Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Possible History"
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@confederatenationalist7283 It actually took three small cruisers to corner Graf Spee, although certainly the Allies did deploy a number of Hunting Groups to search for her. Largely, of course, because they had the resources to do precisely that.
Both Scharnhorst & Gneisenau were on such good form that they fled from a twenty years old battlecruiser. Certainly, they were fortunate enough to encounter HMS Glorious, but, as both were damaged by torpedo hits, one from one of Glorious' escorts and one from a RN submarine, and were not back at sea until November, they were irrelevant where Sealion was concerned in any case. By the way, you haven't mentioned the fact that, during the Norwegian campaign, the Kriegsmarine lost 50% of the total destroyer force available to it. Slip your mind, did it?
The U-boat fleet consisted of 27 operational boats, of which 13 were, on average, at sea on any one day in September, 1940. Moreover, you are perhaps unaware that throughout the war U-boats were eager to avoid contact with destroyers, corvettes, or sloops, yet here you suggest that they should actively seek them out?
S Boats? There were precisely 13 operational at the time of Sealion. Again, they were invariably used to attack freighters or transport ships. Here, you suggest that they should deliberately seek out destroyers and cruisers?
HMS Exeter, by the way, was not sunk by air attack. Moreover, the Germans totally lacked the anti-shipping skills which the Japanese possessed. The Kriegsmarine, in fact, didn't have an operational torpedo bomber until mid 1942, and their failure during Dunkirk rather demonstrated how ill-equipped they really were to attack shipping.
'If the Germans could supply it's forces in Greece and North Africa and Norway they obviously could have supplied their Channel beach head operations.' Perhaps you might buy a map in order to wotk out where Greece is, and why supply from the sea might be unnecessary. The axis, in fact mainly the Italians, always struggled to maintain the comparatively small forces that the operated in North Africa, in the face of constant attacks by the Royal Navy & the RAF/Fleet AIr Arm.
Again, look at a map of Europe, and work out why it is easier to transport men & materials to Norway, as opposed to carrying out an assault landing on an island defended by the largest navy on earth.
I could recommend a book or two to you, as your knowledge seems not to be so much incomplete, more totally lacking, but I doubt you would read them. Feel free to ask, however.
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@confederatenationalist7283 'So mistook the Exeter for Prince of Wales and Repulse.So not exactly a ringing endorsement for large naval assets v air attack.' 'If you mean not a ringing endorsement for large naval assets against well trained torpedo bomber crews,' then you might perhaps consider that, at the time of the Sealion threat, the Luftwaffe had neither well trained torpedo bomber crews, nor even a torpedo bomber, until mid 1942. In fact, in the whole of WW2, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship at all larger than a light cruiser.
'We couldn't have resisted a 'combined' attack by everything that they had.' How then, would you explain the 'Apology' convoy? On 22 August 1940, the British sent a large troop convoy to North Africa to reinforce the Western Desert force, and bring about the shattering Italian defeat that was Operation Compass. The convoy included three armoured regiments, and it carried half of the total number of Matilda II tanks, the best British tank of the time, in existence.
Everything they had? One heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, seven destroyers, seven smaller escort destroyers, 27 operational submarines, 13 operational S boats, and around a dozen minesweepers. Oh, and a powerful but tactical air force, unable to operate at night with any hope of accuracy, and untrained in anti-shipping operations.
Oh, and several hundred barges towed by tugs into the Channel at barely above walking pace, and largely unprotected. All the British had to stop this formidable armada was 70 destroyers and light cruisers within five hours of Dover, supported by some five hundred smaller warships, and a further forty or so destroyers also in Home Waters. That, by the way, does not include the heavies of the Home Fleet, as the Admiralty did not believe that they would be needed.
As I suggested earlier. Buy a book.
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@confederatenationalist7283 What no book tells me is that a warship called HMS Wakefield ever existed. What do you mean 'The Germans obviously couldn't sink British naval assets that weren't there.' Presumably you mean apart from the AA cruiser, 41 destroyers, 6 sloops, 7 patrol vessels, 13 corvettes & gunboats, 38 minesweepers, and 230 armed trawlers, as well as numerous other vessels, which did take part in Sealion?
Kanalkampf was an attempt to draw out Fighter Command over the Channel. Fighter Command refused. The Royal Navy took the obvious and sensible action of sending the Channel convoys (the CW & CE series) through at night. As a result of 33 convoys and 550 ships of these convoys in 1940, 13 were lost in convoy. In fact, between 1940 & 1945, there were 531 such convoys, involving 9097 ships. There were 24 sunk in convoy, and 7 out of convoy. Aren't mere facts a nuisance?
