• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Channel Dash

They got pretty intense on the home front, too.

The RAF lost around 40 aircraft, if memory serves - but achieved nothing of substance for it;

The RN maintained a number of patrols in the Channel but for some reason nothing substantial was accomplished by them either, and;

The British coast artillery, whose reason for being was engaging and driving off or sinking heavy surface warships, and which had batteries that bore on the Channel and were more than capable of dealing with German capital ships, achieved nothing.

There were weather conditions that mitigated against the full and effective employment of some or all of these instruments of war, and it seemed the British found environmental factors played a more significant role than the new technology would initially have allowed them to play. Potential German naval threats against the North Atlantic, and a relocation of scarce resources for use against those threats, further lessened the odds against the Germans. Interestingly, the most effective British weapon used against the German capital ships was an entirely passive one, and an old one - horned mines.

The whole situation caused acute embarrassment in Parliament for the ruling party.

The RN's Fleet Air Arm 825 Sqn, and LCDR Esmonde, set new standards for bravery and devotion to duty that day as well. A memorable photo snapped by a crewman on one of the German ships showed one of the Swordfish that attempted a torpedo attack on his ship passing nearby with flames clearly visible around the cockpit. en route to ditching.

The various summaries of the post-action review ordered by Churchill make for interesting reading.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top