Wars and ConflictsΒ permalink
Churchill and War on the Atlantic
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Message 1.Β
Posted by vesturiiis (U13688567) on Sunday, 15th March 2009
Prime Minister Churchill is quoted as saying his only real concern was the naval blockade in World War 2. Is this a fair statement and how long could Great Britain last without supplies reaching their shores?
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Message 2
Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Monday, 16th March 2009
IMO he was correct. Had the RN, in company with the RCN, RAAN and much later, the USN, not managed to solve the submarine problem, Britain could have been forced to concede defeat. Britain is a small island and depends for nearly all her raw materials on other parts of the world - the middle east and America for oil, and Canada, the US, Argentina, Brazil, and others for ships, troops, foodstuffs, and just about everything else. Places outside of Britain provided all these things that Britain didn't have and couldn't produce - not just to continue the fight but to continue to live. Food was a major consideration since the small British Isles cannot produce enough to feed her civilian population, let alone her troops and the troops being moved onto those islands from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Africa, &c. These men were fighting everywhere, and ships were needed not only to move them and their equipment to Britain, but also to provide transportation for them, their supplies, and equipment, to other areas where important battles were being fought.
Without outside help, Britain simply could not survive, and without the ability to move materials back and forth on the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean, she could obtain no outside help. The Atlantic battles, if lost, would have resulted in Britain's isolation from the outside, and had that happened, IMO she'd have had no option but to capitulate. -
Message 3
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Monday, 16th March 2009
I agree, and in such,Hitler was his navys worse enemy, and removed vital U Boats from the North Atlantic against the advice of his Admirals
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Message 4
Posted by JB on a slippery slope to the thin end ofdabiscuit (U13805036) on Tuesday, 17th March 2009
What Churchill meant was that after the Battle of Britain, there was no prospect of an Axis invasion, but defeat could still come if the U-Boats could starve (literally) the people until they were willing to listen to the old appeasers who would seek a deal which Hitler would have been delighted to offer with Barbarossa on his mind.
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Message 5
Posted by petaluma (U10056951) on Tuesday, 17th March 2009
vestturiiis, its claimed at one time during WW2 Britain came to two weeks of having to seek an end to hostilities with Germany owing to the shortage of food. I well remember the time when ration book food coupons were of no use as the meat was not in the store plus other foodstuffs essential to life.
Until the Allies were able to cover the Atlantic with aircraft the Battle of the Atlantic was very costly and in doubt. I believe the B25 or such aircraft a long distance aircraft was the key to winning the War of the Atlantic regardless of the claims of the Navies, it took the aircraft to hunt and find the U-boats before the Navies could sink them and not wait until the sinking of a ship alerted the escorts of their presence. Granted the Navies took the claim of sinking the U-boats. -
Message 6
Posted by JB on a slippery slope to the thin end ofdabiscuit (U13805036) on Tuesday, 17th March 2009
It was the B24 Liberator operating from Kaflavik in Iceland, then Danish territory which was 'peacefully occupied' by the Americans.
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Message 7
Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Tuesday, 17th March 2009
If I remember correctly it was the British who ''peacefully occupied'' Iceland - not the Americans. I recall a local friend who was a Lt Cmdr in the RCN who was a bit - I guess 'jealous' is the word - of the US sailors who were not socially ostracized by the Icelanders when on leave in Reykjavik, while the British sailors were. It was because the Icelanders viewed the British as invaders, whereas they attached no such stigma to the Americans...they didn't love the latter, but they didn't hate them either, so US sailors could enjoy happier shore leaves.
''Bomber'' Harris could easily have cost Britain the war with his stubborn instance that strategic bombing would win the war all by itself. He was so sure he was right that he refused repeated requests by the RN and men of the merchant marine for a few of his B-24 bombers to patrol the convoy routes. He insisted that turning over two or three squadrons of B-24's (which had an enormously long range for the time) would seriously impact his bombing campaign. Even Churchill couldn't talk him into releasing them for more than a year.
The simple fact was that until the US came into the war, the U-Boats were sinking our merchant ships faster than they could be replaced. There was a huge gap in the middle of the Atlantic that couldn't be covered by the a/c available at the time. Hudsons, Catalinas, Sunderlands, and even the B-17's didn't have the range that the B-24 had and the Germans had a field day in that central gap that lacked air-cover.
Several things changed all that when the US officially entered the war:
1. their enormous production ability was turning out cargo ships faster than the U-boats could sink them;
2. the RN, RCN, and USN, formed hunter-killer groups that didn't have to stay with the convoys. They took an offensive stance and started hunting down the subs on their own;
3. a new type of airborne radar enabled a lot of patrolling a/c to pinpoint the location of U-boats on the surface at night. At the end of patrols, or when they simply surfaced to recharge batteries, U-boats made a habit of running on the surface, feeling safe from air attack. In 1944 when they did that they'd often find themselves suddenly in the glare of a powerful airborne searchlight being attacked by machine gun fire, bombs and/or depth charges. This happened frequently in the Bay of Biscay and near the French coastal bases.
All these things came together in 1944 and pretty well ended the U-boat menace. I think, by the end of the war, statistics show that the mortality rate amongst U-boat crews was higher than in any other branch of the German military.
