OT (WW2) The Great Escape

[hood 2]

Of course all troops committed atrocities.War itself is an atrocity.But just take the case of taking prisoners.In jungle warfare--and that is the only type I know anything about--consider the case of a platoon that has taken four wounded Japanese prisoners,and the wounded were the only Japanese prisoners likely to be taken.How to get them back?The nearest back area is probably six or eight difficult hours trek back.With two teams of four men to a litter that means thirty two men away from the company for maybe 8 to 16 hours.That is the entire platoon!So they are "disposed" of.Neither side took any significant number of prisoners.And the poor devils that were given the job had to live with the fact for the rest of their lives.

[Flyby PC 23]

Substantial research (I googled it last night) reveals it was a made for TV movie 1988 called "The Great Escape II: The Untold Story" with Christopher Reeves and Judd Hirsch. And would you believe it Donald Pleasance playing the evil gestapo what a hoot haha.

 

I think the black beret you are thinking of was from the excellent late 70's series about Belgian resistance "ello ello" oops I mean "SECRET ARMY".

 

BTW fount of all knowledge google also list NO Australian successfully escaping. Hmmmm. So much for James Coburn then.

 

No. Secret Army was outstanding, and Yvette with the beret was the lovely Jan Francis. Couldn't believe it when they blew her up in a bombing raid on Lille(?). But the thing I remember, or think I remember was a documentary.

 

@WUK - You're right of course, there were war crimes committed by all sides and it's easy to forget. There's footage of Japanese soldiers in the immediate aftermath of the war running the gauntlet, with ex POWs armed with all manner of things, clubs, pick axes... Not pretty, and probably not the worst of what happened to them. I've heard a few things about the Foreign Legion in Algeria too. You don't really want to believe it, but part of you knows it could very well be true. War is a nasty business.

 

& @ Hood. Correct too, and it wasn't just enemy soldiers. There were occassions when civilian lives had to be taken to prevent missions being compromised. Either they couldn't be trusted, or couldn't be left behind to face interrogation. I know this happened in Burma, and later in Korea. & remember the Bravo Two Zero book when the SAS were compromised by the little goat herd? What would you have done in the same position? They let him live, but paid the price.

Edited November 5, 2009 by Flyby PC

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Hell in the Pacific with Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune

 

Yes, that was it!...thanks SB

[Duce Lewis 3]

Here is a YouTube video about the dominance of the Tiger - it can scare the sh*t out of you to imagine you

had to fight them. At the end it also shows, how the RAF destroyed many with rockets and carpet bombing.

 

http://www.youtube.c...feature=related

1 on 1, the Tiger was a fearsome opponent

Yet there were advantages to the Sherman

Speed, Manueverability, and ease of production

I saw a documentary where 50k Shermans were built vs 8k Tigers and Panthers

Still I'd much rather have the protection and firepower of the latter

I sure felt for that Brit Tanker, heroic the way he fought that Tiger

 

You are in luck, the same production team including Spielberg and Hanks has been making "The Pacific" for the past three years, its based on two marine memoirs (Helmet for my Pillow and With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge and Robert Leckie). Will be out early next year.

 

http://en.wikipedia....28miniseries%29

Great! I hope it's as well done as Band of Brothers

[Fortiesboy 3]

 

 

I wish they'd redo "Battle of Britain", keeping the storyline, but with the right aircraft,

and the real amounts of them. It must look horrifying, to see hordes of hundreds of

bombers approaching. If you saw "Troja", you saw it can be done per computer - the

gigantic fleet at the beginning was the first time I saw, how big it really all was!

 

 

 

Yes, take your point - But I think it would have to be using a computer. I play golf ( earlier today, in fact ) with a retired RAF pilot who flew some of the Spits and Hurricanes when they made the battle of britain film.

He tells me that things were hairy enough with the (relatively ) small numbers of planes they had in the air when filming. !!!

[Flyby PC 23]

CGI is fine with me.

 

Checkout Tochy's videos at the bottom - http://www.k4.dion.ne.jp/~suppon/

 

That is all done by computer. Merlins is unbelievable!!!

[Bullethead 12]

And the poor devils that were given the job had to live with the fact for the rest of their lives.

 

C'est la guerre, and c'est la apres-guerre.

 

That's not an atrocity, it's necessity. In many cases guys are killed trying to surrender, or shot after being captured, due a host of situational factors. Everybody who's been on the firing line knows this, and I'd say the vast majority of vets have been involved in such situations. But very few folks talk about it afterwards, because most don't want to think about it again and all know they can go to jail for it even years after. Because vets don't say much about it, everybody else thinks it's an uncommon atrocity.

 

Nobody likes taking prisoners. First, if the bastards don't give up at the get-go, usually they've taken out some of your buddies before they give up, which greatly increases their chance of being shot when they leave cover. Second, as you say, there's the logistical problem of dealing with them, even if they're healthy. Third, you usually can't leave them unsupervised in your rear. And fourth, those who've dealt with prisoners before usually don't want to do it again, unless they just like shooting them (and every unit has at least one of those).

 

So, to anybody who might be on the firing line in the future, my advice is never report that you have prisoners up the chain of command, EVER. The first your boss should know about it is when you walk into his CP with the prisoner in tow. Up until that point, as far as he is concerned, you don't have any prisoners, so if you have to cap them somewhere along the way, no harm no foul. But if you say you've got some and then can't deliver, it's your ass.

