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And,about the train at the Amblève with 600 Germans killed:this is an invention :you imagine the reaction of the Germans ? They would have killed thousands of civilians.And they did not ,thus the story is an invention .

Agent for the Resistance: A Belgian Saboteur in World War II page 148-154
it's available at Google Books.
 
You think? I will type this slowly so you can understand. Regular troops will never ever beat terrorist's on home ground. The problem is peace keeping troops have to abide by certain rules. Britain never gave up Cyprus, there are still two air bases there. I know I served on one.




I am really trying not to be insulting here. What absolute bollocks. Obviously you have never served in Northern Ireland o even spoken to people who were there. Lets look at the options open to the British.

(1) Pull out of Northern Ireland. The loyalist would scream "You have left us in the crap". Then begins bombing campaign of British main land

(2) Stay in Northern Ireland with the Republicans screaming, "British Army, an Army of occupation." Carries on with bombing of British mainland

(3) Shoot the crap out of all sides, adapt SS and Gestapo tactics. Not acceptable to the rest of the world or indeed Britain. Both sides join forces to bomb the British mainland

Britain was in a no win situation. The ONLY solution was a negotiated peace deal, which by the way is still very fragile.




Oh my (takes deep breaths). How did Britain finally beat the Boers?
The Boer War was a watershed event for the British Army, the Boers employed hit-and-run tactics that not only caused losses the British could not afford, they did not conform to the usual "gentlemanly" rules of war.

The British Army started off with 12,546 men in South Africa when the war began, but the number of officers and men actually employed from first to last, during the war, was officially given as 448,435, against 27,000 Boers!

It became clear to the British that they had to adopt new tactics to defeat the Boers. They needed to fight a series of battles over a long period of time covering wide areas of ground, this involved marching in long columns for days at a time across the vast plains or "veldt", often without proper uniforms or rations. The weather caused problems, with freezing temperatures and storms in the winter and very hot summers.

The Boer War, according to Rudyard Kipling, taught the British "no end of a lesson".. over 20,000 British Troops were laid to rest in the heat and dust of the South African veldt, with another 22,829 being wounded.

General Haig threw away thousands of British lives by his out of date tactics. Haig used the same type of tactics during WW1, full frontal attacks against well dug in Boers. He never did learn his lesson in South Africa. Haig was warned to change his tactics near the end of WW1 as Britain was running out of men.




Concentration camps? You really are an idiot, do you honestly think the British public or indeed the rest of the world would stand for concentrations camps, especially after WW2?. Also I never said the war in Malaya came to an end through negotiations. Read my post again. The secure villages in Malaya were not concentrations camps, they were secured by denying terrorists forcing aid from local villagers with threats of death. It was a "Hearts and Minds" campaign by British forces, a text book campaign still referred to today.

The Malayan Emergency as a guerrilla war fought between Commonwealth armed forces and the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party, from 1948 to 1960.

The initial government strategy was primarily to guard important economic targets such as mines and plantation estates. Subsequently, General Sir Harold Briggs, the British Army's Director of Operations in Malaya, developed an overall strategy known as the Briggs Plan. Its central tenet was that the best way to defeat an insurgency such as the government was facing was to cut the insurgents off from their supporters amongst the population.

The Briggs Plan was multi-faceted. However one aspect of it has become particularly well known: this was the forced relocation of some 500,000 rural Malayans, including 400,000 Chinese, from squatter communities on the fringes of the forests into guarded camps called New Villages. These villages were newly constructed in most cases, and were surrounded by barbed wire, police posts and floodlit areas, the purpose of which was both to keep the inhabitants in and the guerrillas out. People resented this at first, but some soon became content with the better living standards in the villages. They were given money and ownership of the land they lived on.

Removing a population which might be sympathetic to guerrillas was a counter-insurgency technique which the British had used before, notably against the Boer Commandos in the Second Boer War*(1899–1902), although in Malaya, the operation was more humanely and efficiently conducted.

