Comments on: Battle of Britain and the Battle of Britain http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/ Airpower and British society, 1908-1941 Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:25:56 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 By: Brett Holman http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/comment-page-2/#comment-81105 Brett Holman Tue, 19 Aug 2008 06:26:08 +0000 http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/#comment-81105 Thanks, JDK. I didn't know about the Proctuka! There's a photo <a href="http://www.daveswarbirds.com/bob/misc.htm" rel="nofollow">here</a> -- it's almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a real Stuka. I've got Fleming's book. It looks very interesting but sadly I haven't read it yet ... Thanks, JDK. I didn’t know about the Proctuka! There’s a photo here — it’s almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a real Stuka.

I’ve got Fleming’s book. It looks very interesting but sadly I haven’t read it yet …

]]> By: JDK http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/comment-page-2/#comment-81054 JDK Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:14:22 +0000 http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/#comment-81054 As to the viability of Operation Sealion, it is difficult to get passed Peter Fleming's book of the same name. As he was there at the time, was intended to lead the 'left behind' resistance, and was a professional army officer and writer, as well as informed of the Sandhurst war game on the topic, his views and conclusions are worth seeking out. Yes, brother of Ian. As to the viability of Operation Sealion, it is difficult to get passed Peter Fleming’s book of the same name. As he was there at the time, was intended to lead the ‘left behind’ resistance, and was a professional army officer and writer, as well as informed of the Sandhurst war game on the topic, his views and conclusions are worth seeking out.

Yes, brother of Ian.

]]> By: JDK http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/comment-page-2/#comment-81053 JDK Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:08:58 +0000 http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/#comment-81053 Going back to the model Messerscmitt Bf-110s in the Battle of Britain film the truth is somewhat more prosaic. They were built in the first period the film had the go-ahead, but when it stalled, they were canned, and only the other models were chosen with the revised script, which required models only to back up full size real examples. The lack of Ju-88 and Do-17 (and Defiants and Blenheims) is explained this way - as well as keeping it simple for the audience. The odd one out ~ that everyone is about to point out ~ is of course the Ju-87 Stukas - they were meant to shadow the RAF Museum's Stuka which, some accounts state, was actually got running, but electrical problems brought that to a halt. That's why the Stukas in the film are Ju-87D/G versions, not Berthas which they should have been. Several Percival Proctors were rebuilt into sort of Stukas as well, know as 'Proctukas' but they weren't very convincing looking, and scared Viv Bellamy when he flew them, and they couldn't dive, so that al came to a halt too. My friend the late Robert Rudhall produced two books on the film - both now fetching good prices secondhand. Another friend of mine, Gary Brown, researched and wrote a couple of articles on the film, including interviewing the chief model maker, from which I'm sort of remembering. I can check the facts if anyone's fussed. Incidentally Peter Arnold, the surviving-Spitfires expert just stated of one of the two-seat Spitfires of the film: 'the price for a flying Spitfire then...£12.5k that is about $23,000 USD'. It was only really by about 1995 that the majority of world's population of flying Spitfires and Hurricanes didn't have the film on their CV - pior to then they were mostly ex-film 'stars'; afterwards further new rebuilds have outnumbered them. Cheers Going back to the model Messerscmitt Bf-110s in the Battle of Britain film the truth is somewhat more prosaic. They were built in the first period the film had the go-ahead, but when it stalled, they were canned, and only the other models were chosen with the revised script, which required models only to back up full size real examples. The lack of Ju-88 and Do-17 (and Defiants and Blenheims) is explained this way – as well as keeping it simple for the audience.

The odd one out ~ that everyone is about to point out ~ is of course the Ju-87 Stukas – they were meant to shadow the RAF Museum’s Stuka which, some accounts state, was actually got running, but electrical problems brought that to a halt. That’s why the Stukas in the film are Ju-87D/G versions, not Berthas which they should have been.

Several Percival Proctors were rebuilt into sort of Stukas as well, know as ‘Proctukas’ but they weren’t very convincing looking, and scared Viv Bellamy when he flew them, and they couldn’t dive, so that al came to a halt too.

