Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "War Stories" channel.

  1. In terms of actual military support, aside from supportive comments from a distance, the only Commonwealth support the British had at the time of the Battle of Britain was one Canadian division, and two Australian/New Zealand brigades.
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  2. No, it wasn't 'chauvinism.' Fighter Command used ground controllers to direct the operations of their aircraft, and they needed to be sure that the language skills of non-English speaking pilots were adequate.
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  3.  @leedaneker257  The French didn't have the same control systems as Fighter Command. Moreover, didn't the French fail?
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  4. Then you would have had to wait until early 1942 when Tirpitz was declared operational, and the presence of U-boats would have hamstrung the operations of any German surface ship.
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  5. Really? Where in the text are any of the victor nations committed to 'demilitarisation,' whatever that means? The British Empire & Commonwealth, as well as the Americans and French, certainly reduced their armies back from a wartime to a peacetime footing, and the British reduced their fleet as a result of the Washington Naval Treaties, but those were entirely separate issues unconnected with Versailles.
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  6.  @westpointsnell4167  When, exactly? Why don't you read what Omar Bradley wrote about his performance in Sicily. When you have done that, read up about his catastrophic (for the US troops involved) Lorraine campaign. You aren't thinking of Patton; you are thinking of George C. Scott in that laughable 1970 movie based on Ladislas Farago's hagiography of Patton.
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  7. Would it save you the need to post further if everyone agreed that, in the eyes of many, Montgomery's greatest failing was the fact that he was born in the wrong country?
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  8.  @michaelbowes9894  Montgomery was involved in the planning for Operation Rutter, which was postponed. Final planning for Operation Jubilee was the responsibility of General MacNaughton & Admiral Mountbatten. By the time of the attack, Montgomery was in North Africa. Still, don't let that stop you blaming him.
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  9. Why wouldn't he? What do you consider wrong with seeking the support of so powerful an industrial nation?
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  10. Are standards of education really so dire in the United States? If so, it explains a lot.
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  11. Nobody hired the Poles. Those Poles who came to Britain did so because Britain was the only European country still in arms against Germany.
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  12. Really? Name one other European country other than Britain still in arms against Germany at the time of the Battle of Britain?
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  13. Operation' Crusader,' perhaps. When Auchinleck did.
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  14. No, they didn't.
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  15. To put it more simply. Look how long the two greatest naval powers on earth took to plan and execute Operation Overlord, then ask how likely it was that Germany, with a tiny navy and no similar experience, could come up with something similar in two months.
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  16.  @bryannonya9769  No. Someone knows a few simple facts about military history, and isn't misled by 'Patton - Lust For Glory,' based as it was on Ladislas Farago's biography (actually, more of a hagiography) of his hero.
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  17.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  The taking of Caen was not the critical factor. The critical factor was preventing German armour reaching Normandy. Consequently, the British & Canadians ended up facing 8 Panzer Divisions and 2 Independent Tiger Battalions. In terms of the success of Overlord, Caen was a mark on a map.
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  18. Then you need to do a little more reading.
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  19. Actually, it was a Canadian journalist, and the claim has been totally discredited by a number of investigations, including German ones.
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  20. Especially one which was defended by the largest navy on the planet.
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  21. Montgomery was a Divisional commander in the BEF, and actually moved his division overnight to seal the gap in the Allied line following the surrender of Belgium. If you actually knew anything about the subject, you would have known that, I suggest.
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  22.  @DidMyGrandfatherMakeThis  Of course the longest range hit by one battleship on another was exceptional. That is why it was the longest. On 27 May, 1941, Rodney opened fire on Bismarck at 25,000 yards, and scored her first hit at around 20,500 yards. King George V, using her Type 284, opened fire at 25,500 yards and, similarly, achieved her first hit at 20,500 yards. Bismarck's first hit on Hood was at 18,200 yards. Her superb optical rangefinders were unable to bring about any hits on either British battleship on 27 May. At North Cape, Duke of York detected Scharnhorst at 45,000 yards, but held fire until 12,000 yards, as Scharnhorst remained entirely unaware of her presence. When DoY did open fire, she hit with her first salvo. Starshells from HMS Belfast revealed that Scharnhorst's main armament was still in fore and aft position when she was hit. Certainly, the RN had the advantage of gunnery radar which actually worked, but Rodney's performance demonstrated that, even without it, British battleships were more than capable of engaging successfully at longer ranges.
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  23. Bismarck's career at sea lasted about a week, and she failed on the only mission given her.
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  24. No. Your comment is not correct. In 1940 the manpower was almost entirely British, although a small number of Canadian & New Zealand/Australian troops were in the UK, and only a small quantity of equipment was being purchased from the US.
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  25. There were no working oil fields in Libya at the time, and German troops were only sent to North Africa after the catastrophic Italian defeat, culminating in Beda Fomm, that had been Operation Compass.
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  26. You need to 'chase down the details' yourself. If you did, you would find that, at the time of the Battle of Britain, there were, of just under 3,000 allied pilots who flew at least one operation during the Battle, 112 Canadians, and 32 Australians. Of ground troops ready to face any invasion attempt, of 34.5 divisions in September, 1940, 32.5 were British. There was one Canadian Division, and two Australian & New Zealand Brigades. Those are the plain, unalloyed, facts. However much you may dislike them.
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  27. But who had precisely NOTHING to do with the events of 1940.
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  28. Churchill was not in power when the British declared war. In fact, he had held no government position of any kind since 1929. Perhaps you were unaware, additionally, that Churchill was voted back into power in 1951? In fact, I suspect that you really aren't aware of much.
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  29.  @dwight4626  I assume you are being humorous.
