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Post by silverdragon on Aug 20, 2017 9:33:14 GMT
Dunkirk, "where was the RAF"....
It has long been a "Needle" between the armed forces that on the beaches of the Dunkirk Retreat, the RAF were noticeable by their absence.
The statute of limitations of military secrets has been past its time limits now.
I can reveal where they were... and yes they were there...
They were INLAND of the battle, kicking the crud outa the advancing Sauerkrauts to give our lads chance to get the hell off the beaches.
This I feel needs to be addressed.
The RAF were not as some suggested sat back in their huts sipping tea doing sweet Fanny Adams... they were in a whole world of hell up at twenty thousand feet dodging their own hail of lead trying to keep the German Luftwaffe from reaching the battle lines and strafing the retreating armies.
This can be researched by checking out the sites of crashed RAF planes on the dates of the retreat,, and noting that many of the crashed and downed aircraft were many miles INLAND, and now perhaps this "Myth" that the RAF were absent can be laid to rest by now doing some freedom of information request and find out how many "Sorties" were flown on those days and where.
BTW, Did I know all this already?.
Yes. I knew the basics, my Granddad on one side was fixing the aircraft back then, he "knew"...
Was I restricted in what I was allowed to "know" and say?.
Yes.
Military "Secrets" you know...
There is a long arm of the law that I needed to keep the hell out of the way of?.
Yes it was before my own time with that mob, but, official secrets act and all that?.
This is why maybe its best I dont do the full research myself... I dunno if they is still watching me.?..
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Post by mrfatso on Aug 20, 2017 10:55:59 GMT
There was a Channel 4 program on this very subject a few weeks ago. www.channel4.com/programmes/dunkirk-the-new-evidenceYou should be able to watch it on their catch up service, I don't know if it would work for our non British friends, but it was very intresting. Amongst the things it showed was that the RAF were fighting the Luftwaffe inland, an includes the service logs of service men involved. The film Dunkirk that Inwatched last night includes as one of its three major strands the air battle with Tom Hardy featuring as the lead pilot, Michael Caine is a voice heard through the radio. The last part is a little unrealistic biut other than that it's very good. |
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Post by the light works on Aug 20, 2017 13:45:36 GMT
Too bad America doesn't have a TV network that shows things that happened in History.
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Post by mrfatso on Aug 20, 2017 16:11:08 GMT
I would imagine it might go to Nova on PBS at lot of Channel 4 shows like the Colditz glider show appeared there in a slightly edited form.
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Post by the light works on Aug 20, 2017 22:10:57 GMT
I would imagine it might go to Nova on PBS at lot of Channel 4 shows like the Colditz glider show appeared there in a slightly edited form. it looks like I might be able to watch it from that site. I might remember to check on it next friday. it was mainly a sarcastic remark about the fact our "history Channel" network switched over to reality TV. |
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Post by silverdragon on Aug 21, 2017 7:01:47 GMT
Thanks for the link, and how the hell did I miss that, because TeeVee is so bloody booring right now I would have watched it.
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Post by Cybermortis on Aug 21, 2017 14:52:29 GMT
What are you asking MB to test?
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Post by silverdragon on Aug 22, 2017 7:18:58 GMT
What are you asking MB to test? Publicly show that the myth "The RAF was noticeable by its absence" is a Myth that can be busted. This is re-writing the common history books with truth, the history told father-to-son and onwards, and bring into common knowledge the "Most secret" parts that the RAF didnt want anyone to know where we were on those days to hide the fact we were short on planes but high on courage and fighting to help slow down the Kraut advance, but didnt want to make it common knowledge where we were at that time in case the enemy could use it to their advantage. Our chief weapon was surprise... and cunning... and I told you not to mention the snazzy red uniforms.... |
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Post by mrfatso on Aug 22, 2017 7:44:25 GMT
Yeah but it's not really in the Mythbusters wheelhouse.
Other program formats are more suited to that, and to be honest it's not something many American viewers would be aware of, except people such as LTW and Lokifan.
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Post by Cybermortis on Aug 22, 2017 14:49:04 GMT
"You can't see an aircraft at 10,000 feet from 50 miles away while being bombed" is not exactly a myth.
Notes; The reason they couldn't see the RAF was because they were flying inland and intercepting bombers 50-100 miles away from the beaches. They didn't operate over the beaches themselves in part because they wanted to shoot the bombers down before they dropped their bombs. But also because on those few occasions where RAF fighters did overfly the beaches the AA guns mistook them for German's and fired on them.
