DBWI: HMS Glorious sunk by KM warship(s) April 1940

I know it seems unlikely, considering the WW2 career of the carrier, but could it have turned out different.
After all it shared the Battle Honour with the Ark Royal of the Scharnhorst - one of the returning aircraft crash landing helped with ensuring a refit.

I wonder what the Scharnhorst could have done in the War if it had been able to return to base.
 
With the increased range of Aircraft and the availability of Escort carriers the time for surface raiders has run out.

The sucessful starving of the Britis islands was only possible with the unrestricted submarine warfare. If the Germans had not abandoned surface ships in 1940 after Scharnhorst had been sunk they probably would have buit /refitted some of their surface ships and so wasted precious resources.

Lend Lease would have won the war for the Allies, but with the Iron Wolfes screen around England (and later the screen around Murmansk/Arkhangelsk) Lend lease simply did not reach their destination.

Even the eventual US entry in the war and better (and larger) convoys could not replace the earlier losses.

Sure after Stalingrad and Kursk the Axis situation was not the best, but the raid at Toulon where the whole remaining French fleet fell into the Axis hands and the defeat of the Brits at El Alamein and the failed Torch landings.again turned the tide. With the Med secure even the combined Brit and US Atlantic fleets could not prevent Sealion Mk II. (1944).

With UK out of the game and the US no staging area in Europe Germany could (finally) concentrate on the east. So we now can celebrate the 65th anniversary of the final victory (Russlandtag 6. Juni 1948).

And when the Type XXI was finally available we could give a helping hand to our Japanese allies and finish the conquest of China in 1953 and so the US (they almost WON the PAcific war by 1945 - remember) finally agreed to a peace treaty in 1954, limited their shere of interest to the Americas (minus Argentine and the former French and Brit Caribbean islands)

So for the last 60+ years we sing: Rule Germania, Germania rules the waves (I love the painful looks of my English servants everytime I play that song)
 
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