Luftwaffe's ability to shut down British ports in winter of 1940/41? (1 Viewer)

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tomo pauk

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Apr 3, 2008
An another forum, a member stated that Luftwaffe should've 'shut down' the British ports during the Winter of 1940/41, so the British throw in the towel by the next Spring. My question: was Luftwaffe actually able to do it in the specified time frame, and against the British efforts to deny them that?
 
They certainly tried with Liverpool. Liverpool was the second most bombed location in England after London.
The Liverpool blitz started in August 1940 through to Christmas of the same year. Another attempt was made during May 1941.

There was a large amount of damage done to Liverpool but the port and dock facilities ran for around 18 kilometres so in the end
they continued operating.
 
Well they did shut down the Channel ports and channel traffic, that was what the early part of the BoB was about. Liverpool was a huge port, but there were and are many others that could be used on both west and east coasts.
 
An another forum, a member stated that Luftwaffe should've 'shut down' the British ports during the Winter of 1940/41, so the British throw in the towel by the next Spring. My question: was Luftwaffe actually able to do it in the specified time frame, and against the British efforts to deny them that?
Hi
The Luftwaffe did not have the strength or capability to 'shut down' British ports in 1940/41. To 'shut down' a port it would have to continuously bomb and also keep mining the approaches, it failed to do this to Southampton Docks on the south coast, a short flight across the channel, let alone the west coast ports. The use of Southampton Docks did decrease during 1940, handling 40,469 tons of freight compared with 1.1 million tons during 193. However, this may be down to the larger ships being used on the Atlantic convoys and for trooping to other theatres from west coast ports, as after Dunkirk ships over 1,600 tons were excluded from the port, that is hardly a 'shut down'. As the Luftwaffe also failed to 'shut down' the naval ports of Portsmouth, Portland and Plymouth, also on the south coast and London also still operated to some extent, it is unlikely they would have succeeded to 'shut down' the west and east coast ports in addition. The Luftwaffe also failed to shut down aircraft manufacture in Southampton despite bombing the Supermarine's Woolston works (manufacture of Spitfires was dispersed around the town and hinterland) or prevent warship building and ship repair in the docks. The Luftwaffe did manage to destroy much of the centre of the town.

Mike
 
Well the best opportunity was presented by aerial mining with magnetic and acoustic mines. They did succeed in closing the Thames at Southend for 36 hours in late 1939 and the Humber estuary for 2 days with the former. But by late 1940 the RN had magnetics covered and acoustics in hand.

Magnetic mines were not new in 1939, the RN had laid them in 1917 and carried out research between the wars. So when ships began to be lost in late 1939 due to unexplained non-contact damage they had a good idea of the cause. All that was missing were details of the exact type of mechanism used by the Germans so that countermeasures could be designed. The initial mines had to be dropped by parachute making them easy to spot in inshore waters. It wasn't until May 1941 that the first non-parachute was available to the the Germans. An intact magnetic mine was defused on 22 Nov 1939 and by Jan 1940 several sweeping methods were being trialled. The most effective of these was the LL sweep, which became the standard magnetic sweep in WW2, starting in March 1940. It was then just a question of fitting out the minesweeping fleet with the necessary eqpt. On the outbreak of WW2 the British fishing fleet had been requisitioned, generating over 700 minesweepers in UK waters alone.

German efforts to produce an acoustic mine had begun in 1937 and the first one detected in British waters was in Oct 1940. The Admiralty foresaw this development and began looking for a solution in early 1940, with trials from mid-1940. By Feb 1941 they had 60 acoustic minesweepers with acoustic hammers in the bow.

One of the largest Luftwaffe mining attempts took place on 12/13 Dec 1940 off Southend. At least 45 were spotted by shorewatchers.

So to have been successful at closing the UK ports the Luftwaffe would have had to devote a far greater number of sorties to minelaying in an effort to swamp the RN minesweeping fleet's efforts.

The main Atlantic convoy terminal ports were at Liverpool and the Clyde after June 1940 when the SW Approaches routes were largely closed due to their proximity to Luftwaffe airfields in France. Fearing a possible closure of these ports steps were taken to create 2 new secret ports. These were Military Port No 1 at Faslane on the Clyde, west of Glasgow (construction started late 1940 and completed in 1942) and Military port No 2 at Cairnryan north of Stranraer in SW Scotland (with construction starting in Jan 1941 and a formal opening in July 1943, although it had been docking ships for some months before that).

To see the effort that would have been required take a look at the mining effort that the US 20th AF put in to closing Japan's ports in 1944/45. They devoted a whole Bomb Wing to the task (approx 180 B-29 aircraft dropping multiple mines on each mission) they were using mostly pressure mines which were almost impossible to sweep. 46 missions, c1,400 successful sorties dropping 9,751 tons of mines (over 13,000 mines) between March 1945 and the end of the war. And that was against a foe that had devoted very little attention to minesweeping.

So no, I really don't believe that the Luftwaffe could have succeeded in closing all the British ports. Individual ports for short periods possibly. But not enough to slow the flow of goods into the UK permanently.
 
An another forum, a member stated that Luftwaffe should've 'shut down' the British ports during the Winter of 1940/41, so the British throw in the towel by the next Spring. My question: was Luftwaffe actually able to do it in the specified time frame, and against the British efforts to deny them that?


They had zero to none ability to do that.
They were a tactical Air Force trying to do strategic bombing.
 
