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Old 10-23-2020, 12:49 PM   #1
Tessen
 
Join Date: Feb 2014
Default WW2 What are you going to be and do?

Okay the time machine suffers a malfunction and so is going to whisk you back to the second world war , nothing you can do about it. You're stuck there for 3 days until you can fix it.

But you do get to decide who you'll be: Time date ,Nationality , rank and geographical position in the war. So who are you going be and what are you going to do?

I'd be a Cook for the British at Dunkirk or help out in a fiield hospital.

What about you guys?
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Old 10-23-2020, 01:02 PM   #2
jason taylor
 
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Default Re: WW2 What are you going to be and do?

I'm an intelligence analyst

I'm to weak to be a combat soldier. To honest to be a field agent. To bad at math to be a cryptanalyst. But analyzing reports fits me well.
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Old 10-23-2020, 01:02 PM   #3
johndallman
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Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default Re: WW2 What are you going to be and do?

Early September 1939, anyone in Britain who has free time and access to the postal service. Write down everything I can remember about nuclear physics, reactor and bomb design, and post it to Dr R V Jones at the Air Ministry.
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Old 10-23-2020, 01:29 PM   #4
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: WW2 What are you going to be and do?

I'm going to be the head of the US Quartermaster Corps and for 3 days I'm going to go crazy approving good projects and killing bad projects.

I've sometimes thought that if the attack at Pearl Harbor had somehow hit the QC instead of Battleship Row the war would have been 18 months shorter.
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Old 10-23-2020, 03:50 PM   #5
weby
 
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Default Re: WW2 What are you going to be and do?

If the country does not yet have to be at war, but the war started elsewhere: 1 September, 1939, Finland, head of procurement.

Background: in the winter war Finland faced several problems, but the big ones equipment wise were air defense, anti armor defense and artillery/mortar ammunition supplies.

Since nothing really can be done on such a short notice about the air defense and quite little about the artillery, but there is actually more that can be done about tanks.

So I would design and and approve a simple anti tank launcher. It does not have to specially good, just a charge throwing out or a simple black powder rocket propelling a shaped charge 20-30 meters should be enough. Such are very simple to produce. Funny enough I have done both a shaped charge and a charge thrower as separate projects in real life so should be able to start such a group, hand them preliminary plans and likely a first version prototype of both types and approve the project and funding for production.
The the next two months before the Soviet attack there should be a capability to build at least low thousands of first generation product.

Would reduce funding from the bomber force and try to see if we can also buy quickly some more anti tank guns from Sweden and start the production of the Lahti anti-tank rifle, as while obsolete in the later parts it was fairly cheap to produce and worked very well early on.

I would also try to see what could be done about ramping up the mortar shell production capability and maybe the 75mm artillery too.

Historically Finland started mobilizing at about this time so not much that could be done more about warnings, but providing some details like the fact that Soviets would actually attack so hard also in the north might help, but three days is not really enough to convince people of things..
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Old 10-23-2020, 06:36 PM   #6
Þorkell
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Default Re: WW2 What are you going to be and do?

Þingvellir, Iceland, June 17 1944. If I have to pick three days I'll pick the day before that and the day after.

Iceland declares it's independence from Denmark and the Republic of Iceland is founded.

As for who? IDGAF as long as I'm there and understand the language.
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Old 10-23-2020, 09:28 PM   #7
Alden Loveshade
 
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Location: Hmm, looks like Earth, circa CE 2020+
Default Re: WW2 What are you going to be and do?

There's very few positions that existed during those years at which I'd be qualified. And as people were afraid of spies during those days, an unqualified person that nobody knew might well look like a spy....

I'd be tempted to say a journalist in America right before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor so I could warn about it. (I think I still remember how to use a typewriter). I even knew someone who was there at that time; it might be fun to meet them back then. But what if my report delayed America getting involved in the war, and that caused one of those scenarios where things turn out much, much worse because America continued staying neutral?

I'd also love to be able to tell Anne Frank, "You and your diary will be world famous!" But I don't speak Dutch.

Frankly, as much as I fantasize about changing history, I would be afraid of really messing things up.

So I'd be an uncredited extra in one of my favorite films, 1942s Casablanca. It would be fun in modern times to see myself sitting in the background at "Rick's Café Américain." And I could solve the, "Was that uncredited actor really Jack Benny?" mystery.
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Old 10-23-2020, 09:47 PM   #8
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: WW2 What are you going to be and do?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alden Loveshade View Post
T
Frankly, as much as I fantasize about changing history, I would be afraid of really messing things up.
You could be Stalin's most trusted bodyguard and put barbiturites in his vodka. That's not likely to make anything worse.
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Old 10-23-2020, 10:39 PM   #9
TGLS
 
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Default Re: WW2 What are you going to be and do?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
You could be Stalin's most trusted bodyguard and put barbiturites in his vodka. That's not likely to make anything worse.
I don't know about mixing drugs and alcohol...

--

Time: September 1st 1939
Position: Hitler's Bodyguard
Plan: Shortly after the time machine is fixed, I gun down Hitler before leaping out of there. Ideally, this starts a power struggle among other high ranking Nazis, making Stalin reconsider moving ahead with Molotov-Ribbentrop, and perhaps giving the Britain and France a window to move on the Germans.
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Old 10-24-2020, 03:12 AM   #10
DangerousThing
 
Join Date: Mar 2013
Default Re: WW2 What are you going to be and do?

The problem with a three-day deadline is that I think that most characters would be better off trying to hide and do nothing.

Otherwise, I fear that this would be a cliche time-travel movie. One of the characters would get entangled in current events and he'd be shipped out before they realized it and they'd have to get back to the current day and leave him behind.

Of course, they would see a photograph of the former pc as an older man, perhaps after he used his "war hero" image to win the role of congressman. He would, of course, have been the one who originally funded the time-travel research in general, and the group the pc's belong to in specific.
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