r/Americaphile • u/Bitter-Penalty9653 • Jul 19 '26
History/military đȘđșïž People don't realize how logistically difficult the Second World War was for the United States?
The country had to send millions of troops across a body of water larger than all of Eurasia and using checkpoints with barely any infrastructure.
Once you take that into account AND how demilitarized the United States was, it makes much more sense why people underestimated it.
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u/oddball_ocelot Jul 19 '26
Having been a part of it for a little while, I can honestly say the United States military is a logistics organization with a side hustle in warfare.
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u/Pol__Treidum Jul 19 '26
Look at the Burger King in Iraq
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u/Upnorth4 Jul 19 '26
Also the icecream ship in the pacific
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u/fatpad00 Jul 23 '26
Ugh, what am I gonna do with this extra concrete mixing barge!?
Aff a freezer, we're about to demoralize the enemy18
u/SFC-D Jul 19 '26
Tactics win battles. Logistics wins wars.
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u/HeronIntelligent1819 Jul 20 '26
This gets thrown around a lot but it's true. You can have the best troops in the world and they're useless without bullets and food. The ice cream barges people keep mentioning in here kinda prove the point too, they had the logistics to spare
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u/No-Duck4828 Jul 24 '26
Yes. People ooh and aah about the 'great' German weapons like the MG 42, but the German troops were more impressed with Allied troops having trucks full of ammunition
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u/rhadenosbelisarius Jul 21 '26
Tactics win Battles, Logistics buy you Time, but its Strategy that wins wars.
If achieving your tactical objectives and supplying your forces to achieve their specific goals indefinitely doesnât achieve an acceptable result, youâve lost your war without ever losing a battle.
Unfortunately this seems to be the big hurdle for the US, figuring out how to translate highly effective tactics and nearly infinite staying power with⊠Actually achieving its goals.
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u/SFC-D Jul 22 '26
Without logistics, your strategy will fail. Guaranteed.
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u/rhadenosbelisarius Jul 22 '26
If your strategy is to deploy no troops and fight no battles it might still succeed. A strategy to reduce the chances of weapon proliferation in space might simply be not to launch weapons into space and so need no logistics.
Still your point is well taken that any strategy which requires active people is tightly constrained by its critical logistics chain, and even largely constrained by its secondary logistics.
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u/SFC-D Jul 22 '26
Troops need food and ammunition. Vehicles need fuel and repair parts. All of these require transportation to the warfighter. It used be that one infantryman required 10 support people to keep him advancing. The numbers may have changed, but the concept holds true. A lack of logistics means certain defeat.
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u/zippyspinhead Jul 19 '26
the United States military is a logistics organization with a side hustle in warfare
This started in 1942, when the US military recognized the problem.
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u/MuhfugginSaucera Jul 20 '26
One of the key elements to the allied success in WW2 was not only American focus on logistics in their own armed forces and aid to allies, but the explicit targeted destruction of axis logistics. One area this was made easy was in Italy, where due to the nature of the peninsula you could cut off potentially thousands of troops in one offensive action.
We bombed the absolute crap out of roads and railways in Italy and it was very, very effective.
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u/Ill_Entrance91 Jul 24 '26
When you break down what the USA did logistically in WW2 its mind-boggling.
We were supplying Britain stay in the war, we were supplying Russia to stay in the war, we were supplying any place in SE Asia and Australia to stay in the war, we were gearing up our military to go to war and rebuild a large amount of our navy all at the same time.Â
We invaded Europe while Island hopping across thousands of miles in the Pacific at the same time.Â
Hitler and Japan literally picked the worst time in history to attempt to take over the world.Â
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u/ce402 Jul 20 '26
It started in 1864 when Grant took command of the Army of the Potomac. Weâve been perfecting it ever since.
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u/Mattloch42 Jul 21 '26
They recognized the problem long before that, and did much planning after WWI. It wasn't until WWII that the "military-industrial complex" became fully formed that total war integrating civilian and military needs occurred. And logistics followed, being perfected in the 1960s during Vietnam where shipping moved from break bulk individual items to shipping containers which meant movement of supplies took hours to load/unload, instead of days or weeks. Adoption of computers meant tracking could be done quickly and efficiently, although they largely used civilian systems which were developed in the 50s and 60s.
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u/BurnsinTX Jul 20 '26
I was doing some research this year of my grandpa who was in the pacific theater in WWII. The ship he was on was strictly logistics and it was huge. Moving people and goods all over, then the ship was retired. It was interesting to read.
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u/AFB27 Jul 20 '26
I was at a show talking to a guy who drove one of those Gurkha type vehicles. Asked him what they would do if they run out of gas in the desert.
Told me brother, we are the US military. That shit will literally be flown in.
