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Right after the retreat at Dunkirk, up until early 1941, the British had:
Destroyed the German surface fleet
Between 1940 and early 1941, the British had directly destroyed/sunk only two German vessels; the light cruisers Konigsberg and Karlsruhe, and indirectly sank the battleship Bismarck. This left the Kriegsmarine with one battleship, two battlecruisers, two pocket battleships, two heavy cruisers, and four light cruisers all of which met various fates as the war went on.
Seems like an awful lot of leftover ships for a supposedly “destroyed” fleet doesn’t it?
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Originally Posted by John-UK
Disabled a major part of the Italian fleet.
With respect to the Italian fleet, there were three major actions during the time period mentioned. The first was the The Raid on Taranto in November 1940, which resulted in severe damage to two battleships and moderate damage to another. Two other battleships were completely untouched and they along with all other elements of the Italian First Squadron sailed, intact, to the port of Naples. Six days later, both battleships and six heavy cruisers were in action against a Malta bound British convoy. Additional bombing raids on Naples in January 1941 left the Italians with one operational battleship but the rest of the fleet still undamaged. By February 1941, the Italians had three fully functional battleships again. The Battle of Cape Matapan in late March 1941 resulted in the Italians losing three heavy cruisers and 2 destroyers, with one battleship being damaged and out of operation for roughly five months.
Now, given that after the Armistice of 1943, the Italians surrendered five battleships and over thirty other vessels from heavy cruisers on down, can it be accurately said that the British ever disabled a major part of the Italian fleet during the entirety of the war?
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Originally Posted by John-UK
Germany was being bombed from the air with raids of over 100 bombers - 150 over Nuremberg - using the new navigational device, Gee. A massive air bombing fleet was being assembled. A matter of weeks after the US entered WW2 the RAF launched a 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne. The RAF shot down over 700 German fighters over Continental Europe in 1941.
While all very impressive, none of those numbers address the effectiveness of the air raids themselves, particularly between the fall of France in June 1940 and late 1941. As examples, a December 16, 1940 attack on Mannheim city center in reprisal for the bombing of Coventry saw 134 planes sent out with 102 reported hitting the target. Photo analysis showed bombing was inaccurate and scattered. January 9, 1941 attack on Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr. Bomber Command sent out 296 planes that dropped 206 tons of high explosive ordnance. After action analysis showed almost zero damage an no visible bomb craters nearby. On March 12th, the RAF mounted a night attack on the Focke-Wulf plant in Bremen. 54 Wellington bombers were dispatched, 33 of which carried 132 high explosive bombs and 840 incendiary bombs. All reported striking their target. Photos showed that despite perfect conditions, only 12 bombs hit the plant which was quite large and easy to locate. It was concluded that the average aiming error was 600 yards.
In August 1941, D. M. Butt, a member of War Cabinet secretariat, analyzed 600 photos taken during bombing raids conducted against Germany in June and July. He concluded that only a third of bombing crews who claimed to have hit their targets had even gotten within five miles of them. Two fifths came within five miles of their targets in attacks on French ports but only one quarter managed to do so when attacking targets within Germany itself. When attacking the Ruhr industrial area, only a tenth actually came within five miles of their designated target.
The conclusion….the strategic bombing campaign conducted up to this point was an abject failure. This led to the restructuring of Bomber Command in 1942 and the switch to “area bombing” and Churchill’s pet project to “de-house” or kill as many German civilians as possible in an attempt to deny war factories the workers they needed to stay in operation. While the destruction these raids wrought was biblical in proportion, their effectiveness in breaking the morale of the German population or shortening the war is highly questionable.
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Originally Posted by John-UK
More history from Hollywood. 2.6 million matched into Burma. It was called the British Indian Army, a part of the British Army. When you declared war on Britain, you declared war on one third of the world's population. It is that simple.
You’re right, the British Indian Army was composed of 2.6 million men. But the whole Indian Army didn’t march into Burma, only the 14th Army of the British Indian Army did and at the height of the campaign, never amounted to more than about 1 million men, with the additional support of roughly a quarter million Nationalist Chinese troops and 10-12,000 Americans. I think we can all agree that 1 million is a sizable force, so simply put, there hardly seems a need to grossly inflate it to anything beyond that.
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Originally Posted by John-UK
The USA had nowhere near that many troops on the ground. The Soviets even committed more on the ground that the USA.
Correct, they did….in Manchuria, which wasn’t that hard of a thing for the Soviets to do given they were already right there on the border of Manchuria through almost the entire war. More to the point, U.S. policy from the outset was that there would be no large scale commitment of troops to fight against the Japanese in Manchuria, China, and Korea. Instead, it would be left to the Chinese to fight them as best they could until such time as the Japanese had been defeated outright in the Pacific or isolated on mainland Japan itself.
So your point, such as it is, isn’t particularly relevant.
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Originally Posted by John-UK
The Eastern Fleet was operating off Malaya and the British Pacific fleet off Okinawa.
