Great Britain

The only major power to be in the war from the start to the finish and end up victorious.
But they made some pretty bad mistakes along the way.
What were the main ones?

1. Inability to defend Kra Peninsula North of Singapure
2. Raid on Dieppe
3. Phony war

For send 2 or 3 British's best battleships to Singapore and Japs sunk them.

Originally Posted by Fox

For send 2 or 3 British's best battleships to Singapore and Japs sunk them.

A little correction:
1 Battleship - Price of Wales
1 Battle cruiser - Repulse

They didn't have any air cover and were doomed

Spam was regarded as food in UK.

I would say the Norwegian campaign was bad. The only good that came out of it was that they were able to rescue the King and Queen and Treasury. Otherwise it was a failure...

Originally Posted by boris116

A little correction:
1 Battleship - Price of Wales
1 Battle cruiser - Repulse

They didn't have any air cover and were doomed

Thanks, Boris. I was trying to remember name of those battleships.

Originally Posted by sandy

Spam was regarded as food in UK.

That wasn't Great Britain's doing.
LOL

Well lets have a look at some of the points you raised, with out the failure at Dieppe would the Normandy landings have been a success?. What did Dieppe teach us or teach Britain who passed the information on. There was greater need for secrecy so on Overlord planning a very tight lid was kept on it until the day of the operation. Where ever the troops landed there was need for a working harbour so we built two and took them with us on D Day. As there was need for a lot fuel then a direct line was laid from Britain to Normandy across the channel. At Dieppe the the tanks got stuck in the shingle, so a great number of special tanks were designed known as Hobart's funnies. This included mat layers up the beach so that the the tanks and vehicles would not get stuck, there were the bridge layers to tanks over anti tank ditches, there were the Flail Tanks for clearing mines and barb wire., there were Crocodile tanks which were huge flame throwers and other ones which would fire a dustbin size shell a few hundred yard to demolish strong points, and the were DD tanks which would swim ashore with the landing craft. Now all these were offered to the Americans, they accepted a harbour but ignored the mooring instructions so that it smashed up on the first storm and they also took the DD tanks which they put to see many miles away from the beach in storm conditions so that there ships were out of range of and heavy guns and then wondered why they sank.

When we entered the war we were short of every thing from ships to planes to tanks to men, and chances had to be taken. Now the Norway expedition although a failure it also hurt the Germans. I think that one of our biggest errors was going into Greece and Crete. We stripped our forces in North Africa of men and materials to send to these places, but not in large enough quantities to win the battles, yet had we kept these men in North Africa and carried on at the Italian Army we might have taken the whole of North Africa before Rommel ever set foot in it.