Without RADAR would we have lost the Battle of Britain?

Posted by dbhalling 9 years, 6 months ago to Technology
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If so, would the allies have lost WW2?


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  • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Not so sure that German aircraft were better than British or American, even in 1940. They were designed for a different purpose. The Luftwaffe was designed and used as airborne artillery - a novel concept, for sure, and it worked wonders against limited opposition, as in Poland and France. But when faced with an opponent designed and trained for air defense, many German pilots asked for Spitfires and Hurricanes. The Germans had a significant advantage in trained pilots because they did not rotate their pilots and there was no leave for them. They fought until they died. At first, that gave them lots of experience, but eventually fatigue and loss of the best pilots took their toll.
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  • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Panzer IV and the Tiger did not exist in 1940 or 1941. However, in 1941 KV-1 was the heaviest, strongest and strongly armed tank in the world. Only the German 88mm gun could penetrate it, and until the Tiger, much later in the war, no German tank carried this gun. In fact, the German tank guns at the time could not penetrate the T-34, except from the rear, or with Stukas from the air. The Shermans, by comparison, were death traps with their gasoline engines.
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  • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I believe that German World Domination would have ended rather soon after they had committed the bulk of their divisions on the British Isles. Comrade Stalin would have been receiving the May Day Parade from the Reichstag.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The T-34 was superior to the American Sherman, but it paled in comparison to the Panzer IV or the Tigers. The T-34 couldn't even penetrate the heavier Tiger tanks, which they discovered in the opening rounds of the Battle of Kursk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_....

    What they lacked in engineering might, however, they made up for in numbers. At Prokhorovka (the final engagement in the Battle of Kursk), the Russians outnumbered the more heavily armored (and armed) Germans nearly 4-to-1, but would have lost if not for rather unconventional tactics: they simply drive up onto the tracks of the German tanks and abandoned them! The additional weight effectively stalled the German tanks, whose crews were forced to abandon the armor. I loved the presentation by History Television in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greates....
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  • Posted by evlwhtguy 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You are correct, it was a matter of national survival.....as would have been an invasion....except on steroids
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  • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Agree with you regarding Stalin's concern for the people....
    As for production, compare these numbers: Germany had slightly over 3,500 tanks when it attacked USSR, with many being Panzer I and II, e.g., slightly more than tinfoil on skinny tracks. USSR had more than 5,000 T-34 alone, which was brand new and far superior to anything the Gremans had, and thousands of other types as well. Their big problem was leadership and the fact that many preferred to surrender than fight for communism. That is, until they found out that nazism was even worse.
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  • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    No doubt, they would have sacrificed the Fleet. On the subject of Dunkirk, the Brits made an all out effort and achieved local air parity if not superiority and still had to leave all their equipment to the Germans.
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  • Posted by Flootus5 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    We should consider also in this context that the Soviets took a bit of a trouncing by the Finns in the Winter War. Talvisota. Although ultimately winning the territory they were after, the hugely outnumbered Finns gave the Soviets a real bloody nose in doing so. Much of this is attributed to the inexperience of Soviet officers after Stalin had purged his senior staff in 1937. During The Great Purge he is estimated to have shot up to 30,000 of his officers.
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  • Posted by Flootus5 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Wow, that article is a wealth of information relative to this discussion.

    If we acknowledge the strength of this information and back up to my previously posited position that if Britain had fell, Germany would have been able to begin the invasion when originally planned, on a one front war, without diversion to Greece and North Africa, without diversion of running to the Caucasus for oil, and now with a wholly unsupported Russia in dire straits - holy moly, Hitler may have had it all.

    Another factor to consider is that Stalin was also paranoid of a two front war. A little heard of front was the skirmishes the Soviets had with the Japanese culminating in a decisive Soviet victory at Nomomhan in 1939. Right before the start of WWII. Right when the Non-aggression Pact was being signed. This underscores that Stalin was also having to watch his backside so to speak right during the critical time period we are considering of summer 1941 through 1942. Japan had been long maintaining a crushing military presence in Manchuria and were testing the waters with the Soviets at the Mongolian border.

    Consider the Pacific theater if Britain had fallen. Japan may have re-intensified aggression in Eastern Russia in the summer of 1941. It is interesting to speculate that Japan, also seeking to gain all the resources of the South and Southwest Pacific - would have considered a neutral United States a threat? What if they just bypassed (or not) the weak American presence in the Philippines and roared through a now stranded Singapore and Malaysia much earlier than they actually did? Australia would be on its own without Britain and possibly with a still neutral United States. And then there is India, now without Britain. Wow, the possibilities get endless for what would have ended up a completely different world. "Never has so much been owed, by so many, to so few"

    Would the United States have declared war on Germany as early as late 1940 had Britain fallen? Could that have been the shocker changing North American opinion?

    This is one hell of a fantastic discussion.
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  • Posted by evlwhtguy 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    They always kept the Fleet at Scapa Flow. For the reasons you stated...however with a full on invasion....Be assured they would have sallied fourth. I don't want to minimize the success of the RAF in the Battle of Britain...but the Germans would have had a very difficult time getting the army across and supplying it. I again point out that the British successfully pulled off the Dunkirk evacuation with the Luftwaffe trying their best to stop it.
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  • Posted by 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "He was more than happy to sacrifice a few million foot soldiers armed with whatever rifles he could cobble together."