Throughout 1942 - 43, the US lobbied the Britain for primarily naval assistance to fight the Japanese in the Pacific. These requests were repeatedly denied because the British felt the shifting of such assets would negatively impact the areas of operation believed most important to them, such as the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and Indian Ocean. Thus, the task of fighting the Japanese in the Pacific was left primarily to the U.S. with backing from what limited assistance Australia and New Zealand could provide.
The British Pacific Fleet was not reconstituted until November 1944, nine months before the end of the war. It did not actually begin fighting until January 1945 when it launched air attacks against two oil refineries in Sumatra. In March, it was designated Task Force 57 to function as a “flexible reserve” to the USN’s main Pacific strike force, Task Force 58, which would be undertaking the invasion of Okinawa. Task Force 57 sole mission was to prevent Japanese planes from being leapfrogged from Formosa to airfields near Okinawa. From April 1st to the 14th it performed this task until it withdrew from action. It returned to this same task on May 1st until being withdrawn to Sydney on May 25th. On June 1st, now redesignated Task Force 37, it was integrated into Admiral Halsey’s Third Fleet and began action against the Japanese home islands in preparation for the planned fall invasion of Japan. It remained doing so until the Japanese surrendered on August 15th, at which time the British redeployed it for use in the operation to retake Malaya.
So while it is correct to say that the British Pacific Fleet was active around Okinawa and that the extra heft it provided was certainly helpful, it cannot be said that its presence or activities were crucial or invaluable to the cessation of hostilities with Japan. It was American naval and aviation power that decimated the Japanese fleet, and American boots on the ground that fought the Japanese, island by island, right up to their front door.
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Originally Posted by John-UK
The Soviets got onto Japan proper while the US troops were 350 miles away in Okinawa - who made heavy going of it. The A-bomb never made the Japanese surrender, it was the thought of fighting Soviet troops on their own land.
I suppose this really depends on how you define “Japan proper”. If you include outer territories such as the Japanese controlled portion of Sakhalin Island and the Kuriles, which the Soviets did attack and seize, then you would be correct. But if you are saying the Soviets made incursions onto what one could refer to as either the Japanese mainland or home islands, then no, that never happened.
As to what really induced the Japanese to surrender, it was triggered by the following events; the bombing of Hiroshima on the 6th of August, the bombing of Nagasaki on the 9th, and the Soviets declaring war on Japan that same day. You see, the bombings did awaken the Japanese to the fact that the war was essentially over for them. Their intent was to hold out for a negotiated settlement, using the Soviets as the peace brokers. But the declaration of war by Russia and the subsequent Soviet attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria pretty much eliminated any hope of that happening. When it became clear by the 15th that the Kwantung Army had collapsed in the face of the Soviet onslaught, the Japanese realized that unconditional surrender was the best they were going to get. And so it was on that day that Hirohito recorded his message to the Japanese people announcing the end of the war.
Now, if it makes you feel better to give all the credit to the Soviets for making the Japanese surrender, then so be it. But it does a great disservice to the thousands of men who fought and died in the Pacific trying to bring about the defeat of Japan.
If someone hasn't already mentioned them William Slim's Indian sappers, Ghurkas, and Sikhs fighting in the jungles under very tough conditions would be very much in the running for toughness and endurance.
So happy to see that the XIVth isn't always the forgotten army.
The Commonwealth troops in Burma took a terrible beating during the Japanese invasion, but they learned their lesson. They then went on to show the IJA just how well they'd absorbed the material. The Japanese fought well and hard and still suffered defeat after humiliating defeat, tactically and strategically.
And that came down as much to the individual fighting man as to Slim's undoubted excellence as a leader.
You are thinking commonwealth troops - Indians mainly, but also Anzac, Canadians, Africans from the colonial areas.....
Yes I know that India was part of the British empire at the time but I doubt that Indians would appreciate being labeled British Troops.
Why would they not count? Indian troops also served in the ME, North Africa, and the invasion of Italy, and while there was a draft resistance movement in India at the time many Indians were puzzled by it and wouldn't have dreamed of not serving, particularly Sikhs.
India's separation was relatively peaceful and friendly, and many Indians are Anglophiles to this day. The 'radicals' may have seemed to be a large group, but India had a very large population even back then, so it the violent and noisy were relatively small in comparison; most of the violence was Indian against Indian, and despite the PR polished image of Ghandi in the West he and his family were not angels or 'pacifists' in their own milieu. Besides, the Americans had already accepted Roosevelt's post-war, and pre-war to some extent as well, dismantling of the old European empires and colonial systems for a 'new world order', so it was going to happen anyway, 'radicals' or not. Too bad Roosevelt badly mis-judged Communist imperialism re Stalin and Mao, and the U.S. went at it too soon.
Early British aid to Stalin, arriving in just barely enough time to affect the outcome of the battle for Moscow, kept the Soviets in the war, as did the massive amounts of aid that followed. The British armor units, 125 or so, made Soviet winter offensives possible, as did the later shipments that filled the Kursk Pocket with British armor. Aviation fuel booster was also critical to keeping Russian planes in the air, as were shipments of British aircraft engines and engineers; the Allied bombing campaign over Germany forced the Germans to strip the Eastern Front of AA and aircraft as well, which gave the Soviets almost complete air superiority across their entire Front.