Graf Spee was otherwise occupied on the bottom of Montevideo harbour, and as I think I noted earlier, Gneisenau & Scharnhorst were under repair in Kiel until November. The best the Germans could muster in terms of heavy ships was a single heavy cruiser, Hipper. That was why the Admiralty did not feel the Home Fleet was needed. Had it been, however, at the time it consisted of a battlecruiser, an aircraft carrier, two heavy cruisers & two light cruisers at Scapa Flow, with a battlecruiser, two battleships, & three light cruisers at Rosyth. How long do you suggest Hipper would have lasted?
Your screen of 8 U-boats and 13 S boats, even with seven destroyers and a similar number of smaller escort destroyers, would need to cope with 70 RN destroyers and light cruisers, and several hundred smaller warships. How do you suggest that that might have worked out, and why do you think that the RAF would even be drawn into a large scale air battle over the Channel in the first place? Oh, and good luck trying to screen anything with U-boats!
You seem to be some sort of odd fantasist, unable to understand the actual facts of 1940 in pursuit of your Germany Triumphant delusion.
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@confederatenationalist7283 You are increasingly coming across as a strange simpleton. The only HMS Wakefield ever to appear in the Royal Navy's order of battle was a 26 gun ship built in Portsmouth and renamed HMS Richmond in 1660. She was sold in August, 1698. To put you out of your misery, you are thinking of HMS Wakeful, a V & W Class destroyer sunk off Dunkirk, actually by an S Boat, S30.
'The Luftwaffe and Kreigsmarine obviously couldn't sink any heavier naval assets that we never committed to Dunkirk operation.' But the Luftwaffe in particular didn't manage to sink any RN warship larger than a light cruiser in the whole of WW2, and the Luftwaffe had plenty of opportunities in the Mediterranean.
Why would any larger naval assets be committed to Dynamo? Try to think, however painful it might be. Exactly how useful would a 35,000 ton battleship, or come to that a 10,000 ton heavy cruiser, have been in attempting to lift men from open beaches, or even the Mole? Put simply, such ships at Dunkirk would have been an embarrassment, and the Royal Navy managed to lift 338,000 men without them anyway.
'While your delusional ideas actually degrade the level of resistance shown by everyone involved in the knowledge that they were probably going to lose this fight but fight we will.' 'Delusional?' Then prove any one of my facts to be incorrect. After of course, you have managed to get the name of HMS Wakeful correct, instead of insulting her memory by misnaming her.
You are out of your depth, and would be well advised to give up now.
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@confederatenationalist7283 Tigris I was an 80 feet long motor launch. If you think that the Royal Navy intended to attack any invasion convoy with unarmed 80' launches displacing 50 tons, then you are even dafter than I feared you were. By the way, Tigris I, commanded by Harry Hastings, was not sunk, but was disabled by a near miss and a collision, and was abandoned. Even more remarkably, a group of French sailors patched up her damage sufficiently to enable her to be towed back to Ramsgate by a tug. After the war, she became a houseboat, before being broken up in 1985. During her trips to and from Dunkirk, she brought about 900 men to Britain. If I were you, which thankfully I am not, I think I would try again.
If typing Wakefield instead of Wakeful was a simple 'typo' why did you do it twice. It was actually a result of ignorance, even if you lack the integrity to admit it.
What do you think Kanalkampf proved? I have given you the statistics for the CW/CE convoys. They speak for themselves.
'How does the sinking of the listed ships and exactly what sank them and the example of the RAF rightly viewing the Kanalkampf as a problem, supposedly fit your narrative of an ineffective combined invasion force had it been tried.'
Quite easily. The RAF simply chose not to drawn into an unnecessary battle over the Channel, resulting in the Luftwaffe deeming Kanalkampf a failure, and the Royal Navy simply rescheduled the convoys to minimise the exposure to risk of the small coasters and colliers which comprised them.
