By the way I informed you that the Fulmer was a monoplane fighter after you made the inacurate claim that RN carriers only had Bi-plane aircraft, then you changed to HMS Indomitable only had 9 fighters when with the Fulmers it actually had 21.
I was just correcting you.
Have you found any units etc to back up the 350 tanks moved from Malaya prior to Japan entering the war yet, or maybe their types. The types USSR received in 1941 were not used in that theatre until 1942/43
It seems rather Ironic and expensive that the arsenal of Democracy would supply Stalin, ensuring his Tyany over 250 million people in 1945 and Stalin’s help to ensure tyrany in China for another 500 million, all in order to liberate 40 million Frenchmen for democracy. The arsenal of democracy would then ruin its economy and the world’s economy opposing the USSR and put the world in the current depression (people are affraid to use this word, but it is the only word to decribe a recession lasting this long).
Khahlkhin Gol was not a planned invasion into the USSR (which bordered with Japan in Manchuria, Korea, etc, and whose ports, like Vladivostok had been taken by the Japs in the Russo-Japanese war), it was a border skirmish in the remotest Mongolia.
Funny, Are you saying Japan could not take on a nearly defeated and broke USSR next door in 1941 or 42, so it made more sense to attack the intact US and the UK?
You want a stable platform for ground attack, not for a fighter, which should be unstable and maneuverable. The kills include naval observation aircraft, etc, not many Zeroes, K-43s, etc,. Let me put it this way. You are a British pilot. Would you rather fly a super obsolete Fulmar or a slightly obsolete Hurricane on your next mission? Since you like sources so much, please tell me your source for the Fulmar shooting down 1/3 of all FAA planes. It was so successful that they made only 600 and the British equipped their escort carriers with wildcats.
I never said the Fulmer was good, it was out of date and replaced as soon as possible in the day fighter role, it was after all based partially on the Fairy Battle. Having spoken to a pilots who flew the Fulmer it had very good characteristics for a carrier aircraft unlike the Seafire and Sea Hurricane which were at best stop gaps.
Modern computer controlled aircraft are made unstable so as to be able to be more maneuverable. WW2 aircraft with manual controls needed to be stable or you would end up killing all your aircrew. A stable gun platform means that it stays pointing at what you are pointing it at instead of you having to fight it to stay on target.
Ok little help for you on the Fulmer (just one resource for you)
Fairey Fulmer
Yes I was saying that Japan could not at the time take on the USSR as japan was reaching economic bankruptcy itself with the sanctions imposed by the US because of Japans war in China. The USSR did not withdraw its divisions facing Japan throughout the War.
Churchill would rather have gone to war with the USSR, he only supported Stalin because the USSR was also fighting Germany.
It was bad enough to face a Zero flying a Hurricane or even a Buffalo, I really sympathize with the brave men that were ordered to fly these planes and the Swordfish in 1942 and even later.
I think that the use of the Fairy Battle in France was the worse waste of urgently needed pilots in history. Hundreds were shot down in weeks without ever destroying any of their targets.
Both the Fulmar and Battle used the same Merlin engine of the Hurrican and Spitfire, what a waste. Moreover, many Hurricanes in France had inferior two blade propellers that made them more vulnerable. Had they grounded the Battle after losing 50 of them pointlessly, put the Battles’ 3 blade props on the Hurricanes with 2 blade props, used their engines for spares or for new Hurricanes and trained those pilots for fighter combat, they would have achieved much more.
Germany was also bankrupt when it attacked Poland (Hitler could not wait to start the war in 1943 because Germany was bankrupt. Hitler had fired Schacht, the brilliant economist who saved the German economy and put the incompetent Göring in charge of the economy, production and the Luftwaffe). War allows nations to capture resources from other countries to keep their economies going for a while. Poland, Norway, France, Holland, the Ukraine, etc, kept Germany going. Japan expected to capture the resources of Siberia.
Believe me Stalin nextdoor in late 1941-42 was a much easier target than the US and UK thousands of miles away and under much less pressure from Germany.
Churchill and Roosevelt underestimated the USSR and helped it too much, because they feared it might collase in a few months. The USSR was huge and had 170 million people, so that Stalin could have kept withdrawing and fighting for years without help. Why not strengthen and protect your colonies and territories and let the two bastards bleed each other. While the US had to produce enough fuel, trucks, food, etc, for all the allies and the ships to transport them and fight on two fronts, Stalin simply refused to open a second front at his doorstep, even when the Germans were in Frank retreat and he was swimming in tanks, planes, troops, etc, in 1944 and still Roosevelt kept giving him everything he wanted until Germany surrendered.
The “Arsenal of Democracy” did support the Soviets but not to save the French as much as to save the Arsenal of Democracy. How much of the Wehrmacht did the Red Army destroy? I think its well over two-thirds! All hindsight…
Khahlkhin Gol was not a planned invasion into the USSR (which bordered with Japan in Manchuria, Korea, etc, and whose ports, like Vladivostok had been taken by the Japs in the Russo-Japanese war), it was a border skirmish in the remotest Mongolia.
