The World Wars on the History Channel

It becomes a LOT more difficult to make a historically accurate movie the larger the weapons system, especially in the days before CGI.

In the 1960s and 1970s there simply weren't a lot of period correct aircraft available. Most had been scrapped, and the ones that were still around were being used for things other than movies, such as the P-51's well regarded position as a racer.

Groups like the Confederate Air Force hadn't really kicked off yet.



Regarding rationing, various items were rationed at various times, including some that you just didn't think about, and some items remained rationed until months after the war ended.

Tires
Cars
Bicycles
Gasoline
Fuel Oil & Kerosene
Solid Fuels
Stoves
Rubber Footwear
Shoes
Sugar
Coffee
Processed Foods
Meats, canned fish
Cheese, canned milk, fats
Typewriters

Sugar was rationed until 1947, while coffee was only rationed for about 10 months in 1942-1943.

Rubber products were for much of the war virtually unobtainable because of the extreme need for rubber by the military.

One civilian use of rubber, though, was given VERY high priority -- canning rings and lids for home food canning.

Freezers weren't a common household item yet, canned vegetables cost a LOT of ration points, and the government pushed homes to grow as much as they could, so rubber for canning rings and jars was absolutely essential.

Special sugar rations were also available during canning season, and required special forms (http://www.ameshistory.org/exhibits/events/ration_canning_application.jpg)
 
Nobody has mentioned the American B-17s bombing London, or the footage of the P-51 Mustangs in the Battle of Britain.
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Well, London IS "bigger than a pickle barrel" & the P-51's were in German markings!:D
 
I was born in 1944, while my father was overseas. He and Mom bought a new car in 1947, two years after he got home. It was delivered with wood bumpers -- the dealer installed the proper steel bumpers about a year after the car arrived.
 
One thing you missed, Mike, unless you count it covered under "processed foods", is believe it or not, folks, sliced bread.

I'd have to hunt to find the exact date (43, I think), but the govt did ban the sale of sliced bread. The high grade steel used in the slicing machine knives was a vital war material, so, banning the sale of sliced bread meant the slicing machines weren't used, the blades didn't need to be replaced as they wore, and more of that steel was available for other uses.


There is probably a number of other things that were rationed, banned, or otherwise controlled in the market, that I cannot think of right now, but think, for a moment, how serious things were (or were taken) for the govt to go all the way to banning sliced bread sales, to further the war effort.

We certainly haven't done anything even remotely close to that since. Today, when the troops are sent to war, the rest of America is still at the mall....
 
I've never much cared for war reenactments of any kind.

I watch the real footage to learn about the hardships, experiences and heroism of the soldiers.

One of the most impactful videos I ever saw (real, as far as I know and by appearances) was of a soldier walking one of the invasion beaches and shooting his own fatally wounded/dead comrades. If anything illustrates the horror of war, that would be it.
 
"One thing you missed, Mike, unless you count it covered under "processed foods", is believe it or not, folks, sliced bread."

Banning slicing of bread isn't the same thing as rationing. Rationing means that it's available.

The rational behind the ban was that sliced bread went stale faster, so it required a heavier wrap.

But... the ban on sliced bread proved to be so unpopular that it was rescinded within months.


There were a LOT of changes forced on industry, and by extension, consumers, by the war that weren't rationing.

For example, toilet paper. The War Transport Administration (I think that's what it was called) decreed that the cardboard tube in toilet paper be removed and that the rolls be flattened for shipping. Seems trivial, but with the amount of toilet paper that is consumed each year it was a HUGE savings in shipping space.

Another for people in many areas of the country, especially the cities, was Christmas trees.
 
"We certainly haven't done anything even remotely close to that since. Today, when the troops are sent to war, the rest of America is still at the mall...."

No, we haven't, because the scope isn't nearly the same.

Korea, Vietnam, even the War on Terror...

Compared to World War II, those were/are limited in scope and resource engagement.

In World War II, the United States put over 16 million men and women into uniform to fight what was essentially two major wars (Europe and the Pacific) at the same time. Plus we were supplying massive amounts of water material to our allies.

The United States was literally the only nation on earth that could do that.

Paul Kennedy (I think that's his name) wrote a book some years ago that was an economic survey of the world's war making potential in the 1940s, and assigned each of the combatants a percentage of that total.

The United States came in at 41% of the world's warmaking potential. The next highest total was 14% and change (both Russia and Germany).
 
I realize i'm late to the party here, but i just started watching this(DVR'd it, finally getting around to it). Absolutely wonderful show.
 
