Russia's War Against Ukraine

[Dammit Carl!]

Somebody asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to explain why Ukraine needs denazification when the prime minister is Jewish : he claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler "had Jewish blood" and that Jews as a rule are among the worst antisemites  :hide:.

"So...why'd you invade Ukraine?"
Putin: "The JEEEEWWWSSS!!!"

Crazy damn world we live in.

[GDS_Starfury]

ya ever notice that theres been no evidence of russias use of any kind of active protection on its tanks?
even on T-90s theres been nothing.

[88mmkwk]

Interesting assessment of Turkey's role in the Ukraine conflict with Russia...  I harken back to when Turkey decided to fly the bird at the West and negotiated a deal with Russia to get S-400's instead of following through with their F-35 partner program and acquisition agreement, thereby causing them to lose access to supply parts for and buy F-35's.  With the recent less-than-steller showing of Russian military hardware vs. western systems, I wonder if Ankara might be having some "buyer's regret" right now as they watch events unfold.  Russian troop training and corruption can always be a consideration for poor military system performance, but I gotta believe "ooopsss" must be at least occasionally a thought for the Turk leadership these days....

[GDS_Starfury]

I think that a lot of russian kit can be very good when used by well trained and motivated people.
not their tanks, but a lot of other stuff.  ::)

[planetbrain]

Somebody asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to explain why Ukraine needs denazification when the prime minister is Jewish : he claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler "had Jewish blood" and that Jews as a rule are among the worst antisemites  :hide:.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/yad-vashem-chief-accuses-lavrov-of-libelously-blaming-jews-for-holocaust/
https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1521136329987342337?cxt=HHwWgoCyvdnblJwqAAAA

Israel not too happy with the Lavrov statement. Hopefully makes them a little less neutral. Must be hard to appear to justify anything when you really have no reason to invade.

[planetbrain]

Interesting assessment of Turkey's role in the Ukraine conflict with Russia...  I harken back to when Turkey decided to fly the bird at the West and negotiated a deal with Russia to get S-400's instead of following through with their F-35 partner program and acquisition agreement, thereby causing them to lose access to supply parts for and buy F-35's.  With the recent less-than-steller showing of Russian military hardware vs. western systems, I wonder if Ankara might be having some "buyer's regret" right now as they watch events unfold.  Russian troop training and corruption can always be a consideration for poor military system performance, but I gotta believe "ooopsss" must be at least occasionally a thought for the Turk leadership these days....

A Turkey-Russia Naval  war is, I believe, not even remotely possible unless circumstances dramatically change. if they change to that extent we are all in big trouble!

[MengJiao]

Interesting assessment of Turkey's role in the Ukraine conflict with Russia...  I harken back to when Turkey decided to fly the bird at the West and negotiated a deal with Russia to get S-400's instead of following through with their F-35 partner program and acquisition agreement, thereby causing them to lose access to supply parts for and buy F-35's.  With the recent less-than-steller showing of Russian military hardware vs. western systems, I wonder if Ankara might be having some "buyer's regret" right now as they watch events unfold.  Russian troop training and corruption can always be a consideration for poor military system performance, but I gotta believe "ooopsss" must be at least occasionally a thought for the Turk leadership these days....

  Yep, and Pakistan is probably happy they have been shifting over to Chinese gear while poor India is packed with used Russian stuff.  And China isn't even buying Russian oil at discount:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/u-s-relieved-as-china-appears-to-heed-warnings-on-russia/ar-AAWRuM8?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=d42e103759dc405c94293c145a9c615b

[Gusington]

^That last bit is some very good news.