My friend the late Robert Rudhall produced two books on the film – both now fetching good prices secondhand. Another friend of mine, Gary Brown, researched and wrote a couple of articles on the film, including interviewing the chief model maker, from which I’m sort of remembering. I can check the facts if anyone’s fussed.

Incidentally Peter Arnold, the surviving-Spitfires expert just stated of one of the two-seat Spitfires of the film: ‘the price for a flying Spitfire then…£12.5k that is about $23,000 USD’. It was only really by about 1995 that the majority of world’s population of flying Spitfires and Hurricanes didn’t have the film on their CV – pior to then they were mostly ex-film ’stars’; afterwards further new rebuilds have outnumbered them.

Cheers

]]> By: Old is the New New :: History Carnival XL http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/comment-page-2/#comment-39160 Old is the New New :: History Carnival XL Fri, 23 Feb 2007 15:05:11 +0000 http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/#comment-39160 [...] Is Patahistory Fun?The Manifesto chides historians for endlessly writing about “war, disease, starvation, and oppression,” and then wondering why people think history isn’t fun. “Only perverse and idiosyncratic minds … want to learn more about this miserable past.” Must be a lot of perverse and idiosyncratic minds out there, because miserable pasts of war and oppression seem pretty popular from where I’m sitting. Airminded compared the Battle of Britain to the movie, Battle of Britain. Normblog serialized a talk on the ubiquity of gallows’ hills in Shetland while Salto Sobrius dug up gallows’ hills in Sweden. The Year ‘Round ponders the ins and outs of hanging and a series of historic Victorian homicides. Holocaust Controversies continues doing battle with a YouTube-based holocaust denier, a battle with no end in sight; they call it “fun,” but I have my doubts. That damn yankee Kevin Levin’s Civil War Memory discussed a new Civil War documentary, Virginians Desolate, Virginians Free, and also the work of Chandra Manning. Both discussions relate to the recent fracas over military history (Mark Grimsley is in the trenches of that fight; Spinning Clio surveys the battle from higher ground) and turn on the centrality of slavery to the Civil War experience. A comment on Kevin’s latter post accuses Manning of reductionism, in her insistence that ideas about slavery were fundamental to the worldview of soldiers on both sides. To which I reply: Chandra is a good and brilliant friend of mine, the one in grad school who put all the rest of us to shame. I’ve seen the size of her dissertation, to be published by Knopf next year, and I assure you it is not reductive about anything.“Isn’t play also part of the human condition?” asks the Manifesto. “Where are the jokes? The songs? The dancing?” Well, Ali Eteraz asks if the prophet Muhammad was funny, but concludes he was more “lighthearted” and “corny” than ha ha funny. Sort of like my Dad. “Patahistory is a ludic history,” sayeth the Manifesto: that is, a playful history, a history of games. At Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog (of Serpentes on a Shippe fame), Chaucer’s son Lowys heaps derision on a computer game based on the Hundred Year’s War. Lowys’ 14th-century leet-speak is priceless: “IS ST SWITHUNZ DAY AND FOR XL MORE DAYS IT WILL BE RAINING THE BLOOD OF NOOBS!” But games can be serious business: Brett Schulte at American Civil War Gaming & Reading presents parts eight and nine of a mind-boggling ten part series on Eric Jacobson’s For Cause and for Country, a book about the Civil War battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Brett’s thoroughness testifies to the intense interest of certain gamers and simulators in accurate history. Acephalous‘ Scott Kaufman has a much shorter answer for why the South lost the Civil War.Weak Segues and Synchronic HistoryThe patahistorian embraces weak segues; the Manifesto doesn’t say that anywhere, but I’m going to have to pretend it does or I’ll never get through all these links. At History Unfolding, David Kaiser looked at where the money went in 1965 and today. Adjusted for inflation, Kaiser found, almost every basic necessity costs only half today what it did in 1965–but in that “almost” lies at least one big catch. Jonathan Dresner learned from the Guardian’s News Blog that the British chocolate industry was founded by Quakers. “I wonder if the Pennsylvania Dutch have anything to do with Hershey’s,” he asks. Don’t get me started on candy history, Jonathan. Milton Hershey was in fact a Mennonite, not to mention an idealistic philanthropist who tried to build a chocolate utopian community and gave his fortune to orphans; his great rival, Forrest Mars Sr., was a notorious miser and recluse who lived out his days in a Las Vegas candy factory like the offspring of Willy Wonka and Howard Hughes. At American Presidents Blog, James Buchanan: A Lesson In Name Calling, remarks on the sexuality of the bachelor president and links to a weird but cool little exhibit called Tall, Slim, and