During the middle and latter parts of the Battle of Britain German Bombers flew at 15-20,000 feet (Almost the service ceiling of the bombers in 1940). However this was for area bombardment and not what they were trained for. At Dunkirk the bombers would have been flying at a lower altitude for better accuracy, as they had been trained to do for the close support role.
One thing about Dunkirk that COULD be tested is the claim that the German Bombing was not that effective against the troops on the beaches because the force of the explosion and the shrapnel was absorbed by the sand.
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Post by silverdragon on Aug 23, 2017 9:09:05 GMT
One thing also to be tested is that the german bombers were not aiming for the troops at the beaches, but trying to hit the Boats.
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Post by mrfatso on Aug 23, 2017 10:46:07 GMT
As part of the tactics for Blitzkreig the German bombers were well practised in prediction attacks on targets like shipping, something that they all did in the Norwegian Campaign as well. If they meant to hit the ships rather than the beach they probably could have done.
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Post by Cybermortis on Aug 23, 2017 13:37:09 GMT
The given orders indicates the bombers were ordered to attack both the ships and the boats, although the boats were a higher priority target which is why the RN pulled their destroyers out during the day.
'Bomber' doesn't just mean the Ju-88, Do-17 and He-111 but also the Ju-87 Stuka. The Stuka dive bombers were acuurate enough by their nature that you knew what they were aiming at. In this case it was clear that they were frequently aiming at the troops on the beaches.
The other bombers in use were not dive bombers*, and it is far from impossible that they could release late and hit the beaches rather than ships. However this would have required them to be running attacks towards the land (which they were not) and, given that the ships they were aiming at would be at least half a mile offshore, a degree of ineptitude that does not match the Luftwaffe of that (or any other) time**.
(*The Ju-88 was also capable of dive bombing but as far as I know not used for this in 1940. Besides which it was a brand new aircraft intended to replace the older Do-17 and was not deployed in significant numbers at Dunkirk.)
(**Allied bombers did manage to miss hitting the beaches on D-Day. But not only were they concerned about hitting the landing craft they were doing precision bombing they had not really been trained for or were experienced in. Neither applied to the German bombers in 1940)
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Post by the light works on Aug 23, 2017 13:58:31 GMT
The given orders indicates the bombers were ordered to attack both the ships and the boats, although the boats were a higher priority target which is why the RN pulled their destroyers out during the day. 'Bomber' doesn't just mean the Ju-88, Do-17 and He-111 but also the Ju-87 Stuka. The Stuka dive bombers were acuurate enough by their nature that you knew what they were aiming at. In this case it was clear that they were frequently aiming at the troops on the beaches. The other bombers in use were not dive bombers*, and it is far from impossible that they could release late and hit the beaches rather than ships. However this would have required them to be running attacks towards the land (which they were not) and, given that the ships they were aiming at would be at least half a mile offshore, a degree of ineptitude that does not match the Luftwaffe of that (or any other) time**. (*The Ju-88 was also capable of dive bombing but as far as I know not used for this in 1940. Besides which it was a brand new aircraft intended to replace the older Do-17 and was not deployed in significant numbers at Dunkirk.) (**Allied bombers did manage to miss hitting the beaches on D-Day. But not only were they concerned about hitting the landing craft they were doing precision bombing they had not really been trained for or were experienced in. Neither applied to the German bombers in 1940) for sake of argument, one could speculate they were releasing early, or that they had loaded anti ship bombs, and then due to the ships being harder targets, decided to attack the soldiers, instead. |
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Post by mrfatso on Aug 23, 2017 21:04:11 GMT
Because the upper echelons of the Luftwaffe were pro-dive bombing the Do-17 and the He-111 were also,capable of dive bombing, they may not have been best suited to the role but they could still perform the task.
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Post by the light works on Aug 24, 2017 1:27:52 GMT
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Post by silverdragon on Aug 24, 2017 6:43:45 GMT
"Word is", many of the german bombers loaded, dropped, ran, land, load, repeat, and gave up trying to be any form of accurate, as so many bombs were flying it didnt matter because it was the number of bombs they had taken that day that was being counted.
Being accurate was time consuming and meant flying low.
To avoid possible anti-aircraft and any loose unexpected RAF, they just stayed high, let go the load, and return to base, it wasnt as if anyone was watching them individually at that time?.
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