"Vanishing American Air Superiority"

Ken S. Tucker wrote:
On Mar 18, 2:59 pm, Chris wrote:
On Mar 18, 2:47 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

The RN was pretty much useless, recall Pearl Harbor, suppose the
This feels like I'm being punked, but let's go ahead and treat this as
a real argument.

If you are trying to say that airplanes will surely sink the RN and
allow Sealion to continue because a lot of ships were sunk at Pearl
Harbor, then your argument fails.

The Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor. They would not be
involved in a Sealion invasion.

What you need to understand is that the IJN was the best in the world
at sinking ships at this time. The period from before Pearl Harbor
through to the middle of the Guadalcanal campaign or so is their high
water mark. Saying that because the Japanese in that time frame could
sink a lot of ships in a few hours (especially when they are
obligingly stationary in port during daylight) therefore the Germans
could to (at night while steaming at 20+ knots) is like saying that
because LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Lakers, me
and my friend's who play pick-up basketball will too (even if we give
them a 15 point head start) .

Let's do a quick comparison of the Luftwaffe (and this is mighty
Fliegerkorps X a year later, specially trained for attacking ships-
but not in September 1940) and the IJN. During the evacuation of Crete
HMS Fiji and HMS Gloucester operated inside Luftwaffe air range for
over two days, with no fighter support, and were only sunk when the
two cruisers ran out of AA ammo. During Operation C the Kido Butai's
dive bombers (the torpedo bombers held their weapons, hoping for
better targets) put HMS Cornwall and HMS Dorsetshire both underwater
within a half-hour of the first bomb falling.

That is the level of difference we are talking about between the
Japanese and the Germans: an order of magnitude in effectiveness. And
then factor in the difference between hitting ships that are moving
and hitting ships that are berthed in port, and I begin to suspect
that you are not fully serious with this argument.

Nazi's
float a bunch of cheap boats, the RN responds and the Luftwaffe
Were would they get these cheap boats? They didn't have enough to
carry their invasion force, even by essentially ending all river
traffic and causing significant economic dislocation (in particular,
coal transport was seriously curtailed, meaning that steel production
was way down- see Tooze, _Wages of Destruction_). Barges were critical
for German economic activity, and they didn't have enough (largely
because Hitler had focused on other things, allowing most of the
transportation infrastructure to degrade severely- the Reichsbahn
suffered quite badly too).

I am leaning towards the conclusion that this argument of yours must
be some sort of elaborate hoax, though I am at a loss as to the
purpose.
Chris Manteuffel

As a hobby I build houses, cottages and track vehicles, here's pix,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dynamics/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/3515661...7616995388478/

that's for fun.

I have some news.

They're NOT tanks...


--
William Black

"Any number under six"

The answer given by Englishman Richard Peeke when asked by the Duke of
Medina Sidonia how many Spanish sword and buckler men he could beat
single handed with a quarterstaff.