Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Historigraph"
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@suryaprakash2126 The German Naval Ordnance Department, on 31 December, 1938, produced a report entitled 'The Feasibility of the Z Plan' which described the problems involved in such a programme. The demands in manpower and raw materials were such, that the whole of German Industry would need to have been placed at the disposal of the Kriegsmarine, with the army & air force starved of investment. Thus, the successful German campaign in the west would have been impossible, not to mention the fact that this would have been politically impossible for Hitler.
Even had this impossibility become fact, then just imagine the German fleet you have proposed, in attempting to break out of the North Sea (without, of course, access to any French or Norwegian ports), sailing straight into a new Jutland, as the RN would have six Lions (9 x 16 inch guns) five KGVs, (10 x 14 inch guns), and Vanguard (8 x 15 inch guns), supported by Ark Royal and up to six Illustrious class carriers, four Audacious class carriers, and four Malta class carriers, and a vast array of cruisers and destroyers. As France would not have fallen, and would presumably have remained Britain's ally, you can add to the mix the four modern French battleships of the Richelieu class ( 8 x 15 inch guns.)
I hope that whoever led this German fleet would have been well aware of Admiral Scheer's 'Battle Turn Away' tactic.
Sorry, Plan Z was simply a pipe dream
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Jutland wasn't intended to be a fleet action. The intention was to lure the Grand Fleet to sea, over a number of pre-planted U-Boat traps. The German hope was that the British numerical superiority could be reduced by U-boats and mines. The trap failed entirely. Of 19 boats allocated, only 2 sighted the Grand Fleet, and only one made an attack, which failed.
Scheer then found himself in a battle which he desperately did not want to fight, had his T crossed, with visibility against him. Certainly, he extricated his fleet with a mixture of skill and good fortune, but he knew how lucky he had been, and never took a similar risk again.
The reality is that, strategically, Jellicoe won simply by not suffering losses from within his battleship fleet. British control of the North Sea and therefore, maintenance of the Blockade, continued unimpaired. The effect of the Blockade was made manifest during what the Germans called the 'Turnip Winter' when possibly as many as 700000 German civilians died of starvation & hypothermia.
As a New York newspaper commented of Jutland, 'The German Fleet has assaulted it's jailer, but it is still in jail.'
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Some people need to do a little more reading, then. Aside from the fact that the German army was still busy in France until after two weeks after Dunkirk had ended, the German paratroop force, following heavy losses in Norway & the Low Countries, was down to around 4,000 effectives at the most. Furthermore, the Luftwaffes' stock of operational transport aircraft at the time was less than 230.
Landing a small force of lightly armed paratroopers, with neither artillery nor armour to support them, and with no hope of being relieved by better armed ground troops, would simply have been to throw them away, although it would have given the British an important victory at a critical time.
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Well, apart from the River Plate, first & second Battles of Narvik, sinking of the Bismarck, the Barents Sea, North Cape, Battle of the Bay of Biscay, and the Battle of the Atlantic, I can't think of one either. It is difficult to win a major fleet action when your enemy doesn't have a fleet.
Unless, of course, you wish to discuss the Mediterranean?
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In retrospect, you are correct, in that Glorious should have been better escorted. At the time, however, there was no intelligence to suggest that Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and Glorious should have been fast enough to out run any threat.
The true problem was her commander, d'Oyly Hughes, who was later described as someone who would have been a superb cruiser captain, but was probably the last man in the navy to have been given command of a carrier. Glorious was an unhappy ship, and there seems to have been an 'end of term' atmosphere aboard her at the time of her sinking. She was actually sailing independently of any other large warship because, astonishingly, d'Oyly Hughes was eager to get back to Scapa Flow to court-martial one of his own officers. d'Oyly Hughes was personally a brave man, who had received the DSO in WW1, but there seems little doubt that he was, at the time of his death, an unstable character. He was, oddly, born in Salt Lake City, by the way.
Even though Hurricanes had been landed aboard, Glorious should have been able to operate CAPs, and indeed should have done when so close to the Norwegian coast. In fact, four aircraft were at 10 minutes readiness, but none was aloft.
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@BA-gn3qb The Arctic Convoy was actually PQ17, which was scattered as a result of an error of judgement by the First Sea Lord, who, wrongly, thought that a strong force led by Tirpitz was rapidly approaching, and that an unscattered convoy would be annihilated. Nobody 'ran away,' the Anglo-American cruiser covering force thought they were about to engage the Tirpitz force, in the hope that they could delay it long enough to enable the (again, Anglo-American) battleship force to intervene. Those destroyers of the close escort with torpedoes joined the cruiser force, whilst the smaller escorts stayed in the vicinity of the scattering convoy. Generally, facile comments such as yours dissolve when the facts are examined.