Perhaps you are unaware of actual losses at Dunkirk, given the success of the naval operation. To help you understand, the following are the numbers of British vessels involved. The bracketed number is those lost :-
Cruisers. 1 (0)
Destroyers. 41 (6)
Sloops, & Patrol Vessels. 13 (0)
Corvettes & Gunboats. 13 (1)
Minesweepers. 38 (6)
Trawlers & Drifters. 230 (23)
Special Service Vessels, Boarding Vessels, & MTBs. 21 (1)
Schuits & Yachts. 76 (7)
Oh, and the civilian vessels :-
Personnel Ships 45 (9)
Hospital Ships 8 (1)
Cargo Ships & Tugs. 53 (10
'Little Ships' 303 (12, but a further 150 simply abandoned at the end of the operation).
Thus, I can give you the names of the cruiser, and the 35 destroyers, which were not sunk by your magnificent Luftwaffe. Unlike you, I can even spell their names correctly.
I can also give you the names of every British destroyer & light cruiser deployed on anti-invasion duties in September, 1940, and their bases.
I would also be happy list the names of German warships involved, which wouldn't take anywhere near as long.
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@confederatenationalist7283 You don't seem able to answer any of the facts I have presented to you. I will try again, though I am not sure why I am bothering. I observe that you haven't challenged me about the launch Tigris I. Very sensible of you!
The fact is that at Dunkirk, 41 RN destroyers were, together with other warships and merchant vessels, more or less stationary offshore, and were seriously disadvantaged by numbers of troops aboard hindering their operations. During the course of a week, the Luftwaffe managed to sink four destroyers, a U-boat one, and an S boat one. The same german forces failed to sink the other 35 destroyers, which together evacuated around a third of the total number of troops lifted.
Now try to explain how Sealion might have unfolded. Several hundred towed barges, moving at little above walking pace, and with an escort of seven destroyers, a similar number of escort destroyers, and a handful of minesweepers, would find themselves attacked by :-
From Harwich, 6 destroyers & 11 MTBs.
Portsmouth, 1 light cruiser, 16 destroyers, 5 escort destroyers & 6 MTBs.
The Nore, 2 light cruisers & 18 destroyers.
Plymouth, 3 light cruisers & 11 destroyers.
The Humber, 3 light cruisers, 5 destroyers, and 11 MTBs.
All of which were free to operate at speeds of 25-30+ knots, of course.
I have not bothered to list the smaller warships available in immediate support, by the way, as it would take too long.
'You seem to think the whole thing was impossible to deliver fiction.' Well spotted. Iam certain that Sealion had no chance of success. In that I have the support of Wolfram von Richtofen, commander of Fliegerkorps VIII, Oskar Dinort, commander of StukaGeschwader 2, and of course Admiral Erich Raeder, the head of the Kreigsmarine.
Dinort's account of an attack by some 40 Ju87s, led by him personally, on a RN destroyer force operating off Calais on 25 May, which ended in complete failure, and his subsequent assessment that attacks on warships would need a much greater level of training and expertise than his pilots currently possessed, makes interesting reading, by the way.
'As opposed to a deranged high command v the likes of Rommel, Guderian and Galland.Luckily for us.' Who in the British High Command was actually 'deranged?' Certainly, Rommel & Guderian were competent commander, though neither would have commanded the Invasion Operation, but the whole point was that German forces needed to get ashore in large numbers first, and that id precisely where the idea simply falls apart.
Galland is in a different category. A fine fighter pilot and a devoted nazi, but hardly senior command material. Basically someone good in a punch up, but not fit to command large forces and make strategic decisions.
'I was told by those who were there in the day that finishing us off after Dunkirk was Germany's to lose rather than ours to win.' You keep chanting this mindless mantra. Who told you that, and how would they know? Did you speak to any naval officers from the time? I did as part of my degree, and their opinion was hugely different. One, indeed, quote the words of John Jervis, Earl St Vincent, as expressed to the House of Lords at the time of the Napoleonic invasion threat, to me :-
'I do not say they cannot come, my Lords. I only say, they cannot come by sea.'
Finally, Churchill's speeches were intended to unify and motivate the British people, and as an attempt to generate greater support for Britain in the United States. As Ed Murrow wrote of Churchill, 'He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.' Didn't you even know that?
Finally, why do you keep referring to the British as 'us' when you openly display your contempt for them?
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@confederatenationalist7283 Consistency isn't your strong suit, is it? :-
'I actually stated that deliberately understating that threat is what I call contempt.' Yet you said earlier 'Surely the speech ( Churchill's ) would have been more confidence inspiring if it had said our military intelligence is certain that Germany doesn't have the capabilities to invade us and won't have for the foreseeable future.' Isn't that potentially understating the danger? Make your mind, or what passes for it, up.
