Bismark escapes to France?

Thank you, This makes it more clear now, although it would make more sense to use the larger Royal Navy, which happened to be in the region already, being near its homebases. The USN would propably only be usefull in the Chanal, with the growing number of PT-Boat's, alongside the British MTB squadrons.

Again, I only mean during Torch. Using USN BBs in the Channel is as unwise as you suggest. I only meant to say that the RN BBs have missions in the Home Fleet and Western Med, while (assuming all four German ships are still there) the Torch landings would require very heavy protection. I imagine that the RN will need its own heavy units for protection of the Murmansk Convoy runs, including watching the Tirpitz, and covering the Algerian parts of Torch, where the Germans can't go. The US battleforce at this time was still relatively under-utilized.

EDIT: The USN needs every PT Boat it has for the SW Pacific campaigns.:(
 
OK.

Torch would more likely be protected more heavily, as you mention already. Therefore the allocated heavy assaultsupport of battleships and cruisers is likely to be reduced, to keep more ships available for a possible escape of the German heavy units form their French ports. Therefore, I suppose the firesupportmission of the Torch Landings at Cassablanca and Oran would be without the USS Augusta and Massachusets in the first and without HMS Rodney and Nelson in the second, as these ships would likely be hold back in reserve at Gibraltar, together with a substantially enlarged Force H (normally HMS Renown, one fleet carrier and an escort of cruisers and destroyers.)

Other heavy units would remain at Scapa Flow, in case the German ships decided to escape into the Atlantic for a war on trade. The homefleet would by then consist of three King George V class battleships, with the Anson and Howe almost to be completed as well, making that all five (note that the survival of Bismarck would mean HMS Prince of Wales would never be detached to Singapore.) At least one, but possibly two fleetcarriers would be attached to the Homefleet as well, as a large number of cruisers and destroyers. The USN would at this time also detach USS Alabama and USS Wasp to the Homefleet in the North Atlantic, to strengthen the force against a possible German breakout back to German waters via the Danemark Strait, west of Iceland.

The Mediteranean Fleet would so far consist only of one aircraft carrier and a number of cruisers and destroyers, as the battleships were either under repair, or detached to the Indian Ocean. (HMS Queen Elisabeth, Valiant and Warspite were under repair after heavy damage in late 1941, early 1942, while the four Royal Sovereign class BB´s were mostly in the Western Indian Ocean, with one occasionally in the eastern Mediteranean.)

So the firesupport would basically be done by the aircraft from the escort carriers and USS Ranger, which would likely continue to use her strikeforce against targets of opportunity in direct support of the landings. More was actually not realy needed, as the French forces of the Vichy regime were not that powerfull and could easily be dealth with from the air, given their total lack of aircover.
 
Did RAF even have 1,760 operational bombers in 1941? not sure about that.

Even so, if they kept it at 300 machines per raid, with an attrition rate of 20%, it wold take some 30 odd raids to have finished off the entire bomber command, if no new machines were built.

Yeah a sustained night after night raid strategy as suggested in the article to finish off the ships doesn't seem like a good idea for the attrition reasons you say. The kind of OTL sporadic bombing did work though, bomb them until you get a hit, let them take a few months to repair, then bomb them again, if they try to work up at La Pallice or someplace, bomb them there. They were bombing submarine pens in those ports periodically anyway. If you know you have an operation Torch coming up, try to hit the ports a couple of extra times to be extra sure.
 
Top