Why was the Fokker D VII A Good Plane?

Subject: B-17's and Strategic Bombing (Was:Was D VII a good plane)
From: nt (Krztalizer)
Date: 4/19/04 9:23 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

The
Germans had boys, foreign soldiers, even women in their flak defenses.

An 88mm set up to defend the Zeiss optics works is one that would not be
available to the invasion front. Multiply that by thousands of 88s and every
other caliber - these were being set up around various military targets in
1940-42, long before the stars and bars arrived overhead. The
flakhelferrinnen
did indeed include boys and women - although women usually served in other
roles and boys were physically unable to lift and load an 88mm shell, so men
were used that would otherwise be employed in the war effort elsewhere.

The
British had hundreds of very very expensive aircraft and their finest young
men
involved. And the Germans defeated Bomber Command.

Just as the IJN defeated the USN at Pearl Harbor. Within a few months, the
USN
carried the fight right back to the heart of the enemy - I think that is the
same situation at the RAF's costly, though short-term, loss against the
Luftwaffe over Germany's cities.

v/r
Gordon-
====(A+C====
USN SAR

It is important that we don't play fast and loose with the term :defeated" For
example. In WW II we "defeated the enemy" because we destroyed their ability
to continue the war. But in the American war of the revolution we never
"defeated" the Brits since after the war they still had the largest army and
Navy in the word. They just chose not to fight on. We "won": the war but
Birtian was never "defeated" since they could still fight if they chose to. In
WW II the RAF was never defeated by the enemy since they coild always fly
any time they chose.


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer