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The Basket
Senior Master Sergeant
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- Jun 27, 2007
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^^^ This.The record of the German Navy, its culture and traditions, are not very deep as Britain's were and still are, IMO. Only the German U-boatmen created an indigenous submariner's culture - the hunter, the German Wolf. This they shared with fighter pilots and tankers.
The 'big ships' turned out -- for the most part, to be of very little value -- they scared the hell out of everybody and they were beautiful, 'Germanic' ships, but, and I'm now speaking of WW2, the greatest consistent payback the German war machine ever got from the big ships was in the Baltic, after the collapse from Bagration (June 22, 1944). Again and again, the guns with their long reach helped the Herr maintain an 'orderly' withdraw on the Northern Front.
Other big German ships were held, unused, and destroyed at anchor by Britsh means; or roamed free briefly to be destroyed by the Royal Navy in blazing gun battles; using lesser ships.
It takes generations to grow a Navy and its ships. Jutland, IIRC, was the only major naval engagement - test - the German Navy had experienced since Bismark pulled the whole puzzle together under the Kaiser -- who 'had to have a navy', just like his British and Russian cousins.
In strategic terms, the only terms that matter to a fighting Navy, the Royal Navy won the Battle of Jutland.
Other big German ships were held, unused, and destroyed at anchor by Britsh means; or roamed free briefly to be destroyed by the Royal Navy in blazing gun battles; using lesser ships.
You and not only you forget Ultra. Comes in very handy knowing what your opponent plans are minute by minute. How and even who is doing what.
Read his post.Errrrr...Ultra in 1916? I don't think so.
Material victories don't win wars unless they give you a strategic victory that puts you in a better position to ensure the defeat of your enemy. At the end of the Battle, the Imperial fleet ran back home, having not broken the Royal Navy's blockade, which mean the British carried on starving the German industry of strategic materials and the German people of food, ensuring the Allied victory.The battle of Jutland was a material victory for the German.....
No. The German gunnery optics were superior, allowing them more accurate fire at long range whilst running away, and the greater level of internal division bulkheads made the German ships superior in survivability, but their chemists and metallurgists were not more advanced......simply because the Germans had better metallurgists and chemists.....
Again, no. Against the RN's battlecruisers that was completely irrelevant, it was the thinness of the battlecruisers' armour that made them vulnerable, along with the poor standards of ammunition handling in the RN turrets. However, the RN maintained a higher rate of fire through those more risky storage methods, which meant that if they had managed to get the whole of the larger RN fleet to cross the T of the fleeing Germans then the Germans would have all been sunk in quick order......The German shells had less tendency to break up on impact and their explosives didn't detonate prematurely.....
Which ignore the fact the the Q turret commander on HMS Lion, despite being mortally wounded, quickly gave the command to flood the magazines and saved Lion. And the German ships had greater internal division becasue the pre-War Imperial fleet lost ships to accidental magazine fires in peacetime. the British didn't realise it was a bigger issue because they had better peacetime operational experience.......More importantly their propellant was far more stable. I can't think of any German warship that blew up at anchor like Vanguard, Bulwak and Natal. At Dogger Bank the aft two turrets of Seydlitz burned out completely without exploding.....
And yet the British beat the Germans with superior aircraft and tanks, designed in Britain, and the Royal Navy kept the Imperial Navy bottled up and ineffective for the rest of War, whilst the German industrial base struggled and stagnated because the Germans simply didn't have the intelligence to realise their geopolitical situation at the start of the War meant they were doomed to lose. Not being geniuses, they repeated the exact same mistake in 1939, when - again - superior British designs (especially in aircraft) beat the Germans hollow......The upper class twits who ran Britain were more interested in learning Latin and Greek than developing an understanding of science (Charles Rolls was a notable exception). The German educational emphasis on mechanics and science paid off during the war. The fact that the upper class twits gave away the chemical industry to Germany well certainly did help. Giving away vital industries to rival countries never pays.
To be clear I am saying the Germans had a material victory in the sense that they destroyed more ships than the British. Jutland was undoubtedly a strategic victory for the British and also a tactical victory for Jellicoe. Jellicoe was unfairly criticized for not delivering a second Trafalgar when in fact he handled his fleet as perfectly as could be done given the communications systems available at the time. Other admirals did far worse in WWII with much better communication equipment. He out thought Scheer who main tactic was run away, run away.Material victories don't win wars unless they give you a strategic victory that puts you in a better position to ensure the defeat of your enemy. At the end of the Battle, the Imperial fleet ran back home, having not broken the Royal Navy's blockade, which mean the British carried on starving the German industry of strategic materials and the German people of food, ensuring the Allied victory.
