Thread 64382451

For me, it's Operation Bagration. Started 22 June, 3 years after Operation Barbarossa, it ripped the heart out of the German Army, making for losses that could never hope to be made good. Operation Bagration was the eulogy of the Heer on the Eastern Front.

Not many Aryan supermen were left by mid 1944

Samar…. “They’re getting away”.

Panther and supporting infantry counterattack during Bagration. Potentially 5th Panzer Division, one of few strong divisions available in the area, having been transferred from Army Group North Ukraine at Bagration's onset.

When air superiority is lost: a German supply column, horse driven, is attacked by Shturmovic attack planes.
I'm fascinated by this battle so much partially because it's seeing such an unstoppable force gradually ground down to this at times nearly helpless state.

After Operation Kursk, during the Battle of the Dnieper River, the Red Army appeared to have enough strength to launch a wide frontal offensive.
However, the Germans still had some strength left at this point, and the Red Army suffered heavy losses.

>>64382486
I'm interested in this one a lot too: Hitler stonewalled the fuck out of the soviets for awhile there before they gave out eventually.
Hitler's "stand fast" order of 1941 doomed the man to believing for the rest of the war that sheer willpower to hold a line against any odd...and so the strange reversal began where Hitler behaved more like Stalin in 1941, whereas Stalin was loosening his reigns to good effect

>>64382465
Shit man, tell us what it was about. This site IS social in nature.

>>64382493
The 17th Army, exhausted in the fighting for the Kuban bridgehead and annihilated in the Crimea, should have been withdrawn and reorganized.
The same mistake of leaving an army idle was repeated in Kurland in the final stages of the war.

>>64382451 (OP)
It was so successful because of their deception. The germans thought they were going to launch their campaign in Ukraine. Also the D-day invasion

>>64382575
To be fair, holding the Baltic coast was important for uboat training. How much of that was still helpful by then is up for discussion, but that's supposedly what Kriegsmarine told Hitler.
The wildest thing about Hitler and assuming he was an idiot, was often he was actually acting under advice of his generals. Even later in the war when his nerves were most definitely fucked up, he was still asking for advice. I'm just saying I think he's a way better general than people make him out to be

>>64382589
>because of their deception
Yep, it was still believed the next operation would dive towards Ploesti oil fields, but instead it came through Belarus. There were only a couple actually prepared German divisions in Army Group Center that could punch above their weight by this time

>>64382593
Yeah they were using trying to prepare for some new type of submarine that was supposed to be a super weapon for them.

Manstein proposed a retreat using the Dnieper River as a defensive line, while Guderian insisted on deploying the 6th SS Panzer Army to defend Berlin and withdrawing from Courland, but Hitler seemed obsessed with the belief that there was no chance of victory unless he went on the offensive.

>>64382505
The battle off of Samar was part of the ww2 naval battles around Leyte gulf. The Japanese had essentially used their older battleships as bait to draw off the us battleships (who were supposed to be protecting the marine invasion force) and the US had taken the bait hook line and sinker. While the US fleet was off beating the tar out of the older decoys The Japanese center force showed up to the transports with several heavy cruisers, a few light cruisers, destroyer escorts and several battleships including the fucking Yamato. The only forces protecting the transports were 3 fletcher class destroyers, 4 butler class destroyers, a couple of escort carriers, and every aircraft within flying range.

Their are some good YouTube videos that walk through the battle.. drachinifel probably being my personal favorite..

The tldr version is the US destroyers used smoke, weather, and sheer willpower to successfully charge the attacking Japanese task force, sink several large cruisers and convince the Japanese that they were up against a much bigger force… causing them to break off the attack and leave rather than party wipe the 130,000 marines of the invasion force..

Some important factors to consider were that the Japanese didn’t have targeting radar… which royally fucked them and also tended to force them to navigate in more predictable patterns…. They thought they were up against much larger forces and used armor piercing shells for a majority of the battle… these tended to punch in and out of the small destroyers and escort carriers without meeting enough resistance to set off the fuses…. The US destroyers collectively used all the luck they had…. Seriously I cannot understate how much the Johnston and the Samuel B Roberts got away with simply by deciding to attack like crazy. That said they knew what they were getting into and knew they were the only chance the landing force had.

