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In the end saying "they didn't do X because of the threat of German reprisals" is just another way of saying "they didn't do X because they were cowards". You can argue that it's emotionally understandable but it doesn't become "reasonable", and once you've established that these guys were cowards, why exactly should the British trust them to stand up to future German demands under further threat of reprisals? If they are scared of bad guys doing bad things, then they shouldn't be in positions of power in the armed forces.
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Oct 23, 2021 18:04
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I had never heard of most of this stuff, and while it's probably 2021 backfilling the details in my head, this does sound an awful lot like maybe these French naval guys were not that interested in fighting Hitler, and perhaps may have thought he had some good ideas, even if they may not have been aware of the full depth of Hitler's, y'know, Hitlerism as of yet.
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Oct 23, 2021 18:33
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Randomcheese3 posted:The Force du Raid at Oran had two old battleships and the two large cruisers of the Dunkerque class. You're deliberately downplaying the threat the French squadron at Mers posed to the British fleet in the Mediterranean. If they're cruisers - then what the hell were the Japanese doing going and sinking all those cruisers at Pearl Harbor?
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Oct 23, 2021 19:19
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bewbies posted:why didn't the French take one of the options presented by the British at mers El kebir? Because the commanding officer decided to freak out about protocol, and he refused to see the envoys the allies sent because they were not Fleet Admirals or whatever that douchebag's rank was. e: Beaten like a Fairey Battle Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 20:49
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Don't shoot the messager Gensoul.
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Oct 23, 2021 21:12
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Nessus posted:I had never heard of most of this stuff, and while it's probably 2021 backfilling the details in my head, this does sound an awful lot like maybe these French naval guys were not that interested in fighting Hitler, and perhaps may have thought he had some good ideas, even if they may not have been aware of the full depth of Hitler's, y'know, Hitlerism as of yet. One thing I've heard that sticks with me is this: if you had told someone in Europe in 1920 that a country with a long history of antisemitism that had been brutalized by WWI would start WWII in aggressive moves against its neighbors, most people would have thought you meant France.
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Oct 23, 2021 23:53
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OPAONI posted:One thing I've heard that sticks with me is this: if you had told someone in Europe in 1920 that a country with a long history of antisemitism that had been brutalized by WWI would start WWII in aggressive moves against its neighbors, most people would have thought you meant France.
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Oct 24, 2021 00:01
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Are we really struggling to deal with the possibility that a Frenchman might have an unreasonably large ego and take offence when mildly slighted? This would not exactly constitute scoop of the century in 1940.
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Oct 24, 2021 00:18
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At least one poster has said one of the British missteps was relating a message in poor written French. I just nodded, it made perfect sense to me, having lived in France. Then I thought about other nations where "oh this really important communique was written poorly" was taken as an insult. ???? There's instances where poor communications or phrasing led to problems or unnecessary bloodshed, but that's out of misunderstanding, not pride at them insulting your noble language.
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Oct 24, 2021 00:46
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Trin Tragula posted:Are we really struggling to deal with the possibility that a Frenchman might have an unreasonably large ego and take offence when mildly slighted? This would not exactly constitute scoop of the century in 1940. Post avatar combo, said avatar encountered many men with crazy bad egos.
