[QUOTE=Raguleader]
Heh, yeah, with the exception of France, the US, and maybe Japan, almost all of the leaders involved were related (even then, Woodrow Wilson was a distant relative of Winston Churchill, IIRC, thuogh I may be thinking of the Roosevelts)
Hehe, I’m still amused by Benton Fraser’s summary of the War of 1812 as being a conflict where “You boys invaded our country, and we sent you packing.” in his cheerful, non-confrontational, matter-of-fact way of speaking.
Minor quibble, I think the line was “Dread Naught”, where Naught IIRC basically maens “Nothing”.
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eating humble pie :smack: Yes, of course, that’s why I couldn’t Google it. In fact it was “Fear God and Dread Naught.” I guess that’s what happen when you only hear it orally and don’t verify it.
[QUOTE=Raguleader]
Yeah, one thing you gotta say for the US, we steal from the best.
Apparently the Heavy Frigates used by the US Navy combined British tactics with superior engineering. The way they designed the Constitution, she was not only heavier and larger than her British foes, but also faster and more heavily armed. lots of little things ranging from a new frame layout to using the cores of four tree trunks lashed together for the mainmast instead of just one big trunk. They even designed it so that two of the four bowchaser cannons in the front of the ship could be easily wheeled back into the Captain’s cabin to be fired out the back windows as stern chasers if the need arose. Aside from all that, the American ships used only volunteer crews, which quite possibly had a morale benefit, especially if the conscripted sailors on the British ships knew they were fighting against people who actually wanted to do that sort of thing.
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Yes, but don’t discount the fear. In all seriousness, I’m in the Air Force and I can’t think for a second what it would be like to have to live like the sailors did. I think I’d be getting as far away from any ship if I could.
[QUOTE=Raguleader]
One thing the US Navy did differently from the Royal Navy. No rum for the sailors. Since Rum was all produced in the Carribean colonies, and the British were unwilling to sell it to the US during the War of 1812, American ships instead carried Bourbon (as far as I know, none of the sailors minded).
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You do know that the US Navy loves to meet up with the Canajuns because we have a wet mess, right? For some reason all US ships are dry, of course I sailors refuse to sail without booze. 
[QUOTE=Raguleader]
Yeah, the Germans were very much not wanting to fight the Americans, especially later in the war. Ironically, Germany’s efforts to keep us out of Europe directly instigated our entry into the war. The Zimmerman Note, asking Mexico to invade the US to distract us from Germany (in return for Germany helping them take Texas once they had dealt with the Allies), was the tree trunk that broke the camel’s back after a number of other greviances we had had with Germany, including the deaths of something like a hundred American citizens in the sinking of the cruise liner RMS Lusitania. (Mexico, in case you were wondering, declined Germany’s request, having already fought one war with us and being satisifed that they didn’t wish to risk losing the other half of their country to us)
Random sidebar on that thought, in WWII, Mexico fought with the allies, though in a very limited fashion. Escadron 201, the “Aztec Eagles”, was a squadron of the Mexican Air Force that was trained and equipped by the Americans in Texas, and flew P-47 Thunderbolt fighters under the 5th Air Force in the Philippines during the last year of the war. They were apparently the best dive bombing pilots at the USAAF’s disposal. Mexico joined the war because two of their oil tankers were sunk by German U-Boats in the Gulf of Mexico.
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I imagine by that time Mexico realized that it would have its ass kicked if it tried anything. Amazing how a good drubbing does that.
[QUOTE=Raguleader]
Oh yeah, the Liberty ships, those things are neat. I hear some of them were made largely out of concrete. Form the basic hull shape, fill in with concrete and let it dry. Mostly, IIRC, the trick was they were built in pre-fabricated sections on assembly lines, and the sections were welded together and all the wiring and plumbing connected during the final stages of construction. Not nearly as rugged or reliable as conventional ships, especially in rough seas (some of these ships simply broke apart and sank in storms), but given that the much stronger ships were being sunk by U-boats at a distressing rate, the numbers made up for it.
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I don’t recall any being made of concrete, but I could be mistaken. You are correct about the fact that they were made without much concern about whether they would be around very long.
[QUOTE=Raguleader]
Also neat are the Jeep Carriers, aircraft carriers built on Merchant hulls. Very small, but able to throw up groups of hunter-killer anti-submarine planes. Wildcats would patrol around, looking for signs of the subs, and TBF Avengers equipped with periscope-detecting radars, 5 inch rockets and depth charges would move in for the kill. During WWII, the US built over 100 aircraft carriers, including these. The Japanese and Germans combined were only able to muster just under 20.
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Now this begs the question, would you like to be on one of these ships?
[QUOTE=Raguleader]
Heh, also in the club of “People the Romans don’t like to screw with” are the Jews. Militarily, not so mighty during the times of the Roman Empire (they WERE conquered, and on two occasions large scale uprisings were put down rather brutally), but man they were INCREDIBLY scary people to fight. Like, religious fanatic scary. Jerusalem was the only city where Roman Legions would march through with their banners rolled up, because entering the city with banners unfurled would incite massive bloody riots because they were considered graven images by the Jews.