Erect, which combines obscure biographical data on the U.S. presidents with portraits of plastic figurines for an odd meditation on the office and the men. My favorite figurine is probably Woodrow Wilson’s, my favorite entry Benjamin Harrison’s. APB also provides evidence that Barbara Bush was once a hottie.It had no explicitly historical posts in the past fortnight, but I’m happy for the return of Petri Dish, which blogs on science, culture and history. This post on a class in science and popular culture is interesting, and it sounds like a great class. I’m also happy to welcome the second year of the Science Creative Quarterly, which seems like the sort of place Alfred Jarry would feel right at home. Editor Dave Ng combined Bruce Lee, SUVs, and DNA site-directed mutagenesis in his own manifesto of sorts, while Angela Beckett explained how to win a Nobel Prize. Collection Resurrection is a new blog by a recent graduate of my university’s public history program, now curating and restoring the collections of a small town Ontario museum. Seeds of Growth called Eli Whitney the original “Long Tail” entrepreneur. Chris Clarke’s comic book adaptation of Michael Bérubé’s What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts may or may not be up when you read this–its sheer awesomeness devoured his bandwidth and crashed his site.Patahistory requires “synchronic history,” the history of current things. A blog called Lewis and Clark: What Else Happened, dedicated to chronicling what else happened on every day of the Lewis and Clark expedition, reached its journey’s end this month, two hundred years to the day after Lewis and Clark completed theirs. Walking the Berkshires presented Patriotic Cover, with great images of Civil War era postcards, and discussed Lincoln’s Fast Day of September 26, 1861. Other holidays and anniversaries were noted in the blogosphere: Radical Geek observed Ignore the Constitution Day on September 17th. I suspect the Bush Administration observed it too, but perhaps not the way Rad Geek had in mind. The Axis of Evel Knievel marked the 68th birthday of “the worst historical analogy ever” and the start of last century’s longest conventional war. Finally, I know you know that September 19th was Talk Like A Pirate Day. The Skwib waxed piratical all week; I’m Too Sexy For My Master’s Thesis pointed to this article on Jewish Pirates (”The first shmuck to kvetch will find his tuchus keel-hauled!” declared my friend Judd Karlman); and Patahistory’s Dave Davisson, who is ultimately to blame for all of this, gets the final word with a wordless post: Pirates vs. Ninjas.The End of PatahistoryTa-da! That concludes this edition of the History Carnival. Thanks for scrolling. Jeremy Boggs will host the next History Carnival at ClioWeb on October 15th. (Look! He has cute baby pictures on his blog too!) Contact him via his site or use this handy form to submit entries for the next carnival. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the History Carnival homepage or at the Blog Carnival Index. I am out of here. [...] [...] Is Patahistory Fun?The Manifesto chides historians for endlessly writing about “war, disease, starvation, and oppression,” and then wondering why people think history isn’t fun. “Only perverse and idiosyncratic minds … want to learn more about this miserable past.” Must be a lot of perverse and idiosyncratic minds out there, because miserable pasts of war and oppression seem pretty popular from where I’m sitting. Airminded compared the Battle of Britain to the movie, Battle of Britain. Normblog serialized a talk on the ubiquity of gallows’ hills in Shetland while Salto Sobrius dug up gallows’ hills in Sweden. The Year ‘Round ponders the ins and outs of hanging and a series of historic Victorian homicides. Holocaust Controversies continues doing battle with a YouTube-based holocaust denier, a battle with no end in sight; they call it “fun,” but I have my doubts. That damn yankee Kevin Levin’s Civil War Memory discussed a new Civil War documentary, Virginians Desolate, Virginians Free, and also the work of Chandra Manning. Both discussions relate to the recent fracas over military history (Mark Grimsley is in the trenches of that fight; Spinning Clio surveys the battle from higher ground) and turn on the centrality of slavery to the Civil War experience. A comment on Kevin’s latter post accuses Manning of reductionism, in her insistence that ideas about slavery were fundamental to the worldview of soldiers on both sides. To which I reply: Chandra is a good and brilliant friend of mine, the one in grad school who put all the rest of us to shame. I’ve seen the size of her dissertation, to be published by Knopf next year, and I assure you it is not reductive about anything.