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Oct 24, 2021 00:56
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Acebuckeye13 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. Dunkerque and Strasbourg, by role, were intended to fight cruisers in defence of trade, rather than to fight in the battleline; this is why I consider them 'large cruisers', rather than battleships or battlecruisers. In terms of armament or armour, they were outclassed by any British battleship. While they were faster than the older British battleships, Hood had them beaten in almost any category. The Bretagne-class had been commissioned starting in 1916, but they belonged to an earlier generation of dreadnoughts than the British 'R' or Queen Elizabeth classes -13.5in guns against 15in guns being the main seperator. The Bretagnes were, in terms of armament, armour and machinery, more similar to the British King George V class, all of which had been scrapped or rendered useless for war by 1939, as they were horrifically obsolete by this time. The British ships had also received more extensive refits, especially to things like fire control. In 1940, Valiant outclassed Bretagne in every single way, outranging her by ~10,000 yards, having a superior AA battery, a better armour scheme, and a higher top speed. Acebuckeye13 posted: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. You're right; Mediterranean Fleet had four not five battleships - that was me miscounting. There were also concerns that the French might join up with the Italians. However, there was also no evidence that they would do so, and not inconsiderable evidence that they would not, but only if you trusted the French to do what they said. Fangz posted:In the end saying "they didn't do X because of the threat of German reprisals" is just another way of saying "they didn't do X because they were cowards". You can argue that it's emotionally understandable but it doesn't become "reasonable", and once you've established that these guys were cowards, why exactly should the British trust them to stand up to future German demands under further threat of reprisals? If they are scared of bad guys doing bad things, then they shouldn't be in positions of power in the armed forces. On the one hand, yes, a failure to join the Free French forces is, fundamentally, an act of moral cowardice. However, given the scale of German reprisals, it is also an understandable one that I do not judge people for making. German reprisals were not solely targeted against those who defected, but also against their families and communities. Many who served with the Free French Army did so under noms de guerre, such as General Leclerc, to avoid putting their families at risk. This was harder to do if you were an admiral taking your fleet over to the British. Large numbers of people defecting were also harder to hide and harder for the Germans to overlook. I personally feel it is fair to ask a soldier to risk their life, or to ask an officer to risk the lives of those under their command, but I do not feel it is fair to ask them to risk the lives of innocent civilians. This was a tendency noted at the time. On the 23rd June 1940, the British Naval Liason Officer at Bizerta reported that "Officers who often themselves have lost all, would like to continue with British, but do not appear prepared to demand sacrifice from their men of loss of families, upon whom reprisals are indicated", while the Commander in Chief at Portsmouth stated that morale aboard French ships at the port was deteriorating due to the possibility of reprisals against the families of their crews. Ice Fist posted:You're deliberately downplaying the threat the French squadron at Mers posed to the British fleet in the Mediterranean. If they're cruisers - then what the hell were the Japanese doing going and sinking all those cruisers at Pearl Harbor? As noted above, the thing that made the Dunkerques large cruisers in my eyes was their intended role - trade defence - rather than any technical feature such as armour or armament. Fighting battleships was an entirely secondary role, with French naval doctrine considering them only suitable for combat against the older Italian dreadnoughts, rather than any more modern battleship. This role meant that they had compromised on armour and armament. Compared to the British battleships, they had weaker guns and armour, and Hood could outrun them. Fangz 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. Having checked things rather than relying on solely memory, the decision not to sail for North Africa was made by Admiral de Laborde, established as commander of the French Fleet well after Mers-el-Kebir. Laborde was notably sympathetic to the Germans, and apparently wished to maintain good relations with them, in addition to the other factors I described. None of the major ships at Toulon sailed for North Africa. The only ships that did with any success were the submarines. with four reaching North Africa and a fifth being scuttled in the entry-way to Toulon harbour following damage from German bombing raids. Fangz posted: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. At least in 1940, the rank-and-file of the French Navy was largely less willing to join the Allies than their officers were. The Free French Army had fought for the Allies for several years by 1942, but this largely recruited in French Africa where the Germans could not reach - where there were Europeans serving, these often either served under psuedonyms like General Leclerc or had no family ties in France like the Spanish Republicans of La Nueve. Defection was far more likely to draw reprisals than a scuttling was because of the legal language of the Armistice of Compiegnes. This allowed reprisals against Frenchmen who joined the British, but also gave the French control over their fleet. While French officers had no reason to trust the Germans to stick to this, it was at least something they could point to in their defence. Fangz posted: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. I don't disagree with this, I'm just trying to explain how they saw themselves. Fangz posted: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. Gensoul's first ship did not start to get underway until a little under 45 minutes after the last meeting between Gensoul and Holland ended. This was, not coincidentally, five minutes after the British opened fire; Strasbourg started steaming to avoid the British shelling. Somerville, meanwhile, could not act on the results of the last meeting between Holland and Gensoul, due to pressure to sink the French from the Admiralty. He received the results of this meeting literally one minute before his final ultimatum was due to end. None of the minelaying aircraft were lost, but two of the aircraft that attacked Strasbourg after she left Oran were shot down by her AA fire and a Blackburn Skua crashed due to fuel exhaustion or through AA damage, per Ark Royal's report on the action and David Hobbs' book on the Fleet Air Arm in the Mediterranean. In all cases, their crews were rescued. Uncle Enzo posted:At least one poster has said one of the British missteps was relating a message in poor written French. The problem wasn't so much about how it was written, it was more about how it was relayed. The message, which described the British negotiating position, had been sent not to the French commander, but had been sent out indiscriminately to the fleet as a whole. This implied that the British didn't trust the commander, Gensoul, which was not a good start to negotiations. It being in awful French was merely the cherry on top of a combination of things that implied that the British were not taking things as seriously as one might have wanted. Randomcheese3 fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Oct 24, 2021 |
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Oct 24, 2021 01:34
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If you received a poorly translated and the words you read were different than the intended message, I could see it being insulting or misleading or confusing to have to deal with.
