Youtube comments of doveton sturdee (@dovetonsturdee7033).
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I challenge anyone to produce a greater tribute to any battleship than the following, paid to The Old Lady' herself :-
In July, 1946, HMS Warspite, was sold for scrap. As the most decorated warship in Royal Navy history, the Admiralty had considered preserving her, but ultimately could not afford it in the aftermath of WW2.
On the 19th of April, 1947, stripped of her guns, Warspite departed Portsmouth under tow bound for Faslane in Scotland for scrapping. The mighty warship, which had seen battle in both world wars and escaped destruction so many times was stripped of her guns and destined for an ignoble death. Or so everyone thought. Not long after the journey began, the weather worsened and Warspite showed her first resistance when, on the 22nd, she slipped her tow cable in heavy seas.
The tug crews made the decision to shelter and wait out the storm in Mounts Bay, and this is where Warspite made her final act of defiance. In the stormy seas she broke free of her anchor and drifted deeper into the bay where the surging waves lifted her up and crashed her down among the rocks of Prussia Cove. By the end of the next day the tug crews could only simply report that Warspite was now a battered wreck with no hope of being towed.
Several attempts to re-float her over the next couple of years would fail and by the early 1950s the company who had won her scrapping contract would be forced to drag her to a nearby beach and dismantle her on site. About the best end the proud warship could hope for in the circumstances. An end commemorated in an epitaph by one of her former crew:
"The Subject"
You say you have no subject
And your brushes all have dried;
But come to Marazion
At the ebbing of the tide.
And look you out to seaward,
Where my Lady, battle scarred
Hugs the rock that is more welcome,
Than the shameful breakers yard.
Paint her there upon the sunset
In her glory and despair,
With the diadem of victory
Still in flower upon her hair.
Let her whisper as she settles
Of her blooding long ago,
In the mist that mingles Jutland
With the might of Scapa Flow.
Let her tell you, too, of Narvik
With its snowy hills, and then
Of Matapan, Salerno
And the shoals of Walcheren;
And finally of Malta,
When along the purple street
Came in trail the Roman Navy
To surrender at her feet.
Of all these honours conscious,
How could she bear to be
Delivered to the spoiler
Or severed from the sea ?
So hasten then and paint her
In the last flush of her pride
On the rocks of Marazion,
At the ebbing of the tide.
- Lt-Cmdr R A B Mitchell*
She was not the best armoured battleship of WW2. She was not the fastest, and nor did she have the heaviest weight of broadside.
But she was simply, THE OLD LADY, beloved of the Royal Navy.
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@raghave1043 Nonsense. Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit your agenda.
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@wolfbyte3171 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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@brianconnelly-s5e Farage has no power, but, like the rest of us, has the right, at least for now, to express his opinions.
The Dear Leader is Prime Minister. He needs to learn, and quickly, that, unlike when he was Leader of the Opposition, his behaviour now matters, and that his words, and actions, have consequences.
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But violent, threatening, behaviour is what gets results. Polite objections are simply ignored. Around 15 months ago, a teacher in Batley was victimised because he took an RE class about blasphemy, in which he showed the picture from the Charlie Hebdo magazine.
A mob descended on the school. The teacher is still in hiding. He was thrown under a bus, metaphorically, by the school head, and was abandoned by his union, the education authority, the local authority, his MP, the police, and the government.
The people who brought this about understand the lesson that authority buckles in the face of threats, and will continue to behave in this manner to achieve increasingly extreme demands.
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I think it is more a case of trying to protect their core vote of the public sector, and keeping the bosses of the big unions on side.
The others, such as farmers, the elderly, and those from the private sector, are of no interest, and can therefore be considered expendable.
After all, in the world of Rachel from Accounts, a dead pensioner is both one less pension to pay, and, potentially, one less non labour vote.
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Piorun was part of Vian's flotilla of Cossack, Maori, Sikh, Zulu, & Piorun (originally a British N class destroyer, Nerissa) which had been escorting a troop convoy, WS8B, when diverted to search for Bismarck. The four Tribals all made (unsuccessful) torpedo attacks during the night. Piorun, however, after exchanging gunfire for a time, actually lost contact and was unable to use her own torpedoes.
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Thje title is ludicrous. The target was an aqueduct which supplied water to a major element if rhe Italian civilian population and armed forces. The hope was that destruction would hamper Italian military operations in Albania & in North Africa.
Yes, it failed. Casualties were 1 killed, 1 wounded and 35 captured. Those captured were victims of the failure of a submarine, HMS Triumph, to be sent to the intended pick up point Triumph had a crew of 64, and her mission was aborted after a Whitley bomber had reported that it was ditching, co-incidentally at the recovery point.
Naval commanders feared that the Whitley's distress signal had been picked up by the Italians, and Triumph might, had she been allowed to continue with the operation, have walked into a reception committee.
Churchill's only involvement in Colossus was at second hand, in that it was upon his initiative that a British Paratroop arm was created in the first place'
Do the fools who made this seriously think that Churchill was trying yo micro-manage every single British military operation at the time/
They say ignorance is bliss, but stupidity is unforgivable!
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Just a minor point about HMS Hawke. She was a ship of the 'Edgar' class, of nine First Class Protected Cruisers' built between 1889 & 1894. The class did not have actual ram bows, but ram-style, or inverted, bows, which simply meant that the most forward point of the bow was at the waterline, rather than at the top.
This was intended to maximise the length of the ship, in order to increase speed, provide better hydrodynamic drag, and make the ship more fuel efficient. It was not intended to enable the Edgars to ram other ships to sink them. The Edgars carried 2 x 9.2 inch guns and 10 x 6 inch guns for the purpose of doing that.
The bow was not heavily reinforced in the manner of earlier ships, such as the 1881 built HMS Polyphemus, designed from the outset as a 'torpedo ram' or indeed the Danish Tordenskjold, commissioned in 1882. There is an excellent photograph available of Polyphemus in dry dock, which shows what a real ram bow, intended for that purpose, looks like.
The proof of this may be seen in the photographs of HMS Hawke after the collision, showing her badly crumpled bow. Something which would not have happened had she actually been fitted with a bow designed for ramming.
Just one of a myriad of errors to be found in Robin's imaginative, but largely fact free, book. I fear.
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It has always been accepted the the Ship on the Manchester coat of arms reflected Manchester's history as a Free Trade City. The Ship was intended as a reference to the city's growing association with free trade and enterprise, when the coat of arms was granted, in 1842, by the way. The Ship Canal opened in 1894.
As our first cricket match of the season yesterday, I found myself (a Red) actually agreeing with a team mate (a Blue) on the issue. A most disturbing experience for both of us!
I appreciate, by the way, that Bonnie Greer has never seen anything in Britain that she doesn't dislike, but she is simply wrong about British support for the Confederacy. There is even a statue of Lincoln in Manchester, and a letter from him to the people of Manchester for their refusal to use cotton from the Confederacy, dated January 1863, in a Manchester museum. Perhaps Bonnie should be asked to comment upon it?
It reads :-
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 19, 1863.
To the Working-men of Manchester:
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the address and resolutions which you sent me on the eve of the new year. When I came, on the 4th of March, 1861, through a free and constitutional election to preside in the Government of the United States, the country was found at the verge of civil war. Whatever might have been the cause, or whosesoever the fault, one duty, paramount to all others, was_ before me, namely, to maintain and preserve at once the Constitution and the integrity of the Federal Republic. A conscientious purpose to perform this duty is the key to all the measures of administration which have been and to all which will hereafter be pursued. Under our frame of government and my official oath, I could not depart from this purpose if I would. It is not always in the power of governments to enlarge or restrict the scope of moral results which follow the policies that they may deem it necessary for the public safety from time to time to adopt.
I have understood well that the duty of self-preservation rests solely with the American people; but I have at the same time been aware that favor or disfavor of foreign nations might have a material influence in enlarging or prolonging the struggle with disloyal men in which the country is engaged. A fair examination of history has served to authorize a belief that the past actions and influences of the United States were generally regarded as having been beneficial toward mankind. I have, therefore, reckoned upon the forbearance of nations. Circumstances -to some of which you kindly allude - induce me especially to expect that if justice and good faith should be practised by the United States, they would encounter no hostile influence on the part of Great Britain. It is now a pleasant duty to acknowledge the demonstration you have given of your desire that a spirit of amity and peace toward this country may prevail in the councils of your Queen, who is respected and esteemed in your own country only more than she is by the kindred nation which has its home on this side of the Atlantic.
I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the working-men of Manchester, and in all Europe, are called to endure in this crisis. It has been often and studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow this government, which was built upon the foundation of human rights, and to substitute for it one which should rest exclusively on the basis of human slavery, was likely to obtain the favor of Europe. Through the action of our disloyal citizens, the working- men of Europe have been subjected to severe trials, for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under the circumstances, I cannot but regard your decisive utterances upon the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and re-inspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth, and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity, and freedom. I do not doubt that the sentiments you have expressed will be sustained by your great nation; and, on the other hand, I have no hesitation in assuring you that they will excite admiration, esteem, and the most reciprocal feelings of friendship among the American people. I hail this interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that whatever else may happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exist between the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Submitted by Capt. Gary Holman, Federal Staff
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Firstly, the Luftwaffe could not have 'destroyed' the RAF. The most they might have achieved would have been a temporary withdrawal of Fighter Command north of the Thames to regroup and re-equip.
The Lufwaffe, with the small, tactical, bombers it operated, was never remotely in any position to destroy British war industries, oil facilities, or port facilities. The vast majority of these were far beyond the reach of German fighter cover, and unescorted bombers were sitting ducks during the day, and hopelessly inaccurate at night. Moreover, the Luftwaffe had no idea of the locations of British Shadow Factories.
Have you the slightest idea exactly how big the Royal Navy of 1939/40 was? Or, come to that, how inept the Luftwaffe of 1939/40 was at hitting ships?
If you think it was so easy, wghy wasn't it done?
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A very serious effect. At the start of Barbarossa, the strength of the Luftwaffe amounted to 4,389 aircraft, of which 2,598 were combat types and 1,939 were operational. The inventory amounted to 929 bombers, 793 fighters, 376 dive-bombers, 70 destroyers (Messerschmitt Bf 110s), 102 reconnaissance, and 60 ground attack aircraft, plus 200 fighters in reserve and 60 miscellaneous types.
This force was spread across; 31 bomber, eight dive bomber, "one, one-third" ground attack, two twin-engine, and 19 single-engine fighter groups (Gruppen). Around 68 per cent of the German air strength was operational.
In a document issued by the Department of the Luftwaffe General Staff on 15 November 1940, it was clear that production was barely adequate to maintain current strength, much less expansion of the Luftwaffe. It stated:
[Germany's] own [aircraft] production at best ensures maintenance of the present strength. Expansion is impossible (either in personnel or in material).
Some 1700 aircraft had been lost during the Battle of Britain, but probably even more important was the loss of almost 2700 experienced aircrew.
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Isn't the problem that Starmer hasn't yet realised that he is no longer Leader of the opposition, where he could say more or less what he wanted and no one would much care, but is now Prime Minister, and that his words have consequences.
Labelling the bulk of the British population into the category of 'far right thugs' is likely to exacerbate the current situation, especially when he has also promised special levels of protection for Mosques.
In short, in the first crisis of his Premiership, he is failing badly. There are, without doubt, a number of unpleasant far-right thugs in the country, but all Starmer has done is give them a spurious credibility, by refusing to listen to the concerns of many ordinary British people.
Hopefully, there are some wiser politicians in the labour camp, who will be able to make him aware of what he has done.
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@michaelwilson9849 The 'Battle' as the movie called it, the Battle of El Guettar, between 23 March & 3 April, 1943, was actually inconclusive.
At more or less the same time, 26 March, 8th Army broke the Axis defences at the Mareth Line, and slightly later, on 6 April, drove the Axis forces into wholesale retreat at the Battle of Wadi Akarit.
Odd that George C. Scott's comic masterpiece of a movie missed those details, wasn't it?
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@jimmycampbell78 With the First Past the Post electoral system, the number of seats in the Commons is as follows, with the bracketed number being what it might have been, based on the percentages of those who bothered to vote, and ignoring the rest:-
Labour 411 (219) Conservative 121 (154) LibDem 72 (79)
Reform 5 (93) Green 4 (42).
This is what happens when a system designed to cater for two parties, Tory/Liberal and later Tory/Labour, remains in place when politics, and the number of parties, becomes more complex.
Of course, in the past, the Tories, similarly, have benefitted from this outmoded method, but as early signs suggest that the 2024 General Election may well be the last, isn't it ironic that a party which dropped some half a million votes between 2019 & 2024 should become so all-powerful?
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Not true. Piorun was part of Vian's destroyer flotilla, which arrived the night before the final action, when the crippled Bismarck was already being shadowed by HMS Sheffield, and Tovey had decided to hold off until morning.
Philip Vian chose to carry out a series of torpedo attacks, and each of his destroyers, in turn, acted in this manner. Each except one, that is. Piorun's captain chose to indulge in a quixotic, pointless, gun action, the only result of which was that his ship, alone of Vian's flotilla, managed to lose contact, and failed to use her torpedoes.
'Come on guys, you're better than this.' Whether the video is or isn't is open to debate. You, however, clearly aren't.
Why not simply read one or other of the many excellent books on the actions, instead of flying off into some odd fantasy?
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@HistoryDenied I didn't suggest that it did. However, are you trying to argue that, when slavery was widespread at the time, the English/British should have refrained from the practise? It was, and to a degree still is, endemic in Africa.
Moreover, compared to the Ottoman Empire and Portugal, the British were mere amateurs. They were, however, among the first to condemn and abolish it.
Alas, you are naively trying to impose 21st century values on people from an earlier time. Would you, for example, condemn Marcus Aurelius for not introducing Old Age Pensions into the Roman Empire?
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@johnkitching2248 Because, little chap, it contains allegations without supporting evidence. Specifically 1). That I am a troll. 2). That I am a racist.
Try this for an analogy. My day job is as a naval historian (I have a First in Modern History). If I came across an article claiming that, for example, the Imperial Japanese Navy won the Battle of Midway, and I immediately pointed out the absurdity of the claim, would the pointing out of that fact make me an anti-Japanese racist?
Olusoga's claims about Beachy Head Lady have been demonstrated, by DNA analysis carried out by the Crick Institute, to have been equally absurd. How does me pointing that out make me, in your imagination, a racist?
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Not quite relevant to this issue, but last night (14 February) BBC North West news at 6.30 p.m., contained an article about a wondrous new supermegamosque being built in Broughton, near Preston. The mosque was authorised by Preston Council, but the local Council appealed to what is still called the Government.
Michael Gove's department rubber-stamped the plan, as everyone knew it would. The BBC item had a reporter talking about this mosque to several local people, oddly all Moslems despite there being few actually living in the area, and all enthusiastic about the mosque, followed by an interview with the architects who designed and promoted the scheme. Not one second was given over to the concerns of local people, not of whom was interviewed, followed by the main presenter summing up by lauding the design.
Isn't it grand to see that the BBC, even at local level, proudly maintains the level of impartiality we have come to expect of it?
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@jetaddicted Which Indians? There were around 600 Indian (Muslim) mule handlers, in four companies. Three companies were evacuated, although the fourth, on detached duty on the Maginot Line, was captured. Those who reached Britain were actually honoured with marches through a number of towns (the newspapers of the time confirm this), and Britain's, the toy firm, even produced models of them, for heaven's sake.
Actually, when the Belgians surrendered, a British Division, commanded by Montgomery, as it happens, undertook a difficult night transfer to block the resulting gap in the allied line.
I have never understood why people like you, with no actual knowledge, insist upon displaying you ignorance and prejudice in such a manner. Perhaps you might try to explain?
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@mrfireblade900cc Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that many won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit their agenda.
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@Ludo M The French army in 1939 consisted of 900,000 regulars, together with a further five million men who had undergone regular training and could be called up with little delay.
At the outbreak of war in September 1939, the British Army in the United Kingdom consisted of four infantry divisions up to strength, and one under strength infantry division (the 5 Infantry Division). The recently formed 1 Armoured Division was slowly being equipped with tanks and was undertaking training. There were twelve other infantry battalions scattered around the U.K.
The bulk of the British Army was to the be found in the twelve first line Territorial Army divisions and twelve second line divisions. Most of the personnel in these formations were still undergoing basic training and the divisions were poorly equipped, particularly in terms of artillery and machine guns.
The priority for the British Army was to put together an expeditionary force for deployment to France. This was in anticipation of a German invasion of Belgium and The Netherlands to reach France, in a similar manner to what happened in 1914. The 1 Infantry Division and 2 Infantry Division left immediately for France, with the embryonic I Corps headquarters formed from elements of Aldershot Command. The 3 Infantry Division and 4 Infantry Division followed soon afterwards, allowing II Corps to be formed in France.
By May, 1940, the BEF in France consisted of 13 divisions, of which 5 were regular, 5 Territorial, and 3 semi-trained divisions to be used in second-line duties. There was also 1 Armoured Division and 1 Army Tank Brigade.
The 'only' 500,000 men represented every operational division available to the British in May, 1940. Indeed, three of the divisions were neither trained nor equipped. Would you suggest that the British should have sent men who were in the early stages of training, or even those who had been in the army for a matter of days?
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Oh dear, the distorted revisionist claptrap about the Bengal famine yet again.
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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The BBC news programme which first covered the verdict went to some lengths to suggest that Vaughan had no so much been exonerated, as had escaped on a 'not proven' technicality. In other words, saying that, in effect, he must have been guilty aftert all. They even included an interview with Rafiq, who pronounced himself 'vindicated.'
For whatever reason, both the BBC & the ECB assumed from the outset that Rafiq's unsubstantiated should not be doubted, let alone challenged. The standard of the ECB Inquiry as exposed by Vaughan's defence team proved to be astonishingly inept.
The saddest thing, however, is that the other accused, choosing not to defend themselves against what they believed to be an ECB Kangaroo Court, were promptly hung out to dry on the basis of Rafiq's word alone. Doubtless, the imminent report on English cricket will, of course, 'prove' it to be a seething hotbed of racism.
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@Dennis-JDB Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
Moreover, why would anyone be foolish enough to manufacture a famine in India when 2.5 million Indians were serving with the allied forces. None of which, by the way, were conscripts.
Furthermore, you seem to think that the 1943 Famine was a one off event. Was Churchill responsible for the famines of 1670, 1770, 1873, 1951, 1971, & 1974 as well?
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit your obvious agenda.
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In essence, from the late 1960s at least, politics ceased to involve principles, where individuals with widely differing opinions based on their different experiences of life could argue their cases against a background of mutual respect, and evolved into a profitable career which could be exploited by those with little or no such experience.
Basically, get a degree, become a researcher for an existing MP, then get parachuted into a safe seat. Ingratiate yourself with those already in authority, and before you know it you are a minister.
As most of this breed of MP had little or no understanding of the real world beyond the occasional undergraduate debate, they had no concept of the idea that opinions other than their own might just possibly be valid. Hence, the politics of enmity that has arisen.
Add to that, the fact that modern politics has become a nice little earner, with numerous extra sources of income, and it is understandable that these now well heeled individuals will put self interest before national interest'
I believe that either Plato or Aristotle argued that anyone who sought public office should be excluded from it for that very reason. It seems he was right.
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I wonder if the reality is that the Dear Leader is unable to come to terms with the differences between being Leader of the Opposition and being Prime Minister? He has always, in Opposition, been able to say more or less anything he liked, as no one paid much attention, much like dear Angela, with her chants of 'Tory scum' etc. (whatever happened to Angela, by the way?)
Now he is realising that, as Prime Minister, his words and actions have consequences, and he seems not to like the idea much.
Perhaps the quality of people around him, such as Reeves, Rayner, Cooper, Lammy, and Miliband, are not much comfort, either?
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@maade9642 How is it, then, that in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship bigger than a light cruiser? Moreover, how is it that the Luftwaffe failed so badly at Dunkirk. In point, of fact, in 1940 the Luftwaffe hadn't had any training at all in anti-shipping techniques, as the bombers were seen as providing close support for the army.
S-Boats? Do you know how many the Kriegsmarine had in commission in September, 1940? Thirteen. They were intermittently effective against East Coast convoys, but successes again warships were few and far between.
U- Boats? Not in the Channel. The Kriegsmarine sent three into it in late 1939. They, and their unfortunate crews, are still there. Indeed, in September 1940, the Kriegsmarine had a total of 27 operational boats, of which only 13 on average were at sea on any one day. You are aware, I assume, that U-boats spent the whole of the war trying to avoid destroyers? Actively seeking them out was likely to result in disaster.
Your scenario is only effective if you either ignore or don't know the historical facts.
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Precisely, Prince of Wales (and Repulse) were both sunk by TORPEDO BOMBERS. The Luftwaffe didn't even have an operational torpedo bomber until mid 1942. Similarly, the 1940 Luftwaffe had not been trained in anti-shipping techniques, hence their failure at Dunkirk.
The Germans only had a small number of operational U-Boats in September, 1940. In point of fact, 27, of which, historically, 13 were actually at sea on any one day in September. Moreover, in October, 1940, the Germans sent three U-Boats into the Channel. All three were immediately sunk. The allies had laid a series of defensive minefields, similar to those which had been so successful against German submarines in WW1.
Condors were long-range search aircraft, and had some initial success against unarmed merchantmen. I do not recall reading of any attempt by a Condor to attack a warship, and historically, once merchantmen received defensive armament, Condor crews were forbidden to attempt attacks, because Condors were too valuable, and there were only ever a few of them.
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@MoneyIsSilver 'The Royal Navy was already getting picked apart by the Luftwaffe, though, even before Dunkirke.' Really? In the whole of WW2, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser. Indeed, the Luftwaffe only managed to put a torpedo bomber into to service in mid 1942. By September 1940, the RN had been 'picked apart' in your words, to the extent that, entering the war with 193 destroyers, there were 'only' some 182 destroyers listed as operational or refitting in the RN Pink List for 16 September.
The Luftwaffe, untrained in anti-shipping techniques, had failed spectacularly at Dunkirk, managing to sink only four of the 41 destroyers which were the backbone of the evacuation fleet, whilst the RN, ordered to evacuate 40,000 specialist troops, brought out 323,000 men.
Actually, whilst the Luftwaffe did have air superiority over the Channel, largely because Fighter Command pilots were ordered to stay over the mainland to maximise their chances of survival, Germany never had the remotest hope of transporting an invasion force across it, given their almost total lack of escort vessels and assault ships.
By the way, whilst U-Boats did achieve a degree of success in the wider Atlantic, this was because RN escorts had been temporarily withdrawn to form the Admiralty's massive anti-invasion forces, and had precisely nothing to do with the Luftwaffe. U-Boats did not operate either in, or through, the Channel, because it was something of a death trap. Three boats were sent to operate there in late 1939. They, and their crews, are still there.
'Churchill - thought the Brits were fucked.' You think so? How was it then that, in August 1940, he was confident enough to send a large troop convoy to North Africa? Look up Operation Apology for further information.
In short, stop believing in myths and buy a proper book on the subject.
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A strange, distorted, opinion you have. Certainly, ther Commonwealth and Empire did aid Britain greatly in WW2, but not as early as 1940. There were, in September of that year, only one (Canadian) division and three (Australian & New Zealand) brigades in Britain.
The United States was neutral, selling supplies and equipment to Britain. Greece, Brazil, & Yugoslavia were also neutral, and what exactly was the Jewish League? The United States certainly did look after number one until attacked. How could Poland have done the same? Greece, of course, tried to until attacked by Italy and then Germany. As, of course, did Yugoslavia until invaded by Germany.
Australian troops were equipped entirely with British made weapons. Moreover, they did not need to beg. Australian troops, other than one division, were returned to Australia in early 1942. Oddly enough, in British liners and transports, escorted by British warships.
Perhaps history isn't your strong point. But there are books available.
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'And whilst ive not read any of Gardiners books I've read the more recent "RMS Olympic" by John Hamer, and there's TONS more evidence to support the switch theory that this smooth talker doesn't even mention to you here!' Really? Tell us what some of your 'evidence' is then. I look forward to seeing it.
Aside from the fact that Mr. Hamer has never yet stumbled across a conspiracy theory he hasn't immediately swallowed whole, he seems generally simply regurgitate Gardiner's long disproven nonsense.
'JPMorgan used the event (which oddly enough was much more publicised than Olympic's maiden voyage) to attract & bump off all the 3 billionaires who objected to his forming of the US Federal Reserve.' Firstly, Olympic's maiden voyage was a much more celebrated affair than Titanic's. Haven't you thought to ask why there is no contemporary footage of Titanic leaving Southampton, for example? Or that there is precisely no newsreel footage of Titanic in her completed state? Secondly, the claim of any connection with the Fed. only appeared with the rise of Social Media in the 1990s. Were you to take the time & effort to look into the careers of Astor & Guggenheim, you would be shocked to discover that neither had expressed any opinion about the Fed. Straus is easier to check, as his speech in support of the Federal Reserve concept, made in October, 1911, was reported in the New York Times and can still be read. I can give you the details if you wish.
'In fact one of the propellers dropped off on one NY crossing, which required another return to Belfast,. and another chance to switch the ships!!' No, it didn't. One propellor blade was damaged when it struck an underwater object. Olympic returned to Belfast, and a new blade was fitted, before Olympic left, some three or four days later. 'A chance to switch the ships?' Only in your fevered imagination.
'Oh, and it doesnt matter if there were a million workers at that shipyard who all knew about "the switch" or how many were drunkenly talking about it in bars.' There is no record of any such claims by anyone, and Ulstermen are not noted for being either particularly secretive, or being cowed by authority. If you think that your comment is true, please supply a source. By the way, the term source refers to a contemporary record, such as a newspaper, not to some nonsense you read in a switcher video.
'And how after the Cunard rescue ship dropped the "Titanic" lifeboats off at White Star NY pier terminal, they noticed how the names had been chiselled off of them but so badly they could still tell they were "Olympic" ' Who are these 'they' and why is none of this documented? You evidently are unaware that lifeboats did not have the names of the ship to which they were allocated carved into their sides, largely because they were often transferred between other ships of the line. The most any lifeboat would have had might have been a plate attached by a couple of screws. Why have none of these plates survived, either?
Furthermore, the US Inquiry began on 19 April, 1912. The boats languished in New York harbour for months. How was it that this dramatic evidence of the switch never reached Senator Smith, nor anyone else connected with it?
Sorry, owd lad, but you seem to have swallowed whole most of the nonsense excreted by switchers over the years. I would suggest that you try to think for yourself, but I doubt that you would dare.
Still, any 'evidence' you can produce would be fascinating to me.
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@taffy2126 Unfortunately, it seems that any monument to an old white man is fair game. In Scotland, at the moment, there is a 'demand' that a statue of David Livingstone (The explorer and missionary still widely admired and respected throughout Africa) be removed, because of his 'connection' with slavery.
The connection is that Livingstone, who came from a very poor family, worked for a time from the age of ten in a cotton mill in Glasgow, for 14 hours a day. As this was just before 1833, he may have handled and sorted cotton which had been picked by slaves, and thus benefitted from slavery.
Honestly, I am not making this up!
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I wouldn't go so far as to describe Montgomery as a 'genius.' Certainly not at the level of Marlborough, but I have never understand why commentators, predominantly American, constantly insult him for his cautious approach. Had I been on the front line at, for example, Second Alamein (as my father was), I would have been reassured by a General who made sure of his superiority in intelligence, numbers, equipment, and logistics before beginning a battle.
I appreciate that, of course, this doesn't look quite so exciting in a movie.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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No. The real reason was that the Royal Navy had, and retained, total control of Home Waters, and in particular of the Channel. The Germans did convert around 2,000 barges into rudimentary troop transports. These were to be towed, in pairs and at little more than walking pace, across the Channel by tugs and trawlers.
At the time, the German navy had six operational destroyers and a similar number of large torpedo boats to escort them, with around thirteen operational S Boats. All that the Royal Navy had within five hours steaming of the Channel was around seventy light cruisers and destroyers, supported by some five hundred smaller warships.
'I hear the argument a lot that they didn't have enough landing ships to effectively transport troops.' If that is the only argument you hear against Sealion, then you obviously haven't been listening hard enough!
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@MoneyIsSilver Nonsense. That didn't happen at Dunkirk, it didn't happen in the latter half of 1940, it didn't happen to the East Coast convoys, and it didn''t even happen in the Battle of Crete in May, 1941 where, despite total air supremacy, the axis were unable to land ground troops on the island, and one troop convoy, heading for Maleme, was annihilated.
Air power became crucial later in the war, but not as early as 1940.
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@philwilliams953 In point of fact, Olusoga has a B.A. in History, His postgraduate qualification is in Broadcast Journalism.
Starkey is on a different level as an historian. Come to that, I probably am as well, unless Olusoga has a First in Modern History as well.
Be that as it may, Starkey does not claims that the Slave Trade was a minor part of British history. He does, correctly, argue that the way it is presented is both distorted and two dimensional, and the British are, by propagandists like Olusoga, habitually presented as villians. The African chieftains who were happy to sell off their surplus population, either to European slave traders or Arab slavers, always escape criticism.
This is particularly ironic as, without the enthusiastic co-operation of these chieftains, the trade could not have developed as it did.
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@philwilliams953 I would prefer an even-handed assessment of Britain's Imperial Past, rather than Olusoga's two dimensional approach.
What Olusoga is really about is “I only want to tell you the negative stories from your past,” he said, “ which necessarily means you cannot have an honest debate about it.'” Why else does he ignore the complicity of African Tribal Leaders, or Arab Slavers in the slave trade, and why did he make such openly false claims about, for example, Beachy Head Lady?'
Frankly, I don't care what you feel or don't feel about your country, as I suspect I know considerably about the actual history of the British Isles than you do.
Come to that, having read some of Olusoga's writings, I suspect I also know more honest history than he does.
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@martynblackburn9632 Some did, although there were others in the SS, particularly in the 13th SS Mountain Division.
However, didn't much larger numbers of Hindus, Sikhs, and Gurkhas, among others, also fight on the allied side? Of course, like Mr. Hunt, one may disregard the Christians & Jews as of no importance.
The whole point of war memorials was 'Equality in Death.' Who gave this person the authority to overturn that judgement by, in effect, declaring that Muslims were/are of greater importance?
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@andreleclerc7231 Lord Gort thought he would have 2-3 weeks to prepare for the arrival of the Germans at the Dyle because he had received assurances to that effect from his superior, Gamelin. Gamelin was confident that Belgian built anti-tank defences at the Gembloux Gap and along the Dyle would enable the British & French quickly to establish defensive positions, and the French 7th Army would link up with Dutch forces via Breda. As Julian Jackson ( 'The Fall of France. The Nazi Invasion of 1940' OUP 2003,) wrote :- ' The fall of France can be greatly attributed to the poor strategic planning of the French High Command.'
As early as 15 May, Paul Reynaud telephoned Churchill to say "We have been defeated. We are beaten; we have lost the battle." Churchill immediately flew to Paris, to be told by Gamelin that the French Army had no strategic reserve.
On 19 May, General Edmund Ironside, the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff,conferred with Gort at his headquarters near Lens. He urged Gort to save the BEF by attacking south-west toward Amiens. Gort replied that seven of his nine divisions were already engaged on the Scheldt River and he had only two divisions left to mount such an attack. He then said that he was under the orders of General Billotte, the commander of the French 1st Army Group but that Billotte had issued no orders for eight days. Ironside confronted Billotte, whose own headquarters was nearby and found him apparently incapable of taking action.
At this point, Weygand devised a plan for an attack southward by the trapped Allied forces in the north. This information was disclosed to Billotte, but not to Gort. When Billotte was killed in a car crash on 23 May, 1st Army Group was left leaderless for three days, and knowledge of the plan was lost. King Leopold, by the way, on 21 May had announced that the Belgian Army could not conduct offensive operations, as it lacked tanks and aircraft and that unoccupied Belgium had enough food for only two weeks. Leopold did not expect the BEF to endanger itself to keep contact with the Belgian Army but warned that if it persisted with the southern offensive, the Belgian army would collapse. Leopold suggested the establishment of a beach-head covering Dunkirk and the Belgian channel ports.
There were two local allied offensives at the time, by the way. On 21 May the British & French attacked attacked southward at Arras, and on 22 May the French attacked from the south at Cambrai. Neither force knew of the other, and no attempt seems to have been made to co-ordinate the two.
There is much more in this vein, but in short Gort had totally lost any confidence he might have had in his superiors, did not believe Weygand capable of rescuing the situation ( apparently by establishing a 'Flanders Redoubt' using ports no longer in allied hands), and, in the absence of coherent orders to the contrary, began a withdrawal to Dunkirk, thus making possible the evacuation of 192,000 British & 140, 000 French troops trapped in the north. On 28 May, the British 3rd Division made an overnight march to block the gap in the allied line resulting from the surrender of the Belgian army.
Immediately after Dynamo, the British began landing a 'Reconstituted BEF' in Cherbourg, only to be told by Weygand that the French army was no longer able to offer organised resistance.
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Many were landed at Sierra Leone, which was a British Colony at the time and they were, therefore, safe from being re-enslaved.
Between 1808 & 1860, British anti-slavery patrols captured some 1600 slave ships, and freed some 150,000 slaves.
In December, 2017, the British National Archives displayed an early photograph of slaves aboard a Royal Navy warship, HMS Daphne, as symbolic of the 'profoundly oppressive' nature of the vile British Empire.
Actually, the slaves had been rescued from an Arab dhow the previous day, and were on their way to freedom in the Seychelles. This was explained in detail to the National Archives staff by an historian who had the ship's log and the memoirs of her captain, George Sulivan, who also took the photograph.
However, as this wouldn't fit the current narrative in what is rapidly becoming the country formerly known as Great Britain, as far as I know the caption was never changed.
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By June, 1941, the idea of a German invasion was a distant memory if, indeed, it had ever been much more than a fantasy in the first place, given the naval supremacy of the Royal Navy at the time.
By the way, neither the US nor the Soviets 'came to the rescue.' The Soviet Union was invaded by Germany in June 1941, and the US was attacked by Japan in December, 1941, after which Germany declared war. Stop pretending altruism where none existed.
Incidentally, there are many good books which explain the actual facts in some detail. Perhaps you might read one or two some day?
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@mrjockt I enjoy reading the opinions of Sealion 'Would haves.' Always expounding on what thew mighty Luftwaffe 'would have' done, but never able to explain why it never managed to do it.
Actually, troops on the ground complaining about the lack of RAF support were right. For long periods of each day of the evacuation, the RAF was indeed absent. 11 Group's own records confirm that Park had, at most around 200 available fighters. His oprions were to maintain small frequent patrols, or less frequent, larger ones, known as squadron patrols. He chose the latter, which involved often as many as 40 aircraft, but inevitably left large periods on each day when any cover was absent. Take 1 June, for example. Of four major Luftwaffe attacks during the morning, only one, the third, faced any RAF opposition at all. Indeed, Luftwaffe references to their attempts to attack the evacuation fleet rarely if ever refer to the RAF as a major impediment, their main complaints being the distance from their bases, the adverse weather, and their lack of appropriate training.
Next, the RN never intended to use the heavy ships of the Home Fleet, the battlecruisers, battleships, and heavy cruisers, to oppose any invasion. They were based mainly at Rosyth, with a battlecruiser, two heavy cruisers, and a carrier at Scapa Flow. They could then operate any sortie by German heavy ships, but would only come anywhere near the Chgannel if German heavy ships did. The reality was that, where the sinking of barges was concerned, quick firing 3 inch, 4 inch, 4.7 inch, & 6 inch guns were far more effective that the 8 inch, 15 inch, & 16 inch guns of the Home Fleet.
U-boats were never risking tn the Channel, because it was unsuited to their operations. In October, 1939, the Kriegsmatine sent three to attempt to operate there. THey, and theyr crews, remain there to this day. Why do you think, by the way, that U-boats played a minor part in the attempt to destroy Dynamo? There were, by the way, only 27 operational U-boats in September, 1940, of which 13 were at sea on any one day.
'With air superiority over the Channel the Luftwaffe could concentrate on removing that threat.' Really? In September, 1940, the RN had around 70 destroyers and light cruisers within five hours of the Channel, with some 500 smaller warships in immediate support. Moreover, the RN could operate by day & night, which the Luftwaffe could not. Did you not read how many RN destroyers the Luftwaffe sank in the whole of the war, by the way?
'Then there’s the additional half dozen or so Battleships and the numerous heavy and light cruisers the Germans had access to by mid 1940 that would probably have been operating in the Channel as well.' Now you are simply being silly. The only two German battleships, Scharnhorst & Gneisenau, had sustained torpedo damage during the Norwegian campaign, and were under repair until November. One heavy cruiser had been sunk during the same campaign, leaving only one, Admiral Hipper, operational, and of the pre-war German light cruiser force, of six vessels, two had been sunk and one so badly damaged as only to have been fit for training duties thereafter.
So, the mighty German Navy of your imagination actually consisted of one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, and some six operational destroyers.
Fantasise awaty, but the facts are against you.
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Let's see. Over 100 Belgian & French divisions either capitulated or surrendered in 1940. Thirteen British divisions were evacuated (along with 120,000 French troops). The French did better?
The British & Canadians then fought & won the Battle of the Atlantic, the Royal Navy won the war in the Mediterranean, the Royal Navy maintained the supply lines to the Soviets in the Arctic, The Royal Navy planned and executed every major Allied assault landing in the west, The British provided 892 0f the 1213 warships at D-Day, 3261 of the 4127 landing craft, two thirds of the allied aircraft, and the British & Canadians provided two of every three men who landed on the beaches on 6 June.
The RAF maintained a constant air offensive against Germany, the Western Desert Force defeated the Italians in North Africa, and were the dominant partner in the Tunisian campaign. The British & Commonwealth armies fought and won the war against Japan in Burma, inflecting the greatest single defeat on Japanese land forces in the whole of the war, Operation U-Go.
You are an ignoramus or a simpleton. Go away.
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Using your skill and judgement, would you be good enough to explain how invading Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium, all without declaration of war, shows that 'they tried to maintain peace the entire time?'
I must lack your erudition, as it really doesn't seem that way to me.
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@andreleclerc7231 With a population of around 41 million, the British managed to build and man the largest navy on earth. Moreover, a navy which, by the imposition of a blockade by the Northern Patrol, played a major role in the defeat of Kaiser Bill's Germany by, effectively, starving it to defeat.
Fighting a war on the cheap! You really don't have a clue, do you?
By the way, military casualties in WW2.
UK 383,700 ( 0.82% of population )
France 210,000 ( 0.50% of population )
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@rjpunkin The Royal Navy withdrew the H, I, & J classes on the 29th. But promptly returned them on the 30th. The Royal Navy sent 41 destroyers to Dunkirk. Four were lost to air attack. Of those damaged ( more by grounding and collision than air attack) almost all were repaired and back in service within two weeks.
If Stukas would sink every ship within range, why didn't they at Dunkirk? Why did Oskar Dinort, commander of Stuka-Geschwader 2, write about the immense difficulties his aircraft experienced in attacking destroyers at sea, and why did Wolfram von Richthofen, commander of Fliegerkorps VIII, tell his superiors that providing air cover over the proposed landing areas was totally beyond the capabilities of his command?
Perhaps, instead of sagely informing people of the mighty deeds the Luftwaffe 'would have' achieved, Sealion enthusiasts should be required to read up on what the Luftwaffe at the time did, or more relevantly, did not, achieve, and what the people in command thought of their real prospects
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Whereever did you get this drivel from? White Star had attempted to claim for repairs to Olympic following her collision with HMS Hawke, but a court held that the fault was that of the Solent Pilot in charge of Olympic at the time. As a result, though White Star could not claim, neither were they held liable for repairs to HMS Hawke.
Consequently, they paid Harland & Wolff £25,000 and the repaired Olympic was back at sea in Late November, 1911. A nuisance, but as the company had posted profits in the region of £1 million in the previous financial year, not a serious one. Indeed, also in November 1911, White Star confirmed with H & W their order for the third Olympic, RMS Britannic.
There was never the remotest suggestion that Olympic was a 'write off' as inspection teams fro the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and White Star themselves had already confirmed.
'1. Irrelevant due to the fact that they were going into receivership if they didn't somehow get the insurance money for the Olympic, given that it was crippled.' Nonsense. White Star were a successful company. I have already told you of their trading strength, and their order for a third Olympic. Does that sound like a company on the brink? Seriously?
'2. There is no such thing as bad publicity, and it could be spun to cover any possible bad consequences.' Do explain how anyone could 'spin' the loss of 1500 lives and a huge liner as anything other than a bad thing!
'I believe that the sinking of the ship at sea where it could not be recovered or inspected, would cover up any obvious proof of the switch. I'm still keeping an open mind.' This may come as a shock to you, but when ships sink, it is always at sea!
After posting such nonsense, you claim to be keeping an open mind? As a famous tennis player was wont to say 'You cannot be serious!'
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Dynamo reduced a catastrophe to a mere defeat. For the Royal & Merchant Navies, it was a remarkable victory, and for Bertram Ramsay a triumph. What a pity that the recent 'Dunkirk' movie seemed almost to write the Royal Navy out of the story, in favour of the 'Little Ships' myth.
What a pity, also, that the subsequent evacuation of 192,000 troops from French Atlantic ports, Operation Aerial, has, apparently, been lost to history.
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1). Good luck trying to lay mines with your seven minelayers, when the Royal Navy carried our nightly destroyer patrols during the invasion threat period. The Germans did install some 150 medium, heavy & super-heavy guns along the Channel Coast. In the whole of the war, these weapons successfully damaged seven merchant ships, totalling 8,000 tons. They even managed not to hit HMS Erebus when she shelled Calais on 29 September, and HMS Revenge when she bombarded Cherbourg on 10/11 October. You think those same guns would deter fast moving cruisers & destroyers? Think again.
2). You don't think that any invasion force needed resupplying, then?
3). That presupposes that you manage to get an invasion force ashore. Moreover, how long do you think Fighter Command, from bases north of the Thames, would take to react?
4). 'Sitting ducks?' Like the evacuation fleet was at Dunkirk, when the Luftwaffe totally failed to prevent Dynamo? Do you not realise how inept the Luftwaffe was at hitting ships at sea in 1940? Or that it didn't even have an operational torpedo bomber until mid 1942? Or that in the whole of the war it sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser?
5). Nonsense. The only German parachute division had around 4,500 men left in September, 1940, and the Luftwaffe had only around 220 transport aircraft still operational. With no hope of relief by ground troops, exactly how long do you think lightly armed paratroopers might last?
6). Simply not true. Moreover, what happens to your supply vessels and towed barges at night, when the RN can operate unhindered? Even if not actively transporting supplies, thewy would remain helpless.
7). You have to get your troops ashore first, don't you?
8). See 7). above.
9). See 7).above. Moreover, had you actually seen the final German plan, you would know that the first wave was intended to be around 6,700 men from each of nine divisions. These divisions would lackmotor transport, and most of their divisional artillery. As to Panzer Divisions, these were not included in the first wave, as the Germans lacked anything remotely resembling tank landing craft.
10). Aee 7). above. Moreover, other than your fevered imagination, what evidence you have that Churchill would have fled anywhere.
note: Launching Sealion in July. Good idea. At a meeting on 20 June, Raeder ( I assume you know who he was) stated that the Kriegsmarine had no suitable assault vessels, but hoped to have assembled some 45 barges within the next two weeks. Perhaps you should have added?
11). If all else fails, the invasion force could always cross using Montgolfier balloons.
I don't really know why I bothered to debunk your bizarre wish-fulfilment fantasy at such length, when three words would have been sufficient. Perhaps when you grow up, you will learn this?
THE ROYAL NAVY.
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@raviladva3959 Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't accept any of this, as it doesn't suit your obvious agenda.
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@gregmackenzie5822 What U-boats? In Septermber 1940, the Germans had 27 operational boats, of which 13 on average were at sea on any one day. Moreover, they avoided the Channel, which was heavily mined and defended, after three boats sent there in late 1939 were promptly sunk. Generally, in WW2, U-boats tried to avoid escorts. Seeking them out as you suggest was unlikely to end well for the Germans.
Which S-boats? The Germans had 13 in September, 1940.
Which other naval forces? In September, 1940, the largest operational German warship was a single heavy cruiser. There were also three light cruisers, five destroyers (based in Cherbourg) two destroyers, based in Brest, and seven Wolf/Mowe class torpedo boats.
The actual probability, once the Invasion barges were detected at sea, moving slowly towards the Channel in unwieldy box formations, would be the arrival of Halsey's combined DF 16 & DF 18 from the Nore (9 destroyers), and Pizey's DF21 (8 boats) supplemented by 8 destroyers, of the Rosyth Escort Force, and of 23 Destroyer Division also based at the Nore, from the North. From the West (Portsmouth) the boats of Creasy's DF1 and Stevens' DF8 ( 12 boats), and the 5 French boats of DF23, would arrive slightly later. After that, boats from Plymouth (DF3, DF11, and DF17, 13 boats) could be expected, and a few hours later the Harwich destroyer and light cruiser force would appear. In total, around 70 destroyers and light cruisers, and this doesn't include the five hundred or so smaller vessels, such as fleet minsweepers, gunboats, sloops, frigates, corvettes, MLs, MTBs, MGBs, and auxiliary minesweepers arriving more slowly.
What did the Germans have available to fight these off? A handful of ships as listed above, and a few R boats, akin to British MGBS.
In all probability an action the naval equivalent of the US 'Marianas Turkey Shoot' of the Pacific war.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't accept any of this, as it doesn't suit your agenda.
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@netrolancer1061 Well, not according to Bob Ballard or David Mearns, who both stated that 'the British' sank Bismarck. In point of fact, by the time she sank, she had lost her main armament, her bridge superstructure and command staff, and her internal communications. She was extensively on fire, listing heavily, and settling by the stern. Hardly scratched, in your mind, I suppose?
In fact, she had been reduced to little more than a practice target after around 20 minutes on 27 May. Still, if you wish to believe that, had she been scuttled, it made her slightly less sunk, then enjoy your delusion.
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Oh dear, there is no such proof at all. 'Go to wiki to see the two ships side by side and you will see there names are both painted over you can read the tug boats name that is pushing the titanic easly in the pic.' Aside from the fact that White Star ships had their names engraved into the steelwork of the bows, the names of the tugs were scratched out because the port of registry was also shown. As that port was 'New York' seeing it would have instantly discredited any claim that the ship was Titanic, because Titanic never reached New York, of course. Actually, the footage is of Olympic, and was hastily adjusted so that the makers could pass it off as Titanic at a time when, after the sinking, there was little or no footage of the real thing and there was a considerable demand for it.
'Sea trails in that pic you will find a square hold just above the round port holes. you will find this square hole dissappares in march 1912. now go find a picture of titanic in dry dock underconstrution you will see it has no such hole but the hole shows up latter after march 1912.' I won't comment on that as it doesn't seem to be in any recognisable language. You might wish to explain one or two more obvious problems, such as why does the wreck have a window pattern at the forward end of 'B' deck which accords with that of Titanic & differs from the Olympic of 1912, and why was the number 401 observed on the blade of a propellor at the site?
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@nukni4225 Churchill would have known about a similar phrase used by Garibaldi. Between the wars, Churchill contemplated writing a biography of Garibaldi. The phrase Garibaldi used was ' "I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battle, and death," which was hardly stolen by Churchill.
However, that wasn't what you claimed. You wrote ' Remember his "we shall fight in the mountains, we shall fight on the beaches ..." Stolen from Garibaldi,' and you cannot produce a source to justify your statement.
Therefore, you should not muddy the waters. You should apologise for your false claim, or concede that you are a liar.
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@homelessjesse9453 I assume you mean the Suez Canal? Which was controlled by the British, who had a major naval base in Alexandria. Likewise, sailing from the Inland Sea, via the Cape, to the Channel. Where does the fuel come from? What is 'mind boggling' is that anyone could possibly think that such an operation was even feasible, still less that the Japanese, with their ambitions firmly set in the Far East, would even take such a foolish gamble.
By the way, Tokyo to London, by sea, is 12965 nm, even via the Suez Canal (which couldn't in these circumstances be used). At 10 knots, that would be 54 days at sea. A typical Japanese capital ship of the period, Kongo for example, had a maximum range of 10,000 miles at 14 knots.
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Operation Mercury? That was the one where the Royal Navy prevented any axis reinforcements reaching Crete by sea until the ships were diverted to evacuation duties, wasn't it? The one where one convoy was annihilated, and the second returned to Crete.
Dunkirk? 'Ran them off?' Do you mean when the Royal Navy was ordered to evacuate 40,000 technical specialists, and actually lifted 338,000 troops? When, of 40 RN destroyers involved, four only were lost to air attack? Where, in fact, 235 vessels were lost, of which 142 were small boats simply abandoned at the end of the operation, and 27 were vessels smaller than tugs? Where, of 373 allied warships ranging from MTBs to a cruiser, 39 were lost, 7 of which were to collision or grounding? Simply quoting inaccurate figures out of context merely discredits any argument you may think you have.
As usual for a Sealion fan, you then indulge in all the 'would haves' about the mighty Luftwaffe. In 1940, the Luftwaffe had not been trained in anti-shipping operations, hence the failure (contrary to your view, of course) at Dunkirk. Moreover, the Luftwaffe lacked an operational torpedo bomber until mid 1942. Indeed, in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser.
Even their own commanders, Wolfram von Richthoven & Oskar Dinort, believed that protecting an invasion force was beyond their capabilities. To put your absurd nonsense about sinking 'half the Home Fleet' into perspective, the RN in September, 1940, had around 70 destroyers and light cruisers in bases within five hours' steaming of Dover, backed up by around five hundred smaller warships. There were a further 40 or so destroyers also in Home Waters. I haven't, of course, mentioned the Home Fleet, as most of it was at Rosyth, guarding against a potential sortie by (actually, non-existent) German heavy ships.
The Admiralty, of course, had concluded that faster, smaller, vessels with quick firing weapons were better equipped to deal with the Rhine barges towed by tugs which passed for the German invasion fleet, and which the Kriegsmarine estimated would require eleven days, and nights, to land the first nine divisions. Nights, by the way, are when the RN could operate, and when your mighty Luftwaffe couldn't. So, your 'after the Luftwaffe sank half of the home fleet the rest WOULD HAVE withdrawn' is wide of the mark as well.
Ju52? You mean the 220 or so which was all the Luftwaffe had operational in late August, 1940, after they had not replaced their heavy losses in the Low Countries? You must account for further losses during the paratroop dropping stage of the invasion, although possibly not that many as the Germans only had just under 4000 paratroopers available at the time. Supplying the 800 tons per division that was the minimum a German infantry division required when in action would be a further challenge, of course, but not much of one as it presupposes that any of these formations managed to land in the first place, although I assume you will say that they 'would have.'
Resupply by ships during the day? Which ships? The Germans had a small number of coasters which were to be used to tow barges, but few proper supply ships, and where would these supplies be landed from these non-existent ships in any case?
'The Luftwaffe even this early in the war was very effective against ships , especially this close to their bases.' Actually, close to their bases or not, quite the opposite is the case. How else do you explain their failure during 'Dynamo?'
Instead of indulging your wish fulfilment fantasies about what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done, perhaps you might read up about what the Luftwaffe actually did, or more precisely, didn't/couldn't do, in 1940? Then, instead of talking about 'sinking half the Home Fleet' you might read up on precisely how large the Royal Navy in Home Waters was at the time.
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HX 84, River Plate, Renown attacking Scharnhorst & Gneisenau off Norway, Barents Sea, 1st Battle of Narvik, Glasgow & Enterprise engaging (and defeating) 12 German Destroyers & Torpedo Boats in the Bay of Biscay, 28 December, 1943, Li Wo, February, 1942. That is a few to be going on with, although there are others.
The fact is, because the British had a large navy, they were rarely outnumbered in a naval action, but on the odd occasion when they were, they still did not hesitate to engage.
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@georgekaragiannakis6637 Firstly, the Royal Navy based the Home Fleet at Rosyth, and didn't intend to use it against any attempted invasion, because the Admiralty had already place around 70 light cruisers and destroyers, and some 500 smaller warships, within 5 hours' steaming of the Straits. Battleships, heavy cruisers, and carriers are really not suitable for use against towed barges.
Secondly, Prince of Wales & Repulse were sunk by torpedo aircraft. The Luftwaffe in 1940 had no torpedo aircraft, other than a small number of slow seaplanes based in Norway, and used to attack merchantmen.
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Yes indeed. Germany had to strike to eliminate those hotbeds of brutal communism :- Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, & Luxembourg.
Of course Britain (not England) and France declared war in 1914 and again in 1939. Your sainted adolf invaded Czechoslovakia & Poland, as well as those listed above, without the courtesy of a declaration of war, as did Kaiser Bill to Belgium in 1914. Usually, large numbers of armed troops crossing a border gives a people a good idea what is happening, don't you think?
In the normal world (you might have read of the concept) if in 1941 hitler wished to make peace, couldn't he have approached the British embassies in Sweden, Switzerland, or Spain? Indeed, couldn't he have approached the neutral United States? Even if hitler knew what Hess was planning, was flying to Scotland, then bailing out near what was believed to be the estate of a minor Scots. aristocrat who might or might not have had some connection with the Westminster government really the best that he & Rudolf could conceive.
You are wrong about hitler, by the way. He was a very fine painter. He could do a whole apartment in a week-end. Two coats! I hope you know the reference.
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Your level of ignorance is quite stunning. The nearest the Germans might have got to any form of air superiority ove SE England was likely to have been the withdrawal of 11 Group to bases north of the Thames, for a period of regrouping & re-equipping. As the British were outproducing the Germans in fighter aircraft from June 1940 onwards, this was likely to have been completed swiftly, and did not preclude an RAF return to SE England in the event of any Sealion attempt.
'Then eliminating the royal navy BEFORE the mainland invasion with hith altitude carpet bombing the bigger ships and using u-boats against the smaller ones plus using the Italian and german navy' As a famous tennis player used to say 'You cannot be serious!' The 1940 Luftwaffe had not been trained in anti-shipping techniques, hence the humiliating failure at Dunkirk, and it didn't even acquire a torpedo bomber until mid 1942.
In fact, in the whole of WW2, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger that a light cruiser. To put that into perspective, in September, 1940, the RN had 70 light cruisers & destroyers within five hours steaming of the Dover Straits, supported by around 500 or so smaller warships, and a further 40 or so destroyers further away but still in Home Waters. That does not include Force H, or the Home Fleet, as the Admiralty had no plans to deploy the heavy ships (5 battleships & battlecruisers, and seven cruisers) against the Sealion barges.
German navy? - You mean, I assume, the one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, and seven destroyers which were all the Kriegsmarine had operational at the time?
Italian navy? - You have a cunning plan for getting it through the Straits of Gibraltar's gun batteries, past Force H, whilst finding a method of persuading the Mediterranean Fleet not to get involved?
U- Boats? On average, there were 13 boats at sea on any one day in September, 1940. Moreover, throughout WW2 U-boats tried very hard indeed to avoid close encounters with escorts and/or destroyers. Now you suggest that they should actively seek them out? That would not end well for your U-boats.
Mines? The RN carried out nightly destroyer patrols through the Channel. The Germans had seven converted minelayers, possibly supplemented by some of their seven destroyers. Do you know what effect the explosion of a 4 inch or 4.7 inch HE shell has on a laden mine deck? Quite spectacular, I believe.
In short, why not read a book or two about the reality of Sealion, before resorting to fantasy?
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There is more to assessing the result of a battle than simply counting the corpses. Was Stalingrad, for example, a German victory? The first part of the battle, between the battlecruisers was undoubtedly a German tactical victory. The second, between the main battlefleets, a British one. The High Seas Fleet didn't so much 'leave the field of battle' as run desperately for the Jade, from which it rarely emerged again.
Strategically, the battle was a British victory. The High Seas Fleet never dared face the Grand Fleet again. Nor, indeed, did Scheer even attempt to challenge the British trawlers and armed merchant cruisers of the Northern Patrol, which systematically starved Germany into collapse & revolution. Instead, he argued for unrestricted submarine warfare, which brought the United States into the war on the allied side.
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@eriktrimble8784 'The RN built exactly ONE aircraft carrier after WW1 ended and before WW2 started: the Ark Royal.' That wasn't what I wrote. I wrote 'The Royal Navy actually only built 6 battleships after 1928, whereas they built a large number of aircraft carriers.' In any case, you are wrong. Eagle was converted from a battleship building for Chile into an aircraft carrier, Courageous, Glorious, & Furious were all converted from light battlecruisers into fleet carriers between the wars, and Hermes was launched in 1919. After 1928, the RN built 6 Illustrious class carriers, 1 maintenance carrier, and 7 light fleet/maintenance carriers were also built before the end of the war, and a further 11 light fleet carriers were laid down from 1943. The light fleets, by the way, were not primarily intended for ASW work. With a capacity of around 50 aircraft, they were intended to operate with the main fleets, but built quickly and expected to have short service lives. The carriers intended for ASW duties were the escort carriers and, later, the MAC ships. THE RN built/converted 19 MAC ships and 6 Escort Carriers before US built Archer, Attacker, and Ruler class escort carriers from the United States. These, rather than the larger fleets and light fleets, were the vessels which were involved in the Atlantic sea war.
As to Battleships being ' pretty much useless' in the Atlantic, wasn't it battleships which which sank the Bismarck & the Scharnhorst, and deterred Scharnhorst and Gneisenau from attacking convoys by their very presence? Also 'In the Mediterranean, they were more substantially important. But still VERY much second fiddle to the CV, ' wasn't it, in fact, rather the other way round? A Carrier played a subsidiary role at Matapan, and they were important providing the defence of Pedestal from air attack, but wasn't it the presence of Rodney & Nelson during the same operation which deterred an attack by the Italian surface fleet?
Finally, what technology did the RN ignore ? Radar, asdic, all or nothing armour, centimetric radar, hedgehog, squid, HF/DF, Fighter Direction Rooms, dual purpose secondary armament in capital ships, the creeping attack, Blackett's Theory of Convoy Defence? Compared to the Scharnhorsts & Bismarcks, with their low angle secondary armament and their outdated incremental armour, even the Nelsons were a generation ahead, and the KGV, were almost out of sight.
Agreed, the RN was short of Atlantic escorts in 1940 and early 1941, but this was because of the unexpected collapse of France. Pre-war assumptions had expected the French Fleet to play a prominent role alongside the RN in the sea war, but in the event the RN was obliged to find sufficient ships to retain control of the Atlantic and, in the latter half of 1940, to retain around 60 destroyers in home ports for defence against invasion.
The RN was not woefully unprepared for ASW operations. Agreed, like every other navy, they had probably overestimated the effectiveness of asdic, but they could hardly have been blamed for not foreseeing the failure of France.
Finally, Britain did not come close to being strangled in 1939-40. That is, simply, a myth.
As to this :- 'They chose to focus on trophy ships that were obsolete, rather than the ships that would actually be needed in a new war' between 1935 & the outbreak of WW2, the RN launched 4 aircraft carriers, 22 cruisers, 59 fleet destroyers, and 40 sloops/corvettes, but only 2 'trophy' battleships.
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You miss the point. In the eyes of these people, only British Slavery was ever Bad Slavery. That practised by others was simply an early form of social service. The Portuguese transported more slaves to the New World than the British ever did, but cries of 'Henry the Navigator must fall' seem conspicuous by their absence.
Moreover, modern slavery doesn't seem to concern them much either. After all, who cares if child labour is used to produce the cheap trainers, clothes, and smartphones that they desire?
However, becoming excited about something which ended, in Britain's case, almost 200 years ago, is much more fun. Isn't virtue-signalling wonderful!!
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Preventing 200,000 or so British troops from evacuating from Dunkirk (the 130,000 or so French troops largely returned shortly afterwards) or a further 192,000 evacuating from west coast ports (Operation Aerial) might have forced Britain to come to terms. If, however, Britain continued to resist (as she historically did) then the Royal Navy still held absolute naval supremacy. How do you suggest large German forces would actually reach Britain?
In late 1940, after heavy losses in Norway and the Netherlands, the Germans only had around 4,000 to 5,000 trained paratroopers left, and the Luftwaffe only had just over 220 operational transport aircraft, for the same reason. Assuming that these paratroopers land, where do they get heavy weapons support, or even supplies from, and what use is an airfield without transport aircraft to land on it?
You don't seem to understand exactly how large the Royal Navy was at the time. Moreover, surely you know how badly the Luftwaffe had failed at Dunkirk? You must do, as you mentioned Dunkirk in your post. In 1940, the Luftwaffe had been trained in air support for ground troops. They were good at it. However, they had not been trained in anti-shipping operations, and they were poor at them. THey did get better in 1941, but even then, in the whole of WW2, they sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser.
Just to explain this point, in September 1940, the RN had 120 destroyers in Home Waters. Of these, over sixty were at bases within fours hours steaming of Dover, supported by several light cruisers, and around five hundred smaller warships.
How long do you think the barges full of troops, even troops with wonderful MP43s, towed at little more than walking pace by tugs and trawlers, and more or less unescorted, would have lasted? By the way, do you know why the MP43 was so called? Because it was introduced in 1943. Something of a problem here!
I do enjoy the posts of Sealion 'would haves,' always pontificating about what the mighty Luftwaffe 'would have' done to the poor old Royal Navy, but never able to explain how it was that, when the opportunity arose, they never managed to do it.
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A BBC documentary about Nelson, broadcast recently, made great play about his support for slavery, quoting extensively from the letter to Simon Taylor. At the time, the BBC knew that the famous letter, which allegedly existed only as a copy, had actually been re-written after Nelson's death by anti-abolitionists keen to recruit the memory of the recently deceased victor of Trafalgar to their cause.
An actual copy of the original, a so-called 'pressed copy' similar to an early carbon copy, has resided in Admiralty archives since 1805, and has recently been brought to light by a naval historian. There are, I understand, twenty-five differences between the Admiralty copy, and the letter quoted by the BBC. Odd, or perhaps not so odd, that the BBC knew of this, but chose not to mention it?
I believe that the Admiralty copy is now with the National Museum of the Royal Navy. Probably safer there, as there was possibly a risk that the National Maritime Museum might 'lose' it.
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The BEF in 1914 consisted of 6 divisions, The BEF in France in 1940 consisted of 13 divisions. There were twice as many British troops in France at the start of 1940 as there had been at the time of the Battle of Mons.
Britain, or Britain & the Commonwealth/Empire, supplied the greater number of troops from the Western Allies until around the last eight months of the war. At D-day for example, two thirds of the troops who landed on the beaches of Normandy were British & Canadian. 892 of 1213 warships present were either RN or RCN, 3261 of 4127 landing craft were British/Canadian manned, and two thirds of the allied aircraft were RAF crewed.
All the major assault landings in the west, except Operation Dragoon, were British dominated, and protected by the Royal Navy.
This was all managed with a population of 46 million, compared to the US population of 131 million. No wonder British military deaths in WW2, at 0.83% of total population, were much higher than those of any other Western Ally, and certainly hugely greater than those of the United States, at 0.32%.
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The Home Fleet was based in Rosyth & Scapa Flow. It would only have entered the southern part of the North Sea if any German heavy ships did, and we now know that the Germans in September, 1940, only had one operational heavy ship, Hipper. The remainder were either under repair, or refitting.
You really don't need battleships, battlecruisers, and heavy cruisers to sink barges. Light cruisers, destroyers, and smaller auxiliaries are much more effective, which is why the RN had around 70 destroyers & cruisers within four hours' sailing time of Dover, together with several hundred smaller vessels, ranging from sloops, minesweepers, gunboats, armed trawlers and drifters to armed yachts. As to 'sitting ducks' the most obvious sitting ducks would have been the invasion barges attempting to cross with minimal protection during the day, and no protection at all at night.
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You don't think that, just perhaps, there might be a difference between ships on the open sea, with less than impressive AA guns, their aircraft protection down at sea level, and taken completely by surprise, with a battleship in a narrow fjord, with early warning radar, fighter protection in the immediate vicinity, massed AA support, both on the ship and on hills overlooking the fjord, protective anti-torpedo netting, and smoke pots capable of being operated in 90 seconds/
If you don't think there is a difference, perhaps you should?
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@waynepatterson5843 Oh well. In 1940 the Royal Navy was the largest navy on the planet. However, I see you have now become a Sealion enthusiast.
Mine Blockades : The German navy had eight converted minelayers, possibly supported by a further seven destroyers capable of minelaying. By September, 1940, the Royal Navy had 698 fleet & auxiliary minesweepers in service, almost all in home waters. Additional, the Royal Navy carried out nightly patrols of the Channel throughout the invasion threat period. Perhaps you might consider the effect of a 4 inch or 4.7 inch HE shell exploding on a laden mine deck?
U-Boats:- In September, 1940, the Kriegsmarine had precisely 27 operational 'frontboote,' of which 13 were at sea on any one day. However, none were near the Channel, because in October 1939, the Germans had sent three there and all three were sunk. The Channel was a deathtrap for submarines. The next time the Germans sent any there was after D-Day, out of desperation. Air cover, and the various Naval Escort Groups, slaughtered them.
Coastal artillery :- By the end of August, 1940, the Germans had established over 150 medium, heavy, & super heavy gun batteries along the Channel coast, and these began firing at British CE & CW convoys, which consisted of small coasters and colliers, as they passed up and down the Channel, from 12 August. Between 1940 & the end of 1944, there were 531 such convoys involving a total of 9097 ships. Care to guess how many were sunk during this period? Thirty-one. Care to guess how many were sunk by your wonderful batteries? NONE! In fact, seven were damaged. IN THE WHOLE OF THE WAR. Would you care to explain how these wonder guns, which failed to sink small coasters moving at around six knots, would sink or deter destroyers and light cruisers moving at more than twenty five knots.
Luftwaffe :- The Luftwaffe in 1940 was a tactical air force, trained to support the army. It had had no training at all in anti-shipping operations, and didn't even acquire a torpedo bomber arm until mid 1942. At Dunkirk, it had spectacularly failed to prevent the evacuation of 323000 British & French troops. With everything in their favour (ships either stopped or moving slowly, and crowded with troops) the Luftwaffe bombers managed to sink, of 41 RN destroyers present, precisely four. Using your skill and judgement, please explain how that same Luftwaffe would manage to inflict significant damage on the anti-invasion forces that the Admiralty had assembled by September, 1940. As you certainly don't know, these forces consisted of around seventy destroyers and light cruisers within five hours steaming of Dover, with a further five hundred or so smaller warships in support, and, within twenty four hours, at most, there were a further 51 cruisers and destroyers available.
Barges :- Indeed, because of a lack of other alternatives, the Germans intended to use converted Rhine barges, towed by tugs and trawlers, to transport troops (without artillery, motor transport, or tanks, but with plenty of horses) across the Channel. The Kriegsmarine estimated that it would require eight days and nights to transport nine divisions across the Channel. Would you care to guess what might happen at night, for example, when aircraft could not operate, by the Royal Navy could?
If you actually knew anything about the Sandhurst War Game, or, indeed, about Sealion at all, you would have known that whichever scenario the gamers tried, it ended up with the RN entering the Channel almost unmolested and annihilating the barge trains.
You might wish to read:-
'Invasion of England, 1940' by Peter Schenk.
'Hitler's Armada' by Geoff. Hewitt.
'Coastal Convoys' by Nick Hewitt.
'The U Boat Offensive, 1914-1945' by V.E. Tarrant.
'History of the War at Sea, Volume 1' by Stephen Roskill.
For starters. Unless, of course, you wish to remain in your current state of remarkable ignorance.
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Nonsense, start to finish. Ohio was transferred to the British Eagle Oil Company specifically in order to have a large fast tanker available for Pedestal. The US War Shipping Administration notified her captain that she was to be requisitioned. Her crew was replaced with a British one because of the critical nature of the mission, and because the British at that time were more experienced in the demands of sailing in convoy. The captain and crew were unhappy at being replaced, but at no time were arrested. In the event, two of the ships which did sail had American crews.
Five ships of the convoy arrived. Ohio was the only one under tow, actually being attached by cables to two destroyers, with a third close astern to help with the steering.
There was no American carrier involved at any time, before or after Pedestal, in escorting Malta convoys, although USS Wasp did carry out two ferry trips, in order to fly RAF Spitfires into Malta, in April, 1942. The British carrier sunk during the Operation, HMS Eagle, was actually torpedoed by a U-Boat, not sunk by air attack.
Might I ask why, when you obviously have little accurate knowledge of the circumstances of Operation Pedestal, you even bothered posting?
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Where ever do you get these notions? Did you simply watch a conspiracy video & swallow it whole?
'It is very interesting that Morgan was booked on the maiden voyage of Titanic, but cancelled at the last minute. Very interesting.' It would indeed have been interesting, had it been true, but Morgan had already, in March, 1912, announced that he intended to be at an event in Venice before Titanic could have returned from New York. He hadn't sailed on Olympic for her maiden voyage in 1911, either. Do you consider that suspicious, by the way?
Actually, checking Morgan's returns from Europe from 1904 to 1912 reveals that only twice (1908 and 1910) in those years did he return to New York from Europe before July, and in one of those years (1908) he returned so early only to attend a family wedding, before heading back to Europe a few days later and staying there until late August. By the way, those occasions when he returned early were in June - never as early as April.
Even more conclusively, a New York Times newspaper article of Thursday 28th March 1912 reveals that in March "J. Pierpont Morgan has written a cordial letter to the committee, announcing that he will be in Venice on April 23 for the inauguration of the biennial International Art Exhibition, April 25, and dedicate the new Campanile of St. Mark's." This means Morgan would certainly have no reason to return to New York on April 10, when he was due in Venice by April 23, given that the transatlantic voyage at the time was at least 5 days long, and therefore he could not have made it back in time.
'I don't think Gardner ever thought the workers in Belfast even knew or were complicit in the switch.' Really? You don't think that H & W's workers were bright enough to realise that they were suddenly carrying out modification to the ships to alter their identities? You have a much lower opinion of the intelligence of those workmen than is warranted, just as you seem to assume than most of the office & management staff of H & W were complicit in the plot.
Where is there any anger about Gardiner's book? It is simply, and accurately, proven to be the entertaining nonsense that it was.
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The UK & France declared war on Germany because both had military alliances with Poland, of which Hitler had been well aware, that they would declare war if Germany invaded Poland. Germany had already invaded Czechoslovakia without declaration of war. Germany then invaded Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium, all without declaring war. Germany also invaded the Soviet Union, again without declaring war.
If the British & French waited for a German declaration of war, they would probably still be waiting when the tanks entered Paris. Generally, the arrival of troops, tanks, and aircraft across a border was taken as a clue to what was intended, with or without the prior arrival of a scrap of paper.
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@JBrandeis1 You don't think that Briggs, who was on the bridge right behind Holland and Kerr, or Tilburn, on the Boat Deck where Prinz Eugen's shell started a fire in the ready use lockers, were reliable witnesses, then? You don't think that observers in Prince of Wales, watching the flagship for tactical signals from Holland, might have known precisely when the ship exploded, or where the fires were? You don't think that observers from CS1 were able to contribute their evidence either? You don't think that Prinz Eugen's War Diary has anything to say on the matter? You don't think that the technical experts who attended both Courts of Inquiry were able to give them the benefits of their specialist knowledge? You don't think that conclusions can be drawn from the known ballistic features of German weapons, even when this became fully available to everyone after 1945? You don't think that Sir Stanley Goodall, Director of Naval Construction, might have known something about the reasons for the loss?
Oh well.
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Either of the Nelsons and King George V could have gone 'one on one' as you simplistically put it, with Bismarck. They all had much superior armour and weights of broadside.
That, however, is irrelevant. When you have superiority of numbers, you take advantage of it. It is called Force Concentration. The US Navy demonstrated something similar, equally effectively, at Leyte Gulf. Incidentally, Bismarck was sunk by two battleships, supported by two heavy cruisers. You don't know much about the Royal Navy of WW2, do you?
Still, if you want fairness, go and watch a game of tennis. Fairness doesn't apply in war.
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@djharto4917 Indeed, Britain & France declared war on Germany. After Germany invaded Poland, despite knowing that Poland had military alliances with both. Germany didn't actually declare war on any European country. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium and the Soviet Union were all attacked without the courtesy of a declaration of war, although the arrival of tanks, troops, bombers and, in some cases, einsatzgruppen, could be regarded as clues to German intent.
As to 'There is not one shred of evidence in the archives that Hitler was going to invade Britain.' Sorry, but that is total nonsense. As early as 30 June, General Jodl (OKW Chief of Staff) had issued a memorandum discussing a landing. on 2 July Hitler issued a Directive 'The War Against England' stating that 'A landing in England is possible,' on 12 July, Jodl issued a memorandum describing the invasion as 'a river crossing on a broad front,' and on 16 July, Hitler issued Directive 16, which you can look up for yourself.
Admiral Raeder discussed OKW's plans with Keitel & Jodl on 22 July, explaining that the navy require 10 days to transport the first wave of 13 divisions across. Hitler ended the meeting by stating that 40 divisions would be required. On 23 July, the army stated that their preparations would be complete by mid-September. On 25 July, after another meeting Raeder asked Hitler for authority to commandeer shipping throughout Germany & Occupied Europe, and was given such authority. Raeder estimated 3500 vessels of all kinds, but mainly coasters, tugs, trawlers, & barges. The barges would require extensive conversion, and, as most were unpowered, needed at least 400 tugs.
On 15 August, the decision was made that the attack would take place on 15 September. By then, the Kriegsmarine had assembled 159 coaster transports, 1859 barges, 397 tugs, & 1168 motor boats. There were a number of other meetings between 15 August and the final abandonment of the plan on 12 October, but I won't bore you with facts of which you seem utterly unaware. You might wish to read 'Invasion of England - 1940' by Peter Schenk, for a full, 359 page account of the plan which you claim didn't exist, from the German point of view.
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Try to understand my comments. I have kept them simple, for even the most gormless of switchers to understand.
Olympic was returned to sea on 20 November, 1911, after repair by Harland & Wolff. At that time, Titanic was around five months from completion. There are even photographs of the two together in October, 1911. Titanic is the partially painted one, with only one funnel in place.
By the time Titanic left Southampton on 10 April, 1912, Olympic had completed five further Atlantic round trips since returning from repair, and was in New York Harbor, halfway through her sixth.
In order to return to sea, her insurance (for two thirds of her building costs) had been renewed, and she had full Board of Trade certification.
Is this clear enough for you to understand? You could easily have verified all this for yourself, but I appreciate that switchers cannot usually cope with mere facts.
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@alexalbrecht5768 Have you actually read the full details of the damage which the 18 inch torpedo caused to Bismarck? It was far more than simply jamming of the rudder, there were also extensive tears in the structure of the ship, serious internal flooding, and significant weakening of the stern. You can look up the full details for yourself, should you so choose. Repulse performed better, in that she was able to avoid torpedo hits for a while.
Barham was hit by three or possibly four torpedoes closely adjacent to each other, something which any capital ship, let alone one 25 years old, could be expected to survive.
By December, 1941, the Kriegsmarine had 250 boats in commission. Sinkings in Nov., 1941 were 76056, and in December 93226. As the monthly target was 600,000, this rather demonstrates the extent of German failure. The only times the Germans actually reached their target was after the US entered the war, when U-Boats had their second Happy Time off the East Coast of the United States because Admiral King chose not to organize convoys, and shore lights were not extinguished. You may be aware that the British & Canadians detached escorts from their own groups to help the US navy out and bring the slaughter to an end.
Yorktown was hit by three bombs at Midway, and later by two torpedoes. Illustrious was hit by six bombs. Yorktown was subsequently scuttled. Illustrious was still able to steam at full speed, and subsequently reached Malta. In total, I would agree that Yorktown took heavier damage, but as she ended up a crippled wreck, I fail to see how her performance was superior to that of Illustrious. Are you familiar with the comment made by a US Navy Liaison Officer aboard HMS Indefatigable on 1 April, 1945, when she was hit by a Kamikaze? 'When a Kamikaze hits one of our carriers, it's six months in Pearl. When one hits a Limey carrier, it's 'sweepers, man your brooms.'
Exactly how did British designs fail so catastrophically in WW1? Tell me in full of a British battleship lost in action as a result of naval gunfire.
'The design and employment of British vessels in WW2 was the worst of the allies and was only compensated for by sheer numbers.' Simply making such a comment doesn't make it so, although it does rather illuminate your prejudices.
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@Boppy-B-B How is that 'segregation?' Gurkhas did, by the way have their own officers, as also did Indian formations.
Within an 'Indian' Brigade, by the way, there were usually three battalions. Two were Indian, and one British. Read about, for example, 4th Indian Division at 2nd Alamein, which had three infantry brigades, consisting of 3 British & 6 Indian, battalions.
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The Admiralty report, with which teams from White Star and the Board of Trade concurred, referred to damage to propeller shafting, but not to the propeller itself. Only propeller shafting intended for Titanic was used, not the propeller itself. This idea was, simply, an invention of enthusiastic switch fanatics who simply could not bring themselves to accept the facts about the number discovered on the blade at the wrecksite.
The collision with HMS Hawke did not involve keel damage, again as the Admiralty synopsis, which made no reference to any such thing, confirmed. The first suggestion of keel damage was made in the 1990s by Robin Gardiner.
Although a court case did place the blame for the collision on Olympic, and thus White Star could not claim from Lloyds, it also placed the blame on the Solent Pilot who had charge of Olympic at the time, George Bowyer, and not on Smith.
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Which 'boats' might they have been? The British had taken almost all the available boats. As one single example, when it became clear that Antwerp was about to fall, the destroyer HMS Brilliant removed 26 merchant ships, 50 tugs, and 600 barges from the port.
Immediately after Dunkirk, the Germans were no more equipped to attempt an invasion than the British army was to oppose one. Moreover, the war in France did not end on 4 June. The rest of France was still unconquered, and the British were still evacuating troops from western ports (over 192,000 of them) until 25 June. The very reason von Rundstedt stopped the tanks on the Aa canal was to have them serviced and repaired to be ready for the second stage of the campaign.
In short, there were no ships or boats available. Why do you think the eventual German plan involved, almost entirely, converted river barges towed by tugs?
Finally, of course, whilst the post-Dunkirk British army was, briefly, in disarray, the Royal Navy was certainly not. Any invading force needed to find a credible way past it, and the Germans never came remotely close to determining one.
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@msreviews5576 Actually, Churchill had significant influence on the strategy of the Western Allies throughout to war. One of his major achievements was to dissuade George Marshall from forcing through his ideas about a landing in France in 1942 or 1943. The Island he saved, by the way, together with the Commonwealth & Empire, remained the dominant force in the west until the last nine months of the war in the west. Certainly, D-Day would never have been possible without the British & Canadians.
He didn't, by the way, 'win the war,' which is why I have never claimed that he did. The war was won by a great alliance, with the Soviet Union playing the major part on land. Churchill, and the British resistance in 1940-41, made possible that resistance.
Churchill didn't 'fade away' after the war, either. He was Prime Minister again from October 1951 until April 1955, when he stepped down at the age of eighty.
Finally he didn't make any reference to a "shall reign a thousand year " empire. He actually said, 'if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."
Did the words 'Commonwealth' & 'if' pass you by?
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Remember the old maxim that 'I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?' I suspect that the Preston councillor who has been so vocal on this issue has never heard it, or, at least, profoundly disagrees with it.
I believe he described Mr. Farage as a 'divisive' figure. So what? shouldn't a free society involve divisive figures and robust debate? The only nations I can recall in recent times where only one opinion was permitted are China, North Korea and, historically, the old Soviet Union and nazi Germany. Perhaps the Councillor ought to move to somewhere more appropriate to his beliefs?
As a Prestoner, who actually has been making monthly donations to that particular hospice for some years, I hope that this particular councillor will offer to make up the money of which he has deprived it out of his own pocket. I suppose that, at least, I have the right to hope!
I wonder, by the way, how many people actually objected?
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@jimdavies6764 Simply untrue. The British had an 'Agreement of Mutual Assistance' with Poland, signed on 25 August, 1939, which specifically referred to British support in the event of an attack by Germany on Poland. Read, if you wish, Keith Sword. "British Reactions to the Soviet Occupation of Eastern Poland in September 1939" in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Jan., 1991), pp. 81-101.
Presumably, you feel that Britain should have remained quiescent, and allowed Germany to conquer all of Europe unchallenged?
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@andreleclerc7231 Perhaps you are truly ignorant of the facts, or perhaps you have allowed your prejudices to blind you to them. The Allied (largely, French dominated) plan for 1939-40 was for a defensive strategy to be followed. The bulk of the French army would stand behind the Maginot Line, whilst the best French, and the (entirely motorised) BEF units would move up in support of Belgium. British & Commonwealth contribution on land would be gradually increased, as conscription (which did not exist in Britain in peacetime) was introduced in the UK, and troops from the Commonwealth ( Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, mainly) and Empire (India) were ferried to France by the Royal Navy. At the same time, the Royal Navy would re-impose the blockade on Germany which had been so successful in WW1. In other words, a re-run of WW1.
It should have worked. 135 Allied divisions ought to have been able to fight a defensive battle against 141 German ones, especially since the Allies had a significant superiority in armour, and the bulk of the French army was secure behind formidable defences.
Perhaps the question you should ask yourself is, why didn't it? Do you really believe that, had the BEF been twice the size it actually was (20 divisions instead of 10, perhaps) it would have made any difference at all when the French army largely disintegrated in a matter of days? In other words, what was the difference between the French army of WW1, which fought so gallantly and doggedly, and the French army of WW2, which, for the most part, apparently didn't?
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@urielstavras4968 Unlike Germany, Britain had not been actively planning for war for several years, and nor had the British been frenzedly re-arming. In 1940, after the collapse of France & Belgium, aside from one Canadian division and two Australian/New Zealand brigades, the defence of Britain from invasion was entirely in British hands.
On a more general note, if you now bleat about poor little Germany, you might consider whether invading, without declaration of war, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Belgium was really such a good idea?
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Actually, stood alone against a heavily militarised country which had successfully defeated Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Germany was, by the way, actively supported by Italy, and supplied with raw materials by the USSR.
A shame that there don't appear to be any schools in South Africa any more, sonny.
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@BillFromTheHill100 By the time Churchill became Prime Minister, Britain had already been at war for almost nine months. The Phoney War had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with France, who dictated Allied military policy on land, and Chamberlain, who was simply not equipped to be a war leader, and who was already dying of cancer.
Churchill during the so-called Phoney War period was First Lord of the Admiralty, and could influence the way in which the Royal Navy was used, but had no control at all over bombing policy, which was dictated by the Air Ministry and the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Kingsley Wood. In any case, there was no bombing of 'sleeping German cities' during the Phoney War period.
You do seem to have a fascinating obsession about Churchill, and you are indeed blessed in that you don't seem to let simple facts get in the way.
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The Hipper class cruisers had boilers which broke down regularly, German destroyer designs had high pressure boilers which were equally unreliable, were poor seaboats, and the later ones were overgunned, making it almost impossible to work their main armament in anything but a flat calm, both the Bismarcks and the Scharnhorsts had incremental armour which was a generation behind US & British designs, obsolete low angle secondary armament, and the Bismarcks had outdated 4 x twin gun main armaments.
As to armour, the Bismarcks had 12.6 inch belt and 4.7 inch horizontal, the Scharnhorsts 13.8 inch belt and 4.1 inch horizontal, and the King George Vs (and Nelsons) 14 inch belts and 6 inch horizontal.
'Better ships?' Not really.
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Then explain the fact that, by September, 1940, the Germans had assembled 200 transports, 2100 converted barges, 400 tugs, and over 1100 motor boats in French, Dutch, & Belgian ports. Add to that the nine infantry divisions assembled to form the first wave, supported by a weak parachute division, the eight divisions assembled for the second wave, and the six divisions alloted to the third wave.
Then explain the numbers of planning meetings held during the summer, involving Hitler, Keitel, Jodl, Halder, & Raeder.
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@ClassicFormulaOne1 I am not defending British actions, I am explaining them, based on my knowledge of the realities of naval warfare in WW2, following extensive interviews with veterans, including a Hood survivor, as part of my degree. Possibly you have never heard the statement 'we fight the ship, not the men' which was common to sailors of most navies (with, of course, the exception of the Japanese) in WW2. The glib and facile statements you make about Dorsetshire might please your prejudices as you sternly pass comments on events of three quarters of a century ago, but they have no basis at all in fact. I doubt you even know that, for many years after the war the survivors of Bismarck & Dorsetshire head regular reunions, and as late as the 1970s some of the last living Bismarck survivors visited Dorchester to lay a wreath to commemorate the loss of Dorsetshire in 1942. Hardly the actions of men who felt their colleagues had been abandoned, I suggest. The U-Boat report, by the way, was not an excuse. Captain Martin stated that on of his officers, Lt.Cdr. Durant, claimed to have seen a smoking discharge about two miles off the leeward beam. Martin himself crossed to the compass platform and observed the same thing. As there was no British ship at that location, and as U-Boats were believed to be in or approaching the vicinity of the action, (Bismarck had previously transmitted a number of signals on a U-Boat frequency, which were believed to be homing signals) Martain really had no choice. When the first U-Boat actually arrived is irrelevant, as the British in May 1941 did not have the benefit of your confident certainty.
Your comment about Scharnhorst is simply nonsense. No U-Boat sightings were claimed. The British searched until no more survivors could be detected. The weather, water temperature, and sea state, all factors which you cheerfully discount, were critical factors.
Incidentally, on 8 June, 1940, the British aircraft carrier Glorious and two escorting destroyers were sunk by the battleships Scharnhorst & Gneisenau in the North Sea. Over 2000 men went into the water, and 1200 died. Scharnhorst & Gneisenau did not stop to pick up survivors. The water was cold, but the sea was calm and visibility good. Would you care to comment?
The facts are that, whatever the realities of the events at North Cape in 1943 or of the Bismarck action in 1941, your personal prejudices will not allow you to accept what actually happened, as you much prefer your own version. Why not read a few of the many excellent accounts of the actions which are readily available? You might try 'The Bismarck Chase' by Robert Winklareth, in particular, as he is an American author, and therefore not troubled, as apparently you believe me to be, by any sense of 'shame.'
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What exactly are you writing about? Just to educate you, Bismarck was on a mission to sink supply convoys. The Home Fleet intercepted her, engaged her, and sank her, before she even saw a supply convoy.
'A true slap in the face to the United States.' This would be the neutral United States, content to leave Britain and her Commonwealth to defend democracy alone, until dragged kicking and screaming into WW2 by events at Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war, I assume?
After which, the head of the US Navy, Ernie King, allowed around 600 merchantmen and most of their crews to perish within sight of the American East Coast by refusing to set up a convoy system, simply because it was a British idea.
It anything was 'a pathetic disgrace' the Second Happy Time and Operation Drumbeat meets the criterion.
When you grow up, perhaps you might buy a book or two to improve your knowledge?
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Intact? Apart from having lost her main armament and her superstructure. David Mearns' investigation of the hull identified significant torpedo damage.
At the time of her sinking, she had lost her main armament, her superstructure and command staff, all internal communications, and was a mass of internal fires. She was settling by the stern, and listing heavily. Barely scratched, I suppose?!
In fact, she was finished as a warship within twenty minutes of the action commencing. After that, she was a helpless, if difficult to sink, practice target.
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Oh, and I forgot to add.
Ironic, really. El Guettar was a spoiling action undertaken by von Arnim, over two weeks after Rommel had departed Tunisia. The Panzer Division used, 10th Panzer, only arrived in Tunisia in December, 1942, and, apart from a 4 day period, was never commanded by Rommel, but was part of von Arnim's 5th Panzer Army, as I wrote earlier.
Rommel no more 'planned' this action than John Paul Jones did the Battle of Midway, despite what the ludicrous movie, and many less well informed, people, might claim.
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When in Valparaiso harbour after the Coronel action, Spee was entertained by the German business community to dinner. At one point, a German businessman proposed the toast 'Damnation to the British Navy!' Spee refused the toast, remained in his seat, but when everyone else had resumed theirs, rose, raised his glass, and quietly said, 'I drink to the memory of a gallant and honourable foe.'
As it says on the memorial to Cradock & his ships in York Minster, 'God forbid that I should do this thing, to flee away from them. If our time be come, let us die manfully for our brethren, and let us not stain our honour.'
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The Luftwaffe had failed badly at Dunkirk. It had not been trained in anti-shipping operations, and in the whole of the war sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship bigger than a light cruiser. Attempting to attack warships, and in particular destroyers, is the opposite of what U-Boats actually did in WW2. Moreover, the Channel is a death trap where U-Boats were concerned. Three were sent to operate there in late 1939, and were promptly sunk.
When the RN had around 70 destroyers and light cruisers within 4 hours steaming of the Channel, and the Germans were, potentially, trying to cross it by means of Rhine barges towed by tugs and trawlers, and needed eleven days simply to get the first wave ashore, then in all honesty what was happening (or, at night, not happening) was more or less irrelevant.
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@tomriley5790 The most fascinating thing about the whole High Seas Fleet saga is that, however one might perceive the merits of the cause for which they fought, in two world wars the German armed forces battled determinedly almost to the end against increasingly impossible odds. U-boats, towards the end of both wars, continued to embark on what were increasingly becoming suicide missions, and even the Kriegsmarine surface fleet,, when obliged to fight, did so bravely.
The only significant German force to which this cannot be applied was the High Seas Fleet. After Jutland, almost two & a half years before the end of the war, Scheer consciously chose to keep it safely from harm, and was allowed to act in this manner. Certainly, the fleet sortied twice, barely going out of sight of land and rushing back home at the merest mention of the Grand Fleet. These were sorties in the same sense as, in WW2, an aircraft flying from, for example, Blackpool in the North West of England to Filey in the East of England on a routine training flight was carrying out a 'sortie,' and had about as much relevance to the war effort of the respective countries.
The final irony, of course, was when the High Seas Fleet, after unloading coal, ammunition, & breech blocks in the ports of a defeated Germany in revolution, nobly presented itself at Scapa Flow to be interned, before (to the secret delight of the British & Americans, who were eager to prevent France & Italy demanding some of the better German warships) scuttling itself.
Thus, after Jutland, no daring raids on the Channel (protected by a force of, in the main, pre-dreadnoughts), no dawn swoops on the cruisers and destroyers of Tyrwhitt's Harwich Force, no genuine sorties by fast cruisers and battlecruisers against the auxiliaries imposing the blockade. In short, nothing, apart from Scheer's insistence on unrestricted submarine warfare, which had the triumphant result of bringing the United States into the war on the Allied side.
At what point, I wonder, did Reinhard Scheer conclude that it was quite nice being moored in the Jade estuary, and much to be prepared to going out into that unpleasant North Sea, where nasty people lurked? The inactivity of Tirpitz in WW2 can be justified, in the sense of the classic 'Fleet in Being' preventing Allied capital ships from being deployed more usefully elsewhere. This cannot be applied to the Scheer's antics in WW1.
The Grand Fleet had one main purpose, which was to protect the blockade. Where else could it have been used? The Mediterranean was an Allied pond, with the Austrian & Turkish navies totally outmatched anyway, although the former Goeben & Breslau did show more activity than their former sisters in the Jade, and the Japanese were allies.
The surprising thing, in many ways is that, when Hindenburg became, in effect, military dictator of Germany later in 1916, he did not question why Scheer had been allowed to turn his fleet into an irrelevance, and decide to transfer some of the crews to the army, the guns to the Western Front, and the coal & steel to industry.
Of course, some would say that the above is nothing but British propaganda, I expect.
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@mattbowden4996 'Each one of the actions your propose risks the isolation and annihilation of the raiding force by either the Grand Fleet on the not inconsiderable number of RN Destroyers and Submarines operating in the Channel.' The RN wasn't operating submarines in the Channel. Why would they? Moreover, if you are now saying that the HSF shouldn't have been risked in situations where destroyers were present, then exactly when would it have been safe to take any action at all?
Furthermore, if you insist on a policy of despair, by which I mean the WW2 Hitler approach of avoiding risk to capital ships or even cruisers, then all you achieve is, at the end of the war, a more or less untouched High Seas Fleet being handed over to the victorious Allies. Which is, of course, exactly what happened. Yes, of course some risk is involved, as it is in any military operation, but if the course of action taken is the one you suggest, which seems to be 'we can't achieve anything so we shouldn't even try' then you simply confirm my conclusion that, in North Sea terms, after Jutland the HSF was an irrelevance. Scheer might just as well have advised the All Highest to decommission his big ships, send the crews & guns to the Western Front and recycle the steel.
The reality of late 1916 was that the Blockade was beginning to bite into civilian morale. The Blockade was maintained by a couple of dozen AMCs and armed trawlers. Are you really saying that nothing could have been attempted against it? Similarly, the Harwich Force consisted of light cruisers and destroyers. Was it really invulnerable to attack?
'Ultimately, it seems to me that you are determined to damn Scheer for not giving the RN the grand battle of annihilation they wanted.' Not at all. I have never argued that he should have sought such a battle, which could only end one way. I am critical of him for his complete inability to come up with any alternative means of using the HSF to contribute to the German war effort. The Japanese, in a similar position in WW2, came up with actions such as Savo Island. Why do you consider it so laudable that the HSF spent the rest of the war avoiding any sort of risk?
As you have labelled my proposals for potential sorties as unreasonable, might I ask what, had you been Scheer, you would have done with the HSF Fleet after Jutland?
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Hitler was trying to get Britain to make peace in July, 1940? Really? Why not provide some examples of his efforts? Oh, the 'Appeal to Reason' speech (Surrender or we bomb you) is not a credible one, by the way.
The Luftwaffe lost 1700 aircraft & 2700 aircrew not being 'serious', whilst more than 2000 barges were taken out of the European canal network, crudely converted into landing craft, and sent to Channel ports, together with around 200 freighters, over 400 tugs, and around 1200 motor boats.
Over 20 divisions were allocated to the operation and undertook the necessary training, and a large amount of senior officer & staff time and resources was spent on planning & preparations.
You might ask the people of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, & The Netherlands what their opinions of whether the war was necessary or not were, perhaps?
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Crete is indeed an excellent example. The Royal Navy was ordered to prevent German and Italian reinforcements reaching Crete by sea. The axis sent two convoys. The first, heading for Maleme, was annihilated by a RN squadron. The second, heading for Heraklion, turned back to avoid a similar fate. The result? No reinforcements reached Crete by sea until Wavell had ordered an evacuation, at which point Cunningham transferred his ships to ports on the south of the island.
In point of fact, no British warship heavier than a light cruiser was sunk by the Luftwaffe in the whole of WW2. Furthermore, in terms of Sealion, by September 1940, the Luftwaffe had had no training whatsoever in anti-shipping techniques. You comment that 'In my opinion the Stuka would have had a field day.' Would you care to explain , then, how it was that they didn't have such a field day during the Dunkirk evacuation? Indeed, why two of their own senior commanders, Oskar Dinort and Wolfram von Richthoven, stated, at the time, that protecting German invasion barges was beyond the capabilities of the Luftwaffe?
In September, 1940, the Luftwaffe did not even have torpedo bombers and could not provide any protection for the invasion barges at night. As the Royal Navy had around 70 cruisers & destroyers within 5 hours' steaming of Dover, backed up by around 500 smaller warships, what defences against these ships was available to protect the barges during the eleven days (and nights) that the Kriegsmarine estimated was necessary to land the first wave of troops. Without, of course, most of their motorised transport & their divisional artillery?
Finally, aren't you aware that the aircraft carrier never attained the importance in the war against Germany that it did in the Pacific?
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'The Germans had no where near enough transport for 20 divisions.' The assault wave was to consist of nine divisions and a seriously under strength parachute division.
Walter Ansel, who had access to Kriegsmarine records at the end of the war, determined that the Germans had requisitioned 180 transport ship (largely small coasting vessels), just over 2,100 converted barges, 400 tugs/trawlers, and 1,200 motor boats, The first wave was to consist of around 850 barges, towed in pairs by the tugs/trawlers and the transports, would carry the leading elements of each division.
The Germans had enough vessels to carry out their alloted tasks. What they did not have, of course, was any means of protecting this ramshackle flotilla from the 70 RN cruisers and destroyers which were based some five hours steaming from Dover, supported by around 500 or so smaller warships.
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@jamesb2166 So? In 1929. The Labour party won 287 seats with 8,048,968 votes, the Conservatives won 260 seats with 8,252,527 votes.
In February, 1974, Labour won 301 seats with 11,645,616 votes. The Conservatives won 297 seats with 11,872,180 votes.
These anomalies do occur in any constituency based electoral system from time to time.
The following is perhaps more symptomatic of the general mood in the country:- The 1950 Election, which Labour narrowly won, showed a swing to the Conservatives of 4.3% and a swing away from Labour of 1.6% There was a further 4.6% swing towards the Conservatives in the election of 1951.
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@sebclot9478 Actually, I probably am as good, or at least as knowledgeable, as I think I am. Happily, my publishers and readers do rather seem to agree.
1) My reference to Compass and Beda Fomm was simply to educate you concerning what actually happened to the (largely infantry, and badly equipped) Italian army in Libya.
2). The US never assumed convoy escort duties from the British, least of all from 1942. In January, 1942, the US Navy proposed a Mid Ocean Escort Force of 14 Groups. These were to consist of 15 US destroyers, 27 RN/RCN destroyers, and 101 RN/RCN Flower Class corvettes. Initially, there were 5 US Groups, made up of US destroyers and RN/RCN corvettes, 5 British, and 4 Canadian groups.By winter 1942-3, the US had withdrawn from the Allied Mid-Ocean Escort Groups almost entirely. Two US Groups, A1 & A2, were disbanded when their destroyers were re-assigned, and A4 & A5 had their US destroyers replaced by RN ones, at which point they became British Groups B6 & B7. The one remaining US Group, A3, actually consisted of two US coastguard cutters, with RN/RCN Flowers. When the cutters were reassigned, A3 became the Canadian Group C5. Thus, by early 1943, there were 12 Mid Ocean Escort Groups, B1-B7 and C1-C5. US vessels operating in the Atlantic by then were working between the US and the Mediterranean, not in the North Atlantic.
3). I did ask you to provide details of convoys which sailed to Britain from the Far East via the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean. Where are those details?
4). Have you actually read Mein Kampf? The Soviet Union was, first and last, Hitler's main target. You might perhaps read the reasons for this in 'The Last Days of Adolf Hitler' by Trevor-Roper.
5). Perhaps you might explain how, having marched through Spain, captured Gibraltar, and then withdrawn, what presumably would an isolated German garrison do to maintain itself? Eat the Barbary Apes, perhaps?
6). That is your opinion of Bismarck. The flaws I have described earlier still existed. Bismarck's only advantage over the RN's Nelsons and KGVs was her speed. In a situation where she was obliged to engage, she was outclassed.
7). Do you not remember posting 'The fact that I mentioned ONLY the Bismark by name doesn't mean that it would have been the only German ship to participate in such an operation. I can't believe I actually have to explain that to you.' I merely responded by telling you exactly what naval resources were available to the Germans at the time, as clearly you didn't know for yourself. I chose September, 1940 as even you could look it up without much problem, as the resources available to both sides are well documented. You can choose any month in WW2 to suit yourself, as things hardly got better for the Kriegsmarine, after the punishment it received during the Norwegian campaign. Are you even aware how totally outmatched the German surface fleet was, throughout the war?
8). & 9).Of course the British weren't responding to German provocation, as there was no such major U-Boat construction programme. My contention is that, had there been such a programme, the British would have responded, just as they had to the Kaiser's actual fleet expansion before WW1. By the way, if you think there was a 'scaling back' explain these figures :-
U-Boat Construction by Month :-
1939, Sept. 1, Oct. 0, Nov. 2, Dec 3.
1940, Jan. 1, Feb, 1, March, 2, April, 3, May, 3, June, 3, July, 3, Aug, 5, Sept, 7, Oct, 8, Nov, 9, Dec. 9.
1941, Jan. 11, Feb. 9, March, 11, April, 14, May, 19, June, 15, July, 19, Aug, 19, Sept. 15, Oct. 24, Nov. 24, Dec. 22.
1942, Jan. 15, Feb. 16, Mar, 18, April, 17, May, 20, June, 21, July, 21, Aug. 21, Sept. 19, Oct, 23, Nov. 24, Dec. 23.
1943, Jan, 22, Feb, 21, Mar, 27, April, 18, May, 26, June 25, July, 26, Aug. 21, Sept, 21, Oct. 27. Nov. 25, Dec. 31.
1944, Jan. 20, Feb. 19, Mar. 23, April, 23, May 19, June, 11, July 15, Aug. 15, Sept. 20, Oct. 16, Nov. 22, Dec, 27.
1945, Jan, 37, Feb, 21. Mar. 26.
Where exactly is your imaginary 'scaling back?'
10). Oh, so now Gibraltar is not to be attacked until AFTER North Africa, Suez, and Malta have been conquered? By the way, Suez is in North Africa.
There are many excellent academic studies on the subject of WW2, and in particular of the period leading up to Barbarossa. Have you ever thought of reading one or two, before you wander off into further silliness?
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@sebclot9478 Whether I am arrogant or not is irrelevant. The specialists (usually retired military men, in the most recent case a Rear-Admiral & a Major General) examine my submissions, ask questions if they have them, and only after that are the proofs passed on to the publisher. All I would say is that reviews by academics and military historians have been overwhelmingly position. Clearly, such people lack your enormous breadth of wisdom and understanding. Either that, or my views are credible, and yours are somewhat lacking.
You were the one who brought Suez convoys up, but now you choose to disregard them. Very wise, as there is nothing there to support you.
Of course Hitler's primary enemy was the Soviet Union. Clearly you haven't read Trevor-Roper's analysis of the reasons for the initial preventative attack on France. You should, as it explains how, despite Hitler's contempt for Kaiser Bill's two front war, he subsequently placed Germany into a worse situation from 1941 onwards.
Explain to me why, when Germany was seeking to defeat the largest maritime power on earth, :-
'It doesn’t matter if the German surface fleet was outclassed. Again, raw data with no understanding of what any of it means to the overall picture.'
By 'raw data,' I assume you mean 'facts and figures?' I can well understand from the nature of your argument, such as it is, your urgent need to disregard facts and figures. Explain to me what the raw data does actually mean, if you would be so kind.
'Maybe the British would have responded to U-boat building program. Maybe not. I guess we will never know for sure. And what exactly do you think a scaling back would look like?' No. You explain to me why, when the British had responded strenuously to the Kaiser's naval expansion before WW1, they would simply have ignored a similar U-boat expansion programme in the 1930s?
In short, nothing that you write has any grounding in the real military, and particularly the naval, situation of 1939-1940. As I said, you are wise to ignore facts, as they dismantle your musings even more effectively than I have.
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@888Longball The captain of a Fleet Aircraft Carrier, who had previously been British Naval Attache in Paris, was known to be a Francophile, spoke fluent French, and knew most of the senior officers in the French naval chain of command, was 'too junior?' Sorry, old chap, but your prejudices are showing. Somerville was under no obligation to leave his flagship. In so doing, he would have lost contact with London when events were proceeding at a rapid pace, and he might even have exposed himself to the risk of being 'detained' had negotiations turned sour.
Ask yourself why Gensoul did not pass the full text of the British ultimatum on to his superiors. By the way, the French were no longer allies. They ceased to be so when they signed their armistice with Germany on 22 June.
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@kalyana9705 Are you really deluded enough, or gullible enough, to believe that, at a time when 2.5 million Indians had volunteered to join the Allied forces, Churchill would have engineered a mass famine in the sub-continent? Presumably, you are not a member of Mensa!
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit your rather prejudiced agenda.
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'The Royal Navy stood no chance against the Luftwaffe.' Oh please! The Luftwaffe had just failed badly at Dunkirk, hadn't been trained in anti-shipping techniques, and didn't even acquire a high performance torpedo bomber until mid 1942.
If you were to look at statistics rather than myths, you would find that, in the whole of WW2, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship at all larger than a light cruiser. To put that into perspective, the RN Pink List shows, for mid September, 1940, some 70 RN destroyers and light cruisers within five hours' steaming of the Straits, with a further 500 or so smaller warships available in support.
That doesn't include the additional 40 destroyers further away but still in Home Waters, or the heavy ships of the Home Fleet at Rosyth and Scapa Flow available to intercept any German surface ships which might have been sent to support an invasion fleet, which consisted, by the way, of converted barges towed at little more than walking pace by tugs and trawlers.
Do you seriously wish to maintain that, having been largely unable to hit RN destroyers either stopped or moving slowly in restricted waters off Dunkirk, the Luftwaffe would have been effective against similar ships, free to manoeuve at speeds of 28 + knots, as they appproached those virtually unprotected barges.
I wonder whether you would have been able to convince Oskar Dinort, the commander of Stuka-Geschwader 3? Dinort had been a leading competition flyer in pre-war Germany, and his unit had had considerable success attacking ground targets in Poland. On 25 May, he led a flight of 40 Ju87s against a Destroyer Flotilla off Calais?. His own bomb exploded over 300 feet from his target, and no hits were achieved by any of his aircraft. His report, which may still be read, concluded that attacks on warships required 'a greater degree of expertise than his aircraft had previously needed to demonstrate.'
Or Wolfram von Richtofen, commander of Fliegerkorps VIII, whose dive bombers would have been expected to protect the barges from the Royal Navy, and who reported to Goering that such a task was utterly beyond the capablities of his crews?
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Sealion, at least from the naval viewpoint, might well have been another Crete, in the sense that ground forces sent to support the invasion would never arrive. One convoy, heading for Maleme, was annihilated by a British cruiser squadron, and the second, heading for Heraklion, returned to Greece to avoid a probable similar fate.
There were not 'a lot of soldiers' available. Because of a lack of towing vessels for the hastily converted barges, the first wave was intended to consist of around 6,700 men from each of nine divisions. This first wave would be lacking motor transport and divisional artillery.
The passage would not have been short. The time needed to extracate these towed barges from their ports, form them up into cumbersome box formations, and set off down the Channel to their beaches meant that in some cases, the voyage would require three days. These formations would be almost devoid of escort vessels, and would sail at little more than walking pace.
Would this air force 'protection' have been supplied by the Luftwaffe, which, untrained in anti-shipping operations, had failed totally to prevent the Dunkirk evacuation?
You need to read a book or two on the subject before embarrassing yourself further.
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'Rodney would have had less chances than Hood.' Oh, please!
Rodney :- Belt Armour 14 inches, deck armour 6.25 inches, broadside 18432 lbs.
Bismarck:- Belt Armour 12.6 inches, deck armour 4.7 inches, broadside 14112 lbs
An undamaged Bismarck could be expected to do what German capital ships habitually did when encountering British capital ships (even obsolete R class ones) which was to use superior speed to avoid action. In terms of heavy artillery shots, Rodney fired 340 16 inch shells, & KGV 339 14 inch shells. As Bismarck's armour was proof against anything smaller (such as 8 inch, 6 inch, or 5.25 inch) only these are relevant. All the smaller calibre weapons would do was cause superficial damage. The actual number of hits, despite fanciful comments about British gunnery, is impossible to determine as, for obvious reasons, no one aboard Bismarck was wandering around taking detailed notes.
Rodney, incidentally, hit Bismarck with her third salvo, and had put most of her main armament, her bridge (including command staff), and her internal communications out of action within twenty minutes of the start of the action.
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How did Churchill have a month to 'develop his plan?' France had signed the armistice with Germany less than two weeks earlier. The timescale was as tight as it was because the French ships in Mers-el-Kebir had folded awnings and were raising steam ready for sea. The situation of France, by the way, was totally different from those other nations who had been occupied, in that France still had a theoretically independent though collaborationist, government. Moreover, the small navies of these other countries were largely irrelevant with compared in size with the French one.
Somerville could never left his flagship in order to visit Gensoul. Firstly, he would have been rendered completely out of touch with London, and secondly there was the obvious, though unspoken, possibility that once he arrived aboard the French flagship he might have been 'detained.'
The British at the time were in a desperate situation. Their only remaining trump card, at least in the short term, was their fleet, and no Prime Minister, whether Churchill or anyone else, could have countenanced a situation which would have left the third strongest navy in Europe free, potentially, to join with the second and third strongest against Britain.
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Be fair. Without David's enthusiasm for one of the first black people in Britain, Beachy Head woman, we would never have learned the facts, which were that she actually came from, er, Cyprus. Who previously knew that Cyprus had been moved since Roman times?
Still, as an alumnus of Manchester University who used to make financial contributions on a regular basis, when I read that, upon appointing him as a professor in 2019, the University of Manchester described him as an 'expert on military history, empire, race and slavery, and "one of the UK's foremost historians," ' I was able to cease those contributions.
Thank you, Professor David, for saving me money.
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Small problem here. The Kriegsmarine had no suitable vessels anything like the Landing Ships & Landing Craft that the allies were subsequently to use for their many successful assault landings in Europe & the Pacific. Even to plan a crossing of the Channel, they were reduced to using converted Rhine barges towed by tugs, trawlers or coasters. Moreover, aside from having no suitable transports, the Kriegsmarine was also lacking in surface warships. By September, 1940, they had been reduced, in terms of operational warships, to one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, seven destroyers, seven torpedo boats (similar in size to British escort destroyers), and about a dozen fleet minesweepers.
Furthermore, the main British naval bases at the time for the Home Fleet were at Rosyth & Scapa Flow, with a number of modern cruisers and destroyers in the Humber.
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By 'evidence' you presumably mean switcher videos? Actually, the only 'evidence' of this mysterious 'M' (and a 'P') is in a short video which appeared, without any provenance at all, in the year 2000 or thereabouts.
The problem with it is that no exploration team has ever claimed it, nor even referred to it, despite the fact that such 'incontravertible' evidence would make headlines all over the world. Moreover, even the father of the myth, Robin Gardiner, denounced it as a fake.
Still, if you really can be taken in by what is clearly CGI imaging, and poor quality imaging at that, then that seems to say rather more about you than it does about the images.
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@woobyca7709 The 'Gesta Romanorum,' a thirteenth-century Latin collection of stories for preachers to use in sermons, includes a story about a parishioner’s response to a corrupt priest. When that priest was scheduled to celebrate Mass, the parishioner would skip the service. One day while so skipping Mass and walking in a meadow, the parishioner became desperately thirsty. The parishioner found a tiny stream of pure water from which he drank. Seeking to better allay his thirst, he sought for the tiny stream’s source. A wise man pointed him to a fountain:
He {the parishioner} there beheld a putrid dog with its mouth wide open and its teeth black and decayed, through which the whole fountain amazingly gushed. The man regarded the stream with great terror and confusion, ardently desiring to quench his thirst, but apprehensive of poison from the fetid and loathsome dog carcass that apparently had infected the water.
The wise man explained that the parishioner had already drunk of that water and that it was indeed good. The wise man explained:
See now, as this water, gushing through the mouth of a putrid dog, is neither polluted nor loses any of its natural taste or colour, likewise celebration of Mass by a worthless minister. Therefore, although the vices of such men may displease and disgust, yet you should not forego the services that they are ordained to provide.
In short, God can work through corrupt priests, and through other corrupt persons, too.
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If the British had 'no equipped army left' how did they manage to send a troop convoy (The 'Apology' Convoy) to North Africa to reinforce the Western Desert Force, in August?
In September, 1940, the Germans had, after their losses during the summer, 3500-4000 paratroops, at most.
'Without air cover, the Royal Navy would have not been able to conduct operations in the south.' Why not? The RN had successfully carried out the Dunkirk evacuation, when the Luftwaffe demonstrated how unprepared it was for operations against shipping, and especially against warships. In the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers. In September, 1940, the RN had twice that number within five hours of the Straits, supported by light cruisers and around 500 smaller warships.
As with all Sealion enthusiasts, you place heavy reliance on 'would haves' rather than facts.
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@josephkugel5099 The problem with your alleged 'what if' scenario is that you allow Germany to adopt a totally different policy, but insist that Britain must stick rigidly to the policy she, historically, followed. I have pointed this out to you ad nauseam, but you still refuse to grasp the obvious.
You also seem to assume that Germany had unlimited resources, being able to build a vastly improbable huge fleet, and large numbers of U-Boats, whilst at the same time still greatly expanding the air force and the army. This is simply a fantasy, I doubt that you have read, from your Fantasy Island, a report written by the Kriegsmarine's Ordnance Department, dated 31 December, 1938, called 'The Feasibility of the Z Plan.' This pointed out in sobering terms that the organisational difficulties were largely insurmountable, and that the demands in materials and manpower were such that it would leave the other German armed forces starved of resources for years to come. A problem you probably consider minor, the lack of suitable shipyards, also loomed large in the assessment of difficulties. You even seem to think that your fuhrer saw Britain as his main enemy, when that was clearly the Soviet Union. I doubt that old adolf would have regarded vast numbers of fantasy battleships as much use against Uncle Joe, if it meant his army and air force was not fit for purpose.
I'm sorry that you don't seem to know enough about the RN of 1939 to make it worth discussing the true state of the British battlefleet with you, particularly since the modernisation of much of it seems totally to have passed you by.
'You can take this answer or leave it at this point but im done with this discussion.' Congratulations! That is probably the first sensible thing you have written, even if you did forget the apostrophe.
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@MacAdvisor Perhaps Olympic, like Mauretania & Aquitania, actually survived because of the soundness of her design?
Board of Trade regulations (the ones you wrongly say did not exist) stated any ship over 10,000 tons must have four water tight bulkheads three and half feet above the waterline giving them five compartments. The Olympics well exceeded the figure by a long way with fifteen bulkheads, each extending ten feet above the waterline. Instead of making false claims, why not simply look them up for yourself?
They were outdated, I agree, but they were the regulations which applied when the Olympics (and the Mauretanias) were designed and built.
'Portholes with automatic closing were available as they were patented about ten years previously.' Very good, but that was not what I asked. As I wrote, name any liner, or even any warship, which actually had been fitted with such devices. The fact that something might have been patented does not mean that it was practicable.
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Might have been difficult. Graf Spee had been sunk in 1939, Scharnhorst & Gneisenau were both in Brest, damaged, Hipper was under repair between March & November, 1941, Scheer was repairing between April & July, 1941, Lutzow was repairing & refitting between April 1940 & December, 1941, and Tirpitz was not declared fit for operations until January, 1942.
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Actually, all the data from 1911-1912, by which I mean documents, archives, records, and even photographs, is still readily available and easy to examine. You wouldn't wish to see it, of course, as it proves beyond any doubt at all that Titanic really is Titanic, and the switch theory, if I may dignify it with such a term, is arrant nonsense, dating from the mid 1990s.
You really shouldn't swallow whole everything you see in switcher videos. It do rather make you look a fool when you do.
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South Dakota & Alabama. The photo. was probably taken around 7 July, 1943, when the three battleships, together with HMS Anson, HMS Furious, 8 RN & 5 USN destroyers, were part of Operation Camera, a diversionary mission off the Norwegian coast intended to suggest an allied landing, to draw German attention away from Operation Husky in the Mediterranean, which began on 8/9 July.
At the end of July, Malaya was placed in reserve until used as a bombardment ship at the Normandy landings.
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@ralphbernhard1757 Which comment doesn't actually make sense, except as a repetition of German wartime propaganda. The British had just lifted around 120,000 French troops out of Dunkirk, and had begun, from 7 June, landing the 'Reconstituted BEF' in Cherbourg.
Until, that is, General Weygand, on 14 June, informed Alan Brooke that the French army was no longer capable of 'organised resistance.' Two days later, on 16 June, Weygand became Petain's Minister of National Defence.
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Absolutely. It wasn't as if two thirds of the troops on 6 June were British & Canadian, or 892 of the 1213 warships were RN or RCN, or 3261 of 4127 landing craft had RN crews, or two thirds of the 11600 aircraft were RAF, was it?
Oh, wait. That is precisely how it was.
As to bomber crew losses, Bomber Command lost 57205 of 125,000 aircrew, or 46%. 8th Army Airforce lost 26,000 of 350,000 aircrew, or 7.42%.
Weren't the British fortunate to have it so easy?
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Firstly, if sufficient resources had been allocated to provide these, then the build up of the German army & air force would, of necessity, have been scaled back, with the result that the conquest of France & the Low Countries would almost certainly not have occurred, the Kriegsmarine would not have had the Atlantic bases from which to operate these boats, and Hitler's over-riding priority, the destruction of the Soviet Union, would have been out of his grasp.
Secondly, should major construction of U-boats commenced, then the British, with vastly greater shipbuilding resources, would have begun producing escort corvettes, sloops, and destroyers in greater numbers.
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@jddallas7274 Congratulations on getting so many facts wrong in so short a post. Quite an achievement.
The Germans had 27 operational U-boats by September, 1940, of which an average of 13 were at sea on any one day. At the same time, they had only seven operational destroyers. For comparative purposes, at the same time the RN had 70 or so destroyers and cruisers based within five hours steaming of Dover, and a further 40 or so destroyers in Home Waters if needed.
Magnetic mines might have caused problems in shallow waters, had the Luftwaffe not managed to drop a couple on mud flats near Shoeburyness in November, 1939. A team from HMS Vernon recovered them and determined how they worked. As early as 27 November, tests (successful ones) were carried out on HMS Manchester, and degaussing methods were rapidly introduced. By 9 March, 1940, over 600 vessels had been successfully treated, and the procedure was quickly gathering pace.
The RN didn't seem to have been 'afraid of getting shot to bits by the Luftwaffe in the channel' at Dunkirk when they evacuated over 323,000 men of the BEF & French 1st Army without serious losses. Nor did they seem deterred as they undertook daily destroyer, cruiser, and MTB patrols through the Channel for the rest of the summer. Out of interest, and because it is clearly another fact of which you are ignorant, in the whole of WW2 your mighty Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship at all larger than a light cruiser.
'The Germans would have conducted the landing at night and the Royal Navy would not have responded till the day that is a head start. Every amphibious operation of WW2 succeeded and the British destroyers did not have the guns to shoot the German landing craft till 1942' This is idiocy on a masterful level. The Germans did not have any landing craft. They intended to transport their troops in barges towed in pairs by tugs or trawlers. The barges were to be towed in cumbersome block formations. For example, Barge Convoy 1, from Rotterdam, Ostend & Dunkirk heading for the area between Folkestone & New Romney consisted of 150 barges from Dunkirk & 50 from Ostend, together with a further 114 barges & 57 transports from Rotterdam.
Have you even considered how long it would take to extricate these barges from their ports, assemble them into some sort of formation, and then set sail? The quickest convoy required two days, and the largest three.
'The British destroyers did not have the guns to shoot the German landing craft till 1942 the Germans conducted a successful landing without control of the sea in Crete and they were intercepted by the Royal Navy and still all made so just saying your argument is weak not my.' What do you think that the 6 inch and 4 inch guns aboard British light cruisers, or the 4.7 inch, and 4 inch guns aboard British destroyers in 1940 were? Wooden mock ups? Or,of course, the 4 inch & 3 inch guns aboard supporting vessels, such as minesweepers, gunboats, sloops, and corvettes?
The salient point about Crete was that the Axis were not able be land troops from the sea, at least not until the British had decided to withdraw. Two convoys sailed from Greece, one bound for Maleme & one for Heraklion. The Maleme convoy was annihilated by a RN cruiser squadron, and as a result the Heraklion convoy turned back to Greece.
One of your comments, however, is correct, that 'Every amphibious operation of WW2 succeded.' Do you know why that was? Because those in Europe & North Africa were planned and executed by the Royal Navy, and those in the Pacific by the United States' Navy.
I assume from your post that you are just an immature child. The other possibility, that you are a remarkably stupid or ignorant adult, does also exist, however.
Would you like me to recommend a few book for you to read, or have read to you?
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@jddallas7274 Oh dear. Has no-one ever told you that, when you are in a hole, you should stop digging? Oh well.
The RAF not lose the Battle of France. The Allied ground forces did. The RAF was outnumbered by the Luftwaffe throughout the campaign. As, of course, it was during the Battle of Britain, although a combination of the ability to operate on interior lines, and the use of a brilliant use of resources to produce a unique air defence plan, enabled it to achieve victory.
The Germans were able to take Crete by means of their paratroop and air landing capabilities, against Allied forces still disorganised by their evacuation from Greece. Precisely because the Germans did not have naval 'sumperacy' (whatever that is) the Italian navy was not able to deliver additional ground troops to the island.
As a result, the numbers of operational German transport aircraft were severely reduced, and their airborne forces greatly weakened, to the extent that Hitler lost faith in them, and they were only thereafter used as ground troops.
Have you actually read anything at all?
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'Utter defeat of Empire forces in Asia?' Read about XIV Army and the defeat of the U-Go Offensive.
Then read about the Bengal Famine, but the facts, not the revisionist myth. The Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that revisionists won't accept any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda. It is, however, factually accurate.
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Bypassed by which paratroopers? The 4.500 which were all that still remained after their losses in Norway and the Netherlands? Transported, presumably, in the 225 or so surviving operational transport aircraft which still survived after similar heavy losses during the campaigns in Norway, the Low Countries, and France?
Oh, and those paratroops were equipped with light arms only, as would be any reinforcements flown in by the non-existent transport aircraft. Moreover, should such a force have landed, then ipso facto the British would know where they were, and would be able to concentrate troops, artillery, and armour against them, as well as deploying fighters to intercept and destroy the (imaginary) transport aircraft bringing supposed reinforcements.
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@TechnologieGlobeOculaire 'even after I explained plainly how to totally circumvent it.' No, you haven't. You simply postulated an idea which, as I explained, had no conceivable basis in reality.
I have already explained to you the number of paratroopers available to Germany, and the number of transport aircraft available.
I have also explained the helplessness of paratroop units which have no hope of relief from more heavily armed and equipped ground troops. In the case of Germany, these could only be delivered by sea. Unless, of course, you have worked out some magical way of transporting Pz IVs using Ju52s, even non existent ones?
You appear to think that shipyards can simply switch to building aircraft, which idea can best be described as 'interesting.'
The fact is that, as I wrote earlier, the British were able to outproduce Germany in aircraft.
In terms of fighter aircraft, the actual totals per year were:-
1940. Britain 4283 Germany 2735
1941. Britain 7064 Germany 3744
1942. Britain 9859 Germany 5358
1943. Britain 10722 Germany 10059
Bear in mind, also, that the figures from 1941 onwards do not include fighters either supplied by or purchased from the United States. Nor do they include, from 1942, aircraft of the USAAF based in Britain.
If you seek to make any sort of credible case, mon vieux, perhaps you sjould check your facts first before indulging in fantasies?
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@xunqianbaidu6917 You obviously don't know what Gallipoli was about, do you? Action against Turkey was presented by Churchill as a means of avoiding the unfolding carnage on the Western Front, and offered the prospect of taking pressure off Tsarist Russia, already facing Germany, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire.
Grand Duke Nicholas had, indeed, written to Kitchener, asking for help in the form of action against Turkey. Successful action against Turkey, moreover, held the prospect of bringing the neutral states of Greece, Bulgaria, & Romania into the war on the allied side.
Furthermore, Churchill had nothing to do with the planning of the campaign. He argued the case as a means of using British control of the seas to bring down one of Germany's major allies. Asquith authorised the operation, and British & French military commanders planned it.
I really wish people who choose to comment on the Gallipoli campaign asctually found out something about the background to it first.
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Does it still annoy you, after around 80 years, herr obergruppenfuhrer? So many Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, political opponents, and mentally/physically disadvantaged people still, annoying, ungassed? Perhaps you might provide details of these imaginary twelve peace offers? I have asked your neo colleagues on numerous occasions, and any has come there none.
When did hitler offer to defend the British Empire?
You don't consider the bombings of Spanish towns and villages, followed by those of Warsaw, and then Rotterdam, to have been relevant.then? Moreover, if you really don't seek conflict, then invading Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, THe Netherlands, Belgium, and the Soviet Union, all without declarations of war, is really not the best means of proving your peaceful intentions, is it?
If you seriously seek peace, would you :-
1). Make confidential approaches via the British embassies in Switzerland, Sweden, or Spain, or even ask the United States, again confidentially, to mediate?
or:
2). Send a crank in an aircraft to Scotland, in the hope that he might manage to find a Scottish aristocrat who might possibly have had some sort of connection with the Westminster government, whilst hoping that your crank might be taken remotely seriously?
Give reasons for your answer, and write on both sides of the examination paper!!
If there was no genuine invasion plan, the Germans expended a vast amount of time and resources, not to mention 2,700 aircraft and 1,600 experienced aircrew, on a bluff, didn't they?
Churchill never considered the use of gas bombs, by the way, although the British did briefly consider that the Germans might.
Why would there be a Peace Treaty with the nsdap, by the way? That debased organisation was a political party, not a state.
Go away, little neo, and light a candle in front of your print of der bannertrager, whilst singing the horst wessel song sadly to yourself. Your collection of SS daggers needs a good polish, by the way.
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@portaltwo I defy anyone not to get a little misty eyed over V. E. Tarrant's account of her return to Rosyth for repairs, almost at the end of her life. On 13 June, 1944, she had been badly mined off Normandy, with extensive damage to her port bulge, flooding of several compartments, shock damage to main & secondary machinery, port outer shaft completely seized, and port and starboard inner turbine mountings cracked. Tarrant then relates :-
'At 0835, however, Warspite was able to proceed, using her starboard shafts only. The maximum speed arrained was 10 knots, and she arrived at Rosyth, drawing 42 feet aft, at around 2130 on 14 June. The Battleships Anson & Howe, and the other warships of the Home Fleet, lying below Forth Bridge.all cleared lower deck to cheer the battered Old Lady as she slowly passed by.
14 Battle Honours in WW1 & WW2.
Belli dura despicio: ‘I despise the hard knocks of war’
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@TTTT-oc4eb Oh dear, another wehraboo. Bismarck had been working up for seven months. Exactly how long did she need? USS South Dakota worked up in four and a half, and HMS King George V in three and a half.
Bismarck had outdated incremental armour, a generation behind the all-or-nothing of US battleships, and RN battleships from the Nelsons onwards. She also had outdated low angle secondary 5.9 inch armament, at a time when her contempories, the KGVs, & the Washingtons, had DP secondaries. She also had four twin main turrets, rather than the triples of the Washingtons, the Nelsons, and the KGVs, resulting in unnecessary dispersal of armour. Finally, her internal communications were placed above the main armoured deck. In her last battle (if, indeed, it could even be called a battle) these were put out of action in minutes.
Then, of course, there is the matter of weight of broadside. Bismarck's was 14.112 lbs. A KGV's was 15,900 lbs, a Nelson's 18,432 lbs, and a Washington's 24,300 lbs.
One thing I will acknowledge. however. Her speed when undamaged gave her the ability to avoid action with a Nelson and, perhaps, with a Washington or a KGV.
Again, on the subject of AA atmament, she carried 16 x 105mm guns, 16 x 37mm guns, & 12 x 20mm guns. However, when they were as badly directed as they were aboard Bismarck, they were largely irrelevant in any case.
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@ricoh.3162 Did HMS Rodney also have a poor output of shells? I wonder if the crew Of Scharnhorst would agree with your assessment of the guns of the KGV class as 'flawed?'
There are indeed many books. Perhaps you haven't read that by Von Mullenheim-Rechberg, the senior surviving officer. To quote from page 211 of the English version, published by the United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, in 1980 :-
'Was Lindemann still in charge there? No reports came down to us, nor were we asked what was happening in our area. We had nor heard a single word from the forward part of the ship since the action began but, considering the large number of hits we had felt, there must have been some drastic changes............ Had Albrecht been directing the secondary battery from there? (the forward fire control station). Was his own station serving only as a place of refuge? Those questions were never answered.....
I reached a messenger in the damage control center. The man was in a great hurry, and said only that both the First Officer and the Damage Control Engineer had had to abandon the damage control center, adding that he was the last one in the room and had to get out. Then he hung up. That was my last contact with the forward part of the ship.'
Of course, that was merely an account given by Baron Burkard Von Mullenheim-Rechberg, presumably, in your mind, another British Fanboy?
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Would you suggest that the Germans in June 1944 had anything like the naval resources available to them that the British had had in September, 1940? Moreover, are you aware of the overwhelming strength of the Allied navies in 1944, and the almost total irrelevance of the tiny German Navy in 1940?
The leadership of the British army in 1940 hardly matters, as the most they were likely to have needed to do would have been to organise the herding up from the beaches of any half-drowned German soldiers who managed to struggle ashore from their barges, give them a warm drink, and send them off to prison camps.
Halifax, by the way, had a brief period of significance in the early days of the Churchill premiership, but declined significantly after the successful Dynamo, Cycle, & Aerial evacuations. He was shunted off to the United States as British Ambassador in December, 1940, by the way.
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Odd that there were so many witnesses to the Iceberg then, isn't it? How do you explain that, mass hallucination?
Oh, and the suggestion that the sinking was to facilitate the creation of the Fed. is a fantasy created in the mid 1990s. Two of the three supposed oppenents of it who died in the sinking, Astor & Guggenheim, had never expressed their opinions either way, whilst the third, Straus, was a supporter, and can be proven to be so by reference to reports of his speeches in newspaper articles from the period.
Do feel free to try to prove me mistaken, of course.
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@nukni4225 So it appears that you lack the integrity to confirm that your first post was entirely false? I rather expected that that would be the way you would respond.
You aren't really worth the time of any honest person, but to correct one or two of your additional falsehoods:
First lie, Churchill was not in any government position when Britain & France declared war, and hadn't been since 1929.
Second lie, he was not a serviceman when imprisoned by the Boers, and was not asked to give any 'word of honour' to anyone.
Third lie, he stole nothing from Garibaldi. Garibaldi died when Churchill was four years old. Churchill admired Garibaldi, as I said earlier.
Fourth lie, that he forged the signature on his own paintings. Perhaps to be fair that isn't so much a lie as merely an infantile comment.
Fifth lie, his speeches were, in the main, recorded after the war, but their texts were recorded at the time in 'Hansard,' often read out on the radio by BBC newsreaders, and usually printed in full within a day or two of them being made in national newspapers throughout the Empire. Nothing was edited or changed.
Fifth lie, he was never called a 'war hero' but he served at the Battle of Omdurman, left the army to become a journalist in 1899, but later commanded a Scots regiment on the Western Front for nine months in WW1. You may not consider serving in the military in wartime gallant, but frankly your opinion is of no merit.
So yes, I do indeed call you a liar.
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People who use 'lol' in their posts have already discredited anything they have to say, but just to correct you, the Anglo-French alliance ended with the fall of Paul Reynaud and the subsequent signing of the Armistice on 22 June. One of the terms of the armistice, in case you didn't know, was that the French fleet was to be returned to French Atlantic ports and placed under German supervision. The Head of the French navy, Admiral Darlan, sought to reject this clause, until told by Weygand that 'we aren't going to scupper the armistice for the sake of your little boats.'
This was, obviously, something the British could not permit to happen. Accordingly, at Mers-el-Kebir, the British gave Gensoul a series of options as part of an ultimatum, among which was the transfer of the French fleet to the French West Indies, where it could be placed under the supervision of the neutral United States. Darlan might well have accepted this, but unfortunately Gensoul failed to pass on the full text of the British ultimatum, claiming only that the offer said that he must join with the British or his ships would be sunk.
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you mean that Churchill was responsible for the failure of the Government of Bengal to admit how serious the crisis was, or for the hoarding by speculators of foodstuffs, or for the loss of food imports from Malaya, or for FDR's refusal to allow transfer of allied merchant shipping?
You do know that Churchill took food distribution out of the hands of the Bengal administration and gave to the Anglo-Indian army, or that he diverted grain shipments from Australia to India? No, of course you don't, because it doesn't fit your prejudiced agenda.
Churchill was certainly guilty of not realising that the Bengal administration were making light of the situation as it developed. Obviously, he should have done. After all, it is not that, in 1943, he had anything else on his mind, is it?
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It is quite common for defeated generals to place the blame on the shoulders of someone no longer around to argue. The tanks on the Aa canal were halted by von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, in order to make them ready for the second stage of the invasion of France. There were a number of reasons, including Rundstedt's fear of a second 'Miracle of the Marne' the unsuitability of the terrain around Dunkirk for armour, the impending arrival of the (horse drawn) German infantry divisions, the fact that, in Rundstedt's mind, the allied troops in the pocket were 'trapped,' ( like most European generals, he saw the sea as a barrier, whereas the British saw it as a highway), and the fact that Goering had already persuaded Hitler that the elimination of the Dunkirk pocket was 'a special job for the Luftwaffe.'
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Prince of Wales' engines were not 'in trouble' and her captain was not injured. Her masin armament was quickly restored, although certainly unreliable.
However, Bismarck had been damaged by a hit in her bows which left her down by the bows and leaking fuel oil. After the action Lutjens signalled Prinz Eugen to proceed at reduced speed.
Aside, of course, from Bismarck's inability to bring PoW to battle (although PoW did re-engage Bismarck later, twice on the same day) was Lutjens' worry about the failure of Luftwaffe intelligence, which had led him to believe that there were no British capital ships in the area. It was, in his mind, a real possibility that following PoW might lead him into other approaching British heavies.
As to sinking Norfolk & Suffolk, how would that be achieved when both were several knots faster than Bismarck, and radar-equipped?
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In September 1940 the Germans had, on average, 13 U-boats at sea on each day. They had attempted to send three boats into the Channel in October, 1939, and all were promptly sunk. The Channel was heavily mined (by the British) and unsafe for submarines. Moreover, your suggestions that these boats would 'ravage' the Royal Navy is directly contrary to the manner in which U-boats operated in WW2, when they attempted to keep clear of destroyers or escort vessels, as such encounters generally ended badly for the U-boat concerned.
As to mines, how were these to be laid? At Gallipoli, the Turks had had plenty of time to lay mines in their own waters, much as the British had in the Channel. To lay mines in hostile waters, the Germans needed a large fleet of minelayers, but in fact only had seven converted merchant ships. By contrast, the British had several hundred fleet & auxiliary minesweepers. Furthermore, the mines would need to be laid at night, and the British carried out nightly destroyer patrols every night, from Plymouth & Sheerness.
The Luftwaffe had had no training in anti-shipping operations at the time of Sealion, and as a result had failed badly at Dunkirk. Neither could they operate at night against ships, and they didn't even have any torpedo bombers until mid 1942. In fact, in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers. In September 1940, the British had around 100 destroyers in Home Waters, supported by several hundred smaller warships.
Sorry, but an utterly implausible scenario, and one which has been discredited and disproven for some time.
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@jugganaut33 Nothing remotely like the Grand Slam existed in May, 1941. Development only began in July, 1943. Furthermore, the two German capital ships already in a French port had already been attacked by Bomber Command, but had only sustained slight damage. Nor, indeed, did the British need even to consider so absurd a possibility, as they caught Bismarck with one new and one middle-aged battleship, and destroyed her, within three days of the sinking of the Hood.
Your use of the term 'raped' is rather peculiar, by the way. Bismarck had embarked on a raiding sortie intended to intercept and destroy Atlantic convoys. The Admiralty was intent upon preventing this. What do you think the Royal Navy was going to do when Bismarck was 'intercepted?' Give Lutjens a stern talking to and send him on his way? The British intention was always to ensure that Bismarck never saw a French or German port again. In view of events currently unfolding around Crete, half measures were never considered, and nor would they have been desirable.
As to vessels capable of catching Bismarck, actually, King George V, Prince of Wales, Repulse, Renown, and every cruiser and destroyer in the Royal Navy could, as well as the two modern carriers Victorious & Ark Royal. The successful Swordfish strike was not launched 'in desperation' by the way. The British already knew Bismarck's position, and launched the strike as soon as she was in range. The weather was indeed poor, but not poor enough to prevent the attack, and no aircraft were lost either taking off or landing. There was never any suggestion that they might not find the Ark after making their attack, and, of course, they all did.
Certainly, losing Hood was a serious setback, but hardly a 'global catastrophe' largely because the British have always understood what the Price of Admiralty means. In practical terms, the impact on British control of the Atlantic was barely affected, and the events of 27 May proved this in full.
As to the casualties from Bismarck's crew, this is what happens when countries get involved in war. Do you think that, when Rodney & King George V closed the range sufficiently, their captains should have declined to open fire because some Germans might have been injured?
As to 'surrender' tell me any occasion when a warship surrendered at sea in WW2. The Germans did have a habit of scuttling their ships, but not one of surrendering them intact.
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How exactly would that have been 'better way to go?' Historically, the axis struggled to maintain the forces they actually had in North Africa, firstly because of the RN & RAF, and secondly because of the lack of harbour facilities.
The Germans did increase U-Boat production, from an average of four per month between Sept 1939 and December, 1940, to an average of around 22 per month thereafter, leading to 37 in January, 1945. Attempts to prefabricate boats, as the US yards did with escort carriers and freighters, came to nothing. The Type XXIs, when the parts arrived at the construction yards, were found to have gaps between sections built at different locations, and the boats required to be more or less re-built from scratch.
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By September, 1940, the British had re-armed and re-equipped. There were 34.5 operational divisions by then, the vast majority in the South East.
What paratroopers? After losses during the Spring & Summer, the Germans only had around 4,500 left. Moreover, in early September, there were only just over 220 operational transport aircraft in Luftwaffe service. So, how do you suggest a small number of lightly armed troops, with no hope of reinforcement or re-supply, would fare?
As the Kriegsmarine had no tank landing craft, how do you suggest that tanks could have got across the Channel, still less to 'Salisbury Plain?' Especially in view of the following:-
The bulk of the RN's anti-invasion forces were at the Nore, Portsmouth, & Plymouth. Some 70 destroyers and light cruisers in all, supported by around 500 smaller warships. The Home Fleet was mainly at Rosyth, but not intended to steam south unless German heavy warships appeared, which was unlikely as there were none in service until November, 1940.
Which U-boats? In September, 1940, there were, on any one day, only some 13 at sea. Moreover, U-boats throughout the war tried to avoid encounters with smaller warships such as destroyers, sloops, or corvettes, yet here you suggest that they would seek them out?
Luftwaffe? You mean the Luftwaffe which had just failed badly at Dunkirk? Which had received little or no training in anti-shipping operations, which was still almost two years away from acquiring a torpedo bomber, and which could not operate at night? That Luftwaffe?
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During the time Tirpitz was in Norway, there were five Fleet Air Arm strikes ( Operations Tungsten, Mascot, and Goodwood 1-3) involving a total of 187 dive bombers, followed by three separate Bomber Command attacks, using 98 bombers in total. Tirpitz suffered severe superficial damage from the dive bomber attacks, was crippled by the first Bomber Command attack, and destroyed by the third. 'Lots of losses?' Losses were 18 FAA aircraft and 1 Lancaster.
The two strikes that sank Yamato involved 380 US aircraft.
However, you are not comparing like with like. Whereas Yamato was exposed at sea with no air cover (and, moreover, already intent upon a suicide mission) Tirpitz was hidden away in a fjord, with a large array of smoke dischargers, shore based AA positions and radar installations to support her, and nearby fighter bases to intercept incoming attacks. Moreover, her sheltered position, and surrounding torpedo nets, prevented the fleet air arm from using torpedoes at all.
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@harryshuman9637 Would you describe the KGVs as 'battlecruisers' as well? Same armour as Vanguard. Or the Iowas, perhaps? Or Bismarck?
Agreed, the original distinction between battleship and battlecruiser had largely disappeared after the appearance of the first battlecruiser/fast battleship hybrid, HMS Hood, but the concept of the roles of the two types was entirely different. Put briefly, a battlecruiser was not expected to fight in the line, against other battleships, but to act as the reconnaissance arm of the Battle Fleet, to drive away enemy scouting cruisers, and to hunt down enemy armoured cruisers. The Falklands being a case in point.
No-one, British, American, or German, saw Iowa, KGV, Vanguard, or Bismarck as any anything other than fast battleships.
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Where did you get that idea from? No-one, least of all Astor, Guggenheim, or Straus, were given complimentary tickets,
Mind you, Astor & Guggenheim had never commented about the Federal Reserve either, whilst in October, 1911, Straus had made a speech in favour of the concept.
Ever thought of actually checking the conspiracist video you swallowed for accuracy, or do you prefer to remain ignorant?
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@MegaDavyk If you seek for evidence that Astor and Guggenheim were 'outspoken opponents' of the Federal Reserve, you will search in vain. Whatever their opinions might have been , they both kept them to themselves. If you believe anything to the contrary, please feel free to provide evidence.
Straus is easier. He came out as a supporter of the concept of the Fed. in Ocrober 1911, and his speech appeared in the New York Times. Twice, in fact. Would you like to know the dates so that you may check the archives for yourself?
Oh yes, of course. The M & P letters on the wreck. The letters which appeared, without provenance, in 2000 or thereabouts. The letters which no exploration team has ever claimed, and to which no team has ever even referred. The letters which were even denounced by the founder of the switch myth, Robin Gardiner, as 'fake'. Would you like me to post a copy of his denunciation post?
Have you ever asked yourself why no Titanic researcher or historian has ever given this nonsense house room?
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Ever heard the phrase 'Roi fainéant, or"do-nothing king"?' It is a French term primarily used to refer to the later kings of the Merovingian dynasty after they seemed to have lost their initial powers of dominion. It is usually applied to those Frankish rulers approximately from the death of Dagobert I in AD 639 (or, alternatively, from the accession of Theuderic III in 673) until the deposition of Childeric III in favour of Pepin the Short in 751.
It appears to have been first used by the historian Einhard. 'There was nothing left for the King to do but to be content with his name of King, his flowing hair, and long beard, to sit on his throne and play the ruler, to give ear to the ambassadors that came from all quarters, and to dismiss them, as if on his own responsibility, in words that were, in fact, suggested to him, or even imposed upon him.
He had nothing that he could call his own beyond this vain title of King and the precarious support allowed by the Mayor of the Palace in his discretion, except a single country seat, that brought him but a very small income.'
The Mayors of the Palace, who really governed the Frankish state, were the ancestors of Charlemagne, by the way. Although, of course, Biden's income is anything but 'small'.
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@bottcherimmobilien4864 Of course the idea of a successful invasion is nonsense. Actually, the Allies used 4127 landing craft on D-Day, just to be precise.
Oh, yes. The Appeal to Reason, which basically said 'Stop resisting or we bomb you.' As to the lunatic Hess mission (or should that read 'The Lunatic Hess's Mission?). Reason would suggest that, if Hitler sought a peace, he would have cautiously approached the British government via Embassies in Sweden, Switzerland, or Spain. Even, perhaps, asking the neutral USA to act as a peace broker. Reason would not suggest that a lone flight to Scotland, which ended by mad Rudolf bailing out near the estate of a minor Scots. aristocrat who might or might not have had a tenuous connection with the Westminster government, was a credible course of action.
Hitler, by the way, didn't stop the tanks. Von Rundstedt did, as the war diary of Army Group A states. The reason was to service the armour and rest the crews before beginning the second stage of the campaign, and because he feared a repeat of the Miracle of the Marne. Hitler had been told on the previous day, by Goering, that the elimination of the BEF & First Army was a 'special task for the Luftwaffe,' and chose to believe him. Seriously, if you want your enemy to come to terms, do you :-
1). Capture his entire field army and put it into prison camps? or,
2). Allow him to lift that army back to Britain, where it can be re-armed and re-equipped behind the impenetrable barrier of the English Channel & the Royal Navy?
Send your answer to anyone except me. I already know the answer.
There was a brief period when, had Dynamo failed, Halifax might have won a power struggle and, effectively, surrendered. After Dynamo, Halifax was a busted flush, abandoned in Parliament even by his own supporters.
The rest of your post is irrelevant. I thought the subject was Sealion?
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@andreleclerc7231 You do know that the High Commands of the British & French armies talked to each other, I trust? If the British had promised thirty divisions and turned up with ten , you might have had a case, albeit a flimsy case, but the reality is that the French planners knew exactly what the British brought with them in any alliance, which was unchallenged control of the sea (enabling France, as well as Britain to bring in troops from overseas), the support of a modern air force, and a small, but professional and fully motorised army. The French even knew what the size of the BEF would be.
Incidentally, an army of 93 divisions, supported by 40 allied (Belgian & British) mainly behind prepared defensive positions, should have been able to fight successfully against an enemy army of 141 divisions, few of which were armoured or even motorised.
What happened in 1930? The Rhineland was re-occupied in 1936, when the Deuxieme Bureau claimed that the Germans had used 295,000 troops, rather than the 3000 they actually used, and General Gamelin informed his government that the could not be expelled without full mobilisation, which was unacceptable because of the French economic situation at the time.
Certainly, there was little support for intervention in Britain either, but as Britain had no means of responding unless France did, and as France, despite your charmingly ill-informed belief to the contrary, had no intention of doing anything, this was academic in any case.
So, this comment 'They tried to rally the UK to face them in the '30' is simply nonsensical, in more ways than one.
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@andreleclerc7231 Oh, so you claim to know what Churchill did or did not mean, now? Oh well.
As to the 'Token Force' that forced the French into Belgium, haven't you even heard of Escaut/PlanE or Dyle/PlanD? You should have, as they were the brainchild of Maurice Gamelin. The 'Token Force' was actually the French 1st Army Group, which consisted of the French 1st, 2nd, 7th, & 9th Armies, and the BEF. A total of 38 French Divisions, & 12 British Divisions. 5 of the French Divisions were armoured. The French First Army Group was the best-equipped French Army Group at the time, by the way. Add to that 22 Belgian Divisions, and 9 Dutch Divisions, and that gives you a total of 81 Divisions. The whole purpose of the Plan was to prevent a German thrust around the north of the Maginot Line.
I do admire your amusing claim that the Ardennes was guarded, but not with enough people. Brilliant! Do you really not understand the difference between defensive & offensive operations? Do you really not appreciate the advantages of fighting a battle from prepared defensive positions? You really cannot truly be as ill-informed as you pretend.
As to 'vetting' do you really believe that the British forces which supported the US invasion of Iraq had any influence at all over the plan determined by Norman Schwarzkopf and his staff? Of course not. Do you really believe that the French High Command with 90 divisions would have been swayed by the opinions of the British, with their 12, two of which were territorial units not ready for front line action? Of course not. Just as the Admiralty would not have agreed to alter their dispositions of the Royal Navy on French suggestions.
Have you heard of the French General Pretelat? You should have. In 1938 he organised a military exercise, using seven divisions, representing a German force, in which he inflicted a severe defeat upon the opposing French forces. Where? You ask. THE BLOODY ARDENNES, that's where. In point of fact, the defeat was more of a rout. Much like what happened in 1940, actually. Read about it in 'The Fall of France.' ( Oxford: Osprey, 2000.) by Martin Evans. Gamelin knew about the Ardennes danger, but did nothing about it. Apart from guarding it with 'not enough men' of course.
Seriously, I really don't feel like wasting any further time trying to educate you and correcting the more asinine of your posts. Therefore, I choose to cease reading your nonsense as of now.
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Of course Jutland was a British victory, in the strategic sense. Battles are generally waged in pursuit of a wider aim, and in the case of Jutland the outcome was to demonstrate to Scheer that the High Seas Fleet would never be able to break the blockade on Germany imposed by the Grand Fleet. As a result, the High Seas Fleet stayed out of action until it mutinied, and the Royal Navy starved Germany to defeat by late 1918.
As to the subsequent 'massive defeat' I presume you mean like the River Plate action, the first and second Battles of Narvik, the sinking of Bismarck, the Battle of the Barents Sea, the Battle of North Cape, and the big one, the Battle of the Atlantic?
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@hetrodoxlysonov-wh9oo Failing to defeat the RAF in the Battle of Britain is not the same as claiming that Germany attempted to invade, but failed. Certainly, the Germans did convert a large (about 1900) number of barges, which they intended to tow across the Channel using tugs and small coasting vessels, although after their heavy naval losses during the Norwegian campaign they had no navy worthy of the name with which to provide an escort.
Their plan, if it could be so-called, involved using every available towing vessel (there were, literally, no reserves to replace losses) to tow two barges each, carrying in total nine divisions, across the Channel, over a period of eleven days. The divisions would lack most of their wheeled transport, most of their artillery, and would have no tank support, by the way. Absurdly, the Kreigsmarine plan assumed that, whilst this ramshackle ferry operation was in progress, the Royal Navy would not intervene!
The reality is that, if so ordered, the Luftwaffe could have maintained control of the air space over the Channel in September, 1940. What they could not do was prevent the Royal Navy from destroying the invasion fleet en route.
The story of the Battle of Britain, and the heroic Few, is a noble myth, designed by Churchill to win support for Britain in the United States, with the image of a David versus Goliath struggle. The reality is that a seaborne invasion was unthinkable unless the Germans were able to secure the support of the French fleet. Even then, the possibility of success was remote.
Indeed, as early as mid-August, 1940, when the legend would have people believe that Britain's survival was on a knife edge, Churchill sent major reinforcements, including three armoured regiments, to North Africa. Look up The Apology Convoy for proof.
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Piorun (formerly HMS Nerissa) was armed with six 4.7 inch guns, one 4 inch gun, and five torpedoes. On the night of 26-7 May, 1941, she accompanied Captain Vian's 4th Destroyer Flotilla (Cossack, Sikh, Maori & Zulu) in attacks on the already crippled Bismarck. Your hint that Piorun might have fired the torpedo which wrecked Bismarck's stern simply won't wash, by the way, as the damage was inflicted by an 18 inch aerial torpedo dropped by a Fairey Swordfish from HMS Ark Royal earlier in the day. This is known for certain.
Vian's destroyers or, at least, four of them, carried out a series of torpedo attacks on Bismarck, which scored no hits, but the constant worrying tactics of the British helped wear down the morale of the Germans and deepened the fatigue of an already exhausted crew.
Piorun, however, failed to use her torpedoes. Instead, her captain chose to exchange gunnery salvoes. Neither side scored any hits, and Piorun subsequently lost contact
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@TheAsa1972 The point is that not all 'legends' are good ones. Like the Time 'Person of the Year.'
To clarify what Kennedy thought of hitler, you really should look at what he actually said:-
Nearly two decades after 1945, Kennedy would address crowds in West Berlin as US president.
He gave Ms Henderson, his Research Assistant when he was a Senator, his diary in order to inform her of his views on foreign policy and national security, she said. She subsequently auctioned it.
In a description of the auction, she wrote: "When JFK said that Hitler 'had in him the stuff of which legends are made', he was speaking to the mystery surrounding him, not the evil he demonstrated to the world."
"Nowhere in this diary, or in any of his writings, is there any indication of sympathy for Nazi crimes or cause," she continued.
The diary also contains JFK's thoughts about the British election and Winston Churchill, who Ms Henderson called his "idol".
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'When exactly did they stand alone again?' For, at least, the whole of 1940. To give an example or two, of 34.5 operational divisions in Britain in September, 1940, 32.5 were British. The only Commonwealth forces in Britain at the time were one Canadian division and two Australian & Canadian brigades.
The Royal Navy, other than seven Royal Canadian destroyers, was entirely British.
Of 2927 pilots in the Battle of Britain, 2353 were British. The others, both Commonwealth & Foreign, flew British aircraft, under British orders.
The United States did not commence their Lend-Lease Programme until March, 1941. Prior to that, any supplies Britain acquired from the US were bought & paid for.
THe Commonwealth and Empire played an increasingly large role in WW2, but not as early as 1940. In the (unlikely) event of an attempted invasion, distant voices in support of Britain from the Dominions and the Empire would have had no practical help in repelling it.
There are many books dealing with the events of 1940. You might buy one, perhaps?
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My old MD used to tell us at our regular Managers' Meetings that : 'It needs £10 of revenue to generate £1 of profit. It takes £1 of cost reduction to do the same.' Small businesses feeling the pinch will, inevitably, be obliged to react in a similar manner, and the largest individual cost to them is usually their workforce.
The probability is that, therefore, they will be obliged to cut staff numbers simply in order to survive.
As, I submit, Dear Rachel would probably have known had she any experience whatsoever of working in the private sector, but, alas, I fear she hasn't.
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Very few historians would agree with you. Doenitz regarded the calculations of von Holtzendorff, Kaiser Bill's Chief of Naval Staff in 1917, that in order to starve Britain into submission, 600,000 tons of shipping per month needed to be sunk, as still appropriate. After December, 1941, of course, this figure needed to be increased significantly. Between September, 1939 and December, 1941, would you care to estimate how many times this figure was achieved? Actually, none. the average monthly figure for the period was 211718. In four of the months, the tonnage total was below 100,000 and only twice (June & October, 1940) did it exceed (just) 350,000 In point of fact, the Kriegsmarine never came anywhere near to success in WW2. Certainly, not as near as the Kaiser's navy did in 1917.
What is your source for your absurd claim that 'Britain at one point was down to less than a weeks worth of fuel' by the way?
The rest of your post is simply foolish or, at best, ill-informed, as you seem to be unaware of the absolute supremacy of the Royal Navy in Home Waters at the time.
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Perhaps you are unaware that, at the time, Pound was suffering from a brain tumour which killed him less than 18 months later, and which almost certainly warped his judgement? Certainly, Cunningham would have left the decision to Hamilton and Broome, ther men on the spot, but for the actual response of the Royal Navy to Arctic Convoy defence, perhaps you should read about JW51B?
Or consider the statistics? Of 78 Arctic convoys, involving just over 1,400 merchantmen, 85 were lost. Or, in % terms, 6%. Perhaps the Royal Navy was getting something right?
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Why would there be such a mention? Piorun's role was minor, and disappointing. She was part of Captain Vian's destroyer flotilla, which also included four British Tribals. When they arrived, Bismarck was already damaged, and was being shadowed by a British Cruiser, HMS Sheffield. Admiral Tovey, in HMS King George V with HMS Rodney in company, had decided to delay the final action until daylight.
Vian decided to harass Bismarck during her last night, and all his destroyers carried out torpedo attacks whilst maintaining contact.
All, except one, that is. The captain of Piorun decided to indulge in a quixotic and futile gun battle instead, even though his 4.7s were incapable of causing any damage. Potentially, his five x 21 inch torpedoes might have, but they remained unused in their tubes.
As a result of this foolish behaviour Piorun, alone of Vian's ships, lost contact with Bismarck, and only seems to have recovered it at around 0500 on 27 May, immediately before the final action began.
You might read Ludovic Kennedy's book 'Pursuit' for fuller details. Kennedy was actually present.
There you are. A full mention of the facts surrounding ORP Piorun. Happy now?
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@dwight4626 Who protected the Convoy System? The Royal & Royal Canadian Navies. Who planned every assault landing in the war against Germany, except Dragoon of course? Yhe Royal Navy. Who provided the bulk of the forces for these operations, from Torch onwards? The British & Commonwealth armies.
As an example, D-Day. On June 6, two thirds of the troops who landed on the beaches were British & Canadian, 3261 of 4127 landing craft were British manned, 892 of 1213 warships were RN/RCN, two thirds of the allied aircraft were RAF. The mine clearance operations were almost entirely RN/RCN, the U-boats sent to attack shipping off Normandy were defeated and largely destroyed by British & Canadian Escort & Support Groups, and the operational commanders of the three forces, air, sea, & land, were all British.
In short, you shouldn't believe everything that you see in movies. Although your apparent belief that only the Americans fought the Japanese does rather reveal the depth of your actual knowledge, I suggest.
No, Britain could not have liberated Western Europe alone. Neither of course could the United States. However, this obvious fact has precisely no relevance to your comment, which, if you recall, was :-
'If it wasn't for the Yanks. we'd all be speaking German.'
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@r0bbrn140 But didn't you read the title of the video?:
'When Britain Stood Alone: The Complete Story Of The Battle Of Britain'
The Battle of Britain took place in 1940. Had anyone claimed that Britain stood alone in, for example, 1942, I would have been among the first to correct them. However, in terms of 1940, the title is correct.
Indeed, there were foreign or Commonwealth pilots in the Battle of Britain. 2927 pilots flew with Fighter Command during the batle, of which 2353 were British, and 299 were foreign, by which I mean non-Commonwealth or Empire.
In terms of ground forces, of 34.5 divisions available to Britain on home soil in September, 1940, all except two were British.
Not that this matters, of course, because Britain's real defence against invasion in 1940, was the Royal Navy, which, apart from a tiny number of French, Polish, & Canadian destroyers, was entirely British.
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@ClassicFormulaOne1 So, we shouldn't accept the words of biased British officers, but should accept your prejudiced opinion without question? Perhaps you might supply credible sources for your claims. One of us needs to be smarter, but it isn't me. Actually, by the way, landing a thousand or so German survivors in a British port would have been seized upon by the British as a wonderful propaganda opportunity, at a time when the war was going badly. Haven't you seen the newsreels of large numbers of surrendered Italian troops in North Africa? The British would have done the same with Bismarck survivors.
As for Scharnhorst, the nearest U-boats were the eight boat Eisenbart pack, which was tracking Convoy JW55B. No boats were reported by any British observer during the rescue operations, and your emotive nonsense about men screaming in the dark is just that, nonsense, which you have made up. However, at least you have admitted that it was dark, even if the freezing seas and the rough weather are still too much for you.
Incidentally, the highest ranking British officer present at either rescue operation was a captain, hardly a high-ranking individual making 'political' decisions, but a professional seaman of many years' service, who would have had instinctive sympathy for the crews of the enemy ships, based upon the principle that 'today it was them; tomorrow it might be me.' Your insinuations insult their memory.
I notice you haven't commented on the Scharnhorst/Gneisenau/Glorious action. Why might that be?
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@ClassicFormulaOne1 I regret that you consider my correcting of your errors to be 'hatred.' This, of course, is your problem, not mine. The BBC World Service account comes from December,2011. It also includes the following comments :- 'We were full speed at 36 knots and going through those mountainous seas' 'It was a full gale blowing. To go through that at full speed, the bow would rise in the air and come down, hover there and come down with a clatter as if on concrete; mountains of water coming all over the ship.' 'It was pitch black and we shadowed with the use of radars.' 'At that point it went pitch black.' 'It (steaming away) seemed a terrible thing to do and it was. But it was the right thing to do.
If we had stayed a moment too long we could have joined those unfortunate men.'
As to Scharnhorst & Gneisenau. Of course they shouldn't have stayed to pick up survivors. It would have been foolish in the extreme to risk Germany's only two battleships, one of which was damaged Devonshire actually received one (corrupt) signal from Glorious, which read ' R.A.A. from Glorious. My 1615 2PB Time of origin 1640.' This was not a distress signal, but a signal addressed to the Rear Admiral, Aircraft Carriers, Admiral Wells. Neither escorting destroyer made any distress signal (at least, none was ever picked up by any British warship,) No other British ship or shore base received anything at all from Glorious, by the way. Admiral Cunningham, aboard Devonshire, concluded that the signal related to routine aircraft carrier signals traffic, and took no action. Indeed, what action should he have taken, given the garbled nature of the transmission? You do seem to have a remarkable ability to put the worst possible construction on every British action, assuming as you do that every British report was falsified, yet you accuse me of 'hatred.'
Perhaps, instead of trawling the internet, you might consider reading the writings of professional naval historians, where you might possibly find out something about the realities of naval warfare. Alternatively, you could simply continue spouting your prejudiced anti-British bile.
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@haredr6511 Titanic had received ice warnings only, not references to a 'dense ice fleld.' Californian was the only ship which stopped. Carpathia was further south because of her destination, which was Fiume, not Southampton.
Smith had taken other ships, including Olympic, through the same area at the same time of year and, in Olympic's case, at the same speed, on many previous occasions without problems. He had, by the way, altered to a more southerly course.
Therefore, your analogy is totally spurious.
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They were to be towed into the Channel by tugs or trawlers. The towing vessel would be attached to a powered barge, which would have a second, unpowered, barge behind it. These three vessel units were to be grouped in cumbersome box formations, and would proceed at five knots or so. When (if?) they reached their landing beaches, small motor launches would push the unpowered barges onto them.
Whilst this was happening, the Royal Navy had, by mid-late September, 1940, seventy destroyers and light cruisers within five hours of Dover, with around five hundred smaller warships following up in support.
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There was an earlier battleship with the same name, one of France's first dreadnoughts, of the Courbet class. By 1939, she had been renamed Ocean to release the name for the new battleship, which was launched in March, 1940.
However, she had made her last seagoing voyage as a training ship in June, 1935, by which time her material condition was so poor that she was not considered fit for modernisation along the lines of the rest of her class, but was disarmed and hulked in Toulon, whrn her name was changed at the same time.
Unusually, I fear that Mr. Felton may be in error here.
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The radar system had already failed, after Bismarck had fired at HMS Norfolk on 23 May. The blast from Bismarck's forward guns had disabled her own radar, which was rather more 'delicate' than the British type 284.
Bismarck's design was outdated, featuring incremental armour of the type used in WW1, which had been superseded long ago in the US & Royal Navies by the All or Nothing type more suited to longer range engagements. It was also significantly thinner than the armour of either the Nelson or King George V classes. These two classes also fired a heavier weight of broadside.
There was no possibility of salvaging Bismarck. At the end, she was listing by 20 degrees, sinking by the stern, and suffering from serious internal fires. The leaders of both scientific expeditions to the wreck, Bob Ballard & David Mearns, both opined that any scuttling attempt would only have hastened what was inevitable anyway.
You don't consider the losses in Norway of half of the total German destroyer fleet, the sinking of two (out of a total of six) light cruisers, and the crippling of a third in December, 1939, the long term damage to Deutchland/Lutzow, and the damage caused to Scharnhorst & Gneisenau, putting them out of action until November, 1940, to have been significant setbacks, then? Well, I suppose you are entitled to your opinion.
In reality, after the sinking of Bismarck, the German surface fleet was more or less reduced to an irrelevance. Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst, & Gneisenau escaped back to German waters. Gneisenau never sailed again, Scharnhorst sailed once more, and was sunk, Prinz Eugen made a abortive attempt to reach Norway, but was torpedoed, and thereafter pottered around the Baltic until surrender to the Allies, and Tirpitz functioned as an expensively maintained Fleet in Being.
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@shalaconballard9912 Hood had armour on a par with that of, for example, the Queen Elizabeths, and thicker than the Iron Dukes or the Nagato, and her belt was the same as that of the North Carolinas. That is, simply, a fact.
The post-Jutland redesign changed Hood, from a conventional battlecruiser into a fast battleship, and did result in her being lower in the water, but there was never any intention to add further armour to the ship in her existing form. There was a proposal, never implemented because of the war, for her to undergo a complete modernisation along the lines of Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, or Renown, which would have seen her with new, lighter, engines, and a totally different superstructure. Significant weight savings would result, which permitted installation of enhanced protection without increasing the overall displacement of the 'new' ship.
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Actually, it takes 23 hours for a destroyer to steam from Scapa Flow to Dover. HMS Codrington did precisely that earlier in the war. Not that this matters, firstly because the bulk of the Home Fleet was at Rosyth anyway, and secondly because by September 1940 the Admiralty had already positioned around 70 light cruisers and destroyers within five hours' steaming of the Straits anyway, at bases such as Portsmouth/Southampton and the Nore. These were, by the way supported by around 500 smaller warships, such as fleet minesweepers, sloops, corvettes, gunboats, and armed trawlers.
If it takes 'five minutes to sink a battleship when you have air superiority' please reinforce this point by replying with details of which British battleship was sunk in such a manner by the Luftwaffe in WW2.
'People who think a landing was impossible are just imbeciles with zero idea of military matters and this opinion is a recent one not something taken seriously back then.' Oh? If this opinion is a recent one, why did Churchill send a troop convoy to North Africa, including three full armoured regiments, on 22 August, 1940, when myth would have us believe that Britain's fate was on a knife edge? Look up the 'Apology' convoy for yourself. Why, furthermore, did the C-in-C Home Fleet, Admiral Sir Charles Forbes argue with Churchill & the Admiralty (correctly, in my assessment) that too much emphasis had been placed on naval anti-invasion resources, when many of the lighter vessels could have remained on convoy duty throughout, only being recalled when (if) they were needed? Being right isn't always wise, by the way, as Forbes found when he subsequently lost his job!
Right after the fall of France, on 20 June, by the way, Admiral Raeder, head of the Kreigsmarine, attended a meeting with Hitler, Keitel, & Jodl, informing them that his navy had no landing craft, but hoped to have assembled 45 seaworthy barges within a fortnight. I hope that your German assault were excellent long distance swimmers or, alternatively, had access to Montgolfier balloons!
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You don't consider that the Bismarck's outdated design, involving as it did a low angle secondary armament, four twin main turrets, and obsolete incremental armour, among other flaws, was something of a disadvantage?
Oh, and didn't the Germans have their opportunity to 'eat up' the British in 1940, when France had fallen, Genial Uncle Joe was supplying Adolf with raw materials, and the USA was watching from a distance?
I am sure you have read what actually happened to the cunning plan that was Operation Sealion, so I won't enlighten you further.
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There were just under 200,000 British troops lifted out of Dunkirk. Around 120,000 French troops were also lifted, but most returned to France to surrender less than 2 weeks later. Ther British also lifted around 190,000 troops from French Atlantic ports in Operation Aerial.
By the way, Hitler didn't stop the German armour on the Aa canal, von Rundstedt did, in order to service it before the second phase of the invasion of France, and avoid the risk of a second 'Miracle of the Marne.' Hitler, having been assured by Goering that the elimination of the Dunkirk pocket was 'a special job for the Luftwaffe' chose to believe him, only to discover that the Luftwaffe of 1940 was not very effective against ships.
If you think that lines of converted barges towed slowly across the Channel by tugs and trawlers could hope to survive what the Royal Navy had in store for them, think again.
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@markjones336 Yes, I do. It seems that you don't. India was largely self-administered with a tiny number of British civil-servants, and a small British element within the Anglo-Indian army. The princely states remained largely self-governing, and I doubt the average Indian ever saw a European, except in the major cities. If British rule was so brutal, why did 2.5 Million Indian volunteer for the Allied armies in WW2, when conscription was never attempted there, because it was never needed.
I don't propose arguing about this on a place by place basis, but suggest that you try to get the 'British Empire bad' fixation out of your head, and understand that 'Empire' whether British, French, German, or anyone else's, is a rather more complex and nuanced concept.
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@SMITHSONIAN33 Well, one of us needs to do some research, that is for sure. 'The lion symbolism was used right throughout Europe's Royal Houses.' Indeed it was. The Lion has appeared in Egyptian & Greek art from as far back as the third millennium BC, and probably even earlier.
Perhaps because at the time, and perhaps until as late as the 4th Century AD, Lions were to be found in Greece, Ukraine, and the Balkans, as well as the Middle East, or, if you prefer it, the area known by Crusaders as 'The Holy Land.' The Lion also appears in Buddhist & Hindu religious texts, and in Babylonian and Egyptian artwork, tomb paintings, and carvings going back as far as c3500 BC.
Your belief that 'only place with Lions is Africa' is, frankly, absurd.
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@hzyk2j The fundamental difference between Ukraine and Britain is that Ukraine is on the borders of Russia.
To invade Britain, there are numerous nations in the way, almost all of whom are members of Nato.
What you are suggesting is akin to the idea that, perhaps, Germany could have attacked Britain in 1940, without attacking Denmark, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands, and France first.
Put simply, ABSURD.
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The switch nonsense is a myth invented by an amateur writer, Robin Gardiner, in the 1990s, and later propagated by a number of conspiracist fantasists, to whom everything is part of a series of huge and evil plots conceived and operated by 'THEM!
In the real world, Olympic was returned to Harland & Wolff, repaired by them in about seven weeks, at a cost to White Star of £25,000, and sent back to sea from late November, 1911.
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J Calhoun Not really. In 1917 Admiral Holtzendorff estimated that, in order to starve Britain of supplies, U-boats needed to sink British/Allied shipping at a rate of 600,000 tons per month. Karl Doenitz worked on the same calculation.
By December, 1941, the most the U-boat arm had managed was 363,267 in October, 1940, and 362,268 in May, 1941. The average for the last six months of 1941 was 125,088 tons per month.
With the entry of the United States' Mercantile Marine to the war, from January, 1942, Doenitz raised the monthly target to 800,000 tons (which, given the mass production techniques introduced to US shipyards, was an under estimation in any case), and, of course, the Germans never came close, but the reality is that, up to December, 1941, they had never come close to the necessary figure, certainly nowhere as close as they did in 1917.
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Wherever did you get this nonsense from? There was never a 'conspiracy' to cripple, still less sink, Titanic, and certainly not through smouldering fires, which evidence from surviving stokers has proven were extinguished around 24 hours prior to the collision.
Moreover, Olympic had made several further transatlantic crossings since returning to sea in late November, 1911, and at the time of Titanic's sinking was around 500 miles from her, returning to Southampton from New York. Thus, there were two Olympics at sea, both steaming in excess if 20 knots. If one was already seriously damaged, how did anyone manage that?
Captain Lord was never knighted, and SS Californian was almost ludicrously unsuited for the task of rescue ship, given that she was a small freighter already laden with a full, 'mixed, general' cargo. At least according to the Boston shipping papers when she docked there on 19 April. 'Confusion' by the way? Californian's officers saw Titanic's flares, and notified Lord. He simply failed to respond. If the rescue was already planned, why might that have been?
'Captain Smith and some of this lieutenants were aware of the plan and that is why Murdoch gave a nudge to the iceberg (the iceberg could had been avoided easily) ... That is why the boats were lowered half empty/full.' Sorry, but that is simply too idiotic, and too insulting to the memory of decent men who, whatever mistakes any of them may or may not have made, died honourably on the night of the sinking. It is simply unworthy of comment.
'The insurance fraud - switch theory is very compelling and has many confirmed facts behind it to make it real.' What 'confirmed facts' might those be? Please educate us all by elucidating.
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@whispofwords2590 Actually, the Afrika Korps (15 & 21 Panzer Divisions, 90 Light Div., and 164 Inf. Div.) at the time of El Guettar were part of the Italian 1st Army, under General Messe, which was defeated at Mareth & routed at Wadi Akarit by 8th Army.
The German force at El Guettar was 10th Panzer, which only arrived in Tunisia in December, 1942, and was part of von Arnim's 5th Panzer Army. It was transferred to Rommel's command on 19 February, and took part in the Battle of Kasserine. By no stretch of the imagination, even the most fevered, could it be considered to have been 'trained by Rommel' and it was only commanded by him for four days.
Aren't facts a nuisance?
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Hood was one of four planned 'Admirals.' She was redesigned after Jutland to incorporate more armour. The other three were cancelled when priority was given to construction of escorts and merchantmen instead. She did not 'fail' her sea trials, but almost immediately, with Repulse and a cruiser squadron, went on a world tour in 1923-4. The Admiralty never 'demanded it got scrapped.'
'Very poor ventilation below decks so they had to keep the hatches open or the crew below decks would suffocate.' Nonsense.
'She had to stay in shallow water as much as possible to avoid waves bigger than 4 foot.' Nonsense.
'A refit was done to change the design of the bow to make it higher.' Nonsense. This simply did not happen.
'10 refits in 5 years and they all failed to make her sea worthy.' Nonsense. Apart from minor details (removal of range clocks and some searchlights, and fitting of additional secondary armament rangefinders) her first major refit was not until 1929-1931, and her second in 1936.
'Crew were forced to serve on her as most refused once they heard about the problems with her. Mostly it was new recruits who didn't know anything about her. Officers and the captain were on board as pushishment not because they wanted to be there. Most tried to resign rather than serve on her but they were told nope sorry u cant resign cause we cant find anyone to replace u.' Absolute and utter nonsense. A posting to Hood for an aspiring officer was generally a sure way to subsequent promotion. Do you have any idea how many officers who served aboard her between the wars went on to Flag Rank?
'She was what is now called a lemon. not fit for service. An embarrassment to the royal navy.' Absolute nonsense. For almost fifteen years, she was regarded as one of the most powerful capital ships in existence by the navies of the world. She had the armour & firepower of a battleship, with the speed of a battlecruiser.
'The hatches between the gun turrets and the powder room had to be kept open while in action or the powder room crew would suffocate as they got their air from the gun turret above them. That was a big danger and the crew knew it. in the end its what caused her to explode.' Absolute nonsense. Such hatches, as you call them, had never been left open in RN warships since Jutland, when the commander of the battlecruiser fleet insisted upon a high rate of fire, and allowed charges to be stored within the turrets. Hood was sunk when she was hit by well-directed fire from a more modern warship.
'Sparks from firing the guns went down through the hatches into the powder room and bang up she went.' Absolute nonsense. Do you really believe that heavy naval guns gave off 'sparks,' for heavens sake?
Just to state a few facts:-
1). Hood was certainly a 'wet ship' aft because of the installation of additional armour.
2). In common with many ships of the day, conditions aboard did result in cases of TB among the crew, but the idea that there was a risk of suffocation aboard is simply idiotic.
3) She was, by 1941, overdue for complete modernisation, along the lines of similar work already carried out on Warspite, Renown, Valiant, & Queen Elizabeth. Not because of any particular design flaws, but simply because naval technology had moved on, and she was 20 years old.
You seem to have a very odd fixation about Hood. I wonder if you feel able to substantiate any of your claims?
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It is true that Hitler regarded the Soviet Union as his true enemy, and he sought to neutralise France and persuade the UK to remain neutral. However, this was largely because, as Boney said many years previously, 'can an Elephant fight a Whale?' If the British chose not to come to terms, he had no realistic means of compelling them. Certainly, build the U-boat fleet, but this takes resources away from the army & air force, and in the end the British & Canadians can (and did) produce sufficient anti-submarine vessels and weapons to counter whatever the Germans could build.
Spain was hardly able to provide anything. In 1940, only food supplies from the United States kept Spain from mass starvation, and Franco had been told that these supplies would cease in the event of a military alliance with Germany. In fact, Germany would need to support Spain.
Closure of the straits would not have had the effect you seem to think, by the way. For much of the early part of the war, the Med. was a backwater as far as supplies were concerned. These went via the longer but safer Cape route.
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@mattbowden4996 I see. Resorting to insults rather than even trying to make a coherent argument. What previous statement have I backtracked upon?
'Truly, you are an intellectual colossus.' I wouldn't claim that, although I do have a first in modern history, my particular period being the naval war in 1940-41. It brings back half-forgotten memories of my arguments with Professor MRD Foot, my tutor, about the Battle of Britain & Operation Sealion. Foot had been an Intelligence Officer in WW2, knew all about Bletchley Park, and never breathed a word to us about any of it, by the way.
If you can make any sort of rational argument which explains how Operation Albion challenged the Royal Navy in the North Sea, please present it. Wasn't sending a battlecruiser, 10 battleships, 9 cruisers and around 50 torpedo boats into the Baltic against a Russian fleet already deeply involved in revolution rather over-kill? I suppose that sinking one of the two pre-dreadnoughts, and an elderly armoured cruiser, that were still loyal to the pre-bolshevik Russian regime as it collapsed must have seemed something of a success, after the various strikes, anti-war meetings and desertions that the HSF had experienced in 1917, but frankly it rather stands comparison with Operation Zitronella, in September, 1943, when the German navy sent two battleships and nine destroyers to bombard what amounted to a large shed on Spitzbergen.
From my reading of the German reasons behind the WW2 operation, it appears that there was concern within the Kriegsmarine about the state of morale aboard the Tirpitz, and Zitronella was invented to, in effect, give a disaffected crew something to do. Doesn't Operation Albion rather resemble something similar in WW1, although perhaps you might consider it to have been worth the effort, as the effect on civilian morale, as these poor people tucked into their turnip slices in their unheated homes, must have been most uplifting?
Oh, and Operation Albion lasted for around 10 days in October. What did the High Seas Fleet do during the rest of 1917?
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@williams4434 As you seem disinclined to give a Biblical reference in support of your claim, let me help you out. The nearest thing to a discription of Jesus' physical appearance is in Revelation 1: 14-15, whic in the King James Bible reads :-
'His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.'
Not quite as you said, is it?
By the way, the Book of Revelation probably dates from the reign of Domitian, at around 96 A. D. and was attributed to John the Elder, or John of Patmos, an Ephesian Christian. Certainly, no-one who had seen Jesus would have contributed to it.
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If they had expended vast sums on a surface fleet, then they wouldn't have been able to build up their army & air force to the same extent. As a result, the conquest of France probably wouldn't have happened, Italy would probably have remained neutral, and the Anglo-French naval resources could have been concentrated in the North Sea, as, of course, the French Atlantic bases wouldn't have been available to the Kriegsmarine as they historically were.
As to modern carrier tactics, the Germans had absolutely no experience whatsoever of naval aviation, the one carrier they half built was, in design, similar to the RNs Courageous & Glorious, which by 1939 were long in the tooth to say the least, and the Bf109, with a very narrow and frail undercarriage, was almost laughably unsuited for use as a carrier based fighter. Just compare it to the Fairey Fulmar, let alone the US carrier aircraft designs of the same period, such as the Grumman Wildcat.
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@erictaylor5462 Oh dear. You really are a touchy little chap. Try not to get so worked up; it really isn't healthy.
So you didn't say 'Using modern Carrier battle group tactics.' Odd that, did someone hack into your post and add it without your knowledge?
You said 'using carrier deployed Bf-109's' The simple fact is that the undercarriage of the Bf109 made it unsuitable for carrier operations. However, if that isn't enough, why don't you read for yourself the range of which the Bf109 was capable. When you do, you will realise that it was far too short legged for naval operations.
Perhaps you are not fully aware of the strategic thinking behind the construction of the German battleship fleet. If you had been, you would have known that it was not intended to fight the Royal Navy, but the French Navy, in line with the thinking developed by the Weimar republic that any future German war would be against the Soviet Union and/or the Soviet Union. The pocket battleships from the Weimar period had a double purpose, in that they could dominate the Baltic, but still operate against French troop convoys. The French retaliated by, from 1932, building the Dunquerque & Strasbourg. Germany responded by producing the Scharnhorst class, France then laid down Jean Bart & Richelieu, to which the Bismarck class were the counter. In other words, German pre-war naval planning was based entirely on the French navy; The Germans never sought a war with Britain, largely because there was never any possibility, of challenging the Royal Navy, which explains why the Kreigsmarine was so ill prepared in September, 1939.
By the way, if we go along with your suggestion of German carriers operating in the mid Atlantic searching for convoys (using short range aircraft) and protecting, apparently, wolf packs, what is your estimate of the life expectancy of these vessels?
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@ablethreefourbravo You should read 'Invasion of England, 1940' by the German author Peter Schenk, for full details of the German plan.
'It's a mistake to think the Germans would drive their boats straight to the beach and run directly into machine gun fire like we did.' True enough, because the German troops were to be landed from (mainly unpowered) barges, which were to be pushed slowly onto the landing beaches by small motor boats. Assuming, of course, that they could find a way past the RN anti-invasion forces in the first place.
You seem to have a charmingly naive idea that Sealion, or some form of alternative Sealion, would have been successful, without having the faintest idea about how it might overcome the vast number of problems it, in reality, faced.
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Good heavens! I never knew that, in 1939/40, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, & Belgium, all invaded without declaration of war, presumably for their own good, by your peaceloving Germans, were evil bastions of communism.
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Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the theories of Giulio Douhet, an Italian strategise who died in 1930, well before the flaws in his concept became obvious?
Douhet argued that bombing of civilian populations would result in, put simply, mass uprisings against governments, and the installation of new ones who would immediately make peace, at whatever cost. The idea was popular with such people as Goering, Le May, and the British Air Ministry. After all, it provided the raison d'etre for the large bomber fleets they craved.
Moreover, by mid 1940, there had been plenty of proof that hitler was willing to attack civilian targets by means of bombing. Aside from events in Spain, Warsaw was heavily bombed in September, 1939, on several occasions, as was Rotterdam on 14 May, 1940.
To suggest, or even imply, that German bombing of London was merely in response to British bombing of German towns & cities, is questionable at best.
I urge you to read Douhet's 'The Command of the Air' as it provided the (false) premises under which both the German & British (and later the USAAF) were working in WW2.
Indeed, Arthur Harris, to the end of his days, never managed to rid himself of the idea.
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Gerry Hagen Here is a quote from one of my sources, by the way :-
'Certain modern historians, such as Larry T. Addington, Niall Barr and Robert Citino, are skeptical of Rommel as an operational, let alone strategic, level commander. They point to Rommel's lack of appreciation for Germany's strategic situation, his misunderstanding of the relative importance of his theatre to the German High Command, his poor grasp of logistical realities, and, according to the historian Ian Beckett, his "penchant for glory hunting".
Citino credits Rommel's limitations as an operational level commander as "materially contributing" to the eventual demise of the Axis forces in North Africa,. Meanwhile, Addington focuses on Rommel's disobedience and struggle over the North Africa strategy, whereby his initial brilliant success resulted in "catastrophic effects" for Germany in this theatre of war.'
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Sorry, but the Barrister is correct in his explanation of how the law works. Whether the CPS was right in concluding that there was a case to answer in the first place is not the issue. Once it had, then the trial had to proceed. It did, and the correct verdict was reached. If anything, that demonstrates that the Legal System is still fit for purpose.
Consider the alternative. If the facts and the evidence had not been properly tested before a Jury, how do you think the usual subjects would have reacted?
What is more dubious is the way the BBC and others portrayed Kaba as a young angel, 'unarmed. training to become an architect, and about to become a father' when those responsible within the organisation doubtless knew the facts, but chose not to report the events in an impartial manner.
The BBC had, it seems, concluded, for reasons of their own, that the Firearms Officer was guilty until proven guilty, as the virtually unconcealed fury of their presenters on Monday's news made obvious.
When the facts became public, the startling hand brake turn undertaken by that same BBC on Tuesday was 'mirabile visu.' Wonderful to behold.
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Wrong. The Swordfish attack was called off firstly because the aircraft would be endangered should they fly into the paths of shells being fired by two battleships and two cruisers, and secondly because, by the time the aircraft arrived, it was clear that they were not needed. At 0920 on 27 May ARK ROYAL launched a strike force of 12 Swordfish armed with torpedoes. Their task was to be available should the CINC Home Fleet require their services. Tovey did not need them. That is what really is documented.
There was a claim made to historian Iain Ballantyne, by the son of Tommy Byers, a member of Rodney's crew, in, I believe, 2011.
Tommy Byers claimed to have spotted a black flag flying – a means of calling for ‘parley’, the black flag is used to signify a plea for surrender. Byers also noticed a man waving semaphore flags. Firstly, a Black Flag in naval tradition has always meant the opposite, and secondly the idea of anyone standing on Bismarck's deck signalling in semaphore as she was being blasted by 16 inch, 14 inch, 8 inch, 6 inch, and 5.25 inch shells defies credibility.
The British, at the time of Bismarck's sinking, were short of fuel for their capital ships, and wished to finish her off before either U-Boats on, possibly, Luftwaffe aircraft, arrived. Sinking enemy ships at sea is what happens in wartime. The British were simply eliminating one of three operational German capital ships.
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@sebclot9478 The Italians had possessions in Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. Other than Libya, these were cut off entirely from re-supply, and eliminated completely by November, 1941, after the Battle of Gondar, with 230,000 Italian and colonial troops surrendering.
1). The main Italian forces in Libya were annihilated by Operation Compass, ending with the Battle of Beda Fomm on 6-7 February, 1941. That was, of course, why Hitler was obliged to send a small German force to shore up what was left of Italian Libya.
2). The US only even appeared in North Africa in November, 1942. Italian losses during the period to the end of the campaign were 2.1 million tons of merchant shipping, 83 warships, totalling 195,100 tons, and 83 submarines. Of the surface ship losses, 161,000 were sunk by British & Commonwealth forces, and 33,900 by US forces. Would you care to re-assess your opinion of the extent of the American role?
3). The Suez Canal was simply not used by the British to a significant extent in the early part of WW2. Merchant shipping went by the Cape route, which was longer but safer. The axis had significant aerial forces in the Mediterranean area, which made the passage of merchantmen dangerous. Simply read any academic study of the campaign. Better still, tell me the identity of a single British convoy which sailed to Britain through the Suez Canal during that period. Good luck with that!
4). Perhaps, but the fact is that they didn't, and certainly weren't willing to after June, 1941.
5). I have already explained the situation of Spain in 1939-1940. I suggest you read up on the immediate aftermath of the Civil War to educate yourself. Do you seriously think that Germany could invade Spain in order to capture Gibraltar, then simply pack up and go home? Seriously? I always find the entertaining opinions of those who think German resources were inexhaustible quite fascinating.
6). Good luck with using Bismarck in late 1940 or early 1941, as she wasn't even declared operational until May, 1941. In point of fact, Bismarck was very conservative in design. Three major obsolete features being her four main turrets, resulting in excessive length and therefore displacement, her more or less useless 5.9 inch low angle secondary armament, and most important of all her long outdated incremental armour, when other navies had moved to the superior US conceived all or nothing pattern. Still, you can't expect much more of what was essentially an improved Baden, I suppose.
7). You need to explain it to me. In September, 1940, the Germans had only one operational heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, and ten or so operational destroyers or large torpedo boats. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had been damaged during the Norwegian campaign, and weren't even operational again until November, 1940. Please tell me which other ships, again?
8).& 9). I actually wrote, 'Build more U-Boats? I assume that, as these are being built, presumably in the pre-war period, you expect the British to sit back, say 'I wonder why the Germans are building U-Boats?' and not expand their own escort production programme?' I know exactly the nature of the German U-Boat programme between 1939 & 1945. As you would have grasped had you actually read the above, I was referring to earlier reference to a 'scaling back' of the U-Boat war, which didn't actually happen by the way. The point you seem unable to grasp here is that U-Boat construction could only be aimed at one target, and the British, dependent on imports for survival, would act accordingly.
10). Sorry, I had rather lost interest by that stage, so fantastical was your post. Please look up the full extent of the shore batteries which existed on Gibraltar at that time, and then read up on Force H and DF13, both based on Gibraltar. In September, 1940, these consisted of one battleship, one battlecruiser, one carrier, and fifteen destroyers. When you have done that, tell me which forces were available across the Straits which could successfully have overcome these defences.
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'Germany could afford to sustain vast losses of all kinds and still win a direct conflict with England. If the entire first wave of 150,000 men were lost it wouldn't mean anything.' Aside from the fact that the first wave was likely to have been around 60,000 men, I suggest that winning a war against and island when your own country has no fleet would be more than a little difficult.
Sealion was, at best, a one shot weapon, hamstrung by the inability of the Kriegsmarine to assemble sufficient barges.All 400 were to be committed to the first wave. Once they, or most of them, were lost, there could be no second attempt. The Admiralty had no intention of committing the heavy ships (battleships, battlecruisers, & heavy cruisers) to anti-invasion operations in any case, asd they deemed it unnecessary unless German heavy ships appeared.The only operational German heavy ship at the time, of course, was a single heavy cruiser.
'attacked by U-Boats and E-Boats and aircraft the whole time.' Oh dear. In September, 1940, the Kriegsmarine had 27 operational U-boats, of which 13 were at sea on any one day. The last attempt to operate any boats in the Channel had been in October 1939 when three Type IIs were sent there, and were promptly sunk. Moreover, U-boats in WW2 tried to avoid contact with destroyers or escorts. Now you suggest that they would actively seek them out? 'S Boats?' You presumably mean the 13 the Germans had in service in 1940?
'Aircraft?' The Luftwaffe had little experience of attacking shipping, hence their failure at Dunkirk. In the whole of WW2, they sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser. They did not, by the way, even have an operational torpedo bomber until mid 1942.
'And once the Germans had a foothold on the coast, they can recover downed pilots, put every airfield within 20 miles of the coast out of action, all the RADAR and early warning posts are gone.' The key word here is 'once.' When is that? After the loss of the first wave of tugs and barges, what is left? Plenty of barges, certainly, but nothing to tow them, and nothing to escort them.
'It's airpower and land power that decides the fight for the Germans.' No, it isn't. At least, not in 1940. Land power is irrelevant unless it can be magicked across the Channel, which it cannot. The Luftwaffe was a tactical airforce, intended to support advancing troops. It is more or less irrelevant when there are no troops to support.
I really wish you Sealion 'would haves' would do a little reading before pronouncing so apparently sagely about what your mighty Germans 'would have' done in 1940. Oddly, you then struggle to explain why they didn't (actually, couldn't) do it.
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Peter Nonsense. Bismarck was, admittedly, hard to sink, but not difficult to cripple. Rodney destroyed most of her main armament and her bridge and internal communications within 20 minutes of engaging. After that, her sinking was not a battle, it was an execution.
Tirpitz was destroyed by heavy bombs, dropped from high altitude, because she was an inconvenient 'Fleet in Being' which never actually emerged from hiding. The bomb, by the way, had not been designed specifically to destroy Tirpitz. Hood was, by 1941, an elderly warship with the armour of a WW1 battleship. She was certainly not superior to modern British & US Battleships.
The last Japanese capital ship built in Britain was the Kongo, actually a battlecruiser constructed in 1912. After that, the Japanese built their own battleships, and Kongo herself was totally reconstructed between the wars. When did the Japanese sink the entire Russian navy, by the way? If you mean Tsushima, that was in 1905.
As to 'any battleships that the US produced could easily be destroyed with a well placed hit from a salvo.' Well, the US, like the British, built their post WW1 battleships with the vastly superior ( to incremental, anyway) all or nothing armour system. At Guadalcanal, South Dakota sustained 27 hits, yet remained in action. I can't comment on the effect your indestructible German ships would have had on British battleships, as no British battleship was hit by one in WW2. Before you quibble, Hood was a battlecruiser.
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To my mind, the one commander on either side who did everything right was her Captain, Frederick Dalrymple-Hamilton.
Rodney's arrival is splendidly described in Ludovic Kennedy's 'Pursuit,' as follows :-
' Now, there was nothing to do but wait. It was an agonising period, but Tovey was not left brooding for long. 'Ship bearing Red Seven-O,' shouted a look out. All eyes on the bridge turned to the port beam, there below the horizon were the unmistakable outlines of a ship's fighting top. Could it be Prinz Eugen?' The alarm bells were sounded, the gun crews ran to their turrets, the great guns swung round.
But now her upperworks were coming into view, and there could be no mistaking them. It was Rodney, for Tovey and his staff a truly wonderful sight. She had made no signals for over thirty hours, had been told by the Admiralty to steer a variety of courses which could have taken her anywhere, and now, like Aphrodite, was rising from the sea to take her place on the stage at the time when she was most needed.'
Perhaps Ludovic went a little overboard comparing her to the Greek Goddess of Love & Beauty, however!
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@gokulgopan4397 He cannot. I write as someone who has read the minutes of both Inquiries, which clearly he has not.
As to insurance fraud. Olympic and Titanic, in 1911 terms, both cost £1.5 million to build, and both were insured for £1 million. I an not an accountant, but perhaps someone could explain how losing £500,000 a major asset and a safety record, all at the same time, benefitted anyone?
Except, perhaps, Cunard?!
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This is what I, and anyone who actually knows anything about Titanic, makes of it:-
1). Olympic was not 'beyond repair.' In fact, she had been repaired, and returned to sea from 20 November, 1911, when Titanic was still some five months from completion. The cost to White Star was about £25,000 (at 1911 monetary values), or 1.67% of Olympic's building cost. Morgan didn't pay anything out to have anything scrapped, as he had been dead since 1913.
When Olympic was withdrawn from service, in 1935, after the merger of Cunard & White Star, and at the same time as her old rival Mauretania, she was purchased, for £97,500 and went first to Jarrow for partial dismantling, and then to Inverkeithing, where her hull was broken up. Cunard/White Star did not pay anyone to scrap her. Quite the reverse.
2). Titanic, not Olympic, had around 2,220 people aboard when she sank, which included a full crew of around 900. Nor, of course, was she deliberately sunk.
3). 'Gain about ten million quid from the exercise.' Hardly. The sinking cost White Star a major asset, a record for safety, and £500,000 because Titanic was only insured for £1 million, against her building costs of £1.5 million, again at 1912 monetary values, of course.
The only people who might perhaps have gained anything from the sinking, albeit indirectly, could have been Cunard.
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@michaelnarramore3415 You obviously care, or you wouldn't have posted such nonsense.
The Report on the extent of Olympic's damage, published on 10 November, 1911, was confirmed by teams from the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and White Star. It made no reference to keel damage at all, only to 'two flooded compartments, a 6-8 feet deep gash in the hull, and a damaged propeller shaft.'
Perhaps you don't know that the first ever suggestion of keel damage occurred in 1995, when it was invented precisely to justify the ludicrous switch claim?
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@raywhitehead730 Official records don't differ at all. The Queen Mary did indeed steam from Scotland to Suez in Mid 1942. Via Freetown, Cape Town, & Simonstown. In other words, round the Cape, NOT through the Mediterranean. You have even confirmed this yourself. If you believe that the British used the Suez Canal for anything other than sending warships to and from the Mediterranean fleet, then please provide details of the relevant convoy movements.
Certainly, Allied merchantmen were sunk by U-Boats in the Indian Ocean, but passing through the Suez Canal, and then through the Med., would have exposed them to German & Italian air attack, greater risk from German & Italian submarines, of which there were far more than ever operated in the Indian Ocean, and even a possible sortie by the Italian surface fleet. Which is why the Suez Canal & the Mediterranean were not used for convoy routeing.
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@raywhitehead730 I haven't said that the Suez Canal was 'shut down,' only that it was not used by convoys between the East and the UK. It was used by military traffic, in particular warships moving to and from the Mediterranean Fleet. Supplies and reinforcements, like the eastern convoys, went round the Cape. In the case of military supplies and reinforcements, these unloaded in Suez, at the southern end of the canal, not at Port Said.
Seriously, would you send a slow moving convoy of merchantmen through the Mediterranean in the face of German & Italian aircraft and submarines? Neither would, or did, the British.
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@Simon_Nonymous My pleasure. Ernie has always escaped criticism for his actions, which appear to have been based upon his anglophobia rather than any actual alternative strategy. To give some idea of how catastrophic his behaviour was, in November, 1941, 7 merchant ships were lost in convoy, and 6 lost when sailing independently. For December, the figures were 6 & 17.
After Paukenschlag began, and King refused to institute convoys, the losses in convoy from January to June 1942 were 6, 10, 3, 3, 14, and 14, yet the losses of independents, almost all off the East Coast of the US, were, for the same months, 43, 61, 89, 78, 115, and 122.
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Actually, there was a reason, of sorts, for the seemingly pointless raid. As I recall reading quite recently :- 'The Japanese struck again on 9 April, sinking 23 ships in the Bay of Bengal. However, Japan did not want to invade Ceylon; the offensive was a defensive manoeuvre to raid the British forces and provide cover for their own troop reinforcements being sent to Rangoon by sea. As a result, the Japanese then withdrew and, for the most part, left India and the Indian Ocean alone for the rest of the war.'
So, the Japanese weren't going to invade Ceylon, but, in your mind, were going to invade Madagascar? Could you explain how, logistically, the Japanese could have executed and maintained such an operation? Again, I await with eager anticipation.
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@kayhass2510 Actual history. In September 1940 the British had 34.5 operational divisions in the UK. 32.5 of these were British.
At sea, Britain was defended from invasion by the Royal Navy, which apart from a small number of RCN destroyers, was wholly British.
In Fighter Command, of around 2,900 pilots, around 500 were non-British. Mainly from the Commonwealth.
Certainly, the United States played a major role in WW2, after being reluctantly forced into it by the Japanese & Germans, but in 1940 the US was neutral, although happy to sell munitions to Britain at market prices.
Since then, contrary to what you think, the British fought in the Korean War as part of a United Nations Force, defeated a communist insurgency (unaided) in Malaya, and wisely kept out of the US debacle in Vietnam.
If anything, since then it has been the US begging Britain to get involved in a series of unwise American adventures, generally failed ones, in the Middle East. Unfortunately, a series of British Prime Ministers have let Britain become a part of these American antics.
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This would be the same Ernest King who refused to consider a convoy system off the US East Coast because convoys were a British idea, and Ernie was Anglophobic because apparently he had not been treated politely enough when, as a junior officer, he served with a US Battle Squadron attached to the Grand Fleet in WW1, would it?
How many US merchant seamen were lost just because Ernie didn't like Limeys?
Fortunately, the RN & RCN provided enough escorts to permit the establishment of a convoy system until US new construction arrived, but, seriously, for an opinion on the RN in WW2, Ernie is not the authority to pick.
One of his daughters said of him "he is the most even-tempered person in the United States Navy. He is always in a rage." He even instituted the court-martial of Captain McVay of USS Indianapolis in 1945 because McVay's father had reprimanded him early in his career. To be fair to him, though, apparently he detested the US army almost as much as he detested the British!
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@julianmarsh8384 Actually, if you had bothered to read a German historian, Peter Schenk ('Invasion of England, 1940 - The Planning of Operation Sealion) you could have answered your own questions.
The landings between Folkestone & New Romney involved 150 barges from Dunkirk and 50 from Ostend. These had to be towed out of the ports in pairs, and formed up into a cumbersome box formation. This was a particularly difficult task where Dunkirk was concerned, as the harbour facilities had been largely destroyed during Dynamo.
Those between Rye & Hasting required a further 200 barges from Calais, which again needed to be extricated from the port and formed up, but this time in full view of observers at Dover.
Those for Bexhill & Eastbourne involved 330 barges from Boulogne & a further 50 from Le Havre.
The final force, in 300 motor boats, was to sail from Le Havre to Beachy Head & Brighton.
You ask how long? From the first barge leaving Boulogne harbour, forming up, being towed to, and arriving at, Folkestone/New Romney, the Kriegsmarine estimated three days. The other barge convoys required two days. The barges were to be towed in pairs, at approximately five to six knots.
'The Germam Air Force would have had a field day' You mean like during Operation Dynamo, when it failed totally to prevent the evacuation?
I hope you took in my details about RN forces within five hours of Dover. In point of fact, in the whole of WW2, your mighty Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship at all larger than a light cruiser. Indeed, the Luftwaffe, untrained in anti-shipping techniques in 1940, didn't even acquire a torpedo bomber until mid 1942.
'A screen of U-Boats?' Like the three which were sent to operate in the Channel in late 1939? The ones (U12, 8 October, U14, 13 October, & U40, 24 October) which are still there, encasing the bodies of their crews after promptly being sunk?
If you had any actual knowledge of Sealion, you would know that the Channel was a deathtrap for a WW2 submersible. By the way, in September, 1940, the Germans had 27 frontboote (Operational boats) of which, on average, 13 were at sea on any one day. Is that your wonderful U-boat screen? Moreover, normal U-boat operating procedure involved trying to avoid close encounters with escorts, and especially fleet destroyers. Do you suggest that on this occasion they should actively seek them out? It would not end well. For the U-boats, that is.
I do enjoy reading the poorly informed nonsense you Sealion 'Would Haves' post, by which I mean your amusing certainty about what the wonderful Luftwaffe & the mighty Kriegsmarine 'would have' done.
Odd, then, that you are never actually able to explain why, in reality, they never managed to get remotely near to achieving any of it, isn't it?
You should read Schenk's book. You might, even if belatedly, actually learn soimething.
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@Blue Your ignorance is astounding. Where were cultures destroyed, other perhaps than human sacrifice in places like Benin, and Suttee in India?
What makes you think that a country with a population of 10.1 million (1801 Census) already at war with the largest military power in Europe, was able, militarily, to invade and conquer a place like India, with a population of around 150 million? By the time of the Raj, around 25,000 British administrators administerered an Indian population which had grown to almost 200 million. How did the evil British manage that without the support of a vast, Indian, civil service and the consent of the existing Indian States?
As to the Americas, New Zealand, Australia, and most of Africa, as western settlers in the 17-19th centuries found them in the same sort of condition that Europe had been in in around 4000 B.C., the peoples there hadn't made much progress on their own. What makes you believe that they would have made sudden startling advances? The fact is, the progress they made is due almost entirely to western science, philosophy, engineering, education, and law.
Are you actually a troll? You really cannot be as stupid as you pretend?
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@josephkugel5099 Again, you don't seem able to accept that the British are just as entitled to change policy of the Germans do.
Incidentally, Doenitz adhered to Admiral Holtzendorff's WW1 calculation that, in order to strangle Britain's supply lines, it would be necessary to sink 600,000 tons of British shipping per month. Between September, 1939 and December, 1941, the figure of 300,000 was exceeded three times only, and four times the figure was below 100,000. During this period, apart from a short spell when the RN withdrew most Atlantic escorts to beef up the (already, in most opinions, the more than adequate) naval anti-invasion forces, the RN was handling the U-Boat threat, sinking 69 U-Boats in the process. German actual successes were desperately short of their target.
By the way, the British didn't come 'running to America to trade for fifty old WW1 four stackers.' They were actually offered to the British by the American Ambassador to France, after a similar offer, for a smaller number, had been made to the French Navy. The Admiralty were hardly going to say no, as they saw them as a useful stop-gap until their own new construction arrived in larger quantities.
You seem to base your opinions on myth rather than known facts.
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@gorki855 ORP Conrad was originally HMS Danae. She was leased to the Polish navy afterr the loss of ORP Dragon, crippled and scuttled at Normandy in July, 1944. Dragon was, like Danae, a 'D' class cruiser, and most of her crew transferred to Conrad in October, 1944.
Conrad underwent refit in Southampton & Chatham until late January, 1945, before moving to Scapa Flow, and being attached to CS10 in April. She was in dock for repairs to her turbines until 30 May, when, with three British Z class destroyers, she was based in Wilhelmshaven.
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How was it then that Californian's officers reported a 'large steamer' firing off rockets to Captain Lord.
Can you name any other liner of the period with bulkheads extending up to the top deck. That was why they were liners, not Dreadnoughts.
The Switch Theory was invented by an author, Robin Gardiner, in the mid 1990s. No one with any actual knowledge of the subject takes it remotely seriously, perhaps because of the mountain of evidence disproving it.
Samson was built in 1885 as the 'City of New York.' She was a sailing ship with an auxiliary steam engine, capable of 7 knots, 148 feet long and displacing 506 GRT. Anyone mistaking her for Titanic ( 882 feet long and displacing 46,329 GRT) ought not to have been standing a watch at sea!
Additionally, official Lloyd's and Icelandic records claim that the Samson docked in Isafjordur on 6 April and 20 April 1912, making it impossible for her to have encountered the Titanic given her speed.
It has also not been explained why the crew of the Samson would be concerned about legal issues 500 miles off the coast of Newfoundland in international waters, or what seals would have been doing so far out to sea.
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Repulse & Prince of Wales were sunk by torpedo aircraft. In 1940, apart from a tiny number of seaplanes based in Norway, the Luftwaffe didn't have any torpedo aircraft. Moreover, the Luftwaffe hadn't trained in operations against warships, and were far from proficient at it. As a result, the Luftwaffe failed badly at Dunkirk. In September, 1940, the RN had around 70 destroyers and cruisers within 5 hours' steaming of the Straits, backed up by around 500 smaller warships. Moreover, the first wave of the invasion was estimated, by the Kriegsmarine, to require eleven days. The Luftwaffe could not operate at night, the RN could. What happens to the unprotected barges every night?
I always find the 'would have' comments of Sealion fans fascinating, by the way, when they pontificate sagely about the tremendous deeds that the Luftwaffe 'would have' achieved had Sealion been attempted, but are at a loss to explain the numerous failures of that same Luftwaffe in operations which actually took place.
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@thegamingchef3304 'Do you think the Brits and Canadians would be brave enough to storm the beaches of Normandy without America?' Please refer me to where I suggested that.
However, neither do I believe that, without the British and Canadians on 6 June, the Americans would have been able to have attempted D-Day either.
Bravery doesn't come into the issue. Resources and logistics do. The British & Canadians provided the bulk of the resources. The Royal and Royal Canadian navies swept the mines and kept the crossing lanes clear, provided most of the warships and crews, landed most of the troops, and, when what remained of the kriegsmarine tried to interfere, sank most of their destroyers, torpedo boats, and U-boats.
Not to mention, of course, that Sir Bertram Ramsay headed the planning team which made Operation Neptune possible in the first place.
Americans at the time were no more special than the British & Commonwealth forces involved, whatever Hollywood might like to suggest.
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@justjones5430 4). The following is a list of passengers who cancelled and, where it is known, the reasons for the calculation. Tell me of the connections between them, and who you think told them of the cunning plan :-
ADELMAN, Mr. and Mrs
ANDERSON, Mr. and Mrs. Walter
BACON, Robert, wife and daughter.
U.S. Ambassador to France, was delayed by late arrival of his successor, Myron T. Hendrick. Changed to the France, which departed France on her maiden voyage 20 April 1912.
BILL, Mr. and Mrs. Edward W.
Mrs. Bill had a dream of Titanic being wrecked; they sailed on Celtic instead.
BOND, Mrs. Florence and maid
CARLSON, Frank
Driving to Cherbourg, his car broke down and he missed the boat. However, his name remained on passenger list. His story was related in Walter Lord's The Night Lives On.
CRAIG, Norman, KC, MP
Booked cabin C-132 (see Cave List)
M.P. CHANGES HIS MIND
AT THE LAST MOMENT.
(FROM OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT). LONDON, Tuesday. Mr Norman Craig, K.C., M P., may be regarded as an exceedingly lucky person, for after booking his passage on board the Titanic; he changed his mind, and did not make the journey. Interviewed by our representative this afternoon, Mr Craig said that, as far as he could say, he had no conscious reason for delaying his voyage other than the fact that he considered that, in view of the present political situation, it would bettor for him to remain at home. "I was not going America on business," he said. "I was only intending make the run across and back for the sake of a health-giving outing."
