RodentRevolution
Banned
Bloody g-mail...
Okay fair enough
I am sure there is a lesson somewhere about internets and threads and ends and reading to the something, something...not that I can claim to have learned it myself.
Bloody g-mail...
yes it was, it was only willing to risk its oldest and most useless battleships there, and even then, only at night; the monitors sometimes had to be towed into action while the Revenge had a very short life afterwards (and was referred to by Churchill as a "coffin ship"). You forgot to mention the other battleship in Portsmouth- the Centurion, which was a target ship without any guns. Anyway the RN had to be prodded to move the Revenge south and it didn't arrive until a month after the original planned invasion date. If it had moved within range of the channel guns I'm sure it would have provided a splendid, relatively slow-moving target, though maybe it would not have to be moved as some of the beaches were in range of its guns while it was in port - I'm not sure. Also Operation Medium occurred in the broader and deeper reaches at the centre of the Channel, with lots of room to move close by, further west. The Stukas had effectively closed the dover gap in July 1940 when the Royal Navy cancelled the convoys and forbid ships from operating there during daytime.A slightly delayed response to the statement that the RN wouldn't put capital ships in the Channel. IOTL, HMS Revenge was at Portsmouth in September 1940 and crossed the Channel to bombard Cherbourg in October 1940 as part of Operation Medium. Plus the monitor HMS Erebus bombarded Calais harbor at the end of September 1940. The RN wasn't thinking the English Channel was unsuitable for capital ships by any means.
yes it was, it was only willing to risk its oldest and most useless battleships there, and even then, only at night.
Nobody said the RN was unwilling to fight, just that it wasn't going to risk its capital ships where they weren't needed - it was going to use the masses of smaller ships available instead, which were better suited to the task. Meanwhile the capital ships were needed to secure the Atlantic sea lanes. The RN said it would risk its capital ships in the Channel only if the Germans did likewise. But both Forbes and Pound said this and the Chiefs of Staff and Churchill allowed it, instead of sacking them. Actually if the RN loses too many ships then it has lost, 40 destroyers being the margin between losing and surviving the Battle of the Atlantic for instance.What the RN is willing to do under normal circumstances, and what it is willing to do to defeat a German invasion are two different things.
Do you really think Churchill is unwilling to fire Admirals until he finds one who is willing to fight ?
At the end of the day, if the invasion is defeated and the RN loses half the Home Fleet's battlewagons, that is still a massive win for the British.
yes it was, it was only willing to risk its oldest and most useless battleships there, and even then, only at night; the monitors sometimes had to be towed into action while the Revenge had a very short life afterwards (and was referred to by Churchill as a "coffin ship"). You forgot to mention the other battleship in Portsmouth- the Centurion, which was a target ship without any guns. Anyway the RN had to be prodded to move the Revenge south and it didn't arrive until a month after the original planned invasion date. If it had moved within range of the channel guns I'm sure it would have provided a splendid, relatively slow-moving target, though maybe it would not have to be moved as some of the beaches were in range of its guns while it was in port - I'm not sure. Also Operation Medium occurred in the broader and deeper reaches at the centre of the Channel, with lots of room to move close by, further west. The Stukas had effectively closed the dover gap in July 1940 when the Royal Navy cancelled the convoys and forbid ships from operating there during daytime.
At the end of the day, if the invasion is defeated and the RN loses half the Home Fleet's battlewagons, that is still a massive win for the British.
Okay fair enough
I am sure there is a lesson somewhere about internets and threads and ends and reading to the something, something...not that I can claim to have learned it myself.
I am not so sure on this last point which is why I think a failed Sea Lion discussion might yield far more of a substance to noise ratio than all the countless Sea Lion Success threads.
However the main issue for the RN battle and battlecruiser squadrons per Sea Lion was that there was very little for them to fight. Cruisers with their 8" or 6" main battery and 4" secondaries can equally dominate destroyers and sink barges and are individually far more expendable. Given the paucity of German means of Naval resistance the destroyer force and lighter units could probably do the job, aided by elements of the cruiser force they certainly could.
410 mrge /3.88 mpm = 105.7 minutes aloft.
Rule of thirds.
410/3= 136 miles.
Cruise time loiter at 136 miles with no fuel reserve cushion at all: 35.3 minutes at 3.88 mpm (Buzzard bait condition; 233 mph at 22,965 ft. Slow at medium altitude means dead.)
Combat time with no fuel reserve at 136 miles from base with no fuel reserve cushion at all (highly theoretical) 17.65 minutes at 5.8 mpm. (still Buzzard bait condition of 348 mph at 14,565 ft as the Spitfires can bounce from above.)