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Oct 24, 2021 01:59
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quote:You're right; Mediterranean Fleet had four not five battleships - that was me miscounting. There were also concerns that the French might join up with the Italians. However, there was also no evidence that they would do so, and not inconsiderable evidence that they would not, but only if you trusted the French to do what they said. quote:Defection was far more likely to draw reprisals than a scuttling was because of the legal language of the Armistice of Compiegnes. This allowed reprisals against Frenchmen who joined the British, but also gave the French control over their fleet. While French officers had no reason to trust the Germans to stick to this, it was at least something they could point to in their defence. These events took place *after* the Germans broke the terms of the armistice and began to occupy Vichy France. quote:At least in 1940, the rank-and-file of the French Navy was largely less willing to join the Allies than their officers were. The Free French Army had fought for the Allies for several years by 1942, but this largely recruited in French Africa where the Germans could not reach - where there were Europeans serving, these often either served under psuedonyms like General Leclerc or had no family ties in France like the Spanish Republicans of La Nueve. I am talking about November '42. You had the crew of the Strasbourg literally chanting support of de Gaulle. You had secretive stores of fuel for the journey to North Africa. Meanwhile the commander of the fleet is offering to fight against Torch and doing good damndest to help the Germans. quote:Gensoul's first ship did not start to get underway until a little under 45 minutes after the last meeting between Gensoul and Holland ended. This was, not coincidentally, five minutes after the British opened fire; Strasbourg started steaming to avoid the British shelling. Somerville, meanwhile, could not act on the results of the last meeting between Holland and Gensoul, due to pressure to sink the French from the Admiralty. He received the results of this meeting literally one minute before his final ultimatum was due to end. Fangz fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Oct 24, 2021 |
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Oct 24, 2021 03:30
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The fall of France is just some really weird territory with regard to what sovereignty or democracy even is. The government surrendered, but a smattering of officials, not really including anyone very important in the government, fled to lead all the extra bits of the country that didn't accept the surrender of the official government and kind of...seceded? Revolted? But they took upon themselves a self-decided mandate for the nation in opposition. Like it makes sense because it was all one big war and France was allied with a big block so there was a clear pre-surrender mandate to stick with, and we accept the implicit illegitimacy of Nazi-occupied France because...they're Nazis, and they also lost so their side of things wasn't made into official histories, but we're not so eager to declare other postwar occupation governments as immediately illegitimate. And I guess some of the confusion comes from the nature of how democracies are supposed to work, where big decisions are supposed to take into account the opinions of the masses, while something like the Spanish colonies immediately rebelling against Napoleon flows more easily from the way that the feudalistic relationships work where local lords hold ultimate authority over their provinces anyways, so those individual lords refusing to acknowledge the new monarch is more of an age-old tradition going way back. Uncle Enzo posted:At least one poster has said one of the British missteps was relating a message in poor written French. There was that one war that Bismarck orchestrated where he managed to make statements that seemed innocent in every other language but extremely inflammatory in French. I don't think I've heard of that happening with any other language. Weird place. I guess Japanese I can imagine something like that happen because it has a lot of extra formalities that don't exist in English, so that seems ripe for offending, but I don't know of any particular examples of that causing a major incident.
