196 - Black May, Nazi Subs Defeated - WW2 - May 28, 1943 

one gets the impression that like many other demagogues, our friend the failed artist doesnt really do the whole "rational thinking" thing so much as the "emotional thinking" thing, good for riling up the masses but not so good for effective policy creation and enactment.

Debatable. The more pressing a threat, the more effort is put into defeating it.

Pizza Hut missed an opportunity - back then and maybe today.

What was the impact of Spain and Portugal´s neutrality on other theatres, like how Angola and Mozambique were off limits to each side, and how Operation Torch couldn´t cross the Spanish controlled parts of Morocco?

By the way, remember that Gorbachev, the communist, did an advertisement for Pizza Hut? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fgm14D1jHUw.html

Which is exactly why sponsorship is so difficult for channels (on TV or online) that cover brutal and difficult historical topics. Nobody wants their brand and their warm fuzzy commercials airing next to pictures of battlefield destruction.

@@Raskolnikov70 But the Mussolini Madness... what would they call a stuffed crust? The Stalingrad Special? Delicious pockets of surrounded cheese. It needs to happen.

@@frank_fick I agree, never said that I was one of the people who objected. Brands need to be less sensitive, stop trying to please everyone. Now gimme a "Kursk Kombo" on pan crust, hold the jalapenos.....

He has a career in TV news. Same style!

@@TheVideoNorm Wow i didnt know that thx

Had me laughing out loud when I saw the name if the operation

Not the best codename for OPSEC though 😅

Which makes me even less understanding of operation Copenhagen...

@@nevilleneville6518 Would "Operation All Roads Lead To Rome" have been any less obvious?

while Constantine was born in Naisus in the Balkans.

Mussolini Madness to go!

I hope someone actually tries ordering a Mussolini madness

@@steffanyschwartz7801 Well, in my country's case he tried to feed us that madness against our will but we turned the offer down and kept throwing it back in his face until his buddy Hitler came in and forced us to eat it but we kept fighting both in exile and as partisans. Go and check the weekly episodes from October 1940 to May 1941 here in this channel for more information on that.

I was literally ordering pizza hut when the ad came on lol I was searching for those until I realized it was fake

I'll have the Mussolini Madness with extra pepperonis, some Winston Wings, and a Chiang Kai-Shake please.

Thanks for sharing you father's recollections @Procopius Augustus

That's remarkable! I didn't know any had survived. The V-2 was an astonishing achievement for it's time.

@@jamesdunn9609 In the "Deutsches Museum" in Munich they have an extreme good conserved V2

I kinda want to know how that V2 ended up on almost exactly the opposite side of the world.

I think they have one in the US Air Force museum in Dayton also.

@@SeanHillaby the same way the Aussie troops showed up in Germany.

Great comment.

Late war bombers had ASV Mark III radar by March 43 and allied ASV radar generally outpaced the german detectors in technology. Even snorkels could be detected from a decent distance with ASV, and up to 140km if they were running Metox.

>>Uboats are painfully slow while submerged

Very interesting. And your English is very good, poli kala.

@Θωμας Γκανιας Thanks for telling us about your personal experiences in the fortifications! Your english is great btw 😉

Even worse, how bad does your army have to be that your enemy doesn't think it's worth their time to kill them or take them prisoner? I think the partisans are doing it intentionally, sending them back because they'll be refitted and rearmed and will bring them more useful stuff the next time they attack.

Few weeks ago, all three K&G affliated channels upload about the same time as WW2 do.

Thanks @Mr Mitchell History!

After WW,II.. There is the Korean War...then the Vietnam War and so on.👍

Gotta get my Saturday morning history

Crossover one day?

This shows how bad the Germans were with code names. 'Zaunkonig' told you sound was involved, 'Alaric' was an indication it was about taking over Italy. Very bad security as code names shouldn't reveal what the subject is. German code names always gave a clue - eg 'Barbarossa'. Only codes such as 'Fall blau' were reasonably secure, but they still revealed an attack was planned.

@Amil Topuz Good counting! No matter how many pairs of eyes we have on these things during production mistakes slip through. Thanks for pointing it out, we'll work on correcting it

also, milch was a jew, but important for the war effort.

@@irishalbino9308 He was a half Jew and raised as a Christian. His mother lied about his parentage and claimed he was born out of wedlock.

Milch was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

@@ranianfibio8107 Yes but he was commuted.