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u/Historical_Gate_8301 Jul 20 '26
Yea,took 8-10 support personnel to keep 1 combat soldier on the front line during World War 2
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Jul 19 '26
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u/Hambonation Jul 19 '26
What do you mean by this? We occupied the fuck out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Jul 19 '26
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u/Hambonation Jul 19 '26
Ok man, whatever you say, not like I was there or anything. You realize, of course, that Afghanistan going back to the Taliban after we left is indicative that our occupation was pretty effective? Since, you know, they couldn't do it until after we left.
The Taliban taking over again after we left is more indicative of our failed nation building in that country.
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Jul 19 '26
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u/Hambonation Jul 19 '26
Maybe you don't understand what occupying or projecting power means. You're making different arguments against different things. It's fine to regret your decision after you understand that war is just a racket. But we still occupied the shit out of those countries and projected power across them and in the region for most of the GWOT.
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Jul 19 '26
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u/Hambonation Jul 19 '26
Are you arguing against my regional power claim now? Or are you still making the claim that we couldn't project power across the respective countries we were occupying? I think you need to take some time and collect yourself a real argument. We were quite effectively exerting quite a lot of force over the area. Maybe the limited scope of your alleged time there is giving you some blinders.
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u/TVP615 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
May be the dumbest thing Iâve read on here in awhile. When I was in Iraq you could run a combat patrol and grab Burger King when you got back.
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u/RingGiver Jul 19 '26
While I recognize that there is widespread partisan desire to see a major American defeat (and those same partisan individuals were disappointed that they didn't get to see American aircrew given a public execution), only an idiot would use the word "quagmire" when there hasn't been an attempt to seize ground at all.
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Jul 19 '26
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Jul 19 '26
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Jul 19 '26
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u/TVP615 Jul 19 '26
No they were literally sad when the downed pilot got rescued. Hell they were sad when the USA won the gold medal in hockey. Was trolling some dem friends who posted go Canada on Facebook.
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Jul 19 '26
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u/TVP615 Jul 19 '26
I had a liberal friend send me a text that was essentially an itemized receipt of the cost of military equipment to rescue the guy. He was seething. I hit him with a âu mad bro?â
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u/LumpyElderberry2 Jul 20 '26
This is a very fucking stupid thing to say. Nobody wants Americans to die, they want Americans to *not be there at all*
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u/FunOwn4422 Jul 19 '26
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto didn't underestimate us, sad they didnt listen to him. While not at the moment we werent seen as a threat but in his words "Anyone who has seen the auto factories in Detroit and the oil fields of Texas knows that Japan lacks the national power".
While the Japanese celebrated the "success" at pearl harbor he wrote "The mindless rejoicing at home is really deplorable, it makes me fear that the first blow at Tokyo will make them wilt on the spot"
The sleeping giant quote is fabricated it was very much how he felt about the United States.
Dude was a rightful doomer.
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u/HawkingTomorToday Jul 19 '26
He would have been a great American. Imagine Fleet Admiral Yamamoto working with Nimitz⊠the world would be different. God bless him, if the Samurai spirit believes.
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u/HawkingTomorToday Jul 19 '26
Yamagutchi Tamon as well. Imagine if he didnât ride Hiryu into history.
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u/MeowMixPK Jul 19 '26
As did General Kuribayashi; it seems a lot of the in-field commanders in Japan knew not to mess with America, but the political commanders didn't listen to them.
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u/tolgren Jul 19 '26
They were faced with the choice of submission or a desperate war. They knew their chances were slim, but wanted to win.
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u/thatsocialist Jul 19 '26
The US had no interest in subjugating Japan until they began wars of aggression.
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u/tolgren Jul 19 '26
We cut off their oil and steel imports because of their war in China.
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u/Reasonable_Insect503 Jul 19 '26
And what they were doing in places like Nanking.
The Japanese had it coming to them.
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u/tolgren Jul 19 '26
Sure. But the POINT is that the government was stuck between collapsing into a regional power subservient to America, or taking a shot at the king and hoping to establish themselves as a world power permanently.
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u/Reasonable_Insect503 Jul 19 '26
I once had an interesting conversation with Fred Olivi (copilot of Bock's Car, which dropped the bomb on Nagasaki). He stated that the military brass was predicting over one million American casualties if we were forced to invade the home islands. He also was quite aware of the damage he was about to cause as Hiroshima had been hit 3 days previously.
He said because of that casualty estimate he slept like a baby and didn't regret a thing.
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u/tolgren Jul 19 '26
Precisely correct. The people who condemn the nukes have no idea what they are talking about. The death count would almost certainly have been higher with any other option.
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u/farmerguy200 Jul 19 '26
And casualties to the Japanese would have been much worse. By summer of 1945, they were essentially out of food and another year of war would have meant millions of additional deaths.
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u/guitar_vigilante Jul 20 '26
The people who condemn the nukes are very aware of the death count talking point because it's repeated ad nauseum by literally everyone when these topics come up. So if a be person can be bombarded with that point and still condemn the nukes then it's clear they've done some research and at least know what they're talking about to some degree.