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Oct 24, 2021 04:22
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In the end the math is the math. An italian fleet that could potentially add four more French battleships would absolutely make it almost impossible for the British to control the mediterranean. All of Britain's oil comes through the mediterranean. With hindsight it's easy to feel that the outcome of the entire war would not have changed if the attack did not happen. But at that point in time like other people have pointed out britian was going about it alone and they can take absolutely zero chance of the Mediterranean being lost. When given the choice between potentially losing the Mediterranean and attacking the French fleet the math is easy and right and wrong etc are irrelevant.
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Oct 24, 2021 04:28
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De Gaulle had no legal justification for what he did. I guess you could call him a rebel. The only precedent is that every other occupied country in Europe set up a government-in-exile. At the same time, you gotta respect game
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Oct 24, 2021 04:29
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Zhanism posted:In the end the math is the math. An italian fleet that could potentially add four more French battleships would absolutely make it almost impossible for the British to control the mediterranean. All of Britain's oil comes through the mediterranean. With hindsight it's easy to feel that the outcome of the entire war would not have changed if the attack did not happen. But at that point in time like other people have pointed out britian was going about it alone and they can take absolutely zero chance of the Mediterranean being lost. When given the choice between potentially losing the Mediterranean and attacking the French fleet the math is easy and right and wrong etc are irrelevant. Slim Jim Pickens posted:The Brits lost regular use of the Central Mediterranean the minute that Italy entered the war! They were sending supplies the long way around Africa the whole time!!!!!!!! The only convoys going through the Med were the extremely heavily armed ones to Malta!!!!! Stop saying this poo poo!!!!! Who's teaching people this crarp!?
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Oct 24, 2021 04:30
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Wait so first Gensoul was offended by the bad French, I wanna see this letter. I read French, lay it on me.
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Oct 24, 2021 04:30
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Xiahou Dun posted:Wait so first Gensoul was offended by the bad French, I wanna see this letter. I read French, lay it on me. 
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Oct 24, 2021 04:32
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 https://www.argunners.com/operation-catapult-attack-mers-el-kebir-british-vs-french/ French Western Mediterranean Fleet: 4 Battleships 10 heavy / light Cruisers 37 Destroyers 36 Submarines various oilers / supply and repair vessels … French Eastern Mediterranean Fleet: 1 Battleship 4 heavy / light Cruisers 3 Destroyers various oilers / supply and repair vessels … Royal Navy as of June 1940 15 Battleships 3 Battlecruisers 7 Aircraft carriers 66 Cruisers (heavy & light) 184 Destroyers (of all types) 60 Submarines (mostly modern & 9 building) 45 Escort and Patrol vessels 56 flower class corvettes on order and or on the stocks. quote:July 3rd Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Oct 24, 2021 |
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Oct 24, 2021 04:33
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quote:Mers El-Kébir… le « Grand Port », mot composé arabe, évoque la mer, que ce lieu géographique essaie d’étreindre dans la tenaille, largement ouverte de sa rade, et l’installation portuaire que la France de la seconde moitié du XX° siècle y a créée (1928 – 1945)… http://www.contre-info.com/3-juillet-1940-lagression-britannique-sur-mers-el-kebir-1927-marins-francais-tues
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Oct 24, 2021 04:44
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Jobbo_Fett posted:
When was the last time the British empire gathered literally every ship in one theater? Pretty much never, those 15 battleships were spread in the home fleet, guarding vs the Germans and even in the med it's was split into two fleets plus not all are active at once, there's always a few in dock or repair. The 6 Italian and 4 french battleships together would have had interior lines and could overwhelm each of those in detail. Yes I'm sorry I was wrong on the oil. But did the British fight so hard to hold eypgt and Malta because it wasn't important? How much better would the Italians or the Germans have done if they controlled their supplies fight across North Africa? The British chose to destroy their former allies, which they didn't want to, because they couldn't afford to not contest the med. This shows how serious they thought the situation for. It's easy now to say they should have done this and that but they had imperfect info, time constraints and an actual war on their asses. Until someone gets a time message back to them, I don't see why what they did is so hard to justify. It's not like they were happy to do it, no one in that operation wanted it or liked it
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Oct 24, 2021 04:47
