Advanced French Fighters vs 1942/1943 contemporaries (10 Viewers)

[OldGeezer]

I too was bought up on inFerial (now called American in computing) measurements but have been using metric since the tail end of the 50's when my school started teaching metric. It is so much easier and more logical than measuring in 128ths or 256ths and having multiple gallons and ounces and miles and so many other measurements that have the same names but different values.

Inches and feet and gallons and pounds got mankind into controlled flight, they won WW2, they took us to the moon and created modern computers and the Internet. Not bad for an "inferior" system.

 

[andy1967]

The question is how long could Germany fight a protracted war against Britain and France without running out of money or resources without plundering France, Greece,Russia Norway and Denmark to name a few. What would happen to German forces in occupied Norway and Denmark?Would they withdraw , be reinforced or defeated by Britain and France which would allow Iron Ore shipments from Sweden to German to be disrupted.Then you have Russia, without the invasion of Russia, would the Russians annex Romania to gain control of the Oil fields.

 

[Steamed_Banana]

It gets very hard to predict what happens after we change a major thing like whether France falls. It's very hard to imagine France managing to hold out though if their military was better organized they probably could have. But in anything like a realistic scenario I can only really imagine a few more months at the most. Unless you reorganized the entire French army.

 

[ThomasP]

Another aspect of 'what if France does not fall when it did historically'.

The French Mediterranean fleet would be available. Not an overall war winner, but many of the problems the British navy faced in the MTO could be minimized. On paper and in theory, the French navy could stand off the Italian navy all by itself. The early-war French fleet combined with the British fleet could (probably would) prevent the Italians & Germans from maintaining any sizable force in North Africa.

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[ThomasP]

Addition to the above.

With France still in the fight, a significant number of airbases would be available in Tunisia - not just Malta. How much would this affect the supply routes?

Most of Sicily would be reachable from airbases in Tunisia (the far side of Sicily is only about 300 miles).