you're going to need it?

Anti freeze also serves to provide corrosion protection to the cooling system piping and pump, and it gives you a couple degree higher boiling point thus reducing the chance of overheating under extreme conditions. So that’s why you always want anti freeze in the coolant if you can get it, even if you are in the desert. If you have to dump in plain water you start getting trouble in the long term, particularly if that water is random Russian river water you threw in after Hans let the tank overheat on a road march in which the dust blinded him from even seeing the temperature gauge, and not water which was well filtered, or ideally distilled. I’m sure you’ve seen mineral stains around faucets and such, you start getting that kind of thing inside the engine; only it gets worse because of the high heat levels and corrosion of the metal.

To make matters worse, the dust in Russia from so many long road marches on dirt roads choked the engines of German tanks and trucks and exceeded the abilities of the air filters to contain it. So lots of dirt got into the engines and engine oil, making everything worse in terms of low performance, heavy internal wear, and consequential overheating (causing precious anti freeze to boil out) and outright failures.

Hitler personally made this all the worse because he would not allow an adequate number of replacement engines to even try to be shipped to the frontline units. He wanted all the engines kept back for new tanks so he could keep raising whole new Panzer divisions, rather then keeping the existing ones up to strength. The Germans never learned any better either, and kept raising whole new divisions until the utter end of the war. Indeed in early 1945 when it became hard to find manpower for whole new divisions they just started forming whole new brigades!

Hauling anti freeze around in reserve just means you are stuck with the exact same logistical problem they had when winter hit. Too much distance, not enough transport. Hauling around thousands of gallons of anti freeze for months in a forward position just not going to happen. Either its in the radiator, or its going to be hundreds of miles to the rear at the Army and Army Group level supply dumps.

In Russia the Germans had to send entire army corps marching up single unpaved roads (one paved road per division was considered the normal standard), and supply entire armies or in some instances several armies down a single railroad track which had only bare bones standards in terms of passing sidings, water towers, turntables ect... which let you make the most of the track.

[JBG]

Many vehicles went into Russia in the summer of 1941 with anti freeze in the radiators. But to fix various problems you had to drain the radiators, and they’d spring leaks, and they’d overheat and boil over, and every time all that could be added back in was plain water because it was available. Even if you did have anti freeze it would only be a 1:1 ratio in the summer, because the boiling point also matters.

Why would you want antifreeze in your engine in the summer anyway? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep the stuff in reserve until you're going to need it?

In terms of cost, I was merely thinking of the number on the Govt cut cheque. The facilities to produce large ships and aircraft are quite different, starting with the philosophy of just how to build such things. There's a nice passage in "Running Critical" where the head of General Dynamics, with a Douglas then a GD Fort Worth background gets to know about how ships are built, let alone the problems at Electric Boat.

Care to paraphrase?

Simon, some say that the Germans referred to those petrol M4s as Ronsons as they caught alight so easily! Anyway, diesel is less volatile and diesel engines are better suited due to their torque characteristics to moving heavy vehicles. There is a long and very informative thread on HPCA about the M4 that you might like to read.

I'd appreciate a link, but if you don't have one handy, better that I dig for it than that you do.

The M4 thread was lost apparently during the great yuku-poo debacle/tragedy. However a couple of the members have saved it to disk and may re-post it soon. As one of them reminded me, it is one of the military threads where Supindra got actively involved! Supindra is (may have now retired) a 2 star general in the Thai Army who got there through the combat arms.

Re your earlier question - Davis, head of GD, had a background in aircraft manufacture, he was an aircraft engineer originally for McDonald Douglas. He then moved to GD. Aircraft manufacture, foundry work aside (which in any case would be done elsewhere) is a clean orderly process. Indoors with clean floors, bright lights and lots of white coats. It easily leads itself to detailed and accurate production planning.

Large ship production at the time (the introduction of the Los Angeles class SSNs) was dirty, sweaty, noisy, heavy and often dangerous. No two ships end up exactly the same as there were often constant adjustments, fixes and ad hoc engineering solutions applied. Much of the much larger workforce was less skilled than in aircraft manufacture and union rules were often more prevalent.

I hope that that helps.

[JBG]

Simon, the M4 thread has been re-posted under "essays" on HPCA.