quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
flashguy is likely referring to Operation Foxley.

Thanks to both of you.
Now that you describe it, I believe I may have seen some passing reference to it. I will check the reference.
Something like that is actually what I conceived myself as having the possibility of being successful as compared with other scenarios. I don’t, however, have much knowledge of what sort of security was provided to the Berghof, and therefore had no real idea of whether a sniping mission would have had much chance of success with the armament available to the snipers of the day. The last is something most fictional accounts by authors who are totally clueless about the subject completely overlook.

It is interesting to contemplate what turn the war would have taken if such a mission had been successful.
(Besides validating the value of long range sniping, not to mention possibly alerting the US Secret Service to its dangers to important principals some 19 years later.)

Thanks to mention of Operation FOXLEY, I found an informative video with much good detail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tQWj3ggfUI

Thanks again for that, and thanks for all the replies to the poll. As always, interesting to see the results.

As I say, mention of Operation Foxley piqued my interest and I’ve found several videos that discuss it. I even discovered that the original briefing document pertaining to the operation was declassified and available as a reprint which I’ve ordered.

Thanks again to everyone for the original mention.

I found out a few years ago that my father who was in the 1st marine divisions recon company in Korea in 1950 & 51 disposed of a lot of Chinese officers.

As for the WWII... do y'all realize that officially now we the U.S. entered that war on June 22nd 1941?

quote:

Originally posted by Blume9mm:
do y'all realize that officially now we the U.S. entered that war on June 22nd 1941?

In what way? I know it was the day Germany attacked the USSR, but ...? (And no, my question is not a challenge or criticism. )

And I must retract my earlier opinion about “the armament of the day.” According to the briefing document I mentioned above, the British shooter would have been armed with a German K98k sniper rifle and telescopic sight. The expected shooting distance was also less than 200 meters. At that range and with that rifle, even using the mentioned “explosive” bullets, it would probably have been an easy shot.

I was obviously thinking that the range would necessarily have been much greater, and I was no doubt influenced by the sniper in Saving Private Ryan who boasted that he could have made such a kill “within a mile” of Hitler.

Wife and I had a trip to California planned and saw we would be near the town of Herlong. My mother was a Herlong and so I did some research...

"The community was named after Captain Henry W. Herlong, the first United States Army ordnance officer to die in World War II."

Seems he was some army ordnance officer who died in a plane crash in Georgia on June 22nd 1941 and I think sometime after or during WWII the official start date of our involvement in the war was back dated to the day Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

War with Germany was inevitable. And as soon as the US got in, victory was inevitable. US just an absolute powerhouse of industrial might and innovation with no worries at all about mainland invasion or sincere bombing.

England and France hands' were tied. They *had* to declare war with the invasion of Poland.

As others pointed out, IF Germany had decried the attack at Pearl Harbor and broken off ties with Japan, the US would likely have continued massive lend-lease aid to UK and Russia (etc.), but concentrated on beating up the Japanese. Of course, within a year or two with massive and accelerating war production and manpower mobilization, the US would almost certainly have gotten dragged into open/declared war with European Axis allies.

Given that Japan did not wholesale attack USSR in the Far East, Stalin was able to move vast quantities of men and materials just in to save Stalingrad and turn the course of their war with Germany. So, Japan in a very real way screwed over Germany.