“Isn’t play also part of the human condition?” asks the Manifesto. “Where are the jokes? The songs? The dancing?” Well, Ali Eteraz asks if the prophet Muhammad was funny, but concludes he was more “lighthearted” and “corny” than ha ha funny. Sort of like my Dad. “Patahistory is a ludic history,” sayeth the Manifesto: that is, a playful history, a history of games. At Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog (of Serpentes on a Shippe fame), Chaucer’s son Lowys heaps derision on a computer game based on the Hundred Year’s War. Lowys’ 14th-century leet-speak is priceless: “IS ST SWITHUNZ DAY AND FOR XL MORE DAYS IT WILL BE RAINING THE BLOOD OF NOOBS!” But games can be serious business: Brett Schulte at American Civil War Gaming & Reading presents parts eight and nine of a mind-boggling ten part series on Eric Jacobson’s For Cause and for Country, a book about the Civil War battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Brett’s thoroughness testifies to the intense interest of certain gamers and simulators in accurate history. Acephalous‘ Scott Kaufman has a much shorter answer for why the South lost the Civil War.Weak Segues and Synchronic HistoryThe patahistorian embraces weak segues; the Manifesto doesn’t say that anywhere, but I’m going to have to pretend it does or I’ll never get through all these links. At History Unfolding, David Kaiser looked at where the money went in 1965 and today. Adjusted for inflation, Kaiser found, almost every basic necessity costs only half today what it did in 1965–but in that “almost” lies at least one big catch. Jonathan Dresner learned from the Guardian’s News Blog that the British chocolate industry was founded by Quakers. “I wonder if the Pennsylvania Dutch have anything to do with Hershey’s,” he asks. Don’t get me started on candy history, Jonathan. Milton Hershey was in fact a Mennonite, not to mention an idealistic philanthropist who tried to build a chocolate utopian community and gave his fortune to orphans; his great rival, Forrest Mars Sr., was a notorious miser and recluse who lived out his days in a Las Vegas candy factory like the offspring of Willy Wonka and Howard Hughes. At American Presidents Blog, James Buchanan: A Lesson In Name Calling, remarks on the sexuality of the bachelor president and links to a weird but cool little exhibit called Tall, Slim, and Erect, which combines obscure biographical data on the U.S. presidents with portraits of plastic figurines for an odd meditation on the office and the men. My favorite figurine is probably Woodrow Wilson’s, my favorite entry Benjamin Harrison’s. APB also provides evidence that Barbara Bush was once a hottie.It had no explicitly historical posts in the past fortnight, but I’m happy for the return of Petri Dish, which blogs on science, culture and history. This post on a class in science and popular culture is interesting, and it sounds like a great class. I’m also happy to welcome the second year of the Science Creative Quarterly, which seems like the sort of place Alfred Jarry would feel right at home. Editor Dave Ng combined Bruce Lee, SUVs, and DNA site-directed mutagenesis in his own manifesto of sorts, while Angela Beckett explained how to win a Nobel Prize. Collection Resurrection is a new blog by a recent graduate of my university’s public history program, now curating and restoring the collections of a small town Ontario museum. Seeds of Growth called Eli Whitney the original “Long Tail” entrepreneur. Chris Clarke’s comic book adaptation of Michael Bérubé’s What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts may or may not be up when you read this–its sheer awesomeness devoured his bandwidth and crashed his site.Patahistory requires “synchronic history,” the history of current things. A blog called Lewis and Clark: What Else Happened, dedicated to chronicling what else happened on every day of the Lewis and Clark expedition, reached its journey’s end this month, two hundred years to the day after Lewis and Clark completed theirs. Walking the Berkshires presented Patriotic Cover, with great images of Civil War era postcards, and discussed Lincoln’s Fast Day of September 26, 1861. Other holidays and anniversaries were noted in the blogosphere: Radical Geek observed Ignore the Constitution Day on September 17th. I suspect the Bush Administration observed it too, but perhaps not the way Rad Geek had in mind. The Axis of Evel Knievel marked the 68th birthday of “the worst historical analogy ever” and the start of last century’s longest conventional war. Finally, I know you know that September 19th was Talk Like A Pirate Day. The Skwib waxed piratical all week; I’m Too Sexy For My Master’s Thesis pointed to this article on Jewish Pirates (”The first shmuck to kvetch will find his tuchus keel-hauled!” declared my friend Judd Karlman); and Patahistory’s Dave Davisson, who is ultimately to blame for all of this, gets the final word with a wordless post: Pirates vs. Ninjas.The End of PatahistoryTa-da! That concludes this edition of the History Carnival. Thanks for scrolling. Jeremy Boggs will host the next History Carnival at ClioWeb on October 15th. (Look! He has cute baby pictures on his blog too!) Contact him via his site or use this handy form to submit entries for the next carnival. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the History Carnival homepage or at the Blog Carnival Index. I am out of here. [...]