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Zhanism posted:When was the last time the British empire gathered literally every ship in one theater? Pretty much never, those 15 battleships were spread in the home fleet, guarding vs the Germans and even in the med it's was split into two fleets plus not all are active at once, there's always a few in dock or repair. The 6 Italian and 4 french battleships together would have had interior lines and could overwhelm each of those in detail. Just for reference, I didn't post that as a comparison between the French in the Mediterranean and a bizarro world where the entirety of the Royal Navy is also in the Mediterranean, but it does offer context in showing what the French did have in that area, that could have bolstered the Germans or Italians in some alternate timeline where they are incorporated into a fighting force for the Axis. Also I don't think I have any of the books used as sources on Wikipedia and the one digital article appears to be behind a paywall? I should check my Oxford's companion to see what it says... Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Oct 24, 2021 |
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Oct 24, 2021 04:51
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SlothfulCobra posted:The fall of France is just some really weird territory with regard to what sovereignty or democracy even is. The government surrendered, but a smattering of officials, not really including anyone very important in the government, fled to lead all the extra bits of the country that didn't accept the surrender of the official government and kind of...seceded? Revolted? But they took upon themselves a self-decided mandate for the nation in opposition. Oh, you could definitely do it in English; "Bigshot Joey done went and~" as opposed to "President Biden has, regrettably, made the decision to~" is if anything so much more unthinkable than "バイデンの奴、～とやっちまった" that it begins to scan as hilarious. Japanese gets its rep because its politeness is strictly formalized in a restricted set of accepted grammar, and thus it's something you can print on a textbook page as Needed To Remember, plus there are categories on the higher side a learner will never qualify to hear themselves. The English approach, where it's unthinking, varying convention rather than specification, and demands its strongest form for every Dominos manager, is kind of the scary one.
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Oct 24, 2021 05:03
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Oxford's Companion WW2 Entry on Mers-El-Kebir posted:
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Oct 24, 2021 05:17
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Randomcheese3 posted:Dunkerque and Strasbourg, by role, were intended to fight cruisers in defence of trade, rather than to fight in the battleline; this is why I consider them 'large cruisers', rather than battleships or battlecruisers. In terms of armament or armour, they were outclassed by any British battleship. While they were faster than the older British battleships, Hood had them beaten in almost any category. Eeeehhhhhh, while I understand your reasoning, I think it's still a mistake to refer to them merely as "Large Cruisers." While each individual British battleship was certainly more capable, they were still very powerful warships with battleship-grade weapons and armor. Nothing less than a battleship is going to stand up to 13" guns, and nothing less than a battleship would have been sufficient to defeat or deter them on the open seas. There's certainly a reason the British considered it so important that they be neutralized or sunk.
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Oct 24, 2021 05:39
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Randomcheese3 posted:Dunkerque and Strasbourg, by role, were intended to fight cruisers in defence of trade, rather than to fight in the battleline; this is why I consider them 'large cruisers', rather than battleships or battlecruisers. In terms of armament or armour, they were outclassed by any British battleship. This is not how battleships or battlecruisers were defined and it goes against what the French actually considered them to be: they were (and are still) referred to as either being a navire de ligne (ship of the line) or a cuirassé (battleship).
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Oct 24, 2021 05:46
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Their final configuration was designed to handle the German Deutschlands and the Strasbourg was further modified with more belt armor because of the Italian Littorios. Hell, they were better or comparably armored to most of the British battlecruisers before the chonky boy that was Hood
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Oct 24, 2021 06:17
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:De Gaulle had no legal justification for what he did. I guess you could call him a rebel. The only precedent is that every other occupied country in Europe set up a government-in-exile. At the same time, you gotta respect game
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Oct 24, 2021 07:24
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Let's say you were given a self-published book from somebody you don't immediately want to piss off, but they hope that you will read it. Let us say that it is supposed to be the first book in a historical fiction series about a Scottish "military family" that moved to the US in the 1740s, with each book following a subsequent generation's involvement in various wars and such. Let's say you got this from somebody in Texas and you fully expect that they'll be fighting for the Confederacy in one of the books. What kind of bingo card of tropes would you assemble and prepare to fill out before becoming violent with the first book? I'm going to assume one of the bingo squares would have to do with something about liberty and the King of England instead of them fleeing after cattle raiding instead. Edit: I just think there's some kind of Southern land mine here I don't really understand and somebody here probably knows a strange amount of detail about Scots-Irish obsessions in the US.
