Did the Navy win the Battle of Britain?

It's not that I can't - it's that I would not in any way wish to make any sort of contribution to your revised edition...
Excuse me, revision of what? We are discussing a non-happening are we not? How can that be revised?

 

Well, they did actually go West to East (The Dash), but what the heck...


South-west to North-east...

 

Excuse me, revision of what? We are discussing a non-happening are we not? How can that be revised?


Fred, are you just arguing now for the sake of arguing??? THIS revised edition...

I cannot justify using more time on this childish squandering at this time, I have more books to write - also a much extended version of Operation Sea Lion which I hope to have out in the Spring.



....remember?

 

I'm really disappointed that thats the limit of your knowledge, Fred...especially after so much research. The "low" in Chain Home Low does NOT refer to the targets it was intended to illuminate.

Is that so. The CHL (Chain Home Low) Air Defence Radar System

 

South-west to North-east...

More like west-south-west to East-North-East. Certainly not East to West. You didn't know how to formulate it?

 

Bomber Command's rejigged target priorities meant that as early as 4th July 1940 the heavy bomber force was to attack ports and shipping, and specifically Rotterdam and other Dutch ports....while the medium bomber force was directed at that date against "barges and small craft on the canals and ports in Holland and Belgium.

OK. So, how many barges were damaged or destroyed in Belgium and Holland?

 

Fred, are you just arguing now for the sake of arguing??? THIS revised edition...

Arent' we all....?..........

 

LARGE raids specifically on the marshalling ports began at the beginning of September, for only then were barges clustered enough to make attacking them profitable, once the targets comprised 2-400 barges per harbour basin, as opposed to attacking barges travelling to the coast on waterways.
I know. And that is why Churchill was p***** off because Bomber Command didn't hit more of these tightly clustered barge fleets.

Good night, PR.......

 

Is that so. The CHL (Chain Home Low) Air Defence Radar System

Very good! You're learning. I had to do something to get you to prove a statement!

Now...

Alongside them were the "Chain Home Low" or CHL station to detect low-flying aircraft, and it was soon realised that this could also find small ships. There were ten stations in operation on 4 July, and 14 more were under construction. On 18 June, Fighter Command Headquarters told its operators:

"In the event of the enemy attempting to invade this country, it is considered that some of the enemy troops would be conveyed in large numbers of small ships, which would be beached at suitable parts of the coast. larger ships might also be used to a port after it had been occupied. It is probable that the approach of these ships would be observed by C.H.L. stations."

Observers were ordered to report any concentration of five pr more ships to higher authority and to keep watching it, while the naval liaison officer would check if there were any british squadrons or convoys in the area. A sub-lieutenant was appointed to each station to filter out the naval information. Direct telephone lines were set up with naval headquarters, which proved reasonably sucessful, from Dover it was reported at the end of October -

"It has been found that on request and having provided an indication of their whereabouts, the position and frequently the number of our own patrolling craft or convoys can be readily obtained from CHL stations."


After 18th June the operators rapidly became SO proficient that they could differentiate between moving vessels, stationary surface objects I.E. buoys, and cloud effect on wavetops! The system was so effective at the job that the Army was allocated fifteen CHL sets for watching prospective invasion beaches...

All the above from Lavery, and from AIR 16/430 and ADM 116/4480.

OK. So, how many barges were damaged or destroyed in Belgium and Holland?



I don't have totals broken down by area, just overall ones....

I know. And that is why Churchill was p***** off because Bomber Command didn't hit more of these tightly clustered barge fleets


...but the point is there WERE no tightly clustered barge fleets until the first week of September...

Each day now, for many weeks past, the Spitfires and Hudsons of the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit had scoured the Channel coast from Cherbourg to the Texel. On 1st September their prints showed barges moving in great and unaccustomed numbers towards the sea along the South Beveland and Terneuzen—Ghent canals. During the next few days the growing concentrations at Ostend and Flushing were steadily watched and photographed. On 31st August 18 barges lay in the port of Ostend; on 2nd September the photographs revealed 70; on 4th September, 115; on 6th September, 205. During the same week the number of barges at Flushing increased by 120. And every day processions of barges and motor-boats could be seen moving westwards along the Channel coast in the company of merchant shipping. Between 4th September and 6th September 34 extra barges appeared at Dunkirk, 53 at Calais. By the close of 6th September, there could no longer be much doubt:the Germans would not be massing their craft in ports so exposed to our bombing unless the hour of trial were at hand. That evening, after the Combined Intelligence Committee had studied the interpretation reports of the day, the authorities ordered Invasion Alert No. 2—'the attack probably within the next three days.


