Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "History Buffs: Dunkirk" video.

Speedwell was a Halcyon class minesweeper of the 6th Minesweeping Flotilla, which, commanded by Lt. Cdr. Maunsell, brought back 1668 men. Display your Grandfather's medals with the honour they deserve!
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Where did you get this nonsense from? The 'token' force was actually the entire British field army of the time, including some partly-trained Territorial divisions. 'Pulling out of the line without telling the others?' On 26 May, Lord Gort and the commander of the French 1st Army Group, Blanchard had a meeting at Blanchard's HQ. Blanchard expressed the opinion that, in view of the impending collapse of the Belgian army, Weygand's proposals for a counter-attack were no longer realistic. The two agreed to withdraw the allied forces behind the line of the Lys. The allies held a line 128 miles long, 97 miles of which were British held. In accordance with the agreement with Blanchard, the decision was made to reduce the defensive line by 58 miles. On the evening of 26 May, Gort ordered Lt. General Adam, commander of the British 3rd Corps, to organise defences for a bridgehead at Dunkirk. This is actually all in the books, however much you may refuse to believe it. When Belgium capitulated, the hole left in the allied line was actually plugged by the British 3rd Division, which carried out a difficult night transfer in order to stave off disaster. The British sent more fighter squadrons to France than, in initial planning, they had intended . Additional squadrons also operated from French bases during the day, but returned to home bases at night. Among other things, maintenance for, in particular, Spitfire squadrons could only be carried out by their specialist ground crews. The Spitfire was a rather more technically complex aircraft than the Hurricane. Further transfers stopped when Dowding appealed direct to Churchill that Fighter Command was being crippled by losses in France. 'They begrudgingly agreed to take a token number of French and Belgians.' Really? 120,000 men, or one in three of those lifted, were not British. The vast majority were French, but some were Belgians who had chosen to continue fighting after their leaders had capitulated. The 'Reconstituted BEF' sent to Cherbourg from 7 June was to have involved the only two properly equipped divisions left in the UK, 52nd Lowland and 1st Canadian, followed by a hastily re-equipped 3rd Division. However, the deployment was terminated when General Weygand informed Alan Brooke that the French army was no longer able to offer organised resistance. The attack on Mers-el-Kebir took place because the French commander there failed to pass on the full text of the ultimatum to his government. The possibility of sending the French Fleet to the French West Indies, which Darlan might have accepted, was never considered in consequence. The Armistice terms required that the French fleet be placed in French Atlantic ports, under German supervision. Something which, for obvious reasons, the British Government could never accept. This paragraph :- 'Just to add another point we the US refused to send planes to help the french in Vietthnam but only a few months later we go in ourselves just to allow American interests to take over.' Makes no sense. It seems to be simple gibberish.
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@boxva1396 Belgium surrendered on 28 May. A British division had to undertake a difficult night transfer movement in order to block a large gap in the Allied line as a result. I agree that a small number of Belgian troops continued to fight, in defiance of orders from the Belgian government, but Belgium as a nation did not.
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More bizarrely, it seemed to forget about the Royal Navy completely, in favour of a tedious Spitfirefest. The gliding Spitfire at the end, saving Ken. Branagh from death (and never getting to play Henry V or Poirot) ensured that the film ended with just the wrong touch of bathos. I confess that, when I saw it in the cinema, I actually, much to the annoyance of my wife, laughed out loud.
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Hood was sunk by another capital ship. The Luftwaffe at Dunkirk had had no training in anti-shipping operations, and as a result failed badly.
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Of the 338,000 men lifted from Dunkirk, around 120,000 were French. A further 190,000 or so British troops were lifted from western France in the now unjustly forgotten Operations Cycle & Aerial. SeaLion , had it been attempted, was to have been opposed by the Royal Navy. It is unlikely that any organised German forces could have landed, in view of the overwhelming superiority of the RN in home waters. A pity that the Spitfirefest that was this movie successfully ignored the Royal Navy more or less completely. What is the next project? The Bismarck action without ships, perhaps?