No. The German gunnery optics were superior, allowing them more accurate fire at long range whilst running away, and the greater level of internal division bulkheads made the German ships superior in survivability, but their chemists and metallurgists were not more advanced.
Again, no. Against the RN's battlecruisers that was completely irrelevant, it was the thinness of the battlecruisers' armour that made them vulnerable, along with the poor standards of ammunition handling in the RN turrets. However, the RN maintained a higher rate of fire through those more risky storage methods, which meant that if they had managed to get the whole of the larger RN fleet to cross the T of the fleeing Germans then the Germans would have all been sunk in quick order.
Which ignore the fact the the Q turret commander on HMS Lion, despite being mortally wounded, quickly gave the command to flood the magazines and saved Lion. And the German ships had greater internal division becasue the pre-War Imperial fleet lost ships to accidental magazine fires in peacetime. the British didn't realise it was a bigger issue because they had better peacetime operational experience.
And yet the British beat the Germans with superior aircraft and tanks, designed in Britain, and the Royal Navy kept the Imperial Navy bottled up and ineffective for the rest of War, whilst the German industrial base struggled and stagnated because the Germans simply didn't have the intelligence to realise their geopolitical situation at the start of the War meant they were doomed to lose. Not being geniuses, they repeated the exact same mistake in 1939, when - again - superior British designs (especially in aircraft) beat the Germans hollow.
I think the "not geniuses" part is more critical than the "superior British designs" part to the outcome of the war. As neither an Anglophile nor a Teutonophile, I'm not convinced German designs were all that inferior, just that their arrogance and ideological fixations clouded their vision and impaired their tactics and strategy. For a nation whose long term goal was to subdue the vast steppes of USSR, not designing more range into their aircraft seems in hindsight rather short-sighted. Also, with their extensive electronics expertise, the failure to recognize the impact that radar and radar networks would have on aerial campaigns is particularly odd. And then there's the overconfidence in Enigma. And the curtailment of R&D work once the shooting started. And the lack of long term thinking in terms of personnel utilization, especially highly skilled assets such as Uboat and flight crews. The failure to acknowledge that the "short and sweet" war of conquest had devolved into a long term war of attrition.Not being geniuses, they repeated the exact same mistake in 1939, when - again - superior British designs (especially in aircraft) beat the Germans hollow.
OK, let's assume Hitler doesn't attack Russia in June 1941. He doesn't declare war on the USA in December 1941 and leaves the Japanese to soak up US efforts and restrict the British Empire, meaning Hitler only has to fight the Commonwealth. It still leaves him unable to defeat the British Empire because his force is predominantly a European continental army with very limited navy and air transport. He also has an economy unable to produce the material, especially petrol/oil/lubricants, he needs for a long war, and his Romanian oilfields are vulnerable to long-range RAF bombers from the Middle East, especially as the RAF can still buy B-24s from the US under Lend-Lease in 1941. If Hitler doesn't invade Russia in June 1941, then he has to keep a massive force tied down in Poland to guard against a Soviet invasion, and another force tied down in Norway in case the Soviets decide to occupy all of Finland and push into Scandinavia. And, of course, another large force is already tied down in Occupied France in case the British invade across the Channel. The size of the Royal Navy ensures Britain can invade Europe pretty much wherever they wish, whilst the Germans have zero chance of invading the UK."... defeated by nothing but brute force"
With the emphasis on 'brute' ... and that is why retaking Europe would have been such an impossible challenge had the Soviet's not been prepared to bleed white to keep Russia red.
OK, let's assume Hitler doesn't attack Russia in June 1941. He doesn't declare war on the USA in December 1941 and leaves the Japanese to soak up US efforts and restrict the British Empire
I'm not sure I buy this scenario. Without the huge resource drain of the eastern front, Germany can dominate North Africa, pulverize Malta, Gibraltar, Alexandria, and turn the Mediterranean into a Nazi lake. There goes Suez and access to Middle East oil. Turkey might find it expedient to cooperate in return for revival of its former Ottoman glory in the new world order. Germany doesn't have to conquer the entire African continent; with the Sahara as a barrier to the south, only the north coastal perimeter needs to be occupied and defended. If Gibraltar becomes Axis, Spain, Morocco, and Algeria will likely follow, extending the basing areas for U-boats and FW200s to interdict shipping in the Atlantic and threatening South America-Africa aircraft ferrying routes. With Egypt and Suez in Axis hands, U-boats can operate in the Indian Ocean, further interdicting Commonwealth shipping.The British will still defeat the Axis in Africa because the African continent is simply too big for Hitler to ever conquer