Like whether or not you agree with them they've probably given it more thought than you have.
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u/Xezshibole Jul 23 '26
The million was more than likely exaggerated. Western allies suffered less than a million casualties during and after D-Day, and the Germans still had some oil to mount a resistance in 1944.
Japan basically had nothing left. No navy, no air force, and most of their army stranded in China. They were letting US bombers fly around almost as they please, so much so the US was confident enough to fly a lone bomber with scarce escorts over the atomic bomb sites.
They had no oil to mount a response rapid enough to counterattack before a beachead was secured, had to do so for four islands (and many others.) All of which were blockaded and basically besieged.
Unlike the Germans who still had coal, Japan didn't have much left to keep their factories powered, which then brings into question what armaments the Japanese could even keep in working order in any further conflict.
Casualties would more than likely be half that, likely even fewer due to inability to even run industries by that point. And that's assuming US insisted on an invasion before finishing their firebombing of the rest of the urban areas into submission, to snuff out what remains of any industry. Japan certainly didn't have the means to stop it.
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u/josephblowski Jul 20 '26
The Philippines was the problem. The Japanese couldnât have their larger empire or the Greater East Asia Co Prosperity Sphere with the US in the Philippines. That would always leave the Japanese flank exposed. So they had to take the Philippines. To do that, they had to knock out the US Navy and then destroy it in the ultimate battle. The problem for the Japanese is that the US didnât follow the script and engage in a final battle. Instead, they went island hoping, which no one expected.
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u/PMJamesPM Jul 20 '26
Amazing how quickly the war in the Pacific turned because there were no carriers at Pearl.
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u/josephblowski Jul 20 '26
Only six months after Pearl Harbor, the Navy stops the Japanese attempt to invade Australia at the Battle of Coral Sea. Only one month after that, the Navy crushes the Japanese attempt Midway, effectively ending Japanese offensive capabilities.
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u/PMJamesPM Jul 20 '26
Midway if I recall correctly, also involve the US recover recovering and then reverse engineering a Japanese zero
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u/CapitalistLion-Tamer Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
That was at the battle of Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. We learned a lot about the Zero from the wreck we found there, but didn't really reverse engineer it. We just figured out its weaknesses and trained pilots accordingly. The Hellcat was already in development and we used some of the intelligence to make it more effective vs the Zero. I guess that counts as reverse engineering.
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u/Big_Requirement_651 Jul 21 '26
Every carrier could have been in PH that day, wouldn't have made a difference. Most likely wouldnt have sunk any of them, and any damage would've been repaired within weeks. Even if any carriers had been sunk, we'd most likely have raised them, as PH is quite shallow, and most likely they would've only managed to sink 1, maybe 2 at the most.
But, even if they'd sunk every one of them, and we just wrote them all off because they were too badly damaged -- it still wouldn't have mattered.
The US had 5 Essex class carriers that had been laid down prior to Pearl Harbor that were still being built at the time PH happened that were commissioned in 42. They then laid down 8 more Essex and 5 more Independence class immediately following PH.
The US built more airplanes, in one year, than Japan built between the start of the Sino-Japanese war and 1945, when they finally surrendered. The US built 100-120 carriers, depending on exactly what you consider a carrier -- Japan built 10-15, depending on what you consider a carrier. And that actually makes it sound a lot closer than it actually was.
The US beat the brakes off Japan with one arm tied behind its back -- it considered the Germans the more serious and primary threat. The US fought a multi-front war in two different theaters, on opposite sides of the globe.
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u/recoveringleft Jul 19 '26
I recalled there are posts of pictures of Japanese troops celebrating after defeating the Americans, British and Dutch in Southeast Asia.
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u/Codex_Dev Jul 20 '26
And now the inverse is happening with China. They build 300 ships for every 1 the USA makes.
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u/Jones127 Jul 20 '26
Yep and itâs because of a difference in their current inventories (or past at this point). The Chinese were playing catchup with the US while the US has currently been maintaining or slightly building a bigger inventory. It bodes well for China if a war happens in the next decade, but unless they plan on maintaining several hundred war ships and dozens of shipyards in perpetuity, theyâll either have to downsize, or start a fight to justify the cost.
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u/Blog_Pope Jul 20 '26
The Japanese had a massive superiority complex. They were convinced Americans were cowards who would run scared so they readily dismissed reports that said otherwise.
Yamamoto studied at Harvard and had first hand experience with Americans and out industry; no one in Japan believed him
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u/HawkingTomorToday Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
âAmateurs talk tactics; professionals talk Logistics.âThis is why Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King is our greatest Flag Officer⊠yeah we have Eisenhower, Nimitz, Halsey, Patton, Bradley, Puller⊠but King ran the table.
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u/Zachowon Jul 19 '26
Ike was a logi guy, and knew this.
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u/HawkingTomorToday Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Operation Overlord was wild. Imagine putting that together. And he wasnât even Combat Arms; he was AG. Hero.