At the start of the Emergency, the British had a total of 13 infantry battalions in Malaya, including seven partly formed*Gurkha*battalions, three British battalions, two battalions of the*Royal Malay Regiment*and a British*Royal Artillery*Regiment being utilised as infantry.*This force was too small to effectively meet the threat of the "communist terrorists" or "bandits", and more infantry battalions were needed in Malaya. The British brought in soldiers from units such as the Royal Marines and King's African Rifles. Another effort was a re-formation of the Special Air Service in 1950 as a specialised reconnaissance, raiding and counter-insurgency unit.

The Permanent Secretary of Defence for*Malaya, Sir Robert Grainger Ker Thompson, had served in the Chindits in Burma*during World War II. His vast experience in jungle warfare proved valuable during this period as he was able to build effective civil-military relations and was one of the chief architects of the counter-insurgency plan in Malaya.

In 1951, some British army units began a "hearts and minds*campaign" by giving medical and food aid to Malays and indigenous tribes. At the same time, they put pressure on MNLA by patrolling the jungle. The MNLA guerrillas were driven deeper into the jungle and denied resources. The MRLA extorted food from the Sakai and earned their enmity. Many of the captured guerrillas changed sides. In comparison, the MRLA never released any Britons alive.

In the end the conflict involved a maximum of 40,000 British and Commonwealth troops against a peak of about 7–8,000 communist guerrillas.

I personally served in the Far East from 1967 until 1970, although I was one of the Brycreem boys, I also took part in exercises "up country."
Only blahblah,as to be expected :the point is that the British Army defeated the Boers in SA,when they used guerilla tactics,that the British Army defeated the communists in Malaye who uesed guerilla tactics,that the British Army defeated the MauMau which used guerilla tactics,etc .Thus,it was possible for the military to defeat guerilla's .Why was the Eoka not defeated,while it could be done :because MacMillan had decided to give up Cyprus .In 1921,the British were winning the war against the Irish nationalists.The British Army could win the war against the IRA,but the politicians had not the guts (as usual)
And,about the concentration cams in Malaya :a lot of people were forcibly relocated in camps ,where they were treated humanly,but,these camps were a sort of prisons .The inhabitants of these camps only could leave with the permission of the commander;I don't know why you do object to the appellation of concentration camps .I did not make a comparison with Dachau,etc ....
 
If some one is saying that Haig thew away thousands of British lives with his out of date tactics,that is proving that that person has looked to much on the History Channel Forum .The fact is that Haig was doing a good job.The fact also is that the Passendale losses are much overestimated .While the British losses in 1917 (for the Western Front) were 817.790,those for 1918 were 852.861.(these are official figures ,published by Churchill).
The biggest losses for 1917 were april:120.O70(no big offensive) and october(Passendale):119.808.
For 1918:
march:173.721
april:143.160
august:122.272
september:114.831
october:121.046
The losses of october 1918 were bigger than those of october 1917 .
That Britain was out of manpower at the end of the war,is an invention:there were a lot of men in Britain,but, they were blocked by Lloyd George .
 
Only blahblah,as to be expected :the point is that the British Army defeated the Boers in SA,when they used guerilla tactics,that the British Army defeated the communists in Malaye who uesed guerilla tactics,that the British Army defeated the MauMau which used guerilla tactics,etc .Thus,it was possible for the military to defeat guerilla's .Why was the Eoka not defeated,while it could be done :because MacMillan had decided to give up Cyprus .In 1921,the British were winning the war against the Irish nationalists.The British Army could win the war against the IRA,but the politicians had not the guts (as usual)

And,about the concentration cams in Malaya :a lot of people were forcibly relocated in camps ,where they were treated humanly,but,these camps were a sort of prisons .The inhabitants of these camps only could leave with the permission of the commander;.

Only blahblah? LOL So you are correct while historians , and people who were there got it all wrong.

The situation in Malaya and Northern Ireland is completely and totally different, and there were no concentrations camps in Malaya, neither were the secure villages prisons.

