Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "Historigraph" channel.

Amazingly, the Swordfish ended the war as a radar equipped, rocket firing, antisubmarine and antishipping bomber. This one ancient and obsolescent outlived two other more modern types meant to replace it. No other British carrier plane sunk more Axis shipping than the Swordfish.
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The doomed Blucher was in service for less than six months when she was sunk. The Oscarsborg fortress had guns manufactured by Krupp in 1893 and torpedoes that were nearly 40 years old. The commander of the fortress was Coronel Birger Eriksen. an officer just six months from retirement. Most of the fortress gunners were reservists activated just days before the attack. He had been the fort commander since 1933 and knew the 28 cm guns and torpedoes intimately. The torpedo tubes failed about 50% of the time when they were used infrequently in practice engagements. The 28 cm ammunition was almost 40 years old, and the only practice gunners got was firing very low power blank rounds. They had never fired a full power armor piercing round before that fateful morning of April 9, 1940. To make the battle even more improbable, Eriksen was unable to reach defense headquarters in Oslo and had no orders to open fire. His standing orders were to only fire warning shots. Rather than let the Germans sail past after a few warning shots, Eriksen and his soldiers were determined to stop them, orders or not. The guns worked perfectly that day, as did the torpedo tubes, with the combination of gunfire and torpedoes sending the German Navy's newest cruiser to the bottom in the space of fifteen minutes. The secondary battery of 15 cm and 57 mm guns raked the escorting German destroyers, damaging them and causing the full scale retreat of the rest of the invasion fleet. When the Germans returned in full force four days later, their main target was the fortress. After two hours of heavy shelling, German paratroopers were landed behind the fort. After a brief period of skirmishing that sometimes included hand to hand fighting, Eriksen could see that the 80 soldiers manning the fort were no match for the might of the German army and navy combined and ordered the fort's surrender. To show that no good deeds go unpunished, Eriksen was actually court martialed in 1945 for surrendering the fort too easily! Two military commissions, one in 1945 and the other in 1946, cleared Eriksen of all charges and ruled he had acted according to orders.As you might imagine, this left Eriksen a broken man, and he died in 1958 as a hero that always had a black mark next to his name.
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The sinking of Royal Oak so close to home really galvanized the attitudes of the British public that it really wasn't just a war to be fought over in France.
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Another excellent video. The biggest problem for Germany was not the actual invasion. There's a reasonable chance that could have succeeded with some luck. The biggest problem would be supplying the troops once they got onshore. Even a small salient would have been nearly impossible to supply after the first week. The Kriegsmarine just didn't have the experience or planning to maintain a supply conveyor, and it's doubtful that they could have mobilized enough merchant shipping to carry the volume of supplies needed.
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@bobsemple3268 Yes, it was the single 5"/38 gun mounted on the stern sponson of USS White Plains . . It was meant to discourage a pursing destroyer during a stern chase, not for a long range gunnery duel. The gunnery officer had been drilling the 5"/38 crew for weeks, using radar data passed from the bridge by sound telephone. White Plains was nearly disabled by a near miss that exploded under her hull, knocking out the starboard engine and cutting all electrical power. The plume of black smoke coming from the sudden influx of air into the disabled boilers convinced the Japanese they had scored a direct hit. They shifted fire to other American ships, and this gave the damage control teams time to restore electrical power and once again get the radar operating. Again manually adjusting range using the radar data, the 5"/38 gun crew poured out a furious stream of fire, estimated at 20 rounds per minute for about six minutes. This would be a near record for a pedestal mounted gun without an integral ammo hoist. The gun crew claims they scored six hits on the Japanese cruiser Chōkai , and they continued fire based on the fires and explosions observed on Chōkai as her deck mounted torpedoes continued to explode. Postwar Japanese records claim it was a bomb from an aircraft that set off the torpedoes. Chōkai was only about 6,000 yards from White Plains_, and given the training and use of radar data by the gun crew, it's plausible they did in fact score the hits they claim. _Chōkai sank in 17,000 feet of water, right at the edge of the Philippine Trench. The wreck was discovered in 2019, and an ROV dived it in May, 2019. They are scheduled to dive it again in 2020, and pictures brought back may enable the experts to decide if it was White Plains or an aircraft that caused the fatal damage. Regardless of how that works out, it's a great war story.