Funny, Are you saying Japan could not take on a nearly defeated and broke USSR next door in 1941 or 42, so it made more sense to attack the intact US and the UK?
The Japanese Imperial Army–for all its fanaticism, courage, and ruthlessness–was tactically brilliant at times, but operationally incompetent in a modern battle of armor and nearly useless against a modern mechanized army while fighting in open terrain favoring a war-of-movement. Secondly, aren’t you sort of contradicting yourself here? You’re blaming the U.S. for supporting the Soviets and I believe in a follow up post state that the Soviets could have held out without American aid, but here state the Soviets are nearly defeated. So, what should the U.S. have done? Allow the USSR to fall to the Axis so she can suffer millions of casualties and risk defeat?
You want a stable platform for ground attack, not for a fighter, which should be unstable and maneuverable. The kills include naval observation aircraft, etc, not many Zeroes, K-43s, etc,. Let me put it this way. You are a British pilot. Would you rather fly a super obsolete Fulmar or a slightly obsolete Hurricane on your next mission? Since you like sources so much, please tell me your source for the Fulmar shooting down 1/3 of all FAA planes. It was so successful that they made only 600 and the British equipped their escort carriers with wildcats.
Largely irrelevant as the British could not project power to Singapore and deal with the Germans controlling continental Europe at the same time. The British RN equipped their escort carriers with Wildcats when American production became available. There weren’t enough Wildcats for the USN and USMC aviators in 1940-41 as there were still many squadrons equipped with Buffalos…
That is an unreferenced assertion which is not supported by anything I recall.
I’m willing to accept that it might be a correct statement, but only if you can provide a reliable reference rather than an assertion on a website of unknown reliability which appears to be the only source of this assertion.
You haven’t addressed my question about what happened to the unit attached to the tanks after its tanks were taken to the USSR .
Britain wouldn’t have had 350 tanks sitting in Malaya quietly rusting away in anticipation of a possible Japanese attack. There would have been a very large unit, which I guess might have been about an armoured division, tending to those tanks and training for the anticipated assault.
I can’t find any reference to any British armoured unit of any size in Malaya before or during WWII.
I don’t know of any sizeable British armoured unit which was captured by the Japanese in Malaya. So, the unit had to go somewhere after its tanks were supposedly sent to the USSR. But I can’t find any reference to an armoured unit, which wasn’t in Malaya to begin with, being sent somewhere else at any time before or during WWII.
The assertion about Churchill sending 350 tanks from Malaya to the USSR isn’t supported by the evidence, or lack of it.
RS* is correct.350 tanks would be a about right(tho a bit high) for the average British armored Division compliment. But that leaves nearly 15,000 troops to twiddle their thumbs. Hard to misplace that many, so there indeed should be a record of their disposition.
You present Churchill’s decision to go into Greece as capricious and pointless.
Churchill could certainly be capricious, but his reasoning was that it was important to support the Greeks. He certainly failed to support his own forces with adequate air support, as he also did in Malaya, but it is unfair to present him as capriciously committing troops to a knowingly pointless expedition which would cost needless lives. He judged the circumstances at the time and made a decision which it is easy to see in hindsight as a poor one, but he was the head of the only nation fighting the Nazis at the time while fearing an attack by Japan and he disposed his forces according to his assessments of the military and political considerations.
You ignore the fact that, by good luck - which is often a decider in war - rather than good management, Churchill’s commitment in Greece forced the Germans to divert forces to Greece and interfered with Barbarossa to the extent that it might have deprived Germany of victory in the first phase of that campaign.
There is plenty to criticise about Churchill in his long career, but there is also much to respect and a good deal to praise about his leadership in WWII. The fact is, he inspired his nation and beyond and, most importantly, he won. And he did it as a democratic leader without any of the instruments of compulsion his enemies had.
Overall, in WWII his determination to bring America into the war was a sound and ultimately successful strategic and political aim which he pursued skilfully to defeat the Nazis and Japan and to preserve Britain. It’s a bloody sight more than Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini managed to do in their countries, despite being militarily more powerful than Britain.
So?
In realpolitik, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
What would you have done when given a choice between arming the Soviets to fight on your behalf to greater effect for your benefit than you could manage with the same arms and retaining the arms to lesser benefit for you?
Deadly naval artillery support for what?
Artillery support was not their mission, nor Admiral Phillips’ intent.
The loss due to lack of air support was primarily Admiral Phillip’s fault as he pressed on in the belief that air power could not sink battleships.
He didn’t deprive Malaya of the tanks and planes. He decided not to allocate them to Malaya, on the basis of his assessment of wider strategic considerations.
There is a world of difference between taking away something you have given and not giving it in the first place.