[Pete Dero]

Somebody asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to explain why Ukraine needs denazification when the prime minister is Jewish : he claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler "had Jewish blood" and that Jews as a rule are among the worst antisemites  :hide:.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/yad-vashem-chief-accuses-lavrov-of-libelously-blaming-jews-for-holocaust/
https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1521136329987342337?cxt=HHwWgoCyvdnblJwqAAAA

Israel not too happy with the Lavrov statement. Hopefully makes them a little less neutral.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-705747

Russian Foreign Ministry says that Israel "supports the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv and that Israel's Foreign Minister Yair Lapid saying "The Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust is anti-historical."   :pullhair:

[Gusington]

This is a new level of idiocy.

[Pete Dero]

This is a new level of idiocy.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/vladimir-putin-rewriting-russias-history-books-flna2d11669160
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/vladimir-putins-rewriting-of-history-draws-on-a-long-tradition-of-soviet-myth-making-180979724/

When you rewrite history many things become anti-historical.

[FarAway Sooner]

I do wonder how much of this stuff is accurate.

For the record, in WW II at least, the Germans basically just needed to shoot at an enemy plane and have a fellow aviator say "He hit it!" to get credit for a kill.  I have no idea whether anybody ever did a historical analysis of the number of kills claimed by German pilots versus the number of planes ever deployed in a theater, but the two numbers had to have been close (with the "confirmed kill" count leading by a nose).

[Rekim]

Sorry, but that is not correct

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_and_overclaiming_of_aerial_victories_during_World_War_II

The Luftwaffe's aerial victory confirmation procedure was based on directive 55270/41 named "Confirmation of aerial victories, destructions and sinking of ships" (German: Anerkennung von Abschüssen, Zerstörungen und Schiffsvernichtung) and was issued by the Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe (Luftwaffe high command). This directive was first issued in 1939 and was updated several times during World War II.[2]

In theory the German approval process for the confirmation of aerial victories was very stringent and required a witness.[3] The final destruction or explosion of an enemy aircraft in the air, or bail-out of the pilot from the aircraft, had to be observed on gun-camera film or by at least one other human witness. The witness could be the German pilot's wingman, another in the squadron, or an observer on the ground. If a pilot reported shooting down an aircraft without this confirmation it was considered only a "probable" and did not count in the victory scoring process.

[FarAway Sooner]

Yup.  The key words in the passage you cited are, "in theory..."  Based on the handful of biographical accounts that I've read, it was the "at least one human witness" clause that was the weak link in the verified kill totals for the Luftwaffe.  There were very practical incentives for pilots in general and wingmen in particular to exaggerate each other's kill totals.

To your point, I exaggerated the lack of rigor in the German kill verification system.  If you read the rest of the article, you see that the Germans weren't alone in inflating kill totals, but there is a lengthy list of inflated kill totals involving the Luftwaffe.

The most detailed treatment of this issue that I can remember was in a great book, A Higher Call, by Adam Makos, available at https://www.amazon.com/Higher-Call-Incredible-Chivalry-War-Torn/dp/0425255735.  I ran across similar treatment looking at some of Joachim Marseille's career, specifically including his "17 kills in one day" incident.  Taking nothing away from Marseille as a pilot or a brave human, I just think his kill totals were inflated.

I know that, for American pilots, they were rotated home pretty quickly after gaining combat experience to train new combat crews.  Part of this was a function of the growth curve in US Aircraft between 1942 and 1944--the USAF simply needed more trainers and (unlike the Japanese, for example) made it a very high priority to embed trainers with combat experience in their pilot training functions.  Part of this was a function of the fact that the Americans weren't fighting for their lives to keep enemy bombers out of the sky, so they had the luxury of making long-term training investments.  One result was to put a much lower ceiling on American pilot's kill totals.

Judging by the Wikipedia link you provided, it's the American bomber crews who vastly inflated their kill totals...   ;)

[bobarossa]

Summarizing the conclusion sections at the end of Bergstrom's Black Cross/Red Star series, he estimates that is Russia during '41 and '42, the Germans overclaimed air to air kills at slightly less than a 2:1 rate while the Soviets overclaimed kills at about a 3:1 rate.  He used German losses according to german records and compared them to Soviet losses from soviet records.