The massed Bomber Command bargebusting attacks on the Channel Ports only began on the 7th of September (the Blenheims two nights earlier) because prior to that there were no sizeable concentrations - and after that, on the nights when weather and moon permitted, Bomber Command flew very high sortie rates, for example nearly all of Bomber Commands Blenheims raided the Channel ports on the 5th and 6th, and were joined by BC's Hampdens and Battles on the 7th, while on the 17th of the month ninety-one sorties were flown...

Meanwhile the continued existence of the Royal Air Force was being demonstrated with equal emphasis by Bomber Command. On 7th September the ever-increasing numbers of barges, coupled with the attack on London, caused the country's defences to be brought to their highest pitch of readiness; and a few hours after the issue of Alert No. 1—'Invasion imminent, and probable with twelve hours'—our heavy bombers delivered their first attack on the waiting craft on the other side of the Channel. The Blenheims had already been dealing with the same objectives since 5th September, and by 13th September the whole of the bomber force was attacking invasion targets—the ships in harbour, the communications behind the ports, the gun emplacements on the coast.
As the month entered its third week German preparations reached their peak. On the 15th there were 102 barges in Boulogne, on the 17th 150. By the same date the 136 barges at Calais on 13th September had been increased to 266. By 18th September the Channel ports held more than a thousand of these craft and a further 600 waited up river at Antwerp. But night after night the Battles and the Blenheims, the Wellingtons, the Whitleys and the Hampdens went forth. There was no trouble now in finding the targets, and the short distance allowed the aircraft to carry their maximum bomb-load. In a fortnight of extremely profitable work our bombers crippled 12 percent of the invasion fleet and greatly hampered the Germans in their task of organization, minesweeping and assembly.


The above two passages from Dennis Richards. As is the following...regarding anti-invasion Bomber Command ops BEFORE the 7th of September -

The operations, however, had moments of outstanding success, among which special mention must be made of a raid on the night of 12/13th August. On that night five Hampdens of Nos. 49 and 83 Squadrons, operating under the cover of diversionary bombing, attacked an aqueduct forming part of the Dortmund–Ems canal. Two of the first four aircraft were shot down, the other two badly hit; but the fifth, piloted by Flight Lieutenant R. A. B. Learoyd, dived to 150 feet through the storm of flak and the blinding glare of the searchlights to drop his bomb within a few yards of the target. He then struggled home in his badly damaged aircraft, waited for dawn, and landed without injury to his crew, so completing an exploit which brought him a richly deserved Victoria Cross. Ten days afterwards the canal was still blocked, with the result that the movement of barges and motor-boats from the Rhineland to the invasion ports fell seriously behind schedule.




More like west-south-west to East-North-East. Certainly not East to West. You didn't know how to formulate it?

Well, if I'm only arguing for the sake of it - I can't help but remember that YOU had directional problems too...
Well, they did actually go West to East (The Dash), but what the heck...

 

fredleander

The figure is actually less than 10 %. Well inside the German margins. What is remarkable is that they didn't do more damage as tight as these vessels were packed in the ports. Churchill was actually rather p***** at Bomber Command for not doing a better job of it. And they lost 50+ bombers at it. Please correct me if I am wrong.

If the Germans thought they was no problem and well within their margins why did they have to move the barges and shipping further away due to raids, why were they worried about having more losses.

I consider the area that was originally for Sealion Ramsgate to Portsmouth to be fairly wide frontage 110 miles from end to end, Normandy landings were Cambourg to Carentan was 72 miles wide.

How long were the barges going to be at sea then as you keep saying they would have crossed by daylight, maybe in the narrowest part (Calais to Dover) but at around 6 knots maximum speed of the tow vessels (which the Navy said they did not have the manpower for) not counting tidal flow or currents or including the drag of towing barges behind them. The only figures I have seen put the furthest crossings at around 24 hours. Hence I presume why the Navy said the next crossing could not be made until 48 hours after the first crossing. A long time to be cut off.

You keep saying there were no ships larger than Patrol craft (which we already established had much better weaponry than you knew about) yet the German recce aircraft counted over 30 destroyers in the Southern and South Eastern Harbours by mid Sept

Losses to Invasion Craft by 21st Sept (they requested dispersion of craft before this date due to losses)

214 Barges (12.6%)
5 Tugs (1.4%)
21 Transports (12.5%)

German Naval Statement
Due to careful planning by the Naval Staff these losses could be replaced with reserves, further losses could not be dealt with in this way.

 

Great post. I enjoyed the whole thing. My question really isn't related to the tread topic but weren't the RN, USN, and Japanese Navy roughly equal in number of carries and battleships in 1940? Just taking a quick mental inventory

Hi Dave,

Mainly from my reading of this site for September 1939 however I would stand to be corrected if this is not so.