MHC has told me that Japan was weeks away from a workable a-bomb and a fleet of jet fighters and bombers. We would have lost the war!

Yawn - they seem to forget that we had about 5000 P-80s on order.
 
MHC has told me that Japan was weeks away from a workable a-bomb
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Japan did have a workable "dirty nuke" and they actually deployed it. It was bomb filled with radioactive dust carried by a balloon launched from a sub. They deployed a few off the west coast of the US but they never did any damage. Our gov't kept it VERY quiet to avoid panic (which was the intent of the bomb in the first place).

On a side note, my wife did Fulbright educational exchange with Japan several years ago. She found out that the average Japanese today knows very little of the actual history of WWII. Their school lessons conveniently leave out all the bad things Japan did to start the war - and heaven forbid they actually mention Japanese atrocities.
 
"Japan did have a workable "dirty nuke" and they actually deployed it."

Uhm... No, and no.

The Japanese were working on nuclear weapons at Konon, in Northern Korea, but were years, if not decades, away from anything even remotely resembling a workable nuclear weapon when the Soviets overran the area in 1945.

The much ballyhooed "German submarine carrying nuclear material" is something of a mystery, as the actual purpose of the contents has never been verified.

It's always been assumed by a lot of people that "uranium product" must equal nuclear-type weapon...

But Germany had been shipping the Japanese a lot of rocket and jet propulsion technology, including aircraft, and there is also an interesting argument that the "nuclear material" being carried by the I-235 (I think that was the number) wasn't intended for a dirty bomb, but was to be used as a catalyzing agent for manufacture of alcohol-based fuel for Japanese jets and rockets.

I have to admit that that is a very interesting argument because by that point in the war Japan was quickly running out of oil, having been cut off from the overseas oil fields it had seized at the beginning of the war and, worse, having virtually its entire merchant fleet sunk by US submarines.
 
Ah, the I-52, not the I-235 (Japanese submarines never got that high, and they were U. Oddly enough, that's the symbol for one of the isotopes of Uranium...

My mind works in weird ways at times...

The U-235 was accidentally sunk somewhere off Europe by the Germans themselves...

Anyway, the I-52 was sunk before it ever reached Japan. It did have a cargo of Uranium oxide, but its potential purpose has never been confirmed.

Some have speculated the dirty bomb. I'm not so sure about that for a couple of reasons...

At the time, the effects of long-term, moderate levels of radiation weren't well understood outside of a handful of scientists.

Even if the scientists could have pitched the military on use of such a weapon, I have to wonder how they could have done it given that the effects of such a weapon wouldn't start to show up for weeks or months depending on its disbursal and density.

Dirty bombs are, in this day and age, weapons of terror. The short and long term effects of radioactivity are well known among the general populace (not the case in 1945) and would cause significant disruption among the population.

As I noted, others have speculated that the Japanese were going to use the material as a catalyzing agent for the production of rocket fuel. I've never found any details on such a process, but the Germans may have come up with something.

Unfortunately, no records detailing what the material was to be used for have survived, if they ever really existed at all, so we'll never really know what they were going to do with it.
 
U-235 is the most common fissile isotope of Uranium. Total concentration of both fissile isotopes(U-235 and U-233) in natural Uranium is about 0.7 %.

At the time, the effects of long-term, moderate levels of radiation weren't well understood outside of a handful of scientists.
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it is my understanding that, at the time (1945) even the handful of scientists doing the research and supervising the work didn't understand the long term effects of moderate (or low) levels of radiation. They literally, barely understood the short term effects of high levels. Until the Trinity test, it was all disputable theory. (this is a slight overgeneralization, but essentially true)

Using a radioisotope in the production of rocket fuel doesn't sound right to me. I know that rocket fuel (hydrazine) has been used as a reducing agent in the refinement of special nuclear material from irradiated fuel. Not an engineer, but the other way around just doesn't sound right. Sounds more like someone with a little information, getting it twisted around during the telling of a story...

I spent over 30 years in that field, have a bit of experience, just doesn't sound right...

never heard of the Japanese launching a "dirty bomb" balloon bomb. They did launch some, incendiaries. The intent was to cause terror by starting forest fires in the pacific NW. One did cause some casualties when it was found by some kids on an Oregon beach. No fires were ever credited to them.

There has been speculation they also sent (or intended to send) "plague bombs", but I have never seen any confirmed evidence of such.

The concept of a "dirty bomb" (using conventional explosive to spread radioactive contamination) simply didn't exist, and outside of the scientists and workers who actually made the bombs, no one knew what radioactive contamination was, until after Aug 6 1945.
 
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