What If The Weather Had Been Clear At Dunkirk?

[jimbotosome]

Goering had talked Hitler into letting him use the Luftwaffe to destroy the British at Dunkirk. He wanted to use the Luftwaffe to bomb them into submission when they were trapped in the pocket. Because of bad weather, the bombing raids to destroy them were delayed and the British were able to send a flotilla to rescue them. If the weather had been clear, the entire flotilla would have been sunk (those that didn’t flee). This would have led to the destruction and capture of 340,000 British soldiers. What would Britain have done? Could Germany have just waltzed in to Britain and occupied her? Would WWII never have happened?

[MalcolmII]

Strangely, I was talking to a class of 12year olds yesterday with one of our local worthies who wasat Donkirk and he kept stressing that without the fog/mist /low cloud he wouldn't have been here or any of his mates!!
Mind you, the 320,000 men rescued didn't win the Battle of Britain, 3000 pilots did.
Aye
MalcolmII

[jimbotosome]

(MalcolmII @ Oct 6 2005, 01:48 PM) [post=39803]Mind you, the 320,000 men rescued didn't win the Battle of Britain, 3000 pilots did.
[/b]

Hi Malcolm,

You are right, the RAF did win the Battle of Britain but only because the presence of 320,000 soldiers kept the Germans from waltzing in and executing an unopposed and simple land invasion which would have included possessing all the RAF fields withing a few weeks. The Spitfires and Hurricane's would have still been flying over Britain but they would have had the German cross painted on them and wouldn't be flown by RAF pilots. Also, remember, that the RAF was defending France as well when it was Blitzkrieg'd. Shooting down bombers is not the same thing as trying to stop massive armor divisions from rolling on your airfields.

Don't get me wrong, I am glad it turned out the way it did, but I don't believe it was courage alone that won, but a good deal of luck helped. Thank God for that.

[adrian roberts]

There was a previous thread entitled something like "Could a German Invasion of Britain have succeeded?" The consensus seemed to be that it was far from a foregone conclusion. The Germans would have used ordinary barges to land troops; they had nothing like the technology that we had by D-Day. They had no means of landing tanks unless paratroopers had been able to capture a Channel port; the Royal Navy would have wrought severe casualties on a seaborne invasion even with the U-boat threat, and the RAF had more Spitfires and Hurricanes in mid-September than mid-July even with the BofB and the bombing of airfields.

Therefore, the loss of the BEF troops if the evacuation had failed might not have decisive, though clearly it would have made things difficult for us and would have made it more difficult to carry the conflict abroad later in the war. [Do any of you know the number of combat-ready troops left in the UK, i.e those not sent to France?]

However the negative effect on morale might have been crucial: as it was, Dunkirk was portrayed as a Victory, in one of the most effective pieces of spin of all time. If the troops had all been captured, the hand of those would wanted a negotiated peace with the Germans might have been strengthened.

</div><div class='quotemain'>but a good deal of luck helped. Thank God for that. [/b]

Did you mean that last sentence? A lot of people in the UK were interceding in prayer at this time; the King himself called a day of prayer, and the weather conditions including the millpond seas were attributed by some to this.

Adrian

[jimbotosome]

Hello Adrian,

</div><div class='quotemain'>
The Germans would have used ordinary barges to land troops; they had nothing like the technology that we had by D-Day. They had no means of landing tanks unless paratroopers had been able to capture a Channel port; the Royal Navy would have wrought severe casualties on a seaborne invasion even with the U-boat threat, and the RAF had more Spitfires and Hurricanes in mid-September than mid-July even with the BofB and the bombing of airfields. [/b]

The Royal Navy could not have gotten within 100 miles of the channel without being sunk by land based bombers, u-boats, land based artillery, and mines. This is why they fled Navrik under intense bombing. Ships are no match for airplanes. The success of the RAF in the BofB was mainly because radar gave them sufficient time to intercept the German bombers nearing the target. They would have had no such chance if the escort fighters and bombers only had to fly 20 miles or so to the channel. By the time they would get to the channel, the bombers would have returned to base. The only reason we could take ships across the channel was air superiority which Germany would have held over the channel. By June 1944, the Luftwaffe had been nullified and was no threat to attack. That's not a knock on the RAF, they fought with tremendous heart defending their homeland, but they had certain crucial advantages over Germany in the bombing campaign.