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Oct 24, 2021 07:52
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It seems to me utterly paranoid to think that Germans would have just grabbed French battleships and used them against Britain. Germans if any knew how quick it was to scuttle an entire fleet under threat, and even in the unlikely occasion that they could have taken over the ships intact and with zero sabotage, they would have needed to train an entire crew to run the drat things. And a battleship is such a complex vessel that I doubt they would have gotten anywhere in a long while. Brits simply panicked in 1940. It seems like this was characteristic for Churchill, grasping at any straws you can just because you can. Or rather, because Britain had a stronk navy, it had to be utilized even in situations where there was no apparent benefit. Gallipoli comes to mind.
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Oct 24, 2021 08:11
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:De Gaulle had no legal justification for what he did. I guess you could call him a rebel. The only precedent is that every other occupied country in Europe set up a government-in-exile. At the same time, you gotta respect game Oh yeah France has no other precedent for a general-in-exile returning from overseas to overthrow a foreign imposed government and restore France to greatness.
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Oct 24, 2021 08:36
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Nenonen posted:It seems to me utterly paranoid to think that Germans would have just grabbed French battleships and used them against Britain. ....but they tried to do exactly that??
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Oct 24, 2021 09:03
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Let's say you were given a self-published book from somebody you don't immediately want to piss off, but they hope that you will read it. Let us say that it is supposed to be the first book in a historical fiction series about a Scottish "military family" that moved to the US in the 1740s, with each book following a subsequent generation's involvement in various wars and such. Let's say you got this from somebody in Texas and you fully expect that they'll be fighting for the Confederacy in one of the books. What kind of bingo card of tropes would you assemble and prepare to fill out before becoming violent with the first book? The obvious jumping off point would be a Highlander fleeing or being deported after the '45. Probably fought at Culloden.
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Oct 24, 2021 09:06
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Alchenar posted:Oh yeah France has no other precedent for a general-in-exile returning from overseas to overthrow a foreign imposed government and restore France to greatness. This was regarded by everybody else as illegal and they collected a big multinational army to destroy him Nessus posted:I imagine that it helped considerably that his side won the war and also did not come under the loving embrace of Joseph Stalin Well he won, and more importantly, he won all the intra-france power struggles with the various defectors, as well as the political recognition fight with the UK and USA, who were otherwise going to appoint whoever they liked as head of Free French forces. In terms of Game, he was France's Mao,
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Oct 24, 2021 09:09
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Nenonen posted:It seems to me utterly paranoid to think that Germans would have just grabbed French battleships and used them against Britain. Germans if any knew how quick it was to scuttle an entire fleet under threat, and even in the unlikely occasion that they could have taken over the ships intact and with zero sabotage, they would have needed to train an entire crew to run the drat things. And a battleship is such a complex vessel that I doubt they would have gotten anywhere in a long while. Its not paranoia when they are really out to get you. You have a collaborationist government in Vichy france, presumably thousands if not millions of Frenchmen willing to cooperate with it, even if not enthusiastically, why exactly is it so implausible to think that they could crew the vessels? This is a government who has already broken the diplomatic agreement to fight to the last together. Are you really willing to bet the outcome of a war that you are quite badly losing at this stage on the word of such people? Its a very cold, ruthless but intensely calculated move, a type of move that hundreds are made in the course of any war. The comparison to Gallipoli is... deranged? I have no idea what you are getting at. Also seperately Toulon 1944.
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Oct 24, 2021 09:10
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Randomcheese3 posted:Dunkerque and Strasbourg, by role, were intended to fight cruisers in defence of trade, rather than to fight in the battleline; this is why I consider them 'large cruisers', rather than battleships or battlecruisers. Tell me exactly what do you think the doctrinal role of a battleCRUISER is? (It's not to fight in the line of battle even if they were misused that way)
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Oct 24, 2021 09:28
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If Holland wasn't acceptable, who did Somerville have with him who outranked Holland and wasn't him himself? Like, this is the captain of Ark Royal, in less than a year he's going to be given Hood and PoW. He's not just some random.