I don't know why you do object to the appellation of concentration camps .I did not make a comparison with Dachau,etc ....

LOL yes you did and I quote or rather copy and paste


Originally Posted by lljadw
"Peace only came about because of peace negociations" :wrong;there were no peace negociations in Malaya, in Cyprus :the winner never will negociate with the looser .
I love this one "secure locations":very PC,but a good translation would be concentration camps (as in Algeria,Cuba,South Africa)

Did you forget what you posted?

I didn't say there were peace negotiations in Malaya, I said there were peace negotiations in Northern Ireland and Cyprus

As for Cyprus one of my uncles was there serving in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, he was even on British TV news much to the annoyance to my grannie. lol

Sorry sunbeam, again you are totally and completely wrong.

See and I wasn't even insulting :smil:

If some one is saying that Haig thew away thousands of British lives with his out of date tactics,that is proving that that person has looked to much on the History Channel Forum .The fact is that Haig was doing a good job.The fact also is that the Passendale losses are much overestimated .While the British losses in 1917 (for the Western Front) were 817.790,those for 1918 were 852.861.(these are official figures ,published by Churchill).
The biggest losses for 1917 were april:120.O70(no big offensive) and october(Passendale):119.808.
For 1918:
march:173.721
april:143.160
august:122.272
september:114.831
october:121.046
The losses of october 1918 were bigger than those of october 1917 .
That Britain was out of manpower at the end of the war,is an invention:there were a lot of men in Britain,but, they were blocked by Lloyd George .

Britain was out of manpower by the end of the war is an inventions? I said Haig was told to change his tactics as Britain was running out of men. My grandfather served on the Somme with the Middlesex Regiment, wounded 3 times, gassed and frost bitten, I suppose he was wrong and you are right?

After WW1 in many villages and towns all across the UK the only males were the elderly, young boys or maimed troops. PALS Battalions were slaughtered by the dozen.

Haig did a good job? Haig during the Boer War ordered frontal attacks against well prepared Boer positions, thousands of British troops were slaughtered, Haig used the same tactic during WW1. He never learned the lessons of the Boer War. by 1918 the Allies were in danger of being beaten but thankfully the US troops were fed into the conflict.

Even the figures you gave for British loses you make them sound insignificant. On top of those figures there were over 1.2 million wounded by wars end, that's two million casualties for God sake, get a grip
 
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1) Supply.
Could be a problem if the German forces got stuck not far beyond the shores.

2) The overwhelming superiority of the Royal Navy over the Kriegsmarine.
This was the BIG problem for the Germans. The Kriegsmarine knew it couldn't protect a wide invasion of England and therefore planned to protect an invasion force in the strait of Dover, wich was not favored by the Heer and Hitler.

3) The idea of using barges was flawed (it was anticipated that it would take upwards of 23 hours to get the first wave fully ashore)
The Kriegsmarine was not fully prepared to get the troops save and fast ashore. The Heer had also no experience in amphibious landings.

4) The Luftwaffe would have been overstretched trying to keep the RAF at bay, provide support to ground forces, preventing British reinforcements moving up and holding off the Royal Navy.
The trip to England was very critical. If Hitler didn't change plans to bomb London instead of the RAF airfields, the RAF problem would be solved.


5) The invasion force would have lacked heavy equipment for quite sometime after the initial landings as there was simply no way to land significant amounts of heavy vehicles or artillery until a port had been secured and made operational.
They could ship Panzer III amphibious tanks. They were good enough to support the Heer in England until the bigger ones could arrive.

In my point of view it was the Royal Navy who averted the invasion. They would do everything that was necessary to destroy the invasion fleet, even with big losses for themselves. It was all or nothing.
 
Defenses around the east and south coast of England included fuel pipes into the surf that could be ignited by defenders, then of course land mines. On top of that much of the shore consisted of small stones, or deep sticky mud making it virtually impossible for armour or other vehicles to get ashore.