From the narrow perspective of the defence of Malaya, it was an appalling decision by Churchill not to provide the necessary and available air support. But he wasn’t concerned solely with Malaya and had to make his dispositions in light of wider and more important and more pressing concerns.
Apart from Indonesia being the Netherlands’ rather than Churchill’s responsibility, you are having a severe flight of fancy in asserting that the Indian and Pacific Oceans were left at the mercy of the Japanese solely because of Churchill’s failures in the defence of Singapore and the British fleet fled to Kenya thus, by your implication, leaving the Pacific and Indian oceans free of British naval influence while the RN holed up in Kenya.
I can’t be bothered explaining why this is just purple prose from someone who appears to let his pen, full of bitter ink against Churchill, run ahead of his historical knowledge
See my last paragraph.
Really?
So, apart from the disruption of war production, the bombing didn’t disrupt German lines of communication and divert manpower and materiel resources to static air defence of potential targets rather than being available for operational purposes?
Well, that’s really terrible.
Churchill was a real **** for ordering that.
I mean, all the Germans ever did with their bombers in Rotterdam and Coventry and London and sundry other places was deliver cute little fluffy stuffed animals to the local children looking adoringly to the sky as the Nazi bombers flew over on friendship missions, selflessly risking their aircraft and lives in the flak sent up by unreasonably hostile Britishers.
Could you provide sources for this?
And balance that against the loss of workers and production capacity caused by British (and American) bombing?
If the bombing missions were, as you said above, to no avail, why did German industry move underground?
To be closer to the rabbit burrows so they could more accurately model the stuffed toys they were dropping from their bombers on England?
Ummm, possibly not, given that by then the traffic was pretty much one way, which might have had something to with German industry going underground, while British industry didn’t.
I may be missing your point, if you have one apart from slagging Churchill again, but isn’t it a bit of a non sequitur to assert that Churchill used the money (which wasn’t what Lend Lease provided) inefficiently and then complain that if the US hadn’t provided that support then Germany would have defeated Britain?
Britain defeated Germany.
That seems to be a fairly efficient use of Lend Lease, by both Britain and America, to me.
Really?
I thought the ‘Germany First’ policy was what Roosevelt and Churchill agreed.
But the whole alliance turns out to have been based on Britain recovering Burma.
Silly me!
There’s so much there to which to respond, but this site probably doesn’t have the bandwidth to hold it.
So I’ll just express my wonderment about why you think that the RN was able to recover Rangoon from its base in Ceylon when you previously had the RN scuttling off from Ceylon to Kenya for the duration after the British Pearl Harbor.
And if they remained in Malaya they would have been utilised in the fighting as they would have been an even larger body of troops than the two brigades of the Australian 8th Division who figure consistently in the record, but I can’t recall any references to British armoured units fighting dismounted.
It’s strange how people consider Churchill’s, Zhukov’s, etc, highly biased books and memoirs as references. On the other hand it is difficult to find references to the major blunders, which were often well covered. For example, Patton’s Hammelburg incident is known mostly from a few personal accounts, not much official information (Patton sent 300 brave men 50 miles into the enemy lines to liberate what he thought were 900 Americans and had promised the Officer in charge the medal of honor, but didn’t deliver, because they were killed or captured and the medal of honor would have required an investigation). Stalin erased the second most costly battle of the war, Rzhev from Soviet history (Hitler also tried to erase it from Nazi history), etc, and Churchill certainly did everything in his power to write his favorable history and to cover his booboos. It is unfortunate that the British site does not include references about the 350 tanks, but I find it hard to believe that it is an invention and that the British military would spend a fortune building a fort and not provide any tanks to counter the invasion, that Percival had predicted would take place first in the north, where the Japanese needed to establish airbases and then in Singapore, where the only fort was built.
In any event, if you cannot believe that Churchill would be daft enough to leave Singapore without tanks, you must concede that he was daft enough to send the hundreds of Hurricanes to Stalin that would have saved Singapore, Burma, etc, and the millions of people who perished at the hands of the Japanese and which made little difference in the USSR.
Regarding the USSR destroying a big part of the Nazi army. If the US had not given Stalin all the fuel, trucks, explosives, airplanes, trains, etc, Hitler´s supply lines would have extended more and more in the huge USSR, while Stalin could have continued to withdraw all the way to the Urals and beyond, killing Germans for years and ruining their economy even more. After a few years both Germany and the USSR would have been so weak that the Americans and British could have beaten them easily. Had Roosevelt not given Europe priority, but attacked only Japan with all the resources he gave Stalin and Churchill (who wasted them mostly bombing Germany and fighting pointlessly in Italy), Japan would have collapsed by 1943 and then the Angloes could have invaded from Iran and defeated both worn down dictators, avoiding 50 years of cold war and the risk of destroying humankind.