>>64382451 (OP)
Not often talked about but the german counter attacks after Bagration are interesting

>>64382658
The captain of the Samual B Roberts reportedly called over his ships loudspeaker "This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can,". Before charging a heavy cruiser…. They reportedly used all the 5 inch ammo they had aboard and successfully distracted the cruiser by lighting spot fires with 5 inch star shells….


The end result in the pic in previous post really shows the insanity of it all…. The Yamato on her own had more mass than the entire combined weight of all ships in taffy 3… and I believe on the heavy cruisers and up each of their turrets weighed more than the destroyers of taffy 3..


Through crap intelligence, shitty leadership, subpar technology and sheer willpower on the part of the US forces the Japanese managed to throw away what should have been a major victory, and potentially an insane amount of casualties for the US to stomach….
Reportedly on one of the escort carrriers, as the Japanese ships withdrew a US sailer pointed and shouted “look they’re getting away”.

>>64382658
>>64382681
based effortposter

>>64382451 (OP)
Basic bitch answer but Waterloo is one of the most 'narrative' battles of all time. It reads like it is out of a Roman mythic history, the exile and escape, miraculously Napoleon literally convinces the army to defect and marches on Paris. Armies are raised in panic, the best leaders all marching against him. But Napoleon is faster, he routs the planned linkup of the Prussians and the British with their Hanover and Dutch allies. The Prussians are nowhere to be found, and Wellington must hold the ridge against the most feared man in Europe.

Both sides had their moments to shine. The French column being cut down in the open by the heavy cavalry, Marshal Neys charge. The fighting at Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte. Infantry and cavalry and artillery constantly trying to gain an edge on their rock-paper-scissors type of flow. And at the end of the battle, Napoleon committing the most hardened respected veteran forces in all of Europe in a final offensive, one last make-or-break moment that would decide the battle, and the impact of Wellington's forces not only holding but the Prussians who had been arriving in a trickle finally being in enough force to begin to turn the battle as well. You can wonder what would have happened had his illness not taken Napoleon to rest for most of the afternoon, or if he'd attacked earlier in the day, or any other situations. But rarely will you get a battle where a single day makes such a huge impact on history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57auSISCvIA&pp=ygUUd2F0ZXJsb28gbmV5cyBjaGFyZ2U%3D

>>64382651
>Dnieper
>Berlin
You're 2 years off my man for this scenario

>>64382662
Like trying to reconnect Armee Gruppe North and Center? It was an absolute shit show, I would have fucking died if I were on the general staff and had to make sense of the situation during and right after Bagration.

>>64382658
>the marine invasion force
It was sixth army actually. This was a rare "Navy saves Army" episode, not the typical "Navy saves marines who then take entire credit for victory while having contributed nothing" episode

>>64382804
Fair enough. Honestly I never paid to much attention to the ground forces. The naval action is what has always fascinated me…. If you look up “space” by michtner he puts a semi fictional account of it in there… I read it as a kid and then was pretty surprised to find out it was based on real life.

>>64382681
As far as naval quotes from the war go, I will post the excerpt from Neptune's Inferno:

"The Atlanta was swinging through her own turn to avoid a collision with the van when the searchlight, probably from the destroyer Akatsuki, lit upon her from abaft the port beam. Captain Jenkins reacted as commanders had been trained in peacetime: “Counter-illuminate!” he shouted. His gunnery officer, Lieutenant Commander William R. D. Nickelson, Jr., preferred to respond with other hardware. At once he shouted into his headset mike: “Fuck that! Open fire!”

The naval battle of Guadalcanal was fucking brutal and chaotic and could have fucked us over really hard. But like Kasserine Pass, it allowed us to work to prevent that from happening again.