Mr Craig considers that be has had a providential escape. He had actually packed his belongings ready to depart, and then changed his mind at the last moment. The member for the Isle of Thanet is an enthusiastic yachtsman, and is extremely fond of the sea. It is therefore quite natural that he should spend a short holiday in the manner that had intended. - Hull Daily Mail - Tuesday 16 April 1912
Mr. Norman Craig, K.C., M.P., son of Dr. Craig, whom possibly many Bedfordians will remember during his practice Ashburnham-road. is to congratulated on his escape. He had booked a passage on the Titanic, but cancelled it at the last moment. He has since stated in conversation with a "Morning Post" representative: It is impossible say how thankful I feel that I did not undertake the voyage, although joy is tempered by the knowledge that I have many friends on board, of whose fate I am still uncertain. Everything was ready for my trip across the Atlantic. All my baggage was packed and nothing remained for me to do except to go down to the dock and step on board. But I decided the last thing on the evening before the Titanic sailed that I would not go, and cacelled my passage.” - Bedfordshire Mercury - Friday 19 April 1912
DAVIES, S. P.
Of Winnipeg, Manitoba; canceled because illness forced him to take an earlier ship.
EASTMAN, Miss Annie
Booked cabin D-31 (see Cave List)
FRANKS, Alfred
Mr Alfred Franks of Edgbaston, Birmingham changed his mind after booking. A few days before sailing he took a boat from Liverpool instead..
FRICK, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Clay
Booked for suite B-52; canceled when Mrs. Frick hurt her ankle at Madeira on a cruise aboard Adriatic.
HANAN, Mr. and Mrs.
HARDING, Mr. and Mrs. J. Horace
Booked suite B-52 after it had been given up by Henry Frick and J.P. Morgan; canceled and took Mauretania instead.
HART, George
HITCHENS, Col. J. Warren
Could not get suitable accommodations
HOLDEN, Rev. J. Stuart
The Reverend J.Stuart Holden, rector of St. Paul's Church, Portman Square, London, was booked on the Titanic to sail from Southampton of 10 April 1912 , he is mentioned on the Herbert Cave Passenger List and would have occupied cabin D-11. Unfortunately for her, but perhaps fortunately for him, his wife fell ill before his departure and Rev. Holden cancelled his trip. His boarding card recently came to light in Liverpool.
Holden Titanic Ticket
HOME, Thomas, brother in law to Major Arthur Peuchen was scheduled to sail on Titanic, but cancelled. He sailed on the Lusitania's last voyage.
JENKINS, Dr. J. C.
KIND, Frank
Booked from Amsterdam, saw accommodation plan at Paris, canceled. Transferred to NDL Washington, departed 7 April 1912
LANCASTER, Charles
LAWRENCE, Arthur
Was booked for cabin E-37
LEWIS, Mr. and Mrs. Carlton P. (? Charlton; ?Charles T.)
Were booked for cabin D-32 (see WOOD)
MADDEN, The Rt. Rev. T. J.
Archbishop of Liverpool, England
MELODY, Mr. A.
MIDDLETON, Hon. J. Conan
MORGAN, Mr. John Pierpont
Booked suite B-52. Was delayed by business (suite then booked by Mr. and Mrs. J. Horace Harding).
NESBITT, Rev. Henry S., wife and five hildren
Re-booked 10 April 1912 Titanic departure to 6 April 1912 Carmania departure because of family emergency.
NORMAN, Maxwell
From Boston. Changed to Oceanic
O'BRIEN, Mr. and Mrs. James V.
Were in Ireland because of a lawsuit, which lasted longer than expected. Had to switch to another ship.
PETERSEN, Marius
Peterson wrote to friends that he had decided not to travel on the Titanic. There is also some evidence that he received a partial refund on his ticket. However it is generally accepted that he did travel and perished in the disaster.
PUFFER, Mr. C. C.
ROBERTS, Mrs. Elizabeth Walker, and maid
Saved as Mrs. Elizabeth Robert, and maid
ROSS, Sir Charles
Booked to return on Lusitania, whose voyage was canceled by coal strike. Could not wait for Titanic, re-booked on Carmania sailing 3 days ahead of Titanic.
STAFFORD, Rev. J. S. Wardell
STURROCK, Crawford James
MISSED ILL-FATED TITANIC
Death of Barnhill Man
A Barnhill man, who should have sailed on the Titanic as the representative of an engineering firm, but who was delayed and missed the ship, has died 25 years almost to a day after the disaster to the famous liner on April 14, 1912. He was Mr Crawford James Sturrock, 42 Kerrington Crescent, formerly a partner in the firm of Sturrock & Murray, engineers, Dundee. One of five seafaring brothers, he joined the firm of G. & J. Weir, Ltd., Holm Foundry, Cathcart, Glasgow, and sailed in many vessels as tho guarantee man of their productions. It was in this capacity that ho was to have joined the Titanic. He came to Dundee 20 years ago to join the firm of Pturrock & Murray. He is survived by Mrs Sturrock, a son and a daughter. - Dundee Courier - Tuesday 20 April 1937
MISSED THE BOAT. ESCAPED DEATH ON THE TITANIC. Passing of Mr Crawford J. Sturrock A man who escaped death on the Titanic because missed the boat has died at Dundee. Mr Crawford James Sturrock, 42 Kerrington Crescent, Barnhill, Dundee, was one of a family of engineers and seafaring men, six of whom were at sea at one time. After holding a chief's certificate, he left the sea and joined the staff of Messrs Weir, Cathcart, Glasgow, and attended the trial trip of many of the firm's productions as guarantee man. The time the Titanic was to sail Mr Sturrock was delayed and that fact saved his life. Deceased came to Dundee 20 years ago partner in the firm of .Sturrock & Murray, and retired some years ago. He is survived by a wife, a son, and' daughter. One of a family of 15, Mr Sturrock leaves only three brothers, all in Dundee, and one sister. - Dundee Evening Telegraph - Monday 19 April 1937
THOMPSON, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, and son Harold
The Thompson family had to cancel their Titanic trip when their son was badly hurt while playing.
TURNER, Mr. and Mrs. George H.
VANDERBILT, Mr. and Mrs. George
Mr George Washington Vanderbilt (1862-1914), grandson of shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, and creator of Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC booked to occupy a first-class cabin. However, they changed their minds at the last minute and sailed on the Olympic, but sent most of their baggage along with his personal valet Fred Wheeler, who boarded the Titanic as a second-class passenger at Southhampton. Wheeler perished in the disaster.
It is not clear why the Vanderbilts changed their minds about sailing on the Titanic. According to a New York Times article dated April 30, 1912, they did so at the urging of Edith's mother (Susan Dresser), but since she had died in 1883, this cannot be correct. It is possible that the Times confused Edith's mother Susan with Edith's sister who bore the same name, but there is no way of knowing for sure. The Biltmore Estate Archives contains a letter from George Vanderbilt's niece, Adele Sloane Burden, expressing her relief in learning that her aunt and uncle had changed their minds and were safe. Early newspaper reports had placed Vanderbilt among the missing passengers.
WHITE, Mr. A.J.
WILKINSON, Miss Ada
WILKINSON, Mrs. S. George
WILSON, Mr. and Mrs. J. Clifford
WILSON, Miss Dorothy and Miss Edith
Could not get the accommodations they wanted; Re-booked on the Rotterdam
WOOD, Mr. and Mrs. Frank P.
Booked cabin D-32 (see LEWIS)
The following 3rd class passengers had tickets from Queenstown but appear not to have joined.
CALLAGHAN, Nora
CONCANNON, John
COURTNEY, Bridget
COURTNEY, Margaret
DUNNE, Mary
FORHAN, Delia
GILLIGAN, Margaret
JORDAN, Annie
JORDAN, Mary
MARTIN, Mary
O'BRIEN, Denis
O'CONNELL, Pat
O'SULLIVAN, Michael
RYAN, Pat
SCANLON, James
THOMAS, Pat
TYNDON, James
I must confess that I find you instant 'experts' who become so after watching a switcher video, yet who have no understanding of how to interpret archives or documentary records, vastly entertaining!
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@justjones5430 There indeed were many empty spaces. In fact almost as many as there had been when Olympic made her much more celebrated maiden voyage.
Perhaps you would care to supply a list of the people who cancelled from Olympic, instead of simply asking me to do all the work? Oh, and tell me which of the cancellations from Titanic were, in your terms, 'famous' and who were the mysterious 'they' who warned them?
Thanks for the M & P reference. To use a cricketing analogy, it is the equivalent of a long hop outside the off stump. As a right handed batsman, I will now put my left leg down the track, and drive it through the covers for a boundary.
The M & P images first appeared in around 2010. They have no provenance, and none of the exploration teams have ever claimed them as theirs nor, to the best of my knowledge, even acknowledged them. Seriously, as a convinced switcher instant expert, how would you explain the inconvenient fact that if a team had really found such evidence and believed it to be genuine, they did not bring it to the attention of every media outlet on the planet?
Perhaps because it is photoshopped, and badly at that. Only when viewed with the eye of unquestioning faith would anyone give it, as the saying goes, house room.
Sorry, but if you want a serious debate, you need to pitch the ball up more, on off stump, and nip it away a bit off the seam.
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@nigeh5326 The technology, in the form of the depth charge, asdic, and HF/DF, already existed. WW2 German boats such as the Type II, VII, & IX, were basically nothing more than developments of late WW1 designs.
Moreover, expansion of the U-boat fleet only really became a serious option after the fall of France. Prior to that, whatever fleet existed was, in effect, trapped in German bases with the only way into the Atlantic the long and dangerous voyage around the north of Scotland, seriously reducing the operational duration of the boats.
In effect, an expansion of the U-boat fleet prior to the war not only warns the British of what to expect, but assumes that in 1938 the Germans already assumed what the strategic situation would be in late 1940.
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@Kalus_Saxon Olympic was fully repaired and back at sea by late November, 1911. The inspection reports from the time make no suggestion that her keel was damaged, largely because she had a 92 feet beam, and HMS Hawke's bow penetrated no more than 6-8 feet into Olympic's side. Subsequently, she was repaired in about 7 weeks by Harland & Wolff, and, fully certified by the Board of Trade, was back on her Atlantic duties about five months before Titanic was completed.
'They painted titanic on it and sent it out to claim the insurance..' 'They' would need to do rather more than that. 'They' would need to re-build the forward end of 'A' & 'B' decks, as there were differences between the two ships. 'They' would also need to do this without the H & W workmen not knowing what they were doing.
'Prof is the amount of port holes on the bow. 14 on Olympic and 16 on titanic…' Oh dear, the greatest Canard of all. Both ships were designed with 14 portholes. After Olympic's first voyages, a number of improvements and modifications were made. Aside from 'A' & 'B'' decks mentioned above, the need for extra light & ventilation at the forward end of the port side was also identified, which resulted in the installation of two extra portholes. This happened to Titanic during her building, in late December 1911 or early January, 1912. The portholes were added to Olympic as well, at the time of her first refit. Surely you don't think that a ship at the time of her launch is the completed object, do you?
White Star in 1911 was far from bankrupt. In fact, the company was the star in IMM's crown. Do you really believe that a company in financial difficulties would have just placed an order for the third ship in the class, as White Star did in November, 1911? Moreover, your whole insurance scam depends on your wrong assumption about Olympic. Without that, your scam claim falls apart.
Certainly, a number of people did cancel their bookings for Titanic's maiden voyage. Almost as many, in fact, as had cancelled for Olympic's in 1911. What conclusions would you falsely draw from that? Moreover, if you have thought up a secret 'cunning plan' is it really a good idea to tell all and sundry all about it?
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@MacAdvisor Just as Olympic had a 24 year career until, at the same time as Mauretania, she was withdrawn from service when still, also like Mauretania, in good condition.
Just as, without the intervention of unforseeable events, the other three, Lusitania, Titanic, & Britannic, might be expected to have had equally long careers.
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Bismarcki had 15 inch guns and outdated incremental armour. The Nelsons, Colorados, North Carolinas, South Dakotas, Iowas, and Nagatos had 16 inch guns, and the Yamatos 18.1 inch guns.
Bismarck's weight of broadside was 14,112 lbs. Nelson's 18,432 lbs, and the North Carolinas, Iowas, & South Dakotas 24,300 lbs.
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@gjustg1540 Which ships 'sat waiting?' Don't you think that both the Manhattan Project & Bletchley Park involved issues of far greater import than the sailing of an ocean liner? Or that things like the Official Secrets Act, or the US equivalents, may have been relevant?
Furthermore, many of Harland & Wolff's staff were made redundant after the end of WW1, only six and a half years later. What induced them to keep silent, and, anyway, what was 'compartmentalised' about the work they did?
Moreover, those crew members who escaped Titanic's sinking never, for the rest of their lives, made any suggestions about anything suspicious about either the ship or the sinking.
Indeed, no one at all did, until an amateur historian, Robin Gardiner, wrote a largely fact-free book about it in the 1990s.
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@nikolajkristensen5960 The bulk of the RN's anti-invasion forces, as I said before, were not in Rosyth, but much further south. The Admiralty didn't intend to use their heavy ships, because there was no need. The small, fast, destroyers and light cruisers were far better suited to the task.
'Germany still had a lot of destroyer u-boats bismarck, tirpitz.' Sorry, that is nonsense. Bismarck was undergoing trials in the Baltic, and was not declared fit for service until May, 1941. Tirpitz was declared operational in January, 1942. The Kriegsmarine had ten destroyers, of which four were refitting in September, 1940, and twenty seven operational U- boats, of which thirteen were at sea on any one day in September, 1940. It really wouldn't have been a good idea to send submarines into the Channel, by the way. The Kriegsmarine sent three in October, 1939, and all three were promptly sunk.
As to the invasion barges, you clearly haven't considered how much time it would take to get large numbers of towed barges out of a port, form them up into some sort of order, and set off for the Channel. The Kriegsmarine estimated that the largest of their convoys would require three days.
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The battlecruisers lost at Jutland were lost because of foolish practices encouraged by their commanding admiral. Courageous and Glorious are not relevant to the argument as they had been converted to carriers years earlier. Lutzow was scuttled after taking significant damage. Repulse was sunk as a result of several torpedo hits, as was a state of the art battleship accompanying her. The others, other than Hood, were lost well after they had been converted either to carriers or to fast battleships.
In point of fact, the three other 'Admirals' were cancelled not because of concerns about design but because the Germans were no longer building capital ships. Only one battlecruiser, Hindenburg, and two battleships, Baden & Bayern, were completed after Jutland. The RN already had a massive numerical superiority, and priority was given by the British to the construction of small, fast, convoy escort vessels.
The battlecruiser was not, in itself, a horrible idea, providing that it was used as intended, which was to seek out and destroy enemy armoured cruisers (i.e., the Battle of the Falklands) or to drive away enemy scouting cruisers.
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@ellsworth1956 Firstly, half of the RN's battleships were not 'outdated hunks of junk.' The earlier classes, such as the Vanguards, Bellerophons, and Neptunes, were at least on a par with the German Nassaus & Helgolands, and the three second generation classes, the Orions, King George Vs, & Iron Dukes, were superior to the German Kaisers and Konigs. Moreover, the British also had ten fifteen inch gunned ships, the Revenges and the Oueen Elizabeths, whereas the Germans only ever managed to produce two. During the phase of the Battle of Jutland when the two main fleets actually engaged, from 7.00 p.m. to 7.45 p.m., there were 30 heavy calibre hits on High Seas Fleet vessels, compared to 2 on ships of the Grand Fleet.
Secondly, after Jutland, Scheer more or less admitted that his fleet could not be risked again. Apart from a couple of brief sorties, both instantly abandoned when reports of the approach of the Grand Fleet reached it, and a foray into the Baltic in 1917, the High Seas Fleet remained a Fleet in Being for the rest of the war. No attempt was made during the post-Jutland period to challenge the Royal Navy's Northern Patrol, which intercepted neutral freighters heading for Germany, and which imposed mass hunger on the German civilian population. There was no urgent need, indeed no need at all, to build a further three battlecruisers/fast battleships, when there was no other naval force around capable of challenging the existing Grand Fleet, but there was an urgent need to produce convoy escorts.
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Olympic never had a damaged keel. The claim originated in a book written in the mid 1990s. No contemporary evidence supports this nonsense. The post collision survey carried out by the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and White Star does not refer to any such damage. Moreover, Olympic was repaired in less than two months, and was back on her Atlantic run by late November 1911, at a time when Titanic was still several months away from completion.
There are even photos. of the two ships together in Belfast in October, 1911. Titanic is the one with parts of her superstructure not yet in place, unpainted, and with only one funnel fitted.
Olympic, by the way, was at sea, returning from New York, when Titanic sank. How would you explain that? You really should not watch switcher videos and swallow them so foolishly.
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You haven't heard of Dynamo, Aerial, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Arctic Convoys, the Naval War in the Mediterranean, or the defence of the Indian Ocean then? Nor of the various assault landings (Torch, Husky, Avalanche, Overlord, etc) largely planned and executed by the Royal Navy?
Certainly, there was a colossal struggle in the Pacific between the IJN & the US Navy. The US Navy could afford to devote the level of resources that it did to the Pacific precisely because the Royal Navy was everywhere else.
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Tovey later commented that he had thought of telling Holland to place PoW, a better armoured ship, in the lead, but chose against giving such an order to so senior an officer. I have never seen any suggestion that Leach was so openly critical of Holland.
Holland was unlucky in that Suffolk lost contact with Bismarck & Prinz Eugen at a vital time during the approach of Hood & PoW, which meant that Holland was unaware of their course change, resulting in their approach becoming angled rather than direct, as he had intended.
Certainly, Hood did assume that Bismarck was the leading ship, whereas PoW had identified it to be PE. Holland was aware of Hood's potential weakness in horizontal armour compared to PoW, and attempted to reduce her period of vulnerability to the minimum, but, despite those who still believe to the contrary, the critical hit does not seem to have been caused by penetration of her deck.
In short, Napoleon was said to ask of a commander, 'Is he lucky?' It seems that Holland simply was not.
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Of course, the British should have simply sat back and allowed Germany to conquer the rest of Europe. Firstly when Germany simply chose to march into Belgium in WW1, and secondly when Germany embarked on a policy of rampant military expansion in WW2.
After all, why should any decent person object to Germany, without any declarations of war, invading Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium? Twice, in the case of Belgium.
I appreciate that you are still annoyed after all these years, herr obergruppenfuhrer, but please address two matters.
1). How would seeking to prevent a general European war have expanded Britain's 'Colonial Empire?'
2). Why do you believe that US involvement in WW2 was simply to aid Britain, when in fact it was primarily because of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent German declaration of war?
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@StandWithRussia But the ship was far from a write off. She was repaired by Harland & Wolff and returned to sea on 20 November, 1911, when Titanic was several months short of completion. By the time Titanic left Southampton on 10 April, 1912, Olympic had completed five Atlantic round trips since returning to sea, and was in New York harbor, half way through her sixth. Not bad, I suggest, for a eritted off cripple.
The fact is, without the false 'broken keel' claim, the whole idea of any switch collapses. Have you considered looking at Olympic's actual service record yourself, or have you simply not got the integrity?
You might also look in more detail at HMS Hawke. She did not have a reinforced. ram, bow, but had simply a ram style bow. By the time she was built, ramming was no longer a feasible method of naval warfare. Indeed, her repairs saw her fitted with a more modern, straight, bow.
The collision, by the way, was at low speed (eight knots), and despite your convction to the contrary, Hawke's damage was nor severe, as the bow was not even crushed as far back as the hawse hole.
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@jddallas7274 Congratulations on getting so many facts wrong in so short a post. Quite an achievement.
The Germans had 27 operational U-boats by September, 1940, of which an average of 13 were at sea on any one day. At the same time, they had only seven operational destroyers. For comparative purposes, at the same time the RN had 70 or so destroyers and cruisers based within five hours steaming of Dover, and a further 40 or so destroyers in Home Waters if needed.
Magnetic mines might have caused problems in shallow waters, had the Luftwaffe not managed to drop a couple on mud flats near Shoeburyness in November, 1939. A team from HMS Vernon recovered them and determined how they worked. As early as 27 November, tests (successful ones) were carried out on HMS Manchester, and degaussing methods were rapidly introduced. By 9 March, 1940, over 600 vessels had been successfully treated, and the procedure was quickly gathering pace.
The RN didn't seem to have been 'afraid of getting shot to bits by the Luftwaffe in the channel' at Dunkirk when they evacuated over 323,000 men of the BEF & French 1st Army without serious losses. Nor did they seem deterred as they undertook daily destroyer, cruiser, and MTB patrols through the Channel for the rest of the summer. Out of interest, and because it is clearly another fact of which you are ignorant, in the whole of WW2 your mighty Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship at all larger than a light cruiser.
'The Germans would have conducted the landing at night and the Royal Navy would not have responded till the day that is a head start. Every amphibious operation of WW2 succeeded and the British destroyers did not have the guns to shoot the German landing craft till 1942' This is idiocy on a masterful level. The Germans did not have any landing craft. They intended to transport their troops in barges towed in pairs by tugs or trawlers. The barges were to be towed in cumbersome block formations. For example, Barge Convoy 1, from Rotterdam, Ostend & Dunkirk heading for the area between Folkestone & New Romney consisted of 150 barges from Dunkirk & 50 from Ostend, together with a further 114 barges & 57 transports from Rotterdam.
Have you even considered how long it would take to extricate these barges from their ports, assemble them into some sort of formation, and then set sail? The quickest convoy required two days, and the largest three.
'The British destroyers did not have the guns to shoot the German landing craft till 1942 the Germans conducted a successful landing without control of the sea in Crete and they were intercepted by the Royal Navy and still all made so just saying your argument is weak not my.' What do you think that the 6 inch and 4 inch guns aboard British light cruisers, or the 4.7 inch, and 4 inch guns aboard British destroyers in 1940 were? Wooden mock ups? Or,of course, the 4 inch & 3 inch guns aboard supporting vessels, such as minesweepers, gunboats, sloops, and corvettes?
The salient point about Crete was that the Axis were not able be land troops from the sea, at least not until the British had decided to withdraw. Two convoys sailed from Greece, one bound for Maleme & one for Heraklion. The Maleme convoy was annihilated by a RN cruiser squadron, and as a result the Heraklion convoy turned back to Greece.
One of your comments, however, is correct, that 'Every amphibious operation of WW2 succeded.' Do you know why that was? Because those in Europe & North Africa were planned and executed by the Royal Navy, and those in the Pacific by the United States' Navy.
I assume from your post that you are just an immature child. The other possibility, that you are a remarkably stupid or ignorant adult, does also exist, however.
Would you like me to recommend a few book for you to read, or have read to you?
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@jddallas7274 I presume you mean 'the book' on Sealion?
As I write this reply, the ones on the shelf immediately facing me, above my desk, are, in no particular order :-
Dunkirk. By John Harris.
Hitler's Naval War ( English edition) Cajus Bekker.
Churchill's Moat. The Channel War, 1939 -1945.
Invasion 1940. Derek Robinson.
Hitler's Armada. Geoff. Hewitt.
We Shall Fight on the Beaches. Defying Napoleon & Hitler. Brian Lavery.
Dunkirk The British Evacuation, 1940. Robert Jackson.
Operation Sea Lion. Peter Fleming.
The Evacuation From Dunkirk' Royal Navy Staff History.
Invasion of England 1940. (English edition) Peter Schenk .
The Miracle of Dunkirk. Walter Lord.
Crete 1941 David Thomas.
Silent Victory. Duncan Grinnell-Milne.
Operation Sealion. Leo McInstry.
Hitler Confronts England. Walter Ansel.
The Second World War, Vols. 1 & 2. Winston Churchill.
British & Empire Warships of the Second World War. H. T. Lenton.
Those are a selection, dealing primarily with the topic under discussion, but largely excluding associated topics such as Norway or even the Battle of Britain. Nor do I include documents and archives available to me, which are not readily accessible in book or electronic form.
Tell you what. Instead of simply posting insults, why don't you simply explain to me which parts of my original reply to you were, in your erudite opinion, either wrong, or even inaccurate?
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@pacificostudios What 'allied shipping in the Mediterranean?' Merchant vessels rarely used it, except for supply runs to Malta, and the threat to Malta had largely dissipated after Pedestal in August, 1942, and Stoneage in November, 1942.
Crete, Sardinia, and Corsica were as relevant as the Channel Islands to the overall prosecution of the war, Crete in particular being, at best, a Pyrrhic victory which effectively destroyed the German paratroop arm, which thereafter was used as a ground force only.
Taking Corsica would have forced Germany to fortify the Provence more than they did.' Why? Certainly to nothing like the extent that the Germans were obliged to occupy Italy, and send their troops there.
An assault on Norway would still have involved moving Allied resources back to Britain from the Mediterranean, and the benefit to the Soviet Union was likely to have been slight. The distances involved, and the crossing of the North Sea, in Autumn & Winter, would increase the hazardous nature of such an operation. Indeed, hitler's fixation on Norway as the Zone of Destiny' resulted in 350,000 being based there at the time of surrender in May, 1945. Why would the Allies attempt such an operation when the same result, that of keeping a large number of German units away from the main battlefront, by means of a deception plan, Operation Fortitude North?
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@I_like_bacon_well_done 'just because a ship can travel that fast doesn't mean it is.' He isn't the misinformed one. The U-boats in commission in the German navy in 1912 had paraffin engines for surface running. They were unreliable, which is why the older boats were used for short range operations only in 1914. U18, the most modern boat, had a surface speed ot eight knots. At the time of her collision, Titanic was steaming at 21 knots.
Oh, and it was pitch dark, by the way.
So, are you saying that a boat incapable of reaching Newfoundland, with a surface speed of 8 knots, was able to locate, catch, and torpedo, a liner steaming at almost three times that speed, in the dark?
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'Fighting the nazis for 3 years, alone'. Hardly, until late June, 1941, The Soviets & the nazis were bosom chums. After their acrimonious divorce, the Soviets then received military aid fro Britain and, after December, 1941, from the United States.
The Western Allies then carried out a major air offensive which hamstrung German military production, and forced the Germans to retain large numbers of personnel, much of their modern artillery, and most of the Luftwaffe, in the west in a failed attempt to challenge western air power. This of course, is without mentioning the campaigns in North Africa & Italy.
They also devoted considerable resources to their U-boat campaign, building over 1100 boats, of which over 800 were destroyed, seven by the Soviets. In the midst of this the Western Allies were heavily engaged against the Japanese Empire, in the Pacific in the case of the US & in Burma in the case of the British.
To base your comments simply on the land fighting on the Eastern Front is, frankly, as asinine or blinkered than would a counter-suggestion, that the Soviets contributed nothing because their forces only sank seven U-boats would have been.
'Thank you Russia?' What for, defending herself?
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Seriously, expecting Mr. Lammy to know who Archbishop Cranmer was is akin to expecting my cat to write an erudite thesis on Pope Innocent III.
Thomas Cranmer, by the way, was Archbishop at the time of Henry VII, Edward VI, and (briefly) Mary. But not, oddly, of Henry VIII's successor, Henry VII, Mr, Lammy.
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It wasn't just Swinson. Tolhurst, MacFadden, & Davey used the same , 'my people are very smart and tell me what to do, say, and think. I am, as a Minister, very busy, and shouldn't be expected to think for myself. That is why I signed all those letters in the bottom of my Red Box without bothering to read them' False excuses.
The overwhelming conclusion is that these creatures simply accepted what the Civil Service told them, and the Civil Service simply took the easiest course of action by simply repeating the Post Office line to their Ministers, confident that the Minister would not be interested enough to question them. After all, in a few months, there would be a reshuffle, and the Minister would probably move on to pastures new.
We now know that the country is actually run by the Civil Service, not by the people we actually elect.
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I will keep this as simple as I can. The tone of your post suggests it would be pointless to write anything more complicated.
The Home Fleet had four capital ships with sufficient speed and firepower to catch Bismarck. There were two exit points into the wider Atlantic. The British needed to prevent Bismarck & Prinz Eugen reaching the wider Atlantic, as they would then be harder to chase down, and could become a threat to convoys.
Admiral Tovey, therefore, sent his second and third best ships, Hood & Prince of Wales, to one exit, the Denmark Strait, and positioned his strongest and weakest assets, King George V and Repulse, in the second, the Iceland-Faroes Gap. The reasoning was that each unit, individually, would be capable of preventing the breakout, and each had cruiser support in the area.
Guess what? It worked. Despite the loss of Hood (an aging ship, but with a heavier broadside than that of Bismarck, and armour on a par with a Queen Elizabeth class battleship) Prince of Wales was able to damage Bismarck sufficiently to force her commander to abandon his raiding mission and run for St. Nazaire for repairs.
I hope that this was not too difficult for you to grasp, and I hope that great-granddad did not get bored sitting in Tirpitz at the end of a Fjord for many months betweem 1942 & November, 1944.
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White Star could not claim from Lloyds for the repair, because a court deemed that Olympic was at fault for the collision. However, repairs were carried out by Harland and Wolff in around 6 - 7 weeks, and she was back at sea by late November. The cost was some £25,700 which equated to around 1.85% of her building cost of £1,500,000 For a Company which had shown profits of over £1million in the last financial year, that was a minor inconvenience at most.
Indeed, in the same month that Olympic returned to sea, White Star placed an order with Harland & Wolff for the third Olympic class liner.
As to the imaginary insurance scam, Olympic was insured with Lloyds for £1 million, which would mean that White Star would lose £500,000 their safety record, and a major asset. Perhaps the Board of Cunard suggested the 'scam' to White Star?
You might perhaps fill in the gaps yourself, instead of simply swallowing whole a switcher video?
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In point of fact, Admiral Drax, C-in-C at the Nore, where most of the anti-invasion destroyer flotillas were based, had an agreement with the Air Ministry that the RAF would not attempt to bomb German vessels at sea, but would leave the field clear for the Royal Navy.
Bomber Command began bombing barge ports from 5 September, and by the end of September had destroyed 21 transports, 214 barges, and 8 small boats. There were still 159 transports, 1859 barges, 397 tugs, and over 1100 motor boats available. Bomber Harris' post war claims that Sealion was prevented by Bomber Command did not stand up to scrutiny.
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@tolsen8212 Let me explain. The collision with HMS Hawke was not a second collision. The damage to Olympic was examined by three teams, from the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and White Star. The Admiralty report was published in November, 1911, and the other two teams agreed with the findings. Olympic's damage was stated in the summary as :- “Two major watertight compartments were flooded, hull plating gashed from the Orlop deck to E deck, and the starboard propeller shafting damaged.”
No reference at all to a damaged keel, which isn't surprising, as the Olympic had a beam of 92 feet, and Hawke's bow penetrated only 6-8 feet into her hull. The first claim of keel damage came in 1996, when Robin Gardiner published his poorly-researched but popular book. In fact, Harland & Wolff completed repairs in around 14 weeks, and Olympic was back in service by late November, at which time Titanic was far from complete.
White Star, by the way, had posted profits of £1 million in the last financial year. This equates to around $125 million today. The accounts still exist, and may be examined.
Both Olympic and Titanic had 14 portholes on their port sides forward when originally built. After Olympic's first few voyages, a number of recommendations were made for improvements. One of these involved adding two additional portholes to improve lighting. This was incorporated in Titanic before completion, and similar improvements were made to Olympic in 1912, possibly during her post Titanic refit in late 1912, but perhaps as early as March.
You are completely wrong about 'B' deck windows. I suspect I even know which switcher video you watched to glean this incorrect information. In fact, the forward end of Titanic's 'B' was modified prior to completion, to accommodate extra first class cabins and a cafe. This resulted in an uneven pattern of rectangular windows, which may be seen on photographs of the wreck. Olympic at the time still retained the original even pattern of square windows, clearly seen in a host of pictures from the time.
While it is true that some survivors such as Beesley and Chambers did speak about a port list, this was taken out of context as both were referring to April 14th. This was the result of a difference in the coal consumption and the emptied coal bunker aft of BR 6 and forward of BR 5...The coal bunker was on the starboard side which was emptied. For sure bunker "W" was emptied as this is mentioned by survivors.
There were never any claims among H & W workers that the ships had been switched. That is simply fantasy, unless of course you can produce evidence from any contemporary source. I do not, by the way, mean uncorroborated claims in a switcher video when I refer to 'contemporary source' by the way.
Titanic on her maiden voyage carried as many passengers as Olympic did on her much more celebrated one, and J.P. Morgan never cancelled his booking, as he never made one. He had always been intending to be in Venice on 26 April for an event at the Campanile of St. Mark's. There is even an article about this in a March, 1912 edition of the New York Times, for Heaven's sake!
There is no evidence that Californian, a Leyland Line ship, was carrying nothing but blankets. When she arrived in Boston, the shipping papers stated that she was carrying a 'mixed, general' cargo. This is generally what Leyland Line, a 'Common Carrier,' usually did, and what Californian had been doing for around ten years.
Edith Russell, in her original account, 'I Survived the Titanic,' published later in 1912, actually wrote ' Just then, I spied an officer, and said to him, “Tell me, Mr. Officer. Shall I leave in a lifeboat? Is there any danger?” to which he answered, “I do not think there is any immediate danger, but this boat is damaged, and she certainly cannot proceed to New York. She may be towed into the nearest harbor. We expect the Olympic along in the next two or three hours. She will take the passengers off and proceed with them, but there is no immediate danger, as she is an unsinkable boat, and, madam, you can use your own judgement in the matter.”
Much later in life, after years reading about the subject, she did refer to both Carpathia and Californian, interchangeably.
Titanic received an undercoat of grey primer, as did Olympic. Olympic was painted white for her launch to make her stand out more clearly on the newsreels of the day (Cunard had done the same with Mauretania), but both Olympic and Titanic were then painted black. Do you really wish to argue that, using powerful electric lights in what would otherwise be total darkness, you can tell the difference between light grey and white on a piece of metal which has been under water for 80 years?
The so-called M & P letters photograph first appeared in 2010. There is no provenance, and none of the teams which have visited Titanic have ever claimed it, or even referred to it, perhaps because it is photoshopped, and not very well at that. Seriously, had it had any credibility, wouldn't the discoverer have touted it around every media outlet on the planet?
The ships were only together, at a time when Titanic was anywhere near completed, for a very brief period in March, 1912. Olympic returned to H & W to replace a lost propeller blade. The ships were never together in dry dock, as H & W only had one big enough. Olympic lost her propeller blade on 24 February, 1912. Titanic was removed from dry dock on 29 February, Olympic entered the dry dock on 2 March, a new blade was fitted, and she left on 4 March. All this is documented.
So, you would have people believe that Olympic was stripped, Titanic was stripped, all identifying items were swapped over, and the external appearances of both ships were altered, in TWO DAYS, and nobody noticed? How stupid do you think H & W's workforce, or, indeed, everyone else around at the time, were?
Moreover, then you seek to use the fact that nothing with Olympic's build number of 400 has ever been found on the wrecksite, whereas numerous items with that number, and none with the 401 number from Titanic, still exist on items sold off when 'Old Reliable' was scrapped in 1934/5, as proof FOR the swap, rather than convincing evidence AGAINST it?
I don't wish to seem rude, but it appears you have viewed too many Switcher Videos, and gullibly accepted them at face value instead of checking even the most easily checkable claims.
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Oh please! The iceberg was not visible because of flat calm conditions, at night. There is even a climatic condition called Cold Water Mirage which may have added to the problem.
If Olympic was no longer insurable after being repaired following her ONE collision, how is it that she was at sea at the time of Titanic's sinking, and replied to her distress call, although too far away to help. Are you suggesting White Star sent an uncertified, uninsured, atlantic liner full of passengers to sea, and neither the Board of Trade nor Lloyds noticed?
CaliforniaN was a cargo liner, carrying a mixed general cargo from Liverpool to Boston, in order to re-load from New Orleans with cotton bales. That was what Leyland Lines ships did. She had stopped because of sheet ice, and for no other reason.
Lloyds actually paid out $5 million to White Star. The Olympics had cost $7.5 million to build. This is documernted.
No propeller was ever taken from Titanic and fitted to Olympic. Firstly because the blades of the outer propellers on the two ships had different pitches, but secondly because Olympic's propeller was not damaged in the Hawke collision, only her propeller shaft, which was replaced using parts from the incomplete Titanic, and which is documented. The propeller swap was only claimed when switcher fanatics needed to explain the inconvenient presence of a Titanic propeller on the wreck of Titanic.
The letters M & P are of course conclusive. Always assuming that images which first appeared in the 2000s, without any provenance, which haven't been claimed by any of the several expeditions to the wrecksite, and which are so obviously computer generated, may be taken as proof, that is.
Did you actually get anything right? Yes, the manner in which you repeated, parrot-fashion, something you swallowed from a switcher video, was quite good.
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@zillahwells4063 'The article quotes transcripts from the inquiry.'
Sorry to be pedantic, but the US Inquiry only ended on 25 May, 1912. Moreover, Barrett gave his evidence on the 18th, and last, day, from RMS Olympic. His statement is headed :-
'Testimony of Frederick Barrett
BY SENATOR WILLIAM ALDEN SMITH, ON SATURDAY, MAY 25,
IN THE FIREROOM ON BOARD S. S. "OLYMPIC," NEW YORK.'
His statement was a very short one, with no reference to fire damage.
Congratulations to the DuPage County Register, having access to a time-travelling reporter in 1912!
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Brian Urquhart, the officer wrongly portrayed in the movie as showing photos. of Tiger IIs to Browning and being told 'not to worry about them' actually never spoke to him. The most senior officer he spoke to was a Brigadier. Furthermore, Urquhart was Ultra cleared, but could not disclose the source of his intelligence because others were not. In fact, the only armour with the SS units in the area were elderly training vehicles. The first one destroyed by 1st Airborne was a French Char B1, by the way. Urquhart was more concerned about the number of experienced German officers in the area, who were likely to (and did) react quickly to a crisis. There is a long interview on another site which makes all this clear.
He apparently explained all this to Attenborough when 'A Bridge Too Far' was in production, and it was Attenborough who had the (false) photos. of the Tiger IIs added, even telling Urquhart that they would play better with the American audience at which the movie was aimed. The 'Tea Drinking' scene featuring the heroic Robert Redford was, similarly, false, but added for effect.
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@northwestprof60 Indeed, which just shows how inaccurate the movie was. The German spoiling action at El Guettar was carried out by 10th Panzer, which had arrived in Tunisia in November, 1942, and, apart from three or four days at Kasserine, had never been commanded by Rommel, but had been part of Von Arnim's 5th Panzer Army.
By the time of El Guettar, of course, Rommel was no longer in Tunisia, but his old Afrika Korps, now part of 1st Italian Army, was at Mareth, in the process of being defeated by 8th Army. Shortly afterwards, 1st Italian was routed at Wadi Akarit, by the same people. Oddly, none of this is mentioned in the movie.
Rommel no more planned El Guettar than John Paul Jones did Midway.
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The German plan anticipated that 9 divisions, plus a weak Paratroop Division (actually only about one third strength) would land, but that it would take ELEVEN DAYS to transport these across, using towed barges and small motor boats. Interestingly, the naval plan assumed that there would be no losses of towing vessels (because they had literally no reserves) and that, believe it or not, the Royal Navy would not intervene. This was at a time, by the way, (September, 1940) when the RN had over 70 destroyers and cruisers specifically allocated to anti-invasion duties, together with over five hundred smaller vessels such as sloops, minesweepers, gunboats, and armed trawlers, etc.
Supply by air would have been out of the question, because in late August, 1940, Luftwaffe archives show that there were precisely 226 operational transport aircraft.
Oh, and because of a lack of suitable shipping space, the divisions (all infantry or mountain divisions) would land without their divisional artillery or motor transport, although apparently some horses would have been included.
At the time, by the way, 'the stupidity of Hitler fighting the USSR ' making it possible for the British to hold on, is nonsense, as Hitler wasn't fighting the USSR in September, 1940. Therefore what, apparently, 'we all know' isn't true.
Try changing 'May have been risky' in your post to ''Would have been suicidal' for greater accuracy.
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Of course he did. He was also responsible for the Black Death, the Thirty Years' War, and the Peterloo Massacre. Subsequently, he was probably Jack the Ripper as well.
Clearly, a complex variety of factors, such as loss of rice imports from Japanese captured areas, the large number of refugees entering Bengal, the rising population of Bengal itself, price inflation imposed by wealthier (in the main, Indian) farmers, the refusal of FDR to permit diversion of shipping space, and the inadequate response of the government of Bengal itself, had nothing to do with it.
The worst Churchill can be accused of is not concentrating his attention on Bengal. After all, in 1943, it isn't as if he had anything else to occupy his mind, is it? Clearly, he and his advisors should have realized that the Bengal government reports that the famine was grossly exaggerated were false.
He did, in October, 1943, give control of relief efforts to the British Indian Army, and he diverted grain shipments from Australia, both measures which improved the situation, but I suppose that that was part of his evil master plan as well?
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Unfair. Although the Commonwealth and Empire were later to play a major role in WW2, in 1940, just like Britain herself, they were not geared up for immediate action. There was a Canadian Division and two Australian/New Zealand Brigades in Britain at the time, but, although Britain was, in effect, alone, the British knew that support was coming.
Allied plans pre-blitzkreig had assumed a defensive strategy akin to that of WW1 until Britain organised conscription and troops from the Commonwealth/Empire began to arrive. The issue was that of survival until then.
Put simply, neither Britain nor the Commonwealth/Empire had vast numbers of military resources immediately available. Other than the Royal Navy, of course.
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Apart from Tirpitz, you mean? Oh, and Graf Spee, if you consider her to be a battleship, that is.
It is very difficult to sink ships which never, or rarely, emerged from port, such as the High Seas Fleet after June, 1916, or the WW2 German surface fleet after mid 1941.
Perhaps you might address an alternative question? Why did the High Seas Fleet make no attempt to challenge the British Blockade which reduced Germany to starvation and virtual anarchy in WW1 (I refer you to the 'Turnip Winter') and what contribution did the Kreigsmarine's surface fleet make to the German war effort in the last four years of WW2?
I don't think the British were too worried about the German surface fleet in WW2, when they were busy sinking 454 of the 808 U-boats lost during the failed German attacks on Allied shipping known as the Battle of the Atlantic.
Still rankles, after all this time, I observe.
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@georgegonzalez-rivas3787 There was never any suggestion that the Home Fleet would 'rush down' to intercept an invasion. The Home Fleet was at Rosyth, and would only be sent further south if any (actually non-existent) German heavy ships were detected heading towards the Channel. Home Fleet heavy ships were not intended to operate against a ramshackle invasion fleet of towed barges for the same reason that duck hunters generally do not use field guns. The rapid firing 4 & 4.7 inch destroyer guns, backed up by the 6 inch of the cruisers, were far more suited to the task.
There were 61 U-boats in commission in September, 1940. 34 were older training boats, or new boats working up. Of the remaining 27, only 13 were operational on any one day. The rest were either en route to, or returning from, patrol areas, or refitting/repairing after completing patrols.
Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by torpedo bombers, flown by crews who had been trained in anti-shipping techniques. In September, 1940, the Luftwaffe had had no such training, and until mid 1942, didn't even have torpedo bombers. Why do you think the Luftwaffe failed so badly at Dunkirk. Furthermore, on what basis do you think they would do any better against fast moving warships, when three months earlier they had proved themselves largely ineffective against ships stopped close inshore? In the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe managed to sink 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser. In September, 1940 the RN had around 70 light cruisers and destroyers within 5 hours of Dover, and a further 40 or so more destroyers in Home Waters.
The status of the German navy in September, 1940 :- Scharnhorst & Gneisenau were both under repair, which wasn't completed until November 1940. Bismarck was completing trials in the Baltic, followed by modifications in Hamburg until early 1941. Tirpitz did not even commission and commence trials until early 1941. Prinz Eugen's construction only completed in December, 1940. The only heavy ship available at the time was a single heavy cruiser, with three light cruisers and six destroyers also operational at the time.
Finally, I don't do war games, but I did do a degree in Modern History, specialising in WW2 Naval History, and came away with a first.
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@myclearwater1471 America wasn't 'holding back' the destroyers at all. As early as 15 May, the US Ambassador in Paris had spoken to the French Admiralty concerning the supply of twelve such vessels to France. At the same time an approach was made, on the initiative of the US, to Britain, concerning the provision of '50 or 100 such ships' to the RN.
On 1 August, FDR, via the British Ambassador in Washington, suggested that 50 such ships could be sold to Canada, or in exchange for British bases. Churchill rejected the first option, but described the second as 'undesirable but acceptable.' The first destroyers began arriving in Canada on 1 September. The British saw them as useful stop-gaps for convoy escorts until their own new construction of better equipped escorts began to appear in early-mid 1941, but the initiative for the transfer was from the US, not Britain.
Britain was not 'getting ready' for invasion in August, 1940, unless you consider sending a troop convoy including three armoured regiments with full supporting artillery & transport an appropriate preparation. This was the 'Apology' convoy, which left the UK on 22 August.
The Italian 'invasion' of Egypt began in September, 1940. Far from attempting to take the Suez Canal, 10th Army advanced about 65 miles, then stopped, setting up a series of fortified camps. In December, 1940 the British, using the reinforcements from the 'Apology' convoy, counter-attacked, totally destroying 10th Army and for losses of 1900 men killed & wounded, took over 133,000 prisoners, and captured over 400 tanks and 800 artillery pieces.
Put simply, the Vichy French & 'the Arabs' were hardly close friends, and there was no threat to the oil fields at the time.
Air fields in Britain at the time generally had grass strips. Certainly, attacks did temporarily reduce their efficiency, but for brief periods only. A far more serious problem might have been a determined attempt to destroy the Chain Home radar stations, but no such concerted effort was made. Of course, if the RAF had been temporarily withdrawn from the Home Counties, all the towed canal barges of the Sealion invasion fleet needed to do was find a way past the seventy of so destroyers and light cruisers, with the support of five hundred or so smaller warships, which represented the force the Admiralty could deploy to meet them in the Channel!
The RAF was never short of pilots. Post-War studies of RAF records actually demonstrate that there were more qualified pilots in non-flying roles during the battle than were actually in aircraft.
Finally, there was a shortage neither of food nor of fuel at the time.
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@myclearwater1471 Indeed, Churchill worked with Stalin, just as FDR did. Both regarded Soviet Russia as the lesser of two evils, and the British worked on the principle that 'My enemy's enemy is my friend' or, as Churchill put it himself, 'If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least one favourable comment about the devil in the House of Commons.'
Of course Churchill sought help from the U.S. Who wouldn't want the support of a great industrial power, and FDR give that support because it was in the interests of the U.S. to assist the last surviving democracy in Europe.
As to 'nothing to stop an invasion.' Are you aware that, in the whole of WW2, the mighty Luftwaffe sank 31 British destroyers, and no British warship larger than a light cruiser. In September, 1940, there were over 100 RN destroyers in Home Waters alone, of which over 60 were within five hours steaming of the Channel. The Luftwaffe, by the way, had had no training in anti-shipping operations at the time, had no operational high performance torpedo bombers (in fact, didn't get any until early 1942) and had just failed badly to prevent the Dunkirk evacuation. Even senior commanders like von Richtofen & Dinort were outspoken in their beliefs that the Luftwaffe could not protect an invasion 'fleet' of canal barges towed at walking pace by tugs.
Of course, as a Sealion 'would have' (i.e., an enthusiast full of what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done, but utterly unable to explain why it never actually 'did' it) I suspect that you didn't previously know any of this.
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@abugina The whole of the Commonwealth and Empire eventually stood by Britain, but, in 1940, from a distance. If you can explain how Commonwealth forces being built up in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or anywhere else, and thus far away from Britain, could have made any contribution to the prevention of a German invasion of Britain in 1940, please try.
In September, 1940, of 34.5 divisions in Britain, 32.5 were made up of British troops.
Oh, and in the Atlantic, the Convoy System was introduced from September, 1939. Convoys were escorted, both in the Atlantic and everywhere else, by Royal Navy warships, until the huge expansion of the Royal Canadian Navy, from around May, 1941. Until this happened Dominion navies were tiny.
France, by the way, had a large overseas Empire. What happened to France?
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Presumably, naval warfare isn't your strong point. Firstly, when an 11 inch gunned ship encounters an eight inch gunned ship, supported by two 6 inch gunned ships whose guns cannot penetrate the armour anyway, there should really only be one winner. Secondly, the Graf Spee used up so much ammunition that she would have been unable to fight a successful surface action against Cumberland had she left Montevideo. Thirdly, her fuel purification had been disabled, and she had only enough fuel available for 24 hours in any case.
All in all, the first of a series of failures by the German surface fleet in WW2. In this case, a ship supposedly armoured well enough to resist 8 inch shellfire proved herself to be nothing of the kind.
You are, however, correct about Exeter. Langsdorff should have completed her sinking. Not because of your immature comment about body count, but because of the problem this would have given Harwood concerning whether to disengage and pick up survivors, or continue his pursuit of Greaf Spee.
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@WorshipinIdols 1). Hardly a wild success. A nuisance, in that the Allies needed to send Hunting Groups to seek & destroy her. But, there again, that is what the British & French fleets existed for anyway, and the inconvenience was short-lived.
2). An armoured cruiser which couldn't handle the attentions of three smaller cruisers can hardly be considered to have 'outperformed' them. Neither light cruiser was badly damaged, both remained operational, and were willing to continue the action, which was more than Graf Spee was, by the way. Certainly, Exeter was badly damaged, but during the course of the action, Graf Spee expended most of her ammunition, and could not have continued the action after the better armed (than Exeter) Cumberland arrived. In cold military terms, the Germans had three armoured cruisers, the British & French navies had 83 cruisers. The Allies would have happily have exchanged all three of Harwood's ships in exchange for Spee. In the event, they lost none.
3). Casualties are less significant than the attainment of objectives. Do you think that Stalingrad was a Russian defeat, for example? In any case, the point is irrelevant. Langsdorff didn't sink Exeter but, at least in your mind, flushed with the exhilaration of his triumph, he promptly took refuge in Montevideo, destroyed his ship, and shot himself. What do you think he would have done had he been defeated!?
You posted something exactly similar to this drivel a day or two ago. Had you forgotten?
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@fdumbass As the German plan (Read 'Invasion of England, 1940' by Peter Schenck, for full details) required eleven days to land the first nine divisions of the invasion force, and as one of the barge convoys required three days to form up, proceed down Channel, and land the leading elements of that force, a few hours of fog would not help much. Furthermore, as, for example, the initial landings between Bexhill & Eastbourne involved 380 barges being towed in pairs by 190 tugs and trawlers, the chaos likely to have occurred as these vessels, with inexperienced crews without radar or even wireless, proceeding down the Channel in thick fog at 6 knots can only be imagined.
The Germans only ever, until 1944, sent three submarines into the Channel. All three were immediately sunk by the British mine defences.
The British had around 70 destroyers and light cruisers, supported by around 500 smaller warships, in the immediate vicinity of the Channel. The Luftwaffe, untrained in anti-shipping operations, and having just failed at Dunkirk, didn't even have torpedo bombers until mid-1942. In fact, in the whole of the war, even after receiving the necessary training, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser.
The only way the Germans could fake an invasion would be by sending their barges to sea, risking running into the regular RN patrols from Plymouth & Sheerness. Frankly, the RN didn't really much care whether barges they sank were laden or empty. Moreover, the Germans only managed to assemble around 400 tugs, and had no reserves at all.
By the way, in September, 1940, the operational German navy consisted of 1 heavy & 3 light cruisers, 7 destroyers, 7 escort destroyers, 13 S boats, and less than 20 fleet minesweepers.
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@SpectreAtTheFeast-sx8gq Perhaps you are an example of the indocrination at work. Portugal, for example, was a much greater exporter of slaves, mainly to South America, than England/Britain ever was.
I observe that you omit from your comment any reference to the Ottoman Empire, Arab Slavers in Africa, or the role of Tribal Leaders in Africa in the provision of the raw materials. Just, of course, as you fail to refer to the role of Britain, and in particular the Royal Navy, in the subsequent abolition of the trade.
I wonder why that might be? Perhaps you might elucidate?
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You are mistaken. Hitler did not make 'several peace deal offers' to Britain. Only the one, the so-called 'Appeal to Reason' in July 1940, in which the deal offered amounted to 'surrender or be bombed.' Perhaps you might supply a source where these other 'peace deals' may be read?
Indeed, Britain and France did declare war on Germany following the German invasion of Poland, as they had said that they would. Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that Germany only ever declared war on one state, the USA, in the whole of WW2. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium, and the Soviet Union were attacked without warning. Perhaps the people of those states were expected to understand that the arrival of German bombers, tanks, and troops represented the German idea of a declaration of war?
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@trevortrevortsr2 No. Belfast and her sister Edinburgh were Southampton class, third group cruisers. At the time the Admiralty were concerned that both the American Brooklyn class and the Japanese Mogami class cruisers carried 15 x 6 inch guns, as opposed to the 12 of the Southamptons. Belfast and Edinburgh were intended to be enlarged Southamptons, with 4 quadruple 6 inch turrets, 6 twin 4 inch AA guns, and improved armour. In the event, the quadruple 6 inch turret never went into production, and the triple 6 inch was fitted instead, with further additional armour being added as a result of the weight saving. Apart from Sheffield, fitted with an experimental set in 1938, radar only began to be fitted to the Southamptons in 1941, by which time Belfast was under extended repair following her mining in November, 1939. When Belfast returned to service in late 1942, she had been extensively modernised.
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@ikashibimauler If there is another lesson learned from WW2 it is that air power was not the force in 1940 that it subsequently came to be. If it had been, why did the Luftwaffe fail so badly at Dunkirk?
Of course, aircraft carriers were important in the Pacific from 1942, but they never attained anything like the same importance in the west. Indeed, in terms of Sealion, your point is irrelevant, as aircraft carriers played no part. Furthermore, your general point does not take into account the fact that the Luftwaffe of 1940 was a tactical air force intended to provide support for the army, and had been neither trained to operate against ships, nor expected so to do. Certainly, by early 1941, the Luftwaffe had become more proficient in anti-shipping operations, but early 1941 is not September, 1940.
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@jimcrawford3185 Olympic's keel was not broken. Indeed, it was not even touched. The ram of HMS Hawke penetrated about 6-8 feet into Olympic's side. Olympic had a beam of 92 feet. The collision was at slow speed. Hawke's captain, at the court case, testified that her speed was not more than eight knots. Hawke, though an old lady by 1911, was capable of 20 knots.
The Admiralty report, issued on 10 November, 1911, and supported by separate teams of inspectors from White Star and the Board of Trade, summarised the total extent of the damage as “Two major watertight compartments were flooded, hull plating gashed from the Orlop deck to E deck, and the starboard propeller shafting damaged.”
The claims about keel damage only began to appear in the 1990s when Gardiner wrote his entertaining but silly book. Just as the switchers found it necessary to make the false claim that a propeller from Titanic was fitted to Olympic to justify the presence of Titanic's 401 number on a blade photographed on the wreck.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
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@Nate-uf4xk Really? Why didn't the Luftwaffe do precisely that at Dunkirk, then? 41 RN destroyers, stopped close to the shoreline or moving slowly in restricted waters, crowded with troops and unable to manoeuvre. Sitting ducks, except that during the whole operation, the Luftwaffe managed to sink just 4. Why should anyone believe that, three months later, that same Luftwaffe would be able to sink with ease those same destroyers, this time moving at at least 25 knots and able to take avoiding action? The commanders of the dive bomber units, Oskar Dinort & Wolfram von Richthoven, didn't think they could, and surely they were in a position to know.
I enjoy reading posts from Sealion enthusiasts. Always full of what the mighty Luftwaffe 'would have' done during Sealion, but rarely able to explain why, in the actual events of 1940, they didn't even come close.
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@DidMyGrandfatherMakeThis Of course the longest range hit by one battleship on another was exceptional. That is why it was the longest.
On 27 May, 1941, Rodney opened fire on Bismarck at 25,000 yards, and scored her first hit at around 20,500 yards.
King George V, using her Type 284, opened fire at 25,500 yards and, similarly, achieved her first hit at 20,500 yards.
Bismarck's first hit on Hood was at 18,200 yards. Her superb optical rangefinders were unable to bring about any hits on either British battleship on 27 May.
At North Cape, Duke of York detected Scharnhorst at 45,000 yards, but held fire until 12,000 yards, as Scharnhorst remained entirely unaware of her presence. When DoY did open fire, she hit with her first salvo. Starshells from HMS Belfast revealed that Scharnhorst's main armament was still in fore and aft position when she was hit.
Certainly, the RN had the advantage of gunnery radar which actually worked, but Rodney's performance demonstrated that, even without it, British battleships were more than capable of engaging successfully at longer ranges.
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@Ununpentius You mean the photographs of the forward end of 'B' deck on the wreck, which show a pattern of irregular rectangular windows matching exactly known photographs of Titanic, and which are different from the more regular, square windows of Olympic in the same area, also from contemporary photographs?
Or perhaps the number 401 on one of the propeller blades, also diagnostic of Titanic, when compared to the 400 of Olympic?
Those photographs, old chap?
Don't you think, just possibly, that one of the several diving expeditions to the wreck might perhaps have noticed had there been something 'odd' about the wreck?
Or perhaps, as a confirmed switcher, you choose not to think at all?
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@avikingman1 I agree with your opinion. Holland was a gunnery expert, and knew only too well Hood's weaknesses, which is why he acted as he did, and those who criticise his tactics are wrong. As the angle of Hood's rudder shows, he was within moments of achieving his objective, and in a comparatively close range slogging match, Hood, supported by POW, might well have given a good account of herself.
Alas, of course, it was not to be, but that does not justify the suggestion that Hood, or at least, the Hood of fifteen years earlier, was a poor design, at least in my view.
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Firstly, as he correctly says, binoculars are used to identify an object which has already been spotted, not to search for the object in the first place. Secondly, the iceberg punched comparatively small holes into five watertight compartments, which flooded. It did not rip a large gash in the ship's side. Thirdly, the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the US have examined rivets from Titanic, and declared that :- 'Given the knowledge base available to engineers at the time of the ship’s construction, it is
the author’s opinion that no apparent metallurgical mistakes were made in the construction of the RMS Titanic.' Fourthly, the alleged bunker fire (something not as uncommon in coal fired ships as you appear to think) had been, according to testimony given at the inquiry, fully extinguished before the day of the sinking. Only one fireman, speaking to reporters in New York, disagreed. Fifthly, the only locked gates ever found of the wreck were between the passenger and cargo sections of the ship. No third class survivor claimed anything to the contrary. Certainly, US immigration rules at the time required segregation of first, second & third class passengers, but there is no evidence to justify the claim that the gates remained locked after abandon ship was ordered.
I don't agree with some of his comments, particularly the ones about the Hawke collision, when Smith was not actually in command, because a Southampton harbour pilot was, but if you believe his research is incomplete, please explain why, without of course simply referring to urban myths and inaccurate movies.
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@shahmanz How do you explain the fact that Olympic had been back at sea since November, 1911, and was en route from New York to Southampton when Titanic sank? Or, come to that, how there could possibly have been two Olympic class liners at sea, both steaming at 21+ knots at the same time?
Californian (you got her name wrong) was a freighter on her way to Boston with a dull 'mixed general' cargo. Had she really been intended to be a rescue ship, and it is difficult to think of one less suited for the task, why did her captain not react when the distress flares of a large ship were reported to him.
The three influential people were Astor, Guggenheim, & Straus. The first two had never expressed their opinions about the Fed., whilst the third had spoken in support in October, 1911. His speech may still be read in the NYT archives, by the way.
Insurance fraud? Titanic was only insured for two thirds of her building costs. When she sank, White Star lost a major asset, their safety record, and £500,000 If it was an insurance fraud, who thought it up? CUNARD?!
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1). At the time, Germany had a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. A number of merchant ships had already been sunk. Lusitania, in German eyes, was also a legitimate target, whatever she was, or was not, carrying. The fact is that no one in Britain or the US really believed that a large passenger liner would be attacked in this manner.
2). Turner reduced speed in order to reach Liverpool when the tide was favourable.
3). Churchill was not 1st Sea Lord, he was First Lord of the Admiralty, which was a political, rather than a military, office. Do you seriously think he spent his days deciding where the Royal Navy's ships would or would not be?
4). The northern channel around Ireland was not out of U-boat range. Moreover, the southern route was shorter. Simply look at a map.
5). No, it wasn't. Certainly, the allies wanted US support, but the best way thew Germans could have avoided that would have been not to have attacked a prestigious target carrying many US citizens. In any case, the US didn't become involved for two more years, and only then because the Germans re-introduced unrestricted submarine warfare, and began sinking neutral US ships.
6). Simply nonsense. Lusitania was a legitimate target, in German terms, in any case. The weapons, actually rifle ammunition, were not illegal.
7). Even more nonsensical than 6).
The rest of your post is simply lunacy, and not even worthy of comment. Although I do like your fantasy that Bouncing Bomb research had been completed by 1933. Brilliant!!
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How is it that, if the rivets and steel used in Titanic were 'completely inferior and became brittle in cold waters' her sister ship, built of exactly trhe same materials at the same time, was a successful transatlantic liner, traversing the same cold waters, for almost 25 years?
Oh, and the only locked gates ever found within the wreck were between the cargo and passenger sections of the ship. Witnesses who gave evidence at the US Inquiry from third class made no such claims. For instance, Dan Buckley, an Irish labourer in his 20s, was questioned by Senator Smith :-
Senator SMITH.
Was there any effort made on the part of the officers or crew to hold the steerage passengers in the steerage?
Mr. BUCKLEY.
I do not think so.
Senator SMITH.
Did these passengers in the steerage have any opportunity at all of getting out?
Mr. BUCKLEY.
Yes; they had.
Senator SMITH.
What opportunity did they have?
Mr. BUCKLEY.
I think they had as much chance as the first and second class passengers.
Senator SMITH.
How much water was there in the steerage when you got out of the steerage?
Mr. BUCKLEY.
There was only just a little bit. Just like you would throw a bucket of water on the floor; just very little, like that.
Senator SMITH.
But it was coming in, was it?
Mr. BUCKLEY.
Yes; it was only just commencing to come in. When I went down the second time, to get one of the life preservers, there was a terrible lot of water there, in a very short time.
That is what was actually stated by survivors at the time. Perhaps you might read the records of the two Inquiries, as I have?
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@rc1411 'Because her sister ship didn't have a collision with an iceberg.' Thank you for accidentally supporting my point. Titanic sank not because her steel and rivets were 'brittle' but because a series of holes were punched into her side as a result of the collision. Much the same would have happened to a 'Lusitania.' Indeed, Lusitania sank from a single torpedo hit, which arguably caused less damage than the iceberg collision, in 16 minutes. No ship could have been expected to have withstood the damage sustained by Titanic.
So, the testimony of survivors is unreliable simply because it doesn't accord with your prejudiced opinion? An interesting approach to the event!
Perhaps far more 3rd class passengers died because there were far more on board? 709, as opposed to 324 1st class and 284 2nd class.
Didn't you notice that Buckley first left steerage when there was a trickle of water, and was able later to return to his cabin for a life preserver?
Berk Pickard, another 3rd class survivor, testified to Senator Smith that :-
'I was one of the third class passengers on the Titanic. My cabin was No. 10 in the steerage, at the stern. I first knew of the collision when it happened, about 10 minutes to 12. We had all been asleep, and all of a sudden we perceived a shock. We did not hear such a very terrible shock, but we knew something was wrong, and we jumped out of bed and we dressed ourselves and went out, and we could not get back again. I wanted to go back to get my things but I could not. The stewards would not allow us to go back. They made us all go forward on the deck. There were no doors locked to prevent us from going back. I did not take much notice of it, and I went to the deck.
Bernt Johannsen, a 3rd class survivor who did not give evidence, later gave a report to a Norwegian newspaper that after the collision he 'dressed and went upstairs. It was nice quiet weather that evening, so I thought I would walk to the cabin to get a coat. But at the 4th deck I was stopped by an officer who told me that I could not get any further. The seawater had got into the cabin.'
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You need to 'chase down the details' yourself. If you did, you would find that, at the time of the Battle of Britain, there were, of just under 3,000 allied pilots who flew at least one operation during the Battle, 112 Canadians, and 32 Australians.
Of ground troops ready to face any invasion attempt, of 34.5 divisions in September, 1940, 32.5 were British. There was one Canadian Division, and two Australian & New Zealand Brigades.
Those are the plain, unalloyed, facts. However much you may dislike them.
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@tomk3732 If you are referring to wars between Britain and France, the policy of England, and later Britain, in the post-medieval period was consistent throughout, in that it was an attempt, generally successful, to prevent France from securing the whole of the European Channel coast, and becoming the overwhelmingly dominant power on the European mainland.
The wars of the period, usually involving most European powers, were responses to French expansionism, not attempts to conquer France.
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@theodorechill Perhaps, as you sit in your comfy chair and make pious comments about events of 80 years ago, you might consider the estimated casualty figures, both American and Japanese, for Operation Olympic?
Then you might explain how a soldier who loads a bullet or shell into a weapon is a legitimate target, yet the civilian who makes the shell, or even supplies the soldier with the food to carry on fighting, is not? To help you excape from your Ivory Tower, please note that 20th century warfare had no room for civilians. Goebbels called in a famous speech, for total war, and got it.
By the way, Dresden was an industrial & route centre, and the Red Army General Staff had requested the bombing to aid their offensive.
I wonder if the people of numerous small Spanish towns, or Warsaw, or Rotterdam, realised that your ah was a warm hearted. kindly, individual? .
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@LordZontar The Kriegsmarine had, by September, 1940, converted around 2,000 barges, and moved them into French & Belgian ports. They had also assembled around 550 coasters, tugs, & trawlers, together with almost 1200 motor boats, in the same ports.
In the meantime, the army had ten divisions set aside for the initial assault, with a second wave of nine divisions and a third wave of six divisions, allocated to the operation. They had also positioned around 150 coastal batteries in the belief that these would be capable of protecting the barges from the Royal Navy as they attempted to cross.
Certainly, Raeder had massive and justified misgivings about the chances of success, but his doubts alone were insufficient, in the face of a degree of confidence within the army that, after the simple 'extended river crossing' had been completed, the British land defences would be wholly inadequate.
With the strength of the Royal Navy, there was, in reality, no likelihood that Sealion would succeed, but the order might still have been given, and the German army & navy did far more than simply go through the motions.
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Achilles/Achille is an old Royal Navy name. The first dated from 1744, and the tenth, from 1968, was a Leander class frigate.
More generally, Achilles, as in HMS Achilles, was a 74 gun Ship of the LIne at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and a later HMS (later HMNZS) Achilles, was a light cruiser at the River Plate, Guadalcanal, and Okinawa in WW2.
A much more illustrious name for a new RN warship than Agincourt is, or ever could be.
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'Opposition billionaire businessmen murdered?' Who were they? Don't say Astor, Guggenheim, or Straus, by the way, as it has been proven over and over again that the first two never voiced their opinions, and the third supported the Fed.
'Insurance Fraud?' When White Star lost £500,000 a major asset, and their safety record? Some fraud that was.
'Whitewashed hearings?' You obviously haven't read the minutes of either.
'Government blame?' How was any government to blame?
Stokers didn't refuse to board. The passage crew of Belfast men simply returned to Belfast after arriving at Southampton, where they were replaced by the deep-sea crew , mainly recruited from the Southampton area. Just as had happened with Olympic, in 1911, by the way.
'Catholics turning down work?' Whereever did you get that nonsense from?
Which 'books' do you mean? The two ships had a number of obvious differences.
In short. Don't be a fool.
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Olympic had been fully repaired, and had returned to sea, from 20 November, 1911. When Titanic was still some five months from completion. She had made five further transatlantic round trips, and was in New York, halfway through her sixth, when Titanic left Southampton.
There were no opponents of the Fed. aboard. The 1990s conspiracy myths about Astor, Guggenheim, and Straus have long since been proven false.
What was 'whitewashed' about the Inquiries? How was any government involved? Perhaps you should read the actual minutes, instead of pontificating from Conspiracy Theorist ignorance?
No 'coalmen' refused to re-board at Southampton.The delivery crew of Belfast men simply returned to Belfast, to be replaced by a deep sea crew of men from the Southampton area. Exactly as had happened with Olympic in 1911.
What leads you to claim that Catholics turned down work on Titanic?
What sort of insurance fraud is one which loses the perpetrators a major asset, their safety record, and £500,000 or one third of Titanic's building costs?
Which books?
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@francisebbecke2727 The point of taking the BEF captive is obvious. Allowing it to escape (as, of course, he didn't) would have had a profound effect in Britain. Lord Halifax was a very influential figure, and his argument that Mussolini should be invited to act as a 'neutral' arbiter in armistice negotiations had considerable support.
Had the BEF been captured, it is doubtful that the political establishment in the UK would have rallied behind Churchill, as it did. Churchill was able to portray Dynamo as a miracle, which converted a catastrophe into a mere setback. Moreover, he could, more pragmatically, point to the success of the Royal Navy, and claim (correctly) that an invasion of Britain by a country with no navy to speak of, in the face of the largest navy on earth, was impossible, and that the British Commonwealth and Empire was able to fight on, if necessary for years, if necessary, alone.
Your argument makes no sense. If Hitler wanted the British to come to terms, then allowing their army to escape was precisely the wrong way to bring this about. Of course, at the time Hitler could not possibly have been aware of how inept the Luftwaffe was at hitting naval targets.
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This is utter drivel. White Star's owner did not 'pull out' at the last minute. Assuming you mean Morgan, he was never booked on, as he intended to be in Venice on 23 April. Were the owners of Whit Star psychic? Filling Titanic's bunkers with coal months before the strike even commenced or, come to that, before the ship was even complete? Indeed, there was a bunker fire, but a small one, extinguished the day before the collision, and one which didn't even affect the first class swimming pool, which was positioned above the bunker concerned.
The only people asked not to speak to the press were members of the crew who were giving evidence at the British Inquiry, and were asked to present their evidence first. This was, and is, common practice.
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Oh dear, once again the old 'The Germans didn't attempt Sealion because they chose not to attempt it, not because they couldn't.'
By September, 1940, the European canal network had been largely stripped of boats, because some 2100 had been commandeered, modified, and sent to Channel ports, along with 170 freighters, just over 400 tugs, and almost 1200 motor boats.
23 divisions had been earmarked for the landing, in three waves.
The Luftwaffe used 2500 aircraft for Barbarossa. Have lost 1700, and 2700 trained aircrew, during what your apparently believe was part of the bluff, the Battle of Britain.
If you want to know whether Sealion was 'real' or not, you should read the manner in which an amateur author condemned Kaiser Bill for trying to wage a war on two fronts, in a book called 'Mein Kampf.'
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@senakaweeraratna741 'There are so many ' Nanking' type massacres on the side of the Allies.' Really? You are clearly very selective in you admiration of the Japanese. Aside from the German extermination of certain selected groups, there is no other example in recent history of the treatment of innocent people in this manner. You could, by the way, add to it the mass murder of Chinese slave labourers on the Burma railway. Your comment is so immature that it is barely even worth comment.
'The British Empire in Asia collapsed after the Royal Navy was defeated in the Indian Ocean by the Imperial Japanese Navy.' Nonsense. The realisation that the Empire was ending pre-dated WW2. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, & South Africa were independent Dominions, and similar moves were being proposed for India. If you don't actually know history, you really shouldn't post as if you think you do.
'No other country was able to sink so many British Ships as Japan did in WW2' Have you never even heard of the Battle of the Atlantic? The RN lost nine ships of destroyer size or larger to Japan in the whole of the war. Read up on the war in the Mediterranean, or the Arctic convoys, or, as I wrote, the battle of the Atlantic.
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@jpmeunier5595 I haven't shifted to other subjects. I have simply replied to every inaccurate comment you have made with actual facts. Things, by the way, which seem alien to you.
The British action at Mers el Kebir was hardly emotional or irrational. Somerville held his fire well beyond the deadline, and only acted when it was clear that the French force was preparing to leave harbour.
'It was super easy to send British Sailors into the Harbour to seize the ship.' Don't be childish. This wasn't a scene from a 'Hornblower' novel. The French ships were in a defended French harbour, were protected by coastal batteries, as well as their own guns, and were fully manned.
'It is obvious that no French sailors will fight against their Allies.' French sailors would, I am sure, have acted in accordance with the orders given by their superior officers. I have always regarded the French navy of 1940 as a disciplined, professional, force let down by their army and their political masters. You appear to be saying that they were an undisciplined rabble.
In Alexandria, Godfroy acted wisely and sensibly. He and Cunningham came to an agreement, and both kept to it.
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@jimmiller5600 'Slow to detect an invasion?' The time taken to extract the towed barges from harbour, form them up into some sort of box formation, and send them down the Channel at little more than walking pace meant that the sailing time, from the extrication of the first barge to arrival off the landing beach was three days, in the case of the largest convoy. 'Slow to detect an invasion?' As the barges supposedly passed down Channel, Admiral Ramsay would be able to see the things from Dover Castle, for Heaven's sake!
The Royal Navy sailed regular destroyer patrols every night through the Channel from Plymouth and Sheerness, often pausing to shell a barge port or two. Moreover, the Germans had seven minelayers, mainly converted merchantmen, available to them, possibly supported by a small number of minelaying destroyers. The British had, by contrast, several hundred fleet & auxiliary minesweepers, largely courtesy of their huge fishing fleet. Finally, the minelaying could only take place at night, when the destroyer patrols were active. The effect of a 4.7 inch high explosive shell landing on a laden mine deck was likely to be quite dramatic.
The Germans sent three U-Boats into the Channel in late 1939. They, and their crews, are still there. The Channel was a death trap for such boats, which is why the Germans avoided sending any there until after D-Day when, of course, the British & Canadian Escort Groups inflicted heavy losses on them.
The German plan for Sealion envisaged that 11 days would be required to land the first wave. Cerberus involved three heavily protected fast modern warships fleeing west to east through the Channel in a matter of a few hours, at a time when the invasion threat had long passed, and the concentrated RN forces of late 1940 had long dispersed to other duties. Can you really not understand the difference between the two?
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Oh dear. Another day another ignorant comment. Just to educate you, Neither Rockefeller nor Rothschild had booked on Titanic. As to Morgan, a New York Times newspaper article of Thursday 28th March 1912 reveals that in March "J. Pierpont Morgan has written a cordial letter to the committee, announcing that he will be in Venice on April 23 for the inauguration of the biennial International Art Exhibition, April 25, and dedicate the new Campanile of St. Mark's." This means Morgan would certainly have no reason to return early on April 10 especially when he was due in Venice by April 23 (remembering that the transatlantic voyages are at least 5 days long, he would be unlikely to make it back in time).
Next, neither Astor nor Guggenheim had ever stated their opinions about the Fed. Straus had,, however, in October, 1911 he had made a speech in favour of it, which may still be read in the NYT Archives.
'And the argument that that many employees would keep that a secret is very easily explained as I’m sure they were promised a life time of work to do the switch if they helped the company solve this massive problem of insurance.'
You are sure? Oh good. Based upon what? Especially since many of H & W's workforce were laid off at the end of WW1, only just over six years later. Why didn't anyone say anything then? Moreover, do you really think saying 'if you help us kill 1,500 people, we'll let you continue to work in a heavy manual job for the next few years' would have had much appeal?
'Insurance?' The Olympics cost £1.5 million each to build, and were each insured for £1 million. Thus, when Titanic sank, White Star lost £500,000 and a major asset, and their safety record. The only people who might, possibly, have gained from the scam were Cunard.
'This is 1912/1912 Ireland you numptys very poor and uneducated people that didn’t know any better and a few pounds in the pocket at the time would have shut many of the alcoholic men in that time period up.' You are the numpty here. The workforce at H & W was entirely Protestant, and working in shipbuilding, especially as a riveter, was a very well paid job, albeit of comparatively short duration at the time. One thing you could not risk being working in so dangerous an environment was drunk. Are you really silly enough to believe that H & W employed a workforce of drunks?
Moreover, once again, once Titanic had sunk, are you seriously suggesting that not one man who knew of your (imaginary) switch, would not have spoken about for the rest of his life?
Congratulations, by the way, the stupidest post of the day so far. However, it is still early.
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@zulubeatz1 There was an interesting post on quora a few months ago, from the nephew of Brian Urquhart, the Intelligence Officer shown in the movie giving photos. of German armour to Browning, and being told 'not to worry about them.' In fact, Urquhart didn't ever speak to Browning, and the supposed photos. never existed. Urquhart's real concern was that there were a number of senior experienced German commanders in the area, and he feared that they were capable of reacting more quickly to the operation than the Allies expected, which was actually what happened. Urquhart was the only member of the Intelligence team who was Ultra cleared, and spoke about his concerns to his immediate superior, but could not reveal his source.
Apparently, Urquhart raised the issue of the photos. with Attenborough, but was told that the bulk of the scene would play well in the US, which was the target audience. Likewise, Julian Cook, the officer portrayed by Redford, complained to Cornelius Ryan's widow about the way Redford had played him. Nothing was done, and the tea drinking scene stayed in. Now, of course, because it was in the movie, many assume it to be true.
Incidentally, Urquhart's nephew actually had a photo. of what his uncle told him was the first German tank destroyed by 1st Airborne. It was a Char B1, being used as a training vehicle.
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@perryb72 The uncontrollable coal fire was an invention of a journalist, Senan Molony, in a Channel 4 documentary from 2017, called 'Titanic - The New Evidence.' It was based his theory that a newly discovered photograph of the Titanic allegedly showed a 30-foot-long black mark along the front right-hand side of the hull, just behind where the ship’s hull was pierced by the iceberg.
There are two problems with this theory. Firstly, the alleged mark, found on one photograph but not on others taken of the same area of the ship at around the same time, was between the front of the bridge and the forward mast. This area was well forward of the affected bunker, which was level with the forward funnel, in fact the two were at least fifty feet apart.
Secondly, witnesses asked about the bunker fire at the Inquiry stated that it had been extinguished by Saturday, 13 April, at least a day before the collision with the iceberg. I did explain how the fire was dealt with. Perhaps my explanation was too complex for you to grasp?
Perhaps you might state which 'accidents' had been suffered by ships under Smith's command, instead of making uncorroborated vague statements. You might then explain how it was that so allegedly 'reckless' a captain reached the highest level of his chosen profession?
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There is a marvellous scene in Tarrant's book about her. In late June, 1944, she had been badly damaged by a mine off Normandy, and was sent to Rosyth for repair. By the time she arrived, at 2130 on 14 June, she was down to ten knots, and drawing 42 feet aft. As she dragged herself under the Forth Bridge, the whole of the Home Fleet, including two battleships, manned ship to cheer as she passed by.
Even then, after two months in dock, down to 15 knots, on three shafts and with one turret out of action, the Old Lady was back in action off the French and later Dutch coasts.
If ever a British battleship from the 20th century deserved preservation, it was Warspite.
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What a pity Montgomery wasn't as modest and self-effacing as others, such as Patton or MacArthur. Indeed, his conduct remains the subject of debate. However, the overwhelming majority of it is favourable to him.
He was an unpleasant, self-obsessed, individual, but he was generally protective of the lives of his soldiers, and sought to avoid committing them to battle without superiority in numbers, equipment, and supplies. He was fortunate in that he was the first British commander in WW2, on land at least, to be in such a position.
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JP Morgan didn't invite anyone to 'join him' aboard Titanic. Astor, Guggenheim & Straus had all booked their own passages aboard her. In Guggenheim's case, as late as 8 April, well after it was known that Morgan was not sailing. In fact, between 1904 & 1912 Morgan had only sailed to New York twice before July. He hadn't sailed on Olympic's maiden voyage either. Was that suspicious, too? President Taft, King George V, & Tsar Nicholas II weren't aboard either. Were they also part of your cunning plot?
No passengers ever claimed to have heard 'explosions' although one or two reported 'rumblings.' However, a far larger number reported the iceberg. If there had been no iceberg, what do you suggest that the International Ice Patrol has been monitoring for over 100 years? Large blocks of expanded polystyrene, perhaps?
By the way, Astor and Guggenheim had never commented on the Federal Reserve, which Straus had spoken in support.
Out of interest, where do people like you get your 'imaginative' notions from?
Baaaaa!!
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The Admiralty believed that the secondary armament of a capital ship should not be restricted to anti-aircraft capability only, but needed to be large enough to be effective against surface targets. The 5.25 rather fell awkwardly between two stools, being too large for effective AA use, but not large enough for surface use.
As, in the event, few British battleships ever used their secondary armament against naval targets, I suspect that the use of the 4.5 inch BD mountings on Valiant, Queen Elizabeth, Renown, & the Illustrious carriers was the better choice.
Hindsight is, however, a wonderful thing!
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@hmtqnikitashakur3399 'You clearly have not read it!' That, I believe, actually applies to you. If not, you would have been aware of what Dan Buckley said, as follows :-
Senator Smith, question 14965. ' Was there any effort made on the part of the officers or crew to hold the steerage passengers in the steerage?'
Dan Buckley, reply. 'I do not think so.'
Senator Smith, question 14972. 'Did these passengers in the steerage have any opportunity at all of getting out?'
Dan Buckley, reply. 'Yes; they had.'
Senator Smith, question 14973. 'What opportunity did they have?'
Dan Buckley, reply. 'I think they had as much chance as the first and second class passengers.'
Senator Smith, question 14975. 'How much water was there in the steerage when you got out of the steerage?'
Dan Buckley, reply. 'There was only just a little bit. Just like you would throw a bucket of water on the floor; just very little, like that.'
Senator Smith, question 14976. 'But it was coming in, was it?'
Dan Buckley, reply 'Yes; it was only just commencing to come in. When I went down the second time, to get one of the life preservers, there was a terrible lot of water there, in a very short time.'
Senator Smith, question 14983. 'I want to ask you whether, from what you saw that night, you feel that the steerage passengers had an equal opportunity with other passengers and the crew in getting into the lifeboats?'
Dan Buckley, reply. 'Yes; I think they had as good a chance as the first and second class passengers.'
Perhaps you might note that, from his answer to question 14976, Daniel Buckley was not only able to get to the upper deck very quickly, but was even able to go back down to steerage to pick up his life preserver.
Odd that, given your alleged knowledge of the Inquiries, you managed to miss the above quotations from the American official record, isn't it?
Certainly, one of us is less than properly informed, I suggest.
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@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 The video refers to the claim I mentioned earlier, which emerged in 2008 or so, from the son of someone who died in 2004. It is unsupported by any German survivor. The reference to the black flag is anachronistic, by the way. U-Boats in May 1945 were ordered to surface and fly a black flag to notify allied ships and aircraft that they had surrendered, but I have come across no reference to such a use prior to that date. Indeed, in the 17th & 18th century, a black flag generally meant 'no quarter.' I would be interested to know if anyone else has heard of this alleged alternative use.
If you choose to believe one isolated comment in defiance of all other evidence, then that is, of course, entirely up to you.
By the way Crawford was a Lieutenant-Commander, not a Lootenant-Commander, as stated.
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Titanic was owned by White Star, part of the overall IMM group, which was owned by J. P. Morgan. As owner, Morgan could have sailed aboard her, but chose not to do so. In March, he had announced his intention to be in Venice on 23 April, which would not have been possible had he sailed in Titanic on 10 April. It was even mentioned in the New York Times. Perhaps you missed it?
In fact, between 1904 & 1912 Morgan only twice (1908 and 1910) returned to New York from Europe before July, and in one of those years (1908) he returned that early only to attend a family wedding, heading back to Europe a few days later and staying there until late August. He hadn't sailed on Olympic in 1911 when she made her maiden voyage, of course. Do you find that equally suspicious?
'Sunk by a torpedo? Off Newfoundland in 1912? Who had a submarine which could get there, which could catch a ship steaming at 21 knots, and which could even hit a ship in the pitch dark? Do elaborate.
No-one reported any explosion, although a few people did report 'rumblings' as internal machinery broke loose. A greater number of people did make reference to the iceberg, however.
Good to read your reference to the Federal Reserve myth invented in the 1990s, however. Unfortunately for your fantasy, neither Astor nor Guggenheim had ever expressed their opinions either way, whilst in October, 1911, Straus had spoken in support of the Fed. If you think that you can prove me wrong, go ahead.
Isn't it odd how people who have clearly done little or no actual research, like you, are invariably the ones who write 'Please do some serious research,' by the way?
Perhaps you might explain this phenomenon?
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@karlheinzvonkroemann2217 'This Rheinubung Operation had NOTHING at all to do with Bismarck.' Of course it did. It culminated in Bismarck being sunk. The Channel Dash was Unternehmen Zerberus, or Operation Cerberus.
Scharnhorst & Gneisenau had one successful Atlantic raid, Operation Berlin.
After they, and Prinz Eugen, escaped to German waters, Gneisenau never sailed again following damage in port, Prinz Eugen never reached Norway, and Scharnhorst, the only one actually to reach Norway, carried out a single mission in company with Tirpitz, bombarding Spitzbergen. Her next voyage, in December, 1943, led to her sinking.
Tirpitz had carried out on aborted operation against convoys PQ12 & QP8 in March 1942, but abandoned it upon the imminent arrival of the Home Fleet.
After that, Tirpitz became a typical 'Fleet In Being.'
'Since your're not really very aware of what happend after May 1941.' Very good. As you don't seem to know the difference between Exercise Rhine and Operation Cerberus, or what happened to Gneisenau & Prinz Eugen subsequently, however, I respectfully submit that it is not I who needs to do a little reading.
You don't need to reply. I will take your apology as read.
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@darin271 I don't need to check my history. The raid into the Indian Ocean was intended to cover a large troop convoy out of Singapore. Actually, a small carrier without aircraft, and two heavy cruisers were sunk, as well as a number of smaller craft. In point of fact, Somerville was actually searching for the Japanese force in order to carry out a night attack using his radar-equipped Albacores, something for which the Japanese had neither any means of defence, nor any experience. As the British knew that there were no transports in the Japanese force, they also knew that it was a raid, not an invasion, and chose not to challenge it with the weaker forces at their disposal at the time.
As I understand it, Coral Sea was a strategic defeat for the Japanese, in that it resulted in the cancellation of the landing near Port Moresby. Moreover, wasn't Shokaku damaged and sent back to Japan for repairs, thus not being available for Midway, whilst Zuikaku had lost a considerable number of aircraft and aircrew, and was not considered for use at Midway either?
I suggest that 'victory' is defined by which side achieves the strategic goals it sought, rather than by simply counting the dead. On that basis, Stalingrad would have been seen as a crushing German victory.
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@koookeee How is a 'stalemate' a success? The Germans either land successfully, or they fail.
If I recall correctly, he refers to Admiral Forbes not wishing to commit the Home Fleet. Unfortunately, the Home Fleet was never part of the Admiralty's anti-invasion planning in any case, for the sensible reason that small fast warships with quick firing 4 & 4.7 inch guns are much better equipped to sink barges and tugs than heavier warships.
The RN effectiveness in sinking small convoys. Like the annihilation of one small troop convoy making for Maleme (Crete), and the German recall of the second, Heraklion, convoy? Or the destruction of the 'Duisburg' convoy, or the 'Tarigo' convoy? Those convoys?
The RAF was never intended to attack invasion barges at sea in any case, but was used to bomb barges in the invasion ports, which they began doing from 5 September.
I haven't read the book for years, largely because of the many flaws within it and the basic lack of research, which I am now recalling to mind.
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@markhitchcock4704 You can say it, but it wouldn't be true. The Halt Order was issued by Von Rundstedt, to allow his armour to be serviced and repaired before commencing the second stage of the campaign. Like many senior officers, he feared a repeat of the Miracle of the Marne of WW1.
Hitler had already been assured by Goering that the destruction of the Allied pocket was 'a special job for the Luftwaffe,' and was foolish enough to believe him. Surely, if you want your enemy to come to terms, wouldn't there be more chance of that were his field army to be caged in PoW camps, rather than safe behind an impenetrable sea barrier?
If your lovable peacefully intentioned Hitler was not intent upon conquering the whole of Europe, did the invasions of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Belgium, all take place without his knowledge?
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You make the common mistake of all Sealion enthusiasts, in that you apparently believe that the Luftwaffe was on a par with the Imperial Japanese Air Force. Just to correct you, please note that Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by torpedo bombers, whereas the Luftwaffe didn't acquire similar aircraft until mid 1942. The Luftwaffe had just failed to prevent the evacuation from Dunkirk, largely because it had had no training in anti-shipping operations. In fact, in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank no RN warship larger than a light cruiser, and a total of 'only' 31 RN destroyers. To put that into perspective, the RN started the war with 193 destroyers (ending it with over 400) and in September 1940 had around 70 light cruisers & destroyers within five hours steaming of Dover, over 100 in total in Home Waters, and supporting forces of around 500 smaller warships.
Good luck, by the way, with the U-Boats. Generally, U-Boats sought to avoid attacking fleet destroyers, as it tended to end badly for them. In any case, in September, 1940, the average number of boats at sea on any one day was 13. The Germans did try to operate U-Boats in the Channel in October, 1939. The three they sent were promptly sunk.
Finally, surface attack. What with? The German navy had, in September, 1940, one heavy & three light cruisers, seven operational destroyers, and precisely thirteen S Boats.
The probability is, indeed, of slaughter in the Channel, but of towed German barges, not of the (huge) Royal Navy.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
Incidentally, when there were 2.5 million Indian volunteers under arms fighting for the allied side, perhaps you might explain why, in your confused thinking, anyone, Churchill or otherwise, wouold have wanted to engineer a famine?
You could then explain how Churchill was also responsiblev for the several famines which happened before the British arrived, and then after they had departed?
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which you have been indoctrinated.
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What makes you think that this was a Japanese 'offensive?' It wasn't. As the title suggests, it was a 'raid,' intended to ensure the safety of a large Japanese troop convoy from Singapore. There was no wider ambition on the Japanese part, no large landing force intended to occupy Ceylon or Madagascar.
You apparently feel able to talk glibly about the destruction of the Eastern Fleet as being acceptable if in exchange a Japanese warship or two might have been damaged. How would this have been acceptable? What strategic benefit to the Allied cause would have been accrued if Somerville had sought a surface action, when only one of his battleships and two of his carriers were modern or modernised, whilst his four old 'R' class ships, although marvels of WW1 technology, were utterly obsolete, and fit for nothing except Atlantic convoy escort duty, acting as a Fleet in Being, or, as they later demonstrated, use as naval artillery in support of assault landings? How could the Eastern Fleet have made any significant contribution to defence of Colombo from bombing?
Perhaps you feel able to make such damning judgements from a comfortable chair 80 years after the event. Perhaps you might answer the questions I asked above without waxing lyrical about 'cowardice?'
Oh, and it seems you are in ignorance about Dunkirk as well. Perhaps you might explain what a BEF of 13 divisions was supposed to do after the Belgian army had capitulated, and most of the French army had begun to collapse? Perhaps you would recommend the same action as you require Somerville to have taken, charging blindly into certain disaster?
In point of fact, Dynamo was far from panic. Ramsay's plan brought out 336,000 troops, of which around 120,000 were French, and the British had begun landing new divisions in Cherbourg until told by General Weygand that the French army was no longer capable of organised resistance. The French and Belgian armies, by the way, totalled just over 100 divisions. As I said, the BEF consisted of 13.
Still, well done for making a comment about the Indian Ocean raid. Even if it was a facile and ill-reasoned one.
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The German fleet was built as part of the Franco- German naval race, and not as a challenge to the Royal Navy. Put simply, the Weimar Republic came up with the panzerships to intercept French troop convoys. The French responded with the Strasbourgs. The Germans responded with the Scharnhorsts, the French with the Richelieus, and the Germans with the Bismarcks.
If Germany started building U-boats, then these could only be aimed at Britain. The British response would be to commence an enhanced programme of escort vessel construction. Should the Germans focus on anti-ship capability for the Luftwaffe, then firstly, how do these aircraft even approach the Royal Navy, and secondly how does the invasion of France succeed without the airborne artillery close support that was the Luftwaffe. Serious planning against Britain could only commence after a successful invasion and conquest of France.
The Germans had no choice other than to pause after Dunkirk? How could they possibly consider an invasion of Britain with no assault ships, or landing craft. Indeed, without even the towed barges they later assembled. Moreover, the completion of the invasion of France required another two weeks.
Mine the Channel? With the seven auxiliary minelayers they actually had available? Mining in daylight was not a realistic option, if for no other reason than minefields are of limited use if your enemy (with over 400 available sweepers) knows where they are. At night, of course, what happens when the layers run into one or other of the regular RN destroyer patrols through the Channel?
Fix Enigma? First, they need to know that it wasn't totally secure.
Win the Battle of Britain. Didn't they try?
In short, none of the 'creative' ways have any basis in reality.
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@bobcougar77 There is rather more evidence that the Halt Order on the Aa Canal was issued by von Rundstedt. Indeed, Army Group A's War Diary confirms as much. In common with a number of other senior commanders, von Rundstedt feared a repeat of the Miracle of the Marne. He wished to rest & service his armour before getting into the next stage of the campaign. Hitler, who knew the country around Dunkirk from WW1, agreed with the order, especially since on the previous day Goering had told him that the elimination of the Allied forces trapped around Dunkirk was 'a special job for the Luftwaffe.'
More generally, there was a general difference in attitude between the Germans and the British. Von Rundstedt and his peers viewed an army backed against the sea as trapped, whereas the British, with their history of naval superiority, saw the sea as an available open door.
Certainly, Hitler did not want to attempt an invasion, but his assumption that Britain would come to terms was a major strategic blunder.
As to Sealion, no amount of creativity could make it work. Napoleon had expressed the issue neatly when he referred to his own invasion problems with the question 'can an elephant fight a whale?'
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In a word, Nonsense. Two frigates, two destroyers, one landing ship, one merchantman and a landing craft were lost.
The task force itself consisted of 2 aircraft carriers, two landing ships (dock), 1 Type 82 destroyer, 5 Type 42 destroyers, 2 County class destroyers, 2 Type 22 frigates, 7 Type 21 frigates, 4 Leander class frigates, 3 Rothesay class frigates, 1 ice patrol ship, 2 Castle class patrol ships, 2 Churchill class submarines, 1 Valiant class submarine, 1 Swiftsure class submarine, 1 Oberon class submarine, 3 Hecla class survey ships, 5 trawler/minesweepers, 10 RFA Fleet tankers, 6 logistics landing ships, 5 RFA supply ships, 1 helicopter support ship, 2 Royal maritime auxiliary ships, 3 requisitioned liners, 7 Ro-Ro ferries, 4 container ships, 7 freighters, 15 tankers, and 8 repair/support ships.
What did you say, again?
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Sorry, but almost no historians believe that Hitler allowed the BEF to escape in order to secure an armistice. No such 'historic records' as you claim actually exist. Moreover, if you wish your enemy to come to terms, aren't you likely to have a better chance of achieving that with the bulk of his army in PoW camps, rather than safely out of reach, protected by the largest navy on the planet? Lord Halifax at the time was actively seeking to use Mussolini as an 'independent' arbiter in any peace talks, and had considerable support within the cabinet. However, after Dynamo, his support evaporated.
Not that this matters, because Hitler didn't issue the Halt Order, the commander of Army Group A, von Rundstedt, for sound military reasons. His armour had travelled a considerable distance, and needed a period of rest and self maintenance before embarking on the second stage of the French campaign. Von Rundstedt feared, as many German generals did, that there might be a repeat of the WW1 'Miracle of the Marne.' Hitler knew the country around Dunkirk from WW1, and believed it unsuitable for armour. Moreover, the day before the order was given, Goering had assured Hitler that the destruction of the troops in the Pocket, and any evacuation ships, was 'a special job for the Luftwaffe.'
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The negotiator they sent was Captain Cedric Holland, commander of HMS Ark Royal. Holland was a Francophile, who spoke French fluently, had been British Naval Attache in Paris before the war, and knew most senior French naval officers, though not Gensoul.
The British regarded attacking the French fleet as their least preferred option. Ideally, the best would have been for Gensoul's fleet to have joined with Somerville's. The second choice was for it to sail to the French West Indies, to be placed under neutral US supervision. They also knew, by the way, that the Armistice required that the French fleet be moved to French Atlantic ports, where it would be placed under German 'supervision,' something the British could not allow.
Firing began well after the deadline had passed, and only then when French ships had been observed to be preparing for sea. The blame which has been levelled at Gensoul, by French as well as British historians, is that he failed to pass on the full text of the British ultimatum to his government, as there is considerable evidence to suggest that the West Indian option might have been acceptable to Admiral Darlan. Why Gensoul failed to pass on the ultimatum in full is unknown, as he never sought to explain his thought processes.
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@johnm3845 'A fire was raging before it launched.' Really? A fire had been raging inside the ship for 11 months, for most of which Titanic had not even been coaled?
'They backed the ship in with the burnt black spot facing the ocean so it wasn't visible to people on shore.' Really? Then how do you explain the photograph which shows a mark on the forward part of Titanic's starboard side? The part nearest the quay? Moreover, how do you explain the fact that this mark is well above the waterline, and in the area of third class cabins, nowhere near any bunker?
How do you explain away IMM regulations, which required daily inspection of coal bunkers? How do you explain evidence at The British Inquiry, which stated that a smouldering bunker fire had been identified and dealt with at least a day before the collision, causing damage to internal paintwork within the bunker only?
As you cannot explain any of the above, try a simple question? If there was such a fire 'raging' as you describe it, why would a captain as experienced as Edward Smiith sail in the first place?
'I think this new 3d scan will reveal there was no iceberg damage.' Your comments suggest that you cannot think at all. The £D scans show precisely nothing which has not been seen many times before.
'I think they sacrificed the people on the Titan to cover the headlines about the new findings about what truly sunk it.' You should be ashamed of yourself for making so offensive a comment. Are you not even aware that Titan was a tourist vessel, not part of any exploration team?
You really are beneath contempt.
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Please don't be silly. Bismarck carried 12 x five point nine inch low angle guns, which were outdated by 1940 and never actually managed to hit anything. The British Nelson class , built ten years earlier, carried 12 x 6 inch LA guns, and the King George V class 16 x 5'25 DP. Modern US battleships carried 20 x 5 inch DPs. Perhaps if Bismarck had had a DP secondary armament, she might not have been quite so unprepared to cope with attacks by torpedo bombers?
The main guns in Bismarck were so powerful that they fired a broadside of 14,112 lbs., compared to the 15,900 of the KGVs, the 18,432 of a Nelson, or the 24,300 of a Washington, Iowa, or South Dakota.
Or, come to that, the 18,000 lbs of a Tennessee, or the 15,504 lbs of a Queen Elizabet or R class..
Do you consider that having radar which failed when the guns fired was really beneficial? The radars of US & British capital ships generally had no such limitations.
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The British were not, and never (except for a short period in WW1) have been, a major military power on land. The BEF, though the only fully mechanised army in the world at the time, was tiny, as the other reply has already explained.
The difference between the Soviet Union and Britain should be obvious. If you have any serious intentions of invading an island nation protected by the largest navy in existence, you really need a significant navy of your own to have even a ghost of a chance of succeeding.
Churchill wasn't 'insistent on the United States joining the war' by the way, as he had no authority to insist that the USA do anything. He was, however, quite rightly trying to secure the support of the world's greatest industrial power. Fortunately, President Roosevelt was wise enough to realise that supporting support for the only European democracy still in arms against nazi Germany was in the long term interests of the United States.
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' Olympic had to pay for its own damage, and they were already on the verge of bankruptcy, and so the insurance was doubled with documents, provided the value of Titanic and it just happened to sync a month later collecting on that kept white star line in service until 1930s when it was bought by Cunard.' Oh dear, where ever did you get this nonsense. White Star paid for Olympic's repairs, because the man in charge of her, a Solent Pilot, was deemed responsible for the collision with HMS Hawke. The cost was, in 1911 terms, £25,000. As White Star had posted profits in excess of £1 million in the previous financial year, it was simply a nuisance, which was why, when Olympic returned to sea in November, 1911, the Company confirmed their order for the third Olympic with White Star.
The financial woes of White Star (and, by the way, Cunard) were the result of an enitirely different event, the 1929 Wall Street crash. As a result, both were rescued by the British government, with the requirement that they merge. As there were more ships available to the combined company than the market justified, the two oldest, Olympic & her old rival Mauretania, were sold for scrap.
The insurance was not 'doubled' both Olympic & Titanic were insured for £1 million, or two thirds of their building costs, and £1 million was what Lloyds paid out after Titanic sank.
'How many people have totaled cars and switched identification numbers and drive the car for 5+ years nothing is impossible.' Don't you even realise how absurd that analogy really is? Similar cars are built in thousands. There were only two Olympics in existence at the time. Both took several years to complete, and required a workforce of some 15,000 men. How many cars fall into that category?
The Olympics were never proclaimed 'unsinkable.' The nearest to that is a comment that they were 'as near to unsinkable as modern shipbuilding techniques can make them' which is rather a different thing.
Olympic was painted either white or light grey for her launch because Cunard had done the same to Mauretania for her launch around four years earlier, and she had shown up impressively in early pictures & newsreels. Both ships rapidly acquired the black hulls of their respective companies, however.
There was little celebration when Titanic was launched, because she was nerely the less glamorous younger sister. Titanic's became celebrated because of what happened to her subsequently.
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The actual damage to Bismarck was rather more serious & widespread than most people actually realise, as follows:-
The fatal torpedo hit the steering area of Bismarck. The full fury of the detonation was vented into the ship and against the shell and rudders. The steering capability of the ship was destroyed. The transient whipping response caused by this torpedo hit was stunning. The hull, according to survivors, acted like a springboard, and severe structural damage was sustained in the stern structure. The steering gear complex, encased in 150 mm thick armor, was rather rigid in comparison to the 10 meter long canoe-shaped stern. The unarmored stern structure vibrated at a different frequency than the main hull just ahead of it. Tears were opened in the side shell and bulkheads adjacent to the damaged area. The two decks in the stern were wrecked by the force of the explosion, and equipment in the quarterdeck area was seriously damaged as the explosion expanded upward. Seaman Helmut Behnke, who was sent to check on the smoke-making machinery and its piping found it completely destroyed. Evidence of the severity of damage can be seen in the videotapes of the stern area of the wreck. The remaining platform decks are badly twisted and the upper portions of the damage can be barely seen just above the sediments.
The rudders were jammed at a position of 12 degrees to port, as the ship was in the process of turning to evade a port side torpedo attack when she was struck. Herculean efforts by the damage control teams could not correct this situation as they were unable to enter the steering compartments. Immediately after the torpedo hit Bismarck commenced turning in circles, out of control. Once speed was reduced, the ship inexorably assumed a course to the northwest, directly towards her pursuers, as the intensity of the storm increased.
Attempts to vary the propeller revolutions on the three shafts, ordered by the leader of the damage control team, Commander Hans Oels, failed to counter the effects of the jammed rudder. With British destroyers now closing to attempt torpedo attacks, Bismarck began a night gunfire action which prevented any further damage-control efforts aft. Stormy conditions, darkness, and gun blast from turrets Caesar and Dora prevented damage control teams from assembling at the stern to try to access the steering gear compartments and repair the damage. Divers reported to Commander Oels, the Executive Officer, that they were unable to enter because of surging water within the after steering gear rooms. One of the divers had to abandon his attempt after his air hose became ensnared in damaged structure, cutting off his air supply. Josef Statz overheard Commander Oels say to the exhausted divers when they entered Damage Control Center: "Only if we had the diving apparatus issued to submariners."
It is believed that part of the stern collapsed onto the rudders, as happened with the Prinz Eugen and armored cruiser Lützow, or was damaged in such a way that it was impossible to steer the ship by either manual or mechanical means. It would have been necessary to cut away structure which was covered by surging water. In any event, the repair of such damage was beyond the capability and material provided aboard the Bismarck, even if weather and battle conditions had been more favourable. The stern structure was massively damaged and eventually failed.
There is remarkable similarity between the Bismarck damage and a similar torpedo hit on the stern of Prinz Eugen on 23 February 1942. Dr. Erwin Strohbusch, who directed the repairs of this heavy cruiser in Norway, wrote that this incident, and an earlier one on the armored cruiser Lützow, whose stern also collapsed from a torpedo hit, indicated a structural flaw in the stern design of German armored ships, heavy cruisers, and battleships. Improvements were made to the stern structures of Admiral Hipper, Lützow, Tirpitz, Admiral Scheer and Scharnhorst during 1942-1943.
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Perhaps you didn't know when the Battle of Britain took place? Try to understand this. In September, 1940, there were 34.5 divisions in the UK. Of these 32.5 were British. The only Commonwealth troops in the UK were one Canadian division and rwo Australian/New Zealand brigades. The nearest Indian division was in North Africa, and the Free French/Poles were not yet forned into (small) coherent fighting units as yet.
In the event of any German landing, however unlikely given the naval supremacy of the (British) Royal Navy, supported by a small number of Canadian destroyers, cries of 'Good luck, lads!' from distant Canada, Australian, South Africa, New Zealand, India or anywhere else would not have been of much help.
However important the Commonwealth & Empire became later in the war.
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To a degree. There were 'big ship sailors' and 'small ship sailors,' but it was not unusual to move between the two. Andrew Cunningham, for example, always regarded himself as a small ship sailor, but went on to larger things. Generally, a RN destroyer flotilla between the wars had nine vessels, eight destroyers and a leader, which was usually a slightly larger destroyer. The flotilla would be commanded by a Captain (D) who might well subsequently take command of a cruiser or battleship. One of the other destroyers would be a half-leader, commanded by the second in command of the flotilla, usually of Commander rank, and the remainder were captains were Lieutenant-Commanders. During the RN expansion during WW2, command of smaller RN destroyers such as the Hunt class often went to comparatively junior Lieutanants.
Forbes, C-in-C of the Home Fleet in 1940, on the other hand, never commanded anything smaller than a cruiser. Most RN senior officers, much like US ones, did spend some time in destroyers.
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@johnpeate4544 You are correct, and I was wrong, about it going to court. Monty's publishers were quick to avoid that happening.
Montgomery was threatened with legal action by Field Marshal Auchinleck for suggesting that Auchinleck had intended to retreat from the Alamein position if attacked again, and had to give a radio broadcast (20 November 1958) expressing his gratitude to Auchinleck for having stabilised the front at the First Battle of Alamein.
The 1960 paperback edition of Montgomery's memoirs contains a publisher's note drawing attention to that broadcast, and stating that although the reader might assume from Montgomery's text that Auchinleck had been planning to retreat "into the Nile Delta or beyond" in the publisher's view it had been Auchinleck's intention to launch an offensive as soon as the Eighth Army was "rested and regrouped"
It appears that the publishers acted to avoid the risk of serious court case, and actually believed Auchinleck's as opposed to Montgomery's account.
Even 'A Full Life' by Brian Horrocks, includes such phrases as :-
'From now on (mid July) Auchinleck's mind was set on hitting back, and no further retreat was thought of.'
'From the middle of July onwards, Auchinleck never thought of any further withdrawal.'
'It was the desperate fighting in the first fortnight of July, when the 8th Army rescued Egypt, which paved the way for our subsequent victories.'
'On the 27th July, Dorman-Smith prepared an appreciaton for his commander in which 'the intention' was that the 8th Army would defeat any attempt of the enemy to pass through or round it. There was no mention in this document of any further withdrawal, but even so Auchinleck at first refused his agreement because it did not contain a sufficiently offensive spirit. There was nothing defensive about Auchinleck at this period.'
These comments were written in the same year that Monty's publishers chose to 'adjust' his autobiography,
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@chewyukechun350 You think that French ports, even in nazi control, held stocks of parts suitable for Japanese warships, or ammunition compatible with Japanese requirements?
The German navy at the time, September, 1940, by the way, consisted of one operational heavy cruiser, three operational light cruisers, and about seven operational destroyers.
You seem to have ignored the distances involved, not to mention, put brutally, what was in it for the Japanese, who at the time were far more worried about the US reaction to their expansionist plans than to the results of a far distant European war.
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@Andy-ub3ub 'Minutiae?' Since when have accurate historical facts been so described?
Your observations simply do not stand. On the one hand you come up with a whole series of 'would haves' ranging from questionable to impossible, and then you blithely assume that all subsequent events of WW2 still proceed as they historically did.
You take the same approach as those who merrily claim that, if Germany had built vast numbers of U-boats in the lead up to WW2, then they 'would have' won the Battle of the Atlantic. Utterly ignoring the fact that, had this actually happened, then the British, understanding that such construction could only have been aimed directly at them, 'would have' accelerated construction of escorts to a vastly greater degree than, historically, they did.
Thank you for your 'very very small acknolegement.' I don't much care, as I am right, and you are wrong.
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@ralphbernhard1757 I agree. The the 10th Army would fail could not be known in July, 1940. However, 10th Army had nine divisions, mainly infantry, whereas there were 23 French divisions in Algeria, Morocco, & Tunisia. The British had three divisions, one of which was armoured, together with a fourth arriving in September.
Do you seriously suggest that the Italians would seek to fight a war with nine divisions against a much more mobile British force in the east, and a much larger French force in the east?
I don't recall mentioning any alliance, still less any 'feelings.' The fact is, if attacked the French would respond whatever the British did or didn't do, unless ordered not to by Vichy.
Haven't you yourself suggested that very fact?
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@mattbowden4996 I think my original post read as follows:-
'The High Seas Fleet did sail twice more, but on the first occasion returned to port when advised that the Grand Fleet was approaching, and on the second occasion returned almost immediately when one of their ships was torpedoed. Whether these can be considered serious sorties is open to debate.' Are you now claiming that the HSF didn't return to port when the approach of the Grand Fleet was reported to Scheer, or that the second 'sortie' was not abandoned when a cruiser was torpedoed? The Moltke incident was much later, in April, 1918, by the way, and therefore irrelevant to the October 'sortie.'
When have I suggested cowardice, by the way?
I know that the HSF fleet managed to find something to do in 1917, but operations again a feeble Russian navy would do nothing to bring about victory on the Western Front, although I don't doubt that reading about such actions would have made the Turnip slices being eaten by the starving and disenchanted German civilian population taste much more palatable.
When did I say that the sole purpose of the HSF was to break the British blockade? I would argue that the prime purpose of the Grand Fleet was to protect the Armed Merchant Cruisers maintaining the Blockade, but that is a different issue.
'What you do think they should have done? Just sailed into the North Sea to be annihilated? What possible good would that have done the German state? Even without considering the potential loss of life, capital ships are expensive national resources that take a significant amount of time to replace.' When did I suggest that? I agree that, as far as the Grand Fleet was concerned, the HSF was utterly outmatched, but other actions could have been taken, possibilities being a raid on the Channel, an attack on the Harwich Force, or a sortie against the AMCs of the Northern Patrol, using battlecruisers and light cruisers.
'You're arguing that Scheer should have wasted his ships and the lives of the men under his command in futile gestures against the Royal Navy. Why would he want to do that? What could he possible gain?' No, I'm not. When did I say that?
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@mattbowden4996 'Your initial assertion that the High Seas Fleet August 1916 fleet advance wasn't "serious" is easily disproved.' Indeed? then why haven't you disproved it? Incidentally, I think you will find that what
I actually said was that whether this brief sortie should be considered 'serious' was open to debate. Something you haven't as yet been able to pursue.
You didn't need to remind me, as I already knew about Operation Albion. Perhaps you consider this to have been a triumph on a par with Trafalgar or Midway, but I fear you will be in a minority should this be your view. The relevance to the overall progress of the war, by the way, was minimal, and I ask you to find an historian who thinks that it was.
'Incidentally you also seem to believe that unless a naval operation wins the war single handed then it's unworthy of your notice, which is a ridiculous standard to judge anything by.' Quite. An absurd view, which is why I don't hold it. Indeed, I have been the one suggesting that, after Jutland, Scheer should have undertaken a series of raids against the Royal Navy, as the Japanese did against the US Navy after Midway. You are the one who keeps bleating that this would have entailed risk.
What Red Herrings, by the way? I compared the Spitzbergen raid with Albion because both appear to have been minor operations dreamed up by a German admiralty worried about a collapse in morale following prolonged periods of activity. Can you really not grasp the parallel?
I have already asked you to explain why August, 1916 was serious, but then you post 'so kindly either defend you statement that August 1916 fleet advance was "unserious" and the HSF did nothing of note post 1917 in good faith.' A tricky one, that, as you have already said that 'no one is about to argue that the HSF's forays into the North Sea in 1918 were very serious.' Please feel free to argue with yourself about that one.
By the way, you might wish to consider what the Admiralstab said of the August 'sortie' which was :- 'The sinking of two light cruisers hardly credits the operation as successful. Such sorties might damage the British Fleet, but they will not produce an important, let alone a decisive, result. The stranglehold of the British Blockade has not even been dented, let alone broken.' The report then suggests no further sorties, but the immediate commencement of unrestricted submarine warfare.
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Then as a Polish citizen, you deserve to know the facts, so here they are. Piorun was operating in company with a British destroyer flotilla commanded by Philip Vian and consisting of Cossack, Maori, Zulu and Sikh, all Tribal class destroyers. The flotilla arrived on the night of 26 May, when Bismarck, after receiving damage to her stern, was already being shadowed by HMS Sheffield, and the battleships King George V & Rodney were approaching, although Admiral Tovey had decided to hold off until dawn. Vian's orders were to shadow Bismarck during the night.
Vian, an aggressive commander, decided to make a series of torpedo attacks on Bismarck, which all four Tribals did, but without success, although his ships did remain in contact throughout.
Piorun, however, alone of the five, failed to attack with torpedoes, as her captain, instead, chose to indulge in a quixotic and pointless gun duel, even though Piorun's 4.7 inch guns were totally ineffective against Bismarck. In so doing, he managed to lose contact with Bismarck, but returned the following morning, at around 0500.
As by then Piorun was short of fuel, she was sent back to port by Vian.
There. Now you have as many details as anyone could want.
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What exactly do you mean? RMS Carpathia was torpedoed by U55 in July, 1918, when under the command of Captain William Protheroe, with the loss of five lives, all engine room staff. U55 surfaced and was approaching Carpathia's lifeboats, but left the scene when an escort, HMS Snowdrop, approached.
U55 surrendered at Harwich on 26 November, 1918, and was handed over to the Japanese navy in 1920, operating briefly as O.3, until being dismantled about a year later.
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Untrue, unless of course you are a revisionist, unconcerned with facts when they conflict with your propaganda. Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you will refuse believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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The problem here is that Olympic was never 'worthless scrap.' She was repaired by Harland and Wolff, and returned to sea from 20 November, 1911, when Titanic was around 5 months from completion. Repair costs, at 1912 monetary levels, were £25,000 which was 1.67% of her building costs.
That is where the whole switch nonsense, invented in 1995 by Robin Gardiner, collapses. Unless Olympic was a write-off, then the argument for any switch ceases to exist. Which is why Gardiner thought up a whole host of improbable claims, none of which stand up to the slightest examination.
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Holland was hardly 'just a messenger.' He had been British Naval Attache in Paris, and was known and respected by many of the senior officers in the French navy, although not, unfortunately, Gensoul. Somerville was not in a position to leave his flagship, at a time when events were fast developing, as he needed to remain in close contact with the Admiralty, and there was also the unvoiced, but real, fear that, once in Mers el Kebir, he might be 'detained.'
The question which really should be answered, and which never can be, is why Gensoul failed to pass on the full text of the ultimatum to his government. The option of sending the Fleet to the French West Indies, probably under US supervision, was never passed on to Darlan. Gensoul, for the rest of his life, failed to explain his actions.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which you have been indoctrinated. However, for once try to think outside your programming and ask yourself this : There were 2.5 million Indians serving with the Allied forces at the time. Is it likely that Churchill would have considered, even for a moment and even had he been so inclined, to alienate them?
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@svenschildhauer9139 1). You are correct that Titanic had 14 portholes when launched. However a ship at the time of launch is still very much a work in progress. After Olympic's first voyages, a number of recommendations for improvements were made, which included the fitting of two extra portholes, which Titanic received late in 1911. In November, I believe. Similar retrospective modifications were later made to Olympic as well. Photographs of the completed Titanic clearly show 16 portholes.
2). The propeller swap in a claim of comparatively modern origin. The Admiralty report into Olympic's damage from the Hawke collision, supported by teams from the Board of Trade and White Star, refers only to damage to Olympic's propeller SHAFT, not to her propeller. In view of the location of the damage, it is difficult to see how damage could have been done to the propeller itself. H & W only ever claimed to have used parts from the incomplete Tirtanic's propeller shaft, in order to get Olympic back to sea ASAP. Actually, by late November, 1911. The propeller swap claim was created by dedicated switchers as a fairly desperate means of explaining away why a Titanic (401) propeller was on the wreck, which they still insisted was Olympic, No. 400.
3). Again, this was a recommendation from Olympic's early voyages. Additional first class cabins and a cafe were added to the modified forward end of Titanic during the final stages of her build, giving her a pattern of uneven, rectangular, windows, when compared to the more regular square, even, pattern of her older sister, seen in photographs from the same period Again, this window pattern, clearly visible on the wreck, matches Titanic, but is different from Olympic, in 1912.
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What advantage did the Germans have? They needed to find a way of crossing a waterway 22 miles wide at the narrowest point, when their already small navy had been badly maimed during the Norwegian campaign, and the waterway was defended by the largest navy on earth.
Of course, there was always the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe which had not been trained in anti-shipping operations, which had just failed badly at Dunkirk, and didn't even have a high performance torpedo-bomber until mid 1942. The Luftwaffe which, in the whole of the war, sank 31 Royal Navy destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser. For information, in September, 1940, there were 64 RN destroyers within five hours' steaming of Dover, supported by over 500 small warships, and over 110 RN destroyers in Home waters in total.
Unlike the Maginot Line, there was no cunning way round the Channel & the North Sea.
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@hajoos.8360 Sorry, but it is clear that you haven't read the war diary, whereas I have. After Prinz Eugen returned to port, Vice Admiral Schmundt was critical of Korvettenkapitan Jasper for mis-identifying Hood & PoW as cruisers, commenting that :- The assumption by the 1st Artillery Officer [Korvettenkapitän Paulus Jasper] that he is facing cruisers, is incomprehensible.
Particularly from an artillery officer who must answer the opponent effectively, an accurate identification of the opponent's types is a prerequisite, since the choice of shells, and in some cases for outcome of the battle itself, depends on his decision.' This is from 'Position Statement of the Commander of Cruisers (B.d.K.), Vizeadmiral Schmundt, regarding the War Diary of the cruiser "Prinz Eugen".' The log itself reports the initial contact as 'presumably a light cruiser' at 0537.
I will ignore your insults, but would ask you to explain, once again, why, if Prinz Eugen knew she was facing capital ships, she used HE ammunition throughout. Indeed, she ought, according to German fleet orders, she should have withdrawn from the action. As Schmundt stated in the document I referred to above :- ' Although the conduct of "Prinz Eugen" during the battle against 2 heavy enemy ships is indeed very courageous, it does not meet the common [tactical] views presently in force, according to which, already during the assembly for battle, the cruisers and torpedo boats are to post themselves in the fire-lee of the main body – here undoubtedly "Bismarck".
Although the cruiser had an armament of 20cm guns, with which the artillery officer fired remarkably well and also achieved damaging the opponent, this ship is so poorly armored that it belongs to the light units despite its designation as "heavy cruiser". Every 35 cm or 38 cm hit would have made this ship probably a prize of the pursuing English units or would have forced "Bismarck" to assume extremely unwanted responsibilities for protecting the heavily damaged ship.'
In short, Prinz Eugen, as her log states, used HE shells throughout, because her 1st Gunnery Officer had wrongly identified his opponents. The log confirms this, and Vice Admiral Schmundt agrees.
Presumably, you know better, of course. Do you have any source at all to support your certainty?
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@hajoos.8360 Fascinating. You refer to Prinz Eugen closing the range on PoW in order to achieve greater accuracy, I ask you whether you think it would have been a good idea for a lightly armoured cruiser to do such a thing against a battleship, and in response you embark or a barely coherent rant.
The US navy never exposed their BBs anymore to imperial Japanese BBs.'
Really? 25 October, 1944, the Battle of Surigao Strait? Heard of it? Obviously not. Where on earth did you get the bizarre idea that Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, & Hipper had the best secondary armaments on the planet?
Your actual lack of knowledge and understanding, combined with your enthusiastic use of insults in your attempt to conceal the fact, is extremely entertaining, but there is only one 'bullshitter' posting on here at the present time, mon brave, and it isn't me.
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@hajoos.8360 I thought you said that US battleships did not engage Japanese battleships? You don't need to tell me about the battle, as I, clearly unlike you, already knew the details. I didn't need to scurry off to wikipedia to find out about it. You might try reading 'The Battle of Surigao Strait' by Anthony Tully, perhaps? If it helps, it was part of a larger battle, Leyte Gulf. I assume that you have heard of Leyte Gulf?
Incidentally, when Hipper engaged HMS Berwick on Christmas Day, 1940, an action in which Hipper came off best but Berwick saved her convoy (WS 5a, a convoy containing a number of troopships) Hipper used 8 inch AP shells for much of the action. Of course, you wouldn't have known that, so look it up on wikipedia.
I don't 'interpret' anything; I simply draw conclusions from documented facts. You might perhaps consider doing the same?
Please feel free to go away, as your ideas of what constitute 'politeness' are decidedly odd.
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@kristianmolloy8622 No. In September, 1940, Scharnhorst & Gneisenau were both under repair from torpedo damage. Neither was available until November. There was only one heavy cruiser (Hipper) operational, and only three light cruisers (Emden, Koln, and Nurnburg.) A 4th, Leipzig, was undergoing repairs, but only sufficient to enable her to be used as a training ship. The pre-dreadnoughts, actually two, Schleswig-Holstein & Schliesen, were hopelessly obsolete, and had been stripped of their secondary armaments for use on merchant raiders, and of their crews, who were sent to man the invasion barges. Bismarck, Tirpitz, & Prinz Eugen were not in commission yet, and the two surviving armoured cruisers were either undergoing extended repairs or refitting.
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@HistoryDenied 'British imperialism brought civilisation?!' The fact is that that is a credible argument. Would, for example, Australia have been better off had the aboriginal inhabitants remained at a mesolithic level of development, with a life expectancy of 40 if they were lucky?
Or India if she had remained a network of warring Princely States, instead of becoming the largest democracy on earth, and benefitting from western medicine, civil administration, legal systems, transport networks, etc?
Oh, and In 1783, an anti-slavery movement began in Britain. That year a group of Quakers founded their first abolitionist organisation. The Quakers continued to be influential throughout the lifetime of the movement, in many ways leading the campaign. By 1833, it had been abolished throughout the British Empire.
You seem to have profound difficulty in accepting than any nation other than Britain was ever involved in the practice, and still less ability to accept that Britain led the field in abolition.
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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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Assault with what? What would have happened is that Tirpitz, and any other scratch force of German warships with her, would have been destroyed by allied warships detached from the seven battleships, five heavy cruisers, seventeen light cruisers, and one hundred and thirty nine destroyers, escort destroyers, and smaller escort vessels, allocated to Operation Neptune.
Always assuming, of course, that Tirpitz managed to get past RN submarine patrols and the Allied air forces in the first place.
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Nothing of the sort is 'commonly understood today.' Were you to read 'Invasion of England - 1940' by Peter Schenk, you would have access to full details of the German invasion plan, which was very real indeed. By mid September, 1940, the Kriegsmarine had assembled 159 coasters, 1859 converted river barges, 397 tugs/trawlers, and almost 1200 motor boats in French & Belgian. The plan involved a first wave of nine divisions, supported by a weak airborne division in the first wave, with a further nine divisions in the second wave, and six divisions in the third wave. The initial assault force involved just over 60,000 men, carried in 894 barges (towed in pairs by 57 transports and 390 tugs) and 300 motor boats. The first wave, in entirety, involved just over 150,000 men.
'Hitler’s ultimate goal and this is recorded history was to bring the RAF to the brink of extinction, then pull back and force the British to a negotiated peace.' You claim that this is 'recorded history?' Where is it 'recorded?' Certainly, the invasion plan presupposed the Luftwaffe having air superiority over the Channel, but bringing the RAF to the brink of extinction was never possible. The worst that could have happened would have been a temporary withdrawal of Fighter Command north of the Thames to rest & re-equip. At the time the British were already outproducing Germany in terms of aircraft, especially fighters.
I would agree that the importance of the Battle of Britain was and is exaggerated, largely because of Churchill's speeches at the time, intended to garner support in the United States. Churchill could have said, truthfully, that 'An invasion is not possible. The German fleet is tiny, and Britain has the largest navy on earth,' but the David versus Goliath image was more effective, and, inaccurately, is the image many people have today.
The reality, of course, was that the Royal Navy held absolute supremacy in the Channel, and any attempt to invade with the resources at Germany's disposal had no hope of success, but to suggest that no such plan ever existed is simply not in accordance with either the facts or the historical record.
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Actually, little chap, real historians now accept that the Battle of Britain was not the real reason Sealion was not attempted. Far more relevant was the absolute naval supremacy held by the Royal Navy in Home Waters, and particularly in the Channel. Lesson one of 'The Young Boys' Book of Naval Warfare' says that if you hope to undertake an assault landing on an island defended by the largest navy on earth, you need a sizeable fleet of your own. Which, of couse, the Germans didn't.
'Their cowardice got so bad winston churchill is on record calling them out for treachery and betrayal all while calling them yellow bellied cowards.' When did Churchill say that? I am absolutely confident that you have a convincing, credible, source. After all, 'yellow bellied cowards' is obviously the kind of phrase an accomplished orator like Churchill habitually used, along with 'git out of town, you pesky varmints' perhaps? How dear Winston must have loved Western movies!
Perhaps when you grow up you will learn more about the actual events of 1940, from things called 'books.' Perhaps you should ask your carers about them?
Were you off school, assuming you ever went to one, the day they taught punctuation, by the way?
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@bobbyjoeyoung2becausesteph194
Still a punctuation free zone, I observe.
In point of fact, the United States did not so much 'get involved,' more was dragged rather unwillingly into the war when the US Pacific Fleet was attacked by the Japanese, and the Germans declared war and began sinking US merchant shipping in large numbers off the US East Coast, where the ships were helpfully silhouetted against the coastal lights, which no-one had the gumption to switch off.
Actions indeed speak louder than words. Actions like, in no particular order, as you probably haven't heard of any of them, the River Plate, the sinking of Bismarck, the Battle of Britain, Operation Compass, & Operation Crusader.
The rest of your rant seems to be a repeat of your earlier rant. I would be grateful if you could tell me the occasion when Churchill called the British 'yellow bellied cowards,' as the historians seem to have missed it. Was it around the same time as he said to Lord Halifax 'This town ain't big enough for both of us, pardner?'
By the way, British military casualties as a % of population in WW2 were 0.8%, the highest of any allied nation except the Soviet Union.
By comparison, US military casualties were 0.32%
Generally, I find corpse-counting neither relevant nor appropriate, but when dealing with someone with your obvious intellectual limitations is does seem to serve something of a purpose.
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No. You are the one with no idea. 'The navy got smashed at Dunkirk.' Oh please, do buy a proper book. The RN at Dunkirk lost 6 of 41 destroyers, 0 of 6 corvettes, 0 of 3 sloops, 5 of 36 minesweepers, 12 of 52 trawlers, and 5 of 61 drifters, in exchange for, having been ordered to bring out 40,000 troops, bringing out 338,000. What part of 'naval victory' or at least 'naval success' has evaded your understanding?
Repulse & PoW were sunk by high performance torpedo bombers, flown by highly trained crews. The German air force didn't acquire any remotely similar aircraft until mid 1942.
In fact, in 1940, the Luftwaffe had been trained only as a ground attack force, rather than as an anti-shipping one. Indeed, in the whole of WW2 your mighty Luftwaffe managed to sink 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser. To put that into perspective, the RN began WW2 with 193 destroyers, and ended it with around 400. By September, 1940, there were 70 destroyers and light cruisers within five hours steaming of Dover, supported by around 500 smaller warships. There were a further 40 or so destroyers also in Home Waters.
I do enjoy reading the posts from Sealion 'would haves,' always full of what the wonderful Luftwaffe 'would have' done, whilst blissfully ignorant of what it usually didn't, or couldn't do.
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@moeroahapuku5872 When did I say anything about British naval AA guns? The Royal Navy did mass, and did succeed, at Dunkirk.
What I am saying is that in 1940, the Luftwaffe was untrained in anti-shipping techniques. Their ability to hit any sort of ship, whether armed or unarmed, was poor. Take for example the small Dutch barges, or Schuits, which the British commandeered and used to lift around 23,000 troops. 40 of them, of which 4 were sunk. Or 45 unarmed personnel ships of which 8 were sunk.
These ships were either stationary, or at best moving slowly in restricted waters. Yet you would argue that the same luftwaffe which failed significantly to prevent their operations would suddenly be able to destroy destroyers and cruisers with the ability to manoeuve freely at 30 or so knots?
Nonsense!
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@jimlofts5433 Churchill sent support to Greece because he had previously promised that 'Any country which opposes Hitler will have Britain's aid.'
There really was no alternative to the allied campaign in North Africa and then Sicily/Italy if US troops were to see action in Europe before 1944. FDR supported the 'Germany first' strategy, but knew that US public opinion would not tolerate the failure of their troops to engage for around two years, and would demand more immediate action, probably against Japan.
The allies were in no condition to attempt to land in France until, 1944, but British & Commonwealth troops were already in Egypt/Libya. After completing the Tunisian campaign, where else, realistically, could these troops be deployed?
As I wrote earlier, Churchill proposed the Gallipoli operation, but neither authorised it, planned it nor executed it. Blame Herbert Asquith if you must.
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Not really. The Home Fleet was already at sea searching for Bismarck. There were, in addition to Hood, PoW, Norfolk & Suffolk in the Denmark Strait, KGV, Repulse, Victorious, and three cruisers in the Iceland-Faroes Gap. Bismarck & Prinz Eugen were a serious threat to the Atlantic convoy network at a time when the Royal Navy was already hard pressed in the Mediterranean.
German warships rarely appeared at sea, and the opportunity to destroy the biggest one was too good to be missed. Pride did not really come into it, as the Price of Admiralty was well known to the Royal Navy.
Moreover, the lesson of Bismarck's sinking was not lost on the Kriegsmarine. Early in 1942, Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst, & Gneisenau fled back to Germany through the Channel, and no German surface ship appeared in the Atlantic for the rest of the war.
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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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Yet, apart from one Canadian division & two Australian/New Zealand brigades, there were no Commonwealth troops in Britain in 1940. In the event of an assault landing, however unlikely it might have been, it would be the British who, almost entirely would be the ones who resisted it.
Encouragement from far away, whilst good for morale, would not have helped much. There were 574 Commonwealth & Foreign pilots in the Battle of Britain, and 2353 British ones, by the way.
Moreover, you greatly exaggerate the importance of the Battle of Britain. After all, if the Germans had achieved a temporary measure of air superiority, all that they then needed to do was find a way past the largest navy in the world for their towed barges.
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@sebclot9478 The British weren't in South Africa. In 1941, they had substantial forces in NORTH Africa. Moreover, historically, the Italian Navy struggled to maintain supply levels to the smallish axis forces in North Africa, because of the inconvenient presence of the RN & RAF in the Mediterranean, combined with the serious lack of port facilities in the region.
The Suez Canal was of little importance in the first half of WW2, largely because British convoys went round the Cape. Supplies for 8th Army were landed at the southern end of the canal and moved by rail. The Canal itself was used almost entirely by warships sailing to join or to leave the Mediterranean Fleet, although often these used the Mediterranean via Gibraltar, as did Malta supply convoys.
As the Italian navy was, historically, seriously hamstrung by lack of fuel, and rarely, in the case of the heavy ships, risked action, your Gibraltar option is not credible. Moreover, Franco was never in a position to join the Axis, as Spain relied on US food aid to stave off mass starvation, and FDR had already made el Caudillo well aware that the day Spain did join the Axis was the day this aid stopped. Furthermore, have you actually considered the logistics problems facing a German force passing through Spain even to get to Gibraltar? Bismarck was sunk, by the way, in May, 1941, so is irrelevant to the issue, even if one warship built to a semi-obsolete design could make any meaningful contribution to anything.
Build more U-Boats? I assume that, as these are being built, presumably in the pre-war period, you expect the British to sit back, say 'I wonder why the Germans are building U-Boats?' and not expand their own escort production programme?
Sorry, what you propose is far from 'easy.' It is fantasy based on a lack of knowledge.
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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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Actually, the evidence for your comment is notable only by the absence of any. However,it is quite likely true that most of the Belfast 'delivery trip' crew would choosenot sign on for Titanic's maiden voyage, even if asked. There is a very simple and logical reason for this, which does not necessitate a conspiracy.
The voyage from Belfast to Southampton was a short one, while the North Atlantic route (Southampton to New York) was much longer. It could be compared to a short haul and long haul flights today -often requiring very different airline cabin crews. The crew aboard Titanic from Belfast to Southampton were (except for the deck officers) local operators (or "runners") who mostly worked on voyages that were made locally, and did this with a number of ships, not just Titanic.
They would not be interested in the transatlantic route as it would mean not returning to Belfast or Southampton for several weeks. They would only be interested in shorter crossings. However Southampton, (which had replaced Liverpool as a major international hub) was where transatlantic liners such as those of White Star and Cunard were based, thus the crew based in Southampton were experienced, international men.
It makes complete sense that the local Belfast runners did not sign up for a transatlantic maiden voyage, when they were not experienced or interested in such a trip, which would result in them losing all the local jobs they preferred when local Southampton crew were used to such "long-haul" trips.
Incidentally, had there been the slightest bit of credibility in your comment, wasn't it odd that there wasn't a spate of 'told you so' comments from these men after the sinking?
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
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@BA-gn3qb OK, I will try again. In September, 1940, the German navy had 61 boats in commission. Of these, 34 were either training boats or new boats working up in the Baltic. The remainder were the so-called frontboote. Of these 27, at any one day in September 13 were at sea. Many of these were Type IIs, too small & short range to operate in the Atlantic I have chosen September, because that is when the RN's escorts had mainly been withdrawn from the Atlantic to act as the cutting-edge of the Anti-Invasion force. Total sinkings for September, 284,577 tons. This figure increased to 363,267 in October, but when the RN released the Anti-Invasion forces back into the Atlantic, the figure fell to 181,695.
Moreover, more ships were still being lost when sailing independently than when in convoy. Convoy losses were 25 (out of 59) in September, for example. To give you some idea of the kind of sinkings the Germans needed to achieve, Admiral Holtzendorff, in 1917, estimated 600,000 tons per month, and Doenitz used the same calculation in WW2.
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@gtifighter It seems you don't know that Bismarck & Prinz Eugen were sent out to attack Atlantic convoys, but were obliged to abort the operation because Bismarck had been damaged by Prince of Wales, and Prinz Eugen, after being ordered to operate independently, developed engine problems. Using your skill and judgement, would you care to estimate how many Atlantic convoys were disrupted, and how many merchantmen Bismarck sank?
Certainly, Bismarck would never have prevailed against such odds, but the fact is that the Admiralty were able to concentrate their forces in order to achieve the desired result, which, put simply, is what the larger navy is likely to do. Leyte Gulf is a typical example of a similar force concentration in the Pacific.
If it is ignorance you seek, look closer to home.
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'There were at most 50 destroyers and light cruisers available, not 150.' Wrong. You should read the Toyal Navy 'Pink List' for 16 September, 1940. This was the RN's Order of Battle for that day. It shows 182 destroyers. Of these, 17 were under repair, and 8 on escort duty. 48 were overseas. 21 (including RCN boats) in escort ports, and 23 with the Home Fleet at Scapa & Rosyth. 64 were in anti-invasion ports, supported by six light cruisers. These were within five hours of Dover. In immediate support of these were some five hundred smaller warships, ranging from sloops, corvettes.fleet minesweepers and gunboats to auxiliary minesweepers, armed trawlers & drifters, and a variety of Coastal Forces MTBs, MGBs, and MLs.
'The Germans had 150 escort vessels varying from R-boats, S-boats, improvised heavy gun boats, destroyers etc.' Actually, according to German records, there were 7 operational destroyers, based in Cherbourg, 7 'Wolf/Mowe' class torpedo boats, mainly at Den Helder, 6 'T' boats, at Cherbourg and Den Helder, and 13 operational 'S' boats. The 'R' boats were 19 knot vessels, armed with 2/3 37mm or 20mm AA guns. Yo describe them as 'escorts' is stretching the point.
'They also had 50 U-boats though as many would be training boats inexperience would be a factor. It may have been that the combination of 100 heavy coastal guns forcing the British ships into a narrower area where the Luftwaffe can pick them off or they hit mines or U-boats plus the close-in escort of a wide variety of ships might have been enough to put a dent in the British naval effort.' Oh dear! In September, 1940, there were acrually 61 U-boats, of which 27 were front line vessels (frontboote) and the remainder training boats or new boats working up. 'Inexperience' is a masterly understatement, given that the last time U-boats were sent into the Channel, in October 1939, all three were immediately sunk. Presumably, you don't consider that the mines which you believe would hamper the RN would be ungracious enough to have a similar effect on U boats?
Next, the wonderful coastal batteries. By the end of August, there were a total of 150 medium, heavy, and super heavy guns lining the French side of the Channel, and the first firing at British coastal convoys began on 12 August. What subsequently happened may be left to the post war Admiralty records - 'No British or Foreign ship was damaged. Seven British merchant ships, of an aggregate tonnage of 8,000, were damaged.' That, of course, was in the whole of WW2. These convoys consisted of small coasters steaming at eight or nine knots. Yet you argue that guns which could not hit such targets would suddenly bvecome effective against fast moving, highly manoeuverable, cruisers and destroyers.
The reality is that, on 29 September, the old Monitor HMS Erebus shelled Calais. She was capable of, at best, eight knots. The great Gris Nez guns targetted her. But failed to hit. On 10/11 October, the Battleship HMS Revenge, supported by a destroyer flotilla, bombarded Cherbourg with 120 fifteen inch shells, and 801 4.7 inch shells from the destroyers. German shore batteries engaged her for ninety minutes, again without success. You see the problem with your reasoning, I trust?
'They only had to dent the British ships enough to put them in port for a few weeks, not sink them.' Nonsense. Have you not heard of the condition of some of Cunningham's ships in the Mediterranean. They still remained in operation.
Of course British ships did not use the Channel in daylight. Why should they? In war, you act in a manner your enemy would least desire. The Luftwaffe of 1940 could barely hit ships in daylight. In the whole of WW2, they sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser. At night, the Luftwaffe was even more incapable, whereas the RN certainly was not. Moreover, why would the RN wish to use Capital Ships against barges in any case, given that quick firing 3 inch, 4 inch, 4.7 inch & 6 inch guns were far more effective?
'Any Youtube video about this topic should include links to three Youtube videos of tourists using exaclty the same barges to cross the channel in both directions.' The videos don't seem to show the barges (actually, in the case of Sealion, towed in pairs by tugs or trawlers, at little more than walking pace), coming under fire from cruisers, destroyers, sloops, or gunboats, etc., do they? Unless I missed that bit?
Oh, and you are wrong about the Sandhurst WarGame. Paddy Griffith, who organised it, wanted it to be as accurate as possible. The only major changes he made were to move the RN anti-invasion forces back from their actual locations, in order to give the Germans a small window of opportunity, after if had become obvious that, had this not been done, no organised forces were likely to have landed at all.
I apologise for being so dismissive, but as a naval historian I have indeed researched Sealion, in considerable detail & over many years.
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@hajoos.8360 Sorry, but you are misinformed. Hood was armoured in a similar manner to a Queen Elizabeth, with a 12 inch belt and 3 inch deck. She even had integrated armour (in common with the Bismarck, although at least, unlike Bismarck, this wasn't considered obsolete when installed), compared to the more advanced, all or nothing, lay out of the Nelsons and the KGVs.
The American North Carolinas, certainly superior to the 15 year old Nelsons, were not in commission yet, neither were the Richelieus, the Strasbourgs were weakly armoured, and the best Japanese capital ships around at the time were the Nagatos, with 11.8 inch belts, and 2.5 inch decks. Please don't talk ill-informed nonsense about 'outmanoeuvring' the Nelsons. Surely you know that in WW2, capital ships would generally commence an engagement at some 12 - 13 miles distance. Hood, in the Denmark Strait, opened fire at 26500 yards, for example, and on 27 May, Rodney began the engagement at 23400 yards. Individuals who talk apparently sagely in such a manner only expose their lack of knowledge about the subject. I have heard of this WoW to which you refer, but prefer to deal in reality.
As to Rodney's 'miserable' shooting, perhaps you haven't read any studies on naval gunnery techniques by gunnery officers of the time. I have.
The 'Hood Society' is actually called the 'HMS Hood Association' by the way. I use their website on a regular basis. There are no such comments as you suggest on it. There is a lot of affection, obviously, for Hood, but also a knowledge of her weaknesses as well.
All in all, you have made a number of vague, generalised, comments, interspersed with the occasional insult, whilst managing to demonstrate an entertaining lack of knowledge at the same time.
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@hajoos.8360 When have I even mentioned Baden or Bayern? Incidentally, Baden was actually sunk as a target off Portsmouth, not scuttled at Scapa Flow. I did actually describe Hood as 'much more an improved WW1 fast battleship.' Your comments about Mers-el-Kebir are both gibberish & irrelevant to any assessment of Rodney.
Hood at the Denmark Strait had a well-trained, long service, crew. The reason she and Prince of Wales were sent there is obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the period. They were two of only four capital ships available to the Home Fleet with the speed to catch Bismarck. The other two, King George V & Repulse, were sent to the Iceland-Faroes gap, the other exit point into the wider Atlantic, as it was essential that Bismarck be challenged before she reached the main Atlantic, where she would be harder to track down & challenge. Surely you knew that?
Tirpitz was nowhere near ready. she was only declared fit for operations in January, 1942. Lutjens' orders, by the way, were to carry out commerce raiding in the Atlantic, against British supply convoys, not to risk an engagement against heavy British ships. In the event, he found himself with no alternative and, having abandoned his mission, he detached Prinz Eugen in the (forlorn) hope that she might at least achieve something. After the action, by the way, Bismarck was forced to reduce to a more economical speed because of shortage of fuel. Almost immediately after being detached, however, Prinz Eugen developed engine faults and ran successfully for Brest. I agree, however, that it was a pity that Prinz Eugen did not remain with Bismarck. That would have made it possible for Tovey to have disposed of both German ships on 27 May, not just the bigger one.
As to Renown & Scharnhorst/Gneisenau. Renown was hit twice. Once on the stern and once on the foremast, both by shells which failed to explode. Presumably, the irony of two well-armoured modern German battleships running from one lightly armoured, modernised, battle cruiser, has totally passed you by? I have, by the way, read copies of the Reports submitted by Vice-Admiral Whitworth & Captain Simeon. It seems abundantly clear that you haven't. Neither, in point of fact, refer to galley damage.
Finally, 'So Frenchies and Italians were left in Europe with bbs, beside Britain, there was no competition.' Why then, did you say, in one of your earlier posts, that ' An intact Bismarck, Hood, KGV-class (if the turrets work), French BB, Italian BB, faster Japanese BBs (, not to talk about fast US BBs) would have all out-maneuvered Nelson-class-ships?' Admittedly, I know, as does anyone else with knowledge of the period, that this is nonsense, but it is unusual to come across someone such as you, who seems determined to contradict his original errors with further ones.
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@spider love Try again. Repulse and Prince of Wales were sunk by torpedo bombers. The Luftwaffe in May 1941 had no torpedo bombers. Each ship was hit by only one bomb each, and neither penetrated the armour of the ship concerned. If the Japanese had attacked with level bombers, the two ships would have survived, as the failure of Italian level bombers in the Mediterranean had already demonstrated.
Furthermore, at Dunkirk the Luftwaffe had already demonstrated that it was ill-equipped to hit warships at sea or, come to that, even when stopped offshore.
In any case, this is more or less irrelevant. Tovey took his battleships away, after they had reduced Bismarck to a slowly sinking hulk, because they were short of fuel and he knew that U-Boats had been directed to the area. Try reading Ludovic Kennedy's book.
What has Omaha beach got to do with events which took place in May, 1941, by the way?
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@jacobopm If, as you say, 'no one is now responsible' then why did you post that' 'The responsibility was totally on the British side?'
'Honour' doesn't enter into the issue, still less your nonsense about 'woke image' whatever you think that means. What mattered at the time was that the British Government feared that the new government of France might turn out to be German lapdogs, and would be prevailed upon to use their fleet to provide support for an attempted cross Channel invasion. This wasn't a matter of 'honour' but a matter of national survival for Britain.
As to your comment that :- 'I do understand this might make you feel better,' please do not try to guess, or second guess, my opinion on the events of Mers el Kebir. In point of fact, I couldn't be more respectful of those politicians in Britain who chose to continue the fight, and were willing to do whatever was necessary to achieve survival and eventual victory. Unlike, I suggest, their opposite numbers in Paris (or, rather, Vichy), who lacked the 'honour' to continue to resist.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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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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Actually, the German force at el Guettar was 10th Panzer, which had only arrived in Tunisia in December, 1942, and had been part of von Arnim's 5th Panzer Army. It had actually served under Rommel's command for around four days, at Kasserine. The el Guetter spoiling action was von Arnim's by the way, not Rommel's.
At the time, what was left of Rommel's army ( 15 & 21 Panzer, 90 Light, and 164 Infantry, were being defeated at Mareth, as part of Messe's 1st Italian army, before being finally routed at Wadi Akarit, On both occasions, by 8th Army.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which you have been indoctrinated.
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@gokulgopan4397 The photograph is entirely genuine. The problem arises in Swithin's interpretation of it. He claims that it is of Titanic being dismantled in Harland & Wolff's yard in 1937, when actually it is of Titanic in Harland & Wolff's yard just prior to her completion, in February, 1912.
You can tell Swithin until you are blue in the face that, after withdrawal, Olympic went first to Jarrow for partial dismantling, before the hull was towed to Inverkeithing for breaking up. In other words, she went nowhere near Harland & Wolff.
Sadly, the old chap is far too far gone mentally to understand any of this. On his own site, of course, he will block you as a 'paid shill.'
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So, the Italian submarine fleet', 'the world's greatest in terms of tonnage' sank almost 750,000 tons of Allied shipping in three years? Would it be churlish to point out that between April & June, 1941, the German U-boat fleet, with less than 40 operational front line boats, sank 927804 tons?
As to surface ships sunk by the Italian air force, you claim 72 Allied warships. As the allies lost 76 warships in the whole of the campaign, totalling 315,500 tons, are you claiming that, between them, mines, the Italian surface fleet, the Luftwaffe, and the German U-boat arm, sank just 4? I fear you will struggle to justify this claim, especially since, in terms of tonnage, 145800 is recorded as sunk by Italian means, and 169,700 to German forces. Moreover, would you care to comment on axis shipping losses to RN submarines in the Mediterranean over the period June, 1940 to September, 1943? 328 vessels of 815,800 tons. All except 14 of the vessels were Italian, by the way.
The attack on Valiant & Queen Elizabeth, which disabled both of them, was an outstanding feat of arms. Less outstanding, however, was the fact that absolutely no advantage was taken of it. Valiant, by the way, was back in service by June 1942, although her repairs were completed by March, after which she was sent to Durban for a major refit before joining the Eastern Fleet. Queen Elizabeth took longer to repair, 18 months in fact, although much of this time was spent in the US undergoing a thorough refit.
Would you care to provide evidence for your remarkable assertion that 'By mid-1942, Mussolini's navy had fought its way back from crushing defeats to become the dominant power in the Mediterranean Sea' by describing the occasions upon which this dominance was demonstrated? The triumphant annihilation of the RN surface forces protecting 'Pedestal' by the battlefleet would perhaps be a good starting point?
I won't bother with most of the rest, except to say that I cannot find any references to any Italian nuclear weapons programme earlier that the 1960s, and the flight of the P.108 would have been remarkable, given that New York is almost 7000 kms from Rome, and the operational range of the P108 was less than 3300 kms.
You are a total fantasist, albeit a remarkably amusing one.
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@bullruncrypto1503 Olympic's sea trials lasted two days.
Titanic's sea trials began at 6 A.M. on Tuesday, April 2nd 1912, just two days after her fitting out was finished and eight days before she was due to leave Southampton on her Maiden Voyage. The trials were delayed for a day due to bad weather, but by Monday morning it was clear and fair, with only a light breeze.
Aboard were 78 stokers, greasers and firemen, and 41 members of crew. No domestic staff appear to have been aboard. Representatives of various companies travelled on Titanic's sea trials, Thomas Andrews and Edward Wilding of Harland and Wolff and Harold A. Sanderson of IMM. Lord Pirrie was too ill to attend. Jack Phillips and Harold Bride served as radio operators, and performed fine-tuning of the Marconi equipment. Francis Carruthers, a surveyor from the Board of Trade, was also present to see that everything worked, and that the ship was fit to carry passengers.
The sea trials consisted of a number of tests of her handling characteristics, carried out first in Belfast Lough and then in the open waters of the Irish Sea. Over the course of about twelve hours, Titanic was driven at different speeds, her turning ability was tested and a "crash stop" was performed in which the engines were reversed full ahead to full astern, bringing her to a stop in 850 yards (780 m) or 3 minutes and 15 seconds. The ship covered a distance of about 80 nautical miles (92 mi; 150 km), averaging 18 knots (21 mph; 33 km/h) and reaching a maximum speed of just under 21 knots (24 mph; 39 km/h). After her sea trials her sailing safety certificate was certified for one year.
Put simply, more extensive trails were carried out in Olympic because she was the first ship of her class. There was no logical reason to repeat such a detailed trial for Titanic.
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@coreyandsarahlynch There is no 'porthole issue.' Titanic, like Olympic, was launched with 15 portholes on her starboard side forward, and 14 on her port side. Following Olympic's first few voyages, a number of recommendations for improvements were made. These included the addition of two extra portholes to Titanic's port side, giving her 16.
There are numerous photographs showing Titanic on the slipway with 14, and, later, nearing and after completion, with 16. A ship at the time of launch is simply a work in progress, and improvements are frequently made.
The 'mysterious porthole issue' is simply an invention thought up by enthusiastic switchers, trying to suggest that their fantasy was actually reality.
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The designer of the Olympics, Alexander Carlisle, who retired in 1910, stated in his testimony that he expected the Board of Trade to increase the number of lifeboats for ships that large to be increased, and thus designed then for, but not with, 48 boats. When the Board did not do this, the Olympics were built with 20 boats.
In short, Ismay had no knowledge of the subject. He was a businessman, not a naval architect, and Carlisle denied any involvement from Ismay, or indeed of anyone else from White Star.
'Why didn’t he give speech to all officers that full of people on lifeboats can go down all the way?' For much the same reason. He was a VIP passenger, not a Master Mariner. When Smith was told by Andrews about Titanic's imminent fate, do you think he would have called his officers together and said 'Hold everything chaps. Mr. Ismay wants to make a speech to you.'
There were no costs cut, by the way. Olympic, built of the same materials, was a successful liner for 23 years. Even examination of recovered Titanic steel and rivets by metallurgists resulted in the conclusion that, whilst both were inferior to those of 2024, they were not inferior to thos of 1911.
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You don't seem to know much about Starkey's upbringing. Allow me to educate you :- He is the only child of Robert Starkey and Elsie Lyon, Quakers who had married 10 years previously in Bolton, at a Friends meeting house. His father, the son of a cotton spinner, was a foreman in a washing-machine factory, while his mother followed in her father's footsteps and became a cotton weaver and later a cleaner.
They were both born in Oldham and moved to Kendal in the 1930's during the Great Depression. He was raised in an austere and frugal environment of near-poverty, with his parents often unemployed for long periods of time; an environment which, he later stated, taught him "the value of money."
I respectfully submit that he does have some knowledge of the 'working class' as you rather patronisingly describe them. He is, in fact, a working class man who has achieved much. Precisely the sort of person the Islington thinkers of the Labour party truly detest.
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If you base your knowledge of history upon Olusoga's propaganda, then you might as well assume that Volkischer Beobachter represented a true reflection of the events of WW2.
The history of British slavery has never been buried, or brushed under any carpet. However, the false imposition of 21st century values, by people who seem far more concerned about events which ended almost 200 years ago than about present-day slavery, on the norms of the 17th and 18th century societies, has led to a bizarre and irrational over-reaction of the less well-informed.
Oddly, only British slavery is ever perceived by these people as 'bad' slavery. The more extensive slavery practised by other countries, particularly Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, Dahomey, or Ashanti, or indeed by the Arab slave traders who flourished, and continue to flourish, in Africa, seems to get much less critical comment. If, indeed, it is even mentioned at all.
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@Maximus-HK Congratulations on selecting possibly the worst of a number of silly conspiracist & switcher videos as 'support' for your beliefs. Is that truly the extent of your 'research?'
I can refer you to an excellent site which analyses the nonsensical claims in that video, but will stick to the porthole silliness for now :-
This is one of the most popular pieces of 'evidence' of a switch but also the easiest to disprove. Quite simply, Titanic had 14 portholes on the port side C deck (bow) when launched, but in the following months she received 2 additional ones for better light and air, following recommendations for improvements following Olympic's early voyages.
In fact both Olympic and Titanic were launched with 14 portholes on the port side forecastle on C-Deck and 15 portholes on the starboard side of the same area. However, in December 1911, during Titanic's fitting out, she had 2 added to light the crews galley and wash room which resulted in a total of 16 as seen in the maiden voyage photographs. Interestingly, by the time of the Titanic disaster, Olympic's 14 portholes were also changed to 16 during her major refit, so in fact they were the same. Hence post-Titanic-sinking images of Olympic also have this 16 porthole configuration
Perhaps you aren't aware that, when Titanic was launched, she was basically a shell, and definitely a work in progress. After she was launched then she was 'fitted out' i.e. everything else was added. Ships were not launched in a finished state. Why do you think there was a nine months gap between launch & completion? This misunderstanding may be one of the reasons why this particular 'theory' holds fast despite its obvious answ
According to Titanic researcher Ioannis Georgiou, "the two additional portholes on Olympic were added about March 1912 during her short stay in Belfast and before the maiden voyage of Titanic. So by April 1912 both ships had 16 portholes. (This is something I have noticed.)"
By December 1911, Titanic was fitted with an additional 2 portholes, giving her a total of 16. Courtesy Steve Hall.
Hall summarises the porthole historyas follows: "At the time of the Titanic's launch there were 14 portholes in the port side plating between the fo´c’sle deck and the sheer line of the hull, but by December the same year, the ship was fitted with an additional 2 portholes, giving her a total of 16. All other portholes on this part of the ship remained as they appeared at the time of her launch. Although the ship had 14, then later 16, portholes on the port side, she had 15 on her starboard side, and this number remained consistent throughout.
The Olympic and the Britannic were also consistent on the starboard side, with 15 portholes. The Olympic, like the Titanic, was fitted originally with the same 14-porthole arrangement on the port side of her fo´c’sle, but 2 additional portholes were later fitted; they were there in March 1912. The Britannic, when launched, had 16 portholes, consistent with the later port side configuration of the Titanic and the Olympic."
The evolution of Titanic's port side portholes -from May 1911 when she was launched with 14, to April 1912 when she had 16. There is nothing here that reveals a 'switch'.
To give the spurious 'switch' claim more credibility than it deserves - if those behind the 'switch' were so clever so as to be able to switch absolutely everything aboard Olympic/Titanic as to include the numbers 400/401 etched onto the back of wooden panels in all the state rooms, then how is it they would overlook something as simple as the number of portholes on the outside of the ship?
Oh, and the insurance scam. This would only have even the slightest credibility if Olympic had indeed been damaged beyond repair, but the fact is that she returned to Harland & Wolff and was repaired, and back at sea, by late November, 1911. Thus, White Star had, in April, 1912, two huge, state of the art, Atlantic liners available to them. At 1911-12 monetary values, both cost £1.5 million to build, and both were insured with Lloyds for £1 million. Thus, when Titanic sank, and Lloyds duly paid out £1 million, White Star lost both £500,000 and their reputation for safety. I thought insurance scams were intended to make money, not lose it in large amounts?
If you would like me to correct any more of your apparent misunderstandings, please feel free to ask.
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The British Foreign Office, the senior commanders of the RAF & the British Army, and the Secretary of State for Defence, John Nott, all told her that the islands could not be recovered by military means. Only Sir Henry Leach, the First Sea Lord & Chief of Naval Staff at the time, argued that Britain must take action, saying to her, when she asked why Britain must respond, that "Because if we do not, or if we pussyfoot in our actions and do not achieve complete success, in another few months we shall be living in a different country whose word counts for little."
You are viewing the issue with the benefit of hindsight. At the time, most independent experts believed that the Task Force faced a desperately difficult mission.
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@NistaArcheri I would be interested to know which site, as it is entirely nonsensical.
Just to explain, the Kreigsmarine had suffered serious losses in the Norwegian campaign, and in September, 1940, was reduced to one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, and some 14 destroyers/large torpedo boats. It had no assault landing craft or ships, and for Operation Sealion intended to use barges towed by tugs and trawlers.
At the same time, the Luftwaffe was reduced to around 220 transport aircraft, and the number of paratroop troops was, after losses in Norway & the Netherlands, down to about 4,500 men. Not much larger than a single brigade.
The invasion was cancelled because ther Luftwaffe never managed to secure control of the airspace over south eastern England, the British had been outbuilding the Germans in aircraft, especially fighters, since June, 1940, and the Royal Navy held total supremacy in Home Waters.
As to 'saving' planes' the Luftwaffe lost some 1,700 aircraft and around 2,500 experienced aircrew during the Battle of Britain, so perhaps it was rather late to worry about that?
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@josephkugel5099 Please don't rant. Most unedifying! As the world's largest naval power, of course the British monitored the activities of the others. In reality, warship construction was constrained by the Naval Treaties between the various naval powers, which restricted the numbers of capital ships, such as battleships & carriers. Perhaps you haven't heard of the Washington Naval Treaty?
As the Germans in my reality as opposed to your fantasy didn't place any emphasis on U-Boat construction, there was no particular reason for the British to rush through escort construction. The apparent shortage of escorts which actually occurred was due to entirely unforeseen circumstances, the collapse of France and the consequent need for the British to maintain a much larger presence in the Mediterranean than had been part of pre-war planning. Even so, by the way, between 1936 & December, 1939, the British had launched 50 destroyers and 33sloops, and had 106 corvettes ordered. I won't trouble you with the number of destroyers and sloops also on order.
You seem to accuse me of things I haven't said, and don't even think. British naval strategy from the early 1930s onwards made a number of assumptions, among which were that a future naval war would be against, in the worst case, Germany, Italy, & Japan, but that the French navy would play a major role in the Mediterranean. There was absolutely no suggestion that British would attempt to match the rest of the world's navies, because the Washington Naval Treaty had already determined fleet sizes as :-
UK & USA Capital ships 525,000 tons each, Carriers 135,000 tons each.
Japan Capital Ships 315,000 tons, Carriers 81,000 tons.
Italy & France Capital Ships 175,000 tons each, Carriers 60,000 tons each.
You don't seem to know any of this. The RN, by the way, had already built up to the maximum in terms of carrier tonnage, so your comment about 'Big Gun' admirals doesn't really have any relevance either.
Finally, I know how many boats Doenitz had in commission in September, 1939. Again however, you ramble on about what if Germany had ten times the number of boats, without allowing the British the right to respond, and without even considering which parts of the German war machine would suffer if German industry was diverted to U-Boat production.
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@josephkugel5099 The Washington Naval Treaty was agreed in 1922, and effectively stayed in force until September, 1939. The last US battleships, other than the Iowas, were still designed and built within the parameters contained within it, although the North Carolinas and South Dakotas were able to benefit from the escalator clause in the 2nd London Naval Treaty.
Why do you think that the 'big gun' admirals would respond to Germany building large numbers of U-Boats by stepping up battleship construction? 'What if' scenario or not, it simply makes no sense. Moreover, didn't you even read my previous post? The RN had responded to the actual German U-Boat construction programme by ordering and commissioning large numbers of Atlantic escorts. Explain why, in your world, they would not react in a similar manner to increased U-Boat construction. You clearly assume a remarkable degree of stupidity on the part of the British government and admiralty, if you believe that they would have been unable to determine whose sea trade these boats were intended to threaten.
'I feel that when it came down to building hundreds of new destroyers and corvettes OR building lets say twenty shiny new Battleships that the BB lobby would carry the day in Parliament.'
What you feel is irrelevant, and clearly part of a wish-fulfilment fantasy in order to bring about your dream of a German Battle of the Atlantic victory. Even in the real world, the British rapidly extended construction of escort ships, and suspended construction of capital ships. Do you even know how many escorts the British ordered, laid down, and launched between 1939 & 1944? Actually, 932, excluding fleet destroyers and US built Lend-Lease ships. How many battleships? One, HMS Vanguard.
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@greggorsag9787 There wasn't an Inquiry, but there was a court case, the verdicts of which were that :-
1). The collision was RMS Olympic's fault.
2). RMS Olympic could not, therefore, submit an insurance claim.
3). Neither, however, should White Star be required to meet the costs of HMS Hawke's repairs, because the incident was as a result of mistakes made by a Solent Pilot who was in charge of Olympic at the time.
4). Captain Smith was not directing the actions of Olympic at the time, and was not, therefore, at fault.
As I wrote earlier, neither commander was 'racing' at the time, and as a result the damage was lee serious than it might have been.
It would take a brave, indeed foolhardy, captain to overrule the decisions of an official harbour or river Pilot, then or now. Especially one who, in this case, had taken Olympic into and out of Southampton on several previous occasions.
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No, they don't. Pictures of the wreck show a pattern of irregular, rectangular, windows. After the nodifications to Titanic, involving the addition of extra cabins and a Cafe Parisien, this precisely matches known photographs of the ship.
Olympic, at the same time, had the original pattern of even, square, windows, until the similar upgrades were applied, during her later (post Titanic's sinking) refit. Again, as photographs of Olympic also prove.
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@soulfella1 If you are writing about Sealion then in September 1940 German had no heavy ships at all, apart from one heavy cruiser, Hipper. Bismarck, Tirpitz, & Prinz Eugen were not yet in service, and Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were under repair following damage during the Norwegian campaign, These repairs were not completed until November.
Prince of Wales & Repulse were sunk by high performance torpedo bombers, flown by crews trained in anti-shipping techniques. In September, 1940, the Luftwaffe had no torpedo bombers, and had not been trained in these methods. German aircraft did indeed attack warships in the Channel, but in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers. In September 1940, the RN had more than 100 in Home Waters.
There was intermittent RAF air cover at Dunkirk, but even the RAF's own website confirms long periods on each day of the operation when no cover was provided.
The 50 ex US destroyers did not appear until after the invasion threat had dissipated, late in 1940. The British feared that, had the French fleet been ordered to support an invasion, a landing might have been attempted, which was why it was attacked.
In 1940, the bulk of the RN was in home waters, apart from Cunningham's fleet in the Mediterranean. Finally, the escape of three German warships through the Channel in early 1942 was a strategic retreat by the Germans, and three fast warships speeding through the Channel in a matter of hours is hardly the same as attempting to land troops from hundreds of converted river barges on a hostile shore over eight days and nights without the protection of a surface fleet.
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@waynepatterson5843 Very good. Add the total number of boats up, and it will give you twenty seven. As I said in my earlier post. Furthermore, 17 of these were Type IIs, which carried 5 torpedoes each, and were of the same type which were lost in the Channel without achieving anything in late 1939.
Clearly, you don't have access to the Royal Navy 'Pink List' for 16 September, 1940. If you even knew what this document was, you would know that it listed the location and operational state of every RN major warship, and was produced fortnightly. It was, in effect, the Order of Battle of the Royal Navy. A similar one, by the way was produced for minor vessels.
The List does indeed given the names of over 70 light cruisers within five hours of Dover, and the others further away to which I have already referred, and which I won't repeat. Would you like me to provide you with the name of every vessel?
There was no need for escorts for the Home Fleet, because firstly the Home Fleet already had destroyers with it, as I haver previously stated, and secondly the Admiralty did not intend to send the Home Fleet further south than its base at Rosyth unless the Kriegsmarine sent heavy ships in support of Sealion, which wouldn't have happened because, as we now know, there was only one operational German heavy ship available at the time. If, of course, you consider a heavy cruiser to qualify for this description. Why, by the way, would the Admiralty seek to sink barges with 15 & 16 inch guns, when 4.7 inch, 4 inch, & 3 inch quick firing guns are far better suited to the task?
Perhaps you should read the books I recommended, as you don't seem able to give any sources of your own?
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@waynepatterson5843 You are getting desperate, mon Brave! Firstly, the mine barrages were never possible. For every German minelayer, there were at least 20 British minesweepers, as I have already mentioned, I believe. Add to that the nightly British destroyer patrols from Plymouth & the Nore, and you really are in considerable difficulty.
As the coastal convoys were important to the British, as they delivered essential coal supplies for domestic & industrial use, pray explain why your wonderful batteries simply didn't do precisely as you romantically suggest, and place pre-registered concentrations in front of the route these little colliers would take, in order to stop them? Do you really, by the way, believe that a RN destroyer flotilla, hastening to attack an invasion convoy of towed barges, would be deterred by SPLASHES?
You have just made three posts of increasing irrelevance. Why not just give up and go elsewhere?
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@waynepatterson5843 Do you deal entirely in irrelevancies, or is it that you simply cannot understand what is relevant and what isn't? You have referred to one freighter damaged, an unarmed liner bombed in mid-Atlantic, and a number of similar attacks on unarmed merchantmen by Condors. Don't you know that Condors were only ever effective when attacking lone merchantmen and that, once defensive armaments were fitted, they were ordered not to carry out such attacks, as they were too vulnerable to be risked, and too valuable as reconnaissance aircraft?
I have already answered your question concerning RN destroyer availability by referring to the RN Pink List. I have a copy, whereas you don't, and my copy deals with the critical period for any attempted invasion. If you would like a copy, contact the British Records Office at Kew. The Public Record Office reference is ADM187/9.
By the way, your source seems to think that all the cruisers in Home Waters were attached to the Home Fleet, which in a mistake the badly or inadequately informed often make, as, in addition to the Home Fleet, the RN also had a number of separate 'Commands' in Home Waters.
If you are interested, and you may wish to keep this as part of your education, cruisers in Home Waters on 16 September, 1940, were :-
Scapa Flow :- 2 heavy cruisers and 2 light/AA cruisers.
Rosyth :- 3 light/AA cruisers.
The Humber :- 3 light cruisers.
The Nore :- 2 light cruisers.
Portsmouth :- 1 light cruiser.
Plymouth :- 2 light cruisers.
Firth of Clyde :- 1 light cruiser.
In addition, there were also 6 heavy and 5 light cruisers repairing, refitting, or completing in various British ports. There was also a Dutch light cruiser, operating as part of the RN, under repair.
The names are all available if you ask nicely!
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@waynepatterson5843 Odd how people tend to become abusive when they run out of credible arguments. Still, I have already posted details of the actual number of minesweepers elsewhere. Read the book I recommended for further information. As to minelaying, aircraft mines can only be laid in shallow waters or estuaries, and in September 1940, the Kriegsmarine had precisely seven destroyers capable of minelaying, and nine auxiliary minelayers. Perhaps you would explain precisely how these ships would avoid the nightly RN destroyer patrols. I have asked before, yet oddly you haven't responded. You still haven't, by the way, explained why your guns did not use these techniques against the convoys or even, years later, why they were not used against the D-Day flotillas.
You seem to have adopted the standard response of the Sealion 'would have' enthusiast, in that you confidently assert that 'this is what the Luftwaffe (or Kriegsmarine, or whatever) would have done' but are rather short of credible arguments when asked exactly why they didn't 'do it.'
Incidentally, in the whole of WW2, the Luftwaffe sank 31 destroyers, or less than half the number available to confront the Sealion barges and their tugs within five hours of them being observed.
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@soulfella1 I cannot really answer your post in detail as it is largely incoherent. You make a reference to June 1940, then start writing about Pedestal. What connection is there?
Just to correct the sections I can understand. Operation Pedestal ended on 15 August, 1942. Ohio was helped into port by the destroyers Penn, Bramham, & Ledbury. Brisbane Star, Melbourne Star, Port Chalmers, & Rochester Castle also reached Malta. Pedestal was attacked at various times by axis aircraft, submarines, and light surface units. The Italian surface fleet was not committed.
The Atlantic convoys were never halted, and the 40 (actually 50) US four stacker destroyers were not part of lend-lease, but pre-dated it, and were part of a 'ships for bases' agreement.
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@kickassandchewbubblegum639 As Abe Lincoln said, 'Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt.' Good advice for you to consider.
In 1940 , the Germans had a small number of DFS 230 light assault gliders, capable of carrying nine lightly equipped men each. Commercial aircraft were already under military control. A Ju52 could accommodate, at most, 18 paratroopers. Once the first wave landed, the British know where they are, and are able to respond.
By September, 1940, the British had considerable forces in place capable of dealing with a small number of lightly armed paratroops, who would have lacked transport, artillery or armoured support, and had no hope of relief.
Please, please! buy a book about Operation Sealion and read about the reality, rather than simply indulging yourself in bizarre fantasies.
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@kickassandchewbubblegum639 Tell me when Churchill said what you claim. You might also explain why, if Churchill really did think that, he sent a troop convoy, with three full armoured regiments, and supporting AA, AT & Field Regiments, to North Africa in mid August, 1940? If think you are about to be invaded, would you really send your best equipped troops, and half of the total number of your most battleworthy tanks (the Matilda II) to another Continent? Don't believe me? Then read about the 'Apology' convoy, which sailed on 22 August. I did refer to this earlier, but it appears you chose to ignore it.
I am not, by the way, interested in what 'everyone and his mother said.' I have read the archives from the time (both the British & German ones) and, like the vast majority of my colleagues writing on this subject today, I know that an invasion was never a real possibility as long as the Royal Navy held total naval supremacy in the Channel.
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There wasn't really much of a Kreigsmarine left after the Norwegian campaign, where RN submarines had achieved considerable success. Gneisenau was torpedoed on 20 June by HMS Clyde, and under repair until November. On her way back to Germany, one of her escorts, the torpedo boat Luchs, was sunk by HMS Swordfish. Deutchland was torpedoed by HMS Spearfish on 11 April, 1940, and under repair until April, 1941. Karlsruhe was sunk by HMS Truant on 9 April, 1940. Before Norway, Leipzig had been damaged by HMS Salmon in December, 1939, and was never fully repaired, and Nurnberg was damaged at the same time, although repaired by August, 1940.
Add to that further losses: Graf Spee, Konigsberg, Blucher, ten destroyers sunk at Narvik, and a further two bombed and sunk by (German) aircraft, and the German naval cupboard was alarmingly bare.
One thing, though. Don't try sending submarines into the Channel. The Germans sent three in late 1939, and they are still there.
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@tonyjames5444 I respect your service of course. But events of 1982 are hardly relevant to a situation which existed in 1940. Of course, a bomb hitting a ship will cause damage & casualties, but the point I am making is that, in 1940, the probability is that an untrained Luftwaffe lacked the ability to hit RN ships, moving at speed and able to manouevre freely, in sufficient numbers to prevent massive casualties among the towed barges of the German invasion fleet. The RN had 70 cruisers & destroyers, together with around 500 smaller warships, in the immediate vicinity of the Straits, and the inability of the Luftwaffe to do much of anything at night is significant.
After all, with circumstances much more in their favour, hadn't the Luftwaffe failed badly at Dunkirk, despite Goering's promised to the contrary? Even two senior German air commanders, Oskar Dinort & Wolfram von Richthoven, wrote comments at the time agreeing with what I am stating.
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@tonyjames5444 The Germans actually managed to inflict serious losses on one coastal convoy only CW8. The convoys were stopped for a very short time only, and then re-commenced, at night.
There were 531 CW & CE convoys between 1940 & 1944, involving 9097 ships, almost all colliers & small coasters. Total losses? 31 ships, of which 24 were in convoy. 0.34%, from all causes. Then there are the other coastal convoys, the FN & FS series. There were 3584 of these, involving 104,792 ships. Losses (all causes) 203, or 0.19%.
The Argentinian pilots were attacking ships mainly at anchor, and had some success, but failed to stop the liberation of the Falklands, much as the Luftwaffe, attacking ships stopped close inshore or moving slowly in restricted waters, failed to stop the evacuation.
The Kriegsmarine was far from powerful in 1940. In September it had only one operational heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, about 12 destroyers and escort destroyers, a similar number of minesweepers, and 27 U-boats. However, U-boat life expectancy in the Channel is limited. In 1939 three were sent there, and all were sunk.
The Kriegsmarine invasion plan required eleven days to get the first wave across in towed barges. Who would protect these barges at night, even if your unwarranted confidence in the capabilities of the 1940 Luftwaffe, not shared by their commanders Oskar Dinort & Wolfram von Richthoven, by the way, is accepted?
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@tonyjames5444 Just to have the last word, Prince of Wales withdrew from action in the Denmark Strait because the teething troubles with her main turrets re-occurred. Her own damage was slight, because the seven hits had all missed her all-or-nothing armour and had failed to detonate. Her own hits on Bismarck had forced Admiral Lutjens to abandon his mission and make for St. Nazaire. Admiral Wake-Walker ordered PoW to join his two cruisers, and shadow Bismarck in order to bring other RN forces into contact. Wasn't that the sensible thing to do? What, by the way, has any of this to do with the RN tradition of not abandoning the army?
Finally, I regret to inform you that, were you to look, you would find that the vast majority of historians of the subject today agree with me that Sealion could never have succeeded in 1940, with or without air superiority, because of the shortcomings of the Luftwaffe at the time. This would not remain the case, but it was certainly so in 1940.
As to Billy Mitchell, what exactly did sinking a German battleship prove when the ship was motionless, with all watertight doors opened, and no crew to carry out damage control or operate AA weapons?
I could take ten wickets a match if batsmen weren't allowed, but it wouldn't make me James Anderson!
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@justjones5430 1). The sea trial only needed to be short. Trials of later ships from the same class were often much shorter than that of the 'prototype.' Are you seriously suggesting that the Board of Trade inspectors who supervised the trial, did not do their job diligently?
2). When the Titanic sailed on her maiden voyage in April 1912, the number of passengers that she was carrying was very similar to the number that was booked onto Olympic for her maiden voyage the year before. It’s natural that there will be cancellations and while more than fifty might sound like a high number it’s hard to see that there is much significance in this fact as regards the switch theory... If a number of people had cancelled because of some sort of fear of a switch or insurance scam going on, it seems very likely that they would have spoken out after the disaster. There is no record of anyone doing so. By the way, at the time of Olympic's maiden voyage, she was registered to carry 2,590 passengers, (1,054 first class, 510 second class, 1,026 third class). She actually carried 1,313 (489 first class, 263 second class, 561 third class). Titanic carried 325 first class, 284 second class and 709 third class. Total 1318. You see what happens when facts are checked?
3). You don't seem to understand how bunker fires were dealt with, if you are daft enough believe that they were dealt with by flooding the bunker, which was as high as a five storey building. Such fires were not uncommon, given the combustible nature of coal. Titanic's men followed the standard procedure, which was to use up the coal from the affected bunker first. In this case, according to evidence given at the enquiry, the fire had been extinguished by the day before the iceberg was encountered.
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Oh, dear, a victim of the indoctrination which has replaced education in many places.
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis.
The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't want to believe any of this, as it doesn't suit your agenda.
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Nonsense. 'France, Holland, Yugoslavia, Greece, Czechosolvakia, Poland, and Norway' had been occupied. There were no Indian, South African, or Rhodesian, troops in Britain in 1940. The only Commonwealth troops were one Canadian Division, and two Australian & New Zealand Battalions.
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Except that Operation Barbarossa changed the face of the war beyond recognition. Actually, the idea that Britain was 'hanging on' is rather overdone. In May 1941, the RAF had over 50 squadrons of fighters and fighter bombers carrying out regular sweeps over Northern France, and the level of monthly sinkings, which Doenitz believed needed to reach 600,000 tons per month, only once exceeded 200,000 tons between July & December, 1941 once, and in three of those months was below 100,000 tons.
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@maciamay1393 Again, the absence of any scientific structure in your post is in itself proof of how 'impeccable' your 'science' is.
'Have you been highly successful in life sturdee? If not was it your own fault or was it someone else's fault? Bet I know that answer to that one too.' Is it part of your scientific method to make assumptions without evidence? As Sherlock Holmes said “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Inevitably one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” As, of course, you are trying to do, although I will now give you some data upon which to work below.
Actually, I have been very successful in life. A First in History from Manchester, then a career in logistics leading to Regional Operations Manager level. I am also a published author.
Oh, and as Holy Roman Emperor, the heir of Carolus Magnus, you should address me as 'Majesty' of course!!
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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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@jamesheckman6297 Churchill proposed the Dardanelles as a means of using sea power to remove the Ottoman empire from the war, bring the neutral Balkan states into it on the allied side, and avoid the unfolding carnage on the Western Front. He proposed the operation, but he neither planned it nor authorised it. Interestingly, Enver Pasha was later to write that if the naval attack had continued, Turkish defences were likely to have collapsed.
Certainly, Churchill was wrong about the Gold Standard. He was not an economist, and said himself that he had made an awful Chancellor. Perhaps you might try to explain why his views about India, or his lack of economic skills, were relevant to his leadership in 1940.
You are, by the way, wrong about the Sudetenland. He was critical of the Munich Agreement. He had hoped for a reasonable settlement of the Sudetenland issue, but he was adamant that Britain must fight for the continued independence of Czechoslovakia. Among his criticisms of the government, Churchill said that the Soviet Union should have been invited to take part in the negotiations with Hitler.
Churchill did not hand Poland and Eastern Europe in general over to Stalin, any more than FDR or Truman did. The reality of the end of WW2 was that Stalin had occupied those areas, and neither the US, Britain, nor Canada were in any condition to wage another war to attempt to recover them. After all, all three national leaders had been praising the valour of Uncle Joe and his gallant lads for four years. How would such an abrupt about turn have been explained to the populations of three democratic nations?
Do you seriously think Chamberlain gave a damn about Eastern Europe? Aren't you even aware of his speech, broadcast on the radio to the entire British population, of September, 1938, about the Czech crisis? :-
'How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing. ... I am myself a man of peace to the depths of my soul.'
Odd that the party led by Churchill from 1951, so badly in your mindset, stayed in power for thirteen years, wasn't it? Someone must have thought he had done something right.
Oh, and 'It was always cheaper for Britain to hire some European country to fight for her against a powerful European nation.' Your ignorance of 18th & early 19th century is staggering. It was far from 'cheaper' to finance other European states against an overmighty France, but English/British foreign policy had always been to ensure an approximate balance of power in Europe, and in particular to avoid a single European power securing control of the entire European Channel coast. Hence England/Britain's continuing support for the Netherlands from the late 17th century, and protection of Belgium for the whole of the 19th & early 20th.
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@michaelthebarbarian3380 You need to buy a book or two before posting insults. Otherwise you will continue to demonstrate what a fool you are.
Yes, Rodney was slow. This would mean only that Bismarck could evade action, much as Scharnhorst & Gneisenau had previously done during Operation Berlin.
'Her armor about as good as Hood.' Oh dear! Rodney's armour was laid out to the superior All or Nothing pattern devised originally by the US navy for the Nevada class, and installed in every US battleship since then. This was copied by the British in the Nelson, the KGVs and Vanguard. Bismarck still followed the old, less effective, incremental pattern.
Furthermore, Bismarck's belt was 12.6 inches, and her deck 4.7 inches.
By comparison, Rodney's belt was 14 inches, and her deck 6.25 inches.
In terms of weight of Broadside, Bismarck fired one of 14,112 lbs.
Rodney's weight of Broadside was 18,432 lbs.
Perhaps now you see how foolish your post truly is, especially when compounded by :-
'Rodney (who was inferior to Hood) would have suffered the same fate as Hood in the Straits.'
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@michaelthebarbarian3380 As there are large areas of the subject about which you demonstrate yourself to be almost entirely ignorant, I simply thought it good manners to attempt, at least, to provide you with some of the education you clearly missed. I even tried to avoid long, complicated, words which might have alarmed you
University indeed. In fact a First in Modern History, specialising in the naval wars of the 20th century. Several published books and articles on the subject, moreover.
I observe, by the way, that amidst your insults, you have never sought to challenge any of my facts. I wonder why?
Sorry, old lad, but you are rather outgunned on this subject.
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'The court cases where lots of witnesses and evidence were not allowed to be seen or heard.' What court cases might they have been? There were two major Inquiries, in the US and in Britain, which lasted 18 and 36 days respectively. Who do you suggest were 'not allowed' to be seen or heard at those?
'People do as they are told?' You think so, when events on a daily basis prove this not to be the case? Do you really believe that, had there been such a (totally evidence free) conspiracy, not one of the people involved in it would have been even slightly concerned about 1500+ deaths?
Oh, and the coal strike had ended by the time Titanic sailed, and it applied only to Britain, not to the United States.
Finally, who are these 'shady people' and what are these 'unexplained events.'
Feel free to elaborate, and please don't hold back.
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@touristguy87 Why are many Americans ( I assume you are one?) so desperately insecure that they feel the need constantly to belittle or ignore the efforts of their allies?
Firstly, I haven't made any argument, so the stupidity is entirely yours. All I said was that, if you think that the British lost at 1st Alamein, and only won at 2nd Alamein because of American air power, then you are seriously ill-informed.
I shall attempt to educate you, though I fear it will be a forlorn effort.
Firstly, in 1940, when the French & Belgian armies of around 100 divisions collapsed, what exactly do you suggest a British force of 10 divisions should have done? The British made sensible use of overwhelming sea power to evacuate their troops, and over 100,000 French troops, from the Dunkirk pocket, and were even planning to re- land troops in Cherbourg until told by General Weygand that the French army was no longer able to offer organised resistance. There never was any possibility of a German invasion, not because of the RAF, but because the Royal Navy maintained absolute naval supremacy in Home Waters throughout.
As to 1944. At D-Day, of 4127 landing craft, 3261 were crewed by the British & Canadians. Of 1213 warships, 892 were either RN or RCN. Of 11600 aircraft, two thirds were RAF/Commonwealth. Two of every three troops who landed on 6 June were either British or Canadian. The mine clearance operations prior to D-Day were carried out entirely by the RN and RCN. The Mulberry artificial harbours, without which a landing in Normandy would have been impossible anyway, were devised & built by the British. The Heads of all three services at D-Day, by the way, were all British, being Ramsay, Montgomery, & Leigh-Mallory.
Yes, the US armed forces played an important part in the eventual ALLIED victory in Western Europe, but so did the British & Canadians of 21 Army Group, not to mention the crucial role of the Soviets.
Odd really. The less some people actually know about facts, the more extreme they are in their opinions, as you have so splendidly demonstrated in your posts.
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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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@nikolajkristensen5960 How would theoretical air superiority have meant that 'they' could get over without much trouble? Purely imagination on your part, in defiance of the actual performance of the Luftwaffe in 1940.
The difference between Sealion and D-Day should be obvious. The US troops involved were already in Britain, and the Allies had overwhelming naval and air superiority. Your idea of using the Italian navy to support Sealion is simply fantasy. You are grasping at non existent straws to support your obsessive delusions.
I agree that you cannot analyse a battle which didn't happen, but you can make deductions based on things which did. In this case, the heavy losses by the German fleet off Norway, the lack of training the Luftwaffe had received in anti-shipping operations, the poor performance of the Luftwaffe at Dunkirk, the vast resources of the RN in home waters, and the manner in which the RN subsequently prevented Crete being reinforced by sea, even when the Luftwaffe's earlier lack of training had been remedied. You can add to the the utter impossibility of your foolish suggestion that the Italian fleet could support anything.
What is this bizarre reference to Harry Potter, by the way?
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@nikolajkristensen5960 The British had been the dominant naval power for over 200 years. If anyone had an understanding of the issue, going back to the Seven Years' War and earlier, the British did.
Delay the invasion by a year? Aren't you aware that, from June 1940 onwards, the British were outproducing Germany in aircraft? For example, by May, 1941, the RAF had 56 fighter and fighter-bomber squadrons carrying out regular sweeps over Northern France. If you are going to continue to fantasise about air cover, then how would delaying the invasion by a year possibly have helped? As to the production of warships, the comparison would be ludicrous. Between September 1940 and May 1941, the Germans had brought into service one battleship, one heavy cruiser, and four destroyers. Would you like me to list British & Canadian production during the same period?
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@nikolajkristensen5960 Your ignorance astonishes me. During the Battle of Britain, Fighter Command rotated the squadrons in 11 & 12 Groups on a regular basis. After a period in the Front Line, a squadron would be sent to 13 Group, in the North of England & Scotland, to rest & recuperate, and a rested squadron would replace it. Similarly, experienced fighter pilots would be sent to training units to teach new pilots the tricks of the trade. Furthermore, many qualified pilots were actually in administrative positions, and not in the front line at all.
The Luftwaffe had no such policy. Their aircrew remained with their units throughout. As to your imaginary British 'shortage of pilots,' you obviously haven't heard of the 'British Commonwealth Air Training Plan,' which trained over 130,000 Allied pilots & aircrew in Canada alone.
Do you actually know anything at all about Sealion or the Battle of Britain?
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@nikolajkristensen5960 You really shouldn't regard Wikipedia as the fount of all knowledge. Of the 'sea craft' lost, 162 were small motor boats or barges, of which 150 were not sunk but simply abandoned at the conclusion of the operation. Of the damaged destroyers, all except three were back in service by 18 June.
I would recommend the official Naval Staff History, 'Operation Dynamo, 26 May - 4 June, 1940' but it is out of print, and probably too complicated for you to grasp anyway. What you describe as 'stats' are more correctly described as 'facts.'
One fact in particular being that the Luftwaffe attempted to prevent the evacuation of 40,000 troops, yet in the end failed to prevent the evacuation of over 338,000.
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@nikolajkristensen5960 'whats wrong with that.' Apart from it being in no known language, you mean? You have been posting things about Sealion (and the Battle of Britain) which show a stunning lack of knowledge and, as I have plenty of spare time, I am more than happy to amuse myself pointing out your almost inexhaustible store of mistakes and factual errors.
Incidentally, I notice that one or two of your comments are not actually reaching this site. Perhaps it is finding you too preposterous to stomach? However, in response to:-
1). 'wikipedia isn't knowlegde ?:) you jsut stated everything they said was true but when used against you not true ty for making me see your as you are, a guy from britain who woulnd't believe britain could lose nothing more.' I actually said that 'Wikipedia isn't the fount of all knowledge.' Largely because it isn't.
2). 'google it, if they wasn't short on pilots why did the polish and americans join the eagle squadron freely.' The Poles didn't join the Eagle Squadron, but seven Americans did take part in the Battle of Britain. Similarly, 147 Polish pilots also took part.
You appear to have some sort of idea that Fighter Command was some sort of exclusive club for English Gentlemen. It wasn't. The Poles ( and by the way, pilots from other non-English speaking countries such as Czechoslovakia, Belgium, & France) had arrived in Britain after enduring many privations. They were experienced & capable pilots, who wished to continue the fight against Nazi Germany. Once they had demonstrated sufficient command of English to work within the constraints of Fighter Command's control systems, why shouldn't they be given the opportunity?
Similarly, the American pilots, and a further ten from another non-Commonwealth country, Ireland, made the effort to get to Britain to fight against Fascism. Doubtless, had Fighter Command not accommodated them, someone as ignorant as you would have accused the British of being prejudiced, I assume.
Not, of course, that this is in any way relevant to your fantasy about an (imaginary) British shortage of pilots. For that, you need to look at the Luftwaffe records, old chap.
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@nikolajkristensen5960 Very good. Now do you know how wide the Straits of Gibraltar are, and what there is there? Seriously, this is rather like pulling teeth, but fortunately not mine.
Mussolini went to war so that he could put, in his words, a few thousand Italian dead on the Peace Table. Like Hitler, he assumed that Britain would come to terms after France. When this didn't happen, like Hitler, he had few options, especially when his Armies in Africa were annihilated. Far from supporting Hitler in an attempted invasion of Britain, his surface fleet spent much of the war avoiding action, and by early 1941 he was begging for German support to shore up his troops in Libya.
'They shoulnd't meet britain there before the atlantic if they had some out there, would be very risky for britain to sail between gilraltar and marokko.'
Really? Odd then, that the RN and later USN sailed through the Straits will impunity throughout the war, wouldn't you say?
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@nikolajkristensen5960 1). These perhaps?
Alexander Battery: (South Mole, sea level) Pom-pom and one Bofors to protect the south side of the harbour.
Bombproof Battery: (North side of the Rock part of 18th Century defence lines) 17 Pounder anti-tank gun, 25 Pounder Gun. Also had many Vickers emplacements, will show a photo later in the thread, and rifle ports.
Breakneck Battery: (Upper Ridge, top of the Rock) 1 9.2 inch gun.
Buena Vista Battery: (West Side, commanding views of entrance to anchorage) 4 inch naval gun.
Buffadero Battery: (South facing, field of fire to east (med), west (atlantic) and south (straits). 9.2 inch Battery and 2 Bofors.
Catalan Batteries: (North West Facing, covering harbour, airfield and landward approaches) 3-pdr QF Gun.
Couvre Port Battery: (Covering Landport Gate, only land entrance to Gibraltar at the time) 1940: One 4 inch naval gun and 6-pdr 7 cwt both in an anti-tank role.
Crutchett’s and Castle Batteries: (North facing running down the slope from castle) Searchlight emplacements still there.
Detached Mole Battery: (Mole running S-N at harbour mouth) One twin mounted 6-pdr at either end, 2 3inch 20-cwt and 2 Bofors.
Devil’s Gap Battery (Half way up the Rock, west facing covering harbour and Spanish hinterland) 2 6 inch Mk VII guns (guns still there).
Edward VII’s Battery ( 85 feet above sea level, south/west facing) 2 9.2 inch Mark X guns.
Engineer Battery: (Beside Alexander Battery) Searchlight emplacements.
Europa Advance Batteries: (Southern most point of Gibraltar) Two 4-inch BL Mark IX QF guns on CP Mk I mountings. 1 Bofors.
Farringdon’s Battery: (North Face, commanding views of Spain and airport) Fixed searchlight emplacement.
Forbe’s Battery: (North face, part of landport defences) 40mm Mark 3 gun on a mobile mounting.
Genista Battery: (South Facing) Two 6 inch Mark VII guns.
Half Way Battery: (East Facing) DEL equipped with a 90 cm Mark V Projector.
Harding’s Battery: (South Facing) 1 Bofors.
Hutment Battery: (South facing) 1 Bofors.
King’s Lines: (Part of Landport Defences covering land approaches. Most of these are cut into the Rock itself and you need to go through the Tunnels to get there) Many Vickers MG emplacements, two 6-pdr. 6cwt Hotchkiss anti-tank guns.
Levant Battery: (East/West Facing) Two 9.2 inch guns, one facing east the other west.
Lewis Battery: (West Facing) 1 DEL emplacement, 1 Bofors.
Lighthouse Battery: (South facing, beside lighthouse) 4 heavy 3.7 inch anti-aircraft guns.
Lord Airye’s Battery: (1,358 feet above sea level, south/west facing) One 9.2 inch Mk X gun.
Mediterranean Battery: (Just below Lord Airey’s. North/east facing) Two 4 inch naval guns.
Middle Hill Battery: (West facing) One Bofors.
Montagu Bastion (West facing covering northern side of anchorage) Two 3.7 inch AA guns.
Napier of Madgala Battery: (Beside Engineer/Alexander Batteries, west facing) Four 3.7 inch AA guns.
New Mole: (Southern side of harbour, west facing) 2 Bofors, one 4 inch QF gun, two twin mounted 6 inch guns.
O’Hara’s Battery: (1,400 feet above sea level, west/east facing) One 9.2 inch Mk X gun that last fired in 1976 (my father-in-law was part of the gun crew).
Orange Bastion: (Sea Level, west facing) One 40mm Bofors.
Orillion Battery: (Part of Landport defences cut into the Rock) 1940, one 6-pdr. 6 cwt anti-tank gun, replaced by a 17-pdr gun in 1943.
Parson’s Lodge Battery: (West facing covering Camp Bay) Disguised pill boxes and MG positions as well as DEL emplacements and one 40mm Bofors.
Princess Anne’s Battery: (West/north facing.) Four 5.25 inch high angle guns.
Queen Charlotte’s Battery: (NW facing) One 75mm anti-tank gun.
Rock Battery: (1,360 feet above sea level. 360 degree arc of fire. ‘Rock Gun’.) One 9.2 inch Mk IX gun.
Rooke Battery (West facing) DEL emplacements and location of Fire Command HQ.
Royal Battery: (1,256 feet above sea level) One 40mm Bofors.
Signal Hill Battery: (1,200 feet above sea level) Two 3 inch 30-cwt. AA guns and one 40mm Bofors.
South Batteries: (South Facing) Four 3.7 inch AA guns.
Spur Battery: (Just below O’Hara’s) One 9.2 inch.
Tovey Battery: (West Facing) Two six inch BL MK VII guns, one is still there.
Waterport Battery: (North facing and covering northern part of harbour and airfield) Two 3.7 inch AA guns.
West Battery: (West facing) Two 9.2 inch Mk X guns.
White Rock Batteries: (East facing covering possible invasion beaches) Two 3.7 inch mobile AA guns.
Windmill Hill Batteries: (West/South facing) Four 3.7 inch AA guns, two 9.2 inch guns.
Woodford’s Battery: (South facing) DEL emplacement.
Did you really not know that Gibraltar was the main British naval base in the Western Mediterranean. The above are 'only' the shore guns. You can add the warships of Force H & North Atlantic Command ( 1 battleship, 1 battlecruiser, one carrier, and 15 destroyers of the 8th & 15 destroyer flotillas, and probably a fair proportion of the Mediterranean Fleet itself. At the time, 4 battleships, 2 aircraft carriers, 3 heavy & 5 light cruisers, 22 destroyers, & 13 submarines. You can also add the aircraft based on Gibraltar, and the air groups of the carriers, whose torpedo bombers crews had had considerable training in anti-shipping operations. Gibraltar was, of course, out of range of all but a tiny number of Italian shore based aircraft.
The Straits, by the way, are 8 miles wide.
Actually, that was precisely the reason Mussolini went to war. He even said as much to Count Ciano, his Foreign Minister and Son in Law.
'His support to north african has nothing to do with sea lion, and yes they did sail trough there later it was a none battlefield so if they could italy could to.' Don't be obtuse, of course it does. The British would have unopposed freedom to attack the Italian army in North Africa, and to shell any Italian port, from the sea.
The difference between the British using the Straits, which they did right from the start of the war, and the Italians using them, is that the British coast defences would not be shelling British ships. Are you really this clueless?
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@nikolajkristensen5960 You have demonstrated your cluelessness in a whole series of posts, culminating in your apparent ignorance of Gibraltar as a major British naval base. 'Clueless?' Of course you are. I am simply calling a spade a spade.
I notice that another post from you hasn't appeared on here. This one :-
'how do you figure they would have unopposed attack in north africa? how does sea lion make a diffents to italy war in north africa? I do know they have all that but they will have to launch some operations against that base first yes kinda says itself ty for information me I'm just information you about italy thats all nothing more you asked yourself I answer hard to get?, you really like calling me clueless when you have writen to me for over 100 messages xD I don't care what you think will stop it I said some of my plan quess the rest on the way because im done typing to you.'
As I derive considerable entertainment from replying to you, then, as a gift, here is my reply to that:
1). If a large proportion of the Italian navy was no longer in the Mediterranean, or at least above the surface in the Mediterranean, then Cunningham can use his ships to shell Italian positions all along the coast, to disrupt Italian supply lines along the coast, and to transport supplies to British forces near the front without the need to use valuable trucks and fuel carrying these supplies along the coast road.
2). The same answer. You wish to send most of the Italian fleet to the Channel. Ignoring the sheer impossibility of this, surely you can grasp that, if the bulk of the Italian fleet vanishes, point 1). above applies, and every Italian mainland port becomes a juicy target for an aggressive commander like Andrew Cunningham.
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@TheRunereaper I believe that in the UK, Commonwealth, and Ireland, the change to ‘direct’ steering orders occurred on Jan 1 1933 in both RN and Merchant Navy. As far as merchant vessels were concerned this was in accordance with Clause 29 of the Merchant Shipping (Safety And Load Line Conventions) Act 1932, which was implementing a suggestion made in 1929, at the International Convention for Safety at Sea.
The relevant clauses read:
29. (1) No person on any British ship registered in the United Kingdom shall give a helm order containing the word “starboard” or “right” or any equivalent of “starboard” or “right”, unless he intends that the head of the ship shall move to the right, or give a helm order containing the word “port’, or “left” or any equivalent of “port” or “left”, unless he intends that the head of the ship shall move to the left.
(2) Any person who contravenes the provisions of this section shall for each offence be liable to a fine not exceeding fifty pounds.
It does seem to have been introduced rather late in the day. The United States Navy had changed the regulations 20 years earlier :-
General Order 30 read:
NAVY DEPARTMENT Washington, D. C., May 5, 1913
ORDERS GOVERNING THE MOVEMENTS OF THE RUDDER.
1. On and after July 1, 1913, the present designations “starboard” and “port” governing movements of a ship’s helm are hereby ordered discontinued in orders or directions to the steersman, and the terms “right” and “left,” referring to movement of the ship’s head, shall thereafter be used instead.
2. The orders as to rudder angle shall be given in such terms as “Ten degrees rudder; half-rudder; standard rudder; full rudder;” etc., so that a complete order would be “Right–Half-rudder,” etc.
3. Commanders-in-chief and commanding officers acting independently may, in their discretion, institute the above changes at an earlier date.
F. D. ROOSEVELT
Acting Secretary of the Navy.
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Yet, apart from one Canadian division & two Australian/New Zealand brigades, there were no Commonwealth troops in Britain in 1940. In the event of an assault landing, however unlikely it might have been, it would be the British who, almost entirely would be the ones who resisted it.
Encouragement from far away, whilst good for morale, would not have helped much. There were 574 Commonwealth & Foreign pilots in the Battle of Britain, and 2353 British ones, by the way.
Moreover, you greatly exaggerate the importance of the Battle of Britain. After all, if the Germans had achieved a temporary measure of air superiority, all that they then needed to do was find a way past the largest navy in the world for their towed barges.
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@0815Catgus Firstly, when the Mauretanias were constructed, they were fitted with strong points for installation of six inch guns, for use as Armed Merchant Cruisers. However such weapons were not fitted, as smaller and medium sized liners were so converted instead.
Lusitania carried small arms ammunition, authorised by US customs, and was in a war zone only after Germany had declared a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare earlier in 1915.
Neither fact, of course, is relevant to your original, odd, comment.
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@peterbreis5407 Where 'one eyed jingoism' is concerned, I confess that I am not in your league. Just to correct one or two of your basic errors, Australia actually declared war on Germany on 3 September, 1939. There was no war in the Far East until the end of 1941. What would you have suggested that the Australian armed forces should have done other than that?
Yes, Australia paid for British equipment and ships. Shouldn't Australia, just like New Zealand and Canada, have contributed to the maintenance of their own military?
Were you to actually look up the war records of such well-known Australian warships as Canberra, Australia, Hobart, Perth, Sydney, & Stuart, you would find, probably to your surprise, that all, after some served in the Mediterranean prior to Pearl Harbor, had been returned to Australian waters, actually before December, 1941.
Indeed, after Pearl Harbor, all but one Australian division was returned. The 9th, by the way, was returned after 2nd Alamein following an agreement between FDR & Churchill that a US division would be sent to Australia in the interim. As the ships transporting the other Australian forces back to Australia were overwhelmingly British, as were their escorts, Churchill, supported by Roosevelt by the way, believed that the unfolding crisis in Burma was of greater immediate concern. Actually, he was probably correct, as only those with limited knowledge of the distances and logistics involved could ever have viewed Australia as threatened by any Japanese invasion. Certainly, Tojo's testimony after the war had ended confirmed that Japan had never held such ambitions.
Correct, the Yugoslavian merchant fleet was returned to Yugoslavia at the end of the war, just as those of Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Greece were also returned. Not to Tito personally, by the way. Josep Tito was, for good or ill, Prime Minister of Yugoslavia at the time. Again, what would you suggest should have happened to the fleet?
'Canada, New Zealand and South Africa' like Australia, made sacrifices in order to defeat Germany, Italy & Japan. In terms of military deaths as a % of national populations, however, somewhat less than the sacrifice that Britain made.
When Australia is deeply mired in a bizarre 'Voice' campaign, accusing others of being 'self obsessed' is, I assume, your attempt at humour, and how is Brexit possibly relevant to events which ended almost 80 years ago, and about which you seem to have little actual knowledge?
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@ellsworth1956 Hood was certainly inferior in terms of firepower and armour to the Colorados, but, with 10 knots greater speed, had the ability to choose whether to engage or not. Nagato had a heavier weight of broadside, but thinner armour and four knots less speed. Moreover, both the Colorados & the Nagato were completed after Hood.
Certainly, Hood was outclassed in terms of weight of broadside and armour by the Nelsons, & the King George Vs, as well as by the North Carolinas. Only to be expected, since these were newer classes. In terms of Bismarck, which featured a number of outdated design features, Hood had a heavier broadside, but inferior armour. However, with a similar level of armour to the Queen Elizabeths, Hood was one of only five British capital ships with the speed and firepower to catch & engage Bismarck. Four of these were with the Home Fleet, and Tovey needed to block two exit points into the broader Atlantic.
Thus, he placed his best and weakest capital ships, KGV & Repulse, in the Iceland-Faroes Gap, and the second & third best, Hood & Prince of Wales, in the Denmark Strait. Holland was well aware of Hood's weakness against long range plunging fire, which is why he sought to shorten the range as quickly as possible. Had he achieved this, the probability is that, with the support of PoW, sufficient damage would have been inflicted in Bismarck to either sink her, or at the least force her commander to abandon his mission. In point of fact, that is what actually happened.
Only with the benefit of hindsight have armchair admirals waxed eloquent about the foolishness of sending Hood to engage Bismarck.
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Certainly, at the time Fighter Command was suffering from attacks on airfields, but it is too simplistic to talk about defeat and victory. Fighter Command at worst had the ability to withdraw remaining assets further north, out of the reach of German fighters, in order to rest and re-equip. In fact, the Luftwaffe, properly commanded, always had the ability to control airspace over the Channel, as historically, after Kanalkampf, RAF fighters stayed over mainland Britain.
Assuming that the Luftwaffe did that, all the Kriegsmarine needed to do was find a way of getting 700 or so barges, full of troops and towed in pairs by trawlers, tugs, and small coasters, at around five knots, into the Channel and then onto the British south coast beaches, without serious naval escort.
After all, the British only had around 70 light cruisers and destroyers within 5 hours' steaming of Dover, supported by around 500 smaller warships, at the time.
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Modern Greece was created in 1832, ironically after British, French, & Russian forces had liberated it from Ottoman/Egyptian occupation. Battle of Navarino, anyone?
Prior to that, it had been a province of the Ottoman Empire for over 350 years, during which the Parthenon had been at various times an ammunition store, and a gunnery target. When Elgin visited Athens, he found that the Ottoman governor was permitting the marbles to be broken up for use as hard core. He purchased some of them from the only recognised authority in Greece at the time, that same Ottoman governor. It might perhaps have been simpler if he had not purchased them, as there would not then be discussion about them, largely because they would for the most part no longer exist.
Have a discussion, by all means, but on the basis of facts, and not on the basis of falsehoods and ludicrous analogies, to which Ms. Buxton was reduced.
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Just as you fail to acknowledge that pilots from the Dominions, together with a small number of pilots from neutral countries and from conquered European states, flew in British aircraft, in British squadrons, and under a British command and control system.
The Commonwealth and Empire was to play an increasingly important role as the war progressed, but in 1940 the only Commonwealth troops in Britain were one Canadian division, together with two Australian & New Zealand brigades. In the improbable event of an attempted invasion, it would have been faced in September, 1940 by some of 34.5 operational divisions. 32.5 of those divisions were British.
Certainly shouts of good wishes from distant Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India would have been much appreciated, but equally they would have been of little practical use against German forces landing, for example, between Rye & Hastings.
Clearly, the very idea of British resistance must upset you. You have even broken your caps lock!
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@davidvanhansen Sorry, but you are wrong. From September 1939 to November 1940, Wilhelm Gustloff did serve as a hospital ship, officially designated Lazarettschiff D.
However, from 20 November 1940, medical equipment was removed from the ship and she was repainted from the hospital ship colours of white with a green stripe to standard naval grey. As a consequence of the Allied blockade of the German coastline, she was used as a barracks ship for approximately 1,000 U-boat trainees of the 2nd Submarine Training Division (2. Unterseeboot-Lehrdivision) in the port of Gdynia, which had been occupied by Germany and renamed Gotenhafen, located near Danzig (Gdańsk).
She carried 11 anti-aircraft guns, by the way, which single fact rendered any claim to hospital ship status invalid.
Late in the war, she was allocated to Operation Hannibal. As Wilhelm Gustloff had been fitted with anti-aircraft guns, and the Germans did not mark her as a hospital ship, no notification of her operating in a hospital capacity had been given and, as she was transporting military personnel, she did not have any protection as a hospital ship under international law.
As Gunter Grass was later to write "One of the many reasons I wrote Crabwalk was to take the subject away from the extreme Right... They said the tragedy of Wilhelm Gustloff was a war crime. It wasn't. It was terrible, but it was a result of war, a terrible result of war."'
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The red flag is an invented one. Morgan did not 'back out' of the voyage at the last minute. The NYT on 28 March carried an article about him, stating that he intended to be at St. Mark's in Venice on 23 April, which would not have been possible had he sailed in Titanic. Moreover, he wasn't aboard Olympic for her maiden voyage either. Was that equally suspicious?
The claim that there were opponents of the Fed. aboard Titanic is equally invented, and originated with the rise of Social Media in the 1990s. The opinions of Astor and Guggenheim were never expressed, whilat Straus had spoken in support of it in Ocrober 1911.
Morgan, by the way, did not build the Fed. By the time it was created, in December, 1913, he was too busy being dead, as he had been for over six months.
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Photographs of the wreck, and in particular of the forward ends of 'A' & 'B' decks, match exactly known photographs of Titanic, and differ from known photographs of the Olympic of the same period.
Morgan had no need to book a trip, as he owned IMM, White Star's parent company, and thus did not need to reserve anything. As it was, he had already announced in March that he intended to be at St. Mark's in Venice before Titanic could have returned from New York. The article stating this may be read in the archives of the New York Times, had the gumption to look. There was no 'mystery' all. Morgan didn't sail on Olympic's maiden voyage either. Do you think that that was suspicious, as well?
As to 'insurance', White Star were insured for only two thirds of Titanic's building costs, which meant that when she sank, the company not only lost a major asset and a reputation for safety, but also £500,000 at 1912 monetary value.
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Where do you people get your ideas from? IMM (White Star's parent Company) had regulations which required daily inspection of the bunkers of their ships. A smouldering fire caused by spontaneous combustion was discovered during one of these when Titanic was in Southampton. Joseph Bell set a team to work, and the fire was dealt with at least 24 hours before the collision. According to testimony of stoker survivors, the only damage was to bunker paintwork.
Cleaely, you find thinking difficult, but please try. Is the following scenario even vaguely credible?
Joseph Bell reports to the Bridge :-
'Captain Smith, sir. There is an uncontrollable fire raging below decks, and the hull is being weakened! '
Edward Smith: 'Never mind, Joe. We'll sail anyway. It's only the North Atlantic in April. What could possibly go wrong?'
As to the men aboard Titanic who opposed the Fed., Astor, Guggenheim, and Straus, neither of the first two had expressed their views either way. Straus, however, had. In October 1911 he made a speech in favour of it, which was recorded in the New York Times. The first suggestion of anything different was a myth invented in the 1990s. You should check these facts for yourself.
'Just a day after Titanic sank, both systems were started.' You seriously think so? Titanic sank on 15 April, 1912. The Federal Reserve Act was passed on 23 December, 1913. Which was, by the way, 9 months after J. P. Morgan's death.
You are one of astonishingly gullible, astonishingly ignorant, or astonishingly stupid. I leave it to you to work out which.
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The real mystery is that Scheer seems to have been incapable of devising an alternative strategy which would at least enable his surface fleet to make some sort of relevant contribution to the German war effort. Popping briefly out of port twice, then running home rather than risking a meaningful engagement doesn't really amount to much. How about a raid on the Channel, protected in the main by pre-dreadnoughts, or an attack on the cruisers & destroyers of the Harwich Force, or even a strike by a fast battlecruiser/light cruiser force on the auxiliaries policing the blockade? Sitting comfortably in the Jade estuary, while telling the All Highest that the fleet must not be risked again and that the only answer was unrestricted submarine warfare, wasn't really a credible attitude.
I wonder how Scheer explained the result of his master plan, the entry of the US into the war on the Allied side, to Paul von Hindenburg? Perhaps, echoing the wise words of Britain's greatest military strategist, Captain George Mainwaring, 'typical shabby American trick!'
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@cambopalpatine2185 I don't need to look anything up, as I already know the answers.
RMS Coptic. Ran aground in Rio in December, 1890.
RMS Germanic. Collided with the steamer Cumbrae in thick fog in the Mersey. RMS Germainic continued to steam at low speed to allow the passengers and crew to board her, before the small (900 ton) steamer sank.
RMS Republic sank after collision with SS Florida, near Nantucket in January, 1909. This was in thick fog, and Florida rameed her side, resulting in her sinking. Her captain at the time, by the way, was Inman Sealby.
RMS Olympic. Collided with HMS Hawke in September, 1911. She was in the charge of a Solent Pilot, not captain Smith, as was determined by a later court case to determine liability.
There is no suggestion that Smith, in your words, 'used to sail ships like they were speedboats.'
As Lightoller pointed out in his book , ‘Captain E.J. was one of the ablest Skippers on the Atlantic, and accusations of recklessness, carelessness, not taking due precautions, or driving his ship at too high a speed, were absolutely, and utterly unfounded; but the armchair complaint is a very common disease.’
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Both Olympic and Titanic were launched with 14 portholes on their port sides forward. Titanic had two more added before completion, and Olympic was similarly modified in 1912.
Astor, Guggenheim, and Straus had never expressed opposition to the Fed. Indeed, in two newspapers from October, 1911, Straus had expressed his support. Moreover, how do you suggest Morgan would have persuaded the three to travel on the Titanic?
Californian had sailed a week before Titanic left Queenstown, heading for Boston with a mixed, general, cargo. How would Morgan have known that the two ships would even be close, let alone that Titanic would find a convenient iceberg? You are perhaps confusing J. P. Morgan with Henry Morgan?
More likely, you have simply watched a switcher video, and gullibly swallowed it whole.
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@mel.3687 Where did you get the Lindemann idea from? That was a decision well above his pay grade. The Kriegsmarine was the least nazified of the German armed forces, but because of Admiral Raeder
Erich Raeder was a devout Christian, who retained Jewish, or half Jewish officers, within the navy. Commander Ascher, aboard Bismarck, was half Jewish, for example.
Raeder also ordered the navy to use the traditional, rather than nazi, salute, and even kept chaplains on the larger ships.
Actually, the process of withdrawal from Empire pre-dated WW2 by some years. Canada, New Zealand, & Australia, for example, had become self-governing democratic Dominions many years earlier.
The whole point of Lend-Lease was that the items the US supplied did not need to be paid for until after the war.
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@SolTerran5050 No.The consolation was that Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were unable to break into the wider Atlantic, making them much more difficult to chase down, and ensuring that supply convoys were not threatened by them.
Hood, by the way, was an aging ship, which would have received a major reconstruction along the lines of Renown had war not commenced. There was a degree of affection for her, but her shortcomings were well known within the Navy. She was, however, one of only four capital ships available to Admiral Tovey with the speed to catch Bismarck, and, as there were two exit points into the Wider Atlantic, Tovey positioned two in each of them.
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'I was a shipyard supervisor in a ship yard.' Yes, of course you were. I was Holy Roman Emperor in the 18th Century.
Perhaps you were unaware that, when Olympic returned to sea on 20 November 1911, after repair, Titanic was several months from completion. A photograph of the pair together in October, 1911, shows Olympic in full White Star paintwork, and Titanic lacking three funnels, parts of her superstructure, and, of course, her paintwork. Are these differences 'non structural?'
By the time Titanic left Southampton on 10 April, 1912, Olympic had completed five double crossings of the Atlantic since November, 1911, and was in New York, halfway through her sixth. Not bad for a cripple with a broken keel, I suggest.
You haven't, by the way, explained firstly why anyone should seek to swap the identities of two perfectly seaworthy ships, and secondly why, for the rest of their lives, not one of the H & W managers or shipbuilding personnel in H & W's yard ever thought to mention it to anyone?
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@JesusIsaFlatEarther The word 'Government' comes from the term 'govern', which derives from the old french 'governer'. This is itself derived from the Latin 'gubernare.,' (to direct, rule. guide, govern) This, in turn, is derived from the Greek 'κῠβερνᾰ́ω' or kybernan (to pilot a ship).
NASA in Hebrew has several meanings :-
nasá (נָשָֹא) = to carry, to marry
nasá (נָסָע) = to travel
NÁSA (נאס"א) = NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
nása (נַסָה) = “she flees” (poetic).
So, 'does it?' No, it doesn't.
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Actually, your knowledge is quite lacking. In 1940, the Commonwealth and Empire, though it later played a major role, was still far distant, although supportive. In September, 1940, of 34.5 operational divisions in Britain, all except 2 were British. Immediately after the French surrender, the only Commonwealth troops in Britain were one Canadian dicision and two Australian & New Zealand brigades.
There were a number of non-British pilots in Fighter Command. Other than those from Commonwealth countries, and a handful of volunteers from neutral countries, these men had joined precisely because their own countries had been occupied, and joining the British armed forces was the only way they could continue to resist their conquerors. They did, of course, fly in RAF squadrons, using British aircraft.
What 'American industrial might?' In 1940, the United States was happy to sell supplies and equipment to Britain, at the full market rate. These items were then shipped across the Atlantic in British ships, escorted overwhelmingly by Royal Navy warships.
I appreciate that the idea seems to distress you, but at the time of the Battle of Britain, Britain was, to all intents and purposes, alone.
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Yes, of course. sending almost 2,000 canal barges, 159 merchant ships, 397 tugs, and over 1100 motor boats to Channel ports, arming and modifying the barges to act as rudimentary troop carriers, stripping part of the surface fleet of crews to man the barges & tugs, moving almost thirty divisions into position to produce a first, second, and third wave of troops, and degrading the resources of the Luftwaffe in a futile and irrelevant attack on the Home Counties. All part of a bluff. Of course it was.
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@gruenergermane The second unrestricted campaign began in February, 1917, and was thereafter the policy of the Imperial Navy. Where have you got the '5 german submarines' nonsense from? Similarly, 'history tells us the US-ship transported amunition under false flag' What history would that be, then?
The Blockade, by the way, continued until World War 1 ended, in late June 1919 when the Treaty of Versailles was signed. If the Allies really wanted 'to kill as many huns as possible' it would have been far easier not to have agreed to a November, 1918 Armistice, but to advanced over the wreckage of the German army into the German heartland, as, I believe, Black Jack Pershing wished to do.
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This is nonsense. The supposed recently discovered photographs were nothing of the sort. A journalist found a mark on a single photograph, and drew a whole series of questionable conclusions from it. It did, of course, help to sell a book.
The same journalist never actually explained why a similar mark was not visible on any other photographs of course. Nor did he consider that it might, had it really existed, have been the result of a close encounter with a harbour fender, or if it didn't, might have been a smudge on the negative.
The mark does not show any deformation in the hull, and it is well forward of the coal bunker. Indeed, there was a fire in one of Titanic's bunkers, but this had been extinguished around 24 hours before the collision. The affected bunker was positioned directly below the ship's swimming pool, yet there were no reports of the pool beginning to boil, or the metal distorting.
Just ask yourself this. Does it make any sense whatsoever that, after the (imaginary) fire had been reported to Captain Smith, he would have said 'Never mind, we'll sail anyway. It is only the North Atlantic in April. What could possibly go wrong?'
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Indeed, but not so much a theory as a fantasy, which appeared with the rise of Social Media in the 1990s. The claim was that three prominent financiers, Astor, Guggenheim, and Straus, all opposed the proposal for the establishment of the Federal Reserve, and were lured aboard Titanic in order to dispose of them.
The fact that neither Astor nor Guggenheim had ever voiced their views about the Federal Reserve, or that in October 1911 Straus had spoken in favour of it, was, of course, totally ignored by the conspiracy fantasists who made the allegations.
Sadly, many people have seen these absurd claims, and simply swallowed them whole and unquestioningly.
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She was settling by the stern, listing heavily, had lost her main armament, her bridge, her command personnel, and her internal communications. She was also suffering from widespread internal fires.
As the Black Night said 'Tis but a scratch.
Are you German, as a matter of interest? This fixation about scuttling your own ships, and then apparently believing that they weren't quite so sunk as a result, seems oddly Germanic. The US, British, and Japanese navies don't seem to have had similar views.
If you are indeed German, perhaps you might try to explain the thought process behind it?
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@vitordebruim8634 Lightoller was 4th in the chain of command, behind Smith, Wilde, and Murdoch.
I don't really see what difference it makes whether Titanic broke up on the surface, or as she sank. It is simply a detail of the sinking process, and Lightoller was rather busy at the time. How would him 'lying' about this detail have been of benefit to White Star, in any case?
Certainly, his interpretation of Smith's 'women and children first' order is open to question, and to criticism, but, his answers do not fall into the category of falsehoods.
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@barrysnelson4404 Crete showed nothing of the sort. The Royal Navy was tasked with preventing axis reinforcements reaching Crete by sea. It did exactly that. One convoy, heading for Maleme, was destroyed by a cruiser squadron. A second, heading for Heraklion, turned back to Greece.
Perhaps you aren't allowing for the remarkable inability of the Luftwaffe to hit ships at sea in daylight, let alone at night? Having failed to halt Dynamo, the Luftwaffe went on to sink 31 RN destroyers in the whole of the war, and no RN ship at all larger than a light cruiser. It didn't even acquire a torpedo bomber until mid 1942.
How would mines have even been laid? By the seven minelayers which the Germans managed to convert? When the RN carried out nightly destroyer patrols through the Channel & along the East Coast? Consider the effect of a 4.7 inch HE shell on a laden mine deck.
Artillery? 150 medium, heavy, & superheavy guns were in place by the end of August. By the end of the war, they had damaged, in total, seven merchantmen, totalling 8,000 tons. Twice RN heavy ships shelled Invasion ports, on 29 September (HMS Erebus) and 10/11 October (HMS Revenge & a destroyer flotilla). On both occasions German super heavy batteries fired at them, in the case of Revenge for 30 minutes, with no success on either occasion.
Hitler's ideas about using mines and artillery to close the Straits simply showed the ignorance of an ex-soldier about naval matters. He might just have told his staff :-
“I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.'
To receive the reply :- "Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come, when you do call for them?”
( Henry IV Part 1).
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@KPW2137 'ONE instance of a Kriegsmarine ship gunning down survivors.' Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that, after sinking HMS Glorious and her two destroyer escorts, Scharnhorst & Gneisenau made no attempt to rescue any of the 2000 men left in the water off Norway, but simply left them to their fate.
Two RN warships attempted to pick up Bismarck's survivors, but abandoned these attempts following a U-boat sighting report. Bismarck's senior surviving officer, Von Mullenhein-Rechberg, wrote in his later book of how well German survivors aboard HMS Dorsetshire were treated.
As to Scharnhorst, she was sunk in the Arctic, in the dark, in a storm, in the middle of winter. The surprising thing is not how few survivors were picked up, but that the RN destroyers managed to find and rescue anyone, especially when Admiral Doenitz had informed his commanders that it was 'desirable' that the crews of merchant ships were not rescued. The actual order was issued in November/December, 1939, and read, in translation :- "Do not rescue any men; do not take them along; and do not take care of any boats of the ship. Weather conditions and proximity of land are of no consequence. Concern yourself only with the safety of your own boat and with efforts to achieve additional successes as soon as possible. We must be hard in this war. The enemy started the war in order to destroy us, and thus nothing else matters."
There were occasions, indeed, when U-boat crews were left behind. Just as the crews of allied merchantmen were also left behind. For escorts or freighters to stop in the middle of a convoy battle was invariably a fatal error.
You need to educate yourself, mein herr.
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'Germany kept trying to de-escalate.' Oh dear, the plaintive cry of that sad bird, the Lesser Spotted Neo. How did Germany try to do that? Unless you count hitler's 'Last Appeal to Reason' of 19 July, 1940, aka 'Surrender or we bomb you.' Made when, after Mers el Kebir, if finally dawned on him that the British were not going to sign a French style Armistice/Surrender, and he had no means of invading.
As to the Hess comic interlude. If the intention is to seek confidential talks, do you :-
1). Make discreet approaches to British Embassies in Spain, Sweden, or Switzerland. Or perhaps even approach the United States to act as a neutral arbiter?
or:-
2). Let an unbalanced member of your staff fly to Scotland, in order, hopefully, to bail out near the estate of a minor Scottish aristocrat who might, just possibly, have the ear of Winston Churchill?
As the exam papers used to say 'Give reasons for your answer.'
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@bigwoody4704 I presume you actually mean : Withdrawing 13 divisions from Europe because 100 French divisions were collapsing, then attempting to land fresh troops in Cherbourg until told, by General Weygand, that the French army was no longer capable of 'organised resistance.'
Resisting Germany & Italy for a year largely unaided, then taking almost total responsibility, in conjunction with the Royal Canadian Navy, for the naval war in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Arctic, and the Indian Ocean, thus enabling the US navy to concentrate in the Pacific.
Fighting major campaigns against the Japanese army in Burma, resulting in 55,000 Japanese casualties in a single operation, the defeat of the U-Go offensive.
As to 'Germany First' apart from Ernie King, eagerly killing the crews, largely American, of over 600 merchantmen by refusing to provide Adolphus Andrews with sufficient escorts to institute convoys off the US East Coast, which other leading US politician or military man did not see Germany as the greater threat? Germany was a huge military and industrial powerhouse with cutting edge science; Japan was none of these.
Oh, and buy a map. Australia & New Zealand were never in the slightest threat of invasion, although the Australian divisions in the Middle East, apart from one, were immediately returned after Pearl Harbor.
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Actually, looking for a means of removing the Ottoman Empire from the Central Powers, thus inflicting a massive reversal on Germany. Potentially, a viable alternative to the unfolding carnage on the Western Front.
As to Cannon Fodder, it seems you aren't actually aware of the casualties.
Australia 28,150 New Zealand 7,991 France 27,000 India 4,779 Newfoundland 142 Britain/Ireland 73, 485. Ottoman Empire 251,309.
These are total casualties, both killed and wounded.
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She was settling by the stern, listing heavily, had lost her main armament, her bridge, her command personnel, and her internal communications. She was also suffering from widespread internal fires.
As the Black Night said 'Tis but a scratch.
In any case, this bizarre view that a scuttled ship is, in some magical manner, slightly less sunk, is an odd one, don't you think?
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Allied Ships operating with the Riyal Navy usually had their weapons replaced with British weapons. Some older ships were used for secondary roles, such as fleet tenders, depot ships, or training ships. Blaskawica & Grom, two of the three Polish destroyers to join the RN in 1939, were both British built, so parts were not a problem. The third, Burza, and those ships from the French navy which came under British command were more of a problem, being French built, but Burza continued to operate until 1944, when she became a depot ship for Polish manned submarines.
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You really need to buy a book. By the time Piorun, acting as part of Philip Vian's (British) destroyer flotilla, reached Bismarck, Bismarck had already been located, and was being followed by HMS Sheffield. Admiral Tovey had decided not to engage until daylight, but Vian chose to use his flotilla to carry out a series of torpedo attacks on the already damaged Bismarck. During the night, his destroyers all made separate attacks, whilst all retaining contact.
All except one, that is. Piorun's captain chose to indulge in a dangerous, quixotic, and pointless gunnery duel. As a result, Piorun not only failed to use her torpedoes, but also lost contact.
Those are the facts of the matter. You can check for yourself in any of the many accounts of the battle.
But, of course, I expect you won't.
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The Olympics complied with the Board of Trade regulations concerning the required of lifeboats. They actually carried more than the Lusitanias. Why is that 'apologist?'
The ship was, under normal circumstances, 'practically unsinkable.' The circumstances were entirely abnormal. This is simply a truth.
Poor weather conditions did not apply. The problem was actually good weather, producing a cold weather mirage, which is a scientific fact.
Incidentally, why do you believe that the Inquiries, and in particular the US one, were whitewashes, and how is it that none of the third class survivors, and in particular those examined by Senator Smith, made no reference to what you suggest was 'insurrection and chaos?'
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@nukni4225 You mean the BBC programme 'Fake or Fortune' which in 2015 tried to prove that a painting attributed to Churchill was a fake? Actually, the programme failed to prove anything of the sort. Even so, where is the sin on Churchill's part if someone tried falsely to claim that a picture was painted by him in order to boost the sale price? That is rather like saying Rembrandt should be blamed because someone falsely attributed a 19th century fake to him. In point of fact, Churchill described his paintings as 'daubs' ang gave away far more to friends then he ever sold.
Tell me which 'good and honest' history books claim that Churchill stole from Garibaldi, or that 'fight them on the beaches' or 'blood, toil, tears, & sweat' was stolen from him, or that his wartime speeches were edited, or that he gave any word of honour to the Boers, or that he turned a local conflict between Poland & Germany into a World War, or that he had no military decorations?
I have asked you for your sources before, and you have consistently failed to provide them. In short, you have demonstrated yourself to be a liar, and, to use a phrase many of my American friends tend to use about people like you, a complete 'horse's ass' with nothing to say worth listening to.
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What inspires you people to write such utter nonsense?
Firstly, the Olympic was stripped of her fittings at Jarrow, before the hull went to Inverkeithing. Many of them were auctioned off, including restaurant furniture purchased for the White Swan Restaurant at Alnwick. It is still in use, in the 'Olympic' restaurant, and the original hull numbers are marked on some of the items. In every case the number is 400.
There are no photographs of 'MP' in Titanic's hull. The pictures are poor quality fake images, which appeared, without provenance, in around the year 2000. No exploration has ever claimed them, nor even acknowledged them. Even the father of the myth, Robin Gardiner, denounced them as false, by the way.
No Titanic propeller blade was ever used on Olympic, although parts of a shaft intended foir Titanic were. Because the blades for the outer propellers were bolted on, a n umber of spares were cast at the same time.
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@VascoDaGamaOtRupcha Oh dear! Thank you for trying to educate me!
The attack by Cossack on Altmark was a 'one-off' action because Altmark was known to have been carrying merchant seamen from ships sunk by Graf Spee, and the Norwegian government had chosen not to enforce International Law. As they were not willing to take action, the RN did, and then withdrew from Norwegian waters. You should read a book or two.
'Your claim that Royal Navy had 70 cruisers and destroyers within 5 hours steaming of the Straits is ludicrous.' I am not claiming anything. I am simply quoting facts. Obviously, you are ignorant of the 'Pink List' which the Royal Navy issued on a regular basis in those days. It was the Order of Battle for the Royal Navy. I have selected the List for 16 September, 1940, as most appropriate. I can, if you wish, tell you the names of the destroyers and cruisers, and where they were based at the time. Do try to prove me wrong, I beg you!
The Home Fleet, by the way, was based at Rosyth ( one battlecruiser, two battleships, three light cruisers, and seventeen destroyers) and at Scapa Flow ( one battlecruiser, one aircraft carrier, two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and seven destroyers). As to aerial bombardment, in point of fact, in the whole of WW2 the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser. To put that into context, the RN began WW2 with 193 destroyers, and ended it with around 400.
Of course Norway had a tiny navy. The Royal Navy was only committed after the landings, and as a result the German navy received a degree of punishment which rendered it largely irrelevant, at least on the surface, for the rest of the war. The only success German surface ships achieved in the whole of the campaign was ther sinking of HMS Glorious and her two escorting destroyers after it had largely ended.
Tell me what the similarities are, then, mon brave? So far, you have demonstrated nothing but a profound lack of actual knowledge.
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@VascoDaGamaOtRupcha By the end of the Norwegian campaign, Germany had lost a considerable part of her already small navy, rendering it useless where Sealion was concerned.
By the end of the German campaign in the Low Countries, her paratroop force had been reduced to a weak brigade of around 4,500 men, and her operational transport aircraft to around 220, rendering them irrelevant where Sealion was concerned.
As I said, Cossack was not patrolling Norwegian waters. She was sent into a Norwegian fjord for a specific task, to liberate British merchant seamen after the Norwegian government had failed to act in accordance with international law. After which she left, as Neville Chamberlain was eager not to alienate the nervous Norwegian government of the day, and nor did he wish to seem to threaten a neutral country, as such behaviour was more characteristic of the Germans.
Ironically, although I doubt you will appreciate it, you reference to Cossack does confirm my comment.
You haven't, by the way, explained the similarities between the Norwegian campaign and the (potential) Operation Sealion.
Nor have you tried to challenge my information concerning the disposition of RN anti-invasion forces in September, 1940. If it helps you, although I expect it won't, I refer you to the British National Archives. The relevant document is 'Pink List' for 16th September, 1940, Operations Division, Admiralty Naval Staff (Public Record Office ADM 187/9).
Your lack of historical knowledge, especially of matters naval, is quite remarkable. When you know so few facts, why do you bother posting at all?
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She was the biggest battleship in the world when built, largely because the Americans and British, by and large, stuck to the Washington Treaty limitations.
However, Vanguard (51,420), the Iowas, (57,000), and the Yamatos, were all bigger.
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@rkk578 'So basically the law didn't force the company to pay the seamen, not forbade it.' How many companies do you know who handed out money simply for the sake of it? Why single out White Star? How much did Canadian Pacific pay out to surviving crew when the Empress of Ireland sank following collision with a collier in the St. Lawrence in May, 1914, and 1,012 out of 1,477 died? Would you like me to list a few other examples, or would you simply prefer to try to grow up?
You seem to have a perverse need to make this 'personal.' I have not defended Ismay, but simply provided a few facts of which you are clearly unaware. I wonder if you know that the attacks on Ismay were the creation of an individual called William Randolph Hearst, someone who disliked Ismay on both a personal & commercial level, and who used his power as a press baron to orchestrate a campaign of vitriol against him. As the saying goes, those who control the media control the history, and Hearst, in his own business dealings, made Ismay look, in comparison, like a social worker.
I wonder if you know that, later in life, Ismay set up a fund for lost seamen, or that in 1919 he gave a sum, in excess of £1.1 million, to recognise the contribution of merchant mariners in the First World War? No, of course you don't. You are too fixated with the two dimensional moustache twirling villain you imagined you saw in a movie.
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@JohnS-il1dr No, he didn't. He never intended to travel on Titanic, as he was committed to attend an event in Venice on 23 April. There is an article in the New York Times of Thursday 28th March 1912 revealing that i "J. Pierpont Morgan has written a cordial letter to the committee, announcing that he will be in Venice on April 23 for the inauguration of the biennial International Art Exhibition, April 25, and dedicate the new Campanile of St. Mark's."
This means Morgan would certainly have no reason to return early on April 10 especially when he was due in Venice by April 23.
Put simply, Morgan's alleged cancellation is merely an unsubstantiated urban myth, created to support a false conspiracy theory. As Titanic historian Mark Chirnside has written, 'When the Titanic sailed on her maiden voyage in April 1912, the number of passengers that she was carrying was very similar to the number that was booked onto Olympic for her maiden voyage the year before.
It’s natural that there would be cancellations and while more than fifty might sound like a high number it’s hard to see that there is much significance in this fact. If a number of people had cancelled because of some sort of fear of a switch or insurance scam going on, it seems very likely that someone would have spoken out after the disaster. There is no record of anyone doing so.'
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The Germans had a tiny operational navy, and their assault craft consisted of barges towed by tugs. They had already sent three U-Boats into the Channel late in 1939. All three were promptly sunk by the formidable mine defences. The British had re-equipped quite significantly by September, 1940. They had even felt able to send a troop convoy to North Africa, which included three Armoured Regiments, in August.
The Germans had no suitable transport ships, only a few commandeered coasters, and only just over 220 transport aircraft. Without suitable port facilities, they had no means of getting tanks across, even if any of their barges and coasters managed to avoid the RN's defensive patrols, and the large number of warships allocated to anti-invasion defence.
Oh, and to preempt your next post, the Luftwaffe, already lacking training in anti-shipping operations, didn't have any torpedo aircraft until 1942.
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You could look this up for yourself, bu you probably won't as you won't like what yo find.
Olympic returned to Belfast for repairs following the Hawke collision on 11 October, 1911. She left, fully repaired, on 29 November, 1911. After that, she made several more Atlantic crossings, and was in New York, when Titanic left Southampton in April, 1912. The two ships were together for around 44 days, and were even photographed together. In the photos. Olympic is the one in full White Star livery, whereas Titanic is in base paint, with parts of her superstructure and three funnels still not in place.
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@jeanie6936 Alex. lad, using this false name to pretend to be an idiot support of yourself convinces no-one, and simply makes you look more asinine. Still, if you wish to continue this childish behaviour, direct me to any occasion when I have disagreed with actual evidence.
Indeed, you might start with my earlier post :-
'Olympic returned to Belfast for repairs following the Hawke collision on 11 October, 1911. She left, fully repaired, on 29 November, 1911. After that, she made several more Atlantic crossings, and was in New York, when Titanic left Southampton in April, 1912. The two ships were together for around 44 days, and were even photographed together. In the photos. Olympic is the one in full White Star livery, whereas Titanic is in base paint, with parts of her superstructure and three funnels still not in place.'
Please direct me to any error in that?
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@Tozzpot500 Good for you. The recent flak I have been receiving includes an allegation that I am, apparently, 'getting rattled.' The last time I can actually recall getting rattled (although 'bloody terrified! might be more accurate) was when opening the batting in a club cricket semi-final, in a cup competition.
The opposition turned up with a Professional fast bowler who had played a serious number of international matches, and delivered the ball, very accurately, at 85+ mph. I, somehow, and more by luck than judgement, managed to get to the mid 20s before my off stump vanished. We were hammered, by the way! I suggest that arguments over a half-forgotten, at least to most people, event, discussion of which is, at most, an interesting hobby, do not really come close.
As to the recent fracas, I see no point in replying to insults as opposed to debates about facts. Hopefully, these people, or at least the one I believe is overseeing their antics, well begin to realise that it takes a lot longer for them to post their comments than it does for me to press a delete button.
i regret, of course, the degrading effect their behaviour is having on the quality of discussion on the two main sites, however.
Oh, Merry Christmas, by the way!
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@UCk8kuU12U6EZJKSpcKZTJmQ 'Admitting?' No, STATING. There has never been any dispute that parts of the incomplete Titanic's propeller SHAFT were used. Harland & Wolff said as much in 1911. The Admiralty Report, issued in November 1911, referred to damage to the shaft, but not to the propeller, and certainly not to the keel. Perhaps you didn't know of the Admiralty Report. No, of course you didn't.
The intention was to speed up Olympic's return to sea, which H & W achieved in late November, 1911, several months before Titanic was completed. - Another fact, by the way, which proves any switch was impossible. Do you understand the difference between a propeller and a propeller shaft? Seemingly not.
Not that it is relevant to the switch, but the Olympic/Hawke collision was the result of an error of judgement by the man in charge of Olympic at the time. No, not Edward Smith, but a Solent Pilot, who was in command of Olympic in the restricted waters of the Solent, as determined by the official Inquiry. I assume you know what a Harbour Pilot is? Perhaps not.
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British policy was to continue the fight from Canada IF BRITAIN WAS INVADED. The supposed air superiority was of little use to a Luftwaffe which had failed badly at Dunkirk, because of a total lack of training in anti-shipping techniques. In September, 1940, the RN had around 70 destroyers and light cruisers within close range of the Dover Straits, supported by around 500 smaller warships. During the whole of the war, even after the Luftwaffe had rectified the earlier lack of training, it managed to sink 31 RN destroyers, and no British warship at all larger than a light cruiser. It only managed to acquire high performance torpedo bombers in early 1942.
Instead of pontificating about what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done, perhaps you might pay closer attention to what it actually did? Or, rather, didn't do.
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1). Why should it seem odd that the two ships were together at the dockyard which built them, when one was being repaired after collision damage, and the other was in the final stages of construction?
2). What 'cash paid?'
3). What word 'got out?'
4). Which opponents to the 'Central Bank?' Certainly not Astor & Guggenheim, whose opinions were never known. Nor Straus, who was known to have supported the idea.
5). Indeed Morgan didn't. It was known from late March that he wasn't intending to sail in Titanic. Just as he hadn't sailed in Olympic in 1911. Indeed, from 1904 to 1912 only twice (1908 and 1910) did Morgan return to New York from Europe before July, and in one of those years (1908) he returned so early only to attend a family wedding, heading back to Europe a few days later and staying there until late August. President Taft, King George V, and Kaiser Wilhelm II were not aboard either. Do you think that significant as well? The fact that he intended to be in Venice instead had even been mentioned in the New York Times, late in March. I expect that you didn't know that?
6). Actually, there were plenty of reports of ice on deck, although that would not be significant anyway, where a glancing impact was involved.
7). Exactly how many more facts do you need to disprove the nonsense?
8). Your Caps Lock needs to be repaired, as it makes you look like an idiot.
9). As do your comments, of course!
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@zillahwells4063 The problem with the claims made by Senan Molony about the bunker fire are that, in order to have any effect at all on any steelwork, it would need to reach between 1000 ans 1800 degrees Farenheit. By chance, the affected bunker was directly below Titanic's swimming pool. Such temperatures would have caused the water in the pool to boil, but no survivor ever reported anything of the sort happening.
Certainly, the deck at the forward edge of the pool would have been searing hot, paint would have been bubbling off, and the hull plates outside the pool would likely also have been deforming from the incredible heat. Survivor testimony from first class passenger Archibald Gracie and surviving photographs of the Titanic’s pool show the pool area was undamaged and the water’s temperature was mildly heated to a comfortable warm rather than a scalding hot. It would, moreover, have taken men with protective gear to approach the bulkhead and fight the fire had it been as hot as Molony claimed, as the temperature would have been too hot for the exposed human body to handle, something which was never described by survivors.
Actually, The impact of the bunker fire has been investigated and examined and dismissed long before Molony published his rendition of the theory. One such investigation into the matter was performed by Commander Brian Penoyer of the United States Coast Guard. Commander Penoyer re-evaluated the available evidence on the sinking of Titanic in 2006 for the television show Seconds From Disaster. When evaluating the possibility of fire damage to the ship’s structure from the coal bunker fire, Commander Penoyer consulted naval architect Bill Garzke.
When Commander Penoyer asked Garzke what he thought regarding the fire theory, he replied, “It’s a good theory, but it doesn’t measure up to what we now know happened the ship” (Seconds From Disaster). Garzke further stated he believed the fire had little to do with the sinking as the sixth compartment was already flooding with water and being pumped dry shortly after the iceberg strike, meaning any fire damage to the bulkhead would have made little difference in the ship’s sinking as the iceberg damage had already gone passed the offending bulkhead.
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@zillahwells4063 Of course I have no idea what information you claim to have. Largely because you have so far been unable or unwilling to provide any of it.
'Look up the article yourself if you're capable. I am not required to prove anything to you.' Sorry, but that is not how things work. If a claim is made. allegedly based on specific information, then it behoves the individual making the claim to seek to substantiate it by providing the source of that information. Saying, as you have, 'It is true because I say that it is true' doesn't meet that requirement, and the fact that you seem to be getting more and more angry hardly adds weight to your case.
My replies simply presented a host of facts about the reality of the bunker fire. I am sorry that I have, apparently, raised your blood pressure, but it seemed appropriate that one of us, at least, should deal in documented facts.
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@johnburns4017 Well, here is the article recently written by Urquhart's great nephew:-
My great-uncle, Major Brian Urquhart, died at the age of 101 on 3rd January 2021, in America where he retired after a long post-war career with the United Nations.
Immediately after the battle he was promoted and given command of one of the Nazi-scientist hunting teams. He then became one of the first under-secretaries establishing the UN as we know it today.
He never liked his association with Arnhem, it was but one battle in a long career. I asked him once about a soldier’s life, which I was then contemplating. The story he told concerned his orders to arrange the repatriation of Cossacks to Russia on special trains.
He had his men seal the windows shut with barbed wire and watched as the first were hung from trees by the NKVD before the last were disembarked. Women and children among them, who tried to cut their throats on the barbed wire he had insisted on. He became very bitter after that. He asked if I could handle orders like those.
The majority of his career was as a diplomat who firmly believed the UN should be the only holder of nuclear weapons, controlled by an internationalist military force whose mission was to preserve humanity. A life in peace and war : Brian Urquhart For the man who unlocked the gates at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp it’s not hard to connect with his idealism. Or decipher his contempt for Generals.
It’s also worth pointing out the inaccuracies in his portrayal in many of the books and films. He didn’t get into an argument with Lt General Browning about tanks at Arnhem - Majors don't argue with Lt Generals he told me - he informed the chief of staff- a brigadier - and a few of the brigade majors, that he believed German panzer units had been positioned nearby.
Brian got this information from Enigma code breaking, he was the only ULTRA* cleared officer on the Airborne staff - the main reason he didn’t fly in with Corps headquarters. That information probably included how few tanks there were - but also how many veteran troops and battle-hardened commanders were stationed nearby.
In 1944 he couldn't tell the brigadier, his colleagues or Browning even, where he got his information or its provenance. It’s possible he exaggerated resistance reports and tertiary aerial photos to make his case. Photos like we see in the films have never been found. So it wasn’t quite as clear cut.
When he was interviewed by historians after the war, he had to continue the cover story for ULTRA. When Cornelius Ryan interviewed him for a Bridge too Far in the late 50s, ULTRA was still top secret. Ryan printed Brian’s cover story of aerial photos and Attenborough conflated them with the Tiger II’s - that turned up days later from the Czech border.
The final assessment, that these panzer divisions weren’t fully operational, and the tanks, if any, were junk, was actually the correct one. 1st Airborne would only meet one SP Gun on Day 1, a few partially armed training tanks, armoured cars and half tracks before day 3. They destroyed most of them.
This is a French Char B1 used by a German training unit near Arnhem. The first tank encountered by 1st Airborne and was destroyed by a 17pdr before it did any damage. It was a French Char B1 used by a German training unit near Arnhem.
It was the proximity of command staff and their brilliance in improvisation and counter attack that ruined the mission. Foot infantry with MG42 and 81mm mortar stopped 1st Airborne getting to the bridges not panzers.
The real threat of panzers at Arnhem was more obvious and a bit further away.
Another great uncle, Colonel William Conran RE, was an engineer on XXX Corps staff. He had been sent there to maintain the roads leading to Arnhem. He and Brian separately pointed out the biggest issue with Arnhem.
It was sold as a strategic location from where a quick right turn took you into the Ruhr valley with all its factories. Both pointed out it was therefore only a quick left turn from the Ruhr to Arnhem, and being the centre of German war production, there had to be tanks and materiel hanging about there.
This was the reason for the three day time limit on reaching Arnhem, any longer and they would be facing extermination by Panzer, mortar and artillery bought in from the Ruhr. Which is exactly what happened, the main armoured threat came days later and was mainly STuG assault guns, the perimeter was assaulted more by mortar fire than anything.
If a Major Royal Engineers could work out the threat to Arnhem from a Michelin guide it wasn’t Brian’s failure to convince the Airborne staff that led to disaster.
Dirk Bogarde, who played Browning in the film, was also on staff at 2nd Army at the time and always said he thought Browning received undue criticism. I think Ryan agreed but needed US heroes to sell his book to Hollywood, while Eisenhower was in the White House and Ridgeway was Chief of Staff.
It could be why he gave Browning the famous, possibly apocryphal, line ‘we may have gone a bridge too far!’
One last titbit of truth came from both Uncle Bill and Brian. The mission had to go ahead regardless of the threat, and was a success.
The number one problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp. The logistics issue.
To use Antwerp and control the approaches you needed to control everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen. I remember Uncle Bill showing me on a map. He drove his bladed hand up the single road to Nijmegen, with the back of his hand against the German border and Siegfried line. He then spread his fingers along the various rivers into the the estuaries of Scheldt, Zeeland and South Holland, as if to grab the land between.
Those low-lying lands and boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen make a perfect geographical feature to stop behind and prepare a defence of Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant, German forces would have been in artillery and strike range of the Allies primary logistics hub.
Monty and Eisenhower had had a blazing row about how to achieve that, only the week before Market Garden, about his failure to take the Scheldt estuary, which turned into a row about the narrow front vs wide front approach into Germany. It nearly cost Monty his job. No allied forces were going forward that autumn without opening up Antwerp. Air Marshall Tedder and Admiral Ramsay both told Eisenhower to sack Monty after his outburst.
Market Garden was the very next offensive to be launched and had to solve the Antwerp problem. Monty’s decision to push on to Arnhem may have been one last attempt at his single front argument.
You only needed Arnhem if you wanted to springboard into Germany, but you needed everything up to Nijmegen if you wanted to do anything at all. That’s why Monty got all those resources for Market Garden, it contained a vital mission for everyone.
Two majors on staff admitted as much to me. The sacrifice of two light infantry brigades at Arnhem was probably not necessary - but a small price to pay for Noord Brabant, which was vital and accomplished. Without the Arnhem operation all those tanks and mortars and infantry would have gone to Nijmegen, which was I believe the most important bridge - up or down.
I would bet, If Arnhem had been captured and held that Eisenhower would have cut off Monty’s supplies right then and established himself strongly in Noord Brabant. But it never got that far because Ridgeway’s US Airborne forces failed to grab their bridges in time and isolated the 1st Airborne for too long.
I wasn’t clear. Cornelius Ryan’s first book was ‘The Longest Day’ published in 1959, with Eisenhower’s close support. They had known each other a bit during the war and Ike and Ridgeway (then US Army Chief of Staff) introduced him to the major players for interview.
Longest Day almost immediately went into Hollywood on publication, and both books are clearly written with a screenplay in mind.
Many of the interviews on which he based Bridge Too Far were done with Ike’s patronage in the late 50s early 60s. Ryan was dying of cancer for most of the early 70s when he struggled to finish Bridge Too Far.
The book had a very long gestation and a screenplay was knocking around Hollywood when John Wayne was slated to reprise his 1962 role from The Longest Day.
Interestingly the book was only published after Browning had died. I do not know of any major attempts at litigation between Browning and Ryan but I do know many felt there should have been.
( The original article, by the way, includes a photo. of the Char B1.)
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This, presumably, is the same Luftwaffe which hadn't been trained in anti-shipping operations, didn't (until mid 1942) even have a functional torpedo bomber, and had just failed badly at Dunkirk? The same Luftwaffe which, even after receiving proper training, sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser, in the whole of WW2? The same Luftwaffe which could barely operate at all at night, when the RN could?
Just for information, the RN had just over 110 destroyers in Home Waters in September, 1940. 64 of these, supported by several light cruisers and around 500 smaller warships, were within five hours steaming of Dover.
This is 1940, by the way, not 1942-1945.
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@Set-ri6rs I knew about the 'Battle of Bamber Bridge' many years ago, but there again I come from Bamber Bridge, and my mother knew of the events, as a young girl, immediately after they happened.
Acrually, I felt rather sorry for the presenter. She was lumbered with the asinine title. but was left floundering around tryiing, and failing, to justify it.
She did, however, manage to compare the segregation in the US Army to German treatment of the Jews, and refer to the cruel treatment of the 'economic migrants' of the Windrush Generation, who apparently came to help rebuild Britain. Oger than that, and the occasional throw away reference to the 'White Supremacist' attitude of the British Empire, she had nothing.
Churchill was obliged to accept the American military system, of course. He also accepted an alliance with Uncle Joe and his Gallant Lads. Both out of necessity in order to defeat a greater evil. All the programme managed, however, was to demonstrate that neither Churchill, nor the British people, in any way sought to endorse the US system.
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@Titanick9-1912 Mrs. Lines' account of the conversation between Ismay & Smith, which may be read in full in her statement to the Limitation of Liability Hearings, having been given in Paris on 22 November, 1913, states that Ismay simply said to Smith that Titanic was performing better than Olympic had on her maiden voyage. Indeed, she repeated this comment more than once. What she specifically did not say was that she heard Ismay press Smith about Speed.
Ismay's first telegrams used his name. Why the later ones were signed 'Yamsi' neither I, you, nor anyone else knows. If it was code, it was a pathetic one, I suggest. Moreover, when it was put to him, apparently by Lightoller, that the idea was an inappropriate one, nothing more was heard of it.
At the time, Lightoller was Second Officer, effectively 4th in the Chain of Command. He was 38 years old, compared to Captain Smith (62) or Captain Haddock of Olympic (51). Put simply, he was rather young to be considered for command. Moreover, no other White Star officer survivor ever received a White Star command, either. Although unspoken, having been aboard Titanic seems to have been regarded as a Black Mark against the survivors, of whatever rank.
Lightoller served in RMS Oceanic after the sinking, and became her First Officer after her conversion to an Armed Merchant Cruiser in WW1. He later served in the same role aboard the early aircraft carrier HMS Campania before receiving his own command, in 1915.
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'The UK was knocked out of the war in 1940 and played no significant role in it's outcome beyond being a base for the USA.'
You mean apart from winning the naval campaigns in the Atlantic, Arctic, & Indian Oceans, and the Mediterranean Sea, planning and executing every major assault landing in the west, and at Normandy providing crews for 3261 of 4127 landing craft, providing 892 of 1213 warships, providing two thirds of 11600 aircraft, and, with Canada, providing two of every three men who landed on 6 June? Apart from that, you mean?
Oh, and inflicting massive defeats on the Imperial Japanese Army in Burma, such as 55,000 Japanese casualties when the U-Go offensive was defeated.
Please feel free to check any of the above facts to verify them for yourself.
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@thecensoredmuscle563 J. P. Morgan had decided not to sail aboard Titanic around a month before the sailing, and the reason had been mentioned in an article in the 'New York Times' in March, which can still be read by those interested or open minded enough.
He did not pay, or was not required to pay, for anything, as he was Chairman of IMM. The cabin was the most prestigious aboard the ship, as might be expected, but it was not specifically designed for him, or for anyone else.
Yes, he died less than a year later. He was 75 years old, and was known to be in failing health.
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@nickdanger3802 I always understood that was the reason for the Lee/Grant as well. The Ram itself was not particularly innovative, and many countries, Britain included, had been building turreted tanks for some time, the Vickers Medium being a typical British example, but I understood (from a conversation at Bovington years ago) that the it influenced the eventual M4 shape.
Movement of the Churchill by rail in the UK did pose me a bigger problem, which took some searching. All previous British tanks had been within the British loading gauge restriction of 9' 6" (A10 - 8'4", Matilda II - 8' 6", Crusader 9'1"). Looking at the few wartime photos. of Churchills on flat cars, they do seem to have one thing in common, in that projecting rectangular 'boxes' on the side of the vehicle near the rear, clearly visible on most photos. of the tank, appear to have been removed. I suspect, though I don't know for sure, that this brought the overall width down to below 9'6".
Later in the war, as the British built Scammell tank transporters and acquired around 1,000 Diamond Ts from the United States, other alternatives to rail transport became available and the width restriction was not such a problem.
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During Operation Berlin, Scharnhorst & Gneisenau had the opportunity to attack HX106, protected by HMS Ramillies, an old 'R' class battleship. Later, they encountered SL 67, escorted by HMS Malaya, an unmodernised Queen Elizabeth class battleship. On neither occasion did Lutjens, the fleet commander, risk action. German warships in WW2 generally sought to avoid action, as comparatively minor damage would inevitably lead to their destruction, Bismarck being the obvious example.
By the way, the Deutchlands were very poorly armoured, up to heavy cruiser standard at best, as was demonstrated at the Plate, when Spee's armour was penetrated by Exeter's eight inch shells. I doubt that a Deutchland would have coped with an engagement with two Counties, let alone any of the five British & French battlecruisers capable of catching her.
As to two PBs and a battlecruiser (I assume you mean a Scharnhorst, actually a fast, lightly gunned, battleship) the Germans had their opportunity when both Scharnhorsts encountered Renown off Norway in April, 1940. Once again, after Gneisenau was damaged, the Germans refused action.
The reality is that the Deutschlands were planned in Weimar Republic days as a means of attacking French troop convoys in the event of a war with France, or France & Poland. The French produced the Strasbourgs in response. Once the Germans found themselves trying to deal with the Royal Navy as well, the Deutchlands became, in reality, largely irrelevant. Hence their lack of employment after early 1941.
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'What is not terribly debatable is the many eyewitness accounts from stokers that multiple bunkers ignited from radiant heat through the plates partitioning them. During liability hearings after the sinking, they were forcibly silenced.' Simply not true. Surviving stokers gave evidence, and there is no suggestion that they were 'forcibly silenced.' What, indeed, does that phrase even mean?
'What is absolutely not debatable is the "doosie"; calling for more speed to dispose of the coal, which was allegedly burning in a chain as the fire spread from bunker to bunker, and, even if it did not.' Again, simply not true. Titanic had 19 bunkers, only one of which ever reported a fire, which had been extinguished 24 hours or so before the collision, by using the coal from Bunker that bunker first. Simply shovelling coal into a boiler might increase boiler pressure, which will be dealt with by releasing the excess through safety valves. It will not cause reciprocating engines to operate more quickly.
'Boilers cannot operate on seawater.' Correct, which is why Titanic carried fresh-water tanks in the ship's double bottom. These were located under the reciprocating and turbine engine rooms and had a total capacity of just over 1000 tons. She also carried distillation plants to convert sea into fresh water. As her stokers were not frenziedly shovelling coal in vast amounts into her boilers in any case, however, your point is irrelevant.
'Theblaze precipitating the collision and subsequent sinking is actually quite compelling, indeed.' Indeed not. There was no significant blaze, which makes this comment, indeed your entire post, meaningless.
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@Dizzy19. Careful, don't poke the bear. You might reach a situation which results in every comment you make being the subject of a reponse which is replete with insults, as I have.
What makes this more entertaining is that these responses don't usually actually relate to the comment or subject at all.
Whilst this is extremely amusing, it does lead to my considerable misgivings about the mental state of the person (or now, it seems, people) concerned.
A pity there don't appear to be any qualified psychiatrists interested in Titanic, as I would welcome their opinion.
I now propose to refrain from replying to any of these people, as it was considered, as early as the 18th century, to be rather bad form to poke the residents of Bedlam with a stick.
Of course, actual, genuine, comments, even if silly on occasion, will still receive a response.
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@keithammleter3824 'Harland & Wolf were a bit dodgy back then, focused on saving costs. It has been found in old records that they knowingly put cheap rivets in parts of the hull they thought should see less stress. Which was where the berg hit.'
I'm sure that you have an unimpeachable source for this allegation. You do, don't you?
You should view the documentary 'Titanic 100 : Mystery Solved, ' which would inform you of the following :-
Parks Stephenson and Dan Butler also tested the weak rivet theory. They reproduced Titanic’s seams using original blueprints and the exact same materials. When they performed their tests, the steel bent much further than 5mm. The rivets didn’t fail until around 20,000 pounds of force. Even then, the seam was still watertight.
But there was another test to perform, on a newer and bigger seam. In January 1912, Olympic ran into a very heavy storm. A storm that Captain Smith described as the worst he’d ever experienced. During this storm, some of Olympic’s hatch covers and railings became loose. But also some rivets became loose. This resulted in her returning to the dry dock between January 1912 and the maiden voyage of the Titanic. Harland and Wolff had to prevent this from happening to the Titanic. So they drilled old rivets out, added a new strap of metal over the original seam and inserted newer rivets. This also included steel rivets.
According to original drawings, this was done on all seams under the Titanic’s waterline. With this, the seams were now quadruple riveted, not tripled. When they tested the new seam, it began to fail at 25,000 pounds of force. Yet it was still more watertight that the original seam.
Thus to conclude, the Titanic was NOT a weak ship and the materials used to build her were not cheap or defective. Even though she could have been stronger, she was still not weak. The answer why she could have been stronger lies in why Harland and Wolff ordered Grade 3 iron and not Grade 4. The exact reason is unknown, as there are no official documents, letters or memoirs containing a reason. If there is one, it is buried somewhere in a private collection. If she was made with Grade Number 4 wrought iron rivets, the seams would still have failed, but not as much as they did. This means she could have stayed afloat longer than she actually did. But whether she would have stayed afloat long enough for help to arrive is still questionable and always will be. But the Titanic was NOT a weak ship.
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@stequality It is because of the First Past The Post electoral system. This worked when there were two major parties (Tory/Liberal, then Tory/Labour) but doesn't work when there are several. As proof, simply divide the number of votes cast by the number of seats won, and you will see what I mean :-
Labour. 9,706,716 411 seats 23,622 votes per MP
Tory. 6,828.925 121 seats 56,437 votes per MP
LibDem. 3,519,143 72 seats 48,877 votes per MP
Reform. 4,117,610 5 seats 823,522 votes per MP
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@ParabellumStoria Sorry, but my information about the raid on Alexandria is rather different :- 'Fortunately for the Allies the enemy was not fully aware of the precarious position of the Mediterranean Fleet. To fool Axis reconnaissance aircraft into thinking that the raid had failed, apparently normal operations were conducted on a day to day basis. Smoke came out of funnels, guns were trained, and all the routine ceremonial rituals performed as if nothing had happened. In fact below the waterline frantic repair efforts were being made which lasted several weeks. Had the Axis realised the truth then Admiral Cunningham, with only a few operational ships at his disposal, could have been driven out of the Mediterranean, with potentially disastrous consequences for the Allies.'
Certainly, the morning after the attack, Cunningham conducted the Colours ceremony, with the Royal Marine Band, on Queen Elizabeth's quarterdeck, and foreign correspondents were even invited to attend. If, as you say, the success of the attack was known, why was there no attempt by the axis to exploit their naval superiority?
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@bigwoody4704 I suspect that you haven't actually read Montgomery's memoirs. He didn't ignore the important role of the Desert Air Force, or of Admiral Harwood's Mediterranean Fleet. Clearly you didn't know that between 22 April, 1942, and February, 1943, Harwood, not Cunningham was C-in-C Mediterranean Fleet. Incidentally, he didn't seek to blame Sosabowski for Market Garden either, whatever subsequent myth might claim.
Certainly, Montgomery developed a personal dislike for the Auk, dating from 1940, and much of the success of Alam Halfa was as a result of Auchinleck's outline plan for the battle. De Guingand may well have said that about Montgomery, probably because at the time he was not, unlike Montgomery, Ultra cleared, and could not be told the source of Montgomery's apparent second sight. This was not uncommon. After the sinking of Bismarck, most of the supply ships placed for her benefit in the Atlantic were quickly captured or sunk, apparently as a result of their chance detection by air reconnaissance. The fact that on 9 May, 1941, HMS Bulldog had captured the enigma machine and code books from U110, the real reason for the clean sweep of the German vessels, could not be disclosed.
Montgomery had a number of flaws, his vanity not being the least of them, but frankly the bulk of the criticism he receives seems to be based more on nationality than competence. Vanity, by the way, was not restricted to British commanders.
Trolling? You mean answering posts with which I do not agree? Oh well.
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@myclearwater1471 There is no 'if true' about it. It is a fact. You may choose to question what motivated them, I will simply stick to the truth.
Your understanding, as seems to be a consistent thread, is wrong.
What has the nationality of the commanders to do with anything? In fact, unlike the US Army of the time, the British Armed Forces did not have a policy of racial segregation. A typical Indian division had a mixture of British & Indian units within it, and generally Indian units were commanded by Indian officers who, should the situation arise, also had authority over British units. Agreed, at the Corps and Army levels, the officers were mainly British, Australian, New Zealand, or Canadian, largely because that is where the career soldiers of the time came from.
Your prejudice, and your ignorance of the period, continues to amaze and amuse me. Just for your information, at the height of the Raj, around 320,000,000 Indians were administered (in your perverted view, oppressed) by 20,000 British administrators.
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@ArmouredCarriers Text of a signal from Vice Admiral, Naval Air Stations. to the Admiralty, 21 September, 1941:-
Selection of Hurricanes for conversion to
Sea Hurricanes
Be pleased to represent to Their Lordships that the Vice Admiral Naval Air Stations does not consider that the selection of Hurricanes for conversion to Sea Hurricanes has up to the present been altogether satisfactory.
2. Many of those selected have been of the L.P. and N. series, and most of these have had previous service in Royal Air Force Operational Squadrons. One particular case may be quoted; N. 2455 has since October 1939 been in two different Royal Air Force Squadrons, took part in the Battle of Britain, and was twice extensively damaged, once by forced landing and once by enemy action, before being converted to Sea Hurricane.
3. All these old aircraft suffer from a multitude of minor defects and the Stations have had to expend many weeks’ work in rendering them fit for allotment to a Squadron, and although after this work had been completed the aircraft can be considered as serviceable, it is thought from consideration of their age and previous history that it is most likely that they will continue to suffer from minor defects during their remaining life.
4. It is further considered that even if they can be maintained serviceable, the effect on morale of allotting aircraft of this type to a new Squadron forming is deplorable. Many of the Pilots joining will be young and enthusiastic officers, joining an Operational Squadron for the first time, and to be given an aircraft which can only be described as a ‘cast off from the Royal Air Force’ causes a considerable damping of their ardour.
5. It is submitted that in future only new Hurricanes or those with a minimum of flying hours should be selected for conversion to Sea Hurricanes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Minute from Prime Minister to Secretary of Chiefs of Staff Committee [ADM 116/ 5348] 30 September 1941
:-
Fighters for aircraft carriers
When I visited INDOMITABLE last week, I was astonished to learn that the handful of Hurricanes to be allotted to this vital war unit were only of the lower type Hurricane Ones. I trust it may be arranged that only the finest aeroplanes that can do the work go into all aircraft-carriers. All this year it has been apparent that the power to launch the highest class fighters from aircraft-carriers may reopen to the Fleet great strategic doors which have been closed against them. The aircraft-carrier should have supreme priority in the quality and character of suitable types.
===============================================
The Air Ministry, of course, ignored this. When PQ18 sailed for Russia a year later, the aircraft aboard the escort carrier 'Avenger' were the Sea Hurricane equivalent of the Mark 1, yet aboard the merchantmen were many crated versions of a much later mark.
Mind you, in May, 1941, when there were virtually no modern British fighters in Greece, Crete, or the Middle East, the Air Ministry had 56 squadrons of fighters & fighter bombers carrying out regular, and pointless, fighter sweeps over Northern France.
Whose side was the Air Ministry on in WW2, I wonder?1
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@youraveragescotsman7119 Moreover, the High Seas Fleet, whilst it made two brief sorties later in 1916, carefully avoided risking any further encounter with the Grand Fleet, but largely stayed at anchor in the Jade. As a result, the British Northern Patrol maintained the Blockade, and systematically starved the German population. Anyone who believes that Jutland was anything more than, as far as the battlecruiser forces were concerned, a tactical success for the Germans would do well to read about the 'Turnip Winter.'
No wonder that, by late 1918, Germany was on the verge of revolution, and the High Seas Fleet had mutinied.
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@youraveragescotsman7119 He was appointed to command of V Corps, responsible for the defence of Hampshire & Dorset, in July, 1940. His immediate superior was Auchinleck, who was C-in-C Southern Command. At about that time, Monty began a long-running feud with the Auk, which seems to have continued for the rest of his life, and even resulted in the publishers of his autobiography having to include an apology in them for certain claims made by Monty which might have resulted in legal action.
I believe part of his doubt concerned the one undeniable weakness suffered by the Home Guard, their lack of mobility arising from their lack of transport. I think the Auk envisaged a more static defence in the event of a German landing, which would allow the RN to cut their supply lines and starve them to defeat, whereas Monty had a more mobile defence in mind.
Clearly, Monty had not been told about Corporal Jones' van, or the strategic importance of the Novelty Rock Emporium!
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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@robw1866 Perhaps that says more about the electorial system?
Mathematically, it required 23,622 votes to elect one Labour MP, 56,437 to elect one Tory, and 823,522 to elect one Reform MP.
First past the post is only a democtatic system when two parties only are involved, as in a Presidential election, or with the now gone two party system in the UK, when the parties were Tory/Liberal, or later Tory/Labour.
When there are, arguably, five parties, it is no longer fit for purpose. When a party can receive 500,000 less votes in an election, as Labour did in 2024 compared to 2019, yet, paradoxically, receive a huge majority, isn't it obvious that something no longer works?
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@jebbroham1776 Aside from minor differences, the WW1 Lee Enfield and the one used in WW2 were essentially the same rifle. Moreover, the divisions had effective artillery, mechanised transport, and armoured support.
In terms of tanks, even immediately after Dunkirk, the British had 331 light tanks, 184 cruisers, and 100 Infantry tanks. By the end of August, these numbers had increased to 659 lights, 322 cruisers, and 274 'I tanks.
By September, the idea that the British were short of equipment is a false one.
'COULD Germans have landed in Southern England? Absolutely.' Sorry, but you missed a word after 'absolutely.' The word was 'not.'
The RN Pink List for September, 1940 shows some 70 light cruisers and destroyers within five hours steaming of the Straits of Dover, with around five hundred small warships in immediate support.
The Germans were going to get past this force how, precisely? With canal barges towed by tugs and trawlers, defended bt the seven destroyers and seven large torpedo boats which were all the Kreigsmarine could provide in September, 1940?
Do you really think so?
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@SchwarzerWolf1000 Hood was 20 years old. Prince of Wales was not worked up, more or less sreaight from the builders. Compare Bismarck to HMS Rodney, which was 15 years old in 1941.
Bismarck had weaker armour of an outmoded design. She also had a weaker weight of briadside. Specifically :-
Bismarck belt armour 12.6 inches. Deck armour 4.7 inches. Broadside 14112 lbs.
Rodney belt armour 14 inches. Deck armour 6.25 inches. Broadside 18432 lbs.
King George V belt armour 14 inches. Deck armour 6 inches. Broadside 15900 lbs.
This was (under)achieved on a displacement 15,000 tons greater that that of Rodney, and 10,000 tons greater than that of King George V.
Bismarck had around 7 knots advantage in speed over Rodney, and, arguably, 0.5 - 1 knot above that of a KGV. Her only advantage was the ability to avoid battle.
Bismarck was fortunate that PoW was little more than semi-operational, although PoW's hits did force Bismarck's mission to be abandoned, of course.
You asked for comparisons. Now you have them.
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The damage to Olympic was not similar to that of Titanic. Hawke was moving at 8 knots when her ram bow penetrated Olympic's starboard side. Olympic had a 92 feet beam, and the ram only penetrated some 6-8 feet, causing two compartments to flood, and damaging her propeller shaft. Despite excitable claims by dedicated switchers, there was no contemporary references at all to the alleged 'keel damage.'
At the time, the damage was seen as proof of Olympic's sound construction, and the repairs were carried out very quickly, in less than two months, by Harland & Wolff.
One wonders about the claims that Titanic's hull plates were 'full of imperfections' when her sister ship, using the same plates and built at the same time, operated successfully as a translantic liner until 1934, even acquiring the nickname 'old reliable' along the way.
Olympic was not intended to remain white. She was so painted so that she would show up more clearly and impressively on the newsreels of the day. Cunard's Mauretania had been similarly painted when she was launched in 1906.
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@luigicorvi1661 So if the Olympic, badly damaged and sailing as the Titanic, in your view. did leave Southampton, how was it that no-one, crew or passengers, ever noticed that they were aboard a crippled ship?
How was it that the ship was, apparently, performing better than she had on her previous maiden voyage, as herself, the previous June?
How was it that only one other ship had actually stopped? A small freighter, Californian. Which, by the way, was carrying a 'mixed, general, cargo' according to the Boston shipping newspapers when she docked on 19 April, and not your imagined cargo of blankets at all.
The rest of your post is too crazed to be worthy of further comment, except for one more, of course.
Pl;ease get your Caps Lock mended!
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@WorshipinIdols Except that, as a result of the battle, Bismarck, listing, down by the bows, and short of fuel, promptly abandoned her commerce raiding mission and made an unsuccessful, slow speed, run for St. Nazaire. As none of the hits on Prince of Wales actually exploded, because none hit her all-or-nothing belt, she was only lightly damaged, and actually re-engaged later in the day.
To judge who were the strategic victors, ask yourself:
1). What was Bismarck's strategic objective?
2). How much of it did she achieve?
Incidentally, I said 'a series of failures,' I did not say that there were no successes, even though they were few and far between.
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@WorshipinIdols Where have I lied/
1. If you can't be bother checking your own posts, why expect me to guess at their meaning?
2. I don't think I have mentioned ranges or gunnery, but I do know the details of the action, clearly better than you do. Bismarck opened fire at 22,000 yards, and scored the decisive hit or hits at around 18,000 yards.
What is a 'state-of-the-years' 380mm rifle, by the way? Do tell.
3. I did in fact refer to the hit which caused 600 tons of water to enter Prince of Wales amidships. As I also said, I have read Leach's full damage report. The hit caused a temporary two knot speed reduction, although this appears to have been restored quickly. Leach withdrew following the loss of Hood because he was aware that his half worked-up ship should not attempt to challenge Bismarck unsupported, and because one of the troublesome quadruple turrets had jammed. He did precisely the right thing, joining the senior officer present, Wake-Walker, and helping to shadow the Bismarck as she made for St. Nazaire. Tovey later agreed that this action was the correct one.
Again, where have I lied?
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@Sashulya Please don't get so excited. I merely pointed out that the loss of experienced aircrew and aircraft during the Battle of Britain (and, of course, during the Battle of Crete) had a seriously adverse effect on the German ability to conduct their campaign. You don't really deny that, surely?
Please remind me where and when I wrote that it was a critical factor in the failure or success of that campaign?
Actually, the RAF were replacing their fighter losses on, almost, a daily basis, and their production facilities were largely unaffected. By May, 1941, the British had allocated 56 squadrons of fighters & fighter-bombers to regular offensive sweeps across Northern France. Further depleting German aircraft resources for the June attack, by the way.
Where does your 3,000 come from?
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@WeMustResist Simply not true. Firstly, for a time aerial bombing was the only physical way that Britain could strike back at Germany, and, secondly and more importantly, the Royal Navy had plenty of resources given to it.
Aren't you even aware of the large number of escort ships built, the huge number of assault ships and craft without which landings would have been impossible, and the number of cruisers and destroyers built during WW2?
The Royal Navy had 200,000 personnel, including Royal Marines & Royal Naval Reservists, in 1939. In 1945 it had 800,000 personnel, with a further 73,000 WRNS. In terms of ships, 15 battleships & battlecruisers, 7 carriers, 66 cruisers, 184 destroyers, 60 submarines, and 45 escorts in 1939. By 1945, 15 battleships & battlecruiser, 55 carriers, 67 cruisers, 308 destroyers, and 161 submarines I won't even bother to tell you the number of escorts in service in 1945.
Those 1945 figures, by the way, are after wartime losses have been deducted.
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The 'Battle' as the movie calls it, the Battle of El Guettar, between 23 March & 3 April, 1943, was actually inconclusive. Look it up for yourself.
At more or less the same time, 26 March, 8th Army broke the Axis defences at the Mareth Line, and slightly later, on 6 April, drove the Axis forces into wholesale retreat at the Battle of Wadi Akarit.
Odd that George C. Scott's comic masterpiece of a movie missed those details, wasn't it?
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@alexandros4703 ' Bla, Bla, Bla, you're a scatterbrain, bud, Lusitania this, Olympic the other and Maritunai something else; And yeh, yeh, yeh, if my Aunty had a bollox she would have been my Uncle, etc etc, etc.'
Oh dear. Were you intoxicated when you posted that?
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The binoculars belonged to David Blair, who was supposed to have been Second Officer of Titanic. However, he was replaced by Henry Wilde, Olympic's Chief Officer, because Wilde had more experience aboard the Olympic class of ship. Blair was transferred to Olympic, and took the 'glasses' which were, apparently, his personal property with him. Certainly, Titanic's lookouts were aware that no binoculars were available. One gave such evidence at the enquiry.
Your suggestion about Smith getting 'Olympic to run into a war ship as a test, to determine how to sink the Titanic' is ludicrous. Firstly, HMS Hawke ran into Olympic, not the other way round, secondly Smith was not in charge of Olympic at the time, a Solernt Harbour Pilot was, and thirdly, Olympic comfortably survived the incident.
Olympic and Titanic had exactly the same propulsion systems, although Olympic had a four bladed and Titanic a three bladed centre propeller. On both ships the 4th funnel was for ventilation purposes only, and because, for aesthetic reasons, White Star wanted a four funnelled design to match Cunard's Lusitanias.
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@Wollemand ' “BoB In the air “was lost meaning: Britain had no more aircraft.' Why does it mean that? simply because you want it to? What it actually means is that the Germans have air superiority over the Home Counties. The British are still easily outproducing the Germans in aircraft, and any German bomber outside the range of fighter protection is still desperately vulnerable. Fighter Command has simply withdrawn north of London, in order to rebuild resources.
The crews of Prince of Wales and Repulse would tell you that their ships were sunk by aerial torpedoes delivered by well trained Japanese pilots flying high performance torpedo aircraft. As I explained earlier, the Luftwaffe had no such aircraft, and no such training, in 1940.
Actually, the British had re-equipped in armour so quickly that, in August 1940, they had felt safe enough to send a troop convoy including three full armoured regiments to North Africa (The 'Apology' Convoy). Moreover, it really doesn't matter how many tanks or troops the Germans have if they can't get them across the Channel.
I wouldn't doubt that the Luftwaffe 'would have' bombed the RN in the Channel. However, as they had failed to hit most of the ships collecting troops from Dunkirk when they were immobile, I would be willing to bet that, attempting to hit similar ships zig zagging at 25 knots or so, they were likely to have been even more unsuccessful. Furthermore, what happens to the invasion barges at night, when the Royal Navy can operate, and aircraft cannot?
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The Royal and Royal Canadian Navies won the Battle of the Atlantic. The Royal Navy won the capaigns in the Arctic and the Mediterranean, and every major assault landing in the west, except Dragoon, was planned and largely executed by the British.
For every two US soldiers who landed in Normandy on 6 June, there were three British & Canadians, 3261 of the 4127 landing craft were British/Canadian manned, 892 of the 1213 warships were RN or RCN, two thirds of the aircraft were RAF, all three service chiefs were British, the minesweeping operation was overwhelmingly the work of British & Canadian sweepers, and the Escort & Support Groups which destroyed the attempts by U-Boats to intervene were RN & RCN, from the Western Approaches groups.
I appreciate the lack of confidence in the United States following the recent events in Afghanistan, but distorting the past to make up for failures in the present solves nothing.
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@jessejamesroy0069 You appear to have a lot of 'would haves' in your comment. Firstly, Tirpitz did not become operational for another seven months, by which time the RN had another KGV in commission, and, if Bismarck was still above water, were unlikely to have sent PoW east. Rodney, in addition, would be back from her US refit.
How do you know that Tirpitz 'would have' fought off a Swordfish attack any more effectively than Bismarck did(n't)? Which submarines would come to Bismarck's aid? In may, 1941, there were only two anywhere near her. U-Boats generally were used against merchant shipping as part of a trade war.
'Innocent men?' They were the crew of a warship in wartime, on a mission to attack and destroy merchant shipping. 'Unfortunate' perhaps. Defeated ships in naval battles do tend to be sunk, and the crews suffer as a result. What else would you have had Tovey do? Give the Bismarck a stern talking to, and send her on her way with her tail between her legs?
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Morgan had already decided, in March, not to sail in Titanic, and his actual destination, St. Mark's in Venice, had already been announced in the NYT around two weeks before Titanic sailed. Morgan hadn't sailed in Olympic when she made her maiden voyage in June 1911 either. Do you suggest that that was suspicious? Come to that, Tsar Nicholas II, King George V, and President Taft were not aboard Titanic either. Do you think that they were aware of the nefarious plot as well??!!
Indeed, between 1904 & 1912, Morgan only sailed to New York before July twice, and one of the trips was to attend a wedding. By the way, as owner of IMM, he had no need to book a ticket in any case. Nor, except in conspiracist myth, did he have artworks loaded aboard, then taken off, Titanic.
Ismay actually went instead, on what was actually intended to be a business trip. Why should his wife be ordered to travel with him?
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@massimomax3215 Actually, I don't need to guess, I know. I have the Official Admiralty publication, 'British Vessels lost at Sea, 1939-1945.' There were 9 destroyers (6 lost to aircraft), 7 auxiliary minesweepers (4 to aircraft), 1 auxiliary AA vessel (to aircraft), 1 armed boarding vessel (to aircraft), 1 gunboat (to aircraft), 13 trawlers & drifters ( 5 to aircraft), 2 yachts (1 to aircraft), and 1 tug (to aircraft).
The auxiliary minesweepers & auxiliary AA vessels were actually requisitioned paddle steamers, by the way. Whilst it was cunning of you to choose May & June, presumably in order to include the Dunkirk evacuation, all you have done is demonstrated quite how inept the Luftwaffe were in their failed attempts to prevent it. Thus, In May and June in the Channel, the RN lost only nine front line warships, 6 of which to were to air attack. Would you like to know the names of any of the ships, by the way? You only have to ask.
Just to give you some idea of the paucity of your argument, by September, 1940, when an invasion attempt might, just possibly, have been attempted, the Royal Navy had 182 destroyers in commission, of which 64, plus 5 light cruisers, were allocated to anti-invasion duties, together with around five hundred smaller warships. No wonder that Wolfram von Richthoven & Oskar Dinort, two of the most senior Luftwaffe commanders at the time, both said that protection of the invasion barges was utterly beyond the Luftwaffe's capabilities.
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Randal Gliph I must admit that this pair of scroungers aren't really high on my list of interests at the moment, but I believe that the 'Relationship' with the Royal Family is to be reviewed in the New Year.
My own view of them, which to be honest does, I suspect, concur with almost everyone else in the UK other than the Wokes & Snowflakes who run the BBC, is that they have an almost limitless sense of entitlement, which leads them to assume that they can happily exploit the 'Royal Highness' titles without accepting any of the duties and responsibilities that are involved. Even keen Republicans in the UK, whatever their views on the future of the monarchy, would not deny the Queen's almost boundless sense of duty, and the manner in which Harry & his keeper seem intent upon dragging the House of Windsor down is a source of widespread disgust.
As to Harry's attempt to interfere in US politics, I thought things like that had ceased over 200 years ago when you Colonials had the best of a rather nasty disagreement?!
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@Random_Blip 'You can add Indians to that list seeing as they hold him responsible for the Bengal famine of 1943 (millions of deaths).' Actually, only those who have been indoctrinated.
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India. Seriously, when 2.5 million Indians were fighting for the Allied cause, would anyone really attempt to cause a famine?
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it would require you to try to break your programming.
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@carterglass1694 Didn't you write 'Failed TV presenter dressed as a banker telling you its all nonsense. HHHMMM.' Apparently attacking by that that a video arguing the conspiracy theory was false?
But now you support such theories yourself :-
1) The ship was not poorly built.
2) The claim that three bankers who opposed the Fed. died on board is classic conspiracy fantasy nonsense from the 1990s. The views of two, Astor & Guggenheim, were never made clear, whilst the third, Straus, had spoken in support of the Fed. in October, 1911. His speech may still be read.
3) The Jekyll Island meeting took place in November, 1910. None of those present had anything to do with Titanic.
4) No Insurance scam could have worked because the Olympics were both only insured for two thirds of their building costs. When Titanic sank, White Star lost a major asset, their safety record, and £500,000 at 1912 values, Some scam
5). NDAs did not exist in 1912. Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) were first used in the 1940s in maritime law. But the reality is that the H & W workforce never spoke about the switch, because there was no switch.
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@xenaguy01 Whether she was a battleship or a battlecruiser (and actually her armour was on a par with that of the Queen Elizabeth Class battleships) how is that relevant?
You should view Drachinifel's examination of her sinking, in which he makes a good case for the fatal shell passing through her side, above her belt, and triggering off her four inch magazine, which in turn detonated her aft fifteen inch magazine.
Moreover, the fact of her sinking does not prove that there were any shortcomings in cordite handling. Her last Captain, Ralph Kerr, had served at Jutland, and knew what such shortcuts, within the battlecruiser fleet, could cause.
USS Arizona blew up in Pearl Harbor. Does that 'prove' that her codite handling was deficient? Of course not. So why do you think this applies to HMS Hood?
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@xenaguy01 Changes to cordite handling practices were instituted in the Battlecruiser Fleet within days of the Battle of Jutland. That is a simple fact,. There is nothing to prove. Simply read the RN's archives in Kew Gardens, where the National Archives' are kept.
It is relevant, because you falsely claimed that the practice remained in use in battlecruisers. As no RN capital ship acted in such a manner after Jutland, how the ship was defined was totally irrelevant.
Indeed, I did say that only battlecruisers followed the practice. AT JUTLAND, and not later. Didn't you read my comment in full?
'Therefore, I BELIEVE that Hood followed this procedure.' Isn't that the nub of the issue?' You simply want to believe it, even though you have no evidence to support that belief. It isn't up to me to prove something that didn't happen didn't happen. It is up to you to provide evidence that it did.
But, of course, you can't.
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Always nice to read the views of a Sealion 'Would have,' by which I mean one who pontificates alarmingly about what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done to the Royal Navy in 1940.
'For proof, see what the Japanese did to the Battleship Prince of Wales and the heavy cruiser Repulse. Both were sent to the bottom by land-based bombers.' (Repulse was a battlecruiser, by the way) This is not proof at all. The ships were sunk by torpedo bombers, flown by crews trained in anti-shipping operations. In 1940, the Luftwaffe didn't have any torpedo bombers. In fact they didn't acquire any until mid 1942.
Furthermore, the German crews were trained in the support of ground troops, and had had no similar training where ships were concerned. How else do you explain why it was that, presented with targets either motionless, or moving at slow speed, at Dunkirk, the Luftwaffe failed comprehensively to halt the evacuation?
Indeed, how do you explain why, in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser? To put this in perspective, in September, 1940, there were around 70 RN light cruisers and destroyers within five hours of Dover, supported by around 500 smaller warships. There were over 40 more RN destroyers in home waters, by the way. I haven't mentioned the heavy ships of the Home Fleet at Rosyth, as Admiralty planning did not include these in anti-invasion preparations.
As to German troops ashore? The Kriegsmarine plan provided for these to be transported in barges, towed by tugs or trawlers, down the Channel at five knots, with minimal naval protection. The first wave, lacking much motor transport or divisional artillery, and with minimal armoured support, required eleven days to be landed in full. As a German general of the time is said to have remarked of the 'plan,' 'I might just as well put my troops through a mincing machine.' A wise assessment, I suggest.
In short, what Earl St. Vincent said in the Lords during the Napoleonic Wars still held good. "I do not say they cannot come, my Lords. I only say, they cannot come by sea."
Finally, may I paraphrase Jane Austen? "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that, the less a Sealion 'Would have' knows about the facts of 1940, the more strong is the conviction that the attempt might have succeeded!"
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@joeyjojo5986 'How can you say he wasn't involved in the design?' Put simply, because he wasn't. Aside from absurd claims in some of the sillier conspiracy theory videos, there is no evidence to support your nonsense.
Alexander Carlisle designed the Olympics, and gave evidence to the Inquiry after the sinking. He stated, under oath, that no-one from White Star attempted to influence him.
The whole idea is absurd. Do you seriously think that, for example, the Chairmen of British Airways, Qantas, Emirates, or Luftsansa had any involvement in the design of the A380? They, like Ismay, were businessmen, not designers, and thus left the design to the professionals.
The minimum height of bulkheads, in any case, was dictated by Board of Trade regulations.
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What controversy? Prince of Wales, despite being far from being fully worked up, succeeded in damaging Bismarck sufficiently to force the abandonment of her commerce raiding mission.
A ship is, by the way, an inanimate object. How it performs depends entirely on the actions of the human beings controlling it. After the Bismarck had been sunk, Churchill did briefly suggest having Leach court-martialled for his actions, until being swiftly disabused of the notion by Tovey, who said that Leach (and, therefore, his ship) had acted correctly. In the event of any court-martial, Tovey said that he would attend as Prisoner's Friend. Churchill immediately dropped the idea.
Phillips' actions were intended to intercept a Japanese invasion convoy, perhaps destroying a Japanese cruiser squadron in the process. What alternatives would you suggest he could have pursued?
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Nonsense. Smith was not in command of Olympic at the time of the Hawke collision. She was in the Solent, and in the charge of a Solent Pilot, who was later, in the subsequent court case, deemed to be at fault.
'Haha that TINY accident was nothing of the sort!… that tiny accident literally broke the keel of Olympic. Smith was renowned for being reckless and using his ocean liners like his own “private speedboats” ' Aside from the fact that Smith was not at fault, nor was Olympic's keel damaged, unless you cling to the fact-free myth created by Robin Gardiner in the 1990s. The Damage Report of 10 November 1911 makes no reference to keel damage, largely because Olympic had a 92 feet beam, and Hawke's bow penetrated no more than six to eight feet into her starboard quarter. Moreover, Olympic had a draught of 34 feet 7 inches, whereas Hawke's was only 24 feet. By the way, Olympic was repaired and back at sea from 20 November, 1911. 'Broken Keel?' Nonsense.
Oh, and 'reputation with whom?' Smith had been a Master Mariner since 1887, and senior captain of the White Star Line since 1904. White Star don't seem to have had doubts about him, and they could have had their pick of the best liner captains available.
'He had many incidents in his career and had actually been retired after his final horrific crash with a navy destroyer. Total bullshit. Smith originally held a lieutenant's commission in the Royal Naval Reserve, which meant that he could be called upon in wartime, but retired from the RNR in 1905, with the rank of Commander. There is no reference on his record to any 'horrific crash' involving a destroyer.
Why make such nonsense up when it can easily be proven false?
Far from 'coming out of retirement as a favour' he had, as senior captain (in effect Commodore) taken every White Star liner on her maiden voyage since 1904. He might have been considering retirement, but equally he might have deferred this until Britannic entered service.
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@fmyoung MERCHANT SHIPPING ACT, 1894. (In force in 1911) :-
Compulsory pilotage.
(1)Subject to any alteration to be made by the Board of Trade or by any pilotage authority in pursuance of the powers herein-before contained, the employment of pilots shall continue to be compulsory in all districts where it was compulsory immediately before the commencement of this Act, but all exemptions from that compulsory pilotage shall continue to be in force.
(2)If, within a district where pilotage is compulsory, the master of an unexempted ship after a qualified pilot has offered to take charge of the ship, or has made a signal for the purpose, pilots his ship himself without holding the necessary certificate, he shall be liable for each offence to a fine of double the amount of the pilotage dues that could be demanded for the conduct of the ship.
The Court determined that George Bowyer, who had piloted Olympic into and out of Southampton on several previous occasions, was in error.
The judgement was that White Star, whilst unable to claim from Lloyds because the fault was Olympic's, were not required to fund the repairs to HMS Hawke because a White Star employee did not have charge of the ship at the time of the incident.
Stop arguing and simply read the judgement of the court, unless you think you know better, of course?
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@vonVince Actually, anyone who knows anything about the period knows exactly why the British acted as they did. After Norway, the Germans had virtually no navy left and were never seriously in any position to attempt to invade Britain. However, had the Petainist government chosen to send the French fleet in support, then an attempt might just possibly have been made.
Therefore, the British chose to act to prevent the possibility. Unfortunately, Admiral Gensoul, for reasons never explained, chose not to pass on the full text, including the French West Indies/US supervision option, to his government, which was ironic considering that Darlan would probably have accepted it, but instead began to prepare his fleet for sea.
I wonder if the potential alternative, of French and British warships engaging in a series of actions in the Channel & Mediterranean as the French sought to do the bidding of their conquerors, would have been preferable? I suspect not.
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@bradmason4706 Ariel has been totally overshadowed by Dynamo. RN Portsmouth Command lifted troops from Cherbourg & St. Malo, Plymouth Command from Brest, La Pallice, St. Nazaire, La Rochelle, Rochefort, Bayonne, & St. Jean de Luz. By the time the operation had ended, the RN had evacuated 191870 troops, and had lifted 310 artillery pieces, 2292 vehicles, & 1800 tons of stores. The popular image that the evacuation of the British army from France ended after Dynamo is completely wrong.
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2). Titanic had two further portholes added to her port side forward in later 1911, following recommendations from Olympic's first few voyages. The same change was made to Olympic in 1912. WW1 had nothing to do with it.
4). Hearsay without any supporting evidence, documentary or otherwise.
5). Ballard never reported anything of the sort. Source?
7). Again, mere hearsay. Provide a source.
10). Both ships had grey undercoat. Moreover, Ballard never to my knowledge has never reported that he came across any such anomaly. Olympic had been launched in white or light grey paint because it made her look more impressive in early photographs, as it had Mauretania, which was the inspiration for it. Olympic was immediately overpainted in black. Do you really think that shades of paint on a wreck which had been 13,000 feet down for 70 years could actually be discerned?
11). Olympic's bridge wings were extended simply to improve visibility for her officers when docking. The windows of 'B' deck forward were altered when Olympic received the same improvements that Titanic had previously received.
12). No Titanic propellers were ever fitted to Olympic, or vice versa. Parts of Titanic's propeller shaft were used to speed up Olympic's return to sea after the Hawke collision, at a time when Titanic was months from completion. The pitches of the blades on the two ships were different, by the way.
15). Pure nonsense. No item has ever been found at the White Swan with anything other than the number 400 on it. Seriously, if the owners 'do not like to be asked about the numbering issue' why refer to the restaurant as the 'Olympic Restaurant' at all. Moreover, think of the huge opportunity to be had if there really been anything with 401 on it. Who says the owners have said this?
16). Presumably a reference to the video which appeared, without provenance, in 2000 or thereabouts. The video which no exploration team has ever claimed, nor even mentioned, despite the fact that it would make worldwide news? The video which even Robin Gardiner denounced as a fake?
17). Again, mere hearsay with no actual evidence to support this claim. Furthermore, the lifeboat names were on plates screwed into the side, for easy removal if boats were re-allocated to another ship. Had such a momentous discovery been made, morever, why no photographs or contemporary accounts?
Oh, and 'fateful night in 2012.'
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Actually, there was little to choose between the two battlefleets. The British had 296 guns of 12 inch and above, and obtained 110 hits. (0.37 hits per gun.) The Germans had 200 guns of 11 inch and above, and obtained 80 hits (0.40 hits per gun.)
British overall figures are skewed by the poor performance of the Battlecruiser fleet. Beatty had always placed rate of fire ahead of accuracy (hence his foolish encouragement of his captains to store cordite above the protective blast doors) with the result that Jellicoe's Grand Fleet (and Evan Thomas' BS5) fired 2626 heavy shells to obtain 98 hits, or 26 rounds per hit, while the battlecruisers fired 1650 shells to achieve 26 hits, or 64 rounds per hit.
The most accurate shooting by either side by individual squadrons was by Evan Thomas' superb 5th Battle Squadron of 'Queen Elizabeths.'
You are right about internal design, but this was to a large extent inevitable. The Germans built their heavy ships to operate in the North Sea at short range for short periods. Crew facilities were cramped and uncomfortable, but in harbour crews could use accommodation ships and shore barracks. The British, because of their world wide commitments, built ships which could operate for extended periods away from shore facilities, hence the need for more open spaces within the ship itself.
As to what was wrong with 'our bloody ships,' my view is that the main problem was the free and easy, 'it will be all right on the day' attitude of the man who said it, David Beatty.
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@julianmhall I didn't say that they 'sat on their hands and did nothing,' only that the Admiralty regarded the interception and destruction of a ragged fleet of towed barges with minimal defensive support was a task best left to the surface fleet, which had overwhelming superiority in the Channel area.
The best aircraft available to the FAA at the time were the Fulmar, in service from March 1940 with 806 Squadron, operating from HMS Illustrious in the Mediterranean at the time, and the Swordfish, equipping both carriers and ground based FAA squadrons. The only carrier in home waters at the time, HMS Furious, with 18 Swordfish, 6 Sea Gladiators, and 12 Skuas, was based at Scapa Flow, with the battlecruiser Repulse, two heavy cruisers, Berwick & Norfolk, two light cruisers, Glasgow and Curacoa, and seven destroyers.
In short, there were no large enemy surface ships in the area which might have been targetted by Swordfish.
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@malcolmtaylor518 I agree that POW should have led. More relevantly, Tovey thought the same, and subsequently wrote that he had considered signalling this to Holland. Indeed, he was to say that, to the end of his days, he regretted not so doing, deciding instead to leave tactical decisions to the man on the spot. Whether Holland, brought up on the traditions of the Royal Navy, would have so acted will, of course, never be known.
Holland did intend that Wake-Walker's squadron should engage Prinz Eugen, but the reality was that the battle was over before any such action could be taken. The idea of holding back until Tovey's two capital ships arrived seems eminently sensible in retrospect, but at the time Holland felt that his two ships, supported by Norfolk, Suffolk, and his destroyers, when they arrived, were sufficient to engage successfully.
In short, I believe that Napoleon's question concerning a general ( is he lucky?) could have been applied to Holland. He did little wrong, but on 24 May, the fates conspired against him. I hope that the following, which is a condensed version of the action, explains why I say this :-
As Holland approached Bismarck, he was receiving regular reports from Suffolk & Norfolk. By maintaining his course and speed, he could have crossed 60 miles ahead of her track at around 0230. This, however, would have meant undertaking a night action. Therefore, Holland, at 0012, altered course to slightly west of north, and reduced speed to 25 knots, his intention being to meet the German force more or less head on at around 0200. This would have left Bismarck silhouetted against the afterglow, whilst Hood's squadron would have been approaching at a combined speed of 50 knots, from an unexpected direction. This would have minimised the time during which Hood was at her most vulnerable. This intention was signalled to Leach in POW.
Unfortunately, Suffolk temporarily lost contact around 0028, and only regained it at around 0300. During this period, obviously unknown to Holland, the German force had altered course to the west to follow the Greenland ice belt. As a result, Holland lost the bold, head on, approach he sought, and was now obliged to approach from a much wider angle, greatly increasing the period during which Hood's weaknesses were exposed.
The rest, as they say, is history.
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'Churchill's bombing of Berlin in kind with bombing London. We cannot forget that Churchill was arguably the biggest warmonger of all, here, trying to escalate things beyond any hope of peace, because he knew he had his moat in the channel, and that he could drag the Americans in, with their vaster resources and even bigger moat in the Atlantic'
Oh well, nothing like viewing history with one eye shut, I suppose. Firstly, the RAF bombed Berlin the day AFTER the first German bombs fell on London. Secondly, which wars did Churchill 'monger?' He was out of government between 1929 & 1939, when, in September, he joined the cabinet of a country already at war. Thirdly, within days of becoming Prime Minister, he found Britain and her Commonwealth/Empire alone against an aggressive military power which had already conquered Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, & France. How much more escalation would you like? Fourthly, how did he 'drag America in?' Certainly he wanted the US to join the war on the British side. Who wouldn't for heaven's sake? But America actually only joined the war after being attacked by Japan and after Germany declared war on her. Unless you think Churchill had a hand in that as well?
Germany's chances of a successful invasion were minimal. Serious preparations could hardly begin unless/until France was defeated and occupied. There would be no point in training vast numbers of paratroopers if they cannot get there, and cannot be resupplied in any case. That only became even theoretically possible after June, 1940, with the result that, by September, the Luftwaffe had just over 220 transport aircraft and around 4,000 trained paratroopers, at most.
'By pass the Royal Navy.' BRILLIANT!!
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@Nate-uf4xk Odd, then, that German historians do not regard the RAF as playing an important part in the Dunkirk evacuation, and Luftwaffe records of the time do not suggest that they found the RAF a major inconvenience. Furthermore, the programmes you cite, are rather less than even-handed in their analysis. I saw 'Dunkirk - The New Evidence' and it was so full of holes as to be almost laughable. Of course, no-one able to present an alternative opinion was allowed anywhere near.
What you regard as unequivocal is far from it. Your reference to the Home Fleet rather suggests that you know very little about the Admiralty's defence plans, which involved 70 cruisers and destroyers, and around 500 smaller warships, within 5 hours' steaming of Dover, with the Heavy Ships of the Home Fleet based at Rosyth, again any potential sortie by the (actually, non existent) German Heavy Ships.
The concept of the 'destruction' of the RAF, by the way, is deeply flawed. Even had the Luftwaffe gained temporary superiority over the Home Counties, remaining RAF aircraft could easily retire to the Midlands, and be rapidly reinforced by new fighter construction. In any case, a Luftwaffe untrained in anti-shipping operations did not pose a deadly threat to the RN anti-invasion forces. Or, so Oskar Dinort, & Wolfram von Richthoven, commanders of the Luftwaffe, said at the time.
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@Nate-uf4xk Nonsense. The RN pink list for 17 September, 1940, which details the operational status of every RN warship from destroyers upwards, states 6 destroyers at Harwich, 1 light cruiser and 19 destroyers at Portsmouth, 2 destroyers at Southampton, 2 light cruisers and 18 destroyers at Sheerness, 1 battleship, 2 light cruisers, and 11 destroyers at Plymouth, 3 light cruisers and 5 destroyers at the Humber, 2 battleships, 1 battlecruiser, 3 light cruisers and 17 destroyers at Rosyth, 3 destroyers at Liverpool, 1 cruiser & 10 destroyers in the Forth of Clyde, 1 battlecruiser, 1 aircraft carrier, 2 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers and 7 destroyers at Scapa Flow. Those are just the resources in Home Waters. There were also 10 destroyers on escort duty in the North Atlantic. I haven't bothered listing the forces in the Mediterranean, at Gibraltar, or at Freetown, as it would take too long, but you should add to the above around 500 smaller warships, such as sloops, fleet minesweepers, corvettes, gunboats etc., of which there were over 500 near to the Straits.
The Luftwaffe would concentrate on the heavy ships would they? Firstly, the heavy ships, other than an old battleship at Plymouth, were in Rosyth and Scapa Flow, guarding against a sortie by (actually, non existent) German heavy warships, and secondly the heaviest RN ship sunk by the Luftwaffe in WW2 was a light cruiser.
I find it fascinating reading the entertaining accounts of what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done presented by people who are so sure that they know what 'would have' happened that they haven't found it necessary to bother actually doing any research.
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Had Sealion been attempted, September, 1940 was the likeliest date. So, here goes:-
Bismarck 6 months away from completion.
Tirpitz 8 months away from completion.
Gneisenau Repairing torpedo damage. Estimated completion November 1940.
Scharnhorst Repairing torpedo damage. Estimated completion late October.
Lutzow Repairing torpedo damage. Estimated completion April 1941.
Scheer Preparing for commerce raiding. Sailed 23 October, 1940.
Hipper Operational with care - defective engines.
There were two light cruisers (Koln & Nurnberg) operational, as was an older, training cruiser (Emden).
The German navy had lost 12 of 22 destroyers by September, 1940. Three of the remaining 10 were refitting.
There were also a number of Torpedo Boats, which were similar to the British escort destroyer or the US DEs. By some, I mean 9.
There was also a new class of Torpedo Boat, the Elbing class, which had unreliable high pressure boilers, and were armed with a single 105mm gun, facing aft. About 7 were available.
That is it, I am afraid. A rather one-sided sea battle at best, after which it is possible to deduce what would probably happen to the canal barges towed by tugs and trawlers when the 70 or so RN destroyers and cruisers on anti-invasion duties came across them.
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Dudley Pope, in '73 North' had this nice little postcript about the battered Onslow, commanded by Lt.Cdr. T.J.G. Marchant, her second-in-command, arriving back at Scapa on 4 February.
' Onslow arrived back in Scapa Flow to receive more surprises. The battleship Anson, which had provided the wireless link with the Admiralty during the battle, was leaving with Admiral Fraser on board, and Marchant altered course to give her a wide berth. He was startled to get a signal from the battleship saying 'pass close to me.'
As the Onslow approached, they could see that the decks of the great battleship were black with men, and over the loudspeakers they heard: 'Three cheers for the Onslow - hip hip hurray! hip, hip....'
They were still recovering from their gratified embarassment when they approached Switha and met the battleship Malaya coming out. Once again the little destroyer was cheered as she passed. A few moments later came the order that the Onslow was to steam past all the ships of the fleet now at anchor to receive their congratulations.
She had been away for 43 days; she had fought bravely in defence of a convoy. Though only a few men knew it, and they were in Berlin or at Fort Wolf, she had played a great part in defeating the German surface fleet. '
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What is even odder is your apparent belief that the names of the two Olympics were rivetted on, when they were, as was White Star's custom at the time, engraved into the hull, and then painted in.
If Olympic was 'uneconomical to maintain' how was it that in April, 1912, there were two Olympic class liners at sea, one heading for New York and the other for Southampton, and both steaming at 21+ knots?
As you have already been told, both ships were insured for two thirds of their £1.5 million building costs, and £1 million was what Lloyds paid out. You can check this fact for yourself, of course.
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The claim of the 'Black Flag' was first made in the year 2008 or thereabouts by someone who told an author that he had been told that by his late father, who served aboard HMS Rodney. Moreover, why a 'Black Flag', whicn in naval history has always been symbolic of 'no quarter?
The oinly occaion U boats, for example, used a black flag was in May, 1945, when ordered by Doenitz to surface and fly one to notify the allies of their surrender.
'With so many British ships around it was doubtful that any U-boat would have attacked.' Why is it doubtful? Dorsetshire (not Dorcester, by the way) was a big fat heavy cruiser, with a crew of around 700. A tempting target for any U-boat commander, few of whom were known for their chivalrous, kind. approach to their job.
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Olympic was repaired and back at sea by late November, 1911. There is a photograph of Titanic & Olympic together in Belfast in late October, 1911. They are easy to tell apart. Olympic is the one in full White Star paintwork, Titanic is the one with parts of her superstructure, and three of her funnels, still nit in place, and still largely unpainted. Even a switcher should be able to tell them apart.
Oh, and when Titanic sank, Olympic was also at sea, returning to Southampton from New York. Perhaps you might explain that?
Marconi didn't sail on Titanic because he had sailed three days earlier on Lusitania, and Morgan never intended to sail on Titanic because he had an appointment to be at St. Mark's in Venice on 23 April. This was reported in the New York Times in March, 1912.
You really shouldn't be gullible enought to swallow every half baked conspiracist or switcher video you stumble across.
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@robertotamesis1783 Sorry, but you really are wide of the mark. Churchill did not, despite 'Darkest Hour' ask FDR for destroyers. They were actually offered by the US Ambassador to Paris, and the British saw the old four stackers as useful Atlantic escort stop gaps until new construction became available. In short, they were offered, not requested.
The Germans in September 1940 had no landing craft at all, just large numbers of canal barges, hastily converted and to be towed, at just above walking pace, into the Channel by tugs and trawlers. The known presence of the Royal Navy, in large numbers within a few hours of Dover, was a far greater deterrent than the weather, although by mid October that would have become a problem given the lack of seaworthiness of the Barges.
Air lift helicopters in 1943? No, they hadn't. Moreover, in 1943 weren't the Germans rather busy elsewhere?
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@Ballinalower The U-boat offensive was based on the assumption that the calculations of Von Holtzendorff, Kaiser Bill's Chief of Naval Staff in WW1, was still applicable. This determined that, in order to starve Britain into submission, 600,000 tons of British shipping needed to be sunk each month. After, December, 1941, this figure became meaningless, but in any case even prior to Dec. 1941 the monthly tonnage figure rarely exceeded 300,000, and in many months was below 100,000 tons.
The possibility was a remote one.
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@DZ-1987 No. Apart from Jutland, the High Seas Fleet spent the whole of WW1 avoiding action with the Grand Fleet. Apart from two aborted sorties later in1916, and a raid against the Russian Navy in the Baltic in October, 1917, the HSF spent almost the entire rest of the war snugly at anchor in the Jade, whilst the British Northern Patrol, of Armed Merchant Cruisers and trawlers, systematically blockaded Germany into starvation and revolution. You may read about the Turnip winter for yourself.
To be plain, there was no reason for the Grand Fleet to operate in the North Sea, as the HSF was rarely, if ever, there. Early in the war, raids were, indeed, made by German battlecruisers against East Coast towns, on a hit and run basis. The hope was that the RN would send a number of ships to the East Coast, as the German hope had always been to catch and destroy a detached portion (a Battle Squadron, perhaps ) of the Grand Fleet in order to reduce the numbers against them.
Fortunately, Jellicoe and the Admiralty were not foolish enough to fall for this.
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@conradylee Sturdee was not hated within the Admiralty as such, but by the dominant figure within it. Sturdee became involved, not by his choice, in a feud between Fisher and Charles Beresford, C-in-C Mediterranean fleet, when he was made his Chief of Staff in 1907, Sturdee was told by Fisher to 'keep an eye on Charlie, as he was inclined to be rash,' and to write to him privately about Beresford's behaviour. Sturdee refused, believing that he should be loyal to his C-in-C, and as a result, joined Beresford on Fisher's list.
When Fisher returned to the Admiralty at the outbreak of WW1, Fisher told the First Lord, Churchill, that he would not accept Sturdee as Chief of Staff. Churchill, refused to permit his removal, and the matter rested there, rather uneasily, until Coronel gave Churchill the opportunity to write personally to Sturdee to offer him command of the battlecruisers, after Fisher had informed Churchill that he would not tolerate 'that damned fool' one day longer at the Admiralty.
Even after his success at the Falklands, the antagonism did not abate. When Sturdee returned to the Admiralty with his report, Fisher kept him waiting for several hours in a side room before he would see him, and his own report on Sturdee's performance was riddled with comments about his perceived failures and shortcomings.
Jellicoe, by contrast, thought highly of Sturdee, and, according to Churchill, Sturdee had the reputation within the navy of being 'a sea officer of keen intelligence and great tactical ability, a man who could handle and fight his ship and his squadron with the utmost skill and resolution.'
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If you think that, your knowledge of 1940 is minimal. The US in 1940 was not even remotely able to do anything of the sort. Moreover, the US did not 'thwart' the Germans in Europe. The British did that by refusing to yield in 1940.
By the time the US, reluctantly, became involved, German already had plenty of problems dealing with the Soviet Union and the British Commonwealth & Empire.
The US, at most, made victory certain, and ensured that part, at least, of Western Europe, did not fall under Soviet control.
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In many ways, isn't it a pity that Graf Zeppelin, with her Stukas & Bf109s, wasn't completed and put to sea. If she had, there would have been none of the interminable 'would have' posts which tend to appear about these things which never happened.
Such as what the Luftwaffe/U-Boats/mines/coastal batteries 'would have' done to the Royal Navy should Sealion have been attempted. Here, we have what the Graf Zeppelin 'would have' done had she sailed. Destroying convoys, sinking their escorts with her wonderful low angle main guns, and stretching the poor old Royal Navy beyond breaking point, for starters.
Quite an achievement for a carrier of outmoded design, built by a nation with absolutely no knowledge about, or understanding of, naval aviation, and armed with unsuitable guns and aircraft hastily cobbled together from land based types.
I'm sure the US Navy, upon seeing her, 'would have' cancelled construction of the Essexs, which 'would have been' totally outmatched!
Good heavens, I really enjoyed that!!
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Actually, in 1942, the British & Americans were fighting the Germans in North Africa, the Atlantic, the Arctic, and over the skies of Germany. They were fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, parts of China, the Indian Ocean, and in Burma, and the Italians in the Mediterranean. Whilst doing that, they were also shipping large quantities of supplies to the Soviet Union.
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Actually, no, because the subsequent court case determined that Olympic, or more accurately the Solent Pilot who was in charge of her at the time, was at fault, thus invalidating the insurance cover.
However, despite the nonsense spouted by switchers, White Star could comfortably afford to meet the repair costs. These took around six weeks, and cost around £25,000 (at 1911 values), when White Star had shown a profit of around £1 million in the most recent financial year.
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Olympic was damaged once, when in collision with HMS Hawke. She returned to Harland & Wolff, and was repaired and back at sea by late November, 1911. So desperate for cash were White Star at the time that they ordered construction of the third Olympic, Britannic, at the same time, by the way. You do understand that the damaged plating was fully replaced in Belfast, do you? Hence, your comments about paint marks are simply nonsense.
Both Olympics cost £1.5 million to build, and both were insured for £1 million. Thus, the insurance scam you imply cost W hite Star £500,000 as well as a reputation for safety. I thought such things were intended to make money?
'We all know he ( J. P. Morgan) was scheduled to be on the ship for its "maiden" voyage but cancelled last minute.' No, 'we' actually know that he intended no such thing. The New York Times of 28 March 1912 contains an article, still available in their archives, which states that Morgan intended to be in Venice, at St. Mark's on 23 April, to dedicate the new Campanile and attend an Art Exhibition. How might he have managed that, had he intended to sail aboard Titanic, do you suppose?
You may now accept yourself to be proven wrong. Swallowing switcher videos completely and unquestioningly does make you look such a fool when the real facts are explained, doesn't it?
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Let's assume that Californian left Royal Albert Dock at 1200 on 5 April. By late on 14 April, she would have been at sea some 216 hours. Her position was some 2400 sea miles from Liverpool. Now divide 2400 by 216. That gives an average speed of just over 11.1 knots. Californian's maximum service speed when new was 12 knots, although an economical cruising speed would certainly be less. She was actually making good time.
She didn't drop anchor. Ships did not have anchor chains 13,000 feet long. She simply stopped. Quite why Lord acted, or rather, didn't act, as he did, will never be known, but it seems you are implying that Californian was there to act as a rescue ship (she wasn't, by the way) but then claiming it to be equally suspicious that Lord didn't seem to know that that was his role. Make your mind up.
'Futility' is a total Red Herring. Did you know that the second edition was extensively re-written, interestingly, in 1912?
The only weirdness is that invented by conspiracists.
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Astor & Guggenheim never made their opinions about the Federal Reserve knowm. Straus had, in October, 1911, made his support fro the concept known. His opinions may still be read in the archives of the New York Times. I would be happy to give you further details.
Other ships did answer, and made for Titanic, but they were, like Carpathia, too far away to arrive in time. By the way, Carpathia was a Cunard liner, and was not carrying blankets. I think you mean Californian?
However, Californian was not carrying blankets either. When she docked in Boston on 19 April, her cargo was recorded as a 'mixed, general', one by the Boston newspapers.
Titanic was supplied with Socket Signals, recommended by the Board of Trade. 36 of them. They were white, with explosive heads, and were state-of-the-art at the time. In 1912, there was no requirement that distress flares should be red, and white flares were visible from a greater distance. If what you claim had been remotely correct, why would Californian's officers have been so concerned about a ship firing 'celebratory' rockets?
The glasses are a total Red Herring. Lookouts rarely used them, as their job was to scan the whole horizon, not just a small part of it. When anything was spotted, it was to be reported to the Bridge, where officers with glasses would identify it, and what, if any, action needed to be taken.
Have you ever thought of finding out a few facts, if you are really interested?
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@williams4434 'who said anything about Sub Sahara ?' I did, because those whom you describe as 'blacks' come from Sub-Saharan Africa, not fro Africa as a whole.
To put that into context, would you seek to argue that Europeans from Norway or Sweden look just like Europeans from Greece or Southern Italy? Good luck trying to make that case.
It seems you now accept that only North Africa was ever part of the Roman Empire. Good, that is a start. All you need to do now is grasp the indisputable fact that Africans from North Africa looked, and look, rather different from Africans of Sub-Saharan African descent. Your lumping everyone from the whole of the continent of Africa into the same 'black'' category seems rather like racism to me, and, I suspect, to most other people.
' by description Jesus was black, Bronzed feet who has hair like wool ? black folks, also many believe Jesus was black.' I have already answered this claim elsewhere, but will do so again:-
Revelation 1:14-15 ' His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.'
Not quite what you are claiming, is it?
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The damage was far far greater than that :
The fatal torpedo hit the steering area of Bismarck. The full fury of the detonation was vented into the ship and against the shell and rudders. The steering capability of the ship was destroyed. The transient whipping response caused by this torpedo hit was stunning. The hull, according to survivors, acted like a springboard, and severe structural damage was sustained in the stern structure. The steering gear complex, encased in 150 mm thick armor, was rather rigid in comparison to the 10 meter long canoe-shaped stern. The unarmored stern structure vibrated at a different frequency than the main hull just ahead of it. Tears were opened in the side shell and bulkheads adjacent to the damaged area. The two decks in the stern were wrecked by the force of the explosion, and equipment in the quarterdeck area was seriously damaged as the explosion expanded upward. Seaman Helmut Behnke, who was sent to check on the smoke-making machinery and its piping found it completely destroyed. Evidence of the severity of damage can be seen in the videotapes of the stern area of the wreck. The remaining platform decks are badly twisted and the upper portions of the damage can be barely seen just above the sediments.
The rudders were jammed at a position of 12 degrees to port, as the ship was in the process of turning to evade a port side torpedo attack when she was struck. Herculean efforts by the damage control teams could not correct this situation as they were unable to enter the steering compartments. Immediately after the torpedo hit Bismarck commenced turning in circles, out of control. Once speed was reduced, the ship inexorably assumed a course to the northwest, directly towards her pursuers, as the intensity of the storm increased.
Attempts to vary the propeller revolutions on the three shafts, ordered by the leader of the damage control team, Commander Hans Oels, failed to counter the effects of the jammed rudder. With British destroyers now closing to attempt torpedo attacks, Bismarck began a night gunfire action which prevented any further damage-control efforts aft. Stormy conditions, darkness, and gun blast from turrets Caesar and Dora prevented damage control teams from assembling at the stern to try to access the steering gear compartments and repair the damage. Divers reported to Commander Oels, the Executive Officer, that they were unable to enter because of surging water within the after steering gear rooms. One of the divers had to abandon his attempt after his air hose became ensnared in damaged structure, cutting off his air supply. Josef Statz overheard Commander Oels say to the exhausted divers when they entered Damage Control Center: "Only if we had the diving apparatus issued to submariners."
It is believed that part of the stern collapsed onto the rudders, as happened with the Prinz Eugen and armored cruiser Lützow, or was damaged in such a way that it was impossible to steer the ship by either manual or mechanical means. It would have been necessary to cut away structure which was covered by surging water. In any event, the repair of such damage was beyond the capability and material provided aboard the Bismarck, even if weather and battle conditions had been more favourable. The stern structure was massively damaged and eventually failed.
There is remarkable similarity between the Bismarck damage and a similar torpedo hit on the stern of Prinz Eugen on 23 February 1942. Dr. Erwin Strohbusch, who directed the repairs of this heavy cruiser in Norway, wrote that this incident, and an earlier one on the armored cruiser Lützow, whose stern also collapsed from a torpedo hit, indicated a structural flaw in the stern design of German armored ships, heavy cruisers, and battleships. Improvements were made to the stern structures of Admiral Hipper, Lützow, Tirpitz, Admiral Scheer and Scharnhorst during 1942-1943.
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@MarkHarrison733 Try again, little chap. German bombing of France began on the night of 9/10 May. By 11 May, the French reported bombs dropped on Henin-Lietard, Bruay, Lens, La Fere, Loan, Nancy, Colmar, Pontoise, Lambersart, Lyons, Bouai, Hasebrouck, Doullens and Abbeville.
After the German carpet bombing of Rotterdam on 14 May, Bomber Command began targets east of the Rhine from 15 May, 1940.
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You presumably refer to the entertaining myth that Californian carried nothing but sweaters & blankets, so beloved by conspiracists.
Unfortunately, the original manifest has long gone, but when she docked in Boston on 19 April, the shipping newspapers referred to her as carrying a 'mixed, general, cargo', as Leyland Line ships generally did.
Seriously, if a ship which had been in the vicinity of Titanic when she sank had docked four days later (the day the US Inquiry began, incidentally) with so bizarre a cargo, isn't it just possible that one or two eyebrows would have been raised in the Boston Customs Office?
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I assume you have read the Admiralty Inspection Report on the damage to Olympic? The one which, supported by separate inspection teams from White Star and the Board of Trade, summarised the damage as :- “Two major watertight compartments were flooded, hull plating gashed from the Orlop deck to E deck, and the starboard propeller shafting damaged?" The report was published on 10 November, 1911. Perhaps it hasn't reached your local bookshop yet?
No, of course you haven't. The fact is that the damage was far from beyond repair, except in the mind of Robin Gardiner in the mid 1990s, and numerous gormless conspiracy theorists since. The problem is that, unless you claim, in defiance of all available evidence, that Olympic's keel had been damaged, the whole switch theory collapses as the nonsense that it is.
Oh, and the insurance fraud silliness. What a great idea. Build a ship for $7.5 million, then sink it in order to claim $5 million on insurance!
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Not correct. Dudley Pound, who made the wrong decision to scatter the convoy, was in the early stages of a brain tumour which first paralysed and then killed him, but he didn't resign until September, 1943.
As to 'from that day forward US Navy warships escorted American cargo ships to allied countries under American Command' I presume you are, in view of this statement, unaware of the fact that there were twenty-three Arctic outward bound convoys after PQ 17, all with Royal Navy escorts. These convoys included at least 348 US flagged nerchantmen.
Furthermore, from late 1942, there were eleven Atlantic Escort Groups protecting SC, HX, & ON convoys. Six groups were British, four Canadian, and one American, which consisted of a mixture of British, Canadian, and (two) American warships. After the two American coastguard cutters were withdrawn from this Group, it was redesignated as a Canadian group.
By Mid 1943, there were seven British groups, and five Canadian ones. There were no American groups operating in support of SC, HX, & ON convoys.
Would you care to re-consider your earlier claim?
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The 1943 famine was brought about by a combination of the arrival of refugees, hoarding by profiteers, inability to import food supplies from Japanese occupied areas, the Bengal Administration keeping the facts secret from London, and the refusal of Franklin Roosevelt to release shipping space. Once the facts became known to the government in London, the distribution of food relief was handed over to the Anglo-Indian army, and grain convoys diverted from Australia to India. The worst charge that could be laid against Churchill is that he ought to have known about the situation. After all, there wasn't much going on in the world in 1943, was there? Are you seriously naive enough to believe that Churchill would have engineered a famine in India at a time when 2.5 million Indians, all volunteers by the way, were serving in the Allied forces? Perhaps you simply believe all the propaganda spoon fed to you?
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@garyseeseverything8615 The first monoplane fighter was indeed German, the Fokker Eindecker, of 1915, closely followed by the Bristol M1.
The prototype 109s were intended to have Jumo 210 engines, but as these were not ready, a deal was done with Rolls Royce, which involved Rolls supplying four Kestrel VIs in exchange for a Heinkel He70 for use as a test bed. Two Kestrels were supplied to Messerschmitt. One was fitted into the first prototype, VI, but the second prototype, V2, received a Jumo 210A engine, as did the third, V3, which was the first to carry armament.
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@hajoos.8360 In point of fact, the driving force behind what some have seen as the harsh terms of the Treaty was France. Both Lloyd-George and Wilson believed that the French terms were too severe. Churchill, by the way, was not a major player in the British government at the time, although, as Martin Gilbert pointed out, he was strongly opposed to the proposed terms, and in particular to the disbanding of the German army, which he saw as a potential bulwark against the spread of communism.
Incidentally, he was only elected as Prime Minister in 1951.
Seriously, if you want a debate about 'facts' perhaps you should try to come up with some.
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No. One Canadian division was in Britain, and, indeed, briefly in France until General Weygand told Alan Brooke that the French army was no longer capable of organised resistance, and the Reconstituted BEF was withdrawn.
By September, there were also two Australian & New Zealand Brigades in Britain. All but two of the 34.5 operational divisions at that time were British.
Of course there was a Commonwealth, and it played an increasingly significant role, but not as early as 1940, when, by & large, it provided staunch, but rather distant, support.
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@EclecticHillbilly Strange how people still believe the old myth about Gallipoli. The idea was to use sea power as an alternative to the unfolding carnage on the Western Front. Herbert Kitchener had been approached by the Russian General Staff to take some action which might relieve pressure on Russia's southern flank. He approached Churchill, the First Lord, who suggested a strategy which might knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war, help Russia, and bring the neutral nations of Eastern Europe into WW1 on the allied side'
The proposal was put to Asquith, the Prime Minister, who authorised it. At that point, Churchill's involvement ceased, and planning was passed to a number of British & French commanders, who botched it, although Mustafa Kamal was later to comment how close to success it came.
As Prime Minister, Asquith was, at the time, untouchable, so Churchill was the chosen scapegoat, although Lloyd George, who knew the facts of the matter, brought him back into government almost as soon as he replaced Asquith.
Churchill, by the way, was never a general, although he did command a battalion on the Western Front for a time after his resignation.
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@Jazzanaught Edward Smith was indeed captain of Olympic at the time, but, because she was leaving Southampton and in the enclosed, restricted, waters of the Solent, she was in the charge of a Solent Pilot, who, indeed, and taken her into and out of Southampton on several previous occasions. Many restricted waterways in Britain have similar pilotages, the Mersey and the Thames being examples.
Were you actually to read the verdict of the Court Case which followed, you would learn that the conclusion was that, whilst Olympic's movements were primarily rresponsible for her being rammed by Hawke, and thus White Star were not able to claim on insurance, neither were White Star required to pay for the repairs to HMS Hawke, because the movements of Olympic were directed by George Bowyer, a Pilot not employed by White Star.
The court also exonerated Smith of any responsibility for the incident.
Perhaps you are unaware of the duties and responsibilities of a Pilot. You might look them up?
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@fmyoung As a famous English comedian, Frankie Howerd, used to say 'Nay, Nay, and thrice Nay!'
Elizabeth Lines gave her testimont to the Limitation of Liability Hearings in October, 1913. She claimed that she recognised Ismay by sight, having lived near him twenty years earlier, but that she did not know Captain Smith. Even assuming that she was correct about his identity, what she actually testified to hearing was the following :-
Question 41 : Are you able to state from your recollection the words that you heard spoken between Mr. Ismay and Captain Smith on that occasion? ( Addressed to Mrs. Lines).
- We had had a very good run. At first I did not pay any attention to what they were saying, they were simply talking and I was occupied, and then my attention was arrested by hearing the day's run discussed, which I already knew had been a very good one in the preceeding (sic) twenty-four hours, and I heard Mr. Ismay - it was Mr. Ismay who did the talking - I heard him give the length of the run, and I heard him say "Well, we did better to-day than we did yesterday, we made a better run to-day than we did yesterday, we will make a better run to-morrow. Things are working smoothly, the machinery is bearing the test, the boilers are working well". They went on discussing it, and then I heard him make the statement: "We will beat the Olympic and get in to New York on Tuesday."
42. In your last statement, Mrs. Lines, were you giving the substance of the conversation or the exact words which were used?
- I heard "We will beat the Olympic and get in to New York on Tuesday" in those words.
43. If there were any particular words spoken that you can remember, I should be glad to hear them.
- Those words fixed themselves in my mind: "We will beat the Olympic and get in to New York on Tuesday."
44. Do I understand you to say that the other things that you stated were the general substance of what you heard and not the exact things or words used?
- No, I heard those statements.
45. What was said by Mr. Ismay as regards the condition of the performances, of the engines, machinery and boilers?
- He said they were doing well, they were bearing the extra pressure. The first day's run had been less, the second day's run had been a little greater. He said "You see they are standing the pressure, everything is going well, the boilers are working well, we can do better to-morrow, we will make a better run to-morrow."
46. In speaking of standing the pressure well, Mr. Ismay was referring to the boilers, was he not?
- Of the boilers, I gathered.
47. I understand that hitherto you have been stating what you heard Mr. Ismay say: is that true?
- Yes.
48. What, if anything, did you hear Captain Smith say?
- I did not hear anything.
Do you see any reference to lighting addition boilers in any of that?
You might also refer to later cross-examination :-
162. I understood you to tell us that the two gentlemen had a table in front of them?
- Yes.
163. And that they had coffee and liqueurs and cigars?
- Yes.
164. You are quite clear about that?
- Oh yes.
165. You do not mean that one of them had coffee and liqueurs and cigars, you mean that they both had?
- Yes.
172. If it were a fact that Captain Smith was a teetotaller (sic) and did not smoke, that would rather point to the conclusion that the gentleman who was sitting there was not Captain Smith, would it not?
- I could not tell you. I saw the gentlemen sitting there with their liqueurs, I saw the steward bring them as he came and asked me if I would have any. It was the steward to serve all those things, you know that is a customary thing on a steamship; it was no special order.
So your claim is inaccurate. Ismay, if it was Ismay, made no reference to firing up additional boilers (five were never connected, by the way), and Smith, if it was Smith, apparently gave up his lifelong teetotallism on that one occasion.
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@McRocket Akagi was not rebuilt from an existing warship, but was converted to a carrier following the Washington Naval Treaty. Even so, her conversion began in November, 1923, and was only completed in March, 1927, after which she did not complete trials until November.
Illustrious was laid down in April, 1937, and completed her work-up in Late July, 1940, rather more than three years.
More to the point, in June 1941 the British did not believe that the era of the battleship had ended. Nor, indeed, did the navies of the United States or Japan, both of whom, like the British, were building new battleships at the time. Indeed, the carrier never attained the prominence in western waters that it did in the Pacific, and a modernised, fast battleship, Hood would have been far more useful to the Admiralty from 1943 than your suggested carrier conversion, however relevant that might have been to any future British Pacific Fleet.
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@McRocket A shame you feel the need to be offensive simply because I chose not to agree with you. Oh, well.
I ignored California because rebuilding a battleship as a battleship was hardly relevant. In any case, California was raised in April, 1942, and returned to service in January, 1944. Whatever work Hood might have undergone would have commenced around nine months before California was raised, or, indeed, around six before she was sunk.
The British did not suspend battleship construction at the start of the war. All five King George Vs were incomplete in September, 1939, and three were only even launched in 1940. In the United States, all four Iowas were launched in 1942 or later, and all four South Dakotas were completed after January, 1942.
If you think the working up process is nothing to do with making a ship fit for duty, then clearly you know less than you confidently believe. Read up on Prince of Wales at the Denmark Strait, or Shinano's whole career, for further information.
A modernised Hood would have been a significant addition to the Home Fleet's screen for Russian convoys, could easily have taken the place of Duke of York at North Cape, and could have acted as part of the RN's anti-Tirpitz dispositions, releasing a KGV for use with the Eastern Fleet or, indeed, could have been part of the Eastern Fleet herself.
Clearly, your knowledge of the RN's intentions for the post-war fleet is somewhat lacking. The Admiralty planned, as late as 1944, for twelve battleships, and were producing design changes for the Lions at the same time. Certainly, construction was suspended shortly after the start of WW2, not because the Admiralty no longer wanted them, but because in the short term the use of the yards for quick repair of damaged ships was deemed more of a priority than the construction of new warships which were at least two years away from completion, and the completion of the KGVs was imminent in any case.
The light fleets, by the way, were only laid down from March, 1942, and the Escort Carriers were, in the main regarded as for convoy protection rather than as fleet carriers, at a time when the Royal Navy had as the main priority the security of the Atlantic convoy system.
By the time the rebuilt Battleship Hood would have appeared, much of the German surface fleet would indeed have ceased to exist. In the main, because it had been destroyed by naval actions, rather than by aircraft.
Your opinion about my level of knowledge does not really concern me but,
if you think that 'I have more than made my point (with facts)' might I be permitted to observe that to justify this claim, the facts need to be correct ones, and, regretfully, many of yours do not appear to fall into this category.
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@MrSkillfish Well, Ballard & Mearns, who led two separate expeditions, both attributed the sinking to 'the British.' Moreover, by the time she sank, she had lost her main armament, her bridge and command staff, her internal communications, and was suffering from widespread internal fires. She had developed a serious list, and was settling by the stern.
Hardly scratched, really, I suppose.
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@joegatt2306 'I re-consulted the book and discovered that I missed out totally the tables on pages 349 and 352!' I rather thought that you had.
Actually, statistics can be twisted to suggest whatever someone wishes them to say.
In point of fact, the stats. are as follows :-
Rounds Hits %
BCS 1 & BCS 2 1469 21 1.43
BCS 3 373 16 4.29
BS 5 1099 29 2.64
BS 1, BS 2 & BS 4 1593 57 3.58
Total 4534 123 2.71
1st Scouting Group 1670 67 4.01
1st, 2nd, & 3rd Battle Squadrons 1927 57 2.96
Total 3597 124 3.44
The inference from this is that the Rosyth based BCS 1 & 2, which had not had any opportunity for regular gunnery practice, and had a commander who was foolish enough to regard rate of fire as more important than accuracy, dragged down the efficiency of British gunnery statistics to a remarkable. Especially when the figures for Hood's BCS 3, which had been transferred to Scapa Flow precisely for exercises are viewed, as they suggest what a properly trained Battlecruiser Fleet might have achieved.
In terms of the main fleets, the Grand Fleet & the High Seas Fleet, the three RN Battle Squadrons demonstrated themselves markedly superior to Scheer's Fleet.
No wonder, then, that Scheer reported to Kaiser Bill that the HSF should not be risked in such a manner again, and that unrestricted submarine warfare was the only way forward. However, catastrophic that eventually turned out for the All Highest and his Empire.
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Really? The Luftwaffe of 1940 had had no training in anti-shipping operations, and as a result was very poor at them. They had, for example, failed badly at Dunkirk. What makes you think that a Luftwaffe unable to sink large numbers of supposedly sitting targets at Dunkirk was capable of being any more effective against similar ships steaming at 25+ knots and freely able to take evasive action? It seems almost churlish to ask, moreover, what would have protected the barge trains at night, when the RN could operate, and the Luftwaffe couldn't?
By the way, in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank 31 British destroyers, and no British warship bigger than a light cruiser. In September, 1940, the British had over 100 light cruisers and destroyers in Home Waters, around 70 of which were within six hours' steaming of the Straits. These were backed up by around 500 or so smaller warships, ranging from fleet minesweepers, sloops & corvettes to gunboats and armed trawlers. You don't seem to have the faintest idea exactly how enormous the RN of WW2 really was.
I enjoy reading posts from enthusiastic Sealion 'would haves,' as they are always confident about what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done, yet almost totally unaware of what, historically, the Luftwaffe actually did. Or, rather, didn't do!
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@specialnewb9821 No-one was 'stuck' with inferior rivets. Tests on Titanic rivets in recent years have demonstrated that , whilst they were inferior to more recent rivets, they were more than adequate for the purpose. Moreover, you haven't addressed the case of Olympic, a successful liner for 23 years, with the same rivets.
You say 'corners were cut.' What corners? Titanic actually took longer to build than Olympic. Look it up.
Alexander Carlisle, designer of the Olympics, who retired in 1910, gave evidence at the British Inquiry. There was never any suggestion that bulkhead height was reduced, nor that the suggestion was ever put to him to reduce it.
Perhaps you would consider that 'corners were cut' by Leonard Peskett, with the Mauretanias, because he did not include anti-torpedo bulges against the possibility that a war might break out some years later, and one of them be torpedoed?
The Olympics were well designed and well built ships. Titanic sank simply because she was subjected to damage which was entirely unforeseeable, and far beyond anything with which her design was intended to cope.
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@LordZontar You appear to think that I believe that Sealion was possible. I don't and never have. Indeed, my book on the subject was rather well received when published a few years ago. In short, I am certain that an attempt had no hope of success.
However, that does not mean anyone went through the motions. In point of fact the military archives at Freiburg detail a number of exercises carried out in 1940 involving loading troops onto barges, putting a short distance out to sea, and carrying out landings. The barges, by the way, were capable of withstanding normal Channel conditions. They, and their tugs, could not have withstood what the resources available to the Admiralty would have sent against them.
Would you like me to provide you with a list of the dates of the meetings held between Hitler and the naval and army staffs during the period, or details of the reports from Generals Busch & Strauss, of 9th & 16th Armies, that their preparations were complete, which reached Hitler on 13 September? Hitler, in response to a request from Raeder that the attempt be deferred until 8 or 24 October, when the moon & tides were favourable, informed him that a decision would be made on 17 September, which left open the possibility of D-Day being 27 September.
By 15 September, the transports were in position, and the troops of 9th & 16th armies ready to board. By then, von Richthofen, of Fliegerkorps VIII, had openly voiced his doubts, which supported those of Raeder. Coincidentally, on 14/15, 15/16, and 16/17 September, the regular RN destroyer patrols from Portsmouth & the Nore inspected the coastal barge ports as usual, and, with storms in the Channel on 17 September, Sealion was indefinitely postponed.
You don't need to try to lecture me on the shortcomings of the planning, or of the extreme improbability of success, but there is nothing, at least until mid-September at the earliest, in any German archive to suggest that it was merely a bluff.
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You seem to think you know more about Bismarck's sinking than Von Mullenheim-Rechberg did? By the time Bismarck sank, she was listing increasingly seriously, settling by the stern, a mass of internal fires, and had already lost her bridge, command staff, and most internal communications.
Out of interest, a post WW2 study by the US Navy determined that the British 15 inch was, in terms of accuracy and reliability, overall the most effective battleship gun of WW2. Of course, you wouldn't know that, or, probably, wouldn't want to know it.
In terms of tank guns, the British two pounder was at least the equal of any other tank gun in 1940, and the late war 17 pounder was the only allied tank gun capable of destroying a Tiger 1 or 2 at normal combat ranges. Why do you think Omar Bradley wanted Fireflies for his armoured units?
Out of interest, which British battleships had their 'asses' handed to them at Jutland? During the brief period that the two main fleets (the Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet) engaged, 7.00 pm to 8.39 pm, there were 38 hits on German capoital ships, and 2 on British ones. Perhaps that might explain why, after what you seem to believe was a victory, the HSF fleet never came near the Grand Fleet again.
Except, of course, to surrender.
As to the 'scuttling' both Ballard & Mearns attributed Bismarck's sinking to 'the British.' Forgive me for taking their opinions ahead of yours.
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It cost White Star £25,000 or thereabouts to have Harland & Wolff repair Olympic, which they had done by 20 November, 1911. So short of funds were White Star, that in the same month they placed their order for the third Olympic, Britannic.
When Olympic returned to sea, Titanic was some five months from completion. Photographs of the pair in Belfast in October exist. Titanic is the partly painted one with parts of her superstructure still not in place and three funnels still missing. It would be hard to confuse the two, and harder still to 'switch' them.
How did White Star 'benefit greatly' by the loss of a major asset, a safety record, and £500,000?
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The Stuka, and the Luftwaffe in general, actually failed at Dunkirk. There were 41 Royal Navy destroyers present at various times, of which only 4 were lost to air attack. Of 230 trawlers, 23 were lost to enemy action of all kinds. Of 26 corvettes, sloops, & gunboats, 1 was lost, and of 66 merchant personnel vessels, 13.
Fortunately, the Luftwaffe of 1940 was trained in close support operations on land, but had no anti-shipping skills and, indeed, no suitable torpedo bombers.
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@theuksmostwanted6103 Churchill was born in 1874 and died almost 50 years ago, yet you seek to attack him because he didn't subscribe to the transient and bizarre opinions prevalent at the present time?
Certainly Churchill believed that British culture was superior to that of India, China, or Africa. Other European countries, and certainly the United States, believed exactly the same of their own, largely because every advance in science, technology, and education since the mid 16th century had been developed by Europeans. I wonder how, in 100 years time, observers will view some of the lunatic opinions which currently exist/
As to the use of poison gas, would you explain why using shells, bombs, and bullets is quite acceptable, but using gas isn't? The use of gas was, at the time, actually regarded as less brutal than the other weapons I have mentioned by many, if not most, military men of all nations of the period. To give you just one quote among many, "Gas is a more merciful weapon than [the] high explosive shell, and compels an enemy to accept a decision with less loss of life than any other agency of war."
As to Churchill being an aggressive tyrant, which wars of aggression did he pursue, and, as the democratically elected Prime Minister of the UK in WW2, how was he a tyrant?
By the way, presumably you are aware that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi referred to Africans as an inferior breed of humanity? Would you wish to add him to your list of evil people?
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You fixate upon the Ground War. You lack to account for the role of the bomber offensive, which both hamstrung German industry, largely prevented the Luftwaffe supporting the German army on the Eastern Front, and required a major concentration of artillery & personnel around German cities. You also ignore the major German effort to produce & crew U-boats for the Atlantic & Mediterranean campaigns. Not, of course to mention the war against Japan, in which the Soviet Union was neutal until, literally, the last week or two.
By the way, your indoctrinators have misled you. Commonwealth countries were self-governing and chose, as democratic nations, to declare war independently of Britain. India, though still governed by Britain, never had any form of conscription, yet 2.5 million Indians fought on the allied side. Perhaps they knew what a Japanese occupation would mean to them?
Oh, and your error about the Bengal Famine. Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which you have been programmed by your indoctrinators.
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@dwight4626 'Do you think we would have won without the Yanks ?' Actually, it depends what you mean by 'won.'
Moreover, we would certainly not have been invaded, and therefore we wouldn't now be speaking German. We had the largest navy on earth, and from June 1940 onwards the British were outbuilding the Germans in aircraft, and especially in fighter aircraft. This video is about 1940, by the way, when the US were selling supplies and equipment at market rates.
You probably don't know this, but FDR viewed Land-Lease, when it was finally pushed through in early 1941, as a means of buying time until the US had begun to re-arm. It was never altruistic in the slightest.
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@dwight4626 Do you think that the British & Commonwealth weren't? The largest single military defeat inflicted upon the Japanese army was the defeat of their Operation U-Go, with 30,500 Japanese killed and a further 23,000 hospitalised. The victors, by the way, were the Anglo-Indian XIV army.
The US navy, of course, was able to concentrate almost entirely in the Pacific because the Royal Navy fought, and won, the allied campaigns in the Arctic, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean.
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@nickdanger3802 Still replying with odd irrelevancies, I observe.
However, you might wish to refer to V. E. Tarrant's's 'The U-Boat Offensive, 1918-1945' for a detailed analysis.
Coastal Command are credited with 196 sinkings, US Naval & Army Aircraft with 86, other allied navies with 17, other causes (mines, scuttling, accidents, internment, collisions, and unknown losses) 119, and bombing in ports or shipyards, also 84.
Oh, and US Navy 48.5. Royal & Royal Canadian Navy 257.5.
Total 808.
Do explain the relevance to the Battle of Britain?
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit your agenda, but at least your indoctrinators will be proud of you for not breaking your programming.
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@sshep86 Strange how often people get the Dunkirk losses wrong. According to the official Royal Naval staff history, 72 allied vessels were actually lost to enemy action, and a further 163 to 'other causes.' However, of this total of 235, 135 were 'little ships' which were simply abandoned on the beaches when the evacuation ended. Losses of larger vessels were comparatively light. being 9 destroyers & torpedo boats, 1 gunboat, 6 minesweepers, 29 trawlers/drifters, 9 personnel ships, and 3 cargo ships.
The RN's destroyer force, which would provide the backbone of any anti-invasion fleet, was barely affected, especially since, of the 20 or so which you identify as badly damaged, all except 3 were back in service within ten days. In point of fact, most of the damaged destroyers had been damaged by grounding and collision, rather than enemy action, by the way.
Sorry, but the facts are that, in 1940 at least, the Luftwaffe, which had never trained in attacks of shipping was desperately poor at it. Even their ace Stuka pilot, Oskar Dinort, commander of Stuka-Geschwader 2, wrote of the difficulties his unit experienced when attacking (unsuccessfully) an RN squadron off Calais on 25 May, 1940, and his superior, Wolfram von Richthofen, commander of Fliegerkorps VIII, was adamant that his bombers lacked the skill and training to protect the Sealion barge trains from the massed destroyer attacks that they would have faced.
The simple point is: if the Luftwaffe could not sink destroyers when they were stopped or slow moving in restricted waters, with their operations restricted by large numbers of troops aboard, would they really have been any more successful when trying to attack these same destroyers, moving at 25+ knots, when they were in the midst of the barge trains? The Luftwaffe's own commanders thought not, and I agree with their judgement.
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Isn't it odd how people who demand 'do more reading' are those who, like yourself, have actually done the least?
I assume you have watched one of the Conspiracy Fantasy videos about Astor, Guggenheim, & Straus? Well, whatever those videos might, falsely, claim, the opinions of Astor & Guggenheim were never made known, whilst Straus had, in October, 1911, spoken in favour of the Federal Reserve concept. You can still read accounts of this speech in the archives of the NYT. Assuming that, of course, you wish to 'Do more reading'.
Of course, if you have credible evidence to the contrary which has been hidden for 110 years, you are entirely welcome to present it.
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Wrong. In the summer of 1940 the Royal Navy was concentrated almost entirely in Home Waters and the Mediterranean. According to the Royal Navy's Order of Battle, the 'Pink List' of 16 September, 1940, there were 64 destroyers and six light cruisers. In addition, there were 29 destroyers on escort duty, recallable within 24 hours, and 23 with the Home Fleet at Rosyth & Scapa Flow. Only 49 of the 182 in commission were not in Home Waters, mainly being with the Mediterranean Fleet & Force H.
Your Luftwaffe, despite having such 'easy prey' had just failed badly at Dunkirk. Moreover, in the whole of WW2, it sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser. In point of fact, most of the RN's anti-invasion forces were based at Plymouth, Portsmouth, and the Nore, mainly within five hours steaming of the Straits, and RN destroyers patrolled the Channel on a nightly basis throughout the period of threatened invasion.
As to equipment, so desperately short of this were the British that, on 22 August, 1940, at a time when legend has it that Britain was in mortal peril, they were able to send a large troop convoy, Operation Apology, to North Africa.
As to supply by air, history shows that the Luftwaffe was never able to maintain surrounded German armies in the field. In August, 1940, of course, Luftwaffe archives show that, after heavy losses durng the period May-June, the Luftwaffe had only just over 220 transport aircraft in service. Moreover, have you actually thought what, in terms of Fighter Command 'defeat' actually means? In reality, nothing more than withdrawing remaining aircraft north of the Thames, out of range of German fighters. As the British had been outproducing Germany in aircraft, and especially in fighter aircraft, since June, 1940, after a period of rest & re-equipping, Fighter Command could re-engage, in the improbable event of any organised forces getting past the Royal Navy at all.
You are misinformed about the Battle of Crete. The Royal Navy was tasked with preventing the landing of axis forces by sea, and did precisely that. Two convoys attempted to reach Crete from Greece. The first, heading for Maleme, was annihilated, and the second, for Heraklion, turned back upon hearing of the fate of the first. No troops landed by sea until after evacuation had been ordered and the Royal Navy, once again, was obliged to rescue the army.
Had the Germans set off, in their converted barges being towed by tugs & trawlers at little more than walking pace, they would have encountered around 70 destroyers & light cruisers, supported by around 500 smaller warships. Unlike at Dunkirk, when the Luftwaffe failed to prevent the evacuation undertaken by similar ships when they were either stationary of moving at low speed in restricted waters, this time the RN warships had full freedom of action.
It is frequently said that, the less a person actually knows about the facts of 1940, the more the person thinks that Sealion was possible.
You have just managed to prove precisely that. Congratulations!
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@historymusic6331 'Because there's No way The Royal Navy Doesn't Suffer Staggering Losses To Prevent Operation Sealion From achieving Succeed.' Upon what actual evidence do you base that claim? If I had ever played cricket for England, I would currently have a batting average of 83.5. I can make this claim because there is just as much evidence for it as there is for your 'staggering losses' claim.
'Because Kriegmarine and Luftwaffe harassed The Royal Navy In English Channel.' Really? Let's see.
Between 1939 & 1945, the RN ran regular convoys through the Channel and along the ease coast. The FN/FS series ( Thames to Firth of Forth & return) consisted of 3584 convoys involving 104,792 voyages. Total losses, in convoy, stragglers, and out of convoy, were 203, or 0.19%
The CW/CE series ( St. Helen's Roads to Southend & reverse) involved 531 convoys, or 9,097 voyages. Losses from all sources (aircraft, U-boats, S boats, mines) were 31, or 0.34%. These convoys usually consisted of a number of small colliers or coasters, protected by two older V & W class destroyers and two or three armed trawlers.
So yes, the Germans probably did try to harass the RN in the Channel area. They were, however, astonishingly inept at it.
Right, now the Mediterranean. Perhaps you are unaware that the only people blocked in the Mediterranean were the Italian navy & the 60 or so U-boats sent there. The British held both ends of the Med., in particular Gibraltar, a fortress and the base for the British Force H. Of the 60 boats sent, despite Doenitz's protests, to the Mediterranean, how many managed to emerge back into the Atlantic? Actually one, U26, in early 1940.
You seem to like using phrase like 'staggering losses' or 'heavy cost' a lot. Perhaps you should seek to provide credible arguments to support them?
Or, alternatively, you might buy a book or two in order to educate yourself on the subject, and to disabuse yourself of your strange fantasies?
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I would doubt that, simply because Ajax decommissioned in February, 1948. Between July 1945 & October, 1951, Clement Attlee was Prime Minister & a Labour government in power. Whether Churchill disapproved or not was, to be honest, irrelevant. Ajax' sister ship, Achilles, rejoined the RN from the RNZN in September, 1946, and was sold to the Indian Navy in July, 1948.
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I see. Are you really ignorant enough to believe that a U-boat commander would be able to see, let alone read, signal flags or lamps, in such circumstances, even should he be unwise enough to try?
You suggest that the captain of HMS Dorsetshire stops his cruiser, with a crew of 850 men, in mid-Atlantic, and ignores reports of U-boats in the area, because he can be confident that all U-boat captains are honourable humanitarians who would surely refrain from torpedoing an enemy cruiser? I'm sure that, as the second of three torpedoes slammed into his command, Captain Martin's last recorded action would have been a good-natured shrug.
Out of interest, on 8 June, 1940, the aircraft carrier Glorious and her two escorting destroyers were sunk in the North Sea by the German battleships Scharnhorst & Gneisenau. Would you care to tell me whether the two battleships stopped to pick up survivors? Perhaps you would like another example. In September, 1914, the cruiser Aboukir was torpedoed in the North Sea by the German U-boat U9. Two other cruisers stopped to rescue survivors, and the U-boat torpedoed these as well. In point of fact, the German commanders both acted correctly, just as Captain Martin did.
At North Cape, by the way, Scharnhorst was sunk at 1945 on 26 December, 1943. It was pitch dark, and the British battleship had been firing by radar. After Scharnhorst sank, Admiral Fraser sent two destroyers to pick up survivors, but in the darkness, with a heavy, freezing, sea, they only managed to find 36. In the prevailing conditions, it was quite remarkable that even 36 survived.
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@trentxiiib8756 I note that you haven't explained why the Germans, who were apparently still following 'the rules of war' at the time, failed to attempt to pick up any survivors from HMS Glorious. The RN, in the form of Dorsetshire & Maori, did seek to pick up Bismarck survivors, but abandoned the attempt rather than risk being subjected to a U-boat attack, and U-boats had been reported in the area. Lutjens had even signalled for one to collect Bismarck's war diary.
At North Cape, the British picked up those survivors they could find, which were indeed very few, largely because of the darkness and weather conditions. They did not break off until they had completed their task. Do you have any understanding of what life expectancy was in the Arctic in December?
There are numerous books about the Bismarck action, the sinking of Glorious (and, for that matter, of Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy) and North Cape. Why not read them instead of persisting with your ill-informed and obviously prejudiced foolishness.
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@ClassicFormulaOne1 Do you know what punishment Midshipman Brooks received for his action? Confinement to his cabin for a few days. Hardly keel-hauling was it? The fact was that Brooks disobeyed orders, and as a junior officer could not escape punishment. He did, however, receive nothing more than a wrist slap. Where is your evidence that Martin was a cold-hearted bully? Should you be interested, he actually joined the navy as a boy seaman in 1908, and retired as a (knighted) vice-admiral in 1947, having, at the end of his career, commanded assault forces ( Force W) from HMS Bulolo during the Arakan campaign.
I note that you 'distrust' the motives of Captain Martin, and blame the British commanding officers on the scene. As a historian, you surely know that personal prejudices should play no part; what matters is evidence based on known facts.
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@ClassicFormulaOne1 Precisely what sort of evidence would you expect? Whether there was a U-Boat there or not is irrelevant. If the British thought there was then they were obliged to act to avoid being attacked. Actually, post-war German records make it fairly clear that there was no U-Boat but, astonishingly, the British did not have access to post-war German naval records in May 1941. All the British knew was 1). U-Boats had been ordered to concentrate on Bismarck's position. 2). Bismarck had been transmitting signals, possibly homing signals, on a U-Boat, rather than the usual surface ship, frequency. 3). An officer on the bridge of Dorsetshire reported seeing exhaust fumes on the beam of the cruiser. If you can prove that Group West had not ordered U-Boats to concentrate on Bismarck's position, and Bismarck had not transmitted homing signals on 852 meters & 443 kcs, then please present your evidence.
If you really are an historian, as you apparently claim, then you should know that your personal prejudice against Captain Martin is irrelevant.
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@ClassicFormulaOne1 Well, as you haven't presented any arguments, other than your conviction that you must be right, and as you also claimed that rescue operations after the Scharnhorst action were aborted following a U-Boat report, when this is demonstrably false, it seems fairly self-evident that your 'claim' is based entirely on your personal prejudice.
Incidentally, who exactly do you think you are 'proclaiming' your fantasies to? I know of no credible naval historian who would buy in to your evil murdering British hypothesis, based as it is on a quite remarkable ignorance of the realities of warfare.
In short, keep posting your nonsense, or just go away. I really don't care either way, although people like you do provide some amusement for those of us who have professional qualifications in the field of naval history, I suppose.
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@Ralphieboy Actually, preventing the French fleet from returning to mainland French ports and, potentially, being ordered by Vichy to support an attempted German invasion.
Maintaining British naval control of the Mediterranean, and engaging the Italian fleet on the rare occasions when it did appear. This wasn't often and, to quote the old song, 'If they won't fight us, what can we do more?'
Screening Arctic Convoys against a possible sortie by Tirpitz or Scharnhorst, before ensuring that one Sharnhorst emerged, she did not return.
Finally, using older battleships of the 'R' class to protect Atlantic convoys from possible attacks by German raiders. Particularly during Operation Berlin.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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@colincampbell4261 Perhaps you aren't aware that, at the height of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy had around 500 ships in commission, 200 of which were Ships of the Line. In total, the Royal Navy needed over 200,000 men to crew them. Do you really believe that there were 100,000 black crewmen?
Actually, I don't know what he does or doesn't know about the RN of the time, although I am sure he knows about press-ganging. Perhaps you might explain the difference, in essence, between press- ganging in the 19th century, and conscription in the 20th? What I am confident he does know, and what I assume you also ought to know, is that the reference to half of the Royal Navy being black is ludicrous.
In short, you haven't made a valid comment. You have simply demonstrated your lack of actual knowledge, either of this particular subject or, seemingly, of British & World history in general.
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@TwistedSisterHaratiofales I'm sorry. I didn't realise how little you actually knew about the action. In no particular order :-
1). KGV was rather more than 30 or 40 miles away. There were two realistic exit points into the Atlantic. Hood & POW were sent to cover one, whilst KGV covered the other. KGV, by the way, had the battlecruiser Repulse and the carrier Victorious with her. You can find fuller details in any book on the subject. Perhaps you might care to try 'The Bismarck Chase' by Robert Winklareth, an American author.
2). Norfolk & Suffolk were not 'afraid' to engage, but were intending to take on Prinz Eugen whilst Hood & POW challenged Bismarck. However, the main action was over very quickly, at which point Wake-Walker, now in command of the British force, reverted to the traditional role of the cruiser, that of shadowing an enemy force in order to bring further heavy units ( i.e., KGV, Repulse, & Victorious) into contact.
3). POW broke off the engagement because X turret had suffered a mechanical failure. This was quickly repaired, and she did briefly re-engage.
4). The damage to Bismarck was already serious enough to force Lutjens to abandon his mission. You write glibly about Bismarck, after possibly sustaining further damage, still having 'better chance to run for home.' She was already short of fuel following the loss of her bow tanks, was down by the bows, and had a list. This damage led to her eventual destruction. I cannot see how you can possibly argue that a Bismarck with further damage would have had a better chance.
5). In the final engagement, Prinz Eugen would have been useless, although Dr. Ballard would doubtless have taken some poignant pictures of her wreck when he filmed Bismarck. Lutjens' decision to detach her was undoubtedly correct, given his original instructions, in that she might have carried on operations against Atlantic convoys. Of course, as was usual with the Hippers, she developed engine problems and achieved nothing.
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@senakaweeraratna741 Of course they were. Are you entirely ignorant of allied naval strategy? Clearly you are. The Royal Navy concentrated in the west, and defensively in the Indian Ocean, thus leaving the US navy to operate almost exclusively in the Pacific.
The British lost, in terms of significant warships, two cruisers and one small carrier in the Indian Ocean. If you think that represents 'The pride of the Royal Navy' then you are very ill-informed.
'The Imperial Japanese Army defeated the British Army in Burma, Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore, Papua new guinea among others.' I urge you to read up on Operation U-Go. 55,000 Japanese casualties, greater than the massive US victories in the Pacific. The British were never in New Guinea. The Japanese there were defeated there by Australian & American troops.
'Japan had support throughout Asia as a fellow Asian country.' Yes, it must have been delightful to be beheaded by a fellow Asian.
Are you aware of the fact that 2.5 million Indians volunteered to serve with the allies in WW2?
Indeed, are you actually aware of much at all?
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@jpmeunier5595 Would you like me to recommend a few books, as your knowledge is slightly lacking? I have already told you the facts about the manner in which Fighter Command aircraft were used, so won't repeat them.
Please show me any credible source from the time which demonstrates that the British intended to withdraw from 21 May. The Dunkirk operation was intended to make possible the removal of the trapped troops of the BEF & French First Army in order to land them further west. The British actually began re-landing troops in Cherbourg, from 7 June, but were told by General Weygand that the French Army was no longer 'able to offer organised resistance.' At that point, I wonder if the Admiralty wondered why they had wasted time, ships, & lives evacuating French troops who, when re-landed in France, were simply ordered to lay down their arms by their commanders.
As to Mers-el-Kebir, of course the British were scared. Unlike France, they had chosen to continue to resist, and they feared that an attempted invasion was planned. The German navy had been desperately weakened during the Norwegian campaign, but there was a possibility that the French navy might be used to support an attempt. After all, in early July, 1940, no-one knew exactly how the new French government might behave. Consequently, the British took preventative measures, the extent of which might have been much less bloody had Gensoul acted properly, and told his superiors what the full text of the ultimatum actually contained.
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@perryb72 Oh dear! Please try harder.
1). Titanic had a fire in one of her 13 bunkers, which had been extinguished in the usual manner for such fires in those days, which was to use up the coal from the affected bunker first. As an Olympic consumed up to 850 tons per day, this was achieved by at least 24 hours before the iceberg appeared, having done nothing more than scorch the interior walls of the bunker.
2). Smith did not have an 'appalling record of having accidents.' The only serious incident involving a ship under his command was the collision with HMS Hawke, which took place in the Solent when Olympic was in the charge of a Solent Pilot. Perhaps you might read up on the subsequent court case, which exonerated Smith of any blame. I assume you know what a Solent Pilot is?
Are you really daft enough to believe that White Star, who had the pick of any senior captain they desired, would have employed Smith as Commodore (senior captain) of the line since 1904, and let him command the maiden voyage of each of their new liners since then, if he had such a record?
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Amazing how any reference to Titanic brings out idiots like you. Presumably you watched a switcher video and swallowed it whole?
1). There were three major financiers aboard Titanic. Astor & Guggenheim had never commented on the Fed., whilst Straus was a supporter. This is actually supported by two newspaper articles reporting a speech he made in October, 1911.
2). Olympic had been fully repaired and was back on her Atlantic run for late November, 1911.
3). White Star ships had their names engraved in the hull, not painted on. If any exploration team had made any such discovery, why would they keep it a secret, as any media outlet in the world would have sold the family silver for the exclusive? The fact is, the 'O' you refer to does not exist.
4). The pattern of windows at the forward end of the wreck matches the modified pattern applied to Titanic, and differs significantly from Olympic's pattern at the same period.
5). What about the windows? Titanic had sixteen portholes forward on her port side, after two extra had been added during building. The Olympic of the same period had the original fourteen, until two more were added during refit. What do you think that proves?
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Simply not true. The famous 'Halt Order' was issued by von Rundstedt. It can still be read in the Army Group war diary, should you so choose. Goering had already told Hitler that the annihilation of the Dunkirk pocket was a 'special job for the Luftwaffe' which, of course, then proceeded to demonstrate a remarkable inability to hit ships, even when slow moving or even anchored.
The decision to evacuate was only made by the British War Office on 25 May, and the evacuation was completed on 4 June, the last lift being of French troops, of whom around 139,000 were lifted, so please explain how the troops could possibly have been on the beaches for two weeks.
What is your source for 'British officers ripped of their badges as they were being shot at by the squaddies?' Presumably, it is made up, like the rest of your post.
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@loneprimate Don't get so worked up. However wonderful the Canadian Division was, it was still only one division, after if had been withdrawn through St. Malo by the Royal Navy as part of Operation Cycle in mid June, 1940, along with 52nd Lowland. 3rd British, already re-equipped was preparing to sail to Cherbourg when General Weygand informed his 'allies' that the French army was no longer able to offer organised resistance. Thus, it was not the only fully equipped division, was it?
Not that this is relevant, as by the time the Germans were even theoretically in a position to attempt an invasion, mid September, 1940, there were 34.5 operational divisions in Britain, of which 32.5 were British. Indeed, in mid August, the British had felt strong enough to send a large troop convoy to North Africa.
Before you get so agitated, why not try finding out a few facts?
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Holland actually intended to engage at around 0200, when Bismarck & Prinz Eugen would be silhouetted against the afterglow (sunset was at 0151) but Suffolk lost radar contact at 0028, and Lutjens changed course at 0141.
Suffolk regained contact at around 0300, by which time Holland was about 35 nm away from Bismarck, and slightly ahead. This meant that the British approach involved converging at a wider angle, which became even more disadvantageous to them when the Germans altered course again around 0320. This is another of the many 'what ifs' surrounding the Bismarck action, i.e., what if Suffolk had maintained contact, and Holland was able to engage at 0200?
Holland seems to have chosen not to detach Prince of Wales to act independently (as Tovey later did with Rodney) because of a wish to determine the separate fall of shot from his two capital ships, although possibly he had doubts about POW's state of readiness. I doubt anyone can know his reasoning for sure.
The action, to be honest, concluded before Norfolk or Suffolk could do anything, although I believe that was the intention.
As to Prince of Wales leading, Tovey thought the same, and considered signalling Holland to suggest it, before deciding to leave such decisions to the man on the spot. Certainly, POW was far better equipped to cope with Bismarck's shellfire. Probably, Holland did not believe that he should, Duke of Plaza Toro like, lead his regiment from the rear. I have read that, for the rest of his life, Tovey profoundly regretted not making the signal.
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Always nice to read a post by an enthusiastic Sealion 'Would have.' The same lack of knowledge always shines through.
First, the Germans didn't have any operational torpedo bombers until mid 1942. They had a tiny number of seaplanes capable of using torpedoes, but only ever risked them in the far north, against unarmed merchantmen, as they were extremely vulnerable.
Secondly, the 1940 Luftwaffe bombing arm had simply not been trained as anything other than a ground attack force. It had just failed badly against the Evacuation fleet at Dunkirk. Just for interest, your mighty Luftwaffe, in the whole of WW2, sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship bigger than a light cruiser. In September, 1940, the RN had 70 destroyers and light cruisers within five hours of the Straits, supported by around 500 smaller warships. There were a further 40 or so other destroyers also in Home Waters at the time. I haven't, of course, mentioned the battleships, battlecruisers, and heavy cruisers of the Home Fleet, based at Rosyth and Scapa Flow, as the Admiralty didn't intend to use. them.
Thirdly, Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by Japanese torpedo aircraft. As I have explained, the Germans had nothing similar at the time. Moreover, unlike the Germans, the Japanese had been well trained in anti-shipping techniques.
Fourthly, based on Admiral von Holtzendorff's calculations that Germany needed to sink 600,000 tons of Allied shipping per month to cut the British supply lines, the Germans never actually came close, rarely exceeding 400,000, and often being below 100,000.
Instead of pontificating about what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done, why not simply explain why they never came remotely near actually doing it?
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Unfortunately, Macksey's book is riddled with inaccuracies. The German surface fleet at the time, for example, in terms of operational ships, consisted of one heavy cruiser, seven destroyers, four light cruisers, seven torpedo boats (the equivalent of destroyer escorts) a handful of minesweepers, and around thirteen S boats. Compared to what the Royal Navy had in terms of the Home Fleet at Rosyth, let alone the 70 or so destroyers and light cruisers within five hours steaming of Dover, the supposed German Fleet would not have caused much, if any, delay at all.
I fear Macksey was rather free and easy with facts, in order to make his idea of a German landing possible.
Oh, and yes, I do have the book, and have read it several times.
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@ole-mariusbergesen7818 I really do not know how many times I need to point out to people that at the time of Sealion the Luftwaffe did not have any torpedo bombers. The largest RN ship the Luftwaffe sank was a light cruiser, by the way. Similarly Bismarck was damaged by the Swordfish, but sunk by a surface fleet.
How do you explain that the Luftwaffe, when presented with 'fish in a barrel' at Dunkirk, only sank four out of forty--one destroyers? Do you consider that their total lack of training in anti-shipping operations might, just possibly, have been relevant. Oddly, Oskar Dinort & Wolfram von Richthoven, the two senior German air commanders at the time, did.
As to your original amusing suggestion that the ' Luftwaffe could easily have changed their focus to dockyard, harbors and every part of the supply chain' have you the faintest idea how many ports were available to the Royal Navy on the British homeland, how big they were, and how far apart from each other they were? Obviously not.
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HMS Seal, on 5 May, 1940. She was a Grampus class minelayer, sent to carry out a minelaying operation in the Kattegat. In attempting to evade a German anti-submarine patrol, she was seriously damaged in a German minefield. After her one working engine failed as she attempted to reach neutral Sweden, her commander destroyed his confidential books and surrendered, with the agreement of the Admiralty.
Seal was towed by her captors to Fredrikshaven, where extensive repairs were attempted. She was commissioned into the Kriegsmarine as UB in Spring 1941, but only ever used for training and propaganda purposes. She was then dumped in a corner of Kiel dockyard, where she was destroyed in the same raid that destroyed the Admiral Hipper. She was subsequently raised, and scuttled on 3 May, 1945. The Germans did, however, benefit from examination of the British contact type torpedo detonator at the time of her capture.
Her captain, Lt-Cdr. Lonsdale, was the only British commander to surrender his ship in the whole of WW2. He was subsequently court-martialled, and acquitted, after the war.
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Bizarre how confused people like you can be. Churchill (and Herbert Kitchener) saw Gallipoli as a means of using sea power to avert the unfolding carnage on the Western Front. Had you actually read a book on the subject, rather than simply a 'Churchill was a bad man' manual, you would have found that Kitchener had been asked by the Russian General Staff if the Allies had some means of reducing Ottoman pressure on Russia's southern flank.
Thus, Gallipoli was suggested as a means of :- 1). Responding to the Russian appeal. 2). Encouraging neutral Eastern European states to join the alliance against Germany, Austria-Hungary, & Turkey. 3). Perhaps even knocking the Ottoman Empire out of the war.
Churchill put the idea to Herbert Asquith, who (not Churchill) actually authorised the Operation, after which Churchill, nor any other politician, had any part in the planning or execution of it. When the campaign failed, Asquith needed a scapegoat, which was Churchill'
Narvik was rather different. It was an Allied attempt to support Norway after the German invasion, intended to enable at least part of Norway to remain unoccupied, but perhaps more importantly, to prevent German freighters using Narvik as a means of transporting iron ore to Germany when the Swedish ports were iced up in winter. In fact, it might well have worked, at least in denying Narvik to the Germans, had not the expedition been withdrawn following the Blitzkreig on the Low Countries and France.
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Don't be so sure. The binocular issue is far from cut and dried. The officer responsible, David Blair left the Titanic on 9th April 1912, and along with him, he took the keys to the crow’s nest locker. Most probably an accident, but it is believed to be the reason why there were no binoculars available with the crew during the journey.
However, other versions of the story tell that the locker was open, but that there weren’t any binoculars. According to another story, they were left behind in Blair’s cabin, or he took them along with him once he had left the ship, as the set was his personal possession.
Frederick Fleet, the look out, in his testimony to the British Inquiry, said that George Symons, the man he relieved as look out, had asked about 'glasses' but was told that 'there were none aboard for us, intended for us.'
In Symons' own testimony, in reply to question 11324 'were there any (glasses) on the Titanic, said, ' No, none whatever. After we left Southampton and got clear of the Nab Lightship I went up to the Officers' mess -room and asked for glasses. I asked Mr. Lightoller, and he went into another Officers' room, which I presume was Mr. Murdoch's, and he came out and said, "Symons, there are none." With that I went back and told my mates.'
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@liatmarmur4368 The fire was a minor one, and had been detected during one of the daily inspections carried out by Titanic's engineers, as required by IMM regulations, when Titanic was in Southampton.
Joseph Bell, Titanic's Chief Engineer, set a team to work, and the fire had been dealt with well before the collision. Stoker survivors who testified at the Inquiry confirmed this, and the only damage reported was to paintwork inside the bunker. Certainly, the bulkheads were not affected. The affected bunker, by the way, was well aft of the initial impact point.
I doubt that any senior White Star manager even knew of it. Certainly it didn't stop Ismay or Andrews sailing.
Moreover, do try to think. Had Joseph Bell felt that the fire was a serious one, and reported it to Captain Smith, would you really suggest that Smith might have said 'Don't worry, Joseph. We'll sail anyway. After all, it's only the North Atlantic in April. With a bit of luck we might survive it.'
Seriously?
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@Daz-ty6bo Sorry, but you are either an idiot, a child, or simply very immature. The prime evidence in the photograph is that, as other photographs, German records, and drawings all clearly demonstrate, Bismarck never carried any torpedo tubes, and Tirpitz only received two sets later in her career.
As did, incidentally, Scharnhorst & Gneisenau, although in their case they were triple sets removed from German light cruisers.
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The so-called 'Little Ships' were actually used for a specific purpose, which was to ferry troops from the beaches to the transports & warships waiting offshore. The bulk of the men evacuated came in destroyers (102843) smaller warships such as minesweepers and armed trawlers (97147) and transports (127363). The Little ships actually brought back 6029. You should not let silly films like 'Dunkirk' deceive you. There was, by the way, no German navy able to intervene.
The difference here is that the barges (towed in pairs by a tug or a trawler) were expected to transport large numbers of infantry & horses, largely without artillery or motor transport and with minimal naval protection, across the Channel at around 5 knots, in the face of attack from the Royal Navy which, by September 1940, had around 70 cruisers & destroyers, and some 500 smaller warships, within 5 hours' steaming of Dover.
That is why 'those "slow barges" were not good enough for invasion.'
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'Both sides ran out of ammunition.' Don't be silly. Bismarck never ran out of ammunition, but she ran out of guns after most of her main and secondary armament had been destroyed by repeated hits. Neither did Tovey's ships run out of ammunition, although there was concern that KGV & Rodney were getting low on fuel.
Certainly, she was difficult to sink, because her main belt was placed too low in the ship. Whilst it protected her engineering spaces, if did not prevent massive internal fires, and it did not protect her internal communications, which were destroyed very early in the action.
Perhaps that explains why her senior surviving officer, Von Mullenheim-Rechberg, was unaware of her scuttling?
Still, believe what you want. The fact is that Bismarck sank on 27 May, 1941, being sunk by 'the British' according to Ballard & Mearns.
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@of1300 Yes, I have read the transcripts, and done much research. The Inquiries were not trials, as for a trial there would need to be evidence of criminal intent, and neither Inquiry concluded that there was.
When you make comments like ' freemasons are not allowed by solemn oath to implicate any other freemasons, and since most people of notable position in politics, law and media at that time were freemasons, the whole charade of these hearing actually makes total sense' you can hardly expect to be taken seriously.
I was not intending to insult, but simply to express my bewilderment that someone who is, presumably, an adult, could cling to such bizarre ideas.
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Perhaps the time will soon come to have a debate about the future of the monarchy. Charles and William spend much of their time wandering around telling anyone who cares to listen about how horrible the British are, and seem to have the perverse delusion that, in some strange manner, only British slavery was 'bad' slavery, the other versions being branches of social services. The positive manner in which the English/British abolished slavery at an early date, and the manner in which the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron systematically destroyed the slave trade, is, in their privileged eyes, seemingly not worth mentioning.
Perhaps when he gets back, he will tour the Midlands, the North, and Wales, apologising about the brutal treatment of the peasantry who lived there during the industrial revolution? I doubt it. As someone whose antecedents came from Ancoats, Manchester, I can state with total certainty that, several generations back, my family were certainly not benefitting from their slave plantations in the West Indies.
In short, I will never regard this poseur as my Monarch, however posh a frock his wife wears.
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@shalaconballard9912 Very nice. You should look at any proper book on HMS Hood for accurate facts. I would recommend 'HMS Hood - Design & Construction' by Maurice Northcott, or 'British Battleships of WW2' by Raven & Roberts, to begin with, for proper facts about her. These detail, in particular, her re-design after Jutland, and the proposals for the 'Large Repair.' This was the modernisation which never actually happened.
Put simply, Hood was a ship with the armour of a contemporary battleship, and the speed of a contemporary battlecruiser.
As I said, why don't you look up any of the numerous sources which detail her armour, instead of sticking doggedly to your opinion in defiance of the facts?
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@trumbettier Clearly, your need to resort to obscenities (or, rather, the same obscenity. Couldn't you at least think up a few others?) demonstrates the true validity of your argument, but, more in hope than anticipation, I feel I should ask you, if the British did not save Malta, where the five merchantmen which reached Malta with 32000 tons of supplies came from? Likewise, where did the November convoy, MW13 (Stoneage) come from?
Furthermore, I doubt there was anything in the Atlantic Charter which surprised Churchill, largely because he helped to compose it. I agree, there were aspects to it which he certainly didn't like, but equally the same comment could be applied to FDR.
Yes, the British Empire was largely history by 1960. All empires are transient, whether they be Roman, Spanish, or British. Indeed, historians of the future will probably identify the immediate past as the time when the United States began to decline in prestige and authority, with the rise of the next great world power, China.
Your post, by the way, rather reeks of hubris. You should be aware that generally follows is nemesis.
Odd that you should suggest that the British hadn't learned the importance of air power by mid 1942, when they were clearly well aware of it in 1940. They certainly understood it in 1944, when two thirds of the 11600 aircraft at D-Day were British. Mind you, so were 892 of 1213 warships, two thirds of the troops who landed (British & Canadian,) and 3261 of the 4127 landing craft were British manned. Furthermore, whilst the Supreme Commander was American, the heads of the three armed services were all British, and the naval landings were planned by a British Admiral, Bertram Ramsay.
One final thing. How did Churchill 'bait' Germany between the wars when he held no political office of any kind between 1929 & September, 1939?
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@trumbettier Brisbane Star did nothing of the sort. She had been damaged and could only make 8 knots, and her captain, Frederick Riley, concluded that she could not reach Malta on 13 August without protection, especially since she had been spotted by a Sicily based Sm79. Consequently, he took his ship into French territorial waters and the aircraft, obeying the rules of war, did not attack.
At 1000, Brisbane Star began receiving signals from the Vichy authorities at Hammamet, but ignored them. Around 1700 a Vichy patrol boat appeared and Brisbane Star was boarded by two officials, who insisted that she should be interned. After some discussion, and liberal doses of whiskey, the officials left, boarding their patrol boat, taking a badly injured crewman with them, and even signalling 'Bon Voyage.' Riley kept Brisbane Star behind a series of shoals and sandbars well inshore until nightfall, before continuing on his course for Malta, where she arrived at 1530 on 14 August, a gaping hole in her bows notwithstanding. For most of the last day, she was actually protected by Beaufighters, until she came within range of Malta's Spitfires, by the way.
Riley never at any time sought succour from French authorities. He made a considerable effort to avoid being interned, and his ship was capable of far more than 3 knots. It looks like you have been reading wikipedia, rather than a proper account of Pedestal written by a professional historian, of which there are several available. Even wikipedia does not suggest that Riley sought help from the French. That, presumably, is the bit you invented all by yourself.
You are therefore, utterly wrong in your facile comments.
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@trumbettier My opinion on David Irving, and my views on Brexit, are irrelevant to Pedestal. Buchanan's book might well appeal to those who have a superficial, at best, knowledge of the facts, and/or have existing prejudices which they seek to reinforce. I really don't care what you think about his work as that, also, is irrelevant to Pedestal.
By the way, you do know that Churchill held no political office between 1929 & September, 1939, do you? Whatever his own views, he had no influence at all on British governance during that period. In fact, he was widely regarded as a renegade, especially since he had crossed the floor of the house twice.
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@trumbettier I assume that, by 'intransigent comments' you mean indisputable facts which you don't like. Just for information, the Germans didn't start fitting turbines in their capital ships until the Kaisers of 1912. The British had been using turbines since Dreadnought. Furthermore, the last of the class, Prinzregent Luitpold, was supposed to have been fitted with a diesel engine driving her centre shaft, but never was. This also applied to the succeeding Konig class, which, likewise, were never fitted with the intended diesels and, indeed, resorted to partial coal firing, with 12 of 15 boilers being coal fired. Even the last two, German battleships, Baden & Bayern, had 11 of 14 boilers coal fired. No German battleship in WW1 had a diesel engine. Oh, and the 'enormous fire power' is interesting. I presume you mean the German 11 inch and 12 inch, as opposed to the feeble British 12 inch, 13.5 inch, & 15 inch. Only the last two German battleships, the Baden & Bayern, carried 15 inch guns, in comparison to the (entirely oil fired) Royal Sovereign & Queen Elizabeth classes (10 ships in all) of which the QEs were some four knots faster than the Badens.
By the way, the (oil fired) Bismarcks were hardly wonder weapons. Both had outmoded incremental armour, whereas every British capital ship since the Nelsons had adopted the Nevada type, vastly more effective, all-or-nothing system. Bismarck was able to sink a twenty year old, unmodernised, British battlecruiser, but was quickly reduced from a warship to a slowly sinking, helpless, target in about twenty minutes by HMS Rodney on 27 May, 1941. The other two WW2 German battleships, Scharnhorst & Gneisenau, were also oil fired, although the panzershiffs, often wrongly called pocket battleships, were diesel powered, but hardly formidable vessels, as their performance in WW2 clearly demonstrates.
There were no British capital ships reliant on coal in WW2, by the way.
If Churchill was 'able to stir and keep the drums of war beating' between the wars, he couldn't have been much good at it, given the appeasement policies followed by a series of British governments at the time, could he? He did consistently argue that a resurgent, re-arming, Germany, after 1933, was a threat to European stability. Was he wrong?
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Simply not correct. The only credible, documented, peace offer Hitler made was his 'Appeal to Reason' of 19 July, 1940, if saying, effectively, 'surrender or we bomb you' can be so described. Indeed, it can be considered as reprresenting Hitler's belated realisation that, as Britain had demonstrated at Mers el Kebir two weeks earlier, an armistice was not going to happen. If of course you know of an actual, credible, source where these 'many generous' peace proposals may be read, please provide it.
Oh, and Hitler didn't issue the Halt Order, Von Rundstedt did, for sound military reasons. The first being that he needed to rest and service his armour before embarking on the second stage of the campaign. Like many other German generals, he feared a repeat of the 'Miracle of the Marne.'
Secondly, he knew that the ground around Dunkirk was largely unsuitable for armour, and that his supporting, mainly horse drawn, infantry divisions were beginning to arrive.
Hitler was happy to go along with the order of course. He was aware of ground conditions from his WW1 experience, but more importantly, Goering had told him, a day earlier, that the elimination of the surrounded allied troops was, in Goering's words 'a special job for the Luftwaffe.'
One wonders exactly how many lives would have been lost if Britain had signed a humiliating surrender/armistice along the lines of that imposed on France? Perhaps, had Germany been able fully to implement her policy of mass extermination of certain groups, deportation of large numbers of civilians for exploitation as slave labourers in the fatherland, and subordination of the economies of conquered states to her military needs, the number might have been significantly greater.
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The Germans did have submersible tanks. The So-called Tauchpanzer III. Which was a sealed Panzer III with an air tube connecting it to the surface. It could, theoretically, operate up to a depth of 15 metres. The idea was that they would be dropped from the ramp of a landing barge close inshore.
They had been tested, and were later used in action to cross the Bug river. That said, there were a number of problems where Sealion was concerned, primarily the inability of the driver to see obstacles on the sea bed. They probably would have failed, but they did exist.
The Luftwaffe point is easily dealt with. Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by highly trained crews flying high performance TORPEDO bombers. In 1940, the Luftwaffe had notr been trained in anti-shipping operations, and as a result had failed badly at Dunkirk. Moreover, the Luftwaffe did not acquire a suitable torpedo bomber until mid 1942.
Indeed, in the whole of WW2, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship bigger than a light cruiser. In fact, eight of them.
Both claims are entirely accurate.
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It is always fascinating to read comments about the fantasy that was Plan Z. The idea was adopted in late January, 1939. By that time, the German Naval Ordnance department (on 31 December, 1938) had already issued a report, 'The Feasibility of the Z Plan,' which pointed out that requirements in materials and manpower were so great that the whole of German industry would need to be committed to it. In other words, no weapons production for the army, and no aircraft production for the Luftwaffe. At the time the plan appeared, the Kriegsmarine were still sorting out technical problems with the Scharnhorst class yet, apparently, Germany was going to build six 56000 ton battleships, ten 21000 ton battlecruisers, and four aircraft carriers, as well as large numbers of cruisers, destroyers, and U-boats, by 1947.
As Hitler always viewed the Soviet Union as his primary enemy, does anyone really, seriously, consider that he would have regarded devoting Germany's entire industrial potential to building a large fleet as having any merit at all?
Honestly, the very idea is utterly ludicrous.
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Not quite. It was Ludovic himself who witnessed the battle. His father, Edward Coverley Kennedy, was captain of the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi when she was sunk by Scharnhorst & Gneisenau in the Iceland-Faroes passage on 23 November, 1939. Kennedy was ordered to surrender by the German commander, but instead chose to fight, transmitting an enemy sighting report, and scoring one hit on Scharnhorst. His last words to his bridge personnel were reported as "We’ll fight them both, they’ll sink us, and that will be that. Good-bye".
You are right, by the way. Ludovic Kennedy's book is excellent, written as it was by someone who experienced and understood naval warfare.
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@Lorne.StormTracker_Hayden I take it you haven't troubled to look up the facts about Astor, Guggenheim, or Straus, then?
Indeed, Morgan was a supporter of the Federal Reserve. Indeed, he didn't sail in Titanic, and indeed he was a towering figure in the financial world.
But there is a world of difference between those facts, and the entirely unsubstantiated claim that he had Titanic sunk in order to dispose of three alleged business opponents who actually don't seem to have opposed him at all.
As you are unwilling to look up these three for yourself, answer this question :- How could Morgan be sure that his enemies would all, independently, book passage in Titanic, how could he ensure that the ship would actually sink, and how could he be sure that all three would have the good manners not to board one of the lifeboats?
By the way, The United States House of Representatives approved the Federal Reserve bill by a vote of 298-60 on December 22, 1913. The United States Senate followed suit in a vote of 43-25 on December 23, 1913.
Despite what the conspiracists might like to suggest when they invented their fantasy in the 1990s, the Fed. was not brought into being as a result of the assassination of three individuals, however prominent.
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Then the sources are either disingenuous or badly informed. The term would probably have been to attack in divisions. In RN WW2 destroyer terms, a 'division' was a half flotilla, usually led by the second-in-command of the flotilla. Early in the war, it would have consisted of four ships from a flotilla of eight. In Vian's case, as there were four destroyers, it would have been reduced to two.
It is, frankly, inconceivable that any RN officer aboard Piorun would not have known precisely what Vian meant. Moreover, it really does not explain why, alone of the five destroyers, only one failed to attempt a torpedo attack, and only one lost contact during the action.
A gun duel might have seemed gallant, but it was also futile & pointless in the circumstances.
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The subject under discussion is the Battle of Britain, not the whole of WW2. Don't you understand that? I would have thought that there was something of a clue in the title.
Whilst the Commonwealth and Empire later played a significant role, as early as 1940 most of it was providing moral rather than actual physical support. In September 1940, of 34.5 divisions in Britain, 32.5 were British. Earlier, in June, the only Commonwealth forces in Britain were one Canadian division and two Australian/New Zealand brigades. Had the Germans attempted Sealion, after securing control of the air from Fighter Command, which consisted overwhelmingly of British pilots, then the ground troops facing the landings would have been almost entirely British.
Not to worry, though, because the British Royal Navy was more than capable of dealing with the ramshackle collection of barges which the Germans intended to use.
It seems you don't like the actual facts of 1940, so you have invented new ones.
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The subject under discussion is the Battle of Britain, not the whole of WW2. Don't you understand that? I would have thought that there was something of a clue in the title.
Whilst the Commonwealth and Empire later played a significant role, as early as 1940 most of it was providing moral rather than actual physical support. In September 1940, of 34.5 divisions in Britain, 32.5 were British. Earlier, in June, the only Commonwealth forces in Britain were one Canadian division and two Australian/New Zealand brigades. Had the Germans attempted Sealion, after securing control of the air from Fighter Command, which consisted overwhelmingly of British pilots, then the ground troops facing the landings would have been almost entirely British.
Not to worry, though, because the British Royal Navy was more than capable of dealing with the ramshackle collection of barges which the Germans intended to use.
It seems you don't like the actual facts of 1940, so you have invented new ones.
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'Verified?' Nothing of the sort. The whole nonsense is based on a book, 'Other Losses' written by a journalist in 1989. His claims were investigated by a Panel from the University of New Orleans in December, 1990.
The panel commented that, among its many problems, Other Losses:
misuses documents
misreads documents
ignores contrary evidence
employs a statistical methodology that is hopelessly compromised
made no attempt to see the evidence he has gathered in relation to the broader situation
made no attempt to perform any comparative context
puts words into the mouths of the subjects of his oral history
ignores a readily available and absolutely critical source that decisively dealt with his central accusation
As a consequence of those and other shortcomings, the book "makes charges that are demonstrably absurd."
Panel member Stephen Ambrose later wrote in the New York Times:
Mr Bacque is wrong on every major charge and nearly all his minor ones. Eisenhower was not a Hitler, he did not run death camps, German prisoners did not die by the hundreds of thousands, there was a severe food shortage in 1945, there was nothing sinister or secret about the "disarmed enemy forces" designation or about the column "other losses."
Mr Bacque's "missing million" were old men and young boys in the Volkssturm (People's Militia) released without formal discharge and transfers of POWs to other allies control areas. Maj. Ruediger Overmans of the German Office of Military History in Freiburg who wrote the final volume of the official German history of the war estimated that the total death by all causes of German prisoners in American hands could not have been greater than 56,000 approximately 1% of the over 5,000,000 German POWs in Allied hands exclusive of the Soviets. Eisenhower's calculations as to how many people he would be required to feed in occupied Germany in 1945-46 were too low and he had been asking for more food shipments since February 1945. He had badly underestimated the number of German soldiers surrendering to the Western Allies; more than five million, instead of the anticipated three million as German soldiers crossed the Elbe River to escape the Russians. So too with German civilians—about 13 million altogether crossing the Elbe to escape the Russians, and the number of slave labourers and displaced persons liberated was almost 8 million instead of the 5 million expected. In short, Eisenhower faced shortages even before he learned that there were at least 17 million more people to feed in Germany than he had expected not to mention all of the other countries in war-ravaged Europe, the Philippines, Okinawa and Japan. All Europe went on rations for the next three years, including Britain, until the food crisis was over.
Historians Gunter Bischof and Brian Loring Villa stated that a research report from the panel "soundly refuted the charges of Other Losses, especially Bacque's fanciful handling of statistics." The historians further stated:
It is not necessary to review here Bacque's extravagant statistical claims which are the heart of his conspiracy theory. The eight scholars who gathered in New Orleans and contributed to Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts against Falsehood (1992) refuted Bacque's wily misinterpretations of statistics and oral history evidence in detail.
Numerous reviews of the book written by the top talent in the military history profession such as John Keegan and Russel Weigley were persuaded by the findings of the book. These findings have since been further solidified by detailed case studies on individual American POW camps in Germany hastily built at the end of the war, like Christof Strauss's exhaustive Heidelberg dissertation on the POW and internment in the Heilbronn camp. The mountain of evidence has been building that Bacque's charge of the "missing million" supposedly perishing in the American (and French) POW camps in Germany and France is based on completely faulty interpretation of statistical data.
There was never any serious disagreement that the German POWs were treated badly by the U.S. Army and suffered egregiously in these camps in the first weeks after the end of the war. That the chaos of the war's end would also produce potentially mismatches and errors in record keeping should surprise no one either. But there was NO AMERICAN POLICY to starve them to death as Bacque asserts and NO COVER UP either after the war. No question about it, there were individual American camp guards who took revenge on German POWs based on their hatred of the Nazis.
Of course, you won't believe any of this, I assume?
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Oh dear! Someone else swallowing a switcher video whole! When Olympic went to Belfast for repairs after the collision with HMS Hawke, Titanic was little more than half completed. When Olympic returned to her Atlantic service in late November, Titanic was five months away from completion. There is even a photograph of the pair close together in October, 1911.
Olympic is a completed, fully painted, ship, whereas Titanic is still in base paint, has parts of her superstructure still not in place, and only one of four funnels fitted. Someone blindfolded at midnight on the darkest night of the year would still be able to tell them apart!
The boiler stoking Crew all quit.' Another nonsensical myth. Titanic was delivered from Belfast to Southampton by a passage crew, mainly of Belfast men, who had no interest in signing on, but wanted to return home. Much the same had happened with Olympic in 1911.
White Star were based in Southampton, and had already recruited the Deep-Sea crew from that port.
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Actually, as many people were aboard Titanic for her maiden voyage as had been for Olympic's in 1911. The coal strike, by the way, had ended a few days before Titanic sailed.
The binoculars are a total Red Herring. They would have made no difference, except possibly, had the lookouts been using them instead of using their eyes, the result might have been a slight delay in the alarm being given. Simply read the comments made by a whole series of officers about them. The norm was that lookouts would warn the bridge officers of a sighting, and the officers, not the lookouts, would use their binoculars to determine what it was, and what action, if any, should be taken.
How does the 'insurance scam' work when Titanic was only insured for two thirds of her building costs? Who thought it up? The Board of Cunard, perhaps?
Which testimony can't be true? Is this the usual line followed by you conspiracy people, that the fact that there is no evidence for it is the best evidence of all that it happened?
Exactly how much more does the video need to do to prove how foolish the conspiracy and/or switch theories really are?
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@rosesprog1722 Churchill had no guarantees at all. Admiral Darlan, when C-in-C of the French Navy, said he would not let the fleet fall into German hands. That was before he ceased to be a naval officer and joined the new Petain-led French Government. What if the new French Head of State undertook to send the French fleet in support of a German invasion attempt? Similarly, you think Hitler said he didn't want the French fleet? Oh well, if Hitler said it, it must be true, mustn't it? After all, his career to date proved him to have been a man of his word!
Don't be naive. In July 1940, the only thing standing between Britain & an attempted invasion was the Royal Navy, and the fact that the German navy had been maimed during the Norwegian campaign. Churchill had to ensure that the French fleet did not appear in the Channel in support of a German attack, and he acted accordingly.
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@brianjones5379 '25 countries were helping in some way.' Hardly.There were a small number of individuals from other countries, and from the Commonwealth. They flew in British aircraft.under British command, and following a British air defence system. There was not one European country 'helping in some way' and whilst the Commonwealth and Empire did play a major role later, in 1940 it was still building up for that effort.
In September, 1940, of 34.5 divisions in Britain deemed operational, 32.5 were British. There were Commonwealth troops in Britain, but only one Canadian division, and two Australian/New Zealand Brigades. The only Indian troops were a single division in North Africa, with the Western Desert Force facing the Italians.
In the event of an attempted Sealion, good wishes from far away would not help to defeat it. However, the possibility of such an invasion was small, given the overwhelming strength of the Royal Navy in Home Waters.
That too, by the was almost entirely British, apart from a small number of Canadian and Free French destroyers.
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Actually, they knew that an SS unit had been sent there to re-equip, but that it was short of equipment, only having old training vehicles. The first tank destroyed by 1st Para. was bizarrely an elderly French Char B1.
The famous scene where the intelligence officer, Brian Urquhart, shows Browning photos. of German Tiger IIs and is told not to worry about them is entirely fictional. Urquhart, a major, never spoke to anyone more senior than a Brigadier, no such photos. existed, and there were no Tigers in the area. Urquharts information came from his Ultra clearance, and because of this he could not reveal his true source. In fact, the intel. was correct, in that there was no heavy German armour in the area. However, it was also correct in that there were experienced German commanders there, who were able to react extremely quickly.
Far from being sent home, as the movie suggests, Urquhart was later promoted, and had a long and distinguished post-war career. Unfortunately, the film contains a whole host of inaccuracies, evidently intended to show the British, other than the paratroopers, in a bad light, in order to appeal to transatlantic audiences, the worst of all being the Robert Redford 'stopping for tea' scene, to which even the American officer he was pretending to portray actually objected.
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RN bases were at the Nore (25 destroyers), Portsmouth (20 destroyers) and Plymouth (12 destroyers). Steaming at 20 knots, although even a 'Hunt' class could manage 25, and the rest were capable of 30+, this means that after receiving an invasion alert, boats from the Nore could reach Dover in 3.5 hours, from Portsmouth in 3.5 hours, and from Plymouth in 8 hours. Additionally, four light cruisers could accompany them.
As to mining the Channel, how would you suggest the Germans achieved that, with only seven converted freighters to use as minelayers? Certainly, the Germans did have an elaborate plan to undertake the laying of eleven mine barriers, which would commence nine days before Sealion was attempted. However, as the go-ahead was never given, neither did the minelaying commence. Probably just as well, as the Royal Navy carried out nightly destroyer patrols, and the effects of a 4.7 or 4 inch HE shell exploding on a laden mine deck could not be taken lightly.
Actually, the British mined the Channel heavily, sinking three U-Boats there as early as October, 1939.
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I appreciate that this person has no actual knowledge of the subject, and is simply parroting a script, but his account of Catapult is so bizarrely inaccurate as to be almost ludicrous.
As to other claims. The Hospital Ship 'Po' was indeed sunk by Fleet Air Swordfish. At night, when, on the orders of the Italian Military, she was not illuminated, as Hospital Ships were required to be.
The sinking of the Arno was different. Although, again, sunk by Swordfish aircraft, this was a a result of a signals decrypt confirming that she was carrying supplies to Benghazi. That, is how the British knew it, by the way. I don't claim this, but it is confirmed by an eminent German historian Jurgen Rohwer. Both of these hospital ships, by the way, were not carrying any wounded soldiers.
California, by the way, was sunk, with the loss of 11 crewmen, in Syracuse harbour in August, 1941. Proof that she was being used as a hospital ship at the time, rather than as a freighter, is lacking.
Isn't it nice to sit in a comfy chair and pontificate piously about events of 80 years ago? Especially when being paid, (presumably quite well?) to read a script written by others.
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@ascendantindigo271 So what you are actually saying is that any fact which proves you fantasy wrong must be a false fact, simply because it proves your fantasy wrong?
As original approach, if not entirely a sane one.
Out of interest, here is a Statement I came across fro Reuters. I reproduce it here as it parallels more or less exactly the findings of my own delvings into the matter over many years as a maritime historian. It does not, however, mention that this myth was created in the mid 1990s.
"A widely-shared meme has taken several facts about the Titanic out of context to make unsubstantiated claims that imply the ship’s sinking was a deliberate act. This is not true – experts widely agree the sinking of the Titanic was an accident.
The meme was posted to Facebook and has been shared many times. It consists of two images: one of the ship and a second of American financier John Pierpoint (J.P.) Morgan. These sit alongside a wall of text that suggests Morgan had motive to sink the Titanic because it was hosting three powerful people who opposed his idea for a centralised banking system, ie: the U.S. Federal Reserve. The post reads:-
“DID YOU KNOW? The man who funded the building of the titanic, J. P. Morgan, cancelled his long-awaited journey just hours before its proposed departure,” the meme reads. “3 of the wealthiest men on earth, whom (sic) were against the creation of the federal reserve bank, happened to be invited aboard for its maiden voyage (John Aster, Isador Strauss & Benjamin Guggenheim).
“It then headed full speed into a known iceberg-field, with less than half the required lifeboats, no red signal flares, no Rothschild or Rockefeller on board, and sank to the bottom of the north Atlantic Ocean. Less than a year later, now that the wealthy opposition was out of the way, the federal reserve was created and USA was turned into an incorporated business, with its own business ID number, ’28 U.S.C. 3002 15.”
J.P MORGAN CLAIMS
While it is true that J.P. Morgan owned the Titanic and did not sail on its doomed maiden voyage, there is no evidence to suggest he deliberately missed the trip because he knew the ship would sink. Historians have debated several reasons for Morgan to cancel his trip, but none is related to the Federal Reserve.
“I've never been able to find an authoritative 1912 source explaining the exact reason why J. P. Morgan cancelled his passage on the Titanic, but he definitely didn't do so mere ‘hours’ before the ship's departure,” Titanic expert George Behe said in an email to Reuters.
Meanwhile, Don Lynch, a historian at the Titanic Historical Society (THS), said: “One of J.P. Morgan's biographers said that France was changing its laws to prevent Americans from exporting art treasures from that country, so Morgan went to Paris to oversee getting his purchases out of the country before the new laws went into effect.”
Also from THS, advisory board member Ray Lepien, said that as well as the art treasures theory, “the ‘official’ explanation was that he (Morgan) fell ill and wanted to take the ‘cure’ at a spa in France with his mistress.” Lepien added: “It could have been both reasons.”
STRAUS, ASTOR AND GUGGENHEIM’S OPINIONS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE PROPOSAL
While it is also true that Isidor Straus, Macy’s Department store owner; John Jacob Astor, a property tycoon, and Benjamin Guggenheim, a mining boss, died in the 1912 disaster, there is no evidence to suggest they were the target of deliberate sabotage. There is also no evidence that these three men were against Morgan’s centralised banking ideas.
Firstly, Titanic’s maiden voyage had attracted many prominent names, and was dubbed the “Millionaire’s Special” as a result.
Secondly, George Behe told Reuters he was unable to find any documents in his 45 years of researching the Titanic that proved the three men opposed the Federal Reserve. In fact, a Washington Post investigation found that while Astor and Guggenheim did not take a public stance on the matter, Straus reportedly spoke in favour of the proposal.
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'When the Americans came into the war they took charge of British and Canadian troops on D-DAY.' Really? The Allied Ground forces commander was British, the Air Force commander was British, and the Naval commander was British.
3261 0f 4127 were British manned, 892 of 1213 warships were RN or RCN, two thirds of 11,600 aircraft were RAF, and two thirds of the troops who landed from the landing craft were British/Canadian.
The minesweeping in advance of D-Day was almost entirely carried out by RN & RCN ships, and the Escort & Support Groups which destroyed any U-boats which tried to intervene were RN or RCN.
Oh, and of course the Intelligence Operation was dominated by Bletchley Park.
In the East, the largest single land defeat sustained by the Japanese Army was Operation U-Go, in March-June, 1944. Inflicted by the Anglo-Indian XIV Army.
The French liberated Paris, whilst the British liberated Brussels and Amsterdam, before reaching the Baltic and ensuring Denmark did not fall into the Soviet Sphere of influence.
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@sharonprice42 By captured, I assume you mean 'destroyed.' The British sen onlly two Armoured Units with the BED, 1st Armoured Division & 1st Army Tank Brigade. Ist Armoured Division had 250 tanks, of which 110 were light Mark Vis, armed only with machine guns only, whist the remained were a mixture of cruisers, A9s, A10s & A13s. A small number were captured intact, but only one German unit ever used any, actually 9 A13s, as training vehicles in France & the Netherlands until mid 1941.
1st Army Tank Brigade consisted of two regiments, wquipped with a total of 12 Light tanks, 77 Matilda Is (armed with a machine gun) & 23 Matilda IIs, armed with a two pounder gun. These had been lost in action or destroyed by their crews, either at Arras or afterwards. Only one Matilda II is known to have been used by any German unit, after the turret was replaced by a German AA gun, on the French coast.
If you have a source which tells you anything different, what is it?
.303 Ammunition was useless to the Germans as it was incompatible with their own weapons. A similar comment applies to the AA & AT weapons.
Trucks were of more use, nut only briefly until the lack of access to spare parts became too great.
You keep posting exactly the same thing, time after time, without providing any evidence for your nonsense. You are becoming tedious.
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@alexanderd8740 I haven't said anything of the sort. Only that a one way trip with no hope of landing back is not, at least in my opinion, really carrier aviation.
Doolittle's was an attack from a carrier, as was that from Furious, but they were hardly relevant to the evolution of carrier warfare, the first principle of which is that the aircraft should be able to operate from the carrier. Being able to take off, but not land back, does not meet that principle. The first proper aircraft carrier was HMS Argus, commissioned in September 1918.
The Royal Navy had previously operated scouts from platforms on battleship turrets, on cruisers, or even from towed barges. Would you consider this carrier aviation?
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@koookeee By 'sanguine' I mean his confidence that the Germans could actually achieve a landing at all. The source for the losses suffered by the Maleme convoy which Forczyk uses is questionable (Vincent O'Hara) and the vast majority of other sources do not agrees. Park, 'The Battle for Crete' Annapolis Naval Institute Press, as an American example, for one. There are several others.
'A handful of old destroyers between Harwich and Portsmouth.' Which is why I referred to the Pink List of 16 September, 1940. This shows 16 destroyers and a light cruiser at Portsmouth, and 24 destroyers and two light cruisers at Sheerness (both ports were 3.5 hours from Dover at 20 knots, by the way). He seems to have forgotten Plymouth, as well, by the way, where there were 16 destroyers and two light cruisers. Mr. Forczyk, if he thought this represents 'a handful' must have had large hands. I would be happy to list every one of these vessels, by the way. I DO have the Pink List for 16 September, 1940.
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@koookeee As I understand it, Mr. Forzcyk questioned the ability of the RN to deal with convoys. I have simply corrected this misconception. As the earliest actions against axis convoys took place in the Mediterranean in early 1941, then upon what did Mr. Forzcyk base his claim?
Moreover, the Sealion vessels were actually towed barges, moving at little over walking pace, not convoys in any real sense at all. The Royal Navy by the way, was the best trained in the west in night operations. At the time, only the distant Japanese were their equals.
It appears that you prefer Mr. Forzcyk's alternative approach to that of most authors writing on the subject today. Fair enough, but please don't be so confident in his 'critical analysis,' as you describe it, when there are significant flaws in it.
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@koookeee The Royal Navy already carried out patrols of the Channel from both ends on a nightly basis, usually involving four destroyers from Plymouth and four from Sheerness. During the day, any concentration of barges heading into the Channel would actually be visible from Admiral Ramsay' headquarters at Dover Castle.
What German shipping did pass through the Channel at the time was usually comprised of small groups of ships keeping close to the French coast, and able to retire into any of the many ports in the event of any perceived threat. In point of fact, barge concentrations in French & Belgian ports only really began in early September. In September, the Royal Navy began attacks as opposed to patrols. Such attacks took place on 7/8 September (4 MTBs attacked shipping in Calais, supported by four destroyers from DF1 out of Portsmouth), 8/9 September ( 3 MTBs attacked a small group of ships near Ostend, before entering Ostend harbour and attacking shipping with torpedoes and machine guns, whilst 2 cruisers & 6 destroyers entered Boulogne & shelled the inner harbour, and four destroyers supported an attack by MTBs on Dunkirk harbour), 9/10 September (6 destroyers shelled Calais & Boulogne harbours, supporting attacks by 4 MTBs) 10/11 September (3 destroyers of DF 16 engaged and sank a number of tugs & barges off Ostend) 11/12 September (destroyers from Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Sheerness swept the coast from the mouth of the Meuse to Cherbourg, shelling shipping in several of the ports) 12/13 September ( 3 destroyers of DF 16 swept from Boulogne to Cap Gris Nez, but found nothing at sea) and 13/14 September ( the same destroyers of DF 16 sank or damaged a number of German patrol trawlers). That is a summary of the operations for the first half of September. I haven't listed patrols where nothing was detected.
Of the destroyers in Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Sheerness, there were 4 V&Ws at Plymouth, 4 V&Ws and old S class at Portsmouth, & 17 V&Ws at Sheerness. Of the remainder, the oldest were 3 ten years old B class, whilst 6 were brand new J/K class destroyers ( 6 x 4.7 inch guns, specifically moved to Plymouth to counter the German destroyers at Cherbourg) and the others six years old at most.
The V&Ws were mixed, by the way. Some, the Modified V & Ws, carried 4.7 inch mark 1 guns, capable of 5-6 rounds per minute, whilst the older V & Ws were fitted with 4 inch mark Vs. These, when introduced in 1918, did indeed have separate ammunition, but used fixed ammunition by 1939, and had rate of fire of 8-10 rounds per minute. Most V & Ws carried one or two x 0.5 inch pom poms, and a 3 inch AA gun (which could also be used as a low angle weapon) in place of one set of tubes.
I would agree that the old V & Ws were not suited to fight major fleet action by WW2, but in this case they were actually intended to be used against barges & tugs, where a rate of fire of 5 or 6 rounds per gun per minute for the modified V&Ws, and 8-10 rounds for the V&Ws, was probably more than adequate.
A pity Mr. Forczyk didn't do his research on the V & Ws (and the Scott and Shakespeare class leaders which accompanied them) as these are a particular interest of mine.
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@markkover8040 The accident rate of Wasp's pilots, using aircraft designed for carrier operations, should tell you something. As for carrying out trials in the Norwegian sea, would that really have been possible, in an area regularly patrolled by RN submarines and surface vessels?
By the way, only 7 carrier capable 109ts were built. The remainder were built without the necessary carrier modifications. Even the seven built didn't have folding wings, by the way.
Incidentally, when the project was re-activated, the 109t was considered to be obsolete, and major modifications would have been required to the carrier's lifts, catapults, hangar floors, and arrestor gear to accommodate the new aircraft briefly considered.
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@markkover8040 Certainly, ore did continue to be shipped via Narvik, but in greatly reduced quantities. Rolk Karlbom, in the 'Scandinavian Economic History Review' published a whole host of statistics. For example, between 1937 & 1944, the figures were as follows. These are in thousands of tons, and are for shipments via Narvik :-
1937, 4919. 1938, 4771. 1939, 4027. 1940, 504. 1941. 725. 1942, 1140. 1943, 1936. 1944, 1106. Thus, shipments did continue, but at a much reduced level. Furthermore, in 1937, total German ore imports from Sweden, again, in thousands of tons, were 9084, of which 54.2% was via Narvik. In 1941, the total was 9260, of which 7.83% was via Narvik.
Not that this is particularly relevant, by the way. Navigating small groups of ore ships through coastal waters is rather different from carrying out sea trials of a large warship. To give you a comparison, between 1940 & 1944 the British ran a regular series of convoys from Southend to Methil, and the reverse. These convoys followed closely restricted routes down the East Coast. There were 531 convoys, mainly of small colliers, involving 9097 vessels in total. They were under regular attack by the Luftwaffe and by S boats. Total losses? 31 vessels, of which 24 were in convoy and the rest stragglers.
As Graf Zeppelin never carried out any trials of any sort, the activity of RN warships in the Norwegian Sea is, similarly, irrelevant. However, Alastair Mars' account of RN submarine activity in WW2 assures me that RN boats did carry out regular patrols. These increased once German naval forces had been transferred to the 'Zone of Destiny' and the probability is that the prospect of encountering a large target such as Graf Zeppelin would have resulted in augmented numbers of boats.
70 Bf109T1s were ordered from Fieseler, but only 7 completed with carrier capability. The remainder were built as T2s, without carrier capability, and sent to Norway until the end of 1941. The conclusion that they were obsolete when the project was briefly re-activated was not mine, but that of the Luftwaffe & Kriegsmarine. An alternative, the Me 155, based on the Me109G, was designed, but subsequently abandoned.
A version of the Ju52 with folding wings? Really? A naval version of a three engined transport aircraft?
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Where did you get the myth of the hull plating from? Titanic, like Olympic before her, was designed by Harland & Wolff, who presented White Star with a tender for the cost of construction. The ship did not sink quickly. Compare her sinking to that of Lusitania, for example.
Ismay was not a marine architect, and had precisely no say in the type of steel used. Smith acted exactly as any other captain would have done. He altered to a more southerly course, and warned his lookouts to be particularly vigilant. I don't make this claim, but several Master Mariners who gave evidence at the British Inquiry did.
When did Smith run a ship aground entering New York? I am sure you will immediately provide chapter and verse on this!
Phillips did not send 'shut up' to California. At least, Californian's operator said he didn't, in his evidence. He said that Phillips simply asked him, in Morse shorthand (probably DDD) to clear the frequency. The operator then switched off his set because his shift had ended. He was Californian's only operator, and did not work 24 hours each day.
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@abhivermaz Churchill was a complex man, with both strengths & flaws, but he was able to motivate Britain in a way that almost certainly no-one else (and especially not Lord Halifax) could.
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
All the above can be documented, although I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't fit with the revisionist propaganda you have been fed, and apparently swallowed whole.
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Unfortunately, acquisition of aircraft for the Fleet Air Arm was in the hands of the Royal Navy's most intransigent enemy, the Royal Air Force, until 1939. Consequently, the funds available were spent predominantly on bombers (which, of course, would 'always get through') then fighters, with a small amount going to Coastal Command, and, seemingly, what was found in Trenchard's pockets after a night out at his club being devoted to the Fleet Air Arm.
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Oh good. Another Sealion 'would have.' How was it, in your considered opinion, that the mighty Luftwaffe failed to prevent Dynamo, despite having what might be considered sitting targets, i.e., ships in a confined space, stopped or moving slowly, and crowded with troops. Could it be because the 1940 Luftwaffe had had no training in anti-shipping techniques?
Furthermore, you confuse the respective capabilities of Japanese as opposed to German air forces, and you forget that Pearl Harbor was the base of a neutral country, with none of the ships at any sort of military preparedness.
Bismarck hardly benefits your case, in that the air attack which crippled her was carried out by torpedo bombers. The Luftwaffe did not have any high performance torpedo bombers until early 1942. Not much use for Sealion in 1940, I suggest?
You might also wish to address the fact that, during the whole of the war, your mighty Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship bigger than a light cruiser. Just for information, in September, 1940, there were around 70 RN light cruisers and destroyers within five hours' steaming of the Channel, and just over 100 RN destroyers in total in home waters. You can add to these numbers around 500 smaller warships available to sail as supporting vessels to the main destroyer force.
In short, instead of pontificating about what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done, why not address the rather more prosaic facts of what the Luftwaffe actually did, or rather didn't, do?
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@waynepatterson5843 The American defeat at Sidi Bou Zid, between 14 & 17 February, was inflicted by 5th Panzer Army, commanded by Von Arnim. Kasserine, between 19 & 24 February, including Thala, by the way, was the only time, apart from 6 March at Medenine, when defeated by 8th Army, that 10 Panzer was directly commanded by Rommel. By Mareth, 10 Panzer had returned to 5th Panzer Army, Rommel had departed for pastures new, and von Arnim was owner of the poisoned chalice.
If you seriously wish to believe that Rommel established the 'new Panzer Doctrine' by the way, then feel free. Presumably, you haven't heard of Heinz Guderian? It is self-evident that you don't actually know what most German generals actually thought of Rommel's abilities, an example being Von Rundstedt, whose nickname for him was 'Marshal Laddie.' Incidentally, Rommel's book on Panzer Tactics was never completed, and only exists in scattered, manuscript, form. Someone should have told George C. Scott.
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There were two exits into the main Atlantic. These were the Denmark Strait and the Iceland-Faroes Gap. During Operation Berlin, Tovey concentrated his fleet in the Iceland-Faroes Gap, and Scharnhorst/Gneisenau used the Denmark Strait. This time, Tovey, with four capital ships plus one carrier, placed his 2nd & 3rd most battleworthy ships in the Denmark Strait, and his 1st & 4th, plus the carrier, in the Gap. His calculation was that each force was strong enough to prevent Lutjens carrying out his orders, which were to attack convoys in the Altantic.
Tovey was proved correct. During the Denmark Strait action, Prince of Wales inflicted sufficient damage on Bismarck to oblige Lutjens to make for France.
Holland was well aware of Hood's weaknesses. He needed to close the range quickly, as, in a short range slogging match, Hood's belt, which was almost as strong as Bismarck's, put her in a much less vulnerable position. Holland intended that Wake-Walker's cruisers would engage Prinz Eugen, but the action was over before Wake-Walker could do anything.
Protecting the Atlantic Convoy routes was hardly a minor engagement, by the way.
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Perhaps you should actually read what the terms of the Total Exclusion Zone were. They stated that any sea vessel or aircraft from any country entering the zone may be fired upon without further warning.
Rear Admiral Allara, who commanded the Belgrano Task Force, later said, "After that message of 23 April, the entire South Atlantic was an operational theatre for both sides. We, as professionals, said it was just too bad that we lost the Belgrano". The message of 23 April, of course, was the British declaration of the TEZ.
On the same day, a message was passed via the Swiss Embassy in Buenos Aires to the Argentine government, that the British Government had determined that any Argentine ship or aircraft that was considered to pose a threat to British forces anywhere in the South Atlantic would be attacked.
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'There's no mention of the source of this article or the date, but the screenshot in the book looks legit to me and not something that someone has made up.' As your source is Mr. Hamer, and you want to believe him, firstly, of course there wouldn't be any supporting source information, this is Hamer, after all, and secondly' if you wished to believe in, for example, the Loch Ness Monster, of course you would believe in the authenticity of photographs.
Back on earth, by the way, Bruce Ismay went on public record at the April 1912 United States Senate Hearings, and also it was reported in the official public findings, that the value of Titanic was "$7.5million" a figure independently verified by the New York Times and The Spectator ("$8 million") while insured at only "$5 million" (as reported at the Senate Inquiry, The New York Times and Lloyds itself).
If indeed Titanic had been insured at the last minute at "$12.5 million," as is alleged by you conspiracy fantasists, would this not have raised serious alarm bells in the minds of the insurers at the time, especially if it was part of the public record that the value was "$7.5million"? The actual record, which is confirmed in Lloyds Archives, shows that the Insurers paid out $7.5 million (in US Terms) within 30 days. A shame Mr. Hamer didn't bother to check that inconvenient fact, isn't it?
'Maybe it's been removed from the site or hasn't been scanned. That's the problem with anything online, it can be easily removed if it contradicts the official story.' Here you go again. the world encompassing conspiracy maintained by 'THEM' and the claim that there being no supporting evidence is the best proof of all that it happened.
Don't you realise how daft you sound?
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'please examine all the facts.' Indeed, you should. Start with the alleged keel damage, which wasn't mentioned in the Inspection Report published in November, 1911. The keel damage not noticed or mentioned by anyone until Robin Gardiner invented it for his switch theory book in 1995 or thereabouts. One third of the stern needed replacing? Really? It seems you have read Gardiner's imaginative book then. Harland & Wolff didn't seem to know about that.
Perhaps you might then explain how, after returning to sea from 20 November, 1911, when Titanic was five months from completion, Olympic had made five further Atlantic round trips, and was in New York, halfway through her sixth, when Titanic left Southampton?
Then you might explain how, at the time she hit the iceberg, the crippled and keel-damaged 'Olympic' had actually made better time than the real Olympic had on her maiden voyage.
Alternatively, you might be wiser simply remaining silent?
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@hajoos.8360 I do not understand what you are trying to say. Your posts generally seem to assume a vast amount of knowledge was available to both sides which actually wasn't. I assume you know that Prinz Eugen's War Diary believed that PoW was actually King George V, for example, or that the most recent information, from 20 May, Lutjens had from Group North was that Hood, Prince of Wales, & Victorious were still in Scapa Flow?
Indeed, later on 22 May, Group North confirmed this information, based on a Luftwaffe visual observation which seems to have confused two dummy battleships for Hood and PoW, which had, by then, sailed. Furthermore, Group North had reported to Lutjens that Force H was en route for Crete, when it was actually in Gibraltar.
In short, Lutjens had no reason, based on the faulty intelligence he had been given, to suspect that there were any British capital ships anywhere near the Denmark Strait, and the appearance of two must have come as a considerable shock. Furthermore, his instructions, as they had been for Operation Berlin, were to seek out British supply convoys, and to avoid action with heavy ships.
Certainly, Lindemann did wish to attempt to pursue PoW, but Lutjens needed to consider the wider picture, which was that PoW might have been discontinuing the action in order to withdraw on the support of other British capital ships also in the area. In any case, Bismarck's damage had reduced her speed, and left her short of fuel. After the action, Lutjens realised that Rheinubung was a dead duck, and that his only remaining option was to make for St. Nazaire for repairs. A quixotic charge in pursuit of PoW was not even remotely worth considering.
Basing your criticism of Lutjens on facts of which he was unaware is not only unfair, but unjustified. Lutjens did make a number of mistakes during the Operation, but his supposed failure to pursue PoW was not one of them.
I did, by the way, ask you one question in my earlier post. I observe that you have not answered it.
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@hajoos.8360 'You consider that the Brits had better intelligence than the Germans.' Please do not attempt to put words into my mouth. I simply told you what Group North had told Lutjens about the whereabouts of the Royal Navy's heavy ships.
I do not agree that there was not much difference between PoW & KGV. KGV was a fully worked up battleship, the flagship of the Home Fleet, whereas PoW had only arrived at Scapa a month or so earlier. On 31 March, she had been classified as 'completed,' and she only carried out her full power trials on 8 May. Indeed, civilian workmen were still aboard, working on her main turrets. In WW1 John Jellicoe required a new battleship to go through an intensive working-up period of at least six months before he would even allow her to join a Grand Fleet Battle Squadron. PoW was a raw recruit, to say the least.
The Admiralty were in a difficult situation, in that had Bismarck and Prinz Eugen reached the wider Atlantic, they would have been much more difficult to track down. A similar situation had applied to Operation Berlin, of course. Thus, PoW was attached to Hood, in the hope that Hood would bear the brunt of any action. In the event, the decision was justified, as Lutjens abandoned his mission as a result of PoW's hits on Bismarck.
'A considerable shock sighting Holland's squadron is off limits for a midshipman, but not for an admiral.' What does that even mean? The appearance of two capital ships in the Denmark Strait, when intelligence had identified them as being in Scapa, would have been a shock for Nelson had he been placed in a similar position, let alone Lutjens.
Lutjens detached Prinz Eugen because he hoped still to salvage something from his abandoned operation. Eugen could still operate as a lone raider, if she could be safely despatched, and Wake-Walker would hardly follow her if it meant dividing his force. Bismarck was the main prize, not a lightly armoured heavy cruiser.
You think that Bismarck, still under observation by Wake-Walker, and with Tovey's force approaching, would have had time and space to refuel from a tanker? Moreover, what happens if Bismarck, for whatever reason, missed the tanker? Running out of fuel in mid-Atlantic was hardly desirable, I suggest.
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@hajoos.8360 The Hippers were far from the best heavy cruiser class ever built. Overweight, lightly armoured, and with unreliable machinery, one might have had the edge on a (ten years older) County, built within the 10,000 tons limit of naval treaties, but the more modern US heavies were vastly superior. Put your prejudices aside for a moment and compare Prinz Eugen with USS Baltimore, for example.
Are you seriously suggesting that Prinz Eugen could have towed Bismarck back to St. Nazaire (not Brest, by the way)? What would Tovey have done whilst this was happening? Simply watched and allowed it to happen? The protective Luftwaffe bomber zone? What protective zone? At the time the Luftwaffe did not even have an operational torpedo bomber, and in the whole of WW2 it sank no RN warship larger than a light cruiser.
At least, by detaching Prinz Eugen (which, of course, promptly developed engine problems) Lutjens, though inadvertently, saved her from being sunk as well. You say that air defence would have been more effective? Mere supposition, and again you are using hindsight. How could Lutjens possibly know that aircraft from Ark Royal would appear? Group North had told him that Force H was off Crete, hadn't it?
Lutjens, by the way, was not so much splitting his squadron, as detaching a ship still capable of fulfilling a role, from one which was no longer capable of so doing.
Sorry, but much of your post is less than coherent, and you seem to be arguing simply for the sake of it. When judging the actions of commanders in wartime, it is never wise to base opinions on what historians subsequently know about a situation, but to consider what information those commanders actually had available to them at the time.
Would, for example, Nagumo have acted as he did at Midway if he knew the true position of Sprunce's ships?
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@hajoos.8360 Thank you for educating me. Until this moment, I was totally unaware that Roma was a Royal Navy warship!
You really know little about Baltimore, do you? She carried 9 x 8 inch guns,and 12 x 5 inch DP guns. She had a belt of 4-6 inches, and deck armour of 2.5 inches. Her speed was 33 knots, and she displaced 14,700 tons.
The Hippers had 8 x 8 inch guns, and 12 x 4.1 inch AA guns. Their belts were 2.8 to 3.1 inches, and decks 1.97 inches at their strongest points. They could manage 32 knots. They displaced 17800 tons.
Oh, and the broadside of a Baltimore was 3015 lbs. That of a Hipper 2152 lbs.
Thus, despite displacing 3000 tons less, Baltimore outclassed Eugen at every point of comparison. You say 'So, where is the advantage?' Read the above again, I suggest.
You seem to have missed the point about Lutjens. He detached Eugen because he was still trying to carry out at least part of his mission. Again, you back project what later happened to criticise earlier decisions. Moreover, two ships means double the number of targets, or hadn't you considered that?
Doenitz didn't 'send several subs out.' There were only two anywhere near the action, one of which had expended all her stock of torpedoes. It hardly matters what Kampfgeschwader 77 was or was not doing, as it was out of range.
You seem to be posting largely irrelevant, disconnecte, comments without making any particularly relevant arguments. I have better things to do than simply correct your more obvious errors, and I certainly don't feel inclined to spend my time dealing with the gaps in your knowledge. I am happy to let people read these posts and draw their own conclusions.
I will not, therefore, reply again.
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@hajoos.8360 Don't you remember posting this? :- 'the Hipper-class was maybe the best heavy cruiser class ever built.' Clearly not accurate. The tonnage difference between Counties and Hippers is not relevant to your absurd claim. One thing you might note, though, is that the Counties had much more arduous and successful war careers than the Hippers.
Oh, and Baltimore actually had six TWIN five inch DP mountings as her secondary armament. Each 8 inch gun of Baltimore fired a 335 lb shell. Each 8 inch gun of Eugen a 269 lb shell. Cannot you even use reference books competently?
To install three or four turrets is not a philosophical issue. A three triple turret gun ship needs less length, which means either lesser displacement or greater armour. In the case of the Baltimores greater armament.
Perhaps you might read up on what Lutjens' actual mission, and his orders, actually were. I would have thought you might have done it before now, but evidently not.
Indeed, HMS Mashona was sunk, actually the day after Bismarck, and because she, and HMS Tartar, had been detached because of their lower fuel states, to follow a more direct route which, unlike Tovey's main force, brought them within bombing range. A battleship is, indeed, easier to hit than a destroyer.
Odd, then, that the Luftwaffe consistently failed to achieve either with much frequency. However, the deck armour of, for example, KGV or Rodney, was designed to cope with German 15 inch shells, weighing 1764 lbs each. I leave you to research for yourself the heaviest bomb which could be carried by an aircraft such as a Ju88 flying at maximum range. I assure you, you will be disappointed. Not that it is relevant in any case, as Tovey's heavies were always out of range.
You might ask yourself this :- Even if Eugen managed to get a tow across to Bismarck, what speed would you expect the ships to achieve as they made for St. Nazaire, and what would expect Tovey, with Rodney, KGV, Renown, Ark Royal, and several cruisers to do when he arrived?
Your immature and silly wehraboo comments are becoming tedious, by the way.
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@fus149hammer5 Very few people actually assume that. Most assume that the barges could expect the Luftwaffe to attempt to protect them.
This, however, would be the same Luftwaffe which had not received any training in anti-shipping techniques, and had just failed badly at Dunkirk. The same Luftwaffe which, in the whole of the war, sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser. Just for your information, in September, 1940, the RN had over 110 destroyers in Home Waters, of which 64 were in bases within five hours of Dover.
You can forget torpedo attacks by this Luftwaffe, by the way. The Luftwaffe didn't even have an operational torpedo bomber until mid 1942, so Prince of Wales & Repulse, both sunk by high performance torpedo bombers flown by highly trained crews, do not come to mind at all.
Minefields? Really? The Kriegsmarine had seven auxiliary minelayers. The Royal Navy had around four hundred fleet & auxiliary minesweepers. Moreover, what happens to these minelayers, carefully laying their mines, when they encounter one of the nightly Royal Navy destroyers patrols operating out of Plymouth and Sheerness.
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The point where a shell hit an enemy warship always relied to some element on luck. However well trained the gunnery team, WW2 crews could not aim at a particular area of a ship.
The torpedo hit, however, was the culmination of years of training by Fleet Air Arm crews, in carrying out and executing attacks on enemy warships. The philosophy was based on the fact that RN capital ships were generally slower than new construction or modernisations entering service in the late 1930s. Torpedo aircraft sought to inflict damage which would slow down enemy units sufficiently to bring them to battle. In point of fact, this had already happened once, in the Mediterranean in March, bringing about the Battle of Matapan.
The 'balsa wood' biplane, by the way, actually sank more axis shipping than any other allied aircraft, so perhaps there was some merit in the old Stringbag?
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The Second London Naval Treaty, of March, 1936, limited the size of heavy guns to 14 inches. It was signed by the United States, Britain, & France. Armour protection was actually greater than any other battleship class built (yes, even the Iowas) with the exception of the Yamatos.
As to the effectiveness of the 14 inch guns, at North Cape, Duke of York, firing under radar control in poor weather, scored 31 straddles out of 52 broadsides fired and during the latter part she scored 21 straddles out of 25 broadsides, a very creditable gunnery performance. Likewise, her shells had little difficulty penetrating Scharnhorst's armour, which was actually superior to that of the Bismarck class.
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@The_Conqueeftador In 1940, the Luftwaffe had no torpedo bombers, apart from a handful of outdated seaplanes based in Norway, and little or no training in anti-shipping operations. In fact, in the whole of WW2 the Luftwaffe managed to sink 31 Royal Navy destroyers and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser. Indeed, the Luftwaffe had recently failed almost completely at Dunkirk.
U Boats? There were, on average, 13 operational boats at sea on any one day in September, 1940. Moreover, in late 1939, the Kriegsmarine sent three boats on operations in the Channel. They, and their crews, are still there. There is a reason why U-boats avoided the Channel. It was a death trap for WW2 submersibles.
Finally, throughout WW2, U-boats sought to avoid contact with warships, concentrating instead on merchantmen. You appear to suggest that, for Sealion, they would, in theory, attempt to do something they rarely did in reality, and be successful at it.
Your error is to believe that the Luftwaffe of 1940 can be considered to be on a par, in terms of anti-shipping operations, with the British Fleet Air Arm or the US & Japanese air arms of late 1941/1942 onwards, when in reality there is simply no comparison.
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They did for the Manhattan Project. You might also wish to consider asdic/sonar, HF/DF, Enigma codebreaking, carrier catapults, arrestor cables, angled flight decks, radar, the cavity magnetron, depth charges, Hedgehog and Squid ATWs, director firing on large warships, and tanks. Just to name a tiny number.
It must be wonderful, never having to rely on others for innovation.
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Isn't hindsight wonderful? By June 1940, Germany had invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Belgium (all, by the way, without declaration of war) and had conquered France. Large German forces were within 22 miles of a UK defended almost entirely by the Royal Navy.
The Soviet Union had done a disreputable deal with Germany over Poland, and had occupied the Baltic States. Was Soviet Russia really the greater threat to Britain than nazi Germany.
The reality, as recognised by both Churchill & FDR, was that nazi Germany was the greater of two evils, and that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend.'
If you are ashamed to be British, probably that is due to your lack of knowledge.
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@LouisOlivier-m8c Oh dear, the indoctrination is strong in this one.
'Queen Victoria's armies?' What bloody armies? The Briish army in the 19th century was tiny, being little more than an imperial police force, ferried around as necessary by the Royal Navy. In 1853, when the Crimean War began, the effective strength of the British army was 25,000. Or around two WW2 divisions.
Feel free to explain this conundrum. In 1801 the population of Britain and Ireland was 11 million, according to the first census. At the same time, that of India was 169 million. Exactly how did the British manage to brutally suppress and murder Indians, let alone everyone else, in the vast numbers about which you fantasise?
Moreover, the population of India was 224 million in 1858. At the end of the evil, butchering, Raj, in 1948, it was 358 million.
It the British were enthusiastically wandering around butchering all and sundry, they must have been remarkably inept at it, mustn't they, little chap?
Perhaps you might know a competent adult who can check these statistics on your behalf?
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@billiardsandsnookervideosn8319 A few years ago, I was at a week end conference, the theme of which was the role of sea power in the west in WW2. I found myself at dinner sitting alongside a well-known American historian. The conversation somehow came around to favourite battleships (perhaps the wine taking effect?)
I assumed he would pick the Iowas, the Washingtons or the South Dakotas. To my surprise, he picked Rodney, and I said as much. His reply was quite amusing, along the lines of :- 'Oh yes, the Washingtons & the Iowas were elegant ships, but didn't quite seem to project the same kind of nasty menace as the Nelsons. Rodney always struck me as the battleship equivalent of one of your East End gangsters. Not someone to cross, or argue with on a dark night!' Apart from the reference to 'my' East End gangsters, I didn't feel able to disagree.
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@brucetucker4847 Just to answer one particular question, the Blockade was enforced by the Northern Patrol, the 10th Cruiser Squadron, of around 24 Armed Merchant Cruisers, later supplemented by armed trawlers, firstly under the command of Rear-Admiral de Chair, and later Rear Admiral Tupper, in turn the Rear-Admiral Commanding Northern Patrol, under the overall command of the Admiral Commanding Orkney & Shetlands.
According to 'The Blockaders' (1980), until disbanded in December, 1917, the Patrol inspected over 13000 ships, and only 642 passed through without being examined. I leave it to you to determine whether a battlecruiser force including such vessels as Moltke ( range 4200 sea miles at 14 knots) or Derfflinger (5600 sea miles at 12 knots), supported by a few of the more modern High Seas Fleet light cruisers, which had similar ranges, could have carried out a raid against these vulnerable, unarmoured ships which were choking Germany to death, had their admiral had the flexibility of mind to plan such an operation.
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Newton's Third Law. 'For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.' Why do you assume that, if Germany behaved differently, Britain would still have reacted exactly as she historically did?
Put simply, if Germany began an intensive U-Boat building programme, it could only have been directed against one other country, and the British response would involve an expansion of escort contruction to a much greater extent than actually happened.
Moreover, the comparative success of the U-Boat offensive only happened because, after June, 1940, the Kreigsmarine had access to French & Norwegian bases. Something which had not happened in WW1 and which could not have been predicted. Without it, U-BOats would have needed to make the long and difficult voyage from German bases round the north of Scotland in order to reach the Atlantic, seriously hampering their operations.
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@Losantiville No. To control the eastern end of the Mediterranean you need a naval base at Alexandria, which the British had, and maintained, throughout WW2. To take Suez, it would be necessary to take Alexandria first, in which case, assuming that the British maintained a presence in the Middle East east of the Canal, supplies could still be delivered via the Gulf of Aqaba. In such circumstances, the British would no longer have a naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean, although Malta could still be maintained via Gibraltar, as it was historically, and communications with India would continue via the Cape, again as happened historically. The loss of Alexandria would certainly be a major setback, but not necessarily a terminal one.
Certainly, if Gibraltar fell as well, the Mediterranean and Malta would fall, but the capture of Gibraltar would require the support of Spain. As Spain at the time depended to a large extent on food convoys from the United States, and as FDR had informed Franco that such convoys would cease if Spain joined the axis, it is unlikely that such support would be forthcoming.
The other problem from the German point of view would be the ability to maintain supplies to a larger axis force in North Africa. Certainly Italy had a large navy, but historically seemed oddly reluctant to use it.
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@alexandros4703 You seem obsessively determined to pick a fight, despite what keeps happening. Are you a fan of the Black Knight in the 'Monty Python' movie? 'T'is but a scratch!'
Please feel entirely free to explain to me which part of my brief comment :-
'In 1911 or 1912 Belfast was in Ireland, and Ireland was part of the United Kingdom' is, in your profound opinion, a terminological inexactitude?
'That's much like saying, ''Yes, I know, But in 1776 there was no such place as 'North America' was there?'' ' Actually, no it isn't. the term 'Northern Ireland' only came into being after the political division of the Island. The term Ireland, like the term 'North America' is a geographical, not a political, one.
Seriously, in your obsessive determination to argue with me about anything and everything, I urge you to stop shooting yourself in the foot.
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@tot0m You haven't heard of the Battle of Arras then? Oh well. You don't know about the air support the British did provide. The problem was that, however many squadrons the British sent, the French asked for more.
You don't know how many ships of each nationality were at Dunkirk. Oh well. British, of all types, from cruisers to small vessels, 764. French of all types from destroyers to MFVs, 120, Belgian 45 trawlers, Polish, 1 destroyer, Norwegian, 1 freighter, Dutch, 1 yacht and 1 (British manned) motor boat. The agreement was that French ships would evacuate French troops, and British ships British troops. When it became clear that there were not enough French ships, the British began taking French troops as well. The rearguard, by the way, included both British & French troops. The British subsequently attempted to land troops in Cherbourg, only to be told by General Weygand that the French army was no longer capable of organised resistance.
As to France and Belgian being puppets to British diplomacy since 1934, in point of fact France was the dominant military power in the Anglo-French alliance, and Belgian sought to remain neutral, for all the good it did the Belgians. France was the driving force behind the support for Poland.
As to the attacks on the French fleet. The British government had no idea how the new, collaborationist, government in France might behave, and had no intention of risking allowing the French fleet to support a German invasion attempt. What subsequently happened in late 1942, when the outlook for the war was markedly different, was irrelevant to what might have happened in Summer 1940.
Please do some reading instead of simply posting blind prejudice, for heaven's sake!
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@Imperium83 How better to demonstrate your peaceful intentions than by invading, without declaration of war, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Belgium. Oh, and two years later, your bestest chum, the Soviet Union?
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@chewyukechun350 What is this RSN? In 1940, by the way the Royal Navy was the largest in the world, with 14 capital ships, 6 carriers, 60+ cruisers, and 166+ destroyers. The US Navy had 15 capital ships, 5 carriers, 37 cruisers and 100 destroyers.
The Japanese had 10 battleships, 6 fleet & 6 light carriers, 38 cruisers, and 126 destroyers.
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@Timsvideochannel1 Indeed. John Hughes, the Bishop of Kensington, told him: "There is no place for you in the Church of England."
However, those who later appointed him presumably thought that a wealthy former oil company executive, who had been mainly involved in West African and North Sea oil projects, was a more suitable candidate than a mere clergyman.
Probably, when the emperor Nero sought to appoint his horse, Incitatus, as a Roman Consul, the thought process was a similar one, although the horse might well have been less of a hypocrite.
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Except, of course, for the fact that that assumption requires that, whilst Hitler pursues a totally different policy, the British still behave as they historically did.
Had Germany followed a policy of expanded U-Boat construction, then that could only have been aimed at one power, Britain. The British response might be expected to be an accelerated programme of destroyer/escort production, much greater than the one they actually followed.
For example, historically, 55 Flower class corvettes had been ordered by 31 August, 1939, and a further 49, by the end of 1939. In the altered circumstances you suggest, why shouldn't the first of these have been ordered some two years earlier.
You are ignoring Newton's Third Law.
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This was not the 'worst naval decision of WW2.' For that, simply look at Admiral King's refusal to set up a convoy system for the East Coast of the United States, despite being warned that, after the German declaration of war, U-boats were on their way, as part of Operation Paukenschlag. The result? Over 600 merchant ships, mainly American, sunk, and around 5,000 merchant seamen killed, often within sight of the (still fully lit) lights of the US coast.
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@nickdanger3802 Oddly, enough, it didn't. My research only uncovered real facts. Such as how the 'little help' against the Japanese involved the campaign in Burma, culminating in the defeat of the U-Go offensive and the 55,000 casualties suffered by the Japanese army during that one battle.
Or the fact that escorting North Atlantic supply convoys was almost entirely the responsibility of RN & RCN Escort Groups. From the winter of 1942, there were eleven Escort Groups responsible for SC, HX and ON convoys, of which six were British, four Canadian, and one American Look up 'Mid-Ocean Escort Force' and you will discover that, by the summer of 1943, United States Atlantic escorts had focused on the faster CU convoys and the UG convoys between Chesapeake Bay and the Mediterranean Sea; and only British and Canadian escorts remained on the HX, SC and ON convoys.
Specifically, there were seven British, four Canadian, and one US Escort Groups, (B1-B7, C1-C4, and A3), after the Britsh B5 group had returned from detached service. Even then, this is misleading, as A3 consisted of two US Coastguard Cutters and a number of Canadian corvettes. Indeed, when the cutters were detached, the Group became a fully Canadian one, renumbered C5.
The enormous contribution of US industry to the war effort has never been denied, but this fixation you and others seem to have for listing it is on a par with giving the credit for a Home Run to the bat, rather than the batter wielding it. Moreover, I notice that you neglect to refer to the range of technological advances which the British developed, and which were made available to their American allies. The trade, despite your evident fixation, was not one-sided.
You write as if the British Commonwealth and Empire were mere bystanders, gratefully accepting the noble generosity of US largesse. This odd insistence by some that only the United States played any relevant role in WW2 is an odd and strangely perplexing one. National pride is one thing, but not when it degenerates into one-eyed jingoism. I correspond with a number of American historians as part of what could perhaps be considered my 'day job.' Most of them are equally puzzled.
Oh, and how is any of this relevant to 'The Worst Naval Decision of WW2?'
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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@Damadchef Yes, it would, but without the arrival of more heavily armed ground troops, the survival of unsupported, lightly armed, paratroopers for any length of time was doubtful. Even by May, 1941, the number of German paratroopers was still, at 9,000, well short of a single division.
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Please try to understand. Apart from a small number of aircrew, one Canadian division, two understrength Australian brigades, and around 5,000 New Zealanders, the defence of Britain in 1940 was left almost entirely to the British people,
The Royal Navy was entirely British, apart from a small number of Canadian destroyers, and in September, 1940, of 34.5 divisions in Britain, 32.5 were British.
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The Battle of Britain was an attempt to secure air superiority over the Channel and the South Eastern corner of Britain, in order to make possible a, probably disastrous, invasion attempt. The British sought to prevent this, and succeeded. Victory in war involves achieving your objective. The British did, and the Germans didn't. That is the definition of 'Victory.'
Ranting on about chemical warfare, especially chemical warfare which never actually happened, rather suggests that you need to remove 'Considered' from your title. As, of course, does the phrase ' the war criminal Winston Churchill.'
The allies did not use chemical warfare in WW2. The Germans, of course, did, although 'only' against civilians in their Concentration Camps.
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@Andy-ub3ub No you are totally missing the point. Your first post read 'If germany had invaded, Britain wouldve never gone to north africa.' However much you refuse to accept it, there were already British forces in North Africa before WW2 began. Why do you find this simple fact so difficult to grasp?
Your posts are riddled with 'would haves.' You assume that Germany had the resources to attempt an invasion (she didn't) and you assume no supplies 'would have' been sent to North Africa. Actually, supplies and reinforcements were being sent in August, 1940, when the possibility of an invasion attempt still existed.
Then you fantasise about convoys to Russia (only begun in August 1941), and Operation Pedestal (August, 1942). The British actually maintained Malta throughout the war. You might find it difficult to accept, but the British were fully aware of the importance of the middle eastern oilfields.
'Yes, the british army had escaped at dunkirk, but it had lost all of its heavy equipment.' Yet, by the time the Germans were even notionally able to attempt anything (September) the British had 34.5 operational divisions in the UK alone.
Had Sealion been attempted, and failed, the British could actually have been as well, if not better, placed to support the Soviet Union from June 1941.
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@anthonynicholich9654 If there was no Channel then the whole history of the British Isles, and Europe, would have been entirely different. Precisely because of the Channel, England/Britain evolved as a sea power, with a large navy and a tiny army, which in effect was little more than an Imperial police force or fire brigade, ferried around to trouble spots as and when they occurred, by that navy.
Had there been no Channel, England/Britain, would, perforce, have needed to create and maintain a large army, if only because of the perpetual threat from France. In other words, she would have been far more of a continental power, and far less of a naval power. Much like France, in fact.
I hope that is clear, although your immediate resort to insults rather suggests that it will not be?
'They did not establish air supremacy so what makes you think they would have without the channel being there?' Where did I write that? As your magical removal of the Channel is merely a fantasy, you should expect a rational response, even if you cannot cope with one.
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@evanlavery9788 Actually, in September, 1940, to all intents, it was.
In Home Waters, there were 64 destroyers attached to anti-invasion duties, 23 destroyers with the Home Fleet, and 29 on escort duties but recallable within 24 hours. There were a further 11 destroyers at Freetown and 8 at Gibraltar. You can add to these several hundred smaller warships (sloops, corvettes, minesweepers, gunboats, and auxiliaries, etc), and 8 light cruisers. I haven't listed heavier ships, such as heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, battleships, and aircraft carriers, because the Admiralty didn't anticipate that these would be needed. Mind you, they really didn't expect to need to call in the Home Fleet or convoy escort destroyers, either.
The aircraft which were going to destroy these ships from the air. Would these be the same ones which had just failed to destroy many of the same ships when they were much easier targets at Dunkirk, largely because the Luftwaffe had had no training in anti-shipping operations?
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Of course Britain (and France) wanted the industrial might of the US as allies. Who wouldn't?
If Germany wanted Britain & France to remain neutral, wasn't invading Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium, not the most obvious way of demonstrating her peaceful intentions?
'By mid-1940, The Wehrmacht was redeploying troops to Poland for Operation Barbarossa.' Hardly, until September, plans for Sealion were still being progressed.
I don't think any part of the British Empire regarded themselves as 'Slave States.'
Britain & France didn't go to war in 'defence' of Poland. The Treaty with Poland simply said that, if Germany invaded Poland, they would declare war on Germany.
Oh, and an 'iron oar' would sink.
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You don't know much about the Bengal Famine, do you? I suppose that is what happens when education is replaced in favour of indoctrination. :-
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it probably won't suit your agenda.
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@rolandedwards2923 Oh dear. It isn't good changing a post when you are exposed as in error, is it?
Actually Churchill proposed the use of gas, not against 'unarmed civilians' as your revised claim suggests, but against rebellious tribesmen on the North West Frontier or in what is now Iraq. What he actually wrote, should you be interested, was 'It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.'
Later, he wrote to Hugh Trenchard, head of the RAF, that 'Continued use of the Royal Air Force in Iraq, might require “the provision of some kind of asphyxiating bombs calculated to cause disablement of some kind but not death.' A year later Churchill urged Trenchard to continue “experimental work on gas bombs, especially mustard gas, which would inflict punishment upon recalcitrant natives without inflicting grave injury upon them.”
Even the type of gas used in the 'M Devices' which so excited Giles Milton in the Guardian about 10 years ago, and seems to have a similar effect upon you, was actually called DM, short for Diphenylaminechloroarsine. To read some accounts in the Guardian, and later in the BBC, this comes across as a deadly creation almost on a par with Zyklon B, whereas in fact it was an unpleasant, but non-lethal, advance on tear gas. In point of fact, opposing British troops were advised that in the event of accidentally inhaling DM, “cigarette smoking would give relief."
Churchill was actually proposing a humane means of suppressing uprisings or riots, and of reducing the probable level of casualties.
In fact, something akin to the use of more sophisticated gases often used by police forces today.
Sorry to upset you with a few facts, which I assume you will probably ignore.
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@larryclemens1850 Glorious, as the time of her last voyage, was being used as a ferry carrier. Of her usual 48 aircraft air group, she had left behind in Scotland all but 12 Sea Gladiators (802 Squadron) and 6 Swordfish ( part of 823 Squadron). Her role was to re-embark 263 Squadron's 10 RAF Gladiators from Norway. In the event, the commander of 46 Squadron, decided to try to save his 6 remaining Hurricanes by attempted to land them aboard Glorious. Ark Royal had a longer flight deck, but at the time was carrying her full air group, and Glorious' lifts were wider, which meant that the larger Hurricanes could be taken into the hangar.
Glorious' normal operations shouldn't have been compromised, although her only offensive capability was 6 Swordfish. These could have been kept at immediate readiness, or even ranged on the flight deck, ready for launch, but they weren't. Indeed, a survivor subsequently reported an 'end of term' atmosphere aboard Glorious, and that torpedo warheads were in the process of being removed and placed into secure storage.
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@pedanticradiator Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
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@morningstararun6278 Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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@wimziekman1104 Where does Waterloo come into this? Why would I write about a battle of 1805 when referring to events of 1940?
Why not simply prove to me that Lend-Lease begain before 11 March, 1941, then? I look forward to you trying to do that.
However, about Waterloo. English, Scottish, Welsh & Irish were 'British' in 1805, by the way.
The army was 36% British — although the British provided half of all the cavalry and artillery, but proportionately less of the infantry. Another 10% was the King’s German Legion, which was a unit of the British Army, equipped and paid by the British, but manned by German refugees from Napoleon’s conquest of their homeland.
35% was from small German states (Hanover, Nassau, and Brunswick — note that the King of the UK was also himself the Elector of Hanover, and the brother-in-law of the Duke of Brunswick), and 19% from the Kingdom of the Netherlands (which at that point included Belgium).
Broken down, there were 53,850 infantry, 13,350 cavalry, 5,000 artillerymen with 157 guns, and 1,000 miscellaneous.
You might be wise to print this off and keep it.
Indeed, if you ceased posting ill-informed nonsense and read a few books, you might perhaps learn enough to make yourself able to produce sensible comments. Given your efforts to date, however, this might take a little time.
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@alexandros4703 'So far, you've made excuses for Smith, Lord, Ismay, the Olympic collision, boilers, the British Board of Trade, mirages, and now the crows next.'
In point of fact. I haven't made excuses for anyone. I have simply explained why these people acted as they did, and why hindsight is not a reliable guide.
Perhaps in your version of reality, a non-Alexandros opinion may not be permitted to be expressed?
Fortunately, we do not live in your reality.
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Canberra was part of a joint USN/RAN Task Force defeated in a night surface action by the Imperial Japanese Navy in August, 1942, at Savo Island. To this day, there is considerable controversy about the sinking, in that Canberra had her port side to the Japanese when she was attacked, yet the crippled cruiser, before being sunk by US navy destroyers on 9 August, showed torpedo damage from two torpedo hits in her starboard side. The only vessel to Canberra's starboard which fired torpedoes at the time was the destroyer USS Bagley. A book, 'The Shame of Savo,' by an Australian author, argues the case for 'friendly fire' quite cogently.
Canberra, despite being badly damaged, was in no immediate danger of sinking, but around two hours after the action, at 0330 on 9 August, the destroyer USS Patterson came alongside with orders from Rear Admiral Turner, USN, that she would be sunk if engine power could not be restored within three hours. As this was not possible, and Turner seemingly chose not to adopt the alternative, of towing the cruiser to Tulagi for repairs, the crew were transferred to Patterson. As Patterson was taking them aboard, she was fired on by a cruiser, USS Chicago.
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The first 26 were ordered on 25 July, 1939. To give you some idea of the urgency, the Admiralty held a meeting with representatives of Smith's Dock, whose whaler 'Southern Pride' was the basis of the Flower design, in January, 1939, and the sketch design was approved before the end of February.
Of the first 26, Godetia was completed in 6 months 19 days, and Gladiolus in 5 months 18 days. These two, however, were built by Smith's Dock. Other yards seem to have taken longer, with 10-12 months being about the average.
A naval yard (as compared to civilian builders) such as Harland & Wolff seems to have been quicker. 20 Flowers were ordered from H & W on 19 September, 1939, and all except two were completed in less than seven months. One of this order, Rhododendron, was built in 4 months 26 days, which is the quickest build time I have come across.
I haven't found any building times for the 64 Canadian Flowers, only launch to completion dates.
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The Italian navy had enough problems already with the British Mediterranean Fleet. The Kriegsmarine had very few operational boats at the time, and they were neither able to inflict anything like the level of sinkings required to impose a successful blockade, nor likely to be able to achieve much against the massed anti-invasion forces the RN had established in Home Waters. Generally, U-Boats sought to avoid contact with destroyers, sloops, or corvettes. Actively seeking them out might well have been a recipe for disaster.
At the time, the operational German surface fleet consisted of a heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, and about eight destroyers. In the unlikely event (given Darlan's genuine concern about the 'honneur' of the French navy) that the French was sent to support a seaborne invasion, the probable British response was likely to have been sending the full strength of the Home Fleet down from Rosyth & Scapa Flow. Four capital ships, seven cruisers, and twenty four destroyers were more than capable of dealing with the collection of heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers, without capital ship support, that the French had outside the Mediterranean at that time.
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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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'It goes without saying that it would have been highly advantageous for Britain to have negotiated its own armistice with Germany.' Then I'm really glad you didn't say it. How can you possibly make such a comment without having the vaguest idea what the terms of such an 'armistice' might have been? Moreover, your apparent confidence that Hitler would abide by the terms of any such agreement is hardly borne out by the facts, as Adolf's record in such matters was hardly impressive.
Certainly, the British government did not trust the Vichy French. Can you explain why they should have been more trusting? Why do you place the blame, should that be an appropriate term, on Somerville? He was a serving officer, acting under orders from his political superiors, and he stretched things to the limit, well beyond the deadline, before actually opening fire when Gensoul's ships had raised steam and were starting to move.
Your various alternatives are, in the main, not credible. The option of sailing to French West Indian or even US ports had been offered, and Spain was a fascist dictatorship which, in July 1940, might well have joined the axis. A skeleton British presence? Would the French have allowed this, and in any case wasn't this simply handing over British servicemen to become hostages in the event of a failure to agree? Anchoring British ships alongside their French counterparts? In a French port, under French guns? In any case, in July 1940 the British government was hardly in a position to immobilise a major part of their fleet. Allowing the ships to go to French colonies? The British government had offered this. Gensoul simply chose not to tell his political masters that the offer had been made. Insist that the French reduce to skeleton crews? In a French naval base? How would the British monitor this? Allow the French to enter into tranquil negotiations? When Gensoul's fleet was raising steam and was preparing for sea, and the British were aware of orders from the French Admiralty to any French warships in the area to proceed to Mers in support of Gensoul?
The capability of the Italian navy at that time was an unknown quantity, by the way, and the fact that the German navy (not, by the way, better on a ship to ship basis, despite your throw away comment) had been largely destroyed during the Norwegian campaign was precisely the reason that the status of the French navy had to be settled. The Kriegsmarine alone could never support any sort of invasion attempt on Britain, but the French navy was strong enough to provide such support. France had, by the way, entered the war with around seventy destroyers, nineteen cruisers, five obsolete and two modern battleships. It was not, by the way, particularly 'crappy' despite your authoritative assessment.
In short, in July 1940, the British depended absolutely on their navy to prevent invasion, and it was widely scattered, having to absorb duties which had not been expected in any pre-war planning. The only card the British government had was the fact that the German navy was desperately weak after Norway. In July, 1940, the attitude of France was unknown, but the British government could not contemplate the possibility that the French navy could be ordered to support a German invasion attempt. Fling about glib terms such as 'war crime' as much as you like, (and isn't it easy to do eighty years after the event?) but the action Churchill took was intended to ensure British national survival. It was not only his decision, it was his duty, to act in the way he did.
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@whitewolf1298 I'm not going to get into a 'counting corpses' squabble with you, but Germans historians, and even David Irving, have actually estimated the Dresden casualties to have been 25,000.
Obviously, this is horrible enough, but should be seen in the light of a 1953 United States Air Force report, which defended the operation as the justified bombing of a strategic target. Dresden was a major rail transport and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the German war effort. My own view of the use of bomber command during WW2 is that it was ill-advised, in that greater resources should have been concentrated on long range air cover of Atlantic convoys, rather than the obsession of Harris and his like with Douhet's theories that bombing alone could force a nation into submission. The big four engined bombers had the range to bridge the air gap at least a year earlier than historically occurred, which would probably have resulted in the Royal & Royal Canadian navies winning the Battle of the Atlantic much earlier than May 1943, when they historically did.
However, though I would argue that Harris & the Air Ministry were wrong in their strategy, that does not make them, nor the British Government, guilty of anything remotely resembling a 'war crime.' They believed that their actions would aid the Soviet Union, bring about the collapse of the German war economy, and thus shorten the war.
In the case of the 1943 Indian famine, the British did not divert foodstuffs. There were a number of events which brought it about, including the loss of imports from Burma, now a Japanese occupied territory, the pressure on an agrarian economy from population growth, natural disasters in SW Bengal, the refusal of the US government to agree to the diversion of shipping, and the spread of diseases such as malaria. Indeed, some of the shortages were political in character, caused by supporters of the Congress party in an effort to embarrass the existing Muslim Government of Bengal. The British government give control of food distribution to the military later in 1943, and around 350,000 tons of wheat were shipped direct to India from Australia. Certainly, there were a number of shortcomings in the British response, but largely these were as a result of the pressures of the war situation, and a delay in appreciating the extent of the impending disaster, rather than, as you seem simplistically to believe, merely because the British diverted foodstuffs.
Neither event you cite was a war crime.
Isn't it easy, by the way, to spout 'War Crime' allegations eighty years after the event from a comfortable chair in front of a lap top?
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@whitewolf1298 As I said, I don't intend to indulge you in an argument over the number of deaths. I take it, however, that you haven't read Neutzner, Matthias; et al. (2010). "Abschlussbericht der Historikerkommission zu den Luftangriffen auf Dresden zwischen dem 13. und 15. Februar 1945." Don't, by the way, as you wouldn't like the conclusions.
As best I can tell, you seem to believe that the Germans were innocent of anything even slightly naughty, i.e., 'the Germans were not interested in war crimes per say' whereas the British (i.e., apparently, Churchill) were constantly on the look out for further evils to perpetrate.
If Hitler had no intention of invading Britain, why were there, by late September, 1940, 159 transport ships, 1859 modified Rhine barges, 397 tugs, and 1168 motor boats, in French and Belgian ports? Presumably, the Kreigsmarine were undertaking some sort of pleasant, peaceful, regatta to entertain the grateful French, Belgian & Dutch citizens who had just been liberated by the German army?
Other than that, brief, comment, I really have more interesting and constructive things to do with my time than to debate with people of your sort.
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@glennpickard2239 A Polish destroyer, Piorun, ( actually the former HMS Nerissa ) was part of Vian's flotilla, which carried out night torpedo attacks on Bismarck on the night before her sinking. The RN destroyers made their torpedo attacks, but the captain of Piorun chose instead to engage in a gun duel, firing at Bismarck with Piorun's 4.7 inch guns.
These were incapable of damaging Bismarck, unlike Piorun's 21 inch torpedoes. Unfortunately, in withdrawing after the gun duel, Piorun lost contact, failed to regain it, and thus was unable to carry out a torpedo attack. Certainly, a brave action, but not the right one in the circumstances.
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@hajoos.8360 As a 'well educated on-paper seaman' may I have the impertinence to correct this :-
'High velocity 11-inch-shells from Gneisenau or Scharnhorst penetrated easily the armor of Renown, which meant cold food for Renown's crew.' I assume you have never read Captain Simeon's report of the action with Scharnhorst & Gneisenau, still less, probably, that of Admiral Whitworth. Well, I have.
Despite your untruths, which I will generously attribute to your ignorance, rather than to a deliberate attempt to mislead, Renown was actually hit twice during the action. One shell passed through the main leg of her forward tripod mast, without exploding, although it did sever some electrical leads, and the second passed through Renown's extreme stern, damaging a fan and some light fittings, again without exploding. Renown's armour was not penetrated, and the damage was minimal, with none at all to her galley. I recall telling you this some time ago. Presumably you did not expect me to read this post, hence your attempt to patronise me.
By the way, Kirishima was never a British ship, although built, in Japan, to a British design. Again, clearly, you cannot possibly be attempting to mislead, but are simply either ill informed or merely allowing personal prejudice to override the facts.
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@hajoos.8360 Let's see. Graf Spee, engaged and forced to scuttle, by an 'inferior' cruiser force. Scharnhorst & Gneisenau both damaged during the Norwegian campaign and out of action for six months until November, 1940. Deutchland/ Litzow crippled in April, 1940 and out of service until April, 1941. Karlsruhe sunk on 9 April, 1940. Konigsberg sunk in Bergen harbour by the Fleet Air Arm on 9 April, 1940. Leipzig crippled in December 1939, and only repaired sufficiently to be used as a training ship thereafter. Ten destroyers sunk in the two battles of Narvik, half of the total German destroyer fleet, in fact. Granted, after that, it does get harder, as German surface ships were rarely seen at sea. Bismarck, after failing on her commerce raiding mission, sunk on her first voyage, in May, 1941. Scharnhorst sunk off North Cape, December, 1943, and three German destroyers (of a force of eleven) sunk by two cruisers in the bay of Biscay during the same month. Would you like a list of the occasions when RN arctic convoy escorts groups saw off occasional attacks by German surface forces, even supposedly superior ones as well? The Barents Sea comes to mind, for one.
Odd that most of the above slipped your memory, isn't it?
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@hajoos.8360 So, you claim that I am making things up? You are deluding yourself. Try reading Vice Admiral Schmundt's Report of 16 June, 1941. Schmundt was, by the way, 'Commander of cruisers' in the Kriegsmarine at the time. More relevantly, I hope anyone else who reads this will also look up the document to confirm the accuracy of my comment. They could also read Busch's 'The Story of the Prinz Eugen' for confirmation of Jaspers' error, although Busch is a less reliable source.
Your comment about using AP 14 or 15 inch shells against heavy cruisers is irrelevant, because both PoW & Hood were engaging (or in Hood's case, believed they were engaging,) Bismarck, and, by the way, their ammunition usage has never been in doubt. What sort of 'success' do you think Prinz Eugen achieved? A hit on Hood's boat deck, which ignited AA ammunition, but had no effect on her operational capability. Seriously, if you believe that 8 inch AP shells are of no use against armour, then what purpose do you suggest they served at all? In other words, why did Prinz Eugen carry them?
Do you know any credible authority who would argue that using 8 inch HE shells against Hood was a matter of choice, and not simply an error arising from a mis-identification of the British ships, as the German records, or at least all those I have seen, clearly state?
As to remaining in line, clearly you do not agree with the German 'Commander of cruisers' of the time, whose assessment I quoted earlier. You know, the one you believe I made up, apparently.
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There was no damage to RMS Olympic in New York harbor. The damage to the tug, O.L. Hallenbeck, one of twelve tugs nursing Olympic into position, occurred when Olympic's starboard propeller was put into reverse. The tug was sucked into the liner, cutting off the Hallenbeck’s stern frame, rudder, and wheel shaft. Apart from. perhaps, scuffed paintwork, Olympic was undamaged, That was on 21 June, 1911.
This event had no connection at all to the repairs following the Hawke collision, which took place on 20 September, 1911, as Olympic left on her fifth voyage.
No-one aboard Titanic can be shown to have been opposed to the creation of the Federal Reserve. Of the three 'suspects' Astor and Guggenheim had never made their opinions known, whilst Straus had spoken in favour of the concept in October, 1911.
Possibly, members of the general public might not have been clear about the differences between the two ships, but experts at the time, and every researcher or historian working in the field since were and are. The details of the wreck, and the fact that items auctioned off when Olympic was scrapped in 1935-7, which are still around and in many cases still carry the yard number 400, prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the wreck is that of Titanic.
Any insurance fraud is totally implausible, by the way, as the ship was only insured for two thirds of her building cost.
The boilers and engines for the Titanic were installed over the 10-month period following the ship's launch in late May 1911.
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@alexandros4703 I am not saying it, but several Master Mariners did, at the British Inquiry. As I keep suggesting, clearly without getting it into your skull, simply read the minutes, which may be found with ease, on line.
Actually, a whole host of captains sailed their liners through the same areas at the same time of year. in the same manner. For further details, you might look up the voyage dates of Mauritania, Lusitania, & Olympic among the big liners, and any of the smaller liners traversing the same waters.
But, of course, I assume you won't?
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You have received two excellent replies already, but just to add a further point, I would ask how it was possible for any switch to have been made, as you write, 'right before the voyage' when Olympic was in New York when Titanic left Southampton.
After completing her repairs by late November, 1911, Olympic made a number of transatlantic voyages between then and April, 1912. The only time she met her sister was in early March, 1912, when she returned to Belfast to have a shed propeller blade replaced. She was there for around four-five days.
As White Star lost a major asset, their safety record, and £500,000 when Titanic sank, I doubt that Morgan was laughing much about it.
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@Dizzy19. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you, as well. Apart from visiting relatives and eating, I suspect mine will involve pretending to enjoy my wife's favourite films. It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol.
Not just the Alastair Sim one, but the Seymour Hicks, George C., Scott, Patrick Stewart, & Muppet ones, as well, dammit!
I daren't say it, but I really cannot see Patton as Scrooge, and as for 'Make it so, Mr. Cratchit.' I expect a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past imminently.
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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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The most recent statistics available, those from 2022, suggest that in terms of population per square kilometre India, for example, is at 435. The United Kingdom is 274. However, this is misleading, when the British figures are broken down further, as they reveal the following :-
Scotland 70. Wales 153. Northern Ireland 137. England 434.
Gaza, by the way, in 2022 was 365, Germany 233, and France 117.
Perhaps this explains why, when 'Refugees welcome here' demonstrators are asked if they would be willing to accommodate an asylum seeker, they almost universally say 'I wish I could, but I don't have the room' without realising how ironic the comment really is.
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Amazing how idiots seem to get everywhere these days, isn't it? No pictures of Titanic's maiden voyage exist because, after her older sister, she really wasn't that interesting. Had she not sunk, she would have been the maritime equivalent of Princess Margaret to Queen Elizabeth.
Olympic had actually returned to sea after repair from 20 November, 1911, when Titanic was still several months from completion. In fact, by the time Titanic left Southampton on 10 April, 1912, Olympic had completed five further Atlantic round trips since returning to sea, and was in New York, half way through her sixth. Not bad for a crippled, uninsurable, wreck, I suggest.
The investigations proved nothing of the sort, as you would know if you had acually read the Minutes of either.
By the way, the three bankers, Astor, Guggenheim, and Straus, were only alleged to have opposed the Fed. in conspiracy myths from the 1990s. Back on earth, there is precisely no evidence either way about the views of the first two, who never expressed them. Straus, however, spoke in favour of the Fed. in October, 1911, and accounts of his speech may be read in the archives of the New York Times.
I hope that you are not this erratic when carrying out your medical duties!
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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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@jackrosario9990 Try again. In December, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy had 10 Battleships, 10 Carriers of all types, 38 Cruisers, 112 Destroyers, and 65 Submarines. Compared to the Royal Navy of December, 1941, rather small. Certainly, compared to the Allied navies combined, tiny.
Oh, and the 50 destroyers were not part of Lend Lease.
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@TwinsBigLikeTia Yes.
1). The Marconi equipmernt was used to send and receive emergency signals after the collision. The nearest ship had only one wireless operator, who was not on duty twenty four hours away. The last iceberg warning to Titanic was at 2140 on 14 April. :- '‘From Mesaba to Titanic . In latitude 42° N to 41° 25′, longitude 49° W to longitude 50° 30′ W, saw much heavy pack ice and great number large icebergs, also field ice, weather good, clear.’ That gives the position of the ship, not of the icebergs.
The position transmitted by Titanic's operators was only 7 miles from where the wreck was found, which was, in those days of dead reckoning, quite accurate. Of course there was only line. The vast majority of ships at the time still did not have wireless communications.
Lightoller was Second Officer (third in command) not a lookout. Titanic had more than two lookouts. Those on duty at the time were Symons & Fred. Fleet, who had replaced two others at 2200. David Blair, who transferred to Olympic, did not leave the binoculars in a locker. He took them with him, as they were his personal property, not that of the Line. Blair, by the way, was a senior command officer, who had been second in command of Titanic until transferred, not a lookout. The locker claim is a myth, as the surviving lookouts made clear at the Inquiry.
By the way, 'glasses' as they were known, were used in order to identify an object already sceen. The probability is that if Fleet had used glasses to identify the iceberg, the ringing of the warning bell would have actually been delayed.
The engines were not put in 'full reverse' but Murdoch ordereda swift change of course. Only an ignoramus would suggest that the rudder on the Olympics was too small. Olympic herself was agile enough to ram and sink a U-Boat in WW1. How did she do that if she was difficult to manoeuvre?
Of course Titanic broke apart as she sank. The hull was subjected to intolerable stresses as it rose out of the water. No ship ever constructed, to this day, has ever been designed with such a factor in mind.
The three ships were not built at the same time. Harland & Wolff had two slipways only which were big enough. The rivets might, indeed, not meet the requirements of the 21st century, but they were more than acceptable by the standards of the time. Olympic, by the way, built at the same time, of the same materials, in the same yard, by the same company, sailed successfully and safely through the same waters for almost 25 years. Odd, that, don't you think?
Ship designers don't actually believe the design was stupid, even if this chap's imaginary 'historians' do. Olympic survived a collision with a Royal Navy cruiser with minor damage, and during her long and illustrious career met many severe Atlantic storms. As best I recall she didn't break apart, nor even show the slightest signs of so doing.
There are many mistakes in this video, and it is possible that, as I slowly found my wish to live ebbing as I watched it, I may not have mentioned them all above.
I do know that that is a wasted 12 minutes of my life I will never get back!
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Oh dear. Another fan of switcher videos. Olympic had been repaired by late November, 1911, and back on her Atlantic run since then. The claim from insurance following her accident was because she was deemed at fault, although in the charge of Solent Pilot. That was water under the bridge, and Olympic was fully insured when she returned to sea in November, 1911.
J.P. Morgan did not 'jump ship.' He never intended to board, as he intended to attend an event at St. Mark's in Venice on 23 April. This intention had already been announced in a newspaper in March, 1912, and the announcement may still be read.
The supposed opponents of the Fed. have never been demonstrated to have been anything of the sort. Straus had publicly announce his support, again in newspaper articles which may still be read, whilst Astor & Guggenheim had never spoken about their views.
Read Robin Gardiner's book, certainly. Just check every false 'fact' proclaimed within it.
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'The story goes, and has been around for many decades, with lots of circumstancial evidence pointing towards it, that since it is a fact that all of the wealthiest opposers of a central bank being established in our country were all invited to sail on the titanic.'
The story goes back to a myth invented with the rise of social media in the 1990s, when people with no actual idea about a subject could post their opinions, however silly they might be.
No-one was 'invited' to sail in Titanic. Moreover, of the three prominent financiers who died, two, Astor & Guggenheim, had never expressed their opinions about the Federal Reserve, whilst the third, Straus, had spoken in support of it.
The number of lifeboats was in accordance with Board of Trade regulations. Olympic carried a similar number, whilst the Mauretanias carried less.
The Federal Reserve Act was passed in December, 1913. Harry Truman was 29 years old at the time. He first entered politics in 1922, when he became a judge.
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There was no 'massive coal bunker fire.' There was a fire in one of Titanic's 19 bunkers, which was never remotely out of control, and had been extinguished some 24 hours before the collision. There was no damage to the hull of the ship, and the only action taken seems to have been to have painted over the scorched area. The photograph so imaginatively interpreted by Mr. Molony is some 40 feet forward of the affected bunker, and shows a smudge which does not appear on other similar photographs, and, even if real and not a flaw in the negative, could just as easily have been the result of a close encounter with a dockside fender. Moreover, it is well above the waterline. I thought ships generally only sank when holed BELOW the waterline?
'The coal bunker was so hot that water just turned instantly to steam.' Really? I assume you have a contemporary source? In point of fact, the bunker was directly below the ship's swimming pool, yet there were no reports of that beginning to boil, or the metalwork around it heating up. Odd, that?
To suspend disbelief for a moment, try to think for yourself, and consider this :-
Chief Engineer Joseph Bell reports to Captain Smith that a 'massive coal bunker fire' (your words) is raging uncontrollably below decks, and is damaging the hull of the ship. Smith, a Master Mariner since 1887, and Senior White Star Captain since 1904, remember, replies, 'Never mind, we'll sail anyway. It's only the North Atlantic in April. What can possibly go wrong?' Is this really credible?
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Actually, populations per square kilometre from 2021. India 464, England 434, Scotland 70, France 119, Albania 99, Germany 233, United States 36, Bengladesh 1265, Pakistan 287.
Don't stand too near the edge, as you might fall off in the crush.
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@silverhost9782 Certainly not a credible source, that's for sure. Perhaps he isn't aware of the time Nelson, for one, spent in the Mediterranean, and subsequently with the East Indies Fleet? Or he is unaware that, Nelson spent from 11 June, 1944 to 18 June, 1944, on bombardment duties, and was scheduled to return after re-ammunitioning at Portsmouth had she not been mined?
Rodney was used for bombardment duties from 7 June until 10 June, and then, after re-ammunitioning at Milford Haven, from 18 June until 9 July, during which period she had fired 519 x 16in, 454 x 6in and 1200 x 4.7in.
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I have a degree of sympathy for people like you, who have been victims of the indoctrination which has superceded education. You have my pity.
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda which has been programmed into you.
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@cybereus836 Clearly, Mr. Forcyzk didn't examine the Royal Navy 'Pink List' for 16 September, 1940. This, effectively the RN 'Order of Battle' states the location and operational state of every warship of destroyer size and upwards. There were 25 destroyers at the Nore, 20 at Portsmouth and Southampton, and 12 at Plymouth, for a start, backed by several light cruisers.
The 'enemy invasion flotilla' consisted of 894 converted barges, towed in pairs by tugs, trawlers, and small coasters, from ports from Flushing to Boulogne, together with 300 motor boats from Le Havre. To defend this force, the German navy had five destroyers from Cherbourg, and two destroyers from Zeebrugge.
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@cybereus836 Actually, I said 'I merely stated a whole series of facts' which I did. The facts were taken from the Royal Navy Pink List, from 16 September, 1940. Look it up for yourself. It will prove that I am correct.
'The thing you discount which Forcyzk mentioned is: having boats in the general body of water encompassing England does not discount that those Boats now have to FIND that invasion flotilla.' Oh, please! The Royal Navy patrolled the Channel every night, with destroyer patrols from Plymouth & from The Nore. Occasionally, the destroyers would shell the invasion ports as they passed.
Moreover, the Kriegsmarine estimated that the time required to extract the barges from their ports, form them up into their box formations (with the barges being towed, in pairs, by tugs, trawlers, or small coasters, at just above walking pace), then proceed down the Channel, to the landing beaches between Folkestone and Brighton, would, in the case of the largest formation (380 barges from Boulogne & Le Havre) require THREE DAYS. Moreover, the formations from Ostend , Dunkirk, & Calais would pass through the Straits, which are 25 miles wide. Find them? Please don't be silly. The barge trains would have been clearly visible from Admiral Ramsay's HQ at Dover Castle. If Mr. Forcyzk didn't know that, then his research was sadly lacking. You might like to read 'Invasion of England, 1940' by Peter Schenck, for the German view, which actually agrees with mine, by the way, and provides details of the complete plan.
In point of fact, as a naval historian, I have not much concerned myself about the Battle of Britain, because the main defence against invasion was always the Royal Navy. As Admiral John Jervis, Earl St. Vincent, told Parliament during the Napoleonic invasion threat " "I do not say they cannot come, I only say they cannot come by sea".
Most modern historians, by the way, agree that Sealion was never a realistic operation. Didn't you know that?
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The original ship was not 'damaged beyond use'. It was repaired.at a cost of £25,000 (in 1911) and went back to sea in November, 1911. Olympic was then, with a brief interruption in WW1, as successful and, as 'Old Reliable', a much loved liner until withdrawal in the mid 1930s.
Because Olympic, or, at least, the Solent Pilot in charge of her, was deemed at fault for the Hawke collision, her insurance was invalidated.
There was no insurance scam, except in the fevered minds of conspiracy fantasists.
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Morgan had no need to book a trip, as he owned IMM, White Star's parent company, and thus did not need to reserve anything. As it was, he had already announced in March that he intended to be at St. Mark's in Venice before Titanic could have returned from New York. The article stating this may be read in the archives of the New York Times, had the gumption to look.
There was no 'mystery' all. Morgan didn't sail on Olympic's maiden voyage either. Do you think that that was suspicious, as well?
Oh, and J. J. Astor never expressed his views about the Federal Reserve at the time. This was simply a false claim made by conspiracists, who also included Guggenheim, who similarly had never commented, and Straus, who was a known supporter of the Fed., in order to make up the numbers.
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In September, 1940, there were 7 RN destroyers at Scapa Flow, 16 at Rosyth, 20 at Portsmouth, 12 at Plymouth, 25 at The Nore, 7 in the Humber, 21 in escort ports, and 8 at sea on escort duty.
However, the Germans had five operational destroyers at Cherbourg, so in the minds of the Sealion fantasists, the Royal Navy was seriously outnumbered.
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'Better circumstances?' Would that have been after Bismarck & Prinz Eugen had broken out into the wider Atlantic, and taken a lot more resources to locate?
The British had four capital ships in the Home Fleet with the speed to catch Bismarck, and positioned two of them in each of the choke points from which Bismarck might have emerged. The Battle of the Denmark Strait, and the damage Bismarck received during it, ensured that Lutjens was obliged to abandon his mission and make for St. Nazaire.
Bismarck had a weaker broadside, and thinner armour, than the British Nelsons or the KGVs. Moreover, her armour was laid out in the outmoded, incremental, manner rather than the superior all or nothing of the two British classes. All Bismarck had in her favour was her speed. Once that was lost, she was doomed.
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Hpw many Commonwealth troops were in Britain is September,1940, when an invasion might have been attempted? Actually, one Canadian Division and two Australian/New Zealand Brigades. Of 36.5 Divisions in Britain at the time, 34.5 were British. You could look this up if you wanted.
'Countless thousands of Europeans?' Really? French troops lifted out of Dunkirk had mostly returned, and those Polish troops who arrived did so without equipment, and were re-armed by the British.
The Commonwealth did indeed play a significant role in the war effort, but in 1940, when this video is set, apart from the troops I have already mentioned,and a small number of aircrew, that role was largely vocal support from a distance, as they developed their war effort.
In short, would cries of 'Good luck, Britain, our thoughts are with you' from Ottawa, Canberra, and Auckland, have been of little use against several German Divisions landing on the South Coast of England. Not, of course, that the (British) Royal Navy would have allowed that to happen.
The fact that, to all intents and purposes, the British did stand alone seems to upset you. I wonder why?
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@whispofwords2590 The 'Battle' as you call it, the Battle of El Guettar, between 23 March & 3 April, 1943, was actually inconclusive. Look it up for yourself.
At more or less the same time, 26 March, 8th Army broke the Axis defences at the Mareth Line, and slightly later, on 6 April, drove the Axis forces into wholesale retreat at the Battle of Wadi Akarit.
Odd that George C. Scott's comic masterpiece of a movie missed those details, wasn't it?
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Gustloff was an armed naval auxiliary, carrying troops and U-boats crews, as well as refugees herded aboard at the last minute. She was, whatever, the result, a legitimate target.
The fault lies with the German authorities who chose to put civilians aboard a warship. The Soviet captain, whether drunk or sober, was doing his duty, just as, in similar circumstances, would have a British, US, or German captain.
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@GreyWolfLeaderTW 'Unproven Technology?' Taranto? Matapan? Don't be silly. The Fleet Air Arm had had the 'Find, Fix, and Strike' approach since the early 1930s.
Honour had nothing to do with anything. The Germans had four large warships, and the opportunity to sink one of them was too good to miss, especially since they rarely appeared at sea. Moreover, Bismarck had been sent on a commerce raiding mission, and her destruction was of importance for the convoy network.
The British, more than any other nation, understood the price of Admiralty. The knew that, in war, ships would be lost. 'Honour' was not part of the issue, but strategy was, and the result of Bismarck's sinking was the complete withdrawal, thereafter, of German surface warships from the Atlantic.
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@GreyWolfLeaderTW The use of naval torpedo aircraft to slow down an enemy fleet in order to bring it within range of the Battlefleet had been a staple of British policy for years. Haven't you heard of the concept of 'Find, Fix, & Strike?' Moreover, it had already happened once, less than two months earlier, in the Mediterranean at Matapan. The conclusions you seek to draw from Matapan are, by the way, erroneous. Without the strike on Vittorio Veneto, the battle would simply not have happened.
One battleship at Taranto, by the way, Cavour, was never repaired. The Italian fleet was relocated to Naples, and six months passed before the defences (mainly the addition of additional anti-torpedo nets) at Taranto had been improved. In short, the attack gave the Royal Navy a material superiority at a crucial time, and a psychological one which it retained for the rest of the campaign. To follow your argument, Pearl Harbor must have been equally unsuccessful, because of the ability of the US subsequently to salvage and repair most of the warships there.
The reward for disposing of Bismarck was always immense. The British simply could not allow a German Task Force out into the wider Atlantic, because of the difficulties of hunting it down. Operation Berlin had already demonstrated that. Moreover, Bismarck was the most powerful warship in the German arsenal at the time, and her elimination led directly to the Kriegsmarine abandoning any further attempts to operate large surface ships in the Atlantic. Of course Tovey was willing to risk Victorious' aircrews and aircraft in order to slow her down, just as he was willing to risk those from Ark Royal. His actions were not in any way dictated by the idea of 'revenge' but by an understanding of the situation of the war at sea as it existed in May, 1941.
Oh, and when did Tovey say that he was willing to accept the loss of KGV because Bismarck had sunk Hood? His reactions to Churchill's later order that KGV must complete the sinking of Bismarck, even if this meant her subsequently being towed, show that the loss of KGV was something which Tovey did not for a moment believe acceptable. If you must make this claim, please provide a credible source.
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Rubbish. There is precisely no evidence to suggest that the ships were swapped, and a whole host of evidence to prove that they were not.
Morgan never intended to sail in Titanic. He had a prior engagement at St. Mark's in Venice. There was even an article about it in the New York Times from March, 1912, which may still be read.
Agreed, the two ships were almost identical, ALMOST being the relevant term. Titanic had a partially enclosed 'A' deck, and the forward end of 'B' deck had been modified to include additional first class cabins. As a result, the window pattern was different from that of Olympic. Titanic had rectangular, unevenly spaced, windows, whereas those of Olympic were square, and evenly spaced. Perhaps you might explain how it is that the window pattern on the wreck matches that of Titanic, and differs markedly from that of Olympic?
Perhaps you might also explain how 'money' was involved?
Cmon now. Try to think for yourself, instead of believing the unsubstantiated nonsense the switchers seek to shove down your throat.
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@Doodle1266 Well, certainly your facts are confused. In the engagement in the Denmark Strait, Prinz Eugen was not damaged, but Bismarck was hit three times by Prince of Wales. On hit, forward, resulted in Bismarck losing access to her forward fuel tanks, and being down by the bows, reducing her speed. Although the trim of the ship was rectified, the loss of fuel was not, and Lutjens abandoned his operation at once, heading for St. Nazaire at reduced speed. He then detached Prinz Eugen to operate independently, but PE more or less immediately developed engine problems and made instead for Brest.
On her way to St. Nazaire, torpedo damage to Bismarck's stern compartments crippled her steering and the rest is history.
Prince of Wales didn't carry torpedoes, but Hood did, although they were not used. Certainly, an undamaged Bismarck did have the speed to avoid action in the case of the QEs and the Nelsons, but probably not the KGVs. By the way, the new Italian battleships of the Littorio class were actually faster, at 30 knots, than Bismarck's 29. That did not, of course, prevent the 'relics' of the QE class from engaging them on several occasions, and generally having the upper hand. I have already explained what 'modernisation' involved where those ships were concerned. If you cannot understand, the problem is yours not mine. In point of fact, Scharnhorst & Gneisenau actually fled from the unmodified and obsolete British R class battleships deployed on convoy escort duty on more than one occasion.
By the way, the 'crappy' carrier aircraft actually sank a greater tonnage of axis shipping than any other allied type.
'She died because the commander was foolish went alone with no escort after the first engagement.' Nonsense, Had Prinz Eugen remained with Bismarck, she would almost certainly have met the same fate.
Ever thought of buying a book about the Bismarck action, and reading it?
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@Doodle1266 You don't have a theory. You have a series of fantasies based on incorrect information, and your imagination.
Bismarck was well equipped with AA batteries, which were rather badly directed. Hence her inability to hit any of the attacking aircraft from either Victorious or Ark Royal. German destroyers simply lacked the range for extended Atlantic operations. Unlike the Royal Navy they had no means of refuelling. Moreover, their AA weaponry was seriously inferior to that of Bismarck.
The aircraft specially attacked Bismarck. Which is why they hit her, actually three times. Do you seriously suggest a destroyer or two could have driven off two heavy cruisers? Or heroically sacrificed herself to save the flagship?
'Assuming they could get to German waters where German air power could nullify the British aircraft carrier advantage.' A rather large assumption, given that the Royal Navy was determined to ensure that Bismarck never reached German (I assume you really mean 'Occupied French') waters.
'Bismarck would make it to Brest and be pounded by the British air force until France was liberated.' Aside from the fact that Bismarck was making for the Dry Dock at St. Nazaire, not for Brest, don't you know what happened to the German surface fleet at Brest? In early 1942, it fled back to German waters. Gneisenau never sailed again, whilst Scharnhorst's appeared in the Arctic once, to be sunk by Duke of York, and Prinz Eugen pottered around the Baltic, well away from the RN.
The hits were not minor. They obliged Bismarck to abandon her mission. Simply as that.
I wonder if your reading is restricted to comic books, as you seem remarkably ignorant of the events of Rheinubung.
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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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'Can you tell I like this conspiracy' Indeed. The way you have fallen for it, despite the lack of evidence, and the errors of fact you have made, are characteristic.
1). J. P. Morgan had nothing removed from the ship. He confirmed in March that he would not be sailing in Titanic, as he intended to be at St. Mark's in Venice instead. This was even confirmed in newspapers in March, 1912.
2). 'If you look at the windows on the ships titanic were all even and had portholes underneath, Olympic were uneven and no portholes. The ship 12,500 ft in the Atlantic has uneven windows, no portholes' Sorry. Wrong way round. Titanic's 'B' deck forward end was modified during building, in late 1911, to include extra cabins and a cafe. As a result, the windows there were unevenly spaced and rectangular. The olympic of the same period still retained to evenly spaced, square windows, of her original construction. The wreck matches Titanic, not Olympic.
3). The hotel in Alnwick, the 'White Swan' has an 'Olympic Restaurant' which uses furniture purchased when Olympic was scrapped in the mid 1930s. Some of this furniture carries the number 400, which was Olympic. None has ever been found carrying Titanic's number, 401. You have got this the erong way round.
4). White Star marketed the ships as Olympic & Titanic. They used an artist's impression for their publicity material. Why go to the trouble of producing duplicate sets of advertising material for two similar ships?
5). 'As far as the crew. They were threatened with imprisonment, black balling, all sorts of threats.' Simply untrue. Did noy of the crew, for the rest of their lives, ever make any statement to this effect? You have precisely no evidence to support this outright lie. Do provide your proof, assuming you can, of course.
6). Olympic didn't need repair after late November, 1911, when she left Belfast to resume her Atlantic crossings. Just out of interest, if Olympic needed repair, and Titanic, in November, 1911, was still five months short of completion, which ship actually undertook these crossings?
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@bigwoody4704 The integrity I was concerned about was that of Maxwell-Taylor & Truscott. The same integrity you disparage simply because their opinions of the Sicilian campaign did not accord with yours.
Do you wish me to supply a whole host of opinions contrary to those you have produced above? Have you ever read, for example 'War Diaries, 1939 -1945 Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke' by Alex Danchev & Daniel Todman,(University of California Press)? The assessment highlights the often fractious relationship between Alanbrooke & Montgomery, as indeed did Corelli Barnett, who argued that Alanbrooke was more concerned with explaining why, after The Auk had been replaced, he did not take the job of C-in-C Middle East, than with justifying the decision made to replace Auchinleck.
Danchev & Todman went further, suggesting mischeviously, that Alanbrooke perhaps in later years practised the signature 'Alanbrooke of Alamein,' on scraps of paper! A rather unworthy suggestion, but certainly Alanbrooke had ambitions to be Ground Forces Commander (at least) for D-Day, and resented both the fact that he was not apponted, and thus, by extension, the man who was. The point is that Alanbrooke was not an impartial observer, but an individual rather frustrated by being denied opportunities which he thought ought to have been his.
By the way, Max Hastings was only partially correct about 9th & 10th SS Panzer. The units were indeed in the area, but had been stripped of almost all of their fighting vehicles, other than some PzIII vehicles used for training. As the intelligence officer Brian Uruquhart, was later to write, his concern was not that there was German armour in the area, but that there was a cadre of experienced commanders there who might (and did) react to the situation more quickly that the allies, and in particular Browning and Brereton, anticipated. Interestingly, the first 'German' tank that 1st Airborne actually encountered & destroyed was an olf training vehicle, a French B1. I wonder, given your obsession, whether that would serve much purpose?
In short, apart from the comments I have made above. I do not feel any need to defend Montgomery from the occasional ranter I encounter.
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@bigwoody4704 AlanBrooke,Tedder,Ramsay,Deguingand,Eisenhower,Martin Gilbert John Keegan and the rest of them are not credible ?
Again, I don't recall writing anything of the sort. I simply pointed out that Alanbrooke was known to have resented Montgomery because he believed that Montgomery was given opportunities which he felt ought, rightfully, to have been. I then referred you to a particular book by two academics which explained this.
As I explained by reference to Brian Uruquhart, Max Hastings was only partly correct. The two divisions were indeed there, but their armour was not. At the time, they were waiting to be re-equipped. To take 9th SS Panzer as an example, by the end of June 1944, it had been reduced in numbers from 15,900 to around 7,000 and in early July it was, after suffering heavy losses around Caen, withdrawn into reserve.
After arrival in the Arnhem, the suviving armoured vehicles were sent by train to Germany for service and repair. Only the reconnaissance battalion, of wheeled vehicles and half tracks, was available when Market Garden commenced in September.
You can look up 10th SS for yourself.
By the way, if you feel the need to use insults instead of argument, then that is, of course, entirely your own affair. However, might you try to use more imaginative insults? They used to cause me a degree of amusement, but now they are becoming tedious repetitive.
I don't recall you commenting on the statements made by Maxwell Taylor and Lucien Truscott? I thought I should remind you as you may have forgotten?
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@bigwoody4704 I see the problem here. You think that senior officers played games with each other, in support of ego boosting achievements.
Your response to the comments from Maxwell Taylor and Truscott so far has been to ignore what they said. Please tell me plainly, why did they speak as they did?
By the way, perhaps you are unaware that on 25 July, at a meeting of the two, Montgomery actually suggested that Patton's troops should take Messina. Apparently, at the time, Patton believed that Montgomery wanted the Americans to undertake the bulk of the fighting. It seems in Pattonworld, everything was a cunning plan to undermine his glory. Indeed, he wrote “This is a horse race in which the prestige of the U.S. Army is at stake,” to the 45th Division's commander, Troy Middleton. “We must take Messina before the British. Please use your best efforts to facilitate the success of our race.”
I suppose that a wealthy aristocrat such as George Patton, born to privilege, wouldn't have worried much about casualty levels among his troops when there was an almost limitless supply of suitable cannon fodder available to him?
This fantasy, of course, was demonstrated in the movie, where British troops march into Messina, Montgomery at their head, to be met by a preening, smirking, Patton. What a pity that in the real world, when British troops did arrive in Messina, they were led by a Brigadier, and there was no marching band, with or without bagpipes.
Montgomery wasn't there, either, although he did send Patton a telegram congratulating him.
Clark (no 'e' by the way) undertook three landings? Really? My father was present at Salerno, where he learned precisely how deep was the contempt most US officers felt for the glory hunter. By seeking to be the hero who liberated Rome, he successfully failed to prevent the bulk of Kesselring's army from escaping after Cassino, and effectively mad the Anzio landing irrelevant. He almost single-handedly extended the Italian campaign by over nine months. And you ramble on about territory!
Montgomery was Ground Forces Commander and largely responsible for the plannimng of D-Day. Don't you understand, or is your obsession about him too great, that the point about Caen was that it was a route centre.
It was the pivot which the Germans would use for their armour to counter-attack the beaches before they were properly established. Instead, the Germans became involved in a useless (to them) attritional battle in which eight SS Panzer Divisions & three SS Independent Tiger Battalions were opposed by the British & Canadians, who fought them to a standstill.
I do not intend to rely further to you, by the way. Why not sit back down in your armchair and stick a few more pins in your model of Montgomery?
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@oldgitsknowstuff The Director was made aware, by Brian Urquhart himself, that he never met Browning, and that there were no photographs of German tanks, but was told by Attenborough that the bulk of the audience would be American, to whom British incompetence would appeal.
For the same reason, the second Bridge at Nijmegen, captured by XXX Corps, was excluded, but a totally fictional scene showing the heroic Robert Redford berating the British for abandoning the Airborne in order to 'drink tea' was put in. Even the American officer this was supposed to depict was offended by the scene, and wrote, without success, to Ryan's widow about it.
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@oldgitsknowstuff It was a Parachute Division, not a Regiment. It was a complex operation, and I agree not everything could be included. So, then, why include invented scenes which did not happen, the first being the meeting between Urquhart & Browning, which did not happen, the second being the tank photos. which did not exist, and the third being that XXX Corps could have reached Arnhem had they not stopped for tea? There are a number of others. I know exactly what a 'brew up' is, by the way.
The tank reference had nothing to do with the vehicles used in the movie. Don't you recall the scene where Urquhart shows Browning pictures of German armour, and Browning dismisses them? Never happened. Neither the meeting nor the photos. Urquhart did have concerns about the operation, but not because of non-existent German tanks, but because he feared that the experienced German commanders in the area would be able to react more quickly than expected.
Instead of simply taking the movie at face value, why not check out the facts?
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@stanhelsing4995 'conspiracy, a word created by the cia.'
Oh, dear! The word originated in the mid 14th century :- , "a plotting of evil, unlawful design; a combination of persons for an evil purpose," from Anglo-French conspiracie, Old French conspiracie "conspiracy, plot," from Latin conspirationem (nominative conspiratio) "agreement, union, unanimity," noun of action from past-participle stem of conspirare "to agree, unite, plot," literally "to breathe together" (see conspire).
'Conspiracy theory' is much more recent. "Explanation of an event or situation involving unwarranted belief that it is caused by a conspiracy among powerful forces" emerged in mid-20c. (by 1937) and figures in the writings of, or about, Charles Beard, Hofstadter, Veblen, etc., but the degree of paranoia and unreasonableness implied in each use is not always easy to discern. The phrase was used from 19c. in a non-pejorative sense "the theory that a (certain) conspiracy exists," especially in court cases. Its use in general reference to theories of hidden cabals pulling wires behind the scenes of national or global events is by 1871.
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@JimmysEssay In point of fact, the U-Boats never came remotely near blockading Britain. Certainly nowhere as near as the Kaiser's boats did in 1917. Doenitz calculated that his boats needed to sink 600,000 tons per month. In fact, the U-boats rarely surpassed 300,000, and were often below 100,000 tons.
Oh, and the Battle of the Atlantic. Between January, 1942, and the end of May, 1944, the causes of U-Boat losses were as follows :-
RN/RCN surface vessels :- 135, RAF :- 126, US Navy aircraft :- 63, Miscellaneous losses :- 38, US & USCG surface ships 28, USAAF :- 15, and Allies :- 7. Check in 'The U-Boat Offensive, 1914-1945' by V. E. Tarrant, if you don't believe me. I assume, however, that your prejudices are far too deeply ingrained to be altered by mere facts.
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@JimmysEssay 'This is basic stuff mate.' Indeed, Britain and France declared war on Germany in support of an alliance with Poland, which was intended, unsuccessfully, to deter Germany from further expansion in Europe.
Germany, of course, by July 1941 had invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium, and the Soviet Union, without declaring war on any of them. Generally, those countries learned that the arrival of tanks, troops, aircraft and in many cases einsatzgruppen represented the nazi equivalent of a declaration of war.
Britain sent her main field army, of thirteen divisions, to support a combined Franco-Belgian army of over 100 divisions. The Belgian army then capitulated, and the French army largely collapsed. Britain, a small land power with the largest navy on earth, then used her navy to evacuate the BEF, and much of the French First Army Group, from the Dunkirk pocket, and attempted to re-land troops in Cherbourg, before being told that the French army was no longer able to resist further.
After that, the British, largely again because of their navy, successfully ensured that a German invasion was never attempted, and provided a rallying point for opponents of nazism in Europe and beyond.
Granted, it is difficult to see how Britain and her Commonwealth alone could have liberated occupied Europe, but the lunatic German attack on her former friend, the Soviet Union, entirely changed the situation, especially since the US, although neutral was providing aid for Britain and, after Barbarossa, the Soviet Union.
After Pearl Harbor & the German declaration of war on the US (unusual, that, as Germany generally simply attacked without such a courtesy), Britain then led the campaign in the west. The Royal and Royal Canadian Navies eventually won the Battle of the Atlantic, the RN convoyed supplies to North Russia, with two of 78 convoys only suffering significant losses, the Royal Navy held control of the Mediterranean, prevented any major Japanese campaign in the Indian ocean, and was largely responsible for planning most of the Assault Landings in the west, such as Torch, Husky, Avalanche, & Overlord. This enabled the growing US Navy to concentrate almost entirely in the Pacific against Japan, although the most significant Japanese land defeat of WW2 was the repulse of their operation U-Go, which caused them 55,000 casualties. Only for about the last six or seven months of the war were US ground forces in the west greater in numbers than British & Commonwealth ones. Oh, & by the way, isn't it odd that a 'bit part player' provided the commanders of the Naval, Ground Forces, and Air Forces, during Operation Overlord?
The reality is that Britain could not, alone, have defeated Germany, but there again neither could the United States. The Soviet Union might, possibly have done so, but as a post war Soviet historian wrote, 'The Soviet Union was largely responsible for the defeat of Hitlerism, but it largely did so using US trucks, eating US food, using US radios, and wearing British boots.'
That is what almost every historian working in the field will actually tell you.
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Peter Exactly where do you get your nonsense from? Admiral Scheer was, in effect, a heavy cruiser. Capable of 26 knots, with 6 x 11 inch guns, and an armoured belt of 2.4 - 3.1 inches. By comparison, the North Carolinas were capable of 28 knots, had 9 x 16 inch guns, and belts of 12 inches. The King George Vs were capable of 27.5 knots, had 10 x 14 inch guns, and belts of 14 inches. Please explain why Scheer was superior to either.
Of the four 'proper' German battleships, Bismarck was sunk by surface gunfire, Scharnhorst was sunk by surface gunfire, Gneisenau was crippled by mines, further damaged by bombing in port, and then scuttled, and Tirpitz stayed at the end of a fjord until sunk by bombing, largely because she was hidden so far out of sight that warships couldn't get near her.
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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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The France of early July 1940 was not an ally of Britain, and in fact had not been so since the fall of Paul Reynaud and the subsequent 22 June Armistice. To use a more recent comparison, was the Iran of the Shah, and the Iran of Khomeini, the same country?
One of the clauses of that armistice was that the French Fleet should be returned to French Atlantic ports, and placed under German supervision. The British, whose only sure defence at the time was the knowledge that, after Norway, the remaining German fleet was far too weak to support an invasion, simply were not willing to risk the French fleet appearing in the Channel in support of such an attempt.
Furthermore, the British ultimatum provided for the transfer of the French fleet to the French West Indies, to be placed under the supervision of the neutral United States, but this option was never considered by Darlan or the new French government, because, for unknown reasons, Gensoul chose not to pass it one.
Sorry to interfere with your anti-Churchill diatribe, by the way, but Operation Keelhaul was authorised by Clement Attlee, after the 1945 General Election, and Operation Unthinkable was a theoretical study which never became a reality.
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@blakesutherland519 Moving the goalposts, I observe. Of course the US was able to avoid fighting on the Asian mainland. The Chinese and the British/Commonwealth did that, just as the Royal Navy made it possible for the US Navy to concentrate in the Pacific by fighting and winning allied naval campaigns in the Mediterranean, the Arctic, the Atlantic, and the Indian Oceans. If you believe that the US could have avoided fighting in Europe in a similar manner to the Asian mainland, presumably you are unaware that Germany actually declared war upon, and then attacked, the United States?
As I wrote earlier, and you ignored, the British/Commonwealth suppied the majority of Western Allied troops in the West until late on in the war.
The % casualty figures alone prove how ill informed you are. What you 'feel like' is meaningless, as the facts simply prove you wrong.
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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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'Smith's apparently "stupid" questions were deliberately asked in response to enormous public pressure about the possibility of survival in trapped air pockets.' Really? How would asking what an iceberg was made of be relevant to that?
'Trapped in Air Pockets' at a depth of 13,000 feet? I doubt anyone at all thought such a thing.
Events like this occur when a Senator whose expertise is in Railroads and Railroad Finance grabs control of an Inquiry far outside his area of competence.
By the way 'Further, his list of witnesses was much broader in scope than the British inquiry.' Really? :- US Inquiry - 18 days, 86 witnesses. British Inquiry - 36 days, 98 witnesses.
Did the US Inquiry interview expert witnesses, such as Alexander Carlisle, designer of the Olympics, or Leonard Peskett, designer of the Lusitanias, or John Pritchard, retired Master of Mauretania, or Joseoh Ranson, Master of Baltic, or Harold Sanderson, Vice President of IMM, or Ernest Shackleton, or William Stewart, Master of Empress of Britain?
The British Inquiry was far more detailed, and far more exhaustive, involving people from all levels, from surviving Greasers to the Vice-Chairman of IMM.
By the way, which newspapers screamed 'WHITEWASH!!?'
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@221b-l3t Your post denying about diverting from the subject, this one :-
'doveton sturdee I'm not trying to divert from anything. Those are munitions aren't they? Why did you not specify that those don't count? It was a coal dust explosion and basically everyone agrees on that. What even is your point if you don't count the munitions manifested? Some secret explosives?'
Doesn't seem to have appeared on here. My original post, by the way, read:-
'Nothing has been found in subsequent explorations of the wreck which was not on the official manifest. This did, by the way, include small arms ammunition, but nothing larger.'
I did, therefore, refer to the small arms ammunition at the outset. My point, therefore, is that you diverted from the issue with your false claim about Ballard, presumably assuming that I hadn't read a book which I actually bought in 1996.
My points are, therefore :-
1). Nothing has been found in Lusitania which was not manifested.
2). Therefore, there were no explosive items aboard which might have contributed to her sinking, as rifle bullets do not explode, and they were both manifested, and permitted by US authorities.
3). You still haven't provided a source concerning Ballard apparently finding munitions.
4). In terms of German Rules of Engagement in place at the time, i.e., unrestricted submarine warfare, Lusitania, like every British or Allied ship, was a legitimate target.
5). The sinking was almost certainly accelerated by explosion of coal dust in an empty bunker.
6). Apart from the unsubstantiated claim about secret 'munitions' I actually agree with 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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These would be the same bombers which failed to prevent the evacuation from Dunkirk, which had neither training nor experience in operating against warships at sea, and whose own commanders said that preventing the Royal Navy destroying a seaborne evacuation was beyond their ability, I suppose?
Indeed, you could ask the Fallschirmjagers. Or, at least the half division who had survived the battles in the Low Countries, and were all that was available in September, 1940. At the same time, you could ask them how they expected to cram into the 226 operational German transport aircraft which were all that were around at the end of August, 1940.
Maybe, going forward into May, 1941, you could ask about the two convoys sent by the Germans with ground troops to reinforce the Crete landings. The convoy for Heraklion turned back to Greece after the convoy for Maleme was annihilated by the Royal Navy.
Isn't it interesting how, in the 'would be' or 'would have' fantasy world of Sealion enthusiasts, the poor old Royal Navy is always destroyed by the Luftwaffe? Odd that even the most cursory reading about events which actually did happen rather demonstrates how improbable this interpretation really is.
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@PeterPete Perhaps because the alleged 'information' you claim to have shown is actually nothing of the sort?
Have you considered that, if you stopped posting inane comments to me, you would have more free time available actually to look up the facts surrounding the sinking in greater depth, instead of adhering limpet-like to something you probably saw on a switcher video, and swallowed hook; line, and sinker?
If you believe that anything which disagrees with your fixation cannot, ipso facto, be of 'substance,' even when if comes direct from contemporary archives, then clearly rational discussion is impossible.
In short, I won't waste any further time upon you.
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@christopherwebber3804 'I've seen the pink lists, I've also seen which ships were under repair, which ships were supposed to available for anti-invasion duty and were actually on convoy duty etc, etc.' Good. Then you must know that my information is accurate. I assume that I don't, therefore, need to tell you the names of the eight destroyers on convoy duty.
'The uboats were supposed to attack British ships before they got into the channel, not in the channel.' Really? That would be impressive, given that over half of the cruisers intended to intercept Sealion were already in Channel bases.
'The British ships would be entering the channel at night so travelling at least part of the way at night. it would have been harder to detect the uboats if the ships were being harassed by aircraft, dodging mines, shot at by channel guns, and peppered by small boats in confined waters.' This seems to be simply a wish fulfilment fantasy. There were regular destroyer patrols in both directions through the Channel throughout the invasion period. For example DF1 (4 destroyers) on 7/8 September, (6 destroyers, supported by 2 light cruisers, in two groups). One group actually entered Boulogne and shelled the inner harbour, whilst the second inspected Calais unobserved. On the same night, DF1 (4 destroyers) pareolled from Le Touquet to the mouth of the Seine.
9/10 September. 6 destroyers from The Nore shelled the harbours of Calais & Boulogne, whilst DF1 (6 destroyers) carried out another sweep of the Channel coast. 10/11 SeptemberDF16 (3 destroyers) engaged a small convoy off Ostend, and were fired on by shore batteries, without result.
11/12 September. A major operation involving destroyers, MTBs, and gunboats, from Plymouth, Portsmouth, & The Nore, examined ports from the mouth of the Meuse to Cherbourg, in some cases entering ports, and shelling targets of opportunity. 12/13 DF16 (3 destroyers) swept from Boulogne to Cap Gris Nez.
In all of these operations, the total damage to the RN forces involved was to one cruiser, by mining. No 'peppering by small boats, no damage from channel guns, etc. Nor can you argue that the guns lacking the range, by the way.
'All rather speculative and a lot of luck was required for German success.' A masterly understatement, I suggest!
'There are accounts of the radar directed channel guns firing at night and causing British destroyers to run away from the huge shell splashes around them.' Source, please.
'Your numbers of German ships don't agree with Peter Schenk's figures.' Please tell me where they differ. I too have read Schenk.
Of course Operation Medium was at night. Did that make it any less effective? Moreover, the German response was undeniably ineffectual. The pejorative tem 'ran away' by the way, is most enlightening.
'The point is that the Germans only needed a few weeks to establish the bridgehead and if British ships were damaged enough to send them back to port during that time, the Germans would have had a greater chance of success.' Presumably, you don't consider the need for re-supply ro have been of any importance, then?
Finally, the actual invasion force :-
17 & 35 Infantry Divisions. 150 barges (75 towing vessels) from Dunkirk, with 50 barges (25 tugs) from Ostend. Later, 57 transports & 114 barges (57 tugs) from Rotterdam & Ostend.
7 Infantry & 1 Mountain. 200 barges (100 tugs) from Calais.
26 & 34 Infantry Divisions. 330 barges (165 tugs) from Boulogne, and 50 barges (25 tugs) from Le Havre.
8 & 28 Infantry, & 6 Mountain Division, in 300 motor barges from Le Havre,
7th Parachute Division (actually 4,500 men at best) to capture Lymphne airfield.
Thus, the First Wave, of elements of 9 Divisions, albeit without much of their divisional artillery or motorised transport, would require :-
844 barges, 365 tugs/trawlers, 57 transports, & 300 motor boats.
Admiral Walter Ansel ( Hitler Confronts England) who had worked on the Allied D-Day planning, calculated from German records that, at the end of September, invasion resources in invasion ports, consisted of :-
1859 barges, 397 tugs/trawlers, 159 transports, and 1168 motor boats.
Can you remove your blinkers long enough to see the problem? Towing Vessels of course. The German plan had no reserves of tugs. Any lost could not be replaced. It was, almost literally, a single shot weapon.
Finally, of course, 'All the barges had some the ability to shoot back to some extent (from AA guns to 75mm guns).' Really? Ex army field guns, and light AA weapons on temporary platforms on unstable vessels? Manned by almost untrained (possibly even seasick!) gunners. Of course these would easily deter regular naval weapons with director firing and experienced crews.
It really makes you wonder why nation states even bothered to build proper warships, when a few old guns on planks would have done the job!
I enjoy reading the works of Sealion 'Would haves.' Thank you for the entertainment.
I will not, however, respond further. By the way, did you get some of these ideas from the infamous Fred Leander, author of the inadvertently hysterical 'River Wide Ocen Deep?'
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@hajoos.8360 Of course the Nelsons were the result of the Washington Naval Treaty. The British were given dispensation to build two 16 inch gunned battleships, to counterbalance the American Colorados and the Japanese Nagatos. Consequently, the British simply scaled down their G3 battlecruiser design, keeping armour and weight of broadside, but accepting a loss of speed. Even so, at 23 knots, the Nelsons were faster than any other battleship in western waters for over ten years. The G3 turret lay out, by the way, was more or less the same as the one used on the Nelsons. Didn't you know any of this, by the way? So all your 'even Drachifinel' remark demonstrates is that he knows more about the subject than you do.
'Stormy seas did more damage to German ships in common than British artillerie. British artillery was never able to sink German ships.' Really? tell that to the ghosts of the crew of the Scharnhorst, a ship which, incidentally, had a thicker belt than the Bismarcks. Where did Bismarck end up on 27 May, 1941, by the way?
Indeed, Hood had been a fast & fine ship for many years, but by 1941 was showing her age, and desperately in need of her intended reconstruction. In any case, she was much more an improved WW1 fast battleship, with the outdated armour layout of the period. The Nelsons & the KGVs were a class above, in armour and in firepower, though not in speed.
As to the hits achieved by Prince of Wales, of course her gunnery was not first rate. She was far from worked-up, and the problems with her turrets, although resolved quite quickly in fact, were well-known at the time. Even so, her hits on Bismarck forced Lutjens to abandon his mission and run for St. Nazaire, whereas Bismarck's hits on Prince of Wales caused little damage, largely because the shells failed to explode.
As to 'Speed is one significant way to avoid hits.' Only if by avoiding hits you really mean 'avoiding action,' and there are very few actions in WW2 where avoiding action led to success. Furthermore, using speed to avoid action didn't really work with Scharnhorst, did it?
You don't need, by the way, to tell me that I am right about the North Carolinas. I know I am.
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@raywhitehead730 When you read of alleged historians 'reassessing' Nelson, and condemning someone born in 1874 for not having trendy 'woke' opinions (Churchill) it does indeed generate a degree of despair.
Unfortunately, the left began to take over education in Britain from the 1980s onwards, working on the old Jesuit principle that 'Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man,' and it is working.
My father slogged his way through the Second World War via Alamein, Mareth, & Salerno, before ending it guarding a prison camp for captured SS troops. He would have been horrified at the manner in which the UK has degenerated. I was fortunate, in that I completed my degree in the late 1970s, when the lecturers and tutors hadn't been brainwashed. Indeed, my own tutor, Professor MRD Foot, was the historian of MI5.
Sadly, we now see semi-educated individuals posing as intellectuals, and finding flaws in major figures of the past for not adhering to their standards. Even worse, those historians who do argue for a more reasoned examination of history are immediately 'no-platformed,' whilst the government of the day does nothing to challenge those who impose their own prejudices.
George Orwell, hardly a right wing extremist, wrote that ' “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” Sadly, this is precisely what is happening in the UK today.
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@chrisvillarreal2752 Astor and Guggenheim, two of the three millionaire financiers who died, had never expressed therir opinions about the Fed., whilst the third, Straus, was a supporter and had publicly spoken in favour.
The rest of your post simply amounts to gibberish. If your ludicrous claim was 'OBVIOUS' then how do you explain the lack of any actual evidence in support of it? Furthermore, 'full speed' is not a relative term. It means the maximum speed of which (in this case) a ship is capable. As Titanic had five of her boilers unlit, then, ipso facto, she was not at full speed.
Only one clown here, mon brave!
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@rosesprog1722 Whether Hitler expressed admiration for the British Empire on not is utterly irrelevant. The reality is that, if he wanted the British to agree to an armistice, he was more likely to achieve this aim with the BEF in prison camps than safely evacuated.
As it appears you don't know what the 'Miracle of the Marne' in WW1 was, I won't bother explaining it. You do understand that von Rundstedt was waiting for German infantry, almost entirely horse drawn, to catch up and, if necessary, complete the defeat of the allied troops in the pocket, I suppose?
You might believe that the final conquest of France was inevitable, with the benefit of hindsight, Von Rundstedt, and, indeed, many German generals at the time, did not have this advantage. Von Rundstedt, like every other German commander, was a land animal, and saw an army with back to the sea as trapped. The British, by contrast, saw the sea as a broad highway. In his mind, there was no need to waste his armoured vehicles in such an action.
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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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If Olympic was not a well-built ship, how was it that she had a long and successful career?
Californian's officers reported Titanic's flares (white, not red, by the way) to Captain Lord, but Lord simply failed to investigate. Red flares were not a requirement at the time, by the way.
The 'A M' claim about the wreck has been disproven so often that it is unworthy of comment. Perhaps you might ask yourself why no exploration team has ever claimed it, or even acknowledged it? Or why the father of the myth, Robin Gardiner, denounced these images as false?
'I think that they staged the California in order to save the people on the White Star vessel and their navigational skills were so inept that they didn't get to where they were supposed to be.'
Perhaps you might explain why a fully laden, but small, freighter like SS Californian was chosen to be the rescue ship? A vessel less suited to the job is hard to imagine.
In short, you have watched one of the numerous conspiracy fantasy videos infesting the subject, and swallowed it whole, I suggest.
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@kemarisite Firstly, destroyers, US or otherwise, were not obliged to steam at 30 knots. The modern RN vessels which accompanied Arctic convoys, for example, had no problems when operating at reduced speed. Nor had those US boats which had briefly accompanied North Atlantic convoys in early 1942. Moreover, what actions did the US Atlantic Fleet undertake in early 1942 which required massive destroyer escort numbers?
Yes, Coast Guard cutters, DEs, or corvettes and sloops were more suited, but as these were not available, did that really justify allowing the mass slaughter of freighters in large numbers?
Armed merchantmen had very little hope of protecting themselves from U-boats. Generally, the first warning the merchant ship had was went a torpedo exploded.
'Note that the Royal Canadian Navy immediately organized convoys, despite the lack of escorts, and this appears to have cut sinkings of the Canadian coast from 37 in January and February to 11 in March and April.' Indeed. Isn't that the point I am making? The RCN itself noted that U-Boats preferred to hunt further south, in a convoy free environment.
In April, the RN & RCN detached 24 escorts from their own resources to support US efforts, but still convoys were not established. The British then set up their own convoys between Halifax & Trinidad, later Aruba. Between May and August, they escorted 14 convoys, totalling 76 tankers, withouit a single loss.
Incidentally, if I am wrong about the authority of the US War Shipping Administration, how was it the Kentucky and Ohio, two fast tankers, were transferred to the British Ministry of War Transport for service in the Mediterranean in early-mid 1942?
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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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@jasonyap6494 Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
Try to break your programming and think instead. In WW2 2.5 million Indians joined the allied armed forces. Was Churchill really likely to risk driving them into mutiny by acting as your indoctrinators have suggested? I am sorry if trying to reason for once might make your brain throb!
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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@paulboyce8537 Olympic's propellor was never damaged, although her propellor SHAFT was, and in order to speed up her return to sea a propellor shaft intended, but not yet fitted, for Titanic was installed instead. As the summary of the damage sustained by Olympic, as detailed in the inspection report published by the Admiralty in November 1911, and supported by teams from White Star & the Board Of Trade stated :-
“Two major watertight compartments were flooded, hull plating gashed from the Orlop deck to E deck, and the starboard propeller shafting damaged.”
Do you see any reference to any propellor damage? It hardly seems worth mentioning, in addition, that the blades of the propellors of Titanic & Olympic were set at different pitches, meaning that a propellor from one would not have functioned efficiently on the other. Isn't it odd that switchers only 'discovered' the supposed switch after the 401 casting had been found on the blade at the wrecksite, and they were stuck for an explanation?
'Also the changes would have been labelled as upgrades for the workers. They wouldn't have been no wiser.' Nonsense. Aside from the fact that, when Olympic returned to sea, Titanic was largely unpainted, had parts of her superstructure still not installed, and only one funnel in place, you are still insulting the intelligent of the workers. Do you really think that they arrived for work on Monday morning, looked at the ships, and thought, 'Must have been windy last weekend. Three funnels and all the paint have blown off' Please don't be an idiot.
It must have been a remarkable insurance plan which thought it a good idea to sink a ship which had cost £1.5 million to build in order to claim £1 million from the insurers, whilst losing the asset itself, as well as a reputation for safety. Who came up with it? Cunard?!
There was no other ship in the area, except Californian, by the way.
'I see the fraud very viable and fooling the workforce.' Perhaps you do. But there again, similar fools believe in the Cottingley fairies.
'I have to say all the ignorance that went on in the ship and reasons given why there was no help also doesn't feel right.' The only ignorance I have ever seen about this subject is that excreted by switchers like you.
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@krackerman3628 Odd how people use insults when they aren't really sure of their argument, but thank you for proving the point. Do you really not understand the naval strategy of WW2? The Royal Navy took responsibility for the Atlantic, the Arctic, and the Mediterranean, leaving the US Navy to concentrate almost entire on the Pacific. Moreover, after Midway, the Japanese navy was a busted flush. Japanese naval successes seem to have consisted of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, sinking a few scattered allies cruisers off Java, a brief raid into the Indian Ocean (with no obvious objective in mind) and a pyrric victory at Savo Island.
Ask the German U-boat arm, or the crews of the German destroyers at Narvik, or of Bismarck, or of Scharnhorst, how poor the Royal Navy was.
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Not quite. Even Fighter Command's historical website details the long periods during which there was no air cover.
Estimates of RAF losses over Dunkirk vary between 106 & 177 of all types. The RAF Museum estimate just over 100 aircraft lost. The Museum account also states :-
The measure of Fighter Command’s success, however, is not in the destruction of enemy aircraft but the extent to which it defended the evacuation. Initially, the RAF attempted to provide continuous air cover, but faced with large German formations it adapted its tactics and instead looked to provide air cover in strength — with patrols involving four squadrons — but not continuous air cover. The move from stronger patrols at less frequent intervals was not successful.
The four squadron patrols were often unable to cooperate effectively over Dunkirk. The flying conditions over Dunkirk, with low-cloud and thick smoke, would have taxed pilots experienced in combat operations as part of larger formations. During DYNAMO, it was almost impossible for patrols involving more than two squadrons to maintain contact and fight together. By the time the patrol had reached the French coast the squadrons had become separated and the patrols broke up into single, or pairs of squadrons, with part of the patrol below the cloud cover whilst others, having initially been instructed to provide top cover, flew above it. The result was that there was ineffective support between the squadrons at different heights and the force structure of the patrol was wasted.
The larger patrols also quickly became disorganised in combat, as the squadrons fragmented into sections, largely dissipating the effect of the patrol. Norman Hancock, a Pilot Officer in No. 1 Squadron, recalled that:
‘You went as a squadron towards your target. You were in appropriate formation but once you’d engaged the enemy then by and large people tended to split up. You might get the odd pair who stayed together, but by and large the squadron was split up and individually attacked targets. You didn’t stay as a solid machine of 12 aeroplanes pointing in the right direction. It didn’t work that way… everybody disappeared. … [After the first attack] there was no cohesion to the squadron.’
The patrols by four squadrons reduced the combat effectiveness of Fighter Command and it is evident that more frequent patrols, involving only two squadrons, would have been more effective. This was a lesson drawn and learnt from the air cover by the officer in charge, Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, and he applied that lesson during the Battle of Britain despite the vociferous advocation of larger formations from elsewhere in Fighter Command.
Following the move to larger formations there were only two clear days of weather for the Luftwaffe to launch full scale attacks. On the first day, 29 May, the evacuation suffered heavily and the Royal Navy temporarily suspended the use of its modern destroyers — a decision which based on the lift capacity of remaining ships would have left over 100,000 men to be captured. On the second day of clear weather, 1 June, daylight evacuations were suspended. One defence of the RAF’s air cover is that German artillery fire west of Dunkirk was at least as responsible for that decision. A detailed review of the decision behind the suspension indicates this is entirely false.
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I doubt that any MP would put a salary of £91k p.a., almost limitless expenses, and the ability to make useful & lucrative 'contacts,' at risk for something as irrelevant (to the average MP) as mere integrity.
My own MP, a newly elected one, was, of course, unswervingly loyal to his Dear Leader, did an interview on the local radio station which was little short of a car crash, and then went into damage control mode, putting a cut and paste version of his party's press release on local sites, with the solemn assurance that anyone struggling with the loss of the fuel allowance should contact him, as he 'hoped' he might be able to help.
Still, at least he made clear to all constitutents what kind of calibre of MP he is likely to be.
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@ComradeOgilvy1984 Siegfried Breyer argued that the High Seas Fleet lost it's raison d'etre when the British decided that, in the event of a war with Germany, they would institute a distant, rather than close, blockade. German assumptions had been that they would be required to meet the British navy either in, or close to, German home waters. Once the British changed their strategy, then the Germans, with a smaller fleet, would be obliged to fight in the northern North Sea.
Apologists for WW1 German naval strategy would claim that the High Seas Fleet was never intended to challenge the blockade. This does, however, rather beg the question, if the High Seas Fleet wasn't intended to challenge the blockade, then what exact purpose was it intended to serve?
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That must explain why there were no British troops in North Africa, Tunisia, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Burma or Malaya then, as well as no British ships in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, the Arctic, and the Pacific then?
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'If the Germans had gained aerial superiority they would have had ALL the 11 group airfields and a quick march into LONDON.' Wherever did you get that remarkable idea from? Air superiority over South Eastern England would have given the Germans no such thing. It would simply have forced Fighter Command to withdraw to 12 Group bases north of the Thames in order to re-group. Without troops on the ground, the Germans could not make any use at all of 11 Group airfields, and to get troops on the ground, there would need to be a successful invasion, which would require German troops, in their towed barges, getting past the huge Royal Navy presence in Plymouth, Portsmouth, and the Nore.
Good luck, by the way, trying to harass the RN with the one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, dozen or so operational destroyers and Wolf/Mowe class torpedo boats, and similar number of S boats available to the Kriegsmarine at the time. The RN had around 70 or so light cruisers and destroyers within five hours steaming of the Channel, without even mentioning the Home Fleet's battleships, battlecruisers, heavy and light cruisers, most of which were at Rosyth. Or the further 50 or so destroyers also in Home Waters.
'Southern Ireland would have been helping the Germans. The Americans would NOT have had a cat in hell's chance as the U.K. would have been SHUT.' The Republic would have done nothing of the sort. Ireland simply wished to remain neutral, which was an optimistic ambition in the unlikely event of Sealion succeeding. The United States was neutral, and would remain so until dragged into the war in December, 1941.
'In reality immediately post the B.o.B. it was the R.A.F.'s under manned and ill equipped Bomber Command that went on the OFFENSIVE as the R.N was spread across the WORLD.' Bomber Command was, actually, better equipped for a strategic role than the largely tactical Luftwaffe ever was, and where did you get that idea about the dispositions of the Royal Navy, which was actually largely concentrated, apart from the Mediterranean Fleet, in Home Waters.
'So now just imagine North Africa would have been under German control with access to ALL the Oil Fields, a quick cruise over to South America where the Germans already had their contacts and supporters.' Utter fantasy. The Germans did not even arrive in North Africa until late February, 1941, and only then as a holding force after the shattering Italian defeat that was Operation Compass. Historically, the Italians and Germans struggled to maintain the smallish forces that they actually managed to send to North Africa, as control of the Mediterranean remained in British hands throughout.
Oh, and the Marshall Plan only came into being in 1948!
I fear that your 'would haves' are simply fantasy. Would you like a few books about the realities of the Battle of Britain and Operation Sealion to be recommended to you?
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@sailingtoatlantisandliveab2455 Slavery wasn't despite what appears to be your conviction, solely British. Moreover, you will not find a 'colony' where the existing population, or any part of it, was deported as slave labour. The bulk of slaves transported by British ships were acquired from local tribal leaders in West Africa (a handy way of getting rid of the excess population, or of useless mouths captured in battle from other tribes) or from the long established Arab slave traders who had been active in the area for generations. The trade was organised by private companies from most European countries, not by the British or English governments, and the British government, in the form of the Royal Navy, were by far the most active in supressing it after 1833.
Bengal, by the way, had already been conquered by the Mughals in the 16th century, and the collapse of the Mughal Empire left Bengal in a state of virtual anarchy. I presume that you have no objection to one Indian power subjugating another, by the way? Would you, perhaps, like a list of known famines in India in pre-British times, or do these not count in your world view?
I cannot really comment on events in America after the end of the War of Independence, except to ask how they can be relevant to the British Empire. Moreover, it borders on the infantile to seek to apply 21st century values to events over 200 years ago. Why not condemn Antoninus Pius for not introducing a Health Service into the Roman Empire in 140 AD, or Hammurabi for not devising old age pensions in 1800 BC?
In conclusion, has it ever occurred to you that the British Empire, uniquely in history, was the only one voluntarily given up by the 'masters' or, equally uniquely, that most of those former 'colonies' have maintained close relationships with Britain since independence?
Don't both to reply, as I have no such further intention.
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'Debunk vids.' as you call them have been appearing since the myths of the switch and of the Federal Reserve/Titanic connection first appeared. Both in the 1990s, when Social Media rendered actual knowledge obsolete.
There never was any 'O' on Titanic's hull, unless you chose to be misled by amateurish CGI, which appeared in 2000 or thereabouts, which no expedition has ever claimed, or even acknowledged, and which even the founding father of the switch myth, Robin Gardiner, denounced as fake.
The windows on 'B' deck of the wreck are of the modified uneven rectangular pattern, as seen on photographs of Titanic after the installation of additional cabins and the Cafe Parisien during building.
Neither Astor nor Guggenheim ever voiced their opinions about the Fed. Straus did. He spoke in favour of it, in October, 1911. Either you genuinely didn't know that, or you, in common with every switcher or conspiracy theorist, simply choose to ignore known facts.
'Have to now wonder if a certain mini sub sinking was a wee warning ,stop looking to hard .' Odd, then, that a small tourist vessel should receive such treatment, when a whole host of real scientific and research vessels have gone unmolested, isn't it? Perhaps you might explain that?
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In September, 1940, the Kriegsmarine had 27 operational boats, of which half were Type IIs, coastal vessels incapable of operating in the Atlantic.
The Luftwaffe had not been trained in anti-shipping techniques, as their failure at Dunkirk effectively demonstrated. They did not even acquire an effective torpedo bomber until mid 1942. Indeed, in the whole of WW2, they sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser.
Moreover, what, in this context, does 'victory' even mean? Given the fact that Luftwaffe fighters were very short-legged, probably nothing more than superiority over the south-eastern corner of Britain, as Fighter Command withdrew to bases north of the Thames to reequip. At the time, of course, the British were outbuilding the Germans in aircraft, & especially in fighters. How would such a situation affect the Battle of the Atlantic in the slightest?
The first Liberty Ship was SS Patrick Henry, only launched in late September, 1941. By which time, of course, Operation Barbarossa had commenced.
'Would haves' especially ones based on false premises such as yours, actually count for nothing.
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@PaulSandersonYup The Bengal Famine. Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as, doubtless, it doesn't suit your agenda.
As you have been very vague on the subject of 'concentration camps in Africa' it is pointless bothering to reply to you.
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@darkmath100 The problem is that Olympic's windows on B deck were of a regular square pattern, as seen on photographs. The, much fewer, of course, photos. of the same area on Titanic show an irregular pattern of narrower, rectangular windows.
The reason for that is because, following recommendations received after Olympic's first few voyages, Titanic's starboard B-deck forward had been converted into two private verandahs and suites. Other modifications also included two additional portholes forward, added in November, 1911, a modification also later carried out on Olympic.
According to a very detailed source, the 'Encyclopaedia Titanica' Titanic had a similar pattern to Olympic when launched, but the modifications to provide the two private suites were carried out between February and March, 1912.
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@darkmath100 The B Deck modifications were carried out early in 1912, or possibly at the same time as the two extra portholes port side forward were added, which was in November, 1911. Harland & Wolff's archives show that discussions about the changes began as early as June, 1911.
They were introduced after experience of Olympic's first voyages had shown that the B Deck promenade area was not popular with passengers, and the space could be better utilised by installing first class cabins and a cafe instead. If 'someone' wanted to switch the ships, why carry out modifications which would make them look different, by the way?
As to Edith Russell. If there was a cunning and devious plan to switch the ships, is it likely that the crew would be in on the plot, and would be cheerfully discussing it with passengers? Californian, by the way, was a small cargo/passenger liner with space for 47 passengers. She had sailed from Liverpool for Boston, on 5 April, with a mixed cargo., She had been operating on the same service for around ten years.
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@darkmath100 You seem to either ignore things which don't please you, or invent things which do. I simply corrected you when you blamed Smith for the Hawke collision. I made no comment on his ability as a captain, although he had been a qualified Master since 1887, and Commodore of the Line since 1904, so he must have been doing something right.
The cost of Olympic's repairs, which Lloyds did not meet, was, in US dollars, $125,000. This can be verified from the accounts and archives from the time. She was out of service for two months only. The second time, in February - March, 1912, she did not miss a scheduled sailing. If you had any actual interest, you could have determined these facts for yourself.
I know what a Robber Baron is, but as Titanic & Olympic were not switched, then your odd fixation with Morgan's alleged devious plot is irrelevant, and I do not feel inclined to allow you to muddy the waters to conceal your increasingly obvious lack of actual knowledge.
In fact, I am wasting too much of my time educating you, and replying to your increasingly bizarre posts. I could recommend a book or two, if you like, but I don't propose personally to indulge your nonsense further.
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@nickdanger3802 Hughes, Terry and Costello, John. The Battle of the Atlantic, Terraine, John. Business in Great Waters: The U-Boat Wars, 1916-1945, Miller, Nathan. War at Sea - A Naval History of World War II, Hitler's U-Boat War: The Hunters, 1939-1942, Clay Blair, Hitler's U-Boat War: The Hunted. 1942-1945, Clay Blair. The U-Boat Offensive, 1914 - 1945. Tarrant, V. E.
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Nonsense. Olympic (not Olympia) had never had a boiler fire, and she had been fully repaired by late November, 1911. There are even photographs of her and Titanic at Harland & Wolff's yard in October, 1911. Olympic is the one in full White Star livery, Titanic being the other one with parts of her superstructure not yet in place, largely unpainted, and with only one funnel fitted.
Morgan didn't 'invite' anyone to board Titanic. Nor did the 'rich men' who you believe opposed the Federal Reserve actually do so. Have you any proof of your claim? No? I thought not.
Morgan never planned to travel aboard Titanic, either. He had an appointment to attend an event at St. Mark's in Venice on 23 April. There was even a piece about this in the New York Times in March, 1912.
Both ships had their names engraved in their hulls, and the name painted in. There is a single piece of made-up footage from early in the 21st century purporting to show the letters M & P. It has no provenance, no expedition has ever claimed it, or even referred to it, perhaps because it is so badly made. Oh, and once again, Titanic's older sister, the one which was scrapped in 1934, was called OLYMPIC, not Olympia.
'I wouldn't put it past Ishmay that he probably drugged Captain Smith so his thinking was impaired.' Drivel. Oh, and Ishmay's name was Ismay.
'Heavily insured?' Both ships, at 1910 money rates cost £1.5 million to build. Both were insured for £1 million. Your cunning insurance scam cost White Star £500,000 and wrecked their reputation. Not, I submit, a good idea.
'THE REAL TITANIC SAILED A NUMBER OF YEARS THEN WAS SCRAPPED IN A SHIPYARD SOME 12 YEARS LATTER.' No, Olympic was scrapped 22 years later, after the Wall Street crash, when White Star & Cunard, but struggling financially at the time, were obliged to merge. Olympic's old rival, Mauretania, was scrapped at the same time.
In short, you appear to be either an idiot, or at least a gullible fool.
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@djp1lly830 What we actually know is that Olympic was returned to Harland & Wolff in Belfast, fully repaired in about seven weeks, then returned to service in late November, 1911, when Titanic was still several months away from completion. By the way, Olympic was not on trials, she had been in service since June, and was setting off for New York.
Although White Star lost their claim in court, they were not required to pay for HMS Hawke's repairs either. At the time, they were a very successful & profitable company, as demonstrated by the fact that, at the time Olympic was being repaired, they also ordered the third Olympic, RMS Britannic, from Harland & Wolff.
I have never understood why people who claim a switch are blissfully unaware of the fact that this nonsensical claim dates from 1995, or that they cannot be bothered to find out the actual facts for themselves.
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@PaddyBaxter-ji8in You may find this hard to accept, but Harland & Wolff had considerable experience of building ships, as had White Star in operating them. Neither company had any illusions that any ship was unsinkable.
There is no documented record of Ismay, or anyone else from either company, making such a claim, and thus no evidence that Andrews disputed something which was not said. The claim does, I understand, appear in the movie, however.
Sectarian discord, still less Home Rule, did not apply to a company such as H & W, whose workforce was entirely Protestant. Thus, the rest of your comment shows utter ignorance of the facts of the time.
Of course, you are welcome to provide credible evidence from any contemporary source.
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@Me-fm9zk Virtually no American sailors died before the US entered WW2, although thousands certainly did after the German declaration of war, when Admiral King chose not to institute a convoy system, and lights on the US East coast were left on, silhouetting freighters nicely for U boat commanders. Perhaps you should look up exactly how many US merchant ships were lost in 1930, 1940, & 1941, instead of posting from a state of ignorance?
By the end of 1940, Britain (not 'England') by the way, had survived.The possibility of Operation Sealion had vanished. After June, 1941, the eventual outcome of WW2 was becoming clear.
Your US Department of the Historian refers to Lend Lease as :-
'Although British Prime Minister Winston Churchill later referred to the initiative as “the most unsordid act” one nation had ever done for another, Roosevelt’s primary motivation was not altruism or disinterested generosity. Rather, Lend-Lease was designed to serve America’s interest in defeating Nazi Germany without entering the war until the American military and public was prepared to fight.'
So please don't pretend that the US bailed anyone out in WW2.
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Churchill didn't orchestrate Gallipoli. He suggested the operation as an alternative to the unfolding carnage on the Western Front. Asquith authorised the Operation, but the planning was entirely that of the Admirals & Generals involved.
In 1941, the Admiralty had given Tovey four capital ships capable of catching Bismarck. There were two exit points into the wider Atlantic. Tovey placed his best & weakest ships (KGV & Repulse) in the Iceland-Faroes Gap, and his second third best (Hood & PoW) in the Denmark Strait. Hood's deck armour was 3 inches thick, on a par with the Queen Elizabeths, and only in retrospect was what happened to Hood considered inevitable. The fact is that Bismarck needed to be prevented from reaching the wider Atlantic, and so she was.
Incidentally, Churchill didn't send either Prince of Wales or Repulse to a war zone. He sent them in an attempt to deter Japanese aggression. Again, you are applying hindsight, despite your denial. As to the advice of the Admiralty, that was to send slow & unmodernised R class battleships.
Assuming that Churchill wandered around during WW2 making foolish and unjustified decisions seems to be a strange modern trend, presumably intended to denigrate him. As a war leader, he made many decisions, some of which, inevitably, were wrong ones, but in these cases, as I said, he did not plan Gallipoli, he was not involved in the tactical disposition of the Home Fleet, and Force Z, though in the end a flawed judgement, was a justified gamble at the time.
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@arbjful How was it, then, that Titanic's older sister Olympic, built of the same materials, was a successful liner for almost a quarter of a century, and was still in sound material condition when withdrawn from service?
There was a small fire in one of 19 bunkers, which, according to the testimony of stoker survivors, had been extinguished around 24 hours before the collision, and which damaged nothing more than paintwork in the affected bunker.
Try to think for yourself, rather than simply swallowing whole a conspiracy fantasy. If Joseph Bell (Chief Engineeer) had really reported to Captain Smith that there was a fire 'raging' below decks, would Smith really have said ' Never mind Joe, we'll sail anyway. It's only the North Atlantic in April. With a bit of luck, we might get there.' Seriously?
By the way, White Star had posted profits in excess of £1 million in the most recent financial year, and had confirmed their order for the third Olympic in November, 1911. Does that sound like a company in financial difficulties?
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Simply not true. If the 'real' designer of Titanic quit, please tell us who he was, and why he didn't quit when Olympic was built a year earlier? Bruce Ismay did not know anything about shipbuilding, let alone liner design, and in any case the Olympics fully complied with Board of Trade regulations in force at the time. If they hadn't, they would not have received Certification.
In point of fact, the Olympics both cost £1.5 million to build, and both were insured for £1 million. Morgan and Ismay's cunning plan would, had it actually existed, have lost White Star £500,000 and ruined the line's reputation for safety.
The rest of your post is simply demented nonsense, and unworthy of comment.
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@Embracing01 Hamer is not a 'Researcher,' he is a conspiracist who has never yet encounted a conspiracy theory he didn't swallow whole. Just because he 'said' something doesn't make it true. Indeed, almost everything he claims about Titanic is lifted straight from Gardiner's book, with some imaginative embellishments.
Here is a quote from 'General Knowledge Podcast BONUS CONTENT SHOW Teaser 5 - The Titanic Conspiracy, May 13, 2021' direct from Hamer :-
"I've spoken to quite a few people who've been obliquely involved in it. For example, I spoke to Bertie Lightoller, who was second officer, the most senior surviving officer. I spoke to his nephew and he had some interesting titbits to tell me about various different things. That didn't quite follow the official narrative."
Lightoller died in December, 1952. Hamer was born in 1952. It must have been an in-depth conversation. Unless, of course, Hamer was being less than truthful?
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@tomk3732 Oh well. It is clear you have no idea about what Operation Peking was about. Read up on the Romanian Bridgehead. It was hoped by the Polish government, or, more precisely, by Smigly- Rydz, that Polish forces could hold out in the southeast of the country, near the common border with Romania, until relieved by a Franco-British offensive. Munitions and arms could be delivered from the west via Romanian ports and railways. The Polish Navy would then be able to escort the ships delivering the supplies to Romanian ports. There was never going to be British military support for Poland, other than by air or at sea. How could there be, when the British army was only ten divisions in all. Moreover, the Polish government were well aware of this. You would need to ask a French historian why their 100+ divisions failed to act. The Polish destroyers which took part in Operation Peking became part of the Royal Navy when their own country ceased to exist, just as Polish airmen and soldiers became part of the RAF & the British army, but if you believe that their primary ambition when they arrived in Britain was to defend Britain you are sadly deluded. They fought throughout for Poland, and with, of course, justification. The British, by continuing to resist, gave them the opportunity (and the weapons) to do this.
Incidentally, you wrote initially that 'Before operation MG Polish commander told his British superiors that this is madness.' You are wrong, because he said that about an earlier plan, Operation Comet, and the same comments had been expressed already by several British commanders. He was, in fact, much less critical of Market-Garden. You really should take no notice of 'A Bridge Too Far,' as much of it is inaccurate.
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'How could a ship with a bent keel go on to serve in the war..for 15yrs.' Perhaps because Olympic never had a bent keel, until an author invented one in the late 1990s? She lasted for 23 years, by the way.
'The Olympic had used the titanic propeller after Olympic threw a blade..that's why the propeller at the bottom which is the titanics propeller say 401...history.' 'History?' No, actually fantasy. The blades on the outer propellers of the Olympics were bolted on, not cast. When Olympic lost a blade in February, 1912, she returned to Belfast, where a new, spare, blade was fitted. There are even photographs of this procedure taking place. Never at any time was anything other than part of a propeller shaft taken from Titanic & fitted to Olympic.
Olympic was scrapped in the mid 1930s, after the merger of White Star & Cunard. Her old rival Mauretania was scrapped at the same time. Why do you fantasise that the scrapping was part of a devious plot, especially since the switch myth was still sixty years in the future.
'The captain was screwed out a job otherwise..the passengers were forced to sign a piece of paper stating not to tell what they had seen..secret act.' Oh yes, of course. You have lost most of your family in a disaster at sea, but you are forced to sign a paper, and all 700+ of you, for the rest of your lives, loyally remain silent. Are you serious??
There are many photographs of the Olympic of 1912, and some, though obviously fewer, of Titanic.
'If they could get a Pic of the other propeller I would be willing 2 bet anything it says 400!...' If you are so sure, why not sponsor a new exploration team? Think of the money you would make with so sensational a discovery!
Oh, but having read your comments, I now realise that your carers would let you handle money. Or probably, anything sharp?
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@iridescentprism5113 I prefer to believe the evidence from the time.
No, it isn't possible to keep such a secret. Moreover, you haven't explained why the British should deliberately engineer such a situation.
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
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@dmunro9076 Have I ever said that Bismarck had NO functioning radar? Only that her forward radar was out of commission. The Baron says (Chapter 13 of his book) in the English translation, that 'It now developed that the jolts caused by the firing of our big guns had put our forward radar out of action and, since Bismarck was in the lead, our Task Force was blind to any threat from ahead. In order to overcome this disability and also to have the ship with the heavier guns near the shadowers astern, Lutjens ordered a 'number change' which meant that the Prinz Eugen, her forward radar intact, would take the lead.'
When Prince of Wales re-engaged later on 24 May, The Baron records that the action was at extreme range, and that the glare of the sun on the water made observation from the main fire control centre in the foretop difficult. If so, why didn't Schneider use his, according to you, working radar? Moreover, why wasn't this radar used during the Hood action?
In chapter 15 of the Baron's book, he discusses Lutjens' reasons for abandoning his mission, stating that 'Furthermore, he (Lutjens) was probably disheartened by the fact that the few salvoes fired at Norfolk the night before had put the Bismarck's forward radar out of action. Shipboard repair of this radar was obviously impossible.'
There is, by the way, an entry in Prinz Eugen's War Diary, at 0028 on 24.05.41, that 'Bismarck's radars are not functioning.' Jasper also records that 'his ship was initially stationed 16,000 yards ahead, but later that night Bismarck's radar did completely pack up and apparently the gap was closed to 3000 m so that PG could scan ahead and astern.'
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I recall being told by my parents that Harold Wilson visited Preston in 1964 and made speeches to the workers at Warton, Preston, & Samlesbury, stating that TSR2 was safe in his hands. As a result, in a desperately tight election, one of the two Preston seats which had previously been Tory, Preston South, changed hands.
Within weeks, the jigs on which the TSR2s were being built were broken up, on Harold's orders. The British then paid the US in order to purchase their F111, and then paid them again in order to cancel the purchase.
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@Crashed131963 It has the Germans in control of the sky. Which, of course, they also had when the Luftwaffe failed at Dunkirk. Sinking of Repulse & Prince of Wales proves precisely nothing, in that both were sunk by torpedo bombers. The Luftwaffe didn't even have an operational torpedo bomber until mid-1942. Even their own commanders, Dinort & von Richtofen, thought that protecting the invasion barges was beyond them, and said so at the time.
In the whole of WW2, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser. The RN had, in September, 1940, over 110 destroyers in Home Waters, backed up by several light cruisers and around 500 smaller warships.
The Luftwaffe of 1940 really, in terms of anti-shipping capability, did not compare with the Fleet Air Arm, and to put them on a par with the American & Japanese naval air arms at Midway (over 18 months later, by the way) is like putting a Panzer II and a Tiger II on the same level, on the grounds that they were both tanks!
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@jobson586 'Anything else you got to say??' Actually yes. Apart from your evident inability to understand the difference between siege guns and naval weapons, Schwerer Gustav was not available for use until 1941. Furthermore, as it needed a crew of 250 or so to assemble it, and it took three days to do this, a further 2,500 men to lay the tracks for it, and two entire flak battalions to protect it, perhaps you might explain how it might possibly have the slightest relevance to naval warfare?
You might wish to look up the following :-
40.6 cm/52 (16") SK C/34
As these were the 16 inch guns proposed for the projected 'H' class battleships, and a small number only appeared, as coast defence guns, in 1942. Such weapons were complex creations. Put in simple language, you cannot decide to build one on Monday and install it on Thursday. Evolution, in the case of SK C/34, took some eight years.
As Bismarck was laid down in July, 1936, launched in February, 1939, and commissioned for working-up from late August, 1940, I hope that you can now grasp the problem?
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@inttubu1 It really doesn't matter what I think. Facts are what matters.
1). Other liners had sailed through the same waters, in the same manner, at the same time of year.
2). Why would he, then, be accused of 'murder' particularly by you? Captain Smith certainly died at the scene.
3). All they knew was that circumstances had arisen which required them to cancel their voyages. Just had previously happened with Olympic. You surely aren't suggesting that they had been told of a 'plot', and, after 1500+ people had died, staunchly kept quiet for the rest of their lives? Every one of them?
Rescue would only be possible if there were ships in the vicinity of Titanic. There was only one, whose captain showed s remarkable lack of interest in events unfolding around him.
4).No, there isn't. Titanic's sister ship had been back at sea since late November, 1911. She was on her way from New York to Southampton when she received Titanic's distress signal, but she was over 500 miles away.
5). What 'safety privileges' did the prominent VIPs have?
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As Sherlock Holmes would also say, 'It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. inevitably one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.' As you have done, examples being :-
1). Titanic's insurance value was never increased. It was, and remained, two thirds of her building cost of £1.5 million.
2). The first reference to 'keel damage' appeared in 1995 with Robin Gardiner's little book. The Inspection report compiled by the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and White Star made no such reference. Harland & Wolff certainly knew nothing about it, and Olympic returned to sea on 20 November 1911, when Titanic was five months from completion.
3). Most, if not all, ships had an initial coat of grey primer. Certainly, Titanic was so painted. Olympic had, in addition, a temporary coat of white, or of light grey, paint added before launch, because similar paint applied to the earlier Mauretania had made her stand out well in photographs and newsreels during her launch. Olympic was repainted in normal black after the launch.
4). When Titanic sank, White Star lost a major asset, their reputation for safety, and one third of her building costs. Exactly which financial losses did that recoup?
Or, as Watson would probably have commented, 'Good heavens, Holmes, stop reading ill-informed rubbish written by a simpleton. Direct your attention to this instead. A Dr. Mortimer is worried about a big dog apparently wandering around Dartmoor.'
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Barwell was laid down on 6 September, 1939, launched on 13 February, 1940, and commissioned on 26 April, 1940. She was built by Lobnitz, of Renfrew. She appears to have been scrapped in Singapore around 1957.
The Bar class (76 vessels) were 173.75 ft long, by 32.25 ft x 11.25 ft, and displaced 730 tons, full load. Armament was 1 x 12 pounder gun. Usual crew was 32, and they were coal fired.
I believe one still exists, SAS Somerset, (originally HMS Barcross ) as a museum ship in South Africa. There are one or two photos. on her website.
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People who undulge in festooning their comments with capital letters usually do so to conceal the paucity of their argument, as of course you have done.
Please try to break your indoctrination, and think, instead. You might even try to read a book or two?
The video is about the Battle of Britain, and the possible threat of German invasion. At the time, the only ground forces from the Commonwealth and Empire were one Canadian Division and two Australian/New Zealand Brigades. In September, of 34.5 divisions in Britain, 32.5 were British.
The Commonwealth and Empire eventually played an important role in the war effort, but not as early as October 1940.
Indian troops did serve in North Africa and Italy, but the bulk of Indian forces served in Burma. By the way, there was no conscription in India, yet 2.5 million Indians served in the allied forces. Your ill-informed comment dishonours the memory of those men.
You should take the issue up with those who indoctrinated you, perhaps?
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@TheCountofToulouse Captain Smith was White Star's senior captain, and had been since 1904. Since then, he had commanded every new White Star liner on her maiden voyage. The probability is that, unless he chose to retire, he would have taken Britannic out as well, had she been completed before the commencement of WW1.
'Further, you notion that 'no Titanic researcher or historian' takes is seriously? Do you understand that you just lied? Everyone that has looked into this is a HISTORIAN and a RESEARCHER, why do research and only look for the truth that supports your preconceived outcome?
Don't be silly. Anyone can be interested in any subject, but only those with access to archive records and documents can really be considered genuine researchers or historians. Hence the manner in which the method of history is described. - Look at the evidence, and come to your conclusions based upon that evidence.
Actually, many survivor accounts refer to the iceberg, as do accounts from surviving officers. 'Curious that the damage was in the EXACT places to ensure the ship would sink, too, huh? Again, don't be silly. When a ship designed to stay afloat has five, or, indeed, possible six, compromised, what do you expect to happen?
As you seem wedded to your fantasy, perhaps you might explain who planted the explosives, when, and why?
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Churchill didn't hold any political office between 1929 & September, 1939. When in the political wilderness, he argued that nazi Germany was expanding her military resources, and preparing for war. Was he wrong? If not, then how can warning the government of the United Kingdom about this be considered 'warmongering?'
As to the failed operations he planned, I doubt he ever planned a military operation in his life. Certainly, as part of the Asquith/Lloyd George government in WW1, then during WW2, he was closely involved in the strategy the allies pursued, but the planning was left to the supposed 'professionals' and, at Gallipoli at least, the professionals failed badly.
As to Mers el Kebir, certainly it was his decision, and it was the correct one. After the collapse of France, the British Isles relied absolutely upon the Royal Navy for defence against invasion. The German navy was weak, but had Hitler gained operational control of the French navy, then an invasion attempt might have been made. Mers took place only a week or so after the establishment of the Vichy government, and this government's attitude towards the British (and towards their German overlords) was unclear, to say the least.
Do you think that, had Churchill not taken such a decision, the House of Commons and the people of Great Britain would have responded with good-natured shrugs had a German invasion force, protected by the French navy, arrived off the South Coast later in 1940?
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@dragilxcom4176 Another Sealion 'would have.' The Channel is a death trap for submarines, being shallow, subject to strong currents, and heavily mined. The Germans sent three boats into it in late 1939, and all were promptly sunk. Furthermore, the U-Boat fleet at the time was small, with only 27 operational front-line boats, of which 13 on average were at sea on any one day in September, 1940. Usually, boats tried to avoid going near fleet destroyers, as it tended to end badly for them. You suggest that, in order to satisfy your fantasy, they should actively seek them out? Oh well, ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
'If Germany had the air superiority, RN would have no chance.' You mean like at Dunkirk, when the Luftwaffe, with air superiority, failed to prevent Dynamo, when the rescue ships were sitting targets? This same Luftwaffe, untrained in anti-shipping operations and without even a torpedo bomber, 'would have' been able to sink or disable, in large numbers, RN warships moving at speed, when they previously hadn't been able to hit them when they were stopped close inshore?
This Luftwaffe you laud, which historically in WW2 sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser, 'would have' dealt with the 64 RN destroyers on anti-invasion duties within 5 hours steaming of Dover, supported by several light cruisers and over five hundred smaller warships, and after that 'would have' dealt with the further fifty or so RN destroyers further away, but still in Home Waters?
Instead of posting from ignorance about what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done, why not buy a book, read about what, historically, the Luftwaffe actually did (or rather didn't,) do, and then try to explain it?
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The Germans were never remotely able to gain air superiority over Britain. The best they could ever hope for was a measure of superiority over the South-Eastern corner. They might then have been in a position to attempt their suicidal Operation Sealion. This superiority would be temporary at best, as the British were outbuilding the Germans in aircraft, and especially in fighters, from June 1940 onwards.
By the way, the RAF had little relevance to the protection of convoys, incoming or outgoing, until mid 1943, when a small number of VLR Liberators were made available to Coastal Command. The Air Ministry consistently refused to release long range four engined bombers for the same task.
The Royal Navy fought the convoys through, and in any case, in September1940 the Wolf Pack concept hardly existed, given that, on any one day, only an average of 13 U-Boats were at sea, half of which were short range Type IIs unsuitable for Atlantic operations. At no time in WW2 were convoy losses anywhere near large enough to suggest that Britain was anywhere near being starved of supplies. Certainly, the situation never came anywhere near that of 1917.
Do you seriously think that the small tactical bombers available in comparatively small numbers to the Luftwaffe could have inflicted anything like the damage that the thousands of large British & American strategic bombers subsequently did?
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The actual text of the signal, addressed to R.A.A., (Admiral Wells, Rear Admiral Aircraft Carriers) was as follows:- 'R. A. A. FROM GLORIOUS (corrupt group, possibly CONFIRM) MY 1615 2 P.B. TIME OF ORIGIN 1640'
The signal of 1615 said, according to a Glorious survivor who was a telegraphist in a Swordfish and heard it on his headphones, 'TWO BATTLESHIPS BEARING 310 DEGREES DISTANCE EIGHT MILES,' followed by a position. It would probably have been sent on the Aircraft Carrier wave, but no British warship or shore station either acknowledged it or even recorded receiving it. More importantly, the B-Dienst team aboard Gneisenau didn't receive it either, even though they were monitoring British frequencies.
Devonshire received the second signal at 1720, but without the first signal it would surely have been meaningless.
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Incorrect. The Luftwaffe had not been trained in anti-shipping techniques, hence the poor performance at Dunkirk. It did not even have an operational torpedo bomber until mid 1942. Nor could it operate at night, when the Royal Navy could.
In fact, in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser. In September, 1940, the RN had around 70 destroyers and light cruisers within five hours steaming of the Dover Straits, a further 500 or so smaller warships in immediate support, and a further 40 or so destroyers in Home Waters.
As to 'Britain only regrouped many years later.' Actually, Britain regrouped very quickly. In August, Britain had regrouped to the extent that a large troop convoy, including a complete armoured division, was sent to North Africa.
Sealion believers always talk about what the mighty Luftwaffe 'would have' done, but rarely bother to look at the actual facts of 1940.
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@Dizzy19. I have just finished ploughing through the 'Brilliant Expattaffy's' latest video. All 1 hour 30 minutes of it. Comment is unnecessary, except to refer to 'Hamlet' Act IV Scene 1 :-
"Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend, which is the mightier"
I must confess to being flattered by a few references to myself, albeit not by name. It seems I am a liar, of course.
By the way, don't watch the video, when you come across it, in one go. After around 15 minutes, you will experience a damp sensation down both sides of your neck.
That is your brain dissolving and seeping out of your ears.
Otherwise, enjoy.
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Carmine Paola Oh, you wish to talk about 15 June? Oh well. We could start with the sinking of the cruiser Trento, I suppose. Crippled at 0610, and finished off by HMS Umbra at 1106. Vian had been ordered by Harwood to delay any action until an attack by British & American bombers had taken place, which was at around 0900, when Littorio was hit. At 1115 Harwood, believing the exaggerated claims of the aircrews, ordered Vian to turn again for Malta, after which, at 1215, Harwood gave Vian permission to act as he thought fit.
At dawn, of course, you are probably aware that in a separate action, a force of RN destroyers with the Harpoon convoy had engaged an Italian cruiser squadron, until the Italian squadron broke off at 1000, although it did briefly reengage later.
Vian's force, and his convoy, had been under (German) air attack since 1150, with a stronger attack by 36 Ju87s taking place at 1520. At around the same time, when Iachino's force was around 100 nm from the convoy, he turned away to the North-West, receiving instructions, after the event, from Supermarina to turn away if Vian's force hadn't been encountered by 1600. Vian turned his force and the convoy back towards Malta at 1625, but came under heavy air attack from German aircraft soon afterwards and, with only 1/3rd of his AA ammunition left, and Iachino's force far away, at 2053 Harwood ordered Vian and the convoy to return to Alexandria. Further German air attacks took place on the night of 15/16 June and on 16 June. Put simply, a victory of German air power over British sea power, with a powerful Italian battle fleet observing proceeding from a distance.
You should read 'Malta Convoys, 1949-1943' by Richard Woodman, should you be interested in the facts, although it is fairly clear that you aren't.
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Carmine Paola As you ask, I do have a degree in modern history. A First actually, and my particular specialism was, and is, naval aspects of WW2. The commander of the naval forces for Operation Husky, by the way, was Sir Andrew Cunningham.
You think Rommel was 'successful?' What a novel idea. Doesn't it occur to you that losing so many ships rather suggests that the Italian navy was not really very effective at transporting supplies to North Africa, despite your moving conviction that the British & Germans conspired to slander Italian efforts.
Husky, by the way, involved 1365 Allied warships. The US contingent consisted of 5 cruisers, 48 destroyers, 94 troopships, 98 other warships and 190 landing craft. The RN contingent consisted of 6 battleships, 2 aircraft carriers, 10 cruisers, 80 destroyers, 26 submarines, 250 other warships, 237 troopships, and 319 landing craft.
Despite my research, I have not been able to find out much about the efforts the Italian surface fleet made to defend Sicily, although doubtless you will claim that they were significant & successful.
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Carmine Paola Ike commanded the land forces. Cunningham commanded the naval forces which put them ashore in the first place.
First Sirte? You mean when 5 RN light cruisers and 14 destroyers held off an Italian force of 4 battleships, 7 cruisers, and 13 destroyers, and delivered the supply convoy they were protecting to Malta? Perhaps you are referring to M41 & M42, the supply convoy to North Africa? Originally 8 merchantmen, but reduced to 4, after HMS Upright sank two, and two more collided and returned to port. M42, as it was renumbered, had an escort of 4 battleships, 5 cruisers, & 21 destroyers. The supplies were indeed delivered to Tripoli and Benghazi, although those in Benghazi were lost when the British captured the town five days later.
Oh, and Gazala didn't happen until late May, 1942.
You haven't supplied any of the sources you claimed, and for which I asked, by the way. I wonder why that might be?
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Carmine Paola I did, for what it was worth. Wikipedia actually says of him :-
'Besides dealing with specialist topics, in 1949 he wrote the educational work Che ha fatto la Marina? 1940–45 (What did the Navy do? 1940–45) to make the navy's actions during World War II better known – they were then little known due to censorship. He had planned it in 1942 whilst serving in the Supermarina.
He was also the advisor, screenwriter, production manager, consultant and assistant director on four 1950s Italian war films – three directed by Duilio Coletti (I sette dell'Orsa maggiore, Divisione Folgore and La grande speranza) and one by Antonio Leonviola (Siluri umani, 1954).
No references at all to his naval career or to his academic qualifications, if any.
You really do appear to be floundering around increasingly incoherently old chap. It was amusing correcting your idiocies at first, as I had already done on a number of previous occasions, but I am finding that your evasiveness and lack of knowledge is becoming increasingly tedious, and won't waste any further time on you.
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Carmine Paola One final comment. The nearest thing I can find to a fully detailed academic review of Bragadin's work is in an American naval magazine, as part of a larger study on the relative merits of the various types of naval artillery used in WW2. The author makes brief comments on each of the sources he used, and he actually refers to Bragadin, who seems to have been a Commander in naval intelligence rather than a seagoing sailor, by the way. The review is as follows :-
'Marc Antonio Bragadin's The Italian Navy in World War II (Bragadin 1997) is bewildering. Their ‘greatest’ victory was Pantellaria, in which a British destroyer and several transports were sunk. But given the correlation of the forces involved, they should have exterminated the entire convoy to the last vessel!
And the ‘super fast’ Italian ships could never catch the much slower British vessels; Bartilomeo Colleoni, supposedly capable of 40 kts, was savaged by HMAS Sydney, which on her best day made only 32 kts.
How could it be that with the larger fleet, magnificent artillery and well trained crews the Italian Fleet suffered one shattering defeat after another?'
Richard Woodman (Malta Convoys) doesn't use him as a source at all by the way, and the only other mention I can find are the views of American readers of his work, as follows :-
'While I did find the book useful and interesting there was too much of a pro-Italian bias for me to really enjoy or trust it. The author tends to distort generally accepted facts in ways to forward as positive an impression on the Italian war effort and on the Italian Navy in particular. It is understandable as the author did serve in the Italian Navy during this time period.'
'The author's service in the Italian Navy during the war gives him insights into the thinking of the naval leadership. Unfortunately, his service also reveals itself in more partisanship than should exist in what is intended as an objective history. Too many Italian actions are "superhuman.'
As you seem to rely so much on such a source, this probably explains your lack of accurate knowledge on the subject, as well as your determination to distort, and even invent 'facts.'
Goodbye.
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Carmine Paola There are 11 reviews on the Amazon UK site. 83% are five stars, 17% four stars. On Amazon US there are 78% five stars, 16% four stars, and 6% 3 stars. You have taken your comment from the single 3 star review. The reviewer in that case should have read the bibliography, which includes a number of German & Italian authors.
The difference here is that I have the book, one of over thirty on the campaign on the Mediterranean, in my library, whereas you clearly don't. It happened to be the one I recommended in the hope that it might educate you; I could have recommended a host of others.
Do you really believe that it in any way supports your arguments when instead of attempting to defend Bragadin, you erroneously seek to attack another book on the subject, in the odd belief that this justifies his prejudices? Especially when there are a large number of others which support my assessments, and disagree with yours?
I would offer to give you a list of these books, but doubtless if I did you would claim conspiracy. As, indeed, you already have.
Anyway, definitely no more. I am sure anyone who reads these posts can make his or her mind up who has the more valid and historically accurate argument.
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@rossdsg Sorry, but I was simply replying to your original, half-baked, comment. In 1900, Churchill was a 25 year old former soldier and news reporter.
The rest of your post is, similarly, half-baked. Churchill only became Prime Minister in May, 1940, having held no Government office between 1929 & September, 1939. Why should he, after June 1940, wish to make any sort of peace with a nation which had invaded, without declaration of war, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, & Belgium, and had conquered France? A nation, moreover, which held treaties and agreements in contempt?
However, seeing that you have begun to ramble on about pop-smoking musicians, you clearly are worth any further wasting of my time.
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@larebear1902 ' hmmm, r u an algorithm bot?' No, I am a naval & maritime historian.
Don't be a fool. No expedition has ever found any 'O' on the hull of Titanic. If one had, don't you think that, just possibly, it might have been mentioned? There was a fake CGI video claiming something similar, which appeared from nowhere around the year 2000. It has precisely no provenance, no expedition has ever claimed it, and even the father of the Switch myth, Robin Gardiner, denounced it as fake.
Except in the eyes of the fantasist, it isn't even particularly good CGI, by the way.
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@Andrei613 Easy to say with the advantage of hindsight. In 1939, RN cruisers & capital ships had AA fits on a par with similar ships in the US navy. Compare, for example, the Southamptons & the Brooklyns. A Southampton had 2x 4 4 inch HA, 2 x 4 2pdrs & 2 x 4 0.5 inch machine guns. A Brooklyn mounted either 8 x 1 5 inch, or 4 x 2 5 inch, with 8 x 1 0.5 inch machine guns.
Of the older cruisers, USS Marblehead of the Omaha class in 1941 mounted 7 x 1 3 inch AA, supplemented by 8 x 1 0.5 inch machine guns. The nearest British equivalent, the Leanders, all except Achilles had been rearmed with twin four inch AA by 1938 (Achilles was due to receive these at her next refit in 1940), giving them 4 x 2 4 inch AA & 3 x 4 0.5 inch machine guns. The British were also building ( the Didos) or converting (the 'C's) a number of specific AA cruisers for fleet defence. At the time, the level of AA defence of both the British & U.S. cruisers I have mentioned was regarded as adequate.
In terms of Repulse, certainly a rebuild along Renown lines would have been desirable, but the RN were in the process of modernising their fleet by rebuilding two at a time. After the second pair, Valiant & Queen Elizabeth, had completed, two of Malaya, Hood, or Repulse were next in line, but this programme had, obviously, to be abandoned in 1939. Again, though, Repulse's AA armament is comparable to, for example, a Colorado class battleship.
Finally, selecting Sydney is perhaps a little unfair. Her two sisters Hobart & Perth, had received their twin mounts upon refit in 1939. Sydney's was deferred as a result of the outbreak of war. Of the Auroras, only one, Arethusa, had not received her twin mountings by the outbreak of war.,
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@Andrei613 I appreciate that the Omahas were older than the Leanders, but they were still the nearest US equivalent, given that the next US construction was the Brooklyns which more properly related to the Southamptons.
I didn't realize that you wished me to discuss all 27 British cruisers between the Kents & the Arethusas, which is why I only referred to light cruisers. However, of the thirteen Counties, five still had single 4 in guns as their primary AA weapons at the outbreak of war.
Two of these were the RAN ships, and the other three had been upgunned, in that Sussex, Shropshire, & Devonshire mounted eight four inch guns each. Australia had twins fitted in late 1940, and Canberra by early 1941. Shropshire had her singles replaced by four twins in late 1941, when two eight barrelled pom poms were fitted, Devonshire also received two eight barrelled pom poms in 1941, and had her singles replaced with four twins in 1942. Sussex was badly damaged in port in Glasgow and not returned to service until late 1942, having been re-armed in line with her sisters. All except these five had also received pairs of either eight or four barrelled 2 pounders by the outbreak of war. The other two heavy cruisers, Exeter & York, did also retain single 4 inch, although Exeter received twin 4 inch mountings, together with two eight barrelled pom poms, when reconstructed after the Plate.
Of the light cruisers, four of the five Leanders had received twin mountings by the outbreak of war, as had two of the three Amphions, & four of the five Arethusas.
I don't recall giving a completion date for the modernisation of the two QEs. The point was that both began their rebuilds before September, 1939, actually in 1937, and that after their completion no further capital ships could be set aside for the same procedure
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@Andrei613 My mistake on the Arethusas, I agree. However, of the cruisers, Ajax received 2 x 4 pompoms by May 42, Achilles received 4 x4 2 pounders, and 4 x 2 4 inch, in early 1943, Arethusa 2 x 4 pompoms by March 41, Aurora 2 x 4 pompoms in June 1940, Galatea 2 x 4 pompoms by Jan. 41, Hobart 2 x 4 pom poms by Oct 42, Orion 2 x 4 pompoms by Feb 42, and Penelope 2 x 4 by July 41. The ones which didn't receive upgrades were Neptune, an early war loss, and three (Sydney, Perth, & Leander) operating in the Far East. Incidentally, of these 12, how many were actually lost to the air attack for which you claim they were ill prepared? None. Incidentally, I haven't made any point for you. You have simply stated that RN warships fell short of what you yourself have asserted ought to have been their minimum AA fit. Have you any contemporary sources which agree with you?
Which warships would you suggest the RN should have rebuilt after the war began? Both Valiant & Queen Elizabeth were still rebuilding, Warspite and Renown had been rebuilt, and Nelson & Rodney were the most powerful ships in western waters in any case. British shipyards were busy building new escorts, converting older cruisers to AA ships, and repairing damaged vessels. Moreover, the three US ships you name were not modernised out of choice, but because of their Pearl Harbor damage. Certainly the US had the greater manufacturing & repair capability, but there was also the advantage of having safe yards, far removed from the danger of air attack.
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@Andrei613 You seem somewhat fixated on point-scoring, rather than having a proper discussion. Quite charming, if rather immature, I suggest.
'The RN only converted a pair of old cruisers during the war into A/A ships, Caledon and Calypso.' Really? Better get the reference book re-written then. Caledon was indeed converted in 1942-3, but Calypso, an early war loss, wasn't. Presumably Curacoa, Carlisle, and Colombo weren't given similar conversions then? Nor Coventry & Curlew, immediately pre-war?
Indeed Nelson and Rodney were slow. In fact, only two knots faster than the fastest US battleship in service until late 1941.
'No doubt this is a part of why the QEs got sent to the Med, and not the Nelsons.' No, actually it isn't.
There are indeed many sources which describe the weapons fits of RN warships at the outbreak of WW2. Only you seem to have issued a dogmatic statement of what the 'proper' weapons fit ought to have been.
Still, if you wish to pursue a tedious argument about what you appear convinced were the manifold failures of the Royal Navy in WW2, then please carry on. Just don't expect me to respond.
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@Andrei613 You are the one worried about 'point scoring,' and now I observe you feel the need to become offensive. Indeed, the reference to a 1982 Hood was a fantasy (which is rather different from a delusion, as in this case the writer was well aware that it was never 'real') but my original post was about keeping a modernised Tiger instead of one of the 'R's, so your breathless CAPITAL LETTERS are rather wasted, old fellow. You do need to get the CAPS LOCK key on your keyboard fixed, however.
Just to correct you inaccurate recollection of your own posts, you actually wrote :- 'The RN only converted a pair of old cruisers during the war into A/A ships, Caledon and Calypso.' Which was, in fact, untrue. Don't worry, I accept your apology for your error.
You clearly don't know why Effingham was re-armed. I would have expected that someone of your erudition would have heard of the restrictions on numbers of heavy cruisers contained in the 1930 London Treaty. Oh well, look it up for yourself, as it might enable you to understand the reasoning behind the re-arming.
Your posts seem to be degenerating from their initial insistence upon your singular belief in your concept of a 'standard fit' for cruiser AA weapons, to a wide ranging and all-purpose rant about the Royal Navy in general. I observe that the large light cruiser conversions are the latest to incur your wrath, as I also note your inability to provide a source for your idiosyncratic standard fit belief.
As I haven't mentioned the subject of carriers, by the way, what exactly, apart from what seems to be a general need on your part to be insulting, led you to post this? 'I would suggest that you do some actual research on that matter, since you appear to be ignorant of it, as well'
I am sure you will award yourself a few more 'points' as a result of my post, and you are welcome to them. No one else seems to have any particular views on this theme, and therefore I won't waste any further effort posting against your clearly ingrained prejudices.
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@dillonpierce7599 Firstly, there wouldn't have been a final battle. Tovey would not have caught up with Bismarck, which would in all probability have reached St. Nazaire. Secondly, however, had Bismarck been forced to engage, then the final action would almost certainly have ended much as it did. Both Rodney and KGV had better laid-out, thicker, armour than Bismarck, heavier broadsides, and in a two to one action, one (probably KGV) would be able to target Bismarck whilst being unengaged herself.
What leads you to make the claim you have made, given Bismarck's many & known inferiorities to her opponents?
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@dillonpierce7599 Well, both Ballard & Mearns have gone on record as saying that the British sank Bismarck. Mearns, incidentally, documented the holes from Dorsetshire's torpedoes. By the time of her sinking, Bismarck's main armament had been destroyed and her bridge blown away. Internal communications had ceased, and she was extensively on fire.
Rodney was heading for Norfolk for re-fit in any case, but her only damage was some internal pipework and a jammed torpedo tube. No main guns were damaged at all. Dorsetshire only became involved late in the action, long after Bismarck had ceased to be anything more than a target.
As to your last comment, you seriously suggest that Bismarck, faced by two better armoured, heavier gunned, opponents, would sink one with her two forward turrets, cripple the second with her aft turrets, whilst at the same time sinking a heavy cruiser with her 5.9s. Congratulations! Probably the silliest suggestion I have ever come across, although well in line with the idea of Ark Royal indulging in a surface action with the full might of her 4.5s!
Why not go the whole way? 'Fire Photon Torpedoes at Rodney, Mr. Chekov!'
Alternatively, you might read a book which analyses the Bismarck action in a rational, sensible, manner, perhaps?
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@2adamast You only seem to refer to the British retreating. What were the much larger French forces in the area doing? From 20 May, by the way, the operations of Allied forces were being supervised by Weygand, although no one told Gort that Gamelin had been replaced until 23rd.
Weygand devised a plan for the BEF to move south on Amiens, to take station on the French left. At the time, seven of Gort's divisions were in action on the Escaut, and could not disengage without being followed up. Instead, Gort planned an attack around Arras, which was to have been supported by the French Cavalry Corps, and two divisions of French V Corps southwards from Douai. Most of this support did not materialise, and the attack, after initial success, was called off. The (impracticable) Weygand Plan was called off at the meeting between Gort & Blanchard on the morning of 26 May, when the arrangements for a joint withdrawal were determined. At the time, of 128 miles of the Allied front, 97 miles were held by the BEF. The Gort-Blanchard plan intended to reduce the 128 miles by 58 miles, although the imminent collapse of the Belgian army, was feared.
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She was renamed Uckermark, and was a supply ship for Scharnhorst & Gneisenau during their Atlantic operation of January-March, 1941. On September, 1942, she sailed for Yokohama with a cargo of vegetable oil and fuel, and actually got there on 24 November. On 30 November, 1942 she was ripped apart by an internal explosion which destroyed her, the raider Thor, and the captured liner Nankin. It appears that a repair crew attempted to carry out welding repairs in a fuel tank recently emptied of gasoline, which really was not a good idea.
53 of her crew were killed in the explosion, and most of the rest were embarked on the blockade runner Doggerbank, which sailed for France, but on 3 March, 1943 was torpedoed by U 43. Of 365 aboard, only one survived.
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No, it wouldn't. The best the Germans might have achieved would have been a measure of control over the airspace over South Eastern England, within the range of their fighter aircraft. Fighter Command would have been withdrawn to bases north of London. This would probably have been temporary because, as early as June, 1940, the British were outproducing the Germans in aircraft, and especially in fighter aircraft.
Even better, Operation Sealion might actually have been attempted, and the towed barges, without surface ship escort, would have encountered the 70 or so Royal Navy light cruisers and destroyers based within four hours steaming of the Straits, followed by the 500 or so smaller supporting warships.
Better still, the annihilation of the troops in the Sealion barges might even have brought about a political crisis in Germany itself.
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@ifixboats5066 Would your ten men have had time to rebuild the forward end of 'A' deck, fitting the extra cabins and the cafe, and altering the window pattern? How long would it have taken them partly to enclose 'A' deck, as well?
These features are well known from images of the wreck, and are unique to Titanic. The Olympic of 1912 had the original pattern 'B' deck windows, and retained an open 'A' deck. in 1912.
Oh, and how do you explain the further inconvenient (to you) fact that furniture sold off when Olympic was scrapped, and in use to this day in the 'Olympic Restaurant' in the White Star hotel in Alnwick, has the Harland & Wolff build number, 400, marked on it, whilst no piece yet found bears the number 401? Did your ten men have time to change all those as well?
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@HerrMau The Fleet Air Arm had trained in torpedo attacks on warships for years before the war. The Germans in 1940 had a handful of obsolete seaplanes capable of launching torpedoes. Certainly, pilots can be trained, but this takes time, and the pilots could not have been retrained in time for an invasion attempt in September, 1940. Even then, this would have been in the use of bombs only, not torpedoes. Furthermore, the Kriegsmarine estimated that eleven days would be required to get the first wave across, and even then it would have been lacking motor transport and divisional artillery. Every night, the invasion barges would be exposed to attack by RN destroyers and smaller warships, with virtually no surface protection, and no air protection at all.
The date of the invasion was absolutely critical, given the likely weather conditions in the Channel from late September onwards. Similar constraints did not apply to the attack on France.
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@waynepatterson5843 Exactly which 'RN Records' does your 'order of battle' come from? You seem remarkably reticent about it, to date.
You haven't by the way, named any RN warships as yet, let alone stated where you believe that they were. I really do not propose to list the 698 minesweepers in service by September, 1940. According to Lenton & Colledge, in 'British & Commonwealth warships of World War 2' by the end of 1940, the British had the following minesweepers in service:-
Fleet minesweepers 40, Auxiliary minesweepers 57, Paddle minesweepers 39, Naval Trawlers and Drifters 49, Requisitioned trawlers and drifters, 821.
I presume you do understand precisely how large the British fishing fleet was at the time, and consequently how easy it was to mass produce auxiliary minesweepers almost literally within a few weeks? Perhaps you could obtain your own copy of the RN list for the operational status of minor war vessels for yourself from the National Archives?
If you wish to know the facts about Condor operations, I recommend 'The Rise and Fall of the German Air Force, 1933-1945.' It explains how Condors attacks reduced almost to none once merchantmen received more than light machine guns as AA weapons. However, I fail to see the relevance, unless you seriously propose trying to use Condors against the RN anti-invasion forces. Perhaps, in that case, you could tell me how many warships your Condors actually sank?
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@erichvonmanstein6876 Presumably, you didn't read these earlier comments I posted?
'Hardly worth talking about. In 1940, the operational ships of the German navy consisted on one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, and seven destroyers. The Royal Navy had some seventy cruisers and destroyers within five hours' steaming of Dover, at the same time.'
'Actually, in September, 1940, they had 63 U- boats, of which 27 only were operational front line boats, and on average 13 were at sea on any one day during the month.'
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@dutchhoke6555 The Germans only had around 5,000 paratroops in September, 1940, and only just over 220 operational transport aircraft. Moreover, how long are such lightly armed units likely to survive unless quickly relieved by ground troops.
The German navy in September, 1940 was almost non-existent. All it could muster was one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, and about a dozen destroyers and large torpedo boats. The Luftwaffe had not been trained in anti-shipping operations, and had just failed badly at Dunkirk. In fact, in the whole of WW2, it sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser. The RN, by the way, had around 70 light cruisers and destroyers within 5 hours of the Dover Straits, supported by some 500 smaller warships.
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So, you have airborne drops on Southern England, Wales, & Scotland? In May 1940, the Germans had 4500 trained paratroopers, and lost around a third during the campaign in the Low Countries. Moreover, by September, 1940, they had only just over 220 transport aircraft. How would you propose getting these non-existent paratroopers across. At the very least, Wales & Scotland are far beyond the range of fighter cover, and Ju52s were even more vulnerable than Ju87s without serious protection.
'Dropping a few Airborne divisions in a small locale' Except, as I have said, the Germans had no such resource. Their only airborne division was at less than 1/3rd strength.
'Naval Blockade?' With what? The German surface fleet at the time consisted of one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, seven destroyers, a similar number of smaller, escort type destroyers, and about a dozen minesweepers. The RN had over 100 destroyers and light cruisers in Home Waters, backed up by the Home Fleet of battleships, battlecruisers, and heavy cruisers. You might as well suggest that the Belgian army should have invaded Germany in May!
'It would certainly bode very badly for the British once the Germans got across the channel.' The operative word here is 'once.' The Admiralty had put plans in place which were designed to ensure that this never happened, and the Germans, in the end, were wise enough not to put them to the test.
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@GreyWolfLeaderTW Neither can you deny that the deck armour of HMS Hood was on a par with that the Queen Elizabeth class battleships, and superior to that of every other British battleship design except the Orions, the King George Vs, the 'R' class, and the post WW1 designs.
You might also reflect on the probability that the sinking was not brought about by penetration of the deck armour in any case, but by a fortunate hit in the lower hull, above the exterior anti-torpedo bulge. It is difficult to be sure about Bismarck's weaponry, as she only ever achieved one hit, of course.
Oh, and a famous golfer one said, 'the more I practise, the luckier I get.' The Fleet Air Arm had for years been rehearsing techniques which were intended to slow down enemy heavy ships in order for the Battle Fleet to engage them. They had already achieved this once, when HMS Formidable's Albacores damaged Vittorio Veneto, and thus brought about the Battle of Matapan, two months later.
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@MAAAAAAAAAA123 'They only lost one large warship in the invasion?' So, you either don't consider, or haven't heard of Karlsruhe (sunk on 9 April) and Konigsberg (sunk on 10 April), or 50% of the German destroyer fleet at Narvik, to be large warships. Likewise, neither battleship was back in service until November, 1940, and Deutschland not until April, 1941, all as a result of the Norwegian campaign.
I am glad you have read my earlier replies, even though they don't seem to have penetrated your pre-existing prejudices. Perhaps you might consider trying to present credible arguments demonstrating occasions when the Kriegsmarine's surface fleet performed well. Bismarck, when forced to engage an aging fast battleship, was certainly successful, although utterly failing in the mission she had been set, and Scharnhorst & Gneisenau sank a carrier, but in so doing missing the evacuation convoys they were supposed to intercept, thus resulting in the dismissal of their admiral.
They had previously failed to challenge Renown on 9 April, 1940, and subsequently avoided action with elderly, unsupported, British capital ships during Operation Berlin. After that, of course, neither achieved anything at all. Incidentally, one of the people who believed that the surface fleet performed badly was one Adolf Hitler, who effectively disbanded it after the humiliating defeat in the Barents Sea in December, 1942. Actually, he could just as easily have taken the same action after the Channel Dash, as it really achieved nothing of relevance thereafter.
There is an easy way to demonstrate my ignorance. Simply provide a list of occasions when the German fleet did achieve something of note, after acting as, effectively, ferry boats for troops during the invasion of Norway. By the way :- 'Allied naval losses were similarly heavy, in fact a bit higher.' Really? One carrier, nine destroyers, and two light cruisers, compared to one heavy cruiser, two light cruisers, and ten destroyers. A bit higher? Exactly how rose-tinted are your spectacles?
For all your bluster, you have presented precisely no arguments to contradict Mr. Browne's original contention that 'Apart from it's U-boat arm the German navy seems to have been more of a burden than a weapon during WWII, tying up more resources instead of effectively attacking Allied targets.' Instead of simply posting insults, why don't you present some credible, reasoned, arguments?
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@MAAAAAAAAAA123 When did you give me the list of actions? Please remind me by repeating it. I did, by the way, refer to Bismarck in the Denmark Strait as 'successful' although Bismarck & Prinz Eugen's actual task was to sink merchant shipping and disrupt the convoy network. Remind me again how many merchantmen they sank, and how many convoys they disrupted. As to the Glorious episode, the convoys to which I referred were actually troop convoys, and it wasn't me who judged Admiral Marschall, but Raeder, who dismissed him for his failure.
The fact that Renown inflicted sufficient damage to force Lutjens to withdraw at high speed, and abandon the destroyer force in Narvik, resulted in the loss of all ten German destroyers, by the way. Lutjens had two alternatives available to him, which were to achieve a significant victory over a modernised battlecruiser, or to screen the withdrawal of the Narvik destroyers. He managed neither. Hipper, by the way, sank a tanker, a small transport, and an armed trawler.
Finally :- 'Your standards of success change without rhyme or reason.' Where & when?
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@simonpitt8145 Pound did have a reputation for 'back seat driving.' I wouldn't doubt for a moment that Andrew Cunningham would have left the decisions to the men on the spot. Indeed, Pound's own staff were convinced that Tirpitz was not at sea. Furthermore, whilst scattering a convoy was effective in the Atlantic against a single enemy warship, HX84 being a case in point, it was precisely the wrong thing to do when the enemy consisted of a number of enemy submarines and aircraft.
The irony was, as the convoy began to scatter, and Broome sent those of his destroyers with torpedoes to join Hamilton's cruiser squadron, they were cheered by many of the crews of the merchant ships who, like Broome's own crews, believed that they were heading for a desperate battle against odds.
At the time, Dudley Pound was suffering from the early stages of a brain tumour which was eventually to kill him, which may perhaps explain his unwise decisions.
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@tonyjames5444 Well, I am a full-time historian, so you might consider reading my view. Firstly, the Norwegian campaign demonstrated two things. The first was that air power could influence a land campaign in a manner that sea power could not. The second was that air power could inconvenience naval operations but couldn't, in 1940 at least, prevent them. As Stephen Roskill wrote of Norway 'It is very far from being a triumph of air power over sea power. In spite of the total absence of air cover, short nights, and perfect weather, I do not think any essential sea or landing operation has not come off. And escort vessels, solitary & stationary in fjords, have been constantly maintained.'
Secondly, dive bombers did not 'play havoc' with coastal convoys. Certainly one CW8, suffered 8 losses from a combination of S boats & Stukas, on 25/26 July. These convoys, from Southend to St. Helens Roads, comprised small colliers and coasters, moving very slowly. Between 1940 & 1944 there were 531 convoys (both CW & CE, the same route in reverse), involving 9097 ships. In total, 31 ships were sunk, not all in convoy & not all by air attack. Similarly, of FN & FS (River Thames to Firth of Forth) there were 3584 convoys, involving 104,792 ships, of which 203 were sunk by a combination of factors. In other words 0.34% of the CW/CE traffic, and 0.19% of the FN/FS traffic. Havoc?
Thirdly, the Mediterranean. By January, 1941, the Luftwaffe, belatedly, had realised the need for training in anti-shipping operations. Even so, the Royal Navy was still able to prevent reinforcements reaching Crete by sea in May, destroying one convoy and forcing a second one to turn back.
Fourthly, the Russian fleet, usually immobile in harbour, is not relevant.
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@tonyjames5444 Which naval historians talk about the successes of the Ju87s off Norway, and ABC, the Admiral who was impressed by the strike on Illustrious, also believed that the threat from air attack was not as great as some, such as Charles Forbes, believed. I have read ABC's autobiography, by the way.
I notice you have posted about Crete. I have already answered part of this, but the other point to consider is that the bulk of the RN losses came when, once again, Cunningham's fleet was obliged to carry out a desperate evacuation with, as usual, no RAF air cover.
The difference between this and Sealion (apart from the 6 months time period) being that, operating against the Sealion barges, the RN's anti-invasion forces, operating close to their bases, were free to operate at speed, and not tied down by the need to load escaping troops.
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Californian had stopped because of sheet ice, rather than because of icebergs. Other ships in the same area did not stop.
Lord was made aware of the concerns of his officers, who had seen flares from a large steamer, but simply chose to ignore them, not even getting Evans to check for any concerning signels on his wireless. The excuse that Californian might have collided with an iceberg is not relevant, as the same risk applied also to Rostron in Carpathia. Lord was vilified because, unlike Rostron, he displayed a total disregard for the unspoken Law of the Sea.
The possible conversation between Ismay & Smith, as reported by a survivor, was only to the effect that Titanic was making better time than Olympic had during her maiden voyage. It has been doctored since the original report, as attempts were made to demonise Ismay.
Oh, and Ismay had no say about the number of liefboats. Alexander Carlisle, the designer of the Olympics who had retired in 1910, stated in evidence that he had designed the ships for, but not with, 48 boats, as he expected the Board of Trade ro revise their regulations. In the event, there was no such revision. Neither Ismay, nor anyone else from White Star, influenced the decision.
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@somefurryguy1811 Thatcher was Prime Minister at the time. Her army and air force advisors, as well as the vile John Nott, advised against military action, but Sir Henry Leach, First Sea Lord at the time, when asked if retaking the islands was possible, replied "Yes we can recover the islands." He then added "and we must!" Thatcher replied "Why?" Leach responded, "Because if we do not, or if we pussyfoot in our actions and do not achieve complete success, in another few months we shall be living in a different country whose word counts for little."
By the way, the Falklands were and are just as much a part of Britain as any British town or city, and just as deserving of protection.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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@thosdot6497 My mistake for a typing error. I should have put 1 not 12 April, as the figures were those which applied to the RNAS on the last day it existed.
On 1 April, 1918, the RFC had 4000 combat aircraft. On 1 September, 1939 the RAF had 2600. A contraction of 35% On 1 April 1918, the RNAS had 2949 combat aircraft, on 1 September, 1939, the FAA had 232 aircraft of all types. A contraction of 92%. You did ask.
The unedifying spectacle of inter-service rivalry in the 1920s and 1930s is distressing in view of what happened as a result. Both the Navy & the RAF were fighting over a declining defence budget, with the result that, as someone once wrote, 'The RAF spent most of the funding on bombers (which, according to the Air Ministry fantasists, would 'always get through.' These people saw Douhet's theories as a means of justifying their existence, after all), some on fighters, a few spare quid on Coastal Command, and the contents of Trenchard's jacket pocket after a night out at his club on the Fleet Air Arm.'
The United States seemed to manage very well in WW2 with an Army Air Force, a Naval Air Service, and Marine Corps, all independent of each other.
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The Swordfish was never intended to operate in the Pacific. It was designed to operate in the Atlantic, where it would not encounter fighter opposition, and in the Mediterranean, where it would have protection from carrier fighters.
It was also intended to be able to take off and land in conditions which would have grounded other, heavier torpedo bombers. The contemporary US aircraft, the Devastator, was 2,000 lbs heavier, and simply could not have got off Ark Royal's deck in the sea conditions which prevailed in the Atlantic on 26 May. Moreover, the Swordfish with torpedo had a range of 454 nautical miles. The Devastator with torpedo a range of 378 nmi.
'The Brits were incredibly lucky.' If you mean by that that the British were lucky to have had Swordfish rather than Devastators on the decks of Victorious or Ark Royal, then I agree.
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@wazza33racer I'm sure sea power would have been of considerable use against the Soviet Union. The British and Americans could have sent their battlefleets up the Volga, I suppose?
The benefits the Soviets had received in the middle part of the war from Anglo-American aid were, by 1945, of historical interest only, and Patton's opinions, not shared by the more intelligent members of the Allied Senior Command, by the way, are hardly worth considering, given that at the time he was proposing re-arming German army & SS troops for use against the Soviets.
Finally, please explain how Truman and Churchill/Attlee could, even theoretically, have justified an Anglo-American attack on the Soviets, after years of praising gallant Uncle Joe and the valiant Russian people, to the peoples of the US & the British Empire/Commonwealth?
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@rodsquad5764 You miss the point entirely. How Gensoul should have reacted to the British ultimatum was a political, not a military, decision. Moreover, there was no suggestion of 'surrendering' to a neutral power, but of transferring the fleet to French colonial ports in the West Indies.
The fact is that, for reasons which Gensoul never explained, he chose not to provide his own government with the full text of the British document. He thus chose to act totally beyond his authority.
The probability is that Admiral Darlan, with his keen concern for the honneur of the Navy, might well have agreed with the West Indian port option. The decision, put simply, was not Gensoul's to make.
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@rodsquad5764 The actions Gensoul took had nothing to do with 'running a ship. Try to understand, I urge you. Are you even reading my posts?
Whether Gensoul's squadron should scuttle, fight, join the British, or re-locate to the West Indies, was entirely a judgement for his political masters, and in particular Admiral Darlan, now, and since 16 June, the Minister of Marine in the incoming Petain government.
Gensoul was a career naval officer, not a politician.
'You Saber rattle all you want but you would have made the same decision if you say not your just lying to yourself.' When have I 'sabre rattled,' out of interest?
Had I been a career officer in such a position, and knowing that I had a deadline some several hours away, I would have done what any sensible commander would have done, and referred the situation up the chain of command, to the French Admiralty and, through them, to my government.
I would most certainly not have chosen to sacrifice my fleet, and the lives of many of my men, on the altar of my personal dignity.
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@Jugement Perhaps you might point me to my post where I suggested that the French should have surrendered their navy, as I don't recall saying anything of the sort?
The French had a credible alternative, which was that of sending Gensoul's ships to French West Indian ports, where they would be supervised by the neutral United States. Wouldn't that have been preferable to placing them under German 'supervision' as the Armistice/Surrender of 22 June demanded? Unfortunately, Gensoul's refusal to tell his own government the details of the British ultimatum never gave Darlan the chance even to consider it.
By the way, France & Britain had not been in conflict since 1815. They had fought as allies in the Crimea, and in WW1. Perhaps you missed those two skirmishes? Indeed, any emnity had largely become irrelevant since the Franco-Prussian war, and the unification of Germany. Miss that as well, did you? Or the Entente Cordiale of 1904?
'The French Navy also did hold their end of the bargain and scuttled much more at Toulon than what was destroyed in Mers El Kebir when the Germans tried to cease in 1941.'
It just shows how ignorant of history I must be. I always thought that the Toulon scuttling was on 27 November, 1942. How remiss of me.
Moreover, if you think that the war situation had not changed somewhat between July 1940, and November, 1942, then I respectfully submit that it is not my knowledge of history that is lacking.
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Incorrect. On the morning of 27 May, Somerville was unsure whether Tovey's force was actually in contact with Bismarck. Weather on the morning of 27 May was very poor, but by 0926 had moderated sufficiently to enable a force of 12 Swordfish to take off from Ark Royal, should a further strike be needed. By then, however, Rodney & KGV had already been in action for over half an hour, the sound of their gunnery could clearly be heard by the approaching aircraft, and Bismarck had been reduced to nothing more than a helpless target. A further torpedo strike would have served no useful purpose, but would have required that Tovey's ships cease fire to enable it to take place. Accordingly, therefore, the Swordfish were, sensibly, recalled. Ark Royal was already within range of land based German aircraft (one, indeed, attacked her as her Swordfish were landing back aboard), so her presence in the area was not only unnecessary, but put her to avoidable risk.
The suggestion that Tovey's captains would have behaved in such a manner is not only absurd, but also insulting.
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@rogeredwarrddeshon5000 In that case, why not go the whole hog and claim Titanic was sunk by aliens?
Actually, No 'explosion' was ever reported, although a small number of survivors reported 'rumbling' during Titanic's last moments. Doubtless heavy machinery breaking loose.
No Stoker survivors, and there were 45, together with 20 Coal Trimmers and 4 Greasers, reported anything other than sudden flooding, and they were in the area where any explosion would need to have been.
A large number of survivors reported the impact, actually quite a gentle one, of the iceberg. Moreover, the engineering sections were off limits to passengers. A furtive figure carrying an enormous sack trying to get down into one or other of those sections would have stood out like the proverbial sore thumb, especially since your theoretical device would have needed to have been enormous. Simply compromising one or two compartments would not have sunk Titanic, as Olympic's collision with HMS Hawke, flooding two sections, had demonstrated in September, 1911.
Finally, the suicide bomber is a bizarre late 20th & early 21st century phenomenon, which you have feverishly back-projected to 1912.
As Sherlock Holmes said :- “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Inevitably one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
Just as you seek to do, in fact.
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The Operation involved 6 X craft. X5, 6, & 7 were to attack Tirpitz, X9 & 10 Scharnhorst, and X8 Lutzow,
X9 was lost en route, with her passage crew, X8 developed serious leaks en route and was scuttled. X10 developed faults, but her attack was cancelled as Scharnhorst was absent on exercises. She successfully met her mother submarine and was towed back to Scotland.
X6 & 7 carried out their attacks. X5 was long believed to have been sunk by a hit from one of Tirpitz's 105mm guns, but more recently it has been suggested that she did indeed complete her attack before being sunk, although there is no conclusive evidence either way.
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By August, 1940, the British had sent a troop convoy to North Africa, where the British were operating A9, A10, A13, and Mark VI tanks, all British built. The first US tanks in North Africa were M3s (Stuarts) which did not arrive until late November, 1941.
'What makes you think the Germans could not have put U-boats in the channel?' They did. In late 1939 three Type IIs were sent there. Their wrecks, still encasing the corpses of their crews, are still there. The Channel was heavily mined, heavily patrolled, shallow, and subjected to strong tides and currents. In short, a death trap for your typical WW2 submersible.
Repulse & Prince of Wales were sunk by aircrews highly trained in anti-shipping techniques, operating advanced high performance torpedo bombers. The Luftwaffe had not been trained in anti shipping operations, and didn't even have a suitable torpedo bomber unti mid 1942.
U-boats, even in June-October, 1940, the period when the RN had withdrawn most of their anti-submarine vessels to form their anti-invasion flotillas, were not sinking merchant shipping 'left & right'. The German calculation was that it would be necessary to sink 600,000 tons per month to defeat Britain, based on von Holtzendorff's WW1 estimate. The actual figures for these months of the first 'Happy Time' were :- June 356937, July 197878, August 287136, September 284577, October 363267. In other words, only in one month did the U-boats achieved over 50% of their supposed target. In fact, in the whole of the war, the target was achieved only three time, in May 1942 (616835), June 1942 (636926), & November 1942 (802,160).
Moreover, at the time of the invasion threat, the Germans simply had too few operational boats to have a decisive impact. In August & September 1940 there were 27, of which 13 were at sea, on average, per day. Octobers average was 12, Novembers 11, and Decembers 10. January 1941 saw a reduction to 8. As a number of these boats were small Type II 'canoes' unsuited to Atlantic operations, the Germans colud never hope to approach von Holtzendorff's target. Certainly, even at the height of the German campaign, it never remotely approached the successes of the unrestricted warfare of 1917.
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The Royal Family should maintain their silence. After the catastrophe of the Oprah show, when specific claims were, one after the other, demonstrated to be false, the Markles have learned to stick to vague allegations of a general nature. These cannot, of course, be proven, but more importantly from Markleworld's point of view, they cannot be disproven.
If the Royal Family respond by saying that certain allegations are not true, this will simply result in a to and fro argument of 'Oh yes they are. Oh no they aren't.'
I appreciate that this is Pantomime season, but the Royal Family would be very ill-advised to become dragged down into such nonsense.
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@Goofydownrange 'Another person who can not read.' Were you to follow your own advice, you might read the 'New York Times' of 28 March, 1912, which reveals that:
"J. Pierpont Morgan has written a cordial letter to the committee, announcing that he will be in Venice on April 23 for the inauguration of the biennial International Art Exhibition, April 25, and dedicate the new Campanile of St. Mark's."
By the way, between 1904 & 1912, Morgan only twice returned to the United States from Europe before July, and one of those occasions was to attend a wedding.
Tsar Nicholas II wasn't aboard Titanic either. Neither was President Taft, nor KIng George V. In your entertaining world, does that make them part of the plot as well?
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The Luftwaffe didn't do well against easier 'can't miss' targets at Dunkirk. In fact, in the whole of the war, it sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser.
Shore Batteries? By the end of August, 1940, there were 150 medium, heavy, and super heavy guns lining the Channel coast. In the whole of the war, these damaged seven British merchantmen, but sank none. Between August & December, 1940, 1,880 rounds were fired at Channel convoys, with no hits at all. On 29 September, the monitor HMS Erebus shelled Calais. As she withdrew, she came under fire from the great Griz Nez guns, without result. On 10/11 October, the battleship HMS Revenge shelled barge concentrations in Cherbourg. Shore batteries fired at her for 90 minutes, again without result.
U-Boats? In WW2, the German U-boat fleet took great pains to avoid close encounters with escorts. Now you suggest that they should deliberately seek them out? In fact, the Germans sent three U-Boats, U12, U16, & U40, into the Channel to operate against British shipping in late 1939. Their wrecks are still there.
Your reference to Prince of Wales and Repulse fails to acknowledge that both were sunk by high performance torpedo bombers flown by highly trained crews. When did the Luftwaffe acquire torpedo bombers? Actually, mid 1942. In 1940 the Luftwaffe had had no training in anti-shipping techniques, and was, according to senior commanders such as Oskar Dinort & Wolfram von Richthofen, incapable of protecting the invasion, given that by September, 1940, the RN had 70 light cruisers and destroyers within five hours of the Straits of Dover, with 500 or so smaller warships in immediate support.
Don't worry about the Home Guard, as the most they might have needed to do was to help bedraggled survivors from sunken barges into PoW cages.
Sorry, to be so brutal, but there are a number of books from which you might have gleaned this information.
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@blogsblogs2348 At the time Drew gave the order to scuttle, 0250 on 13 August, he believed that the ship was unable to move, and Drew reasoned that she needed to reach deep water by dawn, which was three hours away. The initial estimate was that power would not have been restored by then. In fact, power and steering was restored at about the same time as the order to scuttle was given.
Drew's evidence at court martial placed great emphasis on his concerns that, had Manchester been attacked again , she might have fallen into enemy hands.
Although it is easy to be judgement at this distance in time, when efforts made by other RN commanders to save, or even keep in action, badly damaged vessels (Exeter & Edinburgh, as typical examples) the result of the subsequent Court Martial, a severe reprimand and prohibition from any subsequent sea command, seems justified.
Rather oddly, in 1948, one of his subsequent duties was to be appointed as ADC to King George VI.
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@Porkypies6m No, he didn't. Whatever nonsense you choose to believe about Churchill, are you seriously stupid enough to believe that he would have done, or even contemplated, such an action when there were some 2.5 million Indian servicemen fighting for the Allied cause?
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which you have been indoctrinated. However, perhaps when you become a little more mature, you might be able to break your programming and learn to think for yourself.
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@emceedoctorb3022 Aside from my puzzlement about this reference :
' Come on, big brain, come at me. Let us see this supposed superior intellect you have bragged about ' I did reply to your response, as follows :-
'I am not disrespecting your father, I am disrespecting your claims, as they do not stack up.
Do you always threaten violence when you are questioned, by the way?'
Why would I 'come at you?' As I have said, I do not believe you. What more would you wish me to say?'
If it helps, from my own experience, I took my late father (69th Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery, present at 2nd Alamein, Mareth, & Salerno, among other actions, to several post War Reunions, amd if the men I met there were typical, they were overwhelmingly proud of what they achieved.
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@michaelthebarbarian3380 As my old University professor, M.R.D. Foot, was wont to tell his students, 'when people resort to insults, it is a sure sign that they have lost the qrgument.' Thank you for proving his point!
Perhaps you aren't aware of the problems with German gunnery radar, the most serious of which being that it tended to fail when the guns fired. As, indeed, Bismarck's did when firing at HMS Norfolk on the evening of 23 May. When she was in action with HMS Hood, and HMS Prince of Wales, therefore, she was not using radar. Didn't you know that? It doesn't surprise me.
Actually, the story about the Nelsons being difficult to handle is doubtful. At least one of her former captains said he found Rodney responsive to her helm, and on a level with a Queen Elizabeth. That was one Andrew Cunningham, a future Admiral of the Fleet, and a former destroyer man, known for his ship handling. Just possibly, he might have known more than you?
My knowledge of the various battleships of WW1 & WW2 does not come from World of Battleships, whatever that is, but from people like Siegfried Breyer, Norman Friedman, or R.A. Burt, among others. Heaven alone knows where you get your misconceptions from. Wehraboo sources or inclinations perhaps?
Your reference to 'range' also demonstrates your lack of knowledge. Bismarck's guns had a maximum range of 38280 yards, whilst Rodney's had a range of 38,000 yards. Not that this matters. If you knew anything about actual naval battle ranges in WW2, you would have known that the longest range hits achieved by any capital ship was 26,000 yards, by HMS Warspite on Giulio Cesare, and by Scharnhorst on HMS Glorious, both in 1940.
26,000 yards was exceptional, and the normal range at which a capital ship might hope to achieve success was 20,000 yards at most. From 15,000 yards, the odds of a successful hit became favourable. Didn't you know that, either?
Perhaps you didn't know, either, that the Nelsons were cut down versions of the proposed G3 battlecruiser, with the same level of armament and the same strength of armour, but with reduced engine power in order to keep to the limits of the Washington Naval Treaty. Bismarck, despite displacing around 15,000 more, still managed to have a lighter broadside and weaker armour than the Nelsons.
Don't worry about not respecting me, by the way. I could never feel the slightest respect for some who couches his ignorance in a series of insults.
Perhaps you should read some books by the authors I mentioned earlier, little chap?
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@domenicozagari2443 He didn't want to engage Hood & Prince of Wales because he was on a commerce-raiding mission, and had orders to avoid action with RN heavy ships if possible, because comparatively minor damage might result in the loss of the ship. As, indeed, was to be the case following Prince of Wales' hits on Bismarck'
He released Prinz Eugen after deciding to make for St. Nazaire, in the hope that she might still achieve something against convoys.
After the damage to Bismarck's bows, she was unable to steam at full speed, and could not have 'chased' the less damaged Prince of Wales, even if the possibility that there might be other British heavy ships in the area had not occurred to him, which of course it had.
Waiting for Tirpitz to be completed and worked up was not his decision to make. Moreover, that event was still some six or seven months away.
Any more comments?
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Ignoring you strange ramblings after this 'For sure the Olympic is the ship on the ocean floor one of the biggest scams ever pulled on the American people,' perhaps you aren't aware that both Olympics cost £1.5 million each to build, and both were insured for £1 million. Thus, White Star lost £500,000 as well as their reputation as a result of your brilliant scam
By the way, there were a number of structural differences between the two ships, in particular in the areas of 'A' & 'B' decks. Unfortunately for your fantasy, the wreck matches known photographs of Titanic, and is different from the Olympic of 1912.
I assume that you don't know, or choose to ignore, the cast number 401 (Titanic) on one of the wing propeller blades at the wrecksite?
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@lordvadar6104 'Your assessment of the Kriegsmarine's capabilities is faulty'. Actually, it is quite correct. When the Royal Navy had some 70 destroyers and light cruisers within 5 hours steaming of Dover, backed up by around 500 other smaller warships, without even calling upon the destroyers of the Home Fleet, mainly at Rosyth, the Germans were never going to defend an invasion force of barges being towed in pairs by tugs & trawlers with the seven operational destroyers, a similar number of Wolf/Mowe class torpedo boats, and a handful of minesweepers.
The FW200 might have been a useful reconnaissance aircraft, but was never capable of conversion to a heavy bomber, and the FW190 was only introduced in August, 1941.
'Had Goering stayed with the original plan of gaining air superiority over England then operation Sea lion would have taken place.' Indeed, it might have been attempted. You now need to explain how it would seek to avoid the RN, available in the strength referred to above.
'The German submarine fleet held the allied merchant marine fleet in check, the supply line from North America was severely restricted by their activities.' Aside from your exaggerated assessment of the capabilities of the U-boat fleet later in the war, you now need to explain how a fleet of 63 boats, of which 27 were operational, and, on any one day, only 13 at sea, during September, 1940, would achieve much at all of benefit to any invasion attempt.
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Thank you for posting the link. It shows how indoctrinated the teaching of many schools has become in pursuit of biased political beliefs.
Just to educate you about the WW2 Bengal Famine, during WW2 around 2.5 million Indians joined the allied cause. Do you really believe that the 'white supremacist drukard pyschopath Churchill' would have allowed the famine and risked mass insurrection in India in 1943? Ask your teacher to answer that.
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't want to believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda, and clearly the indoctrination is strong in you.
In reality, colonialism in the British was almost entirely driven by trade, rather than any ambition to conquer. In 1801, the Population of Britain and Ireland was 10.5 million, and that of India was 159 million. Britain was also in the middle of a major war with the greatest military power in Europe. Do you, or the fool who wrote the nonsense you recommended, really wish to maintain the fantasy that Britain embarked, or was remotely capable of embarking, on the kind of imperial conquests that are suggested?
Cetainly, there was a belief in cultural superiority at the time. Perhaps not surprising when western explorers found in the New World, and in much of Africa societies at a neolithic level of development, and, in Australia and New Zealand a mesolithic, hunter-gatherer level of society. Such a view was not restricted to Europeans. Gandhi, when a young lawyer in South Africa, believed that Africans were an inferior form of Humanity, and should not be accorded voting rights.
Oh, and the bombing of German cities. Put simply, in words you might possibly understand, please explain why it is perfectly acceptable to kill the man who fires a shell which kills one of your soldiers, but somehow unacceptable to kill the 'civilian' who makes the shell in the first place?
In short. There are no civilians in an industrial war. Do try to understand.
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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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@alexandros4703 Don't be disingenuous. The booklet actually reads :-
'AS FAR AS IT IS POSSIBLE TO DO SO, these two wonderful vessels are designed to be unsinkable.'
Perhaps you simply haven't actually seen the booklet? After all, one wouldn't want one to appear less than truthful would one? I have seen it, by the way.
If either Ismay or Pirie made such claims, provide proof, rather than your vague 'reported to have uttered.'
I know what Franklin said, but this was after the sinking, in a traumatic moment of denial. Furthermore, there is no evidence that he, or anyone else, made such a claim about either Olympic class ship prior to June, 1911, when Olympic left on her maiden voyage.
Good attempt at misleading. But, alas, no CEEGAR!
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@alexandros4703 Isn't the question which should be asked, 'why did you only quote part, rather than the whole, of the statement in the leaflet?
By which I mean 'AS FAR AS IT IS POSSIBLE TO DO SO, these two wonderful vessels are designed to be unsinkable.'
What part of 'AS FAR AS IT IS POSSIBLE TO DO SO,' evaded your cognitive abilities, and, of course, WHY?
There is no shame in your being in error. There is shame, to a degree, in refusing to admit it.
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@alexandros4703 'Are you sure you're not getting confused about the difference between Icebergs and Lifeboats again, lol.' Indeed, an entertaining typing error on my part, and it amused me greatly when I re-read it.
I did, of course, immediately admit it when it was brought to my attention. I submit that it is less worthy of criticism than posting part, rather than the whole, of a reference to the desigh of the Olympics, in order, falsely, to try to make a point.
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@whydoyougottahavthis Just obtain a copy of Tarrant's book, and read page 98. At the time, the Germans had 33 operational boats, of which 24, on average, were at sea on any one day in 1941. Historically, when U-Boats were sought to be sent to Bismarck's aid, there were only two anywhere near her, one of which had already expended her stock of torpedoes. The waters around Bismarck (and Hood) were hardly 'infested.'
By the way, Hood would have gone initially to Iceland, and then back to a British port, and could have expected an escort of three destroyers (Electra, Anthony, & Icarus) at least back to Iceland, although doubtless additional escorts from Iceland would have been sent, without affecting those already with convoys. The probability is that the Kriegsmarine would not even have known where she was.
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@Studentofsweetscience try again. Force Z was sunk by Japanese Torpedo bombers. The Luftwaffe didn't have any torpedo bombers until mid 1942.
'Pretty much every Battleship that went down in WW2 went down to dive bombers.' Apart, of course, from Royal Oak, Barham, Prince of Wales, Repulse, Hood, Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Fuso, Yamashiro, Mutsu, Kongo, Kirishima, Bretagne, & Dunkerque, that is.
'Maybe because the British didn't leave their ships within reach without cap.' Oh, please! Just buy a book about the naval campaign in the Mediterranean.
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@Studentofsweetscience Why should I study the war in the Pacific in order to write about the Battle of Britain? I notice you have, as Sealion 'Would Haves' always do, ignored the facts I gave you about the lacklustre performance of the Luftwaffe.
If the Royal Navy 'dare not brave the Channel' why were there around 70 destroyers and light cruisers within five hours steaming of Dover, with around 500 smaller warships in immediate support. Why did both Oskar Dinort & Wolfram Von Richtofen tell their own superiors that protecting the invasion barges was beyond their capabilities?
Yes, I know how many ships were sunk at Dunkirk. Actually, very few, unless you include 162 of the 'Little Ships' left behind at the end of the successful evacuation. You should read the official Staff History, and not rely on myth. 4 of 41 RN destroyers were sunk by air attack. 5 of 38 minesweepers, 23 of 230 trawlers, and 9 of 45 merchantmen by all forms of attack. One, of 26 gunboats and corvettes, was lost.
Don't, by the way, believe the fantasy of the RAF at Dunkirk. For long periods, according to their own records, they were simply not present.
Why, by the way, do you think battleships would even be used as evacuation vessels?
You don't actually know many actual facts about Sealion, do you?
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Elements of nine divisions, lacking both divisional artillery, and motor transport. A tiny number of Panzer IIs, and a number of Pz. IIIs intended to drive along the sea bed after dropping off barges, which had only been previously tested in calm, shallow, lakes.
Capturing two ports? What with? The 4,500 paratroops still available. dropping from the 220 transport aurcraft still operational? The allies used just under 16,000 aircraft of all types on 6 June, and dropped, from over 1,200 aircraft, 13,000 US Paratroopers ( followed by 4,000 glider borne infantry) and 7,000 British paratroopers, again followed by glider borne infantry.
Naval support :- Sealion. None to speak of.
Overlord :- 1213 warships (892 British).
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@jeff5882174 Morgan never intended to be aboard Titanic. He had an engagement at St. Mark's in Venice on 23 April, which was mentioned in an article in the New York Times of March 28, 1912, which may still be read in the NYT archives.
There were indeed three prominent financiers, Astor, Guggenheim, & Straus, aboard Titanic. The nonsense about them originated in the mid 1990s. The first two had never expressed any views about the Fed., whilst the third was a supporter. Indeed, there are two further news items in the NYT from October, 1911, reporting a speech he made confirming this which, likewise, may still be read.
You have simply swallowed a conspiracist video,, which invents 'facts' because no actual supporting ones exist.
You have my sympathy, as you must feel an awful fool for posting such nonsense.
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@adambrande Have you actually seen what a WW2 Type VII or Type IX was like? The movie 'Das Boot' gives some idea. There was barely room for the crew, let alone survivors.
The occasion to which you are referring involved a liner, Laconia, torpedoed by U156 in September, 1942, when carrying around 2,500 Italian PoWs. around 1,500 of whom died.
The Japanese rarely tried to pick up allied survivors. The very fact that 'Ikazuchi's' actions were so noteworthy is simply an exception which proves a more general rule. She was, by the way, under no particular risk as the Allied force at the Java Sea had largely ceased to exist.
On 8 June, 1940, after sinking HMS Glorious and her two escorting destroyers off Norway, the German battleships Gneisenau & Scharnhorst left around 2,000 men in the water, by the way.
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@TTTT-oc4eb You are quite correct about the difference in armour between the KGVs and Bismarck. To comfirm this :-
Belt Armour : KGV 14 inches. Bismarck 12.6 inches. Nelson 14 inches.
Deck Armour: KGV 6 inches. Bismarck 4.7 inches. Nelson 6.25 inches.
( The KGVs had AoN armour, by the way. Bismarck still had the outmoded incremental system ).
Weights of broadside : KGV 15,900 lbs. Nelson 18,432 lbs. Bismarck 14,112 lbs.
Radar assisted fire control. The British system worked. The German one collapsed when the guns fired, as it did when Bismarck fired at a British cruiser.
Optical Fire Control. German fire controls were accepted as being quicker to obtain targets, whereas British ones were better at maintaining a hold on the target. As Rodney was to demonstrate. Bismarck's optical controls failed totally on 27 May, 1941.
Bismarck did have an edge of about 1 to 1.5 knots over a KGV, which would have enabled her to flee from an engagement, had her AA armament not been so inept at dealing with torpedo aircraft.
When did the alleged inferior seakeeping qualities of the KGVs ever hinder their operations, by the way?
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@TTTT-oc4eb Oh dear. The thing about you Wehraboos is that you are impervious to facts. If any of the figures concerning weights of broadside or armour thicknesses are inaccurate, you are going to write to a whole host of writers and publishers, I fear.
Ok then. Bismarck's belt armour was wonderful. Totally impervious to anything. No wonder many other navys did not switch to AoN instead. Oh, wait a minute. They did.
Her deck armour was equally impenetrable. The hit from PoW which left her down by the bows and unable to utilise her forward fuel tanks, forcing her to make for St. Nazaire at reduced speed, didn't really happen, did it?
Her guns were wonderful. Even though we can never be sure as on 27 May she never, unlike Rodney, managed to hit anything. Despite her fantastic optical targeting equipment. Obviously, Rodney couldn't possible have knocked out most of her armament and her bridge in the first 20 minutes of the action. It was all propaganda spread by those British cads and bounders. Even today, many people are unaware that Rodney & KGV were both actually sunk.
'Multiple battleships got their radar knocked out by their own guns.' But surely not the invincible Bismarck and her wonder radar, after firing one or two salvoes at a cruiser? Indeed, KGV's 284 did fail as a result of parted solder. Guess what? She used her 279 instead.
You have convinced me. Bismarck did not sink, but escaped to France, to live a long and happy life as a cruise liner.
Happy now?
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@TTTT-oc4eb 'Why are you even spending so much time on this?' Because I can. After a First in Modern History, I enjoyed a long career in Logistics Management, and had a number of books and articles published about my specialist field, and main interest, that of 20th Century Naval History. The royalties from those, and a nice pension, enabled me to retire early.
Since then, I have indulged myself in responding to you Wheraboos and Sealion 'Would haves' about the wonders of the German armed forces in WW2. I am sure you know what a 'would have' is? Those who pontificate about how the mighty Luftwaffe 'would have' destroyed the Royal Navy had Sealion been attempted, yet are unable to explain how less than capable the Luftwaffe actually was in hitting ships at all in 1940.
You might believe that Bismarck's armour was made of Mithril, and totally impervious to enemy shells, but survivors, such as Mullenheim-Rechberg knew differently. I wonder if you are aware of his accounts of Bismarck losing internal communications early in her last battle, or of the accounts of her being a mass of internal fires by the time she sank? Or are they just British propaganda as well?
Finally, you might account for Bismarck's total failure on her one and only mission. Sent to disrupt supply convoys, she lasted less than three weeks, and didn't even see one. Not what one would have expected of a wonder weapon, was it?
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@edtrine8692 The conning tower, her existing secondary armament, the existing bridge and most of her superstructure, and her boilers & engines, among many other things. Replacement of her propulsion system alone would result in a major weight saving which, combined with the other changes, would result in, effectively, a new ship (see Renown and the modernised QEs for details) with improved armour, bridge, and secondary armament on the same displacement.
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@handygent45 Why would there have been scars? Harland and Wolff removed the damaged plates, and rivetted new ones in place. The new plates were then, of course, painted.
The coal bunker fire has been thoroughly examined, and dismissed, years ago. The smudge on the photograph, claimed as a 'smoking gun' is actually nowhere near the relevant bunker, and other photographs of Titanic do not show a similar smudge. The Board of Inquiry did discuss the fire, and were given evidence that it had been extinguished by 13 April.
While it is true that some survivors such as Beesley and Chambers did speak about a list, this was taken out of context as both were referring to April 14th. This was the result of a difference in the coal consumption and the emptied coal bunker aft of BR 6 and forward of BR 5...The coal bunker was on the starboard side which was emptied. For sure bunker "W" was emptied as this is mentioned by survivors.
'Because this thing called "government" is not to be trusted.' Where does 'government' come into this? White Star was a private company, and Harland and Wolff was a private company. It seems that the only thing leading you to believe this nonsense is your personal dislike of 'government' rather than any credible evidence.
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@pop5678eye 'It also had much more limited resources for rescue since it was far far smaller than the Titanic.' That really doesn't apply, as during the Dunkirk evacuation, vessels half the size of Californian were able to transport eight or nine hundred troops back to Britain. Moreover, it was known that other ships were on their way, so the crowded conditions, on a calm sea, by the way, would only have applied for three or four hours. Given the choice between standing on a crowded open deck, or dying of hypothermia, I suspect I could guess which people would have chosen.
' My argument is that even if the Californian had heard the distress call it could not arrive in time safely to save those who went down with Titanic or those already freezing in the waters.' That wasn't what you argued in your first comment, when you wrote ; 'The duty of a captain first is to ensure the safety of his own ship. The obligation to rescue another ship in distress is secondary to that,' was it?
Whether Lord could have saved any of those who died, moreover, is not the issue. The crux of the matter is that he was made aware of a situation, and chose not even to investigate it.
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@pop5678eye 'Exactly what was he made aware of that would have obligated him to investigate? The only data he had was that the Titanic was at some distance from his ship, previously ignoring ice warnings and telling his radio operator to shut up and finally shooting rockets that are normally used for celebrations into the air.'
What more data did he need? His own officers had told him of their concerns, which he ignored. Firing rockets was the usual means of signalling a ship in distress. That is why Titanic carried 36 Socket Signals. Whereever have you acquired this strange and unsubstantiated belief that there were commonly used for 'celebrations?'
Your second paragraph entirely misses my point, which is not whether Lord could actually have done anything to help Titanic's passengers and crew, but that he simply chose not to investigate what events were unfolding. Alone of the ships in the area, Californian sat motionless, as Carpathia and others effectively busted their guts trying to get to the site. How can you justify that?
Actually, Carpathia was at full speed, and Rostron deployed additional lookouts. Her normal maximum speed was 14 knots, but it seems she managed just over 17 as she raced towards Titanic. Changing a fact or two to justify your claims is really unworthy of you. By the way, Californian's radio operator could also have been at his set, if Lord had bothered to wake him up.
'Here's a hypothetical to you as a demonstration.' Still you miss the point. Lord was vilified, not because he failed to rescue anyone from Titanic, but because he simply refused to find out what was happening. Can you really not grasp that simple fact?
'And again I can remind you that even into modern times rescuers frequently suspend searches when conditions are too hazardous for themselves and wait until daytime or for weather to clear or for seas to calm. You read about this in the news all the time. These are standards of rescue to this day.' Very good. The part you missed is the word 'suspend.' Usually, rescue ships reach the area, and carry out their searches. Only when it is becoming increasing evident that further effort would be futile is any search suspended, as, inevitably, it has become an attempt to recover bodies, rather than to find survivors.
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Once again, so many errors here.
1). There was no change in hull sheet thickness in the design. Titanic's hull sheets were as thick as those of a 1910 built Southampton class cruiser, or come to that a modern oil tanker. They compared favourably with those of the Lusitanias.
2). The same rivets were used in her sister ship Olympic, which plied the same waters, successfully, for 23 years.
3). no binoculars were left behind on any dock in 'Irland.'
4). Frantically shovelling coal into boilers has no effect on speed. It simply raises the boiler pressure above the safe working one of 215 lbs psi., at which point the safety valves raise to protect the boiler.
Doubtless you will immediately delete your post, as you have already done several times. A shame that you lack the integrity to discuss, never mind defend, your errors.
As a former professor of mine used to say, 'the only thing more amusing than someone who does know what he is talking about is someone who doesn't know that he doesn't know what he is talking about.
If you really believe what you claim, why not simply try to prove anything I have written to be inaccurate? Good luck with that.
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@andrejuha164 Oh, please! Do some reading. 'Hitler could place his mega artillery and mega fortresses on this 20 km corridor very simple.' He did. By the end of August, 1940, there were over 150 medium, heavy, and super heavy, German guns on the French Channel coast. From 12 August, they began firing at British coastal convoys as they passed through. Between August & December, 1880 rounds were fired at these convoys, with often as many as 200 rounds fired at each. Total number of hits? NIL. Between then and the end of the war, these guns managed to damage seven merchant ships in total, although none were sunk.
Don't you consider it odd, then, that the Luftwaffe failed so badly to prevent the Dunkirk evacuation? Do you think that the fact that it hadn't had any training at all in anti-shipping operations might have been relevant?
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@ringowunderlich2241 Do you really think that 'hoping for the best' is a wise course of action in wartime? Certainly, Britain acted in her own interests when action was taken against the French fleet. She would have been foolish not to have done so.
In point of fact, on 3 July, Darlan played no part in what happened at Mers el Kebir, as, apparently he could not be contacted, and Gensoul failed to pass on the full text of the British ultimatum to the Vichy Government, only the apparent alternatives of internment or battle. The British needed to be sure that they would not suddenly find the French fleet acting in support of Germany, and if you feel that their action was a war crime then that is your opinion, but it is a less than pragmatic one .
Roosevelt intended to act in a manner had the British navy been in a similar position, and, in putting the defence of his country before any other consideration, he, like Churchill, would have acted rightly.
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@Curlyblonde Not actually true, mon brave. There have indeed been numerous expeditions to the wreck of Lusitania. Certainly, small arms ammunitions has been found, but that was legal at the time, and listed on the manifest accepted by New York customs. Indeed, nothing has been found in the wreck which was not manifested.
Even the current owner of the wreck (reluctantly) admitted that after the most recent expedition.
The simple fact is that Germany had introduced a policy of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare. The fallout from the sinking, in Allied, Neutral, & even Germany and German supporting states, was immense, and the German government promptly ordered that the policy be abandoned.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that some won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit their agenda.
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@ellsworth1956 What do you believe these 'drastic flaws' to have been? The British Director of Naval Construction was informed (actually, wrongly) that the losses at Jutland were due to penetration of their armour, rather than the actual reason. He was requested to 'beef up' Hood's protection, which ended up on a par with that of the Queen Elizabeths. She became, in effect the world's first fast battleship, rather than a traditional battlecruiser.
I have already explained why the other three Admirals were not completed. After Jutland, the High Seas Fleet rather abandoned the idea of challenging the Grand Fleet again, and completed only one of eight planned battlecruisers either under construction or projected. Hood was far enough along to justify completion, but the other three had barely been started.
As, from 1 February, 1917, the Germans concentrated on unrestricted submarine warfare, construction of the three Admirals was almost immediately (early March, 1917) suspended in order to concentrate on escort vessels. The ships were not cancelled until February, 1919, largely because warship design was developing as such a pace that a new generation, capable of matching the speed and firepower of the proposed US Navy Lexingtons, was being designed.
Undoubtedly, if, for example, Mackensen & Prinz Eitel Friedrich had been constructed, then the three Admirals would also have been built along the lines of the redesigned Hood.
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@jrbaretta What exactly do you think the 'Log Book' of a ship from that time contains? Certainly nothing like you appear to believe.
