Did the RN win the Battle of Britain?

[Soren]

Fighter-bombers could carry bombs, but they were very inaccurate in dropping them. In 1944 RAF Typhoons, which specialised in ground attack, were assessed by Operational Research to have an average miss distance of 110m when dropping bombs. LW fighters did not have as much practice. And especially not by night.

So you're comparing the RAF's results at the very well camoflaged terrain of Normandy with anti-ship bombing ?? Seriously Tony, there's no comparison. A vehicle the size of a tank can easily hide or make a hard target of itself in a place like the bocage, but a 350 feet destroyer located in open waters hasn't got the slightest chance.

A good example of how effective air attacks are against warships, even massively defended ones, is the British Swordfish attack on the Bismarck which was packed with AA guns - A destroyer was dead meat if placed in the same situation.

Stukas were certainly accurate, but again, not by night. And (for at least the third time) their record against moving warships at Dunkirk was most unimpressive.

The Stuka did VERY well against moving ships at Norway and in the Mediterranean, delivering devastating blows to the RN at both places.

I am not aware that Stukas had ever dropped torpedoes in anger by 1940 - that's a specialised skill all of its own.

What they did doesn't matter, its what they could which matters.

Besides the He-111 and Ju-88 could do the job as-well.

All they had to do? I suggest that you look at the number of torpedoes fired by U-boats which missed their targets when these were slow merchant ships, let alone fast warships.

No I suggest you should take a look at it ! :uboat.net - Special Sections - Attack Analysis

Some German U-boats had a hit-rate higher than 90% !

The only sitting duck would have been a stationary vessel. And even then, the Germans had their problems with torpedo reliability, just as the RN and USN did.

Exactly what torpedo's are we talking about ?? Cause most German torpedoes were very reliable. The only problems I know of experienced with German torps occured early in the war close to Norway, where the magnetic-pistols were affected by the magnetic-interference of the northpole.

For a U-boat to hit a warship travelling at normal cruising speed, it had to follow exactly the right track close to the U-boat (check out the width of the North Sea), and avoid zig-zagging (which was the standard tactic when U-boats were around) so the U-boat commander could calculate the correct lead angle.

Which was achieved quite often..

Perhaps you could explain how a 7-knot U-boat could "sneak up on" a 25+ knot warship? The RN ships would not have been hanging around, with an invasion force to counter.

They wouldn't, they would wait for the warships to come to them, cause like you said the RN wasn't going to wait around with an invasion going on.

Standard operating procedure for a U-boat spotting an aircraft was to submerge. if it didn't, it was risking not only being bombed, but also the aircraft calling in an anti-sub ship. Once submerged, a U-boat had a very poor view through a periscope. And it would have to travel very slowly, because although a periscope was difficult to see, the plume of water it threw up when the boat was moving was not. And (depending on the weather) it was possible to spot U-boats travelling just underwater from the air, even if they didn't have their periscopes up.

With no RAF ? I'd like to see that happen !

And the water would have to be unusually clear for you to spot a submerged U-boat from above, and I'm not talking "English channel" type of clear !

The biggest contribution made by Allied anti-submarine aircraft was not in sinking U-boats, it was in keeping them underwater so they could hardly move and could see very little. Most of the time the aircraft didn't even realise that they were achieving this, because the U-boat saw them first and immediately dived.

But with no RAF how was that going to happen ?? And even if the RAF wasn't entirely beaten, the LW would occupy so much of it that its effectiveness against U-boat's would've been very small. Also hunting down U-boats wasn't danger-free, it was infact very dangerous business as this article explains:uboat.net - History - U-boat Successes against aircraft

 

[Glider]

Soren can I ask you a few questions.
How many fully operational ships were sunk whilst operating off Norway? care to name a couple?
Germans were very dangerous in the Med after they had received specialist training. That was well after 1940 so isn't a valid comparison.
If the Germans couldn't stop convoys of colliers sailing into the Thames, how are they going to hit destroyers?

How are the Germans going to stop the RN at night with no airforces, almost no destroyers, no cruisers, minefields that the RN are more than capable of sweeping faster than the Germans are at laying. Not forgetting the ones that the RN could lay as the night belongs to the RN.

You are relying on Submarines. As posted before, no submarine, ever, in WW1 or WW2 operated with any success in the channel. Think of all those juicy targets that existed before Dunkirk supplying the British Army and the Germans with those type II short range submarines which couldn't operate in the Atlantic. Why do you think they were not used?
What makes you think that things could suddenly turn around?

German torpedo's were very very unreliable in this period. I will dig around and find some details.