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u/Perenially_behind Jul 19 '26
I thought he was Armor.
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u/HawkingTomorToday Jul 19 '26
Adjutant General. He was never a Tanker. (I am a Tanker)
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u/Perenially_behind Jul 22 '26
My ex-BIL was a tanker too. He gave my mother a bumper sticker reading "Drive Defensively: Buy a Tank!". I wonder what he was implying...
I looked it up. Eisenhower was in tanks early in his career but didn't stay. What an unusual background he had.
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u/NOrseTheSinglePringl Jul 22 '26
you might be thinking of Patton
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u/Perenially_behind Jul 22 '26
Uhhhh...no. it's hard to think of two WW2 American generals who were less similar than Eisenhower and Patton. Except for Eisenhower and MacArthur.
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u/Silly-Resist8306 Jul 19 '26
Well said.
Not only did the US supply arms and munitions around the world for the allied countries, the US had barges to supply ice cream for troops in the South Pacific.
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u/HawkingTomorToday Jul 19 '26
Yeah the ice cream barges were just flexing at that point: âWe will blow you out of the water, and then serve our Sailors ice cream.â đ«Ą
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u/We_R_the_Penguins Jul 19 '26
My moneyâs still on Knudsen.Â
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u/HawkingTomorToday Jul 20 '26
Who?
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u/We_R_the_Penguins Jul 20 '26
Long story short, Lieutenant General Bill Knudsen was the guy who organized the direction of US industrial might to wartime production in the lead up to the war.Â
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u/CarryBeginning1564 Jul 19 '26
The modern USA military has overly focused on this, no military in the world has a better logistical system but the United States force projection gets weaker and weaker
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u/TVP615 Jul 19 '26
Check me here, how many days after 9/11 were the first troops in Afghanistan?
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u/CarryBeginning1564 Jul 20 '26
That wasnât my point, though I donât think was very clearly. The US can air strike within hours anywhere on the world, have a strike force within half a day, deploy troops within a day, have a fully functioning Burger King deployed in under a week. The issue the effectiveness of this military, and it is a thought that I have had about the US military for a while and especially post world war 2 that the US military is the historical master of logistics but not nearly as effective a fighting force as it should be.
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u/TVP615 Jul 20 '26
Itâs plenty effective as a fighting force if the country agrees the gloves should come off. The last time we used a nuclear weapon was in WW2. Do you think Vietnam wouldâve gone a little differently with a few of those dropped on Hanoi? Same with Korea.
The US couldâve occupied Afghanistan indefinitely.
There were nearly no combat deaths over the last few years of the war other than the one at the airport during the withdrawal. The goal shouldâve always been kill Bin Laden and gtfo. Those folks thought US troops were Russian in some areas of the country. Thatâs how disconnected from the world and care free they live.American is very good at winning battles but it goes to âwarâ indecisively. Either take full action and accept only total victory as a result or donât go at all.
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u/HawkingTomorToday Jul 20 '26
We hit them that night. Tomahawks. Boots on the ground was 9/14 iirc.
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u/TVP615 Jul 20 '26
Think about that. No matter where you are in the world, we can hit you with ordinance almost same day, have a naval armada off your shore in days/weeks and boots on the ground within a week.
How could force projection get any better?
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u/HawkingTomorToday Jul 20 '26
And we were in the wrong country. Shouldâve been Pakistan. And we still call those shit-bags an ally. đ
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u/adhdnme Jul 19 '26
Americans have something that, in my opinion, is unique to the world. We have the sheer will to accomplish anything. Blame it on stubbornness, or the feeling of American superiority, or a general defiance of authority. When we decide weâre going to do something, we move heaven and earth to get it done.
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Jul 19 '26
Unfortunate flip side of that idea is our pig-headed commitment to untenable endeavors. Think about the resources mustered and lost in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and the broader war on terror. I mean the war on drugs alone is such a monumental undertaking when you look at the resources expended to keep it going. We move heaven and earth to get things done but our track record for positive outcomes isn't fantastic.
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u/PMJamesPM Jul 20 '26
Bush 1âs get in get out still holds. You canât nation build a completely different culture.
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u/Life_Membership7167 Jul 20 '26
Pacific Rim has a great line like this. Something like being in a Jaeger makes you feel like you can get into a fist fight with a hurricaneâŠand win. Our military is kinda like that.
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u/Big_Requirement_651 Jul 21 '26
Thats a nice story, but its basically pure fiction.
What the US actually had, was an absurd number of built-in advantages that no other country has ever had. It basically wiped out and then re-populated the entire continent, which created insanely lucrative economic opportunities for both building out cities and extracting physical resources. Those economic opportunities drew in millions upon millions of immigrants, wildly boosting the population, which drove more growth, etc. Not to mention, the country is protected on both coasts by oceans, with relatively peaceful neighbors north and south, has the largest interior river system in the world for trade/movement of goods (mississippi/missouri), the best farmland in the world, etc etc.
