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| Britain |
| Battle of Britain was won at sea(?) |
| 2006-08-24 |
| The Battle of Britain was not won by the RAF but by the Royal Navy, military historians have concluded, provoking outrage among the war's surviving fighter pilots. Challenging the "myth" that Spitfires and Hurricanes held off the German invaders in 1940, the monthly magazine History Today has concluded that it was the might of the Navy that stood between Britain and Nazi occupation. The view is backed by three leading academics who are senior military historians at the Joint Service Command Staff College teaching the future admirals, generals and air marshals. They contend that the sheer numbers of destroyers and battleships in the Channel would have obliterated any invasion fleet even if the RAF had lost the Battle of Britain. The idea that a "handful of heroes saved these islands from invasion" was nothing more than a "perpetuation of a glorious myth," the article suggests. "Many still prefer to believe that in the course of that summer a few hundred outnumbered young men so outfought a superior enemy as solely to prevent a certain invasion of Britain. Almost none of which is true," reports Brian James, the author. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #29 It's all about who had the best Ascots. |
| Posted by: 6 2006-08-24 20:10 |
| #28 Thank God for both the RAF and RN! |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2006-08-24 18:53 |
| #27 Contrary to popular opinion,it wasn't the lack of long range bombers that doomed the Luftwaffe. It was the lack of long range fighters that could roam the legnth of Britain that did them in-that and Fighter Command,etc. The ME-109s could only stay a few minutes over London before they had to turn back. Numerous German fighters ran out of gas before they could get home. The bomber bit is left over propaganda from the big bomber enthusiasts in the RAF and USAF who then and now tried desperately to justify their huge cost.(one of the great little known stats from WW2 is before the revamped P-51 started flying escort missions less than a third of 8AF bomber crews completed their 25 mission tour. After the introduction,over two thirds of bomber crews completed tours,which were extended to 30 missions.) |
| Posted by: Stephen 2006-08-24 18:29 |
| #26 Its silly to point at one service and say they get all the glory. Winning wars is a team effort. Plenty of congragulations to go around. Air, Navy and every common Briton can hold their heads high. |
| Posted by: BrerRabbit 2006-08-24 18:11 |
| #25 Imagine D-Day with a German Luftwaffe of 1940... it would have been a disaster |
| Posted by: Flenter Elminter4886 2006-08-24 16:37 |
| #24 LOD hit it on the head. It's all about selling more magazines. Now there will be a food fight for the next six months and sales will syrocket! |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2006-08-24 15:00 |
| #23 It's been a quagmire ever since! We're still stuck in Germany! |
| Posted by: Lancasters Over Dresden 2006-08-24 14:17 |
| #22 What war? It was all just an inter-European squabble until the Yanks got involved because they feared the United Europe they knew would result. Damn Yanks! |
| Posted by: historical revisionist 2006-08-24 14:08 |
| #21 Prussian Blue |
| Posted by: Lancasters Over Dresden 2006-08-24 13:27 |
| #20 "#18 Aw, cmon don't be modest. Everybody knows it was the LANCASTERS that won the battle." Arrgghhhh! Nothing more beautiful than the sound of Lancasters over Dresden! Speaking of Dresden, ABC the other night had a follow-up special on those brainwashed Nazi twins, Prussian Blue girls, and they mentioned that their divorced mommy has named her new-born son Dresden. What a chucklehead! |
| Posted by: Lancasters Over Dresden 2006-08-24 13:25 |
| #19 *ahem* *cough* I was still editing my comments and doing some research for confirmation before posting so I didn't see your comments posted at the time. But as you can see I generally agree. |
| Posted by: Dar 2006-08-24 13:14 |
| #18 Aw, cmon don't be modest. Everybody knows it was the LANCASTERS that won the battle. |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2006-08-24 13:05 |
| #17 "#16 I don't think it was either the RAF or the RN that won the battle. Rather it was lost by Hitler and Goering, who decided to switch from hitting military targets like airfields and radar stations to civilian targets like London. They came very close to forcing the RAF airfields to relocate away from southern England, then the RAF hit Berlin, Hitler had a trademark hissy fit, and the Luftwaffe was tasked with hitting cities in retaliation." *Ahem* *cough* Airdromes is Brit-speak for airfields. Okay, so I neglected to mention the Luftwaffe's failure to continue their raids on radar installations. Otherwise ... |
| Posted by: Lancasters Over Dresden 2006-08-24 13:00 |
| #16 I don't think it was either the RAF or the RN that won the battle. Rather it was lost by Hitler and Goering, who decided to switch from hitting military targets like airfields and radar stations to civilian targets like London. They came very close to forcing the RAF airfields to relocate away from southern England, then the RAF hit Berlin, Hitler had a trademark hissy fit, and the Luftwaffe was tasked with hitting cities in retaliation. |
| Posted by: Dar 2006-08-24 12:44 |
| #15 The RAF won so the RN didn't have to. If it takes the RN 60 years to get the public relations boys going they are pathetic. More likely someone waited until enough memories had faded before making the claim. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2006-08-24 12:36 |
| #14 Luftwaffe's dual failure to develop a Douhet-inspired "battle-plane" (something like the B-17 Flying Fortress with its compliment of initially 10, then eventually 13 .50 machineguns) and fighter-escorts capable of sustained time over the UK, doomed the Germans. Also, Hitler's ill-fated decision to shift bombing RAF airdromes to cities gave the Brits a badly needed reprieve. The claim that the Royal Navy won the Battle of Britain is yet another case of selling more issues of a magazine (in this case) blended with good ole historical revisionism. |
| Posted by: Lancasters Over Dresden 2006-08-24 12:28 |