Here is yet another unreferenced list of what I guestimate Stalin received:
Throughout WW II the Soviets received about 2,050 Hurricanes, 1,020 Spitfires, 4,700 Airacobras, 2,100 P-40s, 2,400 King Cobras, 203 P-47s, 5,000 Douglas A-20s, 866 B-25 Mitchells (18,339 planes in total), 2,000 Railroad engines, 4,100 Sherman tanks, over 300,000 Ford and Studebaker trucks, 51,000 Willys MB jeeps, 11,000 railroad cars, millions of tons of high octane aviation fuel, food, steel, explosives, etc, The Irani railroad alone transported 5 million metric tonnes of supplies to the USSR. In total the USSR received 178 million metric tonnes. In contrast, the Germans had to relocate many Luftwaffe units from the USSR to North Africa in the winter of 1942 (during the Battle of Stalingrad), lost over 25,000 airplanes on the western front and the factories, rail road centers, power plants and cities were consistently bombarded, which greatly contributed to the defeat of Germany in the USSR.
Leccy, regarding the invasion of Norway: Iron ore only traveled through Narvik in the few months when the Baltic froze, but most of the year it traveled directly from Sweden to Germany over the Baltic. The main reasons for the Invasion were that Churchill wanted to avoid giving the German navy access to the north Atlantic and also to avoid a repetition of the prolonged trench warfare in France of WW I, chosing Norway as a battle ground, in which the formidable allied navy would provide a major advantage and where tanks could not be readily deployed by the Germans. Not a bad idea. Unfortunately, he did not take into account the crucial role that 1,000 Luftwaffe and most of the Kriegsmarine airplanes would play. Accordingly, after destroying or incapacitating most of the German fleet and having the Germans with very little fuel, ammunition, etc in Norway, the British ran away, starting the long string of exemplary evacuations.
Who doesn’t believe there were no tanks in Malaya?
The issue in this thread is whether 350 tanks were sent from Malaya to the USSR.
There is no guarantee that 350 tanks would have saved Malaya. Percival’s critical tactical problem was to protect a number of airfields spread around the Malay peninsula. He might well have decided to deploy a significant part of a tank force to static defence of airfields which, as things turned out, were not attacked by the Japanese.
There is also the logistical problem of supplying the tanks with fuel and ordnance and the crews with food, and maintaining the tanks in the field. I’m not sure that the British had the necessary transport and field maintenance resources.
How do you know they would have saved Singapore, Burma etc?
How do you know that the Japanese would not have altered their own IJA and IJN aircraft and anti-aircraft dispositions to meet the extra British aircraft?
Did the British have the logistical and maintenance back-up to maintain that number of planes in Malaya and Burma?
Did the British have pilots of sufficient skill to man the planes against the very well trained Japanese pilots?
Why do you find it hard to believe?
I’d prefer the memoirs of anybody present during relevant events to an unreferenced and isolated assertion on a website.
The British did not build a fort. They built a naval base. Don’t confuse the term ‘Fortress Singapore’ with what was actually built there.
One of the valid criticisms of Percival’s defence of Malaya is that he refused to follow the requests of some of his advisers to fortify Singapore, which in turn made it easier for the Japanese to conquer it.
As for spending a fortune, the naval base took a lot longer than originally intended because the project was starved of funds.
Operation Matador had every chance of success without tanks. The problem was not the absence of tanks but Churchill’s refusal, for political and strategic reasons associated with drawing America into the war, to allow Percival to take the initiative and move into Thailand.
Much as you are hostile to Churchill, and much as I am critical of some of his decisions, it has to be conceded that he had a lot more on his plate than just Malaya and Burma. His main aims were to save Britain and after that India. His focus was on Europe and after that India. He did not have sufficient resources to have adequate land, sea and air forces everywhere he wanted or needed them. He had to make decisions about the best use of the available forces.
So far as sending materiel to the USSR rather than Malaya is concerned, that is consistent with his strategic view that it was more important to support the Soviets against the Nazis than fritter his resources away against Japan to no purpose in defeating the Nazis. I think that his was the correct view. It is also consistent with the British and American war planners’ views before the war which led to the ‘Germany first’ policy, and with America devoting no more than about 15% of its resources to the war against Japan. It just happens that 15% of American resources was a hell of a lot more than anything Britain could muster against the Japanese.
The British had excellent pilots in the east, which were able to shoot down a few Zeroes even with Buffaloes and many of those who survived soon became aces. Had they had hundreds of the better Hurricane, the Japs would have paid dearly. The idea that the Japanese had excellent pilots is partly a myth. The problem is that they had faster, more maneuverable andlonger range planes initially (mostly because they had no armor or heavy self-sealing tanks). However, in spite of the faster and more maneuverable planes, it is surprising how many planes they lost to the few Buffaloes, P-40s, Hurricanes and wildcats in 1941 and 42. If their pilots were so good, why did a few flying tigers cause them so much damage for so long, with so few losses? By the time the Hellcats and Lightnings arrived, they were a few Jap aces and mostly pilots with very few hours of training, for lack of fuel, planes and time.