 

[Jank]

With respect to aerial torpedoes, I have read that in the Mediteranian, the Germans actually preferred using Italian torpedoes which they thought were better.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

Well, certainly getting the necessary tanks across would be critical and difficult, but if they did, the German tactics should have been just as effective as it was in mainland Europe.

i will agree with you that it would've been effective over here if they got the tanks and men over, but that's a very hard task getting all those tanks over they'd need to capture a big port, i believe they had their eyes set on Dover? never gonna happen we'd blow it sky high before letting you land tanks= months of repair works, also remember the command centers for the early part of the campain would still be back in France, the further from the action you are the harder it is to controll..............

So, it appears that U-Boats would be able to operate in blockade of those two ports, which is what I was arguing.

yes this would sink some Navy ships it also eliminates the sole reason that the RN wouldn't be able to sink the U-boats, the problem of finding them! if you sit outside our ports not only do we know exactily where you are but when you have to surface at night there's nothing you'd be able to do against a dockyard full of ships.............

So you're comparing the RAF's results at the very well camoflaged terrain of Normandy with anti-ship bombing ?? Seriously Tony, there's no comparison. A vehicle the size of a tank can easily hide or make a hard target of itself in a place like the bocage, but a 350 feet destroyer located in open waters hasn't got the slightest chance.

he wasn't talking about finding the target but hitting it! it's very hard to hit anything in a -109 with a single what, 500kg bomb? although granted -110s would be better, but a manouvering ship firing at the steadily approaching attacker will put a lot of pressure on the single pilot aiming by eye! furthermore you'd have to get a hit on the ship to do anything and many german bombs were too small and not specialist anti-shipping bombs..........

Besides the He-111 and Ju-88 could do the job as-well

not at the time they couldn't and what about training?

With no RAF ? I'd like to see that happen

you mean with a diminished fighter command? because the RAF still had a strong enough bomber command and the U-boat's enemy Coastal command and heck even aircraft like the Oxford and Anson were fighting over Dunquirke, they'd make great U-boat spotting aircraft

But with no RAF how was that going to happen ?? And even if the RAF wasn't entirely beaten, the LW would occupy so much of it that its effectiveness against U-boat's would've been very small. Also hunting down U-boats wasn't danger-free, it was infact very dangerous business

but we don't have to hunt you down, if you're suggesting the U-boats are used to blockade as you are doing, it's not gonna take us long to figure out where you are, and that very same night when the U-boats HAVE to surface we'll be over you like a bad rash, and if you're gonna say the U-boats should have, whilst submerged, gone back to the safety of France to surface they'd be on station for such a short time there'd be no point in using them! the U-boats were not designed to either blockade or operate in the channel and as has been pointed out no successful submarine operations had been carried out in the channel... now all of a sudden you're proposing that the entire German U-boat force sits, unoticed and untouchable, at the doorstep of the world's greatest Navy? which is annother point, with the size of our navy some losses are acceptable............

 

[Soren]

Glider Lanc,

The RN destroyers HMS Afridi, Bison and Grom, as well as the anti-aircraft ship Bittern were all sunk off of Norway by Stukas. Bittern's sister ship, the Black Swan, was also hit by a Stuka, but the bomb was dropped too low and passed straight through the ship before exploding, only damaging the ship.

Also on 10th January 1941, Stukas badly damaged the Royal Navy carrier HMS Illustrious, and sank the cruiser HMS Southhampton on the 11th January. The Ju-87 also made a very good name of itself in the capture of the Balkans and Crete in the spring of 1941. Stukas devastated Royal Navy vessels during the Crete campaign, helping to send the cruiser HMS Glouchester to the bottom, also sinking the destroyers Greyhound, Kelley and Kashmir, and badly damaging several other RN ships.

And about the U-boats;

I wasn't suggesting that the U-boats were to operate in the channel, only that they were to close it - guarding the intrances, along with mines, waiting for the RN warships to appear. The remaining RN warships in the channel itself would be taken care of by the LW.

About German Torpedoes and their effectiveness:
uboat.net - Special Sections - Attack Analysis
uboat.net - Technical pages

 

[Glider]

Glider Lanc,

The RN destroyers HMS Afridi, Bison and Grom, as well as the anti-aircraft ship Bittern were all sunk off of Norway by Stukas. Bittern's sister ship, the Black Swan, was also hit by a Stuka, but the bomb was dropped too low and passed straight through the ship before exploding, only damaging the ship.

Also on 10th January 1941, Stukas badly damaged the Royal Navy carrier HMS Illustrious, and sank the cruiser HMS Southhampton on the 11th January. The Ju-87 also made a very good name of itself in the capture of the Balkans and Crete in the spring of 1941. Stukas devastated Royal Navy vessels during the Crete campaign, helping to send the cruiser HMS Glouchester to the bottom, also sinking the destroyers Greyhound, Kelley and Kashmir, and badly damaging several other RN ships.