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Just make sure Quebec lays in big supplies of white bedsheets...you know, just in case they need them for something.
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English capitalists offered the best defense against US trading with the Germans. They essentially offered to buy up everything the US could produce, even things they didn't really need. They'd also convoy all the good across the Atlantic while offering at least partial compensation for the ships and lives lost while engaging in this trade. On the US part, offering credit in the form of lend lease, commercial loans, and outright gifts through the Marshall Plan made sure that the postwar UK would be using US industrial machinery and other equipment while manufacturing export goods to help pay back the US loans. The whole thing worked spectacularly well. The UK was able to pay back most of the loans, and the US and UK arguably had their greatest prosperity ever from about 1955 to 1970.
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@BHuang92 The Swordfish survived for many of the same reasons the Grumman Wildcat/Martlet and Douglas Dauntless were in use after more modern and presumably more effective aircraft were available. They were planes that filled a role on small carriers or in specific circumstances that made them the best plane of the task. I don't think anyone could make a successful argument that the Swordfish was a better plane than the Avenger or the Wildcat/Martlet was better than the Hellcat or Corsair, but they were better planes in those limited circumstances that made them the best for the job at hand.
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@TheArgieH LOL. I'll bet some crews figured out how to make a boiler powered by the engine. Swordfish were also used to land agents behind enemy lines and drop supplies to resistance fighters in France and Norway. There really wasn't another low and slow plane that could carry a 1500 pound loadout, so it got used for tasks not even dreamed of by its designers.
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Neil Wilson You're welcome. Eriksen has always been a personal hero of mine. A man who was looking forward to nothing more than a quiet retirement who stepped up and did his duty to the country when it was in peril. The way he was treated immediately after the war was despicable.
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@TheArgieH Yes, and Fairy also produced the Barracuda, an all metal monoplane that, except for the closed cockpit, was hardly an advance of the old Stringbag. The Fulmar and Firefly were both tough but pedestrian aircraft, and the Firefly finally convinced the FAA that British industry wasn't going to produce a carrier fighter better than the Corsair. It wasn't until the Gannet that the FAA got the plane it really needed. A massive, three place, tricycle geared, jack of all trades, able to perform all the roles of the Grumman Tracker, but with turbine power and more endurance. Unfortunately, management decided the Rotodyne was the aircraft of the future. It wasn't, and, by 1960, Fairey was gone, merged into Westland.
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Ohio delivered the oil and aviation gas that the RAF needed to keep flying from Malta. There's almost no question that Malta would have been lost without the fuel for Ohio. The real value of Malta was as an unsinkable aircraft carrier.
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@gibbletronic5139 It's an interesting concept. I'm not sure where a battalion sized outfit would be able to hid by day since their landing wouldn't have gone unnoticed, and the RN and RAF would be pounding them around the clock. Given what happened with attempts to resupply in AFrica using lumbering Ju-52's would have an almost impossible time getting to the beachhead and back again. I think the only chance would have been landing in force and then holding enough area to allow resupply by ship and planes landing at airfields. Holding airfields would have allowed the Luftwaffe to get in the fight with the RAF without having to fly cross channel.
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Rob M Another failure in reading comprehension. What I wrote was "The Kriegsmarine just didn't have the experience or planning to maintain a supply conveyor, and it's doubtful that they could have mobilized enough merchant shipping to carry the volume of supplies needed." The Germans had very little experience in opposed amphibious landings and, as we saw in Norway, things didn't always go very well when they attempted it.
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The difference between Mers-el-Kébir and Alexandria was Gensoul. While he may not have been outright nazi sympathizer, he was certainly a diehard anglophobe. Churchill knew Gensoul and didn't trust his loyalty to the allied cause against Germany. If Sommerville had the good sense to send another admiral to handle negotiations rather than a captain, Gensoul would probably have shown him the secret orders from Darlan to scuttle the remaining ships of the fleet if Germany moved against them. That may have changed the outcome of the operation. However, the persistent rumour is Churchill wanted the "battle" as a way to show Roosevelt Britain was serious about doing whatever it took to stay in the war and defeat nazi Germany. Whatever the real story, Roosevelt was impressed enough to conclude the ships for bases negotiations less than two weeks later, giving Britain 50 overage but still useful destroyers to the British for bases it turned out we'd need once the US got into the war with Germany.