Oh, and the Olympics were designed 'for, but not with' 48 boats. Alexander Carlisle explained the reasons for this in detail during the British Inquiry. Suffice it to say, Ismay had nothing to do with it, although the Board of Trade did.
Binoculars would have made no difference to the observation of the iceberg, by the way, except perhaps by delaying notification of the danger slightly. Such items reduced overall observations to a limited area, rather than to the wider vista to be scanned. That was why glasses were the exception rather than the rule.
It seems, by the way, that Smith ordered the news to be kept quiet, in order to avoid a mass panic.
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Terrifyingly, Sunak's limitless financial war chest might well enable him to buy the Premiership, and result in the Tory Party committing the greatest political Hara-Kiri act since old Adolf shut himself and his wife in a room with a pistol and two cyanide capsules.
Do none of these figures in the Tory Party grasp the fact that the ordinary, tory voting, members of we, the peasantry, will not accept a tax-dodging multi-millionaire with a non-domiciled wife, a US Green Card, and neither the interest in, nor the understanding of, what actually concerns us?
If they don't, then they deserve to be out of government for a generation, despite the carnage that the alternative will inflict on what remains of this country.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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White Star did not gag anyone. Clarke may well have believed that Titanic (just likier Olympic, Lusitania, and Mauretania) carried insufficient lifeboats to accommodate every member of passenger and crew, but as an employee of the Board of Trade he was equally well aware that she carried more than the Board of Trade Regulations in force at the time required.
Consequently, Clarke did grant Titanic certification. Largely because she complied with all legal requirements.
'He felt he could not go go public or make his views known to the powers that be because the owners had made it clear that he wasn't allowed to.
'Had he done so, in his words he would have been shifted, which I think would mean moved position or demoted.' Do you have any actual proof for either of these statements, or are they simply assumptions on your part?
'In hindsight, there was a very strong case to bring charges of corporate manslaughter against White Star Line over the disaster.' Sorry, but simply not so. Unless of course you can state which regulations White Star breached.
Moreover, the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act, only became law in 2007, by the way.
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@vanmust Firstly, the RN capital ships would never have gone anywhere near the Channel in September, 1940. They were based at Rosyth, from where they could act against either a sortie by German heavy ships into the Atlantic, or against those same ships had they headed towards the southern part of the North Sea in support of an invasion attempt. The RN had assembled an anti-invasion force of some seventy destroyers and cruisers, all within five hours steaming of Dover, together with several hundred smaller vessels, such as fleet minesweeper, armed trawlers and drifters, corvettes, and gunboats.
Secondly, the troops to board the barges did exist. The first wave alone consisted of XXXVIII army corps ( 26 & 34 infantry divisions ) VIII army corps ( 8 & 28 infantry divisions, plus 6 mountain division) plus a weak, less than half strength, parachute division, and 22 airlanding division.
Thirdly, there is all the difference in the world between rushing three fast, modern, warships, through the Channel in a few hours, and landing the above forces from towed barges moving across the Channel at little more than walking pace. The Kriegsmarine plan anticipated that it would take eleven days to land this first wave, and even then it would be without both field artillery and motorised transport. This would inevitably mean that the barges and their tugs would sit more or less helpless off the coast and in the Channel throughout this period, largely unprotected during the day, and completely unprotected at night.
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@vanmust Actually, it is quite obvious. As Napoleon said ' How can an Elephant fight a Whale?' It really doesn't matter how large the German army was, their navy was virtually non existent. The plan devised by the Kriegsmarine depended entirely on the number of tugs that could be assembled, as each one could two two barges. By late September, for example, they had assembled 1859 barges, but only 397 tugs (in which I include trawlers and small coasters.) They had, literally, no reserves of tugs. They could not replace any which were lost. Similarly, in late August, 1940, the Luftwaffe had only 226 operational transport aircraft which, assuming 16 paratroopers per aircraft, could only transport some 3340 men. The naval plan, as submitted by Raeder, ludicrously assumed that, in some wondrous manner, the barges would not be intercepted by the Royal Navy, whereas the reality always was that, given the fact that the barge trains would have taken over a day to assemble into formation outside their ports and cross the channel, and would have been observed at an early stage either from the shore or by the regular RN nightly destroyer patrols from Portsmouth of the Nore, the RN's anti-invasion forces would have engaged the almost helpless columns long before they reached anywhere near their supposed landing grounds. It really doesn't matter how vast the German army was, as the German armed forces had absolutely no experience of amphibious operations, and the German navy lacked both purpose built assault vessels, and the means to escort the ramshackle assembly they had put together. The Channel Islands are irrelevant, as a simple glance at a map demonstrates, and the idea of landing on the Isle Of Wight, which is almost within spitting distance of one of the main RN bases, can be discounted at once.
The fact is that, in the early 19th century, France was in much the same situation as was Germany in September, 1940. In either case, had the armies been able to get ashore, they would have succeeded, but, as St. Vincent said in the House of Lords "I do not say the French cannot come, I only say they cannot come by sea". Dudley Pound could have said exactly the same as St. Vincent, with reference to the Germans, in September, 1940.
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What makes you think that Californian carried '3000 life vests?' When she docked in Boston on 19 April, the Boston shipping newspapers recorded that she was carrying a 'mixed, general, cargo' only.
Don't you think that, if a ship which had been in close proximity to Titanic really had docked with such a cargo four days later, collective eyebrows might have been raised in Boston's customs office? Unless, of course, there was a critical shortage of life vests in the Boston area at the time?
As to passengers, Californian was primarily a freighter. She earned her corn as a Leyland Line ship, and Leyland Line was a 'common carrier' who carried anything and everything to the US, in order to re-load baled cotton, normally from from New Orleans. She had been doing something of the sort for some ten years. She did have cabins for 47 passengers, but her raison d'etre was to carry freight. At that time of year, passenger traffic was light. Even Titanic was half empty.
If there really had been the kind of plot about which you fantasise, the small Californian was almost ludicrously unsuited to the role of rescue ship, by the way.
Oh, and imagine expecting the lookouts to 'look out.' Highly suspicious?
'I 100% believe the Olympic was *scuttled" I'm sure you do, given that you seem to have swallowed unquestioningly one of the dafter myths about the Titanic sinking.
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German building up to and including the Bismarcks was part of the Franco-German naval race, based on the assumption that Germany's next war would be against France, or France & Poland.
The fantasy that was Plan Z was, however, intended directly as a challenge to the Royal Navy. As early as December, 1938, the Kriegsmarine's own Naval Ordnance Department had produced a report 'The Feasibility of the Z Plan,' which doubted that, given the resources already being devoted to the army & air force, the plan had any credibility.
Of course, it didn't.
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@gabrielbaynunn2418 I assume it doesn't occur to you that an island with a small population compared to France, Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States, was able to maintain the largest navy & the largest merchant fleet on the planet, but only because the UK was not a land power. The BEF, with 10 divisions, represented almost all of the British army. France and Germany had around 100 divisions each.
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, & South Africa all had independent governments, who each chose to support Britain, and in India, where 2.5 million men joined the Indian army and were to fight bravely in Africa, Italy, Burma, & Malaya, there was never conscription.
As to D-Day, the US were very much the junior partner when compared to Britain & Canada. How did the Soviets keep the nazis busy in 1940, by the way?
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@hughlevett-yeats401 'No...potato head!..You just don't have the info!'
Where did you get this drivel from? A switcher video, perhaps?
Olympic in 1912 retained her original layout, Titanic had been modified during building. The forward section of 'A' deck had been enclosed, whilst the forward end of 'B' deck had been modified to include extra cabins and a Cafe Parisien, resulting in a different window pattern when compared with Olympic. The same window pattern, subsequently found on the wreck, by the way.
The 'useless' Olympic had experienced neither fire nor structural issues. She had been involved in a low (8 knots) collision with a RN cruiser, HMS Hawke, but had been repaired and been back at sea since late November, 1911. When, incidentally, Titanic was still five months away from completion. She was, of course, fully certified by the Board of Trade, and insured with Lloyds for £1 million. She was actually en route from New York for Southampton when Titanic sank.
No propeller was changed, 'huge' or otherwise. The 1911 Inspection Report, from the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, & White Star, confirmed damage to a propeller SHAFT, and parts from the incomplete Titanic's shaft were fitted to speed up repairs. The propeller swap was simply invented by your switcher friends to explain why a Titanic propeller was discovered on Titanic's wreck.
Your imaginary rivetted name is simply that. A dodgy image appeared from nowhere in around 2000. It has no provenance, and no exploration team has either claimed it, nor even acknowledged it. Perhaps because it is so amateurish? When the creator of the myth, Robin Gardiner, himself denounced it as fake, you are on seriously dodgy ground.
As to insurance, each Olympic was insured for £1 million, or two thirds of the building cost for each ship. £1 million is what Lloyds paid out.
I, by the way, have the information, which doesn't involve switcher videos.
If you believe this nonsense, then if you allege stupidity, you might look closer to home?
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@00billharris Firstly, your first paragraph contradicts itself. First you say that 'The Brits did not suffer from an inferiority of manpower or quatitative material on either front.' Then you say 'they were out fought, out thought and suffered a qualatative lack in material.' Well, which is it?
Secondly, the Allies were out thought in 1940? The British contributed 13 divisions to the Allied forces in France & Belgium, the French and Belgians a hundred. The planning for the defence against a German attack was largely the responsibility of General Gamelin and the French High Command. The Belgians capitulated, and the French collapsed. What alternatives do you suggest the British had?
Churchill did not become Prime Minister until the day of Blitzkrieg. I assume you actually know that? The failure in France was not of his making. Moreover, Britain's ability to defend herself was not compromised. The Royal Navy was never challenged for control of Home Waters, and the Germans failed in the Battle of Britain. Indeed, as early as August, 1940, the British were sending substantial troop reinforcements to Egypt to oppose the Italian invasion.
What '2 front' war? There wasn't one until December, 1941. When it began, the British had withdrawn their naval forces, other than a small number of old destroyers and a few cruisers, to Home Waters or the Mediterranean, and Far Eastern forces consisted mainly of infantry. If anything, the British sent too few resources to Malaya. Certainly, tanks were noticeable only by their absence. A belated attempt to remedy this by sending Force Z, intended, by the way, to deter Japanese aggression, failed, but are you seriously suggesting that the British should simply have abandoned Singapore & Malaya without attempting to defend them?
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You care, or you would not have commented. Oh, and by the way :-
'As of April 2024, GB News had 2.87 million monthly viewers, which was more than TalkTV's 2 million. However, GB News is still behind Sky News, which had 8.5 million viewers, and BBC News, which had 11.4 million viewers.
In the year ending May 2023, GB News's average monthly viewers increased by 17.8% from the previous year.
GB News Radio's weekly reach in Q2 2024 was 518,000, with a total of 3.3 million listening hours.'
Why does an alternative opinion scare you so much, out of interest?
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Actually, in 1942, the British & Americans were fighting the Germans in North Africa, the Atlantic, the Arctic, and over the skies of Germany. They were fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, parts of China, the Indian Ocean, and in Burma, and the Italians in the Mediterranean. Whilst doing that, they were also shipping large quantities of supplies to the Soviet Union.
I thought I should mention it in case your education didn't stretch quite that far.
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@DrDoohickey 'Sure, but if witness testimony is to be believed, there is the matter of the overheard conversation.' You really should read what Mrs. Lines actually said. She denied that there had been any comment about increasing speed. All Ismay (assuming it was Ismay) actually said was that Titanic was performing better than Olympic had on her maiden voyage in June, 1911.
Those who allege that speed was mentioned need to read the 'DEPOSITION of Mrs. Elizabeth L. Lines, taken upon oral interrogatories, pursuant to Commission granted October 27, 1913, at the American Consulate-General, 36 Avenue de l'Opera, at the City of Paris, Republic of France, on the twenty-second day of November, One thousand nine hundred and thirteen.'
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Three days later, of course, on 27 May, 1941, the British did indeed celebrate. What the man or woman in the street, or even the average hack journalist, might have thought, is irrelevant, given the remarkable level of ignorance displayed, to this very day, by these people.
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She received five warnings from 0900 on 14 April :-
Caronia, at 0900 on 14 April, Baltic II at 1342, Amerika at 1345, Californian at 1930, and Mesaba at 2140.
It appears that the first two were delivered to captain Smith, the third was a private message not passed on to the bridge, the 4th sent to the bridge but not seen by Smith, and the 5th not passed on. Message one was addressed to Titanic, message two was originally sent by a Greek steamer, Athenia, and passed on by Baltic II, and message four was sent to another ship, Antillian, but intercepted by Titanic.
The times, however, may be misleading as when the signals were received they might well have referred to the situation which applied a few hours earlier.
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@FiveNineO I have tried to find a source for the alleged German peace offers, without success. I am in good company, as no other credible historian has either.
Sorry to be a wet blanket, but Britain & France did not go to war to save Poland. The alliance, with the threat of a declaration of war, was intended to be a line in the sand, which would prevent further German aggression, and thus avoid a general European war.
'The war had barely started at this point.' Really? Tell that to the countries occupied by Germany in early 1941.
You are right that Hess wasn't convicted of war crimes, but he was found guilty on two counts: crimes against peace (planning and preparing a war of aggression), and conspiracy with other German leaders to commit crimes. He was never released because Spandau was located in West Berlin, and its existence gave the Soviets a foothold in that sector of the city. Hence, the Soviets repeatedly vetoed it. In fact, the British made 11 unilateral appeals for Hess to be freed. The Americans and French supported them in a further nine. The Soviets always refused to consider the case.
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John Cornell I hadn't read that, but I have never believed that, subsequently, there was ever a 'Race to Messina' as depicted in the ludicrous movie. Certainly, there was no Montgomery-led pipe band, arriving to be humiliated by Patton (or was it George C. Scott?).
I suspect that there was some, albeit unintentional, accuracy, in the movie, however, in that it depicted events as Patton imagined them to have been, rather than as history shows that they were. Ladislas Farago's book (Patton - Ordeal & Triumph) on which the movie was based, is adored by Pattonites, but I recall reading it long ago and concluding that it was nearer to a hagiography than an academic study.
Montgomery, however, had one shameful condition which has always rendered him unacceptable to many people. He was not American.
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@Embracing01 The minutes of both Inquiries are available on line. I have read them, you clearly haven't. No need to visit the Bodleian, or even to spell it correctly.
Where is Hamer's evidence about Astor, Guggenheim & Straus? The only actual evidence in existence confirms that Astor and Guggenheim never expressed their opinions, whilst Straus had gone on record as a supporter.
I'm sure you can provide statements made by these descendents of H & W workers, of course. Can't you?
The earliest of Hamer's efforts date back to 2012, by the way. He has simply reproduced Gardiner's book, with imaginative additions, such as :-
"I've spoken to quite a few people who've been obliquely involved in it. For example, I spoke to Bertie Lightoller, who was second officer, the most senior surviving officer." Quite an achievement, given that Lightoller died in December, 1952. The same year that Hamer was born.
Do you think that, as well as never having encountered a conspiracy theory he didn't swallow whole, Hamer is also a maestro of the Ouija Board?
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@spankthatdonkey Indeed, think of Prince of Wales & Repulse. Both were sunk by high performance torpedo aircraft, which the Luftwaffe didn't have. The bombs used by the Japanese against them were ineffective. Both were hit by one bomb, which didn't penetrate the deck armour of either ship. There was no reason for the British to bring the Rosyth based Home Fleet south anyway, unless German heavy ships supported an invasion attempt, and as there was only one operational German heavy ship at the time (Hipper) that wasn't going to happen. Heavy cruisers and battleships are not particularly useful at sinking towed barges; more agile destroyers and small supporting vessels are far superior at the task. Oh, and the largest RN warship sunk by the Luftwaffe in WW2 was a light cruiser.
In September 1940, the British had their older, Queen Elizabeth class, battleships, supported by six cruisers and twenty two destroyers, in the Mediterranean, but, as Japan was neutral, only a half flotilla of WW1 destroyers in the Far East, and almost nothing in the Indian Ocean. By contrast. in Home Waters & at Gibraltar, there were 116 destroyers, plus 17 undergoing refits & repairs, of which 64 were on anti-invasion duties. At the time, the RN was not particularly stretched, especially since destroyers which could have been used as convoy escorts were held in Home Waters.
Your suggestion that German forces in Britain could have crippled the British radar network, is something of a chicken and egg.
They have to get there first, and such was the strength of the RN's resources that, as Raeder knew, that was a virtual impossibility
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@simplyarnab The 1943 famine was brought about by a combination of the arrival of refugees, hoarding by profiteers, inability to import food supplies from Japanese occupied areas, the Bengal Administration keeping the facts secret from London, and the refusal of Franklin Roosevelt to release shipping space.
Once the facts became known to the government in London, the distribution of food relief was handed over to the Anglo-Indian army, and grain convoys diverted from Australia to India. The worst charge that could be laid against Churchill is that he ought to have known about the situation. After all, there wasn't much going on in the world in 1943, was there?
Are you seriously naive enough to believe that Churchill would have engineered a famine in India at a time when 2.5 million Indians, all volunteers by the way, were serving in the Allied forces? Perhaps you simply believe all the propaganda spoon fed to you?
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No, it seems you have missed the point.
One Canadian division was in Britain, and, indeed, briefly in France until General Weygand told Alan Brooke that the French army was no longer capable of organised resistance, and the Reconstituted BEF was withdrawn.
By September, there were also two Australian & New Zealand Brigades in Britain. All but two of the 34.5 operational divisions at that time were British.
Of course there was a Commonwealth, and it played an increasingly significant role, but not as early as 1940, when, by & large, it provided staunch, but rather distant, support.
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@tashatsu_vachel4477 Do you seriously believe that Titanic's survivors had detailed knowledge of the dimensions of SS Californian? Define 'small tramp steamer.' Californian was hardly a goliath of the ocean herself, displacing just over 6,200 tons only, and being 447 feet in length.
Actually, I have been a maritime historian for more years than I would care to admit. If Google is the limit of your own knowledge, then I fear that that explains a lot.
I assume you don't actually know the names of the 'other suspects, or you would presumably have dazzled me with your knowledge. Samson (not Sampson, by the way) was, incidentally ruled out as a suspect years ago, largely because Lloyds' List recorded her as docked in Isafjordur twice in April, 1912, on the 6th and the 20th, which proves she could not have been anywhere near Titanic at the time of her sinking.
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@anishachowhan9630 'Indians fought with distinction throughout the world, including in the European theatre against Germany.'
Thank you for your wikipedia cut and paste. Of course Indian troops fought with distinction in North Africa, Italy, & Burma later in the war.
But not at the time of the Battle of Britain, which this video is about.
Oh, and the Bengal Famine. Just to correct the last sentence by means of actual facts, as opposed to indoctrinator myths & falsehoods. :-
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that indoctrinators won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit their agenda, but the documents and archives from the period rather contradict their allegations.
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@nickdanger3802 K6, the mule handlers who operated in France, were part of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps. Professional soldiers, in other words. The Quit India movement began in August, 1942. The two events were entirely unrelated. The movement lasted for less than two months. The movement was opposed by the Viceroy's Council, the All India Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha, the princely states, the Indian Imperial Police, the British Indian Army, the Indian Civil Service, and many leading Indian businessmen.
2.5 million Indians fought on the Allied side in WW2, none of whom were conscripted.
At the time of the Battle of Britain, which it seems constantly necessary to remind people this video was about, Gandhi had stated his support for the fight against racism and for the British war effort, stating he did not seek to raise an independent India from the ashes of Britain.
Yey again, the issue of relevance arises.
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@siddharthmathur8277 The Koh-i-noor diamone? The one which Sultan Alāʾ-ud-Dīn Khaljī took in 1304 from the raja of Malwa, India, whose family had owned it for many generations?
Or the one which was given to the son of Bābur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, by the raja of Gwalior after the battle of Panipat in 1526?
Or the one which formed part of the loot of Nāder Shāh of Iran when he sacked Delhi in 1739?
Or the one which the decendant of Aḥmad Shāh, founder of the Durrānī dynasty of Afghans, Shāh Shojāʿ, when a fugitive in India, was forced to surrender to Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler?
Ironically, the only power which did not acquire it by plunder was the British.
As to your imaginary atrocities. Please explain how a country with a population of 10.1 million, according to the 1801 census, managed to 'plunder' a subcontinent which at the same time had a population at the same time of around 139 million, whilst at the same time conducting a protracted war against the greatest military power in Europe? Incidentally, when the British left India, the population had risen to 360 million. 'What destruction?'
I assume you are unaware of how the British Raj evolved? Look at how much the leading elites in the various Indian princely states, usually perpetually at war with each other, welcomed the British and vied for their support.
I don't know where you received what apparently passes for education, but you have my deepest sympathy that you were not more fortunate.
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'German stukas pilots at the time were the most skilled dive bombers in the world.' Against ground targets in support of the army, perhaps, but they had failed badly against the Dunkirk evacuation fleet. Even their commander, Oskar Dinort, told his superiors about the extreme difficulties involved in hitting ships which were free to manoeuve at speed.
This perhaps explains why, in the whole of WW2, German aircraft of all types sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser.
Oh, the RN was not 'safe in Scotland,' by the way. By September, 1940, there were 70 light cruisers and destroyers at bases within five hours steaming of the Dover Straits, and a further 500 or so smaller warships in immediate support.
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@johnphillips4776 The 1943 famine in Bengal was brought about by a combination of the arrival of refugees, hoarding by profiteers, inability to import food supplies from Japanese occupied areas, the Bengal Administration keeping the facts secret from London, and the refusal of Franklin Roosevelt to release shipping space. Once the facts became known to the government in London, the distribution of food relief was handed over to the Anglo-Indian army, and grain convoys diverted from Australia to India. The worst charge that could be laid against Churchill is that he ought to have known about the situation. After all, there wasn't much going on in the world in 1943, was there? Are you seriously naive enough to believe that Churchill would have engineered a famine in India at a time when 2.5 million Indians, all volunteers by the way, were serving in the Allied forces? Perhaps you simply believe all the propaganda spoon fed to you?
The Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran was a pre-emptive measure, intended to protect oil supplies. At the time, Iran was ostensibly neutral, but in reality pro-German. People like you, pontificating sagely at a distance of 80 years, may not like the idea, but nations in wartime will take whatever measures they deem necessary in order to survive.
What 'plan' to starve Kenyans?
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@smokejaguarsix7757 They didn't need to be dive bombers. Swordfish were perfectly capable of dropping conventional bombs, as some did, for example at Taranto. After the second Battle of Narvik, Swordfish regularly attacked enemy targets in the vicinity of Narvik for two weeks, bombing ships, land facilities, and parked enemy aircraft. Read 'The Fairey Swordfish Mks. I-IV' by Ian Stott.
Moreover, whatever you might believe, Flag Officer, Narvik would have disagreed with you, when he asked Glorious to attack German troops on the Mosjoen-Mo road, in a signal of 26 May. Indeed, aircraft from Ark Royal had carried out a similar attack, successfully, only a few days earlier.
The orders as finally issued by D'Oyly- Hughes envisaged the use of five Swordfish, each carrying six x 250lb & four x 20lb bombs, and escorted by three Sea Gladiators to take off at 2000 on 27 May. The air officers, Slessor & Heath, objected to the operation because of the lack of defined objectives, by the way, not because of any feeling that the operation would be suicidal. After Heath refused to produce a plan, he was suspended from duty and confined to his cabin.
Feeling within the aircrew was far from supportive of Heath. When he left the ship, they were asked to cheer him off from the quarterdeck. Apparently, half refused, one saying 'We will not. We don't agree that those Swordfish should not have gone.'
In short, it was not seen at the time, by anyone at all, as a 'suicide mission.' Swordfish had carried out numerous similar operations during the campaign, without suffering any such losses.
In short, your comments do not accord with the facts. Perhaps you might wish to read 'Carrier Glorious' by John Winton, which is far from sympathetic towards D'Oyly-Hughes, but gives an even-handed account of the circumstances surrounding the proposed raid.
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@smokejaguarsix7757 'Apparently you cant or didnt bother to read my first comment. You provide no source for your information which I requested in my original post smart ass.'
I did. In my response I told you what D'Oyly-Hughes intended, and then suggested that you read John Winton's book. Apparently you didn't bother to digest my reply fully. I won't resort to insults, but will simply leave that to others.
'All aircraft are capable of bombing.' I know, which is why your earlier comment 'The aircraft they were flying were Torpedo bombing Swordfish' needed, disappointingly, to be corrected.
As 'German air coverage was excellent,' don't you consider it odd that Fleet Air Arm ground support operations in Norway to date had suffered few losses? Why should this proposed operation be any different? During the whole of her time operating in Norwegian waters, Ark Royal, despite the number of ground support operations her Swordfish undertook, lost a total of five, at least three of which were the result of forced landings.
Indeed, on 2 June, four Swordfish from Glorious, led by a Swordfish & three Skuas from Ark Royal, launched at 0200 to attack General Dietl's HQ at Hundallen, and landed back at 0530. Vice-Admiral Wells, in Ark Royal, evidently did not consider this to be a suicide mission. It wasn't, by the way.
Simply read Winton's book, instead of merely assuming that the orders were 'insane.'
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@smokejaguarsix7757 What is still secret are the events surrounding the loss of the ship, not the events of 26/27 May. Swordfish, by the way, were not simply torpedo bombers. During the course of the war, they carried, in addition, bombs, mines, depth charges, flares, and rockets. History shows them to have carried out a large number of ground attack operations, both in Norway & in the Mediterranean. As has been pointed out, Ark Royal's aircraft had already successfully undertaken a number of such operations. Why should Heath simply assume that Ark's aircraft were in some way better than his own. Incidentally, Stephens, commander of 823 Squadron, was willing to make out the operation order, until, effectively, his feet were cut from beneath him by Heath. That, by the way, explains why he was not disciplined. Heath wrote a letter to Hughes saying that he was unable to act upon the orders given to him by Hughes, who had received his own orders from Admiral Wells. When an officer flatly refuses to obey orders, what alternative does his commander have?
As to what the orders were (which the squadron commander was willing to act upon, when his superior was not, by the way) as given by Hughes to Heath they were that five Swordfish & three Sea Gladiators would take off at 2000 on 27 May and fly to Hemnes. They would then 'bomb any suitable objective that can be found, including troops & transport, on the road between Hemnes & Mosjoen, small bridges or viaducts, and enemy aerodromes' They were to attack nothing north of Hemnes because allied forces might be there. After the attack, any aircraft that failed to locate Glorious at the ETA was to land at Bodin. I suggest that there is nothing here which could be considered 'idiotic.' Ark Royal had been given similar missions on a number of occasions, and successfully carried them out.
Winton, the only source to my knowledge who has written upon these events in detail, and whose sympathies were with Heath & Slessor rather than Hughes, feels that the poisonous atmosphere between the air commanders and the captain had reached a point which had led Heath & Slessor automatically to assume that any order issued by Hughes must automatically be 'ill-advised or even hare-brained.' He suggests that, had Heath been Commander (Air) aboard Furious (Captain Troubridge) or Ark Royal ( Captain Power) and received similar orders, he would have produced an operation order and the mission gone ahead. The reality is that Hughes was simply seeking to obey orders from his Admiral, who in turn was seeking to relieve pressure on hard-pressed Allied troops in the Mosjoen area. Perhaps Heath allowed his feud to cause him to lose sight of this. Certainly, whatever the rights and wrongs, Heath never received a front-line command again.
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@smokejaguarsix7757 'First you have no idea from where they were supposed to launch, how far from land etc. Those planes have limited fuel and bomb load in colder climes.' Yes, I do. D'Oyly-Hughes intended to bring Glorious within 40 miles of the coast. The aircraft would then fly to Hemnes, then 40 miles south to Mosjoen . The sun sets in those latitudes at around 0030, by which time the aircraft would either have returned or diverted. Even then it is still almost daylight. Bad weather is merely an excuse, as in such circumstances the operation would have been postponed or cancelled anyway. How do you know the weather was going to be bad, by the way? Instead of thinking up every imaginative reason under the sun to justify inactivity, why not read the book?
'They had clear orders previously and known mission targets.' really? what is your source for this claim? Please refer me to it. Incidentally, you refer to the open cockpit of Glorious' Swordfish. Were the cockpits of Ark Royal's Swordfish any less open? Moreover, only the Sea Gladiators aboard Glorious had enclosed cockpits. Would you suggest that the Fleet Air Arm ceased operations until the Albacores arrived in November, 1940?
Heath wasn't subsequently court-martialled because his accuser was dead, by the way, as were most of the witnesses. Clearly, you have made up your mind, although I wonder if, given your attitude, the British Fleet Air Arm would ever have been allowed to have taken off from their carriers at all in WW2. Certainly, I assume you would have stopped Captain Maund launching his aircraft against Bismarck in the rough seas of 26 May, 1941, or Illustrious' Swordfish attacking the Italian at Taranto. What! A night attack? Out of the question!
I thought chain of command went something like :- Admiral to Captain to Commander (Air). At what point does the third link in the chain have the right to choose to ignore orders from his superiors?
'Your arguments are illogical but do show that youre one of those people who think rank makes right.' You don't know anything about me, so please don't make unwarranted assumptions, and from your catalogue of imaginative excuses for inactivity it is fairly clear that you have absolutely no knowledge of the Norwegian campaign of 1940. You are actually aware that the British were at war, I suppose?
Finally, a word from Dick Leggott, of 802 Squadron, who survived the sinking, and would have been one of the Sea Gladiator pilots on the mission :-
'I think we should have flown something. I would not denigrate D'Oyly-Hughes as much as many have. When it came to Flag Officer, Narvik sending a signal saying we would like you to try and do something to assist the army ashore, the least we could have done was to send off an armed reconnaissance. Three Swordfish & three Gladiators could have carried out the necessary patrol; it was daylight 24 hours a day. It could have been done. There was only a twenty to one chance of anybody even seeing a Swordfish in that sort of terrain. There weren't German fighters in every square foot of air there. That really to me is where the affair doesn't entirely devolve upon D'Oyly-Hughes. The majority of the pilots in the Swordfish squadron were put out about it. My own squadron C.O. refused to be drawn into it. It was not good enough. Something could have been done. Still, as you said earlier, what would the mere pilots know?
Please don't bother to respond.
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@catchloe1989-k9l 'Maybe Ballard lied for the rewards that came with sticking to the party line. The White Star Line were in dire financial straits, & could not afford the bad publicity/delay & major repairs required to make the ship seaworthy.'
White Star had just posted profits in excess of £1 million for the last financial year. Olympic had been repaired, and had been back at sea since late November, 1911, and White Star placed their order for the third Olympic class liner in the same month. Moreover, wasn't losing a liner, leading to 1500+ deaths, rather worse publicity than the need to repair one?
Why would Ballard lie? What he had found, others would also soon inspect, and the discovery gave him as much celebrity status as he might (or, indeed, might not) have sought. As to 'THEM!!' still monitoring references to Titanic 70+ years after the event, and still doing the same today, compared to that notion the idea that Elvis, Princess Diana, and hitler are living in domes on the dark side of the moon has more credibility!
Ask yourself why not one Titanic historian, researcher, or exploration team has ever given house room to the switch or conspiracy idiocies invented from the 1990s onwards.
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Quite correct. The Royal Navy in September 1940 had over 70 cruisers and destroyers allocated to anti-invasion duties, based within 5 hours' steaming of Dover, and supported by around 500 smaller warships. Every night in September, destroyers patrolled the Channel from Portsmouth and the Nore.
The Germans, apparently, were going to cross the Channel, in the face of this, in converted Rhine barges towed by tugs and trawlers, and protected by six destroyers, six torpedo boats, and ten minesweepers. Admiral Raeder was not a fool, and knew precisely what awaited the Sealion barges had they sailed. Fighter Command certainly deserves respect for success in the air fighting over the Home Counties in the latter half of 1940, but any claim that this, and this alone, prevented an invasion is massively wide of the mark. The myth promoted by aviation historians immediately after the war that the Royal Navy was kept 'safely out of the way at Scapa Flow' was false, as almost every historian working on this subject today will confirm.
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@OutnBacker Submarines could be spotted if surfaced, or at a shallow depth, when sea conditions were calm, which was quite rare in the Atlantic. The role of aircraft was to force U-boats to submerge, where they were reduced from 17 knots to 4 knots, with limited duration, and then to guide surface escorts to the position. Later in the war, when the allies were able to set up specialist Support, rather than Escort, Groups, the arrival of such a group was extremely bad news for the average U-boat commander.
Proof of this is in U-boat losses. Of 638 boats destroyed at sea ( i.e., 808 less those lost by mining, scuttling, accident, or bombing in port or in shipyards), 257.5 were sunk by RN or RCN warships, 48.5 by US warships, and 17 by allied warships.
Indeed, the question referred to the whole of WW2. Wasn't the battle of the Atlantic equally a part of WW2? Arguably, a more important campaign, given that had the allies lost it, then D-Day would have been impossible.
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Another day another idiot, I observe. Churchill held no political office between 1929 and September 1939, when he joined the Chamberlain administration as First Lord of the Admiralty.
Chamberlain, in conjunction with Daladier, declared war in accordance with the Anglo-French agreement that they would do so if Germany invaded Poland. There was no suggestion that they would defend Poland. Read the Treaty if you don't believe me. The joint Anglo-French hope was that the threat would halt further German military aggression, and avert a general European war.
No-one, British, American, or Canadian, 'gleefully' handed Poland over to anyone. The fact was that Poland was overrun (occupied or liberated, depending upon your view) by Soviet troops, and Western leaders were faced with a fait accompli. Moreover, after four years of praising genial Uncle Joe and his gallant lads, do you think any western leader could have persuaded public opinion that these heroes had suddenly morphed into villains?
By the way, perhaps you chose not to notice that the British people kicked Churchill's 'sorry ass' (as you describe it, with the elegance of a Demosthenes) back into power in 1951, where he remained until retirement some three and a half years later.
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@treyhelms5282 Indeed. Many French did continue to fight alongside the British. They were known as the Free French, and were disowned by the Vichy government when it was established. The alliance ended when the French made a separate peace. Please, read any history book on the subject.
Gensoul was given time to contact his own government, and, in fact, did so. What he did not do is pass on the full text of the British ultimatum, but simply chose a course of action himself.
Can you really not grasp that, in July 1940, the only force preventing a German invasion attempt, at least as London saw the situation, was the Royal Navy? The German fleet was weak and in disarray after Norway, and had no hope at all of successfully convoying an invasion force across the Channel, but the view in London was that, should the French fleet be used in support, then such an attempt might just be attempted. Of course national survival was at stake. The orders, as Churchill said at the time, were regrettable but necessary. Perhaps, 80 years later, you have the luxury to make dismissive comments; Churchill could not afford to be so generous at the time.
At least you seem able to grasp the reason the French were raising steam. As Gensoul had refused to negotiate, and had failed to take instructions from his political masters, what would you suggest that Somerville should have done? Let the French put to sea in order to be more sporting?
Why do you think the British were 'backstabbing' the French? Notice of British intentions had been given to Gensoul well in advance. It was hardly Copenhagen or Pearl Harbor.
The French comment was correct, especially the use of the word 'if.' Gensoul seems to have been unable to grasp the fact that, simply because France had capitulated, that did not mean that Britain would automatically do the same. Interestingly, Godfroy, in Alexandria, seems to have had more political nous.
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@treyhelms5282 The Free French continued to fight against the Germans, but, as they were not the Government of France, they did not continue the alliance. In any case, the ships at Mers el Kebir were loyal to the new French government, the one which had just surrendered to Germany.
The British presented clear options to Gensoul, the man on the spot. At the time, there was no obvious means of contacting the French government through diplomatic means. After the armistice of 22 June, until Petain was given, in effect, dictatorial powers on 10 July, there was no clear government to government channel available. Gensoul, however, had direct links to his superiors, but chose not to use them in full. You can hardly blame the British for responding swiftly to French collapse.
I didn't say that the French gave their warships to Germany, only that there was in London's mind the possibility that they might send them in support of a German seaborne invasion. The fact that the Royal Navy in Home Waters was still superior was hardly a reason to run the risk of it happening.
The French had done more than simply raise steam. The British knew that signals had been sent to other French units to proceed to Mers el Kebir, and some ships had started to move. You continue to refer to this 'alliance' which ceased to exist after 22 June, and in wartime the nebulous concept of 'honour' has of necessity to take second place to necessity. Somerville had his orders, did not, of course, know the nature of the Franco-German armistice terms, and was obliged to act before Gensoul's ships put to sea.
Your reference to the Spanish fleet is irrelevant. Spain had not just surrendered to Germany. I don't doubt for a moment that, had Spain proved to be a threat, the Spanish fleet, such as it was, would have been the subject of similar action. As Gensoul had not made any response, and as French aircraft had already attacked Fleet Air Arm ones, Somerville was entitled to consider the French actions to have been threatening.
Why would Gensoul have asked the British to capitulate? Have you seen the full text of Somerville's message to Gensoul, by the way:-
'It is impossible for us, your comrades up to now, to allow your fine ships to fall into the power of the German enemy. We are determined to fight on until the end, and if we win, as we think we shall, we shall never forget that France was our Ally, that our interests are the same as hers, and that our common enemy is Germany. Should we conquer we solemnly declare that we shall restore the greatness and territory of France. For this purpose we must make sure that the best ships of the French Navy are not used against us by the common foe. In these circumstances, His Majesty’s Government have instructed me to demand that the French Fleet now at Mers el Kebir and Oran shall act in accordance with one of the following alternatives;
(a) Sail with us and continue the fight until victory against the Germans.
(b) Sail with reduced crews under our control to a British port. The reduced crews would be repatriated at the earliest moment.
If either of these courses is adopted by you we will restore your ships to France at the conclusion of the war or pay full compensation if they are damaged meanwhile.
(c) Alternatively if you feel bound to stipulate that your ships should not be used against the Germans unless they break the Armistice, then sail them with us with reduced crews to some French port in the West Indies — Martinique for instance — where they can be demilitarised to our satisfaction, or perhaps be entrusted to the United States and remain safe until the end of the war, the crews being repatriated.
If you refuse these fair offers, I must with profound regret, require you to sink your ships within 6 hours.
Finally, failing the above, I have the orders from His Majesty’s Government to use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships from falling into German hands.'
Where does the message order Gensoul to 'disobey orders and surrender his command?'
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@treyhelms5282 I don't recall the Japanese giving the Americans several hours notice of their intentions.
The Free French had, as I have said before, nothing to do with Petain's government. Indeed, both viewed the others as traitors, as Operation Menace clearly demonstrated.
Your paragraph B is simply emotional rhetoric. It is important to understand the military situation as it existed in July, 1940. Why do you consider an action intended to strengthen Britain's fairly desperate military position to be 'evil?'
Claiming that the British Fleet's strength meant that the attack was 'paranoia' is on a par with the posts I read regularly that it was, somehow, unsporting of the British to concentrate a major force to dispose of the Bismarck. If taking the action they did ensured that the French Fleet did not support an invasion attempt, or even join the Italian Fleet in the Mediterranean, as London believed at the time, then the action was justified.
French forces had been ordered to Mers. before the British opened fire. Again, you call the French forces in Mers. 'allies,' when they had not been since 22 June. Can you imagine a potential alternative situation where, after a successful German landing in southern England, supported by Vichy French warships, Somerville turned up at the Admiralty and said, in effect, 'By disobeying your orders I may have lost us the war, condemned many of our people to the gas chambers and to slave labour, but at least I have kept my honour.' The precedent of Admiral Byng comes to mind.
Your paragraph F 'Gensoul didn't ask the British to capitulate' was what you said in your previous post. What I posted wasn't a speech. It was the text of the ultimatum which Somerville had been ordered by his political masters to present to Gensoul. Somerville kept London informed of events as they unfolded. Part of the tragedy was that Gensoul chose not to do the same with his own superiors.
Incidentally, de Gaulle, in a speech broadcast on July 8th 1940, De Gaulle described the attack as an “odious tragedy”, while admitting that this act was actually understandable on behalf of Britain – sure enough, he asserted that he preferred to see the Dunkerque sinking rather than see it at the hands of the Germans. De Gaulle's biographer, Jean Lacouture, blamed the events on a breakdown in communications, and believed that had Darlan been informed an agreement could have been reached. More importantly, Lacouture also accepted that there was a danger that the French ships might have been captured by German or more likely Italian troops, as proven by the ease with which the British seized French ships in British ports or the German seizure of French ships in Bizerte in Tunisia in November 1942.
There is no point in continuing. You are seemingly not willing to view the events leading up to the attack from the British viewpoint, and, moreover, seem determined to view every British action in an unfavourable light, based on 'evil,' paranoia,' and a determined desire to 'murder' French sailors.
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@treyhelms5282 How many times? The Anglo-French alliance did not exist after 22 June. The French administration which agreed it was no longer in power.
How many times? The fleet at Mers. was loyal to Petain. The Free French wished to continue to resist, Petain didn't.
The British concern was not that the French would hand the ships over, but that Petain would send the ships of the French navy, with their crews, to operate in support of the Germans. Whatever you may choose to believe in pursuit of what appears to be your anti-British agenda, the British considered this risk, or the similar one that the Mers. fleet would join the Italian one, to be a genuine one. You have the comfortable advantage of a gap of 80 years to make you after the event assumptions. The British didn't.
Do you not understand the difference between the Free & Vichy French?
I know Gensoul did not ask the British to capitulate. Why did you post that he did?
Well, I did not make the statement about Dunkerque. de Gaulle did. Similarly, I am simply quoting from Lacouture's biography of de Gaulle. Clearly, you know better than both. I am not making any point about Bizerte; Lacouture did.
Why is Toulon relevant? Do you seriously believe that in July 1940 the British should have known that the French would scuttle their ships in November, 1942? Perhaps, also, you might ask yourself whether the war situation had rather changed between July 1940 and November, 1942.
'Well, I hope you agree we've proven the British attack at Mers-El-Kebir was dishonorable.' Well, you have the right to hope, but I regard the attack as a distressing necessity, taken in a time of huge crisis.
Please stop posting the same thing time after time. You are adding nothing to any debate, except that you now seem to believe me to be paranoid as well. Frequent repetition of words like 'murder' 'evil' 'backstabbing' and 'paranoia' are poor excuses for reasoned arguments, and, for the very last time, please try to understand that Petain's French & de Gaulle's French were entirely different entities.
Going round in circles in this manner is becoming tedious, therefore I no longer intend to bother.
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No, you are missing something important. The Royal Navy in September 1940 was not 'Spread throughout the world.' Apart from a flotilla of old destroyers on the China station, and a strong Mediterranean Fleet, it was concentrated in Home Waters. The two British capital ships sunk in 1941 were sunk by torpedo, not dive, bombers. The Luftwaffe didn't have any torpedo bombers until mid 1942. Similarly, the Luftwaffe in 1940 had not been trained in anti-shipping operations, and had recently utterly failed to prevent Dynamo.
I do enjoy the 'would haves' to which you Sealion fans always resort. I apologise for returning to reality, but are you aware that in September, 1940 the Kriegsmarine had, on average, 13 boats at sea on any one day? Or that the three boats they sent into the Channel earlier in the war were all promptly sunk? Generally, U-boats sought to avoid fleet destroyers, rather than, as you unwisely suggest, seeking them out. As to your conviction that the mighty Luftwaffe would sink the Royal Navy, perhaps it might surprise you to learn that, even after receiving belated training in anti-shipping techniques, the Luftwaffe actually, in the whole of the war, sank 31 RN destroyers and nothing larger than a light cruiser. To put that into perspective, in September 1940, the RN had over 110 destroyers in Home Waters, 64 of which were within 5 hours steaming of Dover.
As to the scrapping of battleships after WW2, that indeed was partly a result of the increasing effectiveness of naval air power later in the war, but it is also largely irrelevant, because firstly the topic under discussion is the Battle of Britain in 1940, and secondly the RN's battleships were not part of the Admiralty's anti-invasion preparations in any case.
The land battle, likewise, is irrelevant, as the whole intent of Admiralty planning was to ensure that no organised German forces were able to land from their absurdly inadequate towed barges in the first place.
Instead of pontificating about what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done, perhaps you might read up instead on what it actually did, or rather didn't, do?
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Why is trying to avoid mass slaughter 'cowardice?' The Munich agreement was enormously popular in France and Britain, where the civilian population (presumably, in your gung ho view, oddly) were quite keen on not having their menfolk killed in large numbers once again. Just out of interest, by the way, the first Spitfires entered service in August, 1938 and, whether you like it or not, the Agreement gave British an extra year in which to re-arm. Would you like a list of the warships which were commissioned, launched, or ordered during that period?
I'm sure you find it easy to condemn people from your comfy chair, 85 years after the event.
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This might interest you. A statement from Reuters referring to the nonsense people like you post :-
A widely-shared meme has taken several facts about the Titanic out of context to make unsubstantiated claims that imply the ship’s sinking was a deliberate act. This is not true – experts widely agree the sinking of the Titanic was an accident.
The meme was posted to Facebook and has been shared many times.
It consists of two images: one of the ship and a second of American financier John Pierpoint (J.P.) Morgan. These sit alongside a wall of text that suggests Morgan had motive to sink the Titanic because it was hosting three powerful people who opposed his idea for a centralised banking system, ie: the U.S. Federal Reserve. The text reads :-
“DID YOU KNOW? The man who funded the building of the titanic, J. P. Morgan, cancelled his long-awaited journey just hours before its proposed departure,” the meme reads. “3 of the wealthiest men on earth, whom (sic) were against the creation of the federal reserve bank, happened to be invited aboard for its maiden voyage (John Aster, Isador Strauss & Benjamin Guggenheim).
“It then headed full speed into a known iceberg-field, with less than half the required lifeboats, no red signal flares, no Rothschild or Rockefeller on board, and sank to the bottom of the north Atlantic Ocean. Less than a year later, now that the wealthy opposition was out of the way, the federal reserve was created and USA was turned into an incorporated business, with its own business ID number, ’28 U.S.C. 3002 15.”
J.P MORGAN CLAIMS
While it is true that J.P. Morgan owned the Titanic and did not sail on its doomed maiden voyage, there is no evidence to suggest he deliberately missed the trip because he knew the ship would sink. Historians have debated several reasons for Morgan to cancel his trip, but none is related to the Federal Reserve.
“I've never been able to find an authoritative 1912 source explaining the exact reason why J. P. Morgan cancelled his passage on the Titanic, but he definitely didn't do so mere ‘hours’ before the ship's departure,” Titanic expert George Behe said in an email to Reuters.
Meanwhile, Don Lynch, a historian at the Titanic Historical Society (THS), said: “One of J.P. Morgan's biographers said that France was changing its laws to prevent Americans from exporting art treasures from that country, so Morgan went to Paris to oversee getting his purchases out of the country before the new laws went into effect.”
Also from THS, advisory board member Ray Lepien, said that as well as the art treasures theory, “the ‘official’ explanation was that he (Morgan) fell ill and wanted to take the ‘cure’ at a spa in France with his mistress.” Lepien added: “It could have been both reasons.”
STRAUS, ASTOR AND GUGGENHEIM’S OPINIONS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE PROPOSAL
While it is also true that Isidor Straus, Macy’s Department store owner; John Jacob Astor, a property tycoon, and Benjamin Guggenheim, a mining boss, died in the 1912 disaster, there is no evidence to suggest they were the target of deliberate sabotage. There is also no evidence that these three men were against Morgan’s centralised banking ideas.
Firstly, Titanic’s maiden voyage had attracted many prominent names, and was dubbed the “Millionaire’s Special” as a result.
Secondly, George Behe told Reuters he was unable to find any documents in his 45 years of researching the Titanic that proved the three men opposed the Federal Reserve. In fact, a Washington Post investigation found that while Astor and Guggenheim did not take a public stance on the matter, Straus reportedly spoke in favour of the proposal.
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'Control the Skies, control the grounds and the seas.' Not in 1940. The Luftwaffe controlled the skies over Dunkirk, apart from a few brief periods when RAF Squadron Patrols appeared, and totally failed to prevent the evacuation. In 1940, the Luftwaffe had had no training in anti-shipping operations, and were, consequently, poor at them, not even acquiring a high performance torpedo bomber until early-mid 1942.
The Royal Navy in September 1940 had around 70 light cruisers and destroyers within close range of the Channel, backed up by around 500 smaller warships, and over 100 destroyers in total in Home Waters. In the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe managed to sink just 31 RN destroyers.
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@mikedimarco3008 I think you mean the Anglo-French Purchasing Board, which became the British Purchasing Commission after the fall of France? The one which purchased military equipment from the US at market rates. By December 1940 British cash orders for aircraft had exceeded $1,200,000,000 with deliveries of 300-350 per month and were expected to reach 500 per month by "early in 1941." The aircraft were supplied unarmed.
The Neutrality Acts actually restricted US equipment being sold to Britain, by the way. What, out of interest, did you think they did?
British survival was never in doubt after, firstly, the failure to attempt Sealion, even though it was likely to have been a German disaster, and secondly, Operation Barbarossa.
The US, in point of fact, was reluctantly dragged into the war after Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war. Please don't try to imply that there was anything altruistic about it.
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@Embracing01 Nonsense. Aside from the fact that the allegedly 'crippled' ship steamed at close to full speed until the time of collision, and, indeed, was making better progress on her maiden voyage than Olympic had in June 1911, which messages did not, in your opinion, get through?
If Californian had indeed been the planned rescue ship, why did Lord, presumably a key part of your imaginary plan, ignore the concerns of his officers about the flares being fired by 'a large steamer?' How many large steamers do you think there were wandering about the North Atlantic at the time, happily firing off distress flares?
Moreover, if there had indeed been a planned rescue ship, a fully laden, slow, small, freighter was almost ludicrously unsuited for the job.
Oh, and Lord was never blamed for the sinking, but he was blamed for his failure to investigate the reason for the flares, and for thus ignoring the concerns of his deck officers.
He did, by the way, give detailed evidence at both Inquiries, but the fact that his evidence actually changed over time hardly aided his case.
You are clearly interested in the subject. Perhaps you should read a book or two about it?
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Although the reference in 'Inherit the Wind' is to the teaching of evolution, one of Henry Drummond's speeches, if applied instead to Islam, seems disturbingly apposite :-
“Can't you understand? ............. You may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating, we'll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind"
Have we actually taken the first steps on that path?
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@williamwilson8582 'Some airy fairy comment about Australia,' A simple statement od actual fact. At what level of development was Australia or, come to that, New Zealand, Africa, or America, when westerners arrived?
Your potted history seems to assume that only the British ever indulged in colonialism or in empire. Have you never heard of the phrase 'the flag followed trade?' Clearly not.
'you get the picture.' Indeed I do. I don't however usually bother with fiction. You appear to have convinced yourself the western exploration, trade, and settlement was entirely bad. I am sad for yo, that you are too disillusioned to see the wider picture, which was that colonialism and empire were complex issues, which brought good as well as bad things to the places colonised. In the British case, how many of the former colonies/ dominions would have had the rule of law, improved health, or democratic institutions, had the British not been there? Would the lattice of warring princely states that was the Indian sub-continent really have evolved into the world's largest democratic state?
Oh, and the life expectancy of Indigenous has been estimated at around 40 years. Now it is around 75 years. Do you suggest that the average Aborigine would have preferred to die 35 years earlier, as seems to have been the case, if you vile and brutal Brits. had not settled there? Oh well. .
'Of course many would say it was an act of brotherly benevolence probably yourself included . I say this as a veteran .' Bullshit. Where have I ever suggested that? I simply am wise enough to understand that the effects of many cultures spreading around the world have been complex and have brought benefits as well as negatives. Being 'free' to live in squalor and die young is not my idea of a positive.
You are a veteran? Why do you think that makes your opinion any more relevant than that of anyone else?
.
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@rayray7527 They didn't have radar until WW2, and most freighters didn't have it until later. Are you going to name any ship at all which had such a light between, for example, 1900 and 1950?
Did Lusitania, Mauretania, Adriatic, Aquitania, Olympic, Scharnhorst, Roma, Prinz Freidrich Wilhelm, President Cleveland, or any of, literally dozens of others, have such fitments?
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It would be, had it been even remotely true, but the fact is that the claim is a total invention, dating from the rise of social media in the 1990s.
If you have any credible proof that Astor or Guggenheim said anything in opposition to the concept of the Federal Reserve, or that the reports of Straus' support for it, as recorded in the New York Times' account of his speech of October, 1911, was false, please feel free to supply it.
You have, I fear, simply watched a conspiracy video and swallowed it whole.
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@johnmcbluenose Documentaries on Dunkirk won't mention 51HD because at the time they were detached and serving in the Maginot Line. It just happened to be their turn, as other BEF divisions had been there previously.
51HD retreated across France, as part of a French Corps, and Admiral James (C-in-C, Portsmouth) sent 67 merchant ships and 140 smaller vessels to lift them from St. Valery. The lift was abandoned due to fog on the first night, and the French Corp Commander surrendered before a second attempt could be made, although 2137 British & 1184 French troops were lifted from the beaches at Veules. That happened a week after Dunkirk had ended, by the way. Churchill did not order that they be left behind. The reality was that they were unable to re-join the BEF.
In total, a further 191,870 British troops were lifted from west coast French ports, ending on 25 June, by the way.
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There was a tradition in the Royal Navy that 'we fight the ship, not the men,' which was reflected in the tributes paid to the crews of beaten enemies. In particular, those by Tovey & Fraser in WW2, and Sturdee in WW1.
This was reflected in Spee's comment in Valparaiso after the Battle of Coronel. At a dinner given by the German business community, the toast 'Damnation to the British Navy,' was proposed. Spee refused it, and after the rest of the room had sat back down, quietly rose to his feet, raised his glass, and said 'I drink to the memory of a gallant & honourable foe.'
People like Raeder & Lutjens had been brought up in this tradition, and their principles permeated the German surface fleet.
Doenitz, a more committed nazi, was, however, rather different.
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@pacificostudios You are assuming that the RAF has gone, which is not an assumption which has any credibility, and one which I do not accept. The title, in point of fact, refers to defeat, not annihilation. The Battle of Britain was not a battle of annihilation, akin to Stalingrad, and the worst that might have happened to Fighter Command was likely to have been the withdrawal of 11 Group to bases north of the Thames, out of range of German fighters, in order to rest, re-equip, and reform, taking advantage of the high fighter construction figures which British industry had been generating since June, 1940.
What do you think strafing and mines might have done? The Germans had precisely seven minelayers, mainly converted merchant ships, supported perhaps by a similar number of destroyers. The British, with immediate access to a huge fishing fleet, had around 400 or so fleet and auxiliary minesweepers operational in September. Moreover, the RN patrolled the Channel from Plymouth and the Nore on a nightly basis. What was likely to happen when a destroyer flotilla encountered a German minelaying operation?
Destroyers had splinter protection, not armour as such. However, they were fast and highly manoeuvrable. Perhaps you might explain how it was that, in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe managed to sink just 31 of these, as you call them, 'tin cans? '
You might also wish to address another problem. The actual German plan for Sealion, which I have read, anticipated some 11 days & nights to get the first wave of nine divisions ashore. What happens at night, when the Luftwaffe could not supply even notional support, but when the RN could operate against the barges largely unhindered?
The Sealion planners had managed to assemble plenty of barges, some 1,900 in fact, but such was their shortage of tugs for these barges, which were to be towed into and across the Channel in pairs, that the planners could, using every available tug, trawler, and coaster, only include 844 barges in the first wave. There were, literally, no reserves of towing vessels. What happens when these numbers are seriously reduced when RN destroyers, cruisers, and supporting smaller warships arrive from the Nore, Portsmouth, and Plymouth?
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@pacificostudios A defeat is something like Kasserine, where a defeated force is able to regroup and, subsequently, successfully respond. It should be obvious. The worst Fighter Command might have suffered was much more akin to that than to Stalingrad, which is, I assume, why the video refers simply to 'lost'.
British ground forces in September were not 'weak.' The British had 34.5 divisions by then, 20 of which were deployed on anti-invasion duties. Indeed, in August the British felt so secure that they were able to send a large troop convoy to North Africa, which led to the defeat of the Italian army in Operation Compass. Perhaps you might look up the efforts made by British industry to re-equip their army during the course of the summer.
Not that it really mattered, of course, because however you may wish to either deny, or ignore, it, the Royal Navy held the Channel secure beyond challenge.
"What was the state of British land defence in September 1940?" Already done and included in one of my books about 'Sealion.' I suggest that I know rather more about the subject than you think you do.
'We can also presume the Germans would have landed the same airborne troops they used against the Netherlands.' You might, probably because you don't know that, precisely because of fallschirmlager losses in Norway & the Netherlands, only some 4,500 such troops were still available in September. What was called 7th Parachute Division by the Germans at the time was, actually, only the strength of a weak brigade. Moreover, there were only 220 or so transport aircraft still in operation at the same time.
You think that such numbers could 'seize airfields and even smaller ports on Day 1?' Absurd! A small force of lightly armed soldiers, with no hope of relief by more heavily equipped ground troops? As one of the actual German Generals of the time remarked, when the plan for Sealion as a whole was expounded to him, 'It would be like feeding my men into a meat grinder.'
As my old Professor, M. R. D. Foot, was wont to say, the one thing more tedious than someone who doesn't know his subject is someone who doesn't know that he doesn't know his subject. You appear to fall into the latter category. At least, you consistently ignore every fact or statistic with which I present you.
Thus, I will no longer respond to any of your nonsense. Go away and do some reading. You may be fortunate enough to pick up one of my books or articles on Sealion, Dynamo, or, even WW2 naval matters in general.
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Small problem here. The Federal Reserve/Titanic myth was created in the mid 1990s. If you actually look up the men proclaimed as Morgan's victims, Astor, Guggenheim, & Straus, you will find that neither of the first two had expressed their opinions about the Fed., whilst Straus was a known supporter, as two newspaper articles from October, 1911, prove.
For whatever reason, the creators of the conspiracy simply picked these three, as the most high profile victims, and labelled them without a single piece of supporting evidence.
As to those who cancelled their bookings (they didn't disembark, as they were never aboard), yes, there were quite a number, but not as many as had cancelled for Olympic's maiden voyage the previous year. How would you explain that?
Hasn't it occurred to you that, should you contact a devious and highly secret plot, then telling all your friends about if hardly helps to maintain secrecy.
I refer you to Guy Fawkes for further information.
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@manilajohn0182 Sadly, Marder died over 30 years ago, so what Leach allegedly said to Oswald cannot be verified.
Neither of the Enquiries into Hood's loss attributed it to the explosion of ready use AA ammunition. Indeed, Briggs stated that the fire on the boat deck was reported to Holland, who said 'leave it until the ammunition is gone' and Tilburn, who was actually on the boat deck, stated that the 4 inch ammunition hatch on the boat deck was 'definitely closed' during the action.
Jack Leach also gave evidence, stating that the explosion was 'before the mainmast' as did his navigator, Lt. Cdr. Rowell. Neither made any reference to the "explosion of the ready use cordite penetrating the flash proofing of X turret". The Enquiry did state that, as PoW was in action at the time, this fact may well have prevented observers aboard her 'from giving a clear cut impression of the occurrence.'
The evidence of technical experts led to the conclusion that :- 'The fire was not in itself the cause of, and was distinct from, the explosion that destroyed the ship. The fire which was seen on Hood's Boat Deck, and in which UP and/or 4 inch ammunition was certainly involved, was not the cause of her loss.'
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@manilajohn0182 Marder's death is relevant, in that it makes it impossible to determine his source for the comment.
'He came to believe that it "endangered the safety of the ship" ' If he did say that, it doesn't appear in the Enquiry findings. Whilst he may not have been asked that specific question, it seems odd that he would have expressed tho opinion to the commander of HMS Kent, but not to any of the members of the Enquiry panels.
'It's understandable why the enquiry didn't go down that path.' Not really. The Enquiries were set up to determine what led to the loss of the ship. The Board for the first one consisted of a Vice-Admiral and two Captains, and for the second one a Rear-Admiral & two Captains. Both Enquiries were confidential, Admiralty, affairs. At the time, there was no suggestion that any of the hits had been from Prinz Eugen, so the idea of concealing anything did not apply.
I will, however, get hold of the book as soon as possible.
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@persimmon93 Actually, I got the information from the Parachute Regiment's own website, which claims this :- 'Impressed by the success of German airborne operations, during the Battle of France, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, directed the War Office to investigate the possibility of creating a corps of 5,000 parachute troops.
On 22 June 1940, No. 2 Commando was turned over to parachute duties and on 21 November, re-designated the 11th Special Air Service Battalion, with a parachute and glider wing. It was these men who took part in the first British airborne operation, Operation Colossus, on 10 February 1941.'
Even it it isn't true, I'm not going to argue with them. The ones I have met are all bigger than me!
Didn't know that about the Japanese, but will look it up out of interest.
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@driftwood8613 I agree that dishes, furniture, etc., did not have the yard number on them, as they weregeneral to White Star ships. However, large items such as propeller blades did.
Moreover, panelling etc., was marked up as appropriate to each ship. As a result, when Olympic was scrapped, and many of her interior fitments auctioned off. many of these bore the number 400 on the reverse.
A number of these, still marked 400 to this day, may be viewed in the Olympic restaurant of the Whit Swan hotal in Alnwick. Fascinatingly, no item marked 401 has yet come to light. Perhaps you would care to explain this oddity?
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The claim that there was the slightest connection between the Titanic sinking and the Federal Reserve was a product of the 1990s, when social media made it possible for people with little or no actual knowledge of a subject to invent conspiracy theories about almost anything and everything.
Prior to that, there had not been the slightest suggestion of any such link, largely because neither Astor nor Guggenheim had expressed their opinions about the idea of the Federal Reserve, whilst Straus had, in October, 1911, spoken in favour of it.
Oh, and Morgan, in March, 1912, had confirmed that he would be attending an event in Venice, which he could not have done had he sailed in Titanic. This was reported in the New York Times at the time.
The ships were, by the way, not swapped. At the time Titanic left Southampton, Olympic, bask at sea fully repaired since November, 1911, was in New York.
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@grahamhill6340 I have the misfortune, as doubtless you would see it, to base my opinions on known and provable facts and evidence, not on strange fantasies. That is the accepted historical method.
Let me ask you about Pearl Harbor, for one. If the US had known about an impending attack, why not have their defences fully prepared? THe attack would still have taken place, but causualties in US men & materials would likely have been far less, and among the Japanese Task Force far greater.
Or would you propound the argument that the reaction in the United States to an unsuccessful, rather than a successful, sneak attack would really have been 'Well, the Japs. didn't really do too much damage. Let's not worry about it.'
Seriously?
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How would the Luftwaffe have 'eliminated' the RAF? The worst case scenario would be that Fighter Command temporarily withdrew out of range of German fighters. The British were already outbuilding the Germans in terms of fighter production, and the Luftwaffe in 1940 (and, in fact, never) was nothing more than a tactical air force.
Do you really think a 1941 invasion was even a remote possibility? Historically, by May, 1941, Fighter Command had 56 squadrons of fighters and fighter bombers carrying out regular sweeps over Northern France. As to where convoys would unload in the UK, actually where they historically did, in Liverpool and in Scotland, well out of the range of German fighter cover. Incidentally, what American bases and what American fighter cover, before mid 1942? The British at the time were not helpless victims, dependant on the United States for their very survival.
As to U-Boats, in May 1941, there were precisely 33 operational front line boats, of which 24 were at sea on any one day, which was an increase on September 1940 ( 27 & 13, by the way), but hardly a force capable of challenging the Royal Navy in Home Waters. Moreover, historically, U-Boats tried to avoid destroyers or frigates, for obvious reasons.
Certainly, by January, 1941, the Luftwaffe was better trained in anti-shipping techniques than it had been in 1940, when it had failed comprehensively at Dunkirk, leading to comments by senior commanders, most notably Oskar Dinort & Wolfram von Richtofen, that it was not capable of protecting convoys of invasion barges from the Royal Navy. As to U-Boats, to send them into the Channel is most unwise. The three which were sent in late 1939 are still there, with the result that no more were sent until 1944, and only then in desperation and with minimal effect.
As to the coastal guns, by the end of August, 1940, the Germans had over 150 batteries of medium, heavy, and super heavy guns in place, and the first firings, at coastal convoys, took place on 12 August. These convoys were coded CE & CW, and consisted of small coasters & colliers. In the whole of the war, there were 531 such convoys, all proceeding up and down the Channel at slow speed. The total number of ships was 9097. Would you care to guess how many were sunk? Thirty one. Would you care to guess how many of these thirty one were sunk by coastal gunfire? NONE.
In the whole of the war, your wonderful coastal batteries which would beat the Royal Navy back, actually managed to hit, but not sink, a grand total of 7 small merchantmen. Would you care to estimate how many destroyers and light cruisers were likely to succumb to these weapons?
In September, 1940, by the way, the RN had around 70 light cruisers and destroyers within five hours steaming of Dover, and a further 50 or so such vessels within 24 hours. In addition, there were over 500 smaller warships in the immediate vicinity.
I appreciate that Sealion 'would haves' always pontificate about what the mighty Luftwaffe 'would have' done, but are less able to demonstrate occasions when it actually 'did' it, but perhaps you should spend a little time looking at what, had slow moving trains of barges towed by tugs and trawlers, actually approached the Channel, the RN 'would have' done to them.
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@dinkeydink9376 Actually, what became the United States rebelled against Britain. The infant USA also declared war on Britain in 1812, invading Canada and burning York.
You seem unaware of constant French interference in Europe through France's history. Since 1700 alone, The War of the Spanish Succession, The war of the Quadruple Alliance, The War of the Polish Succession, The War of the Austrian Succession, The Seven Years' War, The War of the First Coalition, The War of the Second Coalition, The War of the Third Coalition, The Franco-Swedish War, The War of the 4th Coalition, The Peninsular War, The War of the 5th Coalition, The 1812 Invasion of Russia, The War of the 6th Coalition, & The Hundred Days.
That, by the way, simply covers the 115 years from 1700 to the end of Boney's dictatorship.
Of course Boney, by the way, won the Constitutional Referendum of 1804. Just like how Kim Jung-Un wins 100% support in elections in North Korea, or how a variety of Eastern European & Soviet leaders won overwhelming support until the day they were overthrown.
Are you really as stupid as you pretend to be?
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@vanmust Force Z's two capital ships were sunk by torpedo aircraft flown by crews trained in anti-shipping operations. I point of fact, both ships were each hit by one bomb as well, but suffered minimal damage for the hits.
By contrast, the Luftwaffe had not been trained in anti-shipping operations, and didn't even have an operational torpedo bomber until mid 1942. The Luftwaffe had just failed badly at Dunkirk, of course.
Moreover, in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser.
Sealion enthusiasts always make terrifying claims about what the mighty Luftwaffe 'would have' done to the Royal Navy, but are never able to explain why, in the actual events of WW2, they never actually managed to do it.
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The German 'warning' only appeared on the day Lusitania sailed. Frankly, the assumption in the US, France, Britain (and most of Germany) was that no civilised power would attack one of the Great Liners. The shock, and repercussions, were such that unrestricted submarine warfare, introduced on 22 February, 1915, was swiftly abandoned.
When it was re-introduced, in desperation, in February, 1917, the US declared war within two months.
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@fusion451 I regret your ignorance of Maritime Law :- 'In English law, by Section 742 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1894, a pilot is defined as "any person not belonging to a ship who has the conduct thereof"—someone other than a member of the crew who has control over the speed, direction, and movement of the ship.'
George Bowyer was in command of Olympic at the time. He was a Southampton Harbour Pilot, and had previously taken Olympic into and out of Southampton. Olympic was operating under compulsory pilotage. When entering and leaving busy ports, a harbor pilot will board the ship to guide her in or out of port. Because the pilot is more familiar with the local waters, and the location of any hazards, the risk of an accident is reduced. The ship’s crew, including the Captain, are required by law to follow the pilot’s orders. Do you understand this?
At the Inquiry, Smith was exonerated of any blame because he was not in command. Simple and unambiguous as that, whatever your lack of knowledge may wrongly lead you to believe.
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@fusion451 Your ignorance of Maritime Law is sad but understandable. I do not think I can make it clearer. The Court of Inquiry ruled that the Pilot, not Smith, was in command, and that Olympic, under the Pilot's command, was the guilty party.
The ruling stated that Olympic was at fault, but the White Star Line was not liable because Olympic was operating under compulsory pilotage.
Incidentally, Olympic was repaired by Harland and Wolff for about, in US terms, $125,000. not 'millions.' White Star had made around $1 million profit in the previous financial year, by the way.
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@fusion451 There was no broken keel. The report produced by the Admiralty, supported by inspection teams from White Star and the Board of Trade, made no reference to a broken keel, summarising the damage as “Two major watertight compartments were flooded, hull plating gashed from the Orlop deck to E deck, and the starboard propeller shafting damaged.” The gash in Olympic's side was 6-8 feet deep, whereas her beam was 82 feet.
I appreciate that switchers need to pretend that Olympic's keel was damaged. If it wasn't their whole fantasy collapses, but there is precisely no evidence at all to justify this claim. Certainly, Harland & Wolff knew nothing about any keel damage.
As to the differences in appearance, to the general public these would not be immediately obvious, but anyone with more detailed knowledge of the ships would immediately detect the differences in 'A' & 'B' deck, and in the bridge wings. The point is that the newsreel makers were dealing with the general public, not with experts in ocean liner design and construction. Moreover, the general public are often easily fooled, as switcher videos demonstrate to this day.
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Did your grandfather have any views on the failure of the French High Command to defend the 'impassible' Ardennes, allowing the best French units, and the BEF, to be cut off? Did he express any opinion on what the 10 divisions of the BEF were supposed to do when the 100+ divisions of the French army were collapsing in disarray? Presumably, the manner in which the Royal, Merchant, and French, navies evacuated 338,000 men, whilst under heavy air attack much of the time, is demonstrative of their 'cowardice?' As for the Germans treating the French better than the British, odd that. I don't recall the British deporting thousands of Frenchmen to Britain to work as slave labour. Perhaps the history books missed that bit?
The British evacuated over 100,000 French troops from Dunkirk, and were landing a new, 'reconstituted BEF' in Cherbourg under General Brooke, until Brooke was told by General Weygand that the French army was 'no longer able to offer organised resistance,' when they met on 14 June.
Finally, it would presumably be inappropriate to refer to the thousands of Britons, Americans, and Canadians who gave their lives to give the French their own country back?
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Olympic had been repaired by 20 November, 1911, and was actually at sea, en route from New York to Southampton, when Titanic sank.
The three financiers aboard Titanic were Astor, Guggenheim, and Straus. The first two had expressed no opinions about the Fed., whilst the third had spoken in support. Accounts of his speech may be read in newspapers from the time. The suggestion that they opposed the Fed. dates from the mid 1990s.
Olympic, as I wrote, had been back in service since November, 1911. She later served as a trooper during WW1, but was scrapped in 1934. The shallowness of your knowledge is quite remarkable.
You have watched a switcher video, and swallowed it totally, haven't you?
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@erictaylor5462 At the beginning of WW2, the RN had more carriers than the US Navy did. Four of them were large, fast, vessels, and a fifth was large but slower. You are misinformed if you think otherwise.
Whilst the German navy had gunnery radar, even if it fell apart when the guns fired, the Germans did not have anything to compare with the British Type 279 search radar, which HMS Suffolk used to track Bismarck, and which came as such a shock to Admiral Lutjens.
'I think a German carrier could have lasted quite a long time, even if it was unsupported, especially if it operated with sound tactics, such as maintain a constant CAP and using radar to pick up enemy shipping well outside of weapon's range.' The aircraft intended for the one carrier the Germans did almost build, Graf Zeppelin, were Bf109s and Ju87s. The undercarrige of the 109 was almost comically unsuited for carrier operations, and the Ju87 was an aircraft designed for close support of ground troops. The Germans had precisely no experience of carrier operations, and certainly no aircraft to compare with the Fairey Swordfish, or even the Fairey Fulmar. Moreover, they had no search radar, and nothing like the land based reconnaissance resources available to the British.
Perhaps you are allowing events in the Pacific to cloud your judgement. The much greater distances involved certainly made the carrier, as part of a battle group or task force, more important, but operations in the Atlantic were rather different, as there were often periods when aircraft operations were simply not possible. During the last attack on Bismarck by Ark Royal's Swordfish, the rise and fall of the flight deck of some 70 feet meant that no heavier aircraft could even have got off the deck.
Moreover, a carrier in the western war needed to be able to operate within range of land based aircraft for prolonged periods. The British carriers, with armoured decks as a trade off for smaller air groups, were able to do this. I wonder how long the more thin-skinned US or Japanese carriers might have survived in such conditions? As a US liaison officer aboard a British carrier in the BPF famously wrote, 'When a kamikaze strikes a US carrier, it is six months in Pearl. When one hits a Limey carrier, it's 'Sweepers, man your brooms.' '
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@shikeqin I believe that the French ships were fully manned, fuelled, and munitioned, although they were not expecting to be attacked and had awnings on their quarterdecks. The process of removing these and raising steam began when Force H arrived. Mining began following an order from Somerville at 1105, by which time the French fleet had been seen to be raising steam, and the British ultimatum had been rejected. Holland was able to persuade Somerville to delay opening fire until well after the deadline imposed by Churchill, and despite the fact that French naval forces had been ordered to Mers el Kebir.
Certainly, Darlan had given Churchill a letter stating that the French fleet would not be allowed to fall into German hands. However, that was before he became a member of the Vichy government. Subsequently, Churchill had serious doubts about his sincerity. In an attempt to obtain the release of French ships in British ports, Darlan ad provided the British with a version of the armistice terms which they knew to be inaccurate. In short, Churchill was not convinced that Darlan intended to abide by his promise or, even if he did, whether he might be over-ruled by the new Vichy administration of which Darlan was a part.
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@shikeqin I think that a complete collapse of morale played an important part. The French army dominated military planning (with over 100 divisions, compared to the 10 or so British, how could they not?) and assumed that a second war would be a re-run of 1914-1918. The allies would remain on the defensive initially, building up their forces gradually from conscription and from their overseas possessions & dominions, with their best-equipped troops in Belgium and the rest of France safe behind the Maginot Line. As the allies increased their strength, and the naval blockade began to bite, they could then take the offensive.
There doesn't seem to have been a Plan B, and once the German Ardennes offensive had split the best allied forces from the rest, and reached the Channel coast, Weygand in particular seems to have thrown in the towel.
I don't think any criticism can be attached to the French Navy, which had done nothing wrong, but the political leadership seems to have failed.
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@merafirewing6591 No, he wasn't. Try to understand this :-
Morgan’s actual reason for not sailing on the Titanic’s maiden voyage is well-documented. According to Jean Strouse’s 1999 biography “Morgan: American Financier” and Brad Matsen’s 2008 book “Titanic’s Last Secrets,” Morgan was busy trying to ship his vast art collection in England and France by sea to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In late March, he hit a setback: a U.S. Customs Office art specialist, sent to London to inspect the shipments, unexpectedly left for the States. Morgan stopped the shipments, asked the art dealer supervising them to meet him in France in mid-April, and sent a telegram to the White Star Line’s president with his regrets: Business would keep him from sailing on the Titanic.
That, incidentally, explains also his intention to be in Venice in late April, before Titanic could have brought him back from New York.
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@billyliar1614 'Yes, foreign aid is unjustified, but isn't Starmer sorting that?' Perhaps, but only for so long as he pretends to be a war leader. His own left wing will not tolerate this as anything more than a temporary pause.
Where exactly do you think that the monry to fund pay rises in the Public Sector comes from? Increased employer National Insurance contributions and, soon the Emnployment Rights Bill.
As someone who has spent most of his working life in the private sector, unlike, it seems, anyone in the Cabinet, let me explain how these things work. My old MD, after a few minutes shouting at us in Managers' Meetings, explained lot as follows :- To make £1 of profit, you need to make £10 of extra revenue, or make £1 in cost cuts.
That is why the sector is now abandoning potential recruitment, and looking at redundancy plans. You need to be an economic ignoramus not to grasp the fact that reducing the sector will, far from growing the economy, contract it, thus generating less revenue from the National Insurance leaving less to be poured into the bottomless well that is the NHS and, indeed, many parts of the public sector as a whole.
As to pensioners, instead of spouting platitudes like 'the over-65s are the richest demographic' why not think instead about those who were already in difficulties, but did not make the cut? Certainly, many pensioners did not need the allowance, but does that justify considering the rest as mere collateral damage, as Reeves apparently did?
As Matthew Rycroft, told the UK Mission to the UN at the Security Council Open Debate on Children and Armed Conflict 'How a society treats its most vulnerable is always the measure of its humanity.' Apply this to the current government, and Starmer has been found wanting.
That's it. I will not explain further.
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Smith had nothing to do with the officer transfer. The decision was made by White Star's higher management, in order to have a senior officer aboard, other than Smith himself, with experience of Olympic class ships.
David Blair, who was originally intended to be Titanic's second officer, was thus transferred to Olympic, with Henry Wilde moving to Titanic. As a result, Murdoch and Lightoller moved down one level in rank.
Blair took his property with him, of course, and this included the binoculars, which were his personal ones, not the property of White Star.
Aside from that, Smith was not in command of Olympic when she collided with HMS Hawke, a Solent Harbour Pilot was, as the subsequent court case made clear.
In fact, your post is almost entirely nonsense.
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@davidmcintyre8145 Geoffrey Bennett says that Otranto was fired upon by Dresden, but not hit. It seems that Cradock's last signal to her, before the action began, was incomplete ( 'There is danger. Proceed at your best...'), so Otranto's captain took a pragmatic course of action, in that he edged away from the rest of the squadron and subsequently escaped.
What point is served by even talking about the Averoff? What relevance has a ship belonging to a neutral country, far away in the Mediterranean, to Coronel?
More relevant would be the influence that Defence, Australia, or even, stretching the point, Hiei, might have had, had one of them been present.
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@stevetwede9901 Sorry, little half wit, but wasn't your first claim 'Tirpitz was more dangerous than Bismark as it had torpedo tubes' if I remember correctly? What have your subsequent ramblings about how Bismarck was sunk to do with the issue?
Perhaps you might ask a grown up to read my posts. He or she will tell you that, unlike you, I have kept strictly to the issue, which was the relevance or irrelevance of torpedoes on battleships.
However, I will divert briefly on the subject, and refer you to two experts on the wreck :-
Bob Ballard. When asked what sank the Bismarck, he replied 'The British.'
David Mearns. Who said that any attempt to scuttle would have hastened the sinking by 'a matter of minutes, only.'
Perhaps you can then explain how any of this is relevant to the issue of the use of torpedoes on battleships in WW2? Although I seriously doubt it.
There you are. Three identical replies. Perhaps the combined effect might even sink into your limited understanding. Although again, I seriously doubt it.
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@stevetwede9901 As I wrote. To enable them to sink merchantmen more efficiently during the course of commerce raiding cruises. Cruises which, of course, never happened.
By the way, when that happened, Lutjens was dead. Your astonishing level of ignorance is quite impressive, little chap.
If I am stupid, then the battleship designers of the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, & Italy must have been equally stupid. As, initially, must those of Germany, of course.
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@MasterWooten German supplies for their forces in an occupied Britain did not need to come from any distance. Only from occupied France, or indeed from Britain herself. Unlike Britain, Germany had no large overseas empire, and did not need imported goods on anything like the same scale as Britain did.
Thank you for making my argument for me. The campaigns in North Africa and were fought & won by the allies precisely because there was a secure base in the UK. Supply and military convoys were sailed regularly to the Middle East round the Cape, and most of the troops who fought this campaign were British & Commonwealth/Empire.
Moreover, where did the troops which landed in North Africa come from? One convoy from the US, and two from the UK, with overwhelmingly Brirtish naval escorts. In your fantasy, none of the British part of this is available.
In addition, the naval control of the Mediterranean, which made Husky even possible, was almost entirely British.
Finally, how is any of this even vaguely relevant to the liberation of occupied Britain by forces based in Newfoundland or even Greenland?
I can understand why you have dropped that nonsensical idea.
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@lmyrski8385 The treaty was an attempt to draw a line in the sand, and to prevent a general European war, by telling Hitler that, should he invade Poland, he would be obliged to fight a war against two major European powers. Far from seeking war with Germany, Britain and France went far, some would argue too far, in their attempts to avoid one.
To be frank about it, Britain and France did not go to war to defend Poland. Poland was simply incidental in the issue. Both honoured their treaty obligations by going to war, even though Britain as a sea power had only a tiny army, and the much larger French army was not ready for anything other than defensive actions at least initially.
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@norshstephens2395 Oh well, perhaps your reading failed to inform you of the poor quality of AA armament, sensors, and anti-submarine weaponry which severely limited the effectiveness of Japanese destroyers.
Would you care to tell me of any occasion when a Japanese destroyer flotilla actually did sink any allied capital ship? Fantasising about what one 'would have' done to Bismarck in a wholly imaginary and incredible scenario is hardly any argument.
'The Japanese navy was the best navy in the world in 1941. Better than the British navy.' In terms of what? Certainly, the IJN had well-developed nightfighting skills. Only the Royal Navy came close, but in terms of anti-submarine warfare, the IJN was totally outmatched. Your splendid Japanese destroyers failed utterly in their attempts to protect merchantmen from the US navy's submarine offensive, unlike the success achieved by the RN & RCN's destroyers, sloops, and corvettes in the Battle of the Atlantic. In other words, the RN did all that was demanded of it in WW2. Can the same be said of the IJN?
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@norshstephens2395 Apart, of course, from how a Japanese destroyer flotilla gets to the Atlantic and how, without radar, it actually finds Bismarck. Simply fantasy on your part.
Granted, the Long Lance was the outstanding torpedo of WW2, although you seem determined to gloss over or ignore its flaws, and it was only as good as the weapons systems deploying it.
23 Allied warships were sunk as a result of hits involving Type 93s and other weapons. 13 allied warships were sunk by Type 93s alone. Destroyer launched 93s sank one cruiser in the Java Sea, one already damaged cruiser in the Sunda Strait, 8 US destroyers in 1942 -1944, 3 US cruisers in 1942-1943, and one (crippled and abandoned) aircraft carrier in 1942.
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@xXArnOdu974Xx In 1936, the French regular army was 320,000 strong, with a large number of modern tanks, and, if necessary, the ability to call up large numbers of reservists. German had only re-introduced conscription a year earlier, and was aiming to build an army of up to 300,000 men in time. Germany, in addition, had a small number of light tanks, of Marks I & II.
Germany sent very few troops into the Rhineland, some 5,000 at most. Are you really saying that the French regular army could not cope with 5,000 Germans?
As to your apparent conviction that France was incapable of acting independently without the British holding her hand, what sort of support do you think Britain, with a tiny peacetime army, could have given on land? Air support, and the security to French communications with her colonies that the largest navy on earth offered, but, as the French General Staff knew, even if you don't, Britain was not a land power, and only briefly became one in 1916-18 because of the fear of German victory in WW1.
You don't seem to know much, except for your conviction that, whenever something went wrong, it wasn't the fault of France.
I won't bother replying again, as you appear to be beyond education.
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carmine paola Operation Hats; Oh, you mean when the British reinforced the Mediterranean Fleet with a new carrier, two AA cruisers, & a modernised battleship, ran a supply convoy to Malta, attacked Italian airfields at Maritiza and Callato, and shelled Rhodes? As one of the naval history books in my collection says :- 'Operation Hats was one of a number of occasions during 1940 when the presence of a British aircraft carrier convinced a potentially strong Italian fleet not to risk combat, and played a part in reducing the effectiveness of the otherwise powerful Italian fleet.'
If you think that, by avoiding action the Italian Fleet achieved some sort of success, then you presumably would consider Beda Fomm to have been a triumph of Italian arms?
Didn't you know that the British had 300 Shermans at 2nd Alamein? They also had 90 American 'Priest' SPGs. So what? At least they were willing to use them, unlike the Italian failure to risk their fleet, even when the Italian Homeland was under attack.
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carmine paola Odd, then, that in February, 1941, 28 Italian Divisions faced 14 Greek ones. And lost.
Weren't the US Navy outnumbered at Midway, or the Royal Navy in the Barents Sea or in the Biscay Action, or in the First Battle of Narvik? Being numerically inferior is not really a reason for not trying, except perhaps in your mind. Ask the Germans & Japanese, or the British & Indians at Kohima, or the Americans at Bastogne.
2nd Alamein. Actually, the respective orders of battle show, in simple numerical terms, 195,000 8th Army troops, and 116,000 German/Italian troops. The Germans and Italians, of course, were on the defensive, and behind a strongly mined position which could not be outflanked, and was strongly supported by emplaced anti-tank artillery.
The numerical inferiority hardly applied during Pedestal, did it? Yet even here the Italian fleet was conspicuous by being absent.
Do you derive some comfort from claiming false figures, or are you simply ignorant?
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carmine paola Oh dear! In a previous post, you bleated on pitifully about poor little Italy, facing:- 'a global world war when one is facing an enemy empire of '550' million strong--plus a continent of over 147 million souls--against your own population of a meagre' 57' million strong?!..' Now you drone on about Italy being justified, in order to become an imperialist power!
Perhaps Mexico should try something similar against the United States. It would end just as successfully. The fact is, the declaration of war was a cynical act by Il Duce, intended to grab French & British possessions in Africa after the armistice he expected would be imposed by Hitler, and it backfired spectacularly. Even declaring war with a fair proportion of the Italian merchant marine out of the Mediterranean, leaving it to be interned or to surrender to the Allies, was a strategic masterstroke on Italy's part.
As to the coal shipments, weren't you aware that the British government had offered to replace German coal from British stocks? The action the British took was cynically political, intended to make poor daft Benito realise that alliance with Germany was really not in Italy's best interests, and the British certainly got that one right.
As to sources, why don't you try to find some more detailed ones? Although it does rather explain a lot about the kind of nonsense you post.
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@hvermout4248 He was writing about the Peninsular War. Have you any evidence that his comments excluded any reference to the British? Other than your personal prejudice, of course, which doesn't really count.
Battle of Rolica, 17 August, 1808.
Battle of Vimeiro, 21 August, 1808.
Battle of Sahagun, 21 December, 1808.
Battle of Benvente, 29 December, 1808.
Battle of Cacabelos, 3 January, 1809.
Battle of Corunna, 16 January, 1809.
Battle of the Douro, 12 May, 1809.
Battle of Talavera, 28 July, 1809.
Battle of the River Coa, 24 July, 1810.
Battle of Busaco, 27 September, 1810.
Battle of Barossa, 5 March, 1811.
Battle of Redinha, 12 March, 1811.
Battle of Campo Maior, 25 March, 1811.
Battle of Sabugal, 3 April, 1811.
Battle of Fuentes de Onoro 3-5 May, 1811.
Battle of Albuera, 16 May, 1811.
Battle of Usagre, 25 May, 1811.
Battle of El Bodon, 25 September, 1811.
Battle of Arroyo Molinos, 28 October, 1811.
Storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, 19 January, 1812.
Storming of Badajoz, 6 April, 1812.
Battle of Villagarcia, 11 April, 1812.
Battle of Almaraz, 19 May, 1812.
Battle of Salamanca, 22 July, 1812.
Battle of Garcia Hernandez, 23 July, 1812.
Battle of Majadahonda, 11 August, 1812.
Attack on Burgos, 19 September, 1812.
That is up to the end of 1812. Odd that you haven't heard of any of them, isn't it?
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@yingyang1008 'Surely you agree it was an extremely controversial decision.'
It was a very brave decision, demonstrating to the world, and to any wavering allies, that Britain intended to continue to resist.
'A man generally despised by his own generals, admirals and staff.' As that simply isn't true, it isn't worthy of much comment. When Churchill announced the action in the Commons, he expected serious criticism, but in fact was cheered to the rafters by the members of all parties.
Certainly, some of his commanders became exasperated with him from time to time, but if you want to know how they really felt you should read Alanbrooke's memoirs.
I doubt you could recommend any reading material on these subjects to me, although it appears the reverse would apply.
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@nathijomac 10 Downing Street, like Chequers, is the residence of whoever might be the Prime Minister at any given time. No previous PM has done anything similar to Chequers, largely because neither is the property of the PM.
Changing tne interior of the residential quarters in No. 10 is perfectly acceptable, and has been done on numerous occasions, but the Thatcher Room, and the portrait, do not come into that category.
The portrait, by the way, was commissioned by one Gordon Brown, by no means a Thatcher groupie, but someone mature enough to understand her place in British history, and someone more than mature enough not to be unsettled by the images of his predecessors.
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@willnill7946 No, he didn't. Smith gave the order of 'Women & Children first.' Moreover, Lightoller was only second in command of the boats on the port side (the even numbered boats) after Chief Officer Henry Wilde. Indeed, in view od Smith's present, he may well only have been third.
Of these boats, Lightoller was certainly not responsible for the loading of boats 10, 14, & 16, and at best only partly responsible, along with Wilde, for boat 12.
The tally of survivors in each boat was as follows :-
Boat 2 18. Boat 1 12.
Boat 4 30. Boat 3 32.
Boat 6 24 Boat 5 36.
Boat 8 27. Boat 7 28
Boat 10 57 Boat 9 40.
Boat 12 41 Boat 11 50
Boat 14 40 Boat 13 55
Boat 16 52 Boat 15 66
Col. B 28 Col. A 13
Col. D 20 Col. C 43
Collapsible B was the overturned boat upon which Lightoller and the rest stood, after Lightoller had managed to launch it five minutes before Titanic's final plunge. Several additional people from Collapsible B died of exposure during the night.
Lightoller's boats therefore, carried 99 people. Compared to 108 in their opposite numbers on the starboard side. In terms of numbers did Lightoller really do anything much different to Murdoch?
Moreover, both Smith & Wilde spent their remaining time on the port side of the ship. Lightoller had two superiors probably directing his actions.
Many people seem to think that Lightoller's greatest crime was in surviving at all, I suggest.
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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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@barrysnelson4404 No. What actually matters is the reality of the resources available to the British when compared to the Germans.
As to hitler, whether he really believed in Sealion is not the point. He had made his first huge miscalculation, that Britain would come to terms, and when events like Mers el Kebir proved him wrong he first embarked on his desperate 'Appeal to Reason' otherwise known as 'surrender or we bomb you' and then fell for Goering's Douhet inspired nonsense that Britain could be forced to surrender by the Luftwaffe, largely because he (hitler) had nowhere else to go.
Whetever nonsense people like Edward VIII, Avery, or the preposterous Mitfords might have whispered into the ears of goebbels, ribbentrop, or hitler, their influence upon the Coalition Government was between minimal & non-existent.
hitler had a number of odd ideas. Why, for example, did he think declaring war on the United States was a good idea?
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' ISMAY had full intentions of getting into a lifeboat from the moment he set foot on the deck that night.' William Carter did claim that he and Ismay were ordered into the boat. Certainly, Carter was probably attempting damage limitation, as I believe that his wife alleged that he had abandoned her and his children, and divorced him soon afterwards.
Ismay, however, made no such claim. Indeed, he specifically denied that any such order was given, in his testimony to the British Inquiry :-
18557. Did you see how many passengers were put into this collapsible?
- No, I did not see at the time.
18558. Did she appear to be full?
- She was very fairly full.
18559. Would you tell us what happened after you got the women and children in?
- After all the women and children were in and after all the people that were on deck had got in, I got into the boat as she was being lowered away.
18560. There was no order to you to get in?
- No, none.
18561. Did any other passenger get in?
- One.
18562. That is a Mr. Carter?
- Mr. Carter.
18563. Am I right, then, in this, that there were women and children and some members of the crew to man the boat and two passengers, yourself and Mr. Carter?
- Yes, and four Chinamen were in the boat.
18564. Four Chinamen who, we have heard, were discovered after the boat was lowered?
- Yes.
I submit that your assumption that Ismay always intended to get into a lifeboat is based on your personal opinion of him, rather than on any verifiable facts.
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@charliefarley9658 Perhaps, then, you might answer a simple couple of questions?
1). If Ismay always planned to escape on a boat, why did he leave it until the last, almost full, collapsible?
2). When he was bowled an easy half volley outside off stump, by which I mean :-
'18560. There was no order to you to get in?'
Whey didn't he drive it to the boundary by saying something like :
' The officer supervising the loading, Mr. Murdoch I believe but I am not sure, told me to board the boat as there was still space.'
Instead of simply saying : 'No, none.'
Wouldn't the former answer, which could not be disproved, have shown him in a far more positive light than the latter? Moreover, wouldn't it actually have been the kind of answer 'a cowardly weasel and a clever cunning one at that' would really have given in an attempt to justify his survival?
The fact that there were many other passengers still aboard, alkthough not locked in steerage, doesn't really apply, as the boat was, apparently, in the process of being lowered. A collapsible had a capacity of 47. This one had 44 aboard when picked up by Carpathia.
In point of fact, I suggest that most people with much knowledge of Titanic no longer subscribe to the W. R. Hearst 'J. Brute Ismay' version of events.
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@charliefarley9658 'Do you think that Murdoch was going to tell the boss of WSL to f off?'
No, but as Murdoch died, Ismay had a golden opportunity to justify himself by claiming, when asked a specific question, that Murdoch ordered, or at least, suggested, that he should board the boat as it was being launched.
No one could have gainsaid Ismay had he answered in the affirmative Yet, he specifically denied that any such suggestion had been put to him. Odd that, for such a devious individual, I suggest?
Moreover, as Murdoch knew that he had minutes left to live, I doubt that protocol would have meant much to him.
As Sherlock Holmes said '“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Inevitably one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
You are, frankly, twisting facts by attributing motives of your own devising, to suit your belief that Ismay was fundamentally wicked.
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@williamtyson9503 Why bring up PoW's hits? Because they were the reason Lutjens abandoned his primary mission and made for St. Nazaire. Hood and PoW were in the Denmark Strait in order to prevent a German breakout into the wider Atlantic. Because of PoW's hits, that is what, actually, they did.
As there were two British and only one German capital ships present, it was inevitable that one of the RN Ships would not be under heavy fire at the start of the action. PoW, far from battle-ready, was only expected to play a supporting role, and Leach sensibly withdrew after his ship suffered a number of main gun failures, although he did briefly reengage later on the same day. The fact that Hood blew up could hardly be attributed to PoW.
I do agree, however, that my phrasing earlier was unfortunate, in that I probably should have written:- 'PoW inflicted more damage on Bismarck than vice versa during the course of the action.'
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@pacificostudios 1). Any 'what if' discussion must begin from a real starting point in history. Therefore the idea that Britain's radar defences might not work is irrelevant. They did.
2). Prince of Wales & Repulse were sunk by high performance torpedo bombers flown by crews trained in anti-shipping techniques. The Germans of 1940 had neither. Indeed, they did not acquire a half-decent torpedo bomber until mid-1942.
3). 'Without fighter cover, the Luftwaffe would have bombed and strafed the RN units mercilessly.' You mean like they were supposed to have done at Dunkirk, but failed so to do, even when the ships were stationary, and largely unable to defend themselves?
If your mighty Luftwaffe could not take advantage of these circumstances, what leads you to conclude that it would have performed better when facing fast moving destroyers and light cruisers, able to take evasive action? Indeed, how do you explain the fact that the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers in the whole of WW2, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser? To put that into persepective, the RN began WW2 with 193 destroyers, and ended it with over 400.
4). To sum up, you seem to follow the approach of a typical Sealion 'would have', pontificating sagely on what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done, but oddly silent on why, in the actual events of the time, it never actually appears to have come close to achieving any of these wondrous feats.
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@pacificostudios You do seem to take immediate offence at being corrected. Actually, if Mr. Drachinifel says something with which I disagree, I will indeed challenge him. I expect his answer would be rather less choleric, and certainly more measured and reasoned, than yours.
However, his command of his subject is masterful, and, in particular, his analysis of the loss of HMS Hood, for example, was superb. Thus, the issue has never arisen.
The rest of your post bears no relevance to my comments, by the way. You are commenting about Fighter Command, whereas I have simply been correcting your lack of knowledge about the naval situation. I would refer you to the Sandhurst War Game of 1974, but doubtless you are already fully aware of it. A friend of mine knew Paddy Griffith when at University at Lancaster, by the way, and has lots of insider knowledge about the game.
'I know you're a "later historian" because Group Captain Peter Wooldridge Townsend, CVO, DSO, DFC died over 30 years ago, at age 80. You're not over 100 years old, I trust.' Perhaps this is the barmiest comment I have read for days. Aside from the fact that I have access to many original archives from both German & British sources, as a secondary subject at University I studied the Peloponnesian War and read Thucydides, who died in 400 B.C. To use your odd reasoning, must I now be around 2400 years old?
Perhaps you might ask yourself whether, in order to have an opinion, it is necessary to be contemporary with the events under discussion, in other words.
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@alexandros4703 'OK Einstein, then tell us why there was no insurance paid out to WSL for that collision?'
Because a court held that RMS Olympic was responsible for the collision, even though she was not under the charge of a White Star officer, but of a Solent Pilot, at the time.
Thus, the insurance with Lloyds was invalidated. Fortunately, H & W were able to complete repairs in about seven weeks, and White Star paid them around £25,000 This was a nuisance, but hardly serious to a company as successful as White Star.Indeed, the order for Britannic was placed in the same month, November 1911, that Olympic returned to sea.
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@alexandros4703 ' "as successful" heee, that's funny 😅 next you'll be telling us they went on to become passenger cruise ship company of the year.'
Oh dear. Back to insults rather than debate, I observe. Sad.
The following is from Mark Chirnside :-
"The company’s surplus on the profit and loss account had risen from $48,585 in 1910 to $821,062 in the year ending December 31 st 1911. Even if the insurance would not pay out the $750,000, IMM would have remained in surplus. In 1910, IMM’s net profit was a mighty $4,849,580, and this slipped to $4,509,270 in 1911. As for the White Star Line itself, it was ‘the principal constituent’ of IMM and ‘enjoyed continued prosperity, its profit distribution for 1910 being 30 percent’ after depreciation. In fact, White Star’s profit and loss account for the year to December 31 st 1911 was in surplus by £1,102,756 – even higher than IMM’s."
£ 1,102, 756 in 1911 equates to just short of £110 million in 2024. I would say that was a successful company. Wouldn't you?
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@sucharee801 Unfortunately, the findings of the Court are in the National Archives at Kew, but have not yet been digitised, and therefore cannot be reproduced on line, either in my 'usual cut and paste' form or any other.
However, to quote, yes, in cut and paste' form, a brief explanation, here you are:-
Olympic was operating under compulsory pilotage. When entering and leaving busy ports, a harbour pilot will board the ship to guide her in or out of port. Because the pilot is more familiar with the local waters, and the location of any hazards, the danger of an accident is, supposedly, reduced. The ship’s crew, including the Captain, are required by law to follow the pilot’s orders unless there are extenuating circumstances.
The harbour pilot aboard Olympic was a man named George Bowyer. He had been responsible for guiding Olympic out of Southampton on all of her previous voyages. This was to be her fifth voyage and she was booked almost to capacity. Unfortunately, Bowyer made a few critical mistakes in his handling of Olympic this time around. His first mistake was taking too wide of a turn into the channel. Olympic ended up too far south in the channel, leaving too little room for Hawke to maneuvre.
He also misjudged the relative speed of the two ships. Olympic’s speed had dropped during her turn into the channel because the port engine was running astern to assist in the turn. When Hawke was first sighted by Bowyer, she appeared to be passing Olympic, which meant that by law she had to yield right-of-way to Olympic. He apparently ceased paying attention to Hawke after that. When Olympic began picking up speed again, she began to pull ahead, and that was when the suction from her wake pulled Hawke into her side.
As a side note, Captain Smith saw that a collision was going to happen and tried to warn Bowyer, but Bowyer reacted too slowly to avoid it. The subsequent court case ruled that Olympic was at fault, but the White Star Line was not liable because she was operating under compulsory pilotage. The court record shoes the conversation to have been as follows:-
'Captain Smith: “I do not believe he will go under our stern Bowyer.”
Bowyer: “If she is going to strike let me know in time to put our helm hard-aport.”
Smith did not reply immediately, and a few seconds later Bowyer asks: “Is she going to strike us or not, sir?”
Smith: “Yes Bowyer, she is going to strike us in the stern.”
Bowyer calls out: “Hard-aport!” and helmsman QM Albert Haines just manages to get Olympic’s wheel over hard to his right when Hawke struck.'
Bowyer, in court, was questioned over his seamanship in navigating Olympic in those waters. He argued that the new vessels were getting too but he, was found responsible for the incident.
Bowyer also wrote about the Olympic collision in his memoirs, "Lively Ahoy - Reminiscences Of 58 Years In The Trinity House Pilotage Serviice.'
Through the "Olympic" - "Hawke" case, the late Capt. E. J. Smith, the officers, and I told the truth and nothing but the truth. It was taken to the House of Lords, but the verdict was not altered, the "Olympic" losing the case. However, the company thought we were right, and I have piloted the "Olympic," the "Homeric," and the "Majestic," hundreds of times, up to my retirement on December 31st, 1929.
The Court records are very dry, and phrased in the legalistic language of the time. They are stored in five full document boxes.
The above is a brief synopsis of the findings.
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@ricoh.3162 'there wasnt a Problem with unprotectet comm or Power cables but dead people cant answer.' Well, von Mullenheim-Rechberg thought that there was, and he was in the best position to know. Communications broke down at a very early stage.
The British 16 in never achieved the reliability of the 15 inch, which was classified by the US navy after WW2 as the best capital ship gun of the 20th Century, but it certainly did the job required of it. I refer you to the Bismarck action for further information.
As to North Cape, DoY hit Scharnhorst with her first salvo, and 31 of 52 broadsides were straddles. Again, when called upon, 'the worst guns of all modern WW2 Battleships' seem to have done everything required of them.
I'm sorry you seem to think that the use of Force Concentration by the British at North Cape was rather unsporting. Perhaps the British had not been informed that, in war, the laws of cricket or the rules of tennis did not apply.
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@TTTT-oc4eb None of it true? So, Bismarck didn't have twin guns in four turrets, or low angle 5.9 inch secondaries, or incremental rather than AoN armour, or internal communications that were destroyed at an early stage, as von Mullenheim-Rechberg stated. Or a lighter broadside than any British battleship in service? Which of this isn't true.
Actually, I have a First in Modern History, specialising in naval aspects of WW1 & WW2. I have written a number of books and articles on the subject. Put simply, Naval History is what I do.
However, feel free to challenge any of the above, mon vieux.
Or, at least, to try.
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@spikenomoon What 'interrogation notes?' If you mean the evidence given at the American & British Inquiries, then yes, I have copies of both.
Perhaps you are referring to this, from the British Inquiry. Part of Evans'evidence?
8989. Did you call up the "Titanic"?
- Yes.
8990. Can you give me the time?
- It was 9.5 p.m..
8991. New York time?
- Yes, 11 o'clock ship's time.
8992. What did you say?
- I said, "We are stopped and surrounded by ice."
8993. Did you get an answer from the "Titanic"?
- They said, "Keep out."
8994. Just explain to us, will you, what that means?
- Well, Sir, he was working to Cape Race at the time. Cape Race was sending messages to him, and when I started to send he could not hear what Cape Race was sending.
8995. Does that mean that you would send louder than Cape Race to him?
- Yes; and he did not want me to interfere.
8996. That would interrupt his conversation with Cape Race?
- Yes.
8997. So that he asked you to "keep out"?
- Yes.
8998-9. In ordinary Marconi practice is that a common thing to be asked?
- Yes. And you do not take it as an insult or anything like that.
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There was a Syrian Brown Bear called Wojtek which was acquired by the Poles in Iran, and remained with them until the end of the war, allegedly helping to carry boxes of 25 pounder shells to their field guns at Cassino.
After the war, he arrived with the Polish 22nd Artillery Supply Company in Scotland (having by then attained the rank of corporal) and was handed over to Edinburgh Zoo after 'demob.' He subsequently lived a long, uneventful, life, until 1963, when he died at the age of 21, weighing 35 stones, and reaching over six feet tall.
There are numerous memorials to him, including one in the Imperial War Museum.
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Beatty was extremely wealthy, married to an even more wealthy American heiress, and very well connected. Subsequently, as First Sea Lord, he was able to 'doctor' the official report on Jutland.
In his favour, however, as FSL, he argued strongly, though ultimately in vain, against the foolish decision to hand over control of naval aviation to the Royal Navy's most intransigent enemy, the Royal Air Force. As a result, the RAF systematically destroyed the Fleet Air Arm between the wars.
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@xavierthorn1273 Nonsense! In September, 1940, the Kriegsmarine had one heavy cruiser (Hipper) in service. Prinz Eugen did not complete until early 1941. The two battleships (Scharnhorst & Gneisenau) had both been torpedoed during the Norwegian campaign, and didn't complete repairs until November, 1940, the eleven light cruisers were actually three (Emden, Koln, & Nurnberg) although you could add Leipzig, I suppose. She had been extensively damaged in December 1939, and was partially repaired for use as a training ship. 57 U-boats? In September, 1940 actually 61 in commission. However, 34 of these were older training boats or new boats working up in the Baltic. There were only 27 frontboote, of which 13 were at sea on any one day in September. You could add the armoured cruisers, except that Deutchland/Lutzow had been torpedoed off Norway, and repairs didn't complete until April, 1941, whilst Scheer didn't complete a refit in Danzig until late September.
As to destroyers, in September, 1939, there were 22. However 12 had been sunk mid 1940, and in September 1940 three were refitting, leaving seven operational. There were also six Wolf/Mowe class torpedo boats (similar to British escort destroyers or American DEs).
Don't believe me? Look them up for yourself.
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'Capt Smith was influenced by J Bruce Ismay to speed thru the night knowing how difficult it would be to see the icebergs! It was his retirement voyage.' There is no proof that Ismay influenced Smith in this manner. Indeed, the only overheard comment made by him was that Titanic was making better time that Olympic had.
It is possible that Smith, as White Star's senior captain, intended to retire after taknig Britannic on her maiden voyage.
Binoculars would have made no difference, except possibly delaying the warning by a few seconds. The norm at the time was that lookouts reported sightings, and Bridge Officers with binoculars determined what they were.
Olympic was built using the same materials, and was a successful liner for 23 years.
'Turning the ship away from the iceberg was another fatal mistake they should have hit it head on !' Easy to say in retrospect, but do you really believe a ship's officer would allow a collision, when a swift helm change might have avoided one completely?
'Originally scheduled to have 40 + lifeboats on board which was later reduced to only 16 by ismay.' Not true. Alexander Carlisle's evidence was that he designed the Olympics to be able to carry 48 lifeboats, in the event that the Board of Trade changed their regulations. However, as they didn't, the ships were equipped with 20, actually more than regulations demanded. There is precisely no evidence that Ismay or any other White Star official interfered in the design process.
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@russcooke5671 U19 was launched in October, 1912, in Danzig. There are even photographs of the event, as the design marked an advance on the earlier, more primitive, paraffin engined boats the German navy had produced.
You haven't explained, understandably, why the Germans would seek to bring about war with the Triple Entente, and perhaps the United States as well, in 1912, but feel free so to do. I eagerly anticipate the amusement of reading your response.
At the same time, you might care to address a specifically technical matter. Assuming that your imaginary submarine, and a U19 class boat had a surfaced maximum speed of 15 knots, compared to Titanic's 20+, managed to reach Nova Scotia, how was it even able, in the pitch darkness, to locate the target. Using her radar or air reconnaissance, perhaps?!
I agree, you will never make sense to me. Nor to anyone else reading your nonsense, I suspect.
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@Jeremy-y1t Bismarck was, of course, totally undamaged. Unless you consider that the loss of her bridge and command staff, her main and most of her secondary armament, and her internal communications might have been damage?
Or, perhaps the fact that she was increasingly settling by the stern, developing a serious list, and was a mass of internal fires, might also have been relevant?
Robert Ballard, when asked who sank Bismarck, replied 'The British.' David Mearns said that any attempt to scuttle Bismarck would have brought forward the sinking by 'a matter of minutes, only.'
Actually, the final action saw Bismarck reduced from a warship to a gunnery target in around 20 minutes by two battleships and two heavy cruisers. Not that it matters, as fairness might apply in sport, but it never did in war.
By the way, I have just realised who you are. A troll is a troll, under whatever name.
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@KPW2137 'A perfect reply from a RN fan, wouldn't expect anything else.' You mean pointing out a few facts, rather than relying solely on prejudice. Thamk you.
Scharnhorst - No, it is not a fact. But the comments I made about the weather and sea conditions were. I observe that you have not addressed them. You cannot challenge facts, of course.
I did write that survivors from sinking ships were unavoidably left behind. Perhaps your attention span had lapsed by that point?
The German navy's first unrestricted submarine warfare campaign began in February, 1915, and in WW2 from 3 September, 1939. Are you saying that such a policy was fair when Germany introduced it, but a war crime when followed by the USN or RN?
If you didn't have double standards, I doubt you would have any standards at all. You claim that Sharnhorst & Gneisenau were justified in not stopping to pick up survivors (actually, you are correct) but when the Royal or US navies follow the same approach, that suddenly becomes a war crime?
You must be German. The idea that shooting at other people is fine, but when the other people shoot back it is unfair, is characteristically Germanic.
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@KPW2137 As for the Scharnhorst we have reports from the participants of the battle, we have survivors interviews, we have quite a clear picture that regardless of the conditions, a lot of people were left in the water to die, just like that.' Do we? Perhaps you might supply your source? Perhaps she wasn't sunk in Winter, in a storm, in the dark, at all, then?
'Also, you conveniently leave one important aspect regarding the survivors: in all cases except HMS Glorious German surface ships were leaving survivors behind as there were enemy vessels around, or incoming whereas the RN did not care much in this regard.' Nonsense. The B-Dienst team aboard Gneisenau were able to monitor RN radio traffic,, and knew that no RN warship or shore station had responded to Glorious' distress signal. The Royal Navy did not know about her sinking until it was announced on German radio.
'As for the unrestricted submarine warfare, thanks for the wrong implication.' What wrong implication? That Germany did not introduce it in February 1915, and then hurredly abandon it after worldwide revulsion about the sinking of Lusitania. Indeed, when it was re-introduced in desperation in early 1917, the immediate effect was to bring the United States into the war on the Allied side. Certainly, it was practised by all sides in WW2, but the subject of this video is 'Allied War Crimes' in WW2. Indeed, the Kaiser's navy carried out a number of questionable actions in WW1, mainly if not entirely by U-boats as the High Seas Fleet stayed safely in port after Jutland, but how is that relevant to events in WW2?
'Funny part is that I'm not German, quite on the contrary - it's just that I do not like double standards.' You mean 'double standards' such as your absurd claim that 'By comparison, there was ONE instance of a Kriegsmarine ship gunning down survivors.'
I don't like double standards either. Especially when they are based on ignorance, either accidental or deliberate, whichever yours might be.
'Where do I even begin?' Perhaps by getting the occasional fact right?
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@KPW2137 I'm sure you don';t wish to respond, given that my reaction is to prove your comments to be false.
I am glad that you can recall details of 50 years old documentaries, but saddened that you haven't bothered to read actual accounts of the events of the battle in the many books on the subject. I presume that you don't even know that, in the prevailing light and weather conditions, Bruce Fraser did not even receive confirmation of the sinking until over fifteen minutes after it happened? No, of course you don't.
To quote from Richard Woodman ( 'Arctic Convoys'), 'The smoke hanging over the scene, even in the wind-whipped darkness, prevented a single observer in any of the British ships from seeing the Scharnhorst finally founder. Only a dull underwater explosion reported by some of them marked her going.
Still unable to accept what had happened Fraser, showing signs of the strain he had so long borne, sent a series of frntic signals tov his ships demanding confirmation. It was over half an hour before Belfast replied.'
I have several books on the subject. Would you like me to recommend a few, or do you wish to stick to your personal prejudices instead?
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@nightjarflying Britain & France had already warned Germany that they would declare war should Germany invade Poland. It was an attempt to warn hitler of the consequences of such an action, in the hope that it would bring German military aggression to an end, and avert a wider European war.
It was easier for Germany, of course. The Germans invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium, and the Soviet Union, without declaring war on any of them.
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Nonsense.
The British were already fighting in North Africa, and had been since mid-1940. After the US became active participants, the only place where their troops could be deployed in the West, once the impossibility of Marshall's ideas for a landing in France had become obvious, was also North Africa. After the conclusion of the campaign, where else, realistically, could the substantial allied forces in the theatre have gone?
Moreover, if Italy had not capitulated, where would the 350,000 German troops based in Italy in June 1944 have gone?
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@bigwoody4704 Presumably, you aren't aware that Germany had also declared war, and was inflicting serious losses on the US mercantile marine, largely as a result of Ernie King? Your lack of knowledge continues to impress.
The British were in North Africa because of the Italian invasion of Egypt in 1940. It became the only place Germany could be brought to battle on land, after George Marshall had been persuaded that an attempted landing in France was a recipe for disaster. I believe he realised this after seeing the US army in action at Kasserine? Can you even contemplate what would probably have happened if this same army had tried to land in France in 1942?
The North African campaign was overwhelmingly a British and Commonwealth one. A small US force did take part, alongside British First Army, right at the end, of course.
Thank heavens most Americans I speak to are not as dementedly anti-British as you are. Of course, they tend to be academics and military or naval historians, whose views are based on actual knowledge, rather than blind prejudice.
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@bigwoody4704 'I've seen you scat spread across these boards taking your shots at the GIs long after affairs have been settled.' No, you haven't. I cannot recall ever being critical of the US military in WW2 (except of course, for utter fools like Ernie King or Mark Clark) and I have been equally critical of similar British & Commonwealth fools in similar senior positions. It is one of the requirements of being an historian, admittedly one whose writings mainly cover naval matters.
I recall a comment my late father made some years ago. His regiment landed at Salerno with Fifth Army, under the command of Clark. He said, when I asked him about Clark, that 'The difference between the British & American officers in Fifth Army was that, whereas most British officers disliked Clark, most American ones detested him.'
'Why was Churchill sitting in the Whitehouse at the time?' To discuss the future prosecution of the war with Britain's greatest ally, of course. FDR had invited Churchill and his staff, and Churchill was hardly going to refuse.
I will ignore your ramblings about the Falklands. To follow your argument, such as it is, the logical conclusion would be that the only people with any right to be in North America are the Native Americans and the Inuit. Are you intending to leave soon?
Indeed, the Japanese NEARLY took Port Moresby, but didn't. The Japanese managed one significant raid on Darwin, but that was all. Neither the IJN nor the IJA ever seriously argued for an attack on Australia, as it was far outside their 'Co-Prosperity Sphere' and equally far in excess of their resources.
There were large numbers of US troops in Australia because it was a secure starting point for the eventual counter-attack against Japan, much as there were large numbers of US troops in Britain because it was the intended launch pad for landings in France. Neither country was in any serious danger of invasion, and US troops stationed there were not intended as defensive forces.
Truly, the depth of your ignorance and the extent of your Anglophobic remarks amazes me.
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@leonidfro8302 Oh? For a delusional individual, he seemed to do quite well for himself, I suggest.
Oh, and as Clement Attlee stated in the House of Commons in April, 1946,
'In the period from 1st October, 1941, to 31st March, 1946, we supplied to the Soviet Union 5,218 tanks, of which 1,388 were from Canada. We supplied 7,411 aircraft, including 3,129 aircraft sent from the United States of America. As previously explained on the 10th May, 1944, the aircraft from the United States of America were sent on United States Lend Lease to the Soviet Union as part of the British commitment to the U.S.S.R. in exchange for the supply of British aircraft to United States Forces in the European Theatre. The total value of military supplies despatched amounts to approximately £308 million. We have also sent about £120 million of raw materials, foodstuffs, machinery, industrial plant, medical supplies and hospital equipment.'
Was old Clem delusional as well? In fact, is everyone who questions your opinion equally delusion?
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The Germans never came close. Doenitz worked on a calculation that, in order to bring Britain to terms, 600,000 tons of shipping per month needed to be sunk. By the end of 1941, the Germans on only exceeded 300,000 tons on three occasions. Usually, they were below 200,000 tons. After December, 1941, even 600,000 was a serious underestimation.
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@abntemplar82 Try again little chap. The first battleship to be fitted with radar was HMS Rodney, with a Type 79m set, in January, 1939. Bismarck did indeed have radar, Fumo 23, which was used to target HMS Norfolk on the evening of 23 May. The concussion of her forward guns disabled her own forward radar, which was out of action for the rest of her short life.
As to her advanced construction. Firstly she was built with incremental armour, inferior to that fitted to every US battleship since Navada in 1912, and to that fitted to the Nelsons and the KGVs. Secondly, she had four twin turrets, at a time when other navies had moved on to multiple gunned turrets. This increased her length and displacement significantly. Thirdly her secondary armament was the more or less useless 5.9 inch low angle gun, when the US and RN had moved to DP weapons in their latest designs. Fourthly, her internal communications were above her main strength deck, and were disabled early in her final action.
'Further it is not just an American, British and Japanese ideology to keep shooting till your enemy is incapable of returning fire.' But that wasn't what I said, was it?
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'Mount Temple' A journalist, Senan Molony, made the claim in a supposed 'documentary' from late 2020, called 'Titanic: A Dead Reckoning''
The show repeated some old claims about Mount Temple and its role in the disaster, and made some new ones. Among these claims, it was said that Mount Temple was much closer to Titanic when the SOS was received, that Mount Temple approached to within five miles (8.0 km) of Titanic when Captain Moore decided to retreat after encountering the ice field in an attempt to avoid risk to his own ship, and that Mount Temple matched the appearance of the "mystery ship" that was being observed from Titanic because of the distance between her four masts, as later observed by the commander of the raider which sank Mount Temple in World War I.
Unfortunately, Mr. Molony did not bother to mention that the generally-accepted 'mystery ship' SS Californian, was very similar in appearance to Mount Temple. Just look up photographs of the two. Obviously, he wouldn't have mentioned that, as it rather scuppered his claims.
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The Germans did build eight U151 class boats in WW1, which were originally intended to be unarmed cargo carrying submarines, as a means of evading the blockade imposed by the Royal Navy's Northern Patrol.
The first, Deutschland, mad two successful round trips to the US, but the second, Bremen, was lost on her maiden voyage, probably either to a mine or to a torpedo from a British boat, G13. The remainder were completed as warships, with two bow tubes and two deck guns. Deutschland was similarly converted, but with six tubes, and the boats were numbered 151 to 157, the ex Deutschland being 155.
Although impressive as a means of propaganda, and very large by contemporary submarine standards, the cargo capacity was, at 700 tons, relatively small.
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@Drachinifel Thanks for the reply. I appreciate the point about the ranges of Piorun's 4.7s compared to her torpedoes, of course.
I had always understood that Piorun, although part of the escort of WS8B, had not been part of DF4, and had not previously worked with Vian's ships. Accordingly, I thought that she was operating independently, or at least semi-independently, during the action.
Of course, you are right, but it does occur to me that the actions of Plawski, whilst undoubtedly gallant, were perhaps a trifle quixotic? I wonder if, given several hours of darkness ahead of him, he might possibly have manoeuvred into a more favourable attack position? Still, I have never been keen on 'what ifs' and it is easy to make such comments from a comfy chair 80 years later!
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@iggo45 'Museums are places where objects are exhibited, which are found or come from, the place that surrounds them.'
Really? Is that why the Metropolitan Museum in New York hs around 30,000 artifacts of Classical origin? Who would have thought that either Greece or Rome had such large colonies in the New World?
'Even the Islamists did not think to touch them.' Apart, of course, from using the ruin that was the Parthenon for, at various times, a munitions store and a gunnery target, and then breaking up some of the stones for road fill, you mean?
'when we got back our liberty from islamic law of occupation.' Actually, you didn't. After the Greek revolt had been largely crushed by Turkish & Egyptian forces by 1826, the British, French, & Russians sent warships & troops to expel them. Presumably, the Battle of Navarino passed you by?
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@aprilmay578 Operation Dynamo was indeed a success for the Royal Navy. Lifting 338,000 troops was a major achievement, after the hundred divisions of the French army had collapsed. Operation Jubilee was a failed raid, which lasted one day.
Against that, you might weigh the Battle of the Atlantic, Operation Compass, the Defeat of Operation U-Go, the Arctic convoys, the destruction of most of the surface ships of the German Fleet, the Allied (largely British & Commonwealth) victory in North Africa, the successful Torch landings, the Husky landings, Avalanche, and Neptune, all assault landings planned and mainly executed by the Royal Navy, and of course D-Day in Normandy itself, where two of every three men who landed on the five beaches were British & Canadian.
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@aprilmay578 Indeed it was. However, of 4127 landing craft, 3261 were British manned, of 1213 warships, 892 were British & Canadian, two thirds of the 11,600 aircraft were British. The air, sea, and land commanders on 6 June, by the way, were all British.
Oh, and the ships which destroyed the German U-Boats which attempted to intervene were from British & Canadian Atlantic Escort Groups, and most of the ships which carried out the pre-landing minesweeping were RN or RCN.
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@alexedwards6509 I will ignore the insult at the end of your post, but will simply comment upon your own understanding, as you have incorrectly used the word 'governance.'
Governance is the system that provides a framework for managing organisations. It identifies who can make decisions, who has the authority to act on behalf of the organisation and who is accountable for how an organisation and its people behave and perform. I refer you to Harold Wilson's book, 'The Governance of Britain' which dealt with the actual management of government, not the preparation for government.
The word you should have used, of course, was 'government'. It therefore seems that I understand words rather better than you do, mon vieux.
I won't comment further, but will simply refer you to Abbott's error-ridden political career, which, thankfully, never resulted in high office, or anything approaching it.
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@serpentblade8704 Didn't your indoctrinators tell you the real reasons for the 1943 Bengal Famine. Oh, well. Try to understand this :-
The Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of the British Government was that they should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, they had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
Perhaps you are unaware thaw 2.5 million Indians joined the Allied cause in WW2 (without any form of conscription, by the way). Are you really silly enough to believe that the British would deliberately engineer a famine which might lead to a mass rising?
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it require you to challenge your programming. .
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What role did the Americans play in 1939 or 1940? Or, indeed, until the Lend-Lease Act was signed in March, 1941? Until Lend-Lease, the US was happy selling supplies to the British. Indeed, the US only became, reluctantly, involved when Japan and Germany forced her hand.
As to battles, or, rather, campaigns, presumably you mean apart from the Battle of the Atlantic, the defence of Russian convoys, or the campaign in the Mediterranean, all won by the Royal Navy with minor US assistance.
Then you might look at the assault landings in the west. All except one planned and executed by the Royal Navy. Or D-Day, where the Britrish & Canadian forces involved dwarfed those ofb the US.
I assume you have evidence for 'Without the Americans, Churchill would have surrendered?' Sorry, my mistake. Of course you don't.
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How did what you apparently regard as 'lessons' from 1941 have any influence on 1940? Oh, and Prince of Wales was sunk by torpedo bombers. How many of these aircraft did the Luftwaffe have in 1940? NONE actually.
In fact, the Luftwaffe had had no training in anti-shipping techniques in 1940, hence the extent of the Luftwaffe's failure at Dunkirk.
Furthermore, in the whole of WW2, the Luftwaffe, your wonderful Ju87s included, sank some 31 RN destroyers, and no Royal Navy warship larger than a light cruiser. In September, 1940, the RN had around 70 light cruisers and destroyers within five hours of Dover.
It is amazing how much better the Luftwaffe was at what it 'would have' done than at what, historically, it actually did. At least in the ill-informed minds of you 'Sealion was possible' people.
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@davidbradford7105 Your understanding is in error. Both Repulse and Prince of Wales were hit each by one bomb. Damage was slight. Torpedo bombers sank them.
All Mitchell demonstrated was that a battleship without a crew, without the means of self defence, with armoured bulkheads left open, and remaining motionless could, eventually be sunk by aircraft.
I observe that, once again, you, like most Sealion fans, say what the Luftwaffe 'would have done.' I have already told you what, historically, it did (or, more accurately, did not) do. What makes you think that the Royal Navy would have been sent to Canada? Did Cunningham abandon the army on Crete in May, 1941? Crete was lost because of the failings of Freyberg and his commanders, but the Mediterranean Fleet achieved everything that was demanded of it. No axis forces landed by sea until the decision to evacuate had been made. One invasion convoy was annihilated by a cruiser squadron and a second withdrew to Greece to avoid the same fate. Why do you think that the British Chiefs of Staff would have abandoned their greatest asset?
Put simply, you are making claims without any credible arguments to support them.
I wasn't making any point about Dover. I was simply pointing out how close to the Channel huge RN defensive forces were in September. What, indeed, does 'Dover would not have been possible without the RAF' even mean?
'Untrained pilots with heavy bombs sunk a few heavy cruisers in WWII.' Really, which RN heavy cruisers were sunk by German heavy bombs in WW2? The historical records must have missed them.
Finally, I observe that you haven't explained the failure of the Luftwaffe at Dunkirk. Understandable, as Sealion promoters tend to avoid that subject.
Perhaps you should look up the Sandhurst War Game of 1974? Even with a few adjustments to the facts in order to make a German landing even possible, the bulk of the RN forces being moved back to avoid the immediate annihilation of large numbers of towed barges, for example, the result was a crushing victory for the Royal Navy.
'Nearly all Sealion was a success.' How? It was never attempted. No barges ever put to sea. The only contribution to the German cause it made was the increase in British convoy losses until November, because most destroyer escorts had been withdrawn in order to bolster the anti-invasion flotillas in Plymouth & the Nore.
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The following tribute was written by a former member of Warspite's crew, who saw the Old Lady in Prussia Cove, Marazion, after she had broken away from her tow en route to the Breakers. I defy anyone not to be moved by his words:-
"The Subject"
You say you have no subject
And your brushes all have dried;
But come to Marazion
At the ebbing of the tide.
And look you out to seaward,
Where my Lady, battle scarred
Hugs the rock that is more welcome,
Than the shameful breakers yard.
Paint her there upon the sunset
In her glory and despair,
With the diadem of victory
Still in flower upon her hair.
Let her whisper as she settles
Of her blooding long ago,
In the mist that mingles Jutland
With the might of Scapa Flow.
Let her tell you, too, of Narvik
With its snowy hills, and then
Of Matapan, Salerno
And the shoals of Walcheren;
And finally of Malta,
When along the purple street
Came in trail the Roman Navy
To surrender at her feet.
Of all these honours conscious,
How could she bear to be
Delivered to the spoiler
Or severed from the sea ?
So hasten then and paint her
In the last flush of her pride
On the rocks of Marazion,
At the ebbing of the tide.
Lt-Cmdr R A B Mitchell.
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@thegreatdominion949 Perhaps you should not simply believe everything you view in a video? I have come across no such 'directive' in the Admiralty archives at Kew, and I use them regularly for research purposes. As two previous encounters had resulted in captains being admonished for standing off and, supposedly, using too much ammunition, I question whether totally opposite instructions would have been applied in Sydney's case.
Moreover, Sydney was not on patrol searching for raiders, but simply returning to Fremantle after delivering a troopship to the Sunda Strait. I am not trying to justify Burnett's actions which were certainly foolish. I am simply suggesting that he should not be demonised by the suggestion that he disobeyed orders.
As a overflight by his Walrus was likely to have told him nothing, given that Kormoran's armament was well concealed, his only means of identifying Kormoran/Straat Malakka was by visual inspection, interrogation, and signal. He had attempted these, but of course whilst the ship's identity was uncertain, closing the range was indeed an unwise thing to do.
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@502days Just out of interest, how can someone 'talk sense and shut the fk up while your at it' as that is a physical impossibility.
Instead of resorting to insults and obscenities, why not simply look at what the Admiralty Inspection Report, with which the Board of Trade and White Star, both of whom had separation inspection teams, concurred? The summing up of the damage was as follows :- “Two major watertight compartments were flooded, hull plating gashed from the Orlop deck to E deck, and the starboard propeller shafting damaged.”
No mention of keel damage at all. Or, at least, not until Robin Gardiner invented some in his book from the 1990s. Indeed, how could Olympic's keel have been damaged, given that Olympic's draught was 34' 7" and HMS Hawke's was 24' ?
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No, they didn't. The essential difference was that the Germans were attacking a neutral country, which had previously refused to allow RN warships into their waters. Once the RN was able to act, the German surface fleet was badly mauled, losing 50% of their entire destroyer force.
By September, 1940, the German operational surface fleet had been reduced to one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, seven destroyers and seven large torpedo boats.
Moreover, unlike Norway, British was fully prepared.
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@VascoDaGamaOtRupcha My point is clear enough, and I certainly didn't suggest that Norway was not occupied.
As I wrote, Norway was a neutral country, and had not allowed the Royal Navy into her waters. The Germans had already occupied Denmark, and the waters between Germany & Norway were not patrolled by the British.
Calais to Dover is irrelevant, as the invasion barges were towed, in pairs by tugs and barges, from Dunkirk, Rotterdam, & Ostend to Folkestone & New Romney, Calais & Antwerp to Hastings & Rye, Boulogne & Le Havre to Eastbourne & Bexhill, and Le Havre to Beachy Head & Brighton.
As these barges were being towed at little above walking pace, some of them, according to the Kriegsmarine, would require three days to make the crossing. By September, the Royal Navy had 70 light cruisers and destroyers within five hours steaming of the Straits, with around five hundred smaller warships in support.
By contrast, Norway had a tiny navy, and was attacked without warning. In the campaign, the Germans lost ten destroyers (half of their total availability), one heavy cruiser (half of the two they had available), and two, of six cruisers, with a third so crippled as to be fit only for training duties thereafter. One panzership, of two available, was so crippled as to be unfit for service until Spring 1941, and both battleships crippled and put out of action until November, 1940.
As the German campaign was described by a naval historian, Dr. P. R. Possony, later, 'A fleet had been sacrificed to gain a base, but the base had little value without the fleet.'
The fact is that the Kriegsmarine never recovered from the losses it suffered during the campaign, with the result that it could offer nothing more than superficial protection to any attempt to invade Britain.
If you think that the two operations have any similarity whatsoever, you are sadly mistaken.
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@MrLewkon I appreciate that facts mean little or nothing to you, but actually there were 2353 British pilots who took part in the Battle of Britain. There were a further 574 pilots from outside the U.K., of which 328 were from outside the Commonwealth. 145 of these were Polish, and 88 Czech. There were two Polish Squadrons. Certainly, they made a significant contribution, but you are over-stating it to the point of silliness.
Just to educate you further, Britain withdraw her forces from France as a result of the French & Belgian armies collapsing. The BEF consisted of 13 divisions only.
The Germans had 4500 paratroops in May, 1940, and lost around a third of them during the campaign in the Low Countries. By the end of August, 1940, the Luftwaffe had only just over 220 operational transport aircraft available. Moreover, how long do you expect lightly armed paratroops to survive without reinforcements from ground troops, and where were these to come from, as the Channel was dominated by the Royal Navy?
So, no. Your post does not make sense.
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@MrLewkon I will attempt to keep this simple. Firstly, Britain had a comparatively small population, but maintained the largest navy on earth. Britain was not a major land power, and the policy in 1939-40 was the same as in 1914, in that the French army provided most of the troops on the Western Front, whilst the British & Commonwealth contingent was slowly expanded by conscription in Britain and the arrival of troops from overseas, particularly Canada, Australia, New Zealand, & India.
Secondly, overseas pilots, particularly from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, & France, had arrived in Britain with the intention of continuing to fight against the people who had conquered their own nations. Many were already experienced pilots, and, therefore, why shouldn't they have been given the opportunity? You seem to think that Fighter Command was a private, Britons only, Gentleman's Club. It wasn't.
Thirdly, of course pilots of Transport, Fighter, & Bomber aircraft, are different. What relevance has this comment to anything.
Fourthly, By the time the US became active participants in the war, the danger of invasion, even had it truly ever existed, had long passed.
Why don't you simply buy a decent book on the subject of Operation Sealion? I have more interesting things to do than to educate you.
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@MrLewkon 'Dude?' Are you American? That might explain a lot, although most Americans of my acquaintance do actually seem to learn something about the period before they post. Oh well!
Hermann Goering and his Luftwaffe, in the whole of WW2, managed to sink 31 British destroyers, and no British warship larger than a light cruiser. The British began WW2 with 193 destroyers, and ended it with over 400. In September, 1940, they had over 100 in Home Waters.
This would, by the way, be the Luftwaffe which had had no training in anti-shipping techniques at the time, had just failed badly to prevent Operation Dynamo or Operation Aerial, and didn't even have a high performance torpedo bomber until mid 1942? That Luftwaffe?
303 Squadron is an entertaining movie, based on historical events, but scripted to support a particular argument. It is not a professionally made documentary. Perhaps that is where you are getting confused?
Incidentally, you may note that I have never belittled the role of non-British pilots; I have simply put it into the appropriate wider context, something which seems beyond you.
Oddly enough, although it isn't relevant here, I am a full-time historian, with a number of published writings in the field of Naval History. However, I would prefer to deal with the argument, rather than attempt to question the credibility of the individual making it. I will happily leave that to others. I can, however, list a whole host of active historians whose views align with mine.
The facts are that Fighter Command was never short of pilots. Indeed, a study of RAF wartime records reveals that many qualified fighter pilots actually never saw combat in 1940, but worked in administrative positions. Moreover, Fighter Command had a policy of rotating their squadrons, which involved relieving squadrons which had seen heavy combat in 11 & 12 Group from the line and sending them to 13 Group (in the North & Scotland) for a period of recuperation, replacing them with fresh or rested squadrons from 13 Group.
Moreover, more experienced pilots were removed from front line units and sent to supervise training units, in order to teach recently trained pilots the tricks of the trade. Many of these 'new' pilots came from the Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which ensured that there was never a shortage of trained pilots coming through. By comparison, the Luftwaffe practised no such programme of rotation, and experienced pilots stayed with their units until they were killed or disabled.
As I tried to explain earlier, but you clearly missed, Fighter Command regarded the Poles & Czechs as experienced pilots, and as potentially valuable assets. They were initially kept out of front line operations because of doubts about their language skills and their ability to operate within the constraints of Fighter Command's control systems. Once this doubt had been resolved, they became operational. But only, in the case of 303 Squadron, from 30 August, 1940.
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She was carrying small arms ammunition, authorised by US Customs. She was not flying a US flag, and, as in WW2, the big liners were not excorted because of their high speed.
She sank in 18 minutes, right outside a fishing port containing many fishing boats.
You really want to know why Lusitania sank? Because the Germans had recently introduced unrestricted submarine warfare, and because no-one, American, British, French, or, indeed, most Germans, thought thaone of the great liners of the day would really be attacked without warning.
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@1968-Camaro-SS Had you known much, or indeed anything, about the subject, you would know that neither in WW1 or in WW2 were the big liners, such as Mauretania. Aquitania. Olympic, Queen Mary, or Queen Elizabeth, given escorts, except close to Britain in WW2, when they were joined by AA destroyers or cruisers. Their defence was their speed. Moreover, until depth charges became available, and that was some four months after the sinking, exactly what purpose would an sort of escort have served?
I will ignore your ramblings about other subjects as you appear to be merely a conspiracy theorist fool. However, neither flying foreign flags, as German vessels also did in both wars, was not illegal, nor was the use of Q ships. Perhaps you weren't aware that something which was illegal was the sinking of marchant vessels without warning?
Of course the British & French wanted Allies for their war against the Central Powers. In fact, Italy declared war only 16 days after the sinking of Lusitania. Can't you come up with a conspiracy theory about that as well?
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@Youve_GotABeard No, I simply base my judgements upon verified historical facts. In Britain's time of greatest peril, the Summer and Autumn of 1940, the United States stood by and watched. Certainly, weapons and supplies were sold to Britain, but only at the going commercial rate.
By the time Germany & Japan had dragged the US, unwillingly, into WW2, Germany had already attacked the Soviet Union, and Britain was, if not yet sure of victory, no longer in any danger of defeat.
As Churchill said, 'The United States can always be relied upon to do the right thing. But only after all other options have been exhausted!'
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@mirkonavarra1517 Try again. 13 ships were lost during Pedestal. One carrier was sunk by a German U-Boat, one AA cruiser by an Italian submarine, one cruiser by an Italian Mas boat, one destroyer by Italian aircraft, four merchantmen by German aircraft, three merchantmen by German S boats, one merchantman by an Italian Mas boat, and 1 merchantmen by an Italian submarine.
So, five ships were lost to aircraft, four to German U & S Boats, & four to Italian ships.
Oh, and the Italian battlefleet remained immobile, an Italian cruiser squadron refused to engage, though two cruisers were torpedoed and never repaired, and two Italian submarines were sunk. The German liaison officer, Admiral Weichold, said that 'a more useless waste of fighting power cannot be imagined.' He was not writing about the British effort.
You sure that was a 'huge victory?'
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@mirkonavarra1517 What about Ithuriel? She sank Cobalto, not vice versa.
Ohio delivered her cargo to Malta.
My source isn't a single one. It is simply the facts gleaned from several books on the subject. Try 'Pedestal' by Peter Smith, 'Pedestal - The Fleet that Battled to Malta, 1942' by Max Hastings, (2014). Operation Pedestal. The story of convoy WS21S in August 1942, 'Operation Pedestal. The story of convoy WS21S in August 1942' by Brian Crabb, and half a dozen others.
Just to correct your errors, Eagle was sunk by a German U-boat, Cairo, by an Italian submarine, Manchester scuttled after being torpedoed by a MAS boat, Foresight sunk by Italian aircraft, Deucalion by German aircraft, Clan Ferguson by German aircraft, Empire Hope by an Italian submarine, Wairangi by an S boat, Almeria Lykes by an S boaty, Waimarama by German aircraft, Dorset by German aircraft, Glenorchy by an S boat, and Santia Elisa by a Mas boat.
13 losses. As I wrote earlier. If you choose to claim that losses attributed to German vessels or aircraft were actually the results of Italian efforts, then argue that one out with your former allies.
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You think so? Two capital ships, one (second line) carrier, four cruisers, and six destroyers.
As the Royal Navy fought, and won, their campaigns in the Atlantic Ocean, the Arctic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea, leaving the US navy to concentrate almost entirely in the Pacific, I wouldn't be surprised if Chester Nimitz often had the same view of the Royal Navy.
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@sharonscott6244 'slavery ended due to the amount of uprisings of the enslaved who started to meter out the same barbaric treatment they had to endure.' Whereever did you get that idea from? The Baptist War of January 1832 lasted precisely eleven days, and was subdued by British troops.
It was foolish in any case because Parliament had already determined to abolish slavery within the Empire in any case, the bill to that effect being passed in August, 1833.
Despite all what? The British government compensated slave owners in order to avoid them undertaking prolonged lobbying of Parliament, and significantly delaying the passage of the bill.
The Isreal analogy was both wrong and, frankly, idiotic. It seems that someone had not even heard of the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Just as, presumably, you haven't.
I agree, however, that it was difficult to tell what Rees-Mogg was saying, because his words were constantly drowned out by someone screaming at him.
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'1930's Germany - Paradise.' Unless you were disabled, a political opponent of the party, disabled, a Gypsy, a Jehovahs's Witness, a Slav, or, worst of all a Jew. of course.
By the way, upvoting your own post is not the done thing, old chap. Rather bad form, don't cha know?
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You can add the length of time it took the two biggest navies on the planet, one of which had been carrying out amphibious operations for almost 300 years, to put the plan together. The idea that the Germans, with minimal experience of amphibious assaults, and no fleet worthy of the name, could put together a workable plan, using barges towed by tugs, trawlers, and coasters, in a matter of weeks, is too ludicrous to contemplate.
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@gernotfischer7908 Try again. In 1940 the Luftwaffe was not trained in anti-shipping warfare, as demonstrated by the manner in which it failed at Dunkirk. Perhaps you should read up on the Kriegsmarine plan, which assumed that it would require eleven days to land nine infantry divisions (without most of their artillery and motor transport, by the way) provided, of course, that the Royal Navy didn't intervene, as there were, literally, no reserves of towing vessels for the converted barges.
As, by mid-September, 1940, the Royal Navy had around seventy cruisers and destroyers within five hours' steaming of Dover, supported by some 500 smaller warships, do you really wish to argue that the Royal Navy would adhere to the Kriegsmarine's hopes?
If you don't believe me, why not read what Oskar Dinort, the Stuka ace, wrote about the difficulties of hitting destroyers at sea, and what Wolfram von Richtofen told Goering about the same problem?
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@gernotfischer7908 But we are not talking about 1942 onwards, we are talking about September, 1940. The Luftwaffe hadn't any training in anti-shipping operations, and had failed badly at Dunkirk. The relevance of 5 hours' steaming from Dover is that the destroyer bases were outside the range of German bombers in any case, unless they were unescorted, and you can read for yourself what happened to German daylignt unescorted bomber raids on North Eastern British ports.
In a battle of attrition, the Kreigsmarine is outmatched. Their plan left them no reserves of towing vessels, and required eleven days to get the first nine infantry divisions across. This also, of course, means eleven nights, when the invasion barges and tugs were unprotected, and the Royal Navy had a completely free hand.
It is always fascinating to read comments from Sealion enthusiasts about what the Luftwaffe would have done. The historical record rather demonstrates how far short it tended to fall in reality.
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The deciding factor was certainly the erratic behaviour of Guy d'Oyly-Hughes, but that doesn't really have any relevance to the 'Edwardian upper-class system embedded within senior leadership,' given that Guy d'Oyly-Hughes was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and his father was a doctor. He joined the Royal Navy as a Midshipman in 1909, and worked his way up, having a successful and, indeed, courageous, career.
Almost certainly, he would have made a successful cruiser captain, but was utterly unsuited to the command of a carrier.
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So, in you opinion, no British commentator can ever be impartial? Would you apply a similar judgement on statements by, for example, French, German, Italian, Spanish, American or Turkish commentators. If you do, then there can be no such thing as history. If he, or any other, commentator is biased, then the correct response should be to state the reasons which led you to this conclusion.
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@tolsen8212 1). I have already discussed the question of the list. You have ignored my comments.
2). The fact that Morgan didn't cancel at the last minute is not 'semantics.' He never intended to sail on Titanic, as the NYT article (to which you haven't responded) made clear in March, 1912.
3). Indeed, Californian had a comparatively large hold. However, it was full of the 'mixed, general, cargo', as the Boston shipping papers described it, which she transported to Boston and unloaded there. I observe that you haven't stated your source for your cargo of blankets claim. She was, not, by the way, a large ship.
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@tolsen8212 Just as you are apparently unwilling to reply to my earlier post, so I do not feel inclined to respond in any detail to this, except to ask you general questions.
1). What are your actual sources for any of these claims?
2). Why would Harland & Wolff go along with such an obviously illegal and immoral act, especially when the effect on their reputation as shipbuilders would be harmful?
3). How would the H & W workforce of some 15,000 men be persuaded to remain silent? How is it that they remained silent less than ten years later, when many were made redundant after the end of WW1? How were the Board of Trade persuaded to support this plot?
4). How is it that there are no claims that, after the ship you allege to have been crippled returned to service, from either crew or passengers, that she was steaming at reduced speed, or was vibrating?
5). How is it that there are photographs from the time showing Olympic's propeller, with a blade missing, taken when she was in dry dock? Moreover, if the crew, or at least the officers, on 24 February have participated in the fraud, how is it that none of them ever came forward to claim this after the events of 14/15 April?
6). The 1911 Official Secrets Act did not and could not apply. If you have done as much reading as you claim, how is it that you aren't aware that the Official Secrets Act 1911 (Section 1) sets out offences related to espionage, sabotage and related crimes only?
7). As I stated, and you ignored, Titanic was moved from dry dock on 29 February, 1912. Olympic arrived in Carrickfergus Roads on 1st March, just missing the tide. She anchored overnight, before entering the dock on 2 March. Once repairs were complete, Olympic left the drydock on 4th March. However weather conditions were bad, and she was unable to head for the Victoria Channel. It was decided to return her to the drydock until the gales eased, as room in the yard was very restricted. The next day Harland & Wolff achieved a novel, very tricky manœuvre: they moved Olympic out of the drydock, eased Titanic into the drydock and then moved Olympic to the fitting-out wharf, all on the one high tide. All this is documented.
8). How is it that Ballard had never referred to the bulkhead you claim he discovered? How is it that he has never cast doubt of the identity of the wreck he examined and photographed?
9). Exactly how many times was Titanic's appearence altered?
In short, you do not appear to have any evidence at all to support any of your entertaining claims. I should confess, however, that I have doubts about your claims not to have been influenced by switcher videos, as most of your comments align so completely with some of their odder allegations. If you have credible evidence, please present it. Apart from your evident conviction that, seemingly,most of the population of the UK participated to a greater or lesser extent, in this malevolent scheme, you have not produced, to date, anything at all in terms of supporting proof, or even vaguely circumstantial evidence.
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@tolsen8212 What you see as 'smug arrogance' I see as correcting a sea of bizarre unsubstantiated untruths. If you are offended by that, then feel free to present any credible evidence to refute anything I have written. Incidentally, you ask that the discussion remain cordial, having first accused me of the said 'smug arrogance?' Double standards, I suggest.
'Obviously the topic upsets you. Perhaps you think I'm a Q-Anon and you're mad at Trump or something.' Nonsense. What in anything I have written can possibly justify such conclusions? You know nothing about me.
In point of fact, after a First in Modern History, I became a naval historian by profession and have a number of books and articles to my credit. Titanic is an interesting sub-issue to my main area of study, but I do enjoy correcting some of the more absurd fantasy claims arising from Gardiner's silly book from the mid 1990s. Like you, these people immediately become annoyed when their comfortable, but fact free opinions, are challenged.
'But you're still hammering someone else's point that a cargo ship could only rescue as many survivors as could comfortably fit in her cabins, which is ridiculous. So we need to have some give and take here.' When have I ever written that? I have simply pointed out a few facts about Californian about which you were apparently unaware. I have not discussed her capabilities as a potential rescue ship at all. Moreover, I observe that you have carefully avoided trying to justify your claim that Californian carried nothing but blankets as her cargo. What is the saying? 'Put up or shut up.'
There can really be no 'give and take' when one claim is correct and the other false. If you can produce anything at all to discredit anything I have written, then do so.
I don't care what you think about Morgan, unless you can produce any evidence to support your belief personal opinion is meaningless. Please feel free, by the way, to address any point I have made. I did originally show you such a courtesy, but sadly you have not reciprocated.
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@iemjgf No, I'm not. The ACTUAL ship losses at Dunkirk, both British and French, were as follows. Numbers of ships present first, followed by losses in parentheses:-
Cruiser 1 (0), Destroyer/Torpedo Boat 56 (9), Sloop 6 (0), Patrol Vessel 7 (1), Gunboat 2 (1), Corvette 11 (0), Minesweeper 38 (6), Trawler 230 (29), Special Service Vessel 3 (0), Boarding Vessels 3 (1), MTB 15 (0), Schuit 40 (4), Yacht 27 (3), Personnel Vessel 45 (9), Hospital Ship 8 (1), Cargo Ship 13 (3), Tug 40 (7), Landing Craft 13 (8), Lighters 48 (12), Small Craft 242 (142).
Thus, of warships at Dunkirk, of 372 present, 39 were lost. The vast majority of the so-called 235 ships claimed lost at Dunkirk were actually small craft. Most of these, around 150, were simply abandoned on the beach at the end of the operation.
The British lost 6 destroyers, by the way, and the French 3. Not 'many.'
Pedestal is hardly relevant, although five merchant ships reached Malta, not three. However, the question under discussion here is not about the RN defending merchantmen from air attack in 1942, but whether the Luftwaffe of 1940 was capable of keeping the 70 British light cruisers and destroyers, backed up by around 500 smaller warships all within five hours steaming of Dover, away from the towed barges carrying the assault troops.
Certainly, the Luftwaffe's command realised after Dunkirk how poorly trained in anti-shipping operations their crews were. Even after training, however, in the whole of WW2 the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser.
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@TaylorMade223 'Not publicly commenting on the FR, doesn't mean no connection to the FR, the wealthy in favor spoke in support, the wealthy opposed, didn't speak.' Quite correct, but nor does it mean that either Astor nor Guggenheim opposed the Fed., either, does it? Indeed, the idea of any connection between the two events only appeared with the enthusiasm for 'conspiracy' which arose with the growth of social media in the 1990s.
Ever heard of The statement that "silence means agreement" or "Qui tacet consentire videtur.'
"he who is silent seems to consent". In other words, the fact that neither Astor neither Guggenheim expressed any opposition suggests that, at the very least, they did not oppose the idea.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which, it seems you have been so effectively indoctrinated.
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Evidently, you are ignorant of the technology that the British generously did invent and provide to the United States in the first half of the 20th century?
To mention a few things of interest. Radar (the cavity magnetron), asdic/sonar, codebreaking skills (Bletchley Park), the depth charge, advanced nuclear research, the tank, high frequency direction finding, the steam turbine, and the aircraft carrier.
Eould you like to know a few more, or are you simply content to remain ignorant?
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Just out of interest, are you aware that, commencing April 1917, there had been 'acts of collective indiscipline' (i.e., Strikes) in 68 of the 112 French divisions on the Western Front, following the catastrophe of the Nivelle Offensive. For a time, until Petain restored order, the only army defending France was that of the British Empire.
In 1940, a French & British rearguard made possible the evacuation of 338,000 men from Dunkirk, over 100,000 of whom were French, and when the British attempted to land a 'Reconstituted BEF' in Cherbourg, they were told by General Weygand that the French army was no longer capable of 'organised resistance.'
By the way, how many casualties did your enemies, the United States, Britain, & Canada, sustain in freeing your country from German occupation in 1944?
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@N1gel I am more than ever convinced that you are writing through your posterior. Who has ever suggested that the draft of an Olympic was as you bizarrely state, when as rational people are well aware it was 36 feet.
Perhaps you have either misunderstood completely, simply do not understand the mechanics behind Titanic's sinking, which was a rusult of several watertight compartments being compromised, or you do not know why Titanic sank. The flooding had precisely nothing to do with compression, and everything to do with iceberg damage to the hull.
Were you to watch the video again, perhaps you might appreciate the point he is making?
Oh, and the location of Molony's alleged burn mark has never been questioned by anyone, although the nature of the mark has been, and by many.
I really do not understand why you think compression played any part at all in the sinking. The point made in the video was that a coal bunker was not designed to withstand the weight of water it would receive from a flooded compartment.
You do understand that there is no suggestion that the bulkheads themselves failed, but that the compartments they protected were flooded as a result of a line of holes punched into them by the iceberg.
Again, compression is not a relevant factor. I am perplexed that you have, assuming you actually viewed it, misunderstood the argument being presented in the video.
I will not waste any further time and effort replying, by the way.
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Repulse & Prince of Wales were lost to torpedo bombers. The Germans in 1940 had no torpedo bombers. Similarly, the attack on Taranto was carried out by torpedo bombers. Pearl Harbor, by the way, was an attack on ships of a neutral country in harbour.
'The royal navy lost 30 destroyers alone to the Luftwaffe in WW2.' Indeed, in the whole of WW2. In other words, in 68 months. Or, at a rate of less than one every two months. Are you completely unaware of the numbers of destroyers available for anti-invasion duties, and within five hours of Dover, in September, 1940? There were 63, with a further 50 within 24 hours of Dover, but operating with the Home Fleet, or on escort duty or in west coast escort ports. There were also, in September, 1940, six light cruisers on anti-invasion alert, as well as around five hundred smaller warships.
When the Royal Navy attacked the French Fleet at Mers el Kebir, didn't you know that they did it with battleships? The Channel Dash was a major German strategic reversal, which succeeded because of failures on the part of the RAF. The Royal Navy was in the north, providing protection for Russian convoys, at a time when any prospect of invasion had long passed. Moreover, a trio of three modern warships, rushing through the Channel at high speed in a few hours, can hardly be compared to an attempt to land troops from towed barges over an eleven day period.
The Royal Navy couldn't stop the German invasion of Norway because Germany attacked a neutral country, and used their warships to ferry troops into unsuspecting ports. Even so, the Germans lost most of their navy during the course of the operation, leaving them with virtually nothing available to protect their invasion barges in September.
'The combined power of the Royal Navy, French Fleet, French Army, British Army, French Airforce, RAF and norweigian military.' Please don't be silly. The forces committed by the French Navy, French Air Force, and RAF were tiny, as were the British & French (and Polish) land forces. Norway, by the way, had tiny standing armed forces. If you cannot understand the difference between a surprise attack on a weakly-armed neutral country, and an attempted assault landing on the south coast of the UK, then I urge you to do more reading.
'Of course once the German Army was landed by Sea and air.' You can forget the air part. In September, there was about half a division of parachute troops left to the Germans, and only, according to Luftwaffe records, exactly 226 operational transport aircraft. As to the sea bit, that presupposes that the barges, towed down the Channel at little more than walking pace, can get their troops (without divisional artillery, motor transport, or armoured support, as they would have been, as you should have known had you read the Kriegsmarine's plan) ashore, over an eleven day (and night) period.
By the way, the British army had no RAF support at all in Greece, and was itself only a tiny part of the Western Desert Force. What happened in Cyprus, by the way? I assume you mean Crete, where the Germans and Italians tried to send two troop convoys by sea to reinforce the airborne landings. One was annihilated by the Royal Navy, and the other returned to Greece before experiencing the same fate.
Finally, have a look at how effective (or rather, ineffective) the Luftwaffe were at Dunkirk. Even a Sealion 'would have' such as yourself should know that the Luftwaffe in 1940 had had no training at all in anti-shipping operations. Why would you seek to claim that the same Luftwaffe which had performed so ineptly against ships either stopped or moving slowly in restricted waters would suddenly annihilate the same ships when they were free to manoeuvre at speed?
How, by the way, would the Luftwaffe have provided any protection at all at night, when the RN could operate freely?
Seriously, you clearly have a simplistic, superficial, understanding of the true situation which existed in the latter half of 1940. You really need to read up on the facts, not the myths.
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Sorry, forgot about:- 'German U-Boats and of course the then pound for pound most powerful naval surface fleet in the world.' You mean the 27 front line operational boats, of which 13, on average, were at sea on any one day in September, 1940. Or, presumably, the German surface fleet, which in September, 1940, consisted of one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, and seven destroyers. Is that what you mean?
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@jmcfintona999 I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about Operation Sealion and the Battle of Britain. Clearly you aren't aware when the Battle of Britain was, nor when Sealion was intended to take place.
If you wish to debate the naval war as a whole, we could consider such matters as the failure of any German heavy warships to operate in the Atlantic after mid 1941, the suppression of German auxiliary raiders in the Indian Ocean, the total defeat of the German U-Boat offensive, the successful assault landings undertaken by Allied (mainly British) sea power in Tunisia, Sicily, Italy, and France, and the failure of the German surface fleet to challenge the Allied convoys to the Soviet Union. In fact, the failure of the German navy to achieve anything of note after Norway.
Is simply posting an extract from wikipedia the full extent of your 'knowledge?' You really must try harder, or perhaps read more.
To go back to the original subject, please check for yourself the details I gave you concerning the German surface fleet in September, 1940. To help you, the heavy cruiser was Admiral Hipper, the light cruisers were Emden, Koln, and Nurnberg, and the destroyers Karl Galster, Friedrich Eckholdt, Friedrich Ihn, Hans Lody, Theodor Riedel, all at Cherbourg, together with Erich Steinbrinck & Paul Jacobi, both at Brest after completing refits.
Don't feel so defensive about your lack of knowledge, by the way. Many people feel the same when communicating with me on the subject. Perhaps, should you actually buy a book, you might be lucky enough to acquire one of mine. Writing them is, after all, my career path.
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Again, an addition :- . 'The same German Surface fleet that tied up the British Home fleet for 5 years in scappa flow.' (It is spelled 'Scapa Flow,' by the way). Indeed, the 'tied up' British Fleet which disposed of Graf Spee, Bismarck, and Scharnhorst, prevented German heavy surface ships venturing out of port after late 1941 (except, of course for the flight from Brest known as the Channel Dash, and Scharnhorst's death ride mentioned above) ensured that the Russian convoys passed through more or less unmolested, pinned the remnants of the German surface fleet down out of the way fjords, whilst the rest of the Royal Navy dominated the Italian Navy in the Mediterranean, took back the Indian Ocean, and provided 892 warships to ensure the success of the Normandy Landings. Is that the Home Fleet to which you refer?
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@jmcfintona999 Again, what has the relevance or otherwise of Tirpitz got to do with Operation Sealion? Just to explain something to you, however, the Home Fleet had little relevance to the Battle of the Atlantic, which was conducted by (mainly) British and Canadian escort groups consisting of sloops, frigates, old destroyers, and corvettes. Usually, the Home Fleet resources to protecting the Russian convoys consisted of two battleships, a carrier, up to four destroyers, and a destroyer flotilla.
The Vichy French navy played no part in the war in the Mediterranean, or anywhere else, after 1940, by the way.
Perhaps you could explain the relevance of any of your ramblings to the Battle of Britain or Sealion?
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@jmcfintona999 Do you really believe that the Admiralty proposed using capital ships to protect convoys? Please explain how, for example, a King George V class battleship would protect a convoy from a U-Boat? The role of the Home Fleet was to prevent German heavy ships from carrying out raids against Atlantic or Russian convoys. Once the last German heavy ship was destroyed, of course they were sent to the last remaining battle zone.
The Vichy fleet was either interned or kept in French ports after 1940.
I really don't know where you get your ideas from. It was not the duty of the Royal Navy to protect neutral Norway. Indeed, the Norwegian government had objected to Allied warships even entering Norwegian territorial waters. Had the Norwegian government accepted that a German invasion was imminent, and asked for Allied protection, then the outcome would probably have been rather different. As it was, the Allies found themselves faced with a fait accompli. The British navy could, and did, largely cripple the German fleet, but could not change the outcome of the land campaign, apart from extricating Allied troops after the collapse in France brought about the abandonment of the campaign in Norway.
Incidentally, please tell me more about the failure of the Royal Navy to prevent the invasion of Malta. Could you provide the relevant source?
The largest Royal Navy warship sunk by German aircraft in WW2 was a light cruiser, by the way.
What actual sources do you use to obtain your information, as a matter of interest?
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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@archlittle6067 Perhaps you weren't aware that Prince of Wales & Repulse were sunk by torpedo bombers? The Luftwaffe didn't have any torpedo bombers until mid 1942. Perhaps you weren't aware that the 1940 Luftwaffe had not been trained in anti-shipping operations, which is why they failed at Dunkirk? Perhaps you weren't aware that, even after receiving such training, the Luftwaffe, in the whole of the war, sank 31 British destroyers? Just to put that into perspective, the British had 193 destroyers in September, 1939, over 400 by August, 1945, and had over 100 in Home Waters alone by September, 1940. Perhaps you weren't aware that, in the whole of the war, the largest British warship sunk by the Luftwaffe was a light cruiser?
Oh, and you are missing the part where the British were outproducing the Germans in aircraft, particularly fighters, from mid 1940 onwards. You are also missing the part that German fighters lacked the range to accompany their bombers over most of Britain.
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@archlittle6067 Admiral von Holtzendorff, Chief of Staff of the Kaiser's navy, estimated that his boats needed to sink 600,000 tons of Allied shipping per month to starve Britain into submission. Doenitz used the same figure in WW2. Historically, even when the German U-boat fleet had expanded from the 57 boats of December 1939, to 250 in December, 1941, the tonnage sunk was actually 93,226. In fact, between September 1939 & December 1941, tonnage only achieved 300,000, half of the target, on four occasions.
Moreover, should the Germans begin to build a large submarine fleet from, for example, 1936 onwards, the British would conclude that it was directed against them. In such circumstances, does it not occur to you that Britain would accelerated the production of anti-submarine vessels even more rapidly than was actually the case?
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@archlittle6067 It is always interesting to read the opinions of people who are so sure of everything that they see no necessity to check their facts.
1). Quite simply, German fighters had enough fuel to operate for around 10-15 minutes as far north as London. Further north, bombers either operate unescorted and suffer heavy losses (which historically they did, for a while) or operate at night, when they can only bomb areas rather than specific targets. All this time, by the way, British aircraft production grossly exceeds that of the Germans.
2). Which aircraft, U Boats, and patrol boats? Aircraft can only lay magnetic mines in shallow estuaries, not in deeper tidal areas. U-Boats? In September, 1940, the Germans had, on average, 13 at sea on any one day in September 1940. Moreover, in October, 1939, they sent three boats to operate in the Channel. They are still there, with the remains of their crews inside. The heavily (by the British) mined Channel was a death trap for U-boats, which is why the Germans kept well clear of it until after D-Day, when most of the boats they sent were promptly sunk. Patrol Boats? Which patrol boats? There were 13 operational S Boats, and about a dozen destroyers and escort destroyers. There were also seven converted merchantmen intended to lay mines at night. However, the RN had, by September, 1940, several hundred fleet & auxiliary minesweepers. Moreover, the RN carried out nightly destroyer patrols through the Channel, from Plymouth & Sheerness. What happens to the slow-moving minelayers when they encounter a destroyer flotilla?
3). 'Also, you are saying that 300+ Stukas would not stop the Royal fleet?' Yes. The Luftwaffe of 1940 hadn't been trained in anti-shipping operations, which is why it failed to prevent Operation Dynamo. Moreover, it didn't even have an operational torpedo bomber until mid 1942. The anti-invasion fleet didn't need to remain on station. At the time, the RN had around 70 or so light cruisers and destroyers in bases within 5 hours' steaming of Dover, backed up by around 500 smaller warships. In the whole of WW2, by the way, the Luftwaffe, even after the lack of training had been remedied, managed to sink 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship bigger than a light cruiser.
4). 'The enormous British navy was stationed around the world, not just in England.' No, it wasn't. There was a flotilla of small WW1 destroyers on the China Station, and the Mediterranean Fleet. Other than that, the RN had, operationally, in Home Waters in September, 1940., :- 3 battleships, 2 battlecruisers, 1 carrier, 2 heavy cruisers, 11 light cruisers, & 116 destroyers, together with several hundred smaller warships. A further potential asset, Force H, was four days away at Gibraltar. This consisted of one battleship, 1 battlecruiser, 1 aircraft carrier, and 15 destroyers.
5). U-Boat war. Even though the RN had withdrawn almost all of the available escorts to strengthen the anti-invasion forces, between June & October, 1940 (after which the escorts were released back to Western Approaches Command) the Germans only managed to exceed 50% of their 600,000 tons per month twice, with 356.000 tons in June, & 363,000 in October. In July, the tonnage was below 200,000. They were far from winning the U-Boat war in 1940, despite myths to the contrary.
In fact, the suggestion that " the Luftwaffe failed to use simple external fuel tanks on the Bf 109s that could extend their range over England. This probably cost them the war" is simply not in accordance with the facts. There was far move required to achieve a successful invasion than simply success, temporary or otherwise, against Fighter Command, and the Germans were never in a position to meet any of these conditions.
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@archlittle6067 I don't recall suggesting that British Aircraft Production was all Spitfires. In point of fact, in 1940 the British produced 1252 Spitfires and 2515 Hurricanes. The Germans produced 1667 Bf109s. Perhaps you haven't considered the complaints of people like Galland, which are well documented, and were that, when escorting bombers, the performance of the Bf109 was seriously compromised. Furthermore, you don't seem aware of the British network of Shadow Factories, unless you are able to explain how your mighty Luftwaffe 'would have' successfully attacked factories which they didn't even know existed.
You don't seem to know much about the forces the Admiralty had assembled to counter Sealion, either. Unless of course you can explain how your 10% of Stuka hits on Capital Ships would secure the invasion? I don't recall mentioning capital ships, by the way, because the Admiralty had the Home Fleet based at Rosyth, in order to intercept any (actually, non existent) German Heavy Ships should they emerge. The Admiralty planning provided for a forward striking force of around 70 light cruisers and destroyers, supported by 500 or so smaller warships. The striking force vessels, by the way, were within 5 hours steaming of Dover. There were, also, a further 40 or so destroyers also available in Home Waters, in the unlikely event that reinforcements might be required. Presumably, you believe that each of your 30 Stukas could sink or disable three RN light cruisers or destroyers each? Remarkable, when in the real world the Luftwaffe only managed to sink 31 RN destroyers in the whole of the war. Moreover, what had just happened at Dunkirk, when the Luftwaffe utterly failed to prevent Operation Dynamo.
Why shouldn't the Army build coastal defences? As Shakespeare wrote, it was simply to 'Make assurance doubly sure.'
How does the German navy sweep the RN minefields, with their huge number of 22 Fleet Minmesweepers, when they are not sure where the fields, and can only carry out the operations at night. Moreover, how will these slow, lightly armed vessels avoid the regular RN destroyer patrols which operated from Plymouth & Sheerness? Much the same applied to laying German fields, with their seven converted merchantmen available to carry out the operation. As to Coastal Batteries, the Germans had around 150 heavy, super-heavy, and medium batteries in place by the end of August, and these began firing at British coastal convoys passing through the Channel from 12 August, 1940. From August to December, 1940, 1880 rounds were fired, with no hits achieved. Indeed, in the whole of the war, only seven merchantmen were damaged, and none sunk. The batteries couldn't hit small coasters moving at 8 - 10 knots. Tell me how they would hit destroyers moving at 25+ knots? Moreover, tell me how they would hit these destroyers at night, when they could operate unhindered during the eleven days that the Kriegsmarine required to land the first invasion wave. With the proviso, as Raeder stated to Hitler, that adverse weather or the Royal Navy did not intervene?
I know what the German plan involved. I also know, like Raeder, von Richthoven, and Dinort, that it was not remotely based upon reality.
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@archlittle6067 What is this supposed agreement about the 'numbers game?' Why do you disregard Hurricanes completely, and ignore Galland's legitimate concerns? I notice that you have also ignored the reference to Shadow Factories, as well.
Churchill's ministers said nothing of the sort. Lord Halifax did, supported briefly by Chamberlain, who subsequently backed Churchill's stance. After the success of Dynamo, Halifax was in a tiny minority, and was an irrelevance.
The Battle of Midway was almost two years later, and not relevant to Sealion, in that the Luftwaffe were untrained in the necessary techniques, and lacked to necessary equipment, to have a hope of holding back the Royal Navy's anti-invasion forces. even Von Richthoven & Dinort, the commanders of the dive bomber forces, openly said as much at the time.
Where do 'Kamikaze attacks' which began in 1944 have any relevance to Sealion in 1940? Your reference to me apparently 'proving' anything about them is meaningless.
Finally, Crete. I presume you mean the Crete where no reinforcements reach the German paratroop units by sea until after the decision to evacuate had been taken (by Wavell, the army commander in North Africa, by the way)? Crete where two German troop convoys were sent? Crete where the first convoy, heading for Maleme, was annihilated by a Royal Navy cruiser squadron, and the second, heading for Heraklion, returned to Greece as a result of what happened to the first/
Thanks for making my point about the relevance of sea power at that stage of the war. It saved me from the need to do it.
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@ManuelGarcia-ww7gj Actually, the British would have been delighted if the Mers el Kebir force had come over to their side. This was always unlikely, but the British would have been satisfied if it had been taken to the French West Indies, or to the United States. The British, in July 1940, were willing to take whatever action was necessary to avert the possibility of a cross-Channel invasion. Furthermore, Somerville sent Holland to negotiate because, firstly, Holland spoke fluent French, secondly, he was an enthusiastic Francophile, and thirdly Holland had numerous friends and acquaintances within the French staff at Mers-el-Kebir. Perhaps Somerville had underestimated how 'touchy' Gensoul was about status, but anyone reading Somerville's communications with the Admiralty, and his subsequent writings on the matter would appreciate the effort he made to avoid bloodshed. Perhaps you might care to read what he actually wrote before making simplistic judgments?
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@ManuelGarcia-ww7gj Oh yes. I ignored it because it seemed utterly irrelevant in terms of the actual situation. Somerville had sent a fluent French speaker, a senior captain well known to, and liked by, the French, to communicate with Gensoul in Gensoul's native tongue. Somerville probably assumed that Gensoul, as a full Admiral, would have understood how critical the situation was and would act with the maturity to be expected of a man of his rank and experience. Instead, he behaved like a prima donna, apparently refusing to meet Holland for several crucial hours because he was 'only' a full captain. As Somerville was 'only' a vice-admiral, and therefore junior to Gensoul, would even he have been deemed worthy of Gensoul's time? Actually, we will never know, because Gensoul never suggested that he would meet with Somerville, just as he never forwarded the full text of the British proposals to the Vichy government.
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@ManuelGarcia-ww7gj Holland was not a 'mere captain' he had been British Naval Attache in Paris, and was familiar with many of the senior figures within the French navy, including Darlan, de Laborde, and Abrial, but not, unfortunately, Gensoul. Somerville did not visit Gensoul himself mainly for the reason I have previously stated, but also because to have done so would have obliged him to have used a motor launch in order to pass through the Mers el Kebir boom. Gensoul had already denied Holland permission to enter the port aboard the destroyer Foxhound, merely instructing Lieutenant de Vaisseau Bernard Dufay, his flag lieutenant, to inform Holland that he would not speak to him, but that he would send his Chief of Staff instead. Not to put too fine a point on it, Somerville did not wish to place himself in a position which might result in his being 'detained' in Mers el Kebir, out of contact with his fleet. Perhaps you might ask why Gensoul himself did not offer to visit Somerville aboard Hood. Actually, when told that Holland wished to meet him confidentially, Gensoul's response, which shocked Dufay (a close friend of Holland's) was 'You see how it is. Last week they sent me Admiral North, today they send me a Captain. Next time it will be a Petty Officer.'
You really should get hold of a copy of 'The Deadly Stroke' by Warren Tute, for a fully detailed account of the events.
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There is a full description of the proposed Operation Paul by Peter Hore, entitled 'Operation Paul -The Fleet Air Arm Attack on Lulea in 1940' which confirms much of what you have posted, except for one vital difference. The downgraded attack, using one carrier & 18 aircraft, was to be made by 810 & 820 Squadron, FAA, and launched from Ark Royal. Both squadrons were part of Ark's air group at the time.
The written order was signed by Dudley Pound on 8 June, but obviously Ark Royal, at sea off Norway, couldn't receive it, so an amended order was transmitted by signal at 2033 on the same day. This, of course, was after Glorious had been sunk.
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@kms_scharnhorst I was actually referring to the Hood of 1939. After her Special Large Repair of 1939, she achieved 31 knots on trials. The 28 knot reference was to her state in 1941, after 18 months of hard work. Perhaps I should have made this clearer. After her modernisation, Renown was measured at 29.9 knots in July, 1939, and would indeed have had the edge by 1941. Repulse, with her older machinery, almost certainly wouldn't, although there are no records of any trail speeds from the relevant period.
I wasn't 'focusing' on German warships. I simply give them as an example. The Littorios, by the way, only appeared in late August, 1940, about the same time as the British KGVs, of course. If you wish to discuss the Japanese fleet, perhaps you might wish to reconsider your 'laughable' reference to Hood's deck armour, by comparing it to the thinner deck (and belt) armour of pre- Yamato Japanese capital ships?
The Royal Navy actually launched 141 destroyers between the end of WW1 & the start of WW2, most of which (apart from 20 or so) were less than ten years old in September, 1939. The older boats, the V & Ws, Ss, Scotts, and Shakespeares had been mothballed, and were still effective warships. You do understand that there were several different categories of destroyers in the RN, and that the fleet boats, the Tribals, J & K, classes and the later A-I classes were generally less than five years old, I suppose?
In terms of cruisers, there were only 17 vessels launched during WW1, plus a further 8 of WW1 design. still in service. Of these, nine had been rebuilt as AA cruisers. The RN had launched 49 cruisers of post WW1 designs by September, 1939, of which 27 were less than ten years old. Again, you don't seem to have much understanding of the difference between the RN concept of the 'Fleet' and the 'Trade Protection' cruiser.
You keep making dogmatic statements such as :- 'The main problem with the Queen Elizabeth class BB is the fact that UK could've spent the resources which it did historically on other projects and ships which would have helped them a lot more in ww2' without explaining what these projects and ships might have been.
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@kms_scharnhorst I assume it hasn't occurred to you that the US, Japanese, & Italian navies all modernised their older capital ships, most of which were inferior to the QEs, and you haven't criticised them, yet you criticise the RN for doing exactly the same thing?
The 16 older RN cruisers were not 'lying around' but were used in secondary theatres, just as the US navy did with their Omahas.
You seem to assume that the Admiralty of the mid 1930s ought to have been aware that France would collapse in 1940, and should have planned accordingly. In point of fact, the Admiralty worst case scenario, that of war against Germany, Japan, & Italy at the same time, made no such assumption. The expectation was that the Western Front would remain much as it was in 1914-1918, and that the Royal Navy would fight a new Battle of the Atlantic, provide a battle fleet for the Far East, and re-impose the Northern Blockade, whilst the French navy would play a major role in the Mediterranean. Moreover, as any German U-Boat force would only be able to reach the Atlantic via the north of Scotland, it would be much less capable than, with the use of French Atlantic bases, it historically turned out to be.
I accept that there was a shortage of ASW ships, but because the RN was obliged to fight a war for which no planning had prepared it. In point of fact, as Doenitz based his calculations on those that von Holtzendorff had reached in 1917, that 600,000 tons of Allied shipping per month needed to be sunk to bring Britain to her knees, and as up to January 1942, sinking had only achieved more than half of this target on three occasions, the argument about the U-Boat peril is overstated.
Finally, 'Navalised Spitfires & Hurricanes.' The first Hurricanes only reached the RAF on 25 December, 1937, and the first Spitfires in August, 1938, whereas the modernisation of Malaya began in 1930, of Warspite in 1934, of Renown in 1936, and of Queen Elizabeth & Valiant in 1937.
You appear to be saying that the Admiralty ought to have held off modernising the Battle Fleet because, just possibly, a modern high performance fighter might be able to fly off a carrier in a few years time, with a bit of luck, without explaining precisely how this would have been a better option.
By the way, I suppose you know that procurement of aircraft for the Royal Navy was, until May, 1939, in the hands of the RN's most intransigent and implacable of enemies, the British Air Ministry?
Moreover, would high performance fighters have been all that much use at Matapan?
Finally, instead of explaining exactly why, you still persist with your dogmatic 'refitting HMS Hood instead of Queen Elizabeth, Valiant or Warspite' fixation.
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@kms_scharnhorst You 'don't think the Royal Navy was bothered much by the fact that their aircraft procurement was managed by the British Air Ministry?' Actually, they were appalled, and spent much of the inter-war period trying to recover control. The result of this foolishness was that Naval Air Service, which on 1 April, 1918, operated 2949 aircraft & 103 airships, had been reduced by September, 1939 to 232 aircraft, of which around 30 could be considered modern.
oh, and I didn't say that the ASW capabilities wouldn't have been as important. I said that there would not have been a shortage of ASW vessels.
Finally, 'No I am not saying the admiralty shouldn't modernise its battle fleet, I am saying that the admiralty shouldn't have been bothered to modernise ww1 era super dreadnoughts' The British battlefleet was restricted by treaty to fifteen capital ships. In the British case Five 'R' Class, Five 'QE' Class, two 'Nelson' class, two 'Repulse' class battlecruisers, and a fast Battleship, Hood. As they shouldn't, in your view, modernise the QEs, that really wouldn't leave much else, would it?
Again, I didn't say anything as absurd as your suggestion that the QEs were modernised in order to fight Matapan. I asked what benefit would have accrued if the RN had high performance carrier fighters at Matapan, but had not modernised the ships which fought it? You don't think the radar on the modernised QEs played a role, then?
Please don't bother to reply, I think this nonsense has gone on long enough, and I have more constructive things to do than fill in the gaps in your knowledge of between the wars British naval policy.
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@DerpyPossum This is from the 'Washington Times' of 16 April, 1912.
'That Captain Smith believed the Titanic and the Olympic to be absolutely unsinkable is recalled by a man who had a conversation with the veteran commander on a recent voyage of the Olympic.
The talk was concerning the accident in which the British warship Hawke rammed the Olympic.
"The commander of the Hawke was entirely to blame," commented a young officer who was in the group. "He was 'showing off' his warship before a throng of passengers and made a miscalculation."
Captain Smith smiled enigmatically at the theory advanced by his subordinate, but made no comment as to this view of the mishap.
"Anyhow," declared Captain Smith, "the Olympic is unsinkable, and the Titanic will be the same when she is put in commission."Why," he continued, "either of these vessels could be cut in halves and each half would remain afloat indefinitely. The non-sinkable vessel has been reached in these two wonderful craft."
"I venture to add," concluded Captain Smith, "that even if the engines and boilers of these vessels were to fall through their bottoms the vessels would remain afloat." '
So the allegation is based upon something an unnamed individual claimed Smith had said, which only came to light after the sinking. The last two paragraphs alone amply demonstrate how much credibility the claim had.
Atill, as we know, if it was in a newspaper it must be true, mustn't it?
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@jbloun911 When did I say that Churchill 'begged' for anything? He sought US support. He certainly didn't need US support to defeat any invasion, and to be frank didn't receive any in any case.
Most history books actually acknowledge that the defeat of Hitler, on land, was more due to the Soviet army than to the Western Allies. They also acknowledge that the assault landings in the west ( Torch, Husky, Overlord, etc.) were largely British led, and that the US became the dominant partner in the last seven or so months of the war only. Have you actually read any books on the subject?
By the way, have you heard of Operation U-Go, which resulted in 60,000 Japanese dead, and over 100,000 casualties, and was acknowledged by them as their heaviest defeat in a single battle to the end of 1944? I thought not, as it was in Burma.
Finally, 'and get off our internet.' Your internet? Who invented the damned thing? Tim Berners-Lee. Born in London.
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@thecensoredmuscle563 Actually, it is easy to determine his reasons, should you so choose.
In regard to J.P. Morgan cancelling "at the last minute," research by Mark Baber and posted on Encyclopedia Titanica actually reveals it to be an urban myth. Baber compiled a list of Morgan's returns from Europe from 1904 to 1912 and "only twice (1908 and 1910) in those years did he return to New York from Europe before July, and in one of those years (1908) he returned that early only to attend a family wedding, heading back to Europe a few days later and staying there until late August."
Moreover, those occasions he returned early were in June - never as early as April. Even more conclusively, a New York Times newspaper article of Thursday 28th March 1912 reveals that in March:-
"J. Pierpont Morgan has written a cordial letter to the committee, announcing that he will be in Venice on April 23 for the inauguration of the biennial International Art Exhibition, April 25, and dedicate the new Campanile of St. Mark's."
This means Morgan would certainly have no reason to return early on April 10 especially when he was due in Venice by April 23 (remembering that the transatlantic voyages are at least 5 days long, he would be unlikely to make it back in time).
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@theblackwidowchronicles 'the Merida, the Cingetorix, the Blue Bonnett, the Hope, the Silver Spray, the Sechelt, the essie Smith. These all vanished in 1911 in the North Atlantic. Bye Bye......Mic Drop.' I suspected that there was something wrong with you, unless you simply have an odd sense of humour.
Merida - Collided with Admiral Farragut on 11 May, 1911 off Cape Charles, Florida. People taken off by the Farragut.
Cingetorix - Ran aground Hartland Point, 2 March, 1911.
Blue Bonnett - Barge ran aground in Long Island Sound 2.8.11.
Hope - Schooner collided with Hattie S. Heckman in Massachusetts harbor, 14.3.11.
Sechelt - Sank in a storm in Juan de Fuca Strait. 24.3.11.
Essie Smith Actually, Bessie Smith, by the way. The 127-gross register ton sternwheel paddle steamer burned at Parkersburg, West Virginia.
Whether you are a comedian or merely an idiot. Do go away!
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@sichere You can post as many documentaries as you like, but they won't bring St. Valery en Caux any nearer to Dunkirk. Simply check it on any map of France. Dieppe is 229 kms from Dunkirk, and St. Valery en Caux is 34 kms further along the coast from Dieppe.
Even if you had mistaken en Caux for the 'other' St. Valery, sur Somme, that is 151 km, or 93 miles from Dunkirk. On 3 June, 51st Highland was at Abbeville, well south of Boulogne and nowhere near Dunkirk.
The rest of your post, with references to shootings, etc., is simply nonsense. Why not just read the 51st Highland Division website for yourself?
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@sichere What has 'Crow Flying' distance, right or wrong, got to do with anything? By road, Abbeville was, and is 153 kms., from Dunkirk using the modern A16 or D941, or 189 kms. on the A25. If Abbeville is less than 60 miles from Dunkirk, and St. Valery is also less than 60 miles from Dunkirk, how is it that St. Valery is 101 kms. south west (i.e., in the opposite direction from Dunkirk) of Abbeville?
51st were under the command of the IX Corps of the French 10th Army, and retreated with them across France via Varennes, Abbeville, and Erondelle, arriving at St. Valery late on 10 June. Read any book on the campaign; the facts are stated in all. The initial hope had been that Dieppe could be used for the evacuation. Part of the division, Arkforce, was placed in a defensive position at Fecamp, by the way, and avoided encirclement as a result.
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@amernoori4157 The Germans had, by August, 1940, over 150 medium, heavy, & super heavy batteries on the Channel coast. They began firing at the British CW & CE coastal collier convoys from 12 August. Between August & December, they fired around 1880 rounds, without scoring a single hit.
In fact, during the whole of the war, these fantastic 'technologically advanced' batteries failed to sink a single merchant ship from any of these convoys. During the same period, 531 CW & CE convoys passed up and down the Channel, involving 9097 ships, mainly small colliers or coasters escorted by two older destroyers and one or two armed trawlers. Total losses during this period were 31 vessels, of which 24 were when actually in convoy.
Another Sealion 'Would Have' with no actual knowledge of the history of the period, I observe.
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@PoliticalRiskPod Absolutely miles out. The RN Pink List for 16 September lists the following dispositions, of operational warships only, excluding vessels under repair or refit.:-
Scapa Flow :- 1 battlecruiser, 1 carrier, 2 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, 7 destroyers.
Rosyth :- 2 battleships, 1 battlecruiser, 3 light cruisers, 17 destroyers.
Humber :- 3 light cruisers, 5 destroyers.
Harwich :- 6 destroyers. Sheerness :- 2 light cruisers, 18 destroyers.
Portsmouth/Southampton :- 1 light cruiser, 19 destroyers (including 5 French & 1 Dutch).
Plymouth :- 1 battleship, 2 light cruisers, 11 destroyers (including 3 Polish & 3 French).
Liverpool :- 3 destroyers. Firth of Clyde :- 1 light cruiser, 10 destroyers ( including 3 RCN).
Belfast/Londonderry :- 3 destroyers. At sea on escort duties :- 10 destroyers.
Halifax, Nova Scotia :- 3 RCN destroyers.
Gibraltar :- 1 battlecruiser, 8 destroyers. Freetown :- 2 battleships, 2 carriers, 3 heavy cruisers, 11 destroyers.
Mediterranean Fleet :- 4 battleships, 2 carriers, 2 heavy cruisers, 7 light cruisers, 22 destroyers.
These are for vessels of destroyer size and upwards, and don't include smaller vessels (sloops, fleet minesweepers, submarines, MTBs, etc) or ships on more distant stations (East Indies, China, Australia, South Atlantic, Red Sea, etc., as if I did I would be typing all day!
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@Benito-Musolesi A small correction. The Italian government ALLEGED that the British, either directly or indirectly, supplied such bullets. The British government at the time submitted their response, and left the League of Nations to decide the merits or otherwise of the claim. The International Committee of the Red Cross also attempted to investigate claims of breaches of the Geneva Convention, but were not permitted access by either side. Perhaps you would care to read Mr. Eden's statement to the House on 18 May, 1936, as published in Hansard, on the allegations?
So, you consider mass extermination of thousands by means of Mustard Gas to be a 'fair & adequate' response? Thank Heavens Italy didn't have nuclear weapons in 1936!!!!
The rest of your post is simply a rant, on a par with your reference to 'That war criminal of Admiral Cunningham, a coward like all the British.' Presumably, reasoned argument and measured exposition of a case isn't' your forte?
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It wasn't the crew who were at fault, but the captain. The watchkeeping officers alerted Captain Lord to their concerns, and he failed to respond. At the very least, he might have asked his wireless operator to return to his set and monitor the frequencies to determine whether anyone untoward was unfolding.
That same wireless operator, Cyril Evans, simply turned off his set at the end of his shift. Californian only had one Marconi Operator aboard. Nor, by the way, did he regard Phillips' signal as insulting. As he testified, he took the morse shorthand signal from Phillips as simply a request to clear the frequency.
The Marconi operator community was a small, closely knit, one of young men. Evans was 20 years old, and Phillips was 25.
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Marshall wanted a landing on mainland France in 1942, but eventually came to realise the sheer impossibility of such an operation, give the lack of trained troops and suitable assault ships and craft, to which could be added the fact that the Battle of the Atlantic had yet to be won. It was eventually won, of course, in May 1943.
Given the understandable demand in the US for a response to Pearl Harbor and Operation Paukenschlag, FDR viewed it as essential that US ground forces see action in the west As soon as possible, if he was to justify the Germany first strategy.
The only realistic place where this could happen was North Africa, firstly because the British had been fighting there since June 1940, when Italy invaded Egypt from Libya, and secondly because it was hoped that French resistance to American troops would probably be half-hearted. After the allied victory in North Africa in May 1943, where else could the substantial British & American forces be used? Southern France was not a realistic possibility, as it was out of range of effective allied air cover, and a full scale invasion of Northern France was still around a year away.
The assault on Italy served two purposes. Firstly, it produced the unexpected gain of driving Italy out of the war, and secondly it obliged Germany to move large numbers of troops from other fronts into Italy. By May, 1944, there were over 350,000 German troops deployed there. If Italy had not been attacked, and had remained, even passively, part of the Axis, these troops might have been based elsewhere. The Russian Front, perhaps? Or France?
Odd that, if the Americans couldn't care less about Montgomery, he was made ground forces commander for Overlord, isn't it?
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A rather distorted claim. Piorun was operating with Vian's 4th Destroyer Flotilla, of Cossack, Maori, Zulu and Sikh. DF4 was diverted from escort of troop convoy WS8B to join the search for Bismarck, but by the time it arrived Bismarck had been located, damaged by Swordfish attack, and was being shadowed by HMS Sheffield. Admiral Tovey, in KGV with Rodney in company, was approaching but had decided to delay the final action until dawn on 27 May.
During the night of 26/27, Vian's ships harassed Bismarck, carrying out a series of torpedo attacks. Piorun, however, failed to carry out her torpedo attack, but became involved in a brief gun duel, lasting about an hour. She was far from short of ammunition, but, unlike DF4, she did lose contact with Bismarck.
Neither side achieved any hits, by the way. Piorun's action, whilst undoubtedly gallant, was futile, in that 4.7 inch shells were incapable of damaging Bismarck, whereas 21 inch torpedoes were. Moreover, Piorun lost contact, rather defeating the point of her being there in the first place.
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Germany had no navy. In September 1940 they had one operational heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, and about 15 destroyers and torpedo boats. U-boats didn't last long in the Channel. The Germans tried to send three through in 1939. They are still there.
The Germans had heavy guns on the French coast. They fired at coastal convoys throughout the war, and hit precisely nothing.
By September, 1940, the Germans had managed to assemble/commandeer just under 400 tugs/fishing boats. All were required to tow invasion barges. There were no reserves.
The best the Germans could muster at the time was a small number (about a third of a division) of paratroopers. Not that this mattered, as they only had just over 200 Ju52 transport aircraft anyway.
What, by the way, do the Germans at night, when their invasion barges are completely unprotected, and the Royal Navy's cruisers, destroyers, and supporting auxiliary craft are running riot? As Andrew Cunningham said to his fleet later in the war 'sink, burn & destroy. Let nothing pass.'
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@gabrielm.942 Sorry, but it is true. Assuming that an invasion attempt was to be made in the latter half of September, 1940, then :-
Gneisenau : Torpedoed by HMS Clyde off Trondheim in June 1940. Repairing in Kiel. Repairs completed in December, 1940.
Scharnhorst : Torpedoed by HMS Acasta in June, 1940. Undergoing repairs in Kiel. Repairs completed in December.
Deutchland : Torpedoed by HMS Spearfish in April, 1940. Severely damaged, and undergoing repairs in Kiel. Repairs completed by April, 1941.
Admiral Scheer : Refitting in Danzig for a raiding sortie. Refit completed mid October, 1940.
Blucher : Sunk in April, 1940.
Bismarck : Commissioned in late August, 1940, then sent to the Baltic for sea trials and working up. Modifications completed in January, 1941, and working up completed in April, 1941.
Prinz Eugen :- Commissioned August, 1940. Baltic trials until December, after which modifications made in Kiel. Resumed working up in the Baltic, operating with Bismarck. Work up complete in April, 1941.
Schlesien. : Secondary armament removed to equip merchant raiders late in 1939. Used as an icebreaker in the Baltic thereafter, until laid up as an accommodation ship with a skeleton crew July - December, 1940.
Schleswig-Holstein : Supported the invasion of Denmark in April, 1940. Used as a training ship thereafter, with secondary armament removed for use on merchant raiders.
I submit that using these two hulks as troop transports would have been the height of folly. The British had 18 destroyers and 2 cruisers based at Sheerness, 6 destroyers at Harwich, 3 cruisers and 5 destroyers in the Humber. Not to mention 2 battleships, 1 battlecruiser, 3 cruisers and 17 destroyers at Rosyth.
That leaves Hipper, operational but with defective engines, the light cruisers Koln, Nurnberg & Emden, 7 operational destroyers (plus a further 3 refitting/repairing) and nine Wolf/Mowe torpedo boats.
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@gabrielm.942 Blucher was commissioned on 20 September, 1939, and sunk by Norwegian coastal defences on 9 April, 1940.
The situation wasn't different though, was it? The invasion of Norway, which resulted in the crippling or loss of most of the German navy, took place mainly before the fall of France. The earliest that the invasion could have taken place realistically was September, 1940, because the German navy only managed to put their ramshackle invasion force of towed barges together by then. Even re-writing everything that happened between September, 1939 and June 1940, as you seem to want to do, still doesn't give the German navy the landing craft and numbers of escorts available to make a serious invasion attempt.
Do you not understand the difference between a commissioned warship and an operational warship? Commissioning means that the navy has accepted the ship from the builders, but it then needs to undergo a long period of trials and working up.
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@jeanie6936 Show me one occasion when I have defended Captain Lord's inactions. I look forward to reading it.
I simply explained what Franklin said. Show me where I have supported his comments. I look forward to that as well.
As to White Star line and Harland & Wolff, I have not defended them because, whatever you might wish to believe, there is no evidence that either Company did anything wrong. If you think there is, please show me what the nature of this evidence is, and why my comments are inaccurate.
I have simply, on the subject of Captain Smith's actions, reported accurately to you, and to others, what a number of Captains & Master Mariners stated in evidence at the British Inquiry. Again, were you to make the effort to read the Minutes, you would already know this.
Why are you so antipathetic towards debate, and why do you prefer confrontation and insult?
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@jeanie6936 'Just guessing are you?'
No. I am relating what Carlisle said in his evidence, when he stated that, during the course of a four hour meeting with Pirie, Sanderson, and Ismay, the lifeboat topic occupied some five to ten minutes.
The final decision, again as Carlisle stated, was made by Harland & Wolff, after Carlisle had retired in June 1910. As the BoT had not updated their regulations, H & W stayed with 14 lifeboats, 2 cutters, and 4 collapsibles.
As I write on almost every occasion when I reply to your confrontational comments, read the minutes of the British Inquiry if you really do wish to inform yourself.
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@jeanie6936 Or, it means that Sanderson and Ismay were far more concerned about the 'decorations' within Olympic, and agreed with Carlisle and Pirie that the final number of lifeboats was a decision for the builders, not the operators, as Harland & Wolff were experienced shipbuilders, whilst Sanderson and Ismay were not.
As Carlisle testified, the final decision was made by H & W, after the BoT had not amended their regulations, and, indeed, after he had retired and handed over the completion of the design to Thomas Andrews. Who, by the way, was happy enough to sail in both Olympic & Titanic.
Why are you so insistent upon ignoring a primary source like the Minutes of the Inquiry. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with how historical research actually functions?
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@stevemurphy470 You don't need to 'bet' you can check my comments for yourself. Indeed, I hope that you will do that at once.
Had you taken the trouble to have read my post to Dizzy (one of the polite, sensible, people on here, by the way) you would have observed that what I wrote was, in fact:
'I now propose to refrain from replying to any of these people, as it was considered, as early as the 18th century, to be rather bad form to poke the residents of Bedlam with a stick.
Of course, actual, genuine, comments, even if silly on occasion, will still receive a response.'
Does that, perhaps, make my attitude clearer?
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@goinsouth5187 Unlike you, I have no particular problem with acknowledging any error I might make. The whole purpose of such sites is to make possible general discussion of these events, hopefully in a courteous and respectful manner. You, however, and those in your group, seem determined to reduce an excellent and informative video to a slanging match.
Why, by the way, would I feel any need to post 'lies?' Why would you believe that I feel any need to obsess about long ago events to the extent that I would make fabricated claims?
Indeed, the only error of which I am aware, and which I freely acknowledged, was my misunderstanding about the role of the five single-ended boilers. If you can point to others, preferably without the need to include more insults, feel entirely free to refer me to them.
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Don't be silly. Do you really think that there was only one set of glasses aboard Titanic?
Fleet in his evidence to the US Inquiry stated as follows :-
Senator SMITH.
Are you given glasses of any kind?
Mr. FLEET.
We had none this time. We had nothing at all, only our own eyes, to look out.
Senator SMITH.
On the Oceanic you had glasses, had you not?
Mr. FLEET.
Yes, sir.
Senator SMITH.
Each of you?
Mr. FLEET.
There is one pair in the nest.
Senator SMITH.
One pair of glasses?
Mr. FLEET.
Yes, sir.
Senator SMITH.
What kind of glasses are they; strong, powerful glasses?
Mr. FLEET.
No, not always, sir.
Senator SMITH.
What were those on the Oceanic?
Mr. FLEET.
Very poor; you could see about from here to that looking-glass (indicating).
In other words, the glasses he had had in Oceanic were useless. Generally, glasses were used to identify objects which had already been seen by the naked eye. If Fleet had had such glasses, and used them to identify the berg, notification might actually have been delayed by a few seconds.
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@Tozzpot500 To be honest, I would question how serious the financial effects on White Star really were. The line operated over thirty liners of various sizes in 1914, and, whilst the loss of Titanic was a serious blow, financially, a replacement 'superliner' Britannic', was under construction.
A far greater problem was the Great War, which had a serious effect on White Star's business, and resulted in a loss of several ships, but immediately after it the Line purchased a number of second hand vessels, and in 1922 received as war prizes three large German vessels.
The US Immigration Act of 1924 had a detrimental effect on the line, which responded by introducing a 'tourist class' in many of their linerd to make up from the loss of revenue. I understand that the beginning of the line's serious problems should be more properly dated to arounf 1927, but the Great Depression from 1929 was the real cause of the eventual merger with Cunard. Indeed, the first financial deficit recorded by White Star was in 1930.
Intriguingly, a former head of the line did, in 1933, attempt to rescue the company by proposing to create, with the agreement of the government, a new company which would operate and would build other ships similar to the Britannic and the Georgic in order to become profitable.
One J. Bruce Ismay!
I haven't ever seen a detailed financial assessment of White Star after the Titanic sinking, but would be fascinated to read one should it exist.
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@garyhill2740 The British didn't send a QE after Bismarck because the QEs were not fast enough, and were rather busy in the Mediterranean at the time. Your West Virginia analogy is a false one, by the way. Before WW2, West Virginia had had one minor refit, improving her AA fit & mounting an aircraft catapult, whereas Arizona received a major rebuild in 1929 - 1931. In other words, the US navy was following a similar policy to the British, in that older warships capable of improvement were being modernised first.
If British decision-making was poor, then so was that of the US Navy. In point of fact, neither made particularly bad decisions where their capital ships were concerned.
Unfortunately, the Admiralty did not have your advantage, in that no-one told them that a major war was scheduled to commence in September, 1939.
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@zanehayes4380 Yes. Olympic was inspected by three teams, from the Admiralty, White Star, and the Board of Trade. The Admiralty published the report, which the other two teams supported, on 10 November, 1911. The damage was summarised as :-
“Two major watertight compartments were flooded, hull plating gashed from the Orlop deck to E deck, and the starboard propeller shafting damaged.”
The nonsense about a damaged keel first appeared in a book by Robin Gardiner in 1995, as part of his 'switch' claim. Certainly, Harland & Wolff, who repaired Olympic and had her back at sea by late November, 1911, don't seem to have known anything about it.
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Yes, of course. Never mind the fact that Colossus was more than two knots faster, could bring ten, as opposed to eight, 12 inch guns to bear on a target, and had 3 inch horizontal armour, as opposed to Michigan's 1 and a half inches. You might also mention director fire control for the main guns, which Colossus had from the outset, but Michigan didn't receive until December, 1914.
Clearly, not much of a contest.
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@Matt..S 'You didn't get on the Titanic just to have a heated, lighted room with a meal.' Indeed. If you were 1st or 2nd class, you expected a fast crossing. Which is why an Olympic burned 600-800 tons of coal per day.
Surely you understand the correlation between speed and engine power?
Warspite, as built, generated 75,000 shp, on a displacement of 32,000 tons, with a maximum speed of 24 knots.
Hood, when built, generated 144,000 shp, on a displacement of 46,800 tons, at a maximum speed of 32 knots.
Both ships had four shafts, and similar armament and armour. The extra 69,000 shp, and the extra 14,800 tons, were almost entirely due to the huge extra engine power needed to generate the extra 8 knots.
Compare these figures with Titanic & Lusitania :-
Titanic :- Displacement 52,000 tons, 3 shafts, 46,000 shp, maximum speed 23 knots.
Lusitania :- Displacement 44,000 tons, 4 shafts, 76,000 shp, maximum speed 28 knots.
Thus Lusitania, with four turbines compared to two reciprocating engines and one low power turbine, still required 30,000 more shp, on a lower displacement, in order to achieve five extra knots.
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@stevemcregor3108 No, you haven't. There were half-height gates (about three feet high) within the ship, in accordance with US immigation regulations from the time. These were not 'padlocked', as the evidence of third class survivors at the US Inquiry confirmed.
The only actual locked areas were between the cargo and passenger sections of the ship. This also applied to other liners from the time, such as Olympic, or the Mauretanias, to name a few.
To quote from a BBC report of 2012 :-
'One of the most emotive scenes in Cameron's Titanic portrays the third class passengers as being forcibly held below the decks and prevented from reaching the lifeboats. Richard Howells argues that there is no historical evidence to support this.
Gates did exist which barred the third class passengers from the other passengers. But this was not in anticipation of a shipwreck but in compliance with US immigration laws and the feared spread of infectious diseases.
Third class passengers included Armenians, Chinese, Dutch, Italians, Russians, Scandinavians and Syrians as well as those from the British Isles - all in search of a new life in America.
"Under American immigration legislation, immigrants had to be kept separate so that before the Titanic docked in Manhattan, it first stopped at Ellis Island - where the immigrants were taken for health checks and immigration processing," Howells says.
Each class of passengers had access to their own decks and allocated lifeboats - although crucially no lifeboats were stored in the third class sections of the ship.
Third class passengers had to find their way through a maze of corridors and staircases to reach the boat deck. First and second class passengers were most likely to reach the lifeboats as the boat deck was a first and second class promenade.
The British Inquiry Report noted that the Titanic was in compliance with the American immigration law in force at the time - and that allegations that third class passengers were locked below decks were false.
No third-class passengers testified at the British inquiry but they were represented by a lawyer, W D Harbinson, who concluded that: "No evidence has been given in the course of this case that would substantiate a charge that any attempt was made to keep back the third class passengers." '
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Really? During the Norwegian campaign, the German navy lost 50% of their total number of destroyers (10 of 20), 2 of 6 light cruisers ( a third had already been crippled in the North Sea in December 1939 and was only fit for use as a training ship thereafter), both battleships were damaged and not repaired until November, 1940 (thus, not available to support a Sealion attempt), one pocket battleship badly damaged, and not repaired until April, 1941 (a second had already been lost), and one (of 2) heavy cruisers sunk by Norwegian shore defences.
By the time the campaign was over, there wasn't really much of a German navy left to mess with!!
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@Big Bill O'Reilly That is the problem, old chap. I have read numerous books on the campaign in Italy, by American, British, & German authors. They are unanimous in their convictions that Clark placed personal prestige ahead of strategic advantage, possibly because he knew that what was about to happen in Normandy would remove Italy, and him, from the front pages.
After all, wasn't Clark insistent that war reporters refer to, not 'the 5th Army' but to 'General Mark Clark's 5th Army' in any articles?
You still haven't told me what this 'TRUMP U' is? Something to do with your President, I assume?
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@mememeandalsomeyoutoo 'So you want to tell me that Churchill hasn’t committed atrocities?
Is there a source of information that says otherwise?'
Yes. A whole host of documents and archives. Which 'atrocities' do you attribute to Churchill, out of interest?
By the way, I think you might mean Bengal, rather than Burma, but before you response, here are a few facts about the Bengal Famine:-
Actually, the Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
Seriously, with 2.5 million Indian servicemen joining the Allied cause, was Churchill really likely to have gone out of his way to risk fomenting a second Mutiny?
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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@mememeandalsomeyoutoo I regret that you dislike facts, but they do not make them any the less factual.
'I thought he took away the food from his subjects, FDR has nothing to do with them.' Then you were wrong on two counts. Firstly, the people of India were not Churchill's subjects. He was not a monarch.
Secondly, FDR was the President of the USA, and Churchill needed his agreement, in the middle of a war, concerning the allocation of shipping resources, as it was not something he could do unilaterally.
As to Ireland, do you know what Michael Collins said in a letter to Churchill in 1922 during the Irish Civil War? Collins was then Commander-in-Chief of of the Irish Free State Army. Through a friend, he had recently sent a message to British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill: “Tell Winston we could never have done anything without him.”
You are clearly too indoctrinated, or prejudiced, to be worth further effort.
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@alexalbrecht5768 Force Z didn't sail to a war zone, but was sent in the hope that it would deter Japanese aggression in the area. Considering that the Royal Navy had based all pre-war planning on the support of the French Fleet in the Mediterranean, they actually, with the support of Canada, handled the U-Boat threat rather effectively. In point of fact, Doenitz took von Holtzendorff's estimate of the need to sink 600,000 tons of shipping per month in order to starve Britain out, but in the event only achieved 50% of this target on for or five occasions prior to January, 1942, and on several occasions the figure was below 100,000 tons.
In point of fact, no British armoured carriers were sunk. Only one modern carrier, Ark Royal, was lost, to U-boat attack, and she wasn't armoured. The KGVs did not suffer a design flaw. The torpedo hit on Prince of Wales would have had a similar effect on any other battleship in existence at the time, the Bismarck being the obvious example. PoW was actually sunk by four torpedoes, by the way.
Which two battleships were lost to damage control failures?
Finally, compared poorly to which other navies? The German? hardly, The Italian? don't be silly!. The US? In terms of major fleet actions possibly, but there again the British won the major fleet actions which they did fight, and the two navies weren't in competition in any case. The RN & RCN, with some US support, did, of course, win the one major battle in the west which really mattered, the one in the Atlantic.
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@alexalbrecht5768 You might wish to compare the warhead weights of Japanese aerial torpedoes with that of the German G7e, before claiming that the German weapon was inferior.
The three battlecruisers at Jutland were lost not because of design flaws, but because of the foolishness of the commander of the Battlecruiser fleet, who insisted upon rate of fire, and encouraged the stowage of cordite above the blast doors, and even around turret interiors. The practice was discontinued after Jutland, and was never followed in the Grand Fleet itself. The Royal Navy, just like every other major navy, was not immune from fools in high places, although these were, fortunately, few in number.
Hood was more a fast battleship than a true battlecruiser, and her loss was not a result of the same circumstances. She was, of course, 20 years old in 1941.
I enjoyed your comments about the Nelsons. Even with their hull problems, they served successfully for 20 years. In terms of speed, they were actually the fastest capable of 23 knots. The best that a US battleship of the time could manage was 21. The Japanese Nagato was four knots faster, but her armour was seriously inferior. The British, within the terms of the Washington Naval Treaties, had been able to build two capital ships with superior firepower and armour to anything else which put to sea in the next 12 years, other perhaps than the slower Colorados. Bismarck, despite an extra 15,000 tons of displacement, was inferior in armour design, weight of armour, and weight of broadside. Of course their only surface action successes were against Bismarck. After her sinking the German surface fleet was conspicuous only by absence and the Italian Navy, when presented with an opportunity to take on the Nelsons with their own modern battleships, preferred not to make the attempt.
Nelson remained in service until late 1947, by the way. Her scrapping was not because of poor material condition, but because she was no longer needed.
Oh, and which 'battleships' sunk by mines in WW1? Unless you wish to refer to pre-dreadnoughts, that is?
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@untrench408 Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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So, the Italian submarine fleet', 'the world's greatest in terms of tonnage' sank almost 750,000 tons of Allied shipping in three years? Would it be churlish to point out that between April & June, 1941, the German U-boat fleet, with less than 40 operational front line boats, sank 927804 tons?
As to surface ships sunk by the Italian air force, you claim 72 Allied warships. As the allies lost 76 warships in the whole of the campaign, totalling 315,500 tons, are you claiming that, between them, mines, the Italian surface fleet, the Luftwaffe, and the German U-boat arm, sank just 4? I fear you will struggle to justify this claim, especially since, in terms of tonnage, 145800 is recorded as sunk by Italian means, and 169,700 to German forces. Moreover, would you care to comment on axis shipping losses to RN submarines in the Mediterranean over the period June, 1940 to September, 1943? 328 vessels of 815,800 tons. All except 14 of the vessels were Italian, by the way.