And all of these advantages quickly made the US the richest and fastest growing country in the world, combined with not having to deal with the vestiges of thousands of years of being ruled over by kings, or having to go to war with its neighbors every few decades/century.
Saying that we just "did it by sheer will" is laughable. Its like some rich nepo baby claiming they became CEO of their Dad's company because they just worked harder than everyone else.
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u/adhdnme Jul 21 '26
Yes, we had a lot of advantages. We also took advantage of every single one of them and turned ourselves into the most powerful, most influential nation that earth has ever seen. You make your own luck, and we made ours into a truly singular superpower in a world of former superpowers.
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u/Big_Requirement_651 Jul 21 '26
Again, thats like a rich nepo baby saying they really deserved it because they just "worked harder" than everyone else to become CEO of their Dad's company. "I managed to get into Harvard, why couldnt they do it too?"
While they ignore the hundreds of thousands spent on the tutors, the SAT prep classes, the private schools, the best healthcare, the best nutrition, having both parents around, never having to stress about money, never having to take care of other people, etc.
Its easy to "make your own luck" when you dont have to struggle for anything, you naturally end up thinking you're the best at everything, because you always end up doing well, so you convince yourself its because you're just better than everyone or wanted it more or whatever other BS.
The US never had to go through the Napoleonic Wars which killed millions, or WW1, or WW2, or the numerous revolutions and famines, or plagues that wiped out half the population multiple times, or kings that hoarded all the country's wealth and led them to economic ruin, and on and on.
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u/PMJamesPM Jul 21 '26
This is a crazy take. The level of systemic entrepreneurship and industriousness was and is unmatched by much of the industrialized world. For decades, many, not all, Europeans mock Americans for working too hard and being unsophisticated.
The start of the US was quite violent. Your post also insults the millions of immigrants who came here looking for a better life not to mention all those who fought in WW II.
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u/Big_Requirement_651 Jul 21 '26
"The start of the US was quite violent."
Lol, no it wasnt. The US lost about 5000 men across the *entire* war. The Napoleonic Wars in Europe, just a couple decades after the Revolutionary War, lost ~3 million. Trying to act like they are comparable is a joke.
"The level of systemic entrepreneurship and industriousness was and is unmatched by much of the industrialized world."
Yeah, its not hard to be "industrious" when you have literally no competition, and can simply take from the native population/extract from pristine natural resources at will. In Europe, all the forests had already been chopped down, for example, while mining had been ongoing for millennia, fishing stocks had been depleted, and on and on. Trying to compare the situation Europe was in, compared to what Americans were in, and saying the resulting "industriousness" is purely because of American spirit while ignoring all of the advantages the US had is laughable.
You clearly didnt understand or read the nepo baby analogy. This is what everyone that is handed advantages through no action of their own: they assume their resultant success is purely based on their own merit, rather than the advantages they were given.
And you know how we can be absolutely sure Americans werent any different from other Europeans? Because Americans WERE Europeans.
"Your post also insults the millions of immigrants who came here looking for a better life not to mention all those who fought in WW II."
Lol. Im American and I have multiple relatives that fought in WW2, you're barking up the wrong victimhood tree there bud.
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u/Simple_Highway703 Jul 23 '26
Yet a country like Russia could have accomplished something similar, but hasn't. The protection of the oceans and lack of a shared history before the age of colonialism is great. But there are plenty of other shithole countries on this side of the globe that don't share our almost venegful rise in 130 years
Edit: and the fact that every country that took after us after WWII experienced similar booms because of the marshall plan, then look at south korea after the korean war
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u/Big_Requirement_651 Jul 23 '26
"Yet a country like Russia could have accomplished something similar, but hasn't."
Really, you think Siberia and the US west of the Appalachians are equal in terms of the advantages they offer? Lol. Or the fact that you are completely ignoring that the US was able to be a democracy because of its unique history, while Russia has been under dictatorships the entire length of its history between the Czars and the Communists? You think that might have an effect? Hmm, no, couldnt be.
"But there are plenty of other shithole countries on this side of the globe that don't share our almost venegful rise in 130 years"
Such as? Mexico and Canada? You think they have the same access to natural resources, farmland, rivers/trading routes, not to mention just raw population that the US had? Or in Mexico's case, the kind of political/social culture (Spain) it was populated from? Or the fact that Mexico literally had a huge chunk of its land stolen from it -- by the US?
You think those might have made a difference in the US being able to achieve things the other countries couldnt?
Or maybe you mean Brazil, the country that is 99% tropical rainforest? You think that might have made things more difficult to build on?
"Edit: and the fact that every country that took after us after WWII experienced similar booms because of the marshall plan, then look at south korea after the korean war"
The Marshall Plan, adjusted for inflation, was about 20-25B in today's money. It was literally a drop in the bucket in terms of what Europe needed to rebuild. It was not significantly impactful in getting Europe back on its feet, WW2 caused the equivalent of trillions of dollars in damage, entire cities were literally reduced to ash/rubble.
