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Scratch Monkey posted:Before Russia entered the war against Japan they felt compelled to intern American and British aircrews that landed in soviet territory and would often just toss them into the gulag system They also kept the aircraft too and reverse engineered them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4 RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 22, 2021 13:09
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Scratch Monkey posted:Before Russia entered the war against Japan they felt compelled to intern American and British aircrews that landed in soviet territory and would often just toss them into the gulag system Do you have a source on that? We did shuttle bombing of targets in Eastern Europe where Americans bombers would continue on to Russia to refuel and before coming back, and hitting another target on the way home.
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Oct 22, 2021 13:10
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I'd assume planned flights were treated differently from unplanned ones. There were americans of russian and other SSR origins "liberated" from PoW camps and interned. Only about a hundred but still sucks to be them. A good number died in captivity.
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Oct 22, 2021 13:33
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Cyrano4747 posted:Do you have a source on that? We did shuttle bombing of targets in Eastern Europe where Americans bombers would continue on to Russia to refuel and before coming back, and hitting another target on the way home. When bombing mutual enemy Germany the Soviets would allow planes to land at allied airbases, but when it came to planes that had just bombed Japan they felt that they were technically neutral in that conflict and therefore would intern them. Here's a couple of pages I found mentioning it https://www.historynet.com/the-soviet-unions-top-secret-operation-to-repatriate-downed-u-s-airmen.htm https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1992-11-12-1992317164-story.html The story I read was in a magazine a number of years ago concerned a man who joined the AAF and found himself in the USSR after having flown a bombing raid on a Japanese target. His plane had taken some hits and had to make an emergency landing. He was kept in a Siberian camp for POWs that also had a population of criminals who began to brutalize the POWs. He eventually got home but his stay in the camp involved some very unpleasant situations.
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Oct 22, 2021 14:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:Edit: as a bonus have a totally normal picture of a marine with an M1 carbine. "Taken three days ago on Camp Schwab, Okinawa."
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Oct 22, 2021 15:13
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Scratch Monkey posted:When bombing mutual enemy Germany the Soviets would allow planes to land at allied airbases, but when it came to planes that had just bombed Japan they felt that they were technically neutral in that conflict and therefore would intern them. Some of the claims in the (second) article are a little vague, specifically: quote:* The largest group of Americans imprisoned in the Soviet Union included more than 730 pilots and other airmen who either made "forced landings on Soviet territory" or were shot down on Cold War spy flights. Mr. Volkogonov was not specific on their fates but spoke generally about prisoners' being interned in labor camps, some being executed and others forced to eventually renounce their U.S. citizenship. Seems to include both WW2 forced landings after bombing Japan vs Cold War era flights. e: I only briefly skimmed the first article but it seems like they weren't just tossed into the gulag. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Oct 22, 2021 |
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Oct 22, 2021 15:56
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:I'd assume planned flights were treated differently from unplanned ones. There were americans of russian and other SSR origins "liberated" from PoW camps and interned. Only about a hundred but still sucks to be them. A good number died in captivity. I thought the Doolittle raid guys who landed in Russia got smuggled home after a year or so.
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Oct 22, 2021 16:17
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Greggster posted:Is it also true that most fighter pilots were nude, happily sleeping beneath the airplane they were designated to for shelter and comfort? Yes. It is also true that if a strange pilot was staying the night, hospitality required that he be invited to make “one more” on the familial airbase rather than being interned.
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Oct 22, 2021 23:14
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In order to defend against the threat of combat gliders, the RAF prototyped a glider-destroyer. Slow and obsolete biplanes were fitted with lots of low caliber machines guns that would turn gliders into swiss cheese. When that proved to be too heavy for the planes, they fitted it with a single .50 machine gun. It was not to be fired directly at the glider (as that would be a warcrime), but instead right next to it, so the shockwave would rip the glider apart in mid air. The program was quietly cancelled when the first combat flight they intended to accompany completed its mission and returned to base before the glider-destroyer managed to finish crossing the channel.
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Oct 22, 2021 23:30
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why didn't the French take one of the options presented by the British at mers El kebir?