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@SunnyIlha Why would the Royal Navy be 'mothballed' when it was the most certain defence the British had against invasion? If a landing is prevented, then ground troops are not needed. The reality is in the comment made by Churchill to General Weygand on 11 June, 1940 :- 'The best method of dealing with a German invasion of the island of Britain was to drown as many as possible on the way over, and knock the others on the head as they crawled ashore.' The Admiralty had around seventy cruisers and destroyers within five hours steaming of the Straits of Dover, supported by around five hundred smaller warships, in order to do precisely that.
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@SunnyIlha Sorry, but that is nonsense. Of the three armed services available to the British in 1940, the Navy was the most important, the Air Force second, and the Army third. Don't you have any understanding of precisely how large the Royal Navy was at the time? Your apparent belief that the British would disband the Royal Navy and the RAF in order to re-build a standing army is absolutely idiotic.
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Belgium surrendered on 28 May.
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True. A desperately disappointing movie, despite the lavish praise heaped upon it.
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No, it wasn't. The order was issued by Von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, in order to service his armour prior to the second stage of the invasion of France. Belgium, by the way, had capitulated on 28 May.
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@gingerbaker_toad696 Von Rundstedt did not make the decision 'because he felt like it,' but for sound military reasons. Like several of the senior German Generals, he feared a repeat of the Miracle of the Marne, and was anxious to commence the second stage of the campaign. His armour had covered considerable distance on their own tracks, and needed a brief period of service/repair. Moreover he regarded an army with backs to the sea as trapped. The British, however, had long experience of sea power, and regarded the sea as a highway. Still, don't believe me; read instead the opinion of the American military historian Edward G. Lengel, which is as follows :- 'Just as the advance was ready to resume, however, an order arrived from Army Group A, under General Gerd von Rundstedt: The tanks must halt at the Aa Canal. The destruction of British and French forces around Dunkirk would be left to the Luftwaffe. This order remained in effect for two days while Guderian’s tankers champed at the bit, watching in frustration as 340,000 British and French soldiers prepared to evacuate from Dunkirk right under their noses. The Luftwaffe proved unable to stop the famous Dunkirk armada of destroyers, fishing boats and everything in between from carrying the BEF back to England to fight another day. The halt order left Guderian “speechless,” and it has sparked debate ever since. Some writers speculated—falsely—that Hitler had given the order out of a misguided sense of mercy, hoping the British were ready to make peace. German generals, in interviews and memoirs, chalked it up as yet another example of Hitler’s outrageous military stupidity, which had prevented them from winning the war. In truth, there was plenty of blame to go around. On May 23 Field Marshal Hermann Göring had phoned Hitler and demanded his Luftwaffe be given primary responsibility for destroying the Allied forces around Dunkirk. Hitler was noncommittal, but the next day he visited Rundstedt at his headquarters at Charleville in the Ardennes. Some of Rundstedt’s generals had been whispering in his ear that German tank losses were dangerously high. Moreover, although an Allied armored counterattack at Arras on May 21 had failed, many German generals expected another, stronger counterattack. Worrying that a pellmell thrust toward Dunkirk might cost him more precious tanks and leave his southern flank vulnerable, Rundstedt had already issued a temporary halt order by the time Hitler arrived at his headquarters. The führer vacillated between insecurity and overconfidence. The rapid advance of the panzers had surprised even him. Like many of his generals, he worried about tank losses and anticipated a long campaign to conquer Paris and the rest of France. The remaining tanks, he knew, must be conserved for future operations. He, too, worried about Allied counterattacks. Göring’s boasts about the Luftwaffe convinced Hitler the British couldn’t escape Dunkirk anyway. After studying the map, Hitler confirmed Rundstedt’s halt order. He insisted the perimeter around Dunkirk be respected, to allow Göring’s planes plenty of room in which to operate. Guderian and other generals protested, but Hitler stood firm. The panzers held back.
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@gingerbaker_toad696 I really don't care whether you read it or not. The order was given by Von Rundstedt. It is clearly stated in the war diary of Army Group A, which is available for anyone to read.
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It took a moviemaker of considerable genius to conceive a film about Dunkirk which more or less excluded the Royal & Merchant Navies, in favour of a Spitfirefest. What next? Midway without American aircraft carriers?