What made the Jap air attacks so effective was the initial surprise factor and the initial lack of large numbers of decent planes, once war was declared and planes started to arrive they were promptly wiped out.
Singapore was quite a fortress, with five 15" cannon. However, the lousy planning resulted in very few high explosive shells (even though Percival had predicted an attack from Malaya, not a naval attack on Singapore), which were soon exhausted and the large number of armor-piercing shells were almost useless against personnel and tanks. Percival refused to build small support fortifications (in spite of having 6,000 engineers at his disposal), incredibly, because they were bad for moral. Moreover, the water supply, warehouses, etc, were easily captured by the Japs. To see what effect high explosive shells have on tanks and personnel, look up the damage caused by the Texas’ 14" cannon on Panzer divisions in Normandy that believed to be beyond range (the captain flooded a little one side to gain more elevation and reach further). It appears in Bradley’s excellent memoirs (A Soldier’s Story). It’s incredible that the Texas would have more HE shells and cannon than a fortress.
The excuse that the British were expecting a naval attack or no attack at all rather than a certain land attack makes no sense in the face of 95,000 troops, which would be of little use in a naval attack and required a lot of supplies and money to maintain there.
Many of the light Japanese tanks had only small caliber machine guns and thin armor, so they were no match for the old British tanks but very helpful against troops.
The British must have had plenty of ammo (they had many years to transport the supplies and they probably would not send them to the USSR without ammo (they would have been completely useless).
My point about Stalin is that he went from being the worst tyrant after the Ukrainian famine that killed millions (Stalin stole absolutely all the grain from the Ukraine), the murderous purges of 37 (he killed 30,000 of his best officers, including Tukhachevsky, perhaps the most brilliant strategist in the world at the time and millions of his most competent civilians) and the invasion of Poland and tiny Finland (which galvanized the world, inspiring special church collections in the US and much of the western world) and from being the best accomplice Hitler ever had, to being the ally that deserved as much help as possible, including giving priority to Europe. Hitler was up to his neck in the USSR and posed no threat to the UK. Had Churchill stopped bombing Germany without escort planes, Hitler would have stopped bombing the UK and moved his bombers and fighters to the USSR, where they were urgently needed. Stalin would not have collapsed overnight even without any help. He had 170 millon people, against 80 million Germans and unlimited natural resources. Germany would have to slow down as it advanced, leaving more and more partisans in its territory and stretching the supply lines. Germany had no long range bombers to destroy the Soviet industry in the Urals and was producing much fewer tanks, cannon, submachine-guns and planes than the USSR. It seems to me obvious that eliminating Japan in 2 years and concentrating on defeating Hitler and Stalin is far more effective in the long term than to fight on two fronts and to make Stalin the strongest man on Earth.
Another comment about the US being the Arsenal of Democracy. Britain ruled India in the most absurd way possible. Australia with 7 million people produced more steel in 1939 than India with 378 million people, even though India had plenty of iron ore and dirt-cheap labor. Rice productivity was also very low (the north relied on rice from Burma) and tea, indigo, etc, produced ridiculously little income for the Indians. Although 5 million Indians served in WW II, there were extremely few Indian pilots, generals, colonels, etc, In other words, the British considered the Indians Untermenschen to be exploited and who should consume the products of British industry, rather than truly equal members of the commonwealth, which could have multiplied the industrial might of the empire. For example, the Spitfire’s fuselage and wings required an enormous amount of careful manual labour, which millions of Indians could have easily perfomed at a low cost in 1940, leaving the planes to be assembled in Britain and putting the Merlin engines used in the Hurricane to better use. The British should have also built large shipyards, truck factories, etc, in India before the war. providing employment and boosting demand for British goods.
Giving 30 billion in aid to Britain ensured that democracy would not reach 378 million indians for years. On the other hand, the US could have forced the British to relinquish India and then employed and trained millions of Indians for the US army, Air Force, etc, with decent wages and guaranteeing Indian independence after Hitler and Stalin were defeated. Once Burma was liberated and China could be supplied, the US should also have ignored the corrupt Chiang and the communist Mao and recruited millions of starving Chinese (there were 535 million of them without a decent job). In 1944, with millions of Indians, Chinese, British and Americans, the exhausted Germans and Soviets would collapse rapidly, for as the Allies advance in their territories from Iran, China, korea, etc, and treat prisoners fairly, millions of battle weary and inhumanly treated soldiers would surrender en masse, like it occurred when the Americans broke into Germany.
An off-topic about India. Akbar the great had breech loading steel cannon mounted on armored elephants (tanks) centuries before Napoleon and Lee fought with muzzle loading bronze cannon. India also produced the only high carbon steel rifles ever produced, which operated at greater pressure, extending their range.
samjok
You seem to basing your answers on what you think would be credible and logical as opposed to some factual evidence. The single source you quoted about the 350 tanks was written by a secondary school history teacher who has not added any source of that info, let alone a verifiable one.
