Does Pilot = Dodo?

[Fly Navy]

Fly Navy-
On your second point: The Japanese had a ****load more manpower to call upon on the islands in the Pacific. They learned quickly that bonzai type charges were ineffective. That being said, numbers of people don't matter against superior firepower/tactics when employed properly. I'm no grunt, just a student of history. Numbers would matter if we tried to invade China, but that goes against the axiom of never fight a land war in Asia.

Germans had better tech than the Russians. The Russians threw every person they had against them.

Technology is a big trump card, but if both sides are in it for the long run and it becomes a battle of attrition, numbers can be an advantage. Unless you got something up your sleeve (i.e. nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

 

[kmac]

Sure and the Germans were trying to invade Russian and reach Moscow. If we were to try and invade Japan then the casualty numbers would have been extremely high. But the technology differences then were much smaller than today. You could say that the Germans had better tanks, machine guns, and aircraft but that failed them when the temperatures dropped and equipment froze. My point is that the number of human beings is irrelevant to the outcome when the capability of the two sides are decidedly different. I think the island hopping campaign of the Pacific war best illustrates this. Yes casualties on the American side were high, but the Japanese lost much much more.

 

[Broadsword2004]

Just a side note, but the Russian battle tanks actually had superior armor to the German ones and could go through mud the German tanks got bogged down in, due to their wider tracks. I think they also had a gun that rivaled the German tanks.

Aside from that, though, German tech was pretty much superior I think. The Russians also made good use of American half-track vehicles and Jeeps too, but the Russian gov't made every attempt to hide the fact that those were actually foreign-made vehicles.

 

[Acoustix99]

The chinese suffer from a major inferiority complex from having been "dishonored" and trampled on by the west for many years. With their current stand on human life, as stupid as it would be, I would not discount the chinese using tactical nukes against our CVBG's if it look like their only way to beat us.

 

[VarmintShooter]

The chinese suffer from a major inferiority complex from having been "dishonored" and trampled on by the west for many years. With their current stand on human life, as stupid as it would be, I would not discount the chinese using tactical nukes against our CVBG's if it look like their only way to beat us.

Really? I kind of doubt they'd do it with old GW in the White house. They (and everyone else too) have to know we'd respond in kind, and I don't think even the Chinese would risk that.

Of course, you never do know I guess.

 

[Flash]

You link to that article but something like that is pretty insignificant really. On the same argument one could easily say that our Navy has sacked over 25 CO's in the past 3 years due to loss of confidence by the Navy.

Losing the whole crew of a submarine is a little different than some CO's relieved because they fool around with their enlisted personnel/run into a bouy or dhow/falsify their flight records or any of the other reasons that the CO's were relieved.

I linked the article because I believe it is indicative of the overall readiness of the PLA (PRC military). That and the bulk of their sub force is 50 year old designs.

 

[Greaper007]

I hope this isn't getting too off subject. I was talking to my father the other day. He was an F-14 in the late seventies. He was telling me that whenever they would dog fight (in a wargames type scenario, I'm not sure what the correct term is) with other countries they would almost always win. According to my Dad the only acception was against the Omanians, which surprised me. He told me that almost their entire Air Force was composed of Mercenary former RAF pilots. According to him, the Omanians kicked their as*es. Has anyone heard of this phenomenon? If so, are there anyother ex-pat type Air Forces that we would have to watch out for? This may be as much of a factor of continuing a technologically strong pilot flown airfleet as the China question. Granted, this is all conjecture and I really know nothing on this subject. However, as long as everyone else is throwing out armchair theories I might as well recline the Lazy-boy.

 

[Flash]

I hope this isn't getting too off subject. I was talking to my father the other day. He was an F-14 in the late seventies. He was telling me that whenever they would dog fight (in a wargames type scenario, I'm not sure what the correct term is) with other countries they would almost always win. According to my Dad the only acception was against the Omanians, which surprised me. He told me that almost their entire Air Force was composed of Mercenary former RAF pilots. According to him, the Omanians kicked their as*es. Has anyone heard of this phenomenon? If so, are there anyother ex-pat type Air Forces that we would have to watch out for? This may be as much of a factor of continuing a technologically strong pilot flown airfleet as the China question. Granted, this is all conjecture and I really know nothing on this subject. However, as long as everyone else is throwing out armchair theories I might as well recline the Lazy-boy.

The Omanian AF is a bit unique. They still have former RAF and SAAF pilots as instructors. They have no other duties than to fly, which is almost unheard of in most military combat units (there is always paperwork to push).

The reason that they were beat by the Omanian guys is probably the ROE for the exercise. At the time, the fighter they were flying was the Hawker Hunter, one of the most manueverable fighter jets ever built. Notably, Jordanians flying Iraqi Hunters in the 1967 war (after theirs had been destroyed on the ground) were some of the few guys to get the better of the Israeli AF. They had very primitive radar if any and were essentially day VFR fighters, they would have been fish in the barrel in a BVR fight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Hunter

 

[fc2spyguy]

Ok, when you say most manueverable what does that mean? Able to pull more g's than other airframes, smaller turn radii and bleed/recover speed? Also, what really limits the g's an aircraft can take, the airframe or the pilot?

 

[Greaper007]

That's exactly what he was saying flash. I just didn't have the details. So is this comparable to MIG(15's?) shooting down F4's at the beggining of Vietnam.