Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Drachinifel"
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Piorun was part of Vian's flotilla of Cossack, Maori, Sikh, Zulu, & Piorun (originally a British N class destroyer, Nerissa) which had been escorting a troop convoy, WS8B, when diverted to search for Bismarck. The four Tribals all made (unsuccessful) torpedo attacks during the night. Piorun, however, after exchanging gunfire for a time, actually lost contact and was unable to use her own torpedoes.
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Many were landed at Sierra Leone, which was a British Colony at the time and they were, therefore, safe from being re-enslaved.
Between 1808 & 1860, British anti-slavery patrols captured some 1600 slave ships, and freed some 150,000 slaves.
In December, 2017, the British National Archives displayed an early photograph of slaves aboard a Royal Navy warship, HMS Daphne, as symbolic of the 'profoundly oppressive' nature of the vile British Empire.
Actually, the slaves had been rescued from an Arab dhow the previous day, and were on their way to freedom in the Seychelles. This was explained in detail to the National Archives staff by an historian who had the ship's log and the memoirs of her captain, George Sulivan, who also took the photograph.
However, as this wouldn't fit the current narrative in what is rapidly becoming the country formerly known as Great Britain, as far as I know the caption was never changed.
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There is more to assessing the result of a battle than simply counting the corpses. Was Stalingrad, for example, a German victory? The first part of the battle, between the battlecruisers was undoubtedly a German tactical victory. The second, between the main battlefleets, a British one. The High Seas Fleet didn't so much 'leave the field of battle' as run desperately for the Jade, from which it rarely emerged again.
Strategically, the battle was a British victory. The High Seas Fleet never dared face the Grand Fleet again. Nor, indeed, did Scheer even attempt to challenge the British trawlers and armed merchant cruisers of the Northern Patrol, which systematically starved Germany into collapse & revolution. Instead, he argued for unrestricted submarine warfare, which brought the United States into the war on the allied side.
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HX 84, River Plate, Renown attacking Scharnhorst & Gneisenau off Norway, Barents Sea, 1st Battle of Narvik, Glasgow & Enterprise engaging (and defeating) 12 German Destroyers & Torpedo Boats in the Bay of Biscay, 28 December, 1943, Li Wo, February, 1942. That is a few to be going on with, although there are others.
The fact is, because the British had a large navy, they were rarely outnumbered in a naval action, but on the odd occasion when they were, they still did not hesitate to engage.
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You don't think that, just perhaps, there might be a difference between ships on the open sea, with less than impressive AA guns, their aircraft protection down at sea level, and taken completely by surprise, with a battleship in a narrow fjord, with early warning radar, fighter protection in the immediate vicinity, massed AA support, both on the ship and on hills overlooking the fjord, protective anti-torpedo netting, and smoke pots capable of being operated in 90 seconds/
If you don't think there is a difference, perhaps you should?
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@eriktrimble8784 'The RN built exactly ONE aircraft carrier after WW1 ended and before WW2 started: the Ark Royal.' That wasn't what I wrote. I wrote 'The Royal Navy actually only built 6 battleships after 1928, whereas they built a large number of aircraft carriers.' In any case, you are wrong. Eagle was converted from a battleship building for Chile into an aircraft carrier, Courageous, Glorious, & Furious were all converted from light battlecruisers into fleet carriers between the wars, and Hermes was launched in 1919. After 1928, the RN built 6 Illustrious class carriers, 1 maintenance carrier, and 7 light fleet/maintenance carriers were also built before the end of the war, and a further 11 light fleet carriers were laid down from 1943. The light fleets, by the way, were not primarily intended for ASW work. With a capacity of around 50 aircraft, they were intended to operate with the main fleets, but built quickly and expected to have short service lives. The carriers intended for ASW duties were the escort carriers and, later, the MAC ships. THE RN built/converted 19 MAC ships and 6 Escort Carriers before US built Archer, Attacker, and Ruler class escort carriers from the United States. These, rather than the larger fleets and light fleets, were the vessels which were involved in the Atlantic sea war.
As to Battleships being ' pretty much useless' in the Atlantic, wasn't it battleships which which sank the Bismarck & the Scharnhorst, and deterred Scharnhorst and Gneisenau from attacking convoys by their very presence? Also 'In the Mediterranean, they were more substantially important. But still VERY much second fiddle to the CV, ' wasn't it, in fact, rather the other way round? A Carrier played a subsidiary role at Matapan, and they were important providing the defence of Pedestal from air attack, but wasn't it the presence of Rodney & Nelson during the same operation which deterred an attack by the Italian surface fleet?
Finally, what technology did the RN ignore ? Radar, asdic, all or nothing armour, centimetric radar, hedgehog, squid, HF/DF, Fighter Direction Rooms, dual purpose secondary armament in capital ships, the creeping attack, Blackett's Theory of Convoy Defence? Compared to the Scharnhorsts & Bismarcks, with their low angle secondary armament and their outdated incremental armour, even the Nelsons were a generation ahead, and the KGV, were almost out of sight.
Agreed, the RN was short of Atlantic escorts in 1940 and early 1941, but this was because of the unexpected collapse of France. Pre-war assumptions had expected the French Fleet to play a prominent role alongside the RN in the sea war, but in the event the RN was obliged to find sufficient ships to retain control of the Atlantic and, in the latter half of 1940, to retain around 60 destroyers in home ports for defence against invasion.
The RN was not woefully unprepared for ASW operations. Agreed, like every other navy, they had probably overestimated the effectiveness of asdic, but they could hardly have been blamed for not foreseeing the failure of France.
Finally, Britain did not come close to being strangled in 1939-40. That is, simply, a myth.
As to this :- 'They chose to focus on trophy ships that were obsolete, rather than the ships that would actually be needed in a new war' between 1935 & the outbreak of WW2, the RN launched 4 aircraft carriers, 22 cruisers, 59 fleet destroyers, and 40 sloops/corvettes, but only 2 'trophy' battleships.
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