So you think the British were much superior to the French, Poles, Greeks, Danes, Norwegians, Belgians, etc, who had to surrender?
Did not the Romans, Vikings, Normans, etc, beat them?. Without air superiority there is no naval superiority and without naval superiority GB is lost.
England and Wales are ideal tank country, Northern Ireland catholics would have been glad to join the Germans in order to beat the British in that area.
The Germans need only control the ports and destroy the crops and the population would starve or surrender.

If the British were so tough, how come they left Dunkirk?. There were a half million trained French and British troops there with formidable artillery from the combined allied fleet to cover them 30 km plus in land and a huge fleet to supply them. The Germans had very few and primitive tanks and limited artillery.
The US spent a fortune destroying the LW and sending a fabulous armada in order to disembark 100,000 men facing formidable defenses, much better tanks, etc,
If the British army could not fight in France with equipment and 2 million French troops, how could it fight in Britain without them?
If the Brits were such formidable warriors, why then were there far more Indians and Anzacs in Afirca than Brits, although Africa is much closer to GB?.

Originally Posted by samneanderthal

England and Wales are ideal tank country, Northern Ireland catholics would have been glad to join the Germans in order to beat the British in that area.
The Germans need only control the ports and destroy the crops and the population would starve or surrender.

Have you ever been to Wales? I doubt it, because if you had, you would have seen that Wales is not like the flat plains in Northern Germany. The Northern Irish Catholics make up the minority of the population. Besides which quite a few Irish Catholics from both North and Southern Ireland fought in the British Army.

Originally Posted by samneanderthal

If the British were so tough, how come they left Dunkirk?. There were a half million trained French and British troops there with formidable artillery from the combined allied fleet to cover them 30 km plus in land and a huge fleet to supply them. The Germans had very few and primitive tanks and limited artillery.

The British didn't have the equipment you think they had, civilian trucks were commandeered because the British Army was under equipped. If you think the British are not so tough, try taking my granny on, she'd kick the crap out of you and she's been dead for 50 years.

Originally Posted by samneanderthal

If the Brits were such formidable warriors, why then were there far more Indians and Anzacs in Afirca than Brits, although Africa is much closer to GB?.

Do you have the checkable figures and ratio's of the Nationalities?

Again you are talking utter bollocks.

Why don't you come out with it and admit that you are an Anglophobe?

Originally Posted by VDKMS

I don't know about Churchill but didn't some British commanders used Commonwealth troops (NZ , India, Australia, Canada) first to soften up the enemy's defences and then use British troops to claim the victory? That is not to say the British troops were not able to do it by themselves.

Not sure how I missed this but I would say that was not the case with regards to New Zealand troops, there are anecdotal stories of Montgomery doing things like that in the El Alamein break out but they really don't stand up to scrutiny.

I would however like to see what Canadians think as they had more time under Montgomery than we did because of Overlord and by the stage New Zealand troops were under Alexander.

WW1 in my opinion was fairly similar with regards to Kiwi's as well, Churchill's idiocy at Gallipoli was an equal opportunity screw up that killed Kiwi's, Aussies, British, Frenchmen and Indians in equal ratio's.

Five of my uncles were killed in North Africa during WW2 one of my aunts lost three sons and a grandson out there, and that is just from the close family ties.
Now I was around in southern England during 1940 and any one who says we would not have fought to death for our country obviously was not around at that time in England. When an invasion alert went out my mother took her fathers sword and helped man the barricades on the main road to London, she also took her children with her as she thought they would be better of dead than slaves to the Germans.
So much has been written about the battle of Britain by people who were not around at the time or even in the country and is now being accepted as fact by other twits who do not know any better.
The Swordfish propeller was much bigger than the Spitfire or Hurricane as the Swordfish had a long fixed undercarriage for carrier operations which allowed the plane to have a bigger prop.
There was point in sending more aircraft to France if the aerodromes could be protected. The Belgium Army had collapsed, and the French Army was in chaos as their defence strategy was all based on the Maginot line which the Germans just by passed leaving the French Army there cut off and taking no part in the action.
Yes there were quite a few French Men who did not want to fight for Britain and who just wanted to go home.
The main problem with the fall of France and Hitlers success was that most of the countries had not rearmed and were still trying to find a peaceful solution to all the problems while Hitler had other ideas. The problem is when you disarm past a certain level then other countries see you as an easy target. If you read Churchill's warnings on all of this long before WW2 started you would see that most of the problems first few years of the wars came about due to political decisions made during the peace.

Originally Posted by samneanderthal

If the British army could not fight in France with equipment and 2 million French troops, how could it fight in Britain without them?
If the Brits were such formidable warriors, why then were there far more Indians and Anzacs in Afirca than Brits, although Africa is much closer to GB?.

The Roman's built a wall... The Vikings eventually quite coming back.

The Northern U.K. would make for terrible Tank Country, and in Churchill's famous address to the British people about the invasion of their Island, he wans'nt Kidding.


Hitler also shared similar ideas about the British in 1940, he would go on to make this mistake about the Soviets in the following year. He theorized that the Soviets were weak willed, horrible fighters and completly uncaring for Stalin's call to arms in the event of war...

History shows what happens afterwards.

My opinion if Hitler did cross the channel then Stalingrad would be ubsurped as the most possibly hellish battle of the war, by the defense of Great Britan.

A campgain that would have been so costly for the Germans Hitler would have been forced to postpone any further military aspirations for possibly years to come.

What that idiot samneanderthal don't realise, Britain never had a never ending supply of fighting men, the one's we did have were stretched fairly thin all over the world.

But to get back on topic, Dowding fought the Battle of Britain along with Keith Parks (and of course the pilots) absolutely correctly as history has shown.