There’s also a story about when the Romans were fighting to sieze the Temple of Solomon, and the Jews fought fiercely to keep them out of the Holy of Holies (the secret chamber in the back of the temple where nobody except the head Jewish priest was allowed to enter, because it contained the Arc of the Covenant). The Romans, seeing that there HAD to be something very valuable there for the Jews to fight so hard to protect it, fought even harder to get it, and so on. Finally, all the Jews in the temple were killed, and Emporer Justinian (IIRC) entered the Holy of Holies to find… nothing. The Arc of the Covenant was gone, and nobody knows when it left or where it went to (exept maybe for the head priest, who was dead by this point).
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Intersesting, I have to admit that I’m not really that well versed on Jewish history. I’ll have to do some delving into this subject.
[QUOTE=Raguleader]
A big part of it may have been racism, but ever since the Battle of Port Arthur, the Americans had looked apon the Japanese with a wary eye. Here was a mysterious very foreign power that had the ability to defeat Western powers in modern warfare. Also, by WWI, the Japanese were beginning to show some of their expansionist ambitions (IIRC, in 1910 they conquered Korea and various other territories), and the Americans didn’t want them expanding into the Pacific region because, well, it was THEIRS dammit. Both countries wanted the Pacific to be their new exclusive markets for trade, and neither one wanted the competition of the other. The War in the Pacific in WWII may have been inevitable, regardless of how things went in Europe. 
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Yes, there is no doubt that the US was very wary about this and as many don’t realize the US had numerous colonies at one time in the Pacific. I can’t recall the name of the treaty that the US rejected, but it would have declared all three (super)races equal. The world was a very different place back then.
[QUOTE=Raguleader]
And yeah, it’s not so important WHAT you can do as what your ENEMY thinks you can do. If everyone knows for a fact that you can’t possibly be defeated in open warfare (and also, if YOU believe it) , it really doesn’t matter what the actual odds SHOULD be. It’s been said that the Royal Navy won so many times simply because they and everyone else knew that they won every time, and that the fighting before that was merely a violent formality leading up to that.
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Psychology is definitely a factor that you have to consider. I wonder how many battles in history were lost or won because of belief. I think Waterloo provides a good example as Wellington was sure he could defeat Napoleon and he was sure that Bleuker would help him. He ended up being right.
[QUOTE=Raguleader]
Hitler was apparantly a good tactician and a HORRIBLE strategist. Also, I find it interesting that he supposedly had his Epiphany regarding the Jews while suffering the effects of a Nerve gas attack in WWI. While making lots and lots of mistakes doesn’t make you a bad leader (George Washington made all manner of horribly stupid blunders in his career), it’s important to note that Hitler never seemed to LEARN from mistakes (the aforementioned George Washington could be said never to make the same mistake twice, which is a rare gift for a human being indeed). I have read that some things Hitler got blamed for, like the delays on the Me-262 development, weren’t actually his fault (apparently the same delays would have happened just because it took so long for BMW to make a jet engine that wouldn’t just explode at random to make the flight more intersting for the pilot)
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You are correct that Hitler never learned, but he made so many mistakes it was unbelievable. His top generals were just waiting for France to move in so they could arrest him, but everytime he attempted something insane (like the invasion of Austria or the refusal to pay the WWI debt) he was appeased. Sad to think he could have been stopped so many times, but never was.
[QUOTE=Raguleader]
Heh, speaking of Mom, did you know that in the 1930s, the US had drawn up war plans for war with Canada and the UK? They were done mostly as an academic excercise since it was politically incorrect to be caught drawing plans for a war with Germany. It seems that if the US went to war with the Crown, the first strategy would be to sieze control of the entrance to the St. Lawrence river to prevent the English from reinforcing and supplying the Canadians, and the bulk of the US Navy would be drawn in to protect the Panama Canal, the Carribean/Gulf of Mexico, and the Eastern Seaboard. It was a foregone conclusion at the time that if the Royal Navy wished to sieze the Philippines and Hawaii, we weren’t going to be able to stop them (depressing, huh?)
A war primarily with canada mostly involved launching early invasions accross the border to sieze the border cities and to cut off lines of reinforcement via the St. Lawrence river again. IIRC, durign the 1930s the US didn’t have the military capabilities to realistically persue either war plan if it came to it. I’m pretty sure war with Australia and New Zealand would have involved battleships firing kegs at major Australian cities so they would get too drunk to put up a fight. (Not sure how drunk you’d have to make an Australian so that he WOULDN’T fight you though…)
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That fact caused a small uproar up here by some fanatics, but the truth is that it should have been expected. At that time Canadian imperialism had just been quashed by the events in WWI and there was no agreement of mutal support as we have now in NATO. It was also more of a mental exercise, which I would suggest that the US would have been crazy not to consider. There are an untold number of these scenarios floating around.
As for the Ozzies, I have a few friends from down under and I have no clue how much you would have to give them to drink to stop them.
