Profile of somenbjorn

I understand your point but look at it from mathematical prospective. While 1 number could be right and another wrong the chance between right and wrong is a % chance. Now if you take the average your chance of being "closer" to the right answer is now higher. I have formula for this somewhere from back in my college math days but while no answer can be 100% correct we can still mathematically find a number with the % that is the closest to 100 with an average. (An average of realistic numbers lol, cant take an average of crap and get closer to crap and call it a flower). I hope my rambling make some logical sense.

I do understand what you are saying. But still I don't agree with the notion that right or wrong in history should be considered a matter of chance.

The room for error for any study should always be included, as well as the reason why this room of error exists and why it is of that specific side.

Still my opinion stands. To get an acurate number There should be a compilation of atleast 10 sources and the average of those numbers taken

I have to disagree with that notion. A source is either good or it isn't, either accurate or not. If 9 are wrong and one is correct getting the average of all ten will give you a wrong number.


A jigh quality source(s) is what you want to look for. (True I never do care for numbers other than a ballpark figure.) If the study is well made and the eventual figure is what seems to be the consensus of most experts on the subject that is probably closest to the truth, (Not the same as THE TRUTH, you won't find that without a time machine) and will give you a good estimation of whatever it was the numbers tell you.

I hate when people go 10-15 thousand if they have one source saying 10 and another saying 15. Well one or both are wrong. Someone counted and came up with 10 thousand, another one counted in another way or using different material and came up with 15. Nobody made a study and came up with 13 thousand.

with the previous discussion of logistics. it made me ponder what extent the efforts of the RAF and USAF had on logistics and infrastructure during the european theater and if a large impact, to what extent it may've hampered the long term invasion logistics.

I lifted your question in its own thread. We should perhaps do the same more often, this was more or less a troll thread from the start and discussion has moved far away from the original topic already.


More threads for the library!

Now their are only 3 explanations for this either

1: the Russians where incredibly incompetent which i reject since the red army through leaderless in the early days was still a well trained professional force
2: the Germans had Superhuman abilities . Which i reject as well. They had more experience and better leaders at first but it still shouldn't explain the 1:3 ratio
3: or their was something wrong with the soviet tanks.

4: Lack of training for the crews.
5: Lack of infantry support in the early tank brigades.
6: Poor composition in tank brigades 1941-42. (When T-70, T-26s, T-34 and KVs all belonged to the same unit.)
7. Complete breakdown in command and control 1941.
8. Lack of reconnaissance, didn't become better until 1943.
9. Tanks lacking proper vision for commanders, fixed in T-34 with late model 1943 turrets.
10. Commanders acting as gunners on the most common tank.
11. Not having any hope of air superiority until summer of '43.
12. Poor operational art and poor tactics.
13. Mistakes, ooh all the mistakes. Mitigated quite a lot when they learnt how to fight. (3rd phase of the war in Soviet historiography.)
14. Difference in what counts as a lost tank. - (Cannot stress this enough. A German tank sent to factory for complete overhaul is repaired. A soviet tank sent to the factory for overhaul is lost and then produced again.)
15.All of the above. (ok maybe not #2. )


Also Turtle I think he means this book: The Red Army handbook It isn't a book by the Red army, but a study of the Red Army by Zaloga.

I vote bright and sunny. I feel we have too many maps that are dark and gritty. Got to remember war is also fought on the best of summer days

Also like Monolithic Bacon wrote it brings out the depth.