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@BA-gn3qb So, taking four heavy cruisers and four destroyers, supported by two or three older destroyers from the close escort, to engage what might have been one battleship, two pocket battleships, one heavy cruiser, ten destroyers, and two torpedo boats is 'running away' in your world is it? A curious world you inhabit. Feel free to criticize Dudley Pound for his decision, which may have been influenced by the fact that he was suffering from a brain tumour which was shortly to kill him, but please don't accuse the British (and American) commanders on the spot of cowardice.
As to 'Pedestal,' which British admirals 'took their warships and ran away' please? By 'ran away' you need to demonstrate that they did this in defiance of orders. Following a pre-determined plan which specifically excluded the presence of capital ships in the Narrows where they would be more of a hindrance than a help cannot be equated with 'running away.' Please feel free to quote from any naval historian who agrees with your opinion.
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@BA-gn3qb I'll do one final post, and then give up on you, as apart from chanting 'Brits. are cowards' endlessly, you really don't seem to know anything. There were 78 Arctic convoys during the course of WW2. 792 vessels sailed to Russia, and 739 returned. Of the 792, 62 (7.8%) were lost. Of the returning convoys, 28 vessels, (3.8%) failed to arrive. Some 4,000,000 tons of supplies were dispatched, including 5000 tanks & just over 7000 aircraft, all but 300000 tons arrived. Throughout this period, the merchantmen and escorts had no, or minimal, air cover, and were operating far from friendly bases, whilst the Germans had battleships, heavy cruisers, pocket battleships, light cruisers and their entire destroyer force, together with a large number of U-Boats and bomber & torpedo aircraft, close at hand. Despite this, one one occasion only was a convoy subjected to heavy losses, and that because a senior officer in London made an error of judgement, rather than due to any failure of the men on the spot. 829 merchant crewmen and officers died. The Royal Navy lost two cruisers, six destroyers, three sloops, two frigates, and three corvettes. 1840 officers and men were killed. I won't bore you with further details of warships which were damaged but survived, as I imagine from your previous posts that you are reaching the end of your attention span. Please feel free, in the light of the above, to post inanely about the cowardly Brits. By the way, I wouldn't need to read anything you might care to write, as I have already had a number of my own published.
That's all, please feel free to post further nonsense, but I won't waste any further time upon you.
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@Litany_of_Fury No, it wasn't. The Admiralty had no intention of using anything bigger than light cruisers. The capital ships & carriers (actually, just one carrier) were at Rosyth & Scapa Flow, along with 24 destroyers, 5 light and 2 heavy cruisers. There was one old battleship at Plymouth, but there was no plan to use her for anything other than night bombardment of barge concentration ports anyway (which she duly did, on 10 October.).
Given that the invasion forces consisted of barges towed by coasters, tugs or trawlers, supported by a tiny number of destroyers and torpedo boats, the heavy ships were not needed, and it was far easier to destroy such targets with quick firing 4 inch, 4.7 inch, or 6 inch guns than with the bigger guns fitted to heavy cruisers and above. In short, the big ships would have got in the way!
The actual whereabouts of all RN warships can be ascertained from the RN 'Pink List.' My information is from the List of 16 September, 1940 (ADM 187/9).
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Captain Krancke, commander of Admiral Scheer, paid generous tribute to the gallantry of Fegan & Jervis Bay in his account. He also referred to a small freighter, already on fire, which fired at his ship before she sank. This is believed to have been Kenbane Head. He made no reference to any gun battle with Beaverford, only referring to a ship carrying a deck cargo of timber that Scheer caught up with as it fled at speed far to the south of the main action.
The captain's log from Fresno City, another of Scheer's victims, reported "The Beaverford, bearing 110 degrees East South East was attacked and set on fire, distant about 10 miles". It seems Beaverford was attacked around 50 minutes after Kenbane Head, and about an hour before the sinking of Fresno City. There does not seem to have been, therefore, any time for a four hour engagement.
The account of the Beaverford action first appeared in 1944, in the magazine Canada's Weekly, and it was republished in the Evening Standard in London. Quite how, when the convoy was scattering in all directions, a four hour engagement could have been witnessed in entirety, is not made clear.
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@garygemmell3488 Not at all. I was simply, evidently, unsuccessfully, trying to explain the reality of the situation. The reconstituted German navy was never intended to challenge the Royal Navy, as German shipbuilding capacity was nowhere near that of Britain.
From Weimar times, the belief had been that any future war in which Germany might become involved would be with Poland, or Poland & France. Thus, Weimar build commissioned commerce raiders, the Deutschlands, intended to intercept French troop convoys. The French responded with the Strasbourgs. The Germans then produced the Scharnhorsts, the French began building the Richelieus, and the Germans the Bismarcks.
In short, it was a naval race between two medium/small naval powers. There was no expectation until 1938 at the earliest that the tiny German navy would ever be asked to challenge the Royal Navy. Raeder was always aware that this was a task totally beyond it.
The German navy in 1939 was as ready as it was ever likely to be. It was, however, totally outmatched, and had been placed in an impossible position.
You should read about the largely forgotten Franco-German naval race, as it is fascinating subject.
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