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Oct 22, 2021 23:38
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In the late war the Luftwaffe faced the issue of not having enough aircraft to tow their gliders. One proposed modification had a liquid-fuel rocket attached to the glider to launch it vertically, allowing it to reach a sufficient altitude that it could then glide to the target. Early prototypes suffered issues with the pilots suffocating in the upper atmosphere, and the research site was overrun by the red army before the problem could be addressed.
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Oct 22, 2021 23:40
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Did the 30's and 40's US Army have notional aggressor states as part of their training regimen, or are the Circle Trigonists and Krasnovians and such strictly a post-WWII thing?
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Oct 22, 2021 23:53
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bewbies posted:why didn't the French take one of the options presented by the British at mers El kebir? The French took the position that, having signed the armistice, they were now at peace with Germany, and that all the British options would be a violation of either the armistice or French sovereignty. It didn't help that Gensoul was anti-English, personally, and that Sommerville wasn't really given any flexibility in his orders.
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Oct 23, 2021 00:02
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The Lone Badger posted:In the late war the Luftwaffe faced the issue of not having enough aircraft to tow their gliders. One proposed modification had a liquid-fuel rocket attached to the glider to launch it vertically, allowing it to reach a sufficient altitude that it could then glide to the target. Early prototypes suffered issues with the pilots suffocating in the upper atmosphere, and the research site was overrun by the red army before the problem could be addressed. Before I realized it was propably fixed into the glider itself I saw for a second this ACME v-2 rocket with a tow rope attached to a glider propped upwards on a field and a massive ”YOINK” sound effect as the glider gets yeeted to near-space. I am still convinced that was attempt #1.
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Oct 23, 2021 00:05
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Speaking of pilots getting lost, this story is pretty funny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Faber FW-190s were strictly forbidden from flying over Britain in 1942, the reason being that it was very advanced for the time and the Nazis didn't want the Allies to get their hand on them. The allies were extremely keen to get their grubby mitts all over a FW-190. The British hatched all kinds of schemes to try to capture a FW-190 intact, including commando raids, and having a native German speaking RAF pilot land a captured ME-109 at a airport during a battle, yelling QUICK QUICK GIVE ME ANOTHER PLANE NO TIME TO REARM THIS ONE and then flying off. This turned out to be unnecessary. Armin Faber got super disoriented during a dogfight over the English channel. He thought he was over France, but couldn't tell where he was, so he decided to just land at a airport he saw and ask for directions. Imagine his surprise when the ground crew shoves a flare gun in his face and yells at him in English. Whoops, turns out he was over Wales. He spent the rest of the war in a POW camp in Canada before being sent home near the end of the war because he faked being sick, so this was probably a good move on his part.
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Oct 23, 2021 00:09
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The main action undertaken by the Vichy Navy was an anti-german scuttling at Toulon in response to Case Anton to deny nazi capture. Frankly the british murdered 1500 of their allies for no reason and should be vastly more ashamed of it than the Churchill wankery that they do when they talk about it. The french navy was not in danger of becoming active axis combatants. For reference, Bretagne was the only ship the british sunk, everything else hit at Mers-el-Kébir was scuttled by the french navy two years later. The hundreds of french sailors on other ships were sadly necessary losses of an utterly useless attack. Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 00:50
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Hard disagree here. The French fleet had the capability to threaten British shipping in the Med and an intervention at the right time could have been decisive in favor of the Axis. The Empire, fighting for its survival, could not afford to trust its security to French promises that they would never do that. They had already promised not to sign a separate peace, and look how that worked out.
Zorak of Michigan fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 01:31
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Also there were at least a few upper echelon officers in the French Navy the very much wanted to sail out against the British.
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Oct 23, 2021 01:35
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bewbies posted:why didn't the French take one of the options presented by the British at mers El kebir? Drachinifel took a deep dive into the question in this video here, which I thought was pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aoi33VAAO4 His conclusion is effectively that the French commander, Admiral Gensoul, was immensely and needlessly stubborn, and failed to communicate the full range of options the British had presented him to his superiors—most critically, he straight-up didn't tell the Vichy government that the British had given him the option to sail his fleet to the French West Indies or to a neutral power like the United States. Without that incredibly crucial detail, the Vichy government felt they had no choice but to say no, and thus tragedy ensued.
