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dublish posted:Stephen Sears has a good one - volume called Gettysburg. Thank you! Gonna start with the Sears book and if I'm aching for more I'll read the next ones.
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May 22, 2016 03:40
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Battle of Britain talk. Why did Germany need to destroy the British airforce? The steps just seem odd to me. Even with the airforce destroyed the Brits could steam hundreds of ships into the channel and destroy the barges the German tugboats would be towing across. Germany as far as I know didn't have air dropped torpedoes and no real designated naval dive bomber. The factories in the north were pretty much end of range for the Luftwaffe and they were building fighters faster than could be destroyed.
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May 22, 2016 05:02
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You're correct. The German invasion of Britain was an idiotic plan that would never have worked even if the entire RAF mysteriously disappeared.
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May 22, 2016 05:05
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jaegerx posted:Battle of Britain talk. Why did Germany need to destroy the British airforce? The steps just seem odd to me. Even with the airforce destroyed the Brits could steam hundreds of ships into the channel and destroy the barges the German tugboats would be towing across. Germany as far as I know didn't have air dropped torpedoes and no real designated naval dive bomber. But JU87s managed to sink a lot of allied ships in the North sea though, and it was kind of proven later in the Pacific that torpedo bombers don't really work unless the targets were all lined up at Pearl Harbor completely unprepared.
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May 22, 2016 05:24
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jaegerx posted:Germany as far as I know didn't have air dropped torpedoes and no real designated naval dive bomber. Didn't stop them from sinking ships during the evacuation of Dunkirk. Shutting down the airforce has a similar effect as preventing the RN from sailing into the channel, it allows safe transport of troops across the waters for an invasion. Could it have been accomplished? Not with the 109E, and not with the medium and dive bombers they had.
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May 22, 2016 05:32
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Tomn posted:Come to think of it, I can't remember his name right now but wasn't there an incompetent US general in North Africa who, among his other faults, made a habit of referring to every piece of military equipment with his own idiosyncratic nicknames? Wasn't that General Gavin?
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May 22, 2016 05:33
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ulmont posted:Wasn't that General Gavin? Ba dump tish
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May 22, 2016 05:39
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jaegerx posted:Battle of Britain talk. Why did Germany need to destroy the British airforce? The steps just seem odd to me. Even with the airforce destroyed the Brits could steam hundreds of ships into the channel and destroy the barges the German tugboats would be towing across. Germany as far as I know didn't have air dropped torpedoes and no real designated naval dive bomber. IIRC, they bounced around between strategies, from destroying the RAF to terror-bombing the populace into surrender to preparing the way for invasion. None of them were realistic goals, but at the time people were still working out the whole air power thing from first principles.
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May 22, 2016 05:57
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ulmont posted:Wasn't that General Gavin? I actually went and dug it up - turns out I was thinking of General Lloyd Frendenall. From Wikipedia: "Wikipedia posted:Fredendall was given to speaking and issuing orders using his own slang, such as calling infantry units "walking boys" and artillery "popguns." Instead of using the standard military map grid-based location designators, he made up confusing codes such as "the place that begins with C." This practice was unheard-of for a general and distinguished graduate of the Command and General Staff School, who had been taught to always use standardized order procedures to ensure clarity when transmitting orders to subordinate commanders under the stress of combat. Fredendall's informality often led to confusion among his subordinates, and precious time was lost attempting to discern his meaning.[3]
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May 22, 2016 06:41
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Tomn posted:I actually went and dug it up - turns out I was thinking of General Lloyd Frendenall. From Wikipedia: His nomenclature sounds a bit sticky
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May 22, 2016 07:35
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Re: Spain. France had already signed away a shitload of mineral/resource rights to Germany in exchange for intervention during the Civil War so Germany wouldn't have gotten much economically from having Spain enter the war. There was just no need for Germany to serious peruse an alliance and lots of obvious downsides. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 08:22 on May 22, 2016 |
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May 22, 2016 08:20
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Alchenar posted:Re: Spain. B-b-but Gibraltar! Then Regia Marina could have steamed up the Thames and Commonwealth would have surrendered! Or at least the English channel would have been so littered with sunken warships that Germans could have just walked across the shipwrecks to Diversionary.
