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Split Thread WWII & Appeasement

Captain_Swoop said:
What was that 'naval power'?
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I was wondering what naval power he was on about.
Whatever it was, it was dwarfed by the RN, even with just the home fleet and associated bits.

There must have been, what, some 50 or 60 destroyers in home waters in the summer of 1940 (ignoring those given over to escort duty)? Possibly more?

The Germans had, I think, 20 or thereabouts?
And let's not go into the disparity in the heavier ships.

Another daft idea - "Soften up fighter command in the chosen area."

That implies Kesselring thought they could succeed without air supremacy, even local. Which should tell us how much we ought to take his ideas seriously.
 
A few cruisers in among the strings of barges wouldn't have needed to even use their guns. The barges had such a low freeboard and lack of stability that the wake from a fast turn would have sunk them.
If guns were used they would only need to disable the tugs to leave the strings of barges dead in the water.
 
theprestige said:
It's like arguing with an off-brand Harry Turtledove.

The Luftwaffe of 1940 defeats the RAF of 1938, enabling a successful Sealion in 1938. How the Luftwaffe of 1940 makes it to 1938 is left as an exercise for the reader. Perhaps they were flying from the deck of the USS Nimitz.

ETA: There's a bit of waffle about this on the internet that I think makes a lot of sense:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/wjnsd/the_final_countdown_stupid_or_awesome/
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Hmm, how much jet fuel and ammunition would they have on board? Probably not enough to win the whole war. The other thing I've wondered about is how capable would modern anti-shipping weapons be against WW2 battleships. Harpoons and the torps we have now have relativity small warheads. Of course a 2000 LGB is going to be pretty damned effective still. And yeah, no nukes, thats just cheating :rolleyes:

Total sidetrack of the argument at hand... but really its not going anywhere now is it.
 
lobosrul5 said:
Hmm, how much jet fuel and ammunition would they have on board? Probably not enough to win the whole war. The other thing I've wondered about is how capable would modern anti-shipping weapons be against WW2 battleships. Harpoons and the torps we have now have relativity small warheads. Of course a 2000 LGB is going to be pretty damned effective still. And yeah, no nukes, thats just cheating :rolleyes:

Total sidetrack of the argument at hand... but really its not going anywhere now is it.
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A modern torpedo doesn't need a huge warhead, they don't work by hitting the side of the target. Instead they work by exploding under the keel and the shock wave breaks the ships back and smashes in the bottom of the hull.
Even a battleship wasn't armoured on the bottom of the hull.

Here is a video of a Leander Class Frigate being destroyed by a torpedo.

(I don't think it's an ex-RN Leander, unfamiliar Radar, could be one of the ships built for Australia or the Dutch. I served on Leanders.)

 
SpitfireIX said:
Evasion noted. I asked you how the Gladiators that you characterized as useless in 1938 managed to score as many kills as they did in 1940, including several He 111s. I also asked you what operational aircraft the Luftwaffe had in 1938 that the Hurricane couldn't handle.
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ME262
 
lobosrul5 said:
Hmm, how much jet fuel and ammunition would they have on board? Probably not enough to win the whole war. The other thing I've wondered about is how capable would modern anti-shipping weapons be against WW2 battleships. Harpoons and the torps we have now have relativity small warheads. Of course a 2000 LGB is going to be pretty damned effective still. And yeah, no nukes, thats just cheating :rolleyes:

Total sidetrack of the argument at hand... but really its not going anywhere now is it.
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Here's a video of the sinking of the decommissioned, HMCAS Huron, a 5,000 tonne destroyer.



She was actually sunk by 76mm shellfire
 
Major Major said:
They would cancel out; arguing with each other so vehemently that the rest of us could sit back, break out the popcorn and soda, and watch the fight. It would be fun.

:blackcat:
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There is an interesting opinion about all this full of due and careful thought and military knowledge and strategic ability and a lack of want of judgment at this website:

https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110811103618AAg0S1x&page=2

Was Neville Chamberlain right or wrong to appease Hitler?

