america the land of the petty

the USA see them selves as saviours in ww2. the truth is, if you anti British S.O.Bs came in to the war allot sooner i would have a lot more relatives. in all you movies and literature you Americans were the worlds saviours.

<edit>MY FAMILY FOUGHT FOR YEARS WHILE THE PANSY ASS USA STUCK THERE HEADS IN THE SAND.

IF THE USA HELPED WHEN CHURCHILL ASKED I WOULD HAVE A BIGGER FAMILY.

Having said that most of my family is in the service and i hope no one has to rely on the USA ever again.

 

Oh, my sweet Aunt Tillie; my, my, aren't you the pleasant little conversationalist.

Let's us be a little more exact . . . Sept 1939 to Dec 1941 was 2 years and and 3 months.

And exactly what seminal event in that period would have caused the US congress, both houses, to vote upon a declaration of war? You do understand that a declaration of war is required (despite what path our valued leaders may have gone down in the last 45 years or so, an entirely different issue) to be voted upon by congress do you not? Spelled out very clearly in the US constitution. And just what could the US have contributed in 1940 . . . what do you know about the state of the US armed forces between September 1939 and December 1941? I suspect you know not a damn thing or you would restrain your bleating . . . unless, of course, you are willfully disingenuous.

And MY family has always served as well and the numbers of my father and his siblings, all of whom were serving officers during WW2, were diminished by 20% during the war, so don't whine, it is unbecoming and a sign of weakness.

"Realist," my ass. You need to calm down & read a little history. And just to be clear, movies are NOT history. You should look at some of the stuff churned out in the 30's and 40's which frankly glorified the history of the British Empire and early efforts in the war. Some of my favorite flicks, actually, but not reality. As one movie producer once wrote "I thought we were making movies, not history." You make the typical error of equating production of a product for sale, entertainment, with some sort of national psyche - not a few Americans make the same mistake - but the reality is creation of a product crafted to sell tickets, i.e., make money and, dare I say, turn a profit. So, at whom should a movie producer aim his product? Where is his largest market and who amongst that market does he wish to please and how? You need to take a permanent marker and write on the back of your hand in big letters "MOVIES ARE NOT HISTORY" so you can see it every time you see your hand . . . it may help restrain uninformed outbursts. You could also do with a couple of business and marketing courses, it is all very simple once you understand what is going on.

Oh, and just so you know, I am equally dismissive of those who would claim the US won the war all by itself . . . utter nonsense as well.

 

all canada had to do for its independence is ask for it.

 

the Canadian navy grew a thousand fold in the second world war.
i am not blaming media for there message, but the idiots that think john Wayne movies are really how it happened. I find it insulting that the GREAT US of A takes all your war movies as gospel.
Ask any one under 30 about ww1 or the war pre D-Day and any American wont have a clue. If it was not for pearl harbour all Americans would have been happy to watch the rest of the world burn.
the USA has only been occupied twice, once by the British/Canadian forces. We burnt down the white house the mother f##king white house, and Japanese in Alaska. LOOK IT UP.

find time and dates in "American history text books."

 

I do not want to belittle the Americans small contribution, but per ca pita the rest of the world poured there heart and soul in to it.

 

I shall repeat slowly, since you evidently missed it the first time:

M o v i e s
a r e
n o t
h i s t o r y.

M o v i e s
a r e
e n t e r t a i n m e n t
a n d
a
c o m m e r c i a l
p r o d u c t
d e s i g n e d
t o
m a k e
m o n e y.

Clear yet? And I can think of plenty of Americans under 30 who have a pretty good grasp of the events as they occurred. Just because you have bumped into a couple of numb nuts who, evidently, like you, believe that movies ARE history, then that sounds like an ummmm unusual personal problem.

And if the only Americans you can find are the believers of movies as history, may I suggest that you aim a little higher and associate with a better class of people.

Here, you want to have some fun? Watch these, some of them are really quite good for their time and place, others, well, maybe just a little trite and, to be kind, stretching of the truth. Note the dates of production. I would wonder about a correlation between the cost and ability to produce a large scale, and commercially successful, war movie; if the genre has not devolved to the American film industry which, as we all know, tends to go for flash, excitement and "gee whiz" rather than any subtlety or, indeed, accuracy.

Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (1970)
Against the Wind (1948)
Angels One Five (1952)
Appointment in London (1952)
Battle of Britain (1969)
Convoy (1940)
For Those in Peril (1944)
Gift Horse (US release was titled Glory at Sea) (1952)
In Which We Serve (1942)
Landfall (1949)
Malta Story (1953)
Mosquito Squadron (1969)
Murphy's War (1971)
Neutral Port (1940)
Night Train to Munich (1940)
Nine Men (1943)
One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942)
Operation Amsterdam (1959)
Play Dirty (1969)
Reach for the Sky (1956)
Ships with Wings (1941)
Single-Handed (released in the US as Sailor of the King)(1953)
Sink the Bismarck! (1960)
Target for Tonight (1941)
The Battle of the River Plate (1956)
The Cockleshell Heroes (1955)
The Cruel Sea (1953)
The Dam Busters (1955)
The Day Will Dawn (1942)
The First of the Few (1942)
The Foreman Went to France (1942)
The Gentle Sex (1943)
The Long and the Short and the Tall (1961)
The Night Invader (1943)
The Purple Plain (1954)
The Sea Shall Not Have Them (1954)
The Sea Wolves (1980)
The Silent Enemy (1958)
The Steel Bayonet (1957)
The Way Ahead (released in the US as The Immortal Battalion) (1944)
They Were Not Divided (1950)
Uncensored (1942)
We Dive at Dawn (1943)
Went the Day Well? (1942)
Yangtse Incident: The Story of HMS Amethyst (1957)

 

Of course, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the otherwise reasonably accurate "Sink the Bismarck!" fails to show that the pilot of the Coastal Command PBY which put the ultimately fatal eyeballs on the German battleship was a US Navy pilot, Ensign Leonard B Smith. Nor does the movie mention the US Coast Guard Cutter Modoc (WPG-46), while ostensibly in search of survivors of a submarine sinking, was blasting away on its radio, in the clear, about this unidentified battleship it was observing, challenging by both signal lamp and radio for the unidentified battleship to identify itself. Nor does it show Swordfish torpedo planes lining up on Modoc to make their run on Bismarck. Nope, these true events do not appear in the movie . . . how is that for historical accuracy, eh? And a British made movie!

Oh, and John Wayne died in 1979 . . . what are you watching?

 

Oh my goodness, now who is making exaggerated and inflated claims of their importance?

Let’s see . . .
At the outbreak of WW2 in September 1939, the Royal Canadian Navy had ten, yes, ten combat ships and 3 auxiliaries . . . that makes 13, right? So, by your count, then, the RCN increased to somewhere around 13,000 ships, right? A “thousand fold,” right? Thousand-fold means 1,000 times, right? That is what you wrote, is it not?

Really, and you want to stick to that story? Really?

I don’t think you could get that high if you counted landing craft or even life boats.

Over the course of the war the RCN had some 338 or so commissioned vessels, depending how you count. 26 were sunk over the course of the war and 34 were decommissioned. By the end of the war in Europe, there were then 278 RCN commissioned vessels . . . but by the end of the war in the Pacific, there were but 153, the balance decommissioned between May and August 1945. Of course there were also numerous small craft used by the RCN, but, alas, no, not in the thousands as you would no doubt wish to proclaim. MTBs, armed yachts, launches and other auxiliary and reserve types numbered 230 over the course of the war. 12 were lost in action, 68 taken out of service before VE day, leaving 150, of which 91 were taken out of service before VJ day leaving but 59 in service.

Either way you might want to count, 338 or 568, the numbers are painfully no where near your “thousand fold”. One should bear in mind, however, that when most serious naval students discuss fleet numbers, they count commissioned vessels which really does not include the MTBs, etc., so the 338 is the important number.

So, did we exaggerate just a little?

You may wish to look at this article by Rob Stuart, who in some exposure elsewhere I’ve come to regard as a more than competent historian, found in the Canadian Naval Review “Competition: Was the RCN Ever the Third Largest Navy? (Free Access)” or you can go to the review’s web site and down load the full issue, http://www.navalreview.ca/volume5-issue3/. That’s the source of my numbers. My quick & dirty count from just breezing though a couple of tomes came up with 318, so I’ll accept Stuart’s undoubtedly better researched slightly higher 338.

Yes, indeed, I could not agree more, you should look it up.