This is one of the great myths of WW II.

For a tactical air force in June of 1940 they sure turned into a strategic air force very quickly, like a couple of months. ;)
The RAF was supposed to be a strategic air force in 1939 and before. That is aside from defending Great Britain with interceptors.
The RAF wasn't able to do squat to Germany for quite some time.
The Germans were able to operate over GB and had invested in night bombing/navigation equipment to a far greater extent that the RAF did. The British managed to use electronic countermeasures against the Germans very quickly but it was not planed for.

Compared to British and American efforts in late 1943 and 1944 both Britain and Germany came up short in 1940.

Just because you can send bombers over a city or even a specific part of a city doesn't mean that you can lay mines in a channel or destroy docks at will.
 
This is one of the great myths of WW II.

For a tactical air force in June of 1940 they sure turned into a strategic air force very quickly, like a couple of months. ;)
The RAF was supposed to be a strategic air force in 1939 and before. That is aside from defending Great Britain with interceptors.
The RAF wasn't able to do squat to Germany for quite some time.
The Germans were able to operate over GB and had invested in night bombing/navigation equipment to a far greater extent that the RAF did. The British managed to use electronic countermeasures against the Germans very quickly but it was not planed for.

Compared to British and American efforts in late 1943 and 1944 both Britain and Germany came up short in 1940.

Just because you can send bombers over a city or even a specific part of a city doesn't mean that you can lay mines in a channel or destroy docks at will.
The RAF made a mess of German assets trying to build an invasion force. The UK capital was only 90 miles from German airfields in 1940 and within the range of German escorts. The ability of the LW to hit the UK peaked in 1940.
 
The Luftwaffe is not the tool for a naval blockade.

Clue is the word naval.

Doesn't the Royal Navy sweep for mines?

Yeah that's a huge no. Not even close. Perhaps whoever said that was possible should research first. If the U boats ain't doing it in ww1 or ww2 then I can bet dollars to donuts that the Luftwaffe have no chance.
 
And then we get to the argument if attacking the German invasion forces were tactical or strategic.

The Germans planned to hit British production facilities.
They did hit British production facilities, (not as often as they hoped for).
They did it at night in addition to daylight. Granted the Germans could not sustain daylight attacks.

British night raids against Germany proper were a fiasco. They may have thought they were a strategic force but they sometimes could not find the right country, getting to within 5 miles of the right city was a bonus.
The Crews were not trained properly and were not equipped properly. It had nothing to do with desire or courage.

Bombing the channel ports brought the same advantages to the British as the Germans got from raiding coastal cities in England.
It was a lot easier to figure out where the land met the sea and identify landmarks (shape of the coast, island, river) than flying 30-200 miles inland.

But that gets us away from the point.

The Germans were planning on using electronic navigation aids to assist in night navigation and bomb aiming.
The infrastructure to do this required large radio transmitters.
It could not be done in a few weeks or or a couple of months (except to relocate a transmitter.)
Such radio beams were almost useless against "tactical" targets (army that could move overnight).

yes the Germans did do a lot of tactical bombing but the idea that the Germans weren't working on or planning to do strategic bombing is a myth.

In 1940 very few people had the bombers to fly 400 miles from a base, bomb a target with a sizeable bomb load and return . Either by day or by night.
The Whitey was one of the few bombers that could do it at night.
 
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The Luftwaffe is not the tool for a naval blockade.

Clue is the word naval.

Doesn't the Royal Navy sweep for mines?

Yeah that's a huge no. Not even close. Perhaps whoever said that was possible should research first. If the U boats ain't doing it in ww1 or ww2 then I can bet dollars to donuts that the Luftwaffe have no chance.
The Kriegsmarine did run a mining campaign against shipping in British waters using:-

U-boats mostly in 1939/40

Destroyers and torpedo boats (small destroyers) in the first year or so of the war. Problem here was that they needed to cross the British defensive minefields in the east coast barrier and the English Channel. That resulted in them losing ships.

S boats (E boats). This campaign went on all the way through to the final months of the war in 1945.

The problem is that, with the exception of some U-boat mining sorties directed against Loch Ewe in NW Scotland, this activity was directed against shipping routes on the east coast and English Channel. BUT the main Atlantic convoy terminals (Liverpool and the Clyde) were on the west coast. Access to them is via the Irish Sea to which the Kriegsmarine surface ships were excluded, completely.

So the only way for Germany to get at those west coast ports was via a Luftwaffe aerial mining campaign.

The RAF, and the FAA, devoted substantial resources to aerial minelaying in all theatres and probably laid more offensive minefields than RN surface craft and submarines. The RAF called these "Gardening" sorties.

British, Allied and neutral losses to mines in all theatres totalled 534 ships of some 1.4m tons. I don't have a breakdown between air, submarine and surface ship laid.

This paper about the USAAF aerial mining campaign against Japan has some details of German and British WW2 operations.

And one about the RAF WW2 mining campaign (from p137)

So air forces in all major countries, except Japan, were an integral part of instituting a naval blockade in WW2. And aerial minelaying was part of that. That continued postwar. Look at the effects of the mining of Haiphong harbour in Vietnam in 1972.
 
The query which was queried was could Luftwaffe aerial mining defeat UK in ww2. The answer is no.

Was aerial mining a giant pain in the posterior? Yes. But that is not the question.
 

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