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Oct 23, 2021 01:57
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Cessna posted:"Taken three days ago on Camp Schwab, Okinawa." I feel like one day we're gonna find a clay tablet that depicts a similar scene.
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Oct 23, 2021 02:39
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Speaking of which, is there any definitive book about Vichy France? I’m particularly interested in what happened in the aftermath of WW2, how the collaborators were dealt with, etc, but I feel I wouldn’t know enough to just jump into a book like that without context. Doesn’t have to be super dense, though I wouldn’t mind that, just looking for a recommendation or two.
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Oct 23, 2021 06:41
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A little known Luftwaffe formation in the last weeks of the war were the combat gliders of Legion Geier, launched from cavernous concrete-reinforced hangars blasted into the rock high up in the Alps. Some say the real reason Patton's Third Army turned south instead of continuing on towards Berlin was too capture these planes and make sure the advanced German glider technology didn’t fall into Soviet hands. Accounts vary, but according to some, they had enough range to reach Berlin and take decisive part in the battle for the city, if their hangars hadn't been captured in a daring commando raid by the Free Dutch mountaineers.
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Oct 23, 2021 07:08
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Drachinifel took a deep dive into the question in this video here, which I thought was pretty good: Drachinifel is too favourable to the British in my eyes - they were equally stubborn, were tactless negotiators and took a number of aggressive actions that ultimately removed any chance of a peaceful resolution. In the weeks between the armistice being signed and Mers-el-Kebir, the British had repeatedly sought to clarify what would happen to the French Navy. Every time they asked, the French response was the same - the fleet would be scuttled if the Germans or Italians made any attempt to use it. Had the British been able to accept this entirely honest response, then everything could have been avoided. However, they could not. When the British arrived at Oran, they turned up in force. This was immediately alienating to Gensoul, as it was an implicit threat. The first action of the British was to broadcast a message to the French force by signal lamp. The signal, sent in poorly-written French, gave away any chance of keeping the negotiations private. The main British negotiator was Captain Holland of Ark Royal . While Holland had been a naval attaché in France and had good personal relationships with senior French officers, he was a relatively junior officer with no scope to make policy decisions. He was also carrying an unsigned note from Somerville. Put together, all of these implied to Gensoul that the British were not serious about the negotiations, that they were only talking as a prelude to the use of force. Had Force H stayed further out to see, with Somerville and Holland going in together to negotiate, Gensoul would have been much more receptive to the British approaches. Gensoul's messages to the French Navy's HQ in France were not especially significant in the outcome. He sent two messages. The first, sent shortly after Holland's arrival, was a simple statement of the facts as he saw them - that the British had arrived and were willing to use force if his fleet did not join them. While this message was inaccurate, it indicates how he felt about the British actions thus far. Their show of force and dismissive attempts at negotiation did not seem to be the actions of people who really wanted to reach a compromise. A later message, transmitted after several rounds of talks, raised the possibility of a negotiated solution. It described the possibility that had seemed most promising thus far, with the French force being disarmed at Mers-el-Kebir. Both messages were received by Admiral Darlan, commander of the French Navy as a whole, at the same time. Darlan's response was a simple message permitting Gensoul to respond in kind to any British use of force. He then left the Navy headquarters for a cabinet meeting in Vichy, a two hour drive away. By doing so, he washed his hands of the whole affair. Any decision, any compromise, that was made would be Gensoul's own. Meanwhile in the British camp, Somerville was under considerable pressure. The Admiralty and Cabinet wanted a swift resolution to the situation, while Holland (and probably Somerville himself) wanted to attempt to find a compromise, even with a lengthy negotiation. At about one o'clock, Somerville received intelligence that suggested that the French might be trying to leave the port. He ordered Force H to make ready to bombard, and for aircraft from Ark Royal to lay mines in the harbour entrance. Shortly after giving these ordrrs, he sent Holland back in for another round of negotiations and recalled the capital ships of Force H - but it was too late to stop the minelaying aircraft. While further negotiations were made, the mines made it even harder for Gensoul to trust the British. Even so, he was still trying to find a peaceful way out, especially since he now realised the British were truly serious about using forcd. Towards the end of the day, he showed Holland his orders, which permitted him to move the fleet to the Caribbean if seizure by the Axis (or British) seemed likely. Holland recognised this as being close to British demands and earnest negotiations to find a compromise began. By this time, it was too late. Somerville bent to pressure from above and began preparations for the bombardment. Had Gensoul been treated with tact and dignity from the start, things might well have gone better. Elsewhere, like with Godfroy at Alexandria or with the submarine Rubis in Dundee, a polite, honest approach, combined with a willingness to modify Admiralty demands, paid dividends. Had Somerville been willing to wait for an hour more at the end of the day, it might have been possible to find a way to get the French force to the Caribbean.