Royal Navy in 1939 and 1945



SEPTEMBER 1939 In 1939 ....
..... the heart of the Royal Navy was its centuries old traditions and 200,000 officers and men including the Royal Marines and Reserves. At the very top as professional head was the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound.
Royal Navy Warship Strength
The Royal Navy, still the largest in the world in September 1939, included:15 Battleships & battlecruisers, of which only two were post-World War 1. Five 'King George V' class battleships were building.
7 Aircraft carriers. One was new and five of the planned six fleet carriers were under construction. There were no escort carriers.
66 Cruisers, mainly post-World War 1 with some older ships converted for AA duties. Including cruiser-minelayers, 23 new ones had been laid down.
184 Destroyers of all types. Over half were modern, with 15 of the old 'V' and 'W' classes modified as escorts. Under construction or on order were 32 fleet destroyers and 20 escort types of the 'Hunt' class.
60 Submarines, mainly modern with nine building.
45 escort and patrol vessels with nine building, and the first 56 'Flower' class corvettes on order to add to the converted 'V' and 'W's' and 'Hunts'. However, there were few fast, long-endurance convoy escorts.

Commonwealth Navies
Included in the Royal Navy totals were:Royal Australian Navy - six cruisers, five destroyers and two sloops;
Royal Canadian Navy - six destroyers;
Royal Indian Navy - six escort and patrol vessels;
Royal New Zealand Navy, until October 1941 the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy - two cruisers and two sloops.


Edit: Effingham has many Naval numbers and may be able to add something to the mix!


Cheers

Geoff

 

fredleander



If the Germans thought they was no problem and well within their margins why did they have to move the barges and shipping further away due to raids, why were they worried about having more losses.

I consider the area that was originally for Sealion Ramsgate to Portsmouth to be fairly wide frontage 110 miles from end to end, Normandy landings were Cambourg to Carentan was 72 miles wide.

How long were the barges going to be at sea then as you keep saying they would have crossed by daylight, maybe in the narrowest part (Calais to Dover) but at around 6 knots maximum speed of the tow vessels (which the Navy said they did not have the manpower for) not counting tidal flow or currents or including the drag of towing barges behind them. The only figures I have seen put the furthest crossings at around 24 hours. Hence I presume why the Navy said the next crossing could not be made until 48 hours after the first crossing. A long time to be cut off.

You keep saying there were no ships larger than Patrol craft (which we already established had much better weaponry than you knew about) yet the German recce aircraft counted over 30 destroyers in the Southern and South Eastern Harbours by mid Sept

Losses to Invasion Craft by 21st Sept (they requested dispersion of craft before this date due to losses)

214 Barges (12.6%)
5 Tugs (1.4%)
21 Transports (12.5%)

German Naval Statement
Due to careful planning by the Naval Staff these losses could be replaced with reserves, further losses could not be dealt with in this way.

At the end of September the Germans still had plenty of barges (1859, according to Walter Ansel), but this is misleading, as the barges required towing across the Channel in pairs, and the Germans were always short of tugs. By the end of September, they had only 397. One wonders, moreover, how many of the tugs allocated to the first crossing ( 390 of them) would have survived to make a second, or even a third.

As to the size of the invasion fleets, that from Calais would have been 16.5 kms long, and the larger force from Boulogne would have consisted of four columns of 40 barge/tug units each. Captain Lindenau, in command of the Boulogne fleet, reported that, even after this formation had assembled, the crossing would have required four hours of daylight plus the whole of the night.

Furthermore, in September 1940, the RN were carrying out nightly patrols of the Channel. By the time of the Channel Dash, the threat of invasion had virtually disappeared, the barge concentrations had gone, and most of the RN forces present in 1940 had been transferred to other duties.

A force of fast modern warships fleeing through the Channel at speed is one thing; an invasion force of barges which would have required eleven days simply to land the first wave is quite another. The two events cannot be compared, except perhaps in the fevered imaginations of those who want to believe in the almost invincible incompetence of the Royal Navy in order to justify their successful Sealion delusions.

 

...and let's not forget the Navy had another "tripwire" across the Channel to detect the oncoming invasion - the Auxiliary Patrol. The Patrol wasn't simply there as a light fighting force, its essential purpose was forming a picket line of vessels at night across the Channel, with orders to report intruders by radio or by flare.

It was a suprisingly common tactic in WWII; the RNPS' North Sea Picket of grid-stationed trawlers carried out the same function, the USN had chains of radio-equiped tuna boats covering the Western and Eastern approaches to the Panama Canal...