But, Germany would not have used ships and barges to transport troops. The German had elite paratroopers that could have taken the air fields at night and the British would not have had sufficient arms much less soldiers to stop elite forces. I think this was demonstrated that the paratroops were easily capable of taking airfields before the airfields could respond at Denmark right? Germany could have also converted soldiers to paratroopers in a week. All you need to do is teach them to parachute. Go out to the airport tomorrow and they will teach you in a few hours. The extra Spitfires and Hurricanes you mention would have made the Luftwaffe even more unstoppable. The Germans would have come up with a Donald Duck solution for their tanks as well. Boots on the ground were the only deterrent from invasion. Britains initial weapons after Dunkirk came from the US's stock of WWI weapons, personal shotguns, rifles and ammo donated by the "redneck" southern country boys in the US (as many like to refer to them in a derogatory sense).

</div><div class='quotemain'>
Therefore, the loss of the BEF troops if the evacuation had failed might not have decisive, though clearly it would have made things difficult for us and would have made it more difficult to carry the conflict abroad later in the war. [Do any of you know the number of combat-ready troops left in the UK, i.e those not sent to France?] [/b]

The biggest problem Britain would have faced was the lack of arms that they lost in France. As we learned from losses in the war with Russia, the Germans were capable of deploying millions of troops very rapidly. That would mean they would increase thousands the first night to capture ports and within a week could have half of the airfields and ports in Britain.

</div><div class='quotemain'>
However the negative effect on morale might have been crucial: as it was, Dunkirk was portrayed as a Victory, in one of the most effective pieces of spin of all time. If the troops had all been captured, the hand of those would wanted a negotiated peace with the Germans might have been strengthened. [/b]

That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that.

</div><div class='quotemain'>
Did you mean that last sentence? A lot of people in the UK were interceding in prayer at this time; the King himself called a day of prayer, and the weather conditions including the millpond seas were attributed by some to this. [/b]

Well, I would be the last one to undermine prayer changing things, but are you implying that the prayer did not start working until Dunkirk and stopped shortly after that? I believe that God’s interaction is with wisdom and understanding which is in the hands of men to choose by faith to seek and follow, not in overt acts of intervening with majestic acts like parting the Red Sea; otherwise Hitler would never have killed so many godly men.

The rain falls on BOTH the wicked and the righteous. Luck, chance, randomness, or whatever you wish to call, good and bad it happens to everyone at some point. Life is not about going through it unscathed, but joy of overcoming adversity with loved ones and friends, the strong standing with the weak, the fortunate with the unfortunate, therein is and always was the plan of God as I have found it in my years of sincerely searching. Recently May (maywalk) on this board, who was in the Battle or Britain as a young girl, posted a statement of that time that it was a magical time of life, there was no upper and lower classes, the rich were one with the poor, the Catholics one with the Protestants, everyone was in the same boat (I think is how she put it), and though she qualified that statement with saying she was not glad it happened and that many good people were killed, but glad that she was there and got to see mankind at their best, something that those who have never seen great adversity can’t say. Sapper on this board may have seen the closest thing to hell you can see here on the earth, but I bet you he would say he has also seen great things that those of us who were not there can’t and will never see. He has probably experienced a glory that no statesman in our time can claim. Children don’t die of diseases because of people around them not praying sufficiently or they or their parents were in any way “bad” people, or that God just needed another flower in His garden or some stupid statement like that that I hear from well-meaning people all the time. Good always triumphs over evil in the end, not because it is impervious to adversity, but that it is the right way and has a inherent and inevitable success when properly followed.

[DirtyDick]

I disagree that the RN would have been unable to cause severe, enduring and most likely decisive damage to any invasion force. In conjunction with the RAF, I think it would have been most likely to prevent an invasion in mid-late 1940.

Warships that would not have been risked in the Norwegian Campaign would have been risked to defend the UK (hence why they were not risked in Norway). Moreover, the RN had a substantial - although very over-stretched - submarine service, which provided for an additional line of defence that was far more difficult to counter from the air, especially if clustered around likely landing points.

True, RN losses would have been critical and with perhaps grave problems for the future defence of convoys etc., but I believe through sheer numbers and willpower they could have done the job: the job being an all out assault on the German invasion force both at sea and in harbour, assisted in this by RAF bombers (who in any case bombed the landing barges whilst they were being assembled). Many of the Germans' proposed landing craft were barely fit to cross the Channel: they would have been slow and lumbering and succumbe easily to damage.