The attack on Valiant & Queen Elizabeth, which disabled both of them, was an outstanding feat of arms. Less outstanding, however, was the fact that absolutely no advantage was taken of it. Valiant, by the way, was back in service by June 1942, although her repairs were completed by March, after which she was sent to Durban for a major refit before joining the Eastern Fleet. Queen Elizabeth took longer to repair, 18 months in fact, although much of this time was spent in the US undergoing a thorough refit.
Would you care to provide evidence for your remarkable assertion that 'By mid-1942, Mussolini's navy had fought its way back from crushing defeats to become the dominant power in the Mediterranean Sea' by describing the occasions upon which this dominance was demonstrated? The triumphant annihilation of the RN surface forces protecting 'Pedestal' by the battlefleet would perhaps be a good starting point?
I won't bother with most of the rest, except to say that I cannot find any references to any Italian nuclear weapons programme earlier that the 1960s, and the flight of the P.108 would have been remarkable, given that New York is almost 7000 kms from Rome, and the operational range of the P108 was less than 3300 kms.
You are a total fantasist, albeit a remarkably amusing one. Still, I am sure you remain proud of that wonderful day in September 1943 when the triumphant Italian battlefleet steamed into Valetta harbour to accept the surrender of the fortress of Malta.
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The 36 is correct, assuming that the two fleet oilers, Aldersdale & Grey Ranger, are counted separately, and not included as part of the convoy. 21 US registered ships, 13 British (including the rescue ships and the two oilers), 2 Russian, 1 Panamanian, & 1 Dutch.
EG1, commanded by Jackie Broome, consisted of six destroyers, Keppel, Fury, Leamington, Ledbury, Offa & Wilton, four corvettes, La Malouine, Dianella, Lotus, & Poppy, three minesweepers, Halcyon, Salamender & Britomart, two AA ships, Palomares and Poizarica, two submarines, P614 & P615, (both boats building for Turkey in 1939, and taken over by the RN, incidentally), and four armed trawlers, Lord Austin, Northern Gem, Ayrshire, & Lord Middleton,
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@Micscience Does any of that suggest that there was a huge conspiracy? Lord's evidence may have changed, but perhaps because he realised that he was being accused, almost, of dereliction of duty, and sought to portray himself in a better light.
The Inquiry simply did not concern itself with Californian's cargo, only her behaviour on 14/15 April. Californian was a small freighter, with accommodation for 47 passengers. Her principal purpose was to carry freight to the United States, and re-load with cotton from New Orleans. This is what she had been doing for around ten years.
The only concrete evidence about her cargo comes from the Boston shipping papers when she docked on 19 April. Once freight had cleared customs, manifests were held for a time by Customs, but generally disposed of soon afterwards. No-one in Boston expressed any misgivings about Californian's cargo, and to claim, as conspiracists do that, 'as no actual manifest is available to examine, that means Californian MUST have been loaded with blankets and life jackets,' is simply absurd.
The fact that the claim only arose as part of Robin Gardiner's entertaining but evidence-free book, eighty years or so after the event, may also be relevant?
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@berniefynn6623 You mean, apart from the 1 cruiser, 41 destroyers, 5 sloops, corvettes and gunboats, 36 minesweepers, 77 trawlers and drifters, and 20 Special Service Vessels,, MTBs, MGBs and boarding vessels, I suppose?
Not to mention the large number of Merchant Navy transports, or the comandeered Dutch Skoots, or the small boats, almost all of which were crewed by RN personnel?
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@berniefynn6623 Is all you know based on that ridiculous movie 'Dunkirk' of a couple of years ago?
In point of fact, destroyers brought back 102,843 men, the cruiser 1856, the sloops etc. 8755, the minesweepers 48,472, trawlers & drifters 28,709, special service vessels etc., 9355. Skoots carried 22,698, personnel ships 96,606, and the 'Little Ships' 6029.
The Little ships were used to ferry troops from the beaches to the larger ships offshore. The myth, and the movie, are both inaccurate. You should read the Naval Staff History, or any other of the many excellent and detailed accounts.
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@berniefynn6623 Simply not correct. Rundstedt gave the order, and Hitler agreed with it. Rundstedt, as a traditional European soldier, regarded an army with it's back to the sea as trapped. The British, with their understanding of combined operations going back over 200 years, viewed the sea as a large highway.
The weather varied. On 27 May, the Luftwaffe carried out 12 major attacks, dropping 15,000 HE and 30,000 incendiary bombs. 28 May was overcast, restricting aircraft operations, 29 was fine in the afternoon. 30 May was a foggy and rainy day, with aircraft unable to operate, 31 was bright and clear from late morning, as was 1 June & 2 June.
Aircraft operations were only seriously restricted on two days.
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@brch2 So you mean that, with knowledge of what did happen, you would have acted differently than Murdoch did? With similar foreknowledge, the US commanders would have had their defences ready and waiting when Nagumo's fleet arrived.
Which is, of course, irrelevant. Just as Pearl Harbor did not have knowledge of the future, neither did Murdoch. He received warning of the iceberg, and acted as his instincts and training told him, by ordering a course correction which might have averted disaster.
What, by the way, is this nonsense about people being willing to die to protect history? Murdoch was not protecting history; he was involved in events which were rather more immediate than that.
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@Niels_Dn The error was in bombing the building, as rubble is much easier to defend than an intact building.
Isn't it easy, at a distance of 80 years, to make profound moral judgements on a lap top from a comfy chair? Had you been an allied commander or soldier, looking at the Abbey and being convinced that the Germans were using it to direct their artillery, you might perhaps have come to a different conclusion.
By the way, war crimes involve gassing millions of civilians, or executing prisoners, or working slave labourers to death, not trying to minimise casualties among your own troops.
Or, as Arthur Harris remarked 'I would not regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier.' As someone whose father was one of those Grenadiers, I reluctantly agree with him, whatever you smug revisionists might piously pontificate.
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@WorshipinIdols I simply pointed out that the loss of the fuel, and the fact she was down by the bows, meant that Bismarck was no longer able to steam at her maximum, but had been obliged to slow down. I did not say that 28 knots was slow. However, by mid afternoon on 25 May, Bismarck had been forced to reduce to 20 knots. That IS slow. Read Robert Winklareth's account if you don't believe me (or anyone else, I suppose).
You clearly haven't read Captain Leach's damage report concerning Prince of Wales (not Whales, by the way. Didn't your interest in history tell you that?) 7 hits, all on the unarmoured part of the ship. None penetrated the armoured deck. She did take on around 600 tons of water amidships, but was able to renew the action, and maintain her position as a shadower, until she detached short of fuel.
It wouldn't have been a trade acceptable to Raeder, still less to Hitler. Bismarck was supposed to seek out and attack convoys, and to avoid a major encounter with the Royal Navy. Inevitably, she failed.
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@WorshipinIdols No. If I meant 'belt,' I would have said 'belt.' I check my posts for accuracy, whereas accuracy doesn't seem to interest you much at all.
What you recall is what I told you, but, just to try once again. There were seven hits. None pierced the 6 inch armoured deck (1.3 inches thicker than Bismarck's, by the way). One ( 8 inch) partially detonated on the armoured deck, and one (15 inch) passed through the bridge, without exploding. The remainder hit the unarmoured parts of the ship's side, and one caused flooding, although none actually exploded.
Unlike Bismarck, by the way, with her outdated WW1 type incremental armour, the KGVs (and the Nelsons) had all-or-nothing armour copied from the US Navy.
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@WorshipinIdols You really should buy a book. I thought you claimed to study history? Exeter was around 10, 000 tons deep load. Not that this is even vaguely relevant to anything at all. How was Graf Spee's mission successful? What is this gibberish reference you keep making to 113 Tons?
Graf Spee was merely a nuisance, causing, with Deutschland, a larger number of Allied ships to search for them. Having said that, in 1939, what else were these ships needed for anyway? There was no German battlefleet able to sortie out into the North Sea, still less the Atlantic, and the only other potential threat, Italy, was still neutral.
Harwood did precisely what any other cruiser admiral of the day would have done. He shadowed Graf Spee, seeking to remain in contact with her until Cumberland, Ark Royal, & Renown arrived. Langsdorff, in the event, saved him the trouble. Harwoods' cruisers did not suffer 'multiple hits.' Both, after the action, remained on station.
'Oh and Btw. I’ll trade a 13,000+ standard weight cruiser over 113,00 tons of cargo sunk any day.' As I said, you don't know an awful lot about the subject. Do you really think that, losing one of only three armoured cruisers in exchange for nine merchantmen (your frequent references to 113 tons are meaningless, of course) was a cause for celebration in Berlin, especially since the nuisance Graf Spee had caused lasted for three months only but, more importantly, the German belief that the armoured cruisers could cope with 8 inch hits proved ill-founded? From now on, the Germans knew that the remaining two were vulnerable not only to the five faster British & French capital ships, but also to every British & French heavy cruiser.
No wonder Scheer only carried out one raiding operation, before being decommissioned in January, 1943, and Deutschland did, after sinking three merchantmen in the North Atlantic, virtually nothing at all.
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@vonbennett8670 Actually, both ships were hit by one bomb, which in both cases failed to penetrate the armoured decks. They were sunk, unarguably, by torpedoes.
Rudel did indeed sink Marat. A ship laid up out of use and in harbour. Tell me any occasion when he, or any other German pilot, managed to sink a warship bigger than a light cruiser which had freedom to manoeuvre, at speed, at sea, please.
'The Royal Navy didn't lose capital ships in the early years from air attack because for the most part, they kept out of range of the Luftwaffe.' Really? perhaps you might read about the naval war in the Mediterranean to improve your knowledge.
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@drpoundsign Quite the reverse. FDR was asked by Churchill for shipping resources. FDR refused them. The texts of telegrams which passed between to two leaders are available in the Churchill Papers are available for anyone to read.
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
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@johnscott8739 'Actually those are called barnacles.' The depth, or rather shallowness of your knowledge, astounds me. Two dictionary definitions :-
Barnacle :- A type of arthropod constituting the subclass Cirripedia in the subphylum Crustacea, related to crabs and lobsters.
Rusticle :- A rusticle is a formation of rust similar to an icicle or stalactite in appearance that occurs deep underwater when wrought iron oxidizes.
Of course, those who urge others to 'do a little research' are almost exclusively those who, like yourself, have done little or none themselves.
For example, had you bothered to check, you would have found out that no Titanic propeller was ever fitted to Olympic, for two reasons. :-
1). The angle of pitch of Olympic's propellers was different from that of Titanic's.
2). There was no need, as Olympic's starboard propeller was not damaged in the collision with HMS Hawke. At least, not according to the Admiralty inspection report of 1911, supported by other teams from the Board of Trade & White Star. It was published in November, 1911. Perhaps you missed it?
Part of a propeller shaft was transferred to Olympic, in order to get her back to sea as quickly as possible, at a time when Titanic was many months away from completion and a new part could be fabricated without delaying this.
You have fallen for a switcher invention, intended to explain away the inconvenient fact that there is a 401 Titanic propeller on the wreck. Only in the bizarre world of the switcher fanatic could a Titanic propeller be seen as proof that the ship is really Olympic!
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Langsdorff, in my opinion, should have completed the sinking of Exeter. This would have given Harwood the issue of whether to continue attempting to shadow Graf Spee, or to abandon the action in order to pick up survivors.
The safe harbour he chose was an odd one, in that Buenos Aires was more pro-German, although there was a risk of fouling up Graf Spee's water intakes in the shallow channel.
Other than that, he had two insurmountable problems. Firstly, he had used up most of Graf Spee's ammunition in the first action, and was in no state to fight a second, but even more seriously, damage to his fuel purification plant meant that he only had around 24 hours of usable fuel left.
If Langsdorff had turned away immediately upon sighting Harwood's squadron, he might just have escaped unobserved, (as Admiral Graf von Spee might just possibly have done when he arrived at the Falklands in WW1). Once he mistook the three ships for a light cruiser & two destroyers, he was committed. The other shock, of course, was discovering that Graf Spee's armour was not proof against 8 inch shellfire, as the designers of the Deutschlands had claimed.
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G.F. Howe, the official US Historian, estimated that 275,000 Axis troops surrendered in Tunisia. 18th Army Group estimated 244,500 (157,000 German). Rommel later suggested 130,000 Germans, and von Arnim 100,000 Germans & 200,000 Italians. The British official history estimated 238,243 (unwounded) prisoners, of which 101,784 were German.
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Whereas the Mahdi, after capturing Khartoum, was the epitome of chivalry. Apart, of course, from butchering the entire Sudanese garrison, every male civilian in the city, and sending the women and children off into slavery.
The British & Egyptians, 8,000 British & 17,000 Egyptians and Sudanese, defeated an army of 52,000 extreme religious fanatics.
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No, let's look at some verifiable, as opposed to imaginary, facts. The Admiralty damage report, published in November, 1911 (perhaps you missed it?) summarised the damage as follows :-
“Two major watertight compartments were flooded, hull plating gashed from the Orlop deck to E deck, and the starboard propeller shafting damaged.”
Note the phrase 'shafting.' Both the Board of Trade & White Star, who had had separate teams inspecting Olympic, concurred with this summary.
Accordingly, parts of the shafting intended for Titanic, but not yet fitted, were used to return Olympic to sea more quickly. Indeed, aside from the fact that the pitches of the blades on the two ships were set at different angles, which meant that one set would not function efficiently on the other, isn't it odd that the rabid switches making this claim seem to have suddenly discovered the alleged swap only after the shocking revelation that a 401 (Titanic) blade had been found on the wreck of Titanic?
As to insurance, Olympic had been back at sea from late November, 1911, and had made several more Atlantic crossings before Titanic left Southampton in April, 1912. Moreover, as the ships cost £1.5 million each to build, and were insured for £1 million each, White Star would have lost £500,000 as well as a major asset and their safety record, had there been any such shady dealings.
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@robertbennett9949 Why not give the full quotation, which sheds rather a different light on Montgomery? :- 'Personally, my whole attention was given to defeating the rebels but it never bothered me a bit how many houses were burnt. I think I regarded all civilians as 'Shinners' and I never had any dealings with any of them. My own view is that to win a war of this sort, you must be ruthless. Oliver Cromwell, or the Germans, would have settled it in a very short time. Nowadays public opinion precludes such methods, the nation would never allow it, and the politicians would lose their jobs if they sanctioned it. That being so, I consider that Lloyd George was right in what he did, if we had gone on we could probably have squashed the rebellion as a temporary measure, but it would have broken out again like an ulcer the moment we removed the troops. I think the rebels would probably [have] refused battles, and hidden their arms etc. until we had gone.'
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How would people flee anywhere? Moreover, why? There was far more involved in carrying out a successful invasion of Britain than simply gaining temporary air superiority over the Home Counties. The Elephant in the room, as it always is when people over-emphasise the importance of the Battle of Britain, is the overwhelming naval supremacy of the Royal Navy in Home Waters. Despite the legend, the British were confident that a Germany without much of a navy, and with no assault ships or landing craft, could not succeed in carrying through a seaborne invasion. Indeed, in August, 1940, they demonstrated their confidence by sending a troop convoy, including three armoured regiments, to North Africa.
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Oh what ineffable joy! Another Sealion 'Would Have!!' Don't you understand that Sealion was supposed to have been in 1940? At the time, the Luftwaffe had had no training in anti-shipping operations, didn't even have an operational torpedo bomber (at least, not until mid 1942) and had just utterly failed to prevent Operation Dynamo. Don't you know that, in the whole of the war, your mighty Luftwaffe sank 31 British destroyers, and no British warship larger than a light cruiser? To put that into perspective, the British had 64 destroyers as part of their anti-invasion forces, backed up by half a dozen light cruisers and around five hundred smaller warships.
To prevent Sealion, the British didn't need mustard gas. Only Captain Mainwaring and his company to help the few German soldiers who hadn't been drowned when their towed barges were sunk ashore and herd them into PoW camps.
Instead of posting about what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done, why not try to explain all the things they didn't do?
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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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@briandickinson9383 Just to correct one or two points. No battleship ever hit another battleship at '14 miles.' The best recorded was 26000 yards., by HMS Warspite on Giulio Cesare on 9 July, 1940. Bismarck's hit was from around 15000 yards.
Bismarck was hit during the action by Prince of Wales. Her forward fuel tanks were no longer accessible, she was down by the bows, listing by 9 degrees (although this was reduced by counter-flooding) trailing oil, and reduced to 28 knots. At that point, by the way, her mission was abandoned and she made for St. Nazaire.
Two naval enquiries concluded that Hood was sunk by a hit which ignited her 4 inch magazine, which in turn triggered off a 15 inch magazine. There was no suggestion that any magazine doors were left open, largely because this particular folly, the idea of Admiral Beatty, was discontinued after Jutland, and had never happened in the Grand Fleet at all.
Finally, Hood was one of only four capital ships available to Tovey with the speed and firepower to challenge Bismarck. Tovey sent two to the Denmark Strait, and two to the Iceland-Faroes Gap. Hood, though aging, was as well armoured as a Queen Elizabeth class battleship, and Tovey had every right to believe that, together with Prince of Wales, the combined squadron was capable of preventing Bismarck & Prinz Eugen from breaking out into the wider Atlantic. In fact, that is what they did.
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Hunt might be an intellectual giant, and prove to be the salvation of the UK, but those mad, staring, eyes do tend to be rather alarming, and indicative of a fanatic.
As Cardinal Newman wrote, 'better for sun and moon to drop from Heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in the most extreme agony... than that one soul... should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth or should steal one poor farthing.' I suspect Hunt would have a similar approach to his convictions, whilst probably thinking that Newman didn't go nearly far enough.
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Except that Prinz Eugen used HE, not AP, shells through. One of the survivors, AB Tilburn, was on the boat deck when it was hit by a shell from Prinz Eugen, and his testimony at the Inquiry confirmed that, whilst the shell ignited ready use UP & 4 inch ammunition in lockers, it did no further damage. A second survivor, Briggs, was on the bridge at the time of the hit, and recorded Admiral Holland's last words, when informed of the boat deck fire, as 'Leave it until the ammunition is gone.'
Certainly, the destruction was undoubtedly caused by the 4 inch magazine triggering off the 15 inch magazine, but the idea that Prinz Eugen was responsible is a strange fantasy of comparatively recent origin.
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Really? So the Germans didn't convert almost 2,000 barges and assemble them in French, Belgian, & Dutch ports, together with 140 transport ship, 400 tugs, and 1200 motor boats, then?
They didn't assemble 9 divisions for the first wave of the seaborne landings, 9 divisions for the second wave, and 6 divisions for the third wave either?
Their senior commanders, the Heads of OKH, and OKW, the Head of the Navy, and Goering's No. 2 in the Luftwaffe, didn't hold a whole series of planning meetings, I suppose?
Oh, and they were happy to lose over 1700 aircraft, and over 2600 of their most experienced aircrew, as part of your 'feasibility study' were they?
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@michaelmayo3127 I am glad you think that I have 'got it right' as I am disagreeing with you.
All the facts I have listed previously are both correct & verifable. As Britain was the only nation still in arms against Germany after 22 June, 1940, it rreally didn't matter whether the Germans kept quiet or not. Nor could there be any 'element of surprise' as the British fully expected as invasion attempt to be made.
Certainly, Churchill never believed that an invasion attempt had any hope of succeeding, given the absolute supremacy of the Royal Navy in Home Waters, which was why he was willing to send the 'Apology' convoy in August, but that fact alone did not mean that he did noit believe it would be attempted, which explains why there were 70 light cruisers and destroyers, supported by around 500 smaller warships, in the immediate vicinity of the Channel in September, 1940.
As to your comment about misleading the Soviets, why sacrifice 1700 aircraft and 2500+ experienced aircrew as part of what you wrongly believe was a deception plan?
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@FLORATOSOTHON No axis surface troops landed until the decision had been made to evacuate, and the Royal Navy transferred from anti-invasion duties north of Crete to evacuation operations south of Crete.
Good to see the old chestnut about Force Z being aired once again. Force Z was sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers flown by crews who had been trained in the skills needed to attack warships. In September 1940 the Luftwaffe had had no such training, and didn't even, until mid 1942 at least, have an operational torpedo bomber. Their failure at Dunkirk rather demonstrated their shortcomings in 1940, by the way.
It is always pleasant to read another Sealion 'Would Have' post, explaining in detail what the mighty Luftwaffe 'would have' done. Odd then, that in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe managed to sink 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser.
Just to put that into perspective, in September 1940, the RN had around 70 light cruisers and destroyers within five hours of Dover, supported by around five hundred or so smaller warships. There were around 100 destroyers in Home Waters at the time. I haven't, by the way, even mentioned the heavy ships of the Home Fleet, because they weren't needed to dispose of large numbers of river barges being towed by tugs and trawlers.
Your use of the word 'disastrous' is certainly apposite, however. It can readily be applied to any German attempt to carry out a surface invasion with unescorted barge trains, in the face of total RN supremacy in the Channel.
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@rosesprog1722 Actually, in July, 1940, the Kriegsmarine had 53 commissioned U-Boats, of which only 30 were Frontboote. On any one day, there were 11 at sea. 'Surface Scuffles?' Do you really not know of the hammering the Kriegsmarine's surface fleet took in Norway?
'If Hitler had wanted those ships once decommissioned it took 6 months to rearm again, useless.' Again, you assume that, once back in French metropolitan ports, the ships would be decommissioned. In July, 1940, was the British government supposed to take this on trust?
Of course Churchill wanted the French fleet to come over to the British side, but his main concern was that it should not go over to the German side, as the option for it to be taken to French West Indian ports, perhaps under the supervision of the United States, made clear. Unfortunately, Gensoul did not pass on the full text of the ultimatum to his superiors, but ordered his ships to raise steam and prepare for sea. Would you suggest that Somerville should have behaved sportingly and allowed them to sail before engaging?
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@rosesprog1722 It is always pleasant to read a reasoned, well argued response. What a shame yours isn't one.
Indeed, there were other ways. Gensoul could have given his superiors the full text of the ultimatum, but chose not to. Once he rejected this option, and ordered his ships out to sea, the end was inevitable.
How could the ships have been sunk but the men saved, for heavens sake? They were armed warships, in a major French naval base, with heavy defensive shore batteries and regular troops immediately available. Do you, even with your entertaining obsessions, believe that Gensoul would have invited the British ashore and quietly allowed them aboard his ships in order to sink them, perhaps offering them lunch first?
The rest of your post is a repeat of your regular all purpose rant. Might your real problem with Churchill be that he refused to allow Britain to surrender?
You have missed one or two details, by the way. He was also responsible for the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, was the man on the Grassy Knoll when Kennedy was shot and, as a teenager, was Jack the Ripper.
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Well, two professional oceanographers, Robert Ballard & David Mearns, who have also inspected the wreck, say that they did. As, indeed, did the senior German survivor, Barn von Mullenheim-Rechberg,
Still, if the idea distresses you, believe your fantasy. It won't change the facts in the slightest.
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@BlackWater_49 It wasn't a priority because the Luftwaffe was expected to be a tactical air force, intended to support ground forces. If it was intended to operate against the Royal Navy, it would need more than simply re-training, it would need re-equipping with better aircraft, and in particular torpedo bombers, which historically it did not receive until mid 1942.
The only 'alternative history' being discussed here is one where the Luftwaffe established control of the air space over South-Eastern England, not one where the Luftwaffe was an entirely different force than the one it actually was. Even such discussions, although largely fruitless, have to have their origins planted in actual history.
I must admit I do find Sealion 'would haves' vastly entertaining, with their confident assertions of what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done had Sealion been attempted. So much more impressive and dramatic than what, in history, the Luftwaffe actually did or, rather, didn't do.
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@spanishpeaches2930 But , dunderhead, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, & Belgium were all neutral countries, weren't they?
I wonder where you get the idea that you know 'quite a bit' about WW2 from?
'Germany was never going to take that threat of agreement seriously.' So, are you suggesting that Germany would continue to pursue an aggressive, militaristic, foreign policy in any case? If so, your criticism of the Anglo-French action is not justified.
Lebensraum, of course, involved the extermination of those whom the nazis regarded as racially inferior. Do you suggest that to have been justified?
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The difference being that it really didn't matter to the Germans what Lusitania was or was not carrying, as they had already declared unrestricted submarine warfare. The 'fuss' as you call it, was because no one at the time, whether American, French, British, or in most cases German, really believed that any of the warring states would sink one of the great liners.
Gustloff, by the way, was carrying troops and U-boat crews, as well as refugees herded aboard by the German authorities. As an armed naval auxiliary, she was a legitimate target.
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@pondusenglanq8563 'Maybe you dont know history?' No 'maybe' about it where you are concerned. Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium, and the Soviet Union, none of which had declared war on her, and without a German declaration of war on any of them.
Generally, the first any of these nations knew about it was when German bombers, tanks, and troops arrived in their territory. Followed shortly after by einsatzgruppen, of course.
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@georgekaragiannakis6637 First point you made yourself : 8 months later, during which time the Luftwaffe, too late, had trained some of their units in anti-shipping operations. Second point : The Mediterranean Fleet was ordered to prevent German reinforcements reaching Crete by sea. It did. Two convoys were sent, the one for Maleme was annihilated, and the one for Heraklion was ordered to return to Greece following the destruction of the first.
The navy could not exert much influence upon the land campaign, but the bulk of the losses were incurred after the decision to evacuate had been made, and the navy found itself once again required to carry out evacuation of the army without much support from the RAF, who were busy carrying out pointless fighter sweeps over Northern France at the time, wasting fifty six fighter squadrons to do them.
Oh, and the resources available to the RN in Home Waters in September 1940 were several orders of magnitude greater than those available to Cunningham at Crete, and the naval bases much closer.
No, I hadn't forgotten Crete.
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You presumably haven't read Maughan 'Australia in the War of 1939 - 1945' where he states that 6 & 7 Australian Divisions were returned to Australia in early 1942, but 9 Australian Division was retained, with the agreement of the Australian government.
In late October, 1942, Curtin requested that the division be returned. Both Churchill & FDR were opposed, but on 24 January, 1943, the division began embarking in four large liners, which arrived in Fremantle on 18 February. There was never any attempt by Churchill to divert the liners, still less any order by Curtin to countermand Churchill's (imaginary) diversion. What makes you think Curtin was able to give direct orders to the captains of liners like Queen Mary, Aquitania, Ile de France, & Nieuw Amsterdam, still less to their escorts?
In point of fact, five destroyers from the Mediterranean Fleet escorted them through the Red Sea, later replaced by two cruisers. Passing through the Indian Ocean, the escort was considerably augmented by three battleships, a cruiser, and six destroyers, and when 800 miles from Fremantle by a further three Dutch cruisers and two Dutch destroyers. Please read about Operation Pamphlet for yourself. It might stop you making things up.
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@stephenarbon2227 The British were outproducing the Germans in aircraft, and particularly fighter aircraft, by mid 1940. By Spring, 1941, the RAF had 56 squadrons of Fighters & Fighter-Bombers carrying out regular fighter sweeps over northern France. Furthermore, also by Spring 1941, the new warship construction which the British had begun in 1939 was coming into service, in particular large numbers of L, M, & N class destroyers, supported by Hunt class escort destroyers, sloops and corvettes for convoy escort, and the ex American four stackers also for convoy duties. In cruisers, the remainder of the first group of Didos, and many of the Colony class, were now with the fleet. If the RN was out of sight in September, 1940, superiority was on a different planet by Spring 1941.
As to U-Boats, firstly the Channel is a most unsuitable place for them. In 1939, the Kriegsmarine attempted to send three boats on operations in the Channel. They are still there. Furthermore, in May 1941, the Kriegsmarine had 33 operational front line boats, of which an average of 24 were at sea on any one day. Moreover, the usual role of a WW2 boat was to attack merchant shipping. The probability of success against large numbers of fleet destroyers and experienced convoy escort vessels was minimal.
Finally, if you think that the Royal Navy of mid 1941 could not have survived, then you simply have no grasp of precisely how huge the Royal Navy of that time really was. Moreover, why should the British send capital ships into the Channel in any case? What purpose would they serve there? The RN anti-invasion preparations of 1940 had been built around large numbers of light cruisers, destroyers, and supporting smaller warships, actually, over 500 of them. What do you think might have changed by May, 1941?
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You mean how Titanic was switched with Britannic, which only entered service, as a hospital ship, in December, 1915, and which had only been launched at the end of February, 1914? That Britannic?
Oh, and the claim that Astor, and Guggenheim for that matter, opposed the Fed. is totally unsubstantiated by any actual evidence, whilst there is considerable documentary evidence that Straus was a supporter of it.
Still, don't let mere facts concern you.
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I don't know how many times it needs writing, but 'HITLER DIDN'T STOP THE ARMOUR ON THE AA CANAL! Von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, however, did, in order to service and rest it before beginning the next stage of the campaign. Rundstedt, like several of his colleagues, feared a repetition of the 'Miracle of the Marne.'
Moreover, as a traditional German commander, he regarded an army backed against the sea as trapped, because he simply did not appreciate the flexibility that Sea Power gave to the allies. Add to that the knowledge that the area around Dunkirk was difficult tank country, and the slower moving German infantry divisions were beginning to arrive, and the decision was a logical one. All this, by the way, is fully documented in the War Diary of Army Group A.
Hitler, of course, knew what the ground around Dunkirk was like from his experiences there in WW1, but more importantly had been assured by Goering that the elimination of the trapped Allied forces was 'A special job for the Luftwaffe.'
As to the absurd idea that Hitler let the BEF escape to encourage the British to come to terms, simply ask yourself this question :- Were the British more likely to sign a peace treaty if:
1). Their entire field army was caged in German PoW camps? or,
2). Their entire field army, together with around 120,000 French troops, had just been lifted to safety?
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Hasn't it occurred to you that the Royal Navy of 1917 learned fairly quickly? Von Holtzendorff managed to get unrestricted submarine warfare introduced in February, 1917, and the Royal Navy began operating a convoy system from 24 May. As a result, ship losses were reduced from 413 in April to 285 in May, 286 in June, 224 in July, 186 in August, 158 in September, 159 in October, & 126 in November, despite the number of U-boats at sea actually increasing, from 40 in March, to 56 in October. This at a time when many of the refinements in anti-submarine techniques had not yet been created, asdic/sonar being the obvious one. Although depth charges did exist, the early ones were far more ineffective than those available by 1939. Nor, of course, was there anything like an HF/DF to warn of the locations of boats, or, of course, radar.
This explains why the British introduced the convoy system from the first day of WW2. It does not explain why King, with all this evidence in front of him, and knowing from the British about the impending Operation Paukenschlag, chose not to allocate US Atlantic Fleet destroyers to convoy escort duties along the US East Coast in early 1942, despite Adolphus Andrews almost begging him for help.
You really cannot compare the performance of the US Navy on the Eastern Seaboard in 1942, with that of the Royal Navy in 1917. For an obvious reason.
As Shakespeare wrote of Hamlet, in the words of Fortinbras 'For he was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most royally.' The US Navy would, almost certainly, also have proved most royally against Paukenschlag. Had not Ernie King prevented it from so doing.
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@xaiano794 'seriously?' Because firstly you claimed that wages had been cut. When I pointed out that this wasn't the case, you added 'in real terms.'
That is what moving the goalposts means. Basically, when the original argument is proven false, altering the basis of the argument rather than trying to defend the initial falsehood.
'otherwise you'd be suggesting that we were all super rich as we earn nearly 30 times the average wage in 1970 which we both know is nonsense.' Nonsense. You simply argued that drivers should have received a proportion of the 5.5% fares rise of 2022. I pointed out that they did, and now here you go again with your goalpost shifting.
'So honestly, did you genuinely think I was talking about anything else and what gave you that impression?' My mistake, as I replied to what you had written. Clearly I should have realised that what you had written really wasn't what you had meant. I have never been particularly psychic, a lack for which I apologise.
'Clearly you haven't taken the time to even read it. This is just sad.' Again, as I stated, I simply replied to your claim about 2022/2023. Proving you wrong.
'As for Angel trains, you seem to be inferring that there is no relevance since they are a 3rd party.' Not so. I simply pointed out that they did, and do, not employ drivers. Now you are not so much moving the posts as transferring to a different ground.
'how can you be irked by the government putting money in?' You must remind me where you thought I wrote that.
Rather, don't bother, as I won't reply further to your constantly shifting comments. You are becoming tedious, and I have more interesting things with which to occupy my time.
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There was an alarm given at 2007 on the evening of 7 September, 1940, when the codeword 'Cromwell' was issued to Home Guard, regular army, and RAF units, telling them to expect an invasion attempt within 24 hours.
The Royal Navy at the time carried out regular Channel patrols every night. On 7/8 September, the four destroyers from 1st Destroyer Flotilla, from Portsmouth, found precisely nothing. A MTB patrol entered Ostend harbour and torpedoed two freighters, and a patrol bound for Boulogne withdrew due to severe weather.
The Admiralty, it seems, was baffled as to the reason the alert was issued, although it appears that an exercise had been mistaken for the real thing.
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@halowerder3356 Sorry to spoil the illusion, but actually it was Warspite which hit Guilio Cesare from 26,000 yards, rather than the other way round. Warspite was not hit during the action. Calabria, as the British call it, was indecisive at best, although it was beneficial to the British in that it enabled Cunningham to argue that the obsolete Royal Sovereign be replaced in his fleet by the faster, modernised, Queen Elizabeths.
Oh, and this 'The British officers were baffled by the accuracy of Italian Battleships and after the battle tried to deny the hits Warspite received because they didn't want to admit they got outgunned by the Italians' by the way, is simply nonsense, as 'The Naval War in the Mediterranean, 1940–1943,' by Jack Green &, Alessandro Massignani, makes clear.
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@sandrodunatov485 What research into this imaginary hit? What sources?
You are posting nonsense, or at least indulging in a wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Incidentally, what 'superior' forces did Cunningham have? His two old battleships could not keep up, and the rest of his force consisted of Warspite, one carrier, five light cruisers, and sixteen destroyers, facing two battleships, six heavy cruisers, eight light cruisers, and 16 destroyers.
Certainly, Warspite remained in service later in the war after suffering damage, but as a bombardment ship, not as a front-line fleet unit. Surely you understand the difference?
Still, enjoy your fantasy. Just don't expect to be taken seriously.
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The events of 27 May actually showed that, however difficult to sink, Bismarck had been reduced from a warship to a helpless target in little more than 20 minutes.
As to 'the carrier's unconsidered and obsolete Swordfishes!' Sorry, but nothing could be less true. FAA doctrine since the mid-1930s had seen carriers as a means of slowing down an enemy fleet in order to bring it within range of the British battlefleet. Indeed, this had already happened once, at Matapan, only two months earlier.
I submit that you have a Pacific-centric view of naval warfare in WW2. However important carriers might have been there, they never attained a similar importance in the west. The carrier there was an integral part of the fleet, not the centre of it. The three German heavy ships sunk in action were all destroyed by surface ships, the Italian fleet was repelled in the Mediterranean mainly by surface ships, and for much of the year carriers were unable to operate effectively in the Arctic.
Oh, and there has never been any suggestion that Hood succumbed to a repeat of Beatty's Jutland foolishness.
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@davidcolin6519 Actually, I was referring to the 'unconsidered' part of the comment, although it could be pointed out that the Swordfish was, at the time, probably the only carrier aircraft in the world even capable of getting off the deck in the sea conditions prevailing. By the way, the Albacore, which was used at Matapan, was also a biplane.
'In action' does not mean whilst inactive in port, by the way, and didn't you notice my reference to Matapan? Accuse me (wrongly) of not knowing what I am talking about, but at least have the manners to read what I am saying first.
A further example. You say 'And yes, the view that it was Hood's flash protection was definitely the dominant theory when I first looked at this part of Naval History in the 1970s, so I'd suggest that you try provide evidence that this was never a post-battle theory.' As I have restricted my comments to Bismarck & to carrier operations, I would be grateful if you would enlighten me as to when I made such a comment.
I am fortunate enough to have access to ADM 116/4352, the record at Kew of the Second Enquiry. The two experts, D.E.J. Offord, & Dr. Rotter, the Director of Explosives Research at Woolwich, both gave extensive evidence, and both considered the explosion to have been the result of a 15 inch magazine explosion, probably triggered off by the 4 inch magazine.
Your touching conviction that it says so in wikipaedia so it must be true is charming, but neither the exploding gun, nor the failure of safety measures is supported by any professional source.
Finally, your 'catch all' general comment about RN complacency seems totally to ignore the fact that most major developments in naval warfare during the period you disparage were from the RN in origin.
'The very fact that most German Capital/Heavy ships were lost due to surface engagements does nothing to prove your point. If you have only very limited numbers of carriers, then the likelihood is that result.' The Royal Navy didn't have a limited number of carriers. In May, 1941, for example, there were eight in commission, and a ninth (the first escort carrier) almost complete. The reality is that fleet carriers were not suited to convoy escort duties, which is why the RN had begun building Audacity, and had ordered improved Audacities from the United States in early 1941.
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@davidcolin6519 'a strong odour of politics, cover-up and vested interest.' I take this to mean that, because you choose not to accept the conclusions of the two enquiries into Hood's loss, then clearly there must have been sharp practice involved, because the conclusions cannot possibly be correct if they do not meet your requirements. In other words, exactly the same argument that every other 'cover up' enthusiast deploys. The other possibility, that the Admiralty actually wanted to know the reasons for Hood's loss, clearly you consider too far fetched.
As to carriers. Have you never heard of the Washington Naval Treaty, which set restrictions in capital ship construction? From the RN's point of view, the Treaty allowed for 137,000 tons total in terms of operational carriers. The seven carriers in service with the RN in 1939 displaced, in total, 137,900 tons. The Royal Navy, therefore, had built up to the allowed limit. As, indeed, had the United States' Navy, which had actually, six carriers totalling 147600 tons. If you accuse the RN of 'ignoring' carriers, then would you level the same charge at the United States Navy?
Surely you aren't seriously asking me to produce a list of technological developments? This from someone apparently unaware of the ramifications of Washington? If you aren't aware of them yourself, there are plenty of books available to educate you. However, in terms of capital ship development after WW1, read up on the RN's various new designs, and in particular the designs from K3 to I3. All these were subsequently, like the US Lexingtons, cancelled because of Washington, but they hardly suggest that 'UK capital ship development pretty much froze after WWI,' any more than US development did. Even the two which the RN did build, the Nelsons, had superior armour and weight of broadside to the much later Bismarcks, and were arguably the most powerful warships on earth until the arrival of the North Carolinas.
'As for politeness; your unsurprising condescension as to my reference to Wikipedia simply and entirely misses the point; that it was a significant theory at the time, and still continues to be.' I didn't think I was being particularly condescending. I simply asked you to refer me to my earlier post to which you considered this to be a reply. You still haven't, incidentally.
You do, by the way, appear to have ignored another reason for Bismarck's eventual fate, which was that at the Denmark Strait she was damaged by surface gunfire, lost access to around 1000 tons of fuel, and was forced to abandon her mission in order to make for St. Nazaire.
As to Tirpitz. You have been arguing about the role of the carrier. I chose not to include Tirpitz, but instead kept my comments to warships lost during actions at sea, because neither Tirpitz nor, indeed, Konigsberg, Gneisenau, or Scheer, were lost as a result of either carrier of surface ship attack, and were not therefore illustrative of the respective importance of either.
I notice that you seem to consider the Admiralty & the Royal Navy to be separate entities. Bizarre!
Finally, you apparently consider me to be ' a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of all things RN...... who clearly sees no fault anywhere in anything that the RN has ever done or will ever do.' I am far from that, but I do choose to respond to ill-informed comments from someone whose prejudice is only exceeded by his lack of knowledge about the subject upon which he pontificates so apparently sagely.
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The 1943 famine was brought about by a combination of the arrival of refugees, hoarding by profiteers, inability to import food supplies from Japanese occupied areas, the Bengal Administration keeping the facts secret from London, and the refusal of Franklin Roosevelt to release shipping space. Once the facts became known to the government in London, the distribution of food relief was handed over to the Anglo-Indian army, and grain convoys diverted from Australia to India. The worst charge that could be laid against Churchill is that he ought to have known about the situation. After all, there wasn't much going on in the world in 1943, was there? Are you seriously naive enough to believe that Churchill would have engineered a famine in India at a time when 2.5 million Indians, all volunteers by the way, were serving in the Allied forces? Perhaps you simply believe all the propaganda spoon fed to you?
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Easy to say, but much less clear cut, from Lutjens' point of view. Firstly, Bismarck was damaged, listing, and down by the bows. It was far from clear that she was still capable of catching Prince of Wales. If she could, Bismarck had no access to repair facilities, and one or two more hits could have left her more or less helpless.
Secondly, as far as Lutjens knew, The two capital ships he had just engaged might well have had further heavy units coming up in support. He might well have ended up in a repeat of Hipper's predicament at Jutland. In pursuing Beatty's battlecruisers, he walked right into Evan Thomas's 5th Battle Squadron.
I assume you know that Prince of Wales was barely damaged, by the way?
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Presumably, the fact that Bismarck had lost her main armament, her bridge and command staff, and her internal communications was, as the Black Knight said 'but a scratch?' As were the other facts that she was settling by the stern, a mass of fires internally, and listing increasingly heavily?
You are quite correct about Bismarck being 'unable to function.' Have you thought to ask yourself why that might have been?
As to her rudder, it didn't simply 'jam' but failed when several stern compartments were compromised when hit by a torpedo. Certainly, the partly-operational Prince of Wales did retire, after inflicting sufficient damage on Bismark to oblige her Admiral to abandon his mission and make for St. Naxaire.
If Bismarck did 'try to surrender' how was it that her senior surviving officer seems to have known nothing about it? Perhaps because the claim about 'black flags' & 'semaphore' is a 21st century invention? Admittedly, enthusiasm for scuttling is, however, an oddly Germanic trait where warships are concerned. It wasn't an action viewed by positively by the US, British, or Japanese navies of the time.
Oh, and Bismarck's only technical superiority over, for example, the Nelsons or a fully worked-up KGV was that she had the speed to avoid action. Until, of course, her rudder, in your ill-informed words, 'jammed.'
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Why, then, didn't this happen at Dunkirk? The 1940 Luftwaffe had not been trained in anti-shipping operations, and didn't even have an operational torpedo bomber until mid 1942. Indeed, in the whole of WW2 your wonderful Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers and no RN warship bigger than a light cruiser.
To put that into perspective, the RN began WW2 with 193 destroyers, and ended it with over 400. In September, 1940 there were 70 RN destroyers and light cruisers within five hours of the Straits of Dover, with around 500 smaller warships in support. You post from ignorance, in that haven't the slightest conception of precisely how large the Royal Navy was in 1940.
I do enjoy posts from Sealion 'would haves.' Always full of confidence about what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done, but never able to explain the inconvenient facts about why it never actually did.
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@nukni4225 Actually, he commanded 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers between November, 1915 and June 1916, when the regiment was merged into another formation. Hardly a visit on a quiet day, I suggest?
However, as the rest of your post is full of falsehoods and vitriol, entirely unaffected by fact, I won't waste further time on you. In point of fact, Churchill's entire military career was between February, 1895, and November, 1899, followed by November, 1915 to June, 1916. During the first Boer War, he was a war correspondent. Incidentally, he gave no 'word of honour' to anyone that he would not seek to escape. He was a civilian in any case at the time, by the way.
Churchill spent most of the war, at least the early part of it, in London, being based in what is now known as the Churchill War Rooms. Even his bitterest political opponents never questioned his courage. He did actually receive four campaign medals.
Clearly you do need to do a lot more reading, although I doubt that your obvious antipathy towards him would allow you to accept what you read.
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@AcesHigh-n1w Rex Gilroy might well have believed that. Erich von Daniken believes in advanced visitors from the cosmos. The world would be a much less entertaining place without such enthusiasts and eccentrics.
By the way, that map. Where is it? I refer you to:-
The “Liu/Menzies” World Map: A Critique" by Geoff. Wade. Summarised as follows:
'Summary
A Chinese world map purportedly drawn in 1763, and allegedly based on an earlier version of 1418, was brought to public notice in early 2006 by Mr Gavin Menzies, author of '1421: the Year China Discovered the World', and Mr Liu Gang, the map’s owner.
This map has been used to suggest that Chinese navigators circumnavigated and mapped the world in the early 15th century and that dual hemisphere maps were first created in China. The present article provides a context for the sudden appearance of this map, and its apparent evidence for Ming Chinese circumnavigation of the globe.
Through a detailed examination of the cartographic elements on the “1763” map and its alleged 1418 precursor, the many anachronisms and other errors are set down. By demonstrating and enumerating the numerous impossibilities reflected in the representations of both China and the rest of the globe, it is concluded that the map is a modern fake.'
The whole article is eight pages long, but you might like to read it, perhaps?
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The influential people of whom you write, Astor, Guggenheim, & Straus, had either not expressed their views on the Fed., in the case of the first two, or supported it, in the case of Straus. The views of Straus, by the way, were expressed in two newspaper articles from October, 1911, which may still be read, although clearly you haven't.
This unsubstantiated claim first appeared in a book from 1995, by the way.
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@Getonwithit204 ' I have already explained it, and because you don't have the capacity to understand you completely, side step it by a mistake that my phone has made. Of course, your phone or tablet never does that.'
One thing that clearly is your fault is that you do not take kindly to being ridiculed. Does your phone decide what to say, or do you?
'Of course, your phone or tablet never does that.' Actually, no, it doesn't. Largely because I check what I have written before I commit it. Unlike you, evidently. Even in your latest inane comment, you say that 'you don't have the capacity to understand you completely.' What in the name of sanity does that mean, and how do you justify your claim that I don't understand myself?
You might pursue a similar policy of checking, as it would enable you to avoid looking such a twerp.
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What Navy? Bismarck did not commission until early 1941, and Scharnhorst & Gneisenau were being repaired following torpedo damage until November, 1940. Prinz Eugen did not become operational until May, 1941, whilst Graf Spee, Blucher, Karlsruhe, Konigsberg and ten of 22 destroyers had already been sunk, with a 'pocket battleship' and a further cruiser seriously damaged.
In fact, in September, 1940, the German surface fleet consisted, in terms of warships actually operational, of one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, seven destroyers, a similar number of large torpedo boats, around a dozen S boats, and a small number of minesweepers.
By 'landing ships,' do you mean barges towed by tugs?
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@mattholland8966 The British weren't meeting any obligations in the Pacific theatre. Conflict there was more than a year into the future.
If Prinz Eugen had tried to tow Bismarck, Tovey's force would have sunk two almost immobile German surface warship on 27 May, not one.
What airborne troops? The Germans only had around 4,500 (a weak brigade) left by September, 1940, and only around 220 operational transport aircraft.
The Germans had no old destroyers in September, 1940. They only had seven operational new ones. Moreover, the Royal Navy had some seventy light cruisers and destroyers within five hours steaming of Dover, supported by around 500 smaller warships. AA fire wouldn't be much help fending off massed destroyer attacks. Moreover, how successful might such troops, without heavy weapons and no hope of reinforcement or resupply, have been?
Mines? The Germans had seven operational minelayers at the time. The British had around 400 fleet and auxiliary minesweepers, as well as a number of fleet destroyers fitted with sweeping gear. The RN also carried out nightly destroyer sweeps through the Channel from Plymouth and the Nore. I suggest that, should a destroyer flotilla meet a minelayer, it would not end well for the minelayer.
U-Boats in the Channel? The Germans sent three boats into the Channel in 1939. They are still there! In September 1940, on average, the Germans had thirteen boats at sea on any one day. Moreover, U-boats spent most of the war avoiding escort ships. Now you suggest that they should seek them out? A recipe for German disaster.
The Royal Navy was never involved in the Pacific, except as an addition to the mighty US Navy, right at the end of the war. The Royal Navy had been busy winning campaigns in the Atlantic, the Arctic, and the Mediterranean, enabling the US Navy to concentrate almost entirely in the Pacific.
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They were not 'left abandoned.' Firstly, half of the Division was evacuated, the so-called 'Ark Force.' Secondly, the RN's Portsmouth Command sent a large evacuation fleet to St. Valery, but fog in the Channel prevented the lift attempt, which was re-scheduled for 24 hours later. Thirdly, the commander of IX Corps of French 10th Army, of which 51st Highland Division was a part, chose to surrender before the attempt could be made. Fourthly, the evacuation fleet still managed to pick up just over 2,000 men from Veules.
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Not really. The Stirling was also intended to be a troop transport, intended to move troops to far flung areas, with limited airfields, from which it would then supply bombing support. As a 1936 design, the Stirling was a leader in its field.
The tanks were not designed to fit onto carriages, but onto the British loading gauge, which was smaller than European or American ones. Again, a down-side to being the first in the field. Carriages could easily be modified, but tunnels, platforms, and lineside features couldn't.
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@EQOAnostalgia Using your skill and judgement, would you be good enough to explain how invading Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium, all without declaration of war, shows that 'they tried to maintain peace the entire time?'
I must lack your erudition, as it really doesn't seem that way to me.
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The Halt Order was issued by Von Rundstedt, not by Hitler, in order to service the armour and rest the crews before embarking on the second part of the French Campaign. Like many other senior commanders, he was concerned that the French might stage a repeat of the WW1 'Miracle of the Marne.' As a conventionally trained and educated German senior officer, he considered an army surrounded and backed against the sea to be trapped, whereas the British, with centuries of experience of naval power, saw the sea as a wide open highway.
Moreover, as both Von Rundstedt and Hitler knew, the area around Dunkirk was difficult country for armour, and the (horse drawn) German infantry divisions, much better suited to it, were beginning to arrive.
Finally, Goering had told Hitler that the elimination of the surrounded allied forces as, as he put it, 'A special job for the Luftwaffe,' and Hitler believed him.
Consequently, the utter failure of the Luftwaffe to live up to Hermann's boasts, and the evacuation of 336,000 allied troops.
Hitler was giving no-one 'a chance.' He simply made a wrong decision, and totally miscalculated the capabilities of the Royal and Merchant Navies.
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If you believe that then you are a fool, who has gullibly swallowed switcher videos.
Olympic (not Olympia) had been fully repaired and was back at sea by late November, 1911. She was at sea, returning from New York to Southampton, when Titanic sank. Smith was not in charge of Olympic at the time of the collision. She was in the Solent, and a Solent Pilot was giving the orders. As she was not damaged beyond repair, the rest of your comments are largely irrelevant.
However, binoculars are also irrelevant, as lookouts only used them to identify objects already spotted. Their use might, ironically have delayed any warning being given.
Yes, some people did cancel their bookings. Almost as many as had cancelled for Olympic's maiden voyage in 1911. What conclusions may we draw from that.
dId the changes, apparently 'very late at night' involve altering the partly enclosed 'A' deck, rebuilding the forward end of 'B' deck, modifying the bridge wings, and swapping a propeller as well? Must have been a hive of activity, yet none of the workmen involved ever mentioned it!
You shouldn't unquestioningly believe the nonsense you see in switcher videos, as it can make you look such a fool
Alas, however, rather too late in your case.
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@bradmason4706 Goering said the Luftwaffe would destroy the Dunkirk pocket, just as he said it would defeat Fighter Command in a week or two, and it could supply sixth army in Stalingrad. Goering made a number of promises, all of which didn't come true.
Of the 338,000 men lifted from Dunkirk, around 120,000 were French troops.
In 1940, the Luftwaffe had had no training in anti-shipping operations, which largely explains their failure at Dunkirk. They didn't even have a torpedo bomber in service until mid 1942. Moreover, even after their lack of training had been remedied, in the whole of the war they managed to sink 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser. To put that into perspective, in September 1940 the RN had 64 destroyers available for anti-invasion operations, within five hours steaming of Dover, and around 110 destroyers in total in Home Waters. There were a further five hundred or so smaller warships also available to support the anti-invasion force, together with a number of light cruisers. This, of course, doesn't include the heavy ships of the Home Fleet, as the Admiralty had no intention of committing them.
The best evidence from the time, however, is in the comments of the commander of Stuka-Geschwader 2, Major Oskar Dinort, and the commander of Fliegerkorps VIII, Wolfram Von Richthofen, both of whom told the higher command of the Luftwaffe that their aircraft could not hope to protect the towed invasion barges from what, had they set sail, was awaiting them in the Channel.
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@waelomar7065 I think it was a political, not a military, decision. In terms of Generalship, I believe Auchinleck to have been superior to Alexander. However, Montgomery, for whatever reason, detested Auchinleck, and once the first choice, Gott, had been killed, it was inevitable.
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Doenitz believed that the figure determined by von Holtzendorff, the Chief of Staff of the Kaiser's navy, for the level of monthly sinkings required to bring Britain down, was still relevant. This was 600,000 tons per month. Obviously, after January 1942, this figure was a serious under estimation.
Between September 1939, and December, 1941, the Germans exceeded 300,000 tons twice, and on four occasions the figure was below 100,000 tons. The reality is that they never came remotely near achieving their target, and an extra ten boats are hardly likely to have made a difference.
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@sirdudleynightshade8747 Odd that your first response would be a comnbination of insult and abuse. Oh well, so be it.
Churchill actually said of the 'Lancastria,' 'People have had enough bad news for today,' and vetoed publication of the news. Just as the Admiralty in WW1 had kept the mining and sinking of HMS Audacious secret, and as the sinking of HMS Barham, and the attacks on HMS Queen Elizabeth & HMS Valiant in Alexandria harbour secret in WW2. In all cases, to keep the information secret from the enemy.
Why exactly would the Government seek to keep a failed invasion attempt, or even a failed raid, secret from the British people? It would have been in every British, & American, newspaper, the following day.
As Oliver Cromwell once said, 'I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.'
In this case, you, or, at least, your uncle, is mistaken.
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1). 'Did you know that Churchill wanted people below a certain level of intelligence sterilised? Actually, he was interested in the arguments of eugenists in the early part of the 20th century, before WW1, but he considered segregation a better solution, and thought that either was an issue to be addressed at some date in the future.
2). Eight of ten Colossus machines at Bletchley Park were broken up in August, 1945. Churchill had lost power after the Election of 5 July. The decision was made by the Attlee government.
3). He certainly liked to have a say in military decisions, but generally deferred to the advice of people like his CIGS, Alanbrooke, in WW2, and, whilst he proposed the campaign in Gallipoli in WW1 as an alternative to the Western Front, and as an attempt to take Turkish pressure off Russia's southern flank, he neither authorised if (Asquith did) nor planned it.
4). Indeed, as everyone knows, he lost the Khaki election of 1945. People also know, or should, that he was promptly re-elected in 1951.
Haven't you missed the bits where Churchill was also responsible for the Black Death, the Thirty Years' War and, as a tennager, was Jack the Ripper?
Indeed, don't believe myths. Simply stick to facts. Have you thought of trying it yourself?
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I think you will that very few people believe that Hitler declared war on Britain, France, or Poland. They simply assume, correctly, that he invaded Poland without any formal declaration, as he had previously done in Czechoslovakia. Britain and France, through appeasement, had made serious efforts to avoid a major European war, but a line had to be drawn somewhere, and it was over Poland. If France had seriously sought war with Germany, why build the defensive Maginot Line, and the size of the Royal Navy was irrelevant in terms of the land campaign.
Unconditional Surrender, by the way, was demanded by FDR, and actually came as a surprise to Churchill. As to why the British and French failed to declare war on the Soviet Union, have you really not heard of Realpolitik?
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@albertdevries7769 Because Britain's treaty with Poland agreed support in the event of invasion by Germany, but not in the event of invasion by any other power.
I don't care whether you think my comment correct or not, as I know that it is.
You might perhaps explain why Hitler managed to attack Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium, The United States, and the Soviet Union, whilst only declaring war on one of them, and when none of them had declared war on Germany?
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@christinearthur5546 Perhaps you are unaware of the way the British system of Governance works. The 'King in Parliament' makes the law, and the Judiciary enforces it. Sir Keir has the means at his disposal to change any law, or any government policy, he chooses. That is what, in fact, Prime Ministers do, and have done, for good or ill, since Robert Walpole.
The fact is, as I have already written and you have either misread or simply misunderstood, the rioting is the result of many people believing, whether correctly or not, that their concerns are being either ignored or marginalised.
The Prime Minister had an opportunity to call for unity in a time of crisis. Instead, in more than one statement, his response has to have been openly divisive.
Isn't it sad that, when people are struggling to make a sensible argument, they immediately resort to confrontational comments instead, as you have done?
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@christinearthur5546 As I thought I had made clear, the Prime Minister, through the 'King In Parliament' system of governance which has existed, at least since the 'Glorious Revolution' and arguably since the restoration of Charles II after the collapse of the Commonwealth following the death of the Lord Protector, has the power to enact or amend any law he chooses.
As I am not Prime Minister, nor, indeed, a political animal, all I can do is express my views on the manner in which Starmer has acted to date, and so far he seems to have behaved in an unwise and blatantly partisan manner. At a time when those in power are expected to respond in a manner intended to pour oil on troubled waters, Starmer seems to be, rather, pouring petrol onto fire.
If you think that his demonising, en bloc, some 80% of the population, then I fear you are sadly mistaken.
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Os that what you suspect? Oh well. Explain this, then :-
A New York Times newspaper article of Thursday 28th March 1912 reveals that in March "J. Pierpont Morgan has written a cordial letter to the committee, announcing that he will be in Venice on April 23 for the inauguration of the biennial International Art Exhibition, April 25, and dedicate the new Campanile of St. Mark's."
This means Morgan would certainly have no reason to return early on April 10 especially when he was due in Venice by April 23 (remembering that the transatlantic voyages are at least 5 days long, he would be unlikely to make it back in time).
None of his artworks were loaded aboard and then taken off. At the time he was negotiating their shipment with Customs. The artworks claim is total fabrication.
'Massive insurance fraud?' Do me a favour. Both Olympics cost £1.5 million to build, and both were insured for £1 million. Who would come up with an insurance scam which loses White Star, £500,000 a major asset, and their safety record? I can't think of anyone, except perhaps the Board of Cunard. Can you?
'This video also fails to mention the propeller damage that Olympic incurred when Smith ran over a wreckage in shallow waters near Cape Hatteras in 1911, and had to limp back to Dublin on one engine and have the propeller replaced but the collision had warped the propeller shaft itself, this was why it could not be operated it and would require quite expensive repairs.' It doesn't mention it because it didn't happen. Olympic lost a blade from her port propeller in February, 1912.She returned to Belfast (where do you get Dublin?) and the blade was replaced in four days. Neither the propeller, nor the shaft, were replaced.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that the nonsense you have posted is simply a result of ignorance, rather than a deliberate attempt to mislead those as ignorant as you are.
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@user-Rocket-Fest Isn't it odd, then, that the senior German survivor, Baron von Mullenheim-Rechberg, thought and wrote, that his ship had been sunk by the British, that Bob Ballard attributed the sinking to 'the British' and that David Mearns said that, at best, any scuttling attempt would have brought forward the sinking by 'a matter of minutes, only.'?
I do agree, however, that a perverse enthusiasm for scuttling ships is a uniquely Germanic trait. Moreover, they had, over the years, developed something of a taste for the practice.
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He is actually an Archaeologist & Anthropologist, and is described as an expert on African history, He writes, apparently, about museums. I don't doubt his knowledge within his chosen fields, but, oddly, these fields don't seem even vaguely relevant to 1940. I have looked up all three. Interesting to be fair, but hardly in the forefront where knowledge of the period they were discussing is concerned.
I would have enjoyed seeing a leading historian of the RAF, and a naval historian, making proper arguments rather than facile points.
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@NCMA29 Weli, whatever he said or didn't say, Hood's Ships's Cover, effective;y the history of the ship from her day of building onwards, whilst it is very detailed about modifications to her structure, makes no such reference to anything of the sort.
'The armour was only being removed from the deck under X and Y turrets, and only from under the turrets when they were trained for and aft.' 'From the deck?' Hood's armour was below deck level, and an integral part of her structure, and the second part of the phrase doesn't actually make sense.
Hood underwent a number of small refits as the political situation worsened. In 1938 & 1939, her 5.5 inch guns were removed, and seven twin 4 inch AA mountings fitted around the boat deck. Searchlight towers between the funnels were removed, and after war had commenced gunnery radar was fitted.
A major modernisation, along the lines of HMS Renown, was proposed, which would have resulted in a major improvement to deck armour, and a ship not greatly dissimilar to a four turret Renown or King George V, but this was cancelled when war began.
There were known concerns about Hood's deck armour, which at three inches was thin by the standards of newer capital ships. Her belt was adequate, which explains Holland's attempt to reduce the range quickly and bring about a close range low gunnery angle engagement.
Thus, the idea of actually removing any deck armour makes no sense at all.
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@Nate-uf4xk When have I said that? Not at all. The facts are that the Luftwaffe of 1940, without training and without torpedo aircraft, was highly unlikely to have prevented massed RN attacks on the towed barges as they tried to cross the Channel, in clumsy box formations involving pairs of barges towed along at little more than walking pace by tugs, trawlers, or small coasters. Even the two commanders, Oskar Dinort and von Richthoven, said that to their superiors at the time.
The Germans only ever assembled 397 tugs (according to Ansel, an American admiral who studied German records immediately after the war), and the initial landings involved using, literally, all of them. There were absolutely no reserves of tugs.
Let us suppose that, as an over- generous estimate, the Luftwaffe manages to sink or disable 20, or even 30, of the 70 cruisers & destroyers of the Admiralty's defensive resources during the course of the first day. How much damage will this force, supported by hundreds of smaller warships, have done to the barge trains? Moreover, whilst the tugs are irreplaceable on the German part, the Admiralty, should they feel it necessary, can call back the destroyers on escort duties, or bring in some of the cruisers and destroyers at Rosyth, Liverpool, or the Firth of Clyde, or even the destroyers with Force H at Gibraltar. Day two of the landings might well find what remained of the invasion force facing a RN force even greater in numbers than day 1. Moreover, what happens to the barges at night, when they have no protection at all from the Royal Navy?
Of course the RAF was a factor in preventing an invasion, but not, despite Churchill's clever myth-making which has passed into lore, the critical one. If it was, why did Churchill send the Apology troop convoy to North Africa, which included half of Britain's most battleworthy tanks, the Matilda IIs, in mid August, 1940, when legend has it that Britain was teetering on the edge of disaster?
As to Normandy, I didn't spend years trawling through British & German military archives collecting facts and figures about 1940 in order to express an opinion about events four years later, but I would suggest that the likelihood of the Luftwaffe having equal forces to the allies was non-existent anyway, given the losses it had taken during the war, and the massively superior allied production capabilities. Moreover, in 1944 the Germans, much as in 1940, had no navy.
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@Nate-uf4xk Indeed, but the Luftwaffe didn't consider the RAF a serious hindrance to their operations. To give an example :-
27 May. The Luftwaffe carried out 12 raids on Dunkirk, using just over 300 bombers, with 550 escort fighter sorties. Park's fighters, at comparatively long range, carried out 23 patrols in reply.
28 May. 11 Group carried out 11 squadron patrols, which involved a comparatively large number of aircraft on each patrol, but only for a short period. Weather was poor, but for several hours during the day, the beaches had no cover.
29 May. The RAF carried out nine patrols. They intercepted three of five major attacks, but, as these were heavily protected by fighters, they were unable to disrupt the three attacks they did intercept.
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@toekneekerching9543 Then you tell me when I even referred to Mexico? I simply, in a three line reply, stated a fact, that until the end of WW1, the North Sea was called the German Ocean in British maps. That is BRITISH maps, not simply English ones.
The term fell out of use because, after 1918, it was politically unacceptable.
The part of the North Sea nearest to Germany, by the way, is still referred to as the 'German Bight.' I refer you to the 1493 map by Hartmann Schedel, by the way, on which the Baltic Sea is called "Mare Germanicum", and the North Sea "Oceanus Germanicus"
You do know that immediately resorting to insults is the distinguishing feature of someone with a weak argument, do you?
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Why do you people get so upset about the idea? The video is about the Battle of Britain period. At the time, the Commonwealth & Empire were indeed supportive, but largely at a distance. The Commonwealth had provided aircrew, but the only Commonwealth troops in Britain available to help combat a potential German invasion were one Canadian division, and two Australian/New Zealand brigades.
In fact, in September, 1940, of 34.5 divisions in Britain, 32.5 were British. Perhaps you struggle to grasp the obvious, but in the event of a successful German landing on the south coast, enthusiastic vocal support from Toronto, Cape Town, Delhi, Auckland, or Sydney would have been of little practical help.
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@padurarulcriticsicinic4846 1). A court-martial might have taken place, just as one was suggested for Captain Leach. Had either taken place the C-in-C Home Fleet, John Tovey, would have participated as Prisoner's Friend, and Holland exonerated, simply because he had done nothing wrong. Being defeated in battle is not necessary a reason for shame.
2). Losing one's ship is not a reason for discharge from the Royal Navy. Rear Admiral Stuart Bonham-Carter lost two cruisers in quick succession in the Arctic, but was still promoted to Vice Admiral, becoming Flag Officer, Malta, late in 1942. I doubt that Holland would have suffered from any sort of guilt, as Hood's loss was not the result of any failure on his part.
You seem very eager to attribute blame to Holland. How would you justify levelling such an accusation at him?
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Because, from the perspective of 1939/40, the first two Lions wouldn't be ready before 1943. As the biggest bottleneck in building was the production of the 16 inch triple gun barbettes, and as the four twin fifteen inch barbettes taken out of Courageous & Glorious were available in store, the decision was made to place a contract for a ship build to a modified Lion design, with an obsolete, but serviceable, main armament, which (ironically, as things turned out,) could enter service more quickly.
As the war situation developed, design changes regularly delayed construction (at one time, consideration was given to converting Vanguard to an aircraft carrier) resulting in her not being completed until 1946.
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You mistake the Luftwaffe for the Japanese air force. The Luftwaffe didn't have any anti-shipping training in 1940, and didn't acquire a torpedo bomber until mid 1942. It had just failed badly at Dunkirk, and, historically, only managed to sink 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship bigger than a light cruiser, in the whole of the war.
Just to correct one or two of your errors:-
1). The Italian Navy had enough to concern it already, with the Mediterranean Fleet and Force H. Moreover, please explain how you would get it past Gibraltar.
2). Prince of Wales & Repulse were sunk by high performace torpedo bombers flown by highly trained crews. Neither of which were available to the 1940 Luftwaffe.
3). Both Taranto (again, using torpedo bombers) and Pearl Harbor were attacks on bases which were not in states of defence, or in one case not even at war.
4). The German navy had seven auxiliary minelayers, and a similar number of destroyers also capable of laying mines. By September, 1940, the Royal Navy had some 400 minesweepers and auxiliary minesweepers in Home Waters. Moreover, the minelaying was intended to take place over ten nights. Every night, the RN operated destroyer patrols through the Channel from Plymouth and the Nore. What happens when the two opposing forces meet? I believe the effect of a 4 inch or 4.7 inch HE shell exploding on a laden mine deck can be quite spectacular.
5). The RN had, in September, 1940, some 70 light cruisers and destroyers within five hours steaming of Dover, and a further 40 or so destroyers in Home Waters, but further away. The heavy ships of the Home Fleet were based at Rosyth and Scap Flow, positioned to intercept any sortie by German heavy ships either into the southern North Sea, or the Atlantic. In fact, at the time the nearest thing the Kriegsmarine had to operational heavy ships were a single heavy cruiser and three light cruisers.
6). The Royal Navy had withdrawn ships from further afield, other than a handful of old WW1 destroyers on the China Station. The numbers I have given above exclude the Mediterranean fleet & Force H. You clearly haven't the slightest conception of the size of the RN at the time.
7). Cerberus involved three heavily escorted fast moving modern warships fleeing through the Channel in a matter of hours, at a time when the possibility of invasion had long passed and the RN's resources had been removed to operations further afield. If you think that it compares to a ten day operation towing converted river barges across the Channel at little above walking pace in the face of massed naval defences, then you are deluding yourself.
8). It isn't 'argued' that the Germans intended to transport their troops in small civilian ships, it is a fact. Actually, the intention was to tow barges, in pairs, behind tugs or trawlers. There is no comparison between that and the British use of the (navy crewed) Little Ships. Of the over 338,000 men lifted out of Dunkirk, 102,000 came in destroyers, 88,000 in personnel ships, and 77,000 in minesweepers and trawlers. 6,000 came in 'Little Ships'. Despite what you might have seen in that rather poor recent movie 'Dunkirk' the Little Ships went there for a precise purpose, which was to ferry men from the open beaches to the ships waiting offshore, and NOT to pick them up and bring them back. Moreover, when the troops reached England, the local civilians met them with brews of tea, and with sandwiches. Do you, seriously, think a similar welcome awaited the Germans in their barges? ABSURD.
9). Yes, much equipment had been abandoned, but the British had re-equipped to such an extent that, as early as August, they were able to send a large troop convoy to North Africa to re-inforce the Western Desert Force.
Sorry, but you are, it seems, profoundly ignorant of the realities of 1940. Would you like me to recommend a few books to enable you to learn some actual facts?
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@aldaron1021 It was published in 1940. The authors were, allegedly, Hitler, Goering, & Stieve. Such credible sources. In point of fact, your Germans had bombed civilians in Spain, Warsaw, & Rotterdam before anyone else had bombed anyone, and the first British raid on Berlin was on the night of 25/26 August, 1940. The first German bombs to fall on London fell on 16 August, with a second attack on 22 August, and a third in the early hours of 25 August.
Additional fun fact. There need have been no WW2 had it not been for the annoying German habit of invading neutral countries.
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@howardsanderson2520 You entirely miss the point. When the concept of Memorials for the Fallen was first considered in 1919, the principle of 'Equality in Death' was accepted. British & Commonwealth/Empire War Memorials in all parts of the world list names, and usually ranks, but they do not refer to religions.
Now, it seems our Chancellor, without discussion, seems to prioritise one group over another, which is an insult to those Hindus, Sikhs, Gurkhas, Athiests, Christians, and Jews, who also gave their lives in those wars.
A shame that you cannot understand this simple fact.
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@eliopacheco Oh dear! You cannot imagine how tedious it gets having to educate people. Aside from the fact that the Channel Islands were, and are, self governing Crown Dependencies, not part of the UK, the British were never remotely likely to have lost WW2.
I appreciate that you are clearly not Clausewitz, but he would doubtless have agreed with the proposition that, if you seek to invade an island defended by the largest navy on earth, and your own fleet will fit into Adolf's bathtub and still leave room for his pet rubber duck, Franz, it is probably better not to try.
In short, mon vieux, the Germans were never able to invade Britain and thus defeat her. Indeed, after embarking on Barbarossa in June 1941, they were going, eventually, to lose the war.
The massive US involvement, after being reluctantly dragged in by Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war, simply made assurance doubly sure, and speeded up the process.
Lesson over. You are fortunate, as normally I get paid to give lectures to the less well-informed!
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Nonsense. It is not true that Olympic had been 'severely damaged.' At least, not until Robin Gardiner invented the idea in 1995, to sell his book.
Olympic had been in collision with HMS Hawke in September, 1911. She returned to Belfast, being repaired by Harland & Wolff by late November, after which she was back on her Atlantic service. White Star was far from in financial difficulties at the time. If you don't wish to read their most recent accounts, simply ask yourself whether a company with such problems would have committed to the building of the third Olympic class liner, which they did in November, 1911.
As to the insurance fraud itself. Both Olympic & Titanic cost £1.5 million to build, and were each insured for £1 million. Thus, any such 'fraud' would have lost White Star £500,000 together with their reputation for safety.
I thought that insurance frauds were supposed to make money, not lose it in large quantities.
I suspect that you have simply swallowed a switcher or conspiracist video, totally and unquestioningly?
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@NitishKumar-jm7ec But Hitler didn't halt the tanks. Von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, did. He wished to have them serviced before beginning the second stage of the campaign, and was worried about the danger of a second Miracle of the Marne.
You can add to that the fact that the land around Dunkirk is poor tank country. Moreover, like most German commanders, he viewed a surrounded army backed against the sea as trapped, because he had no real grasp of sea power. The British, with their history of naval superiority, saw the sea not as a trap but as a wide open door. So it proved to be.
Oh, and no, the Luftwaffe didn't arrive too late. They were simply not up to the task given to them.
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@NitishKumar-jm7ec If you seek to be patronising, you have chosen the wrong target, unless you also have a First in Modern History and have your name on several books and articles on the subject of the naval history of WW2.
As someone with access to the British, French, & German archives relating to the period, I don't need to waste time on Wikipedia. I would refer you instead to Lord Gort's Second Despatch, paragraph 39, which confirms the the allied retreat to the Belgian frontier defences took place on 22/23 May. Paragraph 43 confirms that the length of the front held by Franco-British forces on the morning of 26 May was 128 miles, but that the intention was to contract to a perimeter of 58 miles. This decision was made jointly with General Blanchard, who had concluded that the optimistic Weygand Plan was simply unrealistic. Gort, like Blanchard, was aware, or at least suspected, that the Belgian army was about to collapse (Paragraph 45) and on the evening of 26 May gave the responsibility for the establishment of the Dunkirk bridgehead to Lt.-Gen. Adam, commander of 3 Corps. Adam began this task in earnest early on 27 May. On 23 May, by the way, RN warships were still lifting troops from Boulogne, an operation which ended early on 24th.
The Luftwaffe on 25 & 26 May had already attacked Dunkirk's port facilities. Significant evacuations only began on 28 May, although a small number had been lifted on 27 May.
I would recommend the Naval Staff History, 'The Evacuation From Dunkirk - Operation Dynamo, 26 May - 4 June, 1940.' Full of precise details, and bearing out, in their entirety, my comments.
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Some of these comments are so unfair. All poor Angela did was push the tea trolley up and down the corridors at Post Office HQ for years, whilst occasionally passing on e-mails to other, more important, people. Without, of course, ever reading any of them.
Her leaving salary of £420,000 p.a. was simply because she brewed excellent tea, and never, ever, forgot to put the biscuit tin, or the milk and sugar, on the trolley before setting off.
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He also had allegedly, an interesting confrontation with a left wing Labour 'firebrand' MP, Bessie Braddock. Braddock said to Churchill, 'Mr. Churchill, you are drunk.' Churchill is supposed to have responded, 'And you, madam, are ugly. But tomorrow, I will be sober.'
Churchill actually respected Braddock. She was appointed by him, when returned as prime minister in 1951 to the Royal Commission on Mental Health, otherwise known as the Percy Commission, whose work led to the Mental Health Act of 1959.
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Oh dear, another indoctrinated one! Aside from the fact that this video was about 1940 (there were no Indian troops in Britain in 1940, and only two brigades in North Africa), how exactly did 'British Colonialism' take 250 million Indian lives when the population of India in 1801 was 169 million, rising to 340 million in 1947? At the height of the Raj, there were 30,000 British Civil Servants, administrating India through the Indian Princely States, and the rapid rise in population suggests that someone was doing something right.
Oh, and the Berngal Famine. Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which you have been indoctrinated.
Don't you realise that you are making yourself look remarkably foolish?
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@hetrodoxlysonov-wh9oo They were trying to secure air superiority over the Home Counties, in accordance with the theories of air power expounded by Guilio Douhet. Put simply, he argued that the air force that could achieve command of the air by bombing the enemy air arm into extinction would doom its enemy to perpetual bombardment. Command of the air meant victory, because civilian populations faced with this would rise up against their governments and impose new ones which would negotiate a surrender. He stated that 'the bomber will always get through.' His writings identified five basic target types: industry, transport infrastructure, communications, government and "the will of the people".
WW2 proved this to be a false dogma, of course, but people such as Billy Mitchell, Arthur Harris (indeed, the whole British Air Ministry) and Hermann Goering were enthusiastic supporters, probably because they could use it to argue for greater spending on their respective air forces.
As to the ramshackle invasion fleet, on simple terms the Kriegsmarine assembled it because, on 16 July, 1940, Hitler issued Directive 16, for the invasion of Great Britain, and it was unwise, in the Germany of 1940, for Raeder or, indeed anyone in authority, to ignore a führerbefehl.
Quite possibly, Raeder hoped that Goering's faith in Douhet was well founded, that Britain would come to terms, and that his barges would be used for a ceremonial landing only, akin to the American landings on mainland Japan after the Japanese surrender. Whether on not this was true, Hitler had given the order, and he was obliged to obey it.
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@JohnSmith-of2gu I think that the all big gun was an inevitability anyway. Even before Tsushima, in 'Jane's Fighting Ships' of October, 1903, the Italian designer Cuniberti had published a paper entitled 'An ideal battleship for the British navy' which proposed a 17000 ton ship armed with 12 x 12 inch guns, and the Japanese Satsuma class, ordered in 1904, had been designed, though not, in the event, built, with such an armament.
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@Ballinalower To be honest, that is a really tough one, given all the variables involved. Realistically, I don't believe that the British could have held Burma, but that, as 2,500,000 Indians volunteered for the allies in WW2, I doubt that the Japanese could have taken over India, but would probably have been involved in a protracted and brutal slogging match.
I have never believed that Japan had any real ambitions in India, other than to establish a presence which would disrupt supplies to China, and I have always had doubts about invasions of Australia & New Zealand, given the distances involved, and the comparative lack of the raw materials available there.
The real question, which I really cannot answer, is whether the United States would simply stand by and allow Japan to seize large areas of the Far East, especially after FDR's embargo had put Japan under such pressure in the first place. To be honest, as a naval historian, I don't know enough about US internal politics at the time, but would be interested to read the views of some one (anyone!) who does.
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@Etäinshewölf007 I mean precisely what I have written, consistently, since my first comment. Why should someone else need to write for me, when you have demonatrated your cluelessness by your remarkable inability to answer a simple, uncomplicated, question, which only required, at the least, a simple, one word, answer?
'Yes' or 'No'.
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@LJ2K2025 That is the joy of First Past the Post:-
33.7% Voted Labour, 23.7% Tory, 14.3% Reform, 12.22% LibDem, and 6.4% Green.
In terms of Proportional Numbers, that would have left Labour with 219 seats, Tory 154 seats, Reform 93 seats, the LibDems 79 seats, and the Greens 42 seats.
In other words, after receiving around 500,000 votes less than they did during the Corbyn debacle, Labour ended up with a virtual dictatorship, despite only around 20% of the electorate actually voting for them.
The Tories in the past have, of course, also benefitted from FPtP, but it makes it neither right nor democratic.
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@romanclay1913 Please explain, as you seem to believe that you are an 'ideas' person, how sending Hess to meet Hamilton, an individual hardly at the heart of government, was likely to have been more effective in bringing about discussions than approaching the British ambassadors in Spain, Switzerland, or Sweden, or even asking the United States to act as an honest broker?
By the way, if Rudolf wanted to meet the 'arch appeaser' Samuel Hoare, he was flying in the wrong direction, as Hoare was actually one of those ambassadors at the time. Didn't your conspiracy theory mention that? Odd, as I read it in one of several books.
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@ceberskie119 Auchinleck was an outstanding general, who defeated Rommel twice, during Crusader and at First Alamein. He never commanded military operations against the Japanese, although William Slim played fulsome tribute to the behind the scenes efforts of Auchinleck in his autobiography.
Patton? Which one? The Patton of the movie, or the Patton of history? You would need to explain why Bradley was so critical of his antics on Sicily, or why Patton performed so badly in the Lorraine. In terms of casualties, Patton's actions in the Lorraine led to over 55,000 allied (American) casualties, yet the fact is never mentioned. Market Garden led to 17,000 Allied casualties.
The Patton of the movie apparently won a crucial victory over 'Rommel' or at least 'Rommel's plan.' A great deal was made of it, when the reality was that Patton fought an indecisive skirmish again a single German division at El Guettar (the division being 10 Panzer, which was commanded by von Arnim), whilst Rommel's old command, the Afrika Korps, was being defeated at Mareth, and later shattered at Wadi Akarit, by someone else.
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@thetimetraveller6550 Do try to think. Are you seriously suggesting that Joseph Bell, Titanic's Chief Engineer, reported a fire to Captain Smith, and Smith, a Master Mariner since 1887, simply said ' never mind, it is only the North Atlantic in April. What could possibly go wrong?'
Do you really believe that the people of 1912 were half-wits?
Titanic, by the way, finished fitting out on 31 March, 1912, and carried out sea trials on 2 April, 1912. She had been out of dry dock for at least two weeks, and was subjected to an inspection by Board of Trade officials. Do you think that they are likely to have missed a serious internal fire?
The serious fire was a conclusion made by a journalist in 2017, on the basis of a smudge on a photograph. It has no credibility.
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His actions started before Italy. In 1940 his division blocked a hole in the Allied line after Belgium surrendered. In North Africa he won the Battles of 2nd Alamein, Mareth, & Wadi Akarit. His British & Canadians fought 8 Panzer Divisions and 3 Independent Tiger Battalions to a standstill around Caen.
As to Market Garden. Yes, a failure with 17000 allied casualties. How would you assess the Lorraine campaign (55,000 US casualtes - George Patton's masterpiece) or the Hurtgen Forest (33,000+ US casualties, courtesy of Bradley and Hodges) out of interest?
Odd how you people, from comfortable chairs 75 years after the event, always seem eager to criticise a commander for building up a superiority in numbers, equipment, and supplies, before embarking on a battle? Presumably, you find 'Steel not Blood' tedious & boring.
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I do not believe that the Royal Family should respond in the face of this deliberate baiting. Showing indifference is by far the best way of demonstrating contempt.
Obviously, if specific allegations against specific people were to be made, that policy might require alteration, but after the manner in which the claims the Markles made in the Oprah train wreck were dismantled, I doubt their advisors would allow a repeat of such foolishness.
Their future revelations will, doubtless, remain of the vague, generalised, type that they have recently been. Unprovable, but, equally undisprovable.
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@harrisr1018 In 1801, the population of Britain was 10.1 million according to the first official census. At the time the British were at war with the greatest military power in Europe. Tell me how the British managed to kill 35 million Indians, when at the height of the Raj there were around 20,000 British civil servants in India, where government was carried out almost entirely by the Indian Princely States, who viewed the presence of the British as highly profitable.
In 1810, the Indian population wasw 210 million. By 1921 it had risen to 318 million. In 1800 average life expectancy in India was 25.4 years. In 1948 it was 35.4 years. Odd, that, isn't it?
Dyer was a British officer who exceeded his authority and disregarded his orders. As a result, he was dismissed his command, sent back to Britain, and never held a military position again. Would you like me to list the massacres carried out by Indian states among themselves before the arrival of the British?
You say 'man made famines.' Which man made famines?
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@harrisr1018 I expected that you would refer to the Bengal Famine of 1943. Most revisionists, or most indoctrinated ones, do use that, or their claims about it, without of course checking any actual facts. Actually, of course, I was well aware of it, but chose to give you the opportunity to trot out the usual propaganda first, as you duly did.
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of the British government wat that it should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, it had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, even by people like you, is that once the British government did find out, it transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India. Seriously, try to put your programming aside for a moment and think for yourself. There were 2.5 million Indians in the armed forces at the time. Why would the administration seek to engineer a famine and risk a mass mutiny?
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit your agenda.
There was no British 'invasion.' If you think that there was, please provide a list of the various assault landings and the series of major battles which resulted from it. Moreover, please explain how a nation of 10.1 million, already at war with France, managed successfully to invade and conquer a sub-continent with a population 20 times bigger. Sheer fantasy. Certainly, ther British eventually governed India, but as a resiult of the support and co-operation of the various Princely States.
Do you have any evidence to support your ludicrous 35 million deaths nonsense? You put forward the number like a demented parrot, but you haven't substantiated it. Presumably, you don't believe that India benefitted from western medicine, science, education, law, engineering, and transport systems? Incidentally, what language are you typing your deluded nonsense in?
Churchill's opinions might not meet current popular views, but is that surprising, given that he was born in 1874? Perhaps you are unaware that Gandhi, born in 1869, expressed the view, when a lawyer in South Africa, that Africans were an inferior form of humanity, not fit to be allowed the vote?
In short, you are an indoctrinated fool, blindly chanting falsehoods programmed into you by others, and I choose not to waste further time correcting your, no doubt genuinely held, errors. I suspect I would have more success trying to teach my cat to play chess.
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Pound's intelligence staff could not give any reassurance to him that Tirpitz had not sailed, but told him that they would have expected to have received more definite information if she had. Pound chose to ignore this, and ordered the scattering of the convoy at 21.36 on 4 July. Tirpitz and her battlegroup did actually sail on 5 July, but returned to port almost immediately once it became clear that the convoy had scattered.
Pound should have left the decisions to Hamilton, the commander of the cruiser covering force in the area, who had four heavy cruisers and supporting destroyers, and was joined by additional destroyers from the close escort once the scatter order had been given, in the mistaken belief that the Admiralty had more definite information, and that they were about to fight a desperate, against the odds, action. For some months thereafter Hamilton's cruiser, HMS London, was known within the Home Fleet as the 'Wop Flagship.'
In December, 1942 protecting JW 51B, a British force of four fleet & one escort destroyers successfully fought off a German force of two heavy cruisers and six destroyers, before two supporting light cruisers engaged and damaged one of the heavy cruisers, which then returned to port at high speed.
Possibly Pound's medical condition let to his misjudgment. I doubt his successor, Andrew Cunningham, would have made a similar decision.
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@Aelvir114 Cavalier was preserved simply because she was the last of her line. There is another RN warship crying out to be preserved, HMS Whimbrel, now an Egyptian vessel in Alexandria harbour. She ticks every box. She is a Black Swan class escort sloop, which operated in the Atlantic, in the Arctic, was part of Walker's 2nd Support Group, and was present at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. A few years ago, an attempt to purchase her almost succeeded, until the Egyptians upped the price.
Needless to say the British Government was never, at any time, even vaguely interested in supporting the venture, and to the best of my knowledge still isn't.
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@wildideas7368 Oh dear. Another one who never learned of the concept of sarcasm at school.
The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as a British dynasty was short-lived. It encompassed the reign of King Edward VII, who reigned for nine years at the beginning of the modern age in the early years of the twentieth century, and the first seven years of his son, King George V, who replaced the German-sounding title with that of Windsor in 1917during the First World War.
Perhaps it didn't help that the Germans, from June 1917, had been using Gotha aircraft to bomb London? Thus, although George V, Edward VIII, George VI, Elizabeth II. and Charles III might claim the dynastic name 'Windsor' in fact their actual House is the same as that of the Belgian Royal Family, that of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
Of course, I am assuming much. Such as that you have actually heard of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha, or George V.
Or, come to that, George VI, Edward VIII, George VI, Queen Elizabeth II. Or perhaps even Gotha Bombers, World War I, and Belgium.
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@TexasSpectre Scharnhorst & Gneisenau had been in Brest since 22 March, 1941, and Prinz Eugen since 29 May, 1941. Bomber Command had been responsible for their neutralisation, and had failed consistently.
The Kriegsmarine introduced a 4th rotor to their Enigma machines on 1 February, 1942, and the revised machines could not be broken by Bletchley Park until the capture of a machine and code books from U559 by HMS Petard in October. Effectively, after 1 February, 1942, the British did not have access to naval Enigma.
The British did, however, expect an imminent breakout, and local forces were alerted of this. When the ships & escorts sailed at 2245 on 11 February, a British submarine, Sealion, patrolling the entrance to Brest, had withdrawn to charge her batteries, and the RAF's 'Stopper' patrol, a Hudson of 224 Squadron, failed to make contact with her ASV radar. Furthermore, the next patrol in line, 'Line South East' had been withdrawn by the RAF because of radar faults, and no replacement aircraft sent. The third patrol line, 'Boulogne' was also withdrawn by the RAF when the ships were still west of it, at 0630, apparently because of fog, and because no imminent operation was expected, as 'Stopper' had detected nothing.
The only other patrol over the Channel was the routine dawn patrol by Fighter Command from Ostend, south to the mouth of the Somme, which the Brest Group passed at 10:00 a.m. From 8:25–9:59 a.m. RAF radar operators, using an un-jammed radar frequency, noticed four plots of German aircraft circling in places north of Le Havre, which at first were thought to be air-sea rescue operations.
At 10:00 a.m. 11 Group RAF Fighter Command realised that the plots were moving north-east at 20–25 kn (23–29 mph; 37–46 km/h) and sent two Spitfires to reconnoitre at 10:20 a.m., about the time that news reached Fighter Command headquarters that radar-jamming had begun at 9:20 a.m. and that the station at Beachy Head was detecting surface ships. Radar stations in Kent reported two large ships off Le Touquet at 10:52 a.m. and when the Spitfire patrol landed at 10:50 a.m., having kept radio silence, the pilots reported a flotilla off Le Touquet (near Boulogne) but did not mention capital ships.
News of the sighting was rushed to 11 Group, and the Navy at Dover, by 11:05 a.m. Asecond flight of two Spitfires found themselves over a German flotilla of two big ships, a destroyer screen and an outer ring of E-boats. The Spitfires were dived on by about 12 German fighters and escaped through anti-aircraft fire from the ships, strafed an E-boat and made off at wave-top height. After they landed at 1109, the pilots reported that the German ships had been 16 nmi (18 mi; 30 km) off Le Touquet at 1042. By 11:25 a.m., the alarm had been raised that the Brest Group was entering the Straits of Dover with air cover.
At 1127, Bomber Command was alerted that the Brest Group was near Dover and warned the groups to be ready. Including aircraft that had flown the night before and those at four hours' notice, Air Marshal Richard Peirse had about 250 aircraft but the 100 bombers on two hours' notice had been loaded with semi-armour-piercing bombs which were effective only if dropped from 7,000 ft (2,100 m) or higher. Visibility was poor with rain and 8/10ths to 10/10ths cloud cover, down to 700 ft (210 m) and unless there were breaks in the cloud just when needed the task was impossible. Peirse ordered general-purpose bombs to be loaded, which could only cause superficial blast damage and attacks at low altitude, in the hope that the attacks would distract the Brest Group as Coastal Command and the Navy made torpedo attacks.
At 1219, the coastal batteries at Dover fired their first salvo but with visibility down to 5 nmi, there could be no observation of the fall-of-shot. The gunners hoped that the radar would detect the shell splashes and allow corrections to be made, although this method had never been tried before. "Blips" on the K-set radar clearly showed the ships zig-zagging but not where the shells were landing. Full battery salvo firing began and the four 9.2-inch guns fired 33 rounds at the German ships, which were moving out of range at 30 kn (35 mph; 56 km/h) and all missed.
German sources state that the fleet had already passed Dover when the coastal artillery opened fire and that the shells landed well astern of the major German units. The coastal guns ceased fire when light naval forces and torpedo-bombers began to attack and by 1321 the German ships passed beyond the effective range of the British radar.
Five operational MTBs left Dover at 1155, and sighted the German force at 1223. RAF fighter cover for these boats had not arrived (it hadn't actually taken off).
Six Swordfish torpedo bombers of the Fleet Air Arm left Manston at 1220. An escort of Spitfires from 72 Squadron failed to arrive, having been intercepted by Fw190s. The Swordfish made their attacks, therefore, unsupported, and all were lost.
Four Beauforts left THorney Island at 1325 were late to meet their fighter escorts at Manston and the torpedo-bombers and fighters were ordered independently to attack the German ships. The position, course and speed of the Brest Group was given by R/T to the Spitfires and Morse W/T to the Beauforts. The torpedo-bombers failed to receive the orders, because 16 Group forgot that they had been fitted with R/T for Operation Fuller. When the Beauforts reached Manston they circled with numerous fighters which appeared to ignore them. Two Beauforts flew to the French coast, found nothing and landed at Manston where the confusion was resolved.
Finally, the destroyers HMS Campbell, Vivacious of the 21st Flotilla and HMS Mackay, Whitshed, Walpole and Worcester of the 16th Flotilla (Captain Charles Pizey), from Nore Command, which were First World War-vintage and used to escort east coast convoys, were practising gunnery off Orford Ness in the North Sea when alerted at 1156. The destroyers sailed south to intercept the Brest Group but it steamed much faster than expected and to catch up,
Pizey took the destroyers over a German minefield and at 1431, just before the destroyers attacked, north of the Scheldt Estuary, Scharnhorst had hit a mine and was stopped for a short time, before resuming at about 25 kn. At 1517 the destroyers made radar contact at 9 nm, and visual contact at 4 nmi at 1543 . Walpole had already dropped out with engine trouble; as the other five emerged from the murk, they were immediately engaged by the German ships. The destroyers pressed on to 3,000 yds. and two destroyers fired torpedoes; Worcester closed further and was hit by return fire from Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen, then the last two destroyers attacked but all their torpedoes missed.
By the way, the German force consisted, in addition to two battleships and a heavy cruiser, 6 destroyers, 14 torpedo boats, 26 'S' boats, 252 fighters, and 35 bombers. Do you really think that an 'ambush' by five MTBs and six V & W class destroyers was ever a realistic possibility?
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@carlpolen7437 I did not claim that Enigma was the only source of intelligence information. If you care to read my post again, you will realise that I was explaining a fact to someone who had claimed that the date of the Dash was known via Enigma, when it was not.
What resources do you suggest the Admiralty had available? Let's see. In February, 1942, were were the heavy units of the Royal Navy :-
King George V - Hvalfjord.
Duke of York - Scapa Flow, working up.
Rodney - Hvalfjord.
Nelson - Refitting at Rosyth.
Queen Elizabeth - Alexandria under repair.
Warspite - Eastern Fleet.
Valiant - Alexandria under repair.
Malaya - In the Clyde. Escort for Troop Convoy WS16
Royal Sovereign, Ramillies, Resolution, Revenge. - Eastern Fleet.
Renown - Hvalfjord.
Where were these 'plenty of resources available' of which you speak? Would you like me to list the locations of the RN's heavy cruisers, perhaps?
The fact is that the priority at the time was maintaining a presence in the Indian Ocean, with what was largely a Fleet in Being of four obsolete battleships, one modernised battleships, and two aircraft carriers, and at the same time providing heavy cover for Russian convoys, in the knowledge that Tirpitz was now fully operational, and had been in Trondheim for around a month, along with Admiral Scheer and several fleet destroyers.
Please explain which of the Admiralty's perceived priorities was less important? Especially since Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had been in Brest for eleven months, and Prinz Eugen for nine, during which period Bomber Command had regularly attacked them without success. There were 63 raids on Brest from March 1941 to the end of the year, by the way.
THe fact is that Bomber Command was given the task of dealing with the three German heavy ships in Brest, and, as Churchill himself remarked, the inability of Bomber Command to do this was a serious failure.
By the way, 'thin-skinned?' Not at all. I simply know far more about the actual facts and details of Operation Cerberus than most do.
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@nickdanger3802 Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
Still, if you are happier cutting and pasting something you probably found on google, then so be it.
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@WillowEpp Renown paid off for modernisation in late August, 1936, and this was not completed until April, 1939. The work involved was as follows:-
15in Turrets were modified to increase the elevation from 20¼ to 30¼.
Bridge structure redesigned similar to that fitted in NELSON and RODNEY.
Entire secondary armament replaced by ten twin 4.5in HA mountings for air defence.
Three 8 barrelled 2 pounder Pom-Poms were fitted to improve her close range air defence.
New gunnery control systems were fitted AFCC Mk VII for the main battery and HACS Mk IV for the 4.5in HA.
Two quadruple, deck mounted torpedo tubes fitted in place of the two submerged tubes.
Limited improvement of armour protection, 4in over the magazines and 2in over the engine rooms.
The 42 Babcock and Wilcox boilers in 6 boiler rooms with 285 psi working pressure were replaced by 8 Admiralty 3 drum type with 400 psi working pressure in 4 boiler rooms. This saved 2500 tons in weight.
The two Brown Curtis direct drive turbines were replaced by two Parsons single reduction geared turbines supplied by Cammell Laird.
These changes increased SHP from 112,000 to 120,000.
Some of the space saved by reducing the number of boilers was used to increase fuel storage and thus increase her range.
Aircraft catapult replaced with Hangar for stowage and maintenance.
The ship was, in effect, largely redesigned within the existing hull, and what emerged was a new warship, as comparisons of the post-rebuild Renown with the Renown of early 1936 demonstrate.
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No. Your post is misinformation, probably entirely due to ignorance. Aside from the fact that as owner of IMM, White Star's parent company, Morgan didn't need to 'book a trip', it is documented in the NYT that he had already planned to visit St. Mark's in Venice before Titanic could have returned from New York.
He had, moreover, confirmed this well before Guggenheim, on 8 April, booked his own trip, which renders your reference to the 1990s created myth about the Federal Reserve equally invalid.
Although, as Astor & Guggenheim had never commented about the Fed., whilst Straus had already spoken in favour of it, such invalidation was hardly needed.
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@TheHandsomeman Republic was involved in a collision on 23 January, 1909, when commanded by Captain Inman Sealby. When Germanic collided with Cumbrae in 1895, she was commanded by Capt. McKinstry. Coptic was not involved in a collision when commanded by Smith from 1889 to 1894. Granted, she did run aground, in December, 1890, on Main Island at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I have already described the Olympic/Hawke incident. RMS Majestic collided with a fishing steamer in 1894. Smith took command of her in 1895.
If it helps, on 7 August 1901: a fire in a linen closet on Majestic forced breakfasting saloon passengers (including John D. Rockefeller, Jr.) to flee to the promenade deck until the smoke cleared. No injuries were reported, nor was there any serious damage done to the ship. Smith was Majestic's commander at the time. (Source: The New York Times, 8 August 1901.). Perhaps you might care to accuse Smith of illicitly smoking in the linen closet and causing the fire?
You do know the difference between groundings and collisions, I assume. In the days of less accurate charts, groundings were inevitable. Smith had held a Master's Certificate since 1875, and had been commanding ships since 1887. Do you seriously think he would have risen as far up the ladder of command as he did if there were any doubts about his competence or his professionalism?
I have seen 'Titanic - The Shocking Truth.' To take it seriously, I would need to be demented, not simply open minded.
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@colonelchuck5590 In the case of Gallipoli, Kitchener had received a request from the Tsar' General Staff for Britain to take action to reduce the threat to Russia's southern flank. The hope was that this could be achieved by knocking Turkey out of the war, which might have also had the additonal benefit of bringing the hitherto neutral Eastern European states into the war on the allied side.
In fact, the idea was no more 'insane' than were the Normandy landings. It was, however, badly planned by the military. Ironically, after the war, Kemal Ataturk said that, had the allied navies maintained their pressure on the Dardanelles for a little longer, the Turkisn government would have crumbled.
In terms of insanity, by the way, didn't George Marshall argue for Operation Sledgehammer, a landing in France in 1942?
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No one told the Poles to fight anyone. Poland was invaded without warning, rather like Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, & Belgium, and was obliged to resist.
No one offered half of Europe to the Soviets. The Soviets simply took it, after themselves being attacked without warning. Perhaps you believe that the Western Allies should have themselves attacked the Soviets in 1945. After years of praising the gallant Uncle Joe and the noble Russian people, how would you have sold that to the citizens of the US, Britain, & Canada?
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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@jeanie6936 But to those who were involved, by which I mean those at Harland & Wolff, at White Star, and within the Board of Trade, there were clear and obvious differences between the two ships.
The most obvious, although there were others, being :-
1). The partly enclosed 'A' deck on Titanic, as opposed to the open one on Olympic.
2). The totally different window pattern at the forward end of Titanic's 'B' deck, as opposed to the unmodified forward end, at least until after the Titanic sinking, of Olympic.
3). The projecting bridge wings on Titanic, as opposed to the flush ones on Olympic.
Why do you feel the need to argue with everything I post, apparently just for the sake of it? Strange behaviour, to say the least, especially since your original response to the post by catfishhunter was, unlike my own response, to ridicule it.
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@ffsForgerFortySeven.9154 Your first post said :- 'This is what happen on the Hood ...someone left the door open on the rear AA mag'
Your second post said :-
'The door and the fire seal was open. I have a few accounts of the door being left open and that... pressure and fire from the explosion.' I asked for details of the sources of these accounts. All you have done since is made vague references to observers, rather than witnesses to 'open doors.'
Of course, there were hundreds of witnesses to Hood's sinking. I have read them, from both the text of the first Inquiry, of 30 May, and the subsequent, more detailed, Inquiry, of 27 August. None of them contain the slightest suggestion that any doors were left open, largely because the only witnesses who could have confirmed or denied this died aboard their ship.
Are you really going to suggest that observers from Norfolk, Suffolk, Prince of Wales or even (at the second Inquiry) Bismarck could have had any knowledge whatsoever. All they were able to do was to give their varied interpretations of Hood's destruction, and no-one has ever doubted that this came about because of an explosion in the 4 inch magazine, which detonated the 15 inch magazine. You are going much further than this, in that you are attributing the loss of Hood to slipshod procedures aboard the ship. As no Royal Navy capital ship had stored cordite in such a manner since the battlecruisers at Jutland, and as the Grand Fleet battleships had never used this method of storage at any time, you will need to prove your allegations. Can you produce any statement by a credible witness that such actions took place aboard any Royal Navy capital ship in WW2? Perhaps a crewman who had been transferred away from Hood a few weeks before she sank, or someone who saw this happen aboard one of the other RN capital ships? As to Anthony Preston, I have a copy of the book in which he made this statement ( Sea Power: A Modern Illustrated Military History, 1979) in which he makes the (unsubstantiated) claim in order to justify his belief that Hood was sunk by Prinz Eugen. Needless to say, he was, and is, in a minority of one where this opinion is concerned.
As to: 'Please bear in mind the crew of the Hood was an Older crew They or some of may have been stuck with bad habits.'
They would have to have been an old crew indeed, as Jutland took place 25 years earlier. Do you really believe that the crew of a warship, in the middle of a war, wandered around ignoring safety procedures aboard the ship? Do you really believe that their officers would have tolerated such behaviour?
Please feel free to present your 175 sources, by the way.
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@ffsForgerFortySeven.9154 Where in the Report does it state that explosion of 4 inch rounds stowed outside the magazine was a 'possible factor?'
Have you read the evidence of Dr. Godfrey Rotter, the Director of Explosives Research at Woolwich, given on 2 September, 1941? (Admiralty Record ADM 116/4352, pages 364 - 369). Dr. Rotter was asked a number of questions on the nature of cordite explosions, and what their effects might have been on the structure of the ship. He gives particularly detailed information on the effects of an explosion of the 4 inch magazine.
As part of the evidence, the detailed stowage of 4 inch ammunition is stated, as follows:-
'The 4” magazines in the after group contained the number of rounds, and the weight of cordite, indicated. The stowage was in bottle racks
Hold 280 – 290 539 rounds 2.17 tons.
Hold 290 – 302 830 rounds 3.32 tons
Lower Platform 280 – 296 1001 rounds 4 tons
Lower Platform 296 – 302 540 rounds 2.17 tons
Upper Platform 280 – 294 467 rounds 1.88 tons
Upper Platform 296 – 306 1232 rounds 4.96 tons
Total about 18 ½ tons.'
What isn't here is any suggestion that rounds were stowed outside the magazine.
Have you read Jurens, Garske & Dulin, 'Battleship Bismarck: A Design and Operational History' published in January, 2019, which states 'Hood's destruction was most likely caused by a 380-mm shell from Bismarck that penetrated the deck armor and exploded in the aft 102-mm magazine, igniting its cordite propellant, which in turn ignited the cordite in the adjacent aft 381-mm magazine. Rapid expansion of the resulting combustion gases from the conflagration then caused structural failure, passing out through the sides of the ship as well as forward and upwards via the engine room vents, expelling the aft main battery turrets and causing the stern to be detached from the rest of the hull at the aft armored bulkhead.' I don't see any reference to 4 inch munitions being stored outside the magazines here, nor in either Admiralty report. In fact, the only reference I have ever come across is a single, uncorroborated claim by Anthony Preston in 1979, in support of his pet theory that Hood was sunk by Prinz Eugen.
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In point of fact, unrestricted submarine warfare commenced on 18 February, 1915. The first Q ship was introduced in June, 1915, and the arming of merchant ships later than that. Both were responses to the German campaign, and did not create it.
UB110 was depth charged, rammed & sunk by HMS Garry on 19 July, 1918. Allegations by her captain, Kapitänleutnant Werner Fürbringer, were made after the war, in his memoirs, published in 1933. Apparently, he witnessed one of his crew killed when a member of Garry's crew threw a lump of coal at him, and Garry's crew also, allegedly, fired at the survivors with pistols, revolvers, and rifles. Furbringer also claimed that there were no independent witnesses of the massacre because Lightoller ordered his men to stop when the convoy his ship was escorting arrived on the scene. As far as I know, none of the other survivors from UB110 ever made any such claims.
L19 landed in the North Sea on 1 March, 1916, returning from a bombing raid on Burton on Trent. She was observed in the sea by the trawler 'King Stephen.' The German commander of the airship spoke English, and asked the trawler's skipper, William Martin, to take the 13 man crew of the airship aboard. Martin refused, because his nine man crew were unarmed civilians, whereas the Germans were armed members of the German military. Martin undertook to report the downed airship to any British warship he might meet (King Stephen had no wireless) but didn't encounter any, and therefore was only able to report the encounter when he docked in Grimsby. The Royal Navy did send out destroyers to search for L19, but in poor weather no trace was ever found.
Certainly, the cruiser prize rules benefited surface ships and had not been written with submersibles in mind, but your apparent conviction that the Germans were the victims is difficult to substantiate, despite your rather biased references to two alleged atrocities.
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@tracymerrill3321 Simply not true. At the time of the collision with HMS Hawke, Olympic was in the Solent, and under the command of a Solent Pilot, who had taken her into and out of Southampton on her previous Atlantic voyages. At the Court of Inquiry, Smith was exonerated of any blame for this reason.
Olympic was fully repaired by Harland and Wolff in 14 weeks, largely because the damage, involving two compartments and a propeller shaft, was nowhere as extensive as switchers like to pretend. Olympic was back at sea by November, 1911, well before Titanic was even completed. I won't even mention the number of small design details which make the suggestion of a mere name swap laughable.
Oh, and both ships cost $7.5 million to build. At the time of the sinking, Titanic was insured for only $5 million.
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@touristguy87 I am not quite sure what you are talking about. I have simply corrected your misunderstanding that Tirpitz was intended to be on a lone mission. She was intended to lead a powerful Task Force, every ship of which was already based in Norway.
Just to clarify, this was to consist of Tirpitz, the heavy cruisers (pocket battleships) Lutzow and Admiral Scheer, the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, the destroyers Friedrich Ihn, Hans Lody, Karl Galster, Theodor Reidel, Richard Beitzen, Z24, Z27, Z28, Z29 & Z30, and the torpedo boats T7 & T15.
However, several ships ran aground when leaving their fjords, and the operation was abandoned when news of the scattering of PQ17 was received.
I wouldn't have expected the RAF to have played much of a role in protecting the convoy, by the way.
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@touristguy87 Perhaps you might explain the relevance of the Bernau Post Office to PQ17? I, and most people, I suspect, am struggling to understand it.
Oh, and eight of the 24 merchantmen lost were sunk by aircraft, and several others sunk by U-boats after being damaged by aircraft. The losses were not 75%, and nor were they all the results of submarine attack. I wonder if you actually know any of the facts about PQ17 at all, frankly?
Of course none of the convoy were sunk by surface action, because the task force never sailed. By the way, what is the reason for the speech marks, as in "heavy battlecruisers" Are you suggesting I made such a reference earlier. Rather unlikely as, evidently unlike you, I know that the German navy in WW2 never had any such vessels.
What is the 'concept' which you think confuses me, by the way? Why are you getting increasing choleric about my simple correction of your original error,
I have, of course, ignored your second paragraph about Chinese bombers and the 'Battle of Linconshire' as it seems to me to be irrelevant, demented, rambling.
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@doejon9424 The Blitz is generally regarded to have ended in mid May, 1941. The US didn't, by the way, 'step in' but was dragged in after Peral Harbor and the German declaration of war.
What did the Blitzkrieg do, exactly? Defeated France, and obliged the British, with their tiny army, to concentrate on their strengths. These being a huge and effective navy, a modern, well equipped air force, the increasing support of the Commonwealth & Empire, and a manufacturing base greater than that of Germany.
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@doejon9424 'The British were running low on mechanized weapons and soldiers.' Really? so short that, as early as August, 1940, they were able to send a Troop Convoy to reinforce the Western Desert Force in North Africa? The 'Apology' convoy of 22 August.
'They had a supioror Navy despite the German U-boats & destoyers.' Presumably, you mean the U-Boats which never came close to success in the North Atlantic? Or the 10 destroyers which were all the Germans had in September, 1940, when the British had 178, of which over 110 were in Home Waters? Or the 400+ with which the Royal Navy ended the war?
The RAF, which, far from lacking 'raw numbers' was consistently operating greater numbers of aircraft, and producing a strategic bombing arm the size of which the Germans could only ever dream about, from mid 1940 onwards?
Technical advancements? Which? There were many projects, but how many were practicable, or saw battlefield service?
'We can only speculate what advancements Germany would have had from 1945- 1948 / 1950. The would've had the fleet of jet fighters, who knows what kind of tanks, various types of ships, accurate rocket warfare.. industrial military complex at it's finest.' Indeed, you must speculate, because you seem to think that Germany had unlimited and inexhaustible resources. Where would the fuel come from which the jets would use? Tanks such as the Maus or the E100? Lunatic ideas? Ships? The Kriegsmarine had stopped building warships after 1941, because of lack of raw materials and manpower. Instead, they concentrated on the U-Boat as a cheap & desperate expedient, which from May 1943 was a broken force. Accurate rocket warfare? The V2 could, with luck, hit somewhere in the London or Antwerp area. 'Industrial Military Complex?' Oh, please! Germany was a shambles of organisations competing with each other. The Germans never even managed to adopt a total war economy, as the British did almost immediately.
'Aircraft carrier?' One almost completed vessel, with an intended Air Group of modified land based aircraft, including the Bf109, with an undercarriage almost ludicrously unsuited to carrier operations. Life expectancy in the Atlantic? A few days, especially since the protective escorts a carrier needed in WW2 simply did not exist in the German navy.
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@doejon9424 What do you mean by 'run dry?' The only land front after June 1940 was North Africa, and there was never any shortage of vehicles at any time. Conversely the axis, because of the problems in actually getting supplies across the Mediterranean, struggled to maintain the forces they had there, and were generally short of fuel.
'It took the invasion of Normandy to push them back.' What does this even mean? By the time of Normandy, the axis had already been expelled from North Africa, Sicily, and half of Italy, as well as suffering massive defeats in the East. As to D-Day itself, actually, two thirds of the men who landed were British/Canadian, 3261 0f the 4127 landing craft were British crewed, 892 of 1213 warships were British, and two thirds of 11,600 aircraft were RAF.
'And you better believe that the campaign in North Africa would have been shut right down if the bulk of Marines didn't have to deal with Japan & island hoping in the Pacific. They would've been sent over there.' What does this even mean, either. There were precisely seven US divisions involved in North Africa, all in Tunisia after Torch.
The 'thinly spread' RAF was, by the way operating 56 fighter squadrons over Northern France by May, 1941, and by the end of the war operated just under10,000 aircraft.
Whether the Bf 109 was superior to the Spitfire is questionable, but largely irrelevant, as the Luftwaffe failed to win the Battle of Britain.
On a one-to one basis, late war German tanks were generally superior, although very little was superior to the Soviet T34/85. German late war vehicles, however, tended to be over-engineered, mechanically complex, difficult to maintain in battlefield conditions, an slow to manufacture. In fact, the Soviets built just under 49,000 T34/85s, the US a similar number of M4s, whereas the Germans built just under 500 Tiger IIs, just under 1400 Tiger Is, and around 6,000 Panthers.
Finally. Yes the Firefly was an American hull, but the gun which made it so effective against Tigers was the British designed & produced 17 pounder. 2,200 were converted. More than the total number of Tigers of both types built.
You need to do some reading instead of relying on myths and falsehoods.
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user-wj6dt5bq3w 'You don't understand.' Well, certainly one of us doesn't. Do you seriously seek to argue that the British & French should have simply sat back and allowed Germant to conquer most of Europe?
By the way, Perhaps you missed it, although I believe it was in all the newspapers, but the very idea that Britiain should come to terms only arose after Germany had invaded those prominent central European states, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium, and France.
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@iamnutty8471 In that case, then surely you must blame Herbert Asquith, not Churchill? Or is it simply that, like Herbert Asquith, you find Churchill a much more pleasing target for blame?
In terms of 'Chain of Command' by the way, Churchill was the civilian head of the Royal Navy. The professional head of the Navy was the First Sea Lord, who until mid May 1915 was Sir John Fisher, and after him Sir Henry Jackson.
Churchill had no place in the army Chain of Command which was headed at the time by Lieutenant-General Sir James Wolfe Murray, who of course, reported to Asquith. Murray himself was heavily influenced by Herbert Kitchener, and was replaced Sir Archibald Murray in September, 1915.
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In 1940 the Royal Navy was not 'split around the entire globe.' Apart from a flotilla of WW1 destroyers in the Far East, it was concentrated in the Mediterranean andv in Home Waters. Pearl Harbor was a pre-emptive strike at a neutral, largely unprepared, country. Britain had been at war since September, 1939. Indeed, a U-boat did sink an obsolete battleship in Scapa Flow, but, in wartime, ships are lost as are aircraft. The British have always understood the price of Admiralty.
As to 'bombing the ports to scrap,' what would the Germans use to do that? The short range, tactical bombers, with small bomb loads that they historically operated?
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@JugSouthgate Bismarck was actually designed as part of the between the wars naval race between France and Germany. As far back as the Weimar Republic, German military planning had assumed that any future German war would be against France, or France and Poland. Consquently, naval planning, restricted as it was by the Versailles Treaty, came up with the Deutschlands as a means of intercepting French troop convoys from their empire. The French responded with the Dunkerques. Germany responded with the Scharnhorsts. France then began construction of the Richelieus, and Germany with the Bismarcks.
German naval planning did not involve the idea of a war with the Royal Navy, as the RN was too superior to make a credible challenge possible. Thus, once the Kriegsmarine found itself facing the RN, their surface ships had few options available.
A single surface raider could not 'pick off cargo ships at will' because of the tactic of scattering, by the way.
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@alexandros4703 I haven't backtracked on anything. If you can show me any advertising material from 1911 or early 1912 which refers to the Olympics as 'unsinkable' please refer me to it. The only single document researchers have found so far is a single reference, in a small circulation magazine. Specifically : 'Shipbuilder' magazine, which called the Titanic "practically unsinkable" in a special issue about the Olympic liners.
The key word here being 'practically,' I suggest. I admit to being wrong frequently, but only when someone has been able to show me that I am. If you seek someone who is unable to admit error, you might look closer to home?
By the way, it is, old chap, bad form to get someone else to open a new address, as it appears you have done about a week ago, then get them to post comments on your behalf, and even to upvote your own comments.
Not the done thing at all, I suggest.
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@willosee Certainly, the 'Battlecruiser' term has been over-used. Her design was extensively altered after Jutland to improve her armouring. For example, her predecessors, the Renowns, had 6 inches of belt armour, and the Lions & Tiger had 9 inches. Hood, by contrast, had a 12 inch belt, the same as the WW1 Orion, King George V, and Iron Duke class battleships, and only 1 inch less thick than the Queen Elizabeths. Hood should more correctly be described as a fast battleship than as a true battlecruiser. Her horizontal armour, at 3 inches, was the same as that of the QEs, and actually thicker than that of the Iron Dukes.
That said, in 1941 she was 20 years old, and had the war not intervened she would have been in the middle of a reconstruction along the lines of those given to Warspite, Valiant, Queen Elizabeth, and Renown. Even so, the assumptions in many posts that 'Hood was a battlecruiser and didn't have a chance against Bismarck' show a lack of knowledge about her design, and are made, I suspect, from ignorance and with the benefit of hindsight.
Certainly, at the time, whilst the RN were fully aware of Hood's limitations, there was no suggestion that to put her up against Bismarck, especially with the semi-worked up Prince of Wales in support, was in any way a suicide mission.
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The 1943 famine was brought about by a combination of the arrival of refugees, hoarding by profiteers, inability to import food supplies from Japanese occupied areas, the Bengal Administration keeping the facts secret from London, and the refusal of Franklin Roosevelt to release shipping space. Once the facts became known to the government in London, the distribution of food relief was handed over to the Anglo-Indian army, and grain convoys diverted from Australia to India. The worst charge that could be laid against Churchill is that he ought to have known about the situation. After all, there wasn't much going on in the world in 1943, was there? Are you seriously naive enough to believe that Churchill would have engineered a famine in India at a time when 2.5 million Indians, all volunteers by the way, were serving in the Allied forces? Perhaps you simply believe all the propaganda spoon fed to you?
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Which Scottish troops were left behind? If you mean 51 Highland Division, they surrendered a week after Dunkirk had ended, on the French Atlantic coast at St. Valery. The had been part of IX Corps of the French 10 Army, and were not near Dunkirk. They were certainly not part of any rearguard.
Moreover, half of the division (ArkForce) were successfully evacuated, and the rest might well have been if the commander of IX Corps had not surrendered as a large RN evacuation fleet was preparing to lift the troops out of St. Valery. Try reading 51 Highland Division's website instead of relying on myth.
135,000 Scots soldiers died in WW1, out of 886,000 British casualties on land.
57,000 Scots soldiers died in WW2, out of 384,000 British casualties on land.
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The Royal Navy was 'crushed' was it? The British lost a carrier, 2 light cruisers, 7 destroyers, and 4 submarines. The Kriegsmarine lost 1 heavy cruiser, 2 light cruisers, 10 destroyers, and 4 U-boats. The destroyers, by the way, represent 50% of the total number of destroyers in service with the Kriegsmarine at the start of the Norwegian campaign. The Kriegsmarine on 1 April, 1940, by the way, had 8 heavy & light cruisers, of which one (Leipzig) had already been so badly damaged as to be unfit for anything other than training purposes. Therefore, Germany lost 43% of their operational cruiser force during the course of the Norwegian campaign.
If you add to these the damaged ships, which consequently could not make any contribution to any potential 'Sealion' (Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, and Deutchland) then it is clear that your contention is absurd. The reality is that the Norwegian campaign, from the perspective of Admiral Raeder, was a disaster from which the Kriegsmarine never recovered.
As to the British being saved by the French army, certainly French troops made a valiant contribution to the defence of the Dunkirk perimeter, but the reality is that the 10 divisions of the BEF could do nothing other than withdraw once the French & Belgian armies, some 100 divisions strong, had collapsed.
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@leelajapheth4051 Perhaps what you believed was a 'documentary' was actually simply a switcher or conspiracist video, devoid of accurate, verifiable, facts?
Try this : Both Olympics cost, in 1910 terms, £1.5 million to build. Both were insured for £1 million. Therefore, what you seem to think was an insurance scam, actually resulted in a loss for White Star of one third of Titanic's building cost, and caused a scandal which adversely affected the hitherto second-to-none reputation for safely of White Star Line.
To those who, unlike switchers or conspiracists, are actually able to reason, the 'Insurance Scam' makes precisely no sense at all.
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Caps lock still playing up, I observe. Still, at least it warns people that you are posting nonsense from start to finish.
1). Morgan cancelled any idea of sailing in March, not because of illness, but because of problems obtaining clearance to ship his art collection to the US. Instead, he intended to go to an event at St. Mark's in Venice. His intention was publicised in newspapers in March. Ismay occupied his suite instead. Do you suggest that Ismay was not aware of the wicked (and imaginary) plot?
2). Astor & Guggenheim had never stated their views about the Federal Reserve, whilst Straus was a supporter, as newspaper articles from October 1911 made clear. THe Federal Reserve myth was invented in the late 1990s. You might look up these three financiers for yourself, but I expect you will not.
3). The bunker fire had been extinguished a full day before the collision. It had damaged paintwork, but bulkheads were not affected. You might read the minutes of the British Inquiry, but of course you will not.
4). No, it wasn't Olympic. Olympic had been repaired and was back at sea from late November, 1911, when Titanic was around five months short of completion. She had been damaged once, not three times, and Harland & Wolff repaired her in six week. You could of course check this for yourself, but of course you will not. You might also look up Olympic's sailing between November 1911 & April, 1912, but I doubt you would do that either.
Have you ever thought of believing in a more credible myth, like the Cottingley Fairies?
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@tranceguide9752 Don't be so choleric, old chap. I appreciate it must be embarrassing being caught out falsifying what Bernt Johannsen actually said, but you really shouldn't take it personally, or get so confrontational about it.
As you seem to see yourself as something of a class warrior ('Two public school ponces talking bollocks,') do you think that mocking what Dan Buckley said is really appropriate? He was a 21 year old farm labourer from Co. Cork, who had undergone a frightening event. So his evidence wasn't as polished as someone used to public speaking, such as a businessman or lawyer, might have presented. Should that discredit it? The fact is, that he did not believe that third class passengers were locked away, or had a lesser chance of escaping.
Neither, by the way, did Berk Pickard. Nor, it seems, despite your claims, did Johannsen, who only refers to being prevented from returning to his cabin.
In fact, there doesn't seem to be any actual evidence at all to support your belief. Other, of course, than Mr. Cameron's movie, I suppose.
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@looinrims I am saying that at the time of Dunkirk, no one, French or British, had signed an armistice. That didn't happen until 22 June. The British, moreover, did not believe that the French military had been totally defeated, only that it had suffered a serious, but not irreparable, reversal. Indeed, after Dynamo the British intended to re-land the 100,000+ French troops back in France, together, with a 'Reconstituted BEF' under the command of Brooke. This began landing on 7 June, but was withdrawn from 14 June onwards, after Brooke was informed by Weygand that the French army was no longer able to offer organised resistance.
Only at that point did the British realise the true extent of the French defeat, and begin operation Aerial.
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@MissR-hn8be I am sorry you prefer to ignore facts. Sadly, the infantilisation of society seem to be progressing rapidly.
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
You might try to ask yourself, by the way, why Churchill would have acted in such a manner when, without conscription, 2.5 million Indians had joined the allied armed forces? Did your indoctrinators not mention that?
I appreciate, of course, that you won't accept any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which you have been programmed.
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@cliveengel5744 The British Official Historian estimated that 101,784 German soldiers were captured at the end of the Tunisian campaign, out of a total of 238,243 unwounded prisoners. The American Official Historian estimated 157, 000 Germans from a total of 244,500. Rommel himself estimated 10,000 Germans. Von Arnim estimated 100,000 Germans & 200,000 Italians.
The Luftwaffe also lost over 2400 aircraft in the Mediterranean theatre between November, 1942 & May, 1943, by the way. I haven't included Italian losses as you don't seem to consider them relevant!
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@cliveengel5744 Army Group Africa, in Northern Tunisia, consisted of 334 Infantry Division, 999 Light Division, the Hermann Goering Division, 10 Panzer Division, Manteuffel Group, and the (Italian) Superga Infantry Division.
The Italian 1st Army, in Southern Tunisia, consisted of 15 Panzer Division, 21 Panzer Division, (Italian) Trieste Motorised Division, (Italian)Pistoia Division, (Italian) Giovanni Fascisti Division, (Italian) Centauro Armoured Division, 90 Light Division, & 164 Light Division.
Listed as requested. Odd that you couldn't find them for yourself. More than enough to make up the numbers that the historians suggested.
Odd, also, that when I posted that Rommel said 10,000, you didn't mention it. I should have typed 100,000. My mistake.
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I assume you are aware that the movie 'Patton - Lust for Glory' has only the most tenuous connection with reality, based as it is on Ladislas Farago's notorious biography (hagiography?) of Patton, 'Patton - Ordeal & Triumph?'
The supposed rivalry between Patton & Montgomery only ever existed in Patton's mind, if indeed, it even existed there. Montgomery was, certainly, a self-publicist, but he hardly concerned himself with the antics of a mere army commander who, after his behaviour in Sicily got him dismissed, only even appeared in Normandy in August, 1944.
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Indeed, Britain and France did declare war. Germany, however, simply invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium and, later, the Soviet Union, without the courtesy of a formal declaration of war. Usually, the first the people of the invaded nations knew about it was the arrival of German bombers, tanks, troops, and, later, einsatzgruppen.
When did Hitler twice propose a 'peace treaty?' Where might the details be read? Unless, of course, you mean the 'Appeal to Reason' which basically said 'surrender or we bomb you?''
However the world might be now, and it is not the result of WW2 & the Cold War, by the way, would you really suggest that a world which saw the mass extermination of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, the physically and mentally disabled, and homosexuals, together with the mass deportation of slave labourers from occupied countries, might have been a better one?
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user-wj6dt5bq3w In point of fact, I really don't care whether you take me seriously or not. However, if you think I have not read the book, you are mistaken, as there was a copy in my University library, years ago, translated by one F. A, Voigt. My tutor, Professor Foot, urged great caution on those of us who did read it, as he considered it somewhat unreliable.
Which is off the point. I asked you, and gave you details, of the efforts Germany went to to prepare for an invasion attempt. You haven't explained why so much effort was expended, if hitler never intended to undertake any invasion.
By the way, being close to Walther Hewel is hardly supportive of any claim to impartiality. Oh, & did you read the 'primary source' or simply an old article in the Guardian?
Which ever. I will not discuss this matter with you further.
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This would be the peace-loving Hitler who peacefully invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Belgium without declarations of war on any, I suppose?
Incidentally, as Churchill held no government office at all between 1929 and September, 1939, when he joined the cabinet of a country already at war, what he allegedly wanted or didn't want was utterly irrelevant.
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So, the RAF sent Lancasters to bomb German cities in 1940, did they? That was clever, as the Lancaster only entered service in early 1942.
The RAF was never remotely near running out of aircraft, as aircraft production in Britain exceeded that of Germany from June 1940 onwards.
Operation Sealion would have gone ahead? Presumably, until the barges, towed at little above walking pace, encountered the Royal Navy's massed destroyer, cruiser, and supporting vessels, forces, as the barges reached the Channel?
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'So you tell me what a ship would be doing in 1912 in the middle of the Atlantic with no passengers full crew and an excess amount of life belts?'
Good question. No ship would. However, neither did Californian. She was basically a freighter. She had room to take a small number of passengers, but she earned her corn by taking cargo (in this case, a mixed, general, one, according to the Boston shipping papers when she docked on 19 April) to the United States, then reloading with cotton from New Orleans.
The claim of the lifebelts, or blankets, or sweaters, or whatever, is simply made up. Moreover, had there been a shred of credibility in the allegations, why, when Lord was told about the flares from a large liner, did he do nothing. Wasn't that the entire reason he was there, in your theory?
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By June 6, 1944, the Battle of the Atlantic had been all but won, and the German U Boat fleet was battered, they had some 37 U Boats in the Normandy area at the time of the invasion. The Allies, however, had total air superiority, and the U Boats made no attempt to sally out on the 6th. An attempt was made on the 7th, but it failed. After the loss of several U Boats in the attempt, all U Boats without underwater snorkels were held back, leaving 14 U Boats fit for operation, only 9 of which were in France. These boats, and others that moved in later, destroyed or disabled about 12 ships, while losing 20 U Boats, a rate of attrition they could ill afford.
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On land the Germans would certainly have defeated the British, just as at sea the British would have defeated the Germans. In the air, the British had been outbuilding the Germans since June, 1940, and, unlike the Germans, were building a strategic bomber force, a resource which the Germans never thought of.
Oh, and at Dunkirk, after around 100 French & Belgian divisions had collapsed or capitulated, around 210,000 British & 110 French troops were withdrawn by the Royal & Merchant Navies. Not, as you seem, rather oddly, to think, in rowing boats.
The reality of 1940 was that the two adversaries were unable to defeat each other, even when your gallant Soviets sat on the sidelines, supplying Germany with raw materials and with oil.
A year later, your Soviet heroes were to learn how that cynical deal would end.
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Who were these 'Allied' soldiers. The French had broken their alliance with Britain when they signed the Armistice/Surrender which, incidentally, committed them to returning the bulk of the French Fleet tro Atlantic ports, where it would be placed under German 'supervision?'
Yes, the French ships in Toulon were scuttled. But the war situation in November 1942 was rather different than that of July, 1940, I suggest. Moreover, the British government had no idea how closely a Petain administration might choose to work with their new overlords, and were not willing to contemplate the possibility of the French Fleet acting in support of a German invasion attempt.
Oh, and the British Royal & Merchant Navies actually rescued around 120,000 French troops from Dunkirk, only to see the bulk of them return to France to surrender shortly afterwards.
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@gandigooglegandigoogle7202 The French Armistice/Surrender was signed on 22 June. Mers-el-Kebir was 3 July, when France had ceased to be an ally, and had become a country whose neutrality was, at best, questionable. Didn't you even know these two dates?
The 'real' government in France was that of Petain & Laval. They commanded the remnants of the French army, and almost all the navy. The French forces under de Gaulle were a tiny minority. If they represented France, what happened at Dakar in September, when the Vichy French forces their defeated the Free French?
'Very likely' isn't really a credible claim. Supposing the British had allowed the French Fleet to assemble in Atlantic ports, and found it operating in support of a German invasion attempt two months later? Darlan's word counted for nothing, as he had joined Petain's government, and changed from a military to a politrical role. The certainly is that the French fleet would have obeyed any orders given to it by those the French Admiralty regarded as the legitimate government of France. In July, 1940 that was the Petain administration.
Didn't Gensoul have the opportunity to 'rally,' as you put it? What did he actually do?
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@MrRikouz What 'contempt?' Are you suggesting that most of the French troops evacuated from Dunkirk did NOT return to France?
The RN at Dunkirk assumed that the French Navy was making arrangements to evacuate French troops. Once the real state of affairs became known, the French were lifted alongd with the British. Would you like exact details? I have the official, Staff History.
The failure at Dakar was because de Gaulle had convinced Churchill that he was able to persuade the forces there to reject Vichy and join the Free French cause. Perhaps Churchill wanted to believe this because the gold reserves of the Polish government in exile and of the Banque de France were there.
Once it became obvious that de Gaulle was unable to match his words with deeds, and his 13th Demi-Brigade of Foreign Legion troops would meet serious resistance, the operation no longer made military sense, and Admiral Cunningham called it off, after only around 48 hours. De Gaulle's credibility with the British, and later the Americans, was seriously dented for some time.
You seem a very bitter little person, considering 80 years have passed since the Americans, British, and Canadians rescued France from occupation.
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@ralphbernhard1757 So, after declaring war on Britain, and concurring with Germany in the armistice of 22 June, which did not hand over any French territory in North Africa to Italy, by the way, you seriously suggest that Mussolini would indulge in a two front war, facing in opposite directions, even after his attempted attack on southern France, against a demoralised French army, had been soundly defeated?
Sorry, but I haver been fortunate enough to have a sense of reality, and am not trying to invent reasons for Gensoul's inexplicable actions.
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Morgan did not have a reservation aboard Titanic to cancel. He had a prior engagement at St. Mark's in Venice. It was even announced in newspapers in March, 1912, which may still be read today, although obviously you conspiracists wouldn't want to read the article.
Guggenheim (two 'g's by the way) and Astor had never expressed any opinions about the Fed., whilst Straus (one 's') had spoken in favour, and newspaper articles reporting his speech may, also still be read, although, again, you conspiracists wouldn't want to read them.
The Federal Reserve Act was actually passed on 23 December, 1913, not 'a week after the sinking. How did J. P. Morgan feel about this? Hard to tell, as he died in Rome in March, 1913, aged 75.
The stupidity of conspiracists, dumbly believing a myth created in the mid 1990s, never ceases to astound me.
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@ABBATributeNZ Actually, when Californian docked in Boston on 19 April, the shipping newspapers stated that she was carrying a 'mixed, general' cargo, as Leyland Line ships generally did.
Perhaps you might ask yourself if, when Boston customs processed her manifest, collective eyebrows might have been raised had a ship which had been in the immediate vicinity of a maritime disaster had been found to have been carrying so odd a cargo. Unless, of course, there was a desperate blanket shortage in the Boston area at the time?
Moreover, if a rescue ship really had been planned, Californian was almost totally unsuited to the task.
There was no 'fishing boat' in the area at the time. The claims about Samson were proven false long ago.
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@rudithedog7534 'I can see why you have a grudge.' Why would you think that making a few factual points suggests that I have a grudge? I wonder if you know what a non sequitur even is?
Portugal also traded with Britain, on very favorable terms. U Boats certainly used Portuguese territorial waters, but, inless you believe the kind of nonsense produced by 'Hunting Hitler' style programmes, not Portuguese ports. Lisbon was indeed a hive of spies, but from both sides.
'Whereas Ireland supplied Britain with food supplies, civilian workers, volunteer soldiers military intelligence.' Food supplies, indeed. Had the Republic not done this, the entire economy would have collapsed.
Irishmen joined the allied cause on a individual basis, but this with without the approval of the government of the Republic.
You don't actually have much of an argument.
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Bomber Command began attacking barge concentrations from 5 September. In total, they appear to have destroyed 214, but there were still 1859 available at the end of September. In fact, the German problem was not the number of barges, but the number of towing vessels. The barges were to be towed in pairs across the Channel, and the Germans in late September had only 397 such vessels. Even allowing for the fact that some barges could be towed by some of 159 small coasters being used as transports, the German plan for the first landing involved 844 barges, which required every towing vessel to be used. There were literally no reserves, and losses could not be replaced.
Interestingly, on 10/11 October, the Battleship Revenge, supported by seven destroyers, shelled barge concentrations in Cherbourg. In an 18 minute action, Revenge fired 120 fifteen inch High Explosive shells, and the destroyers 801 4.7 inch shells. On the following day Sealion was officially called off, and the remaining barges began to disperse. This action, Operation Medium, is totally forgotten today.
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The U-Boat offensive never historically came close to success, at least, not after 1917. The Germans in WW2 estimated a need to sink 600,000 tons of shipping per month to starve Britain. This figure was, of course, increased significantly after January, 1942. In fact, they rarely exceeded 300,000 tons per month, and most convoys crossed unmolested.
The Luftwaffe never had the kind of aircraft to carry out a sustained bomber offensive, never having the sort of big strategic bombers the British built in large numbers. Indeed, from as early as June 1940, the British were building more aircraft per month than the Germans. German air supremacy over the Home Counties would simply result in the British, for a time, withdrawing their remaining assets further north, to permit them to re-equip.
The Germans had no influence over Japanese policies. In fact, if Japan had not taken action when she did, she would have run out of oil, and been unable to do much of anything.
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@pierrefraisse8610 Good to see that the old myth is still alive and well. You should visit the British National Archives at Kew, and ask to see WO/106/1613, the file of documents and signals from the time.
The British did, initially, assume that French troops would be evacuated aboard French ships, but this was, admittedly, a wrong assumption, as, by 29 May, French ships had only lifted 1,006 men. Indeed, by the time Dynamo ended, this total had only reached around 22,000.
When the British became aware of the situation, their vice CIGS, John Dill, sent orders to Vice Admiral, Dover, Bertram Ramsay, with a copy to the senior British officer in Dunkirk, William Tennant, stating that 'The policy of HM Government is that both British & French troops be given equal opportunities for being evacuated in British ships and boats.' The signal may be read in the archives, and that, despite subsequent claims, is actually what happened.
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@lordfnord5768 Perhaps you would be good enough to explain your apparent belief that should, for example, Archie Wavell in Delhi need to contact Churchill in London with an urgent message, this 'fast communication' could only go through the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal?
Are you truly unaware that the Mediterranean via Suez was not used by the British (other than for the reinforcement of the Mediterranean Fleet, and even then on very few occasions) until the Italian collapse? Did you not know that the Italian Air Force, the Luftwaffe, and, on occasions, the Italian Navy, were active in the Mediterranean for at least the first half of the war?
By the way, there is no need to sign yourself 'half wit,' as the nature of your posts have already made your soubriquet abundantly clear.
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@crackiechan4432 You don't need to be nice, just right. It seems that you didn't actually watch the Gaumont programme. I did not actually say the British did not use the Canal AT ALL during the early part of the war. My actual comment' which has so upset your friend, was:
'Do you really believe that the British used Suez as a route to Britain?
' Followed by :-
'Put simply, the British did not use the Canal/Mediterranean route for their convoys for most of WW2. They used the safer, if longer, Cape route instead.'
Followed by:-
'Are you truly unaware that the Mediterranean via Suez was not used by the British (other than for the reinforcement of the Mediterranean Fleet, and even then on very few occasions) until the Italian collapse?'
All the programme showed was the Canal being used for warships joining the Mediterranean fleet (as I said), followed by a reference to the port at the south-eastern end of the canal, where supplies for the North African campaign were landed. Please tell me where any reference was made by Gaumont to convoys passing through the Suez Canal on their way to Britain? There won't be any, of course, because the makers of the programme in 1942, and well-informed people today, knew & know, that, at least until the capitulation of Italy, such a thing DID NOT OCCUR.
Anyway, thanks for providing the Gaumont programme as further proof of the accuracy of my earlier statements.
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@crackiechan4432 Oh, and another thing. The cruiser was the Dido class light cruiser HMS Hermione, sent to the Mediterranean as a reinforcement at the same time as two others, Newcastle & Arethusa. They were sent via Durban, the Indian Ocean, & the Suez Canal. As I said, the British used the longer, but safer, Cape route, always for convoys and usually, except in times of crisis, for warships.
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@Josh Wellbeck The Heads of both the army & the RAF had serious misgivings about attempting to liberate the Falklands, as did the Foreign Office and the contemptible Secretary of State for Defence, the vile Sir John Nott.
When Sir Henry Leach, the First Sea Lord, was asked if retaking the islands was possible, he replied "Yes we can recover the islands." He then added "and we must!" Thatcher replied "Why?" Leach responded "Because if we do not, or if we pussyfoot in our actions and do not achieve complete success, in another few months we shall be living in a different country whose word counts for little."
Leach's role in the campaign has been much understated, as others, and in particular Nott, sought to grab credit for the outcome, but as the last of a line going back past Cunningham and beyond Nelson & St. Vincent, he deserves to be remembered.
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Bullshit. Thev number of deaths seems to rise exponentially with the passage of time. However, there are a few actual facts which clearly escaped you, or perhaps your indoctrinators:
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which you have probably been programmed.
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Morgan did not decide not to board minutes before sailing. He had a prior engagement at St. Mark's in Venice, which had already been announced in the New York Times in March.
Astor, Guggenheim & Straus were not 'invited' aboard. They each, independently, booked. The first two had never expressed their view abou the Fed., by the way, whilst the third was a supporter, as two newspaper articles from October, 1911, which may be read, prove.
There is no evidence of any 'bomb.' Nor has the technology to lift a shattered wreck from 12,500 feet down ever existed.
Have you watched a conspiracist video and simply swallowed it whole and unquestioningly? Unwise, as it makes you look such a fool.
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@83c91 Perhaps you are unaware that according to the most recent UN statistics, the population density per square kilometre in England is on a par with that of India.
The reality is that uncontrolled immigration is not sustainable, for simple practical, reasons. Services, such as the NHS, education, and housing, among others, are on the verge of collapse.
This, however, is not the point, which is that an out-of-touch multi-millionaire former soccer player chose to make comments comparing the language used by Braverman with that of nazi Germany. No one has yet been able to substantiate this allegation.
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@daveofyorkshire301 Actually, my information comes from, among others, 'Whitehall Histories: Naval Staff Histories. The Evacuation from Dunkirk..'
The Naval Staff Histories were in the Public Record Office for some time prior to being published from 2000 onwards. They contain around 220 pages of detailed accounts, statistics, and analyses of the evacuation on a day by day basis, and list every vessel which took part, together with the number of men they lifted, and the fates of vessels which were lost.
Edward & Mary, by the way, was not part of the flotilla, at least according to the Naval Staff History and to The Association of Dunkirk Little Ships. She, along with several other Hastings-based fishing boats, and the Hastings lifeboat 'Cyril & Lilian Bishop' went to Dover, but only the lifeboat was actually used. 'Cyril & Lilian Bishop' was under the command of Acting Petty Officer W.H. Adkin during the evacuation.
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@comealongcomealong4480 People need to be aware, by the way, that taking the UK as a whole gives a false figure, as most immigrants are settled in England. Based on England alone, the population density per square kilometre is 421, as of 2021.
In Scotland, it is 70.
in Wales, it is 150.
In India, it is 428.
In Pakistan, it is 291.
In Bengladesh, it is 1,157.
In Germany, it is 240.
In France, it is 119.
In the USA, it is 36.
Please don't tell our political betters, as they don't think that a problem even exists.
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No, Operation Sealion was wargamed in 1974 at Sandhurst, the senior commanders being experienced WW2 commanders such as, on the German side, Galland & Ruge.
In order to allow some level of fighting on land, the Germans were (falsely) given a landing window of opportunity when the actual dispositions of the Royal Navy were artificially adjusted, moving them further away than had been the reality.
The result? The German first wave landed on 22 September, at dawn. Two days later, the RN anti-invasion forces arrived (17 cruisers and 57 destroyers, with smaller support vessels, which was actually reasonably accurate), annihilating German transports in the Channel. The last pockets of German resistance, out of ammunition and supplies, surrendered on 28 September.
Apart from the fact that the RN anti-invasions forces were, in the main, based at the Nore, Portsmouth, & Plymouth, rather than further away as in the game, no-one seriously quibbled about the result.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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So, you believe that the Germans expended over 1,800 aircraft, and around 2,500 aircrew, on nothing more than a ruse?
Just as they requisitioned and converted over 2,000 barges, over 400 tugs, 1,100 motor boats, and 200 freighters, just for the sake of something to do?
Really?
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Simply not true. The full text of the British Ultimatum was as follows:
"It is impossible for us, your comrades up to now, to allow your fine ships to fall into the power of the German enemy. We are determined to fight on until the end, and if we win, as we think we shall, we shall never forget that France was our Ally, that our interests are the same as hers, and that our common enemy is Germany.
Should we conquer we solemnly declare that we shall restore the greatness and territory of France. For this purpose we must make sure that the best ships of the French Navy are not used against us by the common foe. In these circumstances, His Majesty’s Government have instructed me to demand that the French Fleet now at Mers el Kebir and Oran shall act in accordance with one of the following alternatives;
(a) Sail with us and continue the fight until victory against the Germans.
(b) Sail with reduced crews under our control to a British port. The reduced crews would be repatriated at the earliest moment.
If either of these courses is adopted by you we will restore your ships to France at the conclusion of the war or pay full compensation if they are damaged meanwhile.
(c) Alternatively if you feel bound to stipulate that your ships should not be used against the Germans unless they break the Armistice, then sail them with us with reduced crews to some French port in the West Indies — Martinique for instance — where they can be demilitarised to our satisfaction, or perhaps be entrusted to the United States and remain safe until the end of the war, the crews being repatriated.
If you refuse these fair offers, I must with profound regret, require you to sink your ships within 6 hours.
Finally, failing the above, I have the orders from His Majesty’s Government to use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships from falling into German hands."
Unfortunately for his crews and his reputation, Admiral Gensoul chose not to pass the full text on the his government.
m. Pierre. Either you simply have not read the ultimatum in full before, or you are a liar. I would prefer to believe the former.
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@MrJackassz Where did I say 'All Europeans?' In any case, are you suggesting that spreading learning, science, medicine, technology, and law to Africa, the New World, and Australasia was bad? Would the natives really have been better if they had remained at a mesolithic or neolithic level, and, by and large, died in their late thirties.
Oh dear.The romantic and false image of the noble savage!
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@reginaldmcnab3265 So, you haven't an answer then? Actually, the empire came about as a direct result of Sea Power. Places like North America, New Zealand, & Australia were, to the 17th century mind, unoccupied, and ideal areas for settlers to be placed or in terms of Australia, convicts to be dumped. Africa was similar, with the British successfully competing with Belgium, France, The Netherlands and, to a lesser extent, Germany.
India was the end product of the expansion of trade. The East India Company was skilled in playing off one Indian state against another, and the rulers of those states came to realise that their interests were best served by co-operating with the Company. Even when the British government finally took direct control of the governance of India after the mutiny, the actual administration of the country remained almost entirely in the hands of Indians. In 1800, the population of India was 169 million. 100 years later, it was around 240 million. After the mutiny, there were only ever a tiny number of British officials and troops,about 20,000 in all, in India.
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@olliefoxx7165 Didn't the Americans command their own troops in France, Germany, Italy, and Tunisia? I recall my father, who landed with the 5th Army at Salerno, telling me that most British officers who had met Mark Clark somewhat disliked him, whereas most American officers who had had the same privilege detested him.
The 'American' 5th Army at Salerno, by the way, consisted of one American and one British corps, and one US Airborne Division, in case you didn't know.
Blind Nationalism should not be allowed to obscure facts, don't you think?
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@sshep86 The Luftwaffe had no torpedo aircraft (apart from a small number of ponderous seaplanes which operated from Norway exclusively against merchantmen) in 1940.
The RN would not have sent heavy ships into the Channel. The Home Fleet (apart from an old battlecruiser, a carrier, two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, one AA cruiser and seven destroyers at Scapa) was at Rosyth in September, 1940. At the time, the Rosyth force was two battleships (Nelson & Rodney), Hood, three AA Cruisers, and seventeen destroyers. These were at Rosyth in order to be able to intercept any German heavy ships which tried to break out into the Atlantic, but also because from Rosyth they were equally well placed to act against any heavy ships which the Germans might have sent against the anti-invasion forces further south. In fact, the nearest thing to a heavy ship the Germans had operational at the time was a single heavy cruiser, Hipper, which had defective engines, by the way.
RN anti-invasion forces consisted of some seventy destroyers and light cruisers, most of which were within five hours steaming of Dover, backed up by over five hundred smaller vessels (fleet & auxiliary minesweepers, sloops, corvettes, armed trawlers & gunboats, etc.) precisely the types of ship which the Luftwaffe had conspicuously failed to sink at Dunkirk. Furthermore, the RN could operate unhindered throughout the night, when the Luftwaffe was grounded anyway.
Despite what some might claim, the Admiralty knew exactly what was required to defeat an invasion attempt, and had made the resources available to the commanders on the spot. As Admiral Drax, C-in-C at the Nore, where the bulk of the anti-invasion forces were based, said at the time, 'To defeat an invasion, we need gunfire, and plenty of it.' In September, 1940, the RN had precisely that.
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@sshep86 I agree about the importance of air superiority by, say 1942 or 1943, but I have been writing in terms of the situation surrounding any Sealion invasion attempt in 1940. At that time, neither the British nor the Germans were particularly good at hitting ships at sea. Granted, both improved, but at the time of Sealion this improvement had not taken place, and the Luftwaffe's performance at Dunkirk had been, frankly, abysmal.
Similarly, I know the reasons why the Luftwaffe was lacking in torpedo aircraft, but the fact remains that in 1940 this resource was simply not available to them
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@sshep86 Actually, you said 240 ships, not 140, and you said 20 badly damaged, when in fact the damage was in most cases minor, and caused by grounding or collision. Only in three cases was the damage severe enough to keep the destroyer concerned out of service beyond the end of June. The actual number of front line allied warships lost was indeed light, consisting of 9 destroyers and torpedo boats, 1 gunboat, and 5 minesweepers. In terms of the numbers of trawlers and drifters in RN service at the time, the loss of 29, from a pool of over 1200, could hardly have been considered crippling, and the various other losses, such as schuits, tugs, landing craft, barges and yachts were. to be callous but pragmatic about it, irrelevant to the defence of the UK, and acceptable in view of what was achieved, which was the evacuation of over 323000 men when the original aim had been to bring back to Britain 40000. To compare the nature of the losses, how many American or Japanese tugs, barges, or landing craft were lost at Leyte? If you think it appropriate to equate, for example, a cruiser or carrier with a schuit or yacht, then so be it. By the way, as I keep pointing out, you really cannot compare the effectiveness of air power in October 1944 with that of the Luftwaffe in May/June (or September) 1940.
The damage to the RN destroyers was indeed in most cases minor. I have read the reports from the time, but in any case, as most were back in service within ten days, and no invasion attempt could conceivably be made before late August or September at the earliest ( by which time, incidentally, the RN had in Home Waters 64 destroyers allocated to anti-invasion duties, 29 on Atlantic escort duty or in escort ports, and 23 with the Home Fleet, excluding a further 17 refitting or repairing) then the argument has no merit.
Finally, the Bismarck was not lost to a few obsolete biplanes. Bismarck was destroyed mainly by surface gunfire from the battleship Rodney, supported by the battleship King George V and a number of cruisers. The Swordfish (using, by the way, a weapon not available to the Luftwaffe in 1940) slowed her down in order to bring her within the range of the battlefleet which dealt with. The role of the Fleet Air Arm was to slow enemy warships down in order to bring about a surface action, and they had been training in such tactics for some ten years.
I do not underestimate the power of aircraft against warships in WW2. I simply point out that the evidence demonstrates that aircraft were not effective against warships IN 1940!!!
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@sshep86 Actually, the Luftwaffe could have claimed, and held, air superiority over the Channel at any time. The fact is that they (or rather Goering) came to view the air fighting over the Home Counties as a private duel between two air forces, lost sight of the supposed wider strategic objective, and chose to fight at a serious tactical disadvantage. Had the Sealion barges sailed, the Luftwaffe could have kept the RAF (or, rather, Bomber Command) away from them. Indeed, this wouldn't have been a problem in any case, as Admiral Drax had agreed with the Air Ministry that, in the event of an invasion attempt, Bomber Command would not seek to attack the barges at sea, but would continue to attack the embarkation ports. The RAF at the time accepted that they were, like the Luftwaffe, lacking in the necessary skills and training to hit ships at sea. By keeping clear, Drax's destroyers, led by Halsey's composite 16/18 DF of modified V & Ws, could strike against the barge trains without having to worry about the RAF, whose ship recognition skills at the time was rather lacking!
I won't explain the problems about suddenly producing a reliable torpedo bomber, except to say that in 1940 the Germans had virtually no aerial torpedo stocks, had never tried to modify any of their more modern aircraft to carry torpedoes, and, indeed, Goering cancelled torpedo manufacture in total in November 1940. The first attack by German torpedo aircraft (apart from isolated attacks on unarmed and unprotected freighters in 1940, nowhere near the Channel) was against PQ15 in May, 1942, by He111s. Forget the Fw190, by the way, as it only became operational in August, 1941.
As to the crippling of the Bismarck, she was only in a location at which Force H's carrier could attack her in the first place because Prince of Wales had damaged her during the Hood action. As a result of this, she was listing by some 9 degrees, was down by the bows, and had lost much of her fuel. Consequently, Lutjens abandoned his commerce raiding mission, and made for France, bringing her within range of Ark Royal's Swordfish.
Sinking 5 destroyers by air attack over nine days most certainly is ineffective, given that Goering had assured Hitler that the annihilation of the troops in the Dunkirk pocket, and the ships sent to rescue them, was a 'special job for the Luftwaffe' (Goering to Hitler, 23 May, 1940.) In point of fact, the bulk of the Luftwaffe, contrary to your assertion, was concentrated against Dunkirk. Frankly, when Churchill ordered Ramsay to organize the evacuation of 40000 men, if a mysterious entity had said to him ' if you will accept the loss of 3% of your total destroyer force, you can have 225,000 British and 112,000 Allied troops back,' he would have agreed with alacrity. It is what is known as 'The Price of Admiralty.' The RN turned a catastrophe into a mere defeat, and accepted the losses that this would involve. The fact is, however, that sinking 4 out of 40 RN destroyers at Dunkirk, when everything was in their favour, was a desperately poor performance by the Luftwaffe.
You didn't get the numbers wrong, of course. You simply misinterpreted them. Small pleasure craft, barges, landing craft, yachts, and tugs made up the vast majority of the losses, and from the point of view of the Admiralty, and the future prosecution of the war, they were irrelevant. It sounds callous, indeed it is, but to consider the importance of what happened at Dunkirk it is important to think like the men who made the decisions in May/June 1940.
There is, top my knowledge, no single book giving this kind of detail about the damage to destroyers at Dunkirk. It took me months to assemble the information, firstly by finding the names of the destroyers involved, then by seeking out detailed information on every one of them. This , by the way, was as part of my degree, at a time before the internet. Anyone seeking to do the same now would do well to obtain the Whitehall Naval Staff History covering the Operation, and use this as the starting point.
Finally, you may wish to consider why, if 15 September, 1940 was the decisive day, upon which whether Britain would or would not be invaded would be determined, at least according to Battle of Britain enthusiasts, Churchill was willing to send three armoured regiments, together with their full complement of anti-tank, anti-aircraft, and field artillery support units, to North Africa on 22 AUGUST, 1940? The tanks included half of the total number of the most effective British tank at the time, the Matilda II. Look up Operation Apology for further information.
It rather suggests that Winston, like Oskar Dinort, Wolfram von Richtofen, and Erich Raeder, among numerous others, did not believe that an invasion in the face of British naval supremacy was simply not possible, regardless of the emotive speeches he might have made about 'The Few' in order to maintain morale at home and elicit sympathy in the United States.
I appreciate that you will feel unable to accept much of the above, so perhaps further correspondence would serve little purpose.
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@bpdbhp1632 Have you read the statements of the several Master Mariners and Liner Captains at the British Inquiry? All of who confirmed that they would have behaved in the same manner that Smith did?
Usually, lookouts were not provided with binoculars, as their role was to scan the whole of the horizon, not parts of it. Should anything be sighted, the lookout would immediately notify the bridge, where officers with binoculars would identify the object, and determine a course of action.
To explain this in more details, the dollowing is an extensive quote from the 'Encyclopedia Titanica' :-
Much was also made of a box in the crow’s nest – a small box in the port after corner (B11325) that could be used to hold binoculars. One of the enduring misconceptions in Titanic history is that this proves that binoculars were intended for the crow’s nest. In fact, they were not. The question was put to Charles Bartlett, Marine Superintendent of the White Star Line, at the British Inquiry:
21715. (Mr. Scanlan.) Why have you a bag or a box in the crow’s nest to hold binoculars if you do not think they are required?
That was not always for binoculars; that was for anything the men used in the look-out.
21716. It was not always for binoculars, but it was for anything a man might use on the look-out, you say?
Yes.
21717. What do you mean by that?
His muffler, his clothes, and his oilskin coat and that sort of thing. There is generally a canvas bag put up there.
In order to understand why binoculars were not provided as standard equipment, we need to delve into some of the post-sinking testimony as to how the utility of binoculars by lookouts was regarded in 1912. When
we do so, we find that there appears to be a great difference of opinion.
Not a single captain voiced an opinion in favor of them, and some were quite outspoken against them:
Do you think it is desirable to have them?
No, I do not. Captain Richard Jones, Master, S.S. Canada (B23712)
We have never had them.
Captain Frederick Passow, Master, S.S. St. Paul (B21877)
I would never think of giving a man in the lookout a pair of glasses.
Captain Stanley Lord, Master, S.S. Californian (U. S. Day 8)
I have never believed in them. –
Captain Benjamin Steele, Marine Superintendent at Southampton
for the White Star Line (B21975)
Even the famed Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, presumably called to testify because of his extensive knowledge of ice and icebergs, said that he “did not believe in any look-out man having any glasses at all.” (B25058)
Why should this be? Surely a set of binoculars would be a useful asset if one’s job requires spotting things at a distance, as binoculars magnify things and bring them closer to view. The testimony of Captain Bertram Hayes, Master of the White Star Line’s Adriatic, points us to the answer:
21846. They are a source of danger, Sir. They spoil the look-out.
21847. How is that?
The look-out man when he sees a light if he has glasses is more liable to look at it and see what kind of a ship it is. That is the officer’s business. The look-out man’s business is to look out for other lights.
Having a set of binoculars in hand, then, might inadvertently take a lookout’s attention away from the “big picture” – scanning a large area ahead and to either side – or worse, causing him to delay a report while he examined the object more closely.
Second Officer Lightoller indicated much the same sentiment when he was asked if binoculars would not have helped the lookouts identify what they saw as an iceberg sooner: “He might be able to identify it, but we do not wish him to identify it. All we want him to do is to strike the bells.” (B14293)
He was referring to the bell in Titanic’s crow’s nest, which the lookouts were required to strike upon sighting an object: one gong of the bell called the Bridge Officer’s attention to something off the port bow, two gongs meant something off the starboard bow, and three gongs indicated something ahead. It must be emphasized that the Senior Officer on the Bridge would be keeping his own watch, not relying entirely on the lookout. If the lookout did see something that the officer had not seen already with his own eyes, he would then observe it – using his own set of binoculars if necessary – and decide on what action to take.
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@cliveengel5744 'The Soviet Invasion was priority you know that so why pretend - what could Germany gain from an UK Invasion, nothing.'
'But you know this and keep on arguing the point!'
The problem is that many of us base our judgements upon actual historical evidence rather than upon political prejudice. The evidence that Sealion was a serious plan is clear and unambiguous, from both German archives and what, in the latter half of 1940, the Germans actually did.
If they took the time to read “My Beliefs” then they would have understood it was about the “Living Space in the East”
" If they took the time to read “My Beliefs” then they would have understood it was about the “Living Space in the East” Presumably, the latter phrase is your euphemism for 'mass extermination of whole populations?'
'They spent most of the Great Patriotic War defending their Trade Routes in the Med and North Africa than fighting the German Wehrmacht in Europe, they only became active once the Americans arrived.'
Which 'Trade Routes in the Med. & North Africa' might these have been? The British were fighting in North Africa because that was the only place they could bring axis forces to battle on land, and because they had been attacked by Italy in June, 1940.
'The Soviets paid the price and carried the victory towards Berlin!' True, they did indeed pay the price for agreeing a cynical pact with Germany in 1939, and then supplying much of the raw materials upon which Germany depended, until Genial Uncle Joe was surprised by events in June, 1941. Your use of 'liberated' by the way, is open to question.
'Enough said.' Congratulations. At last you have got something correct.
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@soopypicle6314 No, accounts from the son of a British signalman, given to an author, Iain Ballantyne, in 2010. Seventy years after the events.
The senior surviving German officer, Von Mullenheim-Rechberg, doesn't seem to have known about the scuttling. Clearly you have convinced yourself that you know better?
Two leading researchers, both American and both people who have visited the site, Robert Ballard (who discovered the wreck) and David Mearns, both attributed the sinking to 'the British.' Once again, you seem to think that you know better?
'it didn't put all the pieces of hood back together again did it?' No, it didn't. But it did ensure that British supply convoys remained unattacked by Lytjens' squadron, and it also ensured that there were no sorties into the Atlantic by German surface ships for the rest of the war.
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@soopypicle6314 'So the senior officer of whichever department he was in didn't know about it...ehh so what he was probably some admin...' Hardly, he was the Second Gunnery Officer, in command of the aft 15 inch guns control position, and he was in direct contact with the command staff until communications were lost. If you didn't know that, it seems that you didn't know much.
'and helped the English singlehandedly save Europe and the world..' Please direct me to where I wrote, or suggested, that?
'I just think that the entirety of the fleet that just destroyed the most powerful battleship on the planet, would turn tail at the prospect of a U -boat.' If you had the slightest understanding of WW2 naval warfare you would understand the vulnerability of heavy surface ships to submarines. Moreover, no sensible commander exposes his force to unnecessary danger.
For that reason, HMS Dorsetshire & HMS Maori were obliged to abandon rescue operations upon receipt of a U-Boat sighting report, especially since Bismarck had been transmitting on the U-Boat wave. which were believed to be homing signals.
'Thank you for your information.' My pleasure. A pity it has probably been wasted on someone like you.
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@jonathanwilliams1065 But the new French Government was to be headed by two enthusiastic collaborationalists, Petain & Laval. I doubt that Darlan, with his concern about the honneur of the French navy, would have agreed to the surrender of the French fleet to Germany or Italy, but he was not irreplacable.
Moreover, the British concern was not that it be surrendered to the Germans, as they had no immediate means of manning it, but that French ships, with French crews, would appear in the Channel under orders from the Petain/Laval government to operate in support of a German invasion attempt on Britain. Put simply, it was not a risk the British government were willing to take. Interestingly, when FDR heard of Mers, he remarked that, had Britain been in the same position as France, he hoped that he would have taken similar action against the Royal Navy.
The scuttling of French ships at Toulon in late November 1942 is hardly relevant. By then, the war situation had changed beyond recognition, and the eventual defeat of Germany by the US, Britain, and the Soviet Union was becoming apparent. That certainly was not the case in July, 1940.
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@bobsakamanos4469 As I wrote earlier, please feel free to attempt to show where any of the facts I have posted are incorrect. Instead of simply posting tedious insults.
'The battle of Britain airwar has already been explained - i.e. a delaying action and seige.
The fake invasion purpose was twofold: - staged for Stalin's benefit, having no real chance of success with towed river barges to bring many divisions of artillery, armour, vehicles, etc across. They also hoped that Britain would sue for peace of course given the previous government's lack of stomach.'
It seems that you haven't heard of Guilio Douhet & his theories about air power? In a nutshell, that bombing alone would force the target nation to come to terms. Goering was a fan of the idea, as was the British Air Ministry and the American Le May. Only after it was tried was it found to be erroneous.
Feel free to explain how air combat over the Home Counties was a siege in any shape or form. The intention was to secure control over the Channel & the South East of England before an invasion might be attempted. I did not, by the way, suggest that an invasion attempt would succeed, given the overwhelming naval supremacy the Royal Navy held in Home Waters, but that does not support the argument that it was simply a ruse.
Oh, and whatever 'lack of stomach' previous governments might have shown (I assume by that you refer to their unwillingness to go to war, which was a popular cause in France & Britain) do you really suggest that old adolf really still thought that after Mers el Kebir, which was a clear demonstration of the intent of the Churchill administration, and even led to adolf's 'Last Appeal to Reason' also known as 'surrender or we bomb you.'
'Adolf also expected his US friends to stay neutral.' Really? Then, again, feel free to explain how declaring war on the US after Pearl Harbor, and initiating the second 'Happy Time' was intended to reinforce that expectation.
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@heresjohnny7579 Certainly, the Olympics were not designed with an iceberg collision in mind, just as Leonard Peskett didn't design Lusitania ro survive a torpedo hit.
However, neither the rivets nor the steel hull of Titanic was in any way inferior to that of any other large liner in service at the time. Olympic, of course, was a successful liner for 23 years.
Recent tests on Titanic type steel and rivets manufactured with the same methods, have confirmed that Titanic's construction was not flawed.
They also confirmed than a ship designed to survive with four compartments compromised will not survive should five, or possibly six, meet that date.
But, of course, Alexander Carlisle & Thomas Andrews could have told them that at the time.
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Yes. She was slowly returned to Plymouth, arriving there in early February, 1945. She then underwent an extensive refit, involving the fitment of more advanced radar, among other features, which took until August, 1946. After that, she became a harbour training ship, renamed HMS IMPERIEUSE. She was placed on the disposal list in 1948, and arrived at Cairnryan for scrapping in August, 1948.
Why she was so refitted, at considerable expense, at that period of the war, is baffling, to be polite about it!
Warspite was very badly mined off Normandy in June, 1944. One turret and two shafts were put out of action and she was sent to Rosyth to be patched up. When she arrived, she was drawing 42 feet aft. As she limped up the Firth of Forth, the warships of the Home Fleet, led by the battleships Anson & Howe, all manned ship to cheer her as she passed.
She was repaired sufficiently to operate as a bombardment ship, although down to 15 knots and three turrets. On 25 August, she shelled Brest in support of the US VIII corps, followed by Le Havre in support of the British 49th & 51st Divisions.
Finally, on 1 November, 1944, she shelled Walcheren.
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Actually, IX Corps of the French 10th Army, to which 51st Highland Division was attached, was forming a defensive line along the Somme, and was attacked by the Germans after Dynamo had ended, beginning on 5 June.
IX Corps withdrew across France towards Le Havre, and one of 51st's three brigades, 154, was detached to form part of 'Arkforce' intended to keep communications with Le Havre open. Unfortunately, German forces reached the Atlantic coast near St. Valery-en-Caux first, severing these communications. Arkforce was withdrawn through Le Havre, but a large evacuation of the other two brigades, planned by Admiral James for the night of 11-12 June, was prevented by fog, and a second attempt on 12-13 June was abandoned when the commander of IX Corps, General Ihler, surrendered on the morning of 12th, obliging Major-General Fortune to do the same.
Some British and French troops (2,137 British & 1,184 French) were lifted from a nearby small port, Veules, but around 6,000 men of 51st HD were captured.
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@ClannCholmain Perhaps you weren't aware, but after Italy declared war in June 1940, the Mediterranean was effectively closed to Allied merchant shipping, and convoys went round the Cape.
Not that this matters, however, as, apart from a tiny number, less than 8,000, there were no Australian, New Zealand, South African, or Indian troops in Britain in WW2. The Australians were in North Africa, Malaya, and then the Far East, the New Zealanders and South Africans in North Africa, & Italy, and the Indians in North Africa, Italy, and Burma/Malaya.
The Canadians, of course, played a major role in the European campaign, and were the only substantial Commonwealth force in Britain in 1940.
Ever thought of reading a book or two?
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@ClannCholmain Perhaps you haven't bothered to read the title of the Thread? It relates to the Battle of Britain. Or rather, German attempt to gain control of the air over the Channel & South Eastern England in order to establish conditions which might make a seaborne invasion possible. They were wrong of course, but not because of the size of the British Empire, but because of the overwhelming strength of ther Royal Navy in home waters. By the way, where did you get the number 164 for destroyers from? The correct number is 193.
Indeed, the Royal Navy was the largest in the world in 1939-40. I didn't actually mention the Italian navy, as that wasn't what concerned the British in 1940. They simply concluded, sensibly, that to send troopships or merchantmen through a Mediterranean which at the time was dominated by the Italian Air Force was not wise. Hence, troop and supply convoys from Britain went round the Cape, rather than through the Med., and troop or supply convoys from India and the Far East docked at the southern end of this Canal.
Here is an easy question for you. Please tell me, from your evident encyclopaedic knowledge, the convoy number of any Brirtish convoy which passed through the Suez Canal during WW2? Should be a simple task for someone of your intellect.
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@ClannCholmain So, it appears you now admit that I didn't refer to the Italian Navy after all. I will take your apology as read. In point of fact, I wasn't thinking of the Italian Navy, as Cunningham's fleet in 1940 was quite capable of escorting convoys through the Med. in the face of it. My concern, which was also that of the British at the time, was the Regia Aeronautica, at a time when the British had few aircraft resources in the theatre. That was why convoys went round the Cape.
I observe that you haven't supplied the convoy details. Of course you can't, as there weren't any, but you have chosen instead to ramble on about brexit to cover your obvious ignorance. You do not have any idea what my views might or might not be on that particular subject, and nor is it relevant to the question at issue.
I am not seeking to do myself any favours. I have simply presented you with a series of indisputed facts, which you have neither the knowledge nor the intelligence to challenge.
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Self-inflicted blast damage is entirely dependent upon the elevation of the guns and how close the 'A' arcs were to being closed. Warspite at Narvik fired at very close range, whereas at Calabria the range was very long. Seriously, if Warspite had suffered a heavy calibre hit, don't you think it would have involved rather more than shelves falling over and a chart being ripped?
The use of the definite, rather than indefinite, in a letter to Pound? Is that really all you have? By the way, HMS Neptune & HMS Gloucester were both damaged in the cruiser action prior to Calabria.
Furthermore, at Calabria, by 1700 hours the enemy was no longer in sight and WARSPITE was within 25 miles of the Calabrian coast. Does that, seriously, sound like the kind of risk Cunningham would have taken with his only modernised battleship had she already been damaged?
The reference to the SKL diary is meaningless, as German liaison officers were simply repeating what the Italians told them. German reports of the same period recorded the sinking of HMS Ark Royal on a regular basis, by the way.
'Does anyone know of that German report from Cairo? Were there German agents there?' Shouldn't you, if you seek to use that as an argument, be answering the question yourself?
Warspite's Ship's Cover, by the way, makes no reference to any damage to her at Calabria. She was regularly at sea immediately afterwards, until undergoing a brief refit in Alexandria in early August.
Your comments, frankly, make clutching at straws comparatively convincing.
Who are these 'researchers' by the way? Perhaps they collaborated with Argentinian 'researchers' who 'proved' that HMS Invincible was sunk during the Falklands?
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Firstly, claiming that the contribution of Indian troops is unacknowledged is untrue. Read any account on the campaigns in North Africa, Italy, & Burma.
Secondly, why do you accuse Churchill of 'creating' the Bengal famine? If you seek to blame anyone, try the Japanese, for conquering Malaya and thus preventing food imports from there, the Administration of Bengal for downplaying the extent of the famine, farmers & speculators within Bengal for withholding supplies in order to boost the price, and Franklin Roosevelt for refusing to agree to Churchill's request to transfer shipping space.
Churchill, when the extent of the famine became known, handed over control of food distribution to the army, and arranged for the diversion of supplies from Australia. Still, I suppose it is easier to blame Churchill rather than examine the true facts.
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@Ab-ii4oc The fact is that Bengal did import supplies from Malaya, whether you choose to accept it or not. Indians, by the way, were not involved in Victory Day parades in Britain because there were no Indian troops in Britain. Surely you knew that? Why don't you simply look at the troops who took part in VJ parades in India instead?
Yes, Churchill made a joke in poor taste about Gandhi. Churchill disliked Gandhi, and made no secret of it, just as Gandhi regarded Africans as inferior humans, and made no secret of that. But, despite Churchill's evident shortcomings as a music hall comedian, he did, when made aware of the true extent of the situation, give control of food distribution to Wavell & Auchinleck, and he did divert Australian food convoys to India.
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@Ab-ii4oc Sir Claude Auchinleck was Commander-in-Chief India from 1943 until August, 1947. Mountbatten did not take the salute, he was Supreme Commander of SEAC until it was disbanded in April, 1946. He then returned to the UK, until being appointed Viceroy in February, 1947. The pathe footage clearly shows Wavell taking the salute.
What question am I avoiding? There were no Indian troops at the 75th Anniversary Commemoration for the same reason that there were no Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African or, come to that United States, or Russian, troops. The event was a national one. Each nation commemorated, or did not commemorate it, in their own way. The event wasn't a 'celebration' by the way, but a low key, solemn event.
Fascinating that you accuse me of half-baked knowledge, when your own understanding of the events leading to Indian Independence & Partition is so sadly lacking.
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@Ab-ii4oc What do you mean ' the pathe video which you are referring of june 1946 was organized in london , not in India....' The Parade took place in Delhi, though the film was undoubtedly edited in London. Why don't you just look up 'Victory Parade, Delhi, 1946' and view the footage. Only just over a minute long. The parade is led by the C-in-C India, and the Viceroy is taking the salute. Clear as daylight, as is the fact that virtually all the troops shown are Indian.
You do realize, I suppose, that there were five days of Victory Parades in Delhi? The main one was the one I have described and the one in the Pathe clip. Even the one you have shown, in which Mountbatten indeed took the salute, doesn't suggest that he was Viceroy, largely because he wasn't. Didn't you say that the Parade, when I first referred to it, was to welcome the new Viceroy? Wrong? It was actually the C-in-C and the Viceroy honouring the efforts of the Indian army, despite you squirmingly attempting to deny simple fact.
As to the 75th Anniversary. I said :- 'There were no Indian troops at the 75th Anniversary Commemoration for the same reason that there were no Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African or, come to that United States, or Russian, troops. The event was a national one.' Of course flags of Commonwealth nations were flown, including India & Pakistan, I believe. As also,, I expect, were those of the United States & the Russian Federation. BUT THERE WERE NO TROOPS OTHER THAN BRITISH ONES.
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@Edi_J The circumstances of Jutland were unique, in that the commanding admiral, David Beatty, regarded rate of fire as paramount, and unofficially encouraged his captains to stow cordite in unprotected areas. This policy was not followed by the battleships of the Grand Fleet, and was discontinued entirely after Jutland.
Hood had a 12 inch belt, compared to the 6 inch of the Invincibles, or the 9 inch of the Lions and Tiger, by the way. Therefore, your comment that 'Sending Hood against Bismarck, knowing what happened during Jutland battle, was a war crime' is simply silly.
The fact is, that the Royal Navy in May 1941 had only five capital ships with the speed and firepower necessary to challenge Bismarck. These were King George V, Prince of Wales, Hood, Repulse, and Renown.
Renown was with Force H, which left Tovey with two exit points into the wider Atlantic, and four ships with which to block them. Thus, he sent his second and third most capable ships (Hood & PoW) to the Denmark Strait, whilst placing his best and weakest (KGV & Repulse) in the Iceland-Faroes Gap'
The assumption was that either pairing would be able to prevent such a sortie into the wider Atlantic, where Lutjens' squadron would be harder to chase down.
It worked, by the way. The damage Bismarck received in the Denmark Strait was enough to cause Lutjens to abort his mission.
Had you been in Tovey's, or Pound's, situation in May, 1941, what would you have done differently to protect the convoy network?
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@manilajohn0182 Equally, people seem determined to impose classifications onto things which in reality do not fit easily into any obvious slot.
Hood was redesigned after Jutland and considerable extra armour added. As a result, she was far more of a fast battleship than a traditional lightly armoured battlecruiser. Earlier RN battlecruisers had armoured belts of 6 inches (the Invincibles, and the Renowns) or 9 inches (Lions & Tiger), whereas Hood's was 12 inches, the same as the King George V and Iron Duke classes from WW1.
Indeed, the US North Carolinas had 12 inch belts, and the belts of the South Dakotas & Iowas were 12.2 inches and 12.1 inches respectively. No one has ever called them battlecruisers.
Come to that, the proposed G3 battlecruisers, from which the Nelsons evolved, were called battlecruisers, despite being intended to have 14 inch belts and decks in parts 8 inches thick.
The term battlecruiser within the RN was based on speed, in that it was applied to any capital ship with a speed in excess of 25 knots, as the original concept of the fast, lightly armoured, cruiser killer became outdated.
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@REgamesplayer 'That is a quote from wikipedia and I had read it too.' Both are indeed from wikipedia, but both originally came from books written by the two authors to which I referred. I have both books.
R. A. Burt, for one, has researched the design and construction of British capital ships for many years. Would you consider that, for example, Eustace Ternnyso-D'Eyncourt or Stanley Vernon Goodall to have known less about warship design and capability than John Jellicoe or David Beatty, on the grounds that they were 'merely' naval architects, rather than serving sea officers? The last serving sea officer to design a British major warship was HMS Captain, designed by Captain Cowper Phipps Coles. Look what happened to her!
'As you can see from our conversation, he is wrong in his assessment.' No, to be pedentic, you claim that he is wrong. I suggest that you are in a minority of one in this.
'Agincourt wasn't a good battleship if you intended to duel other battleships with it.' What else would she be expected to do? She lacked the speed to get close to cruisers, and her likely opponents in South America, had WW1 not intervened would have been the Argentinian 'Rivadavia' class, or the Chilean 'Almirante Latorre' class, all four of which were superior.
Clearly, Brazil decided to cut their losses and sell her off to the Ottoman Empire for a reason, however much you may choose to laud her capabilities.
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@REgamesplayer Armoured cruisers ceased to be built after 1910, when the battlecruiser became a more attractive proposition. The last British ones were the Minotaurs of 1909, the last German ones the Scharnhorsts of 1908, unless you count the Blucher of 1909 the last US ones the Tennessees of 1906-8.
You are really stretching a point beyond breaking if you think that Agincourt when ordered would be expected to fight 1890s period cruisers. However necessary it might be for you to make the claim to justify her design flaws.
'Are you aware that cruisers of that era also sailed at around 20 knots? A lot of navy cruisers which were built up in 1890s sailed at 20 knots. Dreadnaughts of that era also sailed at those speeds.' No, I'm not, because there were no Dreadnoughts in the 1890s. However, if all the Brazilians expected to encounter were elderly armoured cruisers like the 1895 Garibaldi, why bother acquiring battleships at all?
Instead of Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro, why not just buy, for a fraction of the cost, a few modified Defences, or Scharnhorsts, at a fraction of the cost. Perhasps because Argentina had, and Chile were acquiring, their own dreadnoughts?
'Do you know how much outdated their fleets were compared to Agincourt? No, because the ships I have named were far from outdated when compared to Rio.
'Not sure about people you are referencing. I do however think that asking historian to pass judgement on a naval design is generally a wrong thing to do. The fact that you don't seem to know of these people is hardly a reason to question their judgement.
You are becoming increasingly fanciful and disconnected from the facts of early 20th century naval warfare. In your first post, you argued that Rio/Agincourt 'prioritized firepower and had to engage other battleships at closer ranges.' Now you seem to be trying to say that Rio was a good battleship against elderly cruisers, but not against other battleships.
As your arguments are becoming increasingly contorted, I will leave you to your own opinion, even if it unencumbered by facts.
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So, what you are claiming is that the Luftwaffe lost 1700 aircraft and 2900 aircrew, and the Allies lost 900 or so aircraft and 544 aircrew, in something that never happened?
Actually, Britain & France declared war because, in an attempt to avert a general European war, they had undertaken to do so in support of Poland, should Poland be invaded by Germany.
Of course, as hitler had already invaded Czechoslovakia, he then invaded Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium, & later, the Soviet Union, all without declaration of war. I am sure all those countries 'diplomatically protested' as well.
Perhaps you didn't know that Germany had already bombed a number of Spanish towns & villages, then Warsaw, then Rotterdam?
There were no preparations made for Sealion? Are you serious? 150 gun batteries on the Channel Coast, over 2000 barges requisitioned, converted, and sent to invasion ports, over 400 tugs and 200 transports requisitioned and similarly located. 27 Divisions undertaking training for landings?
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@LittleMacscorner I'm not getting upset, but I do know quite a lot about Dynamo & Sealion, as they formed the bulk of my modern history thesis.
Many of the German generals did actually believe that Sealion was nothing more than 'an extended river crossing' and Admiral Raeder spent much of the summer of 1940 desperately trying to get them to grasp that it was nothing of the sort.
Hitler's certainly didn't want to attempt an invasion; he assumed that Britain would accept a negotiated peace, and was near to being proved correct. A government led by Lord Halifax wouldn't have had a problem with the idea, and Hitler believed that a neutral Britain left him with a free hand to deal with his true enemy, the Soviet Union. The result of all this was, in Napoleon's words 'how can an elephant fight a whale?'
Certainly, a substantial German force on British soil was unlikely to have been defeated, but, even if a successful invasion was essential, without a navy or even suitable troop transports the possibility of carrying out a successful crossing against the kind of resources available to the Royal Navy was never even a remote possibility. Unlike a land battle, where a smaller force might overcome a larger one by a cunning strategy or as a result of incompetence on the part of the larger force, the Kreiegsmarine, following the mauling it suffered during the Norwegian campaign, knew exactly what the towed barges could expect once they entered the Channel.
It is a bit like the old joke about a motorist asking directions and being told by a local 'If I were you I wouldn't start from here.' In the summer of 1940, the Germans found themselves in exactly the same quandary.
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@Rickblaine1942 Wasn't it you who posted ' We shouldve never intervened in both wars. Let the brits battle it out on their own?' One can debate the reasons for American involvement in WW1, followed by the effects of the Treaty of Versailles, until one is blue in the face, but this video is about WW2, by the way.
'Who forced the US to act?' Well, having most of the US Pacific Fleet's battleships sunk by the Japanese, having an American colony (in all but name), the Philippines, attacked, and having German U-Boats inflicting heavy losses on US merchant shipping off the American East Coast might have had an influence, perhaps? As might the formal German declaration of war on 11 December.
Unless you think that FDR should have worked on the Homer Simpson principle that 'If we ignore them for long enough they will stop it and go away?'
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@Rickblaine1942 I didn't say you said altruistically. Look again at my post. Did the word have ' ' around it?
Don't you know why the US entered WW1? Try :- 'Wilson cited Germany’s violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, as well as its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States, as his reasons for declaring war.' The Germans re-commenced unrestricted submarine warfare because the Royal Navy dominated the North Sea, the High Seas Fleet was effectively trapped in the Jade, the Northern Patrol was imposing a blockade which was starving the German civilian population to death, or at least to revolution, (read up on the Turnip Winter, if you doubt me) and it was a last throw of the dice, insisted upon by the military.
The fact that most German politicians opposed it, as they were well aware of the likely American reaction, had no influence on the Hindenburg dictatorship which was running Germany. That is also why my earlier comment, that the entry of the US into the war simply accelerated the inevitable, is also valid, by the way.
Morality, whether I have it or not, is irrelevant in these circumstances. I am merely explaining facts to you, as simply as I can. No historian can change these facts, but we can, at least, explain the reasons for them.
Now, please, go away.
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@edstar83 'It was the zionists in Britain and France who declared war on Germany not the other way around.' You don't suppose that invading, without declaration of war, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium, and the Soviet Union, might have been of some relevance, then? Generally, the arrival of German tanks, troops, aircraft, and einsatzgruppen was taken as some clue to their intentions.
Britain & France agreed military alliances with Poland in a hope that it would put an end to Germany's aggressive and expansionist posturing. Sadly, the Line in the Sand approach didn't work.
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@jonesalex565 Between 27 May and 4 June, there were 41 British destroyers involved in the Dunkirk evacuation. How many were sunk by your 'stookers' which you believe could 'put a bomb down a gun turret' (whatever that means), in total, four. The Luftwaffe in 1940 was a tactical air force, trained in providing air support for ground troops in a land campaign. They had had no training at all in anti-shipping operations, and were, consequently, poor at the task. Their own commander, Oskar Dinort, wrote of the difficulties of hitting ships at sea, following an attack on 25 May when he led 40 aircraft from his Stuka-Geschwader 2 in an attack on a British naval squadron off Calais. He recorded that his aircraft dived from 12000 feet, but the reflection of the sun on the sea, and the violent course changes made by the warships, resulted in his own bomb exploding 300 feet from his target. None of his accompanying aircraft were any more successful, leading Dinort to conclude that they lacked the necessary expertise to achieve consistent success. His commander, Wolfram von Richthofen, in charge of Fliegerkorps VIII, subsequently told his own superiors that the Luftwaffe was not well enough trained to be able to provide adequate protection for the towed barges that were intended to carry out operation Sealion.
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@jonesalex565 You seem to have resorted to raving. You haven't explained what purpose was served by sending almost 200,000 troops to Scotland, largely because they weren't. Would you like to provide your source for your ludicrous claim?
There was no lie spun about the evacuation. Churchill called the events 'a colossal military disaster' and said ' "we must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations" in the House of Commons on 4 June, 1940. tHE 'Miracle' element was that the Royal & Merchant navies, in the face of (fortunately, ineptly inaccurate) Luftwaffe bombing, managed to lift more than ten times the number of troops thought possible when the evacuation began.
I notice that you still seem to rely on TV rather than archives for your information. Isn't it odd, then, that that what you describe as 'only 20 years old' actually appeared in books by historians dating back to the late 1940s and 1950s? The various descriptions of the events have always been consaistent.
I have a copy of the Official Royal Navy Staff History of Operation 'Dynamo' which has full details of every vessel involved and every event which took place throughout Dynamo. Would you like me to list a whole host of academic works, both British, French, & German, on the subject, all of which tell a consistent tale throughout? I am sure you wouldn't. Finally, what 'archives' were sealed by Theresa May?
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@jonesalex565 ' You're suggesting that it's always been widely known and publicly acknowledged that the Germans let us go at Dunkirk?'
You were the one who suggested that, if I recall correctly. I know no credible historian who would argue that for a moment, largely because there is no evidence at all to support it. The best you will find are the usual suspects, fantasising nazi boys and anti-British Americans, and not even many of them.
You spoke to people who were sent there? Oh good. I spoke to people who weren't. What is your source for your claim? What War Office records? Where were the men sent? Again, WHY? You are utterly unable to give any rational reason.
How is it possible to look something up if no-one knows what it is?
As to Churchill, don't you know? The answer is none of the above, as you really should know. The statements were made to the House of Commons at the time, were published in Hansard, the House of Commons record of proceedings, and appeared in the newspapers which, then as now, have access to Hansard.
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@jonesalex565 Of course the BEF weren't let go. I have been trying to get you to grasp this fact for some time, but you seem to be determined to align yourself with the neo-nazis and Limey haters who, without a scintilla of proof, insist upon chanting this nonsense like demented parakeets. I do admit, however, that your fantasy about the Scottish gulags for the Dunkirk failures is certainly a novel one!
Where have I said that the Germans ran out of fuel? I have explained the reasons for the German failure, basically the von Rundstedt Halt order, the failure of the Luftwaffe, the skill of Admiral Ramsay's evacuation planning, and the resistance of the rearguard.
Please present a source which demonstrates that orders were given by German High Command to let the British escape, and, when you haven't been able to do that, explain precisely why they would have benefitted in any way by letting it happen.
I don't have to prove anything. The facts, and the history, are entirely on my side.
You do seem to have some very odd problems, for which you have my sympathy.
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@jonesalex565 So, no explanation of the reasons for the exile of the BEF to Scotland, or indeed answers to any of my other questions. No reference to any contemporary German, French, or British documents either. Just your conversation with a sapper. Presumably, if this man went to Scotland, then you simply assume that the other nearly 200,000 did as well, despite what the regimental diaries from the time all say.
You refer to :-
Running out of petrol
Shiney water
2 weeks of sudden miscommunication with Hitler
without explaining what you think you mean. Perhaps you might enlighten people? Or there again, perhaps not!
Incidentally, if the British thought that they had been 'let go' why did they immediately begin landing a Second REF in Cherbourg, and only withdrew it after General Weygand, on 14 June, told the commander, Alan Brooke, that the French army was no longer capable of organised resistance? Were they really so confident that the amiable Germans would let them go a second time?
What 'debates' are these, to which you refer? I know of no such arguments being put forward by any credible historian working in this area, and I correspond regularly with many, now that regular face to face conversation is not possible. I admit that I do not normally read the extremist nonsense which appears from time to time (like yours, with no supporting evidence at all) from the neo-nazis and hitler lovers, but if you would care to recommend a recent presentation 'proving' that the British were 'let go' I would be happy to read it. Like you, I know that I will be waiting for a long time for such a document.
What is the relevance of Hess to Dunkirk, by the way?
Although I doubt it, I would be happy to believe that other people are reading this, although your amusing refusal to answer any question put to you might have deterred a few.
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@jonesalex565 You clearly cannot remember your earlier posts. You said that 200,000 men were sent to Scotland, although it now seems to have increased to 300,000. I said that, after a brief period of leave, all clearly documented in Regimental diaries, the men rejoined their regiments. I don't doubt that a number of Scots. went to Scotland, just as the Welsh went to Wales, or the Lancastrians to Lancashire, during their leave period, but to argue that they were all sent to Scotland as you seem to is simply ludicrous, and there is no evidence to support it.
Yes, as I said earlier, the men I interviewed were surprised to find that they were regarded as heroes, when they had expected to be vilified, but there is no evidence to suggest a systematic effort to keep them away from the press. Unless you can produce some, and of course, as with the rest of your posts, you cannot. Just as you said Churchill's reference to evacuation did not appear in the newspapers, until I showed you that it did.
'Why did we invade again? Why don't you answer that?' If you mean the Second BEF, which wasn't an invasion, I didn't answer because I hadn't been asked. I suspect that you had never previously heard of the Second BEF. However, the reason was to show continued support for France, in the hope that France would continue to resist. When Weygand told Brooke of the hopelessness of the French situation, the force was withdrawn.
The rest of your nonsense (two weeks on beaches, Luftwaffe bombers deliberately missing, (even though around 200 German aircraft were destroyed during Dynamo) irrelevant references to Hess & now to Sicily, and strange, meaningless references to 'shiny water' are unworthy of response.
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@jonesalex565 Where is your source for your comment about the sappers? Oh, of course, you don't have one.
The only Allied invasion of France was in 1944. I have told you the reason for the 2nd BEF. Unfortunately, you seem unable to grasp it.
I have never come across any reference by any German serviceman to the suggestion that they were not permitted to finish off the Dunkirk pocket, no suggestion that Hitler ever gave orders that the British should be allowed to escape.
Nor, indeed, is there any such suggestion by any German historian that I have read, and I have read many. odd, that, don't you think?
I notice that you haven't commented on the research and conclusions I posted earlier from Herr Epkenhans. I wonder why that might be?
You are either seriously disturbed, a raving nazi fanatic, or simply astonishingly stupid. I will let anyone who has the misfortune to read your silliness decide for him/her self.
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The conclusion that Jutland was a British strategic victory is based on the fact that the High Seas Fleet never again risked encountering the Grand Fleet in battle. A Trafalgar style victory wouldn't seriously have affected the German war effort, which was almost entirely land based.
In effect, after Jutland, the High Seas Fleet became a nebulous, 'Fleet in Being,' rather than a credible threat, which prevented the British from using their battleships elsewhere (although, unlike in WW2, it isn't easy to see where they could have been used anyway) but didn't even stop the transfer of some Grand Fleet destroyer flotillas to the Battle of the Atlantic in 1917.
Furthermore, all the time the High Seas Fleet swung peacefully around cables in the Jade, the British blockade imposed increasing misery upon the German civilian population (read up on the Turnip Winter) and destroyed their morale, whilst Scheer's enthusiastic support for unrestricted submarine warfare eventually brought the United States into the war on the Allied side.
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'The British installed a king?' Louis XVIII's restoration to the throne in 1814 was effected largely through the support of Napoleon's former foreign minister, Talleyrand, who convinced the victorious Allied Powers of the desirability of a Bourbon Restoration. The allies themselves were divided about several different options, including, Louis, Boney's son by Marie Louise, and even Marshal Bernadotte.
In the aftermath of Waterloo, Boney abdicated, at the insistence of the French provisional government, in favour of his son. On 25 June Napoleon left Paris for the final time and after staying at the Palace of Malmaison, left for the coast hoping to reach the United States of America. In the meantime, the Provisional Government deposed his son and tried to negotiate a conditional surrender with the Coalition powers. They failed to obtain any significant concessions from the Coalition who insisted on a military surrender and the restoration of Louis XVIII.
The British were one part of a much larger European coalition, most of which had armies far larger than anything the British could field.
Don't worry, however. If you were to read a book or two, you also could learn the facts.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
You might perhaps ask why, when there were 2.5 million Indians serving in the military, Churchill should, supposedly, bring about a famine in Bengal?
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So, the Italian submarine flee', 'the world's greatest in terms of tonnage' sank almost 750,000 tons of Allied shipping in three years? Would it be churlish to point out that between April & June, 1941, the German U-boat fleet, with less than 40 operational front line boats, sank 927804 tons?
As to surface ships sunk by the Italian air force, you claim 72 Allied warships. As the allies lost 76 warships in the whole of the campaign, totalling 315,500 tons, are you claiming that, between them, mines, the Italian surface fleet, the Luftwaffe, and the German U-boat arm, sank just 4? I fear you will struggle to justify this claim, especially since, in terms of tonnage, 145800 is recorded as sunk by Italian means, and 169,700 to German forces. Moreover, would you care to comment on axis shipping losses to RN submarines in the Mediterranean over the period June, 1940 to September, 1943? 328 vessels of 815,800 tons. All except 14 of the vessels were Italian, by the way.
The attack on Valiant & Queen Elizabeth, which disabled both of them, was an outstanding feat of arms. Less outstanding, however, was the fact that absolutely no advantage was taken of it. Valiant, by the way, was back in service by June 1942, although her repairs were completed by March, after which she was sent to Durban for a major refit before joining the Eastern Fleet. Queen Elizabeth took longer to repair, 18 months in fact, although much of this time was spent in the US undergoing a thorough refit.
Would you care to provide evidence for your remarkable assertion that 'By mid-1942, Mussolini's navy had fought its way back from crushing defeats to become the dominant power in the Mediterranean Sea' by describing the occasions upon which this dominance was demonstrated? The triumphant annihilation of the RN surface forces protecting 'Pedestal' by the battlefleet would perhaps be a good starting point?
I won't bother with most of the rest, except to say that I cannot find any references to any Italian nuclear weapons programme earlier that the 1960s, and the flight of the P.108 would have been remarkable, given that New York is almost 7000 kms from Rome, and the operational range of the P108 was less than 3300 kms.
You are a total fantasist, albeit a remarkably amusing one.
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Where on earth did you hear that nonsense from? A switcher video, doubtless.
Firstly, Titanic's sister ship was called Olympic. Secondly, at the time of the sinking, Olympic was also at sea, on her way to Southampton from New York. Both ships had, at the time, full Board of Trade certification.
Thirdly, Olympic had been damaged in a collision with a RN cruiser, Hawke, but had been repaired by Harland & Wolff by late November, 1911, and had been back on her regular Atlantic service since then.
Fourthly, the bankers supposedly lured aboard Titanic were called Guggenheim, Astor, and Straus. They had not been 'lured' aboard, they all had booked passages. Moreover, the first two had never expressed any views about the Federal Reserve, whilst the third was on record as being a supporter. The suggestion that this was not the case can be traced back to a book from 1995, but not earlier.
So, 'Conspiracy right??' Indeed. A rather silly one as well.
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@JimmyJamesJ Glorious sank at around 1745 on 8 June. No distress signals were received by any British ship or shore
station. Only at 0901 on 9 June did the battleship Valiant receive news from the hospital ship Atlantis that a transport (Orama) had been sunk by 'a battleship & two destroyers,' and transmitted this report. Devonshire, receiving Valiant's transmission, then herself transmitted that she had received a garbled message from Glorious at 1640 on 8 June.
Until receiving Valiant's message, there had been no knowledge of any German battleship in the area. Upon receipt, Forbes, C-in-C Home Fleet, immediately sent orders to Repulse, Sussex, & Newcastle, with six destroyers to join the evacuation convoys, and himself sailed fro Scapa Flow in Rodney, with Renown & several destroyers.
The first actual news of Glorious' sinking came in a German broadcast at 1500 on 9 June, which claimed the taking of 'many prisoners.' By this time, few of Glorious' complement would still have been alive, but aircraft from Ark Royal carried out several searches, without success. Even by the evening of 10 June, the Admiralty still had no idea of Glorious' position when she was lost. At around 0045 on 11 June, Borgund came across the few remaining survivors.
So, your comment that the failure to send rescue ships was a 'crime' takes no account at all of the reality of the situation.
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@philp8872 I am not making ethical judgments, simply stating facts. In point of fact, US daylight 'precision' bombing wasn't, at least according to American research. particularly precise. According to John T. Correll in 'Air Force' magazine, :-'According to data from training and practice bombing, a heavy bomber at 20,000 feet had a 1.2 percent probability of hitting a 100-foot-square target. About 220 bombers would be required for 90 percent probability of destroying the target. AWPD-1 forecast a need for 251 combat groups to carry out the plan. Bombing accuracy was terrible. The average circular error in 1943 was 1,200 feet, meaning that only 16 percent of the bombs fell within 1,000 feet of the aiming point. “Rather than dropping bombs into pickle barrels, Eighth Air Force bombardiers were having trouble hitting the broad side of a barn,” said historian McFarland.'
The article was called 'Daylight Precision Bombing' and was published in October, 2008.
Agreed, the British policy was based on 'dehousing' the German population, but the reality is that neither allied air force was particularly precise.
Surely you are not suggesting, by the way, that area bombing was unacceptable against German targets, but that the Japanese were fair game when it came to mass firebombing raids?
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@yingyang1008 'needless slaughter of innocent men, fairly simple concept.' Isn't it nice making pious condemnations from a comfy chair, over 80 years after the event?
Try to understand. The only powerful force available to Britain at the time was the Royal Navy, which was massively superior to the Kriegsmarine. However, had the French Navy been sent into the Channel to protect an invasion attempt, then a successful German landing might, just, have been possible.
The British, unlike the French, had chosen to continue to fight. The French navy in the Mediterranean was given the option of also continuing the fight, or going to the West Indies to be immobilised, under US supervision. Admiral Gensoul chose not to notify his own government of the full text of the ultimatum. The British had made plain, from the outset, that Gensoul's fleet would not be permitted to return to France, to be placed under German 'supervision.'
Oh, and Dresden. Perhaps you would explain why it is that the soldier who fires the shell which destroys a tank and kills the crew is a legitimate target, but the 'civilian' who makes the shell, or provides the soldier with the food without which he would be unable to continue the fight, is not?
In other words, however much it may offend your noble principles, THERE ARE NO CIVILIANS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL WAR.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
Sorry, I know this doesn't meet the required agenda.
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Unarmed? A car driven at other cars, or at pedestrians, is a weapon. The Firearms officer hardly got away with it. He was suspended from the time of the incident until the end of the court case, a judge chose to release his name and he and his family are apparently now in hiding. He was, by the way, found not guilty by a jury.
'If someone is 'guilty' of something it needs to go to court.' Rubbish. If someone is accused of a crime, then the accusation must be tested in court. As, in this case, ir was.
You may think that using the RAYCIST!!! allegation will shut down debate, but in these circumstances, no it will not.
There are also genuine, underlying reasons why people join gangs.' Are there also genuine reasons why people stab other people, or shoot them in a crowded club?
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@guntherultraboltnovacrunch5248 Seized from whom, exactly? Spain's garrison evacuated the island in 1811. A small settlement was established by a German born merchant, Vernet, in 1826 to exploit fishing and feral cattle on the islands, until a dispute over these fishing rights led to the arrival of USS Lexington, whose commander Silas Duncan declared the dissolution of the island's government.
An Argentinian garrison which had landed in 1832 mutinied, and a British force landed in 1833, but left after rerstoring order, leaving no formal administration.The German merchant's deputy, a Scotsman, Matthew Brisbane, landed during the same year in an attempt to re-establish Vernet's business, but he was murdered by a group of gauchos led by one Rivero. Survivors of Brisbane's people hid in a carve to avoid the same fate, until a British force returned, once again to restore order.
This time the British stayed, and in 1840 the Islands became a Crown Colony, with a group of Scottish settlers landing at around the same time to establish the first settlement.
So, seized from whom? A murderer who had killed a business rival over a grudge?
Sorry, but no more. Educating people with false agendas has never really appealed to me.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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The Royal Navy operated nightly destroyer patrols through the Channel every night throughout the invasion period, out of Plymouth and the Nore. Fairly regularly, these patrols inspected the invasion ports, and often shelled them. Coastal convoys also operated through the Channel, mainly consisting of small colliers escorted by, usually, two destroyers and one or two armed trawlers. The convoys, of the CE & CW series, sailed between 1940 & 1944. There were 533 such convoys, totalling 9097 ship voyages. Of the 9097, 31 were sunk.
The Germans sent three small Type II boats into the Channel in late 1939. Together with the remains of their crews, all three are still there. The Channel was a death trap for a WW2 submarine.
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So, Germany didn't invade Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Soviet Union, then? Germany tended not to declare war, although the arrival of tanks, troops, aircraft, and, often, einsatzgruppen, was generally taken as a clue to German intentions.
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Not without the Distant Covering force, which might have been too far away to intervene. That said, the scatter order based on inadequate information was a mistake. What was right for an Altantic convoy scattering to avoid a lone raider, with no U-boats in contact and far from enemy aircraft, was wrong for a convoy threatened by, potentially, a whole task force, supported by U-boats and aircraft. My view is that the convoy should have stayed united, and Hamilton's cruisers sent in support.
However, I have, as we all do, the considerable benefit of hindsight.
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Firstly, what part of Nelson's maxim that 'only numbers can annihilate' is beyond your grasp? It you have plenty of naval assets, then you should use them. The United States' Navy did something similar, when they concentrated around 300 ships, including 34 carriers and 12 battleships, against a Japanese force of 67 ships, including 4 carriers, two hybrid carrier/battleships, and 7 battleships, at Leyte Gulf, and more or less annihilated it. What would you have done had you been the Americans? Sent around 230 of your ships away to be more sporting about things?
Secondly, would you care to list the 25 British capital ships involved in the action.
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@TheLoneWolf_andCoyote Please don't be an idiot. I have read the findings of the Report produced by the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and White Star, all of whom appointed teams to look into the extent of the damage. Their agreed summary was “Two major watertight compartments were flooded, hull plating gashed from the Orlop deck to E deck, and the starboard propeller shafting damaged."
Do you see what is missing here? Any reference to keel damage, perhaps? Not surprising really, as the collision was at slow speed, eight knots according to Hawke's commander. Hawke was 20 years at the time of the collision, but still capable of 18 knots. Hawke penetrated 6-8 feet into Olympic's side. Olympic had a beam of 92 feet. Odd that none of this is ever mentioned by 'switchers' I suggest.
Oh, and the propeller was never transferred from Titanic to Olympic, only parts of the shaft. Or, at least, so Harland & Wolff's archives state.
The same archives which also confirm that the costs of repairs carried out to Olympic, in US dollars, was $125,000. Harland & Wolff completed the work in two months, although this did necessitate taking men off Titanic and delaying her completion.
The problem is, when the actual facts are investigated, the myth of of the crippled Olympic with the bent keel is exposed for what it is, and the whole reason for the switch drops away into irrelevance.
Switchers do rely on people reading or watching their products, and being either too gullible to question them, or too lazy, or lacking in interest, to bother. I suggest that you must fall into one of these categories.
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Did this scientist actually say that Woolly Mammoths were not on the planet at the same time as humans? The woolly mammoth coexisted with early humans, who used its bones and tusks for making art, tools, and dwellings, and hunted the species for food.
The population of woolly mammoths declined at the end of the Late Pleistocene, with the last populations on mainland Siberia persisting until around 10,000 years ago, although isolated populations survived on St. Paul Island until 5,600 years ago, and on Wrangel Island until 4,000 years ago.
Modern Homo Sapiens seem first to have appeared 160,000 years or so ago.
In view of this level of knowledge, how much of his subsequent opinion can really be trusted?
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@montanabulldog9687 No, you didn't. I doubt any official RN document would refer to Hood's 4.5 inch secondary armament being replaced by 4.5 inch twins. Largely because Hood's 5.5 inch low angle secondary armament was removed completely, and a secondary armament of seven twin 4 inch AA guns were fitted in completely different locations on the boat deck.
This, however, did not happen during the course of one refit, but in a series of stages. Initially, the shelter deck 5.5s were removed, and four twin 4 inch mountings fitted. Later, the remaining three single 4 inch were also replaced by twins. Twin searchlight towers between the funnels were removed, and the old HACS control system replaced by a new one. No deck armour or plating was removed.
There was a proposal to replace protective deck plating with 4 inch armour over the magazines and 2.5 inch armour over the machinery spaces, but this was not 'forgotten about.' The additional weight involved, 1410 tons, was regarded as having too adverse an effect on a ship whose displacement had already increased significantly over the years.
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@montanabulldog9687 Hood never carried a 4.5 inch gun, single or twin, during the course of her entire existence.
In addition, as I wrote earlier, this :- 'her primary DECK ARMOR PLATE had been "Removed", to have been "Replaced", by a THICKER plate ,. but during the installing of the "New" guns, she was RUSHED back into service, having "Omitted" the deck armor plate, an what ended up happening was that it was simply . . . "Forgotten" about . . .'
was simply not true.
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@montanabulldog9687 I have detailed accounts of every refit carried out on Hood between 1929 & 1941. the took place on:- 3 June, 1929-28, May 1931, 1 August to 5 September, 1934, 26 June to 10 October, 1936, 8 November to 16 December, 1937, February - June, 1939, July-August, 1939, 29 March & 27 May, 1940, and 16 January to 15 March, 1941.
There is no suggestion anywhere that armour plate was removed from the boat deck & not replaced. There was, as I wrote earlier, a proposal to fit thicker armour over the magazines & machinery spaces, but in view of the increase of weight this would inflict on an already overweight ship, it was not undertaken. Hood was scheduled for complete modernisation after the completion of work on Queen Elizabeth, but, of course, world events intervened.
Seriously, do you really think that large sections of armour plate could possibly have been removed, and then 'forgotten about?'
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@marlonbrando9279 Titanic did list to port because of what was called Scotland Road After the collision and flooding, as she was sinking, the port list developed because the main passage on E Deck that ran fore and aft was to Port side (Scotland Road it was referred to). This allowed the water to flood along the port side faster than to starboard.
Your claim that the Titanic’s seacocks were deliberately opened to hasten the sinking has absolutely no evidence to support it. There is no evidence from any survivor testimony, or the wreck, that this was ever the case. Firstly, how do you explain that none of the 350 strong engineering and stoker crew noticed this water rushing into the ship, and secondly, the nearest responder to Titanic’s distress signal, Carpathia, was 2 hours too far away. So why would they want to hasten her sinking? Are you suggesting that they were Japanese Kamikaze sailors, getting into practice for 1944??!!
Where did the ice scattered around the foredeck come from? Was it cunningly concealed for use at the right time, or did it simply dislodge from the iceberg? Were the survivors who reported seeing the iceberg simply suffering from mass hallucination?
As to the insurance scam. Titanic & Olympic both cost £1.5 million to build.and both were insured for £1 million, which is the figure Lloyds subsequently paid out. I am not an economist, but setting up a scam which loses White Star £500,000 and a reputation for safety does not seem to be a successful one. I thought scams and frauds were supposed to make money?
Finally, the invented claims about Astor, Guggenheim & Straus as opposed to the Federal Reserve date back as far as the mid 1990s. In fact, neither Astor nor Guggenheim had ever expressed their opinions about the Fed., whilst Straus was a supporter, as two articles in the New York Times from October, 1911 recording one of his speeches, which may still be read, prove.
Sorry. All you have proved is that, where Titanic is concerned, people are able to let their fanciful imagination run riot.
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@熊掌波清波 The bridge/forward superstructure, together with both forward turrets were destroyed very early in the action. Of course Bismarck was never going to survive, but I am not talking about radar (which, in Bismarck, wasn't working anyway) or optical rangefinders, but about the internal communications between departments within the ship. The senior survivor von Mullenheim-Rechberg, who was in the aft gunnery position, recorded in his book that communications with his superior, Schneider, in the main fire control position, was lost within 20 minutes, and that the gunnery plotting officer, Cardinal, contacted him shortly afterwards to say that he should take over the direction of the aft turrets, because contact with the main gunnery position had been lost.