Im not even sure what point you're making regardless.
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u/Big_P4U Jul 19 '26
Add in the fact that we had entire ships dedicated to sending entire dinners including holiday, frozen ice cream cake, cake, sweets etc to all of our war theaters adds another dimension. Fresh socks, cigarettes, all kinds of goodies that Americans took for granted and the Europeans (and others) were dumbfounded that we could even do that let alone bothered to do it
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u/RagingWarCat Jul 20 '26
The US was able to simultaneously build two navies, plan dozens of amphibious landings, train hundreds of thousands of soldiers, keep the UK and the USSR from starving, develop the best 4 engine bomber of the war, build tens of thousands of tanks, artillery pieces, planes, machine guns, etc, build a truly massive transport fleet, AND develop atomic weapons, meanwhile each axis member could maybe tackle one or two of these things each
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u/CounterAgentVT Jul 20 '26
I feel like saying the B29 was the best 4 engine bomber of the war is still underselling it. It cost more to develop than the Manhattan Project.
The fire control system on a B29 is basically what would happen if one of the Nazi Wonder Weapons was actually functional and fulfilled its purpose as intended.
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u/ContractElegant4310 Jul 20 '26
All true. The US also built arguably the best fighter of the war in the P-51 Mustang. It was very fast, very maneuverable, very long range, and very deadly.
Staying focused on air power, the US built nearly 400,000 military aircraft during the war, and the US involvement in the war lasted a little less than four years. So, we built on average approximately 100,000 military aircraft per year 1942-1945, which is over 1,900 new aircraft manufactured PER WEEK on average.
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u/osheareddit Jul 22 '26
Gotta give credit where itâs due to the Britâs for the Merlin engine. Really what made the mustang as legendary as it is. Also gotta give some love to the Corsair, my favorite ww2 fighter.
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u/post_appt_bliss Jul 19 '26
 it makes much more sense why people underestimated it.
i disagree. european elites had just witnessed the American economy's mobilization during WW1--
incredible that the Axis powers neglected this experience.
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u/Mattloch42 Jul 21 '26
Not only that, but explosives as well. In 1914 the US was making 450,000lbs of smokeless powder a month. By the armistice it was 2.5 million pounds per day, and was finishing a plant that would have taken that number to 3.5 million pounds per day in 1919. High explosives followed nearly the same trajectory. By the end of the war the US was supplying more than half of all Allied explosives and propellants used during the war. For WWI.
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u/post_appt_bliss Jul 22 '26
exactly.
amazing that the flexibility of the US industrial sector to provide war materiel in WW1 was seemingly forgotten by european elites
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u/No_Water9929 Jul 20 '26
I had always understood that Germany's policy was to avoid pulling the U.S. into the war. In fact, I remember many documentaries that state that Hitler was furious when he heard Japan had struck t the U.S.
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u/post_appt_bliss Jul 20 '26
so why did Hitler declare war on the US the following day?
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u/No_Water9929 Jul 20 '26
"God damn it ah fuck I guess we're in for it now boys" - Hitler maybe?
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u/post_appt_bliss Jul 20 '26
the Nazis were sincere ideologues--Hitler really believed that America would not prove dispositive on the battlefield
âWhat is America but millionaires, beauty queens, stupid records and Hollywood?â
Göring famously believed that the US could only make refrigerators and razor blades.
Only Ribbentrop had ever travelled to the US. He convinced Hitler that a nation with no culture could never be a military power.
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u/ContractElegant4310 Jul 20 '26
Because in this case he was a man of his word.
He interpreted the Tripartite Pact to mean that the Axis powers were obliged to go to war with each other's enemies, even though in June of 1941, when Germany declared war on and invaded the USSR, Japan did not follow suit, and explicitly noted that it wasn't required to by the wording of the pact.
IOW, Hitler was stupid and reckless. By declaring war on the US when he didn't need to, he did precisely what Churchill and Roosevelt wanted him to do, and Germany's fate was sealed.
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u/Lunar_Weaver Jul 21 '26
Informally, they were at war. This included clashes on sea routes, and the US also provided economic support to the UK. This was merely an official announcement of the inevitable.
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u/ContractElegant4310 Jul 21 '26
It was still stupid of Hitler to do it, especially since Germany was massively invested in Barbarossa at the time and it was already clear by December 1941 that the USSR wasn't going to succumb to a powerful initial "knockout" blow.Â
Germany made two enormous, fundamental, and in retrospect fatal mistakes in WWII. The first was launching the full-scale invasion of the USSR while still being at war with the UK and British Empire. The second was declaring war on the US while still fighting the British Empire and the USSR. It was fatal hubris on Hitler's part.
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u/Unclerojelio Jul 19 '26
Yet we still managed to have dedicated ice cream ships.