| #13 The Battle of Britain WAS the air battle. There is some wilful ignorance in this story. |
| Posted by: Grunter 2006-08-24 11:41 |
| #12 Of course, it is one thing to say that the Germans would cross and another one that they would be able to land. They had no D-Day like barges (these were invented later). And no PLUTO or Mullberries so they depended on taking a harbour fast in order to get supplies. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-08-24 11:02 |
| #11 During the Crete campaign, when the Germans had total air surpremacy, the RN was still able, from far distant bases, to sink or drive off every convoy they tried to push through. Right, except the total number of attempts was one. The convoy got delayed and the night fell so it was no longer under the protection of the Lufwaffe. Then the British found it. At dawn the German airmen found a few surviving Axis ships pursued by the British ships and a single Italian destroyer fighting a xdesperate delaying action. The intervention of the Stukas forced the British to call off the pursuit. Also so many British units were lost or put out of service for months during the evacuation of Crete taht for a time their Esat Mediterranean Fleet was not an effective force. For the Battle of Britain, no admiral or Sea Lord had any doubt that the RN would be unable to prevent the landings if the Luftwaffe had gained air supremacy. RN's role was however crucial because it raised the stakes for the Germans: they couldn't content with air superiority, they needed total and undisputed control over the channel in order to attempt the crossing. If the RAF was able to cover the Navy even for just a couple hours then this would wipe away the feeble German escorts and tens of thousands of German soldiers would drown. Put the Navy out of the panorama and the Germans could have contented with the kind of air superiority they enjoyed from the fall of FRance until the transfer of units eastwards in preparation of Barbarossa. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-08-24 11:00 |
| #10 Even with a totally unopposed landing, the Germans would have had trouble getting their river barges in order. If the Luftwaffe had had air supremacy, it would have been able to give the RN a bad time. |
| Posted by: gromky 2006-08-24 10:17 |
| #9 If WWII taught us anything, it taught us a new reality that Air supremacy made land and sea supremacy possible. Leave it to the eggheads and 'academics' who never fought in a battle to say otherwise. |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2006-08-24 10:17 |
| #8 There is a lot to this theory. During the Crete campaign, when the Germans had total air surpremacy, the RN was still able, from far distant bases, to sink or drive off every convoy they tried to push through. Yeah, they suffered losses, but they accomplished their mission. (They couldn't stop the paratroops, of course, nor correct for the blunders of the ground commanders.) During the Summer of 1940, the RN also sailed over to the French side and bombarded ports. Some ships actually sailed into harbors, and some BBs stood off other ports for hours shelling them. None was lost to air attack. It would have taken all night long to sail across the Channel in those river barges. The DDs and CLs could have made it all at night. Even if the LW had driven off the RAF (arguably they did succeed in gaining local superiority in the Dover area), they would have been virtually powerless at night. Also, during this time, German torpedoes were very unreliable, so the U-boat screen would have been questionable. I don't want to denigrate what the RAF accomplished, but to say that even if they had been defeated, it was hardly all over. |
| Posted by: Jackal 2006-08-24 09:55 |
| #7 Yes, thank you very much, but - you see - we really didn't need you pilots after all. You can read all about it in our new book. We will be selling them, you know. Historical Revisionists |
| Posted by: Bobby 2006-08-24 06:06 |
| #6 AFAIK the RAF did not lost scores of fighters during the Scharnhost and Gneisenaau escape. IN fact despite warnings by the resistance a number of blunders caused that the first time the German ships were attacked they were already near Calais (ie they had nearly crosssed the Channel and were on the verge of entering the North Sea) and successive attacks were weak and uncoordinated so the fast German ships had no trouble evading them. BTW British torpedo boats and I think destroyers tried to attack the German fleet but were repelled so the Royal Navy did play a part. The British lost about 100 planes during the ill-fated raid agsint Dieppe but as I said AFAIK tehre were no major air to air battles during the Scharnhost and Gneisenauu escape. About destroyers stopping a German landing, just remind what happenned during eth evacuation of Crete where a far smaller number of German aircraft crippled the British fleet. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-08-24 04:38 |
| #5 Then there was the mid-war episode when the Germany Navy sailed 2 warships and accompanying support vessels, through the English Channel. The RAF lost scores of fighters when they engaged, while the German ships were barely touched. The Royal Navy played no part. |
| Posted by: Snease Shaiting3550 2006-08-24 00:58 |
| #4 Oh and Britain might have produced more planes, but they were not producing more pilots. You can have all the planes in the world, but no pilots planes just sits there. |
| Posted by: djohn66 2006-08-24 00:56 |
| #3 I could make a case that the Battle of Britain was won in the Manchester factories that were working flat out to build radars. Radars that removed the element of surprise that aircraft always had in warfare until that point. With radar, the British always knew when the German aircraft were coming and were in the air waiting for them when the German planes arrived. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-08-24 00:55 |
| #2 If Germany got air supremacy them ships would have been sunk, come on people wake up. |
| Posted by: djohn66 2006-08-24 00:32 |
| #1 Tempest in a teapot. The Germans had to have air supremacy over the channel to even think about executing SEALION. Even Hitler wasn't that stupid. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2006-08-24 00:14 |