Strategically? There no occupying a sea. Just by looking at how Skaggerak is celebrated in Germany and comparing it to how Jutland is in the UK should give everyone a hint as to who really won this chapter. It wasn't fear of the UK that made the Reichsmarine recluse after Jutland - it was communist rebellion among the fleet. With that kind of long run retrospection anyway, the Brits didn't lose a single battle in either WWI or II, since they ended up winning both of these wars.
Really, the Brits never lost a single battle ??? You do know what a battle is ? As you may have noticed when I refer to the Vietnam War some times I use the word "battle" and other times "operation." Battles that the Brits lost during WW ll, just listing a couple. Port of Salerno (Sep 9-11, 1943 ) British 46th Infantry Div. vs. the 16th Panzer Div. Brits lost. Monte Camino I (Nov 5-7 1943) British 56 Inf. Div. vs. the 15th Panzer Gren. Brits lost.
I was being cynical. Brits lost a lot of battle, but they're not quite ready to admit it. Case in point, the battle of the River Plate. It is entered on Wikipedia as a "British Victory". Well, when you read the actual battle, in which the Brits doubled the German in tonnage and triple the number of ships, the UK cruisers were soundly trashed, for minimal damage inflicted on Graf Spee. Four days later, the Germans scuttled Graf Spee, because they were intoxicated with false reports and political pressures. Somehow the WASP medias include this event in the battle itself, half a week earlier, so they can transform the beating they got there into a victory of some sort.
Just pointing out that the Iowa's were able to keep up with "fleet" aircraft carriers and because they were fast they were used as escorts for carrier task forces during WW ll. The Iowa's position in a carrier task force was just to the stern of carriers providing heavy AAA for the carriers. The WW ll armament of the Iowas was; 3 X 3 (9) 16"/50 guns 10 X 2 (20) 5"/38 dual purpose guns (80) X Bofor 40 mm AA guns. (49) X 20mm/70cal Oerlikon AA guns That's a lot of ack ack for just one ship back during the day.
And the Captain of the Graf Spee would soon take his own life after scuttling his ship. In a way Captain Langsdorff scuttled himself.
He was a gentleman, and cared for his own. When he died, it was with the old German flag rather than the nazi one, which underlines his independance and decency.
This is why I no longer read what that individual posted. Hell, if they had never lost a battle, then why Dunkirk? And in WWI, what in the heck would anybody call Galipoli? That sure in hell was not a victory. *nods* But those fleets also had a lot of other ships. Fuelers, amunition ships, cargo vessels, hospital ships (often converted Liberty ships, max speed of 11.5 knots) and all to often amphibious transports full of Marines. There is a reason why many call the main combat ships in that war "fast carriers". I even played a war game in High School called "The Fast Carriers". https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4623/fast-carriers
Dunkirk, 1940. Singapore, 1942, worst ever humiliation, Somme, 1916. Gallipoli, 1915; Iraq, 1916. And according to many sources, non British of course , even the Battle of Britain 1940 ended in a stalemate, from military point of view ..
Which for the English was a victory. Remember, to win in a military you do not really have to "win" yourself. You simply need to keep your adversary from winning. And at the end of the Battle of Britain, the UK had unquestionably come out better at the end. A huge percentage of the Luftwaffe had been destroyed, while a much lesser percentage of the RAF suffered the same fate. When a German was shot down and survived, he went into a POW camp. When an RAF pilot was shot down, as soon as they were able they could be put right back into a cockpit. And a German plane shot down was lost. An RAF plane shot down could be scavenged for parts.
During WW ll the Japanese battleship Kirishima 14" gun hit the American battleship USS South Dakota with a 1,480 lb. armor piercing round. It put a dent into the South Dakota's armor plating. Below you'll see the Iowa's 16" 1,900 lb. HC round mentioned, maybe the closest thing to the Soviet's/Russian SS-N-12 Sandbox anti-ship missile that has a 2,000 lb. warhead and why the Iowa's always had a few gallons of battleship grey paint onboard. During the 1980's as today there was no weapons platform able to sink an Iowa class battleship.
1,547 British aircraft lost (1,023 Fighter Command, 376 Bomber Command, and 148 Coastal Command) against 1,887 German aircraft. the RAF Fighter Command lost 544 airmen, while the British military overall lost about 2,300; the German Luftwaffe lost 2,698. Maybe you might want to reconsider your above statement mate ..The losses in single seat fighters were even closer than that .. Spitfire's alleged superiority over M 109 was probably the greatest myth of all ..In the end Göring could't keep his promise to destroy the RAF within 3 months and Hitler said' you had your chance but know I have much bigger challenge to deal with so I need all my resources, of course, he meat that he was going after the USSR ..