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May 22, 2016 08:30
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jaegerx posted:Battle of Britain talk. Why did Germany need to destroy the British airforce? The steps just seem odd to me. Even with the airforce destroyed the Brits could steam hundreds of ships into the channel and destroy the barges the German tugboats would be towing across. Germany as far as I know didn't have air dropped torpedoes and no real designated naval dive bomber. Also if they wanted to launch Fallschirmjäger at the British they'd probably need air superiority.
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May 22, 2016 12:38
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INinja132 posted:Also if they wanted to launch Fallschirmjäger at the British they'd probably need air superiority. Well technically they did send Fallschirmjaeger at the British, just on a different island!
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May 22, 2016 14:14
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MikeCrotch posted:Well technically they did send Fallschirmjaeger at the British, just on a different island! RIP Tante Ju 
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May 22, 2016 14:16
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Deteriorata posted:While Franco was sympathetic, he tried to be too cute and demanded too much from Hitler in exchange for his participation. The talks eventually fell apart and Franco sat it out. Hitler had bigger fish to fry than to try to force Franco's hand. Or, you know, he knew exactly what he was doing and asked for waaaaaay more than was reasonable so he didn't risk totally pissing off either side and also didn't risk having to join the war. Which, y'know, given his totally-not-fascist-guys regime lived on until he died in the 1970s, turned out to be a pro move.
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May 22, 2016 14:31
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Didn't stop them from sinking ships during the evacuation of Dunkirk. The numbers they got against often stationary and always unarmored ships over the course of days at Dunkirk are not congruent with being able to stop a major surface force steaming at high speed.
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May 22, 2016 17:04
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xthetenth posted:The numbers they got against often stationary and always unarmored ships over the course of days at Dunkirk are not congruent with being able to stop a major surface force steaming at high speed. If Britain had sent the Royal Navy without air cover in the English Channel it would have been the greatest maritime disaster of all time.
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May 22, 2016 17:09
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If the RAF was out of the way, couldn't they potentially seal the Royal Navy out of the channel using naval mining? (As was the case in the Baltic sea, but on a bigger scale.)
Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:12 on May 22, 2016 |
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May 22, 2016 17:09
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Fangz posted:If the RAF was out of the way, couldn't they potentially seal the Royal Navy out of the channel using naval mining? Not reliably, nor in a way that would prevent eventual clearing.
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May 22, 2016 17:11
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Tias posted:Not reliably, nor in a way that would prevent eventual clearing. Sure, but it can't be easy to clear a minefield if the Luftwaffe has control of the air.
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May 22, 2016 17:13
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Fangz posted:Sure, but it can't be easy to clear a minefield if the Luftwaffe has control of the air. No, but it still would not be a lasting solution, and asking if it would keep out determined allied forces is gay black hitler territory, we simply don't know and it depends.
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May 22, 2016 17:14
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Hogge Wild posted:If Britain had sent the Royal Navy without air cover in the English Channel it would have been the greatest maritime disaster of all time. For the Germans, yes. e: also on mines you'd be surprised, minesweepers are tiny things.
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May 22, 2016 17:18
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IIRC the barges would have taken over 24 hours to cross the channel, so the RN could have gone in at night. I don't think night air attacks against ships were any good from anybody at that point (other than Taranto).
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May 22, 2016 17:20
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wdarkk posted:IIRC the barges would have taken over 24 hours to cross the channel, so the RN could have gone in at night. I don't think night air attacks against ships were any good from anybody at that point (other than Taranto). Its not just the crossing, the barges would have been vulnerable to attack at any time really over the many weeks they would need to be in place, not only to land the troops, but support them after for the long campaign that would have involved attacking Britain, it just isnt credible to think that the Germans could have invaded without a major reduction of the RN even if they had eliminated the RAF as a force, it was still the joint largest naval force in the world at that time.
