Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "The Channel Dash / Operation Cerberus - How to win through refuge in audacity" video.

No, sending Swordfish against surface warships. The Swordfish were supposed to have been protected by, I believe, three RAF fighter squadrons, but these failed to turn up.
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@crocclark2397 There were eight RN minesweepers & minesweeping sloops whose names began with 'F' Fareham, Fancy, Fantome, Fierce, Fairy, Florizel, Foam, and Frolic. However, there were also 86 trawlers either built by the RN or requisitioned by them with names beginning 'F' most of which were used as sweepers or escorts at one time or another in WW2.
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How do you define success? Fleeing back to German ports, thus abandoning any hopes of operating heavy ships in the Atlantic again, and getting both battleships damaged in the process. A curious definition of 'success.'
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'Defeat?' How so? Admiral Erich Raeder, who possibly knew more about these things than you do, called it a major strategic defeat for the Kriegsmarine. Effectively, it announced the end of any relevant participation in WW2 by the German surface fleet.
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Except, of course, for the fact that they didn't exist in February, 1942.
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Actually, the British had made bombing attacks on the ships at Brest, but their fleet was being more usefully employed employed elsewhere. As to 'safely back home' both battleships were mined, and one never sailed again. The Channel Dash was a serious strategic setback for the Kriegsmarine, in that it demonstrated, as early as February, 1942, that they had effectively accepted that their heavy surface ships would never be able to operate in the Atlantic again.
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@vanmust The Dutch comparison isn't really applicable. At the time, the Dutch had a navy the equivalent, at least, of the British Navy. Some (myself included) would also say that it was rather better led! This certainly didn't apply to the almost non existent German Navy of September, 1940. I really don't believe that a credible bridgehead could have been established, and I cannot see how any such theoretical bridgehead could have been re-supplied or reinforced.
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The Channel was a dangerous place for submarines. The Germans sent three into it in late 1939, and they were all sunk. The German Task Force consisted of more than 60 ships, moving very quickly, and at night. The likelihood of a submarine being in the right place at the right time was remote. RN submarines were extensively used in the Mediterranean and off Norway.
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Why? What did German battleships actually do between 1942 & 1945?
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That is what happens when naval aviation is placed under the control of the RAF. Between the wars, the RAF, for selfish political reasons, virtually destroyed the Fleet Air Arm, and guess what? They have largely done it again. The RAF have always been better at playing political games than the Navy and Army, hence they get a larger slice of the cake from gullible politicians.
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The main guns were not being used to track anything at the time. Anti-Aircraft guns which fail to hit anything would rather seem to be of limited usefulness, don't you think?
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@vanmust Actually, it is quite obvious. As Napoleon said ' How can an Elephant fight a Whale?' It really doesn't matter how large the German army was, their navy was virtually non existent. The plan devised by the Kriegsmarine depended entirely on the number of tugs that could be assembled, as each one could two two barges. By late September, for example, they had assembled 1859 barges, but only 397 tugs (in which I include trawlers and small coasters.) They had, literally, no reserves of tugs. They could not replace any which were lost. Similarly, in late August, 1940, the Luftwaffe had only 226 operational transport aircraft which, assuming 16 paratroopers per aircraft, could only transport some 3340 men. The naval plan, as submitted by Raeder, ludicrously assumed that, in some wondrous manner, the barges would not be intercepted by the Royal Navy, whereas the reality always was that, given the fact that the barge trains would have taken over a day to assemble into formation outside their ports and cross the channel, and would have been observed at an early stage either from the shore or by the regular RN nightly destroyer patrols from Portsmouth of the Nore, the RN's anti-invasion forces would have engaged the almost helpless columns long before they reached anywhere near their supposed landing grounds. It really doesn't matter how vast the German army was, as the German armed forces had absolutely no experience of amphibious operations, and the German navy lacked both purpose built assault vessels, and the means to escort the ramshackle assembly they had put together. The Channel Islands are irrelevant, as a simple glance at a map demonstrates, and the idea of landing on the Isle Of Wight, which is almost within spitting distance of one of the main RN bases, can be discounted at once. The fact is that, in the early 19th century, France was in much the same situation as was Germany in September, 1940. In either case, had the armies been able to get ashore, they would have succeeded, but, as St. Vincent said in the House of Lords "I do not say the French cannot come, I only say they cannot come by sea". Dudley Pound could have said exactly the same as St. Vincent, with reference to the Germans, in September, 1940.
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@KatyushaLauncher Tirpitz had arrived in Northern Norway on 17 January, and PQ11 was about to sail. The Admiralty anticipated an imminent attack on PQ11 or PQ12. In fact, Tirpitz did sortie against PQ12, but failed to press home an attack in the face of the covering force of Duke of York, Renown, Victorious, Berwick, & six destroyers.
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How can a major strategic retreat be described as a 'great mission?'