And about the U-boats;

I wasn't suggesting that the U-boats were to operate in the channel, only that they were to close it - guarding the intrances, along with mines, waiting for the RN warships to appear. The remaining RN warships in the channel itself would be taken care of by the LW.

About German Torpedoes and their effectiveness:
uboat.net - Special Sections - Attack Analysis
uboat.net - Technical pages

Cannot complain about your reply to the first question, How about the rest in particular the colliers.

 

[Glider]

Forgot to mention that the references to the Med don't count due to the extra training received and admitted some time ago.

How can the LW deal with the RN at night?

 

[Meteor]

SO in May 1940 were Nazi fighters equipped to carry bombs? If so did they train to drop them and were they the armoured piercing type.

We seem to be allocating capabilities to the nazis here that they didnt have in 1940.

 

[syscom3]

Didnt the Luftwaffe sink quite a few ships at Dunkirk just a few months prior to this "projected" invasion?

 

[davparlr]

SO in May 1940 were Nazi fighters equipped to carry bombs? If so did they train to drop them and were they the armoured piercing type.

We seem to be allocating capabilities to the nazis here that they didnt have in 1940.

The Japanese used modified artillery shells as armour piercing bombs and blew the Arizona to pieces.

Dismissing the German pilots as being untrained in air-sea warfare is erroneous. Those pilots knew how to fly and how to drop bombs and had exerience in doing so. There expertise in air-sea tactics would grown in sorties not in days.

The danger of unprotected warships to airborne attack is grossly underestimated here. Also, completely ignored here is that the most knowledgeable person in air-sea warfare, Yamamoto, refused to expose his overpowering fleet to two carriers and one airfield and only 200 warplanes with no reserves available to the Americans. He knew there was grave danger without control of the air. With the Germans controlling the airspace over Eastern Britain, at the least Britain would be sorely pressed. You cannot win a war with airpower alone, but it is very difficult to win without it.

 

[syscom3]

Didnt the Luftwaffe sink quite a few ships at Dunkirk just a few months prior to this "projected" invasion?

 

[Tony Williams]

Dismissing the German pilots as being untrained in air-sea warfare is erroneous. Those pilots knew how to fly and how to drop bombs and had exerience in doing so. There expertise in air-sea tactics would grown in sorties not in days.

As I've said before, the Typhoons had an average miss distance of 110m (measured from post-raid photos). That's against targets they could see and were specifically aiming at. That means that 50% of the bombs dropped in an area of 40,000m2. A destroyer occupied about 1,000m2. Which gave a fighter-bomber a 1 in 80 chance of hitting a destroyer - when it's stationary.

Ju 87s were much better - a good crew had an average miss distance of just 30m. Say 50% of bombs hitting within 3,000m2. That gives them a 1 in 6 chance of hitting a stationary destroyer. Hitting a destroyer travelling at anything up to 35 knots is a different matter altogether - Ju 87s used to fly over the target then turn into a nice vertical dive - which is great if the target holds still, much less so otherwise. And a captain with any sense would wait until the Stuka was committed in its dive and then put the helm over....not an easy target to hit. And that's in broad daylight - the invasion fleet would have been too slow to make the crossing in a day.

The danger of unprotected warships to airborne attack is grossly underestimated here.

Not. At. Night.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that the RN would certainly have taken losses, but they would have been a long way from being "sitting ducks". And their losses would have been nothing like as much as those helpless low-freeboard barges stuffed with soldiers and gear. The crossing would have been extremely expensive for the invaders, and the worst would have been still to come, because the Germans would have had to send a continuous stream of vessels (aka targets) to keep those troops which made it ashore supplied. All the studies and war games I've read conclude that this couldn't have been done - it would have ended in the complete defeat of the invasion.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

[pbfoot]

If the Germans had no real chance of victory over the Brits in the summer of 40 why is there all the hoopla over the Battle of Britain

 

[davparlr]

If the Germans had no real chance of victory over the Brits in the summer of 40 why is there all the hoopla over the Battle of Britain

Only because of 20 miles of water, the RN, and the RAF.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

PB it's just as much about what the battle is symbolic of than what it did, it was the first time in the war that the Germans had suffered a major setback (trying not to use the term defeat), it was a symbol of Britain standing alone againt the entire might of the German war machine, our boys were defending and fighting for their home land to the death with their backs to the wall, making a last stand, and for the first time the war was no longer phoney but real for the British people and they got behind it! the invasion probably wouldn't have worked but it'd be a damn sight easier for Jerry with German local air superiority......