As a small boy I remember rumours that German troops had actually landed in three locations, one was around the Wash, one near the Thames Estuary and one near Hythe, they were slaughtered to a man and all evidence destroyed.
 
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Only blahblah? LOL So you are correct while historians , and people who were there got it all wrong.

The situation in Malaya and Northern Ireland is completely and totally different, and there were no concentrations camps in Malaya, neither were the secure villages prisons.



LOL yes you did and I quote or rather copy and paste


Originally Posted by lljadw
"Peace only came about because of peace negociations" :wrong;there were no peace negociations in Malaya, in Cyprus :the winner never will negociate with the looser .
I love this one "secure locations":very PC,but a good translation would be concentration camps (as in Algeria,Cuba,South Africa)

Did you forget what you posted?

I didn't say there were peace negotiations in Malaya, I said there were peace negotiations in Northern Ireland and Cyprus

As for Cyprus one of my uncles was there serving in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, he was even on British TV news much to the annoyance to my grannie. lol

Sorry sunbeam, again you are totally and completely wrong.

See and I wasn't even insulting :smil:



Britain was out of manpower by the end of the war is an inventions? I said Haig was told to change his tactics as Britain was running out of men. My grandfather served on the Somme with the Middlesex Regiment, wounded 3 times, gassed and frost bitten, I suppose he was wrong and you are right?

After WW1 in many villages and towns all across the UK the only males were the elderly, young boys or maimed troops. PALS Battalions were slaughtered by the dozen.

Haig did a good job? Haig during the Boer War ordered frontal attacks against well prepared Boer positions, thousands of British troops were slaughtered, Haig used the same tactic during WW1. He never learned the lessons of the Boer War. by 1918 the Allies were in danger of being beaten but thankfully the US troops were fed into the conflict.

Even the figures you gave for British loses you make them sound insignificant. On top of those figures there were over 1.2 million wounded by wars end, that's two million casualties for God sake, get a grip
That your grandfather served on the Somme,does not prove that Britain was running out of men .
You are talking nonsens about the Boer War:in 1899,Haig was 38( a major):how could he be responsible for the slaughter of thousands of British troops ? And,the British losses in the Boer War were very limited :most losses were non combat losses,due to sickness .
You are talking nonsens about WWI:the official losses I have given are dead,wounded and missing .If I am not wrong,the British losses for the whole war,on all fronts,from all causes were some 2.5 million,of which 750.000 dead,less than the French,German and Russian losses .
750.000 =some 3% of the British male population .
I repeat :Haig was not incompetent;it was politically impossible that the BEF would do nothing,while the French and Russians were fighting and killed .The BEF had to attack,and could do this only on the Western Front .Thus,Haig attacked,and with results:a lot of Germans were killed.
Frankly,I am astonished that a former military is talking all these nonsens .
There was no way that Haig could attack with less losses .
 
The so called peace negotiations in Cyprus had as result that Britain was leaving :the EOKA demanded the withdrawal of Britain,and ...Britain left .To me,that's a capitulation .The release of Makarios was the beginning of the end,that's why Lord Salisbury resigned .If the British government had not the guts to give the army the permission to crush the EOKA,that was the end of the Empire .That means that the soldiers who were killed at Cyprys and after Cyprus were needless losses .
 
The trip to England was very critical. If Hitler didn't change plans to bomb London instead of the RAF airfields, the RAF problem would be solved.

The problem is I think is a little misleading, it is often claimed that concentrating on RAF airfields would have knocked it out of the war but the reality is that even had every airfield of 11 Group been put out of service (and it was only 11 Group that the Luftwaffe could focus on) 10, 12 and 13 Group would have still been fully operational and within 20 minutes of the invasion beaches.

The reality is that the Luftwaffe could only have hoped for a very localised air superiority above the South East coast but the sheer weight of numbers that would have been thrown against any forward German airfields would have prevented the Luftwaffe from exploiting forward bases.




