[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Hippikos

Well, nice to see you finally agree with me. Operation Barbarossa was a big mistake indeed,

No, I don't agree, neither do historians. The mistake was pushing the Eastern Front before defeating England.

430 of the 7377 Lancasters were built in Canada, less than 10%. And because of only 156.000 sorties (of which 40.000 day missions), you conveniently forgot to mention them because they don't fit in your narrow patriotic world.

40k day missions, of short runs or after the US made it safe to come out and play. 7377 lancasters and 156,000 sorties sounds pretty impressive? Try 1,893,565 sorties with 32,263 aircraft....now that's impressive......and effective. :p

Re the P51; originally, the British ordered this design, whose fuselage was actually designed by one of the German designers responsible for the famous Me109 by the way, from the Americans. However, the American engines in the P51a series sold to the British greatly disappointed the Commonwealth Airforces. The P51 was relegated to ground attack roles where it continued to suffer. Despite protests by American Arms Contractors, the British experimented with placing the Rolls Royce engines in these bodies...the same family of engines already having proved themselves in the Spitfire series. The result was the salvation of the P51 series and literally of the Allied Daylight Strategic Bombing Offensive, without which the allies probably would not have won the war. BTW Chuck Yaeger preferred the Spitfire over the P51 saying that the more experienced and talented a pilot, the more he preferred the Spitfire over the Mustang.

The Brits needed a fighter, why didn't they build one if they already had a fuselage design and an engine? Because they couldn't. They contracted to North American Aviation to build a long range fighter, which they did in 178 days. Not only quickly, but a superior fighter in every way, mostly because of it's wing design. The only shortcoming of the Mustang (that doesn't sound like a Brit name) was high altitude performance which was not specified in the contract and not anticipated by NA. Who was objecting to the engine swap? Why would we give a shit? Merlins were built by the Packard Motors Company of Detroit, Michigan.

Yep land-lease, a typo. Pay back…on May 3rd, 2006, the British Treasury Minister, Ivan Lewis in a commons reply said "Repayment of the war loans to the US Government is expected to be completed on December 31 2006," The final payment will be £45 million (as reported by the BBC).

60 years later.

I do know my history, but do you know your history? Germany and Japan were never allies . Actually, there never was any "Axis Treaty/Pact". It never existed. It was simply a term coined supposedly by Mussolini referring to the unwritten bond of friendship between Berlin and Rome which happened to be on the same longitudinal axis geographically speaking.

Yes, I know my history. Try reading up on the German-Japanese Agreement and the Anti-Comintern Pact, both of 1936.

In fact Hitler Hitler betrayed the Japanese with the ‘Nazi-Soviet Pact’, Japan offered to pull out of the Tripartite Pact if the Americans would stop interfering in asia.

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. The Tripartite Pact, was an agreement signed in Berlin, Germany on September 27, 1940 by Saburo Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany, and Galeazzo Ciano of Fascist Italy entering as an alliance. The Tripartite Pact was subsequently joined by Hungary on Nov 20, 1940, Romania on Nov 23, 1940, and Bulgaria Mar 1, 1941.

FDR, actually needing Japanese membership in such a pact, not only refused but actually stepped up provoking the Japanese instead. FDR knew that even the Tripartite Pact didn’t make Japan and Germany military allies, but he hoped that he could fool the American public with propaganda that it was. And he did. To this very day, most Americans accept the propagandic lie that Japan and Germany were military allies. But to the Japanese, who knew they weren’t allied to Germany, this was a surprise. They had hoped the pact would be a bargaining chip the Americans would accept.

I've already shown they were allies. As far as the American people being reluctant to go to war, absolutely. But once pissed off enough to do it, we did it like no one else could.

Hitler declared war on the US (not the other way around) in the hope that Japan would declare war on Russia, which they didn’t because in fact they hated Hitler for what he did with Stalin.

Hitler declared war on the US after we declared war on Japan & it's allies.

Yes, and China. Japan surrendered after Russia’s declaration of war, they couldn’t stand another front after being nuked.

Bwahahahahaha...The japs couldn't stand any front after they were nuked.

My bad, of course it was Wilson.

I'd love to know how Wilson, who stayed out of WW I as long as possible and suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919, brought down the British Empire?