Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "How important was the Battle of the Atlantic? (U-boat bases, Norway, Britain, France, and more!)" video.

The British supplied an army for nearly two year from Suez via the Cape. The equivalent of sailing half way around the world. These convoy ships were locking up shipping of course. The huge port of Liverpool was fully used with ships anchored awaiting berths. The cargo handling facilities at Liverpool were quick, which was a feature of the port - to get ships turned around fast. A convoy entered or left the port each day. The small port of Manchester, 30 miles up a canal, was also fully used. Smaller ships used smaller ports such as Preston. It took the British some time to get the Americans to realise that the Mediterranean was key. It must be opened to allied ships running into Suez. That mean taking Sicily to prevent attacks from Italians. The Americans were quite naive at strategy. The British invented the Liberty ship - a Sunderland design. They needed more ships so the Sunderland yard financed Kaiser shipyard in Seattle to build Liberty ships and a second yard to build them. The US government adopted the Liberty programme when they realised they need a huge merchant fleet. The Germans thought they could get Arctic convoys by air from nearby Norway, leaving the U-boats for the Atlantic. Which made sense.
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@pmpcpmpc4737 Normandy was a British operation. They commanded the land, air and sea.
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@pmpcpmpc4737 Overlord was a British planned and run operation: ▪More British were put down on D-Day than Americans; ▪The British planned D-Day. ▪ All air forces were under RAF Command - Lee-Mallory. ▪ All naval forces were under Royal Navy Command - Ramsey. ▪ All armies were under British Army Command - Montgomery; ▪In Normandy the British destroyed 90% of German armour. ▪All infrastructure like the two mulberry harbours and PLUTO were devised and provided by the British ▪British naval personnel outnumbered US by 5 to 1. ▪Most landing craft were provided by the British. ▪Most planes were British ▪Most ships were British. On D-Day, the Allies landed around 156,000. British: 83,000; US: 73,000
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During the war Britain was not, by any reasonable standard, under siege or blockaded. Imports into Britain stayed at pre-war levels in value. Most food was not rationed, and was available in quantity. Meat and cheese imports actually increased. Oil products, fuel oil, petrol, aviation spirit and lubricating oils were all imported in unprecedented quantities. The context of British action was not, as so often suggested, one of weakness, isolation and austerity, but rather of abundance of key resources. The exceptional mobilization of armed forces and industry was, rather than an indication of national genius, a product of the support Britain got from elsewhere, and from the nature of its economy. Britain had many war fronts, and many home fronts. Appropriately enough, at the time the idea of the ‘People’s War’ was often one where many different peoples were united in a common international struggle. The British war machine imposed hardships on and created opportunities for not just the peoples of the British Isles, but those of much of the world. - Britain's War Machine by David Edgerton
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Rationing was not merely a cap on supply, but was meant to provide a guaranteed minimum supply, and that minimum was usually generous. For rationing did not imply drastically cut supplies, except in the case of sugar. - Britain's War Machine by David Edgerton
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The u boat captain named your granddad Alfred?
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My uncle was sunk 500 miles from Cape Race in May 1941. He froze to death in an open lifeboat together with a 15 year old cabin boy. The u boat captain survived dying in Lubek in 1956.
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@pmpcpmpc4737 1944 was the earliest because of naval build up. Not enough landing craft of all sorts for example. The British wanted to go into the heart of Germany via the gap in the Alps. Canadians were British Commonwealth forces. When the Germans were at war with the British they were at war with the largest empire ever. Take no notice of Hastings. Known to be inaccurate and over opinionated. Operation Lüttich (the Mortain German counter-attack in Normandy) only had has 150 tanks, of which 120 were destroyed. Most of the Germans forces had been previously battered and whittled down by British forces. Churchill suggested an American be Supreme Commander, to get the USA to accept Germany First. A huge mistake. The inexperience and un-professionalism of the Americans showed through in the ETO. Market Garden, Battle of the Bulge etc. Huge mistake by Churchill. D-day was a British operation. They planned, provided most men and ran it. That is not difficult to understand. The British had an alternative plan in case the US pulled out. The USAAF did not bleed the Germans dry over Normandy at all. The Luftwaffe did not appear much because not much of it was left. What you are trying to say is that without the Americans the invasion of Europe would not happen. Which is nonsense of course. BTW, the British had a plan to invade Sicily before the USA came in.
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@pmpcpmpc4737 Britain was key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story. Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle. The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war. The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese. From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad. Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in: ▪ French North Africa; ▪ Libya; ▪ Egypt; ▪ Cyprus; ▪ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked; ▪ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina; ▪ Iraq; ▪ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941. Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans. Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa. The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis. The Germans had been stopped: ▪ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940; ▪ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks. The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of: ▪ El Alemein; ▪ Stalingrad; The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad. Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA. The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese. Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point. Then the British set their Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the US fleet. The British Pacific Fleet assisted US troops protecting the western coast of Okinawa with its armoured carriers - they could operate way nearer to the coast than wooden decked US carriers, as kamikaze's bounced off them. The fleet also bombarded Japan, Sumatra and Taiwan, sinking one Japanese aircraft carrier and disabling another. The massive British merchant fleet greatly assisted the supply of US forces. The Australian navy assisted the US navy all through the Japanese war. The USA was in the war for four years, yet it was less than 10 months before the Japanese surrender they actually fielded an entire army against the Japanese. That was in the Philippines. Before that it was just divisions fighting on scattered islands for a month or so at a time. In Europe the British planned and ran the D-Day Normandy campaign which came in ahead of schedule with 22% less casualties than predicted, with the British in command of all the air, sea and land forces of all nationalities. Then also destroying 90% of German armour in the west in the process, with constant air raids on German cities and industry culminating with 1,000 bomber raids. The Canadian navy was heavily involved in anti U-Boat operations in the Atlantic. The biggest agents in the defeat of the Nazis and Japanese were the British.
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@pmpcpmpc4737 The LST was a British idea with the first being a converted shallow draft tanker pre war. It wad decided the USA would built them in a you do this and we do that. Quoting divisions numbers is meaningless. It is their punch that matters. The green US divisions had far less punch compared to the experienced and hard nosed British. The British wanted to go into the heart of Germany via the gap in the Alps and so did some US generals. A massive army of combined arm would ram its way through. The Torch landing were a diversion from US preparation for their hopeful 1942 invasion of France. US and UK shipbuilding could not supply enough ships for France. Also not keeping up with needed tanks and the likes. Dieppe changed US minds. Putting Commonwealth forces under US, and especially Eisenhower's command was just plain foolish. As history tells us. Wheat violent occupation are you on about? The empire took only 30,000 men to police. It morphed into the Commonwealth. "Had Germans not focused on USSR in 41, they could have easily swept Britain from any colonies east of Gibraltar" More Hollywood nonsense. The Germans tried with a large ally to beat the British for nearly two years in Africa and failed. The Germans were well supplied from nearby Italy. The British had to take their supplies to Suez around the Cape. The equivalent distance of half way around the world. I am going to give up on you as you are waste of time. Saying North Africa was a side show and only the USA defeated the Japanese shows your ignorance. Totally uninformed. A conditioned mind full of America saved the world, Hollywood and bad History Channel documentary history.
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@pmpcpmpc4737 "North Afrika campaign was nothing more than a side show designed to prevent fall of Lybia " You have no idea whatsoever. Just disjointed babble. US performance in the ETO was appalling from the top down.
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