They could ship Panzer III amphibious tanks. They were good enough to support the Heer in England until the bigger ones could arrive.

In my point of view it was the Royal Navy who averted the invasion. They would do everything that was necessary to destroy the invasion fleet, even with big losses for themselves. It was all or nothing.

True but then the problem becomes the inability to supply them with the Royal Navy constantly threatening to break into the invasion lanes.
 
About Sealion :the following points were essential:if ONE was not realized,SL was impossible,and NOT ONE was realized.
1)Air superiority above South East England:not realized
2)Elimination of Bomber Command :not realized
3)The existence of a transport fleet :there was no one
4)A war fleet to protect the transport ships :there was no war fleet
5)The possibility to occupy at least one intact port :impossible
6)The weather :several weeks of good weather were needed for the invasion and build up:this was impossible in september
About 6 :DDay was planned for 5 june,but was delayed because of the bad SUMMER(!) weather,thus imagine the situation in september .
 
That your grandfather served on the Somme,does not prove that Britain was running out of men .


My grandfather saw the massive loses in his own sector.

At one stage British troops were running out of ammunition on the front line, volunteers were called for to bring supplies from the rear. Two attempts failed due to German shelling. My grandfather ran back, gathered mules and under shell fire managed to get through, whether by luck or the grace of God I don't know, but he did it. His company commander took his name for some sort of award.. Later that day the company commander was killed. My grandfather never got his medal.

The*Somme*led to the loss of 600,000 men on the Allies side; 400,000 were British or Commonwealth troops. When the battle had ended, they had gained ten miles of land. Haig has been criticised by some for his belief in the simple advance of infantry troops on enemy lines. With 20,000 Allied soldiers killed on Day One and 40,000 injured, some historians have claimed that Haig should have learned from these statistics and adjusted his tactics. He did not. However, the Somme attack was not just about antiquated tactics as the battle witnessed the use of the rolling artillery barrage that should have helped the Allied troops as they advanced. That it did not was more a comment on the fact that the Germans had dug in more deeply than British intelligence had bargained for and was less susceptible to artillery fire. Once the artillery firing had stopped, the British had all but signaled that the infantry was on its way.*

he had a stubborn and unwillingness to change his way of looking over the battle as a whole, which meant that even though lots of men were dying each day he still did not change his tactics or the rate in which he used up men ‘the nation must be taught to bear losses’ (Haig, June 1916, before battle of Somme and also even implied that he knew he was doing it yet didn’t care and thought of the men’s deaths as just a*statistic, ‘the nation must be prepared for a heavy casualty list’

You are talking nonsens about the Boer War:in 1899,Haig was 38( a major):how could he be responsible for the slaughter of thousands of British troops ? And,the British losses in the Boer War were very limited :most losses were non combat losses,due to sickness .

Haig was (September 1899) appointed Assistant Adjutant General (i.e. chief staff officer) of French’s brigade-sized cavalry force as it was sent off to the Boer War, not a mere Major as you suggest.

The Boer War was a watershed event for the British Army, the Boers employed hit-and-run tactics that not only caused losses the British could not afford,*they*did not conform to the usual "gentlemanly" rules of war.

Britain suffered 55,000 casualties during the second Boer War, while fighting a mobile Boer force of something like 27,000.

Two factors that contributed to the large amount of casualties were that many British soldiers were physically unprepared for the environment and poorly trained for the tactical conditions they faced. Who's fault was that may I ask?


You are talking nonsens about WWI:the official losses I have given are dead,wounded and missing .If I am not wrong,the British losses for the whole war,on all fronts,from all causes were some 2.5 million,of which 750.000 dead,less than the French,German and Russian losses .
750.000 =some 3% of the British male population .
I repeat :Haig was not incompetent;it was politically impossible that the BEF would do nothing,while the French and Russians were fighting and killed .The BEF had to attack,and could do this only on the Western Front .Thus,Haig attacked,and with results:a lot of Germans were killed.
Frankly,I am astonished that a former military is talking all these nonsens .
There was no way that Haig could attack with less losses .

