Originally Posted by samneanderthal

I'm 5 and get all my information from watching the Simpsons.

You act like your five years old, and from the crap you spew, it probably is from the Simpsons

Originally Posted by senojekips

It would appear that the forum has acquired an "expert" whose vision only works in hind sight, and even then, only very poorly.

It wouldn't be so bad if he talked with some small degree of sense.

Originally Posted by samneanderthal

Gibraltar was strong because it had a fleet, Singapore didn't.
No more face can be lost than when 130,000 men are either killed or fall prisoners.
The Japs did in Singapore to the Brits what the Brits had done in Lybia to the Italians, on the latter occassion Atlee said never has so much been surrendered by so many to so few.
It was the first time in WW II that a huge British force was not only defeated but did not have any chance of evacuation, the British specialty.
It was fortunate that Churchill did not manage to send more men in, otherwise 200,000 would have been captured without means of escape.

If the British had know how small the Japanese force was or what they do to their captives, they would not have surrendered.

Hi VDKMS,
They had no choice but to surrender, when you don't have water and have dozens of Japanese ships with artillery that included 18" guns (heavier than the British Coastal cannon) and hundreds of planes and tanks facing you, you surrender or die. Several thousand brave men survived years of hell. The same situation as the Philippines, Burma, etc,

By the way the correct expression is if they had known, in contrast to did you ever think. If they had uses the past participle and did uses the unconjugated verb. I don't mean to humiliate you, but only to help you improve your English which I also had to learn making mistakes (and still make plenty).

The deaf leads the blind...

And it appears that our history graduate not only majored in armchair strategy, but he also have quite a lot to teach us about English grammar and linguistics.

The deaf can well lead the blind

Well Sam, it may be unjustified to call you both deaf and blind, but it still apears to me that you failed to recognize the point I made regarding the battle Scharnhorst and Gneisenau fought against HMS Renown and HMS Glorious.

While you correctly pointed out that the HMS Renown carried a main battery of far lager calibre than it's German counterparts, you failed to see the importance of the two main factors of naval gunnery.
1. To actually hit the target, a task the Germans managed to perform assisted by radar.
2. To keep a higher rate of fire than your counterpart in order to score more hits than him.

And that's where Gneisenau and Scharnhorst had their biggest advantage, their state of art and inovative ordnance transport link system enabled the crew of the main battery turrets to reload each of the three barells regardless of the position of the turret itself.

That means, in a 10 minutes span the Gneisenau was able to deliver 35 shells from each of her 9 main battery guns, a total of 315 shells raining down on and around the enemy in a 10 minutes span, given perfect conditions.

While the HMS Renown was able to cough up about 2 shells pr. minute from each of her 6 main battery guns, that would be 120 shells total in 10 minutes.

Another fact you may have overlooked is that both HMS Renown and HMS Glorious was launched in 1916, while their German counterparts was launched in 1936 and essentially new by the time.

In fact, the entire Kriegsmarine consisted of ships launched from 1931 and onwards, making it a top modern navy at he time, while a great part of the Royal Navy consisted of relics from the WW I.
Modified and refitted several times off course, but even the "mighty Hood" was launched in 1918.

Wether you like it or not, age makes a certain difference here.
And as you started speculating about my idea about the average Kriegsmarine sailor as some kind of "superhuman" in another thread, I can only point out the fact that the Kriegsmarine was exceptionally well trained and dicsiplined, and highly motivated.
And unlike the Royal Navy, the Kriegsmarine didn't suffer a full scale mutiny in the pre-war period either.

I know I'm stupid, but I find it very odd that the inventors of Radar and the big gun would be defeated by the Germans who started operating Radar much later and with shorter range cannon, not to mention much shorter range than the Swordfish. The fact is the Germans had many fewer ships but they always were in the right spot, while the very many British battleships, battlecruisers, submarines and even the cruisers and destroyers (Taffy 3's destoyers damaged with their torpedoes a Cruiser in a huge fleet) were always in the most stupid locations.
By the way rate of fire is pretty similar in naval artillery, but of course if you have 1 out of 22 ships and the Germans have 2 out of 6 ships, they will defeat you every time. Only when the Bismarck was inmobilized did they gather a whole fleet to sink it.

Wasn't Prince of Wales quite new? yet it performed dismally. How can a newcomer in ship building design better ships that the brilliant RN?

The British may very well have had superior range in their early warning radar system, but at the outbreak of WW II the Kriegsmarine had a fully functional and accurate gun-laying radar (Seetakt) installed on all their major ships.

The size of a gun (calibre) doesn't count that much if you are not able to deliver the ordnance at the exact rigth spot (on target) at a steady rate, and since the German vessels did'nt have to turn their turrets back to midships position in order to resupply ammunition, they had a major advantage.
They were able to keep their turrets traversed in the right position, and only had to elevate the barrells after reloading.
One shell every 17 seconds directed by a reasonably accurate gun-laying radar will beat 2 shells pr. minute from a gun that has to be redirected on the target between each load.

Almost like comparing a single shot muzzle loading rifle to a magazine fed repeating rifle.

As for radar, allthough the Germans were among the first to recognize the prinsiple, the British was among the first to emply a radar warning chain in order to detect incoming enemy aircraft on a long distance.
Still the Allies and the Axis powers were on pair with the technological achievements in the early stages of the war, it wasn't until later that the Allies really made a leap in their advances and developed far better systems than the Germans.

Originally Posted by samneanderthal

Wasn't Prince of Wales quite new? yet it performed dismally. How can a newcomer in ship building design better ships that the brilliant RN?

The Prince of Wales was a new ship with a new and inexperienced crew. Just because a man has completed his training, doesn't mean he is a super soldier, sailor or airman overnight, he needs to gain experience with his crew.

A Captain may be the most experienced man in the world, but he also has to learn the strengths and weakness's of his ship and the officers under his command, while the officers must learn the strength and weakness's of the men under their command. It takes time for a crew to jell together, they all need to learn the ropes together. If you had ANY military knowledge worth knowing, you would have understood that.

@Sam
Here is something to think about.

Operational problems are usually the least interesting part of war. The saying is that amateurs talk about tactics but professionals talk about logistics. Battles, especially naval battles or air attacks, may be over in minutes, while many hours, days, weeks, or months may have passed in preparation. An interest in military history can begin at the opposite ends of tactics and strategy, but then as one moves towards the interface of the two, more and more operational details begin to get filled in. The level of detail in life can be almost infinite. Someone reads a map wrong and gets lost, a signal is misunderstood, etc., and the military advantage changes. Once an actual war starts many of the characteristics that make for success in peace quickly become either irrelevant or disastrous liabilities

To the historic dismay of many generals and admirals, it is not always one's strategy that brings on a battle. One or more side merely blunders into it, just because they happen to be in certain places at certain times. Of course, they are often in those places because they intend to be there for some strategic purpose. Or they may be there because they think they are someplace else, for some strategic purpose, but then happen to be there by accident or because they got lost. Such occasions of absurd mischance have often led to the most weighty and historic consequences. Strategy, therefore, is merely intention. All the strategic insight in the world will accomplish nothing without the operation to put it into effect. The operation, however, then takes on a life of its own. The ability to do all that one intends to do in a military operation is rarely possible, even for the most competent, disciplined, and well supplied armies and navies.