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I quite agree. To be fair, though, the film also missed Admiral Wake-Walker and Captain Tennant, who were also important figures in the evacuation. In fact, the film almost missed the Royal Navy altogether, suggesting that the evacuation was carried out by the 'Little Ships,' which in reality brought just over 6000 of 323000 men back, and passing over the role of the destroyers (102000 men), minesweepers & trawlers (77000) and transports(88000) altogether. The RN itself seemed, in the view of the film makers, to have consisted almost entirely of a few helpless vessels wallowing in the Channel, doomed to inevitable destruction unless rescued by a passing Spitfire. Apart, of course, from the 1950s built French destroyer pictured from time to time. In short, a disappointing film, which seemed to develop into a Spitfire Lovefest. If only they had bothered to involve a real historian as an advisor.
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The BEF was actually comparatively well-equipped, but a very small force. For every British division, there were 10 French and Belgian. Once the Belgians capitulated, and the French army more or less collapsed, it is hard to see what alternative other than withdrawal the British had.
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As the speech was made in the House of Commons, and not broadcast at the time, he recorded it for posterity after the war had ended.
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Over 120,000 French were evacuated as well.
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It takes a special sort of genius to make a film about Operation Dynamo and at the same time more or less ignore the role of the Royal Navy.
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Didn't they take 120,000 Frenchmen with them?
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@lesdodoclips3915 Moreover, the British began landing a 'Reconstituted BEF' in Cherbourg, until being told by General Weygand that the French army was no longer able to offer organised resistance.
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I saw the film right through, but admit that I did laugh out loud at that particular scene. Up until that point, I had watched in increasing wonderment a film which achieved what I had always considered to be an impossibility, which was writing the Royal Navy out of Operation Dynamo. I look forward to the director's impending magnum opus, a remake of the Battle of Midway without aircraft carriers.
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@suityboi2126 'Key background role!' Hardly that. Just over 600 ships, almost all manned by RN & Merchant Navy crews, lifted some 338,000 men from the beaches and Mole. Had you just arrived from a distant planet and seen the film with no prior knowledge, you would have assumed that the troops were lifted almost entirely by the Little Ships. Indeed, there was an occasional glimpse of a larger ship, usually wallowing helplessly until rescued by a passing Spitfire, but their true importance was totally ignored. Indeed, the final scene, when the Little Ships arrive when all seems lost is quite astonishingly inaccurate. It totally distorts the actual role these ships actually played, and which they began playing from 30 May, which was to ferry troops from the open beaches to the larger vessels offshore, largely because, in this film, there didn't seem to be any larger vessels offshore! Why would you say that the role of the Royal Navy was boring, whilst seeming to assume that the (actually, intermittent & peripheral) role of the Spitfires was much more exciting?
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@suityboi2126 I know it was 'entertainment.' What perplexes me is the pretense that it was 'history.'
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Hood was lost to a 15 inch shell which exploded in her magazine. Two RN destroyers were lost to torpedoes at Dunkirk.
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He only recorded it after the war. In 1946 or 1947.
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The fact that the film was turned into a Spitfirefest rather spoiled it for me. How in hell can you make a film about Dunkirk and more or less ignore the Royal Navy?
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That would have been difficult. There were no Indian fighting troops at Dunkirk. There were four companies of Mule handlers (all Muslims, by the way) of which three companies were evacuated to Britain. The fourth company, serving on the Maginot LIne and detached from the BEF, was captured.
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During DYNAMO Fighter Command lost 87 airmen and over 100 aircraft to enemy action over Dunkirk whilst the Luftwaffe lost 97 aircraft to the RAF, with others damaged but repairable, these included 28 Messerschmitt Me 109s and 13 Me 110s.
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Only two RN destroyers were lost to torpedo attack at Dunkirk, one to a U-Boat & one to an S Boat.
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There weren't many of those, because the British sent their fighters in what were called 'Squadron Patrols' which meant that for long periods there was no RAF fighter cover at all.
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Probably because it was recorded by Churchill after the end of the war. Speeches in Parliament in 1940 were not recorded, but generally published in newspapers and, of course, in 'Hansard.'
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It is possible almost to admire someone who can make a movie about Dunkirk and almost fail to mention the Royal & Merchant Navies. What next, a new Midway without aircraft carriers?
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The 1958 version was made to be shown to people who knew what had actually happened. The recent one, which seemed largely unaware of the role of the Royal Navy, was made to be shown to people who had no idea.
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