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Oct 23, 2021 09:02
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grassy gnoll posted:Did the 30's and 40's US Army have notional aggressor states as part of their training regimen, or are the Circle Trigonists and Krasnovians and such strictly a post-WWII thing? I shouldn't think the actual wartime Army was doing large scale training exercises of that sort. They had the real thing to worry about.
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Oct 23, 2021 10:12
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Randomcheese3 posted:Drachinifel is too favourable to the British in my eyes - they were equally stubborn, were tactless negotiators and took a number of aggressive actions that ultimately removed any chance of a peaceful resolution. Gensoul had already been treated with kid gloves right from the start. Somerville sent over a captain who spoke perfect French and was the captain of the Ark Royal, a main line warship, so there could be no communication errors. It was Gensoul's ego that saw this as a insult to send a mere captain over and replied with sending a lieutenant. These are not the actions of some one who was going to leave their ego at the door and negotiate in good faith. Gensoul also omitted significant details in his communications with France, again not the actions of some one who was going to negotiate in good faith. It was only when Gensoul realised the British were actually serous about the lengths they would go to he started to see sense but that was too late, the die had been cast. What we had was Somerville who had to make sure that the Kriegsmarine didn't get an extra four battleships and six destroyers and on the other side Gensoul who was an arrogant man who was not honest to his superiors. The French fleet at Mers-El-Kabir already had more battleships in it than the Royal Navy had in the Med and if they were added to the strength of the Italian Navy would have made it impossible for the Royal Navy to contest the Mediterranean against the Axis. It is not an exageration to say the entire course of the war would have gone differently if those ships had become Axis ships. The approach at other places could be different because the stakes were much lower. A single unescorted battleship could be dealt with much easier if it decided to fight. Four battleships with escorts could have been defeated by Sommerville in open water but the victory would be pyrric at best and wiped out most of the heavy RN strength in the Med at worst. With hindsight could it have gone better? Yes. But handing over the ships was never going to be an option for the French and could you trust the Vichy Navy to actually sail to the Caribbean and stay there until the war was over? Maybe. Would you stake the entire course of the war over a maybe?
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Oct 23, 2021 12:09
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Foxtrot_13 posted:Would you stake the entire course of the war over a maybe? it wouldn't have changed the outcome
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Oct 23, 2021 12:16
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We're talking post fall of France, before Operation Barbarossa. The outcomes is very much in doubt. Edit: I mean in the end if you are willing to use the benefit of hindsight (the French scuttling their ships successfully in the subsequent seizure attempt) to defend Gensoul, then it would only be fair to use it to condemn him too. If he had joined the British he would have been alongside many others who did and become a war hero after the war, helping to rebuild the French navy. That would have been a measurable positive outcome for France. He did not act in the best interests of his country at all. Gensoul's actions are pretty easy to explain if you suppose the opposite - he didn't think the British were going to win the war. In which case, why not join the winning side? In the event of an axis victory, getting his ships sunk by the perfidious British, or even handing his fleet over to the Germans are very reasonable things that improve his personal prestige. It is accepting any of the British options that will get him in trouble with the new world order. Edit 2: also you need only to look at the details of the scuttling at Toulon to note that it was not in fact a sure thing. Fangz fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 12:35
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This is July 1940. The UK the last belligerent standing and there are serious questions both internally and across the world as to whether it can or should continue to fight. The outcome of the war is very much in doubt. The French fleet falling into German hands makes it impossible to contest the Mediterranean, which is the main UK war plan for the next four years. It might even make Sea Lion a plausible option (with the benefit of hindsight, probably no, but nobody knows that at the time). Alchenar fucked around with this message at 13:17 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 13:13
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Randomcheese3 posted:Towards the end of the day, he showed Holland his orders, which permitted him to move the fleet to the Caribbean if seizure by the Axis (or British) seemed likely. Holland recognised this as being close to British demands and earnest negotiations to find a compromise began. this specifically is what I'm wondering about. if he had these orders, why wasn't he moving out on them days or hours before? the British had specifically given the option of interning their ships in a neutral port. to that end, why did the French care of the British got their ships at all? in hindsight it seems like the intelligent thing to do was to make plans to move the entire French fleet to England as soon as the French declared their situation hopeless.