]]> By: Alex http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/comment-page-1/#comment-8485 Alex Mon, 20 Nov 2006 17:34:16 +0000 http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/#comment-8485 Pontius, I'm not sure what you mean by "AEF" - Air Experience Flight, an organisation for taking Air Cadets up in Chipmunks? Australian Expeditionary Force? BEF, surely? Anyway, you're the weak-on-facts chappie who trolled soc.history.what-if for weeks with a truly deranged scheme to conquer the UK with some fishing boats or something, aren't you? Confess, we are everywhere. There is a pretty big difference between 9 sunk and 19 damaged (to any degree) and 28 "sunk and damaged" - note the trollish debate framing trick. Pontius, I’m not sure what you mean by “AEF” – Air Experience Flight, an organisation for taking Air Cadets up in Chipmunks? Australian Expeditionary Force? BEF, surely?

Anyway, you’re the weak-on-facts chappie who trolled soc.history.what-if for weeks with a truly deranged scheme to conquer the UK with some fishing boats or something, aren’t you? Confess, we are everywhere.

There is a pretty big difference between 9 sunk and 19 damaged (to any degree) and 28 “sunk and damaged” – note the trollish debate framing trick.

]]> By: Chris Williams http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/comment-page-1/#comment-8360 Chris Williams Sun, 19 Nov 2006 20:08:49 +0000 http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/#comment-8360 "the Fw 190 tip and run raiders managed to get across the channel at low level under the Radar, so why not Ju52's?" I'd hazard a guess that the reason might be the difference between a flight of small fighters that can do 565 kmh, and a large formation of medium-sized transport aircraft that can do 265kmh. "At the beginning of the war, it seems clear that the Admiralty didn't really have much of a grasp on just how much anti-aircraft firepower a ship needed to effectively protect itself without effective air-cover, " That's right - but by June 1940 they had already been rudely awakened, off Norway. The tactics that they adopted - stick out at sea and only send in a modern AA cruiser or sloop to defend the base - actually worked reasonably well. "evidence the debacle of the Repulse and Renown." You mean Prince of Wales - Renown made it to VJ Day: an important fact for me because my father-in-law was serving on her at the time. "These 40 destroyers btw - were these the concrete-bottomed rust buckets that the US lent the RN...?" No - none of those arrived before late September, and almost all went straight to the Western Approaches as escorts. “the Fw 190 tip and run raiders managed to get across the channel at low level under the Radar, so why not Ju52’s?”