Yep, that's pretty much it. I don't much believe in "sealion" and neither, I think, did the Nazi high command. Hitler has been real careful up to this date not to rile up the Brits - he let them go at Dunkerque, tried to have peace at Geneva etc. Anglo-German relations were rather good before the war: the Brits even signed with Nazi Germany the 1935 Anlo-German Naval agreement, which, I don't know on whose's authority, removed the naval restraints of the Versailles Treaty on Germany. Hitler admired the British. I think the "Battle of Britain" simply was a half-hearted attempt to intimidate the English into neutrality. Nazi Germany just didn't have the planes, the ships nor the men to spare invading Britain with the Soviets breathing down the back of their necks. There was no possible "Blitzkrieg" of England. * * * As for fighter comparison, the Spitfire was more of a dogfighter then the Me109, but the later was better as a bomber-chaser, combining both the Spifire and the Hurricane's abilities in one frame. It biggest drawbacks apart from those Mushroom wrote apart was the fact that they had, in the best of cases, only like 20 mins of flight before having to return to base. And yet their kill ratios are pretty much on par with the Spitfire's, maybe even better.
Well it should be noted that in his "vision" for the future "Old World", Hitler was readily willing to concede the British being left as an independent power with their empire still intact. It was Russia that he considered to be a mortal do or die enemy.
There is no need to reconsider anything. What I said still stands, a stalemate in this conflict for the British was the same as a voctory. The German losses were so high that they could not support their planed ground invasion, which was cancelled. And as for aircraft lost, the Germans lost most of their bomber fleet. Bombers are much larger, have bigger crews, and take longer to build than fighters. So if the RAF lost 2 fighters for each bomber, they still come out ahead. Much the thinking that went behind the design and construction of anti-tank helicopters. Or loosing 1 or 2 TOW mounted HMMWVs to take out a BMP. WHen it comes to aircrew, this is seen in your very own numbers. The RAF lost 544, the Luftwaffe lost 5 times that number. Seems like a victory to me. One thing that Germany was very good at in WWII was throwing away huge numbers of forces and equipment in the persuit of vanity battles, that ultimately did not mean anything. The Battle of Britain cost Germany a huge chunk of their air forces. Stalingrad cost them a huge chunk of their ground forces. And neither of those battles was even needed in the first place. Der Paper Hangar simply wanted to have his victory against his enemies at any cost.
Yes ,Hitler saw in Brits as people coming from Germanic gene pool ( even Normans were French sepaking Germanic tribes ) and thats the main reason why he let them off the hook at Dunkirk against the entreaties of his field marshals... The 109´s biggest enemy was it´s lack of range when flying to Britain . The Luftwaffe pilots worried more about lack of fuel than Spitfires...The ME-109 had fuel injection, and had to just climb to escape from a Spitfire.
You most probably rely on British sources which are always biased.. German Luftwaffe had enough bombers and fighters to continue this battle for years to come but Hitler had other priorities ... http://histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/air/eur/bob/out/bobo-lossg.html The Luftwaffe at the onset of their Western Offensive had 1,711 bombers (May 11, 1940). This had declined for the Battle of Britain to 1,380 bombers (June 29, 1940). [Murray, p. 80.] By the end of the Battle of Britain, the Germans had more than made up the losses over Britain and had 1,423 bombers (November 2, 1940 Your statement ' A huge percentage of the Luftwaffe had been destroyed, while a much lesser percentage of the RAF suffered the same fate'' is simply not true.. Highly recommended . http://www.warbirdforum.com/overy.htm Fighter losses were substantially identical on both sides. As to who won the Battle, Overy essentially takes the position that neither side did. However, since the Germans failed to achieve any of their objectives in the campaign, it can fairly be said that they lost it.
I thought the major German losses in the Battle of Britain was in terms of experienced pilots and air crew rather than in hardware.
If it were only that, it would suffice to be qualified as a defeat. The biggest blow the Japanese had at midway wasn't the loss of their carriers - it was the loss of some of their elite airmen.
Isn't some a bit of an understatement? Didn't the Japanese lose more than 3,000 aircrew and carrier crew?
The loss of every life is a tragedy (of course), but these aircrews were the best of the best. The Pearl Harbour crew. Their formation took a long time. Subsequent pilots were not nearly as good, and were in insufficient numbers.
Very much so. Germany (like Japan later in the war) was scraping the bottom to find quality aviation candidates. Part of the problem when you take high losses is that you loose your main pool for training replacement personnel. So you then have less qualified doing the training, and quality degrades even further. But the carriers cost them more. This was their main force projection force, and afterwards were forced to defend their islands from the islands themselves. This greatly reduced their range. And while Japan could still produce aircraft and pilots and crew (of a lesser quality), they could not replace their carriers. That is why one of their super-battleships still in production was converted into a carrier. To bad for them however that it was sunk on it's first mission.
That would have been the Shinano that was originally would have been the third Yamato class battleship but it was decided to stop construction in December of 41 and after the Battle of Midway construction began again but as an aircraft carrier to make up for the carrier losses during the Midway battle. The Shinano would hold the record as the largest aircraft carrier ever built in the world and hold that record until 1961 when the USS Ktity Hawk was commissioned. The Shinano was 62,000 ton 72,000 tons loaded. The U.S. Navy's Essex class carriers were 27,208 tons, 34,881 tons loaded. The Shinano was launched during October of 1944 and started trial runs on November 19, 1944 before it was completed or had a trained crew. It went to sea before it's waterproof hatchways (doors) were installed and when the submarine USS Archerfish torpedoed the Shinano without the waterproof hatchways there were no waterproof compartments and with with an untrained crew in battle damage procedures the Shinano sank with in a few hours because of uncontrolled flooding ten days after starting it's trial runs.