Me and my mate think Chamberlain was a foolhardy coward to cave into Hitler's demands. My dad says Chamberlain did the right thing.
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Henri McPhee said:
There is an interesting opinion about all this full of due and careful thought and military knowledge and strategic ability and a lack of want of judgment at this website:

https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110811103618AAg0S1x&page=2
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Bull. It's just a bunch of people throwing out opinions with little to no evidence provided. You're simply trying to deploy this as a smokescreen in an attempt to distract from the fact that you can't provide any real evidence to support your claims about the wisdom of appeasement, as anyone reading this thread can plainly see.
 
SpitfireIX said:
Bull. It's just a bunch of people throwing out opinions with little to no evidence provided. You're simply trying to deploy this as a smokescreen in an attempt to distract from the fact that you can't provide any real evidence to support your claims about the wisdom of appeasement, as anyone reading this thread can plainly see.
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Frankly this seems to be the latest in a series of posts from Henri that are nothing but bad attempts at trolling.
 
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It's true that in 1938 the RAF was without Spitfires. It's also true that the Bf-109 was without cannon or the Daimler-Benz engine. The Bf-109D had the Jumo 210 motor, four 7.9mm machine guns and shorter range than the E models used in the Battle of Britain. The Hurricane Mk-I of 1938 would have been able to deal with it.

The ME 109 E "EMIL" model with 1200,hp engines and 20 mm cannon were not put into production until early 1939

The Hurricane of 1938 used a 2 blade wood propeller - wasn't until mid 1940 that 3 blade metal props with constant speed (automatic pitch control) would installed on the Hurricanes
 
I would also point out that D-Day was a massive and, even more importantly, COMPLEX operation that involved both paratroopers and the beach landings. And it was this complexity that made the Germans not very good at dealing with it.

For example, the German 21st Panzer Division instead of rushing to the beaches, was first ordered to deal with British paratroopers in the opposite direction. By the time it was clear what's happening on the beaches, now they were ordered to rush that-a-way. But time had been lost, and a third of the division STILL had to remain behind to pin the British.

Complicating the delays, D-Day had opened with a MASSIVE bombing of the German infrastructure, so the Germans were slow to get anywhere near the beaches.

By the time they were reaching the beaches, however, the Allies had had time to move off the beach and lay an ambush which cost the Germans several tanks. This was no longer the Anzio screw-up. Rocket firing airplanes knocked down even more tanks.

But let's return to those paratroopers.

One German combat group, Kampfgruppe Rauch, had actually managed to drive all the way to the sea between two beaches and were ready to start rolling up one of the beaches. Then they look up and see a mess of towed gliders going to reinforce those paratroopers, and potentially cut the German force off.

Now instead of attacking the beach, they turn around to secure their own rear.

And that's just one of the D-Day stories.

I feel confident to say that even in the wildest dreams of alt-history proponents, Germany was at no point prepared to launch anything similar to this. Their dreams of Nazi glory may involve some barges managing to sneak in, or a division of paratroopers somehow managing to land, but nothing approaching the real scale and complexity that made D-Day actually work.
 
Don't forget all the hundreds of concrete embarkation 'hards' built all along the rivers and creeks of the south coast to disperse the assault forces and avoid overcrowding and delay at the major portd. Plus, landung ships were loaded by driving tanks etc aboard not lowering from docks.
Also they towed complete prefabricated harbours across to the beaches, the 'Mulberries' to allow resupply from conventional ships.
There were even ships fitted out as floating kitchens and canteens to feed the landing craft crews and beach teams.
To cover the actual location of the landings targets long the entire French coast were targeted a massive effort.
Even after the landings started the Germans held back reserves as they had been led to believe it was a decoy for the real assault further north by Patton and his 'ghost' army. Operation 'Double Cross'.
 
Did the Germans even have a go at any mock landings?

Before D-Day we'd sampled the make up of the various target beaches, and chosen practice sites in the UK that matched that for mock landings.
 
theprestige said:
And what about Project Pluto? A fuel pipeline from the UK across the bottom of the channel, to keep the invasion force gassed up.
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And, in a similar vein, are the Mulberries, though the Germans were hoping to get an intact port (good luck with that one).

Then again, neither the Mulberries nor an intact port would have done them any good with no ships to do the actual supplying.
 
In the end he Mulberry on the US beaches was wrecked in a storm and even the British Mulberry provided only a smll percentage of the supplies, most came over the beaches.
 
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