I’d hazard a guess that the reason might be the difference between a flight of small fighters that can do 565 kmh, and a large formation of medium-sized transport aircraft that can do 265kmh.

“At the beginning of the war, it seems clear that the Admiralty didn’t really have much of a grasp on just how much anti-aircraft firepower a ship needed to effectively protect itself without effective air-cover, ”

That’s right – but by June 1940 they had already been rudely awakened, off Norway. The tactics that they adopted – stick out at sea and only send in a modern AA cruiser or sloop to defend the base – actually worked reasonably well.

“evidence the debacle of the Repulse and Renown.” You mean Prince of Wales – Renown made it to VJ Day: an important fact for me because my father-in-law was serving on her at the time.

“These 40 destroyers btw – were these the concrete-bottomed rust buckets that the US lent the RN…?”

No – none of those arrived before late September, and almost all went straight to the Western Approaches as escorts.

]]> By: Pontius. http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/comment-page-1/#comment-8283 Pontius. Sun, 19 Nov 2006 03:20:40 +0000 http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/#comment-8283 OK, - well, the reasons might have been different, - but the Germans effectively still let the AEF off the hook at Dunkirk, an error for which they would pay. I was being pretty tongue in cheek in mentioning the airborne assault, lol, - but I'm sure they had a plan to use their paras anyway. (How...??) Yes, Crete was later etc, - and so was Arnhem. In the later case, the lightly-armed airborne forces more or less landed on an SS Panzer division. However, they still held out for some time, as I'm sure the Germans might have done, - to no avail without support, - they were not really able to get any effective re-supplies, but then again, they weren't on an airfield. Turkey shoot? Well, the Fw 190 tip and run raiders managed to get across the channel at low level under the Radar, so why not Ju52's? They dropped the paras' from pretty low level anyway. Even loaded, a two to three minute climb would probably have sufficed, and then back on the deck to the land of the cheese-eaters. (Even in the age of AWACS, - still a valid strategy.) Having secured the airfield they could have been supplied as they were at Crete. German fighters might have used it and some of the fuel on site too, with cover from France as a back-up. But London - no, why bother? At the beginning of the war, it seems clear that the Admiralty didn't really have much of a grasp on just how much anti-aircraft firepower a ship needed to effectively protect itself without effective air-cover, evidence the debacle of the Repulse and Renown. These 40 destroyers btw - were these the concrete-bottomed rust buckets that the US lent the RN...? Dunkirk; 28 out of 56 destroyers sunk or damaged - and that was 'with the German's attention elsewhere'.... and only flying attacks on Dunkirk on two and a bit out of nine days... good job the Germans were all busy oiling their tanks and drinking the vino.... 'BTW, that the Luftwaffe effectively covered the Channel dash isn't an argument against the RAF effectively covering the RN in the Channel. It's an argument in favour. We couldn't sink the Germans because they were going very fast under all available air cover.' Cuts both ways doesn't it, but the fact is the Germans operation was very well planned and executed. The RAF and RN were made to look pretty innefectual. 'Going very fast'? Ships aren't exactly going to get away from aircraft. Do I think the Germans could have pulled off a successful invasion in late 1940? Probably not, but, handled correctly, it might have been harder-fought than some of the dismissive comments here suggest. Mostly it would have been down to the Luftwaffe. My own view is that the Germans Achilles-heel was their poor Intelligence supply and lack of suitable radar to support them at the time. Their front-line fighters were mostly better than ours, and were operated bycrews with recent combat experience using much better tactics than the RAF, at a time and place of their choosing. The real point of all this hot air is about the importance of the BoB. The RAF victory ensured that none of the options were put to the test, and by that measure it wasn't 'only' of importance as the Luftwaffe's first defeat. It ensured we weren't put to the test and that Hitler's attention would stray elsewhere. OK, – well, the reasons might have been different, – but the Germans effectively still let the AEF off the hook at Dunkirk, an error for which they would pay.
I was being pretty tongue in cheek in mentioning the airborne assault, lol, – but I’m sure they had a plan to use their paras anyway. (How…??) Yes, Crete was later etc, – and so was Arnhem. In the later case, the lightly-armed airborne forces more or less landed on an SS Panzer division. However, they still held out for some time, as I’m sure the Germans might have done, – to no avail without support, – they were not really able to get any effective re-supplies, but then again, they weren’t on an airfield.
Turkey shoot? Well, the Fw 190 tip and run raiders managed to get across the channel at low level under the Radar, so why not Ju52’s? They dropped the paras’ from pretty low level anyway. Even loaded, a two to three minute climb would probably have sufficed, and then back on the deck to the land of the cheese-eaters. (Even in the age of AWACS, – still a valid strategy.) Having secured the airfield they could have been supplied as they were at Crete. German fighters might have used it and some of the fuel on site too, with cover from France as a back-up. But London – no, why bother?
At the beginning of the war, it seems clear that the Admiralty didn’t really have much of a grasp on just how much anti-aircraft firepower a ship needed to effectively protect itself without effective air-cover, evidence the debacle of the Repulse and Renown. These 40 destroyers btw – were these the concrete-bottomed rust buckets that the US lent the RN…?
Dunkirk; 28 out of 56 destroyers sunk or damaged – and that was ‘with the German’s attention elsewhere’…. and only flying attacks on Dunkirk on two and a bit out of nine days… good job the Germans were all busy oiling their tanks and drinking the vino….
‘BTW, that the Luftwaffe effectively covered the Channel dash isn’t an argument against the RAF effectively covering the RN in the Channel. It’s an argument in favour. We couldn’t sink the Germans because they were going very fast under all available air cover.’ Cuts both ways doesn’t it, but the fact is the Germans operation was very well planned and executed. The RAF and RN were made to look pretty innefectual. ‘Going very fast’? Ships aren’t exactly going to get away from aircraft.
Do I think the Germans could have pulled off a successful invasion in late 1940? Probably not, but, handled correctly, it might have been harder-fought than some of the dismissive comments here suggest. Mostly it would have been down to the Luftwaffe. My own view is that the Germans Achilles-heel was their poor Intelligence supply and lack of suitable radar to support them at the time. Their front-line fighters were mostly better than ours, and were operated bycrews with recent combat experience using much better tactics than the RAF, at a time and place of their choosing.
The real point of all this hot air is about the importance of the BoB. The RAF victory ensured that none of the options were put to the test, and by that measure it wasn’t ‘only’ of importance as the Luftwaffe’s first defeat. It ensured we weren’t put to the test and that Hitler’s attention would stray elsewhere.