I'm not concerned with Russian or German loses, my concern is British loses due to Haigs mishandling of the troops under his command.

During (and after) WW1, many people have criticised him. Most of the criticisms were fair, and not many disagreed. He even earned the nickname "Butcher of the Somme" for constantly sending troops, especially on the western front into excessive casualties.

Haig was not a coward; in fact he was exactly the opposite. This was not a good thing. He was rarely defensive or passive and too often offensive, sending many men forward into battles that sometimes even he knew they wouldn't win. Many people were forced into an almost certain death like this.
Another similar criticism is that Haig would often use cavalry to charge around the trench and make an attack. He usually knew that the enemy would be armed with machine guns and other automatic weapons. The cavalry stood little chance against machine guns. Many soldiers (and horses) died like this. What makes it worse it that the horses required a lot of looking after, feeding and cleaning, which wasted a lot of their time and was not worth it just for it to charge into its almost certain death.
Haig himself had never fought in a war/battle, so had little knowledge of what he was sending his troops into. He knew about most of the dangers, but he did not know about the fear of being on a battlefield.

Another criticism is that he expected men to be able to cut through or climb over barbed wires. This was a mistake, and led to many casualties and a big waste of time.

Haig would also give orders to use massive bombardments thinking that they would destroy the enemy trenches making it easier for the soldiers to capture them. This did not go to plan and were almost useless, as the German trenches were too well defended, and very deep as they were defending, stationary, so had more time to dig the trenches.

He built his headquarters a long way from the trenches, usually around 40 miles away. This led to more problems such as taking a long time to send a message from the headquarters to the battlefield. Radio was not efficient then, as it would be costly and may not work, and the signal would have been difficult to understand.
 
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The so called peace negotiations in Cyprus had as result that Britain was leaving :the EOKA demanded the withdrawal of Britain,and ...Britain left .To me,that's a capitulation .The release of Makarios was the beginning of the end,that's why Lord Salisbury resigned .If the British government had not the guts to give the army the permission to crush the EOKA,that was the end of the Empire .That means that the soldiers who were killed at Cyprys and after Cyprus were needless losses .

Obviously you have never been to Cyprus, Malaya or Northern Ireland, if you had, you wouldn't be making such stupid statements

Britain was sick of conflict, too many British troops were killed or had been killed in Palestine, Malaya, Borneo including Cyprus and later Northern Ireland. Only a cretin would suggest that regular army units could beat terrorists on their home ground. The few exceptions being Malaya and Borneo.

Not only was various British governments fed up with fighting terrorism, so were the troops on the ground as well as the British public. I remember my grandmother crying and fearful of my uncle serving in the Royal Welch.

Britain was no longer the Empire it was, it couldn't sustain and pay for colonies around the world, Britain was in effect bankrupt. The British empire had faded long before the problems in Cyprus. You really don't have a clue.

You have hi-jacked this thread for far too long, I must admit I am also at fault for pandering to your ridiculous rhetoric and attempting to sensibly debate with you. For that I apologise to other members of the forum.
 
Saying that Haig was responsible for the slaughter of thousands of British soldiers in the Boer War is nonsens.
There were no thousands of British soldiers slaughtered in the Boer War ,which was a cheap war .
British losses in the Boer War were :
KIA:5774
Died of Wounds :2018
Diad of diseases:13250
Died of accidents :738
Died in captivity :102.
7792 British soldiers died from combat losses in 32 months,this is an average of 243 per month,or 14 a day .
About Haig in WWI:your pathological hatred to the man who leaded the British Army to victory,is deconsidering you .
 