    It made it easier to feed the population after the war
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  • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Several of your assumptions I would disagree with. The British understood the air threat to their Fleet and kept it not only out of the Channel, but way out in Scappa Flow. So, take it from the experts - the Fleet would not have lasted long in the Channel. Keep in mind that 10 aircraft shot down means 10 to 20 air crew dead; 1 ship going down is at least several hundred crew dead.
    The Normandy invasion took a lot of firepower and manpower because it was against a fortified defense, both on the beach and in depth. Britain in 1940 had none of it.
    The battleships that you mention would have been not much more than juicy targets - they are not designed to fight off waves of aircraft and small vessels, especially in restricted waters.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Partially, but Germany had most of the best technology in the world at that point in time already. They had the best machine guns. They had the best fighters and fighter-bombers (their lack was in heavy bombers to decimate Britain's production facilities and threaten shipping from the US). They had the best tanks and in large numbers. They had the best field artillery and anti-tank guns. They had rockets. And they had the designs for the Bomb.

    What Germany lacked was a leader willing to leave military tactics to the military. Hitler's armchair quarterbacking was what led to their fall.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Truly. Just play World of Tanks and you can see them one on one. ;)

    The USSR's problem was production: they couldn't field the tanks and artillery to match the Panzer Grenadiere battalions on the Russian Front. That and Stalin didn't really care about the people at all. He was more than happy to sacrifice a few million foot soldiers armed with whatever rifles he could cobble together.

    The deciding factor of Germany v Russia in WWII was Hitler's disastrous decision to attack Stalingrad in the dead of winter. Between supply problems, mercenary forces, and the weather, the entire German force on the Eastern Front was decimated at the conclusion of the battle - a loss Hitler couldn't afford.
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  • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Admittedly, the English strategy was superior at Crecy than at Agincourt - where their hand was more or less forced. But by 'battle tech' (as opposed to 'tech') I also include unit discipline. The French defeated themselves at Agincourt by their poor discipline as well as by their tactical arrangement of resources.

    And Napoleon was a hellova exception.

    Jan
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  • Posted by 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    In fact FDR trusted him way too much, probably because they were not all that different philosophically
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  • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    On the contrary, I think that USSR's strength has been underestimated on purpose - it suited Stalin and his followers to play victim. You bring up tank technology. True, the Russians copied and stole every conceivable technology that they could find. But they improved on it. Yes, the T-34 suspension was Christie. But US rejected it, when as the Russians were very successful with it. The T-34 and KV-1 had 500 hp diesel engines (in 1940!) - no other tank in the world came even close. Early T-34 had a 76mm gun, the KV-1 had a 120mm gun. German tanks of the period had 37mm guns. The heaviest British tank, the Matilda, had less than a 100 hp gas engine and 50 cal machine guns! None of the US tanks had heavy armaments or diesel engines. There is simply no comparison - the Soviet tanks were several generations more advanced than any competitor. In other areas, of course, the USSR was lagging behind - it's navy was not small, but outdated in terms of equipment and tactics and its airforce was designed mostly for one purpose - blitzkrieg attack against Germany with thousands of poorly trained Russian pilots; a scenario that never happened.
    Much of Western aid was food and wheeled transport (trucks, jeeps, Katyusha platforms - Studebakers) and high octane av-gas. Western tanks were sent as aid and Stalin asked for others things instead since they could not be used on the Eastern Front. Aircobras had some success, but trucks and food were of most value.
    Of interest is that through the auspices of FDR and his communist-infested State Department, part of Lend-Lease shipments included some very interesting details on the A-bomb design (certainly of much greater value to the Russians than the useless information that Rosenbergs’ were executed for).
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  • Posted by Lnxjenn 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    A reminder: Stalin was friends with Hitler before he was friends with the Allies. He wasn't trustworthy, as far as the Allies could see.
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  • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The Mitsubishi A6M was a mixed bag. It was superbly designed for the war that Japan intended to conduct - an unbroken string of victories where a small number of exceptionally well trained pilots had constant air superiority and, consequently, few loses. The aircraft was fast, long range and very maneuverable. But it was survivable only in the hands of expert pilots - it had absolutely no protection, such as armor around the pilot and the engine, and it did not have self-sealing tanks. Any hit would doom the plane and, often enough, the pilot. Once Japan began losing pilots, and since it took something like 5+ years of intensive training to obtain the skills of the original pilots, the new pilots became cannon fodder for the better trained American pilots in armored aircraft and with heavier machine guns. Again, it was an excellent aircraft that was designed for specific conditions that did not happen (after the first six months).
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  • Posted by term2 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I wonder about that. Germany had become so advanced under Hitler that I wouldnt have bet against them. It was only Hitler's megalomania that eventually saved the world from German domination. He picked too many enemies to fight at once.
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  • Posted by evlwhtguy 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The Luftwaffe was not able to stop the Dunkirk evacuation....and that was BEFORE the Battle Of Britain. Even if the Luftwaffe was successful in degrading the RAF, they themselves would have been weaker for the actual invasion. Believe ,e when I say that if operation Sea Lion had been attempted, it would have been all hands on deck on the British side. Every warship available would have been sent. Air power is extremely effective, but not in such a small area with the overwhelming force that the worlds most powerful navy would have brought. Again...even if Decimated, the RAF would have been available to assist and a warship is no pushover for aircraft...have you seen movies of midway and the Coral sea battles where the US fought off the Japs. Yes they did sink ships....but not all of them. Our success at Midway was a combination of good intelligence, valor good luck and incompetence on the part of the Japs in clearing the carrier decks. Even at that, an enormous fleet sailed back to Japan after Midway. In the Channel all those battle ships and cruisers would have been shooting down German aircraft.
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  • Posted by 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Again I don't think the facts support your point of view. One ship or a group of ships is no match for meaningful air power then or today.
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