'Are you seriously suggesting that Goering was a better head of the Luftwaffe than Galland would have been.' When did I suggest, or even imply that? Neither were remotely capable of, or fit for, high command.
'It's equally clear that the German level of success in stopping the Dunkirk operation was directly proportional to the level of its high command's commitment to doing so.' Clear to whom? Obviously, you are unaware of Goering's remark to Hitler on 23 May, 1940, about the elimination of the surrounded Allied forces in what became the Dunkirk pocket? 'This is a special job for the Luftwaffe.'
'At that point it no longer saw the BEF or even England as being a threat to its wider aims.For Germany Dunkirk was a sideshow.' Based upon what source? Actually, the Germans simply viewed the Dunkirk pocket in a different light, as troops trapped with their backs to the sea, which their High Command, traditional European soldiers, saw as an impassible barrier. The British, however, with long experience of the flexibility of sea power, saw the sea as a wide open escape route, and were proven right. You cannot seriously suggest that the opportunity to capture the entire BEF, and probably force Britain to discuss peace terms, was a 'sideshow' can you?
'The Kanalkampf was a far more representative guide to how the German defence of an invasion force would have gone for us.' How do you think Kanalkampf actually went? Put simply, the Germans sought to draw Fighter Command into battle over the Channel, and failed. Or to give you more details which you will either simply not grasp, or merely ignore, :
'In the British official history, The Defence of the United Kingdom, (1957) Basil Collier called the German operations a failure, sinking only 30,000 GRT of shipping from the near 1,000,000 tons of weekly coastal shipping in the Channel. In 34 days, Fighter Command flew more than 18,000 day sorties, an average of 530 per day. Collier speculated that the daily sortie rate of the Luftwaffe was lower and that many flights were not connected with the Channel operations.
The Luftwaffe still managed to outnumber the British fighters, which suffered 148 losses, almost half of these in three days in the second week in August. Collier put Luftwaffe losses at 286, most in operations over the Channel. The German loss of single- or twin-engined fighters was 105 and on the three days of high British losses in August, the Luftwaffe lost 100 aircraft. Collier wrote that German losses were nearly double the Fighter Command loss, for very few ships sunk. The British derived other unquantifiable benefits in lessons learned and German strategy did not benefit "in any discoverable way" '
Does that make it clearer?
Moreover, how does air fighting over the Channel, involving a small number of British coastal convoys, have the slightest relevance to any theoretical Operation Sealion?
' 'If' Germany had implemented Sealion with the required commitment.' You could have put anyone you liked in charge, and it wouldn't make up for the lack of escort ships, landing craft, tank landing ships, etc., which would have been needed to get past the massive resources available to the Admiralty at the time.
'If anything Churchill certainly wasn't showboating to gain American support he was just way overestimating his German adversary.' Make your mind up. Was he understating it, or overstating it? You seem to change your mind from minute to minute.
I am not sure precisely what is wrong with you, but there have now been almost 20 posts on this subject, almost entirely from either you or I. In view of that, I will not reply again unless someone else posts something worthy of comment, because your posts are becoming increasingly strange.
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@confederatenationalist7283 I will reply one more time, although I really do not know why. I will try to make it simple, although probably not simple enough for you to grasp.
'By YOUR logic Churchill obviously had no need to alarm the public with his speech regarding invasion.' I'm not sure how many times I need to say this before it sinks in. Churchill never believed an invasion was possible. Why else would he have sent a major troop convoy to North Africa in August?
He did, however, seek to unify the British people behind the struggle ahead, and he wanted the support of the industrial & (potentially) military giant that was the United States. He could simply have said that 'The Germans can never invade. We have the largest navy on earth, and the German navy is tiny' but that would hardly have achieved either objective, would it?
'The relevance of the Kanalkampf was that the RAF chose/had to disengage, from the type of disadvantageous operations, which it would have had to engage in if Sealion went ahead. Didn't you even read Collier's account of Kanalkampf? Are you really ignorant enough to believe that bomber strikes on small convoys and attempts to defend large numbers of towed barges have any similarity at all?
'Germany didn't commit anything like its available resources to the defeat of Britain.' You mean apart from the whole of their navy and almost all of their Air Force? What else was there, given that the army was stuck on the wrong side of the Channel?
'So you've never heard anyone who was actually there say thank God they chose to forget about invading us and chose to invade Russia instead.'
Actually, I have never heard anyone even link the events of July-September, 1940, with the events of June, 1941. Largely because they were unrelated.