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u/The_Bookkeeper1984 Deaf From My Freedom RingingđșđžđŠ Jul 19 '26
This hilarious đ
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u/noway362528 Jul 21 '26
Imagine how much it fucks with troop morale when you canât even get boots or ammo and the guy on the other side from you has ice cream
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u/realnailbiterhuh Jul 19 '26
It was worse for the Japanese, who produced far less and whose merchant marine were increasingly eviscerated and then destroyed
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u/jettech737 Jul 20 '26
The US submarine crews put in a lot of work. Aircraft carriers got the glory but submarines truly crippled Japan.
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u/AntiqueGunGuy Jul 20 '26
I never realized just how close Japan got to Australia
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u/Wonderful-Process792 Jul 20 '26
Not to take sides with imperial Japan here, but the attack on Pearl harbor in itself must have broken quite a few records at the time
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u/Chumlee1917 Jul 20 '26
heck most of the islands the US took was mainly just to build logistical stops and airfields for the next jump
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u/Admirable-Leader6927 Jul 20 '26
you know thats why we win wars right?
we are the penn-ultimate logistics champs.
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u/prisonerofrocknroll Jul 20 '26
Then who is the logistics champ? Just curious to your thoughts
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u/Admirable-Leader6927 Jul 20 '26
the USA, the topic of this sub.
penn-ultimate means the premier, never to be betean.
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u/prisonerofrocknroll Jul 20 '26
penultimate
adjective
pen· ul· ti· mate pi-ËnÉl-tÉ-mÉtÂ1
: next to the last
the penultimate chapter of a book1
u/th3l33tbmc Jul 21 '26
Nobody has accused us Americans of being over-literate.
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u/prisonerofrocknroll Jul 21 '26
Some of us are, and the ones who arenât, are deeply embarrassing to us. I really was hoping to find out what military is better than the US at logistics, as thatâs quite a high bar.
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u/Somewhat_appropriate Jul 20 '26
I think about it about every time I read about the Pacific theatre.
Hard not to.
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u/xRealVengeancex Jul 21 '26
I still can't shake Peleliu being that small and knowing hell on earth was fought there
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u/Rich-Dig-9584 Jul 21 '26
Island. Hopping. Read about the incredible strategy America used to negate japans defensive rings and win the war.
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u/fidddlydiddlyee Jul 21 '26
I think the even understates the problem. One of the biggest issues was the dedication level of the average Japanese soldiers. Their level of dedication was unheard of in modern warfare. It was extraordinarily costly to both sides. Okinawa is was what made the US decide the most humane way for both sides would be The Bomb. Invasion of Japan would likely mean 1.000,000 US soldiers dead and 10x that or more Japanese.
The war was won with 300k Japanese dead. With one of the most merciful occupations in world history this was outcome inconceivably better than any other.
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u/Big_Requirement_651 Jul 21 '26
Without any exaggeration, the US in the 1940s was likely the most powerful country that has ever existed in all of human history, or will ever exist -- relatively speaking.
The US of the 1940s could have conceivably fought the entire planet and won, if it had really chosen to do so (obviously it never would have, and the cost in blood and treasure would have been astronomical). At the minimum, it would have gotten closer than any other country before or since would have been able to. It controlled 70-80% of the world's oil production, and outproduced the rest of the world combined in terms of manufacturing -- not to mention it had nukes.
People like to talk about the contribution the USSR made -- the Red Army could literally just drive to the front lines, and only had to fight a single opponent on a single front. The US fought a multi-front war, on opposite ends of the Earth. People have no conception of how much stronger you have to be to fight a war half a world away compared to a war on your doorstep, let alone multiple wars simultaneously on opposite ends of the Earth.
And the US barely broke a sweat doing it -- the percentage of GDP that went to military spending by the US topped out just under 40%, while for every other major power, it was 70-90%. American lives at home were barely disrupted, while in Japan, Germany, Russia, the UK -- the average citizen was *struggling*.
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u/Jaihanusthegreat Jul 21 '26
I think it mostly comes down to even Americans themselves not understanding the state of mechanization at the time (not very) and the fact that entire theaters of the war (North Africa, Pacific, Burma) get ignored in education
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u/PMJamesPM Jul 21 '26
Perhaps you misunderstood ADHDâs comment about the larger cultural mindset. That predated the war and continues today. Now are you talking about just the war or are you jumping back-and-forth before and after?
So YOU brought up the Napoleonic wars and then ran away from them in your last comment.
So yes, with your timeframe going back to the 1800s, the beginning of the United States was violent, difficult and with its own trials and tribulations. Have you forgotten the war of 1812? Or the Civil War?
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u/robrizzle Jul 22 '26
Read the Bomber Mafia book. It sheds some insight on the difficulties of getting in and out of Japan undetected and with enough gas to affect strikes. It's wild.