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@markfryer9880 Quite so. It would have been difficult to nearly impossible to conduct naval or air operations in the Med without Malta.
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@KuK137 Go back and read the part where I said "it's doubtful that they could have mobilized enough merchant shipping to carry the volume of supplies needed." My point was that they may have succeed in getting troops ashore but would not be able to supply them and would ultimately fail. You simply paraphrased what I wrote, just in more juvenile way.
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It should have been possible for the Norwegians and their allies to hold northern Norway except for the critical lack of close air support. The British learned nothing from the defeat of Poland and the Low Countries and still didn't understand the importance of aircraft in holding ground. The Germans could not have won without their close air support and aerial resupply, things the British could have stopped with enough air assets in Norway.
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@gibbletronic5139 I guess the concept of a raid rather than landing in force might have had a chance although what happened in Dieppe might have been the same fate in England for the Germans. If there were specific objectives like blowing up bridges or dams, that may have been doable with planning and good luck. I suspect the Germans didn't have much faith in their skills at amphibious landings, and the experience with paratroopers at Crete in may of 1941 would have put paid to the idea of large scale deployment of paratroopers. It's an interesting concept, and one that may have worked if the Germans had the like of Admiral Yamamoto on their staff.
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Rob M You can take your degree in military history and go somewhere that people believe you. I sure don't. I'm done with you.
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@johnharker7194 I don't know they squandered it all on the NHS, but the UK wobbled between socialist/outright communist governments ], back to conservatives, and then back to labour/socialist governments again. The British people wanted to play both sides against the middle, appealing to socialists to give them stuff and to the Conservatives when Labour was about to get totally out of control. It worked up until the late 70's, and then the piper want to get paid.
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Tore Østgård Thanks for the correction. Indeed, it should have been HE rather than AP. I was temporarily think HC shells instead. My understanding was the secondary batteries inflicted damage on the destroyers, and that damage, along with the sinking of the Blucher, is what led to the retreat. I imagine the fear of sailing into a minefield also played a part.
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Crankwerk Nygardsvold certainly did nothing to put the country on a war footing, but he was hoping strict neutrality would keep Norway out of the war. France had not yet been invaded, and he was hoping the Germany would be fought into the same kind of stalemate the was seen from 1915 to 1917. leaving both Britain and Germany too preoccupied to bother with Norway. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see how wrongheaded some his decisions were, but things looked different in the beginning of 1940.
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Oh, okay, i get it now, Crankwerk. Neither one of these men was anxious to support the resistance or British and Norwegian commando raids. I think part of what motivated them was to stop German reprisals on Norwegian citizens but they came anyway. I'm sure they thought they were doing the best they could for the people of Norway, but both became more and more out of touch with the people's attitude toward resistance. They are good examples why politicians shouldn't be in charge of military campaigns.
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The story of the SS Ohio is well told in "At All Costs: How a Crippled Ship and Two American Merchant Mariners Turned the Tide of World War II", the story of two US merchant mariners and how they almost single handedly fought off German and Italian aircraft after boarding Ohio when their own ship was sunk. The two sailors were determined that the Ohio was going to make it to Malta, and the story is a real page turner. It's available from Amazon as an e-book.
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Rob M I see. So you actually think the German navy had wide experience in opposed amphibious landings then? Like when?
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@TheArgieH The Sea Fury, while still developed initially as the "Light Tempest", and entering service just too late for the war, finally gave the FAA a really modern carrier borne fighter capable of taking on and beating any other carrier borne (and many land based) fighters of the day. It was so good that it lulled the RN into a false sense of confidence about how long it had to develop a jet fighter, so the FAA started Korea with the Sea Vampire and, later, the Supermarine Attacker as their only jets.