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Oct 23, 2021 13:15
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ChubbyChecker posted:it wouldn't have changed the outcome Ah yes, Churchill has consumed the Spice, has the Eyes of Ibad and can forsee the future. Come on now. He didn't know that. I'm not a fan of the dude in general but in this case I can see why he did what he did.
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Oct 23, 2021 13:16
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bewbies posted:this specifically is what I'm wondering about. if he had these orders, why wasn't he moving out on them days or hours before? the British had specifically given the option of interning their ships in a neutral port. Because Vichy France wasn't actually neutral, it was led by pro-German-worldview fascists. This gets memory holed hard by everyone because of embarrassment. Similarly tens of thousands of French troops who had the option of joining De Gaulle in the UK and fighting on opted to go home. After the armistice France is not committed to fighting Nazi Germany as a unique evil in the world that needed to be destroyed - they'd fought a war and lost and given the scale of the loss were actually being offered what looked like pretty favourable terms. e: also those French sailors have families in France which is now largely under German occupation. Asking them to sail for Britain is asking them to commit treason against their legitimate government and exile themselves for an unspecified amount of time which could be forever. We know in hindsight that the Allies win and that the Vichy regime is going to get revised as illegitimate, but nobody knows that at the time. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 13:21
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bewbies posted:this specifically is what I'm wondering about. if he had these orders, why wasn't he moving out on them days or hours before? the British had specifically given the option of interning their ships in a neutral port. Like I said, it all adds up if you suppose it would be the Germans, not the British that will win the war. In which case it matters a lot personally to Gensoul, because all the Free French would be considered traitors to the new German-aligned French order. I mean if you want illogical: At Toulon, the French commander refused private communications from the head of the Vichy navy to defect to the British, choosing to scuttle instead unless the order was made publicly through formal channels. And this was in November 1942, after the Germans broke the armistice agreement and began to occupy France! A clear suggestion is that the French navy was defeatist as gently caress, there's not many other ways to make sense of things. One might wonder what would have happened if Hitler had heeded Raeder's advice to have the French fleet join the Italians, retaining their crew - especially as that would have fulfilled the letter of the orders the admirals at Toulon were given. Fangz fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 13:27
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Alchenar posted:e: also those French sailors have families in France which is now largely under German occupation. This is a point which I think needs to be emphasized. The French fleet insists that it will remain in harbor but would scuttle rather than attack the British. If they won't flee or scuttle now, when the entire thing is a surprise and they're under the guns of the RN, why would they scuttle at some arbitrary point in the future when the Nazis might have their families hostage? Hostage-taking would certainly be a typical Nazi move. French intentions are not sufficient surety for the security of the Med. French capabilities had to be neutralized.
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Oct 23, 2021 15:17
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Bulgaroctonus posted:Speaking of which, is there any definitive book about Vichy France? I’m particularly interested in what happened in the aftermath of WW2, how the collaborators were dealt with, etc, but I feel I wouldn’t know enough to just jump into a book like that without context. Doesn’t have to be super dense, though I wouldn’t mind that, just looking for a recommendation or two. Nothing is definitive but probably the best single volume is Paxton’s Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944.
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Oct 23, 2021 15:21
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Fangz posted:Like I said, it all adds up if you suppose it would be the Germans, not the British that will win the war. Yeah this makes most sense. In related news a few things around the internet suggest there was some sympathy/support for fascism amongst French naval officers...are there any actual sources that support this or is it just conjecture?