@@insouciantFox True, but he was not exonerated. Commuted still means he is guilty, just that his sentence was shortened.

I was looking forward to a slice of hot Mussolini Madness.

I was shocked for a moment, when I didn't find your comment.

This is incredibly wholesome and we love you both for always being here in our comments

I still prefer contrasting colors for the shirt and vest.

It will be a dark day if this channel ever begins covering conflicts where neckties were not in fashion. ....on second thought toga reviews could be amusing.

@@kirbyculp3449 I agree, but I try to isolate the ratings for the ties unless the outfit is really banging.

All sorts of poor taste and offensive jokes rush to mind. …

@@iamnolegend483 Eisenhower? I hardly know 'er!

jliller Thanks, great info

"Secret Weapon: U.S. High-Frequency Direction Finding in the Battle of the Atlantic Secret Weapon: U.S. High-Frequency Direction Finding in the Battle of the Atlantic" by Kathleen Broome Williams is an informative book on the subject, if a bit dry.

It's got a crust full of hot air and is topped with a lot of baloney.

Not quite. The USN knew full well that the fleet couldn't do its stuff until the sailors had been fledged. Between the time of construction -- and then training -- the USN wasn't going to be dominating factor until 1944. Midway was a military miracle that accelerated things quite considerably.

@@davidhimmelsbach557 yeah you right, US Navy fleet still like few carrier for how many month now, it's very staggering that we are at mid 1943 and USN haven't recovered their losses yet but by 1944 they have a whole armada.

Whether it's Pizza Hut, or a little bar in Rome that has passed from father to son since the days of Augustus, at the end of the day it's still just overpriced cheese and tomato on toast.

@@philipwagner9169 that hurts mate

@@philipwagner9169 in Italy a Margherita pizza is 6$, but having lived abroad I understand how you all are scammed. Yet, if you eat a good pizza (you can find also abroad, but ask an italian first) you will changr your mind😉

@@manuelapollo7988 :) I'll reserve judgement until then, but meanwhile, I'm not a huge fan of traditional English boiled beef and grey cabbage either, so don't take it personally!

@@angelG14I am from Milan. one of the best pizza I had were in Paris and Liverpool, but the pizza guys were from Naples. Generally if it's a neapolitan guy who makes it, it's fantastic. In Chicago I had a fantastic deep dish pizza, but for us in Italy that is not absolutely a pizza, it's something closer to a pie.

This episode brought to you by Pizza Hut.

@CK Lim Yup, pretty pragmatic. The only real choice those Italian troops had was to wait until follow up troops came along to take them to POW camps. As the troops who had found them had certainly given those following troops the location then the Italians would not have had to wait too long. Most people making jokes about it have never actually BEEN to a desert. Walking through desert terrain without boots is a nightmare. You would have to be either stupid or desperate to contemplate it.

Thanks! I was just about to ask what that was. From the vertical stabilizer it looked almost like one of the very early prop-powered, taildragger Me-262 prototypes but I was pretty sure they had only one engine, mounted in the nose.

Thank you Juan!

Thank you so much!

It confused me. I have never seen any RU-vid channels with a Pizza Hut sponsorship, including RU-vidrs like Mikey Chen who seem like obvious candidates. So I was wondering where that was going from the start.

The thing is, I could see a Pizza place doing a line of WWII pizzas. Maybe they could do a pizza for every major American conflict and police action. Vietnam-The Ho Chih Minh Meatball pizza....-Korea-The 38thParrallel pIzza-half veggie half meat.....WW I could be the Doughboy-a giant dessert pizza made from doughnut batter. But not Mussolini.

It was the loss of so many submarines. The Bay of Biscay had become a death run vs radar-equipped aircraft. Hunter-killer aircraft carrier teams. Homing torpedoes. Rockets. New tactics. Hedgehogs. New radar. It all came together in May.

A nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.....

Dogs & cats stacked on top of each other, excrement all over. Bears in upright sitting cages. Baby deer in solitary cages. Very little refrigeration. Essentially an open-air slaughterhouse. Disgusting market. I refuse to say anymore for fear of being in trouble with moderators, but the Wuhan Market was a massive filthy & tragic experience.

I hear the filet of bat is quite tasty.