Those are the numbers crunched at best conditions for best BoB BF 109E type in service. And that is why the BF 109 is not going to be 20 minutes north of the Thames unless the LW pilot has no RTB fuel or has a death wish.
Average cruise speed for the Bf109 was actually somewhere in the region of 4.5 miles per minute (max cruise speed is more like 5 miles per minute). 90 minutes = 405 miles (stated as 410 miles in most sources). And no that does not suggest a reach of 205 miles and that is not what I’m suggesting either.
The rule of thirds as far as I’m aware relates to fuel consumption rather than endurance, you use a third of your fuel for the journey to target, allow a third for possible combat and the final third for the return journey. This is after you’ve made a 20-25% allowance for take-off and landing. So following your logic of dividing the max range by 3 one would exclaim 137 miles! But that’s not how it works. So the actual time allowances are more like, at maximum range of 125 miles, 20 minutes for take-off and landing, 60 minutes to travel to and from target and 10 minutes for possible combat. Remember most combats were over and done with within 5 minutes as ammunition was the deciding factor in the length of a fight.
I think I see where you're going wrong here. You're assuming cruise speed all the way to Duxford with no RAF intercept until directly over the target. The RAF would have intercepted long before then, forcing the escorting 109s into combat long before they reach their theoretical max combat radius. The only way the 109s can escort a strike that far is to have multiple squadrons assigned to the same bomb group, with successive squadrons declining combat with the RAF until certain points in their transit. But that's not really possible without having something close to air supremacy. Which the Germans did not have. At best, they had air parity for a brief time. And in that situation, what good are fighter escorts if they refuse to fight? You might as well send your strike in unescorted at that point.110 miles to Duxford at 273 mph would use 22 Gallons for take-off and 38.73 Gallons for outbound and inbound combined, leaving 27.27 Gallons for combat (Approx 31% of fuel). If take-off uses 20% rather than 25% this works out at 17.6 take-off 41.3 for journey and 29.1 for combat (Approx 33% of fuel).
I think I see where you're going wrong here. You're assuming cruise speed all the way to Duxford with no RAF intercept until directly over the target. The RAF would have intercepted long before then, forcing the escorting 109s into combat long before they reach their theoretical max combat radius. The only way the 109s can escort a strike that far is to have multiple squadrons assigned to the same bomb group, with successive squadrons declining combat with the RAF until certain points in their transit. But that's not really possible without having something close to air supremacy. Which the Germans did not have. At best, they had air parity for a brief time. And in that situation, what good are fighter escorts if they refuse to fight? You might as well send your strike in unescorted at that point.
Time is the ONLY criteria. This is why your assumptions are wrong from the start. No pilot can be sure what he will do in a flight. He keeps a fuel reserve measured in minutes of flight at cruise as his safety cushion. It is true even in combat. That is why an F4F-3 with a book range of roughly TWICE the standard BF109 E-3 only had an effective radius from base of maybe 40 nautical miles additional from its home base carrier over the Emil under its ideal flight conditions during the BoB. Get used to thinking in terms of time aloft at variable speeds and altitudes, not miles flown straight and level at best cruise at best altitude one way on a tank of gas. Who knows if the engine is even metered to fuel flow at best rate? Maybe the mechanic was drunk and/or hungover when he serviced the plane. THAT is 10 minutes gone right there in a DB 601, if the mechanic screws up the fuel flow to the injectors.
Actually if the RN loses too many ships then it has lost, 40 destroyers being the margin between losing and surviving the Battle of the Atlantic for instance.
During the withdrawal REVENGE worked up to 21½ knots.
Not really. Because it's very likely that the farthest North they flew was essentially one waying it. If a pilot is injured and doesn't think he can made it back to base, he may very well ignore his fuel state and stay and fight it even pursue well beyond his max combat range.Ian & McP perhaps you could just look up the furthest north point reached by 109s during the BOB and agree that’s the maximum range according to the LUftwaffe
I think the best evidence is that escorted raids were regularly sent to Portsmouth and Southampton from bases in Normandy in the region of Caen... 100-130 miles away.Ian & McP perhaps you could just look up the furthest north point reached by 109s during the BOB and agree that’s the maximum range according to the LUftwaffe ?
But interesting thread.
NB if you look at the effects of the Jetstram on LW flights to London you might think That time is more important than range. I think Dr Price has comments on the jetstream in ne of his books
If time is the only criteria how come the fuel guage in the Bf109 has graduations for litres of fuel rather than minutes?Time is the ONLY criteria.
If time is the only criteria how come the fuel guage in the Bf109 has graduations for litres of fuel rather than minutes?