Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Historigraph"
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Sorry, but simply not true. Ohio arrived in the Clyde on 21 June, 1942. On the same day, the US War Shipping Administration informed Texaco that she was being requisitioned. After waiting in the Clyde for two weeks, she was visited by Texaco's London agent, accompanied by a representative of the (British) Ministry of War Shipping, and her captain informed that his ship was to be handed over to British ownership, and his crew replaced by a British one. Captain Petersen and his crew disembarked, and were, understandably, unhappy at the way they had been treated.
Perhaps high-handed, but niceties were few and far between in mid-1942. Therefore, contrary to what you might claim, no 'attack' by savage Limey thugs. The original order for the requisition of the Ohio, by the way, came from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In no way was there any 'act of piracy.' A sister of Ohio, by the way, Kentucky, had previously been transferred in a similar manner, and lost earlier in June, 1942. She wasn't seized by pirates either.
As to reading 'Guns of August' presumably by Barbara Tuchman, and 'No Man's Land' by John Toland, both are about the First World War, in which The Netherlands was a neutral country. How exactly did the Limeys bring about the fall of Amsterdam, exactly, and which ships were 'hijacked?'
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Except of course the British were not intending to order their military and their civilians to undertake massed suicide attacks, as the Japanese were. You might take Okinawa as an example. The US landing forces suffered 6,821 killed and 19,217 wounded. Although most in the 20,000-strong Japanese garrison were draftees, they refused to surrender, fighting tenaciously until only a few hundred remained alive to be taken prisoner.
By contrast, the British had a more credible approach, which involved the use of their overwhelming naval supremacy to intercept and destroy the towed barges which the Germans intended to use to transport their troops. Put simply, the British knew that they could defeat Sealion. The Japanese hope was that mass slaughter would so sicken the US leaders that they would eventually choose to come to a negotiated peace. As to the 'bloodbath' idea, look at the casualty levels that the planners of 'Olympic' expected.
Oh, and as to 'They had no interest in occupying Britain, and their real goals were always eastwards.' Certainly the Germans would have preferred the British to come to terms, but the fact that they requisitioned and converted around 200 transport ships, 2000 barges, 400 tugs, and over 1100 motor boats, and were willing to accept the loss of over 1700 aircraft and 2500 experienced aircrew in pursuit of air superiority over the Channel & the English south east coast, tells a rather different story about German intentions, I suggest.
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@Mondo762 Ohio unloaded in the Clyde in June 1942. She was transferred to the British Eagle Oil and Shipping Co., and her American crew disembarked on 10 July. She was re-fitted with extra bofors and oerlikon AA guns, and had special bearings fitted to her engines, and extra protection added to her steam pipes, because comparatively minor damage to Kentucky had resulted in her loss. Kentucky, by the way, also swapped crews. The transfer of these two tankers to the British was a generous act by the US Maritime Commission as fast (16 Knot) tankers were like gold dust at the time and the US Navy were requisitioning them for use in the Pacific. Incidentally, Santa Elisa was a last minute addition to the convoy. She was actually loading in South Wales for the US when she was ordered to discharge her cargo. I have no idea why, although, without Santa Elisa, there would have been 13 merchantmen in the convoy. Perhaps someone was superstitious?
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@thedreadpiratewesley2301 The difference being that a large number of transport & supply ships, not to mention the American landing forces themselves, had been imperilled by Halsey's impetuous acts.
In the Indian Ocean, the Japanese had no such targets. Their raid was defensive in intention, in order to screen a large troop convoy for Rangoon. The British had a fair idea of the composition of the Japanese force, knew that no transports were involved, and that the probability was that of a limited air attack on targets in Ceylon. Unlike the gallant American action at Samar, there was no major strategic threat involved which demanded a quixotic action by Somerville. The maintenance of his Fleet in Being was of greater importance at that time in the war.
Incidentally, Somerville did attempt to use the one positive asset in his armoury, his radar-equipped torpedo bombers, to carry out a night attack, but failed to locate his target, just as Nagumo's aircraft failed to locate Somerville.
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@nikolajkristensen5960 It appears that revealing your errors and lack of knowledge has annoyed you. Indeed, the Kriegsmarine had a heavy cruiser. They also had three operational light cruisers. At the same time, the British had 1 battlecruiser, 1 carrier, 2 heavy cruisers and 2 light cruisers at Scapa Flow, 2 battleships, 1 battlecruiser, 3 light cruisers at Rosyth, 3 light cruisers in the Humber, 2 light cruisers at Chatham, 1 light cruiser in Portsmouth, 1 battleship, 2 light cruisers in Plymouth, and 1 light cruiser in the Firth of Clyde.
The British would not be under air attack 24/7 as you elegantly put it, because, whilst the RN could indeed operate 24/7, the Luftwaffe could only operate in daylight. This, by the way, is presumably the same Luftwaffe which had failed so badly to disrupt the Dunkirk evacuation, which had received no training whatsoever in anti-shipping operations, which didn't even develop a high performance torpedo bomber until early 1942, and which in the whole of the war sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN vessel of any kind bigger than a light cruiser. That Luftwaffe?
The rest of your post is barely coherent gibberish, by the way. I don't feel inclined even to attempt to decipher it.
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@nikolajkristensen5960 Tirpitz? Crew training? She hadn't even finished being built! Knickebein could guide an aircraft to a large, static, target such as a city, but was useless for targeting ships at sea. Surely you know that?
D- day was far from 'a bad idea.' It involved 4217 landing craft, 1213 warships, and 11,600 aircraft. The Germans in 1940 had no landing craft, about 30 warships, and around 2000 aircraft of all types.
You clearly haven't grasped the length of time needed to extricate large numbers of barges from ports and form them into so sort of order; still less have you grasped how many warships the British had within close range of the Channel, so I won't bother repeating the details.
In fact, I won't bother replying to you again, as there are numerous other people, with much greater knowledge and much more intelligent opinions, who make more interesting correspondents.
In the time that you could save by not replying to me, why not buy a book on the subject of Operation Sealion?
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