Many of the light Japanese tanks had only small caliber machine guns and thin armor, so they were no match for the old British tanks but very helpful against troops.
Most British tanks in 1940 were only equipped with machine guns the same as the Japanese. All references I have found to tanks in theatre in 1941 were about Light MKVI and some Danish tanks also armed with machine guns.
Info about Norway for you to read sorry its a British source
Norweigan Campaign
If you wish to understand about why Britain was rather ill-equipped and some reasons why units facing the Germans and Japanese lacked many types of equipment including AA and AT munitions have a read of these two books. Rather long and dry reading but rather enlightening all the same. India may have had manpower but it did not have the industry to do what you wished it to do. Likewise the US in 1941 was still re-equipping itself having no armoured forces so to speak of in 1940 so could have done little to arm, train and equip more foreign Divisions.
Sorry more British sources
UK-Civil-WarProduction/UK-Civil-WarProduction
British War Economy
Germany had a much larger industrial capacity than the Japanese. Albert Speer finally got it started properly on war production in 1942 when he took over as Armaments Minister as can be seen by the massive increase in production from then on.
Highly relevant issue here - the Greek merchant fleet was enormous, at a time when the Battle of the Atlantic was the only real threat to the UK. Diverting forces to Greece guaranteed that this fleet would end up in Allied hands, while had the UK abandoned Germany there would be a strong possibility that this fleet would be neutral at best, or even attempt to return home under the orders of a puppet Greek government. In comparison, the importance of the forces sent to Greece by the UK was minimal.
He was hardly alone in this - Dunkirk had “demonstrated” that it was very difficult to sink ships in port with air power, let alone ships manoeuvring at sea. The Japanese doctrine of using air power to sink ships at sea - instead of big guns - was actually pretty revolutionary at the time, and nobody was really sure if it would work.
I would hardly call the Greek merchant fleet in 1941 enormous. The Norwegian fleet was indeed enormous and it joined the British war effort, although Norway had been abandoned. The Polish navy, army and pilots joined the British, even though they hadn’t done hardly anything to help them, other than declare war while Hitler and then Stalin invaded Poland. The Czeck, Polish, Norwegian, Dutch and a few French pilots saved Britain during the battle of Britain, because most British pilots had been lost in the continent and Britain abandoned all these countries to the Germans. The same can be said about the not quite so enormous merchant and small naval fleets from Holland, Poland, etc, These countries’ fleets could either join the Germans who had conquered them or join the British, who were fighting against their oppressors. I doubt that sending 62,000 British to Greece with few ariplanes, tanks, etc, and evacuating them with their tail between their legs was the reason for the Greek ships to join the British.
Norway, Dunkirk, Greece, Africa, Tarento, the Bismark and Malta demonstrated the great vulnerability of ships to airplanes. The only reason the British did not lose even more ships in Dunkirk was the lousy weather that provided a great break for Churchill, who took the decision to evacuate in the belief that at best they would have a few days and save 50,000 men.
Precisely my point is that India had no industry and very primitive agriculture, because of the lousy way it was governed. Iran did not have any industry and when Stalin occupied it, he used the abundant labor to manufacture hundreds of thousand of submachine guns (he didn’t think the more than 6 million he was producing in the USSR would be enough). Industry can be made in a hurry during war time. But even before the war it was absurd not to produce 30 times more steel in 1939 in India than in Australia (which didn’t have any industry at the beginning either).
samjok why do you insist on calling every battle that the Allies lose a British abandonment.
The Czeck, Polish, Norwegian, Dutch and a few French pilots saved Britain during the battle of Britain, because most British pilots had been lost in the continent and Britain abandoned all these countries to the Germans
You really need to check your figures out
Battle of Britain Nominal Role
The Few’ were 2353 young men from Great Britain and 574 from overseas, pilots and other aircrew, who are officially recognised as having taken part in the Battle of Britain. Each flew at least one authorised operational sortie with an eligible unit of the Royal Air Force or Fleet Air Arm during the period 10 July to 31 October 1940. 544 lost their lives during the period of the Battle
I doubt that sending 62,000 British to Greece with few ariplanes, tanks, etc, and evacuating them with their tail between their legs was the reason for the Greek ships to join the British.
Lets see shall we. Britain sends troops to help us when Italy and Germany invade, I know we (The remaining Greek Forces and Merchant Marine) wont join the Allies because they were beaten alongside our Forces but we will join the Axis side who have committed attrocities in our country.
Norway, Dunkirk, Greece, Africa, Tarento, the Bismark and Malta demonstrated the great vulnerability of ships to airplanes. The only reason the British did not lose even more ships in Dunkirk was the lousy weather that provided a great break for Churchill, who took the decision to evacuate in the belief that at best they would have a few days and save 50,000 men.
