Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Timeline - World History Documentaries"
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@tonyjames5444 I respect your service of course. But events of 1982 are hardly relevant to a situation which existed in 1940. Of course, a bomb hitting a ship will cause damage & casualties, but the point I am making is that, in 1940, the probability is that an untrained Luftwaffe lacked the ability to hit RN ships, moving at speed and able to manouevre freely, in sufficient numbers to prevent massive casualties among the towed barges of the German invasion fleet. The RN had 70 cruisers & destroyers, together with around 500 smaller warships, in the immediate vicinity of the Straits, and the inability of the Luftwaffe to do much of anything at night is significant.
After all, with circumstances much more in their favour, hadn't the Luftwaffe failed badly at Dunkirk, despite Goering's promised to the contrary? Even two senior German air commanders, Oskar Dinort & Wolfram von Richthoven, wrote comments at the time agreeing with what I am stating.
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@tonyjames5444 The Germans actually managed to inflict serious losses on one coastal convoy only CW8. The convoys were stopped for a very short time only, and then re-commenced, at night.
There were 531 CW & CE convoys between 1940 & 1944, involving 9097 ships, almost all colliers & small coasters. Total losses? 31 ships, of which 24 were in convoy. 0.34%, from all causes. Then there are the other coastal convoys, the FN & FS series. There were 3584 of these, involving 104,792 ships. Losses (all causes) 203, or 0.19%.
The Argentinian pilots were attacking ships mainly at anchor, and had some success, but failed to stop the liberation of the Falklands, much as the Luftwaffe, attacking ships stopped close inshore or moving slowly in restricted waters, failed to stop the evacuation.
The Kriegsmarine was far from powerful in 1940. In September it had only one operational heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, about 12 destroyers and escort destroyers, a similar number of minesweepers, and 27 U-boats. However, U-boat life expectancy in the Channel is limited. In 1939 three were sent there, and all were sunk.
The Kriegsmarine invasion plan required eleven days to get the first wave across in towed barges. Who would protect these barges at night, even if your unwarranted confidence in the capabilities of the 1940 Luftwaffe, not shared by their commanders Oskar Dinort & Wolfram von Richthoven, by the way, is accepted?
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@tonyjames5444 Just to have the last word, Prince of Wales withdrew from action in the Denmark Strait because the teething troubles with her main turrets re-occurred. Her own damage was slight, because the seven hits had all missed her all-or-nothing armour and had failed to detonate. Her own hits on Bismarck had forced Admiral Lutjens to abandon his mission and make for St. Nazaire. Admiral Wake-Walker ordered PoW to join his two cruisers, and shadow Bismarck in order to bring other RN forces into contact. Wasn't that the sensible thing to do? What, by the way, has any of this to do with the RN tradition of not abandoning the army?
Finally, I regret to inform you that, were you to look, you would find that the vast majority of historians of the subject today agree with me that Sealion could never have succeeded in 1940, with or without air superiority, because of the shortcomings of the Luftwaffe at the time. This would not remain the case, but it was certainly so in 1940.
As to Billy Mitchell, what exactly did sinking a German battleship prove when the ship was motionless, with all watertight doors opened, and no crew to carry out damage control or operate AA weapons?
I could take ten wickets a match if batsmen weren't allowed, but it wouldn't make me James Anderson!
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Certainly, at the time Fighter Command was suffering from attacks on airfields, but it is too simplistic to talk about defeat and victory. Fighter Command at worst had the ability to withdraw remaining assets further north, out of the reach of German fighters, in order to rest and re-equip. In fact, the Luftwaffe, properly commanded, always had the ability to control airspace over the Channel, as historically, after Kanalkampf, RAF fighters stayed over mainland Britain.
Assuming that the Luftwaffe did that, all the Kriegsmarine needed to do was find a way of getting 700 or so barges, full of troops and towed in pairs by trawlers, tugs, and small coasters, at around five knots, into the Channel and then onto the British south coast beaches, without serious naval escort.
After all, the British only had around 70 light cruisers and destroyers within 5 hours' steaming of Dover, supported by around 500 smaller warships, at the time.
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She was settling by the stern, listing heavily, had lost her main armament, her bridge, her command personnel, and her internal communications. She was also suffering from widespread internal fires.
As the Black Night said 'Tis but a scratch.
Are you German, as a matter of interest? This fixation about scuttling your own ships, and then apparently believing that they weren't quite so sunk as a result, seems oddly Germanic. The US, British, and Japanese navies don't seem to have had similar views.
If you are indeed German, perhaps you might try to explain the thought process behind it?