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The Channel Dash was actually a strategic defeat for the Germans. It was in effect an admission that German surface ships would never again attempt to operate in the Atlantic. The British Admiralty were taken by surprise, as they had not expected it. Look at what the ships subsequently did. Gneisenau never sailed again and ended the war as a hulk, Scharnhorst ventured out twice more, once to accompany Tirpitz in the shelling of a large shed on Spitzbergen, and then to the North Cape, and Prinz Eugen attempted to reach Norway but had her stern blown off, and spent the rest of the war in the Baltic. Perhaps a more accurate term for the operation might have been the Channel Flight.
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Apart, of course, for the fact that they were not battlecruisers at all, but simply poorly armed fast battleships.
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@marvindebot3264 The Scharnhorsts had thicker belts than the Bismarcks, the Queen Elizabeths, the Revenges, the North Carolinas, the South Dakotas, and the Iowas, none of which were ever called battlecruisers. The Germans, by the way, called them battleships.
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@vanmust Firstly, the RN capital ships would never have gone anywhere near the Channel in September, 1940. They were based at Rosyth, from where they could act against either a sortie by German heavy ships into the Atlantic, or against those same ships had they headed towards the southern part of the North Sea in support of an invasion attempt. The RN had assembled an anti-invasion force of some seventy destroyers and cruisers, all within five hours steaming of Dover, together with several hundred smaller vessels, such as fleet minesweeper, armed trawlers and drifters, corvettes, and gunboats. Secondly, the troops to board the barges did exist. The first wave alone consisted of XXXVIII army corps ( 26 & 34 infantry divisions ) VIII army corps ( 8 & 28 infantry divisions, plus 6 mountain division) plus a weak, less than half strength, parachute division, and 22 airlanding division. Thirdly, there is all the difference in the world between rushing three fast, modern, warships, through the Channel in a few hours, and landing the above forces from towed barges moving across the Channel at little more than walking pace. The Kriegsmarine plan anticipated that it would take eleven days to land this first wave, and even then it would be without both field artillery and motorised transport. This would inevitably mean that the barges and their tugs would sit more or less helpless off the coast and in the Channel throughout this period, largely unprotected during the day, and completely unprotected at night.
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@TheRealJohnux I posted because your earlier message was not in accordance with the facts. The failure was on the part of the RAF. Bomber Command had been given the task of crippling the ships in Brest, and had failed. Subsequently, the RAF reconnaissance patrols also failed. The RN had had very few resources in the Channel area since Sealion was abandoned, as they were of more use elsewhere.
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@michaelbriggs5503 Because the design and purchase of Fleet Air Arm aircraft was under the control of the RAF between the wars, until early 1939. The RAF spent most of it's money on bombers, a little (until the last minute) on fighters, and the loose change found in Trenchard's jacket pocket after a night out at his club on Coastal Command and the Fleet Air Arm. The surprise is not that the FAA was badly equipped, but that it did as well as it did with the rubbish dumped upon it by the RAF. It is an open secret that the RAF have always regarded the RN as a much greater enemy than any foreign power, and have systematically sought (with great success) to reduce it to impotence. Control of FAA operations is now once again under RAF supervision. The probability is that the new carriers will rarely see any Lightning IIs, except of course when a film crew is around!
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Fraser was in collision with the cruiser Calcutta in the Gironde estuary while evacuating troops as part of Operation Ariel. She was cut in half, and lost 45 men. The remainder were rescued by HMCS Restigouche, and many were transferred to HMCS Margaree. Margaree herself sank after collision with a freighter, MV Port Fairy, in October 1940, in convoy OL8. 34 were rescued, but 141 died.
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@R.C.A.F.V.R. operation Aerial certainly deserves to be better known than it is. It involved evacuations from Cherbourg & St. Malo by the RN's Portmouth Command, and from a number of other ports on the French West Coast, as far south as Bayonne & St. Jean de Luz, by Plymouth Command. By the time it concluded, on 25 June, 191870 troops had been lifted, together with 360 artillery pieces, 2292 vehicles, & 1800 tons of stores. The operation, because of the distances involved, required the use of large freighters and liners, and on 17 June the liner Lancastria was sunk by bombing, with losses possibly as high as 5000. The disaster was not disclosed at the time, and is still not widely known today.
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As far as the supposed RAF air reconnaissance keeping watch on Brest was concerned, then yes.
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there wasn't one.
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@crocclark2397 Sorry, no luck. Do you know what type or class of ship?
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Not really. All the Channel Dash showed was that, by concentrating all available naval and most available air assets at the same time, the Germans could protect an area in their immediate vicinity for a short period. Both Scharnhorst & Gneisenau were damaged during the operation. Indeed, the latter never sailed again. It was a serious strategic reversal for the Kriegsmarine, amounting to a virtual admission that German heavy ships would never be risked in the Atlantic again.
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@crocclark2397 Florizel was an American built vessel supplied under Lend-Lease. Type HMS Florizel into a search engine and there are a few references to her, and a photograph.
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