Why France?

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silence said:
Didn't the USAF loose a bomber or two as a result of crew fatigue brought on by not being allowed to fly over France on their way to strike Qadaffi?
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Yes ,but the US never informs its allies before it takes such actions , suddenly a squadron of F-111's would like to enter the French airspace to bomb Libya .
The French must have asked where the hell they came from ? the answer was clearly NO ...Well done Mitterrand ! if you treat your allies like this that's what you get. And France was not the only country that denied the overflight. Once again, the allies have not been informed about this before. I doubt that a labour government in Britain would have allowed this in 1986 so easily..Thanks to Mrs Thatcher !
 
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GrauGeist said:
I'm sitting here having dinner mulling over the earlier comment about native French technology and then I remembered that the jet engines of the Mirage fighter were developed from the WWII era BMW003.

Oops!
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It was the German Hermann Ostrich who came over to France and worked on the ATAR engine for Mirage III. Yes, but who didn't benefit from German skills after WW2??
You Americans built your first jets in accordance with Whittle design but later switched to German axial flow engines after you captured some M262's .
Remember who sent your country to the moon??

But Mirage III was the best fighter of its generation ,the first jet fighter exceeded Mach 2 in Europe. A huge engineering achievement I would say.
 
"...Remember who sent your country to the moon?? "

Jules Vern.


".. the first European combat aircraft design capable of exceeding a speed of Mach 2 in horizontal flight."

What about the Mig-21. Several years earlier. Russia isn't part of Europe in your atlas, renegate ...?
 
GrauGeist said:
I'm sure the British, Germans and a few other nations would seriously disagree with that.
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I am not so sure. France developed its own SLBM submarines and the missiles without any foreign technology in early 1970's which was acknowledged even by the Americans as great achievement . Britain received everything served on a golden plate from the US. First nuclear sub reactor for HMS Dreadnought was completely US made by Westinghouse and the missiles along with the nuclear warheads designed and developed in the US and built at Aldermasten under US supervision .

Dassault Aviation's capability in design and development of fighter jets is unique in Europe.. France is second only to US in design and development of nuclear carrier .
The French defence giant THALES is the second largest defence contractor in the UK after BAE Systems ! There is a huge amount of French technology in many of the latest British weapon systems.. Astute class submarines, Challenger 2 tanks and Type 45 destroyers . MBDA , the second largest tactical missile designer in the world after Raytheon was created in France . No country in Europe has this capability. Export transactions for Eurofighter Typhoon outside NATO needs officially US Congressional approval as there is a sizeable US technology in the fighter,computers,software and AMRAAM . The Rafale on the other hand, is 100% French.
 

I don't think any Mig-21 exceeded Mach 2.2 anytime before 1958 .. Not in my atlas anyway.
 
stona said:
Oh come on !

Every nation did what it could and I would be the last to demean Norway's gallant contribution to the allied effort but there were 1.3 million Free French men fighting the allied cause at the end of the w
Steve
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Probably just as many fought on the other side in vichy forces.

Many have a high praise of the French resistance and with reason. But people often forget that resistance in other countries were just as fierce.
 
Marcel said:
Probably just as many fought on the other side in vichy forces..
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I don't have a figure for the numbers of Vichy forces to hand. However it's worth saying that they didn't do much fighting. Minimal resistance was offered in North Africa, and then only in French colonies. They made a nuisance of themselves in Madagascar for a while too. It didn't amount to a lot.
They confused things in French Indo-China for the Japanese in early 1945 if I remember correctly. The Japanese effectively had to oust them in a coup. You could argue that this was one of the first steps on the way to first a French colonial and then an American war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Cheers
Steve
 
Marcel said:
Many have a high praise of the French resistance and with reason. But people often forget that resistance in other countries were just as fierce.
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Thing to remember about the resistance in other countries is that in the West the German occuption forces tended to treat the local population with far less cruelty than in the east.
 
redcoat said:
Thing to remember about the resistance in other countries is that in the West the German occuption forces tended to treat the local population with far less cruelty than in the east.
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Well yes, I think a lot more civilians were killed in the east by the Germans, but that's not to say the same thing couldn't have happened later in north west Europe, and don't forget what happened in Greece.
 
redcoat said:
Thing to remember about the resistance in other countries is that in the West the German occuption forces tended to treat the local population with far less cruelty than in the east.
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Yes, I agree, although occasionally those things happened in the west, too, like murdering a whole village as revenge for the killing of a German. But undoubtedly, the Poles for instance had it even worse.
 