Saying that Haig was responsible for the slaughter of thousands of British soldiers in the Boer War is nonsens.
There were no thousands of British soldiers slaughtered in the Boer War ,which was a cheap war .
British losses in the Boer War were :
KIA:5774
Died of Wounds :2018
Diad of diseases:13250
Died of accidents :738
Died in captivity :102.
7792 British soldiers died from combat losses in 32 months,this is an average of 243 per month,or 14 a day .
About Haig in WWI:your pathological hatred to the man who leaded the British Army to victory,is deconsidering you .

Are you stupid?

The Boer War, according to Rudyard Kipling, taught the British "no end of a lesson".. over 20,000 British Troops were laid to rest in the heat and dust of the South African veldt, with another 22,829 being wounded. and those figures are conservative.

Other figures are:-Total BRITISH deaths in South Africa October 1899 - May 1902:
Officers 1072, Men 20810, Total British Dead 21882.
Besides the soldiers who actually died there were vast casualties, including:
Prisoners and Missing 105
Sent home as invalids:
3116 Officers (8 Died),
72314 men (500 Died, 5879 Discharged as unfit for further service)
Of 72314 men; Wounded 8221, Sick 63644, Not specified 449
Total BRITISH casualties in South Africa October 1899 - May 1902:
Officers 4188 Men 93229, TOTAL 97417

When I was at school anything over 999, was a thousand, so two, three, four or even 10 or twenty times is THOUSANDS

It doesn't matter if they died in battle or died from sickness, the poor buggers are DEAD! That's D E A D

No war is a cheap war, try telling that to the families of those killed or died in theatre by whatever means. Haig was a senior officer during the Boer war and as such responsible for those deaths as was his senior officers.

I don't have a pathological hatred of anyone. Haig did NOT remember the lessons learned during the Boer War. Like it or not Haig was personally responsible for thousands of deaths.

Haig himself had never fought in a war/battle, so had little knowledge of what he was sending his troops into. He knew about most of the dangers, but he did not know about the fear of being on a battlefield. If a battle did not succeed, its execution, not its objectives, were questioned.

Being of little imagination and even less flexibility, Haig could not have been expected to undergo a radical transformation during WW I, no matter how unique the challenges. He thought that the problems of the war seemed simple, it was merely a matter of applying ‘old principles to present conditions’. When stalemate quickly ensued, he still sought a breakthrough so that the cavalry could be deployed.

Who in their right freaking minds sends cavalry into a frontal attack on German dug in positions protected by machine guns? Or are you as stupid as he was. I can only gather that you are somehow related to the man.

As I mentioned before, you have hi-jacked this thread for too damn long with your stupid inane comments and attempt to rewrite history.
 
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The problem is I think is a little misleading, it is often claimed that concentrating on RAF airfields would have knocked it out of the war but the reality is that even had every airfield of 11 Group been put out of service (and it was only 11 Group that the Luftwaffe could focus on) 10, 12 and 13 Group would have still been fully operational and within 20 minutes of the invasion beaches.

The reality is that the Luftwaffe could only have hoped for a very localised air superiority above the South East coast but the sheer weight of numbers that would have been thrown against any forward German airfields would have prevented the Luftwaffe from exploiting forward bases.

The problem was not the airfields. They were quickly repaired after an attack anyway. The problem was the planes destroyed on the ground. The shift to city bombings removed that problem just in time.






True but then the problem becomes the inability to supply them with the Royal Navy constantly threatening to break into the invasion lanes.
Right.
 
Much of the damage to 11 Group airfields could have been prevented if 12 Group had protected those airfields as requested by Keith Parks. Instead Leigh Mallory wanted some of the glory himself.

The political intrigues within the Air Ministry, particularly the activities of Leigh-Mallory and Sholto Douglas, led to the replacement of Dowding and Park on 25 November 1940, two months after the British victory. Leigh-Mallory replaced Keith Park at No. 11 Group, and Sholto Douglas replaced Dowding at Fighter Command. When the official history of the Battle of Britain was published, Dowding's name was not mentioned, leading Churchill to minute Sinclair: "This is not a good story... The jealousies and cliquism which have led to the committing of this offence are a discredit to the Air Ministry.

