The Navy (RN) Won the Battle of Britian...Discuss

[SteffK]

I can agree that they had an impact on the outcome due to thier presence, but to say they actually won is complete RolloX!!!

How the Navy (RN) Won the Battle of Britian...Discuss

[Trikky]

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few," said Winston Churchill in praise of the pilots who took part in the Battle of Britain. But as the 66th anniversary of the firefight in the skies approaches, some of the country's top military historians have claimed it was the Royal Navy rather than the RAF that saved Britain from invasion by the Germans in the autumn of 1940.

The three military historians who run the high command course at the Joint Services Command and Staff College at Shrivenham, near Swindon, have concluded that the Battle of Britain became an overblown myth and that the credit for keeping Hitler at bay should have gone to the navy.

In an article published in the journal History Today, headlined Pie in the Sky, Andrew Gordon, head of maritime history at the college, said: "It really is time to put away this enduring myth. To claim that Germany failed to invade in 1940 because of what was done by phenomenally brave and skilled young men of Fighter Command is hogwash. The Germans stayed away because while the Royal Navy existed they had not a hope in hell of capturing these islands. The navy had ships in sufficient numbers to have overwhelmed any invasion fleet."

But Bill Bond, founder of the Battle of Britain Historical Society, said: "There's always somebody trying to rewrite this historical period. Most of it's nonsense. Without air cover the Luftwaffe bombers would have smashed all the ports. The divebombers would have just blasted navy ships out of the water. Unopposed, the Luftwaffe could have done what it liked. To suggest that the Battle of Britain is a myth is nonsense."

Taken from here

You can also hire these historians for private functions, I hear they do a great Marx brothers skit.

[DREDIOCK]

And next up.
Historians reveal that Martin Luther King was really a KKK Plant designed to encite such a great reaction to the uppity negrosin the white community that it would cause the start of a second civil war

Dont they know its standard perating procedure to wait a minimum of 100 years and after everyone from that time period is dead for revisionist history.

[Edbert1]

If the "Battle Of Britain" means the air-war then it is clear that the RAF did not win it as much as the Luftwaffe (HG) lost it.

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by Edbert1
If the "Battle Of Britain" means the air-war then it is clear that the RAF did not win it as much as the Luftwaffe (HG) lost it.

On that I agree.

The Luftwaffes swich to bombing cities instead of the airfealds probably did far more to loose it for them then anything

[FiLtH]

Sounds like sour grapes (should be a fine whine by now due to age).
    Other than not having the ships for an invasion, the RAF was the key factor. What does that guy think...that if the RAF was defeated, a navy without air cover would have held off the germans?  I think we know how that type of battle pans out.

    If the RAF had failed, and Germany gained control of the skies, the RN would have eventually ceased to exist, its fuels depleted, and invasion would have been imminent.

    Im just an amateur historian, but I think this guy's dad was old navy, and he grew up in a household full of contempt toward the RAF.

[slimm50]

Hey, as in football, a win is a win is a win, no matter how ugly or unlikely.

[Krusty]

The ships were fast to manuver and "pretty safe from air attack" -- my arse!

[Tilt]

BoB was won by the RAF. The LW did not gain significant airsuperiority over SE England.

Its generally accepted that Operation Sea Lion (German invasion via cross channel flotilla) would have been smashed by the British Navy of the time in any event.

This was the German navies opinion at the time............

In 40 the British Navy was purportedly the biggest in the World.................

Sea Lion never happened. Was that because BoB was an RAF victory? Was that because the German Navy knew that a British fleet many times its size would crush it? Both?


well the question was who won the BoB.................... not who caused the cancelation of sealion

[GtoRA2]

Originally posted by slimm50
Hey, as in football, a win is a win is a win, no matter how ugly or unlikely.

Maybe in American football. But maybe thats how it works in soccer, I don't know though. I could ask some chicks around here, they are the only ones I know who played soccer.

[cpxxx]

Apparently these 'historians' never heeded the lessons of Midway and when the Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk.  The RN would have had to sail into the channel to sink the invasion fleet. Right within range of the Luftwaffe bombers and Stukas. Even with RAF air cover it would have been a massacre. The RAF in the Battle of Britain were unable to defend their own airfields but at least you can fill craters. When a ship is sunk it's sunk.

If the RAF was defeated there would have been nothing to stop the Luftwaffe from sinking the RN's capital fleet in the channel.

What is true is that Hitler feared the RN. What he didn't realise was that day of the capital ship was over and airpower would decide naval battle from now on.

[Angus]

How can this still be confusing ?
Oh, well it could but it's still clear.

THIS:
RN and RAF could not have saved Britain withot each other. But it was the RAF who did the fighting before it ever hit the RN as it was supposed to.
RAF held the umbrella for the RN who was then the only stopper for the invasion fleet.
So, in short, the fight never got past RAF.
the German boxer never punched the RAF boxer properly, swung some at the British cheering crowd with some success, then left the ring with a broken nose and little air. The RN was still on the bench...

[Nilsen]

Navy is always better than airforce. Anyone thinking any different are slow in the nugget.


GO NAVY!

[Angus]

Oh ..GLUG  GLUG  GLUG

Anyway seriously, the RN really made it through lots of crap, and one must bear in mind the job they had!
BoB had them ready, but the fight was mostly 20K above them.

[B@tfinkV]

I'm no historian, but lemme say i find it easier to attack a field with a few cruisers protecting it than a horde of spitfires at 29,000ft.