You could meet any one person from WWII...

1. Veronica Lake
2. Lilly Marlane

but definitely

Dittmar...the Me163 Test pilot. With a climb rate of 15,000ft/min, near transonic speed,explosive rocket fuel pushing you, those guys must have been adrenalized...I'd want to ask him where he left the keys and can I take it for a spin.

Sheesh, that would be a great ride wouldn't it...even to just buzz a couple of B17's head on with a closure of 900kph. 'Owned' would be my planes name. I'm sure the B17 gunners would have been gob smacked seeing those little planes at the speeds they were travelling at.

Can you imagine walking amongst all the other fighter pilots of piston engined stuff...being a pilot of the 163 would be just a whole other level of 'elite'...mind you tainted no doubt by the perspective of...elite but nuts

 

..even the special flying suit that the 163 pilots used looks scary to me.....

 

Landing the **** thing must have been even a bigger adventure than climbing to the sky, I´d guess...To be careful not to shake the plane too much or the leftover gasoline mixture will blow the whole thing up...

 

No no no, much worse than that! One of the fuel components was very highly corrosive, so besides the risk of explosion there was the actuall possibility of the pilot being dissolved if he got sprayed by a fuel leak!

Each of the fuel components had to carefully loaded, and the plane abudantly hosed before being filled with the other liquid.

 

Gort, May 1940 and tell him he is doing the right thing.

Pervical 1941, and ask tell him to listen to the Aussies.

Kennedy on the Rawalpindi, to see how honourable his generation really were compared to today.

 

Captain E C Kennedy, Ludovic's father.....interesting choice, urqh.

 

There were others in mind, being from a naval family even if I did serve in the army, tales of naval daring do sort of grew up with me..Jervis Bay amongst others, Cossack, Johnny Walker, corvets etc etc, by the way talking navy....Last survivor of HMS Neptune (cruiser) well only surviver actually, is listed in obituaries today along with a famous LRDG guy...Going fast so they are..

 

For me it would have to be Rommel. Just to hear his exploits and witness his sharp tactical mind would have been amazing. And as others have stated he was an honorable man. A soldiers soldier. My second choice would have been to talk with Adolf Galland who was a great fighter ace, commander and an honorable gentleman. If He had control of the german air force instead of Goering, the outcome for Britain would have been harsh.

 

i've never seen my pick(well i never looked, but i bet hes not here). i'd meet hitler. id ask him questons before id kill him. like, why jews? why takeover an entire country to kill inocent people. you know, stuff like that.
if not him, winston churchhill. id ask, what made you think the normandy invasion was a good idea? the bunkers MUST have been a given.
or, if not him, Stalin, man of steel. id TELL him, you need better equipment. never positve things. though the russians did do pretty good, he had such a massive army(i'm going ooff of what ive herd in the past) they couldnt well equip them all.

 

In fact Churchill was not at all convinced that Normandy was 'a good idea'. He had been more enthusiastic about Italy.....

 

i would want to meet erwin rommel he was a great military strategest

 

My choice would be Hans Ulrich Rudel, the most highly decorated pilot in the Luftwaffe. He was the Stuka pilot who flew over 2000 missions, sunk a battleship, two cruisers and 532 tanks! He was shot down 30 times, wounded five times, lost a leg but still flew, and survived the war. He was brainy too: In the field, he invented novel armaments for the Stuka, such as underslung tank-killer cannons held on by whatever was available.

 

Captain Robert Morton Fuller, US Army Medical Corps, was a physician operating on the wounded, when a French shell blew him to bits during the invasion of Oran in 1944 (Torch). Moments before, British loudspeakers advised the French defenders that they came as friends, but those French were Nazis and didn't think so. Their commander, Nazi puppet Admiral Jean Darlan also didn't mind killing British and Americans. I would like to meet Morty again, my first cousin.

 

Rommel and Patton, preferably both at the same time to see how they would take to each other.

 

Who would I like to meet?? hmmmm well lets see

Field Marshal Slim to talk to him about his campaigns in Burma

Kurt Student, Commander of the Fallschirmjager

Heinz Guderian
Gotthard Heinrici - to find out how he managed to hold the front at Moscow for so long

Albert Kesselring - to talk about Italy

Eric Von Manstein

 

hmmm Admirals Lutgens, Tanaka, Oldedorf, Nagoumo, Yammamoto, Mountbatton, Lee, Halsey, Nimitz, Callahan, Scott, Raider, Generals Rommel, Patton, Clark, Rose, Mcalluf, Mac Arthur, Montgommery, Guderian, Zukov, Goering, Chrushov, Pilots Hartmann, Marselles, Bader, Bong, Sakai, Beerbower, Kong, Boyington, Stewert (yes Jimmy), Sub Commanders, from Wahoo, Tang, Archerfish, Harder, Darter, Dace, Leaders Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Truman, Hitler, DeGaulle, Mussolini, Chang Kai Shek, Hirohito, Tojo. I missed a bunch, but that's all I can think of in a row.

 

I'd turn it around a little...Ive already gone for Gort and Percival, purely because of the interest in individual battle set up.

But I'm now having a dinner party and sitting around the room is Allenbrooke, Churchill, Ike, Bradley, Marshal and Monty...I know Ive left lots out..but for reasons...I dont want Alex fawning over Churchill (only my view), Patton and Monty in the same room and we'd never get past the best route to get the port round the table, Bradley would say lets all push it up together, Patton would sneakily push his port hip flask past everyone to Ike, Monty would slap the table demanding to be served first, Ike would agree with everyone he could including the serving staff, Winnie, would say it had to go to Rhodes and Sumatra first, and would need an unending supply of landing craft to get it there...Brookie by then would have pulled his hair out and just got on with helping everyone get together with one idea, while Marshal, would not do anything Churchil said without saying I'm not falling for that one again, this isn't Tehran or Tunis Winnie.

Then I'd sit back and ask them all to explain in turn or even together the itracacies of a broad front or single route attack.

And just for good measure I'd ask their view on having a single land force commander under Ike for the winter of 44 onwards...
Making sure I had plenty of ear protectors.

 

Gotthard Heinrici
Sepp Dietrich
Hitler's son, Leon DeGrelle.
attend one of Goring's parties.
Max Wunsche
Eva Braun

[ 21. November 2005, 01:51 PM: Message edited by: PzJgr ]

 

Colonel Hans von Luck

 

Good book.