At the least, the movie "Battle of Britain" gave credit to the right people, Hugh Dowding and Keith Parks.
 
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Are you stupid?

The Boer War, according to Rudyard Kipling, taught the British "no end of a lesson".. over 20,000 British Troops were laid to rest in the heat and dust of the South African veldt, with another 22,829 being wounded. and those figures are conservative.

Other figures are:-Total BRITISH deaths in South Africa October 1899 - May 1902:
Officers 1072, Men 20810, Total British Dead 21882.
Besides the soldiers who actually died there were vast casualties, including:
Prisoners and Missing 105
Sent home as invalids:
3116 Officers (8 Died),
72314 men (500 Died, 5879 Discharged as unfit for further service)
Of 72314 men; Wounded 8221, Sick 63644, Not specified 449
Total BRITISH casualties in South Africa October 1899 - May 1902:
Officers 4188 Men 93229, TOTAL 97417

When I was at school anything over 999, was a thousand, so two, three, four or even 10 or twenty times is THOUSANDS

It doesn't matter if they died in battle or died from sickness, the poor buggers are DEAD! That's D E A D

No war is a cheap war, try telling that to the families of those killed or died in theatre by whatever means. Haig was a senior officer during the Boer war and as such responsible for those deaths as was his senior officers.

I don't have a pathological hatred of anyone. Haig did NOT remember the lessons learned during the Boer War. Like it or not Haig was personally responsible for thousands of deaths.

Haig himself had never fought in a war/battle, so had little knowledge of what he was sending his troops into. He knew about most of the dangers, but he did not know about the fear of being on a battlefield. If a battle did not succeed, its execution, not its objectives, were questioned.

Being of little imagination and even less flexibility, Haig could not have been expected to undergo a radical transformation during WW I, no matter how unique the challenges. He thought that the problems of the war seemed simple, it was merely a matter of applying ‘old principles to present conditions’. When stalemate quickly ensued, he still sought a breakthrough so that the cavalry could be deployed.

Who in their right freaking minds sends cavalry into a frontal attack on German dug in positions protected by machine guns? Or are you as stupid as he was. I can only gather that you are somehow related to the man.

As I mentioned before, you have hi-jacked this thread for too damn long with your stupid inane comments and attempt to rewrite history.
The typical attitude of a bully:replacing arguments with insults (thinking he is still at the barracks) and saying,he want a sensible debate .
 
The typical attitude of a bully:replacing arguments with insults (thinking he is still at the barracks) and saying,he want a sensible debate .

I wish I was still in barracks. Goodness I never insult. If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck and looks like a duck, its a duck.

Now lets stay on topic shall we? Do you have anything interesting to say about the Battle of Britain, if you do I'd love to hear it.
 
The Luftwaffe proved inadequate against surfaces ships at Dunkirk sinking only thirteen destroyers and damaging another nineteen in a confined area as they loaded troops. It proved equally incapable against the RAF during the Battle of Britain losing 1887 aircraft of all types in exchange for 1547 fighters. Clearly the Luftwaffe could not stop the RAF or the RN much less both.

The German invasion of Crete is instructive vis-à-vis Sea Lion. Reinforcement and supply by sea proved impossible even though the Luftwaffe had absolute air superiority. The Royal Navy intercepted and utterly destroyed the first flotilla of small boats hazarding the crossing from Greece. No further attempts were made to reinforce by sea. Instead the 5th Mountain Division troops were flown in. Although they eventually prevailed German parachute and glider troops and the JU-52 transport arm of the Luftwaffe were decimated in the process. One can imagine the slaughter had the RN and RAF run through 1277 barges loaded with men and equipment during the proposed Sea Lion channel crossing.

Although it did not appear so at the time Sea Lion was never a viable military option. At best it was a propaganda ploy, a political threat that might have brought a timorous leader like Chamberlain to the negotiating table but never a tenacious warrior such as Churchill.
 
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