I could go on, but the Soviets were not impressive at all, outside of their willingness to launch human wave attacks and shoot down their own troops from behind if they didn't commit suicide. They were simply hired mercenaries of generally savage quality, imo; they 'succeeded' only via Allied aid, supply, and the threat of invasion from the U.S. and Allies. Their casualty rates were ridiculously high, even in battles with children and old men in the invasions of the southern flanks. Historian David Glantz has documented many 'forgotten battles' the Soviets much preferred to leave out of their histories because of embarrassment and causalities, particularly on their southern Front.
Re the vaunted T-34, it was a piece of junk until late 1944, when a Soviet General finally got the improvements recommended by American and British engineers implemented on the production lines, and we all know the war was decided by Feb. 1943, whether the Soviets were in it or not. The T-34 was based on an old American design, in turn borrowed from a rejected British design, a piece of trivia few may know about.
Last edited by OberonKing; 09-13-2018 at 04:18 AM..
So happy to see that the XIVth isn't always the forgotten army.
The Commonwealth troops in Burma took a terrible beating during the Japanese invasion, but they learned their lesson. They then went on to show the IJA just how well they'd absorbed the material. The Japanese fought well and hard and still suffered defeat after humiliating defeat, tactically and strategically.
And that came down as much to the individual fighting man as to Slim's undoubted excellence as a leader.
Indeed. My father and two uncles served in the Pacific, so I study it a little more. Reading about the huge logistical obstacles he had to deal with to get in the fight is some amazing reading, and the conditions they fought under. I think he could have taken most of China back in another couple of years. He had the brains and leadership, as well as great troops.
I could go on, but the Soviets were not impressive at all, outside of their willingness to launch human wave attacks and shoot down their own troops from behind if they didn't commit suicide. They were simply hired mercenaries of generally savage quality, imo; they 'succeeded' only via Allied aid, supply, and the threat of invasion from the U.S. and Allies.
Allied, British & US, aid to the USSR was about 6%. They were a very poor army being slow to learn. Even when winning a battle the Germans invariably destroyed more Soviet armour than what German was destroyed.
With Soviet aid, it was the aid provided at vital times that mattered. 40% of the tanks in the Battle of Moscow were British. The British were supplying the Soviets while depriving their own forces in Malaya. Just two of those convoys, with tanks, diverted to Singapore would have defeated the Japanese. Although the Japanese walked to the negotiating table ready to surrender, as they ran out of ammunition. Some idiot name Percival surrendered before them.
The T-34 was an excellent tank, not junk. The tank of WW2. The Germans copied it - the Panther. American engineers assessing it wrote that the air filter could not have been better design by a saboteur. He never knew it was to be in an oil bath. The diesel V engine they used was way ahead of any allied tank engine. The T-34 was not based on an old American design at all. The US was poor at tank design. They used the suspension of a man named Christie, an American, as did the British. The US never adopted Christie's suspension. The T-34-85 was to be introduced much earlier but manufacturing was all geared to the T-34 which was doing the job, so it was sidelined. It take times to re-tool and set up production lines which would reduce output. Hence it was late being introduced.
I could go on, but the Soviets were not impressive at all, outside of their willingness to launch human wave attacks and shoot down their own troops from behind if they didn't commit suicide. They were simply hired mercenaries of generally savage quality, imo; they 'succeeded' only via Allied aid, supply, and the threat of invasion from the U.S. and Allies. Their casualty rates were ridiculously high, even in battles with children and old men in the invasions of the southern flanks. Historian David Glantz has documented many 'forgotten battles' the Soviets much preferred to leave out of their histories because of embarrassment and causalities, particularly on their southern Front.
Most of what you said isn't backed by much evidence. Few Westerners were present on the Eastern Front, so most accounts of the Soviets during the war came from interviews with captured German generals. Being that the Soviets were thought of as sub-human, it can assumed that the German Generals testimonials of how the war was carried out contained a large amount of bias.
From the end of 1942 and onward, the Soviets could not be halted in route to Berlin. You don't win that many major battles without having a firm comprehension of strategy and tactics along with some pretty great military equipment.
I could go on, but the Soviets were not impressive at all, outside of their willingness to launch human wave attacks and shoot down their own troops from behind if they didn't commit suicide.
Shenanigans. The Red Army was an absolute shambles in 1941, but it learned.
An operation like the Kursk counterattack is not something you carry out with poorly-trained people motivated only by the threat of summary execution. Absorbing an attack is one thing - most any soldier can be trained to stand fast over running away. But counterattacking to the extent the Soviets did - that takes commanders and men who know what they're doing, because you have to exploit the opportunities in real time, you're by definition starting out off-balance and no amount of human-wave will allow you to exploit a breakthrough in depth - which is what the Soviets did.
A counterattack is probably the second-most difficult feat of arms, surpassed only by an orderly retreat.
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