[Olham 164]

Flyby, how are these short scenes made? They are very good!

Are they from flight sims?

That way, and with the perfection of "Light & Magic" or other CGI companies - and maybe

keeping the original acting and some of the aircraft scenes - that would sure make a very

great new version of "Battle of Britain".

(Funny by the way - when I saw the original in cinema as a boy, I wanted to be a Spitfire pilot.

They just looked better to me in their whole design. And for Nazis I didn't want to fight anyway.)

[Duce Lewis 3]

Well we can't close this out without a go here!

http://www.youtube.c...from=PL&index=2

[Flyby PC 23]

Flyby, how are these short scenes made? They are very good!

Are they from flight sims?

That way, and with the perfection of "Light & Magic" or other CGI companies - and maybe

keeping the original acting and some of the aircraft scenes - that would sure make a very

great new version of "Battle of Britain".

(Funny by the way - when I saw the original in cinema as a boy, I wanted to be a Spitfire pilot.

They just looked better to me in their whole design. And for Nazis I didn't want to fight anyway.)

 

 

Wish I knew Olham, I really do. Some of the best CGI I've ever seen. Some of the other clips, like 1945 are still excellent, but you know they are CGI. But Merlins and Shiden-Kai are particularly good. Spliced in with some footage of real people, I reckon this fella could do just about anything and make it 100% convincing.

 

I agree with the Spitfire, quite beautiful as a piece of design. I feel the same way about the Mosquito. Something about them both just looks 'right'.

 

@Duce - Your link isn't working for me Duce. Can you re-post it?

[Duce Lewis 3]

@Duce - Your link isn't working for me Duce. Can you re-post it?

Sorry, not sure what happened

I tested it in Preview before posting too

 

Here's another go

[Mr. Lucky 0]

1 on 1, the Tiger was a fearsome opponent

Yet there were advantages to the Sherman

Speed, Manueverability, and ease of production

I saw a documentary where 50k Shermans were built vs 8k Tigers and Panthers

Still I'd much rather have the protection and firepower of the latter

I sure felt for that Brit Tanker, heroic the way he fought that Tiger http://forum.combatace.com

 

That's like Oddball in Kelly's Heroes, the tank commander with three Shermans. When asked if he could keep the Tiger tanks busy, he replied: 'The only way I got to keep them busy is to let them shoot holes in me!'.

[Olham 164]

Yep, Duce's link doesn't seem to work.

 

And Flyby, you're right about the Mosquito - a great twin engine fighter/bomber.

My first war film I saw in cinema was about a Mosquito squadron, that had to attack

a secret plant in Norway, where the Germans where about to produce "heavy water" (?)

(schweres Wasser), which you need for building an A-bomb.

For that movie, some of the last Mosquitos where saved from becoming objects for

fire worker training. But I forgot the name of the movie.

[Duce Lewis 3]

That's like Oddball in Kelly's Heroes, the tank commander with three Shermans. When asked if he could keep the Tiger tanks busy, he replied: 'The only way I got to keep them busy is to let them shoot holes in me!'.

Pretty true statement for Hollywood

Often times the Shermans needed to mob the German tanks til one of them hit him in the rear

 

Yep, Duce's link doesn't seem to work.

 

And Flyby, you're right about the Mosquito - a great twin engine fighter/bomber.

My first war film I saw in cinema was about a Mosquito squadron, that had to attack

a secret plant in Norway, where the Germans where about to produce "heavy water" (?)

(schweres Wasser), which you need for building an A-bomb.

For that movie, some of the last Mosquitos where saved from becoming objects for

fire worker training. But I forgot the name of the movie.

Try my 2nd attempt, the link apperas to be working

 

Here's your "633 Squadron" Mousies

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=b2xHydbw8mQ

[Flyby PC 23]

I think I remember reading somewhere, but don't ask me where, that one of the biggest weaknesses in the Tiger was its success, and its crew believing themselves invincible. They simply pushed their luck and came unstuck.

 

The other weakness was it's need for infantry support. It's machine guns had limited flexibility, so if you stripped away it's infantry support via mortars or artillery, the Tiger would often withdraw or fall victim to infantry at close quarters, often dropping mines directly in front. I believe that's how the Soviets dealth with them at Kursk, and didn't even make a big issue of it. From what little I've read, I don't think the Russians were as rattled by Tigers as the D-Day forces. I suspect because the Tiger was less superior to their own heavy tanks than it was to the Sherman. That's not really fair to the Sherman, because the Allies didn't have a heavy tank as such, so the Sherman had to fill a gap it was never meant to fill.

 

Every weapon system is only as good as it's missing countermeasure.

 

I also remember a veteran British tank gunner talking about his wartime experience in a Sherman. He said you could take out a Tiger head on, but it was very dodgy. You had to close the range first of all, then hit the lower part of the Tigers gun embrasure so your round deflected through the weaker armour over the drivers head. I also suspect you had to be pretty quick about it. He survived the war, but not in the same Sherman he started out with. I don't recall whether he was in a Sherman Firefly.

 

Yes, the movie is 633 Squadron. Worth watching for the Mossies. The second one with 633 squadron (David McCallum??) is more of the same tosh, trying to make more of the bouncing 'Highball' bomb. Again, it's good to watch for the Mossies in it.