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  30. What a pity Montgomery wasn't as modest and self-effacing as others, such as Patton or MacArthur. Indeed, his conduct remains the subject of debate. However, the overwhelming majority of it is favourable to him. He was an unpleasant, self-obsessed, individual, but he was generally protective of the lives of his soldiers, and sought to avoid committing them to battle without superiority in numbers, equipment, and supplies. He was fortunate in that he was the first British commander in WW2, on land at least, to be in such a position.
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  31.  @nickdanger3802  Rather like giving the credit for a test cricket century to the bat, rather than to the user of the bat.
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  32.  @thebun2901  No. To all intents and purposes, Britain was alone.
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  33.  @tom79013  But in 1940 they were far away and unprepared. The only Commonwealth troops in Britain in September 1940 were one Canadian Division & two Ausrealian/New Zealand Brigades. Of 34.5 operational; Divisions, 32.5 were British. Supporting voices from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, or India would be of little practical use had the Germans managed to land troops on the south coast of England.
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  34.  @nightruler666  You have a Pacific centred view of naval warfare in WW2. In the west, carriers were a part of the battlefleet, not the heart of it. Moreover, weather conditions in the Arctic & Atlantic often restricted carrier operations.
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  35.  Richard Tattis  Not at all. It was just a name I chose, after a WW1 Admiral I admired.
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  36. Really? At the time of the Battle of Britain? In 1940? Think again.
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  37. Yes. There were no supplies from Europe, and Lend Lease only began from March, 1941. Britain not only could, but did.
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  38. Please don't be silly. Bismarck carried 12 x five point nine inch low angle guns, which were outdated by 1940 and never actually managed to hit anything. The British Nelson class , built ten years earlier, carried 12 x 6 inch LA guns, and the King George V class 16 x 5'25 DP. Modern US battleships carried 20 x 5 inch DPs. Perhaps if Bismarck had had a DP secondary armament, she might not have been quite so unprepared to cope with attacks by torpedo bombers? The main guns in Bismarck were so powerful that they fired a broadside of 14,112 lbs., compared to the 15,900 of the KGVs, the 18,432 of a Nelson, or the 24,300 of a Washington, Iowa, or South Dakota. Or, come to that, the 18,000 lbs of a Tennessee, or the 15,504 lbs of a Queen Elizabet or R class.. Do you consider that having radar which failed when the guns fired was really beneficial? The radars of US & British capital ships generally had no such limitations.
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  39. What does 'winning' actually mean? The best the Luftwaffe could have hoped for was control of the airspace over the South Eastern corner of England, within the range of their fighters, as Fighter Command withdrew north of the Thames to regroup. From June 1940 onwards, the British were outproducing the Germans in aircraft, and especially in fighter aircraft. Thereafter, all the Germans needed to do was to get their troops, in largely unescorted barges towed at little more than walking pace by tugs, into and across a Channel dominated by the RN, which had by September around 70 light cruisers and destroyers within five hours steaming of the Dover Straits, and around 500 smaller supporting warships in the same area.
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  40. Perhaps you didn't know when the Battle of Britain took place? Try to understand this. In September, 1940, there were 34.5 divisions in the UK. Of these 32.5 were British. The only Commonwealth troops in the UK were one Canadian division and rwo Australian/New Zealand brigades. The nearest Indian division was in North Africa, and the Free French/Poles were not yet forned into (small) coherent fighting units as yet. In the event of any German landing, however unlikely given the naval supremacy of the (British) Royal Navy, supported by a small number of Canadian destroyers, cries of 'Good luck, lads!' from distant Canada, Australian, South Africa, New Zealand, India or anywhere else would not have been of much help. However important the Commonwealth & Empire became later in the war.
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  41. This would be the same Patton who was to bring about such heavy American casualties in the Lorraine Campaign in 1944, would it? Montgomery was methodical, working on the 'Steel not Blood' principle. Patton, in effect a wealthy aristocrat, didn't give a damn about the hoi polloi in his army. I suggest you read Bradley's opinion of Georgie.
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  42. Really? You clearly didn't know about German bombing in WW1. Or about German bombing of Spanish towns in the Civil War, or of Warsaw. Or about German raids on Scotland in October, 1939.
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  43. Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about. You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India. I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which you have been indoctrinated. However, for once try to think outside your programming and ask yourself this : There were 2.5 million Indians serving with the Allied forces at the time. Is it likely that Churchill would have considered, even for a moment and even had he been so inclined, to alienate them?
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  44. Not in 1940, when this video is set, they didn't. There was one Canadian division and three Australian & New Zealand brigades only in Britain in 1940.
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  45. Has it still not dawned that people are wise to you?
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  46. Indeed they did rally to Britain's defence, but in 1940 they were only able to offer not much more than moral support. In terms of ground forces, the only Commonwealth troops in mainland Britain were one Canadian division and three Australian & New Zealand brigades. Further forces assembling in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or India would have been irrelevant to the defeat of a large German landing force. Please do try to understand that this video is about 1940. However much you may resent it, the facts are as I have stated.
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  47. Perhaps you weren't aware that the US only entered WW2, very reluctantly and only after a Japanese attack and a German declaration of war, right at the end of 1941? I assume you are from the United States? Is education over there really so bad?
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  48.  @glennquagmire1747  It isn't necessary to be an expert just to understand a few facts.
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  49. Not until March, 1941.
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  50. 'Why do people still say that germany ever had a plan to invade GB?' Many people do not think that. Only those of us who have studied German planning and preparation in the latter half of 1940 in detail know beyond doubt that it was not a bluff. I could recommend a book or two?
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