As for parachute troops seizing key locations. The RAF was still in charge of British skies. The German airborne forces were far too small in 1940 to undertake a major airborne assault - and remain in situ whilst the RN delayed or broke the conventional invasion forces bringing reinforcements. Look at the operation in Crete some time later. A scratch force of British and Commonwealth troops evacuated from Greece or harvested from N African units - with 3 old tanks parked at airfields? - inflicted grave losses on the falschirmjagers set against them.

Even if the BEF had been 100% captured, by June-September 1940 there was a significant number of newly trained troops, regular troops recalled from the Empire, as well as troops from Canada and New Zealand (and Australia?). True, they were lacking heavy equipment, but certainly better placed in this respect and in numbers than those at Crete.

(IN any case, you must remember that the BEF was withdrawn with virtually all its heavy equipment lost. Moreover, a substantial portion of this force comprised TA soldiers. Thus, one would have had an additional 300,000+ men with at best a rifle for each, rather than their tanks, trucks, heavy artillery and ammo).

[spidge]

</div><div class='quotemain'>The success of the RAF in the BofB was mainly because radar gave them sufficient time to intercept the German bombers nearing the target. They would have had no such chance if the escort fighters and bombers only had to fly 20 miles or so to the channel. [/b]

The conversation is still centred around the British waiting for the Germans to come over and do whatever........

The RAF in 17 days (Sep 4th - 21st) of raids, purposely destroyed nearly 20% of Hitlers landing force capability in France. This was against a fully equipped Luftwaffe.

I am also convinced that if Dunkerque was clear, British fighters would have been sent the 40 - 100 kms to help cover the evacuation. The Lufwaffe would not have had it all their own way. Diversionery tactics by bombers on airfields etc.

[jimbotosome]

</div><div class='quotemain'>
I disagree that the RN would have been unable to cause severe, enduring and most likely decisive damage to any invasion force. In conjunction with the RAF, I think it would have been most likely to prevent an invasion in mid-late 1940.

Warships that would not have been risked in the Norwegian Campaign would have been risked to defend the UK (hence why they were not risked in Norway). Moreover, the RN had a substantial - although very over-stretched - submarine service, which provided for an additional line of defence that was far more difficult to counter from the air, especially if clustered around likely landing points.

True, RN losses would have been critical and with perhaps grave problems for the future defence of convoys etc., but I believe through sheer numbers and willpower they could have done the job: the job being an all out assault on the German invasion force both at sea and in harbour, assisted in this by RAF bombers (who in any case bombed the landing barges whilst they were being assembled). Many of the Germans' proposed landing craft were barely fit to cross the Channel: they would have been slow and lumbering and succumbe easily to damage. [/b]

My suggestion is that there would be no RN in the channel, period. Long range guns could have easily fired from Calais to Dover, what ship could escape the “Dora” type guns including much smaller ones easier to load. It merely needs to have the range of the channel at whatever point it was deployed and sufficient air cover (like barrage balloons and fighters) to keep from being hit. If you consider that subs could have set up a screen that even ships hugging the British coast at flank speed could not have escaped. If you look at how many 88s the Germans had and could cheaply produce, you see that the RAF would not have had it as easily as when the German bombers were invading England. The Spitfire and Hurricanes versus the HE-111s and JU-88s along with British AAA, was why the numbers were so exaggerated in favor of Britain in the BofB. Fighters versus Fighters over German AAA would have had quite a different result. Again, far from me to knock the RAF but they did have the advantage when the fight was a bombing campaign over Britain held territory and the opposite would be true over the channel. Had the German war industry have focused on crossing the channel as the Allies war industry did before June 44, they too would have had very “clever” methods of transportation, torpedo launching platforms, excellent landing craft, etc. The Italians had this kind of equipment and more importantly the designs for it. It doesn’t take that long to solve those types of problems.

The way to conquer the RAF was best done from the ground by taking over their airfields. Their pilots and aircraft were too good to think you could bomb their fields away flying deep into England. Though that too would have worked from numerical advantages and attrition alone if Hitler had not been stupid enough to go after civilians.