So - an approaching invasion fleet has to NOT encounter any of the dozens of Auxiliary Patrol vessels on station every night, NOT encounter any of the patrolling RN destroyers and coastal craft, NOT hit any part of the mine barrage and warrant investgation...and NOT show up on Chain Home Low radar plots...

 

In other words...

 

Oh....and NOT react to the Luftwaffe changing its tactics and stopping bombing RAF stations in favour of attacking defensive positions in the coastal crust, port defences, and positions and roads up to three miles inland, and NOT react to German attempts to clear the Channel mine barrages....

In other words - German success really depended on British intelligence analysis being as bad as German intelligence analysis in 1940!

 

Is that so. The CHL (Chain Home Low) Air Defence Radar System


A little trivia if I may from an Australian born Air Chief Marshal - read the piece in red.


http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/war-air/23658-raf-australians-killed-ww2-who-what-i-have-found-so.html#post254722

Cheers

Geoff

 

Great post. I enjoyed the whole thing. My question really isn't related to the tread topic but weren't the RN, USN, and Japanese Navy roughly equal in number of carries and battleships in 1940? Just taking a quick mental inventory

The size of navies was restricted by the Washington Treaty of 1922 and the London Treaty of 1930. The RN and the USN were permitted to be the same size. The RN remained larger in tonnage because the US didn't build as many cruisers as allowed until the late 1930s. The USN might have been more powerful because of newer battleships and better aircraft, but the RN was bigger in 1939.

The IJN was limited to 60% of the battleship and carrier tonnage and 70% of cruiser tonnage of the RN and USN. It was a little larger than this because many of its ships breached treaty limits, but was the third biggest navy.

Spidge has given figures for the RN above. According to Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922-1946, the USN had 15 battleships and 5 aircraft carriers in September 1939. 4 battleships were under construction, with 2 more being laid down in the next 5 months. 2 carriers were under construction.

The IJN had 10 battleships; it should have had 9, but rebuilt the Hiei, which had been demilitarised by the London Treaty. 2, the huge Yamatos, were under construction. Another was laid down in 1940 but completed as an aircraft carrier. It had 6 aircraft carriers, with 4 under construction. Conversion of another 3 ships into carriers began in 1940-41.

 

Yep, as of the summer of 1940 Scapa Flow was outside CH/CHL, requiring the FAA/RAF to fly standing patrols instead. And the chain had to be continued down the Western coast and islands of Scotland.

Scapa Flow was a headache for Kirke/Ironside/Brooke due to their paucity of trained forces (on two occasions the forces available for Scotland went down as far as a single division...), but eventually IIRC responsiblity for its defence from raiding/invasion was taken away from C-in-C Home Defence. Until then, their saving grace was -

1/ it meant a really sh1tty sea crossing for crowded transports;

2/ it would mean a crossing through hundreds of miles of air patrol/sea patrol and standing pickets;

3/ It didn't actually GAIN the Germans very much even if successful! The Orkneys/Shetlands aren't really the "back door" to the British Isles...!

 

Fred.
Yes, they did. Otherwise they would not have established Operation Fuller. It was quite extensive.


Fred can you show me one document which says the British knew the date and time of "Cerberus" ?
The gatekeepers to the Channel were a submarine and a maritime patrol aircraft , both missed the German Squadron, this was to have been the early warning - technical failures.
The British did not know the date or the time - "Fuller" was a plan which was to be activated if the Brest Squadron tried to make home waters via the Channel, the difference you miss is that which exists between "if and "when".

Yes, "Fuller" was quite extensive ( it would have bloody silly not to made it so) but it failed because the Germans did not do what was expected of them - they appeared in daylight ....the date and timing of the operation not being known to the Royal Navy & Royal Air Force , it all kind of threw plan "Fuller" into a state of disarray.
Had the details been known the timing of the "reception" would have been better arranged and there would have been quite a few more "guests bearing gifts".........

 

To wrap this possible invasion in 1942 up - it is pie in the sky a "what if" which has more to do with the quite reasonable maintance of defence preparations.
As phylo_roadking rightly points out not a sniff of any invasion craft in French Channel ports - the Wehrmacht was in Southern Russia - that is where reality was in 1942... there and the Middle East.
Germany was still a strong and undefeated enemy but her army was not poised to leap across the Channel in 1942 and the successful return to home waters by the Brest Squadron does not remotely show an ability to mount a surprise and undetected invasion of Southern England.

That attack in Southern Russia which kicked of in June 42 after having (a few weeks earlier) had to defeat a Russian counter attack at Kharkov was only possible when all the eggs went into one basket - when the Southern wing in Russia collapsed in late 42 there was very little there to restore it with - certainly no army which might have been used to invade England.

What if is fine but it is reality which counts.