KGV Regunned

Barbarossa start date

I always thought that March 1st WAS the planned start date for Operation Barbarossa, as planned by a certain A. Hitler?
A reviewer of this book on amazon stated "tanks can't move through the mud of spring". Thought that was one of the reasons they were given tracks?
 
The Tallboy...

...Was designed to be dropped using the Stabilised Automatic Bomb Sight from 20,000 feet. It is NOT suitable for a dive-bombing action.

A Lancaster did dive-bomb target markers onto a French factory for the 617 bombers to flatten it.
 
The Tallboy wasn't very practical except against immoble hardened targets like Uboat pens. They had a hard time hitting Tirpitz with one and she was parked at the time. True, it only took one good hit to capsize her, but had she been moving in open ocean I doubt she'd have taken a hit. Bombers the size of Lancasters were just too easy to see and too slow to make the attack without a ship like Yamato moving out of the way.

Anyway, the Germans had already came up with the better answer to this problem. Radio controlled glider bombs like Fritz X.

The reason they had problems was due to the effective smoke defences around the ship. By the time the bombers were overheaed, the ship was conpletely concealed. Despite this, one of the bomb aimers actually DID hit Tirpitz!!
Eventually the germans screwed up, did get the smoke off, exit Tirpitz....

While it would indeed have been hard to hit her in open ocean, I wonder what the underwater damage from a near miss would be from 6 tons of bomb...I suspect very nasty indeed.
 
I always thought that March 1st WAS the planned start date for Operation Barbarossa, as planned by a certain A. Hitler?
A reviewer of this book on amazon stated "tanks can't move through the mud of spring". Thought that was one of the reasons they were given tracks?

Metrocab

Hitler wanted to start the attack in spring but weather conditions/Balkan attacks [take your pick] delayed it.

Tanks are tracked to enable them to go through rugged or difficult terrain. However there are limits to every ability. The Russian spring mud, when all the snow that has fallen over the long winter and poor drainage in very flat terrain mean serious mud. Even the Soviets didn't move much during this period.

Furthermore, even if tanks could move through the mud their very little use without the infantry, artillery, supply and other support units which all move in trucks [if their lucky], with the aid of horses or under their own boot power.

If the Germans had attacked in March their advances would have been seriously slowed and if their panzers had been able to move and pushed ahead you might have seen at least 1-2 spearheads isolated and totally destroyed.

Steve
 
Weren't the Scharnhorst class designed to be able to be up-gunned?

The twins were not designed with the upgrade in mind, it would have taken a completely new bow section ('a' turret and forward) amongst other things as they did not have enough extra bouyancy to take the extra weight of the fittings.
 
I think this could be book to bypass - Amazon review states he has Barbarossa starts 1st March 1941 :confused::confused::eek::eek: -

Yes. *I* wrote that review (the 2 star one - not the four or five star review).

The book strikes me as being very much a 'tanks, planes, battleships' wank, rather than a serious Alternative History. The author *wants* three Yamatos against three KGV, but rather than writing a book positing that 'in theory', he tries to get it in a crazy, crazy ATL.

Worst thing is, the book is on sale for about £30!
 
AMAZON PRICING

If Amazon sell the book for £30 typically the author will be netting around 40 cents US per volume sold!!!!
So I don't think these guys set out with greed in mind, just writing any old rubbish. The greed bit comes from Amazon.

If I remember right the original planned March 1st 1941 start date for Barbarossa was quoted by Alan Clark in his book "Barbarossa"? Read it years ago so perhaps someone has a copy.

But in any case the first several hundred kilometers of the Barbarossa invasion would have been through what had been part of Poland, following the Soviet abandonment of the Stalin Line and their push forward in 1939. Did the Poles have roads? I think so.
 
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