>>64382813
Yeah no it's one of the great battles of history, I was just nitpicking. My high school math teacher was the daughter of the aviator who had the "Biggest Jap Meatball I ever saw" quote and he came to school to talk about the battle, was pretty sick

>>64382658
One other thing I would note, not that Ernest R Evans doesn't deserve the planet sized tungsten balls he had, is that the US aircraft really helped since they didnt face much Japanese resistance. IIRC like the Destroyers they even kept flying and doing strafing runs when empty just to force evasive maneuvers and maybe apocryphal but I swear one of the pilots dropped a bottle of coke on them or something.

>>64382829
In the drach video on it, apparently one group landed back on Leyte, was immediately given rifles and pressed into service defending against a Japanese charge, then fueled their aircraft up and headed back to the carriers, with one pilot having scavenged a replacement wing for his plane from a crashed plane inland….

I think their was a lot that went sideways on both sides honestly, Halsey got completely snookered and frankly was lucky it ended as it did…. But Kirita repeatedly screwed the pooch on call after call despite essentially having his initial plan work perfectly….

>>64382823
That’s awesome.

>>64382820
Definitely an A1 quote. Up there with “nuts”

>>64382829
Yeah he also through his knee board out as well. The issue was they were off CVEs so had no anti ship weapons. The entire taffy 3 airwing only managed to disable one turret on one of the cruisers with a lucky hit from a 100 lb general purpose bomb. They had no torpedoes or heavier ordnance. They rearmed at an army airfield throughout the day but obviously they didn't have anti-ship ordnance.

>>64382843
They strafed the Japanese torpedos at a couple points though… which was probably a bigger help than taking out a turret honestly

>>64382843
Hey… according to Kurita those were fleet carriers dammit..

>>64382781
They did reconnect but it was cut short and the connection didnt last long because of a soviet attack towards memel surrounding the city. But I was talking about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumbinnen_Operation

>>64382841
I wish there was more material about the return-Philippines campaign. Manila alone was the worst urban fighting the US has ever engaged in. How we just burned the Japanese who holed up in our harbor fort. I do wonder what it was like for some of the original service members who escaped capture and fled into the jungle to emerge and ask for 50lbs of food and 3 years of back pay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Fertig is a really fascinating read

>>64382856
Yeah that's a good point, I had forgotten about that

for me, it's the New Guinea campaign because the scale is so huge and nobody outside of AUS knows about it
>Japs commit a larger invasion force than the US/UK&Commonwealth did in Operation Husky to invade New Guinea and set up bases for bombing/landing in Northern Australia
>their recon is literally based on some popular adventure novel from the 1930s that said that the Kokoda track was one big valley that went north to south so it would be EZ peazy
>it actually crosses like 5 different biomes including snowcapped mountains, tropical jungle, dense woodland and highland prairie and the Aussies fight them across every one
>Aussies have a tiny colonial force and recruit stone-age cannibal headhunters to fight the japs in the jungle
>they manage to stall Jap advance overland, IJA's medieval tier logistics kicks in and they wind up losing something like 98% of their casualties to starvation or preventable disease
>America ends the campaign using it as an opportunity to practice amphibious landings in coordination with paratrooper drops basically just to flex on the japs who are all starving and shitting themselves to death

>>64382870
>aussies are also so pathologically racist that there were huge disagreements over whether to arm and train papuan tribesmen because it might give the precedent to arm abos who they still legally considered wildlife
>that story about 100s of japanese soldiers getting eaten alive by crocodiles in a swamp allegedly happened there

>>64382863
> How we just burned the Japanese who holed up in our harbor fort.

Ever read cryptonomicron? Same deal as “space” it has a pretty good fictionalized account of that.. worth a quick read just for fun.

>>64382451 (OP)
For me its the battle of Kyiv
Watching the myth of Russian military capability crumble in real time was an experience unlike anything else I have ever encountered in my life

>>64382870
>>64382873
Of all the Pacific theater battles in WWII, this is the one that I would want to be involved in the least. Even more than the Burna/China theater. I've heard it described more as Australia vs the jungle, Japan vs the jungle, and Australia vs Japan when they aren't at the current risk of dying or going insane.