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@bigwoody4704 I presume you actually mean : Withdrawing 13 divisions from Europe because 100 French divisions were collapsing, then attempting to land fresh troops in Cherbourg until told, by General Weygand, that the French army was no longer capable of 'organised resistance.'
Resisting Germany & Italy for a year largely unaided, then taking almost total responsibility, in conjunction with the Royal Canadian Navy, for the naval war in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Arctic, and the Indian Ocean, thus enabling the US navy to concentrate in the Pacific.
Fighting major campaigns against the Japanese army in Burma, resulting in 55,000 Japanese casualties in a single operation, the defeat of the U-Go offensive.
As to 'Germany First' apart from Ernie King, eagerly killing the crews, largely American, of over 600 merchantmen by refusing to provide Adolphus Andrews with sufficient escorts to institute convoys off the US East Coast, which other leading US politician or military man did not see Germany as the greater threat? Germany was a huge military and industrial powerhouse with cutting edge science; Japan was none of these.
Oh, and buy a map. Australia & New Zealand were never in the slightest threat of invasion, although the Australian divisions in the Middle East, apart from one, were immediately returned after Pearl Harbor.
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She was settling by the stern, listing heavily, had lost her main armament, her bridge, her command personnel, and her internal communications. She was also suffering from widespread internal fires.
As the Black Night said 'Tis but a scratch.
In any case, this bizarre view that a scuttled ship is, in some magical manner, slightly less sunk, is an odd one, don't you think?
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@VascoDaGamaOtRupcha Oh dear! Thank you for trying to educate me!
The attack by Cossack on Altmark was a 'one-off' action because Altmark was known to have been carrying merchant seamen from ships sunk by Graf Spee, and the Norwegian government had chosen not to enforce International Law. As they were not willing to take action, the RN did, and then withdrew from Norwegian waters. You should read a book or two.
'Your claim that Royal Navy had 70 cruisers and destroyers within 5 hours steaming of the Straits is ludicrous.' I am not claiming anything. I am simply quoting facts. Obviously, you are ignorant of the 'Pink List' which the Royal Navy issued on a regular basis in those days. It was the Order of Battle for the Royal Navy. I have selected the List for 16 September, 1940, as most appropriate. I can, if you wish, tell you the names of the destroyers and cruisers, and where they were based at the time. Do try to prove me wrong, I beg you!
The Home Fleet, by the way, was based at Rosyth ( one battlecruiser, two battleships, three light cruisers, and seventeen destroyers) and at Scapa Flow ( one battlecruiser, one aircraft carrier, two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and seven destroyers). As to aerial bombardment, in point of fact, in the whole of WW2 the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser. To put that into context, the RN began WW2 with 193 destroyers, and ended it with around 400.
Of course Norway had a tiny navy. The Royal Navy was only committed after the landings, and as a result the German navy received a degree of punishment which rendered it largely irrelevant, at least on the surface, for the rest of the war. The only success German surface ships achieved in the whole of the campaign was ther sinking of HMS Glorious and her two escorting destroyers after it had largely ended.
Tell me what the similarities are, then, mon brave? So far, you have demonstrated nothing but a profound lack of actual knowledge.
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@VascoDaGamaOtRupcha By the end of the Norwegian campaign, Germany had lost a considerable part of her already small navy, rendering it useless where Sealion was concerned.
By the end of the German campaign in the Low Countries, her paratroop force had been reduced to a weak brigade of around 4,500 men, and her operational transport aircraft to around 220, rendering them irrelevant where Sealion was concerned.
As I said, Cossack was not patrolling Norwegian waters. She was sent into a Norwegian fjord for a specific task, to liberate British merchant seamen after the Norwegian government had failed to act in accordance with international law. After which she left, as Neville Chamberlain was eager not to alienate the nervous Norwegian government of the day, and nor did he wish to seem to threaten a neutral country, as such behaviour was more characteristic of the Germans.
Ironically, although I doubt you will appreciate it, you reference to Cossack does confirm my comment.
You haven't, by the way, explained the similarities between the Norwegian campaign and the (potential) Operation Sealion.
Nor have you tried to challenge my information concerning the disposition of RN anti-invasion forces in September, 1940. If it helps you, although I expect it won't, I refer you to the British National Archives. The relevant document is 'Pink List' for 16th September, 1940, Operations Division, Admiralty Naval Staff (Public Record Office ADM 187/9).
Your lack of historical knowledge, especially of matters naval, is quite remarkable. When you know so few facts, why do you bother posting at all?
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