Dowding's Costly Blunder in the Battle of France

Nobody said that the Airacobra was marginally better than the I-15, which was a biplane and much slower than the CR.42. The Airacobra was much better even than the I-16 monoplane and in the hands of a very talented man it did well against the Bf-109. But the Brits wrongly considered it inferior to the Hurricane in 1942, so it was a missed opportunity. What I said is that the Airacobra was preferred over more modern SOviet planes, such as the MiG 3, etc, by Pokrishkin, etc,
Personally I think they should have produced the Corsair instead for ground base use, but the P-39 would have been very adequate for ground support in Burma acting together with the P-38 fronm land bases and backed by Wildcats from carriers for Rangoon, etc,
 
I thought this thread was about the Battle of Britain, now its turned into the war in Burma.

How would a navy defeat a Japanese army in the middle of a jungle?

But to get on track, Dowding was right.

If Britain had lost the Battle of Britain and Germany invaded, Hitler would not have stopped there and probably invaded Southern Ireland. Then what?
 
The point is that by losing the many mediocre planes and most of the experienced British pilots, practically all the French pilots, navy and army, Britain was defeated. Göring and Hitler wasted that victory with their tactics and Dowding was saved only by pilots on whom he could not have counted, when he was left with hundreds of excellent planes and very few experienced British pilots.

Had Britain fallen with the British airplane industry and without having to fight on 2 fronts, Germany would have defeated the USSR. Japan would have taken the British colonies without attacking the US and the cold war would have been against Germany and Japan, instead of against the USSR.
 
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Good grief I have never met anyone that viewed life as a series of absolutes in the way you do.

1) Britain was never in any real danger of falling to the Germans:
- a) Because they did not have the capability to cross the channel in any real force.
- b) Because the German Uboat fleet was not strong enough to blockade Britain.
- c) Because the Luftwaffe lacked a strategic bomber to cripple Britain from the air.

2) What gives you the impression Germany would have beaten Russia at any stage, the Germans lacked the materials and manpower to complete an invasion the size of the Soviet Union, they got as far as they possibly could before their logistics system (which was at best a bloody nightmare) failed and the campaign ground to a halt.

I have told you this at least half a dozen times, it is not a matter of just dumping more troops than the opposition on a square and rolling a dice until you win through attrition, the 6th Army while trapped in Stalingrad needed around 500-750 tons of supplies a day just to maintain its combat efficiency (this was lower than usual because they were not carrying out anything but defensive operations) at the minimum required to survive for normal operations I am told it was 1500 tons.

You need to grasp the whole picture, for every soldier you put into the field there are at least half a dozen needed to keep him there and those people use fuel and supplies as well so they have their own supply train and so on and so forth, so even if Britain had millions of planes they still needed a supply line for each and every one of them.
 
The RN and the Sworfish would have gone to the bottom of the Channel trying to stop a German invasion supported by all the planes of the LW. They could not stop the invasion of Norway, where ships had a huge coast to act. In the channel a few km from land they were cannon fodder for the Stukas and Ju-88s with heavy fighter escort.
German submarines did defeat Britain (even when they were few and primitive), which is why the US had to come up with L-L long before joining the war. In essence Germany was fighting also the US since 1939, but that aid was of little use. Only when the US entered the war and showered Britain and the USSR with unprecedented amounts of war materiel, etc, and introduced thousands of fighters and pilots did Germany lose the war.

You do not need a strategic bomber to win a war against a practically nonexisting army in Britain. You simply invade, wipe out the planes and advance rapidly to the industrial centers. Despite all the fanatical rhetoric, I am pretty sure that the British woud have surrendered rather than fight to the last housewife. They were much too smart to die opposing a government more efficient than the one that led them to defeat. After all there were many pro nazis in Britain, including the ex prince of wales.
 
The RN and the Sworfish would have gone to the bottom of the Channel trying to stop a German invasion supported by all the planes of the LW. They could not stop the invasion of Norway, where ships had a huge coast to act. In the channel a few km from land they were cannon fodder for the Stukas and Ju-88s with heavy fighter escort.

These would be the same Stuka's and Ju-88s that managed to sink a staggering 9 stationary destroyers (6 British and 3 French) off Dunkirk during the evacuation?

Sorry I am wrong it was 4 British and 1 French destroyer the rest were mined or torpedoed by E-Boats and U-Boats.

The same Stuka's and Ju-88s that sunk negligible amounts of unprotected shipping in the English channel?

Also would this be the same incompetent Royal Navy that pretty much sunk the Kriegsmarine off Norway in 1940 and hammered the Italian fleet at every opportunity and I am guessing that these Swordfish are similar to the ones that carried out the Taranto raid and was so successful that it gave Yamamoto the idea for Pearl Harbour?


You do not need a strategic bomber to win a war against a practically nonexisting army in Britain. You simply invade, wipe out the planes and advance rapidly to the industrial centers. Despite all the fanatical rhetoric, I am pretty sure that the British woud have surrendered rather than fight to the last housewife. They were much too smart to die opposing a government more efficient than the one that led them to defeat. After all there were many pro nazis in Britain, including the ex prince of wales.

No but you do need them to deliver enough ordnance to destroy the British supply, transport and manufacturing systems prior to any landing, of course after that you would also need a navy capable of defending an invasion fleet and supplying it later fortunately they did not have any of the above and got to spend the war in France until of course they were kicked out of that by an invasion force that oddly enough was protected by a capable navy that was also capable of delivering enough supplies to keep that force in the field.
 
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For SL having a chance ,all the following were needed
1)air superiority above south east England
2)elimination of Bomber Command
3)a transport fleet to transport the troops
4)capturing of at least ONE intact port:you can't disembark tanks,artillery,horses,etc on the beaches
5)warships to protect the transport ships
6)several weeks of good weather for the build up
All these things were needed,not a single was possible .
I would be very surprised if the Germans could have disembark more than 5000 men on the beaches,5000 who would be eliminated on the first day
 
Despite all the fanatical rhetoric, I am pretty sure that the British woud have surrendered rather than fight to the last housewife. They were much too smart to die opposing a government more efficient than the one that led them to defeat. After all there were many pro nazis in Britain, including the ex prince of wales.

By that statement alone, you have no idea whatsoever regarding the British people. Even IF Germany had landed there were over a million ex WW1 vets, who although not 18 or 19 years of age they would have given a damn good acount of themselves. The British would not have rolled over as easy as you think they would.

Define "many pro NAZI's" in Britain. The ex Prince of Wales you are talking about was actually King Edward VIII who was forced to abdicate.
 
The idea of the British people surrendering in masses to the first German soldier to set feet on British soil.....well, it was more likely that the entire island should sink in the sea due to overweight... :sarc:

And the ex-prince of Wales (Edward VIII) later Duke of Windsor, spend very little time on British soil after the wat broke out, he was picked up in France and installed as gouvernor on Bahamas.

I'd say his influence on the British morale and spirit was next to none for the remainder of the war.
 
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?.
 
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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.


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.


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?
 
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.
 
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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.
 
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.
 
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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.
 
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