>>64382877
I think it's gotta be this or the start of the Iraq War/Afghanistan. Both happened in my lifetime so they kinda stick with me better than ancient battles by default

>>64382658
Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors' description of men getting boiled alive by escaping steam is one of the few times a description of carnage in writing actually managed to disconcert me.

The other time was with Hell in a Very Small Place, reading about soldiers just spontaneously dying at their posts from cumulative exhaustion.

Operation granite

>>64382486
this was my last action.
I got captured
after getting surrounded
they got me at the trator factory by the rail road.

I tried to flee but got stoped by katya and her commander corban
they saw me limping to get into a half track

yep war was over for me that day.

i was shipped to the gulag for P.O.Ws
didn't know what happened to my sqaud just assumed they all died

I was the only officer
only 6 of my boys made it.
and they fled because i asked them to leave.
I stayed at the radio into last moment.

dunnoall i can rember was shooting and a T34
turning up and the driver yelling at me in german to come out with my hands up

I came out quitely and was escorted to a truck
that was the end for me.
honestly i didn't know my boys had reteated i think they assumed i was dead.

i was too far behind front lines anyway
I was scared but katya i rembered the scared girl from starlin grad remebered i saved her life
and corban. they saved me from execution

still
the other three guys got captured 3days later
we lost all our vehicles except one elephant tiger
and a king tiger.
but the reast where all destoryed.
dunno i was in a cold cell
untill americans payed for my release.
operation paperclip

they heared i worked on the ufo project or something

i just rember that homo dimetre trying to have his way with me. thanks to katya they mainly left me alone.

nope that mission ended most of my unit.
yes as anon said a blood path.
we where outnumbered 10 to 1
and 5;1 with tanks as well as airplanes
it was hopeless for us.

they only won because they deployed AA guns for the frist time
and those rocket truck things.

we had no counter to it.
we tried what you allies called screaming meme's
but they where too short ranged and bombers kept taking them out
i was a slow retreat and we abandon many vehicles and injured solders

the rest walked back and only stopped to return fire
I was too injured to keep going

I think of actions like this because it shows how a lack of information across the battlefield can lead to folly
the overall commanders could see it was a bad move but the guys at the head of the cavalry could/would not

Battle of Rossbach, Austerlitz -- two battles where the winner was outnumbered 2 to 1, Verdun, Passchendaele, SOG Bright Light missions, Battle of Mogadishu (yea, from BHD but reading about the friction between Ranger officers and Delta as well as the two delta snipers defending Durant is interesting)

>>64382779
he was talking about seting up defenive lines
yes he started 2 years before it came.
just before i was captured i was trying to get the tiger unit to fall back
and go back to the next line.

>>64382651
anon is right. if hilter had decided we change instead we would of but he had the intel of enemy sizes
and left it up to local command to decide our own fate.
because he assumed we would try which we did
but the red army had just too many soldiers
it would of been suicide.

but if he had given the order too. i would of just ordered my men to do it.
but those where not the orders so idk
saving my men was more important at the time
as a officer.

I know russians are not as empathic
so i won't even bother with the commie f*cks
they killed many p.o.w's or so i heared.
I have no respect for communists
you did good kid
don't feel bad. it was just a bad day.
i iwsh i had been there. but my injuries where too bad to contuine.
you did good. don't put your self down.

>>64382451 (OP)
Lepanto
2 civilizations violently colliding in a giant, merciless brawl to decide the fate of half of Europe
The aesthetics are awesome too. Guys in armor with guns on galleys full of cannons, the 16th and 17th centuries were a wild time for warfare (and everything else)

>>64383224
In the same vein you had the Great Siege of Malta, which also had the "last stand" feel to it, making it even more epic
Vienna too