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Oct 23, 2021 15:39
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Foxtrot_13 posted:Gensoul had already been treated with kid gloves right from the start. Sending over Holland made sense for Somerville, yes, but using him as an intermediary can hardly be called 'treating Gensoul with kid gloves'. Thanks to his rank, Holland could not make significant decisions on his own, could not offer concessions or change British policy. The successful negotiations that took place at the same time had British officers of the same rank as (or senior to) their French counterparts leading the negotiation. Holland then made the poor decision to transmit a message about the sensitive, personal negotiations to the fleet as a whole, in poorly written French. This was hardly a move which would endear himself to Gensoul. Combine this with the fact that Force H was sitting there as a direct threat, it's not hard to see why Gensoul took his selection as an insult. Gensoul omitting details from his first message to France is also understandable when we consider his perspective. The British had arrived, mob-handed, with a strong force sitting in a threatening posture. They had sent in a relatively junior officer with what amounted to an ultimatum. As such, he sent a message which reflected his read of British intentions. When it became clear that the British were somewhat serious about negotiations, he sent a clarification, which reached his superiors at the same time as his original message. Foxtrot_13 posted:What we had was Somerville who had to make sure that the Kriegsmarine didn't get an extra four battleships and six destroyers and on the other side Gensoul who was an arrogant man who was not honest to his superiors. The French fleet at Mers-El-Kabir already had more battleships in it than the Royal Navy had in the Med and if they were added to the strength of the Italian Navy would have made it impossible for the Royal Navy to contest the Mediterranean against the Axis. It is not an exageration to say the entire course of the war would have gone differently if those ships had become Axis ships. The Force du Raid at Oran had two old battleships and the two large cruisers of the Dunkerque class. Britain had five battleships in the Mediterranean Fleet, plus two more and Hood in Force H in the Western Mediterranean. They also had the aircraft carrier Ark Royal , to which the French had no equivalent. Foxtrot_13 posted:
Force X at Alexandria had one battleship, yes, but also had four modern cruisers and several destroyers. It was not something that could be inherently easily defeated, especially by a Mediterranean Fleet that was lower on cruisers than was felt necessary. Even serious damage to Force H would not have wiped out the RN's heavy strength in the Med, because Mediterranean Fleet would still be there with its five battleships. All this is moot, though, because the majority of the Vichy French fleet had no real interest in fighting for either side. They perceived themselves as being loyal to France, and had no interest in participating in a larger war that France had been knocked out of. Fighting for Britain, or taking actions that the Germans might perceive as being too pro-British, also brought the possibility of reprisals from the Germans. They were willing to take actions up to and including scuttling their ships to prevent either side seizing them. French commanders had repeatedly assured the British of this - but equally, it is understandable why the British did not trust these. The armistice the French had signed was somewhat ambiguous about Axis plans for the French Navy, and the British could not be sure that the French would hold to their plans if pushed by the Axis.
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Oct 23, 2021 15:42
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You're omitting the points of Gensoul raising steam and calling for reinforcements, which signalled to the British that he was preparing for a breakout. You also miss the point that the French commanders subsequently scuttled their fleet despite being instructed by their Vichy superiors (having been betrayed by the Germans) to defect to the British to join the Free French under Darlan and DeGaulle, and only because the Germans stormed their HQ at 4 am. The events at Toulon do not show the French navy as being unwilling to join the Germans in all circumstances, it shows that they are prepared to do the bare minimum and not a smidgen more in the situation of a total German betrayal and a botched smash-and-grab. Of course, bad feeling from Mers al Kebir contributed to this, but I do not think Toulon says anything about what what would have happened in a counterfactual where the Germans tried to obtain the French ships under more friendly terms. There is really no basis to thinking that the likes of Gensoul would disobey a legitimate order from a French puppet government to hand his ships over to the Germans or Italians. Gensoul had no prospect that he could raise steam in time to put up a fair fight against the British, rather it's his actions that artificially created a time limit. So the whole "oh the thing could have been resolved but time ran out" elides the issue that Gensoul caused the time to run out completely pointlessly in the first place. He could have stopped the process of readying his ships at any time. Fangz fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 15:46