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@Volcanares I've never read of any family relationship between Cunningham and Godfroy. I've also never seen anything that said Gensoul actually showed a copy of Darlan's order to Holland. All the negotiations were carried out by his lieutenant, Bernard Dufay, and there's no evidence he even had access to the original order. Gensoul deliberately left out the option of his ships sailing to the French West Indies for interment by the US Navy in his cables to the French government, only saying the terms were surrender or fight. Darlan's order even included sailing the fleet to US waters for interment if a foreign power attempted to seize the ships, an option the British would have taken if they had seen the original order. Gensoul was spoiling for a fight, and he got one. Godfroy had heard of the results at Mers-el-Kébir before negotiations began at Alexandria. He had a much weaker squadron than the one at Mers-el-Kébir and wisely decided that neutralizing the ships was the wisest course.
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I'm glad to hear that. Norway has too few modern heroes to allow any to be forgotten.
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@TheArgieH LOL, yes it was. The FJ-1 was named Fury over the objections of the RN, and it's one reason why the Sea Fury always has the "sea" part in front. The FJ-1 was a rare airplane though. It was a naval fighter first developed from a land based fighter, the p-51. Thah aircraft served as the basis for the F-86, and the F-86 was later developed into the FJ-2 Fury. I can't think of another plane that went from land based fighter to naval fighter back to land based fighter and the back to s naval fighter again.
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@TheArgieH It was actually named after River Exe, but it also could have been a portmanteau from both the river and X shape of the block. The working name was Boreas for the god of the north wind. I assume because this was the first RR air cooled aircraft engine, so naming it for a wind god seems appropriate. The only other air cooled X block engine during the war was the 24 cylinder Isotta Fraschini Zeta, a not very successful unit, since it was two V12's on a single crankshaft, something totally beyond Italian production standards of the time. The Exe was only ever installed in a Fairey Battle, an airplane otherwise best forgotten, as a test bed. It apparently flew for a number of years as a station hack with various squadrons until at least 1942 or 1943, depending on the source. It was noted as being docile, dependable, and easy to work on and repair. It never had the horsepower needed for high performance work, but it could have been a good relatively lightweight engine for communication and liaison craft if it had been developed.
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@TheArgieH LOL. Yes, it's a nice day here so I'm going to go out and pick branches downed by our last storm before the next storm get here. I forgot about the Vulture also being an X block. Probably an engine best forgotten anyway. The Boreas name was before RR had come p with any gas turbines so it seems like to was a one off that wasn't repeated. Napier was great designing very high output engines but not so great at making them work reliably without a workshop full of staff and parts. The Sabre was a good example of this. While it became the highest horsepower piston engine ever, I doubt it would have survived in production if not for English electric taking over Napier in 1942 and fixing the cooling issues. If jest hadn't come along for a few more years it would have been interesting to see if a reliable 5,000 version of the Sabre could have really been developed and what it could have been used in. Imagine eight of those things in a Bristol Barbizon!
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@kdrapertrucker I wouldn't be too hard on the British. At least they didn't come up anything like the Brewster Buccaneer, an aircraft so terrible it's always in the running for the worst aircraft of WWII. We built 771 of those dogs at a time the the US and its allies were desperate need of good planes. Not one ever saw combat, spending most of their time as target tugs.
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@L4r5man Indeed. And not only didn't the British seem to understand the need for air support, the best aircraft the RAF could provide were a few Hurricanes and the almost worthless Gloster Gladiator biplanes. The Gladiator pilots fought bravely, but they were overcome by better German aircraft and pilots, with most of their planes destroyed on the ground before they could even get in the fight. Fourteen more Gladiators were delivered on May 21 but, with the battle all but lost, the ten surviving planes and crews were embarked on the Glorious for a return to the safety of Britain. Ironically, almost all the pilots and all the aircraft were lost after surviving the fighting in Norway, when the Glorious was sunk while sailing for home with an escort of just two destroyers, both of whom were also sunk. In my book, Norway goes down as one of the worst British defeats of the war, a battle that could have been won except for poor planning, poor tactics, poor cooperation with the Norwegians, and a lack of material resources.
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@HingerlAlois Yes, and it continued for almost a month afterwards, and hence why I said the British learned nothing from the rapid overrunning of of the Low Countries in relation to their ultimate defeat in Norway.
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