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May 22, 2016 17:51
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Look who I found: It's Felix Steter--turns out he's from Wiener Neustadt, a city to the south of Vienna. This document is from 1620/21. He's listed as a Gemeinwebel under Dam Vizthumb von Eckstedt, who would become one of the Mansfeld Regiment's captains in 1625, along with his brother August. I found the Mansfeld Regiment's secretary too--he was a pikeman in 1620, and from there to the secretary of a regiment and one of its legal authorities in five years is a precipitous rise. I don't write much about Mattheus Steiner, but from a certain point of view he's the most important one of all, since without him my dissertation wouldn't exist in its current form. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:42 on May 22, 2016 |
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May 22, 2016 17:55
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Overlord was one of the largest logistical feats of human history. It involved no less than a year of neutering the Luftwaffe. The surface task force of military vessels was one of the largest ever assembled. There was a gently caress off huge misinformation campaign to make the Germans think it was coming somewhere else. They worked for years on how to tow over ready made ports and lay pipe for gas etc in days. They had total operational superiority in the air and on the sea to the point that extremely risky airborne ops in support of the invasion were not only possible but effective. Even then it wasn't a cakewalk. One beach was almost a failure and they bogged down into WW1: Nazi boogaloo for months. This was after three years of planning and the US just making GBS threads the products of industry all over the British isles. Now imagine Germany ca 1940 doing it in reverse on months notice. Yeah. Anyone who got ashore would be a pow in a few months. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 18:03 on May 22, 2016 |
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May 22, 2016 18:00
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Didn't the nazis want a wider secured landing area than all of the normandy landing zones put together, as well?
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May 22, 2016 18:05
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Cyrano4747 posted:Overlord was one of the largest logistical feats of human history. It involved no less than a year of neutering the Luftwaffe. The surface task force of military vessels was one of the largest ever assembled. There was a gently caress off huge misinformation campaign to make the Germans think it was coming somewhere else. They worked for years on how to tow over ready made ports and lay pipe for gas etc in days. They had total operational superiority in the air and on the sea to the point that extremely risky airborne ops in support of the invasion were not only possible but effective. Eh, Overlord was against a German army that had had just as long to dig in and had 10 rested Panzer divisions waiting in Theatre. The British army in June 1940 is by contrast severely understrength and has virtually no heavy equipment left. The Naval and Air prerequisites for an invasion were never going to happen, but if they actually had and we magically give Germany the ability to supply an invasion force then it's difficult to see how far the UK could put up a coherent resistance on the ground.
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May 22, 2016 18:22
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Is it time for someone to post this thing? http://www.philmasters.org.uk/SF/Sealion.htm
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May 22, 2016 18:28
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Space Butler posted:Is it time for someone to post this thing? It's always time to post Alison Brooks' Sealion essay.
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May 22, 2016 18:31
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Alchenar posted:Eh, Overlord was against a German army that had had just as long to dig in and had 10 rested Panzer divisions waiting in Theatre. The British army in June 1940 is by contrast severely understrength and has virtually no heavy equipment left. I mean.. yes? If we give the Nazis the prerequisites they need to win, they will win?
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May 22, 2016 19:08
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Throatwarbler posted:But JU87s managed to sink a lot of allied ships in the North sea though, and it was kind of proven later in the Pacific that torpedo bombers don't really work unless the targets were all lined up at Pearl Harbor completely unprepared. During the Kanalkampf the Luftwaffe needed to generate about 70 bomber sorties to drop 50 odd bombs to get 1 hit. The hits were mostly fatal but the targets were fragile, slow coastal shipping. The contact fused GP bombs (SAP and AP bombs being in very short supply) would have been much less effective against larger armored naval units and the hit probability likely lower when you take into account the increased speed and AAA. Using a 'B' team of WW1 surplus the RN can field a force of 50 Battleships, cruisers and destroyers and 100+ MGBs. To sink that lot the Luftwaffe needs to outperform the USN aviators at the Battle of Leyte Gulf (Who have much much better training and equipment) by over 200%.
