C47 rudder deflections in Band of Brothers

StinkBug said:
With all the BOB fans on here I wonder, how many of you have watched "The Pacific" it's another fantastic miniseries very much similar to BoB but obviously about the other side of the war. I just recently found it on Netflix. Totally worth the time to watch.
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It's okay. I enjoyed it. But the story line in the Pacific was much more disjointed. That is not to take anything away from what our marines went through. It's just that as far as entertainment value, it's a little harder to follow.

(I feel like an ******* for even typing this.)
 
PPC1052 said:
It's okay. I enjoyed it. But the story line in the Pacific was much more disjointed. That is not to take anything away from what our marines went through. It's just that as far as entertainment value, it's a little harder to follow.

(I feel like an ******* for even typing this.)
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I just recently watched "The Pacific". To me, it felt more like a 'psychological' viewpoint - seeing all the mental aspects of fighting in battles like those in the Pacific - rather than the 'brute force' type of battles that took place in Europe. I'm not discounting either type of battle, it was just a different perspective than presented in BoB.

I just recently found out that my Great Uncle was in the Marines at Iwo Jima. My dad had stopped in to see him shortly before he passed away, and somehow it came up in conversation. My dad had never heard him talk about it before. He said in this conversation, my great uncle said "We all had accepted that we were going to die on that island - it was just a matter of when." Hearing that perspective from someone that I knew personally really hit home. Then watching "The Pacific", I kept wondering how I would react if I "knew" that I was going to die fighting on an island in the middle of the ocean - would I step up and say "I'm going to take as many of them with me as possible" or would I crawl in a hole and say "just get it over with". We would all like to say we would step up, but we never really know until we are put in a position like that. Luckily for us, in WWII (and other wars since) there have been more of the 'step up' types than the 'crawl in a hole' types.
 
MBDiagMan said:
Dick winters was a GREAT officer and a REAL effective soldier, but that's not what a CMH is awarded for. It is typically awarded for a single, selfless and heroic act.
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True, but I think he meant that the action for which Winters won the DSC (taking out the battery on D-Day) could easily have gotten him the MOH at any other time but for the MOH rules in place at the time. He and another soldier were put up for the MOH and the other guy got it because his action was very heroic and Winters didn't because they had a rule that only one could be awarded per... here I forget... division or campaign or something like that. Ambrose discussed that in the book a bit.
 
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PPC1052 said:
It's okay. I enjoyed it. But the story line in the Pacific was much more disjointed. That is not to take anything away from what our marines went through. It's just that as far as entertainment value, it's a little harder to follow.

(I feel like an ******* for even typing this.)
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I agree. It was a great series, very much worth watching, but it just wasn't the same story-wise as BoB. Still the depiction of the battles and the horrific human toll was shocking.

Another great non-fiction series was WWII in HD. They have a lot of color footage from all theaters. The footage from the Pacific theater was disturbing. Especially the images of women with children jumping off cliffs in Saipan to escape what they thought were evil Americans. Imagining the level of fear that led them to do that is difficult.
 
petrolero said:
True, but I think he meant that the action for which Winters won the DSC (taking out the battery on D-Day) could easily have gotten him the MOH at any other time but for the MOH rules in place at the time. He and another soldier were put up for the MOH and the other guy got it because his action was very heroic and Winters didn't because they had a rule that only one could be awarded per... here I forget... division or campaign or something like that. Ambrose discussed that in the book a bit.
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Yep.

They gave the medal to this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Cole

Not that he wasn't worthy, but a quota system? Come on.
 
If you like reading on this stiff, Rick Atkinson's three part book series on the Western Front which mostly focuses on the command / political leadership problems, is excellent.
 
How can anyone even consider comparing BoB to something like Breaking Bad?

Both are incredibly awesome in their own right but comparing them is like apple's and orange's.

But I do agree, as far as war series goes - BoB cannot be beat. I very, very rarely watch a movie/series twice and I watched BoB three times all the way through.
 
PPC1052 said:
Yeah. What do you think his assault on the 88 position was?

What do you think his leading the assault with just one squad on 300 German soldiers in operation Market Garden was?
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They both were nothing short of OUTSTANDING tactics and operations. The assault on the 88's was even great strategy that is still studied at West Point and the War College. He was duly decorated for both, but neither were the type of act that warranted a CMH according to the criteria of the time. The CMH is meant to be awarded for acts where the recipient has selflessly totally ignored his own safety, offering to sacrifice his own life to save others.

Major Winters was a great leader and was obviously willing to risk his own life along with the men around him. Had the right situation arose, he might very well have been willing to fall on a grenade or storm a machine gun nest if that's what it took to save the lives of others, but from what I know and from what he wrote, it doesn't appear that such a situation ever arose.

From what I have seen and read, on a scale of 1 to 100, Major Winters might very well have rated a 100, but apparently the situation never presented itself such that he would have earned the CMH.
 
PPC1052 said:
It's okay. I enjoyed it. But the story line in the Pacific was much more disjointed. That is not to take anything away from what our marines went through. It's just that as far as entertainment value, it's a little harder to follow.

(I feel like an ******* for even typing this.)
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The story lines in Pacific is more disjointed, but I don't think it takes away from the series. But I think that is because 2 of the Marines profiled wrote books about their experiences and included stories of other Marines. BOB was based on one book, character stories aside from that. I think that it's harder to put together multiple stories at different times from different sources than it is to just mostly follow one book.
 
After reading this thread I went back and started watching the show again


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
SmashTime said:
Sons of Anarchy

Breaking Bad

Game of Thrones

Lost


Are you sure Band Of Brothers is the best?
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Yes, and I would put Walking Dead over all those other 3. Breaking Bad would be a close 3rd though.
 
Generation Kill is probably my favorite mini series about war. Then Band of Brothers, then The Pacific.
One things for sure, regardless of favorites: HBO is good at producing war dramas!
 
Looking forward to HBO's series on the 8th AF. Most expensive series ever produced. With Spielberg at the helm it should be good. Just hope they don't go overboard with the CGI.
 
Velocity173 said:
Looking forward to HBO's series on the 8th AF. Most expensive series ever produced. With Spielberg at the helm it should be good. Just hope they don't go overboard with the CGI.
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Awesome. I'd think there would have to be the obligatory CGI of bomber formations but hopefully it doesn't reach George Lucas levels. :D

If anyone wants a fantastic read, check out General Doolittle's book I Could Never Be So Lucky Again. Aviation owes a lot to Jimmy Doolittle.

Thanks to this thread I went an re-watched the entire Band of Brothers series. Never gets old.
 
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