But it was, as Wellington said after Waterloo, ''a very close-run thing''. Doenitz's U-boats very nearly won the war for Hitler. Had he listened to Doenitz and concentrated on building subs instead of wasting production time and materiels on battlecruisers and battleships, he'd have brought Britain to her knees. During the so-called ''Happy Time'' when Germany was sinking convoys almost without interference, Doenitz had only 30 U-boats at his disposal, and of that number, probably only half were at sea at any given time. Had he been given the 300 he asked for - and that would have been possible - we wouldn't have had a prayer. IMO Britain would have gone under in late 1941. -
Message 8
Posted by petaluma (U10056951) on Tuesday, 17th March 2009
Erik, re. bombing cities, it was claimed during the heavy bombing in Britain war production increased, the same happened in Germany, then during the Vietnam war the Americans destroying the jungles did very little for their effort. The Allies sure had a lot of thick commanders. Hitler out-ranking his generals surely cost him the war, destroyed the army and country, (maybe his idea according to a film trying to account for his actions)
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Message 9
Posted by JB on a slippery slope to the thin end ofdabiscuit (U13805036) on Wednesday, 18th March 2009
Erik M7:
Yep. The British took over Iceland on very dodgy legal grounds in 1940. They then gave it to the theoretically still neutral USA in Spring '41 and the Americans occupied it from then on, including all the years of Anti U Boat patrols by B24s.
Of course Harris was wrong to cling to ineffective strategic bombing rather than convoy protection, but the RAF were scared of losing their status as a separate armed force which could only be justified if they had a strategic role and were not simply engaged in supporting army and naval ops.
Churchill could always have overruled or sacked Harris as he was wont to do with his senior commanders, and it's an interesting speculation as to why he didn't. I reckon it had much to do with his bias in favour of 'up and at em' belligerent commanders like Harris and Monty, and his mistrust of cerebral pessimists like Dowding (who was, like Churchill, clinically depressed, which was something Winnie was always afraid of in others as much as himself.)
The USN did not wait for the Nazi Declaration of War on Dec 11 1941 to join in the war in the Atlantic. They were patrolling and attacking U Boats well before that, in flagrant defiance of Congress and its Neutrality Acts, under the personal command of the Commander-In-Chief who pretty well wrote the book for future presidents in that respect, as followed by LBJ with the Tonkin 'Incident' and the sledgehammer to crack a nutmeg 'rescue mission' to Grenada in 1983 when all the dead Grenadans were deemed to be Cuban in best 'Anyone who's dead is VC' fashion. -
Message 10
Posted by Grand Falcon Railroad (U3267675) on Thursday, 19th March 2009
Makes you wonder why the Germans didn't invade Iceland in the style of the Soviet Union in "Red Storm Rising" by Tom Clancy.
Surely if they'd done this then the need to invade a more difficult target in Britain would have been null & void. -
Message 11
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Thursday, 19th March 2009
Grand Falcon Railroad,
Makes you wonder why the Germans didn't invade Iceland in the style of the Soviet Union in "Red Storm Rising" by Tom Clancy.
Surely if they'd done this then the need to invade a more difficult target in Britain would have been null & void. Β
Eliminating both the RAF and especially the RN would have precluded a German occupation of Iceland, since Britain would have been wide open for invasion. -
Message 12
Posted by FormerlyOldHermit (U3291242) on Friday, 20th March 2009
How do you sail an invasion fleet from Germany, Norway or France without the Royal Navy noticing? The Norwegian Invasion, while not preventing the Germans securing their objective, did highlight serious deficiences in the Kriegsmarine ability launch an invasion against opposition.
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Message 13
Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Saturday, 21st March 2009
<quote userid=</quote>Makes you wonder why the Germans didn't invade Iceland in the style of the Soviet Union in "Red Storm Rising" by Tom Clancy.</quote>
Germany beat Britain to the punch in Norway and that is, in fact, one of the reasons that the British decided to occupy Iceland... they were afraid that Germany might attempt to do the same thing there. With the RN in the way, it isn't likely they'd have succeeded, but considering what had happened in Norway and the way Germany had walked through Europe, more than one military genius in Britain thought they just might succeed if they made the attempt.
It just wasn't worth taking a chance. -
Message 14
Posted by cyberdai (U10839928) on Tuesday, 24th March 2009
I am not a religious 'tub-thumper' by any stroke of anyone's imagination. However, I notice that nobody has mentioned God's hand in saving this sceptred isle.
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Message 15
Posted by farmersboy (U5592874) on Wednesday, 25th March 2009
That's because this isn't one of the Religion boards.
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Message 16
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Wednesday, 25th March 2009
But eveybody knows that God is on the side of the English. LOL
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Message 17
Posted by giraffe47 (U4048491) on Wednesday, 25th March 2009
God is always on 'our' side, (no matter what side that happens to be), but he tends to help those who help themselves.
Spitfires may have been helped by prayer, but prayer without spitfires . . . -
Message 18
Posted by JB on a slippery slope to the thin end ofdabiscuit (U13805036) on Wednesday, 25th March 2009
Trusting in radar and praying to god, or trusting in god and praying for radar?
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Message 19
Posted by merlin (U10448262) on Thursday, 26th March 2009
Churchill had a combatitive relationship with his commanders - if they could argue with him with strength of conviction and more importantly be proved right - Dowding, they had his support.Indeed Churchill was in favour of Dowding being made CAS - hence Portal was put in place of Newall.
Churchill though had more knowledge of the Army & Navy, thus left the 'firing' to the Air Staff e.g. Dowding!
If Harris was to be 'fired' it would have been Portal - perhaps over Pathfinders or over Pointblank.
Re: the B-24 I believe it was Portal who appropriated the Liberators for VIP Transports despite the pleas of the RN and Coastal Command.
So I'm curious about your comment "cerebral pessimists like Dowding"!?
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