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bewbies posted:this specifically is what I'm wondering about. if he had these orders, why wasn't he moving out on them days or hours before? the British had specifically given the option of interning their ships in a neutral port. Gensoul was under orders to only do this when it looked like his ships were under imminent threat of seizure. This was also primarily aimed against Germany and Italy, who were seen as more likely and able to do so. As to the second part, there were three main reasons why. The more prosaic was that the Germans had declared that any Frenchman who joined the British to fight on would be declared a franc-tireur and therefore liable to severe reprisals. Secondly, a number of figures in the leadership of the French Navy were very right wing and were at least sympathetic to the Germans. Finally, there were questions of French national integrity at play; many in the French Navy were more loyal to France than to continuing to fight a war they felt they had lost. The French Navy was not, as they saw it, a tool to be used by the British or Axis, but part of the French nation, even in defeat. Fangz posted:You're omitting the points of Gensoul raising steam and calling for reinforcements, which signalled to the British that he was preparing for a breakout. You also miss the point that the French commanders subsequently scuttled their fleet despite being instructed by their Vichy superiors (having been betrayed by the Germans) to defect to the British to join the Free French under Darlan and DeGaulle. Gensoul had not called for reinforcements; they had been dispatched by the French High Command without his knowledge. Raising steam was more under his control. The British first got inklings that Gensoul might have been raising steam at about 13:00, and began preparing to bombard and mine the harbour, but also sent Holland back in to negotiate. They called off the bombardment when Holland's negotiations started to bear fruit, but could not cancel the mine laying. This escalation set negotiations back but they continued. There was no clear risk that Gensoul would have been able to escape or fight had negotiations continued for another hour, especially with the harbour channel mined. As far as the scuttling of the French fleet at Toulon goes, this was partly down to the threat of reprisals, and partly because the French fleet had been largely drained of fuel, and had limited time to refuel and get steam up before German forces could arrive. It had no real ability to fight off an air attack and reaching Allied forces meant steaming for hours through waters over which the Axis had relative air superiority. It's not unreasonable that the Vichy commander asked for a direct order to do so, especially since the request came not from his Vichy superiors, but from Darlan who was with the Free French at the time.
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Oct 23, 2021 17:06
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Randomcheese3 posted:
You're really underrating the French fleet here. Dunkerque and Strasbourg were undergunned compared to other treaty-era battleships, but they were still absolutely battleships, or at the very least battlecruisers, and should be considered as such. And while Bretagne and Provence were older ships, they were contemporaneous with the British vessels, if somewhat less capable—Bretagne, Provence, Resolution, and Valiant all having been commissioned in 1916. The British did have the battleship advantage over the French, with the 3 ships in Force H and 4 ships in the Mediterranean Fleet (Malaya, Ramillies, Royal Sovereign and Warspite, all of First World War vintage), but the concern was that if the Axis took the ships, they would have an overwhelming advantage in firepower when combined with the Italian fleet of six battleships, which included the two brand-new Littorio-class ships Vittorio Veneto and Littorio. The Italian Navy was no pushover, and them gaining control of the French fleet (Or even part of the fleet) would have made it extremely difficult for the British to contest the Med, if not entirely impossible. Acebuckeye13 fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 17:13
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Randomcheese3 posted:
I'm talking about the request made by Auphan, the Vichy Secretary of the Navy on the 15th of November. The fleet at Toulon was not drained of fuel either, the crews had specifically stockpiled enough to make it to Allied held North Africa. In the event of the scuttling, a few ships ignored the order and defected anyway, they reached the allies successfully. The excuse of the "threat of reprisals" does not wash because the Free French army was already fighting for the Allies for years at this point, and the rank and file of the French navy was plenty willing to consider defection. And like, why would scuttling not incur reprisals while defection would? You can't argue that they had not enough time either, they had two weeks from time instructions from their Vichy superiors came. The most likely conclusion given their inaction was that the intent of the French admirals was to side with the Axis as per the Raeder plan, but Hitler hosed things up. Note that Laborde had already previously advocated that the Vichy fleet sail out and attack the Allies during Operation Torch. These guys were convicted for treason for doing the scuttling after the war, BTW. I think trying to portray their actions as heroic and loyal to France really requires a *lot* of mental gymnastics. quote:There was no clear risk that Gensoul would have been able to escape or fight had negotiations continued for another hour, especially with the harbour channel mined. There absolutely was a clear risk, the air dropped mines did not close off the harbour completely - some ships (incl the battleship Strasbourg) escaped after all, if there was a longer delay even more ships would have escaped. The French was also shooting at the mining planes and downed one, killing the aircrew. Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 17:23
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