>>64382681
>>64382658
Excellent posts anon, I love any time naval warfare gets some love on this board.
I'll add that while Japanese leaderships gets its fair amount of blame, the single biggest mistake I believe being the order for a general attack to not lose any time rather than forming a proper battle line, I don't really come down too hard on Admiral Kurita.
After all, the Center Force had been under near constant air assault on its way in and only managed to slip contact the evening before running into Taffy 3 I believe, which resulted in the loss of the Musashi as well as Kurita's flagship cruiser, with him having to swim over to another ship. He essentially hadn't slept for several days by the time of the attack.
In addition, he'd always been pessimistic about their chances of success (probably not exactly what you want if you're delusional IJN top brass) and when he realized they were fighting a small escort force and correctly assumed they'd called in whatever heavy units were near, he thought sticking around and making it a suicide run was a waste of his men and withdrew.
>>64383176
Yeah so many times I think the general human thought is seeing naval warfare from the birds eye level of ships moving around a big table. That book's description of the absolute hell below decks made it real.
The description of the Japanese crews tossing crates and anything that will float to the Americans in the water while shouting profanities in broken English was such a surreal moment as well.

The second battle of the wilderness during the ACW stands out to me as being one of the most horrifyingly apocalyptic battles I have ever heard of. Roughly 200 wounded men burned alive from the underbrush catching fire.

>>64382658
>US destroyers used smoke, weather, and sheer willpower to successfully charge the attacking Japanese task force, sink several large cruisers
*With the help of 322 supporting aircraft, which did the actual sinking

>>64382772
It is the perfect ending for the Napoleonic era. But in reality if Napoleon had won at Waterloo he was on borrowed time still. He'd already been defeated once and the Coalition would just reform against him.

For me,it's the Battle of the Bulge. One last German push in the West that no one believed in but that went ahead anyway. Reconstituted units armed with all the iconic late war gear that could have made a difference on the defence sacrificed for what amounted to extremely temporary short term gains. Yet a lot of accounts speak of high morale among the German troops, simply from being on the offensive again. It's fascinating.

>>64382874
>Semper Fidelis
>Dawn star flares on disc of night
>I fall; sun rises
That moment of the story will live in my mind forever.

>>64382451 (OP)
battle off samar

Cannae

>>64383623
>Yet a lot of accounts speak of high morale among the German troops, simply from being on the offensive again. It's fascinating.
Having a relief from Allied aircraft for a few days and retaking some territory help with the mental health

>>64383623
The Germans really hit them hard during this one. Also, Somebody should make the battle for Clervaux into a movie already

Stalingrad

If Stalingrad fell, there would be zero physical limits to the German advance left until they reached the Urals. All soviet forces in and around Baku would be trapped and at the very least made combat ineffective. Shipping up the Volga would stop and The Soviet Union would probably fall within a year
Enter General Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov and his men of the 62nd Army. Right up to the german lines he pushed his men, artfully denying the germans their advantage in artillery and air power. His own command post being within nortar and sniper range of the enemy. He worked hard to ensure every man under his command was properly, fed, clothed and armed, every man would have a warm shelter in the winter, hot food was always available. The numerical advantage of the red army meant that manpower, supplies and fuel could be used effectively against superior firepower and training without needlessly sacrificing men.
With molotovs and submachine guns they fought, shovels and broken bottles, table legs and knives.
And then, 19 November 1942 the red army launched Operation Uranus, encircling the entire 6th army and closed the noose around Paulus. It wasnt too long before breakout was no longer possible, men starved, horses were slaughtered, lice and rats were constant companions. infections and dysentery were common.
Finally, on a frigid January morning Paulus surrendered and Hitlers only chance of ever conquering Moscow died.

>>64384419
Couldnt they have just gone around it and avoided the battle all together? I believe the main goal was the oil field past stalingrad but hitler wanted the city for propaganda and ego

>>64382451 (OP)
Suomussalmi 1939-1940
Why you shouldn't cleanse your officer corps for political reasons before launching an invasion and why you shouldn't copy someone else without understanding why their shit worked

Battle of Leyte Gulf, it goes to show how much of a fuckup mission plans usually turn out when enacted, and that no simulation can ever account for the entropy-ridden reality.

I'm not much of a ship person but I really enjoy learning about naval battles during the Battleship age.