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Oct 24, 2021 10:49
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Xiahou Dun posted:Wait so first Gensoul was offended by the bad French, I wanna see this letter. I read French, lay it on me. David Brown, in his Road to Oran, quotes the message as: quote:La Marine Royale espère que les propositions vont vous permettre, la I should reiterate that the major problem that Gensoul had with it was that it was not a private communication to him, but a general message broadcast to the whole fleet, making public what he expected to be relatively private negotiations. It being in poor French merely exacerbated the problems, implying that the British were also not taking those negotiations seriously. Acebuckeye13 posted:Eeeehhhhhh, while I understand your reasoning, I think it's still a mistake to refer to them merely as "Large Cruisers." While each individual British battleship was certainly more capable, they were still very powerful warships with battleship-grade weapons and armor. Nothing less than a battleship is going to stand up to 13" guns, and nothing less than a battleship would have been sufficient to defeat or deter them on the open seas. There's certainly a reason the British considered it so important that they be neutralized or sunk. I generally use the term 'large cruisers' to refer to ships like the Dunkerques, Deutschlands and Alaskas. All these classes had heavy enough armament and thick enough armour to kill any treaty cruiser out there, but not quite on the same level as battleships. They were built primarily for the commerce war, protecting or attacking merchant shipping, rather than for battlefleet action as battleships and battlecruisers were. They were still powerful ships, it's just useful to have a term that distinguishes them by role. feedmegin posted:Tell me exactly what do you think the doctrinal role of a battleCRUISER is? (It's not to fight in the line of battle even if they were misused that way) Battlecruisers were built primarily to provide heavy support to a fleet's scouting cruisers; when a battlefleet action was joined, they would be attached to the battleline to provide it with a fast wing to outflank the enemy line, screen the fleet's withdrawal or chase a fleeing enemy. They were never expected to form the primary part of the battleline, and were never used that way - at Jutland, the vast majority of the damage done to the British and German battlecruisers was done by other battlecruisers. The German battlecruisers did take damage from the Grand Fleet, but this only came when Scheer deployed them to screen his second withdrawal. This role was one they had inherited from the first-class armoured cruisers that preceded them - a British 1901 exercise report, for example, stated that 'The opinion on the use of armoured Cruisers is practically unanimous, that with their speed and protection they should be utilised for attacking the van and rear of the enemy from the very commencement of the engagement'. The design document that led to the Invincibles stated clearly that the main missions of the new 'armoured cruiser' was to scout for the fleet, chase off enemy scouts and to chase and harass a fleeing fleet. She should also be able to, if needs be, sit in the line of battle. FrangibleCover posted:If Holland wasn't acceptable, who did Somerville have with him who outranked Holland and wasn't him himself? Like, this is the captain of Ark Royal, in less than a year he's going to be given Hood and PoW. He's not just some random. Somerville had Vice Admiral Wells with him; Wells was Vice Admiral Commanding Aircraft Carriers, Force H, and might have been more acceptable to Gensoul. At the same time, Holland was an emminently sensible decision from his point of view, given Holland's rank, history and so on. He could not necessarily predict how Gensoul would react.
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Oct 24, 2021 12:14
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| # ? Jun 3, 2024 13:33 |
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Randomcheese3 posted:Battlecruisers were built primarily to provide heavy support to a fleet's scouting cruisers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser 'The goal of the design was to outrun any ship with similar armament, and chase down any ship with lesser armament; they were intended to hunt down slower, older armoured cruisers and destroy them with heavy gunfire while avoiding combat with the more powerful but slower battleships' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkerque-class_battleship ' Smaller and less heavily armed and armoured than all other treaty battleships, the Dunkerques have sometimes been referred to as battlecruisers.' Of course, the one time there was a real 'line of battle' was Jutland, pretty much, but in WW2 they were (mis)used to fight enemy battleships. That wasn't their intended role, though, their intended role was exactly that of the Dunkerque class. They could fulfil that role with good effect (at great risk), however, and so could have the Dunkerques. I'm sorry, but downgrading these ships to just 'cruisers' to reduce their apparent threat is at odds with, like, everybody on earth and has me wondering here if you are literally the reincarnation of Pierre Laval or something. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Oct 24, 2021 |
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Oct 24, 2021 12:40
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