By 0930, Rechberg wrote, he knew little about what was going on within the ship. He had received no reports, nor had anyone asked him about his own situation. He writes that he used his telephone circuits to ring for information all round the ship, but only managed to get one answer, from a messenger in the damage control centre. From his account, it is clear that internal communications failed at an early stage.
Bismarck's problems arose because of her outmoded, incremental, armour lay out, which, in effect, detonated incoming AP shells above the lower, second, belt, thus resulting in widespread fires and the destruction of internal cables. Similar things happened to other ships with this layout, such as Scharnhorst, Hiei, & Kirishima. The KGVs had the superior, all or nothing, armour, with all communications below it.
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Politically, possibly the collapse of the Churchill administration, his replacement by the Holy Fox, and a subsequent humiliating 'armistice' along French lines.
If Churchill did survive, then any invasion attempt would still have failed, the August troop convoy would probably not have sailed to North Africa, and the recovery of the British army would have been delayed. Of the 323,000 men evacuated, by the way, around 120,000 were French, most of whom immediately returned to France.
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@chernobylcat1791 Douhet was a theorist who, basically, argued that bombing civilians would bring about civil unrest. The population would rise up against their government, and a new government would agree to an armistice. It was, of course, nonsense, in that it didn't work against the British or the Germans when it was actually tried, but the British Air Ministry 'Bomber Barons' Goering, and le May, all believed in the theory.
One area where it did work, albeit unintentionally, was that it obliged the Germans to retain a large proportion of their air force for home defence, and to keep many anti-aircraft guns around their cities when they were desperately needed on the battlefield.
You mistake me. I haven't said that I believe it to be a 'good idea' but I do believe it to have been an inevitable one. If you wish to degrade your enemy's industrial capacity, you must destroy his factories, and the workforce in the factories is civilian.
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@erongi233 You must expect sarcasm, whether cheap or not in your opinion, when you equate an embargo with a military invasion. Moreover, the Soviet intention was to base nuclear missiles in Cuba.
Have NATO suggested basing nuclear missiles in Ukraine? Indeed, Ukraine is the only nation to have voluntarily given up a nuclear arsenal, and look what happened next.
I don't recall suggesting that the US are the good guys, but I do believe that they are less bad than the alternative.
If you insist upon your 'Russians good everyone else bad' approach then that is up to you, as, unlike in Russia, freedom of speech does, just about, still exist in the West.
I will not, however, bother replying to you again.
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@kubhlaikhan2015 France did not have a long history of 'vying with Germany' for anything, Germany was only united in 1871. France's traditional enemies had tended to be, from the Peace of Westphalia onwards, the Hapsburg Empire, the Dutch Republic, and England/Britain.
Similarly, Britain had 'no history of territorial disputes with Germany,' any more than with Narnia. Because, until 1871, Germany did not exist.
Prussia was briefly allied with Britain during the Seven Years War, and again from 1788, firstly against the dominant power in Europe, and then against Russia & Austria. British foreign policy had always been to maintain a degree of balance in Europe, rather than allow one power to gain supremacy.
This had tended to be France, but from the 1870s it was Germany. Hence, British support for Belgium & the Netherlands, intended to ensure that no single major power ever gained complete control of the Channel coast.
Please do not try to claim that you know what an German-imposed Armistice with Britain 'would have' involved. Neither you, nor anyone else, can have any actual knowledge of the subject. Nor, indeed, can you claim that the German occupation of Northern France would 'barely be remembered' today.
'German security in 1940.' Security from what? You have just written that Britain was not a continental military power. Presumably what you are really referring to is the German need to maintain military control over the independent nation states which had been seized by brutal force of arms?
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Odd, then, that the Luftwaffe failed so badly at Dunkirk. You should only view Sealion in terms of the capabilities of the opposing forces at the time, i.e., Summer & Autumn, 1940, and at that time the Luftwaffe had had no training in anti-shipping operations. Consequently, they were very poor at them.
Incidentally, in September, 1939, the RN had 193 destroyers in commission. In September, 1940, they had over 100 in Home Waters, around 65 of which were within 5 hours steaming of Dover. In the whole of the war, Luftwaffe aircraft sank 31 RN destroyers.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
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@danielshanetzky3714 Changing the issue, I observe. As is common with you people. You wrote ' with a small rudder he couldn't stop in time to ram the berg.' Now, you seem to contradict yourself.
Oh, and what 'known documented history of crashing his ship' would you apply to Captain Smith?
To quote Smith himself :-
"When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in nearly 40 years at sea, I merely say- uneventful. Of course there have been winter storms and gales and fog and the like, but in all my experience I have never been in an accident of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea- a brig, the crew of which was taken off in a small boat in charge of my third officer. I never saw a wreck and have never wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort. You see, I am not very good material for a story.”
Captain Smith, New York, May 16, 1907.
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@trumbettier Yes, you are right. A first in History and a number of published books and articles clearly demonstrate how little I have read. I don't propose to comment on Brexit, because the connection to Pedestal is somewhat tenuous, don'y you think? The ships used for Pedestal were overwhelmingly British, and Ohio, though American built, was British crewed.
Pedestal, far from being a disaster was a strategic success. If Malta had not been re-supplied, surrender would have been unavoidable, and the successes against supply lines to Axis forces in North Africa achieved by Malta based strike forces of aircraft and submarines would not have happened.
As to D-Day, I have already told you the actual figures.
Still, I am sure your blind prejudice will, doubtless, see things differently.
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Cunning Plan, Baldrick! Build a ship for £1.5 million, in order to claim back £1 million from the insurers, and lose your reputatioin for safety at the same time. In my haive innocence, I thought that such scams were supposed to MAKE money.l
Indeed, a number of people cancelled their bookings. Almost as many, in fact, as had cancelled their bookings for Olympic's maiden voyage almost a year earlier.
You really shouldn't believe everything you see in conspiracist video, such as the 1990s created myth that Astor, Guggenheim, & Straus opposed the Federal Reserve, as it makes you look extremely silly when you post as you have just done.
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@GODS_OUTLAW There is a simple way to prove who is right and who is wrong. All you need to do is provide a 1911 or 1912 source which proves that Astor and Guggenheim actually had opinions which opposed the Federal Reserve. Then you must explain why the New York Times included two articles, as follows :-
Monday 16 October 1911, page 10, revealing that Straus actually supported the forming of a federal reserve bank. The Article is headed :- 'Isidor Straus urges new banking plan.'
Just a few days later, another headline in The New York Times, Wednesday 18 October 1911, page 14, reveals that Straus defended the forming of a federal reserve bank. :- This Article is headed 'Isidor Straus defends them, and argues that the new monetary system will give them stability.'
Odd comments, I suggest, for someone who, in your imagination, was murdered because he opposed the Federal Reserve?
I can refer you to a site which reproduces the actual articles if it would help? Feel free to ask.
In point of fact, these absurd claims first appeared in a book by Robin Gardiner in 1995, and have been taken up, without actually being checked, by conspiracy theorists and gullible fools since that time.
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Nonsense. As Reuters' investigation demonstrated :-
'A widely-shared meme has taken several facts about the Titanic out of context to make unsubstantiated claims that imply the ship’s sinking was a deliberate act. This is not true – experts widely agree the sinking of the Titanic was an accident.
The meme was posted to Facebook and has been shared many times.
It consists of two images: one of the ship and a second of American financier John Pierpoint (J.P.) Morgan. These sit alongside a wall of text that suggests Morgan had motive to sink the Titanic because it was hosting three powerful people who opposed his idea for a centralised banking system, ie: the U.S. Federal Reserve.
“DID YOU KNOW? The man who funded the building of the titanic, J. P. Morgan, cancelled his long-awaited journey just hours before its proposed departure,” the meme reads. “3 of the wealthiest men on earth, whom (sic) were against the creation of the federal reserve bank, happened to be invited aboard for its maiden voyage (John Aster, Isador Strauss & Benjamin Guggenheim).
“It then headed full speed into a known iceberg-field, with less than half the required lifeboats, no red signal flares, no Rothschild or Rockefeller on board, and sank to the bottom of the north Atlantic Ocean. Less than a year later, now that the wealthy opposition was out of the way, the federal reserve was created and USA was turned into an incorporated business, with its own business ID number, ’28 U.S.C. 3002 15.”
J.P MORGAN CLAIMS
While it is true that J.P. Morgan owned the Titanic and did not sail on its doomed maiden voyage, there is no evidence to suggest he deliberately missed the trip because he knew the ship would sink. Historians have debated several reasons for Morgan to cancel his trip, but none is related to the Federal Reserve.
“I've never been able to find an authoritative 1912 source explaining the exact reason why J. P. Morgan cancelled his passage on the Titanic, but he definitely didn't do so mere ‘hours’ before the ship's departure,” Titanic expert George Behe said in an email to Reuters.
Meanwhile, Don Lynch, a historian at the Titanic Historical Society (THS), said: “One of J.P. Morgan's biographers said that France was changing its laws to prevent Americans from exporting art treasures from that country, so Morgan went to Paris to oversee getting his purchases out of the country before the new laws went into effect.”
Also from THS, advisory board member Ray Lepien, said that as well as the art treasures theory, “the ‘official’ explanation was that he (Morgan) fell ill and wanted to take the ‘cure’ at a spa in France with his mistress.” Lepien added: “It could have been both reasons.”
STRAUS, ASTOR AND GUGGENHEIM’S OPINIONS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE PROPOSAL
While it is also true that Isidor Straus, Macy’s Department store owner; John Jacob Astor, a property tycoon, and Benjamin Guggenheim, a mining boss, died in the 1912 disaster, there is no evidence to suggest they were the target of deliberate sabotage. There is also no evidence that these three men were against Morgan’s centralised banking ideas.
Firstly, Titanic’s maiden voyage had attracted many prominent names, and was dubbed the “Millionaire’s Special” as a result.
Secondly, George Behe told Reuters he was unable to find any documents in his 45 years of researching the Titanic that proved the three men opposed the Federal Reserve. In fact, a Washington Post investigation found that while Astor and Guggenheim did not take a public stance on the matter, Straus reportedly spoke in favour of the proposal.
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@southerneruk Clem Attlee became leader of the Labour Party on 8 October, 1935, after George Lansbury stood down. Churchill had been a member of the Conservative party since 1925. He had been a Tory MP between 1900 & 1904, when he joined the Liberal Party. He switched twice, not four times as you wrongly claim.
Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty in both WW1 & WW2, but this is not the same as your incorrect statement that he was First Sea Lord. The First Lord of the Admiralty was always a politician, not a professional naval officer.
Oh, and Churchill was not 'at fault' for Mers el Kebir. No one was at fault. It was a military decision taken in a time of crisis to prevent the powerful French fleet from falling into the hands of Hitler's Germany, with all the implications that would have had for the possibility of a German invasion of Britain.
Finally, Churchill did not lose the 1945 election because the British public say him as no better than Hitler. Perhaps you didn't know that one Labour election slogan used at the time was 'Cheer Churchill, vote Labour.' Your statement is, frankly, rather asinine.
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@southerneruk Did this Log Book also explain how Ramsay MacDonald, in your (largely gibberish) words 'turncoats the people he was to representing backs Churchill dictatorship' in May 1940, when he had been dead since November, 1937? Did he do this by means of a medium, or through a ouija board? Does it also explain what confused Arthur Henderson into thinking he was Labour Party leader from August, 1931, George Lansbury from October, 1932, and Clement Attlee from October, 1935? Don't you consider it slightly odd that the entire Labour Party, indeed the entire British political establishment, thought these were the facts, and every historian writing on the subject thought & thinks the same, when in truth this was all smoke and mirrors and only you know the truth?
Clearly, in your world, you are the only one in step.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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'British weren't really able to do a whole lot in the war' Apart from, with the Canadians, winning the Battle of the Atlantic. Apart from, with the Canadians, providing two thirds of the troops, 79% of the landing craft crews, 73.5% of the warships, and 67% of the aircraft for D-Day. Apart from designing the portable harbours without which D-Day wouldn't have happened, and apart from, with the Indians & Australians, defeating the Japanese in South East Asia, you mean?
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@barbarshoppole3230 Australia & Canada were, and are, part of the Commonwealth. They were under no obligation to declare war in support of Great Britain but their democratically elected governments both did. Perhaps you could describe in more detail what threat Germany posed to Canada,Australia, or India, in September, 1939?
Granted, India was still under direct British rule, but, without conscription, some 2.5 million men voluntarily joined the Indian army in WW2.
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I see the problem here, Aside from you falsely attributing to me any opinion at all about the Soviet Union, you aren't aware that the British were outproducing the Germans in aircraft and in tanks from 1940 onwards, or that the Commonwealth and Empire were rapidly gearing up for war at the same time.
Of course the Soviets played a major role in the defeat of Germany, after their friends the Germans suddenly turned upon them in June, 1941.
But that wasn't wasn't you wrote, was it? If you recall, you wrote 'Also without the Russians, we would be talking German and Ukrainian. 'Which is simply nonsense. In 1940, and in the first half of 1941, the Soviets were eagerly supplying the Germans with raw materials, and, in particular, oil. Did the Germans attempt to invade then, and if they did not, what leads you to your strange belief that they might have done so later?
I won't waste any further time upon you, of course. You should go away and wallow in your own ignorance.
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The British ultimatum said nothing of the sort. In full, it read :-
It is impossible for us, your comrades up to now, to allow your fine ships to fall into the power of the German or Italian enemy. We are determined to fight on until the end, and if we win, as we think we shall, we shall never forget that France was our Ally, that our interests are the same as hers, and that our common enemy is Germany. Should we conquer, we solemnly declare that we shall restore the greatness and territory of France. For this purpose, we must make sure that the best ships of the French Navy are not used against us by the common foe. In these circumstances, His Majesty’s Government have instructed me to demand that the French Fleet now at Mers-el-Kébir and Oran shall act in accordance with one of the following alternatives:
(a) Sail with us and continue the fight until victory against the Germans and Italians.
(b) Sail with reduced crews under our control to a British port. The reduced crews would be repatriated at the earliest moment. If either of these courses is adopted by you, we will restore your ships to France at the conclusion of the war or pay full compensation, if they are damaged meanwhile.
(c) Alternatively, if you feel bound to stipulate that your ships should not be used against the Germans or Italians unless these break the Armistice, then sail them with us with reduced crews, to some French port in the West Indies—Martinique for instance—where they can be demilitarised to our satisfaction, or perhaps be entrusted to the United States and remain safe until the end of the war, the crews being repatriated. If you refuse these fair offers, I must, with profound regret, require you to sink your ships within 6 hours.
Finally, failing the above, I have the orders from His Majesty’s Government to use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships from falling into German or Italian hands.
Unfortunately, for reasons Gensoul never made clear, he chose not to pass on option (c) to his superiors in Paris.
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@michellebrown4903 But the British never sought to use their boats for a campaign against enemy merchant shipping, as the Germans and the US did, because the seas were immediately cleared of German shipping. A Type VIIc had a range of 8500 nm, by the way. A T class had a range of 8000 nm. The crush depth of a British T class third group was 626 feet. That of a Type VII 750 feet. A T carried 17 torpedoes, whereas a Type VII carried 14.
Both the Ts and the Type VIIs were much smaller than the US Gatos, which displaced 1549 tons, and were 311 feet long. ( T class 1090 tons & 275 feet, Type VII 757 tons and 220 feet. Gatos had a dive depth of 300 feet, and a range of 11,000 nm. Put simply, Gatos were built to operate in the Pacific, whereas British & German boats were intended to operate in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
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@SMITHSONIAN33 Remember your first post, mon brave? Didn't you write 'Iconoclasm, ask Mr Webb where did the three lions symbolism came from, only place with Lions is Africa ? Read more talk less ;)'
I simply pointed out that Lions were not restricted to Africa, as you apparently fantasised. Heraldry, by the way, is totally irrelevant, as it only seems to have appeared from the 12th Century AD., with the earliest documented example being when King Henry I of England presented a shield with a coat of arms to his future son-in-law, Geoffrey of Anjou, in 1127.
Oh, and if you seek to teach others, perhaps you might get a little aid with grammar and spelling, as this might not come amiss?
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@rosesprog1722 The French navy had 70 destroyers at the start of the war, together with a number of modern cruisers. Are you seriously suggesting that, because of the size of the RN, it was unsporting in some way to take action to make a potential German invasion less likely? Any such invasion would not depend on the size of the respective navies, but on whether sufficient force could be concentrated in the Channel area to stop the RN breaking into the barge convoys and destroying them. Your actual lack of understanding is, frankly, phenomenal.
As i have already explained, at the time the U-Boat fleet was tiny, and not relevant to any proposed invasion. The Germans actually sent three boats into the Channel in October, 1939. The boats, and their crews, are still there.
Where do you think I have apologised? I really haven't. As to :-
'There was many other ways like escort them away, evacuate the ships before sinking them, attacking only one at first as a warning, send a torpedo that would sink a ship slowly, etc..' This is so ludicrous that it is barely worth comment, so I won't lower my standards far enough to respond. Finally:-
'Churchill was a savage beast who showed again and again how little he cared for human life, Gallipoli, fire bombing German cities, the Bengal famine etc...' I could try to make you grasp that it is easier to make pious condemnations many years after the event from the comfort of your living room, but it wouldn't work. However:-
1). Churchill suggested Gallipoli, but didn't plan it. He believed it was an alternative to the unfolding slaughter on the Western Front. He proposed it to Herbert Asquith, who sanctioned. The fault lies with the senior officers who produced a flawed plan.
2. Fire-bombing German cities. Indeed he did, because German cities were the manufacturing centres for the weapons and equipment without which Germany could not prosecute the war. You make the common mistake that, in the 20th century, there were such things as civilians. Could you explain to me, for example, why the man or woman who produces a shell which kills a British, American, or Soviet soldier is any less of a combatant that the German soldier who fires it? As Admiral Sir John Fisher wrote 'moderation in war is imbecility.' The simplest answer is to avoid war in the first place. In this case, don't invade Poland!
3). Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit your agenda.
I can give you a whole list of errors made by Churchill in WW2, just as I can for FDR and Uncle Joe. Hitler's would need a much longer list, as would those of the Japanese, but this bizarre fixation you appear to have about Churchill is beginning to look like an idee fixe.
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@konaken1035 Nonsense. Titanic's name, like Olympic's was engraved into the steelwork of the bows, and the only trace of a name ever found is that of Titanic. There was an amateurish CGI image which appeared from nowhere in 2000. It has no provenance, and no exploration team has every claimed it, or even referred to it.
Olympic (please at least get the name right) had been in collision with a RN cruiser in September, 1911, but had been repaired and was back at sea by late November, 1911. All this is easily checkable, I wonder why you twerps don't bother.
The myth about the three financiers opposing the Fed, dates from the mid 1990s. That too is easy to check, but I assume, once again, you couldn't be bothered.
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@ukraineunited56 You haven't actually explained anything, and personal insults are a poor excuse for debate.
Let's see what there is to know. He was Chairman of a successful Shipping Line, and helped to drive through the creation of a class of large liner built in response to Cunard's Lusitania. He sailed on the maiden voyage of the second one, which was involved in a tragedy.
He is reported to have helped women passengers into lifeboats, before boarding one of the last boats as it was being lowered with spaces on it.
He was deeply traumatised by the sinking, withdrew almost entirely from public life, but, according to Paul Louden-Brown, "Ismay and the Titanic'" (Titanic Historical Society, 10 January, 2001), his work with the the Liverpool & London Steamship Protection & Indemnity Association Limited, an insurance company founded by his father, meant that 'Hundreds of thousands of pounds were paid out in insurance claims to the relatives of Titanic's victims; the misery created by the disaster and its aftermath dealt with by Ismay and his directors with great fortitude, this, despite the fact that he could easily have shirked his responsibilities and resigned from the board. He stuck with the difficult task and during his twenty-five-year chairmanship hardly a page of the company's minutes does not contain some mention of the Titanic disaster.'
Ismay maintained an interest in maritime affairs. He inaugurated a cadet ship called Mersey used to train officers for Britain's Merchant Navy, donated £11,000 to start a fund for lost seamen, and in 1919 gave £25,000 (approximately equivalent to £1.4 million in 2023)[35] to set up a fund to recognise the contribution of merchant mariners in the First World War.
The attacks made on him by W. R. Hearst, an influential press baron who was an enemy of Ismay on both a personal and a business level, and which involved Hearst's newspapers calling him 'J. Brute Ismay, seem to have rather swayed perceptions of him.
Feel free to check any or all of the above, of course.
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A. Whittle first demonstrated his engine in 1937. A German scientist had produced a similar patent in 1935. He apparently read Whitttle's patent, but no-one paid anything for it, and the design was never poo-pooed by anyone. B. Lyndon Johnson ceased being President in 1969. Thatcher's first government position, Education Secretary, dates from 1970. C. You obviously know nothing about, for example, the Battle of Amiens. D. What about them? E. The first computer in the modern sense was probably Colossus, designed to break the German Lorenz machine. The designer, Tommy Flowers, was the son of a bricklayer, who worked for the General Post Office. After the war, he continued to work for the GPO, but received a number of awards, notably an honorary Doctorate from Newcastle University & the Martlesham Medal. He died, after a long and happy life, at the age of 92, in 2013, and BT subsequently opened the Tommy Flowers institute in his memory.
You could go on? Why not try getting something even vaguely correct first?
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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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Mitchell proved only that, if a warship was left stationary, uncrewed, and with all watertight doors open, the aircraft of the period could indeed sink it, given enough time. The Luftwaffe of WW2, in the whole of WW2, sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship larger than a light cruiser. It didn't, indeed, even have an operational torpedo bomber until mid 1942. Moreover, it couldn't operate at all against ships at night, whereas the RN could and did.
Three U-Boats were sent into the Channel in late 1939, and were promptly sunk. After that, U-Boats routinely avoided the death trap that was the Channel.
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@brianmacc1934 Not quite. The Royal Navy certainly began gathering resources from 20 May, in the event of evacuation being necessary, but on 22 May, 1940, the British were intending to support the French 1st Army in any attempt to break out and regain contact with the main French forces. This, the 'Weygand Plan' had initially been ordered by Gamelin, but was cancelled by Weygand, and then belatedly re-ordered, by which time German infantry had caught up with their armoured spearheads. Moreover, the plan was known to General Billotte, commander of 1st Army, but not to Gort, and Billotte himself died in a car crash on 23 May. His successor, Blanchard, took over on the same day, but failed to co-ordinate with his subordinate, Gort, leaving Gort with little or no idea of what he was expected to attempt.
Gort actually made the decision late on 25 May, when he diverted his 5th Division from an attack on Douai to his North-Eastern flank, in order to oppose an attack by Army Group B's 6th Army. The 50th Division was sent in support, and the two divisions fought the successful and largely forgotten Battle of the Ypres-Comines Canal, which held back 6th Army until 28 May. Had Gort let 5th Division join the Weygand attack, the probability is that 6th Army would have made any evacuation at all from Dunkirk impossible.
You might read a detailed explanation in 'The Journal of Army Historical Research,' Vol. 92, Number 372, pages 326 - 336, written by Charles More, or the recent book by the same author, 'The Road to Dunkirk - The BEF and the Battle of the Ypres-Comines Canal, 1940' of 2019.
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@brianmacc1934 Oh, I apologise. I thought you actually knew more about the facts than you do, and thus wasted my time giving you a more detailed reply than you deserved.
The fact is that the pre-war allied planning for a war against Germany basically followed what had happened in WW1, in that the French would initially be responsible for most of the fighting on land, whilst the British would gradually take more responsibility as their land forces were built up by conscription and by the arrival of troops from the Commonwealth & Empire. Whilst this was going on, the Royal Navy (the largest on earth at the time) would re-impose the blockade on Germany which had been so successful in WW1.
The British were not a significant military power on land, but had a small, totally mechanised army of around 13 divisions based in the UK. This force would support the best French forces in the north in support of Belgium, but there was no possibility of this force alone challenging the over 100 divisions deployed by the Germans, as should be obvious even to you.
What 'Dunkirk Fable?' You mean the one where the Royal Navy, ordered to evacuate 40,000 'specialist' troops, successfully evacuated 338,000, of which over 120,000 were French? That fable? The evacuation was, and is, never portrayed in Britain as anything other than a defeat. Even Churchill said that 'wars are not won by evacuations,' but the success of the RN ensured that it was 'merely' a defeat, and not a catastrophe. Similarly, there was no attempt to 'degrade' the French. The British sought to keep France in the fight, and even began landing fresh troops in Cherbourg, until Weygand told them that the French army was no longer able to offer 'organized resistance.'
Oh dear. There I go again. Wasting my time explaining facts to someone who is fairly obviously too prejudiced and too ill-informed to be able to accept them.
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@mannylikestoanimate The Amritsar Massacre was the result of an officer ignoring his orders. He was immediately replaced, sent back to Britain, condemned in Parliament, and never given command again.
The Irish Famine was much more complex than you seem to think, and many better-odd Irishmen were complicit in it.
The Partition of India was brought about by Jinnah, who demanded a separate Moslem state, and threatened civil war if it did not happen.
The Iraqi Revolution was a rebellion against the League of Nations Mandate given to the British for Mesopotamia. The British sought to restore order. The alternative was to withdraw, and allow anarchy.
Boer Concentration camps were certainly a failure by the British administration, but It has been argued that "this was not a deliberately genocidal policy; rather it was the result of a disastrous lack of foresight and rank incompetence on the part of the military". Scottish historian Niall Ferguson has also argued that "Kitchener no more desired the deaths of women and children in the camps than of the wounded Dervishes after Omdurman, or of his own soldiers in the typhoid stricken hospitals of Bloemfontein."
Still, I am sure that your indoctrinators will be pleased with you for retaining your programming
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@brentinnes5151 Apart from the fact that paratroops without the prospect of relief from more heavily armed ground troops were equipped with light arms only, and no transport, in September 1940 the German paratroop arm had been reduced to, at best, a weak brigade of around 4,500 men. Moreover, by the same month, the Luftwaffe had been reduced to only around 220 operational transport aircraft.
Add to that the vulnerability of the Ju52 trying to operate in areas outside the range of fighter cover, which was basically anywhere north of the south-east corner of England, and the impossibility of paratroopers achieving anything was minimal.
The British actually recovered rather quickly after June, 1940. By September, there were 34.5 divisions available. Moreover, as early as August, a large troop convoy had been sent to North Africa to reinforce Wavell's and O'Connor's forces there.
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Just to give you a few facts about the Bengal Famine. Despite the false 'facts' excreted by indoctrinators and those with axes to grind, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
There were many famines in India before the British arrived, and after they left, but admitting that wouldn't of course, fit the agenda.
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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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Oddly, your most recent post :-
'doveton sturdee and that is how you shut down an over opinionated know it all, no rebuttal ? Really must try harder !!! '
Hasn't appeared on here, only in my inbox. However :-
As I have corrected the most obvious errors in your earlier post, how much more do you need?
Perhaps the fact that the Federal Reserve Plot theory dates from the 1990s, or the dates of the newspaper articles relating Straus' speech in favour of the Fed.? Actually from October, 1911. You could even look up Astor, Straus, & Guggenheim for yourself, and see what the facts really are.
Or the date of the newspaper article confirming that Morgan intended to be in Venice? Bruce Ismay actually used Morgan's suite instead. Do you suggest that Ismay was unaware of Morgan's vast and overwhelming plot? Incidentally, the Spring 1912 Issue of the Shipbuilder (and a few other sources) describe the prestigious parlour suite, B 52 - 56, but make no mention about it being specifically designed or altered for Morgan.
Or accounts of the actual insurance figure paid out by Lloyds?
Would they help disabuse you of your errors?
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Not entirely relevant, but the attitudes of some teachers are interesting, to say the least. A few years ago, my daughter, then in her teens, was given a project to complete about the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. I helped her with it, and was annoyed to discover that she received an average mark.
I made an appointment to see the teacher, whose response to my questioning was along the lines of 'I am a qualified & experienced teacher. What makes you think that you can possibly know more than me?'
I showed her two books which had been published about the very same subject, of which I was the author, and said ' I have a First in History. Checkmate, I suggest.'
My daughter was, of course, furious!
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Very good, but you are being rather selective with Fleet's actual evidence, aren't you?
Senator SMITH.
Are you given glasses of any kind?
Mr. FLEET.
We had none this time. We had nothing at all, only our own eyes, to look out.
Senator SMITH.
On the Oceanic you had glasses, had you not?
Mr. FLEET.
Yes, sir.
Senator SMITH.
Each of you?
Mr. FLEET.
There is one pair in the nest.
Senator SMITH.
One pair of glasses?
Mr. FLEET.
Yes, sir.
Senator SMITH.
What kind of glasses are they; strong, powerful glasses?
Mr. FLEET.
No, not always, sir.
Senator SMITH.
What were those on the Oceanic?
Mr. FLEET.
Very poor; you could see about from here to that looking-glass (indicating).
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@rdr6269 I don't recall you posting Fleet's entire testimony either. If you had, I wouldn't have commented at all, as, at least, you would have been honest, rather than simply disingenuous. Much of Fleet's testimony, by the way, is not relevant to the 'glasses' issue in any case. I merely added the section which was, as you had chosen not to do the same.
'The fact that the Oceanic did not have very good glasses when Fleet worked there does not mean the Titanic did not have very good glasses.'
Quite. Nor, of course, does it mean that she had.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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@mikefraser4513 "We won the war singlehanded" Where do you get this nonsense from? I doubt that anyone in the UK believed this, then or now. Thus your righteous indignation about 'British supremacy' or 'disservice ' to the Empire & Commonwealh is based on a false premise. Indeed, one that you have invented, presumably to justify your irritation.
Churchill was, in 1945, seen as a war leader, but not someone able to take Britain forward into the changed circumstances of the post war world. However, he was re-elected in 1951 when if became clear that the Paradise promised by the Labour Party was rather late in arriving.
As to 'Standing Alone,' in September, 1940 of 34.5 divisions in Britain, all but two were British. Immediately after Dunkirk, the only Commonewealth troops in Britain were one Canadian division, and two Australian/New Zealand brigades.
If you seriously think that around 300-400 non British pilots, serving under British command, in British squadrons and flying British aircraft, then your understanding is seriously flawed. Would you claim that Britain & the US fought against Franco because a small number of volunteers joined the International Brigades?
Certainly, the Commonwealth & Empire later played a major role in the allied defeat of hiltler, but in 1940 this amounted to little more than moral support from a distance.
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@benthekeeshond545 The German navy had four battleships, and the Italian navy seven. The German havy had six heavy cruisers, and the Italian navy seven. The Japanese navy had 12 battleships, and 18 heavy cruisers. The combined German & Italian navies were, in size, almost the same as the Japanese one. How many German & Italian large ships, by which I mean heavy cruisers and upwards, were sunk by carrier-based aircraft? Actually, one. In harbour at Taranto.
Presumably, you don't accept the Battle of the Atlantic (won largely by the escorts of the British & Canadian navies) the naval war in the Mediterranean (won largely by the British Mediterranean fleet) or the naval war in the Arctic (won by the Royal Navy) as part of the 'naval war of WW2' which you apparently view as won entirely by carriers from the US.
As I wrote, you have a Pacific-focussed view of WW2 naval warfare.
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@johnburns4017 Rather more than that. The barge trains first had to form up in long columns outside their ports. For example, the train carrying the leading elements of 26 & 34 Infantry Divisions, heading for Bexhill - Eastbourne, consisted of 165 tugs and 330 barges from Boulogne, and 25 tugs with 50 barges from Le Havre. Each tug towed two barges, one powered and one unpowered. It would take more than a day to extricate this lot from port, and form them up into any sort of coherent formation. The formation heading for Folkestone-New Romney ( 75 tugs and 150 barges from Dunkirk & 25 tugs with 50 barges from Ostend) had greater problems, given the state these ports were still in.
The Kriegsmarine estimated that it would take three days to assemble the formations, move them westward down the Channel, turn them towards the English South Coast, and push the barges to shore, using the tugs and a number of smaller, pusher, boats. That was for the first part of the first wave, consisting of about a third of each division, without most of their wheeled transport or divisional artillery. The time needed to get the whole of the nine divisions ashore, still without wheeled transport or artillery, was estimated at eleven days.
This assumes, of course, that weather conditions in the Channel would remain benign (which was, I suppose, possible) and that 'external factors' would not come into play. I believe that the 'external factors' Raeder had in mind were hundreds of dark grey ships, each flying a white ensign.
The whole lunacy is described in considerable detail in a book written some years ago by a German author, Peter Schenck.
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I don't know how many times it needs writing, but 'HITLER DIDN'T STOP THE ARMOUR ON THE AA CANAL! Von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, however, did, in order to service and rest it before beginning the next stage of the campaign. Rundstedt, like several of his colleagues, feared a repetition of the 'Miracle of the Marne.'
Moreover, as a traditional German commander, he regarded an army backed against the sea as trapped, because he simply did not appreciate the flexibility that Sea Power gave to the allies. Add to that the knowledge that the area around Dunkirk was difficult tank country, and the slower moving German infantry divisions were beginning to arrive, and the decision was a logical one. All this, by the way, is fully documented in the War Diary of Army Group A.
Hitler, of course, knew what the ground around Dunkirk was like from his experiences there in WW1, but more importantly had been assured by Goering that the elimination of the trapped Allied forces was 'A special job for the Luftwaffe.'
As to the absurd idea that Hitler let the BEF escape to encourage the British to come to terms, simply ask yourself this question :- Were the British more likely to sign a peace treaty if:
1). Their entire field army was caged in German PoW camps? or,
2). Their entire field army, together with around 120,000 French troops, had just been lifted to safety?
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@MrDaiseymay If someone has to have been present in order to comment on anything which happened in history, then that rather causes difficulties for anything prior to around 1950.
That is why people tend to refer to sources from the time, such as the document I referred to earlier, the War Diary of Army Group A, which survived the war and can be examined by anyone interested enough to discover what actually happened.
In point of fact, those who have made the effort would confirm my statement, if asked. Furthermore, I quite enjoy educating the less well informed, even if, like you, they generally get somewhat choleric as a result.
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@popaflare 'Frank Browne, S.J., who boarded at Southampton.' That is a straight lift from Wikipaedia. This claim comes from a single unsubstantiated letter in the 'National Catholic Register' of April, 2012, written by one Jennifer Roche. There is no evidence to support her claim, and, for the rest of his life, Father Browne never seems to have made any such reference.
In short, I suggest that it is simply an invention. Unless, of course you, unlike Jennifer Roche, can supply confirmatory supporting evidence?
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@DavidDieni Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Because the belief was that a pre-emptive strike would persuade the effete (as the Japanese army leaders believed) United States to agree to a negotiated peace favourable to Japan. Ironically, the head of the Japanese Navy, Yamamoto, disagreed with the assessment, but was obliged to obey the orders of the army, whose leaders were in power in Tokyo.
Hitler did fight on two, or more fronts, by the way.
Churchill did not 'starve 3 million Bengalis' by the way. As there were 2.5 million Indians under arms, fighting for the Allied cause, at the time, such an action would have been senseless, had it been, for reasons which you might try to explain, even contemplated.
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
As to the Mau-Mau uprising, perhaps you might actually read a book or two on the subject, instead of simply chanting 'British bad, everyone else good' in a tedious manner?
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which, apparently, you have been indoctrinated. As, of course, you last sentence is ample evidence.
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Isn't Reeves at least, post election, simply being honest by saying, in effect, 'We have a huge majority, and I can do whatever I want. I choose to look after the Labour core vote, and the rest of you, the ones who didn't vote for Labour, or didn't vote at all, will pay for it. Now, nurses, how much would you like 15%, 20%? Just name a figure, and I will find it.'
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@phillipvietri8786 Perhaps you didn't know that the Second Boer War was largely a guerilla war, in which remaining Boers were sustained by loyal families and farms? The British sought to remove this support system by interning (or, if you insist, concentrating) these civilians, in a similar method to that employed by the Spaniards in Cuba during the Ten Year's War.
Yes, the camps were badly managed, but this was not by deliberate policy, and yes around 24,000 people died, but an outcry in Britain led to the administration of the camps being handed over to civilian management from November, 1901, with immediate improvements in conditions.
By the way, during this period, over 14,000 British troops in South Africa died of disease.
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@dost328 No, it was not. Then, as now, in Britain, a suggestion by a Minister was simply that. The final decision was that of the Prime Minister, which is why he was, and is, so-called.
Whatever you might think, Churchill had no role in the planning of the Operation.. Nicholas Lambert's book ' The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster' is clear on the subject. He argues that Asquith ultimately decided on the Gallipoli operation, not in a meeting of the subcommittee on war policy, but in a meeting of the subcommittee on food prices.
Facing skyrocketing wheat prices, due to the war and crop failures in the Southern Hemisphere (particularly Australia), Asquith needed a way to reduce food prices to prevent political unrest. And because he was a good free market Liberal, storming Gallipoli is seen as more militarily possible than instituting food rationing.S
At the same time, the Russians were demanding an immediate loan of 100 million Pounds, to prop up the Rouble, which had become virtually worthless on international markets after their defeats in East Prussia. Asquith ultimately came to believe that Gallipoli offered the chance for a decisive victory against the Ottomans, solving the wheat problem, by reopening the granaries of Romania and Southern Russia to international markets, and restabilizing Russian government credit, all in one blow.
So yes, Churchill was responsible for pushing the operation, but it is Asquith’s government and he made the final decision. However, when both the naval operation and the amphibious landing failed, Asquith made sure that it wasChurchill who took the blame.
You could also refer to the demand from Russia for support to ease the pressure on their southern flank, in an urgent communication sent by the Russian Chief of Staff to Herbert Kitchener.
Actually, I have done my homework.
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@decimated550 Prinz Eugen's War Diary, which is readily available, claims one hit on Hood, around the area of the mainmast, which agrees with reports of survivors from Hood (Ted Briggs & Bob Tilburn) and those of observers in other British ships.
Briggs, whose action station was on the bridge, within feet of Captain Kerr and Admiral Holland, also recorded that there was a report of one hit only prior to the fatal explosion. This was the one on the boat deck, to which Holland replied 'Leave it until the ammunition is gone.' Moreover, the fire control position was atop a tripod mast immediately above Briggs' position. Do you not perhaps think that he would have noticed a 15 inch shell exploding in such close proximity?
The supposed hit in a 'room' forward is likewise, unsupported by any witness. Prinz Eugen's war diary didn't make any such claim, and neither Briggs, Tilburn, nor Dundas reported it in their evidence at the subsequent enquiry. Moreover, as they were the only survivors, as a simple matter of fact, how would anyone know?
Finally, sketches of Hood as she exploded, particularly the one by Captain Leach in Prince of Wales, as presented to the RN Courts of Inquiry, show Hood's fire control position to be intact. Look it up for yourself, it is available on the internet.
You have a choice. You can believe a single statement, perhaps added for dramatic effect, on the video, without the source being stated, or you can believe the evidence of eye-witnesses, British & German, of the event itself.
Entirely up to you.
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@fmyoung Alexander Carlisle, who was the original designer of the Olympics until retiring in 1910, testified that no pressure was applied to him to reduce the number of lifeboats. His evidence was that he expected the Board of Trade to increase the minimum number for such large ships, and thus he designed them for, but not with, 48 lifeboats. When no such regulation appeared, the 'with' number was the one applied. Neither Ismay, nor anyone else, was in a position to dictate to designers how to design their ships. Leonard Peskett, who designed the Mauretanias in 1906, included 16 lifeboats. Do you think he was 'persuaded' and by whom?
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@fmyoung Source? If it were true, and not simply the false myth that it really is, how do you explain this?
In February, 1913, American claimants filed multiple lawsuits in the District Court for the Southern District of New York. The White Star Line subsequently petitioned to limit its liability under the Limited Liability Act, which limits the liability of the ship-owner to the value of the vessel and its pending freight, and vests authority in the district court. Under that statute, a ship-owner may limit its liability only if that liability arises without the ship-owner’s “privity or knowledge.” In The Titanic, the White Star Line sought to limit its liability under the statute to $91,805.54—the value White Star had assigned to the recovered lifeboats and pending freight...
...Once a ship-owner petitions for limitation of liability, all other claims in American courts must cease or be consolidated. On June 22, 1915, the trial began with initial consolidated claims totaling $16 million. Interestingly, among the experts consulted prior to the trial was Captain William Turner of the Cunard Line, who gave testimony on April 30, 1915. Turner testified on several matters pertaining to the operation of a large ocean liner including navigation, posting of lookouts, and basic principles of buoyancy involving watertight compartments. The next day, Turner was in command of the Lusitania at it sailed out of New York Harbor and into history.
Eventually, the parties reached a formal settlement on July 28, 1916, for the amount of $664,000. The claimants agreed to end their claims in the United States and England, and they acknowledged that the White Star Line “had no ‘privity or knowledge’ of any negligence on the Titanic.”
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@fiachramaccana280 Well, I doubt I could learn much from you. I have read, in full, the minutes of both the American and British Inquiries. Dan Buckley and Berk Pickard. I have also read the account of Bernt Johannsen. You might care to read them for yourself?
Buckley, a 21 year old farm labourer from Ireland, was questioned by Senator Smith. This is part of the record :-
Senator SMITH.
Did these passengers in the steerage have any opportunity at all of getting out?
Mr. BUCKLEY.
Yes; they had.
Senator SMITH.
What opportunity did they have?
Mr. BUCKLEY.
I think they had as much chance as the first and second class passengers.
Johannsen told his local newspaper that he tried to return to his cabin from the upper deck in order to collect warm clothing, but was prevented by an 'officer.' More probably a steward, I suspect.
If you believe that of Smith then your knowledge is ludicrously lacking. Smith did not 'crash' Olympic. When she collided with HMS Hawke, she was under the command of a Solent Pilot, as required by the law. The Inquiry placed the blame for the collision on the Pilot, and Smith was completely exonerated. Smith had been a Master since 1887, and Commodore of the Line since 1904. He had taken every new White Star liner out on her maiden voyage since then, without incident. He was retiring when Titanic returned to Southampton. Moreover, he knew that an Olympic class liner, with two propellers driven by reciprocating engines and one by a turbine, was at least four knots slower than the Lusitania class, powered by four turbines, so speed was not an issue.
As experienced liner captains confirmed at the time, the usual procedure they followed at the time was not to stop. Only Californian did, when surrounded by sheet ice. Furthermore, Titanic was not steaming at full speed at the time of the collision.
There is a vast amount of factual evidence available relating to Titanic. Forming opinions based on a video or two will, inevitably, lead to errors and misunderstandings.
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@fiachramaccana280
'The Olympic and only the Olympic was blamed for the crash. And had to pay all the repairs and legal bills. If the pilot had been to blame then the pilot would have shared the burden. A Captain is always in charge of the ship. And knows its capabilities. Thats why they are the captain. So lets stop blaming the little fella for once.'
You should read up on Maritime Law. In restricted waters, a Pilot with detailed knowledge of those waters supervises the activities of the ship. In this case, it was a man named George Bowyer. He had been responsible for guiding Olympic out of Southampton on all of her previous voyages, but this time made a serious misjudgement. As a Solent Pilot, by the way, he was hardly a 'Little Fella.'
The Inquiry determined that Olympic was at fault, but that, as Smith was not in command of her at the time, White Star was not. Thus, White Star, although unable to claim from Lloyds' insurance, was not required to contribute to repairs to HMS Hawke.
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@fiachramaccana280 I thought you were the one who didn't want to blame the 'little fella?' Oh well. If you knew a little more about wireless techniques of the period, as well as about Maritime Law, you would not blame a 'reckless' wireless officer. If you are referring to Frankfurt, then, ordered by Smith, Phillips tried to reach out to Frankfurt to acknowledge his position.
However, Frankfurt's operator, W. Zippel, only answered with "Standby". It can only be speculated whether he informed his captain at this time. At 12:38 Frankfurt sent its position to Titanic and was told by Phillips to inform his bridge and come to assistance. At this time the Frankfurt was between 120 and 150 nautical miles away from the Titanic.This already made it difficult for Frankfurt's wireless operator to hear and understand Titanic's calls. According to some reports the Frankfurt's wireless signal strength indicate that she was actually closer to the Titanic (According to the wireless operator on Mount Temple and the surviving wireless operator on Titanic, Harold Bride). However, this is most likely due to a more powerful wireless transmitter installed in the Frankfurt compared to the surrounding ships.
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@fiachramaccana280 'But the blame rests with Smith speeding through an ice field. Only captains trying to break speed records do that. Normal captains like Carpathia California Mount Temple and Frankfurt move at a snails pace or stop altogether.'
Don't be a fool. The Olympic class were at least four knots slower than the Lusitanias. No-one was trying to break any 'speed record.' At the time of the sinking, Titanic wasn't steaming at her full speed.
By the way, Carpathia was, by Atlantic liner standards, an oldish ship. She had made her maiden voyage in 1903. She was a twin screw ship, with an operational service speed of 15 knots. After receiving Titanic's distress call, Captain Rostron flogged the old lady's engines in order to get her to cover the 58 nautical miles between her position and Titanic's in 3.5 hours.
In other words, an average speed of 16.5 knots.
Frankfurt was an older ship, which had made her first voyage in 1900. Like Carpathia, she was a twin screw vessel, but with a service speed of 12 knots. She covered the distance at an average speed of 13.5 knots, but, obviously, arrived well after Carpathia.
Please don't post lies in an attempt to conceal your ignorance. Especially when you insult the memories of gallant British and German seamen who did everything in their power to bring aid to fellow mariners in peril.
Oh, and by the way, CQD was the accepted distress signal at the time. SOS had been used for the first time less than three years earlier.
You are clearly a malevolent ignoramus, and I am done with you.
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@waynepatterson5843 Oh, well, Guderian then :-
'Rommel's sad experiences in Africa had so convinced him of the overwhelming nature of Allied air supremacy that he believed there could be no question of ever moving large formations of troops again. He did not even think that it would be possible to transfer panzer or panzergrenadier divisions by night.'
'It is nevertheless a matter of considerable regret that Rommel failed to understand the need for possessing mobile reserves. A large-scale land operation, which in view of our hopeless inferiority on the sea and in the air offered us the only chance of success, he held to be impossible and he therefore neither wanted nor tried to organize one. Furthermore, at least at the time of my visit, Rommel had made up his mind where the Allies would land. He assured me several times that the English and American landings would take place in the coastal area north of the mouth of the Somme; he ruled out all alternative landing-places with the argument that for such a difficult and large-scale sea crossing the enemy, for supply reasons alone, must seize a beachhead as close as possible to his principal ports of embarkation. A further reason was the greater air-support that the enemy could give to a landing north of the Somme. On this subject, too, he was at that time quite impervious to argument.'
I did try to find out Manstein's views, but Manstein didn't seem to think Rommel important enough even to mention in his memoirs.
The rest of your post doesn't justify your apparent insistence that Rommel was in any way relevant to el Guettar. He had direct command of 10 Panzer, as I have said, for a few days at most, and his book on infantry tactics was hardly relevant to the development of any sort of Panzer Doctrine. Do you really think that 10 Panzer was in any way influenced by him, or that von Arnim slavishly tried to follow some sort of imaginary plan dreamed up by Rommel for el Guettar. Perhaps you do, or at least feel the need to convince yourself. If so, simply parroting a whole list of dates and formations really isn't either effective or credible.
As to 10 Panzer, do you not perhaps consider that, as part of Army Group Centre in Russia between June 1941 & April, 1942, it might possibly have developed some combat skills which were not those imbued in it by Rommel during the short period during which he indirectly commanded it, although as part of a larger force?
Still, if you have an odd need to cling to a belief that, in some mysterious manner, Patton defeated the ghostly spirit of the Desert Fox, fair enough.
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@rosesprog1722 Surprising how easy it is to take a moral view 100 years after the event. The mothers, children, & old people suffered because Hindenburg, by then de facto dictator of Germany, reserved what food supplies there were largely for the military. The option was there to approach the allies at any time for a negotiated peace, possibly using the neutral United States as a mediator, once it became clear that Germany and her increasingly disaffected allies could not possibly win, but this path was not seriously pursued. In the end, it only happened because Germany was finally on the verge of a collapse into total anarchy.
I wonder if you would have taken quite such a moral view if a member of your family had been killed at Verdun, the Somme, or Passchendaele? The general view on the allied side at the time seems to have been 'get the war done, whatever it takes.'
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As early as December, 1938, a senior marine architect in the Kriegsmarine's naval ordnance department published a report 'The Feasibility of the Z Plan' demonstrating the impossibility of the whole thing. Whoever produced the Plan seems to have assumed that the whole of German industry, in terms of resources, raw materials, and production capacity, would be devoted solely to warship production for around ten years. So, there would be no expansion of the army or air force, therefore no successful campaign in the west, no French bases from which to operate and, most significant of all where adolf was concerned, no possibility whatsoever of a campaign in the east.
The whole thing, start to finish, was nothing more than fantasy.
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What influence did Churchill have? He was not in government between 1929 & September, 1939. If Germany didn't want war, wasn't invading Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, & Belgium, all without any declarations of war, an odd way of demonstrating peaceful intentions?
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Actually, the raids were carried out at the request of the Soviet Union, in order to aid the Soviet advance. Perhaps you remember that Germany broke her non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in June 1941, and attacked without warning?
Chemnitz. Had the war really ended by 5/6 March, 1945?
Pforzheim. Had the war really ended by 23 March, 1945?
Perhaps, herr obergruppenfuhrer, you might consider that, when Germany sent aircraft, troops, tanks (and einsatzgruppen) into a number of neutral countries, without warning, then those countries, and their allies, might just possibly show a degree of annoyance?
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@franswevers5039 Indeed, the Luftwaffe attacked small coasters and colliers. The CE & CW convoys from Southend to St. Helens Roads and return. There were 531 convoys totalling 9097 ships. Losses, to all types of attack, were 28 vessels in convoy or straggling.
Of every coastal convoy, a total of 3584 convoys and 104792 individual voyages, losses were 188. Draw your own conclusion as to how effective these attacks were.
The Royal Navy had no intention, and no need, to use the larger capital ships, or even the heavy cruisers, of the Home Fleet, as there was no need, and it would be akin to use field guns to go duck shooting. The Home Fleet was based at Scapa and Rosyth, in order to be able to intercept the (actually non existent) German Fleet should it sortie. Oh, and in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank no British warship larger than a light cruiser. The decks of British capital ships were armoured to resist shells rather heavier than the bombs of the small German bombers.
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@TheIceman567 You really are struggling. The Colonial Marines were not bought by the British, but freed by the British. The payment was to end political unrest between the US & Britain.
'Humanitarian efforts mean you don’t buy people.' No. Actually, the efforts ensured that the Marines were not re-enslaved or executed. As I said, which was preferable, making a payment to secure the freedom of these men, or fighting a bloody war to achieve a similar result?
Perhaps you didn't know that India under the Raj was a network of independent princely states, both Hindu & Moslem. British management was the work of a tiny number of civil servants? Sorry, no 'perhaps'about it, obviously.
The settlement of the Colonial Marine affair was in 1823, by the way. Hence the reference to 40 years.
'I mean after all it was the British that introduced slavery to North America along with Spain and France.' I don't recall the newly independent United States rushing to abolish it after independence. How does the Declaration of Independence read? 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.' Written by slave owners, and obviously not applied to their slaves. Ironic that, I suggest.
Still, I am sure you must be very proud that, after the abolition of slavery by the British Empire in 1833, it only took the United States around 30 years to do the same.
'But since Britain support the Confederacy and was looking for ways to join their cause from 1861-63 especially after the Trent Affair.' Actually, the British did not support the Confederacy. Haven't you heard of the statue of Lincoln in, appropriately, Lincoln Square in Manchester? Or the letter from Lincoln? As I am sure you haven't, here it is, in full. The original is in Manchester's City Archives.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 19, 1863.
To the Working-men of Manchester:
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the address and resolutions which you sent me on the eve of the new year. When I came, on the 4th of March, 1861, through a free and constitutional election to preside in the Government of the United States, the country was found at the verge of civil war. Whatever might have been the cause, or whosesoever the fault, one duty, paramount to all others, was_ before me, namely, to maintain and preserve at once the Constitution and the integrity of the Federal Republic. A conscientious purpose to perform this duty is the key to all the measures of administration which have been and to all which will hereafter be pursued. Under our frame of government and my official oath, I could not depart from this purpose if I would. It is not always in the power of governments to enlarge or restrict the scope of moral results which follow the policies that they may deem it necessary for the public safety from time to time to adopt.
I have understood well that the duty of self-preservation rests solely with the American people; but I have at the same time been aware that favor or disfavor of foreign nations might have a material influence in enlarging or prolonging the struggle with disloyal men in which the country is engaged. A fair examination of history has served to authorize a belief that the past actions and influences of the United States were generally regarded as having been beneficial toward mankind. I have, therefore, reckoned upon the forbearance of nations. Circumstances -to some of which you kindly allude - induce me especially to expect that if justice and good faith should be practised by the United States, they would encounter no hostile influence on the part of Great Britain. It is now a pleasant duty to acknowledge the demonstration you have given of your desire that a spirit of amity and peace toward this country may prevail in the councils of your Queen, who is respected and esteemed in your own country only more than she is by the kindred nation which has its home on this side of the Atlantic.
I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the working-men of Manchester, and in all Europe, are called to endure in this crisis. It has been often and studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow this government, which was built upon the foundation of human rights, and to substitute for it one which should rest exclusively on the basis of human slavery, was likely to obtain the favor of Europe. Through the action of our disloyal citizens, the working- men of Europe have been subjected to severe trials, for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under the circumstances, I cannot but regard your decisive utterances upon the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and re-inspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth, and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity, and freedom. I do not doubt that the sentiments you have expressed will be sustained by your great nation; and, on the other hand, I have no hesitation in assuring you that they will excite admiration, esteem, and the most reciprocal feelings of friendship among the American people. I hail this interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that whatever else may happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exist between the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Submitted by Capt. Gary Holman, Federal Staff
You seem to be getting increasingly annoyed about me telling you the accurate meaning of some words in the US National Anthem. Take it easy, as the effect on your blood pressure is becoming increasingly apparent.
I won't by the way, respond further, as I have better things to do than educate you, mon vieux.
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@TheIceman567 'Bought freedom? Rather better than being returned to slavery, as would have happened had they been handed back to the US. Agreed, the US could not force Britain to do anything, but both the US & Britain had agreed to the arbitration of the Tsar. Being a nation who believed in the rule of law, the British had two options. Either return the Marines to a country who would either re-enslave them or perhaps even execute them, or pay a sum to ensure their freedom & safety. The British took the humaniterian option.
I didn't say India was independent. I said that the Princely States had a considerable degree of autonomy. Which they did, indisputably.
'It was the people working in a factory that refused to work with southern cotton. It wasn’t the British government.' Tell me, then, when the British government actively supported the Confederacy. There was a degree of sympathy for the concept of States' Rights in Britain, but it was in a tiny minority compared to the overwhelming support for the North. Just as well, really. Can you imagine what would have happened had a pro-Confederacy British government sent the Royal Navy to deal with the Union Blockade?
One mistake I will freely admit. It was an equally ill-informed person who posted his interpretation of the US National Anthem., not you. I apologise for that, but not for correcting your subsequent errors.
'And 40 years? In 1823 the British empire still had slavery going on lol.' But the question was what was the fate of the Colonial Marines, if you can remember that. The Tsar's ruling was issued in 1823. Look it up.
Sorry, but no more of this nonsense. Be happy in your beliefs, however false.
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@Tomb-Wraith 'No. Red is, and has always been, the traditional standard for distress. Not white.' Not in 1912 it wasn't. Look up any book about the methods of distress signalling at sea in 1912. White flares were used because they were visible from a greater distance. You will not find any reference to the idea that distress flares must be red. Furthermore, you seem to be determined to ignore the anxieties of Lord's own crew.
Why would Lord have been vilified had he not got there in time? Rostron didn't get there in time either, and was saluted worldwide as a hero.
'She could hold 54 passengers.' Wrong. She had CABINS for 54 passengers. Californian was twice as big as the V & W destroyers which took part in rhe Dunkirk evacuation, and had much greater on board space that a warship. Many of those destroyers brought over 800 troops back from Dunkirk on each of several trips. Moreover, Californian could have expected other ships, such as Carpathia, to arrive in two or three hours, which could them take off the survivors from her.
' I don't really care who supported him.' Apart from you, you would struggle to find anyone who comes into that category, then or now.
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@shb7772000if Why were they vulnerable? Didn't you notice the bit in my post where I pointed out that the Luftwaffe, in the whole of the war, sank no British warship larger than a light cruiser?
The reality is that, when dealing with large numbers of small, towed, barges, the most suitable warships are fast, agile ones able to bring large numbers of quick-firing guns to bear. In this case, the British were using ships armed with 6 inch, 4.7 inch, 4 inch, and 3 inch guns, all of which were perfectly capable of sinking small coasters, tugs, and converted barges in large numbers. The Home Fleet itself was based in Rosyth, from where it could counter any move by German heavy ships either to support an invasion, or to break out on an Atlantic raid.
To send capital ships against barges would have been akin, as an American friend of mine once remarked, to 'taking tanks on a duck shoot.'
Surely, this is obvious?
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@shb7772000if What do you think happened to British capital ships in the Mediterranean, where they were frequently under heavy air attack from Italian & German aircraft, usually with little or no air support of their own? How many were sunk by these air attacks? The same comment applies to British capital ships which operated in the Arctic. You do appreciate that British capital ships of WW2 were designed to withstand plunging fire from 15 inch AP shells. A typical such shell weighed around 800kgs. The best bomb the Luftwaffe had in 1940 was 500kgs.
Certainly, attacks by US naval aircraft in the Pacific were more successful, largely because they, like the British Fleet Air Arm, were naval fliers trained in the techniques and skills required to attack ships. By contrast, the Luftwaffe of 1940 had been trained as a tactical air force, to operate in support of ground forces. They had had no training at all in operations against warships, hence their failure at Dunkirk. Moreover, unlike the Japanese, the Luftwaffe had no torpedo aircraft at all until 1942.
Rommel in North Africa is not relevant. Firstly, Italian troops were already there, and he had friendly ports in which to disembark. He was never in a position where he was required to make an assault landing. Sealion would require an assault landing without assault ships with which to carry it out, in the face of a vast number of opposing warships, and land defences which, by September, had been largely restored.
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@shb7772000if October 10, 1940. HMS Revenge with destroyer escorts shelled the barge concentrations at Cherbourg. Revenge fired 120 high explosive 15 inch shells, supported by 801 4.7 inch shells from her escorts. Whilst returning to port, the heavy German gun batteries fired at her, but missed. In point of fact, by the end of August there were over 150 medium, heavy, and super heavy German batteries on the French coast, which began firing at British coastal convoys from 12 August. Between August & December, 1940, some 1880 rounds were fired at these convoys, often involving as many as 200 rounds. Number of hits? NONE. In fact, the batteries, during the whole of the war, achieved precisely no hits on any convoy. So, maybe German land artillery COULDN'T hit ships in the Channel.
Other than that, why exactly should British ships not go into the Channel? There was no actual prohibition, rather their presence there would have served no purpose, unless heavy German ships did the same. The right place for British capital ships in Home Waters was Rosyth, and later Scapa Flow, from where they could intercept a potential German sortie into the Atlantic. Incidentally, the Battleship Queen Elizabeth was in Portsmouth until December, 1940, undergoing modernisation. A sitting duck, perhaps? Not really. During the course of numerous Luftwaffe raids, she received no hits.
The fact that the Channel is not as wide as the Mediterranean is irrelevant, as Luftwaffe & Italian aircraft in the Med. had ample range to reach British ships. Moreover, in the Med. the British, unless they had a fleet carrier available, had no air support at all.
Indeed, the Japanese sank two British capital ships. WITH TORPEDO BOMBERS, a weapon not available to the Luftwaffe until 1942.
By the way, what relevance has any of this to Sealion. I have already told you that capital ships played little or no part in the Admiralty's anti-invasion dispositions, for blindingly obvious reasons.
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@shb7772000if Sinking the cruisers and destroyers off Crete during the evacuation is a different issue. Firstly, it was nine months later, during which time the Luftwaffe had had time to get the training in anti-shipping operations which they had lacked in September, 1940, and secondly, during the assault phase of the Crete landings, the axis sent two troop convoys to reinforce the paratroop landings. One convoy, for Maleme, was annihilated by a RN squadron, and the other one, for Heraklion, turned back. The RN actually prevented any seaborne landing.
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@ClannCholmain Actually, in WW2, France suffered 217,000 military deaths, from a population of 42,000,000. Or 5.1%. I haven't, by the way, included the 38,000 French troops killed whilst serving in the German army.
If you seriously think that 3.25 million French military personnel were killed or wounded in WW2, then you are really not in a position to accuse anyone else of 'making stuff up'.
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@stewartmckay9830 Really, the lack of equipment didn't matter, because in 1940 a fully equipped British army was not capable of defeating the Germans in the field. However, to bring this about the Germans needed to be able not only to land a large invasion force in England, but also to steadily reinforce it and re-supply it, something they were never even remotely capable of doing.
Ironically, and largely lost in the 1940 myth, Churchill was well aware of this, otherwise he would never have ordered the despatch of the Apology convoy on 22 August. This involved sending three Armoured Regiments, with 154 tanks, 48 anti-tank guns, 48 field guns, and 20 anti-aircraft guns, to North Africa to reinforce the Western Desert Force. The tanks included half of the total number of Matilda II Infantry Tanks (the most battleworthy British tank at that time) then available in the UK. This happened three weeks before 15 September, 1940, the date the Battle of Britain legend insists was the crucial day.
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@stewartmckay9830 Actually, the Singapore guns didn't 'face the ocean.' Certainly, their main purpose was to prevent an attack from the sea, but most of them were capable of 360 degree traverse. They could, and did, fire inland. The problem with them was that, as they were intended to engage warships, most of their ammunition was AP, not HE.
Incidentally, I am not trying to suggest that there was any 'heroic stand' in 1940. There was no need for one, because a navyless Germany, however strongly supplied with troops and aircraft, was never able to cross the Channel in the face of the largest navy on earth.
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@stewartmckay9830 No, of course the manner in which successive governments have systematically starved our armed forces of resources, and in particular reduced the Navy to a tiny local defence force saddled with two white elephant carriers which will forever lack any meaningful air groups because the F35cs belong to the RAF, not the Navy, is unacceptable, but what has that to do with Operation Sealion?
The reality is that the British expected to be the junior partners of the French on land, but would impose the same blockade on Germany at sea as they had in WW1, whilst the French navy would contribute to operations in the Mediterranean. Again, as in 1914-1918, the British would gradually build up their land forces on the Western Front. The collapse of France was totally unexpected.
However, Britain was never as close to defeat as has been suggested. There was simply no way that the Germans could ever land any significant ground forces on the UK, let alone find any means of re-supplying them. The RN was still the largest navy in the world, and by September, 1940, had already achieved a number of successes over the Kriegsmarine, the most important being the Battles of Narvik, which destroyed 50% of the total German destroyer force.
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@stefanschnabel2769 'Why is this so difficult to understand?' I really don't know. Perhaps you have cognitive difficulties, or perhaps you simply have some perverse reason or other for not accepting the obvious?
You seem to know little about gunnery, either. The fact that a ship could fire a shell for 20 miles doesn't mean that it could hit anything at 20 miles. The longest known hit by a German 11 inch gun was on HMS Glorious, at a range of 26,000 yards, or 13 nautical miles. Graf Spee, at the River Plate action, opened fire at a range of 19,500 metres, or about 10.5 nautical miles. Don't you know anything?
The Adniralty honoured Captain Fegan because he sacrificed himself, his crew, and his ship, in defence of the convoy he was escorting. The Victoria Cross, unlike some other medals, is not awarded on a whim.
Oh, and 22 minutes during which Admiral Scheer was engaging Jervis Bay, was 22 minutes when she was unable to fire on other ships in the convoy, which were scattering in diverse directions in fading light. Hence, Admiral Scheer's failure to achieve much against the convoy. Good luck trying to find any naval historian or writer who agrees with you.
Either you are very young, very stupid, or very prejudiced. Whichever it is, I am done with you and your crass comments.
Do not expect any further responses to your inane remarks.
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Tirpitz was not in commission, Scharnhorst & Gneisenau were both damaged & in Brest, Hipper was undergoing an extended refit in Kiel (until November), Lutzow/Deutschland had been badly damaged by HMS Spearfish in April, 1940, and major repairs were not completed until June 1941, after which trials were necessary, and Scheer had just completed a raiding voyage which had begun in October, 1940, and was refitting until July/August, 1941.
U-Boats were likely, with surface speeds not much more than half those of Bismarck & Prinz Eugen, to have been little more than a hindrance to Lutjens.
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@Jimmydb I won't waste my time arguing with you. Tirpitz was not declared operational until January, 1942. You do know the difference between a ship being commisioned and one becoming operational I hope.
USS Washington , for example. Commissioned on 15 May, 1941. Began builder's sea trials in August 1941, but was still working up in February, 1942, and did not join TF 39 until 26 March, 1942.
Or Bismarck herself.. Commissioned 24 August, 1940. Began sea trials on 15 September, 1940, Returned to Hamburg to complete fitting out on 9 December, 1940. She then completed final addition work in January, 1941, before exercising with Prinz Eugen until early May, 1941.
Every book ever written on the subject will confirm the above. If you lack the ability to understand these facts, then that is your problem, not mine.
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@JackNiles-hc8yz I assume by that flippant comment you don't actually know.
When Admiral Adolphus Andrews, commander of the US Eastern Sea Frontier begged King for additional resources, and was refused, surely it was clear that something was seriously wrong.
At the start of the second Happy Time, to defend the entire US Easr Coast, Andrews had seven Coast Guard cutters, four converted yachts, three 1919-vintage patrol boats, two gunboats dating back to 1905, and four wooden submarine chasers. Fortunately, from late April, the Roya and Royal Canadian Navies sent some of their own escorts from their Mid Ocean Escort Force to protect convoys, after heavy losses, including 95 tankers (73 of which were US registered) were lost, and ihis was having a seriously detrimental effect both on oil supplies to Canada & Britain, and US attempts to strengthen their Fleet Train in the Pacific.
From your posts, it seems that you didn't know any of this. Perhaps you might read a book or two? I could recommend some.
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@dusfitz Bismarck was launched in February, 1939, commissioned in August, 1940, and completed her Baltic sea trials in May, 1941. She was sunk on 27 May, 1941. Why not simply look it up?
I agree that there was a training cruiser sunk in Truk in 1944. She was crippled by aiecraft from YORKTOWN, INTREPID, BUNKER HILL, & COWPENS. Then apparently finished off by USS Iowa.
Sinking a crippled training ship is hardly an engagement to rank with Surigao Strait, I suggest. Any destroyer or light cruiser would have been more than adequate.
Now, if you can find any major sea battle involving any Iowa, thewn tell me about it.
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The Japanese sank Repulse & Prince of Wales with hgh performance torpedo bombers, flown by highly trained crews. In 1940, the Germans had no such aircraft, not acquiring any until mid 1942, and nor did they have pilots experienced in operations against shipping. If they had had such crews, perhaps they might not have fared so badly at Dunkirk?
Oh, what dummy invasion? The Germans only just managed to scrape together enough barges to tow their barges across as it was. By the way, in the whole of WW2 the Luftwaffe managed to sink 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser. As the RN in September 1940 had around 70 destroyers and light cruisers within 5 hours steaming of the Straits, supported by around 500 smaller warships, I suggest that Oskar Dinort & Wolfram von Richtoven, senior Luftwaffe commanders who told their superiors that the Luftwaffe would not be able to protect Sealion, might have known more about the subject than you do.
By the way, cyanide has a molecular weight of 27, air molecules one of 31. Cyanade gas disperses too quickly to have been of use as a battlefield weapon.
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@Boppy-B-B Actually, the Tobruk garrison was originally 9th Australian Division, supported by (British) 3rd Armoured Brigade. The only Indian troops seem to have been a small contingent from the 18 Indian Cavalry Regiment, attached to 3rd Armoured Brigade.
From mid August, the Australians were lifted out by the Royal Navy, and replaced by the Polish Carpathian Brigade, 70th (British) Infantry Division, & 4th Royal Tank Regiment, who were eventually relieved during Operation Crusader.
When Tobruk fell in June, 1942, the defences had been allowed to fall into disrepair, and 2nd South African Division could not hold them.
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@ArjayMartin 'I'm not a historian though.' Anyone reading your posts would, I am sure, have deduced that some time ago.
Himmler flew to the UK to try to broker peace? Good heavens, I never knew that. Moreover, neither did the British!
The rest of your post is irrelevant gibberish, except for your reference to David Irving. He was never, as you claim, ' the darling of the industry,' He was briefly regarded as something as an expert on German military archives, but was never seen as anything more than a maverick, with excessively favourable opinions about anything German.
Still, as you aren't an historian, you wouldn't know that, of course.
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@ArjayMartin Seriously, if you must post large chunks from wikipedia, at least take the reference numbers to other books out! Have you read Buchanan? I did, around ten years ago. The most notable thing about him is his failure to refer to any primary sources, and to use what I will generously refer to as 'half truths.'
As to this ' In Buchanan's view, the "final offer" made by the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to the British Ambassador Sir Neville Henderson on the night of August 30, 1939 was not a ploy, as many historians argued, but a genuine German offer to avoid the war.' There was a much easier way to have avoided the Anglo-French declaration of war on 3 September, 1939, which was for Germany not to have invaded Poland on 1 September, 1939. Have you not considered that?
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@Ocrilat Glorious wasn't intended to be the single carrier finally intended for Operation Paul. The much reduced operation was to have involved 810 & 820 Squadrons, FAA, both of which were part of Ark Royal's air group. Moreover, on the morning of 8 June, Ark Royal was off Northern Norway, and Pound, the First Sea Lord, had already issued orders for Ark Royal To carry out the operation. Glorious had already, at 0253 on 8 June, sailed for Scapa Flow.
The reason for Glorious rushing back to Scapa relates to the conflict between her Captain & her Commander (Air) J.B. Heath. d'Oyly Hughes had received orders to carry out an operation in support of the army. He had given orders to Heath, who had refused to carry them out, stating that the orders did not represent a proper use of naval aircraft. Whatever the rights and wrongs (and I personally do not believe that Heath had any right to refuse legitimate orders from a senior officer), it seems clear that d'Oyly Hughes took a number of strange decisions. He should not have requested permission to leave ahead of the main evacuation convoy (frankly, the Flag Officer Aircraft Carriers should not have given it anyway) but, having been released, he should have maintained a state of alert aboard Glorious, and have had aircraft in the air maintaining patrols around the ship or, at the very least, had aircraft armed and ready on deck at immediate readiness.
Squadron Leader Cross, who had previously landed a number of RAF Hurricanes aboard Glorious in an attempt to avoid destroying them, and who was one of the few survivors, later commented that there was an 'end of term' atmosphere aboard the carrier, because Glorious was widely believed to be in an area where she was in no danger.
The fuel reference does not hold water. If Glorious was short, she should have been kept with the evacuation convoy, which would have been steaming at a much more economical speed, as Churchill, when this claim was put forward, was one of the first to point out.
I fear that the truth is that d'Oyly Hughes, though undoubtedly personally brave, was totally unsuited for command of a carrier. He would probably have been outstanding on the bridge of a light cruiser in the Mediterranean, but the appointment to Glorious was a serious misjudgment by the Admiralty, especially since almost all his previous command experience had been within the submarine service. The author of 'The War at Sea,' Captain Stephen Roskill, subsequently questioned Hughes' mental state.
Despite all the above, however, I really cannot believe that there was any 'Operation Paul' cover-up involving Glorious.
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@Ocrilat I never said that Glorious was not part of the original plan. I said that the original plan included three carriers, which were Ark Royal, Glorious, and Furious, using 78 Swordfish. On 6 June, at a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Pound described the original as 'now impracticable' but went ahead with a much reduced version, using aircraft already available, from Ark Royal.
All this is in Captain Hore's article, and the very fact that he makes this clear is in itself the most obvious refutation of the Glorious/Paul cover-up nonsense. Why, when the possible inclusion of Glorious in the operation had been discounted on the morning of 6 June, would she sail for Scapa Flow two days later to collect extra Swordfish? The only squadrons actually nominated were 810 & 820, and both of these were already aboard Ark Royal.
The suggestion that Glorious was expendable is nonsense by the way, unless you can present supporting evidence. The only carrier still in the area on 8 June was Ark Royal, protected by the Royal Navy units assembling the final evacuation fleet. If Glorious had not, unwisely, been given permission to proceed, she would have had similar protection. You do understand, by the way, that the 'modifications' to the Swordfish were minor, I suppose? Swordfish were designed to carry additional fuel tanks, because they were Fleet TSR aircraft. The fitment of these tanks to Ark's Swordfish was a simple task. Ark also carried the necessary mines, and no particular special training was required for the crews to deploy them. You seem to think that what would have been a fairly simple operation by Ark's experienced crews was a complex one. It really wasn't.
Certainly, the Fuel Shortage explanation for Glorious' loss is improbable, but probably far less improbable than the idea that she, by 8 June, was still involved in Operation Paul. As to your claim that I argued that Captain Hore's article refutes the theory when it does no such thing, how much more definite evidence for the fact that Glorious was no longer part of Operation Paul do you need than the copy of the first page of the Operation Order, signed by Tom Phillips, dated 8 June and addressed to HMS Ark Royal & the Flag Officer Aircraft Carriers do you need?
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@Ocrilat The fact is that d'Oyly Hughes did indeed seek to get back to Scapa Flow as quickly as possible in order to have Heath court-martialled. There is even the evidence of Glorious' signal to Admiral Wells, aboard Ark Royal, witnessed by HMS Diana. The request was for permission to part company and proceed ahead to Scapa Flow for the purpose of making preparations for impending courts-martial. Not a cover story, but a fact for which there were numerous witnesses. There was considerable personal antipathy between d'Oyly Hughes and Heath, but whether this can be taken as evidence of any mental imbalance is not for me to say. Certainly, Glorious was not a happy ship in May-June, 1940.
The probability is that the Admiralty were well aware that the appointment of d'Oyly-Hughes to Glorious had been a mistake, but were not willing to confess it in the circumstances which existed in the summer of 1940.
I have read Barker's arguments and much of his case seems to depend upon his conviction that numerous individuals were drawn into a conspiratorial web, and that certain documents do not mean what they say. The beauty of taking such an approach is that, when convincing evidence is produced to contradict a theory, it can easily be discounted because the source of the evidence must have either been compromised, or the documents doctored. At what point, I wonder, was Captain Peter Hore drawn into this devious web of deceit, when he wrote his account of Operation Paul?
Finally, even if d'Oyly-Hughes had been rushing back to Scapa to collect Swordfish for Operation Paul, does that really excuse him from having no air patrols up, half Glorious' boilers not in service, and no lookouts up top?
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@tjroelsma The problem with these steps is that they are invented. Moreover, they were only invented when Gardiner wrote his book in the 1990s.
Smith, for example, did alter to a more southerly course, and Titanic was never ar full speed. Master Mariners and Liner Captains who gave evidence at the British Inquiry did not question nor criticise his decisions.
The actions of Captain Lord are certainly difficult to explain, but were hardly due to anyone connected with Titanic.
Certainly, a number of passengers did cancel their bookings for Titanic. Just as a similar number had cancelled for Olympic in 1911.
The supposed patch on the ship much touted by enthusisasts in well forward of the affected bunker, and well above the waterline. The evidence give by stoker survivors was that the bunker fire, caused by smouldering coal, had been extinguished around 24 hours befor the collision, and the only damage was to paintwork inside the affected bunker.
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What inspires you to say that HMS Jervis Bay 'failed'?
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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@johnlenin830 It appears that many of your earlier posts are no longer on the thread. Either they have vanished, as does sometimes happen, or they have been deleted, which I am not alleging.
As I recall from my deleted posts:
1). 'The United States declared war on Germany on december 11, 1941, but the second front in Europe was opened only in the summer of 1944.' Define 'Second Front.' A quarter of a million axis troops surrendered to the Western Allies in Tunisia, where the US had being fighting since November, 1942. Subsequently, the Western Allies fought a long campaign in Italy from early July, 1943. The US Army Air Force had been in action against German forces from July, 1942, and the Navy before that.
2). 'The USSR did not "supply" Germany, but received from it what was necessary for the future war.' Untrue. You obviously hadn't heard of the 1940 German-Soviet Commercial Agreement.
3). 'The United States declared war on Germany on December 11, 1941.' Misleading, in that you failed to point out that this was a response, not a choice. The US neither expected the German declaration, nor was prepared for it. Your incomplete statement, at the very least, implies that the US had been preparing such an act for some time, when this was manifestly not the case.
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This wouldn't be mentioned in the video, because it is total invention on Gardiner's part. Had the stern of Olympic been displaced by 45 degrees, how was it that she returned to Southampton under her own power, and how was it that there were no photographs of this remarkable damage, or even accounts of it in reports or newspapers, at the time?
Perhaps you might explain the rationale behind the suggestion that the Admiralty would order a Royal Navy captain to ram one of the great liners, which was carrying over 2,000 passengers and crew, including numerous prominent Americans, to see if it sank? Gardiner was inventing things to sell his book. What is your excuse?
HMS Hawke was, by the way, where she was because she had just completed a short refit in Portsmouth, and was about to undertake sea trials. As Star Trek transporter technology was not around in 1911. in order to leave Portsmouth she was obliged to use the Solent. She had, therefore, every right to be where she was.
Commander Blunt, as both Robin Gardiner & you ought to have known, was cleared of any responsibility for the collision as part of the findings of the Hearing following the incident. He was in the zone which made him eligible for promotion to Captain, and received his appointment to HMS Cressy in January, 1912. After, the verdict of the Hearing had been handed down.
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@R.C.A.F.V.R. operation Aerial certainly deserves to be better known than it is. It involved evacuations from Cherbourg & St. Malo by the RN's Portmouth Command, and from a number of other ports on the French West Coast, as far south as Bayonne & St. Jean de Luz, by Plymouth Command. By the time it concluded, on 25 June, 191870 troops had been lifted, together with 360 artillery pieces, 2292 vehicles, & 1800 tons of stores.
The operation, because of the distances involved, required the use of large freighters and liners, and on 17 June the liner Lancastria was sunk by bombing, with losses possibly as high as 5000. The disaster was not disclosed at the time, and is still not widely known today.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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@ghsense2626 Actually, in 1939 the RN had as more carriers than the US Navy. Other than that, the nearest carrier which might potentially have been hostile was 13,000 miles away.
How did the British struggle with a few German ships? Graf Spee was sunk on its first voyage, Bismarck was sunk on its first voyage, Deutschland & Admiral Scheer made one raiding voyage each, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were both damaged off Norway, made one raiding mission together, then fled through the Channel. Gneisenau never appeared again, Scharnhorst was sunk the next time she appeared, and Tirpitz remained a Fleet in Being for the whole of her career. Half of the total German destroyer force was destroyed in two battles in Norway, and the Germans also lost three of their eight cruisers there, and had a fourth permanently crippled.
Oh, and the Royal & Royal Canadian Navies won the Battle against the U Boats.
You seem to see naval warfare in WW2 solely in terms of the Pacific. Have you not noticed how, in the West, carriers were an element within a fleet, not the heart of it?
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@samstewart4807 Sorry, but this information has been widely known for many years, I certainly knew all about the problems as far back as my university days, although my particular field of expertise was and is Operation Dynamo & Operation Sealion. Specialist professional publications on naval history have covered most aspects of the battle in full detail for many years.
The critical factor was the destruction of the oil purification plant, without which diesel could not be processed for her engines. The ship, by the way, was partially broken up in 1942-3, but parts are still visible as the water depth is only 36 feet. Oddly enough, salvage rights were purchased by the British, as they wished to inspect Spee's gunnery directors.
In short, no one is being lied to, and no one ever was, except of course the command staff of the Spee herself, who were fooled into believing that Ark Royal and Renown were waiting for her, just over the horizon, when in fact they were nowhere near. Given the problems with Spee's fuel system, and her shortage of ammunition, I suspect that this didn't affect the German decision to scuttle in any case.
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@samstewart4807 Which books have you been reading? Eric Grove makes clear in his account of the battle the importance of the hit which disabled the fuel purification system, as well as the hit which caused a large hole in Spee's bows, rendering her unfit for a long ocean voyage and making her incapable of full speed. Even before the battle, the distance she had covered since August had reduced her maximum speed to 24 knots, from the 28 she had achieved on her trials.
He also refers to the numerous tactical errors made by Langsdorff. Similarly, Correlli Barnett is sharply critical of the manner in which Spee shifted target with foolish regularity. even subsequent reports from Spee's officers were critical of the tactics he employed, even going so far as to claim that the strain of months at sea had weakened his will to fight. Barnett sums up the two opposing commanders as follows :- 'Behind Harwood stood four centuries of victory in close quarters attack; behind Langsdorff a naval tradition barely 40 years old and, with brief & rare exceptions, one of raiding & evading and ultimately of defeat.' The first mistake, of course, was to engage in the first place. Spee spotted Harwood's squadron before she was herself spotted, and Langsdorff's orders from his Admiralty were to avoid action wherever possible.
I find it odd that you claim me to be the only person you have encountered who is critical of Langsdorff's tactics. I, on the other hand, have yet to find anyone with any knowledge who is NOT critical of him. The failure not to finish off the battered Exeter (which would have left Harwood with the problem of what to do about her survivors), and the insistence of shifting the target for Spee's main guns with annoying frequency both demonstrate a lack of judgement, resulting in the fact that, having fired off all but 40 minutes of Spee's AP ammunition, she had not actually managed to sink anything.
As to how much is left of the wreck, I really don't care, but I have read the various articles about it placed on the internet by a number of divers in recent years. May I ask why what is still there interests you so much?
As to communications between Langsdorff and Berlin, try 'The Drama of the Graf Spee and the Battle of the River Plate: a Documentary Anthology.'
Basically, Langsdorff explained his problems and his belief that his ship was not fit for sea, and was told by Hitler & Raeder that he should either set forth and fight heroically to the end, or scuttle his ship. He was told, however, that internment was definitely not an option. The final decision was left to him, although post-war reports from survivors of the Berlin Admiralty rather suggest that Hitler expected to be told of the gallant manner in which Langsdorff had fought to the last against overwhelming odds.
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How is 'win' in this context even defined? The best the Germans might have achieved could have been air superiority over South Eastern England south of the Thames. Fighter Command might have withdrawn 11 Group north of the Thames for a time, but even by June, 1940, the British were outproducing the Germans in aircraft, and particularly in fighter aircraft.
Night bombing could certainly continue, as it historically did, but operating bombers beyond the range of German fighter protection in daylight would inevitably lead to heavy German losses of such aircraft.
Moreover, the small bombers operated by the Luftwaffe at the time, primarily intended as aerial artillery in support of ground forces, lacked the capacity to carry out a protracted strategic air campaign.
Finally, of course, whatever happened in the skies over South Eastern Britain had little effect upon what was, to the Germans, the main, insoluble, problem. The total supremacy of the Royal Navy in Home Waters.
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Presumably, the same Luftwaffe bombers which, in 1940, had not been trained in anti-shipping techniques, and consequently had recently failed at Dunkirk? The same Luftwaffe which, in the whole of WW2, sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser? The RN, by the way, in September 1940 had 64 destroyers within 5 hours of Dover, supported by several light cruisers and around 500 smaller warships. There were around 110 RN destroyers in Home waters in total.
The same Luftwaffe which didn't have an operational torpedo bomber until mid 1942? That Luftwaffe?
The essential difference between your fallacious comparisons and the facts is that Taranto and the Force Z sinkings were carried out by torpedo bombers, of which the Germans had none, and Pearl Harbor was the result of an attack on an unexpecting fleet in a peacetime state of readiness.
You obviously don't know much about the Ostfriesland sinking. You should read about how long to took Mitchell's aircraft to sink an old warship, even though that warship was immobile, with no crew to man AA defences or carry out damage control, and with internal bulkheads open rather than closed. Mitchell actually proved that it was probably possible to sink a ship in such condition with large bricks, given enough bricks and enough time.
You are hardly in a position, in view of your evident lack of knowledge, to refer to anything as 'ludicrous' especially since, as a typical Sealion 'Would Have' you seem addicted to the fantasy of what the mighty Luftwaffe 'would have' done, whilst entirely unaware of the reality of what it actually did, or more accurately, did not, actually do.
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@Bullet-Tooth-Tony- Bill Slim was a Lieutenant General in command of BurCorps in August, 1942. Dick O'Connor had been captured and was in a PoW camp in Italy, Pip Roberts was a Brigadier, only being promoted to Major General in December, 1942.
The Auk (my personal hero, by the way - I even met Lt-Colonel C. J. Auchinleck in 1978, just after leaving University. He was visiting him in Marrakesh and the Field Marshal was kind enough to autograph a biography in late June, 1978, and send it to me) was out of favour at the time, although restored to active duty as C-in-C India in June, 1943. Bill Slim was later to write :- '
It was a good day for us when he [Auchinleck] took command of India, our main base, recruiting area and training ground. The Fourteenth Army, from its birth to its final victory, owed much to his unselfish support and never-failing understanding. Without him and what he and the Army of India did for us we could not have existed, let alone conquered.'
I wouldn't take much notice of Big Woody's ravings, if I were you. His obsession about Montgomery verges almost on hysteria.
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@thomaswirkkala7230 Your 'evidence' is somewhat at odds with the facts.
Assuming merchant vessels only, British losses between September 1939 and the end of December, 1939, were actually as follows:-
Mines:- 32, U-boats :- 66, Aircraft :- 9, Surface Craft :- 10, Other Causes:- 4
This information is from 'British Vessels Lost At Sea, 1939 - 1945' a document originally published by HMSO in 1947. The document lists every vessel by date, name, tonnage, location, and cause. There is a separate list for RN crewed vessels.
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@RomanHistoryFan476AD It is always entertaining to read such posts. A few accurate facts. In late August, 1940, the Luftwaffe's actual records show, for 17 August, 1940, 1186 operational fighters and fighter bombers of all types, 294 dive bombers, 960 twin engined bombers, and 226 transport aircraft. The Germans did place a number of heavy gun batteries on the French coast, and they fired on British coastal convoys throughout the war, scoring precisely no hits. The British used the full resources of the Royal Navy and Mercantile Marine in Home Waters to lift 338000 men from Dunkirk, mainly at night. The small civilian boats ferried men from the beaches to the larger ships offshore. Civilian boats such as these actually brought around 6000 men back to Britain. In September, 1940, the Germans had around half a division of Paratroopers available, and only just over 220 transport aircraft operational in any case. The Kriegsmarine plan estimated that nine divisions of the first wave would be landed from barges towed by tugs and small coasters, but this would take eleven days, and, absurdly, assumed no losses among the towing vessels, of which the Germans were seriously short. The biggest warship available to the Germans was a single heavy cruiser, supported by twelve or so destroyers and escort destroyers, and around 16 minesweepers. The Royal Navy had 70 cruisers and destroyers within 5 hours' steaming of Dover, supported by around 500 smaller warships. This doesn't, by the way, include the Home Fleet, based at Rosyth.
I think that covers it, not that the 'what the Germans would have done if...' clowns would take any notice anyway.
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@nosferatut9084 I assume you have a source?
A number of conspiracists have previously made this unsubstantiated claim. They have alleged that 'Titanic's insurance was increased by J. P. Morgan from $5 million to $12.5 million 5 days before her fateful journey'. Some go as far as to state that 'Lloyd's paid out $12,500,000'.
However, Lloyds records do not agree with this at all. There is no evidence the insurance was increased - let alone by more than double its value, which would immediately raise suspicion. Ismay went on public record at the April 1912 United States Senate Hearings and also it was reported in the official public findings that the value of Titanic was "$7.5million" a figure independently verified by the 'New York Times' and 'The Spectator' ("$8 million") while insured at only "$5 million" (as reported at the Senate Inquiry, The New York Times and Lloyds itself).
If indeed Titanic had been insured at the last minute at "$12.5 million," as is alleged by these conspiracy theorists, would this not have raised serious alarm bells in the minds of the insurers at the time, especially if it was part of the public record that the value was "$7.5million"? Quite simply Titanic was underinsured, the main reason being that the White Star Line actually insured its own ships.
Any allegation to the contrary - of an increase - needs evidence, for which at present there is nothing but unverified speculation.
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@barbararice6650 Actually, if you knew much about the action, you would have known that closing the range so quickly was an error to which Tovay later admitted.
'Tovey wanted the mountains of quivering flesh the few German survivors talk about.' Don't be absurd, as well as insulting to the memory of a gallant commander. I am surprised that, with all your many years of extensive military experience, you have never come across the tradition of 'we fight the ship, not the men' common in the US & Royal Navies?
Firstly, had your gruesome fantasy had any accuracy, why didn't the British simply steam away and leave the survivors to die, as, incidentally, Scharnhorst & Gneisenau did after sinking Glorious, Ardent, & Acasta in 1940, and secondly why was Von Mullenheim-Rechberg so complimentary about the manner in which he and his fellow survivors were treated aboard HMS Dorsetshire?
By the way, you don't know anything about me.
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'He stalked Marian Thayer on the voyage, wrote love letters to her, he cheated on his wife, etc.' Actually, after the sinking, he confided, in writing, to Mrs. Thayer, after His wife went so far as to ban any conversation about the Titanic from taking place in Ismay's presence, but Ismay still had a lot to say about it. So instead of confiding in his family, he turned to another survivor, Marian Thayer, an American who had lost her husband when the ship went down.
"[Thayer] wrote to [Ismay] gentle, forgiving letters and Ismay just poured his heart out to her," Wilson says. "So as his marriage was crumbling in England in the year after the Titanic went down, he was becoming more and more and more emotionally dependent on Marian Thayer."
Proof of infatuation, or of infidelity, Where? I am confident, of course, that you have a totally unimpeachable source. Haven't you?
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The 1943 famine was brought about by a combination of the arrival of refugees, hoarding by profiteers, inability to import food supplies from Japanese occupied areas, the Bengal Administration keeping the facts secret from London, and the refusal of Franklin Roosevelt to release shipping space. Once the facts became known to the government in London, the distribution of food relief was handed over to the Anglo-Indian army, and grain convoys diverted from Australia to India. The worst charge that could be laid against Churchill is that he ought to have known about the situation. After all, there wasn't much going on in the world in 1943, was there? Are you seriously naive enough to believe that Churchill would have engineered a famine in India at a time when 2.5 million Indians, all volunteers by the way, were serving in the Allied forces? Perhaps you simply believe all the propaganda spoon fed to you?
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@nickdanger3802 How does any of this bear any relevance at all to the merchant ship losses during Paukenschlag? The British began convoy operations within days of 3 September, 1939, the US (or King) didn't do the same until many months after 11 December 1941, despite having over 70 modern destroyers available in their Atlantic Fleet, despite British Intelligence warning King of the impending arrival of a number of Type IXs, and despite Admiral Andrews begging him to release some of the destroyers. Perhaps you should read Michael Gannon's book on Operation Drumbeat before simply attacking the Limeys! Especially since, in March 1942, those Limeys sent 34 convoy escorts, which they could not really spare, to support Andrews after King refused.
The British carried out 78 Arctic Convoy missions. Only two, PQ17 & PQ18, suffered significant losses. At the time of the Channel Dash, the British Home Fleet was in Iceland and Scapa Flow, providing the cover for those convoys. Why is Royal Oak relevant?
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@nickdanger3802 Sorry, I am surprised that you should post such a fatuous comment. Of course the RN & RCN used a lot of American built equipment, but the crews who fought & won the Battle were British & Canadian. To follow your argument, it would be logical to assume that the US Navy victory at Midway should not be credited to the American air crews, but to the Douglas Aircraft Company, who built the Dauntless. It would, of course, also be foolish and wrong.
Churchill said, I believe, 'give us the tools & we will finish the job.' Huge American resources did indeed supply many of the tools, but I did not anticipate that you would seek to belittle the efforts of the RN & RCN in this manner.
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In fact, he did. He had a massive ego, and often clashed with his superiors. Churchill said of him :- 'In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable.' Eisenhower wrote of him :- 'He loves the limelight but in seeking it, it is possible that he does so only because of the effect upon his own soldiers, who are certainly devoted to him. I have great confidence in him as a combat commander. He is intelligent, a good talker, and has a flair for showmanship.’
The reality is that in being something of a showman, he developed a bond with the ordinary soldier, who generally had an affection for him which they had never really felt for his more traditional, more distant, predecessors. The obvious proof can be shown by the post war 8th Army Alamein reunions, which continued until 2002.
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If that is what you heard, then your hearing is defective. Apart from you apparently, mishearing the name of the ship (actually, Olympic) the cruiser involved in the collision, HMS Hawke, did not have a 'bow designed for ramming' but simply a ram style bow. Look up 'Edgar class cruiser' for further information. The term applied to the shape of the bow, not the purpose of the bow.
Next, the Inspection Report, issued by the Admiralty in late 1911, and supported by teams from the Board of Trade and White Star, summarised Olympic's damage as “Two major watertight compartments were flooded, hull plating gashed from the Orlop deck to E deck, and the starboard propeller shafting damaged.” No reference, you observe, to any damaged propeller, only to a shaft, which was indeed replaced by one waiting to be installed in Titanic. The propeller swap claim was invented by switcher fanatics, as they sought to explain away the inconvenient Titanic (401) number on a propeller blade at the wrecksite.
Olympic was repaired by Harland & Wolff, and returned to sea in late November, 1911, with full Board of Trade certification, and her £1 million insurance, in place. Indeed, she had made several more Atlantic crossings before Titanic sailed in April 1912.
Swapping of namplates would not have been possible, as White Star ships had their names engraved into the hull, then painted in.
Any connection with the creation of the Federal Reserve was a fictional invention from the rise of social media in the 1990s, when actual knowledge of a subject was not necessary should fantasists wish to make bizarre claims about it. For example, the supposed three men who opposed the Fed., Astor, Guggenheim, & Straus, can be proven to have been nothing of the sort. The first two never expressed their opinions, and the third had actually spoken in favour of the Fed. in October, 1911. His comments can still be read in the archives of the New York Times, by the way.
A word of advice. Don't simply swallow whole any conspiracy fantasy video you stumble across. It makes you look such a berk when you repeat it!
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Fact. Olympic was dully repaired and back at sea by later Novembeer, 1911. The cost? £25,000 or 1.67% of her origonal building costs.
Fact. Morgan had said in March that he was attending an event at St. Mark's in Venice on 23 April, whic he could not have done had he sailed in Titanic. This was even mentioned in the NYT of 28 March, 1912.
Fact. Of the three rich men, two, Astor & Guggenheim, had never expressed their opinions about the Fed., whilst the third, Straus, had, in October 1911, given a speech in favour of the idea.
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Perhaps Germany should not have invaded, without declaration of war, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium & the Soviet Union, then?
Having tanks drive over your property, bombers bombing your towns, and soldiers shooting your people, might tend to annoy the mildest of countries.
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The question seems to be not 'what would have happened if Britain had been conquered' but 'what would have happened if the RAF had lost the Battle of Britain.' There are a number of flaws in the debate, the most obvious one being the failure to define 'defeat'.
Just to help these 'experts' out, 'defeat' would, at worst, have involved withdrawing 11 Group north of the Thames, out of the range of German Bf 109 fighters, in order to re-equip. From June, 1940, by the way, the British had been outbuilding the Germans in aircraft, and especially in fighters. This would give the Luftwaffe control of the air over the South Eastern corner of Britain. Historically, they already a measure of superiority over the Channel.
Perhaps, then, the Germans might be foolish enough actually to attempt an invasion. At that point, their river barges towed in pairs by tugs and trawlers, requiring in some cases three days from assembly to arrival at the landing beaches, and with virtually no naval escort, would discover what the records of the time, such as the Royal Navy's Order of Battle for 16 September, 1940, now tell us, which is that there were some 70 or so RN light cruisers and destroyers within five hours of Dover, some 500 or so smaller warships available in support, and around 40 or so more destroyers in Home Waters. This does, of course, not include the larger battleships, battlecruisers, and heavy cruisers of the Home Fleet.
More informed people, such as Erich Raeder and the German Naval Staff,, were, of course, already aware of what awaited an invasion attempt in the Channel, which is why the fact that it was never attempted left them with feelings of intense relief.
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Oh good. Another Sealion 'Would have.' Or, in this case, a 'would not have.' How would you explain the total failure of the Luftwaffe at Dunkirk? Are you aware that the Luftwaffe at the time of Dynamo and Sealion had had no training at all in anti-shipping operations, or the fact that it didn't even acquire a torpedo bomber until mid 1942, or the fact that, in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank 'only' 31 British destroyers, and no British warship larger than a light cruiser, or the fact that, in September, 1940 the RN had around seventy destroyers and light cruisers within five hours steaming of Dover, supported by around five hundred smaller warships, with a further fifty or so destroyers a day or less away, or the fact that the RN could operate against the invasion barges at night?
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In 1940, the only Commonwealth forces in Britain were one Canadian Division and two Australian/New Zealand Brigades. In the unlikely event of German troops actually landing, their landing would be opposed by forces overwhelmingly British in composition. Of 34.5 divisions in Britain in September, 1940, 32.5 were British.
The Commonwealth & Empire played an important part in WW2, but not in the defence of Britain in 1940. Good wishes from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, & India at the time might have been appreciated, but wouldn't have helped much materially.
'And Britain has since reneged on it's promises to all that people of Empire.' You mean the promises of self-government & independence? I thought both had been granted. Did I miss something?
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@JonBanJudah813 Who is to say? Well, the German military & naval archives at Freiburg, for one.
Britannic was sunk (by a mine, not by a torpedo, by the way) after more than two years of war.
Germany was rather eager not to involve Britain in any European war, by the way.
The German U-boat campaign began in August, 1914, by the way, and attacks on shipping, as opposed to warships, began in February, 1915, and even then initially only in waters close to the UK, which does not apply to Newfoundland.
Sunk by a U-boat? Why?
Sorry, but out of the question.
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@kevinswinyer3176 The bunker fire was well aft of the mark seen on a photograph. No-one reported any heat forward of the bunker, and even areas close to the bunker, such as the swimming pool, were not affected.
Do you really think that Smith would have set sail in a ship with a damaged hull, still less one where you claim that the fire 'played a part in the overall weakening of the starboard side of the hull, due to the fact that the heat would have still weakened the entire area of the hull forward of the Bunker that had the fire.' Do you actually know how much heat would need to be generated? Sorry, no one seriously suggested that at the Inquiry, or for 80 years afterwards, until a journalist invented the idea.
Oh, and striking the iceberg head on would have caused far more damage than the alternative Murdoch intended, which was to avoid any collision at all.
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@tot0m 'You seems to deny that French, Belgian and British officer were in very bad terms on may/june 1940.' When have I ever expressed such a view?
'You seems to deny that British command didn't trust French army were able to perform, so they preferred to flee without referring to french command, and make french and belgian armies in worse position to defend.' When have I ever expressed such a view? Moreover, when, historically, did this happen? When Belgium capitulated, the British 3rd Division was obliged to plug a 20 mile gap between the BEF and French forces by conducting a 25 mile night march of 13000 men, which they did on 27/28 May, in order to link up with French forces at Nieuport. Was that fleeing without telling the French?
'You seems to deny that french troops and french officiers mostly wanted to try to defend while british troops and officers mostly abandonned their lines, or doesnt wanted to concert with french command.' When have I said that?
'You seems to be trash against french command who asked for more help.' I have simply stated what actually happened. I don't think anything in my earlier comment can be regarded as 'trashing.'
'On what purpose ? You didn't even gave fact, you just deny facts without proof. So that I bet you maybe english patriot, keen on propaganda and myth about glorious british army.' You facts seem to consist of vague nonsense such as claiming that the British ran away, or were willing to fight to the last Frenchman, or abandoned their allies at Dunkirk. None of these 'facts' of yours have any connection with what actually happened. Where I have made counter-arguments, I have provided supporting evidence.
Comments about what 'The British' thought (or, despite your claims, actually didn't think) in the 1920s & 1930s are irrelevant. In March, 1933, Churchill said in Parliament : "there are a good many people who have said to themselves, as I have been saying for several years: “Thank God for the French Army”.
'And so do the British, they doesnt wanted any casualties to defend french soil anymore like in ww1.' Of course they didn't, but they were willing to send a 'Reconstituted BEF' under Alan Brooke, to Cherbourg, and were willing to continue the fight, until General Weygand told him that the French army was no longer able to provide organised resistance.
By the way, there were 78000 British troops killed, wounded, or captured during the campaign in France, excluding losses among naval personnel. What was that about fighting to the last Frenchman again?
Seriously, if you aren't able to post credible arguments, supported by evidence, but insist instead on chanting outdated nationalistic prejudices, then why do you bother?
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@mikhailv67tv Well, to give one example, after the breakout from Anzio, Truscott, the American commander, expected his units to drive east, in order to cut off the retreating German 10th army. Truscott was appalled to receive orders from Clark to head north, in order to take Rome, but reluctantly obeyed. As a result, the open city of Rome fell to Clark, who was able to enter it in triumph, but the 10th army escaped. The Date? 4 June, 1944. Clark knew what was about to happen in Normandy, but wanted his day in the sun before Italy was removed from the front pages. He got it, but in so doing extended the campaign in Italy by nine months.
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@adelaidesngan604 Nonsense. 14 French destroyers and torpedo boats evacuated 6646 men, 5 despatch vessels 1000, 2 minesweepers 2038, 5 submarine chasers 203, 13 minesweeping trawlers 2665, 7 patrol vessels 2501, 12 cargo ships 2290, 59 trawlers 4814. Total :- 22157.
British ships :- 1 cruiser 1856, 41 destroyers 96197, 6 corvettes 1100, 1 sloop 436, 2 gunboats 3512, 36 minesweepers 46434, 52 trawlers 5396, 61 drifters 12370, 3 AA paddle steamers 4408, 7 MGBs 79, 6 MTBs 20, 3 armed boarding vessels 4848, 40 coasters 22698, 26 yachts 4681, 45 personnel ships 87810, 8 hospital ships 3006, 12 naval motor boats 96, 40 tugs 3164, 13 landing craft 118, 8 motor launches 579, 8 dockyard lighters 418, 7 hopper barges 2166, 8 auxiliary barges 1256, 25 sailing barges 886, 19 life boats 323, 202 'little ships' 5031. Total :- 312668.
Out of interest, one British destroyer, HMS Malcolm, carried only 795 less men than 14 French destroyers and torpedo boats.
Your post rather suggests that you don't even know what the role of the Little Ships even was. Sorry, mon vieux, but you are outclassed. Perhaps you should go away?
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which paratroopers? After heavy losses in Norway and the Low Countries, by September 1940 the Germans only had around 4,500 left. The equivalent of a weal brigade. Moreover, there were only around 220 German transport aircraft operational at the same time, after similar heavy losses.
Not that this mattered much, as the life-expectancy of lightly equipped airborne troops without hope of relief from more heavily armed ground troops, or even of receiving additional supplies, could be measured in a few days.
'Carpet bombing?' With what? The light, two engined bombers designed for the support of the ground troops which were all the Germans had at the time. The Luftwaffe had nothing remote comparable to the Lancasters, Halifaxes, & B17s later flown by the allies.
'Beach crossing could have occurred in many places.' In barges towed by tugs and trawlers at little more than walking pace? Against the Royal Navy's 70 destroyers and light cruisers, supported by around 500 smaller warships, which were in the Channel area, or within a few hours of it, at the time?
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@yingyang1008 Would you care to give examples of the regular scenes of which you speak?
Norway was a military failure, certainly. Should the British and French have simply remained inactive and not attempted to intervene? The Norwegian naval campaign, by the way, was a disaster for the Kriegsmarine's surface fleet, which remained largely irrelevant for the rest of the war.
Mers el Kebir was a justified action. The British had no idea, at the time, how closely a Petainist would co-operate with Germany. The French armistice/surrender had required that the French fleet return to French Atlantic ports, where it would be placed under German 'supervision.' The British concern was that it might be used in support of a German invasion attempt.
Dresden (an Anglo-American joint operation) was undertaken at the request of the Soviet Union. I have never heard a credible argument from people who apparently believe that, in an industrial war, the soldier who loads the shell into the gun is a legitimate target, but the 'civilian' who manufactures the shell, or provides the food without which armies could not fight, is not. In one sentence, There are no civilians in modern warfare.
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Morgan bought control of White Star in 1902, as part of his ambitious plan to dominate the Atlantic sea trade through his IMM company. Certainly not because White Star was bankrupt. In fact, quite the opposite, because along with Cunard, she was a leading player in the business, and had recently introduced a number of new vessels. By the way, 1902 was well before the three Olympics were even a twinkle in Bruce Ismay's eye.
Morgan never intended to sail in Titanic. A newspaper article from March, 1912 states that he intended to be at St. Mark's in Venice, on 23 April, which would have rendered it impossible for him to sail in Titanic and return in time.
Certainly, a number of passengers did cancel their bookings. Almost as many, in fact, as had cancelled their bookings when Olympic sailed on her maiden voyage a year earlier.
'But vocal opponents of central banking and the movement for a U.S. central bank, such as Isador Strauss and John Jacob Astor, were on the ship and died.' Sorry, but this is simply false. Isidor Straus was a supporter of the Federal Reserve, as two articles in the New York Times from October make clear. Astor (and Guggenheim) had never expressed their opinions on the matter. You have appearently been fooled by a myth of recent origin.
Californian, actually a Leyland line ship under the umbrella of IMM, was a small freighter ( 6200 tons gross) with accommodation for 47 passengers. She had sailed from Liverpool, before Titanic left Southampton, for Boston. Her manifest, along with that of almost all freighters from the time, is long gone, but when she arrived in Boston on 19 April, the shipping newspapers recorded that she carried a 'mixed, general' cargo
Thus, your comment that 'However, they happened to have 3,000 blankets and life jackets, and provisions enough to feed as many,' has precisely no evidence to confirm it. Unless, of course, you can provide some?
'To say that it's entirely possible that Morgan and the other banking cartels set up the entire accident in order to get rid of their opponents is an understatement.' No. In view of the total lack of supporting evidence, it is a gross overstatement.
Unless, again, you can supply some confirmatory evidence in support of your remarkable allegations?
I recall asking you precisely this question previously on another site. You did not reply. I wonder why that might have been?
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Really? How do you explain what happened at Dunkirk? Or why, in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser? To put that into perspective, by the way, the RN began WW2 with 193 destroyers, and ended it with around 400. In September, 1940, there were 110 in Home Waters alone.
How do you justify your comment in view of the fact that, in 1940, the Luftwaffe had not been trained in anti-shipping operations? Or in view of the fact that the Luftwaffe did not acquire a torpedo bomber until mid 1942?
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@iansneddon2956 Earl St. Vincent's statement to the House of Lords in 1801, 'I do not say, my Lords, that they will not come. I only say, they will not come by sea,' still held good in 1940.
Or, as the remarkably named C-in-C at the Nore, Sir Reginald Plunkett-Ernle-Earle-Drax, remarked, rather less elegantly 'To defeat the invasion force, we need gunfire and plenty of it.'
The fact that the Royal Navy Pink List from 16 September, 1940, shows some seventy destroyers and light cruisers within five hours steaming of the Straits of Dover suggests that his wish might well have been granted.
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@AlanFagan-y5l Oh well. At least you confirmed that you are trying to shift the argument. Why shouldn't Farage, or Starmer, or anyone else, speak about US politics when in Britain or Europe, when the United States is still the most powerful nation in the world, and her politics affects Britain, as it does the rest of Western Europe?
The difference is that the impact Farage, Starmer, or any other British/European politician could have on US affairs is minimal. I doubt that the average American even knows who Starmer, Farage, Macron, or Von der Leyen is, and cares even less.
By contrast, almost all Britons knew & know who Obama is.
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I read lots of posts like this from people with Asian names. Has indoctrination really eclipsed education so completely?
How, for example, would you explain the numerous famines which both preceded and followed British rule in India, and which occurred without the stimulus of a world war at the same time?
Most of your post is bordering on the lunaric, but just to educate you on the Bengal famine. Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which you have been so thoroughly indoctrinated.
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Presumably, like Rachel Reeves, you don't know, or don't care, how the Private Sector, which actually generates all the money being poured into the bottomless pit that is the NHS, actually works?
Put simply, when costs rise, as they will do now that Rachel has punished the sector, management has two options, which are to increase charges to their customers, or to cut costs. The easiest way to cut cost is by reducing the single highest individual cost element, which is the workforce. I won't, of course, mention the potential third, as that is the nuclear option of closing down the business entirely.
I look forward to Rachel explaining to those employees made redundant how the increase in minimum wage will benefit them.
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@thecommentaryking Sorry, I suspect you are quoting from O'Hara. That explains a lot.
As I said earlier, there is no reference to Operation White in Cunningham's autobiography.
As to 'the British didn't start moving troops to Greece until Spring of 1941,' odd that, considering that on 15 November, 1940, Berwick, York, Glasgow, and Sydney transported 3400 troops and their stores to Piraeus.
It does, however, seem that, indeed, the Italians were not willing to face the British, as Campioni, at Spartivento, failed to commit to decisive action against Force H, thus allowing the fast convoy for Malta & Alexandria, Operation Collar, to proceed to both destinations unmolested.
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@thecommentaryking Aren't you actually agreeing with Cunningham here? After Taranto, the Italian navy did not challenge the British in open battles. At Spartivento, a superior Italian fleet failed to press home this advantage against Force H, at Matapan, in March 41, it was ambushed, losing three heavy cruisers and two destroyers in a night, as well as a battleship damaged.
Subsequently, the Italian fleet made no attempt to hinder the transfer of Allied troops to Greece, and made no attempt (apart from individual gallant efforts by light units such as Lupo) to escort Axis troops by sea to Crete, with the result that no such troops arrived until the Allied evacuation had more or less completed.
Similarly, at First Sirte, a force of 4 battleships, 2 heavy cruisers, 3 light cruisers and 13 destroyers, failed to press home an attack on a British force of 5 light cruisers and 14 destroyers. Subsequently, Italian heavy ships were notable only by their absence during a number of convoy actions, including Pedestal.
Finally, I would suggest that a philosophy which refuses to risk a battle because of the possibility of losses does rather reflect a significant degree of 'unwillingness.'
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@thecommentaryking Isn't it interesting how, when losing an argument, many people resort to insults and abuse. In this case that I am 'anti-Italian?'
Let us look at the posts again. Initially, you claimed that the Italians defeated the British only five days after Taranto. My response was that the loss of nine aircraft could hardly be compared with the loss/disablement of three battleships. I could have said that Operation White was not really an Italian victory at all, as the respective forces never engaged. It was much more a self-inflicted defeat caused by launching the aircraft too far from Malta. Your next comment was that Cunningham was wrong in suggesting that the Italians would be unwilling to use their heavy units. I, having read what Cunningham's actual views were, simply stated that he really believed that the Italians would use their heavy units more conservatively. You then claimed that the British only started moving troops to Greece in Spring 1941. I proved you wrong. Does correcting your false claim prove me 'anti-Italian? I then pointed out that Campioni failed to press home an attack by a stronger force at Spartivento. You claimed that the forces were equal, but that the British had the advantage of a carrier. Actually, the forces were not equal, and the Italians had the considerable advantage of shore-based air power. I then made a number of factual statements about the subsequent use of Italian heavy units. Apparently, you consider that I was 'using Matapan as an excuse for bashing the Italian' when all I wrote was 'at Matapan, in March 41, it (the Italian fleet) was ambushed, losing three heavy cruisers and two destroyers in a night, as well as a battleship damaged. Are you claiming that the Italian fleet was not ambushed, or that it did not lose three heavy cruisers and two destroyers? Why is a simple, factual statement, proof of 'anti-Italian bias?' Certainly, the British had a number of advantages at Matapan, but the statement I made was, unambiguously, completely accurate. You then sought to expand the debate by making a number of statements about the use of smaller Italian units later in the war. As the discussion had hitherto been about the activities of Italian capital ships, these were irrelevant. Again, nothing I wrote about Sirte was inaccurate. Iachino had an opportunity to inflict a heavy defeat on a weaker British force, without in any way risking M42, which was under no threat at all, but chose not to press home his advantage. I didn't make any mistake in my comments about Crete. I merely said that Italian heavy ships made no attempt to escort surface convoys to the island. Did they? You seem to think that this was all the fault of the Germans. Are you suggesting that in May, 1941, Supermarina had no authority over the Italian fleet? If so, it rather sounds like you are the anti-Italian one. Finally, I made no reference to British activity in the Mediterranean because that was not the matter under debate. In short, I submit that none of my comments show anything in the way of anti-Italian bias. If the Italian naval command chose to apply a policy that could best be described as 'timid' to the use of their heavy ships in WW2, that can hardly be considered my fault!!!
Seriously, if you can't post without using insults rather than arguments, why not simply stop posting?
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@thecommentaryking I suggest that we let anyone who reads this increasingly tedious correspondence decide for themselves who is having the better of the argument, and who seems to find it necessary to resort to inappropriate allegations of nationalist bias. A rather tenuous claim, considering that the subject under discussion is events which took place three quarters of a century ago.
However, to return to your last post. Do I detect a degree of anti-British bias on your part? Surely not, yet you refer to 'fear' in the mind of Admiral Somerville when he withdrew his force. In point of fact, once he became aware of an Italian force of two battleships, two heavy cruisers and sixteen destroyers, just south of Sardinia, he would have been foolish to have continued, as, with one modernised battlecruiser, one modern and one elderly light cruiser, seven destroyers, and two carriers (one of which was for ferry purposes only) he was completely outmatched. He had been advised by his air staff that the aircraft from Argus were within range of Malta and therefore, launched them. Argus herself was capable of only nineteen knots, and it was Somerville's duty to protect her. His only mistake, I submit, was in trusting the advice given him. Had he simply withdrawn his force without launching, this operation would have been lost to history. Still, if you choose to regard it as a wonderful victory, then so be it.
The fact that Cunningham's cruisers transported 'only' 4000 or so men, plus stores, to Piraeus in November, 1940, is irrelevant. In your earlier post you claimed that such operations did not take place until 1941. You were, put simply, WRONG. I assume that you simply did not know about the 1940 troop movement, but cannot now bring yourself to admit it.
At Spartivento, Italian shore based aircraft did attack the British force. How, by the way, you can suggest that a force consisting of a modern battleship, a modernised older battleship, six heavy cruisers, and fourteen destroyers is not superior to one modernised battlecruiser, one heavy cruiser, five light cruisers, fourteen destroyers, an elderly, unmodernised battleship too slow to keep up with the main force, and a carrier defeats me, especially since at the time no aircraft carrier had ever launched a successful air strike against an enemy warship at sea. However, let that pass, as well, and kindly explain to me why, after acting so, apparently, wisely and courageously in refusing to press home his advantage and destroy the British convoy on 27 November, Admiral Campioni was removed from command on 8 December, 1940. Was Supermarina as riddled with anti-Italian bias as, apparently, I am?
So, Iachino was obliged to call off his action at First Sirte in order to protect M42 from Force K? Force K consisted of two light cruisers and two destroyers. The close escort of M42, even without the twenty two warships with which Iachino failed to press home his attack on Vian's small cruiser/destroyer force, consisted of seven destroyers and a torpedo boat. Was the four ship M42, with eight escorts to protect it, really in such peril? I'm sorry that Breconshire was mis-identified as a battleship, but won't comment further on this particular matter.
As to attacks on the British troop convoys of Operation 'Lustre' apparently made by 'smaller units' what exactly did they attack, as between March 6 & April, 1941, Cunningham's fleet transported 68000 men, together with their supporting equipment, without the loss of a single man?
Incidentally, the Germans didn't have any 'landing crafts' for their seaborne transport of troops to Crete, but used requisitioned caiques. One convoy, heading for Maleme, and escorted by a single, gallant, torpedo boat, was more or less wiped out by a Royal Navy cruiser & destroyer force; the other, heading for Heraklion, wisely turned back. Frankly, I neither know nor care who made the decision not to provide heavy naval support for the invasion of Crete. I only know that it was not supplied.
Finally, as the initial post concerned the role played by the heavy ships of the Italian navy in WW2, I don't feel inclined to discuss wider matters of strategy. If you feel inclined to post on such matters, why not do it elsewhere?
Oh, and how exactly is calling someone 'anti-Italian' an argument, in any sense of the term?
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@thecommentaryking Interesting double standards here. You previously suggested that the Italian navy was right to avoid action unless it had odds in it's favour, yet when Somerville does exactly the same this is due to fear of losing. Oh well.
I did not ascribe the comment '"wisely and courageously" to you. Read the post again it you wish. I merely included this throw away comment to see it it would elicit exactly the kind of response that it did!
I haven't made any specific comments about the competence or otherwise of Supermarina. If you have determined that the series of facts I have presented have led you to this conclusion, then that is your conclusion, not mine.
As to the use of smaller forces against Royal Navy forces and convoys, there were precisely two in the Aegean, which you have described. On 14.01.41, Neghelli did indeed damage a freighter, which returned to Pireus, Neghelli herself being sunk by the convoy escorts, whilst on 31.01.41, two torpedo boats damaged a tanker, which was towed to Suda Bay, where the fuel was transferred to another tanker. Neither of these attacks, by the way, were in any way relevant yo Operation 'Lusture.'
You previously posted that 'In the Aegean the Italians knew that their smaller vessels were more capable than the larger units to hinder the British convoys.' If the Italians knew this, why was the sum total of their success against freighters the damaging of a mere two in January?
Certainly, once Operation Lustre began the British used the Antikithera Strait (not canal, by the way,) but are you sure this was in response to the presence of Italian surface ships in the area, and not in order to move their shipping further away from the Dodecanese airfields? Indeed, during Operation Lustre, there were no successes at all by Italian warships against British merchantmen, and no losses at all from the 68000 troops transported. Losses, either of empty transports in port or convoys returning empty, were entirely the result of air attack. Was a small force of Torpedo Boats really the best the Italian Navy could manage in support of their German ally, especially since I understand that it began WW2 with 6 battleships, 21 cruisers, 106 submarines, and over 110 destroyers and torpedo boats?
Doesn't it rather make you question exactly how 'capable' these smaller units actually were, or, indeed, why the Italian navy did not heed a request from the German Naval Attache to the Italian Naval Staff on 19 March, 1941, to the effect that 'the appearance of Italian naval units in the area south of Crete would seriously interfere with British shipping and might even lead to the complete interruption of the transport of troops, especially as these transports are at the moment inadequately protected.'
A caique is a small Aegean fishing vessel, with a timber keel and carvel planking. A landing craft is a small, lightly armoured flat bottomed vessel with a drop down bow ramp, used for delivering assault troops onto open beaches. The fact is that caiques needed a port into which to land their troops, whereas landing craft didn't. Therefore, caiques were rather more vulnerable than landing craft would have been, and needed (but didn't get) a naval escort. That is why the Maleme caique convoy was destroyed, and the Heraklion convoy turned back.
Finally, I didn't realise that it was only permissible to post on here by request.
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@thecommentaryking 'You implied it, don't lie on that.' What did I imply?
When GA8 was attacked by three boats, how many merchantmen were sunk? Certainly, sinking Bonaventure was a feather in Ambra's cap, but largely irrelevant to the balance of naval power in the Mediterranean, especially when you consider what happened a few days later.
'It weren't "a mere two" other happened but you don't care about trying to search those.' As you are the one making the claim, isn't it rather up to you to present the evidence?
'The Italians did send their submarines in search of those convoys, but unfortunately, everytime they did the British didn't launch any convoy operation.' How unfortunate, and damned unsporting of the Royal Navy. Absolutely not cricket, what? As we were supposed to be talking about the use (or, mor properly, lack of use) of Italian heavy ships, then I really fail to see the relevance anyway.
'The majority of the Italian navy operated in the Central Mediterranean, with only submarines, torpedo boats and two destroyers that operated in the Aegean.' As at the time the main effort of the Royal Navy was involved in the transport of troops and equipment to Greece, even if this were true wasn't it an inappropriate use of resources, especially since the Germans had specifically for Italian naval support?
'They were capable enough and there were attacks south of Crete on British convoys' Then provide me with a list of British transports lost to naval attack during Operation Lustre. I research in the naval section of the British National Archives at Kew, and they don't seem to have recorded any. What a curious oversight!
Whether caiques were really caiques, landing craft, canoes, or paddle steamers doesn't really matter anyway, does it? The two convoys desperately needed protection and what did they get? One torpedo boat each. No wonder one convoy was annilhilated and the other didn't try to make the trip.
Instead of making vague, generalised, comments, why not reply with proper facts? You could begin with details of successful operations by Italian heavy ships after Matapan, and end with a moving description of that never to be forgotten day in September, 1943, when the Italian fleet arrived at Malta to accept the surrender of the British garrison there. That was what happened, wasn't it?
I'm sure that the 'Times of Malta' was completely wrong when it wrote 'The arrival of the Italian battle fleet in Maltese waters escorted by British warships was a denouement undreamed of by even the most optimistic Maltese during the previous three harrowing years of the war.'
Alternatively, you could simply stop posting here and find a more gullible site upon which to spout your bizarre delusions.
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@thecommentaryking I did not imply that you used the phrase 'wisely & courageously.' The phrase was used by me, and it you intend to reply to 'implications' then that rather suggests that you lack real arguments.
Actually, I prefer to refer to Allied naval records, and Allied naval records clearly state that no merchantmen transporting troops to Greece during Operation Lustre were lost. Some were sunk in port, or returning from Greece, but by air attack.
You stated 'why the Italians didn't sunk many troopships.' Don't you really mean 'didn't sink, or even damage, ANY troopships?' You then ramble on about the Italians preferring to use smaller vessels. Clearly, with a total lack of success.
The Italian fleet had little to do with the siege of Malta. Malta was under intensive attack from Italian & German aircraft, but the role played by the Italian navy was minimal. Tell me of successful attacks by Italian heavy ships against British convoys to Malta. The convoys, like Malta, faced considerable danger from the air, but the Italian surface fleet was rarely, if ever, a factor. Even the Pedestal convoy in August, 1942, was entirely unmolested by Italian surface ships.
Malta, by the way, is only around 100 miles from Sicily. That the Italian navy lacked the ability to organize a seaborne invasion is quite remarkable. Rather on a par with the Royal Navy in WW2 being unable to capture the Isle of Man, don't you think?
So the Germans didn't ask for help? What about the Tarigo convoy of 16 April, 1941. The Germans sent four troopships, together with an Italian ammunition ship, to North Africa. The best the Italian navy could do was to supply an escort of three destroyers. The result was an attack by four British destroyers, one of which was sunk. However, all five transports and all three destroyers were sunk or, in one case, beached. This, by the way, gives some idea of what a well-handled destroyer force can do to a small convoy. Something similar happened to the Maleme caique convoy off Crete.
As the Italian navy never tried anything similar, of course, they were never able to find this out for themselves.
Actually, you never reply with facts, only excuses. Nothing is ever the Italians' fault. It is always down to lack of radar, lack of nightfighting skills, not having sufficient superiority of numbers, the British having an aircraft carrier, not being kept informed by the Germans, the British not sending their convoys at the right time, and smaller vessels being better for operations against the British off Crete.
Whatever. The facts are that the Italian navy contributed virtually nothing to the Axis campaign in Greece & Crete, and their heavy ships achieved nothing against British convoys even when, after Crete, Cunningham's resources were reduced to a handful of light cruisers and destroyers. Even then, Supermarina insisted upon pursuing a policy of masterly inactivity.
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@thecommentaryking Do you not remember me posting this, only about a day ago? 'Indeed, during Operation Lustre, there were no successes at all by Italian warships against British merchantmen, and no losses at all from the 68000 troops transported. Losses, either of empty transports in port or convoys returning empty, were entirely the result of air attack.'
Therefore, when you posted this :- ' the British lost 25 ships, while in "The Royal Navy in the Mediterranean, vol II" of David Brown the total amount of merchantman lost during Operation Lustre was 12.
So it is clearly you who are wrong.'
You are, in reality, only proving that I am right (as I habitually am.) For your information, 25 merchant ships, totalling 115,026 tons, were lost during Lustre, 18 whilst in port and 7 in convoys returning to Alexandria. All were lost to air attack, and none to attacks by Italian warships. Therefore, once again, I am right, and I am sure your apology when it comes will be gracious.
'Making plans' to invade Malta is hardly impressive, is it? and the reference to insufficient vehicles and equipment hardly passes muster. For heaven's sake, Malta is only about 300 square kilometers in area. Furthermore, who declared war in the first place? I don't think it was the British, was it? As to the British reinforcing their defences, what does this say about the mighty Italian battle fleet, which it seems you now confirm couldn't do much to stop this happening?
You clearly don't know much about the action off Sfax. Firstly, it took place when the convoy was negotiating the shallows around the Kerkennah Islands, secondly there was no bad weather so the convoy had not been scattered, thirdly it took place at night, so your imaginary loss of air support was irrelevant, and fourthly, if you think a Navigatori and two Folgores could have coped with a Tribal and three JKNs, especially when the British force was commanded by Philip Mack, then you really are in Wolkenkuckucksheim.
As to 'Also why should they have risked their heavier units in a area that was controlled by British ships, submarines and aircraft, for few convoys that they might have not even engaged?' Well, the area was hardly controlled by British aircraft, as there were very few in the whole Middle-East and Mediterranean area. Furthermore, Italy had a powerful, modern navy, and an effective, though aging, air force, and was at war with a country which for much of the time was unsupported by any allies other than the Commonwealth, and which generally had a fleet significantly smaller than the Italian.
You seem keen to produce an unending series of reasons for not taking action. Why not provide a description of the circumstances under which you believe it would have been appropriate to 'risk' the Italian fleet.
Tell you what. I have just received a payment into my bank of the royalties from my latest publication. As it is a substantial amount, I am in a very good mood, so don't feel you have to apologise about wrongly accusing me of having made a mistake about Operation Lustre if you don't want to.
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@thecommentaryking 'You are partly right' No, I am completely correct.
'Regia Marina alone couldn't have taken Malta, it needed the Army troops.' Yes, I know. Odd that the Italian armed forces lacked the ability to co-operate effectively.
Mussolini declaring the the war is not the point here. - Yes it is, you can hardly use lack of preparedness as an excuse, although I suppose you can add it to your long list of other excuses.
I didn't say that the Italian Navy was ""mighty"" No, I did, and theoretically it was, had it been used effectively, but it wasn't.
As to the convoy, perhaps you might consider Edward Gibbon's maxim that 'The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.' Odd, by the way, that Italian recon. aircraft couldn't operate, but a Glen Martin Maryland could, wasn't it? Perhaps you might also consider that the weather didn't seem to impede Mack's flotilla. Perhaps, the British & Italian navies had different ideas about what constituted rough weather? Certainly, in the Channel in 1940 the British auxiliary patrol regularly operated when German units considered conditions too rough to venture to sea.
Actually it was, the aircraft carriers operated in the Eastern Mediterranean so yes there were aircrafts. Which 'carriers' were these then? Formidable wasn't involved in the Crete evacuation because of a lack of aircraft, and was damaged by German air attack on 26 May, anyway.
While Italy had a powerful navy it wasn't helped by its allies unlike Britain. So the Germans didn't send 60 U Boats into the Mediterranean, didn't send troops to help Italy in Greece, and didn't send the Afrika Korps to North Africa after Beda Fomm, then?
I wonder if the refusal to supply fuel might have been a chicken & egg situation, in that the Germans weren't willing to supply such fuel to a navy which had shown little sign of acting offensively in the common Axis cause? Perhaps it might make a subject suitable for my next article?
then Regia Marina would have used its fleet more offensively, without the fear of loosing too many units. - But they never actually did, did they? You don't seem to understand what the British call 'The Price Of Admiralty' which, put simply, states that losses must be accepted so long as the ultimate objective is achieved. Or in Cunningham's words when urged by Wavell to abandon the evacuation of Crete following heavy losses to air attack ' It takes the Navy three years to build a ship, but three hundred years to build a tradition. The evacuation will continue.' Rather more inspiring than your endless catalogue of reasons/excuses for inaction and failure, don't you think?
Finally, -several articles and books over a number of years. After leaving University with a First in Modern History, specialising in the European & Atlantic Naval War, I have been a naval historian for a number of years. you might even have read some of my works, although I doubt it. Too much accurate use of facts, and conclusions based on those facts which might not appeal to your world view.
Anyway, I am away now for a while attending a History Conference chaired by a couple of American naval historians on the twin subjects of Sealion and Dynamo, and am to speak on both, so I don't feel inclined to waste further time on this pointless exercise.
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@thecommentaryking I wasn't going to bother again, but you really do have a habit of leaving yourself wide open. Just for your information, Eagle was released from the Mediterranean Fleet on 9 April, 1941, and by 18 April, was at Port Tewfik. Do you consider Port Tewfik to be in the Mediterranean, or is correcting another of your errors simply more proof of my anti-Italianism?
She did not return to the Med. until 23 February, 1942, when she joined Force H, by the way.
Whether you believe me to be a naval historian or not is, frankly, of sublime indifference to me, because it is clear beyond doubt that you aren't.
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@thecommentaryking Very good. However, Eagle could not operate in the Eastern Mediterranean because her unarmoured flight deck left her desperately vulnerable to German dive bombers. At least, that is what Andrew Cunningham said.
Therefore, after 3 March, when she carried out deck landing trials with Brewster Buffalo fighters, she remained in port in Alexandria, repairing faults, boiler cleaning, and waiting for the Suez Canal to be cleared. Later in the month, her air group was transferred to the Port Sudan area in order to attack an Italian destroyer force based at Massawa. She recovered her aircraft after she passed through the canal. Sources, by the way, are 'A Sailor's Odyssey' by ABC, and 'Eagle's War' by Peter C. Smith. Obviously, both are biased.
As to your other comment, as I said I don't really care what you think, but I would be happy for anyone to read through these posts in their entirety to reach his/her own conclusion.
That's it. I am making an early start in the morning, so don't feel inclined to waste more time. I will take a full copy of this correspondence to let my two American colleagues have a read. Hope you don't mind.
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And the cost estimated by the clueless MoD usually turns out to be about 10% of what the final cost turns out to be. Following which, the MoD announces that the final design is 'more capable' than had been expected, and that, therefore, only 5, rather than 8, will be built. Presumably, in MoD world, the ideal Royal Navy of the future would have one ship, but a remarkably capable one. It would, however, take 40 years to build, presumably in a South East Asian shipyard.
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@tracyshute5399 Actually, giving them the benefits of Western technology, medicine, education, and law., as had been happening for almost 100 years. Why do you think the population of India increased so rapidly during the Raj?
A tiny number of Britons administed India, generally through a large network of Indian civil servants. The tragedy of the deaths from Partition should be placed at the feet of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who insisted upon a separate Moslem nation. Needless to say, it won't be, of course. Not when there are easier, if incorrect, targets.
What, by the way, do you think the British were 'doing to the people of India in the 1940's?'
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@nickdanger3802 In September, 1939, there were 57 U-boats, of which 39 were operational boats. By January, 1942, there were 250, of which 88 were operational. Between Sept. 39 and January, 42, 69 boats had been sunk. The U-boat arm reached it largest size in January, 1945, with 453 boats. What do you think any of this proves? Perhaps that boats under construction in shipyards are more difficult to destroy than boats actively in combat?
During the Battle of the Atlantic, 808 boats were lost. Of these, 84 were destroyed in harbours or shipyards near the end of the war, and 86 to various causes (collision, accident, scuttling, internment, etc.) Of the remaining 638, 257.5 were lost to RN or RCN warships, 196 to Coastal Command, 86 to USAAF & USN aircraft, and 48.5 to US navy warships. The source is 'The U-boat Offensive, 1914-1945' by V.E.Tarrant, if you choose to doubt my word.
I'm not sure why you feel the need to refer to WW1 when the subject is 'the worst naval decision of WW2,' but a few other facts of interest concerning Paukeschlag, and Ernie King's lack of response to it.
Merchant ship losses :-
Jan. 1942 Losses 56. In convoy 6. Stragglers 7. Independents 43
Feb. 1942 Losses 72. In convoy 10. Stragglers 1, Independents 61
Mar. 1942 Losses 93. In convoy 3, Stragglers 1, Independents 89
Apr. 1942 Losses 81. In convoy 3. Independents 78.
May 1942 Losses 129 In convoy 14, Independents 115.
Jun. 1942 Losses 136 In convoy 14. Independents 122.
Just for comparison, losses for the last six months before the entry of the United States into the war :-
July 1941 Losses 26. In convoy 10. Stragglers 2. Independents 14.
Aug. 1941 Losses 27, In convoy 18 Independents 9.
Sept.1941 Losses 57. In convoy 39. Stragglers 4. Independents 14.
Oct. 1941 Losses 28. In convoy 17. Independents 11.
Nov. 1941 Losses 15. In convoy 7. Stragglers 2. Independents 6.
Dec. 1941 Losses 23. In convoy 6. Independents 17.
Odd that the in convoys losses don't change significantly, but the independents do. Perhaps more detailed examination of the locations of the Independent losses might shed some light on the issue, I suggest?
Don't bother. I did it some years ago as part of my degree.
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Sorry to disappoint you, but Japan was neutral in 1940, and her ambitions were, in any case, far removed from Europe. The Luftwaffe had failed badly at Dunkirk, largely because they had no training in anti-shipping operations, and even their own commanders said that protecting the invasion barges was beyond their capabilities. 'Get a hold of British soil' is the whole point. Without a navy, with no assault craft, and no means of protecting long slow lines of towed Rhine barges, how, precisely, is that to happen?
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@of1300 I have read Senan Molony's book. Unlike many, I have also been able to examine his claims. Who were the 'people' who reported seeing Titanic? A Doctor, Dr.Quitzrau (though his name has various spelling variations). He was a steerage passenger but was upgraded when 3rd class became full. When he was seen on the Saloon Deck by a crew member and asked what class of ticket he held, he was ordered from it when he replied that he held a steerage ticket. It is highly likely that Quitzrau concocted the whole story as a means of revenge against the Mount Temple, and went around circulating the story to anyone who listened. Certainly, when the US Senate Inquiry heard of the story, an affidavit was obtained and this confirmed that Quitzrau had seen nothing at all and was just repeating the story.
Or Mount Temple's 4th Officer, Baker, who claimed that she was much closer to Titanic than her Captain stated? Baker had indeed been 4th officer, but was not aboard on the voyage in question. He simply claimed that he had been told this, although the alleged source never came forward.
Molony also failed to mention that Mount Temple and Californian were both ships with single funnels and four masts, when he claimed that Mount Temple had a distinctive appearance.
There was no testimony that Titanic exploded. Only that 'rumblings' were heard late in her sinking.
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@Bilski86 'Mr Andrew’s said it best “she’s made of iron so. I assure she can.” ' Thomas Andrews is not known to have said any such thing, although Victor Garber did in a movie.
I believe Ismay himself said he turned his back to avoid watching the ship sink. But even so, the ship broke in half because, as the forward end slipped below the sea and the stern lifted, that stern was subjected to stresses far above anything for which the ship had been designed. A number of others, including Lightoller, also thought that the ship did not break. Perhaps because they had more pressing matters, like staying alive, to concern them at the time?
The Olympic design was not faulty. It simply was not expected that five, or possibly six, compartments would be compromised in one wholly unpredictable accident.
Neither White Star nor Harland and Wolff ever advertised the ship as 'unsinkable.' Had the suggestion ever been put to the real Thomas Andrews, then he might well have said “she’s made of iron. I assure you she can sink.”
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@cliveengel5744 I don't use wikipedia, as I have access to a whole host of primary sources. You do understand that the Germans did indeed practice loading troops onto the converted barges, I suppose? Why would you think that, once the exercise was completed, the troops wouldn't simply disembark again?
You do know that the Germans didn't use tanks against the Channel Islands, I suppose? Clearly not.
You do know why the Germans stopped on the Aa canal, I suppose? Again, clearly not. The order was given by von Rundstedt, in order to rest & service his armour for the remainder of the campaign against France. Hitler could have rescinded the order, but chose not to, firstly because of his doubts about the use of tanks in the Dunkirk area from his WW1 experience of conditions, but mainly because Goering had told him that the Luftwaffe alone could destroy the pocket and sink the invasion fleet.
Seriously, surely even someone with your lack of knowledge and understanding should be able to grasp that, if you want someone to come to terms, you are more likely to achieve that with 200,000 of their soldiers in prison camps, rather than by letting them evacuate them from under your nose?
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@cliveengel5744 I don't recall ever claiming that the Sealion campaign ever took place, only that it was never, despite your absurd statement, nothing more than a myth. The rest of your post has no bearing on this point, and I am well aware of the important role of the Soviet Union.
You, however, obviously have neither knowledge nor understanding of German planning between June & September, 1940 (when of course, the Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with Germany, and Stalin was still indulging his hobby of butchering Soviet citizens), so further exposition of this ignorance would be superfluous on my part.
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@cliveengel5744 There was no meeting of 23 July. On 25 July, Raeder met Hitler, when he asked for, and was given, permission to requisition shipping from ports throughout western Europe, and authority to carry out the necessary modifications in various shipyards. No date for the operation was set in the Directive, only the duties allotted to each branch of the military. On 22 July, the army had stated that preparations could not be completed by 15 August. At a further meeting on 31 July, two suitable periods when tide & moon were suitable were determined, these being 20 - 26 August (too soon) or 19 - 26 September. On 1 August, hitler issued Directive 17, and by 15 September, the barges were ready, and the coastal batteries had been installed.
I appreciate that you don't know, or don't want to know, much about that period of the war before Barbarossa, but inventing false 'facts' does nothing for your credibility.
That, by the way, is it. I am done with you.
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@richardcrow5827 You need to read the War Diary of Army Group A. The Germans had no issues with fuel or ammunition, which is why I didn't say that they did. What concerned von Rundstedt was the fact that his armour had covered a significant mileage. He, like many other senior commanders, was eager to begin the second phase. Hitler was at Army Group A's HQ at the time, but agreed with the judgement, firstly because he knew that the Dunkirk area was poor ground for armour, secondly because German infantry was arriving in support, thirdly because he saw an army backed against the sea as trapped, whereas the British saw the sea as an open escape door. Fourthly, but most importantly, Goering had told him, on 23 May, that the elimination of the trapped armies was 'a special job for the Luftwaffe.'
'Ths is not in any history books and has remained secret always.' Oh please! Halifax had been a consistent opponent of Churchill, and had sought to use Mussolini as an intermediary in any peace deal. After Dunkirk, Halifax was more or less an irrelevance, especially after the resignation of Chamberlain due to ill health, when he was the last remaining appeaser in the cabinet, until Churchill managed to dispose of him by making him British ambassador to the United States.
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@elrjames7799 No. Hood was 20 years old, and was less well armoured than Bismarck. Bismarck had superior optical rangefinders, although Hood had gunnery radar. Both had obsolete incremental armour, compared to the all-or-nothing of more modern ships such as the Nelsons, the KGVs, or the Washington.
However, if Hood could have closed the range, she was well enough armoured to have inflicted considerable damage on Bismarck. A damaged British ship, of course, could expect support after the action from other British ships. No similar support would be forthcoming for Lutjens' squadron.
Furthermore, Hood was not alone. She had the support of a modern, though not worked up, Prince of Wales. The fact was that, had the action gone as the British expected, either Bismarck would have been forced to divide her main battery in order to engage both British ships, or would have concentrated on one and allowed the other to fire on her unchallenged. In a longer action, also, Wake-Walkers two Counties could have been expected to act against Prinz Eugen. Incidentally, Lutjens, throughout the action, thought that the battleship with Hood was King George V, not Prince of Wales.
The point I have been trying to make is that those people who harp on about the sort of British arrogance which could have sent an old battlecruiser with eggshell armour against a state of the art super-battleship are writing nonsense. Hood was well armoured, and Bismarck was far from state of the art.
Tovey had every right to expect Hood & Prince of Wales to have been capable of preventing a break out by Lutjens into the wider Atlantic. Indeed, stripped of the emotion involved, that is exactly what they managed to do.
Hindsight, however, is a wonderful thing, as many of the people who post one here efficiently demonstrate every day.
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@Boppy-B-B Perhaps you could explain what motivated Canada, Australia, New Zealand (and South Africa by the way) to join the vile tyrannical British in a war against Hitler?
The convoys crossed the Atlantic as successfully as they did because of the Royal Navy's Escort Groups. Canada did indeed play an increasing role, but not until 1942.
The Japanese did not seek to invade India, but to carry out a major incursion which would disrupt allied supply lines to China. Doubtless you won't have heard of Operation U-GO, the 85,000 Japanese troops committed to it, or the 60,000 or so Japanese troops killed, wounded, or missing from the disaster that unfolded.
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@zaynevanday142 The tanks did exist. They were intended to be dropped from barges close inshore, and to be driven along the sea bed, with an air line connecting them to the surface. They had been tested in a lake, and were later used to cross a river in Russia. There were obvious problems, in that the driver couldn't see any underwater obstacles, and wasn't even sure he was going in the right direction. This, of course, assumes that the towed barge had managed to get past the Royal Navy in the first place.
Nevertheless, for all the use they were likely to have been, they did exist. Look them up in 'Invasion of England - 1940' by Peter Schenk, or even in something as basic as Wikipedia, which even has photos. of one under test.
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Not really a fair assessment. Navies had tended to assume that asdic/sonar had largely nullified the submarine threat. Furthermore, RN planning was on the basis that in a future war the French navy would play a significant role, particularly in the Mediterranean should Italy become an opponent.
German U-Boats, and there were only just over 60 in September, 1939, would be forced to sail round the north of Scotland from their German bases in order to reach the Atlantic. Moreover, half of the fleet consisted of small Type II 'Canoes,' only fit for operations in the North Sea.
The collapse of France gave the U-Boat fleet access to Bases bordering on the Atlantic, and deprived the RN of the support of the French fleet. None of these factors could possibly have been part of Admiralty pre-war planning.
The US Navy had some 70 modern destroyers in the order of battle for the Atlantic Fleet in January, 1942. The problem there was not lack of resources, but the refusal of Ernie King to allow the institution of convoys off the US East Coast.
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@cyclingSausage You miss the point. Try this alternative :-
Definition of 'road.'
'A wide way leading from one place to another, especially one with a specially prepared surface which vehicles can use.'
Did you grasp the relevance of the word 'vehicle?'
Next, try this :-
Definition of 'vehicle.'
'Vehicles include wagons, bicycles, motor vehicles (motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses, mobility scooters), railed vehicles (trains, trams), watercraft (ships, boats, underwater vehicles), amphibious vehicles (screw-propelled vehicles, hovercraft), aircraft (airplanes, helicopters, aerostats), and spacecraft.'
Would you define 'bicycle' as, 'A vehicle whose rider is empowered to travel along any road, pavement, or path, and to which normal road safety legislation does not apply?'
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@jpaokx 'So, the Nazis could have sold half of Europe to America, yeah?' I don't recall writing that. The reality is, however, that when Elgin purchased the Marbles, Greece had been an Ottoman province for around 350 years.
Would you prefer that Elgin had left them alone, even though they were being steadily broken up for hard core, among other uses? Presumably, had they only existed as memories in sketchbooks, that would have been preferable? Is that what you really think?
The Marbles are greater than simple a part of Greek history. They are part of the origins of European civilisation. The same civilisation which freed Greece from occupation by the Ottoman Empire in 1827 -1832.
Sad that you feel the need to resort to obscenities, as they are never a credible alternatve to debate.
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@jpaokx 'Re your first point, you'd need to consider the challenging circumstances of that time and it doesn't negate the principle that cultural heritage should be protected with the consent of the local population.' This would be the Greek population which had been subjected to Ottoman rule for 350 years, and had seen ancient structures being systematically degraded by their rulers without any objection, I assume?
'Re your other point, the Battle of Navarino and the subsequent liberation of Greece from Ottoman control are separate historical military events from the removal of the Elgin Marbles.' Except, of course, that Greece regained her independence, after a greek revolt had been defeated by 1826, by the involvement of British, French, & Russian forces. Indeed, Philhellenism ("the love of Greek culture") was an intellectual movement prominent mostly early in the 19th century, and items such as the Marbles, when seen for the first time by intellectuals in London & Paris, played no small part in the growth of this movement.
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' i Always Knew It wasn't the Titanic
That set sail on April 12th, Especially with all the Damage to the Hull, The Fire in the Engine room, The Damage
to one of the Compartment doors, I knew all along they Switched the ships. And from then on it was Foul play.'
You knew all that, did you? Perhaps, then, you might explain how it was that Olympic returned to sea, fully repaired, from 20 November, 1911 onwards, when Titanic was around five months from completion?
Or how, by the time Titanic left Southampton on 10 April, 1912, Olympic had completed five Atlantic round trips, and was in New York, half way through her sixth? Not bad for a cripple, eh?
Or how stoker survivors testified at the British Inquiry that a spontaneous combustion fire in one (of 19) bunkers had been extinguished some 24 hours before the collision, having damaged nothing more than paintwork in the affected bunker?
Or what was the purpose of an 'insurance job' which cost White Star £500,000 (both Olympics were only insured for two thirds of their building costs), a major asset, and their safety record?
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Had Churchill really 'not conceivably have wanted anything that went against the interests of the British ruling class' then why did he continue the war beyond June, 1940, rather than agree to a negotiated peace, as Halifax wanted?
After Pearl Harbor, the United States (or, rather, General Marshall) was arguing for a landing in France in late 1942. The British General Staff ( not merely Churchill) feared that neither the US nor the British had anything approaching the resources to make a success of this. Thus, operations in the Mediterranean, where the British already had substantial forces, were the only realistic alternatives.
In view of actions such as Kasserine, it appears that there may have been something to be said for the British view
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The Met. have form in this regard. Didn't they say that the Notting Hill Carnival was peaceful? If, of course, you discount the violence, injuries, and arrests, that is.
Unfortunately, however, the antics of those cretins who claimed to be defending the Cenotaph by picking fights all round it have given the media, the Met., and probably the government an open goal to claim 'Muslims nice, White folk RAYCIST!!!!' and brand all of us with the same mark as Robinson's half-wits.
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Unfortunately, there are a number of problems with the claim. Firstly, the squadrons assigned to the operation were already there, aboard the other carrier in the area, Ark Royal. At the time, Glorious was being used as a ferry carrier, not an operational one. It makes no sense to bring Glorious back to the UK to load up aircraft for the attack, but even if this was the case, why did she first land on RAF aircraft, and why did she proceed at more or less half speed? If it was intended that she should carry out the raid, and the suggestion that she was more expendable is nonsense (who would accept that one of the few RN carriers should be sacrificed in order to drop a handful of mines in a neutral harbour, for heaven's sake?) couldn't the RAF aircraft have landed on Ark Royal anyway? Certainly, the Hurricanes couldn't have been taken below as Ark had smaller lifts, but they could have remained in deck for the short passage back to the UK.
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@Paladin1873 Have you read this :- 'Operation Paul – the Fleet Air Arm attack on Luleå in 1940?'( The 22 page document, not the 12 page summary, by the way.)
Peter Hore demonstrates that, firstly, the minelaying in the final draft for Operation Paul involved 18 aircraft from Ark Royal and that, secondly, long range tanks would not have been required. The relevant page, describing the final, much reduced, plan, is numbered 98.
Unfortunately, Glorious' fuel state at the time of her loss is unknown, but whether or not steaming at reduced speed can be explained, the lack of lookouts or air patrols cannot, and the fact that Pound's executive order for Operation Paul was issued in the early hours of 8 June, before Glorious met her end, surely discredits the suggestion that she would have been involved.
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In September, 1940, there were around 70 RN light cruisers and destroyers within four hours steaming of Dover. The Luftwaffe at the time had just failed badly at Dunkirk, hadn't been trained in anti-shipping techniques, and didn't even acquire a decent torpedo bomber until mid 1942. In fact, in the whole of WW2, they sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser. The RN, by the way, began WW2 with just over 190 destroyers, and ended it with around 400.
The Germans in September 1940 had a tiny U-Boat force, with no more than 13 boats at sea on any one day. Moreover, the idea of U-boats seeking out and destroyed the massed RN anti-invasion forces is exactly the opposite of what actually happened in WW2, when u=boats sought to avoid escort vessels in the North Atlantic. Indeed, the three U-Boats which entered to Channel in late 1939 are still there, along with the remains of their crews.
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@coreycochran3983 Did you never learn the concepts of punctuation or the paragraph?
What do you even mean by 'losing the air war?' In terms of the Battle of Britain, the worst that might have meant to the RAF would have been the need temporarily to withdraw fighter aircraft north of the Thames, out of range of German fighters. It would not affect Bomber Command, who would still be able to bomb Channel barge ports, and to attack German cities, as they historically did, at night. Furthermore, the British were outbuilding the Germans in aircraft, and especially in fighter aircraft, from June 1940 onwards. In the event of a real invasion attempt, fighter command were able to return in force.
The Royal Navy would have had no need to withdraw, just as, historically, the only port they left was Dover. The main destroyer bases, at Plymouth, Portsmouth, and the Nore, were unaffected.
You appear to be fixated upon air power. please explain why air power was so ineffectual during Operation Dynamo, or why, even after receiving training in anti-shipping operations late in 1940 and early in 1941, the ACTUAL performance of the Luftwaffe, as opposed to the mythical one, was so poor?
The Royal Navy successfully prevented the landing of axis ground troops by sea on Crete, despite having no air support. Why do you think they would not act in an even more determined manner if mainland Britain was involved? Especially since the German invasion force consisted of Rhine barges towed across the Channel at little more than walking pace by tugs and trawlers, largely unescorted. The German 'plan,' if it is so dignified with the term, was hardly Operation Neptune.
Japan is irrelevant at this time. There is far more to training a torpedo arm than simply sending a few teachers. The first requirement is having a suitable aircraft, which the Germans lacked. Then, of course, there is the need to produce manufacturing facilities for the new torpedo. Do you seriously think any of this was possible within the time frame? Moreover, Japanese concerns at the time were elsewhere than Europe, and the RN in the Far East in late 1940 consisted of a half flotilla of old WW1 destroyers.
Incidentally, the British were actually so near to the 'end of their will' that in August, 1940, when, supposedly, invasion could be expected daily, they were confident enough to send a large troop convoy to North Africa, leading to the destruction of the Italian Army in Operation Compass.
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@coreycochran3983 'It would not be as simple as move the fighters out of range.' Wrong. It was precisely that simple. German fighter escorts were very short-legged, and couldn't operate for any length of time north of London. You don't, by the way, seem to have grasped the production issue. The British were outproducing the Germans in aircraft from June 1940 onwards. Furthermore, Fighter Command was operating over friendly territory. A pilot who bailed out could be back with his squadron within a day, whereas a German crew immediately became PoWs. The suggestion that the RAF was experiencing aircrew shortages is one which a study of the records from the time largely dispels.
German bomber raids on British industrial sites were not particularly effective, largely because the Germans always lacked the big strategic bombers which the British, and later the USAAF, possessed in large numbers. The typical Luftwaffe bomber, be it the Heinkel 111, the Dornier 17, or the Junkers 88, was intended to be a tactical aircraft, operating in support of ground troops, and the bomb load was small. You also, by the way, seem ignorant of the British network of Shadow Factories, used to spread production and thus reduce any serious risk to it. In 1940, the Germans did not even know that these existed, still less where they were.
'Do you think Winston Churchill stays in power if they can't cover their own cities for months' (sorry, I felt the need to correct your punctuation and spelling). Yes, because that was precisely what happened during the Blitz. In 1940 neither the Germans nor the British had any effective means of preventing night bombing. Even at the height of the Blitz on London, Churchill's position was never questioned. You seem to have the attitude of a Douhetist, like Le May, Harris, or Goering, that bombing alone would bring down a government. The events of 1940 and later proved conclusively the folly of this belief.
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Au contraire, mon vieux. The forward end of 'B' deck on the wrecksite, with the irregularly spaced rectangular, windows, is diagnostic of the Titanic of 1912, and different from Olympic's appearance until after her post Titanic sinking refit, when she received the same uograde.
Do try to think. Had this not been the case, wouldn't someone, just possibly, have mentioned it?
By someone, of course, I mean a serious Titanic researcher or historian, or perhaps had bben involved in one of the many expeditions to the site?
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@tjhodge201 I really don't care whether you disagree or not, as your actual knowledge and understanding seems rather limited.
Two aircraft carriers built to the early 1930s design that was the Graf Zeppelin, equipped with unsuitable aircraft converted from land based designs? The Bf 109, even the version intended for carrier use, for example, had an undercarriage so frail that it made the FAA's Seafires look like robust carrier aircraft. How many deck landings in Atlantic conditions could a Bf 109 have survived?
Italian ships? Have you actually read anything about the record of the Italian navy in the Mediterranean? Moreover, have you heard of Gibraltar? How would your Italian ships get past that?
Submarines as escorts? Give me strength. The best surface speed a WW2 U-boat could make was 17 knots. A Bismarck, or a theoretical Graf Zeppelin, could manage 32. Basically, you would simply hamstring the operations of the surface ships. Trying to operate submarines in conjuction with surface fleets was attempted, unsuccessfully, by the RN with their 'K' boats in WW1, and as parts of a trap, by the High Seas Fleet, equally unsuccessfully.
You have a very Pacific centred view of naval warfare in WW2, even though you don't apparently know the name of the Yamato. In the west, RN carriers operated as part of a balanced fleet. Moreover, almost all the German warships sunk in WW2 were sunk by surface ships or submarines. Certainly, that applies to Graf Spee, Bismarck, Scharnhorst, and half of the German destroyer force.
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@tjhodge201 'Imagine if Graf Zeppelin and Italy had completed both their carriers in 1939 or 1940.' You don't seem aware of the faults in Graf Zeppelin's design & conception, or you simply feel the need to ignore them. Actually, the building of Graf Zeppelin was halted in April, 1940, and only briefly resumed in mid 1942, before quickly being abandoned again. The ship ended the war as a floating timber store./
Aquila. Don't be silly, and read a book or two. Work on converting Roma into Aquila only even began in November, 1941, after the disastrous (for the Italian navy) battle of Matapan.
Explain how Midway has any relevance at all to the war against Germany & Italy? Especially since the US, Britain, & Japan all had experience of naval aviation, whilst Italy and Germany had precisely none.
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@tjhodge201 'One last thing the fact both nations were taking valuable scarece resources trying to build Aircraft carriers and not more Bismarcks proves my point.' Are you a totally fact free zone, little chap? As I wrote earlier, Graf Zeppelin was cancelled in 1940, before work was recommenced, then almost immediately cancelled, in 1942. The German laid down the keels of two 'superbattleship,' the H class, immediately before the war, before cancelling them in September, 1939.
Aquila was only even commenced in late 1941.
Your ignorance is, frankly, pheonomenal. The last Deutschland was laid down in 1933, after which the Germans actually moved on to battleships, the Scharnhorsts and then the Bismarcks. How exactly would Deutschlands, with cruiser level armour and speeds of 28.5 knots, have acted as 'protection' for anything?
Bismarck was damaged by a battleship, further damaged by an aircraft carrier, then sunk by two more battleships. Tirpitz was sunk by long range land based heavy bombers using a weapon which was inconceivable in 1939. Yamato was sunk by aircraft from several carriers, whilst on a suicide mission, and the bulk of damage was done by torpedoes, a weapon not even available to the German airforce until mid 1942.
Ask yourself this. How many British battleships were sunk by axis aircraft, even when operating in the enclosed waters of the Mediterranean with minimal air support?
Perhaps you are unaware that the naval war of WW2 was not confined simply to carrier engagements in the Pacific?
Or perhaps you are simply unaware of history.
Whichever it is, why not go away & buy a book on naval actions in WW2?
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British forces sank 70 ships totalling 138,346 tons.
Australian 13, totalling 31,802
New Zealand 2, totalling 2,095
Dutch/Australian 2, totalling 8,303.
Australian/Indian 1, of 525.
Dutch/Indian, totalling 1, of 10,439.
US/Australian, 11, totalling 44,622.
US/Australian/Dutch 2, totalling 16362.
US/British 5, totalling 8,602.
US/New Zealand 1, of 2,212.
US/British/Dutch 1, of 989.
Of these, 46 were warships.
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@chrislye8912 'So if Hitler wanted to do it he would have done.' That seems to be the standard response. Until late September/early October, he did wish to invade, as a last resort. His Generals, with no idea of amphibious landings, convinced themselves that the operation was merely an extended river crossing. Raeder was too canny to say that the operation was impossible, although he did come up with a whole host of pre-requirements. The Luftwaffe, headed by the enthusiastic Douhetist Goering, happily believed that they alone could force Britain to terms.
Of course the Operation was never a realistic possibility, but that does not mean that it was not seriously planned.
As to the three waves :-
The First Wave consisted of nine divisions and one understrength Parachute Division landing in four locations, Folkestone-New Romney, Rye-Hastings, Bexhill-Eastbourne, and Beachy Head-Brighton. The Parachute Division would land north west of Folkestone, in order to capture Lympne airfield.
Once these beachheads were established, a second wave of four infantry divisions and four panzer divisions would land in support, followed by a third wave of six infantry divisions.
Please read my post again. I never suggested that the plan had the slightest hope of success. The Royal Navy would ensure that the first wave was annihilated en route, and of course the operation would be abandoned as a result, but nevertheless, however impracticable it might have been that was the German plan.
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If the Germans had devoted the necessary resources to building the Plan Z fantasy fleet, then they could not have expanded their army or air force as they historically did. Consequently, an attack on France and the Low Countries would not have happened, and there wouldn't have been any possibility of anything like Sealion, as the Germans, of course, wouldn't have had access to Belgian & French ports, but would have been as hemmed in as they had been in WW1.
Furthermore, any expansion of warship building by Germany would ring alarm bells in the UK, as the warships could only be targeted at one power. The British would retaliate with an expanded shipbuilding programme of their own, and British yards could comfortably outproduce anything the Germans could build.
It is all meaningless talk anyway, as Hitler always regarded the Soviet Union, not Britain, as his principal foe.
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@suryaprakash2126 But surely you can grasp that, if the Germans devoted their entire economy to building the Plan Z ships, then their successes in the west in 1940 couldn't have happened because they would have had neither the army nor the air force to bring them about?
If France doesn't fall, the Germans don't have the French bases to launch an invasion of Britain, but it doesn't matter anyway because, being in the middle of building their fleet, which presumably wouldn't be ready until 1946 at the absolute earliest, they would have had neither the air force to bomb Britain from their airfields in Germany, nor the army to cross the Channel from the ports they didn't control anyway!
While, of course all this is going on (or, more accurately, isn't going on) an undefeated France is building up her own armed forces preparatory to an offensive against Germany, and the Royal Navy is imposing the same kind of blockade that effectively starved the Kaiser's Germany into submission in WW1.
The fact is, for a regime intent upon conquering the Soviet Union, a large fleet was an utterly useless luxury.
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@suryaprakash2126 The peace was offered because Hitler knew that he could never successfully invade (as Napoleon said 'can an Elephant fight a Whale?) and he needed the British to give him a free had in eastern Europe. He was, apparently, willing to guarantee the British Empire, largely because he had no means of threatening it anyway. It was a major gamble on his part, and it failed.
Graf Spee sank nine merchantmen in four months. She was a nuisance, but that was what allied naval superiority was all about. In the event, she encountered the weakest Hunting Group, and couldn't cope.
German technology, at least at sea, was over-rated, in that the gunnery radar fitted to their ships was delicate, to say the least. Look at Bismarck. She fired off a few shells at HMS Norfolk, and in so doing put her own forward radar out of action. British & American sets were much more robust.
Yes, the Germans built 1156 U-boats in six years, but only because they abandoned Plan Z more or less from the start. This number, by the way, is about 200 less than the number of destroyers and convoy escorts either in British service in Spetember, 1939, or added to the fleet during WW2.
The Germans, in military terms, gave more than they got from the German Soviet Commercial Agreement of 1940. The Soviets supplied oil, raw materials (predominantly Manganese & Rubber) and grain, whilst the Germans received the incomplete Admiral Hipper-class cruiser Lützow, the plans for the battleship Bismarck, information on German naval testing, "complete machinery for a large destroyer", heavy naval guns, other naval gear, and samples of thirty of Germany's latest warplanes, including the Bf 109 fighters, Bf 110 fighters, Ju 88 and Do 215 bombers.
The Soviet Union also received oil and electric equipment, locomotives, turbines, generators, diesel engines, ships, machine tools and samples of Germany artillery, tanks, explosives, chemical-warfare equipment and other items.
Stalin was never going to supply the vast amounts of iron ore Plan Z would have needed, still less the manpower to build the ships. In any case, by the time of the agreement, Plan Z was history.
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@111076tom Try the early pages of 'The Doomed Expedition - The Campaign in Norway 1940' by Jack Adams. Presumably you weren't aware that, immediately after the Altmark incident, the French government were advocating an immediate landing in Narvik, ostensibly to support Finland, and that, on the very same day that the Altmark incident took place (16 February) the French had created a force 50000 strong, consisting of Chasseurs Alpins, Foreign Legion units, and Polish units, called the 'French Expeditionary Force in Scandinavia?' The Chamberlain government, by the way, refused to participate in the proposed action.
On 21 March, Reynaud demanded more aggressive action by the allies. The allies delivered a note to the Swedish & Norwegian legations in London, protesting about the violation of Scandinavian waters by German vessels, and warning that mines would be laid in Norwegian waters if action was not taken. Reynaud pressed for use of the French force, but the British cabinet turned down the proposal.
Not, of course, that any of this relates to my original question. Why, in your view, were the British the villains here, and the French (and the Poles under their command) excused criticism?
On second thoughts, don't bother to reply, do a little reading up on the facts first.
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@whitewolf1298 'There is no way no how the Kreigsmarine was going to be able to best the British navy on the high seas.' The Kriegsmarine didn't need to do this. If they could have controlled, or, at, least, prevented the British from controlling, the Channel for around ten days, that would have been sufficient to attempt a large scale landing, even using the amateurish plans the Kreigsmarine had made. The British concern was not that the Germans would seize and crew the French ships, but that the French navy, with French crews, itself would operate in support of an invasion attempt. The fact is that the British government had no idea how the Vichy government would behave. Certainly, as head of the French navy, Darlan had given his word that it would not work with the Germans, but Darlan subsequently moved from a military to a political position within Vichy, and was known to be under pressure from Weygand not to let what Weygand called his 'little boats' scupper the armistice agreement.
'Hitler allowed the British to evacuate from Dunkirk.' Another throwaway line which cannot pass. Hitler did no such thing. The famous Halt Order on the Aa canal did not come from Hitler, but from the commander of Army Group A, von Rundstedt, who was concerned that his tanks, although they had not seen much actual combat, had travelled a considerable distance on their own tracks, and needed a brief period of maintenance before the second phase of the invasion of France commenced. Hitler was at von Rundstedt's HQ when the order was issued, and didn't query it, firstly because from his own WW1 experiences he knew how unsuitable for tank warfare the area was, but mainly because, on 23 May, Goering had approached him with the comment that the destruction of the allied troops in the Dunkirk pocket, and any evacuation fleet, 'is a special job for the Luftwaffe.' Fortunately, the Luftwaffe at the time was almost as incapable of hitting ships at sea as was the RAF. Seriously, if Hitler hoped for a peace with Britain, wouldn't he have had a better chance of getting it with the BEF in German prison camps, rather than allowing the Royal Navy to rescue it?
Certainly, Hitler saw the Soviet Union as his true enemy, but if you had read the full extent of the Kreigsmarine planning for Sealion (and I have) you would not so blithely dismiss the idea. Raeder certainly thought Hitler was serious. Indeed, he became increasingly desperate to find reasons to stop what he believed would have been a disaster, until he hit upon the failure of the Luftwaffe as his 'Get out of Jail Free' card. The reality, of course, is that, if ordered, the Luftwaffe should have been able to maintain control of the air space over the Channel. The problem, however, was that control of the surface of Channel itself was what really mattered, and that remained throughout entirely with the Royal Navy.
For his part, Hitler, as Trevor-Roper argued so cogently so long ago, sought to neutralise France, and to persuade Britain to remain inactive, as he undertook his attempt to achieve lebensraum in the east. That the British government did not acquiesce in his plans was his first major miscalculation.
None of which, by the way, has much relevance to Mers-el-Kebir, except as part of the explanation as to why the British government acted as it did and, of course, why they were justified in so doing.
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You obviously don't know much about British defence policy between the wars, and in particular from the late 1930s, when a potential triple threat, of Germany, Italy, & Japan, emerged. The worst case assumption, of war with all three, still assumed to support of France. British (and French) planners expected that a western front, similar to that of WW1, would emerge, the small German fleet would be penned in the North Sea, and the Northern Blockade of WW1 would be re-imposed. The sizeable French fleet would support the British in the Mediterranean, and the Italian North African empire would be threatened by the French from Tunisia & the British from Egypt. This would enable a sizeable British fleet to be sent to the Far East. No-one at all anticipated the collapse of France.
After June, 1940, the British found themselves needing to retain most of their fleet in Home Waters, whilst at the same time needing to maintain a powerful fleet in the Mediterranean, as well as reinforcing the Western Desert Force against attack from Italian Libya.
Of course Churchill's main concern was events in the west. The one positive fact of 1941 was that Japan was still neutral. Even so, there were around 140,000 British & Commonwealth troops stationed there by the end of 1941. Singapore was not starved or neglected. There was a substantial army in Malaya already. After the Japanese attack, incidentally, the C-in-C Middle East offered to sent some of his light tanks to Malaya, only to be told that they were not needed as Malaya was unsuited to tank warfare. This decision was made from Singapore, not from London, by the way.
Of course Churchill was more concerned about the situation in the west. Axis success in North Africa, and even the possibility of an invasion of Britain herself, would have a greater effect on the prospects of survival than the possibility of a Japanese attack in the Far East.
You seem to forget that Britain and the Commonwealth & Empire were actively fighting two major military European powers. Resources were not infinite.
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@Newie67 Hood was completed in 1920. Bismarck had been commissioned in August, 1940, and then spent six months working up in the Baltic. Hardly hurried. Moreover, her AA guns were all modern, even if in the event they failed her.
Bismarck's flaws were more basic. She had four twin turrets, (at a time when every other major navy had moved to three turret designs,) thus requiring a greater length and therefore more armour. Her armour itself still followed the WW1 incremental layout, which other navies had long abandoned in favour of the superior 'all or nothing' design, and she retained an outmoded low angle secondary armament when other navies were installing Dual Purpose secondary systems. Finally, internal communications were placed too high in the ship, and were disabled almost at once in her final action.
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@Newie67 Firstly, Bismarck was not rushed into action. After commissioning, she had six months working up in the Baltic. British and, later, American heavy ships could only dream of such a leisurely work up timescale. Secondly, the German navy did not have an air search radar, even less a radar capable of directing AA fire. Even Tirpitz never received anything more than the FuMo 23 main gunnery sets.
Instead of looking at the hits it took to sink Bismarck, why not look at how quickly she was reduced from a warship to a helpless target. On 27 May, about 20 minutes. By comparison, USS South Dakota at Guadalcanal received 27 heavy hits and remained in action. Warships were expected to achieve rather more than simply being hard to sink, and Bismarck didn't.
Bismarck was never called a 'pocket battleship.' The only three to which this term might be applied were the Deutchlands, supposedly 10,000 tons, but actually nearer 15,000. Bismarck was built well after Hitler had chosen to ignore any treaty limitations, and actually displaced almost 50,000 tons.
Bismarck, by the way, was built to take on the French Jean Barts, in a potential war between Germany & France/Poland. The German navy never gave any consideration at all to the sheer impossibility of challenging the Royal Navy.
Seriously, there are so many errors in your comments about Bismarck that I wonder why you bothered to post at all. Why not just buy a book or two in order to correct the gaps in your knowledge?
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@Newie67 Certainly, Bismarck had three FuMo23s, or, to be strictly accurate, three radars known as FMG 39G (gO)s, of a type which later were renamed long after Bismarck had settled in the sea bed. However, in her initial encounter with Wake-Walker's squadron, she fired a few rounds at HMS Norfolk from her forward turrets, and the shock effect disabled her forward radar, probably both sets if Prinz Eugen's War Diary is correct. Bismarck's senior survivor, von Mullenheim-Rechberg, was actually her 4th Gunnery Officer, in command of her aft director, and he does not refer to use of radar in the last action at all, even when he briefly took command of what was left of her armament until his optical equipment was smashed.
You have, at least, got something right. The bulk of the initial damage, including the destruction of Bismarck's forward armament and her bridge & command staff, was the work of Rodney, in the first 20 minutes of the action.
If the British did not use radar for range, how do you explain the fact that, among others, Hood, Suffolk, & KGV, had main gunnery, Type 284, radar, and used it during both actions. Type 284 had both search & ranging capability, by the way. The reference to radar at 10.15 in your rather poor YouTube presentation is irrelevant, in that it only refers to the main radar, not to supposed AA gunnery radar which you mentioned earlier, and is, frankly, wrong, for the reasons I have explained earlier. The British by May 1941 had gunnery radar on most of their larger warships, and many also had effective air search sets as well. If you wish to discuss naval history with people who are professional historians, with Firsts in the subject and access to a vast array of archives, you really need to up your game, old chap. Incidentally, 'dum' is actually correctly spelled 'dumb.'
As to your rather infantile comment :- 'France was defeated so why build a ship for somebody that was defeated?' Are you really so ill-informed that you are unaware that Bismarck was laid down in 1936, and launched in February, 1939? Was France defeated in 1936 or, indeed, in 1939?
What if the American vessels were built after the sinking of Bismarck? What relevance at all has this to the lengths of their work-ups, or to that of the British KGVs? I will ignore your anti-American rant as irrelevant, and end by saying that the British only became a naval enemy of Germany when Kaiser Bill embarked on a building programme specifically intended to challenge the supremacy of the Royal Navy. Prior to that, the French had been the main potential opponent, but Wilhelm's actions were something no British government of the time could ignore.
I do, by the way, regularly discuss history with others, but they do tend to have rather more knowledge than you appear to have, possibly because, unlike you, they do not acquire their information from rather dubious sources, such as questionable YouTube programmes.
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@Newie67 I wrote that the Bismarck did not have AIR SEARCH RADAR, because she didn't. Show me where I wrote something to the contrary, please. She was not state of the art, despite what your 'documentary' says. For example, she had four twin turrets, when other navies had moved to three multiple gun turrets. This made her much longer, and requiring more armour, than contemporary British & American capital ships. She was, by the way, 251m long, compared to the 227m of the King George Vs, and the 222m of the North Carolinas. Next, she was given low angle secondary armament, at a time when British & American ships were fitted with dual purpose secondary armaments. The British 5.25 inch and the American 5 inch could engage approaching aircraft; the German 5.9s could not. Thirdly, she still retained the outdated incremental armour system, which all other major navies had discontinued after WW1, in favour of the superior All-or-Nothing design pioneered by the US navy. As a result, she, in common with other 'incremental' ships, was far more vulnerable to internal fires. Look up the ends of Hiei, Kirishima, & Scharnhorst, as well as Bismarck, for proof of this, and compare them to the South Dakota, which suffered considerable damage, but no serious internal fires. Finally, her lower belt was positioned too low in the ship. This made her difficult to sink, but comparatively easy to reduce to impotence. As a result, she was reduced from a functioning warship to, in effect, a helpless target, in about 20 minutes on 27 May. Combine all that with her internal communications network, which was positioned above her main armour, and thus was destroyed right at the start of her final action, and you have an impressive looking, but rather outdated, capital ship. Finally, her belt, at 320mm, was 36mm thinner than those of the Nelsons or the KGVs, her deck armour, at 120mm was 32mm thinner than the KGVs and 39mm thinner than the Nelson, and her weight of broadside, at 6400 kgs, was lighter than either the KGVs (7212 kgs) or the Nelsons (8360 kgs). You thus have a warship which has only one advantage, which was the speed to avoid action. Once that was lost, she was doomed.
You might want to print off the above, rather than sticking to simply watching superficial and inaccurate documentaries on TV. There are academic studies of the naval war of WW2 available for adults, you know.
I agree, we do have different ideas about 'healthy discussion.' Mine involve presenting facts and drawing conclusions from them, whereas yours seem to involve refusing to read things you don't like, and then calling people 'nobs' and 'dum.' I suppose I should have realised the extent of your lack of knowledge when you, absurdly, referred to Bismarck as a 'pocket battleship.' Please feel free to go away and watch a few more 'documentaries' if you find proper studies beneath you.
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Rather more than 24 hours. There were three different sets of Barge Trains, and each required that the barges (in pairs, each pair being towed by a tug, small coaster, or trawler) be extricated from the relevant port, formed up into a cumbersome, rectangular box formation, and then towed in this formation slowly down the Channel, at around five knots or so, to the landing beaches.
The Kriegsmarine estimated that the largest formation (330 barges from Boulogne together with a further 50 from Le Havre,) would be at sea, from first to last, for approximately three days.
Obviously, throughout this period, the Royal Navy's regular Channel patrols would be sporting enough to avert their collective gaze.
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@robh316 Actually, in the whole of WW2, the Luftwaffe sank 31 RN destroyers, and no British warship larger than a light cruiser. The RN began the war with 193 destroyers, and ended it with around 400. There were 41 RN destroyers at Dunkirk. 6 were sunk, of which 4 were by air attack. These 41 destroyers alone lifted around 100,000 men.
In 1940 the Luftwaffe had not received training in anti-shipping operations. Indeed, it didn't even receive a torpedo bomber until mid 1942.
You have proven the accuracy of the maxim that 'The fewer facts someone actually knows about 1940, the more convinced that person is the Sealion could have succeeded.'
With the acquisition of knowledge comes, inevitably, the realisation or reality. In short, read a few books!
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' Members of my family who are farmers ' If you say so :-
Lisa Eva Nandy was born in Manchester on 9 August 1979, the daughter of The Hon. Luise (née Byers) and Indian Bengali academic Dipak Nandy.
Her maternal grandfather Frank Byers was a Liberal MP who later became a life peer in the House of Lords. Lord Byers later served as the Leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords from 1967 to 1984. Nandy grew up in both Manchester and Bury.
She was educated at the private, fee-paying Moor Allerton Preparatory School, before going to Parrs Wood High School, a co-educational comprehensive school in East Didsbury in Manchester, followed by Holy Cross College in Bury. She studied politics at Newcastle University, graduating in 2001, and obtained a master's degree in public policy from Birkbeck, University of London.
Nandy worked as a researcher and caseworker for the Walthamstow Labour MP Neil Gerrard. After that, Nandy worked as a researcher at the homelessness charity Centrepoint from 2003 to 2005, and then as senior policy adviser at The Children's Society from 2005 until her election in 2010, where she specialised in issues facing young refugees, also acting as adviser to the Children's Commissioner for England and to the Independent Asylum Commission. She served as a Labour councillor for the Hammersmith Broadway ward on Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council from 2006 to 2010. As a councillor, she served as shadow cabinet member for housing.
Nandy was selected as the Labour parliamentary candidate for Wigan in February 2010 from an all-women shortlist. At the 2010 general election, Nandy was elected to Parliament as MP for Wigan.
Thereafter, onward and upward within the Labour Party, among a wider group who, like her, had no experience of the real world, and even less interest in it.
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' 'Overlord". That hadn't happened in 1940, it happened in the future.' Your depth of research is admirable'
Has it, however, explained why, in 1940, the Kriegsmarine commandeered and converted almpst 2,000 barges, almost 200 freighters, around 400 tugs, and over 1,100 motor boats?
Moreover, the 'merciless application of air power' only began in early September, 1940, when it had become clear even to Hitler that a seaborne invasion was an impossibility. Additionally, any such use of air power required a substantial force of strategic bombers, which, of course, the Luftwaffe never possessed.
You have concisely described Douhet's theory of Air Power, believed by Goering, the British Air Ministry, and many US air strategists. Of course, the theory was proven to be a false one.
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Hitler didn't 'allow' the troops in the Dunkirk pocket (1/3rd of whom were French, by the way) to escape because the halt order was issued by von Rundstedt. The next phase of the invasion of France was about to begin, and the German armour needed to rest and to service their vehicles. Certainly, Hitler could have countermanded the order, but didn't, firstly because of his WW1 experience, which led him to believe that the Dunkirk area was unsuitable for tanks, and secondly because he had been assured by Goering that the destruction of the Dunkirk pocket and the evacuation fleet was 'a special job for the Luftwaffe.'
Seriously, if Hitler wanted to force the British government into an armistice, wouldn't he have been in a better position with the BEF in prison camps, than with it safely on the other side of the Channel, protected by the Royal Navy?
As to Hitler not wanting to go to war with Britain, actually it was more a case of not being able to wage war effectively against Britain, because the Germans, with a tiny navy and an air force untrained in anti-shipping techniques, had no realistic means of bringing such a war to a successful conclusion by getting their army across the Channel.
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@28pbtkh23 He seems to make a habit of it, and he has already demonstrated that he is often a stranger to the truth when it conflicts with his ill-concealed prejudices. Please read my reply to him on another subject, as follows:-
As a 'well educated on-paper seaman' may I have the impertinence to correct this :-
'High velocity 11-inch-shells from Gneisenau or Scharnhorst penetrated easily the armor of Renown, which meant cold food for Renown's crew.' I assume you have never read Captain Simeon's report of the action with Scharnhorst & Gneisenau, still less, probably, that of Admiral Whitworth. Well, I have.
Despite your untruths, which I will generously attribute to your ignorance, rather than to a deliberate attempt to mislead, Renown was actually hit twice during the action. One shell passed through the main leg of her forward tripod mast, without exploding, although it did sever some electrical leads, and the second passed through Renown's extreme stern, damaging a fan and some light fittings, again without exploding. Renown's armour was not penetrated, and the damage was minimal, with none at all to her galley. I recall telling you this some time ago. Presumably you did not expect me to read this post, hence your attempt to patronise me.
By the way, Kirishima was never a British ship, although built, in Japan, to a British design. Again, clearly, you cannot possibly be attempting to mislead, but are simply either ill informed or merely allowing personal prejudice to override the facts.
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@hajoos.8360 Do you think it would have been a good idea for Prinz Eugen to have closed the range? Oh well, possibly fortunate for her that someone more sensible was making the decisions on her bridge. Why do you have such a problem with accepting what everyone else with any knowledge already knows, which was that Jasper believed Hood & PoW were cruisers?
As for the Report from Schmundt which, apparently, you believe I have invented, simply search for :- 'Position Statement of the Commander of Cruisers (B.d.K.), Vizeadmiral Schmundt, regarding the War Diary of the cruiser "Prinz Eugen".' It is followed by further comments by Admiral Carls, Head of Naval Group North. Unless, of course, you now wish to suggest I made that up as well? Carls concluded by writing that 'The criticism of the assumption by the 1st Artillery Officer is not warranted, namely, that at very far distances of the opponent, particularly at sharp angles, the identity of a ship's type, even with the most accurate knowledge, cannot be demanded with absolute certainty.' In other words, Carls, like everyone except you, accepts that Hood & PoW were wrongly identified.
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@donfelipe7510 She could, but Tovey only had four capital ships to block two Atlantic exit points, so kept his strongest and weakest (KGV & Repulse) in the Iceland-Faroes Gap, and sent the middle two to the Denmark Strait. He hoped, by so doing, to have an adequate force in both locations to prevent Bismarck breaking out. He was proved right, but hardly in the way he expected.
Previously, when Scharnhorst & Gneisenau had broken out (Operation Berlin, also commanded by Lutjens) Tovey had gambled on this being through the Iceland-Faroes Gap, and had placed his capital ships there. He had been proved wrong. This time, he hedged his bets.
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@killlois100 'Why did Germany drop 25 different loads of leaflets over London between 1940 -1945, each time appealing to an end to war?' They didn't, although the 'Appeal to Reason' leaflet (surrender or we bomb you) was useful as toilet paper was in ahort supply.
Hitler was not making a charitable gesture at all at Dunkirk. Von Rundstedt issued the halt order because the armour needed to be serviced in order to commence the second stage of the French campaign. Rundstedt, like several other Germen Generals, remembered the 'Miracle of the Marne' and feared a repeat.
Corporal Hitler remembered the area from WW1 days. He knew it was not good tank country, and that the horse drawn infantry divisions were beginning to arrive. Most importantly, however, he was unwise enough to believe Goering's boast that the destruction of the Dunkirk pocket was 'a special job for the Luftwaffe.'
As to Hess. I appreciate that reason is not uppermost in the minds of you neos, but seriously, if your fuhrer had seriously wished to negotiate, which was the better approach?
1). Make cautious diplomatic contacts via a neutral Embassy, such as Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, or the United States? Or,
2). Send a lackey on a lone flight to Scotland, in order to bail out somewhere near the estate of a Scottish aristocrat who might (or might not) possibly have some unspecified contacts within the Westminster government?
Patton (not Patten, by the way) was many things, but he was not a great political thinker. Perhaps you might give rather more weight to US commanders who were, such as Dwight Eisenhower or George Marshall?
I won't be replying to any further posts, by the way. I find you neos quite annoyingly tedious.
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Because the loss of a few small warships would be barely noticed by the RN, which in September 1939 had almost 200 destroyers alone. The only serious contribution the u-boat arm could make was by waging a trade war and cutting off supplies to the UK, as had been attempted during WW1. Furthermore, u-boats tended to avoid attacks on small, fast vessels with ample depth charge resources and asdic/sonar, as there was significant danger of the hunter becoming the hunted. See '2nd Support Group, Captain Walker' for further information. Occasional u-boat successes against larger vessels (cruisers, battleships, & carriers) might have been high profile, but barely made a dent in allied naval supremacy, as the Germans didn't have a surface fleet to exploit any such successes.
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The circumstances at Alexandria were entirely different from those at Mers-el-Kebir. Alexandria was a main RN base, and the small French squadron was entirely surrounded by RN heavy ships. Mers-el-Kebir, was a major French base, containing four battleships, including the new, fast, Dunkerque & Strasbourg.
Somerville knew what was at stake, delayed firing for as long as he could, but with the French fleet raising steam, and night approaching, without any agreement being reached, he really had no choice.
The fact is that every pre-war assumption the British had made had vanished in the previous five weeks, and the risk that the French navy could end up under German command simply could not be countenanced. I agree that Admiral Darlan was a man who placed great importance on the honour of his navy, and would have opposed such a development, but he was, apparently, out of contact with his headquarters during the whole of the day. For all the British knew a new head of the navy, appointed by Laval, might have given completely different orders.
What happened was appalling, and viewed as such by the Royal Navy, but in the circumstances of the time it is understandable.
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@FredericGaillot Which facts do you believe I have got wrong? The small French squadron under Godfroy was certainly armed (I don't recall suggesting that it wasn't) but it was, in effect, trapped in a major British naval base, and surrounded by the bulk of Cunningham's Mediterranean Fleet. Godfroy was certainly an anglophile, who spoke English well. He was a widower, by the way, whose late wife had been a Scotswoman. He was not, by the way, Cunningham's brother-in-law, as you oddly claim. Cunningham's family came from Dublin, and his wife from Sussex.
Neither was the French Fleet at Mers el Kebir disarmed, or even intending to disarm, by the way. Indeed, after the British opened fire, at 1755, the French, although at a hopeless disadvantage, replied, and Force H was briefly subjected to the sight of colourful shell spashes of red, blue yellow, and green from the dyes inserted in the noses of French shells in order to enable French gunnery officers to determine the fall of shot from each battleship. Gensoul had already ordered his ships to come to action stations, steam had been raised, awnings had been folded, and by the time the British opened fire five French destroyers, and the Strasbourg, were under way and approaching the harbour mouth.
The fact is, by the way, that Darlan could not be contacted on the day of Catapult. More significant, however, was the fact that he had been appointed Minister of Marine on 27 June, by Petain, thus changing his role from that of the head of the French Navy to that of a senior minister in a collaborationist government. Churchill had already stated in Cabinet that 'In a matter so vital to the safety of the whole British Empire, we could not rely on the word of Admiral Darlan.' Harry Hinsley, in 'British Intelligence in the Second World War' states that 'Intelligence sources, including Sigint, proposed the disturbing possibility that the Germans were signalling instructions to the French Navy in Darlan's name.'
I am not claiming this as fact; I am simply trying to make you understand what information was available to the British Government at the time. Of course Somerville stuck to his orders and, after delaying for as long as he could, obeyed the instructions of his political masters. Cunningham would, however reluctantly, have done the same had it become necessary.
The rest of your post is emotional rather than rational. The fact is that France was no longer an ally of Great Britain, and a British Government suddenly facing a situation totally changed made hard and unpleasant decisions because it believed them to be necessary for the maintenance of the defence of the United Kingdom. Of course Somerville protested about his orders. I doubt you would have found an officer in the Royal Navy who didn't detest the idea of firing on French warships, but the fact is that it is politicians, not the military, who make the final judgement.
Franklin Roosevelt, by the way, had the United States' Navy making similar plans for a strike against the Royal Navy had the British ever been reduced to a similar situation.
You might try to get hold of an old book called 'The Deadly Stroke' by Warren Tute, who was Private Secretary to Churchill in June 1940, and interviewed a large number of British & French naval officers when composing his account.
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@kristelvidhi5038 The Japanese did not do 'great work' with their carriers. They crippled the US Pacific Fleet with a surprise attack on a neutral country, but the first time they faced a prepared US force at Midway they were heavily defeated, and their carrier force was permanently in retreat thereafter,
They did, however, operate aircraft specifically designed for carrier operations, and operated the carriers as part of a larger Task Group with a number of supporting battleships, cruisers, & destroyers.
The Germans knew nothing about carrier aviation, intended to use aircraft designed for land operations, such as the Bf109 and the Ju87, and lacked the essential support warships.
As for intellectual prowess, what sort of genius deliberately picks a war with the three greatest industrial powers on the planet?
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@Cervando The Americans were our allies? In May 1916? Try again. In May 1916 there was considerable anti-British feeling in the United States as a result of the Contraband Control operations being carried out by the Royal Navy. Understandably, the US Government was more than a little disgruntled at their merchant shipping being intercepted on the high seas by the British. In any case, wasn't the remark correct? Didn't the German Navy assault it's jailer, and wasn't it, after the assault, still in jail?
German planning prior to Jutland involved two ambitions. The first was to use U-boat traps and mines to sink a few British Battleships, and the second was to isolate and destroy a Battle Squadron from the Grand Fleet in order to make fleet action feasible. They never came remotely near to either.
As to losses, the bulk of British losses occurred to the Battlecruiser fleet in the early part of the action, largely due to the shortcomings of it's commander, David Beatty. In the main action between the battlefleets, the Germans scored precisely two hits on one British battleship, Colossus, whilst suffering almost 40 hits on their own heavy ships. As a result, Scheer, shrewdly, ran for safety, and never risked the High Seas Fleet again.
The question no one seems able to answer is ' if the High Seas Fleet was unable to challenge the blockade, then what purpose, if any, did it serve?' The blockade strangled the life out of Germany, and all the time the High Seas Fleet swung peacefully at anchor in the Jade.
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@Cervando Well, however you view it, after Jutland the Germans abandoned attempts to challenge the Grand Fleet, the British control of the North Sea continued, and the Blockade starved Germany into submission.
Your comments on the Spanish Armada don't recognise the wider picture. The Armada was sent to convey an invasion force across the Channel. It failed. The Battle of Gravelines forced the Spanish ships to cut their anchors and head north around Scotland. In total, possibly as much as a quarter of the fleet failed to return to Spain. To suggest that the action was not an English victory is absurd, on a par with those who claim that the British didn't sink the Bismarck because scuttling charges might have been detonated a few minutes before she sank, bringing forward the actual sinking by a few minutes.
Certainly, the English Armada failed, but there again so did the Spanish Armadas of 1596 & 1597. The Treaty of 1604 certainly didn't favour Spain. It confirmed that Spain would no longer seek to impose Roman-Catholicism in England, and would acknowledge the legitimacy of the Protestant monarchy.
Not, of course, that any of this has the slightest relevance to Jutland
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@Cervando In point of fact, in May 1916 Germany was viewed with more sympathy in the United States than Britain. As Professor Kennedy wrote, 'Germany retained a more favoured position within the American Congress and large swathes of the public in the spring of 1916. That governmental and public perception of Germany would change rapidly as the autumn of 1916 came to pass, and that change was a direct result of the Battle of Jutland. While Germany was held in good odour in the United States in the immediate aftermath of the great sea battle, the question of Germany’s desire and willingness to use unrestricted submarine warfare was an issue of concern to America.'
As to arguments about the Armada, or the War of Jenkins' Ear, from my experience most people in the UK under the age of about 40 know virtually nothing about British history, or, come to that, any history, at all!
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@ochomunna270 Really? Churchill became War Minister in late May, 1940. He was a politician, not a time traveller.
At the time of Gallipoli, he was First Lord, and his job was, in conjunction with the First Sea Lord, John Fisher, to devise means by which the Royal Navy could make the greatest possible contribution to the war effort.
Once the authorisation had been given (by Herbert Asquith, not by Churchill) the planning and execution of the operation was undertaken by the military.
Certainly Churchill was the chosen scapegoat, as Asquith protected his own back, but David Lloyd George knew the truth and brought Churchill back into government almost immediately after succeeding Asquith.
The commanders in France in 1940 were in post well before Churchill became Prime Minister, which, as I assume you didn't know. was 10 May, 1940, which was, ironically, the same day as the German Blitzkreig was launched. In fact, his comment on Dunkirk was 'wars are not won by evacuations.'
Do you consider Wavell or Auchinleck to have been 'awful' commanders. assuming that you have even heard of them?
Before you accuse others of lying, perhaps you might find out a few facts. There are heavy paper things called books. Perhaps you might obtain one or two and try to read them?
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@joshuamorrison8332 Please don't get so tediously aggressive. Didn't you write :-
'Chamberlain's desire for peace, while much derided in the history books, probably saved countless lives at Dunkirk,' Or have you forgotten? I didn't say you said Chamberlain played an active role. I simply said that he was irrelevant.
There is no doubt at all about the Halt Order. It may be read in the War Diary of Army Group A, which was captured in 1945 and is readily available. Indeed, Hitler could have over-ridden it, but because of a number of factors, he chose to let it stand. These factors included :-
1). The need to service & repair the armour to prepare it for stage 2.
2). Hitler's knowledge from his time there in WW1 that the area was poor tank country.
3). The imminent arrival of the German infantry divisions, more suited to the task.
4). His (erroneous) assumption that an army backed against the sea was trapped.
But, most of all, Goering's assurance to him, the day before the order was given, that the destruction of the surrounded allied forces was 'a special job for the Luftwaffe.'
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Did you simply pick your 200 to 300 number at random? Here is a response to a Freedom of Information request :-
'Based on the limited data available to us as of 21 May 2024, in the period of 1987 to 1998, 102 cases involving postmasters (by which we include sub postmasters as well as other individuals whose roles at the time were unknown) were commenced that resulted in a prosecution for financial discrepancies, theft, fraud, false accounting offences, and other financial mismanagement.'
So, for two to three hundred each year, read, approximately ten per year.
In detail, the figures are as follows :-
Year. Prosecutions. Convictions. Acquittals. Dismissed Case. Unknown.
1987 2 2
1988 1 1
1989 0
1990 1 1
1991 4 3 1
1992 1 1
1993 2 1 1
1994 4 3 1
1995 2 2
1996 10 10
1997 25 22 1 2
1998 44 41 2 1
There were a number for which the date was in the 1990s but the year unknown :
These amounted to 6 prosecutions, of which 4 convictions, and 2 result unknown.
The Horizon system was piloted in 1996, by the way. Between 1999 & 2015 there were 900 prosecutions involving Horizon evidence. Or, 56 per year on average
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'KGV`s ! Unsinkable ( as long as they don`t face an enemy ); Well, Duke of York sank Scharnhorst, Prince of Wales caused sufficient damage to Bismarck to force Lutjens to abandon his commerce raiding operation, and King George V, with Rodney, rapidly disposed of Bismarck. Incidentally, I don't think 'some britains' (whatever that is supposed to mean) have any problems with German ships, any more than the wartime Royal Navy did. Cases in point : Graf Spee, Konigsberg, half the total German destroyer force (1st & 2nd Narvik), Bismarck, and Scharnhorst.
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@Jack29151 I know exactly what an Armistice is, and if you think that the Treaty of Versailles was anything other than a settlement imposed upon a Germany on the verge of revolution by the victorious Allies you are delusional. 'Draw?' Nonsense! Armistice implies negotiation, and there was virtually none, other than arguments among the allies over exactly how harsh they should be.
If, as you say, Germany still loses WW1, then why would there be any restrictions on the victorious British American, & Allied navies at the end of the war? The Washington Treaties would almost certainly have taken place, the reasons for them being, primarily, economic, and the Royal Navy would have looked more or less exactly as it did by 1939, as would the US Navy.
You are, to be honest, making no sense at all.
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@Jack29151 Not so. The Treaty established limits on the size of each fleet. The US navy disposed of four of their oldest dreadnoughts, whereas the RN, with a much larger battleship fleet, disposed of their older 12 inch gunned ships, but retained their ships with 13.5 & 15 inch guns, and under the treaty terms, built two new 16 inch gunned ships.
Germany, on the other hand, was obliged to hand over all her dreadnoughts to the victorious allies. Most were scuttled (to the secret satisfaction of the British & Americans) in Scapa Flow, but a small number were retained by the British & Americans for testing and subsequent use as targets. The Germans were, however, allowed to retain their Deutchland class pre-dreadnoughts, as they were hopelessly obsolete by 1919.
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Nonsense. By the time Bismarck was sunk, she had lost her main armament and command staff, was settling by the stern and developing a steadily increasing list, and was a mass of internal fires. David Mearns, on of the leaders of the expeditions to inspect her, reported that any attempt to scuttle whould have speeded up the sinking by 'a matter of minutes, only.' Perhaps you consider that a scuttled ship is slightly less sunk?
Both the US & Royal Navies have a tradition that says, 'we fight the ship, not the men.' The fact is that a U boat report was given to Captain Martin of HMS Dorsetshire by a look out. His first duty, and that of any commander in wartime, was to his own ship and men. Are you suggesting that he should have trusted to the sporting instincts of the commander of the U-boat?
U74 was indeed in the area, reported seeing British heavy ships although she was not in a position to attack, and later surfaced amid a large number of bodies and wreckage. She did pick uo one or two survivors.
By the way, perhaps you are unaware that, when Scharnhorst & Geneisenau sank HMS Glorious, HMS Ardent, & HMS Acasta, off Norway in 1940, they left around 2,000 men in the water to die? A shame the Anglo-American tradition hadn't reached the Kriegsmarine, wasn't it?
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@bottomrung5777 Of course a passenger ship could leave port with a bunker fire aboard. Bunker fires were not unknown. Indeed, IMM had regulations in place requiring that the condition of the bunkers aboard their ships be inspected on a daily basis. Which is precisely what happened, the smouldering fire was discovered, a team allocated to it, and it was extinguished around 24 hours before the sinking. What you suggested, however, 'If the decision was to embark knowing the fire would destroy the hull causing catastrophic failure, then mass murder was committed,' borders on the lunatic.
No New York team was allocated because there was no need. As every contemporary source, and in particular, the statements of the engineer & stoker survivors at the British Inquiry, made clear was that the fire had caused no damage beyond scorched paintwork inside the bunker. Thus, your claim that correspondence between the Captain and the New York repair facilities is, unambiguously, a lie.
Quite what motivates you fools to behave in this manner is beyond reason, I fear.
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@bottomrung5777 I prefer accurate, factual, comments, to nice ones.
'You could have AT THE START given a brief background of yourself to try and qualify your take.' You mean, just as you didn't?
I don't need to justify myself to anyone. My opinions, just like anyone else's stand or fall on their own merits, However:-
After leaving University with a First in Modern History, alongside my business career I chose to specialise in Maritime & Navay History, and in particular that of the 20th Century. I have had a number of books and articles published on the subject. I am fortunate enough still to have access to a range of research facilities, such as the National Archives at Kew. Does that help?
'I gave opinion on a line of research that may be appropriate to help victim families get closure.' Really by suggesting to families two or three generations apart from their forebears that these forebears may have been murdered, even though you have precisely no supporting evidence?
'The hulk on the bottom of the sea may show evidence of paint discoloration or ? where the coal bunker was located to possibly help in the entire matter. POSSIBLY.' Actually, no. Definitely not. You think it might be possible to examine the quality of paint on metal which has been deteriorating for over 110 years, let alone the condition of that same metal? Seriously?
Take as much exception as you like. Truth is more relevant than good manners, and your suggestion that there might have been questionable decisions made, once again with precisely no evidence, is insulting to those who died aboard Titanic, as well as to the people who built & operated the ship/
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'As for the British, they let France pay the price for the land war without giving it much support.' Much as the French let, or would have let, the British pay the price for the sea war without giving it much support. That was the accepted trade-off between the two allies.
Mr. Phillips rather exposes the weakness of his argument when he compares the number of divisions in the BEF in 1940 with those of 1918. When the BEF went to France in 1914, it consisted of only six infantry divisions and one cavalry division. In WW2 the forces sent by the British were gradually to be increased by conscription, and by the arrival of additional divisions from Canada, India, Australia, and New Zealand, as had happened in WW1. Allied strategy assumed a defensive posture at the beginning, which would become more offensive as these extra resources arrived. Obviously, because of the 1940 collapse, this was never possible.
I am surprised Mr. Phillips is unaware of this. Assuming, of course, that he is actually unaware, rather than simply avoiding the fact.
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The Kanalkampf brought initial success for the Luftwaffe, but petered out when the Royal Navy rescheduled the convoys to pass through the Straits at night, and Dowding ordered his fighters not to go out over the Channel. Just to put Kanalkampf into perspective, during the whole of the war there were 531 CW/CE coastal convoys ( the ones attacked during Kanalkampf) which passed through the Straits, mainly consisting of small colliers escorted, usually by two destroyers and two or three armed trawlers. Total number of merchant ships involved :- 9097. Total sinkings (by aircraft & S-boats) :- 31. 'Suicide?' hardly!
Kanalkampf was actually called off by the Luftwaffe, because the RN and the RAF refused to play the German game.
Immediately after Dunkirk, the Germans had no available parachute troops, following heavy losses in Norway & the Low Countries. Even in September, they had only about half a division. Furthermore, their transport aircraft fleet had been seriously mauled, and by late August, 1940, there were still only 226 operational.
I notice that you use the habitual phrase of the Sealion enthusiast, the 'would have.' Try reality. In Norway the Royal Navy maimed the German surface fleet, and naval losses to air attack were hardly heavy. Likewise, at Dunkirk, 41 RN destroyers took part, and 4 were lost to air attack. In exchange, the RN, seeking to evacuate 40,000 'specialist' troops, brought out, with the support of the Merchant Navy & the French navy, 338,000 men. The Luftwaffe actually failed badly at Dunkirk, largely because it had had no training in anti-shipping warfare. One wonders how a Luftwaffe which struggled to hit ships sitting motionless at Dunkirk would have performed against similar ships, moving at 25 knots or so, in the Channel. Not that it matters, because in June/July, the Kriegsmarine had no available transport vessels, still less any assault ships. Incidentally, in the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe managed to sink precisely 31 RN destroyers. The RN entered the war with 193 destroyers, by the way, and ended it with over 400.
You refer to Greece & Crete. In point of fact, the RN losses were mainly incurred during the evacuation phase of the campaign. Cunningham had been ordered to prevent axis reinforcements reaching Crete by sea. Two axis convoys were sent. The first, heading for Maleme, was annihilated by a RN cruiser squadron, and the second, for Heraklion, turned back to Greece. No seaborne reinforcements reached Crete until evacuation had been decided upon.
I assume you made up the claim that the British only had 1 division available in June, as it is incorrect. As early as 7 June, the British were preparing to send three divisions (the 'Reconstituted' BEF) to Cherbourg, consisting of 1st Canadian, 52nd Lowland, & 1st Division. As the move was halted after Weygand had informed the British that the French army was no longer capable of organised resistance, these three were immediately available, supported by a number of armoured units. The British had, by the way, quite a number of tanks. Many were obsolete models, but quite capable of dealing with (non-existent) paratroop forces armed with light weapons only.
As for the Germans not knowing how to win, it was actually more straightforward than that. They knew (or at least, the Kriegsmarine did) that they couldn't.
Whatever 'would haves' might fantasise about, 80 years later!
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@LittleWhiteHead1 Prince of Wales & Repulse were sunk by Japanese torpedo aircraft, with crews well-trained in anti-shipping operations. The Luftwaffe had no aircraft, or crews, remotely similar until mid 1942.
Shipping in the Channel did only suffer the losses I stated. Check the figures for yourself. There are fully detailed in 'Coastal Convoys' by Nick Hewitt.
Pedestal was over two years later, when the Luftwaffe had greatly improved anti-shipping techniques, out of necessity. Moreover, the relevance to Operation Sealion is questionable, as RN anti-invasion forces were not hindered by the need to protect merchantmen. On the contrary, they were able to operate offensively against towed barges.
'The full force of both E & U boats.' Sorry, try again. In September, 1940, there were 13 'S' boats in service. As to U-Boats, the Germans sent three into the Channel in late 1939. They, and their crews, are still there. No further U-Boats went near the Channel until after D-Day, when they achieved almost nothing. In short, the Channel was a death trap for submarines. Moreover, attempting to use U-Boats to attack destroyers goes entirely contrary to the manner in which they were used in WW2.
I do not doubt the capabilities of both U & S Boats when used appropriately, against merchantmen at night. I would however question how effective they would be when use inappropriately again fleet destroyers, or when, for the most part, they didn't even exist, as they didn't in September, 1940.
The German surface fleet in September, 1940, consisted, in terms of operational ships, of 7 destroyers, 7 large torpedo boats, and about 20 fleet minesweepers. There were also three light cruisers and a heavy cruiser, which were intended to carry out a diversionary operation off the east coast in order to distract the Home Fleet.
The British knew where their own and the French minefields were. As to German ones, the Germans had seven minelayers. The British at the time had over 400 fleet & auxiliary minesweepers in Home Waters. Moreover, the Germans would attempt to lay mines at night. How then would they hope to avoid the nightly destroyer patrols carried out by the RN from Harwich and Plymouth through the Channel?
My account of the destroyer losses at Dunkirk does tally with every source. Of course the RN switched to night evacuation, on the basis that, in wartime, it is wise to do what your enemy least wants you to do. Incidentally, the RN was also capable of operating at night against any invasion barges, which could expect no escort of any kind.
Finally, the army doesn't really matter, because the whole nature of Admiralty planning was intended to prevent organised forces even getting ashore. Moreover, if British resources were really so desperate, how were they able to send three armoured regiments, with supporting artillery, to North Africa in late August, ' The 'Apology' convoy?
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@annoyingbstard9407 No. I don't 'imagine they designed them the day before they came into mass production?' The first design for what became the V1 was sketched out by Lusser & Gosslau on 27 February, 1942. The technology for what became the V2 had only been available from late 1941. Hitler, by the way, dismissed the concept as 'an artillery shell with a longer range and much higher cost,' at the time.
Certainly, a number of theoretical ideas, leading in some cases to tests of prototypes existed before those dates, but nothing in the way of government sponsorship or finance was provided.
Jet engines were not part of the 'wonder weapon' concept. More than one nation had been working on them, as a normal line of aircraft engine development. Similarly, several nations were working on nuclear weapons, Britain especially being well in advance of Germany. The German programme was, by the way, hamstrung by the involvement of anti-semitic prejudice, which led to a bias against theoretical physics, especially quantum mechanics.
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@ViralDabro Population of India in 1857. Approximately 180 million.
Numbers of British administrators in India in 1857. Approximately 30,000.
One Administrator per 6,000 people. Colonisation?
You also need to look up the structure of the army in India, which was overwhelming made up of Indian troops. It was, by the way, only established in 1895.
The term Indian Army appears to have been first used informally, as a collective description of the Presidency armies, which collectively comprised the Bengal Army, the Madras Army and the Bombay Army, of the Presidencies of British India, particularly after the Indian Rebellion.
So, it appears these 'military armies' with 'totalitarian rule' were overwhelmingly Indian ones.
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@chrism7969 The reality is that they couldn't. The British were already outbuilding the Germans in single seat fighters at the time. The option was always there to concede, temporarily, superiority over the Home Counties, but to return in force had an invasion attempt been made. The irony is that, had they been so ordered, the Luftwaffe could have maintained superiority over the Channel. Indeed, Fighter Command, after Kanalkampf, avoided sending their fighters over the Channel, preferring that damaged aircraft could land back on their airfields, and that pilots who bailed out would not be lost.
Of course, even then, the Germans still faced the problem that their crews were not trained in attacking warships, and the possibility that they could have prevented massed RN destroyer, cruiser, and supporting smaller warships attacks on the barge trains was, at best, a remote one, whatever the enthusiastic Sealion 'would haves' might claim.
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@jackrosario9990 Really?
In August, 1945, there were 15 capital ships, 55 carriers, 67 cruisers, 308 destroyers, & 162 submarines. I think these figures answer your post, so I won't mention sloops, frigates, corvettes, escort destroyers, minesweepers, etc., etc., etc. I would take too long.
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@koczisek Perhaps, before being so generous about Georgie boy, you should read about the shambles that was his campaign in Lorraine?
I also like your idea of the BEF attacking. Very imaginative, in that, firstly, strategy of the Western Front was dictated by the French General Staff, and secondly in May 1940, the BEF consisted of three corps, totalling 10 divisions, three territorial divisions, which were only partially trained, and a single tank brigade of 50 tanks.
