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Re: shuttle disaster



On Sat, 2003-02-08 at 13:17, David P James wrote:
> Ron Johnson wrote:
> >
> > 
> > Ya know, I've always wondered why Hitler declared war on us.  We never
> > did anything to him.  He was fighting the Godless Communists, and a
> > significant minority of Americans were anti-Semitic...  The usual reason
> > is that we declared war on Japan.  Well, heck.  He ignored treaties
> > before.  Why not ignore the Axis Treaty?  It would have kept us out of
> > the war long enough to starve England.  Then he could have easily
> > conquored it.
> > 
> 
> Easily? How? They couldn't manage to invade even when Britain was in the 
> weak state that it was in the fall of 1940, never mind later. The Battle 

Because of lack of air superiority.  My thought was "conquor via treaty
with starving nation".

> of the Atlantic was basically won in 1942 by the British and the 
> Canadians before there was any significant American contribution to the 
> war, and it is that battle that Germany would have had to have won to 
> have been able to "starve England".

I dunno about that...

http://www.navalmuseum.ab.ca/atlantic.html
"Between August 1942 and May 1943, shipping losses and loss of life was
appalling, particularly when compared to relatively small enemy U-boat
losses."

"In May 1943, the battle began to turn in favor of the allies. Loss of
shipping declined significantly and 41 U-boats were sunk during the
month of May alone."

http://www.theworldatwar.com/feature.htm
"Above all the use of aircraft, ... over the Atlantic Gap (now closed by
very long-range B24 Liberator bombers), brought a high level of loss to
the submarine arm."

Hmm, who built all those B-24s, I wonder?

However...
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/atlantic.html
Even through mid-1942, "Brit. & Canada providing 98% of all escorts".

> The Americans liberated Continental Europe. But they did not save 
> Britain. Arguably Canada did, but not the United States.

Oh, and don't forget about Lend Lease & "ships for bases".  There's
no getting around it.  Face it: GB would have been sunk (pun intended)
without the US.

-- 
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Ron Johnson, Jr.     Home: ron.l.johnson@cox.net           |
| Jefferson, LA  USA   http://members.cox.net/ ron.l.johnson |
|                                                            |
| "For me and windows it became a matter of easy to start    |
|  with, and becoming increasingly difficult to be produc-   |
|  tive as time went on, and if something went wrong very    |
|  difficult to fix, compared to linux's large over head     |
|  setting up and learning the system with ease of use and   |
|  the increase in productivity becoming larger the longer I |
|  use the system."                                          | 
|   Rohan Nicholls , The Netherlands                         |
+------------------------------------------------------------+



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