>>64382451 (OP)
It's always struck me as absurd how Soviet victories, even the ones that are celebrated, involve the Soviets taking absolutely staggering losses compared to the Germans.

>>64383623
>One German counter attack caused more US casualties than the Vietnam war

>>64384442
They would have had to take it eventually, sooner rather than later I think. Avoiding it would have bought the Soviets time to better defend it, even though the oil would have helped immensely turn the odds in German favor.
Hitler's ego lost the war

>>64384442
Stalingrad was a good lynchpin for the advance south into the Caucuses mountains, namely Baku in Azerbaijan as the stop point.
Stalingrad became especially important when it looked like army group A could have gotten trapped in the mountains by a Russian drive on Rostov.
Army Group A and B petered out in their progress at about the same time.
The real reason Stalingrad was a disaster was because army group B was starved of reinforcements, replacements, and material until October. Paulus had to fight with 1 hand tied behind his back until Zeitzler replaced Halder, but by then the 6th army was already running ragged. One month of actual prioritization before the encirclement wasn't enough for 6th army to have any built up stocks of food or other material. They were shooting their horses for food while it was still summer

>>64382451 (OP)
Yeah, dumb meatwaves, truly niggerish

>>64384472
>Hitler's ego lost the war
Lol, the old "Hitler was an idiot who should have obeyed Manstein" bullshit. Lost Victories belongs in the fiction section

For some reason: Lake Trasimene
Obviously its an expert ambush. Hannibal manages to use an entire army to ambush another entire army and essentially obliterates it. I mean just being able to hide an entire army in ambush in the middle of the night after a long march just shows how disciplined and skilled all these men were who all spoke different languages and were from different cultures.

A note on pre-battle manoeuvre: Hannibals army had just finished marching through some disgusting Italian Arno river swamps where thousands died from disease and exposure. The men were so exhausted that some simply just collapsed. To steal some sleep, soldiers had to rest on top of dead mules or horses that had themselves died and were floating in the swamps. By this point, Hannibal completely understands the Roman mindset and their willingness for aggression and decides to use it to his advantage: There is a consular army stationed around modern day Arezzo, and instead of marching straight at it to give battle, Hannibal decides to march South-South-East and brushes past it to get their intention. As expected, the Romans follow to give battle. Thats when Hannibal leads the enemy practically by a leash. Towards sunset, he goes on the highground and begins making the appearence that their army is making camp to rest for the night and the Romans follow suit. Meanwhile, the entire "Carthaginian" Army is led behind the mountains and hills into ambuscade to prepare the devastating ambush they will launch the next day all along the road that they know the Romans will march on. Thank god they had the early morning fog.

tldr: tactical masterpiece and Hannibal deserves his praise.

>>64383880
As much as I like Hannibal, I've come to grudgingly respect this guy. While Scipio was off in Spain dealing with rabble, Marcellus faced Hannibal in Rome's darkest hour, and repeatedly proved himself to be Hannibal's match.

>>64384419
The hot food thing is unbelievably important for a working man.

Imagine sitting in a freezing tank for hours unending, unable to turn it on because you needed to conserve fuel. Your meal today consists of dry biscuits and water from a canteen. Tomorrow you'll probably get "soup" which consists of a cup full of broth with strips of mystery meat and stale bread.

Now Imagine you're sitting in a warm basement next to a fire drinking coffee for your night watch. You're snacking on sweet biscuits with some cream and you can't wait for your turn to head to command for a hot meal and maybe sneak a shot of vodka in your juice. Yesterday they had a thick beef stew you could eat with a fork, wonder what it is today?

>>64382451 (OP)
>battles that stuck with you
>names an operation

>>64385089
Go home

>>64382658
operations room did a great overview

lol

>>64384656
6th army straight up ate most of Stalingrads abandoned pets by January, dhit was GRIM

>>64385435
Maybe ones the Soviet citizens hadn't already eaten

>>64382804
Reminder than more sailors died at Guadalcanal keeping Japanese reinforcements and supplies out than the Marine (and Army) losses.