</div><div class='quotemain'>
As for parachute troops seizing key locations. The RAF was still in charge of British skies. The German airborne forces were far too small in 1940 to undertake a major airborne assault - and remain in situ whilst the RN delayed or broke the conventional invasion forces bringing reinforcements. Look at the operation in Crete some time later. A scratch force of British and Commonwealth troops evacuated from Greece or harvested from N African units - with 3 old tanks parked at airfields? - inflicted grave losses on the falschirmjagers set against them. [/b]

Well, you have to consider that EVERY soldier is a potential paratrooper once a week passes. Paratroopers are dropped at night and during foggy conditions where fighters are of no effect. The troop carrier aircraft would have been back in France by the time the RAF could respond. The only defense is AAA. But once the paratroopers on the ground they would be firing the British AAA and they would be aimed at the RAF instead. You might lose 10% of your planes to AAA if it was concentrated and heavy enough and there was no fog, but the next night you could drop troops at the same point and have zero losses since you would hold that territory. After the first airfield is taken, you could then fly in medium arms and troops that were not paratroopers at all. That’s exactly what they did in Denmark. As far as the British tanks at air fields, they would suffer from Stuka strikes and panzershreks/panzerfausts. Tanks are useless without sufficient infantry support.

</div><div class='quotemain'>
Even if the BEF had been 100% captured, by June-September 1940 there was a significant number of newly trained troops, regular troops recalled from the Empire, as well as troops from Canada and New Zealand (and Australia?). True, they were lacking heavy equipment, but certainly better placed in this respect and in numbers than those at Crete. [/b]

It would be harder to get those troops there than for Germany to get paratroopers there from 40 miles away by air. Crete was harmful to the German paratroopers because it was a lot of AAA concentrated in a very small area and the fact that New Zealand didn’t have gun control so the pot-shot NZ farmers were skilled and armed enough to pick most of them off in the air, plus it was a daylight raid (very dumb). You couldn’t do that on an island the size of Britain, especially at night or in fog. But remember, once the paratroopers did manage to set foot on the island, that was all she wrote, game over.

</div><div class='quotemain'>
(IN any case, you must remember that the BEF was withdrawn with virtually all its heavy equipment lost. Moreover, a substantial portion of this force comprised TA soldiers. Thus, one would have had an additional 300,000+ men with at best a rifle for each, rather than their tanks, trucks, heavy artillery and ammo).
[/b]

Your TA is about like our National Guard I think, except our NG has much the same equipment the regulars have, maybe a little older. They would have had a lot of trouble against far better equipped, seasoned troops and elite forces. They are just not trained for that kind of battle. I do think you underestimate Germany’s ability to get heavy equipment over the channel. MG-34s and MG-42s, grenadiers, mortars, small anti-tank guns, and 20mm guns could have traveled with the paratroopers on the first night. What was too big could be dropped in pieces and assembled on the ground.

[jimbotosome]

Hi Geoff,

</div><div class='quotemain'> The RAF in 17 days (Sep 4th - 21st) of raids, purposely destroyed nearly 20% of Hitlers landing force capability in France. This was against a fully equipped Luftwaffe. [/b]

Not really sure what you mean by Hitler's landing force. It would have been over three months since Dunkirk was evacuated (June 3) so the RAF planes flown in Sept (according to my invasion plan) would have been flown by German pilots so they would never have struck anything German but would be patrolling the harbor to see if any remaining RN ships wanted to try running the sub, mine and artillery screens that would be on both shores and both ends of the Channel. As to the time frame you speak of (though I don’t know the details) as far as a fully equipped Luftwaffe, that can’t be the case since the Luftwaffe was engaged in heavy bombing and patrolling Britain during that time which would not have been the case at Dunkirk.

</div><div class='quotemain'> I am also convinced that if Dunkerque was clear, British fighters would have been sent the 40 - 100 kms to help cover the evacuation. The Lufwaffe would not have had it all their own way. Diversionery tactics by bombers on airfields etc. [/b]