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May 22, 2016 19:14
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To uh, go back to the original question.jaegerx posted:Battle of Britain talk. Why did Germany need to destroy the British airforce? The steps just seem odd to me. Even with the airforce destroyed the Brits could steam hundreds of ships into the channel and destroy the barges the German tugboats would be towing across. Germany as far as I know didn't have air dropped torpedoes and no real designated naval dive bomber. There's an aspect of hindsight is 20/20 here. The Luftwaffe didn't know the British were building fighters faster than could be destroyed. And for whatever reason, rightly or wrongly, they thought that the Royal Navy could be dealt with, with the RAF destroyed.
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May 22, 2016 19:26
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AbleArcher posted:During the Kanalkampf the Luftwaffe needed to generate about 70 bomber sorties to drop 50 odd bombs to get 1 hit. The hits were mostly fatal but the targets were fragile, slow coastal shipping. The contact fused GP bombs (SAP and AP bombs being in very short supply) would have been much less effective against larger armored naval units and the hit probability likely lower when you take into account the increased speed and AAA. Using a 'B' team of WW1 surplus the RN can field a force of 50 Battleships, cruisers and destroyers and 100+ MGBs. To sink that lot the Luftwaffe needs to outperform the USN aviators at the Battle of Leyte Gulf (Who have much much better training and equipment) by over 200%. The record of dive bombers against warships in the open sea is really not as promising as Hitler or anyone else might've thought.
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May 22, 2016 19:28
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I think I say this every time during our quarterly discussion of sea lion but the real potential serious consequence of the battle of Britain was not an amphibious operation against southern England, it was having the Royal Navy bottled up or destroyed and the follow on effects that would've had on the battle of the Atlantic. Stukas alone might not have done the job against the home fleet in the channel but stukas, twin bombers, mines, submarines, torpedo boats, and coastal artillery probably would have. Also it is correct that the British were building planes more quickly than they were being shot down but they definitely were not Managing the same with pilots, at least in a way that meant they were anywhere properly trained.
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May 22, 2016 19:43
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Empress Theonora posted:It's always time to post Alison Brooks' Sealion essay. Indeed. Sealion was never a plauseable operation, especially with what we know about overlord. Also guys I made my first GIF and it is mil-hist related! 
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May 22, 2016 19:46
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bewbies posted:Also it is correct that the British were building planes more quickly than they were being shot down but they definitely were not Managing the same with pilots, at least in a way that meant they were anywhere properly trained. I'm not sure I agree, relative to the Luftwaffe. Bear in mind a British pilot shot down and ejecting was probably back in a plane the next day whereas a German one was a PoW.
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May 22, 2016 19:48
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feedmegin posted:I'm not sure I agree, relative to the Luftwaffe. Bear in mind a British pilot shot down and ejecting was probably back in a plane the next day whereas a German one was a PoW. Yeah, but they were still taking a lot of fatalities and injuries severe enough to require lengthy hospitalization. The Germans had the exact same situation four years later - they couldn't train pilots fast enough to replace the losses, which meant the new guys never had more experienced people to make sure they survived long enough to be good, which in turn lead to even worse attrition. Note that the Germans at this time were flying over friendly territory, so pilots who bailed out were back in action rather than in a POW camp. Meanwhile Allied pilots were being stacked up in the Luftwafe Stalags every time they got shot down, yet they didn't have manpower problems. It has a lot more to do with the over-all survivability of your aircrews than their ultimate fate once they are in a parachute.
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May 22, 2016 19:58
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Nebakenezzer posted:Indeed. Sealion was never a plauseable operation, especially with what we know about overlord. Victory through Airpower, right? It's really weird to watch "Walt Disney wants to burn people to death: the movie".
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May 22, 2016 20:29
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