Lancaster

[OttoJ]

The scary part is that you probably believe that. You're just as biased as him, and you intentionally look for every opportunity to confront him or "discretely" mention his views (and your opinions of them) in completely unrelated threads. It's very much like a compulsive disorder with you.

[Angus]

Otto, there is an odd definition in this:
"If the aggressor ceases to attack then the defender has won, surely you understand this"

Sure. But they did not cease to attack. They paused, licked their wounds, then carried on with increasing power.
I'd say they lost the round but won the match, as well as their side won the title if you see what I mean.

But in the BoB daylight ops, it was a K.O. Total withdrawal, never to be repeated in daylight with any noteable strength.

[OttoJ]

Originally posted by Angus
Otto, there is an odd definition in this:
"If the aggressor ceases to attack then the defender has won, surely you understand this"

Sure. But they did not cease to attack. They paused, licked their wounds, then carried on with increasing power.
I'd say they lost the round but won the match, as well as their side won the title if you see what I mean.

But in the BoB daylight ops, it was a K.O. Total withdrawal, never to be repeated in daylight with any noteable strength.

What is your definition of a battle? To me the battle ends when the shooting stops. When the RAF later returned it marked the start of a new battle. One that they won.

Why do you compare LW daylight bombing with RAF night bombing? When did the RAF ever bomb Germany during the day? When did the Germans stop bombing London in night raids? And if you think sending a few Mosquitoes to Berlin is a continuation of the battle then surely the few Fw190G night-bombers sent to annoy the British even into 1944 was a continuation of the London blitz in 1940? Obviously I'm jesting and I don't believe you are this stupid.

[Tilt]

Picking at fringe issues are we not.............

Battle of Berlin was about levels of city attrition.............Battle of Britain was about air superiority..............

If the objective of a "Battle" is not met then it is not won............is it therefore lost?

Many "Battles" can be seen as victories for both sides due to differing objectives........... further splitting ongoing conflicts into a series of "Battles" is often a propaganda tool to high light the best view of the conflict by one side over another.

We should be beyond that here.

De Haviland had a point IMO...........multiple lower cost medium bombers capable of rapid ingress and egress at safer altitudes were more efficient.

Talk of accuracy is useless.......nothing was point accurate unless the bomb was "put" on the point target. (low level)

A city is a big target when all you want to do is terrorise its occupants..............

For  less cost Harris's first 1000 bomber raid would have been a 3000+ Mossie raid at altitudes where a large portion of LW interceptors were pretty useless.

Further, it can be argued that lower levels of Mossie attrition would have led to a higher growth rate in mission ready BC Mossies.......... Harris's Dresden raid may have been a factor higher still had the Mossie been the bomber of choice..............


if, whats and maybe's................

It did not happen, its all speculative.............


Re the above quotes.............. according to these quotes the Red Army had nothing to do with Germanies eventual demise?  .......Incredible!.....I can only think them to be "selective" at best.

[OttoJ]

WWII was not one big battle. It was a series of battles interrupted by brief periods of calm. By Angus' logic the Germans didn't win the Battle of France in 1940 because they lost it in 1944. Idiotic.

When one warring faction withdraws to "lick their wounds" and surrenders the field of battle to the enemy they have lost that battle. Whether they return at a later stage is irrelevant.

[Angus]

Otto, tsk tsk tsk.
Operation, Battle, campaign, - all a sequence of things. Operations become battles, battles being a part of a campaign and so on.
The particular operation to knock Germany out with a massive bombardment on their capital has been named "the battle of Berlin". BC failed there and lost.
But be wary, - many (German) historians and LW veterans do not even to this day recognize the BoB as a "battle"
Anyway, Berlin kept on being bombed untill it was mostly rubble, - I wonder if the Berliners consider the Battle of Berlin to have been won by the LW, - as they kept being on the receiving end untill the war ended.
Germans indeed won the french campaign, BTW

[Noir]

Originally posted by Angus
Germans indeed won the french campaign, BTW [/B]

NO THEY DIDN'T

[Angus]

The one in 1940, - of course they did. They lost the second french campaign in 1944 FYI
Now if those had occured with 4 days within each other instead of 4 years, one could have a second thought about that....was it one battles or two, - one offensive or two, one campaign or two, - giggle

[OttoJ]

Operation and campaign are nothing more than words used to describe a series of battles aimed at achieving a strategic goal.

How long did the RAF take to "lick their wounds" then? A week? A month? Several months? I bet the people of Berlin felt it was a victory at the time.

[Scherf]

Originally posted by OttoJ
I bet the people of Berlin felt it was a victory at the time.

A young woman in Berlin once told me how happy the locals were to see the Russians.


I didn't believe her, either.

[Angus]

Hehe, you were in eastern Berlin I bet.
I worked in Germany with a guy who was drafted at the age of 15 to work with a flak unit. His whole class actually. At the end of the war, half of them were dead. We travelled from Pirmasens through Cologne all the way to Essen where our job was waiting, en route he told me how almost everything had been destroyed, the cities in rubble and most knew there was no chance for victory.

Guess some in the high-up-hills figured too late.

Germany should have wisely surrendered in 1944 or so.

[OttoJ]

If you knew what you had done or helped do with the deathcamps etc. would you have surrendered?

I don't think so.

Nor do I believe the Soviets would have accepted a surrender.

[Noir]

Guess some in the high-up-hills figured too late

They knew but there was no other option that victory in their doctrine

[rshubert]

Originally posted by OttoJ
If you knew what you had done or helped do with the deathcamps etc. would you have surrendered?

I don't think so.

Nor do I believe the Soviets would have accepted a surrender.

The Soviets almost certainly WOULD have accepted a surrender.  Then they would have turned around and done exactly the same as they did in reality--rape the country, steal everything that wasn't bolted down (and a lot of things that were), and exact an exquisite revenge for their losses.

[Angus]

After the firebombing of Hamburg it was noted in the German high command that if some couple of such attack would have occured within the space of a month or two,Germany would have capitulated or had no choice than surrender.
FYI, the firestorms that occured in Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo are a side effect, not easily doable with human effort, and were quite not planned and expected.
Anyway,- most of the German population was not aware of the deathcamps,- neither were the allies with the exceptions of British intelligence which gave a B&W implying image of it, and then in 1944/45 the Russians as well as the allies started overrunning those camps.

Rotten business, this war.