Marcel said:
Yes, I agree, although occasionally those things happened in the west, too, like murdering a whole village as revenge for the killing of a German. But undoubtedly, the Poles for instance had it even worse.
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This is going to sound really, really cold, but - taking the example of Oradour-sur-Glane - what did the resistance think would happen after they killed an SS officer - especially after Lidice?

And no, I'm not saying the SS retaliation was justified, only that it should have been expected.

And I fully agree about how much more the Poles suffered; only the Jews suffered more.
 
The U.S. shared technology and equipment with France until things got nasty...
renegate326 said:
France is second only to US in design and development of nuclear carrier .
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I wouldn't really compare the French Navy's single 42,000 ton carrier to 9 active U.S. carriers each being over 104,000 tons. The USS Midway, a retired WWII vintage carrier is 74,000 tons, so big deal.
And as shocking as this may be to hear, the bulk of the French carrier fleet after WWII were former American carriers.

I could go on, but the bottom line is, we all need to get along and for the most part we do. Around here, British, Germans, Japanese, Americans, Poles, Italians, Brazilians, and everyone else from all corners of the world get together and share common interests and we have a good time doing so...

Why bust through the door with an attitude and stir up a bunch of bullsh!t?
 
The Wermacht, SS and Police units committed atrocities EVERYWHERE.
It's not a pissing contest.
The rules were different in the East simply because before Barbarossa was even launched the Germans had already planned to allow millions to starve in order to supply themselves. This had already established a lowering of the moral bar, based on the virulent racism and anti bolshevism of Nazi doctrine, before more formal instructions like the various and infamous "Fuhrer Orders".
The fate of a Jew, Communist, Resistant, anyone else deemed undesirable (it's a long list), or even Commando was likely to be the same, East or West.
The principal of communal responsibility for acts of resistance, that is lining up dozens or hundreds of innocent people and murdering them in an illegal effort to deter further acts of resistance was well established in ALL German occupied territories.
The men and women from occupied countries in the West who were uprooted and shipped as forced labour to Germany might not consider their treatment any less cruel than that meted out to someone from the East suffering the same fate.
Steve
 

Yes ,the US offered the Polaris SLBM technology to France as well but unlike the Brits, De Gaulle said No thanks, we will develop our own system.
It doesn't mean France never buys US made defence equipment, France bought Grumman Hawkeye Early warning aircraft for the carrier CDG and also in the past the AWACS system because it would be extremely expensive to invest money for few planes. But when it comes to absolutely vital systems for national defence,France goes always domestic.

I didn't compare anything, I simply pointed out that France is the only country that could build a nuclear carrier.
 
renegate326 said:
I didn't compare anything, I simply pointed out that France is the only country that could build a nuclear carrier.
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You are wrong there as well. France is the only one that chose to build a nuclear carrier. Most other Westerm Nations have the technology and know how to do so, but choose not to.

If you believe that England, Germany, Russia or Canada (just to name a few) could not develop and build Nuclear Carriers you are very naive or just thumping your French chest too much.
 
DerAdlerIstGelandet said:
If you believe that England, Germany, Russia or Canada (just to name a few) could not develop and build Nuclear Carriers you are very naive or just thumping your French chest too much.
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It's not just the cost either. There are ethical issues involved. These two are the principal reasons why the RN's new Queen Elizabeth class carriers will be conventionally powered.

I hope we can do better on budget and timing than the French managed with Richelieu.......ooops!.... Charles de Gaulle. I wouldn't bet the farm on it though

Steve
 
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