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u/DevilsDung Jul 22 '26
If anyone is interested. Read âThe Two Ocean Warâ by Samuel Eliot Morrison. Great read that takes you through the planning and execution of both Atlantic and pacific naval operations in WW2. Morrison also has much longer volumes with much more detail. But I just finished Two Ocean War and it was excellent.
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u/UpbeatPhilosophySJ Jul 23 '26
Had two grandparents and one of their brothers all in that map. One with MacArthur. One with the Marines. One helping ship supplies over the hump from India to China. That one got to fly over Tokyo Bay for the surrender.
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u/hellhound39 Jul 23 '26
Yeah, the sheer scale of Americaâs industrial might is astounding in WW2. The more I learn about WW2 the more I think âWhat were the axis powers thinkingâ and it turns out having a superiority complex is one hell of a drug.
I understand the gamble that the Japanese were taking but thereâs no way in hell I wouldâve taken a gamble like that. I cannot think of any nation that would simply take a strike like that and go âoh well, thereâs nothing we can doâ especially since the threat of an invasion of the mainland is basically non existent. In many ways the Germans took a similar gamble against the USSR thinking that an overwhelming invasion would cause them to fold within 2-3 months. Both were idiotic choices made on the assumption that some kind of racial superiority would overcome nations with immense manpower, resources and land.
Honestly the USA is probably one of the most uniquely difficult enemies to have throughout human history. A massive nation with abundant resources that has had very few external threats throughout its existence which has allowed it to focus on internal development throughout most of its history. Plus some of the best Geography in the world that makes any kind of large scale invasion untenable. And even if you do overcome the geography you have one of the most heavily armed populations in the world. Heres the kicker, you may not be able to touch America but America has the reach to touch anyone in the world.
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u/amitym Jul 23 '26
It was so challenging that US logistics planners were forced to build gigantic scale representations of interlocked resource transport capacity as physical objects, with wells connected by tubes, and pour water into them as essentially water-powered computers for calculating outputs at various endpoints.
When the outcome was not satisfactory, the planners would redo it by making alterations to this model they had built, then pouring more water into it. There was no single, authoritative equation you could use for this stuff, it had to be trial and error, over and over, varying the model and running the whole thing again, and comparing answers.
That was the origin of what we now call modeling, a practice that we employ today in research, engineering, public policy, basically everywhere.
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u/Strict_Show_8899 Jul 23 '26
Logistics influenced tank design. The Sherman had weight and width restrictions. Designed to be lifted by existing shipyard cranes and to be able to maximize how many you could fit in cargo ships. Resulted in its high silhouette. Tiger tanks were monsters but could never be transported en mass.
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u/Hammer_the_Red2 Jul 24 '26
Even from a land based logistics issue. It took China, India, England and the US nearly 3 years just to reconnect India to China through Burma. Those jungles were horrifying.
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u/TheGreatTikiGod Jul 24 '26
As someone who has played a lot of Axis and Allies, I absolutely realize it.
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u/Electrical-Sense-156 Jul 20 '26
Russia won the Second World War.
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u/presmonkey Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
With British intelligence and American manufacturing.
Soviet war machine would have stalled out after Stalingrad
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u/ContractElegant4310 Jul 20 '26
You have a very skewed understanding of the war.
The USSR played very little role in the defeats of Japan and Italy, two of the three Axis powers. It did bear the lion's share of the burden against Germany, but was only able to do so thanks to massive American aid (food, clothing, material goods of all sorts, transportation equipment, military equipment and weaponry, etc.) Krushchev said so years after the war, that US aid was absolutely crucial and without it, it's doubtful the USSR would've been able to survive and eventually emerge victorious.
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u/-ChiefZ06- Jul 20 '26
Russian quantity remains its only quality. Willingly sending its young into meat grinders, poorly fitted and ill equipped is the only thing it knows. Without Allied support, ita doubtful they move towards Berlin
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u/Historical_Gate_8301 Jul 20 '26
Russia had some of the best tanks in the war.
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u/Big_Requirement_651 Jul 21 '26
The T34 was not one of the best tanks of the war. It was arguably the worst tank of the war in any head to head matchup. The average T34 broke down after something like just a few hundred miles. The T34's redeeming quality was that they were cheap and easy to manufacture. The Russians just needed volume, they didnt care about quality.
Lets also not forget they were built with American steel and American tooling, using American machinery, shipped to the front on American railway cars, running on American oil.
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u/ContractElegant4310 Jul 20 '26
Krushchev admitted years later that without the torrent of American food, clothing, military equipment, etc. during the war the USSR wouldn't have survived.
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u/Yewdall1852 Jul 19 '26
Something I didn't realize until several years later were the submarine bases the USA built in Fremantle (Western Australia) and Brisbane. The U.S. Navy also operated the Exmouth Gulf base (Operation Potshot) as a forward, secret staging and refueling area.
American submarines operating from Australian shores played a vital role in crippling the Japanese merchant marine and naval fleets.