Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Found And Explained" channel.

  1. Shameful! Imagine using a superior force to win a naval (or indeed, a land or air) battle. Everyone knows that war is a sporting contest, rather like ternnis. In short, don't you understand the concept of Force Concentration?
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  2. Not after 1925.
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  3. 'Pocket aircraft carriers that carried maybe a dozen aircraft.' Or, as RN & USN captains of the time might have called them, 'Sitting Ducks.'
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  4. I am sure Von Paulus would have been delighted to have been offered Graf Zeppelin to support 6th Army in Stalingrad!!
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  5.  @TwistedSisterHaratiofales  Yes, of course you were. Of course you 'authored' a book. I hope you asked someone to check your grammar first.
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  6. Really? Would you say that the British built the Lion class battleships, then?
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  7. Oh look! A wish fulfilment fantasist. Graf Zeppelin's air group from late 1938 was intended to be 30 Bf109s and 12 Ju87s. The Bf109 had a desperately weak undercarriage, even weaker than the notoriously delicate Seafire, and, even though a small number of prototype T-2s were built, they, for obvious reasons, were never tested on a carrier, but only on a marked-out area of an airfield. The probability is that they would have been utterly unsuited to the rigours of Atlantic carrier operations, which the British, with years of carrier experience, understood and the Germans, with none, simply did not. Moreover, unless Graf Zeppelin, without any suitable air search radar, attempted to maintain continuous air patrols, the probability would be that a Swordfish attack would arrive unexpectedly. Of course, if such patrols had been operated, how many of the flimsy Bf109T-2s would still have functioning undercarriages, and be able to operate, when it arrived? Oh, and whilst your Ju87s might have been better suited as carrier aircraft, their range with a 500 kg bomb was around 590 kms. A Swordfish with torpedo had a range of 840 kms. Moreover, any incoming Ju87 strike ( 12 aircraft at most, by the way) at a British force could expect to be detected by British air search radar, and met by Fulmars from Ark Royal or Victorious. The Fulmar had many limitations if compared to contemporary land based fighters, but it utterly outclassed the Ju87. Even if your Ju87s were fortunate enough to escape detection, you might wish to know that the largest RN warship sunk by the Luftwaffe in the whole of WW2 was a light cruiser. RN capital ships were intended to keep out 15 inch AP shells, which weighed 879 kgs, by the way. You think that Graf Zeppelin's tiny strike force of dive bombers would sink anything? Think again. Oh, and the circumstances of the Channel Dash were totally different, in that the Luftwaffe sent around 250 aircraft to protect the three German heavy ships as they fled home through the Channel. In short. Dream on!
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  8.  @ulrichschnell2331  There was no such thing as 'standard aircraft carrier tactics' in 1940 or 1941. They evolved in the Pacific, largely because there was nowhere else where carriers could encounter each other in combat. Battlefield repairs are oine thing, but repairing a damaged aircraft with the limited resources available to a carrier are another. A collapsed undercarriage results in damage to the frame of ther aircraft, as well as to the propellers and the engine. In reality, such accidents aboard US and British carriers later in the war inevitably led to the aircraft being written off. Explain how I have 'destroyed my own argument.' The very fact that you have immediately resorted to fantasising about how the Germans could repair damaged aircraft at sea, even though the three naval powers with actually experience of carrier operations later in the war never did, amply demonstrates your lack of understanding. Perhaps you are simply ill-informed, immature, or in the wish-fulfilment industry.
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  9. The undercarriage of the Bf109, even the T-2 version intended for the Graf Zeppelin, was even more delicate than that of the Seafire. The idea of such an aircraft operating from a carrier in the North Atlantic borders on the lunatic.
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  10. The M class boats also compare to Surcouf, as does X1, notable as the only RN warship to be built and scrapped between WW1 & WW2.
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