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'And he was far more thorough than Lord Mersey and the British Board of Trade, who were mostly invested in applying the whitewash brush.' Let's see. The British Inquiry last twice as long, and had a greater number of witnesses, from a much wider group of involved persons, than the American one. Perhaps you should read the minutes & the findings before commenting upon them?
In detail,
US Inquiry - 18 days, 86 witnesses. British Inquiry - 36 days, 98 witnesses.
Did the US Inquiry interview expert witnesses, such as Alexander Carlisle, designer of the Olympics, or Leonard Peskett, designer of the Lusitanias, or John Pritchard, retired Master of Mauretania, or Joseoh Ranson, Master of Baltic, or Harold Sanderson, Vice President of IMM, or Ernest Shackleton, or William Stewart, Master of Empress of Britain?
The British Inquiry was far more detailed, and far more exhaustive, involving people from all levels, from surviving Greasers to the Vice-Chairman of IMM.
By the way, what do you consider was 'whitewashed?'
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@epyle100 The scan will show nothing that isn't already known. It will certainly not provide any informatin about Astor, Guggenheim, Straus, or Morgan.
The following is the text of a New York Times newspaper article of Thursday 28th March 1912, which states that "J. Pierpont Morgan has written a cordial letter to the committee, announcing that he will be in Venice on April 23 for the inauguration of the biennial International Art Exhibition, April 25, and dedicate the new Campanile of St. Mark's."
The reference that Morgan unloaded 'art works' hours before sailing seems to be simply an urban myth. There is no contemporary evidence in support.
Astor might have been outspoken but, like Guggenheim, not on the subject of the Fed., on which both kept their opinions to themselves.
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@bhaveshparekh8966 I am far from unaware of the Bengal Famine. Indeed, I know the facts, which is evidently more than you do.
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which you have been indoctrinated.
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Why was it a betrayal? There was a new French government, which no longer regarded Britain as an ally, and the Armistice agreement required that the French fleet be placed in French Atlantic ports, under German supervision. The possibility that the Fleet might end up in German hands, or, at least, operating in support of the German war effort, was something that the British government could not allow. The British government would have been happy to accept the re-location of the Fleet to the West Indies (indeed, Darlan might well have accepted the proposal) but Gensoul chose not to mention this part of the Ultimatum to his government.
Somerville could not leave his flagship, as that would have left him out of contact with London at a critical time. Indeed, it might have led to him being 'detained.' Holland had been British naval attache in Paris, spoke excellent French, and was both known and liked by many of the higher ranks in the French navy, though, unfortunately, he had never met Gensoul. What could Somerville have said through a translator that Holland couldn't say directly. The reality is that Somerville wasn't there to negotiate.
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@HistoryDenied Well, the Indus civilization, the earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent. appear to date from be about 2500 B.C. By the time the British & French arrived, not much progress towards them seems to have been made, compared to the progress made during around 250 years of the British presence.
Incidentally, average life expectancy in India in 1800 was 25.4 years. Population in 1800 was 169 million.
By contrast, average life expectancy in India in 1900 was 35.0 years.
Population in 1950 was 357 million.
So, as a result of being exploited by the British, more than twice as many Indians as in 1800 were able to live, on average, ten years longer.
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@leondillon8723 General Alexander von Kluck died in October, 1934, aged 88. He actually commanded the German First Army during the early part of the First World War, but retired in October, 1916, after being wounded.
His army never entered the Netherlands because the Netherlands was neutral during the First World War, and this neutrality was respected by both sides. Thus, the 'Limey' army never entered The Netherlands either, and the 'Limey' navy never hijacked US ships carrying supplies to the Dutch Army,
I don't know what you are drinking, but it must be extremely potent!
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@leondillon8723 Perhaps you didn't know that the design of the tanker class to which Kentucky & Ohio belonged was influenced by the United States' Navy, and that the vessels were earmarked for use as naval auxiliaries in time of war? As you don't even seem to grasp that The Netherlands was neutral in the First World War this wouldn't surprise me in the least.
Oh well. The telegram sent to Texaco by the United States' War Shipping Administration simply stated that Ohio was being 'requisitioned pursuant to the law.' The British government had asked the United States for the services of two fast tankers, and the War Shipping Administration, acting on the instructions of President Roosevelt, made firstly Kentucky and later Ohio available.
This was a generous act, at a time when the United States' Navy needed fast tankers for their fleet train in the Pacific, but taken for the greater good of the allied cause in mid-1942. It does, however, give the lie to your nonsensical claim that 'limey sturmtruppers attacked' the Ohio in a Scottish port.
As to whether the United States' government reimbursed Texaco, I neither know, nor care. Perhaps you may wish to investigate this matter of American jurisprudence; for my part I can' be bothered. Prior to the First World War, certain medium sized British liners had contract conditions which rendered them liable for requisition in wartime as armed merchant cruisers. Possibly something similar applied to the American fast tankers.
Alternatively, you might consider stopping posting nonsense, or at least making some attempt to check your facts.
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@raykeane9345 Churchill was not 'shunned' by the population at large, although his warnings about Germany rapidly re-arming after 1933 were viewed with some alarm by people still recovering from the horrors of WW1. Was he wrong about that, by the way? Politically, he was an outcast, as his party continued to follow a policy of appeasement, and what he was saying was not what his leaders wanted to hear.
Churchill did not 'send the Black & Tans to Ireland.' The Prime Minister at the time, was David Lloyd George, and the force was actually sent by him. Certainly, Churchill played a role in the recruitment process, as the Royal Irish Constabulary was becoming increasingly incapable of controlling the unrest. However, as the Canadian historian David Leeson wrote, "The typical Black and Tan was in his early twenties and relatively short in stature. He was an unmarried Protestant from London or the Home Counties who had fought in the British Army. He was a working-class man with few skills".] The popular Irish claim made at the time that most Black and Tans had criminal records and had been recruited straight from British prisons is incorrect, as a criminal record would disqualify one from working as a policeman. Moreover, the popular claims made about their atrocities confuses them with another force, the 'Auxilaries' who were attached to the RIC as a counter-terrorist unit, and bore some responsibility for such actions.
As to India, Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
In terms of racism, certainly his views would have been unacceptable today, but were the generally held ones at the time of his birth in 1874. Indeed, they were not quite so extreme as another prominent figure from the time, a lawyer who held that Africans were a lower form of human being, and should never be given the right to vote. His name, by the way, was Mohandas K. Gandhi.
In short, you aren't missing much, if you prefer myth to accurate historical facts.
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@jeanie6936 I will simply repeat what Carlisle said at the Inquiry, which was that he expected the Board of Trade to amend their rules concerning lifeboats to take account of the much larger ships entering service. Mauretania entered service in November, 1907, two months after Lusitania.
Carlisle designed the Olympics to be capable of carrying an enhanced number of boats, but as he retired at the end of June, 1910, and Olympic was not even launched until late October, 1910, he was not in post to make any recommendations. However, you might find the following relevant, perhaps?
Question 21267 at the British Inquiry relates to a previous interview given by Carlisle which was as follows The questioner was Mr. Butler Aspinall, who was quoting from a statement Carlisle had given to a British newspaper which read :-
"When working out the designs of the 'Olympic' and the 'Titanic' I put my ideas before the davit constructors, and got them to design me davits which would allow me to place, if necessary, four lifeboats on each pair of davits, which would have meant a total of over 40 boats. Those davits were fitted in both ships, but though the Board of Trade did not require anything more than the 16 lifeboats 20 boats were supplied."
You might also wish to consider the following. The questions are from the Commissioner, and Mr. Aspinall, and the answers from Mr. Carlisle :-
21275. (The Commissioner.) Where did you get them (the davits) from?
- From the davit constructor. We made a rough design in Belfast ourselves, and then I sent it to him to draw the kind of davit he would recommend, seeing that prior to that he had designed one for the Union-Castle Line to carry two boats.
21276. Is that the same design as the smaller one?
- The first you have in your hand was got out about the middle of the year 1909. That was the original thing before the plan was made.
21277. Which was?
- That small one. That is the one for consideration which I put before Lord Pirrie and the directors of the White Star. Then when I pointed out that I expected the Board of Trade and the Government would require much larger boat accommodation on these large ships, I was authorised then to go ahead and get out full plans and designs, so that if the Board of Trade did call upon us to fit anything more we would have no extra trouble or extra expense.
21278. You would be ready to go on with it?
- Yes.
21279. How many boats does this represent?
- That represents 32 boats - 16 doubled. There they are as fitted in the Union-Castle Line. That was done in 1909. That was on the "Edinburgh Castle," I think. (The witness pointed on the plan.) When I saw that one I thought we would improve upon that, and this is the plan I got out.
(The witness explained the plan to the Commissioner.)
21280. (The Commissioner.) What I understand Mr. Carlisle to say is this: He was of opinion, or thought it possible, that, having regard to the size of the "Titanic," the Board of Trade might require greater lifeboat accommodation; and he mentioned this to Lord Pirrie and to other people connected with Messrs. Harland and Wolff, and he was then told to prepare plans for the instalment of larger lifeboat accommodation, and he accordingly prepared this plan. Now this plan provides for, as I understand, four boats upon one set of davits. (To the witness.) Is not that so?
- Yes.
21281. Later on he prepared another plan, which is this, which provides for two boats to each set of davits, instead of one, but neither plan was utilised because the Board of Trade did not require any increased accommodation beyond that which was originally contemplated before these plans came into existence. That is right?
- That is so.
At 21288, Carlisle continued : I came over from Belfast in October, 1909, with these plans that were worked out, and also the decorations, and Mr. Ismay and Mr. Sanderson and Lord Pirrie and myself spent about four hours together.
21289. Did Mr. Sanderson discuss those plans?
- Mr. Sanderson, I think, never spoke.
21290. Did he sit for four hours without speaking?
- No; but that was over the whole of the decorations; we took the entire decorations of that ship.
21291. Never mind about the decorations; we are talking about the lifeboats?
- The lifeboat part I suppose took five or ten minutes.
21292. Then, am I to understand that these plans which you are now producing were discussed, at this four hours interview for five or ten minutes?
- That is so.'
'What do you have to say about that, Albert?' I assume that is addressed to me? If so, I have nothing to say, because I have left the talking to Alexander Carlisle,
Seriously, why do you not simply read the minutes, or is it that you prefer argument to debate?
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@adamsmith4813 2,130,793 in 1949, but how is that relevant?
'I know an accountant he won't get the bus because it's sure to have working class people on it.' If that is the extent of your argument, then it is a facile one. I knew someone who worked for socialist heroine Barbara Castle. He told me that, when she travelled up to her Blackburn constituency, she used a chauffeur-driven Bentley from London, but just outside Blackburn she met her local agent, who drove her to the constituency office in a battered old mini. My mate was a committed Socialist, but didn't see anything amiss in Barbara's duplicity. This is irrelevant, also, by the way.
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How then would you explain the fact that, at the time of the sinking, both Olympic class liners were at sea? Olympic herself was on her way to Southampton from New York. She actually replied to Titanic's SOS, but was too far away to help.
Olympic had been damaged in a collision in 1911, but had been repaired in six weeks by Harland & Wolff, and had been carrying out regular Atlantic crossings since late November, 1911, when Titanic was far from complete, rendering the idiotic idea of a swap impossible. There is even a photograph of the two together in Belfast in late October. Titanic is the unpainted one, with parts of her superstructure, and three funnels, still not in place.
As to insurance, both Olympics cost £1.5 million to build, and both were insured for £1 million. What sort of idiot schemes to lose £500,000 as part of a fraud?
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@Halemmeric2010 You don't know much about the RN of 1940, do you? In September, 1940, there were 70 light cruisers and destroyers within five hours steaming of the Straits of Dover, backed up by around 500 or so smaller warships. There were a further 40 or so destroyers also in Home Waters. That doesn't include the battlecruisers, battleships, and heavy cruisers of the Home Fleet at Rosyth and Scapa.
By the way, the Admiralty had no intention to use the heavies against Sealion. If you had any actual knowledge, you would understand that 3 inch, 4 inch, 4.7 inch, and 6 inch shells are far more effective against towed barges than 8 inch, 15 inch, and 16 inch.
You still haven't addressed the dire actual record of your mighty Luftwaffe against the RN in WW2, I observe.
What happened to those 70 or so ships in close proximity to Dover? Actually, not a lot.
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There was no threat from submarines in the Channel, as it was a death trap for them. In 1939 the Kreigsmarine sent three boats into the Channel. They, and their crews, are still there. The reason capital ships remained in Rosyth was because, where sinking towed barges was concerned, 3 inch, 4 inch, 4.7 inch and 6 inch quick firing guns are far more effective than 8, 15 & 16 inch ones. As an American friend of mine once said, using battleships against barges would be like going duck-shooting with field guns.
Oh, and torpedo bombers? The Luftwaffe didn't acquire any until mid 1942.
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'A 1st class, passenger, Elizabeth Lindsey Lines, cabin D-28, overheard a conversation between Cptn. Smith and Bruce Ismay in the ship's lounge that went something like this:
JBI: So you've not yet lit the last four boilers?'
Mrs. Lines was, doubtless, an honest and accurate witness. To quote the relevant section of her testimony, it went from question 41 onwards :-
41. Are you able to state from your recollection the words that you heard spoken between Mr. Ismay and Captain Smith on that occasion?
- We had had a very good run. At first I did not pay any attention to what they were saying, they were simply talking and I was occupied, and then my attention was arrested by hearing the day's run discussed, which I already knew had been a very good one in the preceeding (sic) twenty-four hours, and I heard Mr. Ismay - it was Mr. Ismay who did the talking - I heard him give the length of the run, and I heard him say "Well, we did better to-day than we did yesterday, we made a better run to-day than we did yesterday, we will make a better run to-morrow. Things are working smoothly, the machinery is bearing the test, the boilers are working well". They went on discussing it, and then I heard him make the statement: "We will beat the Olympic and get in to New York on Tuesday."
42. In your last statement, Mrs. Lines, were you giving the substance of the conversation or the exact words which were used?
- I heard "We will beat the Olympic and get in to New York on Tuesday" in those words.
43. If there were any particular words spoken that you can remember, I should be glad to hear them.
- Those words fixed themselves in my mind: "We will beat the Olympic and get in to New York on Tuesday."
44. Do I understand you to say that the other things that you stated were the general substance of what you heard and not the exact things or words used?
- No, I heard those statements.
45. What was said by Mr. Ismay as regards the condition of the performances, of the engines, machinery and boilers?
- He said they were doing well, they were bearing the extra pressure. The first day's run had been less, the second day's run had been a little greater. He said "You see they are standing the pressure, everything is going well, the boilers are working well, we can do better to-morrow, we will make a better run to-morrow."
There was, in Mrs.Lines' testimony, no reference to lighting ' the last four boilers' at all. Moreover she was adamant about the exact words used.
Whatever influence Ismay may or may not have had over Smith, if Mrs.Lines is indeed a credible witness, then no such reference was made. At least, not within the earshot of Mrs.Lines.
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@HaremScarem1762 The 'copy and paste' quote was from the minutes of the Inquiry. I simply quoted from the text, which you would know, had you actually read it.
'What do you deduce from - (Ismay to Smith) ''So you've not yet lit the last four boilers'', and we'll do better tomorrow''? ' What I deduce from that is that you haven't actually read Mrs. Lines' deposition. Had you done so, you would have known that she made no reference to any such comment, by Ismay or by anyone else. Therefore, further response on my part is not necessary. I note, however, that you actually made it up :- 'A 1st class, passenger, Elizabeth Lindsey Lines, cabin D-28, overheard a conversation between Cptn. Smith and Bruce Ismay in the ship's lounge that went something like this:
JBI: So you've not yet lit the last four boilers?' In your original post
Hoist by your own Petard, mon vieux?
'Maybe you'll tell us that Mrs Lines had cognitive and dementia issues as well just like you suggested Eva Hart had.' I made no such reference about either person. I have never doubted the accuracy of Mrs. Lines' deposition, and all I remarked about Eva Hart was that it was probable that her account was influenced by things she heard later in life. What her seven years old self remembered is unknown, as her first, short, account of the sinking dated from August, 1980. You can listen to the British Library recording if you like. She recorded a second interview in 1993. You can listen to that, too.
She subsequently, in 1994, wrote an autobiography, 'Shadow of the Titanic – A Survivor's Story' Thus, her first, very brief, account of what happened was given when she was seventy five years old. Are you seriously suggesting that she had not read or heard anything at all about Titanic since the ship sank in April, 1912.
'ps, is your book worth a read?' Well, according to reviews from several noted naval historians, yes it is. Not that it is appropriate for me to express any opinion.
By the way, I will ignore any further comments from you, as you aren't actually worth my time and effort.
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@chandlerwhite8302 Outstanding! Another 'would haver.' It is always fascinating to read posts from people like you, full of what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done, but never able to explain why it failed to achieve anything even close in reality.
The British wanted to sink Bismarck before she reached St. Nazaire and became, like Scharnhorst & Gneisenau at Brest, another nuisance 'Fleet in Being.' German heavy ships rarely sortied, and the opportunity to destroy one potential threat to the convoy network was too good to miss. In point, of fact, although clearly you didn't know, the largest RN warship sunk by the Luftwaffe in WW2 was a light cruiser.
Good to see the ignorant reference to Prince of Wales and Repulse. Both were sunk by torpedo bombers. Aparat from a small number of clumsy seaplanes (around two dozen) based in Norway and used against unprotected merchantmen, the Luftwaffe had no torpedo bombers at the time.
By the start of WW2, all RN destroyers and convoy escorts were equipped with Asdic. The surface battle fleet was based at Rosyth, and consisted of three post WW1 capital ships, two light cruisers both less than a year old, and anti-aircraft cruiser, 12 destroyers all less than three years old, supported by four older boats. Not that this is relevant, because the main anti-invasion forces were some seventy cruisers and destroyers based in East & South Coast ports, mainly within five hours steaming of Dover, supported by around five hundred smaller warships. Many of these were, incidentally, the same destroyers which your wonderful Luftwaffe, untrained as it was in anti-shipping operations, failed to deal with at Dunkirk.
Finally, RN aircraft carriers at the time were not capable of combatting land based aircraft. They were intended to support the main fleet by providing reconnaissance and protection from long range bombers, as well as making torpedo attacks on enemy warships in order to slow them down. That is why the only carrier with the Battle Fleet was based at Scapa Flow, together with a battlecruiser & two heavy cruisers, to guard against a potential German Atlantic sortie by an armoured cruiser.
Still, I'm sure you will be able to come back with another fantastical 'would have.'
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda with which you have evidently been indoctrinated.
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@WRPUS471 I agree it happens now. In the UK it is called 'no-platforming.' If anyone disagrees with the accepted ( i.e., woke ) point of view, they are unofficially banned from the BBC, many parts of the media and, if academics, often dismissed from their posts. The latest target is British history, where there is a concerted campaign to discredit Nelson.
I suppose this has become inevitable since the left in Britain gained control of the Education system. I encountered it myself a few years ago, when I challenged my daughter's teacher, who had described Churchill as a 'warmonger.' I said 'whatever Churchill's strengths or flaws, he never actually declared war on anyone.' He said, why do you think you know more than me? and I said, a First in Modern History, and the fact that Churchill was not in government between 1929 & 1939, when he joined the government of a country already at war.' At which point, he threatened to throw me out of his office. As someone who played rugby union as a second row at university and later, I almost wish he had tried!
Sorry to have rambled on a bit, Lockdown does leave me with plenty of free time, but I think George Orwell (hardly a right-winger) summed up the Britain of today when he said '“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
I don't, however, believe that this was happening in the POW camps at the end of WW2.
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@jpmtlhead39 Research? Well. let's see.
Prinz Eugen survived the war largely because she contributed almost nothing to the German war effort, and stayed out of danger. She later acted as a floating gun battery in the Baltic, where her only achievement was that of almost sinking, by ramming ,a light cruiser. A German one, however. Being used for atomic bomb tests was, by the end of the war, about all she was fit for.
Scharnhorst & Gneisenau had a single successful raid, Operation Berlin, in early 1941. After that, Sharnhorst made one attempt to attack an Allied convoy, but was sunk a a result. Gneisenau was crippled in port, and was subsequently abandoned as a hulk.
Hitting Glorious from 26 miles was certainly an outstanding feat. It might stand comparison with HMS Warspite's hit on Guilio Cesare from the same distance. However, unlike Scharnhorst, the Old Lady went on to have an outstanding war record.
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@jpmtlhead39 'the Prinz Eugen contributed almost nothing...Well,She survived the war.' Yes, she did. Having, as I wrote, contributed almost nothing to the German naval war effort, apart from a small number of minor, HE, hits on Hood & Prince of Wales. Watching Bismarck sink Hood, then being sent to operate independently as a commerce raider, but almost immediately retiring to Brest instead, is hardly the stuff of legend, is it?
By the way, except in your mind, Prince of Wales was not seriously damaged. Indeed, the damaged which she inflicted upon Bismarck was far more important, in terms of 'mission kill' as Lutjens immediately abandoned his mission and headed for St. Nazaire instead.
I have already told you about Cerberus, and Raeder's assessment of it as a major strategic defeat, so no need to repeat the fact. I would add, however, that at the time S, G, & PE fled through the Channel, the RN's main forces were in the North, protecting Arctic convoys from a possible attack by Tirpitz, as the possibility of an attempted invasion had long passed.
Indeed 'the rest,' of Scharnhorst's sinking, Gneisenau's hulking, and Prinz Eugen's irrelevance, is history.
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@cybereus836 Clearly, the concept of sarcasm is utterly beyond your grasp.
I do enjoy, however, you insistence upon being rude, offensive, and insulting whilst at the same time accusing me of the same sins. I have encountered similar traits in your sort before; you haven't any effective arguments (or, if you do, you don't seem able to express them) so you replace them with abuse. I recall one of my Tutors saying, many years ago, that one of the few things more tedious than someone who didn't know a subject but insisted in expressing an opinion was someone who didn't know that he didn't know. Professor Foot would have been delighted to read your posts.
The discussion here, by the way, was about Sealion, not about the Battle of Britain. The Battle, by the way, was not the decisive factor where Sealion was concerned. The decisive factor was always the overwhelming naval supremacy held by the Royal Navy throughout the period of the invasion threat.
That you regard me as a liar and a cretin is fascinating. You have the opportunity to prove my errors by contradicting anything I have posted which isn't entirely in accordance with the known facts of the period.
Good luck with that.
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@cybereus836 You were the one who claimed that Mr. Forcyzk made some ' compelling arguments,' I have simply posted a whole series of facts proving that, in reality, that is not really the case.
Indeed, you referred to the need to 'find the invasion flotilla.' An ill-informed comment which I dismantled rather effectively by using facts.
My bruised ego? Oh, please! Nothing reinforces one's ego more than demonstrating the ignorance of someone who then posts a series of insults, yet at the same time insists upon bleating plaintively about allegedly 'aggressive' comments.
As I have said several times, I really don't care what someone like you thinks about me, nor, indeed about my reputation. I will leave the assessment of my arguments and my level of knowledge to those who have bought and read my books and articles, and to those of my peers who have reviewed my body of work.
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@ericbeaton7211 British units defending the perimeter included, among others, elements of the following regiments: the Loyals, Leicesters, Sherwood Foresters, Warwickshires, East Lancashires, Borders, Coldstream Guards, Duke of Wellington's, Green Howards, Durham Light Infantry, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Royal Ulster Rifles, Grenadier Guards, Berkshires, Suffolks, Bedfordshire and Herts, Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, East Surreys, Royal Fusiliers, South Lancashires and the Black Watch. These were withdrawn to Dunkirk on 2/3 June to an inner perimeter, and evacuated. For the last day, the perimeter was held by French troops.
Your reference to St. Valery can only refer to 51HD. 7 & 8 Battalions of The Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders were part of 51HD's 154 Brigade, which formed part of Arkforce. Arkforce was detached from the division on 9/10 June in order to form a defensive position 19 miles east of Le Havre, to make possible the withdrawal of the rest of 51HD and French IX Corps. Heavily congested roads resulted in the late arrival of Arkforce, and enabled Rommel's 7 Panzer to get between it and the rest of IX Corps. As a result, and as it was not possible to reunite 154 Brigade with 51HD. it was ordered to withdraw to Le Havre., from where it was evacuated.
There is a detailed account of these events in 'The Last Act' by Basil Karslake.
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@nickdanger3802 Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
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@SpiritHawk7 According to the 'Handy Book for Shipowners and Masters dated 1964, "A pilot employed voluntarily to navigate the ship is considered for that purpose the servant of the shipowner and the latter is therefore answerable for a collision caused by the pilot's negligence.'
Prior to the Pilotage Act of 1913 a compulsory pilot was not considered a servant of the shipowner, and the only person answerable for a collision was the Pilot himself. The Pilotage Act 1913 abolished the defence of compulsory pilotage within the territorial waters of the UK and Isle of Man and makes the owner of the vessel answerable for the Pilot's negligence.
Solent Pilot George Bowyer was, at least according to the subsequent court case, deemed responsible for the collision. Unfortunate, really, as he had previously taken Olympic into and out of Southampton without incident on several occasions.
As a result, the Court held that, as Bowyer was in charge of Olympic at the time, he was responsible for the collision. However, as he was not a 'servant of the Company' White Star was not required to pay for the costs of HMS Hawke's repairs, although of course their insurance cover with Lloyd's was invalidated where repairs to Olympic were concerned. The probability is that the collision was a driving factor in the change in the law that was the 1913 Pilotage Act.
Captain Smith was not found to be negligent.
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@Land-of-reason Which simply present the manifesto commitments (for what they are worth) of the party the candidate represents.
If you think that people vote for the person, not the party, explain this :-
Frank Field, Labour candidate for Birkenhead in 2017, polled 33588 votes, and won a majority of 25514.
He left the Labour party in 2018 because of anti-semitism.
Frank Field, Independent candidate for Birkenhead in 2018, polled 7285 votes, and lost to the Labour candidate, who polled 24990 votes.
Frank Field had been MP for Birkenhead continuously since 1979.
40 YEARS!
Explain again how people vote for the candidate, not the party?
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@Land-of-reason No. I mentioned manifestos, because that is what appears on the leaflets of candidates. I didn't say that the vast majority of people read manifestos, because of course they don't.
You do realise that you are agreeing with me, I suppose? I wrote 'In reality, how many people who vote actually even know the names of the candidates?' Now you say 'Labour voters tend to follow the direction of their parents or partners - group think.' Isn't that agreeing with my argument that people tend to vote for parties, not people?
No, we don't have General Elections because circumstances change. We have them because, at least in theory, we are a democracy, and a self-perpetuating parliament would not be accepted.
The current situation has, at least in my opinion, been brought about by a combination of Johnson simply not following through on those issues which chimed with the northen voters who elected Tory MPs. By which I mean, Levelling Up, Brexit, and Border Controls. Certainly behaving more like an Islington Thinker than a Tory Prime Minister has hardly aided his cause.
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@bigwoody4704 Sorry, but you are simply wrong. Just to clarify things :-
United States. Population 131,028,000. Losses 407,300 1.31%
United Kingdom. 47,760,000. 383,700. 8.03%
Canada. 11,267,000. 42,000 3.70%
Australia. 6,958,000. 39,700 5.71%
New Zealand. 1,628,000. 11.700 0.71%
South Africa. 10,160 000 11,900 1.17%
Poland. 34,849,000 240,000 7.14%
Populations as of 1.1. 1939., by the way.
Perhaps you should stop posting insults, and use the time saved to buy new batteries for your calculator?
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@bigwoody4704 No, you didn't. As you evidently cannot remember what you actually wrote, even though it was only a day or so ago, I will remind you :-
'You're right it should have been the ANZACs more of Britain's sandbags.'
I have simply corrected you by giving you the actual statistics, which prove that, despite only having a population only 36% that of the United States, British military casualties were less then 5% lower. I appreciate that the US was only finally dragged into WW2 two years or so later after being attacked, but that doesn't alter the facts.
Were you to include civilian losses as well, British casualties were actually 32,200 higher in total numbers.
I am not quite clear why you feel the need to harp on about this, especially when anyone with the most basic grasp of facts can see that you are in error.
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@bigwoody4704 Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I will continue to treat you as I would a normal person. The following are the countries you named, followed by population in 1939, military losses, and thre percentage.
Netherlands 8,729,000 17,000 0.19%
Belgium 8,387,000 12,100 0.14%
France 42,000,000 217,600 0.518%
Greece 7,222,000 35,000 0.484%
Phillipines 16,000,000 57,000 0.356%
United Kingdom 47,760,000 383,600 0.803%
I haven't bothered with Finland. I had assumed, wrongly evidently, that you knew they weren't on the allied side.
I suppose I should have realised that there would be a problem when I moved the decimal point one place to the right in my first set of statistics, to see what happened, any you didn't notice. Don't they teach percentages in the United States? Or do you just find numbers confusing.
However, here are the corrected figures, for you to misunderstand :-
United States. 131,028,000. 407,300 0.31%
United Kingdom. 47,760,000. 383,600. 0.803%
Canada. 11,267,000. 42,000 0.370%
Australia. 6,958,000. 39,700 0.571%
New Zealand. 1,628,000. 11.700 0.71%
South Africa. 10,160 000 11,900 0.117%
Poland. 34,849,000 240,000 0.68%
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@ErichZornerzfun No, there weren't. On 18 August, 1916, a force of 2 battlecruisers (all that were operational after the damage the others had received) and 17 battleships sailed. At 2119 the British intercepted a signal that the fleet had sailed at 2100, and at 2256 the Grand Fleet sortied. At 0500 on 19 August, the British submarine E23 torpedoed SMS Westfalen, which returned to port. At 1233 the Admiralty informed Jellicoe that the HSF was about 60 miles away, and Jellicoe prepared for action.
However, Scheer had received warnings from both U boats and Zeppelins of the approach of Jellicoe's fleet, which he believed to be around 110 miles north west of his position. Upon receiving an updated report from U53 that the Grand Fleet was 65 miles away, and heading towards the HSF, Scheer abandoned his sortice and returned to the Jade. What did the Germans achieve by this mission, as you claim? The sinking of two light cruisers? Is that it?
On 18 October, 1916, the HSF sailed, but within a few hours the cruiser Munchen was torpedoed by HMS E38, and Scheer returned to the safety of the Jade. The Grand Fleet was brought to short notice, but didn't sail as the German sortie ended almost before it had begun. What did this German mission achieve?
If there were more sorties than these two damp squibs, tell me when.
In general terms, what did the HSF achieve post-Jutland?
Did it challenge the Northern Blockade, which was starving Germany into collapse? I refer you to the Turnip Winter. No, it didn't.
Did it challenge the constant movement of men and equipment between Britain & France? No, it didn't.
Did it try to send a fast raiding force into the Atlantic, using battlecruisers and light cruisers, perhaps? No, it didn't.
Did it even seek to bring Trywhitt's Harwich Force of light cruisers and destroyers to battle? No. it didn't.
What it did do was to swing peacefully on anchor chains and cables in the Jade, whilst crewmen heard of the suffering of their families. No wonder they mutinied, was it?
No wonder, also, that Hindenburg & Ludendorff fell for Scheer's and von Holtzendorff's assurances that unrestricted submarine warfare could bring Britain to her knees, forcing Kaiser Bill to accept that his cherished surface fleet was a broken reed, and there was no alternative. Of course, the minor by-product of this desperate decision was to bring the United States into the war on the allied side. Was that the mission that the post Jutland German fleet actually accomplished?
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So eager was your hitler to avoid war that his forces presumably invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, THe Netherlands and Belgium to prove his peaceful intent? Is that really what you think?
When did hitler make these offers of peace and restoration of borders? Where might the text be read? Which historical archive contains them?
'If I remember correctly, he received and rejected one such offer right before giving his famous "fight them on the beaches" speech. Which, if true, is particularly revolting.' Actually no, you don't remember correctly, even if that is what the neo nazi hymn sheet from which you chant says so.
By the way, Churchill only became Prime Minister in May, 1940, and held no political office at all between 1929 and September, 1939.
You really should try harder, herr obergruppenfuhrer.
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@ryanstevens2722 The axis historically struggled to maintain the forces that they had in North Africa, and these were far smaller than those required, even theoretically, to attack the Middle East. Italian supply convoys were regularly intercepted by the RAF & the Royal Navy, and particularly by submarines and the Fleet Air Arm.
Moreover, where would the supply ships actually come from? Most of the Italian merchant marine was trapped outside the Med. when Mussolini suddenly declared war, and the Germans could hardly help with their own small merchant fleet, which could not get through the Straits of Gibraltar.
A limited amount of supply could be transported by air, but no heavy equipment such as trucks or tanks, and maintaining an army entirely by air is highly improbable, as rhe Luftwaffe was to demonstrate at Stalingrad.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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@kdmatt1 Odd how people who clearly don't know what 'research' is generally urge others to do some, isn't it?
I assume you refer to Morgan and the alleged elimination of those financiers who opposed the Federal Reserve, the myth invented in the 1990s. Here is what Reuters have to say about that nonsense:-
A widely-shared meme has taken several facts about the Titanic out of context to make unsubstantiated claims that imply the ship’s sinking was a deliberate act. This is not true – experts widely agree the sinking of the Titanic was an accident.
The meme was posted to Facebook and has been shared many times. It consists of two images: one of the ship and a second of American financier John Pierpoint (J.P.) Morgan. These sit alongside a wall of text that suggests Morgan had motive to sink the Titanic because it was hosting three powerful people who opposed his idea for a centralised banking system, ie: the U.S. Federal Reserve. The text reads :-
“DID YOU KNOW? The man who funded the building of the titanic, J. P. Morgan, cancelled his long-awaited journey just hours before its proposed departure,” the meme reads. “3 of the wealthiest men on earth, whom (sic) were against the creation of the federal reserve bank, happened to be invited aboard for its maiden voyage (John Aster, Isador Strauss & Benjamin Guggenheim).
“It then headed full speed into a known iceberg-field, with less than half the required lifeboats, no red signal flares, no Rothschild or Rockefeller on board, and sank to the bottom of the north Atlantic Ocean. Less than a year later, now that the wealthy opposition was out of the way, the federal reserve was created and USA was turned into an incorporated business, with its own business ID number, ’28 U.S.C. 3002 15.”
J.P MORGAN CLAIMS
While it is true that J.P. Morgan owned the Titanic and did not sail on its doomed maiden voyage, there is no evidence to suggest he deliberately missed the trip because he knew the ship would sink. Historians have debated several reasons for Morgan to cancel his trip, but none is related to the Federal Reserve.
“I've never been able to find an authoritative 1912 source explaining the exact reason why J. P. Morgan cancelled his passage on the Titanic, but he definitely didn't do so mere ‘hours’ before the ship's departure,” Titanic expert George Behe said in an email to Reuters.
Meanwhile, Don Lynch, a historian at the Titanic Historical Society (THS), said: “One of J.P. Morgan's biographers said that France was changing its laws to prevent Americans from exporting art treasures from that country, so Morgan went to Paris to oversee getting his purchases out of the country before the new laws went into effect.”
Also from THS, advisory board member Ray Lepien, said that as well as the art treasures theory, “the ‘official’ explanation was that he (Morgan) fell ill and wanted to take the ‘cure’ at a spa in France with his mistress.” Lepien added: “It could have been both reasons.”
STRAUS, ASTOR AND GUGGENHEIM’S OPINIONS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE PROPOSAL
While it is also true that Isidor Straus, Macy’s Department store owner; John Jacob Astor, a property tycoon, and Benjamin Guggenheim, a mining boss, died in the 1912 disaster, there is no evidence to suggest they were the target of deliberate sabotage. There is also no evidence that these three men were against Morgan’s centralised banking ideas.
Firstly, Titanic’s maiden voyage had attracted many prominent names, and was dubbed the “Millionaire’s Special” as a result.
Secondly, George Behe told Reuters he was unable to find any documents in his 45 years of researching the Titanic that proved the three men opposed the Federal Reserve. In fact, a Washington Post investigation found that while Astor and Guggenheim did not take a public stance on the matter, Straus reportedly spoke in favour of the proposal.
Soory, but it seems you will need to find another imaginary conspiracy theory to fantasise about. Or, alternatively, rejoin the real world?
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The guns were all the 15 inch Mk. 1, and the mountings of the ships other than Hood ( i.e, the Rs, the QEs, the Renowns, the Courageous/ Glorious, Vanguard, and the four monitors) were known as Mk. 1s, also. Hood's turrets were of an improved, Mk. II, design, with 30 degrees of elevation. Elevation of the guns in the Mk 1s was limited to 20 degrees, but with modification of some of the battlefleet from the mid 1930s, these ships had their turrets modified to Mk 1(N), which allowed an increase in elevation to 30 degrees.
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@LosPeregrinos51 'Can you explain their contribution to the Battle of Britain please?' They had nothing at all to do with the Battle of Britain, of course. But they would have had everything to do with the defence of Britain had German forces been able to land. That, mon vieux, is their relevace to the price of eggs.
Moreover, of 2937 aircrew listed with taking part in the Battle of Britain, 302 were from the Commonwealth, and 293 from other countries. 595 of 2937 is not actually a quarter.
'Was that Britain "standing alone"?' Actually, yes it was, as these men were supplied with British aircraft, and flew under British command. Moreover, why do you place such emphasis on the Battle of Britain in any case? Don't you really know what actually mad invasion impossible? The total naval sopremacy held by the Royal Navy throught the period, of course.
Perhaps you might explain why the opinions of your American friend of the merits or otherwise of British commanders are even vaguely relevant? You do know, I assume, that the Steve McQueen character in 'The Great Escape' was entirely fictional, and was added to help market the movie in the United States? You didn't? Oh well, never mind.
Simply posting insults rather than responding to my facts hardly supportd your case.
As my old Professor, M. R. D. Foot, was wont to say, 'When people resort to insults, it is generally because they lack any arguments.' You might bear that in mind?
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@shanemcdowall Just to correct the emotive language, the British, French, & Dutch colonies were not slave colonies. The Japanese were considered a threat, and the British & Americans underestimated their military capabilities, but after the collapse of the French army the actual immediate threat to Britain was, for obvious reasons, given priority.
The campaign in Greece had little hope of success, but was undertaken primarily for political rather than military reasons, to demonstrate to other nations that, however hard pressed, Britain would support anyone who sought to resist the axis. Certainly, from a strictly military point of view, O'Connor should have been allowed to complete his victory, as Wavell argued at the time.
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In 1938, the Intelligence section of the French General Staff reported to their government that there was nothing that France could do to prevent the German military conquest of Czechoslovakia. Read 'French Military Intelligence & the Czechoslovakia, 1938,' by Peter Jackson. Certainly, Chamberlain's government sought to avoid war, but they hardly 'convinced' the French, they were pushing at was an open door.
The British didn't get France 'involved in a fight with the Germans in which the British army simply retreated' because the allied military strategy on land was determined by France, with 90 divisions, and supported by the British, with 10. Neither did the British force upon France a declaration of war which was a join decision. The British didn't 'simply retreat' they advanced into Belgium in support of the previously determined French strategic plan, although you are probably correct about the British strangely failing to attempt to storm through the 120 German divisions to Berlin with their 10 divisions.
Finally, the British didn't bomb the French fleet; they shelled it.
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@MostHigh777 There is only one person jumping around irrationally, and it isn't me. Indeed, Chamberlain wanted the Sudetenland transferred to Germany peacefully, because of his belief in the policy of appeasement inherited from Stanley Baldwin, but Edouard Daladier was a party to the talks held on 29 September, 1938 with Hitler, Mussolini, and Chamberlain. Daladier was as determined as Chamberlain to avoid war, he needed no inducements. However, since the Little Entente, France had had a military alliance with Czechoslovakia, and should the British & French reject any compromise with Hitler, then the only action which could be taken would be by the French alone, in the form of military action against Germany's western border. The British, with a tiny standing army, had no such alliance with the Czechs, by the way. Once Daladier informed the Czech. government that France would not take any such action in the event of a German invasion, then the issue was settled. Chamberlain was, at this point, little more than a bit part player.
When did the British bomb the French Fleet 'killing a lot of Frenchmen' in France, by the way? I keep referring back to your original post, even if you have forgotten it.
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@MostHigh777 Clearly, you don;t remember your original post, so here it is again :- 'One can understand French anger at British behavior. First, the British convinced them to give up Czechoslovakia. Next the British got them involved in a fight with the Germans in which the British army simply retreated. Finally, the British bombed the French fleet killing a lot of Frenchmen.'
There are three separate issues. 1). The Sudetenland. I have answered this in some detail, although I suspect the answer was wasted, as I would not be surprised if you had never previously heard of the Little Entente, the Franco- Czech. military alliance, or even Daladier. The assessment which French Intelligence gave to their leaders may well have been an underestimate of Czech. capabilities, but it was what was believed at the time, and upon which the French government based policy. For further information, there is a detailed account in 'Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol.5 No.1, Pages 81-106, of March, 1994. This relies to a large extent upon 'French Military Intelligence & Czechoslovakia, 1938' by Peter Jackson, by the way. The historian Harindar Aulach, in "Britain and the Sudeten Issue, 1938: The Evolution of a Policy" pp. 233-259 from The Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 18, No. 2 April 1983 p. 238, states that the Anglo-French summit represented a British "surrender" to the French, rather than a French "surrender" to the British. I don't post falsehoods. I do not need to, as I am certain of my facts, and I have access to a University archive and a military/naval archive. One of the perks of being an academic with a First in Modern History, I suppose.
2). 'Next the British got them involved in a fight with the Germans in which the British army simply retreated.' How did Chamberlain, who has just been accused by you of convincing the French to appease Hitler by giving up Czechoslovakia, suddenly turn into a warmonger? The declaration of war was a joint decision, arising from the German invasion of Poland, and strategy on land was entirely dictated by the French General Staff. Of course the British retreated after the collapse of the French front at Sedan. So did the 1st & 7th French armies, which were the best equipped French units at the time, which had accompanied the BEF into Belgium, and which significantly outnumbered the BEF. The BEF was under French orders, and followed these orders when instructed to withdraw. Subsequently, General Weygand informed Sir Alan Brooke that the French army was 'no longer able to offer organised resistance.' Exactly what alternatives did Gort have?
3). 'Finally, the British bombed the French fleet killing a lot of Frenchmen.'
I have asked you where and when. Your nebulous response was
Highlighted reply 'By the way the British did bomb the French fleet at its anchorage in southern France.' I'll try again. When did this happen, what base did the British aircraft fly from, which vessels were targeted, and where were they?
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@malikkimanimaasai3703 Franklin's response was made AFTER Titanic had sunk, and was a knee-jerk reaction. Actually, you added it to your post after I had replied to you. Rather disreputable of you, I suggest?
In fact, the only semi-authoritive suggestion that Titanic, or, rather, the Olympic class, were unsinkable which appeared BEFORE Titanic's sinking was in a small circulation magazine called 'The Universal Engineer' I believe.
I am not sure why you are so exercised about this, as it was then and is now obvious to anyone that a 52,000 lump of metal is perfectly capable of sinking without aid. Moreover, where does arrogance come into it?
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@berniegreen Whether you have heard of Gardiner or not, he was the originator of this nonsense, in his book, Titanic, The Ship that never sank, published in 1995. It was something of a tour de force on the part of someone who never a maritime historian, and had no access to archives or records of the event. Sadly, his co-author, Dan van der Vat, later distanced himself from the book, and confirmed it as a hoax.
Actually, your opinion has little relevance. You may choose to believe the fantasies produced in switcher videos, but until you actually examine the existing documents, archives, and records from the period, as I have been fortunate enough to do, you will always be proven wrong by the actual facts.
I would be interested to know what evidence you might think might 'point me in the right direction.'
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The pilots fought as part of the British Royal Air Force, because it was the only place left to them after their own country, and the rest of Europe, had been occupied. Churchill, by the way, didn't make the claim you allege. His speeches from the time are full of references to the Commonwealth & Empire.
Incidentally, there were 1700 German aircraft lost in the Battle of Britain. 203.5 were credited to Polish pilots. Buy a calculator, as that is just under 12%. The Poles were, of course, fortunate to be flying excellent, British made, machines.
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'If theyd completed the carrier, put Bismark, Tirpitz, prinz eugen, graf spee, admiral hipper, scharnhorst, most of their destroyer fleet, s boats and u boats they could muster...taken it to action and see what happened.' Bit difficult that, considering that Graf Spee, and all but ten of the German destroyer fleet, had been sunk by June 1940, around 11 months before Bismarck & Prinz Eugen were declared operational. Similarly, Tirpitz only completed working up in early 1942.
Moreover, S boats were fast, close range, attack craft, intended to operate in coastal areas against merchant shipping, and U-boats had surface speeds of, at best, 17 knots, just over half of that of a Bismarck or a Scharnhorst. There were sound reasons why navies did not simply lump various types of ships together simply to see what happened.
Graf Zeppelin? Have you looked at the design, or the proposed air group? Outdated and unsuitable. Moreover, aircraft carriers, however successful they might have been in the wide Pacific, never attained any similar level of dominance in the west, and certainly one outmoded one was hardly likely to have filled the Admiralty with terror, or even survived long.
Tirpitz was, by the way, probably the most effective (although that does not say much) of the German surface fleet, as, by acting as a classical fleet in being, she did at least tie up allied resources for almost three years. Bismarck, by contrast, was hunted down and dealt with in less than two weeks, after failing to achieve any part of her mission.
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Very good. Unfortunately, to build such a navy, it would have been necessary to starve the army and air force of the materials and workers necessary to build them up to a level capable of successfully invading France. As a probable result, Italy remains neutral, the French navy remains active on the Allied side, and whatever ships the Germans do build remain trapped in the North Sea or, more precisely, the Jade estuary. You should read a report produced by the German Navy's Ordnance Department, entitled 'The Feasibility of the Z Plan' as this basically said that the whole idea was an impossibility, unless the whole of German industry was devoted solely to naval production.
You seem, moreover, to view the Royal Navy in terms of big ships only. Instead of indulging in fanciful 'would haves' you might have done better to have actually found out what resources the Royal Navy had available to it in 1939. Ignore the capital ships, just start with the 64 cruisers, then add 193 destroyers, then total up the hundreds of smaller warships for yourself.
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Hitler, since coming to power, had reoccupied the Rhineland and incorporated Austria into Germany. He then, without declaring war on anyone, invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Belgium. Of course Britain & France declared war, in accordance with their agreements with Poland. This was, some would say belatedly, a line in the sand, and Hitler ignored it.
By 1940, the world was quite clear how seriously Hitler took peace treaties. France was in the process of finding out.
As to Britain being humiliated, hardly. The RN was more or less untouched, and had just organised the evacuation of over 300,000 allied troops from Dunkirk. Hitler, by the way, did not 'allow' the British to escape. Von Rundstedt stopped the armour in order to prepare it for the second stage of the invasion of France.
Finally, if you see Germany as a military super power, compare the size of what, after Norway, was left of the tiny Kriegsmarine with the resources available to the Royal Navy, and then try to explain precisely how any sort of invasion was even remotely conceivable. If the Germans did not want war, they made a rather poor effort of showing it, don't you think?
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@trickyboy1517 I am sorry that you don't understand how 'First Past The Post' actually works. There was a similar situation in 1933, when the nazi party won power with only 43% of the vote. Didn't that work out well?
The number of seats does not often represent overall sentiment within a nation, as FPTP was designed for a two party state, and cannot cope properly when there is a greater number of parties.
In 1979, the Tories won 13,697,923 votes. Labour & the Liberals won a total between them of 15,846,022
I wonder if, given your fairly clear political opinions, you would have been celebrating the glories of FPTP then?
Perhaps when you become a little more mature, you will begin to learn that any FPTP system usually leaves, in many cases, the majority of people in a nation feeling that their opinions are not represented.
That comment applied just as much to Thatcher's government in 1979 as it does to Starmer's in 2024.
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@johnlenin830 Actually, the Germans declared war on the US, not vice versa. The United States had been supporting and supplying the enemies of fascism at a time when the USSR was actively supplying the fascists. Furthermore, the first US ground troops saw action in Tunisia from November, 1942, alongside British & Commonwealth troops. Immediately thereafter, they saw action again in Europe, from July, 1943. At the same time, the Western allies were producing and delivering large quantities of military aid to the Soviet Union.
Over to you. Please provide details of the support the Soviets gave to US & Australian forces in the Pacific, or to British and Commonwealth forces in Burma. It shouldn't take you long!
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@johnlenin830 Indeed, the US responded to the German declaration of war, which doesn't alter the fact that Germany declared war first.
The United States Army Air Force began offensive operations against Germany in July, 1942, and their involvement in the Battle of the Atlantic actually predated the German declaration of war. There was, realistically, nowhere in Europe where their ground troops could be committed, because, as you are probably aware, Germany, with the benefit of raw materials and food supplies provided by their Soviet comrades, had already conquered France.
Indeed, the USSR was not at war with Japan, but the US & Britain were. You still seem to view WW2 in terms of ground fighting on the eastern front. Don't you perhaps grasp that there was rather more involved than that, or will you seemingly ingrained prejudice not permit the broader view?
'The very existence of the USSR was threatened.' Just as that of Britain had been in 1940, when the Germans were receiving large quantities of supplies from their new Soviet best friends.
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Utter nonsense. There were, I believe, four companies of Indians with the BEF, in charge of mule transport units. None saw combat because they were not combat units, and almost all were successfully evacuated.
If you want to write about the important role of Indian troops in North Africa, Italy, and Burma, then fair enough, but posting the kind of stupid comment you have done here simply exposes you, and their memory, to ridicule.
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@Sp3ar. Have you heard of the Austrian 'Angels of Death'? Maria Gruber, Irene Leidolf, Stephanija Meyer, and Waltraud Wagner were four Austrian women who worked as nurse's aides at the Geriatriezentrum am Wienerwald in Lainz, Vienna, and who murdered scores of patients between 1983 and 1989. The group killed their victims with overdoses of morphine or by forcing water into the lungs.
They began by 'assisting the deaths' of terminally ill patients. However, it seems that they gradually found that the power of life and death excited, and ended up by terminating any patients who became nuisances, even if the nuisance was little more than asking for a drink in the night.
If you give such powers to authority figures, they will, as authority figures do, inevitably abuse them, and you may well end up with compulsory euthanasia. All to benefit the victim, and for the greater good of 'society' of course.
Doubtless, there will be a host of checks & balances, all of which will be quietly eroded in the course of time.
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@donfarquhar6328 Churchill was a divisive figure within the Tory Party, certainly, but in June, 1939, George VI told Mackenzie King that he 'would never wish to appoint Churchill to any office unless it were absolutely necessary in time of war”.' I.e., precisely the circumstances which applied when he came to office. The vote of No Confidence actually came in May, 1940, and not, as you apparently think, immediately after war was declared. In any case, I did say 'in the country' which involves rather more people than the monarch and the grandees of the Tory Party.
Eden was far from heir apparent in 1939. Firstly, he was only just past 40 years old, and had very little ministerial experience, and secondly he, like MacMillian, was a strong supporter of Churchill. He was over ten years younger than either Halifax or Attlee, by the way. He was, certainly, seen as a 'coming man' but certainly not as a national leader in time of war. He was, however, definitely seen as Churchill's successor ten years later.
Of course he was voted out of office in 1945, when the general perception within the British population was of a desire for change, as expressed by the Labour party's brilliant manifesto slogan of 'Cheer Churchill - Vote Labour.' Incidentally, if he was so unpopular, how was it that he regained the Premiership in October, 1951?
Who would have succeeded Chamberlain later in 1940, assuming that an uncertain peace was still being maintained, is not clear, but Eden was not in the front rank of candidates. Moreover, the appeasement period had already ended ; both Britain & France were rearming, and Churchill's star was on the ascendant, as his concerns about nazi Germany had been proved justified.
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@kevinanderson3849 Blucher didn't have time to have any engine problems, but Prinz Eugen certainly did. After being detached by Lutjens to operate independently against merchant shipping, but before any merchant ship was found, defects in her engines showed and on 27 May, the day Bismarck was sunk, she was ordered to give up her mission and make for a port in occupied France.
On 28 May Prinz Eugen refuelled from the tanker Esso Hamburg. The same day more engine problems showed up, including trouble with the port engine turbine, the cooling of the middle engine and problems with the starboard screw, reducing her maximum speed to 28 knots.
The screw problems could only be checked and repaired in a dock and thus Brest, with its large docks and repair facilities, was chosen as destination.
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USS Hughes was a Sims class destroyer, DD 410. I hope that what follows is of interest :-
Hughes was laid down on 15 September 1937 by Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine; launched on 17 June 1939; sponsored by Mrs. Edward M. Hughes, widow of Commander Hughes; and commissioned at Boston Navy Yard, on 21 September 1939, Lieutenant Commander Donald J. Ramsey in command.
Following shakedown in the Gulf of Mexico, Hughes joined the Atlantic Fleet. From July 1940 to December 1941, Hughes served in the Atlantic, first on patrol off Martinique to watch Vichy French Forces there and then on Neutrality patrol off Iceland. During this time, she became the first American destroyer to escort a British convoy all the way to England.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, US warships were urgently needed in the Pacific and Hughes sailed from Norfolk, Virginia on 18 December 1941, arriving San Diego, California in company with Yorktown, on 30 December. She departed San Diego on 12 January 1942 as an escort for ships bringing reinforcements to Samoa. Hughes then sailed from Samoa as part of a carrier striking force built around carrier Yorktown. She screened the carrier in strikes on Jaluit, Makin, Mili, and Canton Islands, then supported the combined Lexington–Yorktown Task Force 17 (TF17), as it attacked Japanese bases at Lae and Salamaua on 10 March 1942. Missing the Battle of the Coral Sea while escorting a tanker carrying fuel to Nouméa, Hughes reached Pearl Harbor in time to participate in the Battle of Midway.
Hughes, while protecting Yorktown during this action, shot down two torpedo planes and assisted in shooting down two others. After Yorktown was hit on 4 June, Hughes continued an all-night vigil to prevent her capture. When the carrier was torpedoed by a submarine on 6 June, Hughes helped damage the attacker with depth charges, and rescued the survivors when Yorktown sank the next day.
After a brief time as convoy escort, she joined American Forces at Guadalcanal, where she screened Hornet throughout the campaign. During the Battle of Santa Cruz. Hughes splashed one Japanese plane and assisted in downing two more. Despite her valiant efforts, Hornet was hit and sunk on 27 October 1942. Joining TF 16 on 10 November 1942, Hughes participated in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal by screening Enterprise. Hughes continued screening operations until the end of February 1943.
Following a refit and brief convoy duty, Hughes was detached from the South Pacific and sailed to Pearl Harbor, departing on 18 April for the Aleutian Islands and arrived on the 24. Bombardments of Kiska from 6–22 July were high points of her months in northern waters. After Kiska was occupied, Hughes departed the Aleutians for overhaul on 25 August in San Francisco, California.
Following overhaul, Hughes sailed for Pearl Harbor on 26 October to prepare for the invasion of the Gilbert Islands. She sailed on 10 November as part of the screen for the escort carriers covering the invasion of Makin Atoll. When Liscome Bay was sunk on 24 November, Hughes rescued 152 of the survivors. She began screening the transport group on 27 November, and 2 days later departed for Pearl Harbor, and arrived there on 7 December 1943. On 13 January 1944, Hughes joined TF 53 for the invasion of the Marshall Islands. She joined in the preinvasion from 3–11 February 1944. The destroyer continued to support the escort carriers during the strikes against Palaus on 31 March.
Hughes took part in the invasion of Hollandia, New Guinea on 23 April, acting as a screen for the escort carrier group which provided air cover for the landings at Aitape and Tanahmerah Bay. Hughes remained off New Guinea as a convoy escort and fire-support ship of the 7th Fleet until 25 September, when she departed for the invasion of the Philippines. During this time, Hughes participated in the invasions of Biak, Noemfoor, Cape Sensapor, and Morotai, serving as flagship of Rear Admiral William M. Fechteler during the latter campaign.
During the invasion of Leyte, Hughes was the flagship of Rear Admiral Arthur Dewey Struble commanding the tiny task group detailed to capture the small islands of Dinigat and Homohon guarding the entrance to Leyte Gulf. Following the successful conclusion of this operation, Hughes screened Philippine bound convoys, making frequent trips to and from New Guinea until 6 December 1944, when she reembarked Admiral Struble and departed for the invasion of Ormoc Bay, Leyte. Following this operation, Hughes was serving as a picket destroyer off the southern tip of Leyte when she was hit by a G4M kamikaze on 10 December 1944. Her dead and wounded totalled twenty three.[3] Badly damaged with one engine room demolished and much of her other machinery destroyed, Hughes was towed to San Pedro Bay, Leyte, where, after temporary repairs, she departed for Humboldt Bay, New Guinea on 19 December en route to Pearl Harbor, where she arrived on 23 January 1945. Following more repairs, she sailed for San Francisco, arriving San Francisco Naval Shipyard on 2 February. Hughes remained there for the next 3 months undergoing extensive overhaul.
After a long testing period, Hughes was declared combat ready and departed for Adak Island in the Aleutians on 4 June 1945. Assigned to the Northern Pacific Force, she remained in the Aleutians until the end of the war, harassing enemy shipping and bombarding Japanese bases. Hughes then served as part of the patrol force off Northern Honshū until relieved on 20 October. She sailed for the United States 10 days later with Destroyer Squadron 2. She was decommissioned on 28 August 1946, and was used as a target ship in the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb test. Following the test she was towed to sea and sunk off Kwajalein on 16 October 1948, and struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 26 November 1948.
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Old? like Nelson & Rodney, the two most powerful battleships in western waters at the time, or Kigh George V & Prince of Wales, brand new capital ships much better armoured than the Bismarcks, or even Warspite, Valiant, & Queen Elizabeth, all of which had been extensively modernised from the late 1930s.
Certainly, Prince of Wales withdrew, but after inflicting sufficient damage on Bismarck to force her commander to abandon his mission and run for France.
The British saw the Bismarck sortie as a rare opportunity to destroy a potential threat to the convoy system, which was what they did.
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@user-li2yv5je5e Indeed, it is important that facts should be correct.
In this case, after the initial Admiralty Inquiry, which did indeed determine that Olympic was at fault, the White Star Line took the issue to court. In the 'Oceanic Steam Navigation Company versus Commander William Frederick Blunt, Royal Navy,' the White Star Line maintained that the Hawke was the guilty party. The Royal Navy countered by going on record that the Olympic did not signal the Hawke of her turn, when in fact she did.
There was the question of speed. Captain Smith estimated that his speed at the time of the collision was 16 knots and denied that his ship was doing 20 as the Royal Navy suggested. A naval architect who examined the damage estimated that the two vessels were traveling at about the same speed at the moment of impact.
The lawyers for the Royal Navy brought up another interesting theory, that of suction. They claimed that the suction from the Olympic’s huge propellers pulled the Hawke into the liner’s side.
This theory was tested in a laboratory setting at the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington. There, wax models of the Olympic and the Hawke were constructed and placed in a water tank. A small motor was used to operate the “Olympic," and the two models were put on parallel courses at speeds in which the two ships were traveling at the time of impact.
The results of the experiments bore out the Admiralty’s theory. In the first experiment, the model of the cruiser swerved toward the liner. In the second, the helm of the “Hawke" was put over 20 degrees, yet she still swerved toward the model of the liner.21 Present at the nine experiments was naval constructor David Watson Taylor of the U.S. Navy. He concluded that if the positions of the two ships were as the witnesses from the cruiser had stated, the “vessels would develop a strong suction tending to draw the Hawke toward the Olympic. The sheering of the Hawke’s bow would be against the helm, and would rapidly become irresistible, so that no hard-to-port helm of 35 degrees could stop it.”
Taylor further went on to say that it would have been impossible for the cruiser to overtake and pass the liner even if she were the faster ship. He stated, “the tendency to sheer in as she got up toward the Olympic would become stronger and stronger, and in my view she would not be able to get her stem abreast of the center of the Olympic. She would fast get into the position of the maximum sheering tendency.”
Professor John Biles, a naval architect at Glasgow University who was present at the experiments, agreed. “Assuming the vessels to be parallel,” Biles concluded, “1 do not think the Hawke could come through the danger zone and get bridge to bridge at a lateral distance of 100 yards. She would turn in.”
Others disagreed. The pilot of the Olympic said that in all of his years of piloting, he never heard of the theory'. Captain Smith stated, “I don’t know anything about it, but it might do so.” The captain of the Mauritania testified that he never experienced this phenomenon.
In the end, the court agreed with the Admiralty. The president of the court did not openly use the word “suction” but concluded that the Hawke was “carried towards the Olympic in a swerve beyond her control.” The court also ruled that “the Olympic had ample room and water in the channel to the northward. She came too close to the cruiser on the south side of the channel. She did not take proper steps to keep out of the way.”
Don't trouble to apologise for your initial rudeness. I will simply attribute it to ignorance of White Star's appeal, and the court case which resulted.
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@joonamikkonen_ Sorry, but it is simple statement of fact :-
United Kingdom :- Population in 1941:- 48,216,000. Military deaths by 1945, 383,700 = 0.795%
United States :- Population in 1941 :- 133,417,000. Military deaths by 1945, 407,300 = 0.305%
France :- Population in 1941 :- 40,400,000. Military deaths by 1945, 210,000 = 0.519%
Incidentally, my post referred to statistics which may be confirmed on any site. Where in it did I suggest that the French were 'incompetent?' The only comment so far attacking any particular nation has been yours.
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@joonamikkonen_ If you include French colonies, then the total population increases to 111,524, 472, as of 1939. The figures I quoted earlier of french military deaths, included French colonial soldiers. If you choose to base the % on the French empire as a whole, then the figure becomes 0.188%
Poland, by the way : Population 34,849,000, Deaths 240,000 = 0.688%
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@iansneddon2956 They could, but the German intention was that the cruisers would form part of Operation Herbstriese, a diversionary operation involving the three cruisers, a gunnery training ship, four liners, and eleven freighters, which would steam up and down the British East Coast between Newcastle & Aberdeen to suggest that a landing was intended there.
This was intended to distract the Home Fleet, and prevent it intervening in the Channel. The irony, of course, was that Admiralty anti-invasion planning did not include the heavies of the Home Fleet in any case, unless German heavy ships seemed about to intervene. The British at the time of course did not know that only one heavy cruiser was operational.
Moreover, the bulk of the Home Fleet had been moved to Rosyth (two battleships, one battlecruiser, three light cruisers, and seventeen destroyers). All were faster than the freighters that the Kriegsmarine intended to use, if not the liners, so if Herbstreise appeared, Sir Charles Forbes might well have been more than a little interested.
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@Rexbuttholes777 'So why wasn't jp Morgan on it or Rockefeller who said he got held up at customs.' Morgan had a prior appointment at St. Mark's in Venice. It was even mentioned in the newspapers in March, 1912. Rockefeller? What is your source for this allegation? In any case, so what? A number of prominent people also cancelled. In fact, almost as many as cancelled for Olympic's maiden voyage in 1911. I am sure you can explain that, can't you?
Only one ship, Californian, actually stopped. The remainder simply continued on course.
No one was 'invited' aboard. Passengers of all classes simply booked. Moreover, Astor & Guggenheim never expressed any opinions about the Fed., whilst Straus was actually a supporter. Indeed, his speeches in support were recorded in newspaper articles from October, 1911. Seriously, if you have developed a 'cunning plan' to remove business rivals, would it really involve:-
1). Hoping that they will book passage in the first place?
2). Hoping that the ship will collide with an iceberg badly enough to sink it?
3). Hoping that your targets will simply not leap into a lifeboat and survive?
The rest of your post is little more than a crazed rant, of course. Unworthy of a response.
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@Boppy-B-B Only if you are a revisionist, with an axe to grind and an agenda to pursue. The Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I assume, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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The keel was not bent. The collision was a low speed one, according to HMS Hawke's captain. Ay around eight knots, in fact. Hawke's bow penetrated around six to eight feet into Olympic's starboard quarter. As the Olympics had beams of ninety two feet, then her keel was never remotely in danger of damage.
At least, not until an amateur hisrorian, Robin Gardiner, wrote a silly book, 'Titanic - The Ship That Never Sank?' which was published in 1998. To make the claim of the imaginary swap, Gardiner invented the keel damage, despite the fact that in reality White Star paid Harland & Wolff around £26,000 (1911 values) to repair Olympic, which took them around seven weeks, and led to her returning to sea in later November, 1911, when Titanic was still around five months from completion.
By the way, the company which you suggest was likely to 'go under' had generated a profit in excess of £1 million in the year to 31 December, 1911, and were so far from bankrupt that in the same month that Olympic returned to sea the order for the third ship in the class, Britannic, was confirmed with H & W.
Certainly, Harland & Wolff do not seem to have known of this alleged keel damage. In fact, no-one with any actual knowledge of the facts gives it the slightest credence, although enthusiasts for conspiracy theories, usually after watching one or two switcher videos, do tend to go overboard on it. Pardon the pun, by the way!
One or two points, which aren't necessary anyway as once the keel damage nonsense is discarded the entire argument collapses. :-
1). When Californian docked in Boston on 19 April, she was reported as carrying a 'mixed, general' cargo. No reference at all to any cargo of sweaters, which was another, much later, invention.
2). There were a number of structural differences between the two ships. They were sisters, but not twins. The forward end of Titanic's 'B' deck was different from that of the Olympic of 1912. The wreck matches the known configuration of Titanic, and differs from that of Olympic.
3). There was little wrong with Olympic when she was scrapped in the 1930s, except her age.Perhaps you are unaware that the newly merged company also scrapped her old rival Mauretania at the same time? The reason for the scrappings was a simple, commercial. one. With the decline in transatlantic traffic, and in the middle of the Great Depression, they were both simply surplus to requirements.
In short, you would lose your $100 when you allow facts and reality intrude on your charming fantasy.
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What are you rambling about? There was no White Star ship called 'Britannica.' There was a Britannic, launched in late February, 1914. There had just been a General Election, in December, 1910. The next one was not due until 1916.
White Star had produced huge operating profits in the most recent financial year. The cost of repairs to Olympic was an inconvienence. but nothing more. Indeed, the order for the third Olympic class liner was placed in the same month that Olympic returned to sea after her repairs.
Insurance Money? Each Olympic class ship was insured for £1 million, yet each had cost £1,5 million to build. Thus, White Star lost a major asset, their reputation for safety, and £500,000 when Riranic sank.
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Actually, the most effective commerce raiders the Germans produced were merchant ships with concealed guns. Unlike ships such as the Deutschlands, which were immediately recognisable, such ships had the ability to fool allied observers into thinking that they were indeed innocents. After spending months of effort in intercepting one merchantman or another in distant waters, cruiser captains could, inevitably, become less than thorough, and either let a raider pass, or, in the case of Sydney, simply get too close.
All in all, they were cheap to produce (armed with 6 inch guns from the old Schleswig-Holstein, or Schliesen), capable of carrying mines, and generally with crews mainly of ex-merchant navy men. Obviously, they weren't ever going to win the war at sea on their own, but they were far more cost-effective at tying up allied naval resources than 'regular' warships ever were.
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@martinwarm4041 Yet another Sealion 'Would Have!' Why don't you people actually buy books on the subject? Or, indeed, even read my reply to the original post?
If your claim was even remotely believable, how is it that the Luftwaffe failed so badly at Dunkirk, and, in the whole of the war, sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser?
To put that into some perspective, the RN had over 110 destroyers in Home Waters in September, 1940, of which 64, supported by several light cruisers, were within 5 hours steaming of Dover, with over 500 smaller warships in support.
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Peter Well, try this. The Scharnhorsts & Bismarcks had incremental armour, which hadn't been used in American capital ships since the Nevadas, and in British ones since the Nelsons, but had been superceded by the superior All-or-Nothing pattern. The Scharnhorst and Bismarcks had outdated low angle secondary armament, which had been discarded by the US navy since the Washingtons, and in the British navy since the King George Vs, in favour of a dual purpose system.
The Scharnhorsts were desperately undergunned, with a weight of broadside of 6552 lbs. By comparision, the US Washingtons had a broadside weight of 24300 lbs, the British Nelsons 18432 lbs, and the British King George Vs 15900 lbs. Bismarck had a weight of broadside of 14112 lbs, but achieved it by the outdated use of four twin turrets, when the British & Americans were using the three multiple gunned turret design, saving both weight & space.
The Scharnhorsts had 13.8 inch armoured belts, and 4.1 inch decks. The Bismarcks 12.6 inch belts and 4.7 inch decks. The Washingtons, by comparison 12 inch belts & 3.6 inch decks, the Nelsons 14 inch belts and 6.25 inch decks, and the King George Vs 14 inch belts and 6 inch decks. All the Scharnhorsts (32 knots) and the Bismarcks (29 knots) had was speed. The Washingtons (28 knots) and the KGVs (27.5 knots) were slightly slower, and the Nelsons (23 knots) much slower. Thus, the German ships could avoid action, but once forced into it were utterly outclassed. I don't supposed you even know that internal communications in both the Scharnhorsts & the Bismarcks ran between the incremental layers of armour, when resulted in Bismarck losing these, and most of her main armament, within about 20 minutes when engaged on 27 May?
I don't need a 'sense of bullshit entitlement,' just knowledge of the facts. A pity you don't have the same level of understanding.
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@michaelbullen4146 You really haven't heard of David's claims about 'Beachy Head Lady?' How he presented a BBC programme 'proving' by facial reconstruction, that she was of Sub-Saharan origin, and linking her with his (alleged) African Roman Emperor, Septimius Severus?
Well worth finding and viewing it, in view of what followed, which was a DNA analysis by the Crick Institute, which demonstrated that BHL really came from that well-known heartland of Sub-Saharan Africa, Cyprus!
Odd that, since this setback, the BBC's historian of choice has not commented further on the issue, still less withdrawn his claim, I suggest.
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@stephend Californian had one radio operator, who had indeed gone to bed. There was no reason to wake him, as I explain below.
There is a common misconception about the alleged 'distress rockets.'
The Titanic never fired any “signals of distress.” True, she fired eight rockets in a little over an hour, but these were eight individual rockets — not distress rockets. According to information entered into the record at the British Enquiry, the Titanic carried thirty-six socket signals.
The 1912 International Rules of the Road governing Signals of Distress are quite clear: Article 31: Class 1, called for – a cannon or explosive device [with report] fired at one minute intervals. The device’s report was the sound of distress.
Article 31: Class 3, covered the sight of distress which is a rocket of any colour fired one at a time at short intervals.
For the Titanic to fire distress signals using the rockets supplied her, the crew should have fired its socket signals at one minute intervals. It was that simple. By doing so, the rockets would be international “signals of distress.” An explosion or report at one minute intervals satisfies the sound signal requirement and the white shower of stars at one minute intervals satisfies the sight requirement. If this procedure had been followed, no one could ever question the meaning of the Titanic’s rockets.
Commencing at 12:45 a.m. Fourth Officer Boxhall had one rocket fired. During the following hour or so, the Titanic fired an additional seven rockets – for a total of eight. The average time between rocket firings calculates to be seven to eight minutes. Even at four minute intervals (as one witness mentioned), there were long periods of time when no rocket activity was seen.
To be perfectly correct, the rockets as fired at random from the Titanic signalled to all ships within her view, “This is my position — I’m having a navigation problem — Please stand clear.”
Captain Lord, when he said that Titanic did not fire 'distress signals' was correct. Perhaps Boxhall simply misunderstood the rules in force at the time?
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@walterCronkitesleftshoe6684 Boney used to ask of a General 'but is he lucky?' and I suggest Holland was very unlucky indeed. After successfully, at least in ABC's view) acting as Vice Admiral CS18 at Spartivento, he was promoted to becoms second in command of the Home Fleet, but only joined Hood nine days before she sailed on 21 May. He would have had little time to judge the abilities of his subordinates, especially since his Flag Captain, Ralph Kerr, had himself only joined Hood in mid February.
Holland's battle plan at Denmark Strait was to have Hood and Prince of Wales engage Bismarck while Suffolk and Norfolk engaged Prinz Eugen (which, Holland assumed, still steamed behind Bismarck and not ahead of her). He signalled this to John Leach of Prince of Wales but did not radio Rear-Admiral Wake-Walker, Commander of CS1, directed Suffolk and Norfolk, for fear of disclosing his location. Instead, Holland hoped to meet the enemy at approximately 02:00. Sunset in this latitude was at 01:51 (ship's clocks were four hours ahead of local time. The intention was that Bismarck and Prinz Eugen would be silhouetted against the sun's afterglow while Hood and Prince of Wales could approach rapidly, unseen in the darkness, to a range close enough not to expose Hood's 3 inch decks to plunging fire from Bismarck. The Germans would not expect an attack from this quarter, giving the British the advantage of surprise.
The plan, essentially correct, The plan's depended on Suffolk maintainingunbroken contact with the German ships. However, Suffolk lost contact from 00:28. For 90 minutes, Holland neither sighted the German ships nor received any further news from Norfolk or Suffolk. Reluctantly, Holland ordered Hood and Prince of Wales to turn south-southwest but he detached his destroyers which continued searching to the north. However, the loss of contact should be understood as temporary and tactical only; and not strategic in terms of the tactical outcome.
Suffolk lost contact with the enemy force in what was essentially a closed, confined rectangular space; aligned generally northeast (the entrance to the Denmark Strait) to southwest (the exit of the Strait into the Atlantic). The enemy units were firmly constrained by the Greenland ice pack to the north, and the extensive Royal Navy minefield to the south along the coast of Iceland. Given the prior warning of the German sortie, there was ample time for the Royal Navy to place armed reconnaissance at both ends of this narrow alignment. Suffolk and Norfolk were at the eastern entrance to the Strait (where contact was made immediately upon Bismarck's entry). Holland was waiting at the western end as the Bismarck force exited the Strait.
The German force, still unaware of Holland's presence, altered course at 0141. Had this not happened, contact would have been made much earlier than it was.
However, Just before 03:00, Suffolk regained contact with Bismarck. Hood and Prince of Wales were 30 nm. away, slightly ahead of the Germans. Holland signalled to steer toward the Germans and increased speed to 28 kn. Suffolk's loss of contact had placed the British at a disadvantage. Instead of the swiftly closing head-on approach Holland had envisioned, he would have to converge at a wider angle, much more slowly. This would leave Hood vulnerable to Bismarck's plunging shells for a much longer period. The situation worsened further when, at 03:20, Suffolk reported that the Germans had made a further course alteration to the west, placing the German and British squadrons almost abeam of each other.
The rest, as they say, is history. Certainly, Churchill's later criticism of the angle of approach did not take account of the factors above, which were beyond Holland's control. I suggest that one error he made was not to have placed PoW, with her superior armour, in the lead. John Tovey later said the same, and commented that he almost signalled the suggestion, but felt at the time that he ought not to interfere in the plans of so senior a commander.
In short, just as Spruance & Fletcher were favoured by good fortune at Midway, so Holland was punished by ill-fortune in the Denmark Strait.
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'A corollary to this is that the so-called Battle of Britain [ Churchill rhetoric ! ] was a misnomer. Britain was never in serious risk of being invaded by sea.'
I agree entirely. The rhetoric about the Battle of Britain was aimed at the United States. Churchill obviously wanted US support, so deliberately painted a David v Goliath image. After all, had he said, 'The Royal Navy is the biggest in the world. Any attempt to cross the Channel by the Germans will result in their annihilation' it would have been likely to generate as much sympathy!
Had an invasion been possible, it seems rather unlikely that Churchill would have sent a convoy of reinforcements, including three armoured regiments, to North Africa, which of course, historically, he did, on 22 August, 1940.
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@flybywire5866 In 1940, the Luftwaffe had not been trained in anti-shipping techniques, still less in the skills needed to attack warships. They had failed badly at Dunkirk, sinking only four of 41 British destroyers involved. In the whole of WW2, the German air force sank no British ship larger than a light cruiser.
The British had around 70 cruisers & destroyers, and around 500 smaller warships, waiting to intercept the Sealion barges, which required eleven days (and nights) simply to land the first nine divisions.
Maybe, the Channel at the end of September, 1940, 'would have been' choked with sinking barges and drowning German infantrymen.
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@unibks4382 Whereever did you get that idea from?
In terms of numbers, Labour received 9,708,716 votes, or 23,622 votes per MP, Tories 6,828,925, or 56,437 votes per MP, LibDems 3,519,143, or 48,877 votes per MP, Reform 4,117,610, or 823,522 per MP.
Oh, the wonders of a First Past the Post system, when party can triumph with half a million less votes than it received in the Labour disaster election of 2019.
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@toniaharrison8978 In June, 1941, 1st RTR was in Tobruk, under the overall command of General Morshead. The force there was under siege, but an attack (Operation Battleaxe) was launched in mid-June, to relieve the garrison. Unfortunately, if failed.
According to the war diary for 5 June, 1st RTRs strength at that time was:-
Regimental HQ. - 4 light tanks.
'B' Sqdn., 8 light tanks, 2 A9 cruiser tanks, and 3 A10 cruiser tanks.
'C' Sqdn., 11 A13 cruiser tanks.
'D' Sqdn., 10 light tanks, 1 A9, & 4 A10s.
Sorry. Doesn't help much, but the best I can do!
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Don't be silly. There was no 'uncontrollable' coal fire. There was a smouldering fire, caused by spontaneous combustion of damp coal, in one of 19 bunkers. This was discovered almost immediately, during the bunker checks carried out on a daily basis, in accordance with IMM regulations.
A team was set to work on it, and it was extinguished at least 24 hours before the collision. The only part of the ship affected was the paint inside the bunker. No-one left the ship. You are confusing the replacement of the passage crew, mainly of Belfast men, with the deep-sea crew, of men recruited from the Southampton area. This was a fairly common procedure.
Why do you think shovelling coal into the boilers would increase speed? Have you never heard of safety valves? Once the working operating pressure of the boilers, in this case 215 psi, was reached, the safety valves would simply lift. Speed would be unaffected.
'When one of the coal stokers who survived later testified at a court inquiry in the UK as to the fire & above facts, his testimony was squelched by the judge'. Sorry, but that is, unambiguously, untrue. I have never understood why people find the need to invent lies on this subject. Perhaps you could explain the reason to me?
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There was no need to 'lure' the RN into the Channel. In September 1940 the RN had around 70 light cruisers and destroyers within five hours steaming of Dover, over 500 small warships available in support, and around 100 destroyers in all in Home Waters. The Germans had seven auxiliary minesweepers. The British had literally hundreds of fleet & auxiliary minesweepers. The Germans could only lay their fields at night, which would be something of a problem at the RN sent destroyer patrols through the Channel from Sheerness and Plymouth every night. I suggest that the results of a 4.7 inch shell exploding on a laden mine deck would be quite noticeable.
U-Boats. In September, 1940, the Germans had, on average, 13 boats at sea on any one day. Moreover, the three they sent into the Channel late in 1939 are still there, as are their crews. The Channel, heavily protected by British minefields, was a deathtrap for U-Boats. Furthermore, the idea of U-Boats seeking out destroyers is utterly contrary to the use of U-Boats at the time, when they sought to avoid escorts in order to attack merchantmen. Attacking a destroyer flotilla usually ended badly for the U-Boat, which is why it rarely happened.
Luftwaffe. The same one which had failed at Dunkirk, couldn't operate effectively at night, hadn't had any training in anti-shipping operations, didn't have a torpedo bomber until mid 1942, and which, in the whole of the war, sank 31 RN destroyers, and no RN warship bigger than a light cruiser? That Luftwaffe?
Naval superiority. With, in September, 1940, one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, six or seven destroyers, a similar number of smaller torpedo boats, 13 S Boats, and about a dozen fleet minesweepers. Naval superiority? Hardly!
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'Made peace with Germany?' After Germany had, without declaration of war, invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Belgium? Exactly what sorts of terms might Britain have expected? The sort Halifax recommended, negotiated by Mussolini?
Oh, and Churchill did not choose the Soviet Union over Germany. He simply worked on the principle that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend.'
Montgomery, by the way, simply waited until he had superiority in men, equipment, supplies, and intelligence, before embarking on a campaign. Only a fool, such as the Desert Fox, willingly commits his forces to something far beyond their capabilities. Montgomery did what any sensible commander would do.
Not very well informed, are you?
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@rosesandsongs21 Thank you for telling me what Douhet's theory was. It isn't as if I didn't already know all about it, is it?
It doesn't actually matter whether he was right or not. The fact is that in the 1930s people like Le May, Goering, Trenchard, and, later, Harris, believed that he was, and that air superiority was the way to win any future war. You may have the advantage of hindsight and moral outrage. They didn't.
You cannot, by the way, claim that the air campaign pursued by the Allies did not shorten the war. This is simply something you wish to believe in support of your rather comfortable moral outrage. Do you even know precisely how many resources the Germans wasted from 1942 onwards relocating arms factories to underground locations or out of the way rural sites? How many aircraft were withheld from the front lines in an attempt to counter the Anglo-American bomber forces, how many heavy guns were similarly held back as anti-aircraft defences for German cities, and how many troops were needed to operate them?
I assume you don't. Still, be happy in your smug judgemental outrage.
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Look up Operation U-Go, a Japanese offensive against Burma & India, which ended with 55,000 Japanese casualties, before you assume that the British & Commonwealth were not playing a significant role against Japan. Formidable, by the way, carried 51 aircraft at Okinawa, Implacable 81, Indomitable 60, & Victorious 51. None were withdrawn from the battle as a result of damage, or from shortage of aircraft.
'Um, the British weren't fighting in Europe, really.' Presumably, you mean, apart from North Africa/Tunisia, Italy, and NW Europe? The Royal Navy planned and executed all the major assault landings, and the British and Canadians provided two of every three men who landed on the Normandy beaches on 6 June, as well as 3261 of the 4127 landing craft, and 892 of 1213 warships. Us troops became numerically superior for around the last six or seven months of the German war.
Prior to that, the RN & RCN fought and won the Battle of the Atlantic, kept control of the Mediterranean, prevented Japanese incursions into the Indian Ocean, and protected 78 Arctic convoys. The RN was overwhelmingly the dominant allied navy in the west, leaving the US navy to concentrate against Japan in the Pacific.
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@Litany_of_Fury What is a 'misleading under-representation of the situation at the time?' The Home Fleet was mainly at Rosyth because, from there, it could be called upon to challenge any attempt by German heavy ships to venture into the southern part of the North Sea in support of Sealion, but was also available for use against a sortie into the Atlantic.
The battlecruiser & carrier were at Scapa Flow in order to be able to operate against a potential sortie by a panzerschiff. The British at the time did not know that virtually every German heavy ship was out of action for one reason or another, but Forbes, C-in-C Home Fleet, was already complaining (correctly, in my view) that there were too many resources tied up on anti-invasion duties, when they could have been more profitably assigned to convoy duty, with the proviso that they remain within 24 hours of the Channel. In other words, three days out, one day back.
Incidentally, only an hour ago, you wrote ' the plan was to floor the channel with everything they had available.' Now, you say that ' British Battleships were on call to repel Sea Lion, but only if they were needed.
' Aren't you rather contradicting yourself here?
Battleships & heavy cruisers were neither designed nor intended to sink barges. Isn't this rather like going duck-shooting with a field gun? Which is why Pound & the Admiralty had neither the need nor the intention to do it.
Seriously, simply read any Staff History on Sealion defence preparations. There is absolutely no suggestion in any that that the Home Fleet was going to charge into the Channel trying to depress 15 & 16 inch guns low enough to hit towed barges.
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@deankruse2891 Well, consider this. The British 'First Past The Post' electoral system is far from democratic, although it might have been when there were only two serious political parties, firstly Tory/Liberal and later Tory/Labour. Now that there are several parties, it throws up a number of anomalies. To take the 2024 election as an example, the number of votes cast compared to the number of seats won reveals the number of votes needed to elect one MP was as follows :-
Labour : 23,622. Conservative : 56,437, LibDem : 48,877, Reform : 823,522.
This has resulted in a bizarre situation where a party which secured 19% of the potential votes of the electorate, and received 500,000 less votes than it did in the Labour catastrophe of 2019, now has an overwhelming majority.
You would need to work very hard to convince anyone that that represents 'Democracy.'
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
The Singapore disaster was a direct result of the fact that a situation existed in 1940-2 for which no pre-war planning could have prepared. The assumption was that a war with Germany would be fought with the support of France, who would take on the bulk of the fighting on land, whilst the French Fleet would play a significant role. Indeed, had France not collapsed, Italy may well have remained neutral.
As a result, the British, never a significant land power, were obliged to attempt, with insufficient military resources to meet the new situation, to find ships and men to defend Britain, protect the Atlantic supply lines, and prevent axis control of the Mediterranean. The Far East, not at war until December, 1941, was, inevitably, starved of resources.
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Oh dear. The old conspiracist myth from the mid 1990s has emerged again. Reuters have already answered this nonsense, so I will let you read what they say:-
A widely-shared meme has taken several facts about the Titanic out of context to make unsubstantiated claims that imply the ship’s sinking was a deliberate act. This is not true – experts widely agree the sinking of the Titanic was an accident.
The meme was posted to Facebook and has been shared many times.
It consists of two images: one of the ship and a second of American financier John Pierpoint (J.P.) Morgan. These sit alongside a wall of text that suggests Morgan had motive to sink the Titanic because it was hosting three powerful people who opposed his idea for a centralised banking system, ie: the U.S. Federal Reserve. It reads as follows.
“DID YOU KNOW? The man who funded the building of the titanic, J. P. Morgan, cancelled his long-awaited journey just hours before its proposed departure,” the meme reads. “3 of the wealthiest men on earth, whom (sic) were against the creation of the federal reserve bank, happened to be invited aboard for its maiden voyage (John Aster, Isador Strauss & Benjamin Guggenheim).
“It then headed full speed into a known iceberg-field, with less than half the required lifeboats, no red signal flares, no Rothschild or Rockefeller on board, and sank to the bottom of the north Atlantic Ocean. Less than a year later, now that the wealthy opposition was out of the way, the federal reserve was created and USA was turned into an incorporated business, with its own business ID number, ’28 U.S.C. 3002 15.”
J.P MORGAN CLAIMS
While it is true that J.P. Morgan owned the Titanic and did not sail on its doomed maiden voyage, there is no evidence to suggest he deliberately missed the trip because he knew the ship would sink. Historians have debated several reasons for Morgan to cancel his trip, but none is related to the Federal Reserve.
“I've never been able to find an authoritative 1912 source explaining the exact reason why J. P. Morgan cancelled his passage on the Titanic, but he definitely didn't do so mere ‘hours’ before the ship's departure,” Titanic expert George Behe said in an email to Reuters.
Meanwhile, Don Lynch, a historian at the Titanic Historical Society (THS), said: “One of J.P. Morgan's biographers said that France was changing its laws to prevent Americans from exporting art treasures from that country, so Morgan went to Paris to oversee getting his purchases out of the country before the new laws went into effect.”
Also from THS, advisory board member Ray Lepien, said that as well as the art treasures theory, “the ‘official’ explanation was that he (Morgan) fell ill and wanted to take the ‘cure’ at a spa in France with his mistress.” Lepien added: “It could have been both reasons.”
STRAUS, ASTOR AND GUGGENHEIM’S OPINIONS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE PROPOSAL
While it is also true that Isidor Straus, Macy’s Department store owner; John Jacob Astor, a property tycoon, and Benjamin Guggenheim, a mining boss, died in the 1912 disaster, there is no evidence to suggest they were the target of deliberate sabotage. There is also no evidence that these three men were against Morgan’s centralised banking ideas.
Firstly, Titanic’s maiden voyage had attracted many prominent names, and was dubbed the “Millionaire’s Special” as a result.
Secondly, George Behe told Reuters he was unable to find any documents in his 45 years of researching the Titanic that proved the three men opposed the Federal Reserve. In fact, a Washington Post investigation found that while Astor and Guggenheim did not take a public stance on the matter, Straus reportedly spoke in favour of the proposal.'
Is that hissing sound your balloon deflating?
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@andrewross4819 You do know that, when people resort to insults, it is generally because they ewalise that their arguments lack any credibility, I suppose?
I don'r care what Reid, or come to that, Erling Haarland, receive in salaries. They are not running the country. Reeves & her ilk are, and the sight of them accepting freebies inevitably begs the question, 'What do these donors get, or expect to get, in return?'
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@PeterPete 'Olympic returned to service in Nov 1911 after her repair, she would have under gone a B of Trade inspection then to establish her seaworthiness.
how do you know this to be true?'
Because at the time, Olympic, along with Cunarders Lusitania & Mauretania, was one of the most famous ships in the world. Don't you think that the Board of Trade might have noticed had she sailed when still uncertified? or that her insurers, Lloyds of London, might have done more than simply raised a quizzical eyebrow?
Any such action by White Star would have led to huge financial punishment, probable imprisonment, and total loss of credibility for the White Star brand. Cunard would have thought all their Christmases had arrived early.
just possibly, a dodgy small company operating a few small tramps might have chanced it. One of the most prestigious shipping companies in the world, NEVER. Please don't be so silly.
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@PeterPete Unfortunately for your argument, no Titanic propeller was ever transferred to Olympic. Or, at least, if one was it must have happened when Harland and Wolff weren't looking. Their archives detail the work carried out to repair Olympic, and confirm that parts of the partially completed Titanic's propeller SHAFT were used, but there is no suggestion that the propeller itself was removed.
As the pitches of the propeller blades of the two ships were different, one from Titanic would not have worked efficiently on Olympic, and vice versa. Indeed, had the blades been identical, there would have been no need for them to be specifically numbered in the first place.
The report issued by the Admiralty following an inspection of Olympic carried out jointly by them, the Board of Trade, and the White Star Line, summarised the damage to Olympic as “Two major watertight compartments were flooded, hull plating gashed from the Orlop deck to E deck, and the starboard propeller shafting damaged.”
There was no reference to propeller damage or, come to that, to the mythical keel damage so beloved of switchers. Indeed, contemporary reports remarked on the robust nature of the Olympic design.
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@PeterPete Reading back through the myriad posts, mainly between you and 'Cornelius,' a number of facts may be observed.
1). It took you a month to correct your lightship error, and only then after being told about it.
2). Your response to everything critical of your fantasy seems to be 'How do you know? You weren't there.' This statement usually falls out of fashion with people once they get past fourteen years or so of ager.
3). You get rather aggressive and insulting when challenged.
4). You demand evidence from others, but haven't produced a single credible piece yourself.
Incidentally, when/if you reply, don't simply send a reference to a book or two, but send an actual, credible, argument which I can examine.
I don't mind trying to educate you on this subject, but don't feel inclined to undertake all the work myself.
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@PeterPete How is this relevant to any of my previous posts? However, as I have read H & W records on the matter, and you obviously have not, I will correct you. H & W, and White Star, by the way, only record the loss of a blade once in 1912.
Olympic lost a blade from her port wing propeller on 24 February, 1912, on her way from New York to Southampton. She completed the voyage, vibrating somewhat, on 29 February, returning to Belfast on 1 March. and completing repairs on 5 March.
The blades on the wing propellers of the Olympics, by the way, were bolted on, unlike the centre propeller, which was a one piece casting, three bladed in the case of Titanic, and four bladed, at the time, on Olympic. There is, by the way, a photograph of the dry docked Olympic, clearly showing the damaged, or rather, missing, blade. Oddly, in view of your convictions, this photograph doesn't seem to show any keel damage, by the way!
As Olympic had left the yard, some of the team working to complete Titanic had to be transferred back to Olympic to repair her as quickly as they did.
This, by the way, doesn't seem to be relevant to my earlier posts, and certainly isn't my unsupported 'opinion.'
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@PeterPete I see. You cannot argue reasonably, so you resort to the old 'the sources have been doctored' argument, the classic last refuge of the conspiracy theorist who has no actual evidence of his own.
Why would anyone bother to 'doctor' such a record? Whether Olympic lost one blade or two in 1912, what possible relevance might that have? There is no record of Olympic returning to Belfast after her departure in early March, 1912 in any newspaper archive known to me, nor in H & W's records, until 9 October, 1912, when she was docked for a refit to incorporate lessons learned from the Titanic sinking.
The refit involved increasing the number of lifeboats carried by Olympic from twenty to sixty four, and extra davits were installed along the boat deck to accommodate them. Also, an inner watertight skin was constructed in the boiler and engine rooms. Five of the Watertight Bulkheads were extended up to B-deck, and an extra bulkhead was added to subdivide the electrical dynamo room, bringing the total number of watertight compartments to 17. These modifications now meant that the Olympic could survive a collision similar to that of the Titanic in that her first six compartments could be breached and the ship could remain afloat.
At the same time, Olympic's B Deck was refitted with extra cabins and public rooms, this necessitated deleting her B-Deck promenades – one of the few features that separated her from her sister ship. With these changes, Olympic's gross tonnage rose to 46,359 tons, 31 tons more than Titanic's. All this is documented by H & W.
She returned to sea in March, 1913.
Still, enlightening to observe that you have abandoned attempting to argue on the basis of facts, and now choose to restrict yourself to vague generalities.
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@Cl0ckcl0ck Of course it was. Admiral Ramsay was tasked with lifting 40,000 men, and actually lifted 338,000, including over 100,000 men. Belgium surrendered early on 28 May. Montgomery was forced to move his division overnight in order to block a large gap in the allied line left by the surrender. Hardly a betrayal by the British.
Mers el Kebir wasn't murder, but a necessary action. The German navy, after Norway, was tiny & battered, but, with the support of the French fleet, an invasion attempt might just have been attempted. Admiral Gensoul was given a series of options in the ultimatum given to him, he simply chose not to pass these on to his political and military superiors. The British government was willing to do whatever was necessary to ensure survival, and acted accordingly. The pity was that Admiral Gensoul was not bright enough to grasp the seriousness of his situation.
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@mich6425 Why didn't these Jesuits of yours cunningly plan to sink Olympic, a much better known ship at the time, instead?
Guggenheim, like Astor, had never expressed his views about the Fed. Straus, the third financier to die, however, had. He was in support of it, as two articles in the New York Times from October, 1911, which can be read, demonstrate.
The rest of your comments are simply too half-baked for me to waste my time upon.
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@frozenflyify The lifeboats are relevant because many of those who allege skimping in Titanic's design & construction claim this as evidence of penny-pinching, when it was nothing of the sort.
The myth about the connection with the Federal Reserve, claiming that three major financiers were 'removed' to ease the creation of the Fed. dates to the 1990s, but no earlier. There is precisely no supporting evidence. In fact, Astor & Guggenheim had never expressed their opinions, whilst Straus was a supporter, and newspaper reports of a speech he made in October, 1911, make abundantly clear.
Incidentally, Astor, Guggenheim, & Straus were not offered free trips aboard Titanic. Again, yet another myth.
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@LocoCoyote Except the German surface fleet didn't actually achieve much. Graf Spee was an insignificant diversion at a time when the Allied navies had more than enough resources to deal with her. Hipper had one brief, moderately successful, sortie in early 1941. Scharnhorst & Gneisenau had a similar degree of success in March, 1941, and Bismarck/Prinz Eugen failed in Operation Rheinubung. After that, the surface fleet either stayed safely out of harm's way (Tirpitz) or failed when it did briefly appear, in the cases of Lutzow, Hipper and, later Scharnhorst.
The U-boats, by the way, were nowhere near as effective as those of WW1 had been, and certainly did not come anywhere nearly as close to success as they had done in 1917.
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Perhaps you don't know that Churchill had no involvement in the planning of the Gallipoli campaign? He proposed it as an alternative to the impending carnage on the Western Front, to relieve Turkish pressure on Russia's southern flank, and to influence neutral Eastern European states to join the war on the allied side. Potentially, it might even have driven the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Certainly, Kitchener thought in similar terms, and after the war Kemal Ataturk said that Turkey was on the verge of surrender when the allied warships were withdrawn from the Dardanelles.
Be that as it may, Asquith authorised the operation, not Churchill, and the planning was in the hands of the army and navy. When it failed, Asquith needed a suitable scapegoat, and Churchill fitted the bill. Not for nothing was one of Lloyd Georges
first acts when he replaced Asquith returning Churchill to the government.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis.
The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda. One wonders why, with 2.5 million Indian soldiers fighting for the Allies, those same allies would have sought to generate a famine? However, where revisionist prejudice is concerned, archive documents or common sense are best ignored.
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The Blackburn Roc first flew in December 1938, Until mid 1939, Fleet Air Arm aircraft were ordered by the Royal Navy's mortal enemy, the British Air Ministry,
Put simply, the AM spent most of their budget on bombers (as devoted Douhetists, they believed that ther bomber would always get through), some on fighters, a little on Coastal Command, and the change found in Trenchard's pocket after a night out at his club on the Fleet Air Arm.
Thankfully, the Inskip Award gave control of the FAA back to ther Navy, but in September, 1939, there were 232 frontline aircraft, many of which were actually obsolete.
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@QuantenRitter The only significant damage done to Prince of Wales was a shell which passed through her compass platform, killing some of the bridge personnel, but not her captain. She was indeed hit seven times by Bismarck & Prinz Eugen. However, none of the shells actually exploded, and there were no hits on her main or secondary armament. You can easily check this from the many sources on Operation Rheinubung, had you the will.
The damage done to Bismarck had left her down by the bows and had reduced her speed. Moreover, Lutjens had not expected to encounter any British capital ships in the area, as Luftwaffe air reconnaissance had failed to notice their absence from Scapa Flow. It is doubtful that Bismarck had the speed to close with Prince of Wales, but in any case, Lutjens was more concerned with getting to St. Nazaire for repair, and could not even be sure that, as Hood & Prince of Wales had come as a complete shock to him, there were not other British heavy units in the vicinity.
'Probably Prinz Eugen could have finished her off alone.' That it the most idiotic & ignorant remark on the subject I have read for some time, and it is not worthy of further comment.
Just read a few accounts of the engagement rather than wandering into the realms of wehraboo fantasy.
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@tomaszser470 The Royal Navy had been targeted by the Luftwaffe at Dunkirk, and the Luftwaffe, untrained in anti-shipping operations, failed. What makes you think they were likely to have been any more successful attacking the same ships, which, unlike at Dunkirk , had freedom to manoeuvre at speed.
One of the more remarkable things about discussions of what the Luftwaffe 'would have' done to the Royal Navy is that the Sealion enthusiasts consistently refuse to accept the opinions of people like Wolfram von Richthofen and Oskar Dinort, both senior Luftwaffe commanders in September, 1940, who said that protecting the invasion barges was beyond their capabilities.
In short, the Luftwaffe was always much better at things it 'would have' done, than at the things it actually did!
There were, by the way, 1213 Allied warships at D-Day.
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Actrually, construction was dictated by the limitations of the Washington Naval Treaties.
On 3 September, 1939, the RN had seven carriers, with six under construction, and fifteen battleships and battlecruisers, with five under construction.
The US Navy had six carriers, with one under construction, and fifteen battleships, with four under construction.
At the same time, Germany had 57 U-Boats. The Royal Navy had 63. U-Boat construction was a desperate wartime measure, brought about by the demands of a situation for which the Kriegsmarine had not planned.
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Somerville sent Captain Cedric Holland, commander of the carrier Ark Royal, to negotiate with Gensoul. Holland spoke fluent French, was known to be a Francophile, had been British Naval Attache in Paris, and knew most of the senior officers of the French navy personally. How much more suitable could he have been?
As to 'coveting the forces at Mers-el-Kebir' do you truly not understand the situation facing the British government in July, 1940? The alliance with France no longer existed following the collapse of the Third Republic, precisely how the new, Vichy, regime would behave was unknown, the British army had been withdrawn and was in the throes of re-equipping, and the only force capable of defeating a German invasion was the Royal Navy, currently overstretched by additional, unexpected, commitments. The one trump card that the British held was the fact that the already tiny German navy had been savaged during the Norwegian campaign, and little remained to protect an invasion force. However, the French navy, the second largest in Europe, could have provided such protection, which would make an invasion attempt at least possible. The British did not covet the French fleet, but they wanted to be sure that it would not be committed against them. Transfer to neutral West Indian ports, or to the supervision of the United States, would have been acceptable to them, but the uncertainty which currently existed was not.
'The British forces claim that they were willing to escort the French to American waters was probably an empty promise should the French have chosen to leave the port. They more than likely would have claimed that the French (neutral entity at this point) had sortied against them.' Your evidence for this is? Actually, non-existent, presumably based on prejudice?
Finally, please don't post piously, 80 years after the event, about 'honor.' In July, 1940, honour was irrelevant, but national survival was vital. The British government was willing to do whatever was necessary to improve the chances of survival after the French & Belgian collapse, and they acted accordingly, as Roosevelt was the first to acknowledge. Gensoul was given options; sadly he chose not to pass on the full text of the British ultimatum to his political heads.
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@shanemcdowall In mid September, 1940, of 10 surviving destroyers in the Kreigsmarine, five were operational, based in Cherbourg. Four were refitting in Wilhelmshaven, one of which transferred to Brest on 22/3 September. The tenth destroyer transferred from Wilhelmshaven to Brest on the same date.
There were also a number of Wolf/Mowe class torpedo boats, ships built in the mid 1920s and comparable to the British 'Hunt' class or the later USN DEs, although they were also torpedo armed. There were five based at Den Helder, one at Le Havre, and one at Cherbourg.
At the same time, the British had around 70 destroyers and light cruisers within five hours steaming of Dover.
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Perhaps Lightoller, who had been a seaman since 1887, might possibly have known more about things than Senator Smith, who was an expert on Railroad Law?
Smith achieved some notoriety for being more colourful than knowledgeable, even being called "Watertight Smith" by the British press for asking whether watertight compartments, actually meant to keep the ship afloat, were meant to shelter passengers.
In addition to this, Smith also asked the ship's fifth officer Harold Lowe what an iceberg was made of, to which Lowe responded, "Ice, I suppose, sir?".
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Why would the UK government wish to sink Titanic? You say you don't 'do' conspiracy theories, then dive right into one.
Olympic was not under Smith's control when she collided with HMS Hawke, by the way. She was in the Solent, and under the command of a Solent Pilot, the same one who had taken her into and out of Southampton on several previous occasions, by the way, as the subsequent court case made abundantly clear. Moreover, if this was some nefarious 'test' why was Hawke managing only eight knots, when, even though an old ship, she could manage at least eighteen?
Smith, by the way, had been Commodore of White Star since 1904, and had taken every new liner on her maiden voyage. There was nothing odd about him taking Titanic.
The rest of your post verges on insanity. Why do you think that a nurse and a stoker were part of Smith's conspiracy team? Titanic had over 100 stokers, leading stokers, and trimmers aboard. Moreover, what evidence have you that Smith escaped?
Your post started off almost reasonably, then you contradicted your claim that you do don't conspiracy theories by posting one of the most ludicrous ones I have ever read.
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@truthandreality8465 Smith was not in charge of Olympic at the time of her collision with Hawke. She was in the Solent, and her movements under the supervision of a Solent Pilot. Blair was Second Officer. He had far more responsibilities than you seem to realise, but he was replaced because Henry Wilde had much more experience of the operations of an Olympic class liner than Blair, having been Chief Officer of Olympic, under Smith, since August, 1911. Do you really think that there were no glasses aboard Titanic when she sailed, even though such items were not generally used by look outs?
The financiers aboard Titanic were not, as you imply without stating, opponents of the Federal Reserve. Two had never expressed their opinions, and the third was a supporter.
The idea that the sinking was brought about because the British already assumed that a war was coming, and believed that 'their enemies wanted to fill those waters up with their own ships' is not only totally barmy, but shows a remarkable ignorance about the relative strengths of the British, German, & French navies of the period.
oh, and recouping £1 million in insurance for a ship which cost £1.5 million to build, wilst at the same time losing a hard-won reputation for safety, was hardly a rational, let alone profitable, scheme, especially since White Star had only just placed their order for the third Olympic class ship.
'There have been several credible reasons brought forth for anyone wanting such a disaster in The North Atlantic.' Such as? Do tell.
Keep these comments coming, please. I am unsure whether you are trying to be serious, or humorous, but you surely provide a degree of hilarity for those of us who know some actual history.
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The convoys in the movie 'The Imitation Game' were supposed to be SC122, HX229, & HX229A, from March 1943. Nothing to do with PQ17. The story in the movie is false. There was a period between February & October, 1942 when the Germans had introduced a four rotor Enigma machine, which the British were unable to break. On 30 October, however, a machine and codebooks were captured from a sinking U Boat by HMS Petard, two of her crew being drowned aboard U559 when she sank. By March, 1943, using these documents and the captured books, the four rotor Enigma had been broken. It didn't happen as the rather disappointing movie suggested, and it had nothing to do with PQ17.
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@Citizenfitz1 Fryatt wasn't commanding a Q ship, in any case.
Germany had, by the way, announced the imminent commencement of unrestricted submarine warfare on 4 February, 1915, in the 'Deutscher Reichsanzeiger' as follows :-
(1) The waters around Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole of the English Channel, are hereby declared to be a War Zone. From February 18 onwards every enemy merchant vessel encountered in this zone will be destroyed, nor will it always be possible to avert the danger thereby threatened to the crew and passengers.
(2) Neutral vessels also will run a risk in the War Zone, because in view of the hazards of sea warfare and the British authorization of January 31 of the misuse of neutral flags, it may not always be possible to prevent attacks on enemy ships from harming neutral ships.
(3) Navigation to the north of Shetland, in the eastern parts of the North Sea and through a zone at least thirty nautical miles wide along the Dutch coast is not exposed to danger.
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@MilitaryHistoryVisualized In the Mediterranean, carriers had been effective against capital ships. Taranto probably wasn't relevant here, in that the Italian fleet was attacked in port, but in March, 1941, Albacores from Formidable succeeded in crippling the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto, bringing about the battle of Matapan.
At this point in WW2, the Fleet Air Arm did not see the role of carriers as being that of strike weapons, largely because the 18 inch torpedo, carried by the Swordfish, wasn't deemed capable of sinking enemy capital ships. Instead, their role was to scout for the main battlefleet, provide air cover against the long range enemy aircraft they were expected to encounter, and when opportunity permitted, to inflict sufficient damage on enemy heavy ships in order to slow them down and bring them within range of the RN battlefleet.
They achieved this twice, against Bismarck & at Matapan, and almost succeeded in doing the same to Tirpitz in the Arctic. Tirpitz escaped, but never sortied again.
Needless to say, the Bismarck enthusiasts, ignoring the fact that Fleet Air Arm pilots had trained for this for years, will claim that the damage to Bismarck was both lucky and, somehow, unsporting!
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit your agenda.
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@simonh6371 You need to look in any decent dictionary. For example :-
'Conspiracist
noun
a person who supports a conspiracy theory.'
'Amazing how thick people are nowadays.' True. You had no need to prove it, mon brave.
Indeed, coal fires did happen from time to time. That was why IMM had regulations which required that bunkers be inspected on a daily basis, and why, when a smouldering fire, caused by spontaneous combustion of wet coal, was discovered in Southampton, a team was set to work on it, resulting in it being extinguished some 24 hours before the collision.
If you were to seek in the minutes of the Inquiries for any suggestion of weakening of the hull, you would seek in vain.
Not, of course, that you are likely to have known any of this.
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@davidchiles5331 How much clearer does it need to be? The Admiralty had around 70 light cruisers and destroyers within five hours steaming of the Straits of Dover. Were German invasion barges to be detected in quantity as they plodded towards the Channel at walking pace, RN destroyers and cruisers (supported by some five hundred or so smaller warships) from Portsmouth, Plymouth, & The Nore, are sent to engage them.
The barges and their tugs are almost unescorted, and are capable of around five knots. The destroyers and cruisers are capable of at least 25 knots. The tugs have a variety of improvised weapons, generally on wooden platforms, and crewed by largely untrained gunners. The cruisers and destroyers have a range of weapons, 6 inch, 4.7 inch, and 4 inch guns being the most common, which are manned by experienced professionals.
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@nickdanger3802 Never a good idea to accept uncritically an RAF source where the Battle of the Atlantic is concerned.
To use an accurate, Naval, source :-
'Total shipping losses of the Allied and neutral nations were about 456,000 gross tons a month during the period July 1940 to March, 1941, more than 60 per cent higher than during the first period. Meanwhile the building rate had increased only slightly to about 114,000 gross tons a month, making the net loss of shipping about 342,000 gross tons a month. Total shipping available had decreased from about 38,000,000 gross tons at the start of the second period to about 35,000,000 gross tons at the end of the second period.
Of the 456,000 gross tons of shipping lost monthly, about 404,000 gross tons were lost by enemy action. U-boats accounted for 42 ships of 224,000 gross tons a month (55 per cent of the total tonnage lost by enemy action), more than twice the monthly tonnage sunk by U-boats during the first period. Monthly shipping losses due to enemy surface craft jumped to 87,000 gross tons (22 per cent) and those due to enemy aircraft increased to 61,000 gross tons (15 per cent). Monthly losses due to mines dropped from second place in the first period to only 27,000 gross tons (7 per cent), with other and unknown causes accounting for the other 1 per cent of the total losses due to enemy action.
There is no doubt that the U-boats had inflicted a serious defeat on the Allies in the Battle of the Atlantic during the second period, but the situation was beginning to look more promising toward the end of this period. One favorable element was the increasing number of antisubmarine ships and aircraft becoming available for convoy escorts as the threat of the invasion of England was decreasing.
The number of antisubmarine ships suitable for ocean escort (i.e., destroyers and patrol craft such as sloops, frigates, corvettes) had increased from about 235 at the start of this period to about 375 (includes 240 destroyers) at the end of the period. Important factors in this increase were the coming into service of the new corvette and also the transfer of the 50 old Town class destroyers from the United States to England from September 1940. These destroyers were equipped with U. S. echo-ranging gear, called sonar, which was similar in principle to the British Asdic.'
Thus, although the figures are largely accurate, the conclusions are incomplete, in that, losses in terms of gross tonnage available had decreased by less than 8%, at a time when the first 'Happy Time' was in full swing.
Evasive, or Diversionary, Routing didn't apply during the period June-December, 1940. It relied upon widespread use of HF/DF sites on ships and shore bases, combined with successes in breaking German Naval Enigma, both of which post-dated that period.
How, by the way, is any of this relevant to PQ17 or Paukenschlag?
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'There’s several photos of Titanic shortly after launch with the enclosed B Deck. These books are easily the most comprehensive set on Titanic.'
'B' Deck on Titanic was, at the time of her launch, exactly the same as that of Olympic, in that the window patterns matched those of Olympic. Thus, 'B' deck was enclosed at the time of launch on both ships, as far as a point between the third and fourth funnels.
However, you originally claimed that 'there are photos of Titanic being launched with exterior B Deck modifications already made'. Which is simply not correct.
Any debate has been about the subsequent modifications, which, externally on Titanic, resulted in a revised, irregular, window pattern at the forward end of the deck, when compared to Olympic, or, indeed, to the original Titanic configuration, because of internal modifications which involved improvements and extensions to first class staterooms and the installation of the Cafe Parisien. These modifications appear to have been undertaken in late 1911.
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Bismarck was crippled as a warship after 20 minutes on 27 May, 1941. Certainly, she took around 90 minutes to sink, but as a warship, she was quickly rendered helpless. Scharnhorst was overwhelmed by Duke of York, and Graf Spee couldn't cope with three small cruisers. Blucher was sunk by the Oskarsborg Fortress, using weapons which were over 40 years old in 1940. It is difficult to comment on the rest. Karlsruhe was scuttled after being crippled by a torpedo from HMSm Truant in 1940, Konigsberg was hit and damaged by Norwegian coastal batteries, before being finished off by dive bombers in 1940, Leipzig was damaged, in December, 1939, by a torpedo from HMSm Salmon, and never returned to front line service, and, again in 1940, 10 of 20 German destroyers were sunk by the RN at Narvik.
Are you sure that German ships, at least in WW2, were 'well balanced & just work?'
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@swunt10 Bismarck was disabled by an aerial torpedo late on 26 May. By 'crippled' I was referring to the fact that her fighting ability was reduced almost to nothing within 20 minutes on the morning of 27 May. A battleship which is reduced to impotence so quickly is less impressive than you would have us believe. Are you aware of the weaknesses in her design? Outmoded incremental armour (which hadn't been used in British or American design for around 20 years) which resulted in widespread internal fires, just as it was subsequently to do aboard Scharnhorst, Hiei, & Kirishima, outmoded, low angle, secondary armament, and outmoded, twin turret, main armament. In short, an enlarged Baden, and not much more.
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@swunt10 So, All or Nothing Armour is 'Bullshit?' Clearly you are better informed than every naval designer for the last 100 years. By the way, simply quoting from Wikipedia doesn't impress anyone, especially when by so doing you merely suggest that you don't understand what you are quoting. Look up a proper book on the subject, and you will perhaps begin to grasp what 'All or Nothing' armour is, when compared to 'incremental.' You could start by reading Norman Friedman (US Battleships - An Illustrated Design History), followed by Willian Garzke & Robert Dulin (Battleships - United States Battleships in WW2). I have given you American sources, because I suspect that British ones, in your eyes, would probably be tainted. Failing that, read up on what happened to Hiei & Kirishima ( both 'incremental' ships) at Guadalcanal, compared to what happened to USS South Dakota, an 'all or nothing' ship.
Indeed, Bismarck survived her battle against Hood & Prince of Wales, but in so doing sustained sufficient damage to force her to abandon her mission. Prince of Wales, by the way, withdraw because of the known problems with her quadruple turrets, but re-engaged later in the day once these had been repaired. Once Bismarck had lost her ability to escape, her design left her unable to resist Rodney's 16 inch shells, which reduced her to a defenceless wreck in around 20 minutes, as every book on the subject will confirm.
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Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst, and Gneisenau were able to flee through the Channel in February, 1942, because there was no longer a threat of invasion, and the British had relocated their heavy naval rsources to other areas, specifically to the north in order to provide a screen for Russian convoys against potential attacks by the Tirpitz, which had just been sent to Norway.
Operations against the German ships in Brest had been left to the RAF, with unfortunate results, but even then the German strategic reverse which was the Channel Dash still came as a welcome surprise to the RN, as if effectively demonstrated that the German surface fleet had abandoned plans to operate in the Atlantic.
Gneisenau & Scharnhorst were both damaged by mines, by the way. Gneisenau was later further damaged in harbour and never sailed again. Scharnhorst sailed in one further action, where she was sunk, and Prinz Eugen spent the rest of the war wandering around the Baltic.
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@screeny_ What is this 'Big Lie' of which you speak? Had I chosen to write about WMDs, I would have used an appropriate site.
On the subject of your actual question, firstly, the names were erased because the newsreels were supposed to represent Titanic in Southampton, when they were actually of Olympic in New York. Hence, the port of registry, 'New York' might have been something of a giveaway.
Secondly, the evidence-free Federal Reserve/Titanic connection was an invention of the 1990s. No suggestion of it at all predates the growth of social media. Passengers aboard were on their way to the US because that was were the ship was going. Had they been heading for Cairo, then that might have been suspicious.
Finally, if you refer to cognitive dissonance you should first find out how ro spell it, and then find out what the term means. It is actually 'the discomfort a person feels when their behaviour does not align with their values or beliefs'.
Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when a person holds two contradictory beliefs at the same time. Something which certainly does not apply to me, and never has.
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@alecbowman2548 That wasn't quite what he said, although why anyone should take any notice of an actor pretending to be an historian anyway is another issue.
The tauchpanzers were intended to be dropped from barges near to the invasion beaches in shallow water, and to drive alone the seabed for a short distance only. The idea was not a wise one, if for no other reason than that the driver had no idea which way he was going, and could not see any obstacles.
The most obvious problem, however, was the difficulty of getting the barges past the Royal Navy's massed anti-invasion forces in the first place, of course.
The tauchpanzers were indeed only used for river crossings, but they were originally created for Sealion. The original hose was 18m long, and they were supposed tro be able to operate in 15m of water, by the way.
I imagine that the designers were not willing to test the concept themselves.
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@ComradeOgilvy1984 I agree with you. There was, incidentally, an alternative course of action which the German navy could, just possibly, have followed, put forward by an Admiral called Wolfgang Wegener, which ended in him feuding with Erich Raeder and being prematurely retired from the German navy in 1926. If you search for RAEDER VERSUS WEGENER, there is an excellent description written by Kenneth Hansen for the US Naval War College in 2005. There are arguments on both sides, but, from the German point of view, surely the fleet simply sitting in port until the Blockade destroyed German morale and the German war effort was unacceptable. Yet, effectively, that was what they did.
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@tmefly2907 'Narrow Passage?' Even at the narrowest point, the Channel is 21 miles wide, and the RN was hardly 'stuck' although the German barges, around 850 of them being towed at not much above walking pace by tugs, small coasters, and trawlers, might well have been.
As for 'very effective against naval targets' what happened at Dunkirk? RN & merchant navy ships stopped off an open beach, or moored against the Mole, yet of 41 destroyers present, the Luftwaffe managed to sink four.
The RN anti-invasion force ( around 70 light cruisers and destroyers, supported by some five hundred smaller warships) had freedom to move at speed and to take evasive manoeuvres. If the Luftwaffe, untrained in anti-shipping operations, couldn't hit such ships when they were stopped, are they really likely to have been more successful when they had freedom of action?
Have you, by the way, the slightest idea how huge the Royal Navy in Home Waters was in 1940?
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@kennethgarland4712 Sturdee, before the First World War, became involved in a feud between Fisher and another Admiral, Sir Charles Beresford. Opposition to Fisher among a number of senior officers was referred to as the 'Syndicate of Discontent' by Fisher.
When Sturdee became Beresford's Chief of Staff in the Mediterranean & later the Channel Fleet, Fisher asked him to send confidential reports about him. In other words, to spy on him. Sturdee refused, and Jackie Fisher, as a result, regarded him as an enemy thereafter.
There is a book, 'Coronel & The Falklands' by Geoffrey Bennett, published as far back as 1962, which discusses the relationship between Fisher & Sturdee in some detail. Sturdee had been Fisher's Chief of War Staff from the outbreak of WW1, and probably bore some responsibility for the defeat at Coronel. Fisher, however, was eager to get rid of Sturdee, and appointed him to command of the Battlecruiser squadron which was sent to seek out Von Spee's ships. Ironically, it was probably the making of him!
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@screeny_ I know damned well it was you, because I know equally damned well it wasn't me. Perhaps sarcasm is not a word in your vocabulary?
I assess the concept of the 'big lie' on my assessment of whether there is, or is not, any credible evidence to support the allegation. As everyone should, although few Conspiracy Theorists ever do.
In the case of my opinion about Titanic, it is based on a host of factors, the main ones being the total lack of credible evidence to support the idea, the vast amount of evidence which supports the contention that the wreck really is Titanic, and the fact that the claims of a conspiracy date back no further than the 1990s and the rise of social media, when it became unnecessary to have any knowledge in order to present a theory, however absurd.
Still, feel free to avoid the issue, as you appear to be intent upon doing.
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@landsea7332 I can understand the Indians who post on here about the Bengal famine. They are victims of the trend to replace education with indoctrination, (which is also progressing apace in the west,) and do not know any better. I doubt that they even know how many such famines there have been, from pre-British rule to post Independence, in India.
The attempts to discredit Churchill by non-Indians are less due to ignorance and more due to the political agenda to bring down white men in general. Churchill was recently voted the greatest Briton of the last 1000 years. If he can be taken down, then every other dead old white man from the past is fair game. Even David Livingstone was recently attacked for profiting from the Slave Trade, on the spurious grounds that he worked as a labourer in a Scottish cotton mill when he was twelve.
Slavery, indeed, seems to be the usual weapon, with the accusers blaming the existence of slavery almost solely on the British, whilst other countries and societies who practised it for longer, and more extensively, rarely receive a mention. Nor, of course, do the African tribal leaders and Arab slave traders who assembled and supplied these people warrant a mention, of course. The Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron, which finally abolished the TransAtlantic trade must, of course, also be written out of history.
The really ironic thing, of course, is that the people who wax so lyrical about the horrors of something which ended in 1833 have no objections to the modern slave trade. No so long as it supplies them with the cheap trainers, clothes, and smartphones they so crave.
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Yes, the bunker fire is well documented. It has been since the Inquiries in 1912.
It had not been alight for 'weeks yes week' or anything like that, as Titanic only completed coaling in Southampton. Moreover, IMM regulations required that the condition of bunkers be inspected on a daily basis. I assume that you didn't know that?
To inject a little reality into your cherished fantasy, a smouldering bunker fire was dicovered in one of Titanic's 19 bunkers when in Southampton. The cause was spontaneous combustion of damp coal, and a team was put to work, with the result that the fire was extinguished around 24 hours before the collision. The damage reported at the British Inquiry referred only to scorched paintwork in the bunker, which was overpainted with oil. There was never any suggestion that a bulkhead had been damaged. At worst, the bunker side, of much thinner steel, might, perhaps, have been.
Do try to think. If a serious internal fire had been reported to Captain Smith, would he really have set sail?
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@MarkHarrison733 'The RAF had 2,000 planes in 1940 and the Luftwaffe had 2,500.
The entire British Commonwealth and Empire was at war with Germany. The US was already at war with Germany in 1940, as Admiral King had confirmed at the time.'
You seem to miss the point, which is not how many aircraft the RAF or the Luftwaffe had in total, but how many were engaged in the battle. If you insist upon posting these largely irrelevant claims, then on 17 August, 1940, Luftwaffe records show precisely 3157 operational aircraft of all types.
Admiral King 'confirmed' nothing. The first attack by a US Navy warship on a U-Boat was by USS Niblack (DD 424), on April 10, 1941. If you can explain how this was even vaguely relevant to the Battle of Britain, please do so.
Apart from a small number of US citizens who had volunteered for service with the RAF, and a small number of American built Martlet aircraft purchased by the British, there was no American involvement.
Commonwealth & Empire involvement did become important later, by not as early as 1940.
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@Followme556 The 50 destroyers, for which Britain paid, only became operational, with British or Canadian crews, well after the Battle of Britain had ended. Britain had to carry out extensive refits on them. Any other items, including aircraft, were also paid for, and had British crews.
There were 2927 pilots accredited as flying with Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain. Of these, 574 were not British. If you can name any nation fighting alongside Britain in 1940, other than Commonwealth ones building up their forces but still at a distance, please try.
To argue that Britain was not alone is as false as claiming that Britain & America supported the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War because of the International Brigade.
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The British did embark on a policy of fleet modernisation, beginning with the older ships of the Queen Elizabeth class, and the battlecruiser Renown, first. Much as the US Navy did. However, only two of fifteen capital ships could be decommissioned for an extended (two years or so) period, at any one time.
By 1939, Warspite & Renown had been completed, and Queen Elizabeth & Valiant almost completed. Hood was due for what was termed her 'Large Repair,' actually a total rebuild along the lines of Renown, in 1941, but 'events,' as they say, intervened.
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@darkmath100 Except that have you any proof at all that anyone aboard Titanic knew where Californian was at the time? The only ship actually known to be making for Titanic was Carpathia. I accept that Titanic's officers probably knew about her, certainly her command staff did, but no one at all knew about Californian.
"a small cargo/passenger liner with space for 47 passengers" You mean accommodation for 47 passengers which is far different than temporarily holding 1500 passengers on her deck.' I don't mean anything at all. I simply describe what sort of ship Californian was. If, however, the rescue was part of the fantastical plot you seem fixated upon, she was hardly the right sort of ship for the task.
'If he didn't file a cargo manifest because there was no cargo then why would she be sailing across the Atlantic?' Because he was carrying a cargo, and the ship was on her regular route. The Leyland line were what was known as 'Common Carriers,' in that they would transport anything and everything that earned money.
By the way, you presumably haven't read the evidence that Ernest Gill, of Californian gave on Day 8 of the US Senate Inquiry :- "I turned in, but could not sleep. In half an hour I turned out, thinking to smoke a cigarette. Because of the cargo, I could not smoke 'tween decks, so I went on deck again."
Californian may have been carrying literally hundreds of 'parcels' of general cargo [just about everything ever traded] on hundreds of bills of lading; all collated on a 'ship's report outward/inward' otherwise known as the 'manifest'. Copies of this document would be lodged inter alia with the custom house at Liverpool or London and Boston and should be in either archive. When you say that no such manifest was lodged, I simply do not believe you, because such documents were essential in order to determine the level of duties payabler.
This, by the way, may be of interest :- A reference to Californian in a newspaper The steamer was loaded with a miscellaneous cargo and berthed at the B & A docks in East Boston." Boston Traveller, April 19, 1912, p.7. "B & A docks" stands for "Boston and Albany docks."
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@darkmath100 'If the crew was in on it then of course there would be no other proof?' So now you believe the crew were involved? Was anyone alive in 1912 actually not part of the plot, in your mind?
Interestingly, I have a copy of Edith's first account of the sinking, published only a year later. What she actually writes is :- 'Just then, I spied an officer, and said to him, “Tell me, Mr. Officer. Shall I leave in a lifeboat? Is there any danger?” to which he answered, “I do not think there is any immediate danger, but this boat is damaged, and she certainly cannot proceed to New York. She may be towed into the nearest harbor. We expect the Olympic along in the next two or three hours.' Care to comment?
When Californian arrived in Boston, the following report appeared in the local newspaper :- 'The Californian was loaded with a miscellaneous cargo and berthed at the B & A docks in East Boston." Boston Traveller, April 19, 1912, p.7. "B & A docks" stands for "Boston and Albany docks." ' Does that suggest a cargo of blankets?
As has often been said 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.' I wonder if anyone has ever seriously looked for the manifest, given that this bizarre theory didn't come to light until the mid 1990s? There would be no reason to keep such documents indefinitely, especially once all relevant duties had been paid.
'The Olympic and Titanic were side by side in Belfast for over two weeks just to replace a broken propeller. That's an awfully long time for something so simple, no?' Actually, NO.
After Olympic lost a propeller blade on her way from New York to Southampton, she was able to complete the voyage before returning to Belfast for repairs. The blade was lost on 24 February, she arrived in Belfast on 1 March, and she left Belfast on 4 March. Two Weeks?
By the way, please don't dissemble. Your original post said 'The Olympic was hit by the HMS Hawke and was written off by some very clever "accounting".' That doesn't read like someone who doesn't have a preconceived view, does it?
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@darkmath100 ' "The Californian was loaded with a miscellaneous cargo" I'm not saying it wasn't. I'm saying no one knows what the cargo was including the Boston Traveler in 1912.'
Indeed. So why do you simply assume that Californian was carrying nothing but blankets? Don't you think that, had a ship known to have been in the immediate vicinity of Titanic when she sank, arrived in Boston with a full load of blankets, apparently with no consignee in the States, someone might have asked a few questions? Was the press in the US at the time so unquestioning? Or was it because Californian, like every other Leyland Line ship before or after, was simply carrying a typical mixed cargo of odds and sods?
' "Was anyone alive in 1912 actually not part of the plot, in your mind?" You lose credibility when you insult your opponent.' I didn't realise you regarded me as your 'opponent.' I believed this was an exchange of opinions. Oh, well.
Charles Payne, H & W's yard manager, recorded in his journal the times taken to build various stages of both ships. He shows that work on Titanic started faster than work on Olympic, but Titanic soon fell behind and when framing was finished she was one month behind. By the time plating was finished, the gap was 2.5 months. In the time between framing and launching, Titanic lost another 1.5 months to finish four months behind.
It appears that some of the slippage may simply have been due to weather. Olympic's plating was done at the height of summer, but Titanic was plated in winter.
Slippage in construction times was not uncommon, then or now. For example, the battleship King George V, when laid down in January, 1937, was intended to be ready for sea trials by July, 1940. In fact, due to slippage, she was not ready to sail until October. As far as I know, no-one has yet suggested that she was switched, although I live in hope.
'Now, however, the delay would make perfect sense if the two ships had been swapped. Those three weeks were to build in some superficial changes so the ships didn't look alike.'
Would you suggest that the large numbers of Harland & Wolff employees who had worked on both ships then carried out small cosmetic changes on Titanic, and loyally remained silent even after their ship sank?
Moreover, they still remained silent after many had been made redundant after WW1 ended? Isn't that taking loyalty rather to extremes?
Moreover, why do you find Occam's Razor so unacceptable where this subject is concerned?
Look, it is fairly clear that you wish to believe the switch theory, as you reject every obvious reasonable answer in favour of an improbable or, at best, debatable, one.
If you wish to believe in the switch fantasy feel free, but don't pretend otherwise.
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@darkmath100 What you might regard as 'snide' I would regard as sarcasm. You would have gone down a ball at the old Glasgow Empire!
I know all about J. P. Morgan. I also know, whereas you clearly do not, that Captain Smith was not found responsible for the Hawke collision. Olympic was in restricted waters at the time, and under the command of a Harbour Pilot, one George Bowyer. Bowyer had piloted Olympic into and out of Southampton previously, but on this occasion made a mistake. Or, at least, a Court determined that he had.
Smith was angry that 'his' ship had been blamed, but no responsibility was attached to him personally. Look up George Bowyer for yourself if you don't believe me. It really does pay to check the old court reports before making erroneous statements.
Smith was Commodore of the White Star Line, and had commanded the maiden voyage of every White Star Liner since 1904. Look up Baltic (1904), & Adriatic (1907), for further information. Evidently, you didn't know that either. J. P. Morgan had bigger interests than appointing ship captains, especially ships under the control of a company which had made over £1 million in profits in the financial year 1910-1911.
Smith, by the way, had informed White Star (actually, Bruce Ismay) that he wished to retire when Titanic returned to Southampton. I suppose I should assume that you didn't know that either?
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@Glynnwilliamson You mean like in early 1942, when the British and Canadians had to send 34 escorts to the American East Coast, because Ernie King chose to ignore British Admiralty warnings and allow American merchant shipping to be slaughtered within sight of the (brightly illuminated) US coast.
Or mid 1942, when there were 12 Escort Groups protecting SC, HX, & ON convoys? Of these, seven (B1 B7) were British, four (C1 C4) Canadian, and one (A3) theoretically American. I say 'theoretically' because it consisted of British & Canadian destroyers, and two US Coastguard cutters. The cutters were soon withdrawn to other duties, and the Group redesignated C5. There were, once the cutters left, no American warships on North Atlantic escort duty. The British & Canadians managed to win the battle all by themselves. The US Navy never really 'arrived' in the North Atlantic.
As to D-Day, the naval plan was drawn up by a team led by Vice-Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, who was also Naval Forces Commander on 6 June. Of 4127 landing craft, 3261 were British & Canadian crewed. There were 1213 warships at D-Day; 892 were British or Canadian. There were 11600 Allied aircraft; two thirds were RAF, and the combined force was commanded by Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory. Two of every three men who landed on 6 June were British or Canadian, and I leave you to guess who the Ground Forces Commander was. The pre-invasion minesweeping was carried out entirely by British & Canadian sweepers, and the Mulberry artificial harbours, without which the whole thing would have been impossible anyway, were a British invention.
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@richardcutts196 Indeed they did, and look at what they saddled themselves with! 27 knots, but 12 inch or 12.6 inch guns, 9.8 inch belts and 3.1 inch deck armour. The British already had 15 capital ships, of which 5 were obsolete, and Iron Duke had been stripped of her armour and two turrets since 1930. Centurion had been totally stripped of her armament and most of her upperworks since 1927 for use as a target ship. In March, 1939, the British did briefly investigate restoring Iron Duke. The work would have involved fitting a new 11 inch main belt, bulges, 4 inch deck armour, two replacement turrets, and new secondary armament of 4.5 or 5,25 inch guns. Boilers & machinery would require complete replacement. The result would have been something inferior to the R class, fit only for second line duties.
Wisely, the Admiralty concluded that the cost, time, and dockyard facilities required would have been better used elsewhere. With five new battleships in the process of construction, the RN, in 1939, did not need to waste resources restoring a museum piece.
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@Tozzpot500 I have just finished ploughing through the 'Brilliant Expattaffy's' latest video. All 1 hour 30 minutes of it. Comment is unnecessary, except to refer to 'Hamlet' Act IV Scene 1 :-
"Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend, which is the mightier"
I must confess to being flattered by a few references to myself, albeit not by name. It seems I am a liar, of course.
By the way, don't watch the video, when you come across it, in one go. After around 15 minutes, you will experience a damp sensation down both sides of your neck.
That is your brain dissolving and seeping out of your ears.
Otherwise, enjoy.
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@gokulgopan4397 I have just finished ploughing through the 'Brilliant Expattaffy's' latest video. All 1 hour 30 minutes of it. Comment is unnecessary, except to refer to 'Hamlet' Act IV Scene 1 :-
"Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend, which is the mightier"
I must confess to being flattered by a few references to myself, albeit not by name. It seems I am a liar, of course.
By the way, don't watch the video, when you come across it, in one go. After around 15 minutes, you will experience a damp sensation down both sides of your neck.
That is your brain dissolving and seeping out of your ears.
Otherwise, enjoy.
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@jasongraham8250 Why would there be no American loans, even if the US remained neutral? US banks were making vast profits from them.
The eastern front had already collapsed as Russia degenerated into anarchy, and troops from there had been used in the St. Michael offensive of March 1918, intended to break through to the Channel, and drive the BEF into the sea. By early April, it had failed, when it was finally stopped just east of Amiens, at Villers-Bretonneux.
Add to that the facts that the U-Boat offensive had been overcome, and the High Seas Fleet was in a state of near mutiny, then Hindenburg & Ludendorff had more or less accepted that the end was in sight.
The arrival of large numbers of fresh American troops had a profound psychological effect both on the allies and the Germans, but they were not involved in the defeat of the St. Michael offensive, and by the time they actually began to operate independently, they were pushing at an open door.
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@nickdanger3802 Sixty nine u-boats had been lost by the end of December, 1941. The first 'Happy Time,' when the British had largely withdrawn Atlantic escorts to beef up anti-invasion resources, involved around 25-30 front line operational boats. Losses during the period were around 360 merchantmen (Jan-Dec., 1940).
In January, 1942, there were 91 front-line boats, of which, on average, 42 were at sea on any one day. The first phase of Drumbeat involved five U-Boats, which were replaced in mid-February by a further 11 boats, of which 6 were German & 5 Italian. The German boats sank 41 merchantmen, and the Italians 16, in this phase. After that, Doenitz was able to send shorter range Type VIIs to the US East Coast & the Caribbean, as the first Type XIV 'Milch Cows' had been commissioned. During the whole course of Drumbeat, just over 600 merchantmen were lost.
How could 'ship captains & owners' possibly arrange their own convoys? Wasn't that the responsibility of the military?
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@kevinronske9894 The FW200 was indeed used to attack merchant shipping, until the ships received AA armament, and the attacks were discontinued because Condors were too vulnerable, too valuable, and too few to risk.
It really doesn't matter whether the FW190 was wonderful and had a powerful engine or not. It only appeared over a year after the very idea of Sealion had been abandoned.
The Focke-Wulf Fw 190 was primarily designed as a fighter aircraft, and whilst it was tested as a torpedo bomber, it was not considered to be as effective in that role as other aircraft in the Luftwaffe's inventory. Additionally, the Fw 190's limited range would have made it difficult to use effectively in a torpedo bombing role, which typically required long-range missions over open water. The Luftwaffe instead focused on using other aircraft, such as the Heinkel He 111 and the Junkers Ju 88, for torpedo bombing missions.
Perhaps you only believe the Fw190 would have been an excellent torpedo bomber because it was never used in the role?
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@metoo7557 Perhaps you might care to read the New York Times of 16 October, 1911. In particular page 10, the article headed 'Isidore Straus Urges New Banking Plan,' which discusses a speech Straus made strongly supporting the plan?
If I do better research? A fascinating comment, from someone who rambles on about using cheap rivets, removing lifeboats, and locking people below decks. These claims are absurd. Olympic used the same rivets, and operated successfully until 1934. No lifeboats were removed, as Titanic already carried enough to meet Board Of Trade Regulations, and no people were locked below decks.
The title of 'unsinkable' was given by a small engineering periodical of the time, and taken up by a newspaper or two. No one from White Star or Harland and Wolff ever made such a claim. You really shouldn't believe everything you see in a movie.
'Just because you cant research past instant gratification.' What exactly does that even mean? In view of your inane comments, I can determine with total conviction that I have done far more research than you ever have.
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@metoo7557 Have your family ever sought to get you help for your mental issues?
If the rivets were so poor, how is it that Titanic's sister, built at the same time by the same company in the same yard by the same people, had a long and successful career?
'The life boats were down sized on purpose, well below regulations at the time.' Nonsense. Do you think Titanic would have received a Board of Trade certificate had that been the case? She actually carried enough lifeboats to meet with the Regulations in force at the time.
There is no evidence that anyone was locked below decks. No such claims were made at the time, and examination of the wreck found that the only locked areas were between the passenger and cargo sections of the ship.
No-one from White Star or Harland & Wolff ever referred to Titanic as unsinkable. That is simply not the sort of thing that mariners would say, either then or now. At the time, a small engineering periodical made the statement, and a few newspapers took it up.
The New York Times article about Straus's speech is in the public domain, whether you choose to believe it or not.
You are either a gullible fool, or simply have a bizarre fixation.
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USS Missouri only commissioned in June 1944, and is therefore irrelevant to any discussion of Bismarck, except perhaps as proof of how AA armaments of battleships had improved over three years of war.
The 'lucky' torpedo hit was achieved by a Fleet Air Arm which had trained for such a moment for years, and had already done it once before, in the Mediterranean. The more you train, the 'luckier' you get.
What have the Java Sea battles got to do with German gunnery skills? By the way, only one, RN (actually RAN) light cruiser was sunk there, and she didn't blow up.
If you choose to ignore what Ballard & Mearns have said about Bismarck, that the British sank her, then feel free. As I am sure the Admiralty of May 1941 would have told you, 'If so, it doesn't make her any less sunk.'
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@robertewing3114 Bafflimg. You have made a whole host of references to things which, apparently, you believe have been said to me, and then described Sir Keith Felling's biography of Chamberlain, written in 1946, as the principal biography of him. when I can name several others, most particularly that by Robert Self. Self's has the advantage of having access to a whole host of information when it was written, in 2006, which was unavailable to Felling in 1946, by the way.
However, my simple question, asking why you consider Chamberlain to have been a 'superb' PM, still remains unanswered.
There really is no point in this.
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@robertewing3114 What do you think is the relevance of 'Some chicken, some neck! to anything at all? I haven't, by the way, been corrected, because I simply asked you what about Chamberlain's premiership was 'superb.' You have wandered all round the houses, with increasingly meaningless comments, without touching on this question. 'Performing the State dynamic' is a strange, meaningless phrase, however fond you may be of it.
'That said, I conclude my summary of your faith in God.' What is that supposed to mean? When did I go into a digression about Theology?
After reflection, I would prefer it if, as you seem utterly unable to answer my simple, unambiguous, question in any rational manner, you didn't reply at all. If it helps, I certainly won't.
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Mr. Brady can answer for himself, should he so choose. However, I am sure that he will have read the minutes of the British Inquiry, the relevant sections being from this part of Ismay's testimony :-
18387. With whom would you discuss this question of driving her at full speed on the Monday or Tuesday?
- The only man I spoke to in regard to it was the Chief Engineer in my room when the ship was in Queenstown.
18388. Is that Mr. Bell?
- Yes.
18389. The Chief Engineer?
- Yes.
18390. Can you tell me on what day it was that she first made the 75 revolutions on this voyage?
- I think it would be on the saturday.
18391. And when was it that you discussed the question of putting her at full speed on the Monday or the Tuesday?
- On the thursday when the ship was at anchor in Queenstown Harbour.
18392. Will you explain that. It is not quite clear why you should discuss the question in Queenstown?
- The reason why we discussed it at Queenstown was this, that Mr. Bell came into my room; I wanted to know how much coal we had on board the ship, because the ship left after the coal strike was on, and he told me. I then spoke to him about the ship and I said it is not possible for the ship to arrive in New York on Tuesday. Therefore there is no object in pushing her. We will arrive there at 5 o'clock on Wednesday morning, and it will be good landing for the passengers in New York, and we shall also be able to economise our coal. We did not want to burn any more coal than we needed.
18393. Never mind about that, that does not answer the question I was putting to you. I understand what you mean by that, that you did not want to get there till the wednesday morning at 5 o'clock, and that therefore it was not necessary to drive her at full speed all the time?
- No.
18394. But the question I am putting to you is this, when was it that you discussed putting her at full speed on the Monday or the Tuesday?
- At the same time.
18395. You have not told us about that?
- That was when Mr. Bell was in my room on Thursday afternoon, when the ship was at anchor at Queenstown.
18396. But what was said about putting her at full speed?
- I said to him then, we may have an opportunity of driving her at full speed on Monday or Tuesday if the weather is entirely suitable.
18397. Then you did know on the Sunday morning that in the ordinary course of things between that and the Monday evening you might be increasing your speed to full speed?
- I knew if the weather was suitable either on the Monday or the Tuesday the vessel would go at full speed for a few hours.
18398. And I suppose you knew that in order to get the full speed of the vessel, the maximum number of revolutions, it would be necessary, presumably, to light more boilers?
- I presume the boilers would have been put on.
18399. Do you know in fact that they were lighted on the Sunday morning?
- I do not.
Where in that is there any suggestion that 'he told Joseph Bell at Queenstown how fast he wanted the ship to go every day?'
Indeed, where in that is there anything which contradicts anything Ismay said at the American Inquiry?
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Well, the Luftwaffe had just failed badly at Dunkirk, largely because they had not been trained in anti-shipping operations. In fact, it they did not even have an operational torpedo bomber until mid 1942. In the whole of WW2, the Luftwaffe sank 31 Royal Navy destroyers, and no RN warship bigger than a light cruiser.
To put that into perspective, in September 1940, the Admiralty had around 70 destroyers and light cruisers within five hours of the Straits, backed up by around 500 smaller warships. There were a further 40 destroyers also in home waters, and that doesn't include the heavy ships of the Home Fleet at Rosyth, which were not needed unless German heavy ships appeared, which was unlikely as the only such ship in operational service at the time was a single heavy cruiser.
Add to that the fact that the first invasion wave in their towed barges required eight days to land, and then ask yourself what happens at night, when the Luftwaffe was largely impotent, but the Royal Navy most certainly was not.
I do so enjoy the foolish contributions of Sealion 'would haves' as they tend to be devoid of any actual, credible, arguments. Thank you for your generous addition to the collection!
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Your knowledge, or rather lack of it, is remarkable.
Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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Sorry, but you seem entirely to have missed the point, which is much simpler :-
1). A number of SPMs were experiencing problems, which resulted in them making good shortfalls, in some cases losing their SPOs and in others, being prosecuted.
2). Many approached the Federation, which they (wrongly, it seems) believed was intended to protect their interests, because they did not believe that the fault was theirs.
3). The Federation, seemingly run by gorgeous George as his personal fiefdom, showed no interest in investigating these concerns.
4). Instead, George converted it from a body representing the SPMs into an offshoot of POL's management structure, with full financing from POL. Which presumably kept the Federation in existence. Some would say it also guaranteed the salaries of the Federation officials, as well?
5). As a result, the Federation swore unswerving loyalty to the mighty Horizon system, with George getting very close, in his evidence, to suggesting that those who dared question this fundamental belief were themselves thieves.
That, I submit, is really the issue here.
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@eightblack8357 One of us needs to go back to school certainly. The Athenians were indeed ethnically Greek, but Greece as a state did not exist, except as a conglomeration of independent city states, more or less constantly at war with each other. Read Thucydides - there are plenty of excellent translations available, for further information.
Indeed, I know of the development of the Byzantine Empire. I also know that, for over 350 years, Greece was an Ottoman province, and the Parthenon was a ruin, used at various times as a munitions store, a gunnery practice target, and finally, as Elgin discovered, a source of hard core. Put simply, without Elgin, who appears to have negotiated the purchase of the Marbles with the only recognised authority in Greece at the time, the problem would have been solved long ago, as they would no linger exist.
'Greece became a Ottoman province until it recovered some of its land and became independent again.' Not quite, Greece became independent because of the intervention of Britain & France between 1827 & 1832.
In 1826, Egyptian forces had conquered almost all of Greece, including Athens, after a Greek rebellion collapsed into war between two different Greek factions. In 1827, Russia, Britain & France intervened, sending a fleet and troops. I wonder if you have even heard of the Battle of Navarino?
In 1828, the Egyptian army withdrew under pressure from a French expeditionary force. The Ottoman garrisons in the Peloponnese surrendered and the Greek revolutionaries proceeded to retake central Greece. The Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia allowing for the Russian army to move into the Balkans, near Constantinople. This forced the Ottomans to accept Greek autonomy in the Treaty of Adrianople and autonomy for Serbia and the Romanian principalities.
Would you like me to recommend a book or two, to educate you?
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@gokulgopan4397 Well, Lloyds shipping records demonstrated that the whaler Samson was nowhere near.
Californian, a small, fully laden, freighter, was almost ludicrously unsuited for the role of the imaginary rescue ship. Lord was certainly criticised in court, not for cowardice but for his failure to react to the concerns of his officers, and for not seeking to investigate even to the extent of waking his wireless operator.
Lusitania was not 'sent to be sunk.' She was lost because the Germans had recently instituted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.
AS to the M & P letter claim. This appeared, with no provenance, in 2000 or thereabouts. No exploration team has ever claimed it, nor even referred to it, despite the sensation it would have made if one had. Moreover, even the creator of the myth, Robin Gardiner, denounced it as fake.
You need to be a total fanatic to oppose the opinion of the creator of the fantasy to which you cling!
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@richardjohnson4373 Actually, no-one talked about any switch until Robin Gardiner invented the idea in the 1990s. There are blueprints for both ships. Why do you fantasise that there aren't?
The tugs names were erased by the newsreel distributors precisely because the vessel in the pictures was Olympic in New York, not Titanic in Southampton. People wanted to see reels of Titanic, after she sank, and there were none, so images of Olympic were used to satisfy the demands of people instead. There is nothing suspicious about that.
.'Not so fast they had to change the propeller at dry dock and since they did not have time to cast another one to get the Olympic back in service they took the propeller off the Titanic and installed it on the wreckage at the bottom of the north Atlantic.' Nonsense. The Damage Investigation Report from 1911 refers only to damage to Olympic's propellor shaft, and only parts of one of Titanic's shafts were used in order to get Olympic back to sea. This claim was made by desperate switchers, apparently like you, to explain why a blade with Titanic's number on it was found on a wreck with they fantasised was Olympic.
'The lions share of the things on board are white start lines markings not Titanic or Olympic.' Indeed they are, but the differences between the forward ends of 'A' & 'B' deck, and the bridge wings, provide evidence as to which ship was which.
'The town the ships were constructed there was a lot of locals talking about the switch. Really? Then there must have been lots of gossip in local newspapers, mustn't there? Be good enough to provide chapter and verse on for these articles.
'I dont worry about what happened in Irland I look at the Carpathia and its odd cargo leaving New York.' Well, you certainly don't worry about facts, it seems. What 'odd cargo?' Do you mean the 740 passengers aboard when she left New York for Fiume on 11 April? Oh, and Carpathia was owned by Cunard, not White Star.
'Plus it makes it to a place in the north Atlantic same place the Titanic sinks?' Have you ever considered that the distress call sent by Titanic, and given to Captain Rostron, which contained a position, might have played a part? Do you think that in 1912 captains simply set off into the unknown and hoped for the best, rather than using sextants and other navigational aids?
I would shut up if I were you. You are simply making yourself look like a fool.
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@AaronKelly-s8l No. France & Britain declared war, as they warned they would, because Germany invaded Poland. India declared war because it was part of the British Empire, whilst Canada, Australia, & New Zealand did because, as independent Dominions, they chose to express their allegiance to their mother Country.
Neither France nor Britain declared war in defence of Polish independence, but as a last attempt to avert a wider European war by blocking further German military aggression. Germany and Japan subsequently expanded the war, Germany by declaring war on the United States, and Japan by bombing Pearl Harbor.
Nor did Britain, or come to that the United States, Canada, or France, 'let the USSR occupy Poland.' That was already a fait accompli.
Either you are astonishingly ignorant of a few facts, or you are simply a crazed neo. I don't really care which.
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How could the shipas have been switched when Olympic had left Southampton for New York on 3 April, 1912, and Titanic arrived in Southampton from Belfast just before midnight on the same day?
Morgan was never booked to sail in Titanic, as he had an appointment to be at St. Mark's in Venice on 23 April, an appointment which had already been announced in the newspapers in March.
The three financiers of which you write, Astor, Guggenheim, & Straus, had either not expressed their views on the Fed., in the case of the first two, or supported it, in the case of Straus. The views of Straus, by the way, were expressed in two newspaper articles from October, 1911, which may still be read, although clearly you haven't.
'A deeper investigation into this tragedy?' You mean you watched a switcher video, swallowed it unquestioningly, and then appointed yourself an instant expert, I assume.
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Rubbish. The British sent their entire field army, including a number of half-trained Territorial Divisions, to support France. The British were a sea power, with the largest navy in the world. As a result they were not a major land power, but relied on the experience & professionalism of the French, who were. From pre-war meetings the French high command knew precisely what to expect from Britain, which was a small but well equipped and entirely mechanised field army, which would be reinforced over time by conscription and by the arrival of troops from the Commonwealth & Empire. Basically, a repeat of WW1. Don't try to blame the British for the collapse of France.
Of the nationalities you list, the Scots are British, and very small numbers of individuals from the others joined the British, usually as pilots. You missed the substantial Canadian contribution, which included a division of troops in 1940.
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sdt8764 Thanks for your comments.
Personally, I wouldn't ban Molony from anything, as his claims are easy to debunk. I incline to the opinion that he was simply a journalist on the make, and spotted an opportunity to profit from a sensationalist book on the subject. After all, Robin Gardiner did set something of a precedent!
How far away Californian was has always seemed to me to have been something of a Red Herring. She was certainly near enough for her officers and lookouts to observe the lights & flares of a 'large steamer' and to report their concerns to Captain Lord. Subsequent criticism of Lord was not because he failed to rescue anyone from Titanic, but because he showed a remarkable lack of interest in the events unfolding around him, not even waking up Evans, his wireless operator, to check the airwaves to investigate. Had he done so, and then set off in Titanic's direction, even had he not reached her in time he would surely have been lauded (sorry about the pun!), like Rostron, for making the effort.
Molony's claims about the fire aboard Titanic are equally improbable, of course. Marks on a photograph, well above the waterline and well forward of the affected bunker, convince no-one except either the ignorant, or those who wish to be convinced.
Claiming that Mount Temple was the alleged 'mystery ship' are equally improbable. Molony in the video claimed that her appearance was distinctive, with four tall masts and a single funnel. A pity he did not show photographs of Californian in his video. Apparently, she, with four tall masts and a single funnel, was totally different!
Indeed, viewing archive photographs of the two ships show how similar in appearance they were.
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Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about.
You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India.
I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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@jonathoncopeland7492 I doubt that. Had the American fleet had only one operational battleship, and the Japanese (or Germans, or indeed anyone) had half a dozen, and supporting cruisers and carriers, to oppose it, then do you really think it would have been sent to sea? An American naval Kamikaze perhaps? Tirpitz had a competent captain and crew (although morale, as a result of months of damaged inactivity, combined with the knowledge that the war was being lost, does seem to have deteriorated later on), but the Kriegsmarine high command had realised, from mid 1941 onwards, that to send a heavy surface ship to sea in the face of British naval supremacy was inviting destruction. Their actual use of Tirpitz, as a potential threat (a Fleet in Being) was probably the wisest course.
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Don't be silly. Lots of 'would haves' totally unconnected with reality. The liberation of western Europe was only possible because of the availability of a secure base of operations just off the coast of Europe. Moreover, historically, D-Day was, despite the efforts of Hollywood, far more a British & Canadian event than an American one.
Oh, and by the way, what would have motivated the America of 1940 even to have got involved? Historically, America was reluctantly dragged into the war by the Pearl Harbor attack, and the German declaration of war.
Do you seriously think an assauilt landing could be undertaken from a base 3,000 miles distant? LUNACY. Not that, of course, there was ever a danger of a successful German invasion of Britain. The Royal Navy would have seen to that.
Do buy a book or two.
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How then do you explain the fact that, in the whole of WW2, and after receiving training, the Luftwaffe managed to sink 31 RN destroyers, and no RN ship larger than a light cruiser? Or how do you explain the Luftwaffe's failure at Dunkirk? Did you know that the Luftwaffe did not have any torpedo bombers until mid 1942?
Actually, the RN operated from Plymouth, Portsmouth, & the Nore throughout 1940, the only port not to be used being Dover. Dive bombing a ship is considerably more difficult than you think. How many tanks, for example can carry out violent course changes at speeds in excess of 32 knots, all the while firing at your aircraft? Moreover, once a dive bomber is committed to the dive, the ship is able freely to make such moves
. I doubt you have read Oskar Dinort's account of leading a flight of 40 dive bombers against a British destroyer flotilla off Calais on 25 May, 1940. He was commander of StukaGeschwader 2, and knew his business. No hits were achieved, and he reported that the skills required were much greater than his crews possessed. He, and his superior, Wolfram von Richtofen, reported to their superiors that they believed that the Luftwaffe would not be able to protect the invasion barges from the Royal Navy. I submit that both knew what they were talking about.
Oh, and which British ships were dive bombed in the Pacific?
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@dmunro9076 How do we know this? :- 'We know that at 0400 24 May 1841 Bismarck had functioning radar.' Mullenheim-Rechberg was a gunnery officer, and is quite certain that Bismarck had no working forward radar after engaging Norfolk.
Moreover, in his description of the final action, he makes no reference to use of radar at any time, and even comments that his own brief period in command of Bismarck's aft armament ended when the lenses and mirrors of his director were shattered.
Certainly, the first re-engagement with Prince of Wales was at 30,000 to 33,000 yards, according to Leach's report to Tovey, but the second re-engagement, at 0131 on 25 May, was at 20,000 yards. Leach records that POW obtained 'A good RDF range.' If Bismarck's radar was working, shouldn't she have observed POW's approach?
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@dmunro9076 The relevant phrase being 'if she had at least one working radar,' when Prinz Eugen's war diary, which I quoted earlier, said that her radar had failed. Do you consider the diary to be unreliable as well? In view of your lack of any evidence at all to support your claim , comments like ', it is likely that,' and ' this appears to be the case,' are hardly convincing, and nor is your rejection of Mullenheim-Rechberg simply because he disagrees with you. Or rather you disagree with him. How, by the way, do you know that he was 'out of the loop?'
As to your assumption that Bismarck must have been using radar in her final action because she found the range so quickly. Why? Rodney straddled Bismarck with her third salvo, and hit her with her fourth. Rodney did not even have gunnery radar. Schneider, according to the (in your mind, unreliable) Mullenheim-Rechberg, recorded his first three salvoes, using A & B turrets only, as 'short' 'straddle' and 'over.' The Baron even refers to Bismarck's stereoscopic range finding instuments, rather than her radar. Oh, but of course, the Baron was unreliable and out of the loop.
In short, you choose to insist, for reasons which presumably make sense to you if not to anyone else, that Bismarck must have had working radar, even though the only sources available either state that she had no operating forward radar, or in the case of PE's diary, that all her radars were not functional.
There is no purpose to be served in continuing to discuss this matter.
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@dmunro9076 So, the Baron is relable when he makes a reference to radar relating 25 May, but obviously unreliable otherwise.
Actually, you are misunderstanding what Schmalenbach wrote in the War Diary, by the way. After it states that Prinz Eugen was ordered to take the lead, at 2044 on 23 May, and that Bismarck's 'instruments' (plural) are not functioning, at 0228 on 24 May, the next reference, by Schmalenbach, at 0400 on 24 May, states that Prinz Eugen, steering 180, or due south, was to sweep 270 to 90 degrees (i.e., due west to due east, ahead of her course) and Bismarck was to sweep 90 to 270 degrees (i.e., due east to due west, or astern ). This makes complete sense if Bismarck's forward radar was out of commission, but her aft set (right above the Baron's head, by the way,) was still functioning . No other interpretation can be applied.
Q E D, I submit.
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@dmunro9076 You do seem to be peculiarly fixated in this issue. Why do you claim that I am 'admitting' anything, when I have never suggested that Bismarck's after radar was not working? Prinz Eugen's diary uses the plural, suggesting that both forward radars were out of action, and only later refers to use of radar to sweep astern of Bismarck's course. There is no suggestion that any radar forward of the beam was operational after the initial cruiser action..
Moreover, Mullenheim-Rechberg's account of Schneider's actions during the engagement with Hood (I appreciate that you only accept the Baron's account when he agrees with you, and that when he contradicts you it must have been due to a lapse in the old chap's memory, by the way) is that of a gunnery officer using traditional optical rangefinders, not that of one using radar technology to determine distance. A similar description applies to Schneider's last action against Rodney.
Similarly, Mullenheim-Rechberg's description of his brief period in charge of what was left of Bismarck's armament clearly shows that he was not using the radar equipment which was actually a few feet directly above him.
Personally, I suspect that the events of the Operation would have impressed themselves upon the Baron's mind for the rest of his life, not, conveniently for you, have become blurred by time.
Still, if you choose to insist that Bismarck used radar in her last action, because you believe she must have done, and the only survivor from the gunnery team must have forgotten about it, then so be it.
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They did exist, had been tested in a lake, and were later used to cross a Russian river. They were supposed to be dropped from a barge near the shore, and to drive along the sea bed, connected to the surface by an air pipe.
Of course, the driver couldn't see where he was going, couldn't see any obstacles, and couldn't even be sure he was going in the right direction. Apart from that, truly a brilliant idea, thought up, presumably, by someone who never intended to use one!
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@davidtanslow3584 'If you have any logic to UK government dates and treaties and laws you will realise that the formalities normally come after the actual integration into the countries.' This doesn't make any sense.
What you 'insist ' is irrelevant, given that it has no basis in fact. You fairly clearly aren't aware that Dynamo was not a betrayal but an operation to remove a substantial number of trapped allied troops in order to re-land them elsewhere in France. In this case, some 120,000 French troops were re-landed further west, and British troops began landing in Cherbourg as early as 7 June. The British self-evidently did not 'capitulate' although the French did, when the government of Paul Reynaud collapsed, an Armistice was signed, and the Vichy regime installed.
Oh, and Hitler did not issue the Halt Order on the Aa Canal, von Rundstedt did, in order to rest his tank crews and service the vehicles before beginning the next phase of the campaign. Rundstedt was concerned that the French might yet be capable of a second 'Miracle of the Marne.' Hitler had already been told, by Goering, that the elimination of the Dunkirk pocket was 'a special job for the Luftwaffe,' and chose to believe him.
It really doesn't matter what you 'state' as it is totally lacking in any credibility.
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@davidtanslow3584 Actually, you are the one trying and failing to re-write history, by referring to an imaginary 1933 Anglo German Treaty, which apparently also involved the United States, then consistently failing either to produce any evidence to support your nonsense, or even explain how an enlarged German fleet, which is what the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 actually involved, would threaten the Soviets. By sending Bismarck & Tirpitz to Stalingrad perhaps?!
As to the secret plotting with Germany? Ramsay MacDonald & Stanley Baldwin? Seriously?? Did the Appeasement policies of Stan &, later, Neville, completely pass you by?
You seem to use the term 'I say,' quite a lot. I suspect anyone reading your nonsense would give a damn what 'you say.'
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Firstly, because the Germans in September, 1940, didn't really have a navy as such. All they could muster at the time was one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, and seven operational destroyers. They had paid a heavy price, in ships sunk or damaged, for their success in Norway.
Secondly, because, unlike the US, British, & Japanese navies, the Germans did not have a trained air arm, and their Luftwaffe, whilst undoubtedly well able to operate effectively in support of ground forces, had not been trained in anti-shipping operations. As a result, even when attempting to attack ships either stopped or moving slowly in restricted waters, as at Dunkirk, they performed very poorly.
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@Embracing01 Unfortunately John Hamer has form, in that he never stumbled across a conspiracy fantasy he didn't swallow whole and unquestioningly. In this case he repeated, more or less parrot-fashion, the contents of Robin Gardiner's utterly discredited book, written in the 1990s. To give you an example of his trustworthiness, I quote the following statement he made in an interview as recently as 2021. :-
"I've spoken to quite a few people who've been obliquely involved in it. For example, I spoke to Bertie Lightoller, who was second officer, the most senior surviving officer." That was quite an achievement, given that Lightoller died in December, 1952, and Hamer was born in the same year. Oh well, I suppose he might have been precocious!
So, three 'independent families' came forward, but sadly he never managed to produced confirmatory evidence. How unfortunate!
Do you seriously suggest that some shadowy body is policing the internet and monitoring comments about the Titanic sinking? Seriously?
If the families didn't want to be filmed, why did they allegedly come forward in the first place?
You ask me not to insult you, but you feel able to insult the integrity of several thousand Belfast shipyard workers and their descendants?
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@Embracing01 Quotation, followed by source, little chap :
Hamer: "I've spoken to quite a few people who've been obliquely involved in it. For example, I spoke to Bertie Lightoller, who was second officer, the most senior surviving officer. I spoke to his nephew and he had some interesting titbits to tell me about various different things. That didn't quite follow the official narrative." (General Knowledge Podcast BONUS CONTENT SHOW Teaser 5 - The Titanic Conspiracy, May 13, 2021)
'Maybe the families who contacted John initially wanted to be interviewed but later decided not to or didn't want the video or audio to be published, or maybe they did but John decided to not upload it.' Lots of 'maybes' there, aren't there, but a serious dearth of solid fact. Just how John likes to do things, actually. So, you now suggest that Hamer allegedly found these people, but decided not to upload what they said. Really? You get dafter by the post.
'How do you not know they're not policing the internet about the Titanic conspiracy?' Perhaps 'they' are also 'policing the internet' checking for unguarded comments about the War of the League of Augsburg, but I doubt that as well. Who are the mysterious 'they' by the way?
You do know that the argument which says that 'the fact that there is no evidence of a conspiracy is the strongest evidence of all that there is a conspiracy' is the last refuge of the crazed conspiracy fantasist, do you?
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@chrismaccool9097 'And if that is true about the Navy and the depth charges.' There is no 'if' about it.
Incidentally, there was no propaganda about the behaviour of U boats in any newspaper. It was simply assumed that the big liners, especially when carrying neutral passengers, would not be attacked. Much as, 20 or so years later, no-one would have believed that the Germans were capable of herding millions of people into camps and gassing them.
There was still a naive belief in the idea that, even in war, there were certain 'standards' which applied, such as Captain Muller of Emden had previously demonstrated during his brief raiding career in 1914, when he scrupulously avoiding killing the crews of merchant ships, but consistently ensured that they were taken to safety.
Turner was, apparently, timing his arrival at Liverpool to meet the right state of the tide. He proceeded at 18 knots, which was faster than all but about six other liners in the British Mercantile Marine, and normally easily fast enough to avoid U-boat attack.
At this time in WW1, the northern entrance to the Irish Sea was a hunting ground for U-boats. He was just as likely to be attacked there, if he was to be attacked at all.
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Perhaps you might look at the Federation's own site, and read what it defines itself as? One sentence in particular reads :- 'Representation of Postmasters in negotiations with Post Office Ltd.'
There was far more, at least supposedly, to the Federation role than you suggest. Moreover, whether Bates, Castleton, or Hamilton were members is not the issue, as many SPMs who definitely were members were punished by POL, brought their concerns to Thomson, and were ignored. Or, at least, George spoke to his friend Paula, who told him not to worry about it. Is that what you mean by 'those inside the group he took RIGHT TO THE TOP as we all heard on Friday.'
How did George 'protect' these people, as you claim? Or were they simply collateral damage, of no importance to George's greater good, the protection of the Federation itself, and by extention George's position, and salary, within it?
I wonder what other SPMs, nervously awaiting the time when their turn came, actually thought about their leader.
The grovelling apology the Federation of today has issued about George's leadership is already clear for everyone to read.
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@MYCROFTonX Do you really believe that converting the Federation into a sub-section of the Post Office was really beneficial to the SPMs? Especially when George made clear time and again that he was solely interested in the survival of the Fed., and by extension the maintenance of his own salary.
How were the investments of those SPMs accused by the Post Office safeguarded, when they believed themselves to have been wronged, and the head of their Federation, after chatting to his good chum the CEO of the Post Office, effectively accused them of being thieves?
If the brand really was as debased as a while series of managers, lawyers, and Board members have demonstrated, then the value of that brand had no merit. Do you seriously believe that Bates was a liar & a thief? Or Castleton, or Misra, or Hamilton?
Indeed, George repeated his comment several times, in the manner of a demented parrot. It made the comments neither true nor justified.
Please explain where Thomson's actual duties might be read. I wonder if they really involved protecting the Federation at all costs, even if it meant throwing a few SPMs under the first passing bus.
Oh, and do you really suggest that those SPMs who believed themselves to have been wronged should actually have said to themselves, 'Our lives may have been ruined, but we should accept it for the Greater Good. The Federation, and Mr. Thomson's salary, is more important.'
By the way, when have I ever said that the 'federation' was a union?
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@scottysgarage4393 Critical thinking skills involve assessing the available information, and making judgements based upon that information.
Perhaps you haven't studied history?
In this case, the first, silly reference to any switch, was made by one Robin Gardiner in the mid 1990s. Unfortunately, he failed to provide any credible evidence to support it.
Studies of the wreck are critical, as the layout of 'A' & 'B' decks, as well as the cast number 401 on the propeller blade, simply supported what everyone knew already, which is that the wreck was that of Titanic.
You might also not be aware that items auctioned off when Olympic was being dismantle in 1934-1937, and which may still be examined to this day, have the yard number 400 (Olympic) marked upon them?
I am perfectly capable of discussing Titanic with you at any time. Shall we see who actually ends up looking foolish?
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@oswaldcobblepot502 It was known that a small fire was smoldering in one of Titanic’s coal bunkers at the time she departed Southampton on April 10. It was caused by spontaneous combustion.
According to leading firemen Frederick Barrett and Charles Hendrickson,
work to dig out the coal to get to the fire did not start until the first watch began after the ship left Southampton. It was not until sometime on Saturday, April 13, the day befor the accident, when the fire was finally put out. According to Barrett, in addition to digging all the coal out, they also played a hose on it.
The most effective way to fight a bunker fire is to dig out as much coal as
possible to get to where the fire is. The application of water would be to prevent it from spreading further and to extinguish the fire once it could be reached. Even today, “water alone is the most common extinguishing agent for a silo or bunker fire” in coal-fired electric generating power stations.
However, water would never be used to wet down coal in a non-burning bunker because wet coal is much more prone to oxidize quickly,
generate heat in the process, and eventually ignite spontaneously.
Spontaneous combustion fires in coal bunkers were not unusual occurrences on board steamships of that day. In fact, according to Rule No. 248 of the IMM Company’s “Ship Rules and Uniform Regulations” that was in effect at the time:
248. Examination of Coal Bunkers. – The respective senior engineers of
each watch, before going off duty, must go through the coal bunkers, and
note their condition on the log-slate, and should there be any signs of
spontaneous combustion taking place, they are at once to report same to
the Chief Engineer, who is immediately to notify the Commander. All coal
should, as often as possible, be worked out of the bunkers.
Hendrickson reported that the paint on the bulkhead was 'off' and that he 'brushed it off and rubbed black oil over it.'
Barrett made it very clear that the bunker space on the starboard side of the ship aft of watertight bulkhead E that separated No. 5 boiler room from No. 6 (the starboardside bunker space marked ‘W’ in the diagrams) was emptied out because of the fire.
Coal burns at a fixed temperature with a given supply of oxygen. Lacking a good draft of air to feed the fire, the coal would only smolder at some relatively low temperature. There would have to had been a good draft of air feeding the fire if it became so hot as to make the steel bulkhead actually glow red. In that case, a lot of coal would have been burnt, and a lot of fumes would have been produced.
But this apparently was not the case. Spontaneous ignition of coal in a bunker usually begins deep down where the coal absorbs oxygen and gives off hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and some
aerosols under rising temperatures. With no real draft of air in the bunker, coal will ignite and smolder at about 750°F. Since the bulkhead was riveted tight around its edges to angle iron which was riveted to the hull and decks, thermal expansion caused by heat
from the fire would cause the bulkhead plate to bulge outward to relieve the stress. After cooling back to room temperatures, it would remain somewhat dented as observed. But to get that bulkhead, which was made of mild steel, to glow red hot, would take atemperature of about 900°F or more from a fire being fed with a good draft of air.
Despite the drama that some subsequent newspaper accounts wanted people to believe, it certainly was not a raging blaze that was completely out of control.
Metallurgical analysis on bulkhead plate similar to that used on Titanic was heated to about 1,200°F so that it became red hot. The plate was bounded to other pieces modelling the shell and floor plates by riveting it to angle iron pieces which in turn were riveted to the other pieces. The results showed the bulkhead plate had distorted by about 6 inches, and the rivets holding the plate would only have been stressed to only 10%-20%
of their failure load. Even if the bulkhead was first heated red hot and then cooled down by sea water or water from a fire hose, it would not affect the low temperature propertiesof the bulkhead. The conclusion of modern day forensics is that the bunker fire would not have weakened the watertight bulkhead sufficiently to cause it to collapse.
The statements by, Frederick Barrett and Charles Hendrickson, comfirming when the fire was put out, are from the minutes of the Britisn Inquiry. The rest is from a detailed study by metallurgists.
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The British were already fighting in North Africa, and had been since mid-1940. After the US became active participants, the only place where their troops could be deployed in the West, once the impossibility of Marshall's ideas for a landing in France had become obvious, was also North Africa. After the conclusion of the campaign, where else, realistically, could the substantial allied forces in the theatre have gone?
Moreover, Overlord was never a realistic possibility before 1944. What would you have proposed doing with all the allied troops kicking their heels in North Africa from May, 1943 onwards. You might also ask yourself what might have happened had Italy not capitulated, and had the over 350,000 German troops in Italy been deployed elsewhere? France, perhaps?
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@BrianSmith-ow9gy Part of the problem with Fleet Air Arm aircraft was that, until April, 1918, the Admiralty had control of naval aviation, and had a Royal Naval Air Service which operated 2949 aircraft and 103 airships. An attack by torpedo bombers (Sopwith Cuckoos) was being planned on the German fleet in the Jade estuary, from aircraft carriers.
Sadly, on that date, the RAF was formed, and the Admiralty did not regain control of Naval Aviation until 24 May, 1939. On that date, as a result of the care and attention lavished on it by the Air Ministry (which was fixated on the bomber which, of course 'would always get through' and latterly, unwillingly, on fighters) the Fleet Air Arm operated 232 frontline aircraft, of which most were obsolete.
It is no wonder the Admiralty built armoured deck carriers, and desperately tried to buy superior American designs. The surprising thing is that, having been betrayed by the Air Ministry, the Fleet Air Arm achieved as much as it did in the early war years.
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@BrianSmith-ow9gy As design of the Queen Elizabeths began in 1994, I suspect that what we have is what we will keep. In October 2010 the government stated that the carriers were to be fitted with an electro-magnetic catapult, and placed orders for F35cs. Incidentally, I referred in an earlier post to the F35cs when I meant F35b,. It is the F35b which is the STOL version and which the RAF are supposedly lobbying against.
In December, 2011, the government ordered a catapult system from General Atomics of San Diego. By May, 2012, the cost had doubled, and the supply date had been put back to 2023. The Government then cancelled the order, and reverted to the ski-jump and the STOL aircraft.
The catapult has been installed in the new US carrier, the Gerald R Ford, but a proposal to retrofit it into their Nimitz class has been rejected. It seems that such an operation would be vastly complex, time-consuming, and costly.
In the 1930s, there was considerable disquiet about the estimate of four years to build a King George V class battleship. Don't times change?
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@cobusprinsloo Easy to say from the comfort of a nice chair, in front of a laptop, 80 years later, isn't it?
I wonder if you would have been quite so pious, had you been in a US, British, Canadian, or Russian trench, about to attack formidable German defences, in 1943-5?
Or perhaps you might explain one mystery to me? Why is it perfectly acceptable to kill a soldier who fires a shell at an enemy tank, but it is not acceptable to kill the factory worker, male or female, who manufactured the shell the soldier fired?
Even simpler, in an industrial war, there are no civilians.
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@cobusprinsloo What Le May said in full was :- “Killing Japanese didn’t bother me very much at the time…. I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal….. every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you are not a good soldier.”
He also said :- “If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting."
Actually, isn't he right?
Indeed, the war was won by 1945. Perhaps you mght ask yourself why, in that case the Germans and Japanese didn't simply surrender?
'The burning of Dresden was completely unnecessary - it was done to appease the Russians.' Not to 'appease' them, but to support an impending Soviet offensive. Clearly, you find allied deaths preferable to German or Japanese ones.
By the way, in terms of Japan, have you actually looked at the US estimates of probable casualty levels, on both sides, had Operation Olympic been necessary?
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@dragilxcom4176 'Could have' is actually defined as 'something was possible in the past, but it did not happen.' In other words, it embraces a possibility. Your 'Germany could have shrink Royal Navy with the U-Boats and Luftwaffe bombing' claim does not meet that definition, in that your blithe assumption, presumably based on a clear lack of actual knowledge, was not within the bounds of possibility.
Of course air superiority became dominant later in the war, but if the subject is Sealion then the time is 1940, or more precisely September, 1940, and the air force concerned is the Luftwaffe, then it was still far from attaining that pre-eminence.
The strength of the Luftwaffe in 1939-1940 was as a ground attack force, operating in support of the army. It did not receive any training in anti-shipping operations until Fliegerkorps X began receiving some later in 1940, after Sealion had been abandoned. You haven't challenged the facts I have stated about the Luftwaffe's lack of training, their failure at Dunkirk, or their 'successes' against RN destroyers, I notice. Oddly, you Sealion 'would haves' never do. Probably wise on your part.
Incidentally, although not particularly relevant to my argument, the British were outbuilding the Germans in aircraft, and in particular in fighter aircraft, by June 1940 at the latest.
Whether the Luftwaffe had or hadn't torpedo aircraft technology is irrelevant. The first use of such aircraft, apart from a handful of successes by seaplanes against unarmed merchantmen in the north, was against PQ15, en route to Russia, in May, 1942. Indeed, Goering, on 28 November, 1940, banned the use of the handful of available seaplanes on such operations, and cancelled the production of the LTF-5b, the Luftwaffe's aerial torpedo of which a tiny number existed in 1940.
Incidentally, Hitler did not allow the British to escape, as the decision was made by von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A. He wished to rest his armour prior to commencement of the second phase of the invasion of France, and feared the possibility of a second 'Miracle of the Marne.'
Finally, I am sorry that you criticise the facts I have stated as 'historical innuendo,' and seek to hide behind your singular self-proclaimed definition of 'could have' rather than continue any discussion, although I appreciate that Sealion enthusiasts and historical facts do not work well together.
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@SAHBfan Certainly, the BPF was excluded from attacks on the Japanese FLEET, but not from attacks on the mainland of Japan itself. The US navy began attacks on 10 July, and the BPF on 17 July, when aircraft from Formidable & Implacable attacked airfields on Honshu, aircraft from Victorious & Formidable attacked shipping in the Sea of Japan, and King George V joined US battleships in the shelling of factories at Mito & Hitachi. Similar attacks continued until 29 July, when Halsey called off operations due to the threat of a typhoon.
Halsey did confirm that the refusal of permission for the BEF to attack warship targets was political, writing in his autobiography that 'I hated to admit a political factor into the military equation - my respect for Bert Rawlings & his fine men made me hate it doubly, but I was forced to recognize that statesmens' objectives sometimes differ widely from military objectives.' He did, however, in his Order of the Day relating to the attacks on Kure, offer special congratulations to 'The valiant British force on the right flank.'
Whatever the politicians may have done, Rawlings and Chester Nimitz became close friends. Admiral & Mrs. Nimitz stayed with Sir Bernard & Lady Rawlings after at their home in Cornwall after the war.Later, Rawlings was invited by the US Navy Department to be a pall-bearer at Halsey's funeral, although he was, by then, himself too ill to attend.
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@stephfoxwell4620 Perhaps you don't know what a Capital Ship' is? It is a battleship, battlecruiser, or a fleet aircraft carrier. The figures I gave included the RCN & RAN, as I said.
Which ships 'defected' from Norway & Denmark? By September, 1940, there were eight French destroyers under RN control. Part of DF23, and based at Portsmouth & Plymouth.
Britain completed five more battleships in WW2, the King George V class, and six fleet carriers, the first & second group Illustrious class.
Germany in September 1939 had two battleships (the Scharnhorsts), three 'pocket battleships' the Deutschland class, and two long obsolete pre-dreadnoughts, Schleswig-Holstein, and Schlesien. Both built in 1908 and totally out of date.
Italy in 1939 had two modernised battleships, two new 15 inch gunned battleships almost completed, and two older battleships also in the throes of modernisation.
In short, you haven't a clue what you are talking about. Why not simply buy a book?
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@stephfoxwell4620 'It matters not if you include or exclude Cruisers as we had 66 of them too.' Yes, it does. Because cruisers, heavy, light, or AA, are not capital ships. Just as destroyers are not capital ships.
I have pointed out more than once that my figures included the Dominion navies of Canada and Australia, Why do you find it so difficult to grasp?
There were indeed Norwegian ships at D-Day. HNoMS Stord & Svenner. Both British built destroyers supplied to the Royal Norwegian Navy. British 'S' class vessels, with Norwegian crews and commissioned by their Norwegian crews in late 1943. Also HNoMS Glaisdale, a British built 'Hunt' class escort destroyer supplied to the Norwegian Navy in June, 1942.
AS a naval historian, I do not seek to play down the Royal Navy. In fact, quite the reverse. But nor do I wish to indulge in the kind of fantasies, hopefully only based upon ignorance, that so inspire you, and which will only result in ridicule.
Your numbers for carriers are also nonsense. At the end of WW2, the RN had nine fleet carriers, assuming that Argus and the repair carrier Unicorn are included. A further four fleets were planned, and four light fleets joined the Pacific Fleet immediately after the end of the war.
There were also 36 American built Escort Carriers, which were returned at the end of the war, as well as 4 British built Escort Carriers. The Escorts were not Fleet vessels, although some did serve with the main fleets from time to time. They were certainly not 'Capital Ships.'
As I said, please buy a book. I would recommend 'British & Empire Warships of WW2' by Lenton & Colledge.
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@stephfoxwell4620 I agree. It isn't a competition, as there is no contest. You are utterly outclassed, and my facts are totally correct.
Have I ever suggested that Germany was not hugely inferior to the largest navy in the world? Especially after the catastrophe the Kriegsmarine experienced during the Norwegian campaign?
'I am making a very clear point.' No, you aren't. When you say, as you did, that the British had 92 capital ships and 340 destroyers, you are posting utter nonsense, and you render any claim you might seek to make meaningless.
The actual numbers I stated are more than adequate to make such an argument, even if they, for no clear reason, annoy you.
Ludicrous hyperbole serves no purpose. Nor does arguing that accurate information is 'sneering and pompous.'
Do some proper reading, or just go away.
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@stephfoxwell4620 'Sorry if figures from the top of my head are a bit broad brush. But they are a good reflection of the overall figures 1939-45.' By 'broad brush' I assume you mean 'made up?' Still.at least you seem to admit your ignorance, such as not actually knowing what a 'Capital Ship' really was.
'Nitpicking?' Correcting 92 to 22, and 340 to 193 is hardly nitpicking. It is simply correcting ludicrously false statements. By the way, I chose September 1939 as an obvious starting point. As I have access to the Royal Navy's Pink Lists, I know the nature and size of the fleet throughout the war. If you would like to know the Fleet strength in August, 1945, you only need to ask. Politely, of course.
'The fact that nobody has agreed with you shows that your efforts to play down the Royal Navy are pointless.' You mean unlike you, with one upvote per post? Didn't you know that upvoting your own comments is rather bad form?
Show me where I have 'played down' the Royal Navy? I have simply tried to educate you in the silly errors you continue to make. Why not simply tefer to any book about the RN in the Second World War for some actual facts?
Actually, as a naval historian with a number of books and articles about the naval war of 1939-1945, I have never come across such an accusation before. Those US writers I have encountered, as well as British writers of a light blue persuasion, generally accuse me (wrongly) of exaggerating the role of the Foyal Navy in the defence of Britain in the early years, and in bringing about the final victory.
Still, fantasise away to your heart's content. Put simply, my information is entirely correct, and your claims are wholly bogus.
Please note that I will not upvote my own post. I do not need to.
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@stephfoxwell4620 No, you idiot. Anyone reading my posts (seemingly, you haven't) would have been able to understand how consistent and accurate they are. Or, if they weren't sure, they could have checked in moments.
Unlike yours which vary from post to post, and are entirely unsupported by any source.
'Exaggerate the strength of the Nazi Navy, play down the strength of the Royal Navy or merely score points for a more in depth knowledge of detail than most laymen.' I have referred to the Kriegsmarine once, in response to a comment of yours. I have been strictly and precisely accurate about the actual strength of the Royal Navy. I have certainly not 'played down' how strong the RN was. Nor have I indulged in lunatic ravings, which I can happily leave to you.
I do have greater knowledge than most people. It comes from a First in Modern History, a specialism in 20th Century Naval Warfare, and the publishing of a number of books & articles on the subject.
To quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle :-
“My dear Watson," said [Sherlock Holmes], "I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers.”
'Anyone can see that Britain was a bigger power than Germany.
For Germany to wage war on the British Empire was a disaster for Germany. A catastrophic error.' Please show me where I have ever written anything which disagrees with that. Good luck.
My whole purpose in replying to you was to correct your initial ignorant comments about the Royal Navy. That you are unable to accept criticism, or even try to check the facts, says rather a lot about you.
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In Britain, the extreme left long ago realised that it would never win power through the ballot box but, as it works to very long time scales, it took the view that 'Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man,” a maxim attributed to a variety of sources, including Aristotle & the Jesuits. Accordingly, they have been steadily infiltrating the British education system since, at least, the 1980s.
Consequently, the UK is now dominated by people brought up to have a blinkered view of the world, reinforced by the ability of the same 'cancel culture' to dictate what may, or more importantly, may not be said. In short, you pay at least, lip service to this received wisdom, or you pay the price. Within the education system of today, alleged academics can happily issue threats that, unless certain statues are removed, they will refuse to lecture students attending those colleges, and the supposed management of those colleges generally accede to their demands.
It would appear that the United States is proceeding steadily down the same path. As George Orwell (hardly a screaming right-winger, by the way) wrote so presciently, 'The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.'
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But Biasmarck was being used as a 'line of battle' ship when she was sunk. The Germans would, moreover, have found it difficult to form a 'line of battle' with only one operational battleship.
Hood was far more a fast battleship than a battlecruiser.After her redesign, her armour was on a par with that of the Queen Elizabeth class battleships. Her 12 inch belt was twice as strong as the belts of the newest conventional battlecruisers, the Renowns.
The British had been modernising their battlefleet, with Warspite, Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, & Renown having received full modernisation, but in the political climate of the time only felt able to withdraw two capital ships from service at any one time. Hood, as a newer ship, was likely to have been modernised after Malaya, Barham, & Repulse.
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@TheDogGeneral Bismarck was intended, with Tirpitz, to be the answer to the French Richelieus as part of the Franco-German between-the-wars naval race. The German belief (hope) was that Britain would be neutral. Once that optimistic idea was proven false, the German surface fleet became largely irrelevant, and Operation Rheinubung was a gesture of despair.
You are worrying about nomenclature. Hood had the armour of a battleship, the firepower of a battleship, and the speed of a battlecruiser. What is something that looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck?
If you did speak to the Curator, what makes you think that was an authority on naval architecture?
I simply pointed out that Hood had battleship-level armour when compared to the most modern battleships in the RN at the time of her construction.
'Bismarck should have been utilized in Fleet coordinated action closer to the mainland of Continental Europe with other German warships to throw around.' Which other German ships? Tirpitz was incomplete, and both Scharnhorst & Gneisenau were damaged and in Brest.
If you really are an historian, who would you need to consult a Curator, whose knowledge would inevitably be superficial?
The writer doth protest too much, methinks.
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@TheDogGeneral Which other fleet actions involved HMS Hood?
Of course Hood didn't feature AoN armour. Her design pre-dated the introduction of the concept into the Royal Navy.
I have been unable to identify a (living) Admiral Fairfax in RN records.
'HMS Hood should never have been sent after a brand new big gun Dreadnought Battleship that had Superior armor protection and much more modern building quality.' Your alternative being? Tovey had four capital ships capable of catching Bismarck. Two were sent to the Denmark Strait, and two to the Iceland-Faroes Gap. You do appreciate the pressure under which the RN was operating at the time, I hope? Should Bismarck and Prinz Eugen simply have been let out into the wider Atlantic unchallenged?
Of course Hood was showing her age. I have already explained the British fleet modernisation policy. The fact is that after September, 1939, a major asset like Hood could simply not be laid up for 18 months to 2 years.
The battlecruisers at Jutland were not blown up because their magazines were penetrated, but because David Beatty had placed rate of fire ahead of accuracy, and tacitly encouraged his captains to store cordite outside the magazines.
The British also referred to the proposed G3s as battlecruisers, despite their planned armour lay out. The fact is, the definition of a battlecruiser within the RN at the time was based on speed.
The Alaskas are not a relevant comparison, but simply red herrings.
'call her a fast Battleship does not give her any justice or credulity for her crew in the families of the men who died.' I met one of Hood's three survivors. I don't think any of our conversation offended, or was disrespectful, to him.
For what it is worth, I have a First in Modern History, and am a naval historian with several published articles and books. That doesn't make my opinion any more or less valid than that of anyone else, but it might suggest that I too are rather more knowledgeable than most people 'on this channel.'
This is going nowhere. I will not, therefore, respond further.
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@TheDogGeneral I didn't make the first reference to the Alaskas, you did. Exactly how referring to them as relevant to HMS Hood is unclear, nor have you made it any more obvious. However, 'when they were operated mentioning any vessel over 25 knots was automatically considered a battle cruiser whether inherent traits were applicable or not serious notwithstanding.' Which is what happened to Hood, the first ever true fast battleship, but called a battlecruiser because of her speed.
'battlecruisers vanished by the time of the second world war there was no new battle cruiser constructed during World War II.' I am surprised that an historian is ignorant of the RN's Renowns, or the IJN's Kongos. By the way, only one battleship was laid down and partly constructed in WW2, HMS Vanguard. Others, such as the Iowas, the South Dakotas, the King George Vs, the Yamatos, the Littorios, and the Richelieus, were ordered and laid down before the war.
Moreover, the battlecruiser concept disappeared as a result of technological development, in that more efficient and lighter engines made it possible for large well armoured warships to steam at 27 knots and over. The battlecruiser concept simply evolved into the fast battleship.
I have explained the British fleet modernisation policy, and why it was suspended from September, 1939. I regret you find the idea difficult to understand.
'The British royal Navy have retained that designation for her and they never altered her in any significant way during her career.' Yes, they did. She was extensively re-designed after Jutland to enhance her armour, and the ship laid down in September 1916 was rather different from the original concept.
Hood 'was completely worn out from overuse showing the flag traveling the world demonstrating British Naval Supremacy and they knew it.' Again, for an historian, you seem to have gaps in your knowledge. Hood undertook one 'Showing the Flag' voyage only, as flagship of the Special Service Squadron in 1924, along with Repulse & a cruiser squadron.
'Hood was utilized throughout the Mediterranean the Atlantic the Pacific Australia I could go on she was present at Mears Al kabeer in France when the French Fleet refused to surrender she took down Pirates and other forms of Raiders as far north as Scandinavia and around the coasts of Africa.' Again, your knowledge is rather lacking. Certainly, Hood was a flagship for much of her career, but her only action other than the Denmark Strait was at Mers el Kebir (I am surprised that you couldn't spell it, by the way), because most of her career was spent in a world largely at peace.
Why do you think, by the way, she has only one Battle Honour, Bismarck 1941? I would like to hear about her hunting down pirates, however. Who was her captain? Horatio Hornblower or Jack Aubrey?
'This conversation would be much like your career if that's the case it's going to go nowhere.' You know precisely nothing about my career. Moreover, insults are a poor substitute for argument.
I had promised myself that I wouldn't reply, and from now onwards I certainly will not.
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@TheDogGeneral I don't know why I bother, as you appear to be largely beyond reason, but I recall you claiming to have examined IWM documents about HMS Hood in 2014 or thereabouts. Please look up 'Royal Navy Ships' Covers.' You will find that they are kept in the National Archives at Kew, which actually opened in April, 2003. Aren't facts inconvenient, sometimes?
I don't intend to respond to your ravings about what constitutes a battlecruiser as compared to a fast battleship, but I will reply to this :-
'The corrected source of action if I were to go back in time would be to dispatch Prince of Wales Rodney and King George V with a fleet a squadron the fact that they called in a massive contingent task force after his destruction to sink the German battle wagon is proof enough that strategy was valid and viable.'
Isn't hindsight wonderful, especially in your case? Actually, there were two credible choke points which needed to be occupied by the Home Fleet to ensure that Lutjens' squadron did not reach the wider Atlantic. These were the Denmark Strait and the Iceland Faroes Gap. During Operation Berlin, Tovey had concentrated his fleet in the latter, but Scharnhorst & Gneisenau had used the Strait.
This time Tovey hedged his bets, He had four capital ships available to him with anything like the speed to catch Bismarck. These were, in order of capability, King George V, Hood, Prince of Wales, & Repulse. Rodney was already en route to the US for a refit at Boston Navy Yard, escorting a liner, Britannic. In any case, at 23 knots, she was too slow to keep up with Tovey's other ships.
Tovey chose to position in each location a force he deemed capable of dealing with Bismarck. His second & third most effective ships, Hood & the semi-worked up PoW, went to the Strait, whilst his best and weakest, KGV & Repulse, went to the Gap. There were also two heavy cruisers patrolling the Strait, and three light cruisers in the Gap.
At the time, no-one thought that these measures were flawed. The Admiralty agreed with Tovey that the measures he had taken were appropriate. By the way, they were, alhough not in the way anyone had expected. After the sinking of Hood, PoW inflicted enough damage on Bismarck to force Lutjens to abandon his mission and make for St. Nazaire. Thus, any threat to the convoys by German surface ships was averted.
The rest is history, of course. Now that Bismarck had been located, Tovey could use Force Concentration to bring her to battle, and her destruction was the result.
Normally, I am paid to educate people in this manner. You have been lucky, as you haven't even needed to buy one of my books. If you think Hood was not suitable for the task, then take the issue up with the spirit of John Tovey, who wouldn't have agreed, rather than continue to post rants to me.
By the way, the Maginot Line was not broken in 1940. The Germans went through the Ardennes instead. Surely an historian of your calibre knew that?
'Your denial of her status as a battle cruiser is affront to the man that served aboard her.' Why? Why would serving aboard a fast battleship rather than a true battlecruiser be considered affronting?
Please don't bother posting another rant, which I will probably not bother to read. Just check the facts I have presented above, as clearly you were not previously aware of them.
Oh, and you may wish to think about this comment by Paul Adam, Chief Analyst at Cassandra Defence Consulting Ltd (2015–present):-
'For the US the canonical example would be the Iowa-class, which had the same 9 x 16″ guns as previous battleships, the same thickness of armour, but five knots more speed (on a much larger displacement); for the UK, HMS Hood as completed had the same firepower and protection as the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships but, similarly, was a lot faster (but also 50% more displacement)
A different metric might be the percentage of the ship’s tonnage devoted to armour: for battlecruisers it tended to be 20–25%, for battleships it was 30–35%. (Hood was 33%, again keeping her as a ‘fast battleship’ rather than ‘battlecruiser’).'
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@TheDogGeneral You keep drooling on about the South Carolina class battleships. I have never mentioned them, but as tou ask, they were simply first generation dreadnoughts, built in response to HMS Dreadnought, but retaining reciprocating engines rather than Dreadnoughts turbines. Their relevance to the Alaskas (another type which seems to fascinate you) was precisely nil.
'But it was clear that was the future Hood should have been converted into an aircraft carrier just in the instance of the USS Lexington in the USS Saratoga retain her as her battle cruiser was a mistake a mistake.' Again, you demolish you claims that you are an historian. HMS Hood was completed and in commission before the Washington Naval Conference even first met. The resulting agreement restricting the numbers of Capital Ships for each sea power led to the US Navy having two choices, either to scrap the six incomplete Lexingtons or rebuild two as carriers. In the event, of course, they chose the latter option, and scrapped the hulls of the other four. The Royal Navy, faced with similar restrictions, followed a similar path, rebuilding the largely useless Glorious class large light cruisers and continuing the development of their half-sister Furious, all as carriers. Odd that you didn't seem to know that? Had you even heard of the Washington Naval Treaty?
You do seem rather fixated on terminology rather than reality. For example, when HMS Warrior & her sister HMS Black Prince were completed, they were without doubt the most powerful warships on earth, and remained so for ten years. Yet, they were officially termed 'Armoured Steam Frigates' which implied inferiority to traditional ships of the line, such as the French 90 gun steam ship of the line 'Napoleon' from the same period. This was, of course, manifestly not the case.
Would you serously, had there been conflict between Britain and France in, say, 1866, have happily have sent Napoleon into battle against Warrior simply because she was termed a ship of the line, whereas Warrior was merely a frigate? In short, names don't matter, but capability does.
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@TheDogGeneral The fact that Hood was showing her age by 1941 isn't the point at issue. To refer you to the evolving design process which resulted in Hood changing for an 'Admiral' into something new, I refer you to John Roberts' book 'Battlecruisers'. of 1997 :-
'On 5 July, 1997, the DNC submitted two revised designs for the Admiral-class ships. The first was a modification of the previous design with slight increases to the deck, turret, barbette, and funnel uptake armour, one-inch protection for the 5.5-inch ammunition hatches and hoists, and the number of electrical generators increased from four to eight.
These changes increased the displacement by 1,250 long tons (1,270 t) and draught by 9 inches (228.6 mm). The second design drastically improved the protection and converted the ships into fast battleships. The vertical armour was generally increased by 50% and the deck protection was slightly thickened as in the first design. These changes would have added another 4,300 long tons (4,369 t) to the original design and increased the draught by 2 feet (0.6 m), but would have cost half a knot in speed.
This design would have been equal to the Queen Elizabeths, but 7 knots (13 km/h; 8.1 mph) faster and with much improved torpedo protection, although it was some 13,000 long tons (13,209 t) larger than the older ships. After the DNC submitted the above designs, he was asked to consider variations with triple fifteen-inch turrets, and these were submitted on 20 July. The Admiralty chose the fast battleship design, and Hood was laid down again on 1 September.'
I refer you to the last sentence of John Roberts' comments. The fact is, that Hood had evolved from a battlecruiser design, but emerged as something rather different.
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@TheDogGeneral 'I have watched Drax video, and he puts out compelling facts and scenarios, but you see they are all subjective and based on his opinion.' I thought you wrote earlier that you had been in contact with him, and he confessed his error? Make your mind up.
You appear now to argue that any opinon which disagrees with yours must be 'subjective.' Only yours is the true one, and not subjective at all!
Actually I, and every other student of the subject, would agree that Hood was CALLED a battlecruiser. Where the vast majority of us would differ is in your refusal to accept that her capabilities when commissioned justified using the term 'fast battleship' for her them. I could quote from a few other authors who agree with Roberts (and, of course, with me) but doubtless you would reject them as 'revisionist' or their opinions as 'subjective.'
Here, however, is one such opinion for you to reject, as I know beyond doubt that you will :-
'After she was commissioned in the spring of 1920, she (Hood) was considered the largest warship in the world, and as the most perfect solution of the battleship problem of her age.' Siegfried Breyer, 'Battleships & Battlecruisers, 1905-1970.
Would you consider Breyer 'revisionist' or his opinions 'subjective' as well?
Put simply, she was something new in capital ship design, and the term for what she truly was had not yet come into general use. Must as the first recognisable battleship, as opposed to ship of the line, HMS Warrior, was described using a term (Armoured Steam Frigate) which totally denied the reality of her capabilities.
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@TheDogGeneral Brilliant! Siegfried Breyer, just like everyone else (except you) merely had 'incorrect opinions' and was a 'revisionist.' He died in 2010. Didn't you know that? Moreover, the work to which I referred is almost the Bible, where naval historians are concerned. Indeed, it seems that everyone (other, again, than you) is a revisionist.
I wonder if you have ever heard the old joke about the proud mother telling a friend about watching her soldier son marching through her town with his regiment. She said, 'It was very moving. The only thing wrong was that my son was the only one in step.' Perhaps she was thinking of you?
I don't think that you actually read my comments at all. Certainly you don't seem able to dispute them, except by chanting like a demented Minah Bird that' 'The Admiralty called her a battlecruiser. Therefore she must have been a Battlecruiser.' The Admiralty called Warrior a frigate. Did that mean that she really had only the capabilities of a frigate?
Are you, indeed, even capable of independent thought? You certainly didn't seem able to grasp my explanation of the Denmark Strait action.
'If she were a battleship she would have been referred to as such or modified into such from her original configuration that never occurred is that simple they are all.' How many times? The Admiralty class as designed were battlecruisers. Hood was heavily modified from the original design before construction, into something rather different. Are you really incapable of grasping that simple fact?
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@TheDogGeneral 'By early 1918, many people in the Admiralty had been querying the reasons for building the Hood as she did not appear to be a great improvement over the Queen Elizabeth battleship design. These queries were answered by the DNC, who stated that Hood had better protection to her sides & barbettes. Taking this further, he also stated that Hood had better deck protection (over the magazines at 30 degrees descent of shell. Hood had the equivalent of 12 inch thickness of decks), and she had complete underwater tybe protection over her vitals, which was entirely additional to the underwater protection of Queen Elizabeth.
As far back as March 16, 1917, it had been noted that, although the 'Admiral'' class were designated battlecruisers, they were as heavily armed and armoured as contemporary British battleships, but with higher speed. In fact, the ships would be more correctly labelled fast battleships.
It is sometimes very difficult to classify a warship with any precision. Perhaps the best manner in which to describe Hood would be as a hybrid battleship/battlecruiser, although this is a rather clumsy term.'
Maurice Northcott 'Hood - Design & Construction.'
Now, I expect you to tell me that Northcott, & Sir Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt, her designer, are not experts on HMS Hood. In fact, in your odd little world, anyone who does not accord with your obsession apparently knows nothing about her either. Are you truly the only person on earth who really knows anything about her?
'she was slower in 1940 then she was in 1920 would you still consider her a fast Battleship if she were doing 20 knots because of deficient machinery.' As Hood was capable of 28-29 knots in 1941, the question is a fatuous one. Moreover, had such a situation existed, then she would simply be an old battleship.
'There is no universally accepted Bible for Naval historians.' You will not find any naval historian who does not acknowledge Breyer as a primary source on the subject.
'As I said, Breyers is of no consequence to me as he was not an authority on her as her Builder's operators and crew certainly were. Did he ever set foot on the battle cruiser HMS Hood ?' I am impressed. When did you board and examine her? Did you meet Captain Kerr & Vice Admiral Holland, and explain their ignorance to them? Perhaps you might try to tell an Ancient Historian not to bother with Edward Gibbin either, as he never even met Diocletian?
You must be very old indeed!
By the way 'Around 1918, American commanders, including Vice Admiral William Sims, commander of US naval forces in Europe, and Admiral Henry T. Mayo, commander of the Atlantic Fleet, became extremely impressed by Hood, which they described as a "fast battleship.' They advocated that the US Navy develop a fast battleship of its own.' ( "High-Speed Thoroughbreds: The US Navy's Lexington Class Battle Cruiser Designs". Trent Hone, 2011.)
'Royal Navy documents of the period often describe any battleship with a maximum speed over 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph) as a battlecruiser, regardless of the amount of protective armour. For instance, the never-built G3 battlecruiser was classified as such, although it would have been more of a fast battleship than Hood.' Raven, Alan & Roberts, John (1976). British Battleships of World War Two: The Development and Technical History of the Royal Navy's Battleship and Battlecruisers from 1911 to 1946. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press.
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@TheDogGeneral 'Siegfried brayer isn't an authority on a British battle cruiser built 6 years before he was born.' Really? Then following that bizarre logic, you must be even less of an authority, unless of course you were born earlier than 1926.
'I can respect that I can respect his own considerations but he doesn't wave his ego like you have on the Queue of a revisionism and says borderline psychotically Hood was a fast Battleship and if you disagree with me you are my enemy.' So, you can respect Dracs. considerations, but not mine, or those of the actual naval historians I have quoted. All of whom, in what passes for your mind, are ignorant, biased, or have agendas. Only you, it seems have ultimate knowledge of HMS Hood. You must find it onerous alone to carry such a great burden, especially when no-one agrees with you.
Oh, and by the way :-
' The basic concept of Hood's design began on 8 November, 1915 when the DNC was asked to prepare a new battleship design along the lines of an improved 'Queen Elizabeth.' To this end, Tennyson d'Eyncourt forwarded the following data : (detailed data list followed).
After some discussions, rwo more modified versions were adopted, when it was hoped that the best of both worlds would be highly advantageous in perhaps having a very fast battleship rather than a slow battleship and a fast battlecruiser.
Work commenced on HMS Hood in May, 1916, but as a result of experience at Jutland it was decided to modify the design to secure increased protection, it having been found possible substantially to improve this by accepting deeper draught and slightly reduced speed. (list of design modifications followed).
The revised design, which represented a merger of battleship and battlecruiser chacteristics, constituted what was then a unique combination of offensive power, protection, and speed. It also marked the final abandonment in the Royal Navy of the original battlecruiser concept, embodied in varying degrees in all the preceding classes, in which protection was sacrificed ro an extent which rendered them unfit to engage other capital ships. ( British Battleships, 1919 - 1939, R. A.Burt).
Let's see now. A ship with the offensive power and protection of a battleship, yet having the speed of a battlecruiser. Can you think of an alternative term for her? I can.
Please tell me what R.A. Burt's agenda is? I look forward to it.
By the way, you haven't yet said when you trod Hood's quarterdeck. I assume, from your disparaging remarks about others who didn't, that you must have done.
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@TheDogGeneral The only time that Hood went into action at sea, she did so as a fast battleship, accompanying another fast battleship. Her armour was indeed obsolete by modern standards, hardly surprising since she was 20 years old, but she carried a heavier weight of broadside than Bismarck, and even in 1941 was capable of 28 - 29 knots, faster than the new KGVs.
Of course between the wars in exercises she was flagship of the battlecruiser squadron. Why would the Royal Navy hamstring a 30 knot fast battleship by attaching her to a battlefleet with a speed of 21 knots? Even the four Queen Elizabeths, capable of 24-5 knots, operated with the Battlecruiser fleet at Jutland. By your perplexing argument that would presumably have made them battlecruisers also, would it?
As I, and a whole host of others, have pointed out, how might a vessel with the armour, and armament, of a battleship, yet also possessing the speed of a battlecruiser, best be termed? As a fast battleship, perhaps?
Your irrational denial of reality, in the face of overwhelming disagreement with your opinion from all sides, would be amusing were it not so perplexing. Why does the term obsess you so? Hood was what she was, not what you insist upon trying to make her.
By the way, you still haven't said when you trod Hood's quarterdeck. Don't be so shy & retiring!
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@TheDogGeneral First you complain because I reply, now you winge because I don't. By the way, perhaps you have forgotten, you brought up ABC and what you, in your wisdom, believed he would have thought. Out of interest, he was later to write that, at the Battle of Calabria, he used HMS Warspite 'as a battlecruiser.'
ABC evidently operated his assets on the basis of their capabilities, and was not hidebound, as you appear to be, by mere type names.
'And then me and other real historians like Drac and other reasonably minded individuals.' Discounting your own absurd self promotion, would this be the same Drachinifel with whom you previously claimed you disagreed because he had agreed with the identification of Hood as a prototype fast battleship?
Please note that I had ceased replying for the same reason that John Tovey ceased fire on 27 May, 1941.
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Great News! My ancient historian mate has just been in touch. You have now reached 102 posts, and he has conceded the second bottle of wine.
I did suggest '150 for a case' on a double or quits basis, but he wouldn't rise to the bait, and insists that my 'poking a lunatic with a stick,' as he describes it, should cease at once.
Quite why you are unable to accept that only your opinion is the one that matters, and those of others are driven entirely by malice or prejudice, is a mystery to me. Illness perhaps?
Still, I wish you all the best for the future, and hope that you eventually recover from whatever condition it is that has assailed you.
I will not post again. Delude yourself however you wish about my reasons, even though I have made them plain enough.
I do hope that other people stumble upon this correspondence, as I am sure that they will find you immensely entertaining, if not enlightening!
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@JeffDoerr Oh dear! An immediate resort to insults. Oh well! Aside from the fact that any such hit has a degree of good fortune, as well as a degree of skill, involved, you haven't explained how it was that the Fleet Air Arm had previously scored disabling hits on two Italian heavy ships in the Mediterranean.
The point about the Swordfish was that, in the prevailing weather conditions in May, 1941, no other torpedo bomber in existence, American or Japanese, could even have got off the deck of a carrier in the first place. Moreover, you can hardly blame the Swordfish for the ineptitude of the German AA defences. All those wonderful, state-of-the art, weapons, and all unable to hit a cow's backside with a frying pan!
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Of course, in German eyes, she was a legitimate target. After February 1915, when the Germans declared a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, sho was every other ship.
She was, legally, carrying openly manifested small arms ammunitions. Had there been anything else, why has no trace of it every been found?
The British have never, except perhaps at the time, suggested that more than one torpedo was used, and detailed investigations have proven beyond any doubt that the second explosion was coal dust in an almost empty bunker.
'Q' ships were legitimate naval vessels. The Germans used a similar concept in both world wars.
Flying the flag of a neutral nation is hardly 'a violation of the rules of war' when done by a merchant ship, by the way.
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