 

[Tony Williams]

Agreed. And it is one thing to take a calm objective view now, which shows that the invasion almost certainly could never have succeeded, and quite another to be faced with the prospect of such an invasion at the time, especially since they did not know then what we know now. All they knew was that the Wehrmacht had smashed their way through Poland and France in an unbelievably quick time - the rest of the world was in shock.

In any case, before the war it was generally believed that "the bombers would always get through", and assumed that London would be destroyed in any air war - that's why children were evacuated at thhe start of the war. Just fending off the Luftwaffe and forcing them to stop their daylight attacks was a huge real and psychological victory by itself, quite apart from the fact that it made an invasion impractical.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

[Meteor]

The Japanese used modified artillery shells as armour piercing bombs and blew the Arizona to pieces.

Dismissing the German pilots as being untrained in air-sea warfare is erroneous. Those pilots knew how to fly and how to drop bombs and had exerience in doing so. There expertise in air-sea tactics would grown in sorties not in days.

The danger of unprotected warships to airborne attack is grossly underestimated here. Also, completely ignored here is that the most knowledgeable person in air-sea warfare, Yamamoto, refused to expose his overpowering fleet to two carriers and one airfield and only 200 warplanes with no reserves available to the Americans. He knew there was grave danger without control of the air. With the Germans controlling the airspace over Eastern Britain, at the least Britain would be sorely pressed. You cannot win a war with airpower alone, but it is very difficult to win without it.

The Japanese planned and trained for the Pearl Harbour attacks for months beforehand.

I'm sure it is not at all feasible to suddenly decide to stick a bomb on an Bf-109 and send the pilot off to sink a Destroyer with no training.

Maybe the Nazis could have gone the whole hog and simply crashed their aircraft into the Cruisers and Destroyers? This would have at least ensured a hit and would have been more effective than the Japanese were in 1945 as the ships AA was far less powerfull then.

I'm not erroneously dismissing the quality of the German aircrew, but it is a fact that they couldnt just simply switch tasks on the spot. I dont think that a Bf-109 could even carry a bomb in 1940. Does anyone know if they did this before 1941?

 

[bomber]

It was the 'Indomitable British Spirit' that made the Germans sit up and take note.... the RAF, the RN and the Army are just the organised military arm of this spirit...the physical representative if it if you like.

An invasion of Britiain isn't a one round fight, it's multiple rounds going against different oponents with differing fighting capabilities..

On top of the 'fighting spirit' one has to look at the very geology of the UK, it's very shape and disposition...

Blitzkrieg work in the UK... not a cat in hells chance...

The German might well of after massive fighting have captured London, but where to from there ?

Devon and Cornwall.... not even us Brits would have control over this area if the people there didn't allow it.
Scotland.... no
Wales.... no
The Midlands... have you seen Derbyshire ?

So the only area I see as being feasible to hold onto would be the area south of the Thames.....

But the losses to achieve this would have been crippling

regards

Simon

 

[Jabberwocky]

Was Sealion possible?

Would the RN surface fleet have taken damage if they sallied against a German invasion fleet? Yes.

Would the RN likely have crippled the capacity of the Kriegsmare to carry out an invasion? Yes.

Would air superiority make their job more difficult? Yes.

Would air superority help in darkness? No.


The Germans proposed this for Sealion:

Carrying out an 11 division (9 seaborne 2 airborne) invasion via a heavily contested sea lane over the course of 10 days. Carry an additional 7-10 divisions over another 40-50 days.

Compose your invasion fleet of 30% military and civilian transports and 70% river barges and other pressed into service craft.

Protect them while they transport 110,000 men and their equipment and supplies for a 10 day to 2 month period with a fleet that is outnumbered by 5:1 in captial ships, 4:1 in crusiers and 5:2 in destroyers, against an enemy operating in home waters from protected bases.

Land your outnumbered invasion force with no element of suprise and no prepatory bombardment against prepared costal defences and three rings of inland defences, bringing little organic heavy equipment with them (including no heavy artillery) until the second week of the campaign.



Logistically, they would of had to run a shuttle system of barges for 14-16 hours a day to keep the army supplied, assuming low levels of expenditure and the capture and return of Folkstone and Dover to full working conditions within 2 weeks. Any interferance from the RN send this into haywire mode, stranding those German troops that did land without fuel, ammunition, food and other supplies.

 

[Soren]

What people obviously forget is that Germany at this time was preparing for an even larger objective - the invasion of Russia. Had Hitler concentrated on Britain alone, waiting with the overly large objective of an invasion of Russia, an invasion of Britain, if you ask me, was entirely plausible.

I'll be back later to address the rest.