Well, the RAF, with the support of radar, coast spotters, Fighter Command and control, and British AAA, couldn't stop the Luftwaffe bombers from having their way in London (they merely reduced it over a period of time), so trying to do it with heavy fighter cover over German held France would have been even more difficult. You don't need all the bombers over the troops to annihilate them, so even exaggerated losses caused by RAF would have been negligible to the utter destruction of undefended ground troops. It would be like the bombing of Warsaw, the British soldiers that were not killed in the initial raid would have had to have fled to the German lines just to survive where they would probably surrender. You simply let the German fighters tangle with the RAF fighters until the RAF runs out of fuel and has to turn back and then follow up with bombers or just send in the bombers willing to lose a few on such short sorties believing that your fighter escorts can minimize it and cause more losses of RAF planes. Another reason that the RAF had an advantage in the BoB, was that the German fighters could not mix it up for long in dogfights over Britain because they had the fuel concerns that limited the ability to fight and were vulnerable to attack from the rear when they had to turn to return to their base being chased by British who could call nearby airbases to help. The British greatly “multiplied” the effectiveness of their fighters by being able to use all their fuel and dead stick land it where the German could not afford to run out until he was back over France. Another multiplier is that the RAF were able to return and refuel/rearm and not have to patrol as well as get backup support from other nearby airbases. They could be ready for another sortie within and hour, I would think, since they merely fly back to their nearby base. How long does it take to refuel an airplane and load more ammo in the wings? A ten minutes? Enemy fighters can’t engage more than a few minutes and absolutely cannot be caught with engine failure or fuel exhaustion. When the RAF fighters were seen intercepting the bombers, where they might get say 10 (making no real difference in bombing concentrated infantry), then the bulk of the Luftwaffe fighters that were not in the air would be waiting for them returning home low on fuel and ammo. As far as sending bomber attacks on the airfields, the entire sortie of the Luftwaffe would have only taken about 20 minutes. I don't think RAF bombers could have even gotten to the coast in that time. Nearby based fighters would have intercepted the RAF bombers. Remember Germany had the numbers by a great margin, especially in AAA. Daylight raids of the British would have been suicidal as were the initial bombing raids by the Americans over Europe.

I believe I see a consistent pattern here and with DirtyDick’s post of a few of things that are incorrectly assumed in this counterfactual.

1) The advantages of the RAF and British AAA in the BoB against bombers flying deep into England with short distances for the RAF to fly and radar or visuals to alert them, being projected on a hypothetical bombing raid on Dunkirk. In fact, all the aforementioned advantages would really belong to the Luftwaffe making them even more formidable.

2) I think was gets “lost in transference” here is that the RAF was heavily involved in the Blitzkrieg of France and was not very effective. They were the “road team” then. This would have been a football match at the opponent’s stadium, not a home game like the BoB (I guess the SS patrols would be like the Hooligans in my analogy). If you look at the difficulty of the American bombers flying into Europe until they had escorts, you can see that Germany had an advantage even though the B-17s and B-24s were so heavily armed.

3) Luftwaffe pilots surviving a shoot down during BoB were lost (far more important than the aircraft themselves) whereas the RAF pilots surviving a shoot down could be back in the air in a matter of hours. In France the opposite would be true. Even in the BoB where the RAF was a few weeks from extinction when Hitler decided civilians made better targets, there was no shortage of aircraft, the hurt was a shortage of pilots, even more importantly experienced pilots. Ask any WWII pilot, or any pilot for that matter, and you will get universal concurrence on that statement. We get into debates over which plane was better than the other making the assumptions of the pilot being equal. But the biggest factor in air dominance is far and away the skill level of the pilots. Inexperienced pilots (on both sides) spun into the ground a lot or were suckered into traps that put them in front of enemy fighters, were outmaneuvered by the more skilled pilots, were not very effective against enemy planes with better pilots. If you read some of the books by war aces like Robert Johnson, it was months before they got their first kill and it was usually a good deal of luck according to them. The experienced pilots were very distracted by having to “look out for” the newbies that were assigned to their wing. Anyone out there that is a pilot knows exactly what I mean. Learning to fly is nothing, everybody with any intelligence at all can do it (even liberals...…just kidding, don’t flame me people…it was just an attempt at humor). Learning to fly well and with complex and high-performance aircraft is quite another. It takes a long, long time much of which must be air training which is not good when you have hostile air patrols in your country by the enemy. I would say it would take at least a year to teach someone without flight experience to be able to control a fighter if you had an accellerated program and really sharp people that could train elsewhere than in the battle area. It would take at least another year to become an asset rather than a liability to the air wing they were in.

[swd1974]

Whether or not the army at Dunkirk escaped the true turning point IMO is the fact that Goering and Hitler refused to understand that while the Luftwaffe was bombing the radar stations they were winning.

Once they switched targets in their hatred and ignorance of radar they lost and the invasion was an impossibility. Not to mention that because of Operation Barbarrosa Hitler never really intended to invade. He thought they would surrender and join them.