Wuhan is an important hub even at that time being à railway jonction and located litteraly in the middle of China. There was one of major battle of the war here in 1938. So if an epidemic would start here it would spread all around very quickly

@Michael Kovacic Well that was a fascinating path of research you just sent me down, thanks for the input! I see that FAT was a system that allowed a torpedo to 'zig-zag' (amongst other maneuvres) that was fitted to a couple of types of torpedo from late '42 but, as you said, never to the new T5. Indy may have gotten the technologies mixed up, but at the same time he is talking about the Kriegsmarine's hopes for the future and it's quite possible they were planning at this time in May '43 to equip the T5 with FAT or something similar when it entered full service. I'm sure they would have loved to have FAT on the T5s if they could. So we'll let the episode stay as it is for now as Indy is talking about an, at this point, experimental piece of equipment

@@WorldWarTwo I am very happy to help! But I believe there is a bit of a misunderstanding on German WW2 torpedo types. The FAT was meant to be used against merchant ships, and if the shot missed, it would enter into its pre-programmed zigzag search pattern, where it could possibly strike another ship in a convoy. The T5, on the other hand, was a torpedo specifically produced to target warships (which had been very difficult until this point) by automatically homing in the enemy's acoustic signature, that is, the noise emitted by its engines and screws. Most of the time, you hear about 2 types, the G7a (which ran on pressurized oxygen) and the G7e (which ran on batteries). Here is a short summary of the most important types: - T1 was the G7a torpedo. It could be exposed to the elements, and was carried by uboats as reloads in upper deck containers. It was faster than the G7e, but left a visible wake. It was also widely used on surface ships. - T2 was the original G7e torpedo. Due to its battery, it required maintenance every 3 to 4 days and had to be carried in the torpedo tubes or as internal reloads. - T3 was a modified G7e torpedo. It could be fitted with an improved magnetic detonator, known as the Pi2, that would break a ship's keel by detonating below it. For example, U515, commanded by Oak Leaves holder Werner Henke, sank 7 ships for over 43,000 tons with only 9 of these torpedoes from convoy TS37 on the night of 30.04. to 01.05.1943, one of the most successful convoy attacks of the entire war. -T3a was the FAT, as described above. It was therefore a modification of the T3. There were different evolutions, the FAT1, the FAT2, and finally the LUT (Lageunabhängiger Torpedo), which could be fired from any bearing. The FAT1 was widely used during the successful convoy battles of March 1943. -T4, also called the Falke, was the first acoustic torpedo, but so slow that it could only be used against merchant ships. Only 3 torpedoes were fired, 2 of them by U221, a uboat adopted by my hometown, Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, in Austria. U221 sank 2 ships with them, from convoys HX228 and HX229, in March 1943. Her commander received the Knight's Cross for sinking 10 ships for over 60,000 tons from North Atlantic convoys in the winter of 1942/43. The T4 was another G7e modification. -T5, also called the Zaunkönig or the G7es (s for sonar), was finally the first purpose-built anti-destroyer weapon of the Kriegsmarine. The Allies referred to it as GNAT (German Navy Acoustic Torpedo). It was first used in September 1943 in the battle between wolfpack Leuthen and convoy ON202, where it was used to sink a destroyer, a frigate and a corvette (uboat commanders reported sinking of over 10 escorts). It had its drawbacks, namely that it didn't home in on ships running too slow, or homing in on noise buoys towed by escorts. The T5's hit rate was only at about 10 to 15 percent, but as uboats had to dive below periscope depth to avoid drawing the weapon on itself, commanders automatically assumed a hit with every detonation. The Kriegsmarine hoped that entire convoys could be destroyed by eliminating the escorts first (in a reversal of previous doctrine), but the limitations of the T5 prevented this. There was also an improved, much more reliable version of the T5 which entered service in 1945. Apparently U245 used this torpedo to sink 2 merchant ships in the final weeks of the war. And the type XXI, which had autoloaders, could have fired 18 of them within 20 minutes without going to periscope depth, which should give you an impression of the havoc this type could have wrought on convoys had it appeared earlier. I hope this gives you a quick overview. If you have any questions, please ask :)

Thank you so much for your support, we are really glad you enjoy our content!

Thanks!

Then the British would have accelerated their own construction of escort vessels. An expanded U-boat fleet could hardly have been a threat to any power other than Britain. Moreover, British (and Canadian) shipbuilding resources were vastly greater than those of Germany.

@@dovetonsturdee7033True. If anything it would have accelerated the Wolfpacks' demise by taking away the distraction of the Bismarck and the surface raiders.