How many ships were sunk by air attack in Norway and Dunkirk and also compare that to how many ships participated in each operation in 1940.
Africa ?? big place mostly land?
Taranto was a very good demonstration to the world of what air power could achieve (when most still did not believe it was possible)
The Bismark was damaged by an aerial torpedo but sunk by Naval Gunfire. Or do you mean the Battle of the Bismark Sea 1943, after quite a few years of practice and refining anti ship strikes it was a good operation.
Maybe you should have added Pearl Harbour along with maybe Midway as examples of the supremacy of airpower over Battlewagons.
The weather over Dunkirk was pretty good for flying the luftwaffe of the time was not trained or equipped for anti ship missions though. Four Destroyers were lost at Dunkirk itself to air attack out of 41 (most of whom did 6 or 7 trips), the more modern destroyers were pulled out of the op after a while to preserve them from further loss leaving it mainly to the old V and W classes from WW1.
Industry can be made in a hurry during war time
Only if you have the money and resources, if you don’t it cant (you still have to buy the equipment and pay contractors and workers to build it all).
I dont know about Iran as it was occupied by Britain and the USSR with an agreement that it only provided Non Military Aid. (Although how providing oil and the railway for supplies to the USSR quite fitted in to that I am not sure).
After occupying jointly Iran, Britain left it in Stalin’s care and it was lucky that he eventually left Iran, but not as soon as the war ended.
Stalin did not care much about agreements and used Iran for all the military purposes he saw fit. He also used the Kingcobras against Germany, although they were given to him exclusively for use against Japan. He also provided the Japanese with important intelligence about American movements (late in the war the British also provided the Germans with some Soviet intelligence).
The British had hundreds of Spitfires and Hurricanes in Dunkirk and lost 100 planes. Not so in Norway, Greece or the Pacific. And visibility did limit dive bombing for many hours.
Those 574 Foreign pilots included several would be aces and shot a disproportionate number of German planes and without them the British pilots would have been overwhelmed during the BoB (the few would have been too few). The most amazing thing is how quickly they adapted to and became very deadly with planes they had never flown.
The reason the RN withdrew from Norway is that it was being trounced by the 1,000 German planes (after the allies conceded defeat, many of the planes were promptly sent to France to defeat again the British). The RN had damaged or sunk most of the German navy and could have easily finished off the Scharnhost, Gneisenau, etc, Instead of chasing them later half way around the world and leaving Norway to the Germans. But did not want to incur more losses and any land forces had also to contend with the planes without much support.
Believe it not WW II was a war mostly of airplanes, specially fighters, without which the bombers were fodder: Poland had almost no airplanes and was licked in weeks, France had few planes and Britain kept the best planes at home (Spitfires), so even though the French and British tanks were much superior to the lousy German tanks of 1940 (mostly Panzer I and all of which were vulnerable even to the French Hutchkiss 25 mm cannon and could not penetrate most of the French and British tanks), France fell promptly thanks to constant dive bombing for hours by primitve Stukas and Hs-123s biplanes which cleared the way for Guderian and defeated several allied counteroffensives. In turn the slow dive bombers survived only because the German fighters had control of the air.
You only care about the ships that are sunk (and plenty were sunk in Norway, Greece, Dunkirk, etc, and without gaining any territory, always evacuating). However, if a ship is taken out of action for months or years, it is almost as important. Many ships that were damaged or sunk in shallow water in Pearl Harbor, Taranto, Dunkirk, Malta, Leningrad (Marad) represented a major loss, even if they were later (sometimes years later) raised back and/or repaired. Many more destroyers were heavily damaged by planes in Dunkirk than were sunk. By the way one was sunk by a torpedo boat, a remarkable deed in a swarm of allied ships.
Had it not been for aerial torpedoes that first slowed it down and then destroyed the Bismarck’s Rudder, it would have escaped to France. So the cheap, linen covered biplanes with 850 hp and an open cockpit, flying close to 100 mph with a torpedo were responsible for the destruction of the 50,000 ton high speed, high tech wonder. That the RN chose to use a flotilla to sink it, instead of finishing it off with aerial torpedoes is another matter.
Some numbers for comparison’s sake would be helpful. But Norway wasn’t ‘abandoned’ as much as the Allies were driven out. I don’t think they really had a choice…
The Polish navy, army and pilots joined the British, even though they hadn’t done hardly anything to help them, other than declare war while Hitler and then Stalin invaded Poland.
What were the other options of Polish aviators? And what help could Poland expect from Britain? A country with a small colonial, constabulary army in 1939! Claiming War on Germany was actually the ultimate “help” Britain (and France) could give as neither possessed forces ready for immediate action in the near future…
The Czeck, Polish, Norwegian, Dutch and a few French pilots saved Britain during the battle of Britain, because most British pilots had been lost in the continent and Britain abandoned all these countries to the Germans.