]]> By: Chris Williams http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/comment-page-1/#comment-8091 Chris Williams Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:22:38 +0000 http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/#comment-8091 PS: Student was unavailable for combat in the summer of 1940, on account of just having had his brains put back in by a Dutch surgeon (cheers mate - you really took that oath seriously, didn't you?). More to the point, the high-tech bits of the German army - paras, tanks, etc - had been subject to a lot of wear and tear in the western offensive. So in airborne assaults as in anti-shipping, we can't read back their capabilities of the spring of 1941 to the summer of 1941. PS: Student was unavailable for combat in the summer of 1940, on account of just having had his brains put back in by a Dutch surgeon (cheers mate – you really took that oath seriously, didn’t you?). More to the point, the high-tech bits of the German army – paras, tanks, etc – had been subject to a lot of wear and tear in the western offensive. So in airborne assaults as in anti-shipping, we can’t read back their capabilities of the spring of 1941 to the summer of 1941.

]]> By: Chris Williams http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/comment-page-1/#comment-7988 Chris Williams Thu, 16 Nov 2006 18:28:19 +0000 http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/#comment-7988 70-80 in home waters, but only 40 of them (plus c. 8 cruisers and a battleship) were less than 12 hours steaming from the invasion beaches. If anything, there were too many committed - Fraser certainly thought so: he reckoned that Ramsay could have sunk the invasion fleet with half that, and complained accordingly. The Admiralty weren't taking any chances. And the score from Dunkirk was 56 destroyers engaged, of which 9 sunk and 19 damaged. As you can infer, I've been at my Roskill this afternoon. 70-80 in home waters, but only 40 of them (plus c. 8 cruisers and a battleship) were less than 12 hours steaming from the invasion beaches. If anything, there were too many committed – Fraser certainly thought so: he reckoned that Ramsay could have sunk the invasion fleet with half that, and complained accordingly. The Admiralty weren’t taking any chances.