The British were outproducing the Germans in aircraft, and in particular in fighter aircraft, from June 1940 onwards. By May, 1941, there were 56 squadrons of RAF fighter and fighter-bomber squadrons carrying out regular sweeps over Northern France. Even if you believe that air power was the only reason that Sealion wasn't attempted, and I don't, by the way, then perhaps you might explain how, if an invasion was deemed, correctly, to be impossible in September, 1940, it could suddenly have become more possible later than that?
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'he really would have just preferred England to sign a treaty.' Certainly true that hitler's ambitions were primarily in the East, but the level of preparations for Sealion in the latter half of 1940 demonstrates that preparations were serious. Requisitioning 2000+ barges and converting them, as well as almost 200 freighters, 400+ tugs, and 1100+ motor boats, then moving them to Channel ports, represented rather more than something simply 'on paper.' As, of course, was the loss of over 1,500 German aircraft, and most of their crews.
It seems that hitler came belatedly to realise what Boney had learned during the Napoleonic wars, and what he expressed as 'Can an Elephant fight a whale?' Yes, hitler would have preferred a treaty, but only because he had realised that he had no military means of imposing his will.
By the way, when Sealion was being planned, there was no 'real war in the east.' Genial Uncle Joe and hitler were enjoying a non-aggression pact, with the Soviets supplying Germany with raw materials.
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@websystema British, Australian, & Indian losses during the whole of the Malayan campaign, which ended with the fall of Singapore (note the correct spelling, little chap) were 138,000 killed, wounded, and captured. The US defeat in the Phillipines resulted in 146,000 killed, wounded, or captured. These figures are from your adored Wikipedia, apparently your source of choice.
You state that this was a disaster for the British, which it undoubtedly was, yet you are silent about the campaign in the Phillipines. I wonder why that might be?
The reality is that Japan had been planning both campaigns for some time. The British had been fighting more or less alone, for some 22 months, until Operation Barbarossa began. Inevitably, almost all British resources had been concentrated in the war against Germany & Italy. What excuse would you give for US unpreparedness?
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy was extremely fortunate that the Royal Navy continued to carry the burden of the war in the west. I will, of course, leave you to explain Ernie King's response, or rather lack of it, to Operation Paukenschlag, which resulted in the loss of around 600 or more allied merchantmen off the US east coast.
As a result of the Royal Navy's efforts, the US Navy was able to concentrate almost entirely in the Pacific.If you doubt that, simply look at the US Atlantic Fleet's Order of Battle for late 1941, and work out where the vast majority of these ships were, or were heading, by the early months of 1942. You will, I fear, need a better, more academic, source than Wikipedia in order to do this.
Not that it really matters, because however desperately you seem determined to change the subject, this video is about Operation Sealion.
This will be my last response to you, as I prefer corresponding with people who have rather more than a tenuous grasp on the events of WW2.
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Blocked which Canal? If you mean the Channel, the Germans did indeed send three U-Boats into the Channel in late 1939. They are still there, as all were sunk within days. By the way, in September 1940, there were only 27 operational U-Boats.
You can allocate as many troops as you like to an invasion, but when you have no navy worth talking about, your enemy has the protection of the largest navy in the world, and you seek to transport your troops in converted barges towed by tugs, without divisional artillery, mechanised transport, or armoured support, then it would be wise to think again.
As, of course, the Germans, rather belatedly, did.
'H!tlet wanted the germans to live in small villages there as farmers.' But only after exterminating or enslaving the 'sub-humans' who already lived there. Unsurprisingly, those 'sub-humans' were not impressed by the idea.
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Getting 90,000 troops across the Channel would have required the construction of a hell of a lot of Montgolfier balloons, because there was no other way of doing it.
Good luck with trying to mine the Channel with six auxiliary minelayers, at a time when the Royal Navy were carrying out regular nightly destroyer patrols through the Channel from Plymouth & the Nore, and had around four hundred fleet and auxiliary minesweepers in service.
Entire U-boat fleet? Do you mean every one of the 27 operational boats in service, of which on average 13 were at sea on any one day in September. If you discount the large Type IXs, sent out into the Atlantic to monitor weather conditions in support of Sealion, that leaves around eight. By the way, the Kriegsmarine had already sent three Type IIs into the Channel in October, 1939. All three were immediately sunk.
You have already had an answer, so I will not repeat much of it. I could recommend a book or two on the subject, as it seems that your knowledge is somewhat lacking, if it would help?
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