You seem to throw out these bizarre, totally unsupported factoids in your rants–and it’s getting a bit tiresome. Mostly UK pilots defended Britain, but yes the contribution of the free forces was significant. But “most British pilots had been lost on the continent?” Fighter pilots? I think one of the main recriminations of the French was that Churchill refused to commit valuable RAF fighter squadrons to France. Britain “abandoned” these countries? Really? I thought they retreated in order to preserve what army they had and to prevent a German invasion of Britain…
The same can be said about the not quite so enormous merchant and small naval fleets from Holland, Poland, etc, These countries’ fleets could either join the Germans who had conquered them or join the British, who were fighting against their oppressors. I doubt that sending 62,000 British to Greece with few ariplanes, tanks, etc, and evacuating them with their tail between their legs was the reason for the Greek ships to join the British.
Your numbers here are wrong and simply pulled out of the air–again, it’s getting tiresome. But before you indict the British as running out of Greece with their tail between their legs, you might want to consider the glorious Pyrrhic victory of the German paratroops over the disorganized, static Commonwealth forces on Crete–forcing Hitler to reconsider the use of airborne forces and tying down large numbers of Heer occupation forces…
Norway, Dunkirk, Greece, Africa, Tarento, the Bismark and Malta demonstrated the great vulnerability of ships to airplanes. The only reason the British did not lose even more ships in Dunkirk was the lousy weather that provided a great break for Churchill, who took the decision to evacuate in the belief that at best they would have a few days and save 50,000 men.
I don’t disagree on the argument of air-power vs. shipping. But you’re ignoring the fact that the weather wasn’t that bad, RAF fighter command sent well rested pilots flying planes full of fuel against exhausted Luftwaffe pilots flying long missions from distant bases, inflicting heavy losses on them. Also, the Luftwaffe lacked proper armor-piercing bombs for use against ships IIRC. If Dunkirk showed the vulnerability of shipping to air-power, it also showed the limitations of the Luftwaffe and the limitations of Stukas against Hurricanes…
Precisely my point is that India had no industry and very primitive agriculture, because of the lousy way it was governed.
But provided Britain with a massive contribution of manpower…
Iran did not have any industry and when Stalin occupied it, he used the abundant labor to manufacture hundreds of thousand of submachine guns (he didn’t think the more than 6 million he was producing in the USSR would be enough). Industry can be made in a hurry during war time. But even before the war it was absurd not to produce 30 times more steel in 1939 in India than in Australia (which didn’t have any industry at the beginning either).
Seems like a rather trite contribution by the Iranians. And what you specifically mean by industry being “made in a hurry during war time” is rather nebulous. The Germans began WWII nowhere near the US in terms of industrial production, and ended it vastly more so inferior…
If my rantings tire you, you can always ignore them.
Hitler had an uncanny ability to draw the wrong conclusions. The fall of Crete at the cost of a few thousand paratroopers impressed the British and Americans so much that they developed large airborne forces. The heavy German paratrooper losses were more because of the primitive, unsteerable parachute with only one strap and because the troopers landed hundreds of meters away from their weapons, which were enclosed in containers and the unarmed troopers were extremely vulnerable while fetching their weapons. Losing a few thousand men while capturing a valuable island is immensely more justifiable than loosing tens or hundreds of thousands while loosing territory and evacuating. Had Hitler used paratroopers to capture some of the Soviet airfields 50 km behind the front in Barbarossa, it would have been extremely helpful.
5 million Indian volunteers out of 378 million is a ridiculously tiny fraction of the potential in human and natural resources. Let me put it another way. Had the Japs attacked only the Brits and not the Americans in 41. Without massive American help (the American public would have gotten tired of providing enormous amounts of materiel without much chance of recooping as the British kept losing the world over and pressured Roosevelt to cancel lend-lease), and without diverting forces to the Philippines or Pearl Habor, the Japs could have easily captured Ceylon, Madagascar and Aden and closed the Red sea to Britain. the hundreds of millions of Indians could do almost nothing to defend themselves against Japan (even less than the Chinese).
German production suffered mostly for lack of raw materials and inefficient slave labor, but production in 1942, 1943 and 44 is beyond impressive for the size of the country and population and being at war. They managed to fight the Soviets, British, Americans, free French, etc, with what they produced (including synthetic fuel), while the immense USSR and British empire relied on American fuel, trucks, planes, raw materials, food, etc, and many of the ships to transport them.
I never understood how could Roosevelt justify providing so much to 170 million Soviets swimming in resources and to more than 400 million British subjects also with lots of resources in order to fight 80 million Germans with very little oil from Romania, ores, etc, If these huge powers with more than 570 million and a great many times more resources than Germany could not defend themselves even fighting together, they did not deserve supplies.
Iran is peanuts compared to India, which did not contribute even what you consider a trite hundreds of thousands of submachine guns.