 

Oh, in case you think I've forgotten, you still have not come up with an event between 2 Sep 1939 and 7 Dec 1941 which would have made the US Congress pass a declaration of war. Can you tell us just what that would be?

 

Good grief some twisted views of history. Might be reasonable to expect the USA took a look at Europe - in Churchills words - 'the rivers of Europe have run red with blood for a thousand years' and thought why on earth should we get involved in that again so soon after the war to end all wars. Politicians of any nation have to 'sell it' to their people - easy to imagine the American people said let them get on with it. The continuation of this schoolboy - my gang better than your gang - puerile! In 1941 Churchill addressed congress and said 'the USA has taken up the sword of freedom' - many Americans died a long way from home.

 

One thing I have not noticed in this discussion so far is a statement of all the preparation work done by America under FDR even before the Day of Infamy suddenly shocked America's public opinion into the war. Under FDR a lot of preparation and planning was done to shift the Economy over to a war footing. When the time came to do so the many months of brain work was already done so it could be shiftly done and with a minimum of waste. Aircraft production grew by rapid leaps and bounds. Same thing with ship production. And though the US Navy had few CVs in 1942, the Navy had a plethora by 1945. This was possible because FDR heart was in the war long before the rest of the nation.

 

I am surprised that the moderators have allowed some of your rants, vulgar language and lack of good grammar. I am the daughter of a former Coldstream Guard, 6th Guards Tank Brigade. Father spoke well of the two American Airborne Divisions he fought alongside in NW Europe. I am accustomed to bashing American hating Brits on Sky News but never thought I would have to come onto this forum and do the same.

 

Winston Churchill - had my father been American and my mother British instead of the other way around ............:

 

This is a common problem with forum sites that are predominantly populated by those with a genuine interest in the subject at hand, with specialized sub-interests within the subject and enjoy discussing the subject(s) and, maybe, just maybe, passing along a little kernel of knowledge.

We are often visited by the ubiquitous “newby” who has a legitimate inquiry of a specific nature, or by those simply seeking to, can I say it aloud, learn something. These visitors, some who are just drive-bys who either find direction in their inquiries and then move on, never to be heard from again, or those who stay on and become valued contributors, are always welcome . . . though I would be the first to admit that responses can sometimes be a little sharp to a poorly thought through posting. Doesn’t mean we don’t like you, it just means that a little pre-posting effort might be in order so that the denizens herein do not have to explain repeatedly or in laborious detail e.g., . . . an F4F is a Wildcat, but a Martlet of any one of several marks can be slightly different . . . an FM is an Eastern built Wildcat, but only the first 10 FM-1s had the same specifications as an F4F-4 . . . and, I get snotty here, an F-4 is a Vietnam era Phantom jet . . . or an F4 could be that same Phantom type or maybe even an F4 Skyray (an obscure USN but interesting USN fighter type) depending on the context . . . knowing the differences in the details as in the above example and other issues before posting and being specific and not inventing shorthand makes the conversation go a little smoother. In other words, it is better to exhaust one’s research opportunities before making a post which indicates you really don’t know anything. Golly, who would have thought the RCN has 13000 ships.

And then we have the “wild-hair-ranter.” I’m an old guy and have a very sensitive “nonsense meter” (didn’t I keep that clean?) and when it pegs, I give these people rather unkind short shrift. I sometimes have to take great care lest I offend the moderators and my fellow forum members . . . the best way to do that is to stick to the facts. These folks usually fall into some well known categories: the “super-dooper storm trooper fan boys,” the “<insert your favorite here> technology was light years ahead and would have won the war had it dragged out for X more years,” the “thus and so <pick your weapon or platform> was the ‘best’,” the “why didn’t <pick a nation or service> do <whatever> my way is oh so much smarter,” or, as in this case, complaining that “so and so believes they won the war all by themselves” (albeit basing the rant on entertainment vehicles).

So, let us be very clear . . .

The US DID NOT win the war all by themselves.
The British (and by extension, the Commonwealth nations) DID NOT win the war all by themselves.
The USSR DID NOT win the war all by themselves.
All of them TOGETHER won the war, in whatever theater, as all contributed, some more than others depending on time and place, but at the end of the day, oh, sometime around 3 September 1945, all benefited from the others' contributions in one form or another.

Anyone who says different has no real interest in history but is merely pushing a, frankly, <pick one> politely, uninformed, not so politely, ignorant or, more likely, disingenuous agenda.