Yes but what does the base of 13 MU have to do with anything?
(^^^^) Map.
Yes but what does the base of 13 MU have to do with anything?
The Germans sneaked in several tens of thousands of men across the Med through air and sea into Tunisia at the close of the North Africa campaign. What happened to them? Captured because the RN was able to prevent evacuation by sea. Now the British at Dunkirk and the Germans at Messina were able to evacuate through contested air space by sea, because airpower does not have the ability to stop transit on the water. For THAT, you need ships which were not present to stop those evacuations by sea. Those ships if present can float there for weeks and blockade continuously. Airplanes cannot stay on station more than their flight time allows. We've gone through ten pages (^^^^) explaining this simple fact about TIME.
Of course I did but it's not a Fighter Command station so really it has no relevance to this thread.Why not? During the BoB, HURRICANES were final assembled there; or didn't you know this?
Mediterranean is a wastly greater combat care than English channel.
Second mistake you make is that you assume all or nothing total combat presence. There wouldn't be need for more than 20 planes or some radar stations to detect ships trying to force their way trough the channel and then dispatch sufficient force to deal with it. There wouldn't be thousands of German planes flying 24/7 or all of them flying at same time and then returning to rest then fly again.
Instead airports of Northern France, Bretagne, and Netherlands would be stacked with planes ready for combat on detection of enemy.
Otherwise you might as well say Aircraft carriers are useless due to way they do battle.
Of course I did but it's not a Fighter Command station so really it has no relevance to this thread.
Aircraft have time in air limits. You in effect have totally misunderstood the nature of the battlespace. Bigger battlespace dilutes airpower. Ships don't have that problem; especially aircraft carriers.
RTL Operation Dynamo. Your argument is NSA.
RTL. Time in air.; Not enough ground support establishment, not enough runways, incompetent LW air traffic control, radar horizon limits, not enough aviation fuel, not enough pilots, etc.
Aircraft carriers combine ship and plane. They CAN stay on station, dodge and weave, hide under weather, and apply airpower opportunistically at a time of their choosing in the form of flying artillery. In that sense, they are floating interdictors who CAN blockade, though their intended use is as raiders.
Stay on station? Distances involved in Pacific's carrier battles greatly surpass the distances of English channel. I dont think I'll discuss this with you further since to you having 100 or 100000 planes patrolling that area presents the same problem but carriers don't. Jesus
Because having 20 planes over the Channel won't do Jack to stop RN operations. Look at the hit rates of dive and torpedo bombers in WWII. It's very low. Particularly when the ship is manuevering.Second mistake you make is that you assume all or nothing total combat presence. There wouldn't be need for more than 20 planes or some radar stations to detect ships trying to force their way trough the channel and then dispatch sufficient force to deal with it. There wouldn't be thousands of German planes flying 24/7 or all of them flying at same time and then returning to rest then fly again.
Instead airports of Northern France, Bretagne, and Netherlands would be stacked with planes ready for combat on detection of enemy.
Cause unsustainable casualties sure, but the RN doesn't have to sustain them long, all the RN forces have to do is remain combat effective long enough to reach the battle area and destroy the German barges and landing craft after dealing with their escorts. It is unlikely that the Luftwaffe could manage this with a reasonable POD. Most of the big Pacific theater carrier battles didn't sink all that many ships after all, sinking a ship with WWII era aircraft is very hard. And to protect a SeaLion you need to outright sink enough of the British Navy that German forces would have a fighting chance to protect the barges, or else the invasion fails, this is not jousting over some important but non vital islands of the pacific but do or die for the UK, they are not going to stop just because they take unsustainable lossesI don't understand the obsession for larger German navy. Aircraft were proven to be kings of naval warfare in WW2. Sufficiently large luftwaffe could keep the channel open for essentially free landing and resupply of troops indefinitely, or cause unsustainable casualties to the RN if it interferes, which it would.
Agreed. The RN will happily sail to it's destruction if it means saving the home isles from invasion. They have a tradition of doing exactly that multiple times in their history. The RN would literally send everything from their newest battleships to the smallest launch armed with only a machine gun to stop an invasion. There would be absolutely zero concern for saving their strength for another day.snip
So... because Henlow is out of range for a Bf109, Henlow - home to a maintenance unit, that means that Fighter Command wouldn't withdraw beyond Duxford, which is a good 60 miles closer than to the Luftwaffe fighter airfields than Henlow.It's out of BF 109 reach and a perfect example of why your argument is NSA.
I have an opinion based on what I have read that any withdrawal of Fighter Command would have to be beyond Duxford if the aim is to be out of range of the Bf109.
So will the UK, and by that point it is far more likely that Tube Alloys has yielded results than its German equivalent, and the embarkation ports for SeaLion go up in artificial sunsIf the Germans could last to the 1950 mark (and the US doesn't get involved), the Germans will have aircraft with specs like the MiG-15, meaning that the UK is no longer safe harbor for the RN