Developing a better torpedo bomber capability in the Luftwaffe would have been a more effective use of any resources put into anti-shipping efforts. They couldn't replace U-boats for obvious reasons (shorter range from shore) but would have been an absolute menace in the waters around Southern England. Enough so that they might have completely driven the Royal Navy out of the channel and made an amphibious invasion of the UK feasable.

@@Raskolnikov70 Not even then. Summer of 1940, which was the time Britain was most vulnerable, the KM had 4 Destroyers and 3 Cruisers able to sail. That was the entire force they had available to cover a Naval Invasion at the time. To make it worse their Landing Craft were converted Rhine Barges, only 1 in 3 of which had engines and could manage 3.5 Knots. Which means around much of the UK coast these barges could NOT make headway against an outgoing tide. Hell in some places they would be moving backwards at 0.5 knots even at full power. Then you have the rest of the specialist equipment an Amphibious assault of that scale requires, not to mention the transports required to supply the troops in the event they somehow managed to get to shore. Royal Navy did not need to risk Capital ships against that force, 20 - 30 destroyers (they had over 100 in British waters) and as many MTB's and MGB's as they could get their hands on would have left the Invasion force little more than burning ruins and sinking wrecks. And they could have waited for night, because of the tidal conditions even in late summer at least part of the operation would have been at night which means those small attack boats could have gotten among those slow, clumsy barges and caused havoc..... Plus they found how vulnerable torpedo bombers were later in the war even in contested airspace. Early war torpedoes required a low and slow attack run, which left the aircraft horrifically vulnerable. There is a reason most nations navies had moved almost entirely from Torpedo Bombers to Dive Bombers for anti shipping.... At least till late war when torpedoes allowing a higher and much faster drop were introduced.

Spartacus has been covering it in his War Against Humanity series.

@@WorldWarTwo He couldn't. You are currently doing 1943 and it happened in 1944

Thanks!

I'm already on my usual pizza app. Time Ghost caught me as a member back at the start of the war. I think I'm too susceptible to advertising.

Yes and no. Pizza yes, but real one.

Paul, tell Ken Burns we're waiting for his call

I don't know that people knew about it. It was a pretty secret project.

@@fieldmarshalbaltimore1329 he was meaning the planners i think

I wonder if the technology came first, then the tactical decisions?

They (scientists, military & gov't) will find out when they test the first one they produce to see the actual results. The physicists had an idea of the destructive capability, but everything was theoretical at that stage. The general idea was to use it on a city, or strategic target.

Sciece fiction authors had been discussing the possible uses of atomic bombs for many years before the war even started. In general, they underestimated the power of atomic bombs, and therefore tended to describe what we would call tactical nukes. In March 1944, a story named "Deadline" appeared in Astounding magazine, which described a nuclear bomb in considerable detail, based entirely upon unclassified sources. It caught the attention of the FBI. John W. Campbell, the editor, managed to convince the FBI that the level of information contained in that story was already common knowledge, at least among the scientifically educated. Amusingly, Campbell had already guessed that the government was putting together a nuclear program, because many of his subscribers, that he knew to be involved in nuclear physics, had suddenly changed their delivery address to Los Alamos.

I used to see this much patriotism way back in the day, in the comment sections of videos about the Balkans. Everyone being super proud of their nation and shitting on the other ones. And I always thought the Balkan peoples were over-patriotic, over nationalist and kinda stupid and that these characteristics were unique to them, because the rest of the world was not asstupid as them and had moved past these pissing contests. It brings me great joy to see the Americans in the same stupid pissing contest cesspool of over patriotic fervour with the rest of us.

About 2700 Liberty ships were produced (an average of 3 ships every 2 days). Plus hundreds of T2 tankers and Victory ships. There was no reasonable chance of Germany winning the tonnage war once the US formally entered the conflict.

@@blockmasterscott The US emerged from WWII as the worlds strongest nation. The power lying dormant woke up, and the world was changed forever.

It would be even better if an Esso sponsored it.

Training and doctrine. Jäger divisions are trained more for adverse terrain and fighting in smaller groups. So, smaller footprint, more agile, less mechanized.

Putin, is that you?

A jäger division is, essentially, a parachute division in structure -- that never flies -- it just marches -- rather like US Ranger battalions. It will not have as many men, as heavy weapons, ... not even the same TO&E. Think of an infantry outfit that moves very fast on its feet --- but does not have a Big Punch -- being only 65% as powerful as line infantry. The boys will be in Great Shape, though.

Thanks Roy!

Thanks @Elveheim

He has no moustache…