And the score from Dunkirk was 56 destroyers engaged, of which 9 sunk and 19 damaged.

As you can infer, I’ve been at my Roskill this afternoon.

]]> By: Alex http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/comment-page-1/#comment-7974 Alex Thu, 16 Nov 2006 14:52:47 +0000 http://airminded.org/2006/09/15/battle-of-britain-and-the-battle-of-britain/#comment-7974 I would point out that the airborne assault on Crete was qualitatively and quantitatively different. To take Crete was to take the airfields and Suda Bay. There literally were no other objectives - without them, the allied garrison was shagged. The Allied position had neither depth nor effective lateral communication, nor were there any reserves, fortifications, artillery, fighters, bombers, or armour. And Student's Airborne Corps *just*, just managed it at appalling cost in lives - but couldn't prevent most of Creforce getting away. So the Fallschirmjäger drop onto Manston (the Ju52s somehow having been missed by Fighter Command, thus avoiding the greatest turkey shoot in the history of air warfare) and Seize The Airfield (Hooyah!). What then? March 70 miles to London and house-clear all the way up the A2 to Whitehall, with at most a division and a half of very, very light infantry, whilst presumably fighting in the opposite direction to secure a port and holding off brigade-sized (at least) counterattacks on the airhead at the same time? BTW, that the Luftwaffe effectively covered the Channel dash isn't an argument against the RAF effectively covering the RN in the Channel. It's an argument in favour. We couldn't sink the Germans because they were going very fast under all available air cover. What does that tell you about the possibilities of sinking the whole RN destroyer and cruiser force going top speed through the straits under the RAF's whole fighter force with the technology of two years before? The German ragtag water festival...sorry...invasion fleet could have been sunk by one flotilla of destroyers, and we had 70-80 of them in home waters. Say the E-boats get two before dying gloriously, and the Luftwaffe get - what? 10 seems optimistic - and you still lose, badly. That's before we get to the cruisers, of which there were more than a dozen on hand, or the Home Fleet, which could have made it in 36 hours with its skirts up. I would point out that the airborne assault on Crete was qualitatively and quantitatively different. To take Crete was to take the airfields and Suda Bay. There literally were no other objectives – without them, the allied garrison was shagged. The Allied position had neither depth nor effective lateral communication, nor were there any reserves, fortifications, artillery, fighters, bombers, or armour. And Student’s Airborne Corps *just*, just managed it at appalling cost in lives – but couldn’t prevent most of Creforce getting away.

So the Fallschirmjäger drop onto Manston (the Ju52s somehow having been missed by Fighter Command, thus avoiding the greatest turkey shoot in the history of air warfare) and Seize The Airfield (Hooyah!). What then? March 70 miles to London and house-clear all the way up the A2 to Whitehall, with at most a division and a half of very, very light infantry, whilst presumably fighting in the opposite direction to secure a port and holding off brigade-sized (at least) counterattacks on the airhead at the same time?

BTW, that the Luftwaffe effectively covered the Channel dash isn’t an argument against the RAF effectively covering the RN in the Channel. It’s an argument in favour. We couldn’t sink the Germans because they were going very fast under all available air cover. What does that tell you about the possibilities of sinking the whole RN destroyer and cruiser force going top speed through the straits under the RAF’s whole fighter force with the technology of two years before? The German ragtag water festival…sorry…invasion fleet could have been sunk by one flotilla of destroyers, and we had 70-80 of them in home waters. Say the E-boats get two before dying gloriously, and the Luftwaffe get – what? 10 seems optimistic – and you still lose, badly. That’s before we get to the cruisers, of which there were